On Deciding . . . Better 3.0

The Clothes Phantom at the Wall, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I was relieved to browse the Aperture library and see that the vast majority of images that I’ve captured fit into the SIgma DP1 parameters: ISO 800 or less and F/4 or smaller apertures. With the D300 and its Auto ISO, I’ve captures quite a few outside of it- ISO 1600 at f/2.8. So while I’d rather have the D300 sensor and 24mm 2.8 in a compact package, I’ll give up 2 stops and continue to consider the DP1 sensor with an f/4 lens.

On the other hand, I suspect that the DP1 doesn’t beat a Leica plus Summicron. My f/2.0 lenses give me 2 stops over the f/4 of a Sigma DP1 and my ISO film is just a stop slower than the ISO 800 of the DP1.

Consultation on Rue Huber, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This is a reworking of one of my favorite street photos. Here’s the previous version from last Febuary posted to Flickr

It’s almost embarassing to put these two version up against each other, but I’m very pleased to see the progress I’ve made in creating memorable images. Importantly to me, I can see the same idea working in the previous version, I’ve just done a much better job of correcting the color and performing local brightness and contrast to tell a story and guide the reading of the image.

There are two factors at work. One is better tools. Thanks to my internet and book instructors like Thom Hogan and Vincent Versace,  I’m using Capture NX and Nik Color Efex in PS to post process. The improved white balance is due to the NX RAW conversion and neutral point tools. The enhanced lighting is from Nik Efex.

The second factor is a more conscious approach to bringing out the light in the photo. The buildings and sky in the background all share the same tone level now with the figures being emphasized in relation. The maps are now at full white with the faces brought up to a similar level, placing the figures in the darker background.

And I thought I used to be pretty good at this. I hope that in a year I’ll have the chance to rework this image again and once again be embarrassed by past efforts.

Glow Plug, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

As I work through some of these Tri-X images from San Francisco, I find that the tools used deeply affect the images captured. These are simple, graphic somewhat grainy and low resolution images. I like these simple, almost mysterious black and white images, but their scale and ambition seems smaller than the clean, high resolution DSLR images which seem, by comparison, to be like medium format captures.

To the extent that I want to range widely over my visual vocabulary, it would seem I need to mix up the tools. Film, digital, rangefinder, DSLR.

Technical note on the image: The right side of the hydrant was blown out, or at least the negative was too dense to pick up texture with the Minolta Scan Dual III that I use. I recovered by adding texture lifted from another area of the image. It’s nice to be able to so simply save an area with “real pixels”.

Two, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I finally retrieved three rolls of Tri-X from a local lab which were shot back in December on a buisness trip to San Francisco. I had the lab (Techlab) here in Baltimore scan them, but the scans are unusable. Many blown out and most full of dust. My usual lab for film, National Photo does a vastly superior job on develop and scan, but they don’t run Tri-X, so I needed an alternative.

The scanning wouldn’t be so bad, but my VueScan/Minolta Dimage III set up is being cranky, with random crashes of VueScan and one crash of the entire system.

Given my experience of traveling with the D300 last month, I’m not eager to keep on trying to use film and scan as much as I like the look of the images. I’d rather drag the D300 and convert from color.

Now that the Sigma DP1 is getting close to release and some images are being posted to the web, there’s the possibility of a larger sensor digital camera for travel to replace the Leica/film setup.

Dutch Portrait, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

With the release of Aperture 2.0, I can finally put Aperture back into my workflow. In it’s absence, I’ve gotten used to the RAW -> Capture NX -> TIFF -> Photoshop -> PSD -> JPEG -> Flickr workflow. I’ve put Aperture back in at the front (receiving and cataloging the RAWs) and at the back (importing back the final, flat PSD from Photoshop). That leaves me with an external folder set of work files from Capture NX and Photoshop. It should actually help keep things orderly and the Aperture library file size down.

Moving Still Bicycles, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

It’s nice to be back with a few hundred images to work through. I need to remind myself to get out and continue to get the Suburban images when the light is right. Tomorrow looks like a good bet, with relatively warm temperatures and sun in the afternoon.

In the mean time, I’m developing this theme of motion in the black and white urban travel series. I’m working on gesture here mostly.

My way of working has been to load images into Aperture for scanning, rating and cataloging, then going to the rated photos to choose one for post processing. It gets exported, opened in Capture NX and optimized as a Color NEF. Then exported as a TIFF and opened in Photoshop.

In Photoshop, I try a few approaches, but leave it full screen on the big monitor unmanipulated until the next day. By then I generally have picked a firm direction to take the image.