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THE IMAGING RESOURCE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY NEWSLETTER
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Volume 15, Number 10 - 17 May 2013
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Copyright 2013, The Imaging Resource. All rights reserved.
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Welcome to the 358th edition of The Imaging Resource Newsletter. We've produced a mega-issue for you this time out, starting with our in-depth look into the controversy surrounding the World Press Photo of the Year, and whether photographer Paul Hansen's winning entry crossed the line in terms of image manipulation. Steve Meltzer then shares a brief look at legendary street photographer, Garry Winogrand, in conjunction with a recent SFMOMA show of the master photographer's work. Finally, we delve into Eamon Hickey's review of the Olympus E-PL5 -- and wonder if, for less than half the price, this PEN is mightier than the OM-D E-M5 -- and then point you to a plethora of First Shots taken in the IR Lab of several of the latest and hottest cameras this spring. This is also the first issue in which we're running HTML banner ads. Besides dressing things up a little, they'll make it easier to sell advertising, to help keep the newsletter showing up in your in-box every other week
. Drop a line to editor@imaging-resource.com, to let us know what you think of them, and (particularly) whether you notice any problems with them in your email client. (Of course, Nikon and Sony will appreciate your clicks, too.) Enjoy!
TOPICS
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Investigation: World Press Photo Winner - Adjustment or Manipulation?
Feature: All Things Photographable - Garry Winogrand, the Ultimate Street Photographer
Review: Olympus PEN E-PL5 Shooter's Report (Excerpt)
Latest from the IR Lab: First Shots Galore
Quick Hits: Q&A with Food Photographer Beth Galton, Samsung Galaxy Camera Review
We've Got Mail
New on the Site
Next Issue
Signoff
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This issue is sponsored in part by the following companies. Please show your appreciation by visiting the links below. And now a word from our sponsors:
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INVESTIGATION: World Press Photo Winner - Adjustment or Manipulation?
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By Dave Etchells
Earlier this week we reported on the controversy surrounding the winning image for the World Press Photo organization's annual Photo of the Year contest. Three months after the winning shot by Stockholm, Sweden-based photojournalist Paul Hansen was announced, accusations came to a head that the image was either a composite, or had otherwise been altered beyond the limits allowed by the contest. The WPP commissioned a panel of experts to examine the photo and, apparently, the RAW file from which it was derived, to determine if the rules had in fact been violated. Their conclusion was that everything was above board, but the winner's reaffirmation doesn't appear to have ended the controversy.
*** Imaging Resource Exclusive: Our News Editor Mike Tomkins has tracked down what we think is the largest, highest-resolution version of the World Press Photo image, and overlaid it with a scaled-up copy of the newspaper version. You can examine the differences between the two versions more closely by clicking this link, and then pointing your mouse cursor on and off the image. ***
As we see it, the issues boil down to two main questions:
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Did\A0post-processing of the photo violate the rules of the contest?
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Is the level of manipulation applied permissible in the context of photojournalism and, if not, should the photo in question be held up as an exemplar of photojournalistic excellence?
Based on the findings of the expert panel, the answer to the first question would seem to be "No." As for the second point, though, the answer is much less clear.
The crux of the argument in the image's favor seems to be that, although the photographer adjusted tonal levels and color rendering, he didn't move any pixels around -- there was no cloning, nor any copy-and-pasting in of portions from entirely different images. We don't think anyone would suggest that either technique is acceptable in photojournalism, so that's not at issue.
Beyond that, the question becomes a much trickier one of whether any\A0tone and color adjustments are allowable -- and if there is a limit somewhere, at what level do adjustments become unacceptable? In this area, the controversy lives on, and in our view there's an important dialog to be had here.
The thing is, you can do an enormous amount to change the impact or even the content of an image while making "only" tone and color adjustments. Extreme local tone and color adjustments can be indistinguishable from cloning or painting on the image, and so to our minds, there's no hard, bright line separating the two. You don't have to move pixels around to totally change the content, emotional impact, or ultimately the message conveyed by an image. Simple tone and color adjustments alone can do the job quite well.
To illustrate the point, let's take a quick look at three notorious examples of photo manipulation that either were or could have been accomplished solely with localized tonal adjustments.
The classic case where tone and color manipulation radically changed the impact of an image was with the dueling magazine covers in the O.J. Simpson case. Both Time and Newsweek magazines worked from the same mugshot of Simpson, but thanks to post-processing, each cover conveyed totally different messages. Newsweek ran the photo pretty much unaltered, while Time burned and manipulated it to produce a much darker image -- both literally and figuratively -- that portrayed Simpson as a sinister character. You can see the two images side by side below.
Time magazine's adjustments only affected color and tone -- mostly the latter, really -- but the impact is dramatic. At the time, there was general agreement that the cover photo had overstepped the line, and that it editorialized on Simpson's plight.
Another recent scandal involved a photo where a distracting element was apparently painted over: a referee was removed from the background in a shot of a triumphant wrestler.
