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June 25, 2009

[REVIEW—PENTAX K-m DSLR]

Price: $900 with Pentax 18–55mm lens

A real photographic tool

The low-down: This 10.2 megapixel single lens reflex camera is fitted with a Pentax zoom lens with a 18–55mm range (approximately 27–82mm film equivalent). The camera/lens combination is small and light for a DSLR and well made. The lens is mechanically smooth with just the right friction in the zoom and focus rings. Image stabilisation is in-body by sensor shift. There is also dust reduction by sensor shake. The camera uses AA batteries and memory is by SD card. There is no body-top function display but the LCD layout is clear and easy to use. Some settings are also displayed in the viewfinder. There is no illuminated focus spot, which is a curious omission.

Like: The camera continues the Pentax style of no-nonsense SLRs. There are no gimmicky concessions to customers moving up from compact cameras. Every function is a genuine photographic tool. The Pentax kit lens is particularly fine. Image quality is exceptionally good, with one caveat.

Dislike: The camera has one serious flaw. JPEG images straight from the camera are unimpressive both in sharpness and in colour. We are at a loss to understand this because the RAW images are excellent. JPEG and RAW can be recorded simultaneously so in one sense it is not an issue, but it does mean that to get the best from the K-m you must be prepared to work with RAW files. If you use a Mac and iPhoto this will not even be a nuisance, but PC users will have to come to terms with RAW.

Verdict: If you can live with the RAW file system – and that, after all, is the way to get better images with any camera – then the Pentax is a fine camera. And the supplied Silkypix RAW converter is excellent. This is a low cost entry into the serious photographic world of the DSLR. It's a lot of camera for the money.

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Posted by terry at 06:33 PM | Comments (3)

[ACTION PERSON!]

This morning Casa Imaging was enveloped in an attractive fog. Just over the road is a lake which looks soft and mysterious in the mist. Altogether a photographer's paradise.

Except that it was so cold. And the bed so warm. It takes more dedication than we can usually muster to leap out into the frosty morning and grab the camera and head for the lake.

And you can get the same finished effect without ever leaving the comfort of home. Just take the photos later on, when the sun has come up, and then apply a suitable Photoshop Action to the image.

Actions, for those who haven't encountered them, are to Photoshop what macros are to Word. They are little automated routines that you can create yourself or download from many places on the Internet.

For instance, we have created an Action that will, with a single click, resize an image to 800 pixels high (we let the width take care of itself) at 96dpi. This is an ideal size and resolution for emailing, with a little judicious tweaking of the JPEG compression.

If you've never created an Action then the best place to start is in the Photoshop Help section. Click on Help in the menu bar and type in “create action” and the step by step instructions pop up. It is exactly the same as making a macro in Word – first the recorder is started, the Action is given a name, then you step through the sequence of procedures until the effect is achieved and then stop the recorder.

But you don't need to do it all yourself. There are many clever and generous people who have created useful actions that they are prepared to give away free. Two good places to start looking for Actions are at www.atncentral.com or Adobe's own exchange site. Adobe requires registration and it's worth going to the bother.

The Action files have the extension .atn. When you run Photoshop make sure that the History/Action palette is visible and the available Actions are listed there. Click on the drop down menu button at the top right of the Palette and choose Load from the menu. Navigate to the downloaded file and select it. It will appear in the Actions list. Click on the one you want and then click on the Play arrow at the bottom of the palette.

Apart from those we have created ourselves the most used Actions on our system are Edgarian Blur and Filer's Frame Action. Edgarian Blur is a quick way of adding soft light glamour to a portrait and Filer's Frame makes an image with rounded corners that floats above a white background onto which it casts a shadow.

Not all pre-packaged Actions work well. Some are downright cranky, and the only way to sort the good from the bad is to try all those that have promising names. Amongst the duds there are many brilliant little automated routines that you won't be able to live without.

