A concerned photographer.
National Geographic photographer Chris Rainier, a one time student of Ansel Adams, has a fine web site displaying his art.
He describes his life’s mission as “…. putting on film both the natural wilderness and indigenous cultures around the globe.”
You can go to his site by clicking the image below, which will take you to a video interview with the photographer.
Click the image.
Strange.
The newly introduced 25mm f/1.4 Leica Summilux.
When you wanted a really fast lens for the Panasonic G range of cameras the usual resort was to the 20mm f/1.7. That lens mightily underwhelmed when I used it, showing very slow focus, awful flare control and lots of other issues, which you can read about here. I returned mine.
Now along comes the Leica-branded 25mm f/1.4 MFT lens at a rumored price of $1,000, making it the costliest MFT lens yet. The design and pricing raise several questions.
First, a 25mm f/1.4 has the same depth of field as a 50mm f/2.8. If you have used the latter on a full frame camera you will know that f/2.8 is too slow to really isolate a subject from its background. The 50mm FFE new Leica lens for MFT will be no different. So if you are buying this lens to isolate subjects you will be disappointed. Now a 50mm f/1.4 really does isolate – but that would mean the 25mm would have to be f/0.7. That is not going to happen. (Depth of field is solely a function of focal length and aperture; the size of the frame exposed is irrelevant. A 105mm lens on a 4×5 camera has the same depth of field as the same focal length on an MFT one).
Second, the lens has no OIS shake reduction. OIS adds two stops of safety so 1/30 at f/1.4 without OIS is the same as 1/8 at f/2.8 with OIS. The sole beneficiaries here will be Olympus MFT Pen users where OIS is built into the body, though I suspect any Pen body will be overwhelmed by this big lens. No Panny MFT body includes OIS – it’s in selected lenses.
Third, there’s no indication of how quickly this lens focuses. It will have to be fast and accurate to justify the astronomical price tag.
Fourth, you can buy a 50mm f/1.4 for your Canon for $450 or your Nikon for $400. Sure, you lose the compactness of an MFT kit, but that’s an enormous price difference.
Fifth, by MFT standards, the lens is huge. Who wants that when one key reasons to use MFT is compactness?
Finally, the new 16mp sensors found in the Panny GH2 and in the upcoming G3 add a rumored two stops of grain reduction. So your poky f/3.5 lens just became the equivalent of an f/1.7 by simply setting your ISO 4x faster for the same level of noise as before. And a G3 body at $600 still leaves $400 in change from the Leica-branded optic.
So I confess I’m unsure who this lens is marketed to. It’s too costly, lacks OIS, too bulky and you can do a better job with background blur in a few seconds using Photoshop’s tools. I doubt Panny will sell many.
I would much rather see Panny fixing what ails the 20mm f/1.7 and maybe making a good 45mm (90mm FFE) fast portrait lens. A 20mm f/1.4, say, with OIS, proper flare control and fast focusing at $600 would get my attention.
Honest, officer.
Spotted on west Mission Street, San Francisco.
G1, kit lens @18mm, 1/400, f/7.1, ISO 640
Adobe, where are you?
Click for the Snapseed site
This $5 iPad app shows the progress being made in touchscreen photo processing apps. (Warning – I have not used it). Check out their video by clicking the above picture. The app uses the touchscreen technology well and the app is very much more than a toy. It includes area selection and smart masking for application of processing to selected areas. Check out the Selective Adjust video. The automasking is just the sort of magic the iPad is all about. Night and day compared to any other masking scheme I have seen, and entirely intuitive, Well done, Nik Software. Every user of digital sensors knows about their propensity to burn out highlights and this is just the ticket to fix those.
In its usual manner, Apple is squeezing the margins and disappointingly refused to increase the maximum storage when they release iPad2, the largest still limited to a modest 64gB. It’s not a hardware constraint. Tear downs of iPad2 disclose there’s lots of room in there for more flash storage. And given the rotten state of competitors’ offerings, Apple has no incentive to add storage at the present time.
Still, that will eventually come, and it’s important for photographers who want to work with RAW files rather than with compromised JPGs. What use is you super-duper DSLR with its phenomenal data capture if you are going tp throw most of the goodness away by working with compressed JPGs?
More flash storage is on the way. Intel is making huge strides with flash storage technology. The SSD recently installed in my HackPro used 32nM spacing (1nM = One billionth of a meter); it’s already obsolete, the current offering using 25nM, at a lower price. Once they cut that to 12nM, storage per unit area will quadruple and per unit volume it will be eight times as much. So help is on the way. With the typical RAW file coming in at some 15mB, 1000 RAW originals will need 15gB of storage or some 235 times the current maximum. With storage densities doubling annually we are 8 years away from that number. It wouldn’t surprise me to see it reached sooner, driven in large part by a burgeoning mobile computing market.
By that time, Intel’s high speed connectivity technology (which Apple would have the world believe is their invention, naming it Thunderbolt) will be the standard on all devices, mobile or not, so downloading your processed pictures from the iPad to your work computer will take seconds. Right now low USB transmission speeds are a huge bottleneck.
Meanwhile, where is Adobe in all of this? They own the serious/professional photo processing market though two outstanding applications, whether you are a Mac or Windows user. Lightroom and Photoshop. (Aperture’s market share is a rounding error). But Adobe’s poky touchscreen offerings for the iPad are underwhelming. Let’s hope they get on it before their faster, smaller competitors take the market from them. Why do I care? Because I want the functionality of exporting to LR or PS on my desktop and I sure as heck do not want to learn any new, big, complex apps which may replace it. I would rather be taking pictures.
I would rather be taking pictures. The Bubble. G1, kit lens.
A magic moment in a child’s life, spotted in San Francisco’s west Mission District.
In SF’s Mission District.
People shopping on west Mission Street in San Francisco are not wealthy. The area is full of cut price stores and interesting groceries selling exotic foods. Many languages are spoken, Spanish being the most common. The people are warm and extroverted, neighbors frequently meet on the street and if the area has more than its share of drunks, addicts and derelicts, none of that takes away from its character.
When you next find yourself on west Mission Street, be sure to check out The Rosamunde Sausage Grill. The menu offers a choice of sausages on a French roll ….
…. and a varied beer selection. Wine drinkers need not apply. Check out the great names. I can recommend the ‘Russian River Damnation’ lager:
The interior is nothing to write home about, basic beer cellar, but the food and beer are excellent.
Best of all, sit outside and watch the street scene as drama unfolds before your eyes.
Son of Klingon. G1, kit lens @ 18mm, 1/400, f/4.5, ISO 320.