The Online Photographer

I Should Have Said...

I assume too much sometimes.

I should have added, to John Kennerdell's article "In Defense of Depth" yesterday, a reminder that John was the author of the article I published in Photo Techniques in 1997 that introduced the term "bokeh" and the concept behind it to photographers in the West.

I added two other articles to John's—one by Oren Grad on the terminology of bokeh in Japan, and the one that really allowed the trio of articles to be published in Photo Techniques at all, Harold Merklinger's fine investigation of the technical underpinnings of the appearance of out-of-d.o.f. blur. (Photo Techniques, as its name implied, was a technical magazine, and didn't publish a lot of articles about pure aesthetic considerations without also covering the technical side.) But despite the fact that all three articles appeared together, John's was the first and really the central one, and the one that kicked things off.

Please forgive me for assuming that was common knowledge. If I had thought about it for half a second I would have realized it is not.

Mike

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Why the M Monochrom?

Why would a digital camera have a B&W-only sensor?

Since I've already given my answer to that question, I figured the least I could do in light of Thursday's Leica news is link back to it.

And by the way, I do applaud Leica for having the courage to make this product. It has done photography a service. I wish the company success.

Mike

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Does DxOMark Matter?

After yesterday's post, Ed Grossman wrote:

I wonder what the DxO scores for the cameras that shot the evenly illuminated, richly detailed vintage images at shorpy.com would be? [...] Makes me wonder how valuable those scores are in a majority of imaging scenarios. I'm thinking, 'not really that much.'

There are a couple of things to understand about this, I think. To begin with, it's important to understand that, roughly speaking, the entire history of photographic techniques, with a couple of important sidesteps, has been a steady march toward greater convenience, not greater quality. (The one really big sidestep was the advent of practical color, which was indeed a qualitative evolution. But we'll leave that aside for now.) Cameras got smaller, chemicals got less toxic, glass plates were done away with, processing got automated, lenses got faster, films got faster and less grainy, and so on. As this progression went on, new kinds of photographs were enabled by each new increment of technology: from the head-clamps of the 1840s to the stop-motion of Lartigue; Capa hiding a Leica under his coat to take a surreptitious picture of Leon Trotsky lecturing, obviously not something that would be possible with a stand camera; Erich Salomon taking candids of politicians in "smoke-filled rooms" with his Ermanox; ordinary civilians sending their Kodaks back to the factory to have the negatives processed and the film reloaded, and so forth. In that sense the march to greater convenience also made a qualitative difference in pictures.  But from a purely technical standpoint, the main or primary (note: not the only) driving force of progress has always been convenience, not quality.

The next thing to understand is that the culture of digital has been quite different than that of film before it. Three aspects of this strike me as important. One, digital imaging was driven early on mainly by non-photographers, or at least people who needed little inculcation and training in the guild secrets of an old craft. The drivers of digital were computer people, in the main, not even primarily photographers in the traditional sense—most photographers went along in self-defense, starting with staff news photographers who had to learn to use pool digital cameras. Certainly, far more people are "digital imagers" now than the number of people who would have considered themselves "photographers" when I got into photography in 1980. Two, early digital was insufficient. In at least one of two ways. Either the technology was accessible and the image quality was insufficient (the first digital camera I used, an Agfa, in 1997, had 780,000 pixels, and the technology to make prints at home wasn't really there), or the image quality was sufficient but breathtakingly expensive (the 6.2 megapixel Kodak DCS460 of March 1995 had a list price of $35,600). So the early years of digital were consumed with an anxious search for adequate, affordable quality—resulting in habits of mind which have definitely continued to now: some photographers virtually center their hobby around exhaustive comparisons and evaluations of image quality, even now that it's no longer necessary to do so. Many of you remember how much we were consumed in the first five years of the present millennium with the question of whether digital could, or had, matched the quality of film—not a question anybody cares about any more. Three, the swift shift away from printmaking and toward online viewing of pictures has been accompanied by what Michael Reichmann famously dubbed "pixel-peeping"—it's as if even the most casual hobbyist has suddenly been visited with the ability to do the digital equivalent of looking at negatives under a microscope. Really, only dedicated photo-tech researchers (amateur and professional, few in number in any case) were doing in 1980 what anyone can do now on their computer screen with the click of a button.

This has resulted in a whole generation of photographers who have been constantly reinforced in the notion that "image quality" is an essential building-block of a successful photograph. Actually, it isn't. Actually, it isn't at all. One can find examples of anything, and I'm sure you can find examples of photographs that "work" primarily because of resolution or color accuracy, but most simply don't. You could also find examples of just as many photographs, if not more, that work primarily because of poor image quality or lower resolution or color inaccuracy.

You just don't get any "points" for using the camera with the best sensor at a given point of technological development. Nor do you have any points taken away for not having the absolute latest and greatest and best, assuming what you have is adequate for what you're trying to do. As an example...imagine you could identify the single photographer who was using the absolutely optimal available consumer digital technique for, say (picking a date out of a hat), October 2003. Is that enough by itself to commend his pictures to our attention now?

But that by itself doesn't mean that keeping apprised the current state of sensor technology isn't interesting, or that people "shouldn't" be interested in it.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Nicholas Condon: "I spent a couple of hours at the Corcoran Gallery today, much of it looking at the work of graduating students. There were several photographers whose work did little for me, a couple that I liked very well, and one (whose name has already escaped me, dammit) whose half-dozen prints were absolutely amazing. I don't know how the photos were taken, processed, or printed; it wasn't marked. If I think back on them, I could say that whatever was used produced images with excellent detail, minimal grain or noise, and plenty of dynamic range. More 'image quality' would not have made them any better, but less resolution or dynamic range would have started to hurt them at some point. The photographer had obtained sufficient equipment and sufficient technical expertise for the job at the hand; she need not spend any more time worrying about such matters.

"Could I have made these photos with my (not so expensive or cutting edge) cameras and lenses? Well, I'm sure my equipment could manage the job, but the photographer needs some significant upgrades...."

Mike replies: Cool. My alma mater. I was in that show myself once....

Every time I write about this, a few people make the mistake of thinking I'm saying that technique doesn't matter. That is not what I'm saying at all. (In fact, I've never said that.) I'm saying "image quality" by itself is not enough to make a photograph work. Which is, I think, indisputable. I'm also saying that some photographs work better with what's generally considered "poor" technique than they would work with what's generally considered "good" technique—and I think that's indisputable as well. Neither of those statements is the same thing at all as saying that technique or image quality doesn't matter. The technical properties of an image and its appropriateness to what's being shown or expressed or reported or recorded are often an important part of the picture and its message.

DxO's Methods Explained

Nicolas Touchard, DxO Labs' vice president of marketing, describes the company's testing procedures for the Canon 5D Mark III in front of him.
Photo and caption by Stephen Shankland.

Stephen Shankland of C|NET has just published a detailed story about DxO Labs' imaging science. Unlike a lot of what you find on the web (including this post!), it's original reporting. He spent a lot of time with DxO imaging gurus in France and watched them put the 5D Mark III through its paces. One tidbit: DxO bucks the conventional wisdom that megapixel mania is marketing nonsense.

It's an excellent report, must reading for any photo enthusiast who is even moderately interested in digital technology, and certainly for anyone who visits DxOMark.

There's also a photo gallery of pictures Stephen took during his visit.

Here's Stephen's article about the relatively weak scores the Canon 5D Mark III just earned on DxOMark. (It indicates that the Mark III's improvements are mostly in the video realm, which aren't reflected in the DxO scores.)

Mike
(Thanks to Stephen)

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A Digital Photographer's Ode to Slide Film

Mahesh Venkitachalam's "What Slide Film Taught Me" on tat tvam asi.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Tom Kwas: "...Actually many things to love in this article, and I certainly feel a companionship with the idea that going from film to digital is going from discipline to confusion. As a professional, it was certainly easier and cheaper, at least from an equipment investment standpoint, to shoot and 'nail' color transparency than is is to shoot digital. And there was more 'joy' in seeing the result. What I realized from going to digital is it wasn't just getting a beautiful or impactful image that made it for me, it was getting that and viewing it on transparency or in a full-scale black and white print. Viewing it on a computer screen? Not so much....

"And therein lies the 'rub.' If Mahesh is not a professional photographer, or using his work in some sort of media capacity for his employment, why change at all? If he is shooting for his own joy, there will be someplace, at least for the rest of the time they make transparency film, that will do pro processing for him.

"I only got involved in digital years ago at the behest of my clients and because I wanted to keep shooting professionally, if I hadn't been a pro photographer, believe me, I would have never stopped shooting transparency, and in fact, I still shoot it today on certain projects that I deem 'legacy' projects: where it would be important to have the physical film in perpetuity.

"One only wonders how many pro photographers fell off the edge of employment during the film/digital change-over. How many were at an age where they just figured it wasn't worth the trouble, or expenses, to end up with that image on a computer screen. How many ended up looking for that Home Depot retirement job in their mid-late fifties rather than go back to a far steeper—and moving—learning curve, and start over again, like they did in their late teens/early twenties.

"Even for me, I'm one interesting job offer away from never taking a professional photo again; mostly because with the change-over from film to digital, it just isn't fun anymore. Everything I interact with other photographers about now has nothing to do with looking at someones photos and oohing and ahhing about composition or 'decisive moment,' and everything to do with digital equipment speak and trying to fix some sort of digital-related problem.

