article – Ming Thein | Photographer

Common photographic mistakes by beginners, amateurs and pros – and how to avoid them

July 2, 2012 by Ming Thein

Beginners: Ever wonder why your photos don’t look ‘professional?’ Amateurs: ever wonder why you lack consistency? Pros: Ever wonder why you lose your edge or drive? Wonder no longer. This article deals with some of the most common oversights by photographers of all kinds, and how to avoid them.

Beginners

The missing subject. If it’s not obvious at a glance what is the subject of your image – i.e. what the photo is actually about – then you should probably ask yourself why you took the picture in the first place. If the answer was ‘because of the X’, and the X is not obvious, then you need to try again. The subject in a photo should stand out – by contrast, by color, by light, by motion, or by focus. In exceptional cases it’s possible to make it stand out by not having it, but this is very, very rare and requires perfect use of contextual information to allow the viewer to make inferences about what should complete the scene.

Poor perspective use. Pick your perspective before your angle of view. Wide angles are used to emphasize foreground subjects, telephotos to de-emphasize them with respect to the background. Don’t use a wide angle to ‘get more stuff in’ the frame, that will just result in boring images. Similarly, telephotos are not for ‘getting closer’.

Being stuck in the wrong gear. This includes the entire suite of woes of technical errors – exposure, focus, camera shake, white balance etc. Usually due to the driver relying too much on the camera to do the work for you: it will never get it right because there is no way the camera can know what the photographer intends to do with each image. You will have to take control somewhere along the line in the imaging chain in order to create the image you envision in your mind at the time of capture, and it’s better to do it closer to the capture process to minimize the subsequent amount of image quality degradation.

Amateurs

Worrying too much about gear. This usually takes the form of hauling around everything you own for every shoot and believing a new piece of equipment will solve some deficiency in your images that can almost always be traced back to photographic skill, or more specifically, the lack thereof. If you carry too much stuff you’ll always be second-guessing your choice of lens or camera. And if you keep buying new gear, you’ll never master what you’ve got – and be at a disadvantage because you can’t control your equipment. Before buying new gear, make sure you know exactly what it is with your current kit that is the limitation, and that it will resolve the problem – otherwise you’ll have both wasted money and compromised your photography. However, if you’re just a camera collector, disregard this item. In fact, disregard this entire post.

Intrusions and truncations into frame edges. With 100% finders being commonplace, there’s no excuse for parts of the subject being cut off at the edges, or obviously contrasting distractions intruding into the frame – like tree branches or phantom limbs, for instance.

Color issues. Odd white balance, or objects in the frame that are obviously the wrong color can create some interest in an otherwise boring scene – or things like that can just be jarring if they’re too far off the mark. This is especially important for skin tones or food. If you’re not sure what the correct white balance is, either adjust it accordingly with the eyedropper tool when converting the raw file, or manually white balance with a gray card. Don’t leave the camera to do it on automatic – if a channel gets clipped, the information isn’t recoverable. This is especially obvious with jpegs due to the limited tonal range available in the first place.

Black and white contrast issues. Amateur black and white generally tends to be too flat or too contrasty. The latter results in a loss of highlight and shadow quarter tones, resulting in an over-graphic representation of the subject and not enough tonal range to differentiate the subject from the background; the former is just dull and uninteresting to look at. It’s like knowing the chef had twenty different ingredients to make a meal, but he used only the gray, monotonous-tasting one.

Poor use of natural frames or leading lines. These little ‘helpers’ are to be found all over the place – the converging perspectives of a long hallway are a great example of this. They can help to draw your eye to the subject, but they can also lead your eye away from it if you put the subject anywhere else by the confluence of these lines.

Center-only composition. Few images work well with the subject dead-center or nearly there; the more dynamic images always have a bit of space before or after – I like to think of it as the anticipation or the aftermath. All cameras these days have more than one focusing point. I hear they even let you pick which one!

Lack of balance. I did say just now that center-subject compositions are boring; that’s because they mostly are. But at the same time, you can’t have frames where all of the action happens in say the bottom-left corner and the rest of the image is empty. Visual balance is a tough thing to describe, but fortunately it’s one of those properties of an image which is instinctively easy to recognize.

Incorrect use of depth of field. Too little, and the picture becomes about the bokeh – most of the images shot with the old Leica 50/1.0 Noctilux are like this – I can never understand why people gush over a picture of a boring fence or pile of bricks just because it exhibits swirly bokeh; to me it says nothing more than ‘I rely on my gear to create a style for me because I have no imagination!’ It is, of course, a tool – used well, it can enhance an image. Used poorly, well, you’re just another camera collector who takes pictures of fences. Notice I haven’t said anything about too much depth of field – you can always compose to use this to your advantage, because any secondary element of context helps to tell the story. However, the converse is also true – there’s no context in an abstract wall of blur. Conclusion: I’m beginning to think there’s a just right amount of bokeh for every scene – or at least a range; just enough blur to help you focus on the primary subject, not too much to remove all the context.

Poor timing and not being prepared. I see plenty of shots that I call ‘near misses’. This is when the idea is there, the technical execution is well done, but the timing is off – always caused by a moving element that’s out of position. There are two elements to getting this right – practice, and practice. You need to have some ability to anticipate what’s going to happen next; you also need to have an instinctive feel for how much lag your camera has between depressing the button and the picture being taken. And the only way to make this intuitive is by shooting and getting accustomed to it.

Professionals

Getting stuck in the creative rut. Not pushing yourself and relying on the same patterns of framing time and again may ensure you get the money shot, but eventually everybody else will be getting the same money shot, too. (Certain local celebrity wedding photographers where I live are notorious for this.) You need to be continually trying new things, improving and refining and always pushing. It’s an increasingly competitive industry, and a very visual one – if your images don’t stand out, then you’re never going to be a client’s first choice – they probably won’t even notice you from the rest of the pack.

Leaving the thinking to the client asks for and no more. This is related to the previous point – in fact, it’s the precursor to it. Clients come in a continuum: those who leave all of the creative freedom to the photographer, recognizing that the reason why they were attracted to your portfolio in the first place is because of your own personal style (these are the best clients of all) – to those that tell you exactly what they want, down to the last millimeter of positioning. The former type of client is rare; this makes it very easy to fall into being a contractor/ executor rather than being a creative.

Subcontracting out too much of the retouching and styling. Another related point comes in the form of an army of assistants and stylists. Given how much of the creative process is encapsulated in the post processing portion, it seems rather risky to leave the work to somebody else – even if they understand your original vision, chances are that it will take longer because there will be many revisions required, and in the end it may still not quite be what you initially envisioned. If you let this happen for too long, technology may move on to the point where you don’t even know how to achieve the desired end result anymore. And if your assistant or retoucher leaves, then what happens?

Not trying different subjects. I’ve had endless debates with various people in the industry on this topic – is it better to be a specialist and only shoot one thing, or a generalist and shoot everything? The reality is that it’s a bit of both. You have to be known for one thing – that becomes your go-to commercial support – but you need to be able to shoot many different types of subjects. There are two reasons for this – firstly, it lets you make more income from being able to offer clients additional services; the less obvious one is that shooting different things helps you to develop different techniques that can be applied across your particular subject of expertise.

Finally, there’s working too much. This sounds contradictory, but not taking enough time out to focus on personal shooting/ creative development can actually make you lose your creativity and consequently negatively affect your business. Fortunately when this happens, you’ve got less work and more time to experiment, so hopefully you do actually go out and do some personal shooting. I’ve definitely noticed that the more commercial work I do, the less I feel inclined to do personal work – I think this is dangerous because that’s probably the only time where you don’t have limitations imposed on you by your deliverables, and can let your creativity do its thing.

And on that note, I’m off for a walk. With a camera. MT

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Commercial work vs personal work vs experimentation vs development

June 30, 2012 by Ming Thein

This shot was the result of creative white balance use, and getting up early because I wanted to try it. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

One thing I’ve noticed since turning to photography full time is that the amount of personal work I do has greatly reduced. It’s not because I don’t have time to do it – on the contrary, I should have plenty more opportunities to sneak out and shoot for half an hour or an hour here and there – I think it’s because I’m starting to fall into the trap of complacency. Or perhaps I’m reaching a photographic saturation point of sorts.

This shot was the result of experimenting with large amounts of blu-tack to keep the watch in place for the shot. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro

I definitely still enjoy shooting, and I still feel the same rush when I nail the frame – what I’m missing is the feeling of wanting to go out and do it in the first place. I think a large part of it is because once you start running your own business, there are always more things you can be doing on the development front – either sending out feelers to potential new clients, following up on existing ones, or doing post processing from jobs past. And that doesn’t count this blog, either.

