The Perseid metor shower goes on all month, but peaks the evening of August 11-12. It is usually better after midnight. Look high in the northeastern skys about 45 degrees above the horizon.

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson died Tuesday at the age of 95. He was one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century.

click the page links to the right to continue and see several of his classic photographs

Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.

I am at SPECTACULAR at Graceland University this week, better known by its short name: SPEC.

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Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.

I stopped by the road in northern Ohio to photograph a combine. To my surpise, I was invited to go along for the ride. The story is here.

For photographer’s with Canon EF lenses who want a digital camera with a full frame sensor, the new Kodak camera is one answer that costs $3,000 less than the Canon EOS 1Ds.

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Leica Digilux 2 – Panasonic LC1 DC Vario Summicron

Read the review at The Luminous Landscape

THE BIG FIVE:
8 MP DIGICAMS

There are five digicams with 8 megapixel (MP) sensors. If you are looking for a full featured point-and-shoot digital camera, you might be considering one of these. They are so full-featured that point-and-shoot hardly seems like an adequate phrase, but these are all-in-one cameras with a single non-interchangeable zoom lens. Some of them have auxiliary lenses that screw or bayonet on the front of the permanent lens.

I am not tempted to buy one of these cameras, tempting though they are, for three reasons.

click the page links to the right to continue

This morning DP Review posted a complete review of the Canon 1D Mark II, giving it a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED rating, their highest.

This is a remarkable 8 megapixel camera that will shoot at speeds of over 8 frames per second for 40 continuous jpeg frames (20 in RAW mode) before the camera pauses to give the buffer a chance to write to the memory card. Amazing!

click the page links to the right to continue

12GB CF CARD!
HOW MANY CARDS DO YOU NEED?

Just what you need for Christmas, a 12 GB (gigabyte) compact flash card from Pretec. Estimated price in U.S. dollars (drum roll please): $14,900. That’s right, just shy of fifteen thousand dollars. It is supposed to be available by the end of the year, maybe in time to go in your Christmas stocking.

What would you do with such a thing? Stick it in your digital camera and take pictures forever!

Does this make sense? Not for me. Ignoring the sticker shock, I wouldn’t want that many images on one memory card. Too risky.

I use mostly 1 GB flash cards. In a serious shooting situation I might fill one or two cards in a day. At the end of the day I download the card/s to a computer, do a quick preliminary edit, delete the bad shots, and burn the rest to CD-R discs. Only when the files have been burned to disc do I re-format the flash card and use it again (more on the reasons for this some other day).

At a recent conference I aeraged a gigabyte of photos per day for 10 days. You can see some of them in the “World Conference” albums here (scroll down to the 10 albums posted in late March-April, 2004). Every night I would download my card/s, edit, and burn two sets of discs, one for me and another for the conference PR department. I would drop off their disc the next day.

With a 12 gigabyte memory card, I could have captured the whole conference on one card, but it would not have saved me from the nightly download, they wanted pictures every day to post online.

And bad things happen to good memory cards. They can eventually fail, get lost, be physically damaged, dropped down the face of a cliff while you are switching cards while photographing bighorn sheep, stolen, or any one of a number of other mishaps. The loss, damage, or failure of a memory card is just like losing a bunch of rolls of exposed film, the bigger the card, the more pictures you lose.

I have not had a lost, damaged, stolen, or failed memory card yet, but I know it will happen some day. For me, the choice is a compromise between the convenience of carrying less cards and the risk of what happens if a card is lost or damaged and the images unrecoverable.

In Colorado last fall, I filled a 1 GB card with photos almost every day. If something happened to one of my cards, I would have lost a a day’s worth of photos. That would be truly sad. If I used a 12 GB card and lost it, I would lose a whole weeks worth of photos. If it was a great week, that would be truly awful (at least in photographic terms).

I went on the trip of a lifetime to Alaska and photographed the whole venture on film. If I had been using my current digital camera I could have shot the same number of photos on one 12 GB flash card with room left over. It would be simple and save lots of space, but what if something happened to that card?

I can think of one good use for a card that big, in a USB card reader you could carry around a collection of your most treasured files, ready to plug into any computer anywhere.

Then again, for $14,900, you could buy a laptop for your treasured files, or several laptops, or a car to carry your laptop, or lots of camera gear, or several trips to Alaska, or . . .

Happy Safe Shooting!

“June 3, 2004 (TOKYO) — Pentax Corp plans to introduce this fall a SLR (single-lens reflex) digital camera aimed at general consumers that will retail for a little more than 100,000 yen.

Pentax began selling higher-end SLR digital cameras last September that retailed for around 190,000 yen, and it is now looking to expand demand by reaching out to ordinary consumers. The firm aims to raise the consolidated sales from its digital camera business by about 40% to 70 billion yen in fiscal 2004.”

Original article is here.

Assuming this is a good quality camera body, this is good news for people with Pentax lenses that want to go digital for less than $1,000.

Photo (c) Robert Capa. Taken June 6, 1944.

See my June 6, 2004 post here

I am deeply moved by the photos of U.S. war dead returning from Iraq. They speak of sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism, commitment, sorrow, and the high price of war.

I posted one photo with some information about the photographer, Tami Silicio, and the story behind the photo in my May 16 post “ON THE WAY HOME” (see below). If you missed that post, you can read more here and here. Tami Silicio took the photos because she believed the families of the fallen soldiers would be comforted to see how much respect and care were shown to the remains of their loved ones. The photographer has a brief web page here.

Whatever your views on the situation in Iraq, the photos are worth looking at. I have not posted these photos as a protest. (Personally, I believe we should be in Irag but I don’t we believe we have made all of the right policy decisions about what we are doing there.)

If you want to see a complete set of photos, the Memory Hole has posted several albums of photos of flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover AFB. Due to very heavy internet traffic, several other sites have mirrored the photos, including this one.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia came apart over Texas. Photos taken of the flag-draped caskets of the Columbia astronauts arriving at Dover AFB have been mis-identified in the press as U.S. casualties from the war in Iraq.

*** *** ***

NASA’s press release:

“April 23, 2004
Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1600)

NOTE TO EDITORS: n04-059

COLUMBIA CREW MISTAKENLY IDENTIFIED AS IRAQI WAR CASUALTIES

Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew as those of war casualties from Iraq.

Editors are being asked to confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who were killed Feb.1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy.

An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia’s seven astronauts.

News organizations across the world have been publishing and distributing images featured on the web site.

-end-“

*** *** ***

The complete set of Columbia astronaut photos from Dover AFB is here.

Due to very heavy internet traffic, the photos are also mirrored here.

Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.

This marmalade hoverfly was photographed with a Canon 1X-5X macro lens. More here.

Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

How I missed this tongue in cheek article, I don’t know. Be forewarned, the writer must have overdosed on 1950’s grade-B gangster movies.

Read Mike Johnston’s humorous take on how camera companies supposedly bribe reviewers.

Personally, I found the bribe from the OM bunch the most poignant. The Konica-Minolta bribe would be the most useful.

The Sony bribe?
As they say in the movies, “Fugedaboudit!”

Photo copyright 2004 Tami Silicio

“Flag-draped coffins are secured inside a cargo plane on April 7 at Kuwait International Airport. Military and civilian crews take great care with the remains of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. Soldiers form an honor guard and say a prayer as, almost nightly, coffins are loaded for the trip home.” The Seattle Times

Taking this photo cost Tami her job. The story is here and here.

PHOTO OF THE DAY – JALYN

Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

This photo is a digital solarization. It began as a color slide, was scanned and turned into a black and white photo (Grayscale), and then recolorized (RGB mode) as a digital version of the wet darkroom technique of solarization. To learn how this was done, go here.

