I wanted to post this here since posting it at B+H Photo (a good online store for photo supplies) forces me to transfer all rights, which I didn't like. Unfortunately, I didn't discover that until I'd already written the review, so I'm posting here instead.

I'll probably use this camera from now on to replace the Nikon p5100 as my "carry around"
camera which I leave in my jacket pocket. I also own a Nikon D300, a few other cheaper compacts, and several film cameras.

The FZ28 was selected on the basis of it zoom capability and lots of research (basically reading lots of reviews by others, mostly at amazon.com and dpreview.com). I was frustrated with the P5100 on a few levels

(a) the noise in all but almost perfect shooting, which especially bad in low light settings,

(b) the lack of a significant zoom capability. (I was hoping that with the p5100 being 12M, I could simply crop but the noise was too bad usually to produce good photos.)

Regarding the FZ28, the main advantage is the zoom. It has a 10M sensor and 18x zoom (which I've read can be increased if you reduce the image size via the menu, but I haven't tried this).
The menu features are nice (a manual setting, for example), not significantly better than the Nikon p5100 IMHO. However, the zoom is great. the noise is not as bad as the p5100, and the lens
is very good.

Pros:

(a) Great zoom and good lens,
(b) Nice selection of menus options
(c) small enough to fit in a (large) jacket pocket.

Cons:
(a) It still has noise, just not as much as the p5100. (I base my comparisons with the Nikon D300, which is excellent, IMHO.)
(b) The autofocusing ability could be speedier.
(c) When shooting hand-held at full zoom, picures are often blurry due to slight hand-movement (this is not a defect in the camera, just a point that the buyer should be careful of).
(d) The raw format is so odd that very few software products can handle it, so either be prepared for changing your work-flow or simply ignoring it. (Why camera manufacturers can't decide on a common raw format is beyond me.)
(e) The lens caps makes "off the hip" shooting more awkward.

Notes on composition and design, 1

This is the first in a series of posts which provides a detailed review of M. Freeman's excellent book "The Photographer's Eye". (I saw this recently on a list of the top books on photography, so it is clearly a favorite of a lot of people.) For me, I learn better if I write about the topic, so this blog post is mostly to serve to help me understand the subject of composition. Also, this book is great if you are somewhat scientifically minded - by which I mean you love laws and general principles. I'll try to summarize all I read as best as I can understand them. Please post comments, especially if there is something I'm not explaining well.

The subtitle is "Composition and design" so the book does not address in great detail the highly subjective issue of the emotional impact and subject interest of an image, though some discussion of that is present. The subject matter of a photo is its content. It could be concrete (such as a portrait or a landscape) or abstract (such as concepts or actions). The relationship between the compositional design of the image and its content is very complex. Despite this complexity, the point of view of this book seems to be to approach photography by first giving a good explanation of the composition and design principle.

To begin, the book starts with frame dynamics. Some subjects (such as a landscape) lend themselves to a horizonal rectangular frame, others (such as a full body portrait) to a vertical rectangular frame, while others (such as an abstract) can be presented using a square frame. Your subject to an extent determines the framing.

Design principles: The two most important principles of photographic composition are contrast and balance. Balance is the relationship between contrasting elements. In particular, a photograph of a solid white surface is, by this measure, poorly designed. It would indeed be a very boring photo!

An artist and teacher Johannes Itten who taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920's, used the following terms to describe some of the basic contrasts:

point	line
area	line
plane	volume
area	body
large	small
line	body
high	low
smooth	rough
long	short
hard	soft
broad	narrow
still	moving
thick	thin
light	heavy
light	dark
transparent	opaque
black	white
continuous	intermittent
much or many	little or few
liquid	solid
straight	curved
sweet	sour
pointed	blunt
strong	weak
horizonal	vertical
loud	soft
diagonal	circular

Aside form the composition of a photograph, the elements of the image which interest the viewer is also important. The Freeman book discusses visual principles next.

Visual principles

POI perception principle: The mind builds up its perception of an image from a series of rapid eye movements to the photograph's points of interest.

