Tag Archive for 'photography'

Photography workflow with Picasa & Flickr

Published by Peter on March 4, 2008 in photography. 4 Comments

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while, but I always thought everyone would probably work in the same way. But then I got introduced to iPhoto, which I consider a sh*tty piece of software, so apparently not everyone is as spoilt as us PC users. So here it goes: how do I process all the pictures I take, easily a thousand per month?

Step 1: the camera

As you might know, I’m a Canonista, I use a EOS 350D digital SLR. I’ve got two CompactFlash cards of 1GB, of which I use the second one only rarely. I don’t take my photos in RAW format, I use the highest JPEG resolution: 3456 x 2304 pixels or 8 megapixels. On a 1GB card I can get between 250 and 300 pictures.

Step 2: import into Picasa

picasa import2

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New lens for my Canon camera

Published by Peter on February 2, 2008 in photography. 3 Comments

My current favourite lens for my Canon 350D is the Canon EF 50mm F 1.8 II ø 52 mm. I really like the wide aperture (f/1.8) that allows me to take pictures without flash in dark environments like tango events, and the small depth-of-field that brings out the subject really nice. Plus, it was only 100€ when I bought it, and now it’s even at 84€.

Maryline-Vincent-Roma (5)

But a 50mm lens in a small digital SLR is equivalent to a 75mm, and sometimes that’s too much. I have to step 2m backwards to get a portrait of two persons (people ask this, you know), and even further if I want a picture of a tango couple with their feet included as well as their head. So I’d like to find a second lens with at least the same aperture, and with a lower focal distance, at a non-ridiculous price (below 400€).

Candidates seem to be:

Does anyone have experience with these lenses? Any suggestions?

What is HD-JPEG?

Published by Peter on October 8, 2007 in audio-video and photography. 3 Comments

While reading the specs of the PackardBell Store & Play, I fall upon “Foto formaten: JPEG, HD JPEG” As I am working with several aspects of HD (High Definition) video all the time, I am of course intrigued. There is a standard for HD JPEG? Wow, tell me more!

HD JPEG = HD Photo = JPEG XR (my guess)

Well, it’s not that easy, actually. When you do a search for “HD JPEG” on Google, all you see is promo talk. Vendors like Philips and Panasonic use it as a feature on their devices, but there is no official definition of what it stands for. What I think happened is:

  • Microsoft developed a standard “HD Photo” (formerly Windows Media Photo) that corrects some of the disadvantages of JPEG:
    • It can store color information at 32 bit per color instead of 8 or 12. (In current JPEG, “24-bit colour” means: 3 x 8 bits for R, G and B.)
    • All encoding steps of the algorithm are lossless (except for quantisation). So it has a true lossless mode (all coefficients = 1). JPEG does not have this (at least, not implemented).
    • All kinds of tech mumbo-jumbo reasons (read the Wikipedia article)
    • “HD Photo offers image quality comparable to JPEG-2000 with computational and memory performance more closely comparable to JPEG”
  • The JPEG committee announced that they would (consider to) adopt HD-Photo as a standard, with as a working name JPEG XR. Provided that, of course, …

    One important aspect regarding the standardization of HD Photo is Microsoft’s commitment to make its patents that are required to implement the specification available without charge. Microsoft’s royalty free commitment will help the JPEG committee foster widespread adoption of the specification and help ensure that it can be implemented by the widest possible audience. The JPEG committee hopes and encourages all participants in its meetings to consider this royalty free approach when offering patented technology as a candidate for standardization.

  • The hardware vendors didn’t like the “JPEG XR” name (it doesn’t really show clearly that it’s an upgrade from JPEG), so they combined it with an acronym that consumers know and associate with “better” and “more expensive”, so was born “HD JPEG”.
  • in short: Technically, it does not exist. Practically, it sells flat screens.

Competition

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