Should I Write This Book?

Had a dream last night that Lisa gave me a book I really wanted as a gift. It was one of those cheap academic paperbacks you find being sold along the Seine in Paris. Maybe forty-eight pages with a cover of grey-blue card. It was a post-modern philosophical treatise on bodily fluids in art called “Snot”.

Hidden Geography of Saint Lawrence

The Philpotts map was made just after the War of 1812. The city of York mapped then can still be seen in Toronto today.

The map made by Lieutenant Philpotts in 1818 shows several geographical details of old Toronto that have long disappeared but determine the shape of the city we see today.

Toronto’s street design is firstly determined by the same military need that had Lieutenant Philpotts creating the 1818 map. Toronto’s reason for being where it is was to make transportation and communication of British North America less vulnerable to attack by the USA. The Niagara River and the Detroit River could be closed by the US forts on both rivers and would quickly strangle the small British colony. Yonge Street bypassed both these choke points by linking Lake Ontario with Georgian Bay.  The Toronto Islands, a spit back then, made for a sheltered port and a natural terminus for Yonge Street. The town itself was built on the military grid that characterizes the entire road network of Ontario.

But the grid of Toronto streets is not uniform. There are bends, diagonals and slightly skewed diversions in the city. This 1818 map gives us clues as to why we have these deviations from what is otherwise a regular street pattern.

The most obvious influence is the old shoreline of Lake Ontario that neatly matches present-day Front Street. This also explains its paradoxical name when the lake shore is now over half a kilometer away.

There are also creeks and ravines that have been covered over and filled-in over the last two centuries. The most influential of these in Saint Lawrence is Taddle Creek, the same creek that ran through what is now the Saint George Campus of the University of Toronto. The diagonal on Richmond Street is an adjustment to the grid that follows the top of its ravine. The diagonal on King Street that causes it to eventually merge with Queen Street is the effect of a bridge that used to be near Parliament Street. The off-kilter direction of Sherbourne and Britain Street is due to another bridge over the same lost creek. The smaller bend at the end of the Esplanade and Distillery Lane follow the details of the shore around the lagoon that is now a playing field.

There are evenings when the air is still that I can smell stagnant water while walking on Berkley and I have always suspected there was a covered creek nearby. Certainly when walking through where this creek used to be one can still see the rise and fall of land that defined its course. Next time you walk through the city you might be able to see the traces of the natural landscape that used to exist.

Public Transit Won’t Solve Congestion & It Ought Not To

Currently we are going through a public relations exercise call “Feeling Congested?“. I find this process to be a drain on time and resources that just infantilizes our citizens. We are on already on the cusp of coming to a consensus that one cannot have a civilization without taxes and to mislead us that public transit will somehow ease traffic congestion does nothing to help.

The cold truth is that for every driver diverted into public transit another will to take their place. So no matter what form of transit you choose, from streetcars to subways, driving your car will never get better. That said, even if we expand our expressways, driving your car in Toronto will continue to get worse. The only way to ease congestion would be to depopulate the city like Detroit. But, sabotaging our economy or engaging in genocide are decidedly bad ways to go about easing our frustration over the daily commute.

There are considerable benefits to congestion, if we can make it work for us. Queen Street is maddeningly congested, but is also so appealing that it has become destination in itself. Paris is one of the most congested cities in the world, but it a place most of us pay good money to visit. For every Torontonian you see on the street imagine four more people and you can imagine how close to one another Parisians live. Driving around the Place De La Concorde is as macho a challenge as climbing Everest, but Parisians are given plenty of options to make their way about town that are more sedate. Commuter rail, the Metro, LRTs and buses are well integrated to encourage the most efficient means of travel. There is no penalty for taking the train compared to the Metro.

