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The NikonLinks Blog by Edwin Leong - 2011 PostsOctober 20, 2011 - Quick thoughts on the Canon 1D X and other misc. items
Other misc thoughts:
October 10, 2011 - More on infrared photography
For infrared filter conversions, there are five choices (six if we include the full spectrum filter choice):
Watch this video at LifePixel for more on sensor choices. For me, I was initially attracted to the Deep BW IR filter simply because I believe that most of my IR photos will be converted to B&W, so why bother with having to do red and blue channel swapping in Photoshop. However, as the LifePixel video makes clear, selecting a color filter allows more editing flexibility than the Deep BW filter. Because the color filters capture in...color, you can use the individual color sliders to adjust the tonality when using the B&W adjustment in Photoshop. You can tweak the photo with much greater control using the color sliders even though you are working with a B&W image. You cannot do this with the Deep BW IR filter. After some thought, when I'm ready to have an existing camera converted, I'll go with the Super Color IR filter, which will provide very punchy and saturated colors for those times when I do want a color IR filter, as well as maximum editing control for my B&W IR photos.
White Balance issues The best way to work around this issue is to preset the WB in-camera, but for some reason, with Nikon SLRs, this can be hit and miss depending on each individual camera. I attempted to preset the WB on the loaner D7000 many times but could never achieve a proper WB no matter what method I tried, from an ExpoDisc to white and grey cards. According to LifePixel, that’s just the way it is with Nikon SLRs, whereas other brands of cameras, such as Canon and Panasonic do not have this issue and allow for preset WB in-camera. I wrote about how to work around the Nikon WB problem in a previous post, but very quickly, if you use Auto WB on a Nikon SLR, you can use Nikon ViewNX or CaptureNX to set the WB before doing additional editing in Photoshop. Using a polarizer
The D7000 as an infrared SLR With infrared photography, you cannot focus a lens normally and because most modern lenses no longer come with infrared focus markers, you’re left guestimating the focus unless you have a lens calibrated for the infrared camera. Calibration is an option if you’re willing to dedicate lenses only for infrared photography, but most of us are not flush enough to have a second set of lenses just for a particular style of photography. My suggestion is pretty much what LifePixel would recommend: select an SLR that has auto focus capability in LiveView mode and have the infrared camera calibrated for universal focus. Cameras such as the D7000 have AF LiveView, which is easily accessible without diving into the camera’s menu system. Below is an example of using regular AF (left) and LiveView AF (right) on the converted D7000 camera - photos were taken within seconds of each other:
On the D7000, there is a dedicated LiveView button that you engage to set the camera into LiveView mode. One huge benefit of LiveView mode is the ability to set the focus point anywhere on the LCD and not be tied to one of the AF points, as you would be in regular AF mode. You focus the camera normally using the shutter release, or in my case, the rear AF-On button. This won’t be as quick as regular AF, but on the D7000, it’s not too bad. After acquiring focus, release the shutter normally for image capture. In bright outdoor conditions, trying to see the rear LCD can be a challenge, so a loupe such as from Hoodman USA can be very beneficial…if you can stand the high cost for the Hoodman LCD loupe. The Hoodman Loupe is about $100 in Canada, which to me is flagrantly overpriced for what the product does. I’m sure Hoodman would also love for you to buy its special rubber straps to mount the loupe onto the camera’s LCD, but at $20 for a set, I think I’d just as soon use some one-cent rubber bands. Alternatives to Hoodman exist, but may not be as easily available as Hoodman products are in major urban centers. The reason why normal lenses cannot focus for infrared is that infrared wavelengths are longer than visible light. The reason why LiveView mode works for infrared focusing despite not having to re-calibrate a lens’ focusing, is that LiveView allows you to “see” what the sensor is seeing through the lens, which is infrared. Without LiveView mode, we would have to see through the camera’s viewfinder, which is visible light and thus incorrect for infrared focusing. This is probably not very intuitive or easy to grasp, but LiveView mode works with LifePixel's Universal lens calibration and that’s all you need to be assured of for digital infrared photography. For those using or wanting to convert a camera without LiveView mode, LifePixel will calibrate a Nikon DX format SLR with an 18-70mm lens. LifePixel will also calibrate the camera with any lens that you send to them for a filter conversion. With a prime lens, that’s pretty straightforward, but becomes challenging if you use zoom lenses like I do. LifePixel will set the calibration to focus correctly at a zoom lens’ widest and longest focal lengths. Personally, if I'm really serious about IR photography, I’d just as soon as make an investment in an SLR with an easily accessibly LiveView mode and not fuss with individual lens calibrations. While not inexpensive, it's also not outrageously expensive with Nikon D3100 SLRs selling for $500 in Canada.
