Ming Thein

Photographic resolutions for the new year

December 31, 2012 by Ming Thein

Cheers! D700, 85/1.4G

Firstly, it’s been one hell of a year. I don’t think I’ve ever written and thought so much over such a sustained period of time; in producing content for the site and its readers, I’ve been forced to thoroughly think through all aspects of my photography and workflow. In fact, I’ve written so much that the keys on my primary computer have gone from brand-new-Apple-matte to mirror-polished-in-the-middle in that nine months. (I’m now on my way towards wearing out a new keyboard.) Thank you all for the support and the encouragement.

I’m assuming that those of you who are still here are the kind of photographer who cares about the kind of images they produce more than the equipment – or at least just as much as the equipment. Whilst I write a lot about gear – a good tradesman needs to be familiar with his tools, after all – I never forget that ultimately, it’s all about the images. I would love to find a set of equipment that works for me which I will never have to replace; give me two of those bodies and I’m all set. But, as we also all know, there is no such thing. So gear reviews will continue.

But, if you care about your images, then you surely care about the process of improvement and getting to the outcome you want; this necessarily means that it can also sometimes be a bit painful. We have to force ourselves out of our respective comfort zones in order to progress artistically. Even subjects, styles or locations that on the face of it might not have anything to do with our preferred material might well prove to impart a valuable lesson or two which we can use alter on. I’m all for cross-pollination of ideas; I know for a fact that my wildlife stalking certainly improved my street photography, and attempting to replicate the various lighting styles in paintings have helped both my commercial work and my personal work.

With that, I’d like to share my own personal photographic resolutions for the new year.

1. Shoot less.
Quality, not quantity*. And if you can have both, then tip the balance even further in favor of the quality mark. I’m shooting a lot – more than I’ve ever done – and the upshot is that I don’t always have the time to process all of that. Yet I realize that experimentation is very much part of the creative evolution process; for the two days I had on my own during the last Tokyo workshop, I shot over five thousand frames, 800 of which I kept to review in detail later on a computer, and about 200 which made the final cut. That’s still too many, in my mind: what if I could capture the essence of a place in say, 100, or even 50 truly outstanding images? I have to be even more ruthless with my seeing and editing process; conditioning yourself to throw out the crap is the only way to keep improving.

*This applies to my personal work. Commercial work is a slightly different matter; you simply can’t negotiate down a shot list – nor would you want to – if you’re being paid per-shot or billing an hourly rate.

2. Use what you’ve got.
We’re all guilty of buying something with a flimsy ‘rational’ justification when in reality it’s because we just want it; it’s about gratification rather than necessity. I think that has to stop; we need to recognize real necessity – if a job calls for 300mm, then you have to get a 300mm lens – as opposed to ‘I’ve always wanted a big lens therefore I’m going to get a 300/2.8.’ I’m sure there are pieces of equipment in my stores that are severely underused – the 45/2.8P for example – I should either pare down what I’m not using, or use it. I’m one of those strange people who feels guilty for having something sitting there, underutilized.

3. Try a new format.
If you shoot large, go small. If you shoot small, go larger. And that doesn’t mean going from a compact to medium format digital; you can try MF film for not that much money, and lose very little (if anything) if you procure all of your gear second hand. Different formats have different properties in the way of depth of field and sometimes also tonal rendition (to do with sensor/ film characteristics etc.); consequently, they can also help you to see and compose differently – which adds to the mental list of options for a particular scene. Alternatively, try shooting with a different aspect ratio – perhaps square or 16:9 – which will also help to find frames where you might perhaps have seen a photographic desert, or create something non-cliched in a popular spot.

4. Reverse your lighting.
Shoot with flash where you normally wouldn’t, and vice versa. Yes, the look will be odd and different at first, but it will help to improve one’s familiarity with light – both recognizing it, and creating it. I find that using lights makes me focus more on the composition because it imposes a higher level of discipline over your shot; you’re setting up and taking time which means that all of the elements are within your control. Similarly, shooting with available light forces you to have a higher awareness of the quality of ambient light, and the way it renders on your sensor/ film – it can really help you to previsualize compositions.

5. Travel more.
My wife always says I’m guilty of not taking enough time out to see the world – she’s right. Part of the reason why is that a consulting career completely killed the joy of travel for me; in one particularly memorable year, I’d flown 120 sectors. But travel for work and travel for personal exploration and education are completely different, and it’s taken me a while to realize that – all airports and airplanes look the same in the end. But perhaps instead of spending money on gear, I should spend money on finding new subjects. After all, there’s nothing better than a completely fresh subject to train one’s seeing and observation skills.

6. Share your knowledge.
I of course plan to continue this site in the forseeable future; I’ll certainly have to find more things to write about, but so far that doesn’t seem to have been a problem. One thing I do realize is that I rarely post on-assignment articles anymore; part of the reason is that I don’t have time on site, and part of the reason is that I’m so focused on the job at hand that I simply forget to shoot B-roll. I really need to hire an assistant.

7. Experiment with video.
One of the questions I’m frequently asked has to do with the video capabilities of the various cameras I test; to be honest, I’ve been a bit frightened of video production up to this point – I don’t really see things in sequences, and the whole production part scares me. What I’d really like to find is software that lets me edit video the same way I edit images – bulk color/ tone curve corrections etc – but I’m not sure I want to spend thousands on something I might not even use that often. I am advising on a number of small productions next year, however, so I’ll have an opportunity to have an in-depth chat with the production people – and hopefully shoot some interesting B-roll (or at the very least, stills) for the website.

8. Develop my own film.
I actually learned to do this many years ago at university, in the pre-digital days. My dissertation involved investigating the use of shorter wavelength lasers for increasing measurement precision using holography – we’re talking down to nanometers here – and of course the holograms had to be produced on film; if I remember correctly, it was Ilford PAN-F and some glass plates. (I still have those somewhere, but have no idea where exactly.) The process was slow and laborious – one exposure, three hours of developing time in a completely dark room – no safe light – and then repeat if you got the exposure wrong. Months and months of it. I think I bought my first music player around then. Now that I’m shooting with the F2T again, I want to regain control of that portion of the process – it’s not so much about throughput and efficiency as it is about furthering my understanding. We’ll see. I’ve got to somehow convince the wife that turning the spare bathroom into a darkroom is a good idea.

