Celine

Digital Manipulation of a Photograph of Celine

Mostly Unhappy

I am mostly unhappy with my photos. I'm not happy with them frequently on technical grounds and frequently on composure grounds.

Technically, part of the issue is equipment and part of it is operator malfunction. On the equipment side of things, the camera that I use, a Canon Powershot S2 IS, suffers from two major problems. The sensor is noisy. Even on the lowest ISO setting (50 ASA) it can not produce a completely noise free image. Second, the lens has serious flaws. At the widest angle it has obnoxious vignetting. At the longest setting it has obnoxious chromatic aberration. I can remove much of the chromatic aberration using Paintshop Pro, but it's tedious to do a good job without hurting the image.

The lens extended out is 430mm 35mm equivalent. With my 35mm cameras, I've got a 500mm glass telephoto lens (not mirror type), and on it chromatic aberration is only noticeable if I stack a couple of 2:1 teleconverters in front of it making it 2000mm. And this was an off-brand not that expensive lens. I am disappointed that Canon feels that people who can't afford a DSLR should be consigned to bad optics.

So that's the technical issue on the camera side. Then there is the operator side. Usually I get the image focused, usually I get the exposure pretty good. Sometimes with night photography I have problems because the 15 second shutter speed limitation prevents me from getting an adequate exposure and also it can be difficult to focus at night because sometimes there just isn't enough light to see to focus manually and auto focus goes south if there isn't enough detail or contrast. In those cases I end up guessing the distances involved and manually focusing accordingly, and if time permits I'll bracket the focus. So while I usually get those things right, sometimes I don't.

Camera shake, I am always trying to push hand-held past half a dozen stops past the point where I should have used a tripod. The image stabilization helps a lot, it's probably good for a solid three stops. I find myself taking pictures that looked good in the tiny LCD monitor but when I load them into the computer there is motion blur.

Depth of field, not always conscious of this as I should be. The camera is also way too limiting in this regard. The iris only stops down to F8, you can't get a deep depth of field no matter what you do with this camera. So sometimes even when I am conscious of it I can't get the deep field I would like or if I'm photographing a person I can't blur the background as much as I would like. I can fake it in Paintshop but there again it's tedious.

What I am most unhappy about though is composition. I lose sight of context. I take a photo of something I think looks really cool, but I back and look at it and it is dull. I neglect sometimes to include things to provide context. I'm not aware of them when I'm present taking the pictures.

I know about the thirds rule but I hate formula photos so I often intentionally don't follow. Sometimes my deviation from formulas works out alright other times it sucks. More often than not the later.

I hope these things will come automatically with enough practice.

Broken Sky

Strange Sky

Wave

Wave at Richmond Beach

Canon Powershot S2 IS

The Canon Powershot S2 IS is an older model. It has been superseded by the Powershot S3 IS.

CompUSA provided this camera as a replacement for a camera that they lost (or sold at a clearance sale accidentally) during a warranty repair. The camera it replaced was a Minolta dImage Z1.

The only real downside to the Canon verses the Minolta is that the optical quality of the lens on the Minolta was superior. The Minolta had a 6:1 optical zoom, the Canon has a 12:1 optical zoom. The Minolta produced high quality images, within the limitations of it's 3.2 megapixel sensor and inferior software, across the full range. The Canon suffers from chromatic aberration at long lens settings and vignetting at short lens settings which together limit the usefulness of all that zoom range.

Now that I've had the camera long enough to really become familiar with it I thought I'd write a little review for those of you contemplating a used S2 and in all probability it shares a lot of traits with the S3 since the design appears almost identical and the specifications are only slightly different.

There are three major things I dislike about the camera. The problems with the optics that I mentioned above, chromatic aberration and vignetting, a shutter speed limit of 15 seconds, an F-stop limit of F8 max, a six-leaf iris, and a noisy sensor.

The chromatic aberration I can mostly fix in software. PaintShop Pro has a chromatic aberration removal tool that works quite well but is time consuming to use effectively. The vignetting is another matter. If the subject contrast is high then it's not too noticeable, but for low contrast subjects like clear skies it is very noticeable. The lens is a bit longer than I would like at the widest angle setting so I find myself often using the very widest angle where vignetting is the worst. Given the predictable nature of vignetting I'm surprised PaintShop doesn't have a tool for this and that the camera firmware doesn't compensate.

At night sometimes 15 seconds is not enough exposure even at 400 ASA, and because of noise I prefer to not use anything above 50 ASA. Even 50 ASA isn't completely clean. Some longer shutter speed options out to several minutes would really be a large bonus. A higher ASA film setting would not be useful without a higher quality lower noise sensor.

The lens can't be stopped down below F8. This makes it impossible to get a large depth of field. I used to have a Mamiya 35 mm camera, and some of the lenses I could stop down to F22 if I wanted to and have virtually everything in focus.

The six leaf shutter of the Canon Powershot S2 IS also causes six pointed star artifacts on city lights at night. I really think they cheesed out on the lens of this camera, that's really it's biggest weakness, but sensor noise is also a significant problem. In addition to the usual "noise" (fine grained snow), the sensor also seems to be prone to "stuck pixels", red or blue almost always, that stick "on" in low light. At first I thought these were just defective pixels but they change from time to time. If they were fixed it would be easier to deal with in software.

There are things I really like about the camera. The software that derives an image from the sensor is vastly superior to that which was in the Minolta. It squeezes a lot more resolution out of those 5.3 megapixels than the Minolta managed out of 3.2 megapixels given the simple ratio. That to say the image is much sharper than the upgrade from 3.2 to 5.2 megapixels would indicate. Canon seems to do a much better job of extracting chroma and luminance information from the pixel array cleanly.

It may be this in part that reveals the flaws in the topics. The resolution on the Minolta may not have been good enough for the chromatic aberration to be noticeable.

Image stabilization is an incredibly useful feature. It substantially improves what you can get away with and makes hand held photography possible sometimes with exposures as much as second long. That depends of coarse upon conditions, but it's easily two or three stops more than what I could get away with without it. Image stabilization works particularly well for video giving video shoots a much more professional appearance. The zoom is also operational when shooting video and it is quiet enough that it doesn't noticeably affect the sound.

The audio in the Canon is actually very good quality, not what I'd expect for in body microphones. The Minolta had only 8 KHz sampling (telephone company quality), the Canon will sample up to 44 KHz 16-bit stereo (CD quality). The microphones manage to produce reasonably good base and uncolored crisp highs.

The Canon has buttons for most things important so that it is possible to make adjustments rapidly. It also responds to the shutter very quickly if focused in advance. This means a lot more photo opportunities that would have been lost with the Minolta due to having to do everything with one set of buttons through menus.

Another strong feature of the Canon is that it is a real power miser. The only times I've had batteries go dead on me is when I first used a set of nickel metal hydrides that had been sitting a year without use and another time when I had the automatic shut-off disabled and it accidentally got turned on and left on until they were drained.

I've taken more than 300 images on one battery charge and until recently that was all I could fit on the SD memory card. Recently a friend gifted me a 1GB card that I've yet to fill up so I don't know if the card or batteries will exhaust first now.

Neither the Canon Powershot S2 IS nor the Minolta dImage Z1 had a hot shoe or an external jack for a remote flash. Neither had a provision for a remote shutter release that didn't require a computer. These seem like fairly simple things that a good design would incorporate. Both had a video output jack. If I had a choice between video and a remote shutter release and flash control, I'd take the latter.

The Cannon Powershot IS autofocus sometimes functions erratically. I can take a number of pictures of the same subject using autofocus and most will be in focus but some will not. This can occasionally lead to a lost good photograph. It also doesn't seem to focus entirely accurately. I can sometimes obtain better results if I am not in a hurry by focusing manually.

The operational temperature is listed as 32-104F. I have operated the camera at temperatures below freezing and it showed no ill effects.

All in all, this camera is a mixed bag. Battery life is excellent. The image stabilization really is a major plus. The firmware is good. The controls are good. The flexibility is good but not quite as good as I'd like. The lens quality and sensor quality leave something to be desired. I like the overall aesthetics of the camera. If I had the same amount of money to spend again I don't know if I'd go this route or not.

Night Walk

Just after midnight I went for a walk and took my camera and tripod along. Perhaps you'd like to join us.
Three blocks up from my house there is a foot bridge that crosses I-5. It is at 195th Ave NE.



Our shadows crossed before us.



We look at the traffic to the north on I-5. To us the cars moved, to the camera red streaks frozen in time.



Approaching the east side of the foot bridge.



I adjusted the camera white balance so that the sodium vapor street light appeared as white as it could make it. It is just after midnight when this was taken. These are mostly 15 second exposures. Here even 15 seconds wasn't quite enough, hence the noise.



Here a view looking up the street in the direction we are headed.



Across the foot bridge one neighbor has solar lamps. These are normally a little bluish but take on an extreme blue color because the camera is adjusted to make sodium vapor light look white.



Light from mercury vapor lamps which appears bluish to the eye looks green to the camera.



I looked north once I reached 10th avenue but opted to go south.



Looking south down 10th Avenue, to the right is a small park adjacent to an elementary school.



Trees take on strange hues illuminated by sodium vapor street lamps.



The school looks strangely eerie at night.



It's good to know the school is setting a good example for students by saving energy through turning all the lights off at night when the building is not in use.



After leaving the school grounds I took a picture of this porch because I though the combination of white painted cinder block, wood, and lighting looked cool.



At this point my fingers were getting cold, so I stopped taking pictures and headed back home. Hope you enjoyed the walk.

Something Like Death

This particular photographer I have on my watch list because she does occasionally produce outstanding photographs, this one is exceptional. It really nails the human condition, puts it right out there stark and visible and staring you in the face. To see it in full size click twice, once to get over to the DeviantArt page and the next to blow it up to full screen.


Something like Death.... by *faondejade on deviantART

China Sunset

Sunset in Li-Jiang China by Sam Lim. Found this on Deviant Art, take a look at Sam Lim's Gallery there.


Another Day by ~SAMLIM on deviantART

Steilicom

I went to Steilicoom for a speaking engagement and while there took some photographs of the area. We were only a block off the water so I walked down to the park and also took a few photographs of the town. Click on any of these images for a larger view.

Steilicoom Stuck In Time


Sky Through Trees


Steilicoom Houses