Andrea, Rock Climbing, Final Fling, Saturday, May 8, 2004, Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

On the Saturday before finals week, Graceland University has a day of fun activities called Final Fling. Rock climbing, mud volleyball, big glove boxing, a 3D obstacle course, and the velcro wall are just a few of the activities of the day.

Final Fling, Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

More Final Fling photos are in the album posted here. All of my currently posted albums are here and my primary website is here.

Final Fling, Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

Bridget, World Conference. Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

This is one of the most popular photos from albums posted during World Conference, measured in terms of the number of visitors that clicked on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the photo. Bridget is my niece.

I snapped the photo below during a break in the activities. Rachel was my photographer’s assistant for the week.

Rachel, World Conference. Photo © Jim Doty, Jr.

More conference photos are in the 10 albums posted here.

Digital Photo from SPECTACULAR 2003, copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.

Charlotte K. Lowrie: Two weeks ago, I walked into my office, raised the lid of my laptop, and was greeted with a one-line error message: “Can’t read from drive C:.” This was far too simple a message for such a total failure. I looked at the screen expecting solicitous condolences or maybe an apology. None were forthcoming. . . .

Ah, the perils of storing digital photos. Lowrie provides a perspective on the issue that I raised in my April 26 post (see below or in the Archives for April). She has opted for external hard drives to backup up digital photos. I prefer to use external hard drives AND high quality CD-R discs.

Read Lowrie’s article here.

Photo (c) M. Plonsky

What kind of closeups can you take with Canon G1 and G3 point and shoot digital cameras? The insect photos at M. Plonsky’s website are a good example. The site has a one page tutorial on macro photography with the G1 and G3. You can see more of Plonsky’s work in the galleries posted at PBase.

If you want to do closeup photography with an SLR, I have an article here.

Photo (c) M. Plonsky

At last! Yesterday I wanted full reviews of 8 megapixel digicams at DP review. This morning they are up at at DP Review.

Here is a quick summary of the conclusions:

Olympus C-8080 – Highly Recommended
Konica Minolta DiMAGE A2 – Recommended
Canon PowerShot Pro1 – Recommended
Nikon Coolpix 8700 – Recommended
Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 – Recommended

Highly Recommended is the top rating, followed by Recommended, Above Average, Average, and Below Avergage. I recommend picking a digital camera that receives a “Recommended” or “Highly Recommended” rating from DP Review.

These results are both surprising and disappointing. I must say that none of these cameras has all the features I want in an 8 megapixel camera. What I want already exists, just in 2 or 3 different cameras. What do I want? High image quality, 28-200 mm lens (35 mm equivalent), image stabilization, fast lens apertures, a buffer for raw files (no waiting to take 3 or 4 photos in fast succession), manual lens zooming, convenient manual focus, good close up ability, touch the shutter to go instantly back to shooting mode from any other mode, and intuitive controls. Maybe the next generation of 8 megapixel digicams will have everything, or almost everything in one camera.

Are these bad cameras? No, they are very good cameras. It is just that I have a good digicam already and none of these has the right combinations of features to compel me to upgrade.

But that shouldn’t stop you. One of these cameras may be just what you want. Read the reviews linked below and decide for yourself.

Image quaility from all these cameras is good, with some image attribute variations from camera to camera.

Image Quality Comparison Chart (c) DP Review

To recap my comments from yesterday, Reichmann likes these cameras in this order: The Minolta and Sony are his favorites with the Minolta edging out the Sony. The Canon is his middle of the road pick. The Olympus and Nikon are at the bottom of Reichmann’s list. It will be interesting to compare reviews.

