Nikon D90 coming soon

Written by Gary on August 27th, 2008

Bob Atkins has posted a blog on what appears to be the new Nikon DX dSLR.

Essentially the main features are:

  • 12.3 megapixels – thank goodness they didn’t go to Canon’s ridiculous 15mp!
  • 4.5fps
  • HD quality movies – a first in dSLRs and the way of the future
  • GPS geo tagging
  • face recognition AF in contrast detection live preview mode – personally I think this is too premature a technology on dSLRs and thus more of a marketing gimmick than real benefit
  • features derived from the D300 such as live preview, sensor cleaning, D-lighting (shadow detail enhancement), VGA HD LCD

    • To my mind, this is a much more sensible upgrade path than Canon’s 50D effort, but I guess only time will tell on this.

    At last Nikon have an entry level digital SLR with features that I feel are critical – live preview for accurate manual focus when needed and a dust removal system, pity it still doesn’t have a CCD-shift image stabiliser as with Olympus models.

    I am more looking forward to how Olympus will respond (hopefully maintain 10mp, improved noise, dynamic range, add HD movies with HDMI output, VGA LCD screen, 9 or 11 pt AF and 4-5 fps in their prosumer range), and perhaps more interestingly, how Canon responds to Nikon’s D700 with their much awaited 5D replacement.

     

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    Canon 50D just announced

    Written by Gary on August 27th, 2008

    Canon have just announced a “sister” model to their 40D, the 50D.

    It is essentially a 40D 1.6x cropped sensor dSLR with 15mp instead of 10mp, an upgraded LCD to a hi res VGA LCD, and a few added features including:

  • contrast detect AF in live preview mode with face detect – much the same as Olympus E420/520 models
  • four levels NR instead of just On/Off – similar to Olympus E410/420/510/520/E3
  • AF microadjustment for up to 20 lenses – similar to Canon 1DMIII
  • four levels auto lighting adjustment not just On/Off – ie. Shadow adjustment
  • ISO extendable to 12800 – will be interesting to see noise vs loss of detail
  • new 3.8mp sRAW2 file save mode – not sure who would want to use this mode
  • peripheral illumination correction (vignetting) for 26-40 lenses – Olympus don’t need this as they use telecentric lens design
  • new Creative Auto exposure mode
  • minor changes to burst speed (6.3fps not 6.5) and 60 jpegs not 75.
  • HDMI output
  • Digic 4 image processor

    • While most of the changes are improvements over the 40D as to be expected, I am very concerned about the increase in photosites from 10 to 15mp and thus reduction in photosite size to 4.7 microns.

    This would usually mean that the price for increased spatial resolution on the sensor should result in MORE image noise at higher ISO and LOWER dynamic range, although Canon seem to say changes in sensor technology have counteracted this – time will tell how much of an impost the increase in megapixels will be to image quality.

    Another concern of this increase in megapixels is that it will be much more demanding on the lenses.
    Canon discovered that at 16mp with the full frame Canon 1DsMII, even the L series zoom lenses struggled to maintain adequate resolution to make the most of the sensor and that sensor was much larger than the one in the 50D.

    At 15 megapixels on a 1.6x crop sensor, this gives the same spatial resolution per mm as a 38 megapixel full frame or a 10 megapixel Olympus sensor.

    I suspect Canon’s lenses will struggle to make use of the 15mp and you may just be creating 10-12mp detailed images but at 15mp file sizes.

    Nikon have realised this problem and have embarked on creating new higher resolution lenses in anticipation of their presumed 25mp full frame.

    Olympus realised long ago that these sensors need much higher resolution lenses than 35mm film cameras required and hence their ZD lenses have far greater resolution than their OM film lenses.

    So the big questions are:

  • how will the increased megapixels impact the noise and dynamic range profile
  • will Canon’s lenses be able to extract more than 10mp detail in a cropped sensor?