Up to this point, I’d never used dinner plates as props for watch photography before. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro

It’s odd, but equipment choice paralysis also seems to be a contributing factor. I’ve now got three systems – Nikon FX, Leica M and Micro 4/3 – each for a specific purpose, but also each with enough lenses to make a general purpose kit that I can comfortably go out and shoot anything with, be it an assignment or a holiday at the beach. And that doesn’t count the various compact cameras, either. Sometimes I honestly stand in front of the equipment cabinet before going out and feel plagued by indecision – even if I pick a system, which lens(es) should it go with? What do I anticipate shooting? What kind of look or style am I going for?

Divisive symmetry. One of those experiments. Nikon D3

Constantly planning shots and thinking about the end result does make you a more conscious and prepared photographer, but it also means that to some extent you’re either paralyzed by indecision, or micromanaging everything in your control to the point that it doesn’t become fun anymore. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is the feeling that you definitely have the wrong piece of equipment on you, but the right one is sitting in the cabinet at home. (At that point, the best thing you can do is figure out what you can do with what you’ve got and just shoot, but that’s an entire post on its own for another day).

The ephemeral missing sushi. One of my favorite near misses – even though nothing is in focus, you can make out enough of the shot to know that there should be something between the fingers and on it’s way to the diner’s mouth. To my eyes, the blurriness of it all actually helps to reinforce the implied surrealism. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, Panasonic 20/1.7 G

So what’s the upshot of all of this? Well, not doing as much personal work means that that the times you do shoot are mostly bridled by the requirements of your clients, and frequently do not result in you pushing the creative envelope – especially if you have conservative clients. The importance of photography for yourself is that it gives you time to experiment and develop your style and technique; without it, it’s too easy to stagnate into a creative rut and consequently land up being unproductive, or worse, uncompetitive. Not having an end client to please takes the pressure off you, and leaves you free to try things that you might not have time to do while on assignment, especially if time is tight and shot list is long – which it almost always is.

It was extremely dark, and empty – there were no people to fill the frame and provide context, motion and life – I didn’t even know if the shot would work technically, let alone aesthetically. I’m very pleased with the result, though. Leica M9-P, 50/1.4 ASPH

Inevitably, the early results of any experiment result in failure, or at best, partial success. Whilst this may not be acceptable in a client scenario, it’s a crucial part of the learning and development process – if you succeeded at something straight away, chances are you will develop that style far less that somebody who has to work at it. The reasons is down to understanding: assuming we don’t give up, humans understand things by doing them; the more times you have to try something, the more parameters you have to change, the more complete a picture you will be able to build up of how things work. This in turn results in better control over the end result, which of course culminates in better output.

Same with this shot – one of those surreal, but fun experiments that came to mind after passing by the gorilla for sale in a store window. Leica M9-P, Zeiss 28/2.8 Biogon

Without this experimentation, one stagnates creatively; it’s actually very obvious in the work of various ‘famous’ wedding photographers in this country. Many of them revert to the same portfolio of five or ten compositions and apply them to every shoot – which has several consequences; firstly, they are increasingly pigeonholed into a particular style or look, and that’s what clients expect; secondly, they can’t take the risk of doings something else because of client rejection; finally, they can’t break out of that way of seeing because they’ve been doing it for so long, and the creative process has atrophied. It’s a dangerous cycle.

Reflections – another experiment. By this point in the shoot (shooting a launch gallery for the Leica V-Lux 3) – I’d had a whole card full of standard shots, but nothing different and interesting – there wasn’t any clean water in sight for a neat reflection, so had to try and make do.

What I always find interesting – and inspiring – is the work of serious amateurs; Flickr is one of the best places to see this. Whilst there are a good number of pros on the site (myself included), it’s also home to a lot of people who fall into the former category. Serious amateurs are in an enviable position – one I didn’t appreciate myself until recently – most of the time, they have the skills to be able to make the shot they want, the lack of pressure to execute it, and the lack of cynicism that stops them from trying things that might fail in the first place. The result is that browsing uploads from my contacts shows me a wide cross section of work; some of it really quite excellent and inspiring; some of it utter rubbish; however, the most interesting to me are the experiments that are near misses, or clearly out of style for the individual: you can almost see how the compositional mind of the photographer works, trying to adapt their old way of seeing to a new style. It’s almost like seeing how something is made.

If I hadn’t brought the D-Lux 5 along, and packed the light panels on a whim, then this series wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t have known that it’s very possible to make commercial-grade food images with a compact.

I often get ideas through looking at other people’s images, period – especially of places I’ve been before, or things I’ve shot before. This gives you the ability to see things through the eyes of another person – and find what you might have missed from your own perspective, which in turn makes you want to go out and shoot again to try and perfect your vision once more, and capture the essence of that particular subject…

Making do with the relatively slow f2.8 aperture of the 28/2.8 ASPH and the limited low light capabilities of the M9-P resulted in long shutter speeds, and the slight softening which lead to this rather surreal image – and the hidden gorilla in the shadows.

Creativity is an iterative process; one that must be built on, nurtured, and continuously pursued. Without it, it’s impossible to develop as a photographer. At the same time, it can’t be forced – something that a lot of people (our government included) don’t seem to understand; you can’t just throw time and money at it and hope that new ideas sprout. It doesn’t work that way – the inspiration, or the ‘ah ha!’ spark has to be there in the first place. The tough part is creating an environment for yourself in which you feel inspired and inclined to experiment. Stress, expectations and tight schedules aren’t conducive for creativity. But over-relaxation and laziness isn’t, either. It’s a tough balance, this one. And that’s one of the reasons why from now on, I’m going to make sure there are a couple of days a month – usually tacked on to the end of location-based assignments – which permit me to go off, explore and experiment. I highly recommend it. MT

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: article, balance, creativity, essay, experimentation, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, personal, photography, professional, thein

Infinite frames in a crop: compositional building blocks (or, the future of photography?)

June 28, 2012 by Ming Thein

Ion Orchard sunset. Leica S2, 70/2.5 Summarit-S

Here’s an interesting thought: sensor resolution is way past the point of far more than most people need – look at that recent Nokia 808 PureView and it’s 41MP sensor as an example. For most compact camera users, that’s just asking for trouble – file sizes, viewing, shooting technique…the list goes on.

What if we took a say 50MP compact 2/3″ sensor (not unfeasible) and just output no more than 5 MP from the sensor? You can zoom to your heart’s content before capture – either by taking a 1:1 crop or downsizing various portions of the frame; have a low light mode which uses pixel binning to reduce noise and/or improve dynamic range; and finally, make the whole thing speedy and lag-free by using a bright, fixed-focus wide angle lens. Or I suppose if you must have macro modes, make it AF. Finally, add some form of image stabilization to the mix, because that kind of pixel density is going to make most tripods look as though they have palsy. We’ve dropped the size, weight and cost of the zoom assembly; this makes for more compact, robust cameras. It also means that more engineering effort and perhaps even more money (though I wouldn’t put it past consumer electronics companies to want to hang on to every single extra penny and avoid R&D spending where possible) can be put into the lens, which should in theory improve optics.

The results probably wouldn’t be pretty at the pixel level, but the target audience is unlikely to care. And 5 good MP is more than enough for a clean 6×4″, or social media post, or email. Hell, it’d probably be enough for a decent A3 print if you use one of the pixel binning modes in good light. Think of it as digital zoom, but instead of getting degradation off the base pixel-level image quality, you get an improvement as you use more and more pixels.

However, I digress. As interesting as that idea is for the future of compacts – I wasn’t initially intending to suggest a new type of camera. What I wanted to explore are the building blocks of composition. Assuming everything is in focus, a scene – especially one shot from a wide angle perspective – can easily be decomposed into multiple elements, some of which contain the subject, some of which contain context, and some of which may turn context into a subject in its own right. All images are made up of these building blocks, and each can be treated as an image in itself. (Don’t try to compose this way in the real world, or you’re either going to go crazy or turn into a product photographer.) Examples may be – a face, a texture, a landmark.

Sometimes you don’t need more than a couple to create an arresting image – a portrait, for instance – sometimes you need as many as you can get to convey the chaos of the scene (crisis photojournalism comes to mind). What I notice in good photographers’ images is that all critical frames contain the elements required to tell the story, and usually in aesthetically pleasing relative placement, too. This is a learned skill; one can identify the critical elements required to tell a story, and then go out and look for a frame that contains them. I suppose the more control you have over the placement of the individual elements, and the more individual elements you can even identify in the first place, the stronger your image will be. Elements may break down into sub-elements – a wide shot may contain a portrait which can contain a face closeup; all of these things are building blocks.

This brings us full circle to the original starting point – how many images are there in an image? Let’s take the first image as an example:

This decomposes into what I think are five clear elements; the building and its relationship with the organic are the subjects.

What I find interesting is that each of these elements – or crops – could be an image on its own. And you can of course further subdivide these images down into their own building blocks. How many does one need to make up a strong overall image? One? Two? More? It’s hard to say; I think the answer is actually infinite. If you had infinite resolution, you could keep subdividing and cropping infinitely.

I know this is a fairly nebulous post, but stay with me here and you’ll start to see the genesis of an idea.