9. Conquer 35 and/or 50mm.
For some odd reason, I’ve always had a strong aversion to both focal lengths; 35mm more so than 50mm. They both just seem unintuitive to me – I don’t natively ‘see’ in either. I even sold a particularly excellent copy of the superlative Leica 35/1.4 ASPH FLE because I simply couldn’t get used to the focal length. 50mm I make do with on a rangefinder because it’s the longest practical focal length – the 75s and 90s tend to be a bit hit and miss with focusing due to the relative size of the frame and RF patch – but it’s not my favorite. 35 always seemed a bit tight to me, or not quite long enough – compositional no-man’s-land. The funny thing is that I have 40, 45, 50, 58 and 60mm lenses – yet I only use them for commercial work when required, and not for my own personal shooting. I suppose I should do the requisite shoot-for-a-month thing with one of them.

10. Streamline my workflow even more.
You can never be too efficient – the more throughput I can manage, the more work I can take on, or the more time I have to spend on other things – either site-related, or family related. The problem is the workload per image has increased because of file sizes; even if the compute/ conversion time is faster, the retouching time doesn’t speed up simply because I can only physically work so fast. But perhaps if I could improve the throughput for the files that don’t need retouching, I might find some time that way; I might well investigate Lightroom…

That’s it for me – you’re welcome to try any or all of them if you feel they might give you the creative kick you’ve been looking for. If you have any of your own, please feel free to share them with the other readers in the comments below – I’m sure we can all benefit from some ideas! In the meantime, enjoy the festivities and here’s wishing all of you a happy, creative, fulfilling and prosperous year ahead. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, new year, opinion, photography, resolution, thein

Still life experiments

December 29, 2012 by Ming Thein

Legs

If you think about it, there’s actually not a huge leap between product photography and still life; after all, they are pretty much the same thing technically. The only tangible differences I can see are of course the intention/ message: one is to sell a product, the other is a visually interesting use of light and texture; and product photography tends to be with controlled lighting, whereas the majority of still lifes I’ve seen tend to use found available light. (Come to think of it, there’s not that much difference between still life and architecture or urbanscapes either, other than scale and occasional inclusion of human elements.) In fact, traditional still life photography was almost always of food – there’s an interesting avenue to explore for my next culinary assignment; it’d certainly be very different to the styles currently in vogue.

Better days past

Admittedly, it’s not something I’d consciously tried to shoot earlier. The main reason I’m now giving it a try is because I’m trying to further heighten my awareness of the quality of ambient light in order to improve both my available light photography (remember, light, subject, composition, idea) and of course the quality of my constructed light. This exercise has taken me down two paths: firstly, the use of film cameras forces me to get it right in camera, whether it’s observation or construction; I want to speed up my workflow even more by paring the amount of postprocessing work I have to do to the bare minimum and absolutely unavoidable. I’m also training my eyes to work as a meter; so far, not too bad – I’m within a stop most of the time, which is about as accurate as the meterless film Nikons can go anyway. (Some lenses give you half stops, shutter speeds are always whole stops; my ‘Blad gives me half stops on the lens.)

Real or artificial?

The second effort is focused on a study of the light used by the great painters of days gone by; they didn’t have the luxury of making their own in real life, so they had to be masters of observation, imagination and replication. In some ways, not having the technical constraints of execution probably made this easier; in others, it’s not easy to replicate realistic lighting entirely with paint! It of course goes without saying that the quality of light achieved by the Dutch masters, Da Vinci, the Italians hyperrealists like Canaletto et al was fantastic, if slightly impossible at times. Still, they conveyed mood perfectly with color and use of shadows. Though such light is seldom found in nature, we can create it now – and to some extent, make up the balance in postprocessing (the colour part, and dodging and burning for contrast, at any rate.)

Classical painting experiment I – hommage to the Dutch Masters.

Classical painting experiment II -hommage a Monet

The images in this set were mostly shot in the last couple of months with a variety of equipment, though there are a couple which date from earlier. I don’t think I’ve quite figured out what my style is for still lifes yet; I’m still in the imitation-experimentation phase, but feel quite drawn to darker imagery with strongly directional single light sources; I like to think of it as ‘tonal richness’. From a postprocessing point of view, it’s not easy to achieve because preserving the quarter tone contrast tends to result in oversaturated primary color channels, which you of course have to correct for individually, which results in hue shifts especially in non-primary colors. Once again, monitor gamut and calibration are critical in achieving the desired outcome.

This is not a carafe*

*Spot the Magritte reference

On the film front, since I’ve decided to eschew color in favor of the tonal possibilities offered by black and white – not to mention full end-to-end control over the process – it’s more about lighting management and attempting to visualize the native tonal response of the film, which is both very different from digital and not much like my normal postprocessed output, either. It doesn’t help that there’s the intermediate conversion step post-digitization which further complicates one’s ability to clearly imagine what the end results will look like. I like to think I’m fairly capable with Photoshop and can quite easily previsualize my end results at the time of shooting with digital, but that extra step has thrown me out. I suppose it’s a matter of consistency, practice, and getting to know the characteristics of one or two film emulsions very well.

