Coolness of the Day

Ever wonder what a real, three-dimensional Mandelbrot-type fractal might look like?

Well, here’s a site devoted to one possibility: Mandelbulb.

Appearance-wise, it doesn’t look all that much like a 3D Mandelbrot (except when you look closely in some spots—see a subheading on the 2nd page of the site for more about this issue), but in terms of complexity, it’s apparently the best 3D approach to the infinite complexity of repetition and variation seen in the Mandelbrot set that anyone has yet found. The function used is very similar to the Mandelbrot set function, except z is raised to the 8th power on each iteration, rather than simply squared. Also, due to the fact that three coordinates are needed on each point, rather than just two, the exponentiation of the coordinates is not the same as the simple complex-number multiplication used for the Mandelbrot set (this is really the central issue with finding a “3D Mandelbrot set”—the problem is finding an analog to complex multiplication that can be used to define points in space, rather than just on a plane). Details on the formula can be found here.

However, the main reason I am linking this is because of the pictures. There are some really fascinating, beautiful pictures. Wow. Definitely a must see—I commented on Flickr this morning that it’s the most interesting thing I’ve seen on the internet in quite a long time. I’m tempted to hotlink one of the smaller images…but that would be rude. Besides, the one I pick might not be the one you like best anyway. So just go there already. :)

RIP: My old Flickr account

Well, for reasons that I’m not going to go into, it was necessary to delete my original Flickr account, the one located at http://www.flickr.com/photos/68079097@N00/.

This is a bit of a bummer, but I’m well along in getting started with a new stream. In fact, things are going so swimmingly that I may soon have to break out the plastic money and get myself another pro account.

All of the pics I have posted on this blog so far come from the old stream, so at the moment they will appear as broken. I’ll fix that as soon as I get a chance.

The link to the new account is http://www.flickr.com/photos/44497532@N08/. I will miss being one of the elite “@N00″ people! :(

My old account was started in February of 2005, and had received over 17,000 views. I wonder what kind of viewage I’ll get on the new stream. As of this writing, I have 21 views. :) That’s the count for the stream, not the count for the individual pics. Once I reactivate my pro status, I’ll be getting a better look at the stats situation.

Another question is Flickr’s Explore. My old stream only had three photos reach permanent “Explore” status (another two were “explored” and then removed later, for some mysterious reason). A lot of the reason for this was that, for quite a long time, my workflow consisted of a final JPG for upload which contained no EXIF data at all. It’s fairly well-known on Flickr that you’ve got to have EXIF data in order to be considered for Explore. I know most of my old pics will still have the no-EXIF problem when I upload them again, but moving forward, all the newer stuff will have it.

Finally, I offer a suggestion to anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation in the future: If you want to “recover” some of the text data from a deleted Flickr account, use Google’s cache feature. But be careful doing that—if you access too many cached pages within too short a time, Google’s servers will decide you are committing a TOS violation and you’ll be banned from using cached pages. How long will the ban last? Who knows. I suppose it varies depending on how nasty they think you are. So be careful. As of last night, I was unable to access any cached Google page from my home internet account, even after waiting a couple of hours. I hope they lift the ban, but I’m afraid now that if I do even a little bit more, it’ll set off their alarm again and I’ll be banned forever. (Or at least until I get a new IP address, which could be months from now.) It’s possible I may already be banned forever. I hope not. :(

Google stupidity

Months ago, when Microsoft came out with their new search engine, Bing, I laughed. What could possibly cause me to abandon Google, I wondered?

As of yesterday, this question has been answered. When I pull up Google’s home page, instead of the usual buttons, there’s just some text that reads “This space intentionally left blank.” It stays that way until I move the mouse.

I am not sure why, but this annoys the living shit out of me. Seriously. Unlike other sites ([cough]Flickr![cough]), Google has implemented a lot of minor, incremental changes to their user interface over the years without ever bothering me, until yesterday when this crap started happening. This is the first time in over ten years of usage that they’ve actually managed to piss me off.

So now I’m setting my browser start page to Bing, instead of Google.

Pixel-Peeper

This looks like it could be a useful site:

Pixel-Peeper

Basically it has a search form on it where you can choose a lens, choose a camera, choose some other specifications like focal length range or aperture range, and it’ll search its database of photos for ones that match those criteria. So, for instance, I picked the Nikon 16-85mm VR, and the Nikon D40….and received zero matches. :) However, each menu also has an “any” option, so when replacing the D40 with “any,” I got many more results. Then you can look at the specs for each photo match or click on a link to view a full resolution version and “pixel peep.”

The problem is that most of these pics appear to be hosted on Flickr. Many, many Flickr users have their original size photos hidden, so when you click on that link it just says “oops, private page.” All you are allowed to see, in many cases, is the 500 pixel wide “medium” version. That seems like a pretty major flaw. You can’t tell very much about lens quality by looking at a 500 pixel image. Even the quality of the bokeh will look different when the resolution is reduced that much.

