New technology releases

[Garth Herrick]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarty

That must be one fine camera that you've got your hands on. The eye can only perceive so much goodness, I wonder how much farther down the pixel road we can go before the difference becomes imperceptible.

This is what I am trying to evaluate for myself. The difference can be just marginal from 6 megapixels to 10. To me the images appear significanly cleaner, with better color distinction and definition. But I am still thinking about this. Your D70 is still a marvelous camera by comparison; and for about the same result, your camera only uses a fraction of the file size. I bet consumer and light duty professional cameras top out at ten megapixels for some time to come: It's really plenty to work with.

D100 on top,
D200 below:

The color is certainly different.

Garth

[Garth Herrick]

As near as is possible, here is a side by side comparison of the Nikon D100 and it's replacement, the D200:

I took these test shots and details in a halogen light. Same settings throughout between the cameras:

f/3.5
ISO 200
1/40 second shutter
Adobe 1998 color space
neutral "incandescent" white-balance preset.

same lens/ focal setting setting (24mm)
tripod
media card

I scaled up the D100 image to the same file size for comparison. The two crop details are at the D200's 100% therefore.

The D100 is inherently more conservative and greenish in it's color rendering in this white balance setting compared to the D200.

So, which is better?

again (age before beauty)
D100 top.
D200 bottom.

Garth

[Julie Deane]

Those pix look great, Garth! I definitely like the second shots better.

I just got my camera, but haven't really had time to play with it yet. And I'm just not that good at the technical stuff like Garth, but when I get a chance and know my way around may camera better, I'll post a few shots.

[Garth Herrick]

Thank you Julie for validating the shots from the new camera. I feel better now. It makes the color from the old camera look dirty and tired by comparison! I am personally impressed how the yellow flowers are so much more deftly rendered by the D200. The D100 lost control on those high value and chroma yellows; they're completely blown out. This is a measureable improvement!

To be sure, your new camera has virtually the same horsepower as mine, so I can't wait to see your first shots. Fire away!

Garth

[Garth Herrick]

I am so impressed with the new Nikon D200. It makes the old D100 look pretty crummy by comparison. Here's a big plus:

I am delighted to find there is terriffic exposure latitude, allowing for great highlight recovery when an image has been mildly overexposed. The image as shot has losses in the highlights, as all digital cameras are prone to. On my old D100, I might have to kiss an image goodbye if it was even a little overexposed. But the D200 has a great deal of highlight data retained in the RAW file. Thank goodness!

Yesterday we had a spontaneous street fair, including the world's first organic pie eating competition! It made for some great shooting opportunities to try out the camera, and I took full advantage. Along the way i got thirsty and made a donation for a glass of lemonade, which resulted in this shot of the little vendor, below.

The color rendering is just superb with this camera! The exposure is a little brighter than I am accustomed to (at 0 EV), so sometimes like this time, I seemingly lost some highlights critical to the image. However my fears were allayed upon the discovery of tremendous latitude latent in the image file, as I adjusted the exposure in Aperture (a RAW file photography application utility for the Mac, only). All the "lost" highlight information was in there!

Taking the original file and a mildly darkened exposure adjustment from Aperture into Photoshop, I overlayed the images to come up with an acceptable compromise and image recovery. This overlay adjustment can be manipulated any way to one's own liking and preference; and I was trying to retain the freshness and brightness of the original exposure as closely as possible, in my adjustment.

For comparison, below are the original exposure, te maximum exposure adjustment (2 stops) in Aperture, an adjustment of about minus 2/3 of a stop used with the overlay in Photoshop, and the result in Photoshop of the original at 50% in the overlay.

This is an example of how one can recover a paintable image from one that was overexposed. Very important in our business!

By the way, I just noticed I shot this at ISO 320. It would be even cleaner at the best setting of ISO 100 (still, it looks pretty good to me).

Garth

[Garth Herrick]

Here are 100% enlargement details of the same:

[Mike McCarty]

For those who lean toward the Pentax brand:

Pentax has announced its new ten megapixel K10D digital SLR. A long list of features include a '22 bit' analog to digital converter, CCD-shift type Shake Reduction, dust reduction, environment sealing, eleven point auto focus, sixteen segment metering, selectable program lines and some unique exposure modes including Sensitivity and combined Shutter/Aperture priority. The K10D also provides both Pentax PEF and DNG RAW format options.

Also, Pentax has today announced the DA 70 mm F2.4 Limited "pancake design"' lens. This new lens measures just 26 mm (1 inch) in length and weighs 130 g (4.6 oz). Its DA prefix indicating this is a digital-only lens and on a Pentax Digital SLR would produce an equivalent field of view of approximately 107 mm (in 35 mm format).

[Mike McCarty]

COLOGNE, GERMANY, Sep. 26, 2006

[Mike McCarty]

At the Photokina photo equipment show going on in Germany there are a lot of significant announcements taking place regarding the next generation of digital cameras and related equipment. Here are a few more:

Remember the name Hasselblad? Hasselblad was the nuts when it came to medium and large format film cameras. In terms of image quality no 35mm could compete. However, the physical size and price of the larger formats left most to adapt the nimble 35mm slr. Well, it appears that not much has changed.

Hasselblad has just announced its new H2D and H3D digital cameras with 22mp and 39mp respectively. The price is expected to be in the tens of thousands and the weight comparable to an M1 tank.

If you just can't cope with 39mp you may want to check into the Seitz 6x17 digital panoramic camera which will produce a 160 mp image in one second, or a 470 mp image in two seconds. Billed as "The Rolex Of Cameras," and going for $36,000, they state the following:

With increasing image resolution the engineering precision of the camera hardware becomes very important. All Seitz cameras are made from solid blocks of aluminium as used in space technology and produced with state-of-the-art CNC machinery. Machining tolerances are at the decisive 1/100 mm. Uncompromising precision and perfectly adjusted lenses are our guarantee for excellent results. Every Seitz 6x17 camera is hand-made in Switzerland and is unique.

And then there is this from Canon (I want one):

Canon has announced the Media Storage M30 and M80 devices which feature a high resolution 3.7" TFT LCD screen, CF and SD reader, USB 2.0 connection and either a 30 or 80 GB hard disk. These devices are similar to the Epson P series Photo Viewer devices enabling you to backup and store images directly from storage card or camera and display them on the built-in screen. The M30 and M80 also support direct printing via USB and are powered by the now 'Canon standard' BP-511A Lithium-Ion battery. Canon are keen to stress that these products are not OEM but have been developed in-house.

[Mike McCarty]

The Point-and-shoot digital camera market is getting increasingly sophisticated. The following new addition was announced by Samsung today. I couldn't come up with a price, but I'd guess something close to $500 which is where the Canon G7 comes in. I'd still settle on a DSLR, but geez, something like this would sure be nice as a back up and a walking around camera:


8 January 2007 - Samsung Cameras today announced the release of the S1050, a point-and-shoot digital camera with a premium quality 10.1 mega-pixel image sensor. Coupled with a super-sharp 5x 38-190, f2.8-4.4 optical zoom lens.

The S1050 includes Samsung