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 You need the eye, you need the hand. Without the eye there are no good pictures. Without the hand, there are no pictures at all. |
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Optimistically world-weary since 1994. |
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You need the eye, you need the hand. Without the eye there are no good pictures. Without the hand, there are no pictures at all. |
Part of
PhotoRant.Com
Optimistically world-weary since 1994. |
What a difference a day makes as I start assembling all the real components and trying to sort them out -- even doubling the size of the chassis the whole thing seems... smaller. And it's definitely slower. And I still haven't added the USB router or the second power supply for the linux portion. Or the lasers.
But really, I don't want to make Wall-E or Huey/Dewey/Louie or K-9 or Johnny-5. All those designs have a similar feel, I think, because they are dominated by components. This seems like a dead-end for the physical design, I'm moving back to my "expressive tentacle-like eyestalk" plan.
Imagine if animals were designed this way. Ugh. They all have similar components, but how different are even the various vertebrates and chordates, much less the wide variety of other creatures...
Did some computer vision tests this evening and it was taking eight seconds a pop to analyze images. Realtime, yay.
Sadly, the Botzilla Name has been hijacked -- repeatedly -- so the name I'm using for this little project is KID (botzilla): Kevin's Illmatic Distraction. Or idiotic. Or intrepid. Or infantile. Indescribable. idk.
No lasers or grenade launchers yet but at least I finally got a little time clear to get this little platform working in a predictable way, with the controller managing DC motors rather than servos or steppers. Truthfully I'm not at all sure that something so typically mechanical is part of my goal. I'm now thinking about using flexible kevlar strips to push bits around, like twistable tendons on a flexible stalk. Motorized rubber bands?
My real interest in this is trying to get at the idea that embodiment, input, and and output are all the same. When someone turns to look at you, not only does that change their collection of immediate stimuli, but the way that they look also has an expressive effect that's transmitted. Should the sound and speed of a motor be considered an expressive part of a robot's presence (how else would people sell Harley Davidsons?)? The idea of separable inputs and outputs, as we have in formal systems like computers, seems to me to be an artificial construct, unlike the nature of being in the world.
Current parts manifest:
Still looking for the right camera, and brooding over whether to switch my old XP machine (go Pentium II!) over to Ubuntu.
Going for two separate processors because it just seems more natural to me, a bit analogous to the distinction of dorsal and ventral nervous systems.
I was at the hardware store earlier today buying some poly irrigation tubing -- while in line I noticed a small LED strip light that I bought to illuminate the underside of my desk (that is, the keyboard area, away from the monitor). 18", $18. Two watts. Expected lifetime: 20,000 hours.
It's fantastic that these sources are dropping in price and rising in quality so quickly. I've heard people grousing about the color balance but I'll tell you -- I haven't yet heard anyone complaining about them who didn't have a vested interest in selling something much more expensive.
I've been shooting for some time now with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (aka Leica D-Lux 4, more or less). I've come to think that it's overall the best small camera I've ever used.
As a companion to my previous LX1 and LX2 notes, here's a personalized LX3 overview.
For myself, the key refinements over the previous cameras are:
That's really it! A short list but each item has had a big impact.
My (small) bag currently contains the stuff shown in the top snapshot: the LX3, a corded manual strobe, and my LX2 as a backup for shots that can benefit from its slightly longer lens.
In a pinch, the whole kit (plus spare batteries, SD cards, & a pocket notebook) can be transfered from bag to a few coat pockets.
ISO 100 with Vivitar 285 dialed down to 1/16 power
The Canon 5D usually sits at home -- more powerful, faster, but comparatively huge. As they say, the best camera is the one in your hand.
Some other new LX3 attributes I've found useful though less crucial:
There is an array of other subtle improvements and alterations, which I appreciate though they're not game-changers in the manner of those other big features. I really get the impression that the design work was done by someone who actually uses the product. What a concept, so unlike most other compact designs, which tend to focus more on body styling, fashionable colors, and confusing on-screen menus. The Pana-Leica designers really seem to get the idea that the camera is a device for the hand; that the eye should be taking pictures, not navigating camera controls.
What about hacks?
So far, only one: A strip of tape across the top of the lens to keep the aspect-ratio switch firmly locked to 16:9 -- I have an annoying habit of bumping and otherwise moving it when the camera is coming in and out of the bag or my pockets.
