Night street in Kuressaare, Saaremaa

I was in Saaremaa (rough translation: Land of Island) this summer because my sister got married and I was also shooting the wedding. Because I had my cavation anyway we went for a whole week and for the first time I had some time to get to know Estonia's biggest island. Kuressaare is the largest town there. Historically it's has always been powerful and/or important center whether it be for it's almost fully preserved castle or for it's health spas and famous mud.

Most of the time I shot with a borrowed Canon EOS 10D and Sigma 17-35mm lens. Had my Minolta Maxxum 7 with several lenses for backup and for black-and-white photography. Take a look at my wedding photography.

This photo was taken in the center of Kuressaare one late night (it does get a little darker during our summers but not much) after I came from local movie theater (that also doubled as a nightclub). I saw this lovely cobblestoned street and for once took the trouble of getting out my tripod. That allowed for maximum depth of field as it was crucial to get it sharp from front to back Vertical format forked best this time. I'm really please how it worked out.

Marilyn Monroe 2005 calendar

It's not very often that you find a nice calendar that you actually wanted on your wall. I think I've had one calendar at my home during my grown-up years, there's one in my office but it's a pretty standard nature pictures. And it's up there because everybody got it for present and it's convenient to have it. But now Ilford (who was some time ago rumored to get our of business) has released a free Marilyn Monroe 2005 calendar. The only catch is that they offer it in PDF-format and you have to print it yourself. Still a good deal. Go download it.

All pictures in this calendar are shot by Sam Shaw, you can see more of his images at Show Family Archives.

Link found via Photographyblog.

Lonely woman in a tram

I don't take public transport very often. Not because I have a car but rather because I live a short walk from all places that are important to me. So when I do take a bus, a tram or a trolley bus (it's a bus with horns, and it uses the horns to eat electricity from wires) I'm rather fascinated by them and by people who ride them. My favourite are trams because they are fast, cars don't get in the way and they are most often newarly empty. So I've grown into the habit of shooting empty trams now and then. Perhaps I just try to persuade myself that I like them empy, maybe it's because I'm too shy to take pictures of not familiar people.

It's actually not very easy to take a good snapshot in moving tram because the tracks are not very well laid down so you are constantly being shaken. Wait for a stop or traffic light, that's the best advice. This particular shot was actually shot when the tram was hurtling along at top speed. I grabbed two shots, one of them turned out decently sharp. I used Casio Exilim S100 that I was testing back then, shutter speed was 1/30th of a second, F4, 1 stop underexposure because this camera tended to overexpose a little. This also got me a bit faster shutter speed.

Why did I choose this photo? I like the loneliness. It was a usual grey bad autumn weather, people don't smile a lot, cars are muddy and they throw up a clowd of water when they speed by. If sun does turn up the next day you really do notice it. Maybe a nice sunny picture next :)

Pentax Optio S5i review

This is a rough translation of my original review (it's in Estonian and contains some photos as well).

Optio S5i is nice small (not to say tiny) camera, slightly smaller than credit card. With battery and memory card it weights about 120 grams so perfect for carrying around all the time in your pocket or bag. Throw in a 5 megapixel sensor and you should have a winner, right? Right? :)

Front and back panels of S5i have stripy metallic pattern and it really helps to grip what would otherwise be a small and slippery camera. I didn't attach the strap but never had any real scare over dropping it. Using strap is probably a smart thing to do nevertheless. It's pretty hard to use the small buttons with your gloves on but zoom and shutter controls are big enough. Why would you want to use this camera with your gloves on? Because where I live it's not very finger friendly weather for about 6 month in any year.

Steve at Steve's Digicams is not happy about the placement of ON/OFF button because you could press it when you really wanted to take a photo. I did not notice this during my one week testing. All other buttons and functions are pretty well laid out, if you've used any digital camera before there's pretty much no learning curve I would think.

Overall very good first impression from Optio S5i.

Tripod mount (not sure if that's the name) is not below lens so getting panoramas from tripod is not that easy but to help you out Optio S5i offers panorama shooting mode where you can see part of the previously shot frame for easier alignment.

