I’ve just received my iPad Camera Connection Kit through the post today.  This unassuming set of dongles attaches to the dock connector of the iPad and allows you to import photos and videos directly into the iPad’s Photo gallery app.

The premise is simple – just plug either the USB or SD card adapter into the dock, then insert the card, or plug in the camera, and the iPad immediately takes you to the import screen.  From here, you can select the photos or videos you want to import and press to start the process.  On testing, my Canon 5D worked fine with the USB connector (with the camera set to PTP connection mode).  A multi card reader also worked fine (direct from CompactFlash).   As for the SD reader, it picked up the videos on the SD directly from my Samsung camcorder, and imported them no problem.

Once imported, you can choose to delete the images on the camera/card, or leave them there.  Also, once the files are on the iPad, you can transfer them to the your Mac/PC by docking the iPad and importing into iPhoto or Lightroom.  I’m assuming many other apps will work too, but these are the two I’ve tested.

On a side note, it works with the RAW files from my 5D with no issues whatsoever (.CR2 format), and I know it also does the same with Nikon cameras (.NEF).

Disadvantages?  Well, you can only use a limited range of devices.  You can’t, for example, plug in a hard disk and play videos off it.  This would be a welcome addition, but it’s doubtful apple will open it up this much.  Strictly speaking, with a jailbreak and a little inginuity, it IS possible, but not to the non-JB, standard user.

Also, when you import the photos and videos, it places them in an ‘Imported Photos’ album, and does not let you choose, or move them around at all.  The only separation you get is the fact that the last import shows up in a separate folder, but that’s as far as it goes.  Hopefully in iOS4 for the iPad, this will be addressed – we’ll have to wait and see…

So overall, a good little set of interfaces.  It does what it says on the tin, and will be an invaluable tool for backing up/previewing shots when out in the field.

A small tip :Once imported, you have to delete the photos manually off the iPad once you’re finished with them.  Unfortunately, there is no ‘Select All’ button currently on the photo app.  Rather than selecting them all individually, which would take ages for a big collection from a long shoot, you can select them a little more quickly by doing the following :-

1) Press the curvy arrow in the top right, as normal to delete imported photos.

2) Instead of selecting each photo individually, touch and hold the first one for a second or two, then swipe your finger around the shot to select them without lifting your finger off.  You can then press delete as usual.  Much quicker, i’m sure you’ll agree!

Cheers!

I switched my Nikon D50, with it’s wonderful memories, and many hours of cracking phototaking, for a Canon 5D.

Now… there a a fair few things to think about when making the move between one manufacturer and another.  These can be boiled down to a few main points…

• Personal Preference.  This plays an extremely large part in the decision.  Some people have an unassailable loyalty to one particular manufacturer, and are completely convinced that anything else is second fiddle.  Luckily, I’ve never really been obsessively tied to one manufacturer or another.  I started, back in the day, on a Praktica BX20 (here), then moved onto a Canon EOS 100 (also known as the Elan – here).  This was followed by a move to Fujifilm, with my first Digital camera being a Fujifilm Finepix 2300 (here), which was used in tandem with the EOS 100.  I then moved gradually up the Digicam ladder, via the Olympus Camedia C3000 (here), then the fantastic Olympus E-10 (here), followed finally by the Nikon D50 (here).  Recently, I’d added a trusty Fujifilm S2 Pro (here) to my entourage, which, despite its age, is a fantastic (if bulky) Nikon-lens-compatible workhorse.  As you can see, I’ve kind of jumped around the manufacturers in my time, and to be honest, just try to make the most of what I have.  Overall, it’s a tie between the D50 and the S2 Pro for my favourite camera, but an honourable mention must be given to the Olympus E-10 (which I still have!), for having one of the best pieces of glass I’ve ever seen on  a non-interchangable lensed camera.
• Investment in Kit. Financially, this is often going to be people’s biggest consideration when making a manufacturer change. As is well known, a good camera is rendered much less so by having poor glass fixed to the front.  The cost of lenses is not inconsiderable, and over the past few years, I had built up a small collection of lenses that I used with the Nikon.  Top of the list was my wonderful Sigma 10-20mm (here). This lens has become my favourite over the last few years, and it was definitely one I’d miss.  It was given as part of the trade-in, so I’m now ultra-wide-angleless for the first time in three years.  I also had a Nikon Speedlite SB-600 (here), which, again, went with the trade.  This adds up to a fair bit of kit.  The thing to remember is that, barring adapters (which generally only allow you to use the lenses in manual modes anyway), one manufacturer’s lenses are incompatible with the mounts on other manufacturer’s cameras.  Therefore, it means that you have to basically start again.  That can be expensive…
• Availability of Kit and Acessories. Some kit just simply isn’t available for other brands, so the little handy bits that you have for your current camera may just not be available for the other brand.  This is becoming less of an issue these days, but it’s still something to think about.

