Alphatracks

The Silio at the Billy Graham Library decorated for Christmas

Dec. 23, 2009 My family spent a recent evening at the Billy Graham Library to enjoy the wonderful Christmas decorations. My Sony Alpha was welcome, no restrictions on photography, except that flash cannot be used in the exhibit halls.

No problem, I simply cranked the ISO up to 800 and shot without a flash. As I have said in the past, I am usually conservative about ISO, but I enjoyed the freedom that comes with shooting at a high ISO.

The Library featured decorations inside and out, and as an unexpected bonus, there was a heavy layer of fog in the area. I hate driving in fog, but it adds drama and mystery to photos. The mist defused the lights, producing interesting streaks and shadows.

You can visit the Christmas photo gallery here. Let me know what you think.

Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a great 2010!

Tweet This Post

March 4, 2009: Yesterday Sony has just announced six new optics to the Alpha dSLR lens lineup. They are:

• Super Telephoto Lens

• DT 50mm F1.8
• DT 30mm F2.8 Macro
• DT 18-55mm F3.5-5.6
• DT 55-200mm F4-5.6
• 28-75mm F2.8

No word on pricing or when they will be available, but Sony says they are coming.

I find it interesting that four of the six lenses are DT lenses, intended for APS-C sensors. These lenses will not cover a full-frame sensor like the one in the A900. Sony hasn’t promised any further full-frame dSLRs, but as sensor technology evolves, full frame dSLR cameras are becoming more and more common.

I have to assume that Sony will offer more full-frame dSLRs, but based on these new lens offerings, it appears that at least some of the future Alpha lineup will feature APS-C sensors. Why introduce new DT lenses unless you intend to offer further APS-C cameras?

This is significant, when you consider that The A200, A300 and A350 were announced twelve months ago and the A700 is nearly 18 months old. On average, dSLR models are refreshed or replaced every 18 months. That means that at least some of the APS Alphas are due for replacement or a major update in the next year.

You don’t introduce four brand new DT lenses unless you intend to continue selling APS dSLRs. So I expect that Sony has some more APS-C dSLRs up its sleeve.

At the same time, I wonder about the wisdom of buying into these new lenses. If you expect to move into a full-frame dSLR at some point, these aren’t the lenses to buy for the long haul. You can use DT lenses on the A900, but not at full resolution. Basically a DT lens will turn the full-frame camera back into a crop camera, at reduced resolution.

On the other hand, you can use a full frame lens on a crop camera without a hitch. I think I would prefer to buy full-frame lenses so they could be used with either format.

Of course Sony hasn’t given us an indication of the price of the new lenses. Possibly Sony will bring the DT lenses in at an attractive price level. We will need to wait and see.

I also wonder where the new 18-55mm lens fits into the lineup. The standard kit lens has been the 18-70mm zoom. Unless the 18-55 offers a significant improvement over the 18-70mm, I don’t see any reason to introduce a new lens in this focal range. When you already have a solid 18-70mm lens, why replace it with one that lacks 15mm in the telephoto range?

If it is not a replacement, who will buy this lens if the 18-70 is still in the catalog? If the new lens was significantly faster or offered macro capabilities, perhaps I could see its value. As it is, unless it offers superior sharpness or better auto focusing, I don’t understand this lens’ purpose at all.

Also somewhat puzzling is the announced DT 55-200mm F4-5.6 lens. Sony already offers a lens of this exact speed and focal length. Perhaps the new model will offer improvements not available in the current 55-200mm zoom. Still, you would think that Sony would concentrate on filling out its lens line with optics that are not available, rather than replacing one 55-200mm with another.

Sony is also offering a new 50mm f1.8 DT lens. It will obviously be priced lower than the existing f1.4 50mm, but it is a DT lens. I think the old Minolta f1.7 50mm, which will cover a full frame sensor, might offer a better value equation, unless the new Sony comes in at a very attractive price. It will be interesting to see how the new lens affects the pricing of used Minolta 50mm f1.7 lenses, which have steadily increased in value as the Sony Alpha line has expanded.

Some people are already wondering aloud about the 30mm f/2.8 macro, but to me this makes perfect sense. Remember it is a DT lens, so it isn’t really a wide angle macro, as some have suggested. On a APS-C sensor, it will offer the equivalent of a 45mm macro. Since Minolta sold truckloads of 50mm macro lenses, I would guess there is a place for this lens in the Alpha lineup.

