The Thursday Pic No 2

Welcome to the Blue

Today is just a short post event and I would like to share with you an image I created recently using my favorite iPhone app, Average Cam Pro.

Use is probably the wrong word, mis-use would be more accurate, for AVC is designed to stack multiple frames of the same image on top of one another with the camera attached to a tripod. The frames are then averaged to present a very low noise high detail final result, it is especially good under low light and the files convert beautifully to monochrome due to the high retained detail and extremely low noise across the three channels.

Anyhow I use it to overlay differing frames on the fly, often moving the camera around as if I had ants crawling all over me.

This image is the result of several taken on Surfers Paradise Beach on the evening of New Years day 2014 and it is in fact a composite of two separate  Average Cam Pro composite captures.

To me it portrays a feeling of peaceful but contented loneliness, instilling the idea that one could just walk off into the surf to a beautiful afterlife. A place where time and distance disappear and all things can and do happen simultaneously, a place where life is always pleasant and simple.

The initial exploratory editing was done in Snapseed on the iPhone over dinner just a few minutes after the capture. These initial edits help me gauge the value of the files, once I returned from holidays I then did the final editing in Photoshop on the Mac.

I am not one to believe that iPhonography must only be carried out “in mobile” so I often work the above way, sometimes I even shoot stuff in my mirrorless camera and transfer it to the phone for a quick zip through my favorite iPhone editing apps.   Whatever works I reckon.

This was actually quite a fruitful evening and I obtained several captures that will be revisited at a later time.

Mastering Your KIt Lens - Part 4

The best lens is the one you have with you when the opportunity arises, the kit lens is often your perfect companion.

Yes your kit lens is much better than you probably think, so today we will explore the upside of owning and using the cheap as chips but under-rated option.

The focal length Range

Its no coincidence that most APSC kit lenses range from about 18-55mm, camera makers and long term photographers worked eons ago that this range covers 90% or better of what most people need for real world shooting.

Anything wider than 18mm  (27mm in full frame money) tends to create unpleasant edge distortions and egg shaped heads and 55mm is about perfect for normal portraits and slightly distant landscapes.  

The 18-55mm range is also about as extreme as you can possibly go before compromises start to creep in, if you go wider or longer you get the double penalties of more weight and greater cost and probably weaker performance at the extremes.  Nothings impossible to solve of course but what price are you prepared to pay for it.

18-55mm just works, you might think you need something wider or longer, but the occasions are actually rare for most people.  When I ask in classes, how many shots people take with the now almost standard 50-200mm kit tele-zooms I find few people have used them for more than just a few exploratory snaps.  Likewise I get plenty of students with super-wide angle zooms in the 10-24mm range but again with few actual photos, ultimately most students seem to find it hard to compose successful images on the wider view afforded by lenses in the sub 18mm range.

The disposable Lens

Look at it this way, the kit lens is almost a free lens if you buy it with your camera, and even used ones one eBay go for almost nothing.  So your kitty can be seen as disposable, no big deal if it gets dropped, lost, damaged etc thus it can used in risky environments or situations like drone copter shots with impunity. Of course it will likely be attached to your camera and that might be an issue if it gets hurt, so if possible let the lens act a sacrificial offering to the concrete, which oddly is often what happens in the event of a bad gravity spot taking hold of things at inconvenient moments.  

A couple of years back I knocked my a900 over whilst attached to a tripod (I tripped on the tripod, call me clumsy clutz if your like) .  Anyway there was good news, the lens mount (the bit the lens bayonet is attached to) acted as a fuse and broke on impact with a very solid cupboard, but the camera remained unharmed....nice one.  I cost me just $80.00 on ebay to replace the 28-85mm Minolta lens but a camera repair bill would have been far greater I imagine.