Gestalt perception principle: The mind leaps to its perception of an image from a recognition of the individual elements in the photograph.

Gestalt laws:

• Proximity: Visual elements in a photograph are grouped together in the mind according to how nearby they are to each other.
• Similarity: Visual elements in a photograph are grouped together in the mind according to their "sameness" to each other.
• Closure: Visual elements which are grouped together are seen to compose an outline shape.
• Simplicity (Occam's razor): The mind tends to prefer simple visual explanations (symmetry, simple shapes, balance).
• Common Fate: Grouped elements with an implied motion are assumed to move together.
• Good Continuation: The mind tends to continue shapes and lines beyond the place where they end.
  
• Separation: The order for a figure in a photograph to be perceived, it must stand out from its background.

Gestalt principles:

• Emergence: Parts of an image that do not contain enough information to explain them suddenly pop out as a result of looking long enough.
• Reification (fallacy): The mind fills in a shapre due to inadequate visual clues (see the Law of Closure above).
• Multistability: When their are insufficient or ambiguous perceptual clues, the mind tends to make elements of the image invert or "pop back and forth". (For example, the alignment of Necker's cube.)
• Invariance: (Less a principle than a property.) When objects can be recognized regardless of orientation, rotation, perspective, scale, lighting, or other factors, then the objects are said to be invariant.

Dynamic tension

Some basic graphical elements are more dynamic than others.

• Diagonals have more energy than horizonal or vertical lines.
• "Rhythm" (periodic patterns) create momentum and activity.
• Eccentric placement of objects induces tension.

Perspective and depth

• Linear perspective (this is what we usually think of as perspective in everyday conversation).
• Diminishing perspective (a special case of linear perspective where similar objects are getting smaller and smaller).
  

  bridge pylons

• Aerial perspective
• Tonal or color perspective (light or warm colors should be "close" and dark or cool colors in the distance).

This ends part 1.

Graphic and photographic elements

A graphic element is a 2-dimensional form whose outline appears in the image. The basic elements are points (0 dimensional), lines (1 dimensional) and shapes (2 dimensional). The shapes in an image can serve to help the mind perceive the image with less visual effort. For example, a "point" can be illustrated by a smaller element in the photograph which sharply contrasts with its background.

Selective focus, motion blur, lens dynamics, exposure all allow the photographer to lend emphasis to a particular element of a photograph.

Composing with light and color

Contrast is one of the basic aspects of composition. One form of tonal contrast is chiaroscuro (Italian for light/dark), which refers to lighting of dark subjects by shafts of light. The tonal contrast from the shadows and highlights created by such lighting gives mood and atmosphere to a photograph.

The brightness of a photograph is sometimes called the key. High key refers to a bright photograph lower in contrast. Low key refers to a dark photograph which is high in contrast. (At least for black and white images. For color photos, high key might refer to a "washed out" or "underexposed" image, and low key might be "over exposed" with high color contrast.)

Color theory

Key parameters of color are

• hue (the "name" of the color),
• saturation (intensity of hue), and
• brightness (darkness or lightness).

RYB vs RGB

RYB, the "painter's primaries": red, yellow, and blue uesful for describing reflected light.

RGB: red, green, and blue - useful for describing transmitted light.

Note: the red of RYB is not exactly the same as the red of RGB. Likewise, for the corresponding blues.

Intent

What is the intent of a photograph? The intent is the purpose or meaning of the photograph. This question almost presupposes the image conveys pragmatic visual information, ignoring the "fine art" aspect of photography. That is because when we ask for a photographs' meaning, we implicitly ask for how it connects to our minds' sense of the real world.

When composing a photograph, and deliberating on its intent, you must ask how conventional or expected you want your photograph to be. Should it be predictably satisfying or challenging? Unusual photographic compositions of a conventional subject can look to the viewer like a sentence with awkward grammar - a distraction to its intended meaning.
On the other hand, like a emotional song or poem, the photograph of an unconventional subject may fit naturally with an unconventional composition. In this case, the reaction of the unusual composition can mirror the planned reaction of the unconventional subject.

