Now you can see your home – and so can everyone else
It may be invasive and doubtless the scum class (aka tort lawyers) will have a field day, but it sure is fun.
Check this link to see NY’s Metropolitan Museum in scrollable panoramic format with the newly enhanced Google Maps. It may not be QTVR quality but it certainly is clever.
The company doing all the pictures, or snooping if you are a tort lawyer, is Immersive Media.
A service with the requisite Gen Y silly name – is it any good?
That exemplar of street photographers, Juan Buhler mentioned in an email that his latest book of snaps was published using a web publisher named Blurb. He finds the quality superior to Lulu, which I used for my first book which was all monochrome. With the first book I uploaded a PDF file, created in MS Word (the bad old days before Apple’s Pages came along), to Lulu, and sure enough, what you see is what you get with this approach.
Blurb, by contrast, delivers an application named BookSmart to you by download and you use it to compose your book. There’s a broad selection of handy templates and while the whole thing is not especially fast, it more than suffices for composing a picture book. As my second book will be all color, I was intrigued to see what Blurb had to offer. Best of all, Blurb offers the option of a hardcover – the only way to go if you value longevity.
First, the software requires that files uploaded be 3000 x 2400 pixels, or thereabouts, to preserve quality. Make them smaller and your picture will show a large exclamation mark indicating the quality is insufficient for reproduction on paper. Given that all my high quality original pictures reside in the Aperture database, I wasn’t about to export them one by one (I’m aiming for 50 or so in the new book), as Aperture is as slow exporting pictures as it is in preparing them for printing – meaning dead slow. So instead I created a custom export profile for my pictures of choice which I highlighted in Aperture using Command-Click, thus allowing selection of non-contiguous originals. Here’s how the export preset screen looks in Aperture:
Note that I have set the Image Quality slider to maximum – twelve on the scale. DPI is set to 300 (not the more common 72 which is fine for screen display, inadequate for printing), as this is the density at which Blurb prints. Hence the large file sizes.
Here’s the export about to commence – the destination folder shows ‘Desktop’ but in practice I make a new folder and export there, to keep clutter down.
Thirty minutes later and there are 50 pictures in my book folder on the iMac (I cannot advise on PC use as I refuse to have a Microsoft paperweight in our home), with sizes ranging from 3-11 mB; some are from film, some from RAW files, so the file sizes are all over the place. These picture files are then imported into Blurb – another ten minutes or so, and after a bit of experimentation with the cover design, here’s what you see:
Pictures marked with a green check mark in the inventory tray at left are those which have been dragged and dropped into the book itself. Rearranging the pictures is a drag-and-drop affair and you can print one or two sided. I’m going to try both and will report back on how things look – I found with my first book that a draft print makes a lot of sense as it’s really the only way to determine if the book feels right from a layout and content point of view. I’m settling on an 11″ x 8.5″ landscape format with hard covers.
Narrative is easily added, but I keep it to a minimum. After all, this is a picture book, not a novel.
Time to do all this from start of export from Aperture to completion of upload to Blurb followed by the related formatting? 5 hours. This would be less on a second attempt, as there should be no learning curve. Blurb saves your uploaded pictures on the fly so if you lock up (I did, once) nothing is lost. Nice.
When composition is complete, the product must be uploaded using a broadband connection to Blurb. Here’s the Blurb upload in progress – it took 18 minutes on my so-so cable broadband connection. Not bad.
Overall I have found the BookSmart application provided by Blurb to be easy to use and reasonably flexible, providing many useful templates (techies can upload their own designs). The program slows down from time to time but simply exiting and restarting the application seems to solve the problem on my G5 iMac.
More when I get the first draft back. Meanwhile you can see the book at Blurb, together with a Book Preview, by clicking here. Don’t order it, please, as this is a draft proof to permit review and editing. Blurb automatically creates a Book Preview – click to see the first fifteen pages.
Update: You can read my comments on the first draft here.
The fastest camera I have ever used
For over thirty years my camera of choice for street snaps was a Leica M2 or M3, typically with a 35mm or 50mm lens. This was the street snapper’s outfit par excellence.
