Part 2: Canon sRAW Noise and High ISO Test ( 40D reference for the 50D )

The previous test was quick and had a lot of variables I didn't bother to think about. This time I did, so I eliminated what I could.

I'm trying to figure out if the sRAW mode on Canon's recently announced 50D will be useful to me. So I'm testing the sRAW mode on the 40D and here are my next round comparison shots...


I decided to eliminate the resizing variable by changing my focal length so the same number of pixels are covering the same parts of the scene (I just cropped the RAW file to the sRAW dimensions and get the same view). The first pair is underexposed and shows the noise differences well, the middle pair is a normal exposure and shows sharpness differences well, and the 3rd pair doesn't change the focal length so the RAW file had to be re-sized to match the same view.

The previous test proved to me that noise was lower using sRAW. This one agrees. The previous test also made me wonder if sRAW was sharper too. This one seems to agree, but makes me realize that the question is more complicated than that. Yes, 4 sRAW pixels are sharper than 1 RAW pixel. The middle pair shows this very well. But that's not how I'd use the camera. I'd use it like the 3rd pair, and after resizing, they are similar.

This does lead me to a valuable conclusion: I expect that canon's 50D in sRAW mode at 7mp will be sharper, and have significantly less noise than an 8mp 30D. I already expected that, but now I'm convinced the difference will be drastic and worthwhile to me.

That means it's time to upgrade! YESSSS!

Other interesting conclusions: The sRAW file size is typically half the full RAW file size, which is unfortunate because the resolution is 1/4. Also, burst mode did last a little longer. I got about 17 RAW files out at 6.5fps, but could get over 20 sRAW files at 6.5fps and the buffer cleared faster. So sRAW mode isn't so much for when you want smaller files, but for fast action bursts at high ISOs.

Details: 24-70 2.8L at 35mm and 70mm and f/8, 70-200 2.8 L IS at 200mm and f/8, 40D, manual focus with live view, on tripod, using mirror lock up and cable release. RAW and sRAW files processed in Lightroom with everything zeroed. Jpegs at highest quality while cropping and bi-cubic resizing. 40D's high ISO noise reduction was OFF this time.

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Canon sRAW Noise and High ISO Test ( 40D reference for the 50D )

When Canon announced the 50D, the specs that caught my attention were the sRAW modes. I liked the idea of sRAW mode on the 40D but couldn't manufacture a reason to shoot a 10mp sensor at 2.5mp. It looks like the 50D will shoot it's 15mp sensor at 7mp. For some of the things I shoot that sounds worthwhile. Then I wondered if those sRAW files would be less noisy at high ISO and just had to test it...

At first I shot a variety of exposures of the same scene and cropped the full size files to match the sRAW size. A noise difference didn't jump out at me at all. What did was how much sharper the sRAW files were. It looks like I either had image stabilization on in one shot and off in the other (which I didn't), or I used a much smaller aperture to get more depth of field (which I didn't). I'll have to try this again with a tripod and manual focusing.


Then I shot black frames (lens cap on at normally fast shutter speed) at ISO 1600 and 3200 in RAW and sRAW. That's where I see a huge difference in noise. Here's the ISO 3200 comparison. I see blatant noise reduction in sRAW. The noise in sRAw seems to be all luminance and no chroma too (someone please explain that to me). I also see more noise in the 40D at 3200 than the 30D at 3200 which is not what I expected (or was advertised). And I should mention that I had to beat the heck out of these black frames to get them to look this bad/obvious.


I did this test in 5 minutes. Please leave comments if you have suggestions for improving the method.
Details:
AWB, Manual Mode, ISO 3200 and 1600, 24-70 f/2.8 @ 70mm & f/4.5 on the 40D, 70-200 f/2.8 IS @ 70mm & f/4.5 on the 30D, handheld, autofocus on middle point at closest flower, raw files 'barely processed' in Lightroom, no manipulation (everything zeroed) on the flower shots, for the black frames only exposure slider set to +4, output was full jpg at max quality.
jpgs from sRAW files cropped to 800x800 near middle of frame. 300x300 corner for black frames.
jpgs from RAW files bicubic downsized to match sRAW dimensions (1944x1296) then cropped to 800x800 near middle of frame.
for exaggerating black frame noise: cropped 300x300 bottom right corner (because noise appeared strongest there in the 40D) then up rezed 200%, brightness +50 and contrast +25 to exaggerate for visibility.

