Two sunsets in my previous post, and now two photos of rusty stuff for this post! Can you detect a theme here?
This old rust-bucket – Tennant Creek, NT – Nikon Z5with Viltrox 20mm lens
Tennant Creek – Jurnkkurakurr to the Warumungu people who have lived in the area for many thousands of years – is located 1000 kilometres from Darwin. In other words, it’s a long way from any big city! The town features a history of gold mining and some of that equipment and the story of that time can be found in a local museum.
I daresay that many travellers pass through Tennant Creek as quickly as possible, mindful of the stories they’ve heard regarding the residents and crime. Whilst it’s true that a recent history of such social turmoil exists, it’s wise to remember that the land speaks of much older stories and times long before colonialism. As ever, visceral reactions to news stories and statistics obscures the lived experience of local people and ultimately, the real drivers behind social problems.
Another old rust-bucket – Tennant Creek NT – Nikon Z5
Making photos isolates a moment in time. Photos often lack context and tell a story that the photographer wants to tell. The idea that a viewer would have an emotional reaction to a photo drives the work of many photographers. Indeed, street photography is littered with such raw moments and reactions.
Such thoughts enter my mind as I carry the camera and stop at a street corner in Tennant Creek. Rather than lift the viewfinder to my eye, better to think on the people who have lived here for thousands of years and face the cultural whiplash of colonialism and bleak over-representation in the justice system – a system that usually protects the rich and powerful and punishes those who can least endure it.
The Urban Dictionary defines an Opacarophile as someone who loves sunsets. It would be fair to say that many people find beauty in sunsets. Certainly, at the end of a day out on the road, our thoughts turn to whether we’ll find a suitable spot to witness the sunset and make a good photo. There’s always some resigned grumbling when heavy clouds obscure the sun!
The importance of the setting sun
The setting sun signals the end of the day and the turning of the earth. One might ponder our long line of ancestors, staring at the shifting hues and watching the sun retreat below the horizon. Such an event reminds us of our smallness and our place in the world.
Evolutionary science suggests that when we experience the beauty of sunsets, we tap into our evolved aesthetic faculties – brain wiring that allow us to see the rightness or harmony of something in order to judge its value and health. A healthy mate is vital to produce healthy offspring and continue the species, so beauty in this context represents a healthy mate and potential long-term survivability. A beautiful sunset stimulates the same aesthetic faculties that allow us to determine the health of a potential mate and the rightness and harmony of things.
Perhaps that theory is a long-bow to draw for many! My favourite is the Biophilia Hypothesis, which I’ve mentioned in a previous post. The idea that humans are drawn to natural areas because we have a deep-rooted connection to them, having lived in such areas for most of our history, is a compelling one.
Two sunsets, two interpretations
Sunset, Meningie SA – Nikon Z5
Having spent much of the day driving around the Cooring, Meningie provided us with the most wonderful of sunsets. A variety of colours, shifting from moment to moment, reflected in calm water. This single sunset made up for all of the sunsets we missed. Can you spot the lone duck in the above photo?
I’m glad I had my Nikon Z5 with me for this. I’d attached the excellent Nikkor 24-70mm F4 S lens after deciding that my usual lens, the Nikkor 40mm f2, needed a break. I know that many photographers prefer a tripod for such scenes, perhaps combined with Neutral Density filters, but our day-trips are about chance and hope, best represented by hand-holding the camera and moving to the next potential aesthetic wonder.
Sunset, Meningie SA – Nikon Z5
What a difference a moment makes to the colours of a sunset! I’m being a bit cheeky, as the colour in the photo above is actually a momentary interpretation of the automatic white balance in the Z5. Once I saw what white balance it had chosen, I decided to stick with it. The first photo is much more like the original sunset we saw. I simply exaggerated the blues and pinks by setting a Tungsten white balance during editing. It’s one thing I’ve noticed in my Z5: the automatic white balance is sometimes over-eager. Still, I find it’s best to grasp these chance moments and chance settings!
