LensWork Technology Blog

A bit of video learning curve

I've been on the hunt for another camera that will do video (my Panasonic G1 cameras do not). I was intrigued by the new Sony A77 and its APS-C sensor size. I assumed its noise factor would be an improvement even compared with a Panasonic GH2, the leading candidate in my quest for a new video-capable camera. In fact, the new images posted at dpreview.com this week show the GH2 is less noisy than the Sony at ISO 1600, in spite of Sony's APS-C size sensor. What a shock. Obviously, the cost of packing in so many sensor points so densely.

I lost interest in the Sony. The GH2 still leads the field, but it is really more than I need. Great camera, but I'd rather have two or three (for multi-camera shoots) that are enough yet affordable rather than one that is great but overkill.

So, I went all the way back to the beginning and started over looking for a camera that might meet my video needs. I found it. The now almost-discontinued Panasonic G2 is the perfect fit for me. Uses my existing lenses; does 720p video (which is all I really need, see below); has the same size sensor as my G1 (12 megapixel stills); has almost the same noise characteristics at ISP 800 as does the GH2; has a stereo input jack for external microphones; and is at the end of its product cycle life so is inexpensive. I purchased a body-only for $299 at Amazon.com which will arrive here on Tuesday, just in time for my departure next Thursday to Carmel for the Uelsmann lecture and for my video tour of Chuck Davis' darkroom.

Here are some RAW noise comparisons from dpreview.com, however, in the real world I'd apply a little Noiseware Pro noise reduction.

   

Below is after Noiseware Pro noise reduction. I can live with this. No, I can thrive with this.

   

   

At ISO 1600, you can see that the G2 is a lot noisier than the GH2, but I rarely use it that high. What really surprises me is that it's about on par with the Sony A77! Of course, the Sony is a 24 megapixel image which will be a deciding factor for lots of photographers, but isn't important to me. I guess that's the cost of the extra pixels, the inevitable noise.

   

What is most impressive is how great the GH2 performs at ISP 1600. Wow! And a lot cheaper than a $2,500 Canon 5D MkII. Again, I assume, the advantage of the 5D MkII being is larger pixel count.

Relative to video, here was the learning curve from the week: If you are a Full Access member of LensWork Online, check out the interview I did with Doug Ethridge. The three-camera shoot of our interview was done with a somewhat dangerous mix of cameras. The video of Doug was shot with my Panasonic GF1; the video of me was shot with his Panasonic GH2; the wide shot video of both of us was shot with my snapshot camera, the Panasonic ZS3. All were AVCHD captured MTS files. Here are the details of the capture:

• GH2 (me) was shot at 1920x1080 at 16,589 kbps (1080p, full frame HD, AVCHD)
• GF1 (Doug) was shot at 1280x720 at 15,285 kbps (720p, AVCHDLite)
• ZS3 (wide of both of us) was shot at 1280x720 at 15,260 kbps (720p, AVCHDLite)

   

Although the GH2 has a much larger image and higher data rate that I'm sure would be an advantage for lots of full HD productions, these differences are nullified because of the size of the finished video we use. Constructed for playback on computer monitors, we size the final video at 960x540 — actually quite large for computer video and the context in which we use them. (By comparison, most YouTube videos are either 400x240 or 600x360.) In fact, any larger and some folks might find they can't see the entire video because their computer monitors are too small. So, the 720p format video camera (1280x720) are enough for my needs for our interviews and for production requirements for LensWork Extended. The new Panasonic G2 shoots 720p (1280x720) natively and will be great for this use.

There is one other cutting edge consideration that was worth checking out. I loaded up our streaming video on my Android tablet which I piped via HDMI cable into our Sony 40" LCD television. I wanted to see how the video looked there just in case people decided to view LensWork Extended on their HDTV. Looks great — not like full size HD cable, but great nonetheless. Even at that large size, the ZS3 pocket camera is only very slightly softer in focus that the other two, far more expensive cameras. The differences are so slight, I doubt anyone will even notice. I am fully satisfied.

So, a concluding word of advice from the pragmatist in me: In the race for more and more pixels and higher and higher definition video, it does appear that just as in other areas of life, "Enough is as good as a feast." I may have to fight off the seduction of 1080p video, but for actual work it appears that 720p has a lot more to offer than the camera sellers would have us believe — at least for those of us not doing feature films or episodes of House for commercial broadcast outlets.

An Extra 7 Feet

Remember this iconic image of Ansel Adams atop his car on his homemade shooting platform? Silly as it sounds, I had a similar arrangement way back when and found the extra 7-foot elevation to be of immense value in improving my compositions. I've long ago moved on from that vehicle, but the concept is about to make a comeback in my photographic life.