Part of what makes Paris work, apart from it’s beautiful architecture and art, is just how compact the city is. While being of a similar population, it sits on a fraction of the land that Toronto takes up. To live in Paris is to live locally. Parisian shop close to home and go to local cafés. While we may now be the fourth largest city in North America our population is sprawled out to take up the room of the world’s largest megalopolis. This kind of living might of worked when we were just a provincial city but now that we are the centre of larger metropolitan area the time spent on the road caught in traffic is no longer acceptable. Trouble is that Toronto is so large that the distances are too far to have a commute of less than an hour in our future.

I measured the distance from a station in the centre of the dark purple areas to Times Square to get an average distance of 16.5 km for a trip of over an hour. In part this has to do with the very complex geography of NYC. Most New Yorkers take a rather crooked path in their commute. Original online map is here.

In a map of average commute times for New York City and Chicago we can get a sense of how far is too far even with a well developed metropolitan rail service. I prefer term metropolitan rail rather than “subway” as these systems are only partly underground and the Chicago system is actually largely elevated above the streets. The numbers shown on map of NYC certainly match with my experience of visiting. It does take at least an hour to get to Coney Island from Times Square.†

The darkest purple areas are commute time of 35 to 45 minutes. The average distance of stations in these areas was 13.5 km to the loop at the centre of the city. Original online map is here.

If we measure from these hot spots to the business centre of each city we can get an idea of what is the maximum length of a commute by metropolitan rail before it is no longer efficient. Cities tend to have metropolitan rail systems that are much larger than this maximum so finding a station in the middle of these areas is not difficult. For NYC I found an average distance of 16.5km for commutes of an hour or more and for Chicago, our sister city in many ways, the average distance is 13.5km for commutes of 35 to 45 minutes.*

The maximum distances for the furthest reaches of Toronto from City Hall are much longer. It’s 20km to the boarder of Markham, Vaughan and the Airport. It is a whopping 26km to our boarder with Pickering. Even with extensive expansion of our “subway” the commute times for most of Toronto will be over an hour.

GO trains are never going to be of much more help to Torontonians than they are now as the schedule is arranged to ship people into the city in the morning and take them back out in the evening. Shift worker and those who counter commute are excluded. The relatively high price of GO keeps those who work in service on the TTC.

One solution would be for Toronto to develop its own system of heavy rail that is faster than the “subway” but has the same regular schedule. This would mean stations that further apart than would be comfortable to walk and a parallel local transit service like a bus to distribute commuters the last bit of distance between the station and their homes.

The other solution is making sure affordable housing is built in the city centre so all citizens can work, live and play locally. Ending the loans to build housing co-ops in the downtown saved us no money. Co-ops are one kind of public private partnership that always came in on budget. The public provided the credit and the co-ops always paid back the loan while serving the city’s interest. The condominiums we are building in their place now are not a replacement as they are beyond the means of many of those who work downtown. Worse, many condos sit empty with no one living in them most of the year.

†This pattern of metropolitan rail systems that take well over an hour to get from the furthest station to the city centre is too common. Having the misfortune of spending hours on the Northern Line is common story that always gets sympathy in London.

*I took seven samples from each city measuring from the city centre to a station in the centre of each of the areas of longest commute times working north, east, south and west. I chose Times Square as the centre of New York City and the Loop for Chicago.

Fast and Cheap

Toronto Christmas Market 35mm f/1.8 ISO200

My 35mm f/1.8 isn’t anything special, it’s just another fast normal lens and it has some pretty obvious flaws, but I still love it. A fast normal lens is inherently of such good character that I can forgive mine for its axial chromatic aberrations, jittery bokeh, and barrel distortion. It’s like a good friend with some bad habits. The bad habits become endearing after a while and you learn to work with them. The jittery bokeh is kind of fun when dealing with low light shots and the barrel distortion can be fixed in PhotoShop if it is really annoying. Prime lenses are so consistently superior to any zoom lens on the market, that their bad habits are never worse than those found with a zoom lens.

