Picture That

The Pentax K-m is Pentax’ response to the Canon XSi and the Nikon D60 among other mid to low priced SLRs. And the K-m has some very worthy features like 10MPixel images with a 16 point auto-focus, a 2.7″ TFT LCD viewer, image stabilization and two mode dust clearing system. This camera has borrowed artfully from it Pentax K-200 but has added smaller size and lightweight to its attributes.

But the real compelling story is the the two kit lenses that come with the K-m. Pentax understands that despite the K-m fairly wide support for K-mount lenses, the camera will have to ffer some rea lenses in the bargain for users new to Pentax - and the the 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 and the 50-200mm F4.0-5.6 telephotos are designed to fit right into the sweet spot for lenses. So for just over $900 US Pentax has a two lens kit that may be the competitive advantage it needs in an increasingl competitive SLR market.

One can tell that Photokina, the CES of camera shows, is upcoming in Cologne Germany in mid-September. There is a proliferation of new camera announcements - particularly in the ultra competitive digital SLR business. Early this Spring, this site featured a story on the new digital SLRs. Yet already there are new cameras coming out from the major vendors. See the Nikon D90 story here.

Well here are two more cameras that should be of interest to digital camera buffs. First, there is the new Canon 50D which continues the vintage camera line starting with the breakthrough Canon D30 of early 2000 (at $1700, it brought digital SLRs well under the $5-9000 barrier)that I bought and still have in working order over 50,000 photo later. The new 50D, like Nikon’s D90, replaces a good camera about 2 years old. And the improvements are substantial for the 50D - from 10 to 15Mpixels, from 250Kpixel view finder to 900K mpixel and capable of live view picture-taking, from 3fps to 6.3 fps multiple exposures plus a gaggle of features which will enthrall Canon still camera users.

But the camera is missing the ace in the hole that the Nikon D90 has, video recording capabilities. Now the question is will the price and release date of the Canon(April of 2009) be too much and too late to match the fighting features of the Nikon. To say the least, the SLR battles are on.

Sony, which has filled out its SLR is not unaware of the competitive pressures. So out comes the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T500 which is a point and shoot 5x optical zoom camera that has video recording capabilities like the new Nikon D90. Well let me correct that - video recording capabilities better than the Nikon D90. First it records in MPEG4 at about 1/8 the size of the NIkon’s whopping AVI videos. Second, the Sony matches the Nikon’s 720P but at 30fps versus 24fps for the Nikon. Finally, the Sony’s zoom lens is image stabilized and sits right in the sweet area of 33mm to 165mm - wide angle to early telephoto. It will be available in late September for $400.

And Photokina has not started yet - there will be more surprise announcements to come. But it should be no surprise that the convergence of video and still cameras is now in full swing.

For the past few years I have been arguing that still and videos cameras are converging. Casio’s EX-F1 is currently the best example of that convergence. The Casio EX-F1 delivers 5 modes of still picture taking including auto-bracketing in four modes, multiple exposures from 2 to 60 frames per second, motion sensor triggered shots, plus multiple flash exposures and then a whole set of video modes of operation: HD at 1920 x 1080 pixels at 30fps, regular video at 60fps, and successively higher frames rates of 300fps, 600fps, and 1200fps (but at the same time diminishing sizes of 512×384, 482×196, and then 336×109 at 1200 fps). But better still, the camera’s controls for lens zooming, auto-focus, color corrections, , ISO settings, and other camera properties apply equally to still as well video images.

Finally, the Casio EX-F1 delivers very high quality images in both still (6MPixels maximum) and video (2MPixels maximum) operating modes. Testing showed remarkably good results for the camera right up to ISO800 - beyond this ISO setting, noise started to appear in the shadows with speckling. But try one out at a camera shop and see for yourself what the camera can deliver.