Recommended Reading

This is an excellent article, posted today on The Online Photographer:

Advice for Aspiring Photographers

Blowing out the sky…or not

[This was originally going to be a quick response to a question posed in a Flickr discussion thread ("Over exposed skies on D60"), but I found myself typing more and more, so I figured it would make a good blog post.]

The meters on the entry level Nikon DSLRs (and the D80, if I understand correctly) are tuned to ensure that darker areas aren’t underexposed, but this often leads to a problem: The sky, or other bright area, ends up “blown out.” There are various ways to alleviate this, none of them ideal.

Ideally, one could simply use a graduated neutral density filter, but such a filter has a built-in, natural limitation, namely that it works best when you can ensure that the sky is in the top half and the landscape is in the bottom. If the division between the two is uneven, as it is in many photos, then it’s not going to be as helpful. There is also a problem when the front element of the lens rotates, as it does on Nikon’s 18-55mm kit lenses.

Luckily, there are other methods:

1) Using matrix metering with the exposure compensation feature. Take a shot, check the histogram or highlight display to see how badly the sky is blown out, adjust exposure compensation accordingly, then try another shot. Be sure to center the frame in the same spot as the first time, so the meter receives the same input both times. In extreme cases, I’ve had to adjust exposure compensation multiple times to get it “right.” A single value is not going to work for every situation. I’ve used compensations varying from -0.3 to -2.7, although -0.7 to -1.7 seem to be the most common. The greater the compensation, the more contrast there’ll be in the final picture. At an extreme value like -2.7, the result is going to be questionable at best. With experience you can take a guess at your compensation value on that first shot, and save yourself some time.

2) Another thing to try is putting the lens on manual focus and setting “exposure lock” to “ON”. (Ironically, it’s possible this method never would have occurred to me if autofocus hadn’t been broken on my kit lens.) Expose an area right on the edge of the sky, hold the shutter button half down to lock the exposure, recompose, and shoot. With the lens on manual focus, you can focus at whatever point in that sequence is most convenient. Then check your exposure just like in (1). Thanks to metering the edge of the sky, the chances are much greater that your exposure will be correct on the first shot, but even if it’s not, you’ll need much less adjustment.

This exposure lock method is easier with autofocus off. With autofocus on, you’ll soon find yourself in a situation where your focus point, your metering point, and the center of your composition are three different spots, and it gets pretty hairy trying to handle all of that (especially if you prefer the left eye like I do, meaning the AE/AF-lock button is mashed right up against your face!). In fact, wanting to avoid this situation was the main reason I decided to learn the next method:

3) Just use manual exposure mode. If you want autofocus on, this will often work better than (2). Adjust the shutter speed and aperture explicitly, then check your results as in the other two methods. I find that manual exposure works best in the winter. In the summer, the presence of green vegetation increases the possible variability of the lighting, and adding a polarizer adds yet another variable, so eventually it gets to be too much to keep track of. That’s why I’ve never entirely given up on methods (1) or (2). However, in situations where the lighting is pretty consistent, this is actually the easiest method.

Wondering what values to start with? That’s not really all that hard. There’s an old heuristic called the “Sunny f/16 Rule” and it goes like this: On a sunny day, you can set your aperture to f/16, your shutter speed to the reciprocal of your ISO value, and the chances are good that this exposure will be right. Whether it turns out exactly right depends on various things, but it’s always a good starting point. You probably don’t want to use f/16, so when you move the aperture down, count how many steps you go, then count that many steps faster on your shutter speed. On a Nikon D40 at base ISO 200, then, the starting point would be f/16 at 1/200 second. But I’d rather shoot at f/8, which is two stops down (or six clicks on the wheel), so then I’d bump up the shutter speed two stops (six clicks) to 1/400 second. Easy! :)

4) I’ve tried abandoning matrix metering in favor of center-weighted, but gave that up after a couple of weeks because I found it was leading to even more tedious adjustment and fiddling than matrix metering. Instead of just needing negative exposure compensations, I now found many of them ending up on the positive side, making the whole process into a complete bother. How I managed to survive for years shooting film with a center-weighted camera is beyond me. :)

5) There’s always HDR, which I haven’t tried, mainly because it’s a computer intensive method (the less time I can spend in front of the computer, the better!). I will hazard a guess that this is the most complicated method of all. Or perhaps the method requiring the most art. :) I’ve seen plenty of cheesy, tasteless HDR compositions. A few of them look really superb, though (whether done with a realist aesthetic or not), and in extreme situations, I am sure that this is the only way to really get the shot.

6) I have found that a circular polarizer can sometimes help. When it does, it’s because the polarizer is actually darkening the sky, thus reducing the overall contrast. But that means it works less well when that darkening effect is minimized, such as in the late afternoon or early morning, or when the air is hazy. Unfortunately, these are precisely the times when the contrast problem is likely to be greater.

7) Whichever of the above methods you use, be sure you are shooting RAW. It has better dynamic range, and overexposed areas can often be “recovered” in post processing. That doesn’t work with JPG images.

