reframing the world one picture at a time
Swallowed by the city. Tokyo, October 2013.
The Outstanding Images Tour
San Francisco
By popular demand, I’m going to doing two sessions:
Session 1: Thursday 28 to Saturday 30 March 2013 (a couple of places due to reshuffling dates)
Session 2: Monday 1 to Wednesday 3 April 2013 (one place)
New York City
Friday 5 to Sunday 7 April 2013 (full)
New date by popular demand: Monday 8 to Wednesday 10 April 2013 (a go if we have 5 or more participants)
Previously in October 2012, I had a chance to handle the M Typ 240 (I’m going to call it the M 240 from hereon in) back at the Kuala Lumpur launch event, and produce a quick preview (that can be found here). At that point, the camera was a very early functioning prototype – yet the improvement over the M9 was clear. There was of course no way to get images onto a PC for review; the SD card was glued in and the grip had no USB ports. Frustratingly, things appeared pretty good on the new (and larger) rear LCD. But we all know that such small and limited-gamut monitors are not a good way to determine image quality at all; I was thus itching to get my hands on a camera, or at very least, some good files to play around with. I’m not really a fan of long waits to availability – whilst it’s nice to know what’s in the works, I’d rather not have to wait six or more months before I can actually buy one. By then, the world might just have moved on.
Advance warning and disclaimer: I do not by any means claim to be an expert or old hand here, just offering my two cents (severely depreciated after foreign exchange fees and post-subprime recession currency devaluation) for those aspiring professional photographers. And by professional, I mean ‘makes most or all of their income for photography or photography related activities’.
Rather, I speak from the point of view of somebody whose professional aspirations started years ago, went through a series of abrupt attempts, starts and stops and encountered much frustration along the way. My regular readers will know that I’ve only managed to make this work since about a year ago; my position in the industry still feels rather tenuous at times, and I’ll be the first to admit that there are still occasional moments of doubt where I wonder if a) this is sustainable, and b) where it’s going in the long term. Perhaps the definition of success is when one stops having self-doubt (or perhaps that’s a sign of losing touch with reality and running the risk of losing it altogether).
Whilst it would be impossible to cover absolutely everything you need to know to be proficient in photography in a single article, the aim of today’s piece is to provide the amateur to hobbyist an idea of the things to keep in mind in order to be able to focus on producing images. It’s something that’s been quite frequently requested in the past few weeks – perhaps a sign that my reader base may be shifting somewhat – so I’ve decided to take a crack at it in a way that makes it both accessible yet still somewhat relevant for the more advanced photographer. Where applicable, the section header links to a more detailed article. I’ll approach this from a in the same sequence as I’d normally deal with my own photographic workflow, in a sort of annotated checklist format.
I got an email from Amazon this morning – some good news for all of you Nikon shooters in the USA: a lot of the lenses on my recommended list appear to be offered at a discount, and a lot of the discounts are healthy. At these prices, the official USA versions are not only cheaper than the gray imports, but also often cheaper than their predecessors. It might be a bad time for the industry, but it’s certainly a good time to be a lens buyer. So, if you’re interested in any of the following, I suggest ordering before prices go up or stocks run out…too bad I live in Malaysia and they won’t ship internationally. MT
Zooms
AFS 24-70/2.8 – $200 off
AFS 24-85/3.5-4.5 VR – $100 off
AFS 24-120/4 VR (currently my general-purpose lens) – $300 off
AFS 28-300/3.5-5.6 VR (reviewed here) – $150 off
AFS 70-200/2.8 VR II – $300 off
AFD 80-400/4.5-5.6 VR – $350 off
Primes
AFS 24/1.4 G – $200 off
AFS 28/1.8 G (reviewed here) – $100 off
AFS 35/1.4 G – $200 off
AFS 50/1.4 G – $100 off
AFS 50/1.8 G – $20 off
AFS 60/2.8 G micro (reviewed here)
AFS 85/1.4 G (highly recommended if you’re not shooting a D800; if you are, get the 1.8G version below) – $200 off (reviewed here)
AFS 85/1.8 G (reviewed here) – $100 off
DX
AFS 18-200/3.5-5.6 VR II – $250 off
AFS 18-300/3.5-5.6 VR – $300 off
AFS 16-85/3.5-5.6 VR – $100 off
Full disclosure: these links will take you to Amazon, and if you purchase something, a small percentage of the price goes to me as a referral fee. It doens’t cost you any more, but it does help keep the site running (and keeps me in gear to review).
Edit: I now have a B&H affiliate link! It’s here.
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Visit our Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including Photoshop Workflow DVDs and customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!
Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!
Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved
Earlier at the start of this year, I was lucky enough to have not one, but two of the cameras I lusted earlier in my photographic career show up – the Contax T3, reviewed here, and the Ricoh GR1V, which is the subject of this article. My first encounter with the GR1 was in 2001, when I was a student and there was still an independent pro camera store on Oxford’s High street. I was looking for a compact point and shoot and played with just about everything they had to offer, but landed up being seduced by something small and horrible (an APS Fuji Tiara 1010i, of all things). The GR1 (or perhaps it was a GR1v) was the only one that left much of an impression due to the way it felt, and the rather stiff price tag. Later, I recall a time in late 2005 or early 2006 when I visited a local camera store – at that point I was very much in the acquisition phase (not that it ever really stopped) on the hunt for exotic old lenses; the faster the better because I was still dealing with the limitations of the D2H. They had the Ricoh GR-Digital in stock, and the GR1V too – I landed up handling both, once again very much liking the feel of the GR1V, but walking out with the GR-Digital.
First, a starting note. Reviewing film cameras both takes a little longer and always somehow feels a little less complete than doing the same for digital; I suspect it’s because there really are quite a lot of unknowns in the equation which you can’t determine whether are due to the camera or some other portion of the process. Still, there are definitely characteristics that shine through regardless – part of this is perhaps down to the equality of media across all cameras – an F6 has the same sensor as a Mju II, which in turn has the same sensor as a 1930s Leica I. Differences are down to glass, assuming that processing is carried out consistently. When evaluating images in the analog domain, it’s already difficult enough to form an opinion based on a small websize jpeg; this is why it’s important to go along with the words of the reviewer as they’ve (hopefully) seen large, uncompressed files on a calibrated monitor – what you’re seeing is merely for illustration and perhaps to break up the enormous blocks of text. The same goes for film: a web scan isn’t going to have anywhere near the same amount of information as the original negative; even printing introduces an additional variable into the mix which might lead a review to conclude erroneously.
Six months is a reasonably long time: enough that if you’ve had a chance to view and master the Introduction to Photoshop Workflow DVD, then chances are you’ve probably encountered a few situations in which you’ve wanted a little bit more processing horsepower.
What do I mean by that? Specifically,
The video uses a number of real-life commercial image examples as vehicles to demonstrate intermediate post processing techniques that go beyond the basic Photoshop workflow for converting raw files. It’s impossible to demonstrate these techniques solo, as they’re often paired together in real applications to achieve a particular outcome or effect. It’s perfect for photographers who already have a basic workflow and looking to add polish to their images, or for those who are looking to extend their post processing skills after my Intro to Photoshop Workflow video. It covers effectively 99% of all the postprocessing situations a working pro is likely to encounter. Runtime is 2h20min.
The video is available immediately for US$63 from the Teaching Store or the iPad app – if you don’t see it in the list of videos, swipe down to refresh.
Now is also a good time to announce a change in delivery method for this and all other videos: by popular demand, no more physical post! All videos now come with (near) instant gratification: they will be available exclusively via digital download; the compression will be identical to the DVD with slightly more efficient codec, which means slightly smaller file sizes. Please note that prices remain the same as instead of covering postage and materials, I’m now covering for server rental and bandwidth…
Thanks! MT
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Visit our Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including Photoshop Workflow DVDs and customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from Amazon.comhere.
Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!
Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved
Firstly, a big thank you to all of the entrants in the competition – there were 760 images submitted in total, which is a far greater response than I expected. Not only were there a lot of images, but the overall quality of submissions was incredibly high; one comment posted was along the lines of this being one of the best collections of B&W work on flickr. I’m inclined to agree with that: the submission restrictions were enough to make you want to enter, but not so frequent that you would post an image without thought. It’s clear that every single image in here had a considerable amount of thought put into its execution. I would say that almost all of the images scored 2.5 or higher on my usual evaluation criteria – light, subject, composition/ execution and the idea – many 3.5 or higher, and a considerable number managed all four; there were a lot of photos I would have been proud to include in my own body of work. This is in stark contrast to another recent photo competition I judged where very very few images hit three, let alone four.
We had to go through the entire pool several times to ensure we didn’t overlook any images; originally the process was supposed to take one afternoon, but it landed up being dragged on for a few days as we had to debate the merits of each image, especially those that were either very close or contentious. And let me tell you…this was no easy process. I apologise for the delay in results, but at the same time there’s no way we could have done it faster and maintained the integrity of artistic intent of the competition. There was consistency, though: the ones that stood out for us the first time were also the ones that stood the test of subsequent passes. The most attractive were those that were tonally rich and made the most of this to add depth and dimensionality to their subjects. High contrast – aside from being scarce – just looks somewhat crude.
Frequently asked, but rarely answered is the question of what makes a good photograph; rarely, if ever, asked is ‘what makes a good photographer?‘ In the first place, does it matter? I think the answer is yes, both because of the importance of self-assessment in the grand scheme of things if you want to continually improve as a photographer, and because we can all benefit from a goal to aim for. Obviously, the answer to this question is going to depend very much on the type of photographer you want to be; being loud, brash and in-your-face might serve you well as a paparazzo, but it’s almost certainly going to result in early retirement if you’re a war photographer.
However, before examining those details – and I’m only going to write on the genres of photography I’m somewhat familiar with (please feel free to weigh in under the comments section if you have any further thoughts or experiences to share) – there are definitely some general traits that are beneficial to all photographers, and we’ll examine those first.
Behind the scenes videos
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