Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

There were three issues that concerned me… under-exposure, loss of detail/resolution, and an inaccurate colour-cast.
There’s also the matter of the large file sizes. Though that’s not really an issue… more of an inconvenience that’ll no longer be a problem once I’ve increased the RAM on my computer.

Taking them in order then:

Under-exposure

This could well be a lens issue and as such I’m not letting myself get too concerned by it until after I’ve tried some shots with a different lens. Its also conceivable that in part its a side-effect of the colour-balance issue, though I doubt it. In any event its fairly easily remedied, either pre- or post- shot, so can hardly be called an “issue” so much as a “quirk”.

Loss of Detail

This was of much greater concern, and the source of much of my initial disappointment.
Of course, this too could have been a lens issue, but equally as well may not have been. And if not, then not so easily remedied. In fact, if a sensor- or processor-related problem then I doubt if it could be remedied at all short of a firmware upgrade maybe. Hence my concern.

However, that impression was formed on the basis of the dozen or so pics I shot with the camera virtually straight out the box (just couldn’t wait, could I?) and conceivably I hadn’t paid quite as much attention either to the settings or in actually taking the shots as I should have done.
And when I inspected the track and river shots I’d done, aside from the persistent colour issue I was much more satisfied.

I subsequently sent one of the RAW files from the river set to a mate for closer scrutiny by a much more experienced eye than mine, and his opinion was, to quote “the GX20 has sort of a clarity that is intriguing, its the detail in the images that is clear and the file looks neat in appearance, think if the white balance is sussed it will be bloody good too”, which really does sum it up quite nicely.
And that’s with the bog-standard lens that came with the camera!

So I think the “loss of detail issue” isn’t an issue after all and can be confidently forgotten.

But there still remains…

Colour Cast

This is clearly a white balance problem and, after looking closely at all the shots, plus taking on board the various comments made about the pics I’d posted to Flickr (which drew attention to either a pink or a purple tone in the shots) I began to suspect (and eventually confirmed to my satisfaction) a problem with the magenta.

With a lot of tinkering in post-processing its possible that the colour can be corrected, but that would inevitably entail a helluva lot of work on each individual image just in getting them to look as they should look. And I’m not at all convinced that configuring a camera-specific preset in Lightroom (my RAW editing app of choice) to do all this work on image import would necessarily be effective for every image taken under a wide range of circumstances.
Now I’m not totally opposed to enhancing a particular colour or manipulating the colour balance at post-processing stage, providing I’m starting out with an image that provides a fairly accurate colour balance! Absent that and one is no longer looking at an artistic interpretation (hmm… please forget I just used the word “artistic”. Don’t know what came over me for a moment there!) but at a flawed image. Not good!

Curiously, this matter of colour balance also seems to be exhibited by the other cameras (blue with the GX10, yellow with the 400D), but nowhere near to the same extent and not with every shot. In other words, the anomalies are at a reasonably acceptable level, and not every pic merits tweaking.

However, it was suggested to me that maybe the problem’s not with the camera itself but with the way its writing RAW files, especially if the version of firmware its using to do this is different to that of the GX10 (which it is).
So two ideas came out of this… either use the RAW conversion software that comes with the camera (which I don’t), or make sure I’ve got the latest stable version of Lightroom (which I hadn’t).

Now, I’ve got the RAW converter app that came with the GX10 installed though I never use it, preferring instead to use Lightroom. So I’d not bothered to install the later version with the GX20, not even having considered using it.
However, I uninstalled the GX10 version then installed the later version… and whaddya know? The shots look fine! (Curiously, they also load a damn sight quicker than with Lightroom.) Not even a hint of colour imbalance.

Feeling a tad more optimistic, I set to thinking… So if its the way the data’s being read as opposed to a flaw in the camera itself (or indeed in its settings), then maybe upgrading to the latest version of Lightroom might render a similar result.
And that’s what I did.

