Carel Struyken was born in the Hague, The Netherlands. When he was four years old his family moved to Curacao, an island in the Caribbean. At age sixteen, he returned to his country, where he finished high school. He graduated from the directing program at the film school in Amsterdam, following which he did a year at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. After school, he collaborated on a number of projects of writer/director Rene Daalder. He was "discovered" as an actor at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles by a lady who had abandoned her car in the middle of the street, calling after him, "We need you for a movie!". The movie was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). The turning point in his acting career however was Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985) (TV), a George Lucas film. In addition to cinema, he has also appeared on TV, notably as the recurring character, valet Mr. Homn, on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987). Carel has also helped in hardware and software development of virtual reality systems. In addition, Carel is a specialist in spherical panoramic photography (http://www.sphericalpanoramas.com/) and giga-pixel stitching. He contributes guest blogs to us at Roberts Raw as he finds the time.
Note : “original_from _raw.jpg” is a straight conversion from raw. This image was converted to 16 bit tif and then adjusted with PS Shadow/Highlight, which produced “with_Shadow-Highlight-adjustment.jpg” By comparison, “in_camera_DRO.jpg” was shot at the same time, using in camera DRO set the maximum level.
Read the full review here
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Carel sent us this as a supplement to his last post.]
[UPDATED: Now better laid out for comparisons]
As mentioned in the review, all images were shot without noise reduction or sharpening. For the Canon 350D I only shot 400, 800 and 1600ISO
-Carel Struycken
PowerShot S90 Crops:
 ISO 100 |
 ISO 200 |
 ISO 400 |
 ISO 800 |
 ISO 1600 |
 ISO 3200 |
PowerShot G10 Crops:
 ISO 100 |
 ISO 200 |
 ISO 400 |
 ISO 800 |
 ISO 1600 |
EOS 350D Crops:
 ISO 400 |
 ISO 800 |
 ISO 1600 |
During the ’70s, a producer/director friend of mine used to roam the LA punk scene with an amazing little 35mm camera, the Minox 35 GL. It was the smallest 35mm camera ever produced. Its sharp Minotar lens shot beautiful pictures and thanks to the high ISO films that were being perfected in those days, one could shoot in very low light. There has never been any digital equivalent in size and low light capabilities until now, with Canon’s introduction of the S90. With the G11 and S90 cameras, Canon has finally reversed the maddening pixel race. Pixel density on the G11 has been reduced from its predecessor’s 34MP/cm² down to 23MP/cm² and low light performance has greatly improved. The S90 uses the same sensor and its f-2 maximum aperture helps to make this the best p&s for available light shooting.
The Canon S90 is slightly larger than Canon’s Elph (3.5 x 2.2 x 0.8″ for the Canon SD940IS vs. 3.9 x 2.3 x 1.2″ for the Canon S90), but it still easily slips into the average pocket. A bit too slippery sometimes and it almost fell out of my hands before I made it a rule to use the wrist strap. Much has been made of the programmable function control ring around the lens and it is indeed wonderful…
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Hit the jump to read the rest of Carel's review and to view his large gallery of sample shots]
[UPDATED]
The Coolpix S1000pj is a very interesting point and shoot camera. Most of the attention during its launch goes to the unique built-in mini projector, but it is also a very well rounded camera with a great zoom range, a very intuitive interface, smooth automation and it produces excellent stills and video.
Most people who get a hold of this camera will probably first try the projector. I happened to be in a room with lots of daylight bouncing off white walls, but could still get a decent projection of about 13″ diagonal on a shadowy section the wall. In a room with dimmed light one can easily increase the projection size to a 30″ diagonal. The projected image is not as crisp as the same image viewed on an LCD screen or as print, but this will not be much of a detriment for the average action snapshot or video.
The 5x zoom lens (28-140mm equivalent) also does macro to an amazing 3cm (1.2″) and with the advertized 5 “advanced Nikon image stabilization features” one uses the full range without giving it much thought. As with many P&Ss, the zoom control tends to overshoot from wide angle to full tele and it takes practice and finesse to make it end up somewhere in the middle range.
The “intelligent automated shooting modes” select the best combination of apperture, ISO and shutter speed on the fly and it seemed to make the right decision in all environments where I tried it out.
The camera also has a “Smart portrait system with skin softening” which I neglected to test. The camera detects faces very rapidly and the skin softening should be a welcome piece of automation to all of us who have done portrait retouching. There is also a “smile timer”, “blink proof function” and the camera fixes red-eye in-camera. Pretty much every kind of retouching is now done in the camera. Who knows, maybe we will have “auto slimming” in a few years, where everybody is electronically slimmed down to an ideal Body Mass Index.
But, most importantly, this little camera gave very good results and also produced surprisingly low noise at higher ISO settings. This has always been a challenge for P&Ss with their tiny sensors and densely packed pixels, but during the last year the pixel race has finally slowed down and the attention to more important characteristics such as noise and dynamic range is beginning to produce results.
The Olympus E-P1 represents a significant step in the evolution of the digital camera. Before it showed its beautifully crafted body, there were roughly two classes of digital cameras: The point and shoots, some of them so tiny we carry them along wherever we go, and the much bulkier and heavier digital reflex cameras with interchangeable lenses and bigger sensors.
The image quality of point and shoots has become very good over the last few years, but in low light situations their little sensors still struggle with too much noise.
I practically always carry a Canon Elph along, but packing my Canon 5D DSLR requires a mission statement, especially when it involves a back country hike. When most brands figured out how to provide a “live view” on the camera’s LCD screen last year, the bulky penta prism and noisily clapping mirror box felt even more like a puzzling anachronism. Why not get rid of all that bulk and do the framing and focusing on the LCD screen? Olympus, with its decades old tradition of delivering exceptional quality in the smallest possible camera body now presents the first camera that follows through on this idea. Although the camera is not easily “pocketable”, it is small and light enough to toss in a daypack and with the wide-angle “pancake” lens, will even fit in the front pocket of a pair of roomy trousers.
The micro four/thirds sensor format, which is currently supported by Panasonic, Olympus and Leica, is smaller than the more popular APS sensor format, but in its most recent incarnation, noise level is not noticeably worse than on the current batch of APS sensors. Olympus, Leica/Panasonic and Sigma also have a very complete list of excellent lenses and most of these are significantly smaller and lighter than their equivalent for the larger sensor reflex cameras.
Handling the camera.
Even with my very large hands, the body felt easy to handle. I usually kept my left hand on the lens, tweaking the zoom or manual focus and providing some stability for the right hand, while it was dealing with the abundance of settings to choose from. The grouping of the functions is not as intuitive as for instance on the Canon G10 and I had to keep leafing through the manual to figure things out. Practically every function can be set using three different interfaces and the second (vertical) knob also helps to eventually work out a personalized routine to master the myriad of settings. Manual focus worked well on the LCD, provided there was no light shining on the screen. Shooting outdoors with only the LCD screen as “viewfinder” was a challenge. Maybe a wide rimmed straw hat would help to keep the screen sufficiently shaded, but a built-in optical viewfinder would really help. There is a separate viewfinder that fits on the hot shoe, but this takes away from the streamlined compactness of the camera body is not of much help when using the zoom lens.
The E-P1 and its soon to appear Panasonic cousins are defining a new and exciting niche and I am looking forward to carrying one of these in my daypack.
Included are some sample shots, straight out of the camera. My bison shots came out a bit blurrier than I had expected. They were shot in a hurry through a car window, so either I or the bison must have moved a bit too much. This was my first experience with a HD video capable still camera and I would like to delve some more into this subject in the near future.
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