My Writings. My Thoughts.
Site Migration
// March 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Site Admin
By now, everything should be a fair bit snappier around the place; after dealing with slow load times for the last year or so, I’ve finally organised a new host and migrated everything. It was also a nice opportunity to do some housecleaning and get rid of all the cruft that’s accumulated over the years.
So, if you haven’t already, why not have a look through everything I’m actively updating:
- My main site: http://www.tindrumfire.com
- My Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/tindrumfire
- My flickr photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35697515@N05/
Improving image quality with a DSLR
// March 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Photography
Carrying around a hefty digital SLR seems like overkill to most; fully decked out with a decent low-light telephoto lens and flash, my camera weighs in somewhere around three and a half kilos. That’s a lot of weight to be carrying around your neck, so why do I do it? After all, why use this?
Nikon D700 (12 megapixel)
When you can use this?
Canon Ixus 980 (~15 megapixel)
The Ixus 980 has roughly 3 more megapixels and is significantly lighter (160g vs. ~3.5 kilos), so that makes it a better camera, right?
As with most things in life, there’s no such thing as a free lunch – yes, the Ixus is lighter, but there’s a world of difference in what’s inside. To understand why, we need to take a step back and understand how a camera works. At its most basic, a digital camera has three elements – a lens, which lets light into the camera, a sensor, which captures the light, and a viewfinder, which lets you see what the camera is seeing.
Your standard point and shoot replaces the viewfinder with an LCD attached to the sensor; the sensor is then left permanently on and the camera transmits what the sensor ‘sees’ to the LCD, giving you a live view of the action. Most digital SLRs are slightly different in that they use a relatively simple mirror / prism system to reflect the light through a viewfinder; the sensor is only activated when a photo is taken. The rest of the time, the sensor is hidden by the mirror.
Logically then, there’s really only two things which affect how well the camera can capture what it’s being focused on – the lens and the sensor. Lenses are a topic in their own right, so I’ll skip over them for the moment. Suffice to say that while most people tend to focus on the body of the camera, your average SLR photographer has probably spent on lenses anywhere up to ten times what they spent on their camera body. Sound insane? Well, yeah, it kind of is, but there’s good reasons for it too.
Sensors, on the other hand, are where the first major difference lies between your standard point and shoot cameras and your average digital SLR. It’s pretty simple – as a general rule, the larger the sensor, the more light it can capture, which in turn means that for a given number of pixels, the better the overall quality of those pixels. Despite what may seem logical, not all pixels are of equal worth. Without getting too complex, every pixel has a certain amount of ‘error’ around what it shows compared against what’s in front of you; this error shows up as variation in colour (chroma) or brightness (luma). The better the sensor, the smaller the average error. And, the bigger the sensor for a given number of pixels, the easier it is to control the error (as each pixel has more information to draw from). The greater the average error, the noiser the image becomes and the blurrier hard lines in the image get.
How much of a difference can there be, I hear you ask? Check this out (taken from Wikipedia):
Camera sensor sizes
My main camera uses a full “frame sensor”, shown in the top left. Your average point and shoot uses one of the sensors in the bottom row. Your typical entry-level to mid-range digital SLR uses the APS-C sized sensors. When you consider that at a minimum, your average digital SLR is using a sensor six twelve times bigger to achieve the same number of megapixels, there’s a reason SLRs tend to take clearer images, even when using a relatively cheap kit lens.
Is it worth the extra weight and bulk? Sure it is, at least if you want to ensure you’re getting the best image possible. Entry-level SLRs like the Nikon D60 and Canon 1000D aren’t even that big or heavy, relatively speaking. They won’t fit in your pocket, but they also don’t weight over a kilo when kitted out with a general walkabout lens either.
Having said that, the camera is the least important part of the picture; a good photographer is a good photographer, and good composition is good composition irrespective of the tool used. People have even managed to take some amazing photos using nothing more than a cellphone …
Grey market camera equipment
// March 3rd, 2009 // 7 Comments » // Photography
This is an update of a post I wrote quite a while ago on a blog I’ve since retired; I’ve carried it across because judging by my incoming search trends, it’s still quite a popular topic. In the main, it’s still applicable, although a few things have changed with time. I’ve updated it to reflect this.
In your search for a DSLR, you might have heard something about “Grey market cameras”, often spoken about in both positive and negative connotations. You’re probably asking yourself, “What are these strangely named beasts?”