That leaves the mystery “super telephoto.” I take the term “super” with a grain of salt. Not that I don’t expect it to be a good lens. It has the appearance of the highly regarded G lenses, so I expect this will be a G lens as well.

Sony has gotten into the habit of calling any lens greater than 300mm a super telephoto. If you look through the Sony lens catalog, most of the G lenses as well as the 500 mirror are listed as super teles. So super doesn’t indicate this is an extraordinary lens — it simply means the lens is probably greater than 300mm.

The mystery lens does have a tripod collar, so I assume it will be fairly heavy or fairly long; or both. The recently introduced 70-400 G lens does not have a collar, so I am banking to this lens being faster or heavier.

If looks are any indication, it will be a fast lens — but what focal length? There is no indication whether it is a zoom or a fixed focal length lens. It appears to be finished in silver, like the other recent Sony G lenses.

About the only thing we can say for sure, it that it will probably be excellent. And expensive!

Technorati Tags
Sony Alpha
Alpha dSLR lens
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post

Indoor basketball shot with a Vivitar M42 lens and Minolta 4000AF flash. Would a top-of-the-line lens/flash combination produce a better image?

Feb. 11, 2009

Sports photography is breed apart. In most forms of photography the photographer takes his or her time, carefully adjusting the lighting and arranging the scene to capture the perfect image.

It’s different for sport shooters. Covering action sports leaves little room for careful composition or lengthy setup. If the participants are constantly moving, the photographer needs to be on the move as well. Shooting fast action outdoors in daylight is difficult enough. Shooting sports indoors or after dark becomes more complex, because you are faced with the problem of finding enough light to stop the action. Dim light and fast shutter speeds are usually polar opposites. If you are going capture sharp action images indoors at a reasonable ISO setting, a fast lens becomes mandatory.

You gotta have fast glass

I was reminded of this when I set out to photograph my grandson’s youth basketball team. I realized that all of my zoom telephotos were too slow to capture indoor sports at ISO 400 or even ISO 800. My Minolta 70-210 Beercan is great for outdoor sports, but with a maximum aperture of f/4, you need to raise the ISO to 1600 to stop indoor action. The same for all my other telephotos. Although I have a nice selection of focal lengths, most of my lenses are too slow for indoor sports, with the exception of my Minolta 50mm f/1.7. While the nifty fifty is fast enough, the 50mm reach is too short to get in tight on the players.

Of course both the Sony and Minolta lens lines offer many excellent, fast optics. You can also obtain fast glass from third party lens makers such as Tamron, Sigma and others.

A fast telephoto is a joy to shoot with, but wide aperture optics involve consequences. First they are usually expensive, and secondly they are typically bulky and heavy. I don’t mind the weight when I am shooting, because it helps dampen vibration. However, carrying around a bag of heavy lenses gets old really fast.

This means that when I want to travel light (which is most of the time) the heavy, fast glass stays home. The most expensive lenses are the ones that get used the least.

That’s why I wasn’t too interested in laying out the cash for a fast AF zoom. I’m sure that a fast Carl Zeiss or a Sony G lens would be exciting to shoot with, but I can’t justify the price tag for a hunk of glass that I will only use on limited occasions.

Still, I needed something faster than a f/4 telephoto. In casting around for a solution, I stumbled across a long forgotten favorite — a second-hand, but little used Vivitar M42 screw mount 135mm f2.8 lens.

Enter the Vivitar 135 f/2.8 in a M42 mount

I was very familiar with this lens, because the the first axillary lens I ever owned was a near twin in the Minolta X mount. It was fast, light and very easy to handle. I bought it in the mid seventies, and used the lens extensively for more than a decade. I would probably still have it, but some low-life broke into our home and stole a bunch of camera equipment, including the 135.

Here’s the inexpensive Vivitar M42 lens and Minolta 4000AF flash mounted on the Sony A350. Note the Control Grip 1000 that serves as a flash bracket.

I wasn’t seeking this particular lens, but when I found a Vivitar 135 M42 mount on eBay, I realized this could be an excellent lens for indoor sports. With the APS-C crop sensor on the Sony A350, the 135 represents a 192mm equivalent. A 200mm f/2.8 lens, with good image quality and a price of less then $30? I didn’t see how I could go very far wrong with that deal. The fact that I already had a M42 to Minolta A mount adapter made it that much sweeter.

