Mischievous Ramblings II

CVS Camcorder Rocket Project

CVS Camcorder Rocket Project is a very cool use of a hacked CVS Camcorder -- they mounted it in a large model rocket (looking back using a mirror).

I clipped this movie out of one of their videos. Awesome!

(I don't know why the embedded version won't work, but it won't, so you'll have to download it -- it's only about 900K, so no big deal)

Baseball Season is Over!

Kiernan's Little League season ended yesterday with the second loss of the playoffs. Frankly, I think we're just as glad. Fewer full evenings and weekend days. We have a team dinner next week and then we're done with this level of ball. Kiernan says he wants to play Juniors next year (that's for 13-14 year olds, and 14 year olds have the option of playing up in the Senior league instead).

So today I finished up all the pictures I'd taken and not processed or not uploaded, plus I did a few of the better ones more carefully (my usual procedure is to let Photoshop process images for the gallery, because hand-tweaking 150 pictures per game just isn't possible for me) and put them up. I thought I'd include thumbnails and pointers to them here:

Gee, it used to be BAD pictures they wouldn’t develop!

Snap judgments describes how WalMart (and other photo service locations) are refusing to print photos that look like they were taken by professional photographers.

Since modern digital cameras allow users to take high-resolution pictures and computers allow them to weed out the bad (poorly exposed, poorly framed, out-of-focus, etc.) pictures, photocenters are increasingly presented with good pictures that look like they might be professionally taken.

They then take it upon themselves to not print those pictures in the name of protecting some unknown photographers copyright.

Pah.

That's why I own an Olympus P-440 printer. They give me crap, I print my own. Someday I'll add a 4x6 version, too.

Digital Photos Break Film Price Barrier

According to PhotographyBLOG, SanDisk's new "Shoot & Store" cards are basically as cheap as film. At $15 for 100 images, that's basically the equivalent of $5 for a 33-exposure role of film and developing (no printing costs included).

I haven't done film developing for a while, but that doesn't sound like a lot of money. The cost is in the prints, as we all know (as Norm Lane, a reloading buddy once said, "it's the bullets that kill ya"), not so much in the film and processing.

Assuming that average snapshot photographers will happily evaluate their images on a computer and only print the best, film in this segment of the market is close to dead. When digital cameras are as cheap as film cameras (and PHD ones are close, but SLRs aren't, at least at the low end), it looks like film is history.

(via chuqui at Teal Sunglasses)

update: that "100 images" is actually 64Mb, which is only about 20 images from my Digital Rebel, so we do have a ways to go. But for those with 2 megapixel cameras, the above is probably still about right.

Two Princesses

Two princesses

Yow! Baseball in Pictures!

Kiernan's Little League all-star team finished their first tournament today. But that's not what I want to talk about — I want to talk about photographing the team's exhibition and tournament games and the championship game this afternoon.

Over 7 days and 8 events (two games today), I took 1144 images totalling (now, which may include a few processed images as well as the originals) 3.36 GB, according to Windows! Counting the regular season and playoffs, I've got almost 2700 files totalling more than 7.75 GB.

Small versions of the images can be found in my Photo Gallery. If the gallery names aren't obvious, I've made a serious error. It's possible that the images will be archived offline at some point to make more online space available. If that happens and you're interested in seeing them, you should be able to figure out how to contact me from information elsewhere on this site.

At some point I'll probably start a new Action Sports gallery and take some of what I think are the best images from the season and put them there.

The challenges involved in shooting Little League baseball are considerable. During non-tournament play, pretty much no-one cared where I shot from, including allowing me access to the dugouts during play so long as I got out of the way of players and coaches moving around. Often I worked from the spectator galleries along the first and third baselines, and very rarely from the bleachers (because there I had to shoot through cyclone fencing or netting put up for safety reasons). During tournament play, I was limited to spectator areas, but I snuck inside the fences during many games and shot from the foul areas between the first and third baselines and the fences. Of course, for shots of the lineups at the beginning of games, the national anthem shots, and team shots afterwards (including presentations), I had complete access to the field.

I kept telling people that I was part of the furniture, that I didn't want them worrying about my sightlines or positioning, and by and large I think that happened — and I missed shots because of it. But I'm not supposed to be part of the game.

After some experimenting, I found that I preferred to work in low-ISO (100 and 200) wherever possible. That limited my nighttime shooting (especially before I got my Tamron f/2.8 28-105 lens), so I let it. I don't like the amount of noise that the higher ISOs (especially 800 and 1600) introduce, although I suspect it is not particularly noticeable when I reduce the image to 21% of the original size. But I surely do notice it when I zoom in on the originals.

