Photographing St Botolph

click photo to enlarge
A shopping expedition to Boston, Lincolnshire, when the day's appearance said spring, but the air temperature and wind said the end of winter, found me, not for the first time, pointing my compact camera at the tower of the medieval parish church of St Botolph. And what a tower it is. Many towns and cities are defined and remembered by a noteworthy building and as far as Boston goes this is the one. As I've mentioned elsewhere it is also known by the nickname, "The Stump". Its tower is an oddity of Gothic architecture. The medieval masons started building upwards and just kept on going. When you look at the layers that are piled one on the other it appears that a spire may have been contemplated at one point but then they rejected that conventional topping to the tower. Up and up it went until finally they decided to top it with a pierced, octagonal lantern.

Since that time "The Stump"
has been synonymous with the town, a beacon for ships approaching the port and a marker for weary travellers crossing the flat Fenland hinterland. When you walk around the town the tower rises above the roof tops allowing you to orientate yourself. Only when you go into the market place or nearby across the River Witham do the nave and chancel, themselves almost of cathedral scale but small relative to the tower, make an appearance. The classic photograph of St Botolph is from the town bridge. The appearance of a new "bow-string" design footbridge has changed that view somewhat and on my recent visit to the town I took a shot of the bridge and the tower, though not from the town bridge. Another photograph that suggested itself to me was the tower rising from the blossom of a cherry tree that grows in the lawned precinct immediately adjoining the church. However, the shot I took on Church Street, a location where I've photographed before, is the one I like best. It has the name of a pub - The Britannia - and a couple of promotional union flags, in the foreground, with the tower beyond. I liked the contrast of the bright red with the distant stonework.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen






Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28.5mm (77mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The megapixels wars and dynamic range

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The rise in the megapixel count of compact cameras has become ridiculous. Models are routinely being sold boasting sensors with 14MP, and consumers are buying them thinking that they offer better image quality than the models with a lower number. Manufacturers know this isn't the case. Enthusiast and professional photographers do too. But, the camera makers, years ago, embarked on the "more is better" method of selling new models and seem unable (or unwilling) to depart from it. This has also started to infect DSLRs: witness the concerns over the Canon 50D (15MP) and the 7D (18MP).

Anyone who is confused by all this needs to know that the main factors in image quality are the lens (just as it always has been) and the processor that works on the image in the camera, but that possibly the most important factor is the density of pixels on the sensor. The lens on an inexpensive camera is usually fairly basic, but given that it's small is usually adequate. In-camera processors improve year on year, so that the images from this year's 10MP camera are likely to be better than the equivalent sensor/MP size of three years ago. Now, what about pixel density? Here are some examples from cameras available today:

Samsung TL240 - 14.1MP - 50MP/sq.cm.
Canon Powershot S90 - 10MP - 23MP/sq.cm.
Olympus E510 DSLR - 10MP - 4.1MP/sq.cm.
Pentax K-7 DSLR - 14.6MP - 4.0MP/sq.cm.
Nikon D3S DSLR - 12.1MP - 1.4MP/sq.cm.
Go to this page of DPReview to find out the pixel density of your camera.

The best image quality in that list will come from the Nikon (the one with the biggest sensor) and the worst from the camera with the highest megapixel count, the Samsung (which has the smallest sensor.) I could have chosen 5 different cameras and, by and large, the image quality would have been directly related to the sensor size and pixel density. Of course, when people ignore the megapixel count they tend to buy within a price range, and that's when choice and comparisons become more complicated. However, the truth is that usable detail, dynamic range, visual noise and all the other factors that make for a good image is closely related to the sensor size and pixel density, not the number of megapixels. In fact, most compact consumer digital cameras would today be producing better images if the manufacturers had stopped at 8MP.

Today's photograph was taken with my LX3 (10MP, 24MP/sq.cm.) and illustrates the second theme in today's "reflection." I'd trade dynamic range for megapixels any day. This shot was difficult for the camera because of the dark shadows of the street near the bright, sunlit clouds. I had to set the EV to -1.33 to control the highlights, and that introduced quite a bit more noise into the shadows which I had to clean up afterwards at the expense of detail. If digital camera manufacturers put less effort into increasing the number of megapixels and more into enabling their products to record the detail in both bright highlights and darker shadows, then images would be sharper and closer to what our eye/brain sees. Cameras that could do this would be easier to expose, and, most helpful of all, images would require less post-processing.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 7.9mm (37mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Streets and names

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High Street is one of the two most common street names to be found in England. Virtually every town and city, and many villages, feature a street with this name. "High" in the sense it is used here means "main". When street naming began in the New World it was the latter word that was chosen to prevent any confusion with "raised" or "elevated". Interestingly, when naming new thoroughfares the word "street" is much less used in England than formerly. House builders fancy that they can more easily sell a new row of houses if the address is anything but "street". So we have avenues, groves, lanes, chases, gardens, closes, places, leaps, ways, forges and even roads.

The second of the most common street names is Church Street. Most settlements had a church, and as they grew more were built. This simple descriptive name was an obvious choice. Where it was eschewed, it was often the name of the building's dedicatory saint that described the road, thus St George's Street or All Saints Road. For obvious reasons, in most villages, towns and cities, the High Street and Church Street are usually two of the oldest roads, and will frequently still have some of the most ancient and interesting buildings.

Today's photograph shows Church Street in Boston, Lincolnshire. Here the street is behind the Market Place, and leads from it to the south porch (the main entrance) of St Botolph. With a tower 272 feet high Boston's church creeps into many shots taken in the town. Here I framed it with the cobbles of the street, the Britannia pub, the row of shops on the opposite side, and the soft, white, summer clouds.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19mm (38mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off