Of course, shooting with a M42 lens on a modern dSLR involves some compromises. Okay, a lot of compromises. I’m planning a full report on the Vivitar 135 M42 lens and I will outline the drawbacks of using a manual M42 lens. While there are some serious downsides to shooting with a M42 lens on the Sony Alpha, the fact is I am getting excellent results with the Vivitar 135.

My initial tests with the 135mm were good, but I decided I needed to add little kick by adding light from a flash. This immediately calls into question the whole idea of using the f/2.8 lens. If you are going to shoot with a flash, why not use the beercan or one of my other f/4 lenses. Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to find a flash that could fully light the players at f/4?

Do you really need a fast lens if you are going to use a flash?

The truth is that at f/4 and ISO 400, anything outside the flash range turns dark. It looks like the team is playing basketball inside a coal mine; or at least in a auditorium whose owners forgot to pay the electric bill. You can “drag the shutter” by shooting at a slower shutter speed, which will relieve the dark background. But if there is enough ambient light, motion steaks in the highlights becomes visible. With a fast lens, I can use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action while the f/2.8 aperture keeps the background nice and bright.

I could have used my Sony HLV-F42AM dedicated flash. Instead, I chose to go with another old relic — a Minolta 4000AF flash.

Common wisdom states that the older Minolta flashes don’t work well with the dSLRS from Sony or Minolta. In this case, common wisdom is way off base. The 4000AF can be made to work very well on the Sony Alpha. It is true the 4000AF won’t work as a dedicated flash on the Sony Alpha. You need to shoot with the flash in the manual mode and you have to tweak the power settings to match the conditions. But it works quite well if you know what you are doing.

I chose the 4000AF because I got a nice deal on a Minolta Control Grip CG-1000 Set and a 4000AF. This allowed me to mount the flash on the CG bracket and use the Sony FA-CC1AM Alpha Off-Camera sync cord to trigger the flash. This combination is far better balanced than shooting with the HLV-F42AM on the hot shoe.

The 4000AF is a powerful flash, so I bounce the flash off the ceiling, Somewhat surprisingly, even though the auditorium ceiling is at least 35 feet above the camera, at ISO 400 bounce lighting from the 4000AF is more than sufficient to fully light the players.

For indoor action, this combination is hard to beat

I intend to follow up the Vivitar 135 report with a second report exploring how to use the 4000AF with the Sony Alpha.

You may wonder just how well this primitive equipment works for shooting indoor sports with a dSLR. The answer is very well indeed. The images look awesome. The telephoto can isolate the emotion on the faces of individual players, and the bounce flash creates wonderful, shadow free lighting.

To shoot in a wide variety of lighting conditions, there is no doubt that a CZ or G lens would offer superior performance. Indoors, under constant lighting, an old M42 lens can easily hold its own against the much better AF lenses. With a little practice and effort, you can create images that look every bit as good at a fraction of the cost.

Stick around. This is going to be interesting.

Technorati Tags
M42 lens
Vivitar
Sony Alpha
4000AF flash
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post

1/64 scale steam locomotive captured with Sony A350’s tilt-out live view system.

Jan 21, 2009: For the last several years, I’ve taken the grandkids to see the “trains, trains, trains” exhibit at the Kings Mountain Historical Museum. Held each December, the event is put on by the Carolinas Division of the Atlantic Coast S-Gaugers.

S-gauge is a model railroad term that indicates the scale of the model trains; larger than HO scale but smaller than the O-Gauge rolling stock from Lionel and other makers. American Flyer is the best known maker of S-Gauge rolling stock, but manufacturers like American Models, S-Helper Services and others produce compatible 1/64 scale locomotives, cars, track and accessories.

Naturally, I always haul a camera to these events. This year, the choice was the Sony Alpha A350. I figured the Live View option on the A350 would come in handy. I was, however, surprised how great the adjustable LCD screen proved to be for this type of work. By placing the camera right on the layout and composing with the LV screen, it was like I walked right into the scene. I’ve shot models at various times in the past, but the A350 Live View opened a brand new dimension for me.

The Carolinas Division of the Atlantic Coast S-Gaugers has created a large layout table, with two tracks running around the perimeter. While the trains are the centerpiece, there are dozens of buttons arranged around the table. Each button triggers an animated display of some sort. One button might cause a building to light up, while other buttons trigger railroad sounds, a plane to swoop over the layout or some lumberjacks to saw away at a fallen tree.

You can spend hours experimenting with the buttons, but for a photographer, the layout offers a host of wonderful subjects. Live View allowed me to capture some interesting viewpoints that I missed when shooting in the past.

