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Ducks and the Sony DSC-H1 |
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A White Paper |
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Part 1 - Overview |
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The H1 Duck Paper Part 1 - Overview
A huge amount of evidence (strictly anecdotal, yet quite convincing) seems to point to a highly unusual relationship between Sony's DSC-H1 camera and... ducks.Yes, ducks. Perhaps "unusual" is not the right word. "Disturbing", "Inexplicable" or "Symbiotic" might be more accurate. It seems that, immediately upon purchasing an H1, each new H1 owner feels an inexplicable, irresistible compulsion to run out and shoot a duck (bad choice of words, "shoot"). Make that "photograph" a duck. Or several. It's an interesting tribal rite-of-passage through which the H1 purchaser becomes an H1 photographer. At first, I though this was due to the H1's uncanny ability to photograph water. What better to establish "entourage" or "point of view" than a duck on the water? After all, a duck is much more interesting than a lily pad or a bulrush (unless, of course, the bulrushes are hiding a small baby in a basket named "Moses"). Subsequently, I came to believe it was some kind of "mythic" relationship. This epiphany came about the day I was hijacked by three ducks in a cemetery. Standing in front of my car, they forced me to a halt. Then, while chatting amongst themselves in a most aggressive fashion, they walked up to my driver's-side window and proceeded to tell me off.
Fig. 1 Aggressive Cemetery Ducks Conferring My initial reaction was that they were demanding to be fed, and had learned this behavior from prior successful encounters. But it never happened to me again unless (and this is the point, dear reader) I had the H1 sitting on the passenger seat. I'm sure they sensed the camera and stopped my car in order to pose. Which they did, on more than one occasion, to their very great satisfaction. Ducks are, after all, rather vain.
Recently, certain members of the DPReview Sony Talk Forum have tried to co-opt the H1 duck. These, of course, are not H1 owners, but owners of other Sony cameras, and even a few (can you believe it?) DSLR owners. They have tried to abrogate the H1 duck to their own purposes. Fortunately, they have pretty much failed since no camera known to man (or woman) takes a true H1 duck picture other than an H1 (although, unfortunately, some H1 owners have managed to take - and post - some severely overexposed and badly composed shots of ducks that looked like they were taken with cell phones. Perhaps they were trying to pass them off as H1 photos using fake EXIF information?).
Others (particularly current and former Sony F828 users) have claimed that the H1 duck evolved from the F828 duck - some terrible shot of a duck used by Sony to promote that camera prior to its release. Nothing could be farther from the truth! A true H1 duck is an excellent duck, not some over-sharpened, under-saturated imitation. Furthermore, you can always tell the F828 duck - it's the one with the purple fringe - and it bears no more relationship to an H1 duck than a mouse does to a mongoose!
Only an H1 produces an authentic H1 duck.
I will take some small credit for the creation of the H1 duck mythos. And I will give some small credit to Mr. R2D2, not of Star Wars fame, but of macro-photography-fame, well-earned on the Sony Talk Forum of DPReview. For some time, I had been a bit taken aback by the plethora of H1 ducks showing up on the Sony Talk Forum. So much so, that I'd started to question the very strange relationship that underlies this previously unknown combination. I wrote the following post, as a question of sociology and anthropology more than one of photography:
Well put, no? Mr. R2D2, who has a particularly twisted sense of humor that derives from photographing too many insects eye-to-eye (not to mention his keen eye for hypocrisy, especially mine), took me to task as follows:
And thus was born the H1 Duck ethos. Based firmly on this author's well-held and treasured habit of hypocrisy and R2D2's twisted sense of humor and accountability!
This White Paper is designed to help the uninitiated H1 user bag his (or her) first serious H1 duck, without which they may be considered nothing more than a dilettante by the H1 community. Shooting ducks is very different from shooting other animals. They pose their own set of challenges and rewards. If you follow the simple concepts outlined below, you should be able to emerge with a fully-qualifying set of H1 ducks.
It is all about exposure. Exposure determines whether you get a duck or not, and whether you join the ranks of the H1 community or languish on the outside, looking in. Exposure can be summed up quite simply: If there are no ducks, you will not get a good duck picture. Conversely, if there is a duck, you may:
fig 2. Underexposure - A pond with no ducks (goldfish do not count)
fig.3 Overexposure - A pond with too many ducks (simulation)
fig 4. Correct Exposure - A Pond with a
few ducks. A small flock As you can readily see from the examples above, two or three ducks make a good H1 duck photo. Any more and you dramatically increase the risk of encountering violent food fights or impolite mating rituals!
fig. 5 Capturing swimming motion Of course, using the H1's powerful image stabilization, you should be able to stop motion at almost any speed:
fig. 6 Stopping motion The Telephoto Duck Due to the remarkable 432 mm zoom lens of the H1, you can get quite close to a duck without getting too close to a duck. That can be important since duck droppings tend to be much larger than sparrow droppings. Also, ducks are very self-conscious (especially H1 ducks) and if they think you are getting too close, they will automatically bob their heads in the water for a quick facial. Which may leave you with an unexpected POV (point of view):.
fig. 7 Reverse duck portrait Note: This picture was probably not taken with an H1. All illustrations used in this manual to demonstrate improper techniques were taken with a camera other than the H1. In any case, serious duck-butt photographers generally prefer to use DSLRs. As impressive as an expensive DSLR lens may be, the telephoto capabilities of the H1's marvelous lens can yield some truly interesting possibilities for the photographer to express his (or her) artistic imperatives. The H1 lens offers unique perspectives not found in reality; it brings a fresh eye to the H1 duck. Some illustrations:
fig. 8 Tele duck No. 1 (333.33 mm equivalent)
fig. 9 Tele duck No. 2 (431 7/8 mm equivalent)
fig. 10 Tele duck No. 3 (432.254 mm equivalent) Note how the three preceding examples taken together not only demonstrate the amazing reach of the H1, but impart a real feeling for the duck and its environment. Well done! (Prints available online).