Enjoy the images. I’m off to shoot some more. MT

On an unrelated note, if anybody has been wondering about the lack of On Assignment posts of late, it’s because I both simply haven’t had time on some of the more demanding recent assignments, or the setups haven’t been that exciting; just seeing me hold a camera in a still pose is not really very instructive or insightful. I’ve got a couple of jobs in the planning stages for next year that should be more interesting…

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Visit our Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including Photoshop Workflow DVDs and customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Cutlery

Spectrum

Froth

Wholecut

Before lunch

Umbrellas

Study of a lamp

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, still life, thein

Lens review: The Olympus ZD 12/2

December 27, 2012 by Ming Thein

Although this lens is not new – in fact, it was announced back in 2011 with the second-generation E-P3, E-PL3 and E-PM1 (full review here) – it still remains ostensibly the best fast wide option for Micro Four Thirds users. (It was also recently re-released as a limited edition all-black version, which now includes the lens hood as part of the kit.) In fact, there’s been remarkably little competition in this arena – just a manual focus offering or two from SLR Magic, and the upcoming (and stratospherically priced) Schneider 14/2.0. Panasonic has the 7-14/4, and the 14/2.5; the latter which is perhaps the 12/2’s closest competition.

My initial experience with this lens and its optics on the E-P3 and E-PM1 were enough to convince me that Micro Four Thirds had come of age, and would make a worthwhile compact system without major compromises for the majority of situations in which I’d want to use a compact system camera. This impression held, wavered, and changed again – to be honest, until the last Tokyo workshop, I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to use the 12/2 on the OM-D (full review here) for a serious evaluation. The last time I used the lens on the OM-D was also the first time I’d taken out the camera for a serious bout of shooting, and definitely wasn’t a good way to benchmark performance of either camera or lens – simply too many variables and unknowns were in play here.

Spiral. E-PM1, ZD 12/2

The lens is one of the Olympus Super High Grade line, impeccably built and finished with all-metal construction, and one unique feature (for a Micro Four Thirds Lens) – the focusing ring clutch. Sliding the focusing ring backwards a notch puts the lens in manual focus mode, and also reveals a focus distance scale: unlike every other lens in the system, the 12/2 has hard stops at each end of the range. Together with the depth of field scales, the lens should theoretically be the ideal tool for street photography – fast, wide, zone-focusable, and with more depth of field for a given aperture and field of view than its 35mm equivalent.

In AF mode (left) and scale-focus MF mode (right)

Except, this isn’t quite the case. Sadly, the clutched focus system isn’t really mechanically linked to the position of the lens elements; it too is a fly-by-wire simulation – albeit a very good one, with the right amount of tactile feedback and everything. The problem is to do with the resolution of the distance scale/ mechanism: there aren’t enough divisions.

Reflections, Tokyo. OM-D, ZD 12/2 from a moving train

It seems that there are perhaps five or six discrete distances to which the focusing group moves, instead of a continuum. The only thing that could cause this is if Olympus used a form of rheostat in the construction of the the focusing ring/ clutch. Although 12mm is a very wide actual focal length with plenty of depth of field for a given aperture, f2 is fast enough that more critical control over your focus point is required. Sadly, though the idea of the ring is a good one, the execution makes it of marginal utility for the photographer in the real world – unless you are willing to use a small aperture – f4-5.6 or smaller – to use depth of field to cover the lack of manual focus precision.

Diagonals, Shibuya. OM-D, ZD 12/2

Curiously, this is most definitely not the case for either manual focus with the ring in the AF position (i.e. selecting manual focus on the camera body) or when using autofocus. Here, the lens is precise, moves in as many infinitesimally incremental steps as one could desire, and has no trouble finding critical focus. While on the subject of focusing, it’s probably a good time to talk about autofocus performance. Like all of Olympus’ other MSC designs, the 12/2 is an extremely snappy lens – even more so on any of the recent bodies. I haven’t experienced any gross focus misses, but it’s worth noting that some care is required at f2 – the plane of focus isn’t quite as deep as you’d think.

Taxi rush, Shinjuku. OM-D, ZD 12/2

The lens is not weather sealed or gasketed, and once again, Olympus has decided not to include a hood – this is excusable for a $250 economy kit item, but not on a $800 premium lens. It just smells too much like penny pinching. Perhaps it’s just as well, because the optional hood is rather cumbersome; it increases the bulk and visual size of the lens hugely, requires a thumb screw to attach, can rotate freely and requires a different cap – why can’t they just use a bayonet hood? Zeiss lenses are a great example of how bayonet hood mounts should be constructed.

Shadows, Otemachi. OM-D, ZD 12/2

Over a good year of use with this lens on the E-PM1 and OM-D, those are my only two complaints: the inaccuracy of the pseudo-manual focus clutch, and the continued minor farce of the lens hood. If you read this carefully, it means that I don’t have any major criticisms of the optics.

The 12/2 uses a rather exotic optical design with 11 elements in 8 groups; one of these is aspherical, one is made of ED glass, and another two of exotic Super HR and DSA glasses. It’s a non-symmetric, telecentric design whose optical formula honestly doesn’t look familiar to me – the closest thing I can think of are the Zeiss Distagons, insofar as they use several extremely dome convex front elements and a rear telephoto group. The lens also employs Olympus’ ZERO coating to minimize flare and maximize contrast and transmission.

The overhang. OM-D, ZD 12/2

Let’s get the most popular question out of the way first: yes, it’s sharp. Bitingly so, at all apertures, across the entire frame in all but the most extreme corners. There appears to be a small amount of field curvature, but nothing overly serious; enough that for optimal sharpness you’ll want to move the focus point over your subject rather than using center-focus-and-recompose, though. The lens has a slightly odd MTF chart that is indicative of a significant dropoff in microcontrast about halfway to the edges; I don’t see this in practical use, which suggests that the field curvature is probably responsible – and more complex than a merely spherical surface. In the real world: sharpness will not be an issue.

Fuji TV building, Odaiba. OM-D, ZD 12/2

Though some of you might think that a little nice bokeh might be obtainable from the 12/2, you’d be mistaken; you have to be very close indeed to throw anything significantly out of focus. Fortunately, the lens focuses down to 0.2m, so this is actually possible. If you have enough distance between subject and background, then bokeh is actually fairly pleasant; however, if there isn’t a lot of distance, and the subject is a bit farther away from the camera, nothing really gets out of focus enough to begin with – in fact, you have to be a bit careful of double images in the out of focus areas. There’s a bit of spherochromatism, too.

