Simply Better Photos

Picture of the week 12.09

2012-02-26T21:29:00.000+01:00

Sun shining through the columns.

Using the shadow lines going into the left bottom corner of the frame. Lens stopped down for making the sun shine!

How to take silhouette pictures

2012-02-19T23:30:00.002+01:00

Silhouette pictures can be a fun way to make photos more interesting. Especially in low light, you can convey a strong sense of emotion or mystery by taking a silhouette picture.

All you need to take a silhouette picture is that the light is coming almost directly at you, and that your subject is not illuminated from your direction. Oh, and don't forget to turn your flash off. Sometimes, if the contrast is really high, you will end up with almost a black and white picture, like the example below.

Silhouette of a person exiting a tunnel

Other times though, you can end up with very nicely illuminated pictures, if the light source is also colorful, like the picture below. I think this kind of slightly colorful background can really add to a silhouette picture.

Silhouettes of people in front of an illuminated fountain

Here is another example, taken at sunset. As you can see, it is pretty late and the sun is almost completely gone, but you get that orange glow on the end of the jetty and the birds standing there. Also, a slight dark blue is still visible on the sea and the waves, which I also quite like.

Silhouette birds on a jetty at sunset

One thing that you should definitely take care about is that the outline of the subjects are relatively clean. In other words, if you take a silhouette picture of a really complex scene, the resulting outline might not be recognizable anymore. So you should stick to subjects that will be recognized by the outline alone.

Picture of the week 12.08

2012-02-18T21:21:00.000+01:00

Bird soaring in front of sunset.

Caught somewhat by luck as the bird suddenly swooped in closer to the ship than it had flown before. The bird and the water in the opposite corners suggests more vertical distance. The tilted horizon kind of emphasizes for me the flying feeling from the bird.

Photography and the camera upgrade itch

2012-02-14T02:00:00.000+01:00

A lot of amateur photographers are afflicted with the “upgrade itch”.

This is the case of thinking that your camera is holding you back from taking beautiful photos.

“If only my camera had less noise at 1600 ISO.”

“If it had a better autofocus system, I wouldn’t want to upgrade”

Is that really the case?

Of course, the camera manufacturers need people to buy new cameras as often as possible, so that they make money. Therefore they try to improve the cameras each generation to be enticing upgrades from the old ones, to scratch this upgrade itch.

The truth is however, for most amateur photographers, the camera is often not the limiting factor. You can make a beautiful photo that is technically flawed, which is no bad thing. Much worse than that is to make a technically perfect photo that is completely uninteresting.

You see, the camera accomplishes only the technical part of the photo, exposure, focus, white balance. The more important part, composition, is up to you. You can have the best camera in the world but if you don’t have the imagination to put something interesting in front of the lens, it’s worthless.

There are basically two things a user desires with an upgrade.

The first is making the job of taking a photo easier. This could be by having a faster lens, a better autofocus system, or faster continuous shooting. For specific situations, these needs can easily be justified. If you shoot often in low light, then having a faster lens is very useful. If you like to shoot sports or something else that moves fast, having a good autofocus system and fast continuous shooting speed is essential. However, if you are just a casual shooter looking to upgrade, none of these things will make you a better photographer.

The second desire is to have better images from the camera. A better camera can give you better colours, more dynamic range and so on. The important thing to figure out is, if it matters to you at the moment.
Try to find the weakest link in the chain: If you are not satisfied with your photos, go through your best photos from the last week or month, and try to think about the following: If the technical quality of the photo was perfect, would this picture be great? Is the composition and everything else great apart from whatever the camera’s fault is?

If the answer is yes, then you are obviously happy with your photos and a better camera will work wonders.

However, let’s be honest, for most of us, the answer is no. We need to practice shooting a lot more and work first of all on composition. The camera’s fault, if any rarely hold us off.

Happy shooting!

Compact camera buying guide

2012-02-13T23:04:00.002+01:00

There is no shortage of compact cameras on the market, in fact the shelves are packed with endless choices at every price point. But how can you find the best compact camera for you?

Well, this is a simple guide on what to look for in a camera.

If you are just looking for a good compact camera, just go through this simple list:

Focal length:

This is basically the field of view of the lens. It’s usually specified in the 35mm equivalent focal lengths, such as the popular 35-105mm that a lot of compact cameras have. The smaller the number the wider the angle of view is.

Look for something with a real wide angle, this means ideally 28mm. Up to 35mm as the widest is still ok, but do not consider any models starting at 38mm and higher, they will be frustrating to use. The best compact cameras may also go down to 26 or even 24mm, this can be quite useful.

Image stabilisation:

This is a useful feature that compensates for camera shake and reduces the likelihood of blurry photos. It is especially important if you take a lot of pictures in low light situations.

This is a good feature to have, if you can find it in your price range. If you are mostly shooting out in the sun, don’t worry about it. Many camera manufacturers also somewhat mislead consumers by claiming high ISO’s as a type of image stabilisation. Be sure to check that the camera you plan on buying has actual physical image stabilisation.

Image quality:

It is almost impossible to predict the image quality of a camera based on the specifications these days. But there is one easy test you can do to check this:

I have found the following rough test to judge the quality works for a great many cameras: Take a picture, and display it on the screen. Zoom in until 1/16th of the picture is on the screen. This means the little box that shows you where your zoomed in part is should be 1/4 the height and width of the frame, roughly. Now, if the picture looks good at this zoom level, the camera is probably good enough. If it looks all smudgy, move on. While this is an utterly and completely un-scientific test, surprisingly, it works for a lot of cameras.

If you have narrowed your search down to only 2-3 cameras, simply try them out. If you already own an SD-card, this is much easier. When you are trying out the camera in the shop, simply stick your card in the card slot. Take a few pictures, take your card out and make your way to the photo printing machines. You know the ones, which develop and print the selected pictures in 2 minutes? Print out 3-4 pictures of the size you are likely to use, and have a good look. Most shops are not really well lit, so this is quite a good test for a compact camera. Chances are, if you like these pictures, you will be happy with the camera. This is quite a cheap way to test your choice before actually buying the camera.

Screen size and resolution:

Most cameras now have decent sized screens, 2.5 inches and bigger. However, the size alone is not the only important thing, the resolution is important as well. A large, low resolution screen will look blocky, so don’t be fooled by the screen size alone. Also, some of the cheaper screens have quite poor brightness or viewing angles, so if the screen is important to you, make sure to actually play with the camera and don’t buy just based on the specifications.

Megapixels:

This is the amount of pixels in the sensor of the camera, and thus determines the output size of the pictures.
Unless you will be printing huge posters, don’t worry about it. Any camera on the market today has enough pixels to print easily up to 30×40cm’s.

If what you want is: “I just need a good compact camera”, look for the following:

Focal Length: starting at 28mm or less
Image Stabilisation: Yes, please
Image Quality: Quick check
Screen size and resolution: Quick check
Megapixels: Doesn’t matter

So, now you know what to look for in a camera and here is to hoping this guide helps you in making a decision!

Feel free to forward or share this guide if you found it useful!

Picture of the week 12.07

2012-02-12T21:20:00.000+01:00

Caught fish lying on cutting board.

Focus on the fish close to the camera so the "monsters" in the background with the knives are blurred. Tight framing to be up, close and personal with the fish and barely have a person in the shot.

Different types of camera lenses explained

2012-02-08T22:31:00.002+01:00

Wide, prime, fast, macro, fish-eye, slow, long, zoom, telephoto...

What do all these mean anway?

Here are some simple definitions:

A wide lens is a lens which has a short focal length. This means it has a wide angle of view, making it suitable for tight spaces or for getting lots of things in the frame. Wide lenses have focal lengths below about 35mm.

A normal lens is a lens which approximates the human eye in terms of angle of view and perception, hence the 'normal'. It is usually considered to be in the focal length range from 35 to 70mm.

A telephoto (or tele for short) lens has a long focal length. It has a narrow angle of view and is useful for shooting things that are far away or bringing things closer in to fill the frame. They have focal lengths starting from 70mm.

Zoom lenses are lenses that have a variable focal length. For example, a classic range for beginner zooms was 35-70mm. This kind of lens usually has a zoom barrel which you can rotate to change the focal length. Zoom lenses usually have a smaller maximum aperture, thus are usually 'slow' lenses.

A prime lens is the opposite and is fixed to one focal length only. A classic example is the 50mm prime, which is also close to our own eye in terms of focal length. Primes usually have high maximum aperture, thus are usually 'fast' lenses.

Fast lenses let in lots of light, and may have aperture numbers anywhere from f1.4 to f2.8. Most prime lenses fall in this category but the more expensive zooms can also be quite fast.

Slow lenses let less light in, and can have maximum apertures anywhere between f5.6 and f8. They are almost always zoom lenses.

Macro lenses can have quite different focal lengths but they always have short minimum focus distances. That means they can focus on objects that are very close and get magnificent close-up shots.

Fish eye lenses have a field of view which is distorted and gives more than 180 degrees of view.

Picture of the week 12.06

2012-02-01T22:30:00.000+01:00

Cloud shaped like a plane.

Subject is everything here, just zoom in tight enough to not have any large distractions in the frame.

Picture of the week 12.05

2012-01-27T01:22:00.000+01:00

Birds flapping over the small canal.

Set the shutter speed low enough for the flapping to be not frozen, 1/6s in this case.

Blown highlights

2012-01-19T01:05:00.001+01:00

Have you ever been annoyed with this in one of your pictures?

Blown highlights in the cloudy sky.

This is a common problem in digital photography where either the selected exposure or the camera sensor itself will push whole regions of the picture into complete white. This is why it is called blown highlights, as the highlights, i.e. the light parts of the picture, become totally white, hence "blown".

The question is, why does this happen and how can you prevent it?

This can happen because of two main reasons:

Over-exposure

If the picture is overexposed, you will see this effect. That means, if you let the sensor have much more light for a scene than is necessary, than it will interpret a light blue as completely white. This is because the sensor thinks the color is much brighter because of the over exposure. Generally, the rest of the scene will also look very washed out. Correcting this is quite easy, just correct your exposure compensation down a little bit. This will make the whole picture a bit darker and hence get the lighter colors to show instead of pure white. Here is an over exposed shot and a corrected one:

Lack of dynamic range

Dynamic range is used to describe the range of darkness and brightness that a sensor can detect.It is usually referred to in "stops". Think of it as a doubling of light intensity with each stop. The problem goes something like this. If a sensor with 7 stops of dynamic range is looking at a scene with 9 or 10 stops of range, the following happens. It cannot recognize all of the different steps and will in-effect truncate.
Make a picture of steps of range in powerpoint, and another range for the sensor.
If the sensor has a smaller dynamic range, it cannot distinguish the very light colors from the very very light colors, and thinks that it is all solid white. You then end up with the ugly complete white sky like the picture above. This is called blown highlights and occurs with small sensors. Larger sensors are much more likely to preserve the highlights, ending up with much nicer skies, as a result of their greater dynamic range.

