Legendary lens technique

Wikipedia says “photojournalists have a saying, “f/8 and be there”, meaning that being on the scene is more important than worrying about technical details.” Fuck me.

For a long time I was shooting exclusively with my 85 mm f/1.2 wide open because most of the time there just wasn’t enough light for me. My only option was to go for a really fast lens. And that meant that I had to have considerable space between me and the subject. Also, because you’re in low light and having a really fast lens means that AF is basically not working. So it was hard for me because I didn’t have enough time to focus, especially if the action happened really fast.

Obviously many other photographers had better cameras which in turn meant they would be in front of me shooting at higher ISO and with slower and wider lenses. Or they would flash or they would use the flash just for the AF-assist. And for a long time my “style” was dictated by that lens.

When I got a 10-22 mm f/3.5-4.5 suddenly I had the option to go really wide based on the fact that I can handhold at 1/20 @ 10mm. Still, time was a potential problem because now the really long exposure times could screw me over. You may think that there has to be very little space between you and the subject because of the FOV. However that’s not always true. Sometimes I was just in the wrong place but then I would just move to the side, lift my camera and get really nice 16mm (10mm on 40D) wide shots with the subject and the nice concave of 30+ photographers/cameramans/reporters. And because I had more liberty when it came to space I was choosing going really wide over going really fast most. And that became my new “style”. All because I was trying to use the amount of light as best as I could.

Just two examples. Lens = not only FOV, perspective, DOF and ISO but also light, time and space.

Tomorrow: ETTR.

Visual Impact

Think of making a photograph that has really strong visual impact. Try to make a photograph that has really strong visual impact. Make a photograph that has really strong visual impact. Realise that it has virtually no visual impact. Fail. Repeat. What the fu-loop?

The more often we do one thing the same way, the more difficult it becomes for us to think of new ways of doing it. What makes for really strong visual impact? Things that are beautiful, disgusting/unnerving, sexual, completely batshit or any combination of the above. That encompasses about everything in the world except things you should not be photographing. But wait, there’s one more thing. Legendary technique.

So what is going to help you thinking of new ways of doing stuff?

Knowing that you will hold on to your technique when you will have absolutely no f#$%(@! clue about what you want to do or how to do it. You will hold on so hard that they couldn’t separate you two with the jaws of life. Everybody does it all the time. Everybody. So spend time improving it. Make it legendary. Know your lenses, cameras, DOFs, colors, lights, angles, compositions, softwares, your everythings.

But oh, you might raise your finger at me and say, somebody said that technique is something that blah blah blah. Don’t care.

Slideshow a hundred thousand photographs at a tenth of a second per image. Now! Go! Do it!

Tomorrow: Legendary technique. Lenses.

 

Funny later

Panorama stitching rendering times. It’s kind of like rendering fractals. After 8 hours of mind-numbing nothing you catch something on the screen with the corner of your eyes and before you can go “what the fu-error?!” you’re in the middle of the street determined to buy something completely inedible from that supermarket that is just… wrong.

So long story short 8 hours ago I started rendering a 22169 px x 7550 px = 167 Mpx test panorama and now I want to become a living paradox by trying to eat something inedible.

On a side note, there are two kinds of funny. Funny that is funny “now” and funny that is funny “later”. Here’s an example of a funny “later” moment.

Imagine you’ve just starting working at a central newspaper. You have virtually no experience in press photography but you are certain your photography skills are solid. Won a few contests, gone to a few camps, been published a few times, that sort of stuff, and you want to prove to those newspaper assholes you’re good.  There’s a story that needs covering and downstairs there is a car and a pissed-off driver who wants you in his car like 15 minutes ago and it’s all great. And you get there, feeling like a million bucks and what happens after the third shot when you’re chimping for a nanosecond to check your histogram? No CF card… heartbreaking.

Tomorrow: Visual Impact. Proof of panoramic super-resolution HDR 1:1 macro wonderland concept, soon. I have the damn things, they just need to be stitched. 167 Mpx for a test shot is good. I’m maybe going to try someting like a 1 Gpx 1:1 macro. Maybe.

