Working with the G1.

In addition to avoiding the Nazi guards trying to enforce a truly moronic ‘No Photography’ rule at the de Young Balenciaga show, I had to contend with camera shake and noise from the Panasonic G1’s small sensor which, even cranked up to ISO 1600, was resulting in long shutter speeds. While the OIS in the kit lens helps greatly, adding two full stop’s worth on the shutter speed front, it’s still all I could do to get a half decent image in the low lighting used at the show. The 1/10th shutter speed in the images below figures to probably an effective 1/40th as regards camera shake with the benefit of the magic that is OIS anti-shake technology. The 28mm (FFE) focal length used also helps, adding a further stop compared to a 50mm standard lens, so that 1/10th makes me look a lot better than I really am, figuring to an equivalent 1/80th or so with a 50mm lens and no OIS.

You can see the original snap which I am talking about here.

In the following images I show enlarged screen shots from Lightroom 3 which are equivalent to a 30″ x 45″ print, meaning huge.

Here’s the first snap with only standard sharpening applied on import of the file to Lightroom, meaning 100/1.1/64 which I find optimal in counteracting the anti-aliasing filter in the G1. Noise reduction in LR3 was set at 0:

Luminance noise is clearly visible though I also have a 13″ x 19″ print in front of me, made on the HP DesignJet90 printer on HP Premium Plus Satin paper (the textured surface tends to mitigate noise to some extent compared with glossy paper) which is perfectly fine unless you stick your nose in it.

In the next picture I applied the following settings in the Detail panel of the Develop module in LR3:

Anything much over 50 on the Noise Reduction – Luminance slider results in artifacts, and falling definition, so it’s a juggling act between noise reduction and sharpness.

The bottom line is that, even at ISO 1600, the small MFT sensor in the Panny can more than cope with noise at any reasonable reproduction ratio for your images. And, as I wrote here, anyone knocking the Panasonic kit zoom as a piece of plastic junk is simply clueless and would likely be better employed telling innocent patrons not to take photographs at costume exhibitions.

To get an idea of the relative size of the Micro Four Thirds sensor (same as Four Thirds – circled) the following image from Wikipedia tells all – it’s approximately one quarter of the area of a full frame sensor as found in the costliest DSLRs:

Incidentally, with the near-grainless sensors in full frame 35mm DSLRs it’s very hard to make a case for the extremely costly medium format DSLRs from the likes of Hasselblad (made by Fuji), Leica with their S2 and others. The gear is far heavier, the lenses bulky and the cost exorbitant, not to mention having to cope with huge file sizes which will need superior computer gear to process efficiently.

Stepper for macros.

It’s a little strange to be writing a column about macro photography when I just sold my Canon 5D and 100mm Canon Macro to a good home. Still, I found myself sharing some details about Helicon Focus with the new owner and notice that Helicon’s web site now refers to a device named the StackShot. This is a focus rail with a built in stepper motor which allows movement of the camera toward the subject in predetermined steps, all set on a small LCD controller.

I have not used the StackShot so cannot comment but what little there is from users on the web it seems to be a solid device. The value of such a device is with very small subjects – bugs say – where the camera movement between snaps has to be extremely small, owing to the high magnification and small size of the subject. The StackShot’s inter-photo interval can also be varied to permit proper recycling of a flash tube if you use one. The resulting images are then stitched together using HF in the usual way – a process rendered trivially simple by this superb application.

You can see an excellent video of the device in action, made by the manufacturer, by clicking here.

The StackShot kit.

The maker says that steps can be as small as 0.01mm and while it’s not cheap at $475, it does look like just the thing for those special subjects. For another $50 there’s a version with a USB port allowing control from your laptop, but I cannot figure out from the operating manual on their web site whether the software runs on OS X on a Mac.

Move over, Wacom.

Photographers who do much outlining work with the Lasso tool in Photoshop often end up using a Wacom tablet. This is an electrostatic tablet with a pen; the pen is dragged along the surface and activates the on-screen pointer in Photoshop.

I never found much use for my small wired Wacom and gave it away a few years back. As I find I’m using the Lasso tool now and then to blur backgrounds, I find I have a hankering for a pen tablet again.

iPad to the rescue! A combination of the Pogo Stylus and Mobile Mouse is all you need. And the iPad is wireless. Mostly I use my finger for outlining, controlling the Lasso tool in PS from my iPad, but if more accuracy is called for the Pogo Stylus can be useful. With the enhanced outlining in Photoshop CS5 I find my finger suffices nearly every time. If you already have an iPad, Mobile Mouse is about the lowest incremental cost of entry to to a tablet outlining tool there is and outlining with an iPad is far smoother than with a mouse.

Rollover the image (use Safari or Chrome to render – does not work on an iPad):

I also livened up the processed image, as a rollover discloses. Take a careful look at the hair of the beauty on the right ….