how to – Ming Thein | Photographer

Depth of field and the importance of achieving critical focus

July 23, 2012 by Ming Thein

Reference polar bear and Noctilux. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Your plane of focus determines more than just what’s sharp and what isn’t: it directs the eye of the viewer to the subject, too. The shallower your depth of field, the more exaggerated this becomes – to the point that with a very shallow DOF lens, a close subject and far background, you really won’t be able to identify what the background actually is.

Jazz time. Leica M8, 35/2 ASPH

All the more important that you choose the right plane of focus, then.

From a compositional point of view, the obvious thing would be to ensure all of your subject in focus – or is it? Not necessarily – sometimes you need just enough of it to be identifiable, and the rest can be merely a suggested impression. Take the eyes in a portrait, for instance. You don’t need to have the ears and hair in perfect focus, too. Less obvious is the need for context: today’s photographers seem to be fixated on achieving ever shallower depth of field, not knowing that in the past, achieving sufficient depth of field was a huge struggle that required the use of camera movements, long exposures, enormous lights and tiny apertures (I don’t know if any readers remember or have heard of Ansel Adams’ f.64 club – so much for ‘f8 and be there’). Part of the problem was the insufficient image quality of smaller media; the other part of the problem was the psychological conditioning of observers and viewers: before photography there was drawing and painting, and neither of those had any such thing as bokeh.

Rain and traffic. Leica M9-P, 50/0.95 ASPH

I used to be one of those chasing ever faster lenses – for the simple reason that earlier digital cameras were frankly pretty crap when it started to get dark – higher ISOs were all but unusable. If you couldn’t use an tripod (reportage work, for instance) then you had no choice but to accept grain (compromising image quality), use a flash (compromising ambience and context) or use a faster lens.

Fortunately, we now have sensors good enough that we don’t always have to shoot at f1.4 the minute it gets dark; we can do so because we like the look, but not because we have to – and that’s important, because it means we can choose just how much context* to include in the shot. Moral of the story: think very carefully about how much of the image needs to be in focus to tell the story effectively: too little, and you lose context because the subject has no stage; too much, and you lose focus and isolation, because the subject may not longer be as separated from it environment.

*By ‘context’, I mean background that isn’t subject. If your entire shot is subject, then there’s no context, of course.

At the crossing. Nikon D700, AFS 85/1.4 G

This brings me to the second portion of this article: focus. It might sound obvious, but ensure your subject is in focus. The non-obvious bit is that there’s in focus, and in focus. The difference is obvious at the pixel level: are you seeing single-pixel detail (or near enough, to the resolving limits of your lens/ sensor combination)? If you’re not, go back and try again.

It matters for two reasons: there’s nothing more annoying than looking at a slightly OOF image, and you yourself will probably look at the photo later and think ‘if only…’; and then there’s the ever-increasing pixel density that makes it more and more difficult to achieve critical sharpness at the pixel level. The higher the resolving power of a camera, the more finely geared the focus mechanism has to be in order to achieve critical focus. In the film days, this wasn’t so much of an issue because the ‘sensor’ had some thickness to it – the emulsion was of a fixed depth – however, with digital sensors, this ‘depth’ is all but nonexistent – so an image tends to snap in and out of focus fairly abruptly, with very little acceptable transition zone – a zone that gets increasingly narrow as your depth of field decreases.

Just enough context. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

The reality is that with modern lens and camera designs, camera shake aside, your ability to focus has by far the greatest impact on the resolution and perceived sharpness of an image. It’s actually much more difficult to achieve critical focus with a fast wide lens than a fast long one – reason being that the transition zone between in and out of focus is far more gentle; an increasing reliance on contrast detect AF rather than phase detect AF does’t help, either.

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to maximize your chances of getting a positive hit. I’ll go through them for each of the common camera types.

