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October 24, 2007
[ REVIEW—CANON EOS 40D DSLR ]
Price: $2800 with EF-S 17–85mm lens
A fine camera gets better
The low-down: This 10 megapixel digital single lens reflex has several evolutionary improvements over the EOS 30D, including the extra two million pixels, a larger LCD screen and what is called “live view” function. Live view is using the LCD screen as the viewfinder with the mirror locked up. The camera can be tethered through a USB to a computer and operated from the PC using the supplied control software. The LCD is now 75mm. Burst speed has been increased to 6.5 shots per second. There is a highlight tone priority setting that extends the dynamic range of images. The camera body is beautifully made and is heavy. Ergonomics are average for a DSLR. Battery life is good and Compact Flash is the memory medium. There is automatic dust removal at camera start-up and switch-off. The EF-S 17–85 image stabilised kit lens is acceptable, focussing quickly but exhibiting distortion and chromatic aberrations.
Like: The picture quality from the CMOS sensor and image processor is smooth, film-like and noise free even at high ISO settings. Dynamic range is as good as it gets, with detail well preserved both in highlights and shadows. The mechanical refinement of the controls and the mirror/shutter is luxurious.
Dislike: The larger LCD is a low resolution affair, with 230,000 pixels, compared with nearly one million on the Nikon D300 and the Sony A700. This diminishes the usefulness of live view and also affects picture review. And there is no auto-focus assist lamp for focusing in the dark. The flash pops up and fires a few times for focus – very crude.
Verdict: This is a fine camera with worthwhile advances on its predecessor. Canon has dominated this segment of the market for DSLRs between $2000 and $3000, but now faces stiff competition. The Sony A700, the Nikon D300 and the Olympus E-3 are coming soon, which means four superb cameras to choose from in the price range. Camera shops have already discounted the 40D to around $2600, so expect some serious price cutting.
[ There is a collection of sample images from the Canon EOS 40D in the Gallery ]
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[ FILTERS – WHO NEEDS THEM? ]
A FEW WEEKS AGO we took a look in the well-equipped camera bag to see what gadgets the complete photographer carries around. We rated a polarising filter as one essential item.
Unfortunately we misdescribed (as George W would say) the operation of a polarising filter, suggesting that it consists of two glass elements that can be rotated in relation to each other. Mike points out that if you did that you would finish up with an opaque filter.
Mike is right and what we should have said is that the polarising filter is mounted in two rings and the ring carrying the glass rotates insides the fixed ring screwed into the lens.
Mike used to work in the camera retail business. He says that he always encouraged customers buying single lens reflex cameras to invest in a polarising filter – partly to increase the profit on the sale and mainly because he knew that once a person gets the hang of polarised light her skies will be bluer, her clouds more dramatic and her shiny surfaces, such as the water of a placid lake, will have more transparency.
Makers of digital cameras insist that we use a circular, not a linear, polarising filter. This doesn’t really have anything to do with the difference between film and digital, it is to do with the operation of auto-focus lenses. The older style of linear filters, while arguably giving a better reflected glare cutting effect, interfere with the auto-focus operation, and a circular polariser is designed to work with the newest lenses.
Compact camera users can benefit from a polarising filter if the camera lens mount has a filter thread, because the effect of the flter can be seen on the LCD screen.
There was also some correspondence with Bob, who writes: “One glaring omission to your list of essential gadgets would have to be a UV or Skylight filter for each lens. Having one permanently attached to each lens can save the front glass element from physical damage, which is cheap insurance. As well it will enhance your images by cutting down on excess UV light...”
We consulted an expert for advice. On the matter of lens protection Bob is right. And a good filter of a well known brand won’t harm the optical quality of the lens, although care needs to be taken with putting filters onto wide angle lenses because if the mount ring is thick it will show up in photos. And in some conditions even a good filter can cause flare, spots of fairy lights in the picture.
However, on the beneficial haze-cutting effect of the UV filter we were told there is none. UV filters are useful with film because film is naturally over-sensitive to light at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Digital sensors, on the other hand, are excessively sensitive to infrared light.
