Forgotten corners.

Urban decay has always drawn me. Maybe it has trawling through old magazines as a child with romantic ideas of travelling to third world countries (and changing them of course, we thought a photo alone could do that back then), seeing abstraction in details or just being drawn to worn down and "storied" places.

Doing one of my early morning photo walks, I stumbled on this image in an abandoned office foyer. One of those places that show neglect now and only highlight the "after thought" nature of the original place. I could barely be bothered to investigate, but on looking close, I discovered the plant was not a fake and was somehow thriving in its squalid location. Moved by its effort to survive, I became determined to capture its struggle and composed the above image through a panel of frosted glass (the only one facing the sun). beauty can be found everywhere, 

The camera was the OMD and the lens the 25mm at about f4. There was a little post processing to get rid of the less attractive spots of bird poo, but otherwise it's as was.

End of an old Bugbear?

After a long while focussing (no pun intended) on street and portraiture photography, I have returned to, or intend to return to landscape photography as well. The streetwise Pen F and action oriented 40-150 Pro were purchased against their own marketing assumptions for this purpose as I have had the 12-40 for a while, but lacked an unbroken range from wide angle (24mm equiv) to medium telephoto (300mm equiv) and a kit with consistent quality across the frame and through the range.

One of the weaknesses of my previous SLR kits was in the use of long lenses for slow to medium slow shutter speed exposures (5 sec to 1/125th). Vibrations that are hardly noticeable, even to touch, are severe and unforgiving when everything is stretched to the limit. Longer exposures have some settling down time and shorter ones can even be hand held, but these shutter speeds are the "sweet spot" of frustration. Heavy tripods with mirror lockup and cable releases applied, tripod collars used when required and a few other tricks such as "weighted" tripods and supporting metal rulers under the lens all failed to arrest quality robbing vibrations. 

The Pen F sports two things that I hoped would eliminate the problem. It has an electronic shutter that creates no vibration or sound and can be fired using a variety of methods from a gentle touch on the back screen to mobile phone wifi release via an app.  Using the first method, my work routine became (very quickly), mount the camera, compose, polarise to cut out reflections, then gently touch the frame where the image was best focussed, firing the camera after a short delay. No noise, no mechanical hints or distractions, just pure image taking, fast and efficient. The quiet gentleness of this system is ironically most similar to using an old leaf shutter or my ancient 1970's Canon F1 SLR with its cloth shutter and mirror lock, so we have come full circle (lets not talk about the clunky T90's).

Today was the perfect day to test the kit out, being still and wet with a high over cast cloud cover. So with polarisers attached and my meagre remaining tripod option in hand off I went. There is always some expectation of failure when a theory is tried out in practice* but my confidence was bolstered with a strong determination to succeed.

*Mathematical theory does not often survive scientific experimentation. 

These 4 were taken with the 40-150 at iso 100 using shutter speeds in the 1/15th of a second range. All the images in this post were taken within 100 meters of each other in the Cataract Gorge, Launceston. The compressed upload does not go close to showing the full detail....exciting!

A couple of wide angle shots from the same places. I toned down the fluorescent greens in post (tones accepted on a Velvia slide, assumed to be fake in digital!).

Changing Shape

Not much of a photo, but a really good example of how colour can change the "shape" or perception of depth in an image. In the mono image the top right of the frame is of no consequence, not so with the colour, where the eye is inevitably drawn to the orange an the little strip of blue in the lower right. My first impression of the colour image is of a shared importance between the hat and orange corner, then a secondary discovery of the blue strip matching the blue pullover and hat (this could be intensified to strengthen it). The mono image is very much about the person, front and centre with the contrast in the hat, texture and tone, as the primary attention getter. 

Pen F and the 75mm

NO PHONES PLEASE

I made a conscious effort to avoid mobile phone images this time or at least put some emotion into the images. Easy to get, but sooo boring and cliched , they are the modern equivalent of the "man smoking" image, but less characterful.

Lollypops are ok though.

And cigarette machines.

Or a mothers trials. Ignore the phone in the background.

All taken with the pen F and 17mm. Starting to detect a "bigger" feel to the images from the Pen.

Changing Times

The Tokyo fish markets are moving later this year. One of, or the biggest in the world, it is an institution amongst the Tokyo millions and more recently the many tourist ready to brave the frantic environment.

Not technically a tourist attraction, the market workers tolerate the steady influx each day (after 10 am), but keep your eyes open as they are still at work and give little warning they are bearing down on you!

I hope the character (and characters) of the old marked transfer well, but I am glad to have made it there twice before it is gone.