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Posted by terry at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2009

[REVIEW—SAMSUNG WB550 compact camera]

Price: $579

Just average

The low-down: This 12.2 megapixel camera is fitted with a Schneider branded zoom lens with a 24–240mm range. This is claimed to be the first 10X superzoom with a 24mm wide-angle. There is dual image stabilisation, optical and electronic. Construction quality is solid and ergonomics are good. The 75mm LCD screen has decent sharpness and brightness and is not bad in bright sunlight. There are few manual controls, but there is a Program mode as an alternative to automatic. There is an HDMI socket for connecting the camera to a high definition display, such as the Samsung television described in today's story. The 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio is selectable in camera.

Like: The camera is responsive. The lens, in spite of its extreme range, doesn't exhibit gross distortions – there is very slight barrel distortion at the wide end and more pronounced pincushion at the 240mm extreme. However, that extreme range comes at a price.

Dislike: Very few of the photos we took with this camera were sharp. This appears to be partly a problem with the lens. Like all such “super” zooms there is a trade-off between versatility and sharp focus, contrast and colour accuracy. Auto exposure and white balance were all over the place. But most distressing was the way that the camera handles – or doesn't handle – noise. The pixel density on this CCD is very high and noise (grain) is apparent at even the lowest ISO speeds. Attempts to reduce the noise blur fine detail. Movie quality is poor.

Verdict: Samsung have tried too hard to satisfy the customer who buys by numbers. Gosh! A 10X zoom – that has to be better than a 3X, doesn't it? And count the pixels – more than 12 million of the things. Terrific! And where will it all end? This camera has 43 million pixels on every square centimetre of sensor. The superb Nikon D700 has 1.4 million pixels per square centimetre of its sensor. Who do the camera companies think they are fooling? Everyone, apparently.

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Posted by terry at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

[GET CONVERGED]

We have been converging at number 5. And if you don't know about convergence in the world of gadgetry then you have not been paying attention.

Convergence is the idea that all our techno toys should come together in one big central thing. TV, Internet, games, music, portable player, pay TV, home movies, still photography and computer should no longer come from discrete devices but should get together in one multi-function unit.

It's an interesting concept, but just thinking about the plethora of doodads that must be bought and mastered makes us go weak at the knees. However, we have been dipping a cautious toe in the convergence waters. We have been playing with a Samsung LCD/LED high definition television set. We can well believe that this splendid device could be the centre of a converged system.

First and foremost it is a fine television. Mrs Imaging thinks that it shows 3D pictures, but we have assured her that it just looks that way because the picture is so fine in all respects that it is like looking at the subject matter through clear glass.

Our interest in the Samsung is as a display device for still photographs and for movies made with still cameras, such as the Samsung WB550. We have reviewed the camera today and think it is no match for the television. It is beaten in both movie and still mode by the much better Panasonic TZ7 which comes with similar specifications.

However, we have nothing but praise for the Samsung television – well, almost nothing. The highest commendation that we can give the set is that, although it comes from South Korea, it can produce a European image with fine skin tones and subtle tonal gradations. Contrast, brightness, colour saturation, tint and sharpness are all adjustable, which is just as well because the defaults are a tad garish for our tastes.

There are four HDMI inputs for attaching high definition devices, such as a BluRay player. Then there are inputs for a computer and ethernet connections. Plus there are two USB ports. Digital (multi-channel) audio input is through an optical fibre connector.

We displayed still images as slide shows from both a USB stick and a computer. The results were sensationally good. A sound file can be included on the USB stick and cued as a soundtrack for the slide show. We would rate the Samsung as an outstanding display device for photographs.

There are a couple of design issues with the set. For instance, it is designed to be wall mounted, but if you do that you cannot reach the USB sockets at the back. They ought to be on the front panel. And the in-set sound quality is very poor. And we could have done with one less HDMI input and one more SCART or component AV socket. Apart from that we can say that we would like our future slide nights to be converged into a Samsung Series 7 TV.

