Perfect Compact?

Still on the trail of the perfect compact and, based on dpreview, it looks like the R8 isn't quite it. Looks like low light and image processing/noise are weak spots.

The new consumables

Digital cameras killed film, and with it 50% of the consumable business (the other 50% being prints, that's a rough 50% BTW). But have camera's become the new consumable? I think Stephen Fry thinks maybe...

Independent best travel of 2007

The Independent has chosen its best travel photographs of 2007.

Does anyone else find it odd that, with one exception, you have to follow a link to see the pictures that won?

I get the impression a lot has changed since I was inspired by Brian Harris' pictures in that newspaper.

More perfect camera

On the trail of the perfect camera, maybe Sigma will be worth keeping an eye on...

The perfect camera

The perfect camera: Pocket sized, great photographers control, superb image quality, cheap reasonably priced.

Ricoh came close except for the noise thing.

Canon arguably got closer.

But what I was really waiting for was a digital something that crossed an XA with an OM-4, only 'more so'.

Then I realized that the real advantage of a pocket sized camera is that it's with you all the time: in your pocket. And while you're waiting for the perfect pocket camera, it's obviously not, well, in your pocket. Thus, waiting for the perfect pocket camera defeats the whole objective of a pocket sized camera.

So I bought one of these & happy I have been.

There's a moral there somewhere...

Flash is bad

Actually, it's not flash that's bad. It's on camera flash that gives flash a bad name. After all, just what is natural light?

Two steps to getting flash off camera:

1. One of these for the flash bit

2. A set of these for off camera bit

Now, if only I could remember what I learnt about lighting at college...

RAW Windows

One of the problems with RAW formats has been the need to use specialized tools to work with the files. Pro photo tools now typically understand many RAW formats, but that doesn't extend to all the other apps that I want to use with photos, or use photos in. In Windows Vista (or more precisely, WIC) that's been made a lot easier by support for image codecs for RAW formats. You can grab a codec for the RAW format used by your camera and then any app that uses WIC to access images gets automatic support for that file type. Great for users and also great for developers, who no longer have to worry about loads of complex code changes just to support the latest RAW format variant.

There's a list of codecs available from different manufactures on the Microsoft Professional Photography site [link] which, interestingly for me, also includes a link to a DNG codec.

Although I shoot with Canon (and therefore .CR2 RAW files), for various reasons I convert to DNG. At the moment that results in a hybrid workflow where I shoot RAW+JPEG because some apps I use don't like DNGs. Looks like we might be getting closer to the time where I don't need to do stunts like that :-) so I'm off to play with codecs for a bit!