http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/ Digital photography forum, contests, photography tutorials, HDR, photo sharing, camera reviews, photo gallery and storage, free software downloads, photoshop actions, photographer directory, blogs, glamour, fine art nudes, and more: PhotoCamel is the most informative, friendly community for professional and enthusiast photographers. en Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:35:55 GMT vBulletin 60 http://photocamel.com/forum/images/camel-light/misc/rss.jpg http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/ http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/271-another-guitar-finish-attempt.html Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:22:20 GMT This is an attempt at getting a sort of butterscotch effect on my lovely old Tokai tele. The body was originally a bit battered, so I stripped it... This is an attempt at getting a sort of butterscotch effect on my lovely old Tokai tele. The body was originally a bit battered, so I stripped it using a mouse sander and smoothed out any wrinkles. From my understanding, this model was built using Alder, so the grain is not that obvious. It still shows through nicely enough though.

I used a white tint and then a yellow tint (nitro based). Found it quite tricky to get an even coverage, but all in all it looks quite nice. Maybe a bit lighter than I expected, but it should darken a bit over time?


White wash


First tint





The headstock - note the 'cheeky' attempt at the Fender font. Shortly after this guitar was released Tokai were forced to change it after some legal threats from Fender.




]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/271-another-guitar-finish-attempt.html http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/269-first-attempt-ruining-future-classic.html Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:49:38 GMT I've had my Strat Elite for around 15 years or so. I'm sure some know of this particular model. Fender only made them for a year or so in the early Eighties. It's was quite a radical and bold departure from the norm. Some great features, and some 'what the?' design decisions. There's very little info out there on the web about this model. Maybe Fender were embarrassed about it :). At least they were prepared to try something new in those days. Now it seems they're perfectly happy to just sit back and regurgitate their earlier success ad nauseum :cool:.

Personally the Elite is my favourite strat, though not without it's quirks. Certainly for live performance it's a bit of a nightmare. Push buttons instead of selector switches, active electronics which are very powerful but can radically alter the soundscape. I prefer it use it in the studio where it's easily controllable.

Anyway, enough waffling. The main reason I wanted to refinish this guitar is that

* it had a chunk of wood routed out behind the bridge. I think the previous owner was a Floyd Rose fan, and refitted the original bridge when he came to sell it. The headstock also indicates that all is not what it seems.




* The black finish was pitted in places. Not overly so, and of course it's all part of being a 25 year old guitar, but I do like my instruments to be in good condition, and I also have had enough of black guitars.

* Lots of people advised me against messing with a 'future classic'. That's enough reason for me to have a go :).


I decided to go for an off-white finish, and selected 'Ford Ivory' car paint (from Halfords own range). I thought this would look nice with the white pickguard, pickups and buttons etc.

I stripped the original black paint using a heat gun. This turned out to be surprisingly easy to do. The wood revealed itself as a three piece under those layers of poly.



You can see the initial filling in of the gap behind the bridge. At that time I was using wood filler, but it never really hardened enough. I tried various methods and found the best solution was to cut a piece of wood that roughly filled in the gap and then surrounded it with car body filler. This provided a very solid and strong base.


After filling in, it was simply a case of a bit of sanding and spraying of the car paint. I then filled in the cut outs with some copper tape. Not really a pre-requisite, but as it was there and I had some tape left over...



A final coating of clear lacquer (again from the car store - just following in old Leo's tradition of using what's readily available :)). I then hung the body in the wardrobe for a week to settle down. Once that was done, it was just a case of some fine sanding, then T-Cut to rub out any little scratches etc. finally, a nice car polish was applied to bring up the finish. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the final result. The body is pretty much frictionless and (dare I say it) flawless.







Lessons I've learned from my first attempt at refinishing:

* Take your time! Obvious really, but it's easy to rush and either make a mistake or ignore it and it comes back to bite you later

* Use the right tools. I had ordered a replacement pickguard and the holes where the pickup selector buttons poke through were too small. I tackled it with a small curved file but no matter how careful you are, it'll never look completely circular. I've since ordered a tapered reamer, which I will use to finish off the holes at a later date




* Car body filler is excellent :). Easy to handle and rock hard.

* Car paint and T-cut is also very good. Just treat it like you are working on your vintage Maserati and it'll repay you with excellent finishing properties.

* A week is not long enough for the paint to fully cure. Even though the paint instructions say it's ok to wait a week, I'd double it in future as the paint was still a little flexible when mounting hardware.