Leica, of course is clueless about how to make a digital camera – they either badge engineer Panasonic’s and increase the price or make an overpriced, dated version of the fabulous M2 in the crippled-sensor M8.
In my experience, after using the 5D for some 15 months now, the 5D with the 24-105mm L zoom is faster in every respect. True, it’s a good deal bulkier than an M2 and not a bit noisier, but the automatic exposure and mind-numbingly fast and superbly accurate autofocus blows away the excellent Leica rangefinder in every way. We are talking operating speed here. Not high speed motor drives which are of little use in these situations. No I mean the speed of execution from seeing the picture to its recording.
Case in point. In continuing pursuit of pure color, and the hell with form and traditional composition, here’s the sort of thing which is second nature to this powerful lens/camera team (not to mention the operator):
It is hard to describe just how fast I had to be to snap this; the whole raising the camera/zooming/composing/snap cycle is just a blur in my memory. Exposure? Automatic. Focus? Automatic. Zoom? Manual – forget motorized zooms. Result? You be the judge.
And, while we’re at it, here’s another pair:
In overexposed highlights, that is
I have written before of the tendency of digital sensors to burn out highlight details. While highlights can be recovered using the Highlights slider in the Aperture Adjustments HUD, this is limited to one stop using RAW, in my experience. Thereafter, not all highlight details can be recovered.
Accordingly, in high contrast situations like outdoor sun, it’s far better to underexpose and use the Shadows slider to bring up shadow detail, rather than trying to recover highlights. The technique is illustrated here. A low noise sensor, like in the 5D, can sustain a lot of shadow enhancement before noise rears its ugly head.
Strangely, I find the large sensor in the Canon 5D more susceptible to highlight burn than the miniscule one in the Lumix LX1. This may be because, as reported at dpreview.com, the 5D’s sensor is some 1/2 stop more sensitive than the indicated ISO, compared with the Lumix. Given that HDR cannot be used with dynamic subjects (the three or five images required dictate the use of a tripod on a stationary subject) I simply underexpose by 1-2 stops in high contrast situations. Single image tone mapping can help, but it adds maybe half a stop at best; any more and the effect is garish. Canon provides exposure compensation on the 5D but is is horribly documented in the miserable book with a miniscule typeface that passes for instructions that comes with this camera. For $3,000 for a body only, this has to be the height of cynicism. Canon, please exclude accountants from the design of your machines and instruction books.
The 5D has a two position power switch, illustrated above. (The peeling on the screen is my stick on protector, not delamination of the LCD!). Normally, the switch is clicked up one notch to ‘On’ when using aperture priority – Av on the top left dial. Click it up one more notch to the line and the rear wheel activates exposure compensation, visible on the bottom of the viewfinder. It’s also displayed on the top LCD screen which is much easier to see than the viewfinder readout. By the way, a Manfrotto QR tripod plate is visible in this snap, permanently attached to the 5D’s base. Highly recommended – this is the ‘Architectural’ version with an alignment lip to preserve its position on the relatively heavy 5D body.
Click the on-off switch to the line, take a first pressure on the shutter release button, and rotate the wheel while looking though the viewfinder or at the top LCD screen. You can elect 1/2 or 1/3 stop intervals using the custom functions in the camera’s software. 1/3 is confusing precision with accuracy in my book, so I have it set to 1/2 stop intervals. I dial in the camera to, say, -1.5 stops, then immediately move the switch back to the regular On position to preclude accidental adjustment – the compensation setting wheel is disabled in this way, although the setting you dialed in is preserved. Better still (or not, if you forget), the setting survives switching the camera off. Power up and there is your setting, preserved.
I prefer to use average exposure metering in fast paced outdoor settings (Canon’s matrix metering leave me unimpressed) as there’s rarely time to take a proper exposure reading in the interest of capturing the moment. With this approach, you gain a stop of highlight adjustment while preserving some three stops of shadow recovery. Now that’s what I call dynamic range.
Here’s an example taken in bright sun yesterday:
Without the underexposure, the white sheet would have been comprehensively burned out. Here, detail is preserved.
With poetry by an unknown author
Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak and the couplings strain,
And the pace is hot, and the points are near,
And Sleep has deadened the driver’s ear;
And the signals flash through the night in vain,
For Death is in charge of the clattering train.
