The abbreviation DPI has become one of the most used, but least understood term in relation to digital photography today, bar none. Every time I teach a photography class I end up having to do a 15 minute spiel on what it actually stands for and why most people should try their hardest to erase it from their brain in relation to what they think it means. It’s particularly confusing because it sounds like it’s being used correctly most times. If you value your sanity and the sanity of those around you, please keep reading.

First off, I want to tell you that it’s not your fault… you’ve been misled, albeit unintentionally by many people, most of whom you have a good reason to think know more than you. So often people use dpi when what they really want to know is resolution. One of the most frequent questions I get is “I’ve been asked to submit a photo to (blank) and they’ve asked for it to be no bigger/smaller than 300dpi, how many pixel wide should I make my final image?”. You’re confused, it looks like a reasonable request, but you just can’t seem to wrap your head around how to go about satisfying it. Or worse, you think you know what they want and solve the problem wrong. Let’s break it down and see where you’re probably getting caught up.

DPI stands for Dots Per Inch, this is a printing term describing how many dots a printer can make per inch on a piece of paper. You want to know how many pixels wide to make your image and here’s the first problem; dots are not the same as pixels and the terms should never be used interchangeably. Your monitor can display 16,777,216 different colors at each pixel site, whereas even the best 7 ink printers can only show 128 possible colors per dot. In order to show the same level of detail and color depth as your monitor, a printer has to be able to produce many more dots per inch (dpi) than the number of pixels per inch (ppi) you want to display; so if you wanted to print a 100px image, one inch wide, your printer would have to be able to print at least 400-600dpi in order for it to have the same amount of detail as the image displayed one inch wide on your monitor.

Ok, that’s sorted, but that still doesn’t answer the question: how many pixels wide should my image be? The problem is that people use dpi or ppi thinking it describes a discrete value instead of term of measurement. Asking someone to submit a photo that’s no more than 72ppi is like asking them to drive to a corner store that’s no more than 10mph away. Without knowing how many inches wide they want the photo, asking for a specific ppi is meaningless, and gives you no clue as to how many pixel wide they actually want the image. Any image, not matter how many pixels wide it is, can be displayed at any ppi, all that changing the ppi does is change how large the resulting image gets displayed. Here’s two extreme examples:

• Example 1) A 1000px wide image gets printed out on an imaginary molecular printer that can literally print on the head of a pin, displaying pixels as small as a single carbon atom. The printer can place a billion dots every inch so the resulting image, printed at 1,000,000,000ppi is only a millionth of an inch wide.
• Example 2) The same 1000px image gets displayed on a JumboTron at a baseball game which uses pixels that are one inch wide, so it has a resolution of 1ppi; the image therefor gets displayed 1000 inches across, roughly 83 feet.

In both examples the resulting image hasn’t lost or gained any resolution, despite the huge difference in size of the resulting image. So changing the ppi of your image will have zero result on the number of pixels or the file size of your image.

Googling around for what others have written about clarifying DPI has shown that even many people writing tutorials on the subject are getting this wrong. Is it really any surprise that many people are confused as well? The overuse of DPI comes from the days of publishing where different publications would print photos at different resolutions; newsprint had a relatively low dpi, whereas a magazine or photo book would have a higher dpi. But since they used standard image sizes and standardized dpi ratings, the combination of the two gave enough information for photographers to size their images. Then internet publishing came along and there were no longer standard images sizes. Somewhere along the line people forgot that, besides the fact that dpi and ppi aren’t the same, dpi alone isn’t enough to tell someone how many pixels wide or tall an image is.

So when someone tells you to give them an image with a min or max dpi, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, what they’re really asking for is either a min/max file size (measured in bytes) or a min/max resolution (measured in pixels). First step is to get that sorted and find out what they really want, once you have that you can actually do something about it.

It’s easiest if they’re looking for a pixel width, because there’s only one way to satisfy that. I’ll explain using Photoshop, but the process is similar in any photo-editing program.

Using Photoshop:

• 1) Open your image and use the top menu to go to Image->Image Size (or press Ctrl-Alt-I) to bring up the Image Size Dialog.
• 2) Make sure “Resample Image” is checked because you want to change the number of pixels in the image, leaving it unchecked will just adjust the ratio of inches wide vs pixels per inch without actually altering the image. Also make sure “Constrain Proportions” is checked, this will force you to keep the same aspect ratio in your image so you don’t accidentally squish or stretch it out of proportion.
• 3) Change either the width or height in pixels, depending on what your requirements are. You’ll notice that the value you don’t change will be changed automatically to fit the proportions of your image. Click OK and you’re done!

There’s only one way to make an image greater or less than X pixels, but if they’re asking for a maximum file size, there’s a couple of ways you can do that. Mostly likely you’re being asked for a maximum file size, in which case you need to shrink your image while balancing resolution with file compression. The more pixels you want to keep, the more compression you’ll have to apply to keep the file size down, but apply too much compression and your image quality starts to suffer no matter how much resolution you keep.

No matter what image format you’re working in, you’re going to be converting it to JPEG as it’s the internet standard compressed image format. When you save as a JPEG in Photoshop it will give you an estimate of how big the resulting file will be for a given quality setting. The scale goes from 1-12; the lower the number the more compression, the lower the file size and the more you’ll degrade your image. On the high end of the scale you have less compression, larger files but little to no visual difference in your image quality. A setting of 10 is the least compression with the greatest image quality. One would think 11 or 12 would give you more quality, but while it will make your files larger, it’s a little known fact that those two setting where included by Adobe for testing and experimentation purposes. They offer larger file sizes but no greater fidelity to the original image.

Check if simply saving as a level 10 JPEG will give you the image size you’re looking for, if not try 8 or 9. If you have to go lower than 8, you’re usually better served by resizing your image a bit smaller instead to keep as much detail in your image as possible. So use the first method above to cut down the number of pixels in your image and try saving again… rinse… repeat… until you get the file size you’re looking for. You’ll very quickly get a sense of what pixel widths and compression settings will give you the image sizes you’re looking for.

Hopefully this helps clear things up. Like I said, it’s not your fault; dpi has been so horribly miss-used and abused lately it’s hard to get a straight answer. I’ve had everyone from editors of major publications and international photo contests get it wrong, so don’t feel bad if it’s left you dazed and confused trying to puzzle out what people are asking you to do to your images.

