Leica will probably announce the release of the M9 rangefinder; possibly, with an 18Mpix FF sensor.
My new M9 Flickr group is all ready for it ...
M9Leica
Nikon will probably announce the release of the D700X; possibly, with an 18Mpix or the old 24.5Mpix FF sensor.
Lots of exciting news ...
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Photograph along the edge
The art and science of photography as a whole is some times made too convoluted. One of the dimensions that can easily enhance your photography is to photograph along the edge.
What edge am I talking about? I speak of the edge along these dimensions:
- time
- space
- age
TIME
The edge of time refers to the temporal edge: be it the edge of day and of season. Ask any successful landscape photographer when is the best time to photograph landscape and surely, you will hear about sunrise and sunset. Well, those are the edge of the day. They are the time when night is transforming from night to day and vice-versa. During these times, the lighting conditions are quite often phenomenal and spectacular. It is no wonder why many well respected landscape images are photographed during these times.
In terms of the edge of season, one obvious choice is the season of Autumn. It is the season when summer is transitioning to winter and when the foliage is transitioning into their brilliant display of colors. It is also when fungus are most prevalent. During this time, unusually colored mushrooms and toadstools are popping out on the ground. Spring is the counterpart of Autumn in the reverse direction. Needless to say, flowers, bees and colors abound in almost limitless variations.SPACE
When I think of the edge of space, I fall back on scenes when I walked along the shores of the Pacific Ocean, along the edge of a lake, along the foothills of a mountain range and along the edge of the forest next to the open plain. Yet again, I am looking for that transition when the landscape changes, when the terrain changes and the land meets the water. The edge of change on the ground often presents itself as extraordinary photo opportunities.
AGE
Transitions not only appear in time and space but also along the edge of life itself: the boundary along the organism's age. Photographing the very young, the ones who were just born --- infants, for instance --- can yield an image that is inherently compelling. An infant who has just transitioned into life outside the womb is a pleasure to behold. A close-up shot of their tiny fingers or toes that reflects the almost brand new skin textures is more than refreshing. They really look so different from most of us adults. On the other extreme, the face of the very aged reflects years of life experiences and wisdom. Sometimes their eyes even reflect certain cherished moments when they talk about them.
Next time, when you are running out of ideas for your photography, think about transitions and think about the edge. And, do not limit yourself to just the edge of time, space and age but a combination of these can be even more eye-popping. Pick up your camera and release the shutter when your eyes arrive at the edge. You may be in for a pleasant surprise.
Happy photographing!
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Zeiss 21mm/2.8 ZF Distagon
This lens has lineage that can be traced to the legend that existed during the reign of the Contax/Yashica days. It was a lens whose performance is envied throughout the industry: high resolution, color accuracy and flare-free. Following the success of this legend, Carl Zeiss engineers decided to construct a new 21m Distagon for the new mounts, improving on the already high resolution and using only eco-friendly materials. The new 21mm Distagon arrived on the west coast United States in late March.
Physical CharacteristicsPhysically, the lens will make a lens fondler weep with tears of joy. The metal barrel is sleek and sexy.
The T* coating is a pure pleasure to behold. The calibrated markings on the lens are engraved, not the usual cheap printed version. And, the weight makes you feel like it means business. Just like a car, it must perform well but you must be able to live with the styling and the sound of door slam. If you slam the door, and it sounded hallow, what does it make you feel? Hallow, doesn't it? The door slam must sound solid. Well, when you turn the focus ring of this lens, it feels like you just slammed the door of a new Mercedes --- solid!
The smoothness of the focusing ring is as smooth or smoother than a Leica lens. We are talking buttery smooth with lots of inertia (damping) to give you complete control over fine-tuned focusing. There is no play or any element of looseness at all --- just pure smoothness with no play. This area has again exceeded my expectations.
The lens even look good. If styling is anything to you, this lens will fulfill that part of the bargain.Finally, as if a hand has stretched out to offer you a welcome shake when you open the box that contain the lens, it even comes with a quality-control card that is personally signed by a Zeiss employee. That is a nice touch that tells me about one thing inherent in the Zeiss culture --- attention to details.
