Ryan's Photo Blog

My First Look At the Plustek 7400 Film Scanner

2011-12-18T09:11:00.000-05:00

The Good:

Well priced alternative to a flatbed scanner.7200 dpi scanner (when measured with a target it turns out to be 3800 dpi in both directions which is right in Nikon cool scan territory)

Actual Dmax > 3.6 and can be increased through multiple exposure mode.

The Negative:

Scanning is done through the included Silverfast Se plus software.

Manual feeder so after you load the carrier you have to push it through by hand one frame at a time. This is not really a problem as I hand correct every negative

No digital ICE (not really a problem for me as I don't use it anyway and it doesn't work on B&W)

My Findings:

If you have any form of workflow the Silverfast software is a piece of junk you would have to spend at least the cost of a scanner to upgrade to a usable version. Besides a rather useless raw mode it doesn't have 48 bit per colour save function. The raw mode would be good if it integrated with lets say Lightroom but it doesn't. It's designed to work with another pricey piece of software you have to buy from them. I don't know about you but I only like to scan once and use the file as a master.

To top it off they keep on telling you to read a 500 page manual and strongly implying that if you want to be a pro you are using the wrong scanner software.

The solution is easy buy reasonably priced Vuescan software. The pro has lifetime support, useful raw workflow and can support multiple scanner types.

Scanning B&W I used some nice grainy HP5+ and found out this:

Multi-exposure is effectively a two pass scan with each scan taken at a different exposure, the 2 passes are then blended together. This actually works and extends the dmax and dynamic range for difficult frames. There is a slight but noticeable lose of resolution. most of which can be recovered with some of the hated USM filtering. Not much need for this function with HP5 I will have to wait until I test it on some high dynamic range shot using TMAX film.

The raw scans pre-adjusted with a film profile seem to contain all the tone information with no banding or noise. Thus they can act as masters.

For 3600dpi scans there was marginally better detail and micro-contrast when scanning at 7200dpi at letting Vuescan reduce the output to 3600dpi (down sampling). This seems to be real not some USM shapening slight of hand (USM was off). Makes sense as the measured on a target dpi is 3800dpi and downsizing by 2 is equivalent to multiple sampling without the alignment problems.

As scan time is almost 4 times as long at 7200dpi I will use 3600dpi scans on images that I don't care so much about and 7200dpi down sampled to 3600dpi on images that look interesting.

Also of slight interest was that letting the software convert from the colour scan to BW gave slightly better micro-contrast then converting the 48bit colour to 16 bit B&W after the fact or scanning in 16bit B&W.

I tested the same negative on my Epson V500. The Epson had less then half the actual resolution and more compression in the grey scale. The hp5 film grains were blobs instead of salt and pepper with the Plustek.

Four out of Five approval rating.

P.S. After using the scanner for a few months the quality of the scans has motivated me to shoot more 35mm film.

Top 10 Signs That You Have Gone Too Far When Photoshopping A Photograph

2011-01-09T07:37:00.008-05:00

We all know that art has no boundaries so how do you know when you have gone too far with the Photoshopping of a photograph? To help you out I have compiled a list of the top 10 warning signs:

Top 10 Warning Signs That Let You Know That You Have Gone Too Far With Photoshopping An Image

10. Only your parents would put it on their wall and you find out later that they take it down when you are not there
9. Young boys want to have a black light poster made of your image to hang on their bedroom door
8. Young girls think it's cute
7. You think it's cute
6. People you don't know give you crop or cloning suggestions
5. People you know give you crop or cloning suggestions
4. Someone says your work reminds them of another person, and it turns out that you can't stand that other person's work
3. Someone wants to know what HDR program and Photoshop actions you used
2. Someone buys it and asks to have it framed in gold and matted with black velvet
1. Somehow it reaches the top 10 in Explore on Flickr

Last Supper Redux

2011-01-04T09:01:00.015-05:00

Roll Over The Image With Your Mouse To See The Original

You spend your hard earned money to pay for a trip to a far away place where no one really knows English just to wait in line to buy a ticket and when you finally get in you find that famous painting you heard so much about is faded, dull and chipped, it looks terrible by today's digital standards.

Fear not as today I will teach you the secrets of restoring these old "masterpieces" from dull and lack luster to the way they should have been in the first place that is if the painter had had any proper art school training.

As an example I will use the painting the Last Supper done by a moderately successful painter (I forget his name at the moment):

Clearly in those days they never heard of the rule of thirds. At first I wanted to crop the image to make the subject Jesus conform to the rule of thirds. But then I realized I could not do a very nice roll over if the before and after images were of different sizes, besides cloning out the odd arms would be far too much work. So instead I opted to use selected focus. Using selected focus allows me to draw the viewer's eyes directly to the subject clearing up all those busy distractions that make the eye wander about. What was the artist thinking wasting his time on all those unnecessary details? Selective focus also gives the painting a depth of field and 3 dimensionality that the original lacked.

To increase the feeling of magic and fantasy and to repair the chipped paint I applied an Orton Effect filter/action. The Orton filter I applied came with a set of 10 other actions which I purchased from WeripU at only $180. I highly recommend them as they save you a lot of time learning stuff.

Then to give it a more modern update look I applied a cross processing action (good value at only $80 from WeripU). Noticed the richness of colour. The hills in the background window are now a pleasant shade of Irish green.

Still it didn't quite pop so for the final touch I applied a subtle single image auto HDR tone mapping, notice how much better the light is on Jesus' robes when compared to the original. A bit expensive at $260 for the HDR package from WeripU but how can you be state of the art without the latest and best tools. Also consider the money you are saving and the disappointment you are avoiding by not travelling to view the original artwork.

Before There Was Digital and The Naming Of Photographers

2010-12-31T11:06:00.011-05:00

The Naming Of Types
(Stolen and poorly adapted from T. S. Eliot)

The Naming of Types is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a photographer must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Snapshot, Wedding, Nature, Macro or Travel
All of them fun everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:

But I tell you, a photographer needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you the most accordant
That name is of course Photojournalism.
A name that is a beacon for both truth and realism
With the names Bokeh and Sharpness being of much lesser importance

But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But THE PHOTOGRAPHER HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice he or she is in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
Of all the names his is the smartest,
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
That of course is because he's an Artist
Of deep and inscrutable singular Nature.

Silver Alchemy - Xtol Plus Rodinal

2010-12-22T22:51:00.020-05:00

There is a certain modern retro look that I have in my mind for a portrait project I have in the works. The Lomo 120 ISO 100 film AKA Shanghai GP3 looks like a possible film for the project For the developer I would like to use Xtol. Xtol looks good but seem to lack a bit of an edge. Xtol's primary component is vitamin C and vitamin C is compatible with Rodinal. The idea (from apug) is that a pinch of Rodinal in Xtol adds a bit of edge definition which is normally absent because of the solvent action of the Xtol. So this might be just what is needed.

http://www.unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Rodinal/rodinal.html

http://www.apug.org/forums/viewpost.php?p=959820

It's a balance between grain and highlights with the Rodinal and shadow detail with the Xtol. The 2 developers just happen to be chemically and PH compatible. But Xtol is a solvent compensating developer while Rodinal is not.

I use around a 2 minute water presoak at the same temperature as the developer and standard agitation (first 30 seconds and a couple of seconds every 2 to 3 minutes thereafter). So far in an unscientific sampling it looks like I'm on the right track. Very happy with the results:

Kodak TMAX 400 "Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 10.5 minutes 19c"

Xtol was meant to be the dominant component yet with the tmax 400 I can see a definite difference in the highlights over xtol alone. I know by my scanning histograms compared to previous work with xtol and TMAX that the DMAX has increased with more highlights and midtone details then what would normally be seen with xtol alone while the shadows are pretty normal for xtol 1:2.

Fuji Neopan 400 "Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 12.5 minutes 19c"

It is less clear that there is any benefit to adding Rodinal to Xtol when developing Fuji Neopan 400 at box speed. I suspect that because it is easy to block shadows with Neopan 400 at box speed using 1:2 Xtol instead of my normal 1:1 Xtol the shadows are closing obscuring any benefits of adding the Rodinal. Upping the Xtol to 1:1 seems to give better results.

Neopan at 400 souped in xtol 1:1 plus rodinal 1:112 for 9 minutes19c

HP5 is a difficult nut to crack The first time was far too grainy. The second time worked much better very sharp maybe even too much acuity.

HP5 at 400 souped in xtol 1:1 plus rodinal 1:135 for 9.5 minutes19c

Shanghai GP3 developed in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 15 minutes at 19c.

Shanghai GP3 developed in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 14 minutes at 19c.

Hard to see at this resolution but good sharp details with the snow grains and just a touch of blotchyness in the deep shadows. Looking pretty good but I need to get a better baseline before I can make any conclusions.

Shanghai GP3 in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:100 for 10 minutes 27c, pushed +1 shot at ISO 160

Tri-X 320p "Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 12.2 minutes 20c

Tri-X 320P shows good dynamic range and retention of highlight details in this high contrast snow scene with only a slight blocking of deep shadows.

Fomapan Action 400 in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:100 for 9 minutes 19c

Fomapan 100 in Xtol 1:2 + Rodinal 1:112 for 9 minutes 20c

Tri-X 400 at 500 souped in xtol 1:1.7 plus rodinal 1:100 for 9.5 minutes at 23c


Ilford Delta 3200 at ISO 3200 souped in xtol 1:2 plus rodinal 1:100 for 11 minutes at 25c (Pretty smooth for ISO 3200)

Google Analytics 8 Months On The Path To World Domination

2010-12-11T08:34:00.000-05:00

My Photo Blog at blog.metrix-x.com has been hosted by Google for 8 months now so the data is 4 months shy of a year. The interactive maps are one of the more interesting aspects of using Google analytics to track visitors. From the world map you can click down to the country and then down to the specific town.

The New Kodak Portra 400 - Wasn't What I Was Expecting - A Short Review

2010-12-10T15:19:00.004-05:00

From My First Roll Of The New Kodak Portra 400 Shoot With My Mamiya C220

It's not often these days of digital that a new colour film is released by a major manufacturer.

Last month Kodak released a new Portra film to replace both the Portra 400 NC and Portra 400 VC with just straight Portra 400.

What was I expecting? Maybe a ISO 400 film with the best characteristics of Portra 160 VC and NC with maybe some of the pizazz of the new Kodak Ektar 100.

What I got was a perfectly tame film. Good skin tones better then the old VC version of the film with slightly more saturated colours then the old NC version.

Scanning is extremely easy, usually I have to play around with the scanner black and white points for each colour to extract the whole dynamic range of a negative. Not so with this Portra even under difficult sun back-lighting it's one touch scanning. The problem with the scans is that they lack contrast basically dull with all the information packed nicely into a smooth histogram,unusable without further digital processing. Once processed the results are rather good.

Portra 400 is definitely not a replacement for Portra 400 vc or nc it is a entirely new film designed for the digital age. This film fits the needs of a professional photographer that needs a film that works consistently well with their digital workflow. It's not for those that want to develop and go directly to print. Yet with a bit of post both the new Portra and Ektar can make large prints that blow the DSLR out of the water in both colour and resolution.

