Martin Pool's blog

Mail me RSS Bazaar distcc Canonical is hiring! flickr

Canon EOS 20D

I bought a Canon EOS 20D just before the holidays. It is really beautiful: a work of art that makes art.

I'll write more later, and pick a couple of good images to put up here. A few brief points:

• It's very fast; catching an expression flashing across someone's face or a bird in flight now depends on the photographer's reflexes, not the camera's lag. This comes down to an optical viewfinder, fast and well-guided autofocus and fast electronics. 5 frame continuous shooting helps too.
• Usability design is superb. I was a bit skeptical of the iPod-style jog dial/button on the back, but it works very well: using your thumb, thumb knuckle or finger you can quickly apply exposure compensation or flip through the menus or replay pictures.
• One gap in the interface design is in handling sensitivity (ISO). This is a key exposure parameter for digital cameras, along with aperture and exposure time; in low light I change as frequently as the other two. But there is no permanent display on the top panel, and none at all in the viewfinder. I'd like a small dedicated 4-digit display on both of them.
• Quality on screen or on small-medium prints is great, but to be fair that's true of most cameras for the last few years. What is new is that this is true even up to 1600 ISO, making it very good in available light (indoors, or in a forest.) I haven't tried a large print yet.

posted Wed 5 Jan 2005 in /photo/tech | link

More opinions on 4/3

dpnow writes of the possible advantages and disadvantages of the Four Thirds standard.

posted Sat 23 Oct 2004 in /photo/tech | link

Interview with Olympus engineers and thoughts on 4/3

Olympus are running an extended interview with the engineers who worked on the Four Thirds system and the E-1 and E-300 cameras. It gives an uncommon insight into the design tradeoffs.

Most DSLRs available in 2004 are based on 35mm SLR cameras, which allows some reuse both by manufacturers and users. However, producing a sensor the size of a full 35mm frame is quite expensive, so cameras tend to have a "crop factor": only the center of the image plane is actually used to capture images.

Olympus have chosen to go with a new all-digital system based on a sensor somewhat smaller than that used in mid-level DSLRS from other manufacturers.

Manufacturers are fairly free to change sensors at will between fixed-lens camera models. However, for DSLRs customers expect to be able to reuse lenses between different generations of cameras. So by picking a particular sensor size and designing lenses to match, Olympus are committing to this size for perhaps ten years, which is an eon in electronics. Engineering tradeoffs can be tough, but particularly so when you're going to be stuck with them through four or more generations of technology.

Lenses specifically and bodies designed from size can be smaller than those based on the 35mm format, and therefore faster, lighter and cheaper at a given quality level. (Or the optical quality can be improved at a given price point, etc.)

On the other hand, a smaller sensor means that at a given resolution level, each sensor site must be smaller, and therefore possibly able to gather less pixels, and so less sensitive. At a given level of sensor technology, aperture and speed, larger sensors ought to have lower noise.

Or does it? Much of the light coming through a 35mm SLR lens falls outside an APS-sized sensor, and so is essentially wasted. The Olympus cameras should get more useful data bits per photon entering the lens.

To cut a long ramble short, the Olympus engineers seem confident that they will continue to be able to improve within 4/3 system, achieving quality comparable to medium-format and then large-format silver-halide cameras. Worth a read.

posted Mon 18 Oct 2004 in /photo/tech | link

Olympus E-300

Olympus have announced a new consumer DSLR, the E-300. It uses their 4/3-system sensor and a mirror viewfinder, so is remarkably compact for a camera at this level. I've wanted to switch to a DSLR for a while, and maybe this would be it. I have looked at the E-1, but it's just a bit too expensive for the amount I'd use it.

This seems to be the E-1 scaled down and with some more amateur features added, such as scene modes. (I'd personally be happy with just PASM, but I guess it's necessary for this market.) It does have a built-in pop-up flash, which plays well with the compact size. The RAM buffer might be smaller than that of the E-1 and it's missing the splash-proof triple seals.

The sensor is a bit smaller than on the competing Canon 300D and the Nikon D70, as a tradeoff for having a substantially smaller body and lenses. I wonder if the smaller sensor is going to cause substantially more noise at any given ISO. On my current Minolta 7i there is noticeable noise at ISO 400 and 800 is often barely usable.

So far (29 Sep) a few people have seen it at the Photokina expo, but there's not much on the net aside from the Olympus press release and spec sheet.

The physical design of the camera looks intriguing, and it looks like it will fix a few annoyances in digital cameras to date.

There's no top LCD, as there is on the E-1 and many other digital cameras today. All the information is available on the review TFT or through the viewfinder. That seems like a pretty good tradeoff: there's already a large display on the back, and information in the viewfinder, so I'm not sure a top display is really needed. If it keeps the price and size down, by all means pull it out; the only downside is probably higher current drain when the TFT is on.

Playback is just through a single button, so presumably you can pop back into shooting mode just by half-pressing the shutter. Putting playback on a mode dial always seemed pretty pointless to me.

There are hard buttons for all the common functions, plus a single rotating control: exposure, WB, resolution, ISO, autofocus mode and point, flash mode, meter mode, (maybe more). It's probably a good tradeoff between interface simplicity and quick access; I hope it will let the user keep out of the time-consuming menus. So all in all it looks like quite a step forward in interface design; let's hope the photo quality is as good.

Olympus have some opinions of Japanese pros on the E-1 — the automatic sensor cleaning and compact lenses seem like the strong points. It looks like the lens system and sensor have carried over from the E-1 to the E-300, so hopefully it will do just as well.

Ted's Cameras are now advertising it at a price of AUD 2000 (approx USD 1400) (to be confirmed), available in November. That would puts makes it a little more than the EOS 300D, and below the Nikon D70 and EOS 20D.

Links:

• DCResource
• jdhodges.com
• LetsGoDigital
• impress.co.jp

posted Sat 2 Oct 2004 in /photo/tech | link

Ethics of photographing a car crash

Ethics of photographing a car crash

I was returning from a trip to the Baltimore inner harbor when I came across a car up in flames almost near my house. Since I had my camera, I couldn't resist (at the time) to take pictures of the scene before the emergency vehicles arrived. After I took the pictures, I was notified by a spectator that the driver was still inside. When the firemen put out the fire, I couldn't make out anybody inside. At this point, the police pushed everyone back. It was not only until later that night when the news came on, did I confirm that the driver did indeed die. Now here I am, with an undeveloped roll of film of the whole incident. What should I do?

posted Fri 15 Aug 2003 in /photo/technique | link

Shooting memorials and landmarks

photo.net:

... I assume you mean different than the standard tourist shot - middle of the day, dead on with lots of tourists around. The first thing you do is visit the monuments during morning and evening light. You get low angle light and shadows, which should add depth and interest to your photos. Also, many monuments are lit up at night, so you have opportunities to do available light photography. You'll need to know how to turn off the flash on your P&S camera, as well as have some way to stabilize the camera - a tripod is best, but you could sit the camera on something and use the timer.

posted Fri 15 Aug 2003 in /photo/technique | link

Eschew Cliché

Mike Johnston writes on eschewing cliché.

"Rosie," taken in the dark by infrared illumination (Sony F-707), Mike Johnston

posted Thu 17 Jul 2003 in /photo/technique | link

Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.