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November 28, 2007

[ REVIEW–OLYMPUS E-510 DSLR ]

Price: $1500

Excellent camera

The low-down: This digital single lens reflex is built around the Four Thirds system of sensor (10 megapixels) and lens, pioneered by Olympus. The camera has “live view”, meaning that the LCD screen can be selected as the viewfinder – and the implementation on the E-510 is an improvement over the earlier versions on the 300 series cameras. There is no body-top camera status LCD, and the viewfinder is not the brightest, but over all construction quality is good. The camera is smaller and lighter than the competition and the kit lens (28‑84mm film equivalent) is very light indeed. There is in-body image stabilisation and auto sensor cleaning when the camera is turned off.

Like: The image quality is excellent. Pictures are sharp and detailed which is probably partly due to the sensor being smaller than on other DSLRs, because a smaller sensor tends to give greater depth of field at any given focal length. We liked the consistency of image quality, including focus, resolution and colour. We found no bleeding in areas of solid colours and detail was well preserved even in red and yellow patches. On board flash performance is good.

Dislike: Auto white balance is not reliable in some situations, such as late afternoon light. The viewfinder is really dim, and we are not convinced that removing camera status indicators from the body top is a good move. No doubt it saves money, and the LCD information read-out is comprehensive and gives easy access to most camera settings, but we’ve got used to status screens on top.

Verdict: This is a camera we would recommend to anyone who wants the image quality of a good SLR without having to think too much. It’s light weight will also appeal. And now that Panasonic/Leica is in the Four Thirds camp there should be some cheaper third party lenses coming onto the market. Olympus have fitted a CF card slot as well as their own xD slot, which makes sense because CF cards are cheaper and available everywhere.

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[ HELP! MY CAMERA IS AN IDIOT! ]

AN EMAIL CAME THE OTHER DAY FROM FRANK, and it warmed the cockles of our heart.

“I was recently given a compact digital camera for my fiftieth birthday. This is the first digital still camera I have ever owned. I am strictly a ‘point and shoot’ lazy photographer. However, I do take pride in my pictures. For this reason, I closely studied the accompanying 110-page online instruction manual…

“I played it safe by always shooting pictures in the Auto mode. Consequently, I became disappointed with many of my pictures. An annoying and regular problem for me was shots which were too dark as well as featureless shadows.

“Thanks to your informative article, I will now use the P mode and try your very useful suggestions about turning the flash off and manually setting the ISO, focus and exposure settings.”

Frank, you made our day! It’s all been worth it. We have weaned one person off the Auto setting. So now, let’s get serious. There are a lot of features built into digital cameras that never get used. Let’s start with exposure compensation.

When a shot is too dark or too light then a spot of exposure compensation is called for. On the back of most cameras there is a button marked with a + and a – sign. Press this and a scale comes up with a zero setting in the centre and plus (over exposure) and minus (under exposure) zones. If the shot is too dark move the compensation into the plus zone. If it is too light then into the minus zone – and then take the picture again.

Backlighting, where the sun is behind the subject, is one of the trickiest lighting situations which the meter almost always gets wrong. A backlit subject is attractive, but not if the face is in deepest shadow. Move the compensation into the plus zone and keep experimenting until the face is correctly exposed.

Almost all digital cameras have a feature called bracketing. With bracketing turned on – which is done through the menu – the camera automatically takes three pictures, one at the camera’s metered setting, one under exposed and one over exposed.

When a digital camera comes out of its box it has a set of default settings that you may or may not like. Colours are often over saturated and garish. If there is a saturation control in the menu it is worth experimenting with different settings. High saturation is not only unnatural but it also causes colour bleeding, so that detail is lost in solid colours – for instance in the petals of a flower.

Check the image quality settings. You should be taking pictures at the largest pixel dimension and in the finest quality. The quality setting, usually expressed as Fine, Medium, Low, is in fact the degree of compression that the camera applies to the image file. At the Fine or Super Fine setting compression is moderate. At Low compression is extreme. You fit more Low images on a memory card but you sacrifice quality.

And one final word of advice – turn off Digital Zoom. It’s a confidence trick. You can achieve the same effect by cropping in your photo editing program.

