Archive for the 'Photography' Category
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
I’m highly impressed by Nikon’s new D90: SLR+HD Video
Nikon finally married an SLR and HD video camera. I really like where this is going. Finally a reason to upgrade (if Canon puts this into an EOS SLR). The big challenge here is the switching costs can be very high due to lens investments.
The D90 is the first S.L.R. in the world that can record video.
High-definition video, at that. Stunning, vivid, 720p, widescreen, 1024-by-720, 24-frames-per-second video, with the color and clarity that only an S.L.R. can provide.
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Canon EF-S 18-200mm IS News
Oh the agony of having Canon release a lens that overlaps two that I already own. This could be a great consolidation lens but the $700 price tag is steep… eBay… Why Canon did not choose USM puzzles me, but I’ll be interested to see the image quality on the production version.
Friday, May 16th, 2008
More proof the US Congress (and downstream courts) have not kept up with a changing world
A smirk of “when will this nonsense end” crossed my face as I read another Ars article this time covering issues with copyright and the impact on average American citizens. I too had once been turned away for trying to have an old family portrait professionally retouched. The issue? We did not have written permission from the copyright holder so they wouldn’t do the work for me. I went home and did it myself with a scanner and Photoshop. Sue me.
The photographer was long gone, I knew it was taken before the CTEA and the 28 yr renewal requirement had been in effect. Let’s be realistic - who would know which of his decedents (if you could find them) had been bequeathed his rights in an old family portrait from many years ago? If no one had inherited the rights, then what? Take the entire family (if you can find them) to court to figure it out?
Personally, I think it’s ridiculous that non-commercial photographs are not excluded or carved out from the copyright law today. Yes, it may disrupt how some photographers charge today, but they can change their billing methods. Let’s be honest: how hard would it be for you to just scan in your picture and reprint a billion of them vs finding a photographer from 30 yrs ago? Think of Snapfish - do you have authorization to print pictures your friend (the copyright holder) posted on their account and shared with you? Snapfish will print and deliver them to you - has Snapfish violated their copyright? I haven’t read Snapfish’s terms or agreements, but you can see how ridiculous this can get.
If you can’t tell, these issues where we have refused to modernize our legislation and/our court precedent fire me up. While I understand that oil, energy, and Iraq are very important issues in the US, these arcane principles that we have not adjusted for the modern world really do prohibit our society from advancing and innovating. Instead of taking new technologies and riding their full potential, the innovators are constantly caught up in a complex web of vague/loose rights that make it impossible to move forward. This ties right into the software patent post from earlier today.
Let’s wake up - our founding fathers never imagined a system whereby people could instantly share photos over an internet at will. Heck, at the time of signing the Constitution, photography “as a usable process” hadn’t been invented yet - it’s time to update our systems!
Many lawyers and scholars will argue that we can accomodate new technologies with the existing system. Sure, they love the existing system. It’s vague, complex, and crazy enough that they can bill hours for a lifetime.
I disagree - the issue is not whether a particular ruling can be expanding to cover a new technology or advancement. Sure, we can keep expanding/contracting the scope of rulings for another thousand years. The real issue is what do we in today’s society truly consider to be intellectual property and who do we consider to be the owner of those rights? Finally, are the current laws around this intellectual property still granting the right (as in proper) permissions? For instance, have you considered that your family photograph is under copyright by the photographer for 70 years after his/her death! Yes, unless you signed an agreement otherwise, your wedding, family, and other photographer-taken pictures are owned by your photographer and his/her decedents.
The US used to require a renewal of copyright after 28 years in order to continue holding your exclusive rights. (ahem, then Disney came along and took over the copyright system) I think it’s time to update the entire system bringing all walks of copyright holders to the tables and systematically update our system to align with a modern world one piece of IP at a time. In my humble opinion ;-)
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
Casio Exilim EX-S10 “Card” Review - the ultimate “slim” camera?
I’m a digital photography junkie although I may not post here so often. I’ve always kept a well rounded portfolio of gadgets around including my Canon Rebel XT, a Sony HDR-SR7 HD video camcorder, and until now, I always used my Canon ELPH SD100 as my goto “pocket” camera that also did lightweight video recording just as many other consumer cameras do today. The SD100 had served quite a useful life and was an outstanding performer in all areas. However, a couple things were starting to create a need for an upgrade. First, the ELPH SD100 was the smallest, viable camera on the market when it came out but today, there were increasingly more “slim” and lightweight options being introduced on the market. Second, the 3 megapixels were ok, but when cropping, I could use a couple extra megapixels to play with. I was also hoping to find a new camera that boosted the “shutter speed” slightly so that I could get more instant shots. Finally, I was hoping to find a camera that had more water/freeze resistant features for added protection in skiing environments. I also did not want to spend more than $275 (arbitrary limit primarily set by what I could thought could “go under the radar” with my wife…).