For some games, I set myself a task of getting a particular shot or shots. For others, I just played Dad and made sure I got pictures of Kiernan when I could. For the championship game, I had (for the first time) no interest in the game outcome, so I could concentrate completely on shooting the game, and I think it made a difference. I made a point of shifting from the first to the third baselines between some innings, deliberately shot some innings with the 70-300 (at higher ISO, I must admit) and others with the 28-105.

Frankly, the 2.5 fps over 4 frames burst mode of the DReb is not worth a whole lot for sports shooting. 1/2.5 seconds is too slow for many sequences, and the tendency of the photographer (me) to rely upon the burst mode probably misses as many shots as it gets. Learning to time the arrival of the ball at the plate was valuable, though (but of course the difference between a fastball and a changeup, even as thrown by 11-year-olds, makes that an interesting proposition). If I could have my druthers, I'd want a 10fps mode, preferably good for 3-5 seconds. That's a huge amount of data, though, and I imagine it would take a pretty specialized camera system to deal with it. I haven't investigated whether the DReb will support either a higher burst rate or a longer burst sequence when working with smaller images. I rather doubt it, and I like being able to crop for printing and web work.

Having a second camera body so that I could have both major lenses available at the same time (or maybe having my mythical 28-300 f/2.8 tack-sharp over the entire range easily affordable lightweight lens suddenly arrive by stork) would be a real benefit, as would having a second body on a remote trigger and pointed at the plate to catch plays there and shots of swings.

And, frankly, the 300mm high end of my lenses isn't quite high enough for Little League and would be completely inadequate for professional baseball (due to the larger areas involved). I suspect a 400 would probably suffice for Little League play, but I'd want a 600mm or even an 800mm for professional play.

So there are my thoughts as they emerge this evening.

Lens Testing 2

The second half of the lens evaluation on the Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 lens was shooting Kiernan's baseball game last night. Since games start at 6 and run to (or often past) 8, darkness becomes an issue, and in the past I have had to raise ISO high enough that I don't like the noise or stop shooting for the last couple of innings.

That's why I love day games.

The Tamron, however, allowed me to shoot the entire evening (until 8:20pm) at ISO 200, which is noiseless enough for me.

I note the larger barrel of the lens (82mm, as I keep reminding myself) makes it easier to get flare unless I shoot one handed and use my other hand to screen the lens. Yes, there is a hood included with the lens, but it will not fit on over the filter B&H sold me. If I'm going to keep the lens I must go to a local store and try filters until I find one that will work with the hood, or get an aftermarket hood.

I also note that, as I expected, 28-105 is a pretty good range for working the infield of a Little League game, allowing sufficient field of view for plays made at the base nearest you (first or third) and enough zoom to get individual plays. It's not as good for the latter as the 70-300, of course, but it's possible to switch lenses while concentrating on certain plays (or opportunities, as the case may be). When the DReb gets relegated to backup status because a new, better camera body is priced where I can afford it, I'll just carry two if my neck can stand it.

OTOH, my "scientific" testing of the Tamron tells me that lenses are of similar quality, and perhaps a wider range zoom (28 - 200 or even more) might provide similar sharpness over the wide range.

Overall, I think the new lens gives me a nice opportunity to reduce my standard kit to two lenses (the 28-105 and the 70-300, which also provides some near-macro capability), with possible add-ons of the 50mm macro if I expect to use it and/or the 18-55 kit lens if I think I'm going to need wider angles than the 28 provides (remembering that the effective field of view of the 28 is 35mm equivalent of 45mm, while the 18 is 29mm). Either set of three will fit into my Slinger or Trekker 200.

How much is it worth to have a picture of Kiernan walking to win the playoff game? Or the agony of defeat?

I think I've talked myself into keeping it. Camera backs (aka "light tight boxes") come and go, but lenses are almost forever.

Lens Testing 1

Having acquired a Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 lens for the Canon Digital Rebel, I was faced with deciding whether or not to keep it. It's big (82mm!) and heavy (just a bit under 32 oz!), but the real question for me was how sharp it was and how often I'd use the better speed (f/2.8 instead of f/4 - 5.6 on various other lenses).

So naturally, I Google'd "lens testing" and came up with a bunch of sites. Many of the descriptions seemed beyond my capabilities or desires. I couldn't order anything non-digital for testing, since my return window on the lens is only a week. I didn't want anything that required additional software, although Nathen Koren recommends a couple of free or cheap programs to analyze digital images of his targets.

Finally I settled on a two-pronged test: shoot some lens targets under controlled conditions and compare the Tamron to my other lenses (a Sigma 50mm f/2.8 1:1 macro, a Sigma 70-300mm f/4 - 5.6 APO "Super", and the Canon 18-55mm f/3.5 - 5.6 kit); and shoot a baseball game in the evening.