Pros : Accurate skin tones, Sharp, Medium Saturation, Easy to scan
Cons : Needs post processing to bring out contrast
Best Uses : Difficult Lighting, Batch Workflow

Lomography 120 Film ISO 100 Is Shanghai GP3

2010-11-08T13:46:00.011-05:00

Last Saturday on a photo walk I found out that Toronto had an official Lomography store. Of course I had to check it out here's a place that you can buy a $40 Russian camera from Ebay or $300 in the store. Interesting stuff but way over priced except for this 3 pack of 120 black and white film that was going for$10 taxes in. The store manager said it was repackaged Chinese Shanghai GP3. Surprisingly I had wanted to try some because I had heard some good things about the film.

Specifications:
Made in Shanghai, CHINA, for professional photography, practising photographing and developing.

The film is made by coating a panchromatic photographic emulsion on a polyester or triacetate film base.

It could be used both for professional and amateur photographers for all-purpose providing fine-grain at full tonal range.

Unit item weight:30 g

Suggested Developing time:
20C degree:

D76 stock - 8 minutes
D76 1:1 - 14 minutes
D23 12 minutes
Rodinal 1:50 15 minutes
D72 1:4 4 minutes

Made by the SMPIC Photosensitive Materials Factory of Shanghai, an industry leader with more than 40 years of experience in making photographic materials.

The parent company, SMPIC , was founded in 1973 and is currently joint venture partner in China with Polaroid and Fuji Xerox, making cameras and office machines, and is also a major producer of high-quality optical glass.

SMPIC makes their photosensitive films to very high standards of quality, easily the equal of the major international brands. Each boxed roll is heat-sealed in a paper-plastic laminate high-barrier wrap, and can safely be stored in a refrigerator or freezer without worrying about moisture damage.

Definitely Shanghai GP3 because of the edge code of "SGPFF" It had a slight strange plastic smell when I was loading on to the developing reel. I haven't seen the punched hole near the end before. Also the sticky end of reel tape did not have any useful glue (make sure you carry an elastic band in your pocket), cheap backing paper with grey on black printing and a curl with enough springiness to act as leaf springs for a truck.

My first roll of Lomography/ Shanghai GP3 film.

This film is rated at Iso 100 and I shot the roll at 100 Developed 11 minutes in Agfa Refinal 19c this is a 2 stop push with no agitation after the first 20 seconds because the telephone rang and I forgot about the film. Except for one shot with blown highlights they turned out OK. I suspect the film should be rated at ISO 60, Nice tonality not that sharp. Light to medium blue dye in the pre-soak water. The film curls badly but doesn't bow so it is still easy to scan. See previous photo for more details about the film.

My second roll I developed 8 minutes at 19c agitated every minute or so. The result was much better tonality also better sharpness for some reason.

Rare find in Toronto a Volvo C202, C303, Laplander or Valp

My favourite out of the second roll the tint comes from my scanning method to pull out more from the negative.

The third roll was developed with Xtol 1:2 plus Rodinal 1:112 for 14 minutes at 19c scanned using the same method as above.

Unlike Kentmere films it is a useful budget film to have in the bag for a slightly retro look.Flickr slideshow of my shots using Shanghai GP3

Using Olympus 35 sp Rangefinder For Night Street Shooting With Fash

2010-11-04T09:21:00.004-04:00

The Olympus 35 sp (produced 1969-1976) had some interesting advanced for the time feature. One of the features is flash control: By setting the flash guide number (GN) on the aperture ring-dial the rangefinder's aperture setting is slaved to the rangefinder focus distance. The farther away the the subject is the more the lens opens up to compensate for light fall off of the flash with distance. For this type of event this method has certain advantages over an auto flash which is often fooled by bright or dark surfaces.

Add to the camera a small flash with a coiled connecting cable and this allows for some interesting handheld off camera flash use. Most of you need no reminding the benefits of using off camera axis flash over on camera flash. So far I have only used this for night street use but maybe I will try some Bruce Gilden flash in the face style shooting.

More of 2010 Halloween On Church St.

Contact sheet for the annual Dufferin Park The Night of the Dread. Here are the rest of the shots taken that night.

So ends the first stage of the experiment
Conclusions:

Aperture slaved to flash guide number and the rangefinder' focus distance works well for getting good exposures.

Flash handheld off angle is better then on camera flash and you can still focus OK

For close work a flash diffuser would really really help and also allow a lot more background to show up.

For this use B&W is better then colour.

Art of Triptychs, Diptychs and Polytychs - Intuition Versus Intellect, Left Versus Right

2010-09-18T07:33:00.002-04:00

A few years ago I started a small group on flickr called Art of Triptychs, Diptychs and Polytychs. The form fascinates me but I can't help wondering how some of the contributers to the pool do such a superb artistic and aesthetic job of choosing their images.
I confess my own polytychs are not very artistic. I'm a pretty equal right brain/left brain type of guy. Unfortunately this doesn't mean I'm balanced, quite the opposite at one moment of time I am either one or the other not both.

Image via Wikipedia

For me polytychs are particularly hard art form because as soon as I start to think about joining 2 or more images together the reasoning/logical side of my brain switches in blocking out any intuition and creativity.

I don't have this problem with in camera double exposures. I either plan the 2 shots before I take the first one or I take the first shot and hold it in my mind until I find something that fits with the first shot as the second exposure. In either case when I'm photographing my brain is usually in creative mode. I have been practising doing double exposures for several years now so even the planning is subconscious.

Converting A Colour to A Black And White Image Utilizing Selective Colour Contrast Filtering

2010-09-14T09:31:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you might want to convert a colour image to B&W. You have used the usual techniques like contrast and brightness curves and maybe even the channel mixer, you have dodged and burned but it still seems to have lost some of the details of the original colour image. Thats pretty normal because some of the details in the original are because of changes in colour not changes in intensity.
Consider a portrait where a person has no fashion sense or maybe Scottish and is wearing a red and blue plaid shirt. If the blue is near the same intensity as the red the checker pattern will blend in when you convert to B&W. Well the quick answer is to use either the channel mixer or a selected colour filter when you do the conversion this would either selectivity darken the red or the blue. But wait although the plaid shirt looks OK the skin starts to look blotchy, not very flattering for a portrait..
The answer is rather simple you selectively blend 2 B&W versions of the image together. One version optimizes the plaid while the other optimizes the skin. If needed you could add more versions to optimism additional parts of the image.

Original Colour Image

I am going to try to illustrate using a bad example, bad because the colour version from the MF film shot looks far better then the B&W. Note the bright red berries back-lite translucent in parts and the bright green yellow pallet of the background.
In this example I used the channel mixer to create 2 images plus a 3rd which is the luminance channel from the original colour image.

Left: Red Berries Centre: Green Background Right: luminance channel

The best (at least for this example) of all 3 images were combined together to give the final image. The berries in the left image was selectively combined with the centre image and finally the low contrast upper right corner was taken from the luminance channel.

Final B&W with selective contrast filtering

Fun With B&W Film - How To Do HDR From A Single Scan

2010-09-12T00:01:00.007-04:00

Right side is a special colour scan of a B&W negative, the middle is a normal scan plus some dodging and burning. The right-side is a HDR image obtained with the 48bit colour left-side image. The right side is scanned in 48 bit colours where the individual RGB channels are adjusted for gain, offset and gamma via the histograms utilizing the epson software prior to scanning in this case the green channel is normal exposure the red is -1.5 stops under exposed and the blue is +1.5 over exposed. After the scan the RGB channels are separated into 3 monochrome channels which can then be processed with HDR or tone mapping software. This being 30 years old Kodak Plus-X it does not have nearly the dynamic range of that of most fresh films such as tmax would have.

RGB channels are actually B&W tinted for visualization purposes only

The Ghost That Walks Beside Us is a direct manipulation of a 3 channel B&W scan

Fun With B&W Film - How To Get Duotone Straight From The Scanner

2010-09-11T23:32:00.009-04:00

Left side is scanned in 16 bit B&W mode. Then duotone tinted in Lightroom. The right side is scanned in 48 or 24 bit colours where the individual RGB channels are adjusted for gain, offset and gamma via the histograms utilizing the primitive epson software prior to scanning in this case to give the red tint. The above film is 30 years old Kodak Plus-X!
Note: French lavender pictured above is now grown in some peach orchards because they repel a moth that is a pest to the peaches.English Lavender has a far weaker scent and does not have any of the same insect repelling properties.

Who Says Sunny 16 Can't Lie

2010-08-25T12:49:00.002-04:00

The title is a spoof on this 1959 Popular Science article Who Says a Light Meter Can't Lie I doubt if this was the first article on the subject it certainly isn't the last. Personally I use a good light meter mostly in incident mode. If it lies it's because of operator error usually because I didn't make up my mind before I took the shot on what the subject should be.

One of the proposed solutions is not to use a light meter. If you shoot film you have most likely heard of Sunny 16 Fred Parker's The Ultimate Exposure Computer is the best reference I can find on the application. Sunny 16 seems to be a good method in normal outdoor nature type photography that is if you have some experience with the light in the location. Normally scattered light makes up only 10% of the incident light but this can change because of reflected surfaces and atmospheric conditions. How hazy, diffused or how soft can be a difficult measurement to make with only the human eye. As it was not a survival requirement us humans are not good at making absolute light intensity measurements, you need experience and references to adequately judge light in many conditions.

Most of my shooting is done in a city environment where scattering and reflections make up a higher proportion of the light then in the open air. Even here a friend of mine has learned to judge the light mostly correctly but sometimes a couple of stops off. He uses years of experience not sunny 16. In the golden hour shooting into the sun and away from the sun is one of the best times to get dramatic city scenes.

When the sun is at 10 degrees to the horizon on a early fall afternoon in Toronto because of the extra amount of atmosphere or air mass (AM) it has to pass through there is about 1 stop less light then at noon. The science is well developed and you can go here to see the math and use their calculator. The factor depends mainly on global position, time and date.

Shooting into the sun you have to contend with a super bright background (the sun and sky) and reflections of surfaces like pavement, choices like highlight or silhouette. How much reflected light is getting back on the subject and so on. Shooting away from the sun both the reflected light and the angle of the subject to the sunlight can make up to 4l stops of difference. The amount of light falling on the subject varies around 3 stops depending on the angle of the sun to the subject. At 10 degrees to the horizon there is about 2 stops lower illumination between the horizontal surface for example a road and a vertical standing structure such as a person. Once again this interactive graphically illustrated calculator comes to the rescue to save the reader from having to view my hen scratching.