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November 21, 2007

[ REVIEW — NIKON Coolpix P5100 ]

Price: $650

A good compact camera, with one reservation

The low-down: This 12 megapixel camera has a 35–123mm film equivalent image stabilised lens in a compact body. There is an optical viewfinder and a full set of camera controls, almost equal to those found on any DSLR. There is an external flash shoe, and an external flash is essential because the on-board light produces scary red-eye even using the anti-red eye setting. Construction is rugged and ergonomics are good. The camera accepts optional wide angle and telephoto converters. There is a comprehensive printed user manual.

Like: The image quality from this little camera is excellent – provided the ISO is not set above 200. Auto white balance is amongst the best that we have seen. Exposure is generally spot on, and where it is not the exposure compensation falls easily under the fingers. Pictures are sharp and vibrant. The video quality, something we don’t normally bother with, is exceptionally good. Given a big enough memory card (SD cards) this is a competent digicam.

Dislike: The viewfinder is very small. Low light response time is poor, by the time focus is locked and exposure calculated and the flash readied the subject has disappeared. This is odd because in normal light responses are lightning fast.

Verdict: This camera, like all the compacts that boast absurdly high pixel counts, is prone to image noise above ISO200. Below that point the images are clean enough, particularly if the end display medium is a 10 by 15 cm print. With Noise Reduction turned on in the menu there is some loss of fine detail at ISO400 and above. However, if your expectations are not too high, the output at a stratospheric ISO3200 is acceptable, with a bit of post-camera clean-up in noise removal software. The sad fact is that if this camera had a 7 megapixel sensor it would be a world-beater. We really enjoyed using it, and as the only competition, the Canon G9, is also over-pixelled these are as good as it gets in compact cameras.

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[ UP EVEREST WITHOUT A BATTERY ]

ALL THOSE WHINGERS who complain that their digicams are not really foolproof after all should spare a thought for Alfred Gregory.

Greg (as his friends know him), was the official photographer on the triumphant 1953 conquest of Everest. The photographs of Hilary and Tenzing that we know so well were all taken by him, using two 35mm and one 120 roll film cameras.

Greg’s 35mm cameras – the ones that he carried to the highest altitude – were a Kodak Retina IIa and a Contax III, loaded with 10ASA Kodachrome film. There was no auto focus, no automatic metering and, most important, no batteries.

Penguin has published a magnificent book of Alfred Gregory’s photographs, including the Everest pictures, together with a stunning collection from his travels in Africa and a selection of his photos taken in the English resort town of Blackpool. And right now, until the end of February, there is an exhibition of new prints from the Gregory collection at the Monash Gallery of Art in Wheeler’s Hill.

We mention batteries in this context because even as we speak our pal PJ is somewhere on Everest with a new fangled auto-everything battery powered camera. And when he was deciding which camera to buy for the trip batteries figured large in his calculations. He dismissed our suggestion that he take a Retina IIa from our collection as frivolous.

What PJ wanted was a camera that is light, has a wide angle lens – 28mm film equivalent – and is powered by AA batteries. He reckoned there wouldn’t be a lot of power points on the slopes of the Himalayas from which to charge proprietary batteries.

We suggested the Nikon P50, which we haven’t tested but we are impressed with the specifications. It has a 28mm equivalent focal length and it does take AA batteries. So PJ went looking for the Nikon but couldn’t find one in any camera emporium.

We mentioned the fact that the most spectacular battery performance we have had was from a set of four Sanyo Eneloop rechargeables in a Pentax K100D. In testing we took 630 photos and when we sent the camera back the battery meter on the camera still showed full charge. This camera, with the right zoom, would satisfy two of PJ’s criteria – a wide angle and AA batteries. But it isn’t light. By SLR standards it’s not heavy, but it carries a few more grams of mass than a compact.

These days the camera is called a Pentax K100D Super and has a few improvements on the original, and it is an excellent camera. Not only that, it is a real bargain, now selling everywhere for less than $700. There is no compact that can match it for versatility and image quality. And once PJ had taken a closer look at it he was sold.

We admired his reasoning. While Alfred Gregory never had to worry about batteries for his cameras the modern mountaineer needs to think carefully about power sources. The Pentax takes four AA NiMh batteries and the Sanyo Eneloops are ideal because they won’t self-discharge in the back-pack. And with a few sets on hand the Pentax will be ready to snap any passing Yeti.

