Milan Zamazal's Weblog

Sony DSC-R1 full review is now available on dpreview.com too. Sony DSC-R1 seems to be a very interesting camera for an advanced amateur with limited budget. When I first read Sony DSC-R1 announcement, it was clear to me that device fixes all major imperfections I experience with my Olympus C-2100 UZ camera. Too bad I can't afford it.

I finally became a photo.net subscriber. I don't use the site much, but I like the idea of a non-commercial photo site supported by its users. I've found photo.net no longer requires a PayPal account to pay the fee, so it's easier to subscribe now.

BTW, do you know who is Philip Greenspun, the photo.net founder and the author of the famous Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming? He is an interesting person and I recommend reading his articles.

These days we have clear sky, full moon and a lot of snow. We can't enjoy such wonderful conditions at our geographical location often. And because winter moon is high, I took my old photography equipment (which suffers of no problems working at -10°C for long time) and entered the night to take some snapshots of it. Unsurprisingly photographing under moon light proved to be tricky, I don't expect any usable result. But I can give you one advice immediately: Before you take your heavy bag with tripod and dive into cold winter night, check the camera remote control, which always used to be in the bag, is still there and it's there at its usual place.

There has been an interesting discussion on comp.periphs.scanners recently about scanners, film grain, noise and aliasing. I wondered why my 2400dpi scanner produces very grainy scans in comparison with prints (and the scanned images are of much worse quality than pictures from my 2Mpix camera because of the grain) and why the grain is more visible in dark areas. Now it's more clear to me (I hope), especially thanks to the Web page mentioned in the discussion. Basically, grain doesn't match well with digital technologies and you need a very high resolution device to cope with it.

My long term observation about GNOME and KDE is that GNOME is stronger in desktop, while KDE is stronger in applications. One of the excellent KDE applications is digiKam.

The most popular free image processing tool, GIMP, hasn't succeeded to become a tool for serious work. Its lack of important features (such as 16-bit color support) and poor user interface make it suitable just for occasional use and perhaps for web designers. Lack of free usable photo processing and management tools has motivated me to develop my own photo processing program as a part of my Springtail Lisp tools. But due to lack of time and zero support from McCLIM developers Springtail didn't provide completely satisfying results.

About a year ago I discovered digiKam. After trying it I've abandoned the Springtail photo application development immediately. Not that digiKam offered all the features present in Springtail and everything I needed, but it provided interesting features, good user interface and was well maintained. It was clear to me that this may be the right tool and it made no sense to invest my effort into development of my own tool instead of helping a promising project.

I can say that digiKam fulfills my expectations and I recommend it to photo enthusiasts who look for a good photo editing and management tool. It can't do everything and there are many features that could be improved, but this is up to us – we can file bug reports, vote for bugs and make patches. I believe this project is well maintained and it's worth to help it.

After using my Olympus C-2100 UZ digital camera for several years exclusively I slowly revive my old film equipment. Despite the great practical advantages of digital cameras such as immediate feedback, in-camera processing, no dust (with a proper camera), no scratches, data safety, low snapshot costs, low weight, etc., there are still some problems. I was very happy with the Olympus camera initially and I learned a lot using it. But with the learning process the camera's drawbacks became apparent: grain replaced by noise and aggressive image processing, too low depth of field replaced by too high depth of field, too low contrast replaced by too high contrast, high sensitivity replaced by inability to take long exposures. I consider the 10x zoom C-2100 lens being quite good, but it has its limits too: it doesn't provide wide angle focal range and it suffers from occasional chromatic aberration.

Ironically, the camera buries itself by teaching me. The clever guys at Olympus have probably even implemented it as a feature – while the camera costed more than all my previous photographic equipment together, it lasted less than any of the other components. It took only a bit more than 3 years before it started to suffer from serious mechanical problems. So I started to look for a replacement not only because of my new requirements, but also because of possible future complete failure of the made-in-Japan camera.

Compact digital cameras haven't made much progress since Olympus C-2100. The number of pixels increased significantly, but without big impact on the resulting picture quality. The processing algorithms were improved, but that's basically all. It makes no point for me to buy another camera with a small sensor. And good digital cameras are still too expensive (Sony DSC R1 being the cheapest one, but still exceeding what I could reasonably pay).

