Kamera Kevin's Blog

Mao Post for Ping

2010-05-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted anything. I've been spending most of my time in the startup and therefore haven't done much personal photography latelyl. I shot these long long long time ago for my friend Ping and forgot to post on the blog. To my surprise many people (including Ping) likes the following picture the most:

These are what I informally called the "Mao Style" picture. Why? Because of this genre that we're familiar with (happy people looking up with hope). In fact you can probably stick this style into any government propaganda and it'll just look as fitting:

FYI some of the original shots are here

Autofocus without mechanical movements?

2010-02-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

Focusing a lens requires moving the lens back and forth. That's the way it has been for over 100 years. This is even true with Nikon's SWM (silent wave motor) and Canon's USM (ultrasonic motor), where the mechanism for moving the lens back-and-forth is quiet.

Today I just stumbled on the following news that a company raised $30 million dollars to create cameras that can autofocus without mechanical movements! You apply voltage to a lens that changes the refractive index. WHOA!!!!!! I've heard lenses that can change opacity by applying voltage, but changing refractive index is a first for me. Imagine, if this is possible on a teeny-weeny scaled lens, who knows what the future of big lens technology will be like in another 100 years? In the 22nd century, we'll probably look back to 2010 and laugh at the $8000.00 super 600mm f/2.8L/G FX SWM/USM auto focus lens that weighs 999 tons.

Hyperfocal Distance > $5500 camera

2010-02-01T22:31:00.001-08:00

What's the solution to taking consistently sharp pictures in extremely challenging conditions, such as a bunch of people dancing in extreme darkness? You know that a $100 point and shoot just won't do the job because the high ISO setting on cheap $100 camera is way too noisy, and the auto focus on a little camera is horrible. Even a $500 SLR camera won't do justice. Heck, a $1000 SLR used improperly won't do it either. On the other hand, a top of the line $5500 camera body with 1000000 computerized AI auto focus and expensive high quality $1000 prime lens and extreme high ISO would work reasonably well. This is a viable solution. It's also a very expensive one too.

You don't really need a $5000 body and a $1000 camera lens. You just need to understand the limitations of your camera equipments. First of all, you don't need a zillion computerized AI auto focus like the ones on Nikon D3s ($5500) or Canon 1Ds mark IV ($5800). You don't need auto focus, period! People in the really manual film days took perfectly good pictures without auto focus. Their secrets? 1) super wide angle lens and 2) knowing what "hyperfocal distance" is.

There are many complex definitions to hyperfocal distance. Here is my simplified, Cliffs Notes version: by turning focus distance to a pre-known constant "hyperfocal distance" and constant aperture, all objects between a known distance to infinity will be in focus. For example, I know that on my APS-C SLR fitted with a 10mm lens, setting the distance to 3 feet (its hyperfocal distance) at f/5.6 means that all objects between 2 feet and infinity will be in focus, period. Combine this with TTL flash, then I simply make sure there is at least 2 feet between the camera and things in front of it, and shoot away. I don't even have to think, I just shoot away. It's that easy. Basically, I'm relying on the fact that 1) wide angle lenses have much deeper depth of field and 2) knowing what my hyperfocal distance and minimum focus distance is.

You can find out what your hyperfocal distance is by experimentation, by looking at tick marks on your lens, or by manually calculating it. It's more accurate to calculate it, so here are some links about this topic:

http://www.dofmaster.com/hyperfocal.html (what is hyperfocal distance)

http://www.dofmaster.com/equations.html (calculating hyperfocal distance)

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html (calculator that gives you hyperfocal and min distance)

Knowing about hyperfocal distance, everyone can take consistently sharp night pictures of moving objects using low end SLRs, TTL flash, and high quality wide angle lenses for a fraction of the cost. Sorry Canon/Nikon, I'm not buying your $5000+ camera with the latest and greatest computer + electronics gadgetry. Technology is overrated. Knowledge is cheaper.

Annie and David's Wedding

2010-01-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

Seriously behind on processing photos... CONGRATS :) Here is a preview. The whole set will be ready soon. You can click on the images to get a bigger resolution (to get full resolution, email me). The first one is HUGE.

Wedding costs

2010-01-11T10:51:00.001-08:00

Not related to photography but I thought this was kind of interesting: http://bridepop.com/everything-else/weddings-by-the-numbers-infograph/

Basically, if you want to have a cheap wedding, go to Las Vegas or Los Angeles. I guess it kind of sucks to be a wedding vendor in these areas because of low cost margins. If on the other hand you're a wedding vendor, San Francisco or San Jose may be a cash cow! In fact, people in Northern Cal pay nearly TWICE as much for their weddings as people in Southern Cal. What's up with that? Is it because of all these spoiled rich dot-comers that have too much money to waste? Or is it the fact that there are simply too many wannabe photographers in the Los Angeles area who aspire to shoot movie stars and such? I don't know. I can only guess from the numbers. Anyways, of the total cost of weddings, about 23% of the entire budget is allocated for photography/videography. Whoa!!! That's a whopping $3691 spent on video/photos per wedding! Wow.

2010 Asian Engagement Shoot aka 婚纱藝術攝影

2010-01-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

I got tons of engagement shoot pictures from projects that Ivan and I have been working on. What do I do with these pictures? I style them. There are many ways to style pictures. For example, many westernized clients prefer the photojournalistic style. That is, they like it raw, unscripted, unedited, in the moment, and usually in black and white. Western style is no styling, very little post processing (我不是在開玩笑). However in Asian cultures (especially in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc), most clients prefer the surreal look. This is why Asian weddings always split up the photo sessions into two separate days-- 1) the engagement shoot aka 婚纱摄影 usually shot at least a month in advance, with professional makeup, hair styling, and 3-5 dress styles (白纱, 古裝/旗袍, 禮服) shot in a professional studio for an entire day and 2) regular on-the-day wedding shots. Look, you can't go to Taiwan or China and not do 婚纱摄影, because many Asian photographers consider the on-the-day pictures to be random, uncontrollable, sloppy work. 他們說老美拍照馬馬虎虎的 :) Personally, 我覺得老美太貴了!!! LOL哈哈哈 !!! 例如一本書他們要收3倍,說很好聽,但是印刷仍然在大陸!

Because LA clients in San Gabriel are almost all Asian, I toned these in the popular style that appeals to Asian customers. Color. Contrast. Surreal. Ultimately, art is subjective. The photojournalistic purists may call the Asian style "cheezy" or "trying too hard." But if this is the style that paying clients want, then that is the style that speaks to them! So call this style whatever you want to call it. If you're not buying, then one cares what you think :)

I got a bunch more pictures on my hard drive, but I'm too busy to process them at the moment. I'll probably see you guys next month. So stay tuned!

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! This is the first post of 2010. It was a lot of fun.

Catching up: November and December

2009-12-27T23:59:00.000-08:00

I have a huge backlog of things that I haven't had a chance to post here. Highlights: I had a chance to meet up with my buddies from junior high who came all the way down to the LA area and that's pretty cool.

I met up with Richard on the Thanksgiving break. I actually ate MEAT!!! Ribs, at Richard's place. I know this sounds weird, but it was such an amazing experience. Just a few week before I was still eating porridge and soft food. I've been sick pretty from severe ulcer almost 1/2 of the year and been on one medication after another and couldn't even eat regular food, like burgers, pizza, boba tea, etc. I've lost almost 10 pounds this year, and I was already a chopstick before I got ill. Well, late November I started getting better... and at Richard's place I ate ribs!!!!!!!! It's amazing how little things can make you happy. Anyways, they say a picture is worth a thousand words so without boring you, here are some pics:

I met up with Eric during the Christmas break. Baby Evan was only a few months old! It was so great sitting down with everyone, eat food that normal people eat, and chit chat and catch up. That means... I didn't really take as many pictures, but it's alright. Sometimes I prefer to relax and be a civilian than to be a photographer.

