Ming Thein | Photographer

Film diaries: thoughts on the viability of film in the digital age

January 22, 2013 by Ming Thein

Closet abstractions. Hasselblad 501C, 80/2.8 CF T* on Ilford Pan F

I’ve had several experiences with film. In what I consider to be my pre-photographic days, we’d shoot it on occasions for documentary purposes or while on family holidays; I took it a bit more seriously (i.e. shot a bit more) when I purchased my own camera – small was good, so I went for APS – and then discovered how horrendously expensive processing was. During my first trip to Japan in 2001, I shot eight or nine rolls of 40 – which was a huge number of images. I still remember being asked by my family – ‘why are there so many photos without people in them?’ To be honest, the processing cost turned me off just as much as the annoyingly large gap between what I saw in the scene and what came out in the prints – of course at that point I had no idea that the type of film mattered just as much as the chemistry and the printing process.

Skip to 2004, shortly after my first DSLR, I purchased a Nikon FM3A – which I couldn’t really get the hang of, and subsequently traded it in for a 12-24/4 (oh, the regret). 2005 saw another dalliance with an F2A and slide film, whose colours and visual punch I enjoyed, but whose costs I didn’t – I think at one point I was spending nearly $1,000 a month on film and processing. I did learn a lot about nailing exposure, though. Later followed an M6TTL in 2009, which I embarrassingly mis-loaded on the second roll and didn’t produce any images; I cleared the balance of film in my fridge and then gave up shortly thereafter. Here we are now in early 2013, and I’m now regularly shooting most of my personal work in black and white with a Hasselblad 501C, Nikon F2 Titan and Ricoh GR1V.

There are a few things to think about before considering film as a medium: firstly, availability of media and processing; secondly, your output medium; thirdly, your workflow; finally, limitations. I’ll cover these one by one.

Availability of media and processing

Film is very much not dead. Whilst Kodak seems to be disintegrating and continually pruning its offerings, at least its popular Portra and T-MAX are still available in various flavours. Fuji and Ilford have maintained a decent selection. I think Agfa still makes a few types, too. There’s also a lot of cheap film out of China – the infamous ‘Lucky’ brand, whose name perhaps refers to the quality of one’s results – which is good for experimentation and learning. Although it’s not as easy to get film these days – chemists don’t stock it, nor do popular tourist attraction kiosks, or even most camera shops for that matter – it isn’t that hard, either. Here in Kuala Lumpur, I’ve watched as over the last five or six years, I’ve gone from being able to buy Velvia 50 from most mass market camera shops to nearly being unable to find it at all.

Processing is probably more of an issue. There are only a small handful of decent pro labs left in Kuala Lumpur; to be honest, the results from even these places are a pale shadow of their former selves, and they weren’t even the best of the bunch back in the day. Realistically, this means that unless you have access to a decent local lab, or don’t mind mailing your films out for processing – with all of the risks that entails – you’re going to have to do it yourself. For black and white, this isn’t so hard. E6 (slide) and C41 (colour negative) films are going to be a bit more challenging as they’ll require several chemical baths at very specific temperatures.

Finding balance. Hasselblad 501C, 80/2.8 CF T* on Ilford Pan F

Workflow

Assuming you have some way to convert your exposed film into clean negatives, the next step is output: whilst you can project slides, you certainly can’t do the same with negatives, and thus either printing or scanning is required. Minilab prints these days – assuming you have a local minilab at all – are not optical. The negatives are scanned digitally and printed on your 4×6″ or 5×7″ using a dye-sublimation printer; (this is just one of the reasons why the negatives are often much better than the final prints) those files are available on a CD if you want – but note that even at 300dpi, you only need 1200×1800 pixels to make an excellent 4×6″ – most of the time, it’s going to be even less than this to increase throughput. Getting proper digital scans or optical enlargement prints is certainly an option – but both have been relegated to the realm of the specialist, with the expected accompaniment in pricing. A drum scan – again, if you can find a lab that will do one for you – costs about $40 per roll of 35mm, at least in this part of the world. Even the mail-order scanning businesses that have sprung up in the ‘States mostly use film scanners like the Nikon Coolscan or a dedicated flatbed with a lamp in the cover.

Although optically enlarged prints are probably the best way of appreciating your images, it’s simply not practical most of the time unless you plan to do it yourself. I admit that since I started shooting film again in December, I’ve not made a single optical print – firstly, my wife would kill me because of the chemical smell in the house, secondly, I don’t have an enlarger.

There is good news, however. Digital has brought most people DSLRs; couple with a good relay lens – a flat-field, high-resolution short focal length macro is ideal- these are actually ideal copying devices. 35mm film doesn’t have more than the equivalent of about 8-10MP of information; this means that pretty much any DSLR today will out resolve film. (Something like a D800E is positively overkill, but it does do a wonderful job with medium format negatives.) You can either buy a slide copying adaptor that simply screws on to the filter threads of your macro lens – perhaps with an adaptor ring or two in-between – or if you’re industrious, build yourself a stand to hold the camera perfectly perpendicular to the film you’re copying, with a diffuse light source underneath to light it. I use my macrophotography lightbox and a jig made out of Lego that clips on to the end of either the Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar, or the Nikon AFS 60/2.8 G – depending on how lazy I’m feeling on the day.

Converting your DSLR ‘scans’ to output should be relatively easy. A little Photoshop action can be made to convert the negatives into positives, with the right tonal qualities; you’ll still need to do some manual dust spotting, but not much. If you get your action right, the tonal values should look great without too much – if any – extra work on your part. I’ve not done any dodging or burning or local adjustments to my negatives; they go through my action* and out again, otherwise unmolested. If I wanted the tonal qualities of digital, I’d shoot digital. Finally, don’t forget that you need to have a place to store your negatives – sleeves work just fine, though they’re becoming increasingly hard to find. My advice? Buy in bulk online.

*Some of you are probably going to ask if I’m going to make these actions available; the answer is that there’s no point because it will depend heavily on several factors: your input brightness/ contrast, the tonal response of your copying camera, and the film you’re using. The action I’ve got for the D800E and Ilford Delta 100 won’t work for a T-MAX negative copied with a 5DIII.

Your output medium

I’m writing this assuming that like most people, your output medium – i.e. for final viewing of the images – is going to be digital or some variation thereon, whether it’s online social media or on an iPad. You can even make a very nice print from a decent scan, so physical media isn’t out of the question, either. As with all images, unless your viewing medium supports the full tonal range and colour gamut of your capture medium, it’s going to be a poor representation of the original. The minute your output goes digital, just be aware that you’re going to have to deal with the restrictions induced by your monitor, colour spaces, profiling etc.

Planter boxes. Hasselblad 501C, 80/2.8 CF T* on Ilford Delta 400

Limitations

In my mind, the largest limitations have got to be colour, high ISO and resolution – with the latter two suffering in tandem. I say colour because almost all film these days is daylight balanced; even back when there were a lot of film choices, you got tungsten balanced film, and that was about it – anything else had to be corrected for with gels or filters. Of course, to get accurate colour we need to get our white balance right – and this is nigh on impossible with film. You can get pleasing colour quite easily, but not accurate colour. Anybody who complains about the retina-searing ‘vivid’ modes in camera has obviously not shot with Velvia. It gets worse: finding a good colour lab locally – at least in Malaysia – is nigh on impossible. And DIY colour developing is not something I’d like to entertain due to the complexity of the process; it might be worth doing if you shoot a lot of it, but I can’t see any hobbyist doing it in volumes to make it worthwhile. Stick to digital for colour applications.

Although there are films as fast as 3200 available, and push-processing techniques to take you into the five-digit ISO realm, the results frankly look like crap. Even at 3200, grain is the size of golfballs and you can kiss goodbye to fine detail or smooth tonal transitions; I wouldn’t want to go much higher than 800 on a 6×6 negative, personally. And even then, things get pretty ropey. Let’s be honest: in this arena, digital has long surpassed film; ISO 6400 images from the D800E have more detail and less noise than an ISO 400 medium format negative. This gets even worse when it comes to 35mm, since the negative is smaller. Of course, you could actually like the way the grain looks – I don’t mind it, but I’d rather have as little of it as possible – in which case, push away.

There’s one final fly in the ointment (silver?): I’ve been searching for a term to describe it, but the closest I can come is lack of security. There are no do-overs: if you mislead the film, you won’t have any images. If you accidentally expose the film before processing, you’re toast. If you mishandle the film while loading it into your developing tank’s spooler, you might land up with scratches or uneven developing. If your bag or room isn’t totally light-tight, then you’ll have fogging. If you are shooting high-sensitivity film, stay away from X-ray machines. If you mess up the developing, your images might not appear, or be too dark or too light. If your negatives get lost in the mail to or from the lab or scanning house, you’ve got no backup. There’s no dual card slot RAID for film. Basically, until you get the film digitised and stored in a few places, that one set of negatives are the only place your images exist, anywhere. And that makes me very, very nervous when it comes to using film for any mission-critical applications. I suppose it’s a good thing that my light meter also happens to be an RX100.

You’ll note that I haven’t said much about equipment. The reality is that there are very few 35mm film cameras being made today – I think there’s not a lot between Lomo and Leica; the proliferation of high quality compacts and various SLRs are long dead. The majority of new film cameras produced and introduced are medium and large format, where technology hasn’t really changed in the last decade – you can still buy a new Hasselblad 503CW, which for all intents and purposes is the same camera as forty years ago. (I’m quite happy with my 1995-vintage 501C, thanks.) This means that if you want anything else, you’re going to have to look at the second hand market. There’s a proliferation of choices – I’ll cover this more extensively in another article – but a similar number of pitfalls thanks to failing electronics, mechanical issues, limited availability of spares etc – not to mention many of these cameras becoming cult objects in their own right, with commensurately inexplicable prices. The good news of course is that you can get an excellent simple SLR and some lenses – say a Nikon FM2 or Canon AE-1 Program – for not a lot of money at all; less than a midrange point and shoot.

With all of these shortcomings and restrictions, you’re probably wondering why bother with film at all. Hint: it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality and the idea. I’m convinced that having just 12 or 24 or 36 shots available to you makes you both antsy (to finish the roll) and more discerning. This in turn means that you may spend more time per image processing, but you probably have better material to work with. You force yourself to see with a more critical eye, with a higher consciousness of the quality of light. And that in itself will help to make you a better photographer. There is also of course the fringe benefit of getting to play with some beautifully built machinery; I think one shouldn’t underestimate tactile pleasure in the grand scheme of things. After all – commercial work notwithstanding, for which film is not really viable except for fine art – isn’t that what photography is all about?

In short: film isn’t dead. It definitely has some limitations, and I personally wouldn’t use it for critical or demanding applications. I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to get a lot of the time because of the various unpredictabilities in tonal response, processing etc, meaning that there’s both an interesting anticipation and extra satisfaction in the process when it comes out as you envisioned, or sometimes, even better. And that’s the second major strength of shooting film: aside from the fun and satisfaction factor, the tonal map of a good B&W negative is almost impossible to duplicate with digital; one can come very, very close, but it requires a lot of work and the results still aren’t quite perfect.

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Filed Under: Articles, Film Diaries, On Photography Tagged With: analog, film, film diaries, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein, viability of film

Why cropping is bad

January 21, 2013 by Ming Thein

For the longest time, I’ve been saying (perpetuating the popular adage?) that cropping is bad. I’ve touched on the reason in previous articles – notably these two on compositional building blocks, and proper perspective practice – But I don’t think I’ve really explained why. There are several reasons; I’ll go through these in some detail over the course of this article, and finish with a commentary on what really happens in the commercial industry – and why we photographers frequently want to strangle the creative directors, agency people or layout artists on the other end of the shoot.

But firstly, an example. Look at the image below: compositionally, it works, yes? What focal length was it shot with? The EXIF data says 16.8mm – oops, that’s a small sensor, so it’s probably about 100 or 150mm or something right? After all, the perspective fits.

Fear and exhilaration. RX100

Think again.

And again.

And yet again.

Oh, whoops. It seems that perhaps 16.8mm is actually somewhere closer to 40mm or thereabouts. At this size, with no other visual cues like depth of field to give away the technical properties of the image, there’s really no way to tell from the crop. This matters nothing to the viewer: each of these crops works compositionally, and doesn’t feel as though it was a compromise or chopped down from something larger. (Perhaps this is one of the hallmarks of a strong image period, I haven’t given it that much thought.) So long as them reproduction size doesn’t exceed the amount of resolution you’ve got to work with, there really is no way for the viewer of the image to know that what he or she is seeing wasn’t the original intention of the photographer.

Frequently, in the world of commercial photography, this is precisely what happens. In my earlier days, I spent a lot of time getting my compositions perfect with the intention that the images be used as-is, without cropping; of course I would leave space for copy etc. depending on the requirements of the client or the final aspect ratio. The intention was to preserve as much image quality as possible for whatever enlargements – sometimes billboard size, certainly poster size – would be required. When working with experienced clients and creative teams, this was certainly a viable approach.

Another example. Senso-ji, Tokyo.

The trouble started when working with less experienced clients who either didn’t have a creative/ PR/ advertising team, or whose team was equally inexperienced: I started getting requests to leave a lot more space around my images ‘for cropping’. I was perplexed by this: on one hand, they wanted the same style and quality of images that were in my portfolio – all of which were perfectly framed and had zero loose space whatsoever – yet they still wanted the extra room to crop. Did they not realize that these two things were at diametric odds with each other? It wasn’t the file sizes that were the issue – good-quality D800E files are usually more than enough for almost any use – it was the space around the outside. I tried to argue the point to no avail, and in the end, the client wins – I leave extra space around the border. This has the upshot of making my compositions look a bit ‘small’. But the client is happy, so I suppose that’s one good bright spot.

Senso-ji, original. Even between the crop – probably about 350mm equivalent – and the origina 90mm equivalent, there’s a lot of difference even though both are ostensibly of a telephoto perspective.

Personally, as an artist, this bothers me. It feels as though I’m ceding control of my composition to somebody else who may not have the same eye for it; almost certainly not a photographer. In fact, it’s exactly what is happening. You have no idea how the final image will be used or cropped; you can only hope it’s in a way that maintains the balance of the composition. It’s like a chef cooking the main portion of the dish, but having the waiter plate it and then running the risk of the diner complaining that the proportions of component sub-dishes are wrong, or the food is ugly. It’s now become such an ingrained habit that I’ve got to be careful with my personal work – not to be sloppy with the edges and empty space in a composition.

I realize I still haven’t explained why dead space and cropping are bad. The former is to do with compositional balance. Empty space can be used as a natural frame to isolate your subject; as a sort of visual cue to signal something anticipatory (if placed in front of your subject), or something historical (if placed behind). Or it can simply be used to show remoteness and emptiness in and of itself. The problem comes when the emptiness is not in harmony with the rest of the elements in the frame: this is what is meant by ‘balance’. A very busy center area and empty borders doesn’t work, because it feels as though the subject in the center has been artificially constrained and not allowed to use all of the space in the frame. Same case if all the action happens heavily to one side of the frame or the other. Clearly, this is not conducive to a strong composition – you’re neither using all of the available space in your frame, nor are perspectives properly employed.

A more extreme example, from my experiments with motion. Definitely a telephoto perspective, right?

It’s the latter which is the cause of the biggest problems in cropping. If you leave say a quarter of the frame width empty on all sides around a center subject, then you’re in fact cropping the frame down to a quarter of the original area, which is doubling the focal length. A 24mm becomes nearly 50mm. 35mm becomes 70mm. Wide becomes telephoto. Take a 35mm shot: the real questions is, at the time of shooting, is the shot composed as a wide, or a tele? Both call for very different arrangements of foreground, midground and background objects to create an effective composition.

And the original frame – a wide 24mm equivalent.

And here we come to the crux of the problem with cropping: it confuses perspectives. Poor use of perspective in composition is one of the major progenitors of weak images. This is generally more of a problem with wide angle than telephoto perspectives, simply because cropping a wide image can completely alter the angle of view of the shot to become a telephoto image, whereas this does not happen on cropping an image that’s already of a telephoto perspective to begin with (there is little difference in perspective between 300mm and 600mm, for instance). Wide-angle images with no clear foreground subjects result in the action being flattened into the background of the image and seeming very far away; there’s no obvious subject to come forward and attract the attention of the viewer.

At this point, if you haven’t read the earlier linked article on proper perspective practice, I highly recommend you do so now.

