Branko's Weblog

(As compared to the Canon EOS 1000D and its 17-55mm kit lens.)

I have been getting into roller derby photography lately, and that means I could use all the light I can get. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted exactly, outlined in painstaking detail before.

In the end I decided to buy a Canon 600D and maybe a new lens too.

I was hoping the new camera would gain me about 3 stops, two through better noise handling and one through a a higher resolution. (The higher resolution does not, of course, gain me a stop. But it does allow me to scale down an image, which translates to sharpness, which means that the moving targets I am shooting require less ‘freezing’. At least, that is how I hope it will work. Preliminary tests are positive.)

A couple of tests down the road indicate that I am looking at two stops, which is already great in my book. 6400 ISO seems pretty much unusable, but everything below is just fine. At 6400 ISO pictures on the 600D look like somebody has been emptying buckets of red and green over the sensor.

The Sigma 17-70mm (full name: Sigma 17-70 mm f/2.8-4.0 DC Macro OS HSM) is everything like the reviews and tests promised. It does almost everything better than the Canon kit lens with two exceptions: it is slightly less sharp (I did not test this myself), and it is much heavier and bigger.

The first point is not very important. Just use the zoom to make up for the slight loss in detail.

The second point is important, because a camera that you take out of the bag to shoot with is better than a camera that you let sit in the bag because it is too unwieldy. Of course, every DSLR is too large when compared to your phone came, but even between the Canon EOS 1000D + kit lens and the Canon EOS 600D + Sigma 17-70mm I foresee myself using the latter much less.

Not that this is much of a problem, as I will have my other lens, the 50mm / 1.8, mounted on the camera for most of the time, and that is one of the lightest and smallest lenses around. If you want better pictures than the kit lens can provide you with, I recommend you get the 50mm / 1.8 as an additional lens rather than replacing your kit lens with the Sigma 17-70mm.

Other than that, I like the fact that the Sigma does macro (not proper macro, but way, way better than the other two lenses) and that colour fringing (purple, orange and green lines along tree branches in the winter) is at times non-existent. I do have one photo though where the branches consist entirely of colour fringes. What causes this I have yet to figure out.

Finally also note that this lens doesn’t strike me as very useful for video: the AF hunts a lot, zooming is extremely noisy, and the zoom rate does not seem to be exactly linear at the long end.

The thing I like the best about my two new purposes is the articulated screen of the camera (that means it folds out). My first digital camera (a pocket model) had one of these, and it works almost just as well on a DSLR to help me focus. This is probably because of the way I shoot. I am just not very good at getting sharp focus with either the AF or by hand using the viewfinder.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If I can get significantly better pictures during the next roller derby scrimmage or bout, I will be happy.

Note that you can get 100 % crops of the images shown here by clicking on them, saved as 85% JPEGs from the original JPEGs. In fact, I uploaded the crops and Wordpress / GDLib created the scaled down versions. The macro shot is slightly out of focus (motion blur perhaps?), the bird photo is as good as I could get. Exif data is available in the large images.

Choices:

1. The Canon EOS 550D, 600D, 60D, and 7D all use the same sensor, resolution, image processor, basically anything that determines the basic image quality. The 60D has all cross-type AF points, but I did not read about many sports photographers that actually seem to use these. The 550D lacks an articulated screen, and I knew how much I liked those.

2. The Sigma lens is one stop faster than the Canon kit lens, so works slightly better indoors.

This is going to be the lamest howto ever. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The HEMA department store sells these pairs of red and white LED lights in the Netherlands. When it gets dark you see them everywhere, on dogs, joggers, police horses (whole bunches of them), and of course on bicycles. At 2.50 euro they are a steal (two leds, four batteries, buttons and straps).

I own a pair of these lights too, and they have one problem. They may be advertised to run 70 hours on the same pair of batteries, but in practice they run out much quicker than that, because it is extremely easy to turn them on accidentally. So you leave work, come home, stuff your lights in your coat pockets—and often even that is enough—put your gloves on top, accidentally turn on your LED lights and they will burn all night. Mine tend to run out after three week or so even though they should last me about three months.

HEMA doesn’t seem to sell containers to keep your HEMA lights in, and in lieu of retrofitting something else I took to simply adapting the largish packaging they arrive in. Although the end-result doesn’t stop the lights from switching on if you press hard on them, accidentally turning on the lights by just putting them in a coat pocket is now history. (I have had it happen that they switched on in their containers when I stuffed a hat in the same pocket, so my solution is not perfect.)

Look after the break for a short photo essay on how to do this.
Read the rest of this entry »

I wish you…

Sometimes you study a thing for a while, and instead of finding out more about the thing, you find out more about yourself—and sometimes both.

I have been looking at lenses and digital photo cameras over the weekend. Have been reading up on reviews, have been comparing prices. The thing is, I wasn’t too happy with the photos I took during the Amsterdam Derby Dames roller derby scrimmage and bout in respectively Rotterdam and Essen, and wanted to see what gear I need for derby photography.

