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June 30, 2007
[ REVIEW—NIKON COOLPIX P5000 ]
Price: $650
Recommended
The low-down: This is Nikon’s compact camera for the serious photographer. The lens range is 36–126mm, film equivalent. The lens has true image stabilisation. There are wide angle and telephoto extenders available as options. It has a 10 megapixel sensor with sensitivity from ISO64 to 3200. The camera body is magnesium alloy, well made, solid and attractive. It is slightly bulkier than most compacts but it easily fits in a jacket pocket. There is an optical viewfinder and an external flash shoe. The camera offers full user controls and the buttons and knobs are well placed and responsive. Focus is fast and accurate. As usual Nikon provide a comprehensive printed manual. There is no RAW capture, only JPEG.
Like: The auto white balance is particularly impressive. We were surprised at the way the P5000 handled subjects lit by a mixed light source. We were also impressed with the video movie quality, a feature we don’t normally comment on because it hardly seems worthwhile. However the sound quality is dreadful.
Dislike: Once again we are disappointed with a camera that is excellent in almost all respects but is let down by having too many photo receptors on too small an area. 10 million pixels is simply too many and the result is picture noise, which can be intrusive at ISO400 in the shadow areas of pictures, and intolerable at higher sensitivities. Nikon’s excellent D40 entry-level SLR makes do with 6 megapixels on a sensor that is ten times the area of that in the P5000. You can’t fit 10mp onto an area the size of a little fingernail without consequences.
Verdict: If you are happy to keep the ISO setting at 200 or below then the Nikon P5000 will do the job. The excellent auto white balance and exposure work to minimise the effects of noise in indoor shots, but mottled skies are not attractive. This is the only Nikon compact that has an optical viewfinder so it is an important model in the product line.
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[ WIDER YET AND WIDER ]
THE WORLD IS A PANORAMA. At least that is the way we see it – wider than it is high. One of the first photographs that Imaging took with his brand new Kodak Retina back in 1956 was, in fact, four pictures of a cloud filled sky over the Barossa. They stitched together beautifully into one long print.
The best photo we have of the Matterhorn was taken by Mrs Imaging with her point and shoot 35mm Pentax. She swung the camera around, taking a sequence of five photos that show the glacier face on the left and the magical mountain on the right with a Swiss flag neatly placed in the last frame.
We wrote a couple of weeks ago about the new Photomerge function in Photoshop CS3 that takes all the pain out of aligning images and matching tonal densities. It is brilliant but expensive. And there is a free alternative.
Autostitch does a pretty good job of creating panoramic photos. It is the work of students at the University of British Columbia and is available by download in what they call a “demo” version.
Many great panoramic shots have been taken with hand held cameras with the photographer simply swivelling his body. It works, but it is not perfect. Even mounting the camera on a tripod and carefully moving from frame to frame is second best, but it will do.
For the really fastidious the camera should rotate around the nodal point of the lens. Not many people will be too fussed about this, but if you want to know the theory take a look at 1000 Nerds and scroll down to the section headed “The world is horizontal”. There’s a lot of good advice here about the technical aspects of creating stitched panoramas.
Ideally you should take a preliminary meter reading from the brightest part of the intended subject and use that to set the aperture and shutter speed manually so that exposure stays constant as the camera moves.
Once the panorama is created the urge to see it as a big print is irresistible. Epson’s Stylus Photo R2400 ($1600) handles paper in rolls – either 21 cm or 33 cm wide and 10 metres long. The pigment inks guarantee long print life.
Results from the Epson are spectacular. Unfortunately we were restrained in our enthusiasm by a limit on the printed length of about 144 cm, which wasn’t long enough for some of our creations. The technical man at Epson says that this is a limitation imposed by the software (Windows and Photoshop) and not by the printer. There are work-arounds.
The alternative to DIY printing is to take the edited creation to a shop with a wide format printer. Camera House in Lonsdale Street will print up to 60 cm wide and 225 cm long. A print that size will cost $140. The image file needs to be either TIFF or JPEG, 300dpi resolution and already in the dimensions of the print size. Sadly most domestic PCs will choke on a file as big as this so ambition must be tempered with realism.
Making panoramas is easy, fun and satisfying, but there is one fly in the ointment. Where are we going to hang them?
[There is a collection of panoramic pictures taken with various cameras in the Gallery]
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Posted by terry at 01:11 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 20, 2007
[ REVIEW—COREL PaintShopPro Photo XI ]
Price: $200
Highly Recommended
The low-down: We took a quick look at the trial download of Paintshop Pro back in March and now we have had a chance to live with the licensed copy for a few weeks. This alternative to Photoshop Elements offers one-click fixes for the person who can’t be bothered, as well as serious editing tools for those who want them. Some of the single clicks work well – noise reduction and high pass sharpening will be a boon for anyone with noisy or soft images. One step Photo Fix is a hit and miss affair but Smart Photo Fix is an excellent tool – it proposes a set of image corrections in a dialogue box that allows for user adjustment. There is an excellent set of one-click picture frames. A depth of field simulation effect will create an out-of-focus background, and lens distortion and perspective correction effects are well implemented. The program uses layers, the same as Photoshop, and will be easy to use for anyone who has used Adobe’s programs.
Like: Our Nikon RAW files opened instantly in Paintshop and we assume that other camera RAW formats will also open. Of course this misses the point of RAW, which is to adjust the image before opening in an editing program, but it is still a handy feature. The best feature, and the point at which it defeats Photoshop Elements, is Scripts. These are automated routines created by the user, like macros in Word or Actions in Photoshop. There is a 120 page user guide covering the basic functions which saves the cost of Paintshop for Dummies.
Dislike: When an edited file is saved as a JPEG the compression setting is hidden in another Options dialogue, and even that doesn’t show the file size. Choosing Export Optimiser does the job, but that is an odd way to do something as simple as save a file.
Verdict: At this price point Paintshop Pro Photo X1 is the photo editor to buy. It has its gimmicks but they don’t obscure the serious application underneath. And being a leaner program than Photoshop CS it is lightning fast, so for the RAM battlers on 512MB, Paintshop Pro won’t keep you sitting around while it does things. Highly recommended.
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Posted by terry at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
[DAYLESFORD FOTO BIENNALE 2007]
IMAGING MOTORED INTO THE COUNTRY last week to take in the second Daylesford Foto Biennale. Not all of it, we admit, merely a fraction of what is on offer. And it occurs to us that this is possibly the most geographically dispersed photographic exhibition in the known universe.
We started at the East Trentham pub, the Pig and Whistle (in the Grand Ballroom, no less – the licensee either has a feel for irony or delusions of grandeur) and we finished at the Town Hall in Clunes. In between we visited galleries, both permanent and ad hoc, in Trentham and Daylesford. We had to give Hepburn Springs and Creswick a miss.
All together there are 56 sites with displays of photographs ranging in style from sharp documentary and portrait photos to experiments on the edge where photography meets painting.
There is a lot of obvious striving to escape the technical perfection and constraints of photo journalism and to use photographic materials in ways that are at once primitive and avant garde. Pinhole cameras are in vogue, producing surprisingly diverse results from the ethereal soft-focus monochrome to sharp colour.
In Clunes, Steph Tout is displaying her 360° pinhole panoramas which, we are assured, were taken with a home made camera cobbled together from a biscuit tin and sticky tape. The colour film is wound around a cylinder in the dark and then sealed into the “camera” which has six holes punched around the barrel. Ms Tout takes one exposure, moves to another point, takes another one, and so on. The film is developed and printed conventionally. Her panorama of the sunset at Lake Mungo is particularly striking.
In the Daylesford Town Hall are some of the entries in the Head On portrait competition. And in the Clunes Town Hall (worth a visit for its own sake) is a display of portraits of well known people ranging from Desmond Tutu to Angry Anderson with two Edna Everages in between.
Just before the Biennale started a group of photographers who still use large format 4x5 and 8x10 cameras brought their gear to Trentham, set up their cameras, stuck their heads under the black sheets and recorded a day in the life of the town. The photos were developed and contact printed on the spot and are now on display in the Grand Ballroom of the Pig and Whistle. The sheer richness of tone and detail in an 8 x 10 image is unsurpassed.
Bryan Dawe, one half of the Clarke and Dawe act on The 7.30 Report every Thursday, happens to be an accomplished photographer with a unique style. His subject is, ostensibly, the female form, but from the clichéd image he creates disturbing dreamscapes. They are indescribable, so you’d best look for yourself.
In the old Trentham railway station there is a display of work by American Karl Koenig, called “Studies in time”. Some of his pictures are printed using a gum oil process, akin to that used in the 19th century. Others are reproduced on a printing press using the photogravure etching method. The results are at once modern and antique and beautiful.
The Daylesford Biennale runs till 2 July and most exhibition spaces open at 10am. Entry to all but the commercial galleries, such as The Convent, is free. The program, includes seminars, lectures and workshops.
