Gooey Bugs : Photography

A welcome tool for improving Windows color management!

JimGries — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:50:00 GMT

It's been a very long time since I blogged about digital photography and yet I noticed that my recent debugger blogs have been appearing on the Digital Photography Community. So, rather than fight the fight I would need to do to get filtering of my debugger specific blogs from there, I thought it might be easier to actually blog about digital photography.

Truthfully, due to some interesting personal issues I haven’t been able to focus on my hobby/passion for well over a year. So please don’t consider me an expert on anything at this point. I certainly have more questions these days than answers.

On to the topic at hand though... Something in the Windows digital imaging arena recently struck me as intriguing. A new, free control panel applet was recently released that claims to simplify some of the headaches of configuring color on Windows systems. You can find it here, if you haven't already.

As I read what it is intended to do, I thought to myself “Hallelujah! I wish this existed years ago!” So I installed it and gave it a whirl.

Well, after playing with it I can't say it answered all my questions or appears to make color management a breeze, but I STILL wish it existed years ago just for the simple feature of being able to associate humanly readable names with some of the worst named files I’ve ever come across. Example? The standard color profile for my Epson 2200 is called “ee231__1.icm”. Go figure.

The 3D Gamut sub-display is also pretty nifty. At first, I didn’t have a clue as to why there was the ability to view the gamut as a wireframe or mesh, or to change the opacity. However, checking the “Compare To:” checkbox and choosing another gamut, it becomes clear what these adjustments can be used for when comparing two gamuts:

Note that you can see my Epson’s Premium Glossy gamut (pictured as a gray blob) has the ability to display hues of greenish blue that aren’t part of the Adobe RGB gamut (assuming I’m understanding this view correctly).

In any event, if you've been struggling with getting your prints to accurately match what you're seeing on your display, this tool is a necessity for clarifying some of the mysteries surrounding color matching and management on Windows systems. Other things you can do to make sense of it all? Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but you could probably fill a small book about the intricacies color profiling, matching and management, let alone the science behind it all. Maybe somebody out there has a pointer to some good sites. Here's one I made use of a long time ago -- looks like it's even better now!

(Let's try this again) A favorite photo!

JimGries — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 18:50:00 GMT

Being that I have two boys (13 & 16) that play Little League baseball, and my interest in photograpy, I have spent a LOT of time taking pictures of them and their team. It's All-Star season now, and I'm happy to report that both boys made the team in their respective divisions. But that's not the point of this posting. No, this one is about a photograph I took over this last weekend of one of the games. This photograph doesn't have my son in it, but I just LOVED how it turned out. Here it is:

It's the batter's stance, the look on the batter's face, the ball in the glove, the position of the ball in relation to the batter's look, the anticipation of the call being made. All summed up in an instant in time. I just had to point this one out, because I doubt that most parents (the main viewer of my photography website) would notice these aspects of the image.

Digital Camera recommendations...

JimGries — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 10:00:00 GMT

(Feedback based update: 7/7/2004)

Due to my computer and photography interests, I get asked quite frequently to spew about my recommendations for purchasing a digital camera. Of course I have opinions, but so do a million other photographer/computer nerds out there. So, take what I say with a grain of salt. What works and is important to me, may not be important to somebody else.

First and foremost, a cheap point-and-shoot camera is capable of taking pictures as good as any high-end model. Most of the quality comes from the eye of the photographer, not the hardware. Yes, you can argue about barrel distortion, chromatic aberations, and moire patterns all day and night. But if it looks like there's a tree limb sticking out of Uncle Bob's head nobody's going to give a rip about all that technical mumbo-jumbo. In my opinion, great photographs should jump out at you rather than be dependent on very close analysis.

My list of key specs is short so it should be easy to remember as you're looking around. It is mostly geared toward people interested in getting a camera to replace their old film-based point and shoot camera.

You really can't go wrong with any Nikon or Canon. It's not that other manufacturers can't or don't make products that are as good as or better than these two, it's just a little more hit and miss with others. Nikon and Canon have been in the camera, lens and photography business forever. They know what makes good picture-taking-gadgets.

There's really nothing wrong with Kodak and Olympus camera's, or Minolta, or HP, or Sony, or Fuji, or whomever. The reason I like Nikon and Canon more is that they are the two companies that most professional photographers use (purely based on empirical evidence). Their businesses rely on keeping their reputation at a high level in the professional market, for sure. I guess I'd say, it's "in their blood" to make a decent camera and lens. Other companies, like Sony and HP don't have that kind of "baggage" to carry around. Heck, either of those two companies could completely drop their digital camera lines and hardly miss a beat. I don't really know much about Olympus and Minolta, other than they've been competing for mindshare with Nikon and Canon for as long as I can remember.

Kodak's in a strange position. From what I understand they have mostly relied on the profits from analog film sales. The digital boom seemed to catch them off guard, and they've been paying dearly. Now they're playing catch up by pushing more in the hardware aspect of photography. Ironically enough, some of the original HIGH end 35mm digital cameras that were available before the Nikon D1 came out were made by Kodak. BUT these cameras were actually Nikon bodies and shutter mechanisms, with digital hardware tacked on by Kodak. Go figure.

Fuji is another company I don't know too much about other than being well known for their analog film products. They are also a humungous company, like Sony, so good digital cameras isn't something that's going to make or break their existence.

