dot unplanned

Three must-attend events this weekend for lovers of the undead (and Ben):

• The Boo Train in Canby
• The Portland presentation of Thrill the World, which is an internationally coordinated performance of the “Thriller” dance. It was held down in the hangar at Oaks Park. (My Thrill the World photos)
• The Portland Zombie Walk, also part of an internationally coordinated effort that involves dressing up like the living dead and hanging out. We also got a second performance of the Thriller dance. (My Zombie Walk photos)

Ben was deeply concerned about getting zombie blood on him at the Zombie Walk, but he had a pretty good time once we put mittens on him.

There were Mormon zombies, Tippi Hedren zombies, baby zombies, Santa zombies, and a Starbucks fan zombie:

Free Software Foundation - Anti-Features:

“I was excited to find CHDK recently. In a nutshell, it is a free software firmware add-on for certain Canon digital cameras. I couldn’t help but notice that the top item on the CHDK feature list is the ability to shoot RAW.

“RAW is a sensor specific set of formats for digital cameras that, in many situations (but not all) boils down to a set of minimally processed readings off the sensor in the camera. RAW data is usually uncompressed. While RAW files are not usable without processing — they’re like negatives in that regard — I am told that professionals and most serious amateurs swear by them. RAW is one feature that camera companies use to differentiate their high-end and low-end cameras. Sensors, processors, and even lenses might be similar or identical in two cameras priced USD $100 apart. The difference frequently lies largely in the software, or firmware, that runs on the cameras. Expensive cameras have software that will produce RAW files. Low-end cameras will only give you the preprocessed, compressed, JPEGs.

“Now, what’s so interesting about RAW as a high-end feature is that the data often exists (almost unprocessed) in the camera’s memory for every single picture taken. In so far as RAW is raw sensor data, it exists every time the sensor is used. In high-end cameras, users are given the option to process that data and send it through a JPEG compressor. In low-end cameras, there’s no option; the data is processed and compressed and the raw data is thrown away.

“RAW is an example of an anti-feature. Anti-features are sold to customers as features but are fundamental or unavoidable aspects of systems that can only be removed or withheld through technological effort. Unlike real features, producers of anti-features charge customers for not inhibiting access to their products’ full functionality. Technological and legal barriers that keep anti-features away from the users of intentionally less featureful end up costing all users their freedom. It is more difficult for Canon to make cameras that output JPEGs than cameras that output RAW, and it’s not significantly more difficult to offer users a choice.”

I don’t know who’s more willing than me to complain bitterly about the way camera companies control features. On its face, RAW is a perfect example of something being kept from consumers for little more than a way to differentiate high-end point-and-shoots from even low-end dSLRs. It was very frustrating to see Canon insist on its exclusion for the PowerShot G7 and I would have preferred to see RAW in the S-series PowerShots.

But RAW is a problematic example, too:

On my Pentax k100d, which shoots at a relatively petite 6 megapixels, a RAW file consumes 11MB of storage space. The highest quality JPEG consumes 3.1MB.

Here’s one way those file sizes make a difference:

It takes a lot of time to write RAW out to storage. I can fire off three consecutive shots with RAW, then the camera stops responding as it writes to the SD card, and I’m lucky if I get a shot a second until it catches up. JPEGS might take more processing power on the image processing side, but they don’t tie up the storage bus. I can get five or six consecutive JPEGs, and the camera takes less time to recover from writing them out.

Here’s another:

When I shoot JPEGS, I can fit 167 images on a single 512MB SD card. It can even be a fairly crappy, off-brand card. I can only fit 46 RAW images on the same card and it needs to be a fast one or the camera becomes even slower.

RAW files come with expense, too. It takes software to process RAW photos once they’re off the camera. That software costs money to develop. Yes, Adobe Camera RAW probably processes just about any widely available RAW format on the market, but it isn’t free and there’s no guarantee any given customer has it. Yes, your camera manufacturer could license it, but there’s some expense, there, too.

And where Canon’s concerned, I’m not even sure I buy the idea that RAW is used as a huge price differentiator. MSRP for a PowerShot G9 is $499.99. MSRP for a PowerShot S5 IS is $499.99. One has RAW, one doesn’t. When people went bananas about the PowerShot G7 dropping RAW support, Canon put it back in for the G9.

Why was it out in the first place? Maybe to protect dSLR sales (I definitely believed that right up until it reappeared), or maybe because Canon didn’t think the demand was there to begin with.

While a lot of people like RAW (me included), many reviews (and plenty of gadget bloggers) decry RAW as a bit of gearhead fetishism that creates unnecessarily complex workflows for most peoples’ needs. Some of that is geek condescension, some of it is just true.

So we’ve got a file format that:

1. Adds complexity to the workflow for a technology people are definitely embracing, but with some reservations about added complexity.

