A night shoot in Zionsville, Ind.

In a final push to capture nighttime holiday decorations, I accompanied a group of photo enthusiasts to the town of Zionsville, a northwest suburb of Indianapolis, on Thursday night, two days before Christmas. It was my fourth or fifth opportunity to put my new PowerShot G12 to the test, and I remain pleasantly impressed with its ability to deliver fine, sharp RAW images at shutter speeds as slow as 1/15 and even an occasional 1/6. Those were my default settings using Program mode and an ISO of 1600.

We were hoping to hook up with the Indianapolis Hiking Club, which was having its annual tour of Zionsville and Chocolate shop stop outing. But by the time we got out of the eatery where we dined beforehand, we apparently had missed the rendezvous. The four of us meanered through the nearby neighborhood then returned downtown to shoot.

We ended the evening in the upstairs restaurant called Plum's Upper Room, where we had a chance to experiment with different still life opportunities using our plate and drink dishes as subjects. Our nice waiter, seeing us shoot away, even brought over an empty wine bottle, suggesting that it might make for an interesting subject of our images. He was right.

I also tinkered, for the first time, with the HDR (high-dynamic range) feature on the G12; it captures three images at different exposures with one press of the shutter, then automatically melds the best exposure elements of each of those three captures into one, amply-exposed image. You get the best brightness, best contrast and best dark characteristics of the image. Because you are shooting multiple images when using HDR, you need to use a tripod to ensure stability (no camera shake). I didn't have a tripod, so I rested the G12 on the table. The HDR feature is an "automatic," not "creative," mode, however, which means the image will be rendered as a JPG, not a RAW data file. That was fine with me, as I didn't buy the camera for this feature, though it did pique my interest. However, I did like what I saw of it, and I'm likely to explore it more. I'll show you a frame from one of those HDR images near the bottom of this post.

A lot of the shots you see in the second half of the photos are looking into window displays of downtown Zionsville storefronts. The lead image at the very top of this post features two Zionsville landmarks: In the foreground, the Christmas tree that the town erects in the middle of brick-covered Main Street each December. And yes, cars respectfully drive around it. The structure in the background is Carter's Toy Museum and Ice Cream Parlor.

The first several images below are simply homes within a two- to three-block range of the heart of downtown.

To view full galleries of my shoot at Zionsville and the Plum's Restaurant, where I stopped afterward. follow the respective links in this sentence.

 

I would like to have tried to capture the tree above with a DSLR mounted on a tripod and equipped with a wide-angle lens. But as it is, it didn't turn out too bad.

 

The angle gives the illusion that this street lamp is ensnarled by leafless branches. But in fact, the lamp hovers well away from the branches.

Above, a member of the photo group silhouetted while taking a shot of the most spectacular home we came across. We chatted briefly with a resident of this home who had come out to go to her car to run an errand. The image above and the next three below are from the same residence.

 

Above, a holiday decoration in the display window of the studio, shop and gallery of "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade.

Above, another juxtaposed illusion: The colored-lighted building in the background is about a block away from this Zionsville street clock.
 

Above and below: Two frames from the 15 or 16 I took of the combination of candleholders, water glass and wine bottle.

Above: New props: a dish with leftover brownie and orange slice (two forks indicating the person who ordered it -- not me -- offered to share) and a saucer and expresso cup.

The picture above is the HDR-treated capture. Notice the background details picked up and the milky brown color tones to the table, which was actually very close to what I remember of the table's color. You can see from the pictures above this, however, that the single-exposure, non-HDR treated photos pick up very little by way of background.

Above and below: I couldn't decide which of these -- color or B/W -- I liked better.

Above: A college sports-neutral retailer displaying the logos of Butler, Indiana and Purdue.

 

Above: It seems like model trains are part of so many decorative holiday displays this season. The gnomes on the right are a different touch, however.

Above: An exterior shot of the studio and shop (the Sanctuary) and restaurant (Ghyslain at the Sanctuary) owned by painter Nancy A. Noel.

Above: A horn of plenty, but hardly plentiful, in another window display among the downtown shops.

Blogger's note: Plum's Upper Room closed in 2014.

Visiting the sunny side of life ...

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine. ~ Jeffrey Glassberg

After numerous disappointments in trying to capture a closeup of a butterfly, serendipity visited Saturday as I strode home from another shoot within walking distance.

The butterfly you see above was fluttering in the circular garden of my backyard, where zinias and blue buttons grow. I shot this with my 300D -- the first-generation Canon Digital Rebel -- and Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. If the now relic of a camera (in digital technology years!) weren't so darn slow in processing RAW-size files, I might have been luckier to get off several other good frames while the background was still in my favor.

Though I did get additional shots, none had the background as this, the first.

Nikon heads laboratory's list of top RAW-sensor performers

Nikon holds the top three positions in a criteria-based laboratory evaluation of the RAW-sensor performances of current-market digital cameras.

Dxomark.com, a Web site created and developed by DxO Labs, claims its ratings provide the first publicly accessible database of objective and in-depth RAW sensor image quality measurements.

Not only do Nikon bodies -- led by the 2-month-old D3x (a curiously virtual clone of the D3 but costing quite a bit more money) -- hold the top three positions on the DxO Labs' rankings of cameras' RAW-sensor performance, but they also claim four positions in the Top Ten and eight of the Top 25. Canon, led by the 1Ds Mark III at No. 4, claims five spots in the Top Ten and 13 total in the Top 25 -- but also positions 26, 27 and 28.

DxO evaluates RAW-sensor performance on the basis of color depth, dynamic range and low-light ISO. Using those criteria, here are DxO's Top Ten rankings and ratings (with 100 being perfect) of digital cameras -- almost all of which are single-lens reflex -- on the basis of their RAW-sensor peformance:

1. Nikon D3x -- 88

2. Nikon D3 -- 80.6

3. Nikon D700 - 80.5

4. Canon 1Ds Mark III - 80.3

5. Canon 5D Mark II - 79

6. Sony A900 - 78.9

7. Canon 1Ds Mark II - 74

8. Nikon D90 - 72.6

9. Canon 1D Mark III - 71

10. Canon 5D - 70.9

RAW-sensor performance is important for many pro-level photographers; RAW is the image format many shooters choose (instead of jpegs) when taking their pictures because it contains more pixel data and information (12 to 14 bits, usually) than the more-compressed jpeg (8 bits). Therefore, such things as brightness, contrast, tone, color and dynamic range can be more easily, precisely and effectively manipulated in RAW format after shooting than a jpeg can be modified with post-processing software.

The tradeoff of RAW images is that they use up a significantly greater amount of space on memory cards than jpegs and, in some cases, require special software to move from the camera to a post-processing platform. However, once a photographer has worked with a RAW image to perfect its final version, the RAW image can be converted to the smaller jpeg format.

Pentax's top performer in DxO Labs' evaluations is the K10D, ranked No. 12 with a rating of 66.9; Samsung's GX 20 slips in just ahead of the K10D at No. 11 with a rating of 68.7.

The only other non-Canon or Nikon camera appearing in the Top 25 is the Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro, which is No. 19 with a rating of 65.3.

Click here to see a full list of the top 50+ RAW-sensor performance ratings by DxO.