Every camera owner should have a fast normal lens. By fast, it should have an aperture that opens to f/2 or wider. Being a prime lens they are small, light, and uncomplicated enough to be taken anywhere you go. This must have bit of kit has the virtue of  being so cheap most anyone can afford one.  Having these virtues usually means f/1.8 and a lot of plastic, thus the moniker “plastic fantastic.”

By normal its focal length could be anywhere between 50mm and 17mm depending on the size of the sensor. They have been called “nifty fifties” for the very popular 135 film format and still are for full frame sensors that are the same size. If you own a smaller crop frame camera, like I do, a normal focal length is 35mm for APS-C cameras and 25mm for four thirds cameras. I count the M. Zuikos 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens for the micro four thirds format among these fast and cheap normal lenses as its wider angle of view is still in the normal range and it shares the virtues of being affordable and uncomplicated.

Normal does not mean boring. Boring photographs come from boring photographers. Normal means the angle of view you use most of the time anyways. It means having an angle of view that is the same as what you see with your eyes. This has the advantage being able to see the composition as you look around you and taking the picture without moving  back and forth. The action of so immediate it is instinctual. See something interesting: aim and shoot. You can see the composition without having the camera up to your face all the time. Your photos will also look more intimate, as it allows the audience to get behind your eyes. The view captured by through a normal lens matches what humans see every day. Telephoto shots tend to feel distant with their strange collapsed perspective and slightly pervy. Wide angle shots are really in your face and can be weirdly distorted.

Fast is still important in this era of ever higher ISOs. Keeping the ISO low with a fast lens means richer, more pleasing colour. You can catch the gestures and expressions of people indoors without the unflattering effects of a flash. Using a flash correctly often requires time to stage the shot. Better lenses offer pleasing out-of-focus areas to give your subjects prominence and emotion. When the action is fast or the light is low these prime lenses rule. You can go nuts and get lenses with speeds like f/0.95 or f/1.2, but f/1.8 is good enough, a fraction of the cost, and free of other flaws of faster lenses like low contrast, and focusing so touchy it’s a personality disorder.

These uncomplicated plastic lenses are smaller and lighter allows me to carry around a camera wherever I go. Big lenses get left at home. These little gems don’t weigh you down and are up to the job more often than not.

Never underestimate the virtue of being cheap. It allows more people to become good photographers. It gives us the freedom to put the lens at risk where we’re trying to get that shot. If it breaks because it got wet, or got dropped, then you can always afford another.

GTA at Night From Orbit Reveals Industry

The lights are now dark and this makes the various densities more explicit. Interestingly the lights also vary by temperature: some lights registered as unusually cool, here indecated in red to accentuate their difference from the rest of the city lights.

Chris Hadfield took this image of the Greater Toronto Area from the International Space Station. While interesting, it occured to me that everything about it was backwards. First It rotated the image so north was more-or-less up. Most people orient themselves this way and anything else just is being needlessly obscure. Next, blobs of light on a dark background are an impediment to interpretation, nothing has any psychological weight. Inverting the values corrected the figure and ground relationship. The density of night time activity was now quite explicit. The shape of municipalities was obvious.

Then things got interesting. There was a distinct variation in the temperature of the lights. This wasn’t obvious in the original photograph, but by playing with the hue and saturation I could make it very plain. Certain areas popped-out as really unusual. The lights were very different. The red area in the lower left is easily identified as the steel mills of Hamilton, but others are really difficult. What is the bright red area west of Milton? It isn’t the Maplehurst Correctional Facility; as that is the black spot just to the right of it. Why is Rosedale pink? Do they have an unusual selection of street lamps?

The colour temperature is different because of the use of different kinds of outdoor lighting. Industrial sites need cheap lighting and lots of it: aesthetics are not a priority. Cheap industrial lighting produces light in very narrow bands of colour that often makes people colour blind, while municipal lighting has a more fulsome spectrum to make things easier on the eyes. It isn’t the various colours that indicate industrial activity, almost all of the darkest areas are industrial zones. Places in the GTA that are awake and working in the middle of the night.

