Camera, Camera, Camera

The creation of this blog was to share my experience with various issues in taking pictures and if reading my blog can give some insight on how to take some picture with more polished technical aspects, I have done my part.

 I gave advices without asking, so this is just me and my experience. If you like it, it is okay to use the ideas, but if you feel that this does not work for you, I will not be upset, because after all, this blog is just a place for me to say something I wanted to say. Shall I say, this is more for myself than for any readers. So don't be surprised that there has not been any activities for the last year or more, not because I stopped taking pictures, instead I have been taking pictures with different cameras. I just stopped having time to talk to my creative mind.

 I am not immuned to GAS (gear acquisition syndrome), lets be honest, I have acquired the following since I stopped writing this blog :

 - Niken F2A, but switch to F2AS after 2 rolls because I could not stand the meter needle in F2A. I have also bought 50mm F1.2, 24mm F2.0, 35mm F2.0, 50mm f1.4. Shall I get the 85, 105mm and 200mm?

- Since I already have the lens, why not F3 HP, even bought extra body as back up and took the F3 to Thailand for holiday.

 - When I was young, I could not afford the famous med1um format Contax 645, now I just could not resist with 80mm, 45mm and 150mm. The bokeh is from heaven with so much so much details yet not harsh. This is even better than the hassy in my opinion.

- I just could not not have the Contax G2 with 28mm, 45mm , 90 mm and 35mm. All are fantastic lens. The camera (range finder) has auto focus, auto exposure and still can shoot at 4 Frames per second. It works like a dream and delivers. One roll just jumped through in a short time.

Funny enough, during the same period, Nikon announce D800, D800E, D600, Canon announced 5DIII, 6D. Pentax was acquired by Ricoh and Hasselblad was acquired by sony (this is not correct after some verification.)

I spent thousands on film cameras, but not a cent on digital.

Digital cameras are more and more an industrial product, they look the same, feel as complicated, the character of the pictures are more or less the same. There is less and less individuality and more and more having the camera between the subject and me. When I shoot film, I only pay attention to the aperture and shutter speed. The rest are composition, light and timing. With digital camera there are more to worry - RAW or JPG, white balance, size of the file not wonder many of my friends stopped taking pictures after all.

Will be posting some film shots for a while, so please be patient and wait for a while.

Walking in the park

Many times we keep asking ourselves where to go shooting?

We have our cameras on which we spent hundreds if not thousands an d yetwe kept the gear in dry boxes which never see daylight (or moonlight) because there is no where to shoot.

Cameras are created to be used. I am very annoyed when one of my frequent blog posted pictures of the same scene but taken with different lens at different apertures!! What a total waste of time and bandwidth. There is no meaning at all to compare lens unless you are comparing a $100.- vs $1,000.- len otherwise the difference between decent lens are very negligible, more so when the comparison is through a blog. More so the price difference is so great, but then the result is expected.

We can compare the color rendition of Zeiss M mount lens with Leica lens. The Zeiss might be better in daylight, Leica might be better in indoor or low light. That is a reasonable comparison, but since so many people had done this before, why do it again, so it is still a waste of time and bandwidth.

Bear with me a little more, as I am very unhappy with some of the photoblogs recently. I am very annoyed when people keep posting pictures saying straight out from the camera! This is also meaningless as each picture should represent the vision of the photographer, be it the exposure setting, the color he sees, the mood he (or she) felt. By saying straight out from the camera, the interpretation of the photographer is gone, he is only showing what the camera can take, not what he can take.

So my friends, be free to make changes to brightness, saturation, sharpness of the pictures using Lightroom or Aperture and not to be enslaved by the myth of "straight out from camera", because it is as meaningless as saying I have not taken the picture, the camera did.

Went to Fort Canning park, a place which I had visited at least 3 times last year with friends and this time with my wife. The day is different, the companion is different, so the mood is different:

Saw this small plant grown in between the wooden fence and concrete. Originally wanted to convert to B/W but it does not work, so keep the color, but increase the contrast and brightness a bit to highlight the leaves.

The camera I used was a M4/3 camera with a long len, therefore the background is blurred, have to increase the brightness because of the yellow shirt, increased saturation, yet still open up the shadow to see the forehead a bit. OH, never forget to lower the clarity in lightroom. A very pleasing picture which is accepted by my wife. (never, never use your wife to test sharpness of the len you use)

A picture which I saw from afar, immediately recognized the shape, the contrast. The dash of yellow to remind us that it is not a set up shot. 

