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Sony tells DSLR shooters they're idiots



 
 
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Old January 10th 13, 12:22 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems
Wolfgang Weisselberg
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Posts: 5,285
Default Sony tells DSLR shooters they're idiots

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.photo.digital.]
Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:


They [previews] usually show you what you'll get. In certain
circumstances they don't. You're right that learning what those
circumsntaces are, and if an inquisitive person, why, is a good and
useful idea. A brief glimpse of the taken shot flashed up on the
LCD or EVF will immediately show you the difference between preview
prediction and result.


So you need the same time to assess the correctness of the
preview mode as you need to check any other parameters.


Not necessarily. For example if the EVF (or LCD panel) is set to show
the resulting image after the shot there is an instant flick between
pre and post views which highlights small differences rapidly &
effectively. Astronomers use that same process to draw the eye to very
small changes which are otherwise imperceptible.


Blink comparators switch many times between 2 images, not
just once --- for a very good reason. And even then you need
perfect alignment *and* no blanking. Oh, and does your EVF
or LCD show 10x magnification of the whole image at once?


Unfortunately, aperture and exposure time is well behaved,
but preview prediction is much less so. Thus you need to
check the results mor often and for a much longer time.


I don't find that to be the case.


Interesting.


[...] It would be nice if our cameras' auto functions were all
infallibly perfect, but none of them are, and it's part of any
inquisitive and careful photographer's work to find out when they
can't be trusted.


Incorrect. There can be an inquisitive and careful photographer
who stays with full manual for his work.


True, but the more restricted is the range of inquisitive
investigation the less it deserves the title.


Why should someone who investigates what's effective in
his photography and doesn't need automatic functions for
his work investigate something so unimportant to his work?
Do photographers routinely learn electronics and program
firmware and study algorithms for deinterlacing and the
theoretical groundwork for image manipulation, lest they be
called not inquisitive enough?


An optical viewfinder shows the image the lens is
presenting to the image sensor. An EVF shows you what the sensor makes
of it. An EVF in preview mode shows you in addition what your selected
jpeg processing options etc. have on the image.


An EVF in preview mode *sometimes* show you an image
*downsampled to 0.3-0.4 MPix* of what the sensor and JPEG engine
made of the light that arrived through the lens *some time ago*
on an *uncorrected* monitor that's usually much too bright in
low light situations.


The preview mode can equally well be used as an aid to
intelligent experiment by the curious.


True.
Psychoactive drugs can equally well be used as an aid to
therapy, too.


Unfortunately in the case of drugs, this turns out to be
unlikely in most cases of drug use. I fear it'll be the same
with preview mode: only a very few will use it "as an aid to
intelligent experiment".


You may be right. But I don't choose my photographic equipment or
develop my techniques with a view to their use in educating the
unwilling or incurious. Nor do I or my doctor choose my drugs on the
basis of how addicts abuse them.


OTOH your doctor doesn't try out a dozen different drug
combinations on you until he hits one that sort of works,
at least usually. He does chimp, though.

[With resepct to finding te right shutter speed to blur moving skaters
while keeping stationary skaters sharp]


It takes a little skill to judge it in preview mode, true. I found it
quicker use it to home in to the right kind of shutter speed and then
use chimping for the final refinement (if there was time) than use
chimping all the way. That's arguably because I'm not a sports shooter
and shoot this kind of ice rink shot about once every two years.


I'm curious. My first guess would be 1/500 or 1/1000 on a
moderate tele to freeze action. What was your first guess
after preview mode and your final shutter speed=


The point was not to freeze action but to blur it! The shutter speeds
needed were generally in the 1/10th to 1/100th sec range.


i.e. just handholdable.

Preview mode
usually let me get it right, and when it didn't it wasn't more than a
stop out.


Whatever floats your boat ... you still needed to chimp.

It's
also possible that all kinds of variable eye and brain physiology
comes into this and that some people will find the preview facilities
far more annoying than useful.


I would find it plainly impossible to see the difference between
tack sharp and mostly sharp in preview.


Which I expect is why the facility to magnify the preview image up to
image sensor pixel level was provided.


Which again --- with roller skates --- means you need to have
your subject pass the part of whatever 0.3 MPix you're currently
seeing at pixel level and judge in 1/60s (or whatever refresh
rate you EVF uses) if the subject was tack sharp or only mostly
sharp --- or reliably follow the subject at that magnification
without camera shake or blur from the camera movement. At, say
150mm (35mm equivalent) and 15 MPix that would mean steadying an
effective 1060mm (and that's only ~7x). That's the same as if
your skaters filled the frame at 21mm for distance and speed and
you'd followed someone's belly button at 150mm at that range.

