Dry and hot in Melbourne

We’ve just had three days of over 40 degrees Celsius and it hasn’t rained since I don’t know when. The green is receding, replaced by brown and weeds.

From Melbourne 2009

There are brown leaves in spots or all over oak trees – and it’s not autumn for a long while.

From Melbourne 2009

People buy large tanks for rain water, for grey water and for firefighting

From Melbourne 2009

What it’s all about – Australia Day

del.icio.us Tags: AustraliaDay,2009,manualfocus,olympus,e-510,rokkor,250mm

I suppose a National Day means different things to different people.

From People in Melbourne

Defence of the realm always comes to mind and we send so many of our young and old to distant shores nowadays not for the realm but for the world.

At the end of the day, we treasure our families

Happy Australia Day 2009

For once, I photographed a parade without giving in to my 7-14mm. I’ve previously shot parades wide – with the Kodak P880 and the Zuiko Digital 7-14mm. But once I got the dslrbaby eyepiece magnifier, I thought I would give my manual focus 250mm f/5.6 Rokkor a good run.

I call this one, Spotted Ibex – the Helmet seems to merge with the orchestral instrument he’s carrying, to give an illusion of a deer’s antlers. If you see the bigger sized photo, you’ll see the threads of the instrument and the hairs on the back of his neck. I’m simply mesmerised.

From People in Melbourne

Then, there was this. The sunlight was very harsh and bright – it’s Melbourne summer and what a summer. These RAAF guys had to stand at attention for a fair time as the speeches rolled through. Facing the sun. Without sunnies. No wonder the slitted eyes. The girl in the back has her mouth open, stifling a yawn.

From People in Melbourne

There was also ethnic diversity in the ranks. The expressions are something worthwhile treasuring.

From People in Melbourne

The military wasn’t an all men’s affair. This flag bearer has again eyes that would mesmerise me and a face that could launch ships. A great bonus was the angelic child looking on.

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From People in Melbourne

The dslrbaby works

I finally succumbed and bought the dslrbaby 1.3x eyepiece magnifier for my Olympus e-510. It’s a three component magnifier –

1. the two optical elements in a plastic tube with a screw thread
2. a rubber eyepiece that fits over the plastic tube
3. a plastic clip that the plastic tube screws onto and this clip then fits onto the e-510

The vendor gives you three of these plastic clips to fit other DSLR brands.

Eye relief is not bad, the plastic tube makes it more like you’re peering through a tube and you can’t see the digital readout on the right hand side of the viewfinder without moving your eyes. The significant thing is that the over smooth focussing screen of the e-510 now appears to snap in and out of focus better. Manual focussing still does not compare to say the Pentax K200D viewfinder, but I seem to be getting higher keeper rates. Focussing with the 50mm f/1.7 manual focus Rokkor is a little improved, with the 28mm f/2.8 Tamron, not much, with the 200mm f/3.5 Tokina yes quite a bit and today, the 250mm f/5.6 Minolta CAT lens does give me more keepers. Of course with the pale postview LCD of the e-510, I still can’t be sure, in the field, but coming back to the PC, it’s a good YES.

From People in Melbourne

From People in Melbourne

From People in Melbourne

From Melbourne 2009

del.icio.us Tags: dslrbaby,eyepiece,magnifier,Olympus,manualfocus,e-510,Rokkor,Minolta,250mm,lens

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• Pentax discontinues the K200D in Japan

Adobe DNG is not RAW (yet….)

Lots of people say the cmera makers should give up on proprietary RAW file formats and adopt the Adobe DNG file format. Here's an opposite point of view from OpenRAW.org:

DNG is not an open standard in that it does not document all the essential information contained in current RAW format files like NEF and CR2 (which also don't document this information). In many ways, DNG can be viewed as simply yet another RAW format with undocumented information - except that DNG has the added risk that information can be lost during conversion to/from DNG and other RAW formats.