Enter the Nikon D90

So it was with a bit of surprise that I saw the recent announcement of the new Nikon D90 as the first Video SLR. Nikon is claiming that honour because the EX-F1 does not allow for mountable and interchangeable lenses. What readers need to know is that the D90 is also a very good update to Nikon’s popular D80 model. Here are some of the key new features:
- new 12.9 Mpixel CMOS chip
- Expeed image CPU used on Nikon top of line Cameras
- Image sensor shake for cleaning on startup
- 3.0-inch 920,000 pixel TFT-LCD
- Live View with contrast-detect AF, face detection
- same fast start up and no-delay shutter speed Nikon top of line cameras
- 4.5 frames per second continuous shooting for upto 100 JPEG images
- 3D tracking AF (11 point versus 51 in D3)
- In-camera retouching including raw development, Vignetting control and straightening
- Improved user interface with optional compact, hot shoe-fit GPS unit
So Nikon is not crimping on new features for the still side of the camera versus the D80 it is replacing. See DPReview here for an extensive preview and comparison of the D90 with the D80 camera that it so effectively replaces. But the key point which is brought out by the NYTimes David Pogue is that this camera does video with interchangeable lenses(Something that users have to pay $4-9000 more for in a top of the line video camera). So now Nikon, which does not have a line of video cameras that this unit would inevitably cannibalize, has thrown down the gauntlet to Canon and Sony that do have video cameras but no Video SLR.

However, David raises some issues associated with the video side of the camera. First it does deliver 720p but not 1080p as in the Casio EX-F1 for true HD recording. Second, the controls for autofocus do not work as quickly for 720P recording. Third, the camera records only mono mode for sound reproduction versus stereo for the Casio. And finally, the camera shoots into storage busting AVI-mode -400MB per minute of video in full 720p. Certainly room for improvement here(the trade off between cameras appears to be D90’s 12Mpixel top of the line still images (the Casio deliver 6Mpixels) versus the Casio’s superior multiple exposure choices and full 1080P (the Nkon delivers 720p) plus the Casio’s very high speed video capabilities.

But the camera is the Video SLR because it marks the entry by Nikon, one of the SLR titans, into the still+video camera business. Its a move anticipated in this photo blog - and given video’s attractive features such as good low lux recordings, camera shake-reduction, swiveling live view, and astronomical zoom capabilities; these are feature that Still Cameras will want to emulate. So artists will now have an increasingly more proficient choice between poetry via still images versus story writing via video using one camera. Very nice indeed.

Lenovo has launched the latest and most power packed graphics notebook this August - go to DPReview.com for all the details. What is notable is that this machine acknowledges that graphics processing is now driving PC development.

Look at all the graphics goodies - 17″ Hi-resolution, high gamut WUXA screen, NVidia 3700 with 1GB of memory, Intel Quad Core processor, DVI-link with 8GB of memory, two 200GB 7200RPM RAID capable disk drives, built-in color calibration unit and 6×4″ Wacom Digitizing tablet among others. Now admittedly many of these features are computer-game inspired - but not the disk drives, color calibration and digitizing tablet. These are pure graphic designer features. Graphics demand much from PC’s and the suppliers are responding.

But the unit weighs a ton - 3.3kg weight; and costs a ton $3300. And both are just starting values as this unit has close to a dozen optional features. However, even given these optional features , I would like to raise three serious game changing problems.

First, the disk drives are undersized and not maximum speed. Flash-based memory or SSD-Solid State Disk drives offer just as much disk space, and soon, even more at much faster speeds. Second, the Wacom digitizing tablet should be a Wacom digitizing screen like the Cintiq so that graphic artists can do touch screen operations directly on the images or deigns they are working with. Third, the operating system is Vista - the weakest link in this package. Not just that Vista’s Media Center PC is tinkertoy media software but Vista itself stands in the way of making this a great machine. There is still no full screen point-and-shoot nor any multi-touch features which the iPhone and Microsoft Surfaces has proved to be very powerful productivity boosts.