Afternoon cigar. Leica M9-P, 50/0.95 ASPH

Compacts

1. Half press to focus, and gently release. You’d be surprised how many people just jab at the shutter button and wonder a) why their camera is slow and b) why images are blurry. The former is because the camera will take some time to find focus; the latter is because either it didn’t find focus properly (the electronics told it to trip the shutter when focus was acceptable or because of the jerk caused by the finger-jabbing motion and recoil.
2. Pick a high contrast subject. All compacts (except the Nikon 1 and some Ricohs, but those are all hybrid systems anyway) use contrast detection to determine when the image is in focus or not. The lens is racked back and forth until the portion of the image under the selected AF box reaches maximum contrast; this may or may not correspond to what you’ve selected. So, to be safe, select a subject with good contrast.
3. If in doubt, stop down a little – but not too much. Stopping down gives you more depth of field to cover focusing errors; on a compact with very short real focal lengths, you’ll find that f4 (or f5.6 at maximum for larger sensored cameras or longer focal lengths) is probably enough to ensure everything is in focus; any more than that and you’ll be seeing a reduction in sharpness due to diffraction.
4. Turn off that AF assist light. Not only is it hugely annoying and conspicuous at night, I find that it also tends to give a lot of false positives.
5. For moving subjects, continuous AF is nearly useless. The only way to reliably hit a moving subject is either to rely on your extended DOF and hope single AF is quick enough to nail it, or use trap focus by pre focusing on a certain point, and waiting for your subject to arrive.

Crossing. Nikon D3100, AFS 85/1.4 G

DSLRs

1. I repeat again: half press to focus, and gently release. The same applies for DSLRs and compacts.
2. And again: pick a high contrast subject. Phase detect AF sensors also like high contrast subjects – preferably something with either horizontal or vertical lines, depending on the orientation of your AF sensors.
3. Don’t let the camera do the choosing. Pick your AF boxes manually. If you don’t, you have no idea what the camera will focus on – it’s generally the closest thing in the frame, but that might not be what you want it to do. Especially if you’re shooting with a very shallow DOF lens.
4. Use continuous AF mode. Again, especially for shallow DOF lenses, a few millimeters of subject movement or photographer movement to or from the subject can affect sharpness greatly – to avoid this problem, use continuous AF mode and only lock focus if you’re absolutely certain you’ve got what you want. (A popular alternative is to put AF-ON on a separate button. I personally use that button to lock focus, because generally it’s easier to use one finger to activate AF and shoot off the shutter button alone, rather than two) And without saying, you HAVE to use continuous AF on moving subjects; make sure the focus box always tracks the subject.
5. Check your focus calibration. Set up the camera on a tripod, with an angled static target (I recommend the LensAlign) that lets you see if you’re focusing on your intended point or not. Adjust your AF Fine Tune settings if you have them, until you can reliably achieve critical focus. Do this for every lens you’ve got.
6. Get your mirror aligned. If you’re manual focusing a lot, you’ll want to get your mirror aligned so that what you see in the finder is the same as what the sensor sees – what this effectively does is adjust the rest position of the mirror so that the distance from mount to sensor is exactly the same as mount to focusing screen, over the whole frame.
7. Use a split prism or micro prism screen. Remember the half-circles in the middle of manual focus film SLR viewfinders? Those were focusing aids called split prisms, which let you see very quickly if something was in focus or not – all you had to do was turn the focusing ring until the verticals aligned. Why they’re no longer standard equipment on DSLRs these days is beyond me. Why they’re no longer available even as accessories, except for some third party companies, is even more mind boggling. The standard screens have a very narrow scatter angle, which means that there isn’t much difference in brightness between slow and fast lenses – great for kit zooms, but not so great for determining critical focus with very fast lenses; they lack the required snap. If you don’t believe me, try using the DOF preview button at f1.4, f2 and f2.8 – you’ll probably see no difference in the viewfinder.
8. Don’t trust the focus confirmation aids. The dot (Nikon) or beep (Canon) is somewhat misleading because there’s a range to ‘acceptably in focus’ – and the extremes of that range are pretty wide. It’s a guide only, not an absolute.
9. Use magnified live view and a tripod for absolutely critical images.