So that’s basically it, there’s no “easy” way out, strictly speaking, unless you want to get a camera body that has some type of in-camera dynamic range expansion. I’ve seen some samples of this from the Pentax K-7, and they look somewhat fakey to me, not as good as a high-quality, manually done HDR image can. (Perhaps this is a matter of setting parameters in the camera, though.)

One final thing—sometimes you actually want to blow out the sky:

New equipment day

No, not new equipment for me, new equipment for Nikon. This was expected, at least for anyone “in the know”, or anyone like me who checks the Nikon Rumors site on a daily basis to see what’s up. :)

The new D3s camera body is a nice announcement, but not really relevant to me, as I doubt I’ll ever need a pro body like that. Of more interest is the announcement of a new 85mm macro lens. It’s a DX lens, f/3.5 and will supposedly cost $529 once it’s available.

I’ve been wondering what to do about the macro problem for a while now. Strictly speaking, I don’t need a macro lens, which is generally considered to be a lens capable of 1:1 magnification of the subject on the sensor. But I do find myself wanting something that’s good for photos of flowers and the occasional insect.

My original solution was to use the D40 kit lens at 55mm. This worked better before I lost autofocus capability on that lens (and is the main reason I am even bothering to think about getting it fixed at all). While I’ve been doing some recent experimenting with manual focus mode on that lens, I find that it’s generally pretty hard to focus it closely at 55mm, where the tolerance is so fine that slight waverings of my body as I stand can easily throw the subject out of focus.

The other alternative I currently have is to use my 18-200mm zoom at 200mm. It doesn’t magnify as much as the kit lens, but it’s adequate in some situations. Image quality is not as good as the kit lens, though.

All of this leads me to think that maybe a dedicated macro lens would work better, even if I don’t entirely need the 1:1 magnification. The problem is that the main offerings available for my camera were not exactly what I would have wanted. Nikon’s 60mm AF-S micro is a bit shorter than I would prefer (yes, it’s actually longer than my 55mm option, but doing macro work at those short shooting distances is not optimal—I’d prefer more distance). Nikon offers a 105mm AF-S micro which by all accounts is a pretty nice lens…except it costs $900, which is out of my price range for such a specialized application. The remaining micro lenses, prior to today, were not AF-S lenses, which would mean manual focus only. Sometimes autofocus really does help, such as one occasion recently when I was laying flat on my belly photographing a caterpillar. Caterpillars move surprisingly fast, when viewed from the perspective of keeping a macro shot in focus. :)

In any case, there is now a new AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/3.5G ED VR lens to consider. If the price manages to drop below $500, it’ll end up being a very appealing choice. It won’t be at the top of my “want” list, but it’ll be there, probably right below the 10-24mm zoom and above the 10.5mm fisheye. :)

An Exceptional Day

I saw a group of four Whooping Cranes yesterday. What a surprise! I could hardly believe my luck.

I was on a photo excursion/hike at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, had been outside for the better part of an hour already, and was nearing the end of the trail. I was a little tired (I am so out of shape it’s ridiculous) and I came really close to walking right by them without even realizing what they were! Horicon Marsh is heavily populated by Great Egrets, which are very beautiful, large, white birds, but they are so common that I’ve gotten kind of blasé about them sometimes. So when I saw four large white birds over a ways along the trail, that’s what I initially assumed they were, and went about my business shooting wide angle landscape shots (I actually have a couple of shots with small, white specks, i.e. Whooping Cranes, in the background, heheheh). I didn’t even have the right lens on my camera to look at them—for the day, I had decided to use the D40 kit lens, complete with broken autofocus. However, I was near the end of the hike, and was feeling like my kit lens project had been a success, so I decided I would take a break from deep landscape shots and grab a shot of those four big white birds over there, even though I knew they were too far away to make a good photo.

It hadn’t occured to me that Great Egrets tend to be pretty solitary, so what were four of them doing together? And weren’t they a little bit too large to be Great Egrets? And where was all the cool neck flexion and posture stuff you usually see with an egret? And what was the deal with the black on the wings? That didn’t seem right. And yet, the truth of what I was seeing still didn’t dawn on me, until I had switched lenses, zoomed in on them and realized they couldn’t possibly be egrets. My next thought was White Pelicans, but that only flashed through my mind for a moment—they were not bulky enough, and didn’t have the gigantic beak apparatus that pelicans have, so that idea was obviously wrong. I also saw a quite distinctive dark facial marking. This is actually reddish, but from that distance, on a cloudy day and through my small viewfinder, it just looked an indistinct “dark” color, compared to the surrounding white. Still, though, it was a clear indicator of what I was looking at, as was the way they walked, very much like a Sandhill Crane.

