Astrophotography

I'm certainly not big on astrophotography, but I was amused to hear, yesterday, that Nikon came out with a new model specifically for that.  It's a slight update to the D810 (called the... wait for it... D810a) that has slightly tuned sensor detection, and allows for longer programmed shutter intervals.

While I haven't really done any astrophotography, I'm certainly interested, so this caught my attention.  Especially once I heard about the shutter part.  I don't do a lot of exposures longer than 30s, but they do happen from time to time, and they're a pain on my D4.

Anyway, I probably won't buy one ($3700), but I'd like to.

It's cool that they have it, although it seems like a very small niche, so it surprises me that they're making it.  And I'm especially surprised they didn't introduce a special lens for it, although maybe the recently-introduced 55mm f/1.4 is that lens.

Phoning it in

My wife and I finally upgraded to new phones yesterday (well, mine is completely upgraded; hers had a problem and will finish tonight, hopefully).

I was most looking forward to the extra CPU power.  Threes went from a five-ten second startup to virtually instant, which was awesome.

Touch ID, I'm still trying to figure out.  I thought (I had specifically asked someone at an Apple Store about it) that you could designate, on a fingerprint-by-fingerprint basis, whether it was usable just for unlocking, or for unlocking and purchases.  That doesn't appear to be the case, but it's certainly easier to use that than to input a PIN.

There are a couple things I'm still figuring out with the camera (my pano attempts haven't been panos at all).  I just sync'ed the new phone, downloading pictures, and that helped me figure some stuff out.  We'll see if I'm right when I finish with that.

But I love the better lens, that's both faster (f/2.2 v f/2.8) and wider (30mm vs 35mm, film-equivalent focal length (really 4.12mm vs 3.85mm, remembering the 15% increase in sensor size).  I haven't yet cared about the extra megapixels (the iPhone 4 is a 5MP, vs 5s@8MP), though that'll be good to have.  The 1080p video will matter, but hasn't yet.  I really like the idea of the slow motion video, but I wonder whether I'll really use it.

I also went from 16GB to 32GB, and that's a big win.  I've been having a lot of trouble with space, which has been impacting both apps and photos, and now I've got a ton of space.  Loving that.  I just need to remember not to do something like, "Well, let's dump a lot of stuff in there, since I've got the space".

Similarly, I was having trouble with icon space on the desktop, so I love having an extra row.  I had just had to do some trimming a few days ago, and now I don't need to have done that.  Ah well.

Going from 3G to LTE will also end up being a big win, although it hasn't mattered yet.  Looking forward to taking advantage of that (especially once iTunes Match finishes doing the matching.  In the eight or nine hours since I mentioned how slow it's going, it hasn't shown any sign of advancing).

Re-viewing technology

I heard about the Lytro Light Field camera when they came out with their first generation camera, a while ago (it now comes out that that one is basically a prototype).

Well, the one they want to call their first-generation (the Illum) is coming out in a few months.

The technology is pretty interesting; it tracks the direction from which light is incident on the sensor.  There are a few more details in that article, but the short of it is that it allows capture of distance from everything shown, and can compute refocusing the image after the capture.

I'm not sure how well it will all work, but it's definitely interesting.  The big drawback is that the overall level of detail is much, much lower, because it can't put the pixels as close together.

The other big plus is that it might be able to work on non-custom cameras at some point.  We'll see how that works out, but I'd love to see it.

Anyway, it's available for preorder right now, if you've got $1500 burning a hole in your pocket.  I don't know, but I'm certainly tempted.

Musical cameras?

I ran across this article about taking a camera to a music festival, and I have to wonder about something.

If I take a camera to a festival (and my main camera is a pro-level one), why do they even put restrictions on it?  Is it going to take money away from the festival?  No, if anything it will add money (maybe not for this year, but for next year), by making the festival look good.

Plus, in posting it, I'd be implicitly endorsing it.

What's the downside?

Pa-nono?

An indiegogo campaign has brought a nifty camera idea, the Panono.  It's a compound camera (36 lenses and sensors) shaped like a ball.  Throw it, and an accelerometer tracks the ball's movement, triggering simultaneous exposures from all 36 at the height of the throw.

It then stitches the images together into a perfect spherical panorama, and uploads it for you.  I don't know what the image quality is like (I suspect so-so, and even only that in good lighting), but I love the idea.  Would love to have one to play with, for sure.  Maybe I'll be able to get one, eventually.

Neat toy, for sure.  Really wish I'd had one when my dad and I drove to Osh Kosh over the summer.  I'm particularly thinking of some potential around the Bean, in Chicago.  Imagine throwing it over top of the bean to someone else.

New phones?

