SDN Photography Talk Thread

[J]

As for technology - I have this urge to keep making larger and larger negatives. I'm considering getting a 6x9 rangefinder at some point or even a 4x5 camera. Suggestions? My 645N seems to have been a gateway drug

Several years ago I had some professional portraits done in B&W medium format by a friend of ours...which I forgot about until we recently found the negatives again. According to the notes the camera was a Fujica G690BL 6x9 rangefinder with a 100mm & 150mm lens, and I remember the photographer absolutely raving about how the camera was the best thing since sliced bread during the shoot. This is a man who has everything, Hasselblads, Leicas, Zeiss, you name it he has it and he's used it all extensively over the years, one particularly vivid moment I remember was his picking up a Hasselblad and exclaiming "compared to this camera (the Fujica), this is a $4000 piece of shit! It is shit!" while making a motion of tossing the 'blad over his shoulder in disgust before setting it back down on a shelf.

We haven't made any enlargements yet but the negatives are huge and look amazingly gorgeous, when we do get them blown up I'll let you know how they look.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Does anyone have experience in low light, people focused work? (Music shows, parties and the like)?
Specifically, what methods of focusing work well for you, how open do you work with your aperture (to get anything in focus), and any tips for flash use?

I use AI AF or one shot AF (I can't decide which is worse), and around F1.8-2.5 (I have a 1.4F prime, but wide open it's practically unusable due to the low AF accuracy combined with the miniscule DOF). I have an external flash, and I always bounce it off to the sides or back, and underexpose it by about a stop.

[aerius]

Lens open all the way, shutter at an appropriate speed, no flash, manual focus. Then again that's the only choice I had given the camera I had to use, we didn't have autofocus back in the day. Sometimes I'll stop the lens down to f2 instead of f1.4, but that's it.

With my Canon compact I turn off the AI focus and set the exposure mode to centre weighted, I find this has the fastest focus & best results in crappy lighting conditions. The camera focuses where I want it to instead of where the AI thinks it should, it'll focus & expose on whatever's in the middle and do it nice & fast.

With a DSLR I'd just manual focus the damn thing, AF accuracy is crap anyway so it's not like you'll do any worse. Open up the lens all the way unless you need a bit of DoF, crank the ISO so you can get a decent shutter speed, then manual focus & shoot. Screw the flash, that's what the f1.4 and high ISO capability of DSLRs is for. You don't need a flash unless you need to even out backlit subjects or something.

[phongn]

With a DSLR I'd just manual focus the damn thing, AF accuracy is crap anyway so it's not like you'll do any worse. Open up the lens all the way unless you need a bit of DoF, crank the ISO so you can get a decent shutter speed, then manual focus & shoot. Screw the flash, that's what the f1.4 and high ISO capability of DSLRs is for. You don't need a flash unless you need to even out backlit subjects or something.

Most DSLRs tend to have lousy focus screens, though. I usually use center-point AF with a fast lens since the middle sensor is usually the most sensitive out of the bunch.

[aerius]

Most DSLRs tend to have lousy focus screens, though.

The LCD screen or the viewfinder? I've handled a couple Nikon DSLRs and didn't find the viewfinders to be any worse than the one on my Olympus Pen FT. Then again the Pen doesn't have the best viewfinder either since it uses a semi-silvered mirror which makes the image rather dim.

[phongn]

Most DSLRs tend to have lousy focus screens, though.

The LCD screen or the viewfinder? I've handled a couple Nikon DSLRs and didn't find the viewfinders to be any worse than the one on my Olympus Pen FT. Then again the Pen doesn't have the best viewfinder either since it uses a semi-silvered mirror which makes the image rather dim.

I've tried on my XTi (I have a Pentax 645 - EF adapter for a macro lens) and it's an exercise in frustration without microprisms or split-ring.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Olympus EP-2 doesn't seem to have any noticeable upgrades beyond the microphone and viewfinder attachment. I figured with the Panasonic GF-1 in the store today and am quite impressed with it. The lack of a integrated viewfinder is a minus, but I guess even with it, the image is going to be cropped. I haven't tried the electronic viewfinder yet.

[The Grim Squeaker]

With a DSLR I'd just manual focus the damn thing, AF accuracy is crap anyway so it's not like you'll do any worse. Open up the lens all the way unless you need a bit of DoF, crank the ISO so you can get a decent shutter speed, then manual focus & shoot. Screw the flash, that's what the f1.4 and high ISO capability of DSLRs is for. You don't need a flash unless you need to even out backlit subjects or something.

