Review: SeaShell SS-1 Underwater Housing

A nudibranch (colourful sea slugs!)

Life, as most of us are all-too-well aware, can be rather surprising and unpredictable at times. A great example of this was exactly two months ago, when my girlfriend and I left Bangkok to go to Koh Tao - a tiny island in the bay of Thailand - to go do our Open Water dive certification.

Long story short - it's two months, nearly 70 dives, and a whole lot of exams later, we're still on Koh Tao, and I am about to complete my PADI Divemaster certification. Needless to say, I sort of fell for this diving malarkey.

So, what is a poor photographer to do, when you rock up on a little island that doesn't do internet deliveries, and only has a limited number of camera shops? You try your damndest to get the best photos you can with the equipment you have available. In my case, I had a beautiful Canon PowerShot S95, but no underwater housing...

The local shop did have a curious little creature, though: An 'universal' camera housing for compact cameras, made by a company I'd never heard of: SeaShell.

How it works

I was rather sceptical at first... Was I really going to put my several-hundred-dollar highly cherished camera at risk by shoving it into an 'universal' camera body? I decided that yes, it would be worth a shot, so I bought the housing for 6,800 Thai Baht (Around £140 / US$225).

The first thing I did was to close the housing and take it to 18 meters for about 15 minutes. It turns out it was as water proof as I had dared hope for... So it was time to put my camera inside.

The SeaShell SS-1 only has two buttons, and both are at the top. It allows you to control a power button and the shutter, only. It sounds very limiting, but it turns out that, just to snap some snapshots under water, it's all you need. This two-button limitation is also the reason why about 25% of cameras don't work in the housing: If the power button is a slider, or is placed too far away from the shutter release button, the camera housing's little rods can't move it (or reach it).

Setting up the housing

Before you can use the housing, you have to set it up. That sounds like it should be easy, but the manual is next to completely bloody useless, and instead I resorted to trial and error. The SS-1 comes with a metric boatload of little rubber feet of different thicknesses. You have to use 12 different rubber feet (2 at the front of the camera, 2 on each side) to attempt to make your camera fit snugly inside the camera housing.

Next, you need to adjust the buttons so the camera housing's buttons align with the buttons on your camera, by using a tiny little wrench and a nut to move the button pistons left, right, and front and back. It all seems just a little bit fragile, and fiddly to set up, but - as we'll see in just a minute, it does actually work pretty well.

In use

In underwater photography, you're taking photos in a medium that's 800 times more dense than air, and that robs your subjects of their color. Reds start disappearing at about 5 meters, and are all but gone a few meters deeper - depending on how turbid the water is etc. As such, you want to get as close as possible to your subject, to ensure there the light has to travel as little as possible before it hits your camera's sensor.

Imagine, for example, that you are 5 meters down, and 2 meters away from your subject - suddenly, light has to travel 7 meters before you can capture it, and your reds are just about gone.

Having to get really close is the main reason why this housing works pretty well: You won't have access to your zoom buttons, but who cares: The Canon Powershot S95 has better apertures when zoomed fully out anyway - so you may as well leave it zoomed out, and get close.

Of course, since you'll be spending most of your time under half a meter from the things you're trying to photograph, you have to be a pretty good diver. It's bad practice to touch the corals and wildlife, so perfect buoyancy control and good control underwater in general is an absolute must - but then that's true for any underwater photography.

The biggest downfall with the SS-1 in combination with the Canon S95, is that the S95 has a flash that pops up, but the housing is too small for the flash to have enough space to do so. This means that you're limited to natural light photography, which turned out to be a blessing and a curse.

It's a lot harder to get photos that look 'correct' without using a flash, but I ended up writing a camera profile for Lightroom that matches the Canon S95's underwater profile, and the fact that the S95 shoots in RAW helped hugely - I was able to recover the reds even from relatively deep depths (12-16 meters), where the human eye can't see them, but the camera somehow managed to record the colors anyway.

Compared with an official housing

I met someone here on the island who had a S95 as well, and he had the original Canon underwater housing for the camera. Whilst I was envious of his additional control and the ability to use flash, it did look as if my photos were as good as his - and in some cases better.

Verdict

I'll be honest with you - the Canon WP-DC38 (the official underwater camera housing) doesn't cost that much more than the SeaShell SS-1 (list price is $240, you should be able to find them much cheaper - on Amazon, they're currently going for $180), and if I had the choice of one or the other, I would have put down the extra cash to buy the official housing.

On the other hand, the SS-1 can be reconfigured to fit any number of digital compacts, and whereas the official housing would be useless with another camera, the SS-1 would probably still fit, and you can keep snapping pictures.

The truth of the matter is that there was no way the official housing was going to be available on a little island like Koh Tao. Realistically, the choice wasn't between an official housing and the SS-1, but between the SS-1, and not being able to take any photos at all. Seen from that point of view, I'm pretty happy I bought the SS-1. It kept my camera safe under water, and the quality of the pictures I was able to capture

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The bright horizon of medium format

We’ve seen two entry-level medium format cameras released onto the market this week: the Pentax 645D and the Hasselblad H4D-31. Even at entry-level, we’re looking at £10,000 for the Pentax with a 55mm lens and €9995 + VAT (somewhere around £8,500) for the Hasselblad with an 80mm lens.

Do I need to remind you to breathe now? Glass of water? Tissue for your eyes? Okay. No, that’s not exactly cheap when you’re just dipping your toes in the water, but if you look at it in context of stepping up from 35mm, it isn’t quite so bad. But maybe you’re wondering what medium format is, and why it’s so special?

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Film

Hasselblad's entry-level medium format digital camera, the H4D-31

Way back when, in the days of dragons and film photography, there were lots of different types of film and film sizes. I could go into all the numbers, but you might die of boredom before I’d finished, and that’s not appealing, for me or for you. Film photography might’ve faded from most people’s consciousness now, but it hasn’t for quite a few photographers, including the medium format aficionados. Many of the old film sizes are no longer produced, but medium format is. It’s 120 or 220 film. It’s 6cm deep.

That means the film is almost twice as wide as film used in 35mm cameras. And this is critical: bigger film means more detail. If you’re looking to shoot high quality landscape shots, or make super-enormous enlargements of your pictures, the extra information afforded to you by the larger film size of the medium format is essential. For serious editorial work, medium format is where it’s at. In spades. (Or millimetres.)

If you want to think about this in terms of digital, the Pentax 645D has a 40 megapixel sensor; the Hasselblad H4D-31 (every time I type that I think it’s a new strain of avian influenza) a 31 megapixel sensor.

Medium format cameras comprise four essential elements: the body, the back, the viewfinder, and the lens. They’re all interchangeable. They’re the camera equivalent of Mr Potato Head.

Body

The body, unsurprisingly, is the HQ of your picture-taking. (The potato of your Mr Potato Head, if you’re keen on maintaining that analogy.) Add the relevant bits and pieces and you’re ready to go. There is, however, a slight quirk with medium format cameras: they’ll produce different image sizes depending on the camera type.

Pentax's 645D

The image will always be 6cm deep, because that’s the depth of the film, but the width will vary. It might be 4.5cm, or 6cm, or 7cm. The Pentax 645 produces images 6cm × 4.5cm. You might, however, have a 6 × 6 camera, whose images will be square. If you don’t want to fuss with portrait or landscape orientation, this is mighty useful.

Naturally, you’ll get more pictures out of your roll of film if your camera takes images 4.5cm wide (15 or 16 images from a roll of 120), as opposed to 7cm wide (10 images from a roll of 120). Use 220 film and you’ll double your number of shots.

Camera back

Continuing with the interchangeable theme, the camera back can be swapped for another one. This probably doesn’t seem quite so important until you know that the film is loaded into the camera back. Change the back and you can change the film. Black and white can switch to colour, which can change to a Polaroid back if you want an instant print, and then back again to the colour film. If you don’t fancy having to rotate your camera to move from portrait to landscape (unless you’re using a 6 × 6 camera when the image is square anyway), you can buy rotating backs, too.

Hasselblad interchangeable backs

Viewfinder

The viewfinder on a medium format camera can be either eye-level, through the clever use of a prism, or waist-level. With waist-level, you get to look down onto your image with both eyes. Auto-focusing is beginning to slip into the medium format world, but otherwise you’ll use your viewfinder in conjunction with a focusing screen. Mostly, it’ll be a matte screen, but as with all things medium-format they can be changed for different purposes.

Lenses

Pentax's standard 67 lens, the SMC 105mm, f/2.4

Finally, you have lenses. I suppose for a last reference to Mr Potato Head, these would have to be the eyes. Just as with 35mm photography, you can change from a wide-angle lens to a telephoto lens, or go arty with a fish eye. And just as with 35mm photography, you should go for the best glass that you can afford. Lenses tend to span a 40-500mm range, but your focal lengths will be different in medium format than in 35mm. You’ll need to remember that. But it’s the sort of thing that you’ll learn, just as you do with 35mm.

Finally

So that’s medium format in a nutshell, with its interchangeability and astonishing picture quality. If medium format digital cameras do become more affordable, which is entirely possible, how long do you think it’ll be before they are a serious consideration for high-end amateur photographers?

Where'd my mirror go?

It’s early autumn so everyone has leapt aboard the Christmas juggernaut, God help us. Christmas isn’t just celebrating half-a-dozen similar but morally incompatible festivals of religious and secular nature.

If you create electronic equipment, it’s also (not to mention ‘mostly’) about making berkovets of cold, hard cash.  

Needless to say, the photographic world conforms to this standard. This week alone, four camera manufacturers released five different cameras. Nothing unusual there, then (however much I wish the festival frenzy was restricted to seven days immediately prior to 25 December). But take a second look at these cameras, and listen to the rumours coming out of both Canon and Nikon, and you’ll notice that there’s an interesting trend emerging: A movement away from the angelic (D)SLR – or (Digital) Single Reflex Camera we all know and love, and an elegant hop towards mirror-less, or EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens) camera bodies.

