Things always have a way of coming back to us & Serious gamer

Abi: No, your eyes are not deceiving you. This does look remarkably similar to a shot I posted earlier in the week which was something of an accident, but one that proved popular and something I wanted to revisit for this project. Incidentally, it is really difficult to recreate a shot you essentially took by accident. This is partly due to the fact that you have little idea how you did it in the first place.

I wear this chain nearly all the time and have done for several years. It usually has a St Christopher on it which I wear for sentimental, rather than religious reasons. I hope it is mere coincidence I lost it around the time of a significant move and I hope that it will find its way back to me. I could really use it right about now.

* * *

Seb: As I write this, I’m running on about 3 hours of sleep — 3 hours in the last 4 days.

You see, I’m at a LAN party. There are 1200 of us in a darkened room, all of us with computers — and all of us playing games. The guy in the photo went on to win a tournament with his team. I won’t name him, because… well… he doesn’t know I took the photo. But hey, this one’s for you, ProSniperX!

This LAN party thing is a 4-day affair, and today is finally THE END.

I feel awful.

So, yeah, this is basically me saying ‘My name’s Seb, and I’m a geek.’

I’m going to find some coffee now.

* * *

You can visit either of our Flickr streams by clicking the photos.

You probably gathered from yesterday’s 13 of 52, that the photographic pickings are pretty slim at the moment.

It’s grey, windy, horrible — there’s about two hours of good daylight if I’m lucky, which makes photo-shootin’ pretty hard. I’m reduced to internal and low-light stuff now, unless the clouds clear and we get some nice, clear, wintry afternoons in the following weeks. But that’s OK — I haven’t done any night-time photography in ages, and trying to get the most out of overcast afternoons is my forte! (By virtue of living in overcast England…) That doesn’t mean the results are very good mind you — it just means that you get something rather than nothing. But you can see the photos in a little bit and decide for yourself.

Today, just to ram a nail in the coffin no doubt, it pissed down. Real rain — not the horizontal kind that we usually get. Just WHOOMPF, bouncing off roofs and roads and cars. The thundering pitter-patter that drowns out music and scares the cat. But who cares! Vertical rain meant I could get my camera and umbrella and go for a walk!

So in the name of art, and wanting to stretch myself a little, I give you ‘Catching Rain’. A series of images depicting England under the veil of cloud and assault of rain. If I’ve done my job right, you should feel like you’re being gently hit by soft, snow-like rain as you look at the following photos.

As always, hover over a photo to see my notes.

(That table is where I shot the pumpkin-on-face photos, incidentally)

(Look at the red and green droplets of water clinging to the branch! Depends what’s in the background. Cute!)

Which one looks better…? I’m actually torn between them. Both look great. Let’s just pretend there are two Vespas and this here is a diptych of them both…!

Hail and well met, fellow Thespians. Did you know that I’ve acted on stage since I was about two? I was (un)fortunate enough to belong to one of those schools where, once a year, everyone slips into a costume made from old curtains, pipe cleaners and aluminium foil and prances around a stage for a couple of hours. In my formative years I just had to look cute. Later on I had to wear wigs (and affect a female voice), wear copious amounts of make-up and generally make a prat of myself. Remind me to get out the school photos some day — my roles ranged from frickin’ Osiris, the Greek [OK, Egyptian, I got it wrong -S] god, through to the Dauphin from The Scarlet Pimpernel. The photos would be nothing short of hilarious. Hilariously awful… but still hilarious.

Moving along then — I alluded in yesterday’s ‘52′ that I love live-performance photography. Stage acting, musicals, dancing, music — it doesn’t matter. I love the STAGE itself. I’m sure a lot of deep and meaningful things could be said about the stage. How one throws off the shackles of their mundane, humdrum façade to assume a different role, a different persona; to be reborn every evening, to bask in both the luminescence of the lights and the audience. Then there’s the argument that it’s all an act anyway — the actual living thing — and that the stage merely exemplifies and amplifies traits already within us. Maybe I’ll investigate that some more.

There’s this story, a Kurt Vonnegut short (which I’ve just discovered was made into a short film!) called ‘Who Am I This Time?’ It’s about a shy, completely unassuming guy that only truly becomes someone on stage. Off stage, he’s a nobody, literally; devoid of personality, limp. If you haven’t read it, you should. Everyone should; Vonnegut was really way before his time, and a genius. It’s in Welcome to the Monkey House, probably the best collection of short stories not written by Roald Dahl (which you should also read).

