Depth of Field Experiments – Parts 2 and 3

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Keithius

You might remember my previous experiments with depth of field - well, with my new camera (and new lenses), I decided to re-run those experiments.

As a refresher, this is the result of my first experiment with trying to control depth of field:

This was taken with my old Canon PowerShot S3 IS camera, with an aperture of f/3.5, an exposure of 1/8th of a second, and a focal length of 25.2mm (equivalent to 159mm in traditional 35mm terms).

In other words, to get this effect, I had to zoom in a bit and set the focus as close as I could to the front bottle of wine. Even so, the bottles in the back, although blurred, were still identifiable. My old camera (like most point & shoot or non-interchangeable lens cameras) was just not capable of creating very shallow depth of field (at least, outside of super-macro mode when focusing on something only an inch away from the lens).

When I got my new camera, one of the first things I did was re-run this experiment.

This was the best I could do with the stock (kit) lens that came with my new camera. This was taken with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2 camera, using a 14-42mm (28-84mm in 35mm terms) f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. The aperture was f/3.5 (as in my previous experiment) and the exposure was 1/13th of a second, with a focal length of 42mm (84mm equivalent).

As you can see, the results were pretty much the same as in my original experiment, with perhaps a little bit more background blur, due largely to the fact that my new camera has a larger sensor (and thus, as I’ve mentioned before, the same f-stop number actually means a slightly larger physical aperture).

More recently, however, I got a new, faster lens (that is, one with a larger aperture – meaning, a smaller maximum f-stop number). Specifically, I got a 20mm (40mm equiv.) f/1.7 lens.

Naturally, almost as soon as I got it, I tried re-running my experiment again. (I was in a bit of a hurry though, so I didn’t pull out all my wine bottles; instead I opted for just one.) This was the result:

The larger aperture (smaller f-number) of this new lens gives a very, very shallow depth of field, allowing me to completely blur out the background.

This picture was taken at the same place as all the others, but now the background (in particular, the orange & red wall hanging) is much, much more blurred out – almost to the point where you can’t make out what it is.

This last picture’s technical details are: 20mm (40mm equiv.), f/1.7, and 1/50th of a second exposure.

As you can see, with the much larger aperture, I was finally able to achieve that shallow depth of field I’d always wanted.

Even though this new lens has a fixed focal length (a.k.a. it’s a “prime” lens, meaning it can’t zoom at all), it is now my go-to lens, especially for indoors photos. That’s because, in addition to the nice shallow depth of field, the larger aperture also means it lets in more light, which lets me take photos in low light (e.g., indoors) at a faster shutter speed (and also, lower ISO setting) than my other lens or my old camera could.

In the end, all these experiments with depth of field and different lenses (and cameras!) have taught me a lot, and helped me get a “gut feeling” understanding of depth of field and focus and how they relate to one another. (Time will tell whether this actually leads to taking better photos.)

Thoughts about “Occupy Wall Street”

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Keithius

I’ve been thinking about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement a lot over the last few months, watching how things played out. I’ve been particularly interested since the movement was happening a scant 30 miles to my east (not quite “in my backyard,” but close enough).

At first it started with curiosity – “will this movement grow large enough to get any attention?” But then it moved to sympathy and finally to understanding.

I watched as TV and Internet news outlets complained that Occupy Wall Street had no “clear message” or “demands,” and at first I wondered if this really was a problem – but then I realized that the people complaining about “no message” were completely missing the point.

The message of Occupy Wall Street isn’t going to be found on any sign, or really in anything that any one person says. Instead, the message is the fact that the movement exists at all.

That a very large group of people have managed to organize mass protests – both here in New York City as well as around the world – is more of a message than any sign, banner, or chant you might hear at any one particular movement site.

These people – the ordinary, everyday people who showed up to the Occupy movement for days or even weeks and months – are very, very, very frustrated and angry. They are protesting like this because they think this is their only choice, the only option they have left, since all of the more normal and regular options one might use (voting, writing to Congress, etc.) have proven to be ineffective. More specifically, the other options these people have to express and influence social/political ideas have not just become ineffective, they have been totally subverted.