The Flickr group Roller Derby is a treasure trove of experience which allowed to me collect some data on the sort of equipment derby photographers use:

• prosumer cameras
• 70-200 mm, F 2.8 lenses
• often a second camera fitted with a wide anglish fast (1.8 max) lens for portraits and group photos

This would have meant an approximate 2000 euro investment in gear. Back when I was poor, I saw every purchase through the pinhole of what I could afford. And though I am not exactly rich, I can afford to spend a little now and again on nice things. For 2000 euro I am going to shop around though, find the lowest price, consider mail order purchases, perhaps look at second hand gear.

And it was while looking for second hand lenses that I had my epiphany. There is this Amsterdam and Eindhoven based company called Pixto-F that provides “services for photographers”, i.e. lets equipment. For a full-frame camera and their nicest 70-200mm lens, they charge 75 euro per day. A quick back-of-the-brain calculation taught me that I probably would not have a real need for this set up on more than four occasions per year anyway.

So why should I spend more on purchasing camera gear than I would in all probability ever spend on renting it? What if I lost interest in either derby or photography in a couple of years? And would I really pay 75 euro in rental fees per bout visited? That suddenly seemed excessive even if it was cheaper than outright purchasing. I just do not have that much passion for either photography or roller derby. Or, to put it in another way, I suddenly found out how much passion I have for either.

Bummer.

Whither photography and derby photography? I’ll probably try and become a better photographer through osmosis than through a burning desire to improve myself, and I’ll have to improve my roller derby photos through other means than better gear. (Position is everything, and the 70-200mm lens is particularly important when shooting down the long side of the track. The cheap 50mm/1.8 lens I have is perfectly serviceable for action shots in the corners, or for photography from the centre of the track, assuming you have the head referee’s permission to be there.)

Looking at all that camera porn has really wet my appetite for a new body though, especially considering that the Canon EOS 600D has more than adequate video features that my ‘old‘ Canon EOS 1000D lacks entirely.

Afterword: left out of this somewhat money centred monologue is an epiphany that came only minutes earlier, namely that my current gear is largely sufficient, and that improving my derby photos is mostly a function of ’simply’ becoming a better photographer. And the price of improving myself is free, gratis, zilch, nada.

Things I need to work on:

• Learning to work with the continuous auto-focus feature. (Go outside and photograph passing cars.)
• Get a steadier hand.
• Learn to focus on the centre (lots of failed derby photos because the subject is not in the middle).
• Become confident, visit lots of bouts and scrimmages, so that the technical side becomes natural, and I start focussing (pardon the pun) on the action and the characters and all the interesting little details.

The world’s best derby photographer is currently Axle Adams (derby name, his real name is Jules Doyle), and what springs out from his photos is not technical perfection (though the man knows is his trade), but the fact that they are interesting.

If I do get better, then will be the time to consider investing in material things.

‘Nuff said.

I have been playing Charlie II, the sequel to Charlie the Duck, for almost ten years now, on and off, mostly off. My own highscore only progressed slowly during that time, a thousand points here, a few hundred points there, until last week when I realized that I can chain the effects of power pills.

Sometimes I really am that slow a thinker.

(Chaining power pills is something that is as old as power pills, i.e. at least as old as Pac-Man. In Pac-Man it’s just not that useful. Note that the high-score shown here is of the shareware version, which only has 6 levels. The full version has 18 levels.)

A long time ago in a land far, far away I had a game called Caesar III installed on Windows 98 (or XP). Actually it wasn’t that long time ago, and it definitely was not far away. But I digress.

And lo, I bought a new PC which ran on Windows 7, and forgot all about Caesar III. Until I cleaned out a cupboard and the found the game again. Long story short, Caesar III refused to install. It would prepare for running Installshield, and then do nothing.

I scoured the internet for solutions, but nothing gave. Most people apparently happily installed their third Caesars on Vista and 7.

So here’s the trick I used: I just waited a long time. Apparently Installshield needed that. After a minute of five or ten, out of the blue Installshield started running.

(Note that you need to run set-up in compatibility mode.)

This is cool: a company called Lytro is taking orders for its plenoptic (or ‘light field’) consumer photo camera, which it expects to ship in 2012.

A plenoptic camera swaps spatial (2D) information for distance information. See it as a grid of thousands of miniscule-resolution cameras all pointing straight ahead, with software combining the miniature photos back into a single exposure. (You used to have something similar in analog called a Lomo camera, but since that lacked the sophisticated software required to make something of the extra information it recorded, it was basically something only used for the cool effects.)

The extra information can be used to focus on a specific plane or object, to remove objects or visual artefacts, to create stereo images and many, many things more.

As they say, a grainy, shaky Youtube video with an idiot acting the straight man can say more than a thousand words:

(See also this for a demonstration of more applications.)

