Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Random Notes from Photokina 2012
Even if you are remotely interested in photography, you’ve probably heard about Photokina — the world’s largest trade show held bi-annually in Cologne, Germany. Photokina is huge, and the amount of stuff on display is simply mind-boggling. Although I didn’t have much time, I managed to zoom through most of the halls and take a brief look at a handful of newly-announced cameras. Since I’m not in the market for a new camera, I examined the latest and greatest camera models from a purely academic perspective.
Being a Nikonista myself, my first stop was Nikon’s booth. I was lucky to be there early Tuesday morning just before the first wave of visitors hit the floor, so I had some quality time with Nikon D600. So what can I say about Nikon’s new DSLR? It’s a camera and it takes photos. The camera’s house features the FX logo, which means that D600 can probably do some effects. Jokes aside, there is little point in repeating what is already being reported by other photography outlets on the camera’s specs and initial impressions. And if you want to get more info about D600, you should probably contact Canon: a couple of guys wearing Canon badges put D600 through some serious testing at Nikon’s booth. Anyway, touted as an “affordable” full-frame DSLR, Nikon D600 is way too expensive for many enthusiast photographers, including yours truly. Interestingly, Nikon had the venerable D90 on display, too. I was pleasantly surprised that despite its age, D90 is still pushed by Nikon as a viable alternative for amateur photographers.
Nikon D600 in all its beauty
I also played a little bit with the Coolpix S800c Android-based compact camera, and the hands-on experience hasn’t done anything to dispel my initial skepticism. It’s an average camera with an older version Android bolted on top of it. Why Nikon decided to waste time and resources on a product like this is beyond me.
Samsung Galaxy Camera represents a somewhat better attempt to couple a compact camera with Android. The camera itself is rather large for a regular point-and-shoot, but it does feature an impressive touch screen on the back. The interface for controlling camera settings is slick, but it’s still no match for dedicated hardware controls like buttons.
At Canon’s booth, I checked out two cameras: PowerShot S110 as a possible upgrade for my S90, and the all-new EOS-M mirrorless system camera. The former really failed to impress. The specs are largely unchanged, and cosmetic tweaks don’t really improve the camera’s overall appearance. S110′s body is a big step backwards compared to the understated black metal, yet classy look of S90. Wi-Fi functionality and touch screen are nice additions, but they won’t set the world alight. EOS-M looks like a much better mirrorless solution than Nikon 1 in many respects, but I need to spend more time testing it before I could form an informed opinion on it.
The compact camera that really piqued my interest was Sony RX100. No, not the mind-blowingly expensive full-frame RX1, but its smaller sibling. I tested it only briefly, but I really liked what I saw. It seems like a no-nonsense camera without all the gimmicks like touch screen, GPS, and Wi-Fi connectivity. In fact, this camera will be at the very top of my list when I decide to upgrade my Canon PowerShot S90.
I went to Photokina worrying that my gear acquisition syndrome would flare up again. So, in a way, I’m relieved that none of the new cameras were tempting enough (with the possible exception of Sony DSC-RX100) for me to start saving money and selling my existing equipment.
Camera FV-5: Android Camera App for Serious Photographers
The Camera FV-5 app is designed for serious photographers, and as such, it lacks fancy trimmings like scene modes, effects, and sharing capabilities. Instead, it puts all essential controls at your fingertips, and offers a handful of genuinely useful features. Camera FV-5′s interface resembles that of a DSLR camera, so photographers will feel right at home using the app. The main screen provides quick access to key settings, such as focusing mode, metering mode, White Balance, ISO settings, and exposure compensation. The dedicated Menu button lets you configure the exposure bracketing feature and intervalometer. The latter tool can come in rather useful for time-lapse photography. The Program button can be used to switch between two modes: Program (automatic exposure) and Speed priority (manual exposure). You can use the pinch gesture to zoom in and out. The app also allows you to use volume hardware keys for zooming.
