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March 23, 2006
[ WIRELESS CAMERAS ]
dpexpert is suffering from a bad case of frustration and extreme irritation. The cause of this condition is the latest gimmick in digital cameras – the wireless camera.
So far we have tried the Kodak EasyShare One, the Nikon P1 and the Canon Ixus Wireless. Not one of these cameras will connect to our domestic wireless network.
In the case of Nikon and Canon we have spent hours on the phone in consultation with company technicians and in both cases they declared themselves baffled and bemused and totally incapable of offering any helpful advice.
Our wireless network is a simple Netgear setup that links two desktop computers. There is nothing fancy or mysterious about it, but none of the three cameras will even admit that this network exists.
We have fittered away days of our life creating every possible permutation of connection parameter and the cameras keep telling us "connection failed".
In the case of the Nikon P1 we didn't even get as far as "connection failed". The wireless setup utility must be run with the camera attached to the computer via USB. Windows recognised the camera, correctly designated it in My Computer and assigned it the proprietary icon but the Nikon wireless setup utility insisted that there was no camera attached. This is obviously not a network problem but a Nikon software problem.
Because we have had problems with three cameras we are inclined to think that the issue is with our particular network setup, except in the case of the Nikon. In which case we strongly advise people with Netgear networks to make sure, before buying one of these cameras, that they can take it back if it doesn't work.
If anyone has managed to get a camera to connect to a Netgear network please let us know in the Comments section.
[UPDATE: This message comes from another camera tester for a respected photography magazine: "I had similar problems with those ***** wireless cameras (haven’t tried the Canon one yet, only the Kodak and Nikons). I really can’t see why they bother as it’s so simple to download files via USB or card reader." Well ... Amen to that! ]
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Posted by terry at 11:36 AM | Comments (4)
[ REVIEW – SONY CYBERSHOT DSC–R1 ]
Price: $1800
Rating: 4.8 stars
The low-down: The Sony Cybershot DSC–R1 is a 10.3 megapixel all-in-one digital camera with a Zeiss 5X zoom lens (24–120mm film equivalent). Quality of design and construction is superb.
The R1 has an electronic viewfinder and a swivelling LCD screen that sits flat on the top of the camera when it is docked. The EVF is acceptable and the LCD screen is exceptionally good. It is small but has excellent display characteristics.
The Zeiss lens does not pretend to be a “super” zoom. Instead it sensibly presents quality above quantity. 24mm is a good wideangle focal length and 120mm makes for excellent portraits. Zoom control is by ring on the barrel.
The ergonomics of the R1 are excellent and it is a joy to use. Focus is fast, exposure is accurate and white balance is outstanding. The resolution from the 10.3mp APS size CMOS sensor is brilliant.
The R1 uses both Sony Memory Stick and Compact Flash cards for storage. Jpeg images write to memory quickly but RAW transfers are slow.
Like this: The image quality from the R1 is exceptional but the real killer up its sleeve is its ability to take photos at high ISO -- up to 1600 -- without showing any objectionable noise. Combining the low noise with the outstanding white balance correction means that photos can be taken under almost any type of light, including mixes of incandescent and flourescent, without flash.
Dislike that: The high price is what cost the R1 a five star rating. $1800 puts it up against some good SLRs. A Canon 350D will not take better photos than the Sony but it does allow for interchangeable lenses and it does have a real viewfinder.
Parting shot: The Sony DSC–R1 is a worthy successor to the F828, the best all-in-one camera that we had so far tested. Occasionally a camera comes along that is such a pleasure to use that you find yourself picking it up and looking for subjects just for the fun of it. The R1 inspires confidence that every picture will be sharp, well exposed and accurately coloured. Add to that the quality of construction and the responsive feel of the camera and it gets a high recommendation.
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Posted by terry at 09:47 AM | Comments (1)
[ EPSON PHOTO RX650 multifunction printer ]
Price: $500
Rating: 4 stars
The low-down: The Epson Stylus Photo RX650 multifunction unit combines a printer, scanner, copier, CD label printer, memory card reader and infrared receiver in a single body.
The printer prints up 5760dpi using six ink cartridges – CYMK and light cyan and light magenta. Print quality is very good.
The flatbed scanner scans paper and also claims to be a film scanner. Paper scans are fast and produce sharp and accurately coloured output files. CD/DVD labels are reproduced by putting the original anywhere on the scanner, inserting the blank CD on the special tray and pushing the copy button. The RX650 detects, scans, positions and prints the copy onto the disc.
The RX650 accepts every type of memory card and is recognised by the computer as an external drive. Prints direct from a camera memory card are very good. The unit also scans to the memory card.