I would be remiss if I did not urge you to take advantage of Sony's amazing VCL-DUCK1758 tele-converter-adapter-add-on lens. It allows you to get even closer, more intimate, with your subject (though, in all honesty, I'm unsure how intimate one should get with a duck, even an H1 duck). The following demonstrates how marvelously close you can get with the H1 and the tele-adapter, and what a unique point-of-view you can achieve:
fig. 10 Tele duck with adapter and Canon 250d closeup lens (722.3561 mm equivalent) Look at the incredible resolution the H1 delivers on a tight closeup on the Duck's eye. There is no other camera that can do this:
fig. 11 Tele duck with DUCK 1758 adapter, Canon 250d closeup lens, reversed 50 mm prime and 7X50 Zeiss binoculars (1524.00365 mm equivalent) The Wide-Angle Duck Shooting your H1 duck in wide-angle can result in perspective distortion, parallax distortion, and, worst of all, duck distortion (see example below)
fig. 12 Wide-Angle Duck Unfortunately, unlike perspective distortion, there is no Photoshop tool to correct duck distortion. Hopefully, Adobe will add one in the next release. Note: An interesting sidelight about the H1 Duck is that it does not suffer from either barrel distortion or pincushion distortion. That is primarily due to the fact that a) ducks do not particularly like barrels and b) it is exceedingly uncommon to find a pincushion in a pond. One interesting use of Wide-Angle H1 ducks is in creating a panorama, or what is known, in this case, as a duckorama:
fig. 13 Duckorama Note: I cannot, in good conscience, recommend the Wide-Angle H1 Duck. By its very nature, the H1 Duck is a telephoto, or at worst, a medium-distance duck. I suggest that you leave wide duck photography to cameras like Sony's R-1. The R-1 has an excellent wide-angle Zeiss lens (24.000034527 mm) and many more multi megapixels. Furthermore, since the best ducks are, by far, the H1 ducks, you really should leave a little something for photographers who own other cameras. Note the tack-sharp image and the impressive wide-angle reach of the R-1 duck below:
fig. 14 Sample of R-1 Wide-Angle Duck (simulated - 24.0000388859476 mm) Focus Even though the H1's lens is quite sharp and its image stabilization system quite effective and its autofocus quite fast, it is still possible to end up, occasionally, with a slightly soft H1 duck.
fig.15 "Soft" H1 Duck Not to worry. There are wonderfully effective post-processing tools that will help you get back to the crispness and clarity that characterize the best H1 Ducks. One of the most commonly used is Photoshop's UnDuckMask (UDM) However, you have to be very careful not to apply too much sharpening or your H1 Duck will suffer from sharpening halos, which can cause your photo to look "unreal" as in the illustration below:
fig. 16 Sharpening halo With a certain degree of reticence and care, you can get a beautifully crisp H1 Duck without suffering the unfortunate side-effects of over-sharpening.
In this author's opinion, the H1 has taken a bum rap as a camera that doesn't do well at noise-free low-light photography. This is simply not true. Low-light ducks are difficult to capture with any camera. And the H1 duck is not inherently noisier than any other kind of duck. The following is an example of low-light duck noise in the H1:
fig. 18 Noisy Low-Light Duck Photo (62.048884998998801 mm) If you are forced by circumstances into shooting under such adverse conditions that you end up with low-light duck noise, there are many tools available to easily cure this condition: Duck Ninja, Duckware Professional and Neat Duck, among others. Even Photoshop has a duck noise-reduction tool, but I don't recommend it. For whatever reason, Adobe elected to place this tool on the Distort menu, and many ducks (and those who photograph them) are offended by this. There is nothing distorted about an H1 duck. Warning: Be careful how much duck noise reduction you use. If you apply too much reduction, the end result could end up looking "plasticky". See the illustration that follows:
fig. 19 Over-processed H1 Duck (59.0000233223344562590412125 mm) Macro Duck If you run across an adult male bobbing up and down in the bushes, it may not be your local Pervert-In-The-Park. Indeed, it may be a closeup (macro) photographer bobbing for focus. On the other hand, you should always exercise due caution. After all, the macro photographer may also be your local Pervert-In-The-Park. One never knows!
fig. 21 Macro Photographer (or possibly, Pervert-In-The-Park) The Pervert-In-The-Park is not to be confused with the "Pixel Peeper". A Pixel Peeper is someone who does not take photographs, but spends an inordinate amount of time looking at huge enlargements of photographs to determine whether secret alien messages have been encoded in their pixels. While annoying, a Pixel Peeper is generally not dangerous (unlike the Pervert-In-The-Park). Fortunately, H1 ducks are rarely perused by Pixel Peepers, so you should be relatively safe. WARNING: Do not use macro lenses or closeup lenses when shooting an H1 duck - it could be dangerous to your camera and/or your health. Bobbing for ducks is never a good idea! It can result in unintended consequences. See example below:
fig. 22 Macro photographer: bobbed too close (102.102103104105106017109110 mm) Photo by professional. Do not attempt this at home! Summary Sony's DSC-H1 may be the best duck camera available today. Certainly, it's the only camera that produces true H1 ducks - though there are many pretenders and "wannabes", none of which are authentic. By following the simple instructions and cautions in this article, you should be able to create your qualifying H1 duck picture and assume your rightful place as a full-fledged H1 Photographer. Quack.
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