Category Archives: Photography

LCD screens

Displays

The best review site.

A reader kindly pointed me to a UK site which has the best LCD screen reviews – or more specifically, TFT LCD screen reviews – that I have come across.

It’s called TFT Central (OK, no prizes for a catchy name) but the reviews focus on objective measurements rather than subjective pap – none of that “It looks great to me” rot.

That same reader mentioned that he had added a Hewlett-Packard LP2475w 24″ screen to his white iMac 24″ as a second display and mentioned that, if anything, the HP screen is possibly better than the one in the white 24″ iMac. High praise indeed. The maximum brightness of 400 cd/sq.m. is identical to that of the white 24″ iMac – meaning brighter than you will ever want. It doesn’t hurt that the HP has height adjustment (are you listening Apple?) and a built-in 6 port USB hub. Are these boys thinking or what? Anyway, for those looking for better LCD displays for their photo processing, check out the site.

If this sort of thing turns your crank, check here for an explanation of the different LCD panel technologies used – the iMac 24″ and the HP referenced above use the same state-of-the-art technology, named S-IPS or H-IPS. Which just goes to show how ahead of the market the 24″ iMac was when introduced in late 2006!

Helicon Focus – improved

Macro, Software

Even better

When I first wrote about Helicon Focus some five months ago, an improved Mac version was “….2 weeks away” – the developer’s words, not mine.

Helicon Focus (mine is the ‘Pro’ version) allows you to stitch together a collection of differentially focused images, taking the sharp zones from each to make an overall sharp composite with seemingly vast depth of field.

Well, my version (3.79) has just been updated to 4.0.1 and it does a better job on really tough images.

Here’s the rendering of the 10 images of the silk flower I originally used to show what this magic application can do:


A composite of ten images. 5D, 100mm macro at f/2.8. Helicon Focus Pro Version 3.79

The flower was both very close to the image plane in the camera and at an acute angle thereto.

And here is the composite image assembled from the same ten original images using 4.0.1:


The composite image assembled with Helicon Focus Pro 4.0.1

The differences are clear – in fact the developer used my images to test the new version after I had submitted them for review.

Congratulations to Danylo and his team – it was not for nothing that this journal named Helicon Focus the best application of 2008. And it was worth the wait!

Anyone using the best in digital gear – full frame or medium format – involved in industrial or close-up photography should have this application on his Mac or PC. That and a sturdy tripod to make sure the camera does not move between exposures. Your clients will love you.

A bargain from Apple

Software

What?

Yes, the title does cause raised eyebrows. When did you last use the words ‘bargain’ and ‘Apple’ in the same sentence?

But there’s not other way to describe the Mac Box Set which gets you Leopard, iWork ’09 and iLife ’09 for a very small sum.

If you are still using Tiger (10.4) an upgrade to Leopard (10.5) is recommended. My upgrade was accidental as when Apple finally replaced my first (Tiger) MacBook (bad wi-fi) the replacement came with Leopard. Leopard is no slower on our old G4 iMac than Tiger and offers superior networking between Intel machines, not least the little advertised feature known as Screen Sharing. This allows you to control other like-equipped Intel Macs over the internet with an interactive picture of the remote machine’s screen ported to yours. Ideal for problem fixing on a relative’s machine without the need for panic midnight visits. Further, you must have Leopard with the latest iLife ’09 as iPhoto ’09 will not work with Tiger.

As for the applications, I can testify that Numbers, the spreadsheet app, is finally almost as fast as my ancient copy of Excel from Office X and, at last, spreadsheets can be saved password protected, although you have to de-protect Excel spreadsheets before import. Import is fast and issues clear warning messages for areas where it struggled. In practice, a large, twenty tab, Excel spreadsheets with many complex formulas and some graphs converted fine with only minor formatting issues. It’s now a fully useable product and will see the last Microsoft application on my Mac finally confined to the the trash can where it belongs. No more weekly Excel lock-ups.

iPhoto ’09 adds little to its predecessor. Poorly implemented face recognition technology and the ability to show the location of a photo using GPS if, that is, your camera stores GPS information in the first place. A solution looking for a problem.

As for the other apps, Pages continues solid and easy to use – though there is a learning curve for Word escapees – and I will not be using iMovie, iWeb, Garage Band or Keynote. The latter is Apple’s version of Powerpoint and runs right into Dr. P’s Business Rule #1. No marketers or slide presentations are to be permitted in business meetings addressing strategy. It worked for me for over a decade – once I had the power to enforce this simple rule – and paid back massive dividends. Margins do not come from a spreadsheet and business plans do not originate in Powerpoint or Keynote presentations.

For an even greater bargain, spend $229 for the 5 user family pack. Better still, buy either from Amazon and you will get 8% off and will avoid that legalized form of theft known as sales tax. Starve the Beast!

The curse of black

Cameras

I never could fathom this one.

When I was a kid, cameras and stereo gear came in chrome. The engravings were in black and everything could be made out from a distance. Especially useful when trying to make out the settings on your amplifier or what have you.

Then, some time in the 1970s, black was declared cool (that seems to be a renewed trend now, with as little substance as last time) and the sad result for users was that their coolness was accompanied by a general inability to tell what anything was set to without a lot of squinting and eyeglasses on the head.

In their mass market models, some manufacturers bucked the trend and you see all sorts of jolly colors in digital point-and-shoots today and I, for one, love the trend. But there’s little color available in the better gear, a recent exception being the Panasonic G1 which comes in a couple of jolly colors. Now Pentax has joined the movement:

I’ve always liked saddle leather brown. Maybe Canon could be persuaded to do a custom 5D Mark II? Nah!

It was 25 years ago today ….

Macintosh

…. and it’s still the only Superbowl ad anyone remembers.

To this day, this inspired piece of anti-Big Brother propaganda convinces consumers that their PC maker of choice is a struggling start-up fighting the forces of evil, when in reality the company has $28bn in cash, 50% operating margins, a $100bn market capitalization and a presence in just about every country and seemingly on every Main Street on earth. Heck, IBM is smaller than the eponymous fruit company now.

You can fool all of the people all of the time and, no, I will emphatically not be watching the Superbowl with its hopped up, hyper-thyroid, cortisone injected ‘athletes’ any more this year than I did 25 years ago. I will, however, be watching the ads, as usual, to see how consumer trends can benefit investing strategy.