Although in this case the referee was erased from the image, \A0the same result could easily have been accomplished by applying "only" tonal adjustments. Just use your burn tool to banish the ref into oblivion, and you'd end up with an image indistinguishable from the one which was so roundly criticized.
So... where are the limits to this? Technically, even cloning is only changing the tone and color of the pixels -- you're just doing it on a pixel by pixel basis. That this is so can, perhaps, best be illustrated by the famous John Filo image of Mary Ann Vecchio emoting over the body of Jeffrey Miller in the Kent State University shooting incident.
In the original image, a fence post appeared to "grow" out of Vecchio's head, but an enterprising photo editor removed it to make for a "better" picture. This was back in the days well before desktop computers and Photoshop, and so the alteration in this case was almost certainly done with retouching dyes. In the case of a black and white photograph, though, tonal values are all that's there, and so retouching was really just a matter of making local changes in the tonal values. Given that no computer was involved, there was no question of moving pixels around, either -- there weren't any. So in the extreme case, local tone and color adjustments can clearly amount to little more than painting on the image. You just use those tone and color adjustments to effe
ct your changes, rather than a paint brush.\A0
All of which brings us back to the question of the winning WPP photo: Were the adjustments Hansen made within acceptable limits for photojournalism? For the most part, we'd say yes,\A0but...\A0as you'll see below -- or on this page, if you'd like to see larger versions of the image -- the winning photo was heavily processed, and among the changes, many local manipulations were made. It's with these that we take issue.
To help in your evaluation, we've provided a comparison of both images below. You can switch from the newly-discovered newspaper version to the World Press Photo version of the image by hovering your mouse pointer over it.\A0
If that low-res version isn't enough to make your mind up, our intrepid News Editor Mike Tomkins tracked down a higher-resolution version of the World Press Photo image, and overlaid it with a scaled-up copy of the newspaper version. The result is shown here, exclusive to Imaging Resource. (It's the largest generally available version of the image we're aware of.)
We have no quibble with overall tonal adjustments -- for example, single-image HDR techniques -- to make a camera's image better match human perception. The human visual system itself does a lot of sophisticated and nonlinear processing to extract information from a scene. Compared to a camera's rigid, linear view of the world, it's as if we have our own built-in HDR processing.
It's when we come to the matter of selective, local adjustments to images that problems arise. Selective enhancement or suppression of a viewer's perception of details is the very definition of editorializing, as opposed to the simple recording of facts. It's in this area that we believe Hansen's manipulation of the image exceeds journalistic limits, and as such that it shouldn't be held up as an example of excellent photojournalism.
The most controversial of the changes made to the image, harking back to the Kent State photo, is the handling of the child's head in the foreground. Comparing against another version published several months ago by Dagens Nyheter, the largest-circulating and widest-distributed newspaper in Hansen's homeland of Sweden, there's a bruise on the child's head that is absent in the WPP image. Of course, without access to the original raw image -- which has yet to be provided by Hansen or World Press Photo -- there's no way to know for sure whether the bruise was removed in the contest image, or added in the newspaper image. Nor, without knowing which version is closer to the truth, can we say for sure whether Han
sen or a newspaper photo editor was responsible for the change.
You can, of course, also question whether the addition or removal of the bruise really changed the image in an important way, but the standard has always been that\A0any\A0addition or removal of image elements is verboten. Consider the case of the Kent State photo: A fence post protruding above the subject's head didn't change the fundamental information the image was conveying in any significant way, but it was widely recognized as an unacceptable alteration. Likewise, the case of the triumphant wrestler image: Did the presence or absence of the referee in the background really affect the information being conveyed in an important way? Clearly not, but again, this image editing was regarded by most as being unacceptable.
In the current case, does the presence or absence of a small bruise on the forehead of a dead child fundamentally change anything? And do the extensive, localized tonal and color adjustments affect the information being communicated? Perhaps not, but they have everything to do with the emotional impact and the message being delivered. Regardless of which version of the image is closer to the original, and whether the alteration was made via tonal and color adjustments, cloning, or direct painting on the image, there's no interpretation of the discrepancy that reflects well on the individual responsible for the edits made. Someone either removed an element for the WPP contest, or added one for the newspaper version. One way or another, and in one context or another, the image was manipulated to introduce or remove something beyond what any fair-minded observer would consider a simple "tonal adjustment". It would be permissible in the name of art, but
is it still journalism, or is it\A0yellow journalism?
As we said at the outset, there's not a clear, delineating line here; it's all a matter of degrees. Nor is it yet entirely clear whether Hansen himself was responsible for the most troubling of edits made to the image: those made locally. Only he and World Press Photo can shed light on that, something which one would hope they will do by simply providing access to the original, unedited raw image.
Ultimately, though, readers will have to decide for themselves what they feel to be OK, and what's over the line. But how should the photojournalism community respond, and what limits should be set? Take a close look at the images, and let us know your thoughts below.