Camera FV-5
Besides the efficient interface, Camera FV-5 boasts several unique features. For starters, the Camera FV-5 can save captured photos in the lossless PNG format. This is a real boon if you plan to post-process photos using your photo processing software of choice. The app can write metadata into the photos or separate XML sidecar files (or both). Saving captured photos in the PNG format is a resource-intensive task but the app processes the images in the background without affecting Camera FV-5′s overall performance. The app also sports long exposure functionality (which does have certain limitations), which is perfect for low-light and night photography.
In short, Camera FV-5 is a perfect camera app for Android-totting enthusiasts or serious photographers. A free version of the app is available on the Google Play Store, so you can give Camera FV-5 a try and see whether it fits your needs.
Soft Proofing in digiKam
Soft proofing is a technique which allows you to see what the photo will look like when printed using a specific printer and photo media (paper, canvas, etc.) without actually printing the photo. Many professional photo processing applications support soft proofing, and digiKam is no exception.
To make this feature work in digiKam, you need to specify color profiles for your display and the output device (e.g., printer). But before you do that, you need to obtain the ICC color profile for your specific printer and print media. Say, you are using an Epson 9880 printer to print photos on the IJMF professional glossy photo paper from Diamond Jet. Grab the appropriate ICC profile from the company’s Resources page. Create the ~/icc directory and move the obtained .icc file into it. In digiKam, choose Settings → Configure digiKam, switch to the Color Management section, and click on the Profiles tab. Select the desired color profile from the Monitor Profile drop-down list (the default sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color profile is a good choice in most cases). Next, in the Color Profiles Repository section, specify the path to the ~/icc directory. Press OK to save the changes and close the dialog window, then restart digiKam.
To enable soft proofing, open the photo you want for editing and choose View → Soft Proofing Options. Select the downloaded .icc color profile from the Profile of the output device to simulate drop-down list, then select the desired item from the Rendering intent drop-down list. This should generally be Relative Colorimetric, but if your printer supports only a limited gamut you may want to try the Perceptual rendering intent instead. Enable then the Highlight the out-of-gamut colors option and select the highlighting color you want. Finally, enable soft proofing by pressing the Soft Proofing On button, and you should see the photo exactly as it would appear in print.
Introducing Pygmyfoto
WordPress is an excellent platform for publishing photos on the web, but what if you don’t need all the bells and whistles it has to offer? Surprisingly, decent no-frills photo publishing applications are few and far between. After thorough research, I returned pretty much empty-handed, so I decided to hack something myself.
The result of my coding endeavors is still pretty crude, but it does the job with a minimum of fuss. At first sight, Pygmyfoto may look like a bare-bones photography blog application, but I prefer to think of it as a no-frills tool for publishing a photo roll on the web. As such, Pygmyfoto doesn’t have the features that are de rigueur of any decent blogging engine. There are no search capabilities, tagging is limited, there is no support for commenting or rating, there is no RSS feed, and all photos are presented as a single stream. In fact, Pygmyfoto is not even a pure webapp: it uses a simple SQLite database as its back end, and a couple of PHP scripts for rendering the photos and the accompanying info. Publishing photos (i.e., resizing them, adding title, description, tags, retrieving EXIF metadata etc.) is done using a relatively simple Python script. Another equally simple Python script lets you quickly archive and re-publish the photos. Data in the database that powers Pygmyfoto can be edited using an SQLite administration tool like the SQLite Manager add-on for Firefox or the phpLiteAdmin web-based tool (included with Pygmyfoto).
Pygmyfoto is not designed to replace a dedicated photography blog or gallery software. Instead, it offers a straightforward way to publish your photos as a continuous roll. Key EXIF data, such as exposure, aperture, focal length, and ISO are provided for each photo along with the link to its high resolution version.
The lack of embellishments means that, once deployed, Pygmyfoto requires practically no maintenance: you don’t have to moderate comments, manage users, remove spam, and perform other administrative chores (although you might want to back up Pygmyfoto’s files and databases regularly). The simplicity of Pygmyfoto’s overall design and its core components (Python and PHP scripts, an CSS file, and the SQLite database) mean that you can deconstruct, tweak, and improve the application even if your coding skills are not up to scratch.
A demo installation of the latest development version of Pygmyfoto is available on my server, so feel free to take a look at it. The source code is available in the project’s GitHub repository along with brief installation and usage instructions.