By flipping the A350’s LCD into the horizontal position, I found I could aim directly down the track at an approaching locomotive. Choosing a vantage point outside a curve let me compose a head-on shot, secure that the train would swing away before it hit the camera.

Shooting in this manner, I did encounter one of the limitations of the Live View system. Like most electronic view finders (EVF) the Sony Live View LCD can’t show you an instant preview. There is a slight lag between what you see on the screen and what is actually happening. You can prove this by moving the camera quickly from side to side. You notice the image on the LCS screen will look smeared, because the LCD can’t refresh quickly enough.

In the case of the train heading directly at the camera, I found I had to shoot slightly before the locomotive looked in focus. If I waited until the front of the engine was perfectly focused on the LCD, the train would be unfocused in the actual image. Because of the shallow DOF, the engine would move beyond of the zone of sharpness while it still look perfectly focussed on the LCD.

Once I understood what was happening, I was able to significantly increase the number of in-focus, head-on shots using the LCD.

Shooting models (not that kind of model…we’re talking toy trains here) is always a challenge, due to depth of field issues. If you read the my basics article on depth of field, you know that the closer your lens gets to a subject, the shallower the depth of field will become. It is tempting to use a macro lens for this type of shooting, but with a macro lens the DOF is so shallow that only a very slim part of your subject will be in focus.

Even without resorting to a macro lens, you’ll probably notice very shallow DOF. Usually I would stop the lens down to create more DOF. However the trains at the King’s Mountain Exhibit were always moving. This led to an interesting dilemma. If I stopped the lens down, the shutter speed became too slow to stop the moving trains. Opening the lens up to the maximum aperture gave me a sufficient shutter speed to prevent the trains from blurring, but the DOF became too shallow to display an entire locomotive — let alone an entire train.

I tried some flash images, with a hand held Minolta 4000 AF flash cabled to the Sony A350. By hand-holding the flash I could aim it in various directions to get some interesting, shadowless light. This gave me some decent DOF and effectively froze the motion of the trains. Actually the flash was too effective in freezing the motion. The 4000 AF stopped the locomotives so well that they appeared static. If I was going to shoot with the flash, I might just as well have asked the guys from the Atlantic Coast S-Gaugers to stop the trains so I could shoot them while they were not moving.

I could have upped the ISO, which would have allowed me to shoot at faster shutter speeds with the lens stopped down. However, I was concerned that this would increase noise, which might obscure some of the fine details on the models. So I tried a variety of shooting techniques. I scrapped many of the captures because they didn’t work out. But I got a few I really liked, and there were enough interesting ones to create a nice magazine or newspaper spread.

Take a look over the gallery and tell me what you think. After shooting the layout with the Sony A350, it is hard to imagine photographing this kind of subject with any camera that doesn’t offer a tilt out LCD.

Check out the model train image gallery to see how the A350 performed.

Technorati Tags

model train
model railroad
scale locomotive
atlantic coast s-gaugers
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post

Scan of 1968 Kodak Instamatic negative produced this. Not bad for a cheap, plastic lens camera, but even at this reduced size you can see it is loaded with dust marks.

Tip of the Week: This week’s tip involves a free piece of software from — surprise — Polaroid Corporation. (PRDCQ) You’ve no doubt heard that Polaroid recently stopped production of their instant film stocks. That is a sad event for those enjoy shooting with Polaroid cameras; but I’m more concerned with the survival of Polaroid software. More specifically, Polaroid’s free Dust and Scratches application.

If you are anything like me, you probably have a fair collection of film negatives. Even if you shoot nothing but digital today, some of your best work may have been captured on film.

Red marks indicate the mask created by the Polaroid software. When you clean the image, only the red areas will be effected.

If you want to use some of those older film images in today’s digital world, you basically have two choices. You can pay a lab to create digital images from your negatives; or you scan the negatives yourself. Professional scanning tends to be expensive, so if you have more than a handful of images, a film scanner may be you best choice.

Negative scanning, however can be quite labor intensive. One of the biggest problems, particularity with older negatives, is dirt and scratches. Even tiny particles of dust will be magnified when the resulting scan is enlarged to a usable size. You can clone out the dust marks with a program like Photoshop, but if the dust spots are numerous, retouching becomes extremely time consuming.

Scanner manufacturers usually incorporate some form of dust removal in their scanners. These systems can be effective, but you don’t usually have much control over a hardware based dust removal system.

