A while back I tried out Phase One’s Capture 1 namely to see how well their Focus mask worked. At the time, I was looking for a quick way to scan through pictures looking for the ones that had critical focus placed where I wanted it without having to go into 100% in Lightroom and study the images.
Needless to say, I found Capture 1 to be technically a really nice RAW processor that was such a usability disaster for me that as attractive as the focus mask feature was, it wasn’t good enough to get me to switch. Even then, focus mask is still one feature I’d long to see implemented in Lightroom.
It should be obvious, I think focus mask is one damn handy feature; it would be even more so to have on the back of your camera. Which is what Phase One has gone and done with their IQ series of ridiculously high resolution MF backs.
Fastest validation of correct focus with Focus Mask
No need to zoom anymore to validate your focus. The IQ series backs are designed to display a colored semi-transparent mask on top of the preview to show which parts of the image are in focus. It’s extremely useful to validate depth-of-field and get instant feedback about whether a shot is perfectly focused or not.
Reviewing Images on the back of a digital camera is a blessing and a curse. Gone is the need to wait hours, days or even weeks for a lab to develop and process your film, you’re now free to review within seconds of shooting the frame. However instant review is no panacea, even ignoring the low resolution of camera LCD screens, judging sharpness, color, exposure or focus placement is virtually impossible.
There are certainly some workarounds for some of those problems. Flashing highlight warnings, blinkies, show clearly where the images is clipping and not just where it’s bright. The histogram shows the overall range of the exposure, including whether there is data in all of usable range or not.
But there’s no real good way to review sharpness or perhaps more importantly focus placement. You can struggle at it in high magnifications, but even with the max sharpening applied to the preview image, the image can still be unindicative of exact focus placement. Never mind it’s time consuming to have to constantly zoom in and out while stepping through images.
Focus mask solves most of those problems; it’s a feature I’d love to see in more RAW processing software and even more in cameras right along clipping blinkies. So why Canon and Nikon are engaged in another race to the bottom, this time to see who can put the biggest ISO number on their camera’s spec sheet, Phase One has turned out an innovative feature that really makes sense—or cents if you’re Phase One. Too bad their backs generally cost more than a car.
In the 6 months between its launch and my acquisition of one, I watched respected photographers like Chase Jarvis and Joe McNally rave about how good the camera on the iPhone 4 was.
I have one now and simply put, I am not impressed.
Let’s get one thing straight, the iPhone 4’s camera is one of, if not, the best camera in a phone. I say that as if it was a worthwhile achievement. I’m sure that for some people it probably means they can replace their $100 point-and-shoot with their iPhone and be perfectly happy. Of course, they were probably happy with the 1 mega pixel camera in their previous phone too.
However, I’m not a fan of qualified statements, good for a camera phone, to me, doesn’t carry a lot of weight. While the iPhone 4’s camera may be good for a phone’s it’s not nearly that good of a camera in general.
Actually, let me clarify that. The hardware is almost passable as a general purpose camera, it’s certainly on par with some low end point and shoots. What makes the iPhone 4 problematic as a camera, is the software behind the hardware.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. We hope your holiday season is bright, safe, warm, filled with friends and family, and lets be honest, that Ole St. Nick brought you something nice.
Nikon Compatible PocketWizards are Shipping to Dealers
LPA Design has begun shipping their MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 ControlTL PocketWizards for Nikon cameras to dealers in Europe and Canada. US versions are expected to follow in 2 weeks and be available on store shelves in mid-December.
Rob Galbraith has an indepth preview of the Nikon ‘Wizards available. I’ve also updated my review with the few applicable notes on the differences between Nikon and Canon versions.
Version 1.35 of PocketWizard Utility now Available
In addition to the release of Nikon compatible hardware, there’s also a new version available for the PocketWizard Utility, which attempts to simplify the UI and adds some much needed functionality.
Version 1.35 of PocketWizard utility adds a number of useful features including:
Saving and Loading device settings to your computer.
Streamlining firmware updates by
Saving your device configuration automatically
Performing a factory reset when the firmware flash is completed automatically
Prompting you to restore you configuration, automatically
Simplified UI by hiding advanced configuration options from the default UI
All of the above changes are welcomed updates if you ask me.
New MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 PocketWizard Beta Firmwares
Firmware version 5.206 for the MiniTT1 and 5.207 for the FlexTT5 brings the following improovments.
Operation when swapping an AC3 ZoneController onto or off from a MiniTT1 or FlexTT5
while the radios are powered on and the camera is awake has been improved.
Improved modeling light sleep behavior with the PowerST4.
Corrected AC3 operations so that exposures at the shutter speed just above X-sync are
now proper.
Improved operation of an AC3 on a transmitter on a 1D Mark IV.
Added logic for better detection of a flash in the top shoe that is slow to become
ready (low batteries).
Remote camera triggering logic has been further improved.
Improved operation with the 5D Mark II when making fast aperture changes.
Eliminated banding on the 5D Mark II and 7D for the first HSS exposure.
Many improvements implemented for operation with the new PocketWizard Utility.
Keep in mind, however, that version 5.206 and 5.207 are beta releases and won’t be avaiable unless you’ve opted into the beta firmware program. They also require version 1.35 of the PocketWizard Utility to download and install.
I’m not sure what the attraction to Adobe’s Flash is with photography sites. It’s not the most useable, accessible or even necessarily the best technology. Flash can easily hamper usability, and become a security and privacy nightmare for users, isn’t indexed by search engines, and on top of all of that simply isn’t supported or available on an increasing number of popular devices.
With all that said, why do photographers continue to use Flash to display their images? When I’ve asked that question in the past, the answer I get most often is something to the effect of, “it stops people from stealing my images.”
The truth is Flash is a laughably poor mechanism for stopping infringement, or even discouraging it, especially for still images.