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Posted by terry at 05:43 PM | Comments (2)

June 11, 2009

[REVIEW—KODAK ESP7 all-in-one printer]

Price: $299

We bought it!

The low-down: This printer/copier/scanner unit is an evolutionary upgrade of the ESP5. The big difference between the units is that the ESP7 has in-built wireless networking connectivity as well as USB and direct input from memory cards. There are now two paper trays rather than one, and this is an added convenience because A4 and postcard photo paper can both be loaded and ready. There are two ink cartridges, one black and one cyan/magenta/yellow plus an additional black. Inks are pigment and there is a final clear layer to eliminate “bronzing” – the colour shift effect that comes with pigment inks when held at a certain angle to the light. The scan and copy functions are useful but of ordinary speed and quality.

Like: The ESP7 uses the brilliant Kodak system of print adjustment based on bar codes printed on the backs of the different paper types and read by the printer. Output is consistently good to excellent, the variation in print quality being related to paper quality. Best results, which are outstanding, are achieved with Kodak's Ultra Premium High Gloss paper. Prints from this unit have been rated highly for fade resistance by Wilhelm Research laboratories.

Dislike: Paper handling is not always precise. We needed to tighten up the paper guides fairly often to stop the paper pulling through at an angle. And setup is finicky – read the instructions carefully and do not deviate from them one iota.

Verdict: The wireless networking capability makes this an ideal all-in-one unit for a home with a number of networked computers. We have now been able to set up the printer driver on a computer at the other end of the house and print at a distance. We like the whole system so much that we have bought one, and commendation does not come any higher.

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Posted by terry at 10:03 AM | Comments (1)

[I'M A MAC – I'M A PC]

Being insatiably curious and perpetually dissatisfied we are suckers for beta versions of software. And there is no more tempting beta than a new version of Windows, and Windows 7 is a whopper. We had to have it.

So how has it been? In a word, sweet.

Now we have four computers – a Mac running OS-X 10.5.7 and three PCs running Vista, Windows 7 and Windows XP. So we should be able to give the definitive answer to the existential question troubling our times: which computer system is best for processing digital photographs?

There is much ballyhoo from the Mac pixies about how they are better looking, better dressed and with smarter haircuts than the overweight Windows drongoes who make up 96 per cent of computer owners. They also brag about how much easier and more intuitive their machines are than PCs. Well, a moment's thought will tell you that this can't be so when you are using Photoshop, because whether on a Mac or a PC there is obviously not going to be any difference. Well, not much, and what difference there is favours Windows.

So let's forget the big Photoshop stuff and imagine someone who is in the market for a new computer to edit, store, print and share photos through Flickr! or Facebook. This customer wants to take the computer out of the box, plug it in and get going without having to buy any extra software. Which operating system is best?

Windows Vista includes a useless mini-application called Photo Gallery. The free program Picasa, from Google, is far superior to Photo Gallery.

Windows 7 comes with Windows Live Photo Gallery – they dream up snappy names at Microsoft – which is an improvement on the one that isn't Live. Let's call it LPG to save space. It can be downloaded free from Microsoft and in theory works with Vista and XP. We managed to get it going with XP but it stubbornly refuses to work with Vista and Microsoft don't want to know about it, in spite of the fact that people all over the world are having problems. If you can make it work LPG is OK, but it will not handle RAW files. It displays them but will not allow editing without first converting to JPEG or TIFF.

A new Mac comes with the latest version of iPhoto installed. It can also be bought as part of iLife 09 (including iMovie, iWeb and Garage Band) for $129 and works brilliantly with OS 10.5 and later. It loves RAW files, and for most people has all the editing functions you will ever need. It also has a nifty, if slightly unreliable, face recognition system that will scan your hard drive for photos of people and match their features to an identification tag – presumably a spin-off of the war on terror.

The verdict: Windows 7 is looking good, but is months from final release. In the meantime the Mac costs more but wins hands down.