Update: In the course of writing this article, we reached out to World Press Photo and requested the opportunity to examine the original raw image for ourselves. We've now received a reply, and it makes clear that if there is to be complete transparency, it is Hansen who must provide this. The WPP apparently does not retain a copy of the raw image, and would not have the rights to distribute it even were that not the case. Nor can it require the photographer to provide his image. Should he wish to put the matter to rest, the ball is now in Hansen's court
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FEATURE: All Things Photographable - Garry Winogrand, theUltimate Street Photographer
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(Note: To see more of Garry Winogrand's images, click through and view the story on our site at http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/09/all-things-photographable-garry-winogrand-the-ultimate-street-photographer)
By Steve Meltzer
Once upon a time a photographer such as Garry Winogrand could walk down a street and photograph freely. He could use a wide angle lens and shoot from just a few feet away from his subjects -- a practice that's considered a veritable invasion of privacy today. Back in the 1950s and 60s people who noticed that they had been photographed would simply smile and perhaps even strike a pose, or maybe they'd just continue on their way. Winogrand took thousands of street photographs in cities around the world during his career, and he helped put street photography on the map as an art form. Yet following his death in 1984, his work, unfortunately, began to fade from view.
Garry Winogrand, New York World's Fair, 1964; gelatin silver print; Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Dr. L. F. Peede, Jr.; \A9 The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Now's the time to revisit this master street photographer. Through June 2, 2013, a sprawling interactive retrospective of his work is on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMa). A boisterous, extravaganza of sound, video and still photography, the exhibition is as lively as the streets Winogrand photographed. After San Francisco, the show travels next year to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, then the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Jeu de Paume in Paris.
If you live within a thousand miles of one of these venues, I implore you to go see Winogrand's work up close and personal. You will not be disappointed. Don't believe me? Get a taste of what you'd see at the SFMoma show by watching this video.
The search for America
I think I understand Winogrand because we\A0have a lot in common. We both\A0grew up in predominantly Jewish working-class neighborhoods in the Bronx, New York, and we both attended the City College of New York and the New School For Social Research. Although he was a decade older, I think that we were both drawn to street photography as children of immigrant families. The Bronx was a place full of first and second generation “American” kids who were\A0straddling two cultures -- America’s and Eastern Europe’s.
Paul Simon said it best in his song “America,” we've “All come to look for America.” Born to immigrant parents in New York in\A01928, Winogrand was an American kid who grew up in a foreign country at home. When you're striding these two worlds, you never fit into either one very well, and Winogrand went out into the street to get his bearings.
This searching for identity differentiates Winogrand’s work from photographers such as William Eggleston, who came from an old Southern family. Eggleston’s\A0work is elegant while Winogrand’s is free-wheeling and far more energetic. Winogrand once, astutely, said, "Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."
In Winogrand's thousands of images, you can taste his search for America -- especially in his early work, which is a visual metaphor for a nation whose “streets are paved with gold.” His imagery is droll and humorous, never caustic or harsh. He never makes a joke at the expense of his subject. In contrast, many of us who were younger than Winogrand went into the streets more embittered. For us, we weren’t looking for America but for evidence of existential rot and urban decay.
Winogrand is lighter than that. His first book, The Animals (1969), is comprised of images taken at the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium. The work is whimsical and strange. The boundary between humans and animals is thin at best, and Winogrand’s sly eye catches not “decisive moments,” but “what the?” moments.
In his book Women Are Beautiful (1975), Winogrand celebrates women as no one else before had done. His images are not hyper-beauties, but rather the “real” women he simply spotted on the street one day and photographed. \A0
"I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful," he said, "but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs."
Winogrand was part of the golden age of street photography, and in those days before Vietnam and (long before) 9/11, you could photograph people openly without being accosted or arrested. There’s a great video of Winogrand that shows him shooting on the street, and it's amazing to see how warmly most people reacted to having their pictures taken.
"All things are photographable"
Winogrand photos reflect a kind of innocence -- a wide-eyed, sense of wonder at a world full of amazing things. He is a boy with a camera in a candy store and he goes crazy photographing everything.
His eyes, of course, were much bigger than his stomach and when he died he still had some 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, some 6,500 developed but not proofed exposures, and contact sheets from about 3,000 rolls. Clearly it was more fun for Winogrand to take the photos than to process and print them.
In Winogrand's day, the street was a much freer and friendlier place than\A0it is now. He didn’t have to carry around a pocketful of model releases or worry about\A0facing a lawsuit. It was an open and optimistic moment\A0in America and it fit Winogrand’s style. After all, he was just looking for America, happily laughing on its kaleidoscopic streets not\A0taking names.
Or as he put it, “The world isn’t tidy; it’s a mess, I don’t try to make it neat.”
(Images used courtesy of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
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REVIEW: Olympus PEN E-PL5 Shooter's Report (Excerpt)
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(You can check out our in-depth Olympus E-PL5 review, complete with gallery photos, lab test results and our final conclusion, here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/olympus-epl5/olympus-epl5A.HTM
By Eamon Hickey
Ever since it was announced, the Olympus PEN E-PL5 has been tops on my wish list (a wish list that Santa callously ignored, I regret to say). My ideal camera would combine good overall performance and a reasonably advanced set of controls in the smallest possible package. The E-PL5 is aimed pretty squarely at that sweet spot, especially when you pair it with one of the many, very small Micro Four Thirds lenses available in the marketplace, so I was especially eager to get my hands on this little camera.