You'd need to *record* the preview image and then zoom in and
watch at your leisure, taking a second or 3. Which is
chimping and works even better with the shutter button.


It would only tell
me major blur or no blur --- not only because the EVF doesn't
have that much resolution,


The preview magnfication of the sensor image is done by computer not
lenses, so the resolution of the EVF doesn't put any limits on the
magnification.


You either get the whole frame and low resolution, or a tiny
shred of the whole frame, through which even a stationary
object will jump around unless you're well braced and have
steady hands or a tripod. (I can do that. Sort of. Sitting.
Bracing my heavy 70-200mm lens on my legs and fixating the
camera with my hands. Which won't work at all with an EVF or
moving subjects I have to track.)

It's kinda hard to see 'is tack sharp' or not under these
circumstances.


but because I can't look that fast.


A natural limit which applies to any technology which relies on you
seeing what's happening.


Which is easily circumvented by softly squeezing the shutter
button and chimping.


Same with DOF, but I can get an idea of DOF by stopping down
the lens.


A nice feature of EVFs is that stopping down the lens doesn't dim the
view unless you want it to. Very handy when doing long tripod
exposures in churches or carefully selecting DoF in interior shots lit
by strobes.


Yes, *please* show me how you evaluate the light, the JPEG
settings and the DoF in a dark interior shot lit by strobes
.... in preview mode!


[snip]


I can't really judge sharpness without magnification,
much less in a limited-dot/3=pixel-viewfinder.


You seem to think the magnification is done by optically magnifying
the view of the EVF screen. It's not. It's done the same way as your
computer can zoom into pixel level detail on your image editor, even
if it's a 50MP image and your computer monitor has only 1MP.


I KNOW. Still, I can't judge the sharpness of a 24 or 36
MPix image on a 0.33 MPix (1 MDot) monitor. I can usually
see if such an image is *quite* unsharp on a large 27"
monitor (when the image occupies 3 MPix (9 Mdot)). I
*still* need magnification to judge critical sharpness
there.)

[snip]


Not with any refresh rate that's needed to
even sorta track the subject, and not without a 10x (or more)
loupe, which severely cuts your perception of the scene.


A 10x loupe?? Why on earth would you ever need a loupe on a camera
which can easily magnify any part of the image,


That isn't called a loupe?


No. A loupe is a lens. Do you describe zooming in and panning around
when inspecting a large image on your computer monitor as "using a
loupe"? I suggest you look up "loupe" in a dictionary.


http://www.gregorybraun.com/Loupe.html
http://www.artissoftware.com/screentools/loupe.html
http://www.markus-bader.de/MB-Ruler/help/loupe.htm

Maybe your dictionary is out of date?


If you don't want more than sorta-WYSIWYG, preview mode only,
then that's perfectly fine with me, use preview mode, stay
with preview mode.


But you cannot transfer what you learn there to other modes,
not without deliberately and consciously working on it.
In other modes you can't get away ignoring the numbers and
their meanings --- you learn by default.


But underneath the image are displayed the shutter speed, aperture,
ISO, plus a lot more which you can choose whether or not to display.


And on web pages there are ad banners on the top and on each
site. They're habitually ignored.

On Windows, there are many cases where you need to confirm a
detrimental action. But as such pop ups are used for
everything, people are conditioned to ignore the warning that
they destroy their installation and click OK.

Just having the numbers doesn't mean that they're being seen.

That facilitates the learning if learning is what you want to do. You
might be right that it also helps you to avoid learning if that's what
you want to do.


In your skater example, did you look at the numbers, adjusted
them and then checked the effect, or did you turn the dials
till the effect was sorta what you wanted and then looked at
the numbers? (Or did you ignore the numbers completely?)


It doesn't bother me if the preview mode of my camera might help the
lazy and ignorant to take photographs without learning what's going
on. I've managed to avoid having to teach people who didn't want to
learn all my life and I don't intend to start now.


That's not the kind of person to use preview mode, they use
full auto everything mode, not even scene modes.


It's harder to follow action with that than simply
looking at the straight image through the viewfinder, but it's
easier to follow the action with it than with a 10x loupe.


