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| Throop at Dawn |
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| Where the pigeons live |
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| the final days of smokey the smokestack re-edit |
Friday, March 18, 2011
some more pics from that shoot out my window.
Doing any real photo editing on my lapdrop is pretty much implausible since it never matches anything I think it will when I see it on a real monitor. So, with my mac mini flatlining I decided to put up 3 versions of the same image from my DP1s, and show how the processing effects them.
The top picture is straight out of the camera with everything in photopro leveled out at zero.
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on my laptop I couldn't see any of the buildings, so I brought up the exposure 0.5, the highlights 0.8 the X3f fill 0.8 of course I can see the buildings in the first one on this screen so maybe I was just screwed over by mac.
The colors looked vulgar so I took the saturation from 0.0 to -0.8, now it looks washed out.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
News!
A little late, but there's new info on the Sigma site and a sample pic!
http://www.sigma-sd.com/SD1/pdf/SIGMA-SD1_Leaflet_Inside.pdf
You probably aren't obsessed like me, but that photo is sharp!
You too can rip off william wegman when it comes out. Here is a quality sample I snagged.
http://www.sigma-sd.com/SD1/pdf/SIGMA-SD1_Leaflet_Inside.pdf
You probably aren't obsessed like me, but that photo is sharp!
You too can rip off william wegman when it comes out. Here is a quality sample I snagged.
this is a mere snigglet, chunk of the picky wick... perty slick, no? Looks like the SD1 will at least stay abreast with the bayer array cameras (all of the other cameras). BUT when? should i or should i not buy an sd15? Tell me, oh minions.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Jen dislocated her footbone.
Hello Foveists,
Well life threw me and my girlfriend an awful curveball last week. The night before my birthday, Friday the 21st, Jen called me from an unfamiliar number complaining that she'd hurt her foot trying to get out of the snow.
Lisfranc is the name of the joint, and it basically means she needs serious drastic painful surgery including metal wires and screws within the next two weeks or her arch will fall and her foot will stop working.
In Leu of this the Foveist blog suffered.
I think the photo above has an awful photography student vibe, but that is also what I like about it. No news on the Sigma SD1... I'm waiting.
-Andy
Hearts in Iron
Well life threw me and my girlfriend an awful curveball last week. The night before my birthday, Friday the 21st, Jen called me from an unfamiliar number complaining that she'd hurt her foot trying to get out of the snow.
Lisfranc is the name of the joint, and it basically means she needs serious drastic painful surgery including metal wires and screws within the next two weeks or her arch will fall and her foot will stop working.
In Leu of this the Foveist blog suffered.
I think the photo above has an awful photography student vibe, but that is also what I like about it. No news on the Sigma SD1... I'm waiting.
-Andy
Monday, January 10, 2011
suddensnow
this entry was a crazy post about how much I hated the winner of the SD1 giveaway for trying to sell his camera on Ebay for a higher price than what it was available for on their website. It was really slanderous and called him out by name. It was in particularily bad form, and my personal version of the Sigma backlash that occured after they announced their new camera was going to cost 6,000 dollars.
The pricing was most likely an act of revenge against all the true things I had said about the company on my blog (wink wink). Luckily, both the President of Sigma and the inventor of the sensor died, so the marketing guys were finally able to lower the price of the SD1 Merrill and allow normal people buy them.
hi all
Don't have stamina for an entire post.
Does anybody know of an good SIGMA/Foveon hack project I could donate to? I noticed that DPreview has a new comparison widget to see their test images side by side and there is no DP1x or even an SD15! Pisses me off. We need some genius to figure out better ways to use these cam cams.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
This is taken directly from Dpreview.com with permission...
HELLO MY Die-Hard Fanbase of radical RGB Photophiles! This is taken from a very excellent and fair review of the Sigma DP1, the camera that drove me insane.
ReAd ThE wHoLe ReViEw ViA clickyclicks
Foveon X3 sensor background
Terminology
- Photodetector - A physical device used to capture a single color value (for a Bayer camera there is one of these per pixel location, the X3 sensor has three per pixel location)
- Pixel location - A location on the final image which contains full RGB color information
What's so good about the Foveon X3 sensor?
In the example below we are simplifying things by using a 130 x 130 sensor, thus a total of 16,900 pixel locations in the output image. Obviously the same rules apply no matter many pixel locations the final image has.
