Technology Tales

Adventures & experiences in contemporary technology

EVF or OVF?

22nd December 2019

In photography, some developments are passing fads while others bring longer lasting changes. In their own way, special effects filters and high dynamic range techniques cause their share of excitement before that passed and their usage became more sensible. In fact, the same might be said for most forms of image processing because tastefulness eventually gets things in order. Equally, there are others that mark bigger shifts.

The biggest example of the latter is the move away from film photography to digital image capture. There still are film photographers but they largely depend on older cameras since very few are made any more. My own transition came later than others but I hardly use film any more and a lack of replacement parts for cameras that are more than fifteen years old only helps to keep things that way. Another truth is that digital photography makes me look at my images more critically and that helps for some continued improvement.

Also, mobile phone cameras have become so capable that the compact camera market has shrunk dramatically. In fact, I gave away my Canon PowerShot G11 earlier this year because there was little justification in hanging onto it. After all, it dated back to 2010 and a phone would do now what it once did though the G11 did more for me than I might have expected. Until 2017, my only photos of Swedish locations were made with that camera. If I ever was emotional at its departure and I doubt that I was, that is not felt now.

If you read photography magazines, you get the sense that mirrorless cameras have captured a lot of the limelight and that especially is the case with the introduction of full frame models. Some writers even are writing off the chances of SLR’s remaining in production though available model ranges remain extensive in spite of the new interlopers. Whatever about the departure of film, the possible loss of SLR’s with their bright optical viewfinders (OVF’s) does make me a little emotional since they were the cameras that so many like me aspired to owning during my younger years and the type has served me well over the decades.

Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III

Even so, I too have used mirrorless cameras and an Olympus PEN E-PL5 came into my possession in 2013. However, I found that using the screen on the back of a camera was not to my liking and the quality of mobile phone cameras is such that I no longer need any added portability. However, it needs to be remembered that using a Tamron 14 to 150 mm zoom lens with the body cannot have helped either. Wishing to sample a counterpart with an electronic view finder, I replaced it with an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III earlier this year and have been getting on fine with that.

The body certainly is a compact one but the handling is very like an SLR and I have turned off the automatic switching between viewfinder and screen since I found it distracting; manually switching between the two is my preference. As it happens, using the EVF took a little acclimatisation but being able to add a spirit level overlay proved to as useful as it was instructive. The resulting images may be strong in the green and blue ends of the visible spectrum but that suits a user that is partial to both colours anyway. It also helps that the 16.1 megapixel sensor creates compact images that are quick to upload to a backup service. There have been no issues working with my Tamron lens and keeping that was a deciding factor in my remaining with Olympus in spite of a shutter failure with the older camera. That was fixed efficiently and at a reasonable cost too.

As good as the new Olympus has been, it has not displaced my existing Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Pentax K5 II SLR’s. The frame size is much smaller anyway and January saw me acquire a new Sigma 24 to 105 mm zoom lens for the former after an older lens developed an irreparable fault. The new lens is working as expected and the sharpness of any resulting images is impressive. However, the full frame combination is weighty even if I do use it handheld so that means that the Pentax remains my choice for overseas trips. There also is an added brightness in the viewfinders of both cameras that I appreciate so the OM-D complements the others rather than replacing them.

While I can get on with EVF’s if SLR’s ever get totally superseded, I am planning to stick mainly with SLR’s for now. Interestingly, Canon has launched a new enthusiast model so there must be some continuing interest in them. Also, it seems that Canon foresees a hybrid approach where live viewing using the screen on the back of the camera may add faster autofocus or other kinds of functionality while the OVF allows more traditional working. That of itself makes me wonder if we might see cameras that can switch between EVF and OVF modes within the same viewfinder. The thought may be as far fetched as it is intriguing yet there may be other possibilities that have not been foreseen. One thing is clear though: we are in an age of accelerating change.