For the longest time I was convinced that street photography looked better in black and white. It makes sense; Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Gilden and all the other masters all shot in black and white, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. During the course of this winter I was definitely feeling bored with my photography. I thought it might be the lack of good shooting weather and the general blah of the winter months but then I started thinking more about my self-imposed monochromatic style. I wondered if it was truly a choice or whether it was a crutch I was leaning on that was keeping me from growing as a photographer. Well a while ago, completely by accident, I re-discovered color which prompted me to go back and take another look at some of my favourite black and white images.

Sometime this February, completely by accident while editing some shots old shots for publication, I stumbled across a way to enjoy color in my street photography. I happen to be fooling around with different white balance settings and tone controls in Adobe Camera Raw and found that with subtle alterations of the overall color cast I could bring back some of the mood I lost when converting to black and white. Straight out of camera, I never felt the colors truly represented the feel of the city when the shot was taken, something was missing and I think it was the cameras attempt to guess at a neutral white balance that stripped out the gloom of a cloudy day or the warm tones of a sunrise or sunset. As well, every environment evokes an emotional response that can be conveyed by color, regardless of whether those colors actually exist in the scene. Through the use of some subtle color toning I’ve been trying to narrow down the colors and shades that make me think of Ottawa, what colors the city feels like. Inducing slight color shifts to the entire image I’ve found also helps tie together all the discordant colors you find on the street, creating a base they can all relate to.

Shooting in black and white definitely makes many things easier; three main elements of any picture are composition, color and texture, removing color simplifies things a great deal. With street photography especially, very little is under your control; an otherwise interesting subject wearing colors that don’t fit in the overall image can ruin a shot. Removing color however means that you have to really much more heavily on texture to create a visually interesting image. Shooting with an eye on color has definitely been more challenging, but it’s given me a new tool to rescue images that I found boring in black and white.

After a few month of experimentation, I’m definitely sold on color as a completely viable option for street photography. I’m not going to be abandoning my black and white roots completely; if this experiment with re-creating some of my old black and white shots has taught me anything, it’s that not every image works in color just as not every image does as well without it. What this experiment has done is given me a new tool to express feeling and mood in an image and helped bring me out of a rut I didn’t even know I was in. Next time you’re bored or feel uninspired, try taking a look at your image library and seeing if there’s techniques or styles you always use and try doing the exact opposite. You might find you’ve been needlessly limiting your own potential and creativity. You can see the rest of the colorized versions of my previously popular shots on Flickr.

In my last tutorial, I talked about all of the photographic benefits of shooting from the hip, and while I got a lot of positive feedback about the techniques themselves, many people were concerned about the social aspects of hip shooting. They felt that they’d love to try it, but they were worried that they would be perceived as being surreptitious, sneaky or sketchy for shooting without raising their camera. I completely understand where they’re coming from, but in the end, the key is to remember that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with shooting from the hip; you’re not doing anything wrong or illegal. If you can convince yourself of that you’re halfway there. The other half is learning how to defuse confrontations before they start.

I really want to hammer this home: shooting from the hip is not a crime. At the very worst, you’re doing something that a few people may object to, but that’s what living in a society is all about – agreeing that while we all do things others may not like, we put aside those dislikes and follow a set of rules we can all agree on and not infringe on each other’s freedoms under those rules. Personally, I don’t like crying babies on the bus, dogs that bark all day, jeans worn a foot lower than underwear, people that walk and text and a hundred other things that people do every day. I’m sure I do things that annoy people as well, but as long as it’s not against the law I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop anybody from doing those things and I expect them to pay me the same respect.

The key to avoiding confrontations while shooting from the hip, or really when doing any street photography, is to remember photography is not a crime. Taking pictures of anything and anyone while in public is completely legal in North America. There are a few exceptions for some government sites, but there’re usually well marked with signs. Body language is what betrays us most times, if you feel like you’re doing something wrong, your body echoes that. Your eyes dart around, looking anywhere but where your camera is pointing, you slouch or try to hide your camera and you end up looking shifty.

Have you ever picked up an item in a store, got distracted and walked out right past the cash with the item in hand? Congratulations, you just learned the secret to successful shoplifting: not looking like you’re guilty. I spent a lot of time in retail in my teens and you can spot an amateur shoplifter from across the room, they just look like they’re up to no good. Luckily, when it comes to photography you actually aren’t doing anything wrong, we’ve all just been scared by the media into perceiving people taking pictures in public as potential terrorists, kidnappers or pedophiles. Terrorists don’t need to use real cameras, they have cell phones and Google, and contrary to what shows like CSI would have us believe, I couldn’t find a single documented case of a kidnapper or pedophile deciding to target a random child from a photo taken in public. The overwhelming majority of crimes against children are perpetrated by friends or relatives, you know… the people you have no problems with photographing your child. You’re not a criminal for taking pictures, stop feeling that way and your body language will reflect that. Street photography is about making and capturing fleeting moments of life to create a photographic record of our society. Some people won’t understand or appreciate that, but in the end, that’s no reason for accusing you of doing something wrong.

It took me a while to get over that fear of shooting in public, but once I did, the difference was amazing. I stopped unconsciously trying to hide my camera or my actions. I walked around with confidence and I stopped trying to disguise that I was taking pictures. I didn’t make it obvious, but I didn’t advertise it either. I just went about my business like there was no one else around, and surprisingly, most people stopped caring that I was taking pictures. Even people that obviously caught me shooting them just didn’t care as much. I don’t look like I am doing something wrong, therefore I must not be. I must also have started coming across as more approachable because I started getting a lot more people stopping to talk to me, interested in what I was doing, not mad about it; it’s a really nice feeling to have people actively interested in street photography.

Sooner or later though, you will run into someone who has an objection to you taking pictures in public, whether it’s another pedestrian, a security guard or the police. When you do get into a confrontation there are many things you can do to defuse the situation before it gets out of hand. Remember to be polite, smile and under no circumstances go on the defensive; that will just make you look guiltier in their eyes. Most people I’ve encountered immediately have the wind taken out of their argument the minute I smile, say hello and don’t give them the guilty reaction they’re expecting. The second thing I’ll do is give out my card and offer to send people a copy of their picture. Right away that stops 90% of confrontations in their tracks. It shows you’re not trying to hide who you are and what you’re doing, and can even get people interested in street photography. Most people only have posed pics of themselves and giving them something new to put up on their Facebook can quickly turn hostility around. Just remember, you’re completely within your rights to be taking pictures, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. No one has the right tell you to delete photos, stop taking pictures or even show them the shots you’ve taken in public. Personally I have no problem showing people my work if they ask nicely, but if they’re rude I may say no out of principle; sometimes though, it’s an easy way to get people off your back.

