Source: PopPhoto.com; Tokina Auto-Focus Lenses

With new model releases of digital cameras, what the regular consumer sees of specifications is usually the camera resolution, the number of pixels.  What’s less obvious is the how sophisticated the software that’s included in today’s cameras.  Better and faster auto-focusing, better optical zoom, faster continuous or burst shots, do not mention the amount of mechanical movements inside the camera and increasingly, in the lens.

Although auto-focus motors were initially built-in to the camera body, motors started to be included into the lens during the early 1990’s.  This resulted in faster focusing and zooming and quieter cameras.  Camera manufacturers like Nikon and Canon also had an edge against third-party lens makers who develop and market mount-compatible lenses, simply because they knew the software to control the lens functions.  It has taken some time but the major third-party lens manufacturers, which include Sigma, Tamron and Tokina, have all caught up with the camera makers in including autofocus mechanisms into their lenses.  But more importantly, the lens manufacturers have also included anti-shake mechanisms in the lenses.  The mechanism includes sensors and gyros to detect small movement.

Shake is a common problem, and depending on the situation, may not lead to blurred pictures.  In some instances, some blurring is expected.  For instance, a head-on shot of a participant in the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain will have blurs.  And it’s even if you use a tripod, there is a certain amount of shake involved when you use an SLR (whether digital or film-based).  And since shake cannot be totally controlled even when using a tripod, the software/hardware in lenses which minimize or eradicate shake is a welcome development.

There’s a rule of thumb when it comes to handheld shooting:  The shutter speed denominator should be larger than the focal length in mm.  As an example, with a 50mm primary lens, the shutter speed should always be faster than 1/60 second.  If the shutter speed is slower than 1/60s, then use a tripod.  Otherwise, the shake would be noticeable.

As long as you are using a primary lens, there should be no problem remembering the “shutter speed threshold” (if we may call it that).  However, when using a zoom lens, it’s hard to check what the focal length is just before shooting the picture.

The anti-shake mechanism and software in lenses helps a lot in this situation.  In most instances, having this feature allows the photographer to have sharp pictures even when shooting two or three stops down depending on how steady the photographers hands are to begin with, as well as the camera weight, and lens length.

Anti-shake or image stabilization is a lot easier with point and shoot.  Digital point and shoot don’t have the same complexity as DSLRs.  The smaller lens, smaller sensor size and lighter body don’t add up to as much blur as DSLRs.  In fact, the main source of blurs for point-and-shoot SLRs is the auto-focus as it might not have focused properly before the shutter button was pressed.

Source: Digital Photography Review

Metadata is defined as “data about data.”  It’s computerese for both a dictionary of definitions about data, as well as the definition of data itself.  The term is more commonly used in large data installations called data marts and data warehouses, and is very important in data mining.

In everyday language, a metadata defines both the database and its elements, or a spreadsheet and its columns, and how these relate to another spreadsheet with different columns, and to another and to another.  And a data warehouse is a large repository of related data, of which a subset is called a data mart.  And data mining is the process of getting specific information from the mountain of data.

At this point, it’s all technospeak.  In real terms, this is the problem of anyone with a digital camera.  The source of the problem is the ease of taking pictures.  With this ease of use, comes lots of pictures.  With lots of pictures, it sometimes takes a lot of effort and time collating the information:  Where was the picture taken? What is the subject or topic or occasion? How was the picture taken?  What camera, lens, lighting and film settings were used?

A regular guy who’s trigger happy with his single camera would soon find out that he’s deep into this kind of problem.  We multiply this complexity by the number of manufacturers of digital photography devices and software and we now have the beginnings of chaos: every bit of information has to be sorted, collated and tagged manually.

Last year, the Metadata Working Group was formed to address this issue.  The Metadata Working Group is an alliance composed of Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony and aims to standardize metadata embedded in digital pictures.  If you have a photo stored in your computer, check out its properties and the list you see is the metadata as defined by the camera manufacturer. If you edited the picture, the list contents now varies.  Some properties changed, and some items have disappeared or been replaced.

To this end, the Metadata Working Group has just released a guideline which suggests methods to increase interoperability and storage of shooting settings and other associated data in digital images. It also aims at standardizing the availability of metadata across all applications and devices, making it easier for users to create, organize and share their pictures.

What this means is that if the JPEG or RAW file followed the rules of storing information, you can run this through a software (which also follows the guidelines for metadata) and organizes the pictures for you.  Right now, no such software exists.  You have to organize your pictures manually.  And as any photographer knows, after a certain point, manually organizing pictures takes more time than taking pictures.  And the more information you deem is important, the longer it would take to organize.

The members of the group represent big names in different related industries.  And it would be to everyone’s advantage to make a standard metadata accepted by all the other manufacturers.

« Older Posts