5 august 2010, Switching to Mac OSX entirely

Until recently I used Ubuntu Linux for my desktop and Mac OSX on my old Macbook Pro notebook. I like and support the idea that knowledge and technology should be open source, meaning open for everyone to improve or modify according to his or her needs. Open source is not necessarily the same as "free". The idea is that you share what you know (or have made) with others, hoping that it will inspire them to make other things that they in turn will share with you, or hoping that they will further improve what you have made (that is why it is almost mandatory that scientists publish the results of their work).

The open source approach substantially differs from the traditional idea among economists that the forces on the marketplace ("supply and demand") will eventually lead to the best products. I think that the omnipresence of Microsoft Windows shows that the marketplace does not always do the job it is supposed to do. Windows and Microsoft Office are flawed products. Moreover, once you've bought them (paid for them!) you are not allowed to improve them. Imagine buying a car and not being allowed to put better tires under it. Worse, you are not even allowed to see what is under the hood. You will just have to trust Microsoft (sure!).

I simply do not understand what is happening there. Ubuntu Linux and Open Office offer very high quality on a very stable and very secure OS-platform and you can freely use it without the restrictions that Microsoft and (to a lesser extent) Apple impose on you. So why are so few people using it? Because Microsoft and quite a few hardware manufacturers go out of their way to make it extremely difficult to use it. They refuse to share source code, refuse to make Linux drivers for their hardware and refuse to make information available that allows others to write those drivers. It's obvious that they think they will benefit from it. But it is just as obvious that the consumers (you) are not benefiting from it al all. You get less than optimal products for monopolist prices. And I have to admit that it is not easy to vote with your feet (simply ignore products form manufacturers who engage in such practices) if you are the only one. It is still a wide spread idea that Linux is difficult to use. Allegedly you would have to be a computer geek. Well, that is not true. It is different and you have to get used to it, but if you managed to get used to windows, then there is absolutely no reason to worry. Download the latest version of Ubuntu, burn it to a cd and install it on a four or five year old computer stashed away in a corner of your attic. It works just like that and most of your hardware will be compatible without installing any of the manufacturers drivers. Yes, that includes most scanners and printers! And who cares about virus scanners if you use Linux. Compare that to installing Windows. On the other hand, if you absolutely need Photoshop or some other piece of software that is only available foor Windows and Mac, then you do not have any choice. Open Office, by the way, is also available for Windows. Who wants an illegal version of Microsoft Office if you can get that legally?

So why the switch to Mac OSX?

Using two operating systems (and two computers) next to eachother is a bit of a pain. The new Macbook Pro with i5 Intel processor and 4 Gb of Ram is just as fast as my quad core (Q6600) desktop. It is much quieter than the "rocket silo" under my desk, uses less power and it also just works (even a little more reliable than Linux so far). If I need a computer on another location I simply disconnect a few cables. Reconnecting it afterwards is a matter of seconds only. And, as a bonus, I can work on two screens simultaneously as you can see on the photo above. The graphics chip in the new Macbook Pro has no trouble at all with normal software and the use of two screens. I am not into the latest high end video games, so I cannot judge about that.

15 june 2010, Art in public spaces

Images shot with the Canon Powershot S90.

15 june 2010, Trying not to look back

Not looking back is difficult sometimes. I sold all my Nikons just about 10 days ago (see my 7 june entry here for an explanation). But I cheated, a little. I kept the Sigma 3.5/180 Apo Macro (for Nikon). That is not really a Nikkor, is it? Also, my wife still owns a Nikon D5000.

I do a lot of macro photography using a long focal length. Panasonic and Olympus have a very limited collection of dedicated macrolenses for four thirds and micro four thirds: Panasonic has a 45mm m4/3 and Olympus a 50mm 4/3. The Olympus f2/50mm is supposed to be very (!) good, but it is a bit too short for my taste. Not enough working distance.

