Category Archives: Photography

Experts and pictures

Cameras

Trust your eyes, not charts.

Frequently one sees performance of digital cameras compared using JPG images. This could not be more useless. Different sharpening algorithms in the cameras being compared render such comparisons meaningless, compounded by the poor dynamic range of the JPG file format. JPG is the fastest way of making a fifty dollar camera out of a thousand dollar one. Add to this technical ‘analysis’ the fact that different lenses at different price points are being used and what you end up is so much noise.

Some try to counter these issues by comparing unprocessed RAW image output. Even worse.

All digital images require anti-aliasing – the process of removing ‘jaggies’ from image details. For example, when the Leica M8 was first ‘tested’ reviewers gushed over the native definition of the RAW images produced by the camera, comparing these favorably with Canon, Pentax and Nikon DSLRs’ output. Chalk and cheese. The Japanese cameras use a strong anti-aliasing filter, placed in front of the sensor. The Leica M8 (and M9) uses none, preferring in-camera software to do the same thing to images rendered with its previous generation Kodak sensor. To get the best out of the Japanese cameras’ RAW images substantial sharpening must be applied in Lightroom (or whatever you use) to get the best from the original file and make a proper comparison.

Reviewers would have it that this makes the Leica image superior as no sharpening is needed, conveniently disregarding the fact that sharpening has been done in camera. They will then compound this misinformation by comparing a fixed focus lens on the Leica (because that’s what they were given to test and are too lazy/ignorant/conflicted to do it right) to a lower quality zoom on the Japanese competitor.

As I have pointed out many times here, the 5D I use – depending on the lens used – mostly needs a sharpening setting of 40-60 in LR. This works fine for the 24-105, 85/1.8, 100 macro and 400/5.6. The 200 f/2.8 ‘L’ is so sharp that it needs a setting of 20 at most. The 20.8 and 50/1.4 I owned (both sold) needed 70 or more at wide apertures. The Panasonic G1 uses so little in-camera RAW processing that it needs even more sharpening – my default import setting for the G1 with the kit lens in LR is 90.

So what’s the right answer to the question : “Is this camera capable of delivering the resolution/speed/handling/whatever that I need?” I’m afraid that, with the host of variables in the digital process, and the broad range of skill sets and needs among users, the only right answer is “Try it and see”.

After all, would you trust a surgeon who never operated before to work on you? Because that’s what these reviewers are – hardly a one of them can take a picture to save his life and what works for you will differ from what works for the guy working for ‘click-through’ advertising dollars using free gear from the manufacturer. He’s not about to bite the hand that feeds him.

So for the reader who asked here the other day “Should I sell my LX-3 and get a G1?” there’s no right answer to that question. How can the needs of, say, a street snapper, compare with those of a macro or sports enthusiast? Depends what you want to use the camera for – there are no Swiss Army Knife solutions.

By all means read the technical reviews to get a sense of the gear but don’t waste your time on comparisons with other makers’ equipment by those unqualified to pontificate. Try it yourself.


Expert camera reviewers. G1, 14mm, f/4, 1/2000, ISO 100

An online camera review reader having just finished yet another mind numbing twenty page special:

The Panasonic G1 and GH1 sensors

Micro Four-Thirds

Sensor design is still in its early days.

A friend of the blog, has forwarded a fascinating technical piece which addresses changes in digital sensor design and suggests the oligopoly held by Canon and Nikon, who account for 78% of the DSLR market, is likely to weaken.

Most significantly, the article provides evidence that the Panasonic sensor in the GH1 (the G1 with video added) is anything but the same as the one in the G1. I would hate to have to compete with a behemoth like Panasonic which can roll out the first workable Electronic View Finder in the G1 only to completely redesign its sensor for the GH1 released shortly thereafter.

I quote: “Upon receiving the DMC-GH1, we fully expected to see a fabrication process similar to the DMC-G1, but partnered with a new design to add HD video functionality. While still early in our analysis, we have been pleasantly surprised to see Panasonic switch fabs and radically re-design their fabrication process and pixel architecture. ”

By the way, the GH1’s sensor is oversize compared to the one in the G1 so that when the user changes aspect ratios (16:9, 3:2 or 4:3) the total pixels used stay much the same.

The article also addresses innovations by Samsung in the sensors used in the fine Samsung/Pentax DSLR cameras and suggests that Canon is sitting on its laurels for now. In fairness, I have to add that’s no bad thing given how wonderful the FF sensor in my 5D is, but I have never known complacency to be a winning strategy.

Click the chart for more.