Basically, the major camera manufacturers lock up each region around the world through exclusive wholesaler arrangements. So, if you want to buy a Canon or Nikon camera, you have to go to the (normally) single wholesaler who’s authorised to purchase from Canon or Nikon. Obviously, in these days of global trade and the Internet, their closest competitor is only a single click away. If you don’t like the prices they’re charging, you’re free to go to a vendor in the US, the UK, or wherever else. Great for you, not so great for the retailer. And, in turn, not always so great for the manufacturer’s ability to find retail outlets and offer a significant enough margin to make carrying their goods worthwhile.
To stop you from doing this, most local service arms will refuse to service or honour the warranty of models purchased overseas. It doesn’t matter if you bought a $2,000 camera in Singapore from an authorised vendor – their default position will be that because you bought it overseas, your warranty isn’t valid. Nice, isn’t it?
These imported models are called “grey market” cameras. They’ve been imported legally and are technically exactly the same as the models being sold domestically, but they aren’t recognised by the distributor. The primary advantage this gives them is that they can set prices in each region to be whatever they want. Canon and Nikon, for example, tend to charge approximately 50% more in Australia than in the US or most of Asia. On the other hand, Pentax is really cheap in Australia, but expensive in Europe. They’ll normally tell where the camera was purchased via the serial number of the bottom of the camera – Nikon varies the first number depending on which market the camera was intended to be sold in. Most retailers will provide domestic support of a foreign model as long as you purchased it in person overseas from an authorised vendor, but Canon’s a bit prickly about this one, apparently.
They argue that it ensures consistency of product, better consumer satisfaction, and so on, but that’s just marketing-speak. It’s basically a form of price discrimination.
So why go grey market? It used to be extremely cheaper (hundreds of dollars in many cases), but this price differential has decreased somewhat with the collapse of the Australian dollar. A recent local camera I bought was only about 3% more expensive than its grey market counterpart.
Why not? You normally lose local warranty support and may have difficulties getting your camera serviced later on. Bear in mind though that this isn’t necessarily the end of the world – most cameras only come with a one year warranty anyway, and there are other service centres that really don’t care where you bought the camera in the first place. Most reputable local retailers will also provide the warranty coverage for you (which they have to do by law), so if your camera breaks, they’ll take care of shipping it back and getting it fixed in the country or origin.
So, in a nutshell, the advantages of going grey market:
- Generally significantly cheaper, but this is heavily dependent on the current exchange rate.
The disadvantages:
- If your retailer goes bust, you’re out of luck during the warranty period unless you’re willing to ship it back at your cost.
- You may have difficulties getting it serviced by the manufacturer after the warranty period. Then again, you may not – it’s luck of the draw. On the other hand, you can always get it serviced by someone other than the manufacturer – most people just want your money and don’t really care where you bought it.
The two companies most people know of in Australia that deal with grey market cameras used to be PhotoBuff and D-D-Photographics. It’s up to you whether or not you want to take the risk, and I make no comment about the long-term reliability of either company. However, I believe PhotoBuff’s been around for about three years, and D-D-Photographics about five. Having said that, PhotoBuff’s been out of action for quite a while now and it’s rather unclear as to when, if ever, they’ll reappear, so with much in life, nothing’s really guaranteed.
What would I do? Personally, I take into account the potential loss should the camera die, the length of the warranty, and the price differential. At the moment, I’ll happily buy local models simply because a 3% price difference isn’t worth the headache to me if the good dies during the warranty period. On the other hand, a year ago I wouldn’t have gone past the grey market models, largely because the price difference was so significant (upwards of 30% in some cases), it was worth taking the risk.
Caveat emptor.
Seeing things others can’t
// March 3rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Photography
Photography’s all about seeing that which others can’t; well, at least that’s what I believe it’s about. It’s about taking the ordinary and turning it into the extraordinary, regardless of whether it’s a person, whether it’s a situation, or whether it’s something as mundane as a bowl of fruit. Good photography makes you double-take and go, ‘Wow. I didn’t even see that!’.
Which is why I’m so impressed with this:
Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
Using a tilt-shift lens? Not so new. Making a progressive montage of photos to tell a story? Again, not so new. But combining them to turn it into something that looks and feels different? Sheer brilliance.