Sometimes, on those long and lonely roads through outback Australia, you come across things you don’t expect to see. Burned out cars flipped on the roadside are commonplace. So too are the broken bottles, campfire ashes, and plastic rubbish that litter desolate truck stops. What you don’t expect to see is an old campground and motel that lies in ruins, featuring an alien and UFO theme. This is Wycliffe Well – once known as Australia’s UFO sighting capital.
Attention Campers – Nikon Z5
In this ruined complex of dormitories, recreation rooms, and offices, we found the remains of glory days, when the site was home to a thriving community looking for their first UFO sighting. The signs are everywhere, including alien murals and painted UFO landings, as well as enigmatic depictions of Karlu Karlu (otherwise known as Devil’s Marbles), providing the geological majesty that perhaps fired the imaginations of UFO spotters who saw lights in the sky around here decades ago.
Welcome – Nikon Z5
The story of the site is a familiar one from a business perspective. It was owned for a long time by one family and managed by an ambitious man who drew upon the UFO mystery to market the facilities effectively to tourists. There were glory days, as the bar and large on-site restaurant provided rollicking evenings of food and music to guests. Finally, they decided to sell up and less enthusiastic owners took the reins whilst promising to repair and maintain the place. It now lies in ruins after flood waters ravaged the site. And there’s little doubt that tourism dried up in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
House 1 – Nikon Z5
It’s an eerie place to explore on the way to somewhere else. Though vandals have long since taken plenty of souvenirs, the site remains a strange and melancholy tribute to outback Australia’s tourist economy and the challenges of surviving in remote locations. Sadly, it’s now at risk of further damage, as huge uncontrolled bush-fires are currently sweeping through the area.
I’m not a scientist. I’m not an engineer of any sort. I’m certainly not a designer of optical devices or digital sensors, just so you know. There has been debate in some corners of the web about old cameras with CCD sensors rendering better colour and their images looking more film-like. I think a pleasing photo is a subjective thing and people are free to decide what that looks like. I’m just curious about the nature of the debate and why people might think this way.
CCD sensors were the dominant type of digital sensors at the dawn of digital photography. Around 2010 or so, CMOS sensors started to appear in new camera models. At the time, I really didn’t think about it, as I couldn’t even afford any of the better CCD cameras anyway. And believe me, there are plenty of CCD cameras that make junk photos! Interestingly, the CCD colour is better pundits rarely discuss those junk cameras, perhaps because their output doesn’t suit the argument that CCD colour is better.
Of Nikons, Canons, Pentax, and Fujifilm
When people talk about those lovely CCD colours, they usually reference the same cameras: most of the early Nikon CCD cameras, the Fuji Super CCD cameras, early Canons and compacts of a certain model, the Olympus Evolt series, the Leica M9, and a handful of compacts with excellent output. Of course, those cameras were always considered excellent. Reviews at the time of their release praised them, so it’s no surprise that they’re still great cameras today.
I used a few CCD cameras at the time, and then moved to CMOS cameras because that’s what was being sold. I don’t remember anyone discussing the merits of CCD colour versus CMOS colour. I do know that the output of many cheap and cheerful CCD cameras at anything higher than 200 ISO is pretty awful – there’s lots of chroma and luminance noise, and the colours don’t look so great. If you read reviews of those old consumer cameras online, you’ll see there was a focus on accuracy of colour. This is because camera makers saturate certain colours to make the output more attractive for consumers.
Consider the quote above about an old CCD camera. Evidence that colour reproduction has always been on the mind of the photographer and that CCD cameras, for all their current hype, have issues with accurate colour reproduction. This is not to say that inaccurate colours are less attractive. Many cameras are sold based on how their on-board JPG conversion software renders colour, after all.
What influences the colour of a digital photo?
First of all, whether it’s a CCD sensor or a CMOS sensor, the sensor itself is actually colour-blind. The sensor only sees lightness/brightness and not colour. The Colour Filter Array on top of this slice of silicon filters wavelengths of light into Red, Green, and Blue. All of this data is transferred to AD converters and the signal amplified. The on-board software takes this data and, in the case of JPG output, it does some clever stuff to render a compressed file. To achieve the Canon look or the Olympus look, or whatever, the software also applies a tone curve, temperature and tint settings, and may saturate certain colours more heavily.
