A picture of an elusive snow leopard on a night-time prowl has won the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 award.

Steve Winter’s image was captured during a 13-month quest to snap the perfect photo of the endangered species in its hostile habitat high in the mountains of Central Asia.

BBC article by Mark Kinver

This is pretty amazing stuff. Both the BBC article, and the extended gallery at the Natural History Museum are worth a visit.

Photokina 2008: The Metadata Working Group, an alliance between Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony has published its first guidelines on the use of image metadata. The guidelines suggest methods to increase interoperability and storage of shooting settings and other associated data in digital images. It aims at standardizing the availability of metadata across all applications and devices, making it easier for users to create, organize and share their pictures.

I’m really glad to see this initiative taking off. More at DP Review

Or download the specification (PDF: 1.7M) from the Metadata Working Group website.

Nikon D700

DX vs FX format

In my humble opinion, the DX format has been a monumental waste of our precious terrestrial resources. Consider all those millions of DX lenses that have been produced over the last couple of years. At some stage they will no longer be used, while early AF Nikkors dating back to the 80s & 90s will still keep powering our FX cameras.

While this won’t happen overnight the FX format is likely to be taken up by many photographers when they next upgrade. Photographers will have to take this switch to FX format into consideration when deciding on whether to buy DX or FX lenses: while DX lenses are (still) cheaper, they can’t take advantage of the quality that can be achieved by FX sensors.

Thankfully Nikon allows their users to switch between DX and FX formats on the same camera, so the switch from DX to FX can be made gradually.

It will be interesting to see what Canon’s 5D Mk II will bring, and how it will be priced. Perhaps Sony, Olympus or Pentax will introduce a full frame dSLR before too long and things will really heat up…

SB-900 Speedlight

Nikon has also announced their newest addition to their speedlight line up. It has some interesting specs: faster recharge cycles compared to the SB-800, and wider range of the zoom head. Its specs are still very close to that of the SB-600/SB-800 though. I doubt whether many photographers will use the need to upgrade their old speedlights.

Still no Nikon RAW compact camera

I am still waiting for a Nikon compact that supports RAW files. Nikon used to build RAW support into some of their compacts—but that was some time ago.

Instead Nikon has jumped on the bandwagon and helped saturate the market with the same type of cameras as other manufacturers have produced—it’s clone central out there. Perhaps they have learned from Canon’s recent success with the Powershot G9 (heck, I bought one).

And while we are on the topic of enlarged sensors, why not build a compact with a DX sized sensor like the Sigma DP1? A DX sensor is almost twice as large as they normally are on a compact, and will give serious photographers digital rangefinder cameras with exceptional capabilities.

More Info

• Ken Rockwell on the Nikon D700
• D700 on Nikon’s site
• SB-900 on Nikon’s site
• Sigma’s DP1

Some of the issues we encountered:

• data may or may not be present in Exif headers
• data may be present at different locations
• data may be present in different formats
• data may be present in different formats at different locations with different values

Terminology

For those among us who are new to image tagging, I’ll quickly explain some of the terminology used in this article.

• Exif: an outdated format mainly used for technical image data (aperture, date of capture, etc). This format has served us well up until this point, but it’s time for a replacement.
• IPTC: an outdated format used mainly for user description of the image (where was it taken? what keywords belong to the image? what copyright info?).
• XMP: a relatively new format developed by Adobe. This format could incorporate both Exif and IPTC data. XMP, being XML based, can be extended. For instance, unlike IPTC, it can deal with different character sets.

XMP & Industry Standards

I would really like to see speedy universal adoption of the XMP format. Standards are here for a reason: they generally make our lives more efficient, productive & enjoyable. XMP has the potential to become the imaging industry’s meta data standard. No more “Waiter, there’s a tag in my soup.“

It would be great if Apple would use XMP for tagging in their Aperture suite. As far as I know Adobe has released the XMP toolkit under a standard BSD license, so it allows other manufacturers to integrate it into their own proprietary applications.

Camera manufacturers for some time now have been adding their own “standards.” Enough already with the “Exif MakerFiles.” This is confusing and counter-productive for independent software developers. I venture to suggest it will be equally confusing for the developers employed by the camera manufacturers: “Which standards are we working with today boss?“

The Added Value Of Meta Data

In a time where meta data is becoming increasingly important, we really should pull together and set up & follow industry standards.

For instance, over 3,000 images were added to Flickr in the time it took me to write this sentence. Suppose that a mere 1 percent of these images were properly tagged (keywords/location/etc). That still equates to around 45,000 tagged images per day. This number is likely to increase when people become more aware of the benefits of tagging content and geo-tagging is more widely adopted (wireless meta data transfer between your camera and GPS enabled mobile phone?).

