Canon, this is completely ridiculous

$900 for this dastardly pair? You've GOT to be kidding

No doubt about it, for serious photographers, the brand new Canon 1D X has a metric tonne of reasons for why it deserves its place at the top rungs as the Canon flagship. It's nothing short of an incredible piece of kit; one that will have many a photographer drooling, and many a bank manager rubbing their hands in glee. It is, rather obviously, the most epic dSLR camera ever.

Which is, my dear reader, why I'm so bloody furious with Canon. Carrying a hefty £5300 / $6800 price tag, this piece of kit costs more than a snazzy-looking second-hand Porsche, so it had better be bloody awesome. Most signs point to 'yes'. I'm not angry about the things Canon have included in this lovely package of photographic nirvana. I'm pissy about the things they've decided to make optional extras.

Where's my GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth?

Specifically, the pieces of kit that are at the receiving end of my rage is the Canon GP-E1 GPS receiver and the Canon WTF-E6 wireless transmitter. Canon claims that they "designed the GP-E1 to share the same rugged and durable exterior construction as the EOS-1D X without adding additional bulk", which is outrageously ridiculous in itself. The very definition of "adding additional bulk" is having to attach an external thing to your camera in order to add extra functionality.

So, why didn't Canon just build it into the camera? I have heard a few potential explanations, but they're all absolute hogwash...

There isn't enough space in the 1D X camera body - Pick up the smartphone that's closest to you. Let's say, for the sake of this argument, that it's an iPhone 4S, which was launched at roughly the same time as the 1D X. The Jesus-phone contains Bluetooth, a GPS receiver, the radios needed for telephony and data traffic, WiFi, a digital compass, a 3.5-inch 960x640-pixel screen, a load of megapixels to boot, and enough processing power to edit photos on the go.

An Apple iPhone 4S is 63 cm³ and weighs 140g. The camera is 2,150 cm³ or so. That means that the camera is roughly 34 times larger than the phone, and weighs approximately 10 times more*. Saying that there isn't space to include three measly extra radios and a bit of extra electronics is just daft. If anyone tells you otherwise, hold up any modern smart-phone and tell them to shut their pie-holes.

*) Canon haven't released an official weight figure for the Canon EOS 1Dx yet, but its predecessors all weighed in at about 1,550g or so, and after handling a 1D X, I wouldn't say that this thing is going to come out any lighter, exactly...

The technology isn't there - We can't say that there's no precedent for including this sort of tech into cameras either. Say what you will about the Fujifilm FinePix XP30 (for example that it's one of the most hideous cameras ever made), but it comes with a $150 price-tag, and has GPS built-in. As for WiFi, take the Samsung SH100. Acquiring one lightens your wallet by a featherweight $130, and it packs all sorts of gadgets - including WiFi - into a package that's only 94 cm³. And it weighs less than the aforementioned iPhone 4S.

Oh, and on the issue of WiFi, a lot of us have been relying on Eye-Fi memory cards. That's right - a flippin' SD card that packs up to 8GB of storage and full WiFi functionality. I would, at this time, invite you to reach for your nearest camera, and grab the SD card out of it. Now marvel. An Eye-Fi card is the size of a postage stamp and about as thick as a coin. They can be had from about £40, too, which isn't that much more expensive than a non-WiFi-enabled high-end SD card. Tech like this is nothing short of actual magic. But it exists, and has done so for about half a decade.

So, dearest Canon, the tech is out there. I suspect you are aware of this, since most of the SD-card cameras you've sold in the last few years are Eye-Fi compatible. Oh, and do you remember the lovely Canon PowerShot SX230 you announced in February? It's a tiny, tiny camera that has GPS built-in...

Rubbing salt in the wound

If we for a moment ignore the slap in the face of not just including these features in the cameras in the first place, let's take a look at the knockout punch: The price tag of the add-ons.

Once you've plonked down a small family saloon worth of cash, do you really want to pay another (rumored) $300 for GPS functionality and $600 for the WiFi/Bluetooth features? I don't want to sound ungrateful to the Gods of Photography, but $300 for a GPS chip? You have got to be shitting me - you can build your own GPS logger shield for Arduino for under $20, and ready-built USB GPS receivers retail at just over $30.

The WiFi/Bluetooth thingiemajig is even more insulting. Its rumoured $600 price-tag is enough to buy a whole additional Canon SLR camera body. Repeating the same exercise as above, if you were to add Bluetooth to your own homebrew project, you're looking at a $40 pricetag. WiFi is a bit pricier, at $90 for the kit. Nonetheless, that still means that you, as a random average joe, can spend $130 to buy the components needed to build the gadget Canon are selling to you for $600.

Keep in mind that these prices are retail price, too - There's no way Canon doesn't have some pretty serious buying power, both when it comes to twisting suppliers' arms and that little concept of economics known as economy of scale. The components to build the GPS unit won't cost Canon more than $10 or so, and the WiFi/Bluetooth unit might cost them $40. At the most.

So, what it all boils to is that you can buy a weather-proof camera that has WiFi built in for $150 (that's 25% the price of the WiFi attachment for the Canon 1D X), or you could buy a GPS-enabled camera for $130 (less than half the GPS-attachment for Canon's flagship).

My dear Canon, do you really hate your professional photographers that much?

So why wasn't this stuff included?

On their website, Canon state that "The GPS Receiver GP-E1 has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission", which might explain in part why they decided to hold off on shipping them out. Presumably, choosing to include GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth would have to include a round of testing that might have delayed their project... But I'm sure people would have merrily waited a couple of months to have this stuff built in.

