mingthein.com – Ming Thein

POTD: Reflections and reflections on reflection

April 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

Reflections. Leica V-Lux 3.

I still haven’t found a camera that can quite capture the luminous nature of reflections in glass – they all either seem to make it look too ‘solid’, or too transparent; I suspect it has something to do with the sensor filtration or the transmission properties of the lenses used.

Here’s a second interesting thought: why don’t camera makers match the spectral response of the sensor to that of the human eye, rather than limit it to an arbitrary range of wavelengths? Our eyes don’t work that way, and that’s probably why it’s so darned difficult to capture exactly what we see. MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD Tagged With: architecture, leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, potd, thein, v-lux 3

Photoessay: Abstracts in metal

April 15, 2012 by Ming Thein

In an earlier photoessay, I covered some of what goes on at a shipyard; today’s coda represents the outtakes that didn’t make it into the final deliverable for the client, but I shot as part of my body of personal work. There’s just so much abstract geometry and texture going on with the interplay of parts, metals, surfaces and finishes at the yard it’s impossible to ignore; I’m pretty sure some of these would make rather interesting large prints. MT

This set was shot with a Panasonic TZ3.

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: compact, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, panasonic, photo, photoessay, photography, ship, shipbuilder, shipyard, singapore, thein, tz3

Book review: Magnum Contact Sheets

April 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

Like most photographers, I do like a good fine art book of images – especially if the content is first rate. Books can be a source of inspiration and ideas, as well as a good reality check to see what’s out there in the world of photography. This will be the first in a longer term series of book reviews, in which I’ll highlight anything I find particularly interesting, and how it’s relevant to photography or developing your skills further. The minimum benchmark is of course that I must find the book worthwhile enough to purchase, but I’ll reserve the right to call out work so singularly execrable that I would be doing a disservice to the buying public if I didn’t warn them away from it.

First off: it’s a Magnum anthology, which means there aren’t going to be any bad images in here. Even the ones that are perhaps compositionally less strong are pretty darn impressive, more so when you read the context and understand the back story.

The book is also full of interesting little tidbits: I didn’t know that most of Robert Capa’s negatives from the Normandy invasion were actually spoiled by the developer – they were overcooked in the drying cupboard and melted – the few that were salvageable were the ones where the emulsion had slipped from the celluloid, but not completely come off; this is why all of the series seem to have some motion blur in them. I thought it was either due to the intensity of the moment, or the technical limitations imposed by cameras and films of the day. Interestingly, I think one could argue that the images are just as powerful despite being technically imperfect; the additional dynamic added adds a real sense of urgency, panic and chaos – which is precisely what war is.

However, the real kicker here is that the images presented aren’t just the single ‘selected’ iconic ones, but also the ones before and after – i.e. a contact sheet of that entire roll of film. For me, this was mind blowing: I have long been under the impression that the photography greats just take one, or at most two, shots and then nail the image; they don’t. They work the scene with at least one, sometimes more, rolls of film before they get what they need. It’s an incremental process. You can actually visualize the compositional development process in the mind of the photographer from shot to shot, especially if the subject is relatively static and predictable so they have the opportunity to try different things and execute incremental refinements.

What I’d take away from this – other than the powerful images and great (but not excellent) printing is that although the great photographers no doubt have huge innate talent – you can see that already from the first shot in the series, usually – but they also have the determination and patience to keep shooting until they know they’ve nailed it. That, combined with the selection process afterwards, is what makes all the difference between being perceived as a mediocre to average photographer, or an incredible one. It’s not that famous photographers don’t take crappy shots; we usually don’t get to see them.

There’s no referral program for people who live in Malaysia, so go ahead and buy it from your favorite retailer. Product images from Amazon. MT

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: book review, magnum contact sheets, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photojournalism, thein

POTD: One more from the window seat

April 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

Not just good for landscapes! Ricoh GR-Digital (original flavor), 2006. What you’re looking at is the shadow of the airplane projected onto a cloud; the white dot with the color halo around it is the sun. The color halo itself is caused by the same process that creates rainbows – prismatic spectral dispersion of the white light from the sun by the water droplets in the cloud. MT

Filed Under: POTD Tagged With: aerial, cloud, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, plane, potd, projection, ricoh gr digital, thein

On assignment and studio review: Watch photography with the Leica M9-P

April 13, 2012 by Ming Thein

We photographers are a strange lot: sometimes we make our lives difficult when there’s absolutely no need to. I recently shot a watch photography assignment using a Leica M9-P, of all things. (This setup has been the subject of another post, here)

You probably know that my usual rig for this is a Nikon with a whole bunch of extension tubes. Why did I do it, you might ask? See the end of the post for the answer.

