Ed_Ingold

<p>Your pictures won't look worse with a high resolution camera, but you may notice defects that were inconsequential at lower resolution. Now that 36MP sensors are relatively inexpensive and widely available, I hear too often that this lens or that is "good enough for film," but you may want to shop for something better.</p> <p>It's not just the lens but the shutter and technique used by the photographer. The state of the art may be live view and electronic shutters, which completely eliminate vibrations due to the mirror and mechanical shutter. Lenses designed to clear a swinging mirror usually incur compromises in resolution and contrast. Some of the new generation of mirrorless cameras offer incredible performance and freedom from flare, CA and distortion.</p> <p>Corner softness may not be as objectionable as some think. If your subject is sharp (in the right places), the edges may be soft if not deliberately out of focus. This may actually enhance the subject's isolation, improving the overall effect. On the other hand, if you are copying newsprint or test targets for fun and profit, a different lens may be in order.</p> <p>In short, use the 24/2.8 AF-D. If you don't like it, sell it and trade up to something better. If you don't need speed, then perhaps a Zeiss ZF lens is in your future. You may decide to keep your older lenses "if they're good enough for film."</p>

<p>Film usually cups so the edges turn to the emulsion side. In a glass holder, usually only one glass has an anti-Newton treatment - the side away from the scanner. (A-N treatment is an etched pattern, which affects sharpness if used on the lens side. The emulsion side is less reflective than the back, and should go toward the lens. If you use a spacer (which can be a thin strip of tape on the glass between frames), it should go between the back of the film and the top (A-N) glass.</p> <p>I use a thin mask on a flatbed scanner, with the film emulsion side down. The mask provides a little space (<0.5 mm) and blocks extraneous light which can reduce contrast in the scan. A piece of A-N glass on top keeps the film flat during scanning.</p> <p>Film you process yourself with a Photo-Flo rinse will lay dead flat after air drying. Commercially processed film is dried with heat and usually coiled up before cool. It takes a set that never seems to go away.</p>

<p>Fogging due to light leakage in the spooled roll usually occurs at the edges, and tends to have an irregular border parallel to one or both edges. Low liquid levels in the tank will affect only one edge, to an extent dependent on the manner of agitation. I have always used stainless tanks (acquired in the 50's) and agitated by inversion. As long as the film is wetted and agitation is done at 60 second intervals, it doesn't seem to matter if there is air space in the tank. Tanks designed to work horizontally are never filled past the half way point, but are agitated continuously by rolling.</p> <p>Damage to the last three or so frames may be caused by the film sticking together. Buckling near the core normally causes crescent or loop shaped patterns due to stress fogging on the emulsion, or layers sticking together. My best guess is the last coil of film doesn't stay in the groove when you load the reel.</p> <p>Stainless steel reels (e.g., Patterson) are the most durable and reliable once you get the hang of loading them. Practice on old film, or an uncut developed roll until you can do it blindfolded. You learn to rely on tactile and audible signs of a good feed, or problems. Film guides tend to scratch the film. You don't really need a guide, and it's best to learn without one.</p>

<p>Steadicam is a single-point suspension system. The larger sizes include a spring-loaded counterbalance system which you wear like a harness. Hunger Games II (Catching Fire) was mostly shot from solid supports, but the first film was largely hand-held. I found it very effective from a story standpoint - District 12 (Appalachia) v The Capitol</p>

<p>On reflection, I didn't answer the main question - camera shake.</p> <p>Camera shake should be avoided in video as much as possible. At best, it is distracting to the view. At worst, it brings out all the defects in a CMOS video detector, namely the "jello" effect. This is because the detector is not scanned all at once, so moving images get smeared in bands.</p> <p>Stabilized lenses help a lot, but there are other ways to minimize camera shake. In particular, there are single-point balancing rigs, used by amateurs and pros alike for smooth, hand-held shooting. They remove most of the angular shake, and some with counter-balanced rigs, most of the translational shake as well. The first Hunger Games movie was shot almost entirely with a rig like this.</p>