The Internet Creating a Need to Know

The internet is really seductive in the promise of providing answers to even the most trivial questions. While watching the CBC news I started wondering, “Where was the studio they used to conduct interviews?” I would stare at the decayed painted sign behind the talking heads looking for some clue. I knew where the CBC offices were but couldn’t figure out from which window they were shooting. Eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore so I googled it. I found the exact room at the intersection of Lilttle Tichfield Street and Great Tichfield Street in Marylebone. Now what? I could announce my discovery and bore everyone to death. If the internet wasn’t available to us would I have felt the need to do this sleuthing?

This all may seem trivial, but it could explain the motives of  the “fact checkers” who are becoming such a social force. The “fact checkers” have upset the traditional players in politics, including reporters. From the humiliation of Margaret Wente who was plagiarizing the work of other reporters to politicians, like Paul Ryan, who inflate their own history to make themselves look better. No one is safe. Just as conspiracy theories and rumours spread like the flu, we got the immune response of seeking evidence. Early in the life of the internet came the UFO craze and Snopes appeared  right behind it.

Fact checking is not just a reaction to the BS storm that makes-up so much of the internet, or an itch that many of us are compelled to scratch. The internet has always offered the promise of being all-knowing. This may be an illusion, but it is still compelling. The internet also is can get your ideas peer reviewed in a matter of minutes. Of course this is not without problems. Trolls abound and most people are too eager to be take a mocking tone or to be crass while hiding behind their anonymity. But on a well moderated chat the truth will out and faster than we ever imagined. Interestingly this is the use for the internet when it was exclusive to academics. It seems to be built into its very nature.

Queen Street is Toronto’s Main Street

Eric Fischer’s map of geotagged photos of Toronto found on Flickr and Picasa. Blue dots are locals, red are visitors and yellow post so infrequently it is difficult to determine.

This is not Eric Fischer’s first map of Toronto that exploites geotagging, I have commented on his map that suggest travel routes through Toronto based on Twitter geotags. Once again Queen Street has a signal that is surprisingly intense along its entire length. Yonge Street and Bloor-Danforth are clear enough, but I expected them to be stronger as they are the defining streets of Toronto. Lost in Toronto? Make the sign of the cross. North to south is Yonge Street and west to east is Bloor Street. Yonge Street made Toronto a strategic location in British North America and both streets have subway lines. However, Bloor-Danforth has seen a decline in some sections while Queen Street, with its achingly slow traffic and slower street car, has seen a renaissance over the last few decades.

This map is an interesting bit of statistics that is worth debating over. I think there is some insight as to the meaning of this map by first understanding why most people take pictures and who would post them on Flickr and Picasa.

I am confident that most photographs are taken primarily for social reasons as mementos of our experiences. Photos are often statements that “we were there” and “we did these things together”. More generally these photographs were made because the photographers see something that moves them. People only photograph what they care about and post them on Picasa and Flickr because they think it is worth sharing.*

I noticed that well-known landscape spots in the Toronto are inconsistently represented on the map. Polson Pier is a well known spot to take pictures of the skyline and shows a significant cluster of images, but it is also the location of Toronto’s largest night club. Other known photo spots are barely represented, like Woodbine Park, or the Main Street overpass: both of which are somewhat lonely spots. Those places with great views of the city that are represented on the map are those one might come across as one travels form one place to another. While hailing a cab to take you home, one can’t miss the spectacular view of the city from Polson Pier. The cluster of photographs on Broadview is a streetcar stop as well as one of the great views in the city. It is also the best place to go sledding in winter. I think most of these images plotted here are opportunity shots rather than planned photo shoots. Therefore most of these photos are taken as part of some other purpose for being there: such as shopping, commuting, or going out for lunch.