Trend? Whatyoumean trend? I see no trend!?

Some trends come in oddly-photographed packages

The observant amongst you will have spotted that only one of the five new cameras that were launched this week was of the mirror-less variety: namely the Samsung NX100. That’s hardly a trend, is it? Well, no. But some other interesting things have been going on. Olympus’ E-5 is its new flagship camera, but as I said over on Small Aperture, I don’t think that they’ve done justice to the camera that is supposed to be heading up their range. Nothing about it makes me go ‘Wow!’ and reach for my credit card. As a self-confessed camera geek, that’s pretty much the reaction I’m expecting when new camera equipment gets let loose. The Nikon D7000, released the same day, is far better value for money than Olympus’ new flagbearer.

It’s not just the uninspired E-5 that suggests Olympus will soon be ceasing production of SLRs, but squeaks from within the camp are saying something similar.

Quite apart from the retro-tastic tiny swivel-scrreen, the Pro90 used an EVF - or Electronic Viewfinder.

If the murmurings from ‘the other’ manufacturers aren’t convincing enough for you, listen to the rumours from Canon and Nikon. Neither of these behemoths of the optical world have produced current-generation mirror-less cameras yet (although both Canon and Nikon have created ELF – Electronic View Finder – cameras in the past, with varying success. Photocritic editor Haje notes that he had a Canon Pro90 about 10 years ago, but ended up trading up to a ‘true’ SLR, because it was ‘pro’ only in name – not in actual fact), but perhaps that could be about to change?

The intergoogles are awash with images of the Canon EVIL, and its prospective range name: EIS. There’s a strong hint that Nikon will announce a mirror-less camera, Q, at Photokina this month. So I’ll say it again: mirror-less cameras.

What is this mirror-less camera you speak of, Miss Bowker?

I should probably begin by saying that in a way, ‘mirror-less camera’ is a bit of a misnomer, after all, compact cameras do not have mirrors either. But the problem is that no one has been able to settle on a name or even an acronym for this other breed of magical-picture-making-machine that benefits from interchangeable lenses but doesn’t have the bulky mirror fandango of the SLR. You might hear them referred to as Mirror-less Interchangeable Lens Cameras (MILCs); Digital Interchangeable Lens cameras (DILs); Micro cameras; Single Lens Direct view cameras (SLDs); or my personal favourite: Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens cameras (EVILs). In the absence of any generally agreed term, I’ll stick with mirror-less camera.

In order for the mirror to be able to flip out of the way, there has to be a gap between the imaging sensor and the lens. Mirrorless camera designs do away with this gap.

Anyway, if you want to know how a mirror-less camera works, you need to know how an SLR, or single lens reflex camera, works first. It’s pretty simple, actually. When you take a picture, you need to be able to see what your lens is seeing otherwise you’ll be decapitating your portrait subjects and accidentally omitting the most interesting feature of your Italian vista. With an SLR, there’s a mirror that redirects the light seen through the lens to your eye, via the optical viewfinder. When you press the shutter release button, the mirror flips out of the way and the sensor (or film, if you’re feeling retro) is exposed to the light and therefore the image. Tah-daa, there’s your picture.

As the term ‘mirror-less’ so aptly reflects, these cameras don’t have mirrors to redirect the image through to your eye via an optical viewfinder. Instead, you see the image on an LCD screen, or an electronic viewfinder, if you’re really lucky. The lack of the mirror malarky reduces the size of the mirror-less camera when compared to an SLR, yet you still get all the goodness of the flexibility of interchangeable lenses and a big sensor.

‘Awesome!’ people might be thinking. Muchly-flexible, muchly-smaller camera. Well, not quite.

Drawbacks of the mirror-less camera

We use SLRs because they give us so much control over the pictures that we shoot. It’s not just about the range of lenses, because, hell, the mirror-less cameras are offering that. It is about the mirror-less camera not autofocusing as fast and having a slower frame rate than an SLR. In addition – at least in our SLR-accustomed eyes, it is about the mirror-less camera being less comfortable, and less intuitive to use when composing pictures using an LCD screen.

In your SLR camera, you'll find the pentaprism in the 'hump' at the top of your camera, just by the eye-piece. It adds to the bulk of your camera (which is bad) but enables you to 'preview' what you are photographing, literally at the speed of light (which is good). If camera manufacturers instead had used a mirror (which would have taken up less space), you would be looking at the world upside down, which would have given a mighty confusing photography experience.

That screen adds an extra layer of communication between you and your image. If you’re a sports or wildlife photographer – or indeed a photographer with any interest in action shots – a mirror-less camera is just not going to be fast enough for you. With a mirror, you are optically connected with your subject, and you get the information you need at the speed of (dare I say it…) light. In other words: you need that mirror.

Compare a mirror-less camera to a high-end compact camera and you’ll notice that perhaps a mirror-less camera isn’t as small as you thought it was. Sure, there’s no more bulk from the mirror, and the pentaprism is absent, but the lens is going to add something significant that the compact does so well in hiding away. You’re never going to be able to pocket a mirror-less camera the same way that you can a Canon S95. This ‘smaller, more portable’ selling point is probably going to have to be re-thought.

In addition, I’m not completely convinced that sensor- and monitor technology is as far advanced as we need it to be. If you have a current-generation dSLR, you may have a feature known as ‘live view’ – this flips the mirror out of the way and lets you use the display on the back of the camera as a viewfinder. For some applications, this works great, but, well, not always.

“I decided to try shooting using only Live View on my 550D for a whole day”, says Haje, editor of this fair blog, “But I gave up after about an hour. I know the 550D probably isn’t the pinnacle of Live View / Electronic Viewfinder technology, but for the technology to become even remotely interesting, it has to be drastically improved. In three years, perhaps. Right now, I’ll stick with the speed of light, thanks.”

Positives for the mirror-less camera

Despite me clattering the mirror-less camera ideal, it does have at least one noticeable positive: lens flexibility. Historically, photographers have bought into a brand because they favour their lenses.

Canon lenses fit Canon bodies and Nikon lenses fit Nikon bodies. (Yes, you can buy generic brand lenses, too, but the mount will still be brand-specific.) Cross-over only happens with the use of an adapter, but the adapter can place the lens too far away from the body and that presents focusing problems. However, the smaller size of the mirror-less camera means that the adapter doesn’t place the lens so far from the body and focusing is no longer a problem. Say hello to lens cross-over, in the style of the moderately successful Four Thirds standard, where Kodak, Olympus, Fuji, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sigma, and, (with a camera manufactured under licence by Panasonic) Leica have joined forces to try to create an universal lens mount and pool their imaging sensors.

The Olympus Pen has an optional viewfinder attachment, turning it into the bastard lovechild of a SLR camera and a rangefinder. Which might not be such a bad thing, actually...

There are a few other cameras out there that do similar things. Digital rangefinders, like the Leica M8 and M9, for example, don’t have mirrors; they rely instead on a different camera design and educated guesswork to get the images the way you want them. Rangefinders, however, are usually met with a Marmite-like effect: You love them and you’ll sell your firstborn to be able to afford the ridiculous price-tag for a Leica M9, or you can’t get along with them, simply because they aren’t SLR cameras.

The mirror-less cameras may be at an advantage by taking the good things about rangefinders (the fact that the lenses can be closer to the sensors because there is no mirror between is a huge benefit, optically) and SLR cameras (much cheaper components, great, well-tested sensors, and an enormous range of lenses available), and merging them in a lovely, uniform package.

What does this mean for photographers?

You know, I don’t think that mirror-less cameras are going to have some great revolutionary impact on the industry or on photographers. Not really. They’re not efficient enough for some types of photography and they’re not small enough to present a serious challenge to high-end compacts. And I don’t think that lens cross-over is a big enough selling point on its own.

There probably is a place for mirrorless cameras in the photography landscape, but I don't see guys like this making the switch in the foreseeable future. (photo by Mike Baird, click to see full size)

Olympus might be leaving the SLR market behind, but if it does, it could well be that it is keen to try to carve itself out a niche after the brand has recognised – after a long and valiant battle – that they simply can’t compete with the rest of the marketplace.

Regardless of Olympus’ strategic direction, I don’t see Canon or Nikon abandoning SLR technology in a hurry, and neither do I see photographers deserting SLRs in droves. What the mirror-less camera does do, is to give consumers more choice and the manufacturers the impetus to push the boundaries with compacts and SLRs. Either way, I think it’s safe to say that mirrorless won’t be the revolution that’ll reduce the our humbe SLR servants to a niche equivalent to where we see film photography today.

And honestly, if the manufacturers want this one to catch on, they have to settle on a universally recognised name. Marketing is all about your consumers being able to identify with your product. At the moment, consumers can’t even make sense of what the product is, much less where it fits into their photographic arsenal.

This post was written by Daniela Bowker, who normally serves as my trusty side-kick as the editor of the Small Aperture photography blog, with a lot of input and second opinions from myself.

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Editing software doesn't have to cost the earth

Wow, that’s a really nice picture. It’s a shame about that big spot on her chin though. And she won’t thank you for that bit of hair she has on her lip there. Y’know, I think her hair is a slightly darker shade of red than that OH GOD IT’S WRONG IT’S ALL WRONG.

Now I admit, you can end up getting a bit OCD about image editing (see first paragraph). While this is true, take a portrait of anyone you know who is even the slightest bit vain and your vision of keeping them “just as they are”, complete with dark circles under the eyes from working late and that bit of spinach in the teeth from tonight’s dinner, might not be met with the standing ovation you were expecting.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just tidy up those minor niggles that pop into your pictures sometimes? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do it without sacrificing central heating and eating nothing but rice and “no frills” tinned tomatoes for a month, just to save up enough money?