Hmm. Well, Lightroom continued to render the files with a magenta tone bias in the white balance (confirming my original diagnosis at least)… but this time showing that in the control panel as a +10 increase. Which it hadn’t been doing before… or at least, not that I’d noticed.
Knocking that +10 off (to effective 0) I exported some test JPEGs. They were definitely an improvement but, alas, not quite enough. However, this does suggest that if I want to persist in using Lightroom for processing the GX20 files (which is my preferred option) then at least I can overcome the problem relatively easily simply by setting the tone slider for that colour spectrum in the opposite direction.

Whoopee!

But another couple of possibilities emerge from this.

It looks as though, if I use the Samsung-supplied RAW converter I may well be able to see the files rendered as they should without any additional tweaking on my part. And if that’s the case, that further suggests that processing done in-camera will probably be okay, meaning that JPEGs should come straight off-camera fine.

Which of course needs testing. And if that’s the case, then maybe I could use the GX20 principally for shooting JPEGs, reverting to RAW only on really critical shots or where I anticipate a lot of post-processing. (In other words, use it as my main “events” camera.)

Now this may seem a bit of a bizarre approach for using a dSLR, but it does actually have certain merits.
For example, when I did the Carnival Against the Arms Trade shoot in Brighton earlier this year the folk down there were eager to grab some pics urgently (practically straight off-camera) in order to send out to various media (who were squawking for photos) in virtual real-time.
Yet that presented horrendous problems as they simply weren’t geared up to handle RAWs, and neither did they, or I, have the right connector to simply process in-camera and then plug the GX10 into their computer. Nor, weirdly, did they have a card-reader on hand (neither, stupidly, did I!). We came up with a work-around eventually but by that time they’d grabbed initial shots from someone else so I missed out on what could have been a really super opportunity.

Shooting in JPEG (plus carrying a card-reader of course!) would have sorted that problem. In fact, the problem would never have arisen.

(Memo to self… in future be sure to carry a card reader and PC connection cables for both cameras whenever attending an event. I don’t call myself an idiot for nothing y’know!)

Then there’s the matter of the file sizes. Were I to shoot principally in JPEG I wouldn’t have to invest in a lot of new high-capacity cards, nor would I be stretching computer resources to their limits if/when importing the files into Lightroom.

At best this is only a partial solution for it’d only really be relevant to my “events stuff”. Where my “scenic” shots are concerned I think I’d still want to shoot RAW, preferring the much greater flexibility in processing, and quality-retention, that such allows.

Nevertheless, things are looking a lot more hopeful now.

In conclusion then, I have to ask myself how I feel about the camera now.
I won’t claim to be ecstatic. And I’m still mildly disappointed by not having experienced that joy of playing with a new toy that I feel I should have experienced. In that sense, I feel somewhat cheated.

But at least now I don’t have the inclination to chuck the bloody thing straight back to the place from whence it came. In fact, if my mate’s assessment bears out, then the thing will prove to have been a worthwhile acquisition.
And you can be assured, now I’ve started this particular topic I’ll be posting news of later developments.

Well, that’ll be something to look forward to, now won’t it? (Heh heh)

Wednesday morning, 16 July. Up with the lark (well, before the lark actually… even before the sunrise in fact), having had about four hours’ sleep.

Why?

Cos I needed to jump on a train to get me down to London real early, almost before the metropolis begins to wake up.

Why?

Cos a bunch of folk calling themselves the Greenwash Guerillas (don’t you just love that name) are staging a demonstration outside the Business Design Centre at the ridiculously early hour of 0815. And of course, me being me, I need to get down there much earlier to a) find the damned place (allowing for my well-earned reputation of being able to get lost even on a one-way street!), and then b) having found the place do a recce with the principal intention of sussing out where both the coffeeshops and toilets are.

Why (the demo, that is)?

Well, this Business Design Centre place is apparently hosting a so-called “Climate Change Summit”, and the delegates thereto really do need to be informed that the “Summit” is being sponsored by e.on, a company entrenched in the power industry. Tha same company in fact that has plans to build the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for thirty years at Kingsnorth, in Kent.
(You can read more about it all here!)

