Shoot First, then Ask Questions

There is a new prototype camera on the market that I would not mind laying my hands on. Apparently, the camera allows a picture’s focus to be adjusted after it is taken: NYT link.

Before I read the NYT article in full, I was skeptical about it, thinking that the focus adjustment will be a photo post-processing trick. But it seems that it's not the case, and that the camera has a special sensor "microlens array", which captures more light data from many more angles than a conventional camera.

It will be interesting to see how this camera performs in real life and if it will indeed be the next breakthrough in digital camera technology.

Thoughts on Photography

This post is dedicated to people who think that the major factor determining quality of photos is a camera.

Here I provide a proof that that's not the case by comparing two pictures taken by the same camera, of more-or-less the same subject, within seconds of each other. The first photo below was taken by the writer of this post (me), the second by my husband. To make it clear, I do not think that the photo that I took is good (for one, the man on the right has his eyes closed). The only point I'm trying to make is that the photos can be vastly different even if the circumstances and camera settings are the same.

Here is a photo I took (low light conditions, no flash, no post-production improvements):


And this is a photo that Anil took a minute later (with exactly the same camera settings):


Here is Anil's photo processed in iPhoto (it looks better now, but the colors still don't look like they should and half of the photo space is wasted):


So please do not ask me anymore what kind of camera I use. Some of the best photos I took were taken with a compact point-and-shoot camera (and some of the worst with the pro-DSLR camera...)

Nikon D40 sensor cleaning

After more than a year of heavy and careless usage, dust speckles found their way to the sensor of my beloved Nikon D40. I discovered that unfortunate fact during my recent road trip, while visiting Arches NP. I attempted to solve the problem at the spot, and that made the whole situation even worse. I started off with one small dust speckle in the upper right corner of my photos, and I finished with two pronounced speckles located more or less in the center of all the photos. Removing them from my pictures was a major effort, and in some cases (e.g. when they happened to show up on somebody's face or on the horizon lane) it was impossible to remove them without ruining the photo.

Do not repeat my mistake and do not attempt to clean your camera if you do not know how to do it and if you do not have appropriate equipment with you! I definitely learned from my mistake.

After coming back home, I googled "DSLR/Nikon D40 sensor cleaning", read hundreds articles and watched several videos on the subject, bought all necessary equipment to do the job, and finally, today, I cleaned the sensor on my camera. It went smoother than I had expected, and I am very happy to report that my camera is fully functional again. So you can expect thousand of new photos soon :)

i love Nikon :)

This is simply mind-blowing. Nikon released a new SLR camera (D90) that can record video!

If I would be buying a camera today, Nikon D90 would undoubtfully be my first (and only) choice.

Nikon D40 vs Casio Exilim V8

Photos taken from South-West corner of Dolores Park at three different magnifications:

Casio Exilim V8 "landscape"- best scene mode 1x magnification:


Casio Exilim V8 "landscape"- best scene mode 3x magnification:


Casio Exilim V8 "landscape"- best scene mode 7x magnification:


Nikon D40 with 18-55mm lens, at 18mm:


Nikon D40 with 18-55mm lens, at 55mm:


Nikon D40 with 55-200mm lens, at 200mm:

Casio Exilim series

That is something truly impressive - the newest Casio Exilim F1 can take 60 (SIXTY) photos per second!!! My old Casio Exilim Z750 could take one photo per second (as any other compact digital camera that you own), my beloved Nikon D40 can take 2.5 photos per second and this new Casio Exilim F1 can take 60!!! Unbelievable.

I would say that if you often find yourself taking pictures of people doing sports that's the camera you want. It costs only around 1000$ and that sounds as excellent QPR to me.

I've been very pleased with the photo quality of Casio Exilim Z750 (e.g. all my Africa photos that are posted here where taken with that camera), so I have strong reasons to believe that Casio can make excellent "amateur"-type of cameras. In fact, I was so happy with my old Exilim that when it broke, I decided to replace it with the newer model of Exilim. This time I decided to buy Casio Exilim V8. I thought that it is a perfect choice for me as two major reasons why I would need a compact camera at all are: (1) taking movies; (2) taking photos underwater. (My Nikon D40 does not take movies and price of underwater housing for it is simply ridiculous - $1350!).

Casio Exilim V8 has 7x optical zoom, no protruding lens and vibration reduction. Moreover, it offers good quality video with stereo sound and possibility of zooming in and out (by 7x) during taking of the movie. Not less important to me was also reasonable price of its underwater housing. I have not tested yet this set up during scuba diving, but as soon as I will, I will report back here how well it performs.

