Club-testing the Ixus 400.

[reddragdiva]

Last night's pics. Photo policy. The Ixus 400 is an unspeakably wonderful club camera, and takes shots you can shrink and web immediately. Barring the red eye. I so so so want one (or a 430, or 500) of my very own.

I thought a few shots were too washed out, and the flash seemed much stronger than the one on the Ixus 50; I turned the EV down to -1/3 and tried taking pics with my finger over the flash. Turns out I'd set the camera to ISO 400. (The ISO setting on a digital camera just amplifies the signal from the CCD, adding noise and occasional washing out, and you really don't ever want to set it higher than the base setting unless you absolutely need to.)

That said, almost every shot was usable straight out the camera. Except for the blasted red eye — and some people have eyes so light it's all but impossible not to get red eye, e.g. bluehelen, even when I got her to pose in specifically red-eye-avoidant directions. I'll need to try again at ISO 50. About three-quarters of the shots needed the red eye removed by hand, which took way too long. I know red eye is caused by the flash being mounted on the camera at all, but hopefully keeping it to ISO 50 will alleviate it slightly.

Whereas the Ixus 50 autorotate actually rotates the JPEG, the 400 just puts "ninety degrees clockwise, please!" in the Exif tag. KDE recognises this but GIMP and Coppermine don't. Bah.

(KDE 3.5 is wonderfully smart and helpful with cameras, by the way. It recognised the Ixus 400 and connected it like a USB hard disk, even if Canon is the one major brand that doesn't do umass. Anyone who says Linux is harder than Windows needs to try Kubuntu Dapper.)

As ali_anarres put it: "There should be more B-Movies where dressing to theme involves wearing very little clothing and wandering round grinning all night."

Today appears to be Camera Bargain Day. If your eBay-fu is strong, you might want a look. Remind me never to end an auction on a Saturday. I won five cameras today (three working, two E18), actually refrained from bidding on two more bargains and a shiny bargain Casio EX-S600 showed up in the post this morning. (hairyears, that's two models up from your EX-S100. And it is so shiny.) I need to Haul Arse on getting these things sold — that's the condition redcountess puts on me buying them! Anyone still keen on a nice camera, I'll keep you updated.

Comments

[ashbet]

Woohoo!! Love the pics!! Good to see Liz out and smiling :D

And Hester does, indeed, look Fabulous on all accounts ^-^

-- A :D

[reddragdiva]

Yes. She saw the images on the LCD, said "Whooo, look at the breasts on that!" and so I thought it would be appropriate to point out her bodily fabulousness in so many words.

[bluehelen.livejournal.com]

..my eyes are actually quite a dark brown!
That said they are quite big which is why, in most photos of me, if looks could kill I'd burn holes in people.
The one in this icon from last time at B Movie came out well though.

[reddragdiva]

The reason your icon pic came out well is that I expertly removed the red eye! You have very large and clear pupils, so the light bounces in and back out quite efficiently.

[bluehelen.livejournal.com]

The reason your icon pic came out well is that I expertly removed the red eye!

Ah, I had wondered why that one hadn't required photoshoppery on my part, as photos of me nearly always do unless they were taken without flash at all : )

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Fab photos -- the rotate thing doesn't work in iPhoto, either, fyi.

You've got some lovely ones of Abi, haven't you?

[reddragdiva]

Of course I have some lovely ones of Abi. She is, after all, now scientifically proven to be photogenic. (HA!)

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Well, there are certainly a lot of photos of Abi...







Alright already. You win. *pout*

[reddragdiva]

Ooh, just hold that pout right there! *click*

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

I hate all photos of me. (Luckily, I like the corset enough that when I look at the photos of myself, I go 'hey, look at that corset' and start staring at my OWN cleavage instead of the rest of me, so it works out.) (Except the ones with Neo, wherein I stare at the cat. *g*)

I'm going to see if I can somehow reinforce the zip on the one boot without sewing into the leather, so I can keep wearing them without making the problem worse until we locate a replacement zip. (Which I need to measure. Remind me tomorrow.)

[reddragdiva]

Hmmmmm. Reinforcing it so it doesn't tear further? Could help.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Because they are just too cool to be forced to sit all lonely in the wardrobe. :)

[theemptied.livejournal.com]

Check out the exiftran package (apt-get install exiftran on debian systems). It will transform them losslessly and you can probably just script it and run it on imported dirs before you hit Gimp or anything.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

No scripting is required. Install jhead and libjpeg-progs and then jhead -autorot *.jpeg (or *.JPG or whatever) will do the job.

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

Running the camera at a lower ISO-equivalency should, in theory, *increase* red-eye, not reduce it.

[reddragdiva]

According to the theory that it bears any more than a passing relation to a film of the same ISO number, which is not a safe theory ;-) Comparing the ISO 50 front-fill shots from April with the ISO 400 front-fill shots from May, it looks like the flash fires at the same strength regardless. That was with two different cameras, though (Ixus 50 last month, Ixus 400 this month), so I'll have to experiment directly with a single camera to see what it actually does in the field.