Humor: pet photography

2009-12-24T22:19:00.000-08:00

From http://graphjam.com/2009/12/22/funny-graphs-pet-photography/

Color IQ: Color test your eyes

2009-11-11T00:31:00.000-08:00

A lot of people ask me how to do color balancing. How much of it is subjective/objective? What's the best approach? Is there a system to it, or is it all about art?

This is a complex subject that I have an easy, fast, and systematic way of dealing with it. A professional photographer doesn't need to have a perfect sense of what white color should be. He/she simply needs to balance the color such that there is a good separation of non-white colors and white colors. In today's world, color balancing is done in several ways. One camp of school is to do it in-camera and shoot JPG and set the WB setting perfectly the first time. This leaves no room for error because a wrong color balance setting on the camera can mean un-recoverable color tones. The other camp of school is to shoot in RAW and post-process the RAW. Post processing is easy. If a picture has bits of perfect white/gray color, he/she can tell the program what that white/gray tone is, and thus set the entire picture into perfect tones. However, not all white and gray-looking surfaces are of balanced colors. Most likely, all surfaces have a hint of blue/yellow, or variation with hue in them. In addition, certain lighting conditions simply do not produce a balanced lighting (CFL, sodium light), in which case it's best to turn the photograph into black and white.

In many cases, one needs to use his/her eyes to make the final judgement. This requires 1) having good sets of eyes and 2) color balanced monitors (most Macs are pretty good). Without good eyes, a perfect monitor is useless. Likewise, the reverse is true.

To date, I only found one good site that tests your eye's ability to distinguish color. It is XRite http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

Give it a try! It's pretty fun. This is what you see when you start:

This is what you want to end up with when you're done:

You get a score at the end.

Have fun!

Now about the subjective part. One can always tone a picture to look a certain way. After color balancing, it is easy to add a bit more yellow (to look more vintage, to give more warmth at night, etc), or a little bit of blue (to give a little bit of that cold look). What I do personally is to always color balance first, THEN tone the picture. Reverse the order and you'll get into a lot of weird results and inconsistency. In summary, do the followings in this order:

1) Get good monitors, and calibrate it using tools like Spyder 3, etc.

2) Verify that you have a decent sense of color by going to the XRite site

3) White balance your pictures

4) Tone if necessary

Canon vs. Nikon Marketing Strategies

2009-10-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this last year but somehow didn't get a chance to finish writing it, thus please back-date this blog to 2008.

Canon and Nikon have been fighting in the SLR and DSLR market for several decades. From the 60s to mid 80s, Nikon dominated the professional film SLR market share. When Canon came out with better technologies such as auto focus and other electronics automation after the mid 80s, many pros (especially those who shoot sports) switched to the Canon EF-mount system. For the next few decades, Canon SLR (and lately DSLR) dominated both the pro and consumer SLR market. Today the competition is just starting to heat up. Every few months, both companies come out with something better and/or lower priced than the other brand. Both companies get a bulk of their revenue *not* from their professional grade camera equipment, but with a flood of plastic, cheaply made consumer grade equipments (sub $500, sub $750, and sub $1000 SLR cameras and cheap kit lenses).

The consumer grade segment of the market is most vital to both companies because they account for a bulk of their revenue and thus is their bread and butter. One way to gauge the competition is to go to a store. I go to Costco frequently and chuckle whenever I see both Canon and Nikon DSLR boxes side by side. As of late 2008, the two consumer grade cameras that Costco sells are the Canon XSi and D60. While both try to compete for similar price range, looking at the boxes, one may feel that they're actually aiming for different types of consumers!

Below is a 2008 Canon XSi picture I took using a Canon SD740 point-and-shoot camera at Costco. The box shows a frozen action of a boy catching a football. Guys love sports. Guys love frozen action, and zoom. There's something about BIG ZOOM, having a big zoom is like having a nice sportscar with XXX horsepower and YYY torque. Guys want the biggest plasma/LCD TV. Fastest cars. Most megahertz computers. Things of that sort. This Canon Rebel is a guy's camera. Just look at the specs, it's sexy!

Below is the exact same item as above but has a different packaging, in 2009. Look at the fancy jargons like "Optical Image Stabilizer Double Zoom Lens Kit", and below, a bunch of fancy stuff like "12.2 MEGAPIXELS", "Digic III", "3 inch LCD", "3.5 Frames per second", "EOS", "Picture Style". Wow! If I were a guy who loves to look at specifications all day, I'd get a Canon Rebel because it's obviously better on a spec-by-spec comparisons.

Let's now look at the Nikon D60. You see a woman with a bunch of smaller images on the side (baby smiling, flower, kids, etc). There's no sports. There's no emphasis on frozen action. There is no fancy jargons to woe you. There IS however lots of emphasis on people... portraits... softness... prettiness... connection to people. No jargon, just "FAST, FUN, & EASY." Nikon's strategy is about connecting to people in the simplest possible way.

Let's look at another Nikon, the D5000 (2009). Unlike Canon that screams technical jargons and specifications, Nikon box simply says "Smart, Sharp, Simply Brilliant." Again the emphasis is on people. Happy people, with happy emotions.

Let's look at yet another Nikon, the D3000. Similarly, it's got happy people. Kids. The camera captured the moment. "Incredible pictures, incredibly easy."

So what's going on? Canon's strategy is to use what they're traditionally good at: sports and specs. Do you remember the late 1980s when Canon EOS Rebel flooded TV with their ads blitz? "It's so easy to use, amateurs can capture Andre Agassi like a pro!" Canon loves to show pictures of sports, frozen in time. In addition, Canon uses higher specifications (higher megapixel, more frames per second, higher processor name, etc) to lure certain types of buyers-- the Specification Peepers. Boys. Men. Guys. People who generally want the highest megapixels, biggest LCDs, most horsepower, most torque, biggest lens, biggest of everything. Canon is the ultimate boy's toy, because boys can brag to each other that they have a biggest spec'ed camera, the Canon. You know,"my cannon/piano/whatever is at least 3 inches longer and thicker than yours so I'm a more dominant male", that sort of thing. Spec for spec, Canon will have more features, for the same price or lower. Canon [on paper] is the most incredible machine on earth. Not surprisingly, Canon is an engineering company where engineers design and optimize the camera by spec, and they will out-spec any competitor, period.

What does that leave Nikon with? Nikon's strategy isn't to use specification to sell. Nikon doesn't need to compete on specs, because not all specs are relevant to the discerned buyer. For example, higher megapixels doesn't mean better image quality (in fact, more megapixel means more noise at night). There are other things to consider, like contrast and color rendition that Nikon excels at. For example (on similar settings), Nikon tends have warmer and more accurate auto white balancing hence psychologically more eye pleasing portraitures (this is all according to DXO Mark). In addition, Nikon tends to have lower megapixels but better night time capability (higher ISO with lower noise), whereas Canon tends to have higher megapixels (great during day time) but less night time capability (higher ISO with higher noise). Of course, color/contrast/night pictures are difficult to sell so instead of trying to describe it as specs, Nikon marketing decides to simply put portraiture of people on their boxes hoping people could just see how great their cameras are. There are other intangible items that Nikon hopes discerned users can feel such as better built quality (vs. the cheaper plastic housing of Rebels); Nikon is traditionally known to be more rugged and this has been true since the 60s when more journalist used Nikons to take pictures of Korean and Vietnam war than any other brands, and that more Nikons went to space & NASA than any other brand. They are also known to have excellent usability, and usability consistency in their product lines (a consumer D40's UI isn't too different than that of the professional D700).

