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Nikon Loves You All, Rewards You With New Wide-Angle Lenses

Nikon has today announced two new lenses, the AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.4G ED and the AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR. Now, those of you used to Nikon’s nomenclature will already know all this, but for those unsure, the AF-S designation in both of those means they’ll auto-focus on any body, and the lack of “DX” anywhere means these are designed for use on FX (and will still work, albeit with crop factor, on DX). They’re both G series lenses and both use ED and aspherical elements and Nikon’s new nano crystal coating to handle optical phenomenons like diffraction, ghosting, etc…

As those of you with a grasp of modern optics and physics might expect, the 24mm f1.4 is rather chunky, basically a 3.5″ cube and weighing in closer to 1.5 lbs. It’s also not a budget prime, and it’ll enter the market at just under $2,200. The 16-35mm f/4, being a slower aperture zoom, slots in as Nikon’s affordable alternative to the 14-24mm f/2.8 (well, sorta, it’s obviously not apples-to-apples), weighing in at $1,260, or approaching 600 bucks cheaper than it’s bigger bro.

They’re both up on our preorder waitlists, so you should go here and add your name: https://www.robertsimaging.com/preorder.jsp

Canon’s New EOS-1D Mark IV Gets Real

Canon this morning in the wee hours when I was decidedly not awake announced their newest pro body, the long-awaited EOS-1D Mark IV. It’s direct predecessor, the Mark III, had just been announced before I hired on here at Roberts, so the announcement of the Mark IV is something of a milestone for me, personally.

Now, getting past the sentimentals, here’s what you need to know:

1. The Mark IV continues the tradition of the 1D line in using an ASP-H sensor with a 1.3x crop factor. The full-frame chips remain a hallmark of the studio-oriented 1Ds line, and of course the 5D series. It’s up now to 16.1 megapixels, and keeps dual-processors (now the DIGIC IV models).

2. It has an all new 45-point autofocus system (39 of which become the more accurate cross-type points with an aperture of f2.8 or wider). Did we mention it’s all new and reportedly exhaustively field tested?

3. Canon is showing a rare conservative streak, and the continuous shooting mode is throttled back to 10 frames per second (versus the blistering 14 of its predecessor).

4. 1080p video. Really, were you expecting them to leave this out after the 5D Mark II, Rebel T1i, and 7D all got it? If you were, shame on you. If you weren’t, ta-da! HD video for everybody!

5. Expanded ISO. The Mark IV sport an expanded ISO range of 100 – 102,400 (which seems somehow familiar)

Those seem to be the key points, a lot of it is the stock stuff you’d expect from a camera at this price point. It keeps the 3″ 920,000 dot LCD, build, 1/300s EX shutter sync, 100% viewfinder, you get the point. Continuing the trend started with the EOS 7D, Canon’s announced a new wireless file transmitter for this beastie (and one for the 5D Mark II, too), for those of you who dig sending photos straight to a computer.

I shouldn’t have to say Get On Our Wait List Today, but it looks like I just did.

Leica Announces M9, X1 Cameras

Leica, the originator of the 35mm still photography format, announced earlier its newest offerings, the nigh-indestructible M9 rangefinder (replacing the somewhat troubled M8 and M8.2 bodies), and a new digital compact dubbed the X1.

M9-with-sensor The king of the show (of course) is the M9, sporting a Kodak-designed 18 megapixel full-frame sensor (which solves one problem of its predecessor, which made wide primes behave notably less wide thanks to a crop factor). The sensor once again lacks an anti-aliasing filter, which I hear resulted in insanely sharp photos from the M8s and which meshes well with all expected physics as well. This time Leica has seen fit to put the cut-off filters back over the sensor, removing the sometimes criticized need for a gamut of such filters for your lenses. Bravo, Leica. Combined with the body tweaks done on the M8.2 to solve a few problems with the day-to-day, in-the-warfield use, Leica’s getting its M series very much to a nice zenith for the digital age. Mind you, I think you still have to take the baseplate off to switch memory cards, but there’ll always be trade-offs for award-winning body design, yeah?

The other camera, a compact body with a 12.2 megapixel APS-C sensor and a fixed 24mm f2.8 lens (kinda like Sigma’s DP2), brings the clasic M series aesthetic to the compact market, while simultaneously creating a new price tier for digital compacts. It features an available grip, and a built-in flash (which is quite cute and cylindrical), full-manual controls (including aperture and shutter dials), RAW, etc.

Both bodies have decided, in a bold and applaudable move, to forgo in-house software and instead come with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom. Bravo, Leica. Seriously. I’ve used quite a few RAW and managements softwares, and Lightroom is easily the best of any of them, and makes taking pictures from good to fabulous a quick and painless chore, complete with robust filtering and organization options. More people could follow Leica’s lead here and I would not be hurt in the least.

Not Dead, Writing

I know, I know, I’ve been quiet lately. Very unsual for me, as anyone who’s had to suffer a full work day with me can tell you. But, it’s not because I’ve lost that lust, that zeal, that je ne sais quois that makes the Out of Focus blog what it is. Nosiree. It’s because I’ve been funneling that absurd knowledge of minutia and technical into a series of advanced topic whitepapers for our new help department.

I’m trying to make it clear that the website this year is taking a stance that more reflects the Roberts experience that has kept us as the leader in photographic equipment here in the Midwest for many many moons. We’re bumping up all sorts of stuff on our site so that not only can you find the product you’re looking for, you’ll even be able to get guidance right there online as to what the darn product you should be looking for even is.

And these whitepapers are the newest in this push. We’re tackling all the big, hot questions that are doddering up the forums. Crop factor, white balance, resolution, MTF, RAW vs JPEG, reading histograms, understanding sharpening, we’re working on getting it all up, and on writing it for photographers of any experience to start approaching.

Hmm. OK, now, I’m contractually required to use the phrase “Photography Learning Indianapolis” somewhere in this post. And now I have. I’ll be with you all soon, and I’ll be bringing a mighty new learning resource with me.

Panasonic 45-200

I finally had time to check out the first technical review of the Panasonic 45-200mm, the first telephoto to match the new G1 Panasonic digital cameras. A lot of the camera world is watching, because this is the first telephoto zoom for the new Micro Four Thirds system, a system which seems positioned to render the ultra-zoom market somewhat obsolete if it succeeds.

Unlike Nikon lenses or Canon lenses, the Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds have a crop factor of 2x, which makes this first offering effectively a 90-400mm lens, which isn’t too shabby for something measuring all of 4 inches long.

The review so far indicates that it’s a solid if not spectacular lens, but it’s a kit lens coming in at around 350 bucks, so I think that’s perfectly acceptable. And, for people looking for a pocketable telephoto zoom, this is the biggest step forward yet.

Looks like we should be getting stock on some soon.

Consumer Report: Digital Zoom

I remember hearing a saying for people in Hollywood: the gross is a dream, ask for a cut of net. In cameras, the idea is “the digital zoom is a lie, ask for the optical.” The amount of zoom is one of the most important digital camera comparisons, and most point-and-shoots will list 2 different zoom values for their cameras, like “3x Optical 5x Digital.” Some of them will tell you this gives the camera a full 15x of zoom, which sounds great. But, there’s a but.

Full Optical Zoom

Here’s a picture. Let’s assume it was shot at the full end of a camera’s “optical zoom” this is as close as we can get, but we want to zoom in more so we get ready to kick in our digital zoom. There’s a reason you should hesitate at this point, though.

Optical zoom uses the lens to change how much of a scene is hitting your sensor. This means that whether wide or tele, you’re using all of your camera’s megapixels. What digital does is reduce the number of pixels from the edge the camera uses, making it look like you’ve zoomed in farther. So, let’s kick our digital zoom in on that picture, and we’ll get something like below. Digital Zoom Crops The yellow represents the area of the sensor not being used, and you can see that what’s left does, indeed, look zoomed in on.

This is actually a process called ‘cropping,’ and you can do it just as easily using the software that comes with your camera. What’s the problem with using less pixels? After using digital zoom, or cropping, you’ll have a much smaller picture, as you can see below.

Smaller Images

If you try printing the picture on the right, it’ll have to be sized up to be as big as the one on the left, and this’ll make is look fuzzier, less sharp, and less detailed.

If you don’t want to make that sacrifice, but still need more zoom than your optical zoom can give you, some Nikon Coolpix cameras and Canon PowerShot digital cameras (among a few others), have available point and shoot lens adaptors, which will add more zoom to your optical zoom.

So, when you’re deciding what camera to buy this Christmas season, decide how much zoom you need and look for ones that have it stated as “optical.”

More Niftiness Built In

Continuing with my introspection on camera features brought about my the return of my old film body last week, how about a post for all those boring, tedious technical aspects of DSLRs that so many of us are already taking for granted and not fully appreciating in our clamor for ever-new and bigger features:

ISO 800+. Let’s set all arguments about high ISO noise and the sensor format wars aside for a moment. Show of hands, ten years ago, who was shooting above ISO 400? How abut ISO 800? By the time this line of thinking gets to ISO 3200, heck, we barely even stock ISO 3200 film. While it’s nice to have increasingly better high ISO performance, let’s not forget to remember that for most practical purposes anything above ISO 800 is a gift given to us by digital anyway, regardless of its chroma noise.

