In The Picture

Living with Nikon’s D5100

 Part 2 – the good stuff, and there’s a lot of it

If someone had asked me two or three years ago what I wanted in my dream DSLR, I would’ve listed just about all of the features Nikon put into the D5100, except for video. It’s that simple. What more can you ask from a camera? That it makes espresso coffee?

The only reason the D5100 is no longer a dream camera because you can buy one for less than $700. It’s a hell of a lot of camera for the money. In terms of image quality, it towers over the direct competition, and punches way above its weight as you can see from the comparison with Sony’s newest sensor.

Image quality – dynamic range

Here’s an example of the D5100’s tremendous dynamic range, in this tough shot against a bright window to the outside.

Another tough shot of a golden sunrise with extreme light and shade

And a third – clouds and contrasts like this are always tough on cameras

Low light shooting

When shooting in controlled conditions on a tripod, ISO 6400 comes out pretty clean, and even extension H7 – equivalent to ISO 12,800 produces acceptable results if you take care with light and steady shooting. As always, click on the images to see a larger file.

The Night Vision (scene) mode raises the ISO sensitivity limit from H1 or ISO 25,600 to the equivalent of ISO 102,400 equivalent, but it only works in Black and White. You see a lot of noise here, along with tremendous loss of detail.

Here’s a real-life ISO 6400 shot. There’s some noise, and some loss of detail (some of that due to the ultrawide Sigma 8-16mm lens) but the image looks more than acceptable on a 24 in screen. My guess is that it would print OK up to A3 size.

Resolution, sharpness

Superb. Just click on the images to see a larger file

Catching the action

The essential ingredients are provided:

• 11-point AF System, fast and accurate
• Good burst speed and buffer depth
• Dynamic AF mode with 3D tracking
• Metering is more accurate than any previous Nikon
• Exposure lock and focus lock

And you can see how well it works

Handling and hands-on

The D5100 is about the same size as the D3100, just a fraction bigger than my old D40. It’s heavier, which makes it easier to hold steady. The body also balances better with bigger lenses. I have large hands with slim fingers, and I find the D5100 the perfect size and weight. I’ve grown quite used to the inward-angled grip, and size, weight and shape are just about perfect. I love holding the camera, and pushing the soft shutter. It’s an ‘elctronically-controlled vertical-travel focal-plane shutter,’ and it’s pleasant to touch.

That’s one thing I didn't like about the D700 I owned for a short time: the hard, metallic shutter. The other thing I don’t miss is the D700’s bulk and weight. The D5100 I can carry all day on bushwalks in a small Lowepro Adventura 120 bag. A big improvement on the D5000 is the 3-Inch, 921,000 pixel articulated LCD, this time hinged on the side. Live view mode focus is much faster than before, and the whole thing has become a whole lot more useful.

Other goodies

• Good battery life (600-700 shots)
• Effective Image sensor cleaning
• Electronic rangefinder for focusing non-AF-s lenses
• Intervalometer for time-lapse shooting

Reviewers say the Nikon D5100's penta mirror viewfinder is a bit of a letdown, given its magnification of 0.78x and frame coverage of 95% horizontal and vertical. Compared to what? A D3? It’s fine if you’re coming from a D40/60 body, trust me. I complained about the loss of the grid in the viewfinder but it turns out that the new focus points in their faint squares form a kind of grid that’s quite effective.

There’s more for the tech heads, mostly:

• External stereo mic jack
• Adjustable mic sensitivity
• GP-1 GPS unit support
• Support for Extreme Pro UHS-I cards
• Scene modes
• Effects

Scene modes are the usual lot, not very interesting to me, but a few of the effects are useful – selective colour, miniature, high key and low key.

Video

I don’t use this camera for video, so I’ll just list the features:

• Up to 1,920 x 1,080 pixel, full HD video, with 1,280 x 720 pixels (720p) option
• 25 or 30 frames per second, independent of resolution
• MPEG-4 AVCHD / H.264 compression, file format .MOV
• Built-in mic is monaural, includes connectivity for external stereo mic
• Full-time contrast-detection autofocus during movie capture
• support for the face detection and tracking
• Shutter speed and ISO sensitivity automatically controlled while recording movies
• Lens aperture cannot be changed when recording video

Kit Lenses

The 18-105 is probably the most common kit lens people choose for the D5100. This is not a highly regarded lens but it renders good colours and sharp images. Distortion is an issue at the wide end and at other points, and its pretty bad. You’d best switch auto distortion correction on, or be prepared to do some extra work in Post Processing. The lens comes with VR but it’s a big lump of a thing for what it does.

