I find it annoying that we continue to refer to 35mm equivilant when
describing focal length. Many users will have never owned a 35mm
camera in the past. I think we should use "Angle of view" as a
universal description.

+1 - Agree. The use of focal length at all has plagued real cameras
for non-specialists. Fine as a secondary part of the description, but
angle has got to be the best. I do have a mental idea of 35mm focal
lengths - but as soon as the format changes, I am thrown and have to
think everything through - slowly!


I have had several lenses for my 35 mm cameras and several enlarger lenses.
I would however,love to see a "Angle of cone of view" description though. I
also wonder how long modern cameras will continue to offer the sound effect
of an old mechanical SLR.
Perhaps we also need a new description for "footage" when describing video.

In message , at 10:17:02 on Tue, 23 Apr
2013, The Natural Philosopher remarked:
well we had better stop referring to horse power, since no one owns
horses for doing work with.

I was out in the fens last Sunday and passed a horse-and-cart. Haven't
seen one for a while. Although the "Steptoe" ones were commonplace in
London when I was growing up.

I think some breweries still have a few horse-drawn drays as a publicity
thing.
--
Roland Perry

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 23/04/13 10:34, Mark wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:17:02 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 23/04/13 09:36, DerbyBorn wrote:
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote in
:

On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:20:16 +0100, Mark
wrote:

Sorry but I find that hard to believe. AFAIK it's just not possible
to fit a good lens in a phone-sized object.
YOu must write to Zeiss and tell them, immediately.
I find it annoying that we continue to refer to 35mm equivilant when
describing focal length. Many users will have never owned a 35mm camera
in
the past. I think we should use "Angle of view" as a universal
description.
well we had better stop referring to horse power, since no one owns
horses for doing work with.

...it is however nice that my DSLR with a 400mm strapped on the front
behaves like a 600mm used to on the old film camera..

About the same power as a pair of binoculars.

Now if only the air would keep still.
I took some pics the other day using a 400mm lens on a DSLR just
holding the camera in my hands. I was amazed that the pictures were
not a complete blurry mess. However next time I must remember to take
a tripod.
If you have a VR lens its surpising how good they can be.

I seldom use the 400, because its manual focus and my eyes are poor these
days..have to go on the 'in focus' light and that keeps flickering.

mainly for bird table shots.

Snooker table?

Some nice pictures, especially of the surrounding countryside. Roughly
where is that? Looks like Welsh borders to me, Shropshire say, or
possibly a bit further south, Herefordshire, west Gloucestershire.

Talking of snow, see what you make of this, and what has it in common
with the second shot (both taken with film SLRs, the first definitely
a Canon FTb, the second, which is actually earlier, might have been
that, or a Practika):
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex1.png
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex2.png

On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:51:41 +0100, Peter
wrote:


Mark wrote

Sorry but I find that hard to believe. AFAIK it's just not possible
to fit a good lens in a phone-sized object.

I've not tried the Nokia 808 but would it really be better than a
small system camera (which would also fit into a pocket)?

See e.g. http://peter-ftp.co.uk/808/
--
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http://www.macfh.co.uk/Macfarlane/Macfarlane.html

In article , Peter
scribeth thus

Mark wrote

On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:51:41 +0100, Peter
wrote:


Mark wrote

Sorry but I find that hard to believe. AFAIK it's just not possible
to fit a good lens in a phone-sized object.

I've not tried the Nokia 808 but would it really be better than a
small system camera (which would also fit into a pocket)?

See e.g. http://peter-ftp.co.uk/808/

Nice pics. It's hard to predict what they would have been like if
they were taken with a £400 camera though.

I have got a fair selection of pics of the same scene taken with the
808 and the Canon S95 (£360 a year or two ago) and the 808 outclasses
it very obviously.

I also have taken some comparison shots with a Pentax K5 and those are
better, as one would jolly well expect given the K5 body alone was
£1000 when it came out, but not massively better.

In fact I would sell the K5 now, if it wasn't for the much greater
flexibility / control (shutter speed etc) and much better low light
performance. For "easy" targets in daylight I would not bother with a
DSLR at all.

The raw camera in the 808 is awesome and if Nokia bothered to deliver
some decent control (AV, TAV, M, etc) - which they won't because they
can't be bothered - they would have an amazing product whose only
weakness would be the low light performance.

Let me see if I can take a pic with all three...