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June 13, 2007
[ WHAT'S NEW IN PHOTOSHOP CS3 ]
MR BROWN, A READER OF THESE PAGES, writes to say: “Photoshop CS3 Photomerge is fantastic! Software of the decade.” And you don’t ignore that sort of enthusiasm, particularly when it is accompanied by some excellent examples.
Photomerge (which is not new to Photoshop CS3, but is vastly improved over earlier versions) is an automated routine that creates panoramas. The idea is to swing the camera around, take several overlapping pictures and then stitch them together on the computer to make a wide and long picture.
Some compact digital cameras help in the process with a dedicated panorama mode that makes it easy to see how each successive shot overlaps the one before.
The problem has always been twofold. One is getting the adjacent frames to match in tone and colour. The other is to correct for the fact that the right hand end of frame one is never the same perspective as the left hand end of frame two. Which means it is always difficult to cover up the seams where the adjacent images blend. Some commercial stitching programs do a good job of fixing these issues but it is a pleasure to have such an outstanding photomerge routine as part of Photoshop.
The process couldn’t be easier. Open the component images and then click on File/Automate/Photomerge. Choose Add Open Files. There are five different types of merge presented and the first is the default for most panoramas. Then go OK and stand back. The panorama in its raw form shows how cleverly the images have been distorted to achieve correct alignment. Seams are invisible.
Once the creation is finished choose Layers/Flatten Image and crop the asymmetrical image to a rectangle. Then give yourself a round of applause. (The panoramic photo of Melbourne at night is merged from four individual images.)
Almost as nifty is the Quick Selection tool. This is used to extract an object from an image to copy and paste somewhere else. CS3 still has the Extract filter with its tedious outline function, but Quick Selection does the job better. You paint roughly inside the object to be extracted and the program finds its edges. It is easy to add or subtract from the selection and then – the pièce de résistance – you open the extracted object in Refine Edge and play around with radius, feather, smooth, expand/contract and contrast until the edge is well defined and fine detail is preserved.
The new Black and White Conversion function does not simply throw away the colour information, as happens if the mode is changed to grey scale. It simulates a range of filters, such as you would use with panchromatic film – red, yellow, green and blue. The dramatic sky and cloud effects produced by red or yellow filters with black and white film are reproduced in the digital medium and the conversion dialogue box splits the source image into red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta channels for fine tuning the tones of the monochrome picture.
The new version of Adobe Camera RAW can be set to open jpeg and tiff files for the same level of image fine-tuning that has hitherto been reserved for the RAW format.
Pity the high price will reserve these delights to the professionals and a few privileged amateurs.
[There is a small collection of panoramas created with Photoshop CS3 Photomerge in the Gallery]
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Posted by terry at 11:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
[ REVIEW—ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS3 ]
Price: $1155 Upgrade $355
Highly Recommended
The low-down: Photoshop CS3 is the latest incarnation of the industry standard photo editing program. CS2 has ruled for the past two years but it was proving very unstable under Windows Vista so a new version was urgently needed. For those running Windows XP or older versions of the Mac OS the question must be asked if the cost of the upgrade is justified. For the money you get a new interface and a few new features, all of which are desirable but none of which is indispensable. Photoshop CS2 is already overkill for standard photo editing tasks because it contains so many functions for use by graphic artists, but Photoshop Elements falls just short of having a full feature set for image editing, so for the serious user the full program is the way to go.
Like: The best of the new features are the new Camera Raw interface, the Quick Selection tool and the new Black and White conversion function. Camera Raw now opens jpegs as well as RAW files and provides the same suite of developing controls that are found in Adobe Lightroom. You might rationalise the high price of CS3 by arguing that you get Lightroom (RRP $505 ) for nothing. The Quick Selection tool is a beauty.
Dislike: There is no longer a Print with Preview control. It has been replaced with a simple Print command that brings up a dialogue box with the print-with-preview selections in it but the interaction between this Adobe box and the printer-specific control dialogue is clunky and infuriating. It is too easy to print with one parameter or another incorrectly set.
Verdict: Photoshop is a venerable program that deserves its place as the industry standard. It is very expensive unless you qualify for the academic price. The upgrade is optional for people still running Windows XP or an older Mac OS but it is essential for Vista users. In the Imaging column today we describe in detail the new features of interest to photographers.
