Sorry, fellow camera geeks, for being so totally GONE the past few months! I kinda got married. So I've been a little occupied.

However, the time has come for me to flex my geek-rant muscles again.

Today, I want to write about a revolution / evolution that I think digital photography has had coming since it's birth...

Basically, in the days of film you effectively had only TWO means of controlling your exposure. Aperture and shutter speed. If you wanted anything else, you had to change film, and use a film with a different ASA / ISO. And your options in that respect were VERY limited. Most films were ISO 100, 200, or 400, and usually the 400 speed films were the ghetto kodak gold stuff you buy for "running-stick-figure-mode" on your camera. And B&W was your only option if you wanted to get *quality* out of ISO 800 or better. And forget about hardcore landscape photography. If you meant business, you were at ISO 50, or 64, or 25, depending on the "era"...

Okay so my point is, Digital lets you change your ISO between each and every picture, right?

HOWEVER, it continues to retain that "secondary" status below aperture and shutter speed. THOSE exposure controls get their own full-time command dials! ISO is still treated as that "other" setting you have to change, like white balance or image quality, etc...

At the birth of digital, this went un-noticed. Digital ISO was in fact still a crutch. Professional results couldn't be obtained above ISO 200, or above 400, or above 800, as each generation rolled by. Any serious digital photographer shot at their base ISO 90% of the time.

Enter the 2007, 2008 and 2009 generations. The Nikon FX series is the best example- CLEAN ISO 6400, use-able for B&W AND color printing at small / medium print sizes. That's a useable SIX stops of light, for a D3, or SEVEN on the D3X, if you count ISO 50 / 100 "LO-1"

Do you realize that is as many stops of control as the average f/2.8 zoom?

The point I'm getting to is, it's time for ISO to play a more important role in exposure control. It's time for ISO to be (able to be) on a command dial FULL-TIME... In so many low-light conditions, for example, I NEVER touch my aperture, I just leave it wide open the entire time. Why not let me use that command dial to change my ISO any time I want? Right now on my Nikons I have to reach up with my left hand, hold down a button, and dial my ISO while all other controls are locked out, and pictures can't be captured.

WHY?

We've been making baby-steps in the right direction, with Auto-ISO. Nikon has slowly given more and more control to it's Auto-ISO function. At first (D200) you could only go up to a certain shutter speed minimum, and you could NOT access the "HI" ISO levels. Then (D300) you could go to any ISO you wanted, and the ISO would actually go DOWN if you maxed your shutter speed. And now with a firmware update, Nikons can dictate ANY minimum shutter speed.

Let's take that next step! Maybe we don't need to add a third command dial, but letting photographers quickly put ISO onto a command dial full-time would be awesome. And, when changing my ISO the normal way via an ISO button, I should be able to toggle Auto-ISO via the sub-command dial that is currently not used when changing ISO.

I dunno exactly how it could / should be engineered. All I know is that in a dark theater, I can go 2,000 exposures without touching my aperture, yet I need to change my ISO incessantly. Sometimes automatic exposure is fine, and so I shoot in A mode with Auto-ISO on. But then sometimes I need manual exposure all of a sudden, and I'm out of luck because even though it is effortless to go from A to M, I'm stuck with my Auto-ISO on and therefore my exposure is still automatic. And I gotta go into a menu to kill Auto-ISO, and then the moment I needed to capture has probably passed.


Alright, I'm done pondering. This is something I've written about regularly, and I guess I'll keep bringing it up until camera companies catch on. Digital is here, people, and it is changing the way we think about exposure...

Take care,
=Matt=

I've been following the "Micro Four-Thirds" system with much interest ever since it was announced. Basically, it is a DSLR without a mirror, otherwise known as a P&S with interchangeable lenses...

Panasonic announced a 7-14mm lens, which on the 2x crop is 14-28mm.

The lens is tiny. It's 10 oz. ...If it's sharp, again I have to say, WOW. What a cool system! I honestly cannot imagine buying a "bridge" P&S camera now. The 20x zoom stuff is just getting ridiculous.

Micro 4/3 is the "bridge P&S" of the future; I see it as a very valuable system with MUCH potential to take over HUGE market share...

Panasonic has also announced an HD-capable Micro Four-Thirds body, the GH1. (Basically a G1 with HD) 1080/24p, or 720/60p. NICE!

=Matt=

...As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now, witness the firepower of this FULLY ARMED AND OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamwithcam/2214313819/


(Link courtesy of my good friend, Brandon Perron from the [b] school...)