I have high hopes for the 50D and its sRAW modes now.

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Birthday Paragliding

Long story.

It goes all the way back to early September when C and I had a big fat party at our condo to celebrate us turning "old" (30). We'd actually decided way back in March to do some paragliding when we got home to Issaquah because we didn't have enough time to do it in Queenstown, NZ. So, we decided we'd go for our birthdays, but specifically, on her birthday. So I made the arrangements.

The instructions were to show up at the landing zone a few minutes before the shuttle left for the top of the hill. So we did. We each had a pilot and they were nice guys. The ride up the hill was shocking. We rode in a nice enough van to a house a few miles up the road. Then everyone got out and hiked a few hundred yards through the woods. Then we piled into a bigger truck with an open bed that where we were to stand, and were surrounded by a frame of well-padded bars. The rest of the road was not maintained at all. It took a few impacts with the frame before I realized why they padded it. We quickly learned to surf with the truck like the pros. As we finally made it to the top of the hill the rain started. Everyone ran under the trees and a few minutes later it let up for a few minutes. The next thing I knew I was flying through the air! It was almost that fast actually. As fast as I could keep up, my instructor strapped me in and shared the bare minimum of information that I would need to get us off the ground. I swear he said we were going to practice before we actually jumped, but my only practice round turned into the real thing. He said "run" and I did. The ride was super sweet. He took me on one really tight turn that had me plastered to my seat. We sank like a fat rock and before I knew it we were landing. The landing was smooth, we came in fast along the ground and all I did was keep up with it. Then I looked up and waited for C to fly through the air behind me. But a half hour later I over heard that her pilot didn't like the conditions and was giving up for the day. The birthday girl wasn't happy. After another false start 5 days later, she finally ran off the mountain on a bright sunny day and had a great flight with a spectacular landing. The final flare didn't quite work and they came down more than across the field. C tried to run but the instructor didn't.

I sat on the landing zone and shot pictures of the whole thing.

A few minutes before she came down some beginner overshot the huge field and landed in blackberry bushes. Sorry I didn't get pictures of that. I did get some other interesting shots. One of a crazy dude practically collapsing his wing high above the ground and still recovering. The wing is all out of shape and the lines are mostly slack. I think he's even higher than the wing when I shot him. There was also some guy on the ground trying to throw a big bag of trash at his buddy as he was trying to land. Total weirdos.

Victoria, BC

C and I have lived around Seattle for about 7 years and have been wanting to visit Victoria, BC the whole time. We finally made it there over Labor Day weekend, 2007. We took the Victoria Clipper in the morning, experienced the Butchart Gardens and the fireworks. The Gatsby mansion is a really convenient and confusing place to stay. The Titanic exhibit and movie at the museum were pretty good. Getting home on the clipper that broke down was a disaster that we kept saying could have been worse.

Victoria is a tourist town, we saw and did all we needed to in 2 days and 1 night. It was nice, but we have no urge to go back anytime soon. We think we spent half our time waiting in lines. But we did pick the busiest weekend of the year.

The Gatsby Mansion is across the street from the ferry terminal. And we managed to check in as early as our boat arrived, which was great. It took us awhile to find where to check in though. There are at least 4 buildings that make up the mansion and they all look like the wrong one, because two of them have restaurants in the way. Several times a day we'd walk past the inside tables, then the bar, and then the outside tables to get to the street. I know a king sized bed is equivalent to two doubles side by side, but it's kind of lame when your king bed is literally just that. I also thought it was funny that our room had a full kitchen but no dishes or equipment to make it even slightly useful.

The Gatsby recommends a fish 'n chips place around the corner so we went there because we were in the mood and starving. The propaganda also mentioned a friendly harbor seal, but I didn't think we'd be that lucky. After sitting in a line to order for a half hour, and then another half hour line to pick it up, we did get to see the chubby seal with a blue eye.