Another potential (if moderately far-fetched) reason for choosing to keep the GPS / WiFi / Bluetooth stuff external, is that these items are all transmitters/receivers. Not too long ago, for example, I had the opportunity to take photos in a military research facility, and one of the things I had to sign (in addition to the Official Secrets Act), was a declaration that I brought absolutely no electronics into the facility that could transmit or receive data. That included having to re-format my memory cards before entering the facility, in front of the security guys, and handing over my mobile phone and Kindle(!) for safe-keeping before I was allowed into the facility.

This type of thing is already a problem for journalists: It's not illegal to send text messages from a court room, but take a photo, and you could end in deep doo-doo. As such, many journos tape off the cameras on their phones, choose cases for their phones that cover up the camera, or choose phones without cameras - all to avoid being accused of taking photos when they're not supposed to . Employees that work in sensitive industries (such as GCHQ or the Security Services) are running into this problem in a more acute way: For some employees, any phone with a camera is completely banned, no matter if the camera is covered up or not. Have you tried finding a phone that doesn't have a camera on it recently? It's surprisingly tricky.

It isn't unthinkable that there are agencies that need photography but ban all and any use of any GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi. Keeping these units as attachments could solve this problem, meaning that super special scientific spy photographers can continue using Canon's top-of-the-line snapper without running foul with their agency policies. It could also be the case that Canon want to give photographers the option to not have transmitters or receivers on them in case they are taking scientific photos of some sort, that might be disturbed by any electronic interference... But surely there must be a better solution for those edge cases?

So, what would the solution be?

Okay, so I hate the kind of blogger who whines about something without offering up at least some idea towards a solution. Here we go...

If we for a brief moment accept that Canon has a good reason to not want to include radios in their top-end cameras, because a fraction of their user base might be put off by them... It could be solved very differently: Instead of adding expensive and clunky external units they could introduce expansion slots that keep the GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth chips and radios on compact-sized expansion modules, to be inserted into the camera body itself.

Obviously Canon would get big bonus points if these modules come included with the camera, so you can install them and then forget about them, instead of running the risk of forgetting your GPS unit when you really need it. This would keep the potential benefit of being able to update extension modules later. Hell, they could even consider opening up for third-party extension modules that could be inserted into the camera (RadioPopper, I'm looking at you here...), for semi-permanent extensions of functionality.

Just don't insult us by charging us $900 for a set of 'accessories' that really ought to have been part of the original product. It makes your 'flagship' look an awfully lot less flagship-like.

This article was originally written for Gizmodo UK.

A bit of a change at Small Aperture

Daniela

Over the summer, Team Small Aperture has lived through some really exciting changes. Haje and his lovely Other Half have moved to a new continent; Gareth and his lovely Other Half are expecting a baby; and I quit my day job and became a social hermit in order to write a book. (If I’d had an Other Half, lovely or otherwise, he’d have left me and cited abandonment. Thankfully I don’t.) And through all of this, we received an offer from Pixiq asking us very nicely if Small Aperture would like to join forces with them. We thought about the offer carefully; after all, we’ve worked hard here, and we don’t want to relinquish anything that we’ve striven to create and develop, but it did have its advantages. The decision wasn’t at all cut-and-dried.

Eventually, though, after extensive discussions amongst ourselves and with the team at Pixiq, we’ve decided to accept their offer. From our perspective, it gives us the latitude to be able to do what we do best: take photos and write. We don’t need to worry about maintaining servers, about the site collapsing around our ears, or about financing things. We can get on with our very new lives with a bit more certainty.

From your perspective, very little changes. You still get to hear what we have to say about new cameras, about workshops and exhibitions, about books, about anything that’s even vaguely related to photography. The monthly competition will continue. And we’ll continue to be as irreverent, disparaging, excited, cynical, and hyperactive as we’ve always been. You won’t even have to change your RSS feed.

We’re very excited to be joining Pixiq, and admittedly a little bit sad to be leaving behind the black and turquoise Small Aperture design. But we hope that you’ll stay with us the for the ride, because it’s going to be awesome.

Gursky's Rhine II - small potatoes in an auction house

How sharp was your intake of breath when you read the Andreas Gurksy’s Rhine II sold for US $4.3 million (£2.7 million) at auction at Christie’s, New York last week? For most of us $4 million is an obscene amount of money to spend on anything, let alone a photographic print. But baby, this is small potatoes in an auction house. For some people this sort of money is pocket change. When I was 18, I was an intern at a London art dealers. The painting hanging on my office wall was a Renoir worth £6 million. So it got me thinking, how does Gursky’s print compare against a few other things sold at auction?

Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust

Let’s start with the most expensive painting sold at auction. That would be Picasso’s 1932 Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. Like Gursky’s photograph, it was also sold by Christie’s in New York, but in May 2010. The sum it went for was a little more than Gursky’s print, though. An anonymous buyer handed over US $106.5 million for it. Heaven only knows what that dude’s insurance premium would be.

That Picasso isn’t the most expensive painting ever sold, though. That honour goes to a Jackson Pollock, called Number 5, 1948, which David Geffen sold privately to an anonymous buyer in 2006. The precise sum wasn’t disclosed, but it’s widely believed to have been a shudder-inducing US $140 million.

Number 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock

What about a sculpture? Alberto Giacometti’s 1961 L’Homme qui marche I sold at Sotheby’s in London for US $104.3 million in February 2010. At the time, that made it the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction.