The Fuji-Chrome look in digital
Fuji is pretty well-known for offering users lots of film presets in their digital cameras. These settings emulate some of the qualities of certain films, including colour, grain, and tone curve. The photo above is from an old Fuji Finepix S7000. It’s a JPG straight out of the camera on the Chrome setting. Note that there’s a slight green bias in the white balance, as well as extra contrast. Definitely a pleasing photo.
On some makes of camera, the White Balance is known to bias warmer or cooler. Nikons tend to have a cooler look to photos, and this helps to produce better colour in some scenes where a warmer bias would create unnatural colours, such as in some types of skin tones. But these things largely matter only when JPG file output is needed.
Choice of lens also has some influence on how a photo looks. People talk about the Leica look, for example, noting that there’s some mystique about it. I don’t have the money to buy a Leica of any sort, so it’s hard for me to comment on this phenomenon. What I do know is that a poor lens can produce poor output, and a great lens can produce great output. Leica have always been known for the superiority of their optics, so it’s most likely that the signature Leica look has a lot to do with the contrast and sharpness imparted by the lens.
Hype and reality
So, why are some people talking about the inherent superiority of CCD sensors and how they render colour? Is CCD colour a question of hardware or software? Here are some common reasons and assumptions, including my thoughts on them, from people who believe that CCD sensors produce better or more film-like images:
The old CCD sensors have thicker Colour Filter Arrays that separate colour better and produce stronger images: As I said, I’m no engineer, so this is tough to question. If this is true, then all a camera maker would need to do is to put a thicker CFA on a new CMOS sensor, and it would approximate all of those great colour results from old cameras. I strongly suspect that the CFAs have very little, if anything, to do with it though, given that there are other strong influences on how a photo looks, such as white balance and camera software.
Camera manufacturers stopped using CCD because CMOS was cheaper, which led to less organic images: Companies do things to save money all the time, but would they really intentionally hobble the output of their cameras to the extent that many CCD enthusiasts believe?
Camera X with a CCD sensor makes photos that look so much better than camera Y with a CMOS sensor, so therefore the CCD sensor must be superior: Let us not forget that most CCD pundits never mention all the junk CCD cameras from that era (is anyone talking about those plasticky Nikon L series compacts that produce average photos?). They mostly talk about the CCD cameras that are still good, even today. They were praised then, and they are still making good photos now. I think that some people who were too young to remember the digital transition now cultivate the mistaken assumption that old camera technology is mostly inferior to today’s technology, and that those great cameras from yesteryear make photos look great because there’s some hidden and forgotten technology in them – the CCD sensor.
CCD cameras make images that are film-like: Let us be clear – only film looks like film. I grew up with film cameras and remember the cheap cameras (I couldn’t afford anything else), powerful in-built flashes, and cheap consumer film. I think the look that many young people talk about relates to the softer quality of many film photos due to low-grade lenses and the appearance of highlights from low-priced consumer film cameras. Those old CCD cameras have limited dynamic range, often creating blown highlights. The best CCD sensors, at low ISOs, do produce less digital noise due to the chip’s architecture, and some people say that this means it’s closer to film. But modern CMOS sensors have advanced greatly in these areas and have far more dynamic range, colour accuracy, and noise control. Just look at the crappiest CCD cameras at anything above base ISO and you’ll see some pretty ugly chroma and luminance noise. The best CCD cameras from that era can make some very nice low noise images, even up to 800 ISO, but none of this means it looks like film. Plenty of people know more about it than I do, but film grain is random and organic. Digital noise is square and uniform. Where an old and highly regarded CCD camera may be useful is at the lowest ISOs and almost no perceptible digital noise. That could make for some nice black and white conversions. The low noise might also make it a better fit for overlaying scanned images of film grain. I’ve never seen much point in overlaying film grain over digital photos that already have digital noise.