Let’s do the same, but in reverse. The frame below arguably works on its own as an image:

But then, if we include more context, so does this:

Or this:

And this.

We can keep pulling out…

…until we reach the initial (final?) frame.

Welding. Nikon D800, AFS 28-300 VR

Each of these compositions on its own would have worked as a frame. Similarly, continuously pulling out adds more and more context, until you pass a threshold beyond which the context dominates the subject. I framed the final shot that way because that was the farthest I thought I could pull out to maximize context, but at the same time isolate the subjects in the frame. Anything more and the subjects would have been too small to identify cleanly. You’ve also got to consider the final viewing size: smaller would mean physically smaller subjects, which would encourage tighter framing. Similarly, images that appear flat and cluttered at smaller sizes frequently work well when enlarged due to the greater amount of detail we can physically appreciate.

I started this article postulating on whether increases in resolution would lead to a new generation of pixel-binning super-sensored compacts; the more I think about it, the more I think it might even apply to photography as a whole. We have long past the point of resolution sufficiency for most purposes; shrinking pixel pitches mean that lens maximum apertures and diffraction-impacted apertures are converging. Eventually you’re going to have to buy excellently designed and well-corrected fast lenses and shoot them wide open to absolutely maximize resolution from the sensor.

Perhaps this will give birth to a new style or form of photography – we capture everything first, and then decide what’s important to the frame afterwards. A little bit like Lytro, but for composition rather than focus. Of course, we can do the same today with the super high resolution DSLRs, but there are limits to how much we can crop, and the lack of suitable lenses to serve as a reproduction optic. Such a camera – let’s call it post-capture framing – would be responsive due to lack of focusing needs; hyper focal would probably suffice; offer decent low light performance due to the large maximum apertures required; and be reasonably compact – rangefinder sized, perhaps – due to an optical system designed and matched to the sensor. It’d probably be closer in proportions to a cube, actually – once the lens is taken into account.

The skill of the photographer at the moment of capture would then be reduced to timing and exposure; the latter would probably be mostly automated, leaving only timing; however, this doesn’t make things any easier. The bulk of the work would now be done in post-processing – not just the digital ‘development’ portion, but also the editing, framing and cropping. I’ve always thought of editing as one of the critical skills for a pro – one’s reputation is based as much on the photos you show against the ones you don’t; being able to see the frame ‘in the wild’ and capture the moment in time is not an easy thing to do. Post-capture framing would give you all the time in the world to do that, which would make things easier somewhat – but also offer more opportunities and flexibility for other compositions.

This would of course raise some interesting IP issues: if another ‘editor’ cropped the original photo to a much smaller, unrecognizable frame, whose photo is it? The person who pressed the button, and just aimed the camera in the right general direction, or the one who actually saw the composition in the master frame?

It’s a brave new world, and an exciting time to be a photographer. Personally, though, I’m one of those very anal people who seeks to maximize all of the image quality they can get out of the camera; which means I don’t crop unless it’s to a non-native aspect ratio. Understanding the use of ‘building blocks’ to create a final composition, plus knowing when you’ve got enough context (or too much context, overpowering the subject) is a very important skill to refine, regardless of the technology involved. MT

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

On the value of having a muse

June 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

Starburst. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, Panasonic 20/1.7

This has been another one of those tricky articles to write – mainly because a lot of self-reflection went into it, and as we all know, it’s very difficult to do that and remain objective. The essays is illustrated with images that are representative of experiments that worked – things I was inspired to try with various muses, and in turn learned something from.

What is a muse? In its purest form, a muse is perhaps best defined as something that triggers inspiration in an artistic or creative sense. It doesn’t have to be an inanimate object; most artists’ muses tend to be people; in fact, most artists tend to land up romantically involved with their muses. Creativity is impossible to separate from inspiration, and inspiration is a very close bedfellow of attachment – attachment to an idea. (I know this sounds like Inception, but bear with me here.*)

*On an unrelated note, that movie contains one of the most spectacular dining rooms I’ve ever seen – from a design and architectural point of view. And I suspect it would be pretty cool as both a photographic subject and backdrop, too.

Floating head. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, 14-42 kit lens

This attachment can take many forms. From a specifically artistic point of view, the main one is to try and capture the essence of the subject in the artist’s work; in fact, an extremely challenging muse is probably the best thing an artist can have, because no matter how hard they try, they will never feel as though they’ve done the subject justice – and this is what drives the growth of creativity. It’s not so much attachment to the subject per se, as an obsession with the desire to capture the subject in a medium or object other than the subject itself – which is in itself doomed to failure, because the more one understands about a subject, the more one realizes that it’s impossible to reproduce it in another medium – especially if the subject is something live and changing, like a person.

Prague sunset. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

So in effect, muses are necessary stimulants to creativity. There are a few things that make a good muse: complexity and multidimensionality is one; ease of access is another (you never know when an idea might strike, and you just have to try something out); finally, some sort of flux or dynamism is another – which is why most muses tend to be things that offer infinitely variable possibilities – for instance, Ansel Adams and Yosemite – or a person.

Journey ending. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Having a muse is also an admission of the artist to imperfection – at least in their own minds. If the artist was happy with their work, they’d finish one piece of art – take one photograph – feel like they’ve nailed the shot, and then never look at the subject again. By trying to photograph something repeatedly, it says both that there’s perhaps more to capture than is possible in a single frame, as well as all of the past frames being insufficient or incomplete in some way.

Vienna at Christmas. Leica M9-P, 50/1.4 ASPH

A person may have many muses. You might, for instance, be inspired by a particular place or location; an object, and a person. Most of mine fall into the latter two categories, though the objects tend to be somewhat short-lived. I’ll start with the easy one – objects. I tend to accumulate objects of design. I have a huge weakness for things which have unique (but functional) design elements; things made of unusual or highly tactile materials and textures; and things that just look good. Past random acquisitions include a miniature fountain pen with no clip; a vase with a hole so impractically small that you would be hard pressed to fit even a single flower stem in it, but an incredibly unique texture; and fifteen stuffed polar bears.** And of course there are the watches, too.

**You may have already seen these make cameo appearances in various camera tests. Their white fur is an excellent test subject for highlight tonality, microcontrast, and of course fine detail reproduction.

Bob. Nikon D700, Voigtlander 20/3.5

Most of these objects will be the subjects of several photo sessions, or until I’m happy with at least one or two of the images I’ve captured. After that, they don’t change, so they don’t really serve much of a challenge photographically; however they litter my apartment as monuments to my design curiosity. But by far the biggest guilty pleasure of mine are cameras and lenses; yes, they are technical tools used to capture an image. But different cameras also force you to shoot differently and think about composition in different ways; a great example is a compact, or a monochrome-only camera. The former removes the crutch of bokeh, and forces you to rely on subject differentiation solely via framing and light; the latter forces you to see luminance, texture and shadow, rather than contrasts in color. Both are refreshing, and mastery helps you improve overall as a photographer.

Red vase and erstwhile contents. Nikon D5100, 60/2.8 G Micro

Then there’s the difference between rangefinders and SLRs – viewing and focusing method aside, I find the biggest difference is that a rangefinder forces you to focus more on your subject – you can’t see what’s in focus and what isn’t; you can’t frame precisely. Shot properly, both of those things subconsciously make you concentrate more on ensuring that the subject itself is the most immediately obvious thing in the frame, and the primary composition is so strong that whatever might be in the edges or out of focus areas of the frame become secondary, and do not detract from the subject. A new camera makes you want to go out and shoot with it, too – and that motivation is often enough to make you get images you wouldn’t otherwise have managed if you’d either stayed at home or not bothered to experiment with.

A Parisian cliche. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH. I don’t think I would even have attempted this with a big black DSLR.

Japan is also a source of endless inspiration for me – perhaps because the place is just so different from anywhere else in the world, especially the old world of Europe where I used to live, and the developing world of South-East Asia where I now live. I step off the plane and feel excited – those very differences that pervade every aspect of daily life force you to approach subjects with fresh eyes and curiosity; you take experimental risks and try things you normally wouldn’t at home or on a commercial shoot, where risk might equal loss of a client. I think every photographer needs these creative trips on a semi-regular basis as a way of forcing your eyes not to take things for granted, especially when back home. Seeing something done differently overseas tends to make you wonder what’s normal – it is of course all relative – but perhaps enough for you to find a worthwhile frame in the course of your daily life you might have otherwise ignored.

Waiting for the train, Sapporo. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

My biggest muse, by far, is my long-suffering wife. She is crash test dummy for new equipment and technique, a partner in crime for experimentation, and a handy anonymous body when an empty scene happens to need one to complete the frame. (She isn’t that patient, though, which also forces me to hone my instinctive composition and technical skills – the less one has to think about something, the faster one works.) And as a person, I find her endlessly fascinating*** – which means that there are always facets of her personality that I’m trying to capture; regardless of whether I do or not, I’ll always feel there’s something left over the next hill – and that motivates me to keep shooting.