Star. OM-D, ZD 12/2

Although the lens in general well corrected, you do get the feeling that it’s on the extreme edges of what was possible with the design constraints put upon the optical designers: there’s visible CA against high contrast subjects, especially in the corners where you can get up to 2 pixels’ worth; there’s also very noticeable distortion. Fortunately, it’s fairly simple in nature – barrel with no sombrero/ moustache – and is easily correctable in ACR. Flare exists but the ZERO coating does a good job of keeping it to a minimum – even without the hood. Stopping down to f4 on the OM-D makes everything but the distortion go away, leaving you with an excellent optic. It doesn’t quite have the transparency of the 75/1.8 or 60/2.8 Macro, but it’s fairly close if used stopped down. It is definitely the best wide option for M4/3 users at the moment. One interesting use of the lens is for handheld long exposure photography – due to the short focal length and excellent stabilizer in the OM-D, shutter speeds of anywhere down to 1/2s (consistently) or 1s (occasionally) with critically sharp results are possible, making for some interesting photographic opportunities.

Commuters. OM-D, 12/2

As always, I suppose the litmus test for a lens is if you’d buy it a second time – I think the answer for me would be a qualified yes. I have since had the chance to shoot with the Panasonic 14/2.5; thought I prefer the 28mm field of view over 24mm, and believe that M4/3 lenses should be a compact as possible to play to the other strengths of the system, I would still pick the 12/2 as the optics are better – they simply render in a more three-dimensional way due to better microcontrast, as well as better edge sharpness. Interestingly, the Panasonic 12-35/2.8 runs it very close at f2.8; however, the T stop of that lens is about 1/3-1/2 stop slower too, for a given physical aperture. What qualifies my opinion is the upcoming Schneider 14/2; it remains to be seen if it performs as well as its price suggests it should. In the meantime, the best way to judge the 12/2 is on its pictorial results – construction, expensive accessories and the imprecise focus clutch are just distractions. And on that basis alone, I think the lens deserves a place in a serious M4/3 shooter’s bag. MT

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12/2 is available here from B&H and Amazon.

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Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews Tagged With: 12/2, gearhead, lens review, m4/3, micro four thirds, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, olympus, review, thein, zd 12 2, zuiko digital

Christmas trivia

December 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! Enjoy the day with your family, eat too much, and grab an interesting shot or two if you can. No pressure. And here’s hoping that whatever new bit of gear you’ve been lusting after has now migrated from under your tree to your itchy paws. But in case you find yourself at a loose end after all the gift-giving, and in danger of slipping into a food coma after too much turkey, here are a few factoids and stories about photographers that you might not have known.

A young man wanted nothing more than to be a jazz drummer; but his chosen career didn’t work out, so he became a photographer instead, later specializing in photojournalism. Even in the ’40s, a photographer made so little money that he had to make ends meet by being a hustler at chess clubs, playing for quarter stakes; this despite landing large commissions for major magazines of the day such as Look. (It seems nothing much has changed in that regard.) His early images of New York City had a distinctive, rather cinematic look to them…Stanley Kubrick ultimately gave up photography to become a cutting-edge cinematographer.

A young boy was such a restless hypochondriac that he was repeatedly expelled from various private schools, and by grade eight, his family pulled him out of formal schooling completely. He taught himself the piano at age 12, and his intense focus for the next 12 years with the intention of becoming a professional musician; what changed his career path was a visit to Yosemite in 1916 with a Box Brownie. That man went on to become one of the most famous landscape photographers of all time: Ansel Adams.

A rebellious youth from a wealthy, bourgeois family left formal Catholic prep school to attend the private Lhote Academy, run by cubist painter Andre Lhote; he trained as an artist but grew bored of the stiffness and rules of the medium, gravitating towards both realism and surrealism – opposite ends of representation, but neither of which had the structure of classical art. He then attended Cambridge, served mandatory duty in the Army, got placed under house arrest for hunting without a license, then had an intense affair with his host’s wife before a nervous breakdown and escape to Africa. Here, he encountered the work of Martin Munkasci, whose images challenged him: before seeing them, he didn’t believe such spontaneous captures were possible with a camera. This was the birth of ‘the decisive moment’ – we are of course talking about Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Kubrick, Adams, and HC-B all used Kodak Box Brownies at one point or other in their early careers. Ultimately, they each picked the best tool for their purpose – and their intended look – Kubrick switched to a Graflex, Adams went with his plate-cameras, and HC-B went Leica.

Robert Capa’s famous photograph of The falling soldier during the Spanish Civil War was part of a much larger collection of images that was lost when he fled Europe in 1939, known as ‘the Mexican Suitcase’; it was subsequently returned in 2007 by its present-day owner, Benjamin Tarver. Inside were nearly 5,000 negatives by Capa, Chim and Gerda Taro.

Although it’s popularly believed that Capa’s photographs of the D-Day landings on the beaches at Normandy in 1944 were blurry because of a combination of the technical limitations of cameras of the day and simply the incredibly intense nature of the situation, the reality is that of the 106 images shot, only eleven survived some serious bungling during development by a lab technician at his agency in London, and even those were heavily damaged to the state that we see in prints today. Moral of the story: develop your own, and guard your negatives/ raw files.

One of (in my opinion) the greatest photojournalists of all time is also possibly the most overqualified. He gained a Masters’ degree in Economics before working as an economist for the International Coffee Organization. After a stint with Sygma and Gamma, he joined Magnum; not finding that serious enough for his needs – by now developed into an intense humanitarian drive to both document culture and raise social awareness – he left and formed his own agency, together with his wife. Although he shoots digital now, he also has those files exposed to film and then rescanned/ reprinted from that source to create his signature tonal look; the irony of course is that this process probably takes longer and has more potential pitfalls than just shooting film to begin with. The man is of course Sebastiao Salgado; his current project, ‘Genesis’, started in 2004, will likely also be his last – he claims that he has so many images to go through that it will probably take him the rest of his life. Now that’s dedication.

