No details? No problem.

Copyright Fred S.  

Fred S posted this picture on a M4/3 forum. He was worried about the black shadows without details and asked for help.

I said:
The picture is beautiful as it is. In fact, to my tast, the black branches add drama and tension to the image.
I spendt years as a teen, with books and photoclubs, being taught that all photos must have detail in all parts. (Ansel Adams' Zone System ect.)

Why?? It's just an arbitrary idea. Did God step down and proclaim that it had to be so? Do people ask painters "why are there no details in that area or in that area?"

 It took me years to unlearn it. I now have found out that artistically, actually some of my pictures have much stronger and better effect if I sink the shadows into blackness on purpose. One datum I learned too late: The Zone System was a TEACHING AID for students, it was never meant to be a tool for an educated photographer! It was meant to teach the student CONTROL over the tones, it was not meant to teach him that "all photos must have details in all areas".

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Addendum: Obviously, in photos, like certain architectural ones, where there are important details in ALL of the parts of the photo, of course you would want to show them all. But I think ultimately that's a minority.

In praise of IBIS (in-body image stabilization) (again)

So, I tried out a Canon full-frame camera. Wow, it had ISO settings up to 25.000! Keeeewl.
So I shot some hand-held test shot with a fast 85mm lens. Most around 1/50th second.
And what do you know? They were shaken! Shaken just enough to not be useable.

My Olympus ILC (Interchangeable Lens Camera) has "IBIS", meaning in-body-image-stabilization. So whatever lens you put on it, you get really solid help with holding the camera still, when hand-held. And I've gotten used to that with most lenses, I can get sharp pictures at 1/8 to 1/15th second, sometimes even longer.  It was a small shock to be suddenly cast back to the Bad Old Days without IBIS.

So in a nutshell: Though the big and heavy full frame camera had ISO up to 25k (though rather grainy), which gained me about three stops of use in low light, the lack of any stabilization in either lens or body cost me three stops of the same. So net effect: zero.

Sony now has full-frame cameras (the A7 series) with IBIS, and the newest Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera also has, finally. This is great. Well done those makers.

Left behind are the Big Boys, "CaNikon", Canon and Nikon. For whatever conservative reason of their own they have chosen only have stabilization in the lens, in a minority of lenses. And in many situations this costs your three stops of light. When we think of how much we have to pay (in money and weight/size) to get a lens of a given focal length which is one or two steps faster (a lot), this is just... a ridiculous waste.

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By the by, related subject: I've seen it claimed that the heavy cameras make it easier to shoot long shutter times without shake. My experience is quite opposite. I think because the heavier the camera, the more the muscles strain, and there for shake. With my first M4/3 camera, I found to my delight that even without any stabilization, but with a more relaxed position, camera at waist height, screen tilted, with less weight, a softer shutter, and no big Mirror Smash (mirrorless cameras, remember?), with a 40mm-e lens I could actually take dead-sharp pictures at 1/15 second a lot of the time.

New "drone" flying car

If you can navigate your way between the hurrican of ads* that some sites now insist on, you can find a video here of a very kool new kind of air vehicle; basically it's like one of those small camera drones, blown up to two-man size.
Unlike a helicopter, which is very difficult to fly, this is not, it's basically self-flying. And it makes for less emissions, and I think, much less noise.

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*I looked now for adblockers for iPad, and found I already had one, NeverAds, but it was turned off, possibly after last OS update. So I turned it on, and what a difference; that confusing and ugly web site is now simple and beautiful. 

What a refreshing experience to see the content without having to make several decisions about what text, pictures, and especially links, is content and which is advertising. (They're disguising it now in many subtle way, like making it hard to see immediately which is a "next page" link and which is a link to promotions.) 

Kinetic art par excellence

Short video selection of Anthony Howe's astounding kinetic art. I wish the resolution was higher, but still it's hypnotic. And amazing to think anybody building this.

Interview with a designer

Charlie Rose interviews Jony Ive, Apple head designer for 20 years. If you like insight into how sharp minds work, don't miss this.

ShelterBox

A brilliant and practical solution to really useful disaster aid: ShelterBox.org.
They started getting really noticed during the Japan disaster.