Untitled. Nikon D700, AFS 28-300/3.5-5.6 VR

Rangefinders

1. The most critical portion of the focusing system is the rangefinder. It is impossible to emphasize how important a perfectly aligned rangefinder is – especially when using fast lenses. Remember also that you have no way to visualize the focus plane. So: make sure your rangefinder is properly calibrated for the lenses you use – each lens will be slightly different because of cam wear, alignment and a whole load of other factors. Do not attempt to do this yourself, because there are four adjustment points – one each for near and far limits, one for travel, and one for vertical alignment. Not knowing which one does what can result in a bit of a disaster. Since there’s a feeler cam that always interacts with the focusing cam on the lens, the calibration can, and does, drift after a while, so check it annually or so if you use the camera frequently.
2. Clean the RF and VF windows! Dirt + smudges + oil = low contrast = difficulty in focusing.
3. Use a magnifier over the viewfinder if you’re using longer lenses. This helps by enlarging the central portion of the frame that contains the RF patch (at the expense of the outer portions) – you’ll find that since the RF patch occupies a large portion of the frame, it’s difficult to see exactly what’s in focus and what isn’t without the magnifier.

Waving to the stars. Nikon D700, AFS 85/1.4 G

Finally, remember the higher the resolution camera you’re using, the more critical focusing becomes – don’t go out for an upgrade of either camera or lenses until you’re sure that you’re getting all you can out of your current one. MT

For readers in Kuala Lumpur (and Singapore, when I’m there), I offer a Rangefinder Calibration Service for Leica M cameras.

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, focus, focusing, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein

How to tell if your D800/ D800E/ D4 has the ‘left focusing problem’

July 3, 2012 by Ming Thein

I’ve been asked this question more times in the last few days than I can remember: ‘does my D800/ D800E/ D4 have the left side focusing problem?’

Here’s how you can tell.

1. Pick the widest, fastest lens you own. A 24/1.4 is ideal.
2. Shoot it wide open, with the camera on a tripod, AF set to AFS single point.
3. Shoot a set of images at extreme left, center and extreme right, defocusing the lens manually between shots. Use viewfinder AF. Pick a subject about 2m away.
4. Without moving the camera, do the same but in live view. (This is so the camera focuses exactly on the sensor).

5a. If there is no difference in sharpness in AF and LV modes between the points across the frame, then you’re fine and don’t have a problem. (But you might of course find the edges worse than the center; that’s normal. LV and AF focused shots at each point should look exactly the same in a correctly calibrated camera.)

5b. If LV is sharper than AF for all frames, then you need to use AF fine tune and try the process again.

5c. If the LV shots look sharper for only some, but not all, of the points, (e.g. right and center points look the same for AF and LV, but your left point is much sharper in LV than AF) – then you have the asymmetric focusing problem and your camera has to go back to Nikon.

You might also find this article useful on how to use AF fine tune.

And with that, I’m off to send my camera in for the fix. Will report back later (or tomorrow, whenever it’s done)…MT

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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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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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Video: A B&W workflow tutorial

June 8, 2012 by Ming Thein

After the series of articles on color and B&W – and of course the M-Monochrom review – I got a huge number of emails asking about my workflow for B&W conversion. I originally tried to put this post into a conventional text and image format, but gave up shortly after I realized it would be impossible. Instead, have a video! I don’t claim to be any good at video production (forays into this are are another topic for another day), but I think this should give you a good idea of how it all comes together. Excuse the lousy sound, that bit I still haven’t quite gotten figured out yet. I suppose I need some collar mics or something – the equipment buying never ends…

Anyway, enjoy the video. MT

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Black and white conversion options

May 29, 2012 by Ming Thein

Water drops. Nikon D3100, 60/2.8 G.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails after the Leica X2 and M-Monochrom reviews asking about B&W conversion and processing; I guess the M-Monochrom announcement had a knock on effect on the way people started seeing things. It doesn’t make color cameras redundant for B&W work, though.

