I was quite interested in this camera, the first Nikon compact with VR (their name for image stabiliser or Vibration Reduction), I thought it could be a competitor for the one I have my eye on, the Canon Powershot A710 IS.

The main turn off for me was the lack of manual controls, being a full time SLR user, when I use my backup compact I want as much flexibility as possible.

The reviews are in though and it doesn’t seem to perform too well.

DCRP Review: Nikon Coolpix S10

If you want a fairly compact ultra zoom camera that can take some creative shots, then the Coolpix S10 is probably worth a look. If you want manual controls and lens accessories then it’s probably not the best choice. While I’m not jumping up and down with enthusiasm about the S10, it’s cool enough (pun intended) to earn my recommendation.

Nikon CoolPix S10 review

The selling points of this camera are the flexibility of the design and the powerful zoom. Neither of these will let prospective purchasers down, but anyone looking for a more general camera will be disappointed by the image quality overall and the problematic flash. The VR system is something that a big zoom really needs if in poor lighting condition, but it is hardly infallible so a few shots are generally required, rather than assuming it will have worked. It does help keep the ISO rating down, which is a good idea. While ISO800 images are noisy, they retain detail and sharpness. So, one for the person who like to get close to the action and wants a pocket-sized camera, but not for everyone else.

Nikon Coolpix S10 – Trusted Reviews

The Nikon Coolpix S10 is a well-made and attractively finished camera with some useful capabilities, excellent noise handling and is capable of producing good results under the right circumstances. However, lacklustre performance, terminally slow AF, poor low-light capability and awkward handling limits its appeal. It is also expensive compared to rival cameras with superior performance, so the overall outlook is bleak.

Nikon Coolpix S10 – CNet

The bottom line: Nikon’s S10 has some decent features, including a really nice lens, but it doesn’t live up to its potential and can’t compete with similarly priced superzooms.

Now I am a great fan of Nikon SLR cameras, but I’ve never much liked their compacts…this doesn’t leave me feeling impassioned to buy an S10 VR..

Introduction – ISO Basics

ISO or ASA in the most basic terms is the speed with which your film or digital camera responds to light, so the higher the ISO/ASA rating the more sensitive the film or CCD/CMOS sensor is to light.

In terms of film those with with lower sensitivity (lower ISO speed rating like 50 or 100) requires a longer exposure and is thus called a slow film, while stock with higher sensitivity (higher ISO speed rating such as 400 or 800) can shoot the same scene with a shorter exposure and is called a fast film.

The same holds true for digital camera, but you are adjusting the sensitivity of the CCD or CMOS not actually using different film, this is one of the beauties of digital cameras, you can change ISO on every shot if you wish, you don’t need different physical films!

The basic rule would be a higher ISO gives a higher shutter speed with the same Aperture settings, so less blur. The trade-off is that higher ISO also gives more noise or grain to your images, which can be a bad thing if it’s not a look you appreciate.

Slow shutter speed will give you pics like this:

Because you just can’t hold it steady enough!

or

Because your shutter speed isn’t fast enough to capture someone in motion!

ISO or ASA

ISO is the term generally used on Digital Cameras, the standard was ASA and in the later years ISO.

To get a bit more technical it was known as the ISO linear scale, which corresponds to the older ASA scale, doubling the speed of a film (that is, halving the amount of light that is necessary to expose the film) implies doubling the numeric value that designates the film speed so 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600.

Nikon digital ISO ratings tend to be exactly the same as the real film counterparts where as some others like Sony Alpha A-100 are slightly off, I think the Canon 350D was out too.

As for other manufacturers I’m not really sure.

For example with the Alpha:

The first column is the indicated sensitivity the second is the actual.

ISO 100 ISO 125
ISO 200 ISO 250
ISO 400 ISO 500
ISO 800 ISO 1000
ISO 1600 ISO 2000

And for the Canon 350D:

ISO 200 ISO 250
ISO 400 ISO 500
ISO 800 ISO 1000
ISO 1600 ISO 2000

Noise or Grain

Noise is what happens when you crank the ISO up, it’s because you are making the sensor more sensitive to light so you are also making it more sensitive to it’s flaws. The contrast, ISO and grain/noise are all linked.