In order to make a strong image, you have to use both all of the available space in the frame, as well as the perspective of the lens effectively. And to do that, there has to be a degree of previsualization on the part of the photographer before taking the shot; it might be as simple as consciously putting your subject into the foreground with a wide, and looking for layers with a tele, or as precise as knowing exactly what focal length corresponds to what field of view. With practice and a degree of conscious observation, the former turns into the latter. This results in the photographer having the ability assess a scene and compose images in his or her mind’s eye before even looking through the viewfinder; combine that with a degree of anticipation, and you’ve got the skills to see strong images.

However, if your 28mm lens sometimes yields a 75 degree field of view (which is what 28mm should yield in on 35mm full frame format), sometimes it yields 50 degrees, or 42 degrees at others – how are you going to know where to position your subjects in the field of view arc to use up the full 75 degrees? The answer is, you won’t. And this results in dead or empty space in the frame, which in turn leads to compositional imbalance, which then results in a weak image. Familiarity with how to compose for a given field of view (and focal length) is therefore the key to strong images: frequent cropping makes this completely impossible.

In some ways, this is like an amateur who doesn’t understand perspectives shooting with a zoom: the lens does the framing, rather than the photographer. Sometimes you want to your subject to occupy a large proportion of the frame, but still retain context; the answer is to shoot wide and go closer, of course. Zooming in completely destroys context; cropping after the fact is the same. A competent photographer shooting with a zoom will pick their perspective first, then use their feet to frame – perhaps tweaking very slightly with the zoom to finesse things, but not by more than a few millimetres – any more, and the perspective deviates noticeably from what was intended.

The final reason not to crop has to do with reasons of image quality: why pay for 36 million (or however many) pixels, and throw away half of them? You might as well save yourself some money, processing time and storage overhead and just buy a 18 megapixel camera instead (assuming of course shot discipline is identical in both situations). Basically, you’re shortchanging yourself.

At this point, you are probably wondering if there are any situations in which cropping for composition is acceptable – other than the hack-fisted art director. This might surprise you, but I think the answer is a definite yes. Firstly: if you have an imprecise viewfinder, you might make proper use of the intended perspective, but still be left with a bit extra which you couldn’t see; trimming the edges to what you did see is fine. (Though with experience, you’ll soon learn to compensate for this.) Secondly, if you really, really, really have no choice: the rest of the frame is may be unimportant, and you have no way of getting closer, but this once-in-a-lifetime historical event is happening now in front of you. Then maybe. (But even so, I’d probably find a way of composing to use the rest of the frame as context to the main event.)

I think the only major reason for cropping is to achieve aspect ratios that are non-native to the sensor/ camera combination you’re using; but this of course goes with the intention that you will compose for these aspect ratios at the time of shooting, with the perspective considerations that are implied. Explicitly, this means that the final cropped image must always retain one original dimension from the original source file – height if cropped to a more square aspect ratio, or length if cropped to a more panoramic one. Otherwise, we’re back to throwing away perfectly good pixels again 🙂

My personal shoot philosophy is not to crop with the exception of different aspect ratios. I don’t trim for viewfinder inaccuracy, even when I shoot with rangefinders; I guess I’m trained to ensure that my subject occupies a reasonably central portion of the frame, and stands out strongly enough that the viewer isn’t distracted by any bits that might creep in around the edges. Do commercial requirements bother me? Without a doubt yes, but I do my best to manage the client so they understand why framing and shooting with the final use in mind always delivers the best results. MT

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

Quick shots from my ‘Diametric Opposites: East and West’ exhibition

January 20, 2013 by Ming Thein

For those who can’t make it to my exhibition for geographic or logistical reasons but would like to have a look anyway, I went back after the opening party (covered well by fellow Malaysian photographer Robin Wong here) to get a few images of the exhibition. There are a few thrown in from the evening, though I admit I was too busy talking to people to do much documenting. I have to say a huge thank you to Leica – especially George Wong and Johann Effendy for organizing things – and of course our host, the owner of the Leica Starhill store – Raymond from Keat Camera. I’m also touched by the support of everybody who turned up for the party – I think over 80 in the end, we were expecting 20-30…hope you all had a great evening, I know I certainly did – enjoy! MT

Coda: The images were shot over several years with a mix of M8/ M9-P, NOT the new M as the internet seems to be speculating. That would be impossible, seeing as Thaipusam 2013 hasn’t happened yet, and there was no new M in February 2012 when the most recent images were shot.

Choice, sufficiency and intangibles

January 18, 2013 by Ming Thein

Nobody needs one of these to tell the time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want one.

The incredibly strong and polarizing responses to the Hasselblad Lunar post in the last few weeks have lead me to think a bit more about why exactly people are so riled up about it, even those who aren’t going to buy one. I’ve even had people who’ve never commented on any of my other posts before either leave comments on the site, Facebook or Flickr – or in the case of a couple of people, email me and openly question my sanity and whether I have a financial interest in Hasselblad (!)

Firstly, I have zero financial interest in any camera company. I was in private equity and M&A for many years before turning pro; I would never invest in a camera company because the business has such incredibly low margins and high risk that any potential returns are simply not worth the risk. There are other reasons, but it’s not necessary to go into them here. The only financial interest I have in any camera sales are referrals via Amazon, and that’s both constant across all camera brands, as well as completely irrelevant here simply because you cannot buy a Lunar from Amazon.

Now that I’ve cleared up my personal position, lets take a fresh look at things. Clear your mind and try to be as objective as possible for the next thousand or so words; put aside your personal biases and preconceptions for the moment. And ultimately, remember that you are always free to vote with your wallet.

Let us begin.

I’m going to start with a bit of an analogy: the auto industry. In the early days, everything was quirky and heavily manufacturer-dependent. You might not always find the accelerator and brake pedals in the same place from car to car, for instance. To drive one effectively – and end up at your destination without breaking your car or your passengers – you really had to know your machine. Today, with few exceptions, the accelerator is always on the right, the brake is always in the left, and the stick between the seats controls the direction and speed of travel.

Cars have reached a point of development where not only so they all operate the same, but they are increasingly looking the same, too. For getting from A to B, pretty much anything will do the job just fine – yes, a Bugatti Veyron can get you there faster than a VW, but to do so requires some skill to operate and seriously diminishing returns in cost terms and general usability. That said, under most driving conditions, the VW will be easier o operate and produce exactly the same outcome. (Hell, my wife’s VW Polo will happily do over twice the legal speed limit without breaking a sweat.) For most people, it’s not necessary. But that doesn’t stop you wanting one, no matter how impractical and expensive it may be. At a more achievable level, plenty of people buy BMWs or Mercedes over Hondas; they don’t fundamentally do the job any differently (ironically, I’m writing this post on my iPhone while waiting for my car to get a new battery*) but we still want one anyway.

*And here’s a good example of sufficiency – I would prefer to write this on a proper keyboard with my 27″ monitor, but I’m certain the content and message of the article wouldn’t have been any different. The same applies to using a pen and paper, etc. I can make do just fine with something less, but I would prefer to use something else – and do so, because I can.

Your car choice is as much a personality statement as it is a tool. You probably use it every day, so you want it to be comfortable, familiar, and perhaps have some of the conveniences that might matter to you – it could be a third row of seats or wheel-mounted shift paddles. A mom of three is going to have very different requirements from a professional race driver. Even within our budget and specification requirements, there are often myriad similar confusing choices; I hate car shopping because you never get to try one for long enough to decide if it works for you or not in the long run.

The moral of the story is about sufficiency. Once we have achieved sufficiency, we then have choice. Once mass penetration has been achieved, proliferation is the only way that such consumer markets can sustain themselves, especially when most buyers are only going to make one such large purchase every few years. The investment required to develop a complex consumer product is enormous; I have no doubt that a new sensor easily runs into the millions, if not tens of millions.

As much as I like quirky products as much as the next guy, there has to be some commonality or economies of scale to make these products sustainable in the long term. I don’t want say Brand X to produce the perfect camera for me only to find that they go bankrupt three years later, leaving me with no upgrade path or after sales support. I want them to be able to survive and continue evolving the design. If that means the sensor has to be one bought and shared with other brands – take the 1/1.7″ prosumer compacts for instance – then so be it. I’d rather be able to buy a Ricoh GRD IV with the same sensor as the G15, S110, XZ-2 and LX7 than be stuck with the GRD I because the company went under making its own sensor.

Such competition is not a bad thing. It forces manufacturers to improve their product and make a compelling argument for the consumer to choose it over similar alternatives. This is a buyer’s market; if there were only one or two products in this category, we would be forced to buy them if we needed the functionality – regardless of whether we liked it or not, or if the rest of the camera was an ergonomic disaster. I, for one, don’t like the the feeling of being at the mercy of the manufacturer. Why should I hand over my hard-earned money if you don’t deserve it – don’t earn it yourself – by making something that I want to buy?