=Matt=

Canon just rocked the prime world again. Not only have they announced two new prime lenses, a 17mm TSE and a 24mm TSE mk2, ...but they have also re-designed the lens construction to allow tilting and shifting to be rotated independently of each other.

Meaning, unlike any other lens for 35mm use, you can now tilt / shift in "opposite" directions.

The sad thing is- Nikon JUST RECENTLY announced an entire new line of TS lenses, 24mm, 45mm and 85mm, and on ALL of these lenses if you want to switch the directions of tilting and shifting (with respect to each other) you literally have to take the lens apart with a screwdriver and rotate the lens mecahnics / elements yourself.

Did I mention that one of the new Canons is a SEVENTEEN MILLIMETER???

Sorry Nikon. You just got owned... I'm not even going to bother mentioning the new 35mm AFS f/1.8 DX now. Not until you come out with a REAL lens for PMA...


=Matt=

[EDIT] Wow. These lenses look nuts. Here's a forum post showing the 17 and 24 TSE lenses' MTF charts ROCKING the 17-40 L and 24-70 L's MTF charts. Now keep in mind that MTF charts are made wide open, and the TSE charts are probably not made with any movements involved. But either way, that is SHAAAAARRRRRRPPPPPP!!!!

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1029&message=31040134

I just had a stroke of genius! Seriously! However, it's going to take a bit of background tech-talk to explain...

Okay, first of all, let's simply state facts:

Nikon SB800's and SB900's have a "Guide Number" mode, when pointed straight forward, in which you can simply dial in the subject's distance and bang, a perfect exposure. Pretty nifty! (Well, for those few who like to shoot manually with their hotshoe flash pointed straight forward all the time...)

Similarly, in fully manual mode you still get distance calculations, except this time you're not dialing the distance, you're dialing the flash power and the distance reads out automatically...

...Now, when you use a flash off-camera and command it wirelessly via CLS, the commander will communicate to the remote through an IR signal that tells the flash how the camera is doing exposure-wise...

The commander can "ask" remotes to be automatic or fully manual.

You can dial +/- compensation into a remote that is in TTL mode, so the IR signal must be pretty high-tech...

I don't know how this works exactly, but I know that at least the camera, if not also the wireless flash remote, knows which aperture, shutter speed and ISO is used.

The SB800 is at least capable of understanding aperture and ISO, because it uses them to calculate a guide number / flash distance...


WHAT IF, and this is a huge what if, ...you could remotely command a flash distance?

Here's how it would work. You'd set up your remote flash however you like, and take note of its distance from the subject.

Then you go onto the back of your on-camera commander, and input that distance for the correct remote group...

The IR signal from the commander says "expose for 10 feet at ISO 200 & f/4, please"

The IR remote thinks "okay, with my flash zoom head set to 50mm, that will be 1/8 power considering that I am an SB800 and my default GN is 125..." *pop*

Seriously, that would take a LOT of the guess-work out of my off-camera flash use.

TTL just doesn't cut it when I'm doing an elaborate environmental portrait with intentional dark shadows and off-center subjects.

So, I use manual power a lot of the time. And when you're shooting manual off-camera flash, it's really a shot in the dark, pun intented. You know that you're not going to be at full power because TTL was probably blowing things out as usual, so you start guessing at maybe 1/4 power. But if that is also blown out, there is no immediate solution apparent. Is it 2 stops blown out? Is it 3 stops? 4? 5? I have no idea. So I dial it down in one stop increments, until I get a proper exposure. Then the next time, I get fed up wasting time so I guess in 2-stop increments to begin with, and blow past the correct exposure, have to go back, and end up taking just as long. This doesn't actually take TOO long and is easier than shooting film and calculating a GN by hand, but it's still annoying.

AND, geeky solutions turn me on.

I know it might be a complicated IR signal to send. But the camera itself should be able to do most of the work, since it knows the aperture and ISO already. It can already spit out a flash distance if I input full manual 1/1 power, and I can already wirelessly command a manual flash power. So we're at least VERY close to achieving this.

So, Nikon, why not?


Alright, maybe I just gave a way a brilliant concept that I should have quietly gone to a patent attorney for. Most likely though, this has already been contemplated many times over, and is either impossible to implement or is already on the way...

Either way it was exciting to conceptualize, and yet I'll live without it. I'm just gonna work harder on being able to calculate a GN in my head. What's that dang formula again? F stop = GN x ISO / distance... GN = F stop x distance / ISO... Eww...

=Matt=