The Online Photographer: Photo-tech

Photo-tech

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Mike's Position on Sensor Sizes

...Is not identical to Ctein's. He speaks for himself.

My own position might be too subtle for its own good, because I've talked about it before but it doesn't seem to penetrate very far out into the world.

I did a lot of work years ago comparing film formats experimentally; we made a lot of prints and questioned a lot of people about them, both photographers and non-photographers. Generally—remember I'm saying generally—the results conformed to a broad pattern. Imagine a bar chart:

- - --------------- - -

(I'm sorry about the above—I'm not a graphic designer, and it would take me forever to render that in a more elegant form.) The bars represent formats, the x-axis is image quality (IQ), and those are "fuzzy" ends to the bars. What I found, more or less, was that film formats (the "sensor size" of the film era) had a certain amount of overlap when mapped against enlargement size. Each successively larger film size had either no advantage or only a subtle advantage over the next smaller format up until the print size reaches a certain rough threshold. (In many cases this was experimentally observer-dependent; photographers could discern differences that non-photographers simply couldn't see. I suspect that's the same with digital.)

Digital is similar, except there are at least three more complicating factors obscuring a clear result: ISO, image size (pixel count), and sensor generation. By that last term, I mean that it's useless to generalize between 2002 and 2010 cameras, for instance.

Another complication is that many people—even some photographers—look at only some factors of IQ and prefer to overlook others. For instance, most people love to look at resolution, and it's historically been very popular to look at shadow noise. There are of course many other pertinent qualities of a digital file, from color accuracy, to the transition to highlight clipping, to the robustness of the raw file (how well it accepts correction or modification in post processing). The variables add up quickly, making strict experimental distinctions difficult even before you start considering that many different photographers have different aims or intentions for their work and how it will be used. Whether or not people make prints—and how large they'll go if they do—is one huge variable in that respect. Finally, different people have different tolerance levels for the various faults; I've never been much bothered by noise, for example, to the point that in the past I've been amused at how fanatical some people get about it. This is the "YMMV" clause, and it's important.

Ctein's general rule of thumb that you need a 50% change in image size—number of pixels—before you'll see obvious qualitative differences is useful. I have an equivalent belief about sensor size, although I wouldn't put a percentage value to it. What he's saying is that you need a fairly large difference before the difference becomes readily apparent, and that's what I'm claiming here too. There simply isn't that much difference between APS-C and full-frame, all else being equal. And there's even less difference between APS-C and 4/3. And yet there is some...see those overlapping bars, above. When you compare 4/3 and full-frame, however—analogous to bars two places away from each other—the bars are further offset from each other, meaning you start to see more easily detectable differences more often than not.

Peepology
Last night, Imaging-Resource (I-R) posted some of its early test shots from the Nikon J1 1-System camera with its CX sensor. Looking at the results in I-R's fascinating Comparometer (which essentially allows you to pixel-peep any two cameras' results side by side) leads to a fascinating but still wholly predictable conclusion:

CX vs. DX: J1 at ISO 1600 is not too far behind the D90 at the
same ISO. An impressive result for the new camera, really.

DX vs. FX: D90 also holds its own pretty well against the D700.

CX vs. FX: Compare the J1 to the D700, however, and the qualitative
differences become more obvious.

Note that you should really go to the Comparometer yourself to really see the differences; the smaller versions posted here aren't really adequate, even after clicking on the illustrations to make them bigger. (Also, consider making a small donation to I-R if you pore over their Comparometer files for any length of time—all that bandwidth really does get expensive for them.)

Note also that, although I've tried to control for image size in this illustration (the J1's 10.1 MP vs. the D90's 12.3 and the D700's 12.1), I've had to violate another variable: the D700 and D90 are 2008 cameras, and the J1 just came out in 2011. The comparison that is fair with regard to sensor generation will be complicated by different image sizes, as the 2010 D7000 is 16.2 MP and no one expects the "D800" (D700 replacement) to be a 12-MP camera when it eventually gets here.

Still, it shows the general trend: to consistently see a fairly distinct difference in image quality, it's almost necessary to move two sensor sizes from where you are, not one.

He just isn't going to, is all
Finally, although I don't want to speak for him, I believe Ctein's contention—or should I say half of his contention? That size doesn't / does matter—is based on base ISO. My qualified agreement with him is also predicated on base ISO. Even my 2009 Panasonic GF1 begins to falter at ISO 800, and digicam sensors fall off in quality a lot quicker than it does. I would never recommend a digicam-size (what I call "fingernail size") sensor to a pro. In fact, Ctein seems to have forgotten this, but several years ago I tried to convince him to replace his Fuji with a proper DSLR! I gave up because he convinced me he wasn't going to do it, not because I became convinced that it didn't matter.

For the record, I still think he should get a Pentax 645D, the closest digital descendant of the Pentax 6x7's he used for many decades. Or at least a Canon 5D Mark II.

To wrap this up...
There are so many variables with regard to inherent digital camera image quality that it's almost necessary to try to get a "holistic" or overarching "feel" for the many variables and differences and how they balance. As always, it's quite possible to work backwards, too: that is, you settle on a camera and then, after exploring its capabilities, you use it within the areas where its competencies overlap with your tastes, expectations, and requirements. We photographers have been doing that since the beginning, and I don't mean the beginning of digital.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Ctein responds: There's really not a lot of difference in our positions about this.

I'd have two qualifiers—these days I think of "base ISO" as being anything up to about ISO 400. I just haven't noticed much degradation in image quality among any of the better cameras with increasing ISO over that range. It's all down on the pixel-peeping level.

ISO 1600 still seems to be the great divide where things really start to shake out.

Funny thing is that's a lot like the way it was with film. Makes me start to wonder if we're seeing technology differences or marketing-think differences, as in "Well, we don't think your typical small format (film/sensor) buyer really cares about ultra-high ISOs." Just wondering....

Another quibble—I think the generation thing needs more weight than you give it. We're not close to theoretical maximum sensor efficiency yet (give it another ten years), so there can be really big differences between makes and generations. When most potential buyers think about this, they don't compare apples and apples, time-wise. They're mentally setting the latest small-sensor announcement against the larger format camera they already own or have been thinking about buying.

So, I think more often than not, when folks think "this small sensor camera can't possibly compete with a large-sensor one" what they're really thinking and don't realize it is "this brand new state of the art small sensor camera couldn't possibly compete with a 1–4 year old large sensor one."

Technically, they should be comparing apples and apples. Consumerly (is that a word? should it be?) I don't think they do, so that becomes a more realistic framing of the discussion.

You're not wrong about me and the Pentax 645D or the CaNikon 5DmIV/D3s.

Problem is, you're entirely right. Either way.

About a year ago I thought I might be making a quick sale of my whole Jim Marshall collection, so I was thinking about what camera to buy. Had the collector who was sniffing about bit, I'd have been able to buy any camera I wanted, even a Leica. So I started thinking about what I wanted, if money were not an issue. It boiled down to a list of 4–5 different cameras, all of which were equally desirable and which were entirely different from each other! What that told me is that I didn't know what I really wanted. (I know I don't want to own 4–5 different camera systems, that's for sure!)

So, issues of folding cash aside, I decided it wasn't time for me to commit. Still doesn't feel like it.

Featured Comment by Bill Pierce: "One of the biggest arguments for larger sensors is larger prints. Museums and galleries tending to exhibit larger and larger prints of contemporary work may be a pretty good argument for some photographers to use larger sensors."

Mike replies: Right you are. See here, for instance.

Of course, many of us do not exhibit in museums and galleries, but that doesn't negate your point for everybody.

Featured Comment by John Camp: "To me, all those results look 'plastic.' [Attempted humor alert.]

"I write books for a living, and my publisher wanted to update the author photos, so they hired a West Coast pro named Rob Greer for a photo shoot that took place Wednesday. We do this every few years, so I'm pretty familiar with the procedure—but the shoots are spaced far enough apart that that I started with film, then did some joint film/early digital stuff, and the last three times, it's been all digital, but of different generations.

"Rob was using a D3x with, I think, a Nikon 70–210 zoom for the outdoors, natural light shots. Before I went over for the shoot, I shaved, and noticed I had a small ingrown hair on my chin, making a red spot. I plucked it out with a tweezers (too much information?) and then went off to the shoot.

"I have a theory, which I just compounded about thirty seconds ago, that you're never more critical of photographs than when the photos are of you. When Rob sent me the photos, the first thing I saw was a little, tiny, red dot on my chin. I couldn't see it in the mirror, but it jumps right out of the large D2x files—and I'm not talking about head shots here—you can see it clearly in the three-quarters body-length shots. It'll go away in the final Photoshopped pictures, but it really brought home to me exactly where we're at, and how nonsensical some of our discussions have become, as regards resolution and sharpness.

"The spot on my chin was smaller than the head of a straight pin (I mean, it was the base of a whisker.) Exactly what would be the purpose of doubling the resolution on this? I can think of a few places where you might want this—on a space telescope, perhaps, or if you were taking technical photos of fabrics, but I have to say that further resolution (which we're apparently about to get) seems to me to be driven by engineer-think: we can do it, so let's do it. But, as you (Mike) say, there are a lot of things to be balanced in photography and it seems to me that this obsessive drive for resolution has to be stealing from other things, like high ISO capability, dynamic range, or pleasant shoulders, or whatever. Or, maybe, that's all the developers have got: resolution. But look what happened to Kodak's films when Fuji began kicking out specialty films with more saturation, different levels of warmth, etc. Suddenly, everybody was shooting Fuji. Is it possible that one of these companies wild decide that there's enough resolution, and we suddenly get a generation of sensors with some other qualities?"

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "Regarding the differences between 2008 and 2011 camera: the advances in software are just as dramatic. The same raw file from my 1Ds in 2005 looks radically better rendered with 2011 software compared to what it looked like in 2005. Even a three year old image re rendered in this year's Lightroom has a world of difference. I suspect that if the comparo-meter re-rendered the files every year, the results would quite different."

Featured Comment by Pak-Ming Wan: "That's a pretty good analogy on how the sensor makes such a difference. Whilst in Australia a couple of years ago, I borrowed a D700, and I was astonished at the files it put out. Astonished. If you have ever used a top-tier sensor, you ought to; just to know the difference. Then afterwards, and only afterwards, are you able to make a real decision on what kind of sensor you'll need. Me? Micro 4/3, GF1."

Featured Comment by Michael Bernstein: "I'm really not a big fan of I-R's Comparometer. True, it is convenient. But unless you make a habit of shooting JPEGs with near default settings, it is a very misleading way to compare the abilities of different sensors/cameras. Certainly, some manufacturers are more conscientious about optimizing JPEG output than others. But that's not how anybody who actually cares about pixel-level quality works."

Mike replies: Yep, you know what they say—nothing's perfect. We haven't even started to take into account the crowd that likes to compare different raw converters and how they match up to different cameras—when I compared the D3, 5D Mark II, and A900, I worked from raw files, but I got slammed for using the same raw converter for all three cameras—the one I used supposedly showed one of the cameras at a disadvantage, according to some. So, what, then—they wanted me to first try each camera with multiple raw converters, and learn the ins and outs of each raw converter I chose to make the best possible conversions, then pit the cameras' IQ against each other's? Someday when I have a free month, maybe. I gotta come up with new material here every day!

