A number of people have asked me in the last few weeks which point and shoot camera they should buy for Christmas and the festive season.

I have to apologise for not being very active on the blog over the last few months, as I’m on an assignment in China, which has been using up most of my time.

During this time I have had a number of people ask for advice on which point and shoot camera they should buy for Christmas or during the festive season.

I have admit I’m a Canon fan, and like to use the Canon PowerShot G12 as a carry around camera.

A new G series camera has been released around the end of October for the past few years, so I had advised several people to hold out for the new Canon G13.

The G series camera is normally released with the Powershot S series camera, which typically has the same sensor and similar performance characteristics.

The S100 upgrade to the hugely popular S95 was released on schedule with a new 12 MP sensor (up from 10MP) and full 1080p HD video (the S95 had 720p HD video).

The G13 remains absent, so I went back in the the news and noticed a couple of things:-

• Nikon released its equivalent camera upgrade from the Coolpix P7000 to the P7100 in August (see the DP Review). Nikon kept the sensor size at 10 Mp and video at 720p. This means Canon has no competition pressure to release a new camera, allowing them to further deplete the existing stock.
• There have been the natural disasters in Japan and Thailand which have affected the Canon manufacturing chain.
• The guys over at Canon Rumours seem to think the G13 will not be replaced until March or April 2012 at the earliest. (Canon has been dragging out the 5D Mark 2 for quite some time with an upgrade overdue, so I expect they are planning to release the 5D Mark 3 and G13 at one of the big electronics shows in the New Year.

Given the information above, and my lack of attention to recent camera news, I came across the latest Photoshelter blog post  13 Digital Point-and-Shoot Cameras Used by the Pros ,which I thought would be handy for people when accessing which camera to buy for Christmas.

I am a fan and regular user of Adobe software products, and was looking to upgrade some of my Adobe software suites from CS4 versions. However, after a bit of research on the Adobe US and Australia web stores, I have been left with a bitter taste in my mouth.

e.g Comparing the Adobe US and Adobe Australia web stores and specifying my upgrade options, the pricing I was given is:-

• Captivate upgrade = $319US or $487AU
• eLearning Suite upgrade = $644US or $988AU
• Photoshop Extended upgrade = $349US or $532AU
• Photoshop Design Premium upgrade = $649US or $987AU

The current exchange rate is $1.06US=$1AU, and there is no sales tax on internet purchases in Australia.

My past products have been brought through the Australia web store, so the Adobe website forces me to purchase using this option at the much  higher price.

Even if you eventually give in to the extortion and purchase the product in the Australia webstore, you get a message on the screen “You will receive an email within the next US business day confirming the status of your order”.

There is absolutely no reason for the extravagant pricing difference for downloaded products.

Due to my disgust at the situation, I have chosen to only update the one program absolutely required, so Adobe has missed out on more of my dollars for at least a couple of years.

Adobe needs to wake up to themselves in the globalised economy and sort this problem which is harming their business. Internationally standardised pricing will ultimately mean more people buying more products.

Carl Chapman

People have a lot on their mind these days, stressed out with the global financial situation, rise in the cost of living,  the climate crisis, and much more.

However in many cases this stress causes problems to appear larger than what they actually are.

Like many other companies in Australia, business has been slow this year, and recent statistics show the retail industry is at its lowest point in the last 60 years. As I try to get my head around the situation and come up with solutions, issues can appear all encompassing, but the life occasionally has a way of stepping in and bringing things back into perspective.

I was walking down the street today and was approached by an older gentlemen, who explained he was trying to find his hotel room. I was a little perplexed as he produced a small map of the local resort he was staying in, but he had no information on where the resort was, the resort name or the address.

After a few minutes of investigating the map I thought I recognised the resort layout. I suspected all might not be well, so instead of just giving him directions, I walked with him to the resort several blocks down the street.

As we walked he told me how he used to have a prestigious job working in cartography (e.g maps) and he was visiting from out of town.

When we got to the property, I found the layout matched the map, but he did not recognise it, or know where his room was. I took him to reception, and was told he had been missing for several hours.

Apparently he had earlier gone to reception from his room to get a key to change rooms, and somehow ended up three blocks down the street.

With the gentleman having directions problems, I walked him up to his unit where he was reunited with his wife.