    • Finally, I worry that Olympus will feel forced to keep up with the megapixel race which I thought should be over? I hope they stay with 10-12mp and target more dynamic range and less noise, NOT more megapixels. PLEASE.

    dpreview.com have a preview here

     

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    Macro with ZD 50mm f/2.0 + EC20 2x teleconverter

    Written by Gary on August 24th, 2008

    Well, promised I would get out and play with my new EC-20 this weekend, so here are a couple of them using the ZD 50mm lens.

    The EC20 means that you can choose to go for 1:1 macro or a longer working distance than with the ZD 50mm lens alone, and as you can see the image quality is still excellent.

    These were taken using the Olympus Ring Flash, off camera for the cumquat shot.

    First another bee shot, this has been cropped and resized to fit here.

    bee - cropped and resized

    and the cumquat shot, minimally cropped but resized.

    cumquat - resized

    larger versions can be found here

     

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    Macro with ZD 50-200mm SWD + EC-20 = 1:2 at 1.2m

    Written by Gary on August 23rd, 2008

    Now let’s test the macro capabilities of this combination out in the real world.

    I chose as a subject, my apricot tree which is in blossom and plenty of bees buzzing around – an interesting test to see how well this goes.

    BUT first, I thought I would try a less wieldy combination, my Olympus OM 200mm f/4 lens with the ZD EC-20 on the E510 with IS on, here is a 100% crop of a blossom taken at about 2.5m which is its closest focus and at 1/500th sec, unfortunately, this is about the best I could achieve.

    OM 200mm f/4 crop

    This shows that although the Olympus OM 200mm f/4 lens was a good lens for 35mm film, and usable with a 2x teleconverter on a full frame, and indeed usable without one on an Olympus dSLR as my other images with it show, it lacks the amazing resolution capability of the Zuiko Digital lenses which were apparently designed to give an MTF of 4-5 times better than the OM lenses.

    This is why Canon & Nikon are now hitting a wall with their current lenses which were designed for 35mm film and struggling to cope with the high resolution sensors such as on the Canon 1Ds Mark III. Indeed, Nikon have started revising their lenses in readiness for their 25mp full frame.

    Enough rambling, let’s see what the ZD 50-200mm with EC-20 can do at the same distance of 2.5m hand held, again a 100% pixel peeping crop:

    50-200mm 100% crop

    Now, we have resigned the OM 200mm to the cupboard, let’s do some more:

    see the bee and blossom pics here

    Now to use this lens like this at 800mm effective focal length at focus of 1.2m giving 1:1 macro (ie. width of image equates to about 36mm of subject), and having a hyperactive bee who just does not want to sit there and pose, you really need to resort to manual focus techniques.

    I tried the C-AF but even the small ramblings of the bee on the blossom was making the AF go crazy and taking the shot was a bit of luck as to if it was in focus or not – the E510’s AF mechanism just wasn’t designed for such macro activity.

    The S-AF works well with it being activated by the AFL lock button and not the shutter button (set wrench 1 on the E510 menu so AEL/AFL setting is M:3 and set AF mode to MF on the rear controls. This means you can quickly lock an AF in using the AEL/AFL button and know that touching the shutter won’t change your focus. You can then just sway in and out minutely until your subject is in focus then fire away. If you want the bee in flight, this is a bit harder and requires a bit of trial and error and anticipate it will fly a little off the flower and pre-focus there and wait for it to fly there and hope you have it – of course you need flash or a fast shutter for this.

    Mind you this combination did get a bit heavy trying to keep focus while waiting for something to happen, but it should work well for all those flying insects which don’t like you getting very close.

    Whilst I suspect I could get even sharper results with the ZD 50mm macro, the shorter working distance would have prevented capturing flighty bees and I am very happy with these initial results.

    Finally, at such magnifications, you really need to reduce blur from subject and camera movement to a minimum, and better results could probably be attained by use of an off-camera flash, such as a hand held Olympus Ring Flash or a Twin flash attached to the lens.