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Posted by terry at 10:00 AM | Comments (1)

June 04, 2009

[I'M A NIKON. I'M A CANON – personality types and brand loyalty]

This being the 200^th birthday of the great Charles Darwin, what better time to explore the mysteries of natural camera selection. Why do some customers buzz around the Canon counter while others make a bee-line for the Kodak shop? What primeval urge compels us to mate with this brand rather than that? Are responses to brand genetically programmed or are they learned? Knowing the answers to these vital questions may free us from self-delusion and enslavement to one particular company badge.

A couple of years ago we had an email from Anthony, a reader in Hong Kong, seeking advice on buying a camera. We gave him our usual line: if you already have lenses from a film SLR then it's easy, buy that brand again. On the other hand go by the rule: you get what you pay for. Price is as good as guide as any in the digital SLR market.

Anthony wrote back saying that was all very well, but there was no way that he would buy a Nikon. Everyone knows that Nikon owners are rude, aggressive, arrogant snobs. Canon owners, on the other hand, are sweet, warm and decent people. (It so happens that we own Nikon and Canon chez Imaging, which could mean something.)

We tried Anthony's theory on Steve Mills at Ted's Camera store and he wasn't convinced. “Camera brands are like cars,” Steve says. “If Dad owned Holdens and got a good run from them then there's no way the kids will buy Falcons.”

He reckons that the brand enthusiast who stands on his box to hector us about the superiority of his camera over all others is “anal”.

Our primitive attachment to brands can be powerful. Just the sight of the name and the company's colours can be a stimulant to buy. Take Kodak, for instance. What does George Eastman's made-up name and the yellow and red corporate colour scheme say to us?

Kimberley Langton, Brand Manager – Digital Still Cameras at Canon Australia, said recently: "Our research shows that the more we can strengthen the emotional attachment that consumers have with the Canon brand, the more compelling it is for them to invest in the range of Canon cameras...” Emotional attachment to a brand?

There is a theory amongst marketing experts that we have relationships with brands as we do with other humans. They speak to us and we respond with either affection or contempt.

According to a publication from the marketing school at one American university Kodak is loved by its loyal customers as a “down-to-earth, family oriented, genuine, old-fashioned and sincere” company. “The relationship might be similar to one that exists with a well-liked and respected member of the family.” Which almost certainly explains why Kodak does so well marketing its cameras to women. It always has, from the first Brownie with its patronising promise that it is so simple that even women and children can use it.

Kodak identified the wife/mother as the family photo chronicler and sold aggressively into that market and has had great success capitalising on the brand perception.

At the other end of the brand personality scale is the Leica. All Leica compact cameras are, in reality, Panasonic cameras, but with the addition of the little red badge and a huge difference in price. The Leica D-Lux 4 is priced almost exactly double the price of the identical Panasonic LX-3. How can this be? Leica devotees reckon that the cameras are not identical because the famous German company has sprinkled some magic fairy dust on the sensor and transformed them from mundane Asian gadgets into optical/mechanical masterpieces of Teutonic craftsmanship. Neither Panasonic nor Leica is saying anything.

To return to our American guide to understanding brand loyalty, the Leica brand is irresistible, regardless of price, to the “pretentious, wealthy, condescending sophisticates. For some, this would be BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus (with gold trim) as opposed to the Mazda MX5 or the VW Golf. The relationship could be similar to one with a powerful boss or a rich relative.”

Sony, Panasonic and Samsung are all well-known brands in microwaves and televisions that have come late to the digital still camera business. Although Sony and Panasonic have a reputation in the video camera field, both professional and domestic, they do not have the reputation built on a history in optics like Canon, Nikon and Olympus. Panasonic has only been making digital still cameras for seven years and is already an outstanding player in the compact camera market.