Weight

Most kit lenses are light, which might not matter if your taking the odd shot then resting your camera down, but should you wish to carry it around all day on a holiday trip, those extra grams will definitely matter.  I have had several Canon shooters tell me how much they just love their 24-70 Ls but then add they rarely carry their camera around with the lens attached cause they are too dammed heavy! So even if you get the exy glass maybe you should keep the kitty.

Its Matched

Normally these days cameras perform all sorts of nifty adjustments during the jpeg processing stage to correct for the optical deficits of the kit lens, this could include: vignetting, distortion and CA removal and maybe other stuff as well.  If you have a a Canon camera and you buy another new Canon lens for example chances are it will do so for that lens to.  But there is no promise at all it will do so with a third party brand lens and when using older pre digital lenses it will certainly not be done.  Net result, when shooting JPEGs the kit lens might be the most

 fuss free option and even deliver better looking files out of the camera.

Resolution

Generally for regular shooting people are not making big prints, postcards and web images on facebook rule the day. These represent the lowest common denominator of imaging quality requirements  (with regard to detail) and neither usage will be impacted on by the difference between a fair kit lens and a really classy glassy.

Despite the generally marginally lower levels of edge resolution on offer via the average kit lens, for most real world photos it's just not an factor.  Consider for a moment, maybe your kit lens is a bit poor in the corners at 55mm but chances are your shooting something like a portrait and tack sharp edges and corners are likely to be a distraction anyway.  

In the mid range most kit lenses actually perform really well across the frame and moving to the wide end if you stop down to f8 or so everything out to the corners will be adequately sharp for web and even moderate size prints.  You could also  stop down to f16 and apply some clever sharpening to compensate for the diffraction effects in the editing phase in which case you will probably even get the very outer edges sharp at 18mm.

The kit lens will not offer the same level of peak central sharpness as a great fixed focal length lens but if you’re not printing bigger than 8 x 10 inches again it will probably not be seen at all, unless your lens is a real stinker.   And if it is a stinker use it creatively and call the resulting images “art”.

Now heres a tip, most of the deficits in visible resolution can be made up via clever and subtle sharpening in post production, so spending some money on a good editing app and learning how to actually use it may reap a bigger reward than buying and exy new lens.

Equally you might also be surprised at just how much better your lens looks when you shoot RAW and use a "state of the art" convertor.  It sounds odd but, often the in camera processing can accentuate the weaknesses in a kit lenses resolution via noise reduction and other adjustments you have no access too.

Sometimes Resolution Just Doesn’t Matter!

A few years back when I started working with iPhoneography I had an epiphany, sometimes resolution just gets in the way, sometimes you just want impressionistic results.  Since that time I have explored the world of iPhoneography and produced many artworks that were deliberately "not well resolved". 

Your kitty can do much the same thing and with greater ease than an optical scalpel like a Zeiss Otus would allow.

Resolution be dammed, embrace the fuzz, explore the blur,  get cosy with mush and most of all have some fun.

It probably has Image Stabilization

When someone is severely afflicted with GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) or suffering from MEGS (Money Equals Great Shots) syndrome they will attempt to justify the purchase of that 35mm f 1.4 lens along the lines of “I can shoot under really low Light”.  Oh pull the other one....what a load of Bovine.

See here’s the thing.  Most of those fast glass heavyweights don’t have "IS" and "IS" is worth about 2-3 stops in terms of practical shooting under low light.  So a non IS f1.4 is about as practical as say a f2.8 to f4 lens with IS, but it gets even sillier.

In most practical instances an aperture of f1.4 has such shallow DOF that except for a few creative uses it is impractical to shoot much at that aperture and on top of that unless the lens is particularly well corrected  (read very expensive) it is unlikely to be critically sharp at the aperture.

Inevitably such lenses get used at f4 or smaller for most shots, but without IS they could well be delivering blurrier shots than the IS equipped kitty.

In any case even half decent cameras these days can shoot clean at crazy ISOs and that goes a long way towards making it possible to shoot in available darkness.