None of the differences should be a surprise. The two camera brands have had very different philosophies since the 50s and 60s. Canon embraces the latest and greatest technologies while mass producing them (at the cost of durability) whereas Nikon is conservative and will only embrace new technology when absolutely necessary. Also, they have had very different philosophies in what types of images their cameras should capture. In the old days for example, Canon traditionally values more resolution (at mid-aperture), whereas Nikon values more contrast at wide-open. Below is an illustration of a 1950's pictures (directly from Dante Stella's article on resolution vs. contrast trade-offs in lens design, http://www.dantestella.com/technical/nikoleic.html):

On the left is Canon, which gives great resolution at mid-aperture. On the other hand, to the right is Nikon which gives great contrast wide-open. There is no "wrong" choice in trade-offs, just preferences. Photographers shooting sports or landscape is likely to opt for the company that values great resolution (higher MTF 30 lp/mm and higher megapixels on the Canon), and photographers shooting portraits and/or at night is likely to opt for the company that values contrast (higher MTF 10 lp/mm and better ISO on the Nikon).

Today, the differences in contrast and resolution between the two companies is no longer a big factors in choosing the "right brands". Both companies employ engineering techniques to yield some of the best products that we have seen to date, and both companies make lenses that yield very similar resolution and contrasts. Today, what makes them different is that Canon is consistently making higher megapixel cameras (21MP) that looks amazing during day time and decent at night, whereas Nikon is consistently making lower megapixel cameras (12.1MPP) that looks decent during day but superb at night. Like the old days, Canon still uses more plastic parts today to save costs and pass the savings to consumers (e.g. 5Dmk2, T1i) whereas Nikon has slightly better built quality to endure harsher conditions better (e.g. D700, D90) but cost more.

In short both companies embrace very different philosophies and employ different engineering techniques and both create great products. Sometimes there is no right camera to use for every single possible situation. For certain situations, Canon can be marginally better than Nikon, and vice versa. I for one prefer Canon and its superior pro-telephoto lens selections for events such as sports/bird shooting, but at other times I prefer Nikon for their Creative Lighting System for shooting portraitures, product shots, and night time.

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Links to other sites:
Trade-offs in lens engineering:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-mtf.shtml

Contrast vs. resolution philosophies of Leica, Contax, Canon, and Nikon:
http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/index-frameset.html?focusing.html~mainFrame

Janice and Jeff's Wedding

2009-10-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Pam and I had the pleasure of shooting at Janice and Jeff's wedding. It was a very lovely wedding and we had a blast both as guests as well as photographers. Speaking of photographers, I've never seen so many photographers AND videographers at a wedding in my entire life! I can only imagine that the coverage was superb. Anyways, without elaborating further, please enjoy these pictures that Pam and I took! By the way some of the pictures below are CLICKABLE as easter eggs to bigger resolution pictures. Have fun!

That's it for now.! If you need photographers or need recommendations on photographers (I know a lot of them) you can email me. My contact is posted on www.KameraKevin.com. -Kevin and Pam

Catch light in models

2009-10-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

I was curious one day and went to the women's hair coloring section in Walgreens and snapped a few pictures with my wife's Canon SD750 (it is such an amazing camera!):

No, I didn't walk in with an SLR. I find that the moment I put my eyes through a camera's view-finder, I get kicked out 90% of the time whenever I'm on a private property for one reason or another. SLRs are huge, cumbersome, and impractical to use most of the time.

I organized the snapshots below. Take a careful look at them. Photographically speaking, what do these pictures have in common? Which pictures do you like/dislike and/or catch your eyes? Try to answer these questions as you're looking through these pictures:

Photographically speaking, these pictures have the followings in common:

1) All of them used diffusers (bounce, softbox, octobox, or umbrella) to cast gentle lighting on the face, to either carve and accentuate some parts of the face, or to flatten the shape of some parts the face.

2) All the eyes are in sharp focus. They say the eye is the window to a person's soul, and when the eyes are in focus, the entire picture is in focus [psychologically speaking].

3) Almost all have at least 1 main catch light in the eyes, placed between 1 o'clock and 11 o'clock position-- aka your very standard text book studio shot. Wikipedia says "Catchlight is a photography term used to describe either the specular highlight in a subject's eye from a light source, or the light source itself. They are also referred to as eye lights or Obies, the latter a reference to Merle Oberon, who was frequently lit using this technique. A catch light may be an artifact of the lighting method, or have been purposely engineered to add a glint or "spark" to a subject's eye during photography. This technique is useful in both still and motion picture photography. Adding a catch light can help draw attention to the subject's eyes, which may otherwise get lost among other elements in the scene."

4) All the catch light are using interior artificial lighting, be it an umbrella, softbox, octobox, or some type of studio diffuser. Four models on the left column used a single softbox (square). A softbox looks like the following:

In fact, if you look at the eyes carefully where there is a white bright square in their eyes, you'll also see a little bit of a ball shaped thing below the white square. That is actually a photographer's head! This is pretty common in studio settings where you want the softbox slightly on top of the model, and the photographer needs to get in front of the softbox to make the shot.

The rest of the pictures use either octobox or umbrellas. An octobox looks like the followings:

Portable studio umbrellas look like the following (there's also a bounce panel to the right):

When a human being looks at a portrait, he/she has an intuition what looks good or not. But photographers can go one step further and decompose and analyze at how the portrait is shot. In the case of portraits, pictures that have catch light have a higher tendency to catches the viewers' attention.

There is one picture that does not place the main catch light between the 1 o'clock and 11 o'clock position. That's the bottom right model where the catch light is actually below and to the right of the model's pupil. This gives her a little bit of a mysterious look (along with a darker broad lighting position to cast more shadows on her left cheek, to make her look even more mysterious than the other models).

Going back to the model pictures, which models catch your eyes? What lighting techniques are used in those pictures that you like? Do you prefer a single source catch light, or multiple light source catch light? Do you prefer the look of a softbox (looks more like a window), or do you prefect the octobox/umbrella look?

* Men's hair dye products do not emphasize the eye as much. The catch light is typically smaller because the photographer usually moves the lighting a bit farther. Farther lighting source gives a bit more harsh feel to the face (opposite of diffusing light for women), which is appropriate if you want the man to look harsher and more manly. Go to any men's hair color section and you'll see what I mean-- smaller catch light, harsher lighting source that yields more square looking face.

Filters and flare

2009-09-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

They say that it's best to put on a filter on your lens to protect it. It's cheaper and more effective than having camera insurance. There have been hundreds of stories on the internet where multi-thousand dollar lenses were saved from crash/drop by putting cheap UV filters (and/or hoods). However, filters come with a price-- decreased image quality. Adding an additional glass means the lens will get flare more easily. This is especially true when shooting directly into a light source where the light source becomes a flare at the opposite side of the frame. Below is an example of a green flare, thanks to a cheap UV filter, when shooting into the moon:

Adding a filter also means decreased of light going to the camera. A cheap lens today in general will allow 90% of light source going through, and a really high end one will allow 99% going through. However, this is actually quite negligible. 10% is miniscule compared to how much aperture I can open up or how high ISO I can crank up in today's modern DSLRs. Each stop means 50% or 200% difference, so the decreased of 1% to 10% of light is a non-issue, at least for me.

Going back to the issue of image quality -- this is a real concern. Below is a wonderful HDR picture that Ping shot in Alaska with a B+W UV MRC filter. Notice the green flare to the left-bottom corner of the pictures. Personally I think it is fine as it adds some artistry to it... in fact often times people add in fake flare in Photoshop to spice up their pictures.