Focusing is ok for a camera in this class, could be faster but probably in the same league as competitors. Getting moving objects sharp could be a challenge, especially if it's overclouded day or not so brightly lit room. In dimly lit room S5i starts to struggle, I had to spot it into a rather contrasty object and only then got focus fixed. One thing that bugged be about focusing was the fact that this Pentax does not tell you if the object you're trying to focus on is too close. So it could be difficult to determine if it's too close or camera is just having hard time trying to get focus.

Auto white balance is decent, but every now and then fails. For example a shot made early morning with clouded skies turned out rather bluish. Also shots taken couple of seconds apart indoors showed different colors.

As to shooting options - there are many. 21 all in all. Starting with usual portrait and landscape and ending with underwater mode. But you'll have to get the optional underwater housing to put this mode into full use. I did not give those shooting modes very thorough testing but "autumn" was a disappointment. It rendered the scene very violet and overexpose. Same place shot couple of seconds later with automatic everything gave nice rich autumn colors. I have this image in my original Estonian review (scroll down to a violet looking autumn picture).

Different shooting modes raised other questions as well. I was trying to shoot a picture with maximum amount of depth of field and tried program, landscape, portrait and macro mode but all gave the same aperture and shutter speed. Strange.

Flash is good for normal photos, I liked that it did not overexpose faces when used from around 80 centimeters away. Background was also not blackened out but contained fair amount of detail.

Macro mode was nice, minimum focusing distance is 6 cm. 3x zoom lense is pretty normal, covers most day to day shooting situations.

During long exposures noise reduction kicks in so it might take a while when your image is being processed and saved. My tests in near darkness turned out well.

Now for the fun part

In my Estonian review i ask a question "Could it be that 5 megapixels is too much?" Optio S5i is being promoted as the pocket size fun camera that can get you quality to print A4. I have a split opinion about it. Larger files is good because you never know which picture you are being asked to print out real big. On the other hand large files are slow to save, they take up space on your memory card and hard drive, it takes more time to copy and process them if needed.

I tried saving max resolution and highest quality picture that Optio S5i could provide to it's internal memory and clocked about 7 seconds. I am usually not that patient. You can use the screen to find your next frame but otherwise the camera is locked up, not possible to take next shot, not possible to review those already taken. This file ends up taking around 2.5-3 megs of space. At least deleting is faster.

Is that all? Unfortunately not. A week after testing Pentax Optio S5i I had the chance to try Olympus Mju Mini (a 4 MP camera) and Casio Exilim S100 (a 3 MP camera). I also tried Optio S5i side by side with older Canon A80 (4 MP). Here are my thoughts from all these experiences.

In my humble opinion advantage of 5 MP-s over 4 is not sufficient enough to tolerate slow write times. I don't need 4 frames per second shooting speeds but I do want decent frame to frame speed. When I have to lower resolution and/or quality setting then is there really a point in putting more into the camera in the first place? Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree and I should get a different camera because it's not possible to get this size/speed combination at this point of time at all...

Now, I admit, that Canon PowerShot A80 is quite a different camera and perhaps it's not very fair comparison but still. I set both cameras to full auto, max quality and shot away. And ended up with results where Canon offered better detail even though it has only 4 megapixel sensor as compared to 5 that Pentax has. When I made a similar test comparing macro mode I couldn't say that one was better than the other.

Especially those objects that are a bit further away turned out fuzzy and not very well detailed. One could even say that Pentax optics are not up to the job but that is a bit hard to believe. And then, to turn everything upside down, S5i took really good photos in bright daylight with distant cranes having good detail. There's a 100% crop in the original review, click on this crane picture and you'll get original image as well.

I think you'd be wise to read Steve's Digicams review of the same camera as well. He usually is more optimistic about cameras and maybe I am being too critical here. For full disclosure: I don't own a digicam myself, I still shoot film (slide) and have only tested ~10 digital cameras so far.

What's the conclusion then?

I would buy this camera if I wanted something that was stylish, lightweight, had good ergonomics and easy to master menus (that is not to say that there aren't many options you could play around with) and good zoom lens. I would probably carry this camera around everywhere, set it's resolution lower than maximum so I would still get excellent prints at 10x15 cm but achieve faster saving times.

