Nikon D800.
There are lots of people talking today about the new Nikon D800. A 36 megapixel monster that has just entered the DSLR game.
The problem with cramming that many pixels onto a sensor is that it takes it’s toll on low light performance and digital noise. A lot of people seem to be pretty upset at this move by Nikon, but a lot of other people, myself included, are very excited (even though I am not a Nikon guy). It all comes down to what kind of work you shoot. Do you need something with low light performance? Or do you shoot controlled studio shots and landscapes? Personally I don’t care much about low light performance, and I will take a extra megapixels over low light performance, so as long as the images are noise free at ISO 100. Then again I am a landscape photographer and resolution is a big deal, especially when you love prints like me and you like to print things BIG. I just wish all the low light and sport shooters out there would stop being prima donnas and realize that other photographers have different needs. The fact is I seldom take my camera off of ISO 100.
The one major drawback to a camera with this amount of resolution is that it will require a lot from your lenses. Chances are with this camera your lenses will be the limiting factor with how much detail you can capture. If you have a soft crappy lens you will just be recording 36 megapixels of blur.
The other bad thing about this is that I suddenly feel woefully behind the times with my 8mp camera. Yes I know. Uck. It was great when I bought it, and for a few years it was fine, and then I got kind of out of photography, and when I suddenly jumped back in everyone was shooting with 18mp or 24mp cameras. I wouldn’t mind, except it is starting to really limit what I can do with my prints. I love big prints and the biggest I dare print with my camera is a 12X18. A lot of people would go bigger, but I want to be able to walk right up to the picture and see all the tiny little details in my prints. I guess it’s time to upgrade! Hey honey……..
The Photography Journey.
Okay maybe that is a bit misleading since it doesn’t exist yet, but I have decided to create a separate site for my photography. I feel like it will be best to keep my 3D and professional work separate from my photography. That said I think I will continue to keep my blog posts about photography and related subject matter on this site. I think I want my photography site to be just photos, not random ramblings and rants about whatever has popped into my head, but a site focused solely on my images. I think it will feel more professional that way. So as soon as the site is up and I have a web address for it I will post it here on this site, and probably link to it on my homepage.
That said it’s crazy how I am suddenly obsessed with photography again. It’s been an interesting journey. I remember when I Was in Japan for a few years and digital was just starting to come around. I remember going into camera shops there and drooling over the images and equipment. At the time however it was not an option to pursue. Later after coming back to Utah I purchased my first camera and started taking pictures. It quickly became an obsession and for a few years I thought I wanted to pursue it as a career. Long story short, I discovered 3D, discovered I was pretty good at it, and my career just sort of fell into place. So 3D took over my life and photography kind of fell to the wayside for 3-4 years. Suddenly this past 6 months it came back with a vengeance, almost as if it had been building up inside of me all that time, and now it’s worse then ever! Now I am suddenly thinking of trying to seriously do something with it.
It’s hard though because I have a successful and fairly lucrative career going with my 3D, and while I do love 3D, I don’t think it is my true passion. Nothing makes me feel quite so alive and excited as being on the top of a mountain when the light is just right and being able to capture that moment with my camera, that excited me in a way that 3D just doesn’t. For now however I will simply dream of doing that for a living and try to get out as often as I can.
Sunday morning I captured this shot down at the lake, it was one of the more incredible sunrises I have seen. It’s funny that most people pack up their cameras when winter hits, but in reality I find winter to be one of the best times to take pictures, I have seen more beautiful light in the winter then I ever have in the summer.
The End Of Creativity.
I was listening to a couple of people talk today about how they felt it was getting harder and harder to create unique images with their photography. They blamed the prevalence of digital photography and the ease at which someone can get into photography. They claimed that we are so inundated with so many images these days, that nothing is unique, it’s a barrage of popular landmarks and cliche sunsets.