[note: I wrote this a couple of days ago, but am just getting around to posting it.]

I've been thinking about the iPhone 5S since it was released yesterday. I'm contemplating buying one, as my iPhone 4 is getting a bit long in the tooth.

But a lot of what's improved won't do much for me. Finally getting Siri would be nice. The extra CPU power (20-40x as much, judging by the graphs) never hurts, but I wonder if it'll really matter. Maybe some games would run without getting as hot, since the processor won't be taxed as much? If so, that'd give a bit of battery life improvement, which is always welcome.

But in terms of meaningful improvements for me? The camera is really the only thing. I like the larger sensor (I shoot full-frame, so I'm of the opinion that it'll only be too large when they can't get a lens in the housing anymore) and larger max aperture. Those will both help in low light. There's some potential for the larger aperture to allow for creative depth-of-field effects, but my suspicion is that the sensor is still too small for that to be noticeable.

I also really like the 720p slomo output. 120p is freakin' awesome. I can certainly think of some things for which I'd love to have that (although a longer lens would be very useful for many of those).

The burst mode and in-focus picking both have the potential to be big difference-makers as well, although it will require some real testing to figure that out.

The dual-color flash will help in low light, too, and probably in a more dramatic way, most of the time. This is really what I wanted to talk about, though. It'd be great to have something like that as an add-on flash for my Nikon. Of course, the coordination between the two would be difficult to mediate. Probably every company would choose its own solution, so flashes become as interoperable as lenses (which is to say, almost not at all). Plus, there's definitely some issue with the detection; auto-white balance on my SLR is pretty good, but sometimes fails pretty hard (this is why I shoot in RAW. I can losslessly correct in post). In fact, that parenthetical leads to the only major change I'd like to see in the iPhone; RAW output.

I don't know what to make of the M7 motion coprocessor. It's certainly got potential. I'd been contemplating a fitbit, so this might completely obviate the need for one. It might also help me to get up from my desk more often during the workday, which would have significant health benefits.

The TouchID sensor... I'm having a hard time getting excited about it, after finding out that the NSA is grabbing data directly off smartphones. So a fingerprint sensor just says to me, "How about I just give you a fingerprint to put into the records". Hard to get excited about that.

[One good thing I read today is that the part mentioned in the keynote, that it read sub-epidermal layers, means that it's much harder to fake.  Gelatin copy won't work, nor will a dead finger.  Kudos, there.  And maybe that's why they bought the company that makes the sensor, for that differentiator.]

Anyway, not sure yet, but I'm certainly leaning towards upgrading.  If I can keep my current data plan, that would make it a slam dunk.  If not, then it gets a bit more complicated.  We'll see.

Expeed-ing along

I don't pay a lot of attention to the chips inside of cameras, but I found this primer on EXPEED4 by Thom Hogan quite interesting.  Misleading classifications (pointed out himself, a bit, in the footnote) aside, this does give a lot of interesting information.

It's mostly about what's in the next generation of the family of chips that feeds the EXPEED models.  The thing I found most interesting about it, is that it indicates that the EXPEED is actually the limiting factor in why the D4 isn't capable of higher speeds.  There's also a hint that Canon's 1DIV can go faster because it can use multiple processors together for greater speed.  Very neat stuff.

It's also implied that the reason the D800 can't shoot faster wasn't a matter of Nikon trying to force sports shooters to the higher-price D4, but merely that the chip can't handle a faster speed with that many pixels.

Anyway, there's some other stuff with some specific call-outs for features in upcoming cameras, although I wasn't as interested in that.  But if you are, check out the full article.

Non-interchangable SLR?

I ran across this article about a new, lensless camera earlier today, and am a bit confused about its terminology.

To start with, I think what they're starting with is a pinhole camera controlled by an LCD screen. That is to say, they open a hole in the LCD lattice to be the pinhole. That would explain what they mention about infinite depth of field (a characteristic of pinhole cameras).

And I think there's something there about opening multiple pinholes at once to get a better image (an interesting idea, for sure).

But where complete confusion sets in, for me, is when they start talking about single pixels as the sensing element behind the LCD array. They must be using a weird definition of a pixel, because one pixel using the normal definition gives almost no information. Try reducing down any picture to height and width of 1 to see what I mean. I won't say there's no information there, but it's a damned small amount.

So I think what they're actually talking about is a single DSLR-like sensor, and possibly doubling that to two sensors. That would make some sense.