Making a Pinhole lens for a Canon DSLR

2010-06-15T16:37:00.009-04:00

Originally From My website July 2005
Specifications:
Depth of Field - Infinite
Equivalent focal length - 50mm
Resolution - very poor!
Speed - slower then you can imagine.
Cost - cheapest Canon lens (the main component is a Canon part)
Making the Pinhole Lens
Parts:
1. Canon camera body cap. Canon caps because they have a thread are claimed to be light tight. I brought an used cap, so technically this is a used Canon lens. Test out the light tightness of the cap by placing it on the camera body and exposing a shot directly into the sun for 5 seconds or so. The exposure should be completely dark. This test is good for other models and makes of cameras.
2. Quality aluminum foil
3. Plastic film with self adhesive backing. I used the clear 3m film that they apply to the front of automobiles to prevent rocks from chipping the paint.
4. Hollow tip 32 gage needle. I used a new insulin pen needle.
5. Sharp craft knife or razor blade
6. Cutting board as a work surface
7. Small piece of dense stiff foam such as styrofoam
8. Cork
9. 3/16" drill
Construction:
1. Drill a 3/16" hole in the inside center of the cap. Use a piece of wood as a backing so that the hole will be fairly round. Use the knife to clean and deburr the edge of the hole.
2. Cut a donut shaped piece of plastic film 3/4" OD. - 3/16" ID.
3. Cut a 1/2" disc out of the aluminum foil.
4. Flatten the foil by placing on a hard flat surface and rubbing the foil with a piece of cork (drink the wine first). Be careful not to damage the foil.
5. Place the 1/2" foil disc on the backside of the cap, centered over the 3/16" hole.
6. Remove the backing to expose the adhesive on the plastic film donut.
7. Place the film donut sticky-side down centered over the foil, use your fingers or the knife edge to seal the foil between the film and the cap. Make sure the foil is flat and sealed around the complete circumference. Note there should be only foil covering the center of the cap.
8. Place a the cap face up with the bottom of the cap and the foil supported by a small piece of dense stiff foam.
9. Very carefully puncture the center of the foil with the 32 gage needle. The motion of the needle should be straight up and down., any sideways motion or too deep of a penetration will distort the pinhole.
10. Have fun!
Alternative Way to Make the Pinhole
Before the foil is installed in the cap just after step 4:

Once again the foil must be supported by some dense stiff foam such as Styrofoa
Make the pinhole as in step 9
Repeat step 4 the foil flattening step
Inspect the hole to make sure the edges have not been pushed back into hole by the flattening of the foil
Install the foil as before

Using this method allows you to practice making pinholes and also allows you to inspect the hole before installation. Note that the needle can only be used a few times before it will get dull and has to be replaced.
Each different pinhole will have its own unique qualities, ideally the pinhole should be perfectly round, perfectly flat and as thin as possible. This is impossible without buying a manufactured hole (yes you can buy a hole) . Unfortunately my microscope is on loan so I can not actually inspect the pinhole except by holding it up to a light bulb. Hopefully I will update the page with actual hole details when I get the microscope back. Alternatively a flatbed film scanner could be used to scan the hole.

Notes:

I originally used plastic tape instead of the film. But it took a couple of trys to get a good (nearly centred) pinhole, I found it was very difficult to remove the gummy residue from the tape backing, I tried soap and water but that did not work. I tried a cleaning fluid but as you can see in the pictures it attacked the plastic cap and messed up the finish. The plastic film has an adhesive that stays with the film even after you remove the film from the cap, this makes replacing the pinhole an easy job.
Dimensions except for the pinhole are approximate.
Many of the pictures have some contrast lose, some even have a rainbow effect. This could be caused by light leakage, a ragged irregular pinhole edge or most likely from the large amount of light that comes through pinhole outside the FOV (field of view) of camera sensor. This light is reflected and diffused onto the sensor. If I shield the lens from off angle light the effect goes away see below for a partial solution..
The low resolution of the lens is mostly related to physics. The pinhole is around 0.3 - 0.4mm diameter and a pixel on the camera sensor is many times smaller. The only way to get higher resolution would be to have the camera sensor area much larger, lets say as large as a large format camera. No way on a proconsumer camera! There is also both a diffraction limit and equivalent For a lens hood I brought an inexpensive rubber hood and glued it on with Gloop. The hood allows about a 90° field of view which is still too wide for the pinhole lens.F stop light limitation on the minimum pinhole size.

Some References:
This Page On My Original Website - contains some more details and pinhole image processing tips
My Blog posting homemade 8x10" large format pinhole cameraThe Pinhole Gallery - A Gallery of Contemporary Pinhole Photography
The Pinhole Camera - Imaging without Lenses or Mirrors By Matt Young (Some of the physics and history of the pinhole camera)
Luminous Landscape - Pinhole Camera Tutorial This page has some good photos and suggestions for making large format film cameras
Isabelle Lousberg If her work doesn't inspire you why bother!
F295.org - Exploring 21st Century Photography
youdesignit.com - pinhole-photography
Online Schools: Guide to Pinhole Photography
PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPHY AND CAMERA DESIGN CALCULATORS

August 21 2005 Pinhole Pictures with Lens Hood

Two Bicyclists

Wards Island Gap
Please contact me for permission to use or reproduce any part of this page photos@rraz.ca
Ryan

Really Bad Video Productions

2010-06-07T12:01:00.003-04:00

RBVP is my tongue in cheek name for my low tech attempt to fool around with moving pictures. As long as I don't take myself too serious the making of small video clips has helped me widen my horizons.

The following Youtube video I made with about 100 shots out of my DSLR. The idea is to make a sculpture out of real life.

My first attempt at this type of stop motion was done a coupe of weeks ago using much fewer photos from my P&S:

My P&S actually has real video, too bad the compression algorithm is so lossy or else I think it might actually be a good video camera. But it is still good enough to record RBVP documentaries or music video style videos.

I doubt it but if you would like to see more but RBVP on YouTube or on Flickr

Colour Balance Epson Scanners - A Short Note:

2010-05-28T09:21:00.001-04:00

Often when scanning it's not only the white balance that needs attention. In this case the white balance is fine but the mid greys and darker have a blue cold colour ting. The leaves are also meant to have more browns.

Epson software is pretty bad when it comes to colour balance. It does more of a white balance then an actual colour balance. Using an image in this thread as an example I added a mid black correction of the image. This type of colour balance is important for films like the new Kodak Ektar.

Here I have used the pavement to re-balance the colour balance.

Credit for original image scanned on Epson 4490, using the epson software taken from this thread

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or One Way To Use A TLR For Street Photography

2010-03-22T10:51:00.004-04:00

There are many schools of street photography starting from the most famous Cartier Bresson.
Notice how he holds his camera when not being used. This would still work today.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqsOYsZlPX4
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjjGiBUaf4s

Or the currently in vogue copying of Bruce Gilden flash in the face style: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRBARi09je8

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle gives us that the Photographer being the observer always alters the scene he's trying to capture. No matter how much you try to camouflage the camera your actions still affect the scene. Hip shots, standing on the corner waiting, trying to blend in, using a camera phone or small point and shot are some of the many other methods which are used in street photography, all of them affect the scene to some degree.

You might not know but one way to camouflage a large building in sunlight is to shine a bright light on it as the human eye can not distinguish it from the skyline. A Mamiya TLR is pretty difficult to disguise even with a bright light.

The photo above is first of a series using a new to me idea for using my TLR for Street photography. That is to place myself in the middle of the path and be obviously taking photos, because people know that they either move around me or I become almost invisible under the camouflaged so to say right out in the open. Now under the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle the observer (photographer) is part of the scene so taking photos or not taking photos does not affect the "quantum" state.

Odds and Ends In B&W Film Development

2010-03-18T08:44:00.016-04:00

If you can soft boil an egg and you have a sink you can develop B&W film

Lucky Seven D76 Development Times

B&W Development From One Shot Powder D76
8x10" Large Format Foam Core Pinhole

Now days I mainly use one shot (dispose after one time use) Kodak TMAX Developer for pushing and Kodak XTOL for other work. I still like very Dilute d76 for my 8x10" litho ortho film this only because I can develop by eye under a red safe light.

XTOL is one of the most environmentally friendly developers. It is also one of the best general purpose developers. I hear that Ilford DD-X is similar with the advantage that it is already in liquid form and a disadvantage that it is at least twice the cost per roll. I would suggest to the beginner that they would start out with a general purpose developer and get the basics down before experimenting with other developers and developing techniques.

For fixer I use a Kodak or Ilford rapid fixer. I reuse until it is too slow (takes twice as long as when fresh). A tip: Drop a piece of the film leader into the fixer and wait for it to clear multiple that time by 2 (3x for TMAX or Delta films) and that is the time you need to leave the film in the fixer. Kodak TMAX and Ilford Delta films eat up fixer and usually need much longer fixing times then other films. Important before disposing of fixer down the sink drop some steel wool in the spent fixer and wait for 24 hours. The steel will scavenge the silver out of the fixer. Remove the steel wool and now the fixer is safe to dispose of. Silver in solution is very toxic to the environment.

I do not use a stop bath for film (you need it for paper) it is only necessary if you have really short development times.

If your water is hard or has a lot of iron then use a Brita water filter. I let normal tap water sit over night with the top off the container so it can reach room temperature and any chlorine can come out. This is easier and less wasteful then trying to keep a constant temperature with running tap water Using the Ilford method for rinsing (see reference below).

When the film is wet the surface is soft almost sticky and can be permanently embedded with dust and water marks, it is also easily scratched at this point. Some tips on drying your film :

Use a separate final rinse with a drop of wetting agent, if you have hard water then use distilled water for the final rinse
Turn of your exhaust fan (leave it off) and run a steaming hot shower. The small particles of water will clean the air of dust particles
Before hanging hold the film at both ends and shake to remove excess water. Be careful not to use excessive force or you could damage the emulsion
Hanging the film on a diagonal will speed up the time that it takes water to run to the edge
You can blot excess water of the edges or end with lint free cloth or paper, coffee filters work well. Do not touch the emulsion! A rocket blower or other rubber bulb duster is a good investment as water drops can be blown off with a jet of air. It will also save you a ton of money in the scanning stage as canned air is really expensive.
While a squeegee is sometimes recommended at the beginning of the drying process it is also responsible for scratches especially on films with softer emulsions. So consider not using one or possibly using your fingers (minus nails) as a better substitute.

Fixer Update: It appears that a hypo-clear or eliminator after the fixer stage does not have much use with negatives (different for paper) and a rapid fixer, in fact residual thiosulfate and thionates may actual aid in the archival process. This article indicates that a 2 bath fixer may be much more effective then a single bath fixer as the first bath takes out the majority of silver while the second fresher bath removes products that the first bath can't.

Final Rinse Update - In the past I had spots now none:

The final rinse is 3 minutes in distilled water; After the 3 minutes I then add 1 to 2 drops of Edwards wetting agent.; Shake really well for 30 seconds, wait 10 seconds until any foam dies down; Then remove film from liquid. Shake off excess water and hang to dry.

Absolutely no spots!

Note: The distilled water adds about $0.15 per roll but it seems to be worth it, The trick seems to be prior to adding the wetting agent leave the film in the distilled water for long enough to dilute (replace) any of the tap water in the emulsion.

Updates January 2012

Mixing Xtol

It seems to help if the water is towards the upper range of temperature (see instructions so that you don't overheat. I use a large plastic spoon to stir and break up any clumps wait and repeat, wait some more and repeat.... Eventually it will almost desolve except I can never get rid of a few small specks which I ignore. Add other package with about 500ml of water. If you want to be exact about the 5l then put 5l in the bucket and mark the level before you start.

Using A Stainless Sieve

When you are filling smaller glass containers with the xtol for storage run it through a dollar store stainless sieve to remove any particles.

Sometimes in the winter my xtol stored in closed glass jars gets a bit of white cloudy stuff. To remove pour it through a fine stainless steel sieve just before using. Also used fixer can also can also get contaminated and the same trick will work here. Just make sure you rinse well directly after use. The sieve costs me less then $2 at the dollar store.

Silk Gloves Better Then Cotton For Film Handling

For handling film instead of using those cotton gloves which seem to pick up fuzz and deposit it on the film I found that silk glove liners that you use for winter sports work much better without picking up lint or static charging the film.

Useful References

The most important resource is the Massive Development Chart for developing times, while you are at it check out their meta list.