I'm not alone in my admiration of the camera's redesign, there's already a swarm of fan web pages, sites, and dedicated groups for it, more than for the previous LX's and possibly driven by some apparently photographer-savvy people at Lumix marketing (I suspect that the growth of LX3-specific product-fan pages has already peaked -- like all modern products, the marketing life of the LX3 is as brief as a flower's, already past its prime while the sales machine is preparing for their next round of new-and-exciting. But this means little to those of use who see cameras as tools rather than as consumer fashion items).
Features I Never Use
Maybe someone can clue me in on uses for these geek-factor checklist items that have simply slipped right past my imagination.
What Next?
No tool is perfect for all things. It's hard to imagine a range of improvements for an LX4 that would be as significant as those that the LX3 already has over the LX1 & 2. Not that that would stop me from dreaming up my own list of suggestions:
Almost two years ago I wrote an entry about in-camera sepia, wondering if in fact a sepia transofrmation could provide a photo with more tonalities than a tyical 8-bit black and white.
At the time, I assumed that the crucial yes or no part of that answer would involve the B&W conversion -- if it was done before the sepia rotation of the color space, or after -- that is, if the # of B&W values was fixed to 256 and then rotated, or if it was in a higher precision RAW format, rotated, and then quantized to eight bit. In the latter case, you'd have more tones.
I was half right, and it was the poor half. Looking closely at LX2 sepia images like the one above, it's become clear that the B&W is converted and quantized first. And the part I was wrong about I didn't expect -- that the LX2 creates sepia images not through a matrix transform in RGB color space, but simply by adding a color to the B&W image. The color appears to be (+30R,-18G,-38B). That is, raise red, and drop green and blue, by a simple addition.
Since the values are already clipped to 8-bit, this means a loss of highlights in the red channel and a loss of shadow detail for green and blue. Since all three are made from the same B&W original, it's possible to rebuild that original B&W 8-bit picture by adding (-30R,+18G,+38B) and then selectively using the shadow detail from the red channel and the highlights from the green or blue channels. The result, in Photoshop, is the same as if the pic had just been shot in B&W to start with (barring JPEG artifacts).
So why does it seem to have more tonality? I'm guessing that it simply looks better on the small, contrasty camera LCD.
It's a tragedy that the B&W image is already clipped to 8-bit before sepia conversion. If the image was unclipped, the sepia conversion realy would be better, with and increased number of shadow tones in red and highlights in blue and green. It is what it is, though.
At least for web use, this is suggesting to me the following work approach for high quality B&W from JPEGs (when time demands preclude shooting in RAW):
• count on spatial resolution as a stand-in for pixel depth detail. Given some level of pixel noise, 4x4 8-bit pixels should be better than one 12-bit pixel. For a reduction from a 4K image down to a 500-pixel web snap, there are a lot of input pixels for every final output pixel.
• with this in mind, set the camera to a low-contrast image, to compact as much of the original RAW range into the 8-bit jpeg, and then feel free to beat on it using levels and curves later on -- knowing that even if precision is lost per-pixel, a lot of it will be made up in the size reduction step.
I'll report on some results soon.
I used to carry a set of pocket-sized and mid-sized gadgets. Then technology reduced them to one gadget. But now in their places are a bunch of new pocket sized gadgets that I keep on carrying. Without North Face and Columbia making trousers with ample extra pockets, where would I be?
Currently in my list of pocket gadgets: a GPS, a smartphone (with so-so camera), a "real" digital pocket camera, a PSP, an internet tablet, a bluetooth keyboard, an ipod, an MP3/wav recorder, and of course one or more Moleskine notebooks (usually two: one for work, one for personal notes, and sometimes a third for watercolor pencils). On the edge of these are the mid-sized gadgets, a ruggedized La Cie hard drive, an ASUS Eee laptop, an SLR -- not quite pocketable. Memory cards. Batteries. Earbuds.
The Moleskine and the keyboard, unlike the others, are defined by the limits of human design -- they just can't get smaller and be usable. I've no doubt that the others will collapse into something unified and smaller and instead of empty pockets I'll have some need for another generation of well-marketed pocketables. Heads-up displays for pedestrians, with integrated games? Some desperate need to keep the text of the Library of Congress within arm's length? Every episode of Heroes (and Hogan's Heroes) for ready reference? Water contamination meter? Celphone-camera detector (and laser disabler)?
Looking at street photos of a century ago, or even fifty or thirty years ago. What we don't see in those photos? Stuff. Kids with a couple of books, not a filled roller pack. People on the street without briefcases, backpacks, phones -- even in the financial districts.