In preparation for the temporarily-named "LensWork Road Show" — of which I'll have more to say as soon as we're ready to make a formal announcement on our website — I'm having a custom cargo trailer made that will allow me to once again incorporate a shooting platform that will elevate my point of view. I am so excited about this I can hardly stand it. The platform will go where the ladder rack is in this photo.

 

   

It's simply amazing what that extra bit of perspective does to improve the angle of view, particularly in the desert and other flat landscapes. Instead of a sliver of land and an expansive sky, it's also possible to have an expansive foreground of the land with a sliver of sky.

Here is a poor man's version of the same thing and the image I created from this only slightly elevated position. I'm standing on a wheeled tool box I use to carry photo gear. Don't laugh; when you are blessed — ahem — with a 26" inseam inherited from your Armenian grandfather, you take advantage of every bit of elevation you can muster.

   

   

   

Just imagine the foreground possibilities with another 7 feet of elevation using a shooting platform.

Pano gear —in action

Last week I ordered a panorama head (see this post) from Jasper Engineering, their Pano Head 3.

Because I am a novice at this, I can't offer any comparisons to other gear, but I must say I am very impressed with the build quality of this device. Precision machined and finished to professional standards. I like the large knurled knobs and way everything fits so tight. Precision is the word, so I don't mind repeating it. Now I just need to learn how to use it.

Did the first crude — and I do mean crude — test this afternoon. Out my kitchen window to the shipyard across the street. Correct that — through my kitchen window to the shipyard across the street. I was so anxious for a test I didn't bother to open the window. Yikes.

Here was my strategy on this first test based on a fairly simplistic thought process:

1. Mount the camera in portrait orientation.
2. Level the pano head using the bubble level on the end of the main arm.
3. Use my zoom lens at 45mm (a 90mm equivalent) with a very approximate nodal point. No use fussing too much on this first test.
4. Set the camera to manual to make all exposures exactly the same.
5. Focus the camera and then lock it so it wouldn't refocus with every shot.
6. The detents in the base plate of this pano head are every 15°, but I wanted more overlap than that. I shot images at roughly half-way between each detent and on the detents. This gave me 11 overlapping shots over a bit less than a 90° swing.

This next part may seem a bit convoluted to you experienced experts, but it made sense to me. I loaded the 11 images into Lightroom and did a few basic things there. I tweaked one of the key images as I would if it were a stand-alone photograph — black point, clarity, brightness, sharpening, noise reduction, white balance, etc. — and then synced the rest of the images so they all had exactly the same treatment. I then exported all 11 images using these common Lightroom adjustments to individual image files. These I then popped into Photoshop's automated Photomerge function using the "Perspective" option. As the final step, I cropped out the excess "wings" and did a very quick job of spotting out the power line running through the image that runs in front of our building.

The strategy worked like a charm. It stitched together perfectly and looks great — at least to my novice eye. Printing at 360 ppi it would make an 11" x 52" image. So much for the first test.

Here is the resulting 78 megapixel image . . .

And a downloadable full size JPEG (10megabyte file) just in case you want to take a look in full res.

View this photo

Conclusions: This is fun! This is easy!

Now comes the hard part — making something meaningful and of art quality.

Panorama gear

I'm — literally — "gearing up" for a serious panorama project. This is all new to me, my only previous experience with panorama photography having been a few experiments with Photoshop's auto stitching capabilities. Terms like nodal points and other math stuff now float around in my brain without landing on any comprehending neurons.

I do understand, however, that my life will be a lot easier if I buy a new tripod head that is designed for panorama use. I've looked at a dozen alternatives. The leader of the pack appears to be Really Right Stuff. Top notch stuff for top notch photographers. I am not at that level yet, so my pocketbook has whispered to me that I ought try out some alternatives.

The one that is catching my eye is from Jasper Engineering and is called their Pano Head 3. Less than $250.

   

   

Anyone have any comments or advice before I jump in?

Sharp, Sharper, Sharpest

[Cross-posted from my Xiang Sha Wan blog.]

I am so impressed with the feature on my Panasonic G1 called "optical image stabilization." It's some sort of magic whereby the lens can compensate for slight camera movements during the exposure. I can make sharply focused images even though I might move the camera a bit when handholding (or monopod bracing) an image at a slower-than-normal shutter speed.

The old rule of thumb has always been to shoot no slower than 1/focal-length for handheld shots. Ergo, if you are using a 50mm lens, be sure your shutter speed is faster than 1/50th of a second. Add a monopod for some extra stability, and you can slow down a stop, sometimes two. Ergo, using a 50mm lens would allow me to shoot at roughly 1/15th of a second, sometimes. Then, additionally add optical image stabilization and there is another stop, possibly two. (Some of this depends on where one draws the line between acceptably in-focus and unacceptably out of focus.)

