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Who's in the corner?
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Sunday, June 29, 2003 |
Random thought:
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Digital photography todayThis is the year you'll buy a digital camera if you don't already own one. Trust me. It's time. If you're a "snapshot" photographer who never has a print enlarged beyond the 4x6 that you get from the grocery store, you can have a digital camera that suits your need for less than $200. And if you're a 35mm SLR maven, you can now sell your digital soul for "just" $2000. Let's look at the low end first. Those who never make prints larger than 4x6 would be happy with a 1 megapixel (Mpxl) camera if they could find one. (Hint: eBay.) But if you're looking for a new camera, you should probably plan on spending at least $200. That's enough to pay for a zoom lens, which is something most people want. If you don't care about that, you can buy a basic point-and-shoot digital camera for $100. A camera like that would make me unhappy, though. I like big prints. I like 16x20 images and 20x24 images. For something that size, you need a 4Mpxl or 5Mpxl camera. But keep in mind that pixels aren't everything. Color depth and the ability to represent a wide range of light values are important, too. I'm going to tell you a lot about the Nikon D100, a digital camera that is everything I expect a camera to be. But first, I'd like to mention the Four Thirds system. Olympus and Fuji will be the first to introduce 4/3rds cameras. These units will be competitive with cameras such as the Nikon D100, but will be smaller and cost less. You can't buy one yet, but Olympus will start shipping the first units later this year. The 4/3rds system may revolutionize photography by standardizing the lens mount (any 4/3rds lens will work on any 4/3rds camera) and by reducing the size of serious cameras. That's a system that's still in the future, though. If you're a serious amateur or a pro, you probably haven't had much interest in any of the cameras under about $5000. They all have exhibited shortcomings that make them unsuitable for professional work. Canon's Eos D10 and Nikon's D100 are two under-$2000 units that have the features needed to convince pros and serious amateurs that digital photography is the future. I haven't yet looked at the Canon (around $1500) but I've had a Nikon D100 (about $1700) on loan for the past month. And it's not going back to Nikon. Looking at the Nikon D100 close-upNikon bills the D100 as the camera for professional photographers and fence-sitters. After using one for a month, I have to agree. The only thing standing between me and owning this delightful camera is about $2000. The D100 lists at $1999, but that's without a lens. If you'd like a lens (and having one does make photography somewhat more successful) you'll need an extra $50 to $4000 depending on the lens you want. But I know that BH Photo and Video in New York City is selling the camera for about $1700 (and the price is likely to drop more later this year). I have a suitable lens for the camera body - a 28-85mm zoom lens, which is equivalent to about 40-130mm for those of us who think in 35mm SLR equivalents. The D100 is based on one of Nikon's film camera bodies - probably the N80 - but the sensor is smaller than what a 35mm film negative would be. There's a good technical reason for this - specifically that a film lens would create significant light fall-off at the edges of the sensor. Making the sensor smaller solves that problem, but it creates another: the magnification factor confuses and confounds photographers who are intimately familiar with 35mm cameras. The photographer who sticks a 50mm "normal" lens on the camera will notice that the camera treats it like a 75mm mild telephoto lens. If you buy the Nikon D100 and have a stable full of Nikon lenses, you'll be able to use most of them. While this seems like it might be a difficult adjustment, in practice is is not. When Nikon sent me the camera, they included a 24-85mm zoom lens that's the equivalent of about a 35-105 on my 35mm film camera. I found that I almost immediately stopped thinking of it in terms of the "true" focal length and just observed what was in the viewfinder. I suffered two brief mental disconnects when I used my 150mm micro lens (now effectively 225mm) and my 70-210 - transformed to a 105-315mm zoom. Surprise! These disconnects were more anticipated (and feared?) than real. My eye knew what to expect from the 150, but found a closer view. Those who prefer longer lenses (I have a "telephoto eye") will probably be pleased by what they see, but the person who has shelled out a lot of money for a 15mm lens has probably done so to obtain the extreme wide angle view the lens will provide on a film camera. With the lens question out of the way, let's take a look what the D100 has to offer. Look and feel are at the top of my list of good features. The D100 looks like 35mm SLR cameras I'm familiar with. It feels familiar in my hands. Common controls are where I expect them to be. Changing from full automatic to shutter-preferred to aperture-preferred to full manual is a snap. Best of all, there is no "digital delay". None. Perhaps I should qualify that slightly. If you've used a high-end 35mm SLR, you know that the camera can focus and expose the film in something less than 100 milliseconds. Any camera will have some delay. Electronic SLRs have reduced the delay to almost nothing. You press the shutter release, the mirror that allows you to see through the lens flies out of the way, the shutter opens and closes, and then the mirror returns to its normal position. Remarkable qualityFirst, you deserve the story behind these two images: I drive through the intersetion of North Star and King avenues regularly. One morning I noticed that construction was underway to provide curb-cuts for the disabled. I glanced at the northwest corner. It was closed. "Sidewalk closed. Use other side," the sign said. Then I noticed the southwest corner: "Sidewalk closed. Use other side." So I looked at the northeast corner: "Sidewalk closed. Use other side." And the southeast corner: "Sidewalk closed. Use other side." What "OTHER" side did they have mind for people to use!?On June 26, I brought the (now "my") Nikon D100 along and captured these images:
Even at its lowest resolution, lowest quality setting, the D100's images are adequate for a decent 8x10. Shooting in "raw" mode and converting the NEF raw file to a TIFF creates a 36MB file that should make a photo-quality 16x20 or larger print. The downside of shooting in raw mode is that each image consumes nearly 10MB on the card, so you get only 27 exposures on a 250MB card. Driving from Los Angeles to San Diego, I stopped to photograph some seagulls and the coastline. For one of the images, I selected raw mode so that I could make some modifications to the image. Clicking each of the images below will display a larger version of the image -- although still not full size from the camera. Full size is 3008 pixels wide by 2000 tall. (The larger images are 1024x681.)
