On Deciding . . . Better 3.0

This afternoon we had a family outing to Harper’s Ferry, WV. Harper’s Ferry is a National Park at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. It’s a Civil War era town that been preserved, famous for being the site of John Brown’s abortive abolitionist rebellion.

As we were leaving the house, I started grabbing the Nikon D300 as I usually would, leaving with just the 24mm f/2.8. But since the purpose of the outing was not photography, I just slipped the Sigma DP1 into my back pocket. The sky was clear, it was midday and not the best time for photography anyway.

Once again I found myself adjusting to the camera, spending more time framing and waiting for the right moment to capture the image. With the 8 to 10 second lockup of the camera after capture, I’m generally compelled to move on to start framing another image. The Nikon allows so much more flow in approaching a subject and working it photographically.

Yet, with the compactness and the relatively high yield of images like this one, I keep reaching for the DP1.

I’ve been writing about the DP1 as a series of short thoughts based on the images I’ve post-processed. This image from Geneva reminds me of the invisibility one gains shooting with a compact camera.

A DSLR with large lens (like the 12-24mm f/4 Nikkor) is an imposing piece of technology. There are lots of folks out with their little compact digitals held out at arms length, squinting at the LCD.

The 28mm equivalent lens on the DP1 suits me. But to capture this image I had to be about 3 feet away from the man reading the paper. Right at the edge of the bench. So I’m kind of crouching, but I look like anyone else taking photographs of the church. But even though the church is a major part of the image, it’s the backdrop, not the subject.

The post processing of this image was not easy because the forground figure was relatively darker than the bus stop and church. I’ve picked out two figures with light and selective sharpening. These are cinematic techniques I’ve learned from Vincent Versace’s approach. No real camera would render those two points so sharp and bright compared to the rest of the scene. It’s remarkable though how the eye is fooled, following the will of the photographer.

Here’s a Nikon specialty. The 105mm VR Micro in my backyard handheld closeup. The character of the NIkon is seductive in an entirely different way than the DP1’s Foveon

At the end of my few hours in Geneva, it started raining again, this time with thunder. The sky darkened and night fell swiftly.

I set the DP1 to ISO 800, aperture wide open (f/4) and 1/25th second. For about half of the shots, this one included, I rested the camera on a railing for stability. There’s a clear difference in the clarity of the signs in those shots, so it made the difference between usable and worthless shots.

The noise across the sky was pretty bad. There was not only typical grain like noise, but also some splotchy magenta-green patches. NiK’s Dfine 2.0 did a good job of filtering at the “high noise” setting. Whereas the D300’s ISO 800 is clean, the DP1’s is not. Next time I may bring something like a gorilla pod for stability and stick to ISO 400 or less. I judge ISO 800 as barely usable and definitely to be avoided.

Here’s an image from last week that I needed to render in monochrome. The slowness of the DP1 image writing tended to push me to grab a single image and then move on. I shot this from across the street, but didn’t move in to isolate nor did I move into position to get a really squared up image. It ends up being not that well composed, but in monochrome some of those distractions are minimized.

Here’s an image from last week that I needed to render in monochrome. The slowness of the DP1 image writing tended to push me to grab a single image and then move on. I shot this from across the street, but didn’t move in to isolate nor did I move into position to get a really squared up image. It ends up being not that well composed, but in monochrome some of those distractions are minimized.

Perhaps I should admit that in the digital age I’ve become a color photographer. My last two trips were made with digital cameras, the Nikon D300 and the Sigma DP1. As I visualize compositions, I see color. Is it the feedback on the LCD or just the knowledge that I’m capturing in color?

In the end it doesn’t matter, because I’m so taken by the color rendition of these cameras that I can’t bear to do black and white conversions unless the image demands it. If I can create the composition and gesture with color, I do.

The DP1 pushes me this way even more because of it’s color rendering. The Nikon has a crystalline quality to it. The resolution and sharpness are profound and color feel exact. The sigma’s colors are less saturated, but more evocative. These Foveon sensor images appeal on a very emotional level to me.

I’m back from my first business trip with the DP1 as my camera. It was a short trip, with only about 3 hours available for a walk around my destination, Geneva. It had been raining all day, but the sky moved to broken clouds during the afternoon. Later there was a thunderstorm, which led to some images as well.

Since I had left before the update to Sigma Photo Pro had been released with its improved treatment of Auto White Balance, I shot with WB set to cloudy. At this point I’ve downloaded it, but haven’t explored it’s improvements yet, so I’ve stuck with the old preset workflow for now.

As a photographic tool, the DP1 impresses with its results, but falls far short of any DSLR in use. I did eventually get into a rhythm for using it, but it inhibits my usual pace of working.

I can easily adapt to the focus mechanism on the camera. Like any point and shoot, autofocus takes a second with the image becoming perfected by contrast detection. A DSLR just snaps into focus with its phase detection mechanism. It’s a very long shutter lag if you try to simply point the camera at the scene and fully depress the shutter release. Most of the time, I’m choosing a focus point and can take the brief time to focus, recompose and release because the scene is static.

However, if there’s motion, the sophistication of a DSLR’s many focus modes and control makes many images harder to get. In these kinds of situations, typical when photographing on the street, I experimented with manual focus with the DP1. I haven’t had a chance to edit the images enough to understand how well this may have worked.

It’s the slowness of the storage on the camera that has much more impact on my shooting. Once the shutter is depressed, many seconds go by before any camera setting can be changed or another image captured. It’s actually the frozen setting controls that seemed to be the more frequent frustration. I might have shot with manual focus and wanted to try auto. Or try a different approach to exposure. On the D300, I’d change setting and shoot. Move to slightly different angle and shoot. With the DSLR it’s a seamless flow with the camera always ready for my next action, whether it’s metering, changing a setting or capturing an image. WIth the DP1, it was shoot and wait, making it impossible to establish a shooting rhythm of any kind.

The DP1 tended to drive me to single shots of a subject unless I felt the subject was really worthy or I had obviously made an error of some kind. Mostly, it wasn’t worth it to stand and wait for the camera. Better to keep on walking and looking while the camera did it’s own thing.

Of course, this all simply means that the electronics of the DP1 are those of a typical compact digital camera. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of the electronics are sourced from the same suppliers as other compact cameras. The DP1 has the sensor of a DSLR at it’s heart, but it still has compact camera electronics for brains.

The light continues it’s dismal spring absence. This is a late afternoon image taken during a short business trip last week, the area behind the hotel parking lot.

In the image you can see a fair amount of chromatic aberration in the small branches against the sky. Not as bad as my standard Nikon 24mm f/2.8 on the D80, but noticeable in a big enough print.

By the end of the week we’ll have an update to the DP1 and RAW processing software that is said to help the green vignette issue. It’s great to see Sigma responding quickly, but it remains odd to me that the camera shipped with such a glaring problem that was fixed a few weeks later.

As many compact camera owners find, a high percentage of total photographic output comes from the compact because it’s the camera that’s available most of the time. On my upcoming business trip to Europe it will be the DP1 that goes along, not the Leica / Film kit or, as last time the D300 DSLR with 24mm lens kiit.

A Nikon D300 DSLR Image. This is what the DP1 can’t do. A sharp handheld macro in doubtful light.