"It reminds me of an art director I knew once back in the late '80s early '90s. She told me that one day she showed up at work, and there was a computer on her desk, and the production department was gone. From that day forward, she spent her time learning and relearning design programs and the constant change in the design programs; and never again went to a paper warehouse to dig through old stock to find the perfect surface to print on, and look through old books and magazines at a library to try and find beautiful but forgotten type-styles. She was now never again paid for her taste, inquisitiveness, or enthusiasm. She was paid to do 10% of what she used to do and 90% of what the production department used to do."

Mike replies: My son's grandfather, and old studio partner—and onetime teacher—quit photography when digital came along. He is badly dyslexic and has a real feel (almost a genius) for physical and mechanical things, but couldn't cope with computers. He used to have a good business as a professional in Washington, D.C.

As far as "why change at all?", I've given this matter a great deal of thought and I think the reason most people don't shoot film any more is: we don't have to. That sounds very simplistic but that's what it comes down to for me. On the other hand, like Mahesh, I'm very glad I had to shoot film for a couple of decades first. (I do wish I'd been more focused about it, but that's just me—that is, it's characterological.)

Featured Comment by David Bostedo: "If it weren't for digital coming along, I'm pretty sure I'd have never gotten into photography. Not being able to play with exposure settings and see instant results would have killed it for me. So it's likely that for every photographer that laments the loss of film, there's a whole new generation of photographers who are only doing it because digital exists. I do wonder if shooting film would help me become better in some way...but it just seems so painfully slow and error prone."

Mike replies: I'm sure a lot of photographers agree with that.

Featured Comment by Steve Jones: "I pretty much avoided photography for nearly four decades, partially because the process, particularly the thought of the seemingly arcane darkroom, appeared intimidating. Digital changed that, and as a learning tool, its cost effective and forgiving character (with a histogram to boot!) was certainly beneficial.

"However, less then three years in, I switched to film, and this also proved instructive, albeit in a different way. I'm glad digital was around to draw me into photography, helping me get a grip on the fundamentals, but moving over to film helped bolster the visualization process; it slowed me down. I believe I would have acquired such skill through digital, but film, by its restrictive nature, expedited the process. Anyway, I enjoy shooting film more so than digital, and I have no plans to return to digital cameras...although I still use digital scanners."

Featured Comment by Mahesh Venkitachalam: "Thank you all, for the kind comments. Unfortunately, shooting film is no longer an option for me, since I live in India and I don't see any local labs that sell or process slide film. The costs are also exorbitant."

How Come Nikon Beats Canon So Badly?

I got a press release yesterday from DxOMark that says the new Nikon D800 is "now the best camera ever tested by DxOMark in terms of image quality."

"Incredibly," the press release goes on to say, "the Nikon D800 even surpasses the best medium-format cameras, which are priced more than 10 times higher!...'The new sensor featured in the D800 achieves the best dynamic range and the highest color sensitivity ever measured, taking the lead on the DxOMark scale with 95 points,' explained Dr. Frédéric Guichard, DxO Labs' Chief Scientific Officer. 'This camera illustrates the consistent improvement that digital camera manufacturers have been able to achieve in the last few years, mimicking Moore's law that has ruled the silicon industry for decades now.'"

It's been a long time since I paid a visit to DxOMark, but I'm going to make a small and not very venturesome bet: I'm guessing Nikon users like the site a lot more than Canon fans do.

Of the top ten cameras in overall score on DxOMark, four are Nikons (and two are Pentaxes). But Canon doesn't have a single camera in the top 10. Canon's highest placed camera comes in at #13. In the top 20, Nikon has eight cameras; Canon, just two. (Sony has five.) Nikon's little entry-level DSLR, the D5100, comes in just above the vaunted (but outgoing) Canon 5D Mark II (evidently the Mark III hasn't been tested yet).

As a side note, my most-used camera limps in at #124. (Breaks into patriotic song.)

Makes me wonder, though, why Nikon beats Canon so badly in DxOMark scores. Note that I did not put that in the form of a rhetorical question—if I were to ask, I already know the answers I'd get: Canon users will say it's because DxOMark sucks and/or has a biased testing procedure; Nikon users will say it's because Nikon's better. I still wonder what the real reason is, though. It's not like Canon can't make sensors. Some people like "the Canon Look" better.

Courtesy DxO Labs

Surprising, in any case, that the D800 is such a strong outlier. Here's the full report.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bernard Scharp: "But when is DxO going to test some film stock? Who cares about these sensors that get replaced every two months? They still haven't tested Tri-X or Acros, and those are older than DxO!"

Ever-helpful Ctein replies: Here ya go Bernard, fresh from the labs: Tri-X: Low light performance: ISO 400. Noise: high, at all ISOs. Exposure Range: 13 stops, but with poor linearity. Color bit depth: 1. Resolution: 3500 lines. Happy, now? [vbg]

Fiddling with JPEGs

After our recent semi-dustup about Raw and JPEG, I decided the other night that I should listen to Ken's point that my knowledge might not be up to date...because he's right, I haven't looked at out-of-camera JPEGs critically for half a dozen years or so. I figured I'd better go see for myself. So I grabbed my trusty GF1, set as usual on RAW+JPEG, and took it with me on my evening get-out-of-the-house drive*. Shooting at ISO 800, where this sensor is already a bit out of its comfort zone, I looked for some situations that might challenge the JPEG engine, and took a few shots around the neighborhood. Later, at digital command central, I fiddled around with two shots: the one above, and a lazy snap I took of the car at the gas station while I waited for the pump.

Before I relay a few impressions, a strict caveat: what I saw is true only for this particular camera and for the particular Raw converter I use, Adobe Camera Raw. Furthermore, I hasten to point out that I'm very used to correcting Raw files in ACR but not much accustomed to correcting JPEGs in Photoshop, at least not critically. It stands to reason I'd be better at the tasks I'm used to.

The out-of-camera JPEGs looked good in both cases. In the train-track shot, neither file held the color of the sun disk, which was a vivid orange. The camera chose a neutral color balance for its JPEG (right), far less orange than the scene looked. But I kind of liked it, and I could probably live with that interpretation. I corrected the Raw file to look more like what the scene looked like to my eye. That's what you're seeing at the top of the post. I'm not a fan of florid color, so I might choose something between the two if I were printing this.

However, when I tried to adjust the color of the JPEG to match the adjusted color of the Raw, forget it. Couldn't come close. Not enough there there.

In the second sample, the gas station shot, ACR let me recover all the highlight detail in the lit-up sign from the Raw version...which didn't matter at all to the picture, because the JPEG version looks fine.

This sign in the background (and thus out of the d.o.f., which is why it's soft) was the brightest large object in the gas station scene. ACR let me recover all the highlight detail in the Raw file...

...Which didn't matter, because it looks fine in the JPEG. The area to the right of the red triangle is blown out, but you can't tell.

Where that shot ran into trouble was that the mixed lighting in the scene included overhead fluorescents as well as the blue ambient light of late evening, and the JPEG looked too green in the areas lit by the fluorescents. The JPEG file seemed way too sensitive to the slider. With just small amounts of correction the color balance swung too far one way then the other. Just a few points of magenta corrected the greenish areas, but swung the blue-lit areas too far to magenta. Similar to the old "red-green cross" that was the bane of printing color negs. That would take a bit more work to correct than just a simple global color balance change.

With the Raw file, no such problem. A simple correction took care of it.

Finally, Carl's advice is not to look at files larger than 100% because you'll never see the difference in prints anyway, but I "cheated"—here are two small areas of the gas station picture at 300% (where you're clearly seeing jaggies in the 12-MP file). The camera is applying both noise reduction and sharpening to the camera JPEG, and you can clearly see the JPEG artifacts in the smooth-toned area:

And here's the same area from the Raw file with a modest amount of noise reduction applied:

The jaggies in the Raw version look more pronounced in the chrome bits, but that translates to crisper, cleaner detail throughout the shot at more normal magnifications.

And, consider that the GF1's Raw files have the reputation of not providing a whole lot of headroom. That is, they're supposedly not that good.

In both cases I concede that the JPEGs looked pretty good right out of the camera. But in both cases the Raw files with just a few rudimentary corrections look clearly better.

So I'm sticking with Raw...

...At least with this camera. Too late, I realized I should have taken the A900 along and made the same shots with it, to see how the larger file and a different company's sensor and processing engine coped with the same scenes. But it's really beside the point—I'm not proving anything here, and I'm not giving you any information you can use. For that, you'll have to get down to the railroad tracks with your own camera, and compare the Raw file and the JPEG your own camera gives you, with your own preferred software.

Mike

*It's 77 degrees here. Who needs Florida?

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It's Raw All the Way For Me, Baby, and I Don't Mean Sushi

Being weak*, I cannot resist throwing in my own two cents on the recent discussion of Raw and JPEG. I should probably forbear, but I'll claim disorientation—it appears that summer is here, already, and I'm not ready for it. The abrupt commencement of warm weather at an unexpected time has addlepated my brainpan.

First of all, if there was ever a non-controversy, this has got to be it. Saying someone else should shoot Raw or JPEG is like trying to say they should use a certain cologne or perfume, or put their toilet paper in the holder so that it comes off the top of the roll or the bottom. It's their business, and, let's face it, is of extremely limited importance to all those others whose business it is not. Each sovereign human being has choices she will be exclusively responsible for as she wends her way through the myriad puzzlements of quotidian life. We must accept that. JPEG or Raw is like ketchup or mustard...suit yourself, and don't bother haranguing me about it—like you, I'm going to suit my own dang self. :-)

My only interest would be in seeing that people understand the distinctions clearly enough to make their own rational choice, and that no one feel pressured to make one choice or the other. I can't speak for him, but I would guess that at least part of Ken's motive in writing his column was simply to help break the tyranny of majority opinion for those who would rather shoot JPEG.