To many of these people, the current political climate must feel like a bad dream, one of those awful nightmares where you are in trouble and screaming for help but your voice isn’t working and no one can hear you.

This is why they’ve turned to protests like this. This is what I think Occupy Wall Street is all about. The many different things you’ll see on protest signs & so forth at any given “Occupy” movement site are just the symptoms of a bigger underlying problem. It’s not the things themselves, but the fact that these things were allowed to happen that is the problem. It’s the disconnect between ordinary people (e.g., the middle class) and politics that is the problem.

So if you’re a politician looking for some “action items” to take away from the Occupy Wall Street protests, let me offer this: listen to your constituents – I mean really listen – and remember that laws need to not just be fair, they need to feel fair – because when they aren’t, people really get mad.

Why SOPA Must Die

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Keithius

[It's taken me a while to get my thoughts in order regarding this issue, especially since so many others have already spoken about it more eloquently than I ever could. But this is such an important topic, and it has been weighing on my mind so heavily as of late, that I just couldn't wait any longer - I had to put my thoughts down in words.]

SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act; H.R. 3261) is a bill before the United States House of Representatives. In brief, it allows both the Department of Justice and copyright holders to request court orders against websites that are allegedly distributing copyrighted material without permission, or are just enabling others to do so. These court orders can require payment processors (e.g., PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, etc.) to freeze accounts, force search engines to de-list the accused website, and require ISPs to block the site’s DNS records.

(Strangely enough, the act also contains some other similar provisions for websites selling discount prescription drugs and surplus military hardware, of all things.)

The freezing of accounts is bad enough, but the blocking of DNS records is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this bill, as this amounts to no less than outright censorship of the Internet, similar to that seen in places like China and Iran.

I have a number of concerns with this bill, but I will just stick to the top few, the ones I think are the most egregious.

Lack of Due Process

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of this bill is its removal of the protection of due process for the accused. The 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to due process, but this bill almost completely denies that right to those accused under its terms.

The right to due process is one of those really important rights for any free society – right up there with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to a trial by jury.

SOPA circumvents due process by making it so that the government (on the say-so of a copyright holder) has the right to take away something of yours (your website, and/or your money) without giving you a chance to challenge this. The takedown actions authorized under SOPA are effective immediately, and there is little to no burden of proof on those asking for the takedown, and even less chance of retribution on those asking for the takedown should their claims later be proven false.

Immediate action can be understandable in some circumstances (child kidnapping, serial killers, etc.), but for something as mundane as copyright infringement, it seems a bit excessive.

Which brings me to my next point…

Excessively Broad

The text of SOPA is purposefully very, very, very broadly written. This, I think, stems from a desire to sort of “cover your bases,” by trying to be as broad as possible so there are no loopholes.

Unfortunately, in this case the broad language simply serves to make this bill applicable to almost everything, in the same way that a law that said “any type of death threat, no matter what counts as attempted murder” is applicable to almost anything. If our actual criminal statues were worded this broadly, every single one of us would be in jail by now, because there is not a one of us who hasn’t at some point in our lives done something that could be construed as a death threat – from angry words during an argument to giving a rude gesture while driving.

This sort of broad, sweeping language doesn’t work for criminal law, and it doesn’t work for SOPA either.

SOPA claims to be aimed at stopping large-scale for-profit copyright infringement, but the actual text means the law would apply to any type of copyright infringement, no matter how small or insignificant.

Stupidly Unenforceable

The Internet is a global network. But the people who wrote SOPA seem to think that the only part of the Internet that counts is the part that’s in the United States.

This is so stupidly untrue as to not require further elaboration.

SOPA would allow blocking of websites for copyright infringement… but it claims to be aimed at “foreign” websites. And the only blocking it authorizes is to block those sites from being seen by… Americans. So, it doesn’t actually “block” the sites, it just blocks them from being seen in America. Anyone in the rest of the world can keep on visiting the site, and download unauthorized copyrighted material to their hearts content.