***I suppose if this wasn’t the case, then I probably married the wrong person. Perhaps there’s a photographic metaphor in this – maybe in choice of camera or choice of subject – but that remains another topic for another day.

Medusa sleeps. Leica X1

Conversely, there are places I visit frequently with a camera – either as part of testing, or because I always have a camera of some sort on me – I will take some photos, but nothing in the location compels me to return. These I do not consider to be muses because they don’t inspire me; I just happen to be there and see something.

Bukit Bintang reflections. Apple iPhone 4

I highly recommend you find your own muse; it doesn’t have to be a person, or even a fellow photographer (my wife doesn’t really have any interest in taking pictures, and she is almost always surprised by the way the images turn out – despite having participated instrumentally in their creation). Rather, your muse is a reflection of you as a photographer – what is it that fascinates you? What inspires you? What makes you want to create? Finding and understanding that is a hugely important step to unlocking your creativity. MT

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Some thoughts on digital camera lifespan

June 22, 2012 by Ming Thein

Some of my 2012 gear. Missing is the D800E, PCE 85/2.8 Micro, AI 45/2.8P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE, Pen Mini, OM-D, Panasonic 20/1.7, Panasonic Leica 45/2.8, D-Lux 5 Titanium,a couple more SB900s, light panels…

This small mountain of gear leads to two very frightening thoughts. Firstly, there’s no ending in sight; one keeps accumulating more and more equipment in order to keep pushing the edge of what’s possible both from a compositional and artistic standpoint, as well as from an image quality standpoint. You’ve either got to have a great day job and very deep pockets, or some good recurring clients.

The second thought is around obsolescence. In the film days, the camera body and lenses lasted a long time; you invested in glass, got a decent body – one that fulfilled your personal needs as a photographer – and then picked the right film for the job. In that sense, image quality differences between brands were down to the lenses and the photographer. This is to say that if you put the same film in every camera, the difference in sharpness or acuity or color or whatever would be down to the lens only. If you wanted more image quality, you went for a bigger format – and thus a larger sensor. The digital equivalent to this would be having only one photo site design of a fixed pixel pitch; say around 4.9 microns, which would get you 16MP at APS-C, 36MP at FX, about 60MP on 645, and something silly on large format. For an equivalent size print, the larger format would definitely outdo the smaller format by an amount proportional to the difference in resolution.

A Parisian cliche. 2006 vintage Leica M8, Voigtlander 50/1.1

Except, that’s not quite the case, because there are technological tricks employed on some sensors that land up yielding image quality that isn’t quite where you’d expect along the size-quality curve. Bottom line: the camera body now plays a much more critical role in the imaging chain because it also contains the ‘film’, and this isn’t something you can change when the equivalent of a new emulsion is released.

Cameras from the 1950s and 1960s are still alive and well today – and in some cases, quite plentiful. Yes, some may have sticky shutters or mechanical issues due to neglect or lack of servicing, but the reality is that they were a) built to last and b) will continue to do a fine job so long as one can find film for them. The chemical process for film processing hasn’t changed much in the last forty or so years. Negatives can (probably) last hundreds of years with proper archival and storage conditions – how long, exactly, is anybody’s guess.

Minute repeater works. 2005 vintage Nikon D2Hs, 85/2.8 PC Micro

However, we’re facing some very real issues with digital, and ones that matter to all digital photographers. Let’s examine these individually.

Camera life. In the film days, shutters may have been rated to 50,000 or so exposures for a professional body – the reality is that nobody but a professional would shoot this many frames; film always has a per-shot cost and effort cost associated with it. You think a bit harder before letting off a frame, and this generally results in fewer frames but more keepers. Since digital is free, photographers experiment a lot more (and learn a lot faster) – but this means that you’re probably going to wear out a shutter if you are a dedicated shooter and keep a camera more than a few years. Even the professional grade cameras have shutters rated to around 300,000 or so exposures; I know of many sport photographers whose cameras are well over the million-frame mark. I’ve had to replace shutters a couple of times on my own cameras. This in itself isn’t a big deal, so long as parts are available. However, if something goes wrong with the electronics, your camera becomes a brick the minute the manufacturer runs out of spare circuit boards – the chips are not something you can repair with an experienced hand, unlike mechanical shutters for instance.

Shipyard worker. 2007 vintage Panasonic TZ3

Lenses. Even modern lenses are not immune to this – yes, they all still use glass and helicoids, but they also rely on a lot of electronics to control autofocus and aperture functions. Let’s not even talk about those with magnetically-activated gyroscopes for stabilization. Even the coreless ring-shaped motors used to achieve fast focusing aren’t infallible; early Nikon AFS lenses are notorious for requiring that expensive repair once the lenses start making squeaking noises. Again: you’re up one of those brown creeks with no paddle if something electronic gives way. The sole exception to this is the entirely mechanical glass by Leica and Zeiss; those will probably survive the apocalypse.

Batteries and cables. Anybody who’s got an older camera that uses Ni-MH or Ni-Cd cells is going to relate to this one instantly: once the batteries are no longer available, you’ve got a brick. And the inherent nature of the chemistry means that this can be as short as five years, or perhaps ten if you’re lucky. I’m glad I don’t have any that fall into this category, but I do have some lithium cells that were so heavily used that they’re pretty much useless now; I’d be worried about not being able to get replacements for these in the future. (Fortunately, I’m paranoid about spare batteries, so I have at least two for each camera I use.) Once supplies dry up off ebay, that’s probably the end of the line – and who even knows how old or new those stockpiles are. One thing I really hate about some cameras is the necessity to use proprietary connectors for things like video out or even USB – if you lose or damage that little adaptor or cable that came in the box with the camera, you’re probably out of luck getting a replacement unless there’s a huge ecosystem for the camera – but so far, no camera connector has reached that kind of popularity. At least some makers see sense and use standard mini-USB cables or 3.5mm minijacks. And putting the two together, the same of course goes for battery chargers…

A quiet moment. 2004 vintage D2H, with a 1960s vintage 55/1.2 SC pre-AI converted Nikkor

Storage media. This one concerns me quite a lot: we’ve already seen big shifts from one type of digital media to another, with almost zero support once a type of card or drive or storage goes out of fashion. Self-burned CDs from just a few years ago seem to be hit and miss when it comes to readability; early DVDs are a tossup because of the format used; and has anybody tried to mount an old drive recently? They don’t always work. I’ve found the best way to keep your files and backups accessible is to use external hard drives, limit the amount of uptime they have (if you’re not using them, don’t turn them on) and change them every couple of years. This serves several purposes: firstly, maximizing forward compatibility; secondly, giving you more space; thirdly, hopefully more reliability as technology matures; and finally, the old drives can be kept somewhere as an incremental backup. And drives fail, too – you might want to take a look at my article on storage and backups.

Online. If you’re storing files online, make sure you have an offline backup. I’m sure Kodakgallery had a lot of users at one point – at least until they shut down this month. I dread to think what’s going to happen to their servers when everybody’s aunt and uncle suddenly realize that all of their photos are there and must be downloaded immediately, or worse still, forgets completely they’re there at all. The problematic thing is that there is usually no automated backup for these things – you have to download the images one by one. If say Flickr went down, I’d lose the 13,800 or so images I’ve got there – at least the small, web-sized archives – and that wouldn’t be so critical, except that all of the images from this site are hosted there. Still, it would be recoverable – but not great. And problematically, there’s no way of executing a backup to this, either.

File compatibility. Of all the future proofing problems faced by us digital users, this is by far the biggest. I’m no so worried about JPEGs, because it seems that as a format it’s here to stay; even the improved JPEG 2000 format introduced by the same group that created JPEG compression originally didn’t really make much of a dent in the photography world. What worries me more is the ability to open all of those RAW files in future; so far, Adobe Camera Raw is doing a great job of maintaining full compatibility with older cameras (which explains why the update files are now enormous), but I wonder what will happen if that platform shifts in future. We can only hope the size of the demand for such support is large enough to support a continuing market for such products. A second set of DNG files may be an option for increased future proofing. However, it’s well-known that ACR isn’t the best converter for all files, and better image quality can be obtained via other converters for specific cameras – so I’d be concerned about what information isn’t being fully captured and transferred over. I don’t have a solution for this other than keeping a full set of uncompressed TIFF files, whose encoding is relatively simple and shouldn’t be too difficult to retain support for in future.

End of the line. 2007 vintage Panasonic TZ3

There’s one final issue I’d like to touch on in this article, and that’s the ecosystem. I’m not about to go greenpeace; I’m referring specifically to the support tech that’s required to maintain a full digital workflow; this includes everything from the memory cards to cables to batteries to the computer involved. Image quality competitiveness aside (more on sufficiency in another article), I think you’re going to have to think about a full upgrade cycle for your support gear every three to five years. It’s no longer your camera body you’ve got to cost in, but also a new computer to handle the larger files, Photoshop upgrades to get the most out of those RAW files, bigger memory cards and hard drives to store everything on, maybe even a higher resolution, more accurate monitor. And all of this of course costs money.

