On Deciding . . . Better 3.0

One of my favorite writers on photographic technique is Dante Stella. As I started back into photography a few years ago, his opinionated essays served as benchmarks for me as I explored cameras and materials. Dante has an extremely practical and grounded approach to photographic instruments.

Most of the essays on the site were written several years ago during the development stage of the digital photography revolution. While it was clear that he was using the best of the available digital SLRs (Kodak DCS 14n and a Nikon D2x), he was not accepting the supposed virtures of digital over film without question. It was interesting to me that his writing became more and more infrequent in the last couple of years as, in my opinion, digital equaled or surpassed film with regard to sensitivity, resolution and image quality. With the D300 perhaps even dynamic range. Then this year Dante wrote a full-on endorsement of the Leica M8. It almost moved me to take the leap and purchase one, but I decided that Nikon DSLRs are, for now, a more economical solution to the digital capture challenge and film was still working well in my Leica M6ttl.

But Dante has also been a fan of small 35 mm cameras like the Konica Hexar and Contax T. So it was with a sense of anticipation that I started reading his first published take on a compact digital camera, the Leica D-Lux 3. I bought a Nikon P5000 for my wife last spring and have been experimenting with it lately.

I can only urge you to read his practical and grounded approach to a digital compact. For example, here’s his view on auto ISO.

Dante StellaThe camera has an auto ISO function (based on light level) and an “intelligent” ISO setting (based on, among other things, subject movement). These seem to push for high ISO, even in bright light, a practice that increases noise and decreases dynamic range. I would suggest forgetting about either of these two settings. It’s easy enough to change ISO via the main menu. Just remember this rule. Inside, ISO 400. Outside, ISO 100. See? There’s your intelligent ISO setting…

As to image quality, I think his view on compact cameras equals mine- at ISO 100 to 400, quality at the 10 megapixel level equals color film. You never wanted to enlarge ISO 400 color film to 8×10 because of grain and you don’t want to enlarge a compact sensor at ISO 400 to 8×10. My D300 can produce fine 8×10’s at ISO 800 and 1600 becomes dicey- two stops better than color film. Monochrome, digital or film, is more forgiving.

In the end, as a travel camera, he gives it a “Thumbs up”.

I see the end of the era here in 2007 where film is now to be used for it’s look- like choosing oils or pastels over photography. Photography is now dead as a recording medium and has become a fine art, joining painting and drawing. Digital Image Harvesting is now how we record the world.

Light Reveals the Moss, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This image took some time to do and was probably one of the first in which I really needed to take advantage of non-destructive editing with layers.

I converted from RAW with Capture NX and then moved to Photoshop for selective processing. I ended up fighting with an area of white plastic at the very top of the mound of dirt. It was close to blown out and nearly posterized. I stripped away all of the work I had done in Photoshop simply by making all of the layers except for the background invisible and saw that there wasn’t enough depth in that area in the image that had been exported from Capture NX as a TIFF.

I reopened the RAW file in Capture NX and retraced my steps until I found where I had made that area a little to “hot”. It was easy since every change was adjustable and could be hidden or revealed.

After re-exporting as a TIFF, I copied the improved image into the Photoshop file, substituting the new version for the old. It was then easy to turn the adjustment layers back on and change whatever I needed due to any changes in the new background image.

I’m not completely happy with the image because of focus depth of field. I was shooting with the 24mm f2.8 at an aperture of f/6.7. I thought at the time of capture that both the moss and the lit area of shrub would both be in focus, but it turns out that the shrub is quite blurred. I applied selective unsharp mask to the shrub to make it more equal in sharpness to the moss/dirt pile. Close inspection reveals quickly that focus point is not optimal.

I’d try to catch the image again tomorrow morning, but it was an unusual lighting effect. The beam of light was actually created by the sun reflecting off of a window on the front of my house. The scene is in shadow with the sun actually in front and to the left of the scene. This accidental arrangement is one of the factors that makes it work- there’s not too much of a contrast range because the scene is generally in shadow except for a focused, reflected bit of sunshine from the early am sun. However, I’m thinking that one could easily recreate this with an off camera flash and some light restricting snoot on the flash. Possibly with an orange-yellow gel for the selective warmth.

Another issue that I’ve been struggling with and have improved somewhat is the value change that happens when I shrink the image for the web. Contrast goes up and shadows get blocked up. So I’m now adjusting at least levels on images after resizing to my standard 1000 pixel wide web jpegs. If I make those a bit on the light size, all of the Flickr sizes look like pretty good representations of the image.

Tonight’s sunset captured by the D300. I spent about 45 minutes about a half mile from my house at the Baltimore Beltway. There’s a road that fronts the Beltway that connects two exits with the fenced of beltway on one side and a barrier wall on the other. At this time of year the setting sun rakes down the road illuminating the brush between the road and the fence.

I’m pushing these color images beyond just the high saturation and high contrast I’ve been doing over the last year and trying to capture and emphasize light itself. I’m concerned more about atmospheric effect that beauty or accuracy. I think I’m joining the “Photography Is Dead” movement.

Wishful Thinking: Should Artists Give the Audience What They Want?Conventional marketing wisdom says you should be ‘customer focused’ and do your best to satisfy consumers’ wants and needs. But it’s a different story when it comes to creative work. Many of the most successful artists achieved fame by provoking and offending public taste.

Killing Photography in the digital age seems to be a good way to provoke the audience.

[Update: The Flickr photo has been replaced with another version. It’s a nice feature of Flickr that’s either relatively new or I never noticed before a few months ago. I’ve decided that while Capture NX is good for many things, Photoshop can be used for more subtle but no less effective manipulations. I’ll bet that both end up in the tool kit. Capture NX for RAW conversion and basic tonal changes and Photoshop for selective enhancements.]