And of course photographs of the event are simply begging to be taken, even at that time of the morning.
And with the forecast being for rain!

I must be mad!

As it turned out, the rain held off. In fact, once the event got under way the sun started peeking through just as though Life, the Universe and Everything were giving its blessing to the Guerillas’ cause.
Didn’t take the new camera with me (the GX20) cos I haven’t quite sorted out the white balance issue (though current thinking is that its nothing to do with the camera per se but rather the way my existing apps are reading the RAW data). So the trusty GX10 came with me instead… along with the 400D of course.

Shot a couple of cards’ full of pics, then back home by just after midday to steam into the sorting/processing/uploading and get them online as quick as pos, plus letting relevant interested parties know of course.
But had to interrupt that to get to back into town during the evening (a spin-off from which was yet more urgent stuff to be done soon as I returned home!) then finally resume messing around with the day’s pics.

(You can see the full set here)

And after all that, turn my mind (and hands, and computer and stuff) to the thorny issue of the GX20’s white balance.
Which, between installing new progs (or rather, updated versions of existing progs), a load of testing, and exchanging a flurry of emails with a knowledgeable mate, now seems well on the way to getting sorted.

So, some 27 hours after I first surfaced I finally managed to get a top-up of that four hours’ sleep I’d had before the fun and games started.

I definitely must be mad!

Clearly there’s some sort of colour issue going on with the GX20, as was revealed by yesterday’s “play shots”.

Well, nothing like the present for starting to tackle this issue, so went out early this morning (bright and sunny) to do a few test shots, concentrating for the purposes of this particular session on the “colour tone” feature of the camera.

I took each shot nine times, corresponding to the available presets in the colour tone setting… standard, red, magenta, blue, cyan, green, yellow, warm, and cool.

However, to avoid totally boring visitors to my Flickr page I’ve only uploaded the first of each series (the “standard” or default colour tone setting).

Other relevant info…

White Balance at the “daylight” setting
Auto ISO
Aperture Priority mode
AdobeRGB colourspace
RAW format

In the pre-shoot “Picture Wizard” settings Saturation was set to +1, Contrast 0 and Sharpness +1

(Theoretically of course when shooting in RAW mode settings such as White Balance, Contrast, Saturation and Sharpness aren’t actually applied to the image, although the information’s saved for when the file’s converted to JPEG (which isn’r strictly true re the white balance… as I discovered on a shoot a few weeks back!). This raises the interesting question of whether or not Lightroom actually reads this data or should one in fact just use the Samsung Raw Converter program that comes with the camera? I sense more experimentation afoot.)

Imported the shots into Lightroom then, with no post processing whatsoever, exported to JPEG at reduced size for web useage (but at 100% quality), also converting to sRGB colourspace.

Comments/observations invited.

(One positive thing that did emerge from this session was that my concerns re detail resolution have been somewhat laid to rest… for the moment!)

And here are exactly the same shots, but “tweaked” (post-processed). Basically upped the exposure a tad and increased the vibrancy quite substantially…

Following on from my last post…

Well, having just come into possession of a new camera I simply couldn’t resist having a play prior to taking it out “for real”. Who could?

And, as is fairly usual with me, optimism thrust common sense aside even before I’d switched the damn thing on. So, a few shots indoors then, a day or so later, wander outside and fire off a few shots; then scurry back indoors to quickly transfer them to the computer so that I could become ecstatic over the truly wonderful results.

My first impressions?

Hmm.

I say again, hmm. (Not even an exclamation mark, you’ll notice!)

Well, I’ve gotta be brutally honest and confess that first impressions were somewhat less than favourable. But I also have to be sensible about this, put aside my initial disappointment, and admit that after a rational analysis of the results the camera itself is a reasonably significant improvement over its forerunner, the GX10.

To explain…

Firstly, the RAW files are absolutely huge. To give you a rough idea, the Canon’s come out at an average of about 11/12Mb, the GX10’s at an average of about 16/17Mb… but this beast is consistently producing files of around 24Mb!

