Posts tagged ‘5D’
Ben Lifson
5D, Nik Silver Efex, C/Y Zeiss 50mm f/1.4
Photography is an art form. I’m gonna make a stand there, not really expecting my readership to muster much of an argument. I don’t talk much about the art, mind you, because, as Kirk Tuck has discussed, blog posts talking about art or vison don’t generate much traffic. However, if I posted a review of the Canon 5D Mk III, I bet you I might set records for page views on my site. And, since I just described myself on my business cards as a “fine art photographer” I guess I’d better start talking about it. Eh?
Normally, I tend to keep to my standard topics, which specialize in film-related issues. If I’m known for anything on the web, it’s that I post more b&w than color, and more film than digital. I love those images and topics, and it would be unlike me to veer to far from those topics and those issues.
But I’ve had in the back of my mind two posts which are related to each other. The first is a post about Ben Lifeson, the second a post about Sean Reid. The reason they are related is that I found out about Mr. Lifson by reading columns written by Mr. Reid.
5D, C/Y Zeiss 50mm f/1.4
So, I’ll get to Mr. Reid another time. Today I talk about Mr. Lifson.
Mr. Lifson is a long-time teacher of photography and editor of photography books. In 2005, he published a series of articles about the nature of visual art and the traditions of painting as they applied to photography at a web site called rawworkflow.com. I felt, as you might reading this now, that rawworkflow.com was an odd location for such a series of articles. But there they were anyway. There were 12 articles in all, and the main theme of the articles was centered on the relationship between fine art (drawing and painting) and photography.
It would be difficult to summarize all the topics Mr. Lifson discussed in detail, but among them were the structure of a face and how best to portray that face; the importance of the hands in portraiture, the importance of the bottom of the frame in terms of grounding the image, etc.
There were 12 articles in all, and I printed each one out. The insights and wisdom was always astounding, and reading them and re-reading them always brought insight and new ways of looking at my work.
When I thought of discussing these insights recently, I went to find the articles (each of which I had printed out, very important as they had ceased to be found on rawworkflow.com — I assume Mr. Lifson had asked that they be taken down, or perhaps their license for use had expired). To my dismay, I only found articles 5 through 12. Numbers 1 through 4 were not in the hanging file where I thought I had left them.
I don’t know where they went, or how I lost them. But lost they seem to be. I will, over the next few weeks, try to summarize the insights in various columns on the blog.
All the images in this post were captured in Vancouver and LA on my trip, which concludes this evening.
Color Efex 4
5D, C/Y Zeiss 50mm f/1.4, Color Efex 4
I occasionally test software for Nik. I got a chance to used the new Color Efex 4 and just received my copy. This is one of the images from the walk-about I did with the C/Y 50mm mounted on the 5D. There are lots of things to like about Color Efex 4, and I’m in the midst of preparing a blog post about the software.
More to come.
Focusing Screens arrive at Patterns of Light n’ Dark!
C/Y Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 mounted on Canon 5D @ f/1.4
Using an adapter, this C/Y is a kind of poor-man’s Zeiss lens on my 5D. Now that I have the focusing screen, I can get accurately focused frames at f/1.4 (within human error, of course). I am a happy man, as this same lens works on my RTS II, my EOS 3, and my 5D. And, well, it would also work on my wife’s 40D and my old trusty 10D (albeit as an 80 mm equivalent).
This opens up new possibilities to me. It gives me a very nicely functional old-school film SLR, a larger, bulkier Canon film SLR, and a digital camera for less $$$ than the Zeiss new 50. Significantly less. Now, of course, there is a cost.
The door on my Saab with the 5D-C/Y combo
I don’t really think for a second the image quality is as good as the new Zeiss lenses made for the EOS mount. But it’s better than any 50mm I have for an EOS mount now, for sure.
