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the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

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Diminishing returns in photography

March 4, 2024 JimK 6 Comments

In many fields of endeavor and enjoyment as you spend more and more money, you get a smaller and smaller perceptual improvement per dollar. You can buy a decent bottle of wine for 20 bucks. Picked carefully, you can serve it to knowledgeable friends and get few complaints. You could could spring for a 40-dollar… [Read More]

The Last Word

How modern camera shutters work

February 25, 2024 JimK 3 Comments

There seems to be some confusion on the issue of how modern camera shutters work. I’m going to try to clear some of that up in this post. Some caveats: There are variations among camera manufacturers that I’m going to gloss over. This applies to CMOS sensors that employ at least one analog to digital… [Read More]

The Last Word

The dubious search for GOATs

February 18, 2024 JimK 1 Comment

It’s always been the case that humans crave simplicity, even when it masks reality. Hence the tendency to construct, measure, and argue over scalar (one number) metrics, even though they almost always ignore nuance. Even better, in many people’s eyes, are scalar, binary metrics, such as picking winners and losers. These metrics are almost always… [Read More]

The Last Word

New camera: marginal gain or material advantage?

February 17, 2024 JimK 6 Comments

There’s an interesting thread in the MF forum of DPR. A Youtuber says that these days, a new camera offers only marginal gains, not a material advantage. The basic argument is that we have passed the era of quantum leaps in performance, and that today’s cameras are so capable that you can do almost any… [Read More]

The Last Word

The Nikon Zf has both an AA filter and pixel shift

February 13, 2024 JimK Leave a Comment

In the previous post, I said: …I’ll accept for the purposes of this discussion that no camera manufacturer uses pixel shift on cameras that have AA filters. I don’t know that that’s true, but I can’t think of any counterexamples. Erik Kaffehr found a counterexample, the Nikon Zf. In the spirit of scientific reproducibility, I… [Read More]

The Last Word

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Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

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Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.