Liberations
Two events in my photographic life: 1. c. 1980, age 23, I built a rudimentary darkroom under the basement stairs in my father's Bethesda house and, David Vestal's developer-stained The Craft of Photography permanently opened on the counter, taught myself to print. It was a liberation: after frustrating years of trying to tell the clerk at the drugstore what I wanted the lab to do, I could at least make sure that each frame was cropped correctly, something that had previously been a headache. Never looked back.

2. c. 2006, age 49, I got a copy of Bruce Fraser's Real World Camera Raw (its relevance is thankfully maintained into the present by Jeff Schewe, in part a labor of love: Bruce died that year). It's still the most important technical book in my own history as a digital photographer. I had just recently bought my third digital camera and first DSLR, a used Konica-Minolta 7D that came with a zoom lens. For me digital had imposed several limitations on photography that hadn't existed previously, but the worst had been the headache of setting the white balance. To me, with my darkroom experience, having to set the color balance before taking the picture was ass-backwards, and a giant impediment to freedom while shooting. Shooting Raw restored the world to its proper order: shoot first and make the creative technical decisions later, at leisure. Never looked back.

My 'take'
Raw fits the way I shoot, which is more or less opposite the way that a professional photographer has to. A pro has to be able to step into any situation and make a good solid strong "B" photograph: competent, capable, good looking, techically skilled. That never interested me. It doesn't give me what I look for in photographs. I'd rather take a bunch of C pictures (and some D's and F's) in return for the occasional serendipitous precious A. That is, I shoot for the hits: those occasional wonderful accidents when the mystery happens and a picture somehow works for me. I probably only get a dozen good shots a year. Part of the reason I so hated having to nail the WB in advance was the possibility that one of those precious great shots would happen and I'd have the WB set wrong: for me, that made it feel like the peril of a misstep lurked in every shot.

One last relevant factoid. I said that for me the good shots, the ones I like, happen rarely, and are consequently prized. One such picture was one I took with a Nikon D700 (it's the first shot in this post) when I briefly owned that camera. I got the exposure right, of course, but I mistakenly had the damned camera set on JPEG because I'd been doing some eBay photos at home that night and I forgot to change it back to regular shooting mode. Ever since then I've regretted that I don't have a Raw file of that shot. It doesn't bother anyone else, but I would just kill to have a little more highlight recovery for the main light on the porch. It doesn't ruin the shot, but it gnaws at me—like losing a prized neg.

I would never, ever, ever not shoot Raw. Good shots for me are like pulling teeth; they come only rarely, sometimes when I least expect. When the good shots happen, I absolutely want the best possible file to work with.

But Ken's absolutely correct—there's no right and wrong in personal photographic decisions, and no one should feel tyrannized by anyone else's choice. If shooting JPEG suits his needs, I have absolutely no problem with that. Each person should do whatever he or she wants to do, for their own reasons, and to suit their own needs and style.

Mike

*And being in command of the bully pulpit, here in my own tiny domain....

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JPEGophobia

By Ctein

As most of you know, I photograph almost exclusively in Raw format (viz. my "JPEG... Seriously?" column).

So saying, I very much enjoyed Ken's column of last Friday. Mind you, I disagreed with most of his points and feel like I could construct persuasive arguments the other way. That doesn't mean I think he's wrong, though!

(It seems to be part and parcel of today's utterly toxic political climate to be certain that someone one disagrees with has to be wrong. Me, I refuse to play in that kitty litter sandbox.)

Some readers, though, took major exception to his position, with talking points that I think are...well...wrong. Ahem. So, without naming any names, I hereby register my disagreements:

I'll start with the notion that you're not a serious photographer unless you're invested in what happens post exposure. That was stated pretty explicitly, with the argument given that serious film photographers didn't stop merely with making the exposure, but were involved in what happened to the film afterwards.

Oh, really?

Most professional film photographers I knew and knew of were photographing with slide film. I was one of the rare exceptions concentrating on color negative. Easily 90+% of those professional photographers did not involve themselves in processing film in any way. They exposed their rolls, they handed them over to the lab of their choice, and didn't pay any attention until the results came back.

I guess none of them were really serious about their photographs, then. Not like me.

Then there was the argument that allowing the camera's software to dictate the look-and-feel, as it were, of the resulting photograph was an abdication of artistic responsibility, at best, and at worst would produce substantially inferior results.

Once again, we look to those slide-shooting dilettantes of yore, who had even less control over the look-and-feel of their results. They got to choose from one of a limited selection of film types. They lived with the results. Today's digital cameras give you a lot more control over what that look happens to be than any film type of old did.

Many readers took Ken's words as a universal prescription, rather than simply a description of what he did and why he did. Despite him pointing out that these choices were camera and software dependent, only a few readers, like Oleg, took this to heart. Need I describe the fallacy in logic that goes, "Well, your description of what you do and why you do it wouldn't work for me, so therefore you're wrong?" See paragraph two.

Last, there is this pernicious myth that photography is about collecting data. Many readers pointed out that JPEG processing in-camera throws away data.

They're right. So what?!

In nonscientific, colloquial usage, "data" and "information" are not the same things. (Note: we are not talking information theory here, we're talking common usage.) Data is just the mass of factoids that get collected. Information is the stuff you care about. Unless you're doing scientific record-keeping, the purpose of photography is to go after the visual information that makes your photograph meaningful and present it to maximum effect.

If data-maximizing is your photographic goal, you'll have to give up white-balancing. Much data was sacrificed to convert the sensor-native color balance of the top photograph to that of the bottom.

Here's the important thing: any time you select for, enhance, or adjust any visual information in a photograph, you throw away data. It's unavoidable. Something as simple as white-balancing your photograph, wherever it happens in the data chain, throws away data (the mathematical transform is not lossless). You really don't want to lose any data? Then you better just accept your photographs in whatever the native color balance of your camera happens to be. Not the auto-adjusted color balance, not the manually-selected color balance. The single color temperature for which your sensor's response is balanced. If the color quality of the light differs from that, in major or minor ways, too bad. You want maximum data? Leave that white point fixed.

Beyond that, maximum-data photographs are usually boring and uninteresting. It is very rare for a full-range, linear conversion of a Raw file to be particularly interesting. Those are the settings I use for making my proof sheets, because I want to see everything that's in the file before I start messing with it. Almost none of the photographs on those proof sheets look their best in that form. Flat, low-saturation, linear-contrast photographs very rarely have the best and most meaningful visual information. Sometimes the tweaks are minor adjustments of saturation and contrast, sometimes they're wholesale major changes.

The top photograph maximizes the data captured by the camera. The bottom version is much better. Many bytes gave their lives to make it possible. (Yes, this is one of the reasons why JPEG isn't for me, but
it's not about preserving data.)

As I said, you're not likely to find me focusing on JPEGs. For me the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and I have workflows available to me that negate most of the advantages Ken's mentions. But that's just me.

He's not wrong.

Ctein

Raw shooter Ctein's lossy expositions (never the complete data) appear on TOP on Wednesdays.

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Featured Comment by fotoralf: "'Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks' (Henri Cartier-Bresson). Just another notoriously unprofessional snapshooter. ;-) "

Featured Comment by Richard: "Most of the photographers I know mean 'non-destructive editing' when they talk about 'not throwing data away,' and that's why they shoot Raw. Sure if you tweak a Raw file and export it as a JPEG, you will lose data. Point is it hasn't gone forever."

Featured Comment by Kevin Purcell: "Gregory Bateson (who was a bit of a wacko) gave my favorite definition of information: 'a difference which makes a difference.'

"The full quote from Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972, pp. 457–9) is perhaps even more relevant to this topic:

A difference is a very peculiar and obscure concept. It is certainly not a thing or an event. This piece of paper is different from the wood of this lectern. There are many differences between them—of color, texture, shape, etc. But if we start to ask about the localization of those differences, we get into trouble. Obviously the difference between the paper and the wood is not in the paper; it is obviously not in the wood; it is obviously not in the space between them, and it is obviously not in the time between them. (Difference which occurs across time is what we call "change".) [...]

Kant, in the Critique of Judgment—if I understand him correctly—asserts that the most elementary aesthetic act is the selection of a fact. He argues that in a piece of chalk there are an infinite number of potential facts. [...] I suggest that Kant’s statement can be modified to say that there is an infinite number of differences around and within the piece of chalk. There are differences between the chalk and the rest of the universe, between the chalk and the sun or the moon. And within the piece of chalk, there is for every molecule an infinite number of differences between its location and the locations in which it might have been. Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference.

"Photography is all about selection and differences: that's the photographer's task in a nutshell."

Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "Color photograpahy, of course, was not serious; collectors wouldn't buy it, museums wouldn't exhibit it, newspapers and magazines couldn't publish it.  Real photography was black and white.

"Seriously, I think the years wandering in the wilderness when most people did shoot slides and didn't do their own darkroom work damaged photography severely. It's really very limiting to just present what  you can capture directly in the camera (even more then than now, we have more controls in the camera than film choices provided then).

"You're all tired of hearing it over and over again, but it's true.  The negative is the score the print is the performance.

"The Cartier-Bresson quote implicitly acknowledges the importance of the chef, and hence of the printing process (what today we call 'post-processing').  He had the good fortune to be a good enough photographer that people would provide him with first-rate post-processing and he didn't have to worry about it, which is good. (Yeah, if you want to argue the extreme position of 'abnegation of responsibility,' then he was doing so; but he was at least doing so in the confident believe that a master chef was cooking what he had hunted.)"

Mike replies: Speaking of which, see the announcement I'm going to post next....