<p>Nomnclature. I should have said "catalog."</p> <p>It's easy enough to locate a changed drive, but you have to do it for each folder and each time the drive letter changes. You could store everything in one folder, but that's defeating the purpose of a relational data base. If you're not careful, that could lead to loss of data unless you rename each new file. Nikon, for one, starts repeating numbers at 10,000 images. (Leica starts over again at 10 million.)</p> <p>One drive for everything? Maybe one ring to rule them all, but I have my images spread over two 2TB drives, and will shortly add a third.</p>

<p>You need a certain amount of blur in video for blending frames. Otherwise you get a stroboscope effect*, which is annoying and distracting (sports events excepted, where sharp if everything). I generally use a 180 degree shutter angle (e.g., 1/60 sec at 30 fps) as a reasonable compromise. Your eye forgives an amazing amount of blur in video, not to mention unsharpness and grain or noise. I can't say the same about the "jello effect" you get with a CMOS sensor and moving subjects.</p> <p>I shoot a lot of concerts, and a drummer looks like he's holding three sticks if you cut the shutter angle below 180 degrees.</p>

<p>The D4s and (probably) the D810 allow you to save a JPEG simultaneously with a RAW file. You have the best of all worlds with a digital "negative" for your archives and a much smaller JPEG file for instant distribution. The color, quality and size of the JPEG files are adjustable.</p> <p>The Sony A7s, among others, has built-in Wi-Fi, which can be used to store or distribute images. I am interested in this camera because it can use Leica lenses. While a Leica M is quiet, it is not exactly silent. (Native A7 lenses are mostly Zeiss, the quality of which relative to Leica can be debated, outside of the Leica forum anyway.)</p>

<p>You can use any drive you wish, but the Lightroom library itself should be located on an internal drive. The library maintains the thumbnails, so you can do a search even if the drive with the images is disconnected. You can copy and transport the library to another computer, but it's usually best to copy the images to a "permanent" drive in your work station and re-import them to that copy of Lightroom. This process will only save changes you export to a new file, not non-destructive changes made in Lightroom.</p> <p>Rather than copy images to the C: drive, which will fill up rapidly, I use a large external drive array, which is more or less permanently attached to my work station. I use a portable drive (2T WD Passport USB3) on the road, and backup the images using a portable Blu-Ray drive. BD discs (27GB) are handy for backing up 16GB CF cards.</p> <p>It's best to assign a drive letter. Otherwise you have to "locate" the missing files each time you mount the disk. You can do that while formatting, or change it in the Disk Management applet in the Control Panel (Windows). I have a lot of loose drives, so I number them and make that number the disk name (which can also be changed) for identification if the drive letter changes. With an assigned letter, the disk will always use that letter if it is available. If not, it will mount to a new letter assigned by Windows. I seldom mount more than two floating drives, so I try to keep letters G: and H: available.</p>

<p>If you use a Lee filter system, then a Lee hood makes sense. Lee hoods are as close to compendium shades for small format lenses as you usually find.</p> <p>I always use the hoods for my lenses for collision insurance and to keep as much extraneous light from the lens as possible. I usually use a protective filter too, except where it reduces contrast. A blast of sand, errant twig or other hard object might damage the lens when least expected. It's not just direct sunlight, because too much open sky against an otherwise dark foreground affects contrast, and a white flower can affect contrast in dark foliage. For maximum effectiveness, I use a compendium hood for my Hasselblad. One hood fits all, and it can be adjusted to cover the exact frame. The protective filter is the first to go in a contrasty situation.</p> <p>That said, the hood for my Nikon 17-35/2.8 can't provide much shade, but it is a good buffer. With a wide angle lens, you have to choose the shot carefully to avoid flare. If possible, pick a lens less susceptible to flare, including some primes and most mirrorless and rangefinder lenses. Hoods for closeups sometimes shade the subject too much, so I often forgo their use, or use a lens with greater working distance (MF is great for that, because the lenses are longer than their small format counterparts.)</p>