     

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    Moonrise hand held at 800mm with ZD 50-200mm + EC-20

    Written by Gary on August 23rd, 2008

    It’s getting past my bed time now, but I just noticed the moon rising about 10deg above horizon amongst thick clouds and being a keen astrophotographer, I just had to try my new toy on this target.

    So here is my first quick shot, hand held rather carelessly at 800mm equivalent focal length reach with lens wide open at f/3.5 (ie. f/7 effective aperture with the 2x TC) and ISO 400 and shutter speed, wait for it… drum roll please….

    yes, only 1/100th second – could I hand hold a 800mm shot at 1/100th at almost 1am and still get an OK shot?

    here it is straight from camera but resized to 600 pixels wide to fit here:

    ZD50-200mm moon shot

    Wow, it has enough magnification to see the craters well, although with all that atmospheric interference near the horizon, we are unlikely to get much more detail until the moon rises higher in the sky.

    Imagine getting a moon THAT size in the background of your landscapes – mind you your foreground subject would need to be a reasonable distance away to get anywhere near the depth of field to make out both subjects in the one frame, but hey, its impressive.

    here is the crop without any PS or sharpening:

    ZD50-200mm moon shot crop

    Remember, the blurring is more due to atmosphere and clouds rather than lens or camera shake (well it could be a bit of camera shake seeing as I was tired and it is only 1/100th sec!).

    I didn’t get a second chance to see if I could do better as heavy clouds obscured it within a minute.

    That will have to wait for another day.

     

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    Olympus EC-20 teleconverter for macro use – 1st test images

    Written by Gary on August 23rd, 2008

    OK, the logical thing to do in the evening after buying the EC-20 2x teleconverter today (see my earlier post on its outdoor tests with the ZD 50-200mm to give 800mm reach) was to have a play and see how well it works with my lenses and Olympus Ring Flash.

    The results are brilliant.

    First, I re-checked its closest focus on the ZD 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens and hand-held the Olympus Ring Flash on the lens. Using manual focus and then just moving in and out from the subject until it was in focus was not so easy whilst holding the flash too but you can do it.

    Here is a shot of the Microsoft stickers on my laptop from 1.2m (I didn’t measure this, but it seemed like it was as Olympus states as the close focus for this lens). I have placed a ruler there and you can see the width is indeed ~36mm which is the same as a 35mm film width, hence the conventional statement that this offers 1:1 macro in 35mm terms with this configuration.

    This was shot at lens aperture of f/5.6 and thus with the 2x TC, the effective aperture is f/11.

    ZD50-200mm macro

    The upper part of this image is blurred as I intentionally angled the lens to reduce reflections from the flash.

    And here is a 100% crop of that image:

    ZD 50-200mm macro crop

    That is not a bad performance at all given we are 1.2m away!

    NOW, let’s try it with one of the sharpest lenses out there, the Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro.

    Obviously, the Ring Flash fits nicely on this lens as long as you bought the optional adapter.

    One thing worth noting with this combination is that AF does not work for the shorter focus distances and you have to resort to MF, but that’s OK, that’s what I prefer anyway, and you still get AF confirm light in the viewfinder flashing when you have it exact.

    Now for the test photo of the same subject as above but taken at f/8 (ie. f/16 effective with 2x TC):

    ZD 50mm macro

    The long edge of this image represents about 18mm so it is a 2:1 macro in 35mm terms and this combination thus offers twice the magnification as the 50-200mm + TC-20 combination, but of course the working distance is much closer.

    and check out the 100% crop:

    ZD 50mm macro crop

    Amazingly, this teleconverter also works on my Olympus ZD 7-14mm lens although I’m not sure I would really want to use it that way but given I often only take 2 lenses on my outings, the 7-14mm and 50-200mm, and now the 2x TC, if I desperately needed that gap in my focal lengths, the TC with 7-14mm would give me a 14-28mm lens (ie. 28-56mm in 35mm terms), albeit at f/8 wide aperture.

    Note, the Canon teleconverters ONLY work with certain lenses, usually the L series telephoto primes and zooms as well as the tilt-shift lenses.