There are two ways of dealing with this – as a hobbyist, I’d recommend buying one complete (and compatible) set, then using it until one critical component dies or absolutely has to be replaced. This should get you at least five years of use, probably more. The upside is lower money out, but also close to zero residual value. As a professional, you probably have to consider the other extreme – upgrade as soon as an improvement is available. Your used gear still has resale value, and this can be used to offset the upgrade costs. Incremental upgrades to the supporting equipment can be made with relatively small spending. (I don’t like to use the word ‘investment’ when it comes to equipment, because it is really a losing proposition.) It also keeps you competitive. I’m a masochistic early adopter, so I’ve always taken the latter route. I think it’s very important to pick one approach and stick to it (or buy film, then consider owning only one camera and lens for the rest of your life) – otherwise you’re going to be stuck in the expensive no-mans’ land inn the middle. MT

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Travel minimalism: one lens to go

June 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

Canterbury in autumn. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Every time I travel for personal purposes, I’m always torn between experiencing the place, and photographing the place. Photography is such a part of me that sometimes I feel that I experience and understand things more through trying to capture the essence of them. Or perhaps it’s because doing so forces you into conscientious observer mode, and this in turn makes one’s mind more receptive to things, and more willing to question what you see and find juxtapositions or contrasts.

Canterbury Cathedral crypt. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

That aside one of the things which inevitably keeps me up the night before departure is trying to figure out what to bring equipment-wise. If it’s on assignment, then I bring everything I might possibly need, plus spares – to hell with overweight baggage, if you don’t have it, it could mean a lost job – on the other hand, if I’m traveling for myself, I’d rather carry as little gear as possible. Well, little enough that I don’t notice it after walking around for hours on end, but with sufficient coverage that I don’t get frustrated and feel like I missed a rare photographic opportunity because I didn’t bring along a wide angle. Or something along those lines.

A Parisian in her natural habitat. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

My last personal vacation saw me bringing an Olympus Pen Mini, the 14-42 kit lens and a Panasonic 20/1.7 pancake. We went to the beach. Frankly this made the choice easy as I didn’t really want to expose any of the more expensive gear to moisture, salt and sand; the M9-P definitely would not have been suitable, and the D800 might have produced great landscapes, but it would also have worked fine as a boat anchor.

Three conversations, Paris. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

I’ve been trying to fine-tune this over the years. I’ve been on trips where I did carry coverage from 14-450mm and a spare body; whilst I got some great images, I also had a sore back, and landed up leaving everything but one body and the 24-70 zoom in the hotel room for the last week. More crucially, I felt the images produced from that trip lacked focus; I brought everything, so subconsciously I was actually trying to capture everything. The upshot is a set of images that isn’t as strong as it could have been, and worse still, experiencing that slightly chaotic panicky feeling that you just might have missed a shot opportunity somewhere.

Tate Modern yard, London. Ricoh GR Digital III

My preferred travel kit is a moderate wide, and a moderate telephoto – both fast – and one body. I might carry a spare compact or something similar as a backup, just in case. I’ve gone with the D700, 24/1.4 and 85/1.4 – this is an absolutely fantastic and hugely flexible combination – plus a spare compact, either the Fuji X100, Leica D-Lux 5, or my favorite, the Ricoh GR-Digital III. Most recently, I spent two weeks in Europe with an M9-P, 28 and 50mm lenses, plus the Pen Mini and 45/1.8 (giving me 90mm in a pocket). This was also an excellent combination, and in some ways better than the Nikon based setup due to weight and instant availability of the telephoto. However, it lagged hugely in low light performance. I think the next trip I take will probably be Micro 4/3 based; an OM-D and Pen Mini with 12, 20 and 45mm lenses will cover the vast majority of situations handily. And not weigh very much, either.

Piccadilly Circus, London. Ricoh GR Digital III

So what’s all of this talk about a single lens?** Or single camera? There are advantages to this approach: firstly, you’re unencumbered and free to enjoy the atmosphere, people and culture without feeling like a packhorse; a small camera around your neck is probably much easier to manage than an entire backpack full of lenses. Also, you don’t have to worry as much about security – frankly, carrying several Leica f1.4 Summiluxes and a Noctilux around even safe Singapore made me pretty nervous.

**Let me clarify: I don’t mean going with a 28-300, though I suppose this might be a viable option for some situations. That lens has more compromises than strengths, and if you don’t know how to manage your perspectives properly, then you’ll land up with weak images too, because you’ll always be trying to ‘zoom in’.

The Shard, under construction. Ricoh GR Digital III

The main advantage, however, is that it frees up your mind from having to think about what perspective to take for a scene. Do you find the essence in the details, or do you go for something wider and more encompassing, with context? Trouble is, there is often no right answer – and from experience, I know that inevitably you’ll land up trying to make both work and being satisfied with neither. On the other hand, if you’ve got just one focal length, then you can pre visualize what your frame will look like; with sufficient experience, your eye naturally looks for compositions that fit within the perspective and angle of view of the lens you’ve got. Thus: instead of wondering what perspective to use, you’re free to spent that mental capacity on fine-tuning the elements inside the frame of the only perspective you have. It can be liberating – providing you’re thinking about the photograph, and not about the equipment you left at home. There’s also the side benefit of not having to change lenses, and thus always being ready.

The doorway, Hanoi. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

I actually did this on several occasions. At the end of 2009, I made short trips to Oxford, Canterbury and Paris; for these I brought two lenses (21 and 50mm for the M8) but only used the 21. I did it again in 2010; the first trip saw me bringing a D700 and several lenses, plus the Ricoh GR-Digital III; I only used the Ricoh and its fixed 28mm because it was both much more convenient, as well as matching the way my eye was tuned at the time after my first Leica-M experience. I got wiser on the second trip and left everything behind except the GR-Digital III. Hanoi later that year saw me using only the D700 and 85/1.4 G.

A Vietnamese stereotype. Hanoi. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

If you are going to try this exercise, I’d recommend going for a wide normal rather than an ultra wide or a tele; for the simple reason that these are the most flexible focal lengths to use. 35-50mm can appear wide or moderately telephoto depending on how you choose to use the foreground elements in your scene. And at some point, chances are you’ll probably want to take a photo of yourself or your traveling companion (or both of you, or your family…you get the point) – and it’s generally much easier with something wide or normal than say a 300mm.

Prague castle and stars. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Some people may find a telephoto easier to use in these kinds of situations because they can snipe from a distance; I’d personally advise against it because it’s very difficult to make images with context; and that’s one of the cornerstones of travel photography. The bokeh may be great, but if the background gives you no clue as to where the subject is, then the image could well have been shot anywhere – and that somewhat defeats the point of travel photography.

A Viennese moment. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Personally, if I had to pick, I’d go with either a 28mm, or a 35mm – depending on whether my images would likely be more people-biased (longer), or more location-biased (wider). And it’d have to be fast, too; I’d be using the lens at night, and anything slower than 2.8 wouldn’t cut it. Frankly, in some situations, even f2.8 may be a little borderline. Finally, it’d have to go on something small, light and unobtrusive; responsiveness is important because your ability to anticipate things will be a little bit diminished thanks to the foreign environment. Right now, my choice is probably between the Olympus OM-D and Panasonic 20/1.7, the Ricoh GR-Digital III/ IV, or the Leica M9-P and a 35/1.4 ASPH FLE.

Give it a try. On your next trip, just use a 35 or 50 prime for at least a day or two; if it makes you feel better, bring along your zooms too, but don’t use them until you absolutely feel that you’re missing shots. MT

Wat Arun and Boat, Bangkok. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

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Filed Under: Articles, Leica, On Photography Tagged With: 21 summilux, article, essay, leica, m8, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, minimalism, one lens, opinion, paris, philosophy, thein, travel

Some thoughts on reprocessing and revisiting images

June 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

The difference of seven years of Photoshop skill: 2012 (left) vs 2005 (right). Mandarin duck; Nikon D2H, Tokina AF 80-200/2.8

From day one, I was told by every serious photographer two things: one, don’t delete anything because opportunities never come twice, but storage is cheap; two, shoot raw, and keep your raw files somewhere in an archive. Or at very least, keep your original jpegs if your camera doesn’t do raw.

I only recently started doing the former: I keep all of the raw files from a commercial shoot, and then send a contact sheet off to the client to let them pick the ones they want retouched – usually between 10 and 50%, per whatever the commercial agreement was. The rest stay in the archive in case they come back later and want to license additional images, or I need to composite in bits during the retouching. For my personal work, I cull ruthlessly – the rationale and the methodology was previously covered in this article.