Most DSLRs tend to have lousy focus screens, though. I usually use center-point AF with a fast lens since the middle sensor is usually the most sensitive out of the bunch.

I've found that tends to give better results. Annoying for focusing, but at least it focuses.

Another very useful tip, it to use an external flash but disable the flash firing, then you can use it for focusing. (the big red grid it emits) - that really helps the camera focus. (and beats the hell out of a flash strobe).

I'll be giving that a try in another party this Friday, got any more tips on the subject while we're (well, i'm) at it? Introducing yourself after taking a surprise shot, getting decent shots, what to focus on (not anatomically speaking ) etc'?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Quick question on storing cameras: Besides a dry box with silica gel inside, is a light bulb absolutely necessary?

[J]

Buh? A light bulb? I've never heard of this before, what's the benefit of storing a camera together with a light bulb?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Buh? A light bulb? I've never heard of this before, what's the benefit of storing a camera together with a light bulb?

Supposed to deal with fungus, but I'm not sure. For the most part, most of the climate control dry boxes I have encountered have no bulb.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Got my new compact camera, yay! .
Wonderful thing, even if it lacks a dedicated macro mode .

I'll be taking nothing but Black and White shots for a while I think. A challenge!

[J]

Today we dropped off the 6x9 medium format negatives for enlarging and my friend & I also had a new set of portraits shot with the 6x9 Fujica I mentioned in my last post. He still maintains the G690 is the best medium format camera he's ever used and he's still going nuts about it several years later. I asked him some general questions on the camera and why he loves it so much, and roughly paraphrased, this is what he had to say:

"See those pictures there? Those are from the Fujica. See the ones over there? Those are from a Hasselblad. Anyone can see which photos are better and it's not the Hasselblad, but a bunch of my clients insist I use one anyway so I have to keep the piece of junk around. It burns my ass when people do this but I have to eat so what can I do? As you can see the Fujica takes better pictures, I get better focus & control and since most people want their 6x6 or 6x7 negatives cropped to a less square aspect they lose even more quality. Why crop a 6x6 to a 4x6 for a full body length portrait when I can start with a 6x9 which is the perfect length and twice as big? It's madness, you're throwing away half the frame! Fucking burns my ass! Sorry ladies.

It just takes great pictures and it's easy to use with this lens (the 100mm AE) I can give it to your friend and teach her how to use it in 5 minutes. It's that simple. Really. So it's heavy and doesn't feel like a Leica? So what? It's for work, it's a tool, it makes my job easy so I can take vacations."

The photos in question were about 24-30 inches on the long side, mostly B&W, the ones taken with the Fujica really were better, not just a little better, but obviously better. They were sharper, has zero grain whereas the Hasselblad photos had a tiny bit (not that you'd notice unless you were standing a foot in front of them), but more importantly the tonal transitions were better. It's like comparing a high quality reproduction in an art book to the original print, skintones when they go from lit to shadow look smoother, richer, and more natural. The photos are more real and have more life to them.

[phongn]

Well, I'd imagine with the 100mm AE it'd be dead-simple to use! I wonder about the tonal aspects - the 6x9 is 50% more frame than 6x6 (and twice as much as my 6x4.5) but it may be the lens that's giving that lovely quality.

[The Grim Squeaker]

From the Photo a day thread -

70's gimmicks>HDR gimmick .

All gimmicks are equally repugnant, since they amount to wallpapering over mediocre photographs with cheap flash. Any technique in the hands of someone who uses it with skill and purpose is not necessarily a gimmick, but when Hip Betty takes a photo of her feet and desaturates everything but her shoes, or shoots TRUE HDR CAT, it's just a stupid gimmick.

Yes, but they're fun! Same as borrowing someone's lens, it doesn't make you a better photographer, but it's fun and lets you do different things and inspires you.

Until you are able to consistently make solid, quality photographs, wonky techniques are essentially a blind alley and I hate to see people wasting their time like that.

Even Ansel Adams couldn't say that about himself . What's the saying, "If you get 1 good picture out of every 100+ or so "keepers" taken, then that's an excellent ratio for a day of shooting by an experienced photographer".

It's also a bland photo because the tones are distributed in big chunks of flat tone - the toward the right are one, the shadows are another, the guy and the paving + grass right to the left of him are another, a big chunk of the reflecting pool is another.

That's probably it. Too damn grey.

If you're going to work in black and white you must, you absolutely must learn to see without color. You have to see in light levels and shades of gray and compose with them just as you would compose with colors, because they are all you get to work with. And you will get a lot of failures until you do, and they won't be the kind of thing you can fix in post.