Photography has always been about making pictures. It still is, but a lot of people have now confused it with equipment collecting. (Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that so long as you know you’re a collector and and don’t pretend to be a serious and competent photographer just because you own some exotic lenses and cameras.) We have now past the point of sufficiency for the vast majority of uses – getting from A to B in the automobile analogy – but the difference is most consumers don’t know that. If you lose control of a 300km/h car, you’re probably going to lose your life. If you lose control of a 50MP camera, at worst you get an enormous blurred file. This lack of consequence I suppose is the root cause of a different psychology in most consumers; you want more if you can afford it.

But like with cars, we all want choices, individuality – look how strongly people identify with their camera brands. They are an extension of your personality, your choice of camera seems to have become a semi-religious thing that must be openly defended and fought over on Internet forums. I’ve seen people who are normally sensible, rational individuals in their real world dealings become infantile zealots. It’s almost a wonder that there aren’t riots and lynchings a Photokina – you’d never see a trade show of all the world’s major and minor religions without things descending into primal chaos.

Yet this is what photography seems to have become for most people. Just as there are religious extremists who give things a bad reputation, there are also sensible moderates who are decent individuals who just get on with their lives and contribute meaningfully to society. Cars, religion, cameras. We now have a choice, and lots of them at that. You don’t have to buy one particular car because it has a lower chance of exploding than another brand; nor do you have to switch religions because one now offers you slightly faster resurrection than another.

The ability to make a free choice according to one’s personal preferences is a first world problem. Pick whatever camera that suits you – both in technical requirements and personal aesthetics/ ergonomics – and just use it. If you don’t like it anymore, get another one, but don’t think that more of something will improve your personal skill level; at best it might make you want to shoot more, which is what will up your game – not more fps or megapixels. If you like to shoot with a large DSLR, then do so, and don’t attack others who prefer compacts. One won’t give you improve composition over the other, that’s down to the driver. There will be people who don’t understand why anything more than a compact is required; others who don’t go smaller than medium format (I know both) and still others who swear that Leicas give them a certain feel. But all of them have one thing in common: they will shoot more with a camera they enjoy using. This means if somebody wants to cover their camera in gold and vajazzle it because they think it suits their personality, why not? It may not be to our personal tastes, but I’m almost certain that they’ll probably produce better images with it than an ordinary camera simply because they want to use it in the first place.

The only reason this is becoming such a hot issue in the photography world is because the proliferation of choice is now reaching a point where it’s noticeable. Not every camera has to be black – you’d probably be mortified if you suddenly found that Honda now only made cars in one color – just as you also don’t have to buy it. But there will be somebody who does, and those people will put some small contribution back into the industry which will eventually let the manufacturers produce something that might well be perfect for you. Without these products, we face a period of stagnation and lack of choice – and I think we can all agree this is something nobody wants.

I don’t have to like every product, let alone buy it – and neither do you. But I think for the industry to survive and grow, products like the Lunar are necessary – and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of them in future from other brands. I say let the manufacturers go wild, and let the market make it’s choices; I’m almost certain that they know what’s going on in the general market sentiment (or at least they should if they’re worth their salt) – but at the same time, I double Bugatti are going to make a budget hatchback for those who complain the Veyron is too expensive, and if you can’t afford a Lexus, there’s always Toyota. In the meantime, I’m going to appreciate the good problem, pick up a camera that feels good to me and get on with the business of making images. It’s the main reason why I hate making camera recommendations – I’m sure a 5DIII is capable of as good or better images than a D600, but I know I won’t be able to make them because the way the camera feels and operates is simply counterintuitive to me. I’d still be stuck trying to think about which button to press, and as a result miss a shot that a seasoned Canon shooter would have nailed. Personal preferences matter.

Ultimately, if your photo is good enough, nobody is going to care what you shot it with – but if you hadn’t brought the camera with you in the first place, or didn’t feel like shooting with it, then the image would never have happened. And that definitely does make a difference. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: analogy, article, cameras, choice, essay, high end, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, parable, photography, sufficiency, thein

Film diaries: thoughts, truths and realizations

January 16, 2013 by Ming Thein

During the course of the last few months – shooting a grand total of a roll and a half, and processing one – I’ve had a few thoughts. Admittedly, these may be premature given that I haven’t even seen what came out of roll 2 yet, but I’ve already had a number of observations along the way which I thought I’d share with you all here.

Muse at work. F2T, Delta 100, 45/2.8 P

The look is very different. I think it’s very polarizing: what you gain is highlight headroom, at the expanse of shadows (to some extent). And there’s grain everywhere, even in the highlights; but it’s non-uniform, non-digital, and varies in size enough that it adds texture rather than distraction. I find that I definitely like it when the light is directional; I don’t like it at all under harsh sun/ midday especially in the tropics, because it seems you lose most of the midtone definition. Here, digital’s linearity seems to help considerably with exposure latitude.

Digital passed film resolution a long, long time ago. Even shooting fine grain film and processing it in a reasonably clean developer – Delta 100 in DDX – the grain is still very noticeable. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to affect the ultimate resolving power of the medium, but what fine details are there are somewhat indistinct compared to what can be achieved with digital (duh, due to the digital nature of the constituent medium – i.e. uniform block pixels.) I will try PANF in colder developer next time to see if that helps. The last time I shot/ scanned seriously, I came to the conclusion that there was at most somewhere between 8 and 10 MP of equivalent resolution in a good negative or slide – I don’t think that’s changed; I’m just not seeing any more of that regardless of the lens used. In fact, if I had to compare the output, I’d say Delta 100 feels much like a D700 shot at ISO 3200+, with similar tolerance for lenses. I must have messed something up in the developing, because I don’t remember Provia 100 being this grainy. Bottom line: we’re utterly spoiled by modern digital; even the RX100 handily outresolves 35mm film – if it had better dynamic range, I’d probably use this as my copying solution instead. Whoever is still complaining about resolution out to have their head seriously examined, probably with a baseball bat.

The Vase. Hasselblad 501C, 80/2.8 CF T* on Ilford Delta 400

That said, I’m seeing a very healthy amount of detail from my Hasselblad negatives: single pixel detail is being resolved at the 20MP level (the magnification limit of my ‘scans’), and I suspect that there may be about ~40MP worth of real detail in a low-ISO 6×6 negative. This makes sense, since the area is approximately four times the area of a 35mm negative.

The Noct-Nikkor has some noticeable focus shift issues wide open. Even on film, you can see the focus plane move as you stop down (or shoot wide open). I think this lens is going to have to be partnered with the D700 for future use, or a D600 with live view and an LCD magnifier.

35mm film is very forgiving of lenses. By f5.6 and sometimes even before, all of my ~50mm lenses (45P, 2/50MP, 58 Noct) all look equally sharp and pleasing. I actually prefer the 45P’s rendition wide open because its slight field curvature I feel adds to the image in the same way the 2/28 Distagon’s does. The good lenses, remain good, of course; some of that magic still comes through – the 2.8/21 Distagon comes immediately to mind – but it’s not as obvious as on a D600 body, let alone a D800E.

Graphic inverse. F2T, Delta 100, Zeiss 21/2.8

I like the negatives more than the positives sometimes. This appears to be a consequence of the scanning process (or, specifically, the D800E imposing its own tonal response curve onto the reproduction) more than anything; still, some of the really abstract, graphic images seem to work better if tone-adjusted and kept as a negative. Perhaps there’s a creative avenue to explore here…

I work faster with film than digital – even if my camera has no meter. The inability to chimp or make iterative improvements to subsequent shots means that subconsciously, you put all of your effort into getting it right the first time and being absolutely sure before you shoot: this is both efficient, and makes you better. One, or at most two, frames, and I’m on to the next shot. This definitely wasn’t the case with my previous experiences – perhaps my skill level has improved a bit since then.

Each roll is a bit like receiving an old-fashioned letter. Both in the fact that you have to open the container to see what’s inside, but more so because you aren’t 100% sure how it’s going to turn out – you remember most of the images (I suppose that’s like anticipation when you see the sender’s address) but there’s enough variables in the developing that the tone – no pun intended – of the message might not quite turn out how you’d expect – either good or bad. I suppose there’s also the aspect of ‘will-it-or-won’t-it-arrive?’ anxiety when you’re doing your own developing, too.