Let’s start back-to-front, with a few highlights from the results:

Deep Sea Chronograph.

I would conservatively say that this was the most difficult shoot I’ve ever done, and the only one that required the services of an assistant – normally, I find they just get in the way and it’s much faster for me to do what needs to be done rather than have to explain it. Firstly, this rig is one which does not focus to infinity, is entirely manual, and is both heavy and unwieldy. Put one finger wrong and you’re liable to make a hole in the bellows, which being the better part of half a century old, is extremely fragile. (The mechanical parts are still in amazingly good condition though, and operate very smoothly.) You need to set magnification first – also restrictive, between about 2.5:1 to 1:2 only (with the Visoflex and 90/4 only) – then move the entire rig to frame – and because it’s unwieldy, you can’t do this handheld. I made a kind of gimbal head out of a Manfrotto 468RC0 Hydrostat head tilted at 90 degrees, to which was vertically mounted a Manfrotto geared focusing rail, with the rail on the Bellows II attached at right angles to that – which allowed me tilt and yaw motion, and precise front/back and up/down movements. Slow going – there were ten adjustment points on support system alone, to say nothing of photographic controls – but accurate.

Duometre a Quantieme Lunaire 40.5

Secondly, the Visoflex prism obviously blocks the M9-P’s hotshoe, ruling out the use of flashes – at least by any conventional means. With a custom-fabricated cable (read: a hotshoe cover with holes made in it to thread through speaker wire, which was then soldered to the contact points of a donor slave – in this case, a Nikon SB700), it was possible. The slave flash would fire at minimum power and trigger the other flashes in SU4 optical slave mode. Optical slave mode is a polite way of saying 100% manual – so it’s either light meter (which I don’t have) or experience (which I do have, from shooting the same thing with slide film). My assistant would run from flash to flash poking buttons and turning wheels in response to cryptic instructions like “top, up one; back, thirty-two and fifty millimeters, up ten degrees; kill the right one.”

[Translation: Top flash, increase power by one stop. Back flash, change power to 1/32 and zoom head to 50mm, tilt the head up ten degrees. Turn off the right flash.]

Amvox World Chronograph

It was a near thing. The entire job relied on a single critical part: that sync cable. At one point, there was an internal short somewhere which either kept the flash firing frequently enough to trigger epilepsy, or not firing at all. And to compound things, I suspect the trigger voltage of the hotshoe and flash didn’t agree, which would occasionally cause the M9-P to not fire its shutter at all. And then the Visoflex jammed…let’s just say the Victorinox earned its keep on that day.

Duometre a Quantieme Lunaire 40.5

It took me just over nine hours to make a final cut of 80 photographs – which is excruciatingly slow, considering I’ll normally do three times that number in two thirds of the time. Most of the delay was due to moving and setting the camera, or fine-tuning the flashes.

Duometre a Spherotourbillon

However, I think this conclusively proves that the Leica M system is a lot more versatile than most people think. Now, if only Leica would produce modern versions of these accessories – and perhaps something to trigger a flash. I don’t think most people have any idea how difficult it is to find a Bellows II-screwmount to Leica M adaptor until you look…

Master Ultra Thin Reserve de Marche

One quick comment on image quality: the 90/4 Macro-Elmar is a superbly sharp lens with great micro contrast, if you use it in the optimal range. At maximum aperture (f4), there is very visible chromatic aberration – both longitudinal and lateral. Stopped down between f5.6 and f11, it’s superb. At f16, diffraction suddenly kicks in – there’s a huge difference between f13 and f16, it’s as though somebody has run a Gaussian filter over the entire image. (I think at this magnification it’s probably closer to f32, though). I wouldn’t even go near f22. I had to pay careful attention to lighting with the M9, for the simple reason that its dynamic range is probably 2-2.5 stops less than the D800 at base ISO. All in all though, I think you’ll agree that the combination is capable of some spectacular results – even more impressive considering that it was never designed for this.

Because we photographers have a particularly odd fascination with checking out other people’s equipment, I’m going to leave you with some gear shots. I will also say that if anybody is in the market for a tripod head, the Manfrotto Hydrostat series is truly excellent – it’s the only head I’ve ever used that doesn’t exhibit any ‘droop’ when locking down the head, no matter the weight or magnification of the camera and lens combination attached. It’s rock solid.

