Does Noise Sound Really Bad?

(This is the Cultural Centre sitting astride a large piece of land fronting the famous Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. Climb on the second deck of a podium in front of it at night and you'll have a great shooting opportunity for the backlit scene on the one hand and for the amazing harbour aglow with a motley of neonlights on the other. Now, can you guess if the shadows are of one person of two? )

(Cultural Centre, Hong Kong) Before I post the nightshots comparison of the GX200, G10, LX3 and other beasts, may I ask: How does noise sound to you? "The high ISO shots by GX200 are noisy," one commentary goes. "The high ISO performance of G10 is not as good as LX3 noise-wise," another review says. "The noisy nightshots of P6000 make it a headturner," the third one laments. Does noise sound really bad? A friend of mine looked at her wedding shots at the studio and sounded really puzzled, "Why are these film photos not as clean as the DSLR's?" The photographer explained with a twinge of emarrassment that it was only because the digital photos were too clean. [Note: Luminance noise makes an image look grainy on screen, but usually not visible on prints while chroma noise is visible as random red and blue pixels and is usually less obvious on both] Save for the presence of excessive chroma noise, noise could give a grainy (and richer, to me) taste to a photo. Maybe there is a reason in my thinking: I came from the film era. For those who start with digital gears since their first sorties into photography, noise may sound bad. So, how does noise sound to you:

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A Real Hero

(Grip On Reality: This photo was taken on my way to work. I was walking past trucks parking on a cul-de-sac when the ropes caught my attention. The light was right, the colour was right and the criss-crossing pattern was perfect and I held up my GX200. People passing by checked me out and wondered what could be made out of such a boring scene. To me, the fun in photography is that the photographer makes something interesting out of what is not obvious to most at the scene. The ropes tied in knots somehow reminded people I know who are in the grip of the recession) You must have also known a friend or two, or even yourself, being baffled by the spiral downturn of the economy. Bank went bankrupt and the rich was faced with a shrinking wealth. A friend of mine has just had his salary cut by over 10% and some of his colleagues started to be shed. But, wait. Was this done really for the sake of continuing the business? Or is there a factor or greed in it? I wonder whether the

New Low Prices

The window shopping some hours ago has almost provoked my AgIDS illness. Just in case you’re in Hong Kong or are coming here, and have the money to burn (All in HK$/ body only): GX200 = $3,280 GRD2 = $3,380 LX3 = $3,180 G10 = $3,280 Prices are available form a gear shop on the 1st floor of the Mongkok Computer Centre. Besides these new low prices, I found that Wing Shing Photo (55-57Sai Yeung Choi St., MK Tel: 2396 6886/ 91-95 Fa Yuen St., MK Tel: 2396 6885) is offering a Sony A700 + Carl Zeiss Lens package for HK$9,980 (hopefully, a bargain will make it some hundreds cheaper).

Eye Contact

(Leica D-lux 5) The digital era may make it easier to end up with fave shots. Even lousy photos may be turned likable after a few clicks in the post-processing workflow. But if digital advancement or amendments have any bearing on the cultivation of personal style, no photographers will need to discover his or her own photographer’s eye. Undoutedly, this is out of the question. Only with a trained photographer’s eye can we give a thinking gaze and capture an eternal moment, in our unique style. Style is the soul of a great photo. A few posts have been written in GXG to touch on the topic of photographer’s eye. Instead of finding an answer, which would require academic discussions, the posts are intended to give my general reflections and spark interests in moving towards further exploration of the topic. The posts can be viewed after the links: 1) Photographer's Eye: Storytelling 2) Photographer's Eye: Little Show of Observing 3) Photographer's Eye: Sight-Worthy 4

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