On the other hand, real flare can come at inopportune moments when you least want them to exist. In my past I never really cared about flare until one day, I came back from from a wedding shoot, and was horrified at a bunch of green flares on people's faces. They're shot using my amazing Sigma 50mm f/1.4 but sadly mis-paired with a really really cheap 77mm Hoya 81A filter! "Why on earth would you use a 81A filter at night" you may ask? Because I didn't have any other 77mm filter at the time, and shooting without a filter while I run around doing event photography is utterly out of the question for me.

The first example below is acceptable because the flare is not interfering with the subject. It just so happened that none of the green flare got on Jennifer, yay!

However, subsequent examples are where I really didn't want any flare to occur, but I did not realize that it was happening at the time since I was too busy shooting and I didn't have time to chimp the LCD. Moral of the story: chimping IS GOOD FOR YOU! Sometimes.

All of this of course could have been mitigated by 1) using a flash and blow away all warm natural lighting [thus rendering the color out of whack and will need to turn night pictures into black and white] 2) using a higher quality filter 3) not using a filter 4) not shooting into the light source (candles). On the other hand, I really wanted to capture the candlelight to emphasize that all these shots were made possible with nothing but natural candle-light. Most photographers will just opt for 1) because flash is a lot easier. Capturing natural candlelit subjects usually requires 1600-3200 ISO, 1/30 sec, f/1.4-2.0 (below EV2)... or pretty much at the limits of what steady photographers can hand-held AND pushing the technological limits of today's DSLRs sensors.

In short, not all filters are equal. I have compiled a list of the filters that I've been using below and some examples shots. The first row shows examples of NO FILTER. Subsequent rows show the 77mm Hoya HMC 81A, 77mm B+W 010 UV Haze MRC x1, 77mm Hoya Super HMC UV(0), 72mm Hoya HMC UV(N) and just for kicks a 77mm Hoya NDX8. The second column shows the reflection of the filter and a full-spectrum CFL light source (rated at 94 CRI) where you can look at the colors of the filters. The last 2 columns show an example of shooting into the light source, and the flare on the opposite site of the frame. Are of them were shot using a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D (portrait lens) on a tripod:

In short, I had a very high expectation of the German made 77mm B+W 010 UV Haze MRC x1 and I was very disappointed with it. People on the internet seem to say that it is great... that it is what German engineering is about. However, my tests show that it simply blows. In fact it is *MORE* expensive than the Japanese made Hoya Super HMC, and performs as badly as the cheap Hoya [regular] HMC. Personally, I've never been impressed with the value/cost ratio of BMW cars vs. Lexus, and this test just made me feel the same about B+W vs. Hoya.

One last note. I didn't cover color range and IR/UV accuracy. I've seen tests that show that the Hoya Super HMC blocks way more IR and UV that it is suppose to thus creating color shifts, and that the B+W MRC has a much more accurate IR/UV block off points. However, without instrumentations I can't validate those tests. If color is a more important issue than flare, perhaps the B+W MRC is a better choice. Trade-offs.

P.S. For more formal results you can visit an external link here:

http://lenstip.com/113.4-article-UV_filters_test_Description_of_the_results_and_summary.html

Modular Transfer Function (MTF)

2009-08-26T01:17:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Norman Korman (http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF.html)

I was going to post this long time ago but today I'm motivated to finish it because a friend asked me "I have a 15MP Canon T1i camera, should I buy a Canon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS to replace my 18-55mm version?" Well, it depends. If the lens will give flexibility when shooting kids from wide to zoom, AND it's only going to be used on the internet (1600 pixel width), AND you don't care about optical quality, then by all means get the 18-200mm lens. On the other hand, the results may be disappointing when zoomed in to 1:1 resolution or printed at 8x10 or 11x14 and above because super zoom lenses like the 18-200mm get convenience and trade-off with inferior optical quality. So if one must use the 18-200mm lens, one might as well as shoot it on a 8-10MP camera because at full 15MP, pictures will have a tendency to look "soft" and "mushy"... they will look not much better than shooting with a lower megapixel sensor and then upsize it later in Photoshop.

Let me just say that when I need convenience, I'll simply use my wife's Canon SD750 point-and-shoot, which is a superb camera to shoot casual events... kids, pets, what not. I don't usually care about optical quality for casual events. In fact I don't expect the quality of the SD750 to remotely match that of modern DSLRs+pro-lenses. On the other hand if I'm serious about something, I'll get SLR equipments but not just any SLR equipments-- pro-lenses. There's no point of buying a toy consumer 18-200mm lens when a point-and-shoot will shoot just as well. Having that said, two years ago I bought the Canon equivalent-- back then a spanking brand new Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR. I had it for about 2 months. I sold it (on eBay) after only using it for 2 months because I was very disappointed with its optical quality. In fact, eBay today is full of used 18-200mm lenses-- people are now starting to discover that super zooms don't project good quality images, and are dumping them back to the used market.

So let's assume now that optical quality is in fact of high concern, how should one determine in general whether a lens is well matched for a particular MP sensor? You compare technical specs. However unlike looking at a single MP value, lenses are a bit more complicate. Lenses are usually characterized using the Modular Transfer Function (MTF).

Originally MTF started from USAF in the 50s when the air force wanted to know how much "lines PAIRS per millimeter" (lp/mm) a lens can resolve (this is different than l/mm!). The higher details, the more information they can get from the Soviet Union using high altitude spy planes and spy cameras. In the old film days, lp/mm was used commonly because there were only a few common formats: 35mm, medium format (45, 67, etc) and it made sense to talk about lines per millimeter projected on film. Today with a plethora of digital sensor sizes, people use lw/ph or lwph (line width per picture height) in favor of the older lpmm unit. Keep in mind, the two aren't equivalent and requires calculations to get from one to another, but for the sake of simplicity, let's just agree that the higher MTF value, the more details a lens can resolve. By the way there are a bunch of good technical MTF information online. My favorite is the following URL. Is this really necessary to read? Yes, absolutely, especially if you're a pixel peeping/engineering/math type of person:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-mtf.shtml

So going back to the question "I have a 15MP camera, should I get a 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens to replace my 18-55mm vesion?" Unlike the camera body, we can't simply look at one single MTF value on a lens. What makes lens comparison complicated is that the center resolution will be different than the corner resolution because unlike a uniform sensor/film density, the projected optic quality isn't uniform throughout the area. To make things more complicated, lens resolution varies with aperture as well; subject to the laws of optics engineering and design, the higher the aperture, the higher resolution, and likewise the wider-open the aperture, the lower resolution. So we have two basic things to worry about now: 1) how much resolution in the different areas a lens projects 2) how much resolution using different apertures. In fact to make things even more complicated there are a bunch of other factors to consider (but we won't get into it here): contrast vs. resolution, color, chromatic aberration, vignette, distortion, and bokeh (BTW I hope I've made pixel peepers happy by mentioning all of these other issues).