By the way, if anyone knows where to get original Fender knobs for an Elite Strat I'd be very grateful! The nearest I've got are the ones you see. The originals have an 'F' stamped on them. As is usual in the weird world of 'older' guitars, I've seen originals go on ebay for $40 per knob. I'm not going to get sucked into that game :). ]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/269-first-attempt-ruining-future-classic.html http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/225-adam-a7-nearfield-monitors.html Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:17:16 GMT So what's this got to do with photography, I don't hear you ask :).

Well, nothing really - but I'm currently listening to my new active nearfield A7's playing some music over wifi via my squeezebox and I finally feel I've found the perfect nearfield monitors. Brilliant dynamics, that unique Adam ribbon tweeter, and - very unusually - controls on the front of the monitor!



These are really transparent and full range speakers. Quite 'toppy' but easy to trim via the trim controls at the back. Maybe a sub-woofer would also be useful for really ballsy music, but for the majority of my music it's like I'm hearing it all for the first time. Excellent value.


"You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

(my usual retort to those who like overhyped monitors :)). ]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/225-adam-a7-nearfield-monitors.html http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/52-50mm-lens-megadeath-shootout.html Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:06:03 GMT Apologies for the 'Fox News' title, but doing lens tests is so tedious that one needs to hype them up a bit :tongue:.

Right, so for this little test the mission was - gather all the Zuiko Digital Olympus lenses in my possession that can be used at a 50mm focal length. I omitted a few MF lenses that can be used via an adapter. I also omitted lenses that I have on my Canon 5D as the reason for this test was to see how the lenses performed, not how the body performed.

Methodology:

Each lens was measured at their widest open aperture, f/4 (if that wasn't the widest aperture) and f/8. This should give a good coverage and show any differences relating to lenses.

Why 50mm? Well, it's an arbitrary focal length really, but nicely fits in with a number of lenses that I already possess. There is only the one 50mm prime lens (the f/2 macro) in the current Zuiko armoury, but the likes of the 14-54mm, the 12-60mm and the 50-200mm could also be used for that focal length.

The shots were taken using the Olympus E-3, the latest (and possibly greatest) 4:3rds body currently available. The camera was mounted on a sturdy tripod, and each shot was taken with a 10 second 'anti-shock' setting and wired cable release. The focusing was determined using the Live View mode with 10x zoom on the critical focus area (the Rolex (imitation sadly) in the centre of the image). Other objects were placed in the same plane of focus for corner crop purposes.

A number of shots were taken at each aperture with the sharpest chosen. Images were uploaded into Lightroom, and then modified and cropped in Photoshop where my standard unmask sharpening was applied (300, 0.3 , 0) and the images were finally converted to 8 bit JPEGS in sRGB mode.

The lenses in use were as follows:

ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 50mm 1:2.0 Macro

ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-60mm 1:2.8-4.0 SWD

ZUIKO DIGITAL 14-54mm 1:2.8-3.5

ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6

ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 50-200mm 1:2.8-3.5


The eagle eyed amongst you will note that the 14-42mm does not in fact have 50mm within it's zoom range! This was just a fun lens test to throw in as it's a lovely and tiny zoom that works great on the dinky E-400, and so I slapped on the EC-14 teleconverter to enable 50mm usage. Obviously you would be mad to rush out and buy the EC-14 purely in order to use your 14-42mm at 50mm, but I added it in - to paraphrase George Mallory when asked why he attempted to climb Everest - because it was there.


Test Shots



OK - so on to the images. I've pasted the crops from each lens so that it makes for easier side by side viewing - so apologies for those on dialup or 12" monitors if these crops seem too big.

First batch of images: Centre crop.

Each crop has a caption explaining the lens and the aperture.






Thanks to James on DPR for making me revisit the 50mm f/2 shots. At first I believed I had the sharpest example in this crop, but indeed it was a touch out of focus. I've since amended the crops to include the best of the 50mm f/2 shots and I think we can agree that this lens is superb even when wide open.

You have probably noticed a couple of images in the above crops appearing more than once. This is because some of the lenses are simply not wide enough to fit into a 'wide open', 'moderately wide open' or a 'stepped down' category, so I've placed them in more than one to keep the lens order intact. Hopefully that makes sense...



Next, the corner crops:






Finally, a conclusion.


Hmm, well I'd be happy with any of them, but that probably doesn't make for good copy. I was blown away with how well the 50-200mm works wide open. I've always thought of it as a sharp lens, but for such a long zoom I think it's exceptional at f/2.8.