There's really no such thing as a completely neutral test when there are so many potential variables. The Comparometer still beats having to go out and buy all those different cameras yourself to make the comparisons from scratch.

Posted on Saturday, 24 September 2011 at 11:38 AM in Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (47)

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Size Doesn't / Does Matter

By Ctein

The recent spate of camera announcements has brought forth many half-informed comments about sensor sizes and pixel counts. Let's clear some stuff up.

You can make great, as in fully professional quality, photographs with small sensors. I'm not talking about artistic subjectivity, I'm talking about objective technical quality. Now, just as with small-format film cameras (read: 35mm) they're not going to be the best choice under every single circumstance. Some subjects or working styles simply demand a camera with humongous real estate. No argument. My disagreement is with those who say it's not possible to do professional work with small sensors, stating it like some law of nature rather than their personal preference. Plainly and simply wrong.

Continue reading "Size Doesn't / Does Matter" »

Posted on Wednesday, 21 September 2011 at 01:08 PM in Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (54)

Monday, 19 September 2011

Unsharp Mask vs. FocusFixer

This is going to sound a little sad, but quite frequently I fire up Photoshop just to have some fun.

I know. But I love to fiddle with pictures. Loved it in der Dunkelkammer, love it in P'shop.

Here's the shot I was working on last night. It's a picture of gallerist Debra Brehmer of the Portrait Society Gallery talking to some young artists, taken with an E-P1 and 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens.

For the most part, files from this lens look quite wonderful. They have a little something extra, a special quality that I don't see very often in digital. I think it's the lens, but I might be underestimating the sensors. I guess I can't really put my finger on it. But the files are often really nice.

Of course this is just the tiny little JPEG, sized for TOP. The full file is what's so pretty.

I hope this picture looks like I haven't done anything to it. My standard when working on images is never to make anything obvious—a picture should never look "Photoshopped." Work on it all you want—I've actually worked on this quite a bit—but it should look like it just fell out of the camera the way you see it. Totally natural.

As I was working, I looked at Deb's face in the full file and it suddenly occurred to me that this might be a good example to show off the abilities of one of my regular tools that I use, FocusFixer from FixerLabs. First, here's what the FocusFixer dialogue box looks like:

Bone simple—you just move the "Deblur" slider until the image is at peak sharpness. (If you move it too far, believe me, you'll know. It's pretty alarming when you overdo it.)

I showed you the dialogue box out of sequence so you could compare the next three images more easily.

Here's an unsharpened detail at 100%:

(All these percentages will hold either in your feed reader or, if you're here at the site when you read this, after you click on the image.) You can see this looks pretty soft.

And here's after FocusFixer has been applied:

Of course, none of these have had any noise reduction yet, so you can see the differences more clearly.

Quite an improvement.

But then, something occurred to me—it's been forever since I compared FocusFixer to plain old Unsharp Masking in Photoshop. And, since I just got a new version of Photoshop recently, I figured that maybe they've improved the Unsharp Masking function. So I ported the image over to that and tried my best to match the FocusFixer-sharpened image above using just Unsharp Masking. Here's what I came up with:

This was with Radius 1.2 and Amount 148. Hmm...looks pretty close, doesn't it? Maybe my old fave, FocusFixer, isn't such a secret weapon after all.

Then I decided to look at the "image morphology" (a fancy term for the structure of the image). Here it is at 300% with FocusFixer:

And with Unsharp Masking:

(Again, if you click on these images they should come up pretty close to 300% on your screen.) You can see the differences a little more clearly now. I still think the FocusFixer version is a little better—softer, cleaner. With Unsharp Masking I've had to kick the contrast up a little too much to match the apparent detail in the FocusFixer version, and there are more color artifacts, and the noise isn't quite as even. But they're very close. (When I tried this five or six years ago or whenever it was, FocusFixer won much more handily. Photoshop has caught up.)

It's worth noting that my friend Carl won't look at files at 300%. He thinks it's basically misleading. He looks at them and works on them at 100% and resists the urge to pixel-peep further.

Now it's gotten late, and I'm tired. And I didn't finish working on the picture, after all that.

I think I'll continue to use FocusFixer, but I'm not going to worry about it. Plain old Unsharp Masking looks pretty good now too.

Mike

P.S. The big problem of all of this kind of stuff is that it sucks you in. All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here! It appears that now I am practically obligated to compare FocusFixer V2 with Photoshop CS5 Smart Sharpen, am I not? Woe.

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Featured Comment by Richard Howe: "I'm Richard and I'm a recovering pixel-peeper (though I must admit that I have a hard time staying on this particular wagon). I have FocusFixer, Focus Magic, and Topaz, as well as the sharpening facilities in Photoshop, Lightroom—aren't these shared with Photoshop?—and CaptureOne, and at times I still find the temptation to compare what each of them can do on a difficult image irresistible: just plain fascinating (and more fun than getting on with the job at hand). Ditto for all the other manipulations that PhotoShop and other tools provide.

"But gradually, over the past few years, I've come to the conclusion not only that what counts is what the print looks like but also that—oy!—more often than not, especially with regard to sharpness, less is usually—not always!—more, and the image straight from the camera is—again more often than not—about as good as it's going to get.

"These days I find it helpful to make a print of the unmanipulated image—or part of it, if the print is to be a large one—before I undertake any image enhancements. If the print of the unmanipulated image looks good enough to me, I try to resist the temptation to see how much 'better' I can make. Of course I often can't resist trying anyway….

"But I loved your post anyway, Mike, just as, 21 years after I quit smoking, I still occasionally enjoy second hand cigarette smoke."

Mike replies: Richard, with me it was because I couldn't sleep last night. :-)

Featured Comment by Mark Roberts: "Those of us using 64-bit operating systems have no choice in the matter. FocusFixer (and the competing Focus Magic) only work in 32-bit systems. Neither has seen an update in at least three years and it's starting to look as if these are dead products."

Featured Comment by John Brewton: ""Mike, you're doomed. The can of worms is officially opened."

Mike replies: John, I open worm cans for a living. :-)

Featured Comment by Ken N: "For whatever reason, I find Olympus and Panasonic files need different sharpening settings than what typically is required. A setting of 1.2 and 148 on the USM settings will bring out those textures which can be quite disconcerting. You might want to try a two-pass setting of 0.5 width for the first one and 1.2 for the second. As to the specific amount, adjust till you notice it and then back off a third. Your mileage may vary depending on other factors, but this is a start point for countering the AA filter and four-pixel merge aspect of Olympus/Panasonic cameras."

Featured Comment by Frank P.: "Why don't you shoot it in focus to begin with?"

Mike replies: Wise guy.

Featured Comment by Dave: "I switched from using Photoshop's USM filter to Topaz lab's 'Detail' plugin. The Topaz product works great and offers a lot more control than USM. Also, it is easy to avoid visible sharpening artifacts when using Topaz Detail.

"Topaz has an infocus plugin that I used for the 30-day free trial period. It seemed to work well, but it wasn't a tool I thought I'd have much use for so I didn't purchase it after the trial ran out.

"I submit a lot of photos to istockphoto.com and they have a brutal inspection process. Anyone who has much experience with istock is familiar with istock's insanely low tolerance for artifacts. Since switching to Topaz Lab's 'Detail' and 'DeNoise' filters my istock acceptance rate has skyrocketed. I don't think I've gotten a single rejection for artifacts since making the switch back in December.

"I suppose I sound like a paid Topaz Labs spokesman, but I am not. I just really like some of their PS plugins and they are way cheaper than the competition."

Posted on Monday, 19 September 2011 at 04:50 AM in Photo-tech, Software | Permalink | Comments (35)

Friday, 02 September 2011

Sony's Big Risks with the A77

Sony might be taking a bigger risk than it realizes with the new A77. Not with the product, but rather from a marketing perspective.

In fact, there might be some wise old heads at Canon slowly shaking and showing wry smiles. Maybe not quite tsk-tsking but almost.

The A77 might well be a brilliant camera. But as every marketer knows, that's not actually enough. Classical economics, with its "rational consumer" model (lately under siege—"irrational consumer" research seems to be a very popular topic right now), predicts that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Actually, products that look like they'll be better before they're purchased are the ones that sell.

Post-point-of-purchase matters too, in that past purchasers influence prospective ones. If you market a product that looks great, but performs poorly, word will get around. Just ask movie producers. Marketing can help a bad film have a great first weekend, but if the movie actually sucks, that word will get around, and attendance will fall off fast.

Where that kind of word-of-mouth from actual consumers doesn't help so much is when you have a good product that doesn't appeal from a sales standpoint, such that nobody buys it. Ask all the moviemakers who create superior films but don't have the marketing muscle to get them noticed. That's more likely to be what might happen to the A77.

Two suspect technologies
Why? The reason is simple: the A77 uses two technologies that might have a negative appeal to the buying public. The first is the EVF. So far, EVFs have been mostly confined to low-end, lower-prestige products, where its limitations (limited resolution, variable brightness, poor refresh at slow shutter speeds) are easier to forgive. The A77 will be the highest-level SLR-style camera (that I know about, anyway) to use an EVF. Will camera buyers take to that, or will they be put off by it and continue to prefer optical VFs? Remains to be seen.

But the one that Sony might really discover to be a booby-trap is the pellicle mirror.

First of all, as a writer and editor, I have to say that "translucent" is just entirely—egregiously, blatantly—the wrong word. Translucent materials pass some of the light that falls on them and diffuse the rest. Muslin curtains, tracing paper, or frosted glass windowpanes in a bathroom are all translucent. An indistinct, fuzzy, or veiled image that's hard to see is actually part of the definition* of "translucent." A pellicle mirror is a beam-splitter. That is, it passes some of the light transparently and reflects the remaining amount. There's no translucency involved anywhere. Wrong word—and a bad connotation. Marketing fail? Heck, English language fail.

The mirror in the A77 better not be "translucent"!
Illustration from imaging-resource.

But the real problem is that consumers have been proven to shy away from pellicle mirrors in cameras...even though they work brilliantly. The story of the Canon EOS RT has been told many times, but I'll tell it again. Briefly, Canon made the pellicle-mirror RT in 1989 as a high-end, limited-edition variant of the 630 family, targeted at what Kodak called AdAms, advanced amateurs. The run was 10,000. Canon priced the camera high—around $800, which was quite expensive at the time—and expected the run to sell out within a calendar year.

It didn't. Photographers were put off by two things. First, the idea that the pellicle mirror cut down the amount of light that could reach the film. Second, even more off-putting, was the idea that because the image-forming light passed through a barrier it just had to be less sharp than if it hadn't.

That idea was wrong (I did the tests—if anything, RT images were sharper than those from its otherwise near-identical sibling with a reflex mirror, probably due to reduced system vibration), but it just "seemed reasonable" to people—so much so that they stayed away. In droves. It took Canon forever to sell out that "one year" run of the RT, despite progressively steeper discounts that had the camera selling from NOS at the end of its model life at prices close to half of the price at which it was originally offered.