You have to understand, when one doesn’t expect to ever see a Whooping Crane ever, having not just one but four of them right there in plain sight is a little difficult to accept. So as I snapped excitedly away, knowing full well that the pictures would be mediocre at best (and not caring one bit!), my mind still hadn’t quite opened up to the idea that me, a basic birding nobody, had any business seeing such rare birds. Who the hell did I think I was, anyway? However, when they began to dance…well at that point there was no denying it, and I just about started to do a little dance myself! ;)

Regrettably, by the time they started dancing, they had moved behind some reeds, so I couldn’t see that part very well. I took a few shots of it anyway, just for documentation purposes. They didn’t turn out very well. The main body of shots was quite usable, if somewhat mediocre as I expected. I was too far away, with a lens renowned for mediocrity at its mere 200mm maximum length, and with only a six megapixel camera. But given these limitations, the photos turned out ok. I may even crop one of them to use as a banner photo for this blog! I haven’t decided yet. ;)

All in all, it was an exceptionally thrilling sighting! I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be the only time in my life I ever see these birds. They really are exceptionally beautiful. Here’s one sample shot, which honestly doesn’t do them justice:

I have actually gone a bit nuts by posting a set of sixteen shots on my Flickr stream. They are the ones that I felt were at least moderately acceptable. Normally I’d want to focus more on quality of the photo, but with birds this rare, I figure who cares. So here is the whole freakin’ set. Enjoy! :)

I’ll almost certainly be back there next weekend, to see if I can spy them again. :)

Update: I just realized that I can post a link to a full-blown slideshow of the whole set. Why bother with all the tedious clicking around when you can just view the entire set, in large size? ;)

Finally, I have to add that I went back to that same spot on October 10th and saw the same four birds again! Like the first time, it was pretty surprising, and very nice to see. This time, the weather was sunny, and the sunlight on their pure, white feathers was really amazing. The only thing, though, is that this time they were even farther away than the first time, so the photos from that afternoon were only useful for identification and documentation purposes.

[post updated October 28, 2009]

Yen are too expensive

Prices on Nikon lenses and camera equipment took a big jump earlier this year, much to the dismay of myself and other Nikon customers. The change was due to a long-term increase in the value of the Japanese Yen compared to other currencies. Rumor has it that more changes are coming, due to even more appreciation of the Yen. This is bad news.

So, I got curious and did a little looking at the exchange rate between the Japanese Yen and the American dollar at various times.

Today, October 1, 2009, the rate is 89.74 Yen for 1 US dollar.

A year ago the rate was 106.05 Yen per dollar, and two years ago, the rate was 115.92 Yen per dollar. Looking farther back, October 1 each year going back to 1998, the rate was always between 105 and 135 Yen per dollar. So the current exchange rate is clearly out of the ordinary compared to what we’ve been accustomed to.

I’ve also heard that Nikon is aware of this problem and is considering ways to alleviate it. This might mean moving more of their manufacturing and/or assembly to other countries. That might be a good thing from a price standpoint, but would they be able to maintain the level of quality on their higher-end items? Who knows. (On the other hand, none of the Nikon equipment that I own was made in Japan anyway, so would it even matter for me? I guess a more relevant question is how it would affect prices and quality on equipment that I want to buy, not on what I already have.)

Of course, another solution would be for the value of the dollar to increase. It wouldn’t have to go up all that much, either. About 20 Yen is all it would take, and that’s not all that much. The catch is that it would have to stay there for a while, giving no hint of going back down to its current level. The other problem with this idea is that it doesn’t seem likely that the US government would want it to happen, because I’m guessing they are wanting to stimulate exports, and for that, a weak dollar is advantageous.

(All exchange rates were obtained from free services on xe.com.)

More on autofocus errors

While reading Thom Hogan’s detailed review of the Nikon D300 today, I came across this interesting little bit in his discussion of the autofocus system on that camera:

The camera detects the current focus situation, calculates where focus should be (yes, it knows not only how much out of focus, but which direction, the error is when you initiate a focus operation), then tells the lens to move a set amount. To prevent hunting, if the new error after the focus is performed is within a reasonable tolerance, focus isn’t attempted again. Tolerances are the bane of accuracy…

In other words, what I was trying to explain last week, in my entry on using a superzoom lens as a focusing tool in wide angle shots where deep depth of field is needed, appears to be correct: If the camera thinks it has turned the lens far enough, i.e. “within a reasonable tolerance”, then that’s where it stays, rather than trying to find the absolute optimal position. And this would be why I was sometimes getting shots where the farthest background or closest foreground details were out of focus, even though the depth-of-field at my chosen aperture should have been adequate to prevent that from happening.

And what I secretly love about this is that I managed to reason it out just from using the camera. Heheh. ;)

So, what lens should I get? :)

I’ve been itching to upgrade my lens collection lately, but of course it’s a challenge for a person in my position to figure out which way to go. By “my position”, I mean “not having a lot of money”, and also “not having much in the way of lenses to begin with.” That means almost anything would be an improvement.