The Sigma Bigprint Unofficial National Tour

So I mentioned in the previous post that Sigma digital camera devotees are a small but hardy band. Many of them hang out on the Dpreview Sigma Forum, withstanding a regular barrage of slings and arrows from trolls. And the members of the group (the sincere ones, not the trolls) are friendly and supportive of each other—some of them have even met up for photography outings and such.

Quick background, even though it's well known: Sigma has the exclusive rights to the Foveon sensor, which works like color film by layering the photodiodes one on top of another instead of placing them side-by-side as in a more conventional Bayer-type sensor. This allows each photosite to record RGB color information and gives Foveon sensors higher resolution than Bayer-array sensors. Unfortunately, this has led to a semipermanent dispute: Sigma likes to say that each photosite counts for three pixels, since it detects all three colors whereas a Bayer array only detects one; so it would call a sensor with five million photosites, for example, a "15 megapixel" camera. Competitors and their followers call foul on this, feeling that a photosite should equal a pixel, and claiming that a 5-MP Foveon sensor doesn't actually quite equal the resolution of a 15-MP Bayer-array sensor.

Arguments ensue.

The latest and greatest Foveon sensor debuted in the Sigma SD1 in 2010. It has a 3200x4800, 15.4-megapixel Foveon X3 sensor, which by Sigma's nomenclature means it's a 46-megapixel camera. (See preceeding paragraph.)

The Sigma Merrill Foveon X3 direct image sensor.

So anyway, let's let that sleeping dog lie where it lays, and move on. Recently, two denizens of the Dpreview Sigma Forum, Rick Decker and Kendall Helmstetter Gelner, had some 2.5x4-foot (30x48 in., ~76x121 cm) prints made from Sigma SD1 files, loaded them into a big cardboard box, and asked who would like to see them. The prints are currently on a circuit of the nation, wending their way from the home of one American Sigma Forumer to the next. (There might be a European tour as well, eventually.)

TOP reader and occasional contributor Jim Kofron was second or third on the list. Since he's in Kenosha, Wisconsin, not far from me, he kindly invited me down to have a look.

Jim Kofron holding one of the touring prints from the SD1.

We met in a deserted elementary school lunchroom; Jim's wife Jennifer is a drama teacher, and a play (which Jim photographed) had just ended. We spent a pleasant hour unrolling the prints and inspecting and discussing them.

The indiputable conclusion: SD1 files are a lot closer to the output of 46-MP Bayer-array sensors than to that of 15.4 MP ones. Foveon sensors have a particularly beautiful output; they have a sort of vividness and clarity that, when everything clicks, can be quite lovely. Some of the prints, even at that size, were really good—just as photographic prints, never mind the technical forensics.

Really big prints are a curious subgenre of photography, one that's been given undue prominence of late because of the conflation of size with status in the art world. Art photographers now almost have to print big. For normal photographers, huge prints are problematic. Most of us don't have places to store them (a dirty little secret of the gallery world: a lot of collectors don't have places to store huge prints either, and some photographers whose work was actually intended to be larger have had to provide 16x20s to galleries because that's the biggest size some collectors want to buy). There are a number of aesthetic considerations that apply as well; some pictures work well big, others really don't. Technically, the bigger the print, the smaller the technical flaw it will expose or exaggerate.

The one Jim's holding works well at the very large size. The eye is drawn past the foreground rooftops and spire and in to the docked sailboats, which are presented in rich, satisfying detail.

Of the twelve or so prints Jim showed me (sorry, I didn't count), a couple of the pictures didn't "work for me" at the size; one picture "fell apart" technically because it just didn't have enough detail where it needed it (detail was, in general, in no shortage in the prints as a whole); one was relatively poorly printed (these weren't fancy custom prints, according to Jim, but inexpensive fixed-price ones); and one showed a serious lens flaw—decentering—with admirable, almost textbook clarity.

My favorites were a western rock face with petroglyphs visible, with two tiny people climbing around on the rocks; the picture Jim's holding, and a similar one of European rooftops; and—the best argument for the Foveon sensor, I thought—a woman sitting in a garden. About that last one: I think it's just impossible to have a reasonable complaint with it. It looks great, even at what I consider an excessive size. As an enlargement it beats medium format film fairly handily, in my judgement, and I'd even say that I've seen plenty of prints from 4x5 that aren't as rich in either color or detail. I've never seen a print from the A900 quite that big, but it at least holds its own with the oversized A900 prints I have seen.

The prints look rich rather than hyper-resolved—there's plenty of detail—detail enough, certainly, even from eight inches with my reading glasses on—but the detail doesn't dominate. It integrates as a whole with the picture.

A slightly-bigger-than-lifesize portrait worked wonderfully, too.

With any camera, some pictures will print better big than others. But with the normal and ordinary caveat that the picture needs to be one that "works" big, I'd have no trouble at all, personally, making four-foot-wide prints from the Sigma Merrill sensor.

The Sigma SD1 Merrill is available as of this month—as mentioned in the previous post, for a much more real-world price than what it cost when it first came out. And what might be, to some, even better news: Sigma plans to put the same 15.4 X3 (15.4/46 MP) Sigma Merrill sensor in a version of both the DP1 an the DP2—to be called, naturally enough, the DP1 Merrill and DP2 Merrill. (At the link, scroll down.) (The difference between the two is the lenses—one has a 19mm [28mm-e] lens, the other is 30mm [45mm-e].)

Many thanks to Jim for sharing the touring prints with me, and to Rick and Kendall for their generosity to their fellow Sigmaphiles. It's always nice to encounter a bunch of photographers with such a sense of community.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Rick Decker: "Mike: Re the picture Jim is holding. You may not have realized that you can see the top of a cruise ship which is in the harbor and then behind it in the distance the houses you see are on the other side of the bay. Also, which you probably noticed, you can read the company name on the crane on the right side. And this from a zoom lens. Thanks for the review. And your three favorites match mine."

Featured Comment by David Paterson: "I owned a Sigma DP1 compact for a short time. There was lots wrong with it but the colour it produced was way the best I have ever seen from a digital camera. The green part of the spectrum—usually difficult—was particularly beautifully and richly reproduced. It had a 5-MP sensor which competed pretty equally, detail-wise, with my two other cameras at that time—Nikon D2X and D300 DSLRs, both 12 MP. If the Sigma SD1 Merrill could take Nikon lenses, I'd be very interested."

Mike replies: Okay, but beware of those write times. Note that the above is not a camera review—it's a print review. As I said in my shortest-ever camera review of the DP2, "Shooting raw with the DP2 is like walking holding hands with a three-year-old: it's just gonna slow you down." I'm told if you shoot Raw with the SD1, write times are very slow by today's standards.

Featured Comment by Jim Kofron: "Mike, I really enjoyed our session with these prints. I've been a Foveon/Sigma fan for a long time, but I was surprised how good many of these prints looked. European Sigma fans should know that Kendall and Rick have apparently sent a batch of the prints over to Amsterdam, so the European tour has commenced!"

Ken Tanaka: Shooting JPEG Instead of Raw

Sony NEX-5N camera JPEG, 1.6 sec. @ ISO 800, –3/10 EV

By Ken Tanaka

A couple of months ago I suggested keeping an open mind toward using in-camera image processing, and a number of people asked me to expand on the subject. So I thought I'd just share the logic behind my suggestion and some notes on my own practices.

First things first: no, I am not advocating that anyone abandon using Raw* image files. They are undeniably essential for any application requiring extensive manipulation of the image, particularly significant enlargements. Further, Raw will be the most practical choice if you expect to apply extreme tonal variations on those images. If you need Raw, shoot Raw. Simple as that.

That said, however, the fact is that the majority of my own images remain rather close to their original capture state. I'll bet yours do, too. And with 10 MP being today's apparent minimum resolution for new cameras, I rarely need to even stretch a file any more. The native resolution is nearly always adequate for even larger prints.

So with 1+ terabyte of mostly Raw files hogging my disc space, I asked myself a few simple questions. Does an all-Raw image work flow make any sense? Should I be taking advantage of the substantial storage and processing economies of using pre-cooked camera JPEG files as my new "standard"? Shouldn’t I be taking advantage of the enormous strides that camera manufacturers have made in in-camera image processing? And the big question: Will anyone call me a sissy if I use in-camera JPEGs?!

Why shoot JPEG? Because that's where the money went!**
The major camera manufacturers invest substantial sums toward refining their image processing technologies***. It's what they're most proud of as the hearts of their cameras and a key part of their proprietary competitive weaponry. Processing systems such as Canon's DIGIC system, Nikon's EXPEED system, and Fujifim's EXR system integrate the operation of the camera with the lens and sensor in an attempt to optimize the recorded image.

Using only Raw files from your camera is analogous to buying an uncooked meal from a fine restaurant, preferring to season and cook it at home. This made perfect sense years ago when the chef was still in school. But today many in-camera chefs are James Beard Award candidates. It's definitely time for a re-think.

Back to the future!
So now that you're eager to use all the new technology in your camera, I'm going to suggest you shoot like it's 1980. Yup. Even the best camera JPEG is an 8-bit file which affords less adjustment leeway than a raw file. So the best general guidance I can offer when shooting JPEGs is to be careful with your exposures. We've all become sloppy as cameras have become more automated. Many of the camera processors realize this and have programs that automatically compensate for our carelessness. But the best strategy is to devote some "quality time" to become deeply, almost instinctively familiar with your camera's metering and processing responses. I guarantee that the investment will repay you with excellent dividends.