Luckily, I still have the S2 pro, so the limited selection of Nikon lenses I still have will still find some use.

So… what does the new kit bag look like?  The answer – quality, not quantity!  Click for links to product pages / reviews…

• Canon EOS 5D
• Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM
• Canon Speedlite 430EX II
• Canon BG-E4 Battery Grip

Along with the accessories that came with the camera (a wired remote release and the obligatory charger), along with my dome diffuser and off-camera flash cord, that’s pretty much it.

The Camera

I’m going to talk about the camera here, and, for the uninitiated, explain a bit about what some of the features mean in a practical sense.

The camera itself is a 12.8 Megapixel, full frame DSLR.  Full frame, in this case, refers to the size of the CMOS sensor, which is the size of a full 35mm frame in film terms.  What is the upshot of this?  Basically, it means two main things :-

Cropping (or lack of it) – Most DSLRs have a crop factor of 1.6.  This is due to the size of the sensor being smaller (15 x 22.5mm) than full-frame (24x36mm).  The smaller sensor results in only the central portion of the lens’s projected image being recorded.  The result of this is that a 20mm lens is the equivalent of a 30mm lens in “35mm terms”.  This makes wide-angle lenses ‘true’ wideangle – i.e. a 24mm lens is actually a 24mm lens, and not a 36mm lens.  The other side of this is that a telephoto lens on a full frame DSLR does not give you the same magnification that it does on a cropped sensor.  Swings and roundabouts eh?

Depending on whether you want tightly cropped closeups, or prefer your wideangle wider, then the full-frame could be good or bad.  However, there is one thing that full frame does need, and that’s good lenses.  Lenses tend to be best towards the centre of the image, and lower quality lenses show this effect more than more expensive lenses.  With the smaller size of a cropped sensor, the lower-quality edges of a lens’s image are cropped out, and this has the effect of keeping the image sharper from edge to edge.  With full-frame, the whole of the glass is used, which, if you have lower-quality lenses, exposes the flaws around the edges.  These usually show up in the way of blurring and chromatic aberration.  Lens manufacturers have actually taken advantage of cropped sensors to produce cheaper lenses that only work on cropped sensors due to having smaller lens elements.   Obviously this means that if you try to use them on a full-frame sensor, you will get, at best, bad vingetting, and at worst, and actual circular image.

Noise (or lack of it) – Unlike the fixed rating of film, the sensitivity of a sensor can be varied more easily.  For direct comparison, the same ratings are used on sensors as on films.  This ISO scale describes the sensitivity of the sensor, and can generally be raised on most digital cameras from around 50 or 100, to 3200 or higher.  Every time you double the ISO, you make the sensor twice as sensitive (or one stop). The downside to this is that, as you increase the sensitivity, the individual pixels also become more sensitive to electrical ‘crosstalk’ from adjacent pixels.  This results in ‘noise’ in the image, producing a more grainy image.  This renders the higher ISO modes on most cropped-sensor DSLRs more or less useless for most purposes.  The advantage a full-frame sensor has is that the pixels on it are not as closely packed, lowering this crosstalk and hence lowering the noise.  You can ‘dial up’ the ISO on a full-frame sensor to 1600 or 3200 with very little grain.  In the real world, this means a few stops difference in exposure.  E.g., if you used ISO 200, and had camera shake due to a long exposure of 1/15th sec, then if you raised sensitivity to ISO 3200, this would change the exposure to 1/200th second (4 stops difference), making hand-holding a reality.  You can do this with minimal noise being added to the image.

