Articles – Ming Thein

Less is more: what does a camera really need?

September 23, 2013 by Ming Thein

I’ve long been threatening to post a photograph of a toilet as an example of a minimalist everyday object made interesting – its basic form has been decomposed down to the bare minimums; ornamentation isn’t necessary, nor does it sell more toilets: less is more. Appropriately, this was also shot with a minimalist camera: an iPhone.

Here’s an interesting question: how many of you have given some thought to the bare minimum of what a photographic device needs to be used as an effective camera? The problem today is we’ve become far to accustomed to camera makers stuffing in additional software features in order to sell devices; none of which are useful, most of which don’t even work properly. Think back to when you last used one of the headline ‘new features’ of your last purchase – pano stitching, for instance; or 10fps tracking; or the ‘supergreen national park-like foliage mode’. Probably only once – shortly after unboxing it – and then never again. I’m willing to bet you can’t even remember which combination of button presses is required to activate it. But judging from current product offerings and advertising, the concept of selling a camera with less features in it is one that simply makes no sense…or does it?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, how to, less is more, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, technique, thein

The line between art and photography

September 19, 2013 by Ming Thein

Here’s a provocative question: is this image art? Why? Why not? Have a think about this carefully, for a moment. Today I’m going to crack open the lid of one of the biggest cans of worms in the whole of photography, peer inside, give you my 1.53 cents* and try not to fall inside.

*Devaluated from two cents since 2009 due to underdeclared inflation, quantitative easing, foreign debt and other economic screwups

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: art, article, essay, fine art, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photography, thein

How I landed up going medium format digital…

September 7, 2013 by Ming Thein

Earlier in the year, many of you saw me post the image of the Hasselblad 501CM hanging off a tripod at 90 degrees near the surf line. Several asked why on earth would I need to turn a square format camera sideways; apart from the obvious answer of ‘to shoot vertically!’ there’s definitely more than meets the eye. Firstly, Hasselblad did actually produce an A16 645 format magazine for the V-series bodies; they’re relatively rare nowadays and must obviously be used with the correct focusing screen to ensure accurate composition. In addition to being better suited to the typical print rectangles, you also get 33% more images per roll of 120 (16 instead of 12, as the name suggests). I was using something a little more exotic; though like the A16, it isn’t rotatable and so requires you to turn the camera through 90 to shoot verticals. It’s not very convenient, to say the least.

Don’t underestimate the final display medium

August 26, 2013 by Ming Thein

This image doesn’t work small: there’s far too much detail going on to appreciate at just 800 pixels high.

Here’s a question for all photographers: how many of you have considered the intended viewing method for an image at any point before final output? No need to answer this to anybody other than yourself. That said, I’m willing to bet that the number is very small indeed. In my recent article on pushing clarity and transparency in a photograph and the intense discussion that ensued, the one thing that stuck in my mind was how we (collectively) undervalue the output medium.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, display medium, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, output, photography, printing, thein

The demise of the DSLR

August 24, 2013 by Ming Thein

Five years ago, while I was writing for a local photo magazine, I was mostly in charge of the ‘big’ cameras – DSLRs and the like. There was no mirrorless category, with the exception of Leica; compacts meant serious image quality or lens quality compromises, and every serious photographer was typically also on first name terms with their chiropractor. You could still get film with relative ease, and better still, develop it. Not long ago, my desk had three cameras for review/ testing on it (the Olympus E-P5, Leica X Vario and Sigma DP3M – none of them were DSLRs. I now routinely travel without one; in fact, most of the time I do a lot of personal photography with compacts. And pretty much the only time my D800E comes out is when I’ve got a commercial job to shoot.