The collection of blog posts specific to my use of a D7000 converted for infrared capture, are available at this page. October 6, 2011 - Steve Jobs and Fuji Steve Jobs has passed away at the age of 56. Jobs is a polarizing figure who people either loved or hated, because of his ability to speak his mind with impunity - as a billionaire, Jobs, as one wag put it, has f-you money. He can tell you to f-off without repercussions, something IBM, Microsoft and Research and Motion can attest to. However, even if you're an ardent PC/Windows user, you cannot take away that Jobs was a revolutionary in the world of computing and technology. His ability to see a design and simplify it to its essence is legend. His rise from middleclass roots in California to the top of the business world is incredible, all the more so for a college dropout. When Jobs announced he was stepping down as CEO of Apple, I don't think anyone following Apple was fooled. We knew it was the "end" and it would only be a matter of timing of when that "end" would come. Jobs is so tied to Apple that he could only relinquish control on his deathbed, which is unfortunately, what has happened. In Canada, we recently went through this same situation in the political arena, when Jack Layton, the former leader of the federal NDP political party, died within months of announcing his "temporary" leave as leader to focus on his health. Like Jobs, Layton also battled cancer, but which form of cancer Layton died from is not known. To see Layton at the press conference making his announcement was to see literally, half a man, being so gaunt and so obviously in ill health. Not unlike Jobs, who lost much weight since his first battles with cancer. Jobs beat the odds the first time battling a rare form of pancreatic cancer, but the odds ultimately caught up with him. Rest in peace Steve. As for Apple, it has to be cruel timing with Jobs passing away a day after announcing is newest product, normally a time for excitement. However, the new iPhone 4s is not what the market expected. The market expected an iPhone 5 and Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, has taken a beating for not meeting the expectation. However, while the iPhone 4s is outwardly the same as the older iPhone 4, the innards are significantly improved with a major increase in speed and a new iOS coming. Fuji has announced that it is entering the mirrorless market with an X-based variant that seems to promise much more of what serious photographers have been demanding. The sensor will not be quite FX in size, but it will be larger than DX. If Fuji retains the styling of the X100, but fixes all the operational and UI complaints, this new Fuji camera offers much potential and I wonder if a few executives at Leica have soiled their pants after hearing about this ;^) But...I have this niggling worry about Fuji and its commitment to any new products it offers to the market. While Fuji has been active in the digicam and bridge camera segments, it abandoned the SLR market after the S5 Pro. Now, this abandonment did not suddenly orphan Fuji Sx Pro users, as they could easily migrate to Nikon thanks to Fuji choosing Nikon SLRs as its platform, but it does make me worry about the long-term for any new proprietary system that Fuji comes out with. And, by the way, nice bit of FUD thrown out by Fuji with its announcement, which is still a long ways from fruition. Tell the world about a new system that has the potential of being best in class and throw doubt in the minds of all those wanting to buy into mirrorless. Canon, the ball is in your court... October 5, 2011 - What is infrared? Let's take a trip down memory lane to high school science, when we learned about the electromagnetic spectrum, which is the range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). EMR encompasses radio frequencies at the low frequency range of the EMR while gamma radiation is the highest frequency range. Within these two extremes is the range of visible frequencies that humans can detect. This visible range of light is a very small segment within the EMR and starts with low red frequencies to the higher violet frequencies. When you see a rainbow after a rainfall, you are seeing all the colors within the visible range of the EMR. Beyond the violet range of light, you get ultraviolet frequencies, followed by x-rays and gamma rays. In the opposite direction, before we see red frequencies, there is...wait for it...infrared frequencies. Before infrared are microwaves and then radio frequencies. In digital photography, we often hear and use RGB to denote red, green and blue, which conveniently follows the EMR from low to high frequency. If you didn't know, nearly every consumer digital camera uses Kodak's Bayer filter or a variant of it in order to create a color digital image. Digital sensors are actually monochrome devices, i.e., black and white and need the Bayer filter to create color (referred to as Bayer interpolation). A notable exception is the Foveon sensor, which uses three individual color filters sandwiched together. When you look at a Bayer filter diagram, you will notice that there is double the number of green tiles compared to the red and blue tiles. Humans have greater sensitivity to green frequencies, which is why Kodak's Bayer filter uses a matrix of 50% green, 25% red and 25% blue color filters. Great stuff this discussion about color and visible light, but let's get back to infrared. EMR is measured in wavelengths and expressed in nanometres. Light is not continuous and Albert Einstein discovered that light flows in waves. The distance between each wave is what creates the sensation of color in our minds - yes, color is a sensation caused by the different wavelengths of light, but that gets into some pretty complicated color science and how human vision works. Wavelengths are measured in nanometres. A nanometre is one billionth of a metre, which is pretty damn tiny, so tiny that it is used to measure atoms. Human vision can detect light from about 380 nm to about 760 nm with 760 nm being closest to infrared