Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Well sometimes people ask me to take a picture of a coworker. This time it was Kirsten who needed a simple picture for a poster.

Well it's nothing to sing about since it's extremely simple and effective. But I noticed something terrible, my little SB-600 had not enough power :(

I had to shoot at ISO200 (and under exposed a stop, by accident) to get this picture done and my flash was already at 1/1 power.

And I'm still not really comfortable to shoot at ISO 400 with my D80, it's getting to noisy.

I also keep noticing that my fast lenses have a problem with precise focusing since the AF fields of my camera are pretty big, compared to the modern models from Nikon, which can analyze a much smaller field.

yes I setup an umbrella in the lab and I'm official a geek, but hey the pictures look so much nicer and it's so much easier and faster to get the right exposure (mostly...) and effect in manual mode.

Sure you could shoot in A mode, but why if you can do so much more in M mode?

Example:

  • aperture= effects flash and ambient
  • shutter speed = effects only ambient light
  • iso = effects only ambient light
So the increase in shutter speed equals less ambient light and the decrease means more ambient light.

Someday I will understand how the whole ratio thing works...

...ok I am proud of zero reflection's in the glasses, but some shadow's are off and could have used a second flash or a reflector in front of her.

well currently I'm playing a little bit with manual focus since my macro does beautiful pictures (ok it's the photographer, but well the lens helps a lot) and my eyes can't be to bad, it's just that i have to learn the technique, but so far I have a hit or miss ratio of 50% which is not to bad.

Are I'm going to invest in a manual focus lens? Well I'm not that sure about it yet. But hey used classics are much cheaper than new lenses.

on the other hand since I sold my 70-300mm. Mhm I found out that I like my current collection very much and just miss something in the 35mm range.

anyway the best candid of the night to the left, in B&W since it was shot at iso 1600. Yes the Nikon D80 sucks for low iso compared to modern cameras like the Nikon D3 or D700. But hey in two years you can get them most likley for very nice prices. And I just took 8k pictures so far with my D80 and I'm totally happy with it, except that it's a bit small in my hands.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

now the comparison between the 17-55 and the 19-35mm is a little bit different. Here we can clearly see differences between these two lenses.

The Nikon is definitely superior at F/3.5 and F/4.5 since the Tokina is very soft at this apertures. But since the focal length are used for landscape pictures anyway, well it doesn't really matter. And you also don't really use this for potraits. Well you use 35mm for potraits, but for this I would just order a Nikon 35mm F/2 or Sigma F/1.4 which cost less than 300$ these days.

But once you hit F/8 the lenses are pretty much equal again and the tokina holds it's stand very well and even seems to have better CA values. Once you hit F/11 both lenses start to get soft again, thanks to difraction, but the Tokina seems to be a touch faster.

Well the message is clear. Return the 17-55mm, buy a 35mm F/2, which can be used on full frame in the future and put the rest of the money towards your saving account for a nice trip.

I could test my sigma 10-20 now against it, but this is getting pretty pointless after I already know that I return it.

The pictures of the 17-55mm vs the 50mm speak for them self. The 50mm looks much better at F/2.8 than the 17-55mm F/2.8 at the same aperture.

How are the pictures prepared?

  • tripod
  • same exposure settings
  • two flash setup
  • taking pictures at F/2.8, F/4,F/8
The prime is at this point already stopped down, but to make clear. I do not want to proof that a prime is better than a zoom. This is obvious.
I want to make clear for my self, if I can justify to keep the zoom or if the prime is good enough.

Well the pictures make clear, I'm more happy with the 50 and can live with the inconvenience of swapping lenses for my goal. It's also so much lighter to carry several primes with you than this zoom.

conclusion
  • the prime is much sharper
  • the zoom has a nicer out of focus rendering, but the prime is pretty close, but not as smooth
  • the prime has much better CA values (at F/8) and the CA is the same at F/1.8
  • the zoom has better contrast
There is no reason to use the zoom at 50mm instead of the prime. So the prime wins.

well after taking about 400 pictures in the last 48h and also some more bunny shots...

...I know they are stupid, but hey they provide nice results and are a good lesson to learn how to keep the lighting constant between several shots. (More or less, my exposure was mostly 0.1 stop off between shots)

Now what did I actually compare and does it make sense todo this?

  • 1 x Nikon 17-55mm F/2.8, for 1200$
  • 1 x Nikon 50mm F/1.8, for 110$
  • 1 x Tokina 19-35mm F/3.5 - F/4.5 for 149$
The result of the test should show how much better the Nikon 17-55 is wide open and stopped down compared to the other lenses.
One thing is sure the build quality and focus speed is far superior to the other lenses, but how much better is it optical? It is also very convenient to have one lens instead of two.

The next post is about the 17-55 F/2.8 vs the 50mm F/1.8 and the post after wards compares the 17-55 F/2.8 against the Tokina at 19mm and 35mm

...let the games begin...

Friday, July 25, 2008

maybe I have to high exspectations, but after playing with the 17-55mm F/2.8 3 hours straight, I'm still not satisfied with the quality.