I'll have mine medium-rare, but hold the sauce, please
I approach in-camera processing to get the best of what it can provide. But usually nothing more. That is, I generally use the most neutral color profile and medium contrast and sharpness. This provides the camera's essential technical corrections and tonal adjustments but steers clear of the faux effects such as "Holga," "Antique," and "MFA Candidate." This produces a file with color and contrast tonality that's generally straight down the middle of the road and able to equally accommodate + or – bumps. It looks more lively than a purely linear Raw image but not vivid.

What about B&W conversions?
Black-and-white conversions are more technically and aesthetically complex than simply nudging chroma and luminance. Reducing relatively rich color data to a few shades of gray is tricky for anything fancier than simple desaturation. B&W conversions also tend to be wandering manual processes as you lurch through slider settings in search of perfection. Staying within a higher-bit color system offers you a wider aisle down which to lurch.

Conversions to B&W can strain the JPEG’s limitations, as shown in this conversion of a gradient portion of a scene.

For this reason I recommend taking either of two approaches. First, experiment to see if your camera's processor can produce a conversion that you like. You may discover that it can usually produce a good average head-start baseline.

Failing that, I recommend that you simply use Raw files for images destined for B&W conversion. This is especially true for scenes featuring color gradients and/or a densely varied palette of colors and tones. Why needlessly suffer?

Other notes
I've already made the point of taking care with your exposures when shooting JPEGs. To that end, if your camera's exposure compensation facility is not already second nature to you (wagging finger), invest the time to make it so. Exposure compensation may be among the least-used features on advanced cameras, even though it's incredibly valuable and powerful for providing the crucial nudging important for getting the best images straight from the camera (Raw or JPEG).

• The "expose-to-the-right" mantra is not always the best strategy for JPEGs. In my own experience, well-lit scenes with high-contrast ratios will, indeed, benefit from + exposure compensation. But predominantly dark scenes featuring bright points or pools, such as the top image, often benefit from – compensation. Again, forget dogma and experiment for yourself.

• Beware of resolution reductions that certain in-camera rendering modes may produce. For example, the Fujifilm X10's EXR mode devoted to minimizing low-light noise uses a pixel-binning**** technique which halves the camera's resolution. I'm not suggesting abstinence, just cognizance.

• Editing JPEG image files in Lightroom and Bridge is essentially identical to editing Raw files. (I use the Camera Raw editor in Bridge for making edits to JPEGs as well as Raw files.) In fact I expect that you'll rarely take note of the difference.

• Images processed from Raw files tend to have basically the same initial appearance, camera to camera, principally determined by your converter. But camera JPEGs show much more character of both the camera body body and the lens. Just an observation.

Photography has always been highly susceptible to dogmatic practices, fetishes, and gospels. "Only film...," "Only prime lenses...," "Only viewfinders...," "Only full-frame...," "Only Raw files...." The problem with dogmas is that although they're often founded in point-in-time best-practices they can become dated millstones in a field with such an inconstant technical environment as photography. That's exactly the case with the "Raw-only" dogma. If you use a late-model camera and have largely ignored its image processor, you owe it to yourself to explore it, even if you're a placard-waving "Raw-only club" member. You may find that you can better allocate your post-processing time or, better, spend more time just studying your images.

And nobody's going to call you a sissy or kick sand in your face at the beach if you start using in-camera JPEGs.

Ken

*[Just an editorial note...we can never decide whether to write it "raw" or "RAW" (it's not an acronym) so TOP's site style is simply to split the difference and write "Raw." This is on us, not Ken. "JPEG," however, is an acronym. —Mike the Ed.]

**Apologies to Willie Sutton for adapting his famous line.

***There are some exceptions. Within my own collection of cameras two, of the most expensive, the Leica M8.2 and M9, are ironically among them. The JPEG images from these cameras are downright primitive.

****Pixel-binning is a software/firmware algorithm to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of an image sensor by merging data from adjacent pixels. The compromise improves image quality but results in less image data.

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Featured Comment by Bill Mitchell: "AMEN! Three cheers and a tiger."

Featured Comment by Jim Allen: "Your analogy of buying a meal from a nice restaurant and taking it home to cook it yourself kind of struck me like a good solid smack. What a perfect description. I never thought to look at it that way, and have been pretty firmly in the 'just shoot Raw' camp. For a long time. Not a placard-waving demonstrator mind you, just always shot Raw by default, having read many recommendations to do so in the not too distant past. I've always set the point and shoot cameras I've owned to shoot 'fine' JPEGs without a second thought, and sometimes have been quite taken with the images thus produced. I've always assumed I needed to sit there in front of Lightroom as a kind of after shoot ritual with my DSLR work. Not always eager to give up the extra time required either. I feel a bit like an idiot for never even really trying out the JPEG capabilities of my Canon DSLRs. I think I've set them to take small JPEGs for Ebay once or twice, but that's it. HMMmmm. I think I'll try your advice and see what I see.

"Thanks for the article, it really was an intriguing read. Long have I wandered in the forest, and suddenly the trees come into focus."

Featured Comment by h.linton: "Interesting idea. I was actually thinking about this very thing this past week and after some thought realized that the only advantage (to my mind) would be the extra capacity on the CF card which is not an incentive to change. I get your logic though, but, in the digital world that I inhabit, it's the post-processing 'signature' that I create myself that I'm most interested in—not what some camera manufacturer might come up with."

Featured [partial] Comment by Zeeman: "There is another consideration though—one does not always know, at the time of image capture, how the image might eventually be used. It is no stretch to imagine that a photographer might take a photo, 'sleep on it,' and retrospectively decide that it looks better in black and white."

Featured Comment by marek: "The flip side is that a good Raw converter at home (perhaps from the very same camera company) is like having the 5-star Michelin chef living in at home listening to our every culinary desire?"

Featured Comment by John Krumm: "I shoot Raw, but when teaching middle school students (as I was this morning) we always have the DSLRs (Oly 520's) set to JPEG. The files look great in Aperture, and it's all so much easier to handle. There's an art to getting perfect jpegs, adjusting contrast as needed, watching specular highlights...it can help your Raw shooting in the end, since it forces you to think about the light more."

Featured Comment by Peter Silvia: "In keeping with this train of thought, Antonin Kratochvil is interviewed here and says that he shoots JPEG."

Featured Comment by K.H.: "Shooting JPEG is the equivalent of taking your colour film to the drug store for some body else to print it for you, shooting in Raw is like having your own darkroom, in my opinion."

Featured Comment by Murray Lord: "I liked what Gianni Galassi posted on his blog a while ago: 'I'm allergic to Raw formats and I expect a good camera to properly do its job, which is to take a photograph and properly process it into a usable file, instead of subcontracting this task to the photographer.'"

Featured [partial] Comment by Ed: "I compare .jpg to .mp3 files. They are great for listening to music in a bus, but not perfect for use on a 40,000 dollar sound system. Not perfect for editing either. But having said that, if you are happy with the end result there is no need to go elsewhere and indeed new in camera engines are improving."

Featured [partial] Comment by Roy: "Hmm. Shooting JPEG only is effectively to intentionally restrict your options. Given that shooting Raw and JPEG simultaneously is a cost free option—card space excepted—the argument is no argument at all."

Featured Comment by Nico Burns: "I still see very little disadvantage to shooting Raw+JPEG. I have a 16GB SD card, which allows me to take about [?] Raw+JPEG images before I run out of room. Hard drives are also fairly cheap. IMO having the Raw there just-in-case is definitely worth it those couple of times you need it."

Featured Comment by Jeffy: "JPEG makes me money."

Featured Comment by Jeff Johnston [no relation —MJ]: "Will anyone call me a sissy if I use in-camera JPEGs?! Yes."

Nokia PureView

(Now there's a term that hadn't entered radar contact for me until a few weeks ago: "Nokia PureView.)

Hard on the heels of the news that the 41-megapixel Nokia 808 PureView isn't being offered here in the United States (the sensor will probably come here eventually in a phone running Windows mobile), there comes this fascinating article by Nokia's Damien Dinning. Really interesting what problem they were solving, and how they solved it. Newthink—I like it.

(As far as the guy hanging from the rock is concerned, though, human beings should stop doing that. I have to look away.)

Ctein is sending me the trial prints he made from the Nokia 808 sample files. I'll comment when they arrive.

Mike

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Featured Comment by beuler: "The size of each photo detector on the 808 (1.4 microns) is equal to that of the iPhone 4S. The iPhone has 8 million, the 808 has 41 million. Do you think this sensor is stunning? Consider the lens! Take a look at this interview about the lens on the front of that sensor. Mike, you should be all over this Zeiss interview."

Mike replies: I enjoyed it, yes.

Featured Comment by Speed: "So instead of buying a phone with a camera attached, we'll be buying a camera with a phone attached. As it should be."

Featured Comment by Jim: "Disruptive technology for sure. Technology eventually reduces everything to an appliance and sucks all the fun from things."

Featured Comment by Mike Anderson: "Like many Nikon fans are saying, 'can I get a D800 without the video?', I'm wondering, 'can I get one of these without the phone?'"

It's the Future Calling

Every now and then I think I've landed in an alternate Universe—this time, because what I'm reading reminds me of one of those jokey posts from about 2004 where someone specifies "what I want" and exaggerates everything to a ludicrous degree.

You know, like "I want a camera that fits my hand but weighs 3 ounces, with a 17–800mm ƒ/1 lens...." That kind of thing.

Or it could have been, "I want a 41-megapixel cameraphone...."

Except that appears to be what all the tips stuffed into my inbox when I got home from the Auto Show last night were going on about. Improbable as it may sound, it appears that Nokia unveiled a forty-one-MP cameraphone at the opening day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain yesterday. Called the 808 PureView, it also has a sensor a little larger than a quarter the area of 4/3—some five times larger than the average small-sensor digicam according to dpreview. The camera's native mode will be pixel-binning, apparently. Here's the Nokia press release.