Don't forget to check out APUG and their Beginners Guide
If you like Ilford then check out their pdf on Developing Your First Roll Of B&W

If you use stainless steel reels and have big fingers like me 35mm film is a b!tch to load. I found this thread on Flickr Loading steel reels - an alternative method a useful resource (note the link to another thread and a link to a video) If you end up with moon shaped marks on the film that means the film emulsion has be physically damaged by pressure (in my case it usually because of a finger pressure. At the end if parts of the film look undeveloped it is usually because on part of the film has crossed a spiral and was touching another part of the film.

Plastic or metal reels when loading 120 film make sure you cut off the tape at the end or it could get stuck where you don't want it to be stuck.

For 35mm a tip is to not to rewind the leader all the way back into the canister (some of the newer cameras have a menu setting to leave the leader on rewind otherwise with manual rewind you can feel it when it is coming off the take up reel. If you have a leader you can trim it and start on the reel in the light!

For plastic I use AP reels and tanks, they are really easy to load and they have an innovative way of agitating without inversion. The only time I have had a problem is when I creased the leader and it got stuck starting at the second turn. Don't panic you have to release the film not by pulling it out as with other types of spools but by first separating the two halves of the spool. Make sure practise doing this and all other aspects of loading with your eyes close or in the dark.

If you use a changing bag make sure it is large enough not to be cramped. A tip I was given was to keep my eyes closed so you are not distracted and disoriented by your vision. I find it easier to load in a bathroom with the door and windows blocked out. (make sure you turn off anything with led lights and do not wear a watch that glows in the dark)

Kodak Xtol Developer - Unofficial Resource Page
T-Max Films -- What Rochester Forgot to Tell Us
A few ideas on using Kodak T-Max Films Successfully by John Sexton

You can see that I like TMAX film, what's not to like with a possible dynamic range of 19.5 stops!

Cross Processing Myths RIP

2009-11-20T17:33:00.011-05:00

The 2 myths I will be talking about is that cross processing E6 slide film in standard C41 colour negative gives unpredictable hence random results. Hence the popularity with lomography crowd. Before you stop me I know plenty of people that take wonderful dreamy shots with lomo and other toy camera but none of them rely on random luck it's skill and artistic ability. Second lesser myth is that it is better to over expose expired slide film when you cross process.

First off in a past life I have a background in imaging and high speed microscope scanners including some patents that I'm proud of but most of what I am going to be talking about is based on observation and intuition. So bear with me while I go through some technical details:

Colour Slide Versus Colour Negative film

Slide film in general has a much smaller latitude when compared to negative film this means that your exposure settings for slide film has to be more accurate then with negative film or your highlights will be blown out (sort of sound like digital doesn't it) on the other hand if you under expose the darks will be one shade of black. With todays colour film a couple of stops under or over exposure doesn't make much difference it will look pretty much the same. Film records light in a nonlinear way so instead of clipping like in digital the highlights and shadows are compressed in a natural eye response type of way.

So why use slide film because if you get it right the resulting image has a much greater dynamic range (the difference in film density between the lightest to darkest part of the image), blues go from the palest lightest shade to inky almost black blues, the same for the greens and reds. A 8x10" colour slide on a light table is a glorious thing. Maybe paradoxically it is more difficult to scan when compared to the more compressed lower contrast ratio colour negative. This is true even when E6 type slide film is processed in c41 (standard developing for colour negative films)

If you want better technical reading go

Here

Dynamic Range By Bob Atkins

and here:

Film Contrast by Perry Sprawls, Ph.D.

Film is not like fine wine it's designed to be used when it is still young. As film ages it gets bombarded with cosmic rays and maybe more important the layers oxidize and chemicals diffuse and mix with each other sort of like the ripples in hundred year old glass windows. Refrigeration or freezer will extend the life but only by so much. As the film ages the unexposed film slowly fogs meaning black is no longer black but shades of grey. The colours in the dark areas become muddy and the grains of silver become more obvious and dyes start to bleed. (This paragraph is conjecture and observation on my part.) Astronomer super charge film sensitivity to low light by annealing it with special gas mixtures).

The lower the ISO the slower the film ages (this shouldn't surprise anyone). What sort of surprised me was that expired film seemed to be fairly constant in exposure (ISO), with only the latitude and dynamic range decreased by the level of fogging.

Now what does this all mean when it comes to exposure. Conventional wisdom seems to be to over expose to compensate for the fogging. I have tried this by a half a stop for 15 year old slide film and all I did was sacrifice the highlights for a bit better shadows, I also tried over exposing by 1 stop and pulling the development by one stop, this was even worse, colour film in c41 seems to push better then it pulls. My best results is to shoot at box speed and meter the exposure for the subject of importance. It also saves me the time money at the lab as most lab charge extra for pushing, pulling and cross processing if they can even really do the pulling correctly.

So shoot at box speed and meter for the subject, it's old film what do you expect new film? I'm only talking about colour slide film it's different for B&W and negative film.

Lab Scanned Early Work

The big myth that cross processing gives random inconsistent results. Except for the occasional very rare damaged roll. I find the result from each type of film is repeatable and consistent.

When I first tried cross processing I didn't really know why the results appeared to be inconsistent. I believed all the myths. First I thought it was how it was developed, then how it was exposed. A couple of years ago I started to examine the colour curves. I couldn't make any sense out of them so I thought it was cross talk between the RGB channels red getting into the green channel, blue into red, ... sort of like the current lomo fad (ducks) using redshft film to shift the colours into the yellow orange red spectrum. So I tied to build a colour profile that would correct this cross talk, no such luck. it wasn't until a lab scanned the cross processed as colour positives effectively supplying me with colour negatives (excuse the brain twisting double negatives).

Examining the colour negatives curves it was plain to see that the rgb curves had a much different shape then normal and the centre of symmetry was offset and different shaped for each of the rgb channels when compared to a normal colour negative curve.

What does this mean:

That colour is dependent on and intertwined with intensity.
If you remove this dependency you get consistent slide to slide, roll to roll results.

If you let a lab scan your film you will get highly inconsistent results that depend how their automated scanner treats a cross processed image when expecting a normal colour negative..

If you want a consistent results you have to adjust every image at either at the scanning stage and/or in post. Usually it's enough to correct white balance at 1/3, 2/3 and %100 white.

The goal is not to get perfect white balance, if that was the target then why bother cross processing.

Whats with the ABCD in the above polytch using the same negative Kodak 64T expired 1997.

A is lab scan not too bad except for the blown highlights and lack of shadow detail.

B is scanning as a colour negative, good details an colours but hard to get the highlights as tungsten balance film has a tendency to have a lot of red noise in the highlights, this can be used to good effect to give a gold look.

Kodak Ektachrome tungsten balanced film is my favourite film to crossprocess

C Scanned to give the expected digital cross processed look.

D is scanned as a colour positive and then colour reversed in post. This gives you the most control at the expense of extra time.
Note: Scans B,C and D were done on my Epson V500 scanner.

I cross process because I have cheap expired slide film and I like the surreal colour shifts even if it is at the expense of some colour bleed and lose of details. I really like Kodak Kodak Ektachrome tungsten balanced film is my favourite film to crossprocess because I can bring out golden highlights.

This expired Fuji Provia 100f is not too bad it still has a good DMAX - DMIN. But of course with all expired film it has lost some shadow detail. By now you should be able to guess which scan is the v500.

Cross processed Fuji Velvia 50 scanned as positive and then reversed by colour negation in post. Velvia 50 is very difficult to scan directly as a negative because the DMAX-DMIN (dynamic range) of the film is so high.

If you disagree with anything I have said then there is nothing to stop you from doing it your own way:)

If you are bored you can have a look at a slide show of my cross processed work on flickr

Faux Redscale

2009-08-13T09:42:00.006-04:00

Redscale is done by putting the roll of colour film into the canister with topside and backside reversed. Originally a DYI project Lomo is now selling the reverse film at a premium and Rolli is now manufacturing films with the filter layers reversed also at a premium.

The gel filters are reversed ordered hence the CMY channels are mixed to an approximation

C' = C + Y
M'= M + Y
Y'= .2Y

This example was done by

1) Change RGB positive to colour negative (don't use the grey scale negative).

2) Remix the RGB channels (I don't know it might be better mixing CMY channels

R' = .2R (Y on negative, Blue on positive)
G' = (G + R)/2 (M on negative, Green on positive)
B' = (B + R)/2 (C on negative, Red on positive)

3)Reverse the colour negative back to a positive (at this step you have a chance to change the colour gamma to bring out the yellows and greens)

3)Adjust contrast and brightness curves

If you are using film you could start with a colour negative and skip step 1.

This is my first attempt at faux redscale so it needs some tuning but overall I find real redscale has a creative yawn factor of 8 out of 10 so faux isn't going to be any better. Give me IR film with the filter built in now that would be creative!

Original Photo

Black & White Development In One Shot D76

2009-07-02T07:26:00.005-04:00

Mamiya C220; Film Tmax 400; shot at ISO 400; 12 minutes in the developer

I have been doing all my B&W developing with Kodak D76.

I keep my d76 in a mason jar in powder form and mix each batch fresh one shot use. Conventional wisdom is that the powder might settle into it's components but it doesn't (don't use the last table spoon). Unconventional wisdom from people that have been doing it for years. I also develop in 1:3 dilution so development time isn't so critical and I get good shadow detail without blowing highlights. Just beware of chemical dust when measuring out the powder.

First time you empty the package into the mason jar stir and shake and roll the powder in the jar then put it on the shelf, no need to shake each time you use .

Disclaimer: I am not an expert and I scan my film rather then print in the darkroom.

Recipe

See massive development table for times don't forget to adjust for temperature.

I use 1.5 level teaspoons (7.5ml) d76 fill to 420ml with water (distilled if you want to be fussy) Stir well let sit for a few minutes and stir again until all powder is completely dissolved. This makes up an 1:3 dilution stock solution. Be careful not to breath the dust from the powder. Only use it for one roll of film.

2 minute water presoak
xx minute development {shake well for the first 30 seconds (instead of shaking invert if possible) tap once on a hard surface to remove bubbles, thereafter every 3 minutes gently shake for a few seconds}
rinse with water stop 4 times
yy minute fix
rinse with water 4 times and soak in clear water for 3 minutes
dip in water a bit of rubbing alcohol and a few drops of hypo clear
hang to dry for at least 2 hours (the leader should feel dry and not tacky) I find weighting the bottom of the film keeps from coming out curled

My 2 favourite general purpose films are Kodak TMAX 100/400 and Fuji Neopan. So far this method has given consistent results with all films I have used.

Kodak TMAX needs loads of fixing time. You can drop a small piece of film that hasn't been in the developer and watch the fixer clear the film, Multiply the time to clear by 2 and that should be safe.

Mamiya C220; Film Fuji Neopan 400; shot at ISO 800; 20 minutes in the developer

Please go here for more details and my notes on developing B&W.

Using The V500 Scanner and HDR Techniques To Get The Most Out Of The Negative

2009-05-12T08:53:00.002-04:00

Example of a technique for scanning high dynamic range films. Plus a digital darkroom dodge and burn

I took this shot using my mamiya c220 with a 180mm lens. Film was TMAX 400 shot at 1/2 stop faster. As usual I screwed up the loading of the film into the developing spools so there are a few handling flaws.