Here’s the current situation: My camera body is a Nikon D40. For lenses, I have the Nikon 18-200mm VR, and a non-functional 18-55mm, where the autofocus doesn’t work. For those not familiar with the 18-55, the manual focusing on that lens is especially tricky, in that you turn the lens only about 1/8th of a revolution to go all the way from closest focus to infinity. Combined with the difficulty of using the D40 viewfinder for focusing, it makes the lens virtually unusable in many situations. I have been meaning to send it in to get it fixed, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. If I got it fixed, it would serve as my “macro” lens—it doesn’t focus to 1:1, but I don’t need to focus that close anyway. I find that at 55mm, it focuses close enough for my purposes. Here is an example:

(Actually, that pic was taken after the autofocus failed, so it is clearly possible to get good results on manual focus. But it took a bit of extremely careful, minute rotations of the lens barrel to get that shot into good focus. Autofocus probably would have been easier.)

The image quality of the 18-55 is also better, in general, than that of the 18-200 VR. Even the barrel distortion at 18mm isn’t as bad, although it is certainly obvious enough to be seen, if there are straight lines in the shot.

So, given my current situation, I’ve been thinking about a few specific expansion options. There are four that come in under $1000 (I would not feel comfortable spending a huge amount of money right now—in fact, I probably am not going to go with any of these, since I really shouldn’t be spending anything right now, heheheh). They are:

10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED AF-S DX – A good DX landscape lens, which would give me some wider angle options than what I currently have, and better quality overall. A possible drawback to this choice is that I am not sure whether I would actually need to go this wide. The widest lens I have used on a regular basis was on my old Konica SLR, a nice little 24mm prime. In general I found it to be a bit wider than I needed it to be, except for in a few limited circumstances. It should be noted, however, that in the years I used this lens (roughly 1994 through 2005), I didn’t have as much idea of how to use a wide lens as I do now. I guess the best thing to do would be to actually try out a superwide lens before committing to buying one.

16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX – A general purpose replacement for the 18-200, to be used primarily for landscape shots. It would give me a bit more reach on the wide end, would force me to narrow my mental focus while in the field (by depriving me of instant access to the longer focal lengths), and would probably give me better image quality than the 18-200. One question with this lens is whether, by getting it, I would be making myself even less likely to ever try a superwide lens. The 16mm wide end would put me at an equivalent angle of view to the 24mm lens on my old camera.

Another question relates to the fact that it is a DX lens. It can be argued that the best Nikon camera body for landscapes is currently the 24 megapixel D3x, which happens to be an FX camera. In that case, the 24-70mm f/2.8 would be a better option. That, however, is getting pretty speculative, given the great expense of that equipment.

70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR AF-S – This would extend the reach and overall quality on the long end. I’ve been really interested in bird shots lately, and let’s face it: The 18-200 is not a very adequate lens for that purpose. It’s not long enough, and the quality at 200mm is not the best. I’ve gradually learned, through trial and error, that my best birding configuration with this lens is to set it to 200mm and f/6.3 (opening up all the way to f/5.6 seems to result in lower quality), and hope for the best. At that aperture, I find that I often need to bump the ISO up to 400 (or even 800) to get an acceptable shutter speed. I also find that autofocusing doesn’t always lead to the best results, although I think this is more due to trying to focus on something that’s too small in the frame. When a bird only fills part of the center focus point, the camera will often focus on what’s immediately behind the bird, instead of the bird itself. I’ve learned to try and get the bird positioned right at the top center part of the marked focus area in the viewfinder, since that seems to be where the focus point looks, but even with that, I often find I’ll get better results if I go through the trouble of manually adjusting the focus. I haven’t been able to detect any clear focusing error in the lens itself, luckily—it seems to be entirely due to just pushing the lens beyond what it’s designed to handle. Being able to zoom in more would certainly help.

The reason I hesitate with the 70-300VR is that it’s not really the 300mm option that I want. What I really want is the 300mm f/4D ED-IF AF-S, along with a 1.4x teleconverter, which would take me up to 420mm f/5.6. This would be the same as having a 630mm lens on a film SLR, which is more telephoto power than I thought would ever be within reach for me. I practically drool at the possibility. :) The problem is that this combination would cost me close to $2000, and it would not give me VR, which I find very helpful during focusing and framing. Assuming Nikon updates this lens with a VR “G” version at some point, I’d expect the price would go up by at least a couple hundred dollars, plus there are rumors of further upcoming adjustments in pricing thanks to the excessively high value of the Japanese Yen. So it’s unknown whether getting that combination will be a likely possibility over the next few years, thus I am considering the 70-300 VR as a “best I can do for the foreseeable future” option. (I still need to look at 3rd party offerings, too, admittedly.)

35mm f/1.8G DX – This lens is tempting for two reasons. One is that it’s just cheap, compared to Nikon’s other lenses. The other is that it’s a prime lens, roughly in the “normal” range (I actually consider it on the long side of normal, since the “normal” lens on my old camera was a 40mm, and this 35mm comes in at about 53mm equivalent, when adjusting for the D40’s crop factor). Using a lens like this would be an interesting creative challenge. Part of it would involve leaving the other lenses at home, which would force me to work with just the one, single focal length. I wonder what I could come up with? I wonder if I would hate it? It’s been a long time since I was limited to just one focal length.

I also think this would be a handy lens to have for trips to museums and the like. It’s much smaller than the 18-200, which means security people would be less likely to look askance at it. :) (If my 18-55 worked properly, this reason would go away.)