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November 14, 2007

[ EPSON STYLUS PHOTO R290 printer ]

Price: $150

Amazing for the price…

The low-down: This is a six colour inkjet printer that uses Epson’s Claria photographic inks. These are dye based inks, unlike some other Epson photo printer inks that are pigment based. Dye has some advantages over pigment and the promised print life is 200 years, stored in an album. It produces prints up to A4 and it also prints directly onto CD/DVD blanks. Print speed is best described as acceptable rather than fast. Setup is straightforward, but for anyone with a Windows Vista PC it is advisable to download the latest driver. This can be done more or less automatically from within the print dialogue box, under the maintenance tab.

Like: Black and white prints are exceptionally good, using the grey scale control in the print dialogue. This produces rich blacks and fine detail. Colour prints are also sharp, with decent resolution and colour.

Dislike: There are simply too many variables in the print options in Photoshop. They are confusing and Epson do not provide a clear set of instructions for selecting the correct settings – perhaps because they assume that Photoshop users know what they’re doing, or perhaps because they assume that most users will manage the image through the totally inadequate Easy Photo Print software that comes with the printer. So, be warned, to get the best results you need to understand how profiles are applied to on-screen images and to the print output. The profiles for Epson papers are installed on the PC at set-up.

Verdict: The output from the Epson is surprisingly good for such a cheap printer. It would be silly to expect the same print quality from a $150 unit as from, for instance, the $600 Stylus Photo R800, but these days we can get photo lab quality and consistency for very little capital outlay. The drawback, as always with inkjet printers, is the cost of the inks. We were not impressed with the number of prints we made from one set of cartridges.

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[ PIGMENT OR DYE? WHICH PRINTER TO BUY ]

THERE WAS A TIME when it was only necessary to choose between Holden and Ford and Vegemite or Marmite. But these days we also have to agonise over the respective merits of pigment ink printers and dye ink printers. What is the difference?

The fundamental difference between the two types of ink is that dye is absorbed into the surface of the paper and pigments, which are microscopic insoluble beads of solid coloured material, sit on top of the paper.

Photographers are not interested in the chemistry and physics of the two ink types, just in what sort of prints they produce. We all want prints that are richly coloured, with excellent resolved detail and that will last forever stuck up unprotected on the fridge door.

The advantages of dye inks are that they tend to produce a wider colour gamut and higher resolution, particularly on high gloss paper. Canon’s Chromalife 100 dye inks, printed onto Canon’s Photo Paper Pro, produce spectacular results. The disadvantage is that dyes are much more susceptible to fading from exposure to air-borne pollutants and ultraviolet light.

Pigment inks have impressive longevity, resisting the fading effects of gas and UV much better. The downside is a slightly restricted colour gamut, coarser resolution and an effect known as “bronzing”, which is one unwanted consequence of using inks that leave a three dimensional topography of coloured beads on the surface of the paper.

Bronzing is the effect you get when viewing a pigment print off centre and areas of similar colour blend into each other and detail is obscured. So, for instance, if a print is mounted above head height on a wall and is viewed from below there is a good chance that the bronzing effect will be seen. This is more pronounced on glossy papers than on matte.

The severity of the bronzing effect seems to vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Kodak solve the problem with their new pigment EasyShare 5300 printer by not selling a true gloss paper and by laying down a clear finish over the print. Epson also uses a clear “varnish” on prints on some types of paper. Canon prints seem to be most severely affected by bronzing. Hewlett Packard high gloss prints are not seriously affected.

Pigment ink printers will work with a range of paper types, including highly textured art papers and canvas, and the quality of black and white printing is outstanding.

Interestingly Epson is retreating from using pigment inks in its basic photo printers. It is claiming a print life of 200 years for its Claria dye inks.

So which system is better? Our guess is that for professional photographers there is no choice – it has to be pigment to avoid the wrath of disgruntled customers who have seen their print, exposed to air and UV, fade before their eyes. But for amateurs the choice is not so simple. Dye inks produce prints with a higher Wow! factor than pigment and, for everyone except Methuselah, they come with a lifetime guarantee if you store them in an album or box.

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November 07, 2007

[ PUTTING ON THE GLAMOUR ]

IMAGING WAS INVITED TO DINE LAST WEEK with some important persons. And, as sometimes happens, we were asked to bring a camera to take some happy snaps of the occasion.

