Humor

Funny video with a punchline that hinges on camera scene modes that I saw linked on a blog I follow. So I am doing the perpetuating thing.



Enjoy.

Cellphone or DSLR - the answer

The answer to the question in the previous post:


Click for bigger.

80 MP medium format backs

I've been reading with great interest the field report of the new super high resolution Phase One medium format back done by Michael over at Luminous Landscape. This monster gives 80MP real resolution and Michael thinks it is equivalent to drum-scanned 8x10" film. This would be extraordinary if true. Looking at the 1:1 crop and counting pixels, the resolution appears to be similar to or slightly better than what I get stitching (see here, here or here) multiple images from my crop DSLR using my very cheapest kit lens. Of course getting that kind of quality in a single shot is far more convenient than my el cheapo solution as you can compose the shot far better. When I compose, I usually make a guide shot with an equivalent wider angle lens to the final stitched image's viewing angle. This works to a degree but is not perfect. I cannot exactly compose this way. My stitching solution also has trouble with very long lenses as the rotation between frames becomes very small so it works best for wide angles. All in all the new medium format backs are very interesting products. Of course I can't really afford such a machine (44k$ for just this new back, no body and lenses included!) which is probably why I don't get these cameras sent to me by Phase One or any of the other makers for testing. I'd be happy to put one through its paces though! Michael mentions stitching multiple shots from this camera. That concept just blows my mind.

A word of caution on using custom camera profiles

If you own a colorchecker, you can use DNG profile editor, or X-rite's passport Lightroom plugin to create a custom camera profile for your camera. This works really well. I should however caution you about an issue I discovered with this. One of the problems is that neutrals are not kept neutral when you change to a different camera profile in Lightroom or ACR. An illustration is given below.



On the left is the result of first assigning my self-calibrated profile generated using the passport plugin (this is also true for other profiles) and then using the white balance dropper on the neutral patch on the card and on the right is the result of first setting the white balance and then assigning the exact same profile. As you can see on the right, my very neutral grey backdrop turns green and the girl's skin is rendered a little too yellow. The skin tone might not be too bad but the green backdrop is very distracting I think. On the left, the color is just fine, no tint to the backdrop and good skin tone. The difference is simply in the white balance chosen by the white balance dropper. The image on the right, Lightroom chose 5700K and -3 tint, while on the left, it chose 5450K and +12. Quite a difference for white balancing on the same patch! I tested with all the other camera profiles and they all show this problem that there is a shift in the color temperature taken from the neutral patches.

P.S. if you prefer slightly more warm skintones than the very neutral rendering you get when using the neutral patch, the passport has a set of warming patches in the top row. You can simply select patches more to the right of the standard patch to warm up skintones. This results in the backdrop staying far more neutral but just the skintones warming up. A far more pleasant effect. See below for the result of choosing the patch two spots to the right of the neutral patch (the middle one in the top row of neutral patches. The second row of neutral patches also allows you to go to cooler colors and is more useful for landscape photography.



This made Lightroom choose 6000K and +27 tint. The skintone that resulted is very nice I think.

Conclusion: do your custom white balance after assigning the profile you want to use.

EDIT: It appears that this is mostly a problem with self-created dual illuminant profiles. I create these by shooting one image under tungsten light and another in sunlight as I don't own a calibrated D65 reference. Whether I create the profile in X-rite's passport program or DNG PE, they show the issue of neutrals not staying neutral. The Adobe-supplied camera-matching profiles also have the problem, but it is too minor to worry about. The differences in grey-card set white balance are on the order of 100K which you won't really notice.

Nikon announces new high ISO monster

The D3s. The thing is capable of ISO 102400. The Sample images show amazingly clean ISO 12800. The ISO 102400 I am sure of course is a trick mode (HI 3) that is really ISO 12800 boosted in software. Still the images very impressive as I am sure the price will be. For the rest it is like the old D3. And oh yeah, there is a movie feature which shoots in silly time-limited mjpeg, a codec from the stone age that nobody uses anymore. Why no mpeg4/H264? Now the question is with the D3s and the D3x, where is Nikon's answer to the Canon 5D mk II? The D700x?

Reviews of the new M9

Just a quick ist of reviews I saw looking into the new M9.
Luminous Landscape. He loves it.
Jonathan Slack's review (lots of great pictures)
Dpreview. They also actually touched one.
Focus Numérique. If you read french. They have some 100% blowups of high ISO images.
Ken Rockwell. He doesn't have one yet, but still waxes lyrical.

If you know of any more let me know. Concerning reviews, I just don't understand why Leica doesn't think I am worthy enough to test one ;-) . Of course, I am far from wealthy enough to be able to afford one, so I am decidedly out of the market. Still it is is nice to finally see a nicely simplistic, well designed, rangefinder camera with a full frame sensor.

EDIT: Another nice one here from David Farkas.

