« July 2009 | Main | September 2009 »
August 27, 2009
[REVIEW—DIGITAL FOCI PHOTO BOOK]
Price: $500
Neat but expensive
The low-down: This photo book is a digital photo frame in fully portable form, made to look like a book with a “leather-like” cover. It is rechargeable-battery operated with 2.5 hours of viewing. The screen is 20cm (diagonal) and 800X600 pixel resolution. There is built-in sound processing for audio files which play through a small speaker. The sound quality is comparable with a small notebook output – squeaky. File input is from USB link to computer, or from just about any memory card. It will even read some RAW file formats. Images can be viewed one at a time or as a slideshow with elegant transition effects. It plays videos in some MPEG formats.
Like: It's certainly a cute concept and it could be the ideal brag book for any grandma who wants to skite about her grandchildren. It also has obvious commercial applications for photographers presenting to clients or sales people spruiking products. It is fun to use and people respond positively and happily to the idea of a digital book.
Dislike: The price.
Verdict: This is an attractive product, but realistically it has to be compared with a netbook computer or even a small screen notebook. 800X600 is not high definition and the Photo Book can't compare with a small notebook for versatility. For a sales presentation it has the advantage that it can be made to look as though it does only that one thing, but for general use the “one special thing” function is limiting. We suspect that there is a market for the Photo Book but it will be specialised. As a go-anywhere digital photo frame it has an obvious advantage over a digiframe that sits on the shelf.
*
Posted by terry at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
[DIGITISING NOSTALGIA]
The postie brought us an unexpected surprise last week. An old friend wrote to us: “Just look at what you find when you're sorting through old photos in a drawer. Cheers. T”
And there were three photos. Kodacolor prints from 1965. There is Imaging, sans whiskers and with Buddy Holly spectacles, climbing a tree for some reason. And Mrs Imaging and Imaging Jnr sitting by the tailgate of the mighty Holden station wagon. And a whole bunch of friends lining up for sausages from the barbie. Mrs I demanded that we digitise them toot sweet for the family archive.
Now, as sweet as these photos might be, they are not in good condition. Kodak's colour print materials from the era were unstable and quickly faded, some colours more than others. This means that not only is contrast lost from the fading of black but that the overall colour balance of the image is also way off what the original might have been.
We scanned the prints and worked on them in Photoshop CS4, straightening, correcting contrast and colour, sampling blacks and whites with the eyedropper in Levels, sharpening using Fred Miranda's Intellisharpen II, and all the time thinking that life's not long enough for this.
Most people don't have Photoshop CS4. But any Mac user does (or can) have iPhoto, and any PC user can download Windows Live Photo Gallery free from Microsoft. So we ran our scans through iPhoto and Windows LPG, set them both to auto correct and enhance, and stood back to see what happened.
The results in both cases were surprisingly good. Auto straightening is better in the Windows program and auto contrast/colour adjustment is slightly better on the Mac. We applied a little further correction in both programs using the histogram tool to adjust the tonal range and liked the results. Just a discreet touch of sharpening gave the pictures zap.
Our Epson V350 scanner handles slides and negative strips, so while we were at it we got stuck into digitising some of the thousands of Kodachrome slides in the cupboard. This is where Photoshop does the job better for one simple reason – it will despeckle!
We started with some slides from 1963, taken on a trip to the Flinders Ranges. The colours are still as vivid as the day they came back from Kodak in their little yellow box, because they have been kept in the dark at reasonable temperatures. But they have attracted dust from goodness-knows-where. Flinders Ranges pictures have lots of rich blue skies in them and dust on sky is an ugly look. And the dust specks are so numerous that there is no way they can be removed one at a time.
Not to worry! Photoshop has a wonderful tool under Filter/Noise/Despeckle. First select the sky in the photo then run Despeckle from the Filter list and all the nasties are removed in a nonce. We did this with 60 slides in which the sky is now clean as a whistle. That's why we pay good money for Photoshop.
