Yet more fun...

Right Pan... from John Opie on Vimeo.

Out with colleagues and former colleagues, this was taken with a Casio EX-FC 100 in the highest-resolution HS movie mode. No sound, just a simple pan right across the beers...

This is an example of high-speed video, in this case using a very inexpensive consumer digital camera that has the option of digital video, including, in this case, 210 frames a second at basically a slightly reduced VGA mode.

I'm basically pleased with the Casio EX-FC 100, with a few caveats: as a still digital camera, it isn't the greatest performer, but then again virtually no P&S cameras are. Their sensors are simply too small for really high-quality work. Related to the sensor size, the low-light performance is disappointing, especially for video. But I knew both of those when I bought the camera, so I'm not totally miffed.


On the plus side, it fits into a cell-phone pocket and has become my constant companion at work and elsewhere. While my phone (Motorola Droid) has a camera as well, this is simply worlds better, especially with the high-speed option. The other-world-like quality of the high-speed video is a lot of fun to play with. Battery life is more than adequate: two days ago I recharged it for the first time in over three weeks of intermittent use. I put in a class 6 16 GB SD card so that I have plenty of room for movies, which especially in the high-speed mode really get large very, very quickly.

The camera also has even higher-speed modes, but these drop the resolution until the fastest speed is a mere 100 pixels or so in height, virtually useless for anything but the most quickest of movement (on the other hand, it does run at 1000 fps).

This particular Casio is simply fun: always with me, and the high-speed modus is the biggest selling point. While Casio does have a bridge camera with the function - indeed slightly better resolution and running 300 fps instead of 210 - I'm contemplating the new Fuji HS-10/HS-11 as a possible upgrade, depending on its high-speed resolution. Specialized tools for specialized work.

What would be interesting would be to take the time-lapse work I've done with a hacked Canon 11o IS and juxtapose it with the high-speed images available here...something for a rainy day.

Lotte

This is a portrait of my sister-in-law, Lotte. In her kitchen, just a few days ago, using natural lighting and automatic white balance. Shot at 1/10th of a sec, f4, ISO 1000, 60mm focal length, handheld using the Olympus E-30 and the 12-60 lens. White balance cleaned up slightly in post-processing in, of all things, Picasa. Simply using that because it's easier to blog with it...

Summer Vacation...

Was in the US for a couple of weeks and picked up some new kit.

After debating for a goodly amount of time about which camera to get, I decided to get the Olympus E-30 with the 12-60 lens.

Truly amazing bit of kit: this photo was taken about 20 minutes after I got the camera at B+H Photo, direct out of the box and without reading the instructions...



What struck me about the combination of these two (camera+lens) is that it is fast.

Seriously fast. This is one of a series of photos, the camera can simply take as many pictures as you want it to without pausing.

The next thing that struck me is that while it works extremely well out-of-the-box, I'm gonna need some time to understand the manual and do some custom settings.

What I really like is the ability to do a 5-stop bracket for HDR work, as well as the extraordinary quality of the lens. Anyone contemplating or using the Olympus digital SLR systems should take a really serious look at this lens...

Here's another. If you could only see it in 12MP, 1:1, as the sharpness goes as far as the eye can see...



That's all for now, more to follow...

Seriously good work...

Samuel Cockedy, a Frenchman who moved to Tokyo in 2000, has not merely the right eye for photography, but has the right idea as well.

Photography isn't about simply capturing light on film or emulsion: it has everything to do with creating emotions, of putting you "there", of placing the photography involved in your heart, twisting and toying with your feelings of desire, of despair, of that elusive "Sehnsucht", something between desire, regret and distance. I think he's done a fabulous job here: watch it, if you can and your bandwidth allows it, full screen in HD. Absolutely marvelous.

The True End Of An Era...

This blog will take a new turn, away from watches and more towards photography, my first real love.

An era is coming to an end.

Let us go back, if we can, to an era where things were more ephemeral, where permanence was fleeting at best: to the early days of color photography.

Color negative films use dyes to make the color. Complex layers of emulsions allow light to be filtered to expose various layers, leaving after processing tiny dye clouds in primary colors to be enlarged and printed. Color prints were fundamentally the same.

Color slides came in two versions: Kodachrome and all the rest. Kodachrome is and was the only slide film that uses pigments, rather than dyes, to create its colors, and which retains its colors under all but the harshest of treatments. Kodachrome didn't contain the pigments, it caught them during the developing process, and was fundamentally a black-and-white film that was colored using pigments during the processing of the film.

Any other slide film? Dyes. Dyes are organic and, especially in the early days of slide films (until, say, the 1970s), they were sensitive to both xrays and temperatures: if your film had the bad luck of being xrayed at the airport more than a few times, fog would set in, ruining you photos; if you spent time in the desert, your colors would show strange and highly inappropriate color shifts, especially for films that were relatively high speed.


Hence Kodachrome was the cat's meow: it simply had the best colors. It was slow as heck - ISO 25 was the standard for a very long time - but simply gave the best results. Very few labs could process it, since it was a hideously complex process that was completely unforgiving of errors in time and temperature.

But had the most beautiful colors.

It got better: ISO 64 came along, then even ISO 200. I loved the ISO 200 for medium-format work, since grain wasn't quite the concern, and it was a joy to use.

But there was competition, especially as the dyes got better - azo metal-based dyes saved the day here - and the films became less and less temperature sensitive and less susceptible to color fogging via xrays.

Well, those days are gone.


Kodachrome is no more. Now, I'll admit I haven't shot a chemical shot in at least 3 years. What little film I had left over is expired, and I haven't shot Kodachrome in ages.

But loading your camera with Kodachrome was the penultimate challenge: it meant that you were entrusting your images to the best there was, and gave you the incentive to really work at getting the best.

Kodachrome. May it live forever, at least in our aspirations...

Gigapan...

Yep, I've got a gigapan. Fun stuff:

Now this is nice...

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Hattip: American Digest