Your guess as to how, exactly, this is supposed to “stop online piracy” is as good as mine.

Ultimately Ineffective

The website blocking authorized by SOPA is done at the DNS level – meaning that it simply stops DNS servers (only in the U.S., as I mentioned above) from resolving the site’s domain name to its numerical IP address.

Which means that if the site www.example.com was blocked, but you knew it’s IP address (e.g., 192.168.55.34), you could just type in the numerical address instead, and it would work just fine.

This is the most obvious example as to why SOPA would be ultimately ineffective at its stated purpose – that is, stopping “online piracy.”

This is a bit like covering your eyes while witnessing a crime, and saying “I can’t see it, so it’s not happening.”

Some of the other aspects of the act – for example, forcing payment gateways (such as PayPal or Visa or MasterCard, etc.), to freeze the accounts of the website’s owners – might be somewhat effective, but again, remember that this only affects payment gateways within the United States. If a “foreign” website is distributing unauthorized copyrighted material for profit, chances are they are going to use a “foreign” payment gateway as well. So, once again, SOPA achieves nothing towards its stated goal.

It Is Censorship

Obviously, SOPA was not designed as censorship per se, but due to the way it is structured, it would effectively be censorship.

Remember, SOPA allows someone to claim you are violating their copyright, and have your site completely blocked.

This is true even if it turns out that you were not violating their copyright, or that your use of copyrighted material falls under “fair use.”

Now, imagine that you are a big website (like, say, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, or Twitter) – are you going to want to run the risk of having your site suddenly blocked because one of your users uploaded something that is copyrighted (even if it is ultimately found to be fair use)? Of course not!

Even though sites like Facebook and YouTube are probably big enough to get unblocked fairly quickly, the simple threat of being blocked at a moments notice is enough to force them – out of simple self-preservation – to severely censor their users. They just can’t take the risk – the potential harm to them (having their site blocked) is too great to even risk letting users upload anything that might, possibly, maybe, be considered copyright infringement.

Out of Proportion

We’ve seen how SOPA is carrying a pretty big stick when it comes to enforcement. But let’s think for a moment about what it is meant to be stopping, exactly:

Copyright Infringement.

Not “piracy,” not “theft of intellectual property,” but simple infringement of copyright.

Copyright, remember, is not a “fundamental” or “universal” right. It is a (time-limited) government granted monopoly on things you create, to encourage people to create things, knowing that others can’t just take what you’ve done for free and make money from it. It’s an incentive to create – nothing more, and nothing less.

Now consider that SOPA would make copyright infringement a felony.

Think about that for a moment – this law would make illegally copying someone’s work be on the same criminal level as murder and kidnapping.

The other aspects of SOPA – blocking websites and freezing accounts – are also wildly out of proportion with the actual harm done.

Imagine if other laws worked the same way – for example, if a particular neighborhood was known to have a lot of shoplifters stealing, say, packs of gum. The whole neighborhood could find itself suddenly and without warning shut down – no power, no electricity, all roads blocked off and the whole neighborhood under martial law. And all this would happen on the say-so of the gum manufacturer who complained about their products being stolen frequently.

If that seems a bit excessive, consider that this is exactly what SOPA would do, except for copyright violation instead of petty shoplifting.

Online piracy – which is just shorthand for “copyright infringement on the Internet” – is not equivalent to physical theft, despite what some people would like you to believe. If anything, it is a lesser crime than physical theft, which is why SOPA is such a terrible idea – it is wildly out of proportion with the crime it is trying to prevent.

Unfairly Biased

If you have any doubt that the movie and music industries are the major reason why this bill exists, consider this: there is a clause in the act which specifically makes streaming copyrighted content a felony.

Remember that any type of content you can create is automatically covered by copyright. Your kindergartener’s crayon drawing? Covered by copyright. Your vacation photos and home movies? Covered by copyright. That sculpture you made back in art class in college? Covered by copyright. Even the words you’re reading right now are covered by copyright.

But what sorts of content can be “streamed?” Well, you can’t very well stream a drawing, or a photo, or a sculpture. But you can stream music and movies – which are the things that are specifically made into a felony by SOPA.