Movie Tuesdays – Lars von Trier’s Antichrist

You have a mouth and during your lifetime you will put things inside it. You will taste them, feel them with your tongue, chew them, swallow them or spit them out. If you are curious by nature you will always try new things, tasting sand when you’re 4, your boyfriend/girlfriend when you’re older, and some things you should just never put in your mouth to begin with.

This is a blog about photography so you can see where I am going with this. I’m talking about what you deliberately look at, about the constant search of things to see. Photographers need to do this. Everyone else should too.

Today, and every Tuesday from now on will be “Movie Tuesday” where it’s all about absolutely flawless, mesmerizing cinematography, about a visual experience you have to go through. I will tell you the name of a movie and you will NOT Google it, watch trailers of it, watch images of scenes from it (well, except for the ones I post here, obviously) or ask your friends about it. You will just watch it not knowing what you’re in for, visually. I’ll take care not to spoil anything for you. This week just watch Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.

Here’s a couple of images from the beginning of the movie. Still shots don’t do it justice. You’ll see why when you watch the damn movie.

Tomorrow I’ll return with: Proof of panoramic super-resolution HDR 1:1 macro wonderland concept.

Next Tuesday: Next movie. Belgian director. The name of the movie starts with a “J”. Yes. That one. Really.

Panoramic super-resolution HDR 1:1 macro wonderland

Let’s say it one more time. Panoramic super-resolution HDR 1:1 macro wonderland.

Why would you do that?

Well, let’s start with the panoramic part. If your intention is to go 1:1, same size on earth, same size on sensor, panoramic is the logical step forward if what you are photographing is bigger than your sensor. Well, there you have it. Yes, there are “new prototype macro photography robotic systems” that make gigapixel macro photography right now as I’m writing this but since the race for the gigapixel started now it’s all about “buying the experimental robot”. Granted, it might be impossible to take x thousand+ photographs by hand from the top a building with a 1000mm lens so fast (you, not the lens) that you can actually pull it off. However, I’ll try to get about 100 Mpx of 1:1 macro.

Super-resolution. Ah, nerd heaven.The funny thing is that it actually works. Sort of. Every photograph going into the panorama stitching software will start as a set of 4 which will be merged into one double sized super-resolution image. So quadruple the amount of photographs for twice the size, no noise and no anti-alias. Processing time? Up there in the hundreds of hours. As a side note on super-resolution you should look at it as just “double the size”. If you were to have a camera with twice the sensor size, yes that would also mean “double the size” but it would also mean that your Mpx/sensor size ratio would be different and that makes a whole world of a difference. So, for practical reasons, we’ll just say that no detail is actually infused into the image as a result of our super-res antics.

HDR is just HDR. Looks great if you don’t go overboard. Good HDR is HDR that people don’t realise is HDR. Or you could just show it to someone who doesn’t know what HDR is and how it looks like. Still might look really cheesy though.

Useful thing I have learned today: Do not studio-flash-nuke at point-blank range a snail that appears to be dead. He is actually hibernating. It pisses him off. Really. After that you’ll have to let him eat your potted plants just to make up for your mistake.

Tomorrow: Proof of panoramic super-resolution HDR 1:1 macro wonderland concept.

Show and tell your next best things

The thought of photographing what I like to look at and what I would like to see has been haunting me for the past few months. And trust me, there is a big difference between what you like to look at and what you point your camera at. Imagine Nachtwey and Mapplethorpe sharing a gallery. While the former is showing us horrors of war and things that he would like never to look at again the latter (also the gay one) is showing us naked men. You be the judge of whom is the honest photographer between those two keeping human nature in mind. It’s about as different as letting loose an overzealous rabid dog in a kindergarten. Of course some people may not take you seriously if you’re straying from the beaten path. However, back in the day when I spent my nights developing film that I shot that day nobody I knew was into photography, and Flickr awaited invention. That got me thinking. We’re all just showing our next best things.

Monolith

What I did to a soap film

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