The demographics for membership in Flickr and Picasa is more or less represents everyone who has access to internet, however I think there might be some division when it comes to the number of images posted. Uploading images from one’s phone is second nature for those under twenty five, but I suspect it is infrequent for those above fifty-five. While almost anyone can be persuaded to sign-up to a site, actually uploading images is a bit different. How many of these images are from any demographic group would reveal something about who is going to these places. The great number of pictures taken along Queen Street makes me think these are people under fifty-five years of age, the kind of people you would meet on Queen Street.

This means these photographs are a trace of how working-age people use the city as part of their social life.

What we have is a map of where Torontonians and their guests go to enjoy themselves. These are the parts of the city that make Toronto worth living in or visiting. These are also the place where a significant part of city life takes place. Queen Street is often derided as the being filled with shallow trendy people, but these people are publishing a lot of images of Toronto and spend the same money as you and I. These people are not some alien presence among authentic Torontonians. They are often those that determine how outsiders see the city. People don’t come to Toronto to go to a chain restaurant on a suburban strip mall, they go to experience those things that are only found in Toronto, like those strange places and people on Queen Street.

This also shows why we must be more thoughtful about city planning, and put aside cheap slogans. Many see Queen Street as a problem that needs to be solved. Driving down Queen Street is a nightmare, there are people begging on the corners, and walking is often faster than taking the streetcar. But this map shows that it is highly attractive to an important constituency and they are showing the world what they see. Many Torontonians do not share this love Queen Street and it would be too easy to spoil these kind of odd but attractive places because of our thoughtless prejudices. It isn’t just tourists these places are attracting, it is also a large proportion of our fellow citizens. Queen Street isn’t just another neighbourhood, it is truly Toronto’s main street.

*There is a growing number of solitary photos on the internet that are about “where I was” or “what I did”. The picture of one’s restaurant meal has become the cliché of this introverted type of photograph. Classifying the images as to content would also give insight into how the city itself is perceived. What people photograph tells us what people think. What parts of the city do people choose to share with others. I predict that the CN Tower would be the number one subject in photos of Toronto. For good or bad, the CN Tower is the visual indicator of being in Toronto.

Cameras For Less Than a Grand

Cheap Cameras That Can Make You Money

I’ve been looking over what is in the market for less than $1000 but still take images you can sell. There are three categories you might think about: the first category are APS-C sized DSLRs, the second are micro four thirds sized MILCs (mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras) and the third are premium compacts.

If you find yourself cropping images heavily you may want a better telephoto performance rather than getting into the murky world of pixel counting. Doubling the pixel count only increases the possible print size by 1.4 times in its diagonal. Camera store salesmen love to quote big numbers to impress customers. High ISO numbers are also to be viewed with suspicion as there is never any discussion about how well the sensor performs at such high ISOs. Generally, bigger sensors perform better at high ISOs than smaller ones, but this is not always true. The anti-shake ability and speed of the lens are is more important as both will keep the ISO low and therefore make the image less noisy or as we used to say “grainy”.

As a benefit, smaller sensors have the same number of pixels as bigger ones and therefor perform better at telephoto lengths. In a sense the image is already cropped when it is taken. The difference in sensor size is expressed as a crop factor.

APS-C sized sensors, like on the Nikon D3200 or Canon 650D (AKA Rebel T4i) give a crop factor of 1.5 making any 200mm lens perform like a 300mm lens. Both have all-purpose super zooms (18-200mm [27-300mm equivalent]). if you don’t have an extra $700 lying around both manufacturers make more affordable telephotos that compliment the 18-55 kit lens these cameras are usually sold with.

The second kind of camera is the micro four thirds sized sensors. They have a crop factor of 2 so they double the telephoto performance. Panasonic and Olympus make cameras that lack mirrors making them more compact and quiet. Lens selection is not as good as with the DSLRs but it is getting better. Many MILCs have adapters that allow the use of DSLR lenses. Prices for these cameras are not necessarily cheaper than APS-C sized DSLRs. You buy these cameras for the handy size and the absence of the loud click of the mirror flipping up.