frequencies. Within the infrared range, there are additional subdivisions of near, mid and far infrared. For infrared photography, we only need to concern ourselves with near infrared and leave the mid and far for the hardcore physicists (detecting black holes and other fun, universe-ending questions). Near infrared is from 700 nm to 1400 nm, but these figures can be slightly different depending on who you refer to, e.g. ISO and CIE have different guidelines for the infrared subdivisions. To offer some perspective to these measurements, Ilford SFX, which was a near-infrared black and white film, has sensitivity to 740 nm. Kodak's true infrared film, HIE, was sensitive to 900 nm. The use of red filters was common for film photographers to accentuate the contrast between clouds and blue sky, resulting in black or near black skies. Also of note, film infrared photography, specifically when using Kodak HIE, produced a glowing effect, which pleased many photographers. However, this is actually an effect of Kodak HIE and its formulation rather than from infrared capture. With infrared being invisible to human vision, focusing lenses can be tricky, especially in today's times when most lenses no longer offer infrared focus markers. While you can calibrate a lens to an infrared converted camera (LifePixel can do this when doing a sensor swap), it's highly recommended to convert a camera that has a good and conveniently accessible LiveView mode, such as the Nikon D7000. While working in bright sunlight can be bothersome unless you use something like a Hoodman LCD loupe, this is nowhere near as difficult as in the recent past when you might have used a nearly black filter in order to do infrared photography. Using a visible light blocking filter requires focusing first then attaching the filter to a tripod-mounted camera/lens - a tripod is necessary due to the very long exposure times due to the near-black filter. Next post, a discussion about the different sensor choices from LifePixel. I also highly recommend reading the articles at the LifePixel website. The collection of blog posts specific to my use of a D7000 converted for infrared capture, are available at this page. October 4, 2011 - Technology and upgrades I drove my wife and a co-worker of hers to the airport so that they could catch a flight to a business conference. During the drive, the two ladies had a conversation about iPads and how they are now nearly indispensable for keeping kids occupied on road trips and outings. Naturally, they metaphorically shook their heads with the electronic and tech wizardry that today's kids enjoy compared to when my wife and me were kids. No, there's no hoary old tales of having to walk to school uphill (both ways!) in blinding snow blizzards, wearing threadbare clothes and shoes. I enjoyed having a (primitive) Commodore Vic 20 as my games console and while my handheld electronic games are nothing compared to today's handhelds, it's not like my generation lived in the stone ages. However, it's hard even for me not to be amazed at all the things that today's kids have access to, even though I love following technology. As a kid, I had monochrome LCD handheld game devices while today's generation enjoy iPod Touches, smartphones, and other sundry consoles such as the Sony PSP Portable and Nintendo DS. In what appears to be an attempt to cash in on the 3-D TV sensation, Nintendo even offers a 3-D version of the very popular DS, which is popular enough for one person I know to create a dedicated site for it. Pretty amazing stuff and thankfully for my wallet, my kids are still happy enough with their regular DS consoles and haven't asked me for one...yet. Everything is getting faster, more powerful and more compact. When I was a student, not everyone had a computer and quite a few still used typewriters in the dorms. Those of us fortunate to have our own computers and printers made do with full sized desktops. Today, students use notebook computers. Once upon a time, a decent notebook computer cost $5,000. Today, a competent notebook costs $500 and is more than enough for a student to type out essays and keep up with all the social networking sites. Throw in a cheap smartphone and no one will ever not be in touch. Even my 13-year old is already equipped with his own notebook (albeit old and a bit slow now) and Android-based phone. On the topic of smartphones and tablets, those of you using Apple's industry leading devices: have you ever experienced and wondered about seemingly low battery life? Apple promotes quite generous battery life specs that I always thought was somewhat fictionalized, but I was recently shown a tip that has extended my iPhone 4's standby time. Prior to discovering this tip, I'd be lucky to get 1.5 days between charges for the iPhone 4. When you open up an app and then push the main control button on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, you don't actually close the app, you merely minimize it; the app continues to run in the background. This can severely affect your battery life and I suspect performance too, as I felt that my first generation iPad had been running sluggishly in recent times. When you double-push the main control button, a bottom scrolling segment appears, which shows all the open and running apps. To close the app fully, you need to push down on an icon until it starts shaking and shows a small red circle with a minus sign in the top left corner. Tap the minus sign to close the app. On my iPad, the first time I did this, I probably had 40 plus apps open. After shutting down all the apps that I did not want open, my iPhone's battery life improved to where I can now recharge about every 2.5 days - I'm not a big cell phone user and my primary need for the iPhone is data access for emails and some research surfing. With much emphasis these days on mobile computing and connection, it seems the staid old desktop computer is passé. Notebooks now offer quad-core processors and enough RAM to rival desktop systems. Add in an SSD and a top-end notebook really can replace a desktop, but as