Photography

I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for years.

Nikon D80 Revealed

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Just a few months after getting my D70s, Nikon’s wrapped up their 20-day teaser campaign by introducing the Nikon D80. Overall, it looks really good — the only thing I see that doesn’t really excite me is that the D80 uses SD rather than Compact Flash (which was one of the reasons I chose the CF-based D70s rather than the SD-based D50), but it makes sense given SD’s dominance of the small camera market.

Brief specs on the D80 (vs D70s):

  • 10 megapixel (6 mp)
  • 3 frames per second, 23 continuous shots (3 FPS, 12 continuous)
  • SD (CF)
  • 11 area AF system (5 area)
  • ISO 100-1600 (200-1600)
  • Upgraded commander mode on the built-in flash
  • Larger, brighter, D200-style viewfinder
  • 2.5″, 230k pixel LCD (2.0″, 130k pixel LCD)
  • EN-EL3e battery (EN-EL3a)
  • MB-D80 battery/portrait grip
  • In-camera retouching (D-lighting, cropping, redeye fix, color).

Looks really, really nice. Given the switch to SD, when it comes time for me to upgrade in a few years I’ll likely be looking at the D200 (or whatever the current camera at that point in Nikon’s lineup is at the time) so I can stick with the CF cards I have now, but the D80 will definitely be fun to play with when it shows up at work. Theoretically, the D80 should be available for sale in September…we’ll see how quickly Nikon can actually get these on to the shelves (the D200, announced in Nov. 2005, has just started showing up regularly on store shelves).

More detailed looks at the D80 are at DP Review, Rob Galbraith DPI and Let’s Go Digital.

Also announced were the AF-S DX 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED (the kit lens for the D80) and the AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED.

iTunes “MANYMEN ARE ZOMBIES” by Jadmix from the album jadmix@gmail.com (5:15).

FD’s Flickr Widget

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One of the newer (newest?) additions to FD’s Flickr Toys is this cute lil’ banner image. Your choice of recent images, recent ‘interesting’ images, random images, or random ‘interesting’ images from your photostream. Slick and easy to set up — here’s the generator.

djwudi. Get yours at flagrantdisregard.com/flickr

As may be obvious by the photos shown in the banner, I’ve been working on playing catch up with my photos off and on over the past few days. Fourth of July photos are coming soon (gee, what, two weeks late?)….

iTunes “Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1: Prelude #17 in A-flat” by Gulda, Friedrich from the album Bach for Book Lovers (1997, 1:38).

Calico (AutoStitch for Mac OS X)

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Panoramic photography is something I’ve been playing with for years — long enough that Prairie was amused to see that I was taking multi-shot panoramics back when I visited Europe during my high school years, long before I had any way to assemble them together with anything more sophisticated than scissors and tape.

Unfortunately, the state of panoramic software on the Mac has been less than I’d like for quite some time now. Apple’s excellent Quicktime VR Authoring Studio is long out of date, without any sign of it being updated for OS X (in fact, searching for it on Apple’s site only returns references to it, with no official product page listed). Canon’s Photostitch is used fairly frequently, but I’ve never been that thrilled with it. Functional, but it doesn’t really “feel” like a true OS X application, and it doesn’t allow for much tweaking or fine-tuning. Other Mac OS X panoramic tools are either commercial and expensive, or command-line ports that I’ve never taken the time to investigate fully (such as Panorama Tools). For a time when I had a working PC I used The Panorama Factory and was quite happy with its range of options, but since my PC finally gave up the ghost, TPF’s performance under Virtual PC wasn’t good enough for me to continue using it.

For the past year or so, though, I’ve been keeping an eye out on AutoStitch. It looked to be the “holy grail” of panoramic creation software: originally created as a research project at the University of British Columbia, it produces truly automatic panoramic photos, stitched from multiple photos that don’t even have to be aligned or all taken with the same exposure (a 57-shot example is shown on the AutoStitch page). The problem, of course, was that AutoStitch is PC-only. Still, I kept seeing incredible panoramas that AutoStitch had produced, so I’d occasionally check in to see if a Mac OS X port had popped up yet.

This morning, my persistence paid off. I’m not sure when it first appeared, but Kekus Digital has produced a pseudo-port of AutoStitch for Mac OS X (licensing the AutoStitch technology in a Mac OS X package) called Calico.

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Portfolio 2: KidsQuest Childrens Museum

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Every so often, someone contacts me after finding one of my photos and asks permission to use it for one project or another. Here’s another: exhibit design firm PPI Design and Fabrication used this photo as part of an exhibit at the newly-opened KidsQuest Childrens Museum in Bellevue.

Prairie and I were able to stop by the museum this morning to find my photo…

KidsQuest Childrens Museum, Factoria, WA KidsQuest Childrens Museum, Factoria, WA

My Picture, KidsQuest Childrens Museum, Factoria, WA Me with my picture, KidsQuest Childrens Museum, Factoria, WA

iTunes “Trust (Never)” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album Glory (1994, 4:36).

Pimp my A95

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One of the (few) downsides to my little Powershot A95 is that as a point-and-shoot style camera, it’s a touch limited as to what it can do — a standard 3x optical zoom, a fixed lens so no other lenses can be attached, no threads for filters…little things like that. Very normal for a point-and-shoot, of course, but at times, a wee bit limiting.

