About taking pictures
DPReview posted that Canon built their 30 millionth EF lens. This is quite a feat since they only introduced the mount in 1987 (a new mount to go along with a new “EOS” body which added Minolta’s auto-focusing ideas into their previous auto-exposure (AE) design), just under twenty years ago. This is great stuff!
For reference, Nikon built their 30 millionth in 2001 and introduced that mount in 1959, or just over forty years.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?
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.â€
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
After I read that Microsoft quietly discontinued support for Windows Media on Mac OS X, I didn’t know what to make of it. Just another free app for the Mac that Microsoft is discontinuing—guess MSN Messenger is next on the chopping block.
As a consunmer, it reminded me that I needed to install a Windows Media Player solution on my computer again, as it begins its arduous recovery from a drive failure. At work, many people zip around video and given the platform predelictions here, many times that video is something in Windows Media. Well, I guess that leaves out Windows Media Player X 9.0.
Now normally I would download the latest MPlayer or VideoLAN Client to do this, but that always seemed a kludge. Oh, they have their uses, but I mostly I’m talking about a one-trick WMV playback-pony. Luckily, the article pointed out a solution I had bookmarked and forgotten about: Flip4Mac WMV.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.)
ND filters and a tripod are your best bet. A neutral-density (ND) filter allows you to experiment with waterblur on a sunny day:
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:
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
Drew mentioned that Apple released an update to Aperture. This is probably the first of many though don’t expect anything major:
Aperture depends on the ImageIO Framework to do the file handling and Core Image to do the majority of the heavy lifting in the UI. So the largest changes should be expected when Apple updates the operating system, not Aperture.