Here are links for reviews at both sites:

DP Review: Olympus C-8080
Luminous Landscape: Olympus C-8080

DP Review: Konica Minolta DiMAGE A2
Luminous Landscape: Konica Minolta DiMAGE A2

DP Review: Canon PowerShot Pro1
Luminous Landscape: Canon PowerShot Pro1

DP Review: Nikon Coolpix 8700
Luminous Landscape: Nikon Coolpix 8700 Non-Review

DP Review: Sony Cybershot DSC-F828
Luminous Landscape: Sony Cybershot DSC-F828

Michael Reichmann has reviewed (or in one case almost reviewed) the 8 megapixel digicams from Minolta, Sony, Canon, Olympus and Nikon. So which did he like best? Go back and read the prior list in order.

He prefers the Minolta and Sony as the best in the group, places the Canon in the middle, and finds the Olympus and Nikon disappointing. Why? Read his comparisons of the group, as well as the individual reviews (linked from the top of his article). Reichmann is not the final answer – nor does he claim to be – but his opinions are well worth considering.

I am anxiously awaiting the appearance of full reviews from DP Review.

Victim of a Belfast girl gang. Photo copyright Thomas McMullan.

This photo is featured among the highest rated at the Photosig photo sharing site. Some stunning work is posted at this site and it is worth looking at from time to time.

Windmill near Schermerhorn. Photo copyright Jaap Hart.

Viewing a single image in full-screen mode in ACDSee software. Super Bowl XXXVIII photo taken with a Canon EOS-1D by Bob Rosato, Sports Illustrated staff photographer.

Keeping track of digital images is a problem. I have taken 25,000 digital photos in the last 12 months. It takes time to go through them all, toss out the bad and mediocre ones, decide how to organize the keepers, caption them, and then burn them all to disc.

I covered a church convention for a religious periodical earlier this month. I took over 3,500 photos in 10 days. Every night I would download all the photos from CF card to laptop, do a preliminary edit and throw out all of the bad shots, pick around 100-150 of the day’s best, and burn them to disc for the editors. Then I would pick 40-60 photos from the day to post online for friends to view (see the World Conference albums). Finally I would pick a handful of photos to illustrate daily conference reports written by my brother-in-law. This whole process – usually called “digital workflow” – would take at least a couple of hours per day.

So what would you do if you had to deal with 16,183 digital pictures taken by eleven photographers in the space of around 6 hours? Ask the photo editors of Sports Illustrated magazine.

And that is just part of a bigger challenge, dealing with over 1 million digital photos submitted each year to SI (and over 3 million in an Olympics year). It boggles my mind.

Picture an editor sitting in a trailer at the Super Bowl going through two photos per second for seven hours, picking “selects” for further review. Ouch.

It is not easy on the photographers either. There is all the the pressure of getting the great shot. As a side note, the equipment an SI photographer takes to a football or basketball game is staggering. “Staff photographer Bob Rosato’s collection of gear is fairly typical. To a football game he takes four or five EOS-1D bodies and 600mm f/4, 400mm f/2.8, 300mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, and 50mm f/1.4 lenses. For basketball, he adds five or six EOS-1Ds cameras and dispenses with the 400 and 600mm lenses. Of the ten or so camera bodies that he takes to a basketball game, many are of course mounted overhead or around the basket for remote operation.” (Sports Illustrated’s digital workflow by Eamon Hickey)

The whole proces is really quite a story. Read it all here. My apologies in advance for some words I would prefer they did not use.

Downloading incoming Super Bowl XXXVIII photos to 10 IBM T40 laptops in the Sports llustrated media trailer outside Houston’s Reliant Stadium. (Photo by Eamon Hickey/Little Guy Media)

Drew, sled.

I love Christmas. Why? Probably because Christmas brings up a lot of happy memories.

Growing up, Christmas almost always meant driving to northern Colorado to spend a few days with grandpa, grandma (who passed away when I was too young), aunts and uncles (10 of them) and cousins. Those days were filled with enjoyable times spent with a wonderful extended family.

There was always the traditional Christmas feast which would include wild game if grandpa had been fortunate on his most recent hunting trip through the fields of northeast Colorado. A few times we got to go along. We always had a blessing, and it would often be sung: “Be with us at our table Lord . . .”

