A Libyan rebel fighter smokes a cigarette next to an improvised multiple rocket launcher in the back of a pickup truck, as the rebels prepare to make an advance, in the desert on the outskirts of Ajdabiya, Libya, on Thursday, April 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

– In Focus – 2011: The Year in Photos, Part 1 of 3

In France, an American officer and a French Resistance fighter are seen engaged in a street battle with German occupation forces during the days of liberation, August 1944, in an unknown city. (AP Photo)

– In Focus – World War II: The Allied Invasion of Europe

Aircraft carrier USS Enterprise at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in late May 1942, being readied for the Battle of Midway. (U.S. Navy)

– In Focus – World War II: Battle of Midway and the Aleutian Campaign

In an obvious case of attitude trumping style, Daft Punk resolved the aged sartorial conundrum, “What goes well with chrome helmets at a red carpet function?”, with certain ease. And apparently the answer to that question is not an LED-prepped, solar-powered space suit, but gorgeous, black Balenciaga suits and a lot of flair and attitude.

– Fresh Celeb: Daft Punk – Balenciaga Suits, Dec 14, 2010

Photos from Christabel’s Panasonic DMC-LX3 camera from last night’s Matt & Kim concert at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. Great show as always – though they’ve stated they’ll never again do a cover of The Final Countdown, they’ve swapped in a cover of Alice Deejay’s Better Off Alone instead!

Last week Christabel and I purchased three large (20.7" x 32") prints from Justin Van Genderen‘s Minimalist Planets collection on Imagekind.com. We then had them mounted onto foam core at The Allen Gallery (with a turnaround time of two days).

At his home in Palm Springs, McQueen practices his aim before heading out for a shooting session in the desert.

– LIFE.com – Steve McQueen: 20 Never-Seen Photos, Mar 20, 2010

Yesterday Samsung’s mobile phone division sponsored a short but sweet outdoor concert starring the very excellent Metric.

The band hit the stage at 7:15 PM and played a tight fifty minute set before taking their final bows and disappearing. Front St. was closed in both directions in front of Union Station where they performed; most of these photos are taken while standing on the concrete median in between the two directions for traffic. Before and during the show, Samsung representatives circulated through the crowd to demonstrate the Samsung iPhone Galaxy S, which looks like a pretty decent Android OS phone. I hope Samsung’s marketing department decides this was a good way to promote their products, companies should be encouraged to put on more free summertime concerts.

Lately I’ve only been taking pictures with Christabel’s new Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. Here are a bunch of photos taken at Toronto’s newest beachfront, Sugar Beach.

My walk home on the 29th was so beautiful that the next morning, hoping for a repeat of the same weather, I carted my 40D with me to work and back, taking photos all the way. Here are the results.

Photo #1: In the morning, I walk a half block south to King St. E and ride four or five stops to Bay St. (The somewhat leaner Canadian version of Wall Street.) The first photo is taken right after I’ve gotten off, having turned on my heel to take a photo of the streetcar that delivered me there.

Photo #2: In warmer weather I’ll take my time and walk south on Bay St. all the way to work (which is at the southernmost point of the street, where Bay St. meets the lake). But it’s only 4C out and a bus is approaching, so I’ll hop on it instead. That partially-constructed building in the photo is the new Trump International Hotel & Tower, a five-star hotel slash luxury condominium.

Photo #3: Skip forward ten hours – I’m on my walk home. Here, facing west, is Toronto’s Flatiron Building (more properly known as the Gooderham Building). Interesting, the Gooderham precedes its more famous cousin in NYC.

Photo #4: Still heading east on Front St. we catch a glimpse of The Cathedral Church of St. James. Apparently the stone foundations were put up in 1833 only to have the entire thing burn down a dozen years later. They did a nice job of rebuilding over the next thirty years.

Photo #5: Further yet east on Front St., I glance back westwards and take a photo of the Gooderham Building. Flanking it (left to right) are the CN Tower, the Brookfield Place buildings, and the Royal Bank skyscraper in between them (which derives its colour from its 24 karat gold coating).

