Headworx

I decided to buy a new digital camera. Technology moves fast ahead and my current Minolta A2 is ageing. I have been quite happy with the A2, but it starts showing its wear... And there are some general capabilities of the camera it just does not have. I went through my albums and among things I would like to have improved are white skies. Indeed on most of my pictures the sky is white. This means the dynamic range of the sensor was not high enough. The bright portions of the image saturated the image sensor, most of the time resulting in a white sky. I do not complain about other aspects of the images that much. Resolution of 8 megapixels is fine for the moment. 28-200 lens are OK too. So I started some research to find a camera equipped with a high dynamic range sensor. On one hand there is a cornucopia of new models from the market leaders, namely Canon and Nikon, followed by Panasonic and Sony. On the other hand two designs have attracted my attention: Sigma SD-14 and Fujifilm S5 Pr...

Exactly a year ago I posted about GPS devices. Part of the post was about GPS - enabled cameras and how automatic geo-tagging of pictures would streamline the process of sharing and storing the pictures. Now after a year the GPS technology has made inroads into many consumer products, but I am still not aware of any consumer photo camera with built in GPS unit. On the other hand as some of you already know, I have been shopping for a new DSLR camera recently. I finally settled on the FujiFilm S5 Pro and one of the important contributors to my decision (versus Sigma SD14) was the GPS support. The FujiFilm S5 Pro is an interesting design, as it is based on the Nikon D200 body (I posted on the S5 Pro last month), and supports most of the accessories designed for the Nikon, GPS being one of them. I was naive to expect the Nikon GPS solution would be elegant. But the reality is Nikon is not an iPod and while being a "professional" it is quite often bulky and conservative. So how...

I had a wonderful sabbatical last July. Packed my backpack as light as possible (managed to squeeze everything below 20 lbs) and took off to Peru. So how it looked like from the perspective of electronic devices and what worked and what did not? First of all - the 6" 3G/WiFi Kindle. It was great to have many books (including the Lonely Planet guide) in such a small and lightweight device. Perfect for long flights (Krakow - Frankfurt - Santo Domingo - Panama - Lima) and for long haul bus services in Peru. Kindle was also giving me a backup Internet access. All worked beautifully. Until I broke it. I must have squeezed it too hard in the backpack or something... Anyway at that point I realized how important it was to have paper backup copies of some important documents (like my flight tickets). Electronic platforms are great. But they are so easy to break. The second access device was my faithful Blackberry Torch. Just after I landed in Lima, I realized my mobile carrier (Or...

Dynamic range has been a problem ever since any attempt to record a piece of reality was done. What we see and hear live is still beyond what most capturing methods are capable of. I remember the years of analog compact cassette tape and my old analog tape recorder being able to achieve signal to noise ratio of 53 decibels. When I adjusted the recording level to reach maximum with the loudest parts of a song, the silent passages were disappearing in random noise. There was a circuitry called DNS, or dynamic noise reduction system, essentially compressing the input signal to fit in the 50-something decibels range. Then came CDs with digital audio delivering dynamic range of 90 decibels. While great on paper specs and fantastic to listen in an isolated quiet room, 90 decibels is very difficult to replay when riding a train in a headset or watching a movie at home. Many recent audio systems offer dynamic range compression, so the silent parts are amplified and the louder parts are attenua...

It is holiday time again in August and holidays mean taking a lot of pictures. What a change in just a few years. Now we all travel with digital cameras, flash memory cards, chargers and laptops. Compare that to taking a few rolls of film four - five years ago. I was late to the digital photography, as I believed the final results were far off compared to analog films. Then in 2002 I bought the 4-megapixel Minolta F100, my first digital camera. And suddenly I realized there is no way back to analog.... Surely the quality was not there yet, but the flexibility and instant preview of the results meant better pictures and much faster learning process (the digital feedback loop is a few seconds - you shoot and you see the picture versus days / weeks long analog feedback loop). There was only the way forward - to improve the quality of digital pictures to match and surpass analog. Chasing the quality I soon realized the battle is not of megapixels. I no longer make prints. I store my photos...

It is summer vacations time again and I am taking a short break from the sunbath at the pool overlooking endless orchards of lemon trees at the foot of the majestic Etna volcano. This trip to Sicily, which I enjoy a lot, has brought usual thoughts on the state of the gadgets I pack with me. Surprisingly, my carry on rucksack has been significantly smaller and lighter this year. A clear sign things are going the right direction for gadget maniacs. I no longer have to tug a set of trolleys filled with electronics. Speaking of the rucksack, I am very pleased with the Kata 123-GO-30. Kata is a brand that does not need explanation for photographers. They have probably the best equipment to carry the DSLR stuff. The 123-GO series bags are very light. I picked the 30, as it can accommodate my Nokia 3G booklet, along with the photo stuff ( FujiFilm FinePix S5 Pro , four lenses, a flashlight, and some accessories). The significant reduction of travel weight comes from well optimized set of pow...

Back in 2002, as an experiment, I bought my first digital camera, the Minolta F100. And just after taking the first batch of pictures I realized the analog era was over. The mix of quality and flexibility of digital photography surprised me at that time. I have never taken an analog photo anymore. Ten years later, in 2012, as an experiment, I bought the Sigma DP1M, a Foveon - based compact camera. And just after taking the first batch of pictures I realized the classic Bayer - based digital photography might be coming to an end... I explained the difference between Bayer and Foveon many times. My Polish friends may refer to the 2007 article in Computerworld: http://www.computerworld.pl/artykuly/56408/Technologia.fundamentalnie.lepsza.html . Also here on this blog there are a number of posts on Foveon, notably the two: http://headworx.slupik.com/2007/02/x3-digital-film.html and http://headworx.slupik.com/2013/01/merrill.html . The Sigma DP1M has many drawbacks. No optical viewfin...

The 2014 Summer holiday season is over. I have not traveled too much this time, but still there were many occasions to play an amateur / enthusiast photographer. I am now entirely on Foveon gear, with three Sigmas ( DP-1M, DP-2M, DP-3M in my arsenal). And after two years the Sigmas continue to surprise me with what they deliver ( download the attached photo to see a full resolution version and zoom in...). My typical setup is the DP-2M, small enough to carry almost every day and I do not hesitate to take it with me on every occasion. This is a big plus of a small camera. If I had a DSLR, it would probably be staying at home. If I need more flexibility, to shot both wide and tele angles, I take the DP-1M and DP-3M. The DP-1M is used rather rarely, mostly in mountains. I was even considering selling it, but eventually decided it would stay. Despite all the progress in digital photography, there still is really no substitute. The Sony A7R may be close , but the body + a decent lens wo...

Today on a somewhat lighter note... I have been having some fun with the iPad Camera Kit. As you probably know, the kit comes as a set of two adapters. The first one is a SD-card adapter, the second one is a USB adapter. Both connect to the only one port iPads have -the dock connector port. Both adapters are aimed at performing just one function - copying digital photos from either an SD card or directly from a camera (over a USB cable) to the iPad. The Photos system application is responsible for handling this task. And there is nothing more. It simply scans a camera - specific subfolder of the \DCIM folder on the attached storage and lets you select and copy photos to the iPad. Disappointing, I have not even found a way to copy the photos to the host computer. I was hoping to see the copied photo files somewhere within the iTunes, but it seems like I was hoping for too much... But I decided to play a little bit with the kit. There is nothing you can do with the SD adapter, apart from...