Let’s start by demystifying two things.

1. Certain cameras have certain particular B&W characteristics. True, but only if you use JPEG. If you are shooting RAW, they provide different starting points – this is from a tonal response point of view – but ultimately you can get a consistent look regardless of the camera. I know, because I do this all the time.

Singapore. Fuji X100

2. There are benefits to a monochrome-only camera. True. The Bayer filter and subsequent conversion is an interpolation of neighboring pixel image data to extract color information; luminance information is lifted from the photosite. Any sort of interpolation will reduce tonal accuracy and increase noise, because the luminance value you’ve got is now an approximation instead of a true value. However, it’s fairly easy to see that whilst there are benefits to shooting monochrome-only, you can actually convert a color RAW file into a monochrome one, and lower the perceived amount of noise – though not to as low a level as a monochrome-only camera. If you have a poor interpolation method, then the luminance values can be affected too – once again, increasing the perception of pixel-level image noise in a color image. Bottom line: yes, lower noise, and yes, better detail.

Trees. Leica M9-P, 21/3.4 ASPH.

Also one of the images available in my print offer.

However, what you lose from a monochrome-camera is the ability to do control the relative luminance level of individual color channels. Why is this important? Suppose your color scene has a relatively small range of background tonal values, but your subject is a very different color. Its luminance may be the same as the background, but it stands out because of the difference in color. As we concluded in a previous article, this kind of image is a very bad candidate for B&W conversion off the bat, because you’d land up with something very flat-looking. (Real life translation: running out and buying an M-Monochrom isn’t going to solve your B&W conversion woes, but it will give you an interesting starting base – especially when it comes to noise and dynamic range. Those of you who don’t mind doing a bit of work, hold on to your normal cameras. And in fact, these techniques apply to the M-Monochrom too.)

Noryn Aziz in the spotlight. Nikon D700, 24-70/2.8

Actually, if you’re prepared to do some work, this not necessarily the case. It’s still possible to separate the subject from the background on the basis of luminance only; you just need to work a bit harder. You’ve even got a few options here. Park that thought for a moment, we have to introduce the basics of B&W conversion first.

Shadows. Leica M8, Voigtlander 50/1.1

A sample image for the purposes of demonstration for this article. This is the original file, converted from RAW, with all of the sliders set to zero. Olympus OM-D, 45/1.8.

The simplest method is to desaturate. All this does is throw out color information, and leave luminance information only. You are then free to do whatever you wish to complete processing of the file. After much investigation and experimentation, this is actually the method I use, coupled with another trick or two. Desaturation can be done in ACR (saturation slider, first tab) or in Photoshop (Hue/Saturation tool, then desaturate the master)

Straight desaturation. Note overall lack of contrast.

Slightly more complicated is the gradient map. You can use the standard linear black to white transition (press D in photoshop first, then add a new gradient map adjustment layer) – which gives very similar, but not quite the same, results as desaturation. Gradient maps with a straight gradient tend to be a bit more contrasty than desaturation. If you want to experiment a bit, it’s actually possible to put in intermediate control points into the gradient and bias it towards a high key (mostly white, black fades out faster) or low key (black stays for longer) look. What actually works here will depend on your image, however, so be prepared to do some fiddling. The good news is that if you use a new adjustment layer, the gradient is easily modifiable without having to redo your entire conversion.

Gradient map, linear gradient. Note increased contrast over the straight desaturation.

Gradient map, low key gradient (mostly black)

Gradient map, high key gradient (mostly white)

Finally, we’ve got the channel mixer. Best used on the RAW file in ACR, this lets you decide how much of each individual color channel goes into making the final image. Note that the tool only uses the luminance components of each channel, and it’s additive; this means that color (and perceptual color) information is discarded. To make things even more complicated, there’s a separate B&W conversion adjustment layer in Photoshop itself that effectively does the same thing as the ACR conversion, but it only has six channels for you to play with instead of the eight in ACR.

Channel mixer via ACR, decreased reds; note how the subject (in this case, predominantly in the yellow channel) stands out more from the background.

Remember the conundrum of how to isolate a different colored, but similarly luminous, subject from the background from earlier? The solution to this is the channel mixer. You can increase the luminance of the primary color of your subject, and decrease that of the predominant background color; the converse also works. The problem comes when you’ve got a mixture of colors in both subject and background, and some of those are common colors. (Don’t get carried away though: remember that some images just don’t work in black and white).

This isn’t, the entire toolkit, of course. You’ll find that after this kind of conversion, things look rather flat. That’s because a lot of how the human eye perceives contrast and separation is dependent on differences in hue; obviously we have removed that, so we have to artificially put it back in again. Two of Photoshop’s tools will be your best friends here: the dodge and burn brush, and the curves tool. Understand how both of these things work, what the dos and don’ts are, and you can work magic with any B&W conversion. A tablet is also extremely helpful for these things, as it gives you precision control and feathering over your brush application. It lets you avoid hard edges, odd abrupt transitions, and permits highly precise editing.

Desaturation with grad blue filter layer in multiply mode (higher density at the bottom of the frame) to darken the bottom red sign

At this point, it’s probably worth talking about plugins and filters. The former are either a set of Photoshop actions, or a separate program, that controls the conversion – specifically the luminance translation of each colour channel into a luminance value – and the tonal map of the final file. Whilst they are extremely popular and used by many ‘internet street photographers’ either to save time or because they are unable to get their desired results from a nuts and bolts conversion, I personally avoid them because they do not give you enough fine control, and even worse, everybody’s images that were run through that filter look the same. There is no personality or skill in that.

Photography is arguably art and very much down to personal taste. If you are 100% happy with the way those results look, great; I’m jealous of the amount of time you’ve saved in your workflow. However, claiming this is art is disingenuous; it’s like finding out Ansel Adams shot BW400CN (a B&W film designed to be run through a C41 color processing machine) and developed it at the local pharmacy – instead of Tri-X or Plus-X, controlling his development time and chemical composition, and then cutting precision masks to dodge and burn portions of his subjects.

That ‘arty’ high contrast, high grain look. It’s actually what heavily pushed Tri-X used to look like, but how many people actually know that firsthand?

There’s a second type of filer that’s useful, and in either form, it performs a similar function to the channel mixer – it either admits or cuts out light that’s of a certain range of wavelengths. The most common example of this is a physical red filter that goes over the end of your lens; the effect is dark skies, because very little of the blue spectrum passes through the red filter and onto the recording medium. It works with digital too, but you have to remember to adjust exposure accordingly, and obviously not use it in color mode. You can also replicate this effect digitally. Add in a new layer, make it one color, and then select the appropriate blending mode; then only do your B&W conversion. There are interesting results obtainable through this method.

Final image, desaturation + curves + selective dodge and burn + second round of curves + slight palladium tone layer

If you pull back the B&W conversion layer slightly – assuming you didn’t directly apply the conversion to the image – then it’s also possible to use a color layer to create a toning effect; sepia or platinum is probably the most common. You can even use a graduated fill layer to provide a variable effect; this is especially useful for increasing the density of skies, for instance.

Personally, I prefer to shoot color and then convert to B&W; not because I can’t decide upfront how a scene should be presented, but because there’s a lot of flexibility in how I want to handle the conversion later to highlight certain aspects of my subject, or achieve certain tonal looks.

I’ll go into detail on my personal B&W workflow with an end to end example in a future article. MT

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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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Zone focusing and shooting hyperfocal

April 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

Hyperfocal shooting is a subset of zone focusing. Both are very, very useful tools in the arsenal of a photojournalist or street photographer; especially so if you’re using a manual focus lens, or one with a meaningful depth of field scale engraved on it. It means that if you know what distance your subject has to be at to fill your frame correctly, you can set that and just shoot straight away when you bring the camera to your eye – a very fast way of working. It’s what I usually do when I have enough light and a wide lens on my Leica.