Pondering travel device consolidation using an Apple iPad Pro 12.9″

18th September 2016

It was a change of job in 2010 that got me interested in using devices with internet connectivity on the go. Until then, the attraction of smartphones had not been strong, but I got myself a Blackberry on a pay as you go contract, but the entry device was painfully slow, and the connectivity was 2G. It was a very sluggish start.

It was supplemented by an Asus Eee PC that I connected to the internet using broadband dongles and a Wi-Fi hub. This cumbersome arrangement did not work well on short journeys and the variability of mobile network reception even meant that longer journeys were not all that successful either. Usage in hotels and guest houses though went better and that has meant that the miniature laptop came with me on many a journey.

In time, I moved away from broadband dongles to using smartphones as Wi-Fi hubs and that largely is how I work with laptops and tablets away from home unless there is hotel Wi-Fi available. Even trips overseas have seen me operate in much the same manner.

One feature is that we seem to carry quite a number of different gadgets with us at a time and that can cause inconvenience when going through airport security since they want to screen each device separately. When you are carrying a laptop, a tablet, a phone and a camera, it does take time to organise yourself and you can meet impatient staff, as I found recently when returning from Oslo. Checking in whatever you can as hold luggage helps to get around at least some of the nuisance and it might be time for the use of better machinery to cut down on having to screen everything separately.

When you come away after an embarrassing episode as I once did, the attractions of consolidating devices start to become plain. In fact, most probably could get with having just their phone. It is when you take activities like photography more seriously that the gadget count increases. After all, the main reason a laptop comes on trips beyond Britain and Ireland at all is to back up photos from my camera in case an SD card fails.

Apple iPad Pro 12.9″

Parking that thought for a while, let’s go back to March this year when temptation overcame what should have been a period of personal restraint. The result was that a 32 GB 12.9″ Apple iPad Pro came into my possession along with an Apple Pencil and a Logitech CREATE Backlit Keyboard Case. It should have done so, but the size of the screen did not strike me until I got it home from the Apple Store. That was one of the main attractions because maps can be shown with a greater field of view in a variety of apps, a big selling point for a hiker with a liking for maps, who wants more than what is on offer from Apple, Google or even Bing. The precision of the Pencil is another boon that makes surfing the website so much easier and the solid connection between the case and the iPad means that keyboard usage is less fiddly than it would if it used Bluetooth. Having tried them with the BBC iPlayer app, I can confirm that the sound from the speakers is better than any other mobile device that I have used.

Already, it has come with me on trips around England and Scotland. These weekend trips saw me leave the Asus Eee PC stay at home when it normally might have come with me and taking just a single device along with a camera or two had its uses too. The screen is large for reading on a train but I find that it works just as well so long as you have enough space. Otherwise, combining use of a suite of apps with recourse to the web does much of the information seeking needed while on a trip away and I was not found wanting. Battery life is good too, which helps.

Those trips allowed for a little light hotel room blog post editing too and the iPad Pro did what was needed, though the ergonomics of reaching for the screen with the Pencil meant that my arm was held aloft more than was ideal. Another thing that raised questions in my mind is the appearance of word suggestions at the bottom of the screen as if this were a mobile phone since I wondered if these were more of a hindrance than a help given that I just fancied typing and not pointing at the screen to complete words. Copying and pasting works too but I have found the screen-based version a little clunky so I must see if the keyboard one works just as well, though the keyboard set up is typical of a Mac so that affects word selection. You need to use the OPTION key in the keyboard shortcut that you use for this and not COMMAND or CONTROL as you might do on a PC.

Transcend JetDrive Go 300

Even with these eccentricities, I was left wondering if it had any utility when it came to backing up photos from digital cameras and there is an SD card adapter that makes this possible. A failure of foresight on my part meant that the 32 GB capacity now is an obvious limitation but I think I might have hit on a possible solution that does not need to upload to an iCloud account. It involves clearing off the photos onto a 128 GB Transcend JetDrive Go 300 so they do not clog up the iPad Pro’s storage. That the device has both Lightning and USB connectivity means that you can plug it into a laptop or desktop PC afterwards too. If that were to work as I would hope, then the laptop/tablet combination that I have been using for all overseas trips could be replaced to allow a weight reduction as well as cutting the hassle at airport security.