Compact Flash digital film format is best. It's the cheapest, highest capacity, and abundant form of flash memory for the foreseeable future. Most Nikon and Canon cameras use this format. One of the readers of this blog indicated that Canon has started using SD format memory in their smaller models. Based on what I've seen recently surrounding devices that make use of memory expansion, SD appears to be gaining a foothold. So I suppose if you're really interested in minimizing size, SD is probably the next best alternative to compact flash.

3 Megapixel is sufficient to print high-quality 8x10's. When's the last time you got an 8x10 of any of the pictures you've taken? I'm guessing most of you would answer: 'uh, never'. When would you need more than 3 Megapixels? Well, if you'd like to print a significant number of 8x10's or even 5x7's OR you're likely to do some heavy cropping of your pictures (say for scrapbooking hobbies) you'll want to try to maximize your megapixels.

Examine shutter lag and auto-focus lag to differentiate between similar cameras. I'll bet you'll be more frustrated with long total lag (auto-focus + shutter) on cheaper point-and-shoots than any other feature or lack of feature. If I were to spend any extra money for anything, it would be to choose the camera that has the minimum delay between when you press the shutter button and when the picture is taken. When reading a review of a camera, say on the most excellent http://www.dpreview.com, find and take note of 'Shutter Lag' and 'Auto-Focus Lag'. The shorter the better!

By the way, one way to minimize this effect on most cameras is to pre-focus whatever it is you're trying to take a picture of. Usually that involves holding the shutter button half-way down a couple seconds before pushing it all the way down. While this usually does make it easier to live with a long shutter lag, in practice (yes, I do have a small Nikon point and shoot that my wife mostly uses. :) I've found it quite limiting and annoying.

Don't worry about zoom, both the optical and digital type. It is an overrated feature on most point-and-shoot cameras. Digital zoom can be completely replicated AFTER you take a picture. The optical zoom capability on a small camera is usually quite limited anyway. For most situations moving closer or further from your subject can be just as effective. To get really close (like of the Little Leage pictures on my website) you'll need the SLR equivalent of a 300mm zoom lens. 200mm equivalence will get you fairly close to most action that's within 30 yards or so. Most instruction manuals and camera review web-sites will list this equivalency spec. Here's a nice definition if you're interested in understanding this a bit more.

There. 5 key points to remember. If you'd like to get more serious about photography, try to veer toward an SLR-type camera. Here are the price ranges I'd recommend based on your level of photgraphy interest:

$150 to $400 - For most typical family and friend snapshots.
$400 to $1000 - If you want any chance of being able to take good pictures in more difficult situations than simple people poses. For example, sports (especially indoor sports), plays, nighttime shots, etc. Be aware that practice and patience will STILL be required to pull these situations off well.
> $1000 - For this amount of money, you'd be able to take fantastic shots in almost any situation Of course, you may need to practice, read the manual, buy more manuals, spend extra money, or be extremely lucky to realize your potential, but in theory just about any type of shot would be possible.

I love digital photography!

JimGries — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 12:33:00 GMT

Jees, I've been intending to get this section started for a long while. To start, here's a short list of the equipment I own:

Nikon D1X - I was a proud owner of the original Nikon D1. I love the improvements made for the D1X.
An IBM 1GB microdrive, 2 - 512MB Compact Flash cards, and a small slew of much smaller CF cards.
Several lenses
- Nikkor 60mm AF Micro 1:2.8
- Nikkor 17-35mm 1:2.8
- Tamron 28-105mm 1:2.8
- Nikkor 80-200mm 1:2.8
- A couple other offbrand cheapo lenses. The 300mm I have comes in handy at times.
Nikon Speedlight SB-28DX
Several studio lights, stands, softboxes, umbrellas and other accessories
Some filters, nothing fancy, just a polarized or two, soft-focus, gradients and neutral densities.
Too many books that cover all topics in photography.
A mostly completed course from NYIP.
A backpack and small hip-pack that both come in handy depending on the situation.
A legitimate copy of Photoshop 7.0.
A legitimate copy of ThumbsPlus by Cerious. My all-time favorite photo organization tool --I've tried quite a few and IMHO, nothing is better. But I'm willing to listen to advice here!
Probably a host of other crap that I can't remember at 2:15am.

If you care to see some of my work (whoop-dee-frickin'-doo), you can go to:

Sky Valley Little League (from last year. This year I'm a coach, so taking pictures hasn't been my priority. :)

My Brother's Wedding (hohum. Boring for you, great for my family)

An Editor's Choice award at Nikon's website (See the first picture in the “December“ category. The only 'contest-like' thing I've ever felt gutsy enough to enter. I was shocked when I actually won an editor's choice. I've been afraid to enter anymore contests since -- heck, right now I'm batting 1.000, why ruin it? )

Film? What's film? Actually, my first SLR was a Nikon N60. A nice little, relatively affordable film camera. I took a lot of pictures with it before moving to digital. But I've taken thousands (well over 10,000, probably over 20,000) with my D1 and D1X. I've more than paid for both the original D1 and the D1X in the savings I get from not having to develop film. Plus, I get instant gratification. For my purposes, film is dead.

I have all sorts of opinions, experience, and unanswered (even unthunk) questions about everything related to photography and digital imaging as a whole. So feel free to post away.