Would you mind telling me where the countryside pics were taken?

The latitude and longitude should be in the EXIF data

As is sadly all too often the case nowadays! And google trawls the net
and picks up all photos it finds with GPS data in the EXIF header and
drops them all over google maps...

It's in Sussex, mostly, I think. North of Brighton.

No doubt about it England's is still in most parts a fine looking
country..

You can see some differences like the blue fringing on the extremities
of the top of the 808 pix but all in thats very good...
--
Tony Sayer

On 24/04/2013 21:45, Peter wrote:
When I get a moment I will do a comparison of cameras.

What is especially impressive on the 808 (BTW I am using the Camera
Pro 3rd party camera app, which offers some advantages over the
built-in camera app) is the way the jpeg compression handles
vegetation (leaves, grass) well. On most cameras you get a mess.

You shouldn't unless you are daft enough to use any of the less than
highest quality settings of in camera JPEG compression. They are all
hyperbolically named so that "good" = poor, "very good" = good etc.

You are right that high contrast green vegetation is amongst the most
tricky things for a JPEG encoder to get right. The others are faint
black detail on a blue or red background. eg Veins in flowers.

But I shoot with a 100% jpeg quality setting, which produces ~10MB
files. The built-in app does ~2.5MB files. Obviously there is bound to
be a difference in the image quality...

You should find that around 98% gives the best size performance
trade-off without faithfully digitising thermal noise for posterity.

Regards,
Martin Brown


tony sayer wrote

No doubt about it England's is still in most parts a fine looking
country..

You can see some differences like the blue fringing on the extremities
of the top of the 808 pix but all in thats very good...

Martin Brown wrote:
On 24/04/2013 21:45, Peter wrote:
When I get a moment I will do a comparison of cameras.

What is especially impressive on the 808 (BTW I am using the Camera
Pro 3rd party camera app, which offers some advantages over the
built-in camera app) is the way the jpeg compression handles
vegetation (leaves, grass) well. On most cameras you get a mess.

You shouldn't unless you are daft enough to use any of the less than
highest quality settings of in camera JPEG compression. They are all
hyperbolically named so that "good" = poor, "very good" = good etc.

You are right that high contrast green vegetation is amongst the most
tricky things for a JPEG encoder to get right. The others are faint
black detail on a blue or red background. eg Veins in flowers.

But I shoot with a 100% jpeg quality setting, which produces ~10MB
files. The built-in app does ~2.5MB files. Obviously there is bound to
be a difference in the image quality...

You should find that around 98% gives the best size performance
trade-off without faithfully digitising thermal noise for posterity.

Regards,
Martin Brown


tony sayer wrote

No doubt about it England's is still in most parts a fine looking
country..

You can see some differences like the blue fringing on the extremities
of the top of the 808 pix but all in thats very good...

I'm happy with the 9/14 megapixel (1) RAW files from a Fuji 9500,
myself, but I rarely print bigger than A4, and crop in camera. I can
live with the larger file size now that storage is so cheap and
plentiful, and the increased time to store a frame makes me think more
carefully about what I want to shoot. No compression artifacts at all,
so no coloured fringes on high contrast edges, apart from some slight
chromatic aberration.

(1) (9 megapixel using third party applications, 14 using Fuji's own
converter, which can access the stored information from the smaller,
interposed sites that the sensor design has in it.)

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 25/04/2013 08:27, Peter wrote:
I am uploading three versions of the same photo here

http://peter-ftp.co.uk/808/3-camera-test/

I didn't take any care to match shutter speeds etc... The K5 was in
TAV move, 1/250 F7.1 auto-ISO. The S95 was in P mode.

The exposure is rather different. However look at the pigeon behind the
bush on the bottom left, and the twigs.

Andy

On 28/04/2013 15:12, Peter wrote:
What is your view (no pun intended)?

Pentax canon nokia in that order.

Andy

No interest in these shots then? FTR, the thing that a little
different about them is that they were taken using only moonlight. I
was pleased with the first, disappointed with the second (which was
chronologically earlier, and my first attempt to use moonlight - the
most difficult thing about it apart from judging the exposure was
getting our Pyrenean Mountain-of-a-Dog to lie still for long enough -
finally he did settle down, but the picture was still rather
disappointing) ...

I just thought someone might be interested in the unusual 'look', but
apparently not!