There are other MILCs with even smaller sensors like the Nikon 1 series and the Pentax Q. The smaller sensors have even greater telephoto potential. However, the price is often more expensive than cameras with larger sensors while the image quality is no better than premium compacts. If you want to take pictures of birds or do astronomy these might be worth considering because they are cheaper than buying most high performance long telephoto lenses and cam be mated to more more affordable telephoto lenses and telescopes.

High performance or premium compacts are without interchangeable lenses, but are half the price of APS-C DSLRs and can be competitive in performance with fast built-in zooms and high quality sensors. A few have teleconverters or even macro adapters that attach to the front of the lens. The Canon Power Shot out-performs professional cameras in the combination of  lens speed and anti-shake stability. Shallow depth of field effects, like blurred-out backgrounds, are not possible with such small sensors except in macro mode, so the quality bokeh is often disregarded.

PS I somehow forgot about “bridge cameras”. These look like DSLRs, but have compact sized sensors with super zoom lenses fixed to the body that go all the way from wide angle to telephoto lengths beyond 400mm equivalents. That’s some serious reach, and the lenses go from respectable to blazing fast. I suspect they fall down at high ISOs as the sensors are really small. This entire category is in decline as many models are not being replaced with newer models.

Practical EV Table for APS-C Cameras

Which Lens Do I Want?

I agonize over which lenses to buy with my Nikon. The trouble with having so much choice with the Nikon F mount is buyer’s regret. My key purpose for buying a camera was to learn more about modern photography. But the more I learn, the more my current equipment seems less than optimal. I’m sure many amateur photographers feel the same way. The only way to fight this agony of choice is the way we should approach any big purchase: one should look closely at what you want to do with your purchase. The insight comes in the form of a hum drum table.

An Exposure Value table is pretty abstract and not terribly meaningful on its own. An Exposure Value, or EV, of zero is an exposure of one second at an aperture of f/1 and an EV of one is half a second at the same aperture or one second at f/1.4. A table can be constructed from this point on. So what?

Well each EV number corresponds to the lighting conditions a photographer will encounter. A table of these numbers gives the photographer an idea of the constraints of what they photograph and what they need to get an acceptable photograph. I like low light photography so I will keep a close eye on the EV numbers on the top rows of this EV table.

This EV table was constructed for ISO 200, the minimum ISO for my camera, so the EV numbers may not correspond with other tables. I aim for ISO 200 because the colour is deeper and noise is kept to a minimum. By doubling the ISO one can shift the shutter speed one row up or one column to the left. For example, I like using 1/125 of a second at f/1.8 for concerts with a nice rich ISO 200. But if the lens I have only goes to f/2.8 I could step up the ISO to 800. The image quality at ISO 800 is acceptable to me, so is not a big deal. However, if the lens has a maximum aperture of f/5.6 the ISO is going to be so high the image will be obscured by the multi-coloured flecks known as noise. Slowing the exposure is not an option because the musicians are always in motion and will be unacceptably blurred. Rather than slowing the shutter speed, chances are you may need to speed it up, if the musicians are really active.

The EV table also gives you an idea of where to set the aperture and the minimum speed for the ISO. Setting the auto ISO gives you a bottom speed before the shaking of your hands blurs the photo or before unwanted motion blur enters the photo. Fixing the aperture sets the depth of field you want, or can live with, while keeping the ISO as low as is possible. If the lighting is not marginal, you can set the aperture to get a deep focal range or to get the peak performance from that particular lens.

I have not entered apertures below f/1.4 because they are rare nor above f/11 because it should provide sufficient depth of field and any further restriction of light should be done with a neutral density filter as smaller apertures cause diffraction. If you want to calculate smaller apertures it is not difficult to calculate it yourself. The table has no shutter speeds above 1/4000 because that is as quick as my camera goes.

Each EV number corresponds to lighting situations a photographer may encounter. This list is not comprehensive, but everyone should recognize the kind of situations that appeals most to them.