Canon never had to learn that lesson again. The pellicle mirror was thereafter relegated to high-speed cameras where it could contribute to cutting-edge frame-rates.

Will the pellicle (a.k.a. "translucent") mirror in the A77 have any actual disadvantages? Doubtful, in my view. First, I'll bet it diverts extremely little light, because the VF is electronic, and the reflected light is just for the AF. Second, I'll bet it won't have any effect at all on sharpness—unless it's to allow for slightly better sharpness because of reduced vibration.

But I'll bet the Common Wisdom will hold otherwise. And the presence or absence of actual disadvantages is not as important as the presence or absence of perceived disadvantages.

You watch—there are probably already people out there expressing misgivings about the "translucent" mirror in such a high-end camera. If they aren't now, my guess is that they will be once the camera comes out. People who buy it will be saying, no, really, take our word for it, this thing works great. And the people who are just thinking about it will be saying, I don't know, I just can't see how the light from the lens could be passing through an additional angled sheet of material and not be less sharp.

You watch.

Not complacent, but...
Sony is certainly doing some interesting things in the camera market. They're not stick-in-the-mud, like Canon and Nikon certainly look to be by dragging their feet over mirrorless for so long. But maybe the downside of that admirable adventuresomeness is that Sony also has some things yet to learn that Canon and Nikon already know.

Anyway, I wish the A77 well. It looks like a splendid camera and will probably work a treat. (The EOS RT was one of my half-dozen all-time favorite cameras, despite its unpopularity.) But it is definitely treading on quicksand just from a consumer marketing standpoint, with not just a bad but a wrong name for its signature technology and two integrated technologies central to its identity that camera buyers are known to be wary of. We'll see.

Mike

*Dictionary.com says, "1. permitting light to pass through but diffusing it so that persons, objects, etc., on the opposite side are not clearly visible...."

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Featured Comment by Shawn Barnett of Imaging-Resource: "DPReview showed the ghosting that I was sure would occur at some point when we first discussed these products. It happens with specular highlights, and shows more dramatically against a dark background. Sony made the film as thin as they could to minimize this kind of light splitting, but it still happens to some extent. I couldn't find the example we saw originally, that of a bridge at night, but their crop shows it well enough. What it also shows is that the effect is minimal.

"And you are absolutely right: 'Translucent: Adjective: (of a substance) Allowing light, but not detailed images, to pass through; semitransparent.' (Dictionary.com)

"That definition is why I always have to change my reviews after I correctly write, 'Transparent Mirror Technology.'"

Featured Comment by Wayne Fox: "All I can say is the A55's have been flying off my shelf; wedding shooters seem to really like them as well as many other pretty serious photographers. Most people buying them have no clue about pellicle mirrors from previous SLRs and of course those are an entirely different beast, sucking way too much light out of the light path compared to these. Personally I don't care for EVF's much, but I can make do with them. My personal preference is the NEX5 and can't wait to get my hands on the new NEX7. You might be right, the A77 is too high a price point and target market for a camera like this, but if the A55 is any indication (and I"m sure that's why they built the A77) it will do just fine."

Posted on Friday, 02 September 2011 at 01:01 PM in Cameras, new, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (77)

Saturday, 20 August 2011

Rare Rings and Big Prints

Here's me with a souvenir from my playing days. Ah, whenever this time of year rolls around, I miss playing pro football.

I'm full of it and fooling no one, of course. The big bling—it's a gen-yoo-wine Super Bowl ring—belongs to my friend Jack, who got it because he's on the Board of Directors of the current World Champion Green Bay Packers. This ring, though, is from Super Bowl XXXI, in 1996. (If you look closely you can make out his name on the ring.)

The last time I played football was in seventh grade. I will say I was a very good cornerback in seventh grade—I was fast, so I could always catch up to the guy trying to catch the ball. Given my skills, my football-playing career might have extended as far as freshman year—ninth grade, I mean—but, alas, I lacked ambition.

And by the way, when I tried the ring on, I had trouble getting it off.

Me: It won't come off.

Jack: Yeah, right!

Me: No, seriously, I can't get it off.

Jack: Oh, it'll come off...

[I'm thinking: meat cleaver?]

...with dishwashing liquid.

I did eventually coax it back off, without either lubricants or more radical methods injurious to my digit.

Before we go on, here are a couple of examples of that small but honorable genre of portraiture I've talked about before, a genre that you probably have examples of yourself on your hard drive: the "photo-friend across the lunch-table" genre. This is Jack's portrait of me, taken with his point-and-shoot (the Leica S2, and it's a radical crop from the file):

...And this is my picture of him, complete with ring and Leica, taken with my point-and-shoot (the Panasonic GF1 and 20/1.7 lens):

He wore the ring just to show me. He says he doesn't wear the ring from last year very often, because it's even bigger:

2010 on the left, 1996 on the right.

...But enough fun sports stuff that European readers won't understand. On to photography:

Jack does very well in what's called the "corporate art" market, meaning, he sells pictures to professional decorators for the public spaces of things like hotels and office buildings. Here he is shown with two of his creations (in this case, hanging in a country club).

This makes it perfectly clear why Jack can use all the megapixels he can get, and why he was able to justify his S2 as a business expense. Sure, it's fun to use as a point-and-shoot at lunch, but with prints this size he actually needs the resolution. The picture on the right in the shot above was taken with a 1Ds, and in the case of that picture he had enough resolution to print on canvas; the picture doesn't depend on fine detail. Another scene of the same size on the far wall (you can't see it here), taken with the same equipment, had more detail in the scene, and the print didn't quite have enough resolution, to my eye, even on canvas.

Jack says that with the S2, he can print on paper at these sizes.

Here's a shot of Jack's we published here on TOP right after the Packers' Super Bowl win last year. A 9-foot by 5-foot print of this picture now hangs in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. It's a merge of three frames from the S2 with the 35mm lens (wide-angle on the large sensor).

As Jack says, "that's when you need medium-format digital files."

Mike

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Featured (partial) Comment by Anthony: "I don't know, calling the GF1 and S2 point-and-shoots is a big no-no. Just 'cause you were using them on autofocus doesn't mean they're not manually capable cameras."

Featured Comment by Bob Dales: "How do you print 9x5 feet? Asked from the environs of 1.6x1.1 feet."

Jack MacDonough replies: Regarding calling very capable cameras point-and-shoots: Just because they are super-capable doesn't mean you can't shoot them casually. And even when shooting casually, I am not on auto-focus. Had it been on auto-focus for the first shot of Mike I would not have captured the ring in focus.

I had not imagined I would want to use the S2 for everything, but I have. It's small enough, and water resistant. Here is a link to another S2 shooter who also uses it for serious as well as less-serious work.

Regarding how to print 9 feet by 5 feet: Thanks to huge digital printers it can be done. My business plan could not work without them. However, any error gets expensive.

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Q: How do you prevent someone from noticing that you're shooting with a Leica S2? A: Wear a Super Bowl ring on your shutter hand while shooting. Geez, Jack, nice bling! And nice photo work.

"@ Bob Dales: Printing at such large sizes is a whole different world. There are several technologies available for such sizes today, nearly all of which live mainly in the advertising display world. Of course I don't know how Jack's were produced (but would also be interested in learning). Here in Chicago Gamma Lab's Durst Lambda 130 can produce a single sheet (digital C-print) of up to 49.5″ x 240". As another example, back in 2006 Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario printed some of my work on vinyl film for backgrounds in an exhibition. This comes straight out of the billboard production world.

Posted on Saturday, 20 August 2011 at 03:28 PM in Cameras, new, Photo-tech, Printers and Printing | Permalink | Comments (19)

Tuesday, 09 August 2011

A Landmark of Camera Development—Maybe

Farm children in tymes gone by knew that a chicken with its head chopped off and destined for the dinner pot would run around for a bit before it dropped—propelled by reflex and a sort of muscle memory, I suppose. Nowadays, it's just an expression: I've never witnessed a chicken beheading myself. Not the sort of thing you'd see in a petting zoo, or the rustic spot with the cornstalk maze where we buy our pumpkin in the fall.

The industrial equivalent will probably pertain at the newly formed Ricoh-Pentax, or whatever it's to be called (do we know yet? I've been away). Plans set in motion before the merger will continue of their own inertia for a while yet. It's not too difficult to deduce that the Pentax Q system and the Ricoh GXR, while incompatible with each other, overlap into the same market space somewhat. The future of both niche products now seems even more iffy than they did before.

While I was away, the Ricoh "M Module" for the GXR was introduced. As regular readers know, I've been using the GXR recently (although I didn't take it on vacation), and I find it both fundamentally unrecommendable and also in many ways a really fun, funky, appealling little camera—an appealing little camera that I actually like quite a bit more than run-o'-the-mill cookie-cutter offerings that are undeniably more mainstream. (Maybe I'm jaded.)

Once you add to the mix the fundamentally uncertain future of the GXR because of the merger, the GXR and M Module becomes something you'd almost have to be crazy to invest in (as a user system, I mean—it's not hard to imagine that it might become highly collectible one day)...but what a proof of concept, huh? The GXR / M Module might never be more than the tiniest of blips on the sales charts, but I think we might well be seeing a landmark in the history of camera development. The very idea of separating the body shell from the sensor from the lens is something that camera nuts have been daydreaming about since before we were quite sure what a "pixel" was. It means you can keep your body and your lenses and upgrade just the sensor as the march of digital technology relentlessly obsoletes your old one. That's very, very cool, and very appealing to many people who are getting very tired of tossing clean, working cameras on to the towering scrap heap of yesterday's news.

Moreover, it's doubtless going to be something that a few lucky, intrepid, or monied hobbyists are going to have a whale of a lot of fun with. Doubtless we'll hear more from the Petulant, the Truculent, and the Naysayers than from those who will actually use one, but fun is fun, and the M Module sure looks like it's gonna be.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, just thinking about what might happen when the engineers of the Q system and the engineers of the GXR put their heads together is going to be tantalizing indeed. It might be a success and it might be a train wreck, but it sure looks like it's gonna be interesting.

Mike

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Featured (partial) Comment by Andrew: "I don't think we've heard the 'fundamentally unrecommendable' aspect of your GXR experience. Very curious to hear."

Mike replies: Well, it's not a big secret—it's essentially prima facie, something anybody can see when looking at the product line. I wrote about it he re. The basic problem is redundancy. If you want a set of lenses all with the same sensor, you have to repurchase the sensor for each new lens you buy.

The M Module is actually an excellent application of the concomittant benefits of the GXR approach. A B&W sensor would be another good application. A small telephoto lens based on a small sensor (giving more effective "reach") might be another.

The lack of mix-and-match options might show up in other ways in the future, as new products are introduced. For instance, let's say I want a B&W-only module. And let's say Ricoh introduces one, with a full-frame size sensor but a very large pixel pitch that gives it a very distinctive "look." But the module comes with, say, a 35mm-equivalent lens. So then people say they also would like the same sensor with a 50mm-e macro lens, so Ricoh introduces that. But perhaps you already have the 50mm-e Macro lens with the APS-C color sensor. Again, you feel you're buying twice what you should have only had to buy once.

