ISO is a property of recording photography; it represents sensitivity to capture light. Before the days of digital cameras, all photographic film was categorized with an ISO rating. Digital cameras have an adjustable ISO. Increasing digital ISO is primarily a matter of increasing the gain of the electronics signal. As with most electronics, gain increases not just the signal but also signal noise (stuff you don’t want). However, many digital cameras today have excellent signal-to-noise ratio.
In the days of film cameras, photographers might “push process” film to achieve higher ISO. ISO 400 was commonly pushed to ISO 800; that’s a difference of 1 f-stop.
Today, using digital cameras, 1-stop is child’s play. Digital cameras can provide 6 f-stops or more …. ISO 51,200 or better. The results can be cleaner (less noise) than the old ISO 400 film pushed to 800.
I shot the image here at ISO 5000 … that was ten years ago.
(Intonition Band, at night under a tent at Fraklin County Fair)
Two new Canon camera bodies have been long rumored to be released soon. For several months, rumors have further suggested the release announcement will coincide with the Summer Olympics 2024. I can only guess this is because some photographers will be shooting the new camera – or cameras – at the Olympics.
Latest rumor suggests Canon will announce one or both cameras on July 17.
The name designation “1” indicates a flagship camera, the best Canon has to offer. That’s the EOS R1.
The EOS R5 mark II is an expected refresh of the very popular EOS R5 that was released four years ago.
As some flowering cherry trees bloom early and some bloom later in the season, Kanzan Cherry is king of the late bloomers. (Also known as Kwanzan Cherry.) They are just now beginning to bloom in eastern Massachusetts. Though they appear as quite small red flowers today …. by Monday or Tuesday they will look like bold pink carnations.
The opening photo here is a past year at the Charles River Esplanade in Boston.
And here is what they look like today, about 15 north of Boston.
What I want: To create awe-inspiring photo, preferably unlike the images other people have created of the same subject.
Equipped with a guide book that helps to locate known waterfalls, I was surprised to discover that the access road was marked: No tresspassing for any reason. However, while the dirt road was apparently verboten, there seemed to be no prohibition to approaching the river a bit further downstream and then walking upstream. Walking upstream seems a simple proposition, but more often is difficult or impossible. On this day, I found my way, but did step upon a dirt road that may have been private property. I did not linger, but simply moved quickly away.
Arriving at the falls, I found concrete, ropes and a step ladder; not exactly the pristine wilderness that I had hoped for. Furthermore, access to the falls was limited to a single rocky ledge with very few options for camera shooting angle. Without risking gross tresspassing and without risking my life climbing down the cliff, I resigned myself to creating a rather documentary photograph and not spending extended time at this location.
A week later, I had three days in the Port Angeles area just outside Olympic National Park. The popular attraction here is the road to Hurricane Ridge, attaining an elevation of 5200 feet. The season being mid springtime, I anticipated a view of the Olympic mountains with snow-capped peaks. But clouds dominated the skies for the entire duration of my 3-days. From dawn til dusk, the great view of the mountains never materialized.
As the song says: You can’t always get what you want … but you might get what you need. Setting aside what I want, what do I need?
A walk outside with sod under foot and an eye toward the weather. My camera equipment must function A documentary photo, not perfect Survive the exploration without injury (slipping on a wet rock, or worse)
So, during my trip, it happened more than once. I did not get what I wanted … but I did get what I needed.
A common problem in outdoor photography : unwanted obstacles. Digitally removing the object can be easy or very difficult.
If the object obscures a plain background such as blue sky or beach sand, then computer software can easily fill-in any space that is vacant when deleting the unwanted object. If the object obscures something more complex such as a person’s face, there is no way to recreate what the camera never captured. While this is surely changing with today’s advances in generative AI, there will always be limitations.
In this image of the Groveton covered bridge, removing the yellow marker post would not be difficlut. The real problem is a telephone/utility pole that stands near the front of the bridge; see the unmodified photo below.