There seems to be something about photography, music and painting. Another painter-musician – who even did a stint at a kibbutz – eventually turned photographer, joining the newly-formed Rolling Stone magazine as staff shooter. Her career was built around celebrity, and turned her into a celebrity herself; she was unconventional, lesbian, gave birth at 51, (in)famously bad at financial management, and possibly the only photographer both to reach that level of wealth and also lose it. We are of course talking about Annie Leibowitz.

For every big-name photographer who’s made it – notice there are no real normal photographic superstars today, they all seem to be almost manufactured in the same way Hollywood manufactures the images of actors/ actresses – there are dozens who are doing fairly well, hundreds who are getting by, and thousands who believe in the dream enough to endure the suffering while trying to make it work. Having been in the last category, and just about surfacing into the second to last, I just want to say I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given, and it’s the least I can do not to mess them up. If you’re still in that last category – don’t give up; it took me four tries to be able to make a sustainable living from photography and related activities. I know that if I hadn’t made one last push, I’d probably still be regretting it. Make a wish, people, and then work hard to make it happen. MT

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Filed Under: Off topic, Uncategorized Tagged With: christmas, famous photographers, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein, trivia

A little gift – extended

December 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

Response has been great to the discounted videos, so since it’s Christmas tomorrow…I’m extending the offer for a few more days, to the 29th of December. All of the short videos on my iPad App are now just $1.99 (down from $5.99). So, if you’ve missed out thus far and wanted an introduction to masking or basic retouching, or been curious how my ACR workflow looks, now’s the time to indulge. 🙂 Happy Holidays! MT

Ming Thein’s Photography Compendium for iPad is available here from the App Store.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2012 holiday special video price, ipad app, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein

Judging the 2012 Maybank Photo Awards

December 23, 2012 by Ming Thein

This article was originally published in The Malaysian Reserve on 7 December 2012. Reproduced with permission

For the whole 14th of November, a number of people sealed themselves into a room at Menara Maybank to pick five winners from a thousand shortlisted candidates. We looked for four things: light, subject, composition, and the idea; the ability to look into the image and at the scene through the eyes of the photographer.

Judging photo competitions is not as easy as you might think: firstly, photography is art, and art is subjective. What might count as a winner for adjudicator might not necessarily be so for another; I found myself both mediating disputes and causing them.

This is perhaps a good barometer for the contest itself: out of over 19,000 entries – larger than the 2012 National Geographic and DPReview photography competitions combined – there were enough that passed initial scrutiny to make life very difficult for us. We had clear winners in some categories but insufficient runner-ups; or a very close fight for first, or even no outstanding winner at all, with every candidate lacking something. More encouragingly though, several talented photographers entered and stood out in more than one category – our Photographer of the Year, Muhamad Saleh bin Dollah; Street Photography winner, Chau Sau Khiang and Studio winner, Hairul Azizi bin Harun in particular; and yes, we judged blind without knowing the identiy of the photographer.

These photographers showed strong images across disciplines, yet managed to maintain a consistent style, standard of technical execution and compositional balance. Contrary to popular belief, specialization is not always a good thing when it comes to the arts: the experience gained from being a multidisciplinary photographer helps you to apply different techniques across various subjects to achieve a unique look to one’s images.

Our Photographer of the Year had one quality that none of the others demonstrated: the ability to consistently edit and self-critique one’s own work. Whilst we saw a lot of technically and compositionally strong portfolios, the flow of the images submitted let them down; either there would be one black sheep image that stood out uncomfortably from the rest, or the images would be too similar and show a very breadth of skill. As a photographer, one important thing to remember is that you’re judged on the images people see, not the ones they don’t – conscious exclusion is therefore critical.

The results were both encouraging, and in a way, disappointing. Whilst it’s clear that there’s some real talent in this country and the level of enthusiasm was a very pleasant surprise, the average standard of some of the ‘professional’ entries was considerably below that of the amateurs. There is clearly better work out there in the media – I’m just surprised we didn’t see any of it entered. Professionalism means consistency and quality of delivery, not merely turning up to push a button. Many people would go to great lengths for the opportunity to make photography into a career – please don’t waste that; make the most of your opportunity and have some pride in your work. Any other way, and you risk damaging not only your own reputation but also that of the entire industry.

There was actually one entry that stood out to all of the judges: Kumaraguru Krishnan’s Photographer of The Year portfolio. It’s a series of out of focus images, with some vaguely people-shaped forms. Collectively, we believe that it was the only entry that really challenged creative boundaries and whose photographer actually stopped to question the rules. Even though the images may appear to be a series of mistakes, the consistency of theme, style, color – even the amount of defocus – indicate otherwise. The set was reasonably well edited – perhaps two of the images were too similar – but otherwise, it left a positive impression on us.

To all the photographers and entrants, thank you. For next year – assuming I’m still judging – what we’d like to see is a bit more creativity. The awards are a fantastic and very visible platform to get your work seen, and who knows, perhaps launch a photographic career. Don’t assume that rules must be followed (we had a landscape where all elements were precisely placed at the rule of thirds, but completely disregarded the natural flow of the scene and thus resulted in a boring, imbalanced image) – they’re merely there as a starting point to prompt you to think and challenge your eyes.

Don’t be afraid to submit something and not win – that’s an overly kiasu mentality. Instead, challenge yourself, and focus on showing us the way you see the world. At the end of the day, it’s that continuous need for challenge and self-improvement that differentiates humans from animals and the great from the mediocre. Remember, photography is subjective: a stronger photograph makes a stronger argument, and we can all gain something from a different point of view. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, judging, maybank photo awards 2012, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein, thoughts

Looking for a David B who sent a book to Kuala Lumpur…

December 22, 2012 by Ming Thein

Just got a present in the mail from whom I assume must be a reader – the printed card just says ‘David B’ – please shout out if it’s you so I can say thank you properly! I’ve got eight David Bs in my contact list, so I just want to be sure 🙂 MT

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To process or not to process?