Now bearing in mind that on the present laptop I’m using to process pics it struggles when importing the GX10’s files into Lightroom, all I can say is that these massive 24Mb files had my machine whimpering, cringeing, and begging for mercy.
It was a struggle just to get them loaded into Lightroom, and I eventually had to resort to importing them one at a time!

So, before even looking at the results, my opinion was already somewhat jaundiced.

Anyway, having (finally) overcome that hurdle, things began to start looking up. At the thumbnail stage anyway.
There was little evidence of the vignetting that so afflicts shots taken with the GX10 (though that’s actually a lens issue), and that consistently blueish cast I seem to get with the GX10 has disappeared. In fact, the overall colour balance seemed to be a much more accurate representation than I’ve ever achieved straight off-camera from the GX10, or for that matter from the Canon. I’d fired all the shots in this initial batch with the camera set to auto white balance and auto ISO and, though I tweaked the wb slightly in post-processing, that was literally a tweak rather than a major edit.
That said, all the shots seemed to require significantly more “vibrancy” and “saturation” than I’ve been accustomed to applying… which may simply be evidence that the AdobeRGB colourspace I select as default is actually being applied more effectively.

Which suggests that the new processor has an impact other than on just the JPEGS… and a positive one at that. Excellent!

But then I looked at the images in larger size and rapidly the suspicion formed in my mind that detail resolution is nowhere near as good as with the GX10. This was majorly disappointing cos, with 14.6megapixels I was expecting much greater detail resolution. I could be mistaken of course and clearly need a more extensive session with a wider range of subjects to verify this or not, as the case may be. In any event, that’s more likely to be another lens issue. (I’ll probably have a go at trying the lens from the GX10 on the camera and see what results I get from that; which should, at the very least, clarify things a bit.)

Well, that’s about it for the mo’.

I’m not as excited by the results as I thought I would have been, or feel I should have been… but rationality dictates that the issues disturbing me are not actually the fault of the camera at all but of the computer (the file size/importing/processing time issue) and the lens (the detail resolution issue).

So, I need a computer with significantly more RAM and a different/better lens before I can really make a definitive assessment.

Bugger!

This here is my photography-kit shopping list, with priorities being pretty much as listed (though there’s no guarantee I’ll stick rigidly to that order!).

Actually, that’s not strictly true. That its a shopping list. I’ve been saving for ages now and still seem little closer to even getting the very first item, on which basis it’ll probably take me about twenty thousand years before I’ve got the whole lot. If I ever do, that is. And that’s assuming I add nothing else to it!
So perhaps it’d be more accurate to describe it as a wish list. A secret fantasy if you will. Sad really, cos its not even very ambitious. And what sort of person is it that has fantasies about camera kit anyway? Oh, what depths to which I have sunk!

Anyway, here goes…

1. A better walkabout lens to replace the kit one for the GX10… at the moment I’ve got my sights set on a Sigma

2. A proper macro lens (for the rest, ditto above)

2. A bigger shoulder bag (the backpack I’ve got isn’t always the best or most appropriate thing to use, and my existing shoulder bag is just a tad too small for two cameras with lenses attached). I have in mind something in the Lowepro Stealth Reporter range

3. A RAW-capable point & shoot… the Canon G9’s still the front-runner for this, though apparently there are rumours that Nikon are about to introduce one as well (the P6000 I think), so my mind could be changed fairly easily (as it very frequently is!)

4. A decent flash for at least the GX10, and possibly one for the 400D

5. A decent and easily portable tripod to slot in between the monster Slik and the real cheapie lightweights I’ve got… something from the Manfrotto range looks fave

And then, in about a million years’ time…

6. A Nikon D300 or similar

(But we won’t even talk about the latter cos I dread to think what actually getting one would entail… loads more highly expensive glass for a start… that wouldn’t fit anything else I’ve got! Er… so what’s new?)

The list being perodically interrupted of course by all the other odd little bits and pieces (memory cards, batteries, filters, spare lens caps, pouches etc etc) that one seems to accumulate without really knowing how, or even why occasionally… somehow they just manage to slip themselves into the shopping from time to time.