Image on the left shows a portion the image as it came from the scanner.

As you can see it would take hours to spot all the dust marks. Right image shows the same area after cleaning with the Polaroid Dust and Scratch Removal software. There is still work to be done, but more than 80% of the spots are gone. Tweaking the settings might eliminate even more marks.

Enter Polaroid’s Dust and Scratches Removal software. In the past, Polaroid manufactured a number of film and flat-bed scanners. I’m not sure if they are still producing this equipment, as according to the Polaroid website, most of the scanning equipment is no longer in production.

Fortunately, much of the software is still available online.

“So what?” you say. “I don’t own a Polaroid scanner.”

I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t own a Polaroid scanner either. But I use Polaroid software with my Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III film scanner. I also use it with my Microtek flat bed scanner.

I first discovered Polaroid Dust and Scratch Removal Software a few years ago. I was scanning in a number of old 126 negatives taken when I was in my early teens. Besides being over 40 years old, it appears the original drug store processing lab wasn’t very concerned with cleanliness. The negs were a mess.

The Minolta Dimage III isn’t designed to scan 126 negatives, but 126 and 35mm negs are exactly the same height. So I was able to insert the 126 strips into the Minolta’s 35mm film carrier.

Because the carrier is not intended for the 126 format, I lost about 1/8″ at the top of each frame. That was no a big deal. What was a big deal was the hundreds of dust specs sprinkled over the final scans.

Of course there will be times the software thinks a crucial part of the image is dust or dirt.

Notice how the cleaning process has removed some of the lettering on this race car (left.)

After reverting the image, I use the select tool to make a loose selection around the effected letters. Now there are no red marks around the lettering, so the cleaning process will ignore this section of the image.

Retouching all those dust mites was out of the question, so I started to cast around for some sort of chemical cleaner. I doing so, I came across Polaroid’s software.

I wasn’t expecting much from Polaroid’s offering. I’ve used other dust removal software, including the despeckle filter in Adobe Photoshop. All of the applications I tried in the past remove dust specs by applying a soft blur to the image. This eliminates the visible dust, but you lose overall sharpness. The decrease in sharpness isn’t overwhelming, but I am of the opinion that any loss of sharpness is unacceptable.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Polaroid D&S software worked differently then the old “blur the image to hide the dust” applications. In the first stage of the process, the application analyzes the image and creates what appears to be vector mask of the image. Anything that appears to be a dust or scratch is flagged. You have a great deal of control over the masking process, so you can eliminate flaws of various sizes, as well as dark and light dust marks.

Because the program could identify small parts of the image as dust, Polaroid allows you to edit the mask. If the program confuses fine lines in the image with dust, you can edit the mask to protect the fine details.

Once the image mask is created, you can “clean” the image. This removes the masked imperfections without touching the unmasked zones. If you aren’t happy with the results you can adjust the settings and clean the image again.

The program is fairly fast. On my Powermac G5, creating a fairly detailed mask took about 30 seconds, while cleaning the image took another 40 seconds. Not exactly speedy, but far quicker than spotting hundreds of dust specs one by one.

The application does involve a bit of a learning curve, but once you learn how the settings work, it is simple and straight-forward.

The price tag for all this high-tech magic? How about zero. You can download the Dust and Scratches program for free. Not a demo or feature limited sample — you get the full working application with no restriction.

Want more? It is available for both Mac and Windows. In addition, you can choose between a stand-alone application or a Photoshop plugin. Because you load your images into the program after you have scanned them, there is no hardware compatibilities to be concerned with. As long as your scanner can create a standard TIFF or JPEG, you can use the software to clean the image.

The only problem I have experienced is that some images won’t load into the program. I use Vuescan as my scanner software for both my slide and flatbed scanners. For reasons I don’t understand, most of the scans saved out of Vuescan aren’t recognized by Polaroid’s software. Opening the image in Photoshop and re-saving as either a TIFF or JPEG generally fixes the problem. Sometimes I have had to save files several times before I could get the Dust and Scratches program to recognize images.

This isn’t Polaroid’s problem, as the software is designed to be used with their own scanning hardware. They offer no guarantee that it will work with a Minolta scanner. Polaroid should be congratulated for offering the software to anyone who wants to use it. If there is a problem with files created with non-Poloroid software and hardware, that should not be Polaroid’s concern.

The final step is to clone out any marks the software didn’t find and to color balance the image.