DifferencesDigital cameras are different. The sensor can capture an image only when it is powered. So when you press the shutter release, the sensor is switched on. When it stabilizes, the camera makes the exposure. That's where the digital delay comes in. Older cameras may have a several-second delay. Newer cameras have reduced that to well under 1 second (1000 milliseconds). The Olympus E10 that I've been using for a couple of years drops the delay to under 500 milliseconds, but that's still long enough to miss a moving subject or a fleeting expression. The Nikon D100 joins other top-end digital cameras (such as its older cousins, the D1 and the D1x) in eliminating the delay. The first time I held the Nikon D100 was last December when I interviewed Henry Posner and Yossi Fogel at B+H Photo and Video in New York. Yossi handed me a D100 that was on display. Without having to look at any of the controls, I aimed the camera, composed a photograph, pressed the shutter release, and instantly heard the reassuring "clatter" 35mm SLRs make. I would feel comfortable using a camera like this to photograph a wedding (if I still photographed weddings) and I've used it to create some environmental portrait (portraits taken on location) images of a client as well as to document CorelWORLD's 14th (and final) event. In all cases, the camera has performed as expected and the ability to review the results immediately has been a plus. A minor quibbleIf there's any disappointment with the D100, it's that the USB interface is the older, slower 1.1 spec instead of USB 2.0, which is 4 times faster than the older version. The next version of the D100 or whatever camera replaces it will undoubtedly include either a USB 2.0 interface or a Firewire (IEEE 1394) interface. This won't be a big issue with most professional photographers because they will probably download images by removing the Compact Flash card and then plugging it into a card reader. This is because pros will own several cards, and probably the cards will be at least 256MB and probably 512MB or larger. If I had to choose a single word to describe the Nikon D100, it would be "versatility". I could choose the highest possible quality ("raw" NEF mode) or a smaller, compressed JPG format that's more than adequate for 8x10 prints. The raw mode would allow me to capture about 25 images on a 256MB card while I could keep shooting for nearly 600 images if I wanted to accept the lower resolution. And there are several choices between the two extremes. Versatility describes the camera's sensor rating too - from ISO 200 to the equivalent of ISO 6400. The best images will come from a sensor running at ISO 200, but sometimes the need for a higher shutter speed or a smaller lens aperture trumps the need for the highest possible quality. That's when the D100's ability to modify its sensitivity in 1/3-stop increments comes in handy. ISO 400 and 800 are both handy when light levels are so low that the shutter speed required for a good exposure is in the 1/4-second or 1/2-second range. If you're in an "available dark" situation, pushing the sensor to ISO 1600 may take care of the problem. If not, there are still two options: High-1 (the equivalent of ISO 3200) and High-2 (the equivalent of ISO 6400) await. Beware! Both of the "high" settings will not allow the use of a flash and both are exquisitely "noisy". Sensor noise manifests itself as random bright pixels across the entire image. You'll also probably notice significant color shifts. Still, if the choice is between a noisy off-color picture and no picture at all, the choice is obvious. If the choice is between a flash photo with flat on-camera lighting and a noisy off-color picture, the choice may be less obvious. In most cases, I'll accept the noise and color shift in exchange for a more natural look. In fact, some artists (pontilists at heart) may like the effect of using the "high" settings. Metering brings more options: Choose Nikon's matrix metering that tries to analyze the entire image and modify the exposure accordingly, center-weighted metering, or "spot" metering. Choose automatic or manual focusing. If you choose automatic focusing, there's also the option to focus once and hold the setting or to continually focus. The most significant difference between this camera and any other digital camera I've used is the focusing and exposure speed. In more than one instance a scene that called for imaging appeared in front of me and I was able to capture it because of the camera's responsiveness. Being able to raise a camera to my eye, press the shutter release, and having the camera instantly take the exposure without any pause is wonderful. As much as I like the Olympus E10 I bought several years ago, I recognize how much of a delay there is between the time I press the shutter release and the time the camera makes the exposure. That time is probably no more than 300 milliseconds, but 1/3 of a second is enough to lose an important image. If you've been wanting to go digital, now is a good time. Those willing to settle for an extremely basic camera can go digital for around $100. Those who want more features (and have the budget to pay for them) can easily spend $5000. Gone, though, are the days when you'd have to spend $30,000 for a digital camera. You can still spend tens of thousands of dollars on digital photography, but you'll have several cameras, lots of lenses and flash units, filters, and several bags of memory cards. Nerdly News!Fix the Windows Media Player security problemMicrosoft says there's a security problem with the Windows Media player. An ActiveX control included with Windows Media Player 9 allows Web page authors to create Web pages that can play media and provide the user a way to control playback. The problem is that the ActiveX control is flawed in a way that provides access to information on the user's computer. According to Microsoft, "An attacker could invoke the ActiveX control from script code, which would allow the attacker to view and manipulate metadata contained in the media library on the user's computer." The attacker would need to host a malicious website with a page designed to exploit the vulnerability and persuade a user to visit the site. It is not difficult to trick people into visiting websites. All that's needed is a link to a bad site in an HTML e-mail. This link could take the user to the website without action by the user. The bug makes it possible for the attacker to manipulate the media library on the user's computer. It does not give the attacker access to the rest of the user's hard disk and would not compromise any passwords or encrypted data. The attacker would be able to modify files on the user's hard disk, but only those files that contain information about the contents of the Media Library. Examining directory path information might reveal to the attacker the user name of the user who is currently logged on. While Microsoft says the risk is "moderate", the company notes that Internet Explorer on Windows Server 2003 runs in Enhanced Security Configuration and this would block the attack, that the attacker gains access only to Media Library information, and that the attacker would be unable to run any code on the user's computer. A patch is available to fix the problem. You you'll find a security bulletin and information about the patch here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms03-021.asp. Zing! There went the new MacApple says the new Power Mac G5 "is the world's fastest personal computer and the first with a 64-bit processor." You can quibble about the first part of that statement if you want, but the second part is true. Because of that, the G5 can use up to 8GB of main memory -- an amount that once seems incomprehensible, but today doesn't seem terribly outlandish. The new G5 processor finally pushes Apple up to the 2GHz speed. The company continues to make use of standard components (AGP and PCI) that can also be found on PCs. The G5 systems "start at $1999" (that's $2000 to the math impaired) and for that you get "only" 1.6GHz PowerPC G5 with an 800MHz frontside bus, 512K L2 cache, and a measly 256MB DDR333 128-bit SDRAM. It includes an 80GB Serial ATA disk drive, DVD-R and CD writer, nVida's 64MB GeForce FX 5200 video card, and network card and modem. Apple should sell this computer with at least double the standard memory, but that gives retailers a chance to use "double the memory for free" programs. And you can head all the way to the top of the heap for another $1000 -- for $3000 you get dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 processors with 1GHz frontside bus and 512K L2 cache. Still nowhere near enough RAM, though -- 512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM. The hard drive is bumped up to a 160GB Serial ATA unit, and DVD-R and CD writer. And this one comes with ATI's ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 64MB video card. A network card and a modem. As for whether it's faster or not ...? Let's not go there. It's a heck of a lot faster than my G3 iBook and Macs with slower processors outperform some PCs with higher-speed processors on some applications. If you're a Mac person, you've probably already gone ga-ga over this one. If you're not a Mac person, you probably wonder what all the fuss is about. You might wonder (I wonder) why Apple chose to ship these powerhouse machines with DVD-R writers instead of with more verastile writers. Now if they'd just get over that business about a 1-button mouse! Speaking of the Mac ...If you're a Mac person with a sense of humor, you'll enjoy the Mac commercial parody. Warning: Some rough language. If you're a PC person (even if you don't have a sense of humor) you'll laugh. Let us know what you think about this program! Write to: |
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