Of course I must add, if your camera has sensor based stabilization then you can use any lens you like and still get the advantage, but that rules out Canon and Nikon stuff.  Sony A mount and Olympus shooters, you’re in luck!

What About Video

High quality pro-style video is typically shot with fixed lenses and various stabilizing rigs to get that cinematic look, but for folks who just want to shoot the events of daily life such an approach is rarely warranted.  Image stabilization is critical to get getting smooth footage without rigging and most kit lenses offer this.

Beyond the stabilization kit lenses may offer other advantages for movie shooting, often the focus can sometimes be driven by a lever or control on the body  (such as on the Sony 3N) or even via a touch screen, focus point can also be often set via touch control as on the Panasonic GM1.

And generally, and this is a big deal in video, all this usually happens in near mechanical silence.

No Wide Apertures ?

Kit lenses of course lack wide apertures at either end of the focal range, that limits those creamy shallow DOF effects but then that look only really works for a limited range of applications and if you are like most non-pro shooters a quick examination of the exif data attached to your files will probably reveal most shots you take are in the f5-f8 range. Which of course is right in kitty lens land.

There is in fact an advantage to a slower aperture lens, it’s a dirty little secret that purveyors of fine fast glass would rather not tell you about.  Fast glass typically suffers from focus shift as you close the aperture down, meaning you might focus at say f1.4 but then shoot at say f3.5, when the shot is actually taken the focus shifts and your final image ends up looking unexpectedly soft.

Smart cameras and owners have all sorts of ways of trying to get around this issue but it remains one of photography's most infuriating and misunderstood problems.

Kit lenses being slow almost never suffer any focus shift, so if you focus the wide angle at say f3.5 and shoot at f5.6 you can be sure the focus remained just where you placed it.

And here is a big tip.....drumroll please.......if your kit lens is a true zoom, you can focus at the most telephoto setting, (manually of course) and then zoom back to the wide setting to take the shot knowing the focus has stayed put.  This is much easier than trying to focus at the wide end manually and will probably beat auto focus reliability at the wide end of the range as well.

You can of course do the same thing in Auto focus mode but you must remember to lock the focus once it is set, which on some cameras is easy as they have a focus lock button but likewise some other cameras make this near impossible forcing you to flick the manual/auto focus switch on the lens barrel.

So in summary there is a lot to grateful for when it comes to kit lenses, all the above makes them sound like a bargain, and in fact they are!

Next Post we start to get all creative.

Mastering Your KIt Lens - Part 3

It's often macro shots like this that cause you to curse the mechanics of your kit lens, hunting and rough focusing are just annoying, but with patience you can work around the deficiencies, this shot was taken with a cheap and very short auto macro tube and a Sony 18-55 OSS kit lens. 

Last blog entry we looked at the optical issues with kit lenses, now we move onto the mechanics.

Kit lens issues related to mechanical construction may prove very difficult to resolve, in short these include lens de-centering ( which really grates on my pixels), poor focus due to sloppy lens fit inside the lens barrel, poor cross frame clarity due to misaligned mounting faces and perhaps a few other mechanical oddities, like misshapen apertures.

All of the above will conspire to place the focus in unpredictable places that are always challenging and often impossible to fix in post production. Most of these mechanical problems are due to sample variation, so if you get a dud, see if you can get it swapped out for a good one.


De-Centering

Lets pull the problems apart, first off, de-centering. In practice all the lens elements of the lens should be perfectly aligned and in a well made lens they are. In other words the absolute centre of each of the lens elements are aligned perfectly and the lens will perform as designed. If one or more of the elements are misaligned you can get uneven clarity across the frame, with perhaps one side sharper than the other, soft spots, blurry corners and a sharp centre, flare spots or perhaps in extreme cases just mush all over the place.

Good quality lenses are constructed in such a way that the centering of the elements is adjustable in manufacture, but many cheap kit lens are just simply fixed in their construction.

High quality lenses can normally be realigned, generally kit lenses cannot.

