Entries Tagged 'camera' ↓

There’s some confusion as to what the RAW photo format actually is, and, like any good photographic fact, it can incite forum flame wars as quickly as the mention of the words Leica and Bokeh in the same sentence. Although it comes in various flavors — seemingly one for every different camera model — RAW is essentially the raw data from the camera’s sensor, hence the name.

If your camera has a RAW setting, you should be using it, no excuses. Here’s why.

Dynamic Range

Dynamic range is the difference between the lightest and darkest parts of a scene. Unless the lighting is very flat (lacking in contrast), your camera’s sensor will only capture a subset of that range. A RAW file, which contains all the data from the sensor, will give a dynamic range of around eight stops. A JPEG will will give you a couple of stops less, which usually translates to blown out, or over-exposed highlights and loss of details in the shadows. So, while you still need to be careful with exposure, RAW will record the maximum information available to you.

Also, the histograms displayed on most cameras are based on a JPEG preview (even when you are shooting RAW). So a histogram that shows your picture as overexposed (the graph is pushed up against the right-hand side) might still have some detail left.

No In-Camera Processing

One drawback of RAW is that you can get flat-looking previews on both the camera’s LCD screen and when you load up your images into editing software. This is because, unlike JPEGs, the camera is doing no processing to the file; no sharpening, no fancy tricks to boost the colors, no nothing. All of the important decisions are left to you to apply later, on a big screen with a much more powerful computer than the one in the camera.

To get the maximum data from a scene, common advice says that you should expose for the highlights, just like with slide film back in the day. Once the highlights have blown, there’s no getting them back. With the shadows, however, you can often pull details out of the murk. The flat looking preview will show you just what you captured. It might not be pretty now, but you are shooting to record the maximum information.

Adjust later

Next to capturing the maximum info from the sensor, the best thing about RAW is the post processing that can be done. Because the camera doesn’t bake any of its settings into the image, you have a clean slate on which to work. Using non-destructive editing software like Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom, you can make endless adjustments to the exposure, white balance, contrast and just about anything else you could do in a real darkroom and change your mind later.

These programs never touch the original RAW file; they keep a small text file (just a few kilobytes in size) which contains the adjustments you have made. Each time you look at the photo, these settings are re-applied in real time (although usually there is a preview to keep things quick). Even cropping, dust spotting and sharpening can be undone, years later, with the original file unaffected.

The (Few) Disadvantages

As you’d expect, there are some disadvantages. RAW capture is slower. Hold down the shutter release of a DSLR and it will happily shoot jpegs until the memory card is full, barely slowing down. Try that with RAW and even pricey cameras will slow to a crawl. Also, RAW files are bigger. That, though, is a poor excuse. Hard drives are cheap, and getting bigger all the time. Of course, some cameras don’t let you shoot RAW files. The manufacturers want you to buy a more expensive camera. If you own a Canon, though, you might be in luck. The CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) will let you install hacked firmware onto some models, adding RAW capture amongst other goodies.

So if your camera has a RAW setting, go switch it on now. The advantages far outweigh the small drawbacks, and it is the only way to be sure you are getting all you can from your camera. A RAW file isn’t called a digital negative for nothing.

The Riddle of the Sphinx asks “Which creature in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?”

The answer is, of course, a hungover photographer.

A tripod has two main parts: The head, to which the camera fixes, and the legs, which keep everything up. Both are equally important, and both can have a lot of extras, some of which are very handy and some of which are useless.

The Legs

The most important thing is stability. After all, the whole point of a tripod is to support the camera and keep it steady, either for use at slow shutter speeds or because you want to keep the camera locked in one place for multiple exposures (High Dynamic Range photography, for instance). Test this out at your local photo store before you place your Amazon order. A wobbly ‘pod is useless, no matter how many extra bells and whistles it has. Try it fully extended and consider what camera you will be using. A little compact will be a lot easier to support than a pro DSLR loaded with a 1000mm lens.

