photography

Astrophotography in San Francisco

From the Space Tourism Guide:

Can You See the Milky Way in the Bay Area? Unfortunately, it is very difficult to see the Milky Way in San Francisco. Between the foggy weather and the light pollution from 7 million people, you can imagine that the faint light of our galaxy is lost to view.

But C. Roy Yokingco argues:

Some people say the Milky Way cannot be photographed within 50 miles of a major metropolitan area. Well, this photo of the Milky Way was captured 12 linear miles south of downtown San Francisco, California.

» about 800 words

Turning off exposure preview on my Fuji X-E3

Nanda Kusumadi has quite a number of tips for configuring a Fuji X-E3. Those tips include using RAW photo recording and turning on 4K video capture (they’re off by default), and one I hadn’t considered: enabling Adobe RGB color space with its wider than sRGB gamut. I prefer not to use some of other the suggestions, such as enabling electronic shutter (it reduces dynamic range).

One setting not mentioned in Nanda’s tips is turning off exposure preview. This is critical when using manual exposure modes with flash. With exposure preview enabled, ambient light is too dark to allow proper composition and focusing when exposure is set for the flash. Turning it off is a smart move to make it easier to shoot with flashes and strobes.

  • Set up → Screen set-up → Preview exp./WB in manual mode → Off

Fuji Instax back for Hasselblad

Isaac Blankensmith writing in PetaPixel about building an Instax instant film back for a Hasselblad 500:

Instant photos are magical. They develop before your eyes. You can share them, gift them, spill water on them, draw on them. The only problem is that most instant cameras are pretty cheap — that’s why I’ve always wanted to hack my medium format camera to take instant photos with shallow depth of field and sharpness.

Since Fuji ceased production of their Polaroid-compatible peel-apart films a few years ago, there has been significant interest in a Fuji Instax back. At least two Kickstarters have been announced, Hasselblad Square Instant Film Back and Rezivot Instant Film Processor, but neither of those was successful.

@instantmediumformat on Instagram converted an old Mamiya Press Camera, but has offered few details for those who wish to follow. Blankensmith’s post is a pretty good starting point for people who’ve been considering building one for themselves–possibly people like me.

Claim chowder from 2013: computational photography

Way back in 2013 I wrote:

I’m sure somebody will eventually develop software to automatically blur the backgrounds of our smartphone photos, but until then, this is basic physics.

The new camera system in the iPhone XS seems to have moved computational photography from the world of parlor tricks to the mainstream.

Update

This blog post from the developer of Halide, a premium camera app for iOS, goes into a lot more detail about all the computation going on in the new cameras.

Compact camera recommendations

A friend asked the internet: Can anyone recommend a mirrorless camera? I have some travel coming up and I’m hesitant to lug my DSLR around. Of course I had an opinion: I go back and forth on this question myself. My current travel camera is a Sony RX100 mark 3 (the mark 4 was recently released). […] » about 400 words

Strobist David Hobby on HDR

I’ve been re-reading David Hobby‘s Lighting 101 tutorial while at the same time exploring HDR (Wikipedia’s HDR article is a good read for those unfamiliar with it). The question that eventually came to mind was how the guy that wrote the following feels about HDR? How often have you heard this, usually with a tone of superiority: […] » about 800 words

The EOS M system might as well be dead

Amazon is now selling EOS M cameras for $329 with free shipping. At that price you have to think about buying it as a joke, but that’s exactly what it is. The camera is hobbled by Canon to avoid cannibalizing sales of their other products. Consider this: Fujifilm’s X series, Sony’s mirrorless NEX 6 and 7 […] » about 300 words

Why in-camera GPS matters

I concluded my review of current camera options with the claim that I’d switch lens systems for a compact interchangeable lens camera that had built-in GPS. Why do I want GPS? Because the competition for all the cameras I listed there is my iPhone, and one of the reasons I prefer my phone is because […] » about 300 words

Aww, I got thanked!

I recently backed the Syrp Genie, one of a handful of recent motion control timelapse projects on Kickstarter. It’s well past its expected ship date, but they done a good job of keeping backers updated on progress and just today they shared photos of the box that will soon be on it’s way to me. […] » about 100 words

Motion Control Timelapse Projects On Kickstarter

Some time ago I backed the Syrp Genie (estimated delivery July 2012), but today I learned of the Radian and Astro. Unlike the Radian and Astro, the Genie supports linear motion, but it’s also much more expensive, bigger, and appears to have more complex controls.

Here are the videos for all three projects:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/syrp/genie-motion-control-time-lapse-device/widget/video.html]

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207087339/radian-a-motion-time-lapse-device-for-everyone/widget/video.html]

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1530895202/astro-time-lapse-motion-control/widget/video.html]

Call it Rolling Shutter or Focal Plane Shutter, It Looks Weird…Cool

I’ve been both frustrated by and in love with focal plane shutter distortion (Wikipedia calls it rolling shutter) for a while, now I’ve discovered there’s a group for it. One of the photos I pointed to in my earlier post was of a low-flying helicopter (bottom), a couple other photographers have captured the effect the […] » about 100 words