Traditional "Mosaic" sensors
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Digital cameras have for years used what is essentially a monochromatic (b&w) image sensor with individual color filters over each photodetector (known as the Bayer pattern and normally in a GRGB pattern). This means that each photodetector can only detect one of either red, green or blue light. Note that the green channel has twice the number of photodetectors as red or blue (this is because the majority of luminance information is carried in the green channel). A demosaic algorithm then combines the color of neighboring pixels to reproduce the scene color at that pixel location.
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| Red 4,225 photodetectors | Green 8,450 photodetectors | Blue 4,225 photodetectors | Output 16,900 pixel locations |
Foveon's X3 sensor
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Sunday, January 2, 2011
Amazon slapdown
Some fool returned their SD14 because he said the resolution was 4 megapixels.
A bunch of people, good people from respectable homes, set him straight, but I thought I'd throw in my 14 cents, and share it with my rabid diehard fanbase.
I would like to mention that the Leaf Volare was a professional medium format sensor that had a six megapixel sensor and a filter wheel with a rgb filter that spun and took 3 pictures. Software interpolated the 3 6mp images and sent the photographer the finished result.
These were called 18 mp images, they were crisp and could be blown up to billboard size with just a little loss of quality. I know a few photographers who didn't feel like the quality of those images were matched by a bayer array sensor until a 46 mp sensor became available.
Sigma has every right to claim 14 megapixels for the foveon X3 sensor. You should go get your camera back. Sigma should probably have provided software to help laymen enlarge their images more easily. I did a side by side test with the 5D MK II and ended up thinking I had mixed up the files they were so similar. The only difference was that the 5D MKII was more contrasty and a wee bit sharper. Tone wise, they were almost identical. I am still shocked when I go back to those files.
Any review of a Sigma camera (DP1 or 2, SD14 or 15) that includes a standardized resolution chart and side by side tests will show you that the images produced are comparable if not better in terms of resolution than those produced by micro 4/3 mirrorless cameras (haven't checked since the gH2 came out). Stop thinking in terms of megapixel. Think about sensor and pixel size and how much info they pull per pixel.
A bunch of people, good people from respectable homes, set him straight, but I thought I'd throw in my 14 cents, and share it with my rabid diehard fanbase.
I would like to mention that the Leaf Volare was a professional medium format sensor that had a six megapixel sensor and a filter wheel with a rgb filter that spun and took 3 pictures. Software interpolated the 3 6mp images and sent the photographer the finished result.
These were called 18 mp images, they were crisp and could be blown up to billboard size with just a little loss of quality. I know a few photographers who didn't feel like the quality of those images were matched by a bayer array sensor until a 46 mp sensor became available.
Sigma has every right to claim 14 megapixels for the foveon X3 sensor. You should go get your camera back. Sigma should probably have provided software to help laymen enlarge their images more easily. I did a side by side test with the 5D MK II and ended up thinking I had mixed up the files they were so similar. The only difference was that the 5D MKII was more contrasty and a wee bit sharper. Tone wise, they were almost identical. I am still shocked when I go back to those files.
Any review of a Sigma camera (DP1 or 2, SD14 or 15) that includes a standardized resolution chart and side by side tests will show you that the images produced are comparable if not better in terms of resolution than those produced by micro 4/3 mirrorless cameras (haven't checked since the gH2 came out). Stop thinking in terms of megapixel. Think about sensor and pixel size and how much info they pull per pixel.
I digress
You can hurt over losing something you hoped for, even if you didn't negotiate it before. It is the world's fault, sometimes, and not yours for engaging fully and hoping for a good result.
So often we mistake the world of man for the actual world, that when we occasionally receive signals from society that say we should piss off and die we interpret those messages as coming straight from nature herself. We can end up with our own blades inserted into our bellies, and expiring with the certainty that our time was on Earth was done due to desires of the Universe at large. But just as the mind of man is always trying to blot out the voice of his super ego, society reviles anyone who appears to go against the grain, challenging even the most stagnant and obtuse of its ideals, indeed rejecting she or he who is often striving for the betterment of the whole.
When I think of the society as a body that I live within, imagining of all it's parts, I can both see many places for myself to work and thrive, and simultaneously nowhere that I may feel desired and wanted. Both realities are equally true because in every position where I thrive, there are many who resent me simply because I exist, people who resent anyone thriving equally. It is a cruel and self-immolated beastie we owe our lives to, and if you feel like the victim, you probably the fuck are. The plight of the socialized animal is that we are victimized countless times and then cast away to lick our wounds and call ourselves stupid for participating in whatever way we could.
I would go so far as to suggest that resting supine behind the greatest injustices in the history of mankind is some morally delinquent dude, convincing himself of his own intrinsic value. Then again, that could be what the devil tells me, buttering me up for the next go around, when I strike the fatal blow against good in defense of my personal sense of specialness.
In other news, I really want a Sigma SD1. I bet they are coming out soon. Maybe in Las Vegas next week? I hope so!
So often we mistake the world of man for the actual world, that when we occasionally receive signals from society that say we should piss off and die we interpret those messages as coming straight from nature herself. We can end up with our own blades inserted into our bellies, and expiring with the certainty that our time was on Earth was done due to desires of the Universe at large. But just as the mind of man is always trying to blot out the voice of his super ego, society reviles anyone who appears to go against the grain, challenging even the most stagnant and obtuse of its ideals, indeed rejecting she or he who is often striving for the betterment of the whole.
When I think of the society as a body that I live within, imagining of all it's parts, I can both see many places for myself to work and thrive, and simultaneously nowhere that I may feel desired and wanted. Both realities are equally true because in every position where I thrive, there are many who resent me simply because I exist, people who resent anyone thriving equally. It is a cruel and self-immolated beastie we owe our lives to, and if you feel like the victim, you probably the fuck are. The plight of the socialized animal is that we are victimized countless times and then cast away to lick our wounds and call ourselves stupid for participating in whatever way we could.
I would go so far as to suggest that resting supine behind the greatest injustices in the history of mankind is some morally delinquent dude, convincing himself of his own intrinsic value. Then again, that could be what the devil tells me, buttering me up for the next go around, when I strike the fatal blow against good in defense of my personal sense of specialness.
In other news, I really want a Sigma SD1. I bet they are coming out soon. Maybe in Las Vegas next week? I hope so!
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Nice people drive trucks, motherfucker! |
I used this camera to take that picture. 600 bux is a steal, yo.
chico jesus y yo y mi ponito poquito
insomniomnia - my new word for eternal sleepless nights.
I wish I could force wise and talented people to read my rough draft and tell me if they liked it, and tell me what to cut, and tell me that everything will be okay.
If somehow this could be arranged I would promise to end my memoir with the line, "The pony, Jesus, and Chico Debarge walked together into the sunset, picking the last pieces of me from their steely fangs."
It would have nothing to do with the rest of the book, but still, I would write it that way in exchange for any pearl of wisdom or rock of reassurance.
In other news. After a lot of grief and searching of my house I finally gave up on ever finding my camera, the key to my big discovery as an insane outsider artist.
Maybe a mover took it when I wasn't looking. I had left it in a special drawer, but while Jen was packing, she pulled the drawer out and while I was carrying something heavy it caught my eye, and I remember thinking "If I don't hide that camera, it will be stolen." If only I had gone back an hid it. So there I was, sans cams.
Well I couldn't shell out another 400 bux for one, could I? No. So I started doing research on cameras and film, hoping to uncover some secret of how to take some nice close-ups without spending too much money.
more later....
I wish I could force wise and talented people to read my rough draft and tell me if they liked it, and tell me what to cut, and tell me that everything will be okay.
If somehow this could be arranged I would promise to end my memoir with the line, "The pony, Jesus, and Chico Debarge walked together into the sunset, picking the last pieces of me from their steely fangs."
It would have nothing to do with the rest of the book, but still, I would write it that way in exchange for any pearl of wisdom or rock of reassurance.
In other news. After a lot of grief and searching of my house I finally gave up on ever finding my camera, the key to my big discovery as an insane outsider artist.
Maybe a mover took it when I wasn't looking. I had left it in a special drawer, but while Jen was packing, she pulled the drawer out and while I was carrying something heavy it caught my eye, and I remember thinking "If I don't hide that camera, it will be stolen." If only I had gone back an hid it. So there I was, sans cams.
Well I couldn't shell out another 400 bux for one, could I? No. So I started doing research on cameras and film, hoping to uncover some secret of how to take some nice close-ups without spending too much money.
more later....
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Writing
For some reason. photography ended up interrupting my writing.
I could draw you a chart and illustrate how it happened, but I can't explain it. It is too annoying and possibly insane to explain, and repeating that information here, for all my loyal blog followers would be a wound too painful to bare.
