Articles – Ming Thein

Over the next 10 days, I’ll be posting 10 sets of 10 tips on how to improve your photography: these little tricks represent the way I shoot that’s probably not so conventional, but works for me and ensures that a) I get the shot and b) the equipment is an enabler rather than something that gets in the way.

Disclaimer: I’m assuming you know the basics already, but want to get serious.

Today we kick off with rangefinders: right now, that’s pretty much only the Leica M (and maybe Epson R-D1) if you shoot digital. Here goes:

10: Timing, timing, timing: shoot lots and get to know the lag rhythm of your camera. It might feel instant, but it isn’t. That split second can make or break the difference in a critical shot, especially during a fast-paced situation – that fleeting expression, or arrangement of people.

9: Get to know your lenses: There is no such thing as the perfect lens. All of them have idiosyncrasies, be it focus breathing, focus shift, curved focus planes, flare under certain conditions, or maybe the ability to produce brilliant 14-pointed stars from point light sources at f16. (Don’t laugh, the Leica 21 Summilux ASPH does this.) The better you know your lenses and the way they draw, the more you can exploit their properties to help your pictorial rendition of a given situation. It’s also why I’ve got eight ways to get to 28mm – there’s a huge difference between the Zeiss ZF.2 2/28 ‘Hollywood’ Distagon and the Ricoh GR-Digital III, for instance.

8: Use a soft release and thumb grip (and maybe front grip). Anything that can make your grip more secure or comfortable, and your shutter release action more gentle, is your friend. I like the Thumbs Up, personally.

7: Don’t limit your subjects to the center focus point. You can focus and then recompose. But remember that most lenses aren’t flat field (especially rangefinder designs, which are usually non-retrofocus and spherical) so a little tweak to the focus ring is required for edge subjects – usually to make the focus point slightly closer, as the focal plane will be curved slightly around you. Experience is required to determine exactly how much and when to shift – this is why I also highly recommend using fewer lenses but knowing them well.

6: Use the DoF scales to prefocus. Especially useful with wide lenses, whose large DoF means that you might even be able to shoot hyper focal and not have to focus at all: especially great for being fast and reducing time between seeing the shot and capturing it. Very important skill for street photography and photojournalism. You can practice this by estimating distances and setting your lens with the camera at waist level, then checking in the finder.

5: Pay attention to the edges. The frame lines are a suggestion: there will be more included. With experience, you can push the composition a bit and still get everything in.

4: Shoot with both eyes open. The nice, bright, high-magnification finders are great for letting you a) see what’s outside your frame and might make composition better or worse if included or excluded; and b) you can keep both eyes open to enhance your peripheral vision. It’ll also stop you from getting run over.

3: Know the limitations of the system. By their nature, your finder will probably only cover 28-135, and not be very accurate for 90 and 135. So really, the strengths of the system lie in the 28-75mm range; don’t try and do birding with one of these things and wonder why your results aren’t up to par. (Note: I do use my M9-P for macro work, but that’s a different story entirely.)

2: Less is more. Rangefinders are small and light: why burden yourself and turn photography into endurance sherpa-ing? Try reducing your regular kit to two, or better yet, one lens. Either something which provides to distinctly different perspectives, or perhaps something in-between. I choose 28/50 or 35.

1: Check your rangefinder calibration. There’s nothing worse than shooting an entire series at f1.4 and thinking you nailed focus – or at least remembered doing so in the finder while shooting – then being horrified as you open up the set only to find your subjects’ noses in focus and their eyes a distant plane away. If you know how to calibrate your rangefinder, great; if not, it might be the subject of a future post here (but I take no responsibility if you damage something or void your warranty). If you don’t dare, send it in to your dealer. The best thing you can do is have your body calibrated to match all of your lenses – so send them all in at the same time. The next best thing is to have it calibrated for the lens with the shallowest DoF; the one exception is if the lens suffers from focus shift. Then you’ve got no choice but to calibrate for your most frequently used lens and remember which direction to adjust for later. Check calibration often and if you get a new, shallower DoF lens. One last related point: make sure all of your viewfinder windows (VF, RF patch, frame lines, front VF) are clean – you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to focus!