Yours truly at work. (You’ll notice I’m not using the tripod here; I put it aside for the further-away shots of whole watches.)

My exhibition of fine art horology sponsored by Jaeger Le-Coultre and Leica will be on display at Starhill Gallery, Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur from 3 May onwards – please drop by if you’re in town! If you let me know in advance, I’ll try to give you a personal tour. MT

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Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews, Leica, On Assignment, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: horology, leica, lighting, m9, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, on assignment, photo, thein, watch

POTD: The crinkled building

April 13, 2012 by Ming Thein

The crinkled building. Or maybe it should be called architectural origami. Starhill Gallery, Kuala Lumpur. And in keeping with yesterday’s article, it was shot with an Apple iPhone 4. MT

Filed Under: POTD Tagged With: apple, architecture, iphone, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein

Professional photography with compact cameras

April 12, 2012 by Ming Thein

Regent Square architecture, London. Ricoh GR-Digital III

The title of this article isn’t a contradiction: I did really just suggest shooting for clients, for money, with a compact camera. I’m not talking about compact system cameras or ILCs like Micro Four Thirds; those have recently come of age and are very, very competent indeed – in fact, for most purposes, they produce indistinguishable final results (think print, or web, rather than pixel-peeping at 400% on a perfectly calibrated monitor) from larger cameras if used within their limits.

GuB Marine Chronometer. Ricoh GR-Digital III

The reality is that while the big guns have been steadily improving, and have almost all surpassed the image quality level any professional photographer may require, there have been steady improvements in compact cameras (fixed lens, small sensor) too. It’s often not clear which arm of sensor development leads which: the desire for lower noise and improved photosite efficiency has undoubtedly helped improve dynamic range and noise properties of larger sensors. And vice versa, development of CMOS technology for larger sensors is slowly finding its way into point and shoots.

Gas Malaysia. Ricoh GR-Digital III

What does this mean? In the real world, my clients almost never have final uses for the images that require more than 12MP when properly shot and composed (i.e. not heavily cropped). We can delude ourselves into thinking more is better – all else equal, it usually is – but most of the time, it makes no difference. Even if you’re doing a billboard, you don’t need medium format – I’ve done a couple with the mere 4MP Nikon D2H – simply because the individual pixels are about the size of golf balls, but nobody notices because you never get any closer than 20 meters.

Selfridges, London. Ricoh GR-Digital III

I recently shot some wildlife images for the local Malaysian launch for the Leica V-LUX 3 (a full review is here on the official Leica Blog). The spec is ambitious: a fixed 24-600mm lens,12MP, and full resolution images to ISO 3200. Did I mention the sensor was just 1/2.33” in size? It doesn’t get much smaller in the compact realm; there’s 1/2.5”, 1/3”, and then you’re into cellphone sensors.

Scarlet Ibis. Leica V-Lux 3

In any case, the images were printed to at least 20×30”, and in some cases, larger. I even used ISO 400 (base of 100) and very dodgy shutter speeds for some of them. Was the color odd? Did they look grainy and horrible? Not one single bit, even with your nose pressed up to the print. I shot raw and did zero noise reduction – zero. Would they pass for fine art, let alone commercial use? Absolutely. In fact, the results were on par with the Nikon D200 and it’s APSC sensor that I used for the same kind of thing about five or so years ago.

Leica Visoflex III on M9-P. Leica V-Lux 3

I did some other testing with that camera, too: studio product work with flash. Here, the result was even more difficult to distinguish from a larger sensor camera – at base ISO, controlled lighting and optimal apertures, everything looks superb even to the pixel level. In fact, possibly better, because to achieve the same depth of field in the final image, I’d have to stop down so far on a full frame camera that I’d be incurring a softness penalty due to diffraction.

Tulip staircase, Queen’s House, Greenwich. Ricoh GR-Digital III

So what about putting my money where my mouth is? I have already. There are photos I submitted to Getty Images – which were shot with an iPhone 4 (5MP) – and accepted. I swear the file quality is fine for A3+ prints, so long as you’re shooting at base ISO and watch exposure carefully – I’ve tried. I recently shot another job (to be the subject of a future On Assignment article) with another compact – the Leica D-LUX 5. Yes, it has a slightly larger sensor, and I was using LED light panels, but the result was successful: the client (and I) would not have been any happier had I used a larger camera.