Visual Noise is what occurs on digital cameras where as Grain is what occurs on film, Grain tends to be a lot more pleasing than noise, especially in Black & White photography.

In terms of film, the ASA or file speed is roughly related to granularity, this is the size of the grains of silver halide in the emulsion, since larger grains give film a greater sensitivity to light. Fine-grain stock, such as portrait film or those used for the intermediate stages of copying original camera negatives, is “slow”, meaning that the amount of light used to expose it must be high or the shutter must be open longer. Fast films, used for shooting in poor light or for shooting fast motion, produce a grainy image.

In digital pictures the image noise is a random, usually unwanted, fluctuation of pixel values in an image. Image noise can originate in film grain or in electronic noise in the input device (scanner or digital camera) sensor and circuitry.

Noise in digital images looks like this:

Now this looks ok in a small size, but if you blow it up the noise is very visible, here is a crop from the image:

Noise is also directly related to sensor size, so camera phones generally give terrible noise even under quite reasonable lighting conditions. Digital SLRs have much better noise performance than compact cameras and even better than that is full frame sensor Digital SLRs like the Canon 5D.

Also note noise tends to be more obvious in shadows or underexposed pictures, so do be careful when shooting.

We will discuss noise more in detail later, what causes it, what are the types of noise and how to combat it. There a few options for software based noise reduction, which again we will discuss later.

Interestingly the most sensitive sensor common in commercial photography may be the Silicon Intensified Target Vidicon, at ASA 200,000, used in TV cameras.

Rule of Thumb for ISO

The most basic rule is keep the ISO as low as possible at all times, especially on cameras like the Panasonic Lumix range and other super compacts with small sensors, keep the ISO at 50 or 100 even if you are shooting at night because the noise these cameras generate can be quite terrible.

When shooting in low light or darkness with a camera with decent light sensitivity (the best compacts on the market now for high ISO shooting are the Fuji cameras after that would come Canon), adjust the ISO up one setting until you get a clear shot.

You can check the sharpness of your shot by zooming in on the LCD.

You can check your camera manual or have a look around online to find out how you can change the ISO, most compact cameras have it inside a menu somewhere and are often using auto-ISO.

For example here is the Canon S3 IS ISO button and it’s usage.

Every digital SLR from medium range and above has a dedicated ISO button.

Be careful when you start shooting something that your ISO is set correctly as well, as the night before you may have been shooting at ISO800, if you keep shooting like that in daylight you will have a lot of overexposed pictures and unnecessary noise in all your shadows.

I’ve made this mistake before! I blame it on an oversight in the D70s user interface..

If it’s really dark and you are taking still scenery it’s always best to use a tripod and the lowest ISO possible.

Summary

Just think a little bit before you take your shot, don’t just keep shooting and hope for a lucky shot Understand your camera and it’s limitations and learn to get the most out of it.

ISO is an important tool in getting us clear and sharp shots by getting the optimum shutter speed out of our camera for any given situation, but it’s also something that can cause a lot of noise and terrible artifacts.

These can ruin your picture if you aren’t careful.

So do learn to use ISO, just be wary of it’s effects as like most things it’s a double edged sword.

You can read more here:

Film Speed

If you need and clarifications please leave a comment below, do check out the previous article in the series on What is Aperture or f-stops/f number & Depth of Field and next to come is Shutter Speed!

Quite a while back (September I think) I chanced upon something called MOO Cards, neat little business cards made from your images on Flickr.

I first found out about them on boing boing who were literally raving about these “stunning custom biz-cards”.

Moo prints beautiful little calling-cards. Each card can have a different back, and the undersized cards are just the right size for your name, email address and a URL or two. The project was co-founded by my friend Stef Magdalinski, who also spends his time hacking British democracy with projects like Wikiproxy and TheyWorkForYou — he’s good people.

You can order your custom MOO cards here, as long as you a Flickr user:

MOO Cards

I chose to make 20 designs 5 times each to fulfill the full pack of 100 MOO Cards, only certain pictures suit the MOO card ratio as it’s quite long and thin.