I am not sure if he suffered from a form of dementia or if there was some other problem, but while walking back up the street, I reflected on how fragile life is, and how my apparent problems were so small compared to others around me.

Today’s event was compounded by a blog post I read yesterday by Sir Richard Branson titled Campaign for organ donation opt-out. He related how a young girl who needed an organ transplant stopped him in the street recently, and asked if he could help campaign for improving the organ donation system.

There are a lot of very sick people round the world in need of transplants, but in many countries there is either no system in place, or it’s badly managed. In Australia we have an opt-in donor register, but the problem is that even if you are registered (which many people are not), organs will not be donated without a family approval. An opt-out system would be better, but all the other bureaucracy also needs to be removed.

My heart goes out to families battling with members with psychological or physical disabilities, and those with children who are sick or in need of transplants.

When I see people in these situations, it really acts as a perspective correction and makes all my issues look so small.

Sometimes you just have to stand back from things, take a breath, stay positive, and take time to smell the roses.

 Carl Chapman

Noise plays a big part in underwater photography. Available light levels are lower underwater,with less available the deeper you go. Knowing the noise performance of your camera allows you to push the ISO and get maximum performance.

I started looking at noise in the Canon Powershot series of cameras in my previous post Noise Comparison – Canon Powershot G11 vs G10.

There has been some recent talk on the web about “native ISO”, where the lower ISO of a camera is not necessarily the best for noise performance due to in-camera amplification methods. I have always thought the underwater photos taken with my Canon G12 at ISO160 were better than ISO80 or ISO100, and thought this might have been the effect of native ISO.

After reading the article The Truth about Digital ISO in Digital PhotoPro magazine, I decided to test my theory.

I setup the camera in manual mode, with a shutter speed of 1/60 sec, aperture of f2.8, and fixed white balance. A fixed white balance is required so the camera does not try and change the colour tints of the high ISO noise, giving you an incorrect result.

I placed a filter barrel and cap over the lens to block out all light, and shot a sequence of RAW images at different ISO settings from 80 to 3200.

File Size

The first interesting thing I noticed was the size of the RAW files.

The size of the file increased as the ISO increased with more sensor noise. The ISO3200 RAW file is nearly twice the size of the ISO80 file.

Plotting the files sizes on a graph we see that they start to increase significantly after ISO 320. (Note:- the bottom scale of this graph is non-linear, and if plotted linearly, the graph approximates a straight line, however the ISO320 turning point is still visible.)

The other interesting aspects of this data are:-

• There is no dip in the file size to indicate any intermediate ISO is better than any adjacent setting.
• Files shot with a shutter speed of 1 sec are larger in size than those shot at the same ISO and 1/60 sec. This is expected as the longer the sensor is sampling, the more noise will be produced.

Graphical Noise

Opening the files in photoshop and visually comparing them with no change to the exposure, noise is only evident from ISO640 and above.

Exposure = 0EV. Click the image to expand.

To make the noise more visible, the files were reprocessed with +4 exposure in Adobe Camera RAW. All other setting where left unchanged.

Exposure = +4EV. Click the image to expand.

The noise can now be easily seen. Interestingly the noise performance is quite good up until ISO320, which approximates the file size graph above. After ISO320 the noise deterioration becomes more significant.

Conclusion

From both the file size data, and visual inspection of the sensor noise on a Canon Powershot G12, the best noise performance is found between ISO80 and IS320. To allow some margin, I would be comfortable using this camera up to ISO250 in my underwater photography.

With the huge improvement in noise correction in the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, this is not as big an issue as in the past, and the camera ISO could be pushed higher if needed.

There is no evidence of “native ISO’ effects due to in-camera amplification methods.

Carl Chapman

I have traditionally used utilities such as Tineye to assist in determining where my images are being used. They do an excellent job of identifying images or portions of an image, but they have not indexed a lot of my photos, despite have a business relationship with Photoshelter who host my image archive.

Google recently released a new image search function which is almost the opposite of Tineye, having indexed a larger percentage of my images,  but their partial image recognition is lacking …. no doubt they have people working on improving this.

Check out these links to read more on Google Image search:-

• Google Announces New Image Search – APhotoEditor
• Google adds Search by Image – David Sanger
• Google’s new Search By Image: TinEye on Steroids! – Fair Trade Photographer

To me as a photographer, the perfect match would be if Google purchased Tineye and combined the technologies… major indexing clout, combined with powerful image recognition.