The best advice seems to be to use the lens cap for protection in the bag, and a hood when the lens is in use, which will cut flare and guard the front element of the lens against a knock. However, in some conditions – where’s there’s a lot of dust or wind-blown salt spray in the air – there is still a good case for a filter. Better to get muck on a cheap filter than an expensive lens.
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October 17, 2007
[ TOKINA AT-X M100 Pro D lens ]
Price: $800
A good lens, but…
The low-down: This is a 100mm f2.8 macro prime lens. The unit tested came in a Canon mount and was used with the new Canon EOS 40D. Construction quality is excellent, with a crinkle finished barrel similar to the finish on some Nikkor lenses. In macro mode the inner lens barrel extends about 5 centimetres and there is no wobble. Switching from auto to manual focus is simply a matter of pulling back on the focus ring to engage manual mode. There is the usual limiter switch to stop the lens hunting for focus through its entire range when it is in either macro or normal mode. A lens hood is supplied but is hardly necessary because the front optical element is already well recessed in the lens body. This lens works on both digital and film cameras. It doesn’t have its own focus motor so it cannot be used as an auto-focus lens with Nikon D40/40X bodies. The manual focus control is smooth and well damped.
Like: The lens gives high resolution images with good contrast. On a digital SLR it has a film-equivalent focal length of about 150 mm, which is good for portraits and is a handy telephoto lens where a little exta reach is needed.
Dislike: The auto-focus is slow compared with the best Canon and Nikon lenses and the action is not as quiet and smooth. In most situations it works well but it can be easily fooled by some low contrast subjects and then it will go hunting for focus and sometimes never find it.
Verdict: This is a fine lens. Tokina makes a very small range of lenses compared with Sigma and Tamron, but it seems to concentrate on producing a few models with excellent optical characteristics and high quality construction. However, the price is high for a third party lens. Both Canon (100mm f2, not macro) and Nikon (60mm f2.8 macro) offer lenses around this price.
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[ HOW TO BE POPULAR AT PARTIES ]
A FUNNY THING HAS HAPPENED since we began to represent ourselves as experts on digital photography. We have suddenly become as popular as doctors at parties.
Ad hoc requests for diagnosis and advice fall into two categories, either “what camera should I buy?” or “why won’t my camera take sharp, well exposed, natural looking pictures?”
When someone says: “I want to spend $1500 on a digital single lens reflex”, as happened last week, it’s simply a matter of saying what we reckon is best for that money at that time.
When the question is: “Why won’t my camera focus properly? Why are all my pictures fuzzy?” it doesn’t take a doctor to know what is going on, but it does take a little longer to explain how to fix it.
The big problem with digital cameras is this: they all come with default factory settings guaranteed to produce fuzzy, badly exposed pictures.
First, the default camera mode is Auto, which means that you might as well stay at home and send the camera out on its own. It will make assumptions about ISO speed, flash use, focussing and exposure and they will almost always be wrong.
When the camera comes from the box immediately set the Mode to P, or an equivalent semi-auto setting. Once that is done you can turn off the flash so that it only works when you want it. You can set the ISO – 200 is a good starting point. And you can fix the focus and exposure problems.
Left on Auto the camera assumes that you want the object closest to the camera to be in focus. One time in twenty this is so, but for the other 19 shots the subject will be blurred. To correct this crazy behaviour you have to go into the menu and look for the AF settings. One option will be a small spot in the centre of the viewfinder. That is the one you want. Then, when you put the centre spot over the subject’s eye and half depress the shutter and hold it down, you can focus on the eye and also reframe the picture.
If you are seeing random green rectangles on your compact LCD screen, or an array of little red squares in your SLR viewfinder, then you have the AF set to some sort of automatic array. Turn it off!
Most digital cameras produce over-saturated images with contrast too high, leading to blown highlights, featureless shadows and bleeding colours. While in the menu system turn down saturation and contrast a notch.
Auto exposure (AE) is a little harder to second guess. By default the camera will be set to read the light reflected from the entire scene. This will work most of the time but not for backlit subjects or any dark subject in a bright environment. For these situations AE should be set to either centre-weighted or spot metering. Centre-weighted is the best all-purpose setting, and Spot is for tricky dark subjects.
The camera makers’ assume that customers are idiots, but just in case some intelligent user comes along they have buried in their menu systems all the controls you need to turn off the drongo defaults.