Images taken with the Pen F and 45mm.

Many crossings

Shibuya crossing, Tokyo. Said to service up to 1000 people every time the lights turn green on the multiple crossing points is the main access point to one of the worlds busiest subway stations.

All of the above images were taken on two crossings with the little Epm2 and 17mm lens.

Strange Choices

I had a coffee with a friend the other day. Opposite where we were sitting was a girl with striking red hair.

So I printed the image in black and white?

More Melbourne

A few more images from the overnighter in Melbourne a few weeks ago. The first batch from the market, mostly with the 17mm.

Some abstracts.

Some more street, again mostly with the 17mm and one or two with the 45mm.

Travel well.

Japan Again

Off to Japan again soon if I recover from a bout of Swine flu/Pneumonia in time. Two weeks in hospital (1 week in a coma) really strips the body of muscle and endurance, but I have 3 weeks to get myself at least strong enough.

As usual gear is on my mind, especially with my strength down a lot at the moment. My wife and I went twice last year, so I know what to expect and I also know that I can make do with what ever I take (nothing beats actually doing something to get over "pre game jitters").

Last trip I had 2 OMD bodies. One with a short lens (17mm) on a Gordy 60" strap (one of the best things I bought this decade) and one in the hand (45 or 75mm lens) on a left hand wrist strap.

This setup worked well for me, especially in Harajuku where the hand camera/75mm allowed candid portraits and the strap camera/pre focussed 17mm combo grabbed the passers by. I tried the same thing in Melbourne recently, but with a shorter strap and it was awkward, so switching back to the longer strap should work better.

EPM2 and the 17mm from a recent trip to Melbourne

To add to the confusion I just purchased a Pen F for its silent shutter (street and landscape applicable). It looks like at this stage much the same combo as above, but an EPM2 as the strap camera and the Pen F as the hand camera. The Pen F mostly for its very slight speed advantage over the OMD's (not AF, but general functions like screen to eye piece switch over) and the EPM because of its top on/off button, no eye cup to loose, quiet shutter and it's less serious look. It also gives me 2 extra batteries (8 total).

For lenses, probably the 25/75 combo for the Pen F and always the 17 for the EPM.

Bags are always a pleasant problem as I have far too many. The main priority this trip will be comfort and weight, so maybe a light weight, waxed Domke F3 (purchased in Japan) or a little Kata Nimble 3? My most comfortable strap is on a camera converted leather satchel, but the bag itself is quite heavy. To get there a Pro Tactic 350 back pack which is rigid enough to rest my feet on, on the plane and great for getting fragile things home with.

Updated before posting. The 75 will be replaced by the 75-300 as the 45 does much the same job, but is much smaller. The bag will be the Nimble as it is the most practical if the least lovely.

So; Pen F and EPM2 with the 17mm, 25mm, 45mm, 75-300mm

New gear and revelations

I recently had a stint in hospital. Not something that would prove lethal in a modern first world hospital, but something that made me very grateful I do not live in a third world country.

On waking up from a long sleep, I found a photography magazine that my mother had brought in for me. In her own words it was a bit odd to give me a magazine on photography, but what else would interest me? Then something funny happened.

I got the photo bug back. The type of feelings I used to get, before I worked in a camera shop for nearly a decade (and got quite sick) and it struck me that in many ways nothing has really changed. Photography is still practiced with the same goals as it always had and the technology is there to facilitate that not change it. Put simply I had forgotten that a good image is simply a good image. Here where people going bush or travelling and taking the same images as we have always taken presented the same way it has been for years. How had I lost sight of this? Too much time talking gear, not enough looking at photos? Or maybe I just stopped buying paper magazines too soon. The magazine format and nowhere to go also makes you take your time and absorb, so maybe this helped.

What do you do when the bug bites? You buy more gear (please ignore all relevant posts prior to this about less is more, just for this post). My lofty wish list* was whittled down to reasonable shopping list after some quotes came in. I decided on a "new tech" camera, a problem solving lens and a new Pro1000 Canon printer (still not purchased, but coming). The logical set up would have been a 60mm macro to fill a gap and EM10 mk2, but I was/am embracing life!

My first purchase was a Pen F. Did I really think it would change my world? No, I have been around cameras too long to think a couple of generation shift would make much difference these days. It did however have a couple of features that I could really do with. A silent, vibration free shutter for long lens landscapes and street shooting and a better manual focussing dynamic than the EM5, both real benefits, not "fluff". The EM10 mk2 actually has most of the features I wanted and is better for a video set up, but the Pen is dead gorgeous and felt better in the hand.

