Jon's Photo Blog

What image quality really means – Part 1

2012-02-23T04:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve spent much of yesterday and today prepping images for submission to Alamy. Since Photolibrary was swallowed by Getty, who then presented me with an unacceptable contract, Alamy has been my main library outlet.

Mills at Tampere, Finland

In some senses that’s neither here nor there; the point is that preparing images for any professional library means giving them some very close scrutiny. This includes examining the entire image at 100% magnification to check for any dust spots or other issues. This is boring but necessary – it’s certainly better than having images rejected by Alamy’s quality control.

And during this rather mechanical process there’s both time and fuel for reflection on what image quality really means. Which all relates to my thoughts about the headline-grabbing 36 megapixels of Nikon’s new D800/D800E. It doesn’t look like I’ll get my hands on either of these until around the end of March, but I’ve seen a number of sample images and studied reports from those who've had access to pre-production cameras.

Glasson Dock, Lancashire

Meanwhile, I’ve been working mostly with images from my Nikon D700 (a “lowly” 12 megapixels) and D7000 (16mp). Here’s one from each camera. Without reading ahead, can you tell which is from the 12mp camera and which is from the 16mp one? (No cheating, now.)

The first image is from Tampere in Finland; the second is from much closer to home, Glasson Dock in Lancashire. I’ve picked these shots because they’re both full of fine detail.

When I view the Tampere shot at 100% on my 24” screen, it’s the equivalent of a print about 50”/128cm wide. I can’t just see every brick – that’s easy. I can see variations in texture form one brick to the next. See those windows on the shadowed wall facing the camera? I can clearly see every slat in the blinds.

Same thing with the Glasson image – except that (because it’s from the D700) it’s “only” the equivalent of a 44”/110cm print. But if anything, the resolution of fine detail seems even crisper. Every rigging line is clearly resolved and I have no difficulty reading the names of every boat.

This being so, the obvious question is: just how much more resolution do you actually need? I’ll return to this shortly, but first: I said that the Glasson (D700) image looks crisper. The most likely reasons for this are nothing to do with any difference between the two cameras. They’re far more likely to be due either to the different lenses used or to the fact that the Glasson shot used a tripod while the Tampere image was hand-held (albeit with elbows braced on the parapet of a bridge). The lenses are, respectively, a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 and a Nikon 18–70mm f/3.5/4.5 ‘kit’ lens.

How much is enough?

Two points.

First, even the smaller file bears scrutiny at a magnification equivalent to a 44” print. I can count on one hand the number of occasions I’ve needed to make prints larger than that. Of course people will say, “but you need to print at 300 ppi and a 4256 pixel-wide file will only make a 14” print”. This is little better than nonsense. 300ppi is the default standard for book- and magazine-printing, so this image file would not quite make a double page spread without a bit of scaling up. However, because the detail in the original is so crisp and clean, this would not be a problem. For a larger print to go on the wall there’s no need to print at 300 ppi.

But, more to the point, how often do most people supply images for double-page spreads or 50” prints? If they print at all, they’re usually printing at A4 size on a domestic inkjet. The largest they’ll normally see their images is on a computer screen or an HD TV. And yes, your HD TV might be 50” wide – but it sure as hell doesn’t have 300ppi resolution. I’ve noted before that ‘Full HD’ resolution is 1920 x 1080 pixels.

At some point, but probably not for at least five years, there will be Ultra-High Definition TV (UHDTV) sets available; one Japanese company has already demonstrated an 85" LCD display capable of 7680 x 4320 pixels. Which may be of interest for those with homes big enough to accommodate a TV as big as the door into the room, but may prove more relevant to big-screen public displays (they’ll be trialling some during the London Olympics). And, yes, that’s equivalent to about 33 megapixels – so the D800 appears future-proof in that respect.

However, it’s a fallacy to think that the existence of 33mp displays means that every image capture will have to match that standard. In fact, they probably never will. Devices with smaller sensors, like compact cameras and mobile phones, are butting up against the physical limits already. One of the key issues is diffraction. Smaller sensors take smaller lenses and therefore the lens aperture is physically small. Already we see that most compact cameras won’t stop down to apertures smaller than f/8 because diffraction would just make the image appear softer. Trying to cram more pixels onto a sensor of the same size achieves nothing if the actual resolution is limited by diffraction. There’s some information here (albeit referencing cameras that are now out of date).

Which leads on to my second point.

Yes, the D800 (and possibly even more, the D800E) are capable of capturing extraordinary levels of fine detail. For some photographers, this is really worth having. However, their true potential is only achieved if every other aspect of the photographic process is also up to scratch.

I’ve already mentioned that the differences between my sample images are attributable to differences between lenses, and/or the use of a tripod. The astounding resolution of the D800 will only be fully realised by photographers using the very best lenses and impeccable technique. And when you start ‘pixel peeping’ these images at 100% depth of field is going to appear to have contracted, too.

I am really looking forward to getting hold of a D800, but I’m also nervous that it will show up the shortcomings of some of my lenses – and will it also make my feel that my long-trusted carbon-fibre tripod is’t quite solid enough after all. The cost of the camera body could be just the start… maybe it’s a good thing I’ll only be getting it on loan!

Coming up in Part 2 – what else does image quality mean?

D800 – a few million pixels too far?

2012-01-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

There’s lots of Internet speculation right now about the feature set of the Nikon D800.

This is (supposedly) the long-awaited replacement for the D700. I’ve been using a D700 more or less since it first appeared (in 2008) and it’s still going strong. It remains to be seen whether the D800 will have any killer features that make upgrading essential.

One feature that’s been widely predicted is a 36 megapixel sensor. That’s three times as many little pixies as the D700. Lots of people on web forums are getting very excited about this but no-one has yet given me a convincing reason why it’s a good thing. One comment even said it would be great for HD video. I think a lot of people need reminding that an HD picture is not quite 2 megapixels. Yes, 2, not 20.

What a 36mp sensor undoubtedly will do is make most of our hardware and software for handling images struggle. Memory cards will look smaller, so will our hard drives, and most software will take longer to handle these images.

It remains to be seen, but I’d be very surprised if this 36mp sensor can match the dynamic range and ISO range of the D4, which has just been released. The D4 has a 16 megapixel sensor.

There’s no question of me buying a D4 because I can’t afford it and anyway for most of my shooting the lower weight and bulk of the D700 is a great advantage.

The D700 is essentially “D3 Lite” – same sensor, same phenomenal image quality, less weight and bulk. What I was hoping for in the D800 was an equivalent “D4 Lite”, with the same 16mp sensor. Here's a good link explaining why the D4 has "only" 16mp:

No doubt I’ll get my chance to put the D800 through its paces for an Expanded Guide. But if it really is a 36mp camera, I’m pretty sure I’ll be returning it at the end of the loan period and not feeling too much temptation to splash the cash.

As I haven't got a D800 to play with, here are a couple of recent shots taken on the D700.

Queenstown Bike Park, New Zealand

Town Croft Wood – a bit closer to home!

Hockney or Adams?

2012-01-10T02:00:00.000-08:00

There seems to be no escaping David Hockney at the moment. Last weekend I was looking at the many examples of his work displayed at Salts Mill in Shipley and then today I picked up the latest Radio Times to find he’s the subject of a major feature by Andrew Marr.

Hockney, of course, is an Artist. Indeed, many would see him as the greatest living British artist. And he has been using photography in his work for decades.

I’m not planning a complete critical assessment of Hockney’s photography, but I was very intrigued – perhaps provoked is a better word – by a brief reference in Marr’s piece to Hockney’s work in Yosemite – which, as he says, is best known to many through the photography of Ansel Adams. There’s a clear implication that Hockney is ‘taking on’ Adams, who many of us regard as one of the greatest and most influential landscape photographers of all time. Even if that’s Marr’s interpretation rather than Hockney’s intention, I couldn’t let that pass without some comment...

Obviously I can’t reproduce their images in this blog without infringing copyright, but you can see one of Hockney’s Yosemite composites on his own website. There are lots of Adams photos here – including several Merced River views.

I did spend some time at Salts Mill looking at a couple of Hockney’s photo mosaics – one of Yosemite and another of the Grand Canyon. These are composed of dozens (maybe over 100 in the case of the Grand Canyon) of standard size (6 x 4) photographic prints, which look to me very much as if they were taken with the camera on automatic settings as there are curious variations in both focus and exposure.

For instance, in the Grand Canyon mosaic there is a railing in the foreground. In one print it’s pin sharp because the camera has focused on the railing; in the next it’s quite soft because the camera has switched focus to the background.

The question which is raised by this is how far this was intentional, and/or how far did Hockney consciously allow these shifts to happen? I’m sure it would be a mistake to assume that Hockney wasn’t aware of this. He’s well-known as an artist who is very interested in the media he uses. However, he may well have chosen to allow this element of randomness to make itself felt.

If so, it’s very different from the approach adopted by Ansel Adams, who is well known as a supreme photographic craftsman, taking great pains to achieve the highest possible level of control over every aspect of the process. He developed the Zone System for precise control of tonal values and relationships in the negative and the print, promulgated the concept of visualisation, and worked mostly with view cameras whose movements allow exceptional control over perspective and depth of field.

For me, and many others, what made Adams great was not technical mastery as such, but the way he used it to express his vision. (Isn’t this what all artists do?). As he himself said:

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

And so we return to Andrew Marr’s implied comparison of Adams and Hockney. Far be it from me to say whether one is a greater artist than the other; all I would say is that Adams is one of those who showed, in the 20th century, that photographers could be artists just as much as painters can.

And, on a more personal note, although I’ve spent considerable time recently looking at Hockney, I do know that it is Ansel Adams whose work I’ll return to time and again.

Incidentally, there’s lots more to see at Salts Mill, including a very good bike shop, and it also forms part of the World Heritage Site of Saltaire. I’ll be going again – and spending some time exploring with my camera.

Season's Greetings

2011-12-22T00:49:00.000-08:00

First, apologies if things have been a bit quite on the blog front lately, but having spent three weeks in New Zealand (of which more later) I was straight into work on my return. Proof-checking and amendments for my latest Expanded Guide (Nikon Coolpix P7100) and another month's contribution to NPhoto magazine to sort out.

(NPhoto Issue 1 has been out for a while now and Issue 2 is due very shortly – interested to know what people think. You'll see my ugly mug on the contents pages but I don't think my contribution is directly credited anywhere – well, off the record, it's most of the 'Nikopedia' section.)

More importantly, however, today is the shortest day and I wanted to wish everyone a great festive season and all the best in photography and life more generally for the coming year.

Here's a seasonal photo (taken on Christmas Eve last year).

We are clearly not going to get these conditions this Christmas!

And here’s a wee teaser from the New Zealand trip, and Queenstown Bike Park.

I think it's safe to say we in the UK aren't going to get these conditions either!

Nikon P7100: the verdict

2011-11-13T06:10:00.000-08:00

I've done a lot of shooting with the Nikon P7100 recently as I've been writing a book on it. This has now been delivered to the publisher and the camera is about to go back too. So will I miss it?

Well, I’ll miss the light weight in my backpack next time I go mountain biking, but overall it’s a relief to get back to shooting with my SLRs. This is not to say that the P7100 is a bad camera. Far from it; it’s the best compact camera I’ve used, by some margin. But it’s still a compact and that means compromise.

For me the biggest compromise is image quality. This should be crucial for every committed photographer. And, at risk of repeating myself, this is not a criticism of the P7100 for having ‘only’ 10.1 megapixels. Far from it. I think it would be a better camera with 6 or 8 mp.

It seems to be an inevitable result of the smaller sensor (physically smaller, not number-of-pixels “smaller”) that compact cameras can’t handle wide tonal ranges as well as SLRs and other cameras with big sensors. I’ve looked at images from the P7100, and another of today’s top compacts, the Olympus XZ-1 (also 10.1mp) not only in comparison to shots from my current SLRs but also compared to shots from the 6-megapixel Nikon D70 which was my first digital camera. And I’d take the D70 shots nearly every time.

The most obvious failing on the compacts is lack of dynamic range. In plain English, highlights and deep shadows both lose detail much more readily. Above is a shot of Mallerstang in Cumbria taken on the P7100; on right, one from the same shoot taken on my D700. It’s not a scientific comparison but the overall lighting was pretty similar and I think the glaring white empty areas in the clouds in the compact shot are pretty obvious.

Action = frustration

My other big frustration with the P7100, and compacts in general, is shooting action. Unlike earlier compacts, the basic response to the shutter button is pretty quick, but the focusing system isn’t nimble enough to cope with fast-moving subjects consistently. I took it with me to shoot the Rapha Super Cross cyclo-cross event at Brockhole on the shores of Windermere recently. I found that I could shoot panning shots fairly well with the P7100 as the focus distance changes only gradually, but it often failed to focus at all on riders coming towards me. In identical circumstances my Nikon D700 SLR coped flawlessly.

There is an option to pre-focus at a specific point, but unlike an SLR neither of the P7100’s viewing systems is good enough to see the rider snapping into focus. You’d have to pick a reference spot and shoot by eye when the rider hit the mark. Of course, action is demanding stuff to shoot and cycling action is tougher than most. Absolute speeds may be low compared to some other sports but you can be very close to the action.

Happy on a tripod

I had more success shooting landscapes with the P7100, notably an afternoon/evening at Farleton Fell in Cumbria (it’s pure coincidence that all the locations referred to in this entry are in Cumbria). This is one of my favourite locations and never disappoints, but I actually really enjoyed shooting with the P7100 here. It is a good camera to use on a tripod and the folding screen actually makes sense when shooting from very low viewpoints, when it can be very awkward to peer through an SLR viewfinder. Results were pretty good, with the obvious proviso about lack of dynamic range compared to an SLR – this can be quite a big issue in landscape photography. The other big limitation is that the 28mm wide-angle is not wide enough.

Evening, Farleton Fell

Now, the P7100 does have an HDR (High Dynamic Range) mode which is designed to cope with exactly these situations. It works by making two different exposures, one to favour the highlights and one aimed at the shadows, and then blending them together. It’s a perfectly respectable technique; I’ve often manually merged multiple exposures to cope with extremes of contrast. However the results from the P7100’s automated HDR seemed uniformly flat and dull, and I’ve rapidly reverted to bracketing and manually merging the shots. It’s just a drag having to do this in situations where an SLR would capture the full range in a single exposure.

I mentioned the folding screen. Regular readers will know that I’m pretty sceptical about on-screen viewing and the P7100 has done little to dent my scepticism. Yes, it’s handy when shooting at low level, but the clarity of the screen image is nowhere near as good as an SLR viewfinder and it’s hard to see properly in bright light. Of course, the P7100 also has an optical viewfinder. I was initially delighted to see this but delight soon faded when I saw how small and poky the finder is. It got worse when I realised that it only shows about 80% of the actual picture – and as that 80% is a linear measurement, it only shows about 64% of the picture by area. Worse still, that 64% isn’t even consistently centred. Mind you, I did find it handy for those panning shots at the cyclo-cross, and the fact that the viewfinder doesn’t black out when you shoot was a help too.

Asking too much?

Reading this I think any fair-minded person would point out that I’ve been pushing the limits of the P7100 and most people probably wouldn’t expect that much out of it. This is perfectly true and I’ve done it quite consciously. I was seriously interested in whether the camera would meet enough of my needs to be a viable alternative to an SLR when I want to travel light. The problem is that the times when I want to travel light are usually when I’m doing something like mountain biking and want to capture the action, and the P7100 is not really an action camera. On the other hand, as compact cameras go it’s very good indeed. I do really like its rugged build and the generous array of external controls, making settings quick and easy to change. The external exposure compensation dial is possibly its best single feature.

If money were no object I probably would buy one of these. But money definitely is an object, and if I had spare cash right now for a lightweight ‘bike camera’ I know that the P7100 is too compromised for this purpose. For a similar amount I could get a Nikon D3100 and 18-55mm lens, and that looks like the best choice to me right now.

And the P7100 in a sentence? It's a great compact – but it's still a compact.

Good results at night – but only when I shot in Manual mode and used
RAW format; Night Landscape mode was nowhere near as good.

The P7100 can shoot some sharp close-ups

On the shortlist

2011-11-03T01:02:00.000-07:00

The photo below has been shortlisted for the photo competition at Kendal Mountain Festival. It's in the top 10, which will be printed up big and displayed in the Brewery Arts Centre, the hub of the festival. The photo shows ace kayaker Callum Anderson in the falls of Glen Nevis, near Fort William in Scotland – the UK's Outdoor Capital.

Getting this shot did not require any extreme wilderness skills: it's actually taken from a bridge where the road crosses the river just below the falls. This gave me a nice stable platform to shoot from and put me at eye-level with the top of the falls. I think one of the things which makes this shot work is the "comin' right at ya" feel.

Callum actually made five runs down these falls before we moved on to another location, but I'm pleased to report this shot was taken on the first run.

For those who are interested, here's some technical info. The camera was a Nikon D7000 and the focal length 66mm (equivalent to 100mm on full-frame). Exposure mode was Manual, ISO rating 400, aperture f/9.0 and shutter speed 1/1000 sec.

Of all this data, it's the last item I want to emphasise. The fast shutter speed doesn't just freeze any motion of Callum in his kayak, but also all that white water. Even at 1/500 I think the definition in the water would have started to soften, and the shot would lose something.

One other thing. I've got my subject right on the centre line of the image. I knew instinctively this was the right way to go with this shot. But then you all know what I think about the "Rule" of Thirds don't you? If not, see this entry.

Blowing my own trumpet

2011-10-31T02:20:00.000-07:00

I picked up two awards at the Annual Dinner of the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild held at Plas y Brenin in Snowdonia last Saturday (Oct. 29th)

I won the Outdoor Feature category for “On the Beaten Track,” published in Cycle magazine. This was an exploration of issues relating to mountain bikes and erosion. This was an award for writing, but here's one of my images which accompanied the feature. The judges said it was: “a great example of good, old-fashioned journalism; a timely question, strong research, balanced arguments, though-provoking quotes and a light, personal touch.” The full article is available from the CTC website.

In the Award for Excellence in Photography I was Highly Commended for a portfolio of images taken for the Expanded Guides to Nikon cameras, which I produce for Ammonite Press. I need to shoot up to 200 images for each new book, from close-ups of every button on the camera to a very diverse range of shots illustrating different technical features in action or just highlighting different approaches to photography. Some of these images can be accommodated within my other photographic projects and commitments, but at least half are shot specifically. It's challenging but enjoyable and I really value the fact that it's made me shoot a much wider range of images. Here's one of the images from the portfolio.

The Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, neatly summed up by the strapline “Words and Pictures from the Outdoors,” is the only UK-based association of media professionals working largely or entirely on outdoor subjects. The membership represents a tremendous body of experience and expertise covering almost every conceivable field of activity and all corners of the globe. They’ve been there, seen it, got the T-shirt, and in more than a few cases, the scars to go with it. And of course they've got the words and pictures too.

Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Centre, runs courses in walking, climbing, skiing, cycling and mountain biking, canoeing and kayaking, navigation, first aid, and mountain leadership – to mention but a few.

I have won other awards, including the OWPG’s Outdoor Book award and the Best Photography award from the British Guild of Travel Writers. I was also Commended in the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2009.

Looking for something that doesn't exist Part 5

2011-10-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

Just a very quick update… I’ve just received a Nikon P7100 compact – which might uncharitably be described as Nikon’s answer to the Canon G series – as I’ll be writing the Expanded Guide to this camera. This will be my most intensive work ever with a compact camera and it will be interesting to see if any of my preconceptions/prejudices are overturned.

Some first impressions are quite favourable, it’s agreeably chunky and doesn’t feel like it’ll slip out of my (largish) hands. And it has lots of dials so most of the main controls are readily accessible on the service rather than being buried in menus. It feels pretty responsive to a press on the shutter too.

It’s early days, obviously, and I’ll report back after I’ve really given it a workout.

Nikon 1 First Thoughts

2011-09-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

No Nikon 1 shots yet so here's one from a recent trip to Menorca

Reactions are starting to appear to the new Nikon 1 camera system, announced yesterday. Obviously it will be a little while before most of us get our hands on one or even get a chance to critically examine images taken with these new cameras, but there’s already a lot of reaction, both positive and negative.

Before the announcement I was pretty sceptical as leaks and rumours had already revealed (correctly) that the Nikon 1 would use a smaller sensor than existing Compact System cameras like Sony NEX-series, Panasonic G-series and Olympus Pen. However, having begun to digest the details of the new system, I’m warming to it, at least in theory.

As I’ve made clear in previous entries, I’ve yet to be totally convinced by any of the existing Compact System cameras. The cameras themselves may be smaller and lighter than a DSLR but once you start using a range of lenses this advantage is less clear-cut. And so far none of them appear to have any other significant advantage over SLRs – in fact, in areas like speed of operation and ability to directly control key functions, they seem like a step back.

The Nikon 1 system (it really is a system, with two camera bodies, four lenses and a range of accessories available at launch) looks like it should beat the CSCs on weight and bulk, and if you believe the publicity, will actually beat all existing cameras in shooting and focusing speed. Whether this really translates into an ability to capture fast action in the real world remains to be seen, but it does suggest that Nikon has managed to Think Different (to borrow an Apple slogan of a few years ago). If nothing else it should breathe some new life into a slightly stagnating camera market.

As for the sensor, well, it’s certainly small, at 13.2 x 8.8 mm. This is less than half the size of the sensors used in most enthusiast DSLRs – but it’s also more than double the size of those used in even the best compact cameras. And, very sensibly, Nikon have not tried to pack daft numbers of pixels in there: it’s a realistic 10 megapixels. Frankly even this is more than most people really need (I love the way people’s jaws drop when you point out that an HD TV screen is less than 2 megapixels).

All of which makes me very interested in these cameras. However, I can see certain aspects with which I may have issues. The most obvious is that there’s no ‘one-touch’ access to the proper shooting modes (Manual, Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority) and it’s not clear how users will adjust aperture and/or shutter-speed in these modes. How easy and responsive it is to use for proper photography remains to be seen.

Much of this will become clearer once reliable commentators like dpreview and Thom Hogan have got their hands on these cameras. In the meanwhile, here’s just a little basic info on the new system:

Camera bodies: J1 and V1 have much in common including the new sensor (Nikon is calling it ‘CX’). The more expensive V1 has an electronic viewfinder while the J1 relies on the screen alone for viewing. The V1 also has a better dust-removal system, probably reflecting an assumption that V1 users will change lenses more often. They’re stated to have exceptionally fast autofocus and image processing, allowing shooting rates of up to 60 fps. I’m still wondering what practical value this (the shooting rate not the AF) will have, but it sounds impressive.

Accessories include a suitably tiny flashgun (no idea yet whether existing Nikon Speedlights will be usable with the Nikon 1), a GPS receiver and an adapter for Nikkor SLR lenses. Plus some pointless (n)ever-ready cases and so on.

Lenses: Four lenses available at launch:
10mm f/2.8 (EFL 27mm)
10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 (EFL 27–81mm)
30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 (EFL 81–297mm)
10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 (EFL 27–270mm)
One comment: they need something wider than 27mm in the range ASAP.

Oh, and the 10-100mm lens is interesting because it has a powered zoom for fast, smooth and quiet zooming when shooting movie clips. This is one of the bugbears of shooting video with normal DSLR lenses.

At this point I can’t resist quoting what I wrote in the Nikon DSLR System Guide, published 18 months ago:

“It’s also a safe bet that someone–if not Nikon, then an independent such as Sigma–will soon be producing lenses specifically with video shooting in mind. These will feature a massive range (maybe 18–300mm), plus powered zoom or some other means to make zooming smoother.”

In fact no-one has yet produced such a lens for DSLRs (yet) but I’m sure a lot of DSLR video shooters are crying out for it and the Nikon 1 may be a pointer.

And finally: some interesting comments here from a couple of people whose views are always worth listening to, Seb Rogers and Thom Hogan.

When only an SLR will do

2011-08-08T01:48:00.000-07:00

After all my speculation about compacts and CSCs, a couple of recent shoots have reminded me just why, sometimes, it has to be an SLR.

1: Low Light

I’ve recently done a couple of sessions shooting for The Cheetahs, a wheelchair sports club based in Thornton, Lancashire. Before I go on with the tech-talk, I do want to say what a privilege this has been. The great thing about The Cheetahs is that it’s a wheelchair sports club for all kids, not just “disabled”. It’s a brilliant, brilliantly simple, idea that cuts through preconceptions and break down barriers. Much of the time when I’m shooting these kids I can’t even tell which are “disabled” and which are “able-bodied” – and that’s the point.

From the photographic point of view, however, shooting these sessions is not without its challenges. They take place in a sports hall which isn’t particularly well lit, but I’m trying to shoot some pretty fast action (wheelchairs move). In one session I used my Nikon D7000, in the other I used my D700. For what I hope are obvious reasons, I didn’t use flash. So let me just give you some numbers:

D7000: ISO 3200, typical exposure 1/200 at f/2.8

D700: ISO 6400, typical exposure 1/320 at f/2.8

Those are not superfast shutter speeds and you can definitely see some motion blur around the edges in some shots (e.g. the hands of a child shooting basketball, spokes of the wheel in a chair moving at speed) but it’s manageable and even adds dynamism to many images.

(At the moment, under the terms of my agreement with The Cheetahs, I don’t have permission to use these images myself. I’m hoping we can use these shots more widely, perhaps in an exhibition, so in future I may be able to show you what I've been talking about).

All those numbers are important: aperture, shutter speed and ISO are the three points of the exposure triangle, and any serious photographer needs to have all three in mind pretty much all the time. But in this case it’s the ISO numbers which are particularly interesting. Shooting at ISO 3200 and 6400 I’ve been able to get really nice results, still with good dynamic range, vibrant colour and remarkably little noise.

The images have had a little noise reduction applied in Adobe Lightroom, but only a little. Noise is certainly visible when viewing the images at 100%, but it’s hardly obtrusive, and certainly doesn’t obscure fine detail like hair, eyelashes or the weave of a shirt. And remember, 100% view is blowing the images up to the equivalent of a 48” print (in the case of the D7000). On a full screen view it’s barely detectable at all.

There’s no question that you wouldn’t get these sorts of results from a compact. Even a really good compact (like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 I looked at recently) shows obvious noise at ISO 1600. Other failings like muddy colours and truncated dynamic range will also show up even in small enlargements. At ISO 3200 I’d class it as marginal even for web use, and quite hopeless for big prints.

With their larger sensors, compact system cameras should do much better. The problem here is more likely to be the availability of fast lenses. The only f/2.8mm lens currently available for Sony’s NEX cameras is a 16mm wideangle, for example. You can use Sony α lenses with an adaptor, but using large lenses like an 80–200mm f/2.8 on these tiny bodies is weird, to say the least. But talking about handling issues takes me on to the second shoot...

2: High Speed

Yesterday I was in Preston city centre shooting cycle racing, including the British Cycling Women's National Circuit Race Championships and the final round of the Elite Men's Race Series. The morning was showery and the roads were still damp for the women’s race, and the light wasn’t great: I was glad to be able to shoot at ISO 800. This is hardly extreme: CSCs and most compacts will produce pretty decent results, though I’d be looking critically at the dynamic range from the compact cameras. But high ISO performance isn’t really the issue.

Cycle racing is fast. We’re talking about riders in some cases travelling at 30mph and also really close – close enough to touch at some points on the course and certainly close enough to feel the slipstream. This combination of high speed and close range demands fast reactions from every part of the system, including the photographer. In particular, as far as the camera is concerned, it demands rapid autofocus performance and minimal shutter lag.

Autofocus

I shot these images with my D700, which has an agile focusing system using 51 focus points to track moving subjects. Like other DSLRs, the D700 has phase-detection autofocus. Without going into too much detail, this is fast and accurate. Compact System Cameras, on the other hand, have contrast-detect AF systems, which are much slower. They’re adequate for a lot of subjects but nowhere near good enough to follow focus on a racing cyclist.

If I were shooting, say, mountain biking, with a CSC, even though recreational mountain biking is considerably slower than road racing, I’d probably have to adapt my approach. This might well be done by pre-focusing and waiting for the rider to ‘hit the mark’.

In fact for some of the Preston shots, standing by the exit of the corner where the riders were almost touching the barriers on which I was leaning, I did switch to manual focus anyway, and prefocus at the appropriate distance. It’s not that I don’t think the camera’s AF system could keep up but seeing the rider come into focus in the viewfinder helped me time the shot.

Shutter lag

It was summed up by a guy standing next to me during part of the men's race. I overheard him remark to his companion, “I’m not getting it, it’s too fast; I’ll try switching to video instead”. The reason he wasn’t getting it may have been that his (compact) camera couldn’t focus fast enough; it may also have been due to shutter lag. With the SLR, when I press the shutter the response is almost instant. With digital compacts the delay between pressing the button and actually taking the shot used to be, in many cases, half a second or more. Most compacts are a lot better now but when you’re used to the instancy of an SLR the slight lag is still noticeable – and with cyclists hurtling past, even a slight delay is enough to miss the shot.

CSCs ought to do better but it ain’t necessarily so: my colleague Chiz Dakin reports that her Olympus E-PL1, for example, does have a tiny but perceptible shutter delay–even when prefocusing, where the delay can’t be attributed to the AF catching up.

Now, I’ll say it again, cycle-racing, especially city-centre criterium racing with its close-quarters, high-speed action, is a very tough test for a camera. CSCs may well do fine in lots of less demanding situations. But what’s abundantly clear is that they will have to improve leaps and bounds before they can genuinely compete with SLRs across the board.

Looking for something that doesn't exist Part 4

2011-07-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm back to that elusive search for the Holy Grail of a compact-enough and yet good-enough camera to take biking or climbing. Of course I'll still carry an SLR for serious jobs but when I'm just riding for pleasure it would be nice to have something that would fit into a pocket, or at least a small pouch.

Just out of interest, I dug out my partner's old Canon PowerShot Pro1. This was reviewed on dpreview.com in April 2004, so it's hardly surprising that image quality doesn't measure up, though I was surprised just how grainy the images were at 400 ISO, even when processed carefully in the latest Lightroom, with its excellent noise reduction. But that's barely relevant, as I never expected them to be of good enough quality for anything more than Web use or maybe very small prints. I was more interested in how the weight and handling qualities felt, so I slipped it into a small pouch and we set off on a road bike ride over the hills of the Forest of Bowland.

Now, when you're cycling for pleasure (but want to get a few shots anyway) it's especially important not to annoy your companions by keeping them waiting too much, or even asking them to ride a stretch of road more than once. Ego, I needed to be able to turn up the power, ride on ahead, stop and hoick out the camera and fire off a few shots as the peloton caught and passed me. Well, the riding wasn't too bad and the camera felt reasonably light even though its all-up weight of 640g is nudging into Compact System territory, and not that far short of a small SLR with a light lens.

However, the hoicking out did not go so smoothly. The problem is that this camera has a retractable lens, which extends when you power on and retracts when you switch off. Leaving it powered on means the lens stays in the extended position and to me it looks rather vulnerable to damage in the process of un-stowing and restowing in its case. With an SLR and its more solid lens, I'd happily leave it switched on when stowing away, making it instantly ready to shoot as I un-stow it next time. With its extending lens, power-on time on the PowerShot Pro is probably really only a second or so, but it feels like an age. I'm used to having that time to frame the shot, and it's very significant when someone's barrelling down the road towards you.

There were a lot of other handling issues, too, but some are just different ways of doing things which I could get used to in time. I do like the fact that you zoom in/out as on an SLR using a ring around the lens, rather than pushing buttons. Again, it's what I'm used to – but every experience I've had with cameras that use buttons to zoom convinces me that the way I'm used to is also the right way.

Anyway, I hardly need to go on. In digital camera terms, it's a dinosaur. If I was buying a compact camera today it would be a very different beast.

More to the point, the weight and bulk gave me insight into what it would be like riding with a compact system camera like the ones I've looked at in Part 2. And here, though there is a saving, it's not all that significant compared to the lightest SLRs. I'm beginning to think that – for my needs – Compact System Cameras, at least as they stand at the moment, fall between two stools. There are shortcomings in performance compared to SLRs, in areas like focusing speed, and I'm really not sure I'm prepared to accept these compromises in exchange for relatively minor weight savings.

Which leaves me with two alternative options. One is to go the compact route, with the advantages of getting a genuinely pocketable camera. One I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on is the Panasonic Lumix LX-5. This has the attractions of a 24mm equivalent lens with f/2 maximum aperture (at the wide end; it’s still a pretty handy f/3.3 at its 90mm longest). 24mm on a compact is rare but in a non-interchangeable-lens camera I’d regard it as essential. And a weight of just 233g does sound very enticing.

But there’s another option. My usual ‘go-to’ site for price checks, Warehouse Express, has the LX-5 at £363.99. For virtually the same money (£359) I could get a Nikon D3100 body. That would be a weight saving of over 300g compared to my D7000. It’s heavier than a Compact System Camera –but not by that much.

Even an entry-level SLR like the D3100 is an infinitely more versatile camera than any compact. Image quality is better at all levels but streets ahead at ISO 1600 and 3200. These are completely usable speeds on modern SLRs, more marginal on most of the Compact System Cameras, and ‘Web only’ on any compact I’ve looked at. It would have access to all my existing lenses and provide an extra backup to my D700 and D7000. And I’m already pretty familiar with it – I did write a book on it, after all!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…...

BTW, I apologise if link colours in this post are inconsistent. It's really not my fault! In fact Blogger is getting on my nerves big-time today...

Cheap and (very) cheerful

2011-06-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

St Petersburg, Russia

I’ve just been re-processing a batch of images, some of them a few years old, for PhotoShelter. And in the process I’ve been struck, yet again, by just how sharp my Sigma 55–200 f/4–5.6 DC lens is.

This is worth noting because this is (was) not an expensive lens. The current equivalent, a 50-200mm f/4-5.6 DC OS HSM, is listed at £299.99 and you’ll get it cheaper than that at plenty of dealers; I found it at £176.99 at Warehouse Express, for example. Just out of curiosity; I’ve no plans to replace my lens. It’s at least five years old now, so I’ve certainly had my money’s worth, but it shows no signs of being ready for retirement.

Now, this lens is a long way from what most people would regard as a professional specification. It doesn’t feel particularly robust, but it’s been thrown into rucksacks (admittedly in a padded case) and bashed around on many biking, walking and climbing trips. And its great advantage is that it is light.

I just weighed it alongside my Nikkor 80–200mm f/2.8 lens. The Sigma masses just 344g, the NIkon 1368g – almost exactly four times as heavy. That’s a difference you really notice when hiking or biking.

Schatzalp, Switzerland: nothing wrong with AF performance here!

Of course the Nikkor has some big advantages: there’s that constant f/2.8 aperture for a start, making the viewfinder image twice as bright at the wider end of the range and four times as bright at 200mm. It’s great for shallow depth of field shots and makes it much easier to use really fast shutter speeds when shooting action.

Åland Islands, Finland: this one shot has more than paid for the lens!

The Nikkor is also a better lens for full-on action because its autofocus is a lot faster – though there are several ways around this, like prefocusing. In fact the Sigma lens has no built-in motor and so can’t autofocus at all unless there’s a motor in the camera body. This means it’s manual focus only with various Nikons including, currently, the D3100 and D5100, though it works happily with my D7000.

In any case, the current 50-200mm f/4-5.6 DC OS HSM lens has its own motor (indicated by the HSM tag) so will AF with all Nikon DSLRs. And, by the way, it also has inbuilt stabilisation.

Optically, as I said right at the start, the Sigma lens is pin-sharp, corner to corner. There’s very distortion at the extremes of the focal length range but that’s easily corrected in Adobe Lightroom. It does show a little flare when shooting right into the sun, but then so does the Nikkor.

Wadi Rum, Jordan

The biggest drawback of all with the Sigma lens is that it only covers the smaller sensor of DX cameras, not the FX (or full-frame) of my D700. But then again, that’s why it’s possible to make it so small and light.

Now, a note of caution. I haven't tested the new lens so I make no comment on whether it’s as good as my example. It’s also true that with lower-price lenses there can be a little variation in manufacturing, so that two lenses of the same model may not always be exactly equal in performance. Maybe I’ve been lucky with the one I have. I’m certainly a very satisfied customer. And here are just a few images shot with this lens...

Flippin' photos...

2011-06-17T01:28:00.000-07:00

I guess the last entry might have read like a little bit of a rant. Not too much, I hope. I’m trying to raise what I see as a serious issue. Pictures that are wrongly captioned/misplaced will annoy people who are in the know and could seriously mislead those who aren’t.

