Digital Camera Review

Photo This & That, the blog of a photographer in London, England, says that the iPod Touch is the perfect companion when on the road. Doubling up as a firewire hard drive, the iPod Touch also offers some standard features that might be of use out in the field. The blog also says that it’s a perfect way to present portfolios of digital images.

[…] The latest models go up to 160Gb! However, the one that caught my eye was the iPod Touch. Not so much a music player, but a portable computer. The version I have is the 32Gb version and I have my music on there as well as a few videos.

However, the thing I use it most for is presentation of work. It can can handle pictures which can be seen as a slideshow or manually flicked through. More importantly for me, it can show audio visual slideshows which are in Quicktime format. I can now carry all my photo essays in my pocket!

With the recent release of the Casio F1, a $1,000 digital camera that can capture images at 60 fps, some photographers are already predicting a future where still and video equipment converges. The prediction is further backed up by the release next year of the Red Scarlet. Certainly, with high-end professional digital SLRs becoming faster and faster in terms of how many images can be captured per second, it is clear that some photographers — those working in photojournalism and sports, for example — are screaming out loud for more.

The Luminous Landscape looks at what this could mean for the industry and the type of cameras on offer to photographers.

I believe that we are at a point in time where a profound change is about to take place in the photographic industry. It is being driven not by user demand, but by the inevitable convergence of a number of required technologies. In combination, and when a certain nexus is reached, they will allow the creation of a new type of photographic instrument which will radically change the way photographers and film makers work.

[…]

Imagine something about the size and weight of a medium format camera. It will have optical reflex viewing and interchangeable lenses. It will be able to shoot raw still images at 30 frames per second – continuously, and without the need for a mechnical shutter at just about any required shutter speed. It will have a recycling memory buffer so that it is constantly recording images, buffering the last couple of seconds and then disposing of them if not needed. That way the image can be captured even before the shutter has been pressed.

When the shutter is pressed the last couple of seconds are saved to disk or card and the camera now continues to record, as long as the shutter release is held down, and without any real time length constraint. So if 5 seconds are recorded, 150 frames are as well. The still photographer or editor can then later choose the frame that is best.

[…]

That’s what excites me the most. Give a creative professional photographer a still camera that can simultaneously shoot movies, and a cinematographer a movie camera that can shoot pro-grade stills, and what kind of creativity will this engender? I don’t yet know, but it’s very exciting to contemplate.

The Luminous Landscape carries its long-awaited review of the Sigma DP1, seemingly just another digital compact camera, but one that had many of us hoping for something closer to DSLR quality. As it turns out, the review says those expectations have largely been met in terms of image quality. However, design and operation of the camera leaves much to be desired.

The DP1’s menus are a mess. There are poorly laid out and have 15 items in a scrolling Shooting menu and another 17 items in a Set Up menu. […] Tedious and not conducive to any form of rapid and involving interaction with the user. It’s almost as if Sigma hasn’t noticed the advancements which its competitors have made in the last half decade in user interface development.

The Sigma has the usual slow contrast detection autofocus that all digicams offer; though seemingly a bit slower than some others. But again, in terms of poor user interface, though it has multiple focus points available there’s no way of getting to them other than though a menu item buried within one of the scrolling lists. Not at all good.

[…]

The LCD screen of the DP1 is a disgrace. It’s simply awful. Resolution appears low, and it simply appears dim and coarse. Yes, I know that it can be made brighter in the menus, but that still doesn’t put it anywhere near on a par with other screens. […]

[…]

In addition to ISO settings from 100 to 800 there is an Auto-ISO mode. But it only moves between ISO 100 and 200, not including any of the other speeds. Seems to be kind of pointless to me, and another example of strange oversights and omissions that Sigma has allowed to exist in this camera.

Such a pity, but as The Luminous Landscape says, perhaps the potential of the idea behind the DP1 might now lead Canon to produce a G10 based on an APS-sized sensor if Sigma can’t get its act together to resolve the flaws of the DP1.