I suspect that more often than not de-centering issues are caused by the lens being dropped, which gives you a hint as to why I won’t buy a second hand lens with a dented or chipped filter thread ring.

The good news is that kit lenses are not designed to be de-centered from the outset, if everything is put together correctly then it should work fine. The bad news, if yours is de-centered, it is not going to be economical to fix it, so unless covered by warranty, buy another copy.

And the other good news, another copy will probably cost very little anyway, as there are a huge number of “up graders” selling their cast off kitties on eBay for next to nothing. Hell it might be worth your while to buy a couple, keep the best one and sell the other....or perhaps keep one in case you accidentally sacrifice the other one to gravity. Mind you I have noticed that gravity seems to be far worse (sucks more) with more expensive lenses. There are also well known high gravity spots, these include Canyon edges, the tops of buildings, any area where concrete covers the ground, I also have it on good authority that the sides of cruise liners and other boats are subject to especially high gravitational fields.


Now moving on to more insidious mechanical nasties

I have actually used lenses where once you cranked the barrel out for close focus or telephoto settings the front of the lens gets lazy and droops. The inevitable result of such misbehavior is poor focus across the top or bottom of the image (dependent upon where you have focused). This effect usually gets worse as the lens ages and becomes sloppier in the barrel, such lenses are a total annoyance but you can often even things up by applying just a little upward pressure on the front of the lens. Nonetheless a lens like this is just frustrating to use and probably should be replaced with something better or newer or perhaps you could discipline yourself and not focus too close or zoom to far out. Or here is a thought, turn you lens into a fixed focal length one by gluing the zoom to a fixed optimal setting, which is likely somewhere in the mid range.

Most modern kit lens do not have smooth metal helicoils inside to give that tight but buttery smooth focus action of old, instead they use clever plastics which work OK when new but eventually develop slop and make precise manual focus difficult or impossible. Naturally this can’t be fixed but a lens will usually need a lot of use before it gets to this point. Sadly, a good number of lenses seem to come out of the factory in a rather loose state so it is something you should check before you take your new baby home.

Some kit lenses also have plastic mounting flanges, again these can wear in high use samples leading to slop and misalignment at the mounting faces. I must say the slop is pretty rare as a lens would need a lot of un-mounting and mounting to wear enough to become lose, so its just a little thing to consider with second hand kitties.

Finally and thankfully rare, you can occasionally get a lens that refuses to focus to infinity, this is a manufacturing defect for sure but if you are not aware of what is going you will likely think the lens is just not sharp. The fix, get it swapped out or buy a new one, old school kittys like the 35-70 Minoltas and Nikons can probably be sorted via a quick adjustment by a tech person.


Flare

A final issue is flare resistance and indeed many kit lenses are less than perfect in this regard, but I humbly suggest that for most instances, actually placing the lens hood on the lens and/or shooting a little more carefully would have negated the issue. Any lens can be made to flare if you shoot into the sun or other bright light sources, the issue is not “will it flare”...but “how bad will the flare effects be”.

Older lenses are typically much poorer than new lenses due to radical improvements in lens coatings over the last couple of decades. I have many older lenses that have flares like a seventies disco given the right circumstances but regardless are still terrific lenses 99% of the time. Despite my Sony 18-55 OSS being touted as a bit flare prone in tests, I really have never had an issue, so don't sweat it yours is probably fine too.

BIG TIP: More often than not in classes when someone says their lens is soft and flare prone the problem is dirty haze and mushy prints on the front element, so keep it clean and fingers off.

Back in the hood.....If you didn't get a hood with your lens, (and oddly some makers skimp on this essential piece of kit hoping you will pay through the nose for one as an accessory) you can pick one up on eBay for just a few dollars.

The kit lens hoods are a bit of a compromise, typically having a petal shape that prevents vignetting when you adjust the lens to the wide angle setting, but providing minimal protection at the longer focal lengths. If you like me you find yourself using your kit lens at predominately the one focal length you could purchase a far more efficient hood than the standard petal one.

