tingilinde

nice point and shoot camera work

The ISS from Discovery (STS-119)

beauty just out of reach

When I was a teenager I bought a few rolls of infrared film and made a few images that made everything look like everything was coated in fine volcanic dust.  Interesting, but far from art.

Greg notes some work of real beauty.  I wish the guy published technique.  For those of you who want to try, this looks like a place to start.

sorting out digital camera image sensors

Pixel count is only one of many things that impact image quality in digital cameras. Sorting through this can be very difficult and most of us have a few things we look for - often just reviews - and focus on other features like user experience and price.

DxO Labs has a sensor score to compare image quality performance of the sensor (note the optical train is not included).   This type of metric is not perfect and you are buying far more than just the sensor - a ratty lens, poor autofocus mechanism or byzantine controls can ruin an otherwise wonderful sensor - but it is probably worth looking at if you are really serious and looking at serious chunks of silicon.

Here is the quick description of the metric

mini dslrs

David Pogue on cameras between real DSLRs and pocket cameras.

Tempting, but I have no photographic skills (I do have a few photogenic friends, so go figure).  Now if I could shoot like Corinne, Alan or Bjarne it might make sense, but ....  The Nikon D5000 is coming off rather well.

color temperature - getting beyond the basics with your camera

Thom points to a handy little article on how to use color temperature to good advantage in your photography.  Great stuff for mixed light photography..  some good stuff for experimenting!

a nugget

When shooting mixed light situations, try setting your WB to the ‘sunny’ icon. This will lock the WB at around 5500K and accentuate both the low temperature tungsten light AND the high temperature blue natural light of dusk or pre-dawn. But experiment for the best results - every situation is different and sometimes setting your White Balance on AWB can be very effective.

enthusiast grade compact digital cameras

Digital Photography Review is a solid source -- if you are in the market some something that is small yet not terribly compromised ... read on.

snip

Since the introduction of the affordable digital SLR a few years back industry observers have been predicting the demise of what used to be called the 'prosumer camera'; the highly specified compact with features aimed at the more serious photographer. A few years ago you could easily pay $700 for a top end compact; today that will buy you a decent SLR with a kit zoom, and it became obvious that the serious compact sector had to adapt or die - fortunately the manufacturers chose the former option.

Thanks to to falling prices and a significant diversification (giving us the option of models which are very compact, or have more exotic zooms, or SLR-like controls) the enthusiast compact market is in surprisingly rude health. These cameras are designed to appeal to the SLR user wanting something more portable for those days they don't want to lug their main camera around, or for anyone who simply can't justify the expense of an SLR kit but can't accept the compromises demanded by a standard point and shoot compact.

The biggest challenge faced by the manufacturers of this kind of product is that, whilst adding a few more controls or a more serious body - or even a bigger zoom - isn't too difficult, there's only so much they can do to improve image quality over models considerably further down the line, some of which will have very similar electronics (including the sensor) inside. We're all still waiting for larger sensors in compacts (Sigma's DP1 being the first, and only attempt so far) - until they arrive, if ever, the cameras in this group are the nearest you're going to get to a genuinely compact SLR alternative.

adding raw to recent point and shoot canons

It turns out that most recent canon digital cameras are base on the DIGIC II chip and you can unlock features Canon disables with alternate firmware called CHDK.  Probably the most important feature is the ability to shoot in RAW.

It isn't completely trivial - here are some notes on installation for OS X users (written 10 months ago - if you are serious, you probably want to hunt a bit)

neat stuff -- too bad some good features are factory disabled

(thanks for the link Jim)

ultracompact digital camera review

dpreview does great camera tests and a reader wrote asking for current reviews of very small point and shoot cameras.  This is the current shoot off.

This category is a bit too small for me as I can't hold that size still.  Of course the old saw that the best camera is the one that you happen to have when you need to take a photo trumps everything.  I find myself using the awful camera in my iPhone quite a bit - perhaps I should carry one of these around too..

A word of caution. A friend bought a small Canon digital camera last year only to have its view screen fail eight months into the one year warranty.  She had to box it up at her expense to have it looked at and they reported it must have been abuse on her part. The camera was unmarked and had never been dropped.  They offered to fix it for more than a new camera cost.  She was completely upset with her warranty experience.  

PS--

A very small subset of Photoshop with free storage from Adobe.

It is probably as much as many need.

reasoning with bayer filters

Bjarne notes an interesting piece on trying to compensate for the Bayer Filter Array structure in most digital cameras

I haven't tried this, but will over the weekend. It is too bad the Foveon sensor never really took off... (you can get them, but in Sigma cameras and at a high price point)_