Leica M9

The web is abuzz with the (obviously not by accident) leaked specs for a new Leica camera called the M9. Apparently this will be a full frame rangefinder with 18 megapixels. I scoured the (adorned with very enjoyable Cuban street photography) pdf brochure and this looks likie a fantastic camera. If you're asking about the price you are decidedly not in the market for this thing. Expect it to cost as much as a D3x. Even though the brochure is clearly real, there are some strange things. This camera's native RAW format is DNG (hurrah Leica!!!) but Leica claims the format maintains the sensor's total 16 bits per channel? That makes no sense. No current photographic sensors have a 16 bit ADC and if they did, it would be utter overkill. There are simply not enough photons to make the signal-to-noise ratio low enough to warrant more than 14 or even 12 bits considering the pixel size on a 18 MP FF sensor. You're just more accurately imaging noise, which really doesn't help you with anything but create bigger files. Not even the D3 with far larger pixels needs 16 bits as 14 bits is already overkill simply because of basic physics. Anyway, the uncompressed DNG files are supposedly 36 MB, which is precisely right for a 16 bits capture on a 18 MP sensor. Concerning the DNG files, why is there no lossless compression that is standard in DNG (lossless jpeg), but only a gamma trick similar to the one Nikon uses in its lossy compressed NEFs? This seems strange to me. Lossy DNG compression is very much nonstandard and unnecessary as the lossless jpeg compression is just as efficient, but it is lossless. All in all, this is a very interesting camera, with some interesting technology. It is going to be very light and should be ideal for street photography and also landscapes. On the other hand, this thing is going to be extremely expensive. If you need the quality but cannot grok the premium price you'll pay for this Leica and don't mind a little extra volume and weight, consider a Canon 5D mk II or a Sony A850.

The D3x is out

Long a rumor, now it's real. Nikon released the D3x, a 24 MP monster in a D3 body. There are some very nice sample images here and some other ones in a annoying and crappy flash interface here - gorgeous images though. Gorgeous detail and beautiful color. However, the price of $8k! makes it completely irrelevant for me. If you're a commercial studio photographer then of course this is great, but perhaps offers not that much different from medium format digital except for the use of all your nikon lenses. If you're a landscape photographer, you have to be super rich or super successful to afford this and then you'll still get far better quality using large format analog which will set you back far less. Or go for the Canon 5D mk II, which offers basically the same quality (for landscapes) in a much smaller package. Let's hope Nikon comes out with a D700x to compete with that using the same sensor as in the D3X. The D3x is a monster. A beautiful one, but a monster nevertheless.

Update: Ken Rockwell writes "... Nikon dared ask $8,000 for a $5,500 camera that is the same thing as the $4,200 D3.", and "The D3X is Nikon's greatest camera ever; it's just not worth $8,000, except to turkeys." He is absolutely right. Don't bite at this price. You can get the same quality using Velvia 50 in any old 35 mm Nikon you can get for $50 on craigslist if you own a good scanner or use a good scanning service.

Update II. Wonderful analysis by Thom Hogan here.

New tool for pixelpeepers

There is an interesting new website called dxomark that has a very comprehensive database of measurements on the performance of different digital cameras. This allow you to do quantitative comparisons between cameras from different manufacturers. Of course, you have to take these things with a grain of salt as invariably you'll find that the most expensive camera is by far the best in these measurements considering noise at high ISO, dynamic range and such. However, if you go out in the field and shoot an image at ISO 100 of a landscape with the camera you would not see any difference to your much cheaper one. And of course, if in such a situation you would shoot using a 4x5 camera with ISO 50 velvia or so, you would get far higher quality images than even the most expensive Canon 1Ds MkIII or Nikon D3. That said, I was curious for a while about what the actual IQ difference is between my D300 and the very yummy D700. Well, here it is. One example is the signal to noise ratio:

which is a full 4 dB better for the D700 at 200 nominal ISO, which corresponds to over a factor of 2 more noise in the D300. This certainly squares with my observation of noise at low ISOs in the D300. If on the DxOmark website, you roll your mouse over the scalebar on the right, you will see what this means for the image. Giving a very similar image to my examples.
Here is the dynamic range:

As you can see, apart from the base ISO, the dynamic range of the D700 is more than a stop better at every setting. That is impressive!

Now if any of this matters to you enough to spend thousands of bucks extra depends on your priorities. I wish I had the financial means to get a D700 and full-frame lenses but right now it is just lusting. I wish it had better resolution though, as from everything I have seen, the D700 gives exactly the same sharpness as a D300. The full-frame advantage doesn't hold up at all in that parameter. For that, use a 5D mkII, or a film camera I guess.

Very interesting new camera(s) from Red

See here for the new RED DSMC system. Far out of my budget, but revolutionary for what it can do. Enormous sensors, still capability that is no compromise and amazing video. These are going to be big!

Interesting new video capabilities in new cameras from Canon and Nikon

two recent cameras, the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D mk II have added high def video capabilities to DSLRs. The D90, a successor to the D80 but now with the image processor of the D300 and up, does 720p at 24 fps, while the full-frame 5D mk II adds 1080p at 30 fps. Here is a piece of video shot with the D90 I found online



Nikon also has lots of video on their D90 website.