many are wont to say, horses for courses. On the road, having a fast notebook makes life so much easier when ingesting, sorting and processing image files. However, as with other aspects of today's lifestyle, there's a trend towards smaller and lighter notebooks, which requires some sacrifice in computing horsepower. The MacBook Air and the multitude of netbooks seem to prove this out. When I read that Brooks Jensen, editor of the fantastic Lenswork magazine, uses Lightroom on a netbook, I was flabbergasted and skeptical that any netbook had enough grunt to run this powerful and popular RAW converter. I really wonder how fast and satisfying the experience could be given that I'm not blown away with my own Lightroom experience using a more powerful 17-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2009 model). I'm thinking that Brooks never knew better until recently, when he wrote about upgrading his desktop system and being blown away by the power and speed. I wonder what he thinks about Lightroom running on a netbook now? I still want a (near) state of the art desktop to make editing more efficient. My current PC running 64-bit Windows 7 (I'm system agnostic these days and like both Windows and Mac, but my preferred hardware is a Mac running both OSes) is long in the tooth. It was built back in the day when 12 MP RAW files were the norm and it was speedy processing those files. When I started using a 21 MP camera, my once mighty PC was staggered when I ingested, sorted, and edited hundreds of those RAW files at a time. Suddenly, two quad-core Xeon processors (eight cores) and 8 GB of RAM felt wholly inadequate. If the rumours hold true of 30-plus MP SLRs coming from Nikon and Canon, and if I happen to get my hands on one, I think smoke will start emanating from the PC. It definitely seems that with every successive generation of camera that pushes the resolution boundaries, we need to upgrade the computing and storage needs. My photo printers are now two generations old, being of the Epson x800 series, whereas the current generation is x900, which replaced the x880 series. I don't feel too terribly hard done by in not having an x900 series printer, although I certainly would not mind owning one. Just because a model has been replaced, doesn't make it obsolete, and really, getting an x900 series printer would require upgrades in other parts of the computer system in order to make best use of the printer. Key upgrade is the monitor. The Epson x900 series is capable of exceeding Adobe RGB color gamut, and there are some monitors that can also exceed Adobe RGB. These monitors aren't cheap and the best of them can cost as much as the state of the art computer that connects to them. With such large color gamut, you really need the newest colorimeters to properly profile the monitors and while you're at it, might as well upgrade the custom printer profiling package too (if you're into such things). Maybe I should just say, screw it, and simply buy myself an iMac. That's actually not a bad idea, but what holds me back is that the hard drive is not user replaceable. If Apply designed the iMac to give the user easy access to the hard drive so that I could replace it with any type I desire, I think I'd have bought one a long time ago. Connect a better monitor to it, and away you go with a dual-monitor, photo editing machine. September 22, 2011 - Brief comments about the new Nikon 1 system Nikon is finally in the mirrorless game. Fantastic and very happy to see Nikon with skin in the game, although, personally, I don't see anything compelling enough for me to buy one. I do like the idea of a silent shutter, something I wish my Panasonic GF1 has, but one feature ain't gonna do it for me. Let's look at some nitpicks:
There appears to be some promise of expanding the series and creating a comprehensive system down the road, but how soon will more lenses arrive? How much will they cost? More importantly, is there a more serious camera in the works? One that can really be a compelling option for the Nikon SLR user to want to buy a 1 series camera? September 19, 2011 - Intro to infrared photography - Way back in the day, when I used to photograph a wedding or two primarily with two Nikon F100 SLRs, I'd occasionally load some infrared film in my spare D70 for outdoor photos. I used Kodak HIE a couple of times, but this true infrared film is a pain in the ass to use and for a wedding shoot, essentially meant only one roll could be shot unless I could find a closet or use a film bag to change the roll. As a true infrared film, Kodak HIE could only be loaded and unloaded from the camera in the dark. I was never quite sure how to rate HIE. I think somewhere along the way, I found a reference to ISO 400, but probably rated it at ISO 50 or 100. When I found Ilford SFX 200, I gladly switched to this film, which with a red filter, provides enough of the infrared look without the liabilities or limitations of having to swap film completely in the dark. SFX 200 also provided a much cleaner looking photo than the boulder sized grain seen in prints from HIE. The look and attraction of infrared photography is often described as surreal. The classic B&W look is most often from sunny days with or without clouds, but almost aways with foliage. With a red filter, Foliage turns white while the sky goes black, creating a very contrasty photo. If you photograph human subjects, they can sometimes take on a ghostly look, which can make for some interesting photos if you have a penchant for historical cemetaries ;^) While B&W infrared is the most popular, it is possible to do color infrared photography thanks to the digital era. But, if you use Nikon and shoot in RAW mode, there is a gotcha to be aware of. Until recently, I had not done any infrared photography since those heady days of the early years of this century. The interest in being able to do digital infrared photography piqued my interest now and again and at one point I was ready to send away my old D100 for an infrared conversion, until my wife asked why I had a parcel ready to ship out - that's how close I was to the conversion. My wife was rather annoyed that I would send away the D100 without consulting her, which is to say she was pissed that I didn't offer her the D100 after I had upgraded to the D2X and D200. Ironically, the D100 proved to be too challenging for her and she eventually confiscated my easier to handle and more automated Panasonic GH-1 for her own use. Since that aborted attempt to convert the D100, I've been contemplating having the old D2X converted, but this won't happen until Nikon releases its next generation prosumer and pro DSLRs. At the moment, with the D100 handed down to my oldest child, the D2X is my only Nikon SLR. For vendors offering aftermarket infrared conversion, one name seems to pop up most often, LifePixel. I've kept tabs on LifePixel's website over the years to see what the cost is for a conversion. I've also noticed that the company brought out additional sensor conversion options, so when LifePixel offered an opportunity to try out a D7000 with a standard IR sensor and universal focus calibration, I jumped at the chance. Over the next few weeks, I'll post comments about using the IR converted D7000 and my exploration of digital infrared photography, including the different sensor and focus calibration choices. Today, I start with just a quick look at how the infrared sensor can throw the white balance for a loop. I shoot in RAW mode with the now standard, bias to the right, style of exposing in order to maximize the information captured. Although we can pre-set a white balance while photographing, shooting in RAW mode affords the luxury (or laziness) of being able to dispense with setting the white balance until we're ready to edit. My preferred editor is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which tookover from the old Nikon Capture 4 I used during the D2X's glory days. This normal way of setting RAW file white balance does not work with digital infrared photography. With no pre-set white balance, what you see on the camera's LCD and when imported into Lightroom is the screen shot below; a red biased image.
Thankfully, LifePixel offers a number of video tutorials at its website and shows what you need to do in order to correct the white balance so that you can actually get the kind of infrared photos expected. Incidentally, the red bias affects Canon SLRs too, so we Nikon users aren't special 8^) LifePixel shows how to adjust the white balance using CaptureNX, which sticks in the craw, since CaptureNX costs a couple of hundred dollars. I'm not a CaptureNX user and balk at having to spend as much as what Lightroom originally cost me just to be able to set the proper white balance. However, there is an alternative to CaptureNX...I tried the free ViewNX and thankfully, it offers a gray point adjustment just like CaptureNX, so save yourself the money if you don't already have CaptureNX. The tricky thing with ViewNX is that I'm not certain how you save the change so that Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw can see the changes. After I finished in ViewNX and thought I saved the changes, I viewed the files via Lightroom and Bridge and did not see the white balance applied. I did notice that Bridge initially showed the change, but then ignored it and reverted the image back to the red bias. I'll need to work on this more and see what's going on, but in the meantime, using ViewNX, I converted a test file to 16-bit TIFF for applying LifePixel's editing suggestions in Photoshop CS5. Following the LifePixel process, I took my test file through four phases of editing, which are described below (excuse the poor sample image, as it's just a quickie taken from my front door):
My thanks to LifePixel for providing me with this opportunity to see what digital infrared photography is about. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I'm going to. A new office printer My first photo printer was the 13x19 inch capable Epson 1270, a six-color, dye ink printer, which produced some great looking prints, but depending on where you lived and how you displayed the prints, could offer some nasty surprises. Some users living in higher ozone regions suffered from prints that turned orange after a few months of unprotected display. Another, potentially costly annoyance, the 1270 had six colors, but only two ink cartridges. One black and one five-color cartridge, which had to be replaced when any single color ran out. At about $50 a pop back then, you couldn't help but feel that you really were throwing money away with a color cartridge swap. Lastly, from what I can recall of my usage, Epson changed from manufacturing the inks in Japan to China. While there should be no reason for the formula to change merely from one factory to another, my prints from the China inks were never as good as the inks made in Japan, which in the early days of color management, could really mess you up if you expected digital consistency. Still, it was amazing to be able to print my own photos after editing the scanned film or the RAW file from my D100. While the 1270 had definite limitations and liabilities, I did not dive into the pigment-based printers until Epson came out with the K3 inks. First came the 13x19 Epson R2400 and then shortly after, the rather large Epson 4800 made their way into my digital darkroom. I've been using both printers for five years now and while Epson has apparently made some dramatic improvements with its HDR pigment inks and printers, the high upgrade cost dampens my ability to plunk down for an Epson 4900. What I really desire though is the much more massive 24-inch capable Epson 7900, but that just ain't gonna happen anytime soon. While I love the output from both printers, the K3 printers still have some niggling (and some quite significant) issues that users became aware of. Pigment inks work best with matte papers. While Epson has improved the quality on glossy papers, there can still be some issues with bronzing. Look at a glossy paper print from a pigment printer and view it at angle to a light source. You will see the edges of the