Category Archives: Photography

Auto Blur

Software

Auto blur.

With smaller and smaller digital sensors lenses get shorter and depth of field grows. It’s tough to beat the laws of optics but, in my opinion, all those calling for ever faster small lenses to limit depth of field and thus differentiate the subject from its surroundings just don’t get it. That’s yesterday’s technology.

The faster the lens, the larger the lens, which defeats the whole purpose of compactness – the very attribute in a camera that makes you take it with you.

What I think is needed is what I call Auto Blurâ„¢. We already have face recognition technology. So why not add technology to blur everything that is not the main subject. Rollover the image to see what I’m talking about (renders fine in Chrome and Safari on my Mac). Refresh your browser if the image is not visible. Will not work on mobile devices.

Thumbsucker before and (mouseover) after AutoBlurâ„¢.

This is a typical G1 image with the kit lens at 18mm fully open at f/3.9. Everything is sharp.

Now, in this case, the background in the mouseover version was tortuously conferred using PS CS2 and the lasso tool – not my idea of fun – but why shouldn’t this be a simple user choice in the camera’s settings?

Software is cheap and weightless. Fast lenses are not.

Follow-up: A reader has alerted me to a Photoshop plugin from Alien Skin named Bokeh which provides many options for the blurring of backgrounds. However, the plugin is seriously overpriced at $199, as the key step – selection of what is to be blurred – remains the exact same time consuming process in Photoshop which I had to use above. So it’s not a solution. Combining face/shape recognition technology with auto-blurring is the approach for those who favor picture taking over picture processing.

Further follow-up: Anothe reader has pointed me to Nik Software’s Viveza 2 – see the Comments to this piece. I see two advantages and one drawback. The advantages are that you do not need Photoshop, as the plug-in will work with Lightroom or Aperture. Further, the selection tool in Viveza 2 is truly amazing – exactly what is missing from Alien Skin’s Bokeh which uses Photoshop’s clunky selection tools which are labor intensive at the best of times. But the key drawback of Viveza 2 is that it does not provide adjustments of sharpness which is what the above piece is all about. Instead (click the link provided at the end of Arun’s Comment) you have to resort to machinations in Photoshop once again. So if only Nik Software could add a sharpness slider to all the other sliders in their tool, that would seem to do the trick until Panasonic or Sony do this with in camera software. Or, even better, if Adobe decides to add this sort of thing to Lightroom – now wouldn’t that be nice?

Lugs and wombats

Micro Four-Thirds

Monty Python to the rescue.

One reason the news is always bad is because good news is boring.

Never was this made clearer than by the fellows at Monty Python who, responding to this sad fact, crafted a ‘Good News’ news broadcast. The presenter, big smile and all, repeated variations on the theme ‘And in more good news today, no wombats were killed on the freeway’.

The Wombat Good News is at 2:50 into the clip.

And chat boards are, for the most part just like the news and hospital waiting rooms. Both specialize in bad news. You don’t go there when all is hunky dory.

So it’s difficult to make sense of the fairly common complaint on Panasonic G1/GH1 discussion fora that has it that Panny’s best and brightest suffers from a potentially fatal defect whereby a strap lug will detach itself, leaving your favorite in pieces on the concrete sidewalk. I mean, ‘No strap lug detached itself today’ is right up there in wombat country. You won’t read about it. It’s a skewed sample whose statistical significance is impossible to determine.

Anyway, here’s hoping yours remain attached. Using a wrist strap doubles the load, of course, so I have $650 set aside in case one of my lugs fails and that I fail to prevail over the schmuck warranty lawyers at Panny USA. (It’s not personal Panny – I administer equal opportunity offense to the whole profession).

Another EVF SLR

Cameras

From Samsung, unsurprisingly.

Samsung is rolling out its NX10 mirrorless DSLR any day now – much the same concept as the Panasonic G1/GH1 but with the larger APS-C sensor and using superior rear LCD screen technology. Boy, if anyone knows about LCDs it’s Samsung as they are one of the largest manufacturers of these in all sizes.