So I started using a close-up lens that had been in the closet for years. A Nikon 4T close-up lens with a 52mm filter thread that fits on the Panasonic Lumix G 45-200mm telephoto zoom. A few weeks ago I bought the Olympus f2.8-3.5/50-200mm SWD. A great lens. I tried it with the Canon 500D close up-lens (77mm thread) that I still own. It seems like a very good combination, but having to use a 67-77mm step up ring to be able to use it means that I can no longer use the lens hood. So I ordered a couple of B&W close-up lenses with a 67mm filter thread. Although B&W has a very good reputation I decided to test them before I started to use them. I am glad that I did. The B&W NL-2 and NL-4 (NL stands for “nah Linze” or close-up lens) are horrible! I sent them straight back to where they came from.

If I am going to use a close-up lens in the future it has to be as good the Sigma 180mm Macro, or close to that. The test images and results are here. You can skip most of the text there and go straight on to the specifications and the conclusion.

12 June 2010, Stitching Panoramas in Ubuntu Linux

One of the drawbacks of using Linux on your desktop is that there is a limited number of programs availbale for image editing. Also, if a manufacturer supplies you with additional software for their cameras, like raw converters and programs for printing and stitching files, this software hardly ever works under Linux. The Panorama below was made using Hugin Panorama Creator under Ubuntu Linux. I had never tried anything like this before. But I must say that the version that I used (apparently version 0.8.0) worked very well and seemed user friendly enough to me. I certainly didn't need a manual for it. It is free (open source) and it is available for Mac and Windows too.

I used to simply crop images if I wanted a panorama. But of course there is a limit to the maximum print size that way. Using two or more images stitched together will get you larger files. In the proces of stitching the image will lose some height. The less overlap there is, the more height the resulting image will lose. So more overlap leads to a better pano.

8 June 2010, Yellow water-lily

I went to the Deelen Nature Reserve today and used the opportunity to test my new Olympus f2.8-3.5/50-200 on the Olympus E620 body. The Olympus telephoto zoom focuses very close. The equivalent of a 400mm at just 1.20 meters means that you get 1:3 (full frame equivalent). Using the Olympus body side by side with the Panasonic G1 is a bit difficult when it comes to exposure, I noticed. Where the Panasonic tends to overexpose when using matrix metering (2/3), the Olympus is very conservative and seems to underexpose by 2/3 of a stop in similar situations. I have to be very aware of the camera body that I am using when I make exposure decisions. By the way, all the images here are RAW images converted in Bibble 5 Pro. I Noticed that with the Olympus E620 body there is not much to gain in terms of resolution if you shoot raw. A lot of people like the colours of the Olympus out of camera jpgs, apparently. That may be true for portrait and skin colours, but I can't say that it is the same for nature and landscape. The yellow in the jpgs looks a bit "bleached" I would say, even if I use the vivid setting. The product setting in Bibble 5 Pro gives me much better colours for subjects like the Yellow water-lily.

7 June 2010, Why I sold my Nikons

I already hinted in the direction of the reasons several times in the past few months. Some people will not like me for what I am about to write here. But you have to realize, I am not just overnight going to sell a system that I have been using for more than twenty years. I did give it some thought. More and more I was experiencing the Nikons as unnecessarily heavy and bulky, while not being any better than the much lighter micro four thirds equipment. I hardly ever used the Nikons anymore. When I started using a Nikon FE and a 1.8/50mm E-series lens back in 1990, that combination had approximately the size and the weight of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 and the 14-45 kit lens that I am using today. Cameras were simple and photography was much less about equipment and much more about the images. Using the Panasonic brings back some of the feel of those days. For my kind of photography I don't need a Nikon D300 at all. I need a good tripod (the Gitzo Mountaineer is my most important piece of gear), superb lenses and a reliable camera with a sensor that gives me the image quality that I am looking for. If you go off the beaten track a lot and work slowly and methodically, a Panasonic G1 will do the job just as well.