As for the ongoing debate about whether the new 12-60mm is better than the 14-54mm - I think they're too close to call. What I like about the 12-60mm is the little extra each at either end and the SWD AF mechanism. However, the 14-54mm works extremely well on the E-3 too and I doubt if there's a strong case to sell one for the other unless you really needed that extra reach. It is noticeable how much extra detail the 12-60mm manages to extract from the background compared to the other lenses at the same aperture (it can be seen clearly at f/8 ) .

The 50mm is at an apparent disadvantage at f/2 but still pulls through. You can see the quality of this lens throughout the range of apertures. It's a one trick pony as far as focal length goes, but obviously has the other party trick of being a superb macro lens.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the 35-100mm will work at 50mm @ f/2 (I managed to pick one up at a good UK price and just waiting for it to slip through customs...). I suspect it will be more than a match for any of the above.


Original images are here:
50mm f/2
50mm f/4
50mm f/8

12-60mm f/4
12-60mm f/8

14-54mm f/3.4
14-54mm f/4
14-54mm f/8

50-200mm f/2.8
50-200mm f/4
50-200mm f/8


14-42mm + EC-14 f/7.6
14-42mm + EC-14 f/8 ]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/52-50mm-lens-megadeath-shootout.html http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/41-big-question-get-12-60mm-sell-11-22mm-14-54mm.html Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:55:30 GMT This is the conundrum I'm faced with now, after picking up a nice 12-60mm from my usual grey market US importer.

I've always liked the 11-22mm as it's a fairly tight zoom range so you always know what you're going to get with it. It's also very sharp and has little pin or barrel distortion to comment on. However, the new 12-60mm does have a lot of nice features that overlap somewhat with the 11-22mm, and especially with the 14-54mm. On the E-3 it's a revelation in how quickly it locks on to a subject, regardless of light availability. It's also a very useful length - almost overlapping the 11-22m and extending beyond the 14-54mm. With pretty good close-up capability too it does pose a big question to those like me who already have the other two lenses.

I did some quick measurements to determine distortion. For this I used the 12-60mm at 12mm, the 11-22mm at 12mm and the 7-14mm at 12mm. All were mounted on the E-3.

These need to be taken with the proviso that the prints were only on A4, so the close focusing of the lens could introduce a bit of macro distortion.

Regardless of that though, as each lens would suffer similarly from the close focusing it should show relative performance for each lens. I also took some test shots of an ISO 12233 chart to see if resolution is any different between the three lenses. All were taken at f/7.1 in RAW and the following are 100% crops. I used Live View to manually focus in each case.


12-60mm @ 12mm



11-22mm @ 12mm



7-14mm @ 12mm




Resolution tests - 12-60mm / 11-22mm / 7-14mm




Conclusions? Well, I think the 7-14mm covers the 12mm end quite well, and the 12-60mm is not particularly stellar here (at least as far as pincushion and barrel distortion goes). Most zooms that cover such a range would also show some compromises, so it's not something that should be seen as unusual.

Selling on the 11-22mm and 14-54mm seems like a pretty sensible thing if you already have the 7-14mm. Certainly as far as sharpness goes the 12-60mm can more than hold it's own at 12mm. YMMV of course...:). ]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/41-big-question-get-12-60mm-sell-11-22mm-14-54mm.html http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/38-e-3-noise-control-compared-e-1-e-400.html Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:26:21 GMT This is a set of images that I created to examine the ISO and resolution differences between three Olympus Four:Thirds DSLR's - the five megapixel E-1, and the ten megapixel E-3 and E-400.

I was interested in how far Olympus have come with regards to one of the main criticisms of the original E-1 - high ISO noise. I think these tests show that Olympus have made great strides since the introduction of the E-1. I would be happy to rely on Auto ISO in the E-3 right up to ISO 800, with ISO 1600 and even ISO 3200 being perfectly usable with a little NR processing.

The E-1 and the E-400 share similar sensor technology - a CCD produced by Kodak. The E-3 is rumoured to share a similar sensor to that found in the E-510. I don't have an E-510 so can't test for what improvements have been added (if any).

All of the shots were taken in JPEG mode at the highest quality. My reason for this was to see how the JPEG engine performed with regards to noise control and detail quality.

All cameras had neutral settings for contrast, sharpness and saturation. The very sharp Zuiko f/2 50mm lens was used at an aperture of f/7.1. The sRGB images were loaded into CS3 for cropping and nothing else. The crops were saved at 100% quality, once pasted onto a wider canvas.

WB was automatic, and the items were lit by a full spectrum 6000K daylight bulb. Metering was matrix. Mirror lockup + cable release was used on the E-1 and E-3, and the IR remote on the E-400 as it's dumbed down enough to not offer something so useful...