Butchart is brilliant and absolutely disappointing at the same time. The flowers are so unusual and lovely I could shoot them for years. The gardens as a whole are awesome too. But there are always so many people around it's impossible to get a decent picture of any larger area without hordes of people in it. And everything but the solid pathways are roped off. So only the close up shots of flowers look good. The fireworks were strange. They had a wide area along the ground to work with so they used it all. Things were lighting up, and launching from, all over the place. That was the cool part. The very not-cool part was the whole thing choreographed to some Disney movie soundtrack, Aladdin I think. Had I not been occupied with shooting the fireworks, I would have left and been annoyed.

The brunch at the Gatsby was ok. The brunch sign that was draped across the main building looked really ghetto and made me laugh.

Next we were off to the museum to see the Titanic exhibit. I love how the IMAX film used a fisheye lens on the Russian scientist most of the time. For a film about a real tragedy, it was quite funny. The movie was good and so was the exhibit, but by the end I was falling apart like I'd been shopping for a whole hour! My back was killing me, my neck was tired, and my feet hurt. I didn't even have a camera bag!

Then we strolled through Beacon Hill park. It started out trashy, then turned into a lovely Butchart-like garden, but with a petting zoo. I didn't go in, but I admit I wanted to. We got some great pictures of each other amongst the flowers there.

We then walked around the city to find the shopping mall areas. We rode the escalator to the top of a nice one and talked ourselves out of buying anything because the exchange rate is about 1:1 right now, which is not very encouraging. So we strolled along the water front and found some greek food and gave up waiting on a mini donut machine that had broken down while the owner chatted away with some friends.

We checked into the clipper an hour and a half early because we got relatively bad seats on the way up because we were only an hour early. We found out later our boarding group for the trip back had already been determined back in Seattle when we checked in the first time. At about the time everyone on the boat realizes we're late leaving the dock, they announced that one of the engines won't start. And it never did. They sent another boat up from Seattle to get us. We eventually got home around 3:30AM the next day. But they did give us free sodas, so I had quite a few dr. peppers to comfort me in my misery. :)






Click here to see a ton of pictures from our trip!

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Lunar Eclipse from Issaquah, WA

I can't believe the weather cooperated!
Just before I went to bed I put all my gear on the porch to cool off so my lenses didn't fog when I was ready to get started, and left a pile of warm clothes near the door. 3 hours later I was out of bed.
I crawled on the roof with two cameras on tripods and a bag of lenses and other equipment. In the dark! I'm sure it looked like a huge disaster waiting to happen.
I started by shooting intervals on the 30D & 24-70 as the moon faded away (I'll have to photoshop them all into one picture eventually). And I used the 10D IR with the 70-300 and a 1.5x TC. Having to manually focus that thing just wasn't working for me. And the moon looks the same in IR anyway.
As I sat there and enjoyed the show I realized the moon was getting so dark that I could probably pull of some star trails with the moon in the frame. So once it was fully eclipsed I started the lens changing madness. I never did do any serious star trails because I remembered that my camera will take a noise reducing exposure of equal length immediately following the shot. I didn't want to take a 10 minute star trail and lose the camera for 20 minutes total. So I got some nice shots of the orange moon and stars. And now I'm going to bed...

Click here to see the rest of my lunar eclipse photos.

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Sailing Lessons

I needed a break during my bike ride home from work because I thought I was going to die... just like I did on the way in. So I pulled over where the Seafair pits were a few weeks earlier and watched some kids work on their sailing skills. I had no idea sailing lessons could be so much fun. I'm not sure if they were doing this on purpose or not. But it sure made me want to take lessons. Eventually some dogs showed up and chased the birds around.




Click here to see the rest of my pictures from this event.

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Wallace Falls

Wallace Falls is sweet! There are 3 levels to it. The first one is a mile down the trail. It's ok, kinda small, but not bad. There are sort of sub-falls below the one labeled "lower" that are probably more interesting. The middle fall is by far the coolest. It's the tallest of the three and has two fabulous sets of sub-falls below it. There's a really steep and treacherous path going from the lookout, with the sign that says you'll die if you leave the trail (my paraphrase), to the bottom. It's hard on the knees but totally worth it. Had I been only slightly more prepared I would have gone swimming. There's a deep section to the pool with some tall rocks on the edge that would make a great diving platform. I must go back and take advantage of that sometime soon. The upper falls are quite disappointing because the mile to get there is all switchback. And after all that effort it's not as exciting as the middle falls.

