Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

I feel dirty.

Not dirty like a rooting pig, but dirty like a shoplifter hiding soup in my pants. A soupy-panted shoplifter who's trying to start his own store.

Before I go too far with this analogy (arguably, I've already gone too far!), let me fill you in...

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My daughter's preschool has a professional school photographer come in twice a year to do portraits of the kids along with a class picture. Then, they send a number prints home for us to look at, purchase the ones we want, and return the ones we don't want. Included in the samples are a number of 8x10s and a few smaller portrait sheets.

By the way, I won't mention the name of the company, but it begins with 'L' and ends with 'ouch'.

My first thought when we got the first package was, "How dumb of them. They waste a bunch of money doing this."

That was until I realized how effective the scheme is. It's easy to say, "No thanks, we don't want to buy any pictures." Especially when you're poor, like us. But when they do the shoot for free, then actually put a prints in your hands, it makes your resolve soften a little. Ok, let's be honest, my resolve didn't soften much, but my wife's did. It doesn't help that my daughter photographs well (my son got sample prints in the same fashion, but pro photographers have a hard time getting a natural smile out of him).

Yeah, putting pictures in the family's hands is a genius move by this company that ends in 'ouch'. It gives that little extra nudge to help the photo-happy person in the family (played in this drama by my wife) sway the stalwart (that's me) toward the purchase. Who cares if it costs the company a buck a sheet to print them? I'm sure they get a lot more sales by doing it.

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As to why I feel dirty...

Well, my wife wanted one picture in particular (my daughter in a cap and gown) but the $12.50 a sheet cost was a bit too much for us to pay. She suggested I photograph the picture to copy it because it was a picture we couldn't get ourselves (well, I could, except we don't have a red cap and gown in extra small handy). I quickly volunteered that there is a scanner at work and the quality would be much better. Then I started hedging...

As I thought more about it (and especially at work while I was doing the deed) I started to feel dirty. How can I, a supposed photographer, copy someone else's work in good conscience?

Obviously, viewing the image is ok, they sent it home with us! Scanning the image for our archives seems reasonable. But, printing a copy for relatives definitely feels wrong (my wife convinced me to do it in the first place by suggesting that we don't pass images or prints on to anyone else in the family). But what about printing a copy for ourselves... doesn't that seem ...dirty... too?

Of course, this is all coming from the guy who actually felt guilty about software piracy in the 90s (that doesn't mean I didn't do it, I just did as little as possible and felt guilty about it when I did do it).

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So what did I do? I scanned the image in question along with the class picture but kept the DPI to 300. Between the quality of the scanner (not great) and the JPG compression, that makes reprinting the shots at 8x10 a stretch. For now, we'll just keep them in our archives of unprinted images. Later on, if we decide we really want a good quality 8x10 from it, we can go back to L___ouch and pay for a reprint.

Obviously, I can't post the image in question here. That'd definitely send my moral meter off the wrong end of the scale...

As my wife said, we should just blame it on my daughter: she's just too cute!

Recommendation: PicLens 1.6 for Firefox

I've known for a while that Firefox has some cool add-ons but I've held off adding any to my home computer... until PicLens that is. What an excellent photo browser, MUCH better for Flickr than the standard interface. It also lets you browse most of the other major photo repositories, including Google Images!

It lets you quickly scroll through a bunch of images to find those you like, automatically loads more as you go (no more clicking the 'next' button!), and has a seamless interface for scrolling, viewing them full screen, and playing a slide show.

A good way to get an idea of how PicLens helps you is this video:



Really, though, there is just no substitute for trying PicLens out. I will warn you, it is relatively processor intensive, so avoid it if you have an older computer. It is supported for Firefox, Safari, and IE.

eBay/Blogger Editor Kit Fix

This has nothing to do with photography, so most of you will probably want to ignore it.

Anyway, I've found that eBay tools are a great addition to my blog since I talk about a lot of used equipment and it adds a lot to my content to have live auction listings right in my posts.

Generating a revenue stream larger than what I get from Adsense with no cost to my readers isn't bad either :) [For actual value, think 2 burgers a month instead of 1].

Anyway, the new eBay To Go widget is very nice for providing live searches on my pages, but it doesn't allow me to use a SID to track which pages are getting the most clicks and purchases. Here's an example for a SB-20 search:

Pretty nice, right? My only complaint is I can't apply an SID, it is shockwave flash (meaning it is slower to load), and it is more complicated (not necessarily a bad thing).