Metering is a little tricky, in that when I mount the lens, the EOS cameras won’t read the actual f-stop, but they will read whether I’m over or under given the chosen shutter speed. But it is in old-style stopped down metering (the view frame gets darker as I stop down). But I incident meter a lot of the time anyway, so that’s no biggie if I’m shooting the EOS 3, and I can chimp with the 5D if I need to.
Switching the adapter if I switch lenses causes a little juggling.
Above image witrh the DXO Rollei preset
So, this is an overall good thing for me. Next post I will discuss my thoughts on my digital-raw-file-to-b&w-file using DXO or Nik Silver Effects workflow. While there are many ways to do this, I have some observations about this effort.
And, as always, there are more film scans coming.
Playing Cameras
5D, Zeiss 50mm Makro Planar, no 'fiddling' except crop
Last week I visited my old undergraduate haunts, Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. I was working on my next book with my friend, Kevin Allen, and he lives but a couple blocks from the campus. Mike Peters, he who I had profiled a couple weeks ago on this blog, is the University photographer, and Mike graciously agreed to sit with me for a while, chat about cameras and photography (or, ‘playing cameras’ as he told anyone who we ran into as we were wandering around the campus together) and loan me his Zeiss lenses and a Hasselblad to shoot with.
Mike and his Hassy
He was auditioning the new Portra 400 film from Kodak; I had a Zeiss lens on my EOS 3, a different Zeiss lens on Mike’s 5D, and I shot a roll of Fuji 400h and a roll of Tmax 100 in the Hassy he lent me.
Mike chatting away
We, of course, found seats in the cafe on campus where the light was best, and exchanged pleasantries and coffee. These three tops images were captured with the Zeiss 50mm f/2.0 Makro Planar (my goodness what a lens).
Then I switched to the Zeiss 100mm f/2.0 Makro, and was rewarded with images such as the above.
I was manually focusing, which can be a challenge when the depth of field is very, very thin, as in the image below.
This is the place where I first received my training in photography, and Mike and I wandered over to the photo lab, which was almost identical to the way I had last seen it, in the fall of 1976.
30+ years ago, my proof sheets sat washing in that sink.
They still teach traditional photography there in 2011, and a Photo 101 class was working on what seemed to be their first test strips that day.
Thrown into Nik Silver Efex just as a test
The focus here is off, not horribly but a little in front of the faculty member (Stacy Morrison) shown here working with a student.
All in all, it was a great day and I truly appreciate Mike’s time and patience as he answered my many questions.
And, thanks for the loan of the lenses. I was truly impressed with the image quality and was reminded of thre Zeiss quality yet once again.
Weston Beach
Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 Beta, 5D
Those of you who tuned into the blog yesterday saw my first image processed with the Beta of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 Beta. Yes, I got into the Beta program for this update from Nik software and I have to say it is much better than the first version of the tool, and that is, of course, saying quite a bit.
While in Calfornia earlier this month, I re-visited Weston Beach at Point Lobos and exposed a few rolls of film along with images captured on my 5D. This time the day was brilliantly sunny, quite a change from last year’s visit.
Weston Beach once again.
Blog Update
Just a bit of clarification regarding yesterday’s announcement. The only real change to you, my readers, when I change the blog is going to be a more focused set of topics. The only major comment about the blog that tends to repeat is that the blog has no big topic. It is about anything, photographically speaking. Well, while that is true, it IS mainly about film photography, even more than it is about black-and-white photography.
Private emails to me often mention the blog’s ‘eclectic’ nature. That, to my ear, is a way of saying ‘all over the place.’
So, since I do believe in my heart that film photography is here to stay, I might as well become a repository on the web for all things ‘film.’ Blog-wise, anyway.
So, nothing is ‘going away.’ I’ll post as often as I have in the past, which is to say, as often as I can. My free time comes and goes, depending on the time of year.
What I am hoping is that once the shift occurs, you’ll all just follow me over there.
More to come.
