Monthly Archives: March 2008

Latest Canon 5D firmware

Canon 5D

Time to update.

Canon has released firmware 1.1.1 for the 5D.

Download is free and installation instructions are included.

Here are the changes:

Here’s the installation in progress:

For me the significant feature is that high capacity 8gB and 16gB cards are now supported. I’m not rushing out to buy these but it’s nice to know I can use them when Vogue calls for that special photo session with Elle McPherson.

The ‘new lenses’ referred to are these:

I somehow doubt any of these exotics will be darkening my gadget bag any time soon. And at the wide end, the Canon Fish-eye beats the pants off their 14mm ‘L’ lens at a fraction of the price and bulk – all you need is ImageAlign and Photoshop.

As for enhanced compatibility with DPP, I don’t use that so it adds no value in my case.

By the way, if you are contemplating purchase of a new camera, most manufacturers now make instruction manuals available on line and it is a good way of learning about features and limitations.

Secular thinking

Panasonic

Some neat editing.


Panasonic LX-1, 28mm, 1/1000, f/3.6, IS 100

Snapped in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The editor of this little comedy had even gone to the trouble of trying to match the paint color, and while I may not agree with the result, it is every bit as tedious to be constantly reminded of the purported existence of a supreme being (it’s even on the currency, for heaven’s sake!) in what is averred to be a secular society. In America, it seems, there’s more religion involved in running for elected office than even the next Pope has to contend with. Bizarre.

Technical note: The widescreen format of the Panasonic LX-1 is a welcome feature here. The small sensor and stretched lens design needs quite a bit of sharpening and chromatic aberration correction – here are my default import setting in Lightroom – bear in mind that I use the camera at its widest lens setting almost all the time. That means 6.3mm, equivalent to 28mm on a full frame. Chromatic aberration falls as the lens is zoomed.


Lightroom import setting for the LX-1

While the LX-1 has been obsoleted by the current LX-2, I would guess things did not change in this regard as the lens on the LX-2 is the same. You can read about automatically applying these corrections in Lightroom here. If anything, I would guess that more sharpening is called for with the LX-2, owing to the overcrowding caused by all those extra pixels on a miniscule sensor, each competing for every photon of light.

There’s a significant amount of barrel distortion at 6.3mm/28mm, too, and when it matters I use the ImageAlign plugin to correct that, round-tripping the file through Photoshop CS2. I believe ImageAlign has been discontinued but similar native functionality exists somewhere deep in the bowels of Photoshop CS3. Unless your subject is one dictating straight lines, it’s generally not an issue.

The Transamerica pyramid

Architecture

A modern cathedral of commerce.

It may not be quite in the league of the scissors arches at Wells Cathedral in Somerset, but the attention to detail in the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco and the elegant execution holds its own in the world of modern architecture. For whatever reason, these snaps seem to work nicely in a square format.


Base of the Transamerica Building. Panasonic LX-1, 28mm, 1/1000, f/3.6, ISO 100.


Another view. Panasonic LX-1, 28mm, 1/640, f/3.6, ISO 100.

The fourteenth century designer of these arches in Wells Cathedral may not have had access to modern computers, but he did OK, no? Notice how the doughnuts confer strength while adding beauty. Simply wonderful. Somehow I think his work will outlast the Pyramid, given America’s love of tearing down good architecture.


An older cathedral of commerce. The scissor arches were an afterthought to spread the load. Some afterthought!

And let’s not get too high fallutin’ about motives here. Both clients were interested in one thing – making some coin. It’s just that the folks who commissioned Wells were smart enough not to pay taxes, whereas the underwriters at Transamerica really would prefer that life was infinite as that means they would never have to pay up on all those life policies …. and you though life insurers were callous and uncaring?

Disclosure: I have a thumping great big term life policy issued by Transamerica on my life, so my son, the beneficiary, prays that the Pyramid and its owners remain standing. Me? I don’t care. Once I’m gone, that’s all she wrote.

Vince Laforet again

Photographers

Some very original new work.

I first wrote of Vince Laforet when complimenting his superb photograph of the welder atop one of the Chrysler Building’s gargoyles.


From the April 2008 issue of Condé Nast’s Portfolio. Picture by Vince Laforet.

Click on this link to be directed to his photographs for a piece in Condé Nast Portfolio addressing changes in commuting. A tedious sounding topic made gripping by Laforet’s photography.

He’s using some sort of smart selective focus technique which appears to render only a narrow band of a picture sharp. A strange side effect is that his subjects end up looking like toys and you wonder whether this is not work by William Eggleston.

Worth the visit to enjoy once more the work of one of the most original photographers working today.

Municipal Logic

Photographs

The brains trust strikes again.

Proving yet again that intelligence is a disqualifying attribute if you want to work for the municipality of San Francisco, the twit who designed the seats in this bus shelter decided to make people on the right feel decidedly inferior to those on the left. No surprise that this citizen elected the highest perch!


Panasonic LX-1, 105mm, 1/1250, f/4, ISO 100