Camera manuals to go

Buried in a previous article, instead of carrying the paper manuals around, I mentioned that you should download your manufacturer’s camera manuals onto the iPhone for reference. But I didn’t explain how this could be done or why it is useful.

Here are three applications I’ve used that render PDFs:

Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader

I’ll be talking about Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader. If you want to know the solution I use for camera manuals, skip to the section on GoodReader.

Continue reading about reading PDF manuals in Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader after the jump

Posted on March 5, 2010 by tychay 2

Live view aperture on the E-P2

Now that my E-P2 has finally found a jacket-pocketable lens, the 20mm f/1.7 pancake from Panasonic (purchase from Amazon or Roberts Imaging), I’ve been carrying it a lot more often.

E-P2 w/ 20mm f/1.7
San Francisco, California, USA

Nikon D3, 50mm f/1.4G
1/50 sec @ ƒ/2.2, iso 2500, 50mm

A 20mm f/1.7 lens and a Hirano case make the E-P2 an effective kit. If you want to pocket it, just unscrew the case and pop out the EVF.

One curious behavior I noticed while shooting is that the aperture is electronically controlled to make the CCD’s life easier in the camera live view—since this is an EVIL camera, it always has live view. When it’s quiet, you can hear the aperture click as you move it around to different lighting conditions. Furthermore, it never seems to set the aperture wider than about ƒ/2.8 unless you are autofocusing. This means when night shooting in the dark with this lens, it’s brighter than your eyes, but not as bright as the lens is actually capable of. Not only that, but the depth-of-field you see in the live view is independent of the final output.

I decided to take a video of the behavior with Marie’s D5000. Since I accidentally hit the shutter button while focusing, here is a still:

20/1.7 aperture
San Francisco, California, USA

Nikon D5000, 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX VR
1/30 sec @ ƒ/7.1, iso 560, 55mm (78mm)

To get this photo, I jury rigged my D200 RRS L-bracket onto the D5000 so I could tripod mount it.

and here is the movie:

I’m just waving my hand in front of the lens a few times. And then I turn the camera off.

The overexposure was the camera’s decision. I didn’t have time to figure out how to keep the Auto ISO from overcompensating my setting.

Do any of you notice this behavior on the Panasonic GF-1?

Posted on March 3, 2010 by tychay 4

The Baseball Roll

Stopped by Nama Sushi for a quick bite. Nama is located right across from the ballpark so, of course, they’d have sushi with baseball references in them. Marie has found a new favorite roll for this place.

The Baseball Roll
Nama Sushi, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, M.ZUIKO Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6M
1/6sec @ ƒ4, ISO800, 19mm (38mm)

I’m trying to figure out a good kit for food photography. I know it somehow involves the Olympus E-P2—the only camera that can be handheld, shot in low light, and is small enough. It turns out, you really need the RAW file, not for the dynamic range, but to recover what the in-camera overdoes.

The key to postprocessing food seems to be aggressive white balance and color correction before even thinking of messing with the vibrancy. Saturation is a definite no-no. I like the post processing effect I used. Makes it look tastier somehow.

These rolls are yummy: salmon on deep tempura-fried salmon, crab, cream cheese, spicy mayo, masago, and green onions. Ten pieces for $9.50. They have a tendency to fall apart when you dip them, though. Good thing the roll doesn’t need wasabi and soy sauce.

Posted on February 24, 2010 by tychay 0

2010-01-16 Melanie’s Bday

From a previous article, I finally found a way to work in Aperture again. But since I’m also trying to pick up photography again, I thought it’d be fun to write a little bit showing a few experimental images taken from that day.

This will be a way to test out a new WordPress plugin I just wrote to do mouseovers. As long as you’re on this blog article, you can run your mouse over the image to see the pre-processed original image.

The specials are…
Mission Beach Cafe, The Mission, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, M. Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6
1/5sec @ ƒ3.9, iso 1600, 17mm (35mm)

I arrived a little late as usual, but just in time to order dinner with everyone else.