Size, feel and handling. I happened to be staying in the San Francisco Bay Area when testing the Olympus E-PL5, and for my first outing with the camera I decided to take it for a hike in an interesting place known as "The Dish Area" -- a kind of nature preserve owned by Stanford University, open to the public and dotted with several radio telescopes (a.k.a. dishes). I hiked the loop trail, a 3.5-mile path with a devilish array of steep 200 to 500 ft. ascents and descents. I shot about 50 pictures in a little more than two hours, and the E-PL5's weight and bulk (with the M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R kit lens) were simply unnoticeable. Over the course of the next week, I carried it with me for hours every day in small and large messenger bags, or hanging from my shoulder, and yet again it was too small and light to notice. I couldn't have been happier.
For the Dish hike, I had the included, detachable MCG-4 grip installed. It's plastic and fairly slim so doesn't add much bulk to the Olympus PEN E-PL5, but for me it didn't improve the grippability of the camera all that much, so I ended up banishing it to that part of my bag known as The Pocket of No Return. A nice touch that it's removable.
I love the portability of the Olympus PEN E-PL5 but physics always has the last word, and the camera's small size brings some inevitable handling compromises. Squeezing the tiltable LCD screen -- with its substantial mounting structure -- plus a reasonably serious array of external buttons and controls onto the back and top deck of this tiny camera makes for a cramped setup. I noticed it immediately on my hike as I was forced to develop new forms of finger yoga in order to simultaneously operate the buttons on the back of the camera and the shutter release (for reference, I'm 6'2" tall with the large-ish fingers that come along with that). And the right-side strap attachment was always in my way, interfering with my operation of the camera's crucial controls. If I were to buy an E-PL5, I'd definitely get one of the straps that attaches to a single point on the camera, and I'd hook it up to the left strap lug only.
Finger yoga aside, I had no trouble with the buttons and dials on the Olympus E-PL5 once I got them within reach. Yes, the controls are small, but I could quickly and precisely make exactly the setting changes I needed to. Bottom line: the E-PL5's small size causes a few minor handling drawbacks, but for me, the camera's superb portability more than makes up for it.
Controls. Even before I hit the Dish trail, I spent a few hours going through the Olympus E-PL5's control setup and menu system -- and hours is what it takes. The camera is extremely customizable but the menu system is almost as extremely inscrutable at default. If you've got the patience, it's worth the time to explore all your options and set up the camera just the way you want it. Be advised, you will need the manual to figure this out.
My first step was to separate the E-PL5's autofocus activation from the shutter release and set the autofocus mode to Single AF + Manual Focus, which allows instant manual focus override. I loved the flexibility of this setup, which gave me a lot of seamless options for focusing quickly and accurately.
I then configured the Olympus PEN E-PL5's live view display to show me shadow and highlight clipping warnings and set the exposure system to give me direct control of the aperture with the rear dial and quick, one-click access to exposure compensation. With this setup I could very quickly zero in on the best exposure on several tricky late-afternoon shots on the Dish trail, -- including tree silhouettes and a pastoral image with cows grazing in a meadow lit by streaky sunlight, with a sidelit 150 ft. radio telescope in the background. It worked equally well for some flower and store window images I made in subsequent shoots in the downtown areas of two nearby towns, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.
While shooting in those downtown areas, I was constantly moving in and out of shadow and sunlight, and, on one day, from twilight to night. So I was doing a lot of ISO changing from shot to shot. I tried assigning ISO to the Olympus E-PL5's function (Fn) button, but that didn't end up making me any happier than changing ISO through the camera's Super Control Panel (SCP). The SCP worked quite well once I got used to it. I also used it to quickly turn Image Stabilization on and off (I want it to be off and not mucking about with my pictures when my shutter speeds are high enough that it's not needed). The SCP also let me quickly change autofocus modes, burst shooting speeds and several other things. The SCP isn't better than dedicated buttons for those functions, but it didn't slow me down much, so I've got no complaints.
Unfortunately, Olympus did choose to bury the autoexposure bracketing function in the E-PL5's menus. I've used a lot of Olympus cameras over the past 10 years, and Olympus just doesn't seem to "get" bracketing; they apparently don't know why and how people want to use it. But I found a nice workaround. I created a custom function set (a "Myset" in Olympus lingo) with bracketing activated. And then I used a really nice feature of the E-PL5, which inadvertently saves Olympus from their own cluelessness about bracketing. You can re-assign positions on the mode dial -- iAuto or Art, for example -- to any of your four Mysets. So I re-assigned Art mode to my bracketing Myset and was able to go in and out of bracketing mode with an instant twist of the mode dial. This worked beautifully for occasions where I wanted to cover all my exposure bases, including some shots inside an iconic Menlo Park tavern called The Dutch Goose and on the nighttime st
reets of University Avenue in Palo Alto, which still had its Christmas lights up.
All in all, I came away satisfied with the Olympus E-PL5's controls. I was worried they'd be too rudimentary for me, but not so: the crucial basics of focus and exposure control are very well-implemented, and I could shoot happily with this camera for a long time.
Performance. It took just a few shots on the Dish Area trail to see that the Olympus E-PL5 autofocuses very fast on stationary subjects. Later, when I looked at these and the rest of my test shots closely on the computer, I found that the focus was also perfectly accurate. For static subjects, this camera's autofocus is just super reliable, and in fact, I ended up never really needing the manual focus override that I had enabled.
When my subjects started moving, things got a little rough. In downtown Menlo Park, I used the Olympus E-PL5 to make a few quick grab shots of some teenage boys bicycling on the sidewalks and the results: nearly all were out of focus. On subsequent days, taking life in hand, I stood on the side of a busy road and tried some tests on bicyclists and cars, using the camera's Continuous Autofocus mode and the Continuous Low burst mode (3 frames per second). And although I got some sharp shots (including one where a driver was staring back at me suspiciously -- sorry commuters!), my results were mixed at best. I don't think I would rely on this camera for fast-action shooting.
Just how fast is the Olympus E-PL5? Find out by clicking here to see our full battery
of rigorous, objective speed and operation tests conducted in the IR Lab.
However, in the days that I shot with it, everything else about the Olympus E-PL5 was snappy -- just the way it should be. There's nothing good to be said about waiting for a camera to respond to control inputs, or write pictures to a memory card, or play back your images, and, happily, the PEN E-PL5 never made me wait.
LCD. I'm a big fan of tilting and articulating LCDs -- being able to compose easily with the camera held at different heights and angles is a huge benefit. So, for me, the Olympus PEN E-PL5's LCD was way ahead of the game from the start. In four different cafes and restaurants, I took pictures of the staff and customers around me, and the ability to frame my pictures accurately without raising the camera to my eye was a great boon. I liked it just as much for macro flower shots, and even just for general pictures, where I find it very natural to hold the camera below eye level. The world has no crying need for a lot of "selfies" from me, so the new feature that allows the E-PL5's LCD to tilt all the way around for self-portrait framing didn't change my life, but it works and I'm sure a lot of folks will love it.
Don't tell anyone, but there's a lot of sunshine in California, and it was out in force on several of my shooting days. I shot a lot of backlit and sidelit scenes, especially on my Dish hike, and I found the Olympus PEN E-PL5's LCD to be mediocre for framing and viewing in bright light. Looking into the sun, I sometimes had trouble seeing what was in the frame. Although the sharpness of the PEN E-PL5's LCD isn't top tier, I had no problem with it, but then I don't try to do a lot of critical image evaluation in camera. As noted above, the screen has a 16:9 aspect ratio, while the camera's native aspect ratio is 4:3 (3:3, 16:9, 1:1 and 3:4 modes are also available), and Olympus uses the wider-than-necessary screen to display shooting information outside the image area; I wasn't bothered by this compromise.
Like its little brother, the E-PM2, the Olympus E-PL5's LCD features touchscreen controls -- which is a blessing if you like touchscreens, and rather inconsequential if you don't since the E-PL5 has a Mode dial and a more sophisticated set of physical controls. Because of my comfort level and familiarity with physical controls, I found myself rarely using the E-PL5's touchscreen (though I was forced to use it extensively on the E-PM2, and eventually I found I kind of liked it). You can use the touchscreen to focus and snap shots in both still and video modes, a feature which could come in handy when you quickly want to change a focus point and capture a fleeting moment when your eyes are trained on the LCD.
Kit lens. For the general kind of shooting I did while testing the Olympus E-PL5, the M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R kit lens covered a nice range of focal lengths (28-84mm in 35mm equivalent terms). It's very light and feels somewhat insubstantial, although the zoom action is smooth and the overall assembly quality is fine. When I focused it manually, which I did mainly for practice (the camera's AF is very reliable, as I said) I found the focus ring under-damped, but this is common with inexpensive AF lenses. The lens, in short, is functional and an above average performer optically, but like most kit lenses is nothing to write home about. Fortunately, Olympus is known for building lenses of exceptional quality for this mount, sold separately of course.
Image quality. Overall, I was very impressed with the quality of my images from the Olympus E-PL5. Sharpness and detail are excellent -- as good as or better than anything I've seen from other 16-megapixel cameras. (Its images even stack up nicely against the lauded Olympus OM-D E-M5, believe it or not.) I shot with the E-PL5 on several sunny days with high contrast levels, and the dynamic range of the camera was very much up to the task, capturing usable detail in a very wide tonal range.
I've always thought that Olympus has a fairly good eye for color, and the Olympus E-PL5's JPEG files live up to that tradition, with a nicely saturated but balanced color palette. Some flower pictures and sunlit landscapes, especially, showed off this quality. Finally, I thought the PEN E-PL5 did a great job at high ISO settings, retaining good detail with very low noise for a Micro Four-Thirds format camera.