Drawbacks to this lens? Other than the concern that using a prime lens would drive me absolutely nuts, the main issue would be the lack of a distance scale. Probably I would just have to learn to make do with the native autofocus capabilities of the camera, inadequate as they are, and fancier stuff like what I was talking about in this previous entry, simply wouldn’t be possible. On the plus side, since it is a 35mm lens, rather than an 18mm, I’m thinking that would be less of a big deal. The other problem with this lens? Nobody has it in stock!

So, there they are: my current options. Comments appreciated, especially if you happen to have switched from the 18-200 to one of the lenses listed here, or have opinions on third-party telephoto alternatives.

Coolness of the Day

Check this out: “Liu Bolin is the 36-year old Chinese ‘invisible’ artist. He paints his clothes and body to blend in almost perfectly with his surroundings.” Intriguing! I imagine getting the paint just right on his body and clothing must be quite a challenge, plus I’m thinking he must have to anticipate the final lighting conditions…huh.

Not the sort of thing I would tend to get into myself, but definitely worth a look.

Quote of the Day

“You should never need to have to pay someone (or be that computer whiz) to keep your computer running perfectly.” – Ken Rockwell

That pretty much sums it up. Computers should just work.

(As for the malware thing, please refer to the concept of “enumerating badness” for a refreshing take on the issue.)

Using a superzoom lens to get around imprecise autofocusing

I noticed a while back that a lot of the landscape shots I was taking had problems with background or foreground objects being out of focus, in spite of shooting at 18mm with a fairly small aperture (f/11, typically). Worse, the effect wasn’t consistent, which made it doubly hard to figure out what was going on. Sometimes a picture shot at f/8 would be just fine, other times I’d have problems even though I was using a smaller aperture than that. It was getting pretty frustrating.

I think I’ve got it figured out now, though, along with a possible solution.

I’m guessing the problem is that, at 18mm, the hyperfocal zone of the lens is so broad and gradual that it’s impossible for the camera to distinguish the sharpest distance from distances which are substantially in front or behind—from the camera’s viewpoint, all of these distances will appear to be equally “in focus,” so the camera will autofocus on a distance that is technically not optimal. This has been borne out by experimentation: When I autofocus on a moderately close object, and then re-autofocus on a moderately distant object, often the lens will not move very much at all, even though it should have, based on comparing the distances of the objects to the distance scale markings on the lens. In the viewfinder there is no visible difference in focus between the two objects, and apparently the camera isn’t able to tell the difference either.

So, if the camera just happens to autofocus the lens in a way where the “most in-focus” object is too far away, then the foreground will end up blurred in the final picture. Likewise, if that object is too close, then there will likely be some softness in the background. In either case, I’m pointing the focus sensor at an object at roughly the correct distance (I hope), but since the depth of field is so wide, the camera isn’t able to precisely center the focal zone on that object, it merely adjusts the lens until the result is “good enough.” Except that it’s not.

(Part of the problem is admittedly that I am using a fairly slow lens—its widest aperture is f/3.5 at 18mm, which is apparently small enough to cause this problem. I wonder how much better things would be if I had an f/2.8 lens? Or an f/1.8 lens?)

Clearly what needs to happen is to get the lens focus set so that the optimal point of the hyperfocal range is resting on an object that’s a little close, but not too close. (Choosing an object that’s exactly halfway between the foreground and the background wouldn’t be the best choice, because at short focal lengths, the hyperfocal range of a lens tends to be asymmetrical, skewed towards the camera.) Since the autofocus mechanism can’t be relied upon to do that by itself, I am left with manually focusing the lens.

But here’s where the second half of the problem crops up: The Nikon D40 is really not at all good for manually focusing on a wide angle lens. In fact, just using the naked eye at 18mm, I would guess I’m even less capable of picking the right setting than the camera is! So how can this problem be solved?

Well, the solution is a bit tedious, but in my initial tests it seems to be working out fairly well. I’ve been using an 18-200mm zoom lens, and while focusing at 18mm is pretty much hit-and-miss, if I zoom the lens out to 100mm or more, it’s quite easy to see if something is in focus or not.  At those focal lengths, the hyperfocal range is much more narrow and easy to spot in the viewfinder. It’s also easy to see if the camera is focusing where I need it to, which means I can leave autofocus turned on for the first part of this.