Zigzag. F2T, Delta 100, 58/1.2 Noct

Individual style is much more difficult to impose without lighting or postprocessing. I suppose this seems obvious in hindsight, but I’d say that 50% (or more, if you rely on filters and HDR) of an individual’s style is imprinted during the postprocessing phase. I know that personally, it affects my tonal map and color signature; the latter is gone with B&W film, and the former is highly dependent on the film type, developing and scanning process (and subsequent conversion). I’m trying to write a conversion action that takes my raw file and turns it into something approximating the image I expected at the time of shooting; it’s not easy because there are multitudinous variables. I suppose I could process each one individually, but that would defeat the point of shooting film: I actually don’t want that much control, otherwise I might as well shoot digital – there are fewer steps to achieving an output image, and far more repeatability.

I’m not really seeing any differently with 35mm, but the shots that work are not the ones I expected. I think compositionally, nothing much has changed. But I’m even more acutely aware of the quality of ambient light now; situations in which I’d make up any deficits in the scene for with postprocessing (uneven light, overly harsh light, colour casts etc.) are pretty much no-go with film. The positive upshot is that the scenes that work are simply gorgeous in tonality. I suppose this does actually affect the way you compose, since shadows always define the shape of an object.

It’s different for medium format, though: 6×6 really has a neat zen balance about it that I’m rather enjoying.

For film, bigger is definitely better. Or harder/ faster/ stronger/ whatever adjective you prefer. And if you’re going to be shooting it in old, manual, quirky cameras without meters anyway, it’s never, ever, going to be convenient – so you might as well go large. Different story with digital, of course.

I keep forgetting to remove the damn dark slide. Enough said. One of these days, I’m sure I’m going to bend or lose it when I’m in a hurry.

Developing is both simple and hard. There aren’t that many steps to it – mix chemicals, open cannister, load reel, put inside tank, seal tank; add developer and time; rinse; add fixer and time; rinse. Hang to dry. Scan, or print to taste. The trouble is, many of the critical steps are both impossible to repeat exactly one time to the next, and there are several of them. And batches of film aren’t always consistent. I’m sure there’s an art to all of these things, but that’s something much like digital processing: you can only get a feel for it through experience. Perhaps once I’ve developed enough rolls I might get some of the touch too; and maybe then I’ll write about it (i.e. when I have something worthwhile to say). Also, 120 film is considerably more difficult to load on the reels than 135; I suspect it’s because the film is both wider and seemingly slightly thinner, too.

To say a particular film has a ‘signature’ seems to be as much a fallacy as saying a particular sensor has one. The development process affects the outcome to such a large extent that I don’t think it’s possible to separate it from the outcome – i.e. it’s really not all down to the film. I certainly don’t have the experience yet, but I’m pretty sure I could make most B&W films turn out the way I expect once I have some handle on their native tonal characteristics and that of the chemistry – much like the various raw files from different cameras.

I need to figure out this drying business. By sheer dumb luck, my first roll turned out okay; the problem was drying it. I rather unwisely decided to hasten the process by wiping the film with a microfiber cloth – it worked fine for the first few frames, then really buggered up the ones at the end with streaks and scratches (presumably from something that got stuck in the cloth). Moral of the story: go buy some hydroflow agent, hang and have patience. Or maybe a rubber squeegee thingy.

Dust spotting isn’t as bad as I remember it to be. It seems that my early slides picked up a considerable amount more dust than these B&W negs – no idea why. But what used to be easily 10+ minutes of spot removal is perhaps 30s on a bad image – a very fragile-emulsion negative such as PAN-F, for instance; and one or two strokes on a clean one. Incidentally, it’s the same technique that I use for retouching dust on watches.

Highlight roll-offs are gorgeous. I suspect this is because most of the dynamic range is in the highlights – something to do with reciprocity error or perhaps the underlying photochemistry of the medium. There’s always a bit of gradation left in even the brightest zones, and nothing ever seems to truly overexpose (unless you do so by more than three or four stops).

That said, there’s not as much dynamic range as I expected. Perhaps this is not entirely accurate. The dynamic range is there, it’s just not distributed as I expected; I’m used to the extreme linearity of the D800E and its brethren, which let you basically expose to the right and be almost sure that all of the shadow information will be there. With film it appears the cost of the wonderful highlight tonality are very compressed shadows. Personally, this means to get the tonal style I’mm after, I’ll have to expose my primary subject highlights in zone 7-8 and let the rest fall where it may, but specifically look for scenes which work with heavy shadows.

How much of the tonal qualities of them D800E are being imposed on my ‘scans’? Unfortunately, without printing, there’s no real way to know – any digital conversion is going to result in some…reinterpretation, I suppose, of the original tonal values.

I doubt I can get anywhere near the same color accuracy with film. Although color films have some latitude to their working ambient light Kelvin temperatures, there’s simply no way you can have film that works at 5500K for one shot, and 4375K for the next – but you can with digital. For this reason, I’m just not going to bother with color film – for now.

Inverse (this is the negative). Hasselblad 501C, 80/2.8 CF T* on Ilford Delta 400

Ah, grain. I’ve always been of the opinion that there’s nothing wrong with it, so long as your image is in focus and your idea is clear; film has just made me recalibrate my expectations. Hell, ISO 1600 from the OM-D looks better at equivalent magnifications than ISO 100 35mm film…

So far, it’s been an interesting experiment – both creatively and in an attempt to better understand some of the technical and artistic history behind photography and why some particular images look the way they look. For instance, I now understand why most film street photography is both grainy and very high contrast; similarly, I’ve developed a new appreciation for Salgado’s developer and printer – I would still love to see his negatives though, to figure out how much of his look is down to light at the scene, how much is down to developing voodoo, and how much of it is down to skillful printing. In the meantime though, I think so long as I’m shooting with a serious focus on creative development, film is probably here to stay for me. Time to pick up more 120 for the ‘Blad; I have a feeling I won’t be doing much 35mm film shooting because it isn’t quite the creative break I wanted. 6×6, on the other hand, is absolutely magnificent. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, Film Diaries, On Photography Tagged With: article, creativity, essay, experiment, film, film diaries, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein

Diametric opposites: my upcoming exhibition

January 15, 2013 by Ming Thein

I’m happy to present my upcoming exhibition sponsored by Leica and Keat Camera at their Starhill Gallery store in Kuala Lumpur – starting from this Friday 18th of January, and running for a month til 18 Feb. If you’re in town, you’re welcome to join the opening reception on Friday 18th at 7.30pm; I’ll be there giving personal tours. Thanks! MT

Filed Under: Leica, On Photography Tagged With: exhibition, january 2013, kuala lumpur, leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, starhill, thein

Photographer stereotypes – a satire

January 14, 2013 by Ming Thein

Advanced warning: you will think this post is either humorous or insulting, depending on which camp you fall into…

Studio/ commercial photographers
Live inside white cubes with huge soft boxes suspended from rails; have one or two assistants to act as fluffers for various products – ‘Yes, oil up that bottle a bit more. Really work it. Niiiiice…’ Cannot function without a tripod and look down on anything less than medium format digital and a full set of Profotos. Almost always shoot tethered, and employ a separate retouching department to make everything look perfect afterwards. Are thought to have the uncanny ability to position things exactly in the same orientation time after time, but really rely on photoshop composites and duct tape to mark cues on the floor. Considers ISO 200 ‘a bit high’. Wistfully remembers the day when technical cameras were de rigeur and 8×10″ sheet film was chargeable to the client.

Wedding photographers
Now with video! Run around the world putting couples-to-be in increasingly odd locations and positions, with completely unrealistic settings and makeup – those are the good ones. The ensuing (retouched) images look nothing like the couple at all; the less they look like the couple, the better the wedding photographer. ‘Wedding photojournalism’ as a genre doesn’t work by definition, because retouching is the antithesis of every photojournalist, and every bride expects to look like a Vogue model even if they have skin like the surface of the moon and ‘freestyle’ teeth. Increasingly employing wide-angle lenses for portraiture, with either the bride a minor footnote in an expansive, dramatic landscape or with enormous manga eyes and tiny feet. Possibly the only paid photography market that’s expanding, with couples often paying thousands of dollars for pre-wedding location shoots where the intention is to pretend-fairytale that they met and fell in love in Paris, when the reality is that the photographer has booked six other couples back-to-back for that trip and will make exactly the same pictures seven times.