In an hour or so I'm off to Spain. I'd like to think I'm packing light, and my clothes are light. It's the STUFF: no internet tablet, no mics or headphones, but the ASUS and the SLR (w/two short prime lenses), a strobe, two moleskines, the wee pocket digi, the recorder & GPS & ipod start to add up. Or do they? Total for everything: one half-filled backpack.
It’s been a couple of years now since I wrote this entry on
digital Black and White conversions. I’m still using a variation of
the Caponigro conversion described there. What prompted me here was a
combination of events, including reconciling the many scripts and actions I
had on several different Photoshop-equipped computers, each of which had
diverged from ts brethren; meeting Bob Carnie at Elevator Digital in Toronto,
thanks to Dinesh;
this
APUG thread, which also included more info from Bob; and the latest
edition of Digital Photo
Pro magazine, which has run B&W articles as its cover story quite a
lot over the last year or two, and this one was no exception. What
surprised me was that DPP were freshly touting the old Gorman/Holbert
method (aka the Gorman
Method).
I've tried the Gorman method a few times in the past, stored actions for it
like many other people have no doubt, and... it puzzles me. It puzzles me because:
As an Action the method makes sense to some degree -- I can imagine applying it to whole directories of pictures at a time. What it lacks in control it might make up for in volume, though you could say that about any Photoshop/Bridge/Lightroom action.
There's also the proof pudding -- Gorman's published shots. They genuinely look great, but... is it really the conversion, or the practiced studio photographer? If he really uses this method, my guess is that he's learned how to nail his desired B&W results time after time by rigid adherence until it has become very natural to use and light for this scheme.
Bob likes Lab too, according to the APUG thread. I'm still scratching my head, though I suppose that the same "use what works for you" logic could be behind his comments (and I have no argument with that line of reasoning, believe me). It's also true that using a combination of all three colors, regardless of just what that composition might be, has the potential to give you really smooth and gorgeous floating-point-precision gradients even without resorting to Dark Side trickery like HDR.
Still, I like the Caponigro
method, and have adjusted it slightly since the previous entry. I don't
try to put the color toning into the same operation, and I put all the
adjustments into a folder, so I can turn them of and on as a group (or fade
them by adjusting the opacity of the entire layer group at once).
I've also added a blank layer I label "burn" to the folder, and set its blend mode to "multiply." Anything I paint into this layer will essentially burn-down (darken) the corresponding areas of the final B&W image, and it too can ave varying opacity in case I get a little too heavy-handed wit the brush (which happens a fair bit). The illustration shows a complete "Modified Caponigro Method" folder.
What about that undisplayed "Layer 2" above the folder?
It's the result of my very favorite Photoshop key commands, a trick I've only heard verbally described as "The Move." It's "ctrl-option-shift-E" and does in one step what the Gorman method does in two -- it merges all visible layers into a new layer at the top of the stack (in the Gorman method, this is done by creating a blank layer and then running "merge visible" on that layer -- exactly the same result).
That "Layer 2" is just such a layer, which has then been hidden for later use (as we'll see).
A problem with Photoshop is that it doesn't let you specify arbitrary blend operations (or filters) on a folder. So the only way to use those sorts of effects are to do a "move," create that new layer, and then execute whatever on that layers pixels. That's what the Gorman method does for its high-pass layer, and how I use it will be described below.
These "merged" layers are great, but do remember -- if you edit any of the underlying Hue, Curves, etc layers, those changes will not automatically appear in the merged layer. Instead, you'll need to hide or delete the old merge and make a new one (clicking the little visibility icons then makes A/B comparisons pretty easy too, btw).
Recently, I've been experimenting with using these merge B&W layers to manipulate color images:
Here are some pics: the first is an un-modified original, followed by two possible B&W conversions, and then the color result of applying those conversions back to the original color image. In the first, darker one, I liked the somewhat bad-color-printing appearance it had. In the second, which also washed-out a lot of the detail in the freckles, the color becomes very soft, looking almost like hand coloring. The last in this group uses the same brght luminance source, but the effect is faded back by reducing the luminance layer's opacity.
As long as we're in Photoshop, it's hard to resist trying near-useless tricks, too. Here's a completely negative luminance applied to the original colors, and its inverse (which gives positive luminance to negative colors).
These samples use a different blend mode: the "lighter color" mode. The result (which looks best, IMO, when slightly faded back) gives slight variations in the overall color saturation according to the overall luminance -- another rather film-like effect and one I really like.
Finally, why not blend components of techniques for something new? The pics below show the high-pass layer from the Gorman technique, applied via "overlay" to the original color image.