On the Canon side, the 5DmkII has far higher resolution and better low-light performance than the D90 for almost 3x the price.

Vincent Laforet (from the obscene amount of gear) has shot a very interesting video showing off the capabilities of the 5D. See it here. The video very effectively shows off the capabilities of the camera. Beautiful stuff. Also superbly deep colors. There is not much story but that is not the point I guess.

These developments are very interesting as they allow very high quality but budget movie shooting with real lenses. Game changers indeed. I don;t think I would buy either of these cameras because of this feature though. On the other hand, I think the 5D mk II is very interesting as a camera for landscapes, but financially this is not a simple thing as I would need a whole new set of lenses too.

The new grad ND tool

Lightroom 2.0 now has a new tool that allows for the very easy creation of simulated graduated neutral density filters. I used to do this all the time in Photoshop, but now we can do this far faster and far more convenient in Lightroom. Below I discuss an example of its use mixed with the new camera profiles. To prime you all, here is an the before/after view (larger in the link):



As you can see the left image is the default ACR 4.4 rendering (I only rotated it 1.5 degrees or so to level the horizon and upped the blacks). This image was taken right after sunset in Canyonlands National Park using my super backpacking friendly D50. On the right the same image, but with the camera landscape profile applied and two grad NDs. I also changed the white balance to cloudy. As you can see. Left - quite boring. Right - very nice saturated colors. The grad NDs can be applied by clicking on the little icon that looks like an actual grad ND filter. Without the grad ND filters, the image looks like this now:



First I applied a quick transition +0.8 exposure grad ND as in the image below.



Then I applied a broader -1.0 grad ND to darken the sky:



This trick allows one to create quite complex gradations. I added a tiny tweak of the curve and added a little clarity and vibrance and saturation.

Here is the final result (large in the link):

High ISO noise in Lightroom and Capture NX

Together with the new D300 came a free copy of Capture NX, Nikon's dedicated RAW converter software. Apparently Nikon wants to push the use of this program. First, after trying it a little let me say that this program still has by far the worst user interface of anything I have ever encountered. In its current form it is a major disaster. The side panels are horribly designed and the way everything works is designed as an 80's X-windows program. Horrifying to say the least. What Nikon does know very well is how to deal with the data coming from their cameras. By default it gives great color and contrast. One other thing it does well is high-ISO noise. I shot the following image at ISO 6400 with the D300 and loaded it as a .NEF in both Lightroom (2.0 beta) and Capture NX. This is the default conversion (the camera was set to Vivid picture style and Capture picks that up, Vivid adds some saturation some sharpening and some contrast)



You see this camera is usable at this ISO. There is a little noise in the dark blue sky but pretty nice. Amazing how far this has come, the image is better than film at ISO 800. Now for some 100% comparisons. This is Capture default conversion



Pretty amazing if you ask me. The noise is very grain like as if it is film.
Now Lightroom. Left, default Lightroom conversion, right optimized noise reduction (about 50/50 in both luminance and chroma)


As you see, Lightroom's conversion is far noisier by default and it is typical digital noise. The more optimized conversion is still noisy and becomes splotchy. Not very good. You also see strange speckling around the lights in both images that is not present in the Capture conversion.

Conclusion: Not surprising since the software comes from the camera maker, Capture NX deals very well with high ISO noise. If only the program were not so horrible in its use that I dread opening it every time, I would use it all the time and import tiffs or jpegs into Lightroom from it.

EDIT: because of a request below, I added the Mac OS X (i.e. identical to Aperture - my trial license for Ap 2 expired) default system RAW library conversion. It looks like this:


Very similar to Lightroom default version but not as good as Capture NX's. Somehow the noise seems to be a little more even than in the Lightroom conversion, so perhaps it would be easier to deal with, but I digress.

New camera

A recent mishap where somebody drove their car over my backpack containing my camera, breaking the lens out of the mount (luckily a plastic lens) and breaking the command dial (making the camera rather useless) made me realize I need a second camera. I usually borrow or rent a second camera for events but otherwise have been very happy with what I had, even if it was only a 6 MP machine. For landscapes I would often use film anyway or stitch multiple images together and the very sharp 6MP allowed for surprisingly large blowups (I've gone to 20x30 and they still look great and surprisingly sharp). Anyway, since there is a great deal from Nikon that is active on Adorama, B&H, ritz, etc, where you get $300 instant rebate on the D300 together with the 18-200VR, I went for it. Note that Adorama has already run out of them in just a few days! This camera is astonishing. I used the D200 and Canon equivalents, but this camera beats most of them in use and feel. I wonder what a D3 would be like? Next to being great in use (the AF system is a dream), it is sharp to the pixel (at least in RAW) and that screen is superb. Also, its jpeg engine is astonishing. I was playing around with it yesterday and shot this mêh scene of a child's slide on our deck. I am astounded by the color. Especially since this was pretty boring hard light.



That's straight (except for scaling and sharpening for the web at a larger size than you see here (follow the link) by LR2 beta) out of the camera. Some more here:







Now you have seen a lot of the silly stuff in our garden ;-)