A system with a split shell/sensor/lens brings up other problems (for instance, would all the lenses be designed to cover the largest of the sensor sizes? How then do you make wide-angles that work as such on very small sensors? Etc.), but it seems like a real step towards more system flexibility rather than less.

Featured Comment by Robert Roaldi: "On the 'photo-interweb,' equipment choice is usually discussed on the basis of 'system investment,' i.e., future compatibility, replication avoidance, etc. This strikes me as how a committee full of MBAs at a corporation selects their cubicle furniture 'system.'

"The longest running example of this is the advice to newbies, looking for camera gear for the first time, to stick to Canon/Nikon because they have the most extensive systems and (or) more rental houses carry their lenses. As a rough percentage, I'd guess that the number of SLR and DSLR purchasers to whom this made a real-life difference probably rounds to zero (in first order).

"The forums are full of people changing systems (or maybe just saying they do) at the drop of a hat. Second-hand sites and stores are full of great deals, there's no shortage of people selling stuff.

"Looking back, instead of guessing forward, how many people bought equipment this rationally? The GXR 'system' is quirky and fun and you like using it; 99% of the time, that's probably enough.

"I started with screw-mount Pentaxes and now mostly use Olympus 4/3 gear. To date, I haven't missed those rental tilt-shift or 600mm Canon/Nikon lenses one bit.

"I am certain that there are plenty of people to whom these things really do matter, and they know who they are. To the rest of the camera buying public, it shouldn't matter in the least."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "Mike, I think that most of what the two of us wrote nearly two years ago still applies."

Featured Comment by Steve Rosenblum: "Hmm.... This doesn't seem as complicated to me. I have a number of M mount lenses in my cabinet—a couple of Leica, Minolta CLE, and a bunch of Cosina-Voigtlander lenses. They are very nice lenses both optically and from the standpoint of compact size/weight. At the moment I don't have any digital way of using them short of scanning film. The micro 4/3 route isn't very appealing to me because of the 2X crop factor; even my wide lenses end up normal or short telephotos. So the prospect of buying this module with the GXR body at a fraction of the cost of the Leica M9 (or a used M8 for that matter) has a lot of appeal. I really don't care if the other modules have limited usefulness; having the ability to use my M mount lenses in an affordable manner justifies the purchase. The fact that Ricoh has been way ahead of the curve on making ergonomically usable cameras is icing on the cake."

Featured Comment by John Camp: "I had a bunch of M lenses at one time, and bought an adapter for my Micro 4/3 camera, and in some ways it worked better than an M8 (at least with the Noctilux, 90mm, and 135mm—you could actually focus them). But, in general, it was a pain in the ass, and I didn't really see much difference with the Leica lenses compared to the Panasonics, except that the Panasonics had autofocus and full electronic communication with the body. So, I eventually sold all the M lenses (I'd already sold the M8.) If I'd held onto them long enough to try the Ricoh, I suspect my reaction would be the same—I'd try it, then I'd sell the lenses.

"We all know that there are large numbers of photographers, however good their images are or are not, who also enjoy the techological/mechanical aspects of photography, and I think the Ricoh might be their kind of camera. For people who are mostly interested in images, not so much. The fact is, there are much better cameras and systems out there, at not much more cost.

"If Ricoh wanted to do this at all, it should have done the entire system like it did the M module—break it into three pieces, so you could replace only a sensor, or only a lens. That would be even more interesting for the techno-enthusiasts....

"By the way, I checked KEH Camera, and the cheapest modern Leica 50mm they have, used, in EX condition (as opposed to ugly or bargain) costs more than $2,000...do you really want to spend that much just to strap an M lens on the front of a Ricoh? To me, that does not compute."

Posted on Tuesday, 09 August 2011 at 11:49 AM in News and Occasions, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (54)

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

The Next Big Thing in Camera Technology?

The news in the photosphere this morning is a New York Times article that has hit our little world like a bombshell. It's been five years or so since I last had occasion to mention the plenoptic camera of Ren Ng (right) in these precincts, and he and his associates have been plenty busy in the meantime, raising $50 million in venture capital and readying a commercial product! That was fast. The brand name is to be Lytro, and with five years' worth of Moore's Law since it was invented, it's getting more and more feasible all the time.

You know how you don't have to set white balance on the camera when you use RAW? You do it later, of course, in your photo editing program. Well, the Lytro does the same thing for focus and depth of field—shoot first, and select your desired plane of focus and desired depth of field later, at your leisure, on your computer. Here's the intro page to the original Stanford University paper (the .avi video at this link takes a while to load, I presume because of heavy demand, but it's pretty cool). Here's a brief Lytro promo video, and here's Lytro's website. (I'd recommend reading the Times article (first link) first.)

Back in 2006 I scribbled, "I'm no Nostradamus, but it's probably likely that this fascinating development will figure in the photography of the future." They're certainly getting closer. It could well be that discussions of "autofocus" and "manual focus" (and focus lag and everything else related to mechanical before-the-shot focus) are soon to be as quaint and old-fashioned as kerosene lamps. And without the need to allow us to find and set focus as we shoot, camera design will be greatly freed from one of its principle constraints, so camera designs would be likely to change radically, too.

Things like this can go either way, of course—there are plenty of examples in history of great ideas getting buried in the backwaters of proprietary protection, public uninterest, or predatory suppression by more powerful competitors, and withering away there. I have a feeling this isn't going to be one of them, but who knows? It's certainly going to be interesting to watch the progress of Lytro's "Light Field Photography" from here on in.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren and many others)

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "I've no doubt that this technology will find its way into every little camera by 2020. It will be right there with the various 'detection' features (i.e., face, smile, blink, ugly), many of which were also probably brought to photography by computer science doctoral candidates.

"This past weekend I read an extensive article on just how far drone technology has been developed for war and surveillance. Surely it won't be long before we can just type GPS coordinates into a camera, open a window, and send our solar-powered cameras off to take pictures for us while we watch TV. The most popular snapshot sites will never be the same. Tourism will be down at places like Paris and the Grand Canyon. Instead, it will look like they are constantly plagued by swarms of flying drone cams. The whole idea of 'street photography' will also be revolutionized.

"Of course the cams will upload everything directly to Flickr and Facebook unedited. (Not much change there.)"

Mike replies: Ken, like me sometimes these days, you are sounding a touch cranky.... ;-)

Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "I am trying to catch up as quickly as I can. Today, for my camera history work, I spent the entire morning researching the motivations behind Kodak's replacing Instamatic (126) with Pocket Instamatic (110). Tomorrow I plan to start on Disc, and then by Sat. I should be ready for Dr. Ng."

Mike replies: Cranky...cranky....

Featured Comment by SRay: "Remember when the Segway was supposed to revolutionize the way people get around? Well, I've never seen an actual Segway, but I sure do see a lot of bikes. Lytro...another Segway? Or a step in a whole new direction for photography? One thing is for sure, imagemaking is evolving. If Lytro becomes a movement, so to speak, it'll be interesting to see what Canon and Nikon will do next. Meanwhile, play with the Lytro. Looks like it might be fun."

Posted on Wednesday, 22 June 2011 at 10:20 AM in Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (78)

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Ephemera

By Ctein

Over the past several weeks, many readers have raised concerns about the permanence of photographs, whether film or digital. Truly, they have every reason to be concerned. It's a problem that has bothered me ever since Henry Wilhelm opened my eyes to this in the mid-1970s (we have been lifelong friends, since).

In practice, photography has not proven to be a very durable set of media. The examples people trot forth of photographs that have survived a century are almost never in their original condition; they are merely recognizable images. Worse, that enduring photographic record of the 20th century, while a far more extensive documenting of humanity than has ever existed before, is but a small fraction of all the photographs made and now lost.

We have the mistaken impression that photography is durable because what has endured is so extensive and we remember victories, not losses. Almost axiomatically, there is little way to remember the losses. It's a kind of cultural posttraumatic amnesia; the photographs that disappear from view mostly get forgotten.

This, of course, is what concerns us all. Photographs are our memories! Unfortunately, we are badly brain-damaged, and while we may be dimly aware of it there is very little we can do about it.

Oh sure, almost all those old photographs (if they physically exist, and most of them don't) can be restored. That is, in part, my business. It's expensive. For what I charge to restore a mere dozen or so individual photographs, you could have all the data recovered from the most decrepit and ancient hard drive. That's an important point: theory says you can preserve old photographs against deterioration and restore them when they do deteriorate. Theory also says you can recover digital data from almost any medium at any time. All it requires is a sufficient application of expertise and money. Especially money.

Nice theory. In practice, how often does that happen? Very rarely. The theoretical permanence of well-processed black-and-white photographs and prints or of well-processed Kodachrome film is as irrelevant to the collective discussion as assuming that everyone will follow proper archiving practices, backups, and storage-medium/format updates for their digital photographs. Those media don't constitute the vast majority of photographs and most of the photographs made in those theoretically-durable media were not well-stored and preserved. If your stuff still looks good, I am happy for you; just realize that you are one of the lucky few.

In the real world, no modern photographic medium, analog or digital, has shown itself to be durable. It only lasts when ordinary people take measures that are, well, extraordinary.

I have been pondering whether the situation is now better or worse than it used to be, and I don't have a clear-cut answer. Mostly that is from a lack of historical perspective; we are simply too newly into the digital age to know what the future will bring.

1. On the left, an all-too-typical color photograph from 1950. It's essentially blank to the naked eye. As the right figure shows, it's possible to recover the image to a satisfactory degree, but hundreds of dollars of work went into achieving this. What percentage of old photos will ever get this treatment?

In the case of film photography, the record is all too clear. Most photographs, slides, negatives, and prints, from 1946 through 1960 are already deteriorated to the point where they are essentially unviewable (illustration 1). Most of them are recoverable but never will be recovered. Not enough money, not enough time, not enough skilled restorers on the planet.

2. By the early-mid '60s, prints were a lot more durable than in the '50s, but that's damning with faint praise. This degree of restoration only costs in the double-digits, but that's still more than most photos will ever receive.

The photographs from 1960 to about 1980 are on the same path (illustration 2). On average they are in better shape because materials improved and less time has passed. On average they are in worse shape because of the increasing shift to chromogenic materials which, back then, lacked in permanance (although God knows they were much better than their 1950s predecessors). Give it another 20 years and most of that cultural record will be gone. I'm not talking about the really important events that were documented up one side and down the other; I'm talking about the mass cultural record that those of us alive at the time made for our own pleasure and to preserve our own memories.

A third of a century of photography is already mostly lost. Very little of it will survive intact another 25 years.

Things got a lot better starting in the early 1980s. E6, C41, late EP2, and RA4 film and paper processes all led to increasingly permanent materials. By the end of the Film Era, chromogenic prints had better display permanence than even dye transfer as well as an entirely acceptable dark-keeping lifetime. Late-generation E6 slides are, in practice, as permanent or more so than K12 Kodachromes were. These photographs will continue to deteriorate, but nowhere as rapidly.

Even black-and-white, on average, has become more permanent, primarily because the vast majority of earlier stuff was really badly processed. I get to see the evidence for that regularly; it is not a pretty sight. Black-and-white RC papers, for example, may not be as durable as fiber-based papers when given ideal processing, but I assure you that a far smaller fraction of fiber-based prints ever received anything close to ideal processing. That theory-vs.-practice thing again.

