The McWetlog

You may be surprised to know that a key tool in astrophotography is the lowly USB webcam. In fact, most amateur lunar and planetary photography is done with webcams: the Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager, widely considered the best camera of its class, is from what I’ve read, essentially a Philips ToUCam Pro modified to fit into a 1¼-inch eyepiece barrel. Webcam astrophotography is essentially a low-cost exercise in adaptive optics: the camera shoots 640×480 video, and you use software to select the best frames (shot in rare moments of atmospheric stability), stack them to reduce noise, and apply an unsharp mask to draw out features. The results are surprisingly good, considering. (For more on lunar and planetary imaging with webcams, see these presentation slides (PDF).)

The software is the key link, and of course the fact that I use a Mac complicates things somewhat, because the telescope companies bundle their lunar and planetary webcams with Windows-only software. Doing it on a Mac requires a couple of extra steps.

Stop right now and read Webcam Astrophotography on the Mac, which covers the same ground that I’m about to (and is actually written by someone who knows what he’s talking about).

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Of the three new lenses Nikon announced today, I will almost certainly be buying the AF-S f/2.8 60mm macro lens just as soon as I can lay my hands on one. A macro lens is a must-have for reptile photography; a macro lens that will autofocus on a D40 (or, for that matter, the new D60, which was also announced today and which also lacks autofocus motors) is a must-have for me. The only other AF-S macro lens Nikon offered prior to this is the 105mm f/2.8 VR, which is much more expensive than this new lens, which lists at US$549 and which presumably will replace Nikon’s current 60mm macro lens, which is AF-only and won’t autofocus on a D40. Believe me, you want autofocus when you’re trying to take pictures of small snakes.

Henry’s is bloody fast at delivery: it took less than two days for my order to arrive. And what was it that I ordered? Along with a new external hard drive for Time Machine purposes, I finally broke down and ordered a Sigma 30-mm f/1.4 lens, the rising Canadian dollar having knocked $120 or so off the price.

This lens is essentially the only autofocus fast-prime option for Nikon D40 users. All of Nikon’s lenses in this category are AF, not AF-S: AF lenses use a camera’s autofocus motors, and the D40 doesn’t have any; AF-S lenses have internal motors. Until now, I’ve been making do with manually focusing the Nikkor AF 50-mm f/1.8 lens, but with mixed results: if the main reason for a fast prime is low-light photography, it’s hard to focus manually in low light. And the angle of field is a bit too tight. Though it’s not likely as good a lens as a Nikon, the Sigma lens is wider angle and has two-thirds of an f-stop more aperture, and it’s also got internal autofocus motors.

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Take seriously the camera manufacturer’s warning not to store your speedlight without removing your batteries first. I discovered last night that the batteries still inside my SB-600, which I had not used in three months, had corroded inside their compartment. The SB-600 is, as a result, all busted up. Oh, poo. And my own fault too, in a real and warranty-voiding sense. It’s some small consolation that an external flash is not a mission-critical camera accessory for me (otherwise it wouldn’t have been left unused for three months). For bounce flash purposes, I’ll probably replace it with the considerably cheaper, but much less capable, SB-400, which will be sufficient in much more cases, and more portable as well.

I’m having fun doing something that the nikonistas on the message boards say is impossible. They say that new camera buyers should at all costs avoid the Nikon D40, the entry-level digital SLR which I happen to own, because it cannot autofocus with AF lenses. And “cannot autofocus,” to them, means “cannot use.” (The technical explanation is that the D40 lacks the autofocus motors that AF lenses rely upon, whereas AF-S lenses have their own motors.)

To which I say: horseshit. You can use AF lenses with a D40; the only thing you give up is autofocus. All the other electronic trickery an AF lens is capable of still works.

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Nikon has just introduced the D40x, a camera very similar to the D40 but with a few added features: 10 megapixels instead of six; three frame-per-second continuous shooting instead of 2½, and a minimum ISO of 100 instead of 200.

As a D40 owner, am I suddenly annoyed and envious, in the tradition of everyone who owns kit that has been ostensibly superceded? No. For one thing, this is an intermediate model between the D40 and D80, not a replacement. But there are two main reasons I’m not bothered:

1. The D40x costs $250 more (in Canada) than the D40.
2. The D40x’s enhancements are not the ones that would have been of interest to me; I’d still have to upgrade to a D80 to get those enhancements (not that I need them yet, but still).

So I’m still perfectly happy with my camera kit. I still have much to learn before I start to feel I’ve outgrown it.

More interesting for my purposes is the announcement of this 55-200-mm telephoto lens with vibration reduction for only $340 — only a $100 premium over the similar lens without VR.

More: Engadget, Gizmodo, Let’s Go Digital.

One of the things about getting a digital SLR is that the number of photos you take goes up — waaaay up. I could fill my 512-MB memory card in an afternoon’s shooting (a bit more than 200 photos, shooting at JPEG fine).

So last Saturday I picked up a four-gigabyte SD card at WePC, the computer store in town. It cost a hundred dollars, about as much as the 512 did two years ago — or as much as a 128-MB card did a couple of years before that. I love falling flash memory prices.

Now I can shoot up to 1,100 photos at a time — which should hold up well on weekends and vacations — or, conversely, shoot in RAW format without constraints.