Even with the file opening hassles, I find Polaroid’s Dust and Scratch Removal software to be a huge time saver. Poloroid is still in business and they are even said to be on the verge of releasing a new digital camera with a built in printer — continuing the “instant print” legacy.

Despite this, you can’t count on the dust removal software being available in the future. My suggestion is that you download the software now, even if you don’t have a need for it right now. If you find yourself with a box full of dusty, scratched negatives, you will be awfully glad you did.

Download http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html Poloroid Dust and Scratch Removal Utility

UPDATE 10/25/2009: The original links for the dust and scratches software have gone dead, and I was afraid the software had become unavailable. Thankfully, Alphatracks reader Jurek Woźniak discovered links where you can still locate copies of this software. Remember, there is no support for the D&S software, so don’t bother the folks at Polaroid if you run into difficulties.

Woźniak’s links are:

Download Dust and Scratches for the Windows PC:

Download Dust and Scratches for the Mac

Follow the comments stream below to find links for the appropriate read me files.

Thanks Jurek! You’ve made a lot of photographer/scanners very happy!

Technorati Tags:
film scanner
dust and scratch removal
Polaroid
photography
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post

Jan 6, 2009: Two great announcements for Mac using photographers today. Apple announced iPhoto 9, with a host of new features. At the same time, Google released the long awaited beta of Picasa for Macintosh.

I was really excited with the chance to use Picasa for the Mac. I’ve used the Windows version of Picasa and was very happy with it. The fact that Picasa can seek out and index all the images on your hard drives without being told is a “killer feature”. It works quietly in the background indexing every image it can find, while you concentrate on other stuff.

For a long time, I’ve hoped Google would develop a Mac version. Early last year, rumors surfaced that “Big G” was working on Picasa for the Mac. Today those rumors have proven true.

My excitement was short lived however. My Mac met the system requirements — but I don’t have the minimum hardware. Turns out Picasa for Mac (or least the initial beta) only runs on Intel processors. PPC Macs, such as my lowly dual processor G5, need not apply.

I’m disappointed, but not completely surprised. Intel Macs are the way forward, while the G5 machines are rooted in the past. Why should Google devote resources to developing for an out of production machine? In fact, the next OS X operating system to be released, “Snow Leopard,” is rumored to run only on Intel processors.

I don’t blame Google, but it is a shame. Even though the G5 towers are outclassed by the newer Mac Pro machines, they still offer solid, powerful performance. If they can run Lightroom and Aperture (they can), I can’t see any performance problems with running Picasa. I’m guessing it was simply a business decision on Google’s part. Developing for architecture that even Apple may soon stop supporting probably didn’t make too much sense..

Of course this is just the initial beta. There is a chance that at some point Google will invite PPC Mac users to the Picasa party. After all, most thinly staffed open source Mac projects manage to support both Intel and PPC chip sets. For the time being, however, if you use a PPC Mac, Google’s stance is “no Picasa for you.”

I was hoping to report on how well the beta ran on my G5. I also wanted to see if Google had included any support for Sony Alpha ARW files. The last time I tired Picasa for Windows, it offered support for certain RAW formats. The Alpha wasn’t one of them. I was hoping that with the influx of new Sony dSLRs (A200, A300, A350 and A900), Google would include Sony Alpha RAW support.

I guess that my testing will have to wait until I upgrade to a Mac Pro or Big G offers a PPC version of Picasa. Meanwhile, if anyone with a Intel Mac tries the beta, please let everyone know what you think in the comments.

Update:

Should post the beta download link here. You can download Picasa for Macintosh at http://picasa.google.com/mac/

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4+
• Intel CPU
• 256MB RAM
• 100MB available hard disk space

Picasa also runs on Windows XP and Linix.

Tweet This Post

Dec. 10, 2008 This time around, I have a question for you. We all know Christmas is coming, with all that entails. Christmas is considered a wonderful time for photographers, with good reason. True photo opportunities abound. What photographer could ignore the lights, decorations and family scenes?

Still, there is something I would like your opinion about. When you are invited to a family get together, do you bring your camera? If so, does the camera interfere with your ability to interact with friends and family?

Can you make top-quality photos and still interact with the family?

Don’t get me wrong. I always bring a camera to parties and family events. Everyone seems to appreciate receiving photos afterward, so I assume my dSLR is as welcome as I am.

There is a problem, however. When I shoot for a client, I try very hard to create the best images I can. If I feel an image could be improved with a different lens or accessory, I actually feel guilty if I don’t make the effort to change lenses or do whatever it takes to produce a better photo.