Picture of the week 12.04

2012-01-18T23:37:00.000+01:00

Defiant piece of grass in the middle of the road

Find a nice lump of grass with a clear stretch of road ahead. Lie on your tummy. Make sure the road is really empty, for personal safety! Compose the frame tight enough to avoid getting anything else in the frame that might compete for attention.

Picture of the week 12.03

2012-01-12T22:02:00.000+01:00

Colorful spinning carnival ride. Altstadt, Dusseldorf.

The colors made this an obvious choice. Then it was simply a matter of finding the right shutter speed to get the desired amount of motion blur.

Picture of the week 12.02

2012-01-08T21:12:00.000+01:00

Birds on a frozen lake.

Taken with a Sony H-1 at maximum zoom, pretty good quality from such a small sensor.

Quick Take: Tamron 18-270 Lens

2012-01-06T01:40:00.003+01:00

I had the chance to get my hands (briefly) on the Tamron 18-270. This was a lens I was very interested in, with the gigantic zoom range of course being the main attraction.

Being a Nikon D40 owner, one of my worries was the weight and size of the thing. As it turns out, this is not much of a problem. Even though it is a large lens, it is not especially heavy and balanced nicely on the D40. In fact, it was more balanced than Nikon’s own 18-200mm, less front heavy, I think.

The Vibration Compensation mechanism, as Tamron calls it, worked very well in my very unscientific testing. The only real downside is the noise. Every time you half press the shutter there is an annoying click clack followed by a buzzing. And the reverse when you let go of the shutter. That is the mechanism activating and deactivating, and it sounds really tinny and kind of cheap.

The zoom ring has a weird feel, it starts off really easy and firms up quite a bit toward the middle and then gets easy again on the way to 270mm. I guess this is one of those things that you get used to after a while, but it just feels not very well put together. Speaking of which, the copy I had would intermittently decide not to activate the autofocus on switching from manual to autofocus. Trying a bunch of more times got it working.

The image quality was fine except for at 270mm, where the lens was very inconsistent. I can’t really tell if that was a lens sharpness or a focusing issue.

Check out these two photos at 270mm. The first one is quite sharp, whereas the second one is almost blurry all over. They were both taken at 270mm f6.3.

Speaking of which, this lens really has some issues with focusing. First of all, when there is relatively little light, the autofocus really struggles mightily. Sometimes it will completely give up and even refuse to try to find focus. Even in good light, I had some trouble where it would not find focus on the object under my focus point but something close to it.

Yes, this lens makes any camera a bit bulky and you can buy “big-zoom” compact cameras that cover a similar range for cheaper. Yes, the build quality and autofocus could and should be better. But then again, you get a 27-405mm range on a DSLR with just one lens.

I was really interested in getting this lens, but it hasn’t quite won me over. The autofocus issues and the overall feeling of cheapness is enough to put me off, unfortunately.

But it might have a second chance: Tamron has announced a new version of this lens, called the Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. It is supposed to have a better autofocus and vibration reduction system. In addition, it is supposed to be quite a bit smaller and also ~100 grams lighter as well. The bad news: Price is quite a lot higher than the old one. But if it addresses the issues of the original, it could well be worth the money…

Nikon 18-105mm VR Lens

2012-01-06T01:40:00.002+01:00

I’ve been using the Nikkor 18-105mm VR as a walkaround lens for my Nikon D40 for a couple of months.

I was looking for a lens that I could keep on my camera all day long, with a 28mm equivalent wide angle and a bit of tele, and most importantly: vibration reduction. Basically, I wanted the equivalent lens on the D40 that I had previously on my compact big zoom camera.

My first thought was to save up and get the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens. That lens has a really useful focal length range and is quite expensive. Unfortunately, when I tried it on my D40 at a camera shop, I found that it was very front heavy on the D40. It threw the balance of the camera completely off.

Then I started looking at the 18-55 VR and 18-105 VR. The 18-105 was only a bit more expensive than the 18-55 VR. Trying it out at the camera shop, the size and weight was a good match for the Nikon D40. Definitely much more substantial than the kit lens, but nicely balanced. The zoom range gives the equivalent of 27mm to 157mm. In the time that I was looking for the new lens, I spent a lot of time with the 18-55 (non-VR) kit lens and found that I did not miss the tele end that much. The reduced tele compared to the 18-200 was obvious, but with the affordable price, I was sold.

Coming from the kit lens to the 18-105 VR, the VR makes itself immediately obvious. In low light, it feels like it makes a difference of about 2 stops. But even in good light, the VR lets you take sharp photos even if you are sloppy or rushed with your handholding. Yes, in good light you can have as good or better photos with the kit lens, but it takes much more effort in low light.

I find the focal length of the lens very useful. Obviously, I would like longer reach, but I am not willing to carry around a much heavier lens to get it. After all, I can always crop to get the same image (albeit with less megapixels).

One of the disadvantages of this lens is the heavy barrel distortion at the wide end. It can sometimes be quite distracting. It has much more noticeable distortion than the kit lens.

A minor niggle is that it lacks a focus distance scale. I think it is quite useful to have one, also because the focus ring takes quite a lot of turning to change the focus distance.

Another problem is that it looks worse than the kit lens at the wide end. I do not care much about lens sharpness, and I don’t go looking for lens flaws in my photos. But looking at the photos from the kit lens and this one, the ones from the kit lens sometimes are noticeably better.

But the biggest problem with this lens is the minimum focus distance of 45cm. Sometimes it will fail to focus on objects that you think are perfectly ok to shoot because they are only 40cm away. Very frustrating. In fact, the kit lens can focus down to 28cm, which is much better.

Despite its shortcomings, I am quite happy with the Nikkor 18-105mm VR. If you are looking for an affordable walkaround lens for your DX Nikon camera, the Nikkor 18-105mm VR is a good choice with a few drawbacks.

The good:
- Very useful zoom range
- Nice size and weight, good companion for the D40
- Vibration reduction
- Only a little bit more expensive than the 18-55mm VR for double the reach

The bad:
- Heavy barrel distortion at the wide end
- Slightly softer at the wide end than the D40 kit lens, sometimes noticeable
- No focus distance scale

The ugly:
- The minimum focus distance of 45cm

Nikon SB-400 Flash Review

2012-01-06T01:40:00.001+01:00

I recently bought the Nikon SB-400 flash for my Nikon D40.

To be honest, I hate flash. I hate the cold look, the bright foreground, dark background and everything else. I hate the towering look of the classic standalone flashes, they look too big and too unnecessary, it looks like I am trying to look like a photojournalist.

As you can guess, I always try to get by without flash. If that means setting ISO 800 or 1600, so be it. But that was not always enough indoors to stop the motion and I was not wholly satisfied with the social photos indoors.

Looking around on the internet I saw the SB-400 mentioned quite a few times for its compact size and ease of use. Since I never intend to mess around with flash settings or something, this was immediately appealing.

Also appealing was the size and look of the thing, very compact and not so tall. Still, nice gadget and all, I did not see a point in getting it until I learned that it can do bounce flash. This is mainly for indoor shooting where you point the flash head upwards and bounce the light off the ceiling. It produces much softer and more natural light than a normal flash, or so I read. Since I want the flash for indoor social shots, that swung it for me and I ended up getting one.

First impressions:

The flash itself is quite small and powered by two AA batteries. The head part of the flash can rotate up to 90 degrees upwards for bounce flash. The whole thing looks quite at home on top of the D40. It has no controls other than an on/off switch and a slider to lock it on the flash shoe.

So, how well does it work?

Well, that rather depends:

When you have the head pointing forward (normal flash), it works not much better than the built in flash. Yes, it is more powerful but so what? I bought this thing for indoor shooting. One of the advantages is that it recycles much faster than the built in flash. I have not done any measurements but it feels like about twice to three times as fast. The problem is, you still get the weird flash look.

However, when you point the head towards the ceiling, it is a whole different story. The whole flash look is gone, and everything looks so much better. Much softer and more natural light, you cannot really tell they were shot with flash. And you get photos you actually want to keep! With flash! Amazing!

Another great thing is the simplicity. You only ever have to turn the thing on after attaching it to the camera. That is it! I don’t understand at all how the metering works, with direct flash and bounce flash and everything, but it just does. What I mean is, when you bounce the flash, depending on how far away the ceiling is you will get much less light on your subject than you would with a direct flash. I expected to fiddle with that every time to get a good exposure, but no, it just works; and works unbelievable well every time.

If you want a Nikon flash for taking pictures indoors, get the SB-400, you won’t be disappointed.

Read about the Nikon D40.

Nikon 18-55 VR compared to Nikon 18-105 VR

2012-01-06T01:40:00.000+01:00

Over the past 2 years, I've had the chance to use and compare these two lenses on my Nikon D40. On the way, I learned a great many things, so I’ll start off with the story.

3 years ago, after buying my Nikon D40, I was delighted at the image quality of the camera and at the same time, a bit frustrated with the standard kit lens, the 18-55mm G-ED II.

My previous camera was a Sony H-1, a big-zoom compact. The image quality was obviously quite poor compared to any DSLR, but the large zoom range, the vibration reduction system and the DSLR like click and scroll control were brilliant.

The kit lens at first frustrated me mostly because of the missing vibration reduction. I had grown so used to it that it felt at first very hard to take sharp pictures. This had mostly to do with the fact that I had gotten sloppy handholding. The limited focal length range was also somewhat hard to get used to. On the plus side, the kit lens was very light and made the D40 very easy to handle. I found the pictures I made with it to be excellent in good light and ok in low light. A very good kit lens, but a shame that it has no VR.

The focal length limitation I could easily live with, but the lack of vibration reduction not so much. Call me lazy, I know, but it makes it much easier to have sharp photos, even in low light. So I started looking at the options:

The Nikon 18-200mm VR

I had at first decided on this ultimate travel zoom, thinking that while it is expensive, this would be the only lens I would ever need. Things were not so rosy however, when I went to try it at the camera shop. While the size seems to be ok on paper, this lens is very front heavy and it feels completely unbalanced on the D40. Using the camera one handed with this lens on it is out of the question, at least for me. With the 18-200mm out of the running, it was time to look at the alternatives.

The Nikon 18-55mm VR

The great thing about the 18-55 VR is the size and weight. It is fractionally larger and heavier than the 18-55 kit lens but just barely enough to feel the extra weight. Since the focal length is the same as the kit lens, this felt like a bad deal to me. Of course, the fact that the normal retail price is ridiculously high makes it a doubly bad deal. I thought it would be silly to spend so much money just to have vibration reduction.