If that doesn’t convince you that this act was primarily written by and for the movie and music industries, I don’t know what will.

SOPA Must Die

There are so many things wrong with SOPA that I couldn’t hope to cover them all – but I’d like to think I’ve at least covered the big ones. On top of that, it doesn’t help that the people writing and debating this bill admit that they don’t understand the issues involved.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think of ways that SOPA could be revised to make it less awful, but there simply is too much wrong with it to be worth salvaging – which is why SOPA must die. It simply is not salvageable as a piece of legislation, and trying to revise it just risks having some of its harmful provisions slip through. It should just be thrown away, and some other more specific and less broad legislation could be drafted instead.

Now, let’s be clear – I’m not saying that online copyright infringement isn’t a problem; far from it. But SOPA is not the answer. We already have the DMCA, which is not perfect (far from it, in fact), but it at least does not have the same problems I’ve outlined here (in particular, the DMCA at least does provide for due process, and it is a much more “surgical” tool for combating copyright infringement, unlike SOPA, which is more like a tactical nuclear bomb in comparison).

Unfortunately, right now the only voices Congress is hearing in regards to these issues come from the movie and music industries, which as I’ve said before, are the ones for whom SOPA (and its Senate cousin, the PROTECT IP Act) was written.

SOPA must be stopped, and it is up to us to remind Congress of this simple and inarguable fact.

If you haven’t done so already, call or email your representative and let them know what you think. Hearing the voices of the people is the only way a democracy can work – so speak now, or forever hold your [CENSORED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT].

New Year, New Camera

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Keithius

OK, so it’s not quite the new year yet… but it’s close enough. I finally decided to pick up that camera I’d been looking at - a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2 – and it arrived yesterday. So even before the battery is finished charging, I’d already started taking comparison pictures. (Why yes, I am a huge geek, why do you ask?)

As you can see, the new Lumix DMC-G2 is almost exactly the same size (and weight) as my venerable old PowerShot S3 IS. This is great for me because I don’t need to buy a new camera bag or anything – it fits just fine in the bag I already have. Also, I don’t have to worry about straining my neck while carrying this thing, since it’s almost exactly the same weight as well. A big fancy camera is nice and all, until you have to lug it around all day on your neck.

Like my old Canon, the Lumix has an electronic viewfinder built-in along with a swivel screen, both of which are features I really like. The Lumix does have a few more buttons on it, but it’s not really that many more.

Here’s a front view of the two cameras side-by-side – old vs. new. I keep the extension tube on the Canon all the time, which is why it looks almost the same size. If it wasn’t attached, the Canon would be much shorter – although when the camera is on, the zoom lens does extend a bit.

I opted to buy the “kit” lens to start with – it’s a 14mm-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens (with the 2x crop factor in Micro Four Thirds cameras, this means it’s equivalent to a 28mm-84mm lens on a more traditional SLR camera).

Some people look down at kit lenses, and I can understand why. Since the kit lens is often the first lens you own, you want to use it for everything (it’s often the ONLY lens you own, at least at first), so it needs to be reasonably good at many things… which of course tends to mean that it’s not particularly great at any one thing.

However, I wouldn’t knock this lens – I may not have much experience with interchangeable lenses, but this one seems quite solid, it’s not too heavy, and (so far anyway) the pictures it produces are quite nice and free of noticeable aberrations.

Eventually I’ll want to pick up a so-called “pancake” lens (a fast one – that is, one with a very low maximum f-stop number, meaning a very large maximum aperture) with a fixed focal length, but for now, this lens will do.

As I may have mentioned before, the screen on the DMC-G2 is not just a swivel screen, it’s also a touch screen, which is very clever. You can just touch the screen to set the auto-focus point, which is really, really, really easy compared to using the 4-way controller and the menus to move it around.

I doubt I’ll use the touch screen for more than the focusing, though. Most of the other menus are just as easy to get to using the 4-way controller, and that way I don’t have to get the screen dirty.