- Developed for 12 minutes in 1:3 diluted D76.
- Scan 1 scanned to make sure highlight detail was retained
- Scan 2 was for shadow details both scans were 16 bit tiffs
- Used a program called enfuse and enfuse GUI to automatically blend both scans together. Enfuse by passes the HDR step going directly to the tone mapping but with more subtlety, less noise and artifacts.

It's hard to tell in small sized but the enfused image has rather harsh contrast in the area of the gravel.

Final step I blended Scan 1 and the enfused image together using a hand painted selective mask. With a bit more care I could tailor multiple selection masks to get the result exactly how I like it.

History of 158 Sterling Rd

Another Example using HDR Tools

Image on the left is 14 bit scanned with some brightness curve adjustments in Lightroom. Normally I would do some dodge and burn.

The image on the right is the same scan plus an additional 2 scans at different scanner exposure levels. The 3 scans were combined and then tone mapped using HDR (high dynamic range) software.

I used Fuji Neopan ISO 400 film if I had used ISO 100 film the dynamic range could have been increased significantly. I think this does demonstrate how much information is contained within a film negative. Scanners have both a programmable offset and gain so there is actually more information extracted from the negative when you scan 3 times rather then manipulate a single scan.

As tone mapping increases local contrast at the expense of flattening out the overall image blending together portions of both images might result in the best of both worlds and focus the composition a bit more. Actually took the HDR into Lightroom to adjust curves and the results are better then above.

There is a trick (an extra 2 steps) to do the same thing in colour without destroying the colours I'm not sure it's worth the trouble but ask me if you are interested.

Testing Epson V500 Scan of a 35mm Zeiss Contax IIIa Colour Negative

2009-05-07T06:58:00.013-04:00

Unlike my Canon 4400f the Epson V500 scanner is in focus, also the slide holder are much better and easier to use. It also works on medium format. The new scanner will allow me to do more B&W in the future. This shot is nothing special but the I choose it as it needed a lot of dodging and burning
Notice the camera information in the additional information.
Yes the v500 is excellent price performance wise. Unfortunately the scanner software does not provide exif information.
one program that make it easy to add exif is filmtagger
I did a test of my v500 on a resolution target and found the focus was good for about 800 lines per inch from 0 to .5mm plus the film thickness from the surface of the glass, going from 2400 to 4800 dpi made no real differences, kind of explains why you have to go to medium format to get a worth while size print. Also explains why a special film holder is not going to buy you much with the v500 optics and it's LED illumination.
This confirmed the results of wet scanning with the film right against the glass

My Current Work Flow

Clean everything with antistatic cloth
Set scanner to pro mode, 3600 DPI for 35mm and 2400 DPI for MF in 48 bit tiff output
Insert negatives If they are too curly use anti-glare glass instead of plastic holders.
Blow any dust off with a rocket blower (If you are rich use canned air).
Preview
Select all negatives and turn off sharpening and hit auto curve button to see what the epson software things it should look like
For each negative adjust curve so there is no clipping using the droppers to set white and black and gamma and colour balance. The epson software is so primitive here, that my main concern that there is no highlight clipping or shadow blocking. Do this for each colour as the over all may look good but one channel might not. The point here is not to get a perfect scan but to get all the information out of the negative.
Scan
Optional If you need more shadow or highlight details then do an additional scan to expand the contrast in the highlight or dark areas blend the images back together in post. I don't have to do this very often. In post I use Lightroom to correct the image and remove any dust.

Important because you have turned sharpening off you need 2 levels of sharpening one for the scan and one just before final output. Fortunately lightroom has pretty good control here. The first level of sharpening is important and should be matched to the grain size and the scanning DPI it is not there to sharpen edges.

For difficult colour balance cases check out this note of mine.
For scanning cross processed films
For scanning high dynamic range (mostly B&W) go here and here and maybe here.

A Two-Pass Approach to Sharpening

This is a good reference on resolution and scanning:

Homemade foamcore 8x10" Large Format Pinhole Camera

2007-12-23T13:58:00.001-05:00

First of 2 shots with my foam core 8x10" homemade camera. Shot with 20 year old Kodak litho ISO 8 film, 3.5 minute exposure. This was my entry into world pinhole day
www.pinholeday.org/
After some sage advice from experts on developing the litho film to get more midtone greys. I am experimenting with diluting the developer to try to get more tones out of the high contrast lithographic film. I think it is working even though this shot may not be the best example as I was shooting towards the bright part of the sky.

The tones worked out very well in this following photo.

The pinhole is approximately f310 with a 80 degree field of view making for a 2.5 to 4.5 minute daylight exposure.
The following is a longer over 10 minute exposure made late in the day under grey sky. The thing I like about a 10 minute exposure in a city is that people go about their business invisible to the eye of the camera. Except for the almost invisible people sitting still on the picnic table, middle right if you need directions. I should have pushed the development a bit longer to bring out more details in the dark areas.
The good thing about this ISO 8 litho film is that it can be developed under a safe light where you can view the film developing. Also it can be pushed or pulled many stops just by changing the developing time.

Infrared Converted Olympus C-4000 4M pixel P&S

2007-10-22T08:41:00.001-04:00

I am fascinated with all forms of imaging so for a while an infrared conversion of a point and shoot camera has been on my to do list. Early in October I was browsing Henry's Camera Surplus Store when I noticed that they had a 3meg pixel reconditioned Olympus point and shoot (P&S) on sale for $30. So I had my project. While not quite yet as the menu was only in Japanese and I don't understand the language. So back to Henry's to up grade to a 4 Mpixel C-4000 zoom had to lay out an additional $20.

Now the conversion. I wanted a camera that was sensitive enough to be handheld so I knew I had to replace the hot mirror (the little piece of glass in front of the sensor which reflects (filters out) most of the infrared and stops it reaching the sensor.

I researched some background on the disassembling of a c2000z here and here. As each camera is slightly different I had to play it by ear in a few places but it was mostly as advertised.

My original idea was to scrape the hot mirror coating off the filter. Unfortunately I used a abrasive that was too hard and I scratched the glass surface. I think next time it will work if I use steel wool (should be slightly softer then glass). So I had to order a custom cut watch crystal from a local watch repair place. Because the index of refraction of the mineral glass is higher then that of the original cover the thickness ordered was 2.5mm instead of the original 2.8mm.

In the mean while realizing the camera would be very myopic and could not focus to any where near infinity I put the camera back together without the glass sensor cover. What I did not realize was that how good the camera would be as a super macro camera. I am thinking of buying another one to use just in this mode.
Infrared Super Macro Myopic (no sensor cover glass)

I adapted my deep red infrared filter by lining the ring with foam weather stripping. I purchased the filter for a few dollars at the local camera show. I brought it to use on my 1953 Zeiss Contax IIIa.

Film Infrared

Finally one week later $25 poorer the watch crystal came in. Much easier taking the camera apart the second time. Now it has no trouble focusing and still works in macro mode. Total cost for the project including the filter was less then $90.
Infrared Photograph of a Photographer Taking a Photograph of The Grand Bend Sunset

All the above shot were hand held without using the flash. The camera for maximum image quality is usually set at ISO 100. For best results it is best to do an in camera custom white balance using a white sheet of paper. This might not be necessary for all filter types. My filter still lets in a good deal of dark red so the true infrared is in the blue and green channels, a custom white balance is necessary to remove the dominant sensitivity to visible light in the red channel.

You can go here to see a Flickr slide show of my infrared work.

Toronto Zombie Walk 2007 or Zombies Around the World United

2007-10-22T07:48:00.000-04:00

Zombies in Infrared

Some more in this 7MB PDF slide show.

Brash American 1956 Argus C44 versus Precise German 1952 Zeiss Ikon Contax IIIa

2007-02-08T09:34:00.001-05:00

My second vintage camera in as many months. This is a dangerous trend!

Brash American 1956 Argus C44 versus Precise German 1952 Zeiss Ikon Contax IIIa
Lens German f2.8 versus German Zeiss f1.5
flash x-sync versus strange cable
Maximum shutter speed 1/300 versus 1/1250 of a second
Minimum shutter speed 1/10 versus 1/1
Meter No versus Yes
Self timer No versus Yes
Rangefinder slight edge to the Zeiss
Smoothness of focus, film advance and speed clunky versus as smooth as silk
Distance scale for hyper focal length easy to read by looking down at camera versus badly placed hard to read scale.
Setting f stops easy because end of lens does not rotate versus difficult because end of lens with f stop rotates making the controls rotate around the camera also because of the smoothness of the focus unless you lock the focus (easy to do) changing f stop could affect focus position.
Sound of shutter starter pistol versus silencer
Ease of changing lens very difficult versus less difficult
Ease of loading film better design and built in takeup reel versus removable take up reel and clumsy loading partially outside the camera
Cost $55 versus $280
Fun factor Argus as the Zeiss is just too precision crafted to use as a fun camera
Reliability Zeiss still going strong but the Argus is dead may it RIP
Image Quality You be the judge but I suspect the legendary Zeiss f1.5 will win out

Comparison

Argus

Argus

Argus

Zeiss

Zeiss

Zeiss

Zeiss

New Years Resolution

2007-01-27T10:03:00.000-05:00

Last year's new year's resolution for photography was that "I would take a much larger number of photographs of people in all types of settings". I thing I have been very successful.

This year I gave my self possibly a harder to keep resolution. My resolution for 2007 is: "put more mood into my photographs."

First step in my half baked plan is to figure out what mood really is I don't mean the text book definition provided by our learned experts.

Foolish me my first thoughts are maybe the media makes a difference so when someone offered me a canon film body compatible with my lens for next to nothing I jumped at the chance. Back in the old days I shot holiday and travel photos without any skill or desire so I do know a bit about shooting film but not much.

Anyway I digress more about modern film cameras in a later blog.

My next thoughts was that maybe a vintage camera will give a vintage feel and mood to my shots. So I purchased this 1956 made in the USA Argus C44 range finder camera. The C3 the forefather of the C44 named the brick (shown in the Harry Potter Movies) sold 3 million copiess and established 35mm as the major film format, but the c3 has a cheap lens system and is quirky.

Besides the fact that people don't believe its 50 years old the 50mm f2.8 lens is not bad and the pictures it takes do seem to have a vintage feel maybe because of the lack of ease of use, you can be the judge. You can even with great difficulty swap lens in the field.

Three rolls later and its up for sale as I brought a new /old vintage camera a German Zeiss rangefinder this time and I am thinking two vintage cameras makes me a collector. But I am having second thoughts its too shinny maybe I will keep it.

So, so far I feel a vintage camera does alter the mood of the photographs. Only slightly because of the camera but more so because I am associating the experience using the old camera with the vintage periods of the 40s and 50s.

Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways to Deliver Itself - New York Times

2006-12-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

All we need is a standardized email authentication method. Right now the big commercial players (Yahoo MSN ...) don't want to work together to solve the problem they instead have developed incompatible solutions that are difficult to implement hence ineffective.

Harvest Time in Niagara Wine Country

2006-09-20T09:47:00.000-04:00

More Photos

This Photo Won Red at BLOGTO

2006-09-14T17:58:00.000-04:00

BlogTO

New Look

2006-09-09T14:47:00.000-04:00

The new look of my photographic "business" card.