The technique that solves this problem is to capture two images. After taking the first photo, take a few steps to one side and make the second photo. That second capture reveals what was hidden behind the pole in the first capture. In post-processing, I removed the pole and then used pieces of the second image to fill in the blank.
Original photo – Before editing
Of course there are still many wires and shadows of wires across the image. Removing those can be easy against a clear blue sky but becomes more difficult across varying clouds, trees, and the shingle roof. I expect generative AI can make this task much easier … and better. If you look closely at the edited image, you may find a few breaks in cable shadows that I have not yet remedied. AI could potentially figure out the pattern of the roof shingles and extend the pattern, completely fixing the shadow breaks.
Fifteen years ago, this question was very significant (for most cameras) as an indication of wear and remaining functional life. If you were to purchase a used camera, you would certainly want to know the answer to this question. Today, this is not as true as it used to be.
Mechanical/moving parts are subject to some degree of wear. Metal parts suffer from friction. Plastic parts may become brittle. They eventually wear out. Get maintenance or get rid of it. But many of today’s digital cameras don’t have moving parts and do not suffer the same effects of wear. They have electronic sensors and electronic shutters.
Cameras have commonly remembered how many times the shutter has been actuated (how many photos have been captured). Through various means, you may be able to retrieve that information from a camera. In many digital cameras today, shutter count information may not be available at all. Furthermore, digital cameras are often used to capture video (rather than still photos) and the shutter count isn’t useful information.
That being said, I recently decided to sell a DSLR from 2015. Any DSLR certainly has mechanical parts and the shutter typically has an expected lifespan. As I had used this camera for still photography (not video), the shutter count is useful information. But retrieving this information from the camera proved a bit difficult. Here are several methods that generally might succeed, but in the case of my camera, I found that only one of these methods succeeded.
If you have software that shows EXIF information within an image, every digital photo may include the shutter count. Didn’t work. While all digital cameras report EXIF, not all cameras include shutter count in that data. (Online comment: “Last camera from Canon with shutter count in EXIF was EOS 1D II N.”)
Some websites: you upload an image from your camera and it will read shutter count from the EXIF information Didn’t work. See explanation above.
FreeShutterCount (freeware) Requires installing some 3-rd party USB drivers … no thanks (I’m not going to risk installing some unverified USB drivers on my computer.)
EOSinfo (freeware) Doesn’t work with my camera model.
EOS Digital Info (freeware) Doesn’t work with my camera model.
DIRE Studio Shutter Count (freeware) Apple/Mac only; I don’t have any Apple/Mac devices.
Tornado EOS Multiple people have reported this software contains malware.
An online search for “expected shutter lifetime Canon EOS cameras” tells me that this camera model should happily provlde 200,000 shutter actuations without any problems. My camera has 30,000 shutter actuations.
At the time for sunrise (about 5:39 am), the skies were entirely a grey haze and the sun did not show. After waiting four or five minutes with a drone in the air, I abandoned hope and packed up my gear. Walking back toward the road, only then did I see the red disc had risen through the haze. For a brief moment, I pondered whether to simply enjoy the spectacle or quickly re-deploy my gear; I chose the latter.
In retrospect, the haze was more than just morning fog; it was smoke in the atmosphere from Nova Scotia wildfires that month. ‘Cause that will filter light unlike normal morning fog.
Mostly (not completely), I’ve learned not to be disappointed when sunrise doesn’t manifest brilliant colors. That’s challenging because arriving at a location before sunrise implies effort to get up early enough to travel to my intended location. In this particular case, I had to travel by bicycle … before dawn. Because getting a car onto the island is a bit difficult, I left my car on the mainland. And although motorized scooters are common on the island, they are prohibited by law at this time of day.
I love the season of flowering trees; sadly, in the northeast, the season only lasts maybe six weeks.