Venice, 2004. Nikon D70, 24-120VR

One of the more popular justifications given for being the image-hoarding equivalent of a packrat is that you might want to go back and reprocess your files later once technology or your technique improves, so you can get more out of the original image. This makes sense from a logical point of view, but from a practical standpoint, if you’ve improved that much as a photographer it’s probably because you’re out there shooting new stuff and refining both the shooting and processing portions of your technique. In short: I’ve never gone back and reprocessed anything. Well, there might have been a couple of exceptions when an image was licensed to a client and adjusted for print or to the client’s taste, but nothing more than that. I honestly don’t have time to reprocess my personal work.

Venice, 2012

However, I suppose we could all find time to do things if we thought they were important enough. And this brings me to the biggest argument against reprocessing images: your artistic vision for that particular image, or what you saw in that particular scene, will never be stronger than at the time of shooting. It just fades gradually as time passes; this is just a consequence of the way the human brain works: we forget things over time. And unless you suddenly look at an image again later and find something that bothers you hugely, you’re probably just going to go with whatever you thought was best at the time.

Courchevel cloud, 2005. D2H, Sigma 70-300/4-5.6 APO

However, in the interests of academic curiosity, I’m going to do some reprocessing for this article. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out: I’m writing this philosophical portion of the article before doing the work. Frankly even finding shots that meet my compositional standards is tough, because I (hope, at any rate) have moved on significantly in my photographic abilities since these images were shot. There’s no point in reprocessing something from last month, because I don’t think you’ll see any difference in the before and after – one’s style changes slowly, like a tree growing. But one’s style is also defined by the way you shoot, and there are things I do routinely now – for instance, cinematic, very shallow DOF in low light – which I couldn’t physically have done back then, because the equipment didn’t exist.

Courchevel cloud, 2012.

The archives have been raided, and yielded a number of images. In some cases I’ve had to use the original JPEGs as a starting point because I didn’t have raw files; this is obvious in the lack of file quality and noise. There’s not a lot I can do about that, unfortunately; 8 compressed bits of tonal information can never be made into 16 complete ones. You’ll also see in some places I disagreed with my original processing choice of B&W vs color, and even the final crop – I guess as one’s style and eye evolves, we see different things in the same image. The eagle-eyed of you will also notice small corrections to composition via distortion, cropping or stretching; I normally do these things today, but I’m sure I wasn’t doing any of it at the time. Similarly, dust/ speck cloning was something I never bothered with. I’ve picked a wide range of subjects, too. I’m going to post the final state I arrived at back at the time – usually a mildly edited jpeg – and the reprocessed, 2012-version. I would highly encourage all of my readers to share their thoughts on which they prefer, and why; let the comments section be a forum for discussion. I’ve also provided some thoughts below on each individual image.

Nikko station, 2007. Nikon D200, 17-55/2.8

Nikko station, 2012. There’s a lot of empty space in the top portion of this image, especially the overexposed window at top left; it threatens to imbalance the composition – hence switching to a 16:9 crop. The original colors in the scene were delicate and tonally interesting, so I opted to rebalance for true color instead of do another monochrome conversion.

Piazza San Marco, Venice, 2004. Nikon D70, 24-120VR

Piazza San Marco, Venice, 2012. This is one of the very early images from my DSLR career; up til this point I’d been using a super zoom compact. If I’d known any better, I’d have used a different exposure time to retain more suggestion of people in the scene, or better yet, stacked many exposures. And f10 isn’t exactly the optimal aperture on the first-generation 24-120VR. Aside from the obvious color fix – this is much closer to the reality I remember than the original processing – verticals, horizontals and tonal maps have also been tweaked. I don’t think the composition is particularly fantastic, but gimme a break, I just started at this point, okay? 🙂

Kinkakuji, Kyoto, 2007. Nikon D200, 17-55/2.8

Kinkakuji, Kyoto, 2012. You’ll notice there isn’t a lot of difference between the two; this was from a later period in my photographic career where my processing was both more refined, and I was shooting RAW (with all of the associated available adjustments) to hand. I didn’t change the composition, though I’m not 100% happy about the positioning of some of the edge elements in the frame; the majority of the change was to sort out the dayglo colors, and the horribly inaccurate foliage. It was a particularly hot summer that year; the image was shot in August, and the trees were looking a little dry and wilted – I think this is much closer to the reality I remember at that point.

Scarlet Ibis, 2007. Nikon D200, AI 500/4 P

Scarlet Ibis, 2012. Not a lot of change; I punched up the color a little, because these birds are pretty darn striking in person. I don’t remember the color of the swamp, so I left it much as-is. Again: a late 2007 image.

La Tania sunset, France. Nikon D2H, Sigma 70-300/4-5.6 APO

La Tania sunset, France. WHOA! You’re probably wondering what happened here – of all the images, this is the one which is the most different from the original. Aside from the obvious change in crop, I’ve now got the shadow recovery tool at my disposal, and better yet, an intimate familiarity with it. The problem I faced at the time was the sunset was a) both not very punchy and b) the native dynamic range of the scene was already quite challenging, meaning that making the highlight portion punchier would have sacrificed tonal detail in the shadows. At the time, I had no clue how to unblock it. I don’t remember the exact color of the the scene, but I suspect it was probably somewhere between the two images. Which one do you prefer?

Venice, 2004. Nikon D70, 24-120VR

Venice, 2012. At the time, I was influenced heavily by a number of ‘classical’ monochrome shots I’d seen in magazines; as a result, this street scene was instantly converted. What I failed to notice in the original – until now, fortunately I still have the original color jpeg – is that the light spillage from the shop windows at left actually give the image an interesting structure that’s lost in black and white because of the similarity of luminance values between the warm-lit stone and the regular stone. I’ve attempted to bring this back, however the limited dynamic range of the jpeg has led to less smooth tonal transitions than I’d be able to achieve with a raw file. Actually, working this ‘vintage’ jpeg reminded me a lot of dealing with iPhone files – imperfect color, blocked shadows, blown highlights, and a decidedly averse reaction to resizing.

Canal reflections, 2004. Nikon D70, 24-120VR

Canal reflections, 2005. To me, reflections are juxtapositions. Our minds invert them subconsciously anyway, otherwise we would recognize them as the mirror images of their own selves; I usually take this further by treating the image as the real subject, and the subject as the abstraction – what’s the difference anyway, since all images are subjective and facsimiles of the real thing? Aside from that obvious flip, the verticals have been corrected, and the tonality smoothened out – especially in the water, so it looks more like liquid and less like a block of color.

Mandarin duck, 2005. Nikon D2H, Tokina AF 80-200/2.8. For some odd reason Flickr won’t let me re-upload a modern duplicate of this image with the right border and matching image size, so I apologize. However, the original image remains the same.

Mandarin duck, 2012. Improved color accuracy and worked on micro contrast a little.

With all of the reworked versions, I’m not sure I can say that I 100% prefer the 2012 version over the originals – photography is very much the sum of the parts, and the interaction between the original framing and the processing is very much a large component of that. The processing methodology I currently use doesn’t really fit the vision I had back then, and vice versa. Score one for the argument against do-overs: you really can’t fix it in post; you can enhance an image, but not fix something that’s fundamentally wrong with the composition or lighting. Here’s another interesting idea for a future article – reprocessing somebody else’s raw files. Might provide an interesting insight into how much difference Photoshop really makes…MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoshop, postprocessing, processing, ps, revisiting, thein

How serious do you want to get?

June 6, 2012 by Ming Thein

At some point, every enthusiast photographer is going to want an upgrade. It’s a natural consequence of human society; more and newer is better. Since money doesn’t necessarily correlate to ability – in fact, it’s frequently the complete opposite situation – the people who’ve bought the best and latest gear generally aren’t the best photographers. In fact, I think a solid argument can be made that if you are very committed and passionate about your hobby, then you’ll find ways to make do without resorting to technology.

Advance warning: this article is as much about individual soul searching as it is about gear lust. Many of you will probably disagree with what I have to say, or find the truths a little uncomfortable; you of course don’t have to listen to me, but you might well find doing so unburdens you and allows you to develop even more as a photographer. Why am I saying this? Because I went through the process myself, and have to make a conscious effort to stop myself from falling into the gear trap. (It’s actually a lot worse when you’re a pro because you can justify buying anything as ‘work related’ and a tax-deductible expense.)

Notice the question I asked was ‘how serious do you want to get?’ not ‘how serious are you?’. There’s a difference: the former is aspirational, and the latter is slightly insulting, specifically in the implied stagnation and doubt of one’s ability.

Rule Number One: don’t confuse need and want.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting something. It’s what makes us human, in many ways. But don’t think you need it. Having a D800 will not make you a better photographer than D700. In fact, it might well make your images worse if you lack the discipline to use it properly. But if you desire one, and that’s all there is to it, then go ahead. If the ownership experiences gives you pleasure, and you’re happy carrying the weight around, then who’s going to stop you? These types of purchases tend to be accompanied by positive personal emotions.