As a tip I often use a foldable old style rubber lens hood that can be adjusted to suit the different focal lengths.......and there is a big bonus with it. Should you need to shoot through glass it can be held up against the glass and will both act as a shock absorber and cut out reflections of the glass.....oh and they are very cheap on eBay too, like less than $5.00!

To conclude todays blog entry, from my perspective a good kit lens is one that has the mechanical criteria well under control but may display some of the fixable optical issues we discussed in the previous blog entry.

Ultimately your technique and artistic flare and editing skills will prove far more important than the actual quality of your lens, with the next entry we will explore the positives of your kitty.

Mastering Your Kit Lens - Part 2

Some kit lens deficiencies are easily resolved in post and some are just ugly to the core, or is that the iris.  For today we consider the factors that can be sorted post shot.  

Here is an uncorrected image taken with an old 28-85 kit lens on a full frame sensor, whilst the lens is not that bad, the edges of the frame show CA, there is some vignetting, obvious barrel distortion and some loss of corner detail.  At this small size it no doubt looks OK but a good size print would be a different matter.

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic Aberration can be generally sorted and visually to to my eyes makes one of the biggest differences, it effects colour and clarity and I personally find high levels of CA visually disturbing, I almost need to have a stiff drink when I see a bad example. CA can be aperture dependent and is always focal length dependent.

With most cameras these days CA  can be corrected "in camera" if you are shooting in JPEG format so only the worst cases will usually be seen in the final file, however Raw files will show the CA in all its awful glory.

It is worth noting that there are two types of CA, longitudinal and lateral.  Longitudinal CA is usually magenta - green and is normally only obvious at wide apertures using fast lenses.  Basically you get differing coloured fringes around the details dependent upon whether you are looking at the area in front or behind the point of focus.  This is hard to fix but far less common and actually rare with slow aperture kit lenses, the good news is if you have it it can be prevented with stopping the aperture down.

The other CA, lateral is where we get coloured fringes around high contrast details, the strength of which increases as you move away from the center of the image, hence the term lateral. There is no fringing in the middle of the frame.  No, its not purple fringing that many people refer to, it can be red, green, blue, magenta, yellow or of course purple.  

Many people think the pure purple fringing seen in a lot of high contrast photos is CA but in fact its often something else altogether, “sensor blooming” and is normally controllable by avoiding over-exposure.  Note however as said, real CA can also be purple too but is most likely in my experience to be magenta or green.

My experience is that some applications are much better at dealing with CA than others, I won’t make any recommendations as apps are always in a state of flux but don’t give up, if your current application can’t “kill the fringe” try something else.

Ideally you will always get the best sharpness from a lens which exhibits no CA, well chances are you will strike out on that one with a kitty, however it is highly likely that one focal length will display very low levels of CA compared to the others. You will need to dig around a bit.  For example, my Sony 18-55 changes its CA characteristics significantly between  25- 30mm with 27mm being close to perfect.  No other focal length comes close and as you move away from the 27mm setting things get progressively worse but in different colour directions.

We can see a section from the right hand upper corner of the above image at the top of the page, the disturbing CA is obvious here and we can also see it has messed with the corner sharpness.  This is a very old film era kit lens lens and no doubt, was fine for its time, but of course digital is far less forgiving.

Vignetting

Unless truly woeful, vignetting is easily sorted, but very high levels can leave your edges a bit noisy once it has been eliminated.   I often add vignetting in post production so it could be a benefit to you anyway. 

The worst cases of VD ( vignetting disease) seem to occur at the wider end of things, with most kit lenses displaying considerable vignetting between 18-24mm.  You may not actually see any vignetting if you're only shooting in JPEG mode,  almost all cameras now correct this in processing, but again for Raw files you will need to roll your sleeves up. 

Generally a little vignetting is actually quite tolerable for most image styles and unless you are shooting landscapes with lots of sky in them you probably won’t be bothered by it.