You can view the IR Lab's in-depth Olympus E-PL5 image quality test results by clicking here,
and read further on in the review for side-by-side comparisons against the E-PL5's top competitors.
Summary. Overall, I was very pleased with the Olympus E-PL5, especially the remarkable image quality and speed it delivers at such an affordable price. Considering that it performs as good as or better than many higher-end compact system cameras and DSLRs, the E-PL5 is a tremendous value and an equally worthwhile option for budding photographers stepping up to their first interchangeable lens camera as it is for experienced DSLR users looking for a smaller, more portable system.
Read our final conclusion in our Olympus E-PL5 review online: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/olympus-epl5/olympus-epl5A.HTM
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LATEST FROM THE LAB: First Shots of the Canon SL1 & T5i, Ricoh GR, Samsung NX30 and more
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By Roger Slavens
One of our team members recently mentioned in a staff meeting that there have been more than 100 cameras announced so far in 2013. That realization just floored us. We're doing our best to keep up with this high-tech onslaught -- and to turn around in-depth reviews for our readers as quickly as possible -- but you can hopefully appreciate the amount of work it takes to get all of them through the IR lab and into the hands of our reviewers.
So, while you wait, we have posted a robust set of "First Shots" from several of the latest cameras for your pixel-peeping pleasure. Click on the links below to see the First Shots (and our previews) from the following cameras:
With these First Shots you can compare the cameras' image quality against that of their predecessors and competing models, and even pit them side by side in our Comparometer\99. We've been impressed with the images produced by a number of these new cameras, and we'd love to know what you think about them.
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QUICK HITS: The most interesting, most-read articles on the IR site in the past two weeks
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Q&A with Beth Galton, the photographer behind a delectable photo series featuring food cut in half
By Dan Havlik
Beth Galton is a studio photographer whose latest photo series, Cut Food, has drawn praise and attention from photo blogs in the past few days. The images in the series feature food that's been, literally, sawed in half and photographed with results that are often surprising. What struck us most about the shots was how Galton, with the help of her food stylist, Charlotte Omn\E8s, was able to not only uncover the unique geometric patterns hidden inside this bisected foodstuff, but also make it downright appetizing.
In our Q&A with Galton, she gives us the back story on the Cut Food series and how she made it work.
Read the interview and see Galton's photos here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/13/beth-galton-the-photographer-behind-delectable-food-photos
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Samsung Galaxy Camera review: Which digicam will triumph in the battle of the Androids?
By Mike Tomkins
Just days after Nikon announced the first mainstream Android camera, Samsung responded with its Samsung Galaxy Camera -- and Android fans found themselves with ringside seats to an epic battle. In one corner, a company with one of the most recognized brands in imaging. In the other, a consumer electronics giant with a long history in smart devices. The two cameras themselves trod equally different paths. Nikon aimed for small, conservative, and camera-like. For its part, Samsung essentially cross-bred the heart of a smartphone with the body and soul of a standalone long-zoom digital camera.
Both cameras, clearly, involved some compromises aimed at integrating both a camera and a computer in a single device. We've been fortunate to have reviewed them side by side, giving us a unique chance to compare and contrast, and to decide which company's engineers made the better compromises overall.
Will Nikon hit a home run at first bat, or can Samsung's lengthy experience with Android give it the edge?
Find out by reading our Samsung Galaxy Camera review here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/samsung-galaxy-camera/samsung-galaxy-cameraA.HTM
(And if you've not already done so, read our Nikon S800c review, as well: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/nikon-s800c/nikon-s800cA.HTM)
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WE'VE GOT MAIL: Questions from readers, answers from IR
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Please send us your camera and photography questions and comments (mailto: editor@imaging-resource.com). Not only will we respond to each and every one of your letters, but we'll also publish the best ones here as a resource for all our readers.
Re: The difference between Bayer and Fuji X-Trans filters
Dave,
Great question and detailed but clear explanation.
Any news of Fujifilm re-entering the DSLR market (seemingly abandoned since the Finepix S2, S3 & S5 Pro) or licensing its technology to other DSLR makers? I can imagine a combination of the X-Trans filter with a full-frame CMOS version of the Super HR sensor they created for those cameras.
My other technical question: In the early days of popular digital, say 10 years ago,\A0Sony used to be unique in processing chrominance and luminance separately (dual processor?) giving very low noise in low light. Is this still the case, or do others do that now as well?
Regards,
Terry
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Hi Terry --
Thanks for the kind words on my X-Trans explanation, it's a fascinating technology.
On the question of Fujifilm re-entering the DSLR market, I'd be very surprised to see them do so, for a couple of reasons. First is that they'd have to develop a whole DSLR body, which, with pentaprism and moving mirror, is much more complex than a mirrorless one. In their prior models, they adapted Nikon bodies to their needs, and I doubt that would be cost-effective these days. Without a Nikon body, that would also leave open the question of what lens mount to use. I can't see Nikon giving them a license to use theirs, and equally can't see them developing yet another set of lenses for a new mount. (Which they'd have to do, to have enough back focus distance to accommodate the mirror.) Finally, over the really long term, I think SLRs will slowly diminish as a part of the market. I wouldn't want to say they'll disappear altogether, but it's clear that the momentum is favoring mirrorless in the long haul.