Performance, price and availability

No DX camera body made by Nikon today outperforms the Panasonic G1 in terms of the resolution that the sensor can deliver (using a high quality lens). On the contrary, the Panasonic G1 outperforms the Nikon D300 in that respect. In addition, Nikon only has a few lenses that are capable of outresolving the D300 sensor (among others the new 1.8/35mm, the 1.4/50mm G and the 2.8/70-200 VR II). Most of their other lenses, however, do not even come close. Their 18-55 kit lens is pathetic in that respect across most of its range, no matter what Ken Rockwell has to say about it. So, if Nikon launches a D400 with 18 megapixels, who cares. They hardly have any lenses capable of getting you all the resolution such a sensor has to offer.

Panasonic on the other hand, has a great, stabilized 14-45mm kit lens that is just as good as the Nikkor AF-S 16-85mm VR. For less than the price of the Nikon 16-85 you will get not just the Panasonic 14-45 kitlens but a G1 camera body as well (390 euros at the moment). If you are a landscape photographer and therefore perhaps willing to give up on autofocus you can buy an Olympus f2.8-4/12-60mm that outresolves (and by quite a margin too!) the 4/3 sensor of the Panasonic between 12 and 35mm. The amount of detail I get from it in landscape photography is simply amazing. Panasonics f4/7-14mm wide-angle zoom is better than anything Nikon makes. Their 45-200 zoom is just OK, but Olympus has a very good, fast lens in that range. It can be used with an adapter.

When it comes to long telephoto zooms in the price range below as much as 7000 euros Nikon has nothing with a decent autofocus. The 80-400 VR is optically OK but its AF (not AF-S) is agonizingly slow and practically useless for anything but stationary subjects. For years now just about everybody is hoping they will replace it with an AF-S lens with a better performance at 400mm. Their 70-300 VR does have good autofocus but is no good at 300mm. Oh yes, and we still have a 10 years old f4/300mm (optically good, but no VR). So that leaves us with the relatively short 2.8/70-200 VR (out of stock!). I have given up. Nikon wants me to buy an f2.8/70-200 VR plus an f4/200-400mm VR for almost 10.000 euros. But fortunately they are continuously out of stock. Even if they could deliver, I would not bill out 10.000 euros for 5 kilos of lenses, one of which (the 200-400) I will use 10 times a year at the most. I am willing to bet that when they replace the 80-400 VR with something better, it will cost over 2000 euros and will be extremely difficult to get in the first year or so. Nikons good stuff is as a rule out of stock.

So I bought myself an Olympus f2.8-3.5/50-200mm plus an E620 camerabody, sold off the Nikons and kept the change. Just like that. The Olympus lens is very sharp and offers blazing AF-speed. It's a little shorter than the Nikkor 80-400 (the equivalent of 400mm vs 600mm for the Nikon), but who cares. The Nikon is not a great performer towards its long end anyway. Fair enough, an Olympus E620 camera body is not a D300(s). But for 1300 euros, the price of a D300s alone, you get a fast telephoto zoom that is much better than the Nikkor plus a very able and light weight camera body that makes the most of the Olympus SWD autofocus. With an adapter I can use the lens on my Panasonic DMC-G1 micro four thirds as well.

Nikon bashing?

