Great B&W work lies nearer alchemy than science. The arcana of developing (time, temp, solution, dilution, agitation) can take a lifetime to master (although passable results are as simple as following the directions on the box). Small changes in any of the many variables can cause wildly diverging results. And that’s before you get to printing or scanning (and then printing digitally, which is its own alchemy). For a certain kind of mind - inquisitive, stuborn, tedious, etc - it’s all damn good fun.
One would think that it might be easier to just take digital files and convert them to B&W. In fact, many cameras include modes that do this in camera including the D80. When you know what B&W can look like, these modes just don’t satisfy. Neither do many of the more ‘advanced’ methods of doing these conversions in post. There’s a least three ways to do it in photoshop (channel mixer, plain old desaturate, switching to lab color and splitting the channels). There are probably other ways as well. And then there’s the various stand alone and plugin apps that promise either better or easier to achieve results. Lightzone seems to be one of the newest and the most promising.
Getting the most out of these tools require a lot of not easily acquired information. If you don’t know the spectral response and density curves of the B&W film you are emulating or how to put that information to use, the results are rather hit or miss. Along with all that take into account that digital sensors respond to light completely differently than B&W; how does one map a linear response onto a curve with big shoulder and toe regions? How do you get shadow densities comparable to B&W without pushing your highlights all out of wack. This is hard enough on B&W film, which already has an acommodating curve. On digital it seems near impossible to do with any regularity.
For all that, there are some people out there doing incredible B&W work on digital. It’s apparently not impossible, but I sure don’t understand how to do it, yet. See the pic below. Bringing up shadows moved the highlights up to 255. Even ignoring the highlights, the noise in the shadows had already taken on offensive look. Blah.
See the photo blog for a color version.
One would think that it might be easier to just take digital files and convert them to B&W. In fact, many cameras include modes that do this in camera including the D80. When you know what B&W can look like, these modes just don’t satisfy. Neither do many of the more ‘advanced’ methods of doing these conversions in post. There’s a least three ways to do it in photoshop (channel mixer, plain old desaturate, switching to lab color and splitting the channels). There are probably other ways as well. And then there’s the various stand alone and plugin apps that promise either better or easier to achieve results. Lightzone seems to be one of the newest and the most promising.
Getting the most out of these tools require a lot of not easily acquired information. If you don’t know the spectral response and density curves of the B&W film you are emulating or how to put that information to use, the results are rather hit or miss. Along with all that take into account that digital sensors respond to light completely differently than B&W; how does one map a linear response onto a curve with big shoulder and toe regions? How do you get shadow densities comparable to B&W without pushing your highlights all out of wack. This is hard enough on B&W film, which already has an acommodating curve. On digital it seems near impossible to do with any regularity.
For all that, there are some people out there doing incredible B&W work on digital. It’s apparently not impossible, but I sure don’t understand how to do it, yet. See the pic below. Bringing up shadows moved the highlights up to 255. Even ignoring the highlights, the noise in the shadows had already taken on offensive look. Blah.
See the photo blog for a color version.
PTLens seems to work just dandy. It has a predefined setting for the Sigma 30 f1.4 - and a bunch of other lenses as well - which seems to correct the barell distortion quite well. And it slipped right into the batch actions I normally use. See the corrected photo below.
Anybody know a good tool for correcting barell distortion? One that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? I dig this Sigma 30 F1.4, but it kind of gives things the bends.
Take it as hyperbole if you like, but I see life through a camera’s viewfinder, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. We all have ways of structuring our reality. Some folks have religion. Some have Nascar. Others barbeque on their back deck every weekend. The viewfinder is my way, so it’s really dissapointing that they keep building these digital cameras with such crummy viewfinders.
The D80 is supposed to have a pretty good VF for a cropped frame DSLR, and from having used the competition, I’d say the D80 is pretty much the state of the art. But that’s not saying very much. Even the full frame 5D has a VF that would have never made it into a basic manual focus SLR from the late 70’s or early 80’s. Those were pretty good cameras in a lot of ways. Nice big viewfinders. Although not as big as something like an F2, they were pretty good. They still are pretty good. If you haven’t ever picked up a Canon AE-1, a Minolta X-something, a Nikon FE or best of all an Olympus OM-1, don’t do it. You’ll hate your DSLR viewfinder. Pick up a good rangefinder, and you’ll be seriously depressed.
How much difference does this make? It’s hard to say. On a psychological level, this is pretty big hurdle to get over. I’m used to the disconnect between vision and print coming at a much later stage of the photographic process. With film, if the end result doesn’t match my vision, it’s usually due to bad processing. It’s not something I’m aware of at the moment of taking the photo. With digital, the bad viewfinder puts the disconect right at the moment of photographing. Making the most of that disconnect is going to be the most challenging aspect of digital for me. The rest of the chain is cake by comparison.
