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July 30, 2006
[ SLIDESHOWS ON TV ]
HERE AT DPEXPERT we have frittered away a goodly part of our lives trying to get a presentable display of our priceless digital images for distribution on DVD to be played back on ordinary television sets.
As we have pointed out from time to time you cannot just throw untreated image files at the telly and hope for acceptable results. TV sets and PC monitors are not the same thing. LCD screens on cameras match TV monitor in gamma and saturation but TVs don't.
While we don't claim to be the world's greatest living expert on this matter we have arrived at a process that produces slideshows which give us great satisfaction with colour, contrast and brightness all nicely adjusted.
The fruit of our labours is in a set of instructions called — for reasons that will be immediately obvious to older Australians — A NICE NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT ON DVD.
We would appreciate any feedback. It is probably possible to simplify the instruction set to either reduce the steps or to make it clearer. Advice and comment is welcome. We will consider A NICE NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT ON DVD to be a work in progress.
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Posted by terry at 01:32 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
July 27, 2006
[ REVIEW — OLYMPUS SP-350 digital camera ]
Price: $700
Recommended
The low-down: The Olympus SP-350 is an 8 megapixel compact camera with a 3X optical zoom (38–114mm film equivalent). Olympus designate the SP-350 as an “enthusiast” camera because it has some features not found on most compacts at this price: external flash shoe, optional lens extenders, RAW image recording and an optical viewfinder.
The camera shape is attractive and ergonomically reassuring. The battery/memory card compartment bulge on the right of the camera makes a useful handgrip.
Exposure is fairly accurate and the exposure compensation method is just about the easiest and most intuitive we have encountered. We found the Olympus default ESP metering to be generally the best at determining exposure. The SP-350 can be used as an automatic point and shoot camera but that would be a pity because it does provide the photographer with full manual controls. The best way to set up the camera is to create a “My Scene” setting with preferred defaults and vary from that when necessary.
Unfortunately Olympus follow the herd with an absurd predictive auto focus system that is guaranteed to always focus on the wrong spot in the photograph. Auto focus should be set to Spot the moment the camera is taken from the box.
Like this: The SP-350 has exceptionally good auto white balance. Photos taken under a tricky mix of incandescent and halogen spots were just about perfect.
Dislike that: Olympus do not provide either a printed manual or a battery charger. The manual is on disc and the owner will have to supply the rechargeable batteries and charger. There is no memory card with the camera, only the 32mb of internal memory. All of which means that the true price of the camera is not $700 but more like $800.
Parting shot: The Olympus SP-350 is up against some stiff competition from Canon and Sony in this price range. The Olympus is a capable camera and feels more like a traditional camera than the opposition. The Sony is also an 8mp camera while the Canon has a 6mp sensor but with image stabilisation. The Canon seems to cost $100 more but it comes with a battery and charger and uses cheaper SD memory cards.
Posted by terry at 07:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
[ THE FUTURE-PROOF DIGITAL CAMERA ]
CAMERA MAKERS ARE REPORTING AN INTERESTING PHENOMENON in their sales statistics: many customers are now buying their third or fourth digital camera. This is good news to the camera makers but it is unsettling news for the prospective first-time customer.
One chap writes in a Web forum: “Back in the old film camera days you could buy a nice camera and probably 5 to 8 years later it still was a good camera... Now with the digital cameras I have seen how fast they become obsolete. Do you think there will be an upper limit for digital cameras where you can buy a nice body and it will be a good piece of equipment several years later?”
At the top end of the market, where the single lens reflex cameras are found, model life is reassuringly long. The Nikon D100, for instance, was in production for four years before it was replaced with the D200. The Canon 30D SLR differs only slightly from the 20D and the 20D is not very different from the 10D.
The frantic action is at the compact end of the market. At the popular price point of $600–700 model life is very short and there is no hope of buying a camera today that will still be current in a year’s time.
Compact cameras have quickly acquired higher resolution sensors and such useful technology as image stabilisation. Zoom lenses have gone wider and longer and automatic exposure, focussing and image processing have all improved so that today’s cameras are superior to those of three years ago. It is hard to resist the siren call of the latest model.
Photographic distributor, Robert Heim, says that there was a formula used in the digital camera business in its early days: “For every $100 spent on a new camera it will be kept for one month.” This was a period when a 2 megapixel camera like the original Nikon Coolpix cost $2000. Mr Heim says that now that 5, 6 and 8 megapixel sensors are commonplace in cheap cameras the turnover rate has slowed to one new camera every couple of years.
Gfk Consumerscope track the camera business and they reported in January that 39 per cent of buyers were purchasing a second or third camera. Stuart Poignand, marketing manager at Canon Australia, says that more than 50 per cent of Canon buyers are buying a second or subsequent camera.