The twin kit with the 18-55mm and the 55-300mm is a better bet, since both of those lenses deliver images well beyond their humble specs and cost. The tele zoom delivers stunning images.

I already owned enough lenses so I just bought the body. My preferred lens combo is the old 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 and the new 55-300.

 

Bottom Line

Great camera. Astonishing how much Nikon crammed into this compact body. Hard to imagine what else you'd need to take great photos. Enormous value as well. Nirvana.

Kim

The Pink Ribbon Show

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act

Yesterday on Twitter, I noticed a tweet from Telstra that started with ‘we (heart) pink.’ This morning, I found the foyer of my gym covered in pink, pink ribbons everywhere and the staff dressed in pink. The water bottles in the big rack have pink tops. The foyer looks like it’s party time. Cancer party time.

Yes, it’s Pink Ribbon day and the Cancer Council’s website tells us that it ‘provides the perfect chance for you to do your part in the fight against breast cancer... So please, (heart) pink this October and help us make a difference for all those affected by breast cancer.’ http://www.pinkribbonday.com.au/?gclid=COWUypS5gqwCFQNNpgodBnDXJg

The Show must go on

The Pink Ribbon Fest plays out in prime time these days. Every enterprise that cares about it’s image supports it. Millions of well-meaning people support the show in the mistaken belief that they’re doing the right thing. Pink ribbons, pink bottle tops, pink shoes. Am I the only one who finds all this pink party stuff offensive?

No. Some Americans call it Pinkwashing. They talk about pink ribbon cause marketing, and disaster capitalism that is rife with hypocrisy and awash in money. Here’s what Breast Cancer Action’s home page says:

‘Pinkwashing has reached a new low this year with Promise Me, a perfume commissioned by Susan G. Komen (a cancer charity) for the Cure. Promise Me contains chemicals not listed in the ingredients that are regulated as toxic and hazardous. At Breast Cancer Action, we call that pinkwashing, and we urge you to Raise a Stink! with us about it.’ 

Here’s the video http://bcaction.org/2011/10/07/watch-the-video-send-a-letter-end-pinkwashing/

A must-see film is Léa Pool’s documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc Pink Ribbons, Inc., but you won’t find free screenings of it advertised by the Cancer Council. It explores the impact of massive corporate sponsorship on the integrity of the major cancer charities corporations. It shows a doctor who says there’s little data on the cause of breast cancer, and asks: how do you cure something if you don’t know what causes it? We’ll come back to that.

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/pinkribbonsinc

Too late for the real victims

My niece died of cancer two months ago. She was just 40 years old. In the four and a half years since she was diagnosed, she was given a lot of chemo, and she was given pretty high doses since she was relatively young and robust. She tried different oncologists and different clinics; she tried alternatives as well but, like most people in her position, she entrusted her care to the orthodox camp. Many people claim to have beaten cancer with alternatives, and by rejecting the 'slash, burn and poison' of orthodox cancer regimes, but this will not be advertised this month.

Two weeks ago, I attended the funeral of a wonderful man, a family man, a medical man, a runner and a gardener. He was 69 years of age. It was the fourth such funeral my best friend had attended in the last twelve months. Another friend has just had prostrate surgery, and we hope that that’s the end of it. My daughter’s wonderful mother-in-law is going through chemo right now to stop an unusual form of cancer. So it goes.

Is that the best you can do with all that money?

The war on cancer has been in full flight for four decades (since President Nixon declared it officially). Thousands of breakthroughs and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the increases in survival rates are pitiful across all cancers. Yes, some cancers have much better outcomes today but others do not. The overall increase in survival rates is measured in small percentages, and are far outstripped by the rise in incidence rates.