So the Lenovo is good news in that it starts to cater to a market that is driving PC capabilities, performance and features. However, photograhers and video producers may want to wait until some of the inevitable hardware kinks get wringed out and the features are improved.

I would like to tell you that the new Firefox 3 web browser is blazingly fast, full of new GUI features yet with great ease of use. And FireFox 3 has one of the best set of add-ons, themes and extensions. It leaves even the upcoming IE8(early next year likely) in the dust. But I won’t - instead I will let the Microsoft evangelist, Paul Thurrott tell you.

Now if you have an 5 minutes of time (it really is that fast for download and install), upgrade to the Web 2.0 browser of choice - its that good. Don’t go image browsing or finishing without Firefox 3.

Moore’s Law that see a doubling in capability for the same price in computing and memory chips every 12-18 months has arrived in the SLR camera world. And really that should be no surprise. In 2006, more than half the new cameras sold were digital and that market share has since swept to the 85-90% range. And because digital photo CPUs and Flash memory are two of the most important components in a camera, literally controlling all the cameras features including shutter setting and aperture openings for exposures plus storing ever larger images at ever faster rates. And the CPU controls many other functions such as filtering shots in a metaphor on how our eyes work depending on shooting conditions such as nighttime, sunset, shady, fluorescent or other common lighting situations. In sum, its getting harder to take a bad photo.

So go to our central website, thePhotoFinishes.com, which is featuring an article a)examining the latest features of the 2008 wave of new Prosumer SLR cameras and b)looking at the image quality one can expect when taking quick snapshots with such cameras. The capabilities of these new SLR cameras are quite stunning. One can now shoot at higher ISOs with less noise and greater sharpness than film cameras. Plus image stabilization both in camera and on the lens give users steadier shots at ever lower speeds or higher apertures. In short digital cameras are earning their keep - including now much closer to 100 year archival storage on appropriate CD/DVD media.

The following is one of dozens of Widgets available at Widgetbox.com:

Its a bit primitive but shows what can be done with new, faster ActionScript 3 animations.
You have to try these out.!

On the margin between bitmap photo editing and vector drawing/illustration, there is a new world of image composition that combines vector+bitmap in new and innovative ways. A lot of vendors have dabbled in this arena including Deneba(now ACDSee) Canvas, Adobe Fireworks and Xara Xtreme Pro - even hints of it in Adobe Photoshop with its styles and path manipulations.

But with Xara Xtreme Pro 4 with its non destructive editing of vector+bitmap image compositions, Xara moves way ahead of the pack in the arena of image compositions. This is where images are combined together in collage fashion. The big advantages

that Xara brings to the table is the ability a)to handle huge bitmap and vector files with speed, b)to do many operations interactively with drag and drop ease; and c)now to edit both vector and bitmap objects simultaneously and non-destructively. In the screenshot above note that the vector container in the lower image has been edited with the same effect applied to the inner bitmap. In contrast, the chip-off arrow at the upper right stays in its vector container with no changes. Let me suggest the creative opportunities are not to be missed. See the full review back here at thePhotoFinishes.com.

I have been telling readers that Casio EX-F1 is something special and now the appreciation for what the camera can do is really starting to to pour forth. It started probably with David Pogues article in the NewYork Times but notably Wired & DPReview except for blurbs from CES 2008 show, missed this beauty:
Chris Hardwick - Wired CES2008 show coverage
David Pogue - NYTimes Technology section
DPReview - like Wired, still mired in CES quick preview
Gizmodo - start of lavishings of praise
Gizmodo - a video sample just slightly over-produced
Luminous Landscape - best take on video and still image quality

Also I am surprised that reviewers have not picked up on the similarities and differences between the Casio EX-F1 and the new Nikon CoolPix P80.

