Time of no photography

in Photography , Thursday, May 19, 2005

I haven't written anything here in the last two months basically because I have done practically no photography, and apart from trying to catch up on reading - slowly - Alain Briot's excellent Aesthetics and Photography series (buy the CD!) I haven't really done anything even related. The demands of a new job and moving to a new appartment in an unfamiliar region take their toll. However in the last couple of days I have been going around with my Ricoh GR1, just in case I stumble upon a quick opportunity. I've often considered that the GR1 was highly significant to me, as using it was the first time I really appreciated what a difference a really high quality lens could make. But for some reason it occured to me this morning that there might have been another factor: autofocus. The first autofocus SLR I ever owned was the Olympus E1, and the first thing I did with it was to work out how to enable the manual focus overide. I was quite fixated on the idea that I wanted to be in control. Later - much later - I came to realise that the problem of control was not so much over focus as over autofocus. I assumed, somehow, that autofocus "just works" and if I was getting bad results it was because it wasn't very good, and anyway was somehow cheating. Of course I was wrong, completely wrong. To use autofocus efficiently and creatively you have to understand it and practice, like any other tool. But maybe with the GR1 the fact that autofocus can only really be disabled in favour of "SNAP" mode, which sets up hyperfocal focusing, gave me the benefits of autofocus coupled with the excellent lens. Ironically I did consider buying the GR1v, which includes a kind of manual focus mode. Whatever, it is nice to rediscover this camera. It is the only one I own which can really be taken anywhere for opportunistic shooting. I have an "ancient" Olympus C4040 (ancient despite being 3 or 4 years younger than the GR1), but it is relatively bulky and the handling, especially compared to the GR1, is horrible, So all I need now is to find somewhere I can still get slide film developed. [Posted from the scene with hblogger 2.0]

RAW Converter Bonanza

in Olympus E-System , Monday, April 18, 2005

Hot on the heels of the announcement of Photoshop CS2 with its new separate RAW processing features, came the "release candidate" of CaptureOne Pro 3.7, and Olympus Studio 1.3. Studio 1.3 comes with a lot of interesting new features and options, so I thought it would be interesting to try it. I'm not really sure what all the conversion engine options are for. If they have pros & cons for different types of images, why not tell us ? But no, Olympus remains inscrutable on this point. To me it seems more a case of "we can't decide, let the user work it out", or simply traditional old "more options os better", however useless they are. Anywaa, one major improvement over Studio 1.2 is that the histogram works again, so at least it is usable. One MAJOR flaw, but really, really bad news, is that 16-bit TIFFs are still created with no EXIF data. What are they thinking of ? This makes cataloging a real headache, and for that reason alone more or kills Studio stone dead as a professional tool. However, if the quality is there - and many people swear by Studio's quality - it might be worth the pain, at least sometimes. So I decided to run a little test, on an image I took recently of a brown bear at the Goldau wild animal park. Here below is the full image (the Studio version in fact). The photo was taken using the Zuiko 50-200mm zoom, handheld, at ISO 100. I processed the image in C1PRO v3.7 and Studio 1.3 using default settings as far as possible, with no sharpening, no exposure compensation, no noise removal. In both cases I output to AdobeRGB. Studio automatically compresses the data, it seems, if you compare the before and after histograms. C1 doesn't, at least not by default, and this accounts for the slightly brighter default result - it is trivial to compensate either way. In fact in both cases outputting to ProPhoto could have advantages, then compressing in Photoshop. In Studio I used the "Advanced High Function" engine (well, why not ?) and left the saturation setting at CS2, sharpening at -3. To be honest the differences to my eyes are negligible. Studio's internal sharpening seems quite good, but in any case leaving sharpening off and using Photokit Sharpener looks better to me. Studio's workflow remains very poor, and even on a Dual 2.5Ghz G5 Mac, it isn't particularly speedy. Studio gets the job done, and produces great quality, but it isn't worth the upgrade from Viewer. C1 gives results which are just as detailed (I really do not see this "plasticky" look some complain about), has far better workflow, gives much more control over the image, and doesn't throw away EXIF data. Bring on Photoshop CS2... 1:1 crop of Studio 1.3 processed image 1:1 crop of C1 v3.7 processed image