For owners of mobile phone cameras the RX650 has infrared connection. Take the photo, set the correct parameters on the multifunction unit, point the camera at it and press the Send button and the Epson does the rest. Results are exceptionally good.
Like this: The Epson RX650 generally dispels the fear that a multifunction unit might not do the job as well as discrete printer and scanner. The scanner works well and the printer will satisfy all except serious photographers who want to make high resolution, long life prints. Prints up to A4 on the RX650 are very good.
Dislike that: The film scanner is best treated as an add-on that doesn’t work. The computer interface is the clumsiest, slowest, most counter-intuitive software that we have ever encountered. Direct print from slide or negative onto 10 by 15 cm paper is reasonable, but scanning to a computer is clunky and produces poor quality images.
Parting shot: Apart from the infuriating film scan function we were impressed with the RX650. We would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who doesn’t need a professional quality printer. We loved the infrared connection to the phone camera – this will astonish your pals because not only does it work, it works well.
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Posted by terry at 09:35 AM | Comments (5)
[ THE EYES HAVE IT ]
The art of digital portraiture
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Amy writes to lament that she finds “it so hard to take photos of people”. And a quick look at her attempts at portraits proves that she is right to lament.
It so happens that digital cameras seem almost to have been designed and built for portraiture. Most compact digicams have optical zooms that cover a focal length range from about 35mm to 114mm in the old 35mm film terms. The 114mm medium telephoto is perfect for portraiture. In the olden days of film serious photographers reckoned that the ideal lens for faces was of a focal length between 100 and 135mm.
There are a number of reasons for this choice of optic for portraits. The first is to do with proximity. A lens double the focal length of the 50mm “normal” lens brings the subject closer to the camera without pushing it into the face, invading personal space and generally intimidating the sitter.
The longer lens also tends to have a shallower depth of field and therefore blurs distracting background detail, particularly if a wide aperture is used.
But most importantly the longer lens gives a more flattering face perspective. Moving in close with a wide angle or standard lens makes for a big nose and tiny ears whereas tight framing with a telephoto puts all the features in proper relationship to each other.
The rules of the portrait are these (remembering that once the rules have been mastered they should be broken from time to time in the interests of Art)…
· If your portrait is no good then you are not close enough. In other words think of the zoom at maximum telephoto extension as normal for people shots and frame tightly to concentrate on the character in the face and to eliminate background distractions.
· The eyes have the character, so focus on the eyes. This is the part of the face that must be sharp in the photograph. Every other feature is secondary. Most digicams allow for spot metering and spot focussing. They never default to these settings so they have to be found and set in the menu. Multi area auto focussing never works because it is programmed to focus on the object closest to the camera which is usually the tip of the nose.
· Flash is only for last resort because the inbuilt flash units on compact cameras produce a harsh, unflattering light and also frequently turn the subject’s eyes werewolf red. It is better to increase the ISO speed of the sensor and use available light through a window for indoor shots. Make the camera default “flash off” and only turn it on in extreme situations.
· The camera is an eye – make sure it sees eye to eye with the subject. Amy’s problem is that she is taking pictures of children and pets from above. To take good photos of children or pets it is almost always necessary to get down on the floor.
· Talk to the subject and be quick – be very quick! Children up to 3 years of age are not self-conscious about cameras, everyone else is. You have approximately 8 seconds to persuade a person to look at the camera and to take a picture before they strike a self-conscious pose. Amy’s photos look as though she has futzed around for a minute or two before pressing the shutter release.
· Never say “Cheese!” Smiles are nice but not essential because forcing a subject to smile compels them to pose. Google the collections of the great portraits by Yosuf Karsh, Philippe Halsman or Arnold Newman and see how many subjects are smiling. Practically none. When Karsh took his famous portrait of Churchill in Ottawa during the War the Prime Minister regarded “my camera as he might regard the German enemy" Karsh wrote later. Churchill had a cigar stuck between his teeth and Karsh says: “Instinctively, I removed the cigar. At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger." Who needs cheesy?
As you know there are some people of different religions and ethnicities who resist the camera for fear that it captures their spirit. They are right to be wary. The aim of every portrait photographer is to capture the spirit of the subject, preserve it in a digital file, print it and email it. The difference between a snap and a good person photo is that sense that we are seeing something more than the surface features of the sitter.
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Posted by terry at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
[ SHOOTING BEN HUR ON THE TAKEAWAY PHONE ]
The world’s first feature film shot entirely on mobile phones has just been made in South Africa.
SMS Sugarman, made by director Aryan Kaganof, was shot using Sony Ericsson W900i phones. For some scenes eight phones were used for shooting.
