Category Archives: Photography

More desaturation

Photographs, Technique

Old subjects dictate old methods

From today’s hot rod show in Paso Robles, CA:


5D, 24-105mm at 24mm, ISO 125, 1/750, f/4.5, processed in Aperture

The technique described here was used.

By the way, if you hit Option-Shift-H in Aperture, the screen will be colored red in areas of burned out highlights – a great tool for those digital sensors sensitive to highlight overload:


Red colored areas indicate burned-out highlights

I have left the exhaust pipe burned out as it heightens the impact of the image.

A Wii lesson for camera makers

Cameras, Photography

Simple is good – when will camera makers learn that?

After stentorian efforts to actually buy one, our experience with the Wii game console from Nintendo is nothing short of a revelation.

You open the box, plug it in, disregard the 500 warning messages to keep scum tort lawyers in their place, and play. Wave the controller about and the player on the screen moves in sync. The graphics are simple, verging on crude, the big instruction book can be disregarded and the result is insane fun!

Now I have to add that I do not play video games. Our son does, now. The above paragraph should have been written by him, except he is just five and his typing needs work. Come to think of it, he can’t read either. But just ask him if he enjoys his Wii.

Nintendo, like Apple, Thinks Different. Where Sony and Microsoft make game consoles of increasing complexity, with their sleazy back door attempt at taking control of your home computing, Nintendo focused on just a few things – ease of use, price and fun. Result? The competition is scrambling to emulate Nintendo’s wireless controller with its built in accelerometers and speakers. It will take them a year. The results won’t be pretty, thanks to Nintendo’s patents. First three month sales of the Wii exceed those of any other game console ever made. The stock has doubled in the past year. Get my drift?

So unless Nintendo or Apple decide to make a camera (I wish!), there’s a huge opening here for manufacturers looking to make a profitable entry into the market. Scrap all those silly buttons, LCD screens, largely useless zoom lenses, slow response times and poor ergonomics. Make the lens fixed. Add an optical viewfinder. Give it just one button – the one you click to snap the picture. Abolish shutter lag. So far that’s all like the Box Brownie of one hundred years ago on which, believe me here, the patents have expired. Put in a big sensor to ban image noise. Make it wireless to upload pictures to your computer. And, like the Wii, sell it for $299. Or $199. Or $99.

Happy users and profits follow. What am I missing here?

The problem with P&S cameras

Cameras

Bottom line is, they all suck

Having just read another thoroughly depressing review of yet another Point & Shoot offering from a major manufacturer on the estimable DPReview.com, I have to wonder.

This one claims to be a top of the line offering. DPReview begs to differ, concluding that the camera has slow focusing and poor image sharpness, not to mention no RAW mode, a clunky interface and useless zoom range. It’s priced at some $350.

So why do these major manufacturers, and they are all guilty – Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, etc. – persist in turning out such execrable equipment?

A recent move by Canon to drop RAW from its P&S cameras may be a clue. The few of these cameras that have half decent lenses would likely embarass the costlier DSLRs from these same makers for half the price. So the consumer gets to suffer on the altar of product differentiation.

That’s a shame, so I suppose it’s little wonder that the much anticipated Sigma DP1 P&S will likely cost closer to $1000 than $300; on the other hand, you get a half decent sensor for your money. If the camera focuses fast, has low shutter lag and a decent lens – not something Sigma’s history of truly frightful lenses makes me too positive about – my $800 is waiting.

That’s if we will ever see this icon – it was last announced that the camera would be available 5 months ago.

Mirror slap in the 5D revisited

Canon 5D

The Custom setting on the mode dial fixes things

In my little experiment to determine the seriousness of mirror slap-induced blur, I concluded that locking up the mirror before taking long exposures on a tripod made sense. Sharpness was improved – not something that would make any diffference for regular prints or web images, but clearly an improvement with big prints.

At the same time I grumbled about the difficulty of finding the right setting on the LCD panel on the rear of the 5D when it came to actually locking up the mirror, a problem compounded by the poor visibility of the LCD screen outdoors. Well, until someone comes up with a neat software fix to reprogram the little used ‘Print’ button on the back of the camera to lock up the mirror, here’s the next best thing.

Set up your camera for your preferred mode of use, go the the LCD screen and set the mirror to lock-up on the first pressure on the shutter release, using Custom Function 12. Now set the mode dial to ‘C’ (the dial to the left of the prism atop the body), go back to the LCD screen and click on ‘Register Camera Settings’. In this way, anytime you set the mode dial to ‘C’ you will have mirror lock-up available.

In my case, the preferred settings are Aperture Priority (meaning I set the camera up with the Mode Dial at ‘Av’), ISO at 250, center area average metering and the RAW file format.

So next time the camera goes on a tripod I will simply move the mode dial to ‘C’ and off we go.


The 5D’s Mode Dial set to ‘C’