The Lens

The lens is a Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM.  Breaking this down, the EF stands for ‘Electro Focus’, with the AF system being controlled by a motor built into the lens, and has been Canon’s standard lens type since 1987.  the 24-105mm is, obviously, the focal length range of the zoom.  The f4 refers to the widest aperture, which in the case of this lens, is f4 throughout the zoom range (most zoom lenses have a smaller ‘Wide Open’ aperture, and so are slower, at their telephoto lens).

The ‘L’ is one of the telling parts of the name, as (according to Canon), it stands for ‘Luxury’.  The ‘L’ range of lenses is Canon’s flagship lens range, offering very high optical quality.  They are the lenses you often see at sporting events, with the red band around the front element.  The larger lenses in the range are white-bodied to keep them cooler in the sun.  The build quality on the L lenses is absolutely fantastic, as is the sharpness and contrast.  Even though I’ve now only got a single lens (currently), I’m glad to know it’s a fantastic quality one!

The IS part of the name refers to ‘Image Stabilization’.  This is the system, imilar to Nikon’s VR (Vibration Reduction) system, which uses gyros inside the lens to detect the slight movement of your hands that can cause camera shake, and counteract it by moving the elements in the lens.  This results in you being able to handhold shots for much longer exposure times.  The blurb specifies three stops more, but I’ve handheld at down to 1/4 sec using this system.  Of course, this doensn’t stop motion blur, but it’s a massive help in low light for more static subjects, and allows you to stop down for sharpness in more normal light.

Finally, USM stands for Ultrasonic Motor, a near-silent focussing motor technology used by Canon in its lenses.

Phew!

Impressions

I’ve been just getting used to this Camera for the past few weeks.  So far, it’s all good!  Initially, getting used to using a Canon instead of my trusty Nikon has been strange.  Everything, more or less, is in a slightly different place, or works in a slightly different way.  It’s all there, but overall, the feel is very different…  Everything is nice and smooth, and quiet, as you’d expect with a professional-grade camera of this type.

Virtually everything I’ll be posting from now on photo-wise is likely to be taken with this camera, so the posting of lots of sample shots is a little redundant (out-of-context test shots should be confined to Lab tests in my opinion!).  Also, it’s easy to search on Flickr for photos taken using the same camera.

So – here goes…!

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Following on from the discovery in the previous post, I’ve decided to furnish my Lubitel 166B with some food.  Fujichrome Provia 400x slide film to be precise.  It’s been kind of weird shopping for film again for the first time in almost ten years – like I said – feels sort of liberating, and I’m not sure why!  There’s been no real method behind my choice apart from a quick glace around Flickr to see how this stuff works when ‘Cross-Processed’.

Cross processing?  Yes – I had much the same reaction you probably are when I first read that phrase.  See… the normal chemical process for developing slide film is known as E6.  This uses a specific set of chemicals to get the colours as accurate etc as possible.  There is a separate set of chemicals for the processing of colour negative film, and the process is known as C41.  So, what happens when you process a colour slide film using the C41 (negative film) process?  What sort of crazyness is that!?  I’ll tell you what happens… the whole world implodes in an annihilating explosion that takes all mankind with it.  Or not.

Truth be told, it produces what can only be described as funky transparencies.   It basically screws with the colours and contrast of an image, with very interesting effect. I’ve gone and ordered a multipack off Ebay for not much money, so it’ll be interesting to see what I can come up with.  I’m going to shoot off a roll or two first, and send it off for processing.  I’ve found a place (Peak Imaging) in Sheffield, that does cross-processing of slide film for just under a fiver…

http://www.peak-imaging.com/htmls/film_processing.htm

Apparently, cross-processing Provia produces a yellowy hue, with greens and yellows emphasized.  Kind of like the following shot (not mine by the way)…

Click here to check out a good photostream on Flickr for some more examples…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonbase/276389961/ in/photostream/

I’ll probably also get hold of some Black and White 120 too, along with a Developer tank and chemicals, and process some myself again (for the first time in 10 years! – oh how I miss the smell of developer in the morning!).  Oh what a voyage of discovery this is!

