On top of the building where I once worked for a computer company, there’s this exclusive restaurant.  It’s actually part of a chain or restaurants and has a good menu of continental dishes.  The building itself is only about 34 stories high, but from the restaurant the view is breathtaking.  The restaurant has a promenade deck of sorts complete with potted plants and you could see up to fifty miles away in all directions, give or take some angles where the taller buildings block the view.

It’s a great place to take pictures, specially if the weather is cooperating.  And, in fact, even if the weather was not cooperating, or specially if there’s bad weather moving in, the panoramic shots would have been incredibly dramatic.

To describe the view, there’s an airport about five miles to the southwest and a mountain range south of that, the bay is about five miles west, a lake five miles to east and beyond that there’s another mountain range going north to south.  Any dark clouds with rain moving from one end of the horizon to the next could be easily tracked.  And the view of the financial district is clear all around.

There wouldn’t be any real problems with the shots.  Panoramic shots would be simple enough to do, with a good wide angle to work with.  You only need a tripod with the camera.  The sunset is spectacular, but you would need some luck to catch it in its best light.  This is due to the smog and haze.  Better to take sunset shots after some heavy rain in the afternoon.

Neutral filters on top of a polarizer would do well in this environment.  The neutral filters would give the shot more contrast.  And the polarizer would help with the haze, making the sky darker.  A bright sunny morning would work.  Or late afternoon after some heavy downpour.  It could also be a good platform for taking pictures of the night skyline.  What with the first class hotels nearby and the tourist district on one end while the commercial district is on the other end.  And yes, lots of the buildings have full lights on deep into the night.

Really, the possibilities are endless.

BenQ’s new camera is totally different in it’s approach and quaintly re-defines innovation in digital point-and-shoot cameras. The camera has fairly standard features:  10-megapixles, 3x optical zoom and a large 3.0-inch touch screen display. It also has a Super Shake-Free Hotkey which provides crystal-clear action shots, with a built-in Red-Eye Remover, and 29 shooting modes, customized for specific environmental scenarios, which include a Night Scene mode to take clear pictures even in low-light settings.

On top of those, it also has an 16:9 HD mode with 1920×1080 pixels picture size, and an AF Assist Lamp which enables picture taking in dim light without any flash.

But that’s not what’s innovative about this camera.  BenQ had made the 3.0 inch touch screen display a whole lot more useful.  Various movements on the touch screen replace button functions on other cameras.  The touch interface assigns movements on the touch-screen to shoot pictures, zoom in on a subject and to view the pictures on the camera.

The “Tap to Shoot” function allows users to take a picture by tapping on the touch-screen display, instead of pressing on the shutter button.  You can also follow the subject on the touchscreen with your finger.  This focuses the camera on the moving subject, and letting go of the touchscreen captures the image.

To zoom in on the picture, draw a circle with the fingertip.  The camera will zoom in on the area up to (up to 3x optical zoom or 12x digital zoom).  Cropping can also be done by the same movements, and the cropped picture will be saved as a new file.

While browsing pictures on the touchscreen, swiping the display will move to the next picture.  Much like the movements on the iTouch or the iPod Touch.  Swiping also works for as controls while watching video.

Note taking can also be done with a “scribbling” feature, where you can write your comments or notes about the picture in real time.

The touchscreen features is a very intuitive approach, and does away with most of the buttons of the camera.  This surely puts the point-and-shoot back to a gentler learning curve for beginners.  And as anyone familiar with rich touchscreen controls, these features are a more fun than playing with the buttons.

BenQ, like a lot of electronics manufacturers have dabbled into photography because of the synergistic opportunities it provides.  They already have the manufacturing equipment, the parts and the software, and distribution network.  With the E1050t, BenQ is maximizing it’s leverage on technologies, and proposing a new way of using the camera.  It may not necessarily be better, but it is a different way to access the pictures and camera functions.

Definitely, with less buttons, it would be less intimidating to newbies and a lot easier to learn how to use.  At the same time, it has a novelty factor to it for early adopters and those who like touchscreen controls.  10 megapixels is not too shabby either, and the 3x optical zoom is about par for the market.