Trips to Ireland still may see my sticking with a tried and tested combination though because I often have needed to do some printing while over there. While I have been able to print a test document from an iPad Mini on my home network-connected printer, not every model supports this and that for NFC or Air Print is not universal either. If this were not an obstacle, apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote could have their uses for business-related work and there are web-based offerings from Google, Microsoft and others too.

In conclusion, I have found that my iPad Pro does so much of what I need on a trip away that retiring the laptop/tablet combination for most of these is not as outrageous as it once would have seemed. In some ways, iOS has a way to go yet before it could take over from macOS but it remains in development so it will be interesting to see what happens next. All the while, hybrid devices running Windows 10 are becoming more pervasive and that might provide Apple with the encouragement that it needs.

Batch conversion of DNG files to other file types with the Linux command line

8th June 2016

At the time of writing, Google Drive is unable to accept DNG files, the Adobe file type for RAW images from digital cameras. The uploads themselves work fine but the additional processing at the end that I believe is needed for Google Photos appears to be failing. Because of this, I thought of other possibilities like uploading them to Dropbox or enclosing them in ZIP archives instead; of these, it is the first that I have been doing and with nothing but success so far. Another idea is to convert the files into an image format that Google Drive can handle and TIFF came to mind because it keeps all the detail from the original image. In contrast, JPEG files lose some information because of the nature of the compression.

Handily, a one line command does the conversion for all files in a directory once you have all the required software installed:

find -type f | grep -i “DNG” | parallel mogrify -format tiff {}

The find and grep commands are standard with the first getting you a list of all the files in the current directory and sending (piping) these to the grep command so the list only retains the names of all DNG files. The last part uses two commands for which I found installation was needed on my Linux Mint machine. The parallel package is the first of these and distributes the heavy workload across all the cores in your processor and this command will add it to your system:

sudo apt-get install parallel

The mogrify command is part of the ImageMagick suite along with others like convert and this is how you add that to your system:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

In the command at the top, the parallel command works through all the files in the list provided to it and feeds them to mogrify for conversion. Without the use of parallel, the basic command is like this:

mogrify -format tiff *.DNG

In both cases, the -format switch specifies the output file type with tiff triggering the creation of TIFF files. The *.DNG portion itself captures all DNG files in a directory but {} does this in the main command at the top of this post. If you wanted JPEG ones, you would replace tiff with jpg. Shoudl you ever need them, a full list of what file types are supported is produced using the identify command (also part of ImageMagick) as follows:

identify -list format

Three gone…

11th January 2013

As of today, Jessops no longer continues to trade. It is but a third specialist purveyor of photographic equipment to go this way. Jacobs, another Leicester headquartered competitor, met the same fate as did the Wildings chain in the northwest of England. These were smaller operations than Jessops who may have overreached itself during the boom years and certainly had their share of financial troubles in recent times, the latest of which putting an end from the operation.

Many are pondering what is happening and the temptation is to blame the rise of the e-commerce and the economic situation for all of this. In addition, I have seen poor service blamed. However, where are we going to go now after this? Has photography become such a specialised market that you need a diversified business to stick with it? After all, independent retailers have been taking a hammering too and some have gone out of business like the chains that I have mentioned here.

It does raise the question as to where folk engaging in a photographic purchase are going to go for advice now; is the web sufficiently beginner friendly? There seemingly are going to be less bricks and mortar shops out there now so coming across one-to-one advice as once would have been the case is looking harder than it once was. Photographic magazines will help and the web has a big role to play too. It certainly informed some of my previous purchases but I have been that little bit more serious about my photography for a while now.