Photo #6: A now unused Canadian Bank of Commerce building at Jarvis St. and King St. E. Love the architecture.

Photo #7: A clearer view of The Cathedral Church of St. James. The purplish skyscraper behind it is Scotiabank’s Scotia Plaza. Actually, the second photo in this series contains the historic facade that now serves as the base of the new sixty-storey building.

Photo #8: I don’t really know much about this building other than it’s kind of nice to look at and it’s all condos.

Photo #9: Here it is again! Taken from the corner of Jarvis St. and Adelaide St. E.

Okay – that’s it! Sorry if that’s a little abrupt – it turned out that not too many of the photos I snapped were serviceable. I’ll do better next time.

I’ve still got a few photos left to post from my last couple of days there, but here’s 9/10ths of what we snapped. Enjoy!

If the slideshow embedded into the page doesn’t show up above, click this link to view it in its own window.

If I was the type of guy who framed and hung vintage photographs in his home, I’d put this one up. How ridiculously cool is this lady?

Pretty cool, isn’t it? The Rasterbator’s website offers free software that you can download and use to “create huge, rasterized images from any picture. Add an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size.”

As a big fan of the now-concluded television series Battlestar Galactica, my inspiration was this:

Here’s how my attempt worked out.

1. I elected to use this Battlestar Galactica “Last Supper” extremely high-quality photo as the source image. At a size of 5300 x 2300 pixels and a resolution of 319.625 pixels/inch, the original image’s print size was a mere 16.582″ x 7.196″.
2. I plugged the image into The Rasterbator 1.2 downloadable software and let it calculate the number of pages I’ll need to have printed. After playing with the options for a while, I decided on three row of five images – fifteen pages total – with a pixel size of 1mm. Final PDF filesize: 201 MB.
3. The next step was undertaken as preparation – turning my PDF into a JPEG image file. I used Adobe Photoshop to do this. Note: A conversion of this nature is extremely CPU-intensive, so plan on having your computer do nothing else for ten or even twenty minutes while it crunches away.
4. Knowing that 8″ x 10″ is the page size available at most retail printing services, I next made use of the excellent open-source program PosteRazor, which allowed me to break my one huge image up into many smaller 8″ x 10″ pieces.
5. Printing the photos was my next task. Of all of the options, I found Costco’s Photo Centre to offer the best quality for the price ($1.39 per 8″ x 10″). Being impatient, I took my images (on a USB key) into a local Shoppers Drug Mart retail store with an Easypix photo printing centre attached and had them done while I waited for about double the price ($2.99 per 8″ x 10″).
6. Mounting time! My solution: I bought eight sets of the 8″ x 10″ Value Series Canvas 2-Packs available at Curry’s for $3.94 each.  Keep in mind that the depth of your frames is very important (the boards I linked to are a half-inch deep). In my opinion you want at least a half inch of depth if your display is going to look like a professional job. The last thing you want to do is make it look like you’ve simply tacked photos to the wall. I then used permanent double-sided tape to mount the prints to the boards.
7. To get the canvas boards ready to be hung on a wall, I purchased sixteen (two sets of eight) picture frame hooks from Canadian Tire and nailed them into the wood frame of the boards. Remember not to place the hook at the top of the frame as you want the hook to fall behind the picture.
8. The last thing you’ll have to do is the hardest: Nail drywall hooks into your wall at regular intervals horizontally and vertically. I put up the middle-top picture (the head of Six) first and branched out in a T from there.

Here’s what The Rasterbator program said the finished product would look like:

And here’s what I actually ended up with:

While I took my time in attempting to do this just right, the end results were still somewhat imperfect. Aside from the imperfect spacing I ended up with on the wall, I think that the slight angle each frame hangs at is a flaw – so look for hooks you will allow you to mount each board flush to the wall. Matte prints instead of going glossy is also recommended, as glossy prints look worse when viewing the display on an angle.