Dragon Dictate Direct
5D, Nik Silver Efex 2 Beta
I just bought a new piece of software today called Dragon Dictate. As some of you may know I write quite a bit as part of my job. I teach at Carnegie Mellon University in the Entertainment Technology Center. I write books, I create online training courses, and I try, when I can, to write entries for this blog. But ironically, I’m not a very good typist. I have long used the “two fingered typing method” and I’m not very fast. Recently, the amount of writing that I have to do is increase, and I’m feeling a little bit overwhelmed by it all.
As many of you know, I read the online photographer Bob, the blog by Mike Johnson. Columns in that blog have been written using the Dragon Dictate software, and the more I heard about it, the more I became fascinated with it. A friend of mine, had given me a gift card from the Apple Store for Christmas, and today I used that gift card to buy a competent copy of Dragon Dictate.
I figured that if this really works, and since so often when I teach I improvise as I go based on a few notes, that this could really save me a lot of time and that my writing would feel more natural than it does. Not that I have a particular problem with my writing, most people find my writing enjoyable, but the ability to speak as I think might increase my speed which given how much writing I have to do would be a good thing.
So this blog entry today, is my first attempt to use the software, and to see how this whole process feels. Right now, it feels kind of odd and a little artificial, but I think there’s some real possibilities here for making my life easier and my throughput from a writing perspective more efficient.
One of the things that’s fascinating about this software, you let your writing and thinking and speaking all of the same time. You have to speak that punctuation, and when you want to save the document, you have to say “save document” and it’s pretty amazing to watch the software go ahead and save the document after you’ve given the command.
The text first post is with very few corrections, exactly as I dictated it into the document. I wanted you to see how well it captured my speech, especially because this is the very first document I ever created using the software. It’s a very first time I tried to use the software, I installed the software about 5 min. before I started creating this document, and as you can see, it’s really pretty good at analyzing my speech and turning it into text.
One of the really interesting things about this from the perspective of my analytical mind will be to see whether or not my “voice” changes as the text is coming directly from my brain and to the microphone instead of from my brain to my fingers to my typo misspellings and then into the document. I can already see that the number of misspellings the software does is far less than the number of misspellings I get when I type.
The future of the blog
A a while back I came up with the idea to come up with a blog that would focus entirely on film photography. As most of you know and certainly as if you look at the number of posts that I’ve done on film as compared to the number of posts I’ve done on digital photography, my film posts far exceeds my digital photography posts. It’s not that I dislike digital photography, I still love using my Canon 5D, and I really look forward to the new Fuji digital rangefinder (which I hope to purchase soon after it comes out Lord willing) but for me the joy involved in using film and especially lately the joy involved in rediscovering color fill is a real pleasure to me.
A I had talked to a couple of the readers of the blog about a year ago about the creation of a blog where we could all post our own film photography. The images would not be mine alone, they would be a combination of mine plus other film images by friends, and it would kind of be a “clearing house” for those photographers who wanted a place to post their film images that was a little better and a little more organized than Flickr perhaps, in a place we could also manage the conversation in a more coherent fashion.
So I think sometime soon this blog as most of you have known it for the 2+ years it’s been in existence, may change. I’ve registered the URL of “the latent image.org” and I believe I will start soon that blog dedicated solely to film photography. Whether that will mean the eventual death of this blog I’m not sure, but I would imagine that my personal life would dictate that I would not be able to maintain two blogs at once (it’s pretty obvious that at times am too busy to even fully maintain this blog). I’ll think that changes can happen anytime soon, but I recently set up WordPress at the other site on beginning to pick out a theme and I may eventually port some of the film related posts over there. I’m also planning to do a revision of my digital versus film comparison, now especially that I’m much better using ex toll than I used to be, and it might be a much fairer comparison given the notes that Paul Busey gave me about getting the best out of digital and the best out of film. The purchase of the cat in the EOS–one camera allows me to use the same lens on both my 5D as well as that film camera, and so the same lens will be used for both cameras one with digital one with film.
