Yearly Archives: 2010

Autoviewer

Software

A fast web display application.

I chanced upon the free application Autoviewer the other day which, once downloaded, can be used as a web display generator using iPhoto or Lightroom and comes in Windows and OS X versions.

I tried it with Lightroom 2 using the ‘Web’ module (first time I have ever gone there, believe it or not) into which Autoviewer integrates elegantly and within 30 minutes had uploaded a 42 slide presentation of recent street snaps which you can see by clicking the picture below.

San Francisco street snaps July, 2009 – January, 2010

Autoviewer uses Adobe Flash technology so it may be a bit poky on older machines. However, I used my netbook with its slow Atom CPU and it does fine. There are also SimpleViewer (tabular presentation) and PostcardViewer (what is says) options available through Lightroom 2, though the full screen approach seems to work best for formal presentation of photographs.

I know I have to edit this selection down, but thought a quick first look would be of interest, as I’m beginning to think that a slide show presentation is superior to the clickable thumbnails I have traditionally used on my web site.

HDR for street snappers

Technique

If it moves, forget it.

I gushed on about High Dynamic Range photography ages ago here, meaning that the curative aspects of time have done their thing and forced me to reconsider.

You see, unless you have one of those blitzoid megabuck Nikons which take a bazillion snaps in the blink of an eye, HDR is useless if your subject moves. And this is not just the case with the street snapper’s target. A wavering leaf or a flying bird – if the images differ in subject matter, forget HDR. They cannot be merged without ghastly ghosting effects.

And as I’m a street snapper at heart, traditional HDR techniques do not work. Heck, it’s tough enough getting one good snap, let alone the three or more dictated by HDR. So, somewhat unconsciously, I have found that I am using the localized adjustment tools in Lightroom 2 a lot more. When I have a subject with challenging dynamic range, I will underexpose by a stop or two to tame the highlights and then bring back the shadows with a spot of localized exposure adjustment.

Here’s an example of what I am talking about. The underexposed original saw me bringing back the detail in the vendor’s face while leaving the reflective sculpture alone:

Chrome vendor, Maiden Lane, San Francisco. G1, kit lens.

So yes, this is still HDR, albeit with a street snapper’s twist.

Epson’s EVF

Cameras

Now in quantity production.

A reader sent me a link to Epson’s press release with details of their new Electronic View Finder. What’s significant about this is that smaller camera makers like Ricoh and Pentax who lack the capital to develop something similar will be able to buy the part at reasonable cost.

Click the picture for more.

G1 discontinued?

Micro Four-Thirds

Let’s hope for a GF2.

The 43Rumors site speculates that the Panasonic G1 has been discontinued.

That wouldn’t surprise me. The camera lacks the GH1’s movie mode (not a factor for me but doubtless bad in those tabular comparisons beloved of gearhead sites) and two years in a field with rapidly changing technology is probably as long a life as anyone can expect.

What would make me trade? Well, I’m hoping for a GF2 – meaning a body shaped like the GF1 with the deletion of the pop-up flash, this being replaced by the G1’s excellent electronic viewfinder – much in the same location as on the rangefinder Leica M models. The EVF can only get better and marvelous as the G1’s finder is, Panny can improve on its tendency to blow out bright lights as well as reduce the noise in lower lighting. The noise thing is, however, way exaggerated by the mass media. Which would you prefer? A near invisible traditional DSLR view or a noisy but bright one from an EVF?

Come to think of it, why not a slimmed down version of Panny’s own failed L1 which was overpriced and offered mediocre sensor quality and a lousy EVF in an oversized package? I would think that by now Panny has realized that the original marketing focus on point-and-shoot upgraders is too narrow and that the whole micro-four thirds thing is now becoming a very serious threat to all those gargantuan DSLRs out there.

The GH2/G2 – take an L1 and remove 30% of the bulk and weight.

And while you are at it Panny, please add a real click stopped ISO dial on the top plate and make that darned wheel less easy to depress so that I cease constantly going into exposure correction mode when all I want to do is change the aperture or shutter speed.

If, on the other hand, the G2 is just a warmed over thing with more buttons, I can see adding another G1 as a back-up when the body only price drops to $300.

Blurring the lines

Photographs

Where does graphic arts start?

The hardliner in me loves Alcatraz. It’s what a prison should be, compounding a remote location which dares the prisoner to escape on pain of death by hypothermia, with the ultimate cruelty – a view of one of the world’s great cities whose sounds you can hear when the wind blows right. Thus heightening the meaning of incarceration, freedom just out of reach, is true punishment.

But the liberal in me sees those same factors as nothing more or less than cruel and unusual punishment, for no matter how heinous the crime, civilization can do better than that. Visit Alcatraz, look around you and listen to the excellent tour tape and you will know what I mean.

So the other day finding myself on the Marina at the north western end of San Francisco, I naturally couldn’t resist a snap of this forbidding, long unused, fortress by the bay. The icy, biting wind may make northerners laugh with scorn but it reminded me why you wouldn’t want to try to swim from the island to the shore.

As it was a blustery day and the haze and water mist were conspiring against visibility, I didn’t expect much and not much was what I got.

Alcatraz lost in the mist. G1, 45-200 @ 91mm, ISO 320.

But later, sitting at the monitor and thawing out, I thought I would try to make something of it. It took a while, masking this and enhancing that, but the whole process reminded me that nothing is real any more. And, candidly, I have no qualms making something half decent out of an image that would ordinarily head straight for the trash. The final version, antique coloring and all, works for me. The lines between photograph and illustration are now so blurred that nothing is real any longer.

Alcatraz prison in all its threatening splendor.