*
Posted by terry at 11:03 AM | Comments (4)
August 22, 2009
[REVIEW—OLYMPUS E-620 DSLR]
Price: $1300 body only
Well sorted
The low-down: This 12 megapixel DSLR is the latest iteration of the Olympus Four Thirds system. It has the effective supersonic sensor dust removal system and image stabilisation by sensor shift that we now expect from Olympus. A four stop advantage is claimed for image stabilisation. The images may be stored on either the expensive and fiddly xD card or on a cheap and ubiquitous CF card – a concession to reality! There are six Art Filters of doubtful usefulness. Aspect ratios of 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 are selectable. The LCD screen is small by current standards (6.75cm) but it swivels, which is a useful feature. There is wireless flash capability to fire remote flashes from the camera.
Like: Olympus kit lenses are a cut above the rest, and the lens supplied with this camera is no exception. Mechanically and optically the Olympus lenses are outstanding. Resolution and contrast are good. And beyond the kit lenses are the Olympus professional quality lenses which are expensive but superb.
Dislike: Auto white balance is not great. The viewfinder is a little cramped compared with the conventional competition. This is a product of the smaller sensor.
Verdict: Olympus has worked hard at refining the Four Thirds system. It got off to a good start with the E-1 but then produced a few duds along the way with cameras like the E-300 and E-330, the first attempts to incorporate so-called live view in a DSLR. But the system is now fully evolved and the current cameras are excellent. The E-620 also provides the internal workings for the new E-P1 (see the main story), sharing most features but without a viewfinder or built-in flash. So there is a choice – one lovely camera in two different body forms. You can't go wrong.
*
Posted by terry at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
[TWO LITTLE BEAUTIES]
Back in the early days of this century, Olympus and Kodak worked together to create a digital camera system that was more than just a reworked film camera. Olympus had no legacy auto-focus lenses such as Nikon and Canon had, so they were free to conceive a new system, which they called Four Thirds.
It was to be an “open” system, meaning that any manufacturer who joined the Four Thirds group undertook to make their lenses and accessories compatible with all other group cameras. So far only Olympus and Panasonic/Leica have produced cameras and Sigma makes a few lenses.
The Four Thirds sensor is smaller than the conventional APS sensor used in Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Sony cameras. Its diagonal dimension is exactly half that of a 35mm film frame. This fact has had camera reviewers and photographers excited about the possibility of smaller cameras with interchangeable lenses and higher image quality than compact cameras can produce. There has been a quiet clamour for a professional compact. And now we have it.
Well, we have two. They are called Micro Four Thirds cameras and both Panasonic and Olympus are making them.
Panasonic was first in the shops with their pseudo-SLR Lumix DMCG1. By removing the mirror/prism from an SLR and substituting an electronic viewfinder the bulk of the camera is reduced. But not by much. The G1 is not much smaller than the smallest Olympus and Pentax SLRs.
This year a new version of the camera, the GH1, was launched, incorporating high definition video. The version we have been using with a 14-140mm zoom(28-280mm film equivalent) costs an eye-watering $3300. The G1, without video, has a more reasonable $1430 price tag.
The AVCHD video from the GH1 is brilliant and it is immediately replayable on a current Panasonic TV or BluRay player. Just put the SD memory card in the TV or player slot and the video plays back in glorious high definition.
However, this is not the camera that the clamourers had in mind. They wanted a high quality still camera with interchangeable lenses in a compact body, not a new style of SLR. And Olympus has delivered with the E-P1. (RRP $1400 with 14-42mm lens) The first thing that most experienced photographers say when they pick up this exquisitely made, heavy, metal-skinned beauty is: “Wow! A real camera!” It looks and feels like a top quality camera from the seventies, but it is much more. And also less – it doesn't have a viewfinder, unless you count the optional accessory 17mm fixed angle finder. You are stuck with the LCD for framing.
The image quality from the E-P1 is superb, which is not surprising considering that Olympus have stuffed the workings of their excellent E-620 DSLR into this small body. This is SLR quality from a camera that will fit in a (commodious) pocket.
We had the camera for a week and fell in love with it. You can see test photos here: http://terryl.jalbum.net/E-P1/ We will have more to say about the Olympus E-P1.