Mind you, I am not saying that the Nikons are bad and that the Panasonic micro four thirds equipment is better in all respects. That would be nonsense. If you shoot indoor sports or theater you should buy a D300s (or even better: a D700) and a 70-200VR II, 2.8/24-70mm and so on. If you pride yourself in mistreating your equipment (a pro does that, right? After all you do not want it to work when you really need it), a Nikon D300 or D3s is a better option than a Panasonic G1. If you regularly need 7 frames per second (really?), buy a D300s or a D3s. There is no doubt the Nikons perform better at high isos, have a little bit more dynamic range and are very sturdy. But I shoot mainly landscapes and macro's, almost always on a tripod, often focusing manually, and sometimes even using long shutterspeeds deliberately (I hardly ever use anything over 200 iso). I walk for miles with my equipment. Of course I could buy a D3X and the very high quality full frame lenses that you need to fully profit from the sensors resolution. Go to a camera store and ask if you may hold a D3X and a 2.8/24-70mm in your hands. Tremendous feeling, like driving a Mercedes or a Volvo. But it is a huge investment and just try carrying those 15 kilos of equipment everywhere you go. A D3X is nice for in the studio, for shooting landscapes no more than a hundred meters away from your car or for shooting birds from a hide. The F4/600mm and converters that you will need for shooting birdes from a hide, by the way, will cost you 9000 euros. But of course it is out of stock. F2.8/400mm then (7500 euros)? Sorry, not available!

More about resolution and printing

A Panasonic G1 gets me 4000 x 3000 pixels, a D3X 6000 x 4000. It may seem like a huge difference, but if you shoot raw the D3X will give you a theoretical maximum resolution (the Nyquist limit) of 2000 line pairs per picture height and the Panasonic 1500 lp/ph. But that is only theory. In real life, taking into account he effect of the optical low pass filter in front of the sensor, the Panasonic will get you 1350 lp/ph (it has a very weak low pass filter), the Nikon D3X perhaps 1800 lp/ph, assuming you have lenses that outperform the sensor.

So, at the end of the day for 20 times the money and twice the number of pixels you get 1.4 times the resolution (the square root of 2; this is simple mathematics), or approximately the difference between a very good 18 x 24 print and a 24 x 36 print. Personally I would dare to stretch some of the Panasonic files quite a bit further than 18 x 24 inches.

7 June 2010, Misty morning

I got out of bed very early last friday (4.30 am) and ran into this. I like some mist for my landscape photography. But this was a little much and it just got worse as the sun rose.

There were not all that many other subjects to photograph either. So far it is a bad year for butterflies and dragonflies. After quite a while I saw this guy(?), trying to hide. If you walk to the right, he will go to the left and vice versa, always staying behind the grass stem. They are quite small, so depth of field is very limited. This was the highest magnification I could get using the zoom with Nikon 4T diopter at 200mm and a working distance of 25cm from the front of the lens (must be about 1.5:1 or one and a half times life size on the sensor!).

6 June 2010, The Wadden Sea

It's been a while since I wrote my last entry in this blog. In the meantime I haven't exactly been sitting still when it comes to photography. For one thing, I decided to sell of my Nikons and go on with my Panasonics. Most of the Nikkors are already gone. The D300 body is still here, waiting for someone willing to pay a reasonable price for it. More about my reasons later.

I visited quite a few nature reserves in the past week. Friday night I went to the Wadden Sea, a Unesco World Heritage area (estuary) only 30 miles to the north from where I live. The sun sets at 10.30 pm this time of year, so I had plenty of time for a meal in a good fish restaurant on the way there. I went over the sea dyke in a place called Paesens and Moddergat and started shooting at about nine going on until way after sunset. It was low tide. Almost the entire Wadden Sea is a mud flat at low tide. You can walk (only with an experienced guide!) to the off shore islands. Beyond those islands lies the North Sea. I used just the Panasonic and the 14-45 and 45-200 kit lenses (exif in the files).

It is just amazing how much depth of field and sharpness you get from this 14-45 kit lens at 26mm and f8 (the equivalent of a 50mm at f16!) using a tripod. It is sharp all the way from the mud in the foreground to the poles in the background. Just have a look at a larger version (50%, please respect my copyright!). The Panasonic 4/3 sensor resolves detail all the way to the level of the individual pixels. The structure on the horizon is a platform on wooden poles with a small wooden cabin built on it and stairs on the outside leading to the platform. I enlarged it to 400% of the original file just to give you an idea of the amount of detail that can be achieved with the Panasonic sensor. If, that is, you use a good tripod and the 2 seconds selftimer! Handholding the camera with the image stabilizer on is not going to give you this amount of detail. And this is only with the 14-45mm kit lens. You ain't seen the Olympus f2.8-4/12-60mm yet! It outperforms this sensor by quite a margin. That is really jaw dropping.