Giacometti's L'Homme qui marche I

Laurence Graff left school at 14 and began his career cleaning toilets. He’s now the owner of a diamond mine in South Africa as well as the Graff Pink – a potentially flawless 24.78 carat pink diamond – that he bought for £28.8 million at a Swiss auction house in November 2010. The boy made good.

The same thing couldn’t really be said for the most expensive racehorse sold at auction. The Green Monkey was bought by John Magnier for US 16 million in 2006. He barely saw a racecourse and was retired a maiden. Mr Magnier is well aware that you win some and you lose some, though. That’s just racing.

So in the grand scheme of things, US $4.3 million isn’t that much for a photograph, even if The Guardian did describe it as a sludgy image of desolate, featureless landscape. Ladies and Gentlemen of the photographic profession, we’d better get cracking with our sales.

Nikon's financial curate's egg

Excellent in parts! That’s probably the best summary of the Q&A that Nikon released today on its financial results for the second quarter of this financial year. Natural disasters and the release of some exciting pieces of new kit have combined to give investors good news and bad news, but overall, the situation’s not looking quite as rosy as it was at the end of September.

Not so many D5100s around at the moment

Until the awful flooding in Thailand submerged Nikon’s dSLR camera and lens production plant and forced it to suspend manufacture, sales for dSLR cameras had been up against like-sales for the same period last year. So instead of a projected 25 million sales of dSLRs and interchangeable lenses for the entire year, the figure’s been revised to 15 million units. The Thai plant is unlikely to resume production at all until January 2012, and it won’t be at capacity until the end of March 2012. Meanwhile, Nikon’s other factories are stepping into the breach, along with some partner organisations.

There’s been less demand for compact cameras across the market as a whole. I’m inclined to suggest that’s a result of improved mobile phone cameras and mirror-less cameras carving up demand betweeen them. Nikon, though, has bucked this trend and hasn’t seen its compact camera sales drop off. It reckons it’ll sell about 100 million of them this year.

Picking up the sales baton - the V1

As for the Nikon 1 – supply cannot keep up with demand. The J1 and V1 seem to be very popular pieces of kit. And Nikon wants to keep it that way. To help defray the losses from the dSLR disaster, they’ll be pushing sales and production of the 1 series. Let’s hope that the Chinese factories can up the supply.

The bottom line? Nikon has adjusted its annual sales and operating income figures downwards. It’s projecting ¥65 billion in annual sales and an operating income of ¥23 billion.

(If you’re so inclined, you can read the full Q&A here.)

I Just Remembered How Fun Photography Is

Blinkers. Yes, those things they put on horses to keep them looking straight ahead. But I’m not talking about real blinkers, no: these are special, invisible, metaphorical blinkers. In particular, I’m talking about the ones that form around the eyes of a photographer once in a while. The more you learn, the less you experiment. It’s the process of going from a hobbyist to taking photos for a living, or indeed to just having the drive and need to improve. We all get it once in a while and it can be hard to shrug off, especially when we’re looking for a new subject or concept but feel bound by the rules. So how do we start afresh? How do we tear those blinkers off (no, stop clawing at the sides of your face – like I said, they’re metaphorical blinkers) and find a fresh new approach? This week, I think I found the answer: you have to remind yourself that photography is fun. 

Baileys - the smile maker.

At the moment, I’m undertaking a couple of portraiture projects. One of them was born of frustration, of sorts, at feeling like I had no ideas, or that anything I could think of only took a quick trip to google to discover that it had already been done. Of course it had: seeing as there are 7 billion people in the world (that’s right, I read the news), it’s quite likely that someone has had a similar idea to your incredible, totally original megaplan that just formed in your massive, omnipotent, glowing master brain. Any project I could think of seemed boring, limp, overdone, predictable, stiff, stupid, silly. The only photo work I was doing was commissioned stuff – stuff I’ve been doing for a while for which I have naturally developed a pattern. This is an inherently human problem: we are genetically programmed to recognise and find comfort in patterns, yet simultaneously, we get tired of repetition. We need variety, change, difference. This is why we are often warned about photography as a job, because we find that when it goes from a creative pastime to something we do as a matter of course or a process we repeat for cash, it becomes that other thing: it becomes work.

Just chillin'

You can imagine my delight, then, when I began this new photo project and the blinkers came flying off at speed at wild angles. Tragically, one of them flew headlong into a small boy. Thankfully this small boy is also metaphorical and represents creative inhibitions, so we can all relax. This long term project was coming along nicely, when I felt something at the sides of my face. That’s right, further blinkers, only these ones were flesh coloured and therefore harder to detect at first. I sat down and sighed heavily, like a man struggling with a tortured, extended metaphor. The subject was interesting, but I needed to mix up my approach also.

The company I am following for my project had an office party upon reaching a milestone, and I was invited. As I am both never one to turn down the opportunity to take photographs yet also never one to turn down the opportunity to party,
I found myself in something of a quandary. Then I came up with the solution: I would take my equipment, set it to an auto mode to make it at least a little foolproof, and then set them loose with it. Tonight, they would take photos of each other, in a relaxed environment where they were in control of everything. As I handed the camera over to the first willing participant, a wave of consternation laden questions passed over me. Will they be into it? What if they break the camera? Will this work, or will it just be a bunch of terrible, unusable snaps? Is this cheating? How far is too far when breaking the rules? Has the gin run out?

I have no idea what's happening here.

