I use Adobe Lightroom for almost all my image editing, and although it is a fantastic piece of software, and can show me picture counts by lens, camera, etc., it cannot show me how many pictures I’ve taken at various focal lenghts.

So I wrote a small Ruby script to do just that. It takes a folder and a result file name as arguments, and scans through the folder for any pictures that matches the file type (jpg or raw) and the camera model I’m interested in (to filter out the compact), and counts all the focal lengths used, and their frequency. It then stores the results in the result file in CSV format.

If you like, you can download the script here. There is also an example result file, which shows a run of all the pictures I’ve taken in 2008. The script uses the mini_exiftool gem that wraps the exiftool binary, so you’ll need both to run the script.

I just love how simple it is to put these kind of utilities together with Ruby. You are welcome to modify the script as you like, and I’d like to hear about any improvements or other cool stuff you come up with.

The image below shows a graph over the 6608 pictures I’ve have kept, taken with my Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, over the last 1 1/2 years. This is the lens that I use for 75% of my pictures.

This shows a couple of interesting things (at least to me):

• I primarily use the lens at it extremes: 17mm and 55mm
• I clearly prefer the wider focal lengths, from 17-35mm

So now I am sure that it is the Canon 24mm f/1.4 II that should be on my wishlist – now I just have to save up for it

We were two who exhibited about 10 photographs each, and I did a slideshow of pictures from various Lindy Hop related events in Copenhagen and the rest of Europe, including Goodnight Sweetheart (GNSH), Herräng Dance Camp and CopHop.

You can view the video in high-resolution (~280MB) by clicking the image below. If you are on a slow connection, there’s also a lower resolution version available here (~110MB).

The following will be a small review of the Canon EOS 50D, focusing on the low-light performance. If you want to get a more technical or extensive review of the 50D, the following sites might be interesting to you:

• DPR’s pre-view and forum
• Roland Lim’s thorough use-oriented review, and comparison with 40D and D3.

For my own little test, I setup some items in a dark room, lit only by a single table-lamp. Don’t be fooled by the brightness of the pictures – to achieve that at ISO 100, a shutter speed of 2-3 seconds was needed. Seeing how the 50D would perform in this kind of setting was exactly what I wanted to know.

Test of ISO 100 to 12800

Below are test shots of ISO’s 100 through 12800. The images were all downloaded with DPP, at its default settings, and exported to JPG. Click on the images to view the large versions.

ISO 100:

ISO 200:

ISO 400:

ISO 800:

ISO 1600:

ISO 3200:

ISO 6400:

ISO 12800:

As you can see, the 50D performs pretty well up to ISO 1600-3200, but above that, visible noise starts to kick in. In some quick low-light test I did this evening, noise at ISO 3200 is a bit more apparent than in the sample shots above, but 1600 seems perfectly usable. Noise is most visible in the dark areas of the picture.

Cropped photos

Below I’ve compared images shot with the 50D with images shot with the 400D. Because of the higher resolution of the 50D, I have downsized the jpg’s in the second column to match those of the 400D native-resolution jpegs, to make it easy to compare. The third column contains the actual 100% crop of the 50D samples.

100 ISO, 400D, 100%	100 ISO, 50D, downsized	100 ISO, 50D, 100%
200 ISO, 400D, 100%	200 ISO, 50D, downsized	200 ISO, 50D, 100%
400 ISO, 400D, 100%	400 ISO, 50D, downsized	400 ISO, 50D, 100%
800 ISO, 400D, 100%	800 ISO, 50D, downsized	800 ISO, 50D, 100%
1600 ISO, 400D, 100%	1600 ISO, 50D, downsized	1600 ISO, 50D, 100%
	3200 ISO, 50D, downsized	3200 ISO, 50D, 100%
	6400 ISO, 50D, downsized	6400 ISO, 50D, 100%
	12800 ISO, 50D, downsized	12800 ISO, 50D, 100%

From these shots, you can see that the 50D clearly outperforms the 400D.

The 400D is fine up to about ISO 400, but at 800 visible noise starts to kick in, and at 1600 it’s too much for anything but an emergency shot. This is also my experience from using the camera.

The 50D, on the other hand, seems to have no visible noise up to around 1600 ISO, with ISO 3200 being usable, although with a little noise and loss of detail.

Conclusion

Compared to the 400D, which could only shoot good quality pictures up to 400 ISO, the 50D can shoot good quality pictures at 1600 ISO, and OK quality at 3200 ISO. That is 2-3 stops in light sensitivity, and means that a shot with the 400D that needed a 1/10 second exposure, can now be shot with a 1/40 or 1/80 second exposure.

For me, that can easily mean the difference between sufficiently freezing dancers in motion, or a big blurry blob where your subject was supposed to be, and I’m eager to test the camera more in real-life situations, to see if the “lab-tests” prove to be the same as results in the field.

Anyway, I hope you have found this useful, if you’re considering upgrading from the xxxD to the 50D.