We would often open gifts after Christmas dinner. Getting gifts was nice but having fun with the family was a lot more important. Sitting in grandpa’s lap, playing horsey on uncle Ken’s back, wrestling with whoever, making mud pies with cousin Linda. We went home from our annual Christmas pilgrimmage with lots of gifts, but mostly with lots of happy memories.

Packing a big family into grandpa’s house was a trick. Every bed, hide-a-bed, and sofa was put to use. When we were small, they would put several of us cousins in one bed lined up like cord wood. One night I woke up in absolute darkness, standing in a room somwhere in the basement (I had walked in my sleep). I heard strange noises coming from in front of me (someone snoring). I reached out ahead of me and felt a bed, but it wasn’t mine. I turned to the side and bumped into a table. I reached out and my hand went into a glass of water and I felt – – – teeth! Yeccch! I did not want to wake the person in front of me, so I lay down on the floor and went to sleep. The next moring I was back in bed where I started, squashed between several of my cousins. I don’t know if I walked back in my sleep, or if someone put me back.

In the pantry on the back porch was a box of chocolate chips. Along with the other cousins, we would sneak out on the back porch and steal just a few chips. Not too many though, lest it be obvious. We did not learn until many years later at grandpa’s funeral that our parents were sneaking chocolate chips too. Then we found out grandpa was actually buying several boxes of chips each year to keep up with the demand. 20 or more people stealing chips is a lot!

Each year brought the annual Christmas program at church. When we were young we had a chance to be a sheep. Later on we cold be a cow. If we were lucky, we became angels or shepherds in our teen years. Young adults played Mary and Joseph, older men were the wise men.

High school brought band and orchestra concerts at Christmas time, filled with all of those wonderful arrangments of Christmas music. I loved rehearsing for those concerts, and the concerts themselves were even better.

There was caroling on frosty December nights, followed by hot spiced cicer and hot chocolate back at church.

Diagonally across the street from our church in Pueblo, Colorado was an older home which would always be decorated in a way that looked splendid to our young eyes. There was a choir of carolers, Santa and elves, the traditional nativity scene, huge candles, and Christmas lights all over the house and in every tree. Christmas music played through outside speakers. After church on Sunday and Wednesday nights in December, I would walk to the corner of the church lot with the other kids and look across the street and listen in wonder. Bright stars twinkled overhead in the night sky, as well as one big one over the manger scene across the street.

Marriage, a job as a band director, and children brought more Christmas memories. Some years we had very little money for presents, but we did have good memories. We still have most of our first Christmas tree. A styrofoam base, a very large pinecone, and a string of inexpensive beads to wrap around the cone. Only the foil metallic angel that set on top has disappeared since we bought our first “tree” for less than a dollar, many years ago.

As a band director in Louisville, Nebraska I always hoped for an early first snow fall. On that day, I would hand out Christmas music and we would play to our hearts content. The Christmas concerts were always a treat. A few days later school would be out and we would head for North Platte and Denver for Christmas with my family and Melissa’s.

After buying gifts one year for the children, we had less than $6 between us. Melissa took her $2.87 (more or less) and bought a gift for me at a drug store in North Platte, Nebraska. When she came out with her littel sack, I took the remaining $2.87 (more or less) and bought her gift.

We would buy the $1 Christmas albums that tire stores sold in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Tapes of those old albums are still family favorites and our children (ages 26 to 31) still look forward to us playing the same music each year while we open presents and have Christmas dinner.

All of our children were home some time or other this Christmas season. We had one Christmas celebration with two of them on December 26, and another celebration with two of them today. They all have spouses or significant others with families to spend time with.

I will end this little trip down memory lane. I hope you have a collection of memories that brighten this season for you. If not, I hope you begin some happy memories.

What a blessed season this can be. May there yet be Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward all of God’s children.

Merry Christmas!