Anyway, enough waffling. Today I have a bunch of photos from a show. There are a lot — about 100 — but as always, I’ve had to pick my favourite few. Notes for each photo can be found by hovering your mouse pointer over them. Again, I have to ask that no names or locations are mentioned in the comments.

Roses & Satsuma; The Crystal Meth of Christmas

Seb: And so we’re into the festive season! But I seem to have missed the holly berries… or they’re still to come — I don’t know. Either way, this lone soldier of a rose hip was all I could find that reminded me of holly berries and cranberries and red currants — all that kind of… reddy festive stuff.

The background… well… let’s just say I’ve been working on my bokeh technique. It was very tempting to closely crop it somewhere on the left, because the right side is a little distracting, but I’ve left it as-is, straight out of the camera.

I’ve finally worked up the courage to do some people photography (or photography-of-people, I have no idea). I guess you could call it portraiture, but that’s not really my thing. Sounds too formal. Hopefully I’ll have some results to show you next week… unless I bottle it at the last moment, which is possible…

Abi: Argh, I LOVE Satsumas. If I had my way I would spend the whole month of December buried under an avalanche of orange peel. I don’t know what it is about these little guys, what it is about them that makes me want to eat ten in one sitting then look forlornly at the fruit bowl as if to say “why did I not buy another net?”.

I know they won’t be available for very long, and so I must eat my annual quota in one go, lest I risk vitamin C deficiency for the remaining months of the year. Scurvy is no laughing matter Kids!

(I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have ’shooting’ and ‘gasm’ in the same sentence. I can’t really call it a ‘meteorgasm’ for obvious reasons. Say it out loud… go on… Loud enough for anyone nearby to overhear you.)

Bit of a smorgasbord of photos this week. It’s winter, so everything happens really quickly — when the sun’s out, it’s beautiful, but five minutes later it can be dismal and grey and rainy. The sun is setting at 3:50pm or something crazy — when you wake up between 12 and 1pm, that makes the apparent length of days very short. Fortunately I have these blog-writing sessions to add structure to my life, otherwise I might hibernate or something…

I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye again, almost non-stop. I think it’s turning into some kind of addiction, some kind of need – I haven’t put a song on ‘repeat’ since I was 16, but I must’ve listened to ‘Please Stay‘ 25 times in the last few days. It has only avoided tonight’s playlist because I’ve discovered another great album by Gaye called Here, My Dear. But I digress…  as I alluded to yesterday, I should have a (dare I say it) photo shoot with a cute girl at the end of the week. Little does she know just how easy these photos are going to be, because she’s stupendously beautiful and photogenic. But hey, I need the confidence-boost, the ego-stroking, so that in the future I can take photos of ugly people!

Big mish-mash of photos today then: the meteor shower of December 12-14 (Geminids), an ‘out-take’ from 52 weeks, and a couple of ‘geometric experiments’.  I’ve been trying to catch meteors for a few years now, but it’s hard here in south England. Lots of light pollution (I have an airport very close by). Then there’s the matter of clouds and full moons and all that jazz — this year was meant to be the best ever for Geminid sightings, but I was still hampered by cloud and sub-zero temperatures.

Yes, I stood outside for about three hours, and all I got was three photos. I couldn’t feel my toes for about two hours after I came back inside (it was the coldest night of the year so far… brr! ice on my boots!) They’re not even that great photos, but I’ve included a couple in today’s Shooting Stargasm.

The geometric photos are just… experiments. I liked the light, and I’m fast learning that I should just TAKE PHOTOS when there’s any kind of light to be had, otherwise I might not get another chance before another Tuesday Photogasm comes around. I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I might be a very good ‘available light’ photographer. It’s dawning on me that this may indeed be the case… (buy my photos, because I have a nagging sensation that they’ll double in price by this time next year).

Enjoy the photos! Think of me freezing my rapidly-gangrenous nuts outside just for the art.

As always, hover over each image for specific notes.

(Admire Canis Major on the far left! Two stars of Orion’s Belt are just visible)

Phew! That was a rather eclectic mix. Now I’m going to shave off my Hitler beard and think of something disturbing for Thursday.

I do hope that suffixing things with ‘gasm’ doesn’t become my catchphrase. I can just see it now… thirty years in the future, sitting on a couch, doing an interview for some crappy daytime TV show… ‘Go on, say it.’ — ‘But I’m here to drum up interest for-’ – ‘Say it! We’re not here to hear about your new book!’ — ‘OK OK… gasm. Gasm, gasm, gasm. There, I said it.’