Since then I’ve heard of some more blatant examples from colleagues in the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild. Chris Townsend reports seeing a picture taken in the Pyrenees used to illustrate a feature on the Alps – and when he raised it with the editor he got the brush-off, being told ‘it looks better that way’. Hmmm, let’s see, if you were a magazine doing a feature on Mel Gibson would you use a picture of Russell Crowe because ‘it looks better that way’?*

Paddy Dillon points out that there’s a book on ‘Best Irish Walks’ but the photo on the cover is of the Langdale Pikes – which, just in case you didn’t know, are in England. He even gave a link to check it out. In this case it’s probably a mistake rather than deliberate, but it’s a pretty awful mistake.

To me, and I don’t think I’m alone, publishers who commit mistakes (including deliberate mistakes) like these are shooting themselves in the foot. I’d never buy a Baltic Guide with a fjord on the cover or an Irish Walks Guide with an English scene on the front, because I’d be saying to myself, ‘if they can’t get the cover picture right, what else have they got wrong?’ And thereby, of course, they’re hurting the poor old author, who may have had no say at all in the cover picture. It can damage their reputation as well as their royalty income.

Flippin’ heck

There’s another thing designers and publishers do which drives me crazy. Sorry, I should say, some designers and publishers; the majority of those I’ve worked with have never inflicted this particular indignity on me. I’m talking about the all-too-common practice of ‘flipping’ pictures – reversing them left to right, in other words.

Back in the “good” old days of film, this could happen by mistake, if a careless scanner operator mounted a transparency the wrong way round. With digital images there’s no way I can think of for it to happen inadvertently; it takes a specific Photoshop command. Somebody has to do it deliberately, and I wish they wouldn't.

It’s so obvious to me that this is wrong that I find it hard to grasp that I might need to explain it. But it’s not just a prima donna thing about the integrity of my artistic vision or whatever. It offends me just as much when it happens to other people’s photos.

I appreciate that part of my objection is on the philosophical level and that other people may not care so much, but I think there are lots of more practical reasons why flipping photos is nearly always a bad idea. (We might make an exception, or at least not get so worked up, for completely generic images). Here are just a few of them.

Photos of places. To me it’s completely disrespectful to the real mountains/landscape to print their images wrong way round. But such mucking around with geography can have real practical consequences when photos are used – as they often are, especially in outdoor magazines and books – as a guide to where to go. Come to think of it, let’s not bother about getting lefts and rights correct in our route descriptions either.

Photos of people. People are asymmetrical. Flipping the image misrepresents the person. Text. Text crops up in far more photos than you might think, from signs in the background to logos on clothing. I’m sure sreppohgarC and suahgreB won’t be totally thrilled, but more important (to me anyway) it just looks stupid.

Bikes. I shoot bikes quite a lot. BIkes have chainrings, gears and so on on the right. Disc brakes, if they have them, are on the left. There are other sorts of asymmetry too (Cannondale’s Lefty fork, for example). And yes, I have seen a photo of mine, with bikes in, flipped. It looked cringe-makingly, teeth-wincingly wrong. And most bikes have makers’ names on too; I don’t suppose eladnonnaC or egnarO would be exactly delighted.

I could go on. Oh boy, could I go on. But I think you know where I’m coming from by now. I do understand why designers might want to do this. We read L–R and this can affect the way we look at a spread – although it’s not genetically hard-wired as some people have stupidly claimed. Don’t they know that lots of cultures read R–L?

And most of the time I have a lot of respect for designers. I’ve done a bit of page layout myself (and I’ll be doing more from now on as I’ve just taken on the editorship of the OWPG’s journal Outdoor Focus). I know how much difference good design can make. But flipping pictures – especially pictures of specific people, places or products – is not good design.

*Names picked from thin air purely for purposes of illustration. Anyone who wishes to discuss whether Russell really is better-looking than Mel, please do so elsewhere.

Don't blame the snapper

2011-06-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen quite a few instances of publishers and others slagging off photographers for wrongly captioned images. It certainly happens. All photographers are human, and therefore fallible and of course some are just plain sloppy. But still, next time you see a shot with an obviously wrong caption, don’t assume it’s necessarily the photographer’s fault.

I’ve been involved with a number of cases where images have been used inappropriately. For example, anyone who looks at the new edition of my Baltic Cruising book may wonder why there is a picture of a Norwegian fjord on the front.

I did too, when my complimentary copy arrived – this was the first I'd seen of the cover. Unlike nearly all the photos inside, the cover shot was not supplied by me. It came from an agency, and on their website was correctly captioned as Geirangerfjord. But as you know, Norway’s famous fjords are on the west coast and nowhere near the Baltic. In fact Norway doesn’t have a coastline on the Baltic at all. The book does give some space to Oslo, as many cruises to the Baltic also call there, but that's still a very long way from Geirangerfjord.

This mistake is embarrassing because my name is on the cover and some people seeing it might think I am somehow responsible for the totally inappropriate picture.

It's also misleading to readers because a Baltic cruise is primarily about visiting cities like Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Rīga, Gdansk and St Petersburg (photo left). And I’m doubly annoyed because I could have supplied many pictures of exciting locations in the Baltic, many of them far better (IMHO) than what is frankly a fairly dull picture of Geirangerfjord.

I should perhaps make clear that the mistake happened at Thomas Cook publishing, and the book packaging company who worked with me on the meat of the book were also out of the loop as far as the cover went. Apparently procedures will be changed so it shouldn't happen again, but this new edition of the book is likely to remain in circulation for at least another couple of years and I will wince every time I see it.

Coincidentally, another "Baltic balls-up" also involves one of my images. This picture of a bike beside a dirt road was taken on the Åland Islands. This sold through Corbis so all the information I had at the time was that it had sold to a UK publisher... but imagine my surprise to find it turning up on the cover of a book called "Go Slow Britain". And yes, I was sad enough to check and the library image did have correct location information attached.

What can you do?

Come on, Nikon

2011-06-10T03:47:00.000-07:00

A reader has just pointed out that my Expanded Guide to the Nikon D7000 lists the SB-800 Speedlight even though it was discontinued a while back. Am I embarrassed? Not really. The people who should be embarrassed are Nikon themselves, or at least Nikon UK. This morning (10/6/2011) I checked their website again, as I do when preparing each book, and the SB-800 is still listed in all its glory. Yes, this could change, now I've flagged it up but it's there today and I have a screenshot to prove it.

In fact the page even describes it as "New Speedlight SB-800". To the best of my knowledge it was introduced in 2003. New? I don't think so.

Come on, Nikon. If we can't rely on a manufacturer's official website to be up to date on which products are current, what are we supposed to do?

Looking for something that doesn't exist Part 3

2011-06-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update, on the subject of compact cameras, ace mountain bike photographer Seb Rogers has some pretty damning things to say: http://sebrogers.typepad.com/seb_rogers_blog/2011/06/the-elusive-proper-compact-camera.html

Seb highlights some specific issues, including megapixel overload – he observes that image quality from the 10-megapixel cameras in his test is clearly better than form the 12 or 14-MP cameras. He also mentions the fact that response to the shutter button is still lamentably slow on most of the cameras.

I don't know if this shutter-lag can be blamed on the inflated megapixel numbers; probably not. But there's no doubt that other aspects of most cameras' operation are slower than they should be precisely because the camera is having to process excessively large image files. I'm talking about things like cameras taking a second or two to display a review image after you've taken a shot, about cameras locking up completely for many seconds after shooting a short burst of images, and so on.

The end result of all these is that not only may the camera take half a second or whatever to respond after you press the shutter button; there will be times when it doesn't respond at all and you lose the shot completely.

Does this feel like progress? It didn't happen with film. Cheaper cameras might take a second to wind the film on but the delay would be completely consistent, and shutter lag was rarely on the same levels as it is with many digital compacts even now. The only 'lockup' would be if the battery dies (and that's the same with digital) or at then end of the film.

Are compact camera buyers simply accepting these major failings as inevitable? Or is this why the compact camera is haemorrhaging market share? And why is there no (apparent) demand for what we really want, which is a 6-megapixel camera with rapid shutter response, excellent high ISO and dynamic range performance, and good continuous shooting abilities. Oh, and a decent lens going to 24mm equivalent.

Now I'd fork out for one of those.

Take a look at 6 Megapixel. It's not new but the basic arguments are still pretty valid.

Looking for something that doesn't exist Part 2

2011-06-06T05:46:00.000-07:00

Continuing the theme of looking for the best ‘pocket’ camera… I began with the statement that there is no such thing as a perfect camera. For me this specific search has only underlined the inescapable fact that there will always be compromises. The question is, therefore, which compromises am I prepared to accept? And which, if any, of the cameras I’ve been looking at would be fast and versatile enough to capture all of the shots accompanying this blog?

Last time I examined one of the most respected of current compacts, the Canon Powershot G12. Without ruling it out entirely, there are big deficiencies (compared to my usual SLRs) in relation to lens range (can’t go wider than 28mm-equivalent), all-round operational speed and a poor optical viewfinder. Can we do better?

As the G12 review on dpreview.com observed, this category of relatively substantial and highly-specced compacts is now facing serious competition from the new breed of compact system cameras. There are also a few (a very few!) non-interchangeable lens cameras around which have SLR-size sensors in a compact size body. I’ve had my hands on a few of these and I thought it would be quite interesting to see how they stack up for the fairly specific areas of use where I would really like something smaller than an SLR (basically when I’m out biking, climbing, or not really planning photography at all but want a ‘just in case’ camera).

I’ve already in recent posts mused about my reaction to a number of compact system cameras and large-sensor compacts; I don’t want to repeat myself (too much) so I’m going to be as brief as possible about those cameras in particular. I’ve also been discussing these issues with my colleague Chiz Dakin, who’s been facing a similar choice. Hers is perhaps more urgent, as she needs to replace her current ‘bike and climb’ camera, a Canon EOS 450D, and was interested in my opinion on the latest EOS 600D as I’ve just been doing a book on it.

Anyway, to the nitty-gritty, in no particular order.

Sigma DP1x

I had one of these on loan for a couple of weeks thanks to Sigma’s Ray Fitchett. It didn’t get quite as much use as it might have done as it coincided with an assignment in Fort William, the UK’s Outdoor Capital, and I was shooting quite a lot of action such as mountain biking and kayaking. And I did decide very early on that it’s not really an action camera.

This is due partly to its screen-only viewing, which I am convinced does not work as well for action as a proper viewfinder. It’s also a camera which takes quite a leisurely approach to shooting. Initial shutter response is OK but it takes its time processing images thereafter. Shooting large numbers of images in quick succession is a no-no.

In fairness I don’t think this is what the camera is designed for. And I should say I do like the concept, summed up by Sigma as “pack(ing) the essence of an SLR into the body of a compact.” Key to this is its large sensor, 20.7 x 13.8mm, larger than the Four-Thirds category, and getting close to the 23.6 x 15.8mm of my Nikon D7000. To really put it into perspective, it’s about 7 times the size of the sensor in the Canon G12. It also uses Sigma’s unique Foveon sensor technology which – they claim – offers special benefits in image quality. I didn’t find the images superior to my Nikons but maybe I didn’t really spend long enough with the camera to get the best out of it.

Conclusion: as a ‘bike and climb’ camera, not for me. As a ‘just in case’ camera, would be well worth considering but I can’t afford £600 solely for a ‘just in case’ camera.

Fujifilm Finepix X100

See earlier blog for some general comments on this. As a ‘bike and climb’ camera, it’s too slow (notice the totally static nature of the image gallery on its own website?) and the fixed 35mm-equivalent lens isn’t wide enough (the DP1x is 28mm-equiv). But it’s a beautiful thing and I’d love one as a ‘just in case’ camera – although not enough to justify spending £1000 (which I haven’t got) on it.

There are a few other ‘large-sensor’ compacts around, like the Leica X1 and the seriously weird Ricoh GXR, but as I haven’t got hands-on with them I shan’t comment. Anyone interested should take a look at the makers’ own sites and also the consistently excellent dpreview.com.
As another of the most authoritative commentators around, Thom Hogan, points out, building an optical finder into a compact camera is not a trivial matter. It can be done, and the Finepix X100 shows just how well it can be done, but it comes at a price.

Which leads us on to the current hot category of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, also known as compact system cameras (CSCs). (I’m sad to see that the EVIL acronym (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) has failed to catch on). It has to be said that once you stick a zoom lens on, these cameras aren’t really pocketable, but there’s still a big saving in weight and bulk compared to more traditional DSLRs.

I’ve already looked at a couple of these in a recent post so I’ll pass over them briefly.

Sony NEX-5

With an APS-C size sensor in a tiny body, it scores highly on image quality but I’m less than impressed with handling and balance, especially as I’d want to shoot action. Frankly I’d suggest that the body is just too small, and not just because I have biggish hands but because filling almost the entire back of the camera with a screen leaves very little room for proper control buttons. I really wouldn’t fancy operating one of these with gloves on, which is a big failing for an ‘outdoor’ camera.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10

Four-thirds size sensor is significantly smaller than APS-C so has more work to do on image quality (but much bigger than most compacts). It’s bigger than the NEX-5 (but only until you attach a lens) and has a decent electronic viewfinder as an alternative to the screen. And unlike the latest Lumix DMC-G3 it doesn’t have a touch-sensitive rear screen.

As Chiz commented “I wonder how the touch-screen copes with being sat half way up a snow-gully with spindrift tumbling down”. I think I know the answer to that – and I’m sure I know exactly how well I would cope with trying to operate it while wearing winter gloves! Would it survive being hurled down the icy gully in frustration? Touch-screen on an outdoor camera? No thanks!

Back to the more practically-specced G10, which Panasonic calls “the world's lightest interchangeable lens camera with a viewfinder”. An attractive claim, and its body weight of 388g is not much more than half that of my Nikon D7000. I’m not sold yet, but this is a camera I wouldn’t mind spending more time with.

Samsung NX10

I include this hesitantly as I have not handled one at all, and Samsung seems to have a pretty low profile as a camera maker, but it does look remarkably interesting. As dpreview said, “It's the smallest interchangeable lens APS-C camera we've ever tested”. And they liked it quite a lot. I must admit I’m also drawn to it because it looks more like a traditional SLR than any of the others I’ve looked at. It looks like Samsung have (hurrah) opted not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Focusing is reasonably fast; it’s limited with moving subjects but this appears to be true of all the non-SLR cameras I’ve looked at, and access to key controls like ISO seems to be pretty quick. They certainly want you to think it’s quick, as the camera page on Samsung’s site features a couple of cycling images. Cycling, as I know well, is not easy to photograph.

And a body weight of 353g, or an all-up weight of 499g with a slimline 30mm lens, means it’s roughly half the weight of my D7000. Interesting. I would definitely like a chance to get to know this camera a little better.

Conclusions

I said this was all about compromise, and all the cameras I’ve looked at involve major compromises. There are several that haven't completely ruled themselves out but at the same time none have convincingly shouldered their way to the front of the pack. However, I would very much like the opportunity to evaluate the Panasonic, and especially the Samsung, in some depth. Without this, and also with the background awareness that both Nikon and Canon are still lurking in the wings, it looks as if my credit card can rest easy for just a little while longer.

Looking for something that doesn't exist

2011-06-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

There’s no such thing as a perfect camera.

OK, let that sink in. There’s no camera that does all jobs equally well. The most that any of us can reasonably expect is that a camera will do all we ask of it in a particular set of circumstances. And it follows logically that we cannot judge any camera without being as clear as possible about what we would like to do with it, and how we like to work.

Let’s take a specific example. I get to play with lots of cameras; this currently includes each new digital SLR that Nikon releases.

However, the two main cameras that I own and use regularly are the Nikon D700 and D7000. Please check out these links, and also my earlier blog entry about the D7000, if you’re not familiar with their specifications.

Anyway, both of these are excellent SLRs and I’m pretty happy with either for most shooting. I’ll go with the D700 and its larger sensor for low light shooting, or when I want to get the most from with my wide-angle lens. I’m more likely to pick the D7000 for shooting wildlife or certain kinds of action because its smaller sensor makes my longer lenses effectively longer still; using my 300mm lens gives the same result as a 450mm lens would on the D700.

I’m also likely to prefer the D7000 when I want to travel light, especially as I can also use lighter lenses which don’t cover the bigger frame area of the D700. However, it’s still a relatively chunky camera; it’s certainly not going to slip into any normal pocket.

I’d dearly love a pocketable camera for biking, climbing and as a ‘just in case’ camera when I’m not really out to take photos at all. And of course people will say, what’s the problem? There are hundreds of compact cameras out there that will slip into a pocket.

Well, yes, there are. But.

In the section on cameras in our forthcoming book, Outdoor Photography, (which has just gone to press), Chiz Dakin and I identify a few key factors when considering a compact camera. They may not be deal-breakers for everyone, but we certainly think they should at least be taken into account. I’ll summarise briefly here: for more detail see the book (due date 15th Aug; it will be available as an ebook as well as hard copy).

1: RAW Shooting.
It’s second nature to me to shoot RAW and I’d have no hesitation in ruling out any camera that can’t do this.

2: Lens range.
Many compacts still go no wider than about 35mm equivalent; a fair number go to 28mm, a few reach 24 or 25mm. I can tolerate 28mm (an 18mm lens on my D7000 is 27mm-equivalent), but would prefer interchangeable lenses so I’d at least have the option to go wider.

3: Sensor size.
Typical compacts have much smaller sensors than SLRs. If the lens is good they’ll probably still produce decent results at moderate ISO ratings but start to struggle at higher speeds (typically 800 and above), and can’t match a big sensor for dynamic range, which is really important for a lot of outdoor shooting.

4: Speed of response.
This used to be a major weakness of compacts in general compared to SLRs. They've got much better but still aren't quite as speedy all-round.

5. Viewfinder.
I want one! I’ve sketched out my feelings about screen-only cameras in a recent blog, and I don’t think this is just a prejudice that I would overcome if I spent more time actually shooting by screen. (I actually do spend quite a bit of time in Live View, e.g. when shooting macro subjects, so I know something about the failings of even the best screens in bright sunlight).

With these factors in mind, let’s look at what’s generally regarded as one of the best conventional compacts, Canon’s Powershot G12. This is a 10-megapixel camera like the previous G11: refreshingly, Canon actually reduced the megapixel count over the G10, which I cheered about in a blog last year. This is a good move for all round image quality, especially from a smaller sensor like the G12’s 1/1.7" CCD; Canon claims it gives the G11/G12 a two-stop advantage in low-light shooting.

