a different slant on things

Back in December I was near an old log cabin and thought I'd ferret around for a nice angle. I ended up liking this one:

I was still farting around with the Sigma 30mm f2.8 at that time and wanted to see if it would work for me (without my glasses) on the GF and automagically pick the right thing to focus on. Naturally I was shooting at f2.8 just to make it clear to me if it had picked focus where I wanted it.

Wondering if it was worth taking my Toho 4x5 out there I thought today I'd whack my 'tilt adapter' onto the Olympus OM28mm lens and take the GH1 instead. Well the sun has risen in the sky since the solstice (duh) and so I didn't get that same lovely light (drat), but the effect of the tilt is perhaps really quite clear

Now its important to note that both images were taken at f2.8, but note the totally different DoF that is visible here? This is actually why Large Format cameras employ tilts / swings and shifts, to allow such control over the focal plane.

So when the subject is at a slanted angle, you tilt the lens to alter the focal plane. This is called the Scheimpflug principle (if you didn't know that already) and is a cornerstone of Large Format photography.

This diagram suggests tilting so as to get all the ground in focus (common in landscape photography), but can equally be applied sideways to get a receding wall in focus too.

The idea is not the same as Depth of Field, as it actually changes the plane of focus.

In a typical camera the focal plane is totally parallel with the sensor (film or CCD) and so the focus is exactly in a line across the picture more or less equal distance from the camera. When you tilt the lens you get to change that to any angle you like.

Looking closely at the segment from the Sigma lens (not tilted) ..

its pretty clear that only a very narrow portion of the image is in focus. Classically it becomes more blurry either side of that focal plane

But in the lens tilt example:

it is clear that the focus follows different rules. Look for instance at the metal hinge and the barbed wire. The hinge is clear further away from the wall in this image, but its base is blurry. Compare that to the image above where as its further away from the barbed wire (at an angle receding from the plane of focus) it gets blurrier (as does the wall).

The reason I bring this up (well aside from that its interesting) is that I get tired of the foaming at the mouth Kingdom of Wang people who are not even one-eyed, they're blind (you know, Wangers), who go on about how infinitesimally accurate lens adaptors need to be or the image will just be crap. You know, down to microns (Daddy, what's a micron? Well Son its smaller than a mites antennae), while this image was made quite with some mm of tilt. And yet this vintage 1976 OM28mm lens (vintage used as in the context of wine year, not vintage like care) , taken hand held even, still gives sharpness like this (100% crop, right click to open in a new window as its scaled a little in blogger):

The problem with Wangers is they focus (hey that's a pun) on how lenses perform on test targets (where such alignment will make a difference because the board and the camera are square), not on how they render images. However for those of us who take photographs of "things" or people such issues are irrelevant.

The reason I love micro43 is because I can get creative lens choices that are simply not possible in Full Frame and for peanuts.

I don't know about you, but I'm into photography as a creative outlet .. not to brag about my lens test chart results. I leave that to the Wangers.

bottom line

start focusing on your creative juices not on the camera specs. Go grab any adapter you want on eBay and use it with the legacy lenses you want to help your creative vision and your enjoyment of photography ... and stop looking at charts.

I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction into Lens Tilts ... I'll leave you with an image taken with my LF camera to demonstrate Tilt to a mate.



Lastly a very rough and ready video showing the effect as it happens. Sorry its rough and pardon my voice-over



:-)

ice crystals like ferns

Sometimes here in Finland we get to see ice crystals forming on the lakes, mostly we don't get to see it because the lakes are covered in enough snow to prevent it. The last time I saw it was back in December 2009 when we had some deep cold but no snow. Then we had a whole lake covered in it in our area

This is how it looked on that day.



a beautiful "ice cover" of plant like ice structures.

Walking on them you could hear the smashing of the ice (as it was still -17°C). I felt quite guilty destroying such beauty.

Today I was out skiing (it was about -19°C or so) and came across a small area where someone had cleared away the snow and they'd started to grow again (given a patch of bare ice).

From where I was standing they looked like tiny replica ferns or perhaps herring bones. With a macro shot (sorry, just my Nokia) you can clearly see the crystalline structure of water. A 100% view of the little ferns to the left

Totally wonderful structures from just water. They even start growing on your face if you're out for long.

BTW, my flash lookin orange coat is a plain old Norwegian Military winter coat that I've tie-dyed orange ... I like orange.