Anyway, it was a little too bright to get good blurry water shots this time. It seems that during the morning the falls are shadowed, but all afternoon they are at least partly lit by the sun. So the best time to shoot them would either be early morning or late evening.

Interesting facts: The trailhead starts at Wallace Falls State Park which is underneath massive buzzing powerlines, there are benches all along the trail, there is pretty good cell phone reception on the trail.




Click here to see the rest of my pictures from this hike.

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Olympic Sculpture Park

The Seattle Art Museum recently opened the Olympic Sculpture Park near the Seattle waterfront. It's free, outside, and very interesting. Perfect for a photosafari! Especially a digital infrared one. All the black and white pictures are from my IR 10D. Inside the main building for the OSP are two hanging basket chairs. They look totally cool, but are terribly uncomfortable. I'm sure they did that on purpose to keep people from hogging them all day. The park goes over a street and railroad tracks and ends up at a park along the water in downtown Seattle. Not only does the park have interesting art, it also has fantastic wildflowers and trees.




Click here to see the rest of the pictures from my visit to the OSP.

Seafair 2007

I went to Seafair 2007 on Friday and Sunday. Each year I get more interesting pictures of the Blue Angels performing. This time the supersonic pass made some great cloud cones and shock waves. I still can't believe how low they fly. Next year I need to be on one of those boats!



Click here to see more pictures of the Blue Angels, the hydroplanes, and more of Seafair 2007!

Sol Duc Park Backpacking

The rangers at the Port Angeles station said we should go to Sol Duc Park since our first choice was already full. It turned out pretty well. Except for the mosquitos that ate me anytime we were near our tent. I guess they like the taste of deet?

It took us 4 hours to hike the 7+ miles to get there. I barely made it. We were the last stragglers to arrive so we got stuck with the campsite next to the ranger "station". Maybe that's where the mosquitos came from?

The trail follows the Sol Duc River and crosses a lot of creeks and waterfalls along the way. Some of them were really photogenic.

We spent the next day on the High Divide ridge. When we got to the ridge we turned left and sat in a meadow for an hour or two and waited for the clouds to uncover Mt. Olympus. But they never did. We did see it's Blue Glacier for a minute or two though. We went back down to Heart Lake to refill the water bottles. Then back up to the ridge again and took a right and sat in a meadow for another hour or two. Dramatic views were everywhere. But the clouds kept it from being totally perfect. Oh well.









Click here to see all the pictures from the trip!

This is the first time I've managed to fill a 4G card on a backpacking trip. I think it was the combination of ferry rides, flowers, and mountains. The 30D battery lasts forever or I would have been toast.

Lensbabies Creative Apertures

I got a Lensbaby a year or two ago and use it occasionally. I like it because it's weird. Then I found the Creative Aperture Kit. It came with a heart, a star, and 5 blanks with instructions to make your own. I finally went to the craft store this evening and punched out 3 more.
It's really hard to do because these punches were designed for paper, not thick plastic apertures. Since the apertures are smaller than the punch I had to tape it to a piece of paper, facing the correct direction, then mark the middle with a pencil, and start the punch upside down so I could see the mark through the bottom. I wonder how these pictures would look if the "hole" wasn't centered?
Anyway, I found that the more complicated the design/number of edges the harder it is to punch through.
I think the butterfly looks cool. It was also the easiest to punch.

Jello Rainbow (One ring to rule them all!)

It's so pretty.

This is how much I love jello. I finally made the ultimate jello dessert; the jello rainbow. It took me 4 hours. I learned that you have to "mostly" cool each layer before you pour it on. If it's too hot it melts the layer underneath and the colors mix and "ruin" both layers. FYI each color gets divided in half, the first one goes on clear, and the second one gets sour cream to make it more opaque.

The hardest part was getting it out of the mold.

A friend recently got me the mold for this type of thing, so I had to try it out when they came over for lunch.

The most surprising thing is that it tastes pretty good. I was expecting the combination of flavors to ruin it. I can't describe what it tastes like, but C actually likes it. (She normally avoids my jellos)

I apologize for the poor quality of these pictures. I could hardly wait to eat it. If this were any other subject I could probably control myself long enough to take decent pictures. :)