I intend to do that comparison once the weather warms up a little bit. Peg in Iran take a trip to New Jersey sometime in March, and I’m hoping to meet up with Mike peters while we’re there, and he’s promised to loan me some Zeiss lenses which would be ideal for the comparison. That comparison might be an ideal opening post for that new blog, as well as the posting of my film roles that I shot while in Paris which have not yet been developed, and I’ve also got eight rolls of color negative film sitting here undeveloped as of yet from my trip down and up the California coast. In
January hasn’t been a very productive month from a film shooting point of view it’s just been too cold. A but hopefully the new software along with perhaps some warmer temperatures will get me out shooting again.
((in case you missed it, the text above is exactly the way Dragon Dictate transcribed my audio ramblings, warts and all. Thought you’d be curious))
Driving up the California Coast
5D, Nik Silver Efex
On a business trip to California, and over the weekend I drove up the coast. This image was sunset looking our over Morro Bay.
More to come once I return later this week.
Rolling Along
5D, Vancouver B.C., Color Efex Pro
I’m in Vancouver, B.C. for a conference and I had the chance to go out walking yesterday afternoon with my 5D. It has been years since I wandered a bit in Vancouver. About a decade ago I worked a lot in Vancouver, and that was during a time when I had forgotten that I was a photographer. I made many trips there back then, and I never carried a camera with me, nor did I really pay attention to the light.
Vancouver is pretty far north, so the angle of the sun is fairly low in the sky. I had forgotten that, but was immediately struck by it as I walked around. The image above was taken at about 2:30 in the afternoon, and the sun’s angle is fairly low in the sky.
Along with making many of the images I shot that afternoon dramatic, it really increased the color saturation of everything, especially the sky.
Stanley Park
I was walking around with the 5D hanging around my neck, and the Bessa hanging from my wrist. I had Ektar loaded in the Bessa, so I’m sure that the contrast of these scenes will be even more intense when I get those images back.
Looking towards North Vancouver
It’s been a while since I posted, I know, but I really have no excuse. It’s just been a bit busy at work, and my wife and I rescued a 3 1/2 year old chocolate lab, and she’s been quite a handful. Everyone in the house has had quite an adjustment to her presence, and it’s been eating up quite a bit of time.
Laughing
I have a feeling that the new family member has been laughing at us quite a bit as we adjust to her. I have quite a bit of film to scan when I get home, but I wanted to post these images while I was here.
Friday Image
Reflections of geometry
Came across this blog and post earlier today. Just some ‘light’ reading to prep you for the weekend. Working on a longer post about ‘totems.’
If you read the blog I linked to, just note that I try to never post without putting up an image (grin).
Dawn at Gehry’s Disney Hall
A few days ago I had set up my tripod late in the evening and embraced the ‘one camera, one lens’ rule I was trying to live by so as to make my life easier. Concentrate on the shots, right? Not the gear, right?
So, two days later, I violate that rule by taking a film 35mm and my 5D, trying to get dawn images on both cameras. I also took a 17-40 zoom and my older 75-300 zoom. I regretted both decisions immediately. Too many choices, four combinations, complicated by one lens having a polarizer and the other not, and the film camera having Pan F (ISO 50) loaded while the 5D’s minimum ISO is 100.
Arrgh! I need to listen to my own advice. I got some nice images, but shoulda just brought the 5D and the 75-300. Wish I had my wife’s 70-200, I must admit, although the 75-300 acquitted itself nicely.
In these situations, where I’m juggling so many location variables (light changing minute by minute, people walking by, tripod needing to be manipulated, etc.) the variety of choices on the camera itself only complicates things. It was so much easier with the Mamiya 645 because all I did was take a shadow reading, take a highlight reading, place tones, change the shutter speed, focus, stop down, flip the mirror up, expose a frame, flip the mirror down, open the aperture, move the tripod, etc. So, the only thing I let the 5D do for me was focus, and then only some of the time.