But don't take my word for it, read other reviews, go give it a try at your local shop and ask friends who have bought it. That is always sound advice. And then go get it from Amazon.

Exploding dog... not, it's a man!

Just quick post. We have this pile of balloons in the corner, leftovers from a birthday gone by. Idle mind is a monster as is well known so after frantic search for device able to record video we ended up with a home made explosion movie (it's some 72 kilobaits, Quicktime should play it).

Stay tuned for reviews of of Pentax Optio S5i, Olympus Mju-Mini and Casio Exilim S100 (first camera with ceramic lens). All quite stylish and rather capable small cameras.

Konica Minolta Dynax 7 Digital review

I did this review originally for my Estonian photo site but because there seems to be demand for English version as well then I'll post here a bit shortened version of my review. Please head over to Fotodiip (original story) to check out some photos made with Dynax 7 Digital (it's Maxxum 7 Digital in USA).

Okay, so it's the first digital SLR from Konica Minolta, they're really late into the market but not necessarily too late. Camera has 6.1 megapixel sensor that has a cropping factor of 1,5 meaning that your 24-105mm zoom lens will turn into a 36-158mm zoom and your 50mm fix into a 75mm lens.

I most unique feature is built-in AntiShake that works as image stabilizer and helps to reduce blur created by shaky hands resulting in sharper pictures with slower shutter speeds. Canon, Nikon and Sigma have their equivalents of this technology but all have put it into lenses that are more expensive. Konica Minolta approach gives all your normal lenses image stabilization. There is a cost, however. Looks like battery gets hammered by this feature so do carry extra battery around and switch AntiShake off if not necessary to use (ie. enough light for normal handheld photography). With my first run I got around 300-400 images but I had AS on all the time, used a lot of display, shot in 4-5 minus degrees (Celsius) and tested flash extensively. Because I could keep the camera for only 2 days I did not get battery empty for the second time.

Second thing that really stick out is the amount of buttons and knobs and levers that are placed all around D7D body. I shoot with Dynax 7 film camera myself, it's the "father" of D7D and has 21 buttons. I'm sure D7D has at least the same amount, perhaps even couple more. But I like it very much. This means that most controls are within finger's reach and you don't have to dive into the menus to set flash compensation, mirror lock-up, change ISO or whitebalance. It'll confuse you in the beginning (unless you migrate from Dynax/Maxxum 7) but if you get used to it I think you'll also come to love it (there's a picture in the original story of film 7 and digital 7 side-by-side).

D7D is very flexible meaning that photographer can configure a lot of options, also functions of many buttons and then switch back to "green" Program mode with one press of a button. You can also configure three function sets for fast switching. For example if you shoot wedding and have to move from outside to inside and outside again you just toggle between to settings that have been memorized before. Really handy.

Most of the buttons are just where they were on the film body, some have been improved (9-way control button under your right hands thumb for example). DOF preview button has been moved a bit, whitebalance button added to index finger working area etc.

Dynax 7 Digital is actually slightly bigger and heavier than it's predecessor. Grip is a handful, an improvement. Good rubbery feel and also patch of rubber under thumb so it sits nicely in my hands. Shutter release (it's called like that, right?) could be a little higher but it's better than on the film body.

CF card compartment door is good, strap does keep out so it's no problem to close. There's also a small slide door within the big door so if you only need to connect USB cable you don't have to open the big door. Nice touch.

Back screen is a delight, it's 2.5 inches. Compares really well against 1.8 that is usual for competitors. Menus on the screen switch to portrait if you turn you camera on the side, that's nice. I could not test display visibility in bright sun, we had lousy weather. Small screen on top of the camera has been removed but because I never use it on my film body I did not miss it. Full points to display.

Viewfinder is slightly bigger and brighter than that of Nikon D70 but if you compare it to Dynax 7 film camera then it's not so great. It's just as bright (slightly "warmer" look I would say) but much smaller, but that's the problem with all current crop of DSLR (except full frame Canons).

Menus are clean and simple, no problem using them at all. At any time you are shown only one screen full of options so no scrolling is necessary. Very good usability here.