Ornamental flowering trees are commonly planted in many different spaces ranging from residential gardens to corporate office parks. One category that commonly hosts plantings of beautiful trees is cemeteries. While it may seem odd to some people, I’ve seen people of all sorts and ages strolling through cemeteries, even having a picnic. Last weekend, I visited a cemetery in Wakefield. Although the crabapple trees had all dropped their colorful petals, I counted more than two dozen dogwood trees in bloom.
From that short excursion, I wanted to share a comparison of two images of the same tree but photographed with wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens. There are a few reasons why you might choose to use one or the other. When in doubt, shoot them both.
The first reason you might choose a telephoto lens is because you can’t get close enough to your subject. I personally encountered that scenario a couple weeks ago, stopping to photograph cherry trees in bloom at a cemetery where the gates were locked. I photographed from outside the fence using a 100mm lens.
The second reason you might choose to use a telephoto lens is to control the background. The narrow field of view may enable you to exclude elements from the background. And a wide-angle lens can include more background, for more environmental context. In the two photos I’ve shared here, both the telephoto and the wide-angle image do show the environment context, but a telephoto also allowed me to exclude the tombstones entirely.
A third reason to choose either telephoto or wide-angle is depth perception. Wide-angle lenses commonly exaggerate distance; multiple subjects in the photograph appear to be farther apart, compared to using a longer/telephoto focal length. Conversely, telephoto lenses tend to compress distance, making multiple subjects (at different distances from the camera) appear closer together.
Lastly, when you have multiple subjects at very different distances, a telephoto lens combined with a small aperture may allow blurring the background – if that’s the effect you’re seeking to create. Both the images here employ an aperture about f\4.5.
I have one surpassing criteria for an aerial drone …. image quality. This month, DJI introduced two new iterations of their drones, the Inspire 3 and the Mavic 3 pro. Personally, the first thing I need to know is how the camera compares to previous models. Lacking actual real photos from a new drone that I have not used, I must begin by comparing camera specifications. Digging up information can be surprisingly difficult because I’m seeking very specific fundamental parameters and sifting out the chaff is tedious.
Someone online recently asked which was the best for photography (which I presume excludes video). My answer was this: “Two words – variable aperture.” But I confess that I am particularly interested in the new 70mm lens with resolution of 48 MP.
I dug through the camera specifications online and composed this simple table of just the fundamental parameters.
Years ago, still-photo quality was my only concern, but today video quality is also a factor. Frankly, for the purposes of the video that I shoot, video quality is comparable across most DJI drones. I personally do not need 120 fps, nor do I require 5.1K. I do require DLOG recording.
A camera’s image sensor has one job – to record light. However, sensors generally can only capture a limited range of light from shadows to highlights. When the actual range exceeds the sensor’s ability, that’s “high dynamic range” or HDR.
Here are two recent examples where the range of light exceeded my camera sensor’s ability. The first is a sunset. No surprise – the highlights are super bright. The second example is less obvious – the surface of a lake reflects blue sky in some areas and elsewhere the light simply falls off to black.
The solution is the same. Capture multiple exposures and then combine them together as a matter of post-processing. Many cameras have this post-processing and a built-in option. Even my smartphone camera includes that feature. The results may be disappointing. My own experience with camera built-in HDR processing is 50/50 at best. The end result is so commonly disappointing that I routinely don’t trust the camera to do it. Instead, I do HDR post-processing using software in a desktop computer.
This technique generally requires that the camera doesn’t move when capturing the separate exposures. The composition of the two captures is exactly the same. If the camera moves slightly, that is commonly not a problem because the two can be aligned during post.
This technique doesn’t work with video. When shooting video, the camera angle usually changes during the shoot; to shoot the scene a second time will result in a different video composition. Two captures will never align. For video, the solution to HDR is different – capture the shot just once but use a special camera mode that is very low-contrast, often referred to as DLog. Straight out of the camera, that shot looks truly awful. It must be post-processed, expanding the contrast range to something that appears correct.