As above it’s $19.99 for 100 cards plus about $5 postage anywhere in the world, so it comes out to about $25 USD, totally worth it I think!

It’s very easy to make the cards and only requires 4 steps, after that you just put in your details.

I’ll write more about my MOO cards that recently arrived from UK.

TechCrunch also wrote about them here and there is a whole Flickr pool of people doing cool stuff with their MOO Cards here.

You should grab this cool FREE software while you can as the company that created it was recently taken over by Adobe so it’s unsure if you’ll be able to get this in the future or not.

RSE (Raw Shooter Essentials) is a pretty good RAW file manipulator for all brands of RAW files (most importantly Canon, Nikon and the DNG or Digital Negative format).

Adobe Systems Inc has acquired the assets of Pixmantec (RawShooter). RawShooter Essentials will no longer be updated but will be available for download until shortly after Adobe Lightroom 1.0 is released as a shipping product.

RawShooter Essentials 2006, is a RAW workflow software tool that sets new standards for digital photography. It is a fully functional RAW converter which allows any level of user to get excellent results with the minimum of effort and knowledge. It provides the highest quality output and fastest conversion time for any RAW converter on the market today.

Now supports 15 additional DSLR cameras including Nikon D200 and Canon 5D!

RawShooter Essentials 2006 contains core functionality such as:

• Powerful File Browser: Full support for drag & drop, shortcuts, cursor sensitive hints and tips, scalable thumbnails, customizable background color and directory management including creation / rename / deletion and defining favorites
• Image Priority: Assignment of priorities to individual or group of images
• Slideshow: Full screen slideshow of RAW images. During the editing process, individual files can be assigned priorities via the slideshow, or consigned to the recycle bin
• Dynamic Preview: True to life representation of how your converted image will look. Unlike, other previews, the dynamic preview instantly shows the effects of any changes that you make to the RAW iage, even at high magnifications
• Powerful Image Correction Tools: Image adjustment tools are provided for white balance, exposure compensation, dynamic range (fill light), shadow and highlight contrast, hue & saturation, sharpness, detail extraction, noise supression (both low frequency and color). Effects of slider based adjustments will be shown on the Dynamic Preview, no matter what the magnification
• Snapshot: Several variations of the same RAW file, all with different levels of correction applied
• Integral Color Database: Fully color managed. No direct changes are made to RAW files. Any color changes made are stored externally from the product
• Multi-threaded Batch Processing: Options such as output format (TIFF/JPEG) and automatic tagging of ICC profiles. Converts huge files in seconds with images queued for conversion in the background. Supports dual processors for maximum conversion speed

Full info here.

You can download RSE here:

RawShooter Essentials 1.2

Hoya is familiar to most of us for UV filters and CPLs as that’s what we most commonly see in stores, what many people don’t know is Hoya is one of the biggest manufacturers of optical lenses, including many parts inside the proprietary lenses we purchase.

Hoya and Pentax have jointly announced their intention to merge and become Hoya Pentax HD Corporation (actually Hoya are ‘merging’ Pentax into their business). This merger is due to be completed by October 1, 2007. Once complete Fumio Urano (current PENTAX President & CEO) will become Chairman of the Board and Hiroshi Suzuki (current HOYA President and CEO) will become President & CEO. The major conclusions in this announcement are that the Pentax name will remain, that Pentax’s optical business will merge with Hoya’s but that Pentax’s current imaging systems division (that which is responsible for digital cameras) will continue.

HOYA CORPORATION (“HOYA”) and PENTAX Corporation (“PENTAX”) announced today that they have reached a basic understanding aimed at a management integration of the two companies, expected to be completed on October 1, 2007. The new company’s name will be HOYA PENTAX HD Corporation. Under a corporate center with strategic planning functions, the new company will realign the business areas of HOYA and PENTAX. HOYA and PENTAX have recognized that they are the best possible business partners to establish a solid business structure that draws on their respective strengths. Through this management integration, the planned new structure will allow the new company to swiftly allocate significant management resources to develop strategic business areas, aiming at accelerating future growth.

Source: DPReview