The cancer industry is pretty slick when it comes to its report cards. Survival means: still alive after 5 years. Yes, they’ve re-written the dictionary to hide the brutal facts. Here’s a simple, unadulterated fact: In 1911, cancer incidence in Australia was 1 in 100. Today, 1 in 3 Australian men will have cancer before the age of 75, along with 1 in 4 women. http://www.aihw.gov.au/media-release-detail/?id=6442464361

The cancer industry has explanations for the rise in incidence rates, of course: first, we’re much better at diagnosing cancer these days, and secondly we’re detecting cancer much earlier than we used to so we’re seeing a whole lot more of it. Earlier detection greatly improves five-year survival rates, of course. There you go.

Winning few battles and losing the war

Cancers in hormone-sensitive tissues, such as breast, prostrate and ovarian cancers have seen dramatic rises in incidence. A number of chemicals common in plastics are known as oestrogen-mimics, and oestrogen is a cancer promoter. Cancers of the digestive system, stomach, colon, liver and pancreas have also gone through the roof. Isn’t that a strong clue that our bodies have trouble dealing with the chemicals and heavy metals in our food chain, and in the air we breathe?

One of my friends is an oncologist. I said to him a while back: ‘The steep rise of cancer incidence must be related to all the chemicals and metals in our environment. Why don’t all you cancer doctors launch a campaign to push government and business to clean the country up?’ He shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘ We live in the world we live in.’ I said: ‘Oh really? Are you worried about doing yourselves out of a job?’

He didn’t react well to that, so I added: ‘What you’re doing is like standing at the bottom of a poisoned river treating the sick fish, instead of going upstream and stopping the poisoning.’ He mumbled something about that being too hard.For a non-pink perspective on the causes of cancer, go this way

http://www.cancerpreventionsociety.org/ourtoxicworld.htm

Yes, it’s so much easier to HEART PINK and cover everything in pink ribbons, and feel all good and virtuous, instead of asking the obvious question: what are we doing to stop the spread of cancer?

What will make our leaders and our people sit up and ask that question? The incidence rate going to 1 in 2 by age 50? It’ll get there before too long if we don’t change anything. It’s not all pink. I’ll leave you with an encouraging post from Zoe Christopher, BCAction’s Resource Liaison Officer, who says

‘In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’

http://bcaction.org/2011/10/19/telling-the-truth-is-a-revolutionary-act/

Kim

52 Suburbs in Sydney – the work of Louise Hawson

52 suburbs, a thousand faces

‘My name is Louise. I've lived in Sydney for over 30 years but had never set foot in most of its 600+ suburbs. So from September 2009 to October 2010, I explored and photographed one new Sydneysuburb a week in search of the beauty in the 'burb.’

That’s what Louise says on her blog. I saw her exhibition at the Museum of Sydney a while back, and meant to write about it but didn’t get there.

What struck me about Louise’s photography was the rawness of many of the images, and the glaring technical issues (light blowouts and stuff like that). And what struck me at the same time was how well the images told their stories, and how the rawness helped them do that. Somehow they look like they’re snatched on the street. That’s how it was, here it is. Unadulterated. Perfect street photography.

Louise also uses a simple but effective technique, putting two images side by side that have something in common (form or colour) but have very different subjects.

Here’s just one example of a 'burb Louise has captured in her unique style: Arncliffe. http://www.52suburbs.com/2010/06/suburb-no-39-arncliffe.html

Now I see she’s getting a new project up and running: 52 Suburbs Around The World http://www.52suburbs.com/ , and she’s looking for sponsors large and small, and crowd funding. She’s already raised over $8,000. You can also help Louise by buying the 52 Suburbs book - on here website.

‘A note about the cities I've ended up choosing. You know how I was going to visit 12 cities? Well, having given it some serious thought, I've reduced the number of cities to between 4-6. Why? Because that way we can spend 2-3 months in each city and really get a feel for the place, exploring 8-12 suburbs in each. A month might just have been rushing it. Plus I'm keen to try and get as many locals in these cities to interact on the blog and the longer we're there, the more chance there is of that happening.’

Good on you, Louise, and good luck!