• EV 5
  -Floodlit Architecture
  -Christmas lights
• EV6
  -Vehicle lights at night
  -Home interiors
• EV7
  -City streets at night
• EV8
  -Amusement parks and fairs
  -Stage lighting for live performances
  -Utility lighting for offices and manufacturing interiors
• EV9
  -Brightly lit city square at night
  -Store displays at night
• EV10
  -Sun just below horizon
  -Neon or illuminated signs
  -Sports venue at night
  -Fire
• EV11
  -Sun at horizon
• EV12
  -Sun just above horizon
• EV13
  -Heavily overcast day
  -Subject in the shadows on a bright day
• EV14
  -Cloudy but full daylight
• EV15
  -Bright cloud in background
  -Sunny, but with soft shadows due to haze
• EV16
  -Bright sun with sharp shadows
• EV17
  -Snow in bright sunlight
  -Open water with bright sunlight

The following table can be cut right down the middle dividing fast lenses, which are mostly prime lenses, from the slow lenses, which are mostly zoom lenses. The difference in performance difference is less distinct with Nikon’s VR  (vibration reduction) or Canon’s IS (image stabilization). With this clever bit of technology, the choice between a fast prime and a slow zoom has become much more subtle. It really depends on how you feel about motion blur in moving subjects. If you’re OK with it, then VR can make an f/5.6 lens a better choice in low light conditions than an f/2 lens. VR can free you of the need for a tripod or a monopod except in the most extreme lighting conditions. Most of the time I find a tripod or monopod slows me down and being rid of it is liberating.

Zoom lenses all tend to be slower between f/5.6 and f/3.5, unless you willing to part with a few grand to get you to a maximum of f/2.8. Prime lenses are consistently faster, between f/1.2 and f/2.8 and cost between $100 and $800.

This table also shows that zooms are much handier if you expect to be photographing in daylight. Changing lenses is never convenient and you risk missing the moment. However when the sun is below the horizon, a fast prime lens is much better at capturing the drama of people. I love going to the fair at sundown with just my 35mm f/1.8 lens. A flash can help some, but too much flash can leave people looking flat and washed out. The only time I use a flash at full power is during the day to fill out harsh shadows.

The table also gives us a pattern for how much VR really can help us out in lower light conditions where slower shutter speeds would be welcome. Still, under certain conditions even VR is not sufficient, like when taking telephoto shots in low light or when you have to use a smaller aperture. Also zoom lenses generally perform at their best at f/8 so a tripod is still worth having. We can see that VR and a tripod occupy their space within these tables at lower speeds. Even with VR, telephoto shots still require faster speeds than wide angle shots, but the speed is lowered by a factor of eight or by three stops. You can often squeeze in one more stop, for a total of four stops, by bracing the camera or by calmly taking several steady shots until you get lucky.

Red shutter speeds are within the ability of lenses without VR, so no tripod required
Pink shutter speeds require a tripod for telephoto shots*
Orange shutter speeds require a tripod or VR for telephoto shots
Green shutter speeds either requires a tripod for telephoto shots, even with VR, or just VR at wider angles, or a tripod if no VR is available.
Blue shutter speeds require a tripod in all cases.

EV	f-number
	Fast Primes			Slow Zooms
	1.4	2.0	2.8	4.0	5.6	8.0	11
5	1/30	1/15	1/8	1/4	1/2	1	2
6	1/60	1/30	1/15	1/8	1/4	1/2	1
7	1/125	1/60	1/30	1/15	1/8	1/4	1/2
8	1/250	1/125	1/60	1/30	1/15	1/8	1/4
9	1/500	1/250	1/125	1/60	1/30	1/15	1/8
10	1/1000	1/500	1/250	1/125	1/60	1/30	1/15
11	1/2000	1/1000	1/500	1/250	1/125	1/60	1/30
12	1/4000	1/2000	1/1000	1/500	1/250	1/125	1/60
13		1/4000	1/2000	1/1000	1/500	1/250	1/125
14			1/4000	1/2000	1/1000	1/500	1/250
15				1/4000	1/2000	1/1000	1/500
16					1/4000	1/2000	1/1000
17						1/4000	1/2000
EV	1.4	2.0	2.8	4.0	5.6	8.0	11
	f-number

