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20 November 2009, Friday
DxO Optics Pro 6
I just got off an illustrated conference call with DxO in Paris.
The new version 6 of Optics Pro is out for WIndows, but the Mac version won't be out until next year.
DxO Optics Pro is software that perfectly and automatically (by reading the EXIF) corrects lens distortion, improves lens sharpness as needed, and does the best job I've ever seen of automatically optimizing highlights and shadows.
Not only does it do a perfect job of correcting the complex distortion of ultra-wide zooms, it creates perfect straightening of fisheye images, regardless of focused distance, and that was even in version 4 that I've been using.
Unlike other shadow and highlight programs (or Photoshop or Lightroom themselves), DxO magically knows how to apply just the right amount of whatever to get my photos to sing, automatically. I last used old version 4 for my photos on Rt 66 back in 2007, and it worked wonders. I pointed DxO to the photos I wanted, it crunched the numbers, and out popped perfected images.
New in version 6 is the ability to remove noise and even push-process images two stops past the highest ISO on your camera. That's right: shoot your D3 at ISO 12,800 in raw, and processed through DxO they showed me it looking better than when processed in ACR or Capture NX.
Even crazier, set your camera, like a Canon G10, to underexpose by using negative exposure compensation, and DxO can push the image a stop or two to get you ISO two to four times the maximum that you thought you had on your camera.
Optics Pro works with both raw and JPG images, but to get the extraordinary noise reduction performance they showed me, it has to do that from raw files.
Of course you can control it manually, but for a guy like me that would rather be shooting than playing on a computer, the fact that DxO can be trusted to do its own thing, and do it extremely well, is a Godsend.
When you buy it. you buy a license to run it on two computers, just like Photoshop.
Dxo Optics pro is compatible with Lightroom 2. It can browse Lightroom catalogs, export back to to lightroom catalogs, and you can call up DxO as an external editor from inside Lightroom by right-clicking and selecting "send to DxO."
Another advantage of DxO over most other software is that it doesn't need to create a duplicate-copy library of all your photos, as Aperture, iPhoto and Lightroom do by default. It it these stupid libraries which cause the compatibility problems where you need to get things in and out of "libraries." With DxO, it works with images as they are stored in my regular file system.
Other software makes duplicates of everything you "import" into them, and with the amount I shoot, I can't afford that. With DxO, you show it what photos you want processed, and it goes to work.
DxO 6 has the ability to split-screen "virtual copies" of different sets of manual corrections. These virtual copies only exist in the software; they don't clog up more hard drive space.
DxO Optics Pro 6 makes it easy to store and recall presets of settings you might like. There is a Presets box near the top right in the Customize tab, and in the other tabs, simply right-click a thumbnail image to use presets.
If you bought Optics Pro v5 since June 2009 you get a free upgrade to v6.
If your copy of v5 is older, you get a 40% discount on the upgrade through 31 December 2009.
If you're new to DxO Optics Pro, there is a 33% discount through 31 December 2009.
So? The Mac version won't be out until 2010. For Mac, as of course I use, the key is to buy or upgrade to version 5 today, and then the upgrade to v6 ought to be free when v6 becomes available for Mac.
19 November 2009, Thursday
Indian Country Tour
Southwest Sun.
NEW: Indian Country 2009 Gallery.
I just posted snapshots I made last week in Arizona and Utah on Dave Wyman's photo tour.
I'm done with DSLRs for travel. All the posted snaps come from the Canon S90 or G11.
RSS Update
For those of you getting too many updates, you are subscribed to the live RSS feed.
If you don't want 37 updates as I write this all day, you want to subscribe to the daily RSS feed instead.
National Wildlife Federation Photo Contest Winners
The NWF has chosen the winners, which you can see here.
18 November 2009, Wednesday
Voigtländer Update
I don't understand why anyone would cheap-out with Voigtländer lenses on a LEICA M9. Lenses are free compared to the depreciation of an M9, and inferior lenses compromise the M9's quality for which you paid in the first place.
The Voigtländer 12mm, 15mm and 21mm lenses work poorly on the M9. I've tried them. Forget them. Their rear nodal points are so close to the sensor that they have red-tinged left sides and blue-tinged right sides. It's nasty. They work great on film, but forget it with the M9, at least if you care about quality.