Let’s start with zone focusing. It’s simple if your lens has a depth of field scale:
1. Pick an aperture
2. Find the depth of field scale markings corresponding to that aperture. They’re on the bit of the lens that doesn’t rotate.
3. There are two of them. Everything between those two marks will be inn acceptable focus. Why the hesitation around ‘acceptable’? Because sharp-at-the-100%-pixel-level defines acceptable focus, and that will vary from camera to camera – the higher your pixel density, the narrower the acceptable focus margin will be. You’ll have to experiment for your camera and find out how much (if anything) to compensate by – for some cameras, you might find you have to as much as halve the width of the gap between the two markings.

Leica 21/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH.

Example: in the image below, the lens is focused just after 1.5m. This means the sharpest point will be at 1.5m, but if we set f2.8, objects from 1.2m to a bit over 2m will be in focus. Selecting f5.6 expands this further to 1m to 5m.

A good rule of thumb is 1/3-2/3: one third of your DOF will be in front of the focus distance, and 2/3rds behind.

Simple, right? There are a few more things to know.
1. It works best for wide-angle lenses, because they have more DOF for a given aperture. (You could zone focus with a telephoto, but you’d need a silly small aperture and probably run out of light).
2. It works best during daytime, because you’ll have enough light to stop down a bit (and thus increase your margin for error).
3. It works best if you have some practice estimating distances, because you can adjust on the fly without having to bring the camera to your eye.
4. It works best with smaller sensor cameras, because again there’s more DOF for a given angle of view (focal length equivalent) and aperture – for instance, the Ricoh GR-Digital III has a ‘snap’ mode that sets focus to certain distance; at f2.8 and 1.5m, almost everything will be in focus from 0.75cm onwards or so.
5. You can’t do it easily with modern AF lenses – those which do have DOF scales usually only give f11 and f22, which are heavily restricted by the amount of light you’ve got to work with; then the distance scale itself is short and probably not very precise, with few distances marked; lastly, there isn’t enough precision in the focusing ring. You could do it by using the AF system to focus on a distance, switch to MF, and set your aperture – but you’d have to memorize your DOF tables, which is never easy or fun.
6. Some compacts are better than others for this than others; the best kind have manual focus with a DOF indicator bar and scale – the Leica X1 and Ricoh GR-Digital series come to mind.

Let’s move on to hyper focal. The hyper focal distance is the setting beyond which everything is in focus to infinity at a given aperture. Even super-shallow DOF lenses like the Noctilux 0.95 have a hyper focal distance – but it’s probably 50m or something at f0.95. Once again, the wider the lens, the nearer the hyper focal distance will be for a given aperture. With lenses in the 28mm range, you can work at a reasonable aperture of f8 or so and have hyper focal distance at about 3m on a full frame sensor, which is great for capturing spontaneous moments in photojournalism or street photography.

There are several very useful calculators online, such as DOF Master – playing around with this will give you a good idea of which of your camera/ lens combinations is best suited to zone focusing. I personally do it with my Leica M9-P, and sometimes with the Ricoh GR-Digital; but never with the DSLRs because AF is very nearly as fast, especially on the D700. Also, beware lenses like the Olympus ZD 12/2 for micro four thirds – it might look like it has distance and DOF scales, but the focusing ring is electronically coupled, and lacks the resolution to make it truly useful. MT

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Workflow

April 22, 2012 by Ming Thein

I get two questions regularly:

1. “What camera should I buy, or should I buy X or Y?”
2. “I have the same equipment as you. How do you make your images look the way they do? Why can’t I do it?”

I’m not going to address the first question here. As for the second question, there are two answers and one fundamental underlying question: assuming the problem isn’t with your composition, what is it about your workflow that creates that very visible difference in the final image?