Distortion

Geometric distortions are generally easy to sort and again unless really OTT you won't notice the issue.  The only thing to bear in mind is the more you have to correct the distortion the less final image area you end up with. Theses days most cameras correct the worst of this internally when shooting in JPEG format, so again you may never notice it anyway.

I suspect that some kit lenses actually shoot a bit wider than their stated focal length to allow for the needed cropping that occurs via the in-camera editing to get things squared away. The Sony 16-50 is a case in point, I think prior to processing it is probably more like 14 mm at the wide end.

The tip to take to the bank is, if shooting RAW files that will need distortion correction step back a bit and give yourself some wiggle room.

Normally the distortion is only really obvious if you are shooting objects with straight lines in them, for example architecture.  I must point out that even many fixed wide angle lens have considerable distortion so buying an alternative lens may not solve the problem altogether.  From an optical point of view this is a hard thing to eradicate via lens design and usually involves adding more elements to the lens, making it both heavier and far more expensive, and since it is relatively easy to fix in post it removes some of the justification for buying well corrected but expensive alternative lenses.

There are two primary types of distortion, barrel and pincushion.  Almost without exception wide angle lenses tend towards barrel distortion (which bloats the image outwards and telephotos tend towards pincushion distortion (which pinches the image inwards.   Normally for zooms there will be a point where there is no distortion and with most kit lenses this will be somewhere in the 26-35mm range. As a tip, the ideal focal length for easier stitching will be the one that has neither type of distortion.

There is one complex type of distortion known as moustache distortion, in this case the middle part of the frame edge barrels outwards whilst the area about half way between the middle and far outer corners pinches in.  Normally such a distortion only occurs with focal lengths at the moderate to very wide end of the focal length range. This complex distortion characteristic unless dealt with in-camera generally defies the best efforts of Raw converters and editing programs, though there are some specialised panorama applications that can correct it.  Again in my experience unless you are doing a lot of architectural work this distortion is not likely to cause you any grief.

Soft Corners

Poor corner resolution can be improved somewhat by selective sharpening using layers but will likely be your hardest issue to really fix, however in the near future using radial deconvolution sharpening this may well be able to be resolved OK.....love the sound of that "radial deconvolution correction....most discombobulating.

Currently Photoshop offers a work around for fixing this issue, but an auto option would be just peachy

Some kit lenses never get sharp in the far corners regardless of the aperture and this is especially the case at the wider focal length. Realistically the lack of far corner sharpness is rarely a big deal, if you think about it how many shots do you take that really need full corner to corner sharpness, I imagine not that many.  

The main type of photography that benefits for corner to corner perfection is landscape work, but even then it matters little for most shots and even small degrees of cropping remove the offending corners.  In fact if you regularly shoot in 16:9 format you will likely never see a rubbish corner unless the lens is utterly hopeless.

And now we have our finished specimen, the CA is gone, the corners sharper, vignetting removed and the distortion but a memory.  Of course it is a little cropped due to the distortion corrections, hence my tip to shoot a little wide if possible.

The final optical Aberration of concern is field curvature, I am not even going to start to deal with that in this blog series, it deserves its own set of blog posts so we will save that for a time when I get bored.

Next Time we will examine the Mechanics of the Kit Lens.

Mastering Your Kit Lens - Part 1

My Mother in Law, Ivy, one of the nicest ladies you could ever meet, captured with my Sony 18-55 whilst waiting at a bus stop

So your kit lens is rubbish, you know this for a certainty because numerous photo blog sites and test sites have told you so. 

Don't worry most kit lenses are not great when measured or assessed in any empirical way, but realistically your kit lens was almost a freebie so what have we got to moan about.  In any case, without meaning to insult anyone, most kit lenses are capable of better results than most photographers are able to deliver.

Now I have seen a few articles on the web regarding “using your kit lens, getting more out of it” but most seem pretty token at best so I thought “how about I do a series of blog posts that really give you something to chew on, something that will really help and hopefully inspire you”.  There will be lots of words and lots of pics to show you just what you can do, today we will set the scene, but make sure you come back now.