Now Magazine is the free weekly entertainment rag along with Eye Weekly in Toronto. Now’s cover story featuring a bashed up Olympus OM3 body with wax blood is the type of smash contact photography that is designed to get readers inside. So of course there was a loss leader headline screaming IS DIGITAL KILLING the art of photography - and a really glossy debate within Now as lead article for coverage of the Contact Photo Festival. Unfortunately there was not much technical or even artistic substance in that debate. For really solid material go here for pro digital and here for the anti-digital points of view. But in the meantime, the story on the Contact Photo Festival was substantial, especially Now’s trademark voluminous listings of all the Contact events (200 places to go for photo shows in Toronto).

But the coverage and reviews of the photo shows was mixed - implying the Contact photo exhibits were of mixed quality. And Now should know because their photog corps constantly roller-coasters in quality of images delivered (or chosen??). Just take a look on the local stories inside Now. Sometimes it looks like a bunch of poorly paid coops and other times Now’s photos are truly a feast.

But if Now got you inside, it also got you to the essential business at hand - the Contact Photo Festival which is still a robust and agit-prop event. Given the explosion of digital camera precocity - photography is alive and well in Toronto. Just go to Fotki.com or Flickr.com and search on the tag Toronto - and you will see huge and diverse photo offerings. And Contact catches some of this vigour and activity as gallery-goers will see about 200 studios and boites putting photographers on display. If past Contact festivals are true to form there is a good show any time and any place.

However there is a disturbing trend - none of the Toronto area camera clubs like Beaches Camera Club, Don Mills Club, Etobicoke Camera Club, Toronto Camera Club, TGPA - all of which have splendidly talented members - none of which appear to be a part of the show. Obviously something has gone awry here. But I will let Eye Weekly’s David Balzer have the last word on the Contact Photo Festival -
“There is also a strong sense — in the work of Bert Teunissen, Luc Delahaye, Adi Nes, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Liss and Rubenstein’s coup, Nan Goldin (whose slide installation Heartbeat will be exhibited) — that the memorial and historical facets of the image might be reinvigorated through painterly composition.”

Grokking the Gimp by Carey Bunks, O’Reilly Press, Feb 2000 - $45
Anybody who has just read my Portable Gimp posting will know why I also have been perusing around for a “brush up your Gimp” skills book. There is a piece of software call Gimp Photoshop Layout which helps reconfigure the Gimp toolboxes and panel dialogs to mimic the Photoshop layout. Its nice, but just not close enough, so I make do with Grokking the Gimp and then just intuiting what Gimp can do.
However Grokking the Gimp certainly keeps me on the straight and narrow. The book gets users up to speed very quicvkly in the layout, toolbars, panels and help associated with GIMP. Then in Chapter 2 is 30 pages of layers, resizing, and other transformation. The first thing you notice is that the many illustrations are out of data not for functionality or the theory behind the Gimp process - no its the interface of the layout. Many operations like rotation, perspective, and scaling are no longer dialog driven. Instead users use the mouse to drag and drop the exact correction they want.

The same disconnect occurs in the chapters on Selection and Path tools. The tools’ icons are identically the same, the operations are identical but some of the process step have become draga and drop and/or added new clicking options. So when I came to the chapters on channels and layer masks - I thought this is going to be a replay. But it wasn’t - here the theory and discussion of the methods and trade-offs are first rate and very informative.

Ditto for the exercises done in the next two chapters on colorspaces and blending modes. Suddenly I am seeing the how and why of color blending, grayscale transitons, and channel mixer corrections in … a new light. Finally the next 3 projects pull all the elements together in a some engrossing exercises.

The book is 5-6 years behind Gimp but way ahead in the graphic design principles and explanations used. Though there are several newer and more up to date Gimp books ( see the Artist’s Guide to Gimp Effects for example) but I found Grokking the Gimp very interesting and very helpful. The book had stood the test of time in computing - remarkable.