26 may 2010, The Deelen and Alde Feanen National Park

I spent most of the day yesterday in two nearby wetland areas, "De Deelen" and "Alde Feanen National Park" (Friesland, The Netherlands). This particular kind of landscape is the result of centuries of peat cutting. It is protected because of the abundance of wetland species, birds, plants and insects. I took my Panasonic G1 and used the Lumix G 7-14mm for most of the landscapes. I had a home made device with me that allows me to screw a polarizer on and use it without vignetting between 11mm and 14mm. It consists of a piece of tube that exactly fits around the fixed lens hood + a 72-77mm step up ring glued to it. Being able to use a polarizer is a very valuable addition to this lens. I was particularly pleased with these photo's, because it is notoriously difficult to photograph this greenish, flat and a bit featureless landscape in an interesting way (not every place that's beautiful lends itself easily to landscape photography).

22 may 2010, New cover photo for May

It's worth the trouble of having a look at it!

15 may 2010, Nikon vs Panasonic

Or should I say "Sigma vs Panasonic"? Anyway, have a close look at the images below. I made them this morning in the back garden. Number one was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Sigma 3.5/180mm Apo Macro at f5.6. Number two with a Panasonic G1 and a Lumix Vario f4-f5.6/45-200mm (at 78mm and f5.6 according to the exif) + a Nikon 4T close-up lens. I am aware that this is not the same as comparing sensors, but it is not entirely comparing lenses either. The comparison has a very relevant practical value though. Currently there is only one dedicated macro lens available for micro 4/3 cameras. That lens, the Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm/F2,8 is rather expensive, it is short (only 45mm) and optically it is a bit disappointing. Apart from the 900 dollar price tag, not what you would expect from a product with Leica in its name. I prefer slightly longer macro lenses (the equivalent of 105mm or more) for their working distance and the less busy out of focus background. For long macro lenses with micro 4/3 cameras you either need a Nikon adaptor that allows you to use Nikkors and third party lenses like the Sigma, or you have to use close-up lenses. I have never agreed with the wide spread idea that using close-up lenses is an optically inferior solution. The results obtained with high quality close-up lenses can compete with those of macro lenses, provided you use a good lens to begin with.

I bought the Sigma about ten years ago. I have never had any complaints about image quality. The Fuji Velvia slides in my archives prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this is a great lens. The images on the Nikon D300 made with this lens are very sharp. I think it is fair to conclude that the Panasonic Lumix Vario f4-f5.6/45-200mm lens coupled with a good close-up lens and used in the middle of its range (50-100mm) can deliver very high quality images.

The Panasonic image has slightly more pleasing light from an aesthetic point of view, but technically the images are eachothers equal. Sharpness is virtually the same, and inasmuch as it differs it has more to do with depth of field than anything else. Additionally, in the Nikon image the flower is slightly larger, giving the Nikon a tiny advantage in terms of detail. The flower seems slightly sharper in the Nikon image, the flower buds are slightly sharper in the Panasonic image. In images like this, with a very shallow depth of field, large parts are unsharp. So the way the unsharpness looks ("the bokeh") is just as important as the sharpness. Both images show pleasant backgrounds. Nothing really busy or disturbing there. I think that in the field, in real world circumstances (I didn't test it in the lab), it's a draw. And that in itself is an amazing thing if you realize that the Nikon 4T close-up lens cost only 5% of the 45mm/F2.8 Panasonic Leica. Even if you add the price of the 45-200/F4-5.6 Panasonic Lumix zoom to that, it is still less than half the price of the Leica (or the 800 dollar Sigma for that matter).