So what about video games?I would be remiss not to mention that all of these methods, except for the high-pass filter, can be executed in a single unified pass in hardware shaders, thus also making them appropriate for using in video games (the high-pass filter would require an additional render-to-texture pass). If you've been paying attention to John Nack's blog, you may also know that such effects will eventually be available in real time for Photoshop and Flash via "Pixel Bender" shaders.
High speed ftw! A quick $12.99 sale price later, and the LX2 is somewhere between 25-30% faster on RAW capture. Thank you OCZ and thanks Gary for the hint!
To my surprise, shooting time for ten "high quality" JPEG images remained about the same -- around 20 seconds -- indicating to me that for compressed pix, the limiting factor is the speed of the "Venus Engine" processor itself.
Addedum: yesterday saw the publication of dpreview's test of the Sigma DP-1 which is probably the closest competitor to the LX-2 and considered by many, in anticipation of it, as the compact streetphoto heir apparent. To my great surprise, the Sigma is significantly slower than the LX-2 -- the only got a little over 7 seconds per frame in RAW while the LX-2 turnaround was only 4.5 seconds (even faster than what I was getting). The Sigma does have a three-frame buffer, though it's not clear to me if you can use it in regular shooting mode. And a hotshoe for Martin Parr & Bruce Gilden fans.
Addendum #2: And on the heels of that, another review lamenting the DP-1's lack of speed, this time by Edward Taylor on The Online Photographer -- "My main complaint about the camera then was that it was painfully slow. It was and it is...." Hmmm.
As I expected, I've gotten more used to the LX2.
In the clichéd and time-honored tradition of pointing Leicas at brick walls to prove that their lenses are top-notch, here's a closer sample of an in-camera-sepia JPEG. The right-hand area shows a detail from the picture on the left -- pixels at one-to-one size (if anything, the image here is degraded just because it's a web-compressed pic. It was also hand-held).
As long as I'm willing to put my thumb on the monitor, it's fine in the hand. During the past week I've been shooting with it at the ION Conference, using it as a notepad to keep track of presentation slides. In the hand for an hour at a time and I've gotten used to the idea. No hand strain. In JPEG, it's also plenty fast.
Tomorrow I'm taking Gary's advice and trying a much faster SD card for shooting in RAW mode. If it can get the differentials indicated on Rob Galbraith's benchmark site, there might be as much as a 4x acceleration, which will keep me quite happy (even a modest improvement might be enough).
After returning from China I gave myself a few weeks to see if Panasonic would announce a new LX3 at February's camera-business trade show. No dice, so I promptly ordered a new LX2 to replace the stolen LX1. Here are a few notes, comparing the two.
Only the LX1 camera, one card & one battery were pickpocketed -- my case & charger, 2nd battery & backup card were still in my luggage. Not surprisingly, everything fits perfectly, equipment-wise. Perhaps with time I'll also learn to adjust as smoothly.
The lens is the same killer Leica 28-105-ish. I have been impressed with the improved color renditions, and I don't mind the slightly different character of the in-camera JPEGs (I also don't buy the notion, proposed by some bloggers and others on photo.net, that the LX2's "Venus III" chip does pre-processing on its RAW data -- an assertion that makes no sense to me).
The higher ISOs (two extra stops, from 400 to 1600 as the top end) are a very welcome addition, regardless of how noisy the highest ones may be. A sharp grainy photo is better than an unreadable blur or no photo at all.
I might yet tape the back of the camera for grip as I did the LX1 -- but not the front. The LX2's front finger grip is much-improved in providing your middle finger purchase. Simple, and well-done -- but it needs to counter a downside change, hands-wise: to accommodate the larger LCD screen, the LX2's designers have cramped the rear-side controls. It's harder to shift your (my) thumb around and hit the correct thing in that smaller space.
If I want to hold the camera firmly, one-handed, I end up with my thumb on the screen (and away from the buttons). I am pretty sure that I only rarely used the LX1 one-handed, so this difference may feel like a bigger deal than it is.
Overall, the narrower thumb space means that my hand is significantly less comfortable when holding the camera "at rest," and that in turn creates the (false) impression that the LX2 is heavier.
The controls themselves have been subtly improved, mainly by Panasonic's UI designers realizing that people confuse the joystick with the directional buttons -- so, whenever sensible, you can use either control to accomplish the same task. This is good usability design, thinking about what the user wants to accomplish and letting them get there in the way most natural for them. A+
The biggest impression of difference between the LX1 and LX2, however, has been speed of operation -- or rather, the lack of it. The LX2 is slower between shots. I would have guessed about 25% slower, which matches change in the pixel count. dpreview's test shows a 32% slowdown on RAW writes, as well as a slowdown in burst mode. Those percentages feel like a lot, given the rhythm I'd already developed with the LX1. This is frustrating given that the camera's operations are otherwise responsive and the AF is even a tiny bit quicker. That extra second and a half of write time can be tough.
