TO CARRY A TRIPOD OR NOT TO CARRY WHEN TRAVELLING

I often had this dilemma. It was no problem if I was driving to my destination, but I go backpacking very often. And the tripod gets very heavy and too much after walking for sometime. I did try carrying a tripod sometimes. But I used to be so tired at the end of the journey that I would hardly have the patience to set it up for a shot. That’s when I bumped across this mini tripod which I found from the advice of a fellow traveller. It is light and easy to carry, small and fits in any bag. I now carry it when I go backpacking, but I fall back on the bigger tripod if I am driving somewhere.



The mini tripod. Goggles shown to indicate the size when folded.

The mini tripod folds into a length less than a foot and probably weighs less than a kilo. Expanded, it grows up to a height of almost 5 feet, which is fairly sufficient. It is not sturdy enough to make very long exposures or may not hold good in windy conditions, but is good enough take a shot with shutter open upto around 1sec. I have taken a few images of freezing the waterfalls using this tripod and it has come out well. It is quite useful for taking landscape pictures early in the morning or during and after the sunset, but don't expect to shoot long after sun down. I have found it useful in most situations I would use when I go backpacking and it has been a good resolution for the problem of having to carry a heavy tripod.

DARK COLORED SUBJECT

I metered on this bird, an Asian Koel, and over-exposed by +1EV so that I can get the details of the feathers. I was quite pleased with the resulting exposure. It is difficult to shoot birds(or any subjects) that are completely dark in color and we often end up only with an outline and a completely black body. I normally over-expose the image to counter that, and yet, not often am I very successful in getting a good image.



Exif: Canon EOS 350D, 100-400L at 400mm, f/5.6, 1/90sec, ISO 200, +1EV

GETTING ALL THE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY NEWS

How and where do you read news items on digital photography? How do you make sure you have not missed all the news you wanted? There are several ways. You can read from a single digital photography website(such as dpreview), but one website may not cover all the news. You can aggregate several RSS feeds and then find all the content you need, but it will be nice if some one else could do it for you.

The way I do it is simple: I search Google News for digital photography. Since Google News aggregates news from several sources(including sites like dpreview), I am unlikely to miss much. Going one step ahead, I have subscribed to Google Alerts on the phrase 'digital photography', so all the do news gets delivered to my inbox, which I can read at ease. This is the most convenient way I have figured to get all my dp news.

BIG NUMBERS AND CANON LENSES

Canon is now celebrating total production of 30 million EF lenses. It took Canon less than 20 years to reach the number, with the first EF lenses produced in 1987. 30 million sure looks like a big figure for a niche market like interchangeable lenses for EOS cameras. If I were asked to guess a number of lenses Canon has produced, I would probably have put it at a million or so! Read the detailed press release with some facts about the EF lenses.

MICROSOFT AND COPYRIGHT

Everyone knows how hard Microsoft has been working and campaigning against piracy and copyright violation. But somewhere within themselves, they don't seem to care so much about keeping their own hands clean. Here a small thread I bumped into, which discusses an instance where a Microsoft magazine seemed to give little respect to copyright laws.

FOOD FOR PHOTOGRAPH...

These crimson colored flowers attract many birds and I found a few of them through my viewfinder. The combination of the birds and the flower is very photogenic and makes an attractive picture. This flowering plant - called Flame of the Forest is common in the forests of my region and if you wait near a tree in the flowering season during mornings or evenings, you are guaranteed to be rewarded with some avian guests posing you in no hurry. The image below is of a Yellow Throated Sparrow, also called Chestnut Shouldered Petronia. You can see a slightly larger image at my picture gallery in the album 'Birds and Animals'.



Exif: Canon EOS 350D, 100-400L at 400mm, 1/750sec, f/5.6, ISO 200

RAW AND JPEG(YET AGAIN)

Much has been written about the debate of raw vs jpg. I am adding mine to it now because I now have some personal experience to quote. So far, I always used to shoot raw, but last time, I sensed a possibility of running low on memory and hence decided to switch to jpg and try it out. This was the first time I was going to try shooting jpeg.

At least you can't tell much when you are in the field. Your LCD does not show much difference whether you shoot raw or jpg. I found quite a few differences when I loaded the images to the computer. Here they are. Keep in mind that the issues like sharpness may be limited to my camera(Canon EOS 350D) and the firmware version(1.0.1) and can't be generalized. But issues like white balance are universal.

Sharpness: There is a considerable loss of sharpness in the jpg images. When I shoot raw, I sometimes manage to skip unsharp mask to the images, or apply very little of it. For example, a typical raw image is treated with USM settings of 75, .8, 4. But the jpg images badly needed sharpening. Most of the time, the values applied were like 125, 1, 0.