Criticisms aside, I found the entire rasterbation project to be a lot of fun, and I truly enjoy looking at the results. If this post inspires you to create your own display, please leave a comment with pictures of what you end up with!

Useful references: Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa and Ten Tips on Using Sect of Homokaasu’s Rasterbator.

Introduction

So you’ve become a pretty competent photographer with your digital SLR camera. You know how to balance shutter speed, aperture and ISO to capture the kind of scene you want in your photos. Now it’s time to start looking for efficiencies. How can you capture more detailed, less noisy images with the equipment you already have?

One technique that’s made inroads as referred to as “exposing (to the) right”. The term is named thus because use of the technique leads to the histogram representation of the image being shifted to the right on the X axis (which is mapped to the brightness level of the photo). But to understand why we would want to expose to the right, first we need to learn a little more about how your digital SLR camera captures that image.

Why We Do It

Optical technology today still being far inferior to the human eye, your digital SLR has a much more limited range in which it is sensitive to light. In practical terms, your camera has 5-7 F-stops to work with. Anything lower or higher than this range is simply rendered as black or white (respectively).

Let’s refer again to the histogram representation of an image. A histogram is merely a graph displaying the distribution of brightness in your image, with the darkest part of the image represented on the left, to the brightest on the right. Logically, from what we already know about a digital SLR camera having 5-7 F-stops of usable range to work with, in order to capture the most detail in our image, we’d want to place the majority of the image squarely in the middle of the histogram with plenty of breathing room on each side. No chance we’ll bleed off detail that way.

But that’s not how your camera actually works. I’ll quote from the source material in which I’m adapting/dumbing down this entire FAQ to explain:

A 12 bit image is capable of recording 4,096 (2^12) discrete tonal values. One would think that therefore each F/Stop of the 5 stop range would be able to record some 850 (4096 / 5) of these steps. But, alas, this is not the case. The way that it really works is that the first (brightest) stop’s worth of data contains 2048 of these steps — fully half of those available. Why? Because CCD and CMOS chips are linear devices. And, of course, each F/Stop records half of the light of the previous one, and therefore half the remaining data space available.

This realization carries with it a number of important lessons, the most important of them being that if you do not use the right-hand fifth of the histogram for recording some of your image you are in fact wasting fully half of the available encoding levels of your camera.

How To Expose To The Right

So let’s attempt to make the most efficient use of our cameras. This means making use of the most step-heavy part of your camera’s sensor – the first (brightest) stop.

How do we do this? Well, it’s actually pretty simple to do. Refer to your camera’s manual to see how you can view the histogram of an image after it’s shot, and turn that option on. Line up the scene you want to capture as per normal, choosing the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings you typically would. Since enormous memory cards are cheap these days, take the shot.

Now, go into review mode on your camera and take a look at the image’s histogram. Assuming you’ve taken a picture of a scene where the light levels are all relatively within the same range, you might end up with a histogram looking like this:

If you’re in a computer-controlled mode such as Tv (shutter priority) or Av (aperture priority), you’ll need to look up the “Exposure Correction” (EC) feature of your camera. On the Canon EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT), the EC button is on the back of your camera next to a little square with a + and – sign. (The same button has a dual use in setting Av in Manual mode.) Hold down the button and use the jog dial on the top of the camera to move the exposure bar indicator in the positive direction (to the right). Moving it to the right about one full F-stop should be sufficient.

If in doubt, simply snap the photo and examine the histogram to see how far to the right you’ve shifted the exposure.

Very important: You absolutely do not want to go overboard and end up losing detail by shifting too far to the right (a phenomena known as “blown highlights”), so account for some breathing room on the right. Your camera will likely also warn you if you’ve blown highlights by displaying flashing black patches on the image itself.

Example of a histogram properly shifted to the right:

Results

We’ve covered why we want to expose to the right – to capture more detail / make better use of the dynamic range of your camera. That’s a nice hypothetical, but how about a look at the real-world results?

