It’s also updated fairly frequently when new cards come out.

CF/SD Performance Database

The data in the tables below was derived by timing how long it took the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II to write out 16 Large ( Quality 8 ) JPEG and 10 RAW .CR2 photos to the card. Timing commenced when the camera’s card status light illuminated, and stopped when the light went out. Each test cycle was performed 3 times (if the card’s capacity allowed for that) to ensure accurate results. All cards were first secure erased, then formatted in the camera (except for larger-than-2GB SD cards, which won’t work in this camera unless they’re formatted on a computer), prior to testing.

Personally I don’t go for the latest fastest cards (Currently SanDisk Extreme IV 2GB) as they are expensive, but I only buy SanDisk as that’s what every pro recommends and they are definitely the most reliable.

I’m currently using 2x 2GB SanDisk Ultra II cards and 1x 1GB Apacer just as a backup.

As my camera is only 5fps and has a fairly good buffer (around 19 shots with RAW) and I don’t often shoot sport I don’t need the super fast write speed the 166x speed cards write.

I do recommend using SanDisk and also spreading out your cards, it’s better to have 4x 2GB cards than 1x 8GB card, as if that one 8GB card fails everything is gone..

A lot of people still use 1GB cards as they prefer to swap often and safeguard their pics.

I’m thinking of getting a PSD (Portable Storage Device) as well, something like the Epson P-5000, but they are so freaking expensive.

Urgh….GAS (Gadget Acquisition Syndrome) is bad.

You can see some samples from the gallery here.

Get started here:

Gickr

Basically a montage is a single image made from many tiny thumbnails of other images.

This is the original picture.

And this is the montage!

Source: Flickr Montager

It really stands out, literally!

The subway art is slightly simpler and more permanent, but it’s the same concept, to look 3D and stand out!

Source: Gargles.net

The PhotographyCorner.com 2006 Photograph of the Year contest begins today (December 19th, 2006) and runs until the end of January, 2007. The Sponsors and Prizes can be viewed on the Photograph of the Year main page, as well as the Rules and the Timeline of the contest.

Before Submitting a Photograph, make sure you are aware of what pieces of information are required with your submission (explained on the How to Submit a Photograph page), as well as what limitations there are as to what photographs can be submitted.

All the information you need is available here:

PhotographyCorner.com 2006 Photograph of the Year Contest

The details on how to submit your entry can be found here:

Photograph of the Year Submission

The only way to submit a photograph to the PhotographyCorner.com 2006 Photograph of the Year contest, is to email the photograph to poty@photographycorner.com. The photograph must be attached to the email (not linked to it in a gallery or flickr, etc).

The neck extension part is the one that freaks me out..

It just shows the power of creative lighting, good makeup and hair, a good clean photograph and a LOT of post processing.

The girl looks just about average to begin with, but so striking on the billboard.

I can recognise most of the moves, quite a lot of perspective transformation, can you see them all?

Looks like a great travel camera, especially if you have a bit of budget for the excellent 18-200mm VR II lens to go along with it!

Super light flexible combo with SLR quality pictures in a compact package, this is the sort of camera for people who want SLR quality pics without lugging around a heavy camera and don’t want/need all the extra controls and confusing buttons.

It’s a top end point and shoot with more latitude almost.

I don’t think I’d use it as a backup, I’d prefer a D80 body..but for most people this would be a great choice with the new version of the 18-55mm kit lens for only $599 aswell it’s a steal.

The lightest, cheapest Nikon dSLR ever made!

Key Features

• 6 megapixel DX format CCD (1.5x FOV crop, as D50)
• Nikon Image processing engine (as D80 / D200)
• 3D Color Matrix Metering II, 420 pixel sensor (as D80 / D50)
• New Multi-CAM530 three area AF sensor
• ISO sensitivity range 200 – 1600 plus HI 1 (3200 equiv.)
• Custom Auto ISO (selectable maximum ISO, minimum shutter speed)
• 2.5 fps continuous shooting (as D50), unlimited in JPEG
• No status LCD, new LCD monitor based status / settings screens
• Large 2.5″ 230,000 pixel LCD monitor
• USB 2.0 with PTP and Mass Storage device support
• Improved menu user interface (as D80 / D200)
• New ‘Version II’ AF-S DX 18-55 mm kit lens

It retails for USD$599 which is about RM2178, I’d guess shop price for cash should be around RM1999.