The M9 is programmed with profiles to work perfectly with all current Leica ultrawides, so they are not a problem. The M9 has no profiles for lesser-brand lenses.
Honestly, do you have any idea by how many thousands of dollars a year your M9 is depreciating? Do you realize that lenses only go up in value? The silliest thing people do is buy fancy cameras and cheap-out on lenses. Do not buy Voigtländer lenses to save money — it will cost you. Only buy them if they do something Leica can't.
Lets look at the numbers:
LEICA M9: $7,000 new. Used value in 3 years: $2,500. Cost per year: $1,500. (used value in 10 years: $500. Cost per year: $650. Used value today, due to scarcity before everyone gets theirs, is about $9,200.)
Voigtländer 21mm f/4: $400 new. Used value in 3 years: $300. Cost per year: $33, and the cost of inferior images. (used value in 10 years: $500. Cost per year: the world pays you $10/year.)
Leica 21/2.8 ASPH: $4,400 new. Used value in 3 years: $3,200. Cost per year: $400. (used value in 10 years: $5,200. Cost per year: the world pays you $80/year.)
Used Leica 21/2.8 (non-ASPH): $1,500. Used value in 3 years: $1,800. Cost per year: the world pays you $100/year. (used value in 10 years: $2,500. Cost per year: the world keeps paying you $100/year.)
Used Leica lenses are always a bargain for what you get. In fact, they tend to appreciate with time, making them better than free or throwing that money away in the stock market.
If you can afford an M9, you certainly can afford to get decent lenses for it.
Zeiss are excellent. I have not yet tried any auf der M9. My concern will be with sensor interface for the shorter lenses without in-camera profiles.
I do want to look at the newest Zeiss lenses for Canon DSLRs, which might let the Canon 5D Mk II out-do the M9. We'll see; Canon's shortcoming is that their wide zooms are superb for sports, news and action, but fall short for nature and landscape use. That's why people have been adapting Nikon's 14-24mm to Canon.
Go Shoot!
I haven't stopped laughing all day. Check this out:
Sadly, this is all too true. Some of my best shots have been made with cameras that couldn't focus. I simply learned how to compensate for the offset.
It's time to stop worrying about your camera and go shoot. I don't even use DSLRs anymore except in the studio. In the field, I use a point-and-shoot.
I do worry about focus, but only because you people want me to report on it. I've been sending half my Leica lenses out for adjustment to get the focus just right. If you think SLRs are a pain, don't even think about trying to get all your telephotos to focus perfectly on a rangefinder camera.
I have no idea how I to embed video on my site. I wish I knew how to do this for my kid videos!
Phase One
Good news: I researched last week's PODAS workshop, and learned a lot more about Phase One. That blog was put together each night as they were trying to put things to bed, so we'll hold off looking at their photos until they are presented formally.
The great news is that I sniffed around enough to learn that Phase One Capture 1 software not only works with DNG files from the LEICA M9, it already has calibrated profiles for the M9!
Leica used to include this with the old M8, but not with the M9.
I've not gotten the colors I want out of the M9's JPGs or DNGs via CS4's ACR tool. Sure, I get nice pictures, but I still haven't gotten the colors I personally prefer out of it.
Capture One ought to let me create color profiles to distort colors in similar ways to how Velvia 50 makes warm colors warmer without changing the greens or blues, and if I can figure that out, hee hee hee, it ought to be good times.
One fine day I hope to get the time to download it and play with it.
Great Work with the Canon G11
Want to see what a real photographer can do with a Canon G11 point-and-shoot? have a look at Laurence Kim's latest work.
If you know what you're doing, you'll get great shots with anything.
If you don't, your time should be spent in art class, not fiddling with even more complicated cameras, until you can get great results with disposable cameras. I'm serious: if you can get the basics right with a QuickSnap, your work will be spectacular shot on a real camera, and if you can't, a better camera will only make things worse.
Free Workshop
Well, not really.
Check out this video interview with Chase Jarvis for some great tips that help a lot more with making great photos than buying a new camera does.
Chase gets to the really important points several minutes in, after they stop talking about his book or cameras or SanDisk. The important take-away after you strip off all the commercial interests, is that it's critical to do your own work, not try to imitate other people's styles.
You can get Chase's book at Amazon.
