Perspective is used to define the relationship of subject size in relation to the background. Though many use the term incorrectly, suggesting that a wide angle lens has a different perspective as a telephoto lens. Saying such is not completely true nor is it completely false. Usually when we use a wide angle lens and shoot subjects at very close distance, the subject appears larger than the background thus giving us an exagerated perspective, while when using a telephoto and shooting subjects at a distance, we get a subject that appears similar sized as our background or we can say we have a compressed perspective. Though the example shows that a wide angle and telephoto has different perspective, but the key here is not the focal length use but the distance of the camera and subject. Perspective is solely a function of disitance of camera and subject, meaning no matter what lens is used for as long as camera and subject remain in the same position, perspective will be the same. Focal length affects distortion (barrel or pin cushion) and field of view.

Here is a little test I did:

I did a series of photos of a static subject and the camera on a tripod. I used the following lenses:

Nikon 16mm F2.8 Fisheye
Nikon 28mm F2.8
Nikon 50mm F1.8
Nikon 60mm F2.8 Macro
Nikon 85mm F1.8
Sigma 15-30mm @ 15mm

All shot at F5.6, I converted it to black and white to avoid confusion with color rendition. I also cropped everything to make the subject all relatively same size. Can you easily tell which was shot with which focal length? This clearly shows that perspective is similar no matter what lens is used, for as long as subject to camera distance is the same.

Now here is a more recent test that I did:

Persepective or the compression effect or exagerated effect has nothing to do with the sensor, if you shot a subject at the same distance (ex. 5 ft away using 50mm on a crop body and a 75mm on a FF) their perspective is going to be the same, the difference is depth of field which is around 1 stop. Remember perspective is a function of distance not focal length nor sensor size.

2 photos shot with a D90 @ 135mm and D700 @ 200mm, using the same zoom lens (to keep quality constant) and distance. Only had to adjust aperture (D90 @f/4 and D700 @f/5.6) to equalize the DOF. You be the judge if there is any difference in perspective.

You can bring out your ruler then measure the size of the cow and the martian at the back then see how similar the ratio is, which simply means perspective was neither compressed nor exagerated by changing camera and focal length since the key here is distance to subject, which in both photos are similar.

If you want to do a practical excercise, try this:

Part 1 – Keeping perspective similar

1. Make sure you a way to keep the camera at the same place for the first half of this activity. A tripod is reccomended.
2. Use multiple focal length lenses or a zoom lens.
3. Line up 2 still objects, preferably 1 is double the size of the other. Put the larger object behind the smaller one.
4. Shoot with a small aperture to make DOF wide enough for us to see the subject and background.
5. Shoot at different focal length while still keeping the focus on the smaller object at all time.

As you do this you will notice the subject (or the object in focus) will keep changing magnification, but the amount of magnification will be proportional to the rear object. This proportional gain is what perspective is all about, keeping the ratio of the subject to the background similar means perspective is the same. To see the similarity, you can gather all your photos in an editing software and crop the images to keep the subject appearing the same size. You can even measure the front object (subject) from the rear object (background) and see how the ratio of their size will remain the same all throughout the test.

Part 2 – Keeping magnification similar

1. Once again I reccomend using a zoom lens.
2. Zoom in to the subject and note size of the subject relative to the whole photo.
3. Now after each shot, change the focal length to a wider one (zoom out) but to keep the subject to appear the same size as the previous shot, so you have to keep stepping forward. Do this until you have max out the wideness of your lens.

As you do this you will notice that though the size of the subject will remain the same, the object at the rear will appear to get smaller and smaller. This is what you call an exagerated perspective.

These test will prove that perspective can only be altered if distance to subject is changed, no other things can affect perspective.

So I returned the unit for repair at the store I bought it from, Mobil 1 in Park Square last Feb 7 and to my understanding they will forward my drive to the distributor. After 2 weeks, I got a call that my drive is now ready for pick up, so I hurried to the store to pick it up. Upon checking the box, 1 cable, the fw 800 to fw 400, was missing and worst the service report that was attached to the box which basically just said:

Disc scanned, no error found, status OK, re-formatted drive.

After 2 weeks, this is all they did. Since a cable was missing they didn’t want to release the drive and will return it again to the distributor. I asked them to have distributor to run a more thorough test or at least try using it far longer than just a surface scan so that the problem can arise.

Since the problem is usually temporarily solved by reformatting, how can I show the supplier or service center that there is something wrong with the unit? I have a feeling they will keep insisting that there is no problem with my unit. I didn’t buy the drive as a temporary storage that would make it OK to reformat every few days.

As I write this, now over a month since I sent the drive for repair, I still don’t have the drive with me and got only a single call from the distributor telling me they will look into the problem. Now that this has happened and I started telling aquaintances about it, is the only time I realized I wasn’t alone. Many of my aquaintance, mostly Mac users also have similar problems with their Western Digital (of all models from portable to desktop external), that like mine can be remedied by re-formatting the drive, so this is not a practical drive to use if you need to format and erase all the contents on a fairly regular basis. So just like oil and water in a bottle, if you shake it hard enough they will look like they have joined together but give it some time and they will seperate again.

