Category: photography

Budget Digital Cameras

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

As one of the comments to my entry about my new digicam, Gary asked about budget cameras. I e-mailed him about what he had in mind, and he clarified that he was looking for something around $200-$400.

I read camera reviews all the time, and I was happy to offer a suggestion. I narrowed it down to the Canon PowerShot S230 (about $345 shipped), Canon PowerShot A70 (about $312 shipped), Nikon Coolpix 3100 (about $301 shipped) and the Nikon Coolpix 3500 (about $338 shipped). I was expecting tough decisions, but it was easier than I expected to narrow it down further.

As it turns out, neither the Coolpix 3100 nor Coolpix 3500 offer ISO locking. ISO, of course, refers to the camera’s sensitivity to light. But, higher ISO settings lead to graininess. So, it can be convenient to be able to use low ISO settings with long exposures for night shots (resulting in proper exposure without the film grain). Unfortunately, those Nikons automatically crank up the ISO when the lighting gets low. Don’t get me wrong, I still think highly of Nikon as a company (I have a Nikon myself), but I think it was a mistake to leave out this feature on their low-end cameras.

So, it came down to the Canon PowerShot S230 vs the Canon PowerShot A70. Both are 3.2 MP cameras and their prices aren't that far apart ($345 for the S230 and $312 for the A70). In the end, I prefer the A70:

  • The A70 has a 3x optical zoom compared with the S230 which only has a 2x optical zoom.
  • The A70 supports add-on lenses. After buying a lens adapter, you can use wide-angle, telephoto, and closeup lenses with the A70. (The S230 doesn't support add-on lenses).
  • The A70 supports aperture priority and shutter priority. With shutter priority, you can specify a shutter speed and the camera will choose the right aperture (f-stop) for correct exposure. Likewise, with aperture priority, you can specify an aperture and the camera will choose the appropriate shutter speed. This degree of control can be handy, for instance, with action shots where you may want to force a slow shutter speed to blur the background or force a high shutter speed to freeze the action.

The only disadvantage to the A70, if you could call it that, is that it uses four AA batteries. Personally, I prefer the convenience of a single battery module as it can be less bulky than a set of batteries. However, AA batteries have the advantage of being widely available (you could easily buy a new set while on vacation). And, they’re much cheaper than proprietary camera batteries which can cost $25-35 (or more) each.

So, Gary, I think the A70 would work well for you. B&H Photo is one of the cheapest retailers on PriceGrabber to have it in stock. B&H is also highly reputable with an 8.87/10 score at ResellerRatings along with Gold, Platinum, and Platinum+ Elite Customer Excellence Awards (the awards are given out by ResellerRatings for exceptional retailers).

The camera comes with a 16 MB CompactFlash card, but that’s just about useless. Taking full size pictures at the Superfine quality settings, you can only get about 8 pictures on the card. So, you’ll want a bigger card right away (not to worry, you’ll still be under the $400 mark). You can get a 256 MB CompactFlash card for $54 from Crucial (with free 2nd day shipping).

Other than the CompactFlash card, I’d also recommend picking up a set of NiMH AA batteries and a charger. Steve’s Digicams has a thorough review of NiMH batteries and chargers — some of the better chargers can charge a set of batteries in about an hour. In particular, the iPowerUS set looks convenient as it includes “[the] Charger, AC and DC cords, 8 AA-size iPowerUS 2100mAh NiMH batteries and two battery carrying cases”.

Greece Pictures

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

I bought my new camera (Nikon Coolpix 5700) ostensibly because I needed a new camera anyway, but I especially wanted to be able to make use of it on my trip to Greece with my family.

I had a hectic project at work during the week preceding my trip, so I didn’t have a chance to read the manual. However, I took it on the plane and that provided plenty of time to read through all of it. I also brought along National Geographic’s Photographic Field Guide and the companion books on “People and Portraits” and “Landscapes”, which I started reading on the plane and continued reading throughout the trip.

Since digital cameras basically have no overhead costs after buying the camera, I made a commitment to myself that I would take pictures whenever it struck my fancy. After all, I couldn’t let 1 GB CompactFlash go to waste ;). In general, I also dislike posed pictures — I find that candids are almost always more interesting. So, I made the executive decision that I would take no posed shots, either. And I didn’t — every shot is candid.

So, over two weeks, I took 272 pictures. I narrowed them down and 80 of those are posted in the Gallery. I also created separate sub-albums for each leg of our trip.

Some notes on the photographs:

  • You’ll see that each filename ends with “_smaller”. This is because I resized each image to 1024x768 before uploading it. I did this out of disk space concerns; for instance, the full-size Santorini pictures are 32 MB but 6 MB in their smaller form. Besides, it can be tough to get your head around a 2560x1920 image ;0.

  • Though I resized the images for upload purposes, I’ve kept the full-size versions of each image as well (which in most cases is 5 MPixels). So if you want a full-size copy of any image, just let me know.

  • And, all images are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. In short, I give everyone the right to “copy, distribute, display, and perform the work”. In return, you must give me credit if you use an image and commercial use is not allowed unless I separately give permission. But, be a chum and go to the link yourself — the page linked is a “Commons Deed” and has no legalese :).

Why pictures were rejected:

Since 80 of 272 pictures are in the Gallery, that means that I tossed aside 192 of them. In some cases, this was an effort in brevity (some shots were basically the same, but from different angles). Others were technically fine and properly exposed but they weren’t interesting enough for me. However, as a beginning photographer, the bulk of the rejected photographs were due to two issues.

Bulls-Eyeing — this is the term I use for subjects placed right in the middle of the frame. I consciously made use of the rule of thirds whenever I could — sometimes even to the extent of centering a subject and then panning the camera to one side to get the shot.