Ken Rockwell predicted it would be called the D60, but he nailed the specs almost right.

More info here:

Nikon D40 Hands on Preview – DPReview

Nikon D40 – Ken Rockwell

This is one of the fundemental parts of photography when you advance past a point and shoot, the biggest controls you have how your picture appears is Aperture and Shutter speed. Shutter speed is more obvious in that a slower shutter gives a longer exposure and more movement or motion blur, where as a faster shutter speed freezes action.

We will discuss creative ways to use shutter speed later.

For now we want to discuss Aperture, many people have a vague idea what it means, but don’t know which aperture or f-stop to select for different situations, or why you would chose that aperture.

To start an Aperture is basically a hole in which light is admitted, in terms of cameras the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.

You can read more about Aperture in depth here.

F-number or F-stop

The lens aperture is usually specified as an f-number, the ratio of focal length to effective aperture diameter. A lens typically has a set of marked “f-stops” that the f-number can be set to.

(f-number is also sometimes called focal ratio, f-ratio, or relative aperture)

The very basics you need to remember is a big number is a small hole, so f/22 is a very small aperture, small hole, less light so longer exposure. Something like f/1.8 is a very large aperture, more light and faster shutter speed (shorter exposure).

Here you can see a very common 50mm lens with it’s Aperture set at the smallest number f/1.8, remember that’s the largest opening in figure one.

Figure two shows the smallest aperture, or highest number which is f/22 for most lenses including this one.

Most cameras with some manual controls at least have something called Aperture Priority mode, which refers to a shooting mode used in semi-automatic cameras. It allows the photographer to choose an aperture setting and allow the camera to decide the correct shutter speed. This is sometimes referred to as Aperture Priority Auto Exposure, A mode, Av mode, or semi-auto mode.

This is the mode I most frequently shoot in as Aperture has the greatest effect on the picture you are taking.

The common f stops are as follows:

When you are buying lenses generally the bigger the maximum aperture the better, most professional zoom lenses have a constant f/2.8 aperture which makes them very expensive and heavy!

You can read more on F-number and the science behind it here.

Lenses

Cheaper lenses usually have a variable aperture between f/3.5 and f/5.6. When a lens has 2 numbers for f-stops it means it varies as you zoom it, so if a lens is Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G AF-S for example, it means at 18mm it’s f/3.5 and at 70mm it’s f/4.5.

Aperture greatly effects light gathering capabilties, so for low light or night work the lowest aperture possible is preferred, some lenses go as low as f/1.2 or f/1.4!

Prime lenses tend to have bigger maximum apertures as it’s cheaper to build with a fixed optic, prime lenses don’t zoom, the most common and cheapest is the 50mm f/1.8 which we’ll discuss more later.

Depth of Field

The most important thing to understand about Aperture is how it controls depth of field, this will directly effect your pictures and the artistic capability in which you can create the images you want.

Here is an example I took yesterday, Macro photography has a very small Depth of Field as the subject is very large in relation to the sensor in the camera.

Depth of Field is the amount of the picture that is in focus, the basic rule is the smaller the aperture, the more is in focus, so at f/1.8 the Depth of Field would be very very small and at f/22 everything would be in focus.

For this picture the Aperture was f/4.2, the largest the lens can manage during this macro focusing range.

Watch at f/4.2

As you can see not a lot is in focus, the focus point for all 3 is the bottom of the question mark, you can see here only just that is in focus the rest is not. The Depth of Field is small.

The shutter speed was 0.7 of a second.

The next was taken at a medium Aperture f/11 which is normally used for landscapes or large scenes.

Watch at f/11

As you can see more is in focus here, the picture is more aesthetically pleasing. The top of the watch is still out of focus and the background is nicely blurred but the subject is fully in focus and part of the watch.