Sports, action and wildlife photographers need fast cameras. Indeed, it’s why models such as the 9 fps Nikon D3 and 10 fps Canon EOS-1D Mark III are in such demand even at a premium in terms of price — $5,000 and $8,000 body only, respectively. Until now, such high frame rates have been one of the main selling points of professional and semi-professional cameras from the likes of Nikon and Canon, but all that looks to change with a new camera from consumer electronics company, Casio.

And boy has it changed. Casio’s new F1 doesn’t just beat high-end professional models by a few frames, but rather by a factor of six. The Casio F1 can shoot images at a staggering 60 fps which brings the model into the realms of high-speed photography. Therefore, it is somewhat fitting to discover that the New York Times had none other than the great-nephew of stroboscopic photo pioneer Harold Edgerton review the camera. According to David Pogue, the camera isn’t perfect in low light and is rather large, but can’t be beat for action photography for $1,000 rrp.

A typical shirt-pocket camera, if you’re lucky, can snap one photo a second in “burst mode.” A $1,000 semipro model will get you 3 shots a second. But this Casio can snap — are you ready for this? — 60 photos a second. These are not movies; these are full six-megapixel photographs, each with enough resolution for a poster-size print.

After such a burst, you’re offered three options: delete all 60 shots, keep all 60, or review them and pluck out the individual frames worth keeping. The whole batch begins to play like a flip-book movie; you control playback with a back-panel control dial. As you watch, you press the shutter button once to identify each frame you want to keep; the rest will be discarded.

[…]

(As I experimented with the F1, I couldn’t help feeling that my great-uncle Harold Edgerton would have approved. He was the M.I.T. professor who, in the late 1930s, pioneered the art of high-speed photography: the bullet piercing an apple, the splash of a milk drop, and so on.)

[…]

But make no mistake: no camera has ever offered anything like the F1’s high-speed stills, high-speed videos or high-speed flash for anywhere near its price. Everybody who sees this camera in action winds up slack-jawed with disbelief.

Casio deserves congratulations for innovating in so many big, bold, industry-defying ways. Instead of pushing misleading metrics like megapixels, the company went its own defiant way and came up with a camera with an extremely clearly defined identity.

The NYT review is here.

Most professional or serious photographers shoot in RAW format rather than in JPEG or some other file type that does not allow later lossless correction to what their camera’s digital sensor originally recorded when the shutter fired. However, the software for manipulating RAW files which comes with cameras — including top of the line models — is never polished enough and what is usually comes at a premium.

There is competition in the marketplace — something that is more than illustrated by two recent announcements from Apple and Adobe, the manufacturers of two such professional digital manipulation and workflow software. First off, let’s deal with Apple who’s Aperture software has been updated to 2.1. Rob Galbraith takes a look at the changes, and in particular, its support for third-party plug-ins.

Without much fanfare, Apple introduced in Aperture 2.0 an architecture with which third-party developers could create image adjustment plug-ins. Now that v2.1 is out, the company is bringing this feature to the forefront, revealing both how image editing plug-ins work and who has already signed up to make them. Let’s look at who first.

Apple Apple itself is one of the first plug-in developers. Included with Aperture 2.1 is Dodge & Burn, a tool for brushing in tone, colour and detail changes to a photo. Dodge & Burn can of course be used to lighten and darken areas of a photo, as well as adjust contrast, saturation, sharpness and blur.

[…]

Apple is describing Dodge & Burn as an “example” plug-in, but this understates its usefulness, since you can perform a fairly broad range of selective adjustments with it, and do so with relative ease. We expect that for some Aperture users, Dodge & Burn will quickly become an indispensable tool.

[…]

Image editing plug-ins are a powerful new Aperture feature.