Nobody reads this, I forgot.
Okay, so, as most of you know, I am the founder and inventor of the national past-time, "Penny Sculpture."
This is when you take a dremel tool, a torch, a pair of tin snips and a magnifying glass to a penny with the intention of rendering it from it's typical, boring old flat round form, into a new and jazzy form that is wondrous and possibly a little snarky towards some other sculpture that pissed you off once. I have been engaged in this artistic endeavor for the past twenty odd years or so, and it has come to my attention that very small things are less interesting in the world of visual arts because, among other things, small, little stuff is more difficult to see. I wondered to myself what people would think of this handicraft of mine if they could see it, and so I began to investigate the art of photography with the intent of photographing my pennies so as to share them with the world at large. They call it that for a reason, because here in the world, they prefer large things.
After a lot of research I bought the dp1. Big sensor, simple camera, shazam. It was kinda expensive, but I thought it would be worth it in the end if I could convince the people that my vision was true by allowing them to see my work in a scale more befitting Art.
Then we had to switch apartments, and during the move, my camera disappeared. I had just taken my first successful macro photo, and the tool was usurped with from me with.
Alright, so it wasn't all that successful, but it showed promise. But then the DP1 was gone. Nowhere to be found! What would I do? How could I recover? What would be my answer to this apple-cart upsetting conundrum?
I'll tell you later.
I could draw you a chart and illustrate how it happened, but I can't explain it. It is too annoying and possibly insane to explain, and repeating that information here, for all my loyal blog followers would be a wound too painful to bare.
Nobody reads this, I forgot.
Okay, so, as most of you know, I am the founder and inventor of the national past-time, "Penny Sculpture."
This is when you take a dremel tool, a torch, a pair of tin snips and a magnifying glass to a penny with the intention of rendering it from it's typical, boring old flat round form, into a new and jazzy form that is wondrous and possibly a little snarky towards some other sculpture that pissed you off once. I have been engaged in this artistic endeavor for the past twenty odd years or so, and it has come to my attention that very small things are less interesting in the world of visual arts because, among other things, small, little stuff is more difficult to see. I wondered to myself what people would think of this handicraft of mine if they could see it, and so I began to investigate the art of photography with the intent of photographing my pennies so as to share them with the world at large. They call it that for a reason, because here in the world, they prefer large things.
After a lot of research I bought the dp1. Big sensor, simple camera, shazam. It was kinda expensive, but I thought it would be worth it in the end if I could convince the people that my vision was true by allowing them to see my work in a scale more befitting Art.
Then we had to switch apartments, and during the move, my camera disappeared. I had just taken my first successful macro photo, and the tool was usurped with from me with.
Alright, so it wasn't all that successful, but it showed promise. But then the DP1 was gone. Nowhere to be found! What would I do? How could I recover? What would be my answer to this apple-cart upsetting conundrum?
I'll tell you later.
By the way.
I'm basically saying go fuck yourself to my DP1, and putting it up for sale. I am keeping the DP2 however, and my DP1s, which I bought when it was mysteriously 199.99 bucks this fall. I am not a landscape photographer. I am not a photographer at all, just a fanboy troll, only I don't like arguing with people.
The Foveist, if that is who I be, recommends the DP2 as a rule, for the faster, wide angle lens finds more opportunity for use, to my lifestyle than the considerably slower lens of the DP1. I don't really know what to photograph with it.
Another brief summary of the foveon sensor situation.
I feel like what happened is Sigma swooped down and saved the life of the ill-fated x3 sensor, a cool new technology developed by a small California startup that really pissed off Kodak and was on their way to getting killed in a ballooning accident before the purchase. Kodak had been promising a 3 color CCD for years, and missed the 3 color Cmos completely. The first camera, the punky Polaroid 530 somehow got sued out of existence by Kodak who claimed they had thought of it first or something, or maybe it just didn't sell, because polaroid isn't a real company, just a rented conference room at whatever hotel the main stockholders have chosen for their monthly cocaine hooker and wanton destruction of American ingenuity party, which is how they met Lady GaGa no doubt.