Tips?

[Simplicius]

Even Ansel Adams couldn't say that about himself . What's the saying, "If you get 1 good picture out of every 100+ or so "keepers" taken, then that's an excellent ratio for a day of shooting by an experienced photographer".

There is a clear difference. A an inexperienced "spray and pray" photographer produces a good photograph by accident; a seasoned photographer produces a good photograph by design. The latter, by knowing how he shoots, what he wants to shoot, and how his camera works on an intuitive level, is able to put himself in the right place at the right time to get the photographs he knows are there, and is able to respond to sudden, unexpected photographic opportunities quickly and effectively. The former takes a mass of pictures of anything and everything in the hopes that a few of them will fall under some nebulous concept of "good." That makes the experienced photographer consistent regardless of the fact that not every photograph he makes is printed.

It is not a requirement that a photographer make exposures that are ultimately discarded, see Julius Shulman:

]He told me that each time he made a picture, he only took one frame. He explained there was no reason to shoot more. You wait until the frame is perfect and then, and only then, do you make the picture.

The sprayers must do it because they can't consistently produce pictures that they like; people who are more experienced often do it to thoroughly explore a subject or as insurance against error and accident, but may get by just fine without.

Tips?

You can only train your eye with constant practice.

Wavering between b&w and color is not recommended. It is similarly challenging to use color effectively, and every moment you spend practicing one is a moment that your skill with the other, whatever it be, is atrophying.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Tips?

You can only train your eye with constant practice.

Wavering between b&w and color is not recommended. It is similarly challenging to use color effectively, and every moment you spend practicing one is a moment that your skill with the other, whatever it be, is atrophying.

That's my problem with shooting in colour then converting - whenever I do that, I start noticing how the colours just pop and I end up going back to colour. I can't see or make images that look better (or at least more interesting) in BW when my mind is working in colour.

[aerius]

As Simplicius alluded to in the other thread, there has to be a point to doing a selective desat, and that point is usually to make the subject really stand out. I took a few photos this summer so I could play with this concept, I didn't like the results that much so I went on to other things, but they do make a half-decent instructional.

For instance let's say I have a red fire hydrant.


It looks like shit cause the background and lighting is crap, but I wanted something easy to edit & get practice in Photoshop so it was good enough. First I desat the background, then blurred it, then lightened it a bit, then added a ton of vignetting since the corners look like crap and to focus attention towards the centre, then made the subject as bright & saturated as I could.



I still haven't figured out a good use for it in my photos, I've seen some good examples by other photographers but to be honest it's not something I'm interested in.

[J]

From ze other thread

The problem is that I don't know (yet) how to think or visualize in black and white. Doing so in colour just means that I work for a good colour picture, not a good convertable BW picture.

Well, no time like the present to practice!

Let's say you see the scene below and decide to take a B&W picture of it.



What do you want to see in the finished photo? Do you want the skies light or dark, the statues flat & subdued or contrasty, the ground light, medium, or dark grey, and so on & so forth. Then you can take a picture with the B&W setting on your camera and see if the actual photo matches what you want, and if not, then a)what parts don't match and b)can they be made to match by adjusting brightness & contrast? Oftentimes the answer to the latter is a definite "no", meaning filters are required or you have to take the photo in colour then simulate the filters in Photoshop editing.

For instance with the above picture I visualized the statues with a full tonal range from almost black to near pure white, with shadow details even in the shaded portions. I saw the skies as a lighter to medium grey, just dark enough to get decent contrast against the clouds. I wanted the ground to be light so the photo wouldn't look too "heavy" and dark, and also to provide a nice contrast against the statues.

Would the B&W mode of my camera do this? Well, let's take a photo and find out.


Guess not. The sky's about right, I would like it a touch darker but it's fine as it is. Everything else, yuck. The ground is way too dark, the statues are totally flat & too dark with nothing above a midtone and there's no shadow detail. Using the curves tool in Photoshop doesn't fix anything without blowing out the sky to pure white. Darn. I need to buy some filters or simulate their effects in Photoshop.

What needs to be done? Well, I need to boost the greens, yellows, and browns to lighten up the grass and open up the statues to get a good tonal range & contrast on them. I also need to get as much shadow detail out of them as I can. At the same time I need to keep the sky from blowing out by dialing back the amount of blue. How is this done? The channel mixer, which to me is god's gift for making B&W photos.

Create a CM layer, select the green channel, then the monochrome box, and adjust the sliders to taste.