I was absolutely delighted to discover that almost everyone was not only willing but eager to have a go. In addition, they took greater care of my camera than I do, holding it with extreme care as if I had given them my newborn baby. I smiled as I watched the behaviour of those with the camera and how it differed from person to person. Some would try to be more stealthy in their approach, waiting to become unnoticed before firing off a few shots at distracted individuals. Others initially took the camera with some uncertainty, gingerly padding around wondering what to do. I would turn away and check back on them a few minutes later to find the same person sliding down the wall into a crouching position, snapping here, snapping there, rushing around the other side of the sofas to get that crucial shot they’d just spotted. Some would simply observe and record, whilst others would get their workmates to pose or dance or do something silly. It made me incredibly happy to see people enjoying photography, to see everyone take to it and have a go and the fun and enjoyment it was bringing them.

That’s when I had a somewhat simple yet important revelation – they were having fun with the camera. Because that’s one of the many things photography is: fun! Somewhere along the line, although I had never stopped loving what I do, I had forgotten to relax and have fun, instead of being intense and super concerned all the time when taking photos.

I also got a lot out of being on the other side of the camera. As a portrait photographer, it’s important to get a sense of how it feels to be the subject as well as the photographer. That sense of empathy can help you when it’s your turn to take photos again. I also realised that it can be easy to forget that someone is taking photos, and you get used to it more quickly than I thought. This is also useful to me, because where once I might have hesitated to shoot, because I wondered if the shot would be natural enough or if I was being overly conspicuous, it seems that often this would not have been the case.

This is Dave. He has lost.

What was even more rewarding was that the learning process did not stop there. When I uploaded the images to my machine the following day to look over them, I was initially picking out all the focusing problems, all the low lighting issues, the odd compositions with peoples’ head coming out of other peoples’ backs or not being quite right in the frame and the strange choice of angles. On my first pass through the images, I was thinking “hmmm, can’t really use that, can’t really use that, not sure about that”. On my second pass, I learned something – on at least a few images that I had supposedly looked over, I had missed some brilliant moments that made the photograph worth including, such as Dave losing at a game of Super Puzzle Fighter, his head in his hands, which was being matched by his onscreen avatar and accompanied by the word “LOSE” in big letters in the top right. It was a brilliant little image and, regardless of how much intention was behind it, it had recorded a whole story in one frame. Surely, this is the very essence of a great photograph. I had lost myself in the rule of thirds and exposure levels, looking purely at the technical and missing the artistic, the story being told in the image. It was an eye opener for me – a technically proficient image still lacks punch and excitement if there’s no story within it. It’s not that I didn’t know this, of course, but sometimes learning by experience is infinitely more valuable than learning something in theory.

If you’re feeling burnt out with your photography or you feel like you’re treading water, it’s probably because you’ve forgotten how to have fun. Don’t allow the technical to overwhelm you. Remember, photography is part science, part art, and wholly fun.

Thanks to Gareth Dutton for this. You should completely check out his work, too!

Finding the Fuji that fits

Those of us who’ve been around cameras for a while pretty much know what we want out of our magical lightbox machines when we come to upgrading or getting a new toy. But if you’re new to photography, or not surgically attached to your camera, buying one is a tricky business. There’s more choice out there than Imelda Marcos faced on a daily basis selecting a pair of shoes, from price, to spec, to how they look and feel. It’s headache-inducing. Small wonder, then, that I love things that can make choosing a camera easier for people, and I got a bit excited when I trundled over to the Fuji website and saw its new-fangled camera comparison widget.

I was all set to find the right Fuji camera for me, or more likely my camera-phobic mother. I was expecting a few simple check box questions, asking about my camera needs, my proficiency levels, and my budget. And then, whizz-bang, it’d spew out a few suggestions. But no, that was a bit too much to hope for.

Instead, you get to compare the specs side-by-side of three different cameras. You can filter your selections by series, zoom, how wide the lens is, pixel count, stabilisation, and even heaven love us, by colour. Once you’ve made your choices, you can see how your three cameras’ of choice resolutions, lenses, sensor types and size, sensitvities, screens, video capbility, and about 15 million other specifications match up against each other.

The Z90 against the JZ500 against the F600

Now that is, in itself, a fairly useful feature. But it assumes that you’ve already a good idea of what you’re looking for. Different types of camera aren’t explained. It doesn’t take into account that people might not know the difference between the X100 and the F600. It doesn’t accommodate people who aren’t sure if a bog-standard point-and-shoot is what they need, or if something a bit more zoomy will suit them better. And price doesn’t even come into it. I can imagine a first-time camera buyer taking a look at it and exclaiming something along the lines of ‘Wuh?’

Seeing as I’m being a bit picky, too, it’s usually a good idea to standardise units of comparison. So I wasn’t thrilled seeing some sensor sizes given in imperial and some in metric.

It’s hard to say that Fuji has missold this widget entirely. The tagline is ‘Find the right camera for you, review camera specifications at a glance.’ It compares camera specs, dead on. But it doesn’t really help people to find the right camera for them. Still it’s a shame. With a bit more thought, Fuji could have a developed something actually useful for its consumers, instead they’ve produced a gimmick that’s vaguely useful for some of us, and doutless overwhelming for a whole lot more.

Pity. You can go judge for yourself on the Fuji website.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011: Winners Announced!

We’re back around to that time of year again, where the winners of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize are announced. As a portrait guy myself, I adore this competition and the results it produces, especially when it’s time to take a wander around London’s National Portrait Gallery and see the selected entries in print. You may recall that last year’s winning entry was David Chancellor’s Huntress With Buck – a striking image of a young, red headed girl on horseback, the recently killed buck draped over the horse’s neck. Interestingly, this year’s winner bears some thematic similarities, albeit in a somewhat more humane context.