I must now look nervously at my remaining hard-drive capacity.

So Nikon announced the D40, its new entry-level digital SLR, this morning (Engadget, Gizmodo). The camera sites already have detailed reviews up, which of course are overwhelmingly positive (they did get pre-release review units, after all): Digital Photography Review; Let’s Go Digital.

Compared to the D80, my current camera lust object, the D40 is smaller and less feature rich, but apparently not by that much. Major differences: it’s six megapixels instead of ten, and its autofocus is more limited. From the reviews, it seems to be aimed at people looking to move up from compact cameras who want more control and a faster camera, but who don’t have SLR experience and might be overwhelmed by professional kit — i.e., me.

And it’s half the price of the D80. Oh dear. After years of digital SLR lust, I may finally have to break down and get this one.

I’m missing Boolean operators right now. Neither Flickr’s new badges (by tag, by group) nor Tiger’s new Smart Folders allow them, at least on the surface, and they’d have been handy these past two days.

You may have noticed a certain amount of hysteria out there about the presence of camera phones — cellphones with a built-in digital camera. Apparently they could be used for all sorts of malfeasance, from pantsuto fetishism to industrial espionage. Case in point: at the Newmarket reptile show last month, there was a notice on the community centre banning digital cameras in PDAs and phones. This was a community centre where selling reticulated pythons was legal, but they were deathly afraid that someone might use their phone to surreptitiously take a picture of you taking a pee.

The reaction to camera phones is not unlike what happened when the inexpensive Kodak film camera was introduced in 1888 (via Kottke).

This Nikon D70 review, while detailed, doesn’t focus on menu lists and histograms (see previous entry); it looks at the camera from a photographer’s perspective — i.e., what’s it like to shoot with this thing? — which is actually useful (via Gizmodo). Yes, I want one.

Nikon’s low-cost digital SLR, the D70, is now available: I saw one at the Henry’s in downtown Ottawa on Saturday, where, at C$1,899, it cost $500 more than the camera it’s up against, the Canon Digital Rebel (which has been reduced to C$1,399). Is it worth it? Wade through the review at DPReview, which, as usual, is exhaustive to a fault. (Jesus, people, is 28 pages of menu lists and histograms really necessary?) The bottom line, which you’ll find on page 27:

[The D70 is] a camera which is a significant step ahead of the EOS 300D in terms of build quality and feature set and a match, and in some instances better from an image quality point of view. …

I am very pleased to see Nikon stepping up with a quality camera which doesn’t compromise on build quality, feature set or image quality and yet offers superb value for money. There’s no risk involved in the D70’s slightly higher price compared to the EOS 300D (Digital Rebel), it’s absolutely worth it.

In particular, the D70 is a lot faster than the Rebel, and in terms of shutter lag and startup times is a pretty fast digital SLR, full stop. Interesting. (via DigitalSLR.org)

Update: I should also mention Glen “Instapundit” Reynolds’s moonlighting-on-Gizmodo review of the D70.

Also at the same time that Nikon announced the D70 (see previous entry), they announced the 8-megapixel, 8x optical zoom Nikon Coolpix 8700, an upgrade of their 5-megapixel Coolpix 5700 (via Gizmodo). Definitely tempting as an alternative to a digital SLR.

DPReview has a preview of the Nikon D70, a low-cost, 6-megapixel digital SLR that is clearly meant to go up against the Canon Digital Rebel — but, at US$999 for the camera body alone and US$1,299 for the camera plus lens, it’s a bit more expensive. It’s due to be released in March 2004, so we’ll have to wait until then to see how it measures up. Michael Buffington notes that the specs are better than the current Nikon D100 (which he owns). See previous entry; see also Gizmodo.

Here’s a new blog dedicated specifically to digital SLR photography (via Matt). I’ll have to keep an eye on this one.

Derrick Story presents some reader-submitted digital photography tips (see also this). My digital photography category is going to be filled with little entries pointing to pages like these. Derrick’s going to feature in a lot of them, I suspect.

A little gadget lust is part of my normal equilibrium, so it’s not too surprising that, 18 months after buying my current digital camera — a 3.34-megapixel Nikon Coolpix 995 — I’m starting to think about upgrading to a new camera. Not that I can afford a new camera — especially not a digital SLR — but it costs nothing to think about it.

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I’m beginning to think I should just put O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com RSS feed in my sidebar and be done with it. Here’s Derrick Story, he of Digital Photography Pocket Guide fame, writing about using the iPod as a digital photo storage device, thanks to the new card reader from Belkin (which, apparently, despite initial reviews, is not so slow as to be unusable). You can also view, upload, burn to CD and share (via Rendezvous — see Derrick’s earlier article on Rendezvous picture sharing) photos directly from the iPod.

(He said, looking forlornly at his aging, first-generation, 5-GB iPod that can’t do these things.)

Mobitopia has a couple of interesting recent articles. One is a rather gushing review of Sony’s top-end Clié, the UX-50, which includes a built-in camera (640×480), Bluetooth and WiFi, but not a cradle or a portrait-mode option for the screen. And it’s pricey. The other article is a complaint about the Nokia 3650’s built-in camera. Apparently its advantage is ubiquity, not speed: you may have the camera with you, but you might not be able to take the damn picture fast enough.