With noise reduction processing, it's hard to say with much authority exactly what various manufacturers are doing, as they tend to keep details pretty close to their vests. (Noise reduction and color management are really about the only "secret sauce" elements to distinguish camera makers from each other these days.) That said, I do know that at least some manufacturers separate chrominance and luminance from each other, because Panasonic, for one, has told me that they do. I suspect it's actually pretty common these days, as it really does help with intelligently separating noise from subject detail.
Noise reduction is a really fascinating area, and few people realize just how much of it goes on, even at base ISOs in current cameras. (Digicams, at least, with their itty-bitty pixels.) The whole trick, of course, is recognizing what's noise versus what's coming from the subject. NR algorithms have for a long time looked at things like local contrast to decide when pixel variations are probably noise, which is why our Indoor Portrait test is so revealing. At a simplistic level, NR algorithms look to see how much local contrast is present point by point across an image, and if the level drops below some threshold, they say "oh, that must just be noise," and so flatten it out. The problem is, of course, some subjects are characterized by subtly contrasting details, and human hair is a classic case: There's fine detail with many very similar colors and tones overlapping each other, and the subtlety of the contrast gives camera NR systems fits. This is why we've eq
uipped our not-very-lifelike models with human hair wigs on them, and we've found the reddish hair of the model in our Indoor Portrait shot to be a particularly challenging subject. If you look at some of those images in the Comparometer\99, you'll see how the detail deteriorates as you go up the ISO scale, and can see how the camera will fairly abruptly switch between showing detail and suppressing it, depending on how contrasty a given patch of hair happens to be.
These days, NR algorithms are very sophisticated, looking at larger areas to determine underlying patterns, taking into account the noise characteristics of the specific sensor used in each camera model, and even in some cases apparently using pattern-recognition to separate noise from subject detail. Overall, the increase in usable ISO levels over the past number of years has had as much (if not more) to do with the ability of more powerful processors to run more sophisticated NR algorithms than it does the underlying sensor technology.
-- Dave E.
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Photography is "Elementary," My Dear Watson
On a recent episode of "Elementary," Sherlock Holmes' view of the bad guy is blocked by a freight train. So he took a lot of continuous sequences varying the angle. He wound up with slices of the face of the bad guy and was able to construct a composite image that was in good focus. Between the cars of the train there are definitely wide enough gaps from what I have seen. The train might have been going 25-50 mph. It seems to me he might have been lucky and got a full face. Anyhow, I thought that was creative on the part of the script writers.
Martin Breslow
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Hi Martin --
Yes, clever of the script writers to have thought of that. It probably comes as no surprise to learn that a similar capability actually exists within Photoshop. I've never used it myself, and I entirely forget what it's called, but you can stack up a number of images of the same scene, and have the program remove any elements that aren't present in most of the shots, combining the bits that are persistent into an image of the scene behind all the movement. I initially saw it demonstrated with an image of a fountain in a crowded public square. There were people blocking the photographer's view of the fountain in every shot, but by combining a number of them, he could produce an image of a completely empty square and fountain.
Not exactly the same as what it sounds like Sherlock was doing, but a similar general idea, I think. Maybe the writers knew about that Photoshop feature?
-- Dave E.
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Fuji X100S Lens Flare?
Dear Sirs,
Recently I bought the Fujifilm X100S. I read many web reviews, and decided to buy this camera and leave for a while my DSLRs. All reviews said it's a brilliant camera, some said it's the best camera in the world. Unfortunately, the lens of the camera has a flare-ghosting failing. Semicircular radius are shown when I shoot direct or side-light sources.
 I don't think a lens hood or a UV filter will decrease the fail. I made some tests. I've sent you five examples that demonstrate this. [Ed. note: See the image at right for one of Akis' examples.]
Could you please tell me if this is a natural failing of the lens? Do you think all the X100S lenses have the same problem, or it's only mine with this failing? It’s unacceptable to pay 1200\80 to buy cameras with these kind of problems. I am so disappointed with Fujifilm.
I made some photos from the same position with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II and 24-105/4L, as well as my Canon EOS 40d with the cheap Canon EF-S 18-55/3.5-5.6 lens, and the photos are 100% clear without any flare or ghosting problems.
Thank you,
Akis
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Hi Akis --
Wow, that's pretty severe all right!
Unfortunately, what you're seeing is almost certainly a fundamental characteristic of the lens, as we saw similar behavior from the original X100, although your examples are quite a bit more severe than any we encountered. (See our Fuji X100 Review for our full findings.) As far as we can tell, the lens used on the X100S is identical to that on the original X100. We haven't fully tested the X100S yet, but I think you'd find similar behavior on any X100S you purchased. And you're right, a lens hood wouldn't be likely to make any difference as the flare in question here is coming from the in-frame lights. A hood would only help block light coming from outside the frame.