The thing is, we never go out without our external flash unit, because we have a deep loathing of in-built camera flashes. They make subjects look as though they have been startled and blinded by a small nuclear explosion in the immediate vicinity. Our external flash is fitted with a simple plastic Stofen Omnibounce dome diffuser that softens the light and makes it look more like natural, available illumination.

In the interests of telling the full story we should point out that the flash diffuser, while being just a simple plastic box that sits on the flash head and is held in place by nothing more hi-tech than friction, costs an astonishing $45.

Anyway, we were mortified to discover that we had left the flash behind. We had no choice but to use the on-board light. And things turned out exactly as we knew they would.

Harsh flash that shows up every pore and wrinkle in sharp and startling relief is not much of a problem if the subject is a man, but when it is a woman of a certain age this is not how she likes to see herself. When an unattractive highlight gleam is added to the forensic detail of the complexion she is none too pleased.

It so happens that there are post-camera solutions to the problem of unflattering flash which involve a little fiddling with the image in Photoshop or PaintShop Pro.

The simplest solution for Photoshop owners is to download a free Action called Edgarian Blur. This Action imparts a lovely soft glow to any photo at the click of a button. The Action creates a second, blurred layer over the original and the degree of softening is controlled with the opacity slider. Just slide the selector to 50 per cent opacity and then adjust it one way or the other for more or less blur.

Once the skin looks blemish-free it helps to reveal those features which ought to be sharp, such as eyes and teeth. Use the Eraser tool to cut a hole in the top layer to expose the sharp original underneath.

For Photoshop Elements and PaintShop Pro the glamorising procedure is easy. First, open the picture that is to get the treatment and duplicate the background layer. Then, with the duplicate layer selected, apply a Gaussian blur from the filter set. The degree of blur is expressed in Pixels and is controlled with a slider in the dialogue box. Around ten pixels is a good place to start.

In PaintShop Pro the routine is: duplicate layer, Adjust/Blur/Gaussian blur and set the Radius at 20 to start with and then experiment with degrees of blur.

Once the skin tone looks smooth and glowing erase the blurred area over the eyes and teeth and then flatten the image.

The problem of the harsh flash is solved and she will think she is as glamorous as the heavily filtered Ms Andy Macdowell.

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[ KODAK EasyShare 5300 multi function printer ]

Price: $299

Consistently bright and sharp

The low-down: This is a printer/scanner/copier combination. It has a flatbed scanner and a six colour printer that uses one black cartridge and one combined colour cartridge. Ink is pigment based promising long print life. Kodak claim prints around half the price of the competition because their inks are cheaper. Paper handling is unusual in that there are two trays, one for A4 and one for 10x15cm paper. Input to the printer can be from the scanner, memory cards or computer. Both scan and print times are good. The unit is attractive and will not look out of place alongside a Mac.

Like: The special feature of the printer is the automatic detection of the paper type – provided it is Kodak paper, which has a printed code on the reverse side that is read by the printer. This takes one of the variables out of the printing process. It works well, but it does limit the utility of the unit. Sometimes a different paper type is called for and as far as we could see (there is no printed manual) there is no way of adjusting for third party papers. And Kodak solve the problem of pigment ink “bronzing” on glossy paper by not having a glossy paper! What they call glossy has a shiny dimpled surface and the printer lays down a transparent gloss “ink”.

Dislike: Prints made directly from memory cards are pretty awful unless the image is exactly to the printer’s liking. And there is no provision for printing on CD/DVD surfaces, a facility that is taken for granted these days.

Verdict: When the photo has been properly prepared in Photoshop the print output is consistently good –better quality and consistency than can be obtained from a commercial photo lab. Both postcard and A4 prints have excellent detail and colour. The scanner is very good.

The bottom line? It is Kodak, and that means “you press the button and we do the rest”.

POSTSCRIPT: Since posting this review Kodak informs us that they do have a true glossy paper. However, I had asked specifically for glossy paper to try in the printer and the paper they sent is labelled "glossy" on the packet, but it is in fact a finely stippled semi gloss. They now tell me that I should have asked for something called High Gloss Photo Paper! But hey, since when did Glossy not mean smooth and glossy? However I will try the 5200 again with the "real gloss" paper.