    I will have more of a play with the TC on the weekend, more fun 🙂

     

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    Correction – ZD 50-200mm SWD incompatible with Ring flash

    Written by Gary on August 22nd, 2008

    In an earlier post about the wonderful Olympus ZD 50-200mm SWD lens, I wrote that it matched nicely with the Olympus Ring Flash for 1:2 macro photography at 1.2m working distance. (I have now amended this post).

    BUT I had made a BIG assumption and not actually tested it out until tonight.

    That assumption was that the compatibility of the Ring Flash attaching to the original ZD 50-200mm lens would extend to the new SWD version of the lens.

    Alas, Olympus for some strange reason, decided to change the lens hood mount in the SWD version of this lens and thus the Ring Flash no longer mounts onto it but must be hand held in place.

    This works, but is a bit unwieldy holding the camera, lens in one hand which also needs to press AF button and take photo whilst other hand holds the flash in place.

    Looks like it may need some velcro to keep it in place if I can work out a suitable system, and it would be nice then to be able to use it on the 14-42mm kit lens in a similar manner too for wide angle creative portraits.

    Fortunately, it seems the Macro Twin Flash still is compatible with the SWD lens.

    Sorry if I have misinformed anyone but Olympus did not advertise this incompatibility either to my recollection but I did find a reference here.

     

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    Extending the E510 – 800mm reach hand held – wow!

    Written by Gary on August 22nd, 2008

    I dropped into my local shop today to help me solve a little dilemma.

    Will the much touted new Olympus EC-20 2x teleconverter work well with my Olympus ZD 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens, or will the image suffer or the AF take too long to work, and could I use it hand held at 800mm at ISO 400 in the shade?

    Well, much to my and the salesman’s surprise, when I tried it out in the store and manage to rapidly focus it with AF on a man INSIDE a passing tram and take a reasonable image (although a little blurred on zooming in) of him at 1/50th sec at 800mm hand held, I knew this was going to be one brilliant combination and couldn’t resist it – so I bought it…. just don’t tell my wife!

    Firstly, what would be reasonable shutter speeds to use at 800mm reach (ie. 200mm setting on the lens)?

    I discovered that although I could take reasonable images at 1/50th sec very carefully hand held at 800mm with IS on, this was pushing the capability just a bit too much and much sharper results were attainable at 1/100th sec, but to be safe I decided to opt for Shutter speed priority exposure mode (the S on the exposure dial), and use 1/200th sec all the time at ISO 400.

    So there I was in the city on a cold Winter’s day in fairly heavy overcast, sitting on a bench thinking, now what can I test this unique outfit on?

    My shoelaces at 800mm focal length

    If you havent guessed, these are the shoelaces I was wearing on my old sports shoes taken at about the 1.2m closest focus distance hand held & rather casually hand held at that!

    Given the heavy shade I was in, the camera took this at wide open aperture (f/3.5) which makes it f/7 with the 2x teleconverter and 1/200th sec, ISO 400. As you can see the depth of field is extremely shallow – but that is 1:1 macro or near enough at about 1.2m focus distance and 800mm equivalent focal length reach. This image is not a crop, just resized for the web.

    So off I went for a walk, and tried a few different style shots…

    see here for these photos with comments on the bottom.

    This is a really fun lens, although a bit big especially with the lens hood on (so I took it off walking in the city to avoid scaring people!).

    Even into the light without a lens hood, flare was well controlled, image sharp, beautiful background bokeh and this can get you shots not possible before by allowing you to get closer images or to compress perspective to the extreme.

    S-AF worked very fast and C-AF worked well once AF had been attained and you kept the subject on the AF point. C-AF does take a while to do the initial lock though, especially if you have changed focus distance considerably, eg. from a close up focus to a distance focus.

    I am sure this will work admirably for surfing and wildlife and relatively stationery birds (birds in flight would really need the Olympus E3 body for a better reliability at capturing them).

    BUT the important take away point is that this combination provides an extremely usable, portable, relatively light kit with still very good image quality at 800mm reach even in the shade.