These same rules apply to police and security guards, although it’s up to you how much you want to push your rights with them. Personally I’d go as far as being thrown in a cell for a bit if it meant standing up for my rights, but I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to go that far. If you do decide to go the same route, politeness and courtesy are even more important; law enforcement officers can make your life difficult in other ways besides getting in the way of your photography, so don’t give them any more ammunition by mouthing off or breaking non-photography related laws. Be sure to know your rights and any laws regarding photography in your country and if you’re told you’re breaking the law, politely ask what law exactly it is you’re breaking. If things look like they’re going to escalate, be sure to get the name and badge number of any officer you talk to for future reference; they’re required to identify themselves as much as you are.

In the end, every confrontation will be different, but cool heads usually prevail and will help keep things civil. Street photography has gotten a tarnished reputation lately and it’s up to every single practitioner to help polish it up a bit. Try to leave people with a better preconception of public photography after meeting you and we can slowly start to change public opinion.


<- Street Photography Tutorial #5: Shooting From The Hip

If you’ve been following along with my street work, you’ve probably noticed I do most of my shooting from waist height and there are a couple very good reasons why. In a previous tutorial we talked about visualizing the shot, if you haven’t read it, you should give it a quick read before we continue as most of the stuff I’m going to go over this time is dependant being able to “see” what your camera sees without looking through the viewfinder. Shooting from the hip isn’t exactly a new concept; photographers have been doing it since before street photography was even considered a genre. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s exactly what it sounds like, taking a picture without raising your camera to your eye, its use stemming from the hand gun technique of the same name.

The main reason many street photographers use this method is to maintain a low profile and keep people from reacting to a camera being around, trying to preserve the natural moments in life of people immersed in their environment. I’m definitely of the school that thinks street photography is best done as candid as possible; otherwise it’s just an unnatural pose that happens to be on the street.

Most hip shooting is done with a wide angle lens, anything 35mm or wider will work, but wider is better if you’re just starting out. The reason being, the wider the lens, the more forgiving it’s going to be with framing as you learn to guesstimate what’s going to be in the shot. You can always crop down a shot if you capture too much, but you can’t invent parts of an image you didn’t capture in the first place. Wider lenses also have the benefit of greater depth of field at equivalent f-stops compared to longer lenses. Why does this matter? Well, when shooting from the hip, your focal length is going to determine the height and width of the imaginary frame lines your mind projects on the world, but what about depth? You’re not looking through the viewfinder, so any focus adjustment is going to be done blind, you’ll have to rely on your distance scales or a pre-set focus distance to ensure your subject is in focus. The greater your depth of field, the less precise your focus estimate have to be. In fact, if your lens is wide enough you can take advantage of the hyperfocal distance to ensure almost everything you care about is going to be in focus.

I prefer wides because I like to capture as much of the scenery around my subjects as possible, close up head shots are nice and all, but street photography is about telling a story, capturing people reacting to the things around them not removing them background. There are however some issues with wide angle lenses you’ll have to get used to. There’s a reason why using fast lenses capable of shallow depth of field is so appealing, it makes it very easy to compose your shot as any unwanted elements in front or behind your subject can just be blurred out to oblivion. This gives you a lot more flexibility when it comes to positioning yourself and your subject. With wide angle lenses and potentially infinite depth of field you have to be much more aware of everything in the shot. I’ve had many great potentially great photos ruined by elements intruding on the composition that I can’t just wish away. You have to be able to consider foreground, background and your subject all at once and how they’re going to relate to each other in the photo, and you have to do all this in seconds most times as you can’t just ask everything on the street to stop while you think about it. It’s not really a hard skill to learn, it just takes practice… lots and lots of practice.

Also, many photographers, especially when their first getting into street photography, can feel very shy or self-conscious taking pictures of strangers in public. The wider the lens, the closer you’re going to have to get to people if you want them to fill a decent portion of the frame. My most used street lens is my 15mm which can take a full body shot at less than 6 feet away from someone; it’s great for getting up close and personal in crowds, but it’s taken me years to build up the confidence to shoot that close. You might want to go with something a bit longer while you build up your courage.

Another problem with wide angle lenses is how much they exaggerate the distortion of straight lines if you don’t keep your camera level; and this leads directly to my second reason to shoot from the hip. Keeping a level horizon is rule one for most types of photography, a small flash shoe bubble level like I talked about last post will help. It’s fairly easy to correct an uneven horizon in post processing if you leave some space around your subjects but it’s always better to get it right in camera. Much harder to correct for later, however, is vertical perspective distortion which occurs if your camera is pointing higher or lower than level. It can be tricky keeping your camera parallel with the ground shooting from the hip, even with a bubble level, but this is where shooting from the hip really shines.

Let’s assume you want to take a full body picture of someone roughly the same height as you and have them fill the whole frame. First let’s look at a longer lens, say an 85mm, standard portrait length. You raise the camera to your eye and frame the shot, now if you keep the camera level the frame is centered on their head, there’s lots of space above the head and half their body is out of frame. To get their whole body in the frame you have to angle the camera down a bit; since you’re using an long lens, you’re a fair distance away and only have to lower the angle of the shot a few degrees. Such a small angle won’t introduce much vertical perspective distortion.

But what happens with a wide angle lens, like most of us street photographers prefer? You have to get much closer in order to fill the frame with your subject, so instead of having to tilt the camera down just a little bit, you could be looking at lowering your aim as much as 30 degrees off level. With that much of an angle you’re going to have all kinds of distortion; squares become trapezoids, the parallel lines of buildings will start to converge, your subjects head is going to be much bigger compared to the rest of the body and the whole thing will just look wrong. Sometimes it will be subtle, but with brick walls for instance, the distortion will look terrible. So instead of angling the camera down, what about lowering the camera while keeping it level, say to hip level… Now you’re aiming the camera at the middle of your subject, half his body is above center, half below; you’ve got everything in frame and haven’t introduced any perspective distortion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying any good photo is necessarily free of any kind of perspective distortion, on the contrary there’s been many photographers that use this kind of distortion to their advantage to create some dynamic and exciting photos, but the point is they did it on purpose. Used properly with intent you can use the laws of optics to great advantage, but accidental distortion is very rarely flattering. Like I said, sometimes the effect of distortion can be very subtle and it’s not until you correct the issue that you realize just how much better your photo looks without it, but trust me you’ll notice a big difference when you start keeping your camera level. Yes, you can correct a lot of this kind of distortion in Photoshop, but: A) correcting perspective distortion means stretching or compressing image information, which means you’re automatically loosing detail whenever you do, and B) correcting distortion on just one axis can be a frustrating, correcting it on all three is just madness, kind of like trying to solve a Rubix cube that changes shape every twist. In the end, it’s just way simpler to avoid the problem all together and keep your camera level.

