The new AminPhoto pipe (feed aggregator) has been updated to include additional sources including DPReview, The Online Photographer, Pop Photo, The Luminous Landscape, PhotographyBLOG, Engadget, Gizmodo, Rob Galbraith, Imaging Resource, DPNow, DCResource, ePhotozine, Cameratown, DCViews, DigitalCameraInfo, DPhotoJournal, DigitalPhotoNews, and more.

Yahoo Pipes is a highly customizable tool for aggregating feeds. I spent a few minutes yesterday quickly putting together a feed, which for now is structured like this:



Click here to see the result. Let me know if I've overlooked any of your favorite photography feeds!

I think most of us feel that sensor dynamic range (DR) is an important thing to assess in a camera. Is anyone doing it well? Of all the sites which tell us about DR on one camera vs another, I just don't have confidence in any of their methods. I don't mean any offense to any of the reviewers on the big sites, not that they're reading this anyway =). I'll try to explain myself here as well as I can.

I'll start with the table found 2/3 way down on this page at Imaging-Resource.
Those results just don't remotely jibe with my real world experience having owned or extensively used a bunch of cameras on that list. Furthermore, their methods - using the lowest ISO possible for each camera and different ACR versions for different cameras - just don't strike me as valid.

Next, consider DPReview. First look here, where Phil Askey, Editor of DPReview, had the following to say regarding the DR of the 5D versus the 40D: "Naturally the 5D's full frame sensor is going to give you better DR, IQ will depend more on your lenses than the camera." Now after reading that, look at what the DPReview 30D and 5D reviews show for dynamic range here, here, and here. Their testing method shows essentially no difference in DR between the 30D and the 5D.

Most like to say that DR correlates best to pixel size/density. That agrees pretty well with my real life experience, but not all that well. My 4-year-old camera with a 5MP 2/3" sensor seems to hold it's own in DR with my new camera with a 10MP 4/3" sensor, which has half the pixel density. I may be wrong about that; it's a preliminary opinion based on regular shooting without any rigorous testing. My old Fuji F30 had a lower pixel density than many of its competitors, but DR always seemed to be in limited supply with that camera. I'll chalk that up to in-camera processing since there was no RAW file available. My personal experience, again without rigorous testing, is that the 5D has noticeably more sensor DR than the 30D. Still, none of the rigorous testing on DPR and other sites seems to demonstrate a tight correlation between pixel size and DR.

Here's how DPR measures dynamic range in their words. From the 5D review:
"Our new Dynamic Range measurement system involves shooting a calibrated Stouffer Step Wedge (13 stops total range) which is backlit using a daylight balanced lamp (98 CRI). A single shot of this produces a gray scale wedge from (the cameras) black to clipped white (example below). Each step of the scale is equivalent to 1/3 EV (a third of a stop), we select one step as 'middle gray' and measure outwards to define the dynamic range. Hence there are 'two sides' to our results, the amount of shadow range (below middle gray) and the amount of highlight range (above middle gray)."

Sounds great, right? I think it would be fair to say that based on the DSLR test results on this DPReview, the Fuji S5 has the most DR, the Oly E-410 the least, and all the other DSLRs about the same. JPEG results don't matter much to me as I shoot almost exclusively RAW. Also, JPEG results don't tell us as much about sensor DR. Here's the deal from the E-410 review conclusion: "Secondly we were kind of disappointed with the dynamic range performance - dropping three quarters of a stop of highlight range can be the difference between a beautiful blue sky and one which is white and washed-out". Now take a look at the "RAW headroom" graphs on this page from the E-410 review and this one from the 400D/XTi review. I don't see where this 3/4 stop highlight loss is coming from. Even in their JPEG performance curves, it doesn't look like 3/4 stop (except vs the Canon), but in RAW - where it counts IMO - it's almost a dead heat.

I'm no Olympus fanboy. In fact, as I alluded to above, my early impression with the E-410 is that DR in RAW is more limited than I had expected it to be. However, I believe the following are probably true:
1) None of the major review sites are assessing DR in a way that helps us learn what we need to know.
2) The commonly taught principle that sensor DR correlates very closely with pixel size, while as useful a way as any to guess about a given camera's DR capability, is probably far from perfect in practice.
3) Perhaps some of us should give greater consideration to how lenses can maximize delivery to the sensor in such a way that makes the most of the sensor DR we're given, whether that be using ND Grad filters with a bright sky or keeping around an old, low-contrast prime for a day of digital black and white.

I'm taking an idea from TOP here. From time to time, TOP features a photo under the title "Random Excellence," highlighting laudable work to be found on the web. While getting featured on TOP has the desirable effect of driving a great deal of traffic to the notable photographer, I expect that getting Spotlighted on my little blog will direct just a few. Nonetheless, I'll enjoy featuring some of the great works I come across on the web, and hopefully some of the readers will enjoy them as well.

For my first Spotlight, I'd like to call attention to a photograph by Grant Klein, used under a Creative Commons license. Click the image for the intended viewing size.