The Nikon 18-105mm VR

This lens is in an interesting middle ground. Price wise, it is much closer to the 18-55 VR than the 18-200 VR. In terms of zoom range, it lies right between them. I found this to be an attractive alternative, it was affordable, doubled the zoom range of my kit lens, and had vibration reduction. After trying it on my D40, I found the size and weight much more reasonable than the 18-200VR. Yes, it is larger and heavier than the kit lens, but not dramatically so. One handed operation is a bit trickier, but still ok.

At the beginning, I was really happy with the extended zoom range and the vibration reduction. After some months though, some of the shortcomings became obvious.

I’ll start with the most frustrating: The minimum focus distance is far too long on this lens. Sometimes, when you want to take a close up of something, you’ll get near it and the lens will simply refuse to focus because you are too close to your subject. This happens so often that it gets really annoying after a while.
Another niggle: The focus ring has no feel and too much travel. Although you can override the focus at any time, you can’t easily tell in which direction you are shifting the focus because the travel is far too long. Since there is no distance scale or anything, I can’t ever really tell what I am doing. Well, I know I am not the best photographer in the world, yes, but I manage to shoot with manual focus cameras and that works out fine. All of this caused me to practically not ever attempt to adjust the focus manually. Which kind of takes some of the fun away.

The final straw: While I was never dissatisfied with the pictures from the 18-105VR, I was not really satisfied either. For a long time, I couldn’t tell why and it took me a really long time to understand the reason. Some of my pictures with my kit lens the 18-55mm, especially those shot in good light, had an almost magical “pop” to them. They looked really, really good. Not that I am a good photographer, I am just talking about the technical quality. You just looked at them and said “wow”. I realized that none of the images shot with the 18-105 were like this. So I started examining the kit lens pictures more closely. The thing that these pictures had in common was: Kit lens, shot with an aperture of f8 or f11. Hmm, ok I thought, this is kind of obvious, any lens needs to be stopped down a bit to get optimum quality.

So I started looking at the photos from the 18-105, picking out the f8 or f11s. They looked fine, ok, there were no obvious problems. But they did not have that “bite”, that “pop” that something extra that the kit lens pictures had. This is the point at which a better photography site would put up comparison test shots between the two lenses. Since I am lazy and can’t bother to shoot pictures just for testing, I will just say the following: The 18-55mm kit lens spanks the 18-105mm VR in image quality, period. Will you notice the difference? I always thought “Lens sharpness is way overrated, it’s for pixel peepers, normal people can’t see the difference”. Well, even with my lowly 6 megapixel D40, I can tell the difference.

On with the rest of the story:

Armed with this information, I snagged a second hand 18-55mm VR to try out. Within minutes, it made me smile. What I had forgotten was how much fun the D40 is with a light lens on it. While the 18-105 is not enormously large, it still is noticeably heavier. The 18-55 VR, on the other hand makes the D40 handle like a dream. The close focusing distance means you can get much closer to subjects and the maximum magnification for macro shots is larger than the 18-105. The image quality is also much better, I think pretty much same as the kit lens, in other words: very good. All of this makes this lens a lot of fun. On paper, this lens looks awkward and expensive, but on a camera, it feels absolutely wonderful. It’s a case of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.

The conclusion, then:

The Nikon 18-55mm VR
It doesn’t do everything, this one. Zoom range is limited, there is no instant focus override. It is a simple, light, cheap lens with vibration reduction. Doesn’t promise you the world. But it does what it does very well. It is a brilliant little lens.

The Nikon 18-105mm VR
This one promises a bit more. Double the zoom range. Instant focus override. Looks a bit more serious as well. In the end: the niggles take a lot of the fun away from this lens. On paper, this is a much better lens, shame that it doesn’t work as well in the real world.

So, which one am I keeping?

Despite the 18-105 having double the zoom range, I always find myself using the 18-55VR. As I said, it is a lot more fun.

Is that subjective? Yes.

Will my 18-105 be finding a new home soon? Also a yes…

Sigma & Tamron:

You may be wondering why I did not consider the alternatives from Sigma and Tamron. I had looked at the Sigma 18-200mm OS but ultimately decided on the Nikon 18-200. When I changed my mind due to the size / weight, the Sigma was looking similarly large and much more expensive than the Nikon 18-105. The Tamron 18-250mm, unfortunately doesn’t have vibration reduction. Since then, the Tamron has introduced the 18-270 VC which was not available last year. I would quite like to try that one out, although I am pretty sure the size/weight could again be a deal-breaker.

Read more about:
Nikon 18-105mm VR Lens.
Nikon D40.

Nikon ML-L3 Wireless Remote Control

2012-01-06T01:39:00.007+01:00

The Nikon ML-L3 is a small infrared remote control that works with the Nikon D40 and many other Nikon cameras.

I guess the main purpose for getting one would be to appear in photos that you take. It is also useful when you are shooting on a tripod and you do not want to introduce camera shake by touching the shutter button. Yes, it is also possible to set the timer function on the camera to 2 or 10 seconds to do this, but the ML-L3 makes it somewhat easier. You can also capture exactly the moment you want, which you cannot do with a timer.

There are two modes on the Nikon D40 for using the ML-L3. The first is the instant remote triggering. In this mode, the camera takes the shot as soon as it receives the signal from the remote. This is good for shooting something when your camera is on a tripod or similar. The second mode is 2 seconds delayed triggering. In this mode, the camera takes the shot 2 seconds after the signal from the remote. As you can guess, this is meant so you can be in the picture without your outstretched arm pointing at the camera. You point the ML-L3 at the camera, press the button, the camera then gives you 2 seconds to tuck your arm away.

If you have just bought an ML-L3 and it doesn’t work with your Nikon camera, don’t get upset, it is very probably not broken: The camera settings need to be changed to use the ML-L3. For the Nikon D40, simply go into the Custom Setting menu (pencil icon) and then to 04 – Shooting Mode. Choose Quick-response remote or 2s Delayed remote. To set the time duration in which the remote is enabled, go to the Custom Setting Menu, item 17: Remote on duration. You can choose between 1, 5, 10 and 15 minutes, after this time, the camera will go back into the previous shooting mode. If only items 1-6 are available in the Custom Setting Menu, then your Setup is set to the Simple mode. To enable the full menus, go into the Setup Menu (wrench icon) and then CSM/Setup menu. Choose Full to display all of the available options.
This remote control works using infrared, and therefore the infrared receiver on the camera needs to “see” the infrared light on the remote control. This means normally it works only when they have “line of sight”. Since the infrared receiver is on the handgrip of the D40 pointing to the front of the camera, normally you can only trigger it from the front side of the camera. Indoors, you can often trigger it from the back because the infrared light will bounce off the walls.

The Nikon ML-L3 comes with a small pouch that can be mounted on the strap of the D40. Since it does not weigh anything, you hardly notice the small weight on the strap, and it is always there when you need it, you don’t have to think to take it with you. Thoughtful touch.

If you need a remote control to use with your Nikon D40 or other camera, the Nikon ML-L3 is the perfect companion for your camera strap.

Photography basics – ISO

2012-01-06T01:39:00.006+01:00

The ISO rating was originally a measure of film sensitivity.

Films are rated for a certain ISO, this defines the sensitivity of the film to light. A film with a lower ISO number needs more light to make the same image than a film with a higher ISO number.

What does ISO mean in the digital world?

A digital sensor receives light and converts this to colour information for its pixels. It performs best when it receives a certain amount of light, let us call this the base ISO of the camera, for example ISO 100.

The same digital sensor can also work if it receives half the light. So if it operates at ISO 200, the camera will let the sensor have half the light, you can still take pictures, but the colour information coming from the sensor will not be as good. Theoretically there is no limit to how high you can take the ISO on a camera up to, the sensor will still give out image information. However, there are practical limits.

If you let a sensor give out information with less and less light, you are bound to have lower and lower image quality. What a manufacturer then does is to define the lowest acceptable image quality for the camera in question, and then cap the ISO setting at the matching level.

When the ISO is increased, you can take pictures with less light. But your pictures will not look as good as the pictures taken at low ISO’s.

If you are shooting in low light at ISO 100, the shutter speed will usually be so low that it is not possible to get a handheld sharp picture. If on the other hand, if you increase the ISO to 800 or 1600, the resulting image quality will be lower, but you will be able to take a sharp handheld picture.

The ISO setting allows you to trade image quality for low light ability.

Tamron 10-24mm Wideangle Lens

2012-01-06T01:39:00.005+01:00

The Tamron 10-24mm lens was designed for use on crop sensor DSLRs. For Nikon DX camera owners, it has a quite useful (35mm equivalent) focal length range of 15-36mm. For Canon APS-C cameras, the range becomes 16-38mm due to the slightly larger crop factor. In both cases, it covers a useful range from extreme wideangle to only slightly wide.

Focal length range

The 10-24mm range of the Tamron was the widest (for a wide angle zoom) until the introduction of the Nikon 10-24mm, and it is still a strong point of this lens. At the wide end, it goes all the way to 10mm. While it may seem like nitpicking to praise a 10mm lens over a 11 or 12mm lens, at such small focal lengths, a difference of 1mm is actually quite large. For example, the Nikon 12-24 has an angle of view of 99° at the wide end, where as the Nikon 10-24 has 109°. 2mm makes quite a difference. At the other end of the range, it goes all the way to 24mm. While this is not the reason you buy the lens, it overlaps quite nicely with the usual 18-xx zoom lenses and thus saves frequent lens changes.

Distortion

One of the nicest things about this lens is the relatively low barrel distortion. Even at the widest setting of 10mm, the barrel distortion is only moderate. It is certainly less noticeable than the Nikon 18-105mm VR at 18mm. Note that I am talking about barrel distortion and not perspective distortion, which is normal (and unavoidable) at 10mm.

Autofocus

Since the Tamron has an internal autofocus motor, it works with the Nikon D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D5000 bodies which have no autofocus motor. I found the focus quiet and accurate even with my lowly D40, it doesn’t hunt or fail to acquire focus. Focusing speed is not the fastest, I would say it is similar to the Nikon 18-55mm kit lenses.

Image quality

Frankly, you are on the wrong website if you are looking for detailed sharpness comparisons or something similar. All I can say is, the image quality of this lens is good enough for me not to notice any obvious problems. The only obvious problem is flare. If there is a light source at the edge of the frame, it often produces a very distinctive red halo, which can be annoying sometimes.

Size / Handling

Physically, this lens is not small, the lenght is modest, but the diameter at the front of the lens is quite large. I was concerned that it would be very front heavy on my Nikon D40, but actually it balances quite well. It is much lighter than the looks suggest, but I also suspect that much of the weight is close to the camera. In terms of size and handling, I found it quite similar to the Nikon 18-105 VR. I also like that the zoom ring is closer to the camera than the focus ring, I can never get used to the other way around. The autofocus / manual focus switch is much easier to use and feels much better than the same switches on Nikon lenses. The zoom ring has a very lazy travel of almost 90°, which feels kind of weird. The minimum focus distance is also very small, which is nice for getting close to things.