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:24:51 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:

Talking of snow, see what you make of this, and what has it in common
with the second shot (both taken with film SLRs, the first definitely
a Canon FTb, the second, which is actually earlier, might have been
that, or a Practika):
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex1.png
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex2.png
--
================================================== =======
Please always reply to ng as the email in this post's
header does not exist. Or use a contact address at:
http://www.macfh.co.uk/JavaJive/JavaJive.html
http://www.macfh.co.uk/Macfarlane/Macfarlane.html

In article , Java Jive
scribeth thus
No interest in these shots then? FTR, the thing that a little
different about them is that they were taken using only moonlight. I
was pleased with the first, disappointed with the second (which was
chronologically earlier, and my first attempt to use moonlight - the
most difficult thing about it apart from judging the exposure was
getting our Pyrenean Mountain-of-a-Dog to lie still for long enough -
finally he did settle down, but the picture was still rather
disappointing) ...

I just thought someone might be interested in the unusual 'look', but
apparently not!

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:24:51 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:

Talking of snow, see what you make of this, and what has it in common
with the second shot (both taken with film SLRs, the first definitely
a Canon FTb, the second, which is actually earlier, might have been
that, or a Practika):
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex1.png
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex2.png

Missed those what sort of level of Moonlight full, half can you say?..
--
Tony Sayer

On 28/04/2013 23:10, Java Jive wrote:
I just thought someone might be interested in the unusual 'look', but
apparently not!

Many years ago I woke up in the middle of the night, and looked out of
the window to see unusually bright moonlight, and the garden lit up with
this beautiful silvery effect. So I got my camera and tripod out, and
took a shot.

When I got the film back some months later it took me a while to work
out why I'd taken a shot of the garden. It looked just like day.

Andy

AFAICR, full or pretty nearly so in both cases.

On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:29:42 +0100, tony sayer
wrote:

Missed those what sort of level of Moonlight full, half can you say?..
--
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Yes, I have some examples of those, here's one taken at the same time
as Ex1:
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex3.png

I took several shots of the same scene, with increasing exposures, and
it's noticeable how the longer the exposure, the more they just look
like daylight. The above was apparently the longest. As with Ex1,
the other, shorter exposures are more bluey.

Another thing that's very noticeable about the shorter exposures is
how the scene darkens in the corners of the shot. You can see it a
little here, but it's much more pronounced on the shorter exposures.
It happens with all lens photography, but we don't normally notice it
with daylight shots, only when the film is 'challenged' by marginal
exposures.

Both Ex1 and this one Ex3 were taken in the winter of 79/80, in the
vicinity of Woodchester Park. I don't have precise shooting details,
but AFAICR a wide-angle to near telephoto zoom on the FTb, onto
Kodachrome slides, with exposures of the order of just under a minute
to about two minutes.

On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:14:10 +0100, Andy Champ
wrote:

When I got the film back some months later it took me a while to work
out why I'd taken a shot of the garden. It looked just like day.
--
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On 29/04/2013 10:14, Andy Champ wrote:
On 28/04/2013 23:10, Java Jive wrote:
I just thought someone might be interested in the unusual 'look', but
apparently not!

Many years ago I woke up in the middle of the night, and looked out of
the window to see unusually bright moonlight, and the garden lit up with
this beautiful silvery effect. So I got my camera and tripod out, and
took a shot.

When I got the film back some months later it took me a while to work
out why I'd taken a shot of the garden. It looked just like day.

Andy

When I used to go out with a camera at night, the make of film had a
huge impact on the final image. Agfa would tend very strongly to a sort
of dull green. IIRC Fuji was the most 'real'.

--
Rod

On 28/04/2013 20:51, Andy Champ wrote:
On 28/04/2013 15:12, Peter wrote:
What is your view (no pun intended)?

Pentax canon nokia in that order.

Andy

Although I agree with your ranking I also think that the Canon and
Pentax are a tadge overexposed by at least half a stop and has burned
out the sky too much and the Nokia has underexposed by half a stop
retaining too much sky detail at the expense of the rest of the image.

The internal JPEG details and average info content a

Canon S95 uses its own custom Qtables approx
Luminance Q=93 Chroma Q~88. 2.8 bits/pixel

Pentax K5 Q=100 (both) 5.85 bits/pixel

Nokia 808 Q=100 (both) 7.1 bits/pixel

The bits/pixel is for the main image only.