One nice thing about this camera compared to my old one is that the eyepiece for the viewfinder sticks out a bit more – this makes it more comfortable to look through, since your nose is not squished up against the back of the camera. Very nice.

For now, I’m leaving the lens hood on, but very soon I’ll pick up some UV filters for the end, and I think I’ll keep them on – I’ve never been a fan of keeping the lens hood on your camera all the time.

Fortunately, some of my old filters can still be used on this camera. My ND-Grad filters, for example, came with 2 mounts and 2 adapter rings, one for a 58mm mount (which is what the extension tube on my old Canon is) and one for a 52mm mount (which is what my new lens uses). I’ll need to get a new UV and polarizing filter though – but fortunately those are not at all expensive. (Which is a good thing, since the “pancake” lens I hope to get uses yet another different mounting size (46mm and 37mm, depending on whether I get a Panasonic or Olympus lens).

One of the things I’ll be doing right away is re-trying my depth of field experiments – I’ll be sure to post pictures from that as soon as I’m done.

Unfortunately it’s winter right now, which means the scenery is somewhat boring, and it hasn’t snowed since that one weird snowfall in October, so there’s no pretty snow to take pictures of either, so for the moment, I must content myself with taking pictures of things indoors. (My rabbits are going to get lots of screen time, I’m sure.)

Anyway, that’s my new camera – I’m quite pleased with it, and I’ll be sure to post more pictures and updates as time goes on!

Keith’s Anime Reviews: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Keithius

What would you do if you had the ability to go back and relive moments in time?

This is the basic premise of the anime The Girl who Leapt Through Time, a story of a girl (Makoto) who suddenly finds herself with the ability to “leap” through time.

This anime takes a slightly different approach from some other time-travel stories, in that it’s less about the actual traveling through time aspect (or how it’s done specifically), and more about the consequences of having such an ability, and how it can affect the people around you – as well as yourself.

This is an amazingly detailed and thought-provoking anime – so much so, that it could just as easily have been a live-action film (although the larger budget needed for that would probably have precluded it being made in the first place, so let’s be glad it was made as an anime).

Makoto is a pretty normal high school student – a teenager – and even when she gains the ability to “leap” through time, she still acts like one. Think about it – what would you do if you suddenly found you could jump through time as a teenager?

Spend all of your money? Go back in time and get it all over again.
Don’t like what’s for dinner? Jump back to yesterday when you had your favorite dish.
Do bad on a test? Jump back after getting the answers back and do it again.

This is precisely what Makoto does – at first – when she gains the titular ability. However, after a while she starts meddling in other people’s lives – trying to help them out. She’s not malicious or spiteful, she genuinely wants to help her friends and classmates, and she tries to use her power (and her Groundhog Day-like power to know how things will turn out) to make things better for them.

Unfortunately, she’s not very good at it, and she also comes to realize that there are limits on her power – making a perfect day for herself is easy, but trying to make things come out perfectly for everyone you know is much, much harder. Many times she screws things up terribly, and has to jump back in time just to un-do things.

Eventually, she thinks she’s gotten things as good as they can get (more or less), but that’s when she discovers another limit on her time-leaping powers… as well as a personal consequence of her use of those powers that is maybe a bit more than she can bear.

The animation is great – as befits an animated feature-length film – and at no time do things look stereotypically “anime” or cutesy for the sake of being cute. There are a few moments of CG animation cut in, which looks… jarring, to say the least; but these scenes are kind of supposed to be jarring, so it isn’t totally out of place.

The soundtrack to this anime is, quite simply, incredible – subtle and wistful at times, it really helps set the mood. There’s no pop or J-pop music in this soundtrack – instead, most of the music is classical or just subtle, atmospheric instrumental.

In the end, The Girl who Leapt through Time is an absolutely fantastic anime – no, scratch that… it is an absolutely fantastic movie (which just happens to be animated), and one that I think anyone would enjoy. Although it involves time travel, it is not sci-fi or anything; just a solid, timeless, classic, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heart-wrenching story.

I highly recommend it.

Core Dump

What you get when my brain crashes…