In this situation I've started to make experiments with my old Praktica-based equipment about a year ago. I hope it can complement the Olympus camera or even to replace it completely for some time in case of its complete failure. One can't resist nostalgia when holding the old equipment in his hands: Solid construction, no batteries needed, the feel of complete control over the camera, listening to the shutter and mirror noise again after the years of silence… But the primary result of this change (not counting changes to one's physical condition caused by carrying the heavy equipment) is that I have to be very careful with taking pictures again. It starts by changing lenses, mounting the camera to a tripod, manual focusing, guessing proper depth of field, considering metering corrections, etc. It takes a lot of time to take a picture, but it's the more amusing part. The tedious part is processing the developed film. I'm not going to make prints at minilab, I want to process the images myself electronically and store them in my computer. And this is no easy thing with film. I'll write more about my experience with this later.

I've finally managed to process my photos from the last winter. You can look at samples of my photos taken under moon light. They are not good photos but they show how moonlight photography can look like. Note the photos are somewhat shaky because I forgot the remote control at home and had to hold the shutter button by hand for the whole time of exposure.

When I scanned photos from the Fuji Superia 400 film I was very unhappy with grainy shadows. The grain seems to be really worse there than in brighter areas even when considering the effect of higher noise visibility in dark areas. I couldn't get rid of it even when I tried to significantly overexpose. By chance I found explanation of the problem in an old issue of the Czech PHOTO life magazine.

Actual sensitivity of negative amateur Fuji films (and this is likely to apply to other vendors' films as well) is very different from what one could assume looking at the declared ISO number. First, it is actually significantly higher than declared, protecting you from underexposition. Second, maximum sensitivity (i.e. the ability to capture minimum light without underexposition) is about the same regardless of the declared sensitivity, the difference between Fuji Superia 100 and 400 is reported to be only about 0,5 EV. When you expose Fuji Superia 100 at ISO 50, you can go up to 4 EV from the middle towards darkness before the material gets underexposed, while when you expose Fuji Superia 400 as ISO 200, you've got only about 2,5 EV.

This explains what I observe – even when overexposing the ISO 400 film twice, there is a big risk of underexposed shadows, resulting in overgrown grain (note that according to Fujifilm specifications standard grain size should be about the same in properly exposed Superia 100 and 400). Indeed, scanning my latest Fuji Superia 100 film seems to confirm the facts. When I compare results from an ISO 400 film exposed as ISO 200 and from an ISO 100 film exposed as ISO 70, there is not much difference in the look of the grain in the highlights. But the grain is much worse in shadows of the ISO 400 film, while in the ISO 100 film the grain is about the same as in highlights there. So there is no point for me to use an ISO 400 film which is more expensive and provides lower dynamic range, while it offers only slight advantage in maximum sensitivity.

Sensitivity is one of the areas where digital easily beats film. Where I'm limited to ISO 50-100 with film, good digital cameras can go safely up to ISO 400-800. Additionally, the higher depth of field allows to use one step wider aperture. And finally, image stabilizers become common, which adds further 2-3 steps. Summed up, DSLRs can provide at least 6 EV advantage over film in nature photography.

I've switched almost completely from using a compact digital camera to using a film camera this year. I scan my 35 mm negatives with a low-end flatbed scanner, namely Epson Perfection 2480 Photo. It is possible to obtain reasonable results using that cheap device, but it's not easy. I've been learning a lot during the process and I'd like to share my experience in the posts here, perhaps it helps someone.

First, what can one expect?

As for the scanner dynamic range, I think it's sufficient for scanning amateur print films, I haven't observed any problems in this area.

As for the scanner resolution, Epson claims something about 2400 dpi regarding that scanner. I'd say such numbers are pure marketing crap nowadays for two reasons: 1. it's not defined what the number means; 2. whatever it's supposed to mean it has probably little to do with reality, i.e. the real scanner resolution. According to internet rumours and my own observations, such as down and upsampling scanned pictures and comparing scans with prints, I estimate the actual scanner resolution performance is very roughly around 1000 ppi. That means the spatial information the scanner is able to capture from a standard 35 mm film field is present in a picture of a minimum size of about 1500x1000 pixels.