So the information content in the Nokia shot *is* higher - largely
because the sky isn't burnt out and amazingly the adjacent pixels are
more nearly statistically independent. Impressive for such a tiny lens!

Zooming in hard on the TV aerial allows easy judgement of the psf. The
Cannon S95 has applied some pretty brutal unsharp masking and its image
quality might well be improved by toning it down a bit (if possible).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Yes, I also remember Agfa was sh*te at low light intensities. As you
say, an awful green cast.

On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:23:09 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

Agfa would tend very strongly to a sort
of dull green. IIRC Fuji was the most 'real'.
--
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http://www.macfh.co.uk/Macfarlane/Macfarlane.html

On 23/04/2013 10:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

well we had better stop referring to horse power, since no one owns
horses for doing work with.


I'm planning to start using one of my mules to pull a harrow, instead of
using the tractor

:-)

The basic point about the Nokia 808 is that one no longer needs to
carry a pocket camera, which I think is a great step forward, despite
its limitations (mostly iffy autofocus, so one needs to take time on a
shot). The bigger item is replaces rather well (again in reasonable
light conditions) is a £1500 1080P camcorder...

All well 'n good but does it work well as a mobile phone 'tho?...
--
Tony Sayer

On 29/04/2013 22:02, Peter wrote:

Martin Brown wrote

Although I agree with your ranking I also think that the Canon and
Pentax are a tadge overexposed by at least half a stop and has burned
out the sky too much and the Nokia has underexposed by half a stop
retaining too much sky detail at the expense of the rest of the image.

The internal JPEG details and average info content a

Canon S95 uses its own custom Qtables approx
Luminance Q=93 Chroma Q~88. 2.8 bits/pixel

Pentax K5 Q=100 (both) 5.85 bits/pixel

Nokia 808 Q=100 (both) 7.1 bits/pixel

The bits/pixel is for the main image only.

So the information content in the Nokia shot *is* higher - largely
because the sky isn't burnt out and amazingly the adjacent pixels are
more nearly statistically independent. Impressive for such a tiny lens!

Zooming in hard on the TV aerial allows easy judgement of the psf. The
Cannon S95 has applied some pretty brutal unsharp masking and its image
quality might well be improved by toning it down a bit (if possible).

Very interesting analysis - thank you.

I am not concerned about the Canon S95, though there should be no
image sharpening selected. 2.8 bits per pixel is crap though...

The cheaper Canons use custom quantisation tables that are too brutal.
The image quality would be better if they used Q~95 and ~4 bits/pixel.
High end Canons use scaled versions of the canonical Qtables.

It is actually very hard to detect JPEG artefacts in Q 95 images
unless they are designer test pieces intended to break the codec.

The Pentax K5 is entirely at its default settings with no manual
over/under exposure. I shoot at the max jpeg quality setting. Normally
I get great results with it; the only problem is that one needs a
waist pack to carry it! Ground shots I rarely tweak but airborne shots
usually have a lot of haze which I try to remove using various means.

I also have a Pentax K5 it replaces my older istD (that always needed a
systematic bias added to its default exposure in most lighting). I find
the K5 performs very well after I got used to the chunky battery grip.

The Pentax ex camera image is hardly touched by unsharp masking and so
is superficially softer but that gives you the option to do it later.
You can tweak so many settings internally that it can be confusing.

The basic point about the Nokia 808 is that one no longer needs to
carry a pocket camera, which I think is a great step forward, despite
its limitations (mostly iffy autofocus, so one needs to take time on a
shot). The bigger item is replaces rather well (again in reasonable
light conditions) is a £1500 1080P camcorder...

I am honestly astonished by how close to diffraction limited its small
lens is. I wasn't really expecting the answer that I got.

I am amazed quite how well it does in daytime conditions.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

In article , Peter
scribeth thus

tony sayer wrote

The basic point about the Nokia 808 is that one no longer needs to
carry a pocket camera, which I think is a great step forward, despite
its limitations (mostly iffy autofocus, so one needs to take time on a
shot). The bigger item is replaces rather well (again in reasonable
light conditions) is a £1500 1080P camcorder...

All well 'n good but does it work well as a mobile phone 'tho?...

Yes; as good as any other smartphone.

I even have VOIP on it.