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October 11, 2007
[ PANASONIC LUMIX FZ18 camera ]
Price: $880
What a lens!
The low-down: This is an 8 megapixel all-in-one camera with a Leica-branded zoom lens with a range of 28–504mm. The lens is image stabilised and is fast, f2.8–4.5. It works as a point and shoot, with face detection, but there is also a full range of user controls, including fine tuning of noise reduction and white balance. It saves in JPEG and RAW. Construction quality is good and the camera is small and light. There is an electronic viewfinder of low resolution and poor dynamic range.
Like: The lens is superb. It has true wide angle and a phenomenal telephoto reach of 504mm (film equivalent). The image stabilisation is effective and hand held photos at full extension are possible. Sharpness and contrast are exemplary and focus, even at full zoom, is quick.
Dislike: The Achilles’ heel of Panasonic cameras has been image noise and it still is. However, by reducing sharpness and contrast by one notch and dialling in one step of noise reduction we got clean images at ISO200. The company’s claim of usable ISO6400 is absurd – not even the best SLRs will do that convincingly. To get the best from the FZ18 be prepared to work at low ISO speeds and to experiment with the fine tuning controls. It is worth the effort. We were also disappointed with auto white balance which did a poor job of getting colour right in the shade.
Verdict: This is a good camera and shutter lag is almost a thing of the past. If the standard pre-focus procedure of half-depressing the shutter button is adhered to shutter lag is negligible. It is not as responsive as a DSLR, but fast enough to track moving subjects. The designers have assumed an intelligent customer who is prepared to come to grips with the full control set of a digicam. If you are in the market for this type of camera also look at the Canon and Sony offerings. All three have their strengths and weaknesses. The strength of this one is the lens.
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[ THE SUPER SLIDE SHOW ]
“HIGH DEFINITION” is the buzz term in televisions and computer monitors these days. And high definition is not simply an ill-defined sales pitch, like high fidelity. It has real meaning and cannot be applied to display devices that don’t meet the standards.
Just in case you have not had a chance to compare high definition displays with standard definition units here’s the difference: on a standard, low definition screen we look at the world through fly wire; on a high definition screen it is as though the world is seen through clear glass. And high definition displays are widescreen. The width to height ratio of a widescreen display is 16:9; standard displays are 4:3.
Which started us thinking about the high definition options open to lesser mortals who are not keeping up with the Joneses in the expensive plasma or LCD TV department. Can we have high definition digital images if we don’t have an HD TV? To which the answer is: probably.
Widescreen computer monitors are becoming common and they are capable of at least displaying low-high definition and some can handle high-high definition. Monitors, as with TVs, can be called high definition if they display pictures with pixel dimensions of 1280 by 720. The ABC occasionally transmits pictures in this low-high definition form. While it is not the best it is better than standard resolution.
True high definition has a picture pixel dimension of 1920 by 1080 and this is the knock-your-socks-off resolution. You can put your nose close to the screen and not be aware of pixels or lines. Our Dell 24” monitor will display true high definition pictures so we looked for a way to make HD slideshows from our camera files and we found it.
Memories on TV, which we have recommended in the past for slideshow creation, has a Pro version (USD$80) that makes stunning HD shows with selectable transitions and controllable pan and zoom effects. You also need the free Xvid video codec installed.
Once the pictures are dropped into MoTV and music is added and the transitions and effects have all been customised the next step is to export the finished show as an AVI video file. In other words we are creating a high definition movie from the still images. We got the best results by cropping the images to 1920 by 1080 in Photoshop before loading them into MoTV.
Under Edit/Preference set the Aspect Ratio to widescreen. Then, under Project, select Export to MPG/AVI file. Click on Browse and select a destination folder, set Save As to AVI and give the file a name.
Click on Advanced Settings and set Video to PAL and Resolution to Custom, and enter either 1280 by 720 or 1920 by 1080, depending on your display. When you click on Finish you choose a codec for encoding. Choose Xvid. When the Audio codec box comes up we choose Windows Uncompressed.
The video generation will start and it is processor-dependent and can take a long time. You might need to leave the PC running overnight. And the smoothness of the display might also depend on the capacity of the processor. If pan and zoom motion is jerky then remake the show with Picture Effect set to None.