Now nowhere in that list is there any mention of upgrading the dSLR camera bodies I’ve already got.

Well, is there?

Nope! I thought not. So how come I mysteriously, suddenly, and quite unexpectedly seem to have acquired an example of the latest Samsung GX20?

As some of you (well, one of you at least) will already know, I’ve been having a bit of a love affair with the Samsung GX10 (basically a re-branded and slightly customised version of the Pentax K10D).
Ok, its got its little foibles. The supplied kit lens leaves something to be desired (though, strictly speaking, this isn’t part of the camera per se); the OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) switch is cleverly in exactly the wrong place, making it peculiarly vulnerable to being inadvertently knocked into the “off” position; the fact that no matter how much you tweak the white balance the pics always seem to determinedly end up with a bit of a blueish cast; the function button and circular controller on the rear of the body seem perversely over-sensitive, so that the slightest tap (as when, for example, slung around the neck the rear of the camera bounces against a jacket button, zip or whatever) can irritatingly reset the white balance or ISO etc for you. Not too serious… providing one notices. Which all too often I don’t! And hence end up with loads of crap pics! (That’s my excuse, anyway.)

But hey, nothing’s perfect. And even allowing those little quirks I still rate the camera… they could even be considered as a feature, giving it a character uniquely of its own! Regardless, I still think its far superior to my Canon, and there’s something about the way it processes pics that I just adore.
And its chunky. You feel like you’re holding something substantial; something that’ll stand up to a bit of rough and tumble. Not a cheap bit of plastic that’ll likely stop working at the first slightest bump.
I’d happily trade the Canon in for a Nikon. But the Samsung? Hmm… probably not. You get the idea.

I’ve had the GX10 getting on for nine months now (or thereabouts). Got it in fact not too long after it was first introduced into the UK market. And I’m still happy with it. In fact, the more I use it the happier I become with it, and the more features I discover how to use (of which there are a plethora… many of them I still haven’t yet played with). Its one of those bits of kit that actually seems to work with you rather than just presenting one frustration after another. It almost actively encourages you to want to try taking better pics, and to experiment… to play, and have fun.

But we live in a consumerist-driven society, and camera manufacturers appear just as committed as any other industry to capitalising on this.
Long gone are the days when you could buy a piece of hardware and confidently expect it still to be in service in 15 or 20 years’ time. Still functioning; still maintainable in terms of parts replacements; and, more to the point, not having been replaced by an “updated” model or version!
This is the blight by which virtually all industries nowadays seem afflicted.
A new model range, distinguished by little other than a different and often confusing “model number”; or a new colour range or other purely cosmetic change; the inclusion of one or two new “features” that are so often little more than unnecessary gimmicks, all too frequently masquerading as “new” or “the latest” technology. And so it goes on. Which of course necessarily entails the inevitable price-hike.

With little intention other than to put yet another dividend into the pockets of the manufacturers’ shareholders at the expense of us, the poor (and daily getting poorer) weak-willed victims of the marketing Machiavellis.
Which is to say nothing of the impact on the environment of churning out all this extra, and largely superfluous, “stuff”. All in the name of the great god “Profit”… which ain’t much use to a species that could well be on the verge of extinction!

So Samsung, just a couple of years or so after announcing the GX10, have introduced a “new”, “upgraded” model… their now current dSLR flagship the GX20!
Far as I can tell, the differences are few and unlikely to cause that much excitement…

An increase in the ISO range from 100-1600 to 100-3200, with an option to configure it up to 6400… accompanied by the warning that selecting such may result in increased noise (what a surprise!).

An increase in megapixels from 10.2 to 14.6 - a dubious blessing at best (and a change in sensor size from 23.5 x 15.7mm to 23.4 x 15.5mm. Hmm).

A new processor, said to have been developed jointly by Samsung and Pentax which, as far as I’ve been able to learn, only affects performance in the JPEG-processing area. Though I could be wrong. But if I’m not, then presumably this is practically irrelevant to someone (such as myself) who shoots only in RAW.

