Steve Jobs & the Digital Era

An interesting juxtaposition this week.

On Wednesday, we lost Steve Jobs after his long fight with pancreatic cancer. Steve was of course a tremendous force in innovation in Personal Computers including the Macintosh.

One of the first digital cameras available to the public was the Apple Quicktake 100 back in 1994. While it wasn't a commercial success for Apple, the entire consumer market for photography underwent a profound earthquake of change from this disruptive technology. Today, film is virtually gone, as are also many small local camera stores. We still have cameras, of course, but they're now digitally based and our methods of making photo albums have also changed, with custom self-published books.

What also happened this week was the culmination of an overly long photo album project. Back in 2004, we went to Peru and with primarily an SLR, came back home with roughly 2000 images ... 75% of which were on 35mm film. A lot of digitizing and organization (no EXIF data) followed in intermittent spurts, but has now finally been concluded: an analog/digital hybrid.

This wasn't our first digital photo album, but it was quite a tedious one to work through, because of it being transitional from its analog component. It reminds us how years of innovation and improvements by people like Steve Jobs have resulted in greater productivity and ease of creating finished products - - hopefully, we won't become jaded and complacent when we realize not only how recent these innovations have been, but also how much more flexibility & freedom they have given us in making great works too.

Our parents grew up in in age where automobiles were young, airplanes were infants, telephones were new ... and then as they raised us, the solid state transistor was invented, which enabled Man's landing on the moon, as well as many other innovations. And in the closet, there's probably some classical old photo albums. Take some time this weekend to see your parents and pull out a few of those preserved memories ... and if you're smart, you'll take a digital photo of each of its pages, and if the images contain familymembers, you'll also record the names & relationships for future generations.

-hh

A quick word on 'snowfall' photographs

(Alternate Title: "A foot of snow later...")

Thanks to it being an El Nino winter, there's been quite a bit of wintery mix precipitation that's been hitting the Northeastern USA this past month.

As such, there's the temptation to go take a digital photo that you're going to email to family & friends (probably to get some sympathy for snow shoveling).

So you go out and take a photo during the storm ... and all that nice white snow turns out a yucky dark grey in the photo - - that's probably not what you wanted, so why did this happen?

The short answer is "technology", specifically, your camera's automatic exposure system.

Yes, we've become quite accustomed to auto-everything cameras, but a downside of this is that the camera never knows what you're photographing, so it guesses.

Simplistically, this "guess" is known as 18% grey, and while it works great 90% of the time for us, where it doesn't work so well is when we have a low contrast scene - - and during a heavy snowfall is a low contrast scene.

With a low contrast scene, the camara's educated guesses often goes wrong: it is looking for "dark AND grey AND bright" contrasts, but it can't find what's not there.

So while a white cow in a snowstorm (light on light) or a black cat in a coal mine (dark on dark) are both intuitively obvious to us, for the camera, it sees both as low contrast and hard to figure out. Subsequently, it can get the overall exposure settings wrong.

Typically, the camera's bad guess is that the cow/snow is "too bright" of an overall scene (it can't find true black), so it sets for a short exposure, which turns white into grey (underexposed). Similarly, the cat/coal is interpreted as "too dark" (can't find bright white), so it calls for a long exposure...and this turns black into grey (overexposed).

Here's an example of an image that's was a low contrast light scene, so it was auto-exposed to be a bad "grey" shot (underexposed), which was corrected later in post-processing:


The trick to avoid this problem is pretty simple: be aware of how your 'automatic' camera settings work, and anticipate what it will do based upon what you know is in the picture. The simple rule of thumb to remember is that the camera will want to turn everything grey if the scene lacks a good cue (bright sunny sky for contrast) to help it out.

With digital, its pretty easy to take a test shot and then adjust your settings. And if you forget (or not bother), you can fix the incorrect exposures later in post-processing. Its up to you to decide how much its worth a little bit more effort upfront when taking the picture, both to get better overall results, as well as to save time later from less post-processing.


And of course, if you do choose to override the default exposure while taking the photo to get what you want, do also make sure to remember to set your override settings back to normal afterwords.


-hh

4 x 5DII in Freezing cold, snow and wet

There was a recent report of a photo-journey to Antarctica, where several Canon 5Dmk2 dSLRs failed, while essentially "none" of the other cameras onboard did.