Sadly it’s still modeled, like the Panny twins, after the conventional DSLR silhouette, with that silly prism hump, but that will not last long, I am sure. Overall it seems about as small as the G1.

I can only applaud. It’s another nail in the coffin of the flapping mirror/pentaprism design which has seen its day in the sun. The user gains compactness and a quieter tool with less weight. So the tool gets used more as a result.

Can a full size sensor variant with no prism hump be far behind?

Now Sammy, where’s the British Racing Green version, please?

Software aberration correction

Micro Four-Thirds

A view of the future.

The traditional approach to optical design has always been to try and correct aberrations in the glass. As apertures get larger and focal lengths get shorter, this gets ever harder to do, so you end up with ridiculously oversized lenses, their bulk further compounded by the need to clear flapping mirrors through the use of ever more complex retrofocus designs.

Some of the results of these design dictates can be seen in gargantuan lenses for full frame DSLRs, best illustrated by showing their weight and bulk. Some examples (weight in ozs, dimensions in inches – length x diameter, volume in cubic inches):

  • Canon 14mm f/2.8 L II: 20 ozs, 3.7″ x 3.2″, 29.7 cu. in.
  • Canon 24mm f/1.4 L: 20 ozs, 3.4″ x 3.7″, 36.5 cu. in.
  • Canon 35mm f/1.4 L: 20 ozs. 3.4″ x 3.1″, 25.7 cu. in.
  • Nikon 14mm f/2.8 ED: 24 ozs, 3.8″ x 3.4″, 34.5 cu. in.

Things get worse when you get into wide zooms:

  • Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L: 22 ozs, 4.4″ x 3.5″, 42.3 cu. in.
  • Canon 17-40mm f/4 L: 18 ozs, 3.8″ x 3.3″, 32.5 cu. in.
  • Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 EF-S:35 ozs, 5.2″ x 3.9″, 62.1 cu. in.
  • Nikon 17-35mm f/2,8 EF-S: 27 ozs, 4.2″ x 3.3″, 35.9 cu. in.

Without doubt these are some of the finest optics made but take two or three of these in your shoulder bag and you won’t be snapping away for too long before exhaustion sets in.

The other design alternative, of course, dictates smaller sensors which bring with them shorter focal lengths and less bulk. But take that thinking all the way and you get what Panasonic has done with its lens range for its micro-four thirds range of cameras – the G1/GH1 and GF1.

That approach, simply stated, is one of “Get the optics to be as sharp as possible and hang the aberration corrections. Fix all uncorrected defects using software”.

I was thinking how best to illustrate this (the preview of the imported file in Lightroom already has the aberration corrections applied) when it struck me that PTLens has the ability of showing corrected as well as uncorrected images – by comparing JPGs (automatically corrected in Lightroom or Silkypics) with RAW (uncorrected) originals generated in the camera; seconds later I had exported an image taken with the G1 and the 14-45mm kit lens at 17mm (34mm equivalent on full frame) and show the results below. Mouse over the image to see the uncorrected original (Note: The mouse over effect works fine on my Mac with Safari and Google Chrome but not with Firefox or Camino, so please use one of the first two browsers if you have difficulty seeing the images below on a Mac. If you use Windows, please let me know what works so I can post that information here).

The effect of software correction in the Panasonic kit lens at 17mm – mouse over for the uncorrected RAW file.

You can see the remarkable amount of software correction applied quite clearly with software removing severe pincushion distortion. Now these lenses are not as fast as the monsters profiled above, but look at the trade offs in terms of size:

  • Panasonic 7-14mm f/4: 11 ozs, 3″ x 3″, 21.2 cu. in.
  • Panasonic 20mm f/1.7: 3.5 ozs, 1″ x 2.5″, 4.9 cu. in.
  • Panasonic 14-45mm f/3.5-f/5.6: 7 ozs, 3.4″ x 2.4″, 15.4 cu. in.
  • Panasonic 45-200mm, f/4-5.6: 13 ozs, 4″ x 3″, 28.3 cu. in.