The economics of photography have been transformed by digital. With film cameras the improvements were in film emulsions, chemicals and papers so there was little to be gained in swapping one $299 camera for another. The big costs were in film and processing, $23 for every 24 exposure film, developing and printing. In digital the pictures cost nothing if they are shared electronically, as most are, so buying a replacement digital camera is not as indulgently expensive as it might look.
Canon have made the unilateral decision that the megapixel wars are over. Canon’s new Ixus 800is is a 6mp camera, which has surprised observers, but the company reckons that 6 million clean pixels with image stabilised lens and exemplary in-camera processing is what people really need. Will consumers buy this reasoning when a 6mp Canon costs $100 more than an 8mp Sony? After all, bigger is better, right?
Compact camera technology is now mature. With many brands taking their sensors from the same source company it is hard to get a resolution advantage. Gimmicks, such as wireless connectivity and touch screens, will only seduce a few gadget freaks and the big battle now is over price and retail margins. Makers are skimping on materials and features -- more plastic, less metal and no optical viewfinder -- and moving manfuacturing to China to shave a dollar off the price. Some of this years cameras are inferior in quality to the models they replace but they have more pixels and cost less.
The only way to stay ahead of the game is never to buy a camera.
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Posted by terry at 07:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 22, 2006
[ PHOTOGRAPHING BIRDS ]
BARRY WANTS TO KNOW [see his Forum post] how I get the birds to sit still long enough to take their photo. I wish that I could claim a trade secret but in fact my approach is pretty basic.
1. Use a fast camera with a 200mm lens. My Nikon D70 is instantaneous with very quick auto focus and no shutter lag. The secondary advantage of using the long lens is shallow depth of field which blurs the background. The birds stand out splendidly against an out-of-focus background.
2. Anticipate where the bird will be and prefocus [halfway shutter depress], then wait until it strikes the anticpated pose then snap!
3. Take lots of photos. I set the camera to Burst mode. Remember the great advantage of digital — it is free and you get instant review of the image. If the picture is no good reset the exposure compensation and take another one.
4. Establish a feeding routine for the birds so that you have a fair idea of where they're going to be. As the great David Attenborough once explained to me, if you walk around looking up into the trees hoping to see and photograph a flying snake [which we were talking about at the time] you'll finish up with no picture and a crick in the neck. He got his amazing film of flying snakes by catching a snake, putting it in a bag and sending a chap up a tree to put the snake on a branch and poke it with a stick. Bingo! Flying snake!
I am fully aware of the objections to feeding native birds. When we moved into our house 30 years ago the garden was full of native plants and the only birds we ever saw were starlings, Indian miners and sparrows. One day we were surprised to see a pair of Crimson Rosellas in the garden so we bought a seed blob [I'm not sure what they are called — seed stuck together with honey and hanging from a wire] and suddenly we had rosellas and lorikeets and the exotic aerial pests disappeared. These days we never see an exotic bird but the trees are alive with the racket of the locals. I cannot find it in myself to apologise for this transformation.
We also feed the carnivores, the Magpies, Currawongs and Butcher Birds. They like us and we like them. They think that God put humans on earth to give them mince meat and who are we to ridicule their religious beliefs?
There are a number of bird and animal species that have formed a mutually beneficial relationship with humans in the urban environment. We give each other immense pleasure. They come and go as they please and sometimes they sit still for just long enough to have their photo taken.
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ALTERNATIVE SITE FOR BIRD PHOTOS — smaller pictures but fast download.
Posted by terry at 01:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 20, 2006
[ A COLLECTION OF BIRDS! ]
THE NATIVE BIRDS have been very active in our garden over the past week or so. We normally host a flock of Rainbow Lorikeets every day and recently they have been joined -- well, that's not quite the right word, given the rivalry between different avian gangs -- by King Parrots, Eastern Rosellas and Crimson Rosellas.
We have the usual complement of Magpies, Currawongs, Butcher Birds, Noisy Miners and doves.
So the Nikon D70 with the Sigma 70~200 lens has been tracking the visitors around the garden. There is a gallery of the photographs so far [new ones are being added every day] on Zenfolio
BIRDS IN OUR GARDEN gallery on Zenfolio
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Posted by terry at 12:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
[ REVIEW — CANON EOS30D DSLR ]
Price: $2500 with kit lens
Highly recommended
The low-down: The Canon EOS 30D is an upgrade from the 20D digital single lens reflex. Little has changed -- the 8 megapixel sensor is the same and image processing uses the same Digic engine. The most significant improvement has been the addition of spot metering. There is no real reason for an owner of the 20D to rush out and buy the new model.
All the virtues of the 20D are maintained -- excellent body build, large and bright viewfinder, beautifully damped controls and barely audible mirror slap. The image quality is exemplary with exposure, focus and colour all being accurate.