How does it go? It is better laid out than the OMD EM5 (one of the few early criticisms of that camera), but the menu has been changed a bit, maybe to accommodate its extra features so I cannot get the two models set up the same (Grrr). It seems that Olympus has just chosen to drop some features on some buttons in the custom menus. It does have some new ways to do AF selection, but I cannot match these with the older cameras. AF may be slightly faster, but the more precise focus point is a blessing.

The extra pixels do not make a sharper or contrastier image, but the extra file size, the silent and vibration free electronic shutter, mounted on a tripod with the pro zooms should produce some big, waste free images. Maybe the dynamic range is better? Still to be confirmed.

The second thing was the 40-150 f2.8 pro lens. This one broke all of my rules, but I was after a landscape lens that would give me a gapless range with my 12-40 for tripod work. As stated before, I prefer prime lenses for most work, but zooms are just too good for tripod work. If you don't have to shoot quickly why waste pixels with poor framing options.

PenF 40-150 at 75mm f2.8 lower right third of the image, about 4mp (off centre sharpness test). The 75mm lens image is identical. Standard processing.

I love my 75-300, but there was a sizeable gap between 40 and 75 in an area that I use a lot, and the corner performance of the long zoom is good but not perfect. The fast, heavy, weather proof and expensive 40-150 ended up being the best choice. I am not going to further bore you with irrelevant test images, but here is my take after using the lens for a week or two.

It looks to be as sharp as the 75mm at the same apertures and focal length across the frame. 

It is slightly sharper in the centre than the 75-300 at equivalent focal lengths, where the cheaper zoom is strongest, being roughly as sharp at f2.8 as the longer zoom at its widest aperture, but sharper stopped down to the same aperture. It is clearly sharper in the corners, being nearly perfect across the frame-my main reason for buying it. It sits more steadily in the hand, has a noticeably "snappier" looking image and is nicer to use except for the weight. The tripod collar helps with balance also, but this is really an issue introduced by the lens itself. Bokeh, in comparison to my primes could be slightly better, but for landscapes that is irrelevant.

Both the 12-40 and 40-150 seem to be designed to create beautiful images to the eye, regardless of how very well they do on the test bench. 

*The 4 perfect primes list of the Leica 12mm and 42.5 ($3000), the 300 f4 ($3500) and my 75mm as well as the newly announced 25 f1.2 ($?). Impractical or ideal?

Autumn Fail

I missed Autumn this year.

EM5 12-40  40 f4

Between the changes to my work circumstances, impatience to get to Japan again for more street shooting and cultural cleansing and an ample dose of apathy, I missed Autumn. 

During a flood emergency in my basement (and record flooding locally that even made the news in the Czech Republic!), that forced me to manually bail out the 8 bathtub sized pool under the house, a little magic caught my eye in the garden. I dropped the bucket and grabbed the first fully loaded camera that came to hand.

The lens is the 12-40 that is still in the "not sure" category with me, but I think I have come to terms with its character. Pekka Podka said in his review that Olympus intended to have a lens not high in super fine detail resolution like the older 12-60, but strong in contrast and smooth rendering (not exactly sure on the precise wording there, as it looks as though his excellent site has been taken down). 

I feel the images have a slightly under exposed look to them, with too much noise and softness, but I have not yet explored its exposure accuracy and forget that I tend to shoot in poor light hand held, where f2.8 is a luxury. Every time I test it, it comes up with comparable quality to my primes**, but in the field something (maybe me?!) goes awry. I also feel the lens misses focus more than other lenses on the EM5 mk1*, but will probably be better on the newer cameras. 

It does not help that I tend to use the lens at 40 f2.8 where it is known to be weakest by a small amount, especially compared to the 45/75 lenses. When I do landscape work it is sharp edge to edge and the focus issues* go away. 

If I look at the images it takes at normal size or when printed, it does a lovely job, but if I go in and pixel peep, it looks to have less detail than the tele primes, rendering a simpler sharpness more on par with the 17mm. Like the 17mm it sharpens well and the colour/bokeh/contrast are good. 

*The EM5 mk1 has a small achilles heel with its focus. It tends to shoot past small subjects. This varies by circumstance and I feel with some lenses and it frustrates my father in law no end when he tries to photograph small spiders, as it focusses perfectly on the ground around them.

** not as sharp as the 75mm (no surprise), smoother, but less snappy than the 45, roughly equal to the 25mm (but more ca) and better in the corners than the 17mm. It is also known to be a better edge to edge 12mm than the prime.

