BMW owns Rolls Royce these days and VW owns Bentley (and Lamborghini). It's more than naming rights though, in the case of Bugatti, that's effectively what it is.
Re:Why were MP ever such a big deal?
on
Beyond Megapixels
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I agree that there's much more to it than megapixels. Excellent images can be produced with the 4 MP Nikon D2h, for example. That said, I still prefer film to digital. And I can't think of anyone who prefers APS to 35 mm. People certainly do care about resolution in the analog world. It's why people use medium and large format cameras.
The engine was co-developed by Chrysler (before the Daimler-Benz buyout) and BMW. When I worked there, I borrowed one of their original Minis they had while developing the new one. Fun car!
Many have suggested photo.net, and I agree and second the commet to be sure to read the static content as well as the boards. I also like Usefilm, particularly as a place to post pictures and get comments. The three Ansel Adams books (The Camera, The Negative, and The Print are classics and loaded with useful information, and The National Geographic Photography Field Guide is hugely informative and inspirational as well.
Speaking of inspiration, spend time looking at the sorts of pictures that you like and thinking about what you like about them and how they might have been made.
Lastly, definitely shoot a lot of pictures. It's especially easy and cheap with digital. Taking pictures takes practice and the more you shoot the better you'll be.
Absulutely right. Someone who takes crappy pictures with a film camera is going to take equally crappy pictures with a digital camera, and anyone with a web browser has certainly seen plenty of crappy digital pictures. It's not all about equipment. It's like thinking you'll be Michael Schumacher if you go out and buy a Ferrari.
No. Lossless JPEGs typically reduce a file size by about a factor of two. Given that the "SHQ" pics are much more compressed than that, one can assume that they are not lossless JPEGs--though it's evident enough by simply comparing pictures side-by-side that the so-called super high quality setting produces pictures of lower quality than TIFFs.
Also don't confuse "lossless JPEG" with simply setting the compression slider in Photoshop or whatever to the highest-quality/least compression setting. They are two quite different things.
Lossless JPEG has never been popular --- in fact, no common applications
support it --- and it is now largely obsolete. (For example, the new PNG
standard outcompresses lossless JPEG on most images.) Recognizing this,
the ISO JPEG committee recently finished an all-new lossless compression
standard called JPEG-LS (you may have also heard of it under the name LOCO).
JPEG-LS gives better compression than original lossless JPEG, but still
nowhere near what you can get with a lossy method. It's anybody's guess
whether this new standard will achieve any popularity.
And you'd be surprised: some photographers are nearly as bright as you.:)
First off, if you do professional photography, you don't use 35mm
Virtually all photojournalism that isn't shot digitally is shot on 35 mm film. Next time you watch a sporting event or news conference, take a look at what the photographers are using. You won't see Hasselblads and Toyos. Not that they don't have their place, too, but you're much more likely to find them in a studio than at the frontlines in Afghanistan or at a Formula 1 race. And National Geographic's photography FAQ says
Nearly all use 35mm transparency film, such as Fuji Provia 100, Fuji Velvia 50, Kodachrome 64, and Kodachrome 200.
I do agree that printing is a creative process, though it can also be true in the digital domain. Digital printing is different, though, in that once you get it "right", you can crank out print after print with identical dodging and burning, etc.
I don't know a roll of film (24-36 pics) weighs 10 times as much as a SmartMedia card (~54 pics Super high quality) so you have to carry half as many.
"Super high Quality" pics aren't going to make it for a John Shaw or anyone else who wants to be able to generate large, high-quality prints. Case in point: The stock agency I shoot for wants nothing less than 4000 DPI scans, in TIFF format. That means about 50 MB per picture.
We, too, have flex time with mandatory core hours. Unfortunately, we also have the requirement of arrival and departure consistancy and my current PHB, a micro-managerial type, is extremely picky about this. The result is that we don't have most of the advantages that you cite. I still prefer it, though. I'm a morning person and it's much easier to get things done before the majority of the people show up.
Oh goodness no. We're talking about something very few humans can do, and it's one of those things that people can do far more easitly than computers. It would be an incredibly difficult undertaking. Try to get one to drive a car to the corner drugstore, first.
