davidsmeaton.com

i headed out today to do some buying and selling. i sold a few little items, including one of the crumpler camera bags. i also picked up a lens to replace the lens that i sold yesterday. the new (used) lens is the nikkor 35mm f2. it’s a nice sharp lens and a tad wider than my old 50mm f1.8. while i liked the 50mm, i didn’t like the fact that it was actually 75mm on my camera. it was just too long for most practical purposes. the 35mm is a bit better, which i like.

so i headed to itaewon to have lunch at the aussie shop. i had a pie and chips, washed down with a vb. i took a few shots with the new lens too.

so i’ve sold most of the stuff i needed to get rid of. all camera bags are now gone, as is the unwanted camera equipment that i had left over. i will try and sell the liverpool jackets, my big blue suitcase and that will be it.

I thought I knew a lot about photography, but I was completely taken by surprise when some photographers started talking about pancake lenses. What is a pancake lens? Jessica, Jeju Island.

Photographers are strange people. Sometimes photographers like big lenses, sometimes they like the smallest possible lenses. The smallest lenses available are commonly called pancake lenses because they’re flat, like a pancake.

For quite a while, pancake lenses had fallen out of favour in photographic circles. A little while ago Olympus released a pancake lens for its new DSLR cameras. That kicked off a surge in renewed interest in pancake type lenses.

Why are they so popular? Well, the biggest reason is that they’re small. One benefit of their size is that the lenses are light and easy to carry. However the biggest benefit is that the small, flat lens makes the camera much more discrete.

Pancake lenses are popular amongst street photographers for this very reason. A long lens is quite obtrusive. Pointing it at someone can attract their attention or make them aware of the camera. Since photographers want to capture people in natural situations, a big lens is too noticeable. A pancake lens makes the camera appear much smaller and less obvious. It allows a photographer to remain unnoticed while taking photos of people.

Pancake lenses are usually short range prime lenses. Most pancakes are between 35 and 50mm in length and around f1.8 to f2.8 maximum aperture. These apertures are important and one of the biggest benefits of prime lenses - because it means the lens is fast and sharp.

Often, pancake lenses will be manual focus, due to their small size - autofocus pancakes are rare indeed.

The other important aspect is image quality. Short prime lenses are a playground for bokeh; out of focus area. Bokeh is important to photographers because it determines the aesthetics of any area beyond the camera’s depth of field settings. If a lens is poorly designed, it will not render out of focus areas very well. The bokeh will look harsh and flat. A good prime lens will produce great bokeh, much better than most zoom lenses.

The resurgence in popularity has resulted in a number of companies developing pancake lenses. Nikon and Canon both have new pancake lenses hitting the market. Panasonic and Olympus have already released lenses with various mounts. There are also a number of third party lens makers who have pancakes; the two most popular being Zeiss and Voigtlander.

The only real downside to pancake lenses is their price. Usually, a pancake will be two or three times the price of a similar standard prime lens. The higher cost is due to the engineering required to make the technology work in a ‘flat’ lens.

With photography’s recent surge in popularity, camera makers have been outdoing each other to make newer and better equipment. This will probably result in companies also developing many more lens types. Nikon have already released tilt shift lenses to appeal to architect photographers. It’s likely that there will be more pancake lenses on the market in the next few years.

For now, it’s probably not worth owning a pancake lens, unless you want to practice your manual focusing. Save your money and invest in some good standard prime lenses, such as a 50mm f1.8.

Happy shooting!

David Smeaton

i don’t often post these kinds of photos. i like korea and i prefer to focus on the colourful side of this country’s culture. but last night i was angry and wanted to illustrate that there are many sides to korean culture. one of the most shocking things to me, for a developed country, is the number of poor and beggars. all countries have poverty, but in korea much of the poverty is due to the fact that the government provides little support for the poor or disabled. so they beg on the subway.

the irony is that when i ask my korean friends, many believe that these people aren’t truly blind. in fact, my friends believe that many ‘disabled’ korean beggars aren’t disabled at all. they’re pan handlers who make money from begging. i’ve even heard theories that this is organised by mobsters who get a percentage of the take. regardless of the theories, there’s a lot of begging on the subway. i see it daily. whether they’re really disabled or not is irrelevant. what is relevant is that korea (as a nation) focuses heavily on economics and on providing for the gifted and talented. the poor are constantly overlooked.