Tagged content has added value for its consumers and ensures it can be found in the first place. Tags could very well be the single most important reason behind the success of Flickr and YouTube. Enough said.

Further Reading

• XMP on Wikipedia
• Adobe on XMP
• ExifTool by Phil Harvey

War Photographer follows photographer James Nachtwey on assignments around the world, including the aftermath of bloodshed in Kosovo, Palestinian uprising in Ramallah and surrealistic labour conditions in a Jakarta sulphur mine (Indonesia). A tiny video camera attached to Nachtwey’s own camera enables the viewer to get a good idea of what Nachtwey is looking at while shooting.

Aside from being an extraordinary photographer, James Nachtwey strikes me as a most honorable human being. Take for instance these words:

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else’s tragedy. This idea haunts me. It’s something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allowed genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person’s predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself.

James Nachtwey

The film was produced, directed and edited by Christian Frei who has since created an equally interesting feature about the destruction of the Giant Buddhas in Afghanistan.

More Info

• Official website of War Photographer
• James Nachtwey’s website
• vii website (the agency Nachtwey works for)
• Buy the DVD from Amazon

Nikon D300

Impressive Specs

• 3-inch LCD with 920,000-dot resolution
• Live View LCD
• Magnesium alloy body
• 51-point autofocus system
• Viewfinder with 100% frame coverage
• Compatible with older lenses (without losing metering — meaning that you can use bellows for Macro photography)

With the D3 Nikon has finally entered the full frame sensor arena. A lot of photographers have waited for this moment. It means that we can finally use proper wide angle lenses, without the annoying crop factor.

The LCD screens will be a real pleasure to use. Both cameras feature a 922k pixel 3-inch screen. That equates to having the same resolution as an older 15″ monitor packed into the 3″ high definition screen.

Another welcome addition is the live preview feature which allows you to hook it up to a laptop. That way you can use the laptop as a large viewfinder.

I’d be very tempted to get a Nikon WT-4 Wireless Transmitter so I could stick the camera on a large pole to take unusual, hard-to-get shots.

D3 vs D300

It is a shame that the D300 does not feature the full frame sensor, since the D3 is not only more expensive but also a lot heavier. I am tempted to purchase the D3 because of its potential benefits for landscape photography, but am reluctant to always have to carry the heavier body (the extra weight is not a problem on short hiking trips, but you will certainly start feeling the weight after several days in rough country).

I still don’t understand why both Canon and Nikon keep coming out with the inbuilt vertical grips for their pro range bodies rather than releasing them separately (like the Nikon D300 and Canon 40d). I’m sure they have their reasons (aside from being able to charge more), but they are not clear to me.

Nikon has also released details of a new professional wide angle zoom lens: AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED. That lens would work like a charm on the full frame D3. Can’t wait!

So, my wish list for Christmas would look like this:

• Nikon D3 (or D300)
• AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
• Nikon WT-4 wireless transmitter (& large pole)
• might as well throw in a GPS gadget while we’re at it (don’t worry, I can always add more items)

The cameras are due to be released in November.

More Details

• D3 on Nikon site
• D3 on DP Review
• Ken Rockwell on the D3
• D300 on Nikon site
• D300 on DP Review
• Ken Rockwell on the D300
• AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED on Nikon site
• Ken Rockwell on the AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED
• WT-4a Wireless Transmitter on Nikon site

Feel free to check it out (naturally, feedback is welcome):
eyeballism.com

Yann Arthus Bertrand, an experienced photographer, has put together a collection of his images taken in over 70 countries. Most photos were shot from a hot air balloon. If you can’t make it to the exhibition itself, make sure to check out the photographer’s website.

You may also be interested in buying his book from Amazon.

Urban Stream, Darling Harbour

Wide variety of excellent images in the collection.

Take your time and read the captions.

You can overdo it however. And that’s what I did. The tricky thing is that what was displayed in the viewfinder didn’t look all that bad. After transfering the images to the computer I was soon convinced otherwise: a very noticable discolouration, and not at all the effect I had in mind. Unless this is the unnatural effect that you’re aiming for, it really is worth heading the warnings by professional photographers when using extreme polarisation in combination with wide angle lenses.

Judge ye self:

Check it out: www.eyeballism.com

For the moment, all writing about photography will stay on this blog with no plans to move it to eyeballism.com

The site uses the excellent lightbox script. That also means that you’ll need one of the more recent browsers to view the content as intended (if you’re still using IE5, or NN4, you’re out of luck–perhaps a good time to upgrade?).

It would be nice to include some of the visual artwork I have created over the years, but the site will focus initially on my photographic explorations due to time limitations.