But what happens at a family event? You aren’t there as a professional, you are there to interact with family and friends. The question is, do you kick back and grab some snapshots, or do you stay in the full-tilt, uber-photographer mode?

Naturally you can do a little of both, but I find the more I strive to take excellent photos in my professional life, the more difficult it is to simply take personal snapshots. Shooting images without thinking through how those images could be improved is completely foreign to me. Habits are hard to break, so when I pick up my camera, it is difficult to switch into a casual shooting mode.

This sometimes puts me at odds with the other members at the party:

“Stop fiddling with that camera and get over here.”

“Hurry up and take that photo…the food is getting cold.”

“Everyone is ready, just take the picture. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

In addition, there is a tendency for a photographer to be somewhat aloof from the rest of the gathering. While everyone else is gathered around the piano singing carols, you’re up on the staircase trying to capture an image of the entire group. When others are seated around the fire telling stories, you are trying to figure out if placing your camera on an end table will allow you to take a long time exposure of the scene. You are there, but you’re somewhat apart from the rest of the party.

A question of reputation

Then there is the reputation factor. Most professional photographers live and die by their reputation. Sometimes basic snapshots can turn out to be amazing, but most of the time that’s exactly what they are: basic snapshots. What does it say about your reputation if Uncle Albert’s snaps from his point and shoot look about as good as yours?

The party might include people you haven’t seen for some time, people that may have traveled great distances to connect with family members. Can you take time to visit with them and still capture the type of images you want to be known for?

What’s your take? Are you willing to dial down your photo efforts a bit when you attend Christmas parties this year? Or would you rather be a grinch and create professional quality photos — even if it interferes with quality time with family and friends? Or are you able to handle both? Maybe you are able to reel off wonderful photos in between sips of eggnog while catching up with the sister you haven’t seen for three years.

Let me know your opinion on this

I really would like to hear from other photographers on this. I haven’t made up my mind if I will be grinch or a snapshooter this Christmas.

Tweet This Post

Note: This is the first of a series of photography tips that will be appearing weekly in Alphatracks. Watch for the a new tip each week.

Practice this technique and you will know at a glance which Compact Flash cards are free to use and which need to be uploaded to your computer.

Dec 5, 2008: If you are like me, you have a collection of memory cards. It’s great to have extra Compact Flash cards available, because you never know when an exciting photo situation may fall into your lap. If you have several cards on hand, however, it easy to loose track of which cards need to be transferred to more permanent storage and which can be erased and used for a new shoot.

To be honest, I actually learned about this trick a long time ago, and I cannot remember who I heard it from. So while I can’t credit the original author of this tip, I can tell you it has become my standard operating procedure for handling memory cards.

A case for every card, and every card in it’s case

Like many photographers, I keep my spare Compact Flash cards in their own carrying case. My choice is a Case Logic faux-leather case
that holds six memory cards zipped inside. By carrying cards inside a case, all my cards stay together and are easy to find. I don’t have to search through my camera bag to locate the relatively small Compact Flash cards; all I have to do is locate the zipper case and select the card I want.

Initially I simply stuck the cards face up in the case. Then I heard someone suggest that you could determine which cards were already filled, by inserting them face down in their storage pockets. Cards that are empty or which can be erased are inserted face up.

It may sound fairly simplistic, but you would be surprised how much time and aggravation this can save. It is especially helpful when you have more of one card of the same brand and type. I recently got a great deal on three identical 4GB Compact Flash cards. I already had a couple cards of the same brand, which means that I now have five cards that look similar. Had I not adapted this trick, it would more than a little difficult figuring which cards needed to be uploaded and which were available for use.

My procedure, which I adhere to without fail, is this. When I upload and backup my images from a CF card to my computer, the card is ready for reuse. I never erase or format the card on the computer, because I believe the camera is better at formatting a card for its own use. So when I determine a card can be reused, I simply insert it face up in any of the pockets inside the zipper case.

Available memory cards are stored face up

When I want to load a fresh card into one of my cameras, I can open the zipper case and select any card whose label is face up. As soon as the card is in the camera I either delete all images stored on it or format the card. This only takes a few seconds, and leaves the card empty and ready to store fresh images.

When I fill a card, or swap it out for a fresh card, I place the used card face down in the case. By following this procedure, I can tell at a glance which cards are available for use. When I return to my computer, I remove all the face down cards and start uploading them with my card reader. When I am certain that all the images are backed up, I return the cards to the case face up and the process starts all over again.