Running through the tick-list:

1: RAW Shooting. Yes, and supported by Adobe Lightroom (otherwise it would be no good to me)

2: Lens range. 28–140mm equivalent, quite comparable to the 18–105 lens I use regularly on my Nikon D7000.

3: Sensor size. 1/1.7" is fairly large by typical compact standards but still less than one tenth the imaging area of the APS-C sensor in my D7000. (For more on sensor sizes see here). As expected, this limits its performance especially at high ISO ratings. The test on the excellent dpreview site gives me a chance to compare outcomes at any ISO rating directly with the D7000 (and a host of other cameras). By 1600 ISO the difference is very clear – but the G12 beats many other cameras with more megapixels.

4: Speed of response. As dpreview observes, the G12 has a rapid shutter response, though not quite up to the best DSLRs. For critical action photography this could be a problem, though I probably wouldn’t envisage using it for really serious action shoots. More of an issue would be its generally slow behaviour in other respects, such as taking about 1.5 secs to show a review image after shooting. (On my D7000 the delay is barely noticeable).

5. Viewfinder. Ah. The G12 does have an optical finder, but it’s not great. Low magnification, only approximate framing and a bit dim except in bright sunlight. Of course bright sunlight is where shooting with the screen is most difficult, so there’s some balance there, but it’s still something I’d have to take seriously.

So, overall, not a bad result, and I’m sure the G12 will satisfy many users who don’t need the option to fit an ultra-wide lens or to shoot high-speed action. But at the same time it’s less pocketable than many compact cameras; in fact, in size and weight terms it’s more like some of the smaller compact system cameras.

Including lens the G12 weighs in at 355g. That’s light compared to my Nikon D7000 (just over double that for the body alone) but you can get a Sony NEX-5 with the same size sensor as the D7000 that’s just 287g (body only). The 16mm ‘pancake’ lens takes the Sony to 354g, and gives a wider view (24mm equivalent), albeit non-zoomable.

Conclusion? Well, the G12 doesn’t do badly. If somebody gave me one I’m sure I’d use it regularly on bike rides and when climbing and I’m sure I’d get some excellent results. But if it’s my own money I’m spending, the G12 is nearly £400. It’s the same price, in fact as a Nikon D3100 body.

A D3100 with 18–55mm lens would be only a little more expensive, and would give me much faster shooting, better quality especially in low light, and a proper viewfinder. But even this combination, which is about as light as it gets in conventional SLR terms, still weighs in at around 660g and definitely isn’t pocketable.

I might as well save my money and stick with the D7000 and 18-105 lens that I already have. By now I seem to be going around in circles, but the G12 isn’t the only alternative to a conventional SLR. More on this very soon...

Gryffindor vs Slytherin

2011-05-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve spent the last couple of months working intensively first with the Canon EOS 600D and then the Nikon D5100, preparing Expanded Guides to both of them. This came about purely by chance, thanks to the vagaries of camera manufacturer's product cycles, plus Ammonite having a small hiatus in authorship of the Canon books.

These cameras are direct competitors, both positioned one step up from the entry point of their ranges. It's been fascinating to have such a direct comparison, and also to have a chance to really get to know a Canon after 20 years as a Nikon user, the last seven with a range of digital SLRs.

Well, if you’re expecting any grand statements, let alone a Road-to-Damascus moment where I realise I need to change to Canon… don’t bother reading any further. In fact my firmest conclusion is that neither of these cameras is ideal for me. Let me enlarge on that briefly before looking at them side-by-side.

I could list various ‘pro’ features that these cameras lack, suggest that the maximum shooting rate isn’t fast enough for serious action, and so on, but for me the biggest frustration about these cameras is the fact that, in the name of making things simpler, they make some basic operations more complicated. This is mostly down to the fact that they only have one command dial and only one screen. Both my day-to-day DSLRs, the Nikon D700 and D7000, have two command dials and a secondary LCD on the top plate which is used for shooting settings.

The lack of a second command dial is most obvious when shooting in Manual mode. I know that the D5100 and 600D probably aren’t aimed at photographers who’ll use Manual all that much, but I’m talking about my personal reaction here. Though it also occurs to me, if you make Manual harder to use, people will use it less. And then someone marketing twerp'll say “see, there’s no demand for it”.

Using Manual on the the D700 and D7000 (and higher Canon models too), one dial controls shutter speed and one controls aperture. Direct. Simple, Fast. Intuitive. On the the D5100 and 600D the single command dial controls shutter speed; you have to press another button before you can use the same dial to change the aperture. It’s not that hard once you get used to it, but it just isn’t as slick, and you definitely can’t adjust aperture and shutter speed simultaneously.

Changing settings on a dedicated LCD is instant, whereas on both my ‘test’ cameras you have to press an extra button just to get to a screen where you can change things, and then scroll around that screen to get to the specific setting you want. Again it slows things down and to me would seem to discourage users from getting involved with the full range of options that the the D5100 and 600D both, very capably, provide.

The other specific issue I’d mention is changing ISO. The EOS 600D does have a dedicated ISO button, but it only takes you to a menu-style screen rather than one-touch ISO adjustment with the command dial. You certainly can’t set ISO with the camera to your eye. The D5100 doesn’t even have an ISO button, unless you re-program the Fn button to act as one. I’d certainly do this if I were using the camera long-term (in fact I’ve already posted it back).

This is regrettable because being able to change the ISO at will is one of the greatest advantages of digital over the (good?) old days of film. With film, once you’d loaded Velvia or whatever, you only had two fundamental camera controls, shutter and aperture. With digital you have a third leg to the tripod, ISO. Anything, however slight, that discourages people from making full use of all three controls is to be regretted.

Anyway, enough of my gripes about common failings of both cameras. What about how they fare when they go head to head?

Starting with first impressions: the Nikon is better-looking. I don’t think it’s all down to that smiley red flash on the hand grip either. I just prefer the slightly less rounded styling.

More importantly, the Nikon feels better in the hand. It definitely has a more solid feel to it, though that’s not because it’s heavier; in fact according to makers’ own figures the D5100 is 10 grams lighter. The D5100’s hand-grip is more positive too (at least for my hands, which are on the large side). Personally I prefer Nikon’s conventionally-shaped but well-sized and positive control buttons to Canon’s odd-shaped cluster on the back of the camera. I think design has got the better of function here.

In use, both are very competent cameras which can deliver excellent results in most conditions. Most of the time there’s very little to choose between them. If you want to drill down to the very last minutia then take a look at the reviews on the always-excellent dpreview: the EOS 600D is here and the Nikon D5100 is here.

Looking at the photos I took with the two cameras there’s still little to differentiate them. I don’t think there’s a killer feature that would make anyone switch from one brand to the other. However, there are some operational specifics that might swing it for you in the (unlikely?) event that you’re a discerning buyer who knows a good deal about photography but isn’t tied to either system by existing lenses. In no particular order:

The EOS 600D has a depth of field preview button; the D5100 doesn’t. On 35mm cameras this would have been a big difference; on digital it’s less significant because you can assess depth of field either through image playback or through Live View (see below). Still, point to Slytherin.

Sticking with depth of field, the EOS 600D has Canon’s A-DEP mode, which aims to set both focusing distance and aperture to ensure everything appears sharp. It’s a nice feature, especially for landscapes, but it’s more limited than they would like to admit. it assesses the depth of field required by using the 9 focus points. If there are nearer or more distant objects which don’t happen to line up with any of the focus points these will not be taken into account, and in the average landscape shot it’s very possible for there to be stuff in the frame at closer distances than any of the focus points are covering. Half a point to Slytherin.

On the other hand, the D5100 has a new HDR (high dynamic range) mode. This works by combining two separate shots with different exposures, one for the shadows and one for the highlights. And it does work; I took several shots with it that would have been impossible in a single exposure any other way. It still has limitations – only two source images, maximum exposure difference 3Ev – but still, a handy innovation on occasion. Point to Gryffindor.

If you’ve been reading my previous posts you’ll know I’ve gone from being a Live View sceptic to using it by choice for certain subjects. Both cameras have clear, bright, articulating screens which are a real benefit when using Live View. Both have the hinge on the left side, unlike the earlier Nikon D5000 which had it at the bottom – a fundamentally dumb thing to do when Live View is often at its best with the camera on a tripod (and movie shooting even more so). But there are some pretty big differences in the way Live View operates.

The Canon gives you an immediate and very clear depth of field preview in Live View – just press the button. The Nikon also gives you a preview but it works in a much quirkier and less intuitive way – I’ve already mentioned this in a previous post. Canon’s ‘final image simulation’ puts its nose in front.

However, the Nikon has much better autofocus in Live View (and movie shooting). It’s still not great for moving subjects and for really fast action you can forget it – but it’s well ahead of the Canon. For Live View overall, call it a dead heat. For movies, because of its superior autofocus, the D5100 surges ahead – but if you’re really serious about shooting movies with a DSLR, get a D7000.

OK, those are the main things that come to mind. Anything else? The D5100 has an extensive Retouch menu and also a new Effects position on the mode dial which includes options like Color sketch and Selective color. To me these are gimmicks pure and simple, and if I wanted to mess my photos about I’d do it in Photoshop anyway – but if you want to do this sort of thing in-camera, the Nikon has far more to offer. Point to Gryffindor? Nope, this is my House Cup, and I’m not wasting points on this stuff.

The Nikon also has a wider set of Scene modes. Both cameras have Portrait, Landscape, Close up, Sports and Night portrait, but Nikon also has Child, Night landscape, Party/indoor, Beach/snow, Sunset, Dusk/dawn, Pet portrait, Candlelight, Blossom, Autumn colours and Food. I’d love to know how much use these modes (hidden behind the SCENE positron on the mode dial) actually get from the average owner, but still, point to Gryffindor. On the other hand, Canon’s Creative Auto mode offers a flexibility (and therefore a potential learning experience) that none of Nikon’s Auto and Scene modes can quite manage. Point and a half to Slytherin.

Finally, the EOS 600D has one excellent feature, even though I’m willing to bet at least 95% of owners will never use it: wireless flash control. This is slightly ironic, as it was Nikon who pioneered wireless flash, but you have to step up to the D7000 or higher (or the D90, still listed though slightly greying at the temples) to be able to use the built-in flash as a commander unit in a wireless setup. The D5100 can work within a wireless setup but only if it’s physically connected to a commander-capable Speedlight. The EOS 600D even has an ‘Easy Wireless mode’, though it didn’t seem noticeably easier than standard wireless operation. Still, big fat point to Slytherin.

OK, totting up the points time. On the operational features that I’ve actually scored, I see that Slytherin – sorry, Canon – comes out ahead. However, I think the Nikon’s better feel in the hand and tidier control layout might even things up. Anyway, it’s a pretty close-run thing overall and anyone who’s in the market for this kind of camera should be pretty pleased with either.

But, in the best reality show traditions, “there can only be one winner”. And the tie-break question is: what abbreviation do they use for Shutter Priority mode? Nikon’s is S. Canon’s is Tv. They’ve been doing it for donkey’s years but it is and always has been indefensibly daft.

Nikon win.

*I suppose I should have mentioned that the 600D has a higher megapixel number, but how many times to I have to say that really means nothing?

2011-05-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Last time I talked about the pros and cons – as I see them – of the viewfinder and Live View when shooting with a DSLR, and suggested circumstances where one or the other wins out.

Well, making the best of the existing DSLR design is one thing, but I did conclude that it’s a fudge. Can we do better? What’s the future for camera design? I’m not an industry insider and I don’t know what the boffins may have up their sleeves. But I do have four decades of experience with a lot of different cameras and I do recognise that the basic design of the SLR is not the final word.

The SLR was and is a brilliant concept. It’s one of the outstanding design and engineering achievements of the 20th century. But in the 21st century, is there a way to keep the best features of the SLR while shedding some of its limitations?

I think there is and I think there are some cameras around right now which at least begin to point the way. But I also think that the industry may be heading up one or two blind alleys, or short-term detours, in swapping the inherent limitations of the SLR design for the equally inescapable limitations of screen-only viewing.

I’ve no problem at all with the basic concept of the mirrorless camera. The mirror is arguably the fundamental weakness of the SLR design. First, the mirror box creates a large void at the heart of the camera, inevitably increasing bulk, especially the depth of the camera (just compare even the most compact SLRs with, say, a Panasonic Lumix G10). This creates a few problems for lens designers.

The reflex mirror has other issues. However well-damped, it’s noisy and creates vibrations. The need for the mirror to flip up and down for each shot must limit shooting speed (it’s impressive that the best SLRs can shoot as fast as they do; the Nikon D3s can shoot full-frame images at 9 frames per second). And we’ve already mentioned that it creates an inherent risk of inaccuracy in the focusing system.

However.

I’ve tried large-sensor compacts like Sigma’s DP2, and I’ve had brief hands-on sessions with new-generation mirrorless system cameras like the Sony NEX-5. And though these encounters have been brief compared to my experience of SLRs, they’ve been enough to strengthen me in one conviction:

Eye-level viewing is better.

Put it another way: I would never want to be reliant on a camera with screen-only viewing. There are several handling issues which, as far as I can see, are fundamental to the use of the screen and can’t be overcome by technology. Handling is more awkward whatever lens you use, and this goes from being a minor issue with wide-angle lenses to being virtually impossible with serious telephoto glass.

So, while there is a place for cameras like the Sony NEX-5 – and it’s great to see more of a focus on sensor size than on megapixel numbers – they will never replace cameras with eye-level viewing for serious users who want intuitive handling with a wide range of lenses. Which is why I feel that, for the long-term future of system cameras, screen-only viewing is a dead-end. In my more provocative moods I’d even say it was a dead-end for all cameras.

But if eye-level viewing is essential, where does that leave us? I’ve used cameras with 35mm-compact-style direct-vision viewfinders, like the rather lovely Mamiya 7 which I had for several years. Shooting with the 43mm wide-angle lens required a separate viewfinder which slotted in to the camera’s hot-shoe for framing the shot – BUT if I needed to focus precisely (rather than relying on the distance scale plus depth of field) I still had to use the camera’s main viewfinder. Great camera for landscapes, not so good for anything else. Don’t want to go back there!

What we want is eye-level viewing with 100% frame coverage, no noisy mirror, no concerns about focusing accuracy – and that SLR sense of being directly connected to what’s in front of the lens. And I don’t think we’re all that far off.

Obviously this wish-list means we’ll need some sort of electronic viewfinder; these used to be awful but they keep getting better. All the required technology probably already exists but hasn’t yet made it to market in a single camera, at least in a totally convincing form. But there are a couple of cameras out there right now which may point the way.

One is Fujifilm’s Finepix X100. I had a brief play with this; it's a thing of beauty, and I was very impressed with the quality of its ‘hybrid’ viewfinder. What hybrid means is that it’s switchable from direct-vision to electronic viewing, both clear and bright. Even in direct-vision mode you have access to a lot of useful ‘heads-up’ displays. However, it’s not a camera I’ll be buying. At nearly a grand for a fixed-lens camera it’s far from affordable – even if I hadn’t read some serious criticisms of some of its functionality on the dpreview site. Nevertheless, it’s one of the best electronic viewfinders I’ve seen – though no doubt that’s helped considerably by looking through an f/2 lens! The EVF is now very close to being as good as a top-notch reflex finder in nearly all conditions.

The other ‘interesting’ camera, or rather cameras, is Sony’s SLT series. Again I’ve only had brief hands-on contact with the SLT-A55, but I found a lot to like about it. Although it looks a lot like a conventional SLR, and has the excellent handling qualities that go with it, it is different. The mirror is translucent, reflecting about 30% of light up to a focusing sensor in the base of the pentaprism, where normal SLRs have them. The remaining 70% of light goes straight on through to the image sensor, which provides a Live View feed either to the rear screen or to a very crisp and clear EVF, which is what enables it to handle like a standard SLR.

The mirror doesn’t move at all in normal shooting (though it can be raised to allow cleaning of the low-pass filter). This makes the camera quieter and less subject to vibration. It also means there’s no interruption in focusing; the focus sensor is operational the whole time. This gives the camera a real advantage for tracking moving subjects.

Although the A-55 doesn't have the build quality or some of the other features you’d expect in a pro camera (and Sony only brands it ‘intermediate’), it does shoot at an impressive 10fps – though not indefinitely, as writing data to the memory card becomes a bottleneck. This speed and full-time focus tracking has prompted a few professional sports photographers to switch to Sony.

Again, it’s not a camera that I’ll be buying. I haven’t been overly impressed with the build quality or the firmware (menus and control interface) of other Sony DSLRs I’ve used, and as I don’t shoot superfast action all that often its particular advantages don’t come close to a compelling reason to ditch my Nikon cameras and lenses. But I do think anyone currently in the market for a system camera and not constrained by existing investment in lenses and accessories should take a long look at the SLT models.

More importantly, I think this is a real signpost to the future, showing one possible way to retain the essential (for me) eye-level viewing while still exploiting the undeniable benefits of Live View. And this is really only Sony’s first attempt at this type of camera. The next generation of SLTs may be very interesting indeed. It’s a challenge that Nikon and Canon are going to have to meet, and I hope they do so soon.

A mirror crack'd

2011-05-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

First, apologies for such a long gap since my last blog post. Variety of reasons, including deep immersion in two Expanded Guides in quick succession (and I’ll come back to that soon, since they’ve given me a direct comparison of two major DSLR contenders). But you don’t need me bleating on about how busy I’ve been. I’ve also been trying to beef up my presence on Facebook and Twitter. But never mind that, let’s just get back to business.

One of the issues that has been very obvious working with the latest DSLRs is the tension that now exists between using the traditional viewfinder and using the LCD screen. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about this and what it may mean for the future of camera design. But let’s start at the beginning.

I cut my teeth on traditional 35mm SLRs, starting with a Zenith E that was probably assembled from spare parts lying around in a Russian tractor factory. Sorry, that’s unfair, it might look like a total clunker today but at the time it really felt like a ‘grown-up’ camera – and I still reckon that Helios lens wasn’t a bad performer. I went on through Yashicas and Contaxes before settling on Nikon 20 years ago in the shape of the classic FM2 – the apotheosis of the all-mechanical SLR. In fact I still have an FM2 at the back of the cupboard, though these days it only gets used on workshops for demonstrating a few things (it’s quite handy being able to open the back!). What all these cameras have in common is reflex viewing. And this is something they share with all the digital SLRs I’ve owned (Nikon D70, D2x, D700 and D7000) and the dozens that I’ve used.