This years winning entry is entitled “Harriet and Gentleman Jack”, by Jooney Woodward. The portrait is of 13 year old Harriet Power and her guinea pig, Gentleman Jack. It’s interesting to draw parallels between this and Chancellor’s winning image last year. Both are of young, red headed girls, creating a striking contrast in the image. In addition, the animals in both images are also red / auburn in shade, which complements and creates a visual connection between the subject and the animal. What’s really neat about comparing these two images is that they have a major contrasting difference in the story they tell: “Huntress With Buck” portrays a world where animals can sometimes be seen as tools and commodities, whereas “Harriet and Gentleman Jack” portrays a world of the animal as a pet, as a companion.

Harriet and Gentleman Jack, by Jooney Woodward

Personally, I find the winning entry this year to be encouraging and proof that the judges are on the right track with this competition. Whilst I love portrait competitions, sometimes I get the sinking feeling that, with some competitions, there is often too heavy an emphasis on an portrait having to be about the exotic, or the extreme, or the exploitative: images of homeless people or perhaps of someone in shocking living conditions, be it in a third world country or in a down-and-out part of New York.

Whilst I appreciate photography’s unique ability to illuminate ways of life that would otherwise remain hidden to all and the subsequent value and importance of such images, it’s just nice to see that, hey, people without problems have interesting lives and personalities too. A photographer shouldn’t feel they should have to ingest a cocktail of vaccines and travel to the most obscure corners of the Earth in order to create a portrait of worth. I’m also pleased that the actual subject matter of the images that were shortlisted this year feels fresh and original. It inspires me and helps me realise that there are still new ideas to be found out there – we just need to look for them!

If you live in London or you’re planning on visiting, you would be absolutely mad to not give the exhibition a look. It’s on at the National Portrait Gallery for only £2.

More murk at Olympus

The bigwigs at Olympus were probably hoping that the investigation they commissioned into the case of higher-than-expected payments to merger brokers would uncover a sloppy but somehow explicable chain of miserable accounting practices and they’d be able to restore a bit of stability to the company and reclaim some of the millions it has lost in share prices since Michael Woodford was sacked in early October. But oh no. Instead it would seem that piles and piles of bloodied linen are about to be laundered very publicly.

Not only does Olympus have to contend with dodgy dealings with Cayman Islands-based companies, rumours of Yakuza involvement in the business, a revolving door of presidents and chairmen, and plummeting share prices, but it could well face being delisted from the Japanese stock exchange, too.

It looks as if Olympus might’ve been concealing losses it had accrued on securities investments by covering them with funds from previous acquisitions. And it might’ve been going on for over 20 years.

Vice President Hisashi Mori has been dismissed following these revelations, and President Shuichi Takayama – who only stepped into the post at the end of October after Tsuyoshi Kikukawa stepped down – has been very quick to place the blame on his predecessor, on Mori, and Hideo Yamada, the firm’s auditor. Well, he has to do something; this doesn’t look good at all for Olympus. Its share prices have taken another dive (so they’re down about 70% since Woodford was kicked out) and the speculation about the future of the company is rife. Not good; not good at all.

(There’s more on the BBC and the Financial Times.)

News in brief: Super-secret iPhone panorama function

So if you’ve an iPhone, and if you’re running iOS 5, and if it’s jailbroken, (which is quite a few ifs, admittedly) there is, apparently, a panoramic camera feature secreted away in the deep, dark depths of its files. According to Conrad Kramer – the guy who stumbled upon it – if you want to take advantage, you need to find the ‘EnableFirebreak’ setting in the iOS preferences file, and flip it to ‘Yes’. And lo! You will have the ability to construct grand and sweeping panoramas with your iPhone, which is of course every iPhone owners every desire.

(Headsup to Engadget)

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

Not just 3D with Panasonic's 3D1 dual-lens camera

I’m going to try my very hardest to restrain my contempt for 3D whilst I write about Panasonic’s dual lens 3D-enabled camera, the 3D1. As much as I dislike the concept of 3D images and videos, the 3D1 camera itself can do some pretty nifty things, so credit where credit is due. Just be aware that my mouth will probably be a bloody mess as I bite my tongue to check its acerbity.

So it makes 3D photos and videos. It does it by having two 25mm f/3.9-5.7 lenses with 4× optical zoom that function in tandem to produce 8 megapixel stereoscopic images. That bit out of the way, we can flick the dedicated 3D to 2D button the camera, and move on to the other tricks that this camera can peform.

When it’s shooting in common-or-garden 2D mode, the MOS sensors have 12 megapixels of resolution and are powered by a Venus engine. You can use one lens to shoot video and the other to shoot stills simultaneously. Or you can focus on one person in a room with one lens whilst the other lens is taking in the entire scene. And all of this can be controlled via its touchscreen.

Panasonic reckons that the 3D1′s low-light capability is pretty special. It has a multi-process noise-reduction function to ensure ‘dramtically clear’ low-light pictures, even when you’ve bumped up the ISO. There’s also the prospect of tripod-free night shooting. This is achieved by smooshing together consecutively shot images. I think we’ll believe that one when we see it.

As instant gratification and immediate updates to our social networks of choice are primary concerns in this world of ours that never shuts down, you can upload your pictures to Facebook or your videos to YouTube by checking the photos or videos in camera, connecting your camera to your computer, and following the instructions.

I doubt it comes as any kind of shock that the 3D1 will be available from December, around US$500.

A love story in 5 polaroids

1 - Flirtation

As a writer, I'm not really one for letting the pictures do the talking. For this particular post, however, I'll make an exception - check out the photo gallery above for the newest (and most, most exciting) development in my life.