St. Paul's Basilica Through the Organist's Rear View Mirror

2006-09-07T15:40:00.000-04:00

The skies were pure and the fields were green
And the sun was brighter than it's ever been
When I grew up with my best friend Kenny
We were close as any brothers than you ever knew
It was always summer and the future called
We were ready for adventures and we wanted them all
And there was so much left to dream
And so much time to make it real
But I can still recall the sting of all
The tears when he was gone
They said he crashed and burned
I know I'll never learn
Why any boy should die so young
We were racing, we were soldiers of fortune
We got in trouble but we sure got around
There are times I think I see him peeling out of the dark
I think he's right behind me now and he's gaining ground
But it was long ago and it was far away,
Oh God it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway,
Then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are ...

And when the sun descended and the night arose
I heard my father cursing everyone he knows
He was dangerous and drunk and defeated
And corroded by failure and envy and hate
There were endless winters and the dreams would freeze
Nowhere to hide and no leaves on the trees
And my father's eyes were blank
As he hit me again and again and again
I know I still believe he'd never let me leave,
I had to run away alone
So many threats and fears, so many wasted years
Before my life became my own
And though the nightmares should be over
Some of the terrors are still intact
I'll hear that ugly coarse and violent voice
And then he grabs me from behind
And then he pulls me back
But it was long ago and it was far away,
Oh God it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway,
Then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are ...

There was a beauty living on the edge of town
And she always put the top up and the hammer down
And she taught me everything I'll ever know
About the mystery and the muscle of love
The stars would glimmer and the moon would glow
I'm in the back seat with my Julie like a Romeo
And the signs along the highway all said,
Caution! Kids At Play!
Those were the rights of spring and we did everything
There was salvation every night
We got our dreams reborn and our upholstery torn
But everything we tried was right
She used her body just like a bandage,
She used my body just like a wound
I'll probably never know where she disappeared
But I can see her rising up out of the back seat now
Just like an angel rising up from a tomb
But it was long ago and it was far away,
Oh God it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway,
Then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are ...
... And objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are
She used her body just like a bandage,
She used my body just like a wound
I'll probably never know where she disappeared
But I can see her rising up out of the back seat now

Meat Loaf

Picture the Cure Auction in Aid of Cancer Research

2006-07-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

The second annual "Picture the Cure", a visual arts fundraiser to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society, will be held at the landmark Gladstone Hotel in Toronto on August 21.

The goal for this year is to raise at least $5,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society. Proceeds will go towards:

funding research on all types of cancer
offering comprehensive and credible information on cancer, risk reduction and treatment
providing support for people living with cancer, family members and friends

Join us for this one-evening event showcasing visual art by local and international artists, featuring:

silent auction with more than 100 matted and framed prints
live entertainment
door prizes/raffles
light fare

Get your tickets today!

Picture the Cure 2006
August 21 (Monday)
6pm-midnight
The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West
Toronto

Advance tickets: $10
At the door: $15

For more information, email: info [at] picturethecure.ca

My artist profile and submissions can be seen here

TPMG Photography Club: Gallery Exhibit

2005-11-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

"Photography / Community / Spirit"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 24, 2005

Canada's largest camera club, the TPMG Photography Club, is pleased to announce its first gallery exhibit - a diverse selection of more than 50 images from its members, covering a vast area of subjects and styles. (For a selection of images, see www.tpmg.ca)

"Photography / Community / Spirit" will run from December 20, 2005 to January 22, 2006, at the Art Square Gallery, 334 Dundas St. West, Toronto. An opening reception will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 20, from 6 - 9 p.m. The public and the media are welcome to attend.

The TPMG Photography Club is just over a year old - but it has grown remarkably over that time. With more than 650 members, it is now the largest photography club in the nation, and may well be one of the largest in the world.

The club's members come from a wide range of backgrounds, and represent a myriad of different approaches to the art of capturing images. Some are professional photographers, armed with the latest digital SLR cameras. The majority are keen amateurs, pursuing photography out of the sheer love of the hobby. One thing they have in common is a desire to share their enthusiasm with other like-minded camera buffs - something the TPMG allows them to do on a regular basis.

The TPMG Photography Club began life in the fall of 2004, with less than a dozen members. Since then, it has blossomed. It now holds weekly shooting events, monthly workshops and print swaps, and has done several out-of-town trips. Just in the last few months, the club has traveled as far afield as Algonquin Provincial Park and New York City, and many places in between.

Some two dozen photographers are contributing to "Photography / Community / Spirit" - for some of them, this will be their first chance to show their work to the larger photographic community, in a gallery setting.

The acronym TPMG reflects the group's origins as the Toronto Photography Meetup Group, part of the popular meetup.com website, where club members continue to exchange information and post announcements.

Multiple exposure of some of the work

Collage of 36 out of 58 entries

As initiator and one of the organizer doing my first and the club's first gallery exhibition has been less fun then I had hoped. But I know the end result will be worth the effort, the exhibition is going to be great.

The Beethoven Frieze play The Boat

2005-11-11T23:01:00.000-05:00

Friday night was my first attempt to shoot a band playing in Toronto at this old fish house converted to a nightclub. With very little stage lighting I switched between ISO 400 with flash and ISO 1600 (no flash) with 50mm f1.8 and 100mm f2.0 lens. I was fasinated by the lighting from the disco ball. The two shots below were done with a flash and a long exposure where after the flash fired I moved the camera in the direction of the disco ball. Of course the floating disco ball on the right was put in later.
More of my first attempt

More about the band The Beethoven Frieze

Smile

2005-10-31T17:42:00.000-05:00

I don't know why but viewing this slideshow makes me smile.

Sorry this slideshow uses javascript and is designed for screens 1024 or wider with a high bandwidth connection

Bath Tub Studio

2005-10-26T16:44:00.000-04:00

No money for fancy studio space, no money for gel filters or proper mood lighting? Do you have a bathtub but only use it as a shower? Then I have a deal for you just take one bathtub, some food coloring, a cheap Canadian Tire flood light and a waterproof bag for your camera and you t0 can produce a wonderful array of unique shots!

Disclaimer: Not responsible for leaky waterproof bags and the use of lighting that runs off 110/220 ac or explodes on contact with water!

Elora Ontario

2005-10-16T23:56:00.000-04:00

Mount Pleasant Cemetery

2005-10-15T11:20:00.000-04:00

The sign says it all, Canada's most famous cemetery.

My first fungas shoot using Canon 100 mm f2.0 prime and a 500D close up lens.

The rest of the pictures are here.

Toronto Zoo and Negative space challenge

2005-10-09T15:50:00.003-04:00

I am ashamed to say I haven't been to Toronto's zoo for many a year. It really is a fantastic zoo you can easily spend the whole day and not see everything, you can almost wear out a pair of shoes it covers so many acres. Its located 30 minutes by freeway from Younge and Bloor. I guess it needed to locate so far from downtown Toronto to be able to afford the land.

Anyway I jumped at a chance to join the TPMG photographic club on a Toronto Zoo photography event.

The challenge this week:

We were all taught to 'fill the frame' when it came to composition, how about we break that rule in a creative manner in this week's challenge entitled 'The Negative Space Challenge'.

Your mission this weekend is to use negative space within your composition to give emphasis on your chosen subject. Using the rule of thirds and having a keen eye to spot such images will be the real challenge as we’ll be operating opposite of how our mind works. ... A photoblog site that was recently pointed out to me that uses much of this technique is called "Round Here". It's a great collection of images and I'm sure that looking through the archives will spur your creativity and hopefully will inspire you to go out and try this challenge.

Ryan Tacay

My response:

Besides the bright colors I was trying to capture the precision which each snake wraps itself around the branch, a loop of its body centered as to make a cushioned headrest. The negative space surrounding the snake helps to define the precision of this shape.

The rest of the shots are here:

Not quite the zoo but at the after event dinner I had a chance to try out an idea I have had for sometime now. This shot was captured by having Adam (TPMG organizer) stand close to the screen of a projection TV.

Reflections of Toronto

2005-10-06T10:08:00.000-04:00

I am stll looking for that perfect mirror of the Toronto skyline.

That same day I road upfront in the subway train, shooting photos with my 100mm f2 lens at ISO 1600 through muddy glass!

Some more reflections of the Toronto skyline and Toronto underbelly

The Lion and the Butterfly

2005-10-03T00:19:00.000-04:00

From the time I was a child I have wanted a pair of stone lions guarding my driveway. Anyway I still don't have a driveway so much for city living.

Here are some photos I took on a TPMG outing to Niagara.

Color and Flight, Fright, Food & Sex

2005-09-30T10:39:00.000-04:00

Color vision in our primeval brain helped us to survive, to avoid getting eaten, to identify which animals and plants are edible and which are poisonous, we even used color to help find a suitable mate for reproduction.

No wonder from a young age we are attracted to bright colors. My theory is that when we have a choice of similar images to select from we are pulled to the brightest most colorful images first.

I have gathered a small amount of web statistic data that seem to prove out my rather simplistic theory.

If you want to be part of the experiment then please click-on and enlarge the image that you are first or most attracted to. Yes I know the results are skewed by the experimental setup.

The image on the left is by far the brightest and most colorful of the series. I was trying for a lomo color flash like effect. Darkened edges and saturated and brightened yellows and blues. The effect is not unpleasant but the basic content is the same in all 3 images.

The Framed Challenge

2005-09-25T19:51:00.000-04:00

Your mission this weekend is to photograph things that are framed by other elements in the picture. It is up to you to find your primary subject and make sure it is framed by its surroundings. This exercise will help you train your eye and ultimately better your composition skills.

As always there's restrictions to this challenge and they are as follows:

No Cropping - you have to find the framed subject before taking the picture, not afterwards on your computer screen.

Subject must be completely framed all around but not necessarily by the same object.

It's open themed so you can shoot whatever you want, so long as it's framed and follows the restrictions above...

Ryan Tacay

My response

The above photograph is all frames, five frames to be precise. This shot only works because I remembered the Flash Fill Challenge. The rest of the shoot

Little Italy low angle Challenge

2005-09-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

Sneaky Dees a Toronto Landmark

This weeks challenge was to take low or high angle shots but because my knees are shot most of my challenge shots were taken standing looking up high or sitting on the pavement. The location was Little Italy which is a strip of Italian restaurants on College St. West, the neighborhood now days is pretty ethnically still with a fair proportion of Italians. Best calamari at any TPMG event so far.

The picture above was taken after dinner and had to have the signs selectively darkened to show the color better. Rest of the Little Italy pictures

Canon 500D Close-up Lens

2005-09-12T22:46:00.000-04:00

Final after almost 2 weeks of waiting my Canon 500D close-up lens arrived from Hong Kong. I shouldn't complain the cost was much lower then I could have brought it locally. With the money I saved I also brought a RC1 remote and a lenspen. I broke even on the lenspen, later found out they are made in Canada so they should actually be less expensive here.

The 500D screws on to the end of my 100mm f2.0 prime lens just like a filter. What it does is to allow you to get much closer to your subject. My 100mm has a minimum focal length of 0.9m with the close-up lens I can move in closer with expanding the object size in the image by about 270%. There are negligible loses in resolution and f stop when compared to placing an extension on the body camera. Also unlike using an extension the auto-focus still works correctly. Downside it only works on one size of lens diameter in this case it is a 58mm.

The kit 18-55 mm lens allows you to get within .28 meters which is at the full 55m zoom actually about the same magnification as the 100mm with the 500D but the quality is not nearly as good and .28 mm is too close a working distance.

If you are using your built in flash remember to remove the lens hood to prevent it from casting a shadow on the subject.

I can't wait to get up and close with nature!