Kim

The Lytro camera – game changer

A quantum leap in digital photography

The technology

Lytro is the first camera maker to put the ‘plenoptic’ or ‘light field’ principle into a consumer device. The first Lytro model has just been announced and sells for $400 to $500 (two flavours). The camera uses a micro-array of lenses rather than a single lens, and this allows it to captures far more light data, from many angles, than conventional cameras can.

The Lytro captures far more digital image information than conventional cameras, so much of it that you don’t have to worry about focus. That’s right, you can focus after the event, much as you can change white balance after shooting RAW. Lytro’s software lets you choose the point of focus from any point in the depth of field.

What’s more, the people you send Lytro images to can do the same (as long as they have the software as well). The PR says that this allows images to be shared and explored in news ways, that still photos become 'interactive, living pictures.'

The camera

It’s the size of a pocket torch, lens on one end, LCD screen on the other. It weighs less than eight ounces, and is made of brushed aluminium. There’s a power button, and a zoom ring of sorts (more of a collar). Battery and flash memory are built-in.

Power on is immediate, and there’s no shutter lag. ‘No auto-focus, no unnecessary modes, dials, or settings,’ says Lytro’s website. ‘And no flash, because Lytro can handle many low light settings.’

The camera has an 8x optical zoom, with the aperture constant at f/2. A DSLR lens with these specs wouldn’t be a cheap item, nor a small one. Resolution is quoted as 11 mega-rays, that is the sensor captures 11 million rays of light per image. The resolution in pixel terms is not stated.

The bottom line

The Lytro camera comes with its own image-management software loaded onto the device. Once you plug the camera in to a MAC, the software auto-installs and shows a gallery of images you can work with. At this time, the software only works with the Mac (OS 10.6 or later), but a Windows version is in the pipeline.

The only obvious downside is the 1.46-inch-diagonal touch-screen display, really too small for previewing photos on the device, but here you don’t need to worry about focus and exposure. Post processing is everything here.

If the Lytro does what it says on the tin, it'll turn the digicam market on its ear, scare the EVIL makers half to death and nibble at the heels of the DSLR makers. Check the CNET video at the link below, and see for yourself.

The essential links

Hands-on video

http://cnettv.cnet.com/lytro-camera/9742-1_53-50113476.html

Back story

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/technology/22camera.html?_r=1

The technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenoptic_camera

Interview with Lytro founder Ren Ng

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/22/light-field-camera-captures-unprecedented-images-lets-you-cho/

Lytro website

https://www.lytro.com/camera

Specs

https://www.lytro.com/camera#tab-specs

Inside the Sydney Opera House

A house with many faces

Our Opera House is an icon that has come to stand for Sydney. Ay the beginning, Jørn Utzon’s daring design caused plenty of controversy. 50 years on, it is still ahead of its time. Of course, these days we’re all proud of the house.

The Opera House has many faces. Below you can see a few of them, and get a look inside. Once a year, the Opera House opens to the public, and we took advantage of that last weekend. Please click on the images to see a larger file.

The idea was brilliantly simple. Or simply brilliant.

From the Botanical Gardens

From Circular Quay

The Concert Hall

On the harbour side. Yes, that is the colour of the carpet

From Bradley's Head, Mosman

From Cremorne Point, when the sun came through after the early morning rain

The morning when the dust storm hit Sydney at the end of the long drought a couple of years ago

A more usual sunrise

As most visitors would see it

We must celebrate our great visionaries

Kim

 

 

Music from out of this world

Spiegel im Spiegel by Avo Paert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZScAdV8qE&feature=related

Enjoy peaceful Sundays

Kim

Simply scrumptious Lamb Shanks

Serve your guests a knock-out meal that’s dead easy

The casserole season is just about over down here, but cold weather is on the way for you in the northern hemisphere. This really is simple but needs good ingredients and 2.5 -3 hours of slow cooking. That’s all.

Here’s what you need for 4 people:

A decent size pot or casserole dish

4 smallish lamb shanks

4-5 spring onions

3-4 carrots

4-5 baby parsnips (or two standard ones)

1 sweet potato

Field mushrooms

Tin of tomatoes (crushed or chopped)

Flour

Paprika (mild)

Rosemary

Thyme

3-4 Bay leaves

Half a bottle of wine (not too heavy)

Vegetable stock

Brown the shanks in a frypan (in olive oil), sprinkling them with flour and paprika, five minutes each side (more flour and paprika). Once that’s done, add the tomatoes, wine and stock (you might need up to a litre but keep some stock in reserve to add later if you need to). Then add the spring onions (uncut) and chopped up veggies (chunky). Cut standard parsnips lengthways. Stir well.

