Category Archives: Photography

A handy backpack

Cameras

From LowePro.

When I sold my Rollei medium format film gear the LowePro bag in which it was stored was sold also. Way too large for anything I would contemplate in terms of equipment given the Canon 5D’s more compact size.

I finally got around to deciding on a new bag for the 5D gear and settled on the LowePro Mini-Trekker AW. LowePro has such a huge selection of products that it’s not easy finding what suits your needs best and though they have a selection aide on their site it’s not as good as it could be.

I narrowed it down knowing that I wanted a comfortable backpack design for trekking through the woods and aware that a handful of lenses, a ring flash, a few spare CF cards, batteries and the 5D’s instruction book (yes, I still get lost in all those menus and buttons sometimes) would be my companions on such trips.


Loaded for bear

In the above configuration, reading clockwise from the top left: 85mm/1.8, 15mm fisheye, 24-105mm L, 5D/200 L, 100mm macro, 50/1.4, 20mm, ringflash. I use UV filters on all lenses (except the fisheye whose bulbous front element precludes the use of a filter) so have need of only one lens cap – for the fishy. Alternatively, I can exclude any one lens and mount the 400mm f/5.6 L on the camera instead. It fits nicely with the lens hood collapsed. A neat attached fold-out plastic cover makes the whole thing weather resistant and quality is top notch – a notable feature of LowePro bags. It comes in green or black (ugh!), does not scream ‘Steal Me’ and has external straps and a supporting pocket for a tripod. (I prefer a shoulder bag for the tripod to spread the load and use a Tamrac for my 30 year old Linhof tripod). Add the QD sternum and waist straps, included, and you have something clearly thought through at the design stage by a working photographer. As I want for nothing gear wise, this bag should have a long and useful life ahead of it.

LowePro’s site asks for $182 for one of these which is ridiculous. I bought mine on ePrey for $120 delivered, new with all OEM instructions, labels, what-have-you.

By the way, here’s my old one with the Rollei 6003 kit:


A throwback to the bad old days of film

The scale is different, but the old bag was some 50% larger than the Mini-Trekker.

As usual, I find that all those zippers need some breaking in but once you get over that the bag is as user friendly as these things can ever be.

Thanks, Mr. Land

Cameras

Polaroid is no more.

The technology of photography was never more magic than when you used Polaroid cameras and film.

Now, as the WSJ reports, Polaroid film is no more. Even with modern DSLRs capable of tethered shooting and near instantaneous screen display of a snap, nothing will ever match the magic of Polaroid.

You can read more about the Einstein of photography and the creator of Polaroid, Edwin Land, here.

Not in the Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 5D

Rumors abound – these you can be certain of.


Teaser ad on the Canon site

With all that speculation about the iminent replacement for the Canon 5D, here’s my list of things I can pretty much guarantee will not be in the 5D Mark II:

  • A 21mp sensor. No way. That would immediately cannibalize sales of the ultra-high margin 21mp 1Ds Mark III which goes for $8,000 a pop. And with the 11 mp in the 5D being as good as it is, reckon on no more than 16mp. Let’s hope they don’t muck up resolution in the process.
  • Ultra-high framing rates like in the 40D and 50D. Same reason as above.
  • Full weather sealing. No way no how. This camera is aimed at the advanced amateur snapper, not the pro in rain forests, even if a few rubber gaskets cost $1.50 to add.
  • Eye controlled focus. That’s the fabulous technology available in some late Canon film SLRs. The camera focuses where you look. (This still seems like magic to me). For some reason Canon have never added it to any of their DSLRs. Just imagine using something like Helicon Focus with eye controlled focus. Sight down your subject – click. Look a little further – click. Oh! wow. But not to be in the Mark II.
  • A smaller body. That would cost too much to re-engineer. Canon will add already mature and developed technologies like sensor dust removal and live view (ugh!) but a comprehensive re-engineering of the body would cost too much.
  • A change for that dumb Print button to make it useful – such as a mirror lock-up control. Someone at Canon has a real axe to grind for their printers (surprise!), so expect more of this silliness.
  • Lens aberration correction inside the camera’s software. See the first bullet point above.
  • A permanently attached vertical hand grip. That would look too ‘professional’ and adds needless bulk to an amateur’s camera. Indeed, one of the appealing aspects of the 5D is that it does not look professional – especially if you add some electrician’s tape to all those gauche logos.

Expect the announcement in late September at Photokina in Cologne.

Helicon Focus

Macro, Software

An insanely great application.

Now and then an application comes along which truly must be graced with the Insanely Great accolade, especially now that Apple has ceased making insanely great products and prefers to focus on insanely great sales instead.

That application is Helicon Focus from some programming geniuses in the Ukraine which, by the time you read this, will doubtless be a part of the USSR again.

Simply stated, Helicon Focus asks that you make several pictures of a subject with the focus slightly different in each, so that your range of pictures has something sharp in each plane. The application then merges the images for one overall sharp one.