Event photographers
Rove in uniformly black-garbed packs; if they’re well-equipped, they’ll have two bodies and huge flashes. If your event organizer ran out of budget after spending too much on the meet and greet ‘talent’, then you’ll see somebody with an entry-level DSLR, kit zoom and pop-up flash continually chimping their screen trying to figure out why their images look horrible. They are probably students who just happened to agree to work for US$50 for the entire evening, and supply their own equipment. Regardless of expertise, will be cajoling random groups of non-associated strangers together for group shots against sponsor walls all night long. Doesn’t like raw files – have you ever tried to deliver a thousand edited raw images the next day? I thought so. The really good event photographers operate like good photojournalists – you don’t see them, but you see intimate moments (both involvingly touching and involving touching) well-captured afterwards.

Fashion photographers – editorial/ advertising
Employ armies of assistants, make up artists, wardrobe coordinators, location managers, stylists, art directors and general minions; all they have to do is hold the camera (and sometimes not even that) and push the button while shouting wildly and acting like a bit of a diva. A generally glamorous lifestyle that involves private jets both as transport, and later on, as props. Sometimes also lions, tigers and other wild beasts. Photographers also known to turn into wild beasts when informed of budget cuts by their clients.

Food photographers
Live pampered lives, eating their way from assignment to assignment, with Michelin-starred chefs on speed dial; that is, providing they haven’t covered their food in oil first and replaced all of the ice cream with mashed potatoes. Or gotten sick from the undercooked (but oh-so-juicy-looking) chicken. Known to obsess over the placement of a fork, or go in surgically with tweezers and surgical forceps to move around a leaf or two to the perfectly right position. Keeps a spritzer handy in their lighting bag just in case something needs to be made fresher, wetter, or shinier.

Fashion photographers – catwalk
Spend their working lives cooped up in a pit at the end of a runway with a hundred other photographers, trying to produce something different (if they’re freelancing) or cookie-cutteringly perfect (if they’re shooting for a magazine or agency). Standard equipment is a monopod and stepladder, or better yet, a monopod built into a stepladder. Must occupy a zen-like mental plane in order to work effectively; shoot like crazy during the fifteen minute shows, then spend the intervals running to the toilet and pressroom to upload the images to the agency server whilst their assistant guards their territory in the pit against possible intruders.

Sport photographers
Consider 8fps slow, and 300mm a short lens. Live for the moment, literally; it’s like being a wildlife photographer except you know the life is going to be wild and happening in front of you in neat 45-minute halves, ostensibly with rules but nothing that prevents a creative or curious photographer from being taken out by a ball, club, boot, bicycle or sometimes high-speed flying tyre. Like catwalk shooters, spend time between action running to the toilet, media center to upload stuff, and having their assistants defend their turf against other agencies – just go the media areas of any race circuit or stadium around the world, and you’ll see bits of tape or crash barriers marked with ‘AP F1 2005’ or similar marking territory. Also known to have very itchy trigger fingers, because moments are rare, worth a fortune if you get the right one, and never presented again for a do-over. Would probably make bad policemen or snipers because of this, despite likely possessing excellent marksmanship due the similar breath-control skills required for good long telephoto work.

Paparazzi
A curious hybrid of sports photographer and catwalk fashion photographer with a singularly voyeuristic bent. Any photography of the target is a good one. Ready to shoot a picture at the very hint of a wardrobe malfunction, and pathologically unable to release the shutter or move away until attacked by bodyguards – just in case that image is the one. Also likes to get close – both for more unflattering detail, and to block out competitors. Know all the latest celebrity hangouts by memory, and sometimes try to make friends with the bouncers, but it never works because they’re always below celebrities in the pecking order. But might cultivate inside sources amongst the lowly-paid entourage with a grudge. Uses a moped to get around quickly, outrun celebrity motorcades and arrive at places before they do. Flashes with high voltage fast-cycle battery packs are a must. Disavowed by camera companies as being proper photographers, but secretly loved at the same time because they have the highest turnover for cameras out of any type of photographer – perhaps the camera companies have some bouncers and bodyguards in their employ, whose sole purpose is to ensure that any dropped or broken cameras are total loss incidents. Also known to use long lenses,

Underwater photographers
Use housings more expensive than their cameras; have constant nightmares about grains of sand in o-rings and flooding. Like seeing fish through the viewfinder, but not in the viewfinder. Always the first to buy the widest lenses possible to minimize the amount of water (and floating crap) between them and their subjects. Carry their strobes on arms; known for their sensitivity towards their subjects – most of the time. Those who are not have no qualms about picking up or poking rare endangered species to provoke a photographically favorable reaction. Always think of the camera as an impervious defense shield from attack by anything; won’t dare to swim with sharks and no cage, but would think nothing of poking their housing right up at the nose of an electric eel.

Photojournalists – the serious kind
Have a jumpy, taciturn attitude and a nervous tic that comes from being around one too many live explosives that have actually gone off; will often bear the scars to prove it, too. Tote around a pair of incredibly beaten-up cameras and a wide-angle lens; needs straps that will work comfortably with a flak jacket. Capable of sleeping anywhere, anytime, and surviving for weeks on end with nothing but coffee; no wonder images are almost always motion blurred (never mind the extreme lighting conditions they almost always work under). At the same time, also capable of waking up to the drop of a pin; it can mean the difference between receiving a World Press Photo Award in person or posthumously. Often gets themselves into locations that secret agents would envy. (Why hasn’t anybody made an action movie about the photojournalist who discovers something secret that he has to diffuse/ deactivate/ fix/ expose before the world all goes to hell?) The stuff that legends are made of, however most of the time it’s about luck, timing, and having the balls to raise one’s camera and shoot some pictures instead of crapping one’s pants in fear. Also known to strut like gunslingers or drink like fish (never the former after the latter) after returning to civilization.

Photojournalists – the average newspaper kind
Rove in packs to press conferences or outside courtrooms, aiming standard-issue 24-70s or 70-200s at their subjects from inside the media cordon or outside the police line. Doesn’t have to do much beyond capturing a useable image that allows subjects to be identified; they’re not paid enough or trained to do more than that (at least not in this part of the world). Has never heard of raw or bounce flash. Usually attached to a reporter.

Wildlife photographers
Covered from head to toe in camouflage gear, including their lenses and tripods. If they stood still against a bush, you wouldn’t see them taking a photo of you from three feet away, which of course they’d never do, because everybody knows that near focus limits of a 600mm lens are about two meters, even with extension tubes. Happy to spend days in a swamp being blood donors to an entire family of mosquitoes just to get that one shot of the rare lesser-spotted mangrove warbler, or something similar. Will use monopods and beanbags in a pinch, but much happier with those enormous 3-m tall Gitzo systematics and gimbal heads that look as though they could support a .50-caliber machine gun.

Street photographers
Black-Leica toting, hyperfocal-shooting; sometimes with flashes. Often spring up like flashers with camera at the ready and speed light firing into their startled subject’s face; have mastered the art of disappearing down a dark alleyway fast enough to prevent angry subjects from turning their beloved M9s into expensive paperweights. Alternatively, extremely stealthy like ninjas; shoot from the hip without looking at subject or finder. The smoothness of their shooting technique is counterbalanced by the incredibly chaotic nature of their photographs – just look at any of the modern Japanese work. Always eating ramen because they can’t afford both proper cameras and proper food; street photography is not a commercial occupation.

Bloggers
I include this category as an afterthought because most of them are either not photographers, or if they are, they’re covered by one of the other categories. (I think ISO 200 is a bit high’, so that should give you a hint.) Always carrying the latest equipment, sometimes lots of it as they’ve got many reviews to write; photograph anything and everything, so long as it makes a useable sample shot, or can be executed at ISO 104,000. Tend to classify themselves as street photographers, but this is a bit of a dangerous catch all term for people who just take random photographs when outside their homes. If engaged in conversation, they will wax lyrical about features they’ve never used or don’t understand, but be very shy about showing their photographs to anybody in person – yet be happy to let it all hang out on the internet. Is on first name terms with their referral account manager at B&H or Amazon.