In the words of a past Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, I want you to feel “comfortable and relaxed” about your kit lens.

This blog series might seem misplaced, after all, almost every photographic website will have articles telling you that you simply must replace that “hound doggy” of a lens with something better and the inference being that you cannot possibly get great results until you do so.  

What a crock!

Sure it’s a good idea to buy a new lens if the current one is limiting you, but being brutally honest you’ll gain more by really coming to grips with what your current kit lens can do.  The whole world of consumerism is built upon the premise that any shortfall or problem can be resolved by throwing more money at it.....your money of course.  Truthfully, skill, technique and artistic application will drive you much further than a new lens.  I think I can confidently say that the overwhelming majority of world famous images from the start of the photographic period right up until a few years ago were taken with lenses much less capable than most kit lens found on any new camera!

Yes it's true that your kit lens will not give you that beautiful shallow DOF and the Bokeliciuos Blur you hear so many Photographers waxing about on web forums,  but realistically that look has limited applicability and in any case the lenses that will really sing in such applications are very expensive primes.  Look I would love to occasionally get the look of the Ziess Otus but at $4500.00 Aus, it ain’t going to suddenly appear in my camera box and if I find I actually need that look commercially, I will hire one and charge it out accordingly.

There are so many better things you could spend your dollars on if you are in the early stages of your photographic journey, like a good workshop or on line course, travel to some nice location to use what you currently have and in more practical sense and really good tripod or flash will open up far more possibilities for you than a better lens.

Back to the kit lens.....

I have had a few kit lenses, of those, my Sony E series 18-55mm has proved to be a fine example of the breed and is in fact my most used out of the 50 or so lenses I own.  A Canon 18-55mm I owned for several years produced images that looked a little like they were shot through the bottom of a beer glass and I think my Sony "A" series 18-55 actually was the beer bottle that originally contained the beer in the bottom of the Canons glass, but nonetheless even they redeemed themselves with plenty of good shots.

I have 3 Minolta 35-70 f4s from film era Minoltas, two were really good and one was stellar, that is until I dropped it on a cement floor and misaligned its innards. It still works fine but is soft on one side at the wide end in the now “post flight state”.

The main issues with kit lenses in my experience is "sample variability", which goes a long way towards explaining why user experiences reported on forums are so.....well variable. 

And perhaps why some test sites will call a lens a sours’ ear and others a silk purse.

Of course kit lenses are generally slow of aperture, slow to focus and slow to sell on eBay, but they are not without their virtues either.

Build quality is generally pretty average, lots of low grade plastic, sometimes even in the lens bayonet itself and in many ways it has got worse over the years, trust me on this, there is a world of difference between say a Minolta or Nikon 35-70 of 20 years ago and a new 18-55 kitty of today.  A single turn of the focus ring will lay bare the rough approach of most new kit lenses in comparison to their forebears.

Speaking of the Nikon 35-70, the one I have has consistently proven itself to be a stellar performer on my NEX 5n, in fact it is probably one of the best lenses I have ever put on that little NEXY including fixed focal length jobbies. Note there have been an enormous array of Nikon 35-70s so don't take this as an automatic recommendation.

So are modern kitties all rubbish, are there no redeeming factors?  Actually there are quite a few, the modern kitty whilst no paragon of constructional perfection or optical excellence can be a very useful device indeed.

I must say up front I have found from playing with hundreds of kittys belonging to thousands of past students cameras, some brands and models are much better than others.  The best in terms of optical consistency are the Nikons, no doubt about that at all from my experience, in fact some have been bloody impressive in terms of the rendered files, the worst, no that would be telling, besides my flameproof suit is at the dry cleaners today.

In constructional terms the M4/3 versions all seem pretty solid and the Fuji "x" series are very nicely done and apparently the new “light as air” kit lens attached to the Panasonic GM1 is a bit of a revelation.