Hands-on

Being an extreme wide angle lens, it is quite different to use compared to any other type of lens. At 10mm, the angle of view is extremely wide, and using it like a normal lens produces quite boring images. You end up with large amount of empty ground and sky around your subject in the middle. You have to be very careful with your composition to actually fill the frame properly. A lot of times, this means getting very close to the subject, and moving just a centimeter or two then has an enormous effect on your composition. You have to be much more patient and careful while composing. I like that it allows you to put a tiny thing in the foreground right next to a huge thing in the background.

Indoors, this lens is a joy to use, you never have the problem of “I can’t back up any more!”. It makes even small spaces look massive. It is also fun to smile at people who ask “Am I in the frame?”, not only are they always in the frame, they are usually 1-2 meters from the edge. However, be careful about having people near the edges of the frame due to the strong perspective distortion at the wider focal lengths. This is not a fault of the lens itself, but a consequence of using such exteme focal lengths.

Conclusion

The Tamron 10-24mm offers a very useful wide angle focal length range for crop sensor DSLRs. It is lighter than similar lenses, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view. The image quality is generally very good, except for some noticeable flare problems. Autofocus is fine, nothing to complain about, and it works with the screw-drive-less Nikon cameras. All in all, quite a nice wide angle lens, with an attractive price. Recommended!

Read about the Nikon D40.

Minolta Hi-Matic G Rangefinder

2012-01-06T01:39:00.004+01:00

The Minolta Hi-Matic G is an old rangefinder camera, similar to the Olympus 35RC.

It is very similar to the Olympus, but is much simpler and has less manual controls.

For starters, its focus mechanism is not coupled to the viewfinder. This means you cannot view and fine tune the focus, which sounds disappointing at first. But actually, this is intended to be a point and shoot camera, so that is perfectly acceptable. Even though there is a proper focus ring with a distance scale, the default mode of operation is much simpler. There are simply four icons on the top of the focus ring.

You simply set focus “approximately” using one of the four icons, or something in between. In practice, it works well unless you forget it at the opposite end of the scale. You can also view the distance scale, but this is at the left bottom of the focus ring, so is a bit inconvenient to use.

It is not possible to set the exposure manually. Both the aperture and the shutter speed will be set automatically when the shutter is pressed. A needle on the right of the viewfinder shows the current settings.

While this occasionally limits your control on the shutter speed or aperture, it is perfectly acceptable and actually preferable for a point and shoot camera.

It also has no timer, which means it is not as easy to be in the picture yourself.

This all sounds a lot more simpler and much more idiot-proof than the Olympus. As a camera, the Minolta is probably not as good, but I like it a lot more. Let me explain:

A camera like this will probably not be your one and only camera. It simply has too many compromises in this day and age. Don’t take it out at night, struggle with a clumsy flash and be frustrated. Don’t take it out if you need to photograph action, the focus is neither automatic nor precise. Take it out during the day when you are feeling adventureous, when you feel like a change, when you just want to go for a walk. Crank the film wind lever back, twist the focus ring to one of the icons, look through the viewfinder, compose and shoot.

They look and work similarly, but their expectations of the photographer behind them are very different.

The Olympus with its manual shutter speed and aperture controls, focus coupled rangefinder and adjustable delay timer is a brilliant photographic tool. Even more so considering how old it is. You can exploit it to its fullest if you are skilled, and at the same time it tries to enough automatic functions to make it easy to shoot. But even though it has automatic exposure, you still have to guesstimate and set a suitable shutter speed. Even though setting the focus distance is easy, you still have to pause and think about how many meters away that tree is. In other words, it tries to bridge the gap between the beginner and the experienced photographer, but using it like a beginner still requires some skill and effort.

The Minolta has no manual exposure, no way to check the focus and no delay timer. It is an altogether simpler tool. On the other hand, you only ever have to worry about the four icons on the top of the focus ring and you can make some really good photos. It does not demand that you make a mental calculation to set the focus, simply look at the icons on top of the focus ring. Big difference? Maybe not, but certainly easier to use. Same with the exposure, you simply press the shutter and it does what it does, no shutter speed to guess, no nothing. You can check out the exposure needle on the right of the viewfinder or you can ignore it altogether, it still works.

I respect the Olympus enormously. I think it is amazing that they were able to build a serious little camera and pack it all into that cute, compact, indestructable case. Although it is fun to use, it demands some skill and patience from the user.

The Minolta Hi-Matic G on the other hand, is much much more fun. By keeping things simple, they have built a little camera that you can still enjoy some 40 years later.

Read about the Olympus 35 RC.

Sony W-120 Digital Compact Camera

2012-01-06T01:39:00.003+01:00

The Sony DSC W-120

I was looking for a compact, cheap, ok camera to keep in my coat pocket all the time. I wanted to have a camera that was compact and light, had acceptable image quality, image stabilization and didn’t break the bank

Bonus points were given out for: Wide angle, low light ability, video capabilities, snappy operation

After some research, I ended up with this Sony DSC W120.

The Sony W120 is an affordable digital compact camera.

The case is made of brushed aluminum, looks great and suggests a much more expensive price tag. The startup time is pretty standard, fast enough to not feel sluggish, but no match for a digital SLR.

It has a focal length range of 32-128mm (35mm equivalent). This is a surprisingly good range for such an affordable camera. The 32mm at the wide end is much more useful than much of the competition which often offers 37-38mm as the widest.

In addition, the maximum aperture at the wide end is a pretty respectable f2.8. That is actually larger than most digital SLR standard kit lenses. While this is not an earth shuttering lens, it is faster than many comparable cameras, allowing the camera to stick to slightly lower ISOs or higher shutter speeds.

There is an optical viewfinder, but it is completely useless for framing, due to its tiny size and small coverage. This means you have to use the display to frame your shots. The display is pretty poor, it quite obviously does not have high resolution. The colors on the display are also mushy, to be kind. While all this is bad for looking at the photos, the refresh rate of the display is actually very good. There is very little lag, so framing with live view is no problem at all. The image stabilization also helps, I think.

One of the nice touches on this camera is that it goes back into shooting mode when the shutter is pressed in any menu or mode. I absolutely despise any cameras that first need to be switched to shooting mode to take a picture, fortunately the Sony DSC W120 passes the test.

The image stabilization is pretty effective; it is possible to get acceptably sharp shots with shutter speeds as low as 1/2 seconds.

The overall speed of the camera is ok for a camera of this type; it is fast enough that it does not feel sluggish. Compared to a digital SLR, it is very slow especially in startup and shot to shot time. With the flash on, shot to shot time increases to 4 or 5 seconds.

Autofocus is pretty ok at the wide end and pretty slow at the long end of the zoom.

One of the annoyances is the auto review functionality. When you take a picture it displays it automatically for 2 seconds. What is annoying is that it is not in playback mode while doing this. So you cannot zoom in on the picture or see the picture info. You cannot even press a button to look at it longer than the preset time. Instead, you have to wait to go back to the shooting mode and then press the playback button to go the picture again.

Talking of stupid designs, deleting pictures is very clumsy. You have to go into the menu, (there is no delete button) and then go to delete, delete this picture, and then move the selection from cancel to ok and then confirm.

This is the kind of functionality that makes me wonder if compact camera designers ever talk to digital SLR camera designers. These points are not super important, and you can easily live with them, but it just makes me wonder the whole time, what were the designers thinking?

Probably the worst thing about this camera are the menus. They are totally confusing and annoying to work with.

For example, when you set the camera to burst mode and then later try to turn on flash, it will display a message saying: Flash setting cannot be changed! I could only figure out after more than a day of playing with it that the flash does not work in burst mode. I cant help but think it would be easier if it told me that.

Another example is with the autofocus. When face detection is enabled, the menu options for the autofocus disappear completely. They are not greyed out or something, they are just not there. Turn off face detection, and there you go. My brain obviously does not function in the same way as the designers of this camera.

To sum-up: The image quality is very good for a camera of this size and price and the image stabilization helps tremendously with low light photos. It works well with everything on automatic, exposure and focus is spot on most of the time. The display could be better and the menus are very fiddly, but in the end these small flaws are not enough to spoil it. If you want manual controls, you might want to keep looking. If, on the other hand you are just looking for an affordable compact camera to point and shoot, the Sony DSC W 120 is a great choice.

The good:

- Compact, light and good looking
- Good image quality (for a compact camera)
- Reasonably quick (for a compact camera)
- Effective image stabilization
- A good deal pricewise

The bad:

- Poor display
- Slow autofocus at the long end of the zoom
- No manual modes

The ugly:

- Proprietary Sony Memory Stick cards

Read my Point and shoot camera shopping guide.

Here are some useful notes on setting up and using the Sony W120. The settings mentioned are used under the Program (P) shooting mode unless otherwise noted.

General:

Confusingly, the HOME button takes you to the camera menu and the MENU button takes you to the equivalent of the shooting settings menu.
Since the Sony DSC W120 is pretty much a point and shoot camera, I will try to set it up to be used that way. In other words, adjust everything once and then forget about 90% of the settings.
I prefer to keep it in Program (P) mode. It lets you decide to shoot with or without flash, which is very important.

Autofocus:

The default mode for the autofocus is Face Detection, Auto. This mode works quite well and reasonably fast.
It is also possible to choose from Matrix AF, Center AF, Spot AF or a preset AF distance.
When face detection is disabled, it defaults to Matrix AF.
It is possible to preset the focus to a distance of 0.5, 1, 3, 7 meters or infinity. This is useful to reduce shutter lag if you need to take action photos. (Face detection needs to be turned off to enable these settings.)

Steady Shot (Image Stabilisation):

Steady Shot can be set to Shooting or Continuous (or off).
In Shooting mode, it only works when the shutter is pressed halfway. This introduces a bit of shutter lag but the liveview image is very responsive.
Switching to Continuous reduces the shutter lag but makes the liveview image floaty, making it harder to compose.
I prefer keeping it in Shooting mode.
It is possible to make (acceptably) sharp shots all the way down to 1 second if your hand is steady.

Flash:

The flash is enabled by pressing the right side of the four way controller.
The flash is disabled in the Burst mode, in which case the camera will display a message saying: Flash setting cannot be changed! Just go back and change REC Mode back to Normal.
The flash fires four times if Red Eye Reduction is enabled. For me, this is enough reason to keep it off. It is also easy to fix red eyes pretty easily in post processing if needed.
The power of the flash can also be adjusted standard, plus or minus.
The flash takes 3 or 4 seconds to recycle after each shot, so you cannot take a bunch of photos quickly with flash.

ISO:

It is possible to set the ISO manually to anything from 100 to 3200.
The camera does quite a goob job at the Auto ISO setting, staying below ISO 800 until a shutter speed of about 1 second (at the wide end).
ISO 400 is still usable but 800 and above is quite terrible. Fortunately the camera keeps 100 to 400 until light conditions desperately demand higher ISOs.
I leave it on Auto ISO pretty much all the time, unless I want to have good colors, in which case I set it to ISO 100.