Yep, try that sometime. Take a flock of birds flying
overhead, track one bird with a long lens and see in the
viewfinder if his eye is tack sharp.


So what? I'm talking about using a specific camera feature and method
to help solve a particular photographic problem -- selective speed
blurring of moving skaters.


You're right, preview mode is just applicable to moving
skaters. :-) Phew! Now I'm relieved!


I do know about the
reciprocal of the focal length for shutter speed, that you have to
adapt that to digital sensor size and resolution, add in the image
stabilising factor when appropriate, adapt it to the holding method
employed (e.g. elbows on wall, monopod, tripod), factor in wind,
factor in unusual rotational inertias (e.g. long reflective vs
refractive lens), etc etc.


Yep. So how many bodies and lenses do you regularly use?


Depepnding on how you define "regularly" anywhere between five and ten
lenses. I'm not counting lenses I use less than once a year. I usually
carry at least three. I only use my backup camera when I want to
reduce lens changes. It doesn't do anything better than my best camera
so it never goes out alone. That varies between more than once a week
to less than once a month so I wouldn't call my use of two bodies
regular.


Do your know your regular lenses well?


Really? I try a new technique, I see what comes out, I
adjust as necessary to my goal, I remember what works and
what not for next time.


Sounds like you're blessed with a much better memory than I've ever
had. I sometimes solve a problem on the run in a busy shoot and by the
time I get to reviewing the results on the computer I've forgotten how
I did it.


You don't have EXIF in your files? There's everything in
there that you can influence by using the preview mode ...
You're not using chemical sensors, are you? :-)


Can't follow the
action at 2 fps --- probably can't even keep the camera steady.


Many action shooters employ the both eyes open method for following
action.


Action shooters generally do not employ preview mode, though:
they don't want the additional *variable* lag between photons
hitting the sensor and dots lighting up on the EVF.


Of course. In that case you'd either avoid using the laggier kinds of
EVF processing or avoid preview mode altogether. The fastest and most
difficult kind of action shooting I do is birds in flight with a 500mm
lens and for that I don't use the camera's viewfinder at all. I use an
adapted gunsight which lets me use both eyes on the whole scene.


Yet wouldn't it be perfect if you used preview mode to have
the body tack sharp but the tips of the wings blurred to
show the dynamic movement?


Much easier to freeze one frame and evaluate it at leisure,
once you have a rough idea (which requires about as much
training as using the preview properly) --- and exactly that
is what happens when you take a shot.


That is indeed much easier, but sometimes there isn't time to do that.


Then there isn't time to play with preview modes either.


Not my experience. I find I still have time to use preview when
there's no time to shoot and review. It's better at that than I
expected before trying it.


That would mean lots of experience with preview, but low on
experience with exposure times and apertures.

SURE, if you have NO idea at all, then a preview helps ---


I find it also helps in my case where I have quite a good idea, having
learned my photgraphy back in the old days before there was even
autoexposure let alone autofocus.


You're saying you're still surprised by aperture or exposure
time settings?


Surprised is too strong a word. But where there are conflicting
demands and aesthetic trade offs involved I like to experiment with
different compromises. Anything which shortens the time between
experiment and result is useful, especially when the shortening steps
over the important boundary between experiment and check into
interactive process control.


The best shortening would be knowing pretty well which
combination work. It's sorta like phase AF and contrast AF:
Phase AF knows the direction and (quite exact) the amount
of travel, contrast AF is an interactive control process ...
guess which one is still faster.

provided you have enough ideas how to *use* the preview mode.
And it's limitations. And where it fails. On your camera.
In your specific preview mode setting.


Perfectly true. These are all things you have to learn for each new
camera, just as in the old days you had to learn about different films
and developing techniques.


But you didn't need to relearn all of exposure time and
aperture. Which is what the preview mode supplies. Preview
doesn't do newer generations of sensors or digital darkroom.


[...]
But if you're referring to learning and experience which is specific
to certain makes and models of camera you're right.


Exactly.
You learn --- and then have to throw away most of it when you
change cameras.

That lack of
generality is also true of autofocus. That doesn't stop autofocus
being very useful, nor does it stop it being useful to learn exactly
how a specific kind of autofocus technology works and where and why it
fails.


AF is fully automatic.
Full auto mode is fully automatic.
Preview is fully manual. And slower than full auto.


Which means the
knowledge doesn't carry over.


Your arguments are much too black and white. That not all the
knowledge carries over doesn't mean that none of it does. All the
knowledge doesn't carry over. But a useful amount of it does.