Portable Apps has done something very nifty. It makes a lot of Open Source apps portable to any USB Flash Stick - for free. Most notably for Picture That readers, Gimp. This means that I now have a very polished photo editor that I am carrying around on my key chain and can use on any PC that has a USB port (1.1 works fine but 2.0 ports are faster)>

The list of applications available on Portable Apps is growing very fast - 13 new programs registered in April alone including Open Office, Notepad++, Toucan, MacOS Classic on a Stick, and about 70 other programs, games, utilities. This is great stuff - well worth checking out.

I did some timings of loads from my Flash Stick through the USB port of Gimp and Open Office - and I saw load times comparable with the hard-disk versions. Slightly faster from the hard disk, but occasionally the Portable App versions were 20% faster. In general this user is a very happy camper.

This means I can do very good photo-editing just about anywhere. Since I have a USB port for SD and Flash cards now I don’t have to lug my laptop everywhere I go picture taking. I just sneak in to the nearest Cyber Cafe , plugin, photo-edit in Gimp, upload to my PixofToronto blog and another photo essay tale is filed.

Finally this is not a neutered version of GIMP but full 2.4.5 with masking, layering, brush tools and an array of color and sharpening corrections tools. This will compete with some of the very good online tools (see here for 5 very good ones); but the advanatge is that I don’t need an online connection and I get to take my work with me which can be handy. I certainly like my Gimp, Portable.

I have been ranting about the Casio EX-F1 as a cross between a fixed lens SLR and a video camera. The fixed SLR format may have some attractions - fit one lens on with a broad zoom range like the Casio with 36 to 432mm at f2.7 to f4.6 and then take away the need to have interchangeable lenses with the consequent carrying bulk and risk of getting dust on the camera sensor. Of course the Casio then raises the stakes by having an unbelievable combo of picture taking at 6MPixels 60fps(frames per second) or in movie mode HD1920×1280 at 60fps or 432 x 192 (600 fps). And the camera has a lot of smart features to manage this prodigious shooting capability. See here.

So the recent announcement of the Nikon CoolPix P80 available today at $400-500 with a 27-486mm f/2.8-4.5 zoom lens and 10.1Mpixel still images certainly garners attention. It is at least half the price of the Casio and nearly double the Pixel capacity - and slightly better zoom range and f-stop settings. But the CoolPix also packs image stabilization within the lens so users get 2-3 stop better fidelity. The autofocus system uses nine points not the 40-50 points in the Nikon D300 and D3 top end SLRs; but still better than my Canon XT 6Mpixel standby.

Also the CoolPix P80 takes images at 13fps and movie images but I cannot find the details on that(see if you can find them at the Nikon site here). So here is the trade-off, Nikon has a light, Fixed 18xZoom SLR camera with some movie taking capabilities and 10.Mpixel images at 13fps for $400 versus Casio EX-F1 with nearly the same Zoom Lens but ability to take HD movie at 60fps and 6Mpixel images at 60fps. Image quality yet to be tested on both cameras but sample images from both are fairly good. Will speed and movies and ability to take pictures in new ways sell at $1000? I will tell you my choice at the start of early summer.

Adobe has finally released its entry into the Web or Online Photo Editing derby. Adobe is well behind some of the 5 major photo editing websites which I have reviewed in detail here. In fact one of those online photo editors, Splash-up, has emulated online the Photoshop interface with uncanny zeal. Splash up is one of the better online photo editors. So what will Adobe do ?

Well if Photoshop Express the beta is any sign - they are taking a completely different approach to online photo editing. First, Photoshop Express is actually two parts: 1)is a Adobe Bridge like image browser which is different than most of the other photo editors and quite useful; 2)instead of copying the features of Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Express takes a KISS approach. All of the major photo editing features use a simplifying approach of showing users 6-10 thumbnails of the kinds of changes they can make - and the user selects the desired change by clicking on the the thumbnail.

I don’t like this approach because in many cases like sharpening and subtle exposure or color corrections its darn hard to tell the difference among the thumbnails. True, if you select a thumbnail it is painted on the full image in reasonable time; but then why use the misleading thumbnails and not just use sliders or other GUI controls. Also there are very few settings and sliders in which the user can adjust the effects. It will be “interesting” to see what the feedback is in the Photoshop Express forums on this issue.

