New Sony Mirrorless Digital Cameras

Yesterday Sony announced two new full-frame mirrorless digital cameras, as expected. Sony calls these Interchangeable Lens Digital SLR cameras. Others might call them Single-Lens Translucent (SLT) cameras.

The α7 (Alpha 7) Interchangeable Lens Camera, full-frame sensor, 24.3MP, is about $1700 (body only) or with 28-70mm lens, about $2000.

The α7R (Alpha 7R) Interchangeable Lens Camera, full-frame sensor, 36.4MP, about $2300 (body only). Similar to the above but with more MP, and the low-pass filter has been removed just as in the Nikon D800E. This increases sharpness.

Both models have improved noise reduction, built-in WIFI and NFC (near-field communication) networking, and many improvements over the Sony NEX mirrorless cameras. The α7R is also weather-sealed like the Nikon D800 and D800E. Some nifty new autofocus features have also been added, such as eye focus, an upgrade of the existing face-recognition system that focuses on the nearest eye.

Five new Sony full-frame lenses will also be launching in Dec 2013, but we will have to wait until sometime in 2014 for a wide angle lens specific to the Sony E mount system. However, there are Leica to Sony E mount adapters available for $33 and up. Likewise, lens adapters are available for Canon, Nikon and many other lenses.

A mirrorless interchangeable lens digital camera does not have a mirror reflex optical viewfinder. This means you get a digital viewfinder in these Sony cameras, called an OLED finder. I have not tried one yet, but I'm told that it is better than the traditional DSLR viewfinder because you see exactly what the sensor sees, including depth-of-field.

Will mirrorless digital cameras replace traditional DSLRs? Only time will tell!

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

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Mirror Flipping

An SLR (Single Lens Reflex) or DSLR camera typically uses a mirror and prism system that lets the photographer see through the lens when preparing to take a photograph. When you press the shutter release, the mirror flips upward to allow light to pass through to the sensor instead of being reflected to the viewfinder. And therein lies a problem: no matter how steady your tripod, the mirror flipping will introduce a tiny amount of shake to the camera and might cause a slight blur in your image.

This can be a difficult problem to isolate. Getting your focus exactly right is a primary concern. A steady camera, with aid from a tripod, vibration reduction (VR) system, or other methods is also very important. A fast shutter speed helps a lot, but this is not possible in low light situations. And some VR systems can introduce shake when used on a tripod, further complicating the situation.

Two possible cures exist for the mirror flipping problem.

Using the first method, you lock the mirror in place before taking the shot. Use your camera to compose the scene and set the exposure, then lock up the camera mirror before releasing the shutter via remote shutter release. For many Nikon cameras, this involves setting a dial to MUP (Mirror Up). Then you use a remote shutter release: the first press locks up the mirror, the second press releases the shutter.

The second method is to use a mirrorless camera instead of a DSLR. I am waiting for a chance to try this when I purchase a full-frame Sony mirrorless digital camera.

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

f/22, ISO 100, 24mm. A combination of 9 images captured from a tripod.
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Dirty Sensor on Nikon D600

The image below is the upper left corner of a photo that I took yesterday. During post-processing, I noticed lots of spots on the image. I examined the image at 100%. There are spots over much of the image, with the largest concentration in the upper left corner. Tonemapping can really emphasize any dust or spots.

I read about the Nikon dirty sensor problem on the D600 model before I purchased it. Some sources said that the problem only existed on early units. A camera-store professional told me that reconditioned D600 units were repaired by the Nikon factory on Long Island and that the oil spot problem was corrected during repair.

Others noted that the upcoming Nikon D610 was a redesigned D600 that corrects the problem. Some said the D610 was just for marketing, since the problem had been corrected in current D600 units.

Your DSLR has a sensor cleaning menu function. My Canon is set to "clean" the sensor on power on/off. This involves an ultrasonic shaking of the sensor. Some dust might shake off, but oil spots will not. The official Canon sensor cleaning recommendation is to use a dust blower only. Nikon has dire warnings about damaging the filters that cover the sensor. It might be best to leave sensor cleaning to professionals.

The image below shows a problem that goes far beyond a few dust specks. I'll be returning my reconditioned D600 to B&H.

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

Saving Your Photos

Digital media isn't perfect. Computers crash. Disks fail. If you value your digital photos, you need to plan and implement a backup strategy for your files.

Planning a backup strategy is complicated by many factors. File naming conventions among digital cameras vary. A download from a Canon 60D results in one or more folders named with the date the photos were taken. A download from a Nikon (D40, D50, D200, D600) results in a numbered folder that contains the files. Usually the camera will number the photo files sequentially. For example, IMG_1685.CR2 or DSC_0012.NEF. However, on some DSLRs you can reset the numbering scheme to 0001 at any time. The file prefix, such as IMG, can also be changed in the camera menus.

My strategy is to use file folders that are named with the date that the photos were taken. This is the default Canon strategy. It takes a bit of extra effort after each Nikon download, but I think it is worthwhile. It works well with Lightroom Collections too, since a collection is just a set of links to the actual files, which can be scattered over many folders or disks.

Once the folders are on my main hard disk, I copy them to an external hard disk. This is my backup disk. I also use a networked hard disk. From the networked disk I can manipulate the RAW images from several computers. For example, I might start a batch of photos through lens perspective correction software on one PC while editing files on the other PC. My only concern is to back up original RAW files and any "finished" photographs after post-processing. Anything that can be recreated, such as perspective correction files, is not backed up.

Backup software could also be used. However, I prefer to control the process myself.

But things happen. This morning I noted that a file, IMG_00393.CR2, that I stored two years ago is now corrupt. My backup scheme failed since I had not manually backed up the file folder. I attempted to repair the file with disk recovery software RescuePRO Deluxe to no avail. Then I tried PHOTORECOVERY 2013 from L C Technology. Again, no luck.

Always back up your photos!

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

f/3.5, 1/40 sec., ISO 100, 18mm

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Do It Again!

My goal was fairly simple, I thought: apply the Rule of Thirds to portray a summer flower in full bloom. It was a cloudy, rainy week in August. Each morning at about sunrise, I went to a local park to photograph one of a a group of flowers. Day after day, the weather refused to cooperate. But it was a great opportunity to practice in the diffused light of the overcast mornings.

I spotted the scene depicted in the photo below: a tiny spider weaving a dew-drenched web on a nascent cluster of flowers. The photo was taken with the lens at its closest focal point, which for that lens was 1.5 ft. The spider was hard at work over several days, and I took a lot of photos. I rejected most of them because of unwanted stuff in the background. When going for a shallow depth of field, it's easy to forget about the background sometimes.

This uncropped 5184x3456 pixel photo definitely does not follow the Rule of Thirds, but I like it. The focus could have been sharper, however, and using a camera with a better sensor might have helped. I will be revisiting this scene in the future.

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

f/5.6, 1/20 sec., ISO 500, 18mm

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Landscape Photography Part 1

I enjoy photographing landscapes. A wide-angle lens works well but I most often use a zoom lens that is capable of a fairly short focal length since it is more convenient for walkabout photography. The question is, what is the best aperture, or f number, to use? Here is my rule of thumb: use the smallest aperture at which you can still get a correct exposure.

To help convey the illusion of depth, you want all objects in the scene to be in reasonably good focus from near to far. Those of you who have read my article on depth of field may recall that a smaller f number gives you a shallow depth of field, which is not what you want for landscape photography.

I read a photo "secret" written by a photography instructor, who said that landscape photography is best done with an aperture setting of from f/7.1 to f/9.0. Nonsense! To maximize depth of field, try f/22. Use a lens that can be set to a short focal length such as 18mm and focus on an object about 5 feet away from your camera. You should use a tripod to steady your camera and thus allow the longer exposure time that will be necessary with the small aperture. Go ahead and increase your ISO up to 800 if necessary, especially if there is some movement in the scene. A higher ISO sensitivity will allow you to increase your shutter speed and thus reduce movement blur.

Oh, you do use manual exposure, don't you?

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

f/22, 0.3 sec., ISO 100, 18mm

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sRGB vs. AdobeRGB

While browsing through your camera's menus you might have seen an entry where you can choose between the sRGB or the AdobeRGB color models. What's the difference?

RGB stands for Red Green Blue. It is an additive color model, in which red, green and blue light are combined to achieve a spectrum of colors. Adding more of each of these three colors gives a brighter result, until ultimately it reaches white.

In the RGB model 8 bits are used for each of the three colors. Thus there can be only 256 shades of red, 256 shades of green, and 256 shades of blue, because 2 to the 8th power equals 256. Combining the three colors gives you 16,777,216 possible colors, or 2 to the 24th power.

sRGB is similar, but it was created specifically for use with CRT computer monitors. Most LCD/LED/etc. displays follow this standard.

LCD/LED/plasma displays emit light as opposed to a print, which reflects light. Prints use the CMYK color model, which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black). CMYK is a subtractive color model. As more cyan, magenta and yellow ink are added, the result gets darker until it finally reaches black. The black color was added to the model in order to conserve ink when printing darker colors. The printing process is further complicated by the use of dithering and halftones.

The AdobeRGB model allows light-emitting displays to reproduce most of the colors possible with the CMYK model. The problem is that not all devices support AdobeRGB. So while you may set your camera to AdobeRGB, only very expensive computer monitors are capable of displaying AdobeRGB. The safest choice is to set your camera to sRGB.

Copyright © 2013 Philip N. Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Wheeler Photography

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