Performance
Over to the performance department, our Zeiss friend has once again not disappoint us.Color rendition of the images produced by this lens will truly knock your breath away. As far as my experiences with other lenses is concerned, nothing among the wide-angle Nikon lenses can come close to it. The closest one is probably the latest Nikkor 14-24mm/2.8G AF-S. Again and again, the colors from this lens have exceeded what my eyes have come to expect from a wide angle lens. They are bold and richly catchy. Does this Cherry Tree remind you of Fujichrome Velvia RVP-50? I know my eyes had a big feast when I first saw it.
OK, you are probably asking me by now: the colors are good, what about the resolution? This lens is, undoubtedly, a high resolution lens. The resolution is good --- it is really good. It is so good, I think the published MTF is slightly underrating the lens. My experience tells me that the resolving abilities of this lens is consistent all the way to the edge. Anyone who is looking for a high resolution lens will not be disappointed by the performance of this lens. I know I am very pleased when I saw and examined my images.
Additionally, the performance of this lens at close range is as astounding as those shot at infinity. Currently, many lenses are tuned optically for infinity and it is easy to do that; in fact, many manufacturers these days have done it fairly well. On the other hand, not many lens makers can produce lenses that perform well both at infinity and close range.
Because the lens is wide, a panoramic image shot with this lens will yield a perspective that is out of this world. I have included a couple images here that were stitched panoramas.
Complaints?
So, is there anything I do not like about the lens? Nothing that I am expecting from this lens has not been met. There are some rumblings among the early adopters claiming that if the subject is focused closed, there are more distortions compared to lenses with aspherical elements. That may be true but I did not buy this lens for macros. :)
OK, there was one small displeasure. The front cap of the lens is like a modern Nikkor front cap. Pinch it and the double-spring-loaded cap is released from the lens. Release the pinch, the dual springs will pop back out into place. It turns out that either the Zeiss manufacturing process or the outsourced company doing the cap has a "bug" in the assembling process. One of the springs was slightly crushed during assembly. And the front cap did not function well. It was not tight when it was capping the lens. I un-popped the mechanism and unbent the slightly crushed spring and it is working like new now. My dealer said all of their caps were like that in his shipment.
Alright, after more than a year and a half of using the Zeiss ZF line of lenses, I now have formed an opinion of the front caps. The depth of the pinch grip is too shallow. Whenever I tried to pinch it to remove the front cap, my fingers have slipped very often from the front cap while I was removing the cap and the cap will end up on the floor. I believe the Nikon ones have a slightly deeper groove for the fingers to properly engage the grip more firmly. Perhaps, Zeiss can re-work these front caps a little --- nothing serious --- and add some tweaking.
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Thursday, August 14, 2008
Large strobe or is it?
For a portraitist, a large light source that throws dispersed light is heaven! When this kind of light falls on the skin of the subject, it brings out a soft skin texture which is attractive and soothing to view. Now, what if your light source is fairly large and it is controlled to be somewhat directional? You get a dramatic angled light. If drama is what you want, you've got it. My room has no other light except the light jumping off the LCD monitor of my computer. I asked the subject to stand in front of it and I positioned it lower than his eye level and tilt it slightly upwards. This was what I got: dramatic and soft.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
GPS for your camera
When the EXIF of your images are geotagged with actual (Latitude, Longitude, Altitude) coordinates, Google and other software can help locate the specific spot that the image was taken. You can display maps of the location you shot the images and click into it to see the images. How do you get that data into the EXIF?
Bascially, as of 2008, there are 2 ways:
For real-time tagging, the GPS data is passed into the camera and that data is received by the firmware of the camera. It's interpreted and encoded into the EXIF area of the image by the camera. This is probably the safest and most aligned with what Nikon had in mind when they provided the 10-pin socket for GPS device attachment. Within this solution, there are variations to achieve the same result.
You can get a regular GPS device spend a couple of hundred dollars more on specialized cables to connect that GPS to the camera. Examples of these cables can be found here.
Another way is to get a di-GPS and plug it directly onto your D200, D300 or D3 Nikon camera. It works well but the draining of electricity from the camera seemed a little high to me at 45 mAmp.
Yet another way is to carry a fairly affordable bluetooth-enabled GPS device in your pocket. Buy a Blue2Can and plug it into the camera. The Blue2Can will pick up the GPS data broadcast from your GPS in your pocket and convert it to data suitable for the camera 10-pin interface. No cables are involved. You do not need to turn your camera into a octopus with 8 cables crawling all over. And, the Blue2Can only use 2.5 mAmp of your camera battery.
I would trust real-time geotagging solution more than the next method because the raw geotagging data is presented to the camera and the writing of the data is completed by the firmware of the camera. This is safe.
Post-processing
There are several available methods out there. Most use a host of software to do it. But, the most popular method is to carry a GPS logger. Essentially, the GPS logger will write a timestamped GPS coordinate into its memory every so often (it is configurable from 1 sec to whatever). An image recorded in your camera also has a timestamp. When you upload all of your images into your computer at the end of the day, you need to run a piece of software which will go through all of your images' timestamps and match those of the GPS logger. This piece of software is often a free software (produced by unpaid software developer) which will then write the real GPS coordinates into your images' EXIF after it finds a matching timestamp in your image(s).
There some downside to this method.
One more variation is that of field post-processing geotagging. ATP Electronics came up with a solution where you stick your flash memory card into it after the images are taken and it will automatically write the geotags into your images right on the flash memory. This is great because you are post-processing it in the field. Hmmm, do I need to do post processing in the field? As of 2008, I do not think there is one for CF cards, they are so far for SD size cards only. Again, the 2 disadvantages mentioned above exists: something not produced by Nikon is writing over your images and I have to keep clocks in synched.
DISCLAIMER
Once again, I am posting what I have researched onto this blog to help others with more readily available information. I do not claim to be a GPS expert and I certainly do not claim that you should rely on this blog for any critical tasks.
AcknowledgementsI gathered these information after I read many threads from forums in Photo.Net and NikonCafe.com.
Bascially, as of 2008, there are 2 ways:
- Real-time tagging
- Post-processing
For real-time tagging, the GPS data is passed into the camera and that data is received by the firmware of the camera. It's interpreted and encoded into the EXIF area of the image by the camera. This is probably the safest and most aligned with what Nikon had in mind when they provided the 10-pin socket for GPS device attachment. Within this solution, there are variations to achieve the same result.
You can get a regular GPS device spend a couple of hundred dollars more on specialized cables to connect that GPS to the camera. Examples of these cables can be found here.
Another way is to get a di-GPS and plug it directly onto your D200, D300 or D3 Nikon camera. It works well but the draining of electricity from the camera seemed a little high to me at 45 mAmp.
Yet another way is to carry a fairly affordable bluetooth-enabled GPS device in your pocket. Buy a Blue2Can and plug it into the camera. The Blue2Can will pick up the GPS data broadcast from your GPS in your pocket and convert it to data suitable for the camera 10-pin interface. No cables are involved. You do not need to turn your camera into a octopus with 8 cables crawling all over. And, the Blue2Can only use 2.5 mAmp of your camera battery.
I would trust real-time geotagging solution more than the next method because the raw geotagging data is presented to the camera and the writing of the data is completed by the firmware of the camera. This is safe.
Post-processing
There are several available methods out there. Most use a host of software to do it. But, the most popular method is to carry a GPS logger. Essentially, the GPS logger will write a timestamped GPS coordinate into its memory every so often (it is configurable from 1 sec to whatever). An image recorded in your camera also has a timestamp. When you upload all of your images into your computer at the end of the day, you need to run a piece of software which will go through all of your images' timestamps and match those of the GPS logger. This piece of software is often a free software (produced by unpaid software developer) which will then write the real GPS coordinates into your images' EXIF after it finds a matching timestamp in your image(s).
There some downside to this method.
- One obvious one is to get both the clock of the camera and the GPS logger in synched otherwise the matching step (described above) will not work correctly.