Well, take a look below. The member PacAce on the Canon Digital Photography Forums took three exposures: A) was taken as the correct exposure according to his camera. B) was shot 1 F-stop underexposed. And C) was “exposed to the right” – the bottom left image being the original overexposed image, and the bottom right image with its brightness/contrast readjusted to look normal:

Now let’s take a look at a 100% crap of A), B) and C) (the brightness/contrast corrected version):

High ISO noise is virtually eliminated from the image he “exposed to the right”.

Make note: This technique is a wonderful way to make the best of low-light situations.

When Not To Expose To The Right

You don’t want to “expose to the right” if you prefer not to do much post-processing work. Each image taken using this technique will require brightness/contrast corrections to look normal again.

Following from the point made above, you don’t want to “expose to the right” if you don’t like to use RAW for your image file format. While the post-processing of the image will still be fairly effective on a JPEG, the nature of the format requires that the camera throw out the data it’s not making immediate use of. Exposure correction gets dicey.

You don’t especially need to “expose to the right” if the scene you are going to capture does not have a wide dynamic range. Save yourself the post-processing work and get the correct exposure the first time.

Sources

• The Luminous Landscape: Understanding Histograms
• The Luminous Landscape: Expose (to the) Right
• Canon POTN Forums: Exposing to the right! An example

Now let’s see if the watch store I spotted this fine piece at will make a deal. $450, take it or leave it…

Update: My bargaining couldn’t net me a deal better than $690 final as their best offer; I walked.

Update II: I returned to the scene of the crime on November 19, 2007. After some yet further bickering I made the purchase for a significant amount less than the number quoted above. It truly is in incredible condition and is slowly becoming my daily wearer (the Kenneth Cole’s battery keeps dying prematurely).

I’ve included an expanded writeup on this particular watch below. There’s also a fantastic article about the Omega f300 series of watches over at DeskDivers.com that’s worth reading.

Unfortunately, if a quality 20x zoom lens is out there, it’s the world’s best kept secret.

Today’s solution? Pack multiple lenses in your camera bag: Two, maybe three. But before you commit to potentially spending thousands of dollars on a set of lenses that do it all, take a moment to consider the type of photography you’re likely to undertake. In the process, you may not only save yourself a load of cash, but also realize something about the kind of photographer you’re destined to be.

Landscape & Architecture Photography

If your natural inclination is to take pictures of the impressive buildings that loom above you, or of the width of a city street as people cross by, or of graffiti splayed out across a dilapidated building, you may be an urban landscape photographer. You’ll want a ultra wide-angle lens, seeing as the constriction of city streets will likely leave you not much room to maneuver away from your subject and still get a clear shot.

Good: The Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM is a beautiful piece of work that gives its user crisp shots with great autofocus speed. At 10mm, you’ve got a very wide field of vision that you can use to stand across the street from a skyscraper looming over you and still make the best of the shot.

Being a first-party Canon lens, build quality and optics are top-notch – but then again, so is the price. The 10-22mm will run you $780 USD brand new. Sample photos can be viewed on the POTN Canon Digital Photography Forums right here.

Almost as good, but cheaper: The Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8 is the new budget champion of ultrawides, sacrificing half of the usual lens range for a constantly wide aperture of f/2.8 instead. Praise for the lens has been universal from both amateurs and professionals alike, and few miss the lowered range – really, it’s the low end that you buy the lens for anyways. At $600 USD, you’re not saving very much by going with a third party lens, but the benefits of that wide aperture really can’t be overstated.

Almost as good, but even cheaper: The Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM will run you $480 USD brand new, which is a considerable savings over the Canon 10-22mm, and comes up with some very impressive visuals of its own (see the POTN thread on the Sigma 10-20mm).

Sigma’s Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) technology matches up comparably with Canon’s USM autofocusing technology, and their 10 year warranty on lenses in Canada is unmatched. It makes getting the Canon 10-22mm, even if you’ve got the cash, a tough call.