At least not for the amount of money I paid for it. It is razor sharp at F/4 but at F/2.8 it seems kinda soft or has slight front focus. I think I give it a rundown over the next week and if i'm not 100% happy at Sunday I send it back and get a refund.

Which translates into the original combo of two primes, which are less convinient, but much cheaper and smaller.

In the worst case I loose 30$ shipping, which is a fraction of what it would cost to rent.

experience so far:

  • + excellent build quality
  • + wonderful CA handling, nearly perfect
  • - not possible to shoot into the sun with it
  • + razor sharp at F/4
  • - kinda soft at F/2.8
  • + very precise focus and very fast
  • - a touch large and heavy
  • + beautiful out of focus rendering

bunny on the left is 2.8 on the right is F/4

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

well sometimes things are going well and sometimes everything just goes wrong...

Originally I found a very nice deal on a 80-200 F/2.8 and promptly ordered it. At the same time I sold my 70-300mm VR to pay for this new lens.

so far it's simple. Now it turned out that they send me the wrong order and my original order was send to another customer. Which is very annoying, since it causes me all kinds of trouble. Now a smart person would had said, ok shit happens now wait it out...

...well I'm not smart and do stupid things when I frustrated. Basically I start shopping to make me happy again, which in this turn resulted in a 17-55mm F/2.8 lens from nikon which will force me to save the next two month. At least parts of the lens are covered by the money I got for the 70-300mm VR and If I need money I can always sell it for like 90 - 95% of it's value.

But it was defiantly not the smartest thing todo, speciall since I got now lenses to cover:

  • 10 - 20 mm
  • 17 - 55 mm
  • 50 mm
  • 90 mm
  • 19-35 mm
which means the 19-35mm has togo and I have no lens over 90mm anymore. Well maybe I get me something nice for my birthday and use the time to recover my finances.

But hey my new banking software tells me I live well in my limits and related to the expenses I had this year, well it suprises me quite alot

(ikea, more ikea, apple toys, tv, dentist, car trouble)


...at least I did not spend that on shoes! (you know who I'm talking too....)

Mhm now the big question is why did I not buy the sigma or tamron version? Basically I love my sigma 10-20 and hate it since it's so god damn unsharp and the reports for the 18-50mm Sigma are pretty bad (very soft till F/4, so defeats the purpose of F/2.8). If I ever have the possibilty to sell my 10-20, I'm most likley going todo this in an instant, if the price is right.

Now the tamron is supposed to be as good as the Nikon 17-55 F/2.8, If you get a copy which is able to focus. Everybody reports that they have issues to lock the focus, which makes it also useless.

And last but not least I can use the nikon in dust/rain since it's weather sealed. (Ok my camera is not, but it's easier to wrap a plastic bag around a camera than around a lens...)

Guess I will be busy at the weekend taking lots of pictures.

...ah and I also keep fighting with grails and I'm not winning here, which is another reason I'm frustrated...

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

well after 1 hour of fighting with the apple tv, it finally accepted that it has now a 250 gb harddrive and is useful now.

...at least until we got more than 150 dvd's...

how todo it?

http://img.engadget.com/2007/03/23/how-to-upgrade-the-drive-in-your-apple-tv/3

it was really fairly simple, once I got the right screwdrivers

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

well today my picture arrived and I have to say it looks wonderful and I'm really amazed at the resolution of the camera, specially since I took this picture with a 100$ lens (was the only 35mm lens I had...)

The only problem is, it needs a frame to be mounted to the wall. So another 70$ are gone for a frame.

the other problem is now I want to print 2 or 3 other pictures in this size, but I guess this has to wait till next month and the month afterward...

Sunday, July 13, 2008

the more I look at current high end compact cameras the less I understand why people actually buy them.

I mean


So the only compact camera which does really nice pictures and which you actually can take with you instead of a D-SLR is the Sigma DP-1

except:
  • to slow
This is the only thing which really bugs me. I can live with the awful menu. I mean I want to use it for street photography, so I put it in aperture or shutter priority mode and to iso 100 or 400 dependings on my goal.

Done nothing else todo.

That the lens has F/4 which is sad, but I don't know how to put a faster lens into such a compact camera. And again for street photographie it should be fast enough. But to wait 7 seconds between pictures is a damn long time. Specially at this price tag.

But it looks at iso 800 better than my D80...

I mean these pictures look nice

But one thing is sure If I'm going to buy a compact camera it's going to be soon.

well,

today I wanted to print and frame on off my pictures in a decent size and was shocked about the cost.

Appr. Outside Dimensions: 22 5/16" x 29 11/16"

DSC747_1 15 1/4" x 22 5/8"

Giclee print on Premium Semimatte Photo Paper $28.80

BM7 Black Magic - Beaded Profile
21" x 28 3/8"
$57.00

Arctic White w/Black Core Mat 21" x 28 3/8"
Window 15" x 22 3/8" - Delete
$21.00

Framing Kit: Premium Clear Acrylic & Foamcore Backing $43.00

Professional Assembly Fee $29.95


Total:

$179.75

179$ for a frame and print is just a little bit steep for my taste. Sure the preview looks beautiful, but still...

it seems like I need to look at some frames from ikea and cut my own mat boards. To save some money on this process.