Shooting from the hip is definitely not for everyone, some people feel it borders too much on being voyeuristic or sneaky and others don’t want to spend the time it takes to train yourself to be able to compose the shot without using the viewfinder. It does take a significant investment in time to get good at it; all I can say is that for me at least it was totally worth it. For those that think shooting from the hip is sketchy, I can understand your reasoning and I think it’s a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. There’s a big difference between shooting from the hip and using hidden cameras or low angles cell phones to take pictures up girls skirts (which seems to have become almost epidemic in some places). I wear my camera around my neck in plain view; I don’t make any effort to hide what I’m doing, I just don’t advertise it either. I’m only taking pictures of what’s in my normal field of vision. If someone sees my camera and obviously has a reaction to it, I make it a point to smile and avoid taking their picture. I don’t stalk people, I don’t push my camera in people’s faces and I’ve had very few people actually take issue with my shooting, far fewer than the number of people that stop me to genuinely talk about street photography. A smile and a friendly attitude go a long way. Keep that in mind and you shouldn’t have any problems.


<- Street Photography Tutorial #4: All the Small Things
Street Photography Tutorial #6: Shooting From The Hip II ->

The main reason I bought the Sony NEX 7 was to use with my Leica M kit, even though many reviews that said the NEX 7 sensor has a serious flaw that makes it unsuitable for use with wide angle rangefinder lenses. The NEX 7 sensor has a layer of micro-lenses, these micro-lenses focus the light hitting them from the lens onto the photo-receptor sites of the sensor. On the NEX 7 they’re built with SLR type lenses in mind that sit much farther from the sensor than rangefinder lenses, the light coming from SLR type lenses striking the sensor at nearer to perpendicular angles. Rangefinder lenses, especially wide angle ones, have rear elements that extend much closer to the sensor, causing the light they focus to hit the sensor at much more oblique angles the further they strike from the center. The micro lenses of the NEX 7 sensor can’t seem to handle light hitting them at such extreme angles which leads to color shifting and lowered sharpness at the edges and corners. I won’t dispute this makes the NEX 7 less than optimal when paired with such lenses, the question is: “Is less than optimal still good enough to take good pictures?” The first lens I’ll be taking a look at with this in mind is one of my favourites, the Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Heliar.

I’ve been using this lens with great success on my Leica film cameras for years, later it became one of my most used lenses on the Sony NEX 3 as well. On the NEX 3 it performed very well, with very good corner sharpness and color fidelity. I was kind of worried when I heard it didn’t fare so well on the NEX 7. After trying it out for a few weeks, I admit, the NEX 7 definitely had an issue with wide angle rangefinder lenses. I do notice some loss of sharpness and magenta color cast in the corners with the Voigtlander 15mm, especially wide open, by f8 it’s much better.

If you’re a landscape photographer who needs perfect sharpness edge to edge or just happen to like looking at pictures of brick walls at 100% magnification, this may not be the lens for you. On the other hand, if you already have one, it’s definitely worth the price of an adapter to be able to use it on the NEX 7. It’s still wonderfully sharp over the majority of the frame on the NEX and has very little barrel distortion. It’s nice and small, making the camera nearly pocketable and is wonderful for street photography being roughly a 24mm lens on the NEX 7.

In technical tests, the corner performance might scare some people off, but I prefer to let real world images be the judge of a lens. A lens is more than sharpness of its optics, the small size and discreteness make it a perfect lens for unobtrusive shooting and it’s got a great depth of field scale, something you won’t find on any of the native E-Mount lenses. If you’re shooting for black and white, the magenta cast is not really an issue. Even in color, I’ve found some creative ways to process my images, using the color cast to add character. If it really bothers you, there’s a free program called CornerFix that does a very good job of correcting the issue.

I’m still a bit disappointed the NEX 7 didn’t handle this lens better, but the combination still makes stunning images. Sharpness isn’t everything and the NEX 7 has enough going for it that I’m willing to make the compromise. If you where expecting 100% crops of brick walls in this review, I’m sorry, I don’t have the time or the energy to pixel peep anymore. Been there, done that, almost went blind and broke trying to satisfy the pixel gods. The pair produce really nice black and white images, and with the right processing the color images call to mind the charm and nostalgia of some of the great color films of the 60’s and 70’s. If Lens Baby came out with a lens that boasted retro color cast, blurry corners, it would be a hit, but do it accidentally and it’s a flaw… oh well. Like I said, it may not be the right tool for every photographer, but it’s still one of my go to lenses on the NEX 7.

PS – None of the images in this post (or any of my CV 15mm + Sony NEX 7 images on my Flickr as of this post) have any local color or sharpness correction done to mitigate any blurring or color cast this combo creates. Any sharpening or color manipulations have been global, across the whole image, so you be the judge as to whether this combo is capable of creating good images in the real world.

<- Sony Nex 7 Rolling Review: Part II – 18-55mm Kit Lens Performance

Photography is an expensive hobby; besides the big stuff like cameras and lenses there’s an endless hoard of little gadgets and gizmos we’re told we can’t possibly live without. I’m usually a bit fan of buying local, but for some things I just can’t justify the ridiculous mark up. At some point someone decided that since we’re willing to shell out a thousand dollars for a lens, we won’t shirk at the $80 price tag on an official lens hood for it (which should be included on all lenses anyways, but don’t get me started on that). Take the example of the Canon ET-65B lens hood for my 70-300mm: eBay from Hong Kong is $4.23 and the price at the local photo store… wait for it… $74.95 for what amount to three cents worth of moulded plastic! Like I said, I like to shop local and official but come on, a price difference like that is just insulting. Here’re a few indispensible accessories you can get on the cheap on eBay that every street photographer should add to their bag.