Believe us, the results are sensational.
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October 04, 2007
[REVIEW—EPSON V500 SCANNER]
Price: $500
Pleasantly surprising
The low-down: This is a flatbed scanner with the facility for scanning film material as well as print pages. Epson says that this scanner is the first in the world to use “a CCD (Charge–Coupled Device) scanner using LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology.” They claim that it is better for the environment, uses less energy and is more reliable. It functions as a conventional flatbed scanner with reflective objects and it also works as a film scanner, handling 35mm slides and colour and black and white strips. There is a carrier for medium format 6X6 film. The film is trans-illuminated from a light in the scanner lid. A resolution of up to 6400 dpi is claimed but not many users will test the claim because of the inordinate time it takes to scan and process at this resolution. Scans at lesser resolutions are fast enough.
Like: This is the first dual purpose flatbed/film scanner from which we have taken respectable film scans. In fact we were surprised by the quality of reproduction from all media. We tried colour transparencies, black and white negatives and medium format negatives with uniformly excellent results. 10 by 15cm prints from all sources were very good. Above that degree of enlargement quality drops off.
Dislike: This is quite a complicated piece of machinery and not at all intuitive in setup and operation, so why not provide a printed user’s manual? It is a pain to have to have the scanner software open on the computer while at the same time trying to find the necessary instructions in an HTML document on screen. This is unacceptable cheap skatery.
Verdict: The Epson V500 is a very good scanner. It may look expensive but you get a lot for the money. The controlling software is excellent, even if it is a little cranky when run in Windows Vista. We were pleasantly surprised by its exceptional versatility.
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[ BEWARE THE PIXEL PEEPER ]
DIGITAL PHOTOGRPAHY has produced an entirely new breed of pest – the infernal pixel peeper.
The pixel peeper is the fastidious chap who enlarges digital images on his computer until he can see and analyse the individual pixels. He agonises over the small dip in the Y axis on the infra red chroma extension scale. He perceives back focus and front focus where normal human beings see nothing. If auto exposure is not spot on every time he sends the camera back to the shop and demands a new one.
Pixel peepers are to be avoided. They spread despondency and despair.
You have bought a new camera and it is taking entirely satisfactory photographs and you run into a pixel peeper and you tell him of your purchase. You can see that he is trying not to hurt your feelings, but he can’t help himself. “Er, you do know that that model is well known for problems with magenta in the auto white balance? No? The salesman should have warned you about that.”
Almost as bad as the pixel peeper is the smug haggler. He has just bought a 13–300mm image stabilised f2.8 Red Flag lens on eBay for $99.99 on advice from a pal who says it knocks the socks off every Canon and Nikon lens in the shops.
The problem for the normal human being is that it seems we have no objective reference points from which to defend our purchase, or even on which to base our purchase. In fact we do. There are a handful of digital photography web sites that provide the results of objective, scientific testing of cameras and lenses.
Imaging’s assessments are subjective, based on 50 years of experience with cameras. We judge a camera by its feel, its ergonomics, its responsiveness and the quality of the photographs as measured by our eyes. There is an archive of these reviews at dpexpert . However, there are places where you can get assessments based on scientific measurements of things like resolution, chromatic aberration, distortion, exposure accuracy, image noise and colour fidelity.
The most visited digital photography site in the world is the London-based DPRreview, established by Phil Askey and now owned by Amazon. Askey and his staff put cameras through rigorous testing procedures and compare competing cameras from different brands. Not all cameras get reviewed on dpreview – like all of us Askey has a preference for putting the more expensive cameras on the bench, which means that most compacts get overlooked and some brands, such as Kodak, seem to be studiously avoided.
For the best lens testing we turn to the German site, Photozone. Photozone does its own scrupulous tests of cameras and lenses but it also maintains a database of owners’ assessments of their lenses which is surprisingly useful. You might think that all owners would be defensive about their purchases, but those who have bought duds seem ready to cry in public.
The best Australian source for results of objective testing is the quarterly magazine PhotoReview Australia, for which Margaret Brown puts cameras through the Imatest equipment, measuring performance of lens, sensor and image processing. There is something reassuringly unbiased about results from a machine.
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