You’ll have unlimited film-like images if you buy this cheap CCD camera: There are lots of YouTube videos touting the benefits of these old digicams, even going so far as to label them Y2K cameras. This is a hook to lure people in to watching the videos so that the creators can game the algorithm and snag subscribers, with a little magical thinking and potential profiteering thrown in. Growing up, I saw thousands of photos from film cameras of all sorts. The so-called Y2K camera, the moniker itself a pointer to the generational interest in digicams, doesn’t make film-like images.
If you want to read a pretty in-depth, though only loosely scientific, article on CCD versus CMOS colours, take a look at this site. Spoiler alert: there isn’t a visible difference between them for most people, and any colour output differences seem to come down to company preferences with regard to on-board software processing. CMOS also offers so much more low-light performance that it’s little wonder CCD was replaced by it in the end.
There is something curious about the Olympus E-1 I’ve been using recently, in light of this speculation about sensors. The RAW files it produces are not as flat and dull as you’d expect. They require little editing when exposure settings are nailed. Is that the sensor? Maybe. More likely a tone curve applied, though it seems odd that this can be seen in the RAW files? You can read my thoughts about it here.
Nikon Z5, when paired with sharp lenses, can produce wonderful output
Does it matter?
People love the photos they love. And I’m not an engineer, so I don’t have all the answers. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Humans are always looking for meaning somewhere and often latch onto narratives despite the data. And that’s OK. Creating and finding greater meaning in life is what we’ve always done.
What I do find interesting is how much prices have risen for the CCD cameras that get the most attention in these online forums and social media discussions. No doubt, some people in those corners have enough interest in profits and online followers that they’ll keep pushing the CCD vs CMOS colour narrative, even unconsciously. I think this is what bothers me the most: the fact that a lot of young people are being duped into paying a three figure sum for a point and shoot from the early 2000s just because some YouTubers told them that the CCD sensor it features produces filmic photos.
In the end, whatever the truth, it’s all part of the marketing and hype cycle. It’s a snake-oil trend that will eventually fade. A generation that grew up seeing family members use those early digital cameras are now looking back to find inspiration in a world that’s over-saturated by AI and overly processed images from smartphones. They feel nostalgic about those old cameras from their childhood and that’s perfectly OK and understandable.
Are digicams worth using now?
The short answer is: yes, of course old cameras are worth using now! Admittedly, I like some of those old cameras because I can afford some of the best ones and their history interests me. And where else would they end up? In the junkyard, thoughtlessly tossed and abandoned as old XD cards and Compact Flash cards molder and rot in their plastic slots? We don’t need the latest and greatest cameras to make interesting photos, that’s for sure.
I do have one thing to thank the Y2K digcam craze for: it has provided me with the impetus to explore some of the early digital cameras I always wanted and could never afford at the time. I can now appreciate some of the great technology in some of those cameras and see how we ended up where we are now. It has also taught me something else: image-making hasn’t advanced as much as the big companies want us to believe.
I came across an old Flickr group about a long obsolete and out of production Finepix camera. The discussion thread there is now abandoned and filled with hopeful posts from beginner photographers, posts from film camera veterans excited about the possibilities of digital photography, and people considering the merits and costs of upgrading to a DSLR.
Sony RX100
Some people questioned why the group was becoming less active, with people theorising that the marketing cycle of cameras and the forced obsolescence of models was resulting in formerly active members moving on to bigger and better cameras, the lure of more megapixels ever-present. Some others were steadfast in their dedication to a camera that permitted them to fall in love with photography as a hobby, sure that they’d never need any more than 5 or 6 megapixels. As you can imagine, there’s a little camera history in those threads, underpinned by melancholy.
Finepix Flickr groupEarly morning walk – Sony RX100
The joy of discovering photography is reflected in those discussions, as well as the spin-cycle of marketing, upgrades, and feature-creep. Isn’t there often a sense of doubt kindled in us by big manufacturers so that we’ll buy the latest gadget? This is part of the reason why I like old digicams. It’s not that I think there’s some long-forgotten, superior image making technology buried in CCD sensors, or that those cameras are more capable than cameras of today, but that old cameras still feed the joy of photography. In this sense, they are relevant.