Awesome.

Canon hits Hollywood

The swanky invitations went out, the speculation was speculated on, the announcements have now been made, and the champagne has been quaffed. What, then, is the fall-out on Canon revealing that it’s launching itself headlong into a professional cinematograhy system? There’s the C300 interchangeable lens digital cinema camera, a slew of lenses, and the forthcoming full-frame dSLR that slots into the movies system, that will, eventually, aim to give serious amateur filmmakers a serious movie-making camera.

C300

The C300 comes in two versions, both with a newly developed Super 35mm equivalent 8.29 megapixel CMOS sensor. Version one is the EOS C300 with an EF lens mount; it’ll take any of Canon’s current range of EF lenses that are used on its dSLR cameras. Version two is the EOS C300 PL; that one’s compatible with industry-standard PL lenses. The question that arises here: why not develop something with dual compatibility?

The big disappointment with the C300, though, is that is only captures 1080p. And that disappointment was compounded by Red’s Scarlet revelation, which will capture 4k. Still, the C300 is relatively small and comes with Canon Log Gamma. That allows for flat image quality with subdued contrast and sharpness, and a whole heap of flexibility when comes to post-production editing and processing.

In Philip Bloom’s opinion, the C300 will be great for broadcast use, but at $20,000 – or thereabouts, as prices haven’t been confirmed – it’s too expensive. Especially with the Red Scarlet coming in sub $10,000. But, what’s important is how it handles and the images it produces. We’ll just have to wait and see about that.

Cinema EOS dSLR

This camera doesn’t have a name, a potential price, or a vague release date yet. It’s a concept, albeit one that has a physical form, as the pictures of it prove. But it’s a damned exciting concept. A 35mm full frame image sensor that can shoot Motion-JPEG encoded 4K video at 24fps. (Although when it records in 4K it will drop to an APS-H crop.)

This is perhaps more what people would have been expecting from Canon – a stills camera that’s entirely serious about video – that offers a stepping stone between dSLR shooting and the C300. It’ll be very exciting to see what it produces.

All those lovely lenses

Seven, yes 7, new lenses were announced alongside the cameras yesterday: four zooms (two EF and two PL) and three fixed-focal lengths all on the EF mount.

There are the wide-angle CN-E14.5–60mm T2.6 L S (for EF mounts) and CN-E14.5–60mm T2.6 L SP (for PL mounts) and the telephoto CN-E30–300mm T2.95–3.7 L S (for EF mounts) and CN-E30–300mm T2.95–3.7 L SP (for PL mounts). They all support 4K resolution and are compatible with industry-standard Super 35 mm-equivalent cameras as well as APS-C cameras. But, they won’t work with 35mm full-frame or APS-H sensors.

As for the prime lenses, there are the CN-E24mm T1.5 L F, the CN-E50mm T1.3 L F, and the CN-E85mm T1.3 L F. They all deliver 4K performance, and all three are compatible with industry-standard Super 35 mm-equivalent cameras, 35 mm full-frame, APS-H, and APS-C sensor sizes.

That’s a wrap

So yesterday gave us a camera that a few people are suggesting is over-priced, a teaser for a camera that really could be something, and seven lenses. What it definitely suggests is that Canon is entirely serious about making movies. This is just the start, after all.

Canon vs Red: The battle for amateur filmmakers is about to commence

In the Blue corner... Canon's C300

I don't want to say I told you so, but... I told you so. Specifically, I've been saying that shooting video on SLR cameras simply doesn't make sense - in some cases. Don't get me wrong; if you're a stills shooter who occasionally shoots video, knock yourself out. It's just the current wave of filmmakers shooting on SLRs that baffles me.

In that article (originally written some time last year), I'm arguing that it's only a matter of time before Canon launch a video-specific camera with an EF lens mount, so you get the best of both worlds: Access to affordable, high-quality glass, and all the features you expect from a video camera (but that tend to be lacking from an SLR camera; including things like decent video codecs, fine-adjustable frame rates, and audio recording that doesn't make you want to stab yourself in the eyeball with a 3.5mm jack plug)

It's fantastic news, then, that the EOS C300 comes along. If you look at it, it looks like the bastard lovechild of an EOS camera and a Sony Camcorder - but it's got a rather fantastic spec, which is what makes it all the more interesting.

I see that my Pixiq stablemate Jose has already beaten me to the details of the new camera, so I'd invite you over to his article to learn more, but I'd just like to talk for a minute about the implications of this...

What does it mean?

The new camera comes in two versions; The C300 comes with the EF lens mount, so you can use the incredible varied array of pre-existing EOS-series lenses with a device that's built from the bottom up to create high-quality video. In addition, there's a C300 PL version of the camera, which means you can marry up the new Canon body with any of the Arri Positive Lock lenses - that's the high-end lenses used on many a 16mm and 35mm film cameras.

The price tag of this new wünderkind is around €12,000, according to Amateur Photographer, so that probably means around £10,000 / $14,000 or thereabouts.

It's worth pointing out the obvious here: That's not pocket change. The whole reason for the video-on-SLR revolution is that it affords amateur and semi-professional filmmakers high quality video at entry-level pricing. If you're going to lay down that kind of money, there are other alternatives out there that are more tempting. Red's entry-level video snapper Scarlet, for example, comes with a £6,000 price tag, a much better set of accessories for filmmaking, and Red's cameras have had the option to use Canon EF lenses for a while, if that's your thing. It's almost obscene how thoroughly Canon has been beaten to the punch on this launch.