The D80 is supposed to have a pretty good VF for a cropped frame DSLR, and from having used the competition, I’d say the D80 is pretty much the state of the art. But that’s not saying very much. Even the full frame 5D has a VF that would have never made it into a basic manual focus SLR from the late 70’s or early 80’s. Those were pretty good cameras in a lot of ways. Nice big viewfinders. Although not as big as something like an F2, they were pretty good. They still are pretty good. If you haven’t ever picked up a Canon AE-1, a Minolta X-something, a Nikon FE or best of all an Olympus OM-1, don’t do it. You’ll hate your DSLR viewfinder. Pick up a good rangefinder, and you’ll be seriously depressed.
How much difference does this make? It’s hard to say. On a psychological level, this is pretty big hurdle to get over. I’m used to the disconnect between vision and print coming at a much later stage of the photographic process. With film, if the end result doesn’t match my vision, it’s usually due to bad processing. It’s not something I’m aware of at the moment of taking the photo. With digital, the bad viewfinder puts the disconect right at the moment of photographing. Making the most of that disconnect is going to be the most challenging aspect of digital for me. The rest of the chain is cake by comparison.
I think this might be my first accuraetly color corrected digital file. See the acompanying post on my blog.
I’m terrible at color correction. I just don’t have an eye for it. I’m not color blind, but I just really can’t eyeball a photo and fix the color with any degree of accuracy. Recently I stumbled across Chris Nicholson’s “Even a color-blind person can color-correct a photo.” Sounds perfect, and actually it is perfectly correct color, although the method is a little slow. Chris outlines a method for using PS’s eyedropper tool, info palette, and curves do color correction by balancing the numerical inputs and outputs for Red, Green and Blue. It sounds more complicated than it is, and with a little practice it gets to be pretty intuitive. If you’ve struggled with color correction, give the article a look:
Uncorrected image, as shot
Image “corrected” via PS auto color
Corrected via Crhis’s method. See a larger version of this image on my photo blog
It’s just before noon on Friday . . .
My D80 arrived sometime early Monday afternoon . . .
I’m still on the original battery charge . . .
Almost 96 hours later and the battery still shows 22% (220 shots) left. That shot counter may be a little optimistic for my usage since I only took 250 shots with the first 78% of the battery, but that’s still some pretty incredible longevity. I like my cameras to be ready to go whenever, hung over my shoulder, waiting for something good to come along. The previous gneration of DSLRs couldn’t support this kind of use. Even if they could shoot 400 or 500 shots on a charge, that meant continuous shooting over a short period of time. The battery wouldn’t always last through a day of off and on shooting. At 4 days and counting, the D80 seems up to the challenge. And it’s a good thing too, since EN-EL3e batteries are still out of stock at B&H ;-)
If you follow Leica stuff at all, you know by now that Leica’s first digital RF, the M8, is now real as in you can look at pictures and video of it on the internet. I’d love an M8, two actually. While the price tag ($5000) is pretty reasonable compared to other pro digicams, it’s way out of my league given other goals I have at the moment - like getting into and paying for Salt next spring.
So what’s the point of this unique wedding of old fashioned RF technology and brand spanking new digital hotness? Having used the D80 for a couple of days now, I think I can enumerate a few points where an RF is still superior:
So what’s the point of this unique wedding of old fashioned RF technology and brand spanking new digital hotness? Having used the D80 for a couple of days now, I think I can enumerate a few points where an RF is still superior:
- Size: while the D80 is pretty small for a DSLR, it’s nothing like an RF body. When you get to lenses it’s game over. The RF allows for considerably smaller lenses.
- Speed of operation: I’ve now used DSLR’s from all the major manufacturers, so I think I can make a pretty broad statement here. In comparison to an all manual camera, DSLR ergonomics suck. Aperture rings on the lens, shutterspeeds on a thumb actuated dial ala Hexar RF, and a highly refined manual focussing system whoop the pants off Multi-badass 10000 AF modules, command and sub-command dials, reprogrammable buttons etc etc etc.
- Lenses: you can do cool things when you don’t have a design around a big flapping mirror.
- No VF blackout: being able to see your subject at the actual moment of exposure gives the RF user a better sense of timing and the ability to handhold at slower shutter speeds.
I’d also take one of Michael Johnson’s DMDs. Think Hexar AF with a digital sensor, built in A&S and a few other goodies. Heck, I’d even pay $1000 for one. I will not however, pay any amount for a Richoh GRD, no matter how many posts Mitch makes about it on photo.net. Mitch seems like a pretty decent guy, and the GRD a pretty decent camera, but 28mm lenses just don’t float my boat, and I know that I require something a little faster to keep my frustration level at the right level for photographic production.