Is the megapixel war over?

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Canon introduced a bunch of new point and shoots today, including the new PowerShot G11, the successor to the PowerShot G10.  The exciting thing is that they've apparently abandoned the race for more (useless, low-end) megapixels!  Check out the specs of the Canon G7 (10 megapixels), Canon G9 (12 megapixels), the G10 (15 mexapixels) and now the G11 (back to 10 megapixels). The reason why this is important is because bigger pixels are better, cleaner, truer pixels, with less noise.  (Especially in lower light.  The noise really overwhelms the picture when the ISO gets cranked up.)  As camera makers try to cram more and more pixels onto a sensor that's not any bigger, the pixels have to get smaller.  Although technology does improve over time, manufacturers have been working harder at making pixels smaller than they have at making them better.   The result was the PowerShot G10, which most photographers apparently thought has similar or worse image quality as the camera it replaced, due to the smaller pixels.

Of course, with higher pixels sizes comes larger filesizes.  The more megapixels the more megabytes, which means cards fill up faster, transfers take longer, backups are larger, processing is slower, etc.  Plus, noisier files compress worse!  (ok - now I'm just splitting hairs...)

So now we've got the G11, with 10 megapixels.  Most people who actually print their photos agree that 10 megapixels is a pretty good size.  I've got a 48" wide print made from an 8 megapixel camera that's surprisingly sharp.  This new camera seems to be Canon's way of saying they agree that 10 megapixels is enough, and working on giving us higher image quality instead of more pixels.

The next question is what this means for Canon's line of digital SLRs.  Right now the two top cameras have full-frame sensors with 21 megapixels.   The 1-Ds mk III is two years old now, and is bound to be replaced in the next month or two.  Will they add yet more megapixels, or will they stop in the low 20's and work on lower noise and higher ISO?

Advice to a friend buying a new camera

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A friend of mine posted the classic "I'm going to get my first dSLR - What should I get?" question which spawned a bunch of comments from friends chiming in about their favorite brands.  I think most people usually recommend the brand that they shoot with, but I didn't.  I shoot Canon for now but I said "Nikon or Sony", which caused him to ask why. I thought I might post the details here before they get lost to the annals of Facebook:

The Canons take pictures just fine - 100% of the pictures I've taken were with Canons! It's just an attitude thing for me now. After being a hardcore Canon user/watcher for a couple years I've figured out how Canon's marketing mind works. The lower end stuff is suitable for most uses but they always hold out the little things that would make photography more convenient for their highest-end stuff.

I'm not talking about expensive features here - I'm talking about things like 5 shot exposure bracketing, a built-in eyepiece blocker, more flexibility for exposure compensation, mirror lockup as a drive mode and not as a custom function, perhaps an actual knob for drive mode, etc.

Many of these are simple things that their highest end model has. I understand paying thousands more for actual technology, but paying thousands to change some firmware constant from 3 to 5 is insulting.   I also think that selling the intervalometer as a $150 accessory instead of building it in to the camera is insulting.

I went with Canon because of the lens selection, and that's why I'm staying with them for now. (In fact, I keep adding to my lens investment.) And I'm hoping that the recent advances by Nikon, Sony, and others will compel them to bring some of these (essentially free to engineer) features down to the mid-range.

When you buy a Canon, you're paying for the millions of dollars they've invested in CMOS image sensor fabrication and high-volume manufacturing technology. You're also paying for the labor of the one intern they hired do do their User Interface work and the tools that work in Technical Marketing.

BTW, I'm officially "cynical" about the whole Canon vs. Everyone Else battle. Just like Lance said "It's not about the bike", photography is NOT about the camera. The most important thing is that you get a usable tool that's gives you the level of flexibility you need and then GO OUT AND TAKE PICTURES!

That's by far more important that the details of which lens you buy, how much you spend, or what brand you use.

Let's talk about California Sales Tax...

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It's July, which means it's time for small businesses in California to file their sales and use taxes with the State of California Board Of Equalization (BOE)  Sales tax regulations can be complicated (like everything else with the State) due to the different situations that under which photography can occur and the different forms in which it can be transferred to the customer. The simple version goes like this:  If you buy a printed photograph from me, it's taxable.  If you hire me to photograph something for you as a commercial photographer and I deliver an image to you electronically, it's not taxable.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, it isn't quite that simple and until recently the BOE was arguing that commercial photography constituted a taxable sale, even if there was no tangible item transferred.

Jeff Sednick, on behalf of the Advertising Photographers of America, has a nice update on his site here, which points to the relevant regulation from the BOE, Regulation 1540.   Note that this is different from Regulation 1528 which covers situations like if you come to me for a passport photo or you buy a piece of art and hang it on your wall.

Matting photos all day

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Today was spent matting and framing photos.  The Mother In Law has a mat cutter and Aaron Brothers was having their one-penny (2 for the price of one) sale so lots of the prints that I made two weeks ago in Charlie Cramer's printing class got shiny new homes.   Now we just have to figure out a way to show them all off. Anyone want to buy a framed print???

Charlie Cramer's fine art printing class

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I had the great pleasure of attending Charlie Cramer's excellent Fine Art Printing Class this past weekend, held at The Picture Element here in Santa Clara, California.  It's an intensive three day class running from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm Friday and Saturday and 9:00 to 5:00 on Sunday.  That's 32 total hours of time talking about printing, looking at prints, making prints of your work, and having your prints reviewed by classmates.  It's an intensive session to say the least and with only eight students, getting the attention of Charlie or his assistant isn't a problem at all. The first half of the class is mostly lecture, as you follow along on your own computer with what Charlie does on the projector.  We covered a lot of good Photoshop techniques for enhancing images and making them more pleasing to the eye.  By Saturday afternoon we switched to working on our own images, making test prints as we went, trying to get the most out of each image.  As the images became more refined we made larger prints, all the way up to 36" x 24".  (Or even larger for wide panoramic shots)   I worked on about 12 images which is probably more than most people did, and I ended up with about 10 nice 11 x 14 images,  a few 24 x 20 images, and a large 48 x 20 panorama.   It's safe to say that I got a lot of prints.

The main part of the class revolves around his "master file" idea and the "print, evaluate, refine, reprint" workflow.  There were a lot of Photoshop techniques to help an image's contrast, color balance, etc. that were discussed and I ended up much more comfortable with Photoshop CS4 than I had been before.  (A lot of the Photoshop interface changed with CS4 and the repetition of doing all the exercises in Charlie's book really helped it become second nature.)

If you're interested in the print as the final destination for your photography and you feel like something's lacking in your prints, then I would recommend this class whole-heartedly.  It's biased toward nature photography but the concepts carry over to any sort of photography.   I happened to get lucky and find this class being offered so close to home but he also offers it in Yosemite Valley, combined with a couple days of shooting.