First thing you should pick up for each one of your cameras is a flash shoe bubble level, they’re a dollar or two each and money well spent. Not only do they keep dust and dirt from gumming up the contact of your flash shoe, they’re indispensible for anyone shooting from the hip. If your camera doesn’t have a flash shoe, you can always stick it somewhere on the top of the camera with double sided tape or epoxy, depending on how permanent you want it on there. When shooting wide angle lenses keeping all the parallels and perpendicular lines your shot from looking wonky can be a real pain, keeping your camera level is the only way to keep everything straight. It’s hard enough to do it by eye through a viewfinder, but shooting from the hip it’s almost impossible to judge if your camera is level. These little bubble levels are too small to be pin-point accurate, but they’re good enough keep you approximately there. Sure, newer versions of Photoshop will let you correct for perspective distortion, but you’ll always be losing image detail when you use software to stretch or compress pixels, after which you’re left with a trapezoidal image you have to crop back to square, and you’d be surprise how much image you lose around the edges of the frame. It’s always easier to get it right in camera in the first place.

If you’re shooting digital, another item that’s always a good idea to invest in is spare batteries. A long day of walking the streets can eat through batteries fast, especially in the cold weather. Again, I’d love to buy official, but some companies are charging up to $120 for an official replacement battery, that’s between 10% and a whopping 70% of the cost of the actual cameras in my case. Buying replacement batteries on eBay can be a bit of crap shoot unfortunately. Just because a 3rd party battery is the same shape as your original doesn’t mean it has the same life in the field. Take a look at the milliamp hour (mAh) rating of the prospective battery and make sure it’s near the rating on your original; a good battery is going to be roughly 20% more or less than a factory one. Some are less than half that, so be careful, it may not be clearly advertised. Some camera companies are even adding proprietary circuitry in their batteries so that 3rd party ones won’t be recognized as viable. My best advice is to avoid the absolutely cheapest batteries you can find (the $5-$10 ones) and look for the ones starting in the ($10-$20) range; they’ll usually have a decent mAh rating and should be compatible. Order one to test out the brand and then order more once you’re sure they work.

My third irreplaceable gizmo is the soft release. It’s just a little metal disk that either screws in or sticks on to your shutter release. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s the cheapest way to boost your low light photography performance. So what does it do? Usually when you press the shutter, you jab down with the tip of your finger, especially on many digital cameras where the shutter button is almost flush with the body. That jabbing motion is transferred to the rest of the camera right at the worst moment, exactly as the shot is being taken, causing motion blur in the image. In order to counter that, you have to gently squeeze the button instead of jabbing at it, but without the extra surface area a soft release gives you, that’s very hard to do. The soft release fits nicely between your first and second knuckle, allowing you much more control for a gentle squeeze. It’s really amazing how much of a difference it makes. With a soft release and good bracing technique, I can shoot as low as 1/15th or even 1/8th of a second, hand held, which makes previously impossible shots possible at night or in low light.

Lastly, every photographer should invest in a couple sets of the standard lens accessories: front caps, end caps and lens hoods. Besides keeping out stray light, lens hood are really important for any photographer walking busy streets. You’re constantly surrounded by moving people, not paying attention to much else than where they’re going or their cell phone. A lens hood will save your lens from most bumps or scratches that could damage the front element of your lens. Many street photographers work with prime lenses as well, which could mean a lot of lens changes. Caps for both ends of your lens is a no brainer to keep them safe in your bag, but those caps usually get taken for granted until you lose one. And I lose them… a lot. You don’t want to spend too much time without your lens cap, but it’s another one of those overpriced accessories. I like to keep a replacement set at home so I’m not forced to pay up to $30 for one locally, if they even have one in the odd sizes many of my rangefinder lenses take. For the cost of one official lens cap, you can pick up spare hoods and caps for all your lenses in one eBay order.

I don’t have any single eBay shop to recommend, if you sort by lowest price searching for any of these items, you’ll find the cheap overseas shops pretty quickly. There are some disadvantages to buying overseas; the shipping time is usually about a month, but on the other hand it’s usually free or very close to. I’ve also had a few shipments lost in transit as they usually don’t provide tracking number shipping for a package that’s worth a couple bucks. Most of the shops though are very interested in keeping 100% feedback ratings and I’ve never had a problem getting a refund for lost shipments, even if I didn’t I’m still only out a couple bucks. Leave a comment if you’ve got your own cheap little gadget you’ve found online, I’m always on the lookout for something new to try out.


<- Street Photography Tutorial #3: Visualizing The Shot
Street Photography Tutorial #5: Shooting From The Hip ->

Yeah, yeah… I said I wasn’t going to do a write up on the kit lens on the Sony NEX 7, but after the shoot at the Old Howard Smith Paper Mill I felt I had to speak up for this little gem. I’ll be honest, I never really gave it a chance when I got it along with my NEX 3. I played with it a bit when I first got it then quickly put it on the shelf, because hey, real photographers don’t use kit lenses, right? Well damn, is my face red.

When I was packing up for the trip, I threw it in the bag because, well because I over pack every single time. I blame my time in the scouts, be prepared and all that, although others will say it’s because I’m a hoarder that just happens to take my hoarding on the road. I make hermit crabs look under packed. I figured I might play around with some of the features on the NEX 7 that you need an E-mount lens for like the HDR and Panorama functions, but I never thought I’d use it for any of the serious shoots. I didn’t get a chance to try the Panorama feature, but I did take a few HDR shots. The built in HDR mode worked very well, but at the end of the day I just don’t really like the look of HDR so I don’t expect to be using it much.

Well, shoot number one happened to be a dance number and considering I was shooting along side two DSLRs using autofocus, I had to keep up with the action or miss shots and in such dim light manual focus just wasn’t going to cut it. Out came the 18-55mm; I figured the slow, hunting autofocus all the NEX 7 reviews claimed I’d be facing was better than nothing. I actually had to force myself to keep shooting over the part of my brain dropping its jaw over how well the little guy acquitted itself.

Was the AF on the NEX 7 as fast as what I’ve been used to on my Canon 50D? Surprisingly, yes and no. Compared to some of the really expensive lenses (70-200 F2.8L) or fast primes (Sigma 30mm f1.4 or 85mm f1.8) it was clearly slower, but it was no slouch. It hunted less than either the Tamron 28-75 f2.8 or 17-50mm f2.8 would have in the same circumstances, especially the latter lens, and was comparably fast. Finally, compared to the sluggish AF of the 85L it was positively blazing, and I’d always been satisfied with what the 85L gave me.

The fact that it hunted in low light was one of the big complaints about this camera and lens combo. I found that as long as I aimed at an area of contrast it wasn’t bad at all, and when it did hunt, it didn’t hunt far like some SLR lenses I’ve used, going back and forth along a major chunk of the focal range, it just kind of vibrated a bit around the focus point and then locked. Another complaint I’ve read is that it will also hunt and miss focus entirely; I’d say this happened about one in twenty times trying to lock focus under dim natural light, and when it missed focus, it missed by a lot. Which isn’t too bad, at least I could easily tell that I missed focus instead of thinking I nailed it looking at the LCD and finding out later at home I actually missed a bit. I found very few shots in which it looked like it focused but was slightly off.