I had a conversation with a Harley dealer at the Auto Show yesterday, during which I admitted that I'm as much a 4-wheeler guy as Jeremy Clarkson (an episode of "Top Gear" highlighted Jeremy's ineptitude with, and contempt for, two-wheeled transportation). In a similar vein, I'm really just not a phone guy—I'm a camera guy. Still, surely, if the cameraphone and the digicam are going to meet each other on the sidewalk one day and pass each other while tipping their hats, then maybe yesterday was a big step towards that particular convergence.

(Unless I'm really in an alternate Universe. Could be; I mean, could a silent movie in black-and-white with a French star possibly win Best Picture in the real Universe? Sounds debatable on its face.)

Mike
(Thanks to numerous alternate-Universe tipsters)

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Featured Comment by Ctein: "I couldn't resist downloading and printing out the three photographs that Christian pointed us to. Printed them out as best-quality prints on 17x22" paper on my Epson 3880 printer. No image massaging except for about a half pixel radius Smart Sharpen, which I routinely do to all Bayer array camera photographs (it's amazing how much it perks up fine detail without introducing artifacts).

"The verdict?

"WOW!!!

"They're good. They're really good.

"For JPEG's, they're almost unbelievably good.

"No, it's not a replacement for RAW, it's not a replacement for an interchangeable lens camera, it's not a replacement for one of today's available-darkness wunderkind.

"But pretty much everything else? Oh yeah, this runs rings around them.

"(Assuming, of course, one actually wants a camera with a phone in it. Personally, last thing in the world I want. But you get the idea.)"

Sony's 'Focus Peaking'

A TOP reader named Peter Erbak wrote from the Czech Republic yesterday to ask if we'd written anything on Sony's focus-peaking. I haven't—I haven't even seen it in action, thanks to the demise not long ago of the retailer in my area that carried Sony cameras.

I'm interested in hearing from people who've used focus-peaking with manual-focus lenses for "real work." If that describes you, what do you think?

Mike

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "It works, sorta. It's never spot on, the way you can get with enlarging the LCD 14x. If you are used to manual focus TLR cameras and use the 'too close, too far, split the difference' technique, it's pretty good, but not pixel-peeping good and make-24x36-inch-prints good."

Featured Comment by Michael Houghton: "It is really rather good, if you choose the right level of peaking (and colour) for the setting. It doesn't, of course, actually show focus—just contrast edges—and it works at the level of pixels you are looking at, not the full resolution, so it might peak with the whole shot in view but not at the pixel level, which can be confusing. Since the NEX displays the actual stopped-down image on the display, and then amplifies the image to get acceptable brightness, it does sometimes find transitory peaks due to sensor noise, and as a result it can be quicker to focus wide open then stop down.

"It takes a little practice to learn how to 'read' the peaks as they build up and drop away while you focus, but with a little learning effort you can get very fast rough focussing that you can quickly refine by zooming in. It will also peak in video mode and with autofocus lenses. It does prefer a contrasty lens, though, and tends to work much better a third of a stop down from open."

Featured Comment by Björn: "It's the best way that I have yet been able to focus with manual lenses on a digital camera. Its still not as good or fast as an old Canon AE-1 or even a good rangefinder. It tends to be very problematic in low light and low contrast situations, because the focus color doesn't show up because the camera obviously uses the edge of an object to determine focus and under those circumstances a precise edge is harder for the camera to see. Also when photographing people the focus color doesn't always show up in the eyes of people, more like around their ears, and if you use a large aperture you will miss focus on those occasions. You have to use the magnification function to be able to focus in those situations and that slows you down.

"The point of focus peaking is that its supposed to be a fast way to determine what is in focus, and when you have to use the magnification feature 50% of the time when shooting people that kind of uncertainty can be quite a pain. It works quite well in normal light and when your subject isn't moving too fast, but then again so does magnification focusing and good old zone focusing. All that said I do prefer it to other ways of focusing if you tweak it a little bit by shooting in Raw+JPG and setting the camera to a black and white preset so that the focus color shows up more distinctly on the screen."

Featured Comment by Bob Ware: "You must try it to believe it! I recently acquired a Sony NEX-5N and have adapters for both Nikon and Pentax lenses. Manual focus confirmation is assured by a shimmering outline around the subject. I find this much more informative than any other type of focusing confirmation system in other still cameras."

Featured Comment by Christer: "I have a Sony NEX-5N with the short kit zoom, and I also use the camera with some of my (current) Summicrons. Focus peak: you never had it so good! Especially if you wear glasses, like I do. I have variable focus (???) eyeglasses which can be a pain when used with some viewfinders. I sometimes manually fine adjust the focus when I use the NEX in AF mode. The image shown will then be enlarged five or 10 times so that focus can be really pinpointed. Of course you can select what area you wish to be enlarged so that you need not move the camera.

"For manual lenses, peaking is even better. You can use the peaking facility with maximum aperture to really nail down focus, and then shoot at whatever aperture you wish. Peaking is convenient, quick and cool."

Featured Comment by J Holmes: "Not really sure it is highly effective in stills (and especially in the case of wide apertures). I own a 5N and really am beginning to think Sony offered it up as a way to appease NEX shooters for a lack of native lenses. I have used it with legacy lenses as well as native and find it to be reasonably fast but not tremendously accurate."

Featured Comment by Doug: "Just like with using a rangefinder for the first time, one has to spend some time dialing in focus peaking and practicing with it. After using it on the Nex-5 and Nex-5N for eight months, I am very confident with it in most situations, and magnification is there for backup. You definitely can't pick it up and shoot with 100% confidence on the first day, but peaking works well with practice."

Featured Comment by JKP: "I really love focus peaking and focus confirmation in my A77. Really handy feature, also for macro photo, and I use it a lot. I have never been really into manual focus, now I would judge my manual focus to be 20–45 % of my shooting...not just because of the focus peaking, but also focus confirmation. But I mostly use it for video work, like follow focus. It is so easy to make controlled change of the focus plane during video shooting, somehow it takes my video work to the next level because of ease of use."

Featured Comment by Peter Foiles: "Using peaking properly is an acquired skill. If shooting a face at wide aperture for example you may initially think that having the face surrounded by peaking means it is in focus but what you will discover is that the ears are in focus and the eyes not. Once you experiment a bit and really understand exactly what it is doing then it works well.

"The combination of magnified view and peaking is as deadly accurate a focusing method as I have found in my 40+ years of photography, though it is a bit tedious."

Myths About Megapixels (...And, Does the D800 Have Too Many?)

By Ctein

The recent announcement of the 36-megapixel Nikon D800 has brought forth a certain number of predictable reactions, a few lauding it as the Second Coming and many more dismissing the utility of more megapixels.

Most such opinions are based on mythical (or at least mistaken) beliefs about what pixel counts really mean. Let's see how many of them I can shoot down in one column.

I've written on this subject many times before, so I'm not going to present detailed arguments. I am simply going to assert facts. To keep the number of comments I have to answer to a minimum, please remember to check to see if your doubts have already been addressed in the cited columns and my comments before you take issue with my myth-busting.

-

Myth #1

The sharpness of your photographs will increase in proportion to the number of pixels.

Reality: Well, technically, the square root of the number of pixels, but that's not really the issue. Quadrupling the number of pixels (doubling the resolution of the sensor) is no more guaranteed to double the sharpness of your photographs than doubling the sharpness of the film you were using did. Image sharpness is a convolution of multiple factors. Improving sensor resolution improves image sharpness, but it won't make a proportional difference unless it is by far the fuzziest link in the chain. For more on this, see my article "Diffraction In Perspective."

-

Myth #2

Getting more megapixels is just about making bigger prints.

Reality: For a minority, yes, but it's more commonly about making sharper prints at whatever size you're choosing to print. Good printers can render more than 500 PPI of fine detail and human eyes can perceive considerably more than that. Digital cameras are only about 50% efficient in terms of resolution (e.g., a 24-megapixel camera delivers about 12 megapixels of resolvable detail), so you don't have to be printing very large to see a perceivable difference from more megapixels. See "How Sharp Is Your Printer? How Sharp Are Your Eyes?"

Whether you care about that difference, of course, depends upon your needs. But the difference is there.

-

Myth #3

More megapixels inevitably means noisier photographs and/or poorer high ISO performance.

Reality: That would be true if the camera manufacturer took exactly the same chip technology and exactly the same support electronics and simply crammed more pixels into the same size chip. That never happens! Those pixel-count changes are always accompanied by other improvements in the chips and the support circuitry. If we had reached the physical limits of image quality, those improvements wouldn't be able to compensate for the additional pixels. We haven't; we're several stops away from that. New cameras frequently have higher pixel counts, lower noise, and better ISO performance, all at the same time. See "Photography at the Speed of Light" and "Something Old and Something New."

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Myth #4

It's pointless to add more pixels because lenses aren't good enough.

Reality: I have no idea where this one came from, because it's contradicted by decades of lens and camera test data. I'm going to cut through the morass of minutia-based arguments about pixel dimensions, filter geometries, and Airy disks and lay it out in very simple terms. A 16-megapixel 35mm-sized Bayer array sensor is going to resolve around 50 line pairs per millimeter (lp/mm). A 36-megapixel sensor will resolve around 75 lp/mm. Even mediocre 35mm lenses will hit 75 lp/mm at some aperture over some portion of their field of view. This is true of both fixed focal length and zoom lenses.