Steve Mills from Ted's says that Sony is a brand to which customers feel a strong loyalty and they reward the company for giving past satisfaction by sticking with them in the new field of digital cameras. But there is something interesting about the johnny-come-latelys in the business – they seem to lack just the last degree of confidence in their own product and their customer's fidelity.

Zeiss, Leica and Schneider, companies that do not themselves make digital cameras for the masses, now have their names engraved on the lenses of Sony, Panasonic and Samsung cameras. (Kodak also use the Schneider brand, with more justification. Schneider is a traditional supplier of lenses to Kodak for their better film cameras since the early thirties.) Samsung has an association with Pentax – some of their cameras are virtually identical – but clearly thinks there is more market appeal in the German brand of Jos. Schneider of Kreuznach than the Pentax optical brand of Takumar.

It is a moot point, and also probably a company secret, just how much the venerable German optics companies contribute to the Japanese and Korean cameras made in China. Perhaps not much more than the name itself. Is the minor snob appeal or technical reassurance of the German brand an enticement to customers? Sony obviously thinks so, and we should never underestimate the status symbolism that attaches to all brands German. A Lexus is good, but it doesn't sport that three-pointed star.

To launch itself into the DSLR business Sony bought the camera division of Konica Minolta, which would have included the Rokkor lens division. These are fine lenses, and legacy Rokkor lenses from Minolta cameras fit Sony DSLRs, so why does Sony brand its premium lenses Zeiss and not Rokkor?

Some years ago we interviewed the president of Hasselblad in his office in Gothenburg. We expressed some amazement that his small, highly specialised company managed to survive the Japanese destruction of the European camera business. He said it was thanks to the Japanese that the company had survived. The snob appeal of Hasselblad is irresistible to well-heeled Japanese (and American) camera buffs and sales in Japan kept the Swedish company afloat.

Perhaps that explains why Sony thinks Zeiss is a more attractive name than Rokkor to the Japanese buying public.

At a launch of a range of Olympus compact cameras last year the assembled journalists were told that the company research showed that for the average buyer the most important feature of a camera is the number of pixels. More is better!

And after pixels comes style. Appearance is very important, particularly to the young female customer. Japanese companies have recognised this factor for years, and even came up with a word for it, “techno jewellery”. If you've ever wondered why you can buy a pink camera that looks like a powder compact, wonder no longer. There is a market for it.

Sony produces two distinct ranges of compact cameras – the W range that looks like a real camera ought to look and the T range that looks like, well, jewellery. The T series, which comes in six colours, is labelled: “Designed to impress”. The W series boasts “everyday features and functions”. What well-dressed girl would be seen dead with that?

Are there rational customers who are impervious to the emotional attachments to one brand and aversion to another? According to the GfK ConsumerScope Imaging survey 60 per cent of customers put “value for money” as the top purchasing criterion, not pixels. But how do the customers know?

J D Power and Associates, in a report on digital camera buying two years ago wrote: “Consumers are increasingly researching product information and third-party, independent reviews prior to purchasing their camera as a means of finding the one that meets their specific needs. Sixty-three percent of consumers utilise the Internet as a source of information – nearly twice the incidence of using information found in consumer product publications (33%). Recommendations from family and friends (33%) and the salesperson's opinion (27%) are nearly on equal footing as resources for product information...Ninety-one percent of all digital camera buyers report doing some type of research prior to purchasing a new camera." Which, of course, includes reading reviews in Livewire.

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DEAR ANTHONY...

To find out which camera brand matches your personality go to http://tinyurl.com/q6f5tj and take the quiz.

“If you are a Nikonian you are a true professional. Forever the perfectionist who always wants the most from the equipment. You see the world in tiny details and a day job as 'pixel peeper' would probably be a dream come true.

“If you're the archetype Canonite you're a sucker for high performance, big lenses and fast money. Never mind what the brand is called, you know what you need and go for it. Your knowledge of photography is immense, You probably know more than all the text books and like to show it.”

Now who's the arrogant one?

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Posted by terry at 01:17 PM | Comments (2)