The wide aperture renders lovely out of focus areas, enhancing the effect of the skull.
Old subjects dictate old methods
From today’s hot rod show in Paso Robles, CA:
The technique described here was used.
By the way, if you hit Option-Shift-H in Aperture, the screen will be colored red in areas of burned out highlights – a great tool for those digital sensors sensitive to highlight overload:
I have left the exhaust pipe burned out as it heightens the impact of the image.
Here’s how the Aperture Adjustments HUD looked for the above:
What passes for beauty today
The roots showing, the hair a mess, the lips artificial, the make-up excessive …. today’s woman.
Seen on the street the other day in a Hispanic neighborhood in San Francisco.
Now if she had an iPod I might be interested – at least that way I wouldn’t have to listen to the inane chatter about sitcoms which is doubtless her default topic of conversation.
Good enough for HC-B
Any book comprised solely of snaps of one great photographer by another is bound to fall into the ‘Silly’ section of a library. Such is the case with ‘Faceless’, a slim book published in 2000 with 36 snaps of Henri Cartier-Bresson taken by David Douglas Duncan. It went out of print almost as fast as it hit the stores. I bought it solely as a memento of HC-B and found a little more to it than at first meets the eye.
Cartier-Bresson may not have taken a memorable snap in twenty years, but he still messed about with cameras. So, as a new generation of Leica film fetishists reluctantly migrates to Leica rangefinder digital in the underwhelming M8 ($5k, lens extra, largely useless viewfinder, fragile optical rangefinder, personalized engraving extra, gold plating on demand if you are a Saudi) these poor boobs (OK, not so poor) tell themselves that HC-B used an M rangefinder for most of his years, so it has to work for them. Snag is, as the above shows, ol’ Hank Carter (as his mates at Magnum knew him), though he hadn’t taken a decent snap in twenty years, was no longer an M Man. Rather, he had switched to a point-and-shoot Minilux which was emblazoned with the Leica logo but came from points farther east.
So while the M8 set keeps telling itself that its deeply flawed camera (IR problems, execrable quality control, largely useless viewfinder if you use wide angle lenses, manual focus, noisy shutter, no assurance that the poorly capitalized manufacturer will survive the next economic downturn, today’s technology in a geriatric body, ridiculous price for what you get) is just the sort of thing HC-B would use today, the old man had finally got what he always wanted – meaning auto-everything, fixed focal length lens and near silent shutter, allowing all the photographer’s skills to be directed at the subject, not the gear. Plus, you can stick it in your pocket; ever tried that with an M Leica?
No matter; before long someone will come out with a like version with a decent digital sensor; essentially a throwaway camera whose very disposability will make it a better tool. After all, who is going to take risks with a camera like the M8 which represents several months disposable income for most, with the occasional fitness for purpose afforded by a street snapper design? And maybe that digital maker can come out with two versions – one with a fixed wide and one with a modest long-focus lens. And no shutter lag. Put me down for two, and keep the change from not getting an M8 for the gas pump. We’re going to need it.
Rocker
Date: May 18, 2007
Place: San Mateo Drive, San Bruno, CA
Modus operandi: Waiting for my son’s swimming lesson to end
Weather: Cold and windy
Time: 1:32 pm
Gear: Panasonic Lumix LX1
Medium: Digital, processed in Aperture
Me: Always on the lookout for mystery on the street
My age: 55
Our son, aged five, loves the water and is becoming a competent swimmer in no small part thanks to the lessons he is taking at a swimming place in San Bruno in the San Francisco Bay Area. While he practises his dives I make it a habit to walk around this colorful area, pretty much assured of some bit of magic on the streets. Ethnic food stores (would you believe a Fijian food store?) abound and the scrappy, immigrant nature of the area is thrilling photographically.
I could not help but being struck by the mystery of this scene and the lovely little Lumix came through, aided in no small part by the widescreen image format native to this fine camera.
Simple is good – when will camera makers learn that?
After stentorian efforts to actually buy one, our experience with the Wii game console from Nintendo is nothing short of a revelation.