There’s a new trend in photography, and that’s a growing trend for candid, unsolicited and perfectly random shots.  This is embodied by the popularity of cell phone cameras.  It’s also the main concept of lomography.  Lomography as a brand uses cameras from Russia which are configured not to shoot what you see.  The simplest explanation is that these are still cameras which have visual effects included in the camera.

And since the cameras are designed to create posterized shots, these are not good for realistic renditions.  Lomography is more surreal and based on the feeling of the moment rather than the technical aspect of standard photography.

I may be biased, but I have not gone into lomography yet.  My current direction is in digital still photography.  However, I do understand the spontaneity being spoused by both cell phone cameras and lomography.  I do have the tendency to shoot candid or stolen shots of people and of landscapes as well.

The candid shots do need a lot to setup.  The first thing I do is to hide the fact that I am going to take a picture, all the while keeping the camera in the open where everyone can see. I try to get as many shots in the open, and with permission.  This allows the people around to see that I’m taking pictures and they can relax and pose as they like.  It breaks the ice, somewhat, and would expect to have their picture taken as well.  If they don’t want to be included in any of the pictures, I would know immediately.

It would help a lot if there was no need for flash.  But that’s an option which I don’t have much choice. And I would rather go with manual focus.  Though auto-focus with a timer has work fine for me, assuming I know what would happen in 10 seconds.  The reason I would rather go manual or aperture-priority automatic is for me to set the focusing distance, and shoot without any other preparation.  Look through the viewfinder in that direction, set all parameters, and then turn and shoot the subject.  It’s a nice exercise.

The spontaneous landscape shots don’t take much preparation.  I usually do it while I’m on a moving vehicle and shooting out the window.  The subject could be anything, sunset or sunrise, billboards, some hills or mountains in the horizon, or a river.  To begin with, there’s not enough time to prepare, as the vehicle would be running with no regard for any picture I take.  I usually focus on a distant object, with no auto-focus, and a fast shutter, with as wide an aperture as possible.  And the lens should be a wide-angle, thoug a prime of 50mm works fine as well.  Long lenses don’t usually work well; zooming in on a subject while on a moving vehicle does not make a good picture.  You’d get more blurs.

I usually don’t have time for a light meter reading.  The shutter speed may or may not be automatic.  So far, I have had shoddy success, but the pictures are an aid to memory of my trips.

With the release of the HD video capability on Nikon and Canon EOS cameras, it seems that the direction for most DSLR would be to have high megapixel still photos and HD video recording.  For several years now, digital video cameras have had the capability to take still pictures, albeit in lower resolution than still cameras.  In the same manner, still cameras are also capable of low-quality video.

Now, there’s a growing list of digital still cameras which are HD-video capable and there are now video cameras capable of good sized digital pictures.  The only limitation of HD videos from still cameras is the file size.  Since the videos are stored in flash drives, the maximum file size is only 4GB.  For HD videos this translates to about 10 minutes of continuous shooting.  There are some who would say that this is a significant limitation seeing that most amateur videos are not edited.  Also, since this is HD, video editing needs a powerful computer (upwards of 2GB RAM with HD video editing software) which is not normally found in the home setup.

However, a new company called Red has merged high resolution still photography with really high definition video.  The Red One, their breakthrough camera can capture HD video in something called 4K mode.  which is four times the resolution of most other HD video cameras.  This is due to the 12MP sensor size. This is big for a video camera.

Another advantage of the Red One camera is that is can use Nikon or Canon lenses with lens mount adapters.  This is significant as not all HD cameras have interchangeable lenses.  Video cameras which have interchangeable lens capability can be counted with the fingers of one hand.  And to be able to use Nikon or Canon mounts is even more surprising.

For a video camera, it’s a whole lot better to use older lenses - those without an auto-focus feature.  While video the auto-focus function is not necessary; it’s a bother to have the shot blurring and focusing whenever you move the camera.

Given the hardware, the math of frame size and frame rate yields some interesting numbers.  At 60fps, the Red One can shoot at 3k size frames (3072 x 1536 pixels).  This is equivalent to an exposure time of 1/60 second for a comparable still camera.  Extracting the stills from the video is done with software from Red (the company).  The camera also comes with an HD video editing software.  But, of course, you can use any other video editing software capable of 4k-sized frames.  With this size HD-video, the computer has to be really powerful indeed.

