Category: Photography

Most people think of the standard lens as the old 50mm, but what do we mean by a standard lens. Well there are a number of definitions.

Most of the books state that a standard lens is one that produces a field of view similar the human eye.

A simple statement except that the human eye and brain is a decidedly different concept. We can concentrate on a small object in the landscape or sweep our eyes across a majestic vista. This gives us the impression of going from a telephoto to a wide angle in a single moment. The camera is a much more simple affair.

One is often better to consider perspective. It turns out that a lens of a focal equal to that of the diagonal of the 35mm piece of film (or full frame sensor) produces a very natural perspective and field of view.

So what focal length should a standard lens be; well it turns out its about 43mm. As far as I am aware only one manufacture made a 43mm lens and that was Pentax.

So a standard lens could be considered either a 35mm or 50mm lens. Depending on whether you want something slightly wider or longer.

For Medium Format users then they generally use a 75mm standard lens, and for Large format users, well thats a topic for another post.

If your after a very high quality compact camera then the Sony RX1 is the king, but with a full frame DSLR price tag.

For me its biggest shortfall is the lack of a built in viewfinder.

One of the best Compacts around has been the Fuji X100, it had issues with focus speed but with the latest firmware its a good little camera but out classed in the focusing stakes by just about every other manufacturers offerings.

Well we are promised that they now have the best focusing around with the recently announced X100s.

I love its traditional format and optical viewfinder, lets hope that the third party RAW processors get better as it now has the latest iteration of the X Trans sensor.

Check out the following site for more details:

www.cbphotoblog.com/

If your interested in more information on the sensor and some background in the processing of its RAW file then check out:

http://chromasoft.blogspot.co.uk

Profiling is considered by many to be a bit of a dark art. I experimented recently with creating some custom camera profiles and comparing them with the camera profile built into Adobe Lightroom.

It always used to be the case that to get the best, a home built profile always gave you the best results, but now I like the results with the default Adobe Profile. I am not sure if it is better or if my test card is getting a bit faded and needs replacing. They recommend replacing every year, but mine is about five years old now. I’ll borrow a new one and retest, I have also run off a few prints using both profiles to see which I like best.

 

These two close ups have been calibrated for the web on a sRGB profile but even so I prefer Adobe’s profile, but to my eyes, both look a little off, with the Adobe profile being a little to Magenta and the Custom profile being to yellow.

While doing these tests it made me think about all the elements of profiling from Camera, Print and Screen, its an area that many struggle with. I’ll write some more about this soon.

With the announcement this week of the new Nikon Coolpix A, most camera manufacturers now have a high end fixed lens compact.

The best of the bunch is the Sony RX1, and the Fuji X100.  I had a play with the RX1 a few months ago and apart from needing a viewfinder Sony have gotten just about everything right with this camera.  Its expensive and not coming with a lens hood or battery charger is just ridiculous, but it is a very good camera.  Personally I like the Fuji better, but then I have a thing about optical viewfinders.

Some manufacturers seem to get it but others are not quite there yet.  The Nikon is a little disappointing.  Focal length wise 28mm is a good option but is playing it safe.  I would personally want 35mm or 24mm; 28mm is really a compromise option that I am not personally keen on.  Then there is the lens speed, it really should have been f/2 at least.  Still its good to see more options available, and once again Nikon have taken the brave option of not including a low pass filter, the anti-aliaising filter to stop moire.

As the cameras in phones get better and better, then compacts are going to have to go beyond just being a simple small sensor’ed point and shoot.

Some months choosing a picture to be my photograph of the month, can be quite difficult. In February I managed to get a good selection of quality wildlife shots as you can see from these two examples. In fact they are far better then January’s picture of the month.

Some months I might have only shot a some weddings or some corporate portraits. With these belonging to my clients there not really available for me to use on my blog.

With January’s picture being wildlife, February really had to be something else. It was quite frustrating with February’s shots were so much better. Luckily as well as some good wildlife shots I also managed to get some pleasing Street Photography shots as well as a few detailed architectural shots.

Altogether a good month of photography, and one thats produced a lot of shots to choose from for February’s Photo of the Month. Lets hope March is as productive.

Sunday morning with the weather being somewhat overcast, I decided not to go out shooting wildlife but have a lazy morning in.  A late brunch consisting of home made Corn Fritters, Bacon, Honey and Fresh Coffee was the order of morning.  Then as I blogged yesterday, we had a fight with the bike in trying the so called simple task of changing a head light bulb on the GS motorcycle.

In the afternoon I grabbed one of my small cameras, a Leica M8 and we went for walk round the village.

When we got to the village church we had a wander round the church yard.  We both love church yards, there is something quite lovely and atmospheric about them, we don’t find them scary at all.

As we walked into the church yard, a young woman with a DSLR round her neck came out, obviously having been photographing round the church and grave yard as we were about to do.

We took a number of atmospheric shots, and I even had a go at some bird photography with the Leica and the 35mm Summicron lens.  I had to slowly approach him but finally managed to get close enough with my moderate wide angle lens to get this shot of the black bird sat on top of the grave stone.

A pleasing selection of images I hope you agree.

The post the other day titled Leica Fan Boy was extremely fortuitous. I was checking Adobe’s website out and spotted a new Release Candidate for Adobe Lightroom. In the notes it stated that it supported the new Leica M (240). This means that Leica must have finalised the software, which means the camera is imminent.

Then just a few hours later I find out that the Leica Dealer who gave me such great service and sold me my Leica M8. would have a demo copy from Friday.

If your after trying out the new Leica M, contact Stephen Premier.

I wish I was lucky enough to afford a new Leica but I have to admit, I would be torn between the Leica Monochrom. the CCD sensor’ed M9P or the new M.

Choices for Photographers just keep getting better.