Looking NW from home.

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Some Photos

Mt Macedon from the North, sun setting.

Rouge Ardent C3.

With other firefighters,
in front of Mt. Hotham fire station.

26dec2004 Tsunami fundraiser, held 22jan2005.

Submissions to the PhotoForum gallery

The PhotoForum includes a Gallery.

Some of my submissions:
feet

Some photos hosted on flickr

I have an account on here.

Some older photos are here.

Submissions to JPG Magazine

I have an account on JPG magazine here.

Issue 8 Squirt that can!

Issue 7 Both Sides

One of my favourite sites.

Digital image preservation through open documentation.

Approaching my (present) "ideal" camera

Have you seen this? I don't like the electronic viewfinder, but I do like the live feed to the swivelling LCD. Interesting comment on "Effect of heat build-up from live view (over time) on noise", the last heading on page 16 "Photographic tests".

Now this would get close to my ideal:

• a mirror to give a true optical TTL viewfinder, coupled with the option to lock up the mirror for a live feed LCD;
• interchangeable Pentax K-mount lenses (that's my current glass);
• save images to an open RAW format;
• good viewfinder, responsive, compact and light, a la Pentax *ist D (damned with faint praise) or *istDS;
• recorded image review "blinking overexposed highlights", and selectable luminance / RGB histogram, like here;
• shower resistant.

... and that's what I'm looking for in my next camera. Good stills, and the ability to make little movies.

"Full frame" 36x24mm sensor would be nice, though not at the omission of the above characteristics.

We're getting closer. This item was an interesting read.

And here's another take: the DMD "decisive moment digital".

Hooray! Pentax have the K10D (and here).

Processing RAW photos from the Pentax K10D

This took a little bit of sorting out. With my *istD, I really like the program RawShooter Essentials, and moved on to the paid Premium version. But Adobe bought these programs from Pixmantec, before they were updated to cater for the K10D. Drat.

Eventually I was alerted to a modified version of RawShooter, on the Pentax forums (a beaut resource).

Now I shoot RAW with my K10D (the .PEF files are smaller in size than the .DNG files), convert to .DNG in Pentax Photo Browser, run those .DNGs through Adobe DNG Converter, and then process in the modified RawShooter Premium.
I created a batch file, to ease the processing steps for K10D .PEF files. It assumes Pentax Photo Browser and Pixmantec RawShooter are installed in their default locations. Adobe DNG Converter for Windows, and the modified RawShooter program, should both be copied into the RawShooter directory.

Camera	File Type	Modified RSP (M-RSP)	Original RawShooter Premium (RSP)	Adobe DNG Converter
K10D	DNG ~16MB	Colours wonky save image from RSP as JPG open in IrfanView menu: Image | Swap Colors (sic) | RGB -> BGR then colours ok	Won't open file. †	Converted, with artefacts along RHS. RSP – no † M-RSP – yes
	PEF ~9MB	JPG thumbnail ok, RAW data wonky	– ditto above –	Won’t convert "There was an error parsing the file."
*istD	PEF ~12MB	Won't open file.	Works a treat.	Converted, no artefacts. RSP – yes M-RSP – yes

† Previews from modified version displayed. Warning dialog if click on preview, crash program if use arrow keys to select.

A brief experience of cameras

Where do I start? I just love taking photos. Some of them even turn out acceptably.

I can vaguely remember taking a roll of B&W prints years ago with one of Mum's cameras. Even a roll of 8mm movie film.

Moving along a bit, I bought a Praktica L (a, b), a servicable, utilitarian camera.

When I became very serious about cycle touring, I wanted something smaller, and bought an Olympus XA (c, d), which proved to be a wonderful little camera.

With the digital era, I dipped my toe into the water with a Canon S100 (e) which was great fun, and captured a number of memorable photos.

I thought I'd try something a little more capable, and bought a Canon G5 (f). The G5 was (is) a good camera.

I decided I wanted to push available light photography, and purchased a Pentax *istD (g, h) which has given a number of years reasonably solid use. It is my new favourite, replacing the XA. I've

I decided that a little point-and-click, able to fit in a pocket, would be useful for capturing fire brigade activities. Thus I bought a Sony W12 (i), which is a surprisingly capable camera.

Recently Pentax produced the successor to the *istD: the K10D (j, k). Now I've more-or-less sorted out my workflow, I'm again taking lots of photos. Even though it's a little larger than the *istD, I suspect this is about to become my favourite camera.

The digital cameras side by side.

An index for roughly ranking cameras

Some years ago, I came up with a metric to roughly rank point-and-click cameras. While it is not particularly precise, I feel it has stood me in good stead. This is the case, even allowing for factors such as the areas outside the sensor photosites [1], and advances with the in-camera image processing (including noise reduction).

I calculate an index of square millimetres per megapixel (mm^2/Mp) based on the Canon S100 (e) (simply because it was the first digital camera I owned) at 100%. Many of the other point-and-click cameras had an index value around 33%. A very few were in the low-70s, which informed my purchasing decision of a Sony W1 (i) at 73%. The Pentax *istD (h) sits at 567%, a world of difference.

My index is not for a precise ranking, but to group point-and-click cameras for further consideration -- or not! Due to the inherrent uncertainties of the metric, in order that I would have some usable indication, variations of ten or fifteen percentage points are not particularly significant.

For details, see a PDF document here, and a graphic here.

[1] And I shudder to think about accurately allowing for the "micro-lenses" in front of the sensor, each gathering light from a slightly greater area than that of the photosites.

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(c) Copyright Andrea Coffey 2004-8
Last modified 20:33 Th 21 August 2008