And the inclusion of “Live View”. Yes. Well. The less I say about that the better probably. Um… with an LCD increased from 2.5″ to 2.7″.

Finally, the body-weight’s increased from 793 to 806gm (including memory card and battery).

And that’s it! Oh… nearly forgot… a re-branded kit lens that looks virtually identical (apart from the name badge) to the one that came with the GX10. That one had Schneider-Kreuznach on it, the GX20’s is allegedly Samsung’s own. It’ll be interesting to discover whether the difference is purely in the naming, or if they’ve managed to sort out the vignetting problem as well.
But, at the end of the day, its still just a kit lens so one can’t complain too much.

Hmm… there’s another “Oh, I nearly forgot” item… the manual’s now printed landscape instead of portrait. Whoopee!

Not much really then to warrant replacing the GX10, and absolutely no valid reason to even consider laying hands on yet another dSLR at the moment. Particularly without the one feature that I think would have represented a real value-for-money improvement… upping the burst mode from 3 to 6fps or thereabouts.

Except, and unfortunately, in certain areas (notably and currently that of camera kit) I’m as prone to the temptations of consumerism as anyone else. Dammit!

So, as I said (seemingly ages ago), it seems I’ve mysteriously and quite suddenly acquired one of these GX20s.

I can of course justify it… sort of (actually a fabricated rationalisation for my shameful consumerist lifestyle, but there’s no need to mention that!).
It now means I’ve got a backup in the event that my camera gets lost, stolen, or (likeliest scenario) confiscated/trashed by the cops at any one of the protests or other such events I cover.

Whether the GX20 will actually assist me in taking better pics is of course another matter entirely, and remains to be seen. But if it doesn’t I suspect I shall be more than a little miffed. Yet, bizarrely, I can’t think of one real good reason why it should!

* By way of explanation: the title of this post is “Psst… whatever you do don’t tell forkboy!”. For those visitors unfamiliar with my ramblings I should perhaps explain that the “forkboy” therein refers to a particular person who otherwise would remain nameless who has no greater joy than honing his wit on my occasional (and rare) acquisitions of camera gear. Hence the appeal to please not to tell this particular person about my coming into possession of the GX20. Please! Else I shall just fall victim to a torrent of sarcy remarks. And he’s a fine one to talk… what with his huge lenses, and huge mansion to match!

As a general rule I don’t like doing “indoors shots” at home… mainly cos lighting’s usually a bitch, and very few things there jump out and shout “photograph me”.

The first issue I’ve sort of overcome by my fairly extensive experimentation at The Bear pub where the lighting conditions are, to say the very least, “interesting”!
But the second issue… ah, that’s a different matter entirely. Familiarity is of course the cause of the problem, so the solution obviously is to try to see things “as with a stranger’s eyes”. Hmm.

Ages ago a mate of mine suggested that its a good exercise to occasionally try shooting things different to one’s “normal” pics, for all sorts of very good reasons.

Then, not so very long ago, an internet photo buddy of mine shot a rather delightful series of wine bottles and suchlike.
Well, this (coupled with that ages-old suggestion that’s always been lurking in the back of my mind) set me to thinking.

And what I ended up with was this short series of shots around the theme “In the Kitchen”!

Now these are doubly interesting for a certain person who shall remain nameless has occasionally passed the odd comment here and there implying that I’m somewhat secretive about my abode (bloody cheek!).
Well, having shot this little series I decided to create a brand new Flickr set, “Around the Home”, and include therein the odd one or two relevant shots I may have taken in the past.
Lo and behold, it seems I’ve actually done quite a few (so much for those rumours of “secretiveness”!). You can see the complete set here.

Having read this and this I thought “Hmm… this seems like a good act to get in on. Think I’ll give it a try meself”.

But whilst everyone else seems to be getting delightful bees and dragonflies and stuff, what do I get? A bloody giant bat, that’s what!

Maybe Mother Nature’s trying to tell me something?