17 November 2009, Tuesday
Nikon Short Film Contest
Nikon's having a contest for the best short film of 140 seconds or less. That's quite a long clip; TV commercials are only 29.5 seconds, for instance.
Entry is free, you may send up to five different films, and top prize is $100,000.
Here are the rules.
When I say "film," I mean that Nikon is accepting digital video files of just about any kind (up to 200MB) and that they may have been created on any kind of camera, film, digital, cell phone, or whatever.
That means you can shoot in 35mm 'scope or 65mm on Arri, Panavision, break out the old Mitchell, shoot with your camcorder or cell phone camera, or even try your luck with a DSLR's video mode.
The good news is that Nikon claims it doesn't care how you shoot it, so long as it comes out as a file you can upload.
Good luck! It's all about story telling, not the gear.
LaCie Rules!
I just opened my mail after returning from Indian Country.
Lo and behold, LaCie returned the big, professional 1.5TB external hard drive I had sent to them for repair.
It worked fine, but it made funny noises ever since Ryan pulled it off a counter to fall four feet onto solid concrete.
I called LaCie, wondering if I could send it in for service, hoping maybe replacing just the internal drives would be a cheap way to make it reliable again.
It was still under warranty, so the LaCie guy in Oregon said send it in and they see what they could do. He said don't worry about having dropped it; the technicians won't penalize me unless it's got obvious impact damage.
They sent me email letting me know it was serviced with their compliments.
I opened the box, looking forward to a freshly serviced drive, but no!
Instead they sent me a newer model, just like new complete with all the cords, manuals and power supplies, which I had not sent in with my older drive. What they sent me was marked "refurb," but except for the brown box, looks like new.
Whoo hoo!
It always pays to buy quality. I got lucky this time.
Actually, I had retired this 1.5TB drives as too small. I now use 3TB drives daily for backup. I'll use this 1.5TB drive for utility.
16 November 2009, Monday
Arizona and Utah!I just got back from a week of shooting everywhere from Monument Valley to Arches National Park to Sedona.
I photographed with the Contax G and 645 systems, shooting Velvia 50 as usual.
For digital, I brought a Canon S90 in my pocket, which worked great! I also made some snaps on the Canon G11 when the S90 batteries started to fade after three days of hard shooting.
It turns out that in spite of all my checklists, Ryan managed to pull out the little bag with all my chargers after I had packed it, so I had my wife FedEx me my little bag of chargers from home.
FedEx is awesome: my chargers really did show up the next morning out in the middle of the Utah desert, about 15 miles out of Moab where we were staying.
No big deal if they didn't arrive. I do my serious work on film, and I had enough batteries with me to run my real cameras through the next decade. It's only the inconsequential digital stuff which needs charging. Real photographers (me, too) don't need no stinking battery chargers or computers when we're out shooting.
Here are some casual drive-by snaps from yesterday, made with the S90. We didn't do much shooting yesterday: driving from Flagstaff to Phoenix and then from Phoenix to San Diego took all day on the road.
Dawn, King's House Motel, Flagstaff, Arizona. bigger.
American Flags, Sedona, Arizona. bigger.
Red Rock Crossing, Sedona, Arizona. bigger.
10 November 2009, Tuesday
I've been having a blast shooting with these two cameras the past few days.
What is striking about each of them is how much better they work at high ISOs than any other camera their size.
Other pocket cameras start looking bad at ISO 400.
These two work swell at ISO 800. When their Auto ISO picks ISO 1,600 when I need it, it still looks about as good as a DSLR.
I haven't started to analyze in depth, and I am very happy that each of these seems to be a step up from everything that came before.
I haven't compared, but I also think that this better high ISO performance is going to translate into much better daylight performance, with the noise reduction having to work much less hard and making my photos look less like cartoons.
Oh yes, as expected, S90 images look just like G11 images. They have the same sensor, and the S90 has a faster lens that lets it run at one stop less ISO in the same light for even better quality than the G11.
Another world-beating feature of the S90 is a secret: if you turn the big ring while setting WB, you get instant access to warm/cool (amber/blue) WB trim. Even LEICA can't do this; it allows me to get the perfect color balance right out of the camera in AWB. Hitting DISP gets you to a screen to do this and set green/magenta balance; the trick is the ring alone will adjust A/B without needing to go deeper. HA!
We'll see, but for starters I'm very impressed that for once it seems that the claimed high ISO improvement is for real.