Decent (not at all exceptional) 35mm-format lenses can hit 75 lp/mm at just about all apertures and will do so over most of the field of view for at least one aperture. They'll show peak resolutions more like twice that. Really good lenses (not necessarily expensive ones) will be able to exceed 75 line pair per millimeter without even trying hard over most/all of the field of view and will have peak resolutions three or more times that.

Furthermore, until the lens resolution drops to only half that of the sensor, improving sensor resolution will produce an observable improvement in image resolution.

See the previously cited diffraction column and "Why 80 Megapixels Just Won't Be Enough..."

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Myth #5

This is just a useless horsepower race by manufacturers; people don't need all those megapixels.

Reality: Sure, it's a horsepower race, but saying nobody needs it would be like saying nobody needed 120 format over 35mm or sheet film formats over 120 roll film. Most people don't, to be sure. Even more won't be willing to pay the premium. Count me in that group; I may still very well lay out a grand for the 24-megapixel Sony NEX-7, but there's no way I'm laying out $3K for the boat anchor Nikon D800. But that's just me (and, similarly, your priorities are just you).

Let's also remember that not everybody likes to compose uncropped, full frame. Actually, most photographers don't (although many digital photographers have been forced into it). If 50% more pixels affords them the opportunity to do some reasonable cropping without unreasonable sacrifices in sharpness, they will be happy campers.

In other words, it's not about you. It's not even about me.

•     •     •

It's likely I have missed some myths, but I'm sure I've done enough busting to enrage some of the myth-perpetuators. Can't wait to see what shows up in my e-mail inbox.

Ctein

Physicist, astronomer, photographer and fine printer Ctein has written hundreds of articles for dozens of magazines about the science and technique of photography over four decades. It's no myth that his weekly TOP column appears on Wednesdays.

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Kirk's Take (Kirk Tuck #4)

They stole our choice of aspect ratios. Now we’re getting them back

By Kirk Tuck

When I started taking photographs, back in 1978, I picked up a 35mm camera because that's what matched my budget and, I thought, my needs. I spent some years trying desperately trying to confine my vision of what a scene or portrait should look like into a long and stringy frame that never quite worked. When I needed to shoot horizontally I always needed to slice off all the junk that showed up on the either side of the "good part" of the frame. When I shot vertically there was alway twenty five or thirty percent of the top or bottom of the frame that needed to be chiseled away to calm my eyes.

Gradually I became habituated to the long, skinny and mathematically clumsy frame and tried my best. I figured that having a photographic vision that was fluid and smooth and easy must be for people with some innate, natural talent. Like those lucky bastards who can just pick up a guitar and make wonderful music after a handful of lessons.

Then one day a friend who was also interested in photography showed me a camera he'd just picked up. It was a twin lens YashicaMat rollfilm camera that shot 12 square frames on each roll of 120 film. Square frames!

My friend couldn't warm up to the reversed image in the waist level finder and suggested that I give the camera a whirl. I reached down and pulled the finder apparatus into position, flipped up the little attached magnifier, looked through and focused. And, in an instant, something somewhat magical happened: Everywhere I pointed the camera a perfect composition sprang into being. I could point the camera at the intersection of a concrete curb and the asphalt of a street and, there it was, perfect composition.

And the joy I felt when I lined up my first informal portrait was wonderful. It eclipsed everything I'd done in photography to that point.

I felt like I couldn't afford the camera. I was still in school and working a part time job. But when I started down the stairs of my apartment, intent on returning the YashicaMat to my friend, I realized that I couldn’t afford not to buy it. The effect was that powerful.

When I decided to pursue the rigorous and noble undertaking of professional, commercial photography I went right out and bought a used Hasselblad 500 CM and 150mm Sonnar Lens. Every time I looked through the finder of that camera I knew the one thing I wouldn’t have to worry about would be framing. I had found my perfect aspect ratio.

And I found, when looking at the work of others—even masters—I have always had a prejudice for the calmness and formal structure of the square. I have friends who've used panoramic cameras and all the other formats. I've dabbled (mostly unsuccessfully) with 6x7 cm, 6x9 cm, 6x12 cm 6x4.5 cm, 4x5 inch, and 8x10 inch cameras and almost every time I find myself chaffing at the aesthetic discomfort of all that wasted space.

"No Problem." I thought. "I'm happy just shooting these marvelous, magical squares of color and black and white." And I did. Cartons and cartons of Fuji and Kodak films. Mostly Tri-X, but other flavors when the menu called for them.

And then one day it all collapsed.

We made the transition to digital. Clients loved it. You could shoot quick. You didn't need Polaroid. Etc., etc. We’ve heard it all a thousand times before. But the thing that really never got talked about was the most important thing we lost: aspect ratio choice.

If you bought a professional level digital camera you had no choice of aspect ratios. You got stuck with the nasty old 35mm, 3:2 ratio whether you liked it or not. And my battle with wasted and unusually configured space returned. And it was nasty. One maker of digital backs offered a square back but it was priced for people working for jumbo clients in world class markets. I was stuck with mainstream.

I'm sure there are those among us who can look at a 3:2 frame and immediately, and comfortably divine the "presence" of the square without assistance. Good for them. I'm not one of them. I like a little assistance from my camera in the form of clearly defined boundaries. Edges. Guide posts. When I look into the finder of my camera I want to see a square frame and I want everything not in the square frame to be excluded from view. And given the popularity of square frame cameras from the 1950s right up to the age of digital, I'm sure there are many who agree with me.

I suspect that rigorous boundaries are helpful because they eliminate one variable of choice and so let us concentrate on composition in a different way, regardless of which format you favor. Cropping after the fact is not the same.

One of the reasons I have been so passionately enamored of the mirrorless cameras is that removing the optical finder from the equation means camera makers can give us back our freedom of choice when it comes to the configuration of our framing via the electronic viewfinder. I bought the Olympus E-P2 with its electronic viewfinder largely because I can set the camera so that, when I bring the finder to my eye, I see a square image framed by black. And every EVF capable camera I can think of strikes the same blow for Freedom of Choice.

If you like wide, they give you 16:9. If you like that pedestrian and ubiquitous 35mm frame they're happy to give you the option to "3:2 it" all you want. And, true to most of the sensors in the mirrorless cameras I tend to use, they also offer the stodgy and boxy 4:3 ratio. You are free to use any of these "lesser" aspect ratios or join me in re-embracing the most intoxicating of formats, 1:1. It even sounds uniquely balanced. One-to-one.

Given the quality of camera files these days I've come to believe that flexibility in setting your preferred aspect ratio is one of the most important factors for overall photographic success and, that the move back to a gracious banquet of aspect ratios is a sign that we're moving past the gnawing hunger for more pixels and less noise into the more lofty sphere of actually thinking about the content and artful arrangement of our images instead of just their legibility.

If you are consistently uneasy composing images I would suggest that you and your present camera format may be at odds. If you have access to an electronic viewfinder camera with changeable aspect ratios you might want to take it out for spin and see what works for you. One size fits all is rarely a good plan in the mystical world of art. Or in the pragmatic world of photography. And if you really love the 3:2? Well aren't you just as happy as a pig at the trough?

SUPPORT ASPECT RATIO FREEDOM!

Kirk

Photographer, photo book author, and photography blogger Kirk Tuck's monthly column on TOP appears on the last Saturday of every month.

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Sensitometry and the Plotter/Matcher, Part II

You probably remember Part I, from a week ago Saturday. You might want to go back and re-read that before diving into this part. First, to reiterate: no B&W film photographer needs to practice sensitometry. It's absolutely not necessary for doing good work. This article does, however, contain information of real value for all APUG-type B&W photographers, so don't skip it if you're one of those—even if you have no intention whatsoever of buying a densitometer or practicing sensitometry.

As an aside, since a week ago Saturday I have acquired not one but two densitometers...

Comment o' the Week: Good Ol' Days

From Dogman:

Among the wonderful memories of doing daily newspaper photography in the '70s & '80s was the hurried darkroom work. NOT!

You have never lived a full life until you have faced an 80-mile round trip night sports assignment to a barely lit high school football field where you were expected to obtain outstanding action photos in less than 20 minutes so you could meet an early deadline for the regional edition. Shoot your Tri-X at 1600 although the Luna Pro is showing that is almost two stops under, hit the country road and exceed the speed limit while trying to avoid the deer wandering around the route, get to the darkroom to constantly agitate the film for 3–4 minutes, give it a water soak for another few minutes, print it wet in an autofocus Leitz that's constantly shifting focus due to the wet negatives buckling, print a soft and crappy shot with equally crappy print quality on #5 Kodabromide or #6 Brovira (whichever is available) and give it to the sports desk dripping wet to barely make the deadline.

...and then go to your next assignment for the weekend edition society page.

Boy howdy!  Those were the Good Ol' Days.

Great one.

I've long subscribed to Carl Weese's late '90s idea that B&W film photography was already perfect but that digital represented the real coming-of-age of color photography. Now I also like the idea that digital frees film photography...frees it from all its heretofore onerous practical and quotidian duties such as Dogman so vividly describes above. Now we can use B&W film only when we really want to.

It was Ron Wisner who said, also in the '90s, that B&W film photography would eventually join all the other obsoleted methods of graphical reproduction as a much smaller but greatly more prestigious fine-art printmaking medium. Nobody needs stone lithography, or woodcut, or copperplate etching any more for commercial image reproduction, but none of those things has gone away. (Just like view cameras or, say, platinum-palladium printing have not gone away.)

Could've been worse, Dogman. You could have had to use something like this.