It seems that the E-3 slightly over exposes looking at these images. This would tie in with other findings I've noticed on other blogs and forums. It's not a problem to work round (and my usual setting on pretty much every DSLR I've used is to dial in -3 exposure to protect highlights). It will be interesting if this becomes a common finding. If it does then Olympus may tweak the exposure algorithm with a future firmware update.

As far as detail goes, it's obviously a reasonable leap from 5 megapixels to 10. The E-3 seems to have slightly more 'sharpness' than I would think was natural. If I were shooting JPEG then I may adjust the 'natural' sharpness settings to -1. As the noise increases, the images have a slight 'bitty' quality. I'm not sure if this is the result of a 'neutral' sharpness setting or some form of noise cleaning (even when NR is turned off, I would expect some processing of the image to remove certain artifacts). The E-1 looks slightly softer with neutral settings, and the E-400 even more so. Normally I only shoot using RAW, so am not too interested in how the various cameras treat 'sharpness'.

I also tested the various Noise Filter settings in the three cameras. It's not something I've ever turned on before as I like to do my NR in a proper editing environment. The results of these tests don't change my opinion. I prefer the slightly noisier details than the smearing that in-camera NR often applies.

Anyway, take all of these images with a pinch of salt. This is my own real world test, and not something done in a lab. No doubt other 'real' results will be showing up soon, but for me I'm generally very happy indeed with the strides that Olympus have made with regards to detail and noise control. It dispels some of the myths of the 'tiny' sensor.



Initial scene (from E-3). Click image to see full size. You can also download all full sized images by following the links at the end of this page.



ISO 100. No Noise Reduction, 100% crops. Click image to see full size.




ISO 400. No Noise Reduction, 100% crops. Click image to see full size.



ISO 800. No Noise Reduction, 100% crops. Click image to see full size.




ISO 1600. No Noise Reduction, 100% crops. Click image to see full size.



ISO 3200. No Noise Reduction. 100% crops. Click image to see full size.






ISO 100. No Noise Reduction. 100% crops. Click image to see full size.



ISO 400. No Noise Reduction. 100% crops. Click image to see full size.




ISO 800. No Noise Reduction. 100% crops. Click image to see full size.



ISO 1600. No Noise Reduction. 100% crops. Click image to see full size.



ISO 3200. No Noise Reduction. 100% crops. Click image to see full size.




Effects of in-camera Noise Reduction. Click image to see full size.




You can download all of the original JPEG files in a zipped archive from the following links:

E-1 Full Sized Images (46MB)

E-3 Full Sized Images (145MB)

E-400 Full Sized Images (54MB)


Addendum

I did an A4 (approx. 8"x12") print of the ISO 1600 full sized image for each of the cameras, and (as I expected) the 'bittiness' is completely invisible in print. The E-3 print looks more like a low ISO shot than something at ISO 1600, whereas the E-1 print clearly shows the noise in the shadows. The E-400 sits somewhere in-between. It's nicely balanced tonally with just the vague hint of noise in the shadows.

One other thing I should point out is that the standard 'natural' setting on the E-3 (in my view) adds too much sharpness, which I think accounts for the 'bittiness' of the high ISO shots. If you set the sharpness to -2 then I think it looks cleaner. Maybe not so 'sharp', but that can be rectified later via any decent editor.

I hope to be picking up an A3 (12"x16+") printer soon, which will really show the differences (as well as make much better use of the 10 megapixel files). ]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/38-e-3-noise-control-compared-e-1-e-400.html http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/19-comparison-wide-angle-lenses-tamron-7-35mm-canon-16-35mm-mkii-zuiko-7-14mm.html Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:58:09 GMT I present for you here a fairly rough and ready test - more to try out the new blog features on Photocamel as much as anything else :).

It's often been said that one of the things that the Olympus 4:3rds system would struggle at is ultra wide angle due to the smaller sensor requiring very wide angle (in 35mm terms) lenses. The ZD f/4 7-14mm was an attempt by Olympus to dispel this myth, and largely it does do that. Conversely, a common criticism of DSLR's using the full frame (35mm) based sensors is that they are poor at wide angles due to light fall off and soft corners when shooting wide open and at a wide angle.

I'm lucky enough to have access to a Canon 5D + their new 16-35mm mkII f/2.8 zoom as well as my usual Olympus gear and thought I'd try a quick test to see what differences there are between the two systems when shooting at such wide angles. Just for good measure, I'll also throw in the Tamron f/2.8-f/4 17-35mm lens - a cheap but fairly well-regarded lens but which as shown here is really more suitable for APS-C sized sensors than their full frame cousins.

As each lens has a different minimum focal length I used 17mm as the common denominator, though the EXIF for the 7-14mm shows 9mm (i.e. 18mm), but I think that's close enough.



Full scene overview - all lenses shot wide open:


Olympus E-400 ZD 7-14mm f/4



Canon 5D + Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8 17mm



Canon 5D + EOS 16-35mm MKII f/2.8 17mm


Center 100% crops at f/2.8 (this obviously excludes the Olympus 7-14mm as it's maximum aperture is f/4)







Center 100% crops at f/4









Center 100% crops at f/8








Center 100% crops at f/16








Conclusions on center shots:

The Zuiko is very even and pretty sharp even wide open. By f/8 it seems to have hit it's peak, and performance has tailed off by f/16.

I'm impressed with how the cheap Tamron is really quite sharp in the center. It seems to have a bit more contrast compared to the Canon. Of course these center shots hide a multitude of sins, so unless you use the lens on a crop camera you're going to have to deal with the results in the next round of images.

Corner 100% crops at f/2.8 (again excluding the Olympus 7-14mm as it's maximum aperture is f/4)






Corner 100% crops at f/4








Corner 100% crops at f/8








Corner 100% crops at f/16







Conclusions on corner shots:

As can be seen the 17-35mm is really rather poor on a FF body wide open, though unsurprisingly improves significantly when stopped down. The Canon 16-35mm mk2 is better but again does need stepping down (though not so much) before the detail starts appearing. The Olympus ZD 7-14mm has an advantage (if you can look at it that way) of starting at f/4 and puts on a good show straight away. By f/8 it's as good as it gets (I did take f/22 shots with all of these lenses but they do not show any improvement, and in the Olympus case it's a marked deterioration due to diffraction issues).

All of the lenses suffered with chromatic aberrations (CA) to a greater or lesser extent. The Olympus has it least and is pretty much unaffected by f/8. The Tamron is the worst offender (and I can back this up with real world shots that show this a lot). The Canon improves as the aperture decreases, but never quite removes it.



Of course it's not really fair to compare 3 lenses that fall into different price brackets not to mention different mounts. The Zuiko was also not at the widest angle (here at 9mm rather than 7mm) which makes quite a difference in field of view. I have tested this lens at 7mm though and it's pretty even across the board. I also don't have a 14mm FF equivalent zoom lens at hand so can't compare (do any actually exist?).

Even so, if I were going out with the aim of shooting some WA landscapes I'd plump for the ZD 7-14mm 75% of the time. It lets me shoot at wider apertures, so I can get possibly faster shutter speeds hand held (and the new E-3 with IS will add to this greatly). It also has the least distortion and propensity to show chromatic aberrations. It is really incredibly accurate in showing horizontal or vertical lines, regardless of focal length. A great architectural lens. The one let down is that it can not accept filters due to the protruding front element. It also flares very easily.

I'd use the Canon 16-35mm the remaining 25% - either high ISO requirements or if I had a tripod with me as it really does need stepping down quite a bit to hit peak performance. What it does show though (and the 5D sensor is probably helping here) is a greater amount of detail, but you pay for that with smaller apertures and slower shutter speeds.

The Tamron costs around 1/5th the price of either of the other two lenses, and it does show in all round performance. Center resolution is really quite excellent, but there is a lot of distortion (check the horizontal and vertical lines in the intitial shots - they're very bowed). It looks like it would make a great WA lens on a cropped sensor though, so long as it's not used for precision shots such as architecture.


Equipment used:
Olympus E-400 - 10mp CCD sensor
Canon 5D - 12mp CMOS sensor
Olympus ZD 7-14mm f/4
Canon 16-35mm Mark II f/2.8
Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-f/4
Tripod
Mirror lockup and wired remote on Canon, infrared remote and shutter delay on Olympus
Lightroom





Link to original RAW files (note 170MB zip file)
http://photocamel.com/ldm/RAW_FILES.zip


Addendum:

I recently picked up the Olympus E-3 and took a few reference shots with the 7-14mm attached. First impressions - it resolves quite a bit more detail than the E-400 that I used in this test. I can't explain why for sure as they're both 10mp sensors, but I guess there's some more finely tuned processing going on within the E-3. It would be very interesting to test the E-3 + 7-14mm against the 5D + 16-35mm mkII. Maybe I'll get round to that at a later date.
]]> Paul Shields http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/paul-shields/19-comparison-wide-angle-lenses-tamron-7-35mm-canon-16-35mm-mkii-zuiko-7-14mm.html