Bring to the boil and either simmer on the stove or put the lot into a casserole dish and put it in the oven at about 350/160 degrees. Check every half hour to make sure there’s enough liquid, stir well and add more stock if needed. After 1.5 hours, add the mushrooms (chopped or whole depending on size), chopped stalks from the spring onions, herbs and bay leaves.

Cook for at least another hour, making sure the shanks and veggies are mostly covered. The sauce should be medium - between thick and thin. Serve with basmati rice, potatoes or pasta. There you go. It’s even better if you let it cool and put it in the fridge overnight.

Kim

An open letter to our government

First, Fire your PR company

Along with most Australians, we have watched on in horror as you’ve stumbled around the political forest, crashing into trees at every turn. My partner and I work in marketing and PR, and we wonder who your strategists and advisors are. In fact, we wonder if they are undercover agents for the opposition. That’s how shocking your blunders have been.

The carbon tax was a win at long last, and a chance for you to take the high ground. What did you do? The very next day you jumped into the gutter with Tony Abbott once more, flogging the long-dead horse of offshore refugee processing. Why, oh why do you keep painting yourselves into deadly corners, and behave like stubborn teenagers who won’t be told, won’t listen, won’t take advice. Hell-bent on making their own mistakes. All of them.

Carbon Tax

Your selling of the carbon tax was a marketing disaster. Did you sell this as a tax on big polluters? No. Now consider this: carbon means nothing to most people – pollution does. Pollution is toxic to the health of our children, to their brain development. Pollution is linked with leukemia and other cancers – did you talk about these toxic effects that parents deeply care about? No. Instead, you let the opposition get away with calling the tax toxic. How on earth did you let this happen?

Did you take the high ground and remind Australians that we are innovators? That we are born leaders forging ahead instead of waiting for everyone else to move first? That’s our history, from Howard Florey to Ian Frazer. From Bradman to Freeman. Did you talk about investing in clean and renewable energy technologies? And creating whole new industries with thousands of jobs? If you did, no one heard you.

Mining Tax

The miners stared you down and you left money on the table, huge amounts of money, enough to return your budget to surplus in very short order. Were they really going to pick up sticks and move to the Congo or Nigeria or Sierra Leone? Where they have to pay huge bribes to governments and employ armies of security guards and take all kinds of big risks?

This was another marketing disaster – if you can’t garner broad popular support for taxing big polluters and hugely profitable miners, then you and your PR and marketing people are incompetent. Period.

Refugees

How did your policy of ‘treating refugees more humanely’ turn into a policy focused on ‘breaking the people smugglers’ model’? How did your opposition to Howard’s Pacific Solution turn into the Malaysia solution? You had the chance to take the high ground once more – treating refuges with compassion and fairness – but you decided to get into the gutter instead, with Tony Abbott and the radio shock jocks. And you lost.

You’ll always lose fights in the gutter because Tony Abbott and his gang and Alan Jones and his followers rule that space with their simple labels and bumper-sticker messages. You are the Labour Party, and we expect more from you than rampant opportunism. You lost the light on the hill because you’re in the gutter trying to win over the populists who will never vote for you in a thousand years. Meanwhile, you’ve lost your real supporters. 

People won’t vote for you if you don’t know who you are, if you can’t tell them what you stand for, if you can’t be true to your principles, if you can’t be counted on.

Our Prime Minister

People who know Julia Gillard say she is very capable, but to us in the real world she comes across as a lumbering, droning, boring, unengaging politician. If you’re not going to replace her with someone more competent, can’t you at least hire Julia a voice coach who can teach her how to speak with more impact and animation? And a speech coach who can teach her how to craft get messages and get them across? And a fashion consultant who can help her dress better?

Please remember, if you can, who you are and the hopes and aspirations the people who voted for you held. Climb out of the gutter and start looking for your principles, and please fire your PR people, your strategists and coaches before it’s too late. Call us, please. Or send us an email. We can help.