I did order a print of this picture to see how large I can print with my camera, after post processing and how good of a job mpix does. There print costs are defiantly way lower and if I'm happy with the quality I can order the prints there and the frame somewhere else.

So much about saving this month...

cloth: 200$
hd for mac: 110$
print: 50$

enjoying live, priceless

Mpix Lab

ProductsQuantityItem Total

20" x 30" Very Large Print (True Digital B&W Paper)131.99

Water-Based Lustre Coating13.04

Double Weight Matboard113.25





























well spontaneous decisions of the night,

I just ordered a 250GB hard drive to upgrade my apple tv from the 40GB HD to 250GB to store all my stuff on it.

if it doesn't work out, I use it as a backup drive for my laptop.

...every month another mac project...

Saturday, July 12, 2008

well sexy toyes...

http://www.adorama.com/SGDP1.html

i really considering to get this to have a small portable camera for trips and just daily picture taking. I see so often beautiful landscapes or nice street scenes and never have a camera with me. Now you could argue you could just buy a cheap compact camera for like 150 - 200$ (cheap is relative), but there sensors are just so small and noisy and this camera is supposed to have a very nice large sensor.

well I think about it and wont buy it before adobe releases a lightroom plugin to handle the raw data of this camera.

...yes I know it got raving reviews for the picture and awfully reviews for the menu handling. And you need to go for everything into the menu. Well I guess I wait for a nikon or canon model with the same nice chip and just buy a small 35mm/f2 lens for the trips and maybe take the 90mm with me...

but the 35mm F/2 cost 300$ and the camera cost 700 - 300 == effective 400...

what do I want?

  • aps sized sensor - sigma got it
  • compact format - sigma got it
  • manual control with dedicated wheels, buttons - sigma lacks this
  • F/2.8 if possible since F/4 is kinda slow - sigma lacks in this
  • 28 or 35mm, both is fine, interchangeable would be perfect, sigma got parts of it
  • around 500$ - sigma cost 300$ more
  • fast write speed - sigma really lacks in this
basically a digital rangefinder like a leica M8, just affordable and not 8k$.

drink of the day,

http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink10428.html

bermuda mai tai recipe. Just weird to drink mai tai without amaretto...

pycuda and me,

well the last two weeks I'm sitting here and learning python and C again to utilize the calculation power of cuda and current nvidia gpus for calculations. I don't have any real use for this yet, but it's an interesting idea and maybe we can work it into something.

So far I rewrote the complete python math module to allow the execution of the standard math functions on a gpu instead of the gpu and the results are pretty impressive.

For example to calculate the acos function on 524k floats is 1000x faster than to calculate it on the gpu. Now I have no idea were I could use this, but hey it's nice to have.

I also created my own fork of pycuda under:

http://github.com/berlinguyinca/pycuda/tree/master

to speed up the development, since the original developer won't have time to merge my changes with the main repository, at least not all the time.
Benefit is I learn another source code management system. And git is defnitly the nices system I used sofar, but svn with still much simpler and has the benefit of more available tools. Specially I miss a git fisheye integration.

Now I just have to figure out why my ohloh ranking keeps dropping and does not increase over the time...

I also was not able to get an iphone yet, but atleast it will get cheaper once the demand settles and hopefully they improve it even more. I also don't know If I really need it...

Saturday, July 05, 2008


well spending 4th of july in Berryessa and taking pictures of random people.

I particularly like the kayak picture and we are actually considering to rent one the next time or maybe buy one in the distant future.

...and yes the little girl is also nice...

Tuesday, July 01, 2008


well after I got my second flash a couple of weeks ago, I thougth it's time to throw everything I know about lighting overboard, like use softlight, umbrellas, indirect light yadda yadda yadda...

And just used hard light and try to limit my self to a perspective of 35mm and 50mm. Main reason for this I want to figure out if I'm going to buy the nikon 35mm f/2. I'm only thinking about this particular lens since 2 years.
Nachdem mein zweites Blitzgeraet vor einieger zeit geliefert wurde, dachte ich es ist doch mal wieder zeit ein bissel mit meiner kamera herumzuspielen. Gesagt getan und um das ganze etwas interressanter zu machen benutzte ich nur ein 35 und 50mm objektiv und 'hartes' licht statt weiches licht.

In den meisten faellen ist es ganz gut geworden, ausser das hartes licht nunmal die eigentschafft hat alles zu enthuellen.




Ah yes all the pictures are roughly 1 - 2 stops underexposed which works fine for the black & white, but in case of the color pictures they are a little bit to dark. After all it was just an experiment which needs to be refined now.

Lesson learned:

  • get a 35mm F/2 or 30mm F/1.4
  • control your shadows better, some a off
  • needs a lot of post processing, so far I did none
  • hard light does not work well, if angled on skin
  • nikon's CLS communication is not always up to the speed of shooting