Unfortunately, most manufacturers have their own MTF values derived from theoretical/calculated results. In fact, they don't make it easy for consumers to access that information. In addition, manufacturers' MTF is a lot lower than the theoretical values due to manufacturing variations, and subject to real world conditions (heat, humidity, calibration, irreproducible lighting levels, etc). Luckily however, there are numerous MTF charts published by independent testers online. Photozone is one very good European company that publishes optical results. Let's look at the MTF for the following two lenses:

18-55mm 55-250mm	18-200mm

Go to both pages, scroll to MTF for 18mm at f/3.5. You'll see that for center MTF value (middle of projection), both lenses resolve almost the same lp/ph. Now, look at border MTF value (edge of projection), and you see while the 18-55mm resolves at 2182 lw/ph, the 18-200mm resolves at an abysmal 1703 lw/ph. Extreme corner is another story to be told. Based on this MTF, one can say that the 18-200mm lens often yields mushy looking images. "This lens at f/3.5 and 18mm isn't very sharp" is what photographers would say. You can look at other apertures and other zoom ranges and see that aperture-for-aperture, zoom-for-zoom, the cheaper 18-55mm lens usually out-performs the much more expensive 18-200mm lens! (see footnote 1)

In short, lens engineering is about trade-offs, and one of the big trade-offs is convenience vs. optical quality. I understand that the 18-200mm lens is much more convenient for shooting pets and kids. It's certainly more convenient than having to switch between 18-55mm and 55-250mm lenses. So if convenience is the primary issue at hand, the 18-200mm is a fine lens. Just don't expect crystal sharp pictures.

If on the other hand optical quality is of importance (portrait, event, wedding, poster, etc), then don't get the 18-200mm. Instead get a better lens that can also resolve just as much resolution as the sensor has. MTF is your friend.

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Footnotes:

1) One can make the argument that you can just close up the aperture to f/5.6 and beyond and both lenses will perform superbly. As good as that sounds, f/5.6 is 1.5 stop lower than f/3.5. That means the lens opening at f/5.6 is roughly 1/3 (1/(2^1.5)) than at f/3.5. Shooting f/5.6 under anything but bright day will yield a lot of disappointments.

Lynn & Ross' Wedding

2009-08-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

Lynn and Ross are x-coworkers/friends from the Google days. They got married on August 22, 2009 in Malibu, Adamson House. What more could you ask for when you mix a beautiful day, a beautiful couple, and a beautiful location! Click www.lynnandross.com for more info.

I wanted to make sure this special couple had a good coverage throughout this once in a lifetime event and came in as a secondary/third shooter. Since we were not primary shooters, you will not see a single portrait of Lynn and Ross and no close-up of rings, shoes, etc on this web site. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed these pictures that Pam and I took. For other photographer's pictures, you can check out Michael+Anna's web site. They're very good, you have my endorsement!

It's all about the lenses!

2009-08-19T10:21:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across a post on Craigslist. "High End Professional Photography Studio Sale (August 22&23) (1300 N. Wilton Pl., Los Angeles 90028)" I looked at the pictures in that post, and it brought back a lot of memories. All of the pictures here are from that Craigslist post.

Back to my story. The year was 1990. I was shopping for photographic equipments. I was armed with The Recycler (a print version of today's Craigslist/eBay-local). The rationale for shopping heavy duty photographic equipments was that they're good investments-- they would last a life time. After all, the basic photographic techniques had been the same since the early 1900s. You take a picture, develop on a canister, darkroom darkroom darkroom, print, done. It was done that way in 1900, in 1910, in 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990 (black and white still done that way at the time). Why wouldn't it be any different in 2010, 2020, 2030? So I thought at the time.

I had an early version 1978 Pentax K1000 with a 55mm f/2 lens, and it was all I needed. The only other things I needed were darkroom equipments, and some black and white filters. I responded to a post on the Recycler. I showed up at this house in Granada Hills. This old man with white hair opened up the door. He said "oh, so you're Kevin?" He sounded a bit surprised, and I could hear the tone "Oh great, it's just a kid." He was a retired photographer selling off a bunch of old equipments, from drums, to easels, to enlarger, trays, chem bottles, camera lenses, everything. He turned out to be a nice and patient guy and explained some of the equipments that I didn't know how to use at the time. I ended up spending 4 hours looking at his arsenal of professional photo equipments. I came out with more photographic knowledge than before, more equipments, and an almost empty wallet. But I was ready to create my own photo lab, and I was excited!!! Many kids at the time just wanted to spend hundreds of dollars perfecting their Street Fighter techniques and such. I had my own darkroom... waaay cool, dude.

Even as digital photography became more prevalent in the late 90s, many professionals laughed at it. The resolution sucked. The color sucked. Everything sucked about it. Some experts estimated that it took 100 years for photography to reach the state of the art quality, and it would take at least a few more decades to do the same, digitally. But Moore's Law proved everyone to be wrong... doubling transistors every 18 months, and doubling computational power every 2 years or so... you continue this trend, and in 10 years, digital photography surpassed everyone's expectations. In less than 10 years, most of the pro photographers were already on digital (digital processing and digital capture).

When I finally parted with my darkroom equipments in 2008, I barely got back any money, after taking in consideration of shipping costs. You see these pictures of the old film equipments? They're no different than what I saw in 1990. The difference is utility-- they were useful in the 1990, and today, they're obsolete and worth very little. Hardly anyone wants to use an enlarger, let alone dealing with stinky chemicals and trays. Digital processing is not just "good enough", it is superior. With one mouse slider in Lightroom/Picasa/Photoshop, you can change contrast in 1 second. You can change the tone in 1 second. You can change the exposure in one second. You can burn and dodge in 10 seconds. A single print that may have taken masters like Ansel Adams hours to create, now takes minutes. In some instances, you can create amazing results in your digital darkroom, in seconds.

See the pictures on this post? Almost everything is worth... $0.00. They have little utility in today's world. The only things that are still worth something... are the lenses. Optics don't change like electronics. No matter what technology you're using, you need to capture light. Optical innovations isn't subject to Moore's Law. You see that old Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.4 above? It's still worth a lot. A good lens in the 70s, is still a good lens today.

It's all about the lenses!

Canon finally reversing their high megapixel trend

2009-08-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today, Canon announced the Canon G11, a large sized point-and-shoot camera. The intended audience for the G-- series cameras include professionals and serious enthusiasts who use it in conjunction with their big SLR bodies. It is only 10MP. Interesting, the older Canon G10 had a whopping 14MP. It appears that Canon reversed the high-megapixel trend. What happened?

Well, remember the old post I made "High megapixel cameras preferred by lousy photographers"? For the past 3 years or so, Canon has making higher and higher megapixel cameras, esp. on small sensored point-and-shoot cameras. They have been doing so, because the laymen thinks that the higher the megapixel, the better it is. To Canon, the higher megapixels the cameras, the better they sell, so they kept going higher and higher. It is no different than a car maker enticing teenager drivers with meaningless specs like horsepower and torque. In the old days, the higher the horsepower and torque a car had, the better they sold. But then people got smarter, and realized that there was so much more that makes a car than horsepower/torque... things like comfort, mileage, ergonomics, reliability, cost of ownership, insurance rate, etc. As the car manufacturers mature, they started reversing the big horsepower trend.

IMHO, today is the day we can mark that the digital camera market is maturing. The fact that Canon reversed its high-megapixel trend, is a sign that digital camera shoppers are finally getting smarter, and more matured. They are now realizing that higher megapixel doesn't equate to a better camera. Let's take a quick look at images from the old G10. At the lowest ISO of 80, the images from the old Canon G10 (with a whopping 14MP) looks spectacular. But at the higher spectrum (1600-3200), it is completely unusable. It is grainy. It is artificial. It is ugly. As mentioned in my old blog previously, the trade-off for having high megapixel is 1) higher noise at higher ISO and 2) unusable pictures at less than ideal lighting situation. Granted, if the purpose of a camera is to use it during an ideal bright day or in a studio, a high megapixel is perfect for the job. But most people shoot in all conditions, day and night, indoors and outdoors, and most of the time in less than ideal lighting situation.