Kodak also claim that the printer will work with non-Kodak papers. From our limited testing we did not find this to be so -- but they well us that provided the paper is non-swellable it will work. We will try.

Posted by terry at 09:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 06, 2007

[ REVIEW—SONY SYBERSHOT DSC–H3 ]

Price: $600

Tries hard, but…

The low-down: This 8 megapixel camera has a 10x zoom (38–380mm film equivalent) Zeiss-branded lens in a compact body. Like the Panasonic TZ cameras it fits the long zoom into a body that is smaller than the usual pseudo-SLR superzooms. The Sony is well-made and attractive and has optical image stabilisation and face detection, just in case you don’t know what one looks like. It also claims dynamic range optimisation and we found that dynamic range is wide with good highlight and shadow detail. Full manual camera settings are provided for those who aspire to better than Auto operation. There is no optical viewfinder and the LCD image is below average, giving only an approximate idea of what the sensor is capturing.

Like: The picture quality from the camera is generally good. The multi-zone autofocus system must be turned off for satisfactory results. If it is left on an unacceptable number of photos will be out of focus. The camera is very responsive with little or no shutter lag. Image stabilisation is effective. The high definition format is excellent.

Dislike: The auto white balance is poor. Photos taken in open shade may have a colour cast anywhere from magenta to orange. The LCD screen is unsatisfactory as a viewfinder and for review of images. We found that pictures that looked dreadful on LCD review were acceptable on the PC monitor.

Verdict: This could be a camera to take on a holiday. The Panasonic TZs have the advantage of a 28mm focal length at the wide end of the zoom, which would sway us towards that camera, but the Sony is better in the image noise department, producing slightly cleaner images. The high definition image format, in which the pictures are recorded with 1920X1080 pixels, is excellent. This camera is part of the trend to merge still photography with television displays, which means we can expect the return of Uncle Arthur’s slide show any night now. Canon’s new PowerShot SX100IS will soon join the Sony and Panasonic in this compact superzoom category.

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[ THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING ]

‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY and also the season to be looking out for the Christmas present for the cousins and pals who have everything. We offer a suggestion.

Hunt out twelve (or more) of your best photos – either snaps of the family or great works of art created with the camera in the Austrian alps – and turn them into a 2008 calendar. It couldn’t be easier.

There are a few different ways of doing this, of which the easiest is to pop along to the Camera House Digital shop, 176 Lonsdale street and create your calendar, on the spot, using their Hewlett Packard Photosmart Studio. You take your twelve masterpieces (or more – you can have more than one photo per month) on any sort of medium, CD or memory card, and load it into the terminal. You select a style, arrange the images in preferred order, press the go button, pay at the register and within an hour you will have your calendar 300 by 300mm printed and bound. The service costs $35 for the first and reduces with multiple units from the same input.

If you prefer to do the whole thing from the comfort and privacy of your own PC Hewlett Packard offer an on-line version of the same service at www.snapfish.com.au You need to register on site to use this service and then you select Create Photo Gifts from the options menu. Photo gifts can be books, cards or calendars. You select a style, arrange your photos and upload the whole set of layout instructions and photographs. Delivery takes ten days and costs $25 plus postage. Quality is good but not quite up to the standard of the in-shop alternative and it is smaller.

Photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements usually includes calendar templates. Doing it this way you have to print the finished item yourself and that needs a good quality A4 printer. Then you toddle along to Officeworks to have the calendar bound. Which would all be acceptable if it were not for the fact that templates in editing software are straitjackets. We have made calendars using Photoshop Elements and they were OK, but they have one drawback – the table of dates is always fitted onto the same page as the photo, whereas with the Hewlett Packard system the photos are on one page and the dates on the next.

There is a better DIY method for making photo calendars – use a Word template. Microsoft has a smorgasbord of calendar templates on their web site. This way of doing the job gives the user control over typeface and font size and also over the dimensions of the table in which the dates are displayed. You can please yourself whether to have the photo on one page and the calendar on another or both together on the same sheet. You need double sided paper for the printing – Ilford make a very nice double sided smooth heavyweight matte paper that is ideal.

Once again the quality of output will depend on the quality of printer and it also involves a trip to Officeworks for the binding.

While you’re about it you might as well get stuck into your own, unique Christmas cards.

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