After stability comes ease of use. A tricky to operate gadget is a gadget which stays at home gathering dust. Make sure the legs can be quickly and easily extended without the clamps taking chunks out of your fingers. And also make sure that once the rig is set up, the joints don’t creep, the legs slowly collapsing under their own weight. The easiest locks are flippable knobs. The most annoying are the circular collars which need to be twisted to close; remember back to the last time you removed the u-bend on the pipe under the sink? With collar-style locks, you’ll be doing that every time you use the tripod.

After this, look for extras. A geared centre column can be nice if you use a heavy camera as it allows small adjustments while still bearing weight. With a non-geared head, adjustment is faster but you’ll need to get a hold on your gear before you unscrew anything.

Legs, too, come in different types. The most basic extend and that’s it. Some models can be splayed, either for better stability on uneven terrain or to drop the tripod closer to the ground. Here, tripods lacking a centre column will go lower. Some higher end models have a removable column, or even a reversible one so the camera can hang underneath. And there are a few Manfrotto tripods which have a flip-out centre column: extend it fully and it hinges, allowing you to point the camera straight down and effectively make an ad-hoc copy stand.

Other niceties include “leg-warmers” (foam sleeves which protect your hands from the cold metal), spirit levels, and adjustable feet (the rubber foot screws back to reveal spikes. Just remember to reset them before you photograph on your mother’s parquet). Many manufacturers now offer carbon fiber models, which are light, stiff and expensive.

Heads

The head screws onto the legs, usually via a standard mount. You then fix your camera to the top either by a machine screw which matches the tripod bush on the base of the camera or via a quick release mechanism. These are, as the name suggests, a lot more convenient as you can leave the quick release plate on the camera permanently and just slot it into the tripod when needed. The only other function of the head is to move, and then to lock solid when in position. The differences come in the kind of controls the heads offer.

There are many specialist heads, but the ones you’ll most likely want are a ball head or a pan-and-tilt head (aka the three-way head). The ball head is the most convenient: the two sections are connected by a ball and socket joint making movement in all three directions easy. The ball is locked by a single control, making it very fast to reposition. The disadvantage is that small adjustments are harder; if you want to adjust in one plane, it’s easy to slip out of alignment in another. Some models have an extra panning control to spin the camera on a horizontal access while the ball is secured.

The pan-and-tilt head has three controls, some of which may be spring loaded and damped. These are, to borrow from airplane terminology, pitch, roll, and yaw. Each axis has its own controller. This is a little slower than a ball, but it does mean you can easily track a subject in one direction while keeping other movement isolated. Hence the “pan” in the name. It also means you are less likely to drop a big heavy camera, something easy to do with a ball head.

Whichever you chose, don’t be cheap. A good tripod might be pricey but it will last and last. The cheap ones will frustrate you, the heads will sag and they’ll drop your expensive camera into the dirt. If you’re really unlucky, they might even claim a finger or two.

I’m in the market for a new tripod. If you have any suggestions, or anything to add to these tips, leave them in the comments.

Eye-Fi just announced an update to its line of WiFi enabled SD cards and made them a whole lot more useful. The original $100 card has been rebadged “Eye-Fi Share” and has been joined by the “Eye-Fi Home”, an $80 card which functions as a cable replacement: no uploading to Flickr or anywhere else, just wireless transfer to your computer, and the quite exciting $130 “Eye-Fi Explore”, which will geotag and upload your photos out in the field. All models are till 2GB in size.

One of the problems our Danny Dumas noted with the original card is that it will only work with pre-configured WiFi access points. You needed to set the card up by connecting it to a computer. Now, the Explore will hook up to any of 10,000 Wayport hotspots in the US for upload. This is fine, and great for photographers who are set upon by over zealous security guards and told to delete their pictures (”Ha! They’re already in the cloud”). The Explore will send photos to either the web or your home machine.

The real magic, though, comes with the new geotagging support. It doesn’t use GPS, which would be too big a battery drain on the host camera. Instead it uses WiFi triangulation, just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. In fact, it uses the same Skyhook service that Apple uses. And if the card can’t connect to a WiFi access point to grab the info it needs to geotag the photos, it will store a snapshot of the access points it sees and work things out later when you get back to your PC or Mac.