Let's take a look at a picture from a G10 (Courtesy of http://www.imaging-resource.com/):

100% crop shot at 100 ISO. It's got great tones, colors, and details:

100% crop shot at 1600 ISO. Look at the massive amount of in-camera noise reduction applied to the picture. It's very digital/artificial. It's ugly! We don't need to look at 3200 ISO even though the G10 can go up to 3200 ISO. That high ISO is marketing BS from Canon.

Not many people have had a chance to play with a G11 or look at sample pictures online, but the fact is clear-- Canon is reversing this high-megapixel non-sense. Personally, I think this is an indication that 1) the laymen are slowly recognizing that higher megapixel doesn't equate to better pictures 2) Canon is responding to the market demand, and making a camera that is more capable in less than ideal situations (vs. a high megapixel camera that sells well). In the past few years, numerous posts on photography forums indicate that people are now realizing that high megapixels means trading off resolution for image quality. Kudos to Canon for making a lower megapixel camera that shoots well, and kudos to all the buyers out there resisting buying a camera with high megapixels.

The digital camera market is maturing.

Model shoot - Jane Chiu

2009-08-08T22:49:00.000-07:00

Jane Chiu is a former co-worker / model / friend who needs a few shots for her upcoming pageant. The location of this shoot is at Caltech. She's experienced so it's easy to shoot her, with minimal instructions and setup time.

At the time I had the luck of having FIVE assistants-- my beautiful wife Pam, her brother Ben, brother's wife Karla, her mom Yuen, and Jane's bf Rob. I designated Pam as the main light, Ben as the fill light, and Karla as the hair light-- the rest carried equipments. We had about an hour and a half to shoot (6:10 till sunset), so it was a very fast paced session. I like fast paced shooting sessions.

I prefer to shoot a client's head first-- the make up is still fresh, there isn't a lot of sweat, and the eyes and expressions are still sharp (model fatique kicks in after an hour or so). Therefore, I almost always start with head shots first. Below is a 3rd try. I kept this one because the face is clear, the lighting is soft (thanks Pam!) and the catch light in her eyes shows up clearly. Also I liked the blurred domes/arch that I placed in the back. Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G VR.

After a few usable head shots, I move to half body shots. The sun-ray hitting to the side of her hair and a little bit of the face-- flash magic. Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G.

After about 1/2 hour we moved to the hallway in Caltech. There were a bunch of people dressed up for their wedding shoot, and I decided to make them as the backdrop. No flash. No Photoshop magic, shot as is using a specialized "wedding lens" called Lensbaby Composer. Lensbaby Composer set on Manual exposure mode on f/4 aperture ring.

Every shooting session needs a darker, more serious shot. Here are two of my favorites using one of the dark buildings on Caltech. One is a soft dark shot, and the other one is a harsh cold-looking shot.

For some reason, many Asians like white-washed (hi-key like) shots. So here is one for the sake of variety:

Personally, I like vintage stuff. Below is an attempt at creating a 1960s film look. This could have been someone's mom in the 60s, or something:

In the end we had about 110 frames. 20 were duds (test exposures). I ended up picking only 30. All of these pictures were shot under an hour and a half, with five assistants. In the absence of assistants, I'd have to use umbrellas (instead of hand-hold diffusers), and it would have taken at least 4 hours. Thanks to Pam, Ben, Karla, Yuen, and Rob. That was pretty fun!

P.S. Feel free to send me more clients!

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Technical data:

Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G VR

Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G

Lensbaby Composer f/4

How blurry is your Hollywood Style Creamcheese Bokeh?

2009-08-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

Lens sharpness is of high importance for most photographers. When a picture is sharp, they see more details. When they see more details, the viewers' neurons fire as if they're saying "Oh this really captures the moment, I love this picture." There are lots of published reports on lens sharpness. Manufacturers and independent testing corporations have their own MTF results that describe a lens' characteristics in terms of contrast and resolution. The more contrast and resolution a lens can reproduce, the "sharper" an image will project to the film or sensor. Every lens has a best and worst sharpness depending on the location (center or corner) of the projection, and it is very dependent on its aperture. In general, almost all lenses have the best "sharpness" in the center at the sweet spot of the middle f-stop (for full frame, that is about f/5.6-f/8).

While there are numerous published MTF, there is not a standard when measuring the quality of blur (aka "bokeh") in a lens. This is mostly because the quality of a blur is very subjective. Below are two pictures using two different lenses (courtesy of http://www.rickdenney.com):

Don't look at the wine-- both are equally sharp. Look at the background blur. A majority of the people on internet forums will say that the background blur for the top picture is very busy and distracting, while the background blur for the bottom picture is more uniform, more creamy and soft. The top one has a lot of bokeh balls that look like donut rings, whereasa the one on the bottom has more creamy, soft, smushed artistic look. Ken Rockwell has a pretty good graphical explanation here. Of course, there will always be a minority that prefers a busy looking bokeh (with donut ring shapes, weird shapes, inconsistent inner fill, etc).

While lenses optimized for sharpness are great for action/sports, landscape, and architectural work, lenses that yield soft creamy bokeh are great for portraits and for artistic purposes. So while it's interesting that while many people spend lots of money buying the sharpest lenses, there are a few who will spend even more buying the lens with the softest bokeh money can buy. Below are two artistic bokeh examples I found that I like:

Courtesy of Rogvon. This using a 55mm Voitglander which yields an amazing creamy soft bokeh.

Courtesy of Dustin Diaz. This is using the famous Nikkor 200mm f/2 which yields a huge bokeh. Note that many new Nikkor G lenses tend to exhibit a ring around the bokeh ball. This is a very typical 200mm f/2 bokeh.

According to Google Trends search, more and more people are looking at lenses not just based on the criteria of sharpness (which is of high importance for most work out there), but also bokeh characteristics. Lately, I've been hearing the term "Hollywood Style Creamcheese Bokeh". It really means the same thing as just "bokeh", it's just that the word Hollywood emphases the blurring and transition techniques commonly used in Hollywood movies.

What lenses do portrait photographers use? They use the lens with the most pleasant looking bokeh so that they can obliterate the background into soft and creamy cheese to make their subjects pop out. The best bokeh lenses are ones that are f/2.8 or below (which happens to be the minimum aperture for pro-line lenses), usually 85mm and above. The biggest bokeh shape is achieved by 1) grabbing the longest lens you can get your hands on 2) opening up the aperture from f/1.4 to f/2.8 3) setting the lens focus distance to MINIMUM while moving your body to aim at the subject 4) making sure the background light source yields a nice blur 5) use LIVE-VIEW on the camera because bokeh cannot be seen on the viewfinder. Note that even if you try all of the above, you will not always get a consistent result. The reason is bokeh is not only sensitive to focusing distance and settings, but also dependent on background light intensity! This is why the lens that yields a nice bokeh one day may not yield the same the next day-- a lens will have a tendency to yield bokeh one way or another, but that tendency is not guaranteed 100%.

Below I have put up a result of different bokeh characteristics of the different lenses I used. The background green and blue bokeh balls are my router and cable modem lights. By taking the bokeh of a light source at night time, I am isolating the shape, transition, and fill of individual bokeh looks for more objective viewing. I need to do this at night because during day time, all the light balls will be smushed together, and the background blur will usually look pleasing regarding of the lens used. Note that I don't own all of the lenses below. Thanks to everyone who lent me their babies.

Click here to see it in details:

Personally, my favorite is the Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 used at 70mm. It is a very versatile zoom with the quality of a prime lens, and the bokeh shape is mostly consistent and the fill is solid. There is a slightly line/edge on the rounded bokeh balls, but that is acceptable IMHO. There are not many lenses with great bokeh AND sharpness-- this is one of them.

