Category Archives: Photography

Spam in the RSS feed

Software

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam eggs and spam.

Putting aside the Monthy Python quote, above, readers using an RSS feed (such as Google Reader, NetNewsWire, Vienna, etc.) will have noticed that yesterday’s postings had summaries inundated with spam. This spam appears to advertise stimulants which readers here have no need of, this blog offering a natural high.

This is what it looks like:

Mercifully, my RSS feed only contains a brief extract of the posting so the schmuck who did this doesn’t get his click-through link to show up. I reposted the piece under a different name but no joy. The same spam in the summary field showed up.

Some very smart people are on to this and I found the fix on Anwyn’s Blog which I recommend if your blog is similarly afflicted.

Suffice it to say that the problem is fixed and the revised posting of yesterday’s piece now looks like this in the RSS reader:

Unfortunately, there’s no way of deleting individual articles from the RSS history but at least newer pieces are now shown without spam, viz:

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.