It might be that photography is becoming more specialist again after a period when the advent of digital cameras caused an explosion in interest. Cameras on mobile phones are becoming ever more capable and cannibalising the compact camera market for those only interested in point and shoot machinery. Maybe that is where things are going in that mass market photography doesn’t offer the future that it once might have done given the speed of technological advance. The future and present undoubtedly are about as interesting as they have become utterly uncertain.

Thinking over the last ten years or so, there has been a lot of change and that seems set to continue even if I am left wondering if photography has shot its bolt by now. My first SLR came from a Stockport branch of Jessops and was a film camera, a Canon EOS SLR. It certainly got me going and was exchanged for a Canon EOS 30 from Ffordes, an internet transaction during which the phone system around Manchester and Cheshire went on the blink. That outage may have exposed a frailty of our networked world but there has been no fire to melt cables in a tunnel since then. Further items from Jessops came via the same channel such as a Manfrotto 055 tripod and my Pentax K10D. A Canon-fit 28-135 mm Sigma came from Jessops’ then Manchester Deansgate store and another Canon-fit Sigma lens, a 70-300 mm telephoto affair, came from another branch of the chain, although not the Macclesfield branch since that had yet to be established and there’s no photographic store left in the town now after the Jessops and Wildings closures.

Those purchases have become history just like the photographic retail chain from which they were sourced. These days, I am more than comfortable in making dealings over the web but that concern about those starting out that I expressed earlier now remains. Seeing how that would work is set to become interesting. Might it limit the take up of photography on a more serious basis? That is a question that could get a very interesting answer as we continue into ever more uncertain times.

Dispensing with temptation

26th January 2012

The compact system camera arena is a burgeoning one with many manufacturers having followed Olympus into the fray. In latter months of last year, Nikon finally took the plunge though Canon have yet to do the same. Seeing offers on Olympus E-PL1 kits with a 14-42 mm zoom lens had me tempted, particularly with a price tag of the order of £250. In fact, I even got to looking into the competition too and a shortlist emerged. This also featured the Samsung NX-11 and the Sony NEX-C3 as well as the big brother of the latter, the NEX-5N.

Dispensing with temptation

What eventually countered the allure of shiny objects was the question as to why I needed such an item. After all, I already possess a Pentax K10D DSLR and a Canon Powershot G11 and these have been satisfying my photographic needs for a while now. The DSLR may date from 2007 but it is still working well for me and, if it ever needed replacing, I’d be going for another Pentax with the K-5 being a strong contender. The Canon is doing what’s asked of it so the recent launching of the G1 X isn’t so tempting either.

The whole dalliance has me wondering about how photographic equipment changeovers come about. After all, it was around a decade ago with the DSLR revolution was in the offing if not in progress. Until then, film photography was predominant but it looks as if it got as far as it could from a technological point of view when I look back at what happened. The digital photography area was new and untapped so moving there offered new possibilities and purchases more easily justified. The end result is that very few film cameras are being made nowadays. Ironically, it’s film photography that now is untrammelled terrain for many and it is holding its own too in an era when digital photography predominates.

The same sort of newness that came with digital photography also applies to CSC‘s to a certain extent. From the heritage of half-frame 35 mm film photography, Olympus has fashioned a different type of digital camera: essentially a compact with interchangeable lenses. Was it the fact that I have no CSC that caused me to be tempted and has it happened to others too? Also, is that what got digital photography going in the first place?

It almost feels as if camera manufacturers have to keep bringing to market new models and new types of camera in order to stay in business. After all, Minolta had to sell its camera division to Sony when they failed to get going in the DSLR market quickly enough. The same thing might have happened to Pentax too with the marque passing to first to Hoya, and then to Ricoh after the firm lost its independence.