I disagree. This is akin to saying all the songs have been written. I have always marveled at how there is in infinite variety of music. There are only so many notes in a musical scale, yet they can be combined in an infinite amount of ways, with an almost infinite amount of sounds, instruments, voices and styles. The result is that there isn’t a limit on the variety or abundance of music. I feel the same applies to photography.
First, every unique place is far form being captures. Sure there are iconic landmarks that you see over and over again (delicate arch for example) but I have been in the southwest dessert a lot, and I can tell you no one has ever even come close to exploring all of the land down there.
Second, even with a place that has been photographed a thousand times, the light and seasons, and quality of the picture will be in constant flux. There is always going to be a unique moment to capture, you just have to be there at the right time.
Third, even with 50 photographers on the same beach at the same time, they are all going to capture unique images. At any given place there is an almost infinite amount of compositions available.
Put those three together and I would say that we have to even touch the possibilities that this amazing planet has. so get out there, keep shooting, and keep it real.
16 bit and 32 bit explained.
I am always amazed how many people don’t understand the difference between 8, 16 and 32 bit color. Here is a quick explanation. 8bit is your standard bit depth for an image. It means that you have 0-255 values for each of the color channels, red, green, and blue. This results
When we jump up to 16bit there are extra gradations between each of those values, so between 0-1, or between 200-201 there are a bunch of extra values, so instead of simply 256 different shades of blue you now have tens of thousands. This theoretically leads to more natural color gradations, although the effect is invisible or very noticeable depending on the image.
Here is a good way to explain it. Imagine you have a 500X500 pixel image and you want a gradient stretching from the top to the bottom. Now imagine that this gradient is going from completely black (RGB 0,0,0) to a very dark gray (RGB 20,20,20) With an 8 bit image you can only have 20 steps of darkness between the two number, when those 20 steps are stretched out over 500 pixels you start to see the noticeable steps between each of the values, resulting in banding. Now if you did this with a 16 bit file, there would be many steps of darkness between each of those values, and you would end up with a smooth gradient. Theoretically, depending on if you are using a good monitor or not.
It gets a little bit confusing for some people however because in Photoshop, even when working in a 16bit color depth the color picker is still only 8bit, so you won’t see all of those extra gradations when sampling colors, but they are there. If you are working in another application, such as After Effects, you can properly sample all of the extra color depth.
Now 32bit is a whole different beast. It is the same concept as a 16bit file, except now instead of the range of 0-255 you have values much brighter than 255, and much darker than 0, this is what is termed as an HDR file. They are incredibly useful in 3D work for lighting and reflection information.
Regardless of if you will be converting the final image to 8bit for print or web output, I think it is extremely beneficial to work in 16bit color depth. Having the extra color information in the file allows you to do heavy manipulation on an image without the image falling apart as easily as when working with an 8bit file. The benefit might be negligible in some situations, but there really isn’t a reason not to work in 16 bit depth. unless you need one of the Photoshop filters that isn’t available with 16bit, that is almost never the case for me. Someday, maybe by the year 2050 Photoshop will finally fully support 16bit and 32bit color depth.
New Lens, Duraplaq, And Velvet Paper.
I talked a while ago about my plans to purchase a high end inkjet printer for printing my own work. Those plans have changed. I finally found a place online that will print on Moab Somerset Velvet paper, so I no longer feel the need to do it myself. As it turns out I was searching for the wrong thing that whole time, what I needed to be searching for was “fine art giclée printing” not photo printing. I am so excited to start printing on this paper, and I hope that I will finally be happy with my prints.
In addition to printing on this awesome paper I have also rediscovered Duraplaq. Duraplaq is a mounting process for prints. They take your print and dry mount it on a piece of wood, bevel and sand the edges, and then coat it with a variety of finishes. I first saw a duraplaq about 6 years ago in an art gallery on the Oregon coast. I remember being stunned by how it looked, almost as if the photo was printed directly onto the wood. There are different finishing options, but what I remember really loving was that it wasn’t glossy, you could view a very large image say a 40X60, without having any part of the image obscured by a glossy highlight. (Have I mentioned how much I hate glossy prints?) Overall it provides a beautiful, minimalistic, and archival quality way of displaying your work. It’s also half the cost of a traditional matte/frame/glass job.
One additional benefit of the duraplaq is that the print lays completely and perfectly flat on the wood. I have yet to see a company do a perfect job with mounting my prints on matboard (perhaps I have gone to the wrong labs), there is always this subtle wrinkly irregularity to the surface that drives me crazy. Yes I am a perfectionist.
Since I no longer felt the need to purchase an inkjet printer, I now had the funds for a new camera lens. I have always been disappointed with Canon’s wide angle lineup, it seems the only way to get a really sharp wide angle lens from Canon is to buy the 24mm tilt shift, which runs about 2100 dollars, out of my range at the moment. After searching around for a while I started hearing a lot about the Tokina 11-16 f2.8. After reading some reviews I decided this was the lens for me. It is sharp, as in beats the Canon 10-22 hands down, especially in the corners and on the edges, it has a 2.8 aperture (which isn’t a big deal for landscapes, but still nice), and it is built like a tank. I have ordered my copy and am excited to start trying it out. I am also very excited to finally have a true ultra wide angle lens again, ever since switching to digital, 17mm has been my widest lens, and frankly it just doesn’t cut it sometimes. Now I just need to find time to go shoot!
Instagram and Photography Is Back.
I am not sure how many more overly color corrected, faux retro styled pictures I can take. Please someone go back in time and un-invent instagram. I know retro has been all the rage for a while now, but just because it’s tone mapped to make it look retro doesn’t make it good. It’s like lens flare filters all over again.
That being said I think it’s safe to say photography is back for me. I’ve been on a break for 2-3 years now, but I am starting to feel the itch again. A month ago as the fall leaves were changing we had one of those wonderfully early snow storms. The next day I took the morning off and went up into the mountains to shoot. It was amazing, there was no one up there, I only saw about 4 people the entire 3 hours I was shooting, and it was the most beautiful I had ever seen it on the mountain. I kept thinking to myself as I was standing in the snow looking at the wonders of nature how crazy everyone else was for sleeping in their warm beds, and complaining about the new snow. That’s what photography is about for me, I’m not saying that’s how it should be for everyone, but for me it’s as much about the experience, the communion with nature, then it is about the final picture. I hope someday my pictures will fully portray the experiences I have when I take them.
Color Management Explained.
I think I finally have a pretty good grasp on color management. I’m no expert, but this post should help explain it, it can be a very confusing topic.
Let’s start with our monitors. My problems with color management began about 6 months ago when I purchased a Dell U2410. A nice 24 inch IPS display from Dell. I purchased it because my understanding was that IPS displays provided more accurate color, and consistent colors and brightness levels from very extreme angles, something that most TN monitors severely lack (despite marketing lingo stating otherwise: now introducing our super mega dynamic 6 gazillion to 1 contrast ratio! and 5000° viewing angle!) This was all true, and I have to say I am extremely happy with my monitor, I will never purchase another cheap LCD again.
That said I unknowingly introduced a serious problem into my workflow. I did not fully understand that the monitor I had just purchased was what is called a “Wide Gamut” display. For those who don’t understand this most LCD monitors are not capable of displaying all the colors that the human eye can see, in fact they display a rather narrow range of colors. A wide gamut display is an LCD that is capable of displaying many more colors then a cheap standard LCD. The blues are bluer, the greens are greener, etc…. overall it can display stunning and very vivid color. This is a good thing right? Yes and no.
This is what sRGB color space is all about. sRGB color space is the color space that most cheap LCD’s can display. It is your standard color space. Adobe RGB color space displays a wider range of colors, and ProPhoto RGB displays an even wider range, getting pretty close to what our eyes can see. My Dell monitor can properly display the range somewhere between Adobe RGB and ProPhoto.