Of course, another important point is ease of use in the field. There are two sides to that. Using the close-up lens means that the lens loses its capability to focus to infinity. You can only focus on subjects that are between 35 and 23 centimeters away from the front of the lens. So if you need more working distance (or less) than you are out of luck (or you need another close-up lens). The fact that you can zoom to enlarge the subject (or make it smaller) at least partly compensates for that limitation. It adds to the versatility and helps you frame the subject the way you want it without having to move the camera (and tripod) back and forth. The Panasonic G1 camera (and the GH1 and the G2 and the GF1) all have manual focus assistance ont the articulated screen. A great feature for macro photography. The Sigma, being a lot longer gives you twice the working distance. The Nikon body has a much better optical viewfinder that allows you to focus very precisely without the hassle of an enlarged image on the back of the camera and the need to "scroll" to that part of the image that you want to focus on. It is almost a draw, but I think that in terms of ease of use the Nikon with the Sigma macro lens has a slight edge on the Panasonic. But it is still comparing apples and oranges. I have to admit that it may very well be because I have been working with (D)SLRs and optical viewfinders practically all my life and need some more time to get used to working with the Panasonic.

13 may 2010, Scanning slides

I have been going through my archives in the past few days. I scanned quite a few slides. There are a lot of misunderstandings about how to scan slides. Many of the scans I made years ago are still on my hard drive. Most of them are worthless because I made the mistake to think that the scanner (actually the scanner software) should deliver the final image. The scanner software (I use Vuescan for my Nikon LS-5000, but its the same for the Nikon software) gives you the option to tweak the image, but that is useless. What you want is a 16 bit tiff file that leaves all your options open for processing it afterwards. The scan should be sort of a "raw" file with as much information in it as possible, no burned highlights, no absolute blacks, no excessive saturation and no sharpening. That means, among other things, that you don't use features like "auto-levels", curves etc. If your scan is a 16 bit tiff file in the highest resolution, you can do all that virtually lossless in Photoshop and save the result as a duplicate file. The scanner software doesn't do anything that Photoshop cannot do a lot better. And Photoshop does it without destroying the original scan file.

Bottom line: You don't tweak an image while you are scanning it. At that moment you want to keep as many options open as possible. You tweak the 16 bit tiff ("raw file") for the specific purpose you want to use it for and then save a duplicate.

Every image has its own story. This one was made in early May, up high in the Stelvio region of the Italian Alps. The Alpine Snowbell is one of the first flowers to emerge as the snow melts. They sometimes literally "push" themselves through the snow. It was a cold day, with a bright grey cloud cover low above our heads. I was just walking around, wandering what I was doing there. Nothing to photograph but melting snow and brownish grass, I thought. I had never seen Alpine Snowbells. The bell shaped flowers are less than half an inch in size. I didn't even see them untill my companion at that time showed them to me.

The image is part of my new macro gallery.

9 may 2010, Some more images from Spain

I have added a few more photographs to my gallery with images from spain.

8 may 2010, Images from Spain

I updated my gallery with images from spain with larger and slightly better processed photos. Most of them are scans from slides made in the 1990's. Working in the field back then was a lot more difficult than it is in the digital age. Then you had Fuji Velvia 50 or Fujichrome 100, slow shutterspeeds (1/30 - 1/60) and a focal length of only 400mm. A Nikon D300 at ISO 400 or ISO 800 with the equivalent of a 600mm lens would have made life a lot easier and the images a lot sharper. Many of the images from the 1990's are only just OK. There's a lot of blurring caused by inevitable subject movement.

7 may 2010, AF VR Nikkor 4.5-5.6/80-400mm

My eight years old Nikkor 80-400 VR has recently been serviced by the Dutch Nikon service point. It had become impossible to zoom any further than 300mm. It simply got stuck there. Including shipping it took Nikon exactly three days to repair it. And now the zoom ring is going smoother than ever. I was pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of the operation.