Well read on, budding image makers, for I have tried and tested four different lower-price solutions for you. (Cos, well, we’ve already looked at the free ones.) As a portraiture photographer first and foremost, I decided to take the same, straight out of camera, unedited image and try to get the most out of it using these four different packages:

• Corel Paintshop Pro X3 – £79.00
• Nikon Capture NX2 – £113.61
• Portrait Professional – £69.95
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 – £77.46

I’ll be testing each one using the same four criteria: exposure tweaking / editing, retouching and sharpening, black and white conversion, and toys and fun filters. Here’s the image I’ll be using:

Corel Paintshop Pro X3

Upon first loading up, Corel had a fairly easy and clear layout, arranged logically. It’s essentially an organiser and image editor in one. After a bit of fiddling, I worked out how to bring up my image and start messing with it in the editor.

Exposure tweaking/editing

I adjusted the colour balance to make the image cooler, then used curves to alter the shadows, midtones and highlights. I have to say, there was little subtlety in the changes in tone and exposure. Another thing I noticed was that there isn’t instant feedback to the changes you make in the preview pane — it takes a good second, as if it were the victim of satellite delay on a news programme. It might be my poor brain being a useless, pickled mess but by that time I’d pretty much forgotten what my image looked like before the tweak.

Corel with sharpening

Retouching and sharpening

I used the clone brush to even out the skin tones, bringing the opacity down to even out skin tones and remove bags from under the eyes. This was fairly effective, but again not as subtle as I would have liked. There is a “makeover” tool which is fairly effective for removing individual spots and blemishes.

When sharpening, the high pass sharpen wasn’t too bad, but left the picture a bit grainy. The unsharp mask (which is often used for a slightly more dramatic sharpen) was nowhere near as subtle as I’d have liked it to be, and bringing the slider up to any remotely significant amount was creating a weird ring around the iris; I’m quite sure that “weird ring around my irises” isn’t the first thing my clients ask for in their portraits.

Toys and fun filters

Your usual array of brush stroke effects and the like here but something I hadn’t seen before was quite a cool little feature called Time Machine. This runs you through a few different classic image making methods, from the Daguerrotype images of 1840 to a classic cross-processed look. And they don’t look half bad, to be fair. Plus there’s a paragraph explaining how each photographic method worked at the time, so you get a little history lesson, too!

Ooh, with toys!

Corel using even more toys!

You may have noticed that I didn’t include a black and white conversion section for Corel. That’s because there is a “black and white film” effect hidden away in the filters section, which oddly gives a much greater degree of control over black and white conversion than the other option on offer, which was a simple remove colour option. I found I made a better conversion using the black and white film filter.

Corel does black and white

Summary

A good variety of tools available for image editing, but not enough power and subtlety in the tools themselves. A bit like borrowing an old toolbox from your grandad ñ lots of stuff in there, but most of it isn’t worth using.

Portrait Professional

I will be putting all of the categories together for this one, as they all sort of happen at the same time. Plus, there are no fun toys or filters to speak of, nor are there any black and white conversion options, apart from sliding the saturation to 0. This piece of software is a little different from the others in that it is designed specifically for portrait images.

After loading up my JPEG image, I had to define where the eyes, nose, edges of the face, chin, sense of humour, likes, dislikes, opinion on Jedward all are in the subject’s face (some of those aren’t true, I’ll leave you to work out which they are), to create what can only be described as what might pass for a death mask in the TRON universe:

Portrait Professional

You are then taken to the editing suite, where everything is a slider. It felt a bit like create-a-character mode in a computer game, as I was able to adjust the shape of his mush in several ways, using a slider. None of them looked particularly natural, though.

The other sliders all deal with skin smoothness, wrinkle removal, spots and blotches, dark shadows under eyes and so on. Essentially, this program appears to be a piece of “quick fix” software to make portraits looks good. However, I’m really not sure who this software is aimed at – to professionally retouch an image requires a careful, complex level of attention, skill and patience, working on individual areas of the face for a significant period of time. There are no shortcuts, and this software can only do so much towards improving an image before the face you started with begins to look plastic and unreal.

Interestingly, I was also unable to save the image in the trial version. I decided to delve closer by zooming into the image and started to realise why they might not want us to save the image – the amount of detail lost when using the various sliders make the retouch job look amateurish.

Portrait Professional not doing such a great job

It looked like I had taken a wire wool scouring pad dipped in hydrochloric acid, held my subject down, and proceeded to scour his face until it was featureless and sterile. Actually, maybe that would save me time after the shoot in retouching – anyone fancy a free portrait session? No?

Like anything in life, there are no “quick fixes”. I personally would avoid this particular piece of software. If you’re serious about using photo editing software to get more out of your pics, there are much better programs out there for similar prices.

Nikon Capture NX2

What I immediately liked about NX2 was the fact that it didn’t take very long at all to load ñ it popped up on my screen and was ready and waiting without any fuss. I chose my photo and I was into the editing suite in seconds. There was a very clear and uncluttered layout and it almost felt like I had used it before. Each adjustment you made to the photo would be recorded as a “step”, so that could return to a step should you find it needed adjusting later on, which is a nice, non-destructive way of editing.

Exposure tweaking/editing

Editing exposure was very simple and effective. All was done from a simple “adjust” menu. The results were displayed very quickly, more quickly than in PaintShop Pro, which made it easier to make finer adjustments to the image. I was also impressed with the amount of fine control there was to be had over the exposure and other settings. As before, I used curves to edit the shadows, mids and lights and then altered the colour temperature to make the image cooler.

NX2 with sharpening

Retouching and sharpening

The auto retouch brush did a good job of removing blemishes without blurring the skin.Unfortunately, there was no clone brush I could use to smooth out skin tones. Looking in help, they suggested using a gaussian blur to smooth out skin tones. Unfortunately, this just gives you a picture of a dude with a blurry face. I used this in combination with the selection brush (works like a photoshop mask) in order to localise the blur to desired areas of the skin. Not the best solution, but it did help a little with skin tones and blemishes.

I used the same sharpening methods (high pass sharpen and an unsharp mask). There was a better fine level of control here than with Paintshop Pro but not as good as I’d have liked.

Black and white with NX2

Black and white conversion

There was a dedicated black and white conversion button, the sliders offering a good level of control again, although I felt the options were a little too simple. All in all, though, it was possible to get a good black and white conversion.

Toys and fun filters

None. Zip. Nuttin’. NX2 seems to be pushing itself as a very serious digital darkroom type thing, and you are very silly for wanting silly effects. Silly Billy.

Summary

To conclude, NX2 feels a bit like a beginner’s Adobe Lightroom, in a good way. It offers a decent level of fine control and immediate feedback. Both of these factors are very important when tweaking an image to get it just so. It’s a great place to start when learning how to get more out of your images. A few sessions learning with this program would definitely benefit your shots but at £113, are things getting a bit pricey?

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8

First Impressions

You knew it was coming, how could we not include Adobe? Photoshop Elements 8 (or PSE8 as I’ll call it from this point) is what you imagine it would be a sort of simplified, stripped down version of Photoshop. However, you are still able to make full use of a wide variety of tools and the layout was as clear and user-friendly as you would expect.

Exposure tweaking/editing

Retouched and sharpened with Elements 8

I initially loaded up my RAW file which loaded up Adobe camera RAW, a sort of pre-import tool that allows you to mess with colour balance, exposure etc before loading it up into the editing suite proper. There’s no mistaking the difference in the subtlety of changes you can make here, with instant feedback on how it’s looking.

Retouching and sharpening

Retouching was simple and effective. I used the clone stamp on various settings both to even out the skin tones and remove blemishes. Although there is a dedicated spot removal tool, I would recommend doing it manually with the clone stamp. No real complaints here. As before, I ran both a high pass filter and an unsharp mask on the image. Both were the most effective of all the packages. There really doesn’t seem to be any better software for portrait retouching and sharpening at this price.

Elements does black and white

Black and white conversion

As with its bigger brother, Elements has a dedicated convert to black and white tool. It’s slightly simplified but essentially very similar to the “full” version. It has some presets you can meddle with to see how different mixes harbour different results.

Toys and fun filters

An extensive range of fun toys and filters to mess with your photos, from various sketch / brush effects to turning your image into a mosaic and adding clouds (for when you need that clouds-over-a-mosaic look). In case you were wondering, here is that much sought-after look:

And Elements has toys, too!

Summary

To conclude, PSE8 has everything you need to start practicing enhancing and getting more from your images. The price is on a par with the other packages on offer here and it will give you a chance to see whether you really need the bigger, more feature packed full version, for a fraction of the price.

And the winner is…

It was probably something of a foregone conclusion, but it seems that PSE8 has it, at least it does for me. Nikon Capture NX2 does a valiant job of providing an alternative to Adobe Lightroom at a slightly cheaper price, but not much cheaper than Lightroom 2, so I’m not sure it’s particularly worth dropping your pennies on, especially at over £100. In addition, I feel you can do most of what NX2 offers in Photoshop Elements 8.

And because I should probably warn you, it’s worth mentioning a program I downloaded the trial of which was going for around £25, called Pixbuilder. It was essentially MSPaint with (very bad) layers and curves options thrown in. If you’re wondering “how cheap is too cheap for my image editing software?”, the answer is “that cheap”.

Fisheye: speciality or everyday lens?