December 21, 2012 by Ming Thein

Ginza dusk.

This is the photographer’s analog of the classic fisherman’s dilemma: fish or cut bait?

I’ve always, for as long as I can remember being serious about photography, shot RAW and done some form of processing afterwards. The more potential the file had, the more processing; conversely, I’d also spend time trying to save files that probably weren’t compositionally worthwhile. And as much as I hate to admit it, in the early days, trying to hide photographic mistakes behind punchy processing. In effect, the processing was taking center stage instead of the image. One of the hardest things to do is create a strong, but natural looking image – both from a perspective and processing standpoint; in order for it to stand out well from reality, the light, subject and composition all have to be exceptional. The image has to tell a story – but that’s another topic I covered here and here.

Note: all images in this article are a half-and-half composite of Sony RX100 shots; the SOOC JPEGs are on the left half (especially obvious for the B&W images) and the processed RAW files on the right. The RAWs were converted to DNG first then run through my usual workflow; CS5.5 doesn’t natively support the RX100. Where the finished file was cropped to a different aspect ratio, I’ve followed the finished file. Some noise reduction was one on the high ISO files. As usual, go by what I say and not what you see – there’s web compression involved in the mix, and you aren’t looking at the original files on a calibrated monitor.

And a 100% crop of the above – a huge difference here, but aside from tonal density – not much in it at web sizes, is there?

For argument’s sake, I’m going to assume that you’re able to see, compose and execute the image you see at a particular scene when pressing the shutter. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to exclude conceptual and commercial work – there is simply no way you can achieve some frames in a single look, and it’s impossible to have a perfectly dust-free product in others – even if you can get the lighting perfect. We’re talking about creative, personal and documentary work only. The reality is that a lot of photojournalists and reports never leave the JPEG – and some even SRGB JPEG – realm as it is. There are many reasons for this; speed and throughput being the first, the display medium being the second – there’s no point in supplying a beautiful file that uses all 16 bits of the Prophoto gamut if it’s going to be printed on a halftone CMYK process on newsprint. It’s a waste of time. (That of course doesn’t mean you can’t shoot both a JPEG and a RAW and deal with the latter if you find yourself up for a Pulitzer.)

Giant chef. Either rendition works, frankly – I don’t mind the overall tonality of the SOOC image, even if it’s lacking the pop of the actual scene.

A recent email exchange with a hobbyist photographer friend has spurred me on to think about this topic a bit more. The question: is Photoshop really necessary? Shouldn’t a good image be able to stand on its own? Yes, but don’t good ingredients taste better when skilfully prepared and cooked? (The Japanese may disagree with the cooking part; I can’t blame them.)

To answer this, we need to backtrack a bit. In the early days of digital, JPEGs were simply not an option because cameras lacked the required processing power. Raw output was something that was simply a direct data dump off the sensor itself; the data stored (perhaps lightly compressed to save space) for later processing. JPEG file quality was simply, unusable compared to the standards of the day: film. It didn’t have the tonal subtlety, the dynamic range, the detail; to make things worse, there was an inherently blocky “digital-ness” to it that made images feel, well, unnatural. RAW processing was a way to partially get around that and reduce the gap – we could alter the conversion/ output algorithm to create an image whose shadow and highlight response more closely matched that of film. It was also a way to overcome some of the limitations of early sensors; notably color response, chroma noise and tonal accuracy.

Imperial Palace East Garden, Tokyo. The SOOC image is too green – the needles definitely didn’t look like that after a warm summer and heading into November.

100% crop. There’s quite a lot more detail and tonal subtlety in the processed image.

Postprocessing my raw files was a habit I acquired since shooting with a DSLR in 2004, and I haven’t shaken since. I don’t discount JPEG-only cameras, but I’d definitely take the availability of a RAW file into consideration when buying one. And I certainly don’t feel like an image quality evaluation is fair or exhaustive until I’ve run some RAWs through my normal workflow. However, recent experiences with first the Sony RX100 and more recently, the Fuji XF1, have made me revaluate this: in fact, the XF1 has such good JPEGs and such crappy RAW files (perhaps ACR is also to blame here) that I don’t think I’d ever shoot RAW on this camera; but I will still postprocess the JPEGs. However, this is not a RAW vs JPEG debate; it’s something a bit more fundamental: for non-critical applications, is it still worth spending time processing or not?

What happened here is perspective correction – nope, you can’t do this in-camera. Not much to fix with tonality, though.

Yes, the processed RAW files clearly look better at the 100% level, but you’d have to make a 120cm wide print to really see that. And for practical viewing purposes, the only difference was in the overall tonality (and sometimes not even then) of the image, which could easily be fixed by altered JPEG output settings. Downsizing hides all manner of dirty pixel-level flaws. Could it be that I’d been creating some unnecessary work for myself for some time, and hadn’t realized it? It was the same case with the JPEGs from the Nikon D600 I was testing around the same time; they looked great at typical display sizes, but started to fall apart at the pixel level. (Before you worry that I might have gone all Hipstagram on you, note that I’m always open to finding new ways to balance image quality and throughput – and that includes shooting Ilford PAN F in my F2T and then ‘scanning’ the negatives with a D800E. I’m just saying.)

Suppose you weren’t super-anal about image quality, though. Suppose you didn’t pixel-peep, or print large. Suppose you shared your images online or at most made 8×12″ prints. Remember the points of sufficiency; if your display medium is going to be that severely limited, then the reality is you might not see much of a difference if you set your camera up correctly. The strength of the image and its contents is of course going to make more of a difference; the camera is just a tool and medium.

Facebook break from shopping. Near zero difference in tonality, just a bit of shadow recovery and perspective correction. Again, the SOOC JPEG would be fine for 99% of uses.