As I mentioned here before, I have had mixed feelings about this lens ever since I bought it. The sample that I own has always had troubles with sharpness once passing the 300mm mark. And I had already stopped using it over 320mm altogether. After getting it back from Nikon I decided to do some testing. I reasoned that it had been disassembled for the repair and that the characteristics might have been changed. They have! Now it is very sharp up to 360mm, if (a big if) I stop it down to F8 . There seems to be a sharp cut off point there because at 370mm it is just as bad as it was before. I can hardly imagine that the quality of the glass is the only factor causing this. It must have something to do with the construction of this zoom lens and the alignment of the different elements inside. There's no doubt that it is difficult to design and adjust the moving parts of the lens in such a way that at every focal length the elements of the lens are aligned exactly the way they should be. Add to that the vibration reduction, moving lens elements relative to the optical axis, and compromises must be inevitable.

Something else that is remarkable is that the “window” of optimum performance is very narrow. At 360mm sharpness is bad at F5.6, very good af F8 and bad again at F11. At first I thought it was a coincidence. But no, even if you shoot burst of three it is three times bad at F5.6, three times very good at F8 an three times bad at F11. I tried it several times. The results are very consistent. Also I get the impression that sharpness is better if you focus on subjects nearby and worse if the lens is focused near infinity (it seems it is a bit near-sighted). I will have to do further testing for this near-sightedness, though. All I know is that it is not uncommon for tele zooms at the long end.

I think that all this proves that the variation between different samples of lenses can be quite large. Even if you buy high quality brands. If you invest in an expensive lens, that you are going to use a lot during a period of many years, it is certainly worth wile to test it right after buying it. Not just because there may be something wrong with it, but also because getting to know its strong and its weak points is important for the results that you will get. I know I can get professional quality with this lens at 360mm stopping it down to F8. At 400mm and F5.6 it is rubbish. That is a good thing to know because using the lens in the field the difference between F8/360mm and f5.6/400mm is negligible. If you do not test it you will zoom all the way to 400mm and end up with unsharp images, wondering what went wrong. Below are some samples (exif in the files, as usual). No sharpening applied to any of them, except for the standard sharpening applied by the raw converter. By the way, I do not think that the differences really matter for prints smaller than 8 x 12 inches. But, looking at the last to samples you wil have to agree that f8 and 360mm is a much better idea than f5.6 and 400mm.

6 may 2010, Lens choice for landscape photography

Although I photograph lots of subjects, I consider myself a landscape photographer first and foremost. It's what I like best. Going off the beaten tracks, searching for locations and new angles of view, waiting for the light. And then when the light is finally right, you often get no more than five minutes to make the image. Everything has to be prepared, or you are simply too late. And that moment and that light will never come back again. There will be other occasions and maybe even better light, but it will never be the same again.

There are some people claiming that all you need for serious photography is a few fixed focal length lenses (20, 28, 50, 85/105, 200). Pros just walk a few steps forward if the subject does not fill the frame. They claim that you do not need to cover every millimeter from 14 to 400 or 600. Now, perhaps it is true that you can do street photography with just a 28mm lens and a 1.4/85mm for portraits. If the subject doesn't fit in the frame the way you want it, you simply go a few steps forward or backward. But in landscape photography that is often not possible, both for practical reasons and for reasons of composition. If you are standing at the edge of a cliff you can go a few steps backward, but going forward does not seem like a good idea to me (that is a very good practical reason to own a first class zoom lens). In many cases you want to combine foreground detail with a careful selection of the background. You do not want just the base of the mountain in the background, you want all of it. For carefull framing it may be necessary to zoom to a focal length somewhere between 28mm and 50mm.