This was actually the first image I used to test out whether the workflow works. Because of that, the DNG output was 8-bit, not 16-bit. That may have accounted for the overaggressive smoothing, or it could be the lack of dynamic range in an ISO 1600 µ4:3 CMOS sensor (roughly 1/4 the size of a 35mm frame). Then again, maybe it’s the setting on Topaz Adjust plugin. In any case, it does have the painterly look that you get when you start remapping dynamic range of an image. Not too sure if I can still call this a photograph.

If you mouseover the image, you may be wondering how I pulled color from the black-and-white original. The original is the JPEG, but the image was generated from the RAW. For documentary photography, on cameras which resemble rangefinders like the Leica M8 and the Olympus E-P2, I prefer black-and-whites previews, which force me to concentrate on tone and not color—but it’s always nice to be able to grab the color channels from the RAW if I change my mind.

This exposure tests the outer-limits of the kit lens: 1/5 of a second at a borderline too-high-for-this-camera ISO at the largest aperture for this 35mm EFL. Had I my old 17mm pancake, I’d have gotten a full stop faster. Still, it got focus-lock and the in-body image stabilization allowed me to shoot handheld braced against elbows on the table. Yeah!

More photos in later pages…

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Posted on February 9, 2010 by tychay 4

Unsupported RAW workflow in Apple Aperture

One of the most annoying aspects of Apple Aperture is that there is no API for RAW plugins. This means that you’re stuck with Aperture’s RAW rendering—and Apple has been slow to update support for the latest cameras. For instance, the Olympus E-P1/E-P2/E-PL1 series has been out since August, selling like hotcakes, but there is still no RAW support for these models, even though the E-30, which is supported, uses the same basic RAW file format.

Well finally my workaround seems to work for my satisfaction. Whee!

Morgan
Martuni’s, The Mission, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, M.ZUIKO Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6
1/3sec, iso 160, 14mm (28mm)

For those too lazy to read forward here is the step-by-step:

Select images in Aperture and choose “Edit with…” Catapult.
Read and save images in your favorite converter (for me and the E-P1 it is Adobe Camera RAW).
Reimport images within Catapult and close the box.

Continue reading about How to convert after the jump.

Pages: 1 2

Posted on February 8, 2010 by tychay 11

The Olympus E-Pnext

Olympus launched a teaser site for the next E-Pnext:

When I first saw this yesterday, it said “You can’t hide creativity…” and it’s since been changed to the unimanginative, “YOUR next camera is coming soon…”

For reference, I decided to see if I could glean it for MY last camera which came last month… the E-P2

MY last camera came last month…
San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D
1/5sec @ ƒ4, ISO200, 85mm

I didn’t have a 17mm pancake like in the picture and my “man-hands” are blocking some of the details, but the E-P2 extends out to my palm, while the photo shows the next one extending out to the woman’s knuckles. The length of my hand should be about right so it’s at most about an inch smaller and just as tall.

Continue reading about Guesses about the next Pen from Olympus after the jump

Posted on February 1, 2010 by tychay 2

What (entry) dSLR (to buy)? [The entry kit dSLR Part 4]

(Article continued from part 3)

Unlike in the article four years ago, I’ll be covering specific models. I’ll cover them in the reverse order to my original article, because I felt I gave the less popular brands a short shrift last time.

Pentax

The Pentax K-x ($550 from Adorama, B&H, Amazon)

The Pentax K-x is available in 100 color combinations in Japan.

Four years ago, I stated that Pentax makes shooter-centric cameras at a great value. In fact, I mentioned that Pentax was the first entry in this dSLR price category, and this was in line with Pentax’s history: to bring those people on a budget a quality camera.

Continue reading about Pentax, Sony and Olympus entry dSLRs after the jump

Posted on February 1, 2010 by tychay 13

The Woodwork

You tell that other boy, not to touch the woodwork