These are enormous differences – even greater when the lower weight of the body is added in – and means that you can carry a G1 and a three zoom lens outfit all day without tiring. Weight of the three zooms with the G1 body? 38.5 ounces. By comparison, a Canon 5D body without lens weighs 31.5 ounces. And your 35mm full frame-equivalent focal length range for the G1 kit is an astounding 14-400mm!

My point here is twofold. First, the future of lens design lies with software, not glass. Second, the only good camera is the one you have with you and I can assure you it’s a whole lot easier to take the G1 and a couple of lenses on a hike than it is to take a full frame DSLR similarly equipped.

For comparison, here’s a snap using the overrated Canon 24-105mm L lens on a 5D body – I say ‘overrated’ because it is a nightmare for architectural photography. The approach adopted by Canon/Adobe Lightroom is to leave the extreme barrel distortion at 24mm uncorrected, necessitating a round trip through PTLens or the like to straighten things up. The imported image in Lightroom shows extreme curvature of lines parallel to the edges at 24mm..

The effect of software correction in the Canon 24-105mm L lens at 24mm – mouse over for the uncorrected RAW file.

Panasonic’s approach is, I believe, the future of lens design and I expect all leading manufacturers to embrace this methodology during the coming decade.

A revolutionary decade

Photography

The 2000s will forever be the decade film died.

There’s a strong case to be made that photography experienced only one game changing technology in the 112 years leading to the end of the millennium, and that technology was the invention of roll film.

While dry plates were already in use when George Eastman introduced roll film in 1888, the change was revolutionary, taking the making of pictures – heretofore the province of an affluent few – from ‘artists’ and placing the enabling technology in the hands of everyman.

The first Kodak – 1888

I would go further and add that Kodak’s invention of Kodachrome – which did for color what the Brownie had done for monochrome – was a technological sea change of almost equal significance. Color was now available to anyone at modest cost with consistently assured results, thanks to Kodak’s outstanding quality control.

Kodachrome

Some might even argue that the invention of small cameras was as big a technological leap, one made possible by the existence of roll film. The Leica may not have been the first camera to bring high capacity exposure capability to photographers, but it brought an engineering standard that gave much the same guarantee of results as did Kodak’s roll films.

Thereafter much of what changed was simply variations on a theme. Rangefinders came and went. The pentaprism and flapping mirror (both on their last legs) – a mechanism surely invented by Rube Goldberg – prevailed for much of the last four decades of the twentieth century, but what lay underneath was still the same old roll film camera. There was still the agonizing wait while Rochester processed your Kodachrome, although always cured by the exciting arrival of the mail with that small yellow box of slides. I doubt that postmen have ever been as popular since.

There was, of course, one other technological breakthrough of enormous magnitude, but ultimately of little significance, and it too was the brainchild of one man. Edwin Land gave the affluent consumer instant results, first in black and white, later in color in the guise of Polaroid film. The process was rendered obsolete by the one hour lab which could deliver 36 beautifully printed snaps in one hour or less, making the extremely high cost of Polaroid film a thing of the past. Americans may be impatient, but they also know the value of a buck, and at a buck a shot compared to a buck for ten, the math did not solve for Polaroid.

But the first decade of the new millennium, which ends today, saw the first really significant change in mass market photographic technology since 1888, so you could argue that roll film is amongst the longest lived modern technologies known to man. Daguerrotypes, wax cylinders, shellac discs, vinyl LPs, CDs, DVDs, Cathode Ray Tubes, carburetors, propellers, drum brakes, magnetic tape, typewriters, recording tape, cassettes for film, movies and sound – all are dead or dying and none lasted more than a few decades.

That revolutionary change, of course, was the introduction of mass market digital technology and while I do not recall ever complaining that 36 exposures on a roll were too few, now a thousand or more on a postage stamp-sized memory card is viewed as the norm. And if that’s not enough, movie capability is taken for granted. In the short space of a decade, digital technology has largely equalled or exceeded anything available to its predecessors in quality, flexibility, size, price, speed, you name it.