Of equal interest is the speed of the processing. I gave Photoshop Express some of the biggest files for online editing (easily double the size used by the other online photo editors). To my surprise Photoshop Express was able to load them in expected times and dynanmically edit them much more quickly than I expected. I have seen other online photo editors use AJAX scripts for these tasks and then were awfully slow on identically the same files. So kudos to Adobe and the Flash/Flex team for delivering software that can perform on line with real speed.

Adobe is beginning to fire more often on the web media front. Most interesting is the new media player. Its really oriented towards movies - but even there the restriction is that that the movies must be one of the following:
.FLV - Flash Video
.F4V - MPEG Flash Video
.MP4 - MP4 Movie
.MP4V - MP4 Video
.M4V - MPEG-4 Video
.3GP - 3GP Movie
.3GPP2 - 3GP Video
.MOV - Quicktime movie
Notably missing from this list is any Microsoft or Real Networks video files. This is really obnoxious. But what is interesting and can be seen from the screen shot is that Adobe has managed to get some major players including CBS, MTV, Universal Music, PBS, and 40 others. Not too shabby right out of the gate.

The other interesting aspect is that the AMP=Adobe Media Player is an Adobe AIR application. So any body that downloads AMP will also be armed with AIR. This may be in response to Microsoft getting the Olympic Games. Anybody who downloads a movie or video coverage of the Olympics in Beijing will also get the Microsoft Silverlight player downloaded to their machine.

Finally, this is an example of Adobe eating its own dog food. They developed in AIR which Adobe is trying to promote as the universal RIA=Rich Interface Application generation tool. It seems pretty solid and quick. I downloaded some pretty large files on DSL with no pauses in transmission I encourage readers to try it because the response time and configuration will become much more prevalent in the next years or so.
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By the standards of timeliness, Ning is late to market. WordPress and Google’s Blogger were among the first wave of social sites. Then Myspace and Facebook arrived - and set new standards for what could be done on a social website. Now Ning has arrived and set a new standard for how easily things can be done when inteligent Web 2.0 based processing is brought to bear on a website. But of even greater interest is that the whole Ning codebase is available to developers - though most users will find the four step, drag and drop, then launch process not just easy but satisfyingly quick.

One can see from the screenshot of the admin module above that Ning provides the website developer with a very rich set of options - music, photos, videos, events, forum and blog, activities, badges, RSS - all the major options one would expect at Facebook or MySpace with a little 3rd party help. But what took my breath away was how easy and intuitive it was to develop in Ning. I am just getting used to Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6 - popular open source CMS apps - and it is sometimes like pulling teeth to get them configured properly (no problems with either on setup though).

So here was my test of ease of setup and configuration - setup a photo gallery site with Outing events and forum for discussion. Customize it to look halfway decent - and hopefully be done by the end of the day. Well, just two hours later this was what I had been able to produce in Ning:

Now the uploads of the images were slow - I could not get the Java bulk loader to run. And the simple individual file loader took about 15 minutes for 8MB of images. A bit slow. I also have yet to figure out how to get Photo albums posted like activities or blog entries in addition to the slideshows:

Find more photos like this on jbsurveyer
Also I could not tell the difference between a Blog with comments and a Forum … but maybe that is just my dim wits. However, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up a very functional website in such a short time. And when I saw all that Ning was prepared to expose to developers so they could refine their sites- all the templates with CSS and coding, huge insights into how to call and utilize the modules and APIs .. in short almost as good as getting the Joomla or Drupal code downloads. But also as sophisticated - not for the coding faint of heart.

But the bottom line is that Ning has targetted for Designers as well as Developers - you choose your level of interaction with Ning and you still ca get an awful lot done very quickly. Impressive on first run - hope they have enough server power, because Ning will get used.