No Eyes Here

A theme that has crept in to my street images around home is heavily shaded eyes.

Evandale Market EM5 12-40

The reason is, of course, the light.

The Spring or Autumn light in Tasmania is strong, bright and low in the sky and the people lucky enough to share it are going to need some shade for those eyes.

OMD 17mm

In Japan it is Umbrellas, but In Tasmania it's manually shaded eyes.

Manic Melbourne

Meg and I had a little jaunt over to Melbourne a few weeks ago, she for work and me just because.

I spent the better part of three days working on my street technique and discovered a few things.

1) your mistakes are often your best stuff, even after all these years. Frustrating but true. Maybe it's that you are as surprised and delighted as another viewer by the discovery of a new image taken "less well" that works or maybe it is just luck.

OMD 45mm

2) Technique that works in one city may not work in another. Harajuku Japan suited the 17mm focussed on about 2 mtrs at f4-5.6. Melbourne defied this. Maybe the distances were different, or the people or the light or maybe my mojo was not packed in the case when we came over, but for some reason a longer (25/45mm) lens was more successful, even for grab shots.

EPM2 45mm

3) Revisiting the same place gives you a feeling of easy comfort, but this may not always be a good thing. Seeing differently is not always linked to just seeing different things, so reinventing yourself in a known haunt is tough, but clearly defined and going somewhere new is not automatically going to change you, just your view. Be aware of the difference between improvement and being in a rut.

OMD 45mm

4) Those little OMD cameras (and Pens) frikkin' rock, even the old ones! The lenses aren't bad either. Yeah they miss the odd shot, as do most cameras, but if you are prepared and "sorted" with your technique, they are quiet responsive and deliver a deep and glowaciuos image. This is only getting better in the newer models, but any of the cameras with the 16mp sensor or later are good.

EPM2 25mm

Welcome back Silver FX

A year ago I switched to a Mac computer. In the process I lost the FX suite (now owned by Google). I purchased Silver FX at full whack a few years ago, then it grew into the full suite thanks to Google upgrading anyone who owned one to all and found some good stuff in there.

Paying for it again (even at less than $40) was a bit of a pride thing....really shits me. I had the disc, but no go and my activation number was ignored, so I let it go grumpily. 

Reading a blog on line the other day (more photos less gear?), I noticed an announcement that it was free at the moment, so I grabbed it again. 

Not too proud to say I missed it and am glad to get it back.

Lightroom and PS can do a lot with mono conversions, but there is something about the depth or control and a programme with full focus on only black and white that makes a difference. It is dated by the standards of some of the "film simulation" programmes out there, but I am not interested in that, I just want the best digital mono image I can create easily and cleanly. My favourite tools are the contrast and structure sliders and the filter controls.

All of the above were taken within 50 feet of each other at Perrin dunes on Tasmanias' east coast with the 12-40 and 75-300 lenses. All very "Death Valley".

The colours are from the copper and gold toning options at weakest setting then modified to a finer degree.

ANZAC Day

It only means something to Australians and New Zealanders, but it is our shared national day.

It is also a great time of the year (high Autumn) to photograph proud men and women and the spectacle of military pageantry.

Gear? The OMD and 75-300 zoom (look at that colour!)

The one above is from my old favourite kit (1Ds mk2 and 135 f2L). Much the same quality, but twice (three times?) the weight of an OMD and 75 f1.8. How things have changed.

Aren't Pelicans great.

Equal parts goofy and awesome, they are hypnotic with their antics.

Camping at the end of the season with my friend and father in law John, we stopped for lunch at St Helens on the Tasmanian east coast and were entertained by the local royalty.

Camera stuff; OMD and the 75-300.

Little Landscapes

Tasmania has more than its fair share of beautiful places. It's hard to travel in any direction before becoming aware of a very photogenic location on many scales. 

When I was young, the only place worth photographing that I could reach on foot was the Cataract Gorge reserve in my home town Launceston. After repeated visits, having done all of the usual images, I started to look for smaller details. The elusive waterfalls that my friends could never find were actually only 1 foot high, but with a wide angle lens placed low looked ten times larger. 

Sticking with that method bore fruit when camping at Boat Harbour last year. We had missed the true summer season, so we had the place to our selves (still managed to find the most mosquito infested part of the camping ground though and someone left the mozzie flap open).

Around sundown (when the mosquitoes were planning their massed strike), inspiration hit in an area of about 50 foot square on the foreshore. The tide had recently exited leaving clean, wet rocks full of brilliant colours and textures. The light at this time of the year is cool and brilliant, full of the expectations of autumn, releasing the tired hold of summer.