Macro:

The macro function is enabled by pressing the left of the four way controller.
At the wide end, it will focus down to nearly 1 cm from the front of the lens, but autofocus struggles and does not always focus on the right object.

Exposure compensation:

Exposure compensation can be set by pressing the Home button and scrolling up and down to find the setting.
It can be set from -2 to +2 stops.
The camera remembers the exposure compensation setting if it is turned off and back on again.

Olympus 35 RC Rangefinder

2012-01-06T01:39:00.002+01:00

This cute little camera is a classic Olympus “Rangefinder”.

This means, unlike a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera, the viewfinder is not coupled to the main lens of the camera. The film will see the light through the main lens in the middle of the camera, whereas the viewfinder is on the top right corner of the camera. You are not seeing exactly what you will take a picture of. There might be alignment errors for close by objects, for example. Well, what is the point of having such a camera when SLRs don’t have such problems? Size, mainly. Since rangefinders do not have the mirror moving up and down with each shot, the bodies are much less deep. Also, many of them, like the Olympus 35RC come with a fixed focal length lens (no zoom) which is physically quite small. Therefore they are quite convenient, and will fit in a coat pocket.

Shooting the Olympus 35RC is simpler than I thought it would be. To shoot in automatic exposure mode, there are mainly two controls: The focus ring and the shutter dial.
The focus ring allows you to choose the point of focus. There is a small, yellow tinted rectangle visible in the viewfinder which puts two images over one another. The movement of the focus ring adjusts this interaction. If the picture in the yellow rectangle looks ok, you are in focus on that object. If it looks misaligned then it is not in focus. In practice, I just guess the distance to my subject and set the distance using the focus ring.

To adjust the exposure, set the shutter dial to some value and the aperture ring to A (automatic). Then, looking through the viewfinder, press the shutter halfway down. The needle at the bottom should swing to some value. If it stops at one of the aperture values, you can take the shot. If it goes all the way to the left into the red zone, the light level is not enough and the camera will not shoot. You can set the shutter slower (smaller number) to have more light and try again. You can see the viewfinder with the shutter speed indicated at the top and the needle pointing to the automatically selected aperture at the bottom.

It also has full manual controls if you would like to shoot it that way.

I bought this camera on ebay for 26€. It is in good working condition although I have had to procure a special battery for it. I’m shooting at the moment with 400 iso black and white film.

The only thing I do not like so far is the low light ability. The camera has no onboard flash of course, and the film speed dial only goes to iso 800. Even though the lens is f2.8 and thus reasonably fast, the slowest shutter speed available is 1/15. This does not allow much in the way of low light fotography. It doesn’t really make sense to have such a small camera with a flash just as big so what I would really like to have is a iso 1600 or even a 3200 setting in there. Ideally I would like to have the exposure meter adjusted up 2 stops so that it reads iso 400 correctly at the 100 setting and 3200 correctly at the 800 setting. Then I would be able to shoot in all sorts of conditions.

To sum up, this is an interesting old camera, and quite refreshing after shooting with modern digital compact cameras.

Read about the Minolta Hi-Matic G Rangefinder.

Gorillapod SLR

2012-01-06T01:39:00.001+01:00

I hate carrying tripods around. It is such a hassle to carry it around, take only a couple of pictures and bring it back home.

In the last couple of years, I haven’t had a tripod. Whenever I needed one, I improvised with various things that fell to hand at that moment, a bench, wall, table, big rock, basically anything I could find. The trouble with using such an improvised support is adjusting the composition. This is especially difficult if the camera in question has no live view. You have to adjust where the camera is pointing by folding and tucking the camera strap under the camera. Basically it is very tedious and frustrating.

When I saw the GorillaPod, I thought that it could help. I liked the idea that I could place it easily on irregular surfaces or wrap it around poles and railings and things. I bought the GorillaPod SLR to use with my Nikon D40.

After using trying to use it a couple of times, I realized that it was not the answer for me.
First of all, while it is great to wrap around a horizontal railing, the neck (the part upwards from where the legs meet) is so saggy and inconsistent that you never dare leave it farther than an arms reach away. This is because the neck can suddenly sag down and bump the front of the lens into wherever it is sitting. So using it by wrapping it around things is basically out of the question.

Next, when you are feeling adventurous and use it in this way, it is next to impossible to adjust the composition. Whenever you try to adjust where the camera is pointing, and move the neck of the GorillaPod, the legs loosen themselves as well. Adjusting it into the desired position is not an easy task.

Using it on a tabletop or a flat surface presents its own challenges. The legs are too flexible to be used like a classic tripod, and it is almost impossible to get it to stay stable on a flat surface. The trouble is, as soon as it starts leaning toward one of the legs because of the flex, since the center of gravity is high because of the camera, the flexing continues until the camera basically falls over.

The biggest problem however, was in adjusting camera settings and composition. Because of all the flexible joints, anytime you press a button on the camera or change the composition slightly, the whole thing moves a bit. Then you have the adjust the composition again. Then the legs move as well when you are trying to move just the neck. Then you adjust the neck and put it down. Now it is still not correct since you got the neck right but the legs moved. Again and again… Arrrghhhhh!!!!!!

In the end, the GorillaPod SLR is very useful for me as a fancy paperweight. I will be going out and buying a tripod with a ball head which I can actually fix! I was really hopeful when buying it that it was going to help me but alas, that turned out not to be the case…

How to take beautiful night photos without a tripod?

2012-01-06T01:39:00.000+01:00

This picture was shot without a tripod. But even though it was shot with a shutter speed of almost 1 second, it’s not blurry.

Let’s be honest: No one wants to carry a big heavy tripod around, especially when traveling. But I do want to have some nice pictures at night as well.

The solution?

Improvise

You can usually find a wall, a rock, a trash can, a fence, or some other thing in to use instead of a tripod. Just set your camera on it and adjust the composition. You can stick some stuff under the front of the camera to tilt it up, if necessary. The right composition is a lot easier to adjust if the camera has live view. If not, you can just take a couple of pictures and look at them on the display and adjust as needed.

Now the camera is stable and won’t vibrate unless you touch it. But how do you take a picture without touching the camera? This is where the delay timer comes into play. All cameras have this, it is usually indicated by an icon that looks like a watch face. The standard time is usually 10 seconds, and some cameras allow you to set the duration yourself as well. Simply set the timer, let go of the camera and wait. It is of course even easier if you get a remote control like the Nikon ML-L3. This also makes it easier to be in the picture yourself.

Here are some other examples of night time shots with improvised support.

Scared of Photoshop? Try something simpler

2012-01-06T01:38:00.005+01:00

Are you scared anytime you see someone working with Photoshop?
Let’s be honest, while Photoshop is great for working with images, it is hardly the ideal tool for a beginner.
Fortunately, there are some great, simpler alternatives for you to try out.

The first is Paint.net, a free image editor for Windows.

It is very easy to learn and perform basic image manipulation, like cropping, resizing, adjusting brightness, contrast etc. It is also quite good for drawing something, or modifying a picture. I am normally quite reluctant to do any sort of image processing, have no interest at all but over the course of using paint.net, I have gained some skill in manipulating images with the “magic wand”. This allows you to select same sort of colors as an area, and for example turn a light background into complete white. Paint.net is quite fast, and doesn’t feel slow on almost any computer. It also supports using layers, so you can merge different pictures using layers and effects and stuff. This is where I reach my limits with image editing, so for me Paint.net is more than what I need.

The second one is Picasa, the free image software from Google.

Picasa has a lot of different functions: It can help you organize your photos, you can let it scan your computer for the photos and show them all in one place. You can tag them, mark them as favorite, label your friends in the photos.You can also edit your photos in Picasa , getting rid of red eyes is a matter of about 3 clicks. It also works wonderfully with Google Picasa Webalbums.

When I get back with a bunch of pictures on my camera, I usually do is the following: Copy the pictures from the card to the hard disk. Open Picasa, it scans the changes and finds the new pictures automatically. Then I go through them once, delete the bad ones. Then I go through once more and mark the ones I want to upload to my webalbum. Simply click on Upload, write the name of the new album, choose maximum picture sizes and I’m done. Picasa webalbums makes it really easy to share your photos with friends, you get 1 GB of free space and the expansion options are nicely priced (an extra 20GB is 5$ / year).

About the only thing that is not perfect is: It is not possible to make sub-albums, so in effect, all of your web-albums are in one “folder” and after a while gets kinda crowded. Other than that, highly recommended.

The wildcard, if you want to call it that, is Microsoft Powerpoint.

Yes, I know, it is not really an image editing program. But if you just want to paste together some images, it is just perfect. A lot of the illustrations I put together does not require a lot of finesse, it is just moving and resizing a bunch of small pictures. For this sort of stuff, Powerpoint is perfect, they even added a “Save as picture” option in Office 2007. Nice and easy.

Image editing on your computer need not be complicated, as long as you are using the right software. For me personally, these three save a huge amount of frustration and pain for two simple reasons: They are all that a beginner needs, and they are easy to use. Have Fun!

Taking photos at sunset

2012-01-06T01:38:00.004+01:00

The colors at sunset can be pretty interesting, if you catch the right moment.

How to take self portraits anywhere?

2012-01-06T01:38:00.003+01:00

Are you always getting back from vacation with hardly any photos of yourself? You can’t be bothered to carry a tripod around? Or maybe you don’t like to ask strangers to take pictures of you?

There is an easy way to take great photos of yourself. Simply hold out your camera in front of you and point it at you.

Put something interesting in the background and you are done.

“But I don’t have a pivoting rotating screen to compose the picture with!”

Neither do I, but I can get decent photos all the time with this method. Obviously, you may have to take multiple photos to get the framing right, but hey, that is the advantage of digital. Of course if you are using film, you may want to find a better solution than burning that much film.

Holding out your left hand is much easier, because the shutter is on the right side of the camera, so on the left side when the camera is looking at you. If you hold out your right hand, you will have to get your finger all the way to the other side of the camera.

Of course, because you have your arm extended out, camera shake can be more of a concern than usual. I have found it most stable to place the grip of the camera in my palm and to press the shutter with my thumb. Using my index finger on the trigger makes my hand shake too much.

Important! Since the grip on the camera is not the best in this situation, I always wrap the camera strap one or two times around my wrist. This way, if I lose my grip on the camera, it does not crash test itself on the ground. If you hold the camera like this, take care to prevent any possible camera damage.

I have used this technique with 35mm and 28mm focal length equivalent cameras and found it to be quite easy to get the shot I wanted. If you are using a much longer focal length, you may find it hard to get yourself in the picture. Conversely, if you are using a much shorter focal length, you may end up with your arm in the picture.