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Update: March 13, 2009

They finally decided to replace the drive, I am now in the process of re-populating it with my files. So far so good, but just like before the first few weeks upon purchase was error free, will update in a month.

Macbook Pro 2.4 ghz Santa Rosa / 4 gb RAM / 250 gb HD / Superdrive 8x DVD burner / GeForce 8600M GT 256mb /with applecare till Jan 2011

After getting the unit, I have to admit the notebook does look gorgeuos,  much slimmer than my current notebook and also much lighter. So I proceeded with loading all my neccesary softwares and some reccomended softwares from friends using a Mac. After all this is done, I tried working with my new notebook to edit some photos, it was blazingly fast. For the first time I wasn’t afraid of surfing to any websites, since when I was using a Windows notebook I need to make sure I would not visit suspicous site in fear of getting a virus and etc. Also now I don’t fear borrowing thumbdrives, downloading from memory cards that I don’t own and receiving emails with virus.

But just like any marriage, the honeymoon stage had to end sometime, in my case a week. As I was reading through sites about Mac’s and watching videos from Apple site, I discovered Time machine, a built in back up utility on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The problems is since it does incremental back-ups on a fairly regular basis, I was worried it would eat up my external drive rather quickly, so a new one is in order. Since the Macbook Pro only has 2 USB ports and owning quite a handful of USB peripherals (External DVD writer, scanner, card reader and a mouse), I decided that I should look for an external hard drive that can utilize my Macbook Pro’s firewire ports. So I purchased a Western Digital My Book Studio 750 gb, I partitioned it so that I have 300 gb for my time machine. Since the drive seems large enough, I also share that drive for one of our Macbook’s time machine, since the Macbook’s files are not as sensitive, what I do is eject disc from the Macbook Pro and connect the external hard drive to the Macbook through firewire 400. Suddenly after a few days of doing this I noticed my Macbook Pro’s start up time of under a minute suddenly became closer to 5 minutes this when the External Drive is connected but start up is quick if not connected. So I searched around and saw some possible solutions, one was to reset PRAM, that didn’t help. I also tried placing the External hard drive in the privacy tab of spotlight, then removing it, so that it can rebuild what seems to be a corrupted database, no help either. I also tried reformatting the backup partition. Suddenly it worked, but only until I plugged the drive to the Macbook again. This time I tried to just delete the backup partition of the external drive and not connect it to the Macbook anymore, still start-up was still as slow. So I did an update of my Mac OS, manually deleting the spotlight database, have spotlight rebuild the database and guess what, worst happens. Now it won’t even boot up I am just stuck at the gray screen with an Apple logo, this is until I remove the External drive and hit the power button and it start-up is back to normal. This not the only errors I have noticed, when I checked my console I notice in the log some of these errors (there is more):

11/30/08 8:35:22 PM mDNSResponder[22] WARNING: sandbox_init error Could not set Mach lookup policy for service com.apple.bsd.dirhelper err=1100Could not set Mach lookup policy for service com.apple.distributed_notifications.2 err=1100Could not set Mach lookup policy for service com.apple.ocspd err=1100Could not set Mach lookup policy for service com.apple.mDNSResponderHelper err=1100Could not set Mach lookup policy for service com.apple.SecurityServer err=1100Could not set Mach lookup policy for service com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd er

11/30/08 8:46:29 PM mds[21] (/Volumes/Backup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/5F1DEE1A-C243-4172-8F0C-32EAB09D9A36)(Error) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:Could not open /Volumes/Backup/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/5F1DEE1A-C243-4172-8F0C-32EAB09D9A36/live.0.; needs recovery

12/1/08 12:43:58 AM Finder[126] [QL ERROR] Generator database update takes too long… we will use what we currently have

12/1/08 2:06:48 AM diskarbitrationd[31] unable to probe /dev/disk2 (status code 0xFFFFFFFC).

12/1/08 2:06:48 AM kernel disk2: I/O error.

12/1/08 9:23:53 PM mdworker[130] -[ABAddressBook sharedAddressBook] Can’t ABACQUIRE_FILE_LOCK /SourceCache/AddressBook/AddressBook-696/Framework/AddressBook/ABAddressBook.m:3165

Honestly I have never had any of these with any of my past Windows notebook, I was usually 100% migrated to the new notebook within a day or two, in this case it’s now around 2 weeks and I can’t still abandon my Windows notebook, since I don’t want to trust my Mac until I resolve all these problems.

I am ready to give up and just sell my newly aquired Macbook Pro and just stick with the Windows system. Though Windows are used by the majority thus Virus and other security problems are part of the Windows experience, having such a wider user base, information of problems on the net are easy to find, thus fixing a problematic Windows seems, in my case, much easier. This Macbook Pro in 2 weeks time have already freezed up twice on me, as opposed to my Windows experience which is much less, or roughly once every 2 months. Now I don’t know if its the Macintosh OS or my HD is the problem. People have suggested to just unplug the external drive before booting up, I agree this will work, but not really a solution but a workaround that I never had to do in my Windows notebook where I leave 2 external hard drive connected and I can safely start up and shut down without any problems.