Did you or did you not archive the contents of that memory card?

There are other benefits to this procedure beyond knowing instantly which cards can be reused. Recently, I had several assignments back to back. About the third day, I grabbed a card from the case and noticed that it contained images from day 1. For a few anxious moments I tried to recall if I had already uploaded the files from that card. I couldn’t remember. I thought I had, but I was not sure. Then it occurred to me the card had been face up in its pocket. Because I never deviate from the practice of only placing cards that can be safely erased face up in the case, I knew the pictures had been backed up. I went ahead and formatted the card, secure that the existing images had been backed up, even though I couldn’t remember doing it.

Note that this only works if you are a fanatic about following this practice. I knew my files were backed up, because I never put a memory card face up into the zipper case unless it is free for reuse.

Don’t overlook orphan files on your Compact Flash cards

One other advantage to this trick is it prevents you from leaving orphan files on your memory cards. Many times I have filled up a memory card with a hundred photos or more, then shot a handful of images on a second card. If you shoot a lot, it is easy to overlook the small collection of images stored on the additional card, especially if you are traveling or working on a tight deadline.

Because my procedure is to remove all face down cards from the case and upload everything to my standard folder structure, nothing is overlooked. Even if there is a card with only 1 or 2 images on it, these images will be added to my library because I force myself to upload all the images from all the cards before putting them back in the case.

How about you? Do you have a procedure that helps keep things straight when you are in the field?

Technorati Tags:
Compact Flash
Memory Card Case
digtial photography
photography tip
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post

I spotted a great image over in the SONY ALPHA DSLR-A200 Flickr group. It wasn’t taken with an A200. In fact the creator Sam Knox says he was shooting with a “pocket-sized point ‘n shoot” at the time he created this Photoshop masterpiece.

What is so great about the shot is he turned Big Ben into… well you have to see it to understand. Check it out at the Sony A200 discussion group.

If you shoot with an A200, you might want to join the group as well. You can sign up at Sony Alpha DSLR-A200 main page It appears to be a very active Flickr group open to all A200 shooters.

Technorati tags:
Sony Alpha
A200 dSLR
Photoshop
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post

F/9 at 28mm and extremely shallow depth of field? Only from the mind of Minolta

Nov. 25, 2008 A couple weeks ago my wife suggested we go apple picking. It has been a while since I last picked apples and as the last of the fall colors were still decorating the trees, I agreed immediately.

We chose the Apple Hill Orchard in Morganton, NC, about a hour and half drive.

Naturally I brought along a camera; the Sony Alpha A350 equipped with my trusty Minolta 28-85mm f3.5-4.5 zoom. Because this was an apple picking excursion, I didn’t want haul along a lot of extra equipment, and I wasn’t interested in changing lenses while traipsing around the groves. So I went with the 28-85mm because I expected it would provide sufficient versatility for the day’s shooting.

The aperture was a little slow for shooting inside the Apple Hill general store, but with a little care I got some excellent shots. Outside in the actual orchard, the 28-85 proved to be an excellent choice. On the A350’s APSC size sensor, the focal length is the equivalent to a 42 to 127.5mm zoom. I would have liked a little wider angle of view inside the cider mill, but otherwise the lens was perfect for my purposes.

The biggest surprise for me was how much I enjoyed using the macro mode of the 28-85mm. For reasons I don’t fully understand, Minolta designed the 28-85mm lens so that the macro mode can only be engaged at the 28mm focal length. This is directly opposite of most macro zoom lenses, which either provide their macro effect at the maximum telephoto focal length or else offer macro throughout the entire zoom range of the lens.

I have heard some photographers harshly criticize the lens because of its wide-angle only macro design.

It is a somewhat odd configuration, but I found it was great for creating the effect of very shallow depth of field. I could shift into the macro setting, focus on an apple or other subject and watch everything outside of my main subject turn soft and dreamy. I was shooting at f/9, which would normally cause nearly everything to be in focus with a 28mm focal length. Shooting in macro however, gave me a razor sharp subject against a soft background.

So maybe Minolta knew what they were doing when they created the 28-85 with a wide-angle macro. I guarantee you I will be shooting with this setting much more often in the future.

You can view the image gallery at Alphatracks visits the Apple Hill Orchard.

Technorati Tags
Sony Alpha
A350
Minolta 28-85mm
Tom Bonner
Alphatracks

Tweet This Post