Every photographer has a favourite lens. Maybe it’s an 18-200mm zoom or a 50mm prime. Maybe it’s a wide angle zoom. Heck, maybe it’s your kit lens. But it’s a lens that you count on day in and day out. It’s an everyday lens that you take with you every time you pack your camera bag and walk out the door. It’s a lens that you know you can rely on in most situations you’ll encounter. And in most cases, it’s a standard type of lens. Nothing too crazy.

So why, then, is my Nikon 10.5mm fisheye lens one of the three that I carry in my bag every day?

When I first got into photography, I spent countless hours debating about what lenses I would spend my money on. Of course, I needed a standard zoom to cover the basics, but what else? I perused countless portfolios and tried to guess what lenses were used on my favorite photographs. I always caught myself stopping at photos taken with a fisheye lens. There was just something so powerful about those fisheye photos. The 180 degree angle, the distortion, the amount of information within a scene that was shown. It was love at first sight. Soon enough, I dropped the cash and picked up my first and only fisheye lens.

At first, it was just… fun. I took the cliché fisheye pictures of my friends and their dogs’ noses. But once I started figuring out what kinds of photography I enjoyed shooting the most, I found myself using the lens more and more. A calm and surreal view of the ocean in Florida. Fisheye. A long exposure of an Atlanta skyline at night. Fisheye. A motion-blurred black and white shot of a subway train as it passed through the station. Fisheye.

I became obsessed with this lens and it eventually got itself promoted from a box on a shelf to my camera bag. It’s now one of my two favorite lenses (the other being my 50mm f/1.4) and my portfolio wouldn’t be the same without it.

Unfortunately, the fisheye lens has gained a reputation for being a gimmicky, kooky, just-for-fun lens. I think it deserves more credit than that. I can’t count how many photos I’ve been able to take with that lens that I could have taken otherwise. And they aren’t just-for-fun photographs either. They can distort architecture to give an amazing perspective; they can give landscapes some feeling of other-worldliness.

Granted, you may not want all of your photos to be taken with a fisheye lens, but I highly recommend adding one to your repertoire. If you do any sort of landscape, cityscape, or architectural photography at all, I’m confident that you’ll enjoy seeing things differently through a fish’s eye. And if you need a touch of inspiration to get you started, why not take a look here?

The Canons of Navarone

Something interesting has happened in the world of photography: Canon currently have two cameras on the market, at basically exactly the same price point. The Canon 550D (EOS Rebel T2i) costs £705 in the UK and $799 in the US, whilst the Canon EOS 50D costs £726 / $850.

Shop around further afield than Amazon, and the prices are so similar that they are practically identically priced. Which is a curious and interesting situation. The question, then, is as follows: You will buy one of them, but which one would you choose?  

Comparing the specs

When you compare the specifications side by side (made a lot easier by using dpreview’s fantastic side-by-side comparison tool of the two cameras), there ain’t much between them. The 50D is slightly faster, the 550D has a slightly better screen and higher resolution.

Some would argue that the 550D makes more sense because I have the memory cards already (HD/SD), but the 550D generates massive files, and I probably have to buy new, bigger memory cards anyway, so that point is moot.

In favour of the 550D

A very tasty camera indeed.

The 550D has a full-HD movie mode, which isn’t something I generally look for in a stills camera, but I have seen some beautiful results, and I’m tempted to give it a go.

The 50D doesn’t have particularly good high-ISO results in some tests, which is a downer, while the 550D appears to have inherited the absolutely epic low-light skills from the 7D camera.

Resolution means nothing, and the difference between 15 or 18 megapixels is practically non-existent. Having said that, having a little bit higher resolution can’t harm, but the key thing is that imaging chips in general are slowly getting better – seeing what the 7D has been able to do with a ‘very similar’ imaging chip, I’m leaning towards the 550D based on its innards

In favour of the 50D

A very tasty camera indeed.

I’ve owned many cameras in the xxD series in the past – the 60D, 10D, 20D, 30D, and 40D have all been in my possession at some point, and I trust Canon to do a good job on it. They’re a lot more solidly built than the xxxD series, so that’s a huge advantage if you mistreat your camera (which I generally don’t).

The 50D is also faster in general: It starts faster, it takes photos in continuous mode faster, etc.

What would you do?

n

So, the 550D and the 50D cost practically the same, and have different advantages. Which one would you buy?

• Canon EOS 50D
• Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i)
• I don't know, honestly!

View Results

It’s an interesting (and fiercely difficult) choice to have to make; choosing between these two, very similar-yet-different cameras. I know which one I am leaning towards, but I’m very curious to hear what you would choose – and why. Vote above, comment below, make it good!

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The case for Pentax

When I recently posted my guide to choosing your first dSLR, I was ripped to shreds in the comments for overlooking Olympus and Pentax… Which is quite wrong of me: Pentax have long made some pretty awesome cameras, with features that Canon and Nikon haven’t had (like being able to remote control external strobes – a feature Canon has never had until the introduction of the Canon 7D!)

Someone who was particularly outraged is the most fabulous John Cavan, who wrote a passionate and well-articulated plea to stop ignoring Pentax – and he’s got a pretty damn good case, actually… here’s why:  

Canon, Nikon. Nikon, Canon. When most people think of buying a dSLR, that is often the debate that they wage with themselves. Of course, with the Sony purchase of Minolta, they may even now start to think of Sony in that debate. There is, however, another player on the market, a player that has been around for a very long time. In fact, they were once synonymous with SLR photography: Pentax.

Pentax is the first Japanese company to release a 35mm SLR in 1952 and, for quite a while, were the defacto standard for 35mm photography. The M42 screw mount, while not a Pentax invention, was made so prevalent by Pentax that it became known as the Pentax mount. In a sense, Pentax ushered in the age of SLR photography producing more cameras than all other manufacturers combined. So, what happened to them? They didn’t fall off the 35mm radar, even as they lost ground to names like Nikon and Canon, Pentax continued to innovate, but they were the last to move from the limited capability of the M42 mount and, to some degree, that probably hurt them the most.

However, Pentax didn’t go away. They continued to produce excellent cameras, including the classic K1000, first created in 1976 as a basic SLR, it managed to outlive all of its brethren and almost all successors because of its elegance and simplicity, finally hitting end of life in 1997. In 2003, Pentax entered the digital age and didn’t stop their innovation. By this time, however, the Canon/Nikon duopoly was pretty complete. A tough nut to crack, no?

Pentax is trying to crack that nut, so I’m going to talk about Pentax as it started getting serious about dSLR photography with the arrival of the K100D, K110D, and the K10D. The first two were the entry level dSLRs and the last was aimed at the prosumer. As with all of their cameras, Pentax focussed on certain key areas: backwards compatibility and the photographic experience. These are factors that continue to be key to Pentax since the introduction of these cameras, so let’s talk about them.

Backwards compatibility is a funny statement with digital, but it is applicable because it means that over 50 years of high grade optics are still available to you. Many of us Pentaxians have in our kits lenses that the modern dSLR owner wouldn’t even think of, wouldn’t even be aware of. We don’t have these lenses because there aren’t modern options for Pentax, because we have those too, but because they present optical quality as good as any current lens and at a price that you can’t hope to beat brand new. To give you an example, I own a Vivitar Series 1 100mm f/2.8 Macro manufactured by Kiron. This lens is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, macro lens ever produced and it’s nearly 40 years old. I paid $160 (Canadian) for it. To compare, a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens currently retails for $730 or $1249 with image stabilization.

Another backwards compatibility feature, which makes my last comment even more interesting, is Pentax image stabilization (or anti-shake) is in the body of the camera. There are certainly advantages to IS on the lens, such as IS in the viewfinder, but the single biggest advantage to it on the body is that every single lens I attach to my Pentax, regardless of age, can be stabilized. Of the major dSLR manufacturers, only Sony can say that, and they don’t have the lens history of Pentax. There’s another advantage: price. You can see that above, IS adds $500 to the price for what is otherwise the same lens.

For your first step into the world of digital photography, look beyond the two big brands for some creative features and competitive pricing!

Now, of course, Pentax isn’t just leaving us in the world of historical lenses, scouring eBay and Craigslist so that we can take pictures. They do have a very good line-up of modern lenses with zooms and primes, wide to telephoto including what many, such as DP Review, call highly desirable limited lenses. It isn’t just Pentax, we also have Sigma, Tamron, and others producing good optics for a good price. So, with Pentax, you can pull from the old (even ancient, M42 can be adapted to the modern bayonet mount) and the new. Heck, with an adapter, you can even put a monstrous medium format lens on it! I know a local photographer that uses his Pentax 67 lenses on his K20D all the time.

Alright, I think I’ve established that Pentax is good at keeping the old available to the new, but I also mentioned the photographic experience. Most modern dSRLs offer what I would call point-and-shoot features and, to some degree, that is a wise choice. Pentax took a different approach, aiming their line at people looking to have the pleasure of the 35mm film experience in a digital package. So, instead of scene modes on the dial, they added things like hyper-program (a way to quickly switch between aperture and shutter priority modes), sensitivity priority (control ISO with the rear dial), and shutter/aperture priority (camera sets ISO based on shutter and aperture). Other ideas, such as the “green” button near the shutter release that quickly resets the exposure, even in manual, giving you a good starting point for creative adjustment. They also have the RAW+jpeg button that will easily give you both formats for the next shot, a feature that just made it to Canon now.

So, where is Pentax today? Well, they have a line up modern dSLRs that have continuously received top reviews time and again. In the entry market, we have the K200D, K-m and the K-x cameras. The K-x is the newest and is something worth talking about, so much so that Photography blog gave it a rare “essential” rating. At the higher end, we have the K20D and the K7, both very highly regarded. The K7 was recently compared to the latest Canon prosumer (the 7D) on DP Review and came out very close, but also costs quite a bit less. I’m not going to go into detailed features for them, this is widely covered on the Internet, but I will note that the prosumer versions of the Pentax line offer a number of features that are usually only seen in substantially more expensive cameras. Where Pentax lacks is at the truly pro end of the spectrum, something they hope to rectify with a medium format digital in the new year. Mind you, that’s probably more than most of us would wish to handle if we’re not doing commercial photography.