Not everything is lost though. Even though I have to admit that I'm disappointed by the price point, I think there's definitely a space in the market for both the C300 and the Red Scarlet. If Canon marketed their new video-cannon more in the $2,000 range, we'd have a true alternative to the 7D or 5D mk 2 for film makers. The tech included in the video camera isn't all that different from the net sum of bits and pieces that goes into one of Canon's high-end SLR cameras, so there's no particular reason for why they wouldn't be able to create the cameras at a loss for a while, until the economies of scale make the cameras profitable.

Canon certainly has its work cut out, but this is one battle where there can only be one winner: Amateur filmmakers. It's taken bloody long enough, but things are finally getting interesting in this market, and I, for one, am thoroughly looking forward to this battle!

Hallelujah! Guidance for security guards when it comes to photographers

It’s taken bloody long enough and has come at the expense of dads being told that they can’t take photos of their kids in shopping centres, but finally there is some guidance for jumped-up heavies in uniforms who pass for security guards on what they can and cannot say and do to photographers. It’s the result of some pretty lengthy discussions that involved the Home Office, the British Security Industry Authority (BSIA), and photographers’ representatives such as Amateur Photographer and SceneThat. But by Juno, I’ve read it and it’s clear and reinforces some important points that we’ve been trying to teach them for a while now.

As far as I’m concerned, these are the edited highlights. You can go peruse the rest of the document – and it’s only four pages long – on the BSIA website.

• The size and type of cameras are not, in themselves, indications of suspicious behaviour. Large cameras, lenses and tripods should therefore not be viewed as being more suspicious than other types of equipment.
• If an individual is in a public place photographing or filming a private building, security guards have no right to prevent the individual from taking photographs.
• Security guards cannot delete images or seize cameras, nor can they obstruct individuals from taking photographs.
• Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places. This includes where an individual is in a public place but taking a photograph or film of a private building.

There is more, but this alone should help photographers reinforce that they’re not terrorists and by taking a photo, they’re not breaking the law or doing anything that’s otherwise nefarious. I think I’ll print out a copy and keep it in my camera bag.

Picfull - a playful, if frustrating, photo filter site

Any compact camera released within the past year comes with a dizzying array of filters as standard. It seems to be the current battle-ground of the point-and-shoots. If you can’t sepia tone, posterise, or Warhol-esque your pictures at the click of a button without the tedium of transfering your images from memory card to computer, then why bother? There need to be star filters, cross-processing look-a-likes, and over-saturation options at your fingertips.

But what if you don’t have a camera with such a crazy selection of toys, but you’d like to play? And what if you’re not the sort of camera-owner to have a snazzy post-processing programme waiting to crop, rotate, and adjust the colour and contrast of your images? There are quite a few online, and free, filter-adding options out there. One of them is Picfull.

This is me made to look glow-tastic

Picfull offers 18 different effects that you can apply to your photos, for free. You upload an image, you select which filter you want to apply, you fiddle around with it until you’re happy, and then you save and either download or share it with your adoring fans by email, Twitter, or Facebook. Or you can undo eveyrthing and start again. Or you can apply another filter over the top of the first one.

It’s a really simple concept, if you’re into vintage-looking portraits or pen-and-ink sketches. But I didn’t find the user-interface all that friendly.

How about in ghastly two-tone?

It’s great that it offers you the option to adjust the contrast on your yellowed image, or control just how much blur there is on your blurred effect, but it doesn’t show you how much of an effect your adjustments are having as you move the slider. You have to wait for the effect to be applied. And if you don’t like it, you can’t just undo the move without undoing every previous action, not unless you can remember exactly at what value the contrast used to be, or where the saturation levels were initially.

If you’re making adjustments to the colours in an image, this inability to remember previous values, or undo just one action, is not helpful.

Or there's me looking vintage (in jeans)

I know, Picfull’s a free toy that’s meant to be a bit of fun. In all honesty, I shouldn’t complain. I’m spoiled by the control I have in Lightroom and when do I ever make my photos look as if they were taken on a Holga? But it feels that bit of a waste if you’ve gone to the trouble of developing a site specifically to play with photos, and it isn’t quite as easy as it should be.

I wanted to be able to play with Picfull. Instead I found it a touch on the frustrating side.

Analogue films crash into the 21st century with the LomoKino

This has to be about as simple as film-making gets. It’s Lomography’s inspiredly-named LomoKino – a movie camera that works on 35mm film. There’s no sound, no post-production, and no special effects: just somewhere around 40 seconds of footage shot at 3-4 frames per second on a camera that uses a hand crank.

The LomoKino has a 25mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/5.6. Focusing is between one metre and infinity normally, but at the click of a button it can do 60 centimetre close-ups.

If you’re wondering how on earth you can watch your cinematic masterpieces of baby’s first steps in over-saturated cross-processed wonder, Lomo’s already got that covered. In addition to the LomoKino, you can pick up the LomoKinoScope, which’ll let you watch your homemade movie, turned by a hand crank, too. Get them digitised and you can share them on the Lomography website, naturally.

The LomoKino takes any 35mm film, whether that’s slide, colour negative, or black and white. You just have to remember to ask the lab not to cut them when you have it developed.

Normally I look at toy cameras in despair. There’s something about paying money for nasty plastic and even nastier glass that makes me shudder. This, however, this made me smile. I’m not likely to go out and buy myself one anytime soon, but I’d be unlikely to look at someone with thinly veiled horror if it were given to me for my birthday. (But don’t, please, anyone, get any ideas.) It’s £65 (US $79) for the LomoKino by itself, or £89 (US $99) for the LomoKino and LomoKinoScope package.