I'm pretty comfortable using this camera at ISO 400 where I can do a little post-processing noise reduction and get great images. (Faster than ISO 400 is not useable, IMHO, with this camera.) I've found with some consistency that I can use my monopod, optical image stabilization and shoot at 1/8th of a second. I occasionally lose a shot out of focus, but rarely. If I shoot at 1/4 of a second, I can occasionally get a sharply focused image, but I lose a lot more that I'd like.

Here's an example at 1/8th of a second with the monopod.

And a 100% crop . . .

Here is an image shot with a 90mm eq. lens at ISO400 at 1/8th of a second using the monopod.

And here is a 100% view of the gentleman's ear and hair.

All of this is so seductive to an old tripod-only guy. So seductive in fact that I was foolishly carried away by the freedom last year in China. One of those really dumb things one should probably not admit in public. I sort of forgot that blurry pictures can be created by movement of the camera or movement of the subject. There I was all comfortable with my slow 1/8th of second shutter speeds with my yippy-skippy camera and monopod, completely forgetting that people are rarely motionless for 1/8th of a second. I lost quite a few nice portraits because, although I was still, they were not.

For example, I prefer this composition and angle . . .

. . . but, a quick peek at 100% shows why I don't use it. She moved ever so slightly and my 1/8th of second shutter was too slow.

Instead, I use this one — which I like, but not as well as the exposure that shows both eyes. At least this one is in focus because I luckily captured her when she wasn't moving.

Flash to the rescue! Except I didn't take one last year — other than the under-powered, harsh light of the pop-up flash built into the camera itself. Yuk. Live and learn. This year I'm taking my Metz 50 AF-1 and a Gary Fong collapsible light dome.

Report on the GF1 videos

For the production of the new LensWork Visual Workshop, Finding an Audience for Your Work, we decided to step up to HD video recording. Using the same kind of rationale that I used before, we looked for a digicam with HD video capabilities — rather than purchase a dedicated video camera. After a bit of research, I was delighted to settle on the Panasonic GF1. This offered two advantages: I could get the 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens that also can be used on my G1, and it can serve as a backup camera for the G1 when I travel. A neat solution.

So, how does the video perform? I think, very well for our purposes. Check out the sample video we posted here for a peek at a video made with this camera in our studio.

A few comments that may be of interest:

• A large motivation for selecting this camera is the ability to focus manually. This is a must for studio video recording where "focus hunting" can be an awful distraction in the final product. Many digicams do not offer manual focusing, so beware of this missing feature.
• Also, the AE lock is a must. In a controlled studio environment, exposure should not drift up or down during a recording. Again, lots of digicams do not have this feature.
• I find the white balance of the GF1 slightly cool. Thankfully, it has a WB control that allows shifting by 100K units to a precise setting. Very nice.
• The 20mm lens is perfect. Because it is an f/1.7 lens, we could used a cooler 500W Tota bulb rather than the much hotter 750W bulb.
• Part of the process that makes such a camera work for us is that we don't actually use the full HD video size in our final production. Since our videos are seen on computer monitors, we don't need video that is 1280x720 — too many people would have problems with video this large on their smaller monitors. Instead, we produce our videos to 75% of that size — 960x540 — which will fit everyone's monitor (and browser) and is plenty big for our use. This reduction in size helps create an even better image with these class of cameras.
• The file format we are using is the AVCHD option at the best quality available in the camera, so-called SH for "super high." It's still a compressed format, but works great because we are not doing any post-processing other than trimming the file and plopping on some overlays.
• We are using Camtasia 7 to produce the videos, but it doesn't accept the MTS format files. (I'll have more to say about Camtasia in a future post.) We convert the MTS files from the camera into high resolution WMVs using Emicsoft's conversion software. These we import into Camtasia for final editing. It's a workflow that is clean, efficient, and produces great looking videos.

We couldn't be happier with this camera for this use. In the field? No idea yet, haven't tried it. For still images? Ditto. But, I can report that for the kinds of video we are making in the studio and at the size of our final output videos, it's a peach of a machine.

Aspect Ratio

Let's list the common aspect ratios we find in photography:

• 1.000 (1:1)
• 1.200 (20x24)
• 1.250 (4x5, 8x10, 16x20)
• 1.272 (11x14)
• 1.294 (8½x11)
• 1.333 (4:3, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960)
• 1.500 (3:2, 24x36mm, 6x9cm)
• 1.666 (5:3, Super 16mm)
• 1.777 (16:9, HDTV, 1280x720, 960x540)

I find it odd that in all of photography the one aspect ratio that appears to have never been used by any film format, camera manufacturer, framer, or video standard is the one aspect ratio to have been demonstrated in history to have really significant artistic implication. Where in this list is the sublime Golden Ratio, or Golden Mean? There is nothing particularly magic about 1.618 — except that's its truly magical.

This ratio of length to height has so many unique properties that books have been written about it. I won't, at least not here. I will only say that it is the most useful shape into which we can compose a photograph — a simply lovely geometry. It's well worth, at least, knowing about.

Here are some resources I recommend to anyone.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
• http://www.goldennumber.net/
• http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT668/EMAT6680.2000/Obara/Emat6690/Golden%20Ratio/golden.html

Slingeriffic

All this high-tech gear has got to go into something to haul around with us. Delicate electronics and optics are suddenly at the mercy of cloth and zippers. And therefore — at least in my life — the search for the perfect bag continues.

For the last couple of years, I've been using Lowepro sling bags. If you are not familiar with the sling bag concept, you really should take a look. In the field this is a terrific design.

I have both the SlingShot 200 AW and the SlingShot 300 AW. They're good, but not perfect. In both cases, I wish they had more room in the top compartment. It's teardrop shape loses a lot of cube that could be used if it were not that shape. The newer models are an improvement, but still cramped.

In searching for something a bit more volumetric yet still a sling bag design, I discovered the Kata 3N1 bag.

The top compartment has more room; unlike the Lowepro, it slings in either direction, over either shoulder; unlike the Lowepro it therefore provides entry from either side; unlike the Lowepro it also can be configured as a regular two-strap backpack or a two-strap X-design backpack — very handy for longer treks. There are two outside pockets, too. And, the optional tripod holder is pretty nifty for a lightweight tripod or monopod. It comes in three sizes, the "10," the "20," and the 3N1-30. I purchased the largest size (30) for two Panasonic G1 bodies, three lenses, a monocular, battery chargers, and use the top compartment for a jacket, audio recording gear, my pocketable video camera, and lunch.

I used this bag in my recent trip to Asia and it was a gem. Definitely the best bag I've owned for my use. If you are in the market for a bag, check out the videos on the Kata website. Here is the Amazon.com link for the largest size.

Lens systems

Cameras are, indeed, fascinating tools with ever more capabilities. Like so many other photographers, I enjoy reading about the new models, the new features, the new bells and whistles. But, I do wonder if I'm just entertaining myself, indulging in consumerism fantasies.

Intellectually, I know that the real research should be all about the lens systems, not the cameras. I have always thought that the lens is far more important to the picture making process than the camera itself. Lenses and film, lenses and sensors — that's where the rubber meets the road.

So, in the optical world, who has the best lenses? Nikon? Canon? Leica? Sony? Olympus? Pentax? Other than experiential word of mouth — a prejudiced analysis, for sure — where do we find such information that has any sense of authoritative objectivity? Would it be useful for us to have a dpreview.com of lenses only?

Then again, I know for certain that the winning lens system does not belong to my Panasonic G1 system which I'm using to make lots of images with which I'm perfectly happy. Maybe I'll polish up my grandfather's old Argus C3 and give it a spin around the block.

The New Zone System

In my youth, one of the primary distinctions between the "serious" photographer and the casual hobbyist was their commitment to the Church of Zones. Any b/w photographer worth their salt knew of it, and most of them practiced it in one form or another. Even the 35mm Magnum-type photographer understood and used the principles, even if they weren't as fastidious as the classicists of the West Coast school. As the technological foundation of the craft, it was bedrock.

What is today's bedrock equivalent? Histograms? Photoshop? Pixelmania? There are probably lots of answers to this, but here are my Five Technological Things Every Photographer Needs to Know in today's world.

1. ETTR- Expose to the Right. If this is new to you, do a Google search for lots of articles about this philosophy of exposure and image quality. I need not rehash it here, just know it's important and you need to know it. Seriously. Closest thing to the Zone System there is in today's world.
2. Bigger is still better. We're talking sensors. Just like in the days of film, the more square inches of data recorded the better the technical quality of your image. Pixel density, noise reduction, etc., etc. Again, Google for details if you need to. The bottom line is that there is no escaping this universal truth.
3. Straight prints are a myth. It was myth in the days of the darkroom, and it's still myth today. Ultimate virtue in an image will never come directly out of your camera; every image will require some post-processing to really make it sing. Every image. Every single damn one of them. There are no exceptions. Knowing this, it only makes sense to shoot RAW and resign yourself to the time it will require to make the best image possible. JPEGs are a punishment — like instant coffee; it may be brown and taste vaguely like the real stuff, but it isn't. The coffee, I mean.
4. You can crop a bit in post-processing. You can adjust tones and color in post-processing. You can add blur in post-processing. You cannot make out of focus things magically become in-focus. Yes, you can sharpen, but that is not the same as focusing. Therefore, of all the things you do in the field, blowing the focus is the one thing you will have no recourse whatsoever to fix. Get it right in the field or pay the price later.
5. No amount of technology can make up for a lack of inspiration. It is still true that there is nothing worse than a sharp photograph of a fuzzy concept, as Ansel Adams said some fifty years ago. It's called "art making" not "technology using" for a reason.