Tethered Shooting with Entangle
Tethering your DSLR camera to a computer opens a whole new world of possibilities: you can instantly view your shots on a large screen, trigger your camera remotely, practice the art of time-lapse photography, and perform other clever tricks. While commercial tethering software for Windows and Mac OS X often costs serious money, you can enjoy all the advantages of tethered shooting on Linux free of charge courtesy of Entangle. This tethering software lets you control practically all camera settings, trigger the shutter from the computer, view a live preview of a scene, and automatically download captured images to the computer.
digiKam Recipes 3.9.31 Released
Besides a handful of minor tweaks, the new version of the digiKam Recipes ebook includes the following new material:
- Prevent Photos in digiKam from Disappearing
- Simple Color Toning
- Simulate a Washed Out Effect
Readers who already purchased the book will receive the new version free of charge. If you haven’t received your copy, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com, and I’ll email you the latest version of the book.
Happy reading!
Add a Vintage Effect in digiKam
Want to add a vintage effect to your photos? digiKam has all the tools you need to turn your digital snapshots into vintage masterpieces. Open the photo you want for editing, adjust exposure, white balance, and tweak other settings as you would usually do. The first step in the “aging” process is to add film grain to the photo. To do this, choose Effects → Add Film Grain. There are a lot of parameters you can configure, but you don’t have to enable and tweak them all. You can start with adjusting the Grain Size parameter as well as trying different values for parameters in the Luminance Noise section. You can preview the result at any time using the Try button. Next step is to tweak the color balance to make the photo look aged. One way to do this is to tweak the color balance settings, so the photo looks washed out with a slightly yellow cast imitating aged photo paper. Choose Color → Color Balance and adjust the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow parameters to achieve the desired result.
The exact values for each parameter depend on the given photo and your personal taste, but you can start with the following values:
Cyan: 37
Magenta: 25
Yellow: -25
To make the vintage effect even more realistic, add vignetting to the photo. Choose Enhance → Lens → Vignetting Correction, tick the Add Vignetting check box and adjust the available parameters to your liking. Finally, sharpen the photo using Enhance → Sharpen to make the film grain more pronounced, and you are done.
digiKam Recipes 3.9.19 Released
This release features the new Add a Vintage Effect in digiKam recipe along with a raft of minor improvements, tweaks, and fixes.
digiKam Recipes in FBReader
Readers who already purchased the ebook will receive the new version free of charge. If you bought the ebook via Amazon, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com.
Happy reading!
digiKam Recipes 3.9.15 Released
First off, the digiKam Tricks book has got a new title: digiKam Recipes. Why? Because I like the word “recipe” better. To celebrate this momentous event, a new version of the digiKam Recipes book is available for your reading pleasure. The new version features the Check and Optimize digiKam’s Databases recipe as well as a few minor tweaks and corrections.
digiKam Recipes in FBReader
Readers who already purchased the book will receive the new version free of charge. If you haven’t received your copy, please send your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com, and I’ll email you the latest version of the book.
Happy reading!
digiKam in c’t Digital Photography
The latest issue #6 of c’t Digital Photography features an in-depth article about digiKam by yours truly. c’t Digital Photography is a relatively new quarterly magazine published by Heise, one of the most respected magazine publishing houses in Germany.
For my money, c’t Digital Photography is the best photography magazine on the market. And I’m saying that not because I write for it. The magazine caters for serious amateurs and professional photographers alike, offering high-quality articles covering a wide range of topics: from macro photography and panorama stitching to lens adapters and lens correction techniques. The current issue #6, for example, is chock-full of great articles, including excellent pieces on DIY studio gear and macro focus stacking. Linux users will also appreciate that c’t Digital Photography covers Linux-based photography tools as well as open source software for other platforms. In fact, issue #4 of the magazine features a comprehensive article on photography software for Linux, while issue #5 covers photography apps for iOS and Android.
c’t Digital Photography is published both in German and English, and your magazine subscription is available internationally at reasonable rates. The magazine’s editor has kindly provided me with two extra copies of the English version of the current issue which I’ll be more than happy to share with Scribble and Snaps’ readers. Leave a comment to this post, and I’ll randomly pick two lucky recipients.