Sadly, Sigma is kinda a half-assed company in their own rite; good at making knock off high-end lenses, but lacking the facilities and class needed to produce a real immortal imaging tool. Worse still is they are surrounded by companies who are usurping the DP concept and focusing real design acumen and all the class money can buy to make real envy causing cameras. the Leica X1 and the Fujifilm X100 specifically. Both X cameras use bayer style sensors (Fuji hasn't said, but I can't imagine them outsourcing the sensor and Sigma doesn't appear to like sharing), so no matter how good they are, and I do guarantee that both will outshine the DP series in resolution and just plain awesomeness, all that style and awesomeness is kinda missing a special something, this fabulous X3 technology, which is for the time being left to Sigma to awkwardly incrementally improve until they hire a really inspired design team.
MY IF I WAS THEM MOMENT FOR 2010
funny you should ask. if I were them, I would think seriously about making a line of legacy glass camera blanks, that are built in cooperation with some of these decimated companies. An m42 / K-mount digital Spotmatic would sell, a la Cosina and their Bessamatic. How about a digital Bessamatic? That would fucking be a hit like no other. Only true camera lovers would buy it, and then more image addicts would be craving the X3 sensor.
My ideas are actually a lot more specific than that, but therein lies the kernal. A well maintained lens from 1820 still works fine today. With film on the outs (kodacolor RIP), a digital work around to use all this awesome technology is inevitable. I just think Sigma should be the ones doing it, and highlighting the benefits of their unique product.
Here's another image for people to sneer at.
The Foveist, if that is who I be, recommends the DP2 as a rule, for the faster, wide angle lens finds more opportunity for use, to my lifestyle than the considerably slower lens of the DP1. I don't really know what to photograph with it.
Another brief summary of the foveon sensor situation.
I feel like what happened is Sigma swooped down and saved the life of the ill-fated x3 sensor, a cool new technology developed by a small California startup that really pissed off Kodak and was on their way to getting killed in a ballooning accident before the purchase. Kodak had been promising a 3 color CCD for years, and missed the 3 color Cmos completely. The first camera, the punky Polaroid 530 somehow got sued out of existence by Kodak who claimed they had thought of it first or something, or maybe it just didn't sell, because polaroid isn't a real company, just a rented conference room at whatever hotel the main stockholders have chosen for their monthly cocaine hooker and wanton destruction of American ingenuity party, which is how they met Lady GaGa no doubt.
Sadly, Sigma is kinda a half-assed company in their own rite; good at making knock off high-end lenses, but lacking the facilities and class needed to produce a real immortal imaging tool. Worse still is they are surrounded by companies who are usurping the DP concept and focusing real design acumen and all the class money can buy to make real envy causing cameras. the Leica X1 and the Fujifilm X100 specifically. Both X cameras use bayer style sensors (Fuji hasn't said, but I can't imagine them outsourcing the sensor and Sigma doesn't appear to like sharing), so no matter how good they are, and I do guarantee that both will outshine the DP series in resolution and just plain awesomeness, all that style and awesomeness is kinda missing a special something, this fabulous X3 technology, which is for the time being left to Sigma to awkwardly incrementally improve until they hire a really inspired design team.
MY IF I WAS THEM MOMENT FOR 2010
funny you should ask. if I were them, I would think seriously about making a line of legacy glass camera blanks, that are built in cooperation with some of these decimated companies. An m42 / K-mount digital Spotmatic would sell, a la Cosina and their Bessamatic. How about a digital Bessamatic? That would fucking be a hit like no other. Only true camera lovers would buy it, and then more image addicts would be craving the X3 sensor.
My ideas are actually a lot more specific than that, but therein lies the kernal. A well maintained lens from 1820 still works fine today. With film on the outs (kodacolor RIP), a digital work around to use all this awesome technology is inevitable. I just think Sigma should be the ones doing it, and highlighting the benefits of their unique product.
Here's another image for people to sneer at.
big toyz
Obviously, I can't even take a photo right and have no nearby family or friends to take pictures of so for me writing a photography blog is really about the absurdity of life.
Here we have an image taken during one of my drives back to Towanda PA from Chicago, the city where Chico Debarge is the best you can expect for their new years show. He really humps the microphone, by the way, and from what I saw one shure omnidirectional could definitely win a sexual harassment suit using last night's footage as evidence.
At one of the rest stops that pepper the route to Towanda from Chi-town, I stopped to see if there was a tanto' for sale at the gift shop. After failing in my quest, back at my car I spied this matchbox collection outside. Due to the cheery nature of this new year, I used iPhoto to take the contrast down so that we could all see plainly how everything is the same.
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