I decided to take the Google image search function for a spin and see what it could do.

One of  the results that struck me most, was a image of the inside of a computer portable hard disk drive posted to Flickr less than one month ago . This image has a Rights Managed (RM) copyright license which has special conditions for offering exclusivity of use, and I know from my records that it has not sold from any of my stock photography sites.

Doing a Google search, I see my image appears on a number of other sites. Visiting each site, I was able to identify the images came from my my Flickr account, as I use slightly different copyright watermarks on each site that I post images.

This was very concerning to me. I only post selected images on Flickr, all with a “Rights Reserved” designation, and a “Do not copy” warning notice. I also have Sharing functions and access to original images disabled in the Flickr Privacy & Permission menu.

I sent an email off to the friendly people at Flickr support, and received the following reply:-

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Flickr Customer Care.

Before I go into addressing your concern, I’d like to first apologize for the delay in my responding to your inquiry. We are committed to answering your questions as quickly and accurately as possible. However, we are currently receiving unusually high volumes which caused the delayed response.

I understand that you have a concern with your photos that are showing on the other website like XYZ (name changed to protect the innocent… Carl), even though it was set as All Rights Reserve and disabled the sharing options. Allow me to provide the information you need.

There are a few ways that your photo might be displayed outside of Flickr, but still hosted here. Some of the ways include:

* Blogs

* Tag search applications

* Web-based games (often fun memory based programs)

* Screen savers (displaying most recent uploads or photos from Explore, etc.)

* Desktop photo display widgets (like Apple’s Dashboard or Yahoo! Widgets)

Through the Flickr API, it is possible to construct such websites and applications that query Flickr’s publicly available photos via tags or user ID and build dynamic content that displays photos in interesting ways. If they are properly using the Flickr API and abiding by the requirements, the photo as seen on the page will link back to the photo page as it is found in your photostream, and it will be for non-commercial use. The actual image itself is not hosted on that site, but the display will probably look different than what you are used to.

If you would rather your photos did not show on these sites, you can opt-out here:

http://flickr.com/account/prefs/apioptout

Your photos will still be searchable on Flickr.com, and you will still be able to use third-party sites for your own stream (ex., our printing partners).

Separate from the API Opt-out, we offer the opportunity for users to hide the “Blog This” button above your images:

http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/blogging/

This will prevent people from using Flickr’s integrated blogging feature found above a photo though it is not a guarantee that your photo will not be blogged manually.

Note: There are a few instances where your image may be hosted on Flickr, but someone has just linked to the static image element and not through to your photostream itself. This is against the Flickr Community Guidelines. If you have questions about that, feel free to drop us a note via Help by Email:

http://www.flickr.com/help/website/#7

Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Regards,

Flickr Customer Care

Now I maybe missing something, but I have never seen the API opt-out setting on any of my account menus…. this should be readily available to the account holder.

After contacting the offending sites, I found a couple of people used third party programs utilising the Flickr API to download images for their sites and blogs. Some applications like Zemanta do a good job and filter images by license before providing content to their users, and also embed special code to show their application was used. However, other applications are unfortunately much less detailed or compliant in the design of their software.

Some offending sites appear to have been subscribed to auto-posting software (such as Simplespeed ) which automatically reposts web page  content and images to other sites, replicating the unlicensed image around the web.

… what a nightmare for photographers.

Conclusion

I spent hours chasing down the relevant site owners, and most were very good about removing the unlicensed images.

However, the rate at which images seem to be able to propagate around the web without appropriate licensing is mind boggling and getting very scary. As a photographer it’s getting more difficult to control the licensing I can offer my clients, while maintaining a presence in the social media sphere.

From several past blog posts and podcasts, I know some elite photographers such as Trey Ratcliff (Stuck in Customs) are happy for their images to be shared around the web to increase visability, and I can understand that point of view.

For now I have opted-out of the Flickr API, and disabled the “Blog this feature” while I internally debate my options. I will continue to operate my Flickr account, as it has been a source of some excellent business contact referrals, but if my lunch continues to be given away, I may consider shutting it down.

Guess the key lesson is to be very careful with your settings when promoting your images through social media platforms, and watermark all your images.

