Believe it or not, this is the side of the skip on the truck seen above:
Friday morning before 7 am. Nikon D40, Nikkor 18-200mm with image stabilization.
BTW, this trip demonstrates my main remaining gripe: dynamic range. I took many images I was exited about but which simple fell flat because the contrast exceeded what the camera could handle.
Apparently, Nikon, like Canon, has addressed this issue with software in the camera in the upcoming models, let's see how that goes. I doubt it will be as dramatic an improvement as I could wish for.
Look at the picture below: admittedly an extreme subject, but the eye can handle it, so I think we should aim for cameras to also be able to handle it one day, with detail both in shadows and highlights.
13 comments:
Not enough contrast? Photoshop! :)
Yes, that one is easy. It is too much contrast which is the problem, because you can't pull detail from an area which has been pushed into blackness or whiteness.
rose trees don't grow on crompton street.
the third picture looks medieval.
is this a movie prop?
"Rose trees"??
The third picture is the side of the truck seen in the second picture. (Turns out he parked right next to where I was walking.)
That skip sure has taken a beating. Strange, they don't use skip trucks here in the US, there nearly always seems to be space enough for a roll off dumpster. I like the ingenuity mandated by limited space or resources.
Oh, also, great early light photos. I always had an uneasy feeling when reading the back of a roll of film, you know, always have the sun behind you, only shoot when there is good strong light etc etc.
I know! That advice is aimed at non-photographers with cheap cameras. For them it is entirely appropriate!
The advice can be disregarded with cheap cameras also.
You have to know your camera and what does and doesn't work with it, but you load a 400ASA 126 cartridge, and you can shoot late into the evening.
I am trying to remeber when I shot to the sun, and am remembering interesting silouhettes of ruins, and crystals and bottles on my window sill.
Wish my old photos and I were geographically closer.
I tried this once and never saw it post. Here I go again:
"[...]admittedly an extreme subject, but the eye can handle it[...]"
The eye handles it by constantly adjusting the pupil to let in more or less light as needed, that is, the pupil dilates when looking at the darker areas and narrows when looking at the bright sky. One can squint as well if the sky is too, too bright. The camera has neither luxury.
I read something in the last year or so about a new sensor array design that would prevent highlight blowout or at least mitigate it. I believe it was Steven Manes writing for Fortune magazine. (He liked it, which is rather astonishing.) I don't think we're too far away from what you're looking for in any case.
I believe the eye can handle more than what film or digicam can. If I'm wrong, then OK, the camera should be better than the eye.
I am sure we will get such a sensor sooner or later. But the first articles about one being made was in 2000, and we haven't heard from that since.
Fuji is doing a heroic job in their big cameras with small and big sensors in each pixel, but the difference is apparently not all that dramatic.
I agree that the eye is much better than any sensor. No argument there. The problem, though, is how we see a scene versus how the camera produces an image.
The camera cannot adjust individual sensor elements to let in less light or more light in order to prevent detail loss in the highlights or shadows. Your eye does this automatically, and generally without you realizing it, as you focus on portions of the scene you're viewing. In other words, it continuously adjusts its "aperture," whereas the camera gets to use but a single setting when you press the shutter release.
With your camera, you can simulate what the eye does by taking a properly exposed picture of the sky, one of the interior detail of the tree, and so on. This shows that the camera can capture any portion of the scene with the clarity we desire--but, as with the eye, it just can't do it all at once.
We can, sometimes, bracket several exposures of a scene and use Photoshop to put them together to get the desireed result. (PS CS3 has this built in, if I remember correctly. Alas, I don't have that yet.) We do pretty much the same, focusing on areas that interest us while scanning the overall vista; the (properly exposed) big picture we see is put together in our minds.
You can get some sense of the difficulty the camera has in capturing a whole scene by facing toward the rising or setting sun and looking at something in the shadows. Because your pupils narrow to let in less light overall, you can't see what's in those shadows--not until you block the direct rays of the sun with, say, your hand, which allows your pupils to dilate and take in enough light to see what you're trying to see.
Eolake said...
"I believe the eye can handle more than what film or digicam can."
If memory serves me well, the nekkid human eye can detect the red spot of a lit cigarette at a mile's distance on a clear, dark night, and a candle's light at 30 kilometres.
MoonDarter points out a very pertinent fact, that we use the combination of our eyes and brain to see. Makes us subject to optical illusions sometimes, but they're the downside of an overall incredibly efficient perception system. Sight uses as many neurons in the brain as all our other senses together.
This explains why the recycled brainpower of blind people gives them unequaled efficiency with their other senses. Did you know that our tongue can be trained to transmit visual images to the brain? In no more than 10-15 minutes, for ordinary people, and with nearly no effort. Pretty amazing.
Some day soon the blind shall see again, my brothers. Believe. Science is about to do it for good. All together now, let's sing!
"I've seen the light,
It's opened up my eyes, lalalala..."
(Don't forget to make a donation on your way out. My third manor thanks y'all so very much.)
P.S.: It's true that eagles and hawks can see much better than us. But they need bright daylight for that feat to be possible. They never hunt in dim light, and hate even cloudy days.
But then there are owls.
The tongue? Sounds like a joke.
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