    What other camera lens combinations could achieve this super telephoto reach at effective aperture wider than f/8 so AF still works and under 3kg?

    Olympus with Olympus ZD 70-300mm lens + EC-14 1.4x teleconverter = 840mm reach at f/8 but lower image quality.

    Olympus with Olympus ZD 300mm f/2.8 + EC-14 = 840mm reach at f/4 but VERY expensive and big.

    Canon APS-C dSLR (eg. 40D) + 300mm f/4L IS + 2x TC = 960mm reach at f/8 but that’s a bigger lens, white and Canon 2x TC’s image quality is not as good.

    Canon APS-C dSLR (eg. 40D) + 400mm f/5.6L + 1.4x TC = 900mm reach at f/8 but that’s a bigger lens and no IS.

    Canon APS-C dSLR (eg. 40D) + 400mm f/4L IS DO+ 1.4x TC = 900mm reach at f/5.6 but that’s a very expensive lens with DO aberrations.

    Canon 1DMIII (1.3x crop) + 400mm f/5.6L + 1.4x TC = 728mm reach at f/8 but that’s a bigger lens and body and no IS, although you can increase ISO by 1-2 stops and you get 10fps.

    Nikon DX camera + 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 + 1.4x TC = 840mm reach at f/8 but lower image quality and no IS.

    Nikon DX camera + 300mm f/4 + 2x TC = 900mm reach at f/8 but lower image quality and no IS.

    On a full frame dSLR, you would need a 400mm f/4 with 2x TC or a 800mm f/5.6 and these lenses are very big, heavy, and expensive.

    This is one of the advantages of the Four Thirds system – telephoto reach with portability, and again highlights that sensor image quality is not the PRIME reason to buy into a camera system.

    If it were, we would all be taking 8″ x 10″ film cameras to take social shots at parties – a ridiculous notion!

     

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    Olympus E510 and low light macrophotography

    Written by Gary on August 21st, 2008

    Here is what can be achieved by taking your camera with you everywhere and you happen to bring the Olympus E510 with the very sharp Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro lens.

    Yesterday I was asked to take this photo of a person’s eyes which were stained with a dye to show up lesions on the cornea when lit with deep blue light from a slit lamp in a dark room.

    This requires a bit of pre-planning but is very possible with the above set up as long as you take the time to adjust a few settings.

    First, AF is going to be a pain in this low light condition, so just set focus to the closest distance possible and lock it there (eg. in bright light use AF to lock it on something close then change to MF setting to leave it there). In general, manual focus is best for macro work anyway.

    Second, you need a reasonable amount of depth of field and thus I settled for f/5.6 which is a good compromise as long as we can get shutter speed fast enough to stop camera shake.

    Third, exposure is going to be a bit tricky given the high contrast, I decided to go with manual exposure and adjust until it looked good on the LCD, this resulted in shutter speed of 1/30th sec at 1600ISO.

    Fourth, the extreme colours here needed to be portrayed accurately, so AWB was probably not going to work for this so I set WB to sunlight – given the light source was a deep blue.

    Now,, we are all set, time to take the photo. Just move in and out with the camera until the eye looks sharp, then hold steady and take the shot.

    Fortunately, the Olympus macro lens is image stabilised by virtue of the E510 body and thus 1/30th sec is easily within its realms of capability for a 100mm effective lens in 35mm terms.

    Had I used a Canon 40D with a Canon EF 60mm macro lens to achieve this, I would have needed a faster shutter speed which would force me to ISO 3200 &/or drop aperture to f/4 (much less DOF given the larger sensor size as well). Unfortunately, Canon do not offer an image stabilised macro lens that I am aware of. Forget that the 40D has a little more dynamic range or less noise at ISO 1600, the Olympus E510 performed as well as I needed, and arguably, better than a Canon 40D could do and for much less weight. Is this a dig at the dpreview.com review of the E520? 🙂

    So, let’s see what we managed to achieve:

    First, the good eye, note the only green is the pooling of the stain at the bottom of the eye:

    First the good eye

    Now, the bad eye, check out all those lesions on the cornea shown up as green including scratches and petri-dish-like spots of infection lesions – I reckon I could put this image on an astronomy site and say it is a planet!