Those media can move over now, and make room; there's a new one about to join their club. Digital does the utility work (and, I'd say, color, too, although some might still argue that) better. Optical/chemical monochrome film photography—highly evolved, completely mature, fully worked out, and beautiful in its own right—might finally get what its proponents have always sought...an elevation in its status as an art medium.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Walter Glover: "My sentiments entirely, as one who uses digital capture for the sake of commercial expediency and B&W sheet film for the soul and contentment of producing fine crafted work."

Sensitometry and the Plotter/Matcher, Part I

Backing up a bit from yesterday, I acknowledge that a number of people were mystified as to, well, what the heck I was talking about. A densitometer, more specifically a transmission densitometer, is simply a device for measuring densities—usually, for our purposes, on negatives.

As you know even if you've never shot one in your life, a negative is a tonally reversed image; dark things in real life (called "shadows" through the photographic process even if they aren't literally shadows) expose the negative very little, resulting in clear (transparent) or close-to-clear areas on the film; bright things in life (called "highlights") result in heavily exposed areas of reduced silver metal in the negative—the dark parts.

A negative. Photo by John Loengard. Extra points if you
recognize whose negative it is.

A transmission densitometer merely measures how much density there is in any given area of a negative. It's just a measuring device, like a scale or a thermometer or a ruler.

Of course, the fun doesn't end there. Because anything you can measure, you can plot. (Mathy types rub hands together, twirl ends of mustachios.)

What sensitometrists do—well, the activity we're mainly concerned with here, anyway—is to expose a film to various measured amounts of light, develop the film in a particular manner (i.e., with the developer you're interested in, at a controlled time and temperature), read the density, and plot the amount of exposure against the density it creates on an X-Y graph.

If you do this a bunch of times for a bunch of different exposures (again, with the same film and development protocol) and plot all the points on your graph, you can then draw a line between all the points. Voilà—the film curve.

 

Courtesy nfsa.gov.au

The parts of the curve are labeled in this nice illustration I found (thanks, Australia!), so I won't belabor them further. Except to note that "base + fog density" (commonly written fb+f and pronounced "film base plus fog") is simply the "background density" of an unexposed but developed and fixed piece of film. You can see the fb+f at the edges of the negative in John Loengard's photo above.

The curve was first devised by Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield, the fathers of sensitometry, in 1890, and was called the "H&D curve" in their honor for many years. Now it's more commonly known as a "characteristic curve" or "film curve." Sometimes you encounter the terms "D-LogE curve" or "Y'know, that charty thing for, like, the films or whatever" ('80s highschoolese*). All different names for the same thing.

Now, see that straight line section of the curve? How steep that is describes the contrast of the negative. Develop the test films for more time, the straight-line section gets steeper or more vertical. Develop for less time, and the slope gets milder. That's the origin of the term "Contrast Index" or CI, which was an method developed by C.E.K. Mees and Loyd [sic] Jones of Kodak Research Labs to describe contrast with a single number; there were even handy CI protractors for measuring the angles of curves. Mees and Jones, by the way, are responsible for our current system of B&W contrast management: developing to an average (or ballpark) CI and then fine-tuning contrast with paper grades. Different story for a different day.

More usual in more modern times has been to plot a "curve family"—several curves describing the same film in the same developer but developed for different amounts of time. Here's one of those, also clearly labeled if you'll look at it for five seconds. Note that as the development times go up, the curves get steeper.

Now, if you think about this, that represents an awful lot of test exposures if you're exposing one sheet (piece) of film at a time in, say, a 4x5-inch camera. So, naturally, a shortcut's been devised. What photographers do now to get this information relatively quickly is to use a pre-made piece of transparent material called a "step tablet" or "step wedge" that has a number of steps (usually 11 or 21) of known density already on it. One such is sold by Stouffer Industries. So what you do is expose your film to this step wedge, then read the densities on the film with...you got it, a densitometer.

A densitometer, as I mentioned yesterday, is very easy to use. You turn it on, put the film over the sensor, press the button or lower the sensor arm on to the film, and the reading comes up on the readout. That's all there is to it.

The other type of densitometer is a reflection densitometer, for reading densities on prints.

So what's sensitometry for?
Ctein said yesterday that he has a densitometer but has no use for it. That makes perfect sense to me, because he's mainly a color photographer. Consider this passage from Ansel Adams's fine book The Negative, in its various iterations over the years possibly the most inspirational technical book ever written (cited as such by literally generations of photographers):

Many consider my photographs to be in the "realistic" category. Actually, what reality they have is in their optical-image accuracy; their values are definitely "departures from reality." The viewer may accept them as realistic because the visual effect may be plausible, but if it were possible to make direct visual comparison with the subjects, the differences would be startling.

—Ansel Adams, The Negative, from the Introduction

A densitometer to my mind is really only useful in creative photography in helping to manage the "departures from reality" of the tones in black and white photographs. And, for the most part, they're used by people who can develop film one picture at a time, which means sheet film, which means large-format photographers, who use view cameras.

How any B&W photographer departs from the norm in terms of tonal values is an indivisible part of that photographer's style, from the high contrast of a Ralph Gibson to the low contrast of a Henry Wessel. It's one thing that makes B&W photography so different from color photography: every good black and white photograph is an interpretation.

Ralph Gibson, Priest Collar

Henry Wessel, Albuquerque, N.M.

Note that I've named two photographers who've probably never used a densitometer in their lives. That's entirely by design, because most photographers don't...and don't need to.

Yr. Hmbl Ed. hopes that all the above has been relatively pain-free. Even more fun stuff to come, so please stay tuned.

Mike

*Working with high school students can cause one to crave nouns.

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Featured Comment by Dennis Mook: "This brings back memories of the mid-1970s when I was learning the Zone System by reading books by Picker, White/Zakia & Lorenz, Adams, and others. I was a forensic photographer at the time and was fortunate to have all of the resources of the police department's darkroom at my disposal. I dutifully exposed many, many rolls of 35mm Tri-X (our standard crime scene film), Plus-X, and Panatomic-X as well as sheet after sheet of 4x5 Tri-X (my personal work) according to procedures laid out by my literary teachers. I then used a transmission densitometer to plot film base + fog and establish characteristic curves for these films with several developers. I found myself totally caught up in the technical side of photographic chemistry at the expense of getting out and making aesthically pleasing photographs! Did all this experimentation make me a better photographer? Maybe in some way as it allowed to understand the very simple 'expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights' axiom, albeit at the cost of a lot of time. I believe the one other thing it taught me was to be very disciplined in my approach to making my art which paid off in my photography as well as printmaking."

Up With Squares! More on Square Sensor Cameras

By Eduardo Cervantes

I was interested in Mike's article the other day called "Why Not Square Sensors?" I have advocated before for square sensors. In the case of a full-frame DSLR, an ideal square sensor would be 36x36 mm in size, but a proportional conversion could implemented in any digital camera known to man.

The reason for a square sensor is to go from vertical to horizontal at almost the speed of thought. It would allow the operator to hold the camera always in the same way, preserving the controls always in the same place and always keeping the flash over the center of the lens. No fancy, tiring and distracting elbow movement either. Superior to working with a vertical grip too, I believe.

This proposed system must be mirrorless. The main advantage is that the entire existing line of lenses in any camera system could be used without any restriction or limitation. Only three things are needed: A square shutter curtain to cover the entire square sensor in cameras with shutters, a square LCD and a square EVF. Perhaps, the complete shutter could be discharged with the use of an electronic shutter. They are already here.

The photographer could go from vertical to horizontal and to square at the soft inconspicuous touch of a dedicated button to obtain the desired framing in both the LCD or EVF. He or she could go from a 1:1 to a 2:3 aspect ratio and anything in between with the same camera. Whatever suits the subject better. One other huge bonus would be that when shooting Raw, the in-camera cropping would not be final. Re-framing and re-orienting the picture could be done during Raw developing always keeping the maximum sensor area in regard to the image circle.

The purpose of this arrangement is appointed for speed and comfort when shooting horizontals and verticals as well as for the optimization of the image circle in relation to subject kind and intention. It is not meant for the entire square sensor to be covered with the lens image. Suffice to say, the efective image would be kept within the projected circle of the lens.

For an existing lens system ready for a 24x36 sensor, these are the rounded figures:

2:3 aspect ratio: 24x36 = 864 square millimeters
3:4 aspect ratio: 25.5x34 = 867 sq. mm.
4:5 aspect ratio: 26.5x33 = 874 sq. mm.
1:1 aspect ratio: 30x30 = 900 sq. mm.

One more thing: There are some camera systems with a few perpective control lenses also known as shift lenses. As we all know, these lenses have bigger circles in order to be able to shift the lens without running out of image.

Nikon and Canon have some superb T/S glass in their lens lines. In the particular case of Canon, the new T/S-E II perspective control lenses have a usable circle of 67.2 mm. The circle needed to cover the entire 36x36mm sensor is 51mm. By using this kind of lenses with a square sensor we would effectively be converting a full-framer into a digital medium format camera and still have some millimeters left for shift.

Hasselblad's V camera first digital back had a 36x36 sensor. The image area of a 36x36 sensor is 1296 square millimeters in area, just a few millimeters shy of the Leica S2 with 1350 square millimeters in its 30x45 sensor.

The extra cost of the square sensor, especially as the cost of sensors continues to fall, would be within reason when taking into consideration all these benefits.

Eduardo

Mexican photographer (and TOP reader) Eduardo Cervantes studied photography in the United States and now owns and operates an all-digital professional studio in his native Merida, Yucatan.

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Featured Comment by Francisco Cubas: "A small world isn't? My first photography teacher was Edmundo Segura, in Villahermosa, and he used to talk about Eduardo Cervantes, who lived for some years in the city. He'll be glad to read this."