2. Places extra and sometimes performance-hampering demand on system resources both in terms of space consumed and storage processing costs.

3. Is scoffed at by even the enthusiast press at least half the time.

It’s not a shoo-in for an Industry Conspiracy Anti-Feature of the Year Award.

But we haven’t gotten to the whole “choice” thing. People should, in theory, be allowed to choose to deal with the added complexity, hampered performance and increased storage costs. I’d put myself in the set of people who’d prefer to make that decision for themselves.

At the same time, if I get a low-end point-and-shoot, see the option to toggle RAW and do so, I’m not going to complain about how the camera has too many menu options, eats SD cards like bonbons and takes extra time to process. I’m not sure the average point-and-shoot customer is going to be as forgiving and I’ve read enough utterly schizophrenic reviews from the likes of Popular Photography to know that choice is a liability to some reviewers, who will add “large files” to the “cons” column of a review if they can’t think of anything else to say.

So maybe RAW’s an anti-feature, maybe it’s a feature the camera manufacturers don’t perceive demand for, and maybe it’s something deliberately excluded in the name of “protecting the user experience.” That last irritates and frustrates me because I prefer to make my own tradeoffs. I don’t think, however, that most people do.

Lest I be accused of missing the larger point of the essay, which was about how DRM is bad … no I didn’t. I just don’t think leaving RAW out of consumer-grade cameras is at all like technologically circumventing fair use.

(found the link via ed)

I’d ordinarily linklog this, but it’s so cool I CAN’T CONTAIN IT IN A MERE SIDEBAR!

Eye-Fi Wireless Camera SD Memory:

Never scrounge around for a USB cable again! Eye-fi is a magical orange SD memory card that will not only store 2GB worth of pictures, it’ll upload them to your computer, and to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa (or 14 others) [including SmugMug -mph] wirelessly, invisibly, automatically!

This little guy looks like a normal 2GB memory card and works with nearly any camera that takes SD memory. There are no antennas, no protrusions, no subscription fees, and no cables.

Works with Macs, too.

It would be really fun to have something like this as part of a deliberate project, dialing the camera down to relatively modest capture settings and letting fly, Crapshoot-style.

If you visit that link, consider subscribing to PhotoJojo’s free newsletter while you’re there. I wrote Amit, one of the proprietors, to tell him his newsletter is one of the few I remain happy to see every time it lands in the inbox. They maintain a positive, pro-creativity buzz in the newsletter that almost always manages to restore my good feelings about picture-taking when it arrives after the latest Popular Photography, which usually manages to drive my inner censor to new heights of anxiety.

PhotoJojo is where I learned about the photo blocks project:

Today was a wonderful day to be out. After Ben got up from his nap I took him to the water tower playground down the block. There’s a community garden there. Until recently it’s been fenced off from the playground, but the fence was all taken down today, so we spent some time looking at what’s left of the vegetation and flowers there.

I took the G9 along, initially because I’m just trying to get in the habit of taking it with me. Once we were there, though, a lot of macro opportunities presented themselves, so I took them. I haven’t tried to do much macro photography with the Pentax k100d, so I can’t really compare the two cameras, but I was pretty pleased with what I got out of the G9 today. There are a few glitches here and there, but it did a nice job.

One area where it most definitely does better than the Pentax is in its automatic white balance setting. The Pentax always seems to be off. It’s nothing that isn’t easily corrected (telling LightRoom “auto” instead of “as shot” usually handles things just fine), but the G9 gets it closer to right the first time.

On the other hand, this Canon struggles the same as all of them with reds and magentas, which are much more saturated — to the point of being blown out — than the Pentax even dreams. It’s a deficiency that’s also recoverable in LightRoom, but it’s a much more fiddly one. Fixing white balance is your first choice in LightRoom’s develop module. Desaturating the reds and fiddling with their tint is further down the panel.

And the Canon has another problem, which is metering Ben, who is fair skinned in a way that defies easy photography. I always end up having to set the EV down a stop or so when I’m shooting him in daylight. I think the k100d has a little better dynamic range where Ben’s particular complexion is concerned. It’s easier to get something closer to his actual skin tone with the Pentax and a nudge of warming and saturation.

Anyhow, it was a pretty fun set of pictures. The colors were just exploding today, even in the high afternoon sun. By the time we were heading home the sun was much lower and the colors were even more beautiful.

This evening we bought pumpkins and went for a ride on the Boo Train at the Flower Farm in Canby. Ben was a little afraid of the monsters on the train ride, but we showed him how to yell back at them when they jumped out and that helped.

I packed a PowerShot G9 along for this trip. Not a lot to report at this point. It’s a black brick, it’s about the same size as the first PowerShot I ever bought, an S10. In fact, I just looked it up on DPReview: The S10 and the G9 are the exact same weight, and the G9 is only a half inch fatter.