The shadows were still too dark so I made a curves layer under the CM layer, selected the green channel and gave the shadows a bump.



And voilà! Just what I wanted.



Now you know how I do it, and you can experiment with your own pictures to see how the tools work. See this page for more info & examples.

[Simplicius]

I still haven't figured out a good use for it in my photos, I've seen some good examples by other photographers but to be honest it's not something I'm interested in.

I have a really hard time envisioning it being used effectively in 'straight' photography of any genre. It's such an openly artificial technique that it clashes heavily with the concept of the 'found' scene and anything meant to represent that.

On the other hand, I can easily imagine it being used effectively when the photo is meant to be an artificial thing (photo-illustration, or some kinds of constructed scenes) or to aid an advertisement. I just stumbled across this example a few minutes ago:



(The original's on the left.) While the 'truth' of the desaturated photo is questionable because it's common knowledge that life jackets are made in high-visibility colors, orange + black looks good (can't forget to plan the color scheme), and the manipulated photo would be vastly more effective as an ad because the kayak completely dominates the shot.

[aerius]

I have a really hard time envisioning it being used effectively in 'straight' photography of any genre. It's such an openly artificial technique that it clashes heavily with the concept of the 'found' scene and anything meant to represent that.

I think the key here would be to use it in such a way that it would be hard to notice. For example if I took the photo below (not mine by the way, one of my friends took it) and desaturated everything except the ladders, you probably wouldn't notice anything wrong until you've looked at the photo for a while, and some people would miss it entirely. I think the technique can be used effectively in "straight photography", it would just be damn hard to do.

[J]

Well, I'd imagine with the 100mm AE it'd be dead-simple to use! I wonder about the tonal aspects - the 6x9 is 50% more frame than 6x6 (and twice as much as my 6x4.5) but it may be the lens that's giving that lovely quality.

I had a bit more shop talk with the photographer while picking up the photos earlier this week, he says it's the larger size of the negative which is responsible for most of the improvements, the rest is the lens which he says is as good as anything else out there. As he explains it, with a larger negative there's more room over which to spread the tonal transitions and since it's not being enlarged as much for a given print size it stays sharper, less grainy, and the tones look richer & better. At print sizes of up to about 16-18" on the long side he says there's barely any difference between 6x9 and the smaller medium format sizes unless one is using a grainier film (TRI-X) or a film with superfine grain & resolution such as Pan F Plus. Once the enlargements get bigger than that, 6x9 starts to pull ahead.

[Bounty]

Loot! My uncle dumped some kit he never used:

- One Chinon CM-3 SLR with both manual and semi-automatic modes
- A 55mm lens
- A 135mm lens
- A 2x teleconverter
- A Vivitar 283

All in a pretty sweet leather camera case. Nice.

[The Grim Squeaker]

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/p ... moto/all/1
Awesome Japanese lightning film blasting photography. You read that right.

I'm considering trading in my Sigma 30mm 1.4F EF-S prime lens for a Canon 50mm 1.4F EF lens, the Canon will cost more (and doesn't have the benefit of being digital only), but it'd be better for portraits, street paparazzi shooting and shows or concerts.
I'm not sure about it, as I like the Sigma lens a lot, but the focal range is just too wide for most of my uses, it's too wide for portraits, although it is good for group shots, and I really want something with a bit of tele power for concerts.
I know the 50mm canon has great reviews (it's a 50mm prime, hard to screw up), does anyone have any tips or advice for me on the matter?

(I also considered going for the Tamron 60mm F2.0 macro prime, but I can't really justify a macro, and i'd be using it at normal focal range focusing distances 70% of the time).

[Simplicius]

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/p ... moto/all/1
Awesome Japanese lightning film blasting photography. You read that right.

What I've seen of Sugimoto's interests me. There's a book of his, Architecture, on Amazon that's somewhere in the middle of my list.

I've mostly spent my time scanning - I wrapped up the first 14 years' worth at the end of the year, so now I finally get a crack at the more recent and therefore more likely material. I did get out three rolls between Thanksgiving and the new year and just got the last two of those developed today; I'm pretty happy with some of the results. Shooting indoors with ambient light is a bit of a bear, but it feels good to open up that aperture.

I'm playing around with meaningless self-promotion as well, part of which being that weblog I've linked in my sig. Even if nothing comes of it, I'm awfully fond of that header image.

Loot!

Welcome to the screwmount club. I know you're a rangefinder guy and all, but if the SLR grows on you there are a buttload of great old lenses for the M42 mount out there, and well-priced for the quality.