How things change.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: article, demise of the dslr, dslr, essay, future of photography, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein

PayPal, margin pressure and the small business perspective

August 22, 2013 by Ming Thein

A few days ago, I received an email from PayPal informing me that some of their terms and conditions of service had changed – ostensibly to ‘ensure high standards of service continue to be maintained’. I read that immediately as a greedy grab: turns out I was right. Buried in the fine print of the changes were a bunch of rate amendments, effective 10 Sep 2013, that now make the cost of receiving payments in my part of the world anywhere up to 6% plus a fixed fee (for commercial payments that fall into the “International micro payments for digital goods” category, which includes my videos). On top of this, there’s a ‘micropayment fixed fee’ of MYR2.00 (US$0.65). And then there’s a 4% currency conversion fee to Malaysian Ringgit on conversion. And a further 2.5% added to the exchange rate when you withdraw the funds to your bank account. Very cunningly, they don’t provide a like-for-like fee comparison, either. That’s a grand total of anywhere up to 12.5% PLUS RM2.00. Previously, I calculated the net cost of using PayPal at about 5% inclusive of FX; a merchant credit card terminal would be around 3%. Given the long payment times for credit card providers and relative discomfort of people using cards overseas, I elected to stay with PayPal for the time being – lousy service and lack of regulation notwithstanding. See why this has now become a problem?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Off topic Tagged With: article, business, costs, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, payments, paypal, pricing, small business, strategy, thein

Repost: It’s a visual world – the basics of making great images

August 10, 2013 by Ming Thein

This article was originally written for and posted on the official WordPress blog in two parts on 18 and 25 June 2013. I’ve reposted it here as I believe it makes a good primer to the science and art of making outstanding images – the full-blown article is here. MT

Ginza, Tokyo. Sony RX100 (I include camera info here solely to demonstrate that it really doesn’t matter what you use.)

When I was first approached by WordPress, I have to admit that I was a little worried about the magnitude of the task at hand: ultimately my own site is very much about what goes into the creation of outstanding images. And that’s a 600+ article, 1.3-million word work in progress. That’s obviously not going to fit into the length of your average post, so today I’m going to throw the rulebook out of the window and start again. I highly encourage you to do the same: regardless of your experience level with photography, do the same. Approach this article with an open mind and no preconceptions. I’m going to do the same.

A question of clarity

August 8, 2013 by Ming Thein

Photography as an artistic medium is limited: by and large, the structure of your image is restricted by what exists in reality. Sure, you can alter that representation of reality by changing the light, your composition, your physical position, focal length, perspective, white balance, saturation, or a thousand and one other technical and artistic parameters. But ultimately, it still remains both interpretative and approximate. This is a good and bad thing: it means that assuming there is no post-capture manipulation of content going on, a photograph can be used as a relatively accurate representation of something; there is an assumed level of integrity in a photograph that isn’t present in an impressionist painting, for example. However, photography as a medium isn’t really encouraging of the same interpretative latitude as other media where one starts with a blank canvas/ sheet of paper (forget three dimensional and mixed media for the time being, that’s something which photography will never be able to replicate).

Film diaries: Nine months on

July 15, 2013 by Ming Thein

It’s now been a healthy chunk of time since I started shooting film again; enough to have a baby. What kind of child has this experiment turned out to be? Building on an earlier article of random thoughts and also from a digital perspective, I’ve had some more time to reflect on things now that a) my workflow has matured, and b) I think I’ve figured out where it fits in the grand scheme of things creatively for me. All I’m going to say is that the point I’m at now is very much not what I expected when I bought the F2 Titan in October last year.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, Film Diaries, On Photography Tagged With: article, eight months on, essay, film, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein

The importance of printing, from a photographer’s standpoint

July 11, 2013 by Ming Thein

From the print session at the end of last year’s Making Light workshop – these were a bit of a revelation to the participants, most of whom had never made large prints before. And we were doing straight out of camera printing with no real postprocessing or optimization…

If all of you, dear readers, were sitting in a room, and I asked “How many of you print?” I think not every hand would be raised. “Regularly?” Even fewer. “Large?” Fewer still. And you’ve all proven yourselves to be a pretty exceptional bunch of people, if the comment threads are anything to go by. If anything, the average photographer – taking both amateurs and pros into consideration – these days prints very little, if at all. Yet a concern that seems to dominate a lot of photographers’ thoughts is over resolution; my question is why?