But because you’re swapping different types of information, you also lose a lot of information. I read somewhere for instance that the Lytro uses a 20 megapixel light sensitive chip to get to a 1 megapixel image. The result is that this type of camera will be mostly useful for photography where you cannot or will not control the setting. The Lytro will be used for snap shots, where otherwise you would use a regular (read: slow) pocket camera and miss the funny face your toddler pulls. Other uses of similar cameras would be surveillance (where beforehand you don’t know which details are important), or medical imaging where you want to separate planes of say tissues or cells.

All other types of photography have great use for the extra information plenoptic photography has to offer, but cannot afford to give up all that spatial information (i.e. resolution).

So I was thinking: what if you put both a regular sensor and a micro lens array with a dedicated sensor in the same camera? Now, you would not want them to occupy the same space, but as it happens the ‘camera’ (Latin for room) has plenty of space, and many professional cameras use a mirror to reflect the incoming light to a viewfinder. If you’re building a mirror camera using an electronic finder, you could put the micro lens array in front of the viewfinder’s light sensitive chip.

This method does of course also have its draw backs in the form of trade-offs. You could not use this for video for instance, or anything else involving most forms of motion. What my idea solves is mostly an engineering problem. It transforms a problem of unknown variables to one of mostly known variables, which means throwing a lot less cash at the designing the camera and allowing a manufacturer to be early to market.

Now and then somebody mentions on bicycle activism blogs that there is no speed limit in the Netherlands for cyclists.

That struck me as a bit odd, so I decided to find out if this is true.

And yes it is, by and large.

The Dutch rules of the road (RVV 1990) only mention speed limits a couple of times, notably in articles 20 through 22, which regulate the maximum speed for motorized vehicles.

There are a bunch of snags and exceptions though.

The most obvious one is the speed limit on woonerfs. Woonerfs are a type of proto-Shared Space, an area where all road users mix. To protect the weakest of these—children playing—the maximum speed for all road users on woonerfs is defined in article 45 as stapvoets, the speed of a walking horse. Since this is technically too slow for both car drivers (the engine would stall) and bicyclists (they would keel over), the Dutch supreme court has decided that stapvoets should be interpreted as 15 kph.

According to article 63, traffic signs overrule traffic rules (that makes sense, as signs can be used to indicate exceptions to the rules). Article 62 says that all road users are required to obey signs that either prohibit or command something. That means that signs regulating the maximum speed also apply to bicyclists.

Generally bicyclists will not encounter speed limit signs, with one exception. The signs that indicate the start of a built-up area are often accompanied by a speed limit sign. As article 22 of the Dutch rules of the road already orders operators of motor vehicles to limit their speed to 50 kph in built-up areas, this is an extraneous sign. My guess is they are put there to remind motorists to lower their speed. But since signs apply to all road users, they also apply to cyclists. Signs only apply for the wegvakken (road segments) immediately following them, that is until the very first side-road or crossing.

Finally, there are two catch-all articles in both the Dutch rules of the road and the traffic code, one regulating reckless speeding, and the other regulating all reckless behaviour. Article 19 of the RVV (the rules) says that “bestuurders ['operators of vehicles'] must be capable of bringing the vehicle to a stop within the distance of which they are capable of seeing the road, and of which it is free”.

And article 5 of the Dutch traffic code states that all road users are prohibited from behaving in such a way that this causes danger or hinders other road users.

By the way, if you want to read the rules for yourself, the following definitions may be useful:

• Weggebruiker: road user
• Bestuurder (’operator of a vehicle’): all road users except pedestrians
• Wegvak (’road segment’): the stretch of road from one (side)road to another

(I am not a lawyer. The above is not legal advice.)

My friend and co-blogger (over at 24 Oranges) Natasha has taken up roller derby, an all-women’s full contact roller skating sport. I have come along to a couple of games, and I am here to tell you that roller derby rocks.

The basic game is simple. Two teams of five women skate around a smallish oval. One woman on each team is the designated scorer, the so-called ‘jammer’; the other four are blockers. (The blockers of both teams combined are called the pack.) The designated scorer must overtake the pack to score points. The blockers of the opposing team must prevent this. (The pack must stay together.)

To make things easier for everybody involved, the jammer wears a big star on her helmet. In the video below you see a blocker called Beyonslay successfully stop a jammer called Rice Rocket

Ah, yes, that is another aspect of roller derby, it is also about show. The contestants wear kinky outfits (not always noticeable among the safety gear), wear fightin’ make-up, and have cool names (which are officially registered to avoid duplicates). I definitely encourage you to check out a scrimmage (unofficial match) or a bout (official match) if you have the opportunity.

The following video I shot myself during a bout between the Essen Devil Dolls (red) and the Amsterdam Derby Dames (black). In the first ‘jam’ you see Amsterdam jammer Monstah Megs start alone, because the opponents’ jammer is on the bench for a foul.