On Deciding . . . Better 3.0

My photographic output has been much less over the last few months. Whether symptom or cause, my cameras have not been accompanying me unless it’s been specifically for travel, in which case the Sigma DP1 now automatically comes along.

I’ve seen some very nice light over this time, but I didn’t have a camera with me. I started once again trying to decide whether there was any reasonable way to carry a camera with me more consistently and even started checking out smaller compacts that would be more easily pocketable than the DP1.

In the end, I decided that the problem was that I’m lacking photographic goals right now. With the end of the calendar year in sight, I’ve spent some time looking over my images in Aperture, looking at what equipment has been most productive for me and thinking about how I use my collection of equipment.

The DP1 is my business travel camera, sometimes being traded off with the Leica M6 when I’ve shot Black and White in cities, mostly London. My most popular images on Flickr are DP1 images, whether because of the image quality, the subject matter or the level of interest in the camera. It’s clear to me that when Sigma offers an update with a faster lens, better low light capability and faster operation, I’ll be a buyer. Or perhaps we’ll see the equivalent from Olympus or Nikon in the near future. With a new Leica M8 now going for $4000, it could be that I might eventually go to a digital M.

The D300 gets used with either the 24-120mm VR or with a kit of the 12-24mm f/4 plus the 105mm f/2.8 Micro. I’ve grown fond of using the 5x zoom of the 24-120mm, but the rendering quality of the lens doesn’t suit me well. While images tend to sharpen up well enough in post processing, it is not a crisp, high contrast lens. Yet having it on the camera, it tends to displace my better lenses, since the focal lengths are completely or in part covered by the superzoom.

I’m going to try to use the 300 with a bit more purpose now. Either with the 24-120mm for casual shooting, easy enough when I’m walking out to my car and not having to walk much with the big camera and big lens, or with the 12-24mm plus 105mm kit for a serious shooting session.

It seems I really don’t need anything longer than the 120mm for now and I might even consider swapping it for the newer Nikon 16-85 VR which is reputed to be a sharper lens.

The two primes, the 24mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1.8 are small and fast, but I don’t see how they fit into this plan right now. I loved them on the D80 since I could have a small, light DSLR kit. I’m used to the larger D300 at this point and have the DP1 when I want to go very light. And I don’t get along with the evaluative metering on the D80, while the D300 and DP1 are generally right the first time.

Nearly two months without a photo upload or post here. The combination of the Jewish holidays and the election seemed to squeeze out any air for photography. With the election now decided, I regret that I missed some of the best light and fall color. Here’s my penence: a black and white conversion from a D300 image. When I grabbed it this afternoon in the overcast light, I saw it as monochrome, so I immediately converted it.

This with the much maligned Nikon 24-120mm zoom, which I find sharpens up nicely.

This is an image that had no intent to it. I was photographing my son as he slid down a slide in these cascading pools, working on how to set shutterspeed and pan to capture him sharply amid the rushing water. In this frame he was out of site more or less (that’s him at the far left of the frame) but the image is striking.

This is an image captured with the Nikon 105mm Micro VR. It’s a beautifully sharp lens. This was handheld at 1/60th sec at f/5.

As I’ve looked through some of these images, I’ve begun to realize why I like the wide lens of the Sigma DP1 and why the 24mm f/2.8 spends so much time on the Nikon DSLR.

This image shows it well. The knothole in the tree on the right is nice and sharp. But the near side of the knot on the left is out of focus enough to bother me. The depth of field of the 105mm is just too shallow for my favored look. When I use the 24mm and move in close to frame at an aperture of f/5 the depth of the two trees would be fully in focus.

It may be that I’m better off without the 24-120mm lens because of typical subject matter and desire for deeper focus. At the very least I need to work toward bracketing apertures to better judge how much I need to stop down to successfully capture this kind of image.

I’ve finally ranked the images from my New Hampshire vacation now almost 3 weeks later. I really felt kind of blocked and detatched from the image making, largely because I felt that I had a low number of captures and an even lower yield of good images out of the collection. I hope to work through them steadily as I probably have about 30 images worth the effort of post processing.

It’s almost like a loss of faith or confidence that in the end one or two of these images will be standouts. I think that my eye is much more critical of technical flaws, leaving me unimpressed with so many images. Of course that should only lead to better images in the future.

I’m back from 2 weeks in New England, mostly staying in our favorite campground, Glen Ellis in Glen New Hampshire.

My single most important goal was to climb Mount Washington with my 15 1/2 year old son. It was a cool day and I took the Sigma DP1 as a light, landscape capable small camera. It performed well.

My photographic output wasn’t very prolific, but there are still about 800 images to sort and rate.

My eyes seem to need a break from these summer colors. So I went back into the archives. This was captured in Georgetown near Washington, DC.

The “micro 4/3rds” news is very exciting. Olympus and Panasonic announced that they are working together on a new specification for a lens mount which uses the same sensor size as the DSLR 4/3rds mount but does away with the mirror box for more compact cameras.

This opens up the possibility of a compact with interchangable lenses and a large sensor. Leica could use it for a rangefinder focusing camera, perhaps even with automated rangefinding. There’s the possibilty of autofocus based on infrared or other optical systems as the film Olympus Stylus Epic or Contax G2 used.

I would probably give up the Sigma DP1 for a new camera with a more responsive operating characteristic as long as the image quality was at least as good as the current crop of the 4/3rds DSLRs. Of course, I’d rather have a similar compact from Nikon that would slot into my current workflow and provide Nikon image quality.

I’ve been out a few more times capturing these local fields. They are visually interesting to me, but are hard to photograph since the forms and shapes are so organic and random.

When you’re standing in front of a sunset, it takes much more insensitivity than I have to just ignore it. And after all, the view is part of the process of going out to these suburban farms and sunset was the light source after all. Maybe I can think of this image as documentary rather than cliche. Maybe I want to show that I could take conventional images if I wanted to. It’s just that I’m more interested in this view of the field: