The Online Photographer has just published the fifth and last part of its epic series of articles called "Great Photo Books You Can Buy New." The series encompasses reissues, current books, a backgrounder on photo book collecting, and lists by Martin Parr and by Jeff Ladd of the photo book review site 5B4.

Part V, by T.O.P.'s regular book reviewer Geoff Wittig, concentrates on classic books by major figures, with a concentration on Dr. Wittig's favorite genre, landscapes. Links to all the earlier posts are listed at the end of the new article.

Link: T.O.P. - Geoff Wittig's List (Great Photo Books You Can Buy New Part V)

In 35mm film photography terms, I've been partial to the 40mm way of seeing for some time. Nothing would make me happier than a digital version of my Olympus OM-2N on which I could mount the unassuming OM 40mm f/2 lens. It's been a pleasant surprise to recently see Panasonic and Sigma bring out compact, fixed focal length lenses with this, my favorite angle of view for candid people photography.

For those who are wondering what's so special about 40mm, The Online Photographer revisted an excellent article today.

Edward Taylor has written a Sigma DP1 Review for The Online Photographer.

As I held it in my hands I thought to myself, "This is the future of P&S cameras." I didn’t realize at the time that it was also going to be a "blast from the past." Before going any further into what may seem like a good bit of criticism, let me say up front that I really like this camera, and, despite its high cost, would buy it again.

Speaking of "serious" compacts, Mike Johnston published his Zeiss Ikon ZI review today. Much respect to Zeiss and Cosina for introducing such a thoughtful product in the narrowest of markets. Respect to Mike also for doing much the same in writing this review.

After reviewing the official Sigma DP1 examples, my thoughts turned to the best method for upsizing them. While it is clear that these images contain a ton of detail, the choice of upscaling approach is important for getting the best possible extra large prints out of relatively small (4.65MP) files. As luck would have it, Ctein of The Online Photographer today posted Part 1 of a three-part comparison between Genuine Fractals, Blow Up, and Photoshop Bicubic. I'm looking forward to Parts 2 & 3, which are said to be coming over the next week.

In the meanwhile, I've been having fun experimenting with resizing approaches. In particular, I've been comparing Genuine Fractals and Photoshop Bicubic Smoother for their ability to upsize the DP1 samples to 14MP. The major problem I've encountered with upsizing the SD14 and DP1 files is that of aliasing artifacts (jaggies). Genuine Fractals seems to do an excellent job of preserving detail while minimizing these artifacts. I'm finding that the default setting on Genuine Fractals used to upsize followed by modest Smart Sharpening in PS (Amount 100, Radius 0.3) gives good results. In the comparison crops that follow, I compared this approach to Photoshop Bicubic Smoother, which required more aggressive subsequent sharpening (Smart Sharpen, Amount 200, Radius 1) for a similar degree of apparent detail. Disclaimers up front: 1) I don't yet have permission from Sigma to post upsized images, but I believe that using these tiny crops as examples is permissibile from a copyright standpoint. The original photographers for the images from which these crops were derived agreed with this; 2) JPEGs aren't the best source for upscaling. JPEG artifacts become more prominent; 3) Obviously my methods for upscaling may be suboptimal and therefore not representative of the DP1 X3 potential; 4) Rick Decker pointed out that the crop I chose from his image may not do justice to the sharpness possible with the DP1 given that the light wasn't that bright at the time of the capture.

Here are some examples (Click image for intended viewing size):


Another example (Click image for intended viewing size):

The differences are definitely subtle, and it would probably take quite a large print to show them. However, if you pick through looking for aliasing effects, they're present in the images resized using PS Bicubic to a greater extent than in those resized with GF5. The jaggies on the slope near the observatory are the most prominent example, but there are others if you look closely at 100%.

In a response to Ctein's article, Hugh Crawford posted the following insights regarding Genuine Fractals: "The behavior of the Genuine Fractals makes sense if you keep in mind that it was originally designed as a file compression program that converted the raster information to vector information and compressed it using wavelets. It tends to want to define things as areas with edges. On the one hand it does a good job of getting rid of aliasing effects on edges and sharpening them without the usual sharpening artifacts, but at the expense of wanting to make things look like areas with edges if the blur is near the sampling frequency." These comments agree well with my preliminary results shown above; and in examples not shown, I've seen a bit of the downside to which he referred.


I have written to Sigma for permission to feature upsampled images on this site. Depending on their reply, I will be able to more fully demonstrate the potential of this approach.

If you use the link below to join me in pre-ordering the DP1, Amazon will give me a small credit towards the purchase of my DP1. Thanks!

Mike Johnston recently launched Photoborg.org, a site which deals with "Photography Basics for Beginners and Parents." It's an excellent place for beginners to ask questions about photography. One neat aspect of Photoborg.org is that it features reader pictures from time to time. I'm proud to have had a photo I took of my son Oliver featured today. My interest in photography really began with photography of my children, and the photo Mike accepted is one of my earliest attempts to manually control the elements of picture taking. If you are a beginner, especially a parent interested in family photography, "The Borg" is worth a look. For anyone with a significant interest in photography, I highly recommend Mike's other blog, The Online Photographer.

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.