For those who thought sensor designs had peaked this piece will reinforce the fact that we are still in the early stages of innovation which, coupled with the new breed of Electronic View Finders, will make the next decade a Golden Era for new and increasingly responsive camera designs. In fact I expect that a decade hence, the pentaprism and flapping mirror will have disappeared from all but the most basic cameras (and the Leica DSLR, of course), confined to Rube Goldberg’s (Heath Robinson’s for UK readers) garbage bin where they belong.


On the BART. The G1’s antiquated sensor will do fine for now!
G1, 31mm, f/5.4, 1/80, ISO 800

How not to succeed

Photography

Forget the degree.

I have always thought of a degree in photography as being about as worthwhile a concept as a doctorate in professional wrestling. Either can teach you technique but neither has significant bearing on your chances of success.

A friend’s commitment to the school of hard knocks when it comes to making your way in photography got me thinking. Are not most of our great commercial and fashion photographers graduates of the same school, having started as grips and photographers’ assistants?

Look at the curriculum for any photography education culminating in a degree and chances are that :

  • It will be taught by an old guy no one has heard of with many credentials after his name. He’s teaching because he failed to make money in his field of purported expertise.
  • It will pride itself on requiring the student “….to devote substantial time to traditional darkroom work”. Using film. But of course. The mystery of the antique.

The first point is obvious. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

The second is the primary reason why you should run, not walk, from such a course of study, and is a requirement imposed by the dated and unsuccessful on their modern charges. It’s not too far to go to say that this is a crime, because it will significantly hurt the student’s chances of success.



Current curricula extracts.

The high fallutin’ reasons put forward for this ‘darkroom experience’ idiocy is that the student will learn to understand the photographic process from first principles. Or some such rot.

Given that the only thing you can hope to learn in a classroom is technique, then the rational approach in the modern, fast paced and hyper competitive world is one which focuses on the best and fastest tools out there. No student messing about with chemicals and safety lights can hope to learn a fraction of that which the one with a decent DSLR and a computer running Lightroom or Photoshop will. While the first is still worrying about putting up the blinds and locking the door, the second has looked at fifty images in twelve variations each and learned mightily from the iterative process. At the end of just one day’s work Student Number One has maybe produced one image which he is still waiting on to dry. Number Two has some six hundred to choose from. Which is going to learn more?


Xanadu. Four variations – forty seconds.
5D, 24mm, f/6.7, 1/125, ISO400, processed in Lightroom

So go to class and learn technique but if that involves ‘traditional darkroom work’ or ‘traditional media’ run like hell. And if you believe that traditional darkroom work will make you a better photographer then I can only ask why you didn’t try a horse and buggy before learning to drive?

As for learning to see, no classroom will ever teach you that.

HP DJ90 with Snow Leopard

Printing

Phew!

Long time readers will know that I use a Hewlett Packard DesignJet 90 to make large prints using my iMac. I suggested it made little sense to rush into the OS 10.6 upgrade (Snow Leopard) until many of the incompatibility issues were resolved. Indeed, Snow Leopard has already had one upgrade to address security issues since I wrote that piece.

Well, some good news. HP has released new printer drivers for the DJ 30/90/130 series (respectively 13″, 18″ and 24″ wide) as stated in this Apple Support document. This is great news for those of us using what may be one of the best ink dye printers made. While recently discontinued, I confess prints made with it today look every bit as good as they ever did! My only grumbles have been the occasional blocked printer head, easily replaced. Click ‘Printing‘ on the right for more about this outstanding piece of hardware for serious sized printing.

Update 1/2016:

There is one more benefit to keeping a Snow Leopard boot drive handy. SL was the last version of OS X to include Rosetta, the emulation software which allows Intel Macs to run PPC (IBM G3/4/5 CPU) apps. This is important if you want to run the HP online System Maintenance Utility which is coded to work with PPC CPUs only. And you really want to be able to run that utility as it is the only definitive way of identifying printhead issue, allowing you to hone in on the faulty head – see Page 3-10 in that linked PDF. See here for details.


Snow Leopard – the last great OS from Apple before the tinkerers took over.

You can still buy Snow Leopard from Apple for $20. This is not altruism or nostalgia on Apple’s part. Rather, SL (10.6) was the first version of OS X (from 10.6.4) to permit access to the AppStore wherefrom all subsequent OS X upgrades are made over the air, Apple no longer shipping OS X on DVDs. So without SL you cannot access the AppStore.

I actually use an old PPC iMac G4 to access HP’s utility but you can do just as well using SL for less trouble.