In any case, I’m not writing to convince you to buy Pentax (it means more great lenses for me on Craigslist if you don’t), but to consider it. Canon, Nikon, and Sony all produce excellent cameras as well. I don’t think you, as the consumer, are going to be left feeling cheated with any of them. My only advice would be to get your hands on to the cameras and try them, all of them. The feel, the weight, and the placement of the controls are all going to be factors that should influence you as much as anything and that you can only get by putting it into your hands with a decent lens. If you do that, in a good photography store that lets you, then I think you’ll find that Pentax is as good as any of them and perhaps, now, the debate you wage won’t just be Canon, Nikon or Nikon, Canon.

About John

John is a software architect that just happens to be an avid amateur photographer. He did a lot of 35mm film (used Yashica and Pentax) in college as the editor of the newspaper, but then kind of let it slide for years after that because he could never be bothered to develop the film. Ultimately, he got back into photography with the Pentax K10D and then it just went from there. Check out his website, too!

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Computers for Photographers

If you’ve dabbled in computing much, you’ve probably come across Moore’s law – basically; as Wikipedia so succinctly puts it, “Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years”

All good and dandy, but recently something funny has happened – people seem to simply not need faster computers anymore. This is relevant to photographers, because there’s a parallel between computing and photography: Just like you eventually don’t need more megapixels in a camera (one group has gone as far as saying that 6mpx is all you need, and – with a few notable exceptions, I think I am inclined to agree), you eventually have all the speed you need from a computer.  

This one became clear to me when I started looking into replacing my now-3-year-old MacBook. It’s a black one, with a dual-core 2Ghz processor. It started its life as a 1GB/120GB configuration, but I since upgraded it to 4GB/250GB (an upgrade you can do today for about £70/$100). You know what’s odd? If you look at the current-spec 13-inch unibody MacBook Pro, it’s got essentially the same spec: 2.26 Ghz / 2GB / 160GB… I think Apple have realised what the rest of the world realised, too: Computers are finally Good Enough.

Sure, there are always groups of people who will perennially have an insatiable hunger for more processor cores, more memory, and more storage space; serious gamers, video editors, and scientists spring to mind – but even for the power-users (I do count myself as one), we’re starting to hit a plateau where it’s perfectly okay to own a 3-year-old computer. Which just messes with my brain; when I first started getting into computers, the second you bought one, it was out of date. I remember the first time I plonked down a serious amount of money on a new computer (before then, I’d always had hand-me-downs or I’d bought second-hand computers) – it was a Dell, which had a Pentium III, 600 Mhz. I’m telling you, it was the cream-of-the-crop, one of the fastest computers you could buy. It had a whopping 1GB of memory, too, which was insanely expensive, and made it incredibly fast indeed. Six months later, I found myself upgrading several of its components, and six months after that, again. And again. And again.

So I’m no longer a serious gamer (or indeed, a gamer at all – I moved to the place where I live now, about four months ago, and my poor Xbox has never been out of its box), but I am a pretty serious photographer. I run the CS3 suite by Adobe, and I take all my photographs in RAW format. It’s not that long ago that editing RAW photos was a huge chore which would take bloody ages, but with 4GB of memory (which is a trivial upgrade, both in DIY-skills and in monetary investment) is of huge help.

The thing that dawned on me the other day is that no, you no longer need the cutting edge of computer equipment to play with the big boys: while I love the design of the new MacBook Pros, i’d be spending the best part of a grand without actually upgrading my kit all that much: I’d still have to buy extra RAM and harddrive space to make the computer faster than the one I’ve got now.

So what do you recommend

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re in a very good place for photographers when it comes to computers: You don’t need a new, or even a fast computer to be able to edit your photos at a professional level – and the longer this plateau stays around, the cheaper computers are going to get. Which, again, is good news.

Of course, the real reason I wrote this rambly-rant of a blog post is so I have something to point people to when they ask what kind of computer they need to buy to be able to edit their photos properly; my answer is simple: Even the cheapest Dell computer will do the trick: Right now, you can pick up a Dell Inspiron with a 2.6 GHz dual-core processor, 3GB of memory, a 20-inch widescreen monitor, 320 Gb harddrive, optical mouse and built-in card-readers for under 375 quid. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a lot of computer for not-a-lot of money.

Specifically, however, I’d recommend you make sure you have enough memory (2GB should be enough, 4GB is plenty), and a screen which you like to work on – bigger is better, I’d recommend 19-inch or bigger. An optical mouse makes precision-work a little easier (I know a lot of photographers who buy expensive gaming mice for increased precision, but I think that’s probably a bit overkill), and beyond that, a copy of Photoshop (which will cost about the same as the computer outlined above, but is a must-have for anyone who is serious about photography), and you’re done.

So Haje, what is your set-up, then?

Thought you’d never ask. I use a MacBook 2Ghz / 4GB / 250GB hooked up to a Samsung 23-inch monitor and a Logitech LX710 wireless keyboard and mouse. Not technically part of the computer set-up is a set of nice studio monitor speakers and a Pioneer amp to play tunes – but I can’t work without music (right this very second, for example, I’m listening to a spot of Gatas Parlament, a Norwegian hip-hop group – if you want to take your aural stalking to a higher level, look me up on Last.fm), so the music bit of all of this is completely essential.

But ultimately, personally, I’d be perfectly happy with any laptop with an Apple logo on it, manufactured in the past 3-4 years or so.

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The best camera is one you actually use

Those of you who are following @photocritic on Twitter (or, in fact, if you were paying attention to the RSS feed), can’t have failed to notice that I was out on the road. If you’re making a particularly good job of stalking me, you’ll also have noted a load of photos posted to my Flickr stream, most of which were taken with my iPhone, and some of ‘em were taken with my little Canon Digital Ixus camera.

Yes, that’s right, I was out globetrotting – on a motorcycle, to be precise. Due to the extremely limited space I had available to me, I didn’t bring my full assortment of lenses with me. In fact, I only brought a single lens; My mighty fine Canon 50mm f/1.4 prime lens (I know I keep banging on about it, but you need a prime lens). Then, as I was traveling around, something very, very interesting happened; I didn’t use my SLR camera at all.  

What? No SLR?! You call yourself a photographer?!

I know, it surprised me, too; I brought my little Canon digital IXUS camera with me as a back-up camera, in case something happened with my big camera. And in case I was planning on going out drinking, in which case I consider the IXUS to be as close to you get as a disposable digital camera (have you noticed that you never lose anything you don’t really worry about losing, and always lose or drop your expensive stuff? Exactly…)

So anyway, I was riding along, and the first 1,500 miles, it was raining, and I had my Canon EOS 450D in the top box of my motorcycle. Which means that in order to actually get to it, I would have to:

• Spot something awesome
• Get on the brakes, nearly causing an accident with the car driving behind me
• Park the bike
• Put the bike on its side-stand
• Take the key out of the ignition
• Unlock and open the back box
• Take the camera out of the back-box
• Take off my gloves and helmet (can’t use the SLR with my helmet on)
• Point the camera, take the photo
• Put the camera back in the back-box
• Close and lock the back-box
• Get back on the bike
• Start the bike
• Ride off into the sunset

By comparison, taking pictures with my Digital Ixus was much easier; I was less worried about it getting wet, so I just carried it in the inside pocket of my leather motorcycle jacket. That means it’s protected from the rain by my outter rain layer and the jacket itself. As it turned out, this was more than a-plenty: The camera came out perfectly dry every time. Because of this, it was a lot easier to take photos:

• Spot something awesome
• Get on the brakes, still nearly getting myself killed because cage-drivers never pay attention, and because my motorcycle brakes are an order of magnitude better than any car brakes
• Find somewhere safe to stop, and hold the bike upright with my thighs
• Reach in my inner pocket
• Point the camera, take the photo
• Put camera back in inner pocket
• Ride off into the sunset

All about the opportunism and impulsivity

Now, the fact that I was able to stop on a whim, fish out a camera without having to stop the motorcycle’s engine, without having to lock and unlock the suitcase strapped to the back of the bike, and without having to take my gloves and helmet off, meant that I started the trip taking photos with the Ixus…

… And then never stopped. Sure, at one point (after it stopped raining, of course) I moved the 450D into the tank bag, so it would be easily accessible, but even then, the hassle of taking my helmet off (you’d be surprised: I have to take my gloves off, take my glasses off, then undo the buckle, pull it off of my head, put it somewhere safe so it doesn’t fall off. Then when I want to put it back on, I have to put my ear-plugs (or headphones, if I’m in a music-kind-of-mood) back in, because they invariably get unsettled by taking my helmet off) seemed like too much of an obstacle to bother.

So, despite riding 3500 miles through some of the most amazing landscapes known to man (Seriously, if you’ve never been to Norway, I highly recommend riding or driving from Oslo to Bergen via the Hardangervidda road over the mountain pass, and then follow the coast around all the way to Kristiansand. You’ll be awestruck in the original sense of the word), I never really felt inclined to dig out my SLR camera. In fact, of all the things I brought with me in my (admittedly very limited-spaced) luggage, there were only three things I didn’t use: My long underwear (It never got cold enough to warrant putting them on), my Tyreweld kit (because I didn’t have any punctures) and my Canon EOS 450D.

Needless to say, when you’re on the road for 3 weeks, it gives you a lot of time to think. In the last week, I spent a lot of time wondering if perhaps I should dig out my SLR camera and try taking some photos. And yet, I never did. Which made me think; am I really so lazy that I’m willing to pass up the opportunity for some awesome photos, just because I can’t be arsed digging out a proper camera?