So here’s what the procedure boils down to:

• After making sure my exposure settings are good, I’ll start by composing a rough framing of the scene, then I’ll take note of some close elements in the frame, and some distant elements.
• I’ll then zoom the lens to a telephoto setting, and focus on one of the close elements I noted. Autofocus works fine for this, so that’s what I use.
• I’ll then take a look at the distance scale on the lens, to see where it is. Typically it’s somewhere around the 3 meter mark, but it varies of course.
• Then I’ll repeat this zoom-and-focus procedure with one of the distant elements in the original composition, and again check the focus scale on the lens. Typically it will be closer to the infinity mark, but again there is some variability.
• Then I’ll switch the lens over to manual focus and zoom back to 18mm, or whatever length I was using in the original composition.
• I’ll then manually rotate the focus ring on the lens to a position moderately closer than halfway between the distance from the nearer focus point to the farther one—again, not choosing the exact halfway point is due to the fact that the in-focus zone on a wide angle lens will be skewed closer to the camera rather than being perfectly symmetrical.
• Then I’ll reacquire my original composition in the viewfinder, make sure it’s just the way I like it, and take the shot. Hopefully my original exposure value will still be valid—if it’s not, though, the beauty of a manual focus setting is that it stays where it is, if I need to make any further adjustments (as long as I don’t accidentally bump the focus ring!). It’s also perfectly reasonable to “bracket” the focus a little bit, on multiple shots.

The whole procedure is a bit of a pain in the neck, but far less annoying than getting back to the computer only to discover that my background or foreground is fuzzy.

The one big question in all of this is, which aperture is needed? Since Nikon, in
its infinite wisdom, doesn’t bother putting any sort of depth-of-field markings on lenses anymore, I simply resort to guessing (admittedly, it would be better to utilize an actual depth-of-field chart, so maybe I’ll have to get myself one of those). Depth-of-field is typically pretty wide at 18mm, but it’s not infinite by any means, so I generally won’t bother with apertures wider than f/8. I tend to stick around f/10 or f/11 for the most part, although I honestly don’t have enough practice at this yet to definitely have a feel for it.

The other complication is that the aperture choice becomes more critical at higher focal lengths. Sometimes I’ll zoom the lens all the way up to 35mm or so, for “wide angle” landscapes, and obviously increasing the focal length will decrease the depth of field. But, on the other hand, the original problem becomes less of a problem as depth-of-field decreases, so eventually I can just fall back onto regular autofocus as I zoom in on something.

In the long run, I’m thinking a better solution might be to upgrade my camera body.  I’ve heard the D300s has pretty good autofocus—I wonder if D300s owners have these problems? :)

Who needs a time machine when you have cranes?

I came across an interesting little fact this morning, while surfing the interwebs.

But first, a little context.

A couple of years ago, during an evening hike at Kettle Moraine State Forest, as the sun was getting close to the horizon and the wooded areas of the trail were starting to get distinctly dusky, I heard something really, really bizarre coming from above.  To my ears, it sounded a lot like a pterodactyl flying overhead, although it obviously could not have been one of those. The source of the racket turned out to be two fairly large birds flying overhead, calling out as they flew.

I later realized that the birds were Sandhill Cranes, which I had seen before, but I had never seen them in flight, nor had I heard their call prior to that evening. What an experience it was, too—almost as if, for a moment, I had been transported back in time to when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth. It’s really a challenge to describe how otherworldly a sound it was, although people who have heard that call themselves can probably understand.

Since then I’ve become more familiar with Sandhill Cranes, having seen them quite often at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, where they are pretty common. They are odd birds, looking distinctly more primitive than many other species, I’ve always thought (with the possible exception of storks).

Well, it turns out that perhaps they really are more primitive, in one sense. This morning I was browsing through the website of the International Crane Foundation, specifically their field guide to the various crane species of the world. On their Sandhill Crane page, they state the following:

A Miocene crane fossil, thought to be about ten million years old, was found in Nebraska and is structurally identical to the modern Sandhill crane, making it the oldest known bird species still surviving!

So Sandhill Cranes have not only been around for at least ten million years, but no other bird species is known to have been extant for that long? That is just cool. Sort of like time travel, almost. :)

You know you’re a real photographer when…

…your camera setup is worth more than your car. ;)

However, since my car is pretty much worthless, does that apply to me?

(Seriously, my car would be worth more if I broke it down and sold the parts than if I tried to offload it fully assembled.)

Anyway, I had this thought after several hours of lusting after this lovely beast. :) By the way, I’m pretty sure that’s a D90 it’s mounted on, and I wouldn’t mind one of those either. :)

Now, how much would that lovely thing set me back? At today’s prices, about US$1500 for the lens. A 1.4x teleconverter would also be needed, for another US$450 or so. I’m guessing I’d have to defer purchase of the teleconverter until later. ;)

Obviously I need to think about something else for a while….heheheheh.

Stuff worth reading

I’ve added a couple of links over on the sidebar, to sites which I end up checking pretty much every day. They are both excellent, informative, interesting and useful, so you should take a look. They are The Online Photographer (actually the blog on the Online Photographer site), and ByThom, by photographer and Nikon expert Thom Hogan. Again, I’d rate these both in the “essential reading” category.

Odd weather this summer

I started noticing clouds a couple of summers ago. By “started noticing,” I mean I noticed them in a way I hadn’t noticed before. It’s not that I’d never noticed clouds, obviously, it’s that in summer of 2007 I started to notice them with a photographer’s eye. I’ve also noticed that, for instance, there are types that are much more typical for the winter, and some much more typical for the summer.

This summer, though, has not been typical. In order to illustrate this, take a look at this, which was taken in early July, 2007:

Although it was an exceptionally fine specimen, that type of big, crisply-defined cumulus cloud tends to be pretty common in Wisconsin in the summer.