That is an extremely abbreviated history of analog photographic permanance. So abbreviated, in fact, that it includes numerous minor inaccuracies. The overall picture, though, reads truly enough; view it in broad strokes.

So what about digital photography? The initial period is going to be rocky. Hell, it already has been rocky. I'm going to guess that the majority of photographs from the first decade of the Digital Era will be lost (for some definition of "first decade:" your dating system may differ from mine). Again, I'm talking real practice, not theory. With digital, it's even more about practices than inherent characteristics of the media. Said practices were very, very sloppy.

I suspect that is changing rapidly. Your average camera-wielders are getting much better about preserving their photographs, much more quickly than I expected. The reason, I think, is because the everyday records and data of one's life are going increasingly electronic.

My housemate, Paula, and I were surprised this last year when the IRS told us they would no longer be sending us paper tax forms to fill out; we would have to download them from online. Hardly a burden; we still file on paper, so that's what we did. What really startled us was to learn how much of a minority we are in; only about 5% of all tax returns are filed on paper these days. We had no idea.

That's the way the average citizen's world is very rapidly moving, and in that world there are strong forces at work to improve overall digital durability in practice as well as theory. In the dark, on the hard drive, all bits look the same. Doesn't matter if it's someone's photographs, their music, video, or movie collection, their electronic books, their bank statements and check stubs, or their tax returns. As a pleasant, inevitable side effect one's personal photographs will get preserved and maintained along with all the rest of one's electronic life.

Analog photography lost more than a third of the century. I'll be very surprised if digital photography loses even a quarter. Maybe not even much more than another few years beyond the already-past decade.

I hate it when any photographs are lost. But I've come to sincerely believe that we are better off now than we used to be in the Analog Era. I've seen how badly that worked out.

Ctein

Ctein, the author of Digital Restoration from Start to Finish, writes a regular weekly column (not always on restoration issues—sometimes, it's parrots) for The Online Photographer that is published on Wednesdays.

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Featured Comment by Jim: "It always comes down to money! But, why should we preserve them? I read recently that there are 43 billion photos now uploaded to Facebook, another five billion to flickr. And, I would guess, perhaps trillions living on hard drives around the world. I'm not convinced it's a good thing they survive.

"I burned tens of thousands of negatives and prints from 50 years of my photography (I'm a photojournalist) heavily documenting my area a few years ago because I couldn't give them away to historical societies, etc. Sent out dozens of letters, made numerous phone calls. Too expensive and space-intensive to store and conserve them, they all said. Too expensive to scan and convert them all to digital, they all said.

"For most of my photography career I worried about archiving prints and negatives, and then digital files. But I don't concern myself with it anymore. Most of these trillions of images being constantly recorded these days will never be looked at again anyway.

"Perhaps they should be as impermanent as our own memories, which gracefully degrade as we age and then disappear when we die."

Mike replies: That's a painful story, Jim. I almost hate to say this, but it's at least possible that you destroyed your work during its stay in the "Trough of No Value." That doesn't mean it might not have been valuable to future generations or historians, just that it wasn't valuable to them yet.

Posted on Wednesday, 15 June 2011 at 05:43 PM in Ctein, Photo-tech, Visual Culture | Permalink | Comments (33)

Wednesday, 01 June 2011

How Invention Works

By Ctein

The recent death of Willard Boyle, Nobel Prize winner for the invention of modern digital photography (a.k.a. the CCD) has brought out a certain amount of armchair quarterbacking. Understand that this is entirely normal when Nobel prizes are involved. Sometimes it is just sour grapes and sometimes it is entirely justified. I have reason to think this time it's more the former.

I have some modest knowledge, because I also invented the CCD.

The only minor problem with me laying claim to fame is that I was two years late! Unlike the Olympics, second place in science does not get you a medal. Had I done my homework properly I could've saved myself the trouble of even inventing it.

That's where part of my doubt about the sour graping comes from. I wouldn't have found this in the earlier literature if it weren't being discussed as an imaging device. There were a zillion electronic devices being invented and the term "charge coupled device" wouldn't have meant a thing to me.

The other reason for doubting the sour grapes is that it's a terribly obvious use of the device. Quite possibly Boyle did invent it as a potential memory device, but the imaging and light sensitivity properties of silicon were well known and regularly used in the industry, and I doubt that there would've been more than 10 minutes conversation at lunch the first time he talked about it with his colleagues before somebody, him or someone else at the table, would've said "That could also be a great device for capturing and storing an optical signal." And everyone's reaction would've been, "Of course!" It's a no-brainer.

The consequences are also pretty much no-brainers. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to design an entirely modern digital camera back in 1971. It's a simple intellectual exercise once you imagine the sensor exists. I'd be amazed if similar designs didn't exist at Bell Labs and a number of other places. Now, what all of us did was put those designs aside as being somewhere in the distant future, until someone more obsessed than us (Steve Sasson at Kodak) decided to build a prototype in 1975. For which he deserves full credit—it's easy to scribble cool stuff on paper, it's a lot harder to build. But the concept was neither new nor radical.

Now inventing the CCD itself, that's not a no-brainer, which is why Boyle deserves his prize.

Me, I came to the CCD from entirely different route. I was actually trying to solve a photography problem. As I've mentioned previously, solar astronomy is always starved for light, because you're throwing away 99.99% of the photons to look at the very few that you care about. In 1970 we were pushing hard up against the limits; it was routine to develop the film to gamma-max to extract both maximum sensitivity and maximum contrast from the image.

I knew that electronics was already much much more efficient than film at using photons. None of the electronic technologies I knew of, though, were suitable for serious scientific imaging. So I decided to look at the problem sideways; what sort of basic photoelectric devices were there, and could I come up with a new one, since the existing ones were all unsatisfactory?

Okay, voltage/current sources—that's obvious. Solar cells of any kind. Well known, so scratch that. What other basic electrical components are there?

Resistors? Unfortunately, also well-known: the cadmium-sulfide photocell. Nothing helpful there.

Inductors? Hmmm, I'd never heard of a photo-inductor. I also couldn't imagine how to make one.... Or how I would use it if I could (still can't). Table that one.

That leaves capacitors among the basic electrical devices. I'd never heard of a photo-capacitor either. But, wait—I know how to make one, and it's easy! Take a silicon photocell, but instead of hooking up the lower region to an electrode to drain the photocurrent, just let those electrons pile up there. A depleted region will store electrons just like a capacitor, up to a point. Now, make this a potential well, so the electrons will stay trapped there until the well fills up or they get shoved out. Add a gate electrode so that you can change the potential on the well; then, after you've collected the exposure signal, you change the differential voltage on the region and you can dump the electrons out to a signal line.

This was also stuff that everyone already knew how to integrate, as field effect transistors and as CMOS. I could put a whole bunch of these little silicon photocells backed up by collection wells on a single chip. It's simple fabrication. For a modest number of cells, I could have individual readouts, but for large arrays of them it would make more sense to set them up like a clocked shift register so that each batch of electrons went, in bucket-brigade fashion, down a row of cells to the output electrode. That would keep the number of electrodes reasonable even if the cell count got very high.

That's the way invention works. Inspiration, followed by the realization that it can be implemented...followed by implementation. I stopped at realization, once I discovered I was two years behind. And as for the digital cameras, everyone stopped at realization, until Sasson at Kodak moved to implementation.

From there it's a mere hop, skip, jump, and another third of the century to get us to where we are today.

Ctein

Ctein's column appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

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Posted on Wednesday, 01 June 2011 at 04:44 PM in Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (13)

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

Virtuous Technique

By Ctein

In keeping with the moral tone that Mike has recently set on The Online Photographer, this week I'm going to write about virtuous photography.

Well, to be truthful, this column came out of a conversation over pizza with David Dyer-Bennet a good month ago, and I'd been planning all along that it should run this week. Perhaps a case of divine coincidence. Perhaps just another example of great minds lying in the same gutter.

I have written in the past about photographers trying to find a moral dimension to their practice, expressing some feeling of superiority that they work with manual cameras, or work in film, or, most especially, work with slide film. Although you do hear more than a bit of it from the digital photographers who photograph in JPEG rather than RAW mode. They suggest that there is something distinctly more virtuous about taking what the camera and the film (or sensor) hands them and having to live with that than being able to massage it endlessly later in the darkroom (or on the computer).

My writing has been, shall we say, less than respectful towards these practitioners. You might even say it has been mocking. You might even be right to say that. I have come to realize the error of my ways. I should not be mocking them.

I should be feeling sorry for them! Because their moral compass is 180° off course.

Slides and JPEGs do not lead to virtuousness and righteousness. They cannot.

They cannot, because they do not allow for choice. Virtuousness comes from choosing to do right (or at least choosing to avoid doing wrong). To demonstrate moral strength, you have to be tempted and to prevail. If you are never exposed to temptation, you are not virtuous; you are simply innocent and naïve. An enviable state, that, but almost axiomatically it is not something one can be proud of as an achievement.

Asserting that having chosen slide film or JPEG demonstrates virtuous choice will not wash. It may be prudent to avoid being put in a position of temptation; the devil is a crafty fellow. Avoiding him is a good survival trait, but it does not demonstrate that one is so virtuous that one can resist him.

You simply cannot be a virtuous, morally superior photographer if you use slide film or make JPEGs in camera. It just isn't possible. No temptation, no virtue.

So there it is. Truly there is a moral imperative for using negative film and for making all digital photographs in RAW mode. How you then deal with the temptation to make a hash of things is where you will demonstrate how virtuous your photography is. I have no doubt you will all rise to the task.

So, when next you hear a photographer crow about the superiority of their slide- or JPEG-only photography, do not mock them, do not deride them, do not castigate them. Show compassion and pity them, for they have yet to realize that they fail to walk the righteous path.

Ctein

Ctein's weekly sermoncolumn appears on SunWednesdays on TOP.

Note: Interested parties can rent a video of Saturday's retouching seminar for $14.99 at YouTube.

This is an unedited HD 1080p recording of the May 21, 2011, live show. The show is over two hours long, and you can pause, rewind, and watch as many times as you like over the 3-day rental period.

Watch the desktop of Ctein as he shows how he restores color that has faded from old photos.

This show could have just as accurately been called "Scanning," as almost an hour is spent discussing and demonstrating the best scanning technique for old prints and slides, as well as fixes that can be done during scanning. —MJ

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Featured Comment by David Stubbs: "The virtue question posed by Ctein reminds me of the following by Mark Twain: 'A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo but doesn't.' As the post lays out, Practioners of Pure Photography aren't fast tracked to sainthood. Plenty of truth-cheating moves are at their disposal. I know; I've used plenty of them to tune a picture.

"Warpedly, it also makes me think of housebreaking a dog. A puppy that hasn't had an accident indoors hasn't learned anything yet. It has to be shown the approved scheme of things upon committing the unapproved. Then, having learned, the dog that woofs by the door when the time comes shows virtue. The well taught dog that pees in the house is a focus-stacking, cloud-cloner.

"Seriously, make the picture you want to. Just don't call a lie the truth."