So in theory the scanner should be sufficient for both my primary target medium, a 1280x1024 computer screen, and my secondary media, occasional prints not larger than A4. In practice it's not that easy but more on this next time.

Wouldn't it be worth to buy a better scanner? I don't have any experience with current more expensive scanners, but from what I've read and seen on the net, I think they provide somewhat better results with significantly higher comfort for much more money. Higher Epson flatbed scanners such as 4x90 or V7x0 produce better results and offer hardware features for dust removal, but increase in the device cost is significantly higher than increase in the resulting scan quality. Low-end "4000 dpi" dedicated film scanners give even better results for even more money. Drum scanners produce much better scans than Epson 2480 for 100 times more money. Basically it's your choice whether you invest much more money into better scanning hardware producing good results or much more time into scanning process using a cheap scanner producing acceptable results. Or whether you buy a good digital camera equipment and get rid of scanning entirely.

One of the main advantages of digital photography over film is that all the process is in your hands. With film at least its development is usually left to a laboratory. And this is a problem, I've experienced a lot of troubles with it: scratches, sticked garbage, fingerprints, even exchanging my roll of film with one of another customer. In the better case I can partially repair some of the damages spending a lot of time on retouching, in the worse case the shot is lost. I'm not a photographer who takes a lot of pictures and then chooses a few pictures from a roll of film, I usually spend significant amount of time on taking each shot and don't shoot the same picture twice. So if they damage my shot, it's completely lost.

I don't want to risk those problems anymore. As I don't know how to find a good laboratory in Brno, I have two alternatives. Either sending my films for development to PHOTO life's CREATIVE LAB (they claim they handle everything in the process very carefully) or developing the films myself. With my low-volume production I'll probably try the first choice. It means about 3 € extra cost for postage, but it still looks like the cheapest way to get the thing done right.

BTW the laboratories in Brno that show complete incompetence are Fosh foto and Fotex (at Kobližná).

Sometimes the possible consequences of connecting old flashes to modern electronic cameras (both digital and film) through hot shoe are discussed. The problem is high voltage (up to at least 300 V) of those flash units on their contacts, exceeding the standard limit of 12 V. I've never heard about a destroyed camera from direct user experience, but people are warned not to try such things.

What's my own experience? An old simple hot shoe flash with voltage about 90 V on its contacts usually worked with my Pentax MZ-M camera, but I sometimes experienced delayed mirror return (for about half a second) after taking a snapshot. I was more cautious with my other body, Pentax Z-1, reported to be sensitive to high voltages. I once attached another flash unit, 40 V, to it. Two snapshots went fine, but on the third one it actually happened what the rumors had warned about: the camera got completely frozen and I had to remove the battery from it to get it alive again. However no other damage has happened.

I no longer risk damaging my cameras by using old flash units. I bought a used Pentax flash unit for €15, with safe voltage. It is only a bit stronger than common built-in flashes, it doesn't have any TTL etc., but it works, it's safe, cheap, small, light, inconspicuous and communicates with the Pentax cameras. It's enough for my occasional flash use.

This is my warning to other photo amateurs: Although no permanent damage has happened to my cameras, I can confirm that using old flashes with voltage higher than 12 V on their contacts may cause at least temporary malfunctions. And it's not true that Pentax cameras are safe up to 600 V.

My digital camera sensor got dirty enough and it was no longer possible to clean it just by softly blowing air to it. So I looked for a more powerful cleaning solution. After some searching I decided to try Pentax Image Sensor Cleaning Set O-ICK1. It looked simple and didn't require any liquids. Does it work?

I wasn't much successful when carefully following the instruction manual. But then I applied somewhat stronger pressure than suggested and it started to work very well. My sensor is sufficiently clean now.

Here are sample images (crop of the same resized area) before and after the cleaning (please ignore the sky in the background and look just at the dust spots):