I like it because unlike the modern 'membrane' GoreTex stuff it allows my sweat out when I'm skiing and therefore keeps me warmer. That its cotton is not a problem when its really cold because (simply) its not going to get wet.

The key to staying warm is to stay dry. So I have a multi layer approach.

• thin technical synthetic layer close to the skin
• thin merino wool layer (long johns) over that
• light fleece over that
• the canvas over that

and as a bonus its actually really cheap too.

win win

bubbles locked in amber

I have good friends. They often tell me that "I'm not alone, because they are there for me". While I have no doubt of their genuine intentions and efforts too, the problem is that frequently I still feel very much alone.

When I go to sleep at night, when wake in the middle of the night, when I wake in the morning, when I spend most of the hours of the day, heck even when doing things around the house - I'm just alone. Over a year later and I still simply feel empty at her absence. I still feel the desire to be able to do something for her - yet I can not.

So despite the words of "you're not alone" ... you know ... I feel that I am. Perhaps we are all always alone, perhaps its just a state of mind that we are actually with anyone.

I don't know if I'll ever completely stop feeling this way. Like bubbles trapped in amber, gradually filling the empty void left by her absence I reckon that there will remain quite a few bubbles that will be forever empty, even if the amber never sets.

Even tipping something in to mix with the existing treacle of my life I don't expect that will fill those voids completely.

I'm just saying ...

Contrast masking goes phonecam

One of the things I happen to find useful in digital imaging is what variously goes under the names contrast masking or tonemapping.

Since HDRI developed a few years ago it has perhaps put a sour taste in many mouths by the "slap-dash" hyper attenuated HDRI images which people seem to be pumping out there. Stuff which is about as subtle as suddenly screaming in a restaurant "what do you mean you fucked my brother!" Personally I've done stuff like this with it ... when photographing an interior for a business.

Its Artificial?

Humans are dreadfully conservative in the main and Photographers are no different. If its a camera feature then its 'kewl' if you do it on your PC then its some sort of  'artificial processing' and like Dr Tyrells owl...

... somehow less because its ... artifical (and you know, proper digital photographs look just like the real thing).

So while "proper" fotographers (NB photographers who mainly participate in fora and don't take photographs) argue about if "tonemapped" images are proper the next stage of digital camera evolution is happening outside of the Kingdom of Wang, in the wild, out on the streets, right in the palm of the hand of ordinary folks. Phone cams and software like instagram!

A friend of mine visiting London the other day snapped this on her LG and shared it on FarceBook.



I immediately saw the hallmarks of HDRI and contrast masking and so asked her about it. She said that it was done with Instagram and no it wasn't HDR setting. So she sent me the original, which is below.

 

I think its pretty clear that the shadows are brought up (footpath beside bike) and there is  colour in the ferry over there just 'under' the bridge as well as the red 'fence' over on the left. Not to mention the difference in contrast in the water and even the clouds.

She didn't think they were much different, but I'm willing to bet that she thinks the top shot is the better of the two and that somehow Instagram has done a good job.

Negative

This will come as a shock to people but this is what has been happening in colour photography for decades before digital with the inbuilt contrast mask provided in colour negative. This is one of the reasons why people (like me) still find value in using Negative film, because it actually does a lot of contrast control straight out of the box for you.

Saves me having to fiddle around in Photomatix like this:




into this...



as outlined in this blog post.

Evolutionary paths

Of course no one (least of all a scrooge like me) wants to upgrade their camera bodies anywhere near as much as people upgrade their phones (and I'm not even using an Android or iPhone phone yet). Ask anyone who knows much about it, and they'll tell you that aside from one or two phone companies the majority are loosing money every quater. So this sort of evolution is savage - think creative destruction.

For some years I've advocated that people always use RAW and that all the in-camera effects are just there to satisfy the sufferers of the camera disease CFO or Camera Feature Obsession. A basic JPG could be recorded and embedded into the RAW (as it is already actually...) and then when you connect your camera to your PC to download your pictures and can then on the PC side and use (more powerful) processing implement any filter you like by just clicking on a thumbnail preview. This would then save image the to JPG for you. You could then go back and alter it at will to be anything.

• "Natural"
• High Contrast
• Black and White (either panchromatic or monochromatic, or even colour filtered)
• Sepia

Maybe I should just write this myself?

In the mean time, phone cams are killing compacts for all the right evolutionary reasons.

:-)