If there’s anybody I haven’t managed to insult yet, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get around to it. MT

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: humor, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, satire, thein, types of photographers

Photoessay: Cars and film

January 13, 2013 by Ming Thein

From a recent roll shot with the Nikon F2 Titan, Zeiss 2/28 Distagon and Nikon 58/1.2 Noct on Ilford XP2-400 – somehow, a good number of the images turned out to be of cars, even though they were shot a quite different times. Even more curiously there are quite a few BMWs in there…

Note: Ilford XP2-400 is a C41 process black and white film, which means it’ll give monochrome (if in my experience, slightly toned due to the development chemistry) images through a normal minilab process. However, what isn’t so well known is that the film is also developable in regular black and white chemistry; I used DDX 4:1 at 26C for five minutes, and it worked out just fine – as you can see here. Contrast needed a bit of a boost after digital copying (with my usual D800E and macro lens setup), though, and dynamic range appears to be a bit limited compared to normal black and white negative film. Still, I’m quite pleased with the results. Enjoy! MT

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Filed Under: Film Diaries, On Photography Tagged With: bmw, cars, concept, film diaries, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon f2 titan, photoessay, photography, thein

Film diaries: medium format revisited, with the Hasselblad 501C

January 12, 2013 by Ming Thein

Many of you might remember my earlier serious revaluation of medium format photography (article here) – and the conclusion I reached from a couple of months ago, which was that whilst there was a slight but noticeable gain in image quality, it simply didn’t work for me – not only would the solution for my regular commercial subjects be rather clunky and impractical. For my personal work, it didn’t feel different enough from shooting FX digital to force me to think different; in fact, the slow AF and generally sluggish UI made me frustrated. You’ll probably also recall that I very briefly evaluated the CF-V 39 back for the V series and quickly abandoned it because somehow it just left me confused – “…somewhere between the combination of the multiple crop lines, the left0-right inversion and everything else that was different, my brain shut down. I just couldn’t see anything other than what should have fit into the square 6×6 frame…”. Logically, this shouldn’t have been the case, given that rangefinders have far more confusing framelines, and any DSLR has a maze of AF boxes and grids and the rest inside the finder. But it did, and I summarily ruled out shooting with any of the V-series cameras.

This actually wasn’t my first experience with the V-series. Many, many years ago, one of my students acquired a 503 and CFV-16; I played with it briefly and found that to be equally frustrating and counterintuitive. (I also remember the back just shutting down and refusing to cooperate at one point, too.) It didn’t leave much of an impression, and certainly not a positive one.

Yet somehow despite all of this, I seem to have performed an abrupt 180 degree turn in the last couple of months. I acquired a rather nice 501C, which according to its serial number, is around 17 years old. For some irrational reason – and that’s the only thing I can put it down to – I am taking to this camera in a way that I certainly didn’t with the others. It doesn’t feel counterintuitive. It doesn’t feel finnicky or fragile. And it certainly isn’t confusing. Unlike the others, it makes me want to go out and shoot; it’s also got me seeing square compositions, which I certainly didn’t do before. In fact, I like working with it so much – and of course the results it produces – that I’ve also ordered a second back and 50/4 Distagon FLE, and the 120/4 Makro-Planar to complete the kit.

The obvious question is of course, what changed?

I’m not entirely sure myself. Other than that perhaps the shooting experience is different enough to give me the kick I was looking for; the basic controls are all still there, in a logical layout, without so many quirks that you go mad trying to remember them. Don’t get me wrong: using a V-series Hasselblad is still very much an exercise in masochism; your finder is reversed, the focus throw is extremely long, you only get 12 shots per roll (24 if you can find an A24 back and 220 film) and your shutter speed tops out at just 1/500s. Not to mention little quirks like having to remember to cock the shutter before mounting or unmounting lenses to avoid breaking the leaf shutter drive shaft, or putting the dark slide in before changing backs/ taking it out before shooting, the oddly positioned shutter release etc. And let’s not even talk about how fiddly it is to load the backs in the first place*. Somehow, the experience works for me.

*That said, unlike my first film Leica M, I managed to load it properly and not get a blank roll at the other end. I think I was just more careful this time.

It also helps that the experience is a pleasantly tactile one. ‘Serious’ cameras from the film era were built like the proverbial brick outhouse; the choice of materials and attention to detail made them objects to last, and objects that were enjoyable to use and handle. If you’re holding your camera for hours on end every day, believe me, this matters; that little, rattly, cheap-feeling plastic switch can drive you nuts after a while. The 501C, on the other hand, is every gram a real camera with a feel that is unmatched by just about every modern piece of gear, excepting perhaps the Leicas and Zeiss lenses – certainly not anything from a mass manufacturer. Historically, the cost of these things was non-trivial, and it certainly shows. What I do find amazing is that a very, very good condition complete outfit can be acquired for around the same cost as a midrange prosumer DSLR – yet I still get comments from people fawning over it as though it’s a Bugatti.

I suspect the latter may be as much to do with the perceived (historical) costs of entry, as much as the masochism required to pilot one well which results in quite a large psychological barrier overall. I personally have no issue with meterless cameras, or manual focus; I’m training my eyes to be a light meter, and for the most part, I’m within about a stop of the intended exposure. For commercial flash work, it’s usually manual through a mix of experience and quick guide number calculations. It’s actually quite liberating to be in full control of the outcome and not have to second-guess whether the camera is going to give you what you want or not.

There are also some very clever things I like about the V system: firstly, the ability to change backs mid-roll means that you can carry a high ISO back and a low ISO back, and not waste film or miss shots. The lenses are calibrated so that turning both shutter and aperture rings in the same direction by the same number of stops maintains a certain EV exposure; most of the CF lenses even have a coupling button to lock the rings together. Not letting you take out the back without a dark slide in place (and blocking the shutter if it is in place) makes sense too, if you think about it: you don’t want to accidentally waste a frame. You can also easily interchange finders and focusing screens; later cameras also take winder grips and motor drives.

With film, the shooting experience is only half the story. To control the output completely, you also have to develop and scan your own (assuming your output is digital rather than print). I’m still refining my process for both, so I’ll refrain from commenting too much on that for now; suffice to say that the grain is a bit large for my taste, probably because tap water here is 27 C and far too warm for slow development. As for the scanning process – I’m using a single-shot capture from a D800E and Zeiss 2/50 Makro-Planar, duplicating the negatives sandwiched between glass for flatness. The tonality and conversion process definitely needs some refinement, too.

It seems like a lot of work – and it is – but I am enjoying the process. And all up, I don’t think I’m spending much (if any) more time than I would with a digital workflow – I have fewer, but better, images to work on; the conversion process after scanning is largely written up as a macro, so I don’t have to do anything other than load my files, crop, dust spot and press a button; there is no curve or dodge and burn work involved anywhere. If I wanted that level of control and cleanliness, I’d use the D800E. That said, if they did ever offer a ‘full 6×6’ (or close to it) digital back, I’d probably mortgage a kidney and buy one. I could see myself using this thing commercially if throughput and control were faster and more consistent.

In short: so far, so good. I’d highly, highly recommend the experience if you have any interest in shooting film, or trying something different – the best thing about it is that if you don’t like it, you can resell the camera for pretty much what you paid for it. If you do like it – I did the economics – I’d have to shoot 25,000 frames with my complete (two lenses, two backs, two finders, including film and chemical cost) 501C setup to equal the cost of a new H4D-40. And there’s no way I’d be shooting in such quantity with either camera – I have other workhorses for that. More thoughts to come soon. MT

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Filed Under: Film Diaries, Gearhead: Reviews, hasselblad, On Photography Tagged With: 6x6, film, film diaries, hasselblad, medium format, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein

Image licensing 101

January 10, 2013 by Ming Thein

I thought it would be worthwhile spending some time demystifying an important but frequently misunderstood cousin to pricing: licensing. But before we discuss licensing, we should spend some time on the basics of intellectual property.

Intellectual property is any tangible or intangible product or service that employs proprietary know-how which can be used to gain a competitive advantage or holds commercial value. It is the idea or the manifestation of an idea which people are willing to pay for. An image is an idea in the mind of the photographer before it is executed, and then it becomes tangible; people pay to have this image for their own use, or perhaps use in conjunction with promotion of their own product or service. In short: it’s worth worrying about if you could make money off it.

The key difference between IP and physical property is its ability to be replicated with little to no marginal cost to the creator; whether one person or a hundred people hear a song, it costs the same amount to produce. Yet clearly, people are willing to pay for the ability to play that song on demand – that’s the iTunes model – which means the song has value, which means that it’s intellectual property. It doesn’t matter whether five or five thousand people buy it, the cost to license for each individual is the same, and the product they receive is the same. When calculating pricing and production costs – i.e. musicians’ contracts – this is all taken into account. No doubt a song composed exclusively and specifically for an event will have a higher license fee than a library track which might be used for anything from an athalete’s-foot-powder jingle to a prize presentation ceremony.

