Hockley Photography

With a forecast in the mid-70s for yesterday, our family wanted to do something in the Portland area outside to enjoy the weather, and naturally I wanted to involve photography. My wife suggested the Portland Japanese Garden, which I’d only been to once (several years prior) and hadn’t taken photos. We looked at their website to get directions and information, and discovered they have a very restrictive photography policy.

In short, there’s a $150/year fee to take any photos which will potentially be used for any sort of commercial effort. If you don’t pay the fee, you have to sign a policy that you will never sell any of the images you take. If you’re like me and shoot stuff and then work on possibly marketing it at a later point, you’re pretty much screwed unless you pay the $150. They don’t allow any portrait photography under any circumstances. If you’re only shooting for personal, non-commercial use and don’t pay the $150 fee, there’s a $2 tripod fee. Everyone who takes photos (with the fee or not) is required to allow their marketing department to use the photos for promotional purposes.

Yes, they’re a private entity and are free to set their own rules. However when the rules are so restrictive that it prevents folks from an enjoyable experience, that’s a loss for the Gardens and a loss for photographers. Based on their restrictive rules, we chose to go elsewhere this weekend.

In the comments to Scott Hanselman’s blog post about our podcast, someone brought up the issue of UV filters, and suggested that one should put a filter on a lens and never take it off. This is an area of debate amongst photographers. On one hand, it sounds like a great idea. Put a piece of glass in front of your expensive lens, and let that glass get any scratches, fingerprints, dust, or other debris which may come into contact with the lens.

There’s a downside, and it’s one that puts me into the “don’t leave a filter on your lens all the time” category. Digital camera sensors are susceptible to lens flare, which is caused by light reflecting back and forth through the various layers of glass in a lens. The result is that bright lights in a photo will often show up mirrored on the “opposite” side of the photo. The problem becomes evident when shooting bright lights, especially lights directed toward the camera. The other downside to having a filter on is that it’s just one more layer of glass for the light to pass though, which will lessen the quality of the image. There are a variety of filters out there, and there are some very good ones that will make image degradation almost unnoticeable, but it’s still there.

Lenses are made from hard glass. About the only time I’d say a filter is good protection is if you’re in a situation such as blowing sand. You’re not going to permanently damage the lens from a light touch. A better protection against hard impacts is the use of a lens hood, which is a hard plastic attachment that goes on the end of the lens and extends outward. Optically, the purpose of a lens hood is to help prevent lens flare from sunlight striking the lens from outward angles, but most lens hoods (for anything but wide angle lenses) will extend at least a couple inches forward, absorbing any impact if you accidentally bump the lens into a wall or god forbid drop it and it lands lens-down.

When I’ve spent $1200 on a high-quality “L” series lens, I’m not going to compromise the engineering by adding another layer of glass.

Last week I noticed some information that Nikon is making a strong surge and gain in sales against Canon’s position as the market leader for DSLRs. In 2006, Canon’s market share was 14% above that of Nikon, but for 2007 that margin has dropped to only 3%.

Why the big change in one year? Are Canon’s products getting worse? Does Nikon offer a much better product all of a sudden? I don’t think it’s anything like that… I think it’s simply a question of product placement and availability.

When Canon introduced the original Digital Rebel (300D) in 2003, they offered the first sub-$1000 consumer/prosumer DSLR. Getting the cost down below $1000 led to a bunch of serious hobbyists buying the Canon DSLRs. At this time, the only Nikon options were much more expensive; Nikon simply didn’t have a product offering in this range. Nikon didn’t break the sub-$1000 mark until a year later with the D70.

The other factor I’ve noticed as I go about life is that I’m starting to see the Nikon products in a lot of places. Costco has been a big distribution outlet. They literally have palettes of Nikon D40x cameras right up front, for around $500. Mass marketing works.

My prediction is that we’ll see Nikon and Canon remain a few points apart, with neither holding a commanding lead. And that’s a good thing; it will keep them competing and giving us new features at affordable prices.

On a related note, if you want to see a couple of cool charts showing the timeframes for Canon and Nikon’s DSLR products, go here (Canon) or here (Nikon) and scroll down to the bottom.

Responding to the public outcry over the breadth of licensing conditions in Adobe’s original license for Photoshop Express (previous blog post), Adobe has posted a new Terms of Use Agreement to take effect on April 10th. They removed the part of the license agreement which drew the most ire; users no longer give Adobe the rights to use the images for any purpose whatsoever.

The new terms contain an interesting section about rights given to other users. Take a look at sections 6 and 7… here’s an excerpt:

You hereby grant Other Users a worldwide (because the internet is global), royalty-free (meaning that Other Users do not owe you any money), nonexclusive (meaning you are free to license Your Content to others) license to view, download, print, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display Your Shared Content subject to the limitations in Section 7.

It’s no longer a rights grab by Adobe, but posting any material for viewing apparently lets anyone use your content for any number of purposes. Again, it’s not a license I can agree with for my work.

If you want any sort of control over your work, take a few minutes and read the terms for any services used. Caveat emptor.