Workflow is very important to professionals, because if you’ve got a very high image throughput, then you can take on more work, deliver better quality images to your clients, and at the end of the day, make more money. So it’s in our interests to be as efficient as possible, without sacrificing quality. Good workflow should have the absolute minimum number of steps, be fast and easy to execute, automated to the greatest extent possible (but recognizing that individual images are like children: you have to treat each one differently) and most importantly, be camera independent. The latter requirement is so that you are free to use the best tool for the job without worrying about what to do with the files later. There’s no getting around the fact that different cameras and lenses require different amounts of editing or correction to achieve the desired results; it’s just something that has to be built into your process.

A common misconception is that workflow just covers the post-shoot editing process: it doesn’t. Workflow affects the entire way you execute an assignment, from preparation to final image delivery. What follows is a high level overview of the way I work, and some of the key steps.

1. Prep
– Make a list of equipment you’re going to need.
– Charge batteries, and bring 2x the number you think you’ll need – s*** happens.
– Ensure you have spares: cards, batteries, flashes, bodies, RF calibration spanners…
– Unless you’re shooting a run-and-gun stealth photojournalist assignment, or are going to be carrying your equipment for long periods of time, take everything you think you might need. Better to have it and not use it rather than miss a shot for want of a lens.
– Pack with plenty of time to spare, in case you find you’re missing something or can’t decide which configuration to use – at least you’ve got time to think it over or go out and buy anything critical that’s missing.

2. Shoot
– Turn up early so you can set up (if required) and be relaxed. Nervousness means jumpy hands which means blurred images.
– I always shoot RAW, for maximum latitude later when processing.
– Write-protect your keepers in camera to prevent accidental deletion.
– Shoot bursts where possible, both to get duplicates (insurance) and a choice of material to work with later.

3. First edit
– Delete the ‘obvious fail’ shots in camera when you have downtime – but ONLY when you have downtime. Missing a shot because you were staring at the back of your camera is an amateur’s mistake. I’ll probably dump about 50% of the images at this point.

4. Post-shoot
– Unpack
– Clean equipment – lenses, filters, eyepieces, LCDs etc.
– Recharge any depleted batteries
– Put everything back where it came from, so you can find it again next time.

5. Dump cards
– I will dump all cards to my primary processing machine at this point, and leave the cards unformatted back in the camera – just in case a file gets corrupted or I need the original, I know it’s still there.

6. Backup
– I use a Mac. At this point, I’ll run a time machine backup on my primary processing machine.

7. Second edit
– Delete the images that don’t really work at larger sizes – see my previous article here on editing. I use Adobe Bridge to delete and rate images. Another 50% of the images will go.

8. RAW conversion
– Depending on your machine, figure out how many RAW files you can open before it starts to slow down (use the ‘efficiency’ display in Photoshop; it’s in the bottom left of your image window. 100% means that everything is being loaded to RAM, which is the fastest way of editing). I can open about 15 12MP files in 16 bit before things start to slow down. This means I’ll probably load 20-30, because I also delete some at this point.
– Load bunch of files (20-30) into Camera Raw.
– Make primary exposure adjustments; I will adjust white balance, exposure, shadow/ highlight recovery sliders, vignetting.
– I only crop to aspect ratios that are non-native for my camera. If I’m using a multi-aspect ratio camera like the Leica D-Lux 5, I won’t crop at all.
– I have created a color profile for each camera I use so that I can get consistent color and the same look out of any camera I use, this is applied to the raw file in ACR.
– And same for the tonal response curve.
– Open the files in Photoshop (I’m using CS5.5 Extended now) at maximum quality: 16bit, full resolution.
– B&W conversion: depending on what final look I want, there are many options: gradient map, desaturate, channel mixer…to be the subject of a future article.
– Make curve adjustments – sometimes up to four or five times.
– Any retouching is done at this point – e.g. dust removal for product shots, or color enhancement using brushes and masks. I use a Wacom Intuos4 6×9″ tablet for this, nothing else so far gives me enough fine control.
– Local dodge and burn where applicable.
– Finally, sharpening: do this last, so you don’t land up increasing image noise/ grain. Must be done after curves.
– Convert to 8 bit and desired color space.
– Save final file. I generally use a maximum quality JPEG unless the client demands otherwise; you really can’t tell the difference unless you’re going to do future manipulation on it. (Revisiting old files will be the subject of another future article).
– Optional: do an incremental backup again, if it’s a big conversion job you can’t finish at one sitting, or if each file is time consuming and will take a lot of effort to duplicate.