This is great news, and something we predicted last month:

Somebody like Eye-Fi will work out how to put faux-GPS, or WiFi access point triangulation, onto a memory card and then GPS will explode.

Hopefully manufacturers will start bundling these cards with cameras. The price of the Explore includes a year of hotspot access.

Press release [Eye-Fi]

Product page [Eye-Fi]

The flash on most point and shoot cameras is harsh and makes your subjects look horrible. It’s fine if you’re just taking a night shot of your buddies in a bar, but when you want slightly higher quality shots for your eBay photos or your “personal collection,” you need something like this Marumi Ring Light to get more uniform illumination. This way there’s not just one harsh flash light spot on the person’s face. It still doesn’t help those people who photograph their naked junk being reflected off a teapot on eBay, other than, you know, making sure their junk is lit correctly. [Enjoy Your Camera via DVice - DSLR Version]

Nikon also announced the D300 today, as was heavily rumored. Its latest prosumer DSLR is loaded with a 12.3 megapixel DX format CMOS sensor (the one Sony just announced), 6fps burst—it goes up to 8 with the optional battery pack, HDMI support with 1080i playback, 200-3200 ISO range, live view and a 3-inch viewfinder (the same as the D3's). It too is shipping in November, with a body-only price of $1799. This is a lot of camera for less than half of what the D3 costs.

NIKON D300 DIGITAL SLR CAMERA: MAJOR FEATURES

New DX-format CMOS image sensor with 12.3 effective megapixels
The D300 features a new 12.3 effective megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor that produces high quality images with fine detail and sharp resolution throughout its sensitivity range of ISO 200 to 3200. The camera’s ISO range can be extended using its built-in options of Lo-1 and Hi-1 for the equivalent of ISO 100 and ISO 6400 respectively. The CMOS sensor’s integrated A/D converter features the ability to select between 12-bit and 14-bit conversion, making it possible to shoot 14-bit NEF (RAW) format images.

High-speed performance
The D300 offers professional level high-speed performance with a shutter release time lag of only 45 milliseconds, camera start-up time of 0.13 second, and continuous shooting speed of approximately six frames per second. This speed can also be boosted to eight frames per second when using Nikon’s optional Multi-Power Battery Pack MB-D10*. The D300 can sustain continuous high-speed shooting for bursts of up to 100 shots** at full 12.3 megapixel resolution, and it supports next generation UDMA high speed memory cards.

New EXPEED Image Processing System
Similar to the Nikon D3, the D300 features the new EXPEED Image Processing System that is central to the speed and processing power of the camera. EXPEED delivers optimized performance for the camera and its features and ensures high-image quality and high-speed image processing.

Versatile new Picture Control System
The D300 features Nikon’s versatile Picture Control System that allows photographers to fine-tune and adjust fundamental rendering options for their pictures so they can define the exact tone, sharpening, brightness and saturation they prefer. They can then port these settings to any other Nikon camera featuring the Picture Control System, such as the recently introduced D3, so that even when shooting with different cameras, they can get consistent tones for all their pictures.

New 51-point auto focus system
The D300 features Nikon’s Multi-CAM 3500DX auto focus sensor module, with 51 AF points, including 15 cross-type sensors that are located in the center of the frame. These cross-type sensors work with all NIKKOR lenses, including those with apertures as small as f/5.6. The D300’s auto focus system is closely linked with the camera’s innovative Scene Recognition System to deliver greater accuracy in subject detection and focus tracking performance.

Revolutionary new Scene Recognition System
Nikon’s D300 features a revolutionary new Scene Recognition System that greatly enhances the accuracy of, auto exposure, auto white balance detection and auto focus in the camera. The Scene Recognition System uses the camera’s built in 1,005-pixel RGB metering sensor to recognize the subject or scene being photographed and detect any movement. This information helps optimize exposure and white balance settings for the recognized subject and also enables the camera to assign appropriate AF points based on any movement of the subject, ensuring highly precise auto focus tracking performance.