The W900i phones have a 2 megapixel camera built in and record to Memory Stick Duo. Imaging has tested one of the Sony Ericsson camera phones and been impressed, but there’s no getting away from the fact that by any standards these units produce low resolution images. The digital zooms are unusable and there is virtually no manual control of any of the usual parameters such as ISO speed and aperture, nevertheless the plan is for cinema and DVD release.
Asked why he did it Kaganof said: “Somebody had to do it.”
dpexpert is old enough to remember when a phone was something that had a handle to crank and a switchboard operator on the other end with a spaghetti jar of wires, plugs and sockets to patch through to the called subscriber. A telephone was just a telephone. Alexander Graham Bell would have recognised it.
Goodness knows what he would make of the new Nokia 6280 which is a phone, camera, video camera, stereo music player, sound recorder, image storage and display device, stopwatch, diary, web browser, email client, portable games device, television set, address book and FM radio combined. We apologise to Mr Nokia if we have left anything out of that list.
The 2 megapixel camera works at three resolutions and three image sizes for both still and video shooting. At top resolution and size [1600 by 1200 pixels] the images make respectable prints to 10 by 15 cms.
These tiny, low resolution, fixed focus, wide angle cameras can, with careful use, produce romantically back lit soft-focus images that are especially attractive. The sepia effect in the Nokia makes for charming portraits.
The storage medium in the Nokia is a combination of SIM, phone memory and mini SD card. The card supplied is 64 meg capacity and larger capacity cards can be installed to hold more MP3 and JPEG data.
Using the software supplied with the phone it is linked to a PC via the USB port and it appears in My Computer as “Nokia phone browser” and works as though it were an external drive. Files can be transferred in both directions.
The LCD viewing screen on the Nokia is of a decent size and resolution and makes a decent portable image viewer. Photographers can also brag about their best shots by installing them on the phone as wallpaper, displayed when the phone is in standby mode.
Photos can be sent as multimedia messages to other similarly equipped 3G phones.
But wait, there’s more! The Epson Stylus Photo RX650 multi function device we have been testing prints from an infrared enabled phone just by pointing it at the printer and pressing a button on the phone itself. It has to be seen to be believed. (Other makers’ multi function units do the same.)
The Nokia 6280 is one of the cheapest 3G phones but at the moment a 2 megapixel camera is as good as it gets. There will no doubt be higher resolution cameras in phones in the next few months and there may even be phones with optical zooms. The LCD viewing screens probably won’t get much larger because that would involve increasing the overall size of the camera and who wants that?
As things stand the Nokia and phones with similar specifications represent a useful accessory for photographers. At the very least they are go-anywhere cameras with image storage and viewing functions. And at their best they may be tools for re-shooting Ben Hur.
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Posted by terry at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)
[ REVIEW—SONY CYBERSHOT DSC–N1 ]
Price: $900
Rating: 3.5 stars
The low-down: The Sony Cybershot DSC–N1 is an 8.1 megapixel compact digital camera with a Zeiss 3X zoom lens (38–114mm film equivalent). Construction is metal and quality of design and construction is high.
There is no optical viewfinder and the 7.5cm LCD is hard to see, even in overcast light. In situations where the screen is visible it is an excellent high resolution display.
All shooting parameters are set via the screen by touch. This is one of those mysterious technological breakthroughs that no one knew they wanted and when used it makes you wonder why they bothered. Navigating through menus by way of a touch screen is slow and frustrating and surprisingly difficult without the manual to hand.
When a photo is displayed in review mode it can be scribbled on (“painted”, according to Sony) or can be stamped with a heart, snowflake or star etc. The supplied stylus is too coarse for fine drawing or writing legibly.
Like this: Hidden behind the pointless technology of the Sony DSC–N1 is a fine camera. Resolved detail with the 8mp sensor and Zeiss lens is breathtaking. Exposure is always spot on and dynamic range is very good for a compact digital. Colour is generally good but auto-white balance is not completely reliable. Photos taken in open shade tend to yellow/red. We found that by reducing Saturation and Contrast the orange cast can be cut back. In fact using the low settings seems to improve all photos.
Dislike that: Reaction to the gimmickry of the DSC–N1 is bound to be personal. Some people will love it. You can even create slideshows in the camera with music (supplied in the camera’s internal memory) which is played back through the tiny inbuilt speaker. Given a choice, for the same money, of touch screen gimmickry or a good optical viewfinder it would be no contest.
Parting shot: The Sony DSC–N1 will have strong appeal to the gadgetphile, but the serious photographer should compare it carefully with Sony’s excellent DSCW7, a 7.2mp camera with a good optical viewfinder and costing $250 less. The DSCW7 doesn’t let you put snowflake stamps in ten colours on your photos, but if you cherish your images you won’t miss that dubious boon.
[Sample images from the SONY DSC N1 in the Gallery ]
Posted by terry at 08:28 AM | Comments (2)