My three main points of comparison, though, are the PowerShot G5 I bought the day before Ben was born, the Pentax K100d and the Nikon P5100 I traded in for the G9.

It’s so much faster than the G5. It still pays to be somewhat patient when shooting, because it doesn’t have an SLR’s speed, but it’s pretty quick all the same. The extra reach on the zoom (the G5 had a 4x zoom, the G9 a 6x) is nice. It doesn’t have the flip-out/tilt display of the G5, but since I’ve been shooting with the K100d so much, I’m a lot more used to composing in the rangefinder again, anyhow.

I can’t honestly compare it with the P5100 except superficially. It feels more solid, and the slight difference in size means it can’t be slipped in the front pocket of even baggy pants as comfortably. Nikon’s user interface is fine, though I think the G9 might expose a little more functionality up front. I prefer the G9’s two custom settings positions on the main dial. I had that with the G5 and it was nice to be able to just flip the dial to my preferred baseline settings. I also have the sense (though I would not fight with anyone about this) that the P5100 software might have been a little more quick to adjust the ISO up. The G9 seems more content to keep that locked down. That’s good, because even if it does have an ISO 1600 setting available on that dial, nobody reviewing it has had much good to say about settings above 400. Oh … and I can manually set the autofocus area much more quickly and intuitively with the G9 than I could the P5100.

I’m not knocking the P5100 at all, though. It was a pleasant little camera. If I’d been shooting with the CoolPix line for the past seven years, I’d probably find the G9 a little alien and off-putting. But for compact digital point-and-shoots, the P5100 was my first non-Canon ever. I could have gotten used to it, but in the end I kind of didn’t want to: I know the G9’s ancestors and I remember the G5 very fondly. It was much easier to pick up the G9, power it on, and start using it without having to wonder what any of it meant.

There’s an excellent quote from DPReview’s review of the G9, just out yesterday, though, that puts a bow on my thoughts about comparing any two point-n-shoots. Especially models like the P5100 and G9:

It’s the biggest irony of the compact digital camera market: since the cameras all use very similar sensors (often the exact same sensor) and many even share the same lens assembly, the price difference between the entry-level models and range-toppers such as the G9 simply isn’t reflected in a commensurate difference in output quality. And it doesn’t matter how much you are prepared to spend; you can’t buy your way out of the ‘compact camera problem’ - a small, noisy sensor is a small noisy sensor no matter what kind of tank you build around it or how many ‘professional’ features you build into the body.

So ultimately, what you are buying is flexibility and control, and that’s something both the P5100 and G9 have plenty of. In the end, the difference lies in how well each model exposes the features you most want.

That’s not to say there aren’t real differences. I spent some time on one forum looking over 100% crops from each and came away thinking the G9 might have had a slight edge. But for something pulling duty as a camera that fits in a jacket pocket or bag, the differences are negligible.

Comparing it to the K100d? It does what it was meant to do: Remove all my choices in terms of lenses and cut down on bulk. I can grab it and go knowing I’ll get good pictures out of it, and I can cultivate a habit of keeping a camera handy with it. The K100d is for much more deliberate situations, or settings like last month’s Last Thursday, where an SLR’s flexibility and speed is valuable. And it’s nothing I’m happy sticking in my bag if I’m just heading out for a walk or taking Ben to the park.

We found a leaf pile down the block from Lisa’s this afternoon. Ben and Orion went kind of bananas. They were both soaked by the time Orion’s mom and I convinced them to get in the cars to go home.

When we got in the door, I told Ben to take off his shoes, go in his room and take off his pants so I could change him into some dry ones after I got done putting the camera away. By the time I was done putting the batteries in the charger and stowing the camera, Ben was standing in my office door in a fresh pair of pants. He’s never spontaneously self-dressed before, so that was pretty cool.

I went to my first-ever Last Thursday tonight with Sven & Gretchin. I liked poking my head in the galleries, but I liked looking at the people in the galleries from outside the galleries even more.

Canon unveils PowerShot G9 12.1 Megapixel compact camera:

The camera also features RAW Mode, enabling the use of RAW+JPEG functionality, so photographers can snap JPEG images for immediate use and RAW images for more extensive image editing later on.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but it’s good to see just that in the feature list. I recently had occasion to snap a few shots with Sven’s G5, the last G-series PowerShot model I owned, and remembered why I liked it so much. If the new model has the processor power to handle RAW shooting, it’ll be a really nice “not ready to commit to a dSLR” camera: Nicer optics than the superzooms, more control than models aimed at people who really want to just point and shoot.

The one thing I don’t like about it, just glancing the product shots, is the missing tilt-and-twist display, but that was missing in the G7 as well.

I wouldn’t trade my k100d for one now, but if these had been out just two months ago I would have had a debate on my hands.