The Canon is particularly good at handling saturated colours without bleeding and blurring the edges between adjacent blocks of colour. Skin tones are smooth. The overall image quality is what aficionados call “film like”. Canon set their defaults in this camera for accuracy not for unnatural saturation and contrast.
The camera came supplied with the Canon EFS 17-85mm image stabilised lens. Canon call this the “enthusiast kit” and it has a retail price of $3298. With the humble kit lens the 30D costs $2500. Body alone is $2300.
Like this: The Canon EOS 30D is a well-balanced camera that feels just right in the hand. The combination of build quality and responsiveness inspire confidence.
Dislike that: Controls are not intuitive. By default the camera uses an absurd auto focussing system that is almost guaranteed to produce out-of-focus images. To reset the auto focus area to the same centre spot as the exposure meter it is necessary to consult the instruction book. Fortunately the book is comprehensive and clear -- you need it!
Parting shot: The Canon EOS 30D with the better lens is competition for the Nikon D200 which has a 10 megapixel sensor. Choosing between the two would be difficult and a great pleasure! Anyone lucky (rich) enough to be shopping in this market gets to choose between two superb cameras.
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Posted by terry at 10:25 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
[ FROM FILM TO DIGITAL -- it’s just about all over ]
IF YOU'RE THE SORT OF PERSON who hopes that digital photography is a passing fad we can only suggest that you take a look at Kodak’s Australian web site (www.kodak.com.au) There you will see that the company that was founded on film -- the light-sensitive silver halide emulsion on a transparent flexible backing -- now offers only one compact film camera, the Advantix T20, and three throwaways for sale. Compare that with the bewildering array of 25 digital cameras it has on offer.
The story is much the same with other manufacturers and distributors. Canon lists five film compact cameras on its site (www.canon.com.au) but you might have difficulty finding a shop that stocks them. Nikon has no compact film cameras and only two film single lens reflex cameras, one for the pros and one marketed to students learning the craft.
Steve Mills, senior salesman in Ted’s Digital Corporate division, says that the last Nikon F6 film SLRs had to be sold at a loss to move them off the shelf.
Mills says that film sales to serious photographers, along with photographic paper and chemicals, have been declining at the rate of 20 to 30 per cent a year. At the same time the sales of inkjet printers and associated consumables have been increasing at the same rate. The last enlarger that Mills sold was “some years ago” and since then he has sold only one enlarger lens. It is not so surprising then that Nikon abandoned the manufacture of enlarger lenses in January this year.
Sales staff at Ted’s city store reckon that they sell one compact film camera every fortnight.
It is now four years since the milestone was reached where more digital cameras than film cameras were sold world wide. This year the digital cameras are taking 92 per cent of the market. Companies that were slow to appreciate the speed with which digital would be embraced have been swept aside, the most prominent casualty of the revolution being the proud of company Agfa, admired by serious amateurs and professionals for the quality of their black and white photographic paper as well as being a major supplier of minilab processing machines, chemicals and paper. Kodak has survived, but only by shedding thousands of staff around the world and closing their Australian manufacturing plant.
Andy Wu, manager of the suburban Kodak Express camera shop and processing laboratory in the Forest Hill shopping centre, says that some of the lost film sales are compensated for with camera memory card sales. Sadly for the retailer memory cards are reusable, unlike single use film.
He says that he usually has one compact film camera in stock for the occasional customer not ready to make the transition to digital. Sales of film cameras run at about one every two weeks.
Wu has a particularly loyal customer base because of his shop’s reputation for quality processing but even so his ratio of prints made from film and from digital files is now about 1:1.
Life is particularly tough for the operators of small camera stores with on-site processing. Supermarkets have entered into the one hour processing in a big way with do-it-yourself kiosks for customers with digital memory cards. And the big electrical goods retailers all sell cameras that these days qualify as electronic gadgets. Put bluntly, the digital revolution has left a huge pile of casualties in its wake.
How long will companies like Kodak and Fuji continue to make film? Steve Mills believes that the availability of 35mm film will always be tied to the motion picture industry. As long as movie makers shoot and distribute on film it will be economically feasible to cut the film into strips and load it into cassettes -- after all that is where it all started with the first Leica in 1925. But, once the movies go beginning-to-end digital, film will be finished, at least for the amateur photographer unless some small start-up company moves into the vacuum left by the retreat of the big companies from the business. Silver-based photography may survive but in an expensive and esoteric and slightly eccentric form.
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Posted by terry at 10:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 06, 2006
[ MAHA POWEREX battery charger & batteries ]
MAHA POWEREX battery charger & batteries
Price: $70, inc. 4 AA 2500mAh batteries.