Featured Comment by Jed: "I don't know where I fit in: I own and use a Nikon DSLR that I have permantly set to RAW (the only exceptions being when I shoot RAW+jpeg). But my true love is shooting 35mm with vintage SLRs. I dabble in B&W, but I shoot mostly color and when I do, I shoot slides (almost alway Velvia 50!). I love looking at my slides on a lightbox; it's my very favorite way to view photos, even more than holding silver B&W prints or looking at digital files on an excellent computer monitor."

Featured Comment by Ken Norton: "Choice can occur at the production stage or in the post-production stage. Choice still occurs. There is no moral superiority of one stage over another."

Featured Comment by Edward Richards: "Jesuit education, Ctein?"

Posted on Wednesday, 25 May 2011 at 07:54 AM in Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (57)

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Metamaterials and Photonic Crystals

By Ctein

The future of photographic optics and sensors is going to be profoundly affected by advances in materials science that most photographers have never even heard of.

Broadly defined, metamaterials are substances whose properties depend on their microstructure more than their chemical composition and that exhibit novel properties not usually found in nature. Most of the definitions I've seen don't include photonic crystals, although I must confess that I don't understand why. Photonic crystals are also materials that have novel properties due to their structure.

The most notable thing about photonic crystals is that they can be what amounts to an optical semiconductor. Electronic semiconductors are valuable because they only allow electrons to have certain energies; between those allowable energy bands are what are called bandgaps. An electron cannot exist inside the material in that bandgap. The way an electron gets from one conduction band to another is by absorbing or emitting a photon that changes its energy by enough to let it jump across the bandgap. You can see where that leads: photodetectors, LEDs and laser diodes. By adding small amounts of contaminants (a.k.a. dopants) to a semiconductor, one can tailor the energy levels and bandgaps to one's needs, yielding the whole array of solid-state electronics and integrated circuits that exist today.

Photonic crystals can play the same tricks with photons. Within them, certain energy levels (a.k.a. wavelengths, a.k.a. colors) are forbidden while others are not. A natural example of a photonic crystal is opal; it's not chemistry but the geometric packing of silica spheres in bulk opal that cause the brilliant flashes of color that we see. Those packed spheres will only allow certain energy levels to exist. The phenomenon is very different from diffraction; when you tilt an opal, you don't see a continuous change in color as you would with a diffraction grating, instead you see it flash brilliantly when the angles are just right to reflect light at an allowable energy level into your eyes.

Artificial photonic crystals, like semiconductors, can be made to do all sorts of interesting things. You can make photonic crystals that act like diodes: Light can pass through them in one direction but not in the other. True one-way mirrors. You can make converters: if a photon of forbidden energy attempts to pass through the crystal, it's converted to a photon of a different energy.

Applications in sensor design are immediately apparent. Near-perfect anti-reflection coatings are one possibility. Another is much better color filters for the sensor. For example, digital cameras don't do well with blue light for two reasons only one of which is that today's blue filters aren't anywhere near perfect. The other is that silicon is relatively insensitive to blue light. Consequently, digital cameras don't have anywhere near perfect efficiency in this part of the spectrum.

One can imagine a photonic crystal blue filter. It blocks red and green light entirely. It doesn't allow blue light to passthrough, either, but it does convert blue photons to, oh say, infrared photons. Silicon is very responsive to infrared photons; the same sensor would have much more sensitivity with this filter than with a conventional one. A filter might even convert a blue photon into two infrared photons, thereby doubling the signal in the sensor and improving the signal-to-noise ratio in the final output.

This is relatively normal stuff compared to metamaterials. They just plain break the rules, at least as we thought we understood them. When modern metamaterials were proposed about 10 years ago, the mathematics of them allowed for such outrageous possibilities that many physicists fairly felt that they would turn out to be a theoretical concept that could never be realized in actuality. Well, that turned out to not be the case. We can make metamaterials, and they have proven themselves to be extremely weird.

The most important weird property for photographers is that metamaterials can have refractive indices of less than one. Nothing "normal" does that; a pure vacuum has a refractive index of one and all ordinary materials and gasses have refractive indices higher than one. Not only can metamaterials get below one, they can even go negative. The holy Grail has been a refractive index of less than –1 at optical wavelengths, broadband, and we're closing in on that.

What do such negative indices allow that you didn't have before? Superlenses and hyperlenses: optics that perform better than what conventional optical theory allows in a perfect lens. You think the Raleigh diffraction limit is the ultimate resolving limit for a perfect lens? Not for a superlens; it can resolve much better than that theoretical boundary. Do you believe that you can't build a lens that can resolve details smaller than a half wavelength of light? Hyperlenses blow right past that.

These technologies are working their way out of the laboratory into scientific (translated: expensive!) instruments right now. They will migrate down to the photographic equipment that we use. Unless, of course, something even better comes along in the meantime.

Timeframe? My guess is during the next decade; I'd be surprised to see much appearance of these materials in our toys before 2020, but I'd be utterly amazed if it was after 2030.

Ctein

Physicist/photographer Ctein's regular column on TOP is published on Wednesdays.

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Posted on Wednesday, 30 March 2011 at 08:17 AM in Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (33)

Thursday, 17 March 2011

The Megapixel Race is Over

More interesting to me than Ctein's theoretical endpoint, though admittedly much more prosaic, is: where is the point at which the buying public will have gotten its fill of higher ISOs (sensitivity) in digital cameras?

I've argued many times that a useful way of looking at the history of photographic technology is that, for any given property, first a "problem" is highlighted, then there's a "race" as various manufacturers vie to see who can outdo the others—encouraged, supported and rewarded at every step by the buying public—and finally there's a stage at which the market loses interest, because a state of sufficiency has been reached. That is (to quote myself), the point is reached at which further improvements no longer inspire additional sales.

This has happened with all sorts of things. Of course, with each parameter, manufacturers do go beyond the sufficient point, and a small speciality market embraces the extremes, but the public in the main has had enough. I've written about all that before.

I speculated a year or two ago that we might be seeing that point reached with the "megapixel wars," and I think that's bearing out. The two 24-MP DSLRs (three, if you want to consider the A850 and A900 as different cameras) haven't gone over very well with buyers, and image sizes from 16 MP to 21 MP don't seem to be impeding sales of the cameras that offer those pixel counts. Personally, I didn't even pay much attention to the pixel count of the last camera I bought. It had enough, that much I knew; actually more than enough, by definition, since it had more than my previous camera and my previous camera had enough. I decided on the newer camera based on other considerations.

I have no doubt that manufacturers will exceed 24 MP in mainstream cameras, and specialty cameras for speciality uses will find their niches. But there are signs that the mainstream camera buyer might already think that 24 MP is overkill.

Bruce E. Bayer's color imaging array

The next development will probably obliterate the present context: that is, some technical development in sensors will come along that elevates some new method of measurement, some new kind of spec, to a position of central importance, and traditional pixel counts will cease to matter.

We'll get to the sufficient point with low-light sensitivity far sooner than we reach the theoretical technical limit, if history is our friend. In fact, we might even have arrived at the threshhold of that zone with the sensitivity of the D7000 / K-5 / D3s—which is mighty good, happy talk of fireflies and handheld astrophotography aside.

And speaking of the next development that will obliterate the present context: Anyone want to place bets on the end of the lifespan of the Bayer array?

My call is 7–11 years, and, since it has seemed more persistent already than I thought it would be, I'm going to go with the far side of that estimate: I'll say the Bayer array will be essentially history by 2022.

My friend Oren will remember I said that, so no doubt I'll get called on it 11 years from now.

Mike

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Posted on Thursday, 17 March 2011 at 06:34 PM in Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (51)

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Photography at the Speed of Light

By Ctein

I was catching up on some of my photonics journals last week and they reminded me that I still haven't answered for myself the question of just how fast digital cameras can get. What is the ultimate limiting ISO?

You know there has to be one. Simple logic. I mean, when you reach the point where the shutter is open just long enough to let one photon get through, you can be pretty confident that you're not going to be able to form an image.

Unfortunately that simple logic doesn't really tell you very much. There are a zillion comments online to the effect that the "laws of physics" limit how fast the camera can get, but it's pretty clear to me that the people saying that don't have any idea what that limit is. Statements can be both true and irrelevant. Much like pointing out that the laws of physics limit how fast a rocket can travel. No argument there, but rocket designers aren't bumping their heads on that speed-of-light brick wall just yet.

Where is ISO's "speed of light" limit? I don't know, but I can tell you of some improvements that push sensor speeds way beyond anything you've imagined. All are either proven technologies or such simple extensions of existing technology that we can be entirely confident they can be implemented. That doesn't mean they will be, but they do constitute a proof of existence.

The current speed champ, the Nikon D3S, provides very decent quality up to ISO 6400, and is usable up to 102K. Not that that would ever be my choice, but if it's the only way I can photograph The Second Coming or First Contact, it'll do. How do we make it even faster with no loss in image quality?

First, install a back-side-illuminated sensor (unless I misread the specs, the D3s isn't using one). BSI sensors are about twice as efficient as conventional ones at gathering light. Large pixels don't benefit as much as small ones. For the D3S I'd be conservative and call it a 2/3 stop gain (for micron sized pixels, it's distinctly more than one stop).

BSI sensors haven't made big inroads yet, although they're in a few cameras. I suspect a combination of cost and the fact that smaller-sensor cameras need them more desperately.

Next, Kodak has this nifty modified Bayer filter array that gains you another stop of efficiency. That's three-year-old technology; not certain why we haven't seen it in a camera yet. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, maybe Kodak's being a pain about licensing, dunno. Whatever, it's not a physical issue, so far as I know.

The Kodak array isn't the theoretically best one. It's probably possible to squeeze another half to full stop of efficiency out before you've reached the limit. I'll be conservative and say half a stop more.

The new hot area of development is sensitizers for silicon. Silicon detectors, at their very best, run about 50% efficiency. In addition, they are much more sensitive to long wavelengths of light than short ones. That's particularly bad because most often you're using high ISOs under indoor lighting that is generous in the long wavelengths and weak in the short. That's why the red channel in your high ISO indoor photos looks pretty clean, the green channel looks mediocre, and the blue channel looks horrible.

Anyway, an assortment of companies are developing layers and coatings that can be applied to the surface of the sensor that catch nearly all the photons and transfer their energy to the silicon. Some of these technologies are very close to rollout, if they're not already in production for the minuscule cameras that go into cell phones.

Combine BSI sensors, improved filters, and sensitizers and there's a 10X performance improvement. Let me emphasize that this is real improvement, not funny games being played with more amplification and noise reduction. What the Nikon D3S can do at ISO 6400, these technologies would let it deliver at 64,000. And when the flying saucers (or Jesus) descend onto your front lawn, you can crank that dial up to "11" for an unbelievable extended speed of 1,000,000.

Honest to God, I have no idea what you do with a speed of 1,000,000. Make handheld photographs by starlight? Just sayin'—it can be done, and we haven't exhausted the bag of technical tricks so don't assume that even this represents that performance brick wall.

Realistically, these technologies will appear in small-sensor cameras sooner, because they have more need for them. I don't think too many people will be unhappy when digicams offer the image quality of today's full-frame cameras. Trust me, they are going to get there.

Meanwhile, the skies still the limit, folks, and we still don't now how high is up.