I ask as it seems to me that users of more modern smart phones seem to
have more trouble maintaining a connection than what users of older
phones do...
--
Tony Sayer

On Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:19:47 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 28/04/2013 20:51, Andy Champ wrote:
On 28/04/2013 15:12, Peter wrote:
What is your view (no pun intended)?

Pentax canon nokia in that order.

+1


Andy

Although I agree with your ranking I also think that the Canon and
Pentax are a tadge overexposed by at least half a stop and has burned
out the sky too much and the Nokia has underexposed by half a stop
retaining too much sky detail at the expense of the rest of the image.

The internal JPEG details and average info content a

Canon S95 uses its own custom Qtables approx
Luminance Q=93 Chroma Q~88. 2.8 bits/pixel

Pentax K5 Q=100 (both) 5.85 bits/pixel

Nokia 808 Q=100 (both) 7.1 bits/pixel

The bits/pixel is for the main image only.

So the information content in the Nokia shot *is* higher - largely
because the sky isn't burnt out and amazingly the adjacent pixels are
more nearly statistically independent. Impressive for such a tiny lens!

You've lost me there!

Zooming in hard on the TV aerial allows easy judgement of the psf. The
Cannon S95 has applied some pretty brutal unsharp masking and its image
quality might well be improved by toning it down a bit (if possible).
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

Java Jive writes:

Yes, I have some examples of those, here's one taken at the same time
as Ex1:
http://www.macfh.co.uk/PrivTest/Ex3.png

I took several shots of the same scene, with increasing exposures, and
it's noticeable how the longer the exposure, the more they just look
like daylight.

Sounds entirely reasonable. After all, you're taking a picture which is
illuminated by reflected sunlight, though admittedly rather dim
reflected sunlight!

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

newshound wrote in news:517ed592$0$29899$c3e8da3
:

On 23/04/2013 10:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

well we had better stop referring to horse power, since no one owns
horses for doing work with.


I'm planning to start using one of my mules to pull a harrow, instead of
using the tractor

:-)


Will go and shoot some "footage' on my SD Card later!

My digital camera sounds like an old SLR when I take a photo - why doesn't
it make a noise like and old movie camera when in video mode?

Seriously - current cameras are being sold to a generation who have no
empathy with old 35mm - so why perpetuate the effects and the lens
equivilents?

In article 42,
DerbyBorn scribeth thus
newshound wrote in news:517ed592$0$29899$c3e8da3
:

On 23/04/2013 10:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

well we had better stop referring to horse power, since no one owns
horses for doing work with.


I'm planning to start using one of my mules to pull a harrow, instead of
using the tractor

:-)


Will go and shoot some "footage' on my SD Card later!

My digital camera sounds like an old SLR when I take a photo - why doesn't
it make a noise like and old movie camera when in video mode?

Umm ... it has sound, your old camera didn't?...

Seriously - current cameras are being sold to a generation who have no
empathy with old 35mm - so why perpetuate the effects and the lens
equivilents?

Indeed I bet non of them have any idea what goes on in it or how it
works...

--
Tony Sayer

On Sun, 12 May 2013 09:20:18 GMT, DerbyBorn
wrote:

Seriously - current cameras are being sold to a generation who have no
empathy with old 35mm - so why perpetuate the effects and the lens
equivilents?

The sounds can be disabled on some and hacked/disabled on others.
In some markets the sound is required for 'privacy' reasons - whether
this is a legal requirement or not, I can't say.

On 12/05/2013 10:20, DerbyBorn wrote:


Will go and shoot some "footage' on my SD Card later!

My digital camera sounds like an old SLR when I take a photo - why doesn't
it make a noise like and old movie camera when in video mode?

Seriously - current cameras are being sold to a generation who have no
empathy with old 35mm - so why perpetuate the effects and the lens
equivilents?

What sound would you rather they made?

I can't think of any other sound (and I have been mulling this for ages,
going through lots of sounds, ringtones, music, etc.) that I would
rather it made.

--
Rod

On 2013-05-12, polygonum wrote:

On 12/05/2013 10:20, DerbyBorn wrote:


Will go and shoot some "footage' on my SD Card later!

My digital camera sounds like an old SLR when I take a photo - why doesn't
it make a noise like and old movie camera when in video mode?

Seriously - current cameras are being sold to a generation who have no
empathy with old 35mm - so why perpetuate the effects and the lens
equivilents?

What sound would you rather they made?

On my own camera, none. ;-) When other people are snooping around me,
a warning sound.