The other alternative for displaying searches is the eBay editor kit. The editor kit allows me to set an SID in a custom search box, but looks really crappy on blogger, like this:


So a spent an hour today trying to track down the problem (this thread is my main source). It turns out that the default blogger template has the CSS code:

.post img {
border: 1px solid #E3E4E4;
padding: 2px;
background: #fff;
}

This causes all images to have a 1 pixel border and 2 pixels of padding... even the hidden images in the custom editor kit display!

The solution is to create a new CSS entry to turn off the border and padding inside of a ebayEK class:

.post .ebayEK img {
border: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}

Then, just put span tags with the ebayEK class around the editor kit code to make the problem go away:

<span class="ebayEK">
... ebay code here ...
</span>

This results in a display like this:


Much better, right? Now custom editor kits are not trashed anymore...

Backyard Garden Macros

Bear with me...

The final installment of the Sigma 600mm f/8 review is coming along, but there's a lot of images to include. It'll take a few more days to finish.

For now you get some macro shots...

I took the Canon 100mm f/4 Macro out back to give it a little try (note this is an old FD mount lens, not the newer Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM). Not a real test, just messing around a bit.

The main reason I took it out was to shoot an albino spider I spotted (no idea what species it is, maybe it is a juvenile, if spiders have such things?). The first sequence was backlit by the sun:


After a number of shots (including the image that opened this post) I grabbed my flash and tried backlighting with the sun. Sadly, the spider moved, so none of the shots were really what I was looking for, but it does show that the Canon 100mm f/4 Macro can perform decently.


BTW, these last two shots are cropped to less than half the height of the original frame (the spider was tiny, maybe 7mm long?). As it was, I was using the 100mm (which gives a little better than 1:2) along with a second extension tube to get down near 1:1. I used a tripod but the wind was blowing decently, causing the blurriness in the sun-only shot. The flash sharpened it right up though.

The image that opened this post is a 100% crop (if you click on it) showing the spider's fangs. I will admit that I applied sharpening to it. Pretty cool, huh? (FYI, that one was without the flash)

Finally, I'll end with a closeup of a flower (this was maybe 1:4?). I just liked the colors and the contrast between the texture and delicacy of the point. My wife knows what kind of flower it is, but I forgot...

Sigma 600mm f/8 Reflex Performance Addendum

Truthsayer asked the following question in a comment:

Why are you comparing a 200mm lens to the Sigma 600mm?

That's an excellent question, and probably an indicator that I rushed the last post (Part 1 of the Sigma 600mm f/8 Reflex review) before it had all the explanation it needed. So I'll try to fill in some blanks about the performance of the Sigma 600mm in this post.

Before I go on, I need to specify that I'll only be discussing the pure, best-case, performance of the Sigma 600mm. In real-life use, the Sigma 600mm will generally not perform as well as these 'ideal' test shots. So this is more of a theoretical discussion of how well the Sigma 600mm performs rather than what to expect out of it when you use it. In my next post, I'll discuss the real-life use of the lens and its many handling quirks.


So, why compare the Sigma to a Canon 70-200mm f/4 USM?

1. The short version is that I had the Canon 70-200mm handy. It is currently my only telephoto lens.

2. The slightly longer version is that the Canon 70-200mm is similar to the existing lens of someone interested in purchasing a Sigma 600mm (admittedly, the Sigma is a budget lens). A better comparison would probably be one of the 70-300mm consumer zooms, or even the Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS. Comparing the $100, 20 year old Sigma 600mm to the $7,000 Canon 600mm f/4L IS USM or even the $1,000 Canon 400mm f/4L USM would be just rude.

3. The real reason is that I wanted to validate my purchase. If my tests conclude the same thing as this guy (that a 600mm shot is no better than an upsized, high quality, 200mm shot), then there is zero reason to keep the lens around. I could get shots just as good (and with less struggle) using the 70-200mm. That conclusion would make me very sad.


And what did I learn?

Well, luckily, my tests showed that the Sigma 600mm f/8 Reflex can easily achieve more detail than an upsampled shot from the 200mm end of the Canon 70-200mm f/4 USM, as shown in the comparison shot below:

Left: Upsampled Canon, Right: Sigma 600mm 100% crop

Essentially, for shooting pictures of birds or other far away objects (like the moon) I should be able to achieve a substantially more detailed image using the Sigma. Obviously not super sharp, but better. That makes it worth keeping around until I can get a used 400mm lens.