Here is my last option that I am planning to do very soon, clean install of Leopard, reformat external hard drive, and hope it will solve all my problems, since I really want to keep it, but if I am not able to use it properly then I have no choice but to give up.

In my work, my main source of income comes from shooting commercial photography (studio, fashion, advertising and editorials). I also do events and weddings, but this probably supplements my income to only about 15%. So my choice of camera has to fit my type of photography.

I will go through the criteria when I choose a camera.

1. Resolution, more resolution means larger prints, as simple as that, so in my commercial work this is very important. For events though, clients rarely require large prints so for as long as they are at least 5 megapixels they will work as good.

a.D2x - 12 Megapixels

b. D300 – 12 Megapixels

2. ISO, every time a new camera is released, the very first thing people seem to ask is what is the highest ISO? Or how clean are the high ISO shots? Indeed having very clean high ISO is heaven sent, specially to events, its either you no longer need to use a flash and create natural looking photos or you can shoot faster with your flash, since it doesn’t need to fire as much thus recycling is much faster. The D300’s ISO that can go as high as 3200 without the need of boosting is just astonishing, and if needed it can even go up as high as 6400 with boost (HI 1), now compare that to the D2x where ISO is only up to 800 and 3200 with boost (HI 2). Comparing the noise of both cameras, I wouldn’t hesitate using the D300 all the way to ISO 1600 and know I will have acceptable (to my standards) images, but with the D2x I try to keep it at ISO 640 or below. Though in commercial photography, I rarely go past ISO 200, and actually even prefer ISO 100, why? Since lighting (strobes and flash) are almost mandatory in commercial photography, having a lower ISO means being able to use a larger opening for my lens, to give me the creative freedom I need in terms of playing with Depth of Field (DOF), cropped sensors are already at a disadvantage of having wider DOF compared to full frame cameras, so being able to use larger aperture can help compensate for this. Shooting outdoors under strong ambient lighting together with strobes and large aperture will require you to have a very low ISO to avoid overexposing your subject. This is the area where the ISO 100 of the D2x is better than the D300 ISO 200. The D300 may have a low boost to simulate ISO 100, but after testing it, I did notice that I tend to lose some details, so unless really necessary, I will try to avoid using it. If only the D300 had a higher flash sync speed to compensate for the ISO 200, but both D2x and D300 share similar flash sync speed of 1/250 sec. So as far High ISO is concerned, hands down the D300 is the clear winner, but for Low ISO, the D2x still edges out the D300.

3. Auto White balance (WB), frames per second (fps) and auto focus speed (AF) these three functions are probably the least important in my main line of work but a life saver for an event photographer. Let me explain, when I shoot the very first thing I do is set my WB to custom then shoot an 18% gray card, after which I will shoot 1 frame of the gray card itself, this is so I have a reference when I do post processing or at the least RAW conversion. I shoot the gray card every time I change a layout (lighting) to give me a WB basis every layout. So 99% of the time my cameras is set to custom (preset) white balance and almost never shoot on Auto white balance.  In an event though, where lighting condition can change so fast there isn’t just enough time to create a custom WB, so shooting on Auto is the fastest way of doing it. AWB has improved so much since I started shooting digital, that the D1x AWB was a joke to use, you were better of shooting using cloudy setting and correcting after rather than the unpredictable AWB. Recently or since the D200, AWB was now a very acceptable means of getting close to the color that you would want and every incarnation of a new DSLR model kept improving on this. Between the D2x and D300, both performed beautifully under available light but D2x showed its weakness when using a flash and under mix lighting often exhibiting an orange cast. The D300 on the other hand performed much better when under this situation.

The D2x will shoot 5 fps at 12mp and 8 fps at 6.8mp crop mode while the D300 will shoot 6 fps at 12mp and 8 fps at 8mp with the optional vertical grip and EN-EL4a battery. Just by looking at the specs the D300 is indeed a better fps camera, but is it practical? The D300 can shoot 8 fps with the vertical grip and a different battery that comes with the camera, the cost of the grip, EN-EL4a battery, cover for the battery and charger can easily cost 25% of the camera itself if not more. So personally I don’t think its practical to spend that much for a mere 2 fps. Even with majority of events the fps of both cameras are fast enough, and to a studio photographer irrelevant since when I shoot fashion and commercial, I pause after every shot. So as long as a camera can shoot 2 fps, I am fine.

In conclusion, I find the D300 a slightly better camera for my line of work, but the slight upper hand of the D300 will not make majority of my work any faster or better so a change from my current camera is not needed. Though if circumstances are different, and I am not using a D2x camera, I would get the D300 in a heartbeat. I am already slowly increasing my events and weddings, and so the D300 may be part of my kit sooner than later. To those who shoot events more, don’t even think about it and run to your nearest camera shop and get the D300 now!

Please click chart below to see how I scored the cameras (also included D200 and D80):