RBS Building comparison

Recently, the sun was setting on the RBS building next to where I work in downtown Bridgeport, Conn.. I thought the scene was very beautiful. So, I decided to snap a few frames of the building, each one a different camera.



The first, above, is from a 3MP Fuji 6800z point-and-shoot I got for 30 dollars on Ebay. (Isn't Ebay great. LOL!) The resolution is interpolated in-camera up to 6MP. It's still a pretty quick and responsive camera for how old it is.



The second, middle, shot was made with a Kodak DCS-330 3MP Professional camera that I'm borrowing from a friend to play with. It's one of the first Kodak pro bodies to use a preview monitor in back. I believe the first was the DCS-315. Not 100% sure though. This image was the most saturated and contrasty of all the cameras.




The third, bottom, was made with the Kodak nc2000e that I've been using for a while now. It has been interpolated up to 3MP through Photoshop's RAW converter which opens the tiff file. What's also interesting is the crop factor. On the nc2000e, the 16mm fisheye lens used, clearly giving the widest view, with a 1.5X crop factor. That makes the 16mm a 24mm lens on the nc2000e. On the DCS-330 however, there is a 1.9 crop factor. That makes my 16mm a 30mm. On the Fuji, the widest end is a paltry 39mm. It's 3X zoom goes up to 108mm.

All have been sized to 200 DPI at 10 inches across. All were lightly toned or sharpened in Photoshop. Feel free the files to download to compare.

Just another day in paradise

Here's a couple of pics from yesterday's assignments. Both were in Bridgeport, Conn.

The first is a portrait of resident Eric Colon who has a problem with the construction company next door to him. On windy days, plumes of dust are sent his way and rats have been a problem too. The city has forced the company to stop work but it's fighting it in court.

The second set is from Bassick High's graduation ceremony at the Klein Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday night.

(Shot with the Kodak nc2000e)

Fresh Fest in Bridgeport, Conn.

Here are some high ISO pics from the Kodak nc2000e taken at the Fresh Fest Old School Reunion concert at the Arena at Harbor Yard in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Saturday May 15, 2010. I bumped the ISO to 1250 and 1600 and opened the raw tiffs in Adobe Bridge with CS4 RAW.

Interestingly, they all seemed about two stops underexposed, even though I was using the correct shutter speed and aperture based on the reading I was getting from the D3s and D2h I also was using.

I've also opened the same set of tiffs using the original software intended for the camera, an early version of Photo Mechanic called AP Viewer. It also has a plug-in for Photoshop which allows for the removal of moire pattern common in the old Kodak camera, due to the lack of an anti-aliasing filter. On a side note, a trial version of Band Aide (noise removal tool) was also part of the software, but I need a key to continue its use. (Any suggestions?) Anyway, the photos that looked two stops under in CS4 now look completely normal and right on in exposure. I can batch process the photos to jpeg but loose the ability to interpolate the images to 3.2 MP like you can in CS4 RAW.

So, it's a bit of give and take. I can get the better resolution but have to really dig deep into Photoshop to get the underexposed images to come back to normal, or I can have a well exposed image up front, but lack the higher resolution if I needed a photo for printing. Ah, the dilemma!

More photos from the concert are at my Flickr page here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonman24/sets/72157623957197542/