<p>For still subjects and landscapes, resolution is probably the most important parameter. In that respect, the D810 has only 1.5x the resolution of a D4s. In general you can up-res a good digital image by a factor of two, which translates to a good 16"x24" print from the D4s, and 24"x36" from the D810. If your taste runs larger or smaller, the comparison is still proportional to resolution.</p> <p>For journalism and event photography, high ISO and speed of operation are probably more important, at which the D4s excels. All of the most used controls are on the camera, not in the menu. The battery life is phenomenal. The downside is that all Nikon DSLRs are noisy (loud), and the camera and (zoom) lens are large and heavy. Resolution is almost a non-issue for newpapers, brochures and publicity shots.</p> <p>For specialized needs, like a sound stage (TV?), a quiet camera is highly desirable. A number of mirrorless cameras come to mind, like the Sony A7s, which can be operated completely silently, using an electronic shutter. The A7s is also very small and unobtrusive, and can be used with a wide variety of lenses of various brands, including Leica and Zeiss ZM. Although only 12.1MP, the ISO extends to 406,000, and is quite usable at 25.6K. For the price of an D810 body, you could have the A7s and a 24-70 Zeiss zoom. Downside - it's slow to turn on, has a noticeable lag, and poor battery life (but extra batteries are only $50).</p>

<p>Thin mount filters, by definition, do not have a threaded ring to which another filter can be attached. However, they can be stacked on a standard filter, which has a threaded ring on the front. This nearly doubles the thickness of the stack, and may lead to vignetting. You will need to stop down the lens (preview) to see if this occurs. The added layers and reflective surfaces may also reduce contrast due to flare.</p>

<p>Where (in which folders) files are stored is of primary importance. Once a system is so designated, it is very difficult to change it. By the principles of a relational data base, each image file must have a unique address, which should follow some hierarchal order. Place names, such as "Italy" are extremely limited. For example, the same image might pertain to "flowers" or "Roman Ruins", which are descriptors (e.g., Key Words), which do not require multiple copies of the same image. It doesn't matter where they are stored as long as you can do a search by one or more descriptors (or fields). You can use more than one field for the file key, such as a folder name and file number. That way the file number can be repeated at a future date without overlap.</p> <p>For record keeping, I maintain folder names based on a reverse date code (YYYYMMDD) because that's easy to sort. I put a tag at the end of that date code related to the general contents, like 20010723 Prague Castle. In general, I save files in folders based on the last date of capture. If possible, I back up each evening using that scheme.</p> <p>I'm not saying that's the best way, or the only way, just a "way" and the reasoning behind my decision. There are about twenty formalized rules for relational data base structures, but only the first two or three matter. (The rules were invented by IBM, who promptly tucked them away and never really used them. Kodak did that to a lot of their inventions too, with the same results. By contrast, Oracle and 3M "get it".)</p>

<p>CF cards have a built-in controller, whereas the controller for SC cards is external. The result is fewer (and more robust) connectors, faster transfer and lower cost per GB. In most respects, memory technology for SD cards has surpassed that of CF.</p> <p>I was skeptical about the small size and potential fragility of SD cards, but so far that fear has proven unwarranted. The Nikon D4 takes one of each, and many miniature cameras, including the Leica M9 and M240, take a single SD card. A case that would hold four CF cards has a capacity for 12 SD cards in the same space, at half the cost per GB for comparable transfer speeds.</p>

<p>Pick a neutral color, not green or blue. The screen will reflect from the subject, forming colored highlights that can't be easily removed. Video masking must be done 30 or more frames per second, which requires an high degree of automation. Fortunately the resolution is very low in video, even HD video, so these things aren't easily noticed. For still shots, you have as much time as you need.</p> <p>I haven't tried it for years, and technology has probably improved. I found it to leave unnatural edges, in addition to unwanted highlights.</p>

Position of an image within a page depends on the printer and the software. The printer may impose borders so that the page may be transported in a proprietary manner. There are also variations in registration, which are approximately 1/16" for ink jets. My laser jet has a positional error of about 1/32", which is more significant the narrower the border. If you can't tolerate an uneven border, the best approach my be trimming for a full bleed, or setting the border to 1/4" or more to minimize the effect of registration errors. I use Adobe InDesign for layouts, which introduces negligible error.