Yet with aperture and exposure time almost all carries over,
even switching sensor sizes.


A surprising amount of what I learned in my film shooting days has
turned out to have been oversimplified and overgeneralised. That's
mainly been due to increasing sensor resolution revealing unsuspected
problems in earlier cruder generalisations. Rather like the way
improved detail resolution in scientific measuring instruments reveals
the simplifications and overgeneralisations in earlier mathematical
models.


Naah. You've increased the enlargement (you print larger or
look at 100% with higher resolutions), you needed to factor
that in even back when.

What has changed is that you are more variable in your ways.
But luckily all you need is a simple correction factor.

Just as switching from Deutschmark to Euro.

In fact angle of view is more independent and useful than
"equivalent focal length" which IMHO is a silly fudge of an incomplete
generalisation.


So you'd write an angle of view on a lens --- which is then
attached to a 35mm-sized sensor, a 1.6x crop sensor, a 2x crop
MFT and maybe even to a 2.7x '1"' sensor. For which sensor
would you write the angle of view?


None, for exactly the same reasons I wouldn't write "equivalent focal
length" on a lens either.


Thus the focal length is most useful, and from there you get
trivially to equivalent focal length, but not to angle of view.


lot. This year I spent only a few minutea on it. I was stopped by a
security guard who was worried that I might have a perverted interest
in photographing child skaters or be planning a terrorist attack.


And next year you'll be arrested for carrying a camera.


I doubt it. In the UK over the last few years photographers and
lawyers have succeeded in getting the law clarified and better
guidelines issued from the government to police and security
personnel. That's led to improved relations between photographers,
police, and security guards. I used to get harassed often enough that
I carried a copy of the relevant legislation in my gear bag. I don't
now because there's much less harassment.


All it takes is just one terrorist that also used a camera once.



No idea what that argument means.


Basically: If you need to chimp for a rather long time to
find the right settings, you don't know your camera well.


I don't. It's a recent acquisition. It takes me at least six months to
get to know a camera well. But on the other hand the exposure
parameters I'm playing with are in this case largely camera
independent.


And exposure --- unlike preview mode --- carries over well.

If you don't need to chimp for a long time,


Which I don't.


I call your
""sufficiently much faster that in five minutes shooting you
can come away with many more good shots of a much greater
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
variety than without preview" bull.
^^^^^^^


Experiment trumps speculation. My experiment, your speculation.


So you did experiment shooting a second five minutes shooting
without preview mode and came off with many less good shots
and with a much smaller variety? I doubt that!

So, let's stay with logic: you'd need to produce many good
shots and of a much greater variety in the time you'd spend
with chimping otherwise. I dunno about you, but I can't do many
*good* shots in 20 seconds. Much less in a very great variety.


It does you credit that you're worried about the educational state of
lazy or stupid photographers and would rather the market insisted on
supplying them with cameras they couldn't work without a proper
scientific understanding of camera technology.


Where did I require that one enter Maxwell's equations into
the camera before the shutter works? Or alternatively, the
theory of charge transport in semi-conductors? Or maybe how
to design and make a processor for the camera?


When you look up "loupe" in your dictionary look up "eristic argument"
as well :-)


Yep, it's really a good term for your "cameras they couldn't
work without a proper scientific understanding of camera
technology." Thank you.


Unfortunately the
market is based on consumer choice.


Really? So where are the cameras many ask for?


In the shops.


So where's the affordable compact camera with a really large
sensor, 8 or less huge MPix, a good *fast* lens, an optical
view finder ...


So why not leave off the preview mode (instead of wasting
months or years on it) and start being in a fix and thus
learning immediately? Please use short, simple words to
explain that ...


Because that learning process is less fun, and I'm easily bored. Plus
preview lets me get a lot more fairly good shots while I'm doing the
learning. Helps my motivation. I also suspect that learning which is
more fun works faster and better. But I'm willing to accept that may
be a personal idiosyncracy.


I see. You want the easiest way, not the fastest or the
best way.


Not what I said nor meant. I said I wanted the most fun while
learning.


Yep, the easiest way.

By that I meant playful skill acquisition and problem
solving. That's always been the best and fastest way to learn for me.
A friend and cognitive psychologist tells me that's not just a
personal idiosyncrasy of mine.


"best" and "fastest" are hard to judge, since you cannot
compare well yourself.

Funniest/most entertaining way, that's easy to find out.

-Wolfgang
 




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