Problem with Exposure correction: It is much easier correct the exposure in the raw file. I had a few images that were slightly underexposed(May be by 0.5EV). It would be no trouble at all to fix that in the raw image, but I had to work hard to restore it in the jpg image without spoiling the image. I can't say this conclusively, but I think the in-camera jpgs came out slightly darker than they should.

White Balance: I did not face any problem with white balance, but was afraid I might. It is fairly easy to fix white balance issues in the raw image but is a major task if you shoot jpgs. During late evenings or tungsten light conditions, it’s probably impossible to shoot leaving the white balance setting to Auto.

Loss of contrast? This is another thing that I can't say for sure - it may be true or it could just be a perception. I felt a loss of contrast when I shot jpgs. For the jpgs I shot, I almost always ended up applying local contrast enhancement - something I apply rarely when I shoot raw. I would be able to confirm this problem only if I try both raw and jpgs for some more time. But unlikely that I will shoot jpgs again.

These are the problems that haunted me. Of course, there are advantages shooting jpgs. One is the memory needed to store them, which is what forced me to shoot jpegs this time. It will also save you some processing time since you don't need to convert the raw files. That is useful if you shoot a large number of images. And if you are not too bothered about the quality - like if you are shooting some picnic or such events, which do not require stringent quality, why bother to shoot raw? Personally, I find the problems mentioned above to be fairly serious issues and hence I would continue to shoot raw unless I am running low on memory.

BUFFALO'S BATH...

Despite being busy in the last 2 weeks, I still managed to spend some time to work with the camera. There is a lake just 5 minutes away from home, where I often go in search of birds. One morning when I was on my way back, I caught these buffaloes emerging from the water.



Exif: 1/45sec, f/16, ISO 200, 100-400L at 100mm

NIKON TO STOP MAKING FILM CAMERAS!!!

I am back to updating here daily and am now going to be logged on regularly for next few days, after a gap of almost two weeks. One of the first things I did was to fill me up with all the digital photography news I missed in this period. What I came across was what could be a significant step in the evolution of Digital Photography, and which could also mark a big step in marking the decline of film. Nikon is already readying itself to shun film, and has decided to stop producing most of their film cameras. It is a big surprise to me and is coming much much earlier than I expected it to happen. What makes me wonder even more is that only a month back, I saw some advertisements of Nikon film cameras in some photography magazines. But it could well be an effort to get rid of the inventory. Kodak is one other company that has already taken this step, but not many others have followed yet. Predictably, Nikon is not abandoning film altogether and is going to continue producing a few models.

In the meanwhile, growing sales of digital cameras and rapidly improving technology has not gone all that good for some camera makers. Most of them are not making much money, especially the second tier camera manufacturers such as Olympus and Konica Minolta. In another surprising news, Konica Minolta has decided to exit from camera business, with its inability to make much progress in digital camera market. It is very much possible that some more companies may follow soon.

A QUICK NEWS

I am still busy at my work and shall be back to posting regularly in 3-4 days. I logged on to internet after many days for a quick and hurried session of checking mails, and I see a mail quoting that this blog is nominated for Best Photography Blog Award. I did not have time to look for details, but what is surprising is that it is nominated under equipment review section, which hardly happens here. Details here.

I am going to be busy on personal work for next 10 days, and Digital Photography World will see a slow down in activity for this period. There may be occasional posts once in a while, but not regularly. In the meanwhile, take a peek at rest of this website.

REPLACEMENT FOR CANON EOS 20D?

It has been a while since 20D has gone 'old' but Canon has not made any mentions of replacement. The buzz now is that a replacement may be out soon. The next version to 20D, which people have preferred to call 30D for obvious reasons, seems to be out for a launch of Feb 06 and should be available by Apr 06. Read more on the buzz

It also means that if you are a potential buyer of 20D, it is a good idea to wait. You may have a chance to pick up the inventory at a good bargain, or may be able to get a better camera at the same price.

RECOVERING LOST IMAGES

It is not often that digital photographers run into the problem of loosing images, but if that happens in a rare occasion, it could be really painful. Even worse if you were out on a holiday and come home to see your pictures gone. It could happen either because of corruption of your memory card or because you deleted them accidentally and are no longer readable. I have seen people making pleas of help in some photography forums. It looks like there is no reason to panic on that, and there are some vendors who provide software to recover deleted or corrupted images. And even more good news? Some of them are free! See a list of recovery software available.

It may be a rare thing to happen but it is good to know that there is a way out of such a situation. Some of the free ones include Z-A-Recovery and PC Inspector Smart Recovery

LOCAL CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT(DEFOGGING)

It is a technique I have started using lately, though I use it sparingly and only if I find a need for it. It is a technique to improve contrast of the image without harming the image like the contrast adjustment command does. Interestingly, it is done by applying unsharp mask on the image. The primary uses of local contrast enhancement, which is often called defog, are -

1. Improve the image that looks dull because of any reason such as foggy weather, image taken through a glass or just a bad lens
2. Improve the contrast of the image to make the image look more pleasant and colorful.