Previously:

• Cameras I have loved
• Raw Feelings
• G7

I’ve been so busy worrying about the tender sensibilities of outraged Protestants I neglected to process some shots I took last week at the zoo. It was a great trip. I woke up early Saturday morning and made it to the gate by about 8:15.

There is nothing better than the zoo at that time of day. I don’t say that because I don’t like people and wish they wouldn’t come to my zoo, but because I like being able to take as much time as I want to stand in one spot and watch. During the busier times that’s just not polite.

That early in the morning the inmates are a little less retiring, too. I lost half an hour watching a family of swamp monkeys have breakfast and start their day. Two of them scuffled over a slab of ice that appeared to be their morning water supply. One of them finally made off with it and, in greedy monkey fashion, promptly lost it in the stream running through their enclosure. I had pretty good luck with other primates who weren’t yet feeling so hassled that they weren’t willing to hang out near the fronts of their enclosures.

One of the hippos spent a lot of time right in front of the glass. The lorikeets weren’t crabby yet. The elephants were all busy giving each other dust baths. Some animals weren’t out for the day that early, but there were so many in great form that it was hard to notice the ones still hiding out in their overnight housing.

I also happened across a real photographer taking shots of the bald eagle. She had the biggest lens I’ve ever seen in person. Its barrel was about as big around as my head and maybe as long as my forearm and hand with my fingers extended. The camera just sort of hung off the end of it like a funny little box. I wanted to ask questions about the lens, but she was clearly there On Business. Her zoo escort seemed to be acting as her prosthetic situational awareness for anything outside her viewfinder, and I figured that she didn’t have time to waste. The eagle was in the perfect spot, the morning light was still diffuse, and who knew how long she had before the bird got bored and moved somewhere terrible.

I also had time to wonder why, when there’s a gift shop full of postcards that are much nicer than most of the pictures I get, I insist on getting up early and hanging around hoping some swamp monkey decides to look up at me so I can get her catchlights. I came up with two reasons:

There’s a technical challenge. Animals provide all sorts of wonderful detail to capture, like the fine lines of a lorikeet’s feathers or the wrinkles on a monkey’s paw. But it’s an adverse shooting environment. The angles can suck, there are scratched up enclosure coverings to contend with, the lighting is often dim and tinted, the animals themselves don’t hold still. A good zoo picture should remove as much of a sense that the subject is in a cage or behind glass as the photographer can manage, and that’s pretty hard without some planning and a little technique. Sometimes I catch myself taking the exact same shots this year that I took the year before, and the year before that. It’s always cool when I get something better, and a little bit of a letdown when I can tell I didn’t learn a lesson from last year’s version. Seeing how far my equipment has evolved is pretty cool, too, because shots start appearing each year that I wouldn’t have even attempted with last year’s camera.

The other reason I came up with is that I like working on the pictures when I get them home. It’s a chance to look at the animals all over again, catching things about them I didn’t notice, being able to take advantage of the sense of proximity the lens creates. It’s like a whole ‘nother trip to the zoo.

So that’s that. I’ve got a backlog of pictures from other stuff I’m working through right now. We’ve got a decent set from a trip to Waterfront Park that’ll go nicely with a Ben update.

If that’s what you’re into. We had a pretty quiet one. I took Ben to the zoo for the morning. This afternoon we went to Dairy Queen and spent some time down at Mt. Scott park. On a whim we decided to go by the fireworks stand at the Woodstock Safeway and buy a “value pack,” because Ben was pretty curious about the fireworks that had been going off in the neighborhood all afternoon.

No maimings to report.

The bats, however … the bats at the zoo were just a riot of nasty today. Go look. You’ll see what I mean. Yellow?

And there was some maiming in the lorikeet cage. This lorikeet was attacking everyone who got near. Ben got nipped at. He thought it was funny, which was better than the guy a few years older than me who stood in the middle of the lorikeet cage yelling “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.” over and over and over until a docent came and asked him if he was o.k. His wife stood at his back yelling “Did that thing poop on me? Did that thing poop on me? I think it pooped on me! Did that thing poop on me?” They made me uncomfortable. The bright red fanny packs didn’t help.

Good photographic luck in the reptile and bat houses today. The 50mm/1.4 let me keep the shutter at 20 or 30 most of the time, sometimes up to 60. I’ve never caught this kind of detail with the cayman before, and I got a pretty good one of one of those little yellow birds that live near the giraffe cages.

I’m thinking I might spend one of my upcoming weekend mornings at one of the Winged Wonders photography classes. Good excuse to be on zoo grounds early and get some good light for the outdoor critters.

Oh. It’s Smugmug for online photos now. I set up a gallery on Dreamhost, started fiddling, decided I didn’t want to fiddle any longer. I trialed smugmug a while ago but ultimately went with flickr. Looking around, they seemed like the best place to go in the wake of my de-yahooification. And they have a pleasant way about them, with some useful help pages that address digital issues succinctly.