This summer, though, they have been almost totally absent. In fact, the dearth of regular, puffy, well-defined cumulus clouds has gotten to be pretty surprising. Oh, there are cumulus clouds pretty regularly, but instead of clear, well-defined cumulus, we’ve been getting ill-defined and markedly scraggly cumulus, as if the entire species of cloud known as “cumulus” has come down with an illness of some kind.

Some of the best cloud patterns we’ve had all summer were in early July, such as these here (this photo taken almost exactly two years after the previous one):

There were some nice clouds that day, but clearly not cumulus, and on a lot of days, there will be no clouds at all for most of the day.

Instead of clouds, we’ve had haze. Day after day the sky will be clear, and if you’re in a spot where you can see the horizon, you can clearly see a substantial amount of hazy moisture in the air. Somehow, all this moisture has been having a hard time forming into the usual cloud patterns. This means there hasn’t been much rain, either. Autumn colors have started in the past week, in spite of the lack of cold weather, and my theory is that the trees just gave up hoping for a good soak and decided to cash in their chips for the year.

Anyway, I wonder what the deal is. El Niño perhaps?

It’s not been good from a photography standpoint, because for one thing, crappy clouds make crappy pictures. Beyond that, I’ve found that the polarizer I got last spring doesn’t work nearly as well when there’s a lot of haze in the air (I should have known that already, but somehow it wasn’t apparent to me back in the film days).

Maybe now that we’re heading into autumn, things will change. Even they don’t, though, there will still be the fall colors. I have a feeling they are going to be especially nice this year.

RAW workflow software revisited

Earlier this year, I wrote about this topic. Since then, I’ve switched over to Lightroom. When I got my new computer a couple of months ago, I didn’t even bother checking to see if my copy of Silkypix still worked (I suppose I should really try that some time–I bet it works quicker on the new one).

What occasioned the switch? Mostly, it was the realization that what I wanted from a piece of software was for it to get the hell out of my way, so I could just make some minimal tweaks, rather than screwing around for an hour on one picture. I realized that most of the pictures I’m really happy with are almost fine the way they are, straight out of the camera, and don’t really need to be altered much—perhaps a slight adjustment to a couple of settings, without going really overboard, and there it is. Done. This, compared to endless fucking around with the curves tool, often specifying separate curve profiles for luminance, red, green and blue, which was just getting ridiculous, especially on my old computer.

There was also the problem of keeping my ever-growing photo library organized. Under the old system, I was using iPhoto for organization, and Silkypix for tweaking. It was an inelegant system, mainly because iPhoto wasn’t handling the organizational side of it adequately. In fact, iPhoto was so far from doing what I needed that I don’t know if I’ll ever get caught up on organizing those older photos, even though they’ve all been moved into Lightroom now.

I guess this means I wasted however many dollars it cost me to buy Silkypix. I’m not saying it’s a bad piece of software, mind you, just that, in the end, it didn’t meet my needs as well as Lightroom does. Neither did iPhoto, although at least that came free with the computer.

The one aspect of this that I’m not happy about is the anticipation of having an additional program to buy upgrades for. Actually, I don’t know why that didn’t bother me with Silkypix, since I’m sure they also charge money for major upgrades. I suppose the point there was that the money would have been going to somewhere other than Adobe. ;)

Oh—and I’m still intending to try The Gimp sometime, especially since my copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 doesn’t work at all on the new computer (that lack of forward compatibility is one of my big peeves about Adobe software, which is what drove me to the other stuff in the first place).

An old fave, found anew!

(I originally posted this on my Flickr profile page a couple of months ago…but I think I’m going to just move all the updates on that profile over to here. I’ll put today’s date, since I don’t want to get into the confusion of retroactive posting.)

Update 8/15/09 – Hmmm. This profile seems to be turning into a pseudo-blog of sorts. Hopefully that’s an acceptable use under the Flickr TOS. :)

I lost a contact today. No idea who it was. I just know that this morning I had 128, now I have 127. It bothers me when contacts just randomly disappear. Were they deleted? Did they just get tired of Flickr? Have I been blocked for some unknowable reason? No way to tell, most of the time.

In better news, an old favorite photo that I thought had been removed from Flickr has, it turns out, not been removed, it was just hidden for a while. Here it is. That pic was Explored all over the place a couple of years ago, back when Explore actually meant something. It’s one of my all-time Flickr faves, which, for some unfathomable reason, I actually forgot to mark as a favorite back when I first saw it. Huh. Weird. Well, I have faved it now, so there. :)

Photography update: I am still shooting, but have gotten involved on another project that is taking quite a while to finish. I’ve been needing to do it for quite some time, but was never able to make much headway on it with my old computer, which just didn’t have the horsepower for it. Well, my new one does, so now is the time. I was originally hoping to get it done by the end of August, but now it’s looking like Labor Day or even mid-September. Anyway, it means the post-processing side of my photography equation is on hold for the time being.