You can take a closer look over on the Lomography website.

October photo competition winner!

When I asked for photos of landmarks and monuments for October’s competition, and gave the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Brandenburg Gate, the Sydney Opera House as possible examples, I wasn’t quite expecting you guys to take me at my word. We had photos of three of those four ehm… monumental landmarks. But we were also treated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Tanjore Big Temple in Tamil Nadu, India, and the Albert Memorial. Amongst others! So thank you. And thank you also to the super team at Fracture who are supplying a 12″ Fracture for the winner. The winner who is…

Sydney Opera House, by Nyami

Yeah, we went with the Sydney Opera House. Well done, Nyami! As Haje said, it was an angle he’s not seen before, and the subject was well-placed. Get in touch and we’ll sort out your prize!

Thanks everyone who entered. Haje and I really enjoy looking at what you submit and talking over our favourites. November’s competition will be announced shortly, just as soon as I’ve sorted a theme!

Our November photo competition

The theme for November’s photo competition is taking a slightly unusual bent. My brother has suddenly become a key player behind a campaign to force his university to reconsider its decision to close its school of music. To try to bring a smidge of publicity to the cause in my own quiet way, and to bolster my brother, too, I thought that I’d make the theme music.

Anything musical will do. You might want to try your hand at concert photography; you might want to submit a photo of an instrument; hell, even an unusual and well-composed shot of your CD collection could swing it for us. We don’t mind, just think notes, scores, sounds, and performers. The best picture wins a 12″ Fracture.

The competition opens today – that’s Wednesday 2 November – and you’ve until Wednesday 30 November to submit your entry to the Small Aperture Flickr pool. Remember, it’s just one entry per person, please.

The Rules are the same as last month and all the months before, but they’re here all the same in case you need them. If you need me, you know where to find me. Otherwise, good luck!

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t have written for Small Aperture or be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
• You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
• It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
• Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
• We (that being me and Haje) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
• You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Small Aperture.
• Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
• We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

Photo week at Apple

For anyone who was looking for any kind of excuse to saunter over to the Apple Store on Regent Street, they’re laying on a series of photography events over the week 7 to 14 November. And they extend a bit beyond just using the iPhone. Apple’s brought on board NK Guy, the MV collective, and David Ward and Eddie Ephraums, amongst others, to offer a series of workshops, talks, aimed at photographers of varying abilities and backgrounds.

There are beginners’ guides to lenses, portfolio reviews for slightly more experienced photographers who are looking to progress, as well as in depth looks at different types of cameras and which sorts of photographer they suit and a talk from pro Mark Esper. There are plenty of sessions that cover the iPhone camera and the plethora of apps, but there’s an off-camera lighting masterclass and a session that explores the best means to back up your image archive, too.

You will have to reserve your spot at some sessions and there’s quite a bit going on, so you’d be best heading over the Regent Street website and taking a look at the full schedule.

Book review: The Rough Guide to Digital Photography

I can’t remember how many different Rough Guides I’ve thumbed through when I’ve been on my travels; they’ve saved me from near-disaster when stranded in northern Spain and helped me to find half-way decent vegetarian food in not-especially-vegetarian-friendly places, not to mention pointing out places where I really must go and get photographs. Clear, comprehensive, and honest, they’re as essential to travel as a passport. So what about a Rough Guides foray into territory beyond travel, The Rough Guide to Digital Photography, by Sophie Goldsworthy? Does it live up to the Rough Guide reputation?

I shan’t take us all around the houses. Yes. It is a worthy addition to the Rough Guides family. But remember, this is a Rough Guide to photography, not a book for advanced amateurs. It’s a serious exposition of the basics, not a deep and meaningful about studio lighting.

It starts with what to look for in a camera and ends with a resources section covering more books, websites, retailers, galleries, and clubs and societies for when you want to learn more and expand. In between it looks at kit (from lenses to external hard drives), exposure, composition, types of photography, post-processing, and even includes phone apps and the film revival.

Goldsworthy’s style is accessible and comprehensive. It’s not just that she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to explaining ISO or running through the basic tools in editing suites, but that she’s able to articulate it as well. Too often you read something that has been written by someone who obviously knows their onions, but can’t explain anything, even if their life depended on it.

You expect there to be plenty of photographs in a book about photography – although believe me, I’ve seen a few where there just are not enough – and this book doesn’t disappoint. However, it doesn’t only include pictures that are great examples of effective leading lines or super colour composition, it has a fair number of comparison photos, too. This is what your photograph will look like if you don’t use a graduated filter, and here’s what it’ll look like with one. Being able to see the effect of a fill flash makes such a difference when you’re learning about it.

There are plenty of quick tip boxes scattered throughout the book, as well as equipment pointers and short expositions on pertinent questions. I’m a Photographer Not a Terrorist gets a look in and cross-processing is explained. Granted the chapter exploring online resources and communities will be out-of-date in a year or so (hell, it was probably out-of-date the moment it came off of the press, things move so fast), but that can’t be helped and when you look at the book as a whole, it really doesn’t matter, either.

Just like a travel Rough Guide, it’s the perfect start to someone’s photographic adventure. It tells you what you need to know so that you get out there and enjoy exploring and discovering for yourself. If you know anyone who’s looking for a good grounding and wants to make the most out of their camera, start here.

The Rough Guide to Digital Photography, by Sophie Goldsworthy. Published by Rough Guides and available from Amazon UK and Amazon US