In the next blog entry I will examine the optical factors with kit lenses that we can actually do something about.

The Thursday Image - No 1

Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging

My mother in law, Ivy often has a strange turn of phrase and occasionally  and quite delightfully mangles the English language, a few weeks back she turned the word, mesmerised into mezarized, which I kind of like.  Anyway I find I am indeed "mezarized" by reflections and how they interplay with the real world, over the years I have taken many such images, enough for a book.

But here today is one of my faves from last year, it was taken in during an holiday afternoon stroll in the Rodeo Drive area of LA.

The technicalities,.... I used my iPhone 4S and ProCamera for capture, the file was pre edited in Snapseed then post edited in Photoshop.

This particular image was entered in a regional art comp and whilst it didn't, win was the second "Peoples Choice" which was nice to know. The print now hangs in Wendys' office.

It is a bit of a statement piece for me, you may have noted from a previous post I am a trend and fashion contrarian, I see most of it as superficial and contrived, a part of the self serving commerce machine.

Anyhow the name, which just fits for me, is derived from a track off the now ancient "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" set, by Genesis, titled "The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging".

BTW, should you have some spare time, check the Album (double album) out, at the time of release it was quite controversial polarising opinions left right and centre, but now after many years I think it stands up as an amazing work of musical exploration and provides some pointers of the directions that Peter Gabriel would take in the ensuing years.  Oh and take your time cause you really do need to listen to it several times to get the nuance and impact.

I Don't Get Selfies..Here's Mine

I've gotta say, I just don't get the whole selfie craze, my son Aaron assures me it is a legitimate photographic movement, but he's in his 20s and probably interested in gazing upon the endless visage of a bevy of pretty young women.

Me, I'm beyond all that, all I see is vanity and self absorption, the product of generation ME!  

I guess its part of the social media thing, much which leaves me bemused and bored.  Honestly with the greatest respect, I really don't care what you ate for a midnight snack or that you just got a bargain on a nice new shirt or skirt or that you just had a rude exchange with the lady in the corner shop.

I mean what is it that convinces todays young and sometimes not so young that their every movement, thought, meal and personal issue is of imperative significance to greater human kind.  And Why would you want to air your dirty laundry anyway?

Sure I am happy to see a pic or two of you, maybe even some snaps from a very important event, say a graduation or big birthday, but random shots of every little event in your life taken from the same perspective, with the same “I’m a hollywood star in my own mind” expression...spare me the agony please.

Hey, now don't think I don't value pics of my kids, wife and even myself progressing through lifes ebb and flow, hell I literally have thousands and thousands of them, remember I am a photographer, I have every moment from the pre birth, actual birth to this past christmas get together on my system and in print and negative form. 

But why oh why would I presume it is fair game to bore you all silly with an endless barrage of images that really only mean something to our family and frankly for my part I am not that visually interesting, I'm Brad Nichol not Brad Pitt!

Anyhow I am going to break my "no selfies" rule, so above is one of the very few selfies you are ever going to see of me, I like it too.

Backstory, just in case you are at a loose end and wish to feign some interest for my 15 seconds of fame..... 

Whilst on holidays recently my lovely wife Wendy and I went for an evening stroll along the river bank in Brisbane City.  We came across a great building with all sorts of mirrored surfaces and like the silly "50 something teenagers" we are, we couldn't help ourselves.  We just got carried away playing around with our cameras trying to remove 40 kilos of weight or add some on to see what might await use should we go on an endless binge of cream buns, chocolates and big macs.

Soon we had killed half an hour and had some gut busting giddy fun laughing at our silly selves and of course we had captured some fun pics,  So there you go, a genuine selfie, I won't make a habit of it...promise.

PS:  I think I now have a bit of a handle on the Selfie thing, its not photography, its just a shorthand version of written communication about oneself, ah now that makes a little more sense, not art and not meant to be.