Leica M8
Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH
35mm, 1/125 Sec at f/4, ISO160
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom V4.3
On a Mac MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.8.3
Adventures with IE6
This good Friday we had an invite to visit Caroline’s sister, Angela in Chesterfield.
We also had a little chore to do. Get Angela’s ‘new’ desktop computer up and running. This was an old Windows XP machine that Alan, Caroline’s farther no longer needed.
First job was a booting problem, quickly diagnosed to be a flat motherboard battery, which was easily fixed.
Then getting it on the internet, this proved harder then expected. Angela’s Wifi supported and was using MAC address filtering as an additional security measure. Unfortunately the old wireless router’s management software only supported IE6. We tried Safari on the MAC, the iPad and Firefox, but none were supported.
In the end I ended up booting up an old VM of Windows XP that I happened to still have sat on an old external harddisk that was sat in the bottom of my computer bag. Lucky!
With the VM booted up on my Mac it was soon in IE6 and logged into the router to make the necessary modification.
Back in the day when Microsoft’s IE6 was the leading browser more often then not software was specifically written for it.
Luckily today most things are a little more standards based, so no matter if your using the latest Microsoft Operating System or a Mac running OS X, even other flavours of UNIX and LINUX; we can all work together.
Is Full Frame Better?
We are seeing some big pushes recently, as more and more manufacturers come out with full frame cameras. As I mentioned in a previous article even high end compacts are getting bigger sensors, but is full frame the best.
If you go back fifty-sixty years or so most people shot medium format or large format. Cameras with negatives 6 cm x 6 cm or in the case of large format 5 inch x 4 inch or larger. Gradually though more and more people switched to the lighter and smaller formats as the technology got better and the image quality improved.
With the larger formats, depth of field was always what photographers wanted, there was even a club called the F-SixtyFour Club, where it was considered that all photographs should be taken at f/64 or greater. Some of my Large Format Lens actually go to f/128, where as modern 35mm lens tend to stop at f/16.
As formats get smaller then due to the physics of optics the depth of field gets greater, together with the advantage of the cameras being smaller and lighter. For many uses the greater depth of field gives many advantages.
Today the fashion seems to be out of focus backgrounds, a particular craze among Leica photographers currently with their advantage of full frame 35mm sensors and fast glass. Its even something I indulge in myself as can be seen from this months picture of the month.
But I hope we continue to get the option, smaller sensors like CX format in the Nikon Series One with its 2.7 crop do offer some types of photography an advantage. So let there be more cameras like the Full Frame Sony RX-1 but also more cameras with smaller sensors like MicroFourThirds, Nikon One, and even the little Fuji’s like the X10 with its tiny sensor.
Give us well built bodies, and direct controls but also options, so if I can use the right tool for the right job.
What is a standard Lens
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.
Fun Sayings – English
There are a number of sayings that I really like. I was reminded of one of my favourites the other day when someone mentioned the loveliness and purity of the English Language.
English as a lovely language yes but Purity; certainly not.
English: a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages & rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.
Film Friday – Old and New
While travelling back to Lincolnshire from London, I had a while to wait in Kings Cross Railway Station. Its a very curious mix of old and Architecture and has a number of photographic opportunities. Since I took this photo I have seen a few by another Leica Shooter on the DPReviews called Michael Toye. You can see more on his flicker Gallery here: www.flickr.com/photos/michael_toye. Much better then mine I think you would agree.
My shot here was shot on my Leica M4, with a Leica 35mm Summicron, on Ilford HP5 Plus developed in Kodak X-Tol developer.
Fuji X100S Reviews start to appear
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:
If your interested in more information on the sensor and some background in the processing of its RAW file then check out:
Profiling Tests
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.
Motorcyclists – life style, or commuting choice
Do motorcyclists see it as a life style choice, a cheap method of transport or a thrill for Sunny Sundays.
OK so the photo above is a pair of bicycles, but I could not resist this rather nice image taken with my Leica M4 and a Summicron 35mm lens.
To be honest if you have a small sub 250cc bike then it is a cheap method of transport. But for those of us with larger bikes it can be an issue. For a while my little Honda 650 V twin was considered a commuter under the tax rules and had cheap tax. Then the government decided that all bikes over 600cc where sports bikes used on Sunny Sundays. So the tax rate greatly increased.
Come on; lets be sensible about this, there is quite a difference between a commuter on a little 50cc or 250cc or even a long distance commuter such as a BMW RT which is 1200cc.
Some of us have 600cc sports bikes which we only uses for sunny Sundays, but some of us have 1200cc or even 1600cc bikes which are highly fuel efficient and effective commuters that have far less environmental impact on the Earth then a car.
Lets tax transport sensibly, encourage public transport, bicycles and scooters. But don’t forget those of use who use motor vehicles that are essential due to our location or the nature of our jobs. For some of us, using a car or large bike is the only option. Either put an option in place for us or tax us suitably.
Comic Relief 2013 – Red Nose Day
Well its finally here, Red Nose Day 2013.
A funny way to raise money for charity. We will be having a few events here at work, and I know a few studios that are having studio events. So if there is an event near you please support it.
Hope you enjoy the day and together we can all raise a lot on money for Comic Relief.