Pictures beat words, so here’s one of the six originals I took of that much abused currency, the US dollar. Doubtless it’s illegal to photograph currency, but when the subject in question is worthless, it’s no longer currency right? Here’s the first of six snaps, with the focus at the far end:

Now here is the composite of six originals, each with slightly different focus points, after processing in Helicon Focus. The slight image magnification is conferred by the application to allow for image size changes between the component pictures. It’s something you can adjust in the application’s Preferences. Suffice it to say that the default setting of 4% magnification seem to work pretty well, so make sure you leave a little space around your subject to allow for this magnification:

Look carefully and you will see an out-of-focus band around the ‘A’ in ‘America’ – I should have taken more snaps with smaller focus adjustments. The lens was set on manual focus and the camera on manual exposure.

You can either use a stationary camera and adjust focus or use a focus rail to move the camera. The latter approach avoids image size changes but as the program adjusts image sizes when blending, if you use the stationary camera approach, I fail to see the advantage of a focus rail. If you use ring flash you should use a stationary camera as otherwise your lighting intensity will vary between component pictures.

Mind blowing! Insanely Great!!

So any time you need extreme depth of field and your subject is stationary, this $30 application is just what the doctor ordered.

All six snaps were taken on a Canon 5D with the 100mm macro lens at maximum aperture, for minimum depth of field. Helicon Focus reads many formats, including the RAW originals used here. Processing (MacBook, 2.1gHz C2D) took maybe 40 seconds and the interface is completely intuitive.

For those with high speed motor drives I imagine you could just set the camera on Continuous and move the focus ring as you bang away.

Well done Helicon Focus and let’s all pray you avoid the clutches of Mother Russia. Heck, you can always ask the French to save you ’cause sure as hell we will not. And for those of you who enjoy locking up now and then, Helicon Focus also comes in a Windows version. Either way, an available premium version of the application takes advantage of multi-core CPUs so if you use a computer with Intel’s drop dead (Insanely Great!) Core2Duo or Core4Duo or whatever, your processing speed will be nice and fast.


A composite of ten images. 5D, 100mm macro at f/2.8.

I’m using the Canon macro at f/2.8, its maximum aperture here, so as to push the application hard; realistically you would expect to stop down to take advantage of the lens’s sweet spot as well as to reduce the number of exposures required. For this lens, f/8 to f/11 seems best. You can see some overlap issues on the right of the above image – something I will address in a subsequent piece.

Disclosure: After writing the above I was given a free registered version of Helicon Focus by Dan. While it’s always nice to get things free, remain assured that my objectivity is not about to get corrupted. Sure, like all of us I can be bought, but it will cost you a sight more than $30! Thank you Dan.

Postscript: I shared the constituent RAW files for the above image with Dan Kozub of Helicon to see what was causing the slightly imperfect alignment visible in places. Dan wrote back that a new, enhanced version of the application would be out in about a month and would fix the issue. He advised me that he had tried it with my images and all was well – so at least it wasn’t me! In fairness to Helicon, this was a pretty extreme test given the closeness of the flower and the flower’s extreme angle to the plane of the camera’s sensor.

For some more practical ‘in the field’ tests, please click here.

Talent

Photography

You know it when you see it.

I was ruminating about our six year old boy the other evening. I was wondering whether he would be a good photographer. Which got me thinking about the broader issue of talent.

I suppose the word really means doing something well. While a liberal mind set dissociates that from material gain, a capitalist world dictates otherwise. Call me a philistine, but if you cannot make money from your art, you are not talented. Because the best and highest use of talent is to make it public and make it worth paying for.

What?

The greatest pianist? No, not some unknown whom five guests at a country house weekend enjoyed a while back. Horowitz. A supreme performer and an avid self publicist. As famous as they get. The best of the best. Were there better? We will never know because if they hid their light under a bushel we would have never heard them. Or of them.

The greatest photographer? No, not some unknown who showed a print or two at a country house weekend enjoyed a while back. Cartier-Bresson. A rabid self publicist. As famous as they get. The best of the best. Were there better? We will never know because if they hid their light under a bushel we would have never seen their work. Or seen them.

The greatest singer? No, not some unknown who sung a song or two at a palatial mansion weekend enjoyed a while back. Callas. A voracious self publicist. As famous as they get. The best of the best. Were there better? We will never know because if they hid their light under a bushel we would have never heard them. Or seen them.

Well, you get the point. Without publicity there is no talent.

That’s not to say that you cannot succeed without a talent in your chosen avocation.

No one without a tin ear would ever claim that Madonna can sing worth a twig. Yet she is a superb businesswoman and very successful. Money is her talent.

No one who is not blind or deaf would ever claim that Streisand can sing or act. Yet she is a superb businesswoman. Money is her talent.

No one with any aesthetic sense would ever claim that Mick Jagger could sing or dance. Yet his raw sensuality negated all of that. Fame is his talent.

The difference between the first and last three examples is that Horowitz, HCB and Callas will survive their demise. The likes of Madonna, Streisand and Jagger will not. And let us be grateful for that. Because, for the long term, talent is survival, not money.


Talent personified. Cartier-Bresson by Hoyningen-Huene, 1935


Talent personified. Horowitz at Carnegie Hall


Talent personified. Callas