You open the box, plug it in, disregard the 500 warning messages to keep scum tort lawyers in their place, and play. Wave the controller about and the player on the screen moves in sync. The graphics are simple, verging on crude, the big instruction book can be disregarded and the result is insane fun!
Now I have to add that I do not play video games. Our son does, now. The above paragraph should have been written by him, except he is just five and his typing needs work. Come to think of it, he can’t read either. But just ask him if he enjoys his Wii.
Nintendo, like Apple, Thinks Different. Where Sony and Microsoft make game consoles of increasing complexity, with their sleazy back door attempt at taking control of your home computing, Nintendo focused on just a few things – ease of use, price and fun. Result? The competition is scrambling to emulate Nintendo’s wireless controller with its built in accelerometers and speakers. It will take them a year. The results won’t be pretty, thanks to Nintendo’s patents. First three month sales of the Wii exceed those of any other game console ever made. The stock has doubled in the past year. Get my drift?
So unless Nintendo or Apple decide to make a camera (I wish!), there’s a huge opening here for manufacturers looking to make a profitable entry into the market. Scrap all those silly buttons, LCD screens, largely useless zoom lenses, slow response times and poor ergonomics. Make the lens fixed. Add an optical viewfinder. Give it just one button – the one you click to snap the picture. Abolish shutter lag. So far that’s all like the Box Brownie of one hundred years ago on which, believe me here, the patents have expired. Put in a big sensor to ban image noise. Make it wireless to upload pictures to your computer. And, like the Wii, sell it for $299. Or $199. Or $99.
Happy users and profits follow. What am I missing here?
Book review
Taken in moderation, a sip here, a nibble there, these sixties diaries of Cecil Beaton are a blast to read. A sort of cross between the National Enquirer and the Tatler. Indiscreet, vicious, bitchy, funny, warm spirited, mean, generous, spiteful, the full panoply of human emotions, both good and base, is on parade for all to see here. And Beaton is rarely without his camera, conjuring up some new piece of fluff for all to enjoy.
If you like this sort of thing, and I wouldn’t put it on the recommended reading list without at least some prior exposure to his earlier, less gossipy writing, it’s a fun way to spend an afternoon.
Hoppé got it right
“The task of the artist is to develop his powers of perfection and sympathy, to bring a new vision of beauty and spiritual strength to a mechanistic age. This cannot be done in a darkroom or laboratory.”
E. O Hoppé, A Hundred Thousand Exposures. Focal Press, 1945.
Bottom line is, they all suck
Having just read another thoroughly depressing review of yet another Point & Shoot offering from a major manufacturer on the estimable DPReview.com, I have to wonder.
This one claims to be a top of the line offering. DPReview begs to differ, concluding that the camera has slow focusing and poor image sharpness, not to mention no RAW mode, a clunky interface and useless zoom range. It’s priced at some $350.
So why do these major manufacturers, and they are all guilty – Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, etc. – persist in turning out such execrable equipment?
A recent move by Canon to drop RAW from its P&S cameras may be a clue. The few of these cameras that have half decent lenses would likely embarass the costlier DSLRs from these same makers for half the price. So the consumer gets to suffer on the altar of product differentiation.
That’s a shame, so I suppose it’s little wonder that the much anticipated Sigma DP1 P&S will likely cost closer to $1000 than $300; on the other hand, you get a half decent sensor for your money. If the camera focuses fast, has low shutter lag and a decent lens – not something Sigma’s history of truly frightful lenses makes me too positive about – my $800 is waiting.
That’s if we will ever see this icon – it was last announced that the camera would be available 5 months ago.
Bergie’s
Date: 1984
Place: Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, New York City
Modus operandi: Looking at store windows
Weather: Gorgeous
Time: 11:00 am
Gear: Pentax ME Super, 28mm Takumar
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Gorgeous location, superb architecture, the poshest store in New York – what could be better?
My age: 33
For many years two of the finest women’s clothing stores in mid-town Manhattan were catty corner (English translation: Diagonally opposite) one another on Fifth Avenue: Bonwit Teller at 56th Street and Bergorf Goodman at 57th.