High Speed Flash Sync. I just recently got my Canon AE-1 Program back form a friend who had been borrowing it. As I was looking it over I saw the familiar old lightning bolt next to the 60 on the shutter dial. I think about a thread I read recently on a forum, where some user was livid that the new wave of Nikon digital cameras How dare Nikon only give the D700 a maximum flash sync of 1/250 of a second with a focal plane shutter? My E-3 can sync between 1/30 and 1/250 of a second. It may not be perfect for every need, but boy, it’s certainly more versatile than that old lightning bolt.

Image Stabilization. I’ve mentioned this before. It’s starting to get where a lot of us take for granted what I’d consider the biggest aid to photographers since auto-focus (at least for convenience). I don’t care how it’s implemented, IS like Canon lenses, Nikon lenses’ VR, Panasonic’s Mega OIS, Olympus’ in-body IS, Sony’s SuperSteady Shot Included (which wins points for the most marketing-speak branded term), Pentax’s Shake Reduction (winning the award for most pertinently named), etc.. The ability to shoot static scenes up to 5 stops slower than the conventional 1/x rules tells me I can is a serious advantage which has become almost as common as shutters in the digital age. According the the old rule, (modified by taking into account crop factor) my dear 50-200mm (100-400mm equiv) should need at least 1/400 second, but I’ll frequently use it down to 1/60 thanks to IS.

White Balance. OK, I understand it’s a popular pastime on some sites to complain about how mediocre the auto white balance feature on most cameras (which I find a bit unfair, if you pay attention you never actually see the world as being totally white). But, the way I see it, we have it at all now. When I was learning photography, I was basically told I could buy tungsten or daylight balanced film. Then, I had to remember which one I had loaded at any given time. Later, I learned about color-correcting filters, which brings white-balance options up to a dozen or so. But, now we have cameras that will attempt to figure it out for us, give us a half dozen presets, and typically even let us dial it in in ridiculously precise steps ourselves. And we can change it by shot!

Sorry, I was getting a little too excited about white balance there. Ah, *ahem*, right. Next time: Stuff!

Getting Deep (Or, How to Be Shallow)

Bokeh the Fifth

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: to the best of my knowledge bokeh isn’t directly affected by sensor size. I say “to the best of my knowledge” because, despite popular opinion, I’m not all crazy omniscient (crazy, yes, omniscient, no).

“But,” you say, “Derek! You told us way back when that sensor size affects bokeh!”

Why, so I did, good job paying attention. Here’s the thing: remember our lesson on Depth of Field? And I told you sensor size was a part of it? Aha, now we’re getting to the point.

Cream of the Crop

Bokeh Episode IV (A New Hope)

OK, this next bit is lengthy so we’ll split it into two posts. We’re going to talk about crop factor. For those of you who already know what this is, feel free to skip this post and check back the next one when I go into why this matters for bokeh. For the rest of you, read on!

OK, so. Way back in the bad old days of photography people used all sorts of fun and exotic stuff to capture images on. Most of these were big, and I mean really big, and had to be prepared by hand and used chemicals you’re probably not allowed on an airplane with these days. Eventually, these things were replaced by film, which found it’s most popular form by far in the 35mm negative. Then, near the end of film’s rule as king, and right before the dawn of digital, there was a format called APS-C (the history of which I’m not going to get into) which was somewhat smaller than the frame of a 35mm negative. More or less, and for various reasons, this smaller format became popular with DSLRsand we’re only now starting to see a resurgence of 35mm-sized sensors. But, alas, APS-C isn’t the only smaller sensor size, and for a whole slew of reasons you’ll find that pretty much every camera maunfacturer out there uses a different sensor size, most of the time smaller than 35mm.
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The Lengths You’ll Go

Bokeh. Yup, it’s time to continue my discussion on that screwy term and talk about what goes into creamy out-of-focus backgrounds. So, before we dive into today’s topic, let’s mention what we’ve learned so far:

1. Bokeh comes from the Japanese, and roughly means to be out of focus. It describes the aesthetic quality of a shot’s out of focus area.
2. It is a complex thing influenced by many variables.
3. One of these variables is aperture, and wide (low number) apertures are better because they have shallower DOF.

So, next up is the variable of focal length. Focal length, you’re likely aware, is how long the lens’ front element is from the sensor and it affects how your camera “sees” the world. The human eye has roughly a 45 degree field of view. A telephoto lens might only have, say, a 25 degree field of view. That means it’s seeing less of a scene than your eyes, but since it’s putting it on the same size sensor your final shot will make it seem like the lens made an area “bigger”. It’s the other way around for wide angles, and they’ll shove much more of a scene than you can see onto that same size sensor, making everything look smaller.

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