The above link is to DPreview.com, where a gentleman posted a "mine didn't fail" report. A long conversation resulted, with one poster pointing out (correctly) that there were a lot of issues and that the report of a non-failure wasn't particularly insightful, particularly when it was in attempted response to a field report of failures.

Unfortunately, while some of the exchange did get a bit heated, the moderators at DPreview have decided to slash-n-burn their way through the thread, and in doing so, resulted in collateral damage of posts that did not have any possible violations or controversies. Which included both of mine. As such, I see that I can no longer trust dpreview to retain professionally based objective works.

I'm not going to ask DPreview to consider undoing their moderation - that's their prerogative, and their actions reflect on their reputation only. Instead, I'll reiterate where it can't be removed:


Philip Harle wrote:
> Spent last week on the Light & Land photo trip to Glencoe. I was
> amongst 4 5DII users who managed to get their camera soaking wet and
> cold shooting for a whole day whilst it was constantly snowing. None
> of the cameras had the slightest problem.

I'm not about to re-write my long objective statistical analysis that has apparently been removed by the Moderators for whatever reason. My editorial comment on this matter is that I have noted that it has been removed.

To reiterate in much shorter form - - my apologies, but I'm not about to go into the same level of detail:

Part I:

- The above 'zero failures' report is a sample size of (n=4 x 1 day)
- The controversial Antarctica trip was a sample size of (n=26 x YY days)

That's at least a 60:1 ratio in the "power" of the respective statistical samples. As such, even if the suggested 20-25% failure rate is true, this report's sample size lacks sufficient sampling"power" to have a reliably high confidence to be able to detect the failure(s) in the first place.


Part II:

- most people don't really understand Statistics.
- most people don't really understand Test & Evaluation (methods & standards)
- most people don't really understand "self selected" sampling bias

Nor do most people understand how these interact and make the analysis of a complicated device used in uncontrolled settings and then subject to anecdotal reporting, variable judging and self-selection bias ... simply results in a mess to try to professionally analyze.

As such, all that can really be concluded is that the LL trip reported an 'alarmingly high' failure rate in 50% of their sample, which under a null hypothesis of 'All dSLRs are about the same' then may have been coupled with an 'alarmingly low' failure rate on the other 50%.

Part III:

It should be noted that even if the failures are eventually determined to have been caused by 'human error', there remains the niggling issue that said human errors were not randomly distributed, but clustered. To cut to the chase, something that significantly alters the probability of human-contributed errors ... infers a system design flaw.

Part IV:

How to rig a 'waterproof' test so that even an exposed Kleenex can pass?
I previously only said that it could be done. Here's some concrete suggestions as to how it can be done:


Method A: low flow rate + atomized to mist + extremely dry chamber + high temperature + air make-up + good separation distance = weak humidifier

Method B: medium flow rate + spread + very dry chamber + extreme cold + good separation distance = dry snow machine, or possibly even just verga

Method C: high flow rate + no spread + aimed horizontally at target + distance + gravity + splash control = water misses the test coupon

Method D: "before/after" weigh scale not sensitive enough to measure weight change from water, or use of a method that doesn't measure relevant change (eg, dimensions).

Method E: handling of sample after test (eg, time delay, allowing it to dry).



-hh

Photography Retrospective

The above link refers to the top 100 photography blogs, as per Sarah Scraffod. Its an interesting ...and useful... mix.

It served as a reminder to me that my images are getting backlogged. There's still 1000+ images to review & import from Tanzania last month. Plus there's tons of old stuff that should probably be revisited and either scanned or rescanned, such as this 1994 image from Yellowstone Canyon:


Approx 10 year old flatbed scan of 120 film (Mamiya 645)

I don't even know if 'sharpen' filters existed back when this one was done. By today's standards, its resolution is downright fuzzy.


-hh

Adobe Photoshop Express, Copyrights and IP

The Big Media reviews of Adobe's Photoshop Express are out today on Google News.   

So far, it appears that most of them must have been written early last week, before the news of the actual contents of Adobe's EULA hit at ZDNET, Ars Techica, MacRumors and others...all because of individual readership (not professional journalists) of the "Fine Print".

Apple Computer had a far more humorous EULA error this path month too - their fine print in Safari 3.1 for Windows said that it could only be legally run on Apple hardware.

Here's the fine print from Adobe:

Use of Your Content. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

The key part is what it allows - - not what the alleges was its intent .  To that end, this text essentially gives to Adobe a free and unlimited license that they can do anything with, including selling your works, creating derivatives, selling it as Stock Photography, "Derive Revenue" etc, etc. .. and all without ever being required to give even a penny back to the actual Copyright holder.