Super-density, 3-inch VGA, TFT LCD monitor with 920,000 dot resolution
The D300 features a gorgeous, ultra high-definition 3-inch LCD monitor with 920,000 dot resolution. The monitor provides a 170-degree viewing angle and is very effective in confirming focus on pictures as well as framing a shot using the camera’s new LiveView modes.

LiveView shooting with two optimized modes
Two new LiveView modes in the D300 enable photographers to compose their shot using the camera’s ultra-high resolution LCD monitor. The Tripod mode is designed for precise focus and accuracy when the camera is on a stable platform and the subject is not moving. In this mode, the camera focuses on the subject using focal-plane contrast and any point on the LCD screen can be selected as the focus point for the picture. The second mode, called Handheld mode, allows photographers to use the camera’s conventional TTL focusing system, with all 51-points and 15 cross-type points available. When using this mode, the camera activates focusing immediately when the shutter button is pressed, to ensure accurate focus.

Active D-Lighting
Nikon’s D-Lighting feature in its digital SLR cameras has proved to be a popular way for photographers to quickly compensate for dark areas of a picture after it is taken, without adversely affecting its highlights. The D300 features a new Active D-Lighting mode that, when enabled, provides remarkable real-time highlight and shadow correction with optimized image contrast. Active D-Lighting produces broader tone reproduction in both shadows and highlights by controlling highlights and exposure compensation while applying localized tone control technology to achieve a more pleasing level of contrast across the entire image. And because the advantages of Active D-Lighting are applied as images are captured, image editing time can be shortened.

Self-cleaning Sensor Unit for efficient dust reduction
The D300 is the first Nikon digital SLR camera to employ a Self-cleaning Sensor Unit. Four different resonance frequencies vibrate the optical low pass filter in front of the image sensor to shake particles free and reduce the presence of dust in the camera.

Large, bright viewfinder that achieves 100% frame coverage
The D300’s new eye-level pentaprism viewfinder offers virtually 100 percent frame coverage and 0.94x magnification for comfortable and precise composition.

Fine-tune adjustment for auto focus
Photographers who need to make small adjustments to correct differences in focusing can do so using the D300’s built-in capability to adjust focus specific to a lens. The camera offers the option of either setting compensation for a specific lens so adjustment in focus is only enabled when that particular lens is used, or the camera can apply a uniform level of compensation for any lens used with the camera. Users can store settings for up to 20 different lenses if they prefer to fine-tune the camera’s focusing based on specific lenses.

Reliable and durable
The D300 incorporates several features designed to ensure the camera performs reliably and consistently under demanding conditions. The camera’s chassis is constructed of highly durable magnesium alloy and the body features numerous seals to protect the camera against dust and moisture. The camera’s shutter mechanism is tested to 150,000 cycles, assuring a long life of consistent performance.

Exclusive Wireless Transmitter WT-4A (optional)
The D300 is compatible with Nikon’s new WT-4A wireless transmitter that provides support for wired LAN (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX) and wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a/b/g,). When using the D300 in LiveView mode, the WT-4A can transmit a remote view from the camera and also support continuous shooting through a wireless or wired connection using Nikon’s Camera Control Pro 2 software (optional).

Multi-Power Battery Pack MB-D10 (optional)
The D300 is also compatible with the optional new Multi-Power Battery Pack MB-D10. This battery pack supports three types of batteries and features sequential power supply with auto-switching to the battery installed inside the camera body. When used, the battery pack can boost the D300’s high-speed continuous shooting to eight frames per second* for up to 100 consecutive shots**.

[Nikon]

It’s not convenient to take a tripod everywhere you go at night in order to take good pictures. This is especially true when you’re trying to keep a low profile in the bushes. So what do you do? Adjust stuff like ISO, exposure and aperture. If you don’t know what those are, the instructions will fill you in:

Aperture: F-stops are different settings allowing different amounts of light to enter your camera. This is different from exposure, in that the aperture is that funky iris/anus looking thing that is a series of connected sheets that either open or contract to make a hole get bigger or smaller.

Doesn’t everything get much simpler when it’s explained in terms of anuses? – Jason Chen

How to take AWESOME night photos WITHOUT a tripod [Instructables]

Image Credit