Recommended
The low-down: The Maha PowerEx battery charger comes with four AA NiMH batteries that the makers say can be charged in an hour. Four 2500mAh batteries bought separately cost $18. 2700mAh units are $22 for four. AA batteries come in pairs at $9 and they also fit in this C204W unit. (Order from Servaas Products)
Some digital camera users prefer generic batteries to the rechargeable proprietory batteries. If you are using conventional AA or AAA batteries you are never likely to be far from a replacement for a flat set. Rechargeable AA and AAA batteries, while initially expensive, pay for themselves and give the user the economies of rechargeable and the reassurance that single use batteries will be close at hand in an emergency.
And think of the environment. Billions of single use batteries are tossed into landfill every year and any technology that reduces that impact on the environment is welcome.
Like this: One of the drawbacks with rechargeable batteries has been that once they run down and are left flat for a time they die. The Maha PowerEx promises (we haven’t tested this so we are relying on the specification sheet) that Lazarus batteries can be raised from the dead. The makers say that they use a “conditioning algorithm that first fully drains the batteries and then recharges them.”
This charger is ideal for the international traveller because it can cope with any voltage/AC frequency combination without the need for additional transformers.
Dislike that: The instruction sheet leaves some important questions unanswered but the distributors tell us that the charger can be safely left connected to the power supply because it automatically switches off when the batteries are charged; this means that they can’t be accidentally overcharged and they don’t suffer from the dreaded “memory” effect, so you don’t need to worry about undercharging. It would be better if this information were supplied with the charger.
Parting shot: We go through a lot of batteries at dpexpert and we are conscience-stricken every time we throw a set of flatties in the garbage. To save money and to calm our troubled consciences we are buying the Maha charger.
Posted by terry at 10:55 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
[ COLOUR ME RIGHT ]
Back in the olden times -- say five years ago -- when the standard method of sharing photographs was to simply hand around the prints from the photolab, we all saw the same thing. Well, more or less the same thing, allowing for varying degrees of colour blindness or myopia and astigmatism.
These days, when the preferred method of sharing photographs is through the medium of the Internet and by display on computer monitors, we are all seeing something unique. It would be rare to find two monitors calibrated alike. In fact it is rare to find any monitor calibrated at all. Brightness, contrast and colour are all over the place. Cathode ray tube monitors display a different picture from those of LCD screens. The picture on an LCD screen looks different from different angles.
Most, if not all, LCD screens straight out of the box are over-bright. Just like television sets the manufacturers set the brightness and contrast far too high because they are afraid that potential customers will dismiss a correctly adjusted screen as dull. Monitors also come with over-saturated, garish colour. This is a display characteristic sometimes referred to as “Asian”. “European” means more natural contrast and colour. Virtually all monitors come from Asia so it is not surprising that they have the characteristics favoured by their manufacturers.
At the very least a new monitor needs immediate adjustment of brightness and contrast. One simple and free way to do this is to go to www.dpreview.com and click on any camera review. Near the bottom of the first page of any camera review page there is a greyscale image that shows 26 tones between white and black. A properly adjusted monitor should show perceptible differences between all 26 blocks.
Anyone with Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements installed also has Adobe Gamma adjustment installed. It is located in Control Panel on Windows PCs and can be run as a simple step by step wizard. This routine is a bit like going to the optometrist in that it involves making choices between slightly different images. In other words the adjustment is subjective.
Some questions have to be answered to which the correct answers are not obvious. When Adobe Gamma asks for the gamma number the right answer is 2.2. When it asks for the monitor phosphor (for CRT monitors) the correct answer is probably P22. And when it asks for the hardware white point the correct answer is 6500o K. There may be some arguments about these variables, but these numbers are a good starting point.
The guess work can be taken out of monitor calibration with a device such as the Pantone ColorVision calibrator. This gadget attaches to the monitor screen and connects to the computer through USB. It guides the user through the calibration steps with easy to follow on-screen instructions. The software generates standard red, blue and green patches on screen and the calibrator reads the colour and sends it back to the computer for adjustment. When the job is done the application sets a colour profile for the monitor.
Monitor characteristics change with time so recalibration should be done at least every couple of months.
As LCD monitors become the norm and CRTs disappear (a tragic but inevitable development) monitor calibration is going to be more and more important. A badly adjusted CRT monitor probably won’t be too far from acceptable average. A badly adjusted LCD screen comes from another visual universe.
And here’s a tuning tip that will improve the appearance of any screen. If you are using an LCD and wondering why on-screen type looks like a little bundle of fly specks it is because you have not enabled ClearType. (This is Windows we are talking about here.)
Right click on any empty area of the desktop and choose Properties. In the dialogue box click on the Appearance tab and then the Effects button. Click on “use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts” and choose ClearType.
Then, to make the effect even better, go to the Microsoft PowerToy downloads and download and run the ClearType Tuner PowerToy. Give your eyes a treat!
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Posted by terry at 10:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack