The Hunt for a Quality Camera Backpack

I went to Camera Street (博愛路 [Bo Ai Road] and surrounding streets, near the main Post Office) in Taipei last week to look for a quality camera backpack. Because I was going to be doing a lot of walking in Taiwan, I figured that I would probably find use for a nice, sport-oriented backpack or sling bag. Like a good, resourceful consumer, I did my research beforehand, hitting up all the big brands on the internet, like Lowepro, Tamrac, Tenba, Domke, ThinkTank, Kata, etc. Once I narrowed down the choices, I hit the streets and this is what I found:

1. Kata — I was really keen on Kata ever since I saw their 3N1 series sling bags. They just have really sleek designs that actually have purpose to them. Plus, they seemed to be well constructed (Kata also produces body armour for the Isreali forces).

** 3N1-20 **

Comes in three sizes, S, M, L. Note to Goldilocks: The large is too big! The small is too small! The medium is just right.

The 3N1 is probably going to be a really popular bag in the near future. It just came out this summer, so prices are still up there (although I think that Kata prices are reasonably priced for what they offer, compared to Tamrac or Lowepro). Most of the shops I looked at only carried the small and large versions (3N1-10 and 3N1-30, respectively) but the last shop I went to, which was an official Kata dealer in Taiwan, carried one 3N1-20 bag. Like I mentioned, Kata bags are great. They’re well made from top to bottom and well thought out. This bag almost gave me too many possible configurations to play with, that I nearly confused myself. You can see an in-depth preview here. The one thing I wasn’t keen on was that it was impossible to put a camera with a 70-200 f/2.8 attached, which I really wanted out of a slingbag. Only the large version was able to fit that in, but the 3N1-30 just looks heavy. Granted the side access of this type of slingbag, whether it be this, Lowepro’s Slingshot series, or Tenba’s Shootout, just doesn’t allow fitment of long lenses unless it is the largest version, impractical for a city-going daypack. Plus, they’d just look strange on my relatively small 5′ 8″ frame.

I also, at the same place, stumbled upon the Kata T-212. It was a bit small for my needs, but well designed, and looked like tactical gear for the Navy SEALs. I later found out that there was a larger version, the T-214, that would probably suit what I carry around.

** T-214 **

T-214. Looks and sounds intense.

So then it was off to look at other options. I saw a pack from Jenova, which the sellers claimed was an Italian brand manufactured in China. However, I was pretty sure some random company from HK decided to buy the rights to the brand name because the construction was pretty mediocre. Overall, the organization and the ballistic nylon wasn’t too bad, but what really raised question marks was the construction of the plastic buckles. They just seemed to reek of cheapness. I looked online and could not seem to find a picture anywhere.

Redondo Pier

Redondo Pier, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

Time for another picture review. I was at the Redondo Pier at sunset early February of this year and thought I could get some nice sunset shots. When I first shot this, I wasn’t really into it. It might’ve been because the camera simply couldn’t get all the color in the sunset. The pixel depth of the S3 IS is only 8-bits, and the camera cannot shoot in RAW. Thus, the dynamic range of the scene simply could not be captured accurately. Additionally, because any shots over ISO100 on this camera are nasty, my shutter speed was restricted to 1/6 of a second at f/5.6. Luckily, the S3 has some relaible image stabilization.

The original shot was a bit bland. The sky was muddy, and thus I chose to pull up the shadows to make the pink/maroon sunset come through. However, this resulted in blowing out the highlights. HDR would’ve helped immensely for this shot. The only redeeming part is that blowing out the highlights actually improved the uniformity of the shot, with the white part being largely a horizontal portion on top, not really affecting the important parts of the shot, such as the pier and the water. The upper right corner shows some un-blown out portions of the sky due to slight vignetting, which in hindsight I probably should’ve painted over in white.

I was quite surprised when multiple people told me they really liked this shot. I guess I was worried too much about the technical aspects and afraid people would wonder about why the sky was so white, but the natural beauty of this scene really saved it. The water was deep blue and sparkling that day, and the purple cast was gorgeous, serving as a great backdrop over the silhouetted pier.