However, sometimes it just slipped my mind and ended up centering some subjects without even realizing it. As I looked over my photographs to decide on which ones to include in the Gallery, I’d often think to myself “Whoops, bulls-eyed that one” as I crossed it off my list.

Overexposure — you might think that overexposure or underexposure would be equally likely, but not in my case ;). I liked the control that center-weighted metering gave me and I often made use of it. That way, I could ensure that my subject would be properly exposed — even with a differently-lit background.

However, it would often be the case that the background would be a very bright sky. So, the camera would diligently obey and overexpose the sky in order to properly expose the foreground. And, I quickly learned that while PC-tweaking can correct for a surprising number of anomalies, once your sky approches FFFFFF, you're up a creek. That is, even underexposed backgrounds can be “brought back to life” inside the PC, but a “white” sky simply has no blue information in it anymore.

Looking forward:

I hope that both through further photography experience and the Dallas Camera Club that I’ll be able to avoid those kind of mistakes in the future. In the case of overexposure, in particular, I suppose that matrix metering might help me there (?). At least that way, if the subject ended up underexposed, I’d still have a chance of correcting that in post processing.

Dallas Camera Club

Ashley Bischoff10 Comments

Since buying my new camera (Nikon Coolpix 5700), I’ve been reading various books on photography as well (including the National Geographic Photography Field Guide), which I’ve found very useful).

In that book, they mentioned what should have been obvious to me: many cities have camera clubs. So, I checked Google for “Dallas camera club” and, what do you know, there is a Dallas Camera Club. They have meetings every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of of the month. The 1st-Tuesday meeting is for their photography competitions, while the 3rd-Tuesdays are regular meetings.

The meetings are held at one of the rooms of Parker Chiropractic College, which is just at 35 & Walnut Hill. So, as yesterday was a 3rd-Tuesday, I decided to check it out. The Chiropractic College was easy to find, and it only had a few buildings so finding the room wasn’t tough either.

When I first stepped in to room 226, I noticed that more than half the room were retirees. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, since the field of photography has been around for over a century. But I guess I didn’t expect to have many interests in common with older Americans.

Before the meeting, there were snacks and drinks. The drinks were all 2-liter bottles, but even included Kroger-brand “Caffeine Free Diet Cola” — ahh, the guilt-free brown water I love. Of course, there were also cookies, which probably counteracted any carb-savings I got out of the soda ;).

For what it’s worth, the cookies were of three varieties: those Snackwells Devils Food cookies (ehh), and soft chocolate chip cookies in two sizes (one set about Chips Ahoy sized and another set of about 3” each). Perhaps the cookies are different each month.

The meeting itself was well run and interesting. As with any club of this type, there was the occasional nervous banter of the President between introducing speakers (but, I can live with that, I suppose).

The first presentation was a PowerPoint-based slideshow (using a projector connected to a laptop) of the club’s recent fieldtrip to a Dogwood Farm (it was like a botanical garden for trees, or such). Pleasantly, the slideshow was set to auto-advance evey four or five seconds (woo, no chit-chat between every slide!). As I understand it, the slideshow was made of contributed pictures from club members; so, some were great while others weren’t quite as good.

The second presentation was on creating simulated multiple-exposures using Photoshop. This one amazed some of the Photoshop-newbies, but it basically consisted of sandwiching two photographs over separate layers and varying the transparency between the two. I didn’t mind that so much, but the information wasn’t something that I’d regularly use.

After the meeting, I talked with a few of the members. They were all very friendly and, of course, rather knowledgeable about photography (I counted at least two people who had bought a Canon EOS-10D, which impressed me). I thought the meeting was worthwhile and I’ll probably try to go again.

New Camera — Nikon Coolpix 5700

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

My family is going on a trip to Greece for two weeks at the end of this month for my brother’s college graduation. We’re leaving May 24 and returning June 10, but I’ll write more about the trip in another post.

So, I bought myself a new digcam with some of the proceeds from my recent freelance-to-hire gig (which is still on-going). The Nikon Coolpix 5700 is a 5.0 megapixel camera with an 8x optical zoom. I suspect that Nikon may be releasing a new camera to replace it over the summer since they’re currently offering a $100 rebate (c’est la vie).

So, I bought the camera and some accessories as well:

And conveniently, I saw over the weekend that Half Price Books had National Geographic’s Photography Field Guide for just $10 (the list price is $25). I already had the original, but I picked up the other books in the series — “People and Portraits” and “Landscapes” (and there’re probably more copies still there).

Rendering with Subsurface Scattering

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

There’s a thread in that Slashdot story on the development of a photorealistic CGI TV show on speculation as to what was missing from the Final Fantasy movie that prevented it from appearing real.

Miloslaw Smyk conjectured that perhaps it was the lack of subsurface scattering (also called radiosity). If you haven't heard of it (and I hand't until now), subsurface scattering takes into account the slight translucency and reflective properties of skin and other objects:

All non-metallic materials are translucent to some degree. This means that light scatters inside the material before being either absorbed or leaving the material at a different location. This phenomenon is called subsurface scattering. […]

Miloslaw linked to this page with examples of subsurface scattering (from where I also got that definition above). In this case, a picture can probably easily explain what I'm attempting to put into words. Check out this rendering (with subsurface scattering) of three glasses of milk. The glass on the right uses traditional rendering techniques (for references) and it resembles paint. But, the glasses on the left are skim milk and whole milk, respectively.

For more rendering goodness peep the animations as well. In particular, I was most impressed by the fire renderings (14 MB DivX) and the assorted renderings with subsurface scattering (12 MB DivX). CG fire can be so tough to pull off (in fact, I can’t recall a movie with effectively rendered fire), but my hope is that some of these new techniques may soon make it into upcoming movies.