There's a huge range of prices for both film and digital cameras and, in either case, quality costs money. But there's different ways of measuring cheaper. The Nikon 950 that you'll pay $800 or so for this year won't be worth much in five years, but a Nikon F5 or Leica M6 certainly will be. My ancient Nikon FG is still worth about what I paid for it many years ago. Also, good lenses are expensive and that doesn't change whether you're using film or digital.
Good point about the cost of consumables. It becomes very significant if you shoot as much as the typical high-end amateur or pro.
I share your enthusiasm for the D1 (and Nikons in general), and photo.net is a great resource.
Resolving power and graininess are different things; it's possible for one film to have both more grain and more resolution than another. Visual graininess isn't the result of being able to see individual grains but rather clumps of grains.
At any rate, film remains far ahead of digital and likely will for a while. Fuji Velvia, for example, resolves 160 lines/mm. You have to scan with at least 4000 dpi to begin to approach the limit of film, and that produces a very large file, certainly bigger than anything you'll get out of a consumer digital camera.
That said, digital as a recording medium certainly does have its uses and is becoming extremely popular with photojournalists (especially with the release of the very nice Nikon D1), but for that application speed is more important than ultimate quality. And digital is great for output. A high-quality scan and an inkjet print of a slide or negative now can look as good, if not better, than the traditional enlarger and silver paper method.
Re:official web site (Has pictures from the book!)
on
Full Moon
·
· Score: 1
There aren't any stars because a proper exposure for the surface of the Moon would be far too little to cause the stars to show up, and, conversely, an exposure that would show starlight would grossly overexpose the surface. The most exposure lattitude you're ever going to get is about 9 F-stops (which I think Kodak Tri-X gives), so you can never get both. Color print film has less lattitude than that, and color transparency the least.
Keep in mind that the Moon is lit by the Sun, so, except in shade, the sunny 16 rule applies: the correct exposure is about f/16 with a shutter speed approximately the reciprocal of the film speed. E.g., with ISO 100 film, f/16 at 1/125 second. You definitely aren't going to get stars to show up with an exposure like that.
Someone I used to work with was either related to or very good friends with a local newspaper journalist. This former co-worker was featured several times in anecdotal stories (e.g., in one about the musical tastes of pre-teens, we learned that her daughter enjoyed the Spice Girls). I think journalists learn somewhere that concrete examples with real people increase interest in a story, and I suppose the easiest way to get these, at least for relatively non-exotic things, is to ask friends and acquaintences.
Yes, definitely! I saw him give the keynote at the '98 Usenix and he rocks. He did a Q&A session later in a smaller room and I was hugely impressed with him. Sometimes it's kind of disappointing to actually meet one of your heroes but I came away liking him even more.
Mr Sam Khuri, the perpetrator of the Benchmark Printing toner spams, is himself facing a number of lawsuits but this idiot just keeps it up. See this for some more info on this bonehead.
The reality is that you don't have to totally redesign the wheel in some markets," Stedman said. "The new approach going forward will be to embrace more of a standard platform and add value on top of that.
It seems to me that there wasn't much added value in SGI's "nonstandard" approach. The company I worked for benchmarked Visual Workstations against their competition and, not only weren't they on top, but they frequently were the worst or close to it. This surprised (and disappointed) me, but I'm told others have had similar results.
The HP S20 is a pretty decent film scanner that's not terribly expensive. I agree that SLRs are great, just don't make the mistake many people make, which is to get an expensive body and cheap lenses.
In my experience, Apache is definitely better than Netscape Enterprise. Enterprise has proven quite buggy and unstable and, despite the fact that we are one of Netscape's very largest customers, the support is attrocious. I'd throw out Netscape in a minute and replace it with Apache if it were my (and not Management's) decision to make.
I work for DaimlerChrysler's Technical Computer Center and it's clear that the value of Open Source is becoming apparent to more and more people. Big companies are conservative by nature, but I only need to compare the reaction I got several years ago when I suggested that we offer a Perl class (that's non-standard!) to the very positive response I got this year, and the great turnout we had. I see that Learning Perl is number two for the company on Amazon's "buying circle" (or whatever it's called). We also have some Apache servers internally and Linux boxen here and there.