Bonus for Leica M8/9 users: The meter is center weighted and very heavily biased towards protecting highlights. So, for backlit subjects there are a few ways of compensating. a) Lock exposure with the camera aimed at something of roughly equal luminance but not backlit; this works on the shutter half-press position (with a little dot displayed at the top between the leftmost digits in the finder) if you’ve got the release mode set to standard. b) For M9 users, use the rear dial to activate exposure compensation. I personally don’t like this, because I have no idea if I have it set or not, and if so, how much. c) If you’re shooting with fixed and not auto-ISO, then note the shutter reading in the finder, and move the shutter dial to something appropriate. I use a slightly more complicated method, with auto-ISO: if the shutter speed displayed is over the minimum you set, then you know the camera is in base ISO. I just manually set it to something lower; the camera can’t lower the ISO any more, so it overexposes as desired. If the situation is dark and you’re above base ISO, this doesn’t work. In very dark situations, I usually just leave the camera at ISO 1250 and go manual with the exposure. MT

See more of my work with the Leica M9-P here on Flickr: click here And for earlier work with the M8, click here

Blogs are personal things. They’re alive only so long as the owner(s) are active and interested in maintaining and regularly updating content. By the same token, they take on the personality of the author(s); after a while, a reader probably has a pretty good sense of what the author is like – or at least how he wants to be perceived.

Salutation to the fire god. D700, 24/1.4

So, this virtual interview is my attempt to reach out to my readers – both now and in posterity – to help you put a personality behind the images and words. First clue: I’m writing this from my iPhone in the middle of one of Kuala Lumpur’s legendary traffic jams. It’s rush hour, and raining. I haven’t moved more than 100m in the last hour. I hate traffic, especially when there’s plenty to be done. In fact, hate isn’t strong enough a word to describe how I feel about it. The waste of opportunity and productivity just drives me mad.

Kuala Lumpur at 7pm. M9-P, Noctilux 0.95

But enough of that. You probably want to know more about what makes me tick as a photographer. My self-confessed impatience is telling, though: I’m a very restless person who always has to be doing something. And that also applies to photography: I want to push the limits, challenge myself and make better images. Without further ado, to the questions.

Gap in the shadows, Prague. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Why start yet another blog?
Because I want to get to know my audience – it’s nice to have that relationship, as well as feedback to know what people like and what people don’t. It doesn’t mean I’m going to change my shooting style to all HDR, for instance, but it helps me to tweak things. I do take this seriously though. It’s a huge commitment and a lot of work to regularly update and generate content – especially when it’s free and at the expense of other work.

Matriculation day, Oxford. M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Do you have any formal photography training?
No – I’m actually a physicist by training (Balliol College, Oxford) and a ‘corporate raider’ – I’ve spent just as much time in the consulting and M&A businesses as photography. I taught myself by practicing, reading, experimenting, looking at other people’s photographs, and talking to a lot of people.

The hidden treasure inside us all. D700, AFS 60/2.8 Micro

What are your favorite subjects?
I’m a diverse photographer. I shoot pretty much everything, though my speciality is watches/ macrophotography and photojournalism; I dabble in food, architecture and travel/ landscape. I used to be a very serious birder, spending entire weekends in swamps being eaten alive by mosquitoes, but these days my back protests at the weight of the lenses, and frankly I’m just tired of scratching insect bites. I was even official photographer for a popular local jazz club for a year, which was fun, but left me bleary eyed the next day at work. Curiously, the only thing I’ve never shot is sport – with the exception of some motor racing. I like to apply different techniques to different subjects – this inevitably yields a different perspective on things.

Lange Datograph. D700, AFS 60/2.8 Micro

Do you have an aim or objective when shooting?
Yes and no. Yes if I’m on assignment, no if I’m just out and about – but I’ll always have a camera on me. Preferably something small and portable; it used to be the Ricoh GR Digital III, but that was supplanted by a spate of mirror less cameras that I never really liked except for the Olympus Pen Mini; now it’s a Leica M9-P. Above all though, I try to present a view of the world (or my subject) that’s unusual, compelling, and aesthetically pleasing. I do try for perfect compositions even under demanding conditions, which is why my keeper rate is pretty low – 2-5% is normal. It’s worse than fixed deposit returns.

The police are everywhere! Prague. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

What’s the most frequent question you get asked?
Hands down, which camera/lens/widget should I buy. The answer is always, if you know you need it, you won’t be asking me. If you don’t need it, then buy it if you want it but don’t expect it to make you a better photographer.

Indirectly inspired by Alex Majoli – shot with a compact. Cattle Egret, Kuala Lumpur. V-Lux 3

Do you have any heroes?
Aside from XYZ-man and his ilk? Photographically, there are a few. Ansel Adams, of course, for his ‘processing’ – I try to do what he did in the darkroom, but with photoshop (and color!). Cartier-Bresson for his sense of timing. Sebastiao Salgado, for his epic photojournalism – the images are masterful in their composition, moving in their content, and excellent in their processing, especially considering most of his work was done on film! Alex Majoli, for his work with compact cameras. I think it was from him that I realized the camera really didn’t matter at all.

Workers, London. Inspired by both Majoli, HC-B and Salgado. GR Digital III

Why do you like shooting? What keeps you inspired after all of these years?
Many reasons. It’s the freedom to create, in manageable bite-sized chunks; you don’t need a huge amount of time to produce something very satisfying. And everybody does it differently. It’s meritocratic; the better your skill, the better your image. I also admit that part of me likes the gear…

Back alley, Kuala Lumpur. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Doesn’t having more people interested in photography make it harder to be successful?
Having lots of people interested in photography isn’t a bad thing – yes, there’s more noise out there, but it also means there’s more awareness and new/ different opportunities. May the best man win – more true than ever.

KLCC dawn, Kuala Lumpur. D700, 28-300VR.

What’s the favorite image from your career so far?
I’m going to say it’s one I haven’t taken yet. If I’m not improving, I need to try harder.

Girard-Perregaux F1-047. D700, AFS 60/2.8 Micro.

How do you know when a photograph is good enough to keep?
This is a tough one to answer. I think after a while you build up an instinctive sense of what works and what doesn’t, and what you like and what you don’t. If I’m selecting one image from a sequence, then I pick the one with a mix of a) the most emotion; b) the best composition; and c) the best technical aspect – exposure, focus, etc. If I’m culling a set from a shoot, then firstly I figure out roughly how many images I need to tell the story or deliver to the client – and then progressively cull the weakest.

Look up. Sometimes wonderful things happen. St. Peter’s, Vienna. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

How do you shoot and not disturb the flow of events around you, or miss something else when you’re shooting?
Be fast, and be prepared. If you’re ready, that means being observant and with camera held at high port; I can get in, get a few shots, and get out again most of the time without anybody noticing. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if people notice anyway – it can be a good thing when you want to capture intense emotion, too. Always, always, look around you – above and below too – you never know what you might miss otherwise.

Commando training, Nagarkot, Nepal. D700, 24/1.4

If you could only shoot with one body and one lens, what would it be. Also what equipment do you miss the most?
I see we’re back to gear again! I can have one body and one lens for each subject type, but for obvious reasons the same setup I use for watches isn’t going to work for photojournalism, birding or sport. I wish I had a high magnification tilt-shift lens to maximize depth of field and resolution, but sadly the tilt-shift macros only reach 1:2 and are not useable with extension tubes or bellows.

Dusk launch. D3100, AFS 85/1.4

What annoys you most about photography/ photographers these days?
People who believe equipment makes the image, and that the more expensive the camera, the better the image.

Panerai Mare Nostrum. D700, AFS 60/2.8 Micro

What’s more important – talent or practice?
Talent comes from practice.

Cheers. D700, AFS 85/1.4

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting in photography?
Practice, practice, practice. Use your imagination, experiment and try out. Ask other people what they think of your images; get them to give you constructive feedback; but remember also that opinions are personal, and everybody’s got one – so don’t get discouraged.

People flow, Prague. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH