On The Jazz II

I was just doing some photo library organising tonight and came across some photos from the last few months that I quite like but had completely forgotten about.

So here they are

Labels: forgotten, photo

Well, due to play.com messing up my order I did not receive the camera until today. Still, they did at least sort it out very quickly when I called them to find out where my camera was.

I took it out with me today to evaluate how it performs [photos]. I didn't have time to go out to specifically take photos. So what you have is a selection of photos from my journey to the library, and my day spent in the library. Lucky you.

First impressions:

1) it's a lot smaller than I expected, and also physically much nicer than the product shots lead you to believe. Quite frankly, they make it look like abomination whereas in reality it's fairly smart. Nothing amazing, but nonetheless quite nice.

2) the interface is pretty intuitive, all important settings are easily accessible

3) 16:9 mode is quite cool. Obviously I realise you can crop in post but if you're planning on ending up at 16:9, having the LCD 'viewfinder' image cropped to that ratio does help with composition. There is also a 3:2 crop available which may be more useful in the long run (not sure if the appeal of 16:9 is going to wear off)

4) battery life is a.b.y.s.m.a.l, even with 2900mah NiMH AAs. I mean, really, really bad. Like 10-20 shots bad. Just terrible. It looks like I will end up buying a proprietary Li-on battery and charger. Suck.

5) video is as expected. Which is to say, good.

6) as a still camera, it seems to really be not bad at all. Of course, I haven't really pushed it so far so only time will tell. Most cameras should be able to handle what I shot today!

7) macro really isn't very macro-ey on this camera

Labels: field test, first impressions, kodak, photo

Leica 50mm Summicron-R E55*

OK, it's been a while (I can't even remember the last time) since I went on a bit of a camera rant so here we go.

So tomorrow I expect to receive a new camera. Excitement! However, in all fairness it's probably not actually a very good camera. I expect it to be decent but no more. Why then, given that I already have a veritable plethora of actually very good cameras, would I buy it?

Well, the answer is two-fold. First - I obviously have a problem with buying cameras, lenses etc. It just happens. I don't really have that much control over it.

Secondly, I am well aware that it is a mediocre camera. What it has going for it is its video capabilities. Recently, as anyone who knows me will know, I have become an uncle. Although my poor niece has been extensively photographed in her short life I've also realised that short video clips of her are really fun. Now then, that brings us back to reason 1 as I do actually have access to several DV cameras and the video mode on my F30 isn't bad either. But what I wanted, nay needed, was HD.

To an extent I feel I'm justified here. Because by the time that she may actually want to watch these videos, she'll probably not be too impressed with VGA or PAL.

OK, so itch identified it was time to scratch it. What I was looking for was essentially a very cheap HD camcorder. And the search led me to the Kodak Z1085IS. There are actually a few cheap HD camcorders around which record onto SD(HC) cards with the h.264 codec. Aiptek and Jazz sell very cheap camcorders that will shoot 720p (or even 1080i). The problem with these is that they lack IS (image stabilisation) which I think is fairly important for video, and have low bit-rates (more on this later). The next step up from these are far more costly 'real' camcorders from the likes of Canon, Sony, Panasonic - the usual suspects.

Well, that doesn't work since I'm after cheap. The answer (I hope) lies in the fact that several manufacturers are now offering HD (by which I mean 720p) video facilities on their digicams. Kodak, Panasonic and Samsung are the ones I know of. Clearly it is only a matter of time before 720p becomes standard on digicams. However, if I don't want to miss my niece growing up I can't really wait around so I had to pick one of the current crop. This is non-ideal as the current crop don't really offer everything I'd want from a digicam, so I decided to pick a camera solely for its video capabilities (rather than try and replace the F30).

When it came down to it, the real contenders were:

Samsung NV24HD
Panasonic TZ5/FX35
Kodak z1085

The Panasonics were kind of out of the running pretty quick on grounds of price. However, they also have the disadvantage of having small sensors and recording video using MJPEG. They also apparently have a terrible microphone setup. On the plus side the TZ5 and FX35 have (on the wide end) 28mm and 25mm lenses respectively. Wide angle is a good thing (although not as good as I'd previously thought - but that's for another day).

I really wanted to get the Samsung. It has a 24mm (equivalent) lens and encodes videos in h.264. Alas, it also has a tiny sensor (1/2.5" same as the Panasonics) and the bit-rate of the videos is low (7-8Mbps).

Finally, the Kodak. Firstly I can't believe I bought a Kodak camera, but then I wouldn't have believed it if I'd bought a Samsung or Panasonic either. However, dig a little deeper and the Kodak gets interesting:

1) it's the cheapest of the 3
2) it has a (relatively) large sensor. 1/1.63". It may not sound like much but when you work it out it has about twice the surface area of the sensors in the Samsung and Panasonics. This should mean less noise for the Kodak in low light. As far as I can tell the sensor resolution shouldn't have that much effect as when you're shooting 720p I can only assume you're doing pixel-binning so that the total sensor size is the important issue rather than pixel pitch - I understand this is oversimplifying but you get the idea.
3) much higher bit-rate for video. Video is recorded in MPEG4-2 at ~14Mbps. I'm aware that h.264 is a more efficient codec so you can't compare directly, but by all accounts most of its gains over MPEG4-2 are with low bit-rates. Basically, my hunch is that 14Mbps MPEG4-2 will look better than 7Mbps h.264
3) it runs on AAs. Good because I also plan to record several hours of lecture each day on it next term. I don't expect a set of batteries to last much more than an hour.


OK, anyway, that's why I bought the Kodak. Hopefully I'll find out tomorrow whether it was the right way to go or not.
Oh, and a retroactive warning: nerd alert.

*this picture has nothing to do with anything really - it's just a nice lens which I happen to have a picture of because I'm going to sell it. Did I mention that it's nice? And for sale...

Labels: cameras, h.264, hd, mpeg4, photo, video

Just a quick heads-up for UK readers.
Tesco currently have a special on photo books.
I can't vouch for the quality but at 4.99 a go it's got to be worth a punt.

Labels: photo

Just a quick plug for that rarity which is a product which actually works exactly as advertised. Last Christmas my brother gave me some Visible Dust DSLR sensor cleaning products.
Today, after finally getting sick of all the gunk on my sensors I actually used it. Up until now I had gone by the principle of 'why do work now if I can do it later' and as a result ended up spending a lot of time spotting out dust in photos.
Well, it turns out that cleaning using the arctic butterfly takes a couple of minutes at most, and really isn't hard at all. I wish I'd used it earlier!
The only down side to it is that it might seem a little pricey, but once you realise that Canon charges £80 (that's about $1000 to you US folk) for a sensor clean you soon get over it.
So kudos to Visible Dust, all the more so considering that their product R&D is apparently conducted in appallingly foggy conditions.

Labels: arctic butterfly, dust, photo, sensor cleaning, visible dust

finished late last night, the second (final?) part of LHR-LAX:

Labels: cloudwerks, film, LAX, LHR, photo

for those of you that missed it: LHR-LAX.
Yes, this is old news but it's relevant because the sequel is coming very soon...

Labels: film, LAX, LHR, photo