Reflex viewing is often described as ‘through the lens’ viewing but this isn’t strictly true. On an SLR you don’t look through the lens. You actually view the image projected by the lens onto the focusing screen. You can see this screen if you take the lens off your DSLR and look up into the base of the pentaprism. The proof, if you like, that you aren’t simply looking through the lens (as if through a window) is that your eye never has to refocus on objects at different distances; the camera and lens do that instead.

Nevertheless, reflex viewing does feel very much like looking through a window, giving a sense of direct connection to the world. And this is the way that I’ve been used to working, with nearly every camera I’ve used for (OMG) almost four decades… ‘Through the lens’ (aka ‘eye-level’) viewing feels right and natural to me. And then the first digital cameras started appearing. Digital SLRs like the classic Nikon D1 (still, and possibly forever, the most significant digital camera ever made) of course relied on reflex viewing but we soon became accustomed to seeing people with digital compacts using the screen to frame their shots instead. In the early days this was making the best of a bad job; the screens were small and poor quality, but the viewfinders were usually even worse.

Now, of course, most digital compacts have much bigger and better screens and there isn’t room for a viewfinder at all. In fact there’s a whole generation of digital camera users for whom screen viewing is entirely the norm; they don’t miss the viewfinder at all. In fact if they trade up to a DSLR they have to get used to the completely new experience of raising the camera to their eye.

Yes, I know, most DSLRs now have Live View. But this wasn’t always true. Taking NIkon, for example (that being the range I know best), the first SLRs to have Live View were the D3 and D300, launched in August 2007 – less than four years ago. The D60 (Jan 08) and even the D3000 (Aug 09) didn’t have it; only since the arrival of the D3100 (late 2010) is it present across the entire range. When I first saw SLRs with Live View, I didn’t get it. To my nasty suspicious mind, this feature was merely pandering to people who’d got used to screen viewing on compact cameras and couldn’t adapt to ‘proper’ cameras.

However, because I had to write about every feature of these cameras, I couldn’t just ignore Live View, and once I started using it I began to see some genuine advantages. I think it’s worth listing the main ones.

1: 100% viewing.
It’s a lamentable fact that the majority of DSLR viewfinders do not show you 100% of the image. It’s much more usual to have around 95% linear coverage, meaning you only see 90% of the picture area. This may be a hangover from film days, when commercial printing often cropped the edges of the image (and slide mounts masked it slightly), but in digital SLRs there’s no such excuse. However, equipping every camera with a 100% viewfinder would add significantly to bulk, weight and cost. I wouldn’t like to state as a fact that every camera with Live View has 100% image coverage, but every DSLR that I’ve handled does. This means that, as far as framing is concerned, Live View on most cameras delivers ‘what you see is what you get’ and the viewfinder doesn’t.

2: Impeccable focusing.
In ‘normal’ use, i.e. using the viewfinder, DSLRs focus using sensors in the plane of the focusing screen, so they’re reliant on the image relayed by the reflex mirror. This is fine as long as the mirror is perfectly aligned and the image sensor is exactly where it should be. (So that light from the lens has to travel exactly the same distance to the image sensor, when the mirror flips up, as it did to the focusing sensor beforehand). The trouble is, there are lots of reports of cameras with some small misalignment somewhere – just enough to throw off the accuracy of focusing by a tiny amount. It’s usually not enough to be noticeable but can become evident at those times when there’s least margin for error, i.e. using extreme long lenses or in extreme close-up work. Live View focusing, on the other hand, works directly off the main image sensor so there’s no possibility of any such mismatch. In most cases you can also position the focus point exactly where you want it, so you can focus on exactly the right part of the subject – right down to a single eyelash if you’re so inclined. Of course, when you’re talking about this level of precision, any movement in either the camera or the subject is going to wipe it out, so this mostly applies to static subjects and a camera on a tripod. (It’s also the case that Live View focusing is a lot slower, but we’re focusing on its strengths here).

3: Depth of field preview.
Of course many SLRs have a traditional depth of field preview, whereby you press a button and the lens stops down to the actual shooting aperture. And we all know the limitations of this; it darkens the image, making it increasingly hard to assess what’s truly sharp and what isn’t quite pin.
Well, Live View, on some cameras at least, offers an alternative. You’ll have to check exactly how it applies on your DSLR. Let’s take the two cameras I’ve been working with recently. The Nikon D5100 stops down when you enter Live View, setting the lens at whatever aperture was dialled in beforehand. However, if you turn the dial to change the aperture while you’re in LV, it doesn’t update immediately, only when you take a shot.
Got that? Say you’ve set f/11 before entering LV. You look at the LV image, decide you need more depth of field and change the setting to f/22. The screen view doesn't change right away, but when you take the shot it’s taken at f/22 and when LV resumes you’re now viewing at f/22. You’ve got to say this is a quirk in Nikon’s delivery of Live View, and you’ve got to say that in this case Canon’s implementation is more logical, as – at least on the EOS 600D I’ve recently been using – LV updates continually to reflect changes in aperture, providing a full-time, genuinely live, depth of field preview. In fact Canon touts its ‘Final Image Simulation’ as giving you an accurate preview on brightness and colour balance too. Points to Canon on that count (for my overall verdict on the two cameras, watch this space).

OK, that’s at least three big reasons why Live View might be preferable over the viewfinder, in some circumstances anyway. But there are also some very significant downsides.

1: Handling.
The ‘praying mantis’ posture is now characteristic of compact camera users. The problem is, holding the camera away from you is inherently less stable than holding it to your eye. This is true with lightweight compacts and even more so with heavier, bulkier SLRs. This greatly increases the incidence of camera shake. Yes, we now have the wonders of Image Stabilisation/Vibration Reduction or whatever the other makers call it, but in a lot of cases this extra tech is doing little more than cancel out the extra wobbliness due to a less stable way of holding the camera. In other words, it takes us (more or less) back to square one.

2: Speed.
On SLRs Live View is significantly slower than viewfinder shooting, for at least two main reasons. One is that focusing off the main sensor, though accurate, is also much slower than using a dedicated focusing sensor. The second is that – at best – the shutter has to close to end Live View and then open again to take the shot. This inevitably means a delay; you can hear it. If you use a continuous shooting mode, the mirror usually stays up between shots. This means that neither the screen nor the viewfinder is any use, so how do you follow a moving subject? The clear upshot of this is that Live View is seriously hamstrung when it comes to shooting moving subjects.

3: Visibility.
Screens have got better, but even the best of them are hard to see clearly in bright sunlight. You can get screen shades and even viewing loupes which at least partly alleviate this problem, but it’s extra clutter and extra faff. They’re a very good idea if you’re doing, say, sustained macro shooting on a tripod within a limited area, but less so if you’re moving around a lot and even less convenient if you’re switching regularly between Live View and viewfinder shooting.

4. Connection.
Live View gives you a different kind of view. I know that I observed early on that the viewfinder doesn’t deliver a genuine through the lens view; you are looking at the focusing screen. However, it feels direct; it feels connected to the world. By putting the camera right up to your eye it takes over your visual field and, in a strange way, almost disappears. When you use the screen, holding the camera out in front of you, it can seem more like a barrier between you and the world. To me, the Live View view is ultimately more detached and less immediate than the reflex view.

I’m aware that this last point is more subjective, but the other three are clear objective limitations to the usefulness of Live View on a digital SLR. It’s possible, in fact probable, that technology will improve matters on at least the speed and visibility counts, but there’s not going to be much that can be done about handling. The benefits of larger sensors in SLRs (and other system cameras) are undeniable, but they also mean that lenses are always going to be physically a certain size. With longer lenses in particular, handling in Live View is fundamentally unwieldy. This is not just an SLR thing. I’ve tried one of Sony’s NEX cameras (mirrorless, full-time Live View) with an 80-200mm lens and it was barely the right side of completely impractical. I am pretty certain that 200mm is about the limit for Live View handling, other than on a tripod.
So… we have three pretty big positives for Live View, and three pretty big negatives against it, plus a fourth on a more personal level. Which is why I opened this piece by referring to a tension between using the viewfinder and using the screen.

So how do we resolve this? Right now, assuming we are committed SLR users, the answer is that we use each approach when it’s most appropriate.

Viewfinder:
whenever speed is important, whether it’s a need for the focusing system to track moving subjects or just our own ability to react quickly;

whenever we’re using longer and/or heavier lenses, except on a tripod;

whenever we’re concerned about camera-shake, i.e. hand-holding at slower shutter speeds;

whenever we want that intimate sense of filling our personal field of view with the image.

Live View:

whenever we want to frame a shot carefully (probably on a tripod) using 100% of the image area. (This will not apply with pro-spec DSLRs which give 100% coverage in the viewfinder too);

whenever we want ultra-precise focusing on static subjects;

whenever we want a clear and readable depth of field preview.

This is certainly where I’m at right now. I still regard viewfinder shooting as normal but I’ve long ceased looking on Live View as a mere gimmick and I now use it routinely in situations where it shines, especially for macro photography.

But this is a compromise, isn’t it? We now have cameras with two fundamentally different, and arguably incompatible viewing systems, shoe-horned into one body. This can’t be the best of all possible worlds. What might the answer be and what are camera makers doing about it? Well, that’s what I’ll turn to in the next thrilling installment.

Aperture price plummets

2011-02-17T00:23:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie as I'm still wrestling with the next edition of the UK Hillwalking Guide this week, but I thought it worth a mention that Apple is now offering Aperture for just £44.99 on the App Store–about a quarter of the previous price.

Up to now Aperture has been rather overshadowed by Adobe Lightroom though both apps do broadly the same job. Here's what I'm saying about them in the forthcoming 2nd edition of Outdoor Photography...

"Both programmes integrate their organising (Library) and editing (Develop) functions so that you can move seamlessly from viewing a page of thumbnails to tweaking the colours of one or two of them. Essentially both programs show you a preview of the image, which changes to reflect the adjustments you’re making. However, they don’t create a new file then and there, but merely record the adjustments you’ve made. As and when you need to export a JPEG for the web or send a TIFF to a high-end publisher, the adjustments are applied to the exported file.

"Once you get your head round it, it’s hard to imagine working any other way. There’s no interruption to the workflow: you just move smoothly from Library to Develop and back again. And because you don’t create JPEG or TIFF versions until you need them, it saves on hard disk space too. In fact these apps can export directly to the web (and they now integrate with sites like Facebook and Flickr) so you can post images online without leaving a JPEG copy on your own system at all.

"Actually, iPhoto works in a similar way, though its editing tools are far less sophisticated."

I've been using Lightroom for several years now. I originally chose it over Aperture mainly because it ran faster on the Mac I was using then. I've run later versions of Aperture in demo mode and they run fine. I think any Mac with an Intel processor should handle it just fine. And you will need an Intel Mac because you have to update the OS to use the App Store. Snow Leopard version 10.6.6 to be precise. Snow Leopard doesn't run on pre-Intel Macs.

Given that I'm already using Lightroom for nearly all my photo handling and editing work, I don't see myself changing to Aperture, but for any photographer who's not already committed to Lightroom it makes a lot of sense to look at Aperture. I think above all it should appeal to anyone currently using iPhoto or Photoshop Elements and finding them just a bit limiting.

And if you're still using Photoshop AND a separate cataloguing app, it really is time to save yourself the hassle–and the disk space!

If you're not using a Mac then Aperture's no good to you but I wonder if it will put pressure on the pricing of Lightroom, so keep your eyes open.

It's dangerous to say 'Finished'

2011-01-27T07:59:00.000-08:00

It's dangerous to say 'Finished' till the Send button has been well and truly pressed, but I do believe my half of the work on Outdoor Photography (new edition) for Cicerone Press is now complete. The text is complete and correctly formatted, all the captions have been inserted at the right spots and all the picture files numbered accordingly.

I’m just waiting to see if there are any last minute corrections from my co-author Chiz Dakin, and then we can say it’s a wrap.

Obviously it will be some time before you can actually read the book, either in print or as an e-book; it now has to be edited and designed and believe me, those are not trivial pursuits. Watch this space for updates.

I started out with the idea that it would be possible to hang everything on the framework of the original Outdoor Photography and just add in new bits here and there to allow for the fact that digital was in its infancy when the first book appeared. Of course it’s not been like that at all. Although core ideas about what photography is have not changed that much, the technology does have a pretty fundamental effect on the way we approach it. And the outdoors has changed too. I don’t believe I’d even heard of kite-surfing last time, let alone photographed it.

So the new book will be bigger and better, with not only a lot of content specific to digital photography but a lot more solid stuff related to specific sports and activities too.
Thanks to Jonathan Williams at Cicerone for an excellent editorial steer in the early stages and of course to Chiz for lots of hard work, good ideas and great photos.

And now it’s time for a pint.

PS I’ve just agreed to run a couple of workshops on Introduction to Digital Outdoor Photography at the Keswick Mountain Festival, under the auspices of NASOP, The National Academy for Sport & Outdoor Photography. Dates probably 18th and 20th of May. Again, more details will follow.

Landscape on the run

2011-01-21T00:12:00.000-08:00

Landscape photography is a nice, slow, contemplative business, isn't it? Well, maybe... sometimes. And then again there are times like last night. I'd spent much of the day delivering greetings cards and postcards to outlets across Cumbria. I'd had clear skies for most of the day but drove into thick fog between Ulverston and Barrow. The fog was clearly spreading as I made my way down to Kents Bank for the last drop of the day, but I had a hunch that I'd get above it on Hampsfell, and I was right. If you don't know Hampsfell, you should; it's one of the lovely limestone ridges around the southern fringe of the Lake District, with wide views over Morecambe Bay in one direction and the high Lakeland fells in the other. I had a walk there in Car-Free Cumbria (hard to get now, contact me if you'd like a copy).

Yesterday I parked near the golf club for the quickest access and within a couple of minutes walking I was starting to emerge above the clouds. But here's the thing. It was almost 3.30 and I knew sunset would be at 4.30 (a few minutes later than almanac time because I was a couple of hundred metres above sea level). I had just an hour and there were photo opportunities in every direction.

Clearly it was going to pay to be fairly quick and decisive with my shooting decisions. I knew that I only had to turn the Mode Dial on my Nikon D7000 to U1 and all the basic settings would be what I want for landscape; I'd then only need to adjust aperture or shutter speed and maybe ISO. The basic problem still remained: every time I stopped to take a shot at Point A I was losing the chance to take a shot at Point B.

Decisions, decisions. The sun was getting low and its acute angle meant the light was changing quickly, and the fog level was fluctuating too. When the light and/or weather is really spectacular there's a fundamental tension between the shots that you can see right in front of you and the (potentially even better?) opportunities that might be waiting just over the hill.

I spent about twenty minutes on Fell End, not right on top but moving around the shoulders of the hill where the ground is steeper. I even took a few shots of someone playing golf (I know, I know, but the light was amazing). In that time the fog dropped a little and the continuation ridge to the south appeared for a few minutes (the only name on the map is Wart Barrow). I even got lucky enough to get a couple of shots with a walker in the foreground.

All the time, though, I knew I wanted to get to the top of Hampsfell proper–about a kilometre to the north–before the sun went down. Not because of summit fever but because I knew from previous visits that it has some lovely limestone outcrops and great views over the Vale of Cartmel to the Coniston Fells. By about ten to four I knew I had to move, and fairly quickly to, to get there in time. I took this at a brisk walk, but couldn't resist stopping for a few quick shots along the way (posing sheep above the clouds, that sort of thing).

By the time I got to the limestone edges it was 4.15. This didn't leave me much time at all to find the best position. The second photo here was taken (according to metadata) at 16.19.35. Within a few more minutes the light on the foreground was losing its edge as the sun almost touched the cloud layer. As it was turning the clouds pink I thought there might be one more shot and I could see a nice lone tree that might make a nice foreground for it–but I had to run to get there before the sun went down.

And that seemed like it was it. Except that as I walked back over Fell End the mist began to creep up and over the ridge and I got a whole series of new shots. And then the only problem was finding my way back down when suddenly visibility was down to 30 or 40 metres.

Moral of the story? I had an hour of the sort of light and conditions that landscape photographers dream of. In that time I got probably 12–15 shots that are real 'keepers', plus minor variants. To me that's a pretty good rate of return. But it was only possible because I was familiar with the camera and had most of the settings sorted in advance. It also helped a lot that I'd been to the location several times before and had a good idea where to head for. And finally, it helped that I wasn't overburdened with gear and could move pretty fast. I think tripods are a great thing and every photographer should have one. But you also have to know when to leave them behind.

Rumour has it

2011-01-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

PhotoRadar is suggesting that a replacement for the Nikon D700 is likely to be released in February or March. Possibly to be called D800, and then again, possibly not.

As I’ve been using a D700 since soon after its launch I naturally take an interest in these things. It’s not that I’m desperate to replace my existing D700 (which was serviced just before Christmas), but there are some potential improvements that would make me sit up and take notice. I think it’s a given that it will have ‘Full HD’ video, so I’m not even going to comment on that.

I notice PhotoRadar leads with the suggestion that the new camera will have a 24 megapixel sensor. Groan. This is most definitely not one of my desiderata. Exactly what will that achieve apart from making it more expensive? If you're one of the tiny minority who actually needs 24mp you'll have a D3x already. 16mp – for parity with the D7000 – would be plenty; it would be nice to be able to prepare images for Alamy without up-sizing. But otherwise, 12mp is fine. I'd rather see the focus on improved dynamic range than the 99% pointless pursuit of too many pixels.

Conclusion: don’t want to pay over the odds for inflated pixel count. Rather have better dynamic range/high ISO performance on a sensor between 12 and 16 MP.

Another suggestion on PhotoRadar is that the “D800” will have an articulated LCD a la D5000. My gut reaction is that this would make me much less likely to buy the new camera. I’ve used a D5000 extensively and for me the articulating screen was mildly beneficial when shooting video (which I do occasionally) and a right royal pain in the butt the rest of the time. The “D800” screen would have to be a much better implementation that the D5000’s but even so… A fold-out screen will inevitably add weight and bulk. That’s one negative. But it’s also exposed and fragile in use; bad news for the outdoor photographer. Either you leave it in the open position, where it’s vulnerable to damage (because there’s no screen protector), or you fold it away every time, which leaves you less ready to shoot.

This was more of a pain on the D5000 because more of the controls had to be accessed on screen. A camera like the D700 (and presumably the “D800”) uses buttons and dials much more to change settings, so there’s less need to see the screen before shooting. But I do like instant image review (especially the histogram) so I would want the screen to be readily visible. I’ve used other DSLRs with fold-out screens, e.g. Sony a350, which possibly had a better system (just about the only thing I did like better on the Sony though) but still am not convinced about overall cost-benefit analysis of folding screens for still photography (sorry, I mean ‘photography’). Maybe I should come back to this topic.

Conclusion: a folding screen on the “D800” would be a negative for me.

Having downgraded a couple of items on the PhotoRadar wishlist, what’s on mine?

Dual card slots–dual SD a la D7000 is fine by me. The halfway house on the D300s (1 Compact Flash, 1 SD slot) is just mildly annoying. I know people who have lots of CF cards may find it a nuisance, but SD cards are pretty cheap these days.

Remember that stuff called film? A 4Gb memory card will hold around 200 RAW files from a 16megapixel DSLR. 200 shots is the equivalent of say 6 rolls of 35mm, and my memory is that Velvia film + processing didn’t leave much change from a tenner a roll, i.e. £60. You can get two SanDisk Extreme 4GB cards for that at Warehouse Express.

Dual slots allow instant backup. You couldn’t get that with film (yes, you could shoot duplicate images, at least for non-moving subjects, but if anything happened to the film they were both gone).

SD slot(s) would also allow us to use Eye-Fi cards. I don’t use one myself (yet) but it would be pretty handy when I’m doing product shots or other macro stuff at home. An alternative, which might be be better still, would be an inexpensive WiFi gizmo no bigger than the GP-1.

I’d also like to see significant improvements to autofocus operation in normal shooting (I’m less bothered about Live View). Most of all I’d like a wider spread of focus points. These currently cover less of the frame on Nikon’s full-frame (FX) cameras than on the DX format models. But ultimately I’d like the AF to be able to work anywhere within the frame, as it can in Live View).

Another thing I’d really like to see would be “smart bracketing”. This is where the camera reads the brightness range of the scene and, if it can’t encompass it in one shot, brackets exposures accordingly. For me the point would generally be to be able to merge those frames to a High Dynamic Range image in post-processing, but it should also integrate with an Auto HDR function in-camera to produce JPEG images from the Retouch Menu.

Give me all of those for £2000 and I probably would trade in my existing D700. If they could make it smaller, lighter and tougher too, that would be even better ;–)

Where are the video lenses?

2011-01-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

Here’s a thought. Video shooting has very quickly become virtually standard on digital SLRs; it’s easy to forget that the very first DSLR to shoot video was the Nikon D90, released in August 2008.

Less than 2 1/2 years. A short time in many ways, but it’s a long time in terms of today’s product cycles. My D7000 can shoot Full HD video, and the functionality of video shooting, particularly in relation to focusing, has improved a long way.

Not that this is a big deal for me. Polls show that most DSLR owners still shoot video either never or very rarely, and I’m in that camp. I do enough to be familiar with it because I have to be when writing the Expanded Guides, but when I’m shooting for myself I shoot stills. Or “photographs”, as we used to call them. I’m a photographer, after all.

But I do shoot some video and one of the hardest things to get right on a DSLR is zooming. It’s almost impossible to do it smoothly when hand-holding and not that easy on a tripod either.
The missing piece of the jigsaw is the DSLR-video lens.

It’s a puzzle to me why no-one has yet (AFAIK, anyway) produced SLR lenses specifically with video shooting in mind. These would feature a massive zoom range (at least 18–300mm), plus powered zoom or some other means to make zooming smoother. I imagine this would require an internal motor and power source in the lens because current cameras aren’t set up to drive it, but it wouldn’t have to be massive – and for many users this could be their one and only lens, replacing two or even three existing lenses when shooting video.

They will be usable for stills as well, but there will inevitably be optical compromises. Aberrations may be inconsequential in the low-resolution video image but will manifest in the still photograph at higher magnifications; distortion will show up whatever the magnification.

Not only would such lenses be a godsend to those (such as photojournalists) who do regularly shoot video on DSLRs: they might make sceptics like me use it a bit more as well.

Wide and handsome

2011-01-10T00:42:00.000-08:00

I promised I’d say a bit about why I’m so partial to wide-angle lenses, so here are a few thoughts.

As many before me have observed, the beauty of wide-angles is not just in the width. More than anything it’s about depth.

Wide-angles bring the third dimension fully into play. With super-wides like the 14mm and others discussed in my last-but-one post, you sometimes have to be careful about your own feet, or the tripod legs, getting in the shot. That’s how close you can work to your foreground.

Foregrounds do many things. To me, above all, they’re about connection. The foreground is where you are. It’s where you see and feel and smell the landscape. The rock you’ve just climbed, the spatter of lichen on a boulder, the ice crystals around the edge of a pool: wide-angle lenses allow us to put these in the picture as part of the landscape.

So wide-angles aren’t just about seeing the bigger picture, though they can certainly do that. The great beauty of the wide-angle is in connecting that wider view to the nitty-gritty stuff of personal experience.

I think this is where the wide-angle lens on a conventional camera scores over the ‘letter-box’ panoramic format. Panoramas have plenty of width but most of them are lacking in the depth department. Even in the hands of a master like Colin Prior, I find that looking at panorama after panorama leaves me feeling a bit distanced and disconnected from the subject. Compare with another master, Joe Cornish, whose trademark is probably the portrait-format wide-angle shot with strong foreground.

Of course that’s not all there is to wide-angles. That ability to get close without losing the background isn’t just useful in landscape photography. They can be very useful in confined spaces too–including interiors, obviously, but also anywhere where it’s not possible just to step back to take it all in.

Actually using wide-angles takes a bit of familiarisation. That possibility of your own feet, or the tripod legs, intruding on the shot is just part of it. It’s symptomatic of the fact that you can be very close to elements of the picture–often quite literally close enough to touch. What this means is that very small shifts in camera position can have a large impact on the overall balance of the image. And because wide-angles bring the third dimension into play more than other lenses, this applies to shifts in any direction.

For example, you might spot what looks like a great shot and frame it initially with the camera in your hands. If you then put the camera on a tripod–well, most reasonably portable tripods aren’t quite tall enough to reach my standing eye-level. The camera might be in exactly the same place in fore/aft and left/right terms but on the tripod it’s 10 or 20 cm lower. This can change the framing significantly.

The answer to this is simple enough, though simple isn’t quite the same as easy. It’s looking, looking and looking again. Looking through the viewfinder to see what’s in the frame–but also looking directly at the scene to see what else is there.

Incidentally, this is why I’m not completely enamoured of ‘stitching’ as a way to create a wider view. With digital cameras and the latest software it’s remarkably easy to combine several images into a panorama, but the problem is there’s no way to look through the viewfinder and see, in one go, what you’re going to end up with. I’m sure if you do it a lot you can develop a pretty good sense of what the combined image will look like, but even then the first time you’ll actually see what the final framing looks like is back at home on the computer screen.

With a genuine wide-angle lens, on the other hand, you get it there and then, when the landscape’s right there in front of you. To me, there’s no substitute for that immediacy. And that is at least part of the reason I love wide-angle lenses.

Photo: Midland Hotel, Morecambe

"It's public domain"

2011-01-09T23:29:00.000-08:00

Imagine this...

You’ve got a fine show in your front garden. Roses, marigolds, tulips… Maybe they aren’t all that special. They probably aren’t going to win any awards at Chelsea Flower Show or anything like that, but you’re quite proud of them anyway. You prepared the ground, dug in loads of compost and some stinky manure, planted seeds and seedlings, watered them carefully, weeded when necessary, watched out for pests…

And now they’re at their best. It gives you great pleasure when people walking past stop for a moment to admire them. One or two of them bend down to smell the fragrance of the roses. You’re very happy to share your pride and joy.

Then one morning you get up and look out of the window and they’re all gone. You rush out to look and every flower-stem has been neatly snipped off with secateurs.

You’re mad, of course, but what can you do? Report it to the police? Exactly how much time are they going to devote to the theft of a few roses?

Then, a few hours later, you’re wandering past a street market when you spot some flowers that look suspiciously familiar, on sale for a fiver a bunch. You challenge the stall-holder but he just laughs:

“Front garden, mate. Practically overhanging the street. That’s public domain.”

Affordable super-wides

2011-01-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

Turns out my “new” Sigma 14mm f/2.8 lens isn’t all that new after all. Mr Sigma, Ray Fitchett, tells me this lens was discontinued in 2003. And he should know–but it doesn’t look that old! Essentially mint condition, in fact. And the first test shots are coming out beautifully: excellent sharpness and not a sign of distortion. Straight lines really are straight–great for urban landscapes.

Anyway, the process of deciding what lens to buy got me thinking about two things: why I like wide-angles so much (a subject for another entry methinks), and what the options are for affordable super-wide lenses. "Affordable" is something you have to decide for yourself. I didn't really want to spend over £500 and would have been very happy spending less–and in the end I did.

The reason I was looking was that I had decided to replace my well-travelled and well-used Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG. This may have taken a few knocks: anyway, whatever the reason, I have become aware that it is not producing the sharpest results. Still fine for most purposes but would definitely fail quality control at Alamy, for example.

Naturally I looked first at a straight replacement, but list price for this lens now is £849.99, which is definitely over-stretching my definition of ‘affordable’. So I thought I’d spread the net a bit wider.

The first question you may ask is: what counts as a super-wide lens anyway? I can remember being pretty excited when I first got a 20mm lens. This was back in the mists of time when I was shooting on 35mm film. My gut feeling is that on 35mm or full-frame SLR (what Nikon calls FX format) this still counts as super-wide. Arbitrarily I’m going to say that a lens has to be wider than 24mm to qualify–and that’s on FX.

My trouble is I use both FX (D700) and DX-format (D7000). On the DX format, also known as APS-C, you’d need a 16mm lens to match the coverage of a 24mm on FX format. DX/APS-C is the format of the vast majority of SLRs sold by Nikon, Canon and Sony, and the whole Pentax range (apart from the ‘medium format’ 645D).

Therefore, to give me a reasonably wide-angle view when using the D7000, my search was limited to lenses of 16mm or wider. But I also wanted a lens I could use on the D700 as well, so any lens limited to the smaller format was ruled out. And I wanted a ‘normal’ lens, not a fisheye, which I’ve never liked.

This meant excluding Nikon’s AF-S 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED DX (a not-quite unaffordable £599) and AF-S 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED DX (£815). The 12-24 is actually cheaper than Sigma’s but the Sigma works on full-frame cameras while the Nikon only gives full coverage on DX sensors.

Among Nikon lenses that did meet my criteria were the AF-S 16-35mm f/4G VR ED (around £845: too much money and not as wide as I’d really like) and the AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED. This by all accounts is a pretty stunning lens and if money were no object I might well have gone for it but it retails at around £1299. It is also pretty big and heavy, which is a serious consideration when I’d be using it regularly on long walks and bike rides.

Nikon also do a 14mm f/2.8D ED AF but this also retails at over £1200.

At this point I seemed to have run out of options at least as far as new lenses go. Sigma has nothing else apart from the aforementioned 12-24mm. Tokina only have a 16–28mm f/2.8: this gets pretty good reviews but the cheapest price I found was £720. Tamron don’t seem to make lenses for FX format any more.

But before deciding that another Sigma 12–24 was my only option I took myself to eBay. Interestingly I found quite a lot of lenses with a brand-name new to me–Samyang–including a 14mm f/2.8 which covers full-frame, at around £330, but mostly shipping from Poland and Hong Kong. Do you think I’m going to buy a grey import of a brand I’d never heard of?

So that’s why I ended up with this far from new but very nice Sigma 14mm f/2.8. Yes, it’s fixed focal length and a zoom might have been nice but I think zoom is more use for longer lenses. With super-wides your nearest subject matter is usually only a metre or two away anyway so it’s easy to make shifts in framing by using the universal zoom feature available with all cameras and known as walking. As a bonus it is considerably smaller and lighter than the old 12–24mm zoom. I’ve spent less than any of the listed options and I’ve got a lens which looks to be an excellent performer. I’ll report any further feedback once I’ve used it some more.

Of course my search was complicated by wanting to support a full-frame camera. If you’re only using DX-format cameras then you have much more choice, like the Tokina AT-X 11–16mm PRO DX at around £579. Good ole Ken Rockwell described this as “the best ultrawide zoom available for Nikon DX cameras”. You could also look at Sigma’s 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM, which might be a tad cheaper and Nikon’s AF-S 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED DX at £599. Tamron’s AF SP 10-24mm f3.5-4.5 is significantly cheaper but I suspect you get what you pay for. If all of these are too much then you might be joining me on eBay.

Of course I haven't covered own-brand lenses for Canon, Sony or Pentax. I have no real experience there (a little with Sony cameras, that's all). Canon have a highly rated 16–35mm lens but it's £1800. Pentax have a 14mm F2.8 at c£550, a 15mm f/4 at c£600 and a 12-24mm f4 at c£800. Sony have an 11–18mm at £600. I've actually used one of these and it was OK but didn't make my heart sing (rather like the cameras). Any feedback on any of these is welcome.

And I now have a surplus-to-requirements, perfectly functional but not sharp enough for big enlargements, Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG. Anyone like to make me an offer?

P.S.: 10/1/11Just a quick update for anyone on Nikon DX format: Gray's of Westminster–the legendary Nikon dealer–currently have the 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor at £399.00 (RRP - £573.99).

Photo Tip of the Year

2011-01-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

Here’s a very simple tip to improve your pictures. This should work on just about every camera:

Turn the flash off.

It’s that simple.

Why then, you may ask, do manufacturers build a flash into almost every camera on the market? Fair question. And I am going to talk about the times when it can be a help… but let’s start with the reasons why flash isn’t such a great idea so much of the time.

First, all flashguns, and especially built-in ones, are really small.

Second, all flashguns, and especially built-in ones, are really weak.

Third, all flashguns mounted on the camera, and especially built-in ones, are positioned very close to the lens. What does all this lead to?

Well, let’s think about what flash is used for. Overwhelmingly it’s used for taking pictures of people. But the small size of a typical flash makes its light very hard-edged. Hard shadows and sharp edges aren’t always particularly flattering for portraits.

The weakness of flash also means it only works at close range. This by itself wouldn’t be a problem for individual portraits, but photograph a group of people and, if the ones closest to the camera are reasonably lit, anyone a few paces further back will be looking distinctly dim. It certainly means flash is absolutely useless for many of the things people try and photograph with it–from fireworks to players at Wimbledon or Lady Ga Ga on stage in a big arena.

The position of the flash close to the lens has two main consequences. Firstly it means the light is front-on to the subject. It is basically the flattest light you can get, usually with just a few tiny edgy shadows. Not very nice at all. Secondly, pumping the flash right into someone’s eyes often gives us the dreaded ‘red-eye’–which is nothing more than light bouncing back off the blood-vessels in their retina.

Yes, I know many cameras have a red-eye reduction flash mode. But think about what this does. It fires one or two pre-flashes first to make the subject’s pupils contract. This delays the actual shot by a second or so. Bang goes all chance of spontaneity or naturalness.

Which means that my Tip of the Year 1B is:

If you must use flash, turn off red-eye reduction. You can easily fix it in software later.

I feel more confident about urging everyone to turn off the flash now than I would have done a few years ago because digital cameras have got better and better at shooting in low light. This is particularly true of SLRs and the new Compact System Cameras because they have larger sensors. This gives them not more megapixels, which is a red herring, but bigger ones. However even compact cameras, despite their much smaller sensors, are getting better.

The measure of this is the maximum ISO rating you can set. On most compacts this will be around 800 or 1600. On the latest SLRs it’s several notches higher–3200, 6400, 12800 or even more. And you genuinely can get decent results at these ratings. The portrait of an Italian farmhouse cheese-maker was shot in his dairy under fairly basic fluorescent lights: the ISO rating was 5000 and I was able to hand-hold comfortably with a longish lens (170mm). How would it have looked with on-camera flash?

To get a direct comparison look at the other two shots here. I must apologise deeply as they are pictures of me but decent models are hard to come by...Anyway, the left-hand shot was taken with on-camera flash; the right-hand version was also taken with flash, but the gun has been moved off the camera.

Which brings me to one of the exceptions to the ‘turn it off’ rule. Flash can work well, but one of the best ways to do this is to get it off the camera. This obviously doesn’t work with a built-in unit–you’d have to take the camera apart, after all! But a separate flash doesn’t have to be hugely expensive.

Because a built-in flash is always in the same position, every shot you take with it has basically the same lighting. Whether it’s a cosy pub, a gathering round a campfire or a performer on stage (assuming you can get close enough and photography is allowed!) the shots will all look the same. Turning the flash off means that the pictures represent the actual lighting that was there, bringing you close to the mood of the moment and what you actually saw. You can see another shot taken with the D700, at ISO 6400, here. This mood certainly would have bee ruined by shooting with a built-in (and maybe any) flash.

There is a second exception to my “Turn it off” rule. In fact I’d suggest the best time to use flash is exactly the last time most people would think of using it: when the sun’s shining brightly. This is because bright sun can create harsh shadows and a bit of flash can help to lighten these. This is known as ‘Fill-in flash’ and it’s the best argument I can think of for the built-in units on most cameras.

So try these for a set of New Year’s Resolutions (looks like a lot but they’re all connected):

1: If you don’t know already, find out how to turn the flash off–and then do it!
2: If you don’t know already, find out how to turn up the ISO rating and experiment with shooting that way in low light.
3: Turn the flash back on when the sun’s really bright.
4: Find out about using a separate flashgun which you can take off the camera. (I’ll come back to this subject soon).

Happy New Shooting Year

Thirds? No thanks

2010-12-22T03:47:00.000-08:00

There’s something about thirds that seems to exert a hypnotic influence on many photographic pundits. I’ve commented before on the notorious Rule of Thirds as a guide to composition. But thirds crop up in another context too; how to ensure that as much of your shot as possible is sharp.

What we are talking about is Depth of Field (DOF). This is my definition:

depth of field is the zone, extending both before and behind the point of focus, in which objects appear to be sharp in the final image.

Most photographers know this, of course, and know that the zone gets deeper if you use a smaller aperture.

Depth of field extends both “before and behind the point of focus”. In other words, if you focus, say, 5 metres away, objects 3m or 10m away may also appear sharp (depending on the aperture and other factors). In landscape photography it’s traditional to try and get everything sharp–from the closest object in the frame right out to the horizon. This isn’t always easy but it’s helped by picking the right focus distance to make best use of DOF. If you focus on the most distant object, you’re wasting potential DOF because the zone of sharpness extends beyond that distance but there’s nothing in the picture that will benefit from it. The scientific way to maximise DOF is to focus at what’s called the hyperfocal distance. If you focus at this distance, everything beyond it out to ‘infinity’ (which in optics just means ‘a long way away’) should be sharp.