Bonwit’s no longer exists, pulled down in the middle of the night in 1981, before the City could place a restraining order on him, by that crass vulgarian, Donald Trump. With it went those gorgeous sandstone friezes that decorated the facade. In its place we got the gauche Trump Tower, replete with glitz to attract Eurotrash.
Bergie’s (no one calls it Bergorf Goodman), on the other hand, survived, and thrives on The Ladies who Lunch to this day.
I could never pass either store on my walk to work from my luxury high rise apartment (meaning infested rat trap) on 56th at Eighth, to what was then the Citicorp Center on Lex and 53rd, without stopping to gaze in their windows. And what windows they were! Never less than perfectly arranged, the best of European designers’ work was to be found there. St. Laurent, Givenchy, Ungaro, Marc Bohan (then at Dior). No, not Tommy Hilfiger. The polyester set could shop elsewhere.
This particular day I had detoured north of 57th and was making my way west along 58th Street, a rather mysterious passageway betwen Bergies and The Plaza, with that nice cinema near Fifth which remains there today. Having long been fascinated with the great school of 1930s American high rise architecture – perhaps best seen in Chicago – I was really looking forward to eyeing the Pierre and the Sherry-Netherland, in much the same way that one might a beautiful woman. Much to look at and dwell upon. A feast for the eyes and senses. A corner here, a bit of mystery there, never has architecture been so much fun.
Just before turning right on Fifth I glanced up at Bergie’s window, the one fronting onto 58th Street and there they were – the two grand hotels of New York City. But the real magic happened when those two ladies joined the reflection in Bergie’s window.
Can you say ‘click’?
Note: On this occasion I was using my ‘disposable’ Pentax ME Super rather than the M3. New York streets were seriously dangerous at this time and the theft of the cheap Pentax would not stir the soul as deeply as were I to lose my precious Leica. In the event, that preciously engineered and very compact Pentax turned out to be a wonderful street worker during my New York years (1981-87), only finally moving on when the LEDs in the viewfinder started to play up. Needless to add, it was never stolen.
Keep Left
Date: 1982
Place: Lexington Avenue, New York City
Modus operandi: Wandering around the streets aimlessly
Weather: Gorgeous
Time: 10:00 am
Gear: Leicaflex SL, 21mm Auper-Angulon R
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Enjoying this little bit of whimsy
My age: 31
Until modern Western quality control techniques were imposed, you could pretty much bet that anything from China was going to be schlocky when it came to execution. And that didn’t just go for their consumer goods. The Chinese applied the same low standards to their businesses and buildings, as this snap attests.
All of this is made so much the funnier when I relate that, at the time I took this, the newly opened representative office of the Bank of China in New York was a client of mine. I was advising them on installation of financial management systems which was sort of tricky when their default approach was to stuff the branch full of Chinese workers who spoke no English and showed remarkable facility with the abacus. Who needs IBM mainframes?
Anyway, after struggling with this insanely frustrating client for months (these people redefined, in 1982, resistance to change, and just hated to pay their bills) I felt I owed them one, and here it is. The missing letter in their cheap signage had been like that for ages, though I constantly pointed it out to the manager of the office. As you can see, the Chinese’ sense of style and decorum leaves a lot to be desired.
Only a very wide angle lens could capture all of this scene’s elements, and the 21mm Super Angulon R, for all its ridiculous bulk, was as good as they got in those days. The Leicaflex SL remains at the zenith of mechanical SLR design, with easily the best manual exposure meter I have used. It remains a fine and affordable user for those who like film, and comes with the best viewfinder you will find on any SLR, film or digital.
Book review
This slim volume has been on my bookshelf for some ten years now, a gift when it was first published. Amazingly, it remains in print, which says something for the appeal of these light-as-air sunny snaps from a great French amateur photographer who did his best work in the 1930s.
This collection makes for a pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a sun filled Sunday afternoon. Nothing deep here, just pure confection, and worth it for that fact alone.