Apple - the first (and hopefully last) major dissapointment

I bought a new MacBook several weeks ago and for most of this time I was very happy with it. But then, around a week ago, my keyboard stopped working. Or to be more accurate it started choosing when it felt like working and when it didn't. Today I finally found time to go to Apple store to have it fixed and I got shocked by the response of a tech guy there. He told me that he could not help me, that it was not a hardware, but a software (?!?) problem, that Apple was aware of it and that they were working on the solution! It exceeds my imagination how it is possible to screw up keyboard drivers or whatever else the problem is.
A quick google search revealed that similar problem to mine have many other Mac users, and that this problem seems to be specific to Leopard (the newest Mac OS): link 1, link 2. So until Apple kindly solves the problem, I have to either keep on using an external keyboard (what a lovely perspective to carry around with me the keyboard that is bigger than my laptop) or install back the previous operating system.
But the most I am disappointed with Apple because of it's negative campaign against Vista. No doubt that Vista sucks, but still if you claim that you are so much better than your opponent, that puts some responsibility on your shoulders, e.g. make your customers' laptops usable by providing them with working keyboard drivers!

Photo Booth

aka Attack of Clones aka La donna e mobile aka why I prefer to waste time instead of sleeping (or packing)

hiking/biking and photography

For the moment, I have two lenses for my camera: 18-55 and 55-200mm. I was considering buying just a camera body and one 18-200mm lens, but I had problems finding a place that would sell just a body of Nikon D40 - it always comes "in kit" with a lens (usually 18-55, occasionally 18-135). Moreover, 18-200mm lens is very expensive and its demand significantly exceeds supply, which means that after you place your order you have to wait for it 1-3 months. That's why I decided to go for two-lens solution.
Now I kind of regret it. I lost few good shots (of wild animals) because I did not have my telelens handy enough or I was too slow in changing it. Also during hiking carrying two lenses with you in the way that you could easily access both of them is really tricky and not very practical.
I learned my lesson: next time I go hiking I will only take the 18-55 lens with me. I will only carry both lenses with me when I will go somewhere with a specific aim of taking pictures. The same will apply to other lenses that I will potentially buy in the future (I decided that I will only buy a wide-angle or macro lens when the quality of my photos with the current camera/lens set up will justify further investment in photography).

Today I went biking with my camera, and finally having a telelens with me paid off. I had time to exchange the lenses and take this picture of (1) Palace of Fine Arts in the foreground, (2) Alcatraz in the center and (3) the coastline in the background:


The fog is slowly approaching:


Golden Gate Bridge from the west:


Golden Gate Bridge from the east:

ultimate happiness

Already yesterday Lev concluded that my unjustified happiness springing from the fact that I started working hard in the lab, can be only explained by me entering the maniac phase of the bipolar disorder. I wonder what he would say today seeing me running around the lab, laughing, jumping and taking pictures of everything and everybody WITH MY NEWLY ARRIVED NIKON D40!!! It's amazing that such a small thing can make somebody so happy...
So far I only got 18-55 and 55-200 Zoom Lenses and I hope that I will not regret not having wide angle zoom lens during my hike in Sierra Nevada next week. But I already tested VR (vibration reduction) system of my 55-200 lens and I have to admit that it works amazingly well - basically removing need of carrying a tripod with you!
The stupid mistake that I made was not ordering immediately the second battery. I guess I should still buy it somewhere before I go for my week long hike.
On this note I wanted to thank everybody who helped me decide which camera I should buy, especially Lars, who provided me with the most comprehensive information about Nikon D40. Actually, I am going to add his comments to my previous post about the camera, in case anybody else would also find them useful.

one laptop per child

It's not perfect, but it is ingenious: link

iCrazy

I am so happy that somebody said that aloud: see BBC article about the iPhone phenomenon.
With all my love for Apple and Apple products I am still deeply convinced that the vast majority of people who bought iPhone within the very few first days that it is on the market have serious psychological problems. They bought fancy toy to compensate for the lack of love from the side of their parents, draw more attention from friends or even strangers, and in a few days they will be surprised to find out that iPhone is not Prozac and in long term it will not help them solve their life problems. Guys, grow up. Or seek medical help.