Lastly – go here for a bit of a rundown of cross processing, and more examples…

http://blog.epicedits.com/2008/10/15/cross-processing-tips-and-suggestions/

Thing is, I’m going back to basics here.  I’ve forgotten what the thrill of sending a film off to the lab and having to WAIT to get it back is like..! Digital is brilliant in so many ways, but this is the first time I’m going to really have to think about what I’m taking, from both an exposure and technical point of view.  But Lomography is about not thinking isn’t it?  Bah!  I’ll figure it out somehow…

The one thing I’m missing in using my iPhone for this is the restriction that film photography places on you.  The thing about digital is that, in the end, if you don’t like a shot, you can delete it.  I’ve purposely been trying NOT to retake shots I’m not happy with, reason being that I wouldn’t have the chance to review and reject with film like I do with digital.  I’ve been really enjoying it, and I’m going to carry with the iphone Lomo – Including a run down of the apps I’ve been using to produce the shots (more on that later!).

Talking of yesterday’s Eureka moment, I had another, even bigger on this morning. A real slap on the forehead, why-didn’t-I-realize-that-before moment.

I was thinking back over the film cameras I’ve still got, and digging through my collection of old Zenits, Canon EOS and Minoltas, when i remembered an old TLR (Twin Lens Refex) medium format box I got hold of years ago.  I got hold of it back in university, in an attempt to do some experimentation with Medium Format 120 roll film.  Unfortunately, it’s something I never actually got around to doing, what with the advent of digital and all the cheap snappyness associated with it.  So I dug it out…

Turns out, it’s a Lubitel 166B.  What’s a Lubitel 166B when it’s at home I hear you cry (or not). Well… it’s a Russian camera, produced in the early 80s, but based on a design from around 1950.  It was cheaply made as a way for Amateurs to experiment with using Medium Format. The best bit…?

It’s made by LOMO.

I’ve had it here all this time, and never realised I was sitting on a bit of classic Lomography kit!  It’s one of a selection of cameras used by the Lomo community to capture images on film. Examples of such work can be found at http://www.lomography.com/photos/cameras/Lubitel%20166B/popular.

Looking over it – it’s a lovely little bit of kit.  It feels so raw and primitive compared to the most basic of digital SLRs.  It’s completely mechanical, so no batteries, and no electronics.  It’s a box, with a variable hole at the front, that allows you to project a fixed image on a piece of film.  In short – it’s a camera – with no bells and whistles.  No auto focus, no auto exposure.  Nada.  Why is it that that makes me feel so excited???  Shouldn’t I be looking at this, in all it’s out-of-date plasticness, and be horrified at the prospect of having to manually work out exposures?   The answer is a resounding no. The simplicity of all this is what interests me.

Anyway – I thought I’d take a few shots of the little beauty (ironically, with my Digital SLR) and share them with you…

It’s got a plastic-covered body, with a metal underframe.  Focussing is done manually on a groundglass screen (pic two), and there is a little pop-up magnifier which assists the process a bit, though ease of focussing is not meant to be one of its strong points.  There is something nice though, about using a focussing screen to frame the shot rather than a held-to-the-eye viewfinder – not sure what – I just like it! Aperture (f4.5-22) and shutter speed (Bulb, to 250th Sec) are done manually.  It does have a self-timer though, so selfs are a definite possibility. Pic one shows it all packed up and capped.  It only weighs about 500g – nice and easy to carry.

The upshot of this is that I now have a ready path to follow in actually trying genuine Lomography.  Bizarrely. I’m actually looking forward to the restrictions that this camera and the use of film will place on me.  The fact that it has the viewfinder on top is also going to be interesting.  This will allow me to ‘shoot from the hip’ so to speak. I know for a fact that getting interesting candids probably wont be as hard with this. I will, of course, blog about it once I’ve done a bit more fiddling around…

Let me explain…

Photography is an art.  In the end, it’s all about the aesthetics.  Beautiful photos opportunities rear their heads in the most unlikely of places.  There are things, that, unfortunately, generally need to be present in order to produce most photos.  One, not surprisingly, is a camera of some sort.  Kit. Equipment. Tin. Glass.   Also needed is some form of technique.  Rules of thirds, exposures, shutter speeds, so on and so forth.  Not to say that these things are the be all and end all, but they help.