    First the good eye

    For the tech heads, the green is actually fluorescent glow from the stain when blue light hits it, for this reason, flash photography would not have been possible (although I guess it might be if you had a deep blue filter to put on your flash, and you used off-camera flash).

    This goes to show that even though there is digital noise at ISO 1600 with the E510 this does not mean you should never use it and that there are situations where it can be used very effectively.

    This post is partly to make my point of the previous post – image sensor quality is NOT the most important factor in cameras by a long shot – it is whether or not you have your camera there, what lenses you have available and its other functionality, in this case, of critical importance was image stabilised macro capability.

    For more examples of the versatility of this E510 + 50mm f/2 macro lens combination, see here

     

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    dpreview.com’s review of the Olympus E-520 dSLR

    Written by Gary on August 21st, 2008

    dpreview.com have just published their detailed review of the Olympus E520, and I thought it deserves a few comments, feel free to add your own to this post.

    Now dpreview.com is one of my favorite photography websites, but I feel the reviewers usually get bogged down in the small differences between image quality of sensors that most people really don’t need to worry about, while missing out on the much more important aspects of the camera fitting into a much wider system of lenses and its main utility.

    I don’t think too many people would argue that the Four Thirds sensors have marginally less dynamic range and more image noise at high ISO than the larger sensor APS-C, DX or full frame dSLRs.

    But these cameras can still produce a great 20″x30″ print if you are careful with ensuring you are using a good lens, expose well, focus well with aperture wider than diffraction limit of f/5.6-8, and ensure minimal camera shake (which is helped by the IS system). Indeed the Olympus cameras have arguably one of the best in-camera jpeg processing engine to minimise need for photographers to have to resort to Photoshop, etc to get the best images – this, along with the relative ease of use makes these cameras great for those getting into dSLR photography without being too intimidated.

    The reviewers really miss the main reasons why you would want to buy the E520 – its not the camera that you are buying it for – after all the camera will depreciate to almost worthless within 3-5 years like any digital SLR.

    Why do I buy Olympus dSLRs?

    (ps.. I also am happy to consider buying Canon/Nikon full frame dSLRs too but for different reasons – I am not confined to Olympus – I buy cameras for what they can allow me to do, not for their brand name)

    Primarily its for their portability in terms of weight, size when combined with their great range of high quality lenses whilst still achieving very acceptable high quality images and in-built IS, dust protection and live preview for when I need it.

    If you don’t take your camera with you, it doesn’t matter how good the sensor or image quality potential is, and this is where Olympus comes in – I can take two bodies with 7-14mm and a 50-200mm lens attached and capture almost any type of creative photo I want without getting tired carrying them, AND they provide some unique photo creativity as mentioned in previous posts.

    It’s a pity dpreview.com reviewers or perhaps its the nature of their review format which does not allow them to look more clearly at the big picture.

    Whilst it is true that its direct competitors have caught up in camera functionality such that the E520 in itself does not have as much lead in functionality over its competitors as the E510 did when it was brought out, there is still a significant difference in the range and quality of quality lenses designed for the sensor than is available for the competitor lenses in APS-C or DX format.

    The E520 does add some potentially useful benefits over the E510 such as improved shadow detail, contrast-detection AF in live preview, a second panning mode to IS, but perhaps more importantly, it allows use of wireless TTL flash photography via the new R designated Olympus flash units.

    If I had a choice of an E510 or a E520 at double the price (I am not sure of actual current price differences), I would probably go for the E510 unless I really needed the wireless TTL flash capability and I was going to buy a R designated flash to use it with (eg. Olympus FL-50R or FL-36R flash) or I wanted an underwater housing (don’t think Olympus ever made them for the E510).

    I hope in my haste, these comments make sense.

     

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