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June 07, 2007
[ FUJIFILM FINEPIX S5700 review ]
FUJIFILM FINEPIX S5700 camera
Price: $400
Recommended
The low-down: This is a small, pseudo SLR camera with a seven megapixel sensor and a 10X zoom lens (equivalent to 30 to 380mm on a film camera.) There is no optical image stabilisation which makes hand-holding at the long end problematic. The lens does not increase the short barrel length as it is zoomed to telephoto. Focus is quick and accurate and image sharpness is acceptable. Sharpness can be adjusted, but increasing the default has other consequences. Body construction is entirely plastic, attractively finished. The degree of user control over camera functions is exceptional for the price and all controls are well laid out and intuitive in use. The menu system is clear and the F-Mode menu is a quick way to access the essential functions. The camera uses AA batteries and will work with alkalines. The electronic viewfinder is very low resolution and does not give any idea of image tone, colour or sharpness. Either SD or xD memory cards can be used. There is a good printed manual. Macro is excellent.
Like: This is a responsive camera with none of the lag that has characterised these pseudo SLRs in the past. There is no freezing of the image in the viewfinder and the conventional shooting technique of half depressing the button to set focus and exposure and then reframing works perfectly. Never once did we miss a shot because of lag.
Dislike: Image noise at ISO400 is ugly. Given the modest pixel density, for which Fuji deserve praise, it is hard to understand the noisy, granular output. At lower ISO settings the issue goes away but we regard ISO400 as a normal speed.
Verdict: The Finepix S5700 is a lot of camera for the money. Neither the camera nor the instruction book treats the user like an idiot. There is a built-in assumption that the customers may be point-and-shooters but it costs no more to cater for those who want to expand their photography experience. The only issue that stops the camera being highly recommended is the image noise. If you can live with an ISO200 limit then it deserves consideration.
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[See sample images from the Fujifilm Finepix S5700 in the dpexpert Gallery]
Posted by terry at 02:12 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
[ THE FRAME UP ]
Pictures, whether on the wall or on the screen, usually benefit from being displayed in a frame. The frame isolates the photo from the background, and focuses attention on the area within the frame. And here is a simple routine for creating a custom matte frame in Photoshop Elements. With small adaptations the same routine will work in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro.
First open and edit the photograph – the picture has to look its best. Then, when editing is finished, resize the image to the dimensions best suited for display on a monitor. We find that 600 pixels in the vertical dimension fits nicely on most monitors. It is an acceptable compromise between maximum size and that which can be viewed without scrolling. (Ctrl-Alt-I opens the Resize dialogue box. Make sure that Resample Image and Constrain Proportions are checked. Choose Bicubic Sharper in the drop down box.)
If you are resetting the resolution to the standard 72dpi you need to run Resize again and deselect Resample Image.
Now hit Ctl-A to select the image and Edit/Stroke and put a 1 px black border around the picture. This makes for a crisp divider between the picture and the background.
Next go to Image/Resize/Canvas Size, check the Relative box and enter 1cm in each dimension for enlargement and select White for Canvas Extension Colour. This puts a white border of 0.5 cm around the picture. Go Ctrl-A and Edit/Stroke and create another 1 px black outline. The hit Ctrl-C to copy the entire image.
You have now, in effect, pasted the picture onto a white mounting board and copied it. Hit Ctrl-N to open a new image page which will have the same dimensions as the copied picture plus border. In the New dialogue box make the height and width dimensions 4cm more. Then choose the colour for the frame itself in the Foreground/Background colour picker. Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the white space with colour.
Now, paste the copied picture onto the coloured background with Ctrl-V and flatten the layers (Layers/Flatten Image). With the Magic Wand select the coloured border surrounding the picture and white border and copy it (Ctrl-C). Then simply paste is back as a new layer. (Ctrl-V)
We have a picture, surrounded by white mounting board and a coloured border, all flat and two dimensional. With the top layer selected in the Layers palette open the Artworks and Effects palette and choose Special Effects/Filters/Texture/Texturiser/Apply. A dialogue box opens in which you choose the texture (Canvas), Scaling (64%) and Relief (5%). In the preview you will see how this looks on the coloured frame.
When the texture has been added stay in the Special Effects department and choose Layer Styles/Bevels and apply a simple emboss. (Note that the Apply button must be pressed). This gives the frame a three dimensional look with a small drop shadow on the left and top. Still in Layer Styles choose Drop Shadows and Soft Edge to extend the drop shadow slightly.
Flatten the layers and the frame is complete. Photoshop users can turn this routine into an Action so that once created it can be applied with a single key stroke. Photoshop Elements people will have to redo the full process every time. Finally Save for Web in the File menu.
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