Unfortunately determining the hyperfocal distance isn’t easy. It depends on the aperture, focal length, camera format and, strictly, on the size of print or screen enlargement you want too. Not something you can easily compute in your head.

It would be nice to have a rule of thumb to work out the hyperfocal distance quickly and at least approximately. And here’s where those thirds come in again as you’ll often see advice in books and magazines to focus “a third of the way into the view”. The trouble is that no-one ever seems to explain what they mean by this. I can think of several different possible meanings.

1: A third of the way to infinity? That's a mathematical absurdity. A third of infinity is still infinity!

2: A third of the way to the horizon? At least we can work out what this would be. The distance to the horizon depends mostly on our viewing height; at sea-level, for a person of average height (say 1.7 metres), it’s 4.7 km. A third of this distance is just under 1.6km, or about a mile in old money. But focusing at this distance is optically almost indistinguishable from focusing on the horizon. The hyperfocal distance is actually very much closer. And of course this method takes no account of aperture, focal length or any other variables.

3: A third of the way up the frame? Well, this has a certain simple and practical ring to it. And in a typical open landscape it does sort of work. However, it’s totally dependent on how you frame the picture and how different elements are arranged within it. If there’s a great sky you might place the horizon low down in the frame, possibly on that ‘third’ line or even lower. This method works, but only roughly, and only for a certain conventional type of landscape shot.

All of which left me not much the wiser. So I asked Chiz Dakin, my co-author for the forthcoming new edition of Outdoor Photography, if she had any ideas. She didn’t resolve the mathematical contradictions (I don't think anyone can) but she did say something interesting:

“I try and pick a point that's still in the foreground, but more towards the back of the foreground. This usually ... keeps the whole foreground in good enough focus, and holds as much as possible of the middle and background in focus. In such a case the "thirds" really refer to foreground, middleground, background, rather than being true mathematical thirds.”

I think this is about as helpful as any explanation that I’ve ever seen, but it does presuppose that we have some intuitive idea of what constitutes “foreground”, “middleground”and “background”. Does the world really divide up into neat zones like that? Or do we as photographers train ourselves to see it that way?

After all this I took a step back and asked myself what I myself do in practical everyday shooting to find the hyperfocal distance. There’s a techy method, which involves focusing on infinity first and locating the nearest object that’s sharp. This is slow but reliable. On proper cameras there’s also a depth of field preview button, which also helps.

However, I realise that without consciously thinking about it I’ve been using a much more intuitive method. Basically this means focusing at the point where the nearest and most distant objects look about equally unsharp. This isn’t perfect, and I may make adjustments after a test shot, but it’s at least as effective as any other method (short of using camera/lens movements and the Scheimpflug Rule).

And the funny thing is, I don’t think that focus point is a third of the way to or from anything in particular, or at least only about as often as the laws of chance would imply.

Thirds? Sorry, still not convinced.

Mode Dial Magic

2010-12-17T04:43:00.000-08:00

In the previous post I commented on using JPEG settings to get the best guide when shooting RAW. However, there may be times when you want to shoot JPEG and you won’t necessarily want those very specific ‘for RAW’ settings. I might easily choose a VIVID Picture Control and lower level of Active D-Lighting to produce immediately attention-getting results in shots destined for the web.

But of course it’s a faff changing a bunch of settings like these. Picture Controls and Active D-Lighting aren’t an easy one-button-push away; they’re buried in the menu system, which always makes things slower (Rule 1: cameras with more buttons are easier to use because you can get to more settings more quickly).

Of course my Nikon D7000 has a Recent Settings Menu, which usually makes it relatively quick and easy to get at these settings. But it also has a new feature which can make it even easier. The D7000’s Mode Dial features two ‘extra’ positions, U1 and U2. What these do is allow instant access to preset combinations of settings. Basically, you set the camera up for a particular scenario; using buttons, dials and menus. Almost ever parameter you think of can be included. Once the camera is set up as required, go to the Setup menu and then select Save user settings. You then assign the current settings to U1 or U2 and press OK. Job done. Next time you switch the camera to U1 (or U2) it will recall that entire range of settings.

It may make it clearer if I lay out how I’m using this–at least to start with. U1 is going to be my ‘Landscape Photography’ setting. The most important settings that I want to save are:

Image Quality: RAW
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Direct Sunlight
Picture Control: Neutral
Active D-Lighting: High

From now on, whatever I was doing the moment before, I can reinstate all of these settings simply by turning that dial back to U1. I think that’s pretty cool, actually.

I’m still thinking about what exactly I will do with position U2. I might set it up as an ‘Action shot’ setting but then again I might set it up as an instant ‘snapshot’ setting. This might have settings like these:

Image Quality: JPEG Fine, Large
Exposure Mode: Program
White Balance: Auto
Picture Control: Vivid
Active D-Lighting: Auto

But then again it may not. I’ll get back to you.

The D7000 is the first DSLR from Nikon to offer this feature. How many there are from other makers with something similar... I'll get back to you on that too. Or you can get back to me.

Why JPEG settings matter when shooting RAW

2010-12-17T02:52:00.000-08:00

Here’s an interesting thought for photographers who shoot RAW. You understand, obviously, that RAW files record all the data captured by the camera's sensor and that you can make big adjustments to white balance and so on during the RAW conversion process on the computer.

When you shoot JPEG, on the other hand, the image is processed in-camera and all sorts of settings are locked in. A lot of the original RAW data is effectively thrown away and there’s much less room for adjustment later–not without degrading the image, anyway. The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that when you shoot JPEG you have to be a lot more careful about getting the settings right in the first place, but when you shoot RAW it doesn’t really matter. You still have to get the exposure about right, but settings like White Balance are irrelevant because you can reset them later during RAW conversion.

Or so you might think.

But step back a moment. You’re shooting RAW. You’re a careful and thoughtful photographer. You use the playback image on the back of the camera and often look at the histogram or highlights display to check the exposure.

And what is that playback image? It’s a JPEG. Even if you shoot RAW, the camera still produces a JPEG image for review purposes. And when that JPEG image is processed it recognises all the JPEG settings. Changing the White Balance setting won’t affect the RAW file but it will change the look of that review image. And if you’re using that review image as a basis for shooting decisions, then this matters. It affects the histogram, too.

Now, I’ve been aware of this for a while and I’ve always tried to ensure that White Balance settings are appropriate even when shooting RAW. But there are many other settings that also influence the appearance of the JPEG image.

This morning (fine and frosty) I tried a little experiment with my new Nikon D7000, taking some comparison shots. One of each pair was shot with a VIVID Picture Control and Active D-Lighting OFF. The other was shot with a NEUTRAL Picture Control and Active D-Lighting EXTRA HIGH. (Canon equivalents are Picture Styles and Highlight Tone Priority; other manufacturers use different jargon). Not surprisingly, there’s a big difference in the review image between each pair. The second shot looks less saturated, lighter overall, and has far less blocking of the shadows. The histogram looks quite different too.

Now, when I plug the memory card into the Mac and launch Lightroom 3, the first screen that comes up shows thumbnails of all the images, allowing me to select some or all for import. At this point the comparison pairs still look quite different. However, when I import them and look at them within Lightroom proper, the pairs look identical. This confirms that the basic RAW data is the same.

If I’m out shooting RAW in interesting lighting conditions, which often means high dynamic range, I don’t necessarily want the camera-back image to show me exactly what I’m going to see when the image is processed in Lightroom. What’s far more useful, to me, is a guide to how well the image is capturing the full range of tones in the scene. The histogram is my best guide to this. However, when I shoot with a Vivid Picture Control and Active D-Lighting OFF, the preview image is using a condensed tonal range. It’s rather as if I load the image into Lightroom and don’t use the Fill Light and Recovery tools at all. I’m not seeing all the detail that I could see, and the histogram reflects this.

My conclusion is that, to get the best sense in the field of the tonal range that the RAW file is actually capturing, I need to be consistent about using the Neutral Picture Control and keep Active D-Lighting set to High or Extra High.

Adobe giveth–and taketh away?

2010-12-14T03:21:00.000-08:00

After quite a lot of agonising about it, I've added some photos to Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/2ft83bn. I've agonised because I'd like more people to see them but Facebook is notorious for copyright theft. Their own terms and conditions give them free rein to exploit images posted by users, never mind being wide open to outside theft.

However I've now decided to post, but only with strong watermarking. Some would argue against this because it can deter genuine potential buyers, but I'm hoping the Facebook gallery will encourage people to visit my own website, where they can see the photos in a slideshow format that makes theft more difficult.
I've heard it said that features like Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5 make it all too easy for image thieves to 'repair' watermarking anyway. Many photographers don't think Adobe did us too many favours with that one!

However, another Adobe program, Lightroom 3, not only makes publishing to Facebook and Flickr a doddle, it also makes it really easy to add strong watermarks to each shot as it's published. In particular, there's an option to add a drop shadow to the watermark, which I think should make it considerably harder for thieves to remove the watermark.

The watermarking's pretty strong and I think this is more obtrusive on some images than others–anyone who wants to see them without watermarks please look at my website.

Love the camera, can't get on with the software.

2010-12-08T10:44:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness for that. Adobe has updated Lightroom (and Camera RAW & DNG) which means I can start using it for RAW file photos from the Nikon D7000 and give up on the sooo slooow Nikon View NX2.

I do like the camera. In fact, I've just bought one, as I my previous blog hinted I might. I'm in a privileged position as I get to play with all Nikon's shiny new SLRs for the Expanded Guides, but only on loan (and in the case of the D3x only for a week!). If I want one of them I have to splash the cash like everyone else. And the D7000 is well worth it.

However, try as I might, I can't get on with Nikon's software. Maybe other people love it but it's just not intuitive for me. Nikon View NX2 has a much better feature set for RAW file processing than the lamentable previous version but it just keeps telling you to wait.... and I'm on a fast system, god only knows what it's like on a slower machine.

Hard to understand how they can be so good at the camera interface and ergonomics and yet make software so user-un-friendly.

Nikon D7000 first verdict

2010-11-25T02:23:00.000-08:00

Shot with the D7000: Little Crag, Lancashire

Nikon’s new D7000 is a great camera for outdoor people.

I've been using Nikon's new D7000 DSLR for a couple of weeks now as I'm writing the Expanded Guide for Ammonite Press. And I have to say I don’t want to send it back.

I liked the D90 a lot when I did the Guide on it; in fact I very nearly bought one. You can think of the D7000 as a hybrid of D90 and D300s. OK, it has a different sensor with 16 megapixels, but frankly the 12mp of the other two cameras is more than enough for 99% of people.

I have to say I’m slightly hamstrung in judging image quality as Adobe haven’t yet (25/11/10) released the Camera Raw update for this camera so I can’t fit its RAW files into my usual Lightroom-based workflow. Instead I’ve resorted (and I choose the word wisely) to Nikon View NX2, which is free with the camera. I may have more to say about this soon, but it won’t be complimentary.

So: shame about the software but the camera more than makes up for it.

To me–and I am fairly used to lugging heavy cameras around–the D7000 is a great combination of sensible weight with robust build quality and a good feature set. It feels as solid as the D300s but bulk and weight are closer to the D90. This is a camera I could carry when climbing or mountain biking.

Control layout is good–Nikon have had the ergonomics of the SLR nailed for a while now. Handling beats any other make that I’ve tried. Lots of buttons but that just means that all the controls I want regularly are on the surface and really quick to access. Hiding functions in the menu system makes cameras look simpler but actually makes them harder to use.

My only gripe is that, in common with all of Nikon’s ‘amateur’ cameras the Mode Dial has no lock and it’s far too easy to nudge it accidentally onto a different mode.

Oh, and it even shoots Full HD movies. Which doesn’t really interest me personally (I’m a photographer) but I have to explore this aspect for the book. Well, here’s a free hint on how to get the best quality out of your HD-movie-capable SLR: use a flippin’ tripod!

And the D7000? The only question now is can the credit card take it?

Give a damn, give a bike

2010-06-28T00:41:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this. I stumbled across it when looking for results of the national road race championships on the web last night (Geraint Thomas and Emma Pooley, BTW)...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/cycling-in-benin/dreaming-of-the-champs-elysees

This is really humbling, when I'm occasionally inclined to moan about not being able to afford a decent full-suspension mountain bike. And what the heck, I can have so much fun on my hardtail anyway...

I do have an old road bike in reasonable condition and I'm seriously thinking about donating it to Benin if the cost of shipping is not too crazy. They're also looking for any spare bits of kit, clothing etc and I'm sure most of us who ride bikes have some bits we don't need. Hard to think of a better way of clearing space in the garage and doing something worthwhile at the same time.

No photo this time, go and look at the link instead and follow through to http://quietgriot.com/ as well.

2010-05-20T00:40:00.001-07:00

Here's some sound advice for anyone using photos on a blog, or indeed posting photos–or any other content–on the web in any way.

http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2010/05/19/blogging-pitfalls-using-google-as-a-stock-photo-site/

I'll leave it to speak for itself. Needless to say, the image you see here is one I created myself–nearly always the best way to illustrate a blog.

I'm well aware that, for various reasons (such as important legislation in the offing here in the UK), this blog has looked rather too much like a long rant about copyright and intellectual property. I'm not promising that I won't return to such subjects in the future but I am going to focus on making some positive entries about the business of actually taking photos. Watch this space!

Is this a dodgy competition?

2010-05-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

The Take a View Landscape Photographer of the Year competition is about to open for entries. Anyone thinking of entering might look at the terms and conditions of this competition.

At first glance it doesn't seem too bad... Rule 16 states: By entering the competition, you grant Take a view and its sponsors and supporters a non-exclusive, irrevocable licence to reproduce, enlarge, publish or exhibit, on any media, the images for any purpose connected with the competition. This looks like exactly what we are always asking for: images can't be used outside the purview of the competition.

However, read on and we find that specified uses which may be made of the images include:

a) inclusion in the Take a view book;
and
f) on any merchandise commissioned by the organisers.

Bear in mind that this is a competition with an entry fee (2009 figures were £7 for one image, £15 for 2–5 and so on)... It is also noteworthy that "The owners of the competition are Lightworx Ltd t/a Take a view." My understanding of limited companies is that, in general, they exist to make a profit...

Run that past me again. I'm expected to pay them for the possibility of including my shots in a commercially published book and potentially on a variety of commercially available merchandise? Somehow I don't think so.

Taking a closer look, the 2009 prizes were as follows:
Adults: four category winners and four runners up get cash prizes; one of them gets the overall as well. That's 8 images.
There's also a national parks award which may or may not coincide with one of the above. If it doesn't that's 9.
Youth: one cash prize for best overall plus workshops with Charlie Waite for other category winners: that's 4 images.
Also Natural England’s ‘Landscape on your Doorstep’ Award, no cash value.

I reckon that means that a maximum of 14 images can actually earn a tangible prize. Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection 3, which was the book of the 2009 comp., had 224 pages... I wonder how they filled the other 210?

It seems pretty clear that a large majority of pictures included in this book–which is unambiguously a commercial production–were supplied by photographers who not only did not receive any sort of prize, but have actually paid for the privilege!

On the assumption that the rules are likely to be much the same this year, I definitely won't be entering and I can't imagine why any photographer in their right mind would do so.

Another 'competition' to avoid

2010-04-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

They say: "Open to both amateur and professional photographers, the Syngenta Photo Prize celebrates the beauty to be found in the landscapes, plants, communities and technologies of global agriculture."

Does it indeed? Or is its real purpose to allow a multinational company to get hold of a large number of high-quality photos on the cheap? Just consider this excerpt from the Terms and Conditions:

All entrants submitting photos agree to allow Syngenta to publish these in electronic or print format for any commercial or non-commercial purpose (including but not limited to advertisement and promotion) without any additional payment. Syngenta shall have a non-exclusive, worldwide irrevocable right to use the above-mentioned photos free of charge.

Note that it says 'All entrants'. Not just the handful of winners but every single entrant must agree to give Syngenta unrestricted use of their photos. I repeat, this is a multinational company...

When I say 'handful of winners' I'm not kidding. There will be six winners, three chosen from Syngenta employees and three from everyone else. The prizes are worth a pretty penny–in fact up to US$8000–in the form of vouchers for Canon equipment. And, oh yes, the prizes are actually provided by Canon, so Syngenta are actually getting all the photos for nothing.

I repeat once more, this is a multinational company. It could take your photo and use it in all sorts of ways all over the world and you wouldn't get a penny.

Well, it won't be doing that with any shots of mine. I won't be entering, that's for sure. So here's one photo that they won't be getting their grubby little multinational mitts on...

Don't Believe Everything You Read

2010-04-25T00:49:00.000-07:00

The photo here was taken high on Little Stand, one of my favourite Lake District fells. (Overseas readers may like to know that ‘fell’ is a traditional word for a hill or mountain, and fellwalking is what we do on them–along with scrambling, climbing and mountain biking).

There are lots of reasons to like Little Stand, including the main reason we were there: it’s absolutely covered in rock, most of it at the sort of angle that’s ideal for scrambling or very easy climbing. I’ll come back to that, but there’s another great thing about Little Stand: it’s not a Wainwright.

Another explanation for the uninitiated: A. Wainwright (his name was Alfred but he generally just used the initial) wrote a series of walkers’ guidebooks to the Lake District Fells between 1952 and 1966. Genuinely innovative in some ways, quirky and opinionated too, they’ve alienated some with their occasionally misogynistic and authoritarian asides.

Wainwright’s list of Fells seems to have become the definitive list of Lakeland Fells, and people now talk about ‘doing the Wainwrights’. However, unlike–for example–the Munros in Scotland, Wainwright had no set criteria for what constitutes a separate fell, and this has led to some odd inclusions and exclusions.

Among the inclusions of dubious merit are Brim Fell (Southern Fells), which any fule kno is part of Coniston Old Man, and Sergeant Man (Central Fells), which AW himself admits ‘is merely a rocky excrescence at the edge...of High Raise’. And among inexplicable exclusions, Little Stand is by far the most glaring.

It’s not as if Wainwright didn’t know it was there; he used it as a stepping stone on one of his routes to Crinkle Crags. Did he not notice the distinct dip after the summit of Little Stand? By his own criteria, Sergeant Man deserves a separate chapter because many people make it ‘the target of a day’s outing’. Fine, but that would exclude Brim Fell–no-one climbs that on its own. And by the same logic, Little Stand deserves its own chapter. I’ve made it ‘the target of a day’s outing’ on more than one occasion.