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

I wonder what kind of phrases/quotes will be remembered when I die. I wonder if I’ve already said my greatest words of wisdom (what a sad thought…) The phrases you find online, one spoken or written by influential and important people, were they great at the time? Will something I’ve written in the past year come back in 50 years, without context, and sound far more pertinent or awesome than I ever intended?

I’m ranting, sorry. My eyes hurt because I’ve been either under or oversleeping — why do my eyes hurt when I oversleep? God knows. Also, my eyesight is failing again which means I need to get new lenses. I wish I knew for sure if this was just genetic (both my parents have poor eyesight) or if it’s the continued, excessive computer-use. Or maybe it’s both. How bad can it get…? I’m only -4 at the moment, and apparently I shouldn’t worry until I’m at -8 or so… but still…

This week’s photos come from New Year’s Eve. Just a few minutes before New Year’s Day actually. It’s been incredibly cold for the last couple of weeks and conditions haven’t been great for photography (and I’ve been sleeping at odd hours, which doesn’t help).  I think I alluded to a previous love of low-light photography — it was basically all I did at college, when I first started taking photos.

I’ve been out the last few nights trying to take some more photos, but so far nothing else has worked. It’s pretty hit and miss, pointing your camera at puddles (like yesterday’s 52), or into misty windows. If there’s any kind of photography that actually lies, it’s photos of night-time or low-light scenes. Photography is all about drawing with light (literally), so when there is no light it’s no surprise that the results are a little weird.

As always, you can hover over photos for my notes. Not much this week, but with Christmas and New Year celebrations, I think you can forgive me. I’m going to try and do some more night-time photography in the next few days, while the moon is still quite full.

(This actually looks really cool when cropped to just the end of the road… there’s some fogginess and some nice light… but I’m showing you the whole thing because of the MOON! There’s a couple of stars in there too, if you look closely…)

(This week’s 52 wasn’t a crop of this — they are different photos, from different angles. I love the light in the puddle in this version though!)

* * *

And we’re done for another week! The last photo was actually going to be this week’s ‘19 of 52′, but I went with the ‘puddle of ink’ at the last moment. I still haven’t got my driving license… did you know that? I really should get it this year…

Ta’da & Snow Drama

Seb: Believe it or not, it’s 4:15am in this photo. That’s not dawn either — that’s light from a city about 10 miles away. The colour itself is light pollution I think (though remember, this is long-exposure, so it wasn’t THAT orange, but definitely a bit orange). Look how still I held my arms for 30 seconds! (I’ve had a lot of practice over the years…)

I’ve been waiting all week for the perfect conditions for this photo. I bet you’ve never seen a landscape like this before… and neither have I!

The snow continued after this photo, and we’re currently under about a foot (30cm) of snow. There’s been snow on the ground for two weeks now — the coldest and snowiest winter in history I think, or certainly since I was born. And get this, our heating is broken because oil doesn’t flow well when it’s cold. Wonderful.

* * *

Abi: Whenever I look at this I am forcibly reminded of one of those Greenpeace ads involving a clubbed baby seal. Maybe it is the Panda hat, it gets a fair bit of attention and not in a good way.

Anyway, as you may have gathered, the UK is experiencing conditions which we as a nation are simply not equipped to deal with. Our transatlantic chums must bear in mind that when it snows, or excessively rains, or gets a bit warmer than we were expecting, our entire country grinds to a halt.

We simply don’t get much practice in dealing with any extreme weather and so, when it does happen, we either pretend it is not happening or battle on with the kind of camaraderie last seen during the war years. That’s what we Brits do, we queue and PANIC BUY.

The original concept for this shot did not involve me at all. Put simply, my friend flatly refused to lie in the snow for any length of time which is why I ended up doing it. This project may just kill me yet.

* * *

For smaller versions, but with the addition of usually-hilarious comments on Flickr, click the photos.

Last week I said that if no one else wrote a review, I would — and as it turns out, there’s still just a bunch of previews but nothing substantive. Yes, it has 1080p HD video recording capabilities, yes it has a shiny-almost-Canon-7D-18-megapixel sensor… but no one’s commented on what it feels like. Specs are only a tiny portion of the story — so here’s a hands-on review of the new Canon 550D.

Note: Don’t expect a highly-technical review. No doubt professional sites like DPReview will get to that in due course. This is all subjective. There are no chromatic aberration graphs, or side-by-side comparisons. Just some test shots, some video, and my (fairly) expert opinion. I’ve also never done this before, so the format might be a bit weird. Stick with me though, I should cover most of the important stuff!