See a comparison with and without the 500D lens

Black Creek Pioneer Village - Symmetry / Flash Fill Challenge

2005-09-11T15:47:00.000-04:00

I missed last week's symmetry challenged so I combined it with this week's flash-fill challenge.

Two Halfs Make a Hole (mirror symmetry)

Mellow Yellow (angular symmetry)

This is the closest to multi-scale symmetry (related to fractals) Example: where magnified shape of the edge of the beach looks similar to the beach shoreline, looks similar to ... the coast line. This type of symmetry really interests me but my close up lens hadn't arrived yet so I could not capture it down to the degree I would have liked to get.

What Sheep Look At (mirror symmetry)

Harvest is Near (fractal symmetry)

Window Into the Past (obvious symmetry)

Some Pictures from this photographic shoot

Raw and City Night Shots

2005-09-06T12:06:00.000-04:00

With all the city lights this 100mm @ f2.2 ISO 200 with a 15 Second exposure appears to be shot at midday not as it was 1 hour after sunset. A plane flying by looks like a film scratch.

So the question of the day is why shoot raw? Some reasons not to shot raw: The file is at least 3 times the size. Your computer has to have more memory and power and disk space. Up to recently MS XP needed a special viewer. Extra steps are needed to process the photos. You need to learn more software. It usually at the end is changed to JPEG format anyway.

Up to last Sunday my laptop was just too old and too short of resources to use Raw. How old? NT OS and no USB port that's how old. Saturday evening it was working. But on Sunday morning the hard drive was going ping ping ping ... The usual fix of rebooting and rebooting just resulted in an system error. More drastic methods such as turning it over and shaking (gently) resulted in the screen blinking off and on. Oh well its only money and a new this time a desktop is almost ready to go. After spending 8 hours loading all my legal software and extra drivers, updating XP security flaws and dumping all those special promotional 6o day free software, then the system crashed while removing the after market firewall and using the XP firewall. I hate bloatware plus I hate MS even though I use it. Anyway the system self repaired by reloading itself over all the updated drivers and such. Shades of the 3 week ordeal of loading MS NT on a "NT compliant IBM laptop". Know only one thing not working and a call to Tech support who if I had followed their instructions would have resulted in the foot being healed and the leg being amputated( I have the log to prove it). Fortunately by not following all their instructions to the letter I removed another usless piece of the manufacturer's software and XP has been working reliably for 4 days now.

So now I have 500 meg of memory, 200 geg hard drive, two dvd/cd read/write drives, plus a cd read only, multiple usb and flash card readers ... and a NEC LCD 17" monitors that is so clear that I am looking at a color slide projector makes my old monitor seem like I was looking through coke bottles, not to mention stereo speakers that make noises for no apparent reason.

MS is actually fully supporting RAW in the future. Presently you can download Microsoft's Raw Image and Thumbnailer Viewer. So now I am ready for Raw. Oh yes had to go down to the Toronto Beaches to supplement my current collection of 4 Raw shots.

A bit of correction makes it look closer to sunset but we lose the fine details of the waves lapping on the rocks.

There is really only one reason to use Raw; its because its the purest form of image that your current camera electronics and software will allow you to record! From when the light hits the lens (maybe before if you are using flash) to when the image shows up on your desktop there are a series of compromises in the signal chain. After the lens the sensor is the first big compromise.

The sensor is the point where the light falling on a pixel is transformed into electrons and accumulated usually as a charge and then read out as a voltage or current. We all know that a image is broken down into pixels but at the sensor each pixel is actually 3 pixels one each with a red, green and blue filter (rgb). Just imagine if we could buy a 24 meg B&W rebel xt, well it would be easy if there were a demand! Because each pixel is broken up into 3 sub pixels the sensor loses 2/3 of the light following on it. Each pixel in the sensor does not have exactly the same sensitivity of it neigbour. Both reducing the noise and the variation of sensitivity between pixels are areas that sensor manufacturers are hard at work trying to improve. On long exposures you might notice a few bright pixels, these are caused by pixels that leak current.

The output from each sub pixel is accessed (read out) is amplified by variable gain amplifier and then converted to a digital number. This number has a precision of x = 10 to 14 bits with a noise level of plus or minus y bits. This noise level is roughly speaking the sum of sensor noise, readout noise, amplifier noise multiplied by the gain of the variable gain amplifier. The gain of the amplifier will increase with ISO setting thus increasing ISO will increases noise.

Patience I have almost got to the RAW part. In the mean time you read this much more complete discussion on RAW from The Luminous Landscape. The camera software takes those x bits per sub pixel and applies some corrections which only the camera software has control over. Next it takes the user selections which includes color conversions, sharpening and lastly output format.

If you select Raw you can bypass all these changes to you image it is important to turn off any spatial filtering (in Canon rebel XT select parameters menu item parameter 2 to turn off filtering) The complete image will now be saved without any additional lose of detail and color information.

If you select JPEG all sorts of spatial and color detail will be lost plus some unwanted artifacts will be added. With JPEG the 3 x bit sub pixal values will be remapped into 3 8-bit bytes using the selected RGB color space. The jpeg compression algorithm will futher mix up the image in subtle spatial ways. Once these spatial details are changed and colors remapped information is lost that can't be recovered!

If you are shooting for the web JPEG is fine but if the work is more important then use RAW that way you can process the images over and over again. As you get newer, better tool you will always have the highest quality original to work from. For anything other then web you should also always work in 48 bit color or 16 bit B&W. Noise filtering and sharpening should be the last step before saving the image in the color format that you are going to be using for printing. In that way you will never lose precision through arithmetic truncation on 24 bit color 8 bit B&W images.

Too bad I focused on the backdrop instead of the pier.

This motion blur unlike the images in previous posting does not give a feeling of motion but gives a ghosting effect. Too bad they are not in white.

As you can see in the image above I am still getting use to the work flow and tool set. I use Raw Shooters Essentials 2005 as my Raw processing package. I find its much easier to use and has a better work flow then Canon's Raw software that came with the camera. People in the know say its one of the best if not the best. Excellent package and so far its free! For the rest I use Picture Window Pro less expensive, not as sophisticated and not as complicated to learn as Photoshop, their website is a very good resource for all things digital photography and color profiles.

One last thing about Raw there has been a call to standardize Raw format, IMHO this will be slow coming, standardized Raw format is almost an oxymoron the whole Idead of Raw is to give the camera owner ability to access the image before it is polluted by layers of conversion software. They may end up standardizing part of raw format but not the manufacturer specific part.

Notes:

MS raw viewer has a problem with large tiff and some avi files, it locks them and will not unlock them so you can't move or edit them best to dis the tiff viewing function until the next version comes out O well its from MS next generation will be better I hope.

Google has a free program called Picasa which does a nice job of finding, html slide shows, backing up and organizing you photos

Toronto Brick Works

2005-08-30T13:08:00.000-04:00

Most of older Toronto was built from bricks out of this huge derelict factory located at the base of the Bayview extension in the Don Valley. Evergreen has big plans to redevelop the property while keeping the character of the structure. Some more of my Brickworks Photos

The Creative Colour Challenge

2005-08-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

This last Sunday the TPMG went to the CNE with a challenge for the day. As I replied to the posted challenge I choose to loosely interpret plaid as a color :) Some more of my photos shot for the challenge.

Challenge by: Ryan Tacay

"In collaboration with the upcoming event at the CNE this Sunday, I've put together another challenge for you guys to participate in. If you choose to accept, your mission this weekend is "The Creative Colour Challenge". In this challenge you will pick a colour of choice and during the event, hunt for shots that display your chosen colour only. Of course there are certain restrictions to make things a bit harder for you so, here are the rules:

1. You can only use one lens during this challenge - focal lengths, aperture etc. can change but you must choose your lens of choice and stick with it.

2. You have to fill your frame with at least 80% of your chosen colour. None of this, "I choose blue and the sky in the background is blue" stuff lol.

3. Whatever colour you pick, you must stick with for the duration of the day – no switching colours mid-way through or jumping between 2 colours just because it presents itself there at your convenience. The point is to move around and hunt so let's get going and work up an appetite 'cause you know we'll be eating again at the end of the day. ;)"

Frogging at the Chin Picnic

2005-08-27T08:38:00.000-04:00

Color is it the same for each of us?

2005-08-25T13:13:00.000-04:00

Do we all see colors the same way? The simple answer is no, otherwise why would some people dress in such awful colors. This is not to imply there is anything wrong with the colors of the clothes on this Wards Island clothesline. We also know that some people have various levels of color blindness making it difficult for them to differentiate between colors.

There is often confusion between what we know as color because we can see it with our eyes and the scientific description of color being the wavelength of light in the visible spectrum somewhere in between the short wavelength near-ultraviolet and long near-infrared wavelengths. If a prism was used to split up sunlight the resulting spectrum would look like the diagram below. If we had a light meter to measure the intensity of the light along the x-axis (= wavelength) we would have a spectrometer. The spectrum of the sun is wideband as the sun has light at all wavelengths. If you could look even closer at spectrum you would see very fine peaks and valleys of intensities this is called the fine line spectrum caused by some element of the sun emmitting light. Many sources of man made light but excluding the the good old incandescent light bulb are narrow band emitters having just a few narrow lines in their spectrum, devices such as lasers may have only one narrow line.

What does this have to do with how we see colors, actually very little. Unlike our ears where we can hear minute differences in frequency (1/wavelength), intensity (volume), in pronunciation and in enunciation (sound envelope) our eyes were not designed for such subtle distinction.

Eyes can only detect 3 wide overlapping frequency bands, our brain merges these inputs together to form our perception of color. These 3 bands as every artist knows are the reflective primary colors of red green blue (RGB). The eye can't distinguish between a yellow light and mixed red and green lights. But for the mixed red and green light a spectrum analyser would not measure any yellow! The red and green will not pass through a yellow while the true yellow wavelength light will pass right through. To our eye there are millions of ways to form the same shades of yellow. The brain interprets the colors that eye sees in ways that help us deal and make sense of the environment, the colors and color intensities are relative to the surrounding. A red box surrounded by blue will look to be a different shade when it is surrounds by green. Also the brain interprets colors seperate from outlines. We all know that the brain doesn't care if we color the box and go outside the lines, the box will still look red.

To end this long winded discussion IMHO there is no way that it is possible for each of us to see colors exactly the same way. Also as we don't reproduce colors using the real spectrum of light but instead use an imitation of our own visual system all media will look different from the original scene and also look different to each individual.

Color, Noise and ISO 1600

2005-08-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons I choose the Canon XT over other camera manufacturers was because of the lower noise levels at higher ISO numbers. Reviews even said the noise levels were similar but with a different look to the more expensive Canon models.

After my return ferry ride from Sunday's Wards Island trip I decided to take a few early evening shots with my 100mm f2.0 lens. To save the setup of the tripod and also because I had only used it a few times I set the ISO level to the maximum of 1600. In the picture above I was expecdting bright saturated colors but instead they were dull and slightly dirty in a way that could not be corrected with picture window pro (the software I normally use) so much so that I will have to go back and shoot it again with my tripod.

This is a 4x zoom of 4 parts of the top photo: notice the blotchiness of the colors not only in color intensity but in the actual color value. I can attribute some of it to using jpeginstead of raw but I doubt that does much more then smooth out noise spikes. I find the noise more annoying then the graininess of film. Film has most of the noise is uniformly distributed spatially with the noise being primary intensity rather then in color value. Increasing ISO number does not for the most part increase the sensitivity of image sensor it is really only increasing the amplification. Electronic noise causing a lower signal to noise ratio is still the biggest hurdle preventing image sensors from reaching the dynamic range of film. More about color in a future post.