subject matter in the photo reflect back the light - that's bronzing. For old film users that shot slide film, if you look at the emulsion side of the slide at an angle to the light source, you will see a very similar effect as bronzing. Epson and other manufacturers introduced a high gloss ink cartridge for some printers to lessen the bronzing effect - I believe the current Epson pigment printers incorporate the high gloss formula in the regular color cartridges. Now, most people don't look at prints at weird angles, so I was never terribly bothered by bronzing from glossy papers. But, I despised the black ink swapping cost needed with the older Epson K3 printers when I wanted to switch from a glossy paper to a matte paper. So much so that I resolved to never swap black inks with the 4800 and dedicated it for glossy prints only, while I mostly use the R2400 as a matte paper printer, but will swap inks from time to time due to the lower costs involved. Epson K3 printers use three black inks (black, light black and light light black), which allow Epson printers to produce very good B&W prints. However, there are two versions of the main black ink cartridge, one specific for glossy papers (photo black) and one specific for matte papers (matte black). The older Epson printers use eight inks at once, but the extra black ink actually makes for nine colors that need to be available if you use both types of papers. Unfortunately, Epson did not design the older printers to accommodate both black inks installed at the same time, which requires a costly ink swapping process. It's costly because the old black ink has to be purged from the print head and ink line running from the cartridge to the print head. Estimates range from $50 to $75 of lost ink for the 4800 printer (not sure of the cost with the R2400). Epson heard the criticism and now accommodates both black inks in their current printers, but there is still a small cost associated with switching from photo black to matte black. Epson's main competitors, HP and Canon, learned from Epson's mistake and produced printers accommodating both types of black inks long before Epson finally did so. The older Epson pigment ink printers also suffer from clogged print heads if not used on a regular basis. There's a lot of user feedback about humidity affecting clogging, about leaving the printer on all the time or not, about the different cycles of the moon and the rise of the tides...just kidding. Personally, I think air bubbles have something to do with clogging problems as I've seen a few large air bubbles in the long ink lines from the cartridge to the printing head inside my 4800. There has to be a reason why Epson uses pressurized ink lines in their largest, plotter-sized printers. That's a bit of a lengthy introduction to spell out that for photo printers, I'm biased towards Epson units, warts and all. When the time came for me to buy an office printer, I naturally looked at Epson and purchased an Artisan 800, which was Epson's high end all-in-one. I also have an Epson CX4800, which is a low-end, scanner, copier and printer unit, but it's lack of features and poorer photo printing quality led to the desire for an upgrade. There are more expensive all-in-one printers, but the Artisan 800 straddles the middle ground for price. Based on specs, the Artisan 800 has almost everything I want from an office printer with copying, fax, scanning and CD printing capability. It also has an auto document feeder and its dye inks allow it to produce some great looking photos on glossy paper. Alas, the Artisan 800 turned into a big disappointment. Over the years, I've noticed that Epson printers sometimes go through some kind of maintenance process before it will actually go ahead with printing. While the specs may indicate some blistering print speeds, those specs can only be applied when the printer is actually printing and not counted from the time that you click on the print button in whatever application you are printing from (Photoshop, Word, Excel, etc.) If I actually counted the time from when I send the print job to the Artisan to when the printer actually spits out the document, the spec would, at times, be about 1 page per 3-4 minutes. The Artisan 800 has the worst maintenance process of any of the four Epson printers I have in my house. Add to that a tendency to dump more ink than plain paper can really handle, and you end up with some soggy feeling prints. The auto document feeder no longer works after only mild usage and the scanner, for whatever reason, is now scanning its own data ribbon cable, so that it is now useless as a scanner and copier. The hardware issues started happening about a year after purchase, so I didn't bother to inquire about servicing costs. It at least still functions as a printer. I had to go back to using the CX4800, but wouldn't you know, the scanner in this unit is also now defective. But, it's six years old and we got it free with a digital camera purchase, so I'm not bothered by it as I am with the Artisan 800. The CX4800 is now in my oldest child's room, for printing out his homework assignments. With both Epson units defective, we needed a new office printer for general duty color printing and more importantly, copying and scanning. With a rather dubious Artisan 800 experience, Epson was out. Canon makes many all-in-one printers, but I don't know much about Canon's consumer line of printers. We settled on buying from the king of consumer and professional printing, HP, but more because we got a good price on the unit than reputation.
The HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 has all the functions of the Artisan 800 except for the disc printing capability. The 8500 also offers, as standard, the ability to produce double-sided prints, which I believe the Artisan 800 can also do, but only with an added cost accessory. The 8500 is taller than the 800, but takes up about the same footprint on the desk. For inks, the 8500 uses the four standard CMYK pigment ink colors, while the 800 offers the extra light magenta and light cyan to the mix.