Ctein

TOP's weekly column by Ctein (pronounced "kuh-TINE," and yes, that's his entire legal name) appears on Wednesdays.

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Posted on Wednesday, 16 March 2011 at 11:17 AM in Cameras, new, Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (60)

FWIW

For what it's worth (doubtless not much), I think I've come to a tentative axiom—

Current digital cameras are too complicated to be either a) adequately precise, or b) adequately durable.

I'm still on the fence as to what might be the best way to act on that. Two potential options:

Buy the best possible camera* and just make sure you earn enough with it so that it pays for itself several times over within a three-year cycle.
Buy the cheapest camera that is adequate for your needs, put up with its imprecision**, and use it sparingly until it's "totalled"—i.e., costs more to repair than it's worth. Cross your fingers that this is >6 years.

That is, two opposing philosophies: 1. offset high cost with high returns, or 2. eke maximum value out the equipment via the route of minimal investment. Option 1 minimizes the "A" constraint in the axiom and option 2 minimizes the "B" constraint.

Haven't come to any conclusion about that yet.

And of course the argument could be made that traditional mechanical cameras were too durable...sort of a dogs vs. parrots kind of problem....

Mike

*On the assumption that the best professional cameras where "good value" is not a design constraint will also have the highest precision. Not an automatically true assumption, as you're probably aware.

**Going on the assumption that this is unavoidable, as all digital cameras will be to some degree imprecise anyway.

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Featured Comment by Ken Sky: "You are leaving out the biggest variable in the equation—the photographer. As humans age we are prone to decay and increasing imprecision. I am sure my vision is more imprecise than the latest generation of digital camera. The likeliest cause of camera failure is human error e.g. dropping it or forgetting to charge the battery."

Mike replies: Right. In a private email exchange, a friend wrote, "How a camera fails matters. The worst kind of failure is one that's not obvious while you're shooting—i.e., you think it's working but find out when you get home that your negatives / files are trash," and I replied, "Agreed. My camera often fails because it's pointed at the wrong thing, which for some reason was invisible to my brain while I was out shooting but which becomes quite clear later on."

Featured Comment by JOHN MCMILLIN: "I've heard a similar idea postulated with automobiles, probably first by Public Radio's The Car Guys. Choose one: either buy a three-year-old car and keep it seven years, or buy a seven-year-old car and keep it three years."

Featured Comment by Nick: "Option 3: Adopt the notion that digital cameras are more like film that cameras: A consumable. Undersand that you aren't really sure how big a box of film you're purchasing, that there may be a couple hundred or a couple thousand rolls in it.

"Alternate Option 3: Consider that digital cameras, like all bits of consumer electronics, are more rented than bought. Understand that your are paying an upfront cost for something like a three year lease, and that the 'landlord' may be a bastard and kick you out after six months, or he may be a sweetheart and let you stay for years and years."

Posted on Wednesday, 16 March 2011 at 10:28 AM in Cameras, new, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (39)

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

How to Display Inkjet Prints

By Ctein

Just as with conventional darkroom photographs, the care, feeding, and longevity of inkjet prints has been subject to a certain amount of misinformation. So what else is new? Some people think digital media are so durable that one need not even worry about the matter; others make dire predictions of imminent failure. Both extreme points of view are based on old and obsolete materials, data, and notions. Both have been proven wrong.

To begin with, you should understand that there's a huge variety of print materials and inks out there. Some of them really are crappy. I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that you actually are seeking out the more long-lived media. The best independent source for information on that is Henry Wilhelm's website, Wilhelm Imaging Research. The worst is often an ink or paper manufacturer's website.

In this article I'll be quoting lifetime numbers for prints made with Epson Ultrachrome inks, like the ones Charlie Cramer is using for his Print Offer prints, but the general principles will apply to all inkjet prints, dye or pigment (although their lifetimes may differ from Ultrachrome). I'm also assuming indoor display at normal light levels.

Under those conditions, the worst "good" print paper I know of is Epson Velvet Art, a rather primitive material by current conservator standards, It's rated at 35 years display life, unprotected (I'm going to round everything off to the nearest half decade, because, honest to god, two digits of precision is way too much in this field). Everything else checks out at 45–70 years. This is not fabulous, but it's still in the ranks of the very best of the traditional color darkroom prints, including Ilfochrome and dye transfer.

Fortunately, we can, and we will, do better. The reason:

No prints of any value should ever be displayed without protective glazing. Dust, dirt and other sorts of aerosol and particulate matter in the environment will settle on the surface of the print if you don't cover it. Cleaning inkjet prints is especially difficult, but you really don't want to be cleaning the surface of any photographic print. Given the nasty stuff that dust and particulates can adsorb on their surfaces, don't offer them any chance to attach themselves to the print.

Putting prints behind regular framing glass or acrylic improves the display life by 50–100%. That increases the range of display lives from 75–120 years, with 85–100 being typical. That's excellent. UV glass will improve that by another 60–100%, but that hardly makes UV glass a requirement; we've already entered the range of museum-standard permanance well beyond what you could be confident of achieving with a traditional print. I would only recommend UV glazing in the most extreme circumstances, such as a known high-UV environment. It doesn't hurt, but it's awfully expensive.

Recommendations have been made for "airtight" or sealed framing, to protect prints from gaseous compounds that could attack them. First, no such thing exists; second, it's a bad idea to even attempt it.

A "tight" frame will not prevent external gaseous pollutants from diffusing in, but it will tend to concentrate any compounds that are generated or outgassed within the frame environment. This is a known hazard for prints. In fact, the vexatious silvering-out problem with untoned B&W silver RC papers only occurs with framed prints. In general, more damage has been done to photographs and art prints over the ages by "protective" materials than anything else, simply because they are in close proximity to the artwork*. Tight framing is very dangerous.

It also doesn't work. On the timescale of decades, you cannot make a hermetically sealed frame at any reasonable price. Hazardous gaseous pollutants will diffuse in through any available path at a rate sufficient to attack the print. It doesn't take a lot, and they've got a long time. Once you've protected the print from aerosols and particulates—and simple glazing does that—you've done all you can reasonably do.

People have investigated truly airtight framing. It's an area of interest because it was determined, a good quarter-century ago, that essentially all light-fading in photographic prints involves hydrolytic or oxidative reactions. If you can exclude oxygen and water from the print environment, even exposure to UV-rich light doesn't cause prints to fade significantly faster than they do in the dark. If you can figure out how to frame your prints under dry nitrogen and make sure they stay that way, light fading becomes a thing of the past.

Problem is, there's no way to do that at any kind of affordable price, not when you need to keep it that way for 50–100 years.

Summary: always frame your photographs under glass or acrylic; don't worry about UV-absorbing glazing; and don't even try for an airtight frame—won't work, bad idea.

As best as we currently understand inkjet prints, if you follow these recommendations inkjet prints are likely to substantially outlast conventional darkroom prints on display.

And as with all conservation research, this is subject to change without notice, your mileage may differ, and only four out of five doctors agree.

Ctein

*Footnote: I am not going to get involved in detailed discussions of preferred framing practices and materials, so please don't ask. It's way too big a subject. Just this one thing—use acid-free boards and papers but avoid the use of buffered materials**. Alkaline materials are know to be bad for all traditional color photographic prints. I don't know that they're bad for inkjet prints, but it would be what I'd assume until proven otherwise. If a museum or archival material is unbuffered, the product description will say so specifically, as buffering is more common.

**And a footnote to Ctein's footnote from Mike: buffered materials are fine, even desirable, for paper artifacts and traditional black-and-white silver gelatin ("fiber-base") prints. But Ctein is talking about color photographic prints, especially dye transfer prints.

ADDENDUM: Oren Grad just informed me that many of the Museo, Hahnemuhle and Epson fine art papers are buffered. I'd trust Epson to have some idea of what was safe to use with their inks, so belay that recommendation in my footnote to always use unbuffered boards, at least when it involves Ultrachrome inks. —Ctein

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Featured Comment by MHMG [Editor's note: "MHMG" is Mark McCormick-Goodhart, the Director of Aardenburg Imaging & Archives]: "What fascinates me with print life predictions is how often the print life figures for various products are viewed by the public as a definitive answer to the question 'How long will my print last?' The marketing guys have done a great job creating a nice soundbite for a decidedly complex issue. Indeed, two of the fundamental assumptions used to make these comparative print life predictions are rarely ever discussed. These factors are: what failure criterion has the testing lab used to decide the 'end of life' and what 'average' real-world environment has the testing lab used to extrapolate from the test conditions to actual real-world display conditions. The testing lab's chosen failure criteria may or may not square up with the individual print collector's image quality concerns, and real world light levels simply don't obey the law of averages very well. On light fading rates alone, a 'standardized' print life prediction has an error bar that easily ranges over two orders of magnitude depending on the difference between the lab's light level assumption and the real print display environment.

"OK, but a prediction based on both standardized failure criteria and normative environmental assumptions is still an apples-to-apples comparison between different products, right? Well, not necessarily in meaningful way because many print processes don't fade or discolor at a linear rate. It takes more than one measured datapoint to plot the retained image quality over time. Depending on the strictness of the chosen failure criteria, the endpoint in the test may not even detect early or mid-stage print quality deterioration. Thus, fading non linearity and visually different failure modes can cause two similarly rated products to perform in markedly different ways over the 'total life span' of the print.

"All that said, it is the end-user's responsibility to take some time to consider the matter more carefully. If we begin to ask more probing questions about the industry's print durability test methods and underlying assumptions, I believe photographers, printmakers, and print collectors will eventually get more thoughtful and comprehensive answers on print longevity."

Question from GH: "Could someone explain what buffered materials is/means? Thanks!"

Mike replies: "Buffered" means that the pH has been raised to a level higher than 7 (neutral), into the alkaline range, in order to provide a safety factor against acidifying.

Acidity is the enemy of most paper artifacts, and a neutral or near-neutral pH is the ideal environment for paper. As acidic particulates or gasses attack the print, the pH gradually lowers—that is, the environment becomes more acid and less alkaline. Buffering allows some lowering of the pH without going below 7.

[Correction: it's more complicated than this chemically; see the Comments section for greater detail. But be warned, it gets a bit deep.]

Some color materials, however, most notably dye transfer, don't like a basic (alkaline) environment, so buffered materials should not be used. Some framers think acid-free, buffered mat board should be used for everything just because it's the standard for paper artifacts including B&W silver-gelatin prints, but, as Ctein says, that is not the case for many kinds of color photographic prints.

Featured Comment by James Miller: "Your article is well-written and more accurate than most on the subject of framing and displaying images. Thank you.

"This part could be misleading, however: 'Tight framing is very dangerous...Once you've protected the print from aerosols and particulates—and simple glazing does that—you've done all you can reasonably do.' I don't think you are suggesting that it's OK to leave the back of a frame open, but it would be a mistake for anyone to come to that wrong conclusion.

"Yes, air-tight framing would be costly, unnecessary, and impractical for consumer environments, but it would not be 'dangerous' beyond giving one a false sense of security. Anyway, there is a world of difference between truly air-tight framing and the tightly-closed framing recommended by every credible preservation authority.