Hewitt’s
Date: January 1, 2005
Place: Main Street, Templeton, CA
Modus operandi: Tripod, warm coat, hat, gloves, scarf, the whole megillah
Weather: Freezing cold at a time when the streets are deserted
Time: 7:00 am
Gear: Rollei 6003, 40mm Distagon
Medium: Kodak Portra NC160
Me: A pleasant memory of a great place
My age: 53
There’s a class of apologists in the US which thinks that freedom brings with it entitlements. They would have it that great American corporations like WalMart and Home Depot are driving the “….poor small local businessman out of business”. How many times have you heard that tripe? The reality is that you can choose lowest price with useless service, or service at a decent, if not the lowest, price. The latter attributes are found in the local hardware store.
In my case the store is Hewitts, and it’s on the Main Street of the small town of Templeton where I live, in central California. Hewitts employs half a dozen people and has premises some 10,000 square feet in size. WalMart is 2 miles distant to the north, Home Depot three to the south. Hewitts has been around since 1899 and remains vital and prosperous to this day. Far from glitzy inside, Hewitts boasts no superannuated greeters who failed to save for their retirement, no asinine ‘Hi! I’m Joe’ lapel badges. Yet there’s nothing there that you cannot find to fix problems in the home or garden. Why? Because the best thing that Hewitts has to sell is the knowledge base in the heads of the three owners, all in late middle age.
Hewitts, and thousands of businesses like it, make no apologies or excuses for the WalMarts and Home Depots of the world. Rather, they thrive because of them. Why? Simple. It’s called an informed sales force that just happens to own the store. No contest.
Case in point. The other day I was stumped by a plumbing issue – a dripping tap. The clearance to remove the body of the tap was so narrow that even a thin-walled plumber’s socket would not work. So I did the natural thing. I dropped in on Rory at Hewitts and described the issue. “Why not bring in a 5/8 inch hex socket and let me turn the wall thickness down on my lathe?”, Rory suggested. “That should get you in there.” I dropped off the socket and a few hours later got a call asking for the exact machining dimensions I thought might work. A day later, I had the socket and the tap was dismantled for replacement of the faulty O ring which was the cause of the leak.
While at Hewitt’s I bumped into another of the owners, Leonard, and had a nice chat about Churchill and William Manchester’s splendid biographies. (Winston Leonard Spencer Chuchill – his folks liked WSC as much as I do). Leonard graduated as a chemical engineer, is an authority on military history and, like his colleagues, has superb analytical skills he can bring to bear on any home hardware problem. Now let me assure you, you will not find the likes of Leonard or Rory at the big stores. So you make your choice – price or brains.
This snap, taken in brutal cold early on New Year’s Day (that’s 28F/-2C in California-speak for those of you in the mid-west), with no traffic (my tripod was in the middle of the road and I needed the ultrawide lens to make the background recede), is a tribute to small retail businesses everywhere. Long may you prosper.
And yes, a big print of this snap is hanging in Hewitt’s for all to see.
The Custom setting on the mode dial fixes things
In my little experiment to determine the seriousness of mirror slap-induced blur, I concluded that locking up the mirror before taking long exposures on a tripod made sense. Sharpness was improved – not something that would make any diffference for regular prints or web images, but clearly an improvement with big prints.
At the same time I grumbled about the difficulty of finding the right setting on the LCD panel on the rear of the 5D when it came to actually locking up the mirror, a problem compounded by the poor visibility of the LCD screen outdoors. Well, until someone comes up with a neat software fix to reprogram the little used ‘Print’ button on the back of the camera to lock up the mirror, here’s the next best thing.
Set up your camera for your preferred mode of use, go the the LCD screen and set the mirror to lock-up on the first pressure on the shutter release, using Custom Function 12. Now set the mode dial to ‘C’ (the dial to the left of the prism atop the body), go back to the LCD screen and click on ‘Register Camera Settings’. In this way, anytime you set the mode dial to ‘C’ you will have mirror lock-up available.
In my case, the preferred settings are Aperture Priority (meaning I set the camera up with the Mode Dial at ‘Av’), ISO at 250, center area average metering and the RAW file format.
So next time the camera goes on a tripod I will simply move the mode dial to ‘C’ and off we go.
A mural tells all
Well, it’s not the dog. He went digital ages ago and is tired of waiting for the filmies.
As for the cow, she just got her prints and they were full of scratches and dust.
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