Try it the next time you are alone, you can get some great photos of yourself, and remember, practice makes perfect.

Zooming while shooting

2012-01-06T01:38:00.002+01:00

The usual way to isolate a subject from the rest of the picture is to use a wide aperture. This causes a very narrow depth of field around the subject, and the rest of the frame should be outside of the depth of field, hence out of focus.

Feeling experimental today? Read on.

There is another, silly, but fun way to isolate a subject. Now, this can only be done with a lens with a real zoom ring. Here is how:

Frame your shot with your subject in the middle of the frame. Then, press the shutter while you are zooming in. To be clear, you have to shoot while you are twisting the zoom ring. The picture above is an example of what you can get. Zooming in while shooting blurs the whole picture, but the sides of the picture are blurred much more than the center. As a result, the subject in the center of the picture is relatively visible, while the rest of the frame kind of falls away. You will have to play around to find how much zooming action you can get away with. Zoom too much, and everything will be blurry, zoom too little, and you won’t get the effect you are looking for.

While you obviously don’t want to use this for serious portraits and such, it is a fun way to spice up your shooting. Try it out sometime.

How to hold a camera to avoid blurry pictures

2012-01-06T01:38:00.001+01:00

Blur or lack of sharpness due to camera shake is a common problem for many photographers. It is caused by the movement of the hand(s) holding camera itself. It can cause you to take a completely useless photo from a good opportunity.

Luckily, holding a camera steady is not that hard. You can find many guides all over the internet showing you how you should hold your camera. Since I am a big fan of simple things, I will try to tackle this with just one principle that you can apply for every single situation.

Let’s start with the worst case, what I will call the fingertip approach: You hold the camera in front of you with your fingertips. Your arm is extended, your fingers are extended, and the camera is shaking.

Holding a camera with fingertips.

The basic and important thing to remember is:

The heavier your camera is, the less likely it is to shake.

Now, before you say “I don’t want to carry a heavy camera!”, well, neither do I; and fortunately, there are ways to make your camera “heavier” without carrying a single gram more.

How?

In the fingertip approach, the “weight” of the camera is just itself; say 200 grams for a small compact digital camera.

Now try to think of something to combine it with so it gets heavier.

Hmmm…

Found it yet?

For starters, your whole hand!

Holding a camera with the whole hand.

Let’s apply the principle, one step at a time:

Hold the camera with the palm of your right hand, instead of just with the fingertips. Now, your arm is extended, but you have “integrated” your hand with the camera, they move together. The “weight” of the camera is now the camera + your hand, say 0.5kg. You have about doubled the “weight” and this will be a little steadier than the fingertip approach.

One more step:

Instead of holding the camera with just your right hand, get the left to hold it as well. Now, you have a much more balanced “platform” for your camera, the “weight” of the camera is ~ 1kg. Be careful not to block the flash or lens with your left hand.

Holding a camera with both hands.

Ok, now its time to minimize the arm movement:

Instead of having your elbows at the sides, have them rest on your chest in front of you. Now, you have essentially cut out the movement of the upper arm, and fastened the camera a little better to a heavy object, yourself. If you do this, you will want to control your breathing when shooting, it is surprising how much your lungs move up and down when breathing in or out.

Now the motion of the camera is much more closely tied to your body, and the apparent “weight” of the camera is increased.

The next step is to cut out your motion. If you are standing up, you will inevitability move a little bit. What you have to do as the next step is increase your apparent weight by “integrating” yourself to some heavier object. The technique that I use most often is to find a column or a wall and brace myself next to it. You can sit somewhere; lay down on the ground, whatever stops your motion. You can also try to brace just your main shooting hand on some still object.

Obviously, there are different styles for different cameras. SLRs or other cameras with viewfinders for example are inherently less prone to camera shake; because in putting your eye to the viewfinder, you often “integrate” them with your head, which is obviously heavier than your hand(s).

For an SLR, I find it best to hold the camera normally with my right hand, and place the left side of the camera in my palm so that I am holding the lens with my left hand fingers. (Thumb to the left, fingers to the right of the lens.) When shooting in the portrait orientation, I keep the same grip and always tilt the camera to the left (counter clockwise). I find that my right hand is always steadier when tilting to the left. This is what works best for me, you can probably use this as a good starting point to find out exactly how you feel comfortable.

Holding a DSLR.

Feel free to forward or share this guide if you found it useful!

Read more:
How to take beautiful night photos without a tripod?
How to take self portraits anywhere?
Troubleshooting your photos to take better ones

How to take panning shots

2012-01-06T01:38:00.000+01:00

Panning is a technique used to convey subject motion. Normally, when a moving object is shot with a low shutter speed, the moving object will be blurred. This shows that there is a moving object, but we cannot see it clearly. To illustrate motion better, what we actually want is to see the moving object clearly, not the background.

Just try the following points to get some panning shots:

Track the subject

Panning allows us to do this. The camera should not stay still, but rather move to track the subject motion. This way, the subject is sharp but the background is blurred. Look at the first picture. Here, I tried to track the Ford GT-40 as well as I could and pressed the shutter in the middle of this tracking motion. (Don’t stop the motion when you press the shutter, that won’t work, follow through and try to take more frames if your camera shoots fast enough.)

Works best with an SLR

On an SLR it is very easy to track the subject smoothly because you can look through the viewfinder, and you can usually take the picture exactly when you want it because of the low shutter lag. With a normal compact camera with an LCD live view only, panning is much harder to do. Because the live view systems usually have some lag, it is hard to track the subject smoothly. Also, because the autofocus systems are much slower on compact cameras, it is hard to take the picture exactly when you want because of the long shutter lag. It could be helpful to already press the shutter halfway and let the camera autofocus when tracking to reduce the shutter lag.

Shutter speed is important

The other thing you have to keep in mind is the shutter speed. Depending on the speed and angle of the subject, you may need to experiment some. The car above was taken with a shutter speed of 1/160 s. The bird in the picture below needed a shutter speed of only 1/40 s. While both pictures are not perfect examples of panning, they still manage to convey the motion quite nicely. I had to experiment quite a bit to find the correct shutter speeds to get the right amount of blur.

If you choose a very low shutter speed, it becomes almost too hard to get the moving subject reasonably sharp so that basically all of the picture is blurred. If the shutter speed is too high, then the background doesn’t blur enought to convey the motion satisfactorily. Just try a few times to find a reasonable shutter speed.

Practice, practice, practice

The final point: Panning sounds like a really hard photography technique to get right. With a compact camera, it probably is next to impossible. With an SLR though, it is pretty doable. I had never tried it before because I thought I would never get it right, but after trying it out, I ended up with some pretty good results. The trick is to try a few shutter speeds to find the right range, and practice panning and you will get some nice pictures.

Failure can also be fun!

Even when you fail to pan properly it still can produce a fun result. My panning skill in the above picture is obviously terrible. But even so, I quite like the result. It has enough sharp bits in the picture to understand what it is. Don’t be afraid to fail, that can be good as well!

Nikon D40 SLR First Impressions

2012-01-06T01:37:00.003+01:00

This camera is a Nikon D40 Digital SLR. It is Nikon’s entry level, thus cheapest DSLR. I have recently bought this camera, my previous being a ‘big zoom’ compact. Below are some of the impressions of the D40 coming from a compact camera.

Coming from a compact camera, the first thing that I noticed was the speed. Sure, the D40 is not quick by DSLR standards, but coming from a compact camera, it feels like the shutter is instantaneous. The 2.5 frames per second continuous shooting rate is years ahead of most compacts. While other DSLRs may be even quicker, I never found the D40 to be sluggish in use, except for moments where the autofocus did not react fast enough.

The autofocus system on the D40 is fairly simple, with only 3 focus points. I had some trouble adjusting to this in the first days. You have to have one of the autofocus points somewhere near a contrasty area in the picture. This is quite unlike compact cameras, which focus, slowly, but they do in the end. If you point the D40 somewhere with no contrast at all, it will often not be able to find focus.

One of the most pleasant surprises was the shutter noise of the D40. I had feared a loud shutter noise because I had gotten used to the almost nonexistent shutter noise of my compact. It was great for taking pictures without being noticed. The shutter noise of the D40 is very quiet and smooth for a DSLR.
Of course, having real parts move inside the camera every time you take a picture has another effect as well: It is somehow much more satisfying to take pictures. Every time you take a picture, you get a little klinkity klank, and that feels good. You get the impression that what you did was more than just shuffling electrons around.

The usability of the D40 is exemplary. I specifically mean the playback functionality, looking through the pictures, zooming in, out and deleting them.

The buttons on the left of the screen include the playback, zoom in and out. The directional pad on the right allows you to scroll around in the zoomed picture. It also navigates through the pictures when not zoomed in.
Simply use the left thumb to zoom, right thumb to scroll in picture and to move to next/prev picture. This works like a dream and it takes hardly any time to get used to.

Deleting pictures is so easy, you wonder why not all cameras have the same functionality? Push the delete button twice. Done.

Probably the biggest plus over my old compact camera was the colors. While I was pretty happy with my compact in good light, the colors from the D40 are on another level. It is very hard to describe this in words, but the colors just look so much better. Another good thing is that you don’t get blown out skies so often. This happens when the camera cannot recognize the really light blue of the sky and renders it completely white, a common problem for many compacts. This was one of the most annoying things on my old camera.

One of the negative points of moving up to a DSLR was camera shake. Since my compact had a stabilized lens and the D40 did not, I had quite a lot more trouble with camera shake. It is not that the D40 is prone to a lot of camera shake; it is just that my little compact had really spoiled me with image stabilization. I also think that camera shake is easier to see on a DSLR since the resulting image is much crisper and cleaner.

Read more about the:
Nikon 18-55 VR compared to Nikon 18-105 VR
Nikon 18-105mm VR Lens
Tamron 10-24mm Wideangle Lens
Nikon SB-400 Flash
Tamron 18-270 Lens
I have now another small site specific to the Nikon D40, visit it here.

Photography basics – Shutter Speed

2012-01-06T01:37:00.002+01:00

Shutter speed dial

The shutter speed is the duration during which the shutter of the camera stays open to let light shine on the sensor or film.

Think of the shutter as a very fast opening and closing curtain.

The longer the curtain stays open, the longer the sensor or film is exposed to the light.

This allows the photographer to use the shutter speed to control the exposure. All other things remaining the same; if you double the shutter speed, you double the amount of light that hits the sensor.

The required shutter speed for correct exposure depends on the ISO and the aperture.

The shutter speed is also important for photographing things in motion. A ‘fast’ or short shutter speed is needed to capture moving things without blur. For example, a speed of 1/60 or 1/125 is often enough to freeze a moving person. On the other hand, a faster speed of 1/500 or 1/1000 will be needed to freeze the motion of a car.