Another Trolly Stop photo

Because color is not so important to the subject matter in this photo I think ISO 1600 is not too bad here.

The Wrong End of the Stick

2005-08-23T10:47:00.000-04:00

You ask why would I show a picture of the backside of a toad. The answer is simple its the best photo I could get. The toad like most wild animals would rather be invisible when it comes to humankind. Rather then put the creature into shock by prodding with my camera lens, I choose not to disturb it, let it believe its camouflage was successfully concealing it.

Captured in Motion

2005-08-22T19:26:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday I took the ferry over to Wards Island to take a few photos. One of my targets for the day was to capture the feeling of motion. Being of a scientific bent of mind. I asked myself the question: What gives a static photograph the impression of motion? As I am wont to do I will attempt to answer my own question by breaking down and classifying motion in photos into two classes. These two classes are not exclusive both could be combined in single photo. More of Sunday's pictures.

The first class is those photographs that show motion by having motion blur. While a normal photograph is a frozen moment in time. This type of photo has frozen not a single moment but several moments. The photo on the left is the first of my pinhole lens shots that I really like! It was taken at ISO 200 and with a 15 second exposure, it was also very windy so the bushs and tree branches were also in motion. I had to saturate the colors to make the path of the two bicyclists visible. I have subclassed this as a linear motion blur. Another example of linear blur is when the camera is panned to follow a high speed object such as a race car, in this case the race car is fixed in focus while the background has a linear blur.

The photo on the right was taken in a heavy gust of wind with my lens stopped right down to maximum and at ISO 100 for a 2 second exposure. This subclass of motion blur for lack of a better name I will call cyclic motion blur. Cyclic because the object when disturbed oscillates around its at rest point. For an instance at both extents of its travel it stops moving giving it the characteristic of a multiple exposure stop motion strobe effect.

The next class I call perceptual motion. Our brain is hardwired through genetics and through life's teachings that nature has laws; gravity pulls down an object, if an object is past it's center of gravity it will fall over, water can't be put in a pile... We know without thinking that the shirts in the picture are not static but are being blown by the wind. It is not in the nature of a shirt to hang in the way that the photo shows unless there is wind.

Our mind tells us these people are running not standing still. If they were standing still they would be falling over.

This last example of the cyclic motion blur subclass was of an CNE ride at night.

Ignorance - Dynamic Range - Flash Fill In

2005-08-20T08:24:00.000-04:00

I find one of the big differences of digital photography as compared to film is the reduced dynamic range of digital cameras. This image of a field bike repair was taken at the Leslie Spit. Notice the bright sunlight reflecting off the cement. I am not happy with the light and dark contrast in the above image.

If the image is too bright to the point that one or more of the color channels are clipped/pegged at its maximum value (which is 1024 for the canon rebel xt). Then areas that are brighter then this max value will lose all of the details. The image on the left has had the brightness increased by 25%.

On the other hand if the image is too dark then the dynamic range of image is reduced and fine detail is lost. Some of the detail can be brought back by digitally enhancing the image in a program like Photo Shop. This is especially true if you are working in raw mode. But fine detail is still lost and noise especially in the dark areas will be increasingly visible. There is a mathamatical basis beyond the scope of this post for this increase in noise and lose of detail.

The answer to getting better contrast is simple but too late for this time around. It was pointed out to me after the fact that I should have used flash fill-in to bring out the dark areas. I knew about flash fill-in but always thought it was used in lower light situations. In general I stay away from using the flash as I usually get glare off a sweating nose or forehead, but in bright sunlight glare shouldn't be a problem. Oh well another reason to buy a remote flash.

People

2005-08-19T17:10:00.000-04:00

One of my major goals in photography is to compose better travel pictures less like tourist snapshots. Looking back on the thousand or more travel pictures I have stored away in boxes I notice many of the scenic shots are quite impressive to my untrained eye but where are all the people? It might be because I am shy and don't want to impose but I very rarely take photos of people.

That has all changed once I joined the Toronto Photography Meetup Group (TPMG). At the TPMG events all the other members are a built in source of people who do not usually mind getting their pictures taken. I can already see improvements in my style and composition. Also I am no longer shy about imposing my camera on people in the street. Most of the time if I ask they are delighted, some are shy, some not.

This is one my earlier shots with my Rebel xt using the kit 18 - 55mm lens. I was lucky to catch the moment of realization that the video phone was not the only camera.

This newer picture was taken at dinner at the Taste of Danforth event. It was shot after dusk without a flash in "natural" patio light with a wide open 100mm f2.0 prime lens ISO 800. I leaned the camera on the table to steady the shot. I am happy with the background composition; the transition from the fence on one side to the hair and to tree bark on the other side.

Furry Objects in the Mirror May Appear in Focus

2005-08-18T11:33:00.000-04:00

After trying unsuccessfully to catch this little guy randomly scurrying about I relized my camera was in single shot mode and I had to release the button for each refocus. By the time I figured it out all I got was this shot minus a piece of tail. When taking pictures of furry animals I have not had much luck with the Canon autofocus function.

At the Chin Picnic I took several out-of-focus shots at the dog show but only this one where the dog was sitting still turned out. Most of the time I have the camera on center spot focus, this may be a mistake as the fur is too fine to allow a focus lock.

Ugh not another pet shot!

Edwards Gardens Texture Challenge

2005-08-14T16:49:00.000-04:00

The challenge this week for the Toronto Photography Meetup meetup was to try to capture texture. The location was Edwards Gardens, a semi-formal garden, wedding picture paradise. Texture, love nature and textures in nature equals fractals up close or far away should be easy.

The rest of the pictures are here.

I don't own a macro lens, The closest lens I have is the Canon kit lens 18-55mm from 0.9 feet to infinity. Adequate but a bit slow in focusing and needs a fair amount of light. My first problem was getting in close enough, the focus motor kept hunting. I had to change to manual focus and set the lens at minimum focus distance. To focus I moved in or out till the image in the Canon's tiny view screen seemed to be with my poor eyesight in focus. The next problem was the slight wind, with a depth of field of about 1/4" any swaying will put the object out of focus.

This shot was easy, but had to watch for saturation in the red. I like the way the last of the raindrops from the days rain beads up on the pedals.

Any way add a close up lens or a lens extension or a macro lens to my ever growing shopping list.

I brought my first Tripod for my pinhole camera experiments. I don't count my dirt cheap terrible to use mini-table top tripod as a real tripod. I brought a Velbon Sherpa 250.

Pluses are:

it is mostly metal
sturdy 3 - section legs
camera quick release
really like the smoothness of the head
The head can be mounted on the bottom of the tripod allowing some low angle to the ground shots
locking lever locks both rotational axis at the same time
aprox. $100 cdn

Neutral:

weight 2kg
closed length 60 cm
it dosn't have a handle or a carrying bag (The carrying bag from one of my cheap walmart folding chairs works perfectly)

As this my first tripod I am not the person to go for camera equipment reccomendations. But one of the photographers tryed it out, liked it and wrote down the part number.

Anyway back to the shoot. I used the tripod to take my first long exposure shot of moving water. As my lens only stops down to f22 it wasn't that long of a time. I find out that I need another filter, a neutral density filter ND for short. While I am at it I should add a polarizing filter or two to the shopping list.

At the prerequisite preshoot 2 hour lunch. I thought it would be interesting to make a salt and pepper, zen garden texture shot, to get a headstart on the challenge. After labouriously designing and building the garden using a fork and a swizzle stick as a rake the picture were less the then interesting. That is until a radio remote fired flash was but onto the table. So add a remote firing flash to the list.

Shopping wish list as a result of this outing:

close up lens or a lens extension or a macro lens
neutral density and polarising filters (for how many lenses as each Canon lense seems to need a different size
radio remote fired flash

Canon Rebel XT as a Pinhole Camera

2005-08-13T16:23:00.000-04:00

Why make a pinhole lense for a digital camera? Because I can. There is something interesting about adding the most simple primative glassless lense to one of the most complicated technologies.

More pictures and construction instructions.

Why can't I get this d&*m online spell checker to work?

Taste of Danforth Photo Challenge

2005-08-13T14:19:00.000-04:00

The challenge was to shoot the whole day using only a single prime lense. My weapon of choice was my 100mm f2.0 Canon lense.

The original Danforth was all about a Greek Neighbourhood, women dressed in black on the front porch crying, mourning the death of a family member. Fruit Markets the only stores in Toronto open 24 hours 364 days a year (closed for Christmas). Times have changed Asians for the most cases have taken over the fruit stores, now open more conservative hours. Many greek restaurants have moved up market greek cusine. The Danforth has become a stylish place to live. Many of the greek people have sold there houses replaced by the multi-cultural mix that is Toronto today.

More photos
Some of the more interesting photographs were taken after dusk using the camera handheld with no flash at ISO 800.

Kensington Market Pedestrian Sundays

2005-07-29T22:29:00.000-04:00

A few times a year the Kensington Market closes its streets to motor vehicles. As far as I am concerned this should be a permanent change. Normally the streets are so crowded that pedestrians and vehicles move at the same speed.

Kensington Market Photo Shoot

Toronto Islands with a Brand New Canon Rebel XT

2005-05-18T12:04:00.000-04:00

Some how my Olympus broke, don't ask how, ever since I was a kid I was good at taking things apart to try to fix them but not so good at getting them back together again. Anyway I replaced the Olympus with the Canon. So many buttons to learn, so many modes, so unclear instruction book to read, even real men have to try to read the occasional manual!

My first shoot with my brand new digital camera was on the Toronto Islands.A few of the better shots are from a later trip.

More pictures.

First Photo Shoot at the Necropolis

2005-04-18T09:37:00.000-04:00

This was my first photo shoot with the Toronto Photography Meetup Group The first time in my 53 years I have picked up my cameras as a hobby. I hope you will see improvments in my composition, subject matter and style as the timeline of this blog progresses.
More of my first shoot.

Back in university when I was traveling up in the Arctic as part as my work studies I brought a second hand Pentax SLR. After graduation I started work at a geophysical survey instrument company, see the world young man. I kept the camera for about 7 years and took many trays of slides in exotic off the tourist path, the Arctic, Iran, Russia ... While I was in Brazil as all imported goods at that time had 150% import duties I sold the Pentax for more then I paid for it.The problem with a camera when travelling was and still is that it is a target for thieves, you always have to watch them so for many years I was without a camera.

In 1995 while in Japan to give a speech on medical image processing I brought a Olympus L-10 SLR camera, the automatic type that has a built in 28-110 zoom lense. I used this camera to take typical business tourist pictures in countries in Europe and in Thailand.

Back a about 5 years I took a long beach bum trip to The Big Island of Hawaii. I wanted a compact waterproof camera that I could take every where including under the ocean. I brought a Minolta vectis weathermatic zoom PHS (Push Here Stupid) APS film camera. Great little camera small, lightweight, very rugged, the pictures are only slightly lower resolution then the Olympus. Too bad not many companies nowdays have the equipment to develop the APS film. A doubt the current crop of digital cameras would have stood the heat and acid moisture right next to the lava flow as it entered the ocean. Only the batteries couldn't stand the heat!