I'd read enough.  This has shades of "Photo Contest" all over it.  

Photo contest?  Yup - you should go read their Fine Print inclusions sometimes too:  what you find is that they similarly leave themselves highly unconstrained.  It wouldn't be at all surprising if the underlying intent of at least a few of them isn't really to have a good old fashioned contest, but to harvest images with which to build a Stock Collection for free.

Thus, I've pulled my test photos OFF of Photoshop Express, just like I've stopped  entering 'Contests'.  

Thus, if you see this image out there, you know its probably been stolen without permission from its Copyright Holder:

Mufindi Starry Night (Tanzania 2006).

In the meantime, there's one possible "Poison Pill" for businesses that try to (cough) borrow Intellectual Property (IP) in this fashion:  the Photography Model Release.  An identifiable individual who hasn't signed a Modeling Release can cause trouble, although its also likely that a lawyer would argue that this "Perpetual License" puts the responsibility back on the Copyright Holder.  Well, maybe the IP owner does have a Model Release - - but Adobe (and all the rest) didn't buy a copy of that document.

-hh

Venus at Dawn

It is shortly before dawn on Cayman Brac. The breeze last night was a wind, and it blew all night, out of the Southeast. Yet half the clouds are high, and the horizon to the east is clear, which is making for a nice pallet of colors for sunrise. High above in the quickly changing black-to-blue is Venus, as a bright morning star. Below at my feet, a hermit crab in an inch long shell marches across the dock's boardwark, then changes his mind and marches back under the bench at my feet.

Ten minutes ago, the Cayman Airways 737 landed, breaking the island's sounds of bird calls, counterpointed by the rumbling of waves breaking over the windward reef that's 75 yards from shore. Twenty minutes from now, the week's visitors will all be onboard and jet will again make its noise to leave, flying to Grand Cayman and taking its passengers one step closer to their homes.

Last night, I finished "The Last Season" by Eric Blehm. A book with the reminder that our time on Earth can end suddenly and at any time, over what could be a normal activity. This past week, the ambulance has come down to the dock for treating scuba divers twice for suspected DCS, plus Pam had a reverse block that resulted in an end to her diving this week while it heals.

Appreciate every day and every sight.


-hh

Of Grand Schemes

Bibliophile sailors will recognize the name of Donald Crowhurst.

A few tourists to the island of Cayman Brac may come across the remains of his trimaran, the "Teignmouth Electron" and wonder what it was, and what its history was. Fewer still will realize that this boat (despite the sad shape that it is now in) actually was part of a scandal, from the first solo, nonstop, round-the-world sailboat race back in 1969.

In a way, it represents the dreams of one man. In another way (and with a bit more information on his life at the time), it might recognize a 'Grand Scheme' of sorts - - to recapture one's self worth or self-esteem. Can't really say how unrealistic this was (or wasn't), as one must cope with midlife (and any accompanying "midlife crisis") on our own, and on our own terms.

Perhaps its because its finally autumn in New Jersey that one's thoughts turn to things like these. Too many things still left to be done, and a dawning realization that there's never going to be enough time.


-hh

Summer Wedding

Who says 13 days isn't enough time to plan a wedding?

This was from August, my brother's daughter. I was asked to be the Wedding Photographer. Ain't never done that before.



Things turned out well enough, including the quality of the photos.

Of course, what I didn't expect was for the happy couple to do was to take ALL of the photos, unedited, and upload them all to an online directory. Its in the URL Link, above.


What's still on my "To Do" list is to cull down through the photos to just the best ones, organize them into a nice photo album (I'll use iPhoto for this) and have it done in time to be a Christmas present for the newlyweds.


-hh

How's your sense of humor?

Earlier this month, I happened to be in Brussels.

On the famous Grand Place, one of the 'brasseries' (think pub, cafe, bar, etc) is the 1697 Guild House "Roi d'Espagne" (King of Spain), which is located the northern corner of Grand Place.

For reference, their website is:
http://www.roydespagne.be/

In any event, their men's room is up on the 1st Floor (ie, one level up), which had the following interesting decor:

This angle reveals that the "wallpaper" consists of full-size black & white (mostly) photos behind a sheet of glass. However, this angle gives an interestingly diffrent interpretation: