opinion – Ming Thein | Photographer

How my photographic journey began – a short autobiography, part one

September 27, 2013 by Ming Thein

You’d think that after 13 years of this I’d have mastered the art of camwhoring for decent self-portrait, but no. At least the collage shows two things: firstly, a relative progression of personal style over the years, secondly, that file sizes have continued to balloon…all of these are at the correct relative size to each other. Also, that I’ve gone through a hell of a lot of gear. You might even spot a Canon in there if you look closely enough.

Today’s topic is a rather personal one, but something which has been asked with remarkable frequency: how did I get into photography in the first place? I’ve been shooting seriously for the better part of thirteen years; taking commercial assignments on and off since 2005, and full-time pro for the fourth time since the beginning of last year (2012).

The line between art and photography

September 19, 2013 by Ming Thein

Here’s a provocative question: is this image art? Why? Why not? Have a think about this carefully, for a moment. Today I’m going to crack open the lid of one of the biggest cans of worms in the whole of photography, peer inside, give you my 1.53 cents* and try not to fall inside.

*Devaluated from two cents since 2009 due to underdeclared inflation, quantitative easing, foreign debt and other economic screwups

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: art, article, essay, fine art, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photography, thein

The demise of the DSLR

August 24, 2013 by Ming Thein

Five years ago, while I was writing for a local photo magazine, I was mostly in charge of the ‘big’ cameras – DSLRs and the like. There was no mirrorless category, with the exception of Leica; compacts meant serious image quality or lens quality compromises, and every serious photographer was typically also on first name terms with their chiropractor. You could still get film with relative ease, and better still, develop it. Not long ago, my desk had three cameras for review/ testing on it (the Olympus E-P5, Leica X Vario and Sigma DP3M – none of them were DSLRs. I now routinely travel without one; in fact, most of the time I do a lot of personal photography with compacts. And pretty much the only time my D800E comes out is when I’ve got a commercial job to shoot.

How things change.

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: article, demise of the dslr, dslr, essay, future of photography, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein

PayPal, margin pressure and the small business perspective

August 22, 2013 by Ming Thein

A few days ago, I received an email from PayPal informing me that some of their terms and conditions of service had changed – ostensibly to ‘ensure high standards of service continue to be maintained’. I read that immediately as a greedy grab: turns out I was right. Buried in the fine print of the changes were a bunch of rate amendments, effective 10 Sep 2013, that now make the cost of receiving payments in my part of the world anywhere up to 6% plus a fixed fee (for commercial payments that fall into the “International micro payments for digital goods” category, which includes my videos). On top of this, there’s a ‘micropayment fixed fee’ of MYR2.00 (US$0.65). And then there’s a 4% currency conversion fee to Malaysian Ringgit on conversion. And a further 2.5% added to the exchange rate when you withdraw the funds to your bank account. Very cunningly, they don’t provide a like-for-like fee comparison, either. That’s a grand total of anywhere up to 12.5% PLUS RM2.00. Previously, I calculated the net cost of using PayPal at about 5% inclusive of FX; a merchant credit card terminal would be around 3%. Given the long payment times for credit card providers and relative discomfort of people using cards overseas, I elected to stay with PayPal for the time being – lousy service and lack of regulation notwithstanding. See why this has now become a problem?

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Filed Under: Articles, Off topic Tagged With: article, business, costs, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, payments, paypal, pricing, small business, strategy, thein

Repost: It’s a visual world – the basics of making great images

August 10, 2013 by Ming Thein

This article was originally written for and posted on the official WordPress blog in two parts on 18 and 25 June 2013. I’ve reposted it here as I believe it makes a good primer to the science and art of making outstanding images – the full-blown article is here. MT

Ginza, Tokyo. Sony RX100 (I include camera info here solely to demonstrate that it really doesn’t matter what you use.)

When I was first approached by WordPress, I have to admit that I was a little worried about the magnitude of the task at hand: ultimately my own site is very much about what goes into the creation of outstanding images. And that’s a 600+ article, 1.3-million word work in progress. That’s obviously not going to fit into the length of your average post, so today I’m going to throw the rulebook out of the window and start again. I highly encourage you to do the same: regardless of your experience level with photography, do the same. Approach this article with an open mind and no preconceptions. I’m going to do the same.

A question of clarity

August 8, 2013 by Ming Thein

Photography as an artistic medium is limited: by and large, the structure of your image is restricted by what exists in reality. Sure, you can alter that representation of reality by changing the light, your composition, your physical position, focal length, perspective, white balance, saturation, or a thousand and one other technical and artistic parameters. But ultimately, it still remains both interpretative and approximate. This is a good and bad thing: it means that assuming there is no post-capture manipulation of content going on, a photograph can be used as a relatively accurate representation of something; there is an assumed level of integrity in a photograph that isn’t present in an impressionist painting, for example. However, photography as a medium isn’t really encouraging of the same interpretative latitude as other media where one starts with a blank canvas/ sheet of paper (forget three dimensional and mixed media for the time being, that’s something which photography will never be able to replicate).

FD Shooting with the legends: the Nikon AI-S 58/1.2 Noct-Nikkor

August 6, 2013 by Ming Thein

The Noct-Nikkor is perhaps one of the most legendary – if not the most legendary – of the lenses in the Nikon pantheon. Hitting the market in its first AI version in 1977, it was designed to do two things: firstly, be shot wide open, and secondly, push the limits of the F mount’s relatively narrow diameter with a lens that would collect enough light to shoot relatively slow film at night, and without a tripod. Although based on a traditional double-gauss design, the lens incorporated one enormous technological advance for the time.

FD Shooting with the legends: the Leica M6TTL

August 4, 2013 by Ming Thein

Advance disclaimer: I’m not a full-blown Leica M nut, so most of my opinions are just that: opinions. But I’ve used a few of these things in my time, both professionally and for personal work. These images predate my recent DIY film efforts, so you’ll see a mix of color negative and slide film in there – I was mostly shooting Provia 100 and Velvia 100F at the time. The vintage of the images is also given away by the early watermark…

The Leica M6 series is perhaps the most accessible film Leica for most; I mean this in terms of both usability and price. A very large number of these cameras were produced in several key variants from 1984 to 1998; this volume means that prices on the secondary market have stayed relatively affordable. For not much more money over a ‘classic’ M2, M3 or M4, you can have something with slightly updated materials – likely resulting in longer service intervals – and of course, most importantly, a meter. With any of the classic M bodies, you need to use an external meter or an experienced eyeball to determine your exposure. Ignoring the design oddity that was the M5, the Minolta-collaborative CL and the more recent (and expensive) M7 and MP, we’re left with the M6 for most people if you want a film M camera with a meter.

FD Shooting with the legends: The Olympus [mju:]-II

July 31, 2013 by Ming Thein

I suppose it’s possible to call this camera the epitome of film point and shoots; it was, after all, quite possibly the Volkswagen Beetle of its generation. Made in huge numbers (3.8 million for this model alone, 10 million of all Mju variants), not especially expensive, but by all accounts incredibly reliable and delivering consistently excellent results. I certainly remember lusting after one while growing up, but through some strange turn of events landed up buying a rather useless Fuji 1010ix APS camera instead, which I still regret to this day. Thanks to some blind luck and the quick actions of a friend, I managed to eventually get my hands on one – new in box, for not much more than a brick of film.

FD Shooting with the legends: The Hasselblad 903 SWC

July 29, 2013 by Ming Thein

All of Hasselblad’s SWC (originally ‘Supreme Wide Angle, then Super Wide Angle, then abbreviated from ‘Super Wide Camera’) cameras are slightly odd beasts: they’re tiny for medium format, but large for anything else; they look very much like stunted miniature versions of the regular V series bodies. It’s as though somebody chopped the middle section out, taking the winding crank and waist-level finder out along with it. In place, the camera has grown a large megaphone-like viewfinder, and the shutter release has migrated to the top of the body.