(New York Times)

Yes: Having a high end digital camera with all of those buttons and menus does assist in creating a stunning image. The emphasis is on the word “assist”.

No: No matter how advanced, expensive or brand of digital camera it will not magically create a portfolio maker.

Here is something that you the reader need to understand. “IT IS NOT THE CAMERA!”

It is you that takes a portfolio maker and what you shoot that image with is 100% irrelevant.

It is your personal vision for the subject material that you like to shoot. It is your vision on where to place the device you use to capture that image. It is you that decides what lighting to add. It is you that decides where to have you subject placed within the frame. It is you that decides where the props need to go and so on. I could keep going “it is you” for another 30 pages.

Starting to make sense?

Now to go back in time. The cameras that were used up to the mid 1950’s were rather primitive compared to the film cameras that we started to see in the 1960’s through to the early 1990’s. There was a period of great leaps in camera technology after the 1950’s. I know of photographers that are to this day shooting with a very well maintained Hasselblad that was manufactured in the 1960’s. Present day the selection of film cameras is very small compared to even a couple of years ago.

All of these cameras including cameras that Ansel Adams, Henry Fox Talbot, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and hundreds of other great photographers, did one thing, they captured an image.

The cameras were not advanced, Ansel Adams who I am sure all of you have heard of used a basic 8”x10” view camera. This is just a lens on the front and a film plate on the back. You manually control the focus, movements and controls on the lens. You can’t get any more basic than this, I know I use a 5”x4” view camera on a regular basis.

Great photography is created by a human being, when they press the shutter button. Or even in some cases just flip a lever.

Don’t fall in love with the gadgets, fall in love with photography.

Blake Foss is a San Francisco based photographer, designer, developer, and model maker. His entries are crossposted with permission from his blog at www.blakefossphotography.com

]]> http://lensmonger.com/2010/02/its-not-the-camera/feed/ 0 http://lensmonger.com/2010/02/a-hundred-years-of-infrared-photography/ http://lensmonger.com/2010/02/a-hundred-years-of-infrared-photography/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:25:28 +0000 derrick http://lensmonger.com/?p=230 A hundred years ago, the first infrared photo was published in the Journal of the Royal Photographic Society. To say that the world hasn’t been the same since is a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s certainly looked a bit trippier since.  Like so many things,  once the purvey of the rich and dedicated, IR photography is almost trivial now. Your camera sensor is already sensetive to IR light, if less so than visible light. So all you have to do to take an infrared shot is filter out the actual, visible colors. I guess it goes without saying that there are filters for that. Once you filter out the visible spectrum and you dial up (way up) the exposure time, what you get is a glimpse into a world that looks almost, but not quite, just like our own world.

Even if you don’t have a camera that takes filters, you can play around with IR photography yourself. All it takes is about four layers of Congo Blue and 30 seconds or so of exposure in full daylight. And a tripod. Trial and error may be involved.

(Photo via Wikipedia)

My particular obsession was with art deco and gothic theaters. At that time most of them had been torn down or abandoned, the few that remained were so beautiful and many of them had been restored to original specifications.

There is a theater in Cremorne called “The Orpheum”, an art deco theater built in 1935 and fully restored in 1987, reopening in December that year. I used to see any movie that was showing just to experience being there. In the main theater they had an organ that would rise from the ground and would be played before the movie started. Now this was cool as most theaters you are bombarded with Coke ads, boring and I don’t like the taste of the stuff.

I wanted to photograph this place so instead of hoping I would one day be hired to shoot it I just called and asked if I could come in before hours and take the photographs. The manager agreed as long as I let him select a couple of images to use for marketing. A small note on doing this, always get an agreement in writing when doing a trade for prints as he took my images and when they were returned many of them had been “lost”.

For years I would see my photos in magazines and newspapers as well as self promotion. Fortunately I had backups of all my shots as I shot 2 images of each setup using different films. I kept the Fuji Velvia images and they received the Kodak film that was better for low light, but lacked the strong color saturation of Velvia, a film I still use today.

ALWAYS GET SOMETHING IN WRITING WHEN DOING A SHOOT THAT HAS ANOTHER HUMAN INVOLVED!

About 8 months ago I had all of my negatives and slides shipped from Australia and rediscovered the shots of the Orpheum Theater and I loved them even more and wanted them on my web site and portfolio. Only problem, they were color transparency film shots and I needed to digitize them.

I always believed that to obtain professional results from a film scan you had to use a drum scanner or really high end flat bed scanner that cost a lot. I had not kept up with the changes in technology and found that I was able to purchase a flat bed scanner that would scan up for a 6cm x 12cm (panoramic medium format) film image for less than $500.00.

It took a few days for the scanner to arrive after I ordered it and I spent the better part of a week working with the supplied software and 3rd party software to optimize the scans. After a lot of tests on several different types of film ranging from color transparency film and black & white negatives I had the perfect profile saved.

Basically I tossed the supplied software away and used a 3rd party scanning application that did several things that provided me with the quality I wanted.

• It runs several scans over the film strip at different exposure levels and either combined them or saved them as individual images
• This produced in a sense a High Dynamic Range HDR image and when opened in photoshop I am able to combine the images using the HDR feature in PhotoShop to ensure I had detail in the blacks and no blown out highlights
• The scans were raw, no unsharp mask. This allowed me to have control over how much unsharp mask I wanted within PhotoShop
• The software also didn’t add any form of color compensation or balance keeping the images neutral, again allowing me to optimize in photoshop
• No dust removal. Usually with careful cleaning dust spots are minimized and easy to retouch. Some scans actually had no dust spots at all. Now that is a clean workspace justification.

Each image takes a while to get to the final stage and worth every minute. I still have some of the prints that were done chemically from the transparency and I used that print as a base. I printed the digital scan and at the print size of 9.5” x 11” (US letter size) I saw no difference, none at all. This is a huge advantage when I do shoot with film today as getting a print from a transparency is really expensive. Negative film prints are a lot cheaper, but color negative film will never give you the same rich colors and tonal range of transparency film.

Over the last few months I have been scanning in my original film based images and will post some more of them later. In the meantime here are some of the images from the Orpheum Theater in Sydney, Australia.

One image has been posted on this blog, under the entry, My First Portfolio Maker. A wonderfully dark and grim portrait of a friend of mine.

Once you have seen them you will understand why I love the place so much.

Click on the image to launch a slide show

Blake Foss is a San Francisco based photographer, designer, developer, and model-maker. His entries are crossposted with permission from his blog at www.blakefossphotography.com

]]> http://lensmonger.com/2010/01/the-orpheum-theatre-and-film-scanning/feed/ 0 http://lensmonger.com/2010/01/freehand-stereo-photography-its-easier-than-you-think/ http://lensmonger.com/2010/01/freehand-stereo-photography-its-easier-than-you-think/#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:23:27 +0000 derrick http://lensmonger.com/?p=123 Many years ago I realized that taking a stereo photograph of a stationary object is as trivial as taking a picture, locking the settings, moving your camera a few inches to one side, and taking the same picture again. The first shots I took I used a tripod and a ruler laid against the front of it and it worked out fairly well. Unless you have a controlled environment, though, this is all really elaborate and burdensome. Some years later, I thought to myself, “How precise do I really need to be?” Turns out you can get a fairly decent 3D effect freehand. It’s pretty simple, actually. Stand squarely in front of your subject with your feet about two feet apart. Favor your left foot. Frame your shot and lock the settings, Take the pic. Shift your weight over to your right foot and take the shot again. Mission accomplished.

Choosing a Subject

You’re going to be taking two separate pictures, one after the other, so the first thing you need to consider is that the subject must be static. That pretty much rules out animals and children, but planes, trains, and automobiles are still good options. Ideally there shouldn’t be any movement going on in the background, either. This makes outdoor shots challenging, but not impossible. Avoid windy days and busy roads and you should still be able to get a good shot.

The second consideration is how interesting your subject is going to be. Choose a subject with a strong presence in the foreground and an exciting shape. Again, planes, trains, and automobiles tend to be good choices, but if you’re experimenting around the house, you can also try musical instruments or toys. String instruments can be especially good. The strings tend to pop nicely.

Finally, avoid very small subjects. You won’t get the depth of field you need for a nice sharp 3D picture if you’re only inches from your subject.

Setting up the Shot

Once you’ve chosen your subject, it’s time to compose. You have options here, but there are a few don’ts. Compose your shot as you would any other, but be careful not to crop anything that’s in the foreground. For example, don’t cut off the nose of the plane. Doing so creates a jarring effect at the edge of the picture. Also try to stick to a safe zone around the edges of the picture where nothing too dramatic is going on, depthwise.

