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Size Matters

sensorsizesoverlaidinside-updated

 

People want small light cameras.  They want zoom ranges from 24-300mm and a aperture starting at f/1.8.  They also want high quality images, high iso performance and the ability to use shallow depth of field.  All of this should fit in a man’s shirt pocket.

I have to admit I would like this to, unfortunately I also understand the laws of physic and modern optics and understand why all cameras are compromises.

Image quality is generally linked to sensor size as is depth of field.  Small fast lens cannot cover a large sensor area, thus we have the conflict and its thus we have to make compromises.

What would your compromise be?

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Carry Everywhere Camera – but which one

Tintern AbbeyI have a number of cameras for various purposes.

From my SLR’s which I use for wildlife, weddings, portraits and sometimes landscapes.

My Medium Format and Large Format cameras get used for my personal Landscape work.

But what about the carry everywhere camera.  Well currently; sometimes its Leica M8 or M4 and sometimes my Nikon Series One V1.  The V1 with the lens ranging from 10mm to 110mm gives great flexibility, but its frustrating to use in some situations.

I still keep looking for a carry everywhere camera.  Currently these duties are spilt between my iPhone and the Nikon V1.  I keep thinking about the Fuji X100, or the new breed of large sensor’ed like the Ricoh GR V.  Both of these are less flexible then Nikon V1 but offer better image quality.  There is the Sony Rx-100 with  the same sensor as the Nikon Series One.  Then there are the smaller sensored compacts like the Panasonic LX-7 and the Canon S95.  These have sensors even smaller then the Nikon V1.  The small sensor of the Nikon Series is one of the biggest criticism of the system.  The sensor is smaller then the Micro FourThirds system but still larger then most compact sensors.  The shot at the top of this article was shot with the V1, so as you can see it produce some lovely images.

Below are some crops comparing three of my cameras:

Summicron Wide Open
Summicron Wide Open
SLR Wide Open
SLR Wide Open
V1 Wide Open
V1 Wide Open

I was shooting a few test images at the weekend under the harsh midday sun.  These were taken with my Leica M8 and 35mm Summicron, Nikon D200 SLR and 24-70mm f/2.8, and the Nikon V1, shot at the equivalent of 35mm field of view for a 35mm film/sensor.

Under the bright if hard light all three cameras have done a great job.  With the manual focus Leica, I think I have missed focus slightly but all three images look pretty good.

I also shot the same tests at f/8.  It was here that the Nikon V1 looked noticeably soft in comparison.  After f/5.6 diffraction sets in and the image quality starts to suffer.

SLR f/8
SLR f/8
Summicron f/8
Summicron f/8
V1 f/8
V1 f/8

Below is a shot taken with the Leica.  If one ignores the cameras, the shot at the top is a great shot, as is the shot below.  It shows that a camera when used to its strengths can produce excellent images.  The old adage its not the camera but the photographer is certainly true.

Family Grave Its also true that the best camera is the one thats with you.  Thats why I am thinking so hard at the moment about small compacts, its finding one where the limitations do not limit me.

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Waddington Air Show – metering for planes

This weekend its the annual Waddington Air Show.

Waddington Air Show

Whether you have the latest SLR’s and big fast glass or a basic compact, with its mix of static displays and flight demonstrations, there is plenty for everyone to photograph.  One common disappointment is that often the photographs come out too dark.  Shooting into the bright sky can fool many light meters.  Back in the old film days I would switch to manual and take a reading from a grey card I would place in front of me to meter off.  The same light falling on the grey card was also falling onto the aircraft and this would give me a good basic exposure.

In case your wondering about the shot above, its a rather poor composite of two different shots I took when the Red Arrows flew over Lincoln.  A bit of fun you might say in Photoshop.

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Lightroom V4.4.1 Update Released

Lightroom V5 crop toolIt was a bit of a surprise considering that version 5 is now out but an update appeared the other day for version 4 users; version 4.4 was updated to version 4.4.1, mainly a bug fix but still nice to know V4 users are still getting some support.

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Colour Spaces & Working Spaces

For those of you who shoot jpeg, do not edit in post and send your images off to typical print shops, then you probably just have your camera set to sRGB. sRGB is a very limited colour space and cannot show as many colours as modern printers can print. Its the typical output of a standard cheap monitor. In fact many high end displays can only display sRGB, but it is most cameras default setting, and what most print shops assume your camera is set to and what the file is set to.

If you are interested in producing the best output possible then you need to set your camera to AdobeRGB, this colour space can show more colours.

When editing even AdobeRGB cannot handle as many colours as your camera may capture or in fact what a high end pigment printer can print. If you are after the best results then you want your working space to be ProPhotoRGB.