Another example: When you buy a movie on DVD, you’re not buying the movie per se; you’re buying a license to watch the movie by playing it back on your home theatre equipment for you and some friends in a private setting, without any ability to make commercial gain from it: i.e. charging admission for multiple screenings would not be allowed. The theatre that shows the movies has a license too, but they have legal permission to run multiple screenings and collect admission fees.

So clearly, there are many things that affect the value of intellectual property. Let’s look at it in a photographic context: each photograph is IP, and probably has some estimated lifetime value depending on several factors; the aesthetics of the image, the criticality of the moment, and its difficulty to replicate – a generic crappy built-in flash shot of a flower is going to be far less valuable than a studio-lit and atmospheric image of the Loch Ness Monster making out with Bigfoot in The White House, especially if the President is in on the action. Clearly then, intellectual property, pricing/ value and licensing are all related. It’s important to remember this.

Since a photograph – especially a digital one – doesn’t ‘wear out’, this means that it can be reused multiple times, or resold to many people. However, there’s obviously value in exclusivity, regardless of whether you’re the only entity allowed to use it or you’re the one who commissioned the image, it means that legally, nobody else can republish the image for any reason – it is under your control. In situations like this, the lifetime value – let’s say 100 units, for argument’s sake – of the image is probably going to be used up by whoever it is who buys the license, assuming it’s for longer than a short period of time, or it’s something whose value is proportional to its currency. Thus, to give away the exclusive right to use the image, you would charge 100 or pretty close to it. Perhaps even more if there are multiple interested parties; this is how paparazzi get rich: there are clearly a lot of people who want to see Kate Middleton’s boobs.

But what about more complicated situations in which perhaps the photo is well executed, has a decent lifetime value, doesn’t go out of fashion quickly, and might have multiple uses? (We’re talking stock photography here, in case you hadn’t figured it out.) A photo of the grand canyon might be used in a travel advertisement, for an airline, for a hotel, hell, as a composite base for a fashion shoot, as a computer wallpaper* – who knows. And it the original object isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but that particular combination of light and weather conditions may not be that repeatable. So how much does one charge for a ‘license’?

*The most expensive/ profitable stock photograph in history is reputedly the clouds and rolling green hills used as the Windows XP background. I believe in addition to a very handsome initial lump sum payment, the photographer continued to receive royalties for every copy of Windows sold: that’s a lot of money.

First we must understand the different types of license. (Remember, in the case of a photograph, a license is the right to use.) There’s commercial/ non-commercial; are you advertising something that will make you money? Then there’s time period – one month, one year, in perpetuity? Don’t forget geographical region – obviously, the more people see it, the more widgets you’re going to sell, so the higher the corresponding value of the image that helps you sell those widgets. Finally, there’s media type, which is somewhat linked to geographical region – online media has no region because the internet is accessible from anywhere; print media and billboards can be highly location-specific. In addition the obvious value of having more eyeballs through a geographically wider audience, it’s important not to forget the value of context and repeatability: it’s easy (and therefore relatively cheaper) to get a shot of Mount Fuji in Japan, but not so much in say, Austria. And thus the same image licensed in Japan would likely cost less on an estimated per view basis than licensed in Austria – but the total amounts might be similar because there are simply a lot more people who would see it in Japan.

The job of stock agencies is twofold: firstly, to serve as a clearing house for people looking to license images, providing diversity and a consistent level of quality; secondly, they’re also supposed to maximize the lifetime value of the images they represent. (Whether they do so or not is another debate.) Ignoring microstock agencies, which work on the basis of volume (fifty cents an image regardless of usage or content, perhaps half of which might go to the photographer) the rest of the more serious agencies will find out what you intend to use the image for, at what size, across what geographies and media etc. before presenting you with a quote. I know that agencies like Getty require this as a matter of course before you even get any sort of ballpark number; there are separate and intricate negotiations that go on behind the scenes if an image is to be used on an exclusive basis or have its rights bought over entirely.

In recent times, the agencies have been acting increasingly like the 500-pound gorillas they have become: agree to our rather one-sided royalty structures (where up to 80% goes to the agency) or have nothing at all. Inevitably, photographers agree with the agencies – myself included – because it often represents the difference between having all of nothing or some of something. The way I look at it, I’d rather have my images out there and available for sale – you never know, you might get lucky and be the recipient of a rights buyout or large exclusive deal – and thus potentially generating income, rather than sitting in my archive and probably never even viewed by me. Of course, agency representation comes with many caveats: for most agencies, you are no longer allowed to license the image on your own, i.e. all representation rights for that image transfer to the agency on agreement; and of course, they will never take images that are subject to existing licenses – whilst it’s still possible to extract some value out of it, there’s no point representing an image that has a significant chunk of its lifetime value already used up. Of course, for my better images, I prefer to retain tight control of the rights; they are not represented by any agency.

Even freely downloadable/ available images have notional licenses attached to them; the most common being ‘all rights reserved’ and ‘creative commons’. The former means that the image is not to be used without express permission from the IP holder, i.e. the photographer; they may grant you a license that involves payment, or it may not involve payment. According to Wikipedia, the phrase originates from “the copyright holder reserves, or holds for their own use, all the rights provided by copyright law, such as distribution, performance, and creation of derivative works; that is, they have not waived any such right.” This nicely ties in with the latter: creative commons are several types of generic usage licenses created by the Creative Commons organisation which detail terms and conditions of use for other parties who wish to use the intellectual property. All do not require explicit permissions (so long as the conditions of the license are fulfilled) from the creator or IP holder in order to use the work. Note that this is not the same as waiving rights entirely. Common stipulations of creative commons licenses usually take the form of credit or acknowledgement to the original creator of the work.

As a photographer, it’s important to bot know what your rights are, as well as keep track of any license agreements you might have made with other parties; this is so that if later on, you choose to offer an exclusive or regionally exclusive (for example) license, then you can actually ensure that you meet the terms of your agreement with the new party. I would strongly advise against putting any of your work out there under anything but ‘all rights reserved’; this way you have legal recourse if any of your images are used without your permission.** Similarly, don’t ever upload any full size images – even though legally people are supposed to seek permission, nobody ever does; piracy is too easily seen and treated as a victimless crime. Too often – especially in lower-educated third world countries – the perception is not only are there no physical goods stolen, there isn’t even a real person you can see! Avoid this entirely by not making useful-size images available. This is the main reason I will never post full size images online, so please stop asking. From the other perspective, if you use an image or work that is ‘all rights reserved’ without permission from the creator, you are liable to have legal action taken against you, and you will almost certainly lose. Think carefully: I’m sure you’d be rather angry if somebody took both credit and commercial value out of your hard work and didn’t even so much as ask your permission first.

**I imagine that your wife or girlfriend wouldn’t be pleased to find out that the nice portrait you posted on Flickr has been stripped and is now used to advertise haemorrhoid medication in Indonesia; it might not be that dramatic, but it’s happened to me often enough that I think you get the point.

Although most people who deal with creatives, images and IP should in theory be familiar with licensing, I’ve been met with enough blank stares and confused looks when broaching the topic that I’m convinced that it really isn’t common practice in this part of the world. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Clients don’t often understand why they need a license (“but I’m paying for the images!” is a common response) – it’s not so much that we want to charge them more as we need to ensure that legally, all parties are fully covered. Just as I want to have it in black and white that I can or can’t license the image to a competitor, you as a client would also want to make sure that if I breach that agreement, you can sue me for doing so since you paid for exclusivity. Generally, once explained, all is clear and there aren’t too many problems. I consider client education a necessary thing to safeguard the long term future of the industry – clients who understand and appreciate IP are certainly much easier to work with in the long run.

For the most part, you can grant these clients time-restricted unlimited media exclusive licenses anyway – most commissioned work of this sort is either small value and/or highly client specific, which means that you won’t be reselling them to anybody else, and the only possible way for you to increase the lifetime value of the image is to extend the usage period. For the most part, I actually tend to grant indefinite licenses in the interests of the client relationship; I’d rather they happily come back to me for more work rather than grudgingly hand over a bit more license money.

Bottom line: if you’re going to at any point bill for photo work, make sure you understand and manage your rights and IP carefully. It will help you to both maximise your revenues, as well as ensure that you’re not caught in the position of not actually owning your own images. MT

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