Seen better days – Nikon Z5
The truth is that people were making interesting photos using simple box cameras a hundred years ago. People still make arresting photos using old cameras now. The act of photography is the recording of an image to a medium, whether that’s film emulsion or software output via digital sensor and SD card. Photography is about seeing the world afresh and inhabiting the moment.
In the quest to sell cameras, companies convince us that the latest features are things we need to have. Have you ever heard that more megapixels are better, for example? You may think that the latest 42 megapixel beast is better in every way than your trusty old 12 megapixel compact, but this isn’t telling the whole story.
Ruins of the old school in Wirrabara Forest – Sony RX100
My old Nikon D70 only features a 6.1 megapixel sensor, but that’s more than enough for web viewing. It’s overkill for viewing on a phone screen. It can be printed at 4×6 inches, 7×5, and even 8×10 (possibly a little more too) if cropping hasn’t happened and you don’t use a magnifying glass to examine details.
This is where more megapixels has advantages: recording finer detail and the ability to crop the photo without losing too much of that detail when viewing at larger sizes. Six megapixels can stretch over a forest scene and pick up plenty of detail for small sized prints, but 24 megapixels can be halved in cropping and still print quite large without significant loss of detail across the image.
Sony RX100 outputNikon D70 output
Consider the two photos above. The first is from my Sony RX100 – a 20.2 megapixel compact camera from 2012; edited from Raw. And the second photo is a straight JPG from my Nikon D70 – a 6.1 megapixel DSLR from 2004.
Ignoring the different white balance settings and the aggressive sharpening on the D70 photo, both images look quite detailed don’t they? But the RX100 file contains a lot more tonality and detail, and this can be seen when zooming during the editing process.
When output to compressed JPG – where finer details are lost and pixels discarded – and resized to the same dimensions, the two photos aren’t noticeably different. At small print and viewing sizes, 6.1 versus 20.2 megapixels is not significantly different to the eye. Print large, and all of a sudden, the detail of the 20.2 megapixel image will become apparent, as the D70’s admirable but comparatively humble resolution struggles to stretch to these sizes and details look blurry.
Rusting out in the green field – Sony RX100
Buckets of photons
Even though it’s best to be careful when framing photos with a low megapixel camera like the Nikon D70, it allows one to slow down and consider the scene. There is another variable at play here too – largish digital sensors with a low megapixel count have bigger pixels, and will usually produce less digital noise. Packing 20 or 40 million pixels onto the same sized sensor will produce more digital noise.
I remember my first digital camera – a grey plastic Kodak with an awfully tiny LCD screen, 1 megapixel, and batteries that barely lasted 12 shots. I did enjoy it though, as the colour profile over-saturated the colours and the JPGs looked nice to my eyes. It made some decent looking 6×4 inch prints, but anything larger and you’d easily see the pixelation on any lines that weren’t straight.
Every pixel on a sensor captures photons. The best analogy I’ve heard is to think of each pixel as a bucket, and each photon as a drop of water. You can put more buckets onto a large sensor but the more you cram on there, the smaller the buckets have to be. You can’t fill those small buckets with too much water without spilling it over to neighbouring buckets. And if you put 40 million buckets on a small sensor, those are going to be tiny buckets that can’t hold much water at all!
This is partly why smartphones with small sensors and 100 megapixels aren’t so good at making finely detailed photos. The light spills from tiny buckets and causes loss of detail, blown highlights, and noisy interference with neighbouring buckets. A larger camera sensor with less megapixels and bigger pixels can produce less noisy images with good detail. It’s also part of the reason why my Nikon D70, with an APS-C sized sensor and only 6.1 megapixels, produces practically noise free images up to ISO 400. That, and the fact that those CCD sensors seemed to produce a finer grained digital noise pattern that lends itself well to black and white conversion.