Sports & Events Photography

If your primary goal is to attend sporting events or concerts and want the ability to zoom right in to isolate one or two subjects, you’re in need of a telephoto lens. You’re also going to need a ‘fast’ lens which has the ability to freeze fast-moving action. The ability to do this will cost you, and there’s no way around that.

Good: As is almost always the case, a first party Canon lens stands out as the best option. Here you’ve got the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, which on a Canon 300D, 350D, 400D, 20D and 30D actually reflects a focal range of 91-260mm. This is another high-quality “L” lens from Canon with a constant f/2.8 aperture through the entire zoom range and image stabilization (denoted by “IS” in the lens name) added on top. All that’ll run you a hefty $1950 USD, but that’s the price of quality.

Almost as good, but cheaper: Can you do without image stabilization? (IS is always a good idea at long zoom ranges, but when you’re on a budget…) Pick up the exact same Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM for $1250 USD. However, you’ve got a third route to go as well. Sigma again steps in with a quality budget option with the Sigma APO 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM for $700 USD.

The dark horse: Well-known as a “starter” L lens, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM offers the same beautiful optics of its more expensive siblings at half-cost, but with a noted limitation in aperture (thus limiting your lens’s “speed”). However, at a mere $650 USD this lens has proven to be an extremely popular purchase option.

Walkaround Lenses

So far we’ve looked at the ultra-wide (10mm – 20mm) and zoom (70mm – 200mm) lens ranges. But how about that crucial in-between zone for taking photos of stuff that’s not too closeby but not too far away?

Good: Once again, we go first-party with the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens. On a 1.6x field of view crop body like the Canon EOS 350D, Canon EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XT, Digital Rebel XTi) or Canon EOS 30D, that works out to a 27.2 – 64mm focal range; just what we’re looking for. Located squarely in the medium price range for quality lenses (especially considering its “L” status), the 17-40mm will run you about $765 USD.

Almost as good, but cheaper: I personally own the Tamron SP AF28-75mm F/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF). You’ll notice that this lens boasts a wonderfully low aperture of f/2.8 across its entire focal length, which is a great plus in not-optimal lighting situations and situations in which you’d like to blur the background behind your subject. Having been designed for a full-frame sensor body, the focal length of this lens on your Canon EOS 350D, 20D or 40D will actually be 44.8 – 120mm. This lens retails for about $400 USD and has never let me down. I should, however, note that anecdotal evidence says that you should purchase your Tamron lenses somewhere where are be able to return it without trouble – a number of users have found some copies of the lens relatively soft.

Almost as good, but cheaper II: Another option coming out of the Tamron workshop is the Tamron SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di II LD Aspherical (IF). This lens is heavily, heavily celebrated by the budget DSLR crowd and is built specifically for 1.6x field of view crop bodies (notice it’s a Di II, not a Di like its 28-75mm brethren). Once again, this Tamron offers you a constant aperture of f/2.8 all the way across, but at what many consider a “more usable” focal range than its older cousin, the 28-75mm. And once again, a slight warning should be issued: Many copies of this lens have been reported to be soft, so make your purchase somewhere where you can return/exchange for a sharper version. You can pick up the Tamron 17-50mm for approximately $450 USD.

The dark horse: This is a lens that belongs in every single Canon SLR owner’s backpack – bar none. At a mere $110 USD, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, a.k.a. the “Plastic Fantastic”, offers an incredibly large aperture, stunningly sharp visuals and a fanastically low physical weight at the cost of a fixed focal length, plastic construction and a sometimes frustrating stepper-style autofocus motor. But for the price and versatility, you simply cannot go wrong.

Notes

In order of appearance, sample photos for each of the lenses mentioned in this post:

1. Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5 – 4.5 USM samples
2. Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8 samples
3. Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM samples
4. Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM samples
5. Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM samples
6. Sigma APO 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM samples
7. Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM samples
8. Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM samples
9. Tamron SP AF28-75mm F/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) samples
10. Tamron SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di II LD Aspherical (IF) samples
11. Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II samples