Different intents:

• conventional or challenging,
• planned or reactive,
• documentary or expressive,
• simple or complex,
• clear or ambiguous,
• direct or implied (e.g., pointing to a subject by photographing its shadow or only a small part of it),
• individualistic (in terms of its style) or not (e.g., customized lighting techniques or surrealism or unusual lens selection),
• emphasis on beauty/fashion (this could refer to clothing or architecture or action shots, equally) or not.

Process

It is important to know know in advance what kind of image can be created from a given situation. This of course requires experience and how well you can keep in mind the images you took previously in similar situations that "worked". Process is in some sense the search for order. In other words, the attempt to answer the question, what is the "right" perspective, angle, lighting needed to make a shot of a particular scene "work"? Process involves hunting - the search for situations which can be photographed in a way that the viewer can perceive the intent meaningfully.

	repertoire
	vvv
focal length selection	vvv	ISO setting
aperture	photographer's eye	white balance
DOF	^^^	shutter speed
	^^^
	scene opportunities presenting themselves

Process involves

• dexterity at handling the camera,
• situational awareness for photographic opportunities,
• compositional skills,
• state of mind - finding ways to stay alert and connected to the situation.

Zen (apres de Cartier-Bresson):

• develop "a relationship between the eye and the heart", know the "spirit" of the subject,
• try to reveal the "inner look" of a person,
• "Zen and the Art of Archery" (by Herrigel) applies to photography!

Probably a true Zen practitioner would see it as an abuse to use Zen to improve one's photographic skill. However, the "flow" between ones consciousness and the minds view of reality while photographing has been described by many as "Zen-like".

"If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an 'artless art' growing out of the unconsciousness." - Daistz T. Suzuki

Anticipation

Though unimportant in studio and constructed photography, it is very important in reportage photography to have an accurate sense of what will happen next. One must capture behaviour and action, as well as the way events move across the field of vision. Typical situations in reportage photography:

• a scene presents itself and the photographer must simply wait for the actors to appear,
• a subject has been identified but the photographer must wait for an interesting situation to form to capture a good image.

Exploration

Another aspect of process is the thought and research going into exploration of a situation we want to photograph. Types of exploration:

• the subject is a clearly defined physical object and there istime to move around it to shot from the best perspectiveand with the best lighting,
• the object is very large (say a bridge or a large park) and the photographer must literally explore it to discover its various facets,
• the subject is a localized event, such as a football game or parade, with different temporal and physical aspects that the photographs could capture.

If you think you have the best shot and the best perspective, keep shooting.

Return

This is another aspect of exploration. Ansel Adams often found repeated returns more rewarding than waiting for something (eg, a sunset) to happen at a particular spot.

Construction

A still life is an image constructed by the photographer by objects under his or her control. However, construction also applies to architectural or even some outdoor art or garden photography, where various factors such as customized lighting play a role. Organizing a detailed image with many compositional elements is a complex task requiring concentration and rigor.

Juxtaposition

Suppose you have a photograph with two objects seen nearby each other. As explained in the Gestalt section, our mind has the tendency to assume a relationship between things seen side by side. The viewer therefore bnaturally asks why the photographer choose that perspective and if the juxtaposition was intented or not. Similarly, a sequence of related but distinct photography can provide a unified meaning that is not captured by the individual images. Likewise, inset photos can be used to add content to an otherwise featureless area of a photo.

Post-production

One wants to optimize a photograph - use whatever procedures available to make the compositional design as effective or functional as possible. For example, if a subject does not stand out from its background, perhaps some contrast can be added using computer software to digitally manipulate the image. Knowing what can be done in post-preduction can affect decisions made at the time of the shooting. For example, if you know how to "blend" and "tone map" images into a HDR (high dynamic range) image, you know you should use exposure bracketing to capture several separate images of the same scene but with different exposure settings.


This is the end of the review of this excellent book. I learned a lot from it but probably will forget it soon enough. Hopefully, this blog will serve as a useful reminder. I've left a lot out, including all Freeman's excellent illustrations which exenplify his ideas, so please don't think this is all there is. A highly recommended book.