I’m interested to hear others experiences and opinions.

Carl Chapman

A frequently visited dive spot on Agincourt Reef has a large coral head which is home to several Diagonal-banded Sweetlip fish, and whenever possible I try to spend some time getting shots of them.

Diagonal-banded Sweetlips fish (Plectorhinchus lineatus)

With a number of different sweetlip species on the reef, I find myself drawn to this particular one for their colour.

As juveniles they have a completely different colour and pattern. As adults they are a very social fish, usually seen in pairs or groups.

Growing up to 50 cm in length, this species occurs in the eastern Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. In Australia it is found on offshore islands of north-western Western Australia and on the northern Great Barrier Reef through to southern Queensland.

The visability was a little low at the dive site on the day, but the top of the coral head was in 5m of water, which allowed a reasonable amount of illumination. It was then a matter of positioning myself for the best light.

The sweetlips are weary of divers, but by staying a comfortable distance from them, they will remain in the area allowing you to get reasonable photos and video.

The fish on the left with its mouth open is getting cleaned by a small wrasse, which can be seen in video 1 below.

Diagonal banded Sweetlips fish video 1 (Plectorhinchus lineatus)
Run time: 35 sec
View on Vimeo, Youtube
Format: 1280 x720 (720p HD)
Purchase Options: Royalty Free (RF)

Diagonal banded Sweetlips fish video 2 (Plectorhinchus lineatus)
Run time: 12 sec
View on Vimeo, Youtube
Format: 1280 x720 (720p HD)
Purchase Options: Royalty Free (RF)

These photos and video were shot underwater as part of my Great Barrier Reef Images project while diving on Quicksilver’s Silversonic in Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia.

Carl Chapman

With the increasing use of laptop computers around the globe, the external portable hard disk drive has become a popular computer hardware addition for system backup and expanding data storage.

Inside of a computer portable hard disk drive

I have 4 portable hard disk drives for backing up my computer system. Recently I dropped one of these devices on a hard floor and it has unfortunately never worked since ….  hence the reason for having multiple backups.

The broken drive had been sitting around the office, and with a typical “plastic block” outer form factor, I decided to pull it apart and try producing some different photographs.

Initially I started taking plain photos on a white background, but then experimented with modifying the lighting.

I found that using flash and partially blocking the light path created a interesting shadow transition across the face of the disk spindle.

Using various focal lengths, viewing angles and orientations, I achieved the additional following images:-

Another important consideration in taking these types of images is the depth of field, or the range of focus. The camera is quite close to the subject, which means that even with a small aperture, only part of the image is in focus. You have to carefully choose the area you want in focus, and the areas that will still look interesting when out of focus.

I chose to focus on the arm and mounting structure near the front, while throwing the disk out of focus. An interesting optical illusion occurs when the shadow crosses the centre of the spindle, with the disk surfacing appearing to be sharper to the eye, however a closer inspection shows no difference …. I guess you could call this sharpening with contrast.

Carl Chapman

 View more Technology Images or  Computer Photos .

Over $30,000 in prizes to be won thanks to the incredible sponsors! Join the celebration of underwater image-making.

The competition offers categories to appeal to all underwater photographers: Wide Angle Nature, Macro, Diver in Harmony with the Reef, Young Photographer, Compact Camera and Creative. An additional award will be given for the image judged ‘Best in show’. Three judges will oversee the competition: Bob Halstead, Jurgen Freund and Xanthe Rivett. Finalists will be screened at the Cairns Underwater Film Festival on the 13th August 2011 and winners announced on the night.

The Cairns Underwater Film Festival is now in its 5th year and is growing in popularity. This year the festival is being run by a team of passionate volunteers and will be screening winners of the 37th World Festival of Underwater Films direct from Marseille, France. The Cairns Underwater Film Festival will delight those who love to explore the underwater world. We are bringing a selection of awarded films from various nations and will also showcase local talent.

All profits from the photo competition and film festival will be donated back to the community through selected volunteer organisations, conservation groups and charities.

Cairns is the main gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea, and the Cairns Underwater Film Festival and Photo Competition is a celebration of the beautiful underwater world.

For more information visit:

• www.cairnsunderwaterfilmfestival.com
• www.facebook.com/CUFFAustralia
• twitter.com/CUFFAustralia