The basic reason for shooting RAW and postprocessing is that there is no one-size-fits-all for camera settings; therefore it’s impossible to have these baked in to the JPEG development algorithms of a camera. Fair enough; however, these algorithms have been getting increasingly clever over time as processing power increases. (A lot of RAW files aren’t even composed of truly RAW data anymore, but that’s another topic altogether.) To push perfection with every frame, there’s no way around RAW and postprocessing, end of discussion. You simply cannot have a camera that’s smart enough to recognize when some parts of an image need to be dodged and burned; the day that happens, I think I’ll retire as a photographer.

There are cases where the format-imposed limitations can actually force you to make stronger images – spot metering for subject or highlights can result in more powerful compositions and fewer distractions, especially when you have very contrasty lighting. Alex Majoli’s early work with the Olympus compacts is a good example of this. I frequently use this technique to strengthen the mood of an image, regardless of what camera I’m using.

Port of Tokyo. The AWB got this one horribly wrong; it could have been the window I was shooting through that threw things off.

100% crop. Not as much extra detail as you would have thought.

Once again: pick the right tool for the job, and that includes your file formats. I think what might be useful is a set of guidelines as to when each method is useful; even for a person who can run through their entire RAW workflow for a file (excluding heavy duty retouching) in about 30 seconds, I’m considering moving to JPEG for some things. Firstly, I don’t need perfect files for everything; social/ personal/ family documentary etc. is one such thing. Secondly, I’ve been spending more and more time processing files as my workload increases and camera resolution gets higher; I simply don’t want to spend any more time in front of a computer than I have to. I’d rather be out shooting and meeting people. (An obvious solution would be to shoot less, but this somewhat defeats the point of being as photographer. And yes, I’m trying film again at the moment, too.) Client and professional work will always remain shot RAW of course – there’s no point in going to the nth degree to ensure pre-capture image quality with the best lenses and supports then throwing most of your tonal space away with a JPEG. And you never know what post-capture manipulations you might need to do later on.

The biggest downside of shooting JPEG is that your settings are pretty much baked unless you’re willing to change settings on the fly from scene to scene. (Some cameras offer bracketing for this, too.) In real terms, you have to make a conscious choice at the time of shooting whether you wan high key portrait color or low key B&W. On top of that, you have to deal with limited dynamic and tonal range, and that you have to get your exposure as close to perfect as possible in-camera. This is very different from shooting RAW with the aim to post-process afterwards; in this case, you always expose to the right (and even clip highlights slightly) to maximize tonal range in the low-noise highlight and midtone portions of the image. My RAW files look flat and a bit too bright; this is normal because matching exposure to the desired tonal map is a critical portion of the processing flow.

The camera got this one spot on – all I did was straighten out the perspectives a bit, and sharpen.

It’s important to note that you need to spend some time figuring out what the best JPEG settings are for your camera and shooting style; the rest of this article is meaningless if you’re shooting with the wrong settings. And regardless of whether you JPEG or not, I would always shoot RAW+JPEG – you never know when you might need the file later. Storage is cheap; do-overs are often impossible.

When it might be best to use a straight-out-of-camera JPEG (or film + minilab):

When file quality is secondary; anything intended for facebook or social email, for example. These distribution methods compress the hell out of the images, strip color information, and then to make things worse, viewing is almost always on a non-calibrated device. You can spend all the time in the world tweaking, but it’s going to look like crap if the display can’t make the required color.
In very high throughput situations, like sport or news or reportage. And dare I say it, wedding factories.
I’m cringing as I write this, but if you camera has a style preset you particularly like (and are okay adopting as your own style) then go right ahead…so far, I haven’t seen anything that fits the bill personally.
When you don’t have the time. If I go away for a week, I’ll shoot an average of 1,000-1,500 images a day; of this, perhaps 100 will be saved to review on a computer later; I’ll throw away another half, but the problem is now I’m stuck with 350 images to process. At say 1 min per image, that’s around six hours. A lot of what I shoot is documentary/ observation/ personal, and these don’t need processing. I am now being even more critical with my editing, but it’s still a lot of time to carve out when you don’t have any spare to begin with.
If you enjoy photography but don’t want to deal with the hidden back end that comes with it – the computers, the storage, ensuring you have enough power to run photoshop and that your converters are up to date…the list is endless.
What you see is pretty much what you get: if you’re learning, it’s much easier to see the effect of exposure or setting changes. With RAW, you have to use experience to visualize what you can get. This is probably the most common stumbling block I see amongst my students who are just starting to discover the power of Photoshop.
If your camera puts out lousy RAW files but amazing JPEGs – the XF1 is a great example of this.

I’ve never used SOOC B&W before, though I doubt it would have been able to retain the slight tonal variation in the man’s trousers. I had to do quite a bit of dodging and burning to bring that out.

And in favor of RAW + Photoshop (or self-developed and printed film):

No question: when image quality is the first priority.
When you want to do something that can’t be done in camera; compositing, for instance.
When you don’t have many images to process
When you have no choice – either the JPEGs are crappy, or there are no JPEGs at all…
When you have to do perspective correction (and don’t have a tilt-shift lens).
In extreme lighting situations that can’t be handled out of camera.
When you need to make tonal/ exposure changes to part of the image only, and not the whole image; this is where dodging and burning comes in.
If you’re a control freak…

But wait, there’s a middle ground:

You can shoot RAW but batch process; I think Aperture and Lightroom are a good example of these halfway houses. The problem I see is that you’re spending nearly as much time as a full-blown individual Photoshop workover, but without the same control or output quality. And this somewhat defeats the point. That said, I do keep presets for various things – usually to do with color calibration for flash work or for certain types of lighting or cameras, or high ISO situations.
The other option is to have the camera output a very neutral JPEG and postprocess that; you can skip the RAW conversion step (although it is possible to open JPEGs in ACR and have the same adjustments, but not the same latitude of course). This actually frees up quite a bit of time; that minute can get down to 15 seconds or less if you have a fast computer – dodge and burn, curves, color correct, sharpen, save. And it does of course help that the files are much smaller, too. This is actually not a bad option – whenever I review a camera without RAW support, this is the method I use – but if you start to do any extreme tonal manipulations to the files, it will become obvious, especially at the pixel level.