Other than that, I think it's a pinhole camera with an array of "pinholes". One limitation, if that's so, is that you'll be limited in exposure length, I believe, because two opposing polarizing elements don't stop all light. Don't believe me (and it's certainly counter to what I heard in physics class in high school)? Well, variable neutral density filters work by taking two one-stop polarizing elements, and rotating one of them. All of them go from two stops to eight (which is a nice range), but even at eight stops, you can still take usable pictures (heck, I've got a ten-stop filter that still allows usable pictures).

Anyway, it's an interesting idea, and I'm curious to see what they do with it.  Thinking about it, something like this would probably be perfect for a cell phone camera, where space is very constrained.  Hmm...

It also just occurred to me... Maybe what they were referring to, in using the word pixel, was a specific spot (any specific spot) on the LCD "screen"ing the sensor.  If so, the article was not well phrased.  It's also a bad term to use, because pixel is short for "picture element", and the screen blocking the sensor does not have any picture elements in it.

Where am I?

Just ran across this new GPS device for cameras (how new? Amazon's page doesn't list it as available yet).

Anyway, price unknown (although the HK price converts to $150-ish), it sounds fantasic. Sturdy, small, weather-sealed, and out of the way (ie: not on the hot shoe). It also has an extra port for using an external trigger and uses little power. As long as the GPS function actually works, this looks to be everything I want in a camera-mounted GPS device.

Anxious to actually play with one. If worse comes to worst, I'll ask my inlaws to bring one over from Hong Kong next time they visit. But hopefully Amazon will carry them before that.

Ansel on Photography

I recently picked up Ansel Adams' first book on photography, The Camera.  I figured it might help improve my photography.

Well, I'm not sure if it will have done so, or not, but it certainly did help my theoretical knowledge of how the whole system works.  I already knew the practical side of a lot of concepts, but it's always good to know the theory that goes with it.

And this book breaks down the major pieces that go into a camera, and talks about how they work.

One thing that I found interesting was that I had always associated him with landscapes and large format work.  But he worked with all kinds of cameras, it seems.  The most surprising was him talking about the lengths he went to for pinhole camera photography (well, he didn't talk about it at length, but the level of detail in what he hinted at was pretty impressive).

But the biggest surprise was how current it was.  Really, digital doesn't change all that much, except the output format of the data.  Some pieces, later in the book, were a little out of date.  For instance, there was talk about small format cameras, but to Adams, 35mm IS small format.  The tiny-sensor point-and-shoots or mirrorless cameras didn't exist.

The definition of in-focus changed a little bit.  In analog terms, it was the size of the circles of confusion of points in the view.  In digital terms, it'd be something like the number of pixels to show finest detail.  And one interesting thing there was his definition of in-focus: the circle of confusion of a point had to be less than 1/1000th of an inch.  Modern cameras can have pixels that are only 4.7microns (only a hair larger than that size).

But I did learn a lot of details of how different pieces of a camera work.  In particular, I hadn't realized exactly how a modern focal plane shutter worked (mostly, I had no idea how they got it so fast).  Interestingly, that wikipedia link actually has more information on it, but Adams' discussion was a good starting point (perhaps with more historical info).

It also talked quite a bit about perspective (and choosing lenses to match a perspective), and had a lot of encouragement to just shoot.

There was also a long enough discussion of what makes a view camera so good that I was really wishing I had Nikon's 24mm PC-E lens to try out some of the things a view camera allows you to do.  I suspect Ansel thought 35mm cameras were rather crippled, without those adjustments.  At least, after reading that, I could see why he might think that.  It's unfortunate that it's still not economical to get a large-format (4x5 - 8x10) digital sensor.  That would be neat to play with for landscape photography.

There were a couple of details about aperture controls that didn't get mentioned, that surprised me.  Those were blade count and blade rounding, and how that affected bokeh.  Actually, bokeh was not even mentioned, which was also a bit of a surprise.

The other things that were a bit out of date had to do with tripods (no mention of quick-release gear or ball-heads, nor of carbon fiber), filters (nearly non-existent now, with digital postprocessing), and about meters.  Actually, not sure how changed the latter is, but suspect a bit different.  Oh, and there was no mention about white balance either, although I suppose that would go in the second volume (The Negative, which I have, but have not yet started) if the issue existed back then.

But overall, it was an excellent book, and would be especially valuable to the beginner.

Evaluating cameras

DxOMark does a good job (not perfect; I wish they did a better job of getting things reviewed sooner) providing some basic benchmarking on cameras and lenses.  Some people seem to think that the top-line number their reviews produce, especially on cameras, are the final word on how good a camera is.

It isn't, but it does provide some nice data on some parts of the camera.  For a digital camera, there's no doubt that the sensor is the heart and soul of the device.  If the sensor is no good, the camera certainly won't be, either.

It might be the sine qua non of the device, but it isn't the totality.

