Category Archives: Photography

The American Drive-in Movie Theater project

The American Drive-in Movie Theater project

Photographer Carl Weese is working on a project to document the drive-in theaters scattered across America, using large-format cameras and B&W film. He’s been working on it for years, but is now concerned that the switch to digital movie projection and distribution may spell the final end of most of the theaters he still wants to photograph. So he’s started a Kickstarter project to raise money for a final trip this summer.

I’d recommend checking it out, even if it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you’re interested in funding. It’s a cool project, and you might even recognize some of the theaters he’s shot (I know I did). I’ve got one of his prints already, and it’s gorgeous. Check it out!

DPReview’s “hands-on preview” of the D800

DPReview’s “hands-on preview” of the D800

36 megapixels is a lot. One thing that doesn’t seem to get mentioned much in all the online discussion about megapixels is the fact that increasing your camera’s resolution increases its demands on the rest of the system surrounding it. Some people mention the need for more computing power and hard drive space to deal with the files, but that’s not what I’m talking about, really. I’ve found that when I’ve upgraded to higher resolution cameras (from 6 to 10 and then from 10 to 16MP) that I’ve had to address weaknesses in my lenses, my tripods, and most importantly my own technique in order to really see the increased resolution in my photos.

In short, if you’re looking at one of these but don’t have top-notch glass to put in front of it, you might be better off getting one of the D700s that are due to flood the used market soon, and putting the money you saved toward some nicer lenses. That said, there are plenty of folks who can put all those pixels to good use, and I’m sure they’re thrilled right now. In the right hands, the D800 (especially the “E” version without an antialiasing filter) looks like a killer camera. I’ll be interested to see the sample shots when they start popping up.

Content-Aware Fill

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This has been making the rounds, so I’m hardly the first to post it. It’s still pretty amazing though.


(Click here to watch a larger version on Youtube. It’s worth watching full-screen.)

I’m never quite sure what to think of these whiz-bang features in new versions of Photoshop. They’re great tools for artists, to be sure, but our culture already has a real problem with photography and how it reflects reality, and I’m not sure this kind of thing really helps. What do you think?

High ISOs on Small-Sensor Cameras, or “Why does my digital camera suck so badly in low light?”

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DPReview has posted a typically excellent article explaining the various High-ISO/low-light modes found on compact digital cameras these days. It’s a must-read for anybody who’s looking for a digital point & shoot or who may be in the future.

The executive summary is that camera manufacturer marketing departments are dirty, dirty liars, and that these high-ISO modes either have so much image noise that you wouldn’t want to use them or (more likely) use such aggressive noise reduction that it will destroy any fine detail in your pictures. (Fuji seems to be something of an exception to this, and their cameras seem to be the ones to buy if you want to take pictures without a flash in low light.)

It’s frustrating because there’s a very simple, direct technical solution to the problem, and it’s to stop forcing more and more megapixels into cameras than the sensor technology will support, and focus on providing better pixels rather than just more. But as long as camera buyers keep focusing on that single number when comparing competing models the situation is unlikely to change. Given that the next two posts on DPReview are announcements of 12(!) megapixel compacts from Casio and Panasonic, I’m not optimistic.

Pinnacle Peak

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Here’s another one from my summer on Mt. Rainier. Specifically, this was taken on Pinnacle Peak, though not at the actual peak, because I didn’t want to die that day. I was climbing along a rocky ridge as a bank of clouds moved in, and I decided that rather than risk falling off the peak somewhere in the fog ahead, I would just take a picture of this tree and head back down. It’s got fog, it’s got rocks, and it’s got a dead tree, which sound to me like three ingredients for a decent black and white photo.

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones

I dug this one up because I needed something to hang in the hallway with my black and white shot of Mt. Rainier, and this one didn’t have much color in it to begin with. Of course, shocking as it is, the Walmart photo printers don’t quite give you what you want, so I’m going to have to play with it some more and try again.

Hold on to that camera strap

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If you’ve never dropped and lost a lens cap, lens hood, eyepiece, or something worse, you’re probably not out there taking enough pictures. There are some places though where you really don’t want to drop your camera, like, say, orbiting the Earth. Don’t think they’ll be getting that one back.

On that topic, here’re a couple (rather large) pictures of the camera gear aboard the ISS. Pretty cool stuff. Although I’m sure that for as much as that stuff certainly cost, it was far more expensive to launch it all into space…

(Linkage shamelessly pilfered from the excellent Strobist blog. If you’re at all interested in photography, that site should be in your bookmarks.)

CS3

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Wow. Adobe has done the unthinkable and released a beta for the next release of Photoshop. If you’ve got a CS2 license I’d highly recommend going over to the Adobe Labs and signing up for an account and downloading the beta. You’ll have to enter your CS2 serial number on the site to enable the beta to work past two days, but it’s worth it.

I’m hardly a Photoshop guru, but I’ve never let that stop me from commenting on this stuff before… The new palette docks are a nice improvement in the interface, or at least they would be if I could figure out how to move them over to my second monitor. The real killer feature for photographers (at least that I’ve seen) is the smart objects/smart filters stuff though. Coupled with adjustment layers this means that most photographic manipulations can be done non-destructively, i.e. you can go back and make changes to the filters even after you’ve applied them, which is pretty cool. Bridge has seen some nice improvements too; it’s actually a program I can see using to manage my photos now.

Any rate, go download it and check it out. Even if you’re not a CS2 user it’s probably worth playing around with for the couple of days before it expires.