Standing nap. Yes, it’s two files. Look carefully.

100% Crop. More noise, a smidge more detail, and slightly smoother tones; not a lot in it. And that’s with me looking at the full size files on my calibrated monitor, not the web crop; there’s even less difference here.

My currently preferred JPEG settings

Important note: currently, I’m using my JPEGs as preview images either for quick client contact sheets after a job. When shooting RAW-only, the JPEG settings apply to the preview image but not the RAW file – so I generally try to make them as close as possible to be representative of the tonal range I can get of the RAW file, i.e. flat and not saturated, but sharp. If I was shooting JPEG only, I’d run similar settings with the anticipation of doing some light processing work on them afterwards – the halfway house.

My current style is neutral and natural; I look for or create light first and foremost (though the latter doesn’t apply here; if I’m creating light, I’m also shooting RAW to maximize image quality). I want to retain a decent amount of the tonal range; however there’s no way to control the output curve for most cameras, which results in large dynamic range images appearing very flat. This means contrast is set to the lowest option, or close to it – depending on the camera.
It’s very easy to have individual color channels blow; thus reduce your saturation a notch or two.
Sharpening is a mixed bag; some cameras do this well, some don’t. But I don’t use zero sharpening, as a lot of the time this setting does actually affect the in-camera RAW conversion and the amount of detail extracted. It also helps you to determine if critical focus was achieved – I’ll usually run somewhere between neutral/ default and maximum.
White balance is on auto, but I will override it where necessary to avoid blown highlights.
Maximum quality and size, of course – with an extra RAW file saved, too.

There are still many reasons to shoot RAW – and even exclusively RAW – but I can’t help but feel those are eroding slightly; and for the vast majority of users – even serious hobbyists – it might not be necessary all the time. Admittedly, my main reason for revisiting this topic is in the interests of curiosity and efficiency; I don’t think there’s as much of an image quality penalty as there used to be, especially for smaller output sizes. I haven’t decided just how much SOOC JPEG I’m going to use at this point – edited JPEGs are probably as far as I’m going to go – but you can be assured that I won’t use it at all until I feel that I’m getting the image quality I want. And in any case, I can still apply my normal workflow to the JPEGs – the tradeoff is significantly shorter processing time against a bit less latitude. Moral of the story: get it right out of camera; if it’s not there, you’re not going to be able to add it in afterwards. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, how to, jpeg, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, postprocessing, processing, raw, sooc, thein, to process or not to process

The Sony RX1…

December 20, 2012 by Ming Thein

…is now surprisingly in stock at Amazon. Probably won’t last long, so if you’re one of the dozens of people who’ve emailed me about one, now’s the time 🙂 MT

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Film diaries: the first roll

December 19, 2012 by Ming Thein

Some months ago, I acquired a vintage Nikon F2 Titan in the hopes of both fulfilling a longtime photographic dream, as well as perhaps shooting a little film again in the name of stimulating creativity. Many of you have been anxious to see the results; I bet none more so than myself. The trouble is, I feel that I’ve set a standard here that I must uphold; if the images from this roll don’t meet that standard, then I think there’s going to be a lot of hand-wringing, rude gestures and cries of ‘pah, amateur’. In this post follows the highlights of that first roll.

Before I show any images, I want to give some background: I’ve shot film creatively before. I’ve even processed it before, as part of my dissertation on improving measurement precision using short-wavelength laser holography (don’t ask, because I don’t really remember). But I’ve never done both, and my processing days predate my creative photography days by a considerable period of time. Finally, the last time I shot film was in mid 2009, with a Leica M6TTL. Before that was 2005, with another Nikon – an F2A. Note: EXIF data will say ‘D800E and 50mm’, because that’s what I used to digitize the negatives.

This roll is both the first roll of true B&W I’ve shot*, processed and scanned entirely singlehandedly. It shows, too: it’s grainy considering it’s Ilford Delta 100 exposed at ISO 100; in places it’s uneven, and there’s a streaking problem from where I got impatient and decided to try to wipe the film dry with a microfiber cloth. In hindsight, one of those Dyson Airblade hand dryers would be awesome for the task.

*An embarrassing, dirty confession: all of my previous film B&W work was C41 process (BW400CN, XP2-400) for convenience – finding somebody to develop black and white film in Kuala Lumpur is not a trivial task because serious shooters do their own, and consumers don’t do it at all.

The ‘scanning’ was accomplished with an interesting hack-rig: my product photography lightbox, lit by a speedlight within, film passed through a cardboard mask (to prevent scratches) and the camera resting above, spaced perfectly with the long hood from a Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar but fitted to the 2/50 Makro-Planar which coincidentally has the same bayonet. Add a 20mm extension tube, and the spacing is not only perfect, but I now have a 4000+DPI scanner.

I’ve spent some time in Photoshop to automate the conversion process as much as possible, to try and keep the character of the film intact and consistent, and minimize the amount of individual work required on each image. I can’t say I’m 100% happy with the results yet, but we’re getting there. If I can run an entire roll of RAW files as an automated action – cropping excepted – then the total scan and process time is actually about the same as a comparable number of digital files.

Anyway, more on that in another article. For now, I just want to leave you with one thought: resolution both matters, and doesn’t – we’re seriously spoiled by the degree of image quality obtainable from the current state-of-the-art FF digitals. Enjoy! MT

These images were shot with a 1979 Nikon F2 Titan on Ilford Delta 100, with a mixture of lenses – Voigtlander 28/2.8, Nikon 58/1.2 Noct-Nikkor, Nikon 45/2.8 AI-P, Zeiss ZF.2 2.8/21 Distagon, Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar. Can you tell which is which, other than through perspective? I can’t.

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