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?
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.
Hans Nyberg has combined high-res scans of photos taken on the Apollo missions with modern digital image processing techniques to create scrollable, zoomable 360ยบ panoramas of the lunar landing sites. Requires a recent version of QuickTime, and I’m sure they’ll take forever to load on slow internet connections, but it’s well worth it in my opinion.
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
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.
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.)
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.
Looks like it’s for real. Nikon has introduced their D40 entry-level DSLR. I’ve got a couple of friends with D50s, and they’re very nice cameras but I’m not sure I could recommend this one. Most of the features cut from the D50 to make this one aren’t a big deal, but the inability to autofocus with non AF-S lenses is a problem. For me this would mean 3/5 of my lenses would only be operational in manual focus mode, which would be fine, but I doubt the viewfinder on this camera is really up to the task. What’s more problematic for most potential buyers of this camera is that Nikon doesn’t have any primes that are AF-S, except for their high-dollar super-telephoto lenses. So if you buy this body expect to upgrade fairly soon if you get serious about it and start buying more lenses.
On the other hand, it’s possible that this means that Nikon is planning on updating their entire lens lineup with AF-S motors. Which would be good news indeed; AF-S lenses are a lot quicker and quieter than the old screw-drive AF lenses, and it’s obvious from the D40 that taking the motor out of the camera allows them to make it quite a bit smaller…
Looks like Nikon is pushing downmarket with their next (unannounced) DSLR, the D40. The rumoured specs and pictures of the camera are easy enough to find with Google, so I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Based on the rumours I’d be a bit reluctant to recommend this one to people; the inability to use autofocus with anything other than AF-S lenses seems pretty limiting. Still, I’m sure Nikon knows their target market better than I do. It does look interesting if for no other reason than that the pictures make it look absolutely tiny.
