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Rangefinder
Magazine
By sheer coincidence both Canon and Olympus gave several photo writers, including myself, the opportunity to try their new cameras while attending recent auto races.
Canon sponsors the Audi USA team in the American Le Mans Series for prototype sports cars. The race at the scenic Laguna Seca race track in Northern California gave us the chance to experience the new EOS Digital Rebel camera, a 6.3-megapixel SLR aimed at amateurs. Essentially, it is the guts of an EOS 10D in a plastic body that looks similar to the Rebel film camera.
At just $799 for the body alone Canon has again shaken the digital SLR world by substantially undercutting the prices of cameras from other manufacturers. During a couple of days of testing, we found the quality of images to be as good as those from the 10D, and maybe even better than those from the pro EOS-1D. Of course, the operational speed and the range of features and adjustments are more limited than those found on a pro camera body, but the camera was usable for shooting race cars at speed. I wouldn’t recommend the EOS Digital Rebel camera for anyone looking for a rugged, high-speed camera for daily use, but it would make an excellent second body. The price confirms that the “electronic guts” of a digital camera with a small image capture device cost about $600 at retail. So Canon could probably introduce a camera for professional use in a rugged body like the EOS 1D for under $2000. This bodes well for the 1D replacement, which I anticipate we’ll see within six months.
It’s been over a year since Olympus announced the E-1 camera, designed from the ground up as a professional digital SLR. Olympus is a sponsor of the all-conquering Ferrari Grand Prix team, so what better opportunity for Olympus to let us try out some new E-1 cameras than at the recent U.S. Grand Prix in Indianapolis. The cameras were not full production models, but nonetheless, they gave an indication of the camera’s capabilities. The E-1 camera body is slightly smaller than other similar cameras. It has a smaller mirror, and uses physically smaller lenses optimized for the so-called four-thirds image capture chip. In operation the camera seemed fast enough for action photography. Image quality from the 5-megapixel CCD proved acceptable, although there was some noticeable noise at 400 ISO. Ergonomically, the body design has a good hand grip and well-placed dials and knobs. One problem I found was with autofocus, where the lenses tended to hunt while rapid-fire shooting. The E-1 camera body is priced at $2199 (street price is expected to be closer to $1800), which puts it in the middle of the pack between lower-priced camera bodies from Canon and Nikon and their more expensive pro cameras. Of course the E-1 needs the new line of lenses from Olympus, which ups the price of investing in this new system.
Samsung SyncMaster monitor Recently I’ve
been using the Samsung SyncMaster 191T, which has a 19-inch screen and
a fixed resolution of 1280x I did not find the $799 monitor as refined as the $1299 20-inch Apple Cinema Display, which offers a much higher resolution (1680x1050) even though it is only one inch bigger diagonally.
Eye-One Color Management I recently had the chance to try the Eye-One Display from Gretag Macbeth. It’s a small measuring device that hangs down over a monitor. The Color Match software runs through a sequence of colors that are drawn on the screen beneath the meter. The software adjusts the monitor’s settings to display accurate colors. Earlier color meters were attached by suction, precluding their use on an LCD monitor due to the delicate surface. The Eye-One does not rely on suction. Instead, it sits close to the surface, held by its own weight, so it can be used just as effectively on LCD monitors as on CRTs. It only takes about one minute to run the program, and an ICC color profile is automatically stored. Ideally one should run the Color Match program regularly to check the display’s accuracy. If you want to make sure your monitor is displaying accurate colors, the $249 investment will be worthwhile. Eye-One Display is only one part of a total color management system that includes a spectrophotometer for profiling a printer, scanner or even a digital projector.
Smart Disk
FlashTrax An alternative is an external portable hard drive that can be operated without a computer. Over the years there have been several models on the market, and some have not proven very reliable. Fortunately, hard drives have gotten much more reliable. Now that kids use portable hard drives for storing music (MP3 players, such as Apple’s iPod), there’s much more development going on that benefits photographers who need storage devices. SmartDisk’s FlashTrax is one of the newest devices aimed at photographers, and it is also eminently suitable as an MP3 music player. I carried one with me while on vacation, and my son Matt used it most of the time as an MP3 player. His only complaint was that the battery did not last long enough. I used it to make quick copies of Compact Flash cards from my Canon 10D. The unit contains a 30 GB hard drive and a flip-up 3.5-inch LCD screen. It only accepts Compact Flash cards, which are inserted in the front of the unit. One push on a button and the whole storage card is copied automatically onto the hard drive. You can then view the images on the screen or on a TV and sort them into folders as needed. The unit comes with one battery plus a power cord for working from the mains or from a 12-volt car power supply in a car. At a cost of $500, it’s a little difficult to justify, unless you do not have a laptop computer. I find that when I’m traveling I usually need to do some image editing on the computer, so I need to carry it anyway. Now that the cost of Compact Flash cards has dropped, it’s possible to buy a 2GB card for about the same price as the Flashtrax. If you want an MP3 player, this unit makes a lot of sense as it also doubles up as a backup for image storage. Now if it doubled up as a PDA and a mobile phone, it would make a lot of sense! Photoshop CS Although Adobe says there are many improvements to the program, the most important upgrade for photographers is likely to be the ability to edit raw images directly from most SLR digital cameras. Other changes include enhancing shadow and highlight details in images while preserving midtones. To help in editing, a histogram palette is always available for viewing changes to an image as they are made. A new Match Color feature lets users batch process a group of files to match the statistics of an edited file. According to Adobe, the file browser function has been improved considerably so that batch procedures can be performed on images including exporting to more professional-looking web pages. Metadata can also be added for organizing files. For Mac users the most significant improvement is full optimization for Mac OS X (10.2.4 or better). Photoshop CS will not even run under OS 9. Furthermore, it will make better use of the dual processors used in the latest computers, which means it should be considerably faster in operation. Hopefully this means it’s even more beneficial to upgrade. John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been using a camera as a professional for 33 years, a computer for 23 years, and has combined his knowledge of both for the past ten years. Readers can contact him by e-mail at john@johnrettie.com or by snail-mail in care of Rangefinder.
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