06 November 2009, Friday
Contax G2 and Zeiss 28mm f/2.8.
NEW: Contax G2 Review. Better than the LEICA M9, for a lot less money! The M9 is the world's best digital camera, but the Contax G2 is about 40 years more advanced.
NEW: Contax G2 Users' Guide. How to use every feature of the G2, which is a lot simpler than I make it seem.
05 November 2009, Thursday
Nikon 28mm f/2.8 AF-D.
NEW: Nikon 28mm f/2.8 AF-D Review. A full review of the current lens, which has been available since 1994.
04 November 2009, Wednesday
NEW: Leica Lens Serial Numbers. It's easy to figure out when your lens was made.
03 November 2009, Tuesday
Film?
As you can see, film looks better, but fewer people shoot it.
Why?
Film is now an alternative medium, just as newspapers are to the Internet, and as TV is to movies.
Even as newer media take over the old, the old still gets better at what it always has done.
For film, film again a serious artists' medium, free from the encumbrances it had back when it was used by snapshooters.
Yes, fewer people shoot film because my mom now shoots digital, but just as many serious photographers shoot it as ever.
The reason the market numbers drop is because the snapshooters are bowing out, not the serious artists.
Rancho de Taos.
NEW: Photos from Arizona and New Mexico, November 2008.
Feel the power! This is what I photographed on Fuji Velvia 50 on a Nikon FA. You'll see links to the digital snaps of the same subjects if you want to compare for yourself.
The important part is that these shots are what I got back from the lab with no twiddling, and the images look even better on the actual film than on the cheap scans I present at this gallery.
These shots are almost a year old. I had to get out of my cage and post these before I forgot them all.
02 November 2009, Monday
Yosemite!
Barn, Yosemite National Park.
NEW: Photos from Yosemite and California's Eastern Sierra, October 2009.
I've presented many of the original JPGs, DNGs, and JPGs derived from DNGs, which means that these are also the highest-resolution complete images ever published on the Internet. Previous science experiments may have allowed people to browse or scroll around larger stitched images, however this is the first time anyone has published complete files from anything with higher-than-DSLR quality.
Have fun!
Canon Photography in the Parks Contest
Even if you missed your chance to enter, you can still vote for your favorite images.
If you do, you can enter to win a free Canon Rebel T1i and 18-55mm IS kit.
Nikon S70.
NEW: Nikon S70 Review. The Nikon S70 is a huge disappointment. I was expecting a great camera, but it's awful. Oh well.
01 November 2009, Sunday
Standard Time
I just made a point of setting all my cameras back to standard time.
Unlike a clock, if you don't actively reset all your cameras right now, you won't know they are wrong until sometime in February, 2010 when you notice the EXIF is off by an hour.
All Saint's Day & Barnack's 130th Birthday
Today is Oskar Barnack's 130th birthday. Barnack is the martyred spiritual leader of the Leica cult. You'll see his photo in every Leica catalog and PR piece.
I've seen his image in catalogs from at least 1938 through today, just as paintings of Saddam Hussain, Ché and Mao Tse Tung are all over other countries countries in which those martyrs are worshipped. Even weirder is that the iconic photo of Ché you see everywhere was shot on a LEICA.
In any case, it's a bit eerie to have Barnack's birthday fall on All Saints' Day, and Dia de los Muertos, as if the whole world is celebrating his birth.
Respecting the Martyr, I will admit that setting the clock of the LEICA M9 was the easiest of every camera or digital clock I had to reset this morning. All I hit was MENU > ZEIT and go, while my Nikons and Canons required several tries if I didn't hit SET or OK or DONE or whatever in the right sequence.
All this, and I still have my M9's menus in German, and the M9 is still easier to use than anything else in English. Maybe the Martyr was right.
What Was New in:
The end of September, 2008 (Photokina)
The beginning of September, 2008
December 2007: Loads of details about the Nikon D3, D300, 14-24mm and 24-70mm, much of which still isn't on the individual review pages.
November 2007: First hands-on details about the Nikon D3, D300, 14-24mm and 24-70mm, much of which still isn't on the individual review pages.
August 2007 (Loads of new Nikons and Canons)
2006 November - December (includes birth of Ryan Rockwell)
2006 October - November (includes photos from a trip to NY)
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Thanks for reading!
Ken
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