Let me explain this a little further. Suppose you have a rock (two feet diameter) in the foreground and a 6000 feet mountain in the background. Standing 15 feet away from the rock using a 50mm lens, you have the rock in the lower right corner of the frame, but unfortunately only two thirds of the mountain is in the frame. Going a few steps back is not going to help you to get the mountain to fit in the frame. Taking a thousand steps back may help but then you will have lost sight of the rock that you wanted in the foreground. You cannot make the image that you want with a 50mm lens. So you get out your 20mm lens. You take a few steps in the direction of the rock because you want it to fill a reasonable part of the lower right corner of the frame. So far, so good. But now you have another problem. The giant mountain in the background looks like a pathetic molehill. It's much too small. Of course you can solve that by walking several miles in the direction of the mountain, but then you will no longer have that rock that you so desperately wanted in the foreground of your image. Conclusion you need something in between 20mm and 50mm. But, unfortunately, that lens is not in the bag. And even if you do have a 28mm, it still remains to been seen if it enables you to frame the image exactly the way you want it, the size of foreground and background subjects perfectly balanced. Life is so much easier if you own a few top class zoom lenses. Nikons f2.8/24-70 (full frame) or their f3.5-5.6/16-85 (DX) would have saved you a lot of walking. Not that I have anything against walking, on the contrary, I like it, but I hate missing opportunities. And even with a zoom leens you will still have to walk, choose the right position to balance background and foreground, making sure that the rock in the foreground does not shield crucial parts of the background, etc.

It is not true that fixed focal length lenses are optically better than zoom lenses. At least, not as a rule. Lenses like a f1.2/50mm or f1.4/85mm are often expensive (lots of glass; difficult to produce) and not very sharp wide open. They are meant for low light photography or for portrait photography with shallow depth of field. The optimum aperture of these lenses in terms of sharpness will often be f4-f5.6. I seriously doubt if a 1.4/50mm Nikkor stopped down to f8 is any better that the f2.8/24-70 at 50mm stopped down to f8. It may very well be that the 24-70 performs better, if I can believe the people at Photozone.de. Invest your money in a few good zoom lenses and get to know the characteristics of these lenses. That would be my advice. Do not push your luck. It is an attractive idea to have one lens for everything. Those lenses actually exist (e.g. the Nikkor 18-200mm VR that I own), but they are a compromise. Lenses like that are absolutely no match for an f2.8/24-70 and an f2.8/70-200 combination if you want to make large prints (12 x 18 and larger). If you think these lenses are expensive, there are two things you should realize. 1. A camera has a lifecycle of maybe 18 months. These lens will last a lifetime and they will retain most of their value. 2. There are good lenses that are a lot cheaper and still a very good choice, e.g. the Nikkor 16-85 VR (DX), the Tamron f2.8/70-200, the Nikkor 80-400 VR, the Tokina f4/12-24mm (DX) etc.

6 may 2010, Large prints from the Panasonic Lumix G1

Do we need larger sensors and more pixels than the 12 megapixels on a 4/3 sensor in order to be able to make large prints (A2 and more)? The answer is no if you shoot the best lenses available for the system and stick to ISO 100 or 200. For the image of the cherry trees I used the G1 and the Lumix G Vario f4/7-14mm. I resized the original 3000 x 4000 pixel file to a 6000 x 8000 file (the algorithm I used was Sinc Lanczos, which is very similar to "bicubic smoother" in photoshop). Below is a 100% crop from the original file. Yes, that's a very sharp lens! If you click on it you will get a 200% version of it. Perhaps it doesn't look very pretty to you, but if you save it and then print it you will see that it yields a fine print at 300 dpi (approx. 3 x 4 inches). It's important to realize that what you see is only a tiny part of a print that is 20 x 26,5 inches in size (50 x 67 cm or A2+). You are not going to watch a print like that touching it with the tip of your nose. I would even print it at 30 x 40 inches if necessary.

The only reason for shooting cameras with larger sensors is, as far as I'm concerned, low noise at high ISOs. I would not use the Panasonic G1 at ISO 800 for prints larger than 8 x 12 inches. The Nikon D300s (DX format) doesn't really have a problem with ISO 1600 for a 12 x 18 and with the full frame D3s you can easily go to ISO 3200 for a 12 x 18 print.