So.  Now take the large proportion of that clutter out of the equation and out of the process.  So – what do we have left?

Raw potential – that’s what.

What am I babbling on about?  Well… I love photography; that much is clear.  However – sometimes, I feel like having to make sure I have kit with me (from camera, to tripod, to batteries, to memory cards, blah blah until the end of time), as well as having to carefully consider technique and the pressure of finding a shot to start the inspiration flowing, end up producing a grand total of bugger all.  You can easily end up being stifled by everything and anything you have with you, be it in your kit bag, or in your head.  So – what about the times you’ve got too much in your head to fit any more in (never mind photographic technique!).  What about the times (and there are many), when you don’t have your kit with you?

There is something that many of us now carry about our person that is capable of producing basic reproductions of the scenes around us.  That something is our mobile phone.  The majority now have some sort of camera in-built.  This applies to my very own iPhone.   I have a 1st Gen iPhone 3G, with the 2-odd Megapixel camera, no flash etc.  To use an internet cliché – meh.  Its pretty useless in most situations.  Bar brightly lit scenes, with nobody actually moving, it’s output it is, at best, severely lacking.  Mostly, I’ve looked at these shots and tried to work out how I can make them better – turn them into something beautiful.   Its not an easy task,  and has meant that the iPhone has really been mostly confined to the limits of I-haven’t-got-anything-else-with-me-but-want-this-snapshot trivialities and keepsakes.

Then I had bit of a back-to-front idea.  Instead of trying to bring up to standard something that was not, why not play on it’s weaknesses, and revel in its low fidelity?  In other words, rather than messing about trying to make them better, I would see if I could make them ‘worse’ (in a manner of speaking).  I started to punch various synonyms of lo-fi photography into google, and came back with some interesting stuff.  Not surprisingly, there are a lot of bods out there with similar ideas.  It seemed that lo-fi photography was (paraphrasing the Wikipedia entry), a reaction to the general perceived ease of taking technically perfect photos in the digital age.

Another term which reared it’s head was Lomography.  Again – from the Wikipedia entry…

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, “happy accidents,” and alternative film processing are often considered part of the “Lomographic Technique.”

There are 10 ‘rules’ of Lomography (again, more details can be found here)

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don’t think (william firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don’t worry about any rules

So… Lomography is the art of photography sans rules.  I like the sound of this.  Something a bit more freeform, a bit less constrained by the aformentioned technique and kit. I’d heard of this a while back, but only today linked the iPhone camera to the possibilities.

Thing is, the rules above are great, but some of the rest of the philosophy is a little skewed.  The whole thing is based around the ‘Lomo’ brand of Russian Cameras, and shooting on 120 film.  I’d love to do that, but unfortunately, both associated cost, and time would be a hindrance.  Unfortunately, the community based around the art tend to be rather protective about what can be defined as Lomography.  Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to do it properly.  I started out in darkrooms, and the smell of developer and fixer is still something that takes me back to some of my most formative and creative days as a photographer.  However, for now, I’d have to be happy to embrace the philosophy encompassed by the ten rules above, without conforming completely to the standard.  In essence – dancing round the first nine rules, whist fully embracing the tenth.

I’m going to give it a go with my iPhone.  I’ve set up a separate Flickr account, as I want this to be as freeform and spontaneous as possible.  I don’t want these photos muddying my standard Flickr Photostream, as I don’t want my standard photos muddying this.   I want it separate.  The ‘Lomostream’ will be at :-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axemanlomo

It’ll also be on a constantly playing slideshow on my homepage for the time being, which will look something like this :-

Well.. truth be told, it’ll look exactly like that, and will update in real-time as I upload more shots.

Let’s see where this takes us shall we?

Thought I’d put up a quick entry about this shot I took in Morlais Tunnel near Merthyr Tydfil.  It seems to be getting much loving on Flickr sice I posted it yesterday.  I was really happy about the way this turned out. Taken with a 30 sec exposure (in a very dark tunnel!), with the business end of my 10-20mm Sigma zoom, it reminds me of something out of the X-files…! Martin was very patient, and managed to stay still in it throughout, despite getting a good old soaking from the drips coming through the shaft. The shaft itself is one of three air shafts along the length of the tunnel. Take a look at Martin’s site at http://www.blackmountainsite.co.uk for a selection of pics taken by him on the same day.