Read the rest of this entry »

At just 104mm long and 56mm wide while also weighing in at just 214g, the Canon PowerShot A470 is ideal as a camera you can keep in your pocket. Moreover, its small size and low price does not mean that it is lacking in terms of features. Sporting a 3.4 x zoom equivalent to 38-132mm on 35mm, it can shoot at ISO settings of 80-1600. True, noise is an issue at higher sensitivities, but according to a review published by Imaging Resource, not as bad as you might think.

Image quality, color, and exposure are all good with the Canon PowerShot A470. Overall color is bright and vibrant, yet still natural. […]

[…]

The PowerShot A470 captures a lot of fine detail, with minimal noise suppression to blur detail at ISO 80. In the crop at right, the mosaic shows great detail, with only a little smudging in the background and clothing.

[…]

The Canon PowerShot A470 handles image noise very well at its lower ISO settings, and even at ISO 400, noise is higher but still not too distracting overall. You can see it best in the gray squares of the color chart, demonstrated above. At ISOs 800 and 1,600, noise is much higher, with a more pronounced grain pattern and greatly decreased detail definition. Still, even at these higher settings, noise isn’t as bad as we’ve seen in other point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Indeed, Imaging Resource liked the Canon PowerShot A470 so much that they made it a “Dave’s Pick,” setting the camera apart from many others in its price range.

Overall, the Canon A470 is a good performer. It captures good exposures with sharp details and accurate color under most average shooting conditions. Given its selection of preset shooting modes and built-in features like Face Detection and Motion Detection, the PowerShot A470 is equipped for quick handling of common, yet tricky situations. The Canon A470’s automatic features will keep novices comfortable, while available options such as Long Shutter mode, an adjustable metering mode, and a manual white balance setting cater to more savvy users. The Canon A470 is a very capable camera that’s a snap to use, and an easy Dave’s Pick.

The Canon PowerShot A470 can be purchased in a variety of colors from Amazon. Specifications can be found in the official press release from Canon posted on the Digital Photography Review web site.

It used to be that digital SLRs cost thousands of dollars, but in recent years prices have plummeted. For the price of a serious digital compact camera five years ago, you can now pick up an advanced DSLR from brand leaders Canon and Nikon. Two such models are the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi) and the Nikon D60.

Both cameras are sold in a kit version that includes a good 18-55mm zoom lens with an anti-shake system. Canon calls its system IS (Image Stabilization), whereas Nikon calls it VR (Vibration Reduction), but it’s just the same thing. This feature alone, combined with high ISO sensitivity, makes it possible to shoot hand-held in situations that would have required the use of a tripod previously.

Although admitting bias towards Nikon, Agylen compares the two and weighs up the pros and cons of both. On paper at least, the Canon has the advantage over the Nikon with a resolution of 12 over 10 mp (although in reality this makes little difference), Live View and a larger LCD screen for reviewing images.

There are many other elements that could be compared between the two, but these are the most relevant ones, in my opinion. Both are probably very good cameras and you won’t be disappointed with either one. Personally, I would go with the Nikon because of the higher auto-ISO range and the Active D-Lighting, but that’s just me. You might be a big fan of composing and reviewing using the LCD, so the larger screen and the Live View feature of the Canon will certainly appeal to you.

In reality, though, you can’t go wrong with either.

One issue that many bloggers and website owners are unaware of is image copyright. Many professional image and news sites as well as photographers do not allow use of their work by others without permission or payment. However, devoid of photographs, blogs can lose their appeal, but there are thankfully a number of sites that do offer use according to a variety of terms.

SpinXpress, for example, is a site that allows global searches of some image sites for photographs, video and music that can be used according to a variety of licenses such as Creative Commons. The situation has now gotten even more diverse with one of the largest photographic libraries, Corbis, making use of its images free for bloggers.

Probably, confronted with widespread theft of images, they figured it would be easier and more commercially productive to allow use on their terms. The Photography Blog has more.