Whether it's the particular arrangement of the lens elements themselves, poor lens-coating technology, or a combination of both is hard to say, but it does seem that this particular lens is very prone to severe flare. Even though what we encountered was nowhere near as severe as your examples, we said that it was possibly the worst lens flare we've seen in a camera to date.
It's really too bad, the X100/X100S are really great cameras in most other respects, but if you're going to be doing a lot of night shots with bright lights in the frame, you may really want something different.
-- Dave E.
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Wanted: Printer Recommendation
Dear all/Mike Pasini --
I am researching an A3/A2 art printer to buy and have found your reviews on the Epson R3000 and Canon Pro-1 excellent. Given that they were written in June 2012, I wondered if you have updated any of these -- the Matte Black ink issue in the Pro-1 for instance.
I also wondered if there are reviews for any newer printers, or other older ones such as Epson Stylus Pro 3880 in the pipeline.
Thanks, Valerie
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Hi Valerie -
Mike's no longer associated with Imaging Resource, and we've been slow replacing him on the printer review front, so we haven't posted any printer reviews recently. Senior Editor Dan Havlik is going to be performing that role for us going forward, though, and we should have some new reviews going up starting fairly shortly.
The first couple of reviews up will be of Canon consumer models, as they've always been good performers, and we haven't reviewed any of the current crop yet. Following those, we'll take a look at what's on the market and what's on the horizon, and proceed accordingly. We'll definitely be picking up the pace of printer reviews over the next several months.
So no updates on the Pro-1, and we don't know whether there's been any reformulation of the its Matte Black ink. It seems like that's the biggest limitation in print quality, when printing black-and-white on matte-surface papers, so hopefully Canon will reformulate it (if they haven't already) to give better density. We'll reach out to Canon, to see if they have anything to report about the matte black formulation, will report back here if we learn anything of interest.
On the question of older printers, the 3880 has been around for more than three and a half years now, so I'd think it's ripe for replacement. Given that, it wouldn't be worth our while to do a review of it at this point, as we'd be needing to review its successor shortly after. (And before you ask, no, I have absolutely no information on when a replacement for it might be coming, I'm just speculating based on how long it's been on the market. :-))
-- Dave E.
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NEW ON THE SITE
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At http://www.imaging-resource.com/new-on-ir you can keep track of what's new on our main site. Among the highlights since the last issue:
- News: Google I/O recap - What's new for photographers in Android, Google Plus and more? (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/17/google-io-recapped-whats-new-for-photographers-in-android-google-plus-and-m)
- Review: Is the Olympus E-PM2 the best compact camera system for those stepping up from point-and-shoots? (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/16/olympus-e-pm2-review-the-best-compact-system-camera-for-those-stepping-up-f)
- News: Raspberry Pi cameras officially available (but selling out fast) (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/15/raspberry-pi-cameras-officially-available-but-selling-out-fast)
- Video: Ansel Adams interview from 1971 shows master photographer discussing work with Group f64 (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/14/ansel-adams-video-interview-from-1971-shows-master-photographer-discussing)
- Historical Photography: Rare, 1920s color film footage shows life in London (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/14/check-out-this-rare-old-color-film-footage-showing-life-in-london-during-th)
- DIY Lightning strikes thrice: How one man turned two different photos into a 3D model of a lightning bolt (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/14/lightning-strikes-thrice-how-one-man-turned-two-photos-into-a-3d-model)
- Video: Astronaut Chris Hadfield rocks the Internet with cover of "Space Oddity" from space (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/13/astronaut-chris-hadfield-rocks-the-internet-with-cover-of-space-oddity-on-b)
- This Month in Digicam History: The swivel debuts, Minolta wows us and the face of testing hands over the baton (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/11/this-month-in-digicam-history-the-swivel-debuts-minolta-wows-us-and-the-fac)
- Review: Leica M (Typ 240) First Impressions: 24 hours with Leica's latest digital rangefinder (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/09/leica-m-typ-240-first-impressions-24-hours-with-leicas-latest-digital-rang)
- Photos: Photographer recreates famous abstract portraits using real-life models (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/05/08/photographer-recreates-famous-abstract-portraits-using-real-life-models)
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NEXT ISSUE
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Our next issue will be mailed to you in two weeks, on Friday, May 31. See you then!
SIGNOFF
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That's it for now, but between issues visit our site for the latest news, reviews, or to have your questions answered in our free discussion forum. Here are the links to our most popular pages:
Newsletter Archive: http://www.imaging-resource.com/cgi-bin/dada-nltr/mail.cgi/archive/irnews
Daily News: http://www.imaging-resource.com/news
SLR Gear: http://www.slrgear.com
New on Site: http://www.imaging-resource.com/new-on-ir
Review Index: http://www.imaging-resource.com/camera-reviews
IR Photo Contest: http://www.dailydigitalphoto.com
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Happy snapping!
Dave Etchells & Roger Slavens
mailto: editor@imaging-resource.com
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