The process is simple. Apply unsharp mask(Filter >> Sharpen >> Unsharp Mask) on the image with low amount and threshold, and high radius. The recommended values are 20, 50 and 0. Below is an example of how defogging works to remove haze. This image was taken in a foggy morning and hence looked dull.



I applied unsharp mask with the values 30, 50 and 0 on this image.



Below is the resulting image, where you can see the improved contrast. The haze is also minimized.



As always, unsharp mask has to be used with caution and applying too much of it on the image is undesirable and can result in ugly output. I usually use local contrast only if it is necessary. The Local Contrast enhancement is usually applied at the beginning of the processing. It is best done in LAB colors to prevent any color distortions.

Further reading:
1. Luminous Landscape: Local Contrast Enhancement
2. Cambridge in Color: Local Contrast Enhancement

A BIRD PORTRAIT

Because it is difficult to approach them, Shooting portraits of birds is a big challenge. And it is not very common to find an intimate pair sitting close to you. I managed to get close to one of these Jungle Babblers and just when I was about to take a picture, another one flew in and posed with it for a few seconds.



Exif: Canon EOS 350D, 100-400L at 400mm, f/5.6, 1/250sec, ISO 200, +1/2EV

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND UNDERSTANDING EXPOSURE

To sum up the essence of this post, my ability to get the exposure correct has improved considerably since going digital due to instant feedback, and I notice I am making fewer errors when I take a picture and re-shoot to correct it.

In the years that I was using film, I worked very hard to get the exposure right. I used to take notes occasionally so that I can get some feedback on the exposure once I get the film developed. And each time when shooting, if I found the need for exposure compensation, I would think hard to get the right value. Despite all that, there were always errors. And with slide film, any small exposure error was a serious problem. I used to get it wrong pretty often despite all the care and effort I took to get it right.

Come digital and we had the instant feedback system. You could check the image in the LCD to verify if everything is ok, and there was the histogram to give you more accurate feedback. But when you are doing action photography or shooting birds, you can't afford to shoot first, look at the histogram and make another attempt to get proper exposure. So I had to learn to get it right the first time. I started observing the subjects, the light pattern and the camera's ability to get the metering right on a particular scenario. Continuous observation of this kind helped me understand the camera’s metering better, and hence make the correct exposure compensation on the first shot.

I still do make lot of mistakes with exposure, but I am getting it right more often. Images discarded due to bad exposure have come down to as much as 75% of what used to be six months ago. I have found that same improvement was difficult in film since I would not get the much useful instant feedback. Here are a couple of things I did which helped me improve.

1. I kept studying the histogram after each shot wherever possible, even if I am fairly sure that the image will be fine. It is also important to study the image on the LCD to get a feel of the exposure.

2. I studied the lighting condition of the subject and each time, and I made an attempt to check how the camera's light meter behaves for such a lighting condition. For example, I now have a better understanding of metering when I shoot a bird with sky in the background. If there is blue sky, I don't need to compensate. If it is bright sky, I need to compensate by +1EV(0.5 to 1.5 depending on how bright it is). In case of overcast sky(when photography is better not done), I need to compensate up to +2.0 EV and I may still not get a good image. There can be other factors - such as how much of the frame is covered by the subject and how much by the sky and take takes time to perfect it. So I still end up changing exposure by -1/3 to +1/3 when processing the RAW image. But it is important to note that I used to discard images six months ago because the exposure error used to be worse.

3. Similar to previous point, I also started studying the compensation needed depending on the color of the object. For example, the camera meter never gets it right if you are shooting a bird that is completely black(or white), or if your subject is bright snow. I haven't worked much with such subjects since going digital, I am yet to make more improvements on it. But I have noticed that I can expose a black colored bird much better than I used to do earlier.

It may be possible to fix exposure problems during post processing, but obviously, best results are obtained when the image is exposed properly. I usually do not expect very good final image if I need to make a compensation of more than 0.5EV in during post processing.

LOOKING BACK AT 2005

Digital Photography World was conceived sometime in May 2005. I have been updating this blog almost regularly, though there have been some short breaks. With whatever little feedback that I have received, this blog seems to have gone well with its readers. And especially popular are the long articles that I occasionally write about learnings in Digital Photography. Here is a list of them that I wrote in the last few months.

Notes on Color Management

Correcting Chromatic Aberration

Unsharp mask explained

Removing dust and scratches using Photoshop

Sensor Cleaning Experience

Digital Image Management

Digital Camera Buying Guide

I hope to keep the pace of writing and my own learnings in the year of 2006. But the first four months of the year might see occasional breaks, since I am mostly on the move in this period and spend less time online. And yet, I hope to make much improvement in the year ahead.