The 8500, like many of the current all-in-ones, has internet connection capability either through hardwire network connection or via wireless. The Artisan 800 also has this capability, but at the time, I never needed this feature. However, for the 8500, I decided to take advantage of the wireless feature and place the unit in a central location in the house rather than hidden away in an office. Setup is different than the Artisan 800 in that HP is an advocate of user replaceable printing heads, whereas Epson believes in permanent printing heads. The need to calibrate the two printing heads requires a 20 minute setup cycle when first powering up the printer. After that, follow the instructions on the printer's LCD to enter in fax and network connection information. I installed the driver for my big, desktop PC system, as well as with my MacBook Pro and thanks to the wireless feature, never had to connect the printer to either computer. Network connections can sometimes be difficult to setup, but the HP 8500 made it simple. Find the wireless network, enter the password and done. The wireless feature is awesome and matters not whether you speak Mac or Windows. I can even send print jobs via my Apple iPad or iPhone, albeit, this is not quite as good as with using a real computer. For example, I don't seem able to print out web pages that I surf to using the free HP printing app. However, this app can access saved documents or photos on your iOS device and send them to the 8500 for printing. Creating an account at HP's ePrint website allows the printer to have its own email address, which means, yes, you can email documents to the printer, which will be waiting for you when you return home - assuming that you have adequate paper and ink supplies available. I can, of course, check the status of the printer and its ink levels wirelessly. I tried out the double-sided printing capability, having a dubious attitude towards this feature since the 8500 is an inkjet printer and if you have an information-rich document, the paper's going to have to absorb a lot of ink, resulting in a soggy sheet. The 8500 comes with an accessory adapter that fits at the rear of the printer for double-sided printing. When you setup the printer to copy, say two single-sided sheets to one double-side sheet, the printer will print on side one and appears as if it will spit out the paper without actually having printed on the other side. However, the paper is still held by the printer and the printer pauses to allow the paper to dry before pulling it back in to print on side 2. The time for drying is pretty short and depending on your paper's weight, can still result in a soggy feeling print. For inkjet printers, I would only use the double-sided printing feature for text documents on fairly heavy weight paper. It's early going for the 8500 in my house, so who knows what will happen with the scanner and auto document feeder a year down the road. But, I'm thinking that HP made its name with printers and it certainly cannot be any worse than the troublesome history I've had with the Epson Artisan 800. At this point, I'm not too curious about the 8500's capability as a photo printer given that I already have two dedicated photo printers with a third, the Artisan 800, available for glossy paper printing.
September 15, 2011 - Objects of desire:
When I briefly had the joy of using and reviewing the D3X a couple of years ago, on my last night with the camera, I jury-rigged a macro setup to digitize some 35mm slides. D3X mounted to a Gitzo tripod with the 105mm f2.8 AFS VR Micro lens used. Manually adjust the height of my light box to get within range of the lens' focus throw while still being able to capture the entire frame of the slide. Brought the RAW files into Lightroom and compared some files to ones that I had scanned many years earlier with a Minolta ScanDual III. Unfortunately, the D3X files didn't compare to those old Minolta scan files. The setup certainly was not ideal, but at some point, I'll have to repeat the experiment using another 20+ MP SLR on hand and a wicked sharp macro lens. September 14, 2011 - With Sony coming out with a 24 MP DX format A77 SLR, it seems reasonable to expect that Nikon will use the same or very similar sensor for its replacement for the D300. Looking at the specs of the A77, it seems to offer much and what really intrigues me is the true continuous auto focus capability thanks to use of a pellicle mirror, which Sony calls "translucent." With a traditional SLR using a mirror flipping up and down like a hummingbird flapping its wings, the camera's auto focus is always interrupted, even if measured in fractions of a second. With a pellicle mirror, the focus is truly continuous, which offers an ability to really track a moving subject accurately. The fly in the ointment about the A77, the small image buffer size, which results in about 1 second of shooting before the camera slows down to write files to the card. That's just not good enough for sports, where a play may take several seconds to develop and come to a climax for the peak action. However, for people who aren't interested in having a buffer capable of 3-4 seconds of 8 fps frame-taking action, the A77 looks quite promising. Nikon will need its game with the D300's replacement. A quick history of how I came to take over NikonLinks... For users of this website going back to pre-2004, you know that NikonLinks was created by Don Ferrario. Don is a successful car dealer who no longer had the time to maintain the site and did a search for a person who could take over the site. His search led to CameraHobby and a question of whether I would like to take ownership of NikonLinks. A price was agreed on and I took over in July 2004 and have maintained the site since. Although I've since recouped my purchase price, the 2008 financial crisis hasn't helped with finding sponsors of the site. Thus, I'm very grateful to Jason Odell and Jimmy Koh for maintaining their support of this website over the long haul. I've been a Nikon user since 1997, when I bought my first Nikon film SLR, a F50. The F50 was quickly replaced by the F70 during a two week trial period. Since then I've used the F90x, F100 before buying my first DSLR, the D100. After the D100, which has since been given to my oldest child, I've gone through a couple of D200 SLRs (sold), a D2X (still own), a D300 (sold). Now, I wait for what Nikon will roll out this fall before I decide to take the plunge again. Of lenses, I've gone through probably two dozen with a dozen still waiting for that next SLR purchase. Last year, I finally gave into a long-standing desire to own an F series Nikon and purchased an F4s from Jimmy Koh. No real interest in wanting shoot film again, just wanted to satisfy that itch that developed ever since I saw an F4 for the first time back in the late 1990s. As for what I've been using regularly since selling the D300...well, I don't want to offend the Nikon faithful with my dalliance with the enemy 8^)