By now you may be thinking, what has this got to do with photography? Well, be fair, I never promised that this blog would be solely about photography. But there is a more general point: Wainwright’s ‘definitive’ list of Fells is not definitive at all: it’s just one man’s opinion, which has been uncritically accepted for far too long.

But this is a good thing for Little Stand; not being a Wainwright means it gets far fewer people tramping over it. We didn’t see anyone else there all day, yet whenever we had a view to Crinkle Crags there were lines of little figures dutifully marching along its ridges. The rewards of not simply accepting the conventional wisdom.

And the reason we were there? Take a look at http://jon-sparks.co.uk/Jon_Sparks_Photographer_and_Writer/Books.html and find the 6th entry in the list: Scrambles and Easy Climbs in the Lake District. Nothing is certain yet, but there’s a distinct possibility that there will soon be More Scrambles and Easy Climbs in the Lake District...

Copyright is a Human Right

2010-04-21T01:41:00.000-07:00

Really interesting ruling by an Irish judge reported here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/19/charleton_eircom_emi/

The judgement includes such phrases as "the right to be identified with and to reasonably exploit one’s own original creative endeavour I regard as a human right," which underscores the basic legal status of both copyright and moral rights.

In a comment on EPUK, Paul Ellis states that only the UK, Netherlands and Ireland do not enshrine moral rights as a legal right, and this judgement appears to shift the Irish position significantly. (Yes, the UK Copyright Act does make some provision for moral rights but allows some significant exceptions, and does not make MR inalienable, allowing contracts such as the currently controversial Bauer ones to force creators to sign away their moral rights).

This whole area is certain to become a battleground all over again after the Election (not immediately perhaps but definitely during the next parliament) and this judgement is one more piece of ammunition on our side.

Send in the clones?

2010-04-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

When Adobe Photoshop CS5 arrives later this year, one new feature that's certain to attract a lot of interest is the Content-Aware Fill tool. This appears to greatly streamline the retouching of images and allow speedy removal of elements of a scene.

This might appear a wonderful development, but in fact it's very much a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, a tool that makes it easier to cleanly remove unwanted lens flare and other artefacts would be highly welcome.

On the other, anything that makes it easier for the unscrupulous user to remove a watermark from a web image is extremely UNwelcome. Image piracy is a big enough problem without Adobe making it easier!

And on the third hand, it probably encourages further the already rampant trend of "cleaning up" all sorts of images, from the buffed-up images of UK Conservative leader David Cameron to the casual assumption that it's OK to remove pylons from a landscape.

I had to tell a calendar publisher the other day that it was not acceptable to remove a couple of wind turbines from one of my shots, even though they were very small in the frame–I very much doubt you will be able to see them in the low resolution image at the head of this page. The calendar page is a different matter. They are there in the landscape and anyone standing where I stood would see them.

I don't want to present an idealised, airbrushed, OK Magazine view of the landscape. I will fight to preserve wild and natural places. But we don't help this fight by making landscapes that have been compromised look as if they are 'unspoiled'.

Why pay good money for photographs?

2010-04-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a wonderful example of what can happen when image buyers seek out the lowest common denominator:

http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html

If you don't want to follow the link it basically shows the same photo of the same five people being used to promote a bunch of different companies in different parts of the world.

I also wonder how much the photographer of this image has made from its repeated use through a microstock agency. As it's microstock, probably not very much, even though the image is obviously very "successful" and has been used again and again.

As I respect other photographers' copyright I'm not republishing the shot here, even though it would probably cost me tuppence.

2010-03-19T03:59:00.000-07:00

Panic on the streets of London

2010-03-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

The Digital Economy Bill is now before the House of Commons, and many photographers are still deeply unhappy about it.

Despite significant amendments in the Lords, many photographers remain highly concerned about the potentially damaging effects on our livelihood if the Digital Economy Bill should pass as it stands. It has now had its first reading in the Commons and is expected to have its second reading shortly. It is feared that, as part of the 'wash-up' which occurs before an imminent election, there may be no proper Commons debate on the Bill (this usually takes place at third reading). The last chance to have any influence on the contents of this Bill may therefore come at Committee stage (between 2nd and 3rd Readings).

Two key points to note:

1: There has been some renumbering so the contentious Section 42 (Orphan Works and Extended Collective Licensing) is now Section 43. Please bear this in mind when writing to your MP.

2: Despite the welcome amendments which add some flesh to the bones, it remains a worry that much of the nitty-gritty of the new measures will be set out later in secondary legislation. And, as we all know, the devil is in the detail. The Government has promised further consultation before this secondary legislation is put in place, but based on experience so far most photographers' groups are pessimistic about the chances that photographers' worries will really be addressed.

Anyone who is concerned about the potential threat, or wants to know more, may want to look at a newly-created website, http://www.stop43.org.uk/

This includes a concise summary of what worries so many photographers: http://www.stop43.org.uk/pages/read_more.html;

Opportunities for viral campaigns against Section 43: http://www.stop43.org.uk/pages/virals.html;

And links to contact MP's: http://www.stop43.org.uk/pages/contact_your_mp.html

Please take a look

Photography is not a crime

2010-02-24T02:42:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing stories about people obstructing photographers lawfully taking pictures in a public place. For instance, it's just been reported from Greenfield in the Peak District that private security guards at a mill 'apprehended' members of the public for using a camera near the entrance, but while on a public road. This of course raises specific issues about the role of such private security firms. I very much doubt that they actually have any jurisdiction outside the property they are protecting, and I have suggested to my contact in Greenfield that they report this to Liberty http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/ and also http://photorights.org

There are also wider issues here about the general attack on the rights of photographers. There is a myth, for instance, that it is illegal to take photos of children without parent's permission. This is totally untrue. However, I would be very careful about it these days as there are other risks attached. Take a look at http://www.photographersrights.org.uk/page6/page6.html. Still, here's a photo taken on Blackpool beach, without asking anyone's permission. I hope it reminds you of the warmth of summer.

For more information on photographers' rights in general see http://www.sirimo.co.uk/2009/05/14/uk-p ... rights-v2/ where you can download a useful pdf; the page also has links for USA and Australian photographers' rights guides. However I now hear worrying rumours about much greater restrictions on photography in public places–all in the name of privacy. I'll report further when there's some meat on the bones. Perhaps what we should be saying is: Photography is not a crime–yet.

Widows and Orphans

2010-02-11T01:25:00.000-08:00

The Digital Economy Bill is going through the UK Parliament at the moment. If it’s received any media attention at all it’s mostly for its proposals to toughen up the law on illegal file-sharing, but there’s a lot more to it than that. One that’s really worrying for photographers is Section 42, which introduces a procedure for dealing with 'orphan works'.

What is an ‘orphan work’?: any photograph or other creative work that can’t readily be traced back to its creator or other copyright holder. With the rise of the Internet the number of orphan works in circulation has expanded exponentially. It’s scarily easy for any image to become an orphan work. Take a look at the picture alongside this blog (taken this very morning, 500 metres from where I live).

Right-click on it (control-click if you’re on a Mac with one-button mouse) and you’ll see that you can easily save the image to your own system. You’ll also see that the image has a copyright watermark and if you open it in Photoshop and check the file info you’ll see that it has copyright information embedded. Now, if you were unscrupulous enough, you could crop the image to cut out that watermark, and you could also delete the copyright info in Photoshop. You could then re-circulate the image on the Web with nothing left to tie it to me.

This image is, of course pretty small–but if it’s good enough to use on the web, it’s good enough to steal and re-use. And lots of images get used much larger than this. I recently discovered that a magazine for which I have worked regularly had placed most of its back issues online in facsimile form. Naturally the photos aren’t watermarked. Because people viewing these pages can zoom the screen view, it is possible to see many of the images at almost full-screen size and the image can be captured in a couple of clicks by taking a screen grab.

I've done this myself to prove the point and the results are easily good enough for further use on the web. To its credit, when contributors complained, the magazine in question blocked access to the back issues and we are currently trying to sort out an agreement. However, there’s no way of knowing whether some of these images have not already been grabbed. Once grabbed, the image can enter circulation on the Internet without any identification attached: it has become an orphan work.

What little we know of the Government’s plans–because the BIll is terrifyingly non-specific–suggests that it will then be fair game for all and sundry: from Flickr to personal websites, most of the Internet will become one giant photo library. Any publisher wishing to make use of an orphan work has to assert that they have made a reasonable search for the owner but it’s not hard to see how difficult that would be to police.

The proposal appears to be that a small fee–amount to be decided by Peter Mandelson's office–will have to be deposited with a collecting society in case the owner spots the usage. The author who discovers his work has been used as an orphan can then make a claim and receive a percentage of this fee, after the collecting society has had its share. But the crucial word there is discover: unless photographers spend their entire time trawling the internet for such infringements, it’s likely that only a tiny percentage will ever be uncovered.

Of course if we spend all our time looking for copies of our work, we aren’t shooting new work. But if this law goes through, many photographers think there won’t be much point in shooting new work anyway because it will be next to impossible to make a living from it.

See more of my work at my website

Two more books

2010-02-05T03:21:00.000-08:00

They’re coming thick and fast at the moment. I’ve recently had two more books published by Ammonite Press. These are Expanded Guides to Nikon’s D3000 and D5000 digital SLRs.

Nikon D3000

The D3000 is Nikon’s new entry-level model; it’s very similar in many ways to the earlier D60, which in turn was not vastly different from the D40x. The one big innovation on the D3000 is the new Guide Menu which is intended to help the user make quick and easy choices about the right shooting settings.

If you’re already familiar with basic camera settings and modes, then there’s no great benefit in using the Guide Menu; in fact it’s just a slower and more roundabout way of setting up the camera than through the usual buttons and dials. However, for new users who aren’t familiar with digital SLRs and don’t really know what all those buttons and dials actually do, then it is a great way to become familiar with the range of possibilities. If it encourages users to break free from leaving the camera on one bog-standard AUTO setting the whole time, then it’s very welcome.

Nikon D5000

The D5000 is a more enthusiast-oriented camera and has many features in common with the D90, which marks the top of Nikon’s amateur DSLR range. I think the D90 is a lovely camera and got some great results from one when I was writing the Expanded Guide to it. The D5000 has much the same image quality, and very nice it is, but personally I don’t like the control layout as much as the D90. I’m used to cameras with two command dials and the D5000 only has one. It’s definitely slower when using Manual mode as you can’t set shutter speed and aperture simultaneously. However I know that millions of people never use Manual mode at all.

And at the end of the day we actually bought a D5000, which I share with my partner, and I wouldn’t have done that if I thought it was a bad camera!

I know I’ve not yet mentioned the fold-out screen, which was one of the big talking points of the D5000. To me it’s irrelevant to normal picture-taking as the SLR viewfinder still rules, but it does come in handy sometimes when shooting movies or using Live View on a tripod.

Just in case anyone had the wrong idea, I don’t get to keep any of these cameras; if I’m lucky I might have a camera for a month while working on its Expanded Guide, in which time I have to become really familiar with all its features and use it to shoot as wide a range of images as possible. It gets easier with practice and of course there is a family resemblance between Nikon DSLRs, but it’s still pretty intense.

The photo at the top was taken with a Nikon D5000….

See more of my work at my website

Rule of Thirds=ROT

2010-02-05T02:35:00.000-08:00

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs."
Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is revered by many as the greatest ever landscape photographer. I don’t know if I’d go that far – at some point these things get a bit silly. Was Pablo Casals a greater musician than Jimi Hendrix? (Answers on a postcard, and send them to someone else, please!)

What I can say is that Adams has been a big influence on me, especially in the early part of my career. I’m an admirer, not a slavish disciple, but I do believe he said more wise things about photography than almost anyone else. And one of the wisest things he ever said was this: ‘There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.’

Which came to mind recently when I was reading a camera manual to help someone who was struggling with their camera (it might be unfair to name the maker), and came across some advice for taking ‘good pictures’. Including the old chestnut: position the subject at the intersection of thirds.

Ah, the dear old ‘Rule of Thirds’–only in my view it’s not dear but dire. I’d venture to suggest that this ‘Rule’ has killed more potentially interesting photos, and probably crushed more photographers’ enthusiasm, than anything else.

It's not that you can't ever take good photos using it, but it gets in the way at least as often as it helps. My advice about the ‘Rule of Thirds’ is very simple: forget it.

In fact, if it wasn't so frequently quoted all over the place, I wouldn’t even have mentioned it.
OK, I can guess what's coming next: if it's so bad, why is it so frequently cited? Actually, it beats me, because I see lots of photographers talk about it who clearly do not slavishly follow it in their own work. I think it's just become a standard knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone asks about composition.

No doubt I'll have more to say on this soon, but meanwhile here's a pic that definitely doesn't conform to the ROT.

It ain't necessarily so

2010-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a statement most people would agree with:

The more pixels your camera has the better.

Well, as the song says, "The words that you're liable to read in the Bible... It ain't necessarily so."

In fact I would argue (and I'm not alone!) that most cameras, especially compact cameras, have too many pixels. Here's why:

Bigger pixels are better (why? read on). But cramming more pixels onto the same physical size of sensor–which is what happens 99 times out of 100–means smaller pixels. I’m not a Canon user – I’ve been committed to Nikon cameras for nearly 20 years and can’t see any reason to change – but Canon made an announcement late last year that made me want to cheer. Their new top-end non-SLR camera is the Powershot G11, which features a 10-megapixel sensor.

What’s worth cheering is the fact that its predecessor, the G10, had 14.7 megapixels. In other words, Canon has downsized its pixel count. Why is this worth cheering about? Because it’s the first sign I’ve seen of an end to the hitherto relentless ‘pixel inflation’. This has always been driven by marketing rather than imaging. The sensors on compact cameras are tiny and cramming ever more pixels into them makes no sense. Smaller pixels mean more image noise, and countering this with noise-reduction software can soften fine detail – but fine detail is exactly what more pixels is supposed to give you in the first place. I hope this is just the start. For most purposes, 10 megapixels is more than enough–usually far more. Do you know how many megapixels you need for an image that will display perfectly on your new 1080p HD TV set? The answer is two. Yes, 2. And what are you going to do with your shots that needs anything more than that?

Bigger pixels capture more light. This is what reduces image noise and allows remarkably good images in unbelievably low light levels. My Nikon D700 runs up to 25,600 ISO–and it works, though images aren't perfect. Back in the days of film we thought 800 was fast and on small-sensor cameras it still is the realistic top limit. The new Nikon D3s takes the score to a barely believable 102,400 ISO.

Bigger pixels also go hand-in-hand with better dynamic range: this is what allows a camera to capture good detail in bright highlights and deep shadows. I don’t have a shot taken on a Canon Powershot anything so here’s a photo taken on my Nikon D700 at 6400 ISO– and displayed at about 0.1 megapixels!

Back it up or live to regret it

2010-01-25T05:21:00.000-08:00

Here’s a simple piece of advice that every digital photographer needs to follow–but millions don’t!

This is prompted by my nephew who asked for my advice after losing several hundred images taken on what may well be a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Oman. I can’t yet tell you if he’s recovered any or all of them but I made a few suggestions (and members of that excellent professional forum Prodig.org were really helpful too).
More to the point–if this has never happened to you, count yourself lucky–and then get cracking and make sure it never does. Get those photos backed up now!

If the only place your photos are stored is the hard drive of your Mac or PC, they are not safe. Hard drives can fail. Wait long enough and they inevitably will. It might not happen in your lifetime but you don’t know that for sure. The only security for digital images is always making sure they are stored in at least two places.

There are many ways to do this and many software packages that will make it easy and automatic. If (like me) you’re on a Mac and running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Time Machine is there to do it automatically for you. Once it’s set up you hardly need to give it a second thought. But you do have to set it up first, and you have to have somewhere, such as a second hard drive, for it to save to.

But then a 500gigabyte hard drive can now cost you less than £50 (here in the UK). Spend this before you even think of splashing out for a new camera or lens or any other photographic requisites. It is far more important!

Some versions of Windows Vista have a Backup and Restore feature and it is supposed to be improved in Windows 7. There are many third-party solutions as well like the well-respected Retrospect Express.

There are also many options for online backup though unless you pay you’ll find space is limited. I can’t go through all the options here and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for everybody. But if you use a digital camera you really, really, need to have a backup strategy. This is probably the best advice I will ever give you. (And so early in the life of this blog too!)

Infinite Monkeys

2010-01-25T04:49:00.000-08:00

“...there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.''
Douglas Adams. The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
You still hear some people say that digital photography is about frantically shooting hundreds of images because one of them is bound to be right. I’ve heard this from lots of people, some of whom should know better, but it’s absolute nonsense. Shooting hundreds of images at random only condemns you to weary hours of editing at the computer afterwards. And besides, in real-world photography there are so many variables that you would have to shoot not hundreds but thousands or even millions of images to have any real chance of getting ‘the’ shot. It’s very much like the idea that if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters one of them would be certain to produce Shakespeare's Hamlet.
This is sort of true, but mathematicians have also calculated that it would take longer than the age of the known universe. The true point of the Infinite Monkey metaphor is to demonstrate, not the possibility of such an occurrence, but its infinitesimally small probability of actually happening. More to the point, even if the monkeys did produce Hamlet, they wouldn’t know that they had done so; they would be completely unable to distinguish it from the infinite piles of gibberish they had also produced.
It may or may not also be relevant that the text of Hamlet consists of about 200,000 characters, including spaces, and can be stored on computer as a text file of around 100 kilobytes. A single image from a typical digital SLR may contain 12 million pixels, each having over 65 thousand possible values, and without compression takes up 65 megabytes of disk space, or 650 times as much information...
Now I’m pretty sure I know what’s wrong with this logic, but it still makes a whole lot more sense than the Infinite Monkey view of photography.

Welcome

2010-01-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my brand new blog. I'm planning to use this to offer lots of helpful hints and advice on all things photographic, as well as occasionally wandering off into other areas. If you are interested in photography, especially landscape and outdoor pursuits, don't be afraid to ask questions.

The image you see here–entitled Photographing Lynch Tor, Dartmoor– was Commended in the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2009, announced last December.
This photo was successful in the This is Britain category, which gave me some pleasure as this category seemed to be dominated by urban, documentary style images. However, as I said in my original image caption, ‘Even in our crowded island, wild places are usually not too far away’.