However, one of the nice things about the A95 is that it is possible to attach some accessories to it. Canon’s Powershot cameras include a detachable ring around the lens assembly that, when removed, reveals a mount point. Canon also supplies a few accessories that can attach to the mount: an adaptor tube, which can then have either a wide-angle or a telephoto lens attached to it. However, as the A95 is a couple years old, these items aren’t incredibly easy to come by anymore.

Last week sometime I stumbled across LensMate, a local company that makes aftermarket adapters for the A95’s mount in both 52mm and 37mm sizes. I went ahead and ordered the 37mm adapter (since I knew my work carried some 37mm filters and accessories), and it arrived in the mail yesterday.

I took the camera in to work so that I could make sure the adapter worked with the filters I wanted to pick up. It did (no surprise, but nice to have it confirmed), so I got three Quantaray filters: a UV Haze, a Neutral Density, and a Circular Polarizer.

Since 37mm is a standard size for camcorder lenses, our store carries a few accessory lenses originally designed for camcorders. Since they’re the same thread size as my new adaptor, I started experimenting with those, and as it turns out, we’ve got a set of a .5x Wide Angle Lens and a 2x Telephoto Lens that fit perfectly, so I started playing with those to see how well they worked. Verdict: not bad, and I may want to pick the set up after my next paycheck.

Then things started getting silly.

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iPhoto 6.0: Flickr Photocasts

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One of the questions I had while watching the Macworld ’06 keynote popped up when Steve was demoing the new ‘Photocasting‘ ability in iPhoto 6. He clicked on the Photocast RSS feed, iPhoto popped right up, and the photos appeared in the album.

“What would happen,” I wondered, “if you tried to subscribe to a Flickr RSS feed as if it were a Photocast?”

Copying my Flickr Atom feed

Subscribe to Photocast...

Entering the Flickr Atom address

iPhoto's Flickr Photocast

Admittedly, it’s not quite the same as an official (iPhoto-created) Photocast would be, as Photocasts can (optionally) include the full-resolution photos. As the Flickr feeds only include the small size photo, the resulting album is populated only with small (~240×180) photos, certainly not any resolution suitable for printing. Also, my understanding is that a Photocast would include however many photos were in the album selected for ‘casting; the Flickr feed only includes the last 10 photos.

Still, it does work; the only real differences are simply differences in how the RSS feeds are created (number of items and resolution of the included images).

Perhaps Flickr could include an option to enable Photocasting — if not for entire feeds, then perhaps for individual sets — and allow a choice of what size photo to embed into the Photocast feed, and/or how many photos to include (last X, entire sets, etc.). Then, clicking on a set’s ‘Photocast’ link or icon would allow iPhoto/Flickr users very nearly the same Photocast functionality as iPhoto/.mac users do.

It’s at least worth tossing the idea out there, I’d say.

Update: Found in this spirited discussion of the Photocast feeds on Brent Simmons’ weblog is an announcement from John Evans that he’s created a Flickr to Apple Photocast (Phlickr) feed converter.

It will take a feed from flickr and rework it a little so that it uses the large images and contains the comment of the photo as well. It is an Atom 1.0 feed that seems to validate on the feeds I have tested, it also includes most of the extra apple stuff debated here. If I can work out the date format I will add that too, and myabe the tags can be retrived and added so they appear as keywords.

To use just paste any feed from flickr into the box and hit the button, the feed should just open up in iPhoto, if not it will just be a regular atom feed with all the relevent enclosures so it will work in NetNewsWire or whatever your reader is.

I just tried it, and it worked fine for me.

Andy Rosen: Early punk photos

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Jim Kerr, Simple MindsI came across an article in today’s Seattle Times about Andy Rosen, who’d taken a lot of photographs of the early punk scene in London — and is just now starting to showcase a lot of never before seen photos on Flickr.

Rosen had a successful photography career from 1976 to 1984, completely embedding himself in the early punk-rock scene in London.

He began as the bands were starting up, and by the time the punk-rock scene exploded, he had a real in. He lived with some of the musicians and was friends with some people who became musicians.

But back then you needed money and more than a card reader to see your shots, so a lot of Rosen’s film never got processed. It got boxed up and stored at mum and dad’s. That includes all the photos he finally uncovered and developed last year, and sat on until now.

Dave Gahan, Depeche ModeThe collection he’s put up so far (and, apparently, he’s just getting started), is amazing. Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Siouxie Sioux, The Sex Pistols…tons of shots that have never been published before.

On top of that, he’s set up a weblog where he’s recounting some of the stories behind the photos — the photo shoots themselves, his relationships to the subjects, how he was able to get the shots he did. Tons of incredible documentation of the time and the musicians.

For instance, a very early performance by The Clash at a small Boxing Day 1979 gathering with about fifty family and friends in attendance:

Joe Strummer, The ClashAt the time the Clash were just another punk band – better than most but definately not the Rock Stars they were to become. Funny thing was I shot about 10 rolls of black and white and decided not to develop them. Money was tight in those days – so I would sometimes just not bother processing the film if I felt the band was not worthy of the expense. Looking back on it what an idiot I was. Years (two decades) later I stumbled on a whole bag of unprocesed film I had left In london at my mum and dads. There they were clearly labaled THE CLASH. I excitedly processed them and to my amazment I relaized I had captured a precious moment in Rock And Roll history – which might never have been seen. A band in all their innocent glory – playing to fifty people – moments before they were to etch themselves into punk history as one of the most prolific Punk Bands ever.

This is great, great stuff. Thanks for sharing all this, Andy!