The shutter speed was 4.2 seconds.

The next is at f/22 which is used for long shutter speeds and macro photography.

Watch at f/22

As you can see now virtually everything is in focus and the shutter speed was very long at 18 seconds.

So you can see as you increase the f-number the aperture hole gets smaller, more of the pictures is in focus and the shutter speed gets longer.

You can use this to control how the picture looks and small apertures are especially good for seperating the subject from the background.

Another example are flowers, these are two shots taken at f/5 and f/22, you should be able to work out which is which now.

We’ll discuss more about DoF as it’s called later and more advanced ways to use it, plus the terms such as Bokeh which are commonly used now.

You can read more about Depth of Field here.

Summary

Aperture is the most powerful tool in taking the pictures you want, in creating artistic effects and interesting eye popping captures of animals, people and flowers.

Just don’t get carried away and use an aperture that is too large (small number), especially on portraits as you can have one eye in focus and one out, or can create confusing pictures that look completely out of focus.

Choose the correct aperture to give the background a nice blur and make the subject stand out.

It will take some practise and you will have to learn each lens, also note most lenses are not super sharp wide open, wide open means the maximum aperture (the smallest number) so stop it down 1-2 f-stops.

So for a f/1.8 lens it should be sharp around f/2.2 and above.

As a rule of thumb for portraits you can use the maximum aperture stopped down 1-2 stops, for group shots try around f/5.6 and for landscapes try f/11-16.

If you need and clarifications please leave a comment below, next to come is What is ISO or ASA – Camera/Film Sensitivity AKA Filmspeed!

Now might be a good time to pick up some Extreme III cards.

SanDisk Corporation today introduced the new SanDisk Extreme IV line of CompactFlash digital film cards for professional photographers. The line is targeted at photographers who require the highest possible performance and the largest capacities for their medium format and high-end digital single lens reflex (SLR) cameras. The SanDisk Extreme IV cards are available in capacities of up to 8-gigabytes (GB) and deliver minimum read and write speeds of 40 megabytes per second (MB/sec.) making these the fastest flash memory cards in the world. This exceptionally fast card speed is critical when shooting large numbers of high-resolution images.

SanDisk also introduced the new SanDisk Extreme FireWire reader that can transfer images from the SanDisk Extreme IV cards to a computer at up to 40MB/sec. for significantly improved workflow efficiency. These new products were announced at a press conference held today at the NASDAQ Market Site in New York City.

The SanDisk Extreme IV cards are targeted at the professional photographer who needs the absolute highest performance and maximum reliability. The company will continue to offer the SanDisk Extreme III and SanDisk Ultraâ II lines.

More details here.

Image from dpreview.com

Ah the new Nikon D80 kit lens looks like a peach too, yet to see any good hardcore reviews of it yet though, it’s a nice new release though to go along with my much sought after Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED as I currently don’t have any telephoto past 70mm!

I’m actually using the Nikon D70s kit lens most of the time which is the superb Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED I shall do a proper review of it one day.

It’s a very sharp lens though at least at f/5.6 and above, I find it a nice focal range too, but it does distort a bit at 18mm, but is fine again by 20mm.

The 18-135mm gives a nice boost in focal length without the weight of going up to 200mm.

From the Nikon press release:

Nikon is pleased to announce the introduction of the AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED, a compact, lightweight 7.5x zoom lens. Boasting a range of state-of-the-art optical technologies, this new lens offers outstanding performance at a remarkably affordable price.

The AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED features Nikon ED glass, aspherical lens elements and SWM (Silent Wave Motor) for enhanced performance. With a focal length range of 18-135mm, the lens is suitable for a wide variety of shooting situations; from sports, action and portraits to wide-angle landscapes. The picture angle is equivalent to a 27-202.5mm lens in the 35mm format.

RRP: £299.99
Sales release: September 2006.

That makes it around RM2000 in a direct conversion, so perhaps we’ll get it for about RM1800, not bad!