If only old walls could talk – Sony RX100
Glass, perceived sharpness, print size, and viewing distance
The quality of a lens also impacts the perceived detail in images. A sharp lens at the optimal F-stop, with good camera technique, can make even an old sensor with single digit megapixel counts shine. Likewise, poor optics can cause even 24 megapixel images to look mushy.
What constitutes a sharp photo? Lots of fine detail is important. But what about contrast? How about focus and blur? Big megapixel count cameras will punish average lenses and bad technique at the pixel level, as they’ll look less sharp than expected.
Here’s another thing to consider: viewing distance. The further away you are from a printed image, the less fine detail you’ll see. For example, I could print a photo from my D70 at 8×10 inches, 300 dpi, and while it would appear less sharp close-up, it could hang on my wall and look sharp enough at a normal viewing distance. I could even print at twice that size and as long as the viewer wasn’t close, the photo would look OK and certainly be recognisable. Up close, the edges would look blurry and other digital artifacts would show up. But it’s also wise to remember that there’s more to a good photo than whether you can see edge blurriness or not. An arresting image will always trump some loss of detail.
For optimally sharp prints at 8×10 inches and 300dpi, 7.2 megapixels is the minimum requirement. But remember, these are numbers for optimal sharpness, and 6.1 megapixels will still look OK when printed a bit larger because our normal viewing distance isn’t pixel peeping up close. The same applies to other megapixel counts: optimal sharpness versus actual viewing habits.
Lovely rust on blue – Sony RX100
So, what does it all mean?
If you’re looking to buy a camera, ask yourself this: what am I going to use it for? If you’re only going to share photos on the web, any digital camera since 2003 will serve you well. If you want to print the occasional photo, but you’re not looking to go much bigger than 8×10 inches, then look at cameras of at least 8 megapixels. Want the sharpest photos possible, with the most detail recorded, and you also have access to the best printers available that can actually print all that detail at poster sizes? Then you’ll be looking at cameras with at least 24 megapixels. You’ll probably need even more if you really want images with as much fine detail as possible. And that’s not to mention the cost of top quality glass!
In my current, seemingly endless and potentially dull, blogging about the little Sony RX100 Mark 1 camera, I’ve realised that I really enjoy using old cameras. Not exclusively old cameras, mind, but just older cameras when the mood strikes. The very idea that I’d upgrade as soon as the latest fancy-glitter-megapixel thing hits the shelves is tedious. The whole thing is exhausting, really. It’s also why I’m excited to receive an old Nikon D70 in the post.
The sunny edges we miss
There’s some science behind the nurturing properties of spending time in nature, with reports that subjective well-being is elevated, even for people with depression and anxiety. Many people report feeling recharged when they spend time in nature, be it walking through the local forest or walking along the beach. The Biophilia Hypothesis posits that humans are innately attracted to natural places and living areas filled with biodiversity. By seeking out this connection, we truly get back to who we are as living beings.
A world of green
Have you ever wondered why stress levels are so high in urban environments? The further away we are from nature and our natural selves, the greater our risk of developing a wide range of physical and mental health problems. Even something as simple as exposure to natural light each day can promote better sleep and improved subjective well-being. And the addition of green spaces to urban areas is linked with lower levels of stress.
Bamboo in the sun
We all need connection
What would it be like to see our planet from the deep cold of space? Some astronauts report their lives being significantly changed and their views transformed after seeing earth from this unique angle. The Overview Effect is a transformative state of mind that affects some astronauts. They report that after viewing our planet suspended in the depths of space, they develop not just a new appreciation for beauty, but a deep connection to all life.
Our small blue planet, from this point of view, is incredibly fragile and special – an oasis in a cold, black vacuum. There may indeed be billions of planetary star systems out there, but we’ll likely never reach them as even the closest is impossibly distant, and beyond the reach of the best rocket science, unless there’s a sudden shift in our understanding of time and space. So, rather than pollute the sea and soil beneath our feet, we should imagine our planet as a tiny blue speck, teeming with life, finite and fragile.
The Rusty Ruin Journal 