For some of you, you already know me and my style from the 10-plus years of chugging away at CameraHobby.com. I wound down that site on September 1 thinking that I would retire from writing about photography, but I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, which I will post about in the coming weeks (a review of a D7000 converted for infrared capture). We all have particular interests and biases which will affect our thinking and as time goes on, I'll let you know more about myself (experiences and gear used) so that you can weigh my comments accordingly. Unlike other blogs, there is no commenting feature, but if you wish to publicly comment on something posted here, you can send me an email using the link found below the navigation section in the left side column. September 21 is being thrown around by some as when Nikon might just finally introduce a mirrorless camera to compete against the pioneers of Olympus and Panasonic, as well as newer competitors, Sony and Samsung. As the NikonLinks editor, you would expect me to be a Nikon user, however, the last three years, I've been using two different systems while I waited for Nikon to come out with the camera I desire. One of those systems is Panasonic-based with a GH-1 and GF1. Both are competent cameras and have given me my mirrorless fix, so whatever Nikon comes out with will need to be very special for me to move away from a more mature Panasonic system (which can share lenses from Olympus). What I find interesting in the discussion about Nikon's (and Canon's) missing entry in the mirrorless arena is that there was a fair bit of angst amongst the users back in 2009. Plenty of questions of when Nikon would get in the game and fears that it would lose market share to the upstarts (not that Olympus is really an upstart in photography, with a long and storied history). Well, Nikon and Canon are apparently losing market share to mirrorless cameras...in Japan. For the coveted SLR market, Sony now has 15% and Nikon and Canon combined have about 75%. The Sony figure includes its mirrorless offerings, which seems to be the norm to include mirrorless cameras in the same category as SLRs due to the ability to change lenses. However, mirrorless is apparently not gaining traction outside Japan. Maybe Nikon and Canon, through so many decades of selling their wares worldwide, knew a thing or two about consumer fickleness and to not immediately enter a new market until some maturity occurred. Maybe, late 2011 is the right time for Nikon to finally enter the mirrorless market. I just hope that it will be more well thought out than the Coolpix line, which at the higher end range, just doesn't seem to be keeping up with Canon and Panasonic. Some comments by Thom Hogan seem to be dumping on Nikon for whatever it plans to announce this year. Whether it be the D4, D400, D800, mirrorless, whatever, it won't be right according to Hogan. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Unless, Nikon announces everything expected and demanded, and, could Nikon please do it in time for the Christmas rush, when retailers do most of their business. I'm one of the consumers hankering for a D700 replacement, because that's one of the categories that I really covet for my photography - my oldest son plays minor hockey, so I spend a lot of my winters in dark and dingy hockey arenas around Vancouver, Canada. Sports combined with low ambient light means needing clean high ISO quality to get those shutter speeds up to freeze the action properly. A camera with higher resolution, say 18 MP plus, is a boon for photo projects I might do for the hockey team, e.g. posters and prints produced with my 17x22 inch capable Epson 4800 printer. The camera I'd love to use is the D3S, but being a working kinda guy who just follows photography as a hobby, blowing $5,000 on a single camera isn't the wisest thing to do (did that in 2006 with the D2X). The camera I'm hoping for is basically a higher resolution D3S in a D700 form factor circa CAD $3,000. Throw in a 70-200 f2.8 VR lens and I'm just over the $5,000 mark, which represents better value for me. What's rather surprising about Hogan's comment is that he offers a yawn at the idea of Nikon announcing a D4. While this is not the camera for me, I'm still going to be excited to see what the D4 is all about, because Nikon's going to up the ante with its flagship camera. It most certainly is not a yawner, because it sets the tone for Nikon to throw down the gauntlet and challenge someone to respond. Maybe Hogan simply means that its time for Nikon to announce the flagship; everyone and their grandmother knows Nikon's history and timing with the D series SLRs, so in that sense, it's not exactly being the Amazing Kreskin to know that it's coming this year. It's just unfortunate that there seems to be a sense of negativism about Nikon's pending products before we've even seen what Nikon's going to offer. Why not see what's actually going to come before pronouncing judgment. |
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Infrared sensor choices from LifePixel
September 12, 2011 - This is the inaugural post of the NikonLinks anti-blog blog. What I mean is that while this will look like a blog-type page, it won't be using the ubiquitous blogging software available to the masses. This will just be a standard, non-social media aware HTML page where, I, your humble NikonLinks editor, will post the occasional comment about Nikon and photography-related matters - occasional meaning that there is no pretence that this will be a daily blog.