Friday, February 13

Amish Farm In Winter

NEW CAMERA TEST - WUDAYA THINK?

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My new Canon PowerShot G10, point-and-click came this afternoon. So at 4:30 I raced about five miles out of Lancaster and on a back road found this Amish farm vista. It's shot in RAW mode at f11 and 1/500 with an ISO of 200 with the sun low in the sky behind me. The thing allows for full automatic override and it's got a 5X zoom that seems pretty well made to match the camera. It fits into my pocket and, oh yea, most importantly it's got a range finder and a 17.5 mxpl sensor. I think that few P&Cs still have range finders which means heavy battery drain, and glare problems. However the range finder suffers from gordo parallax chopping.

So... here's the first image I tried. I'm impressed with the palette information re. sky to shadows. I've cranked this out so that I can easily print it at 4 feet on the horizontal edge (someone want to convert that to meters?) The dynamic range seems very strong. But ... well... what do you think? It's hard for me to carry this sissy little thing. It seems to challenge my man-hood. I feel girly or amateurish or... well, both. And yet I can see that I can carry it about in my pocket and consequently get image material that I'd never other wise get since lugging my normal kit is a challenge..

Okay... if I hadn't mentioned it was a P&C... would you have guessed? Be brutal... okay?


BTW.... note the date. This is THE DEAD OF WINTER here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Note the (missing) snow cover! Hmmm...... Yesterday it was about 50 degrees. This may just be a belated January thaw.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Technically speaking: I couldn't tell the difference to any DSLR, especially not in such a small size. I guess you are aware of Michael Reichmanns recent comparison between the G10 and a medium size camera?

But I would certainly like to see that photo in a big print! It really glows with color. And its painterly feeling smoothly emphasises the rural atmosphere. So, technicalities aside: the wetware behind the camera seems to be top notch!

Anonymous said...

i have been thinking along the same lines of getting a G10 to complement my Sony A700 which is way heavy. Is you photo straight out the camera because it has an HDR quality to it.

Michael Harris Photography said...

4 ft = 1.2192 according to my iphone, finally I get to use the unit app. If you hadn't said anything there is no way to tell at website resolution. That said, the colors are vibrant, I agree it has that HDR look and I'm sure you can work your magic with it. Sounds like your ego is doing some control s**t, if this helps you create, and follow your passion who cares what anyone thinks... go for it, you said be brutal! You create beautiful art, you are not that art and you are not your equipment..

Ted said...

(Thomas) What i did was print a small piece of a full blow up to 4.25' on the horizontal edge and the detail was astonishing. Now I shot this at ISO 200 and I'm certain that there will be a noise problem when the ISO gets cranked. Still, this is pretty cool.
( John) No the image I've posted here is a the result of two images stitched together into a pano and then enhanced.. since I am only interested in cameras which will give me sufficient info to do PP enhancements. However, look at the image i've posted on February 14th (following this one) where I have included the virgin capture from the HD card.
(MikeH) Ahhhh.... great that the iPhone comes in handy, right? As I told John above, the dynamic range was recreated by me in PP from information that the G10 was able to capture. And the HDR feel that you note is undoubtedly a byproduct of that enhancement. And yeah... like every artist I am a control freak... Right! This is one part of the world where I am the elected/appointed/anointed tyrant. Where else can we get total control over this much of our lives??? Frankly, I think that is one of the most compelling reasons that artists exist.

But I digress... Thanks for the moving compliments Mike... And I remain envious of your boat on blue water even though, as you can see from the image we're discussing, the snow/ice cover has entirely lifted from Lancaster County.

Andreas said...

Hmm ... guess you know my answer: I'd rather carry my DSLR :)

But, really, it does not matter what camera you have. When you asked me, down in Firenze, if I think you should upgrade from 8mpx, I said I believe not. You are someone who invents more than half of his pixels anyway. I could give you my old Kodak 5mpx camera and you would produce just the same images. Nobody could tell :)

Glen Goffin said...

lol ... yes ... but which half!?! That's the art part :) I love this composition.

John Roberts said...

My first digital camera was a Canon G3, one of your new baby's ancestors. Its image quality (even in 2003) made me fall in love with digital photography and abandon film. I eventually got a dslr, but the switch was more for lens selection options, not image quality. I am currently contemplating a small, pocket size digicam to carry when toting my E-510 is impractical. I decided a long time ago that most rants about image noise are usually grossly exaggerated, so a modern digicam will do just fine for what I have in mind for it, as I'm sure your new G10 will do for you. Enjoy!