I’d imagine taking this same shot again with my 40D and bracketed from -2 to +2 EV would significantly improve the quality of this shot, from sharpness to color gradation to dynamic range.

Focal Length: 6mm (36mm Full-Frame FOV)
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter: 1/6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure: Manual

The Lonely Daisy

Tamron 17-50 Test 160, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

This is the first shot that I had been happy with shooting wide open. I had just gotten my Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 not three days, and I was eager to test it outdoors. I was still unused to shooting at wide apertures, so things took quite a bit of practice.

I was at the Palos Verdes city park within the Trump National Golf Course with my mother, taking in the ocean views when I saw this frail, lonely looking little yellow wild daisy all by herself in the middle of a patch of bushes. Although it didn’t grow very well, and looked to be battered by nature’s elements, it stood staunchly where no other flower dared to be.

This was a true picture moment. The sun was setting, and available light was dimming, so I knew I had to get this one quickly. Yet, as a low ISO fiend, I kept it at 100 and shot it wide open. The shot still obeyed the shutter/focal length rule of thumb at 1/80s.

The picture you see is just slightly sharpened with very modest USM. The excellent Tammy sharpness took care of the rest. Say what you will about the bokeh, but I’m more concerned about the flower in the middle.

Focal Length: 50mm (80mm Full-Frame FOV)
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter: 1/80 sec
ISO: 100

CKS Memorial Hall, 中正紀念堂

CKS Memorial Hall, 中正紀念堂, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

I was having a terrible time trying to come up with how to write my latest essay in Chinese, so I decided to procrastinate all night, looking at pictures, reading up on all the Olympics buzz, etc. By the time I realized that I was losing some serious beauty rest time, it was already 4:30 in the morning. I had always wanted to go out and shoot in the early morning, since there are very few cars and it wouldn’t be so hot yet.

Thus, I waited to around 5:00am to set out. It took a while to get to CKS Memorial Hall A.K.A. Democracy Hall, and to my chagrin, lots of seniors were already out doing their early morning exercises. Still, there weren’t too many people, so I made a beeline to the central flagpole to set up my shot. The conditions would’ve been much better had an old geezer not had been getting in my way for about 10 minutes, but I finally framed my shot.

At ISO 80, I thought I was going to get some clean, well-exposed shots. However, they all looked like crap in the LCD. The sky was already way too bright for any good light gradations in the clouds. I knew I had to go for an HDR shot. I set the camera to f/8.0 (the minimum allowed on my camera), MF to infinity, and began snapping away. I started off a a pretty fast shutter speed 1/80 sec, underexposing by about 2 whole stops, and working my way to one whole second.

Previous attempts I made of tonemapping in CS3 were terrible. I simply couldn’t get the tone changes subtle enough without making the entire picture look bland. I needed something else to help me convert HDR photos. Thus, I plunged into Photomatix. After merging in CS3 as a 32-bit *.hdr file, I did the tonemapping in Photomatix Pro 3.0. It was a bit amateurish with the overprocessed look and everything, but I thought it was a good, honest, effort. With practice, I’ll be able to get it to be more subtle yet eye-popping at the same time.

Micro Four-Thirds

Micro Four Thirds System

I didn’t care about the Four Thirds system. I understood the appeal of having such a system for casual photo takers desiring a more compact solution for a DSLR, the cheaper to make, exactly 2x crop factor lenses, and everything else in between, but to me, it was a system that was not yet stable. There weren’t enough lenses, and the DSLRs themselves were just too toy-like. The sensor, while delivering excellent photo quality, still couldn’t match that of the APS-C and Full-Frame CMOS sensors Canon and Nikon (particularly their new CMOS sensors that rival or best Canon’s ISO performance) made, especially at the higher ISOs.

Although the Four Thirds standard has gained popularity with Olympus as its flag bearer, it doesn’t even come close to the appeal of Canon or Nikon in the photography world. I believe that the companies that have suscribed to the Four Thirds standard — Olympus, Kodak, Panasonic — understood that, to increase market share of the Four Thirds standard, they needed to appeal to a larger target audience. Olympus tried to make DSLRs easy to use and smaller to hold with its E-4X0 series of E-Volt cameras, but even the diminutive bodies of those cameras dwarf the compact point-and-shoots and even the superzooms. The Four Thirds system was probably not going to get much more growth than it already has had.

Enter Micro Four Thirds. I’m not going to talk about the technicals, because it’s all here. And here. In a nutshell, it takes away the mirror box and prism of the DSLR, allowing makers to shrink the thickness of cameras significantly while preserving the high quality image sensor, and in addition, still allows smaller, interchangeable lenses. The only obvious downside, and it’s only a downside because the technology is not yet mature for EVFs, is that there’s no TTL optical viewfinder.

I believe that with the annoucement of this Micro Four Thirds System, Olympus and Panasonic will be able to move both upmarket and downmarket. They will obviously be able to lure more casual shooters in with the promise of better image quality in a compact body, as well as the novelty of interchangeable lenses. They will be able to, should they be shrewd about their marketing and positioning, revive the superzoom category. Panasonic currently makes some excellent superzooms. They are likely to be moved to the Micro Four Thirds system in the future. In addition, with the Micro Four Thirds system in place, making those cameras even more compact should be the next step, such that it challenges current compact cameras. If they do away with the interchangeable lens system, they can make great quality compact fixed-lens cameras with Four Thirds sensors, leading to massive scale of manufacturing of these sensors, and dropping the price of higher end cameras.

Upmarket, I believe the prospects are highly mobile as well. Many enthusiast and professional photographers currently look to high-end point-and-shoot cameras such as the Canon PowerShot G9, the Ricoh Caplio GX10, and Sigma DP1, etc. for a DSLR backup. They shoot with these bodies because they provide the manual controls and the best image quality (for compact cameras) in a package they can squeeze in tight places and shoot in silence when noisy mirror boxes in DSLRs give others away. Still, many professionals still pine for the option of interchangeable lenses. With the Micro Four Thirds system, they still have the option of a small body with very silent operation and still be able to change their lenses to suit the shooting situation. If Olympus and Panasonic further develop their marketing, they can usher in a new age of affordable (sorry Leica) “digital rangefinders” that photographers so prized back in the film era. Micro Four Thirds is almost perfect for a rangefinder body. I’m pretty sure most enthusiasts and professionals will soon be clamoring for a Micro Four Thirds camera as a backup body when these cameras begin to hit the markets.

By no means will this announcement be the end of DSLRs. Far too many photographers value the image quality produced by full frame cameras. In addition the lens infrastructure is already too established to be dismantled. Full frame sensors are now cheaper than ever, with both Canon and Nikon with two bodies each, and Sony will soon join the fray. The other manufacturers will come in as well. With this does mean, however, is that the middle of the camera market has completely opened up and is ripe for the taking. Crop sensor DSLR cameras, especially the entry level ones, are in some serious danger. If Olympus and Panasonic play their cards the right way, the bridge market will be theirs. They now have to opportunity to seize a sizeable portion of the high-end point-and-shoot, superzoom, and entry-level DSLR market.

A few things hinder Micro Four Thirds. One, is the that contrast AF is slug slow compared to phase AF. Two, as mentioned previously, EVFs still suck. Many enthusiasts and professionals still prefer using a viewfinder instead of a 3″ LCD screen, because the ergonomics of shooting in such a manner is much more manageable. If electronic viewfinders don’t improve the way LCD screens have, the high end shooters will be loath to adopt. Third, how small is small? Olympus and Panasonic need to do the right, targeted market research to see how many consumers are willing and excited to see the birth of a more compact, interchangeable lens camera. I suspect many will indeed go for it, but there are still many that are plenty happy with a tiny, P&S. Persuading those customers to buy these new Micro Four Thirds cameras will be the key to ultimately increasing these companies’ market shares.

I look forward to the competition to come.

Mock-Up of Micro 4/3 version of Zuiko 40-150mm f/4-5.6 ED lens next to the normal 4/3 version

Taiwan High Speed Rail 700T

IMG_1983, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

Interesting thing about the Taiwan High Speed Rail train; most people think it’s just the Japanese Shinkansen 700 Series imported to Formosa. However, it actually has a number of modifications that make it significantly different from the Japanese model.

When THSR was designing their railway infrastructure, they somehow decided that the European system was more suitable, as it had wider tunnels, thus allowing for more quiet trips, amongst other reasons. So, when they chose their train, they could shorten the nose (the normal 700 Series has the nose of a platypus) because the aerodynamics of entering a wider tunnel is easier. In addition, the 700T had to be outfitted with more powerful motors, so that the maximum speed could be boosted from the normal 700′s 285 km/h to 315 km/h.

It’s interesting riding at 186 mph. They post the speed whenever the train attains speeds of 285 km/h and over, I think, so it’s always a cool thing to see it say 300 km/h, which is the maximum operational speed. The great part is that the acceleration and deceleration is so smooth on the train, your body doesn’t feel any inertial response. It’s a little louder than usual at top speed, but still plenty quiet. I don’t demand a Lexus cabin experience, especially at nearly 200 miles an hour.

This was taken at the Chiayi station (actually in the Taibao township) during my first trip ever on the THSR, on my way up to Taipei. The trip is so short. It’s pretty amazing how you can get from Kaoshiung (Zuoying) to Taipei in less than two hours (the nonstop trips) now.

If there’s one thing that isn’t convenient about the THSR, is that the stations — with the exception of Taipei area and the not-yet-built Kaohsiung station — are so far away (relatively) from the actual cities themselves, so it takes a while to get to the stations. They were obviously taking into consideration noise and price issues when building these stations out of the way of the real urban areas, and I don’t actually think it’s that big a deal. Only a small handful of Taiwanese commute daily across the island, and those are the only people who would truly require convenience. An educated guess puts these people at Taipei, Hsinchu, and Kaohsiung, and at these places, the convenience of getting to THSR is much better than at other places. The Taipei station is inside the main railway station, and the Hsinchu station is near the science region, which most of these commuters would be going to, if it’s for work. The Kaohsiung station is not yet opened, but will be soon, and it will also be in the railway station, connecting to the trains and to the newly constructed metro there.

Focal Length: 6mm (36mm Full-Frame)
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/160 s
Exposure: Tv Priority, Evaluative Metering

Taipei 101 at Night

Taipei 101 at Night, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

I’ve been taking a bunch of pictures at the same exact spot today, through this little porthole along the side of the stairs next to my room. It has a little ledge on it, so I just sit my camera there and snap away. The perspective is getting stale, but this is the last picture that I’m going to take of Taipei 101 from there, since I’ve already taken a day picture, a panorama, a closeup, and now a nightscape.

In retrospect, I should have widened the aperture for this shot so that a little more light entered the lens. When the picture came out, it was underexposed by about 2 EV. I had to pull up the exposure in Photoshop, increasing noise a great deal.

However, I did want the picture as sharp as possible, although I realize now it would not make too much a difference, as the thermal noise in the air and leftover haze would’ve obfuscated the marginal sharpness I would’ve achieved by shooting at f/8.0 instead of f/4.5 or some other value. Furthermore, the lightstars are not the prettiest; you can tell that the S3 lens has a 6 bladed aperture element from the six-sided stars produced. This shot took the entire 15 second maximum shutter time that the Canon PowerShot S3 IS allows.

Focal Length: 22mm (132mm Full-Frame)
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 15 s
Exposure: Manual

Childhood Simplicity

Childhood Simplicity, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

I was just walking around my residential neighborhood in Sinying (Wade-Giles: Hsinying, Hanyu Pinyin: Xinying) on a Thusday afternoon when I saw a couple of kids, presumably brother and sister, running around an empty, abandoned parking lot.