Kim

Please note:

This is the text of an email I sent to Anthony Albanese, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd.

Living with the NIKON D5100

Still a great camera after the dust has settled?

Part 1 – the bad news (there's not a lot of it)

It may take longer with a human partner, but 3-4 months of living with a camera is enough to reveal its flaws. Let’s start with a glaring one that I missed in my earlier review: Not enough buttons on the body. A depth-of-field preview button would be great but we're asking for a lot in a bargain-priced consumer body. HDR is an option, however, but there's no button for that either. 

I’m no big fan of HDR photography, as I’m a purist at heart, but it comes in handy the harsh contrasts of Australia’s bright sun. The D5100 has no button for this – it’s a menu setting. Worse, it’s a single shot menu setting. In other words, it turns itself off again after one HDR shot. That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever come across, Nikon!

The only way around this, pointed out by a fellow Nikon blogger a while back, is to choose HDR on the selectable FN button. Problem is, that’s the button I use to choose the ISO setting. Why not use the Auto ISO function and let the camera choose the sensitivity? Because that’s something I want some control over.

Another gripe is that the little white lens mount button is too close to the FN button. When you’ve got your eye glued to the viewfinder, it’s easy to mistake as the FN button. On a D40x it’s on the front of the body, not here on the side. On the whole, I have to say that the buttons on the back of the camera still catch me out. The layout just isn't as logical as on a D40, where you can work with your eyes closed.

Does HDR work? Yes, but you’d better make sure you hold the camera steady for the two shots it takes, or use it on a tripod. Otherwise you spoil the outcome.

Normal shooting

HDR-image

Yes, the difference is subtle but it's there - click on the files for a larger image

High ISO shooting in the real world

I get a bit annoyed when I see the ISO comparisons at the end of camera tests, you know: those rows of wine or olive oil labels taken at various settings, probably on a tripod. The D5100’s images were judged by most reviewers as clean at ISO 3200 and fine or at least perfectly usable at ISO 6400. Here are the kind of shots I'm talking about:

ISO 6400

ISO 12,800

These images look just fine, don't they? It's a different story in the real world, where even ISO 3200 is on the ragged edge with noise, smudging and loss of detail.

And ISO 6400 gets more noisy, with more loss of detail.

Here's a close crop

All this is not to say you can’t get usable images after some post-processing and resizing. What I’m trying do here is to get this noise thing into proper perspective: for real-life shooting, ISO 1600 is tops for uncompromised IQ, and ISO 3200 is OK with a bit of care shooting and more in post-processing. ISO 6400 is on the edge, best left for emergencies.

Other stuff

Yes, the viewfinder could be more generous. It could use a penta prism instead of penta mirrors. It would also be bigger and more costly. You can't have it all in this compact package at the modest price Nikon's asking.

Kim

EVEN IN POLITICS, MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN

At long last, Australia will begin dealing with refugees in a more humane manner, and stop  locking them up for years. This is nothing special - every other western country has been dealing with refugees that way for many years, and it’s in line with the UN HCR’s refugee convention which Australia is a signatory to.

What is special is the way this 180 degree turn came about: both our government and our opposition insisted on playing gutter politics with one eye firmly on the populist fringe shock jocks who keep demonising refugees and whipping the disenfranchised fringe voters into a frenzy.

It all began with the government’s ludicrous idea of sending refugees arriving on boats to Malaysia, ignoring the howls of protest from every corner of the political spectrum. A refugee advocate tested this idea in the Supreme Court which found that it was unconstitutional. The government, hell-bent on digging itself deeper into this hole, introduced legislation that circumvented the court decision figuring the opposition would back the legislation (none of the independents did, nor the Greens).

Our opposition, led by the abominable No-Man Tony Abbott, did what it does best: oppose everything the government has ever come up with. Yes, same on this occasion and the bill was sunk, leaving away-at-the-hairdressers-forever Julia Gillard looking even more incompetent than usual.

(Don't you love Nicholson?)

For the rest of us, or most of the rest of us, we got what we wanted so thank you Gillard and Abbott for making it happen at last. Hopefully, we can now stop cringing with embarrassment whenever someone raises the issue of refugees.

Kim