Nature Travel & Street Photography

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When digital technology and advances made in digital sensors have created excellent cameras, it has constantly challenged the ability to store digital files - be it images or movie files. While Tera Bytes have become cheaper and softwares are becoming more efficient in retrieval of files, the main challenge that digital photographers and video makers face is that of an era of evolving file-creation technology.

The traditional CDs have slowly given way to the more efficient DVD format allowing us to store more images on a smaller media. The DVD format has constantly evolved and is going through another major evolution right at this moment! The Blu-Ray is in! Developed by the Blu-Ray Disck Association and funded and supported in various capacities by close to 200 world renowned electronic device & movie makers.

Contrary to the current disk writing technology of using the red laser beam (that has an effective wavelength of 650 nano meters) the Blu-Ray will use a Blue Violet laser (with an effective wavelength of 405 nano meters) allowing the technology to pack more content within the same space of the disk. A single-layer Blu-Ray disk can store 25 Gigabytes of content compared to 4.7 GB of a DVD and a double-layer Blu-Ray disk can store as much as 50 GB compared to 8.5 GB of a DVD!

While the Blu-Ray technology is supported by a large array of disk makers and industry leaders including:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment

a competing technology, named the HD-DVD, is extensively developed by Toshiba & NEC.

Although at this time, the Blu-Ray evolution is backed up by the largest number of the world’s leaders of electronic device manufacturers and movie makers, the capacity advantage is surely in favor of Blu-Ray. With a larger Numerical Aperture of 0.85 exceeds that of HD-DVD’s 0.65, allowing it to put in more data on the same disk. As a comparison, a single-layer Blu-Ray disc packs in 25 GB vis-a-vis 15 GB for a HD-DVD while a double-layer Blu-Ray disk packs 50 GB compared to 30 GB for a HD-DVD.

Launched recently, the camera that will intrigue all digital users is the 160 mega pixels 6×17 panoramic model from Seitz Phototechnik, AG. The image size of 7,500 x 21,250 pixels (60mm x 170mm), with a total resolution of a whopping 160 MP produces RAW (16-bit) image of 307 MB & uncompressed TIFF file (48-bit) of 922 MB. The camera uses Schneider, Rodenstock , Linhof Technorama, Fuji or any other large format lenses.

To match the camera, the digital back comes with impressive writing speed of 300 MB/sec & an ISO range from 500 to 10,000 ASA. The special sensor is produced by DALSA Corporation exclusively for Seitz. Ref: http://www.roundshot.ch/

SanDisk has aggressively produced CF cards to go along with such a massive electronic device. In 2006 Photokina it launched the 12 GB and 16 GB Extreme III CF cards with writing speeds of 20 MB/sec. Not to mention the cost that pro’s shell out for such gadgets - a whopping USD 800.00 for the 12 GB and USD 1050.00 for the 16 GB.

And yes, with such a capacity, you can shoot without the worry of running out of space!

For almost 2 years I have been worried about developing my films. Not only have I tried a lot of commercial developers but more frequently have I promised not to go back to the last one! It was very frustrating waiting for days for my chromes to come back and then not be able to use the most of them because the developers lacked the training to correctly process them. Worse still, in many of these developing shops, the machines that does all the work, have not been repaired for a long time. Fuji, which is one of the largest makers of these machines, have raised their costs and in some areas have completely withdrawn on-site maintenance work.

Had things not gone as bad as it did one weekend, I would have waited for a couple of more years and gone for a pro grade Nikon DSLR. But now the situation is different. I have a Nikon D200 DSLR. I had determined that I would be using this digital equipment only for street, candid and black and white shots, and hence there was no need for me to switch to any other brand. I still have a large stock of Fuji chromes for my art work. But had I not done that study, and for those who wants to do landscape on digital too, the Canon high end DSLRs would probably a suitable option.

For the first few days, it rained continuously in East Bay. The camera laid on the table completely ready to go but I just could not take it out. For the next week, I was so tied up with my regular job that I could not even think of anything! Finally, I managed to bring out the camera on the open.

My first few hundred shots were a disaster. It was not the camera, it was my lens. I was using about 800 mm handheld! I brought the camera out from chasing the birds and the bees into the streets of San Francisco. And it created wonders. I tested the exposure rapidly in all possibly drastic conditions that the city would allow me and I have to say, I am very pleased. I am yet to test the high ASA range though - I have used it only upto 200 ASA.

Below are three images from my tests - and if you see the tonal range, they are 5 stops apart! But as I said earlier, the metering is right on. So what did I like about metering? Ah! The ability to chose your exposure area in the center weighted option. Thats just brilliant.

And what I am no happy about so far? Well, since the first few days the camera was lying in my house, I tried a lot of shots in a lower Kelvin situation. I am not happy with the ambient range that is provided on the White Balance options - I would have loved to go down to 1000 K if possible!

The lady on the train

The bicycle man

The Tram Cars in Powell, CA

Except for the last image The Tram Cars in Powell, CA the other two had f/stops difference of 4 - 5 and yet the camera handled it graciously. I had not used any filters and the shots were hand held.

Unfortunately, D200 is not compatible with the SB50 DX - my pet filler that I have so grown used to. A SB600 or the SB800 would cost another US $ 400 to upgrade. I have also lost 1 stop and 50% of the wideness on my Tamron’s 17 - 35 f/2.8 lens. Thankfully, most of my lenses are Nikon’s and will not suffer from such a problem.

Although this blog is not meant to serve as the newspaper, in a way, this post ties back to my last on the Nikon’s expected D3. Not willing to wait for the PMA 2007 and pushing the buck on Nikon, Canon has announced the launch of the newly designed Mark 3 digital camera on Thursday Feb 22 2007, the latest of their EOS 1-D series.

From the information available so far, the EOS-1D Mark 3 is a complete overhaul - a 10 mp APS-H Foveon CMOS sensor ( APS-H means a crop factor of 1.3 ) with the ability of shooting 10 frames per second. The updated DIGIC III image processor will reduce noise sufficiently to allow a shooting range upto 3200 and can be pushed further upto 6400 ASA. Added to that, it will have a 19 area AF system and a 3.0″ LCD monitor with a live-view feature.

The model is to be shipped in April 2007 and is estimated to cost around US $ 3,999.

This launch, and the fact that there were absolutely no news of it whatsoever, took a lot by surprise. For the Nikonian’s though, not only does it put the pressure of the new D3 but also would make them look at repositioning the D2Xs and the D200.