Shooting against an open backdrop with a clear horizon gives a pleasing effect as the 3D view will show the ground and sky dropping away into the distance, but fifty feet or so along, the parallax is so small that you really won’t be able to perceive a whole lot of depth

Taking the Shot

This is where it gets tricky. You’re going to want to take two shots in rapid succession while locking the camera settings. Both shots need to have the same focal length and exposure level. The easiest way to do this is to let your camera do the thinking, but only let it think once. Most point and shoots will not refocus between shots if you keep the shutter button halfway depressed. In theory, the exposure time could vary between the two shots, and this is something you need to look out for. Usually you’ll be fine. The two exposures will be similar enough that the light level will be nearly identical.

A better option, if you have it, is to set up the shot manually. Most dSLRs will let you switch from aperture priority to manual without losing focus and exposure settings. Doing this will guarantee both shots look the same.

A note on choosing an aperture: I’ve found that a fast aperture doesn’t work as well as you’d expect. Instinctively I thought that the focus blur would enhance the perception of depth, but in reality it seems to interfere. Choose a small aperture and you can’t go wrong.

Okay. You’re almost set. It’s time to take some pictures. Assume a sturdy stance with your feet about two feet apart, directly facing your subject. Shift your weight slightly to your right leg. Look at your subject through your viewfinder and align some noticeable part of your subject with a cross-hair. It doesn’t need to be the center cross-hair. If you’re using a composition grid, you have four to choose from. Point is, find a fixed point on your subject and line it up with something on your viewfinder. Now, depress your shutter halfway. Your camera should focus and lock exposure settings. Take the picture, but be careful not to lift you finger all the way off the shutter. Keep it halfway depressed. Now slowly lean to one side by shifting your weight to your left leg. If you’re using a regular zoom, you want to move about 4-5 inches to the left. Be careful to keep your camera horizontal. Make sure your marker is lined up with the exact same point it was on the previous shot and push off the second shot.

Creating the 3D Image

Now that you’ve made the shot, go download Stereo Photo Maker. Start it up and select “open left/right images”. Now it’s time to get the alignment taken care of. SPM will take care of the minor misalignments you might have accidentally introduced when taking the picture, so it’s best to just let it do its thing. Select “adjust -> auto-align”, or just press alt-a. Once the images are aligned, you can tweak the depth. Select single image “view -> flashing” and use the left and right arrow keys to adjust the parallax. The point where The two images are in the same place will appear to be on the same plane as the viewing surface, while anything that was in front of that will pop out of the screen. Make sure that nothing that is in front of your viewing plane is cropped.

Now that your stereo shot is set up, it’s time to render it in a way the eye can see. The easiest rendering to visualize is called the wobble technique. It involves creating an animated gif that rapidly switches between the two eyes. The mind ends up extrapolating the depth information. This technique has drawbacks though. For one, any excessive depth info is just jarring – the effect is easily ruined by exactly the kind of shot you’re going to want to take. The files are also cumbersome. Animated gifs are not known for their portability. Having said that, to create one of these, simply select “file -> make animation gif” You’ll be able to see in the preview whether or not the effect is any good.

A better way to create a 3D image that’s viewable without any special glasses is to place the two images side-by side and view them cross-eyed. It’s not hard to view one of these once you’ve worked out the technique. Fundamentally it’s the same technique used to view those old 3D steganographs – you remember the ones: a seemingly random pattern of colored static that resolves into a 3D image of a schooner if you look at them just right – you simply relax your eyes and slowly cross them, as if you were focusing on something in the middle distance between the screen and your face, until the left and right images merge. It’s kinda headache inducing, but it works well. These are easy to create, too.Just save your project as a stereo image. Some people like having a bit of space between the two images or small aligned dots on the bottom or top of each image to help the viewer line them up. I’ll leave that up to you.

Your most sure-fire option to create compelling 3D that anybody can see on the cheap, however, is by creating an anaglyph, to be viewed with those old-fashioned 3D glasses you might have lying around. If you don’t you can pick up a few pairs dirt cheap from Amazon. There are two primary types: red/blue or green/magenta. SPM will do either and these can be veiwed either as prints or on screen. Of course, the cost is that you lose color data and have to use goofy glasses. Honestly, it’s best to just go the black & white route if you’re using these things.

One final tip – if you ever find yourself looking at an image that’s just not right in a jarring, instant headache kind of way, you probably swapped the left and right images. SPM’s “swap left/right” button in the toolbar will fix you right up.

We’d love to see your stereo photography efforts. Post them in the comments or send them to me at derrick <ta> lensmonger.com.