Token LX1 sighting: I saw Sylvia Plachy using one on Ovation's televison bio Close Up. She was switching back and forth during the same session between an LX1, a Leica M, a Rolleiflex, and a Hasselblad 500 of some sort (SWC?).
Almost time to say goodbye to China, now that I'm back in Beijing. Also time to say goodbye to:
If I can just keep my laptop and 5D working for two more days....
(Followup: I remind myself, a bit, of my old second (third) cousin who raced motorcycles and cars and kept soldiering on through the many hospitalizations as just part of the passion....)
Which doesn't begin to compare to what happened to Michael :(
I've finally started to mess around with SoundSlides -- I've had a link set to it for some time, ever since seeing a quick guide on Martin Fuchs blog almost a year ago (ouch).
The link above is my first crude attempt with the demo, a little recap of Isaac's summer hockey season -- after ten minutes of using the program I promptly sent Joe Weiss a nice PayPal delivery (and ordered myself a new audio recorder (sorry Griffin, my iTalk is cute and tiny but not a general-purpose tool) and some replacements for my main mics, which have seen better days long ago)(more stuff to carry when shooting -- hoorah). I'll replace the prezo some time soon when I get my proper SoundSlides reg code and also re-record the audio with Isaac playing it (or something similar).
Obviously I've got an learning curve ahead of me but I'm excited -- SoundSlides is just far easier and more direct to use for these sort of presentations than anything I've see so far using regular Flash, or Flex, or even Premiere. All good programs, but SoundSlides is directed -- it does one thing and does it well. No wonder it's so popular for news shooters and wedding folks.
It's common to tell digital photographers: "don't trust the camera LCD as a preview."
Why the heck not? A lot of the time, I happen to like the picture I see on the LCD. So I made myself an Adobe Camera RAW preset that, as best as I could eyeball, would match the tonal range of the LCD on the LX1.
It was a somewhat subjective process, not entirely perfectly scientific, but simple enough. I shot some Kodak grayscale charts, played them back on the camera LCD while simultaneously loading them in Adode Camera Raw, adjusting the corresponding RAW/DNG conversion on my laptop under Photoshop CS3. I could see where the blacks petered-out, and the overall relationships in tones between neighboring patches. So patch 1 was full-on, the grays died out arounf patch 14, the values were a little boosted around patch 5, etc. It made the picture that I liked.
Once I'd made such a preset fro RAW files, I also made a corresponding adjustment curve that would alter camera JPGs to also more-or-less match the results I was getting from ACR. It's easy to make such a curve with a three-layer photoshop file (I like RAW but some situations — particularly very fast repeat shooting — still require JPEG for this little bufferless compact camera).
To make a curve that matches a JPEG to the ACR result: First, open the JPEG. Next, add a Curves layer and close the Curves dialog (we'll come back to it). Now, open the RAW file in another window, Select-all, and paste it on top of the JPEG (which will make a new layer). Set the blend mode of this new layer to "Difference."
Now all you need to do is open that curves layer again and adjust it until the visible differences between mictures are the absolute minimum. If the picture is black, then both the bottom (JPEG) and top (RAW) layers are a match.
The less-than-wonderful surprise I got was: the pictures don't align. At first I thought it was sharpening, but actually they just don't line up. They are two or three pixels misaligned, apparently at a 45-degree angle. In fact it's not even an integer number of pixels — the pic above (a 100% blowup of the previous blog entry) shows the closes I could get, and shifting it in the opposite direction simply moves the various contour-outlines from one side of the face to the other.
The second surprise was that, despite the fact that these curves reduce the tonal range (that is, they step on constrast), the RAW pic holds detail quite a bit better than the JPEG. I'd expected that since the JPEG had more range than my desired pic, I wouldn't make much difference. But it does. The higher fidelity of RAW still matters even on a low-fidelity images.
As a minor aside, we noticed last night that the LX2 makes a guest appearance in Spiderman 3 — in a scene where a photographer loses his SLR, he wastes no time in dragging an LX2 out of his jacket pocket & just keeps on shooting.... (though I'd never recommend carrying the camera in your pocket with the lens and flash both already extended).
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