But… Why?!

Part of the reason, I think, is that this tour was never really meant to be a photo tour – if it were, I think I would have taken the time. This trip was meant to act as punctuation between my previous job (which I hated with the passion of an iberian street argument), and my my new job as a writer. But ultimately, I’m still a photographer at heart… So why?

Then it dawned on me; the very same argument for not being bothered to dig out a proper camera is the precise reason why the Apple iPhone is topping the lists for most uploaded photos on Flickr, and why camera phones are so incredibly popular: Phones, by their very nature, have to be very accessible: It’s no good having a telephone which needs to be locked out of a case, taken out of a protective pouch, and pampered into life before you can answer a call. It rings, you fish it out of your hand-bag or pocket, you answer it. This accessibility – and expectation of accessibility – is what makes camera phones such great photography tools; reaching for your mobile phone has become a well-trained movement, whereas most of us are more careful with our cameras. When going out on the lash for a night, you do bring your phone, but you might not bring a camera, for example.

I know I have been slightly schizophrenic in my reaction to camera phones; my hatred of their poor quality optics and results is stemmed by their accessibility (‘everyone’ has a mobile phone, and I defy you to find a mobile phone which doesn’t have a camera on it these days) and ubiquitous presence. Formally, and officially: Camera phones are a good thing. I’ll tell you why:

On this trip, I discovered that having a compact camera which I use is infinitely better than a SLR camera that I don’t use, even if the latter has has the potential for much better photos than the former.

The best camera you own is the one you actually end up using… and that’s worth keeping in mind when you pack for a trip, I think…

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Create your own pinhole 'lens' for your SLR camera

If you’ve been around photography for a while, you’ve probably come across the term ‘pinhole’. Basically, it’s the simplest form of bending-light-into-the-shape-you-need-it-to-be you can possibly do. A well-built pinhole camera can take gorgeous photos, with incredible depth of field, with a wonderful lo-fi look to them.

But what if you can’t be bothered getting your hands dirty with sheet film, developing or even having to build your own pinhole camera? If you fancy having a go at pinhole photography while using your trusty digital SLR, then this is everything you need to know to build your first pinhole ‘lens’.

It starts with a body cap

The first thing you’re going to need is a camera body cap.

You can either use the one that came with your camera (but you’ll be cannibalising this body cap, just like you did when you followed the instructions to create my macro extension tube out of a Pringles can) of you may want to get a second one. They are cheap as chips on eBay these days (I bought 2 of ‘em for £3), so you may as well get a spare…

Now, to prepare the camera body cap, I used some coarse sanding paper to take the logo off, then some finer sanding paper to get the coarseness down a little. There’s no good reason for doing this, other than that it’s a little easier to work with a flat surface than one with the logo of your camera embossed on the front.

If you wished, you could just drill a hole in the body cap and mount the actual pinhole to the inside of the cap instead, but seeing as how I’m planning to experiment with different pinholes in the nearby future, I like the idea of having the pinhole bit mounted on the front – easier to work with that way.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me for the blurriness of this illustration image – it’s tricky to hold a drill and a camera cap and a camera to take the photo all at the same time.

The real reason for taking this ‘action shot’, however, is that I didn’t want to look like a complete amateur, even though I was using a masonry bit in my drill. Of course, going through all the trouble to avoid showing you lot, only to then go ahead and tell you in the body copy anyway is a bit of a waste. You’ll have to forgive me.

Anyway, you end up with a body cap with a hole in it. Finish the hole by sandpapering down the rough edges both on the front and the back of the body cap, and remember to sandpaper the inside a little bit too – if for no other reason than to get a prettier finish.

Now, a very important step: you need to wash the body cap very well indeed. after all the sandpapering, it’ll be covered in black dust, and this is the kind of stuff you really don’t want to be stuck inside your camera – especially not on your imaging chip!

Creating the pinhole itself

Next up, we’re going to create the pinhole itself. There’s tons of way of doing this, but I’m a big fan on using whatever you have to hand. You need a material which is soft enough to work with efficiently, but it needs to be firm enough to be at least a little bit durable.

A coca-cola or beer can is perfect, but since I didn’t have any of those kicking about (I know, it’s mad, isn’t it? I seem to have lots of empty beer- and wine bottles, though, but they don’t make for great pinhole photography), I decided to use the side-wall of a tea light instead.

Drinks cans and tea light are made of soft aluminium, so you should be able to cut them with a pair of kitchen scissors without any problem. Beware that the edges may be very sharp, though, and you don’t want blood everywhere, so be careful.

With a very sharp implement (like a safety pin or similar), push gently into the aluminium. It helps if you have a soft-ish surface like a writing pad (that’s why all the photos are taken on lined paper. Well, that, and laziness). You want to push and turn the needle so you can only just barely see a hole.

Now, using extremely finely gritted sanding paper (I used 1200 paper), polish down the opposite side of where you poked the pin through.

The reason for the sandpapering is two-fold: for one, you don’t want the burrs on the other side of the metal, but you also want to make the metal as thin as possible, because the thinner the metal is, the finer your pinhole photos will be.

There are advanced ways of making the metal thin enough, or if you’re properly hardcore, you can get a professionally laser-cut pinhole body cap (see the ‘further reading’ section below for a link), but as long as you’re doing your best with making the hole a) as small as possible and b) as round as possible, you should be able to start making pinhole photographs soon.

When you think you’ve had a pretty good stab (haha, see what I did there) at making your first pinhole, hold it up to the light. If you can see that it isn’t perfectly round, discard your piece of metal and try again. It should look roughly like it does in the photo. Of course, the size of the pinhole is very important as well, but for now, we just want to make images appear, so this is a pretty good start.

Putting the two together

Now, you’re going to want to mount the pinhole to the centre of your body cap. Measure the centre carefully (or just take a wild guess, it’s up to you, really. I’m firmly in the guessing camp on this one), and simply tape the strip to your body cap. Also, I wish to apologise for the blurriness of this photo – you’d have thought I was capable of taking a sharp macro photo by now, but I guess that’s not the case. I blame my camera, the light, and London Transport Police because obviously, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me just rushing things a little bit in my excitement.

Next, use a sharpie (or whatever black permanent marker you might have handy at the time), and black out the front and back of the visual metal. I’m not sure if this is actually good for anything, but it makes me feel better thinking that I’ve at least tried to reduce the refractions on my aperture ever so slightly. That, and it makes the lens cap look more home-made, which is always a bonus.

After the previous step, you’ve actually finished everything you need to do to create a pinhole photograph! I decided to add an extra step, which is to add an additional white cover to the front of the pinhole body cap (because, obviously, if it’s a DIY project you have to add such adornments. And also, it’s a marvelous excuse for me to post a photograph of myself on my own blog), but that’s just me.

Now, it’s time to actually start taking some damed photographs, finally! Put the body cap on your camera, and set your mode dial to ‘manual’. Turn to a low-ish ISO (100 or 200 are good starting points) and a long shutter time. If you’re taking photos outdoors, start with 10 seconds and then adjust.

If you can’t see anything, you need to check if you’ve accidentally put the wrong body cap on your camera, and then select a longer shutter time.

With all the equipment finally put together in a half-way meaningful fashion, I figured it was time to start shooting some photographs…

Time to experiment!

Coca-Cola

Coffee cup

Coffee

Portrait

Autopsy of my photos

As you can see, all the photos came out a little bit on the fuzzy side.

One of the big problems you have when you’re shooting digital pinholes is that your imaging chip is absolutely tiny – the camera I was using here, a Canon 450D, has a 22.2 x 14.8 mm CMOS sensor. Compare that to a 36x24mm ‘normal’ negative, or the 60x60mm roll film (or even sheet film) that they’ve got in the analogue world, and it becomes clear that you have an awful lot less leeway.

The tiny sensor also has implications on how precise your pinhole needs to be – both in roundness (which is nigh-on impossible to get right with a safety pin) and in size (which, again, is tricky, although there is a way of measuring the size of your pinhole with a scanner)

However, the purpose of this exercise wasn’t to get perfect, super-sharp photographs, but go get a feel for how it’s actually possible to take photographs without having a lens attached to the front of your camera, for next to no money at all!

Further reading and inspiration

If this article has whet your appetite for pinhole stuff, but you just can’t get the tooling right (or if you’d rather be out there taking photos than actually mucking about with drills and bits of metal), you can buy a specially made body cap with a laser-cut pinhole.

Wikipedia, as always, has a pretty good article on pinhole photography, and in the Pinhole Camera Model article, they go into ludicrous detail of the mathematics and optics behind pinhole photography.

The Pinhole Visions website over on Pinhole.com is a huge and useful resource for learning more about pinhole photography.

For inspiration, I direct you yet again to the awesome Slowlight.net belonging to Katie. Also, hidden deeply inside her site is a list of links (see the bottom of this page) which has links to a ton of interesting pinhole photographers.

You can also try Flickr, where there are a whole load of interesting and quite active pinhole photography groups, like Pinholers, Pinhole Photography, and the oddly apt, considering this article Digital Pinholes

As usual, I’m sure I’ve left off tons of links, but that’s where you guys come in – Got ideas or recommendations? Post a comment!

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Picking an SLR camera

Back in April, I did a Top 15 entry-level camera round-up, and it’s one of those posts where the comments stayed relatively calm, but I got tonnes of e-mail afterwards, with suggestions, comments etc. I was surprised at the level of passion people had about that one single article, but it got me thinking: I love trying to come up with interesting ways of doing photography, but what if people really want some buying advice? I discovered long ago that this particular blog isn’t really the place, but still… I figured I could do better than a top 15…

So I decided to launch a new website to help you out.
 