Size (more specifically depth) was my greatest concern as I reviewed features. I could accept less than top tier performance in other categories, but I like to use this type of camera for skiing (drop it into a coat pocket), going out to bars (drop it in a pant/shirt pocket), and other places where I want its size to be no more than carrying a cell phone.
And so I began my research.
There were a few cameras that were easy candidates - the Canon SD1100 being the first. The SD1100 continued the ELPH SD100 tradition with portable size, a no-nonsense frame, and as expected a high quality Canon product. The SD1100 shutter speed only seemed slightly faster than my older SD100, boosted the megapixels to 8MP, widescreen pictures, and added Optical Image Stabilization (very nice). The SD1100 boasted a relatively small depth at 22mm. The price was definitely reasonable at ~$230.
I also looked at the Olympus Stylus SW line of cameras. The 850 was within my price limit, and boasted unique features such as shockproof, waterproof, and freezeproof (great for skiers). The 850 was relatively slim at 21.3mm, however, almost every Olympus SW camera had received poor image quality results in reviews, and while slim, the camera was slightly wider/taller than other options. One other negative was that Olympus still uses its proprietary xD flash media which I just have a hard time buying into. The price was within reason at ~$260.
I was really hoping Nokia would offer me the perfect package. Nokia had two types of cameras that may have worked. First there was the 21mm slim S51, but I couldn’t get over the “cheap” feel of the camera. Then I noticed the super-slim 18mm depth, Nokia S210 which was also one of the cheapest options at a mere $175. This camera was the perfect size and on paper, had great features. I nearly hit the buy button to order it when I noticed the bad reviews on the internet. I was seriously bummed this one didn’t work out.
I checked a few others and then remembered Casio had its super-slim camera line. Casio was never known for high quality pictures, but was known for super-sexy looking cameras. And that’s when I found the Casio Exilim EX-S10 (commonly just referred to as the S10). This camera was launched in 2008 as the “world’s slimmest 10MP camera”. It just hit the store shelves a couple weeks ago at $250 but unfortunately NO ONE had done even a modestly decent review of the camera making a purchase decision difficult (and hence I’m sharing my experience now). I bought one anyway at a local Target planning to return it if I was disappointed. Since I bought it, I’ve noticed CNet UK has done a review here.
“World’s slimmest” turned out to mean 16mm slim, which … is very slim. Check out the pictures below with a Casio S10 next to my iPod Nano (3rd Generation).
The S10 is just “3 Nanos deep”. On size/portability, you can’t possibly beat the S10. The Exilim very easily fits into a shirt or jacket pocket. It has a great size LCD screen that works well in direct sunlight.
The EX-S10 picture quality was pretty decent (not a Canon, but nothing Photoshop can’t fix). Images can be taken at up to 10 Megapixels. It has 3x optical zoom, a standard flash and other features. There’s a one button movie record button which is nice. I did find it was having trouble in lower lighting conditions or very cloudy areas. Taking pictures is fairly simple and I actually found it “so easy” that it was somewhat difficult as a more advanced SLR user to get the shot to take the way I wanted. The integrated “Best Shots” feature proved to be very useful as is the face detection engine that follows the subject you’re shooting.
Here’s an example shot taken from near the mid point of Copper Mountain in Colorado recently (unedited, raw JPG, click for full 10MP version):
The Exilim is a great looking camera and packs only the features I really considered “necessary”. I personally don’t care about “in camera image editing” or other nonsensical things vendors seem to be packing into these small digicams today. There is a “YouTube upload” software package that is supposed to make uploading YouTube videos easy… whatever…
As for videos, I was surprised to see the Casio takes good videos and even does “Ultra HQ Widescreen” at 848×480 pixels.
The Casio uses an SD flash card slot which is great. It also has a proprietary battery which is not so great, but easily obtainable at $30 for a retail Casio battery (I found Casio to be the cheapest place online). Given this is a new battery, it may take some time for the super cheap options to show up on eBay. I did notice that the flash card “speed” can create a big difference in shoot time. I originally was using a slower TransFlash memory card in an SD converter, but when I switched to a SanDisk Extereme III SD card, the performance was noticeably faster.
The bottom line: if you’re looking for a slim camera that you can take anywhere and that takes relatively decent photos and videos, then this Casio is a great buy. I’ve never seriously considered a Casio and have always recommended Canon P&Ss to my friends and family, but that may change with the S10. Other Casios CANNOT be assumed to “be just as good” so be careful which one you buy.
If you want absolutely top performance in shooting and image quality, and are willing to sacrifice some size features, then the Canon SD950 or other models with OIS may be a better option although bulkier. If you need to shoot underwater, Olympus seems to be your only option without buying expensive waterproof housings. Unfortunately, Nikon’s consumer P&S line needs to catch up to its SLRs. I also looked at other vendors, but didn’t find any of them relevant to my particular needs.
UPDATE: Steve’s Digicams has posted a long review that I’d recommend looking at. There are sample pictures and videos too. http://www.steves-digicams.com/2008_reviews/casio_ex-s10_pg5.html
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
New TSA rules for Lithium-ion batteries
Heads up if you fly with extra laptop, camera, or other Li-ion battery packs… I often check my extra battery packs for my DSLR and camcorder in other luggage so this would have caught me by surprise…
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Effective January 1, 2008, the Department of Transportation (DOT) through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) will no longer allow loose lithium batteries in checked baggage. These batteries may continue to be packed in carry-on baggage.
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
Video Editing Software for Linux? Help?
I recently splurged on a Sony HDR-SR7 HD digital camcorder (the hard drive based one). It’s *very* impressive for taking videos, but now I want to edit them… Does anyone know of a commercial video software package that runs on Ubuntu or RHEL5 that I can use to edit the AVCHD format these movies commpress into? I’m willing to pay up to a couple hundred dollars to not have to install Windows on my system… Canon, Sony, Panasonic, etc all use this video format now, and unfortunately none of the typical open source software video editors can handle this format. Ideally I’d like to just use Ulead’s VideoStudio 11 Plus as it appears to have all the features I want (except Linux support)… I can’t imagine any of these apps run well in Wine.. and CodeWeavers does not seem to have tested them.
Not a knock on Ubuntu, but this is where I think Ubuntu could separate itself from the other distros/commercial OSs… work with the ISVs for a desktop user and get a full suite of apps available on the platform (i.e. like Apple does). I would also like a good photo printer for Ubuntu that has proper color calibration (the wish list goes on…)
Friday, June 15th, 2007
Kodak is revolutionizing sensor images
This is actually the first time I’ve seen something innovative for digital photography come out of Kodak - the competition for Canon is surely welcomed (perhaps a price drop…). This technology could probably find adaptations all over the place including webcams, cellphones, video recorders.. I couldn’t tell exactly how many stops you could shave with this type of lens - I suspect that won’t be known until there’s a product on market…
If only Kodak could create SLR EF/EF-S /L lenses that were slighlty more affordable ;-)
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-6190890.html
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
CNet Interviews Adobe CEO Chizen
Interesting to hear how Adobe views open source from the top - and also interesting to hear the characterization of other companies’ open source strategies. Can I say he may have missed the point?? I’d love to debate this topic with Chizen for just 20 minutes… there is so much pent up opportunity.
http://news.com.com/Its+Adobes+game+to+lose%2C+says+CEO/2008-1012_3-6164519.html?tag=html.alert
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
VMWare Converter: Path to Linux?
Interesting article on converting your Windows desktop into a VMWare image and then running it on Linux. The problem I have is that with VMWare, the Windows-only hardware (i.e. my Canon photo printer and Canon scanner) that keeps me bound to Windows is not available to a virtual machine… and thus gets me nowhere. With VMWare, I could use Photoshop on Linux, but I am skeptical of the performance. If I could get Photoshop native on Linux, I would sell my Canon hardware on eBay and get Linux-friendly devices.
http://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_converter_windows_linux
Monday, December 18th, 2006
You Witness News: DIY Photo Journalism is Easy
I found news of this new photojournalism channel very exciting. The basic pitch is that with everyone having digital cameras and now video recorders stuffed into their everyday consumer devices, why not pay them for their coverage of events they are at. Instead of having a journalist canvassing (paid) every square inch of every city for the latest “shot”, why not pay everyday Joe and Janes for the pictures they capture (and for cheaper)?
The problem I think they’re trying to solve is twofold: 1) news is global, yet local and it’s hard to scale the current, traditional model and 2) with digital dissemination, rights to digital content gets more difficult and with many royalty structures expensive…
So the answer seems to be You Witness News from Yahoo! News. Whether it works or not as a business model is certainly TBD, but wouldn’t it be cool if the picture you snapped of the elephant that broke out of the zoo and ran down Main St. landed on a Yahoo! or Reuters article covered around the globe? And you’d get paid for it….? I think this is a very innovative idea. I’m sure there are many photojournalists who would disagree. I think the hardest challenge Yahoo! will have is educating people this exists. I’ve seen them posting it in various photo sites, but even then it’s hard to hit the masses.
Monday, December 18th, 2006
Adobe Launches Photoshop CS3 Beta… sadly no Linux version
Sadly Linux is not a platform yet for Adobe and Photoshop. However, via Adobe labs you can get your hands on their latest CS3 beta here. The new features being introduced are listed here. A couple that I find enticing are: 1) Automatic layer alignment and blending (if it really works), 2) Multiple, adjustable angle planes for wrapping images around planes and 3) for Mac users, native Intel performance (and for Windows users, native Vista … well performance support…)
I’d really like to see a Linux version.
Monday, November 27th, 2006
Batch Image Processing with Gimp
Ran across this again today. When you need to make multiple processing changes to an entire folder of images, nothing beats the DBP Gimp Plugin. Heck, this one should be standard in Gimp by now. Just make sure you have g++ and the gimp dev libraries installed.
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
Canon Rebel XT vs XTi
I’ve been noticing some conflicting reviews of the new Canon Digital Rebel XTi. While there’s a minor pixel bump up and a dust buster built in, the new LCD is probably the only compelling reason to upgrade for me. Anyway, if any of you have upgraded and can attest to the veracity of these issues, please drop me an email.
One thing the XTi has is cool commercials. (warning to Flash 9/Linux beta users - it’s buggy)
Thursday, August 24th, 2006
Canon Launches New Rebel DSLR
The Rebel XTi was announced and now features a larger LCD (nice), 10.1MP (not much more than the XT…) and some anti-dust mechanism to protect the sensor (haven’t seen the details of how this works.
Canon’s website has little detail or pictures either.
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
Canon - No Interest in Supporting Products on Linux
I received the following response in a support inquiry to Canon about their CanoScan 8400f (an awesome scanner btw). I emailed them asking if they had any beta drivers I could try out for using the scanner in Linux. Unfortunately Sane does not have support for this model… and apparently from what I’ve seen, Canon offers no help unlike HP, MicroTek, and others.
I’m torn because Canon has superior imaging/photo products but they absolutely refuse to support anything - even their high end photo printers - on Linux. It seems absurd to me especially when you factor in they do offer support and drivers for Windows 98 and Mac OS 9. I mean come on, how many users of these two platforms are still out there? I just noticed they even support Windows Me… are you kidding?
And with Gimp, Sane, ImageMagick, gPhoto, F-Spot, and a myriad of other open source apps that deal with imaging and photography, I have to imagine their are many more Linux users out there.
I haven’t looked at the latest IDC data, but my hunch is Apple is hovering near 2.0% of the desktop share and Linux at around 3.0%…
My bet is everyone’s waiting for Adobe to support Linux. They have Reader support but none of the other mainstream dev apps. The Linux desktop seems to be a major chicken-egg problem.
Anyway, here’s the amusing email I received from Canon support:
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Dear Mr. Dolan: Thank you for your reply. There are no known plans to develop drivers for the Linux operating system. I am sorry for any inconvenience caused by this. It is your choice what to do with the scanner. However, since Linux is open source, I would suggest searching the Internet to see if a driver has been developed. Please note that if there is one, Canon does not support it. Sincerely, Devin Technical Support Representative
Monday, April 3rd, 2006
Just Purchased a Tokina 12-24mm AT-X Pro
I finally got the courage to get an ultra-wide lens for my Rebel XT. I chose the Tokina (Pop Photo test here) over the Canon for price and I think quality (Canon’s EF-S lens seemed kinda cheap). Losing the extra 2mm is the downside there, but I did save $200 with Tokina. After testing 4 ultra-wides at B&H, I was surprised at the quality of the Tokina, the price, and how much you lose in your field of view with a 12mm versus 10mm. But hey, the 2mm wasn’t worth $100/mm….
I chose the Tokina over Sigma for quality - if you’re thinking about these two lenses, trust me - go to the store and test them both and the answer will be clear (and sharp).
The Tamron was never really an option, and testing it with a couple shots made that clear.
Just how different is a 10mm versus 12mm? This was my biggest question. With a DSLR I have a 1.6x crop factor to worry about. Just 1mm becomes 1.6, 2mm becomes 3.2.
Take a look at the difference (from relatively the same position at B&H)….
The Canon EF-S 10-22mm @ 10mm ($699):
The Tokina ATX-Pro 12-24mm @ 12mm ($469):
Aside from breaking character and using a non-Canon lens, I also went crazy and ordered from Beach Camera (in NJ) to save on tax and they gave me free shipping… In the end I saved quite a bit with the Tokina.
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
Canon’s New EF-S 17-55MM f2.8 IS USM
Very nice new lens on the market from Canon. Review here. I use a Digital Rebel XT and would love to get this new lens although it’s fairly pricey at roughly $500 $1,000. I Currently rely on my 29-135MM IS for general purpose use. I’ve been considering a wider lens for some time yet I’m still surprised by how high lense prices remain despite a boom in DSLR volumes with the Digital Rebel.
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