Breitling

BY FUJI F50FD

FUJI F50 FD AT ISO 1600
This is a full scale detail of the watch on the previous page. Notice the circular rings on the dial. These rings are 1 pixel wide and 1 pixel apart. I could only see such a detail at 100 ISO on the Panasonic DMCL40 with f2.0 Summicron lens, and here it is showing at ISO 1600. When the entire watch was scaled by 50%, these rings were lost, because they were too small to be visualized.

FUJI F50 FD AT ISO 3200

This is a full scale detail of the watch on the previous page. Notice the circular rings on the dial. These rings are 1 pixel wide and 1 pixel apart. AT ISO 3200 you can still see some rings at the top of the dial, noise has hidden the balance of the rings. Compare with ISO 1600. When the entire watch was scaled by 50%, these rings were lost, because they were too small to be visualized.

FUJI F50 FD AT ISO 6400

This is a full scale detail of the watch on the previous page. The circular rings are no longer evident.
These silk owers dont have the detail of real owers, so its not important that they be seen tack sharp with hard edges. In reducing the image to t this page there was going to be some softening of the detail, and I encouraged this by blurring the original image 30% in Live Picture. Then I built the le to 7.5 inches wide. The colors with chrome selected in the F50fd were vibrant enough, so no color boosting done. The noise levels were quite low in the shadows and after I adjusted the levels to brighten the owers and enhance the blacks, any noise disappeared.
This small mobile was swinging in the breeze from the door so I used the F50fd at ISO 3200. In Live Picture I added the glassy looking overlay. The I built the le to poster size from 3MP to 94 MP = 54 x 74. The resulting image is very smooth. This photo was taken before I realized that the noise at ISO 3200 was caused by the temperature of the camera which had been in my trousers pocket, in the sunshine. The battery area of the camera felt warm, so the internal temp must have been over 90 degrees. See the Leica camera pics. for an explanation of CCD temperature versus noise.
Enlarged section of 54 x 74 poster made with F50fd at ISO 3200
TThis is an small section taken from the 256 MB le. Made with F50fd at ISO 3200. It shows the orange shs eye and the texture that was superimposed on the photo. You can see how smooth the image is. Go to image above to see the entire image, and techniques used to create the photo and the print.
Unretouched image F50fd at ISO 3200
Scaled to 26% in Live Picture. No other adjustments.
This is an evening shot about 30 minutes before the sun set. Hand held. Noise clean up in Nikon NX 10% NR. The only noise was in the water. Prior to scaling at 29% in LP I applied 30% blur, and then after the scaling, I opened the TIFF in GKON to apply unsharp masking of 10%. The colors are spot on.
This is an straight image, apart from scaling 50% to t the page. As usual I added 30% blur in Live Picture before I built the le out to the nal dimensions.The I opened the TIFF le in Graphic Converter and applied unsharp mask at the default setting of 2.5 radius and 50% intensity. Noise reduction was not needed, nor color adjustments. White Balance was set to Auto on the F50fd. Manual White Balance produced very noisy and ugly colored images, so I abandoned it and switched back to auto WB. Lighting was a 5000 deg Kelvin light box over the camera, with a small concave mirror in front to reect a catch light into the lens so that it looks like glass. The F50fd under some non-standard light sources such as this one, which is a uorescent tube - is inconsistent in exposure - so I always shoot six exposures with the same settings, and choose the best. Not only is exposure inconsistent under this lighting so is White Balance. The image looks and feels just like the original,

This is an straight image, apart from scaling 25% to t the page. I added 20% blur in Live Picture before I built the le out to the nal dimensions.Then I opened the TIFF le in Graphic Converter and applied unsharp mask at the setting of 1.7 radius and 50% intensity. Noise reduction was not needed, But I did make some color adjustments in LP. White Balance was set to Auto on the F50fd. Lighting was a 5000 deg Kelvin light box over the camera, with a small concave mirror in front to reect a catch light into the lens so that it looks like glass. This test done with the camera temperature inside battery box at 60 degrees F.
This is an straight image, apart from scaling 25% to t the page. I added 20% blur in Live Picture before I built the le out to the nal dimensions.Then I opened the TIFF le in Graphic Converter and applied unsharp mask at the setting of 1.7 radius and 50% intensity. Noise reduction was not needed, But I did make some color adjustments in LP. White Balance was set to Auto on the F50fd. Lighting was a 5000 deg Kelvin light box over the camera, with a small concave mirror in front to reect a catch light into the lens so that it looks like glass. This test done with the camera temperature inside battery box at 60 degrees F. The Fuji F50fd macro facility does not prevent the photographer from adjusting exposure time or aperture, resolution or ISO, whereas many compacts have a dedicated macro mode with puts the camera in auto mode. Every time the camera off shuts down you must press the macro button to allow the camera to focus up close. Minimum distance 7 cm.
KEEPING THE CCD COOL - FUJI F50 FD AT ISO 6400
I nally have gured out how to make good noise free photos at ISO 6400. CCD sensors are very sensitive to chip temperature. As the chip temperature goes up, the purple noise streaks begin to appear. If you carry the camera around in a pocket, or worse still put it in a black camera pouch and carry it on your belt (both of which I was doing), the internal temperature can easily reach 90 + degrees. Then if you re off a few shots using ash, the battery heat warms up the chip, so that it could reach more than 100 degrees. Now the maximum operating temperature is only 104 degrees, so you can bet that at this temperature the performance is very poor. And I am pretty certain that this heating of the chip is what causes the purple streaks. Fuji even warns about this on page 71 of the user guide under Power management. It says if you dont use power save mode, if you use the camera continuously in a hot place, vertical linear noise may appear in the image by the nature of the CCD. And this is what I was doing, so I had the noise bands. I did an experiment and cooled off the camera. I placed a thin thermocouple in the battery compartment to measure the temperature inside the camera, and put the camera under the outlet of an air conditioner until the internal temperature was 50 degrees. I then shot the Leica camera, and by the end of the shoot the internal temperature had climbed to 60 degrees. I shot 6400, 3200, 1600 ISO. I didnt use any noise reduction program - which I normally have to do -but I cleaned up the image in Live Picture and reduced the greenish coloration in the leather. I softened the image 5% blur, and reduced in size to t the web (25%). Moral: keep the camera body cool - dont put in a pocket which touches your body, dont put in a black pouch and wear outside your clothing.

Cindys Hat

This is the image as it came from the camera. Reduced to 25% for the web in Live Picture. No noise reduction, no color adjustments.

Groceries

UNRETOUCHED IMAGE - FUJI F50 FD AT ISO 3200