Very long telephoto shot (I think equivalent of 270MM) I took this from the top of the park pointing down toward the road, the road is in shadow thus forming a dark background, the strands of grass just pop up. (no leica, no zeiss, just pana)

Credit goes to my wife who spotted the lighter branches against the background, I have Ansel Adams in mind, but no even near, just trying. Have to increase contrast to get the lighter branches to separate from the background.

Until next time!

Shanghai Hong Fang

In the middle of shanghai, an old iron factory was converted to a culture centre with the key feature is sculptures of Shanghai artists. The exhibitions are plenty , many in the open air and many inside the converted godown.

I won't go into details of the exhibition, but my limited experience told me that the quality of the sculptures is very high. Too bad that there are too many artist in China that even the good artists seldom see light.

The whole place is full of art pieces that I spent more than two hours browsing each and every one. Here you see a brick built mercedes (the body never rust and never dent, don't ever try to face it head-on, but it is going to be slow). Picture on the building wall is different facial expression of the same model on different building.

Is this running away on one foot. Not easy, but a very impressive exhibition.

Like what I mentioned very early in this blog, contrasting fusion of senses. A multi color steel flower. Just as we least expected. A good sense of surprise.

It is just feast of arts, one can spend half a day taking pictures, examining the display from different angle, appreciate the design, the user of material, the expression, the replication of texture with different material - like this metal towel.

a more traditional sculpture converted to black-and-white. Excellent work.

I also try to play with the Art filter my yet another new camera in grainy b/w.

Photography is interesting and different. For the fun of it therefore I keep shooting.

Cameras and Film

Did some spring cleaning and spring activation. Exposed all my cameras on the table, total 22 plus 52 lens. This is my over 35 years of collection. Thanks to my 34 years old classmate to make this happen.

Since Kodak decided to read the last chapter of their book at 11, I realized that I have not yet finish the few rolls of Ektar 100 which I bought last year from HK. The film is not cheap, with the development, the wait time etc. A lot of trouble, but at least I do not need to juggle with dials and menu, no more figuring ISO (there is only one ISO 100), no more white balance (it is always daylight), no more worry about grain (the grain is very fine), no more worry about adjusting contrast, color balance because all are automatically taken care of. Strange, when we shoot manual and analogue, there is less to work on, as many issues are automatically done. Finally, a relief that no need to worry about highlight being blown off or shadow implode. Film actually does auto HDR, and this is done in on shot.

Working with film actually have less to worry, only aperture and shutter speed, the camera will do many other things on A mode, all is well taken care of, seems like it has brain of its own. Kodak, why you are so right! I just order another 10 rolls of Ektar100, or even 100 rolls to keep in the fridge for my years of shooting.

All words without picture is difficult to show how amazing the film is.

Seems like a very normal picture, but look at the sky, the clouds are so pure, the sky is blue, the sun light has that warmth, the shadow has the details. I admit that I am equally surprised about the dynamic range, color, details of this picture with little adjustment. The green is especially true to eyes. anyone who doubt the accuracy of film, please look at the color  green and purple of your digital camera. Even Leica M9 has its green all wrong in certain color temperature; and if the camera does not have enough Infra Red filtration or too much, the purple color will be off.

there is no comparison in terms of everything about the technical side of a picture except sharpness, but if human eyes are less than 20mml, then what is the purpose of having 36million pixel digital file??

Hmm, we thought taking picture was easy

The more I dig into the ways to take better picture with digital, the more I feel like fumbling with a computer than taking picture. Just to list a few that we need to know: ISO, white balance, shutter speed, aperture, depth of field, file size, JPG or RAW (DNG), if it is JPG whether it is fine, normal or basic, even camera profile.

The list of things to consider before taking a picture is getting more and more, no wonder the number of good photos are still selective.

My recommendation from the latest read and experiment :

ISO - set at the camera's base ISO close to 200 or 100 (not 80 or 160 as it is easier to think in round numbers). This will eliminate one variable.

Use RAW, or JPG normal ( I find there is no additional advantage of JPG fine, but a larger file size). I find the N brand has very good jpg output, I almost always shoot JPG with N camera. With L camera, the DNG color is so green, most Chinese with yellow skin will look  greenish-pale. Luckily, there is a profile to adjust for the excessive green and get the color as correct as possible. Please bear in mind, this is not white balance which is caused by the changing of lighting color temperature, so no white balance adjustment can change it except adjusting the camera profile. It took me quite a long time to realize that the M camera is not accurate in color.

