SLR cameras

There's something of a cottage industry on the Internet of making parodies through artful subtitles of Der Untergang, a movie about the last throes of the Third Reich. And now there's one that takes on Nikon's D3X, the company's new $8,000, 24.5-megapixel SLR.

The subtitles depict Adolf Hitler coming to terms with the arrival of Sony's Alpha A900. One amusing moment comes when a minion listening to Hitler's rant comforts a weeping colleague, "There, there, I hear he shoots only JPEG." (In case the humor is lost on you, that'… Read more

Some users have reported that photos taken with Canon's new $2,700 EOS 5D Mark II camera can be blemished with dark spots near areas with very bright highlights.

I first heard about the issue on the DP Review forums on Friday, but now one pixel-peeping user has come up with a fix spotlighted by Photography Bay: Disable for highlight tone priority, lighting optimizer, and noise reduction, according to commenter f_stops.

"No black dots," the photographer and new 5D Mark II owner reported on the posting, supplying before-and-after shots as proof.

Canon is checking into the issue. &… Read more

The photography world is beginning to adapt to a new phase in the marriage of cameras and computing technology: the arrival of SLRs that can shoot not just still images, but video too.

The change began with the arrival of image sensors, the light-sensitive microchips that replaced film. Now, two new SLRs--Nikon's D90 and Canon's EOS 5D Mark II--are taking another step away from the film paradigm, following in the footsteps of point-and-shoot cameras by recording continuous video and not just still images. Doubtless video will gradually spread to other SLR models and makers.

"This camera is the ultimate 'equalizer'--you no longer need half-million dollars' worth of high-definition video cameras and lenses delivered by a truck with its own driver to shoot a high-definition film in low light--you just need a $2,700 camera and a few lenses," gushed professional photographer and Canon adviser Vincent Laforet in a blog post about a 5D Mark II prototype.

But not everything will be simple for Laforet wannabes excited by the new possibilities. Hardware, software, Web sites, and perhaps most of all, technique all must catch up to the new technology.

Though how-to book authors have yet to weigh in, there are signs the adaptation has begun. Take the case of video hosting. … Read more

I'm a big fan of Adobe Systems' camera profiles, which when editing the raw images that higher-end cameras can produce imbues photos with what I find to be more natural hues. So I was glad to hear camera profiles are moving out of Adobe Labs and into Photoshop and Lightroom.

I apply the "camera faithful" profile by default when I import photos from my Canon SLR into Lightroom. But when I tried to use the profiles on some photos I took with an Olympus E-3, I found I couldn't.

Now seemed a good time to find … Read more

A correction was made to this story. See below for details.

DxO Labs, a French company with deep experience measuring cameras' technical performance, has launched a Web site called DxOMark.com that features detailed information on the performance of the image sensor at the heart of many higher-end digital cameras.

Many Web sites and magazines measure camera image quality with varying degrees of rigor, typically examining either the JPEG that the camera produces or a processed version of the camera's raw. But with its DxOMark Sensor measurement, DxO takes a new approach by judging the sensor performance based on the unprocessed "raw" image file from higher-end cameras such as SLRs.

That's significant, because raw images typically must go through a conversion process called demosaicing before they're useful for viewing. Most digital cameras capture only a single color--red, green, or blue--for each sensor pixel. Demosaicing fills in the gaps in this colored checkerboard pattern so each pixel gets all three color components, but this processing stage can disguise sensor performance.

The detail-obsessed camera crowd has begun eagerly chomping on the new data. On Sunday, there were 220 mentions of DxOmark on the Digital Photography Review forums, a popular location for impassioned technical discussions.

New tests coming More measurements are coming, added Nicolas Touchard, vice president of marketing for DxO Labs' image quality evaluation business. First, in two or three weeks, will come measurements for medium-format digital camera sensors from companies including Hasselblad, Mamiya, Phase One, and Leaf. Then will come more high-end compact "bridge" cameras.

DxOMark Image Processing for the camera's computer, whose job it is to perform tasks such as converting raw images to JPEG, and DxOMark Optics for lenses.

The latter measurement will go beyond most lens tests by showing how well each lens works on each camera rather than one or two reference models. DxO takes that approach because lenses behave differently because different cameras have different attributes such as the geometry of the microlenses that help each sensor pixel gather more light, Touchard said.

DxO makes a business out of detailed measurements of camera performance, selling the data to camera and chip companies and incorporating it into its own DxO Optics Pro raw-processing software for photographers. So why give some of the data away for free on a Web site? Publicity.

… Read more

Red Digital Cinema Camera, a new maker of high-end digital movie cameras, is expanding its turf closer to traditional camera makers such as Canon and Hasselblad.

On Thursday, Red announced a new range of modular camera designs that it plans to deliver mostly over the coming year and a half that can take not just high-resolution video but also still images. The move comes just as Canon and Nikon have begun adding video support to their SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras.

Various new models from Red will be able to accept lenses from Canon, Nikon, and Mamiya, a move that could make them a more serious possibility for professional photographers, but the prices--thousands of dollars to tens of thousands--restrict this equipment to a very small market.

Certainly Red's new cameras will never be as widely used as video-enabled SLRs costing less than $3,000. But Red, if it can deliver on its promised road map, holds the potential now of shaking up professional markets. Its original Red One video camera did, winning high-profile accolades from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson among others for its ability to outdo film.

What's unclear is how well cinematographers used to video will take to still imagery and photographers will take to video, but the two realms are certainly growing ever closer in the consumer market.

High-end sensors The models come with a variety of high-end sensors: a 24-megapixel chip the size of the 36x24mm full-frame sensors in the top-end cameras from Nikon and Canon; a 65-megapixel 56x42mm sensor competitive with those in medium-format digital cameras; and one large "617" format sensor that measures a whopping 186x56mm and whose 28,000x9,334 pixel resolution comes to 261 megapixels.

Red divides these new camera models into two lines, the more compact Scarlet models and the more powerful Epic models that can reach higher frame rates with high-resolution sensors. Also accompanying are a wide range of cinematography accessories such as a 1,080p LCD video monitor, an input-output module, lens mounts, battery packs, and wireless controllers. One fascinating combination: a harness that sports a pair of cameras for shooting 3D movies.

With the models, Red is trying to establish a new category called "digital still and motion cameras" (DSMC). Whether it will succeed with the jargon is anyone's guess, but the technology certainly is coming: Nikon's new midrange D90 became the first SLR camera that can shoot video, too, and Canon's higher-end full-frame EOS 5D Mark II is about to ship.

The 5D Mark II can shoot 1080p video, but Red's cameras record at higher resolutions geared for digital movie projection systems.

One area where digital photography has wrestled with film is in dynamic range--the difference between light and dark areas. With poor dynamic range, dark areas disappear into black murk and bright areas wash out. Red boasts of a wide range, though, with its full-frame, medium-format, and large-format Monstro-brand sensors all producing 16-bit data spanning more than 13 stops of dynamic range. The cameras shoot video or still images using a raw image format that accommodates the data. … Read more

Apple's photography software now can accommodate raw images from some newer digital cameras through the release of Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.3.

Specifically, the update to iPhoto '08 and Aperture 2 means that the photography software can deal with raw images from three prominent new digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras: Canon's midrange EOS 50D, Nikon's video-enabled midrange D90, and Sony's ambitious 24-megapixel full-frame Alpha DSLR-A900.

Also supported is Nikon's high-end compact camera, the Coolpix P6000.

Raw images are taken directly from higher-end cameras with no in-camera processing into a JPEG. That means photographers … Read more