A fun discussion on Flickr pointed me to this site that contains a quiz where you guess images as “fake” or “photo”?

The site is sponsored by Alias, they have been the king of 3D graphics for many years now. I remember visiting my friend at Alias/Wavefront’s offices in Santa Barbara (back when they were a division of SGI) and seeing all the movies posters up on the walls there—each one had parts that were rendered with their software.

If you take the quiz and get a 10/10, there is a 4 question bonus round.Continue reading →

Here is a question I received today:

We’re planning to buy the 35mm film negatives from our wedding photographer, and we would like to have them scanned into digital format (as a back-up, and so friends/family can order prints). A friend of a friend offered to help us out—and “scan them at 16-bit resolution” for free.
Does that refer to bit depth (i.e. 65,536 colors) – or something else?
Would 11″x14″ prints from a “16-bit resolution” scan look ok?

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I hate how nearly every discussion that mentions Canon and Nikon in the same breath degenerates into a pissing contest. Yes, I’ve been guilty of this myself, but I like to think my rants are of a different quality than mindless cheering of “my team.”

Having said that, I wanted to piss on another troll here in my blog, because of something I read in this Flickr thread. It is typical of many things I’ve seen spouted.Continue reading →

Zeiss today announced the much rumored foray into Nikon SLR cameras with the ZF lens series for the Nikon F-mount. (Previously Zeiss only made interchangeable photo lenses for Contax.)

These lenses are manual-focus prime lenses. In particular a 50mm (Planar T* 1.4/50 ZF) and 85mm (Planar T* 1.4/85 ZF) lenses. Probably much better constructed than the 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor that is my most used lens. Of course, the $100 price point is hard to beat, even if I give up 2/3 of a stop.

It will be interesting to see if Zeiss will be able to carve out a niche in the prime lens market without the corporate advantages they had in the Contax line.

I hope so.Continue reading →

Someone asked on Flickr how you get waterblur in your photographs.

You can go into aperture priority stick and stop down to f/22 to get waterblur, but you are hitting the diffraction limits of the lens and losing sharpness. (Remember, if you have a polarizer hanging around, it doubles as an 2-stop ND filter. If you have a pocket digital camera, your sunglasses can be a filter in a pinch.)

“Horsetail Falls, Columbia Gorge” by tychay
3 exposures (2.5″, 0.6″, 1/6″) (Nikon D70) ƒ22, iso 200, 12mm (18mm), 81A + polarizer, tripod

ND filters and a tripod are your best bet. A neutral-density (ND) filter allows you to experiment with waterblur on a sunny day:

“Redwoods and West Berry Creek, Big Basin State Park” by tychay
3 exposures (3″, 1.3″, 1/4″) (Nikon D70) ƒ16. iso 200, 12mm (18mm), vari-ND, tripod

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Ethan pointed out to me this press release from Nikon UK that points out that Nikon Japan is getting rid of most 35mm SLR film bodies, all large-format lenses and enlarging lenses, many manual focus 35mm lenses and related accessories.

I emphasize the word “most” because many people are reading this as “all” when, in fact, the Nikon F6 is still being manufactured and sold worldwide along with the Nikon FM10 for some markets. The former is the latest (and possibly last) in a long line of 35mm cameras that people like me used to dream about owning as kids. The latter is an all-manual camera that has a special place in my heart because I hijacked an eyepiece from its grandfather, the FM2 to build my D70 eyecup replacement.Continue reading →

Moritz Petersen took this wonderful photograph on Flickr:

“sunny blossom” by mortiz™

This sparked a discussion on C.A.F.E. on how he managed to get the wonderful star pattern on his night shot.Continue reading →

Someone asked on Flickr if they should delete their camera raw files after converting to Adobe DNGs. Certainly you can see a strong pressure from Adobe to do so in order to save some hard drive space.

I don’t. Continue reading →