The built in image stabilization was also a pleasant surprise; it’s comparable to the IS on my Canon 70-300 but without any of the hum I’m used to hearing when it kicks in. I didn’t do any test as to how many stops of effective stabilization it provides, suffice to say it works well.

In terms of image quality, the kit lens is clearly having a tough time satisfying the NEX 7′s 24mp sensor, but that’s not a huge surprise; but for a $200 lens it held its own well. I’ve definitely seen sharper lenses, but I’ve seen many more that where softer, and you really have to ask yourself: how sharp is sharp enough? Put it this way, in one situation, it resolved that nearly invisible peach fuzz hair, finer and smaller than eyelashes I didn’t notice in real life. That’s sharp enough for most of my purposes. I won’t be using it to take pictures for billboards, but I don’t think I’d have any problems printing a 16X20 of any of the days shots.

At the end of the day I was forced to admit, this lens deserves a space in my NEX 7 kit. The NEX 7 provided decently fast AF with this lens, and while it may not take advantage of every one of the NEX 7s 24mp, it’s sharp enough for most purposes. Modern cameras have replacement cycles measured in months instead of years and most of us have gone right along with it, always demanding more sharpness, more megapixels faster AF… more, more, more. I admit, I’m a recovering pixel-peeper, it took me a long time to realize that way lies madness. You can drive yourself crazy, constantly comparing 100% crops and MTF charts (if you don’t know what those are, stop Googling it right now, you’ll save yourself pre-mature grey hairs not knowing). I bought the NEX 7 for its size, ergonomics and usability. It’s combination of features like the EVF, adaptable lens mount and multiple control knobs make it the flexible, jack of all trades camera I wanted it to be. The fact that the kit lens is decently sharp with nice snappy autofocus is just icing on the cake. It’s all about the right tool for the right job; when I have time for manual focus, of course my Leica M lenses are the ones I’m going to reach for, but for action shots or those occasions where a zoom is just more practical than a prime I won’t hesitate to trust that the Sony 18-55mm will deliver.

<- Sony Nex 7 Rolling Review: Part I – First Impressions

Sony Nex 7 Rolling Review: Part III – Paired with the Voigtlander 15mm F4.5 Heliar ->

Time for another look at what’s in the bag! Last weekend I was invited along to a shoot at the Old Howard Smith Paper Mill in the outskirts of Montreal. This was my first trip to the location, so I didn’t really know what to expect; it’s situations like this that make my days in Boy Scouts really pay off. When you’re getting ready for a shoot, a photographer’s first instinct is to think about camera gear: lights, lenses, cameras, memory cards and tripods. These are all necessary, but often not the most important things you’ll bring to a shoot. In then end a camera is just a tool to record an image; if you’re too tired, cold, hungry, wet or blind to use it, no amount of camera gear is going to get you the shots you want. Most of us have sunk a small fortune into our photography bag, luckily you don’t have to win the lottery or hit it big on Partypoker to put together a decent support kit with whatever’s left in your wallet. If you’re heading out to shoot on location, especially an unfamiliar one there’s a few essential you’ll want to bring.


Clothing: There’s nothing worse than being uncomfortable for killing the creative process. Dress appropriately for the weather. If you’re expecting cold, dress in multiple thin layers with one more layer than you think you need. You can always take a few off if it’s warmer than you expected. If it’s hot, wear clothing that can breathe and wear a hat. If possible bring a change of clothes, and I always bring a small fold up rain poncho if there’s any chance of rain. Don’t forget things like gloves or sunglasses too. Think of what you’d bring with you camping for the day, even if you’re not leaving civilization. We all dressed appropriate to the 10C weather at the Mill shoot, but only a few of us where prepared for the ice still lingering in the basement of an abandoned factory.

Food and Water: Even in the city, you won’t always have time to grab food or water from a store, out in the woods it’s even less likely. I like to travel light as possible, but I’ll always spare room for a large water bottle and even if I know where my meals are coming from during the day I’ll stash a couple zip-lock bags of nuts or trail mix wherever there’s some room in my bag. If it’s cold out I’ll usually bring a thermos of tea as well, nothing like a couple sips of a hot beverage to get some warmth back. Getting in position and set up takes the most time at any shoot, having snacks on you can save you tons of time, especially if you can’t leave everything set up on location if you have to break for lunch.

Odds and Ends: How many times have you been on a location shoot and found yourself saying: “If only I had a _____”. Chances are that thing you need isn’t some weird object; it’s probably one of those super useful household objects you just didn’t think to bring because you take for granted that it’ll be around when you’re at home. Here’s a list of small odds and ends that I’m sure you’ll see the use in bringing along, and if you don’t… bring them anyways, I’ll guarantee you’ll find a use for them one of these days.

It’s a lot of stuff, but most of it is pretty small, I can usually fit my boy scout kit into a Lowepro lens case meant for a 70-200mm lens. It keeps everything in one spot and has the added benefit of being a modular design that allows me to attach it to pretty much and strap, belt or bag I’m carrying. The only real limit to the amount you bring is weight, if I know I have to carry everything I bring around with me all day, I’ll skip some of the heavier items, but if I’ll have a car or someplace to stow extra gear safely I’ll beef the kit up a bit.

Even though the mill was in the middle of town, once inside it was like stepping into the apocalypse. It was dirty, dark, dangerous, slippery and wet, temperatures ranged from 5-10C below outdoor temperatures, there was no access to running water or bathrooms; I may as well have been camping in a forest of broken glass, rusty nails and rotting wood. The point is, many people get so focused on the camera gear part of the equation, they forget the extra things that can make even the most gruelling location shoots bearable and let you actually put your thousands of dollars of camera into action. Stay tuned for more shoots from the Old Howard Smith Paper Mill, it’s one of the greatest locations I’ve ever shot at, and I had an absolute blast exploring it.