<p>My Summicron 50/2 is what is commonly known as a "version 2," probably from the late 60's. It is a recent purchase when I found my DR Summicron from the same era will not work on an M9 (also a new, lightly used acquisition).</p> <p>While I can't say for sure that flare is a design consideration for Leica, accounting for internal reflections is well within the scope of lens design. Zeiss promotes this fact in their flack sheets, just as Leica touts compensation for higher order aberations.</p> <p>Using a filter on a digital camera can have unintended consequences with regard to veiling flare. A sensor is much more reflective than film, and can develop a sympathetic effect with the flat, parallel surface of a filter. This seems to be more pronounced with retrofocus lenses. I find I get better contrast if I avoid using filters, even UV or polarizers, for landscapes and closeups, easily seen in an A/B comparison. Using high quality, coated filters (e.g., B+W or Helios) helps, but does not eliminate the problem.</p>

<p>I lay a tape measure on a table with the object of focus at an even inch marking, and shoot at a 30-45 degree angle to the surface. You must make sure the camera is focusing on the target, and not some other object.</p> <p>Front (or back) focus can derive from at least two sources. Auto focus is usually an open-loop algorithm, which is much faster than actual trial and error but subject to determinate errors. Secondly, the plane of focus may change as the lens is stopped down for taking. This is particularly troublesome with rangefinder cameras, in which focusing is completely separate from the lens, and depends on calibration of both the rangefinder and the lens itself.</p>

<p>Just for fun, I shot some pictures into the sun today, using a Summicron 50/2 and a Zeiss Biogon ZM 28/2.8, with the disc just outside the field of view. There are no spots, no glare, no haziness in the photos at all. The same shot with my Nikon zooms would create a rainbow effect, and a great loss of contrast if direct sunlight impinged on the objective. Hasselblad is better than Nikon, but a streetlamp in the field of view creates streaks and spots. Hasselblad lenses, save the Biogon, are retrofocus and complex.</p> <p>I'm not a lens designer, but a ray tracing program could account for and optimize reflections which result in glare.</p>

DOF would affect the appearance of objects in front of or behind the billboard.

<p>"Achieving simplicity is always harder than it looks?</p> <p>Pithy! I hear that a lot about Mozart - the trick is to make the difficult sound easy. Well done photo, by the way.</p>

<p>The best "travel" lens I've used is a Nikkor 18-200/3.5-5.6. It is slow, but surprisingly sharp. What does "slow" matter if you have ISO 25K at your disposal? I still don't have one of my own, but travel with three f/2.8 zooms which cover the same range, at a gross weight (with accessories) of 35 pounds, is beginning to wear on me.</p>

<p>I apologize if I misunderstood the original post. The OP is telling us which bag is "best". That, of course, depends on the user's needs at the moment. My needs change continually, so I have a closet full of bags, like many others on Photo.net.</p> <p>Camera bags tend to look the part because they share a common functionality - among them are size, method of carry, accessibility and protection. I'm not sure any disguise their purpose any better than wrapping a paper bag tightly around the neck of an open beer bottle. I have a better plan. If I suspect trouble, I stay away. If I see trouble, I walk away. If I can do neither, I become the trouble ;)</p>

<p>The perspective is determined by distance from the subject. The focal length determines the field of view. In the example presented, the distance is the same in either case, and the field of view of the 300mm lens on a FF sensor is nominally the same as that of a 200mm lens on an APS-C sensor. Depth of field is related to the absolute magnification of the image and aperture. That said, a longer lens and larger sensor has more magnification in this example.</p> <p>Quality is another, ambiguous issue, depending on what is important to the application, or in the eyes of the beholder. Resolution, noise, color and contrast are possible factors. There are incredibly good APS-C sensors (e.g., Fuji X-Pro1) and lesser FF sensors. All else being equal, larger sensors will have more resolution, or larger cells with proportionately less noise. If we compare two exceptional sensors with comparable quality glass, size may make little difference.</p> <p>Leica digital users often select a APS-C sized Fuji X-Pro or Sony NEX camera as a backup. None of these cameras has an anti-aliasing filter, and all can be adapted to use Leica M lenses. From examples I've seen, it is very hard to see a difference.</p> <p>The most important factor is what pleases you, or your customer. Perhaps it's something as mundane as meeting deadlines (i.e., less editing and adjustment).</p>

What could be cheaper than a Zip-Loc bag? Please don't task to borrow me camera. If you can push your budget to $200 or $300, a Go-Pro camera will work at those depths and give superb results.