Lynn & Ross' Wedding

Lynn and Ross are x-coworkers/friends from the Google days. They got married on August 22, 2009 in Malibu, Adamson House. What more could you ask for when you mix a beautiful day, a beautiful couple, and a beautiful location! Click www.lynnandross.com for more info.

I wanted to make sure this special couple had a good coverage throughout this once in a lifetime event and came in as a secondary/third shooter. Since we were not primary shooters, you will not see a single portrait of Lynn and Ross and no close-up of rings, shoes, etc on this web site. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed these pictures that Pam and I took. For other photographer's pictures, you can check out Michael+Anna's web site. They're very good, you have my endorsement!

It's all about the lenses!

I stumbled across a post on Craigslist. "High End Professional Photography Studio Sale (August 22&23) (1300 N. Wilton Pl., Los Angeles 90028)" I looked at the pictures in that post, and it brought back a lot of memories. All of the pictures here are from that Craigslist post.

Back to my story. The year was 1990. I was shopping for photographic equipments. I was armed with The Recycler (a print version of today's Craigslist/eBay-local). The rationale for shopping heavy duty photographic equipments was that they're good investments-- they would last a life time. After all, the basic photographic techniques had been the same since the early 1900s. You take a picture, develop on a canister, darkroom darkroom darkroom, print, done. It was done that way in 1900, in 1910, in 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990 (black and white still done that way at the time). Why wouldn't it be any different in 2010, 2020, 2030? So I thought at the time.

I had an early version 1978 Pentax K1000 with a 55mm f/2 lens, and it was all I needed. The only other things I needed were darkroom equipments, and some black and white filters. I responded to a post on the Recycler. I showed up at this house in Granada Hills. This old man with white hair opened up the door. He said "oh, so you're Kevin?" He sounded a bit surprised, and I could hear the tone "Oh great, it's just a kid." He was a retired photographer selling off a bunch of old equipments, from drums, to easels, to enlarger, trays, chem bottles, camera lenses, everything. He turned out to be a nice and patient guy and explained some of the equipments that I didn't know how to use at the time. I ended up spending 4 hours looking at his arsenal of professional photo equipments. I came out with more photographic knowledge than before, more equipments, and an almost empty wallet. But I was ready to create my own photo lab, and I was excited!!! Many kids at the time just wanted to spend hundreds of dollars perfecting their Street Fighter techniques and such. I had my own darkroom... waaay cool, dude.

Even as digital photography became more prevalent in the late 90s, many professionals laughed at it. The resolution sucked. The color sucked. Everything sucked about it. Some experts estimated that it took 100 years for photography to reach the state of the art quality, and it would take at least a few more decades to do the same, digitally. But Moore's Law proved everyone to be wrong... doubling transistors every 18 months, and doubling computational power every 2 years or so... you continue this trend, and in 10 years, digital photography surpassed everyone's expectations. In less than 10 years, most of the pro photographers were already on digital (digital processing and digital capture).

When I finally parted with my darkroom equipments in 2008, I barely got back any money, after taking in consideration of shipping costs. You see these pictures of the old film equipments? They're no different than what I saw in 1990. The difference is utility-- they were useful in the 1990, and today, they're obsolete and worth very little. Hardly anyone wants to use an enlarger, let alone dealing with stinky chemicals and trays. Digital processing is not just "good enough", it is superior. With one mouse slider in Lightroom/Picasa/Photoshop, you can change contrast in 1 second. You can change the tone in 1 second. You can change the exposure in one second. You can burn and dodge in 10 seconds. A single print that may have taken masters like Ansel Adams hours to create, now takes minutes. In some instances, you can create amazing results in your digital darkroom, in seconds.

See the pictures on this post? Almost everything is worth... $0.00. They have little utility in today's world. The only things that are still worth something... are the lenses. Optics don't change like electronics. No matter what technology you're using, you need to capture light. Optical innovations isn't subject to Moore's Law. You see that old Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.4 above? It's still worth a lot. A good lens in the 70s, is still a good lens today.

It's all about the lenses!

Canon finally reversing their high megapixel trend

Today, Canon announced the Canon G11, a large sized point-and-shoot camera. The intended audience for the G-- series cameras include professionals and serious enthusiasts who use it in conjunction with their big SLR bodies. It is only 10MP. Interesting, the older Canon G10 had a whopping 14MP. It appears that Canon reversed the high-megapixel trend. What happened?

Well, remember the old post I made "High megapixel cameras preferred by lousy photographers"? For the past 3 years or so, Canon has making higher and higher megapixel cameras, esp. on small sensored point-and-shoot cameras. They have been doing so, because the laymen thinks that the higher the megapixel, the better it is. To Canon, the higher megapixels the cameras, the better they sell, so they kept going higher and higher. It is no different than a car maker enticing teenager drivers with meaningless specs like horsepower and torque. In the old days, the higher the horsepower and torque a car had, the better they sold. But then people got smarter, and realized that there was so much more that makes a car than horsepower/torque... things like comfort, mileage, ergonomics, reliability, cost of ownership, insurance rate, etc. As the car manufacturers mature, they started reversing the big horsepower trend.

IMHO, today is the day we can mark that the digital camera market is maturing. The fact that Canon reversed its high-megapixel trend, is a sign that digital camera shoppers are finally getting smarter, and more matured. They are now realizing that higher megapixel doesn't equate to a better camera. Let's take a quick look at images from the old G10. At the lowest ISO of 80, the images from the old Canon G10 (with a whopping 14MP) looks spectacular. But at the higher spectrum (1600-3200), it is completely unusable. It is grainy. It is artificial. It is ugly. As mentioned in my old blog previously, the trade-off for having high megapixel is 1) higher noise at higher ISO and 2) unusable pictures at less than ideal lighting situation. Granted, if the purpose of a camera is to use it during an ideal bright day or in a studio, a high megapixel is perfect for the job. But most people shoot in all conditions, day and night, indoors and outdoors, and most of the time in less than ideal lighting situation.

Let's take a look at a picture from a G10 (Courtesy of http://www.imaging-resource.com/):

100% crop shot at 100 ISO. It's got great tones, colors, and details:

100% crop shot at 1600 ISO. Look at the massive amount of in-camera noise reduction applied to the picture. It's very digital/artificial. It's ugly! We don't need to look at 3200 ISO even though the G10 can go up to 3200 ISO. That high ISO is marketing BS from Canon.

Not many people have had a chance to play with a G11 or look at sample pictures online, but the fact is clear-- Canon is reversing this high-megapixel non-sense. Personally, I think this is an indication that 1) the laymen are slowly recognizing that higher megapixel doesn't equate to better pictures 2) Canon is responding to the market demand, and making a camera that is more capable in less than ideal situations (vs. a high megapixel camera that sells well). In the past few years, numerous posts on photography forums indicate that people are now realizing that high megapixels means trading off resolution for image quality. Kudos to Canon for making a lower megapixel camera that shoots well, and kudos to all the buyers out there resisting buying a camera with high megapixels.

The digital camera market is maturing.