What doesn’t help is the lack of longevity of camera models. The coming of digital photography has exacerbated this situated with models being launched at a frenetic rate. In the days of film photography, a model could last on the market for a few years and there was once a time when a twenty year lifetime wouldn’t have looked so ridiculous though there were incremental improvements made over that time too. For instance, a Pentax K1000 wouldn’t be exactly the same at the end of its production run as it was at the start though the model number may be the same. That world is gone.

Camera types have done better with the SLR design lasting around 50 years so far. However, mirror-less camera technology is adding pressure like never before. Even compact cameras allow live TTL type viewing and Olympus dug into its film camera heritage to add an interchangeable lens mount to give us the first E-P1. The original PEN cameras were half-frame 35 mm affairs and, appropriately enough, their descendants have small sensors in the micro four thirds mould. Then, there’s Sony’s efforts with translucent mirrors that do not move like their SLR counterparts. Canon tried this in the 1980’s with film cameras but never pursued the genre. After that, there are mirror-less SLR-style cameras from Samsung and Panasonic that make you wonder if a full size equivalent is in the offing with live viewing and an electronic viewfinder. Olympus is doing a teaser advertising campaign at the moment and it has some wondering if an OM-D is in the offing.

Dispensing with temptation

In parallel with all this, Sony is making a good impression with their CSC’s, the NEX series. These have APS-C sized sensors like many DSLR’s and in compact bodies as well. However, the feel very much is that of a compact camera and some have complained of a like of buttons on them though the photographic quality is very good. Samsung have gone for the same sensor size in their NX-11 thought they have gone for SLR styling. That may be more suitable for some than having to find settings buried in menus.

In summary, we are in an exciting if unnerving time in camera technology at the moment. On one hand, we are seeing a great deal of miniaturisation and what formerly were still cameras can do movie making as well. The latter may not be an interest of mine and it looks like a time-consuming hobby too. A lot is in flux right now and a recent court case reminded us of the difficulties in doing original work these days with image processing in Photoshop forming the basis of a victorious copyright claim. Because the number of images that are getting created everywhere, it could be hard for some to avoid this one and that could be exacerbated if the government changes the law so that intellectual property claims can be processed in the small claims courts. That sort of thing makes film photography seem attractive and it does seem that it isn’t disappearing either, even if Kodak has its financial problems. Novelty seems to change photographic tastes and it seems that film photography is novel again. It’s a changing world and who knows where it take us. Maybe a new DSLR body might make a good purchase in case CSC’s usurp their place entirely. Photographic technology is interesting yet again.

A tendency for overexposure?

14th July 2010

A recent trip to Sweden saw my Canon PowerShot G11 being put to rather more use than was expected. If I had known what might have been coming my way, I may even have eschewed the principle of lightweight packing to bring along my Pentax DSLR. Nevertheless, the little Canon did what ever was asked of it when light was plentiful.

Once thing that I have noticed in comparison with the Pentax is the Canon’s tendency to overexpose a scene. To a point, this can be explained by the former having proper spot-metering and the latter having the less specific partial metering. In fact, that might explain why a Canon EOS 10D SLR in my possession has the same tendency. Maybe it’s time to make more use of the Sekonic light meter that I have but that adds bulk that doesn’t fit in with the idea of carrying a compact camera around with you.

That leaves getting more practice with exposure corrections at processing time (I do capture all my photos in raw format). Going further, I am finding that the same consideration appears to apply to image sharpening too. It’s almost as if you need to develop a feeling for the results produced by a camera before satisfaction with any acquired photos will follow. Having decent lighting at capture time and not having muck on the sensor helps too as I have discovered with the photos made used my Pentax K10D on a recent visit to Arran and Argyll. The state of the sensor needs sorting (even if it has an anti-dust system on board) but I sometimes wonder if my judgement of lighting is what it used to be or whether my aspirations have gone too high. Maybe I need to slow down a little so as to set aside time for working on getting better results and with the right light, a quantity that should come with autumn and winter. In the meantime, I’ll stick with making the best of the British summer.