Grant is a photographer and graphic designer in California, whom I came across on the networking site Virb. It was actually my four-year-old, train-obsessed, web-surfing son Oliver who first noted this photograph, taken outside of Las Vegas. Grant's website is GrantKlein.com, and his Virb page is here.

The Online Photographer (TOP) is one of the few photography blogs I read regularly. Mike Johnston's recent post, "Me and My D3," is one to which I can relate very well. Although much tempted by the latest, greatest in tech, things have gotten to the point where the latest gear offers much more than I can use. Shortly after the Canon 5D was released, folks on the DPReview forums began to clamor for more features, such as weather sealing, 45-point autofocus, more megapixels, etc. The only things I can think of to want are a smaller, lighter camera, and more dynamic range (DR). Unfortunately, my desires seem to be in a different direction than most, so I doubt I'll see them met in the near future. In fact, given a choice between putting 5 more MP or 1 stop more DR in the 5D replacement, I'm pretty sure Canon would choose the former though I would certainly prefer the latter. It's no problem though. I'm content where I stand gearwise, and technology will undoubtedly bring me my compact 35mm digital camera with tons of DR before long. In the meanwhile, the latest pro bodies we're seeing from Canon and Nikon are sure to delight those who need all of those amazing features.

Earlier today, I blogged about the relative qualities of Adobe Lightroom (LR) 1.2 and Phase One Capture One (C1) 4 beta with regards to the processing of high ISO files from the Olympus E-410. Having also recently processed Ricoh GX100 files in both LR and C1 (beta), I thought I'd share an example from the GX100 here as well.

I took this ISO 800 shot with my GX100 earlier this evening to use as an example. I should note first that C1 does not officially support GX100 files, though it has preliminary support for the DNG format and will process Ricoh RAW.

Here is a screenshot of the low-light ISO 800 image being processed in LR 1.2 on the left and C1 4 beta on the right. Click the image twice for the intended viewing size. Both programs preview changes in real time when viewing at 100% like this, so these are how the processed images look as well. As you can see, there is a lot of blotchy color noise in the LR image despite the color noise removal being maxed out. IMO the character of the noise is also less attractive in LR.


Here are the images after processing in Noise Ninja (NN) using the same NN parameters for noise removal and sharpening. As before, the LR image is on the left and the C1 image is on the right. As you can see, the "coarse noise" option in Noisehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Ninja was able to improve, but not eliminate, the color blotches in the LR image.


I did this all very quickly, so the colors are uncorrected in the case of both LR and C1. If anyone is interested, I have made both the RAW (DNG) file as well as the in-camera JPEG (B&W) available as a downloadable zip file here.

I should mention that although I showed this file being processed with all kinds of sharpening, I never treat my high ISO GX100 images that way. With this type of shot, I generally apply zero sharpening and only the standard level of luminance NR in C1, which is less than zero sharpening in LR terms. I also generally convert to B&W using Alien Skin Exposure. In my opinion, the ISO 800 noise from the GX100 has a pleasant quality when left without sharpening with C1 as the RAW processor. Here's a 50% crop of the image given that treatment (Click image twice for full size):


Here's the resized image:


The default in-camera JPEG for comparison:

There are many things I'd like to blog, but unfortunately time hasn't permitted me to do much lately. With that said, here are a few of the upcoming topics I'm planning. This post is mostly for my own sake, but feel free to comment if you'd like to see something in particular.

Anticipated soon:
- Olympus E-410: This poor man's Leica M8
- Using Manual Focus Lenses on DSLRs
- Resources for Buying and Selling Used Photography Gear
- Cosina-Voigtlander 28/35 MiniFinder User Review
- Ricoh GX100 RAW Processor Shootout
- Why Shoot RAW? (by request of my brother Bijan)

For RAW processing of Canon DSLR files, Phase One's Capture One (C1) software is unmatched in my opinion. In particular, using the Etcetera color profiles developed by Magne Nilsen, C1 does the nicest job with color rendering and also seems to do a better job capturing fine detail without excess noise. Unfortunately, C1 does not support all cameras which offer RAW, whereas Adobe's Lightroom (LR) basically does. With the Leica Digilux 2 (D2), I find that ACR 4.0/LR 1.0 does an excellent job. In fact, I keep Photoshop non-updated on one of my Macs for the sole purpose of maintaining the 4.0 version of ACR. LR 1.1 made a mess of my D2 files, and I haven't yet had a chance to try LR 1.2 with them. With the Olympus E-410 and Ricoh GX100, I'm finding that, unlike LR 1.1, LR 1.2 does a nice job with low ISO files. However, for higher ISO files I turn to the buggy C1 beta for reasons mentioned here. If anyone has found a RAW processor for Olympus and Ricoh that can match the low ISO performance of Lightroom and the high ISO performance of C1, I would love to hear about it.