Recently I upgraded by computer by installing an SSD, best upgrade ever and now my four year old MacBookPro is as fast as when I originally bought it even running the latest software.

I decided to do a fresh install of my applications. Unfortunately this caught me out recently, when I discovered some of my recent edits have not been quite as good as they could have. Unfortunately some of the defaults for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop are less then optimal.

Lightroom Preferences

Now Lightroom is very good; you cannot actual set a working colour space, it uses its own created by the main developer but it can be considered to be similar to ProPhoto, the difficulty is if you export it to a third party program, if the third party program will accept it you need to set the Colour Space to ProPhoto RGB, by default Lightroom will export it as sRGB in 8 bit. This can be limiting and can cause issues with banding and artefacts appearing in finished image.

Photoshop Colour Settings

In Photoshop you get to the colour settings by pressing Shift-CMD-K. I would suggest you start by choosing either Europe General Purpose 3 (for Europe) and America General Purpose 2 for the USA.

Default Colour Settings for Photoshop

As you can see the default is sRGB which needs changing to ProPhoto RGB, Gray wants setting to Gamma 1.8, yes there is a Grey Colour Space which consists of shades of Grey! Once these are set to your likings then I would suggest you save it. If your copy of Photoshop does not show as many options as above then have a look to the right, there is a button marked more options. Press this and more options will appear.

So is this extra effort worth it, well it only needs configuring the once so its not really any extra effort but i’ll let you be the judge, here is the final edited picture of Lisa.

Lisa

In case you are wondering this image as been converted back to sRGB to be put on the web. Many web browsers cannot cope with anything else then sRGB and do not support colour management. It is getting better as Safari and Firefox now both support colour management.

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Birds in Flight at Whisby Nature Reserve

Last weekend we headed to Whisby Nature Reserve, the aim was to practice my bird photography.  We packed the car with the big Gitzo tripod and my longest SLR lens.  Once there we setup and I practiced on the local gulls and terns.

Most modern SLR’s have quite customisable focusing systems.  While shooting I tried various groupings of focus sensors, i’ll also limited the number of focus sensors in use, so the computing power in the camera could concentrate on just a few.  It meant my targeting had to be a little more accurate but from what I had read, it could speed up focus.

The other main setting I kept changing was the focus timeout for lock on.  This controls how long the system looks at that focus distance when there is nothing there anymore before searching again for a new lock.

Many people do not try customising their cameras and find they are not getting the shots they want as the focus performance is not up to the task.  So each year they buy the latest and greatest camera instead of truly learning how to customise and fine tune the camera they have.

That saying, if someone wants to give me a Nikon D4 or even a D3s I’ll happily snap there hand off ;).

The Black Headed Gulls still had young on the island and a number of times when a Mute Swan got to close they dive bomb the intruder and attempt to move them off.  The Swan did not seem to bothered and ignored them.  Also paying a visit was some Greylag Geese, which just trampled over the island ignoring everyone.

 

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Sony Release a Special Edition on the RX1 the RX1R

Sony RX1

 

The release of the Sony RX1 was a major coup for Sony in producing the firsts 35mm full frame compact.  Sony and Fuji are definitely the two manufacturers that are exciting photographers at the moment.

This week they announce the special addition version of the RX1.  Unlike Leica whose special editions tend to be a new paint job or Leather covering.  This special edition which Sony are calling the RX1R is basically the same camera but lacking the AA filter, so a far sharper picture will be produced.

A good update, but as I have said before, shame about the lack of viewfinder.  See my post on high end compacts for more info.

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New Fuji XF Camera and System fragmentation

Leica M8 and Fuji XPro1Fuji has now added a new camera to the XF range. The X-M1 is the new bottom of the range model. Nice to see more choice but it is a little worrying that Fuji has decided to change the lens design. The new lens that comes with this camera has no aperture ring unlike the other cameras. The UI on the back is also different. What is nice is the new tilt screen but unfortunately this camera has no EVF or optical viewfinder.

The other cameras and lens in this range come with an ‘A’ for automatic setting on the aperture ring and also a ‘A’ for automatic on the shutter speed dial: this is not that difficult to understand, but the new camera has the more modern mode dial on the top and like I mentioned no aperture ring on the two new lens released with it. To enable the new lens to work on the older cameras a firmware update has been released but is a worrying fragmentation of the system.

For people that shoot with more then one body this difference is going to make working with to different XF bodies more difficult. Fine if you can afford two X Pro1’s but difficult if you have an X Pro1 and then this in your bag as your emergency spare body.