The above image was captured with a Fuji XA1 camera and 27mm lens. This whole kit cost $599 and would have to be one of the best landscape kits available for the money. Taken in late evening gloom, the exposure was about 30 seconds at F8. The camera was secured on a sturdy tripod, with a cable release used (the Fuji cameras do not need an overly heavy tripod and the camera has WiFi control/release, but old habits are hard to break).

Dilm or Figital?

Why do we still worship the memory of film and how good is our memory?

Film photographers are an old and declining breed, or a new and exciting breed, depending on how you look at it. True film shooters (they had no choice) chased the best technical and visual quality they could extract. They would leave no stone unturned to get their desire look, defined sharpness, contrast or the right grain look, but all were limited by films very nature. Film shooters were an accepting lot, all collecting from the same garden, but all trying to present a different arrangement.

The art community experimented with the "wet" process (limited as it was), creating looks like "cross processing", stretching the limits of chemistry any way they could or chasing workable flaws in an effort to stand out, but they were the few beating a different drum. Most of us just wanted as good as we could reasonably expect from our work flow.

Recently I was struck by a disturbing thought. The only time recently (digitally) I felt able to term any of my work as "film like", was when it looked overly grainy, poorly processed or badly taken. I was accepting things I did not like to fit in with the conventions of the digital world.

The modern acceptance of film falls into two camps;

In the red corner we have the true film users*, who can see and often need the difference, but  have to explain their choice of medium or just don't bother and let it go unnoticed. Chris Gambat of the Phoblographer recently stated he cannot get the dynamic range or look of medium format film out of digital and Eric Kim in his new ebook on Proof Sheets stated that the red/yellow/orange of Portra film eludes him in digital. Personally I have never felt that digital black and white has the depth or richness of film, putting me off using it on the whole.

In the blue corner we have the "App" film shooters. They may or may not actually use film, but either way, they are going to make sure you are aware of their intent with signature signs such as too much grain, poor focus, passed off as "artistic selection" and introduced, artificial, film flaws such as scratches, fading and bad processing (every thing true film users try to avoid).

The above image is digital. It is processed to look like I liked my black and white images to look when produced in my own darkroom. My preferred look was clean, rich and brilliant, without any soft or mushy grey tones, with tight and sharp grain (and no more than needed) and a slight warm tone (sepia/selenium), usually applied to the paper on printing. The hairs on my arms stood up when I re discovered** the look and the new process to get it.

Part of the secret is the highlight control of the OMD/Sony sensor. The recovery of detail in highlight tones takes on a film like look and the more sparkly highlights are beautiful (look at the umbrella handle above). My attempts at the same look with Canon tended to be brilliant, but thin, loosing detail for more sparkle.

I am home again.

So, sorry there wont be any fashionably "fake" film images on my gallery any more, but the reality is, I never liked that type of look in the first place.

* often with an unbroken trail of film use from their first camera to now.

**by accident I hit grey scale conversion in the middle of processing a contrasty and vibrant colour image. The unfinished colour image lead to the finished mono one.

Through a Glass Door

Street photographers use many tricks to get their images.

Sometimes the "trick" offers itself up. 

Leaving a store in town I noticed, first the man on the right, dignified, patient and then the man on the left, happy and relaxed. Between my composition and myself was a panel of door glass. At first I cursed the quality robbing effect of this enormous, low grade and unwanted lens filter, but as the taking of the image went on longer than intended, I realised that I was effectively invisible to my subjects. This allowed me a second bite, a rare commodity in street shooting. The second image was better In every way. I know that if this was taken on the other side of the glass, I would not have loitered unnoticed.

The camera was an EM5 with 25mm lens.

The quality is down a bit (notice the reflections in the top right corner), but street shooters accept that as part of the game.

High Drama

Walking outside, going to the car to get some dinner, the light was blinding across the garage roof.

Looking up, all I could see at first was glare, but as the clouds moved diffusing the light, a world of drama was revealed. I raced inside to grab a camera (a pretty random act usually, but I got lucky with a card and battery loaded OMD with 75mm attached). Out I came again and luckily, the light was much as I left it. This summer has been long, dry and hot, but has dished up some powerful spring/autumn like cloud formations.

I could not describe a more pedestrian looking vista of a garage roof, power lines and suburbia if allowed to intrude in the image above, but excluded, the true heroes are allowed to shine. 

The whole show lasted a few minutes until the sun was fully hidden by cloud, but who cares when you get a chance to see natures' brilliance from you front yard.