I tested following lenses: Minolta 24mm, Minolta 50mm, Minolta 24-105mm, Minolta 300mm and Sigma 70-300mm. All worked fine, no problems with AntiShake or anything. When I said "all worked fine" I lied a bit :) I actually got in trouble with 24-105 and 70-300 lenses two times. Camera just would not display aperture and when trying to press shutter message "Lens not attached" (or something similar) was displayed. Turing camera off and on again helped. Don't know what's the problem here, haven't read in in any other reviews so maybe only this camera has this glitch.

Focusing is just as fast as with Dynax 7 film body. D7D actually won out with 70-300 Sigma lens that is pretty dark in the long end (F5.6) as it would focus on dark and low contrast scene (on film body it failed to do so). Camera just kicked into really slow focusing mode and grounded to stop at the right point. Seems that some improvements to the focusing have been made.

Flash raises higher than on the film model, no problem with red eyes at all so no need for red eye flash mode actually.

I did not like shutter sound very much. It gave kind of loud plastic sounding clap. It's hard to compare with film body (because of the motor wind) but I'd say that no improvement have been made. Of course you hear the sound only like 10 cm from your ears so it will never sound too quiet but I don't think it's a camera for shooting piano concerts.

Focusing is also noisy, no competition with Canon USM lenses or even with Nikon D70 kit lens. I think this is bigger problem with Konica Minolta cameras and might have to do with their design decision to put focusing motor within the body and not within the lenses. Use manual focus if you need quiet :)

KM have given up excellent red assist light that allows my film Dynax 7 to focus virtually in the dark. Instead they have opted to use strobe light from flash. There are several things fundamentally wrong with this in my opinion. First you need to manually raise the flash (not very convenient in a fast pace shooting situation). Second, it's really annoying for people and forget about getting some candids or unaware faces on your picture. Then again, who would buy D7D to shoot with on-camera flash? Especially when you can crank ISO up to 1600 and still get acceptable quality? More on that a little later.

Shooting speed is more than enough for my style. I tried continuous mode with JPG and also "pumped" from frame to frame and managed fast times without buffer getting full too soon. I don't shoot sports and I don't shoot wild animals chasing their prey, if you're into that kind of thing then you of course wish for 8 fps and 40 frame buffer. Instead you have to do with 3 fps and 12 frame buffer in JPG format. 4 in RAW (if my memory does not trick me).

AntiShake really seems to work. I don't normally go around shooting 1/20, 1/10 and even 1/6th of a second handheld. Most amazing was, that I could shoot 1/100 with 300mm lens at a not very brightly lit store and get very acceptable results. Thumbs up. Results probably depend on your hands quite a lot, I have medium steady ones attached to my body :)

On the right hand side of the viewfinder you'll see 5 step progress bar showing how much AS is working. If it's 2-3 you'll probably get decent result. If it's more then chances of getting sharp pictures fall considerably. Big screen really helps when checking images for sharpness.

Picture quality is excellent with some downsides. Looks like Dynax 7D seems to underexpose up to a stop in some conditions. In grey overcast day I got constant underexposure by 1 stop. Images looked darker than necessary and histogram backed this feeling up. Fortunately it's really easy and fast to key in exposure compensation if you set this function to back scrollwheel.

Inside and on Rammstein concert I got well exposed images so a bit confused.

On the plus side - colors look really nice, there's enough detail in the shadow areas and I don't think I blew out any highlights. Auto whitebalance worked well, pictured taken in my office turned out ever so slightly greener than necessary

D7D is a joy to use at low light levels. First you have AS but then you have really good quality ISO 800 and even ISO 1600 is largely usable. Of course noise shows up but it looks controlled and it can be worked later if necessary. I have comparison shots up in the original review, just scroll down the page.

Conclusion

If you own Minolta glass and want to take the dive into digital then go ahead, buy the camera, it's a fine piece of machinery. I'd get one for myself if I had the funds but that'll have to wait a little. It sits nicely in one's hands, is really easy and fast to use and big screen plus AntiShake are like added bonuses. However, if you don't have an investment in Minolta lenses then you might want to consider other options as well.