You can skip directly to the sample photos, if you want to see some evidence of the new CMOS sensor and metering system, or the gains in high-ISO performance.

Gear Used

Camera: Canon 550D (also known as the Digital Rebel T2i in America, or the Kiss X4 Digital in Japan). Costs about £700, body-only, or £800 with the kit lens. Due to imports/exchange rates, it’s a lot cheaper to buy in the US (about $800 for the body only).

Lenses: Sigma 50mm f1.4 (around £400), and the Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 (also around £400). I’m actually a bit of a prime lens snob, but I’m still waiting for an APS-C sensor 10mm prime lens… you hear me, Canon, Sigma? Anyway, both lenses are best-in-class… as long as you get a good sample (I’m not going to go into the variety of Sigma’s output here…)

Initial Impressions

Before the 550D, I used a 450D for my ‘every day’ and on-the-move photography (travel, mostly). The 550D is identical to the 450D — weight, shape, balance, etc. The body seems to have a slightly different finish, and the grip is a little ‘grippier’. In more detail:

(500D on the left, 550D on the right)

The trigger: The button itself is a little harder to depress; slightly more ‘clicky’. Not ‘hard’ to operate though, just a little more… affirmative.

The buttons in general: No doubt the change to the trigger is due to an overhaul of all the buttons on the camera. The buttons on the back of the camera are now flat, making them quite a lot easier to use (though they take some getting used to!) There’s also a new ‘record’ button up by the eyepiece, to go with the camera’s video capabilities. Personally I still have a few issues hitting the depth-of-field-test button, but I think that’s due to my huge hands.

Other bits: In all other ways, it’s identical to the 450D (and 500D, I believe). There’s a new HDMI output, below the USB output, and an audio input (mic) above — and also a microphone on the front; for the video capabilities. Oh, it uses a new kind of battery too, the LP-E8 — so you’ll need new batteries, and a new grip too (lame!)

Photos

[Sample images are at the end]

The most important bit! (Unless you’re buying it for the 1080p HD video thing, anyway — that’s a bit further down the page). Does the 550D take good photos? ‘Hell yes’ would be the easy answer, but let me break it down a bit.

Resolution: Yup, more megapixels — up to 18 million effective pixels now, or 5134 x 3456. The RAW files are about 25MB, so you might need to get a new memory card!

Image quality (IQ): Better than the 450D, but I can’t compare it to the ‘identical’ sensor of the 7D. There are reports of it producing very, very similar photos to the 7D, despite Canon saying that the sensor is ‘not the same’. Of course you don’t get the weather sealing, but at half the price and half the weight… who am I to complain. The 550D uses ‘gapless micro lenses’ infront of the CMOS sensor, increasing the quality and sensitivity of every pixel. This in turn opens up ‘extended ultra-high ISO’ settings (more on that in a second).

Shooting: Continuous frames-per-second seems about the same as the 450D, despite the new DIGIC 4 processor — the listed speed is 3.7FPS, but if you shoot in RAW-only mode it will reach 6FPS! There’s all the standard options — RAW, JPEG, RAW + JPEG, etc. — but there’s currently no RAW support for Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. The Canon Digital Photo Professional RAW processing tools are OK, but lack the depth of Adobe’s Camera RAW.

Metering, auto focus, and exposure compensation & bracketing: While we still only get the 9-point auto-focus (damnit!), there is a new ‘iCFL’ metering system in use, inherited from the Canon 7D. Basically, each of the 9 focus points collect a lot more information that’s then used to more-accurately expose your photos. From my tests, it does seem to be better and more reliable  than the 450D — but it’s pretty hard to test empirically. The AEB (exposure compensation/bracketing) now lets you go from -5 to +5, in steps of 1/2 or 1/3 — pretty neat, if you shoot into bright lights a lot (stage/theatre photography, in my case).

Custom functions: Some of the juicy high-end custom functions make their Rebel debut:  ’ISO expansion’ and ‘noise reduction’. With more pixels rammed every closer together, noise increases and image quality generally degrades — enter TECHNOLOGY! How better to counter technology issues with yet more technology? First, there’s ‘ISO expansion’ that lets you shoot at up to 12800 ISO speed, i.e. almost complete darkness with a large-aperture prime. There’s also on-camera noise reduction that seems to perform a lot better than the on-computer equivalent — you can enable noise reduction for all high-ISO shots, or just for long exposures. If you’ve used a digital camera in the dark, you’ve probably noticed the noise that creeps in — these new functions go a long way to making digital cameras better for night-time photography.

