Went to Birmingham for the second time in a week on Saturday evening, intending to have a balti at the Royal Naim on Stratford Road, for years my favourite balti house by a long way. And it was gone! In fact Stratford Road seemed stripped of Balti Houses, and Stoney Lane not much better. There were still a fair few on Ladypool Road, thank goodness. So what has happened to the Balti Triangle, and especially the Royal Naim?
An unpleasant shock
September 8th, 2008Myth No. 9 - 4/3 is about the same size as APS-C
September 3rd, 2008This is one that is almost inevitably put about by 4/3 devotees, who can be a very strange lot at times. However, the heart of the myth is that there’s little difference in physical size and further that the difference is eroded in practice due to cropping required to make the images from 3:2 format cameras fit standard paper sizes - one site claims APS-C is only effectively 14% bigger than 4/3.
So, let’s look at the facts, shall we?
The dimensions of Canon’s APS-C sensors are 22.2 x 14.8 mm - that’s 328.56 sq mm. (I use Canon for a comparison as the dimensions of the imaging area are known - Nikon quote total sensor dimensions.)
The dimensions of the 4/3 sensor are 17.3 x 13.0 mm - or 224.8 sq mm.
So the difference is 103.66 sq mm, which means that the APS-C sensor is 46% bigger than the 4/3 one.
Now, let’s look at common paper sizes.
6″x4″ plainly is in a 3:2 ratio. 7″x5″? Well, that’s 2.8:2 or 4.2:3, so cropping on either format.
10″x8″? 2.5:2, or 3.75:3. A4? 2.83:2 or 4.24:3. And so on - it’s clear that there’s no magic advantage for 4/3 for popular sizes.
So it’s clear that unless you’re incapable of elementary maths, 4/3 suffers from a pretty significant size disadvantage compared to APS-C. Does that matter? Well, it means that for a given pixel count, the pixels have to be considerably smaller, leading inevitably to greater noise.
Reflections on Brum
September 1st, 2008It’s 25 years since I first went to Birmingham to go to university. Back then, the city was a dump in virtually every way - the attractive historical buildings were still being demolished to make way for anodyne and anonymous modern edifices, and the city was full of underpasses. I didn’t see a proper tree for 10 weeks. My home town of Leeds had been through a difficult time, but Brum seemed to be utterly defeated. On sundays, I would wander along the canal towpaths, picking my way through the discarded needles and broken glass, but this was the best the city had to offer on a sunday morning, the closes thing to physical escape - paradoxically, a wander along to Winson Green for a pint at the Bellefield.
But now - well, what a change. Where once it was hard to find a pub, now there’s nothing but. The paths are safe, clean and even. The architecture both old and new is striking. It’s a nice city. How things have changed!
More reflections on Brum
September 1st, 2008
- And they say don’t look back..
A shot from the city
September 1st, 2008
Reflections on a City
Myth No. 8 - Format size doesn’t dictate creativity
August 27th, 2008Well, absolutely, no, the choice of format doesn’t dictate creativity. What it does do is define the bounds of creativity, at least in certain areas. So if you want to use selective focus with a wideangle perspective, forget doing it on a compact digital, for instance. If you want golfball-sized grain in a normal print size, don’t use a large format camera. Common sense, surely?
I’ve used everything from Disk cameras to 5″x4″ for film, and a VGA Phonecam through to full-frame for digital - each has a place, and each places different bounds on creativity.
Nikon’s D90 and video
August 27th, 2008So the D90 is to have some video capability. I would love to be old-fashioned and scathing about such a facility - except it’s the way the world is going, with multimedia at the heart of newsgathering. Oh, and I would quite like the feature myself, sometimes. I certainly find I shoot more small bursts of video on compacts now than I used to.
What has the internet brought us?
August 27th, 2008It should be a source of information, and thus a better-educated public. However, it appears that the internet has become nothing more than a sounding board for ill-informed comment - and that’s not just in blogs. 
Yesterday I posted something about the new Canon EOS 50D, and hinted at my surprise at the reception the news had in certain quarters. But then looking at some of the comments, it becomes clear that (a) half of those commenting hadn’t read the full story, (b) many of those that had didn’t understand it, and (c) the majority of the rest have absolutely no understanding of the realities of the industry. Fuckwits, the lot of them.
Paraphrasing some of the comments, we have some pillocks who see this camera as a rushed response to Nikon’s D300. Really? I’m sure Canon would be delighted if they could turn out a new DSLR in that sort of leadtime. It’s entirely possible that certain aspects of spec may have be altered for that reason, but the whole camera? Cloud cuckoo land, and those that believe such a thing possible are fucking cretins.
Then there’s some arsehole who clearly hasn’t got the faintest idea what the fuck he’s talking about who thinks that the idea of “gapless pixels” is marketing speak designed to “make socially inept photographers drool”. Hello? Excuse me, fuckwit, but would you mind waking up and smelling the coffee? That’s actually potentially the most significant thing about the camera, the possibility of getting greater resolution whilst not losing out on the noise front - in fact Canon claim it’s better than the 40D. Well, this sort of twat may not see the difference, but then I suspect he’s got many more problems than simply being “socially inept”. Plain fucking “inept” will probably do for starters. Given that he also talks about dropping the camera from “waste height”, I can only assume he uses the camera like he talks - from his arse. And this is the crux of it - people without a fucking clue spouting on as if they knew what they were on about. The internet? It’s just a bunch of blokes down the pub, talking bollocks as ever - except that now the whole world can listen in. Scary.
Canon announces the 50D…
August 26th, 2008…and some people seem to be disappointed. Beats me why - of course the proof of the pudding and all that, but on paper, it looks great.
Zeiss lenses for Canon?
September 8th, 2008According to Zeiss themselves, “ZE” lenses are coming. Now I assume that’s not a reference to Mamiya’s ZE range of 35mm SLRs, nor to the Olympus flavour of Four Turds, but to Canon’s EF mount. If so, it should open up choice a little more for Canon users, particularly for ultrawides.
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