- Another downside is a little scary to me. I am essentially allowing a piece of software not approved nor tested by Nikon to write over certain parts of the images. I don't know about you but my out of town trips cost thousands of dollars and if there is any chance of anything corrupting my images, I would want to rule it all out --- totally! The cost of a GPS solution (even if it is $400 will only be a very small fraction of the cost of one trip). We really do not know how Nikon encodes their NEF files because it is a proprietary format and they do not have the need to tell you how and when they change and move certain bytes from here to there. These 3rd-party software may work fine now because the programmers have correctly guessed from reverse engineering where things are stored in each image.
One more variation is that of field post-processing geotagging. ATP Electronics came up with a solution where you stick your flash memory card into it after the images are taken and it will automatically write the geotags into your images right on the flash memory. This is great because you are post-processing it in the field. Hmmm, do I need to do post processing in the field? As of 2008, I do not think there is one for CF cards, they are so far for SD size cards only. Again, the 2 disadvantages mentioned above exists: something not produced by Nikon is writing over your images and I have to keep clocks in synched.
DISCLAIMER
Once again, I am posting what I have researched onto this blog to help others with more readily available information. I do not claim to be a GPS expert and I certainly do not claim that you should rely on this blog for any critical tasks.
AcknowledgementsI gathered these information after I read many threads from forums in Photo.Net and NikonCafe.com.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Robin's Hood
Many photographers who are puzzled over the hood issue get confounded even more when the world moved from film to the digital world. Do we really need a hood around the front end of a lens? Why can't an expensive lens take care of it without a hood? What's the reasoning behind it?
Let me start with a real life example and I assume that you do drive a car. Imagine yourself driving through a dark tunnel. When you are in the last 200-300 yards inside the tunnel, looking out from inside the tunnel, what do you see? You will notice that the scene outside the tunnel is crisp and almost sparkling clean. When you get closer to the edge of the tunnel, you notice that the crispness of the scene outside is reduced. When you finally approach the very exit of the tunnel, you will feel the crispness of the scene dropping by a large fraction compared to what you originally saw while you were deeper in the tunnel? Check it out next time when you drive through that tunnel!
That crisp image you saw while inside the tunnel is synonymous to what your film or digital sensor sees with the lens hood attached. Basically, the lateral light hitting the front element of the lens is blocked out by hood: a lot of it is blocked. When you are about to exit the tunnel, the lateral light begins to pour in from all directions, interfering with the relevant light from your subject that is entering your eyes (the lens). This effect lowers the contrast of the image cast on your retina and reduces the crispness of the edges of the subject you are looking at, too. This lateral light interference plagues film and digital sensors.
There's no lens I know of in the market that can reduce this effect without a hood. This is exactly the reason why you should get a hood even if the lens does not come with it. In general, it will give you a better image almost all of the time. Actually, right now, I cannot think of a situation it won't.
Happy hooding and don't take Robin's.
Let me start with a real life example and I assume that you do drive a car. Imagine yourself driving through a dark tunnel. When you are in the last 200-300 yards inside the tunnel, looking out from inside the tunnel, what do you see? You will notice that the scene outside the tunnel is crisp and almost sparkling clean. When you get closer to the edge of the tunnel, you notice that the crispness of the scene outside is reduced. When you finally approach the very exit of the tunnel, you will feel the crispness of the scene dropping by a large fraction compared to what you originally saw while you were deeper in the tunnel? Check it out next time when you drive through that tunnel!
That crisp image you saw while inside the tunnel is synonymous to what your film or digital sensor sees with the lens hood attached. Basically, the lateral light hitting the front element of the lens is blocked out by hood: a lot of it is blocked. When you are about to exit the tunnel, the lateral light begins to pour in from all directions, interfering with the relevant light from your subject that is entering your eyes (the lens). This effect lowers the contrast of the image cast on your retina and reduces the crispness of the edges of the subject you are looking at, too. This lateral light interference plagues film and digital sensors.
There's no lens I know of in the market that can reduce this effect without a hood. This is exactly the reason why you should get a hood even if the lens does not come with it. In general, it will give you a better image almost all of the time. Actually, right now, I cannot think of a situation it won't.
Happy hooding and don't take Robin's.
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