Canon’s first DSLR – the D30 of 2000

You can read all about the first Canon-branded ‘serious’ DSLR at DPReview which recommended it highly in August, 2000. Today even the cheapest point and shoot exceeds the D30’s specs at a fraction of the cost.

I, for one, embrace digital with open arms. Its democratizing features – everyone can press the button if few can actually take a good photograph – means there is much more noise in imagery today than ever, but for photographers seeking ever less interference between vision and result it would be quixotic to deny the superiority of digital over film in every respect. None of that denies that there remain a few superb craftsmen getting the very last iota of quality from traditional wet darkroom processes, but that’s largely a decision based in the love of process rather than in the love of results. There are still folks who use hand tools for woodwork and bamboo split cane rods for angling. For them it’s the tool not just the result.

What is startling is the rate of change. In a very short time the digital camera has gone from expensive plaything with poor image quality to dominating every image making sector from point-and-shoot to professional gear for billboard-sized images. Three things make it possible – the first two are the development of sensors and the invention of low energy display panels – plasma, LCD, whatever. Curiously, the latter have thrown photographers back to the very early days of the creative process where the image was viewed at some distance – albeit under a dark cloth – on a screen during the composition stage. But more importantly, those screens in large sizes – as big as your wallet permits – have obsoleted the wall print. While consumer ink jet printers are at a level of perfection seemingly hard to improve, they are about as obsolete as roll film. Who needs a printer when the TV screen beckons as the display medium of choice? Why spend huge sums on matting and framing when a $5 connecting cable works just as well? Sure, I’m a huge fan of big prints, but the cost makes little sense for most applications.

The third enabling technology is, of course, the personal computer and that too is reaching a development plateau. Prices are leveling off at a point so low it seems ridiculous. Reliability has never been better so that now one of the greatest challenges facing any hardware manufacturer must surely be the lengthening replacement cycle. Why get a new box when the old one works just fine? The operating systems and application software for home computing are now so cheap, reliable and capable that it seems hard to imagine revolutionary changes which will make photographers want to throw everything out and start again. While we will see more data storage move to the ‘cloud’, remote from the hardware, the core technologies are well developed, cheap and in place.

The computer for the rest of us – it just worked.

But then no one saw digital coming, certainly not Kodak or Fuji, both of whom have been broken by the change. So it’s foolish to say that things are as good as they can get and doubtless there is some new technology around the corner waiting to create the next seismic change. I just can’t see what it is. Within ten years upper end camera hardware will have shaken the silly prism and flapping mirror as surely as CDs shook off the stylus, but that’s evolutionary, not revolutionary. The sensors in the best gear are at a point where it’s pointless to demand more, and while things may get faster and quieter and maybe even cheaper, it’s hard to see what the next revolution will bring. I think it may take a while.

I believe that the next ten years will be the Decade of Broadband. Increasing bandwidth demand for delivery of content – movies, data, commerce of all sorts, art books (finally!), online storage – will see a dramatic increase in bandwidth to the business and home, while competition will see to it that prices continue to fall. AT&T got most of it right in its prescient 1993 advertisements titled “You Will” with a voiceover by Tom Selleck (remember him? Also obsolete). The only thing missing from making all of the telephone company’s ideas really practical is an absence of bandwidth and speed in our transmission systems. It will just take time and money – no technological breakthroughs are needed, just shovels to make trenches for all that optical fibre.

Meanwhile, thanks to the technological revolution of the first decade of this new millennium, there has simply never been a better time to be a photographer.

On a personal note, had you told me on January 1, 2000 that my Leica M2, Leica M3 and Rolleiflex 3.5F would all be disposed of and that I would be using two cameras from a home electronics manufacturer (the Panasonic G1 and LX1) for daily snaps and a Canon 5D for ‘medium format’ quality …. well, I would have pointed you to the local loony bin after suggesting you first sober up. Change or die.