9. Final edit
– Go through the set again. Keep only the unique, essential images. By the time I’m done, I keep only 1-5% of the initial shoot volume.

10. Portfolio selection
– I keep a portfolio of images for the subjects I commonly shoot; this gets updated after every shoot, especially if I feel there are images that should be added. It’s my aim to have at least one image to add to the portfolio (and replace an old one) from each assignment; this way, I force myself to continually improve.

11. Backup and format
– Dual duplicate sets of images with all raw files to external hard drives, one of which is kept offsite
– Keep finished files only on main processing machine
– Final backup: time machine of main processing machine
– Only now will I format cards. Where possible, I keep at least two copies of the original files – just in case something goes wrong. It’s happened to me in the past, and I’ve been very, very grateful that I did remember to backup. I’ve been doing it religiously ever since, and highly recommend you do the same.

A note on filing: I store images in hierarchal folders by Subject>Event/date>Subset. This allows me to find things easily. I have a separate folder for work on assignment, which is named with something sensible and a date. I don’t like database-based programs for image management like Aperture, because it’s very difficult and unwieldy to manage if you have a lot of images.

12. Delivery
– Send off the images to clients; either over the web, or via DVD.

Now, repeat! MT

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The process of editing

April 20, 2012 by Ming Thein

Let me clarify: by editing, I mean the process of selecting which images to keep, which make the final cut, and which aren’t wroth bothering with. I’ll generally do three edits: one almost immediately after shooting, in-camera; one when I get home and dump the cards/ start converting raw files; and the final cut after I’m done making finished files, but before I archive or deliver complete sets to clients.

As an example, let’s take the contact sheet I used in an earlier article on how to use contact sheets. For the purposes of this exercise, assume that this set is one that came fresh out of the camera (in reality, it’s already been through the complete selection process, and no, I don’t shoot jpeg unless I have no other choice.)

First cut (in camera)
I’ll delete images which are:
– Clearly out of focus
– Incorrectly exposed
– Compositional failures/ experiments that didn’t work
– Clearly meaningless/ no obvious subject
I’ll leave duplicates or near-duplicates of good shots; you can’t judge fine detail or critical focus off the back of a camera screen.

For the example, I’ve already taken out the first cut in camera, so let’s move on.

Second cut (before raw conversion)
I’ll delete images which are:
– Not critically sharp
– Didn’t work as well as expected when viewed at a reasonable size (full screen, usually)
– Compositionally weaker than the rest of the set
At this point, I also pick the best image if there are a series of duplicates or near-duplicates. (Duplication is something I do where possible to give me the best possible selection of raw material to work with.)

Final cut (before delivery)
– Eliminate similar images, so that what you’re left with is a series of individually very strong photos, each with a clearly different character
– Chose only the best X images, where X is your delivery target/ agreement

Final cut. Notice how each image in the final set is distinctly different from the other, yet I haven’t ‘lost’ any critical shots, and manage to capture the essence of the movement of the watch.

I’ll leave you with one final thought: the mark of a truly good photographer is not how many good shots he produces, but rather how many good shots the audience remembers: if you only show good shots, nobody is going to think you’re capable of producing a dud. Furthermore, if you aren’t your own harshest critic, your skill level is never going to improve. This is why editing is so crucial to the entire photographic process; I force myself to keep only the best 1-2% of everything I shoot. MT

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: editing, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, philosophy, photography, thein