Need is different: you’re going to find it difficult to do product photography without lighting gear. That’s a need, if the situation calls for it. I wouldn’t argue any other way. These types of purchases often feel like paying tax: we do it because we have to, not because we want to.

This brings me on to Rule Number Two: only buy something if you know you’ve exhausted the limits of your equipment.

There are so many advantages here: you’ll buy exactly what you need. You won’t waste money on trying things that ‘might’ be useful. You will actively seek the skillset required to make the most of the new acquisition.

Rule Number Three: learn to use what you’ve got. This one is a biggie. The number of people who keep buying bigger and faster lenses and cameras thinking that it’s going to solve basic compositional problems never ceases to amaze me. Fps and bokeh are tools and enablers, not a crutch for compositional imbalance! Yes, the ‘Photoshop tax’ is painful, but if you think about it, not unreasonable. I use photoshop for every single image I shoot. There is no other piece of equipment that falls into this category, yet some of the other tools I own cost far more. How is this unreasonable? I look at it as cheaper than having a darkroom, or paying somebody to develop films for you. Furthermore, signing up for a decent course or educational program is going to cost less than a new camera, but teach you far, far more. Buying a professional camera without understanding photography is like driving a Ferrari with traction control off in the rain: you can go fast, kinda wing it, probably hold it together most of the time, but sooner or later, you’re going to crash in a big, messy way.

This brings us around full circle. I don’t define seriousness in photography as whether you make your living from it or not; there are plenty of ‘pros’ who make big money but don’t really care about the output – so long as it’s about 90% there, the clients can’t tell the difference. Even more shockingly, I was told this in person, by more than one person whose fees are rather high. Similarly, there are amateurs who are outstandingly good photographers – probably without the commercial inclination or personal interest in making a living out of it – but their shooting discipline and workflow shows incredible attention to detail, even though very few people (if any) see their images.

Rather, seriousness is probably closer to how much of a sacrifice you’re willing to make; this comes in many forms. Cost. Weight of equipment. Time spent processing, which could be spent on other things. Sleep sacrificed for that perfect sunrise or sunset. Personal security, to get the shot in a dangerous area. Photographers who try to capture things they cannot control – think photojournalists and wildlife shooters – rank pretty darn high on the seriousness ladder.

I think it’s very important to know where this boundary lies personally. Like every other wildlife photographer, I once had aspirations to shoot for National Geographic; the reality is that after a bit more research into what they do while on assignment; I don’t think I’d be happy with that kind of life; sacrifices are high. But on the opposite side of the coin, I’m willing to put up with PC lenses, tripods, focusing racks etc. in order to eke out a tiny bit more image quality for my watch photography – which I don’t think many people would bother with.

Perhaps another definition of the spectrum is whether you’d go out of your way to get the shot or not: a serious photographer would either go far, far out of their way and plan specifically to get that one image; a not-serious one would be more opportunistic and just make causal images as and when the opportunity arises.

Knowing where you stand on this continuum – enables you to make decisions without that slight discomfort and doubt that you’re compromising on other things at the expense of photography – but without really knowing why. It’s a lot easier to be happy about the choice to carry 20kg of equipment on holiday because you know that you aim to get some very specific shots that can only be done with that equipment; as opposed to bringing-it-along-because-you-bought-all-of-it-already-because-it-made-you-look-like-a-pro-and-now-you-should-probably-use-it. Similarly, you won’t feel bad about missing that amazing sunset your 20kg-toting friend got because he woke up at 5am, and you were hungover after partying the night before – but you know how to make a decent shot with your mirrorless camera when the opportunity arises, even if you don’t actively go out of your way to look for it.

That liberation brings happiness and contentment. Very simply, that makes it a hell of a lot easier to enjoy what you do; the fact that you’re here and reading means you’ve got a choice. And given that choice, would you want to do anything for any other reason? MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, commitment, how serious do your want to get, ming, mingthein.com, opinion, philosophy, thein

Start with the end in mind: visualizing your shots

May 31, 2012 by Ming Thein

Lighting candles at Christmas outside Stefansdom, Vienna. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Most of the time, we shoot first and then figure out what to do with the images later. That’s the wrong way of doing things. A healthy portion of famous photojournalism work was premeditated: not in the sense of the scenes being staged, but the photographers had some idea of what they were looking for, what might happen, and if it did, how they wanted to capture it. The final composition was most probably unplanned and spontaneous, relying on the photographer’s experience and training to deliver the precisely ‘right’ combination of elements in the scene.

Market thespian, Kuala Lumpur. Nikon D200, 12-24/4

Even street photography works best with some degree of forethought: you might not know what’s going to come into your frame, but you do have to be conscious of light direction, possible backdrops or natural frames, and of course the flow of people. It isn’t planned, but a lot of the time I see locations with interesting urban geometries and abstractions, then wait around for something interesting to happen or for a person to be in precisely the right location to complete the shot. Often, most of these scenes would be acceptable but slightly boring without the human element – however, short of hiring a model, all you can do is wait and be prepared for somebody to turn up at the right place and time – and for that, you have to be both able to see what the difference would be, and ready to capture that instant.

Vintage Lemania chronograph for a book on military watches. Double page spread, text in white to go on the black column at right – planned and shot as such. Nikon D200, 105/2.8 VR Micro

On the other side of the spectrum, almost all commercial work is planned, right down to the smallest of details. There are blank spaces left in compositions that look awkward on their own, but are there because of intended text placements or cropping to fit strange aspect ratio spaces. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the conceptual side of things – often most clients know what they want, but are unable to communicate it to the photographer because describing visual things requires a wholly different an unfamiliar language to somebody working in say, hamburger sales. The trick here then becomes trying to understand the end use of the image, its intended goal, and how you translate that into a photograph – in a sense, we photographer have become more than just executors – we have to think actively about human psychology to some extent, too.

I bet you feel like a grilled snack on a skewer right now. And that’s the end goal. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Fortunately, this is usually pretty simple: the end goal of commercial photography is almost always to sell more product. Which means that if you look at the image and it doesn’t stir some desire in you – whether it’s to go out and buy something or make you feel hungry – then the photograph has failed its objective.

I’m digressing here. What I really want to talk about is how the previsualization process works. I’ve already said a little bit about how I go about street photography – find the location and light, and then wait for the people or the action – but it’s different for every subject. Although photojournalism is pretty close in technique and execution to street photography, there’s one huge difference: you have to capture the story in a frame or a few frames, not just find an interesting random slice of life that may or may not be significant in a greater societal context. This means you have to identify what key elements you want in the frame beforehand – what you need to tell the story, in effect – and then go out and actively look for them. Throw the unpredictability of lighting and action into the mix, and you can see why it’s such a difficult job. You can also see why most photojournalists favor wide angle lenses; they allow the primary subject to be easily made prominent, and then context to be easily included in the frame as background – but not dominating the subject.

Construction works on evacuation break. Ricoh GR-Digital III

In fact, wildlife, sport and photojournalism use similar processes. This is because you have no control of the subjects, but need to include key elements in order for the image to work.

Architecture is actually fairly simple: the architect usually wants to showcase a particular design detail or feature of a building, which means all you need to do is visualize how to present it in several ways – either with human-scale context, with environmental context, or in a more abstract, purer design-focuesd form. The remainder of the planning goes into figuring out what time of the day produces the most favorable light, and which vantage point and perspective you need to use. (I’ve got an upcoming On Assignment feature on an architectural shoot in Singapore, within a few days, actually.) In fact, the most unpredictable thing is the weather: there’s no way you can control it, and a few days of rain can completely kill your schedule.

Rain would have killed this job. Leica X1

Food, watches and other commercial object-things work in a very similar manner to architecture, with one key difference: you can control the light. And you can plan the light to give the object certain characteristics, and in turn create controlled emotions in the viewer – remember the earlier article on color and emotion – it applies equally to light, too, since color equals light equals image. Most commercial shoots have controlled compositions, too – for the reasons mentioned above – most of the time, there’s an intended final use. And frequently, the client knows exactly where the text is going to go, or what other layout features the image has to work around.

Jaeger Le-Coultre Master Ultra Thin 1833 limited edition. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro.

Finally, there’s portraiture. I’ve left this one to last because it’s really a mix of everything; you can choose your background like street photography; elect to include or exclude contextual elements like photojournalism; pick the best and most flattering features of your subject like architecture; and finally, control the lighting like for food and watches. But yet there’s an uncertain element in the form of your subject; no matter how well you know a person, 99.99% of people will act differently in front of a camera, and that makes capturing a natural expression hugely challenging. Often I’ll find I shoot or pretend to shoot lots of frames at the start of a portrait session, but the ones that I submit in the end (and the client prefers) are the unplanned candids grab shots that happen during the informal downtime. In fact, doing this has almost become a habit with me – I should see if I can figure out how to drop the pretense in the future and just go straight to the informal bit.