They seemed to be having so much fun, with the older boy riding around in his bike and his little sister running alongside him. Yet, if you saw the entire shot instead of this crop, you would’ve seen that they were literally behind a rundown set of apartment buildings, with overgrown grass all around them.

As a 22 year old, I couldn’t understand, at least, not anymore, what the fun was about running around outside in 82 degree, humid, sunny weather. But their playing brought back memories of when I was about the girl’s age, and my sister was the boy’s age, and we would play in the parking lot of our aparment complex much in the same way. My sister, decked out in her then new rollerskates, would skate from post to post, while I would try to catch her with my boundless 5 year-old energy.

From a technical standpoint, this shot is terrible. The kids are out of focus (the contrast AF system in a body like the S3 IS is far too slow to track the childrens’ movement), and even with them in focus, I had this zoomed all the way to 72mm (432mm Full-Frame) so the clarity would not have been so good anyway. I used the OOF blur to my advantage, however, and converted the original color photo to black and white, tinkering with grayscale translation of colours to give it an aged, saturated look. The high contrast of the now B&W photo allows the kids to stand out in the frame, and I cropped it to keep them in the center of the frame, and to cut out the multiple cars next to them that would ruin the feeling of nostalgia in the photo. I couldn’t do anything about the cars directly behind them, however. I then sprinkled in a little noise to make the background a little more homogenous, and to emphasize the feeling of an aged photo.

In the end, I believe I was able to achieve what I set out to do, despite this photo being a technically flawed shot. It was a spur of the moment, unplanned shot, but the subject matter really shined through in the end, and multiple people commented on how much they really enjoyed this photo.

Focal Length: 72mm (432mm Full-Frame)
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter: 1/125 s
Exposure: Av Priority, Evaluative Metering

羅斯福路四段

羅斯福路四段, originally uploaded by tomscy2000.

I took this picture during my second trip to NTU. My parents and I mainly walked around the 公館 (Gongguan) area, looking at the surroundings. At 9-10 pm, the area was still bustling. I took this photo at almost 11pm, when a number of people left already, but this made for the perfect time to get some nice light streaks from the scooters riding down Roosevelt Road.

Taken at the middle of a pedestrian bridge, set on top of the railing, with 2 second shutter delay.

Focal Length: 6mm (36mm Full-Frame)
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 2.0 s
Exposure: Manual

I want this camera! Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

24-60mm f/2.0-2.8 Leica DC Vario-Summicron, 1/1.63" 10.1 Megapixel CCD

I’ve decided that this will be my next compact camera. I’d definitely take this over the Sigma DP1. Sure, it doesn’t have the APS-C sensor, but a 1/1.63″, 16:9 Aspect Ratio, 10.1 Megapixel CCD is already huge for a compact; good enough for really nice, usable photos.

What really sold me, however, is the 24-60mm f/2-2.8 !! Leica DC Vario-Summicron lens. This is ultra fast for a compact shooter. Couple that with Mega OIS, and this is one capable lens. Plus, it’s a Leica. That alone makes peoples’ toes wiggle.

One thing that might not be good, however, is that Panasonic is usually overaggressive with noise reduction and sharpening out of the camera, often to the detriment of photo quality, but Panasonic is using their new Venus Engine IV, so who knows. Besides, I hardly ever shoot above ISO 400. WIth optical stabilization and the fast lens, I’d probably shoot at ISO 100 most of the time.

With Panasonic’s track record in digital cameras, this camera should be much easier (and faster) to use than the DP1.

The camera itself is gorgeous, especially in black. Plus it already has an assortment of add-ons like an optical viewfinder clipped onto the flash hotshoe a la Sigma DP1 and Ricoh, a wide angle adapter for those that want to go wider than 24mm, and even custom ND and polarizer filters.

Bottom line, this should be an amazing point-and-shoot, and I want it!