I got Nathen Koren's lens targets and printed them out at 1200 dpi on my laser printer (not ideal, according to Nathen, but should be acceptable). I also got a USAF '51 chart. I assembled them all onto a piece of white artboard and took them out into the backyard on a sunny day.

I placed the target at one side of the backyard in shade and shot from a tripod at various distances. For each lens I shot at maximum aperture, f/4, f/8, f/16, f/32 (if available) and maximum aperture. For the zoom lenses I shot at minimum zoom, medium zoom, and maximum zoom. All images were taken at iso 100 and shot RAW for maximum data. I did my best to shoot exactly the frame of the artboard although I doubt I ever succeeded precisely.

Once I had my 60 or so images, I batch converted them (using Canon's utility) to 16-bit TIF and renamed them to a combination of lens (s50, sig, tam, kit), mm focal length of shot (extracted from the exif), and f/stop, resulting in a bunch of files named entertainingly like kit18f8.tif.

I examined each one in Photoshop at 100%, noting the sharpness (ability to distinguish adjacent bars) on each of two horizontal targets, a vertical target, and a diagonal target. I also noted the smallest clear target section on the USAF target, although it quickly became obvious that there was insufficient variation for that data to be useful. I recorded all data in an Excel spreadsheet.

(Do I have Too Much Time on my hands, or what?)

To rank the shots, I obtained a mean value of the horizontal sharpness values and a mean value of that mean and the diagonal sharpness value. I assigned two ranks -- one for each mean -- and then a mean rank which was the mean of the two other ranks.

Top Ten:

Sigma Macro	50mm	f/8
Tamron	50mm	f/8
Tamron	50mm	f/16
Sigma Macro	50mm	f/16
Tamron	50mm	f/4
Sigma Zoom	70mm	f/8
Sigma Zoom	100mm	f/4
Sigma Zoom	100mm	f/4
Tamron	28mm	f/16
Kit	18mm	f/8

It's hard to say, based upon these tests (maybe I will have to get that software and play with it) that one lens is overall better than another. All the lenses appear at least once in the top 10 rankings. All the bottom rankings appear to be at extreme apertures, but there's no clearly significant ranking among lenses.

So the question is whether the faster speed of the Tamron is worth the money, weight, and size. Exactly the questions I had before I spent hours doing all this "scientific testing".

Choose Wisely.

This is a post I sent to the Canon-300D yahoogroup (for the Digital Rebel):

Using the Dreb is not like using a P&S camera. Nor is it like using a film SLR unless you do all your own developing and printing.

A P&S camera (film or digital) makes all (or virtually all) the decisions for you, from focus to exposure.

P&S cameras almost always have small lenses (especially digital cameras), you get big depth of field (which manufacturers of P&S cameras like, because then consumers don't complain about out-of-focus images because everything between 4' and infinity is in focus).

Unless you do all your own film developing and printing, many processing decisions are taken away from you by the processing lab. Yes, it's true -- developing and printing film (especially color film) is not a 1-2-3 process that involves no decisions. The machines and the people involved in creating prints from film at your local Costco are making huge numbers of decisions about your images.

What the Dreb gives you is a huge ability to make decisions about your images, from what focal length lens you use to what exposure (under/over or "normal") to whether or not you use flash to what depth of field when you take the picture through a seemingly infinite (and certainly very large) number of decisions you can make in post-processing (crop, resize, levels & color adjustment, filtration and so forth).

Many of these decisions can be automated (use the Program modes instead of the "Creative" modes, always use fill-in flash if available, use average or normal exposure) -- even post-processing (process using levels to stretch the exposed dynamic range to the full range), etc. But all that means is that you are making the decision once and then repeating it -- a process that is likely to generate fewer good images than you get with a P&S camera because more individualized decisions are being made for the image coming out of the P&S camera.

It's all about the choices you make in taking and processing the image. The Dreb gives you a lot of choices to make, and your post-processing software gives you many more.

Choose wisely.

Photos

We took an afternoon nature walk at Maplewood Flats (a nature sanctuary near us) on Sunday, and I've put a few photos up in my Unassigned gallery (though they'll eventually move around as I categorize them).

I've observed to myself that I don't go out to take pictures -- I just take my camera along when we go do things. I think it's part of my internal critic's efforts to convince me that I'm not any kind of artist. The Artist's Way (I think that's the title of the book) prescribes a weekly Artist's Date to be just between you and your art. I think I need to find a way to do that -- give myself photo assignments and then go do them, perhaps, or find a website or magazine that sets up photo assignments.