Granted, there is still a great deal of resistance, confusion, and FUD (I heard one manager from a different part of the company say we don't use "freeware", as he incorrectly called it, because we'd be hosed if the author got hit by a truck), but the tide is turning and a lot of people are becoming very interested.
Slashdot Mirror
BMW owns Rolls Royce these days and VW owns Bentley (and Lamborghini). It's more than naming rights though, in the case of Bugatti, that's effectively what it is.
I agree that there's much more to it than megapixels. Excellent images can be produced with the 4 MP Nikon D2h, for example. That said, I still prefer film to digital. And I can't think of anyone who prefers APS to 35 mm. People certainly do care about resolution in the analog world. It's why people use medium and large format cameras.
The engine was co-developed by Chrysler (before the Daimler-Benz buyout) and BMW. When I worked there, I borrowed one of their original Minis they had while developing the new one. Fun car!
Many have suggested photo.net, and I agree and second the commet to be sure to read the static content as well as the boards. I also like Usefilm, particularly as a place to post pictures and get comments. The three Ansel Adams books (The Camera, The Negative, and The Print are classics and loaded with useful information, and The National Geographic Photography Field Guide is hugely informative and inspirational as well.
Speaking of inspiration, spend time looking at the sorts of pictures that you like and thinking about what you like about them and how they might have been made.
Lastly, definitely shoot a lot of pictures. It's especially easy and cheap with digital. Taking pictures takes practice and the more you shoot the better you'll be.
Absulutely right. Someone who takes crappy pictures with a film camera is going to take equally crappy pictures with a digital camera, and anyone with a web browser has certainly seen plenty of crappy digital pictures. It's not all about equipment. It's like thinking you'll be Michael Schumacher if you go out and buy a Ferrari.
Because lossless compression will get you, at most, a factor of two.
No. Lossless JPEGs typically reduce a file size by about a factor of two. Given that the "SHQ" pics are much more compressed than that, one can assume that they are not lossless JPEGs--though it's evident enough by simply comparing pictures side-by-side that the so-called super high quality setting produces pictures of lower quality than TIFFs.
Also don't confuse "lossless JPEG" with simply setting the compression slider in Photoshop or whatever to the highest-quality/least compression setting. They are two quite different things.
Lastly, from the JPEG FAQ:
And you'd be surprised: some photographers are nearly as bright as you. :)
First off, if you do professional photography, you don't use 35mm
Virtually all photojournalism that isn't shot digitally is shot on 35 mm film. Next time you watch a sporting event or news conference, take a look at what the photographers are using. You won't see Hasselblads and Toyos. Not that they don't have their place, too, but you're much more likely to find them in a studio than at the frontlines in Afghanistan or at a Formula 1 race. And National Geographic's photography FAQ says
I do agree that printing is a creative process, though it can also be true in the digital domain. Digital printing is different, though, in that once you get it "right", you can crank out print after print with identical dodging and burning, etc.
I don't know a roll of film (24-36 pics) weighs 10 times as much as a SmartMedia card (~54 pics Super high quality) so you have to carry half as many.
"Super high Quality" pics aren't going to make it for a John Shaw or anyone else who wants to be able to generate large, high-quality prints. Case in point: The stock agency I shoot for wants nothing less than 4000 DPI scans, in TIFF format. That means about 50 MB per picture.
I just picked up a Phillips DSR6000 DirecTiVo receiver from Circuit City for $100. That's actual price; no rebate.
I'd say so. The main (and very big) fault of the first edition is the lack of CGI.pm coverage.
We, too, have flex time with mandatory core hours. Unfortunately, we also have the requirement of arrival and departure consistancy and my current PHB, a micro-managerial type, is extremely picky about this. The result is that we don't have most of the advantages that you cite. I still prefer it, though. I'm a morning person and it's much easier to get things done before the majority of the people show up.
Oh goodness no. We're talking about something very few humans can do, and it's one of those things that people can do far more easitly than computers. It would be an incredibly difficult undertaking. Try to get one to drive a car to the corner drugstore, first.
There's a huge range of prices for both film and digital cameras and, in either case, quality costs money. But there's different ways of measuring cheaper. The Nikon 950 that you'll pay $800 or so for this year won't be worth much in five years, but a Nikon F5 or Leica M6 certainly will be. My ancient Nikon FG is still worth about what I paid for it many years ago. Also, good lenses are expensive and that doesn't change whether you're using film or digital.
Good point about the cost of consumables. It becomes very significant if you shoot as much as the typical high-end amateur or pro.
I share your enthusiasm for the D1 (and Nikons in general), and photo.net is a great resource.
Resolving power and graininess are different things; it's possible for one film to have both more grain and more resolution than another. Visual graininess isn't the result of being able to see individual grains but rather clumps of grains.
At any rate, film remains far ahead of digital and likely will for a while. Fuji Velvia, for example, resolves 160 lines/mm. You have to scan with at least 4000 dpi to begin to approach the limit of film, and that produces a very large file, certainly bigger than anything you'll get out of a consumer digital camera.
That said, digital as a recording medium certainly does have its uses and is becoming extremely popular with photojournalists (especially with the release of the very nice Nikon D1), but for that application speed is more important than ultimate quality. And digital is great for output. A high-quality scan and an inkjet print of a slide or negative now can look as good, if not better, than the traditional enlarger and silver paper method.
Mark
Oops, I meant to post the URL of the FAQ. http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkFAQ.html
Yep, Perl/TK
There aren't any stars because a proper exposure for the surface of the Moon would be far too little to cause the stars to show up, and, conversely, an exposure that would show starlight would grossly overexpose the surface. The most exposure lattitude you're ever going to get is about 9 F-stops (which I think Kodak Tri-X gives), so you can never get both. Color print film has less lattitude than that, and color transparency the least.
Keep in mind that the Moon is lit by the Sun, so, except in shade, the sunny 16 rule applies: the correct exposure is about f/16 with a shutter speed approximately the reciprocal of the film speed. E.g., with ISO 100 film, f/16 at 1/125 second. You definitely aren't going to get stars to show up with an exposure like that.
Someone I used to work with was either related to or very good friends with a local newspaper journalist. This former co-worker was featured several times in anecdotal stories (e.g., in one about the musical tastes of pre-teens, we learned that her daughter enjoyed the Spice Girls). I think journalists learn somewhere that concrete examples with real people increase interest in a story, and I suppose the easiest way to get these, at least for relatively non-exotic things, is to ask friends and acquaintences.
Yes, definitely! I saw him give the keynote at the '98 Usenix and he rocks. He did a Q&A session later in a smaller room and I was hugely impressed with him. Sometimes it's kind of disappointing to actually meet one of your heroes but I came away liking him even more.
Mr Sam Khuri, the perpetrator of the Benchmark Printing toner spams, is himself facing a number of lawsuits but this idiot just keeps it up. See this for some more info on this bonehead.
It seems to me that there wasn't much added value in SGI's "nonstandard" approach. The company I worked for benchmarked Visual Workstations against their competition and, not only weren't they on top, but they frequently were the worst or close to it. This surprised (and disappointed) me, but I'm told others have had similar results.
The HP S20 is a pretty decent film scanner that's not terribly expensive. I agree that SLRs are great, just don't make the mistake many people make, which is to get an expensive body and cheap lenses.
In my experience, Apache is definitely better than Netscape Enterprise. Enterprise has proven quite buggy and unstable and, despite the fact that we are one of Netscape's very largest customers, the support is attrocious. I'd throw out Netscape in a minute and replace it with Apache if it were my (and not Management's) decision to make.
I work for DaimlerChrysler's Technical Computer Center and it's clear that the value of Open Source is becoming apparent to more and more people. Big companies are conservative by nature, but I only need to compare the reaction I got several years ago when I suggested that we offer a Perl class (that's non-standard!) to the very positive response I got this year, and the great turnout we had. I see that Learning Perl is number two for the company on Amazon's "buying circle" (or whatever it's called). We also have some Apache servers internally and Linux boxen here and there.
Granted, there is still a great deal of resistance, confusion, and FUD (I heard one manager from a different part of the company say we don't use "freeware", as he incorrectly called it, because we'd be hosed if the author got hit by a truck), but the tide is turning and a lot of people are becoming very interested.