Photography – Page 37 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Sparkles

I am a magpie at heart – I love shiny objects. As a kid, I used to drive my mother nuts because I liked rhinestone buttons on my dresses and gaudy costume jewelry. These days, I am more conservative, or at least demonstrate better taste, than I did when I was five years old as far as clothing. But, I am still irresistibly drawn to sparkles – splashes in water – spider webs in the morning light – flickery sun in dark shadow.

Today, I returned to the local botanical gardens. Autumn is settling in. The sky has a different quality of blue, the light is cool and intense. The scent of pine needles rises up with the heat of the day. With me came my Lumix ZS5, and the Canon QL17 GIII. I took a few pictures with the Canon, and oodles with the Lumix. This is the luxury of digital – 60 pictures without the cost for processing.

The path I took this morning was one I haven’t taken before. I always head uphill for some reason, but today I deliberately went downhill. Here, the garden is more of a woodland, with large California oaks mixed in with other native plants. The colors are more brown and green in the woodland area of the garden than up the hill, but there are little bright spots here and there of sunshine and shadow, along with lingering flowers and autumnal berries.

What I looked for today, very deliberately, was the contrast of light and dark, of sun and shadow. I stopped the camera down to -1/3 EV, to keep the camera from making all the light areas washed out. In the shadows, this creates a bit of drama with contrast. Compositional elements were a bit more studiously considered as well, such as movement of a tree branch across the picture, a pathway, a stairway. Some shots I framed with foliage, others I attempted to focus on a specific part, such as a tree leaf, and open the f/stop as much as possible with this camera (which is not more than f/3.3 manual), to blur out the background.

The set on Flickr for today contains images as they came from the camera. Most of them need some help, I think, but a few of the ones of the oaks are interesting and successful as they stand, I think. The one below has been cropped.

I am always in conflict about post-processing images, yet it has been done since the early days of photography. Images have been manipulated by time and f/stop, airbrushing out of unwanted characters who have lost political importance, handpainting. Processing of film images also influences the final product.

Why should digital images be any different?

Arrival

Canon Canonet QL17 GIII with Canonlite Flash

Fresh from Sunday night’s purchase from Bob Wood (mercantile47 on eBay), this really clean Canonet QL17 GIII arrived in today’s post. His pictures are really beautiful – the camera looks just like its photos. In real life, the camera appears to have been well treated, seems to work perfectly, and is totally confusing! A manual camera? Setting up film, f stops, shutter speeds? Add to that getting to understand how a rangefinder lens works and actually having the visual acuity to see it? Yeah, it really is a mind tweaker. I get digital really well, but this is an altogether new kettle of fish. I am really eager to see my first roll of film, which I expect will be total crap because I am lost, there could be light leaks, there will definitely be user errors.

Resurrection

The other day my photo buddy and I got together. He just acquired a Nikon D200 DSLR for a song, and in a fit of generosity (as well as a ploy to convert me to a Nikon fan!), has offered me the use of his Nikon D70 DSLR for play. Isn’t that great? And I admit, I am really excited about the idea of being able to use a DSLR with interchangeable lenses. All my digital cameras have had fixed lenses.

I’ve also been on the hunt for a rangefinder camera as I have never used one, and am looking at several on eBay. I don’t want to spend a fortune, so I have been doing a lot of research. It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn while looking! There are so many rangefinder cameras out there – some more popular than others, some with an interesting history, some for pennies, others for thousands of dollars. To me, what is the most fascinating idea of all, is their supposed portability compared to SLRs. I’m no expert, but my impression is that the plane of focus can be very narrow, and this gives pictures taken with rangefinders some of their charm – blurred foreground and distance, with razor sharp images in the middle. As well as this, brilliantly detailed landscapes.

And if I do this – I need to get the pictures developed. My scanner has an attachment for digitizing film negatives. But! I have no negatives that I can find to try it. Solution? Dig out my old, and only, SLR – a Canon A-1.

Tragically, I never really learned to use this camera. My cheapskate side hates spending thousands of dollars on snapshots which I don’t like. However, with the idea of being able to digitize snapshots, I decided to pull it off the shelf where it has been sitting for too many years. It has seen better days. It has been dropped fairly hard, to the point the enamel is down to the metal underbody, and the ISO dial is reluctant to move. The lens has a haze filter on it, but the entire camera was swathed in dust. The lens itself was jammed, and a button to release it from “A” for the automatic modes popped out when I tried to move the lens to an F stop.

As you can see, this poor thing has been really neglected. I got most of the dust off, but this shows you just how much more needs to be done. Despite this, I went out and got a new battery and the only package of film (Fuji 400 Superia) in the drugstore, downloaded and printed out a manual, which I don’t think I ever even read when I got this camera nearly 30 years ago. I read the manual front to back.

I pulled out my tripod and set up a few shots, using only the manual elements to do some close-ups of an orchid in the yard, and the dying hop plant. I tried to do shots with the largest F stop – f/3.5 with the 28 mm macro, and some with f/11 for detail and depth. I have no idea how they will turn out, but recorded them in a notebook. It will be interesting to see what they look like. Hopefully not like snapshots!

It’s pretty amusing to think I used my digital camera (Lumix DMC ZS5) to take these pictures. If I find myself wanting to use this Canon, we are very fortunate to have a camera repair place here in town that has an excellent reputation.

Time was when one used to be able to buy film in drugstores and grocery stores, but not now. Online seems to be the place, and camera stores. The varieties are still myriad, but local availability has dwindled. Forget having black and white processed at a local lab – it needs to be sent out while color processing stays somewhat local. It may be worthwhile looking into processing at home or finding a local members-only lab, but that is a bit down the line, and only if I get into it.

How times have changed!

Singing the Blues

Having become a bit more serious about photography, doing “themes” seems to be a good way to focus on something, rather than randomly shooting all and anything. And just getting out with the conscious intent to take a picture in theme is proving to be a challenge, a bit of a laugh, as well as tapping into what I would consider as design elements in a painting now being used in a sentence.

The set to the right, What Color is Blue?, are some of the ones I did yesterday morning in a local park. None have been retouched, but a few have been cropped. The most interesting thing to note was how the color shifted with a longer exposure. The benches are a rather nice blue, very clear, but become more turquoise with more light exposure, either with the f-stop or the time.

The above photo is a detail of one of the bench shots I did. I rather like the composition of lines in different directions. However, dead center is a bit of blob between the blue uprights . . . I will try to remove this with some software and see the results. No wonder people edit digital pictures! They can become much more interesting when cleaned up a bit.

Pushing Up Daisies

Below is an image of a daisy taken awhile ago alongside our house. It’s rather bland. Below is the same image, with post-processing done in Photoscape. You can see that under the top daisy, the flower’s receptacle has become nearly pure black, like a puzzle piece. Even in the original picture, it is a bit dark, and consequently distracting to the eye.

Neither picture above is especially spectacular, but the post-processing certainly messed up the final image. Below are two more results, the first which is sharpened only from the original. The receptacle is a bit more defined, with its ridges a bit more clear, but not darker. The second one uses the “bloom” feature (which I don’t understand – I’m a novice in post-production photography software) in combination with the sharpening. I think the result is a little better. The whiteness of the petals is more apparent. I also used the mole removal feature to get rid of the black spot on the foreground daisy.

One thing I have a very hard time with visually is contrast – adjacent areas and their shades of grey – when I work in color. Whenever possible, I try to take photos of any artwork I am doing to check out the contrast. High contrast has few shades of grey; low contrast has several. The degree of density in each, how dark or light, can determine the “pop” in a picture. In painting, this can cause items to retreat to the background, or move forward. This is what our mind uses to create depth and dimension in a photograph or a painting.

This next photo is the last one above, converted to greyscale. It is a soft photo, not especially dramatic. There are good areas of contrast, but the petals are lost.

Daisies in Greyscale after Sharpening and Blooming in Color

This next photo is the greyscale photo further sharpened, and the contrast increased. The petals are more apparent.

Greyscale Daisies with More Sharpening and Contrast

Finally, here are chorus lines of the photos in a row. It may be worthwhile to look at it, and thus decide which photo is ultimately the best. I set the lines up so they would span the same space, but in doing so, some of the image quality is degraded. What I am looking for is the contrast and clarity in the final image of the petals, the inside yellow part (stamens and pistils? I forget my flower sex!).

Ultimately, I am not sure about any of these photos. I think the viewer needs to determine it. Liking or disliking a photo is a personal thing. I do think, in general, the composition is rather nice, but in retrospect, I should have taken the photo from a more superior perspective, looking into the foremost daisy a bit more, but not by much. Also, to cut down on “busyness,” it would have been a good idea to remove the dropped petal on the most distant daisy, the one up against the wall. If I knew how to remove it with software, I would try it. There is some movement in the photo. The center of the daisy on the left may be a distraction, just as the receptacle on the upper daisy may be too dark.

Good, bad? I need to step back to reconsider! Too close, too much, a bit overwhelming. Later I can make a decision.

One thing which does help is turning one’s work upside down.The same can apply to a photo. Maybe I am more successful than I think, as I really like the movement in this upside down image. And, in reconsidering, I like the one of the colored daisies only sharpened a bit, with the black spot removed, the best.