The camera is a rugged and bulky machine.  The Red One does not come cheap at the price of $17,000 without any accessories.  But for this size video, it’s about four-times less expensive than other 4K video cameras.

HD video is a growing trend and it will take a while for the equipment and costs to be within reach of consumers.  There is that one other necessary piece of equipment which is not mentioned, or mentioned only in passing when HD video editing is mentioned, and that’s the computer and the video-editing software.  Might as well, as amateur digital video camera users typically don’t bother to edit their video.

A while back I had a home project converting prints from my photo albums to digital files.  At the time , my setup was fairly simple:  a 300 DPI UMAX scanner, and multiple SCSI hard disks of 2 or 4GB each.  I figured I had enough hard disk space and shouldn’t have any problems scanning the pictures.

Turns out that there were several problems, mainly from trying to make the job go faster.  I scanned the images to TIFF, and as part of the scan process, I also did some post-processing. During the scan process, I had multiple pictures laid on the scanning glass.  This allowed me to scan multiple pictures at the same time.  Unfortunately, not all of the pictures were set at right angles and I had to adjust the scans by rotating the pictures by several degrees.

Though not a very common occurence, it does happen that sometimes when taking pictures, the shot is not leveled.  This usually happens when the photographer is not paying attention and frames the picture at an angle.  Admittedly, there are some pictures which look better when skewed.  In fact, some purposely take skewed pictures.  But on the whole, a skewed picture does not make a good picture.

Making sure the picture is leveled is a simple matter of paying attention.  A beach scene for instance, or shooting a sunset are examples of pictures which focus is a level horizon.  In the case of a skewed picture, the eye notices that the picture is degree off by as little as a degree or two.  It’s enough to ruin a perfectly good picture.

There’s this anecdote a friend of mine told once.  It was his own experience.  His wife works for the Accounting staff of one of the biggest sports shoe makers in the world, and that company had a promotional event which involved some NBA players at a basketball clinic.  With free tickets, my friend went to the clinic with his whole family.

He’s not really a basketball player, but is into sports, like bowling, badminton, swimming and mountain bike riding.  He’s also a techie for a major computer company.  Besides, that one of his hobbies is photography, he’s had a digital camera since the late 1990’s.

He goes to the event with his whole family and starts using his digital camera.  Shoots with the flash and takes some videos of the events.  And when the NBA players come along the worst thing happens.  He runs out of battery charge.  He checks out his camera bag and he’s got no spares.  He never did explain if he forgot to charge the batteries but he was not very happy.  He didn’t have anyone to blame as this was solely his fault.  The event was set and they’ve planned to be there, and he wanted to take pictures.  Unfortunately, due to an oversight on his part, that didn’t happen.  He went home dejected because he had no pictures of NBA stars.

This just goes to show that even for guys who have been taking pictures for a long, long time, it’s still possible to screw up because of batteries.

For photography in general, it’s a cardinal rule to check the equipment before going anywhere.  In the case film cameras, check that the flash is in good working order and the batteries charge the flash in an acceptable time, typically about 5 seconds.  If it takes longer than 10 seconds, it’s time to change batteries.  It would be pre-emptive to replace batteries at this point, unless you’re willing to wait until the batteries are fully depleted, and in the case of flash units, if it takes longer than 10 or 12 seconds, then the flash might be too weak to light up the picture.  In which case, you would end up with a picture which has uneven lighting (strong at the center and shadowy at the edges) or an underexposed shot, or just a black film.

And whether it’s a film camera or a digital one, it’s always best to bring along spare batteries.  There’s always that feeling that the best shot is the one which was not taken (something like the fish that got away).

For rechargeable batteries, the normal recharging time is 6 hours.  But there are chargers which can fully charge batteries within one and a half hours.

Additionally, it’s better to have lithium-ion batteries rather than nickel-metal hydride (NiMh) batteries.  The older technology NiMh batteries have what’s called battery memory or charging memory.  With these, the battery charge has to be fully depleted before being recharged.  Otherwise, if this keeps happening, the battery will slowly lose recharging capacity.

With today’s electronic devices, with no battery charge, it just doesn’t work.  The alternative would be to plug in the camera to a wall outlet.  Though not every camera can operate while plugged in in this manner.