i’ve got myself a handy little device, a geometr gps unit which attaches to my nikon camera. the unit locks on to satellites and tracks my location. then, when i take a photo, the data is automatically added to the exif data.

as a result, i can locate the exact position i was standing when i took the photo, which is very cool. the device arrived from the taiwan distributor last week. i had it on my camera thursday when i went to work and tested the gps tracker out. i took a few photos and also used the gps tracker on friday when i went to seoul forest.

here’s a photo i took on thursday (exif data is available in the photo’s properties):

once i downloaded the photo to my computer, i edited it and uploaded the photo to flickr.com. flickr has an automatic mapping service thanks to their owners at yahoo. i pulled up the map and got this result:

that’s very cool. the longitude and latitude points are very precise. i recognise the area and it’s exactly where i was standing when i took the photo. the pink dot represents where i stood. the arrow is pointing in the direction of the world trade centre.

the gps unit is great, although it does take about a minute to lock its position when i first turn the device on. however, that’s not a major problem. it doesn’t seem to use much battery life, so i can leave it on while i’m walking around and it constantly updates my position.

i definitely plan on taking the tracker with me during my travels … and i’ve promised the geometr company that i’d write a review of the gps device, which will probably appear in the next week or so.

nikon continue to release new bodies at breakneck speeds … the latest in the line is nikon’s D90, the successor to the popular consumer D80. the D90 features a very interesting new set of features that has nikon fans giggling like school girls, despite the fact that many of the new ‘features’ are just bells and whistles.

amongst the most talked about features is the D90’s ability to shoot video. it’s the first DSLR with video capabilities (thanks to its other new feature, live view). nikon are also claiming that the D90’s video is better than most consumer camcorders and can produce more interesting movies (thanks to myriad of lenses, especially the fisheye, telephoto and macro lenses).

personally, i see a lot of pitfalls here. users are going to start trying to make movies with these DSLR cameras, winning users with a few ‘eye candy’ features that are starting to move nikon away from their true focus - quality DSLR cameras.

the new D90 also has sensor vibration cleaning, 12.9 mp DX sensor, live view (as mentioned, bigger 3 inch screen, better iso noise control, more frames per second, but a poor buffer rate (only 7 raw images, meaning a burst rate of less than 2 seconds when shooting raw), and a few other bells and whistles.

although the D90 is a greatly improved camera, it still fits the model of releasing minor improvements and bleeding consumers dry … amateur photographers should not be buying bodies every 12 months.

the only thing i’m even remotely excited about is not the nikon D90, but an accessory that has been released at the same time; nikon’s GP-1 GPS unit. this handy gadget will attach to the hot shoe and add gps data to each photo as its taken. the gps data is stored into the image’s exif data for later use. this has come just in time for me to make use of it during my travels!

although i’m no expert (and nobody cares about my opinion), i think users should keep away from buying the latest camera bodies. if you have no camera, then it makes sense to buy the best body you can afford (i did that when i bought my D200). but if you have a good camera, upgrading to a new body … to get a few extra megapixels and new features … is a snake oil sales pitch that people are falling for. nikon and canon have both worked out that the ‘camera wars’ are not good for consumers, but good for profit margins. by constantly releasing new models, the camera companies are greatly improving their revenues.

live view and movies are not what DSLRs are about. DSLR cameras have a viewfinder because they’re professional cameras with interchangable lenses. let the point and shoot crowd have live view. let camcorders have the movies. nikon and canon should stick to improving lens technology. they should spend time developing DSLRs with gps built in (not a hot shoe accessory). they should be working on electronic shutters (where 50 frames per second would be possible). they should work on sensors and noise reduction … btw, some of nikon’s bridge cameras and “point and shoots” DO have gps built in.

i personally think nikon is losing sight of its true purpose with this new camera. many will disagree with me, but the serious photographers will know what i’m talking about.

i guess the next camera that comes out will also have a phone, mp3 player, and be able to make espresso … although i have to admit, that some of the D90 sample movies do look very good.