Also, just looking at the top-line number can be misleading as well.

I learned this about when I got my D4.  It was cool when it came up as number one, and a bit surprising when it fell out almost immediately (with the introduction of the D800).  But the high-ISO numbers were a bit misleading on the D800, I think.  While I occasionally wish that I had the extra color depth or dynamic range, I'm mostly happy because of the better ISO performance of the D4.

But wait, you say, they were rated almost identically there.  Well, there's a bit of a story there, and it mostly comes down to dynamic range.  The D800 is better at 100 ISO, and maybe at 200 (can't remember), but gets significantly worse after that.  Given that I take a lot of indoor shots of my kids, I frequently end up shooting higher than that, so I largely come out ahead.

Plus, I like the way the D4 handles, better; it's very nicely balanced and the controls are excellent.

But, of course, there's still the money issue.

Anyway, I'm getting badly sidetracked.  The points are that a) there's a lot more to a camera than DxOMark score and b) there's a lot more to their benchmarks than the top-line number.

So, now that I've pointed out my own experience with finding that out, I wanted to point people to a long article that takes a much closer look at their reviews.  It's on an excellent site called Luminous Landscape and gives a lot of good information.

So before you buy a camera based on a DxOMark review, you should read the article to help you interpret the numbers.  You'll be glad you did.

Irritating day

I mentioned, recently, getting a bit more into photography. One of the reasons I got the bigger ball-head was that I had already ordered a new camera that was much heavier than my old one.

Anyway, the new camera was originally supposed to ship in the middle of February. For some reason (I heard several ideas, but no consensus on why), they didn't end up shipping until the fifteenth of this month. And despite preordering on the first day, I was not in the first batch of cameras shipped from the store. I wasn't feeling too good about that, and was wondering if I'd have to wait for months, but was happy to get a shipping notice last week (it seems that Nikon sent out another batch much quicker than they usually do).

Bad luck (them attempting to deliver just minutes before my wife got back home from taking the kids for a walk) kept me from getting it Saturday. It being Fedex Home, they didn't make another attempt until today. Since I was kind of anxious (and it required a signature), I stayed home all day waiting for it (well, and doing work on my computer).

I checked the tracking a few times, not seeing anything (not even, "out for delivery") until 1430. Then, it said that they had failed to deliver at 1418. Well, I was within 20 ft of the door at 1418, and there was no door tag left, so I can only conclude that they tried to deliver to the wrong house (odd, given that they got the right house on Saturday). Thank goodness I didn't tell them they could leave it without a signature; who knows where it would have ended up? Irritating enough, but it got even worse when I tried to call them right afterwards. They claimed that the driver would come by before 1530.

Ok, I've had second delivery attempts when they've screwed up at least one time before (although that was UPS).

So I went back to my work until 1610 or 1615; at which point I called again. Now they tell me that, not only is the driver already back to the depot, but that he was already back when I called the previous time. And they have no way to get the package to me (not helped by Fedex home drivers being contractors, apparently) today, nor can I go to pick it up myself (because pick-ups stop at 1630, and the depot is 30 minutes away).

And as if all that wasn't enough, when I called Ritz to complain, they just kept telling me what the tracking information page said. Thanks, I found that myself. Even worse, the person I was talking to kept going silent for long periods of time (30+ seconds) without telling me they were doing something. I just kept talking, and then getting dead air. I even hung up on them once because I thought they'd lost me. But the same useless guy answered again when I called back.

Very poor customer service from both FedEx and Ritz, to put it mildly. And I'm definitely not getting anything shipped via FedEx Home ever again.Regular FedEx? Sure. But not the Home variant.

Will the next big (still) camera have a mirror?

I was interested to read Trey Ratcliff's essay about the future of cameras.

While I certainly agree with him in principle, I'm not so sure about timing. That is, it's certainly coming, for many good and valid reasons, but he seems to be saying that it's right around the corner, and I think he's a bit early, there.

I'm fairly sure that the next generation (iteration, if you prefer) of top-of-the-line cameras will be SLRs, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the generation after that is, as well. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if the generation after that is a mirrorless camera. I would expect it to be full frame (so, bigger lenses and bodies than what we're currently seeing), with a much fuller selection of lenses than any currently available mirrorless system.

I'm kind of looking forward to it, actually (even though I have a new SLR on order). One good thing is that lenses should be quite a bit cheaper. One nice bit about never having a person looking directly through the lens, is that even the viewfinder image (whether delivered to the back of the camera or to an eye-hole through the back of the camera) can be digitally corrected for various lens imperfections. That should lead to fewer tradeoffs needing to be made during engineering, and, therefore, cheaper lenses. We'll see, but I think that's one factor.