How the Fog Obscures, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Today it started out foggy and warming in Baltimore. Tonight we’ve got rain, wind and the chance of thunderstorms. I grabbed this image this morning as I returned to the D300 and 12-24mm lens as my working standard.

Over the past year I’ve found that posting images on Flickr and here, with my journal thoughts here, has been valuable in developing the work. At the same time, I realize that when I’m posting images nearly every day, there’s a dilution both of quality and stylistic integrity.Recently David Allen Harvey of Magnum put out a call for portfolios from his weblog’s readership. He received 250 portfolios and commented that “Most of you need a serious edit”. Similarly, Dave Beckerman gets inquiries from aspiring art photographers but when he looks at their online portfolios he finds the same lack of editing.Perhaps one needs to present work in progress as distinct from finished work. The idea of 6 to 10 strong, related images as a set appeals to me.

I think this will be the end of my Nikon P5000 experiments for a while. I explored image quality and speed for shooting monochrome images over the last week or two and came away satisfied.

The controls and speed on the P5000 are fast enough if you work at prefocusing. Since you can chose aperture and the sensor is so small, it’s easy enough to get good depth of field with a prefocus. The quality is good and has it’s own sharp, full of depth signature look. It’s very different from the way the Leica draws a scene, but the P5000 is tiny and provides a digital workflow at low cost.

On my next trip I plan on bringing the P5000 along in addition to the Leica and trying some city street scenes for comparison.

I’ve written before about how George DeWolfe’s Fine Print Workshop was an important influence in developing my current high saturation, high contrast style for color photographs. DeWolfe has an interesting view on the value of destructive editing. He has no patience for the dozens of layers that most PhotoShop gurus would have you use for “non-destructive” editing. DeWolfe advises flattening images and painting directly on them, using the history brush in an interesting way.

After hearing VIncent Versace on a number of Podcasts (The DIgital Story, Digital Media) I took a second look at Versace’s “Welcome to Oz”. I had flipped through it months ago, but couldn’t really penetrate its message. But perhaps I had become more receptive, because i went ahead and purchased it finally.

It’s been slow going since Versace uses masking layers for his selective edits. So I’ve worked on using selections and local changes in tone and color.

This image was edited with Capture NX, using the brush selection tool to substantially change the image. It may be a powerful enough set of tools to largely replace Photoshop. It works well enough with Aperture since the saved RAW file, the NEF, contains all of the edits within it. Aperture can’t render the edits, so a TIFF or JPEG needs to be generated to go into Aperture to serve as a representation of the current edit state of the image.

I think that the one aspect of Versace’s ideas that I find most appealing is the idea that at the time of capture one should be previsualizing the final image. As I’ve written here before, there’s always an unanticipated transformation of reality into the captured image. So there’s a second previsualization at the time of evaluation of the image when starting post processing.

In this image, I decided that the two triangle forms should dominate, one light and one dark. with masking I was able apply changes to the forms that achieved something like what I imagined. There were further unexpected transformations along the way, but I had that idea about where I wanted to go.

I’ve written before about how George DeWolfe’s Fine Print Workshop was an important influence in developing my current high saturation, high contrast style for color photographs. DeWolfe has an interesting view on the value of destructive editing. He has no patience for the dozens of layers that most PhotoShop gurus would have you use for “non-destructive” editing. DeWolfe advises flattening images and painting directly on them, using the history brush in an interesting way.

After hearing VIncent Versace on a number of Podcasts (The DIgital Story, Digital Media) I took a second look at Versace’s “Welcome to Oz”. I had flipped through it months ago, but couldn’t really penetrate its message. But perhaps I had become more receptive, because i went ahead and purchased it finally.

It’s been slow going since Versace uses masking layers for his selective edits. So I’ve worked on using selections and local changes in tone and color.

This image was edited with Capture NX, using the brush selection tool to substantially change the image. It may be a powerful enough set of tools to largely replace Photoshop. It works well enough with Aperture since the saved RAW file, the NEF, contains all of the edits within it. Aperture can’t render the edits, so a TIFF or JPEG needs to be generated to go into Aperture to serve as a representation of the current edit state of the image.

I think that the one aspect of Versace’s ideas that I find most appealing is the idea that at the time of capture one should be previsualizing the final image. As I’ve written here before, there’s always an unanticipated transformation of reality into the captured image. So there’s a second previsualization at the time of evaluation of the image when starting post processing.

In this image, I decided that the two triangle forms should dominate, one light and one dark. with masking I was able apply changes to the forms that achieved something like what I imagined. There were further unexpected transformations along the way, but I had that idea about where I wanted to go.

One of my photographic goals I set about a year and a half ago was to break out of my preference for shooting flat, formal compositions. I had tended to avoid objects in three dimensional space including photos and landscapes.

While I still shoot lots and lots of these straight down compositions, I think that the concerns are more about light and shape definition than simple formal abstract concerns.

I worked on this image a bit because I want to push my use of light further. I like using off camera flash or, as here, found selective lighting effects. I did a significant amount of burning and dodging on this image to strengthen the effect.

This was my most successful black and white capture using the Nikon P5000 yesterday. f/5.3 at 1/3 sec with VR at ISO 800.

The compact camera creates yet another style of shooting which I could perhaps call point and shoot. While the camera creates nice exposures when set to an auto mode, it takes just as much consideration to get a really good image as it would with any other camera. With the narrow dynamic range, shooting JPEG there is a big difference between the D300 and this camera. An even bigger difference between this and film, where tolerance for less than perfect exposure is even greater.

There’s no real issue with image quality really. It’s just that it takes more care and less spontaneity is possible with the camera.