Every week, I get a huge stack of e-mails from readers (well, I get lots of e-mails, I don’t actually print them out and put them in a stack, that’d be ludicrous) who want some help finding a Digital SLR camera. Every time, I have to send them away again, because, well, I’ll be honest with you: While I love, and know a fair bit about photography, my knowledge of actual cameras is limited.

Sure, I’ve used most of the DSLR cameras Canon have launched over the years, and I’ve probably given Canon more than their fair share of my money in the past decade, too, but the truth of the matter is that I’m reluctant to give people advice. I don’t want to re-spark the age-old Canon-Versus-Nikon debate every time I do so either, because frankly, cameras are so good nowadays, that it’s unlikely to be the camera that’ll be the bottleneck in your creative process – it’s the photographer.

On the other hand, I hate sending people away – I like to pride myself on being useful and helpful, and it bothered me that I was unable to help. So I decided to come up with a solution.

Some of you may have noticed that a list of D-SLR cameras appeared on the right of this page – well, that was part of a testing phase, which now is finished, and I’m proud to launch Photocritic SLR.

For every dSLR currently on sale, I have:

• Researched it, and written an introduciton
• Gotten a photo of it from the manufacturers
• Found out what it costs, roughly
• Found some of the best reviews of each camera out there

As I said, I willingly admit that I can’t give particularly thorough advice, but there are dozens of websites out there that can. As such, the Photocritic SLR site gives you a chance to get a rough overview of the market, and delve into the details in all the reviews that are out there.

Best of all, if you, in your journeys, come across a brilliant review that I’ve somehow missed, you can add the review to the right camera yourself! Fabulous.

So go on, if you’re in the market for a camera, check out Photocritic SLR. Let me know what you think in the comments!

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What's in your kit bag, and why?

On Photocritic, I don’t generally bother talking too much about equipment, unless I’m particularly excited about something. My approach towards photography is that a good photographer can take good pictures with bad equipment. A bad photographer can only take mediocre photos with good equipment. In other words: If your technical skills and photographic insight aren’t up to scratch, you’ve already lost the game: No amount of equipment can save you.

Nevertheless, I often get comments and e-mails asking about what type of equipment I use. It’s an interesting question, but asked wrongly. My equipment list is boring. The argumentation for choosing each of these pieces of equipment is what is interesting, because it might help you pick which lens or gadget you buy next!  

Throughout my photographic history, I’ve had a lot of different cameras. I started with a Canon A-1 SLR (which I still have!), and then went through a series of exciting cameras. I had a Canon RS, which used to be the fastest camera Canon ever made. I had a Canon EOS 1Nhs, which was pretty damn quick as well. Then I went digital, and had a D60, 10D, 20D, 300D, and now I’m on a 30D. Why such a quick succession? Well, I used to work as a photographer, and cameras get used a lot. They get bumped into things, they get dropped, and the shutter mechanism gets slack after taking tens of thousands of photos. Also, I’m a gadgets nut, and I love playing with a new camera. Sure, there are no massive differences between the D60, 10D, 20D and 30D, but for every upgrade, there was a little bit more speed, a few new toys, and they just got better and better.

So why do I use a 30D now, rather than, say, a 400D or a 5D? The simple answer is cost and timing. I love the fact that Canon brought out the 300/350/400 cameras, because they bring photography to the masses. I genuinely believe that every aspiring photographer should be able to afford a digital SLR, because it’s the single best purchase you can make. It doesn’t matter if it’s Canon, Nikon, or one of the other brands. It doesn’t matter if it’s the bottom of the line model. By their very nature, dSLR cameras are unlikely to be the bottleneck of your photography skills. Lenses, flash guns, studio equipment, and all that might be, but especially as you’re first starting out, it doesn’t really matter.

Personally, I’m a right clumsy git, so I decided to invest a little bit more money to get the 30D. When I was in the market for a camera again around the same time as when my book deal came through, the 30D just started to become available. I like its bigger screen than the 20D, and I like the fact that it’s sturdy, rugged, and looks like it can take a battering. Because I no longer work as a professional photographer, I take a lot fewer photos (and my stuff is no longer insured against any damage, so I take better care of it too), so in retrospect the 30D is probably a bit over-kill: I could have easily done with a 400D. My main argument for it now isn’t that it’s stronger and faster, but that it’s heavier. I’ve got huge hands and I’m not very good at holding stuff still, so a heavier camera is rather useful in that respect.

The first lens I bought for my kit was the 28-105 f/3.5 zoom from Canon. It is a decent lens, but in retrospect, I regretted buying it. I quickly replaced it with the 28-135 f/3.5 image stabilized lens. When I go travelling and have to pick a single lens, is the lens that gets to go on adventure with me. It’s wide enough to be useful for most landscape stuff, and zooms in far enough to be good for portraiture, wildlife, and all that. It’s also a macro lens, and it works surprisingly well at taking photos up close, too. It’s not a cheap lens, and it’s not all that sharp either, but it has a special place in my heart nonetheless…

The next lens I bought was a 70-200 f/2.8 EX APO lens from Sigma. It’s bloody expensive, but it’s also one of the best lenses I own. Because it stays at f/2.8 throughout its zoom range (in general, zoom lenses that have the same aperture throughout their zoom range are of better quality for reasons that are slightly beyond this write-up, I’ll do that one as a separate article some day), you get a long lens that’s perfect for concert photography. Which, incidentally, is why I bought it. (more about concert photography here and here). The lens is quite heavy, but it’s really sharp, handles well, has a fantastic bokeh, and is great for all sorts of sneaky photography.

For work, I started doing a great deal of interior photography, and needed to go wider than the 28mm afforded by my other lenses. With my recent success with the Sigma lens, I decided to go with the Sigma 17-35mm f/2.8-4.0 lens. It’s a peach, what else can I say.

Other stuff in my kit bag is the Lensbaby lens, which I’ve fallen completely in love with (as explained at great length here), a 50mm f/1.8 mk1 prime (as rambled about here), my home-made macro extension tube, and a Canon 135mm f/2.8 Soft Focus lens, which I to this date haven’t quite figured out how to use. Sure, it’s a great prime lens, but the soft focus bit is an absolute mystery to me.

For parties, going out, and all that sort of stuff, I keep a nifty little Canon Digital Elph S500 handy, too. The battery life of it is absolutely amazing, and the lens is spot-on. Sharp and reasonably fast. The camera itself is virtually indestructable, too (I’ve dropped it more often than I care to remember, but its metal casing really holds its own), and it’s small enough to carry around everywhere.

My final gadgets are a Slik tripod, a standard Canon Speedlite 420 flash gun (my 550s kept breaking or getting stolen, it seems as if the 420 agrees with me better — knock on wood), and a LowePro Stealth Tracker photography backpack to lug it all around.

The last piece of kit worth mentioning is my Apple dual G5 2.0 Ghz with a 19″ Eizo flatscreen TFT monitor and Photoshop CS2. It’s not strictly photo gear, but I couldn’t be a photographer without it, so it obviously belongs in this list :)

So, where do I go from here? I’m currently drooling over the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens, as based on my experiences, and those of many of my friends, it’s supposedly one of the sharpest and best prime lenses out there. The fact that it’s a perfect focal length for portraiture, the fact that it’s a magnificent macro lens, and the fact that it’s not actually that expensive for what you’re getting, means that I have to fight hard to keep my credit card in my pocket. Must… save… up… money…

So, enough about me. What’s in your kit bag? Why? And what is your next purchase?

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Emergency tripod? Piece of string!

The main problem of taking photos free-hand is that your hands aren’t particularly sturdy. Myself, I find using a heavier camera makes it a lot easier (the inertia of the camera means it is reluctant to move, so up to a point, a heavy camera is easier to hold still for the duration of a photographic exposure than a very light camera), but what about lighter cameras?

The obvious answer is a tripod or a monopod, but these devices can be terribly heavy, and they are not particularly portable. One solution is to hold the camera against a surface (a tree, a building, or a signpost), but that doesn’t always work either, and none of these items offer an awful lot of flexibility.

How do you stabilise your camera most often?

• Quadrapod
• Tripod
• Monopod
• Mini Tripod or similar
• Gorillapod or similar
• String tripod ('chainpod')
• A rock / table / whatever
• Freehand with a fast lens
• Freehand with an IS lens
• Freehand
• Stabilise my camera? But why?
• I don't take photos

View Results

How?

I often find myself thinking 'Damn, if there was only a way to anchor the camera to the ground…', and I recently found a solution that works: A String Tripod (also known as a Chainpod)!

It is a laughably simple device: You get a wing nut bolt (or anything that screws in) that fits into the tripod hole of your camera (you are looking for a bolt with 3.5×8″ threads), and drill a small hole into the bolt. Then, you attach a length of string to it, with a loop at the end. If you use the shearing lines available for tents, you can vary the length of the loop, and, as such, the height of the camera.

To use one of these string tripods, put your foot (or feet) through the loop, and pull the string taut against your foot. Now, out of nowhere, your camera will be a lot more stable, as it has an axis against which it cannot move (up/down). This means that you can hold the camera a lot calmer – you would be surprised how much of a difference this can make!

But… But…

Sure, it will never replace a proper tripod or monopod, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you gain a couple of stops on your shutter time by using this system. And the best thing? Making one of these is going to cost you less than a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread!

Don't buy camera gear via Froogle etc

It’s old advice, but it certainly hits the spot…

Since the dawn of the commercial web we have been warned to not be suckered by “too good to be true” online deals. Keep your friends close and your credit card closer. Over and over scummy retailers are exposed but a quick name-change are back online trading their crap, fake or purely imaginary goods. 