*VR is not available for fast prime lenses and telephotos are not made any faster than f/2. I disregarded telephotos or zooms that come in f/2.8 as they are beyond the reach of most people. I also limited telephotos to 200mm as this is the most common length. Every increase in the length of the lens requires a similar increase in shutter speed.

The Great Potential for The Nikon N1

I have not used either of the Nikon N1 cameras, the JI or the V1, but I have been surprised by the negative reaction to the small size of the CX sensor on the camera. It has a decent resolution of 10.1 megapixels, which is enough for a full page on a magazine with room to spare for cropping. The Pixel peepers argue about the colour, but it is still better than what you’d expect from any camera a decade ago. As far as I can see the small size of the sensor makes for some benefits that are almost as revolutionary as the adaption of the 135 film format a century ago. The CX sensor gives the photographer convenience at a bargain and gives us access to technological power that use to be the reserve of a privileged few.

The small sensor makes for some things physically more difficult like shallow depth of focus effects and ultra wide angle lenses. But this loss is acceptable for all that can be gained at the telephoto range, especially with the FT-1 adapter that allows use any F mount lens on the Nikon N1 cameras.

While the image sensor is getting the smaller, the size of the subjects we photograph remain the same, like the human face, which results in smaller angle of view for similar lens geometries. The smaller angle of view for the same subject requires we step back further to get it into frame. Lenses at or around 50mm have the greatest potential for aperture size while remaining affordable . The longer the lens gets the more expensive it is to make it fast enough and without distracting artifacts, like colour distortion or flares.

You can see on this table that same lens would function differently for each sensor size. The comparative sizes run almost diagonally for these common lenses. The CX sensor size is a continuation of the geometrical progression between the FX and DX sizes. I added in the 50mm in the CX line, although none is made for the N1, because this cheap wonder lens is used by almost every Nikon owner and is a useful benchmark.

The comparison of is based on the crop factor of each sensor. The DX sensor has a crop factor of 1.5 compared to the FX sensor, meaning a 50mm lens for the FX will perform like 75mm lens on the DX camera. The crop factor for the CX sensor is 2.7 compared to the FX sensor, meaning that the same 50mm lens now performs like a 135mm lens. Considering that for the money it takes to buy a used Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 manual focus lens you can buy a new 50mm f/1.8 autofocus; that is a pretty good deal. Fast prime lenses between 35mm and 80mm are all well under a grand have a greater aperture and focus faster than any telephoto in production. They easily beat these monstrous professional lenses that cost ten times as much.

Considering how much lens performance a photographer sacrifices by using a teleconverter, the more than acceptable quality of the CX sensor should lead one to to consider changing the camera behind the lens instead. We could pull in beside anyone with their gigantic bird watching lens with handheld equipment that is a tenth of the price, a quarter of the weight and takes the same shot. While this may not be the end of the digital SLR, it should lead many of us to reconsider what we are paying all that money for.

While there is some loss at the wide angle and for shallow depth of field effects, I could imagine even professional photographers keeping their DSLR for those shots and have the V1 as their second camera when they need to reach out or when the loud click of the DSLR would be disturbing. For the news photographer traveling light the appeal is obvious. When the action starts and the VR would just result in motion blur, it would be easy enough to switch to a fast prime and still get the reach of a short telephoto.

The V1 can be found at half the list price on Ebay, $350 with a kit lens, and I fully expect that the next generation of the CX sensor to appear soon and it will be better. Any improvement in image quality over the current model will make any further quibbling about the deficiencies of the CX sensor irrelevant.

*the normal lens for CX should be 18.5mm