"The recommendations are to use glazing in the front (always), insulating filler in the back of the frame, and tight closure using a sturdy dust cover. That assembly certainly would not be air-tight, but tighter closure of the frame, front and back, better slows the rate of temperature and humidity changes inside the frame. Slowing the rate of change inside the frame minimizes expansion/contraction cycles (mechanical stress) of the art's substrate.

"Framers often confuse this tight closure recommendation with jamming the fitting points into the back as tightly as possible. That is a common mistake, and a serious one, as it would restrict normal expansion/contraction cycles, causing wrinkles in the art paper. The fitting points should be installed loosely enough that the frame contents can rattle just a little.

"99% UV-filtering glass is no longer expensive, and always recommended for preservation framing. The optically-coated glass and acrylic, which usually include a UV filter, are the expensive glazing products. And when visual acuity is important, the extra cost of that benefit may become insignificant."

Posted on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 at 10:03 AM in Collecting, Ctein, Exhibits, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (57)

Tuesday, 08 February 2011

New LensAlign: Better and Cheaper

TOP's longtime patron and sponsor Michael Tapes of Michael Tapes Design (he and Fabio Riccardi of Lightcrafts kept TOP alive and kicking in its rocky early days with their sponsorship, just so you know), has recently launched his new lower cost LensAlign MkII ($79.95).

The clever, well-designed LensAlign has become the dedicated photographer's standard for testing and adjusting camera body/lens combinations for AF inaccuracies resulting in front and back focus problems, something I'm exploring for the first time myself with the adjustable Pentax K-5. Michael tells me that although the new MkII replaces the previous LITE model in terms of price, it is actually equal to their to the Pro model in terms of performance and accuracy. Like the Pro model, the MkII features proprietary True Parallel Alignment, which allows the camera imaging plane to be set precisely parallel to the focus target of LensAlign. Mark Dubavoy highlights the new LensAlign MkII in his article "Are Your Pictures out of Focus?" over at The Luminous Landscape (L-L was another early TOP supporter, as long as we're on that topic).

The LensAlign MkII can be purchased from B&H Photo, from Amazon, or directly from Michael.

Mike

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Posted on Tuesday, 08 February 2011 at 05:58 AM in Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (4)

Thursday, 13 January 2011

'Center' vs. 'Fringe' and a Day at the Beach

Regarding the "iPhone fashion shoot" (see "It Won't Be Long," below), I think David Dyer-Bennet hit the nail on the head when he wrote, "Many of the problems with the camera in my phone...are precisely the problems that mostly don't come up working with a professional model in the studio." With almost any camera or imaging system, you can optimize its performance by hitting the "center"—the sweet spot—of its various parameters, and minimizing potential sources of image degradation. And, indeed, that's easiest to do in the controlled conditions of the studio.

In the studio, you can use a tripod to control camera shake; use the optimum aperture of the lens; use the ISO that yields the best quality, and so forth. As old-time studio photographers know but some readers might not, you can also tailor the contrast ratio of the lighting to match the latitude (or "dynamic range") of the camera. Even using a transparency film of limited latitude, a studio pro would simply adjust the lighting accordingly so that the film could capture the whole subject brightness range effortlessly.

I wrote an article a while back (for a photography magazine, not this site) about how you could get very similar image quality from a decent digicam as from a good DSLR. All you had to do was shoot the digicam under optimal conditions.

It's only when you get to the "fringes," so to speak—the performance limits—that better, more capable cameras and lenses begin to show their superiority to worse ones. I've referred to this in the past (in writing about lenses) as "stressing" the system. Stressing a cameraphone is easy: just ask it to record too great a range of brightnesses, under mixed lighting, at a high ISO, with its lens wide open, at too slow a shutter speed. The result: failure. In situations where a better camera might still succeed.

In olden times, "not stressing" an amateur camera meant asking your
subjects to come outside and stand in the sun.

It's even true of non-imaging properties like durability. For example, an average consumer camera will probably do fine shooting at the beach on a warm, bright, calm day. If you paid extra for a camera with weather sealing, you wouldn't be getting any added utility for your extra expense under those conditions. But add blowing sand and salt spray, and suddenly you're stressing a cheap camera and risking failure or damage—and you're also suddenly getting your money's worth out of a weatherproof one.

Or consider autofocus speed. Two cameras might do indistinguishably well under bright light with high-contrast subjects. But what about under low light with low-contrast subject matter? One camera might still be able to grab focus while the other one can't. You've stressed the systems, and reached the performance fringe with one.

Getting to know a camera consists of a number of skills and capabilities. Learning its settings and practicing until you're able to handle it quickly, to name two. But an important one is the gradual process of exploring the boundaries of its capabilities, so you eventually learn what it can do and what it can't. Every camera and lens imaging system has limits. It's knowing where they are that's the key.

The better the camera, the broader the center, and the further you can "stress" it before you reach the fringes where degradation starts to show.

Mike

Illustration from Square America

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Featured Comment by Edie Howe: "Then there's the Holga—a camera so neurotic that picking it up stresses it out."

Posted on Thursday, 13 January 2011 at 10:38 AM in Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (25)

Thursday, 30 December 2010

A Moment of Silence

I know we've covered this to death already, but just a brief moment of silence, please—today, December 30th, is the last day that Kodachrome film will be processed anywhere in the world, ending a remarkable run that began in 1935.

Props to "God and Man," Leopold Godowsky, Jr., and Leopold Mannes, the inventors of Kodachrome. Props also to Eastman Kodak, which promised in the late '90s that Kodachrome would be available and supported for at least ten more years. Promise fulfilled. Final props: Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, for keeping the flame.

To commemorate the occasion, Dwayne's (which I'm told is experiencing extremely heavy demand for the final processing runs—the line is running around the clock), is selling a T-shirt in the classic Kodachrome box colors.

The T-shirt costs $12.95 and is available at the Dwayne's Photo website.

Note that at least two of the books in our 2010 Bestsellers list in the previous post contain pictures that were mostly shot on Kodachrome: Harald Mante's Photography Unplugged and William Albert Allard: Five Decades. Both books have outstanding reproduction quality and amply show what all the fuss is about.

Mike

P.S. Apropos of nothing, note the byline on the Times article. That's A.G. as in the son of Pinch and the grandson of Punch, now cub reporter, some day, Publisher.

UPDATE: A nice video of a segment from CBS's "Sunday Morning" about the demise of Kodachrome. About what you'd expect, but nicely done, and it's nice to see Dwayne's, and Dwayne, and the last shot Steve McCurry took on the last roll ever made—of a cemetery in Parsons. Thanks to ShadZee for this. (Warning: more Paul Simon.)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Maureen: "Although I've heard Kodachrome II was better, for my money nothing was as beautiful as a Kodachrome 25 slide with the right subject, exposure, and composition. Not garish Fujichrome colors, not grainy like Kodachrome 64 and 200, just subtle, beautiful, infinitely detailed Kodachrome 25. R.I.P."

Posted on Thursday, 30 December 2010 at 04:32 PM in Film and Darkroom, Photo-tech, Visual Culture | Permalink | Comments (40)

Friday, 17 December 2010

'Making Sharp Images' for TOP Readers

Lloyd Chambers has generously set up a page offering a discount to any TOP readers who are interested in a one- or two-year subscription to the interactive website "Making Sharp Images." The two-year deal amounts to two years for the price of one.

As Lloyd pointed out in the comments to Ctein's "Leasing Knowledge" post, the fact that you can't "own" your own copy of the material is really no different from a movie you see in a theater, a play, or a lecture you pay to hear. I respect those who have philosophical objections to the format, but it is what it is—if you're interested in the topic and ready to learn about it, it still might be well worth your while.

If you haven't seen it yet, the Table of Contents gives a good idea of what's available. As you can see, it's going to take some commitment on your part.

Lloyd has also made discounts available for his other products as well. Here again is the page for TOP readers.

Mike

Posted on Friday, 17 December 2010 at 03:53 PM in Photo-tech, Websites and links | Permalink | Comments (19)

Thursday, 02 December 2010

'Book' Review: 'Making Sharp Images' by Lloyd Chambers

By Ctein

Our friend Lloyd Chambers has a new "book" out. Note the quotation marks—this isn't a paper book, an ebook, or even a PDF file. It's a set of some 180 web pages, readable online only. It's called Making Sharp Images. The price? $44.95 for a one-year subscription.

Go here to see the complete table of contents of the book.

The book is focussed on a single topic—sharpness and lack thereof in all its manifestations. It's not a treatise on good photography, per se, although Lloyd regularly touches on that subject. This is a strength, not a weakness. Lloyd never claims that sharpness is the be-all and end-all of photography. If it's not of special interest to you, the reader, then this is not the book for you. If you find yourself wishing a photograph was sharper or wondering why one was not, then read this book.

Along the way Lloyd will happily scare the bejeezus out of pixel peepers. He describes more sources of blur than you can shake a sensor at. Some years ago, regarding darkroom printing, I observed that given the number of things I'd found that could go wrong in the darkroom it was quite amazing that any of us ever managed to successfully make a fine print. Well, when you're done reading the chapter "All About Blur," you'll feel much the same way.

Lloyd has many helpful in-camera technique hints and tips in this book. For example he devotes several web pages to using LiveView most effectively (it's not as easy as you'd think), especially with cameras that can make it a bit tricky.

The book is not limited to matters of camera technique. The chapter "Digital Sensor Technology" includes a fine grab-bag of post-exposure methods for sharpening up photographs and increasing fine detail. I think there was even one or two I didn't know—the book is that extensive

Lloyd also offers up a very practical (and dauntingly complete) set of lens tests that most readers can perform themselves. A few recommendations, like obtaining multiple samples of a lens, are beyond the means of most lens testers, self included, but most of the tests do not demand unreasonable resources or skills.

Do I have any quibbles? Of course; there will always be quibbles. I think Lloyd makes a bit too big of a deal about diffraction and achieving pixel-level resolution, although he's technically accurate. This is the difference between a judgement call and facts. We agree on the facts, but not on the judgement. You get to decide for yourself.

I did find one repeated error: "Depth of field doubles every two stops, so stopping down from ƒ/4 to ƒ/8 doubles the depth of field." I think this is simply a miswrite—depth of focus increases in direct proportion to the f-number. Depth of field varies in a much more complicated way.

My biggest quibble is with the pricing structure. $44.95 is not unreasonable for a book of this quality and scope. But once I buy a paper book, I can read it forever. If I understand Lloyd's approach, after a year this web book becomes inaccessible to the buyer unless they fork over additional money (annual renewals are $14.95). I recognize that Lloyd is trying to establish an analogue to people buying new editions of a physical book, but I think it's a bad fit. As an author I certainly hope that people will buy new editions of my books when they're published, but no one is obligated to do so or else suffer losing access to the older edition they did buy.

In summary, though, highly recommended. Unequivocally so, if Lloyd can revamp the price structure.

Ctein

Note: Beginning next week, Ctein's weekly column will appear on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays. If you tune in looking for it on Thursday, as usual, you might have to dig back in the stack a bit. —Ed.

Posted on Thursday, 02 December 2010 at 10:10 AM in Books, Ctein, Photo-tech | Permalink | Comments (43)

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