A ’slow’ or long shutter speed is needed when there is not much light. The drawback to this is twofold:
1. You cannot freeze moving objects anymore: Since the shutter speed is long, they will move during the exposure and therefore will be blurred.
2. Your shot will be affected by camera shake. If the shutter is speed is slow enough, the camera shake caused by your hand will be visible in the shot.

To prevent camera shake, the usual rule of thumb is that your shutter speed should be 1 / focal length that you are using.

Since shutter speed is usually expressed as 1 / x seconds, it is easy to work out what sort of shutter speed you need to prevent camera shake.

We always think of a picture as a frozen instant of time. Of course this is never completely true, the picture is usually taken in a small but measurable time. The shutter speed allows you to choose how long this time should be.

Photography basics – Aperture

2012-01-06T01:37:00.001+01:00

The aperture controls how much light is let in by the lens.

Lenses have variable aperture, making it possible to let in a lot of light for low light conditions or let in only a fraction of the light for those sunny days. This is one of the ways to adjust the exposure of a photograph, or in other words to control the amount of light that falls on the sensor or film.

The aperture is set by controlling the diaphragm inside the lens. The diaphragm is a number of adjustable blades that form a hole. Since it is adjustable, the size of the hole, and thus how much light passes through it, can be adjusted.

The aperture is specified by the f-number. Confusingly, as the f-number gets smaller; the amount of light that passes through the lens gets larger.

On most lenses, the aperture can only be set to fixed points; a regular progression of f-numbers looks like the following:

f 22 – f 16 – f 11 – f 8 – f 5.6 – f 4 – f 2.8 – f 2 – f 1.4

Here are some examples of different apertures from a Nikkor 28mm f2.8 Series E lens. These pictures show you what the film sees when the different apertures are set.

This looks like a weird set of numbers, but in fact there is some logic behind them.

As you go from left to right on this set, every next f-number doubles the amount of light entering the lens, also called one stop.

This is related to the meaning of the numbers. The f-number specifies the fraction of the diameter on the front element of the lens that is used to gather the light. The fraction is related to the focal length of the lens, thus a 50mm lens set to an aperture of f 2 will use 25 mm on the lens diameter to gather the light. Since the area of a circle is proportional to the square of the diameter, the ratio for a doubling of light is square root of 2 or ~ 1.4. That is the reason for the weird set of f-numbers.

A lens that gathers more light gives you more freedom for choosing your shutter speed and ISO setting.

Therefore lenses which have low f-numbers are preferable. Unfortunately, the lower the minimum f-number on the lens, the larger, heavier and more expensive it is. This is because it needs more glass to gather more light.

The aperture also affects depth of field, the range in your scene where the objects are in focus. The larger the aperture (low f-number) the narrower the depth of field, and the smaller the aperture the wider is the depth of field.

The aperture lets you control how much light to gather and also how much of your scene is in focus.

What do all these camera modes mean?

2012-01-06T01:37:00.000+01:00

Mode dial on a Nikon D40

The mode dial on a modern camera usually includes a bewildering number of letters and icons.

I can never remember what 90% of those modes do, and even if I did, I don’t remember to set that mode when the opportunity presents itself.

But you can get by using just 3 of the modes, even 2 if you are desperate. Here are some clues to know when to use which mode.

The so called Program mode. This is the mode that I shoot in most of the time. The camera does the exposure and the focus. You can however set the exposure compensation, which is the only control (other than the flash) you need most of the time for snapshots. The nice thing about this mode is, it is completely automatic, but you have control over the flash, which is what you need for your snapshots.

This is the Automatic mode. This is what most people set when they look at a camera for the first time. The problem with this mode is that the camera will invariably choose the wrong moment to turn on the flash, usually ruining your planned picture. Really, just use mode P, and turn on the flash when you want it.

This is the Shutter Priority mode. Here, you can set a shutter speed and the camera will set the correct aperture for the light conditions. If you need to capture a speedy subject, choose a high shutter speed. If you want to blur the motion, choose a lower shutter speed. You can also play around with longer shutter speeds like 1-5 seconds to get nice some effects on water fountains or similar things.

This is the Aperture Priority mode. Here, you set the aperture and the camera chooses the correct shutter speed. It is useful for mainly two things. First is the ability to choose the depth of field, set a wide aperture for shallow depth of field and a narrow aperture for larger depth of field. Secondly, the image quality with almost all lenses are better when “stopped down”, i.e. not at maximum aperture, but a couple of stops below.

This is the Manual mode. Here, you set both the shutter speed and the aperture. The camera does not adjust for the correct exposure in this mode. If you set unsuitable values and the exposure is all wrong, tough luck. This mode is useful in order to keep the exposure constant, when taking a couple of images to stitch together a panorama or something. I almost never use it.

The rest?

Well, there are many other modes, but like I said at the beginning, I could never learn them. But here is how you can cheat, and use one of the modes I mentioned above:

Portrait mode:
Here, you want to have the background blurred and out of focus so that the whole picture is focused on your subject. You need shallow depth of field, so you need to use mode A, and set the maximum aperture (lowest f-number).

Landscape mode:
Here, you want to have pretty much the whole picture in focus, everything. So, you need a wide depth of field, simply set mode A, and choose a lower aperture (low f-number). It is a good idea not to go with the lowest one, because diffraction decreases image quality, go with 1/3 from the bottom (f11-f16?).

Sports mode:
Here, we want to freeze the subject motion. In order to do that, we need a high shutter speed, set mode S and try to guess a suitable shutter speed. Take a few test shots to see if your chosen shutter speed can “freeze” the motion. If not, choose a higher one. On the other hand, if you want to blur motion, you should choose lower shutter speeds.

Troubleshooting your photos to take better ones

2012-01-06T01:36:00.000+01:00

Are you not satisfied with the photos you are taking?

Thinking of getting a better camera to take better pictures?

Let’s see if a better camera will improve your photos.

First, you have to find out why your pictures are no good.

Let’s go through the possibilities:

Troubleshooting blurry pictures

(Click on the pictures to view the larger versions.)

If the whole picture is blurry, this is most certainly caused by camera shake.

The problem is that the chosen shutter speed is too low and the slight movement of the camera causes the picture to be blurred. What you need to do is to find a way to shoot with a faster shutter speed.

What you need: A higher shutter speed, or less camera shake:

What you can do with your current camera:
- Set a higher iso (if possible)
If you are worried about reducing image quality, well don’t be. It is far better to have an image with some high iso noise than a completely blurry picture.
- Set a faster aperture (if possible)
This will let you choose a faster shutter speed for the same exposure.
- Set negative exposure compensation
Yes, the whole picture will be darker if you pull the exposure compensation down. But which is better, a dark image (presumably of a dark scene anyway) or a blurry one? Again, for you to decide. Have common sense , if you expose -8 stops to stop camera shake, you will get an almost completely black but not blurry image, not a dark one.
- Work on your handholding technique
- Shoot with a tripod or improvised support
Both will minimize the camera movement and help you get sharper shots. There is a limit to what you can do with handholding, but with a bit of practice, it will take you surprisingly far. If you don’t like carrying a tripod around, look out for any object where you can place the camera to take the picture.

How a new camera can help you:
- If your camera doesn’t have image stabilisation, you will gain some breathing room by getting one that has. This can make a difference of up to 2-3 stops.
- A camera (or lens) with a faster aperture than your current one will help you shoot with faster shutter speeds

Troubleshooting motion blur in pictures

If a moving subject in the picture is blurry and the rest of the picture is sharp, this is caused by a too slow shutter speed. The shutter speed was not fast enough to freeze the motion of the subject.

What you need: A higher shutter speed

What you can do with your current camera:
- Set a higher iso (if possible)
- Set a faster aperture (if possible)
Again, as explained above, setting a higher iso or a higher aperture will let you choose a higher shutter speed

How a new camera can help you:
- A camera (or lens) with a faster aperture than your current one will help you shoot with faster shutter speeds

Image stabilisation will not make a difference here, because the problem is not camera shake.

Troubleshooting out of focus pictures

This is sometimes hard to tell apart from blurry photos, but there is an easy way to check: If nothing in the frame is sharp, then it is camera shake. If however, your subject is out of focus but the complete background is in focus, then you have a focus problem. The camera focused either too close or too far from the distance where you wanted the focus.

What you need: Correct choice of focus distance

What you can do with your current camera:
- Shoot by focusing and reframing
What you can do is the following: The autofocus points are usually indicated on the viewfinder or the display of the camera. First, point the camera so that where you want to focus lies smack under the focus point. This may be different to how you want to frame the shot. Half-press the shutter to let the camera acquire focus. Then without taking your hand off the shutter, quickly pan the camera to what you actually want to shoot and fully press the shutter before the camera has a chance to reacquire the focus. (Don’t let go of the shutter button when doing this.) In more advanced cameras, there is also an autofocus-lock button to keep the focus manually.

How a new camera can help you:
- A camera with a better auto-focus system can help you get more better focused pictures. If you took a picture quickly or of a moving subject and the autofocus could not keep up, then this is also a point where a better / quicker autofocus system will make a world of difference. Currently, almost all compact cameras have what could only be called mediocre autofocus systems that need almost a second to focus. DSLRs, even the cheapest ones are far quicker. If you need to shoot fast moving subjects, at the moment you have to have a DSLR.

Troubleshooting grainy pictures

This problem is usually caused by having a low light scene. Usually the aperture is wide open and the shutter speed is as low as it can reasonably be. Therefore the camera starts cranking up the iso to have the correct exposure. Unfortunately the image quality degrades as higher and higher iso settings are used. The reason for this is that the sensor has less and less light information to work with. Most compact cameras have tiny sensors thus a very small amount of light to begin with and as a result generate very poor image quality at high iso settings.

What you need: Possibility to use a lower iso setting

What you can do with your current camera:
- You can try to lower the shutter speed further and thus lower the iso setting as well. In this case, you either need to be careful with your handholding, or use some sort of support, otherwise you will trade in a grainy picture for a blurry one.
- You can try to set a larger aperture if it is not already wide open.
- You can shoot with a shorter focal length. This makes no sense at first, but there is an explanation. Yes, the focal length has at first nothing to do with the exposure or the iso. However, there is an indirect link because basically all consumer zoom lenses have variable aperture. The maximum aperture of the lens decreases with increasing focal length. A typical kit lens these days would be a 18-55mm zoom, where the aperture at 18mm is f3.5 and the aperture at 55mm is f5.6. So the short end of the zoom is almost two stops better than the long end. Therefore shooting with a shorter focal length (wider angle) will let the camera have a larger aperture and thus lower iso.

How a new camera or lens can help you:
- Getting a camera that is better at high ISOs will help in this case. All else being equal, the picture quality will be better. But note that this is primarily a function of sensor size. For example, moving up from an entry level compact camera to a slightly more expensive one will not make much of a difference because the vast majority of compact cameras have sensors of the same size. The image quality improves gradually over the years, but the fact is, you need a larger sensor for noticeably better high ISO images. I think this is perhaps the biggest gain in moving up to a DSLR or similar large sensor camera.
- Getting a camera or a lens with a higher maximum aperture will also let you choose a lower iso for the same exposure.