A new acquisition

16th January 2010

Back in the early days of this blog, I mulled over the idea of having a high-end digital compact camera to complement a DSLR that then was delivering very dusty images; that Canon EOS 10D was cleaned since then and comes in for occasional use to this day. That was nearly three years ago and a first generation Ricoh GR Digital was the item that then was catching my eye. At the time, I failed to justify spending that much money on such a thing and ended up acquiring a new Pentax K10D DSLR instead. The question that rattled about my head was this: what was the point of spending DSLR money on a compact camera? Its one that never really went away and comes to mind when you see the prices of interchangeable lens compacts like Olympus’ Pen and equivalent offerings from Panasonic and Ricoh (there, it’s interchangeable lens units rather than actual lenses).

The strongest counterpoint to the cost conundrum is the little matter of size. SLR (film or digital) cameras are sizeable things and there is a place for having something that drops into a pocket. It is that which has propelled me into taking delivery of a Canon PowerShot G11. It may need a good-sized pocket but, unless you are going out with no jacket, it shouldn’t be a problem most of the time. For those shorter sorties when I don’t fancy bringing an SLR out, it well-built and looks the business though some acclimatisation is in order to make the best of the knobs, buttons and menus. Nevertheless, the included manual will help with this process (there’s a paper quick start guide and more detailed documentation on CD).

Canon PowerShot G11

The camera hasn’t seen extensive use just yet so here are a few early impressions. Firstly, there’s the matter of size: it’s even smaller than the first camera that I ever bought (more than fifteen years ago) and that was a Ricoh 35 mm compact film camera. That comparison is even more striking when you consider the feature sets. The Ricoh was a fixed 35 mm lens affair with things like date and time stamping, ISO choice and a nod towards scenic mode selection. In contrast, the much newer Canon is loaded with the sorts of things that normally are found almost exclusively on SLR’s, starting with its effective 28-140 mm focal length range.

Exposure modes such as manual, aperture priority and shutter priority complement scene-based modes and another for movies (not a concern of mine, it has to be said). As if that weren’t enough, there’s exposure compensation too. It came as a surprise to me to find a form of manual focussing included though it is not as convenient as turning a focussing ring on a lens. You can see the inbuilt flash above but there’s also a hotshoe and a place to attach a tripod too. Settings like white balance and file format are accessed using the Function/Set button with the lever underneath the shutter release button controlling the focal length of the lens. In addition, there’s also image stabilisation and that’s important when you’re using live view to compose a photo. Spot metering and focal point selection are other things that find their way into the package. Some may be excited by other things but exposure and focussing are essential for any photographic efforts.

An optical viewfinder is included and it has dioptre settings too but my first impressions are that live view though the rear screen trumps it and I see no need for such things on SLR’s. That also flips out from the camera body and can be rotated either for self-portraiture or for folding back in on the camera body for use like a non-articulated screen. Another use is with those occasions when the subject means holding the camera in positions that would be impossible with a conventional screen; holding the camera over your head or down low on the ground are the sorts of situations that come to mind.

Of course, there’s more there than those features that I have listed and the specifications on the Canon website are as good a place to start as any. So far, my only testing has been of the cursory checks variety and to make sure that the thing works properly. Still, this has given me more of a feel for the camera and how it operates. As you’d expect, high ISO settings are noisy but a bigger surprise was that the smallest aperture setting is f/8. Being used to SLR’s, I was expecting to get f/16 and its like on there but a spot of internet investigation showed that I should have been taking the size of the sensor into account with my expectations. Any trials so far have been in dull weather so I’d need to use it in a wider variety of conditions before giving it the sort of wider appraisal that you’d find in the likes Outdoor Photography (who liked it, it has to be said). For what it’s worth, I have found no major criticism so far though I cannot see it usurping my SLR’s but that never was the intention anyway.

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