Recently I purchased an Olympus E-410 kit, which is currently the most compact and light DSLR kit on the market. It's a nice solution for the days when the Canon 5D is too large and heavy but I want something more than a compact digital camera. Here they are, side-by-side, with a Zuiko OM 50mm f/1.2 lens on the E-410 and a Vivitar 135mm f/2.3 lens on the 5D:



In most respects, I'm very happy with the E-410. However, high ISO performance has been a bit disappointing. It's not that I expected the E-410, which has a sensor 1/4th the size of a 35mm sensor, to match the 5D in this respect. However, I had hoped that it would fare a bit better than it does. To be fair, a significant portion of my E-410 high ISO woes derive from the fact that I shoot only in RAW format. The default E-410 in-camera JPEGs seem to handle noise pretty well depending on the settings one chooses. However, the results I was getting using Adobe Camera RAW were marginal at ISO 800 and downright poor at ISO 1600. The main problem was blotchy color noise, distributed in coarse patches. I should note that the version of ACR I was using did not officially support the E-410. I was thus happy to learn yesterday that the new version of ACR and Lightroom (same RAW conversion engine in these Adobe products) officially support the E-510, which has the same sensor as the E-410. Therefore, I gave LR 1.2 a try with some high ISO files. As a comparison, I also processed the same files using Phase One's Capture One Version 4 Beta. I should note that the E-410 is not yet supported by C1 v4 Beta. In fact, to get C1 to recognize the files, I had to first convert them to DNG using Lightroom. Nonetheless, the results were interesting, so I will share a representative example here.

This test was conducted as follows:
- The photo was taken at ISO 1600 and underexposed a bit. I did not push the exposure up during RAW processing.
- All RAW conversion settings were at default except as noted
- Both C1 and Lightroom 1.2 noise reduction parameters were set to 67 for color noise and zero for luminance noise
- RAW conversion sharpening settings were at default for both C1 and LR.
- Both C1 and LR were used to export 16-bit TIFF files (Adobe RGB color profile) to PS CS3 for further processing.
- TIFFs were processed using the Noise Ninja plugin for CS3 using auto profile. Noise Ninja settings were at default for both files except that I set the sharpening amount to 60% on the file processed from C1 and twice that for the file processed from LR. This was done to make the apparent level of sharpening/detail more similar between the two images.
- Levels were adjusted identically in both photos to correct for underexposure, and then rough color correction using the PS color balance tool was done on each image.

Obvious issues with this methodology:
- Setting the NR values to the same number in each RAW processing application certainly does not mean that the same amount of NR was being applied in each case. In fact, it was obvious that compared to C1, LR 1.2 is applying considerable luminance NR at the minimum/"zero" setting, though not nearly so much as in LR 1.1.
- Likewise, setting the sharpening values to the same number in each RAW processing application does not mean they are getting the same amount of sharpening.
- E-410 RAW files are not explicitly supported by C1 or LR, though I assume they are supported in LR since LR offically supports the E-510, which has the same sensor.
- Differences in Noise Ninja sharpening settings obviously affect the outcome image quality.
- Color balance adjustments in the end of the process also affected the outcome.

I have experimented with a number of different settings and chose these for this comparison. However, given the significant issues mentioned above and others I may not have consisered, I think that the best way for others to see for themselves is to do a similar comparison using the RAW file. Feel free to download my RAW file in DNG format for testing by going here.

My main findings were as follows:
- C1 4 Beta is buggy as can be. Crashes often. Hopefully the E-410 will be supported in C1 v3.7 soon.
- LR 1.2 is a major improvement on LR 1.1. Everything looked unnatural to me at the pixel level in LR 1.1, and this has been largely addressed.
- LR 1.2 continues to apply more luminance noise reduction than I would like at baseline.
- LR 1.2 color noise reduction does a nice job handling fine color noise but doesn't effectively handle patches of blotchy color.
- C1 color noise reduction effetively eliminates these patches almost completely.
- Noise Ninja's "coarse noise" setting is capable of reducing any residual blotchy color noise remaining after RAW conversion, but can't completely eliminate them from the files processed from LR.
- I prefer the character of the noise after C1 conversion to that of the noise after LR conversion, though neither is very "film-like."

Here are the examples. First, the image processed by LR 1.2 (resized):


Next, the resized C1 conversion:


Here's what I mean by the trouble with coarse color noise patches in LR conversions. Note the blotchy yellow patches in the LR conversion on the left, absent in the C1 conversion on the right (click image for intended viewing size):


Finally, note the character of the noise in these crops. Again, the LR conversion is on the left, and the C1 conversion is on the right. Some of the blotchy color noise is also apparent in this crop of the LR image.



For the time being, C1 v4 beta is my RAW editor of choice for high ISO E-410 images despite the frequent crashes and need to convert to DNG in LR prior to opening files in C1. LR offers a terrific workflow and supports two of my cameras that C1 doesn't, but the coarse color noise just doesn't work for me.

It's been a while since my last blog post. Work has been a killer. I am excited to see that Adobe has released an update to Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW, especially since users in the Adobe forums are reporting that the update addresses the issues some of us noted with the LR 1.1 version. I was impressed with Adobe's responsiveness to product criticism by users. Looking forward to trying this new version!