After I read Truthsayer's comment about getting a 1200mm effective focal length, I started to wonder about the Olympus series of cameras. It turns out Olympus dSLRs use the four-thirds standard, meaning their sensors are smaller than Canon APS-C sensor and use a 4:3 aspect ratio instead of 3:2. The image at right (from Wikipedia) shows the relative sizes of the various digital sensors.

I dug a little further and found that those Olympus photographers have really put a lot of testing into the OM mount version of the Sigma 600mm. For instance, this thread provides a well-done review of the 600mm and concludes that the lens is pretty darn soft. And this thread concludes the same thing, along with a discussion of many of the other reflex lenses that are out there.

Some observations and comments:

• The first review/thread actually gives MTF50 measurements for the lens, which is something I've seen nowhere else.
  
• The second thread has a lot of handling comments that I'll echo in my next post.
• There may be an adjustment method (screws under the center obstruction) to get the lens in better alignment. I'll check this out when I get home.
  
• The second thread has a moon picture which is softer than mine. I think I got a good copy of the lens and it works better on a Canon than an Olympus due to the sensor size (more on this later).
• Sigma lenses are prone to mold (I knew that!).
• The Zuiko 500/8 Reflex is very well respected, but it goes for $300+ on eBay. Not worth it to me since it is still going to suffer from most of the handling drawbacks of the Sigma. Here's a good comparison including the Zuiko.
  

I think the main problem for Olympus/four-thirds owners is that their smaller sensor size (a little more than half the area of the APS-C, and a quarter of the size of a 35mm frame) is exposing the optical deficiencies of the Sigma 600mm mirror lens. I would urge Olympus users (or other 4/3 bodies) to stay away from the 600mm Sigma or at least go in with reasonable expectations.

Luckily, on my 20D, the Sigma performs a bit better just because the pixels aren't as close together!


MTF Discussion (Geeks Only!)

Ultimately, it comes down to spatial resolution, or line pairs per millimeter (lp/mm). In the business, this is called a Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). MTF is a trait of both the lens and the camera. I don't want to describe MTF50 in detail here, but if you are curious, look at Imatest's page on MTF or Bob Atkins' page on MTF.

Imagine what's happening in your camera: light enters the lens, gets refracted/reflected, and then is projected onto the image plane inside the camera. If the lens is good, then the image on this plane will be very sharp (very narrow lines can be distinguished). But to get a sharp image, you also need lots of pixels to resolve the image projection from the lens. MTF is thus a factor of both lens and camera, with the limiting factor (lens or camera) deciding the overall MTF.

So, imagine the Sigma 600mm f/8 projecting an image onto 35mm film. The lens designers did what needed to be done to get decent MTF (lw/mm) on film. Not perfect, of course, but most people who have used the Sigma 600mm f/8 on a film camera have been happy with its performance. Now, take the same lens, and stick it on a 4/3 camera. Since the 4/3 image sensor is half the height of film, even though the lw/mm is the same, we've got less total lines/image on our sensor. And, as a result, the overall image is going to look like it has half the spatial resolution and appear softer than the image on film. In First Light's post, he quotes an MTF50 on his E-1 of 703 lp/ph. But, on 35mm film, that would be around 1400 lp/ph, which is generally considered to be a good resolution.

Note that I switched to lp/ph (line pairs to picture height) for this argument. On my 20D, FL's figure equates to around 800 lp/ph (it is actually a little higher when you consider the difference in aspect ratio). Not great, but only a little on the poor side of good. That pretty much summarizes my experiences: all my images are soft and probably comparable to upsampling an image from a decent 400mm lens.


Conclusion:

It isn't that the Sigma 600mm f/8 is so bad, but it works better on larger sensors. And for my purposes, since it outperforms my other telephoto lens (a Canon 70-200mm f/4), it will sometimes find itself on my camera.

As an example, here's a shot which I could never have gotten with my Canon 70-200mm:

American Tree Sparrow (?), Sigma 600mm F/8, 1/2000s, ISO 800

Ok, well, I could have gotten it, but it wouldn't have as much detail. The image above is nearly full frame; click it to see it at 1600pix!