If you are shooting with good optic, always experiment with the best aperture and stick with it. No point to stop down if the performance of F2.0 is almost as good unless you have to increase the depth of field. This will eliminate another variable.

Oh, no. The white balance. There are at least 8001 variables from 2000K to 10000K. It is almost always not possible to get the correct white balance. Without the correct white balance, most skin tone will be very yellow. Remember, except for convenience, auto white balance is not always correct, and the time when we get the white balance wrong is more than 50% outdoor. When we are shooting indoor, the chances of getting the white balance wrong is almost 100%.

A simple shot of the skyline in Hong Kong. Looks acceptable, but you don't know what you have missed until you use the dropper in lightroom and point to the grey wall/

Still not a fantastic picture, but the color is so much more realistic without the blue cast which I got from auto white balance of the R brand camera. I am sure the N, C, F, L brands all behave similarly  here and there, since there are 8001 color temperature variables, the only way is to include something white or grey in your picture. Once you have this, it is just a matter of point and click.

Another example:

This picture was considered acceptable until I realized that the white bowl is yellowish. So with the magic click...

Now the skin tone is healthy not like being sick.

I am going to shoot some Fuji ISO 100 film this week, as the film is no longer imported into Singapore and Hong Kong due to low demand. Those who shot film now are using Lomo camera or cheap point and shoot film camera which needs at least ISO 200 or ISO400 to get some more speed to offset the small aperture of this type of camera.

BTW, are you stocking up Kodak Ektar ISO 100 film? If not, please do, and keep it in the fridge. This film has beautiful color, very smooth tone, but I think it is going to go down. Good luck!

Still Shooting with the newly learned technique

Taking pictures has been an up and down experience. We bought a new camera, got ourselves exciting, went to take pictures of the leaves, chairs in the park, then the street, old men, street lamp. Then we stop taking pictures until we find another new camera, we then went through the same again. More leaves, more chairs, more street, more old men, more street lamp.

Not that I am against getting new gear for the fun of fondling a new toy, we have to try shooting something new all the times. The internet is flooded with review on equipments. Of course, bloggers have to make money, so they write something that is constantly renewed i.e. gears (this matches the need of camera companies keep coming up with new cameras with a twist here and there), many blogs contain pretty useless reviews if we consider a len sharp enough to recognize the image properly is good enough, we don't need any more reviews.

A few blogs ago, I said I learned a lot from Overgaard's blog, still experiencing it everyday to polish the new technique.

This is a twist to shoot night shots with different white balance, instead of using auto white balance or day light, I used tungsten. The camera added more blue than normal, thus creating interesting bluish violet color on the window frame. The look is very new to me so I consider this to be interesting.

this pictures was taken without a tripod handheld at less than 1/8 second. You can see the buildings are sharp and from the light streak created by the moving car you can roughly guess how slow is the shutter speed. The lamp showed a nice beautify star sign in the middle. The trick is just learned from Overgaard. I learn more in two of his blogs than many other blogs. He also has good teaching on lightroom3 which I am trying to learn how to use.

Changing of Photo Style

It is interesting to change my shooting style. In Hong Kong I use my General External Receptor Camera, set everything to Black and White, increase the contrast by two notch in the camera. Friends who know which camera, please keep it to themselves because I shall not review any camera brand in this blog becuase the title is "Camera not Important".

Here is the result.

Since I am following the recommendation of www.Overgaard.dk, the setting is ISO 800, using a 21mm lens (equivalent to 31.5mm), Auto exposure, with some increase of exposure by 0.3 - 0.7 stop depending on the scene. Generally I found increasing by 0.3 can improve the shadow a bit, but in B/W picture, i am still not very clear how will the noise behave if underexpose.

The images are very refereshing because black and white pictures will take away the colour senses which sometimes distracts our eyes due to a brighter red, orange, yellow colour. In B/W everything is either light, shadow or grey. This is a new experience. What surprises me is the my General External Receptor Camera has rich black and white output. May be it is because it lacks anti-alias filter.

Will be shooting Okinawa in Black and White and see for the next few days.

BTW, I tried some street photo in B/W, due to my skill, the people all looks very tired, so I don't want to post pictures which I don't like. Will try next time.