This is part one of my ongoing review of my new toy, the Sony NEX 7. Over the next couple months I’ll be posting my thoughts on the camera paired with various lenses, I didn’t buy it to get into Sony’s E-Mount lenses, it’s primarily to compliment my Leica film kit so I’ll be talking about it with those lenses in mind. Sony’s own lens offerings aren’t amazing so far, I may pick up their new 50mm this summer, but that’s about it. There’s been a lot of controversy over this camera in the rangefinder circles; it was hoped that the NEX 7 would be the Leica killer, a camera the average user could afford that overcame all the little issues we’ve all be complaining about with other mirrorless cameras. It’s got a nice big sensor, gorgeous EVF, lots of manual control nobs and buttons, built in flash, articulated LCD and offers tons of different ways for the user to customize control. On paper it’s almost the perfect camera, but conflicting results with wide angle rangefinder lenses had many people worried. I’ll get to that later, but first let’s start with first impressions.

Right out of the box, the NEX 7 felt like a quality piece of equipment, the metal housing is very sturdy feeling, nothing like the plastic body of my NEX 3. The LCD doesn’t feel like it’s going to break every time I flip it out, it slides out smoothly with no wiggle or play. The buttons and knobs are well machined and seated in the housing and you don’t feel like you’re stressing the frame when you press them. It’s the Porsche to my NEX 3’s Honda Civic, everything just feels classy and sleek. I was surprised how comfortable such a small camera felt in my huge mitts, the rubberized front grip is nice and deep and the rear of the camera had a bit of a thumb grip as well.

The pop out flash feels a bit flimsy, but it hides away, flush to the body nicely. One nice though about the in camera flash that Sony probably didn’t intend really sets it apart from any on board flash I can think of; the little arm it flips out can be pulled back with one finger to bounce the light off the ceiling. It takes a bit of finger gymnastics to pull off, but it’s really helped out in a few situations already.

Ergonomically, the buttons all fall nicely in places where my fingers can reach them without contorting my hands in weird ways; my only complaint is the video record button right under where my thumb sits. If I was big into video I’d probably love the positioning, but I’m not, so I can see myself accidentally engaging the video when I don’t want to. I’m loving the two metal control dials placed under your thumb on the top right of the camera that can change function depending on what mode you’re in. Sony even included a lock button so that you can’t accidentally change their settings once you’ve got them set where you want them.

One thing we all wanted in a mirrorless camera for our Leica glass was more manual control and the NEX 7 doesn’t disappoint in that department. Right out of the box, the buttons are all configured for use with auto-focus Sony lenses, which makes sense, but isn’t nearly optimal if you’re going to be using the camera with manual lenses most of the time. Luckily you can re-assign the functions of almost all the buttons, and they all have contextual settings as well that change how your buttons and dials work under different shooting modes. I can see some people getting frustrated with this, I have to admit, this is the first camera where I actually read the instruction manual. Getting the hang of setting up and customizing all the controls was a bit daunting due to Sony’s less than stellar menu layout, but after using the camera for a while it’s made operation faster than on any digital camera I’ve ever owned. Sony did a pretty good job of anticipating a huge range of different setups people might want, but why they didn’t go the extra step of allowing every button to be customized to any function I don’t know. They were almost there, the Sony menus, while confusing, allow about 90% of all the different permutations of button setups. Maybe future firmware will change this, but it’s really a small complaint, it’s still more customizable than any of my DSLRs.

The Electronic View Finder (EVF) is just gorgeous, this is what I’ve been waiting for, this is why I bought this camera and I couldn’t be happier. Well, ok of course I could, but within the limits of current technology Sony turned it up to 11 with this one. It’s crisp, clear and sharp; I haven’t seen any ghosting or tearing of the image I saw in previous EVF’s. Some people have complained that it gets grainy in low light, but that’s to be expected when you bump up the ISO in dark conditions. I have pretty bad eyes, in really dim conditions I’ll take the NEX 7’s backlit EVF over squinting into a dim optical viewfinder any day. I’m also in love with having all my cameras settings and displays in the viewfinder. I wear glasses, so I usually can’t see the edges of the frame in any viewfinder, which means I have to shift my eyes around the viewfinder and off my subject to try and see any exposure information displayed outside the frame on most cameras. Having all this information overlayed on the display is a god-send for me, not to mention having access to the histogram, frame lines and electronic level. Oh yeah, did I mention that, the NEX 7 has a built in two-axis level you can display on screen, amazing.

Like I said, I don’t plan on using the camera with Sony lenses, but I figured I’d give it a whirl for a bit, just to get a feel for how Sony built the camera to behave. Overall I like the autofocus with the kit lens, much faster than on my NEX 3. It’s still no match for my DSLR, but contrast detection AF just isn’t in the same league as the phase detection systems you get in SLRs right now. It’s definitely not suited to sports or any fast action photography, but for everyday purposes it’s fast enough. I’ll revisit this topic when I pick up the new fast 50mm, but for now I can’t see myself using the 18-55mm enough to form more detailed opinions.

As much as I love the camera, it has it’s quirks and problems. The first known issue, which I was hoping they’d change with the NEX 7, is how much of the really cool in camera image processing options are disabled if you’re shooting RAW. Sony did a great job with adding things like a panorama mode, built in HDR and dynamic range optimization, but in order to use these functions you have to be shooting in JPG mode; you can’t even be in JPG+RAW mode. I can understand why they did this, by definition all these functions alter the image after it’s been taken and a RAW file is literally RAW sensor data, there’s no such thing as processed raw data. This was the same way it worked on the NEX 3, but I was hoping since the NEX 7 was aimed at the pro and advanced amateur market they would have allowed you to shoot RAW+JPG so you could get a pano or HDR jpg straight out of the camera, but still have the original RAW files that were used to create that image to play around with later.

Another issue that I knew about going in is how Sony implemented switching between the rear LCD and EVF. Here’s how you’d expect it to work: there’s a sensor at the eye cup that detects when you’re looking through it, so take it away from your eye and the rear LCD comes on, put it back to your eye and the EVF comes on… don’t touch the camera for X seconds and it goes to sleep and you have to half press the shutter to bring it back to life. And that’s how it works, almost anyways. For some reason, some genius engineer at Sony decided that even if the camera is asleep, putting your eye to the EVF should wake it up and it shouldn’t go to sleep as long as you have the camera to your eye. Makes sense, kind of… if you’re looking through the EVF you must be actively using the camera, and for the sake of speed, if you bring the camera up to your eye you obviously want the camera to be on. Makes sense on paper, but in practice it’s terrible because the sensor just goes by light levels; if it gets darker it must mean an eye is looking through the EVF, but it can’t tell the difference between the EVF going dark because it’s pressed against your eye, or because it’s resting on your chest on a strap… you know, like 90% of all photographers on the planet carry their camera. I really don’t know how this got past QA, it’s like they thought every photographer carries a table around to set their camera down on when they’re not using it. In a real world shoot, it means the camera almost never goes to sleep when you’re walking around with it hanging on your neck and it chews through batteries like a fat kid at a pie eating contest. There have been a lot of complaints about this issue and I’m really hoping it gets fixed in the upcoming firmware update. This kind of issue seems to be cropping up more and more in high tech gizmos; just because we have the technology to make touch screens and smart sensors, doesn’t mean they should be included regardless of whether they actually work better than a good old manual control button.