KL Drift. Ricoh GR-Digital III

We all know Alex Majoli made his name shooting with compacts – famously half a dozen Olympuses C5060s – because of their silence, unobtrusiveness and low replacement cost, especially important in combat or hostile environments. (I’m told he uses an M9-P now, though.)

Welders; Hommage a Majoli. Ricoh GR-Digital I

I should probably talk a bit about the situations in which a compact would be more useful than a larger DSLR or even ILC:

1. When size or weight is a priority. I haven’t done it (and probably never will) – but I wouldn’t want to climb Everest with a Nikon D4 and suitable lenses. There’s plenty of light, so I’d probably go with one of the more robust compacts.

Shipyard inspection. Ricoh GR-Digital I

2. When you don’t want to stand out. Sensitive or covert photojournalism/ documentary photography immediately springs to mind. Nobody is going to pay you a second thought or glance if you’re ‘just shooting with your cellphone’ – everybody else is doing it, so you just blend in. Compacts are pretty much socially acceptable and transparent in most situations; if you’re not 100% sure of that, adopt the shooting pose of a complete photographic ignoramus and you’ll soon see what I mean.

Nepalis protesting in London. Ricoh GR-Digital III

3. When there’s a lot of light. This sounds stupid: it’s not, because you’re going to have a to stop down a DSLR in the tropics if you’re shooting in bright sunlight; I’ve hit the 1/8000s limit even at f4 or f5.6 and base ISO before – especially with anything even slightly reflective, like water or glass. Short of using a grad ND so you can open up the aperture a bit more, you’re going to land up having to stop down anyway. And guess what: compositionally, there’s no longer any difference between the images cameras of a different sensor size produce. (Dynamic range is something else entirely).

Tea time. Ricoh GR-Digital III

4. When you need extended depth of field. There are compositions that only work with compact cameras precisely because everything is in focus – something which may be optically impossible with an SLR, especially if you need a telephoto perspective. You’re probably wondering why I don’t use one for macrophotography: simple, nobody makes something that delivers the right perspective, and since you can’t change lenses, there’s not a lot I can do to rectify that. Secondary optics and adaptors are an option, but then you’re going to be getting compromised image quality because you’re adding components to an optical system that’s optimized for something else.

Trees. Ricoh GR-Digital III

5. When you want a different look. There are times when the harsher, higher contrast look that’s a property of smaller photosite sensors (specifically: lower dynamic range, because the electron wells are physically smaller and can’t collect as many photons before reaching full charge capacity and overflowing – i.e. blowing out or saturating). If you’re shooting in bright daylight, this could look like exposing for the shadows and completely losing the highlights to white; or exposing for the highlights and leaving the shadows dark (or even black). The latter produces some very arresting black and white work, actually. Or if you’re totally masochistic, perhaps you like the look of massive chroma and luminance noise.

Croissants a Poilane. Canon SD780 IS

The one final piece of advice I suggest is that you talk to your clients beforehand to make sure they’re okay with you using a small camera: very often, it’s about perception rather than reality; your client may not be aware that you can deliver the same image quality or unique images through your choice of equipment – it may negatively affect your reputation. Most importantly, make sure you have enough practice and confidence that you can actually deliver what you claim with your compact – don’t experiment on paid work, unless it’s B-roll. And as ever, always carry a backup. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, Gearhead: Reviews, On Photography Tagged With: article, compact, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photography, professional, thein

POTD: Vacation time

April 12, 2012 by Ming Thein

Tanjung Jara beach, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. Nikon D700 and 85/1.4 D

I’m off to the beach for a few days for a short vacation (the same beach in the image, coincidentally) and to practice my hommages a ~~Daido Moriyama~~ Hiroshi Sugimoto (I have no idea how I got that one mixed up). I’ll still have internet access though, so please keep commenting. There’s also a couple of very interesting posts completed and scheduled, including an On Assignment covering shooting watches with the Leica M9-P system – I wouldn’t leave you guys without something to read, would I? 🙂 MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD Tagged With: beach, landscape, leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photo, potd, thein

Photoessay: Over Australia

April 11, 2012 by Ming Thein

This series was shot while on a long flight home from Auckland, New Zealand; the transit via Singapore meant that most of the flight was actually spent crossing the vast Australian landmass, over its northeast corner. The landscape through the window changed every ten minutes or so, presenting vastly different scenes – more abstract paintings than scenery. I was entranced, and didn’t manage to finish the presentation I was supposed to put together on the flight. But, I think it was probably worth it. MT

This series shot with a Nikon D700 and AFS 28-300/3.5-5.6 VR.