The problem is that in the graphics realm colors are defined in a 0-255 range. So we have a wide gamut monitor that can display 30% more blue then a standard monitor. So if we have an image of a completely blue square where the blue is maxed out at 255, the wide gamut display is going to look much more saturated. Because your software is saying okay monitor display as much blue as you can here!! We are cranking the blue all the way up! GO! So the standard display shows it’s fullest blue, and the wide gamut display shows it’s fullest blue, but because the wide gamut display is capable of such richer blues, the image is very different on both screens. That’s the problem.
The solution? Color management and ICC profiles.
ICC Profiles are basically look up tables telling a program or operating system how to display certain colors. So when I have the proper ICC profile for my wide gamut monitor installed, if I am in a color managed application such as Photoshop I can properly display colors with the proper color space. For example, if I open up an sRGB image in photoshop without color management or an ICC profile installed, photoshop doesn’t know how to interpret the colors of that image, so since I am using a wide gamut monitor the image ends up looking super saturated.
Now if I open that same sRGB image in photoshop and have an ICC profile installed photoshop can say oh look I have an ICC profile telling me how this monitor displays colors, so now that I know this and I also know this image is using sRGB color space, I can now compensate for the way this monitor displays colors and display this image just like it would display on another monitor. The result is photoshop shows the image just how my second cheap LCD does, I can drag the image back and forth between the two monitors, and it stays consistent. Without color management or an ICC profile when I drag the window between my 2 monitors the image changes between looking correct and being super saturated. Or if you have tweaked your image on the wide gamut display to loo how you want it too it would look very under saturated on the 2nd standard monitor.
If you create a custom ICC profile with a hardware calibration device such as a color spyder, this will give you extremely accurate color, because it won’t just compensate for the fact that your monitor displays more saturated colors, but it will compensate for all the color casts and tints that your monitor might have, thus yielding very accurate color when working in a color managed application that respects the ICC profile.
The problem in windows is the entire operating system is not color managed, only specific applications can take advantage of your color profile, so while your sRGB image will look correct in photoshop or in windows picture viewer, it will look incorrect everywhere else in the operating system. Mac’s are superior in this regard because the entire OS is color managed, not just specific applications.
We also have another problem. When displaying your work on the web, only some web browsers support color management. Again Microsoft drops the ball on this one with internet explorer having 0 color management abilities. It will not see or respect your systems color profiles. As a result if I am using internet explorer on a wide gamut monitor, even if your image on the web is tagged as sRGB, it is going to look super saturated. Luckily Firefox and Safari are color managed, so on a wide gamut monitor any images tagged with the sRGB color space will look correct.
Alternatively if you have created your image on a wide gamut screen and don’t tag the image with sRGB color space, someone viewing your image on a standard monitor in internet explorer will see the image as being very under saturated.
So my conclusion about color spaces? Stick with sRGB color space. Sure in theory it might be beneficial to have the more accurate and richer colors that Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB offers, but if your work is destined for the web, what benefit is it? If you have to convert your image to sRGB so that everyone else with cheap monitors will see it properly, there is little benefit to working in a richer color space. Perhaps if you are working in a closed environment and your printer is capable of printing the wider gamut of colors, it might be of a benefit, but for most people that simply isn’t the case.
However I still think it is worth purchasing a high quality and accurate monitor. If you purchase a monitor with good color, and calibrate it with some form of hardware calibration, and then work in a color managed application, you at least know that your colors are correct. Does this matter if everyone else isn’t using a calibrated display? I think it does because then you at least know that you are in the middle of the bullseye, and everyone elses uncalibrated screen should revolve around that point. Instead of you being off on the edge, and then someone else is on the opposite edge of the spectum and then it truley looks incorrect.
So that’s it for now, I still need to write one more part about how to actually implement this information! Windows isn’t terribly intuitive when it comes to color managment, and how to set it up. Man, I am starting to sound like a mac person!
Light Field Cameras.
All the rage these days seems to be the emerging technology of light field cameras. I don’t understand all the technical details behind them, but the main benefit is that you can choose your focal point in the image after the fact. Pretty cool for sure. Lytro, the first company to produce such a camera is currently taking orders for their camera, which will ship the first part of next year.
Obviously the Lytro camera is still a toy at the moment, it lacks any sort of useful controls over the picture taking experience, with only a power button, a zoom slider, and a button to take the picture. Any remotely serious photographer will not get much from it, but it’s what this is promising for the future that is the big deal. As soon as professional cameras start getting this technology (which one would assume will happen eventually) then it could be a pretty big deal.
That said, I still wouldn’t see it really doing much for the average photographer. I don’t know about other photographers but I know where I want my focal point to be 95% of the time, and I wouldn’t change it later, even if I could. As I have mentioned before photography is a deliberate art for me, I know what I want when I am taking the picture, and I am not one to mess around extensively in post processing, just enough to transform the picture into what I remember seeing with my own eyes, and maybe enhance it a little bit. Besides I mainly shoot landscapes, and in that form, the goal is usually infinite focus anyway, so refocusing would be a moot point.
That said I still think this could be huge. Say you have captured the perfect shot, but the camera miss focused, suddenly that is not an issue. Or if the focus is just slightly off and you want to adjust it just a little bit, it could be a lifesaver. So this is definitely exciting technology, and it will be interesting to see what the future brings.
Prints.
There is something special about getting your work printed. Things can look great on the computer screen, but I am always amazed at how much better something looks when it is printed. To really appreciate a fine photograph I think you have to see it printed. I thought for years that Ansel Adams was a bit overrated, but then I saw his actual prints at an exhibition. I no longer think that he is overrated, the quality of the photographs far exceeded any of his work I had seen on the computer.
That said I am entering a new realm. I have been sending my prints to a photo lab for years, however I have never truly been happy with the results. What photo labs call matte, I like to refer to as glossy with speckled highlights. I long for the types of paper I used to use in the dark room, the true satin and matte papers that had an earthy tangible quality to them. This is something no photo lab has ever given me.
So I have decided I am going to invest in a professional grade inkjet printer. Probably something that will print 13 inches wide, or maybe 17 inches wide if I can find the cash. The first thing I am going to do when I get the printer is purchase some moab fine art paper and enjoy the look and feel of a true fine art satin paper. I think the details in a photograph matter, for a fine art photograph the presentation can matter as much as the photograph, the feel and look of the paper can have a huge impact on the presentation of your work. I am tired of the same ‘glossy with speckled highlights’ that you get from almost every photo lab in the country.
This will also give me complete control over the printing process, I am tired of spending hours tweaking my photographs, only to have some lab technician think the darks need to be crunched or lightened up more. In the end this really isn’t about being able to print things cheaper, in fact I would wager it’s going to be quite a bit more expensive for me, it’s about having the control and choice that I have been missing ever since I abandoned the dark room.
Color Management Rant.
I recently had a problem with a particular photo. After standing for an hour and a half in the cold morning weather, 9,000 feet up a mountain, the light finally hit the peak of the mountain in front of me, I took my picture, and then packed up my gear and drove home. I then proceeded to spend several hours working on the picture, tweaking the colors and light until I felt it represented what I remembered seeing with my own eyes. I was very happy with the picture. The light on the mountain was perfect. Happy story right?
The next morning I went to work and viewed the picture on my computer at work. The picture had completely changed! The subtle light that I had worked so hard to capture was gone. The richness of the leaves and trees was faded and dull. The photograph no longer represented what I had remembered experiencing.
That my friend is color management, and while you may be able to control to a reasonable degree how accurately your machine displays color, and even how well your machine will calibrate with any given printer, the truth is you have NO control over how everybody else on the internet is going to see your images. It’s annoying, unnerving, frustrating, and depressing, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.
The end.