The Leica M9 and the Viewfinder Revolution

Cameras, Leica

The last face lift.

I wish Leica well with its new M9. There’s always a market, however small, for the dowager on her third face lift and no shortage of insecure, wealthy buyers with weak egos craving fame by association. I think of the M9 as the Joan Collins of cameras. Neither is cheap.

The Joan Collins of cameras – the Leica M9.

The best thing to be learned from the M9’s tired makeover of a design that peaked in 1959 with the M2 is that the viewfinder is key. It is the window to the soul of the photographer’s subject, and the less it imposes itself between subject and snap, the better it serves its purpose.

The first twenty years or so of digital camera design will, I believe, go down as the period during which manufacturers’ disregard of the needs of consumers was at an all time high. So enamored did they become of digital this, and LCD that, their design results were some of the slowest, least responsive and unusable cameras ever made. You hardly need me to tell you that. Go to any crowded place on a sunny day and enjoy watching their owners squinting at silly little screens held two feet away from their eyes while taking pictures far worse than their parents managed on the Brownies and Instamatics of yore. Those at least were properly framed and action shots were the order of the day.

At the other extreme from the point-and-shoot set were the ‘professional’ DSLRs which made matters even worse. Like the Leica M9 these depended on fifty year old technology, this time in the guise of flapping mirrors and bulky glass prisms to get the image to the snapper’s eye. But as this is the digital age, these cameras started to sprout dozens of excrescences in the guise of control buttons and yet more ergonomic noise on their miserable LCD screens and ever more cluttered viewfinders. The only significant change in appearance was that the shapes became more organic and free flowing as modern plastics and manufacturing technologies took the sharp edges off. Just look at the original Nikon F for comparison, if you want to see what I’m talking about.

But the innovators in camera design, the Japanese, have woken up. First, they need a new idea to sell more gear to all those current digital owners, be they amateurs or pros. Second, some of them actually use the gear they make and grew up adulating the Leica M as the touchstone of camera and industrial design for, in 1959 when Mr. Yamamoto was knee high to a grasshopper, the Leica M2 was the unique blend of form and function. Small, fast and with decent lenses, it was the traveling companion of choice not just for well heeled amateurs but for pros wanting the best there was. And Yamamoto san, when he finally migrated to longer pants, found that the M2 was his snapper of choice, surrounded as he was by flashing LEDs and beeping buzzers galore.

To cut a long story short, the example set by the Leica M has placed camera design on the cusp of the next revolution. The changes that will bring will be nowhere near as earth shaking as the invention of digital sensors but they will finally make the digital camera the practical tool it has so far largely failed to be. And the most significant of those changes will, simply stated, be in the area where the Leica M once excelled. The viewfinder. The window to the subject’s soul.

I doubt it matters what the sensor size or format will be, for the new crop of digital cameras will come in any size you want. Medium format, full frame 35mm, APS-C, Micro four thirds, microdot – whatever. But what all of these designs will boast will be an absence of the ridiculous pentaprism, flapping mirror and LCD screen, all obsoleted by the growing availability of fast, noise free, bright-in-any-light and superbly compact electronic viewfinders. And they will focus fast with no shutter lag. A whole new selling proposition, rediscovered from those halcyon Leica days.

The maker at the cusp of what I call the Viewfinder Revolution is, of course, Panasonic, with their ground breaking G1/GH1 designs. That will not last long and you can bet that the basements of Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax/Samsung, Olympus et alia are a beehive of activity, filled with engineers and lawyers finding workarounds to Panny’s patents.

And their new designs will boldly drop the faux pentaprism hump that Panny felt was needed to introduce users to a new design ethic, will delete all the silly little buttons and will relegate the LCD screen to its rightful place as nothing more than a rarely used configuration display for favored settings. The EVF, whether eye level, waist level or both, will move modern camera design to a place where the wonderful digital sensors of today and tomorrow will finally be wrapped in a body with a viewfinder which can do them justice.

So thanks, Leica, for pointing the way. It’s just too bad that, like our heroine in the first paragraph, you refuse to age gracefully and pass to the museum which is your well deserved resting place.

The Leica M of women – Joan in 1960 and in 2007

Note: The writer used Leica M2/3/6 cameras and lenses almost exclusively in the period 1973-2008 (doubtless all now owned by Yamamoto san) and can assure the reader that the only ‘Leica glow’ he ever felt from all those wonderful lenses was from the red ink on his bank statement. Only those who have paid the asking price of the M9 and its glass will feel that glow, and they will spare no effort telling you about it.