Click the pic for extra bigness…

Tonight, I reversed this trend and bought a Canon Pixma ip4500.  It seems, so far, as if this is a good decision.

Basically, my good old Stylus Photo 1290 recently packed up and left for a better place (in other words started printing random blue lines on my prints – same thing really).  I’d always had a lot of trouble with both the 1290, and the Stylus photo 895 I had before it.  The big problem was print head clogging.  I would use up half of the ink per cartridge getting the print heads unblocked every time I wanted to print.  Usually, by the time I managed to get a gap-free nozzle check page, I’d have used half the cartridge in ink, and lost the will to live.  I went over to a continuous ink system (fotospeed) which helped somewhat on the 1290, but when that packed up, it was no use on the 895. After reading lots and lots of bad reviews of the current crop of Epson A4 printers, I decided I couldn’t be arsed with blockages any more and gave up for a bit.  However, recently, I’ve wanted to get back into home printing (at least up to A4 – I’ll keep bigger for the professionals at Photobox or somewhere similar!).  I read up, and decided to go for a Canon instead.  After a bit of research, I settled on the Pixma ip4500.  It has better economy and print speed than its newer sibling (the ip4600), and all reviews say to go for this one if you have a choice between the two.  So I did.  

Results?  Well – preliminary messing about seems to show that this is a damn good printer.  I’m using the bundled colour profiles with the Fotospeed paper I’m currently using, and seem to be getting good results. There are very slight casts (mainly very slight magenta), but nothing that can’t be corrected.  The speed is great – much faster than anything I’ve had in the past.  Also, I’ve done a good 5 or 6 A4 pages of test prints, and the ink level hasn’t even been touched.  I could NEVER have done that with the Epsons.  The photo quality is excellent, and to be honest, the ease of setting the thing up, and the fact I’m now a little less fussy about my prints has probably helped.  

This thing also prints on CDs and DVDs – not sure I’ll ever use it, but it’s nice to have.  

Will report back when I’ve produced some more output…!

This is a shot created using HDR photography. For those who haven’t heard of it, or have heard of it and don’t know what people are jibbering on about, it stands for High Dynamic Range. A standard camera is only capable of capturing a certain range of tones in a single shot. This means that if you take a shot similar to the one here, then you can either expose for the sky (which would put the foreground here in more-or-less total darkness), or you can expose for the foreground (which would blow out the sky, as it would be massively overexposed. The happy medium is to average your exposure. This would have the effect of the sky being too over-exposed AND the foreground being underexposed).

So… where does HDR come in? Well, it involves taking a series of bracketed shots. This means taking one shot at the correctly metered exposure, one at a lower exposure (usually 1-2 stops), and one at a higher exposure (again, usually 1-2 stops). You then use a processing package such as Photomatix (http://www.hdrsoft.com/) to combine them all, bringing out the detail in the better-exposed parts of each to make an overall image. The result can be extremely dramatic, much more closely matching the type of view you get with the naked eye (which has a massively higher dynamic range than a camera sensor). HDR started out as a bit of a black art, and whilst still not the simplest of techniques, applications like Photomatix have made the whole process a lot easier.

Have started a nice little photo project today – 100 Strangers. The idea is to approach 100 strangers (not all at once you understand!), and speak to them. In the course of the conversation, you must ask them their name, get to know a bit abbout them, and ask them if they mind you taking their photo. if not, then you snap away and add it to the flickr group “100 Strangers”.

Talking of Flickr, I’ve now got a permanent presence in said repository of photo stuffs, which you can get to at http://www.flickr.com/photos/.

I’ll still be adding my best shots and sets to the gallery here, but they’re now also available on Flickr too (it’s all a bit more sociable you see…).  I think this project is a great idea – a good way to get less confident photographers talking to their subjects.  It’s so easy to just snap away and get candids, but it’s much harder to come out from behind the telephoto and step up to the plate in such a direct way.  You can find out more about the whole thing at www.100strangers.com.