Besides those two main issues, there isn’t a lot to complain about; there’re always little things you would want to change, buttons moved slightly, menu options rearranged, but overall it’s a very solid camera. There’s been a lot of controversy over how the 24mp sensor handles high-ISO noise and wide angle rangefinder lenses, but I’ll get into that in later posts, so stay tuned for more updates in the coming months. Overall, I can see the NEX 7 having a permanent home in my everyday photo bag.

Sony Nex 7 Rolling Review: Part II – 18-55mm Kit Lens Performance ->

The Hawk’s Factory Close Focus Adapter is a marvelous little piece of engineering that many people won’t care about, and those that should care, probably don’t know about. One of the biggest limitations of any rangefinder system is close focus ability. Rangefinder bodies and lenses just aren’t designed for it; parallax error makes focusing closer than around a meter very difficult with mechanical rangefinders so there was never really any reason to build a lens that could focus closer than that. Using a rangefinder lens on a mirrorless camera avoids the issue of parallax error, but the lenses still can’t focus any closer than they used to; enter the Hawk’s Factory Helicoid. Not only does it allow Leica M lenses to be mounted on a Sony E-Mount camera, it’s got a built in helicoid to move the lens out a few more millimeters from the sensor. So what… a few millimeters, what does that give you? Quite a bit actually…


The adapter is solid, very well machined and feels like a quality piece of equipment. Fully collapsed, the Hawk’s adapter works just like any other Leica M adapter, allowing them to be mounted on a Sony NEX body at the correct distance to allow full infinity focus, and it does a damn good job of that by itself; it’s on par with the more expensive adapters I’ve tried from Voigtlander or Novoflex. Mounted on the Hawk’s adapter I feel absolutely no looseness with any of my M mount lenses, something I can’t say about some of the cheaper adapters I’ve tried, and all my lenses focus right to infinity just fine. This isn’t new though, we’ve had adapters for our legacy lenses for some time, sometimes even before the cameras they’re designed for are available. What’s new is the incorporation of the helicoid in the adapter.

The helicoid in the Hawk’s adapter gives you another range of focus for any lens mounted on it; focus your lens to its minimum focal distance then continue focusing closer by twisting the adapter just like you would on a lens. The helicoids itself has a silky smooth movement and the newest version of the adapter even gives you a convenient focusing tab. In most cases this extra couple millimeters of extension will let you focus 50% to 80% closer than you could normally. This is simply a miracle for those of us used to the usual one meter minimum focus distance of many RF lenses. It doesn’t bring you into the true macro lens range, but it does bring you within the close focus range of most SLR lenses, and since there’s no glass element involved the Hawk’s adapter won’t degrade your image like using screw on close up filters or macro attachments.

The adapter focuses in the same direction as Leica M lenses, which is nice for those of us that are already used to that. It’s got a very nice throw length, assuming you’re wearing the camera around your neck, the focusing tab goes from around 5 o’clock collapsed for normal focusing to about 7 o’clock at the closest focus distance. The focusing is well damped and stiff enough to prevent accidental movement but not too stiff to be impede easy use. The adapter focusing tab doesn’t interfere with the built in focusing tab on my 25mm Skopar and I doubt it would interfere with the tabs on any of the Leica lenses with one either. There’s no infinity lock, which I count as a huge plus; I can’t stand infinity locks and have gotten rid of lenses that have them for that reason alone. As I’ve said, it feels as well built or better than any of the Leica M adapters I’ve tried and I sense no loss of stability or durability when fully extended as well.

Some people have balked at the price of the Hawk’s adapter, which goes for around $179 on their eBay store, but if you think about it for a second it’s actually a real deal. It’s the same price as the high end adapters Leica adapters, and provides the same functionality and so much more. What other piece of equipment will improve the usefulness of every single lens you can mount on it? It fills a major whole in any rangefinder kit; I used to carry around and have to switch to the kit lens that came with my NEX any time I needed a close up shot. And the beauty of using the Hawk’s adapter is that there’s no fumbling and switching of lenses, the close focus capability is always there waiting to be used no matter which M mount lens I’m using at the time. Below are some sample shots from my Voigtlander M-mount lenses at normal minimum focus distance and the close focus achieved with the Hawk’s adapter; just mouse over the images to see how much closer you can get.

For me, the Hawk’s adapter has been the single greatest addition to my rangefinder kit since my Sony NEX 3. It’s only available for Sony E-mount at the moment, and so far it’s only available from the Hawk’s Factory eBay Store and a few other resellers on eBay. If you can’t find a listing, contact Hawk’s directly via eBay and they might be able to tell you when more will be available, they’re not mass producing them. They don’t have a website and it’s not sold in any brick and mortar store as far as I know, but if this adapter is any indication of their potential I think we’ll be seeing more of Hawk’s Factory in the future. It’s not exactly a revolutionary idea that strains our knowledge of optics to the limit; it’s straight forward physics, something I expected one of the big companies in the adapter game like Cosina, Novoflex or Fotodiox, but it ends up coming from a small factory in Taiwan.

*UPDATE*

I’ve found one issue with the adapter, although I’m not sure if it’s user or equipment that’s to blame. As I stated, the Hawk’s helicoid is stiff enough to prevent accidental turning most of the time; I’ve found it’s harder to accidentally change focus with the adapter than it is to accidentally change focus on most of my lenses. That being said, it can happen. If you’re checking focus each shot, this isn’t really a problem, but if for instance, you had set your lens to the hyperfocal distance and where only framing each shot and not checking focus it can be a problem. If the adapter is only slightly extended away from the base position, the slight shift in focus is hard to see without magnifying the image on the LCD. I got home last night to find all my shots during a hour long period of wandering around to be just slightly out of focus, luckily they weren’t critical work. I though about it all night, wondering if some kind of lock on the adapter to solve this problem would be an improvement, but in the end I feel that a lock would just get annoying; I like the fact that I can go from normal to close focus so smoothly, a lock would mean more fumbling and missed shots. In the end, it’s my job to make sure I’m properly focused; so while it is an issue to watch out for, I don’t think I can blame the adapter.