Updated: 24th Jan 2009
Seems the OpenRAW initiative was not supported by any vendor – that’s pretty hard to sustain. Barry Pearson wrote a long riposte to that DNG article on OpenRAW and currently lists a lengthy itemisation of hardware and software support for DNG.

del.icio.us Tags: RAW,AdobeDNG,DNG

Interpreting The Histogram

Lots has been written about the Photographic Histogram. Many people still don’t understand what it is and what it does. Here are my notes:

What the histogram is

1. The histogram is a coarsely scaled and over small 2D representation of the tones. Some cameras have separate RGB histograms.
2. The histogram has two edges, the left and the right edge of the bounding box
3. If it looks like a peak has a slope extending past a box edge it means that there is some technical data that has been lost / will be lost regardless of RAW.
4. RAW has a higher latitude because the contrast curve is not "baked in" and the camera histogram may not show the RAW histogram, it may show the histogram of the embedded JPEG in the RAW. So, you infer that you have half a stop or more of latitude even though the in-camera histogram is showing that there is a truncation of the slope or tail of the peak.
5. With cameras with LiveView, the histogram is a predictive forecasting tool - it tells you before you press the trigger, what could be captured in tones. Shooting RAW or shooting a bracket of 3 or 5 shots is *NOT* a predictive tool - you have made the shots, you can retire without seeing the shots or you may take the time looking at the shots in camera - either way, you have lost oppurtunity or time. This lost time may be ok for a landscape shot but not useful for a quick assessment of a marching parade or anything in motion.
6. Some cameras don't have histograms
7. Some cameras don't have a good EVF or an LCD (e.g. my Kodak P880). This causes me to underestimate the visual quality of the image.
8. Some cameras have an over beautiful EVF or LCD (e.g. the newer Canon G models and reportedly the Panasonic LX-3, the Nikon D90 DSLRs set....). This can cause people to overestimate the visual quality of the image.
9. Some cameras don't have auto bracketing e.g. the Nikon D60.

What a histogram IS NOT

1. The histogram does not measure the visual quality of the shot. It is after all a crude 2D graph of tones.
2. The histogram does not tell you which subject or part of the subject constitutes the tail or slope of the peaks that is being cut off.
3. There is no "correct" histogram - the idea of "correct" does not apply because of points a. and b.
4. The histogram does not tell you how to compose the shot.
5. The histogram does not tell you what is wrong with the shot. It does not advise you that you are shooting into the sun, it does not tell you that you could enhance detail and micro contrast by changing your position and your lighting angle. It does not tell you that your metering pattern is inappropriate. It does not tell you that you are metering for a 12% grey target when you are facing white snow.
6. The histogram does not tell you clearly how much to compensate in EV - i.e. how much EV to dial in to move the peak and thus the tail of the hills. You can do some experiments and gain some understanding by dialing in EV and shooting a test subject. And watching the histogram move horizontally. You do that as homework, not on the day.
7. The histogram does not tell you how much tail to chop off or to force into the bounding box - that's your choice and you have to visualise using whatever method you understand (zone system, experience with the subject etc....). This is a human, visual assessment, certainly the computation and artificial intelligence is getting smarter but the histogram isn't - the histogram is a crude 2D graph.

If a person does not understand how to use the histogram, there is nothing stopping the person from doing a bracket of shots or interpreting visual quality by looking at the LCD screen or the EVF.
The histogram is an informative and useful tool above the:

1. It's sunny so I use f/16 1/100 @ ISO 100
2. Oh, the meter says it is EV 17 @ ISO 100
3. Heck, I'l just dial RAW and shoot a bracket of 5 shots at .3 intervals, one of them should work.

If a person does not want to use the histogram and has some magic recipe that works for them, just do it.

del.icio.us Tags: histogram,photography,LCD,image quality,EVF

Insights and Teach Ins

Image by Dr Craig via Flickr

I read Chuck Gardner’s Zone System articles some time back and it was one of those epiphany days. He writes well, one of my latest reads is his Colour Management article. Worth spending the time to read, even sacrificing a few trees,