PicApp gives bloggers and other online publishers access to copyrighted news and creative images, completely free. Now available in public beta, PicApp features images from Getty Images, Corbis and other prestigious image agencies. Each image is accompanied by a non-intrusive ad to drive royalties to the related content partners, instead of the traditional license fees. “Bloggers are the new journalists and they can now get great images - and use them legally, with no charge whatsoever,” said Eyal Gura, CEO, PicScout. “Through PicApp, we are providing today’s new media with access to the latest images and an easy way to enrich their readers’ experience.”

Mashable has more on the Corbis PicApp Beta while the actual site is here.

They might be taking some time to get accepted as a replacement for traditional picture frames, but digital versions which allow multiple images to be stored and displayed show great potential in a world where nearly everyone is ditching film. Ramblings of Maggie seems impressed at least and explains why such frames offer advantages over their traditional predecessors.

I’m sure you’ve all seendigital photo frames at the stores. I think a digital photo frame would make a great Mother’s Day Gift. I recently got a small photo frame for Christmas. I would love a bigger one for the living room. Not only do they make great gifts for mom but the prices are so reasonble now that you could also grab some for Dad, Grandma and your favorite client. Imagine Grandma’s face when she opens a photo frame and you’ve preloaded it with all the special photos of her favorite grandkids.

Interested? Well, check out Sony’s new digital frames — the DPF-V900, DFP-V700 and DFP-D70 — which all have a resolution of 800×480 and from 256MB to 512MB of internal memory. The three new additions recognize JPEG, RAW, TIFF and BMP picture formats and come with USB and a multi card reader. The DPF-V900 looks the most promising with a 9 inch LCD screen.

When people think of semi-professional and professional D-SLRs they invariably concentrate only on Nikon and Canon, undoubtedly the world leaders in this sector of the market. However, others are also attempting to offer choices to serious photographers, and one of those companies is Olympus. Although the Japanese company says it is aiming to target the professional market, Digital Cameras Review instead considers that Olympus is more looking towards semi-professional users.

Olympus has finally announced their long-awaited flagship DSLR camera, the E-3. Billed as a pure pro camera, the Olympus E-3 is really more comparable to the cameras by Olympus’s competitors that we’ve been categorizing as semi-pro, such as the Pentax K10D, Canon 40D, and Nikon D200. Whatever you call it though, there’s no question that the new E-3 represents a sizable leap forward in technology and sophistication for the Olympus SLR line.

Indeed, Olympus have been responsible for pioneering various technologies from the consumer and prosumer digital camera market such as in-camera image stabilization and live view in ways that Nikon and Canon have yet to do. The Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 might have live view, but is it of much use if the screen can’t be tilted for low-angle or over-the-head shots? Crave says the same.

As the pioneer of live view on dSLRs, Olympus has continued to show the worth of the system for those photographers who may not have been convinced by the compact-like ability to compose images on an LCD screen. The E-3’s 64mm (2.5-inch) LCD is the smallest manufacturers can get away with these days, but it has the ace in the hole of being able to flip out and twist around camcorder-style, like the Panasonic DMC-L10. The screen also previews depth-of-field, exposure and image stabilisation settings so you know what you see is what you’re going to get. If you’re still not convinced, just flip the screen over and hide it away.

However, the respected Digital Photography Review says that the camera cannot compete in the resolution and digital noise game with rival offerings from Nikon and Canon. This seems to be the main failing of the camera.

If Olympus could only find a sensor to match the quality of the camera itself and the lenses available, the E-3 would have been lifted into a class of its own. As it is, this is a camera that will keep the faithful happy, and one that offers some unique features at a good price, but one that is unlikely to see eBay suddenly flooded with high end Nikon and Canon gear as professionals and serious photo enthusiasts dump their systems and jump trains to the Four-Thirds express. Features like in-body IS and a tilting screen are all well and good, but a camera at this level needs to offer the ultimate image quality and total shooting versatility, and here the E-3 can struggle to match its direct competitors.

For brand-faithful shooters, the Olympus E-3 is an intelligent upgrade. For others, however, it depends on their requirements and expectations from a camera.