Still forum posters continue to be burned by dodgy online traders. The problem comes down to customers shopping on price alone. Like the apocryphal lemmings over a cliff they are drawn to the low bidding merchants in shopping search engines. When the item doesn’t turn up, or unexpected (and unexplained) costs appear on the credit card statement or when they get zero (or abusive) customer service they look around for help and sympathy. But there is only one person to blame in the end; the customer. Emptors and caveats, etc.

When you understand how these businesses operate you can see why there are so many problems and how little is in your power to avoid being taken. When I started this blog one of the ex-members here had his own online camera store. I learned a lot about how the business worked and the more I learned the more sure I was my policy of sticking to the high street was the right one, even though it meant paying a premium.

… Thus begins the fantastic article by Chris over on the dSLR blog. He explains how some of the scams work, and also tells you how to avoid them.

I’ve been bitten by one of these scams myself, ages ago when I was buying my first article, so take heed, folks, there’s nothing quite as horrible as the feeling of being parted with your hard-earned cash, and seeing none

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Better pictures with a compact

A compact camera is an “all in one” camera. This type of camera is (as the name implies) small and compact. There are many different types and qualities of compact cameras, from your average run-of-the-mill camera that you might get for free when you subscribe to a magazine, to highly expensive and advanced varieties.

We’ve done a lot of writing about compacts before here on Photocritic, including choosing the right digital compact for your needs, about Macro Photography with a compact camera, getting the most out of a compact, and adding threading to a digi compact. To my great surprise, I haven’t written anything in general about compacts, though, so I thought it was high time I changed that… 

The compact cameras is today, mainly split into three different categories, namely by their form of storing the pictures. The three varieties are APS, 35mm or digital. All three kinds have their pros and cons, but for most purposes, APS is dead, and the 35mm compact is going the way of the dodo – Digital is definitely the way forward!

It can be argued that disposable cameras are compacts, but for the sake of simplicity, we can just say that disposables are very simple compact cameras who use 35mm film (or in some rare occasions, APS), and concentrate on the more interesting features of compact cameras:

Short history of the compact camera

The history of compact cameras is indeed a bit vague. To be honest, one of the very first cameras that was sold in volume, the Kodak Brownie, was a compact camera. The real distinction for the compact cameras didn’t begin until 1936, when Germany’s E.H.G introduced the world’s first 35mm SLR. When the big companies, like Nikon, Canon and Leica started introducing SLR’s in the end of the 1950s, beginning of the 1960s, the difference between compact and SLR became more important.

By the mid-1970s, fully automatic compact cameras started appearing, a type of camera that would now be referred to as point and shoot.

Historically, the compact camera has always been the tool of the person who “just wanted to snap pictures” while photographers use SLR, Medium Format or a variety of other types of cameras.

Lately, the digital cameras have made an introduction. Ironically, history repeated itself: The first true digital cameras* were compacts, and it wasn’t until recently (mid-1999) that there was a digital camera that was good enough to be used by the press and other serious photographers

*) I am happily ignoring the fact that there were digital backs to medium format cameras available. These first digital cameras would cost the same as a medium-class sports car, and have nothing to do in this write-up about compact cameras :)

Characteristics of a compact camera

Currently, most compact cameras are electric, meaning electronic light meters, electrical film advance (winding the film to the next frame, and rewinding the film when all the frames have been filled) and everything. Usually you have not many choices when it comes to taking pictures, except from turning the flash off and on. There are a few of the top-range models that can have more advanced things, like shutter time, aperture settings etc, but in general, these cameras are for the “specially interested”, as the price of these cameras usually supersedes that of an entry-level SLR, and most users in that price class will probably chip in a few extra dollars (or pounds, kroner, kronor, gulden, drakmer, whatever your unit of currency might be) to get a full fledged SLR system.

Tips on using a compact camera (or: how to get more out of your camera)

Using a compact is not hard – and you can’t really do anything wrong. However, here are a few tips on how to improve your picture-taking with a compact camera:

Take many pictures – Obvious as this might sound, if you take many pictures, you will get used to your camera, and you will know its strengths and weaknesses after a while. Besides, the more pictures you take, the bigger is the chance of one of them being really good.

Don’t zoom in – walk closer – Due to physics, zooming in and walking closer are two quite different things. Just try it – look through your viewfinder, and zoom in on, say, a coca-cola bottle. Then, zoom out, and frame the picture just as you did. In about 90% of the cases, the second picture will just look better. Without explaining why (look for some of my later photography articles :), this is a general rule – it’s just the way it is. Besides, most compacts are constructed in such a way that if you zoom out, the lens has a bigger aperture. This means that it lets more light through, and that you get less depth of field – usually this is a good thing.

Zoom in on portraits – Flatly contradicting myself, I know. However: when shooting 35mm film, it is generally recommended to take portrait pictures on between 100-200mm length. If you take a look at the front of your compact, it will probably say something like “35-105mm” or “28-70mm” or something like that. Most compacts (with a few exceptions, just to make things more complicated) only have a limited maximum range – but zooming in all the way usually makes for better portraits. (this has the same reasons as above, but don’t take my word for it – just try it yourself)

Finally, Make sure you manage to avoid the Red Eye phenomenon.

Well.. That should get you going. Enjoy, and good luck!

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Try before you buy: Rent glass!

A good way to get to grips with camera equipment is to go out and rent some. Here in the UK, I’ve found Calumet Photo to be an invaluable source of expensive glass on a temporary basis (they also have a presence in Germany, Holland, and the US), but I just stumbled across a brand new concept: On-line lens rental! 

It is such an obvious thing to do, but I guess it’s like Columbus’ egg – you have to think about it first. Of course, you can’t keep a good idea to yourself for very long, so when I started to look for it, I actually found two companies that do on-line camera equipment rental – One of them is Ziplens, and the other is the unimaginatively named RentGlass.

As far as I can tell, they both only cater for the US market, but hey – it’s a brilliant idea, and I bet it’s only a matter of time before the concept goes around the planet.

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Buying the right camera

In a completely unrelated post, I received a rather lengthy comment today. I suspect the main purpose of the post was to get a link to his site, but of course, Photocritic uses REL=NOFOLLOW (read why) on all the user-contributed links, so the spamming activity went without any particular merit.

What was insteresting, however, was that this person actually raised an interesting issue and an fascinating question. He says that 75% of people buy the wrong camera for his photography courses… 

I am a photography teacher.

I find that 75% of people buy the wrong camera. So just how do they end up in one of my classes with the wrong camera. The short answer is that they bought the most fashionable looking camera without really knowing what to look for in a digital camera.

The questions you should ask the sales person is: how long does the camera take to turn on? How long does the camera take to focus on the subject? And how long does it take to actually take the photo? Turning on the camera can take between 1-5 seconds, focus can take from 0-2 seconds and shutter lag can take up to 1 second.

Why is this important, well try taking a photo of a child blowing out the candles with a camera that takes 2 seconds to focus and 1 second to take the photo and all you will be left with is a child looking away and smouldering candles. This is where the new D70s rise above all the other cameras in its class with instant turn on focus and shutter release.

We highly recommend the D70 to someone who wants a camera to last him or her for many years without the frustration of a slow camera. We are so happy with our D70s we bought four more we highly recommend them to anyone who loves photography and does not want to have to upgrade when they learn more about photography!

Why 75%? Surely, everybody who buys an D-SLR has a camera good enough? Why are you talking about shutter lag and camera turn-on-lag? It’s a long time ago that this was a big issue for digital compact cameras. Sure, there are still crummy cameras out there, but the vast majority of digital compact cameras are not struggling with the problems mentioned here. Granted, most of them aren’t good for a photography course because you don’t have aperture and shutter speed settings, but still…

And finally – Why recommend the Nikon D70 specifically? Do you work for Nikon? I would argue that any digital SLR (even the ages-old Canon EOS 30D, if you can pick it up for cheap off eBay) is more than good enough to use for learning photography. Hell, according to Froogle, you can pick up a digital SLR for about $650 (£350, approx). Furthermore, there isn’t that much difference between the D-SLRs anymore. Of course, the better cameras have more features and are more sturdy, but image quality wise, a 8mpx camera is as good as most other 8mpx cameras – especially in the DSLR world, where you supply your own glass anyway.

So folks, ignore all previous advice, and buy any DSLR (preferably Canon or Nikon, I don’t quite trust the others yet) you want.

… And just because this guy with his spamming managed to raise an interesting issue, I’m going to thank him by linking to his website anyway. Although, strictly speaking, I probably wouldn’t bother with going to any of the courses. If his Photocritic commenting skillz are anything to go by…

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Removing the IR filter from an SLR camera

This one falls in the “if you are planning to do this, you have to hate your SLR” category. If you enjoyed our earlier tip about IR photography, you will probably have noticed that many cameras – especially DSLR cameras – have IR filters built into the body. Obviously, that means that you can’t use it for IR photography. Unless you remove the filter, that is… I wouldn’t dare do it to my own camera, but if you have a destructive streak (or very steady hands), you could follow the instructions posted on this page. It concerns the Canon EOS 350d, but the procedure should be similar for most camera brands:

1) Take the whole thing apart 2) Locate the IR filter 3) Remove the IR filter 4) Put the whole thing back together again

Hey, we never said it was going to be easy!

Homemade lenses are all the rage

Making your own lenses is all the rage these days, and we are all for that particular flavour of fun.

Mark Tucker makes a lens out of a Plunger, simultaneously creating what he claims is the ugliest camera in the world. MKAZ is a prolific lens maker who has photo essays and information about no less than 7 lenses he has made himself. Orbit 1 features a compact bellows-style lens which can also be used as a tilt/shift lens, and Chromasia takes it a step further, making an actual Tilt/Shift lens himself. Oh, and there’s of course our very own Pringles macro lens, too.

Bravo, guys, keep them coming!