THE DAMN SHUTTER: The shutter is still loud enough to scare children from 100 meters. It’s a bit quieter than the 450D but not by much. Why does Canon give us such a noisy mirror mechanism when they’re capable of so much better? Lame.

Video

No doubt you’ve heard about the Canon 550D’s video capabilities. It was only a matter of time before the functionality dripped down from the 5D, to the 7D, and ultimately the 550D — you can now get a full-HD 1080p digital camera for just £700… crazy! And it’s pretty damn good at it too. Check out this little video clip:

Excuse the bed hair, but still — did you try it at 1080p? Full screen? (If your computer will even render it…) Anyway, the video functionality, in more detail:

HD, 1080p, 720p, etc: You can shoot video in all sorts of ways, with the 550D. Canon have learnt their mistake from the earlier video-shooting SLRs and given the 550D a full array of options: 1080p at 24/25fps (NTSC/PAL), 720p at 50/60FPS, and even a ‘digital zoom’ 640×480 resolution (which is kinda fun). Video clips are capped at 29 minutes and 59 seconds, which is 4GB at full 1080p.

Video quality (VQ?): I’m nothing more than an avid, amateur film maker, but the reaction of those that have seen my test 550D videos have been universally great. It’s simply flawless, 1920 x 1080 video. Just like usual film-making, the lens matters a lot. I’m not sure how else I can rate the video quality… it does exactly what it says on the box; that’s it.

Audio quality: The 550D has a forward-facing monaural microphone. It’s surprisingly good, though I haven’t tried it ‘at a distance’ — I can’t imagine it’s particularly directional. You can also hear a lot of noise from the wind in one my other videos. It was really, really windy though. Anyway, it’s more than enough for indoors and self-documenting work. There’s also an input for an external microphone (3.5mm jack).

Other bits: Video recording on an SLR is definitely a two-person thing. There’s no auto-focus, you see — well, there is, before you start shooting, but not once you press ‘record’. So you need a tripod, and depending on how bright it is, you might be trying to stay in a very shallow focus plane (look at my other test video to see how shallow the f1.4 focus is!) By default video recording is in ‘full auto’ mode, which basically chooses the ISO/aperture to match your framerate (24, 25, 50 or 60 FPS). You can switch it to ‘manual’, if you need to force a particularly wide/shallow depth of field.

Everything Else (appendix)

There are a few things that don’t really impact your use of the camera but are still worth noting, if only for a sake of completeness.

There’s a new LCD screen: It’s very nice, with lots of pixels and less glare than the 450 or 500D. It’s also the first 3:2 screen — i.e. wide-screen — so your images aren’t shrunk-to-fit any more! The new LCD screen is a real joy.

The digital menus have been enhanced: You can now access more ‘buttons’ through software — hit the new ‘Q’ button and you can change things via the LCD screen. Overall the menus are unchanged (though very busy, with all of the new video recording options), but with the new screen there’s some more real estate that is well-utilized.

Embed copyright info into your images: One of the smaller features to find its way from the higher-end Canon cameras is the ability to add your name and a custom copyright notification/message to every image your camera produces. It’s stored in the EXIF data for each image. Pretty neat!

Sample Images

I’ve only had the camera for a few days, so I haven’t had a chance to try every kind of condition yet. I’ll try to add more to this little gallery over the next few days and weeks. The various improvements to the sensor and the addition of some custom functions to the 550D are generally tailored towards more extreme use — low-light, especially. There’s also ‘Highlight Tone Priority’ (another custom function), but I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet — 7D users are reporting great results though, especially for candid/external portrait photography (weddings), so the 550D is probably just as good in that regard.

These photos are all taken on either the Sigma 50mm f1.4, or 10-20mm f4-5.6 lenses, and are straight out of the camera. Click for larger versions.

(Simulated fire, 50mm @ f/1.4, ISO-6400. Close up on the right)

Wide-angle night-time, City of London (The Royal Exchange), 12mm @ f/5, ISO-1600.

Just standard overcast light, 50mm, ISO-100, large aperture. Metering looking good.

Photo on the left looks a bit bright (but it’s accurate). Metering on the right looks pretty spot on, with dark/bright elements!

* * *
If you have any questions about the camera, feel free to leave a comment — I’ll reply.