My second favorite is the Nikkor 105mm f/2.8. It has a very low minimum distance, thus small objects can have huge looking bokeh. It can also obliterate the background into art. The contender 70-200mm f/2.8 is an excellent bokeh lens, but I didn't have one to play with at the time.

The Lensbaby Composer (the 3G is a typo) is a very good bokeh lens when used at f/2.8 and beyond.

The softest, creamiest bokeh is the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4. The edges are super soft, it's like an angel painted the balls! However, f/1.4 on this lens aperture yields very soft images.

A peculiar bokeh here is the old 1980 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AI-S. It has 7 blades, and you can see the heptagonal bokeh at a higher aperture. This can be useful for certain types of shot (product with shapes). I wouldn't use it for people or pets though, but you'll see this peculiar bokeh characteristic frequently in older pictures, especially from the 60s to 80s-- the era Nikon ruled the SLR 35mm world.

Lastly, it's important to note that none of these examples have ugly donut shape bokeh like ones from the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR (I had it for 2 months and sold it off). This is a hideous lens that yields ugly busy background blur. There are numerous other really bad bokeh lenses, mostly those with higher than f/2.8 aperture (e.g. 3.5-5.6, 4-5.6, etc etc). I didn't have the pleasure of testing+trashing them here, but if you Google for their names and the word "bokeh", you can see how bad they are.

Strobist: producing Googly colored shadows

2009-08-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an article where I couldn't figure out how lighting was done in such a way that there were 3 different colored shadows casted on subject (see http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2009/07/machine-dreams/ for the full article on Marissa Mayer below):

Then Thomas Kang told me "I believe it's subtracting colors, not adding them. You set up multiple color lights that add up to white, then when something gets in the way, it occludes only some of the lights but not the others, resulting in "shadow" areas where only those non-occluded lights shine, which no longer cancel out entirely, so they produce colors" Well duh! I knew that! :) I was curious to see how easy it was to duplicate the result, and took out my 3 flash and gelled them with different colors: yellow, blue, and red. Here are the results:

First, I make sure that ambient light isn't contributing to exposure (indoors, 200 ISO, f/4, 1/200 second):

Then, I set up the 3 strobes (yellow and blue on opposite sides). I took six different exposures taken at different times. By the way Buster is a very good super bear model and sits still very well.

Top left: yellow only. Top middle: red only. Top right: blue only.

Bottom left: no yellow. Bottom middle: no red. Bottom right: no blue

As you can see, bottom middle or blue+yellow make almost perfectly balanced colors (complementary). Adding a tint of red, and then manually doing white balance later yields the final result below with all 3 flash on:

That was pretty fun! By the way if you look at Marissa's picture, you'll see that there's at least yet another light (white) on the left side in order to make a harsh shadow to the right. Also the order of the color is different than the one I used. Now go out, gel your flash units and have fun!

ChateauLooey

2009-07-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most interesting shoots I've done in my life. The client runs a business selling cardboard homes (ChateauLooey) that cover up the litter box. "Hide unsightly litter boxes with a charming lightweight, durable litter box cover made of heavy grade corrugated box material."

The client wants to revamp their current web site, with new designs and new pictures. The 6 cardboard homes look really great in person... beach home, cottage home, brick home, etc. However, the web site doesn't do justice. The assignment is to make each home standout, with style. The client also would like to use their cat Wooster as the model. I quoted 3 hours on-site+ editing, and it was pretty much a spot on estimate! In short, it was 30 minutes product-shot setup (backdrop, stand, umbrella, lighting), 1.5 hour shoot behind the backdrop, and the remaining hour in a real home environment. Wooster had a tendency to run out, but it was easy to place him inside the cardboard box, and he would sniff around, walk out, walk around, etc. during which I had precious seconds to take pictures before he ran elsewhere.

Here's the video I created for the client which will be placed on their website:

It was a pretty pleasant shoot. No animals were injured. Including the photographer.

P.S. The new design with new pictures and a video should be out in a month or two. Special thanks to Christine and Redseed Media for giving me the opportunity.

"Help my HD is filling up fast"

2009-07-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

A good 'ol friend of mine took a picture of his condo to put online, and I spent about 2 minutes doing basic editing to make it look more "homey" by warming it up, sharpening foliage, and adding more definition to the mid-tones while recovering a little bit of details in the highlights:

Later on he asked:

BTW, how do you save/backup your pictures? Currently, I just copy them into two HDs.

But with my new camera, the space is filling up quick. Also, what about sharing? Do you upload your orignial pictures? 7M each?

If you just got a brand new spanking XXX megapixel camera and if you're filling up your HD fast-- you're most likely machine gunning your camera. In another word, you're taking too many pictures. Let's say you take 100 full size resolution pictures per session. For a typical [2009-spec'ed] 15 megapixel camera, that is 20MB in raw and ~2 to 8MB in JPG (depending on your setting), or up to 2GB/session. If you have a 100GB HD, you'll fill up your [2009-spec'ed] HD in a short period of time.

Are all of those pictures "usable" pictures? When I say usable, I mean are they good enough that someday, you'd be willing to spend $20/frame to print them as posters? Most likely, the answer is no. In all likelihood, you're not going to use every single one of those 100 pictures to print and to publish on the web. In all likelihood, more than 90% of those pictures will end up on the hard-drive, sitting there forever, never to be seen again.

In the old film days, people thought very carefully about their shots-- composition, lighting, color, timing. Each frame needed to be developed and printed, and each frame had a substantial cost to the photographer. Not surprisingly, for a typical photographer in the old days, each roll of film had many good looking shots (compared to today's DSLR shooters) because each frame had a cost, so a lot of thought was put into each frame before the actual shot.

Today however, people think digital is free, so they machine gun shot their digital cameras. They take one picture. Then take another. Then another. To make matters worse, camera makers today advertise that their cameras have really high frames per second, and many macho guys love it (they tend to also the ones that love BIG ZOOMs). They like to show off with their super fast click-click-click-click-click camera. It's as if they're screaming "I am a super cool sports photographer and I can make lots of photos! Listen to the super cool click-click-click-click-click sound my super camera makes!" Yeah, whatever. Maybe these guys like big zooms and fast frames-per-second cameras because they compensate for their small penis or something. I don't know. Anyways, after the session is over, people upload hundreds and thousands of bad looking family photos on Picasaweb, and share it with people who don't actually have time to look through every single one of the thousands of boring looking photos. They do so, because it's so easy to machine gun cameras, and it's so easy to upload to Picasaweb.

Unfortunately, there is a cost of taking too many pictures. That cost is time. One needs to spend initial time managing (picking/filtering and editing) pictures. If the photographer ever needs to find pictures to use in the future (wedding slide show, baby shower, etc), then he/she will have to spend a lot of time sorting through thousands of pictures. If each picture takes 1 second for the brain to parse, then 1000 pictures will cost 16 minutes, not counting software lag. If the average layman machine guns 10000-20000 pictures per year, then the future cost of time would be HOURS and even days. Lastly, there is also the time a photographer incurs on others when he/she shares bad pictures to others. I can't tell you how many times people upload 3000 [really really bad] pictures from their vacation and ask me to critique. They're incurring HOURS on me, and to their friends.

1) My first useful advice to storage woes is-- think more, shoot less.

2) Pretend that you're using a film camera. Pretend each frame costs $0.50. You need to nail your focus and exposure correctly. You have one shot. You think carefully, and make that one shot. Alternatively, if you're a macho machine gun kind of guy, you can pretend that you're a US Army Sniper. "One shot, one kill" is their slogan. You have one chance. So slow down, breath, think carefully, and make that one shot. By doing so, you will A) ensure that all your shots are well thought out, and therefore, will be spot on and B) you'll gain intimate knowledge of your camera settings, and gain knowledge of lighting in general.