Posted by terry at 10:56 AM | Comments (1)
August 14, 2009
[REVIEW—PENTAX K7 DSLR]
Price: $2000
Another winner from Pentax
The low-down: This 14.6 megapixel camera came fitted with the Pentax 18-55mm lens. This is at the top of the company's camera range. It has a magnesium-alloy body and is smaller than the K20D. It is weather sealed and sports an excellent 920,000 dot LCD and 100 per cent viewfinder. It has an HD movie mode. Image stabilisation is by sensor shift. There is both body-top and LCD information displays. All important controls are immediately accessible on the camera body, including a nifty white balance adjustment tool. The tool itself is not unique to Pentax but the accessibility is. Amongst all the desirable features for serious photography is a killer innovation – true in-camera HDR (high dynamic range) processing.
Like: The in-camera HDR processing works by taking three exposures at widely space exposure values and then merging them into a single jpeg. Of course it can really only work with the camera tripod mounted, but that is true of any HDR sequence. The results from the K7 are splendid and, unlike some HDR output from Photomatix or Photoshop, completely realistic. (For more information about HDR photography see http://tinyurl.com/kmgqur)
Dislike: Auto white balance is not brilliant, but white balance compensation is so easy to fix via a button on the body that we shouldn't complain. Getting the SD memory card out of the camera is nearly impossible. Most times when we managed to extract it the card went flying across the room.
Verdict: This is another fine DSLR from Pentax. We liked the lens for its optical qualities and also for its smooth mechanical feel. The camera is robust and confidence-inspiring. Images are consistently well exposed, although default saturation is a little high. The RAW files are produced in Adobe's universal DNG format which means you don't need any conversion utility other than Adobe Camera Raw, which is free. Highly recommended to anyone serious about photography.
*
Posted by terry at 09:48 AM | Comments (3)
[DIGITAL BLOW-UPS]
There comes a time in a digital photographer's life when the image from the camera is simply not big enough to give satisfaction.
A picture straight from Imaging's Nikon D300 can be configured to 30cm by 45cm at 240dpi, which is not quite big enough for an A3+ print (32.9X48.3cm). The file needs to be enlarged to fit.
A small degree of enlargement like that is not a problem. Just go Ctrl-Alt-I in Photoshop and reset the dimensions, choose Bicubic Smoother and bingo! However, if the degree of enlargement is greater – say a cropped part of the image enlarged to A3+ – the process is not so straight forward. Simply doubling or quadrupling the image size will produce ghastly results.
Adobe recommend that enlargements made in Image Size should be in ten per cent increments for best results. And if the enlargement is 400 percent that can take forever, 10 per cent at a time.
American photographer and Photoshop expert, Fred Miranda, sells a Photoshop action (www.fredmiranda.com/shopping/SIpro) that automates the process. With the photo that is to be enlarged open in Photoshop you choose the degree of enlargement in the Action drop-down and then run the action. Fred also offers a variation on the theme with a suite of Resize Pro Plug-ins for specific camera models. SI Pro costs US $24.90 and Resize Pro is US $19.90. Both are available for PC or Mac.
The big shots of photo enlarging software are Alien Skin Blow-up 2 (www.alienskin.com US $250) and Genuine Fractals 6 (ononesoftware.com US $300) These are also Photoshop Plug-ins. Trial versions of both are available for download. Blow-up 2 is fully functional for 30 days and Genuine Fractals overlays a watermark on the final image, but at least you can see how it works.
We compared the three programs by taking a close-up of a watch face using the best camera/lens combination we have. We did no post-camera processing except to enlarge a section of the picture 400 per cent. We then printed the three images, side by side on a single sheet of Canon's best inkjet paper. After all, the only reason for enlarging images is to produce big prints. We inspected the prints with a magnifying glass. It is impossible to show the results in low resolution newspaper images so you must try it for yourself.
Enlarging applications need to reduce the appearance of pixellation without losing fine detail. Adobe's simple ten percent increment process produces a grainy result with sharp high contrast edges but it is barely acceptable.
Fred Miranda's plug-ins add extra steps in the process to improve edge sharpness and contrast. Results are good.
Of the two expensive applications Alien Blow-up 2 achieves the best compromise between smooth surfaces and sharp edges. Fine detail, such as the watch numerals, is reproduced without any jagged outlines. Genuine Fractals results are closer to Miranda's output.
Viewed from a normal distance the three prints are different but none is better than the others. Frankly we can't see why anyone would pay more than US $20 for an enlarging plug-in.
*
Posted by terry at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)