The beefeater. Nikon D90, 18-200VR

The upshot of all of this is one simple thing: no surprises. You get what you are expecting, and you can safely say a) job done, work delivered and b) the preplanning frees up your mind to focus on the other parts of execution, like lighting and fine tuning composition. All in all, producing a stronger image. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, philosophy, photography, technique, thein, visualizing

Chasing perfect color, and common myths about white balance

May 21, 2012 by Ming Thein

The previous article on the inexact science of color and emotion dealt with why color was important, and how we can use it as a tool to alter the mood and emotional response of the viewer of our photographs. This article explains how we get there.

Sandwiches. Did you know greens are heavily affected by the yellow channel? Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Although highly saturated color is visually striking, and B&W images are timelessly classic and elegant, there are a lot of times when neither is appropriate or an accurate representation of the scene. I’ve recently realized that I like accurate color above everything else – saturation control then becomes a matter of seasoning to taste. Color accuracy is actually quite critical when it comes to things like food – if the color of cheese or lettuce is off, it just looks moldy or unfresh. This is definitely NOT good for commercial work! My recent work is what I’d call in a ‘natural’ style – the color, saturation and hues are as close to my perception and remembrance of the scene as possible. I’ll do some shifting of white balance to make things warmer or cooler as required, but not a huge amount because it can do some very strange things to tonal accuracy.

Scarlet Ibis. The red in is plumage is due to pigments in the shellfish that forms the majority of its diet. Leica V-Lux 3

Skin tones are perhaps the most difficult to replicate accurately; this is because skin is both reflective of ambient light (easy for the camera to capture) and emissive – we’re warm, and there’s some passive IR radiated by warm objects. Although modern cameras have very effective UV/IR blocking filter packs, they also produce (in my opinion) slightly dead-looking skin tones. I actually liked the skin tones from the Leica M8 for this reason, which was notorious for having perhaps the weakest UVIR filtration of any camera on the market – to the point that to get accurate blacks you’d have to use a UVIR filter on your lens.

Black fabrics in the sun are notorious IR-emitters. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Other objects that are notoriously difficult to reproduce accurately are flowers, some animals, and some fabrics. Again – this is because of the way they interact with the near-UV and near-IR spectra, which affects the way our eyes perceive color (though we can’t see UV or IR directly unlike some animals). To date, there is no camera that accurately reflects the spectral response of the human eye – and I suspect it might be very difficult to make one, because the filter pack would have to be calibrated to transmit or cut out a certain amount of each wavelength. It’s much easier to make a filter that cuts out everything above and/or below a certain wavelength. Throw in the added complication of mixed light sources, and you’ve got a minor nightmare.

Colors. All of them. Which one do you balance for without shifting the others? Answer: focus on your subject – in this case, skin tones and blacks. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, 45/1.8

So what can we do to achieve perfect color?

First clarification: we are not trying to achieve perfect spectral reproduction; we’re trying to achieve perfect perceptual reproduction. It’s not quite the same thing. Basically, you want to get to the starting point of being as close to what you remember seeing as possible, then work from there. That way, you know that all of your tweaking isn’t going to create some strange shifts in certain parts of the tonal spectrum.

Chilis. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

White balance is inextricably linked to color. And there are some important things one has to bear in mind:

1. You have to get it right first time if you’re shooting JPEG. There just isn’t the tonal headroom in 8 bits to be able to make anything other than minor channel adjustments and not encounter posterization or weird hue shifts.

2. Manual white balance and a piece of paper are your best friends.

3. If you’re shooting RAW, white balance is less critical, but if you blow a channel, you’re not getting it back. Usually reds and yellows are the first to go. With earlier cameras, you might have to underexpose by as much as two stops to maintain tonal detail in the reds. I think it’s something to do with IR-sensitivity, the effectiveness of the filter pack over the top of the sensor, and how the red pixels respond very strongly to IR pollution.

Cigars are one of the most difficult colors to get right. I don’t know what it is about the tobacco leaf, but that rich, deep brown hue requires a lot of work to perfect. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

4. White balance does affect exposure. This isn’t immediately intuitive; the reason is because if you get it very, very wrong, you’ll find that after correction, the dominant colors in the shot will shift, and the sensor may not have gained up enough at the extreme ends (red or blue) resulting in underexposure – most likely. You can to some extent recover this in post, but the bigger problem is that you’re going to land up with a very noisy image – the blue channel is generally holds the most noise for most cameras as it is the least sensitive due to the laws of optics, photon energy and filtration…but I won’t go into that here; complex quantum mechanical formulae are beyond the ability of my blogging software to input and display. 🙂

Prayer wheels, Nepal. Nikon D700, 24/1.4 G

Bottom line: shoot raw, and get in the right ballpark. Small adjustment are fine, and you can never get it 100% right all the time with a manual balance because ambient light is always changing. AWB works reasonably well on most cameras these days, but you have to watch out for the very warm light sources. I was told by several people in the camera industry that it was a conscious choice to leave the yellow/red components in the tungsten AWB because people expect the light to be warm (back to perception) – and having pure whites just looked odd to most consumers. I can attest to that as a lot of my students have asked me why the color is so blue when shooting indoors! Although I can’t say whether it’s a visual expectation on the part off the photographer, or whether inaccurate white balance is something they’ve come to expect because it was inadvertently dictated by the industry.

I’ve been playing with a handy little tool recently called a WhiBal. Basically, it’s a very, very accurate neutral gray card. I’ve found there are two ways to use it – one, take a shot under AWB with the card in the frame, and use that as your reference frame; eyedropper tool WB from the card in ACR, then sync white balance between the remainder of your files. Note that these two methods only work when your lighting is consistent from frame to frame, i.e. under studio conditions. The other option is shoot the card under the lighting conditions you’re going to use to set the preset in camera; I find this works better because all of your frames are automatically synced from the shoot. And if you’re using the same setup – as I do for watches – I can basically do it once and just leave one of my manual presets to match my flash and diffuser combo.

If any of you have shot purple flowers, you’ll know they’re notorious for shifting towards blue: that’s because of the UV reflectance. Flowers have UV and IR reflective pigments to signal to other animals – in this case pollinating insects and birds – that can see UV and IR.
Nepal. Nikon D700, 24/1.4 G

Next, make the tweaks – in your RAW converter, (I use ACR 6) perfect your white balance. Use the eyedropper tool on various gray areas in the scene until, it looks close to what you remember. (This is another reason why I like to process as close to immediately as possible: you might forget what the originals scene looked like, or any processing ideas you might have had at the time). Don’t worry if the eyedropper tool doesn’t get it right; you can shift the color temperature and hue sliders a little until you do.

This blue is one of the most difficult colors to get right. What makes it so appealing as a car color – the fact that it changes a lot under different lighting conditions – also makes it a royal pain to photograph and represent accurately. The honest truth is that I have no idea what RGB value this actually is, because it’s both reflective and in many spectra. Nikon D700, 28-300VR.

Open your file, make whatever contrast adjustments you need to – curves/ levels – then only use the Hue/Saturation tool to adjust the individual channels. Using curves inevitably shifts the saturation and hue slightly – there’s no way out of that – so you’ll need to bring back the individual channels. For instance, if it’s predominantly red and you used a curve that darkened the image, you’ll have to compensate for that by reducing saturation and increasing lightness slightly in the Hue/Saturation tool. There is no exact science to this – it’s all about experience, perception, and having the most accurate monitor you can find.

Remember what I was saying before about shellfish and birds? Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Each camera has a different filter pack and spectral response. Even though manufacturers try to keep the color output consistent from model to model, there will be differences. The D3100, for instance, has a crappy color gamut that I was never happy with – much like the NEX-5 – however, the D700, D5100 and D7000 are all pretty similar. The D800 is close, but even more accurate and with a wider supported tonal range out of the box. The M8 with UVIR filter, M9 without and S2 are almost identical. Since I use a whole bunch of cameras – at the last check, Leica, Nikon, Olympus and Ricoh – I’ve created individual color profiles for each camera in ACR and saved them as camera defaults. The look I like is somewhere between the tonal richness of Leica and the warmth of Olympus – perhaps Olympus + Zeiss glass describes it best. Oh, and different lenses have different spectral transmission characteristics too, just to make life more interesting. Your personal preferences will almost certainly be different because each individual perceives color differently. But I suggest that if you have the time, this is a worthwhile exercise.

The challenging pale but saturated lightness of macaroons. Nikon D700, Carl Zeiss ZF.2 2/2.8 Distagon

One important final note: all of this is in vain if your final output use is extremely limited gamut or highly compressed (*cough*FACEBOOK*cough*) – all of the additional tonal information you tried to save is going to be lost and compressed to hell. Some browsers (Safari) and photo sharing sites (Flickr) are better than others because they are color profile aware and don’t compress images, but the issue then becomes monitor accuracy. So unless you know the final output method and have some control over it, it’s very tricky to ensure that everybody is seeing the same thing. And printing is a whole separate blog on its own…MT

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