3) DELETE BAD PICTURES while you're shooting. Ask yourself "Is this picture good enough that I'm willing to spend $20 to print on a poster?" If the question is no, delete it. Also ask yourself "Does this picture have good sharpness? Does it have good colors? Does it look like something that I can put up in my kid's wedding slide show? Does it look like something I can put in a yearbook?" If the answer is no, delete it. Delete delete delete.

4) DELETE DUPLICATE-LOOKING PICTURES. People often take a shot, then take another. "Smile! Click. Wait let me take another one just to be safe. Click. Wait one more." When you have a bunch of similar looking shots, there will always be one shot that looks better than the rest. If you're going to print or share the best one, you're most likely never going to use the ones that aren't as good. Therefore, delete the rest. Why keep anything that is anything but the best?

5) Share less pictures. People in the 20th century have ADD and get bored after looking through 50 pictures. In the old days 35mm film had 24 or 36 exposures-- people didn't get bored after looking through a roll of film because they had enough attention span for up to 50 pictures. But people today get really bored with today's pictures, because people shoot too many! So instead of mass uploading 3000 pictures (yes I know it's super easy to do in Picasaweb), pick out your top 20-30 and upload those.

6) If taking JPG, downsize the resolution. If your destination print is the internet, then 1600x1200 is way more than sufficient. So why waste 4700x3100 pixels on a typical 15 megapixel sensor? Taking 4700x3100 is over SEVEN TIMES the size you need for your normal 1600x1200 size. You may be thinking that you need to make big prints (300dpi). First of all, megapixels is just one equation on making good prints-- 100 lousy megapixels will look worse than 10 good megapixels (other factors affected by lens quality, lighting, etc). In general, 8MP is more than enough for 8x10 print, so no need to use 15MP if you don't need to. Downsize it.

7) Backup backup backup. Storage is cheap, but get the right type. People are now just finding out that burned DVDs only last 10-20 years. Even hard drive quality isn't what they used to be-- many break down in a matter of 3-5 years.

I personally use a consumer grade RAID-1 network drive (two mirrored 1TB hard drive) as a primary drive, and a 500GB+200GB external drive for backup. I know one of these disks will fail in a few years, so it's imperative to use RAID-1 and/or backup. Here are some datapoints: this year I had a 750GB Seagate fail after 10 months, a 1TB Seagate fail after 3 weeks. In the past I've also had a catastrophic failure of the famous IBM 60GB Hitachi Deskstar (aka Deathstar), and a EIDE Maxtor drive failure. Devices fail.

For a given price, hard drive capacity doubles every 12-18 months. For example, last year, the cost of 1TB was $200. Today, it's less than $100. As long as the rule of doubling is true (and it has been for ages), then you can buy whatever storage you need today, and buy double the capacity when you need more. For example, if you filled up your 1TB this year, just get a new 2TB this year ($200) and copy everything over to the new 2TB. Next year when your 2TB is filled, buy a new 4TB next year ($200) and copy everything over to the new 4TB drive. When your 4TB is filled, buy a new 8TB ($200) and copy everything over to the new 8TB drive. What do you do with all the old drives? Safe-format (secure format 4-8 times) and eBay. There's no point keeping a bunch of old drives that'll become paper weight in less than 5 years. High-tech means "obsolete very soon." Keep your data, throw away technology.

In short, hard drive may be dirt cheap today, but the cost of management is not. The best way to use your digital camera is to pretend that it's a film camera... every frame has a cost to it, so think more, shoot less. By doing so, you'll end up with a lot of good pictures, and save a lot of management time, while gaining more knowledge and appreciation for photography.

Thank you Patrick

2009-07-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

I went to Northern Cal for vacation on the week of June 29. I got a chance to meet up with my coworker/colleague/friend Patrick Hung, a former pro photographer. Patrick said he had a bunch of photography stuff that he no longer have a need for. I didn't know exactly what to expect and boy oh boy, all the goodies exceeded my expectations! First of all, a real backdrop plus 2 9' professional-grade backdrop stands... JackRabbit rapid flash charger (I'll need to get an adaptor for the SB-800/900 since the adaptor is for a flash in the film days), a *real* studio flash unit with light bulb+flash (WOW), a camera flash bracket, a bulb release extension that fits on my FE2 (this is a electro-mechanical film camera). I offered $ and dinner but Patrick was such a generous guy; he wouldn't take anything but thanks. THANK YOU PATRICK.

Here's the first trial using the low-key backdrop. Manual exposure at 1/200 sec, f/4, 200 ISO. 1 SB-600 under umbrella at 1/16 power, 1 SB-600 pointing upwards at 1/4 power, 1 SB-800 rimlight snooted towards the hair (on the left side) at 1/32 power:

Here's when the model stops behaving:

Here's the setup (this shows 2 umbrellas but the top 2 pictures only used 1):

By the way here is something I learned about velour-type backdrops. The Photek instruction sheet that came with the backdrop says something to the effect: "Don't fold or it'll crease. Just stuff it in the bag. If it creases, just hang weight and wait." I thought, wouldn't it be better if you fold it carefully and roll it up? After a few days of experimentation, it IS better to just stuff it in a random manner. The random crease pattern under flash actually gives out a natural marble-like texture. On the other hand, when you fold it, there is a very noticeable crease that the eye can spot easily. So, there ya go-- it's is [sometimes] better to be lazy-- just stuff it in and everything will just turn out fine!

The true cost of Leica D-Lux 4 vs Panasonic LX3

2009-06-17T23:32:00.002-07:00

What's in a name? Can you repackage the same camera under a different name and charge twice as much? Apparently, that's what Leica has done.

I've been doing research on the Leica D-Lux 4 and Panasonic LX3. Internally, they're almost the same cameras and almost every casual shooter online agrees that the image quality differences between them are negligible. One produces a slightly cooler/warmer image. Yes there are other very subtle differences in tone, but it's not very significant. What is significantly different is the price tag. Today, you can get new models as follows (results from Bing/live cashback):

New D-Lux 4: $680
New LX3: $410

The argument I keep hearing from D-Lux users is that "it's a red dot!", "it has a slightly better warranty", and "it has a better resale value." I think what they are really saying "I need a Leica to fit in with my Country Club buddies putting at the greens." Leica, Mercedes, golf. They go hand in hand. I haven't heard a person who said he/she got the D-Lux because of the extra software. Anyways, of all the arguments I've heard, the "better resale value" seems to hold, somewhat. After doing a search on completed bids on eBay, here is what I find:

Used D-Lux 3: $450 (ball park)
Used LX2 $200 (ball park)

Assuming a new D-Lux 4 will drop to the price of today's used D-Lux 3 in a few years, and assuming a new LX3 will drop to the price of today's used LX2 in a few years, then we're looking at the following depreciation (yes this is a gross assumption but since no one can see the future, let's just assume the past prices correlates to future prices to some extent):
D-Lux: 680-450 = $230 depreciation (33% loss)
LX: 410-200 = $210 depreciation (51% loss)

So assuming you are willing to sell your old Leica D-Lux or Panasonic LX, will will depreciate to about the same value; even though the Leica costs a lot more than the Panasonic, its higher resale value holds. Leica owners can probably feel good that they're only paying $20 extra for the extra warranty, and the red dot that is useful for getting attention (which could be very good or very bad, depending on your perspective). So in the end, the cost difference, based on the assumptions above, is only $20 plus/minus a bunch of flaws in the assumptions above.

What is your take on the D-Lux 4 vs. LX3?