The Silk Road by Alessandra Meniconzi

in Book Reviews , Tuesday, April 12, 2005

The Silk Road is the title of a book recently published by Swiss traveller and photographer Alessandra Meniconzi. I've wanted to post on a review of this for some weeks, but just couldn't find time to do it...so this mini-review will have to do for now.



Bringing together photographs taken during a number of voyages through Western, Central and Eastern Asia, the book retraces the network of routes collectively known as the fabled "Silk Road".

This collection really is something quite out of the ordinary. The photographs of landscapes and people (and The Silk Road is very much about people) are simply radiant. Some good examples of her work from the Himalaya are here. The way in which the light is captured in these photos is difficult to express in words, as so much emotion is conveyed through them. At nearly 250 pages, this is a substantial piece of work. The book is beautifully presented, and a real pleasure to explore. I guess my favourite part is the section on Tajakistan - a practically unheard of Central Asian republic - but there are gems everywhere.

Meniconzi travelled frequently by mountain bike, well off the beaten track, and took the time to become familiar to and with the people of the regions she travelled through. This is no voyeuristic collection, no "click and run" operation, but a work which is full of empathy for the people it represents.

It is telling that she has little time for discussion of the apparatus of photography, revealing only that she uses just a few lenses and a basic camera. Quite a lesson for those of us who are so sure that a better camera and a €10000 lens would make us geniuses.

You can find out more about Alessandra Meniconzi at her web site, as well as information on ordering the book.

I think it is fairly clear that I highly recommend it!

Go to meet thy Maker

in Olympus E-System , Sunday, April 03, 2005

Well my E-1 went on a ride to Olympus Switzerland last Thursday. Hopefully it will return soon, with a new rubber coating for the grip, which as seems to be common with E-1s, was coming loose. I also asked them to look at the card compartment door which is sometimes a bit stiff. I delivered it myself to Olympus in Volketswil. I doubt that the extremely correct Swiss German receptionist will forget me in a hurry, as somehow I slipped and more or less hurled the box at her. Despite my profuse and embarrassed apologies, she was not amused...

Helmut Hirler - Iceland

in Book Reviews , Wednesday, March 30, 2005

I discovered this book by the German landscape photographer Helmut Hirler in Zürich. It is one of a small series of very nicely produced panoramic photography books, but this one is really quite different: black & white, mainly infrared (possibly all) panoramas of Icelandic landscapes. With a terrain as colourful as Iceland, black & white is not immediately obvious, but these really work.



The book itself is beautifully presented, a cloth bound volume held in a slipcase. Printing quality is excellent. Hirler, who seems to have quite a strong reputation in Europe, appears to have used a Linhof 617 camera, although technical details are non-existent (not that this matters). He has a feature page at Linhof, which would tend to confirm this assumption.

There are some gorgeous images in this book, especially of the many impressive Icelandic waterfalls. A particularly striking image is an ethereal, other worldly shot of the settlement at Glaumbær, and another favourite is the rivulets and falls at Hraunfossar. Everywhere his treatment is delicate, with a strong eye for composition, and without any sign of the tendency towards gloom and despondency all too often apparently beloved by germanic artists.

The only criticism I do have is that the sequence of images at Dyrhólaey is a bit dull at times, and overlong, although one photo of the sea swirling around a basalt stack is quite magical.

All in all this is a very unusual treatment of a subject that is becoming more and more popular, and it deserves a wider audience.

It doesn't seem so easy to find in the anglophile part of the Internet, but it can be found on the German Amazon site.

"Iceland" is published by Edition Panorama, ISBN 3-89823-189-5