Background info for friends in Europe not aware of the iPhone phenomenon in the US:
iPhone is a fancy phone that also has integrated iPod and camera (but as you know vast majority of all other phones on the market can also take photos and play music). The special thing about iPhone is that it is beautiful and elegant (as all Apple products are) and it makes browsing the internet easy - it actually has Safari that works in exactly the same way as on your computer (that is great of course!)
The problem is that you have to buy it for 500-600$ and you can use it only in one network (AT&T), which actually has the worse performance of all networks that you can have in the US. Moreover, you have to sign up for a 2 year contract and during this time pay monthly few of at least 60$...
And to buy this thing people actually queued in front of Apple and AT&T shops. Some of them queued for more than a day! Can you imagine? And all that without ever personally seeing the phone or keeping it in their hands. How insane is that?
When iPhone went on sale I was in Santa Monica and I just happened to pass next to the Apple shop. I was surprised to see around 1000 people queuing there, several TV-cameras, people taking pictures of other people who just bought their iPhone and clapping their hands and cheering for them... Before I realized that it was Apple store, I actually thought that there must be somebody famous there (it was LA in the end...). And yes, there were, the first iPhone owners enjoying their 5 minutes of fame...

question to photographers

Inspired by a NYT article reviewing digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras and encouraged by they low prices I finally made a choice which camera I want to buy.
My first choice is Nikon D40 (second being Canon EOS D400). Here is nice comparison between Nikon D200, D80, D70, D50, D40, Canon 5D and XTi cameras).

The major shortcoming of Nikon D40 is that it does not have automatic sensor cleaning system... I am not really sure how big issue is that? All old style cameras also did not have it and somehow people were able to manage that problem.

Nikon D40 comes with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens and I plan to additionally buy a tele-lens
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR Zoom Nikkor, as well as a wide angle lens Nikon 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor.
The problem is that the latter lens costs 940$... So I was wondering if any of you maybe has Tokina equivalent of this lens (or any experience with Tokina lenses in general) as I am tempted to buy it as it costs only half what Nikon lens does. Here is comparison
between those two lenses.

EDIT (25th of July 2007) - Here is what Lars wrote to me in reply to this post:

About the camera: Actually, we own a D40 since 3 weeks now and are very satisfied with it. We bought it with only the 18-55mm lens in the kit, as I have a couple of other Nikon lenses already (24mm f/2.8; 50mm f/1.8; 105mm f/2.8; 300mm f/4). So for me the decision pro Nikon (vs. Canon) was a clear cut.

Since you don't have any SLR lenses at all, you are free to choose - but I would still go for Nikon (though Canon would be fine too). Your decision will rather be, whether to get a new D40 or a used D50! The former is newer and mostly better than the latter, but has one clear disadvantage: The lenses. Whereas on the D50 basically all modern lenses (Nikon, Tokina, Tamron, Sigma) work just fine, with the D40 you are bound to the VERY modern lenses, which offer a ultrasonic drive (aka SilentWave) for autofocus. Currently there are only some Nikon and Sigma lenses offering this, but in the future there will definately be other from Tokina and Tamron as well. With other words, on the D40, my lenses which I had before (all belong to the "D" series), do work on the D40, as they measure the light (exposure, metering) and I can use them to take pictures with manually turning the focus ring, they just DO NOT autofocus! Julie doesn't like that, so she is only using the original 18-55mm lens. This is a nice lens, covering a reasonable range of zoom for everyday use, which will fully satisfy you most of the times. Noteworthy, since the D40 has a lens-magnification factor of 1.5 the 18-55mm lens corresponds to a 28-80mm lens by the known standard, as I said, enough for most daily situations. However, if you want to shoot wildlife animals etc, you definately want a more tele-lens: so the 55-200mm, corresponding to an 80-350mm lens is what you want! Buy it by all means and do so with the camera in one of these SUPERkits having both these lenses. An interesting alternative, would be the image-stabilized new tele lenes (their VR series) from Nikon, eg the 300mm f/2.8, designed for digiSLRs -they are really good, but pricey and heavy. I don't believe you need them, unless you go on safari again - but then you could still rent one...

The "automatic sensor cleaning system" is no issue at all (for me), if you only pay a bit attention while changing lenses. Obviously avoid long opening periods of the camera with no lens in front, and any dust! The 6M pixels will be plenty, no need to spend more money for the 10M pixels D40x.

About the other lenses, I don't think you need a fisheye nor a macro at this moment. Of course you can always get it later if you feel you are missing it! Fisheye effects you can do on any picture with photoshop, and in order to do really nice macro pictures you need to invest and carry around! a tripod... About the wide-angle: It is nice to have one, but then 28mm is not soo bad. If you need something wider, keep in mind, it is expensive and heavy, as these lenses contain a lot of glas... Make sure you get one with ultrasonic drive (aka SilentWave) if you want to autofocus (although for wide angle manual works very good and easy - tele is more of a problem).

I do believe you should buy a UV filter for both lenses for protective reasons! And pouches for camera and the lenses...

I hope you find this useful - let me know, for what you go. And, don't by anywhere else than online. Trusted stores I know are, Adorama and B&H photo - you will need to juice and use your credit card though...

keepon dancing with a robot?

keepon- isn't he cute?


Infanoid project