Love must illuminate

Our ol' doctor friend Pascal (he's not around so often now, as he's got his own clinic established) wrote this, I don't know where it's from, but it seems it's an original Rassi:

Le vrai amour, c'est comme la religion: il doit illuminer, pas éblouir au point de rendre aveugle. -- (Pascal Rassi)

Translation:

True Love, like religion, must illuminate, not dazzle to the point of blindness. -- (Pascal Rassi)

"Less Gear More Photos"

This guy gets it: LessGearMorePhotos

You always hear that in order to become a great photographer, you need to have your camera with you all the time. I always wanted to be that guy, the guy who carried around his [big, heavy] DSLR all the time, but to tell you the truth, I already carry a backpack, lunch bag and gym bag out to my car every morning. I tried to carry my big camera bag too. It worked for a few weeks, but inevitably I’d wind up putting it in the car each morning, and then taking it out (along with the three other bags) when I got home…with no photos on the memory card. Then the next day I forget to take it with me or just not feel like it, and kick myself when the sunrise/clouds/sunset/rainbow/storm/light/fog/foliage on the Hudson River looked amazing and I had no gear with me.

It was Olympus designer Maitani's life work: designing cameras that were as small as possible for the image quality. He wanted the perfect "take-everywhere" camera. I'm not sure we have it yet, there are many good choices, but compromises in them all. But things are moving fast now in the digital age, so in five and ten years it'll look different yet again.

The new Olympus Pen-F. A beautiful camera, and compact and light for the quality and powers it has. 

Cool plate pattern

Tommy found this fascinating video.

Superzooms are not all bad

I had a nice win today: I really want(ed) to use my Panasonic 14-140mm 3.5-5.6 lens for walk-around shooting, for it covers my whole shooting range in one small lens, but somewhere inside me I had the conviction that such a compact, long-range, economical, light-weight lens could not possible be all *that* good, surely not beyond "useable in many situations". For some reason I had never really tested it with intent.
(I felt like that because that had been the situation with two other 10x zooms I had owned from companies which shall remain nameless (Nikon and Pentax) so I thought it was the norm. They both were quite unsharp at points.)

In other words I felt I was stuck between a wonderfully flexible lens which may not be good enough for exhibition pictures, or lenses which are great technically, but *much* heavier and shorter-range, and so way less practical.

But I finally today did a systematic test of the Panasonic 14-140mm lens, and what did I find: It is *great*. Not just "Good for a superzoom", but really sharp from edge to edge, over the whole range. And also even on full aperture. And neither did any color-faults or whatever stick in my eye.

Wow. My walk-around photography is saved.
(I use it on my Olympus M4/3 cameras, but it'll work on Panasonic cameras too.)

And if I may at some point need shallow Depth of Field or faster lenses, I just plop the compact primes 45mm 1.8 and the 12mm 2.0 in a pocket (two in one pocket!), and that's handled.

Don't tell too many people, because so long as most people think that no super-zoom is good enough for serious photography, this may be my "secret weapon".  :-)

(Click for big pic)

 Above, the whole frame, below, crop from it. 
(No computer sharpness applied.)

Notice it's the newer, slightly smaller, 3.5 model on the right I talk about, not the older 4.0 model (which was not bad either though). Incredible how much goodness can come in such a small package. (Just like Reece Witherspoon.)

Robotics progressing (Updated)

Robotics are progressing, watch video.
It takes very fast and sophisticated balancing-computing to make the upright robot walk in a woods with snow on the ground!

Update:

John K said:
Spooky. Not too hard to imagine it with a gun. 

Nope. And I'm sure you're not the first to do so. I think many hard-ons around Pentagon has been inspired thoughts of what such a thing with a machine gun could "accomplish" in many a defenceless hot village around the world. Napalm has gotten so expensive.

And until they can think well enough for themselves, just plug them remotely into videogames globally, and let the kids do some "defending their country" while they think they are playing.

You need a permit, you need a permit, you need a permit, you

These Photos Got Me Kicked Off a Beach in Toronto. Article.
Because he used big cameras, he was assumed to be doing commercial work (by a maintenance man!), and had to have a licence.

So what I can learn is to use very good, but small cameras (say, Olympus E-PL7 with 45mm 1.8 or a Sony RX100 II or Canon G7X), then you'll be OK.