If your pictures have none of these problems, and yet you don’t like them:

Well, you need to improve your shooting more than anything else, your camera is not at fault. Get out there and practice! Happy shooting!

Experimenting with slow shutter speed and motion

2012-01-05T08:36:00.000+01:00

The shutter speed can be used in a number of ways to interact with motion in the picture. Low shutter speeds can be used to blur objects and high shutter speeds can be used to freeze objects in motion. But how can it be actually applied? Here are some examples for using a slow shutter speed.

Use a slow shutter speed to create a beautiful look with flowing water

Use a slow shutter speed to illustrate a motion

Illustrating the speed of a car with slow shutter speed

How Many Megapixels Do You Need?

2012-01-04T03:05:00.000+01:00

The answer to this question depends mostly on what you want to do with your pictures.

If you want to just view your pictures on your computer screen, you do not need many megapixels at all. The typical laptop sold today comes with a screen with around 1 megapixels. Most high end screens do not have more than 2 megapixels.

99% of cameras on sale today have more than 5 megapixels. Basically then, the number of megapixels you need comes down to how large you want to print your pictures.

For example, I have a 6 megapixel Nikon D40. How large can I print?

That is only restricted by the quality I need at the output. This is determined by the ppi, or pixel per inch.

This determines how many pixels of your image cover one inch on the print. For the highest quality prints, this should not be smaller than 360 and for normal quality prints, not smaller than 180. Using these numbers with the 3000 x 2000 image size of the D40, I get the following results.
For an optimum quality print, I should not print larger than about 20×15 cm.
For a normal quality print, I should not print larger than 40×30cm.
For me, this is completely sufficient. The largest size I print is 30×20cm, and that falls in right between optimum and normal quality for a 6mp camera.

Since even the cheapest cameras on the market now have more than 5 or 6 megapixels, this has become a total non-issue for me. If I go to buy a camera these days, I do not even consider the pixel count. Unless you are printing huge posters, neither should you.

Picture of the week 12.01

2012-01-01T21:11:00.000+01:00

Couple walking between flourescent benches. Hofgarten, Düsseldorf.

Picture was taken while zooming slightly during the shot. It's important to keep the main subject in the middle of the shot, to keep it a bit less fuzzy than the rest of the frame.

Crop Factor

2012-01-01T21:01:00.000+01:00

The crop factor specifies the relative size of a sensor. The reference size is almost always taken as 35mm film, where each frame has a size of 36×24mm. This is also known as “full frame”. The crop factor then is the diagonal of this divided by the diagonal of the specific sensor in question. Since the smaller sensor “crops” the picture, this ratio is called the crop factor.

There are some interesting things that result from the use of a cropped sensor (a sensor smaller than full frame).

First of all, since the images is “cropped” relative to a full frame sensor, the field of view is reduced. This is the same thing as using a longer focal length. In fact, the effective focal length is quite easy to calculate, it is simply the normal focal length of the lens multiplied by the crop factor.

For example, entry level Nikon DSLRs have a crop factor of 1.5, therefore the standard kit lens which is 18-55mm acts like a 27-82.5mm lens. This is then called the 35mm equivalent focal length. A lens with that focal length range on a full frame sensor would have the same field of view as the 18-55 on a 1.5x cropped sensor.

Crop sensors are good if you want to have longer focal lengths. A relatively inexpensive 55-200mm tele zoom suddenly becomes equivalent to a 80-300mm full frame when used on a camera with a 1.5 crop factor, which increases your reach. On the other hand, this is not so convenient at the other end. At wide angle, a standard (for full frame) 28-80mm zoom suddenly becomes a 42-120mm, which is nowhere near as good a range. To get real wide angle, you need shorter focal lengths, hence the multiple options starting at 16-17-18mm that are built specifically for crop sensor DSLRs.

Secondly, the sensor is obviously smaller, in fact, sensor area is reduced relative to the square of the crop factor. This is because both the width and height shrinks, so effect on the area is squared. This has a number of advantages. Since the sensor is smaller, it is cheaper to produce, lighter, more power efficient, fits in a smaller camera body and so on… These advantages also spill over onto the lens. Since the sensor is smaller, the image circle (basically the diameter) of the lens can be smaller. Again, cheaper, lighter, smaller etc…
There are however also some disadvantages to a smaller sensor. The image quality depends heavily on the area of the photosites on the sensor. If the sensor size is reduced, so is the amount of light hitting those photosites. That means reduced image quality compared to a larger sensor.

So the miracle of minituarization allows us to put a camera in every phone, but the sensors are so small that the image quality is miserable in anything other than good light.

Compromises…

Read more: Why you should care about sensor size

High ISO Noise = Grainy Photos

2012-01-01T20:53:00.000+01:00

One of the situations where compact cameras really struggle is low light situations. The following are some examples of what happens when you shoot at high ISOs in (usually) in low light. You usually end up with grainy photos. (Click on the picture to see it larger.) That is noise caused by pushing a small sensor too far. The higher the ISO value, the less light the sensor has to work with. Have a look at the ISO article for a more detailed explanation.

So, how can you fix these grainy pictures?

Well, a larger sensor provides much much better low light performance. Take a look below for similar shots but with a Nikon D40 instead of a compact camera, at an even higher ISO. Even though the D40 is now quite out of date, the low light performance is still light years ahead of the current compacts, as you can compare above and below. As a result, the photos come out much less grainier than the previous ones.

Want this image quality but don’t want to carry a DSLR? There are now some interesting options coming onto the market, in the form of the “mirrorless” cameras. In essence, these are physically much smaller than DSLR’s while having the same sized sensors. You can check out the Panasonic G1, GF-1, G2, G-10, Olympus E-P1, E-P2, E-PL1 and Sony NEX-3, NEX-5. Even though they are still not what you could call pocketable, they are definitely smaller than a DSLR. This is a relatively new market, so the prices are relatively high for a cut-down DSLR, but should drop towards the end of the year as more players enter this market.

Deciphering Lens Acronyms – Nikon Edition

2012-01-01T20:31:00.000+01:00

New lenses all have bunch of acronyms attached to them.

Here is a simple guide to the more recent Nikon lenses to understand what these all mean, and to understand if any of this is important:

AF: Autofocus
These lenses autofocus with autofocus capable Nikon bodies that have an internal autofocus motor.

AF-S: Autofocus with silent wave motor
These lenses have an internal motor that does the autofocus. This enables AF-S lenses to work with bodies without internal autofocus motors such as the Nikon D40, D60 or D3000.

VR: Vibration Reduction
These have elements inside the lens that compensate for camera shake and prevent unsharp pictures.

ED: Extra low dispersion glass
This is a sort of coating that reduces chromatic aberration. Don’t worry about it too much, if you are reading this site.

DX:
These lenses are designed only to work with crop sensor cameras (1.5x). That means that they will not cover the full sensor if used on a full frame camera. This allows lenses to be made smaller, cheaper and lighter because they only have to cover a reduced area.

M/A: Manual / Auto
This allows switching from auto to manual focus instantly by moving the focus ring. On lenses which do not have this feature, you should not touch the focus ring when the camera is on autofocus, trying to move the focus ring may damage the autofocus mechanism in this case.

What about the ones that I didn’t mention? Well, I think those are beyond the interest of the amateur photographer. To see a more professional and complete explanation of all lens acronyms, have a look at the glossary from Nikon.

Why you should care about sensor size

2012-01-01T20:09:00.000+01:00

A comparison of common camera sensor sizes

This is an illustration of the most commonly used sensor sizes on the market.

In my opinion, the technology in the camera is not worth talking about unless you can actually see fairly obviously how it makes a difference. Fortunately, it is quite easy to see the effects of sensor size.

There are two very common failings of small, compact camera sensors:

Blown highlights

Have you ever been annoyed with this in one of your pictures? This is caused by a lack of dynamic range. You see, there is only a certain range of darkness and brightness that a sensor can detect. If the sensor has a smaller dynamic range, it cannot distinguish the very light colors from the very very light colors, and thinks that it is all solid white. You then end up with the ugly complete white sky like the picture above. This is called blown highlights and occurs with small sensors. Larger sensors are much more likely to preserve the highlights, ending up with much nicer skies, as a result of their greater dynamic range.

High ISO noise

This is the noise pattern caused by the small sensor at high ISO’s. When a higher ISO is set on the camera the sensor is told to produce an image with less light. Go from ISO 100 to 200 and you are telling the sensor that it should produce an image using 50% less light. Guess what? The image it delivers won’t be as good. Now couple this with a sensor that was already receiving only a small amount of light to start with, and the results are not pretty. This is where a full frame DSLR sensor has the advantage, and allows you to increase the ISO massively without seeing too much image quality degradation.

But why the difference?

Look at the first picture and compare the size of the sensors. Nowadays, you can find 12Megapixels packed into any one of the sizes illustrated above. So, the sensors have the same amount of pixels, but the largest sensor is 31 times larger (in terms of area) than the smallest one. Of course, since the pixel count is the same (12MP) the individual pixels have the same area ratio.
Think about this.
If one pixel gets 30 times more light than the other, is it surprising that it produces better image quality? That is what it’s all about, the larger the sensor, the more light information it has to play with.

It’s not about the number of pixels, it’s about how good each pixel is

A larger sensor with the same number of megapixels will give you better image quality than a smaller sensor. While the wonders of minituarization has allowed us to put a camera in every phone produced these days, there is no getting away from the laws of physics. Even though they may have as many megapixels as their bigger brothers, these small sensors only have a tiny amount of light information to work with. So it’s no wonder that the pixels that they deliver are not as good as real cameras.

Which size sensor should you consider?

There are mainly two considerations for this:

1. Size / Weight

The trend is pretty obvious, the larger the sensor, the larger the lens, the larger the whole camera.
If you want to have a camera that you can put in your pocket, you obviously have to go with a small sensor camera since only those are small enough. So no need to think about all this then?
Not exactly. You now know that image quality is primarily a question of sensor size, so at least keep this in mind when you are shopping for a small sensor camera. The manufacturers will try to market things like: “This one with the titanium body, yes, it is sooo much better than that plastic one, yes sir!” Yes, it costs twice as much but if the sensor sizes are the same, maybe you should think twice about whether it really is better.

2. Budget

Obviously, the larger the sensor, the more expensive it is, etc. etc…
If you don’t mind carrying it around, get the largest sensor you can afford. I personally think that entry level DSLR’s are an excellent compromise in terms of image quality, size and price. The prices have really come down in recent years, and the image quality is on a different planet compared to compact cameras.

Read more:
Crop Factor
High ISO Noise = Grainy Photos
Blown highlights