Very Light Posting For The Next Week Or So

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Ron

I am very busy with another assignment and have had no time to post here. BUT I will be posting again, shortly.

COMMENT PLEA: Please don’t waste my time with useless comments. Since all comments here need my approval, no known spam will get through. Yet, some people, perhaps robots, I don’t know, continue to post spam, sometimes very long messages, composed of nonsense, or pitches for making money. Not the biggest pain to delete, the spam deletion process is very easy, but it does continue to mystify me.

Also, I am not happy with comments like “great post”. What does that add to anything? If you like my ideas, and have something to add, I greatly appreciate it. If you disagree with me, even better!!! Let me know and why.

RON

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Finding Truth In Chaos

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Ron

When you set out to take pictures, sometimes it’s good to know generally what you are looking for. You need some sort of internal filter to help you select objects. At least, I do. Over the years I’ve identified things I like to shoot. Cityscapes, chaos, ruin, cheesiness, run-down areas. All these appeal to me. I don’t know why; I don’t have to. This is true especially when you are shooting for black and white photography, especially fine art photography. I like graffiti; dirty walls; destroyed objects. They all represent some aspect of departed humanity. My shot of Ana Peru Peru Ana, a graffitied wall in the Lower East Side, is just such a shot. And so is Ruined Kitchen, which exemplifies everything I like in imagery.

The point is, you need to listen to your inner Ansel; every photographer has one. Listen to him, find out what you like, what you really like, and focus on it.

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Filters In A Digitial Age

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Ron

A long time ago, when photographers printed on paper from negatives (and where we are just speaking about black and white photography), filters were very useful. It would be difficult to replicate the effect of a 25A Dark Red filter (which selectively blocks blue and thus makes the sky very dark or black). The 25A Red Filter could make clouds really pop out from a sky, make storms stormier and so forth. They were often used in desert photography, so that the very light or white foreground was much different from the sky. Green filters would selectively enhance the green of plants (actually, anything green) and some plants would be much greenier than others, meaning, for black and white photography, much lighter. This would give plant shots a lot more drama.

BUT with digital photography and with scanners, you do need to use these filters any more. My shot of Tree With Cloudy Sky was taken with my Canon 5D Mark II. The original sky had very little contrast and the the clouds were sort of vague, almost hazy. I just took the shot because I liked the tree and hadn’t gotten any other good shots that day. When I processed the image through Photoshop, I decided (after converting to black and white via NIK) to see what the filters would do to it and I was greatly surprised.

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More About Lenses (And Art)

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Ron

Now you have a camera, probably a digital SLR or DSLR. What about the lens?

Well, it depends on what you want to do with your camera. If all you want is to take some family or fun travel shots and post them to Facebook or Flickr or send to your friends, you are probably well served by the most inexpensive zoom lenses. For most people, at least for Canon cameras, this will be the the 18mm-55mm and the 70mm-300mm lenses. Remember, the smaller the lens mm number, the wider angle the lens. The bigger the mm number, the more telephoto the lens is going to be. Both these lenses are Image Stabilized, which is very important for the 300mm end of the longer lens. Since the view angle is very tiny at 300mm, even teeny camera movements are a bigger percentage of the image. IS is critical for a long lens; IS and a tripod. There is nothing to be gained by taking blurry pictures (assuming you want crisp images). At the wider end, at, say 18mm, which is nearly fisheye, the image is very wide, so any camera shake or movement is only going to affect a tiny portion relative to the image size. IS is still important, but you can get away with nothing. Henri Cartier-Bresson had his Leica (a pre-digital 35mm camera)’s len very wide open and if you look at this images, you will see pretty crisp shots, even if he just popped up, shot the picture, and disappeared.

Having said all this about lenses, if you are interested in fine art photography, you would do very well to invest in some better lenses. For 35mm type cameras, a “normal” lens is 50mm or so. This means, approximately the image angle of view that we see with our eyes. Canon makes extremely good 50mm lenses. The better the lens (in this case) the wider the minimum aperture. This means, the lower the light required for a image (among other things). Canon’s f/1.8 50mm lens is probably the best value for the money, at about $100. Now a fixed focal length lens means no zoom. But you can believe me when I tell you that it doesn’t matter. Or matters much less. Most of my shots at are taken with fixed focal length lenses. Once you get used them them and to the greatly increased image quality, you will not want to go back.

Fine art photography means whatever you want it to mean. I saw a photography show made up of other people’s family Polaroids, the kind you usually toss out after a few years. On a gallery wall, they became art, if only for a short while. My point about better lenses is only that you need to be open to a variety of creative approaches. Large format cameras like my Deardorff only use fixed focal length lenses. My automotive shots, like Truck Engine in Chains was just such a shot. You find art in limitations.

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Photographic Concepts: ISO

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Ron

If turn your camera’s setting to M from A or P (i.e., go manual) you will have access to the ISO setting. This is a setting, whether film or digital, which determines how sensitive the take-up medium, whether film or a digital sensor, is to light. ISO means International Standards Organization, and is, in fact a shorthand for referring to ISO 12232:1998 or 12232:2006 (updated for digital cameras). The details do not matter all that much. The main thing to realize is that the lower the ISO setting, the less sensitive the film (or digital sensor) is to light. For film this means that the silver halide grains in a film are smaller. Film ISO have ranged down to 12. Like everything in photography, numerical relationships are based on powers (or square roots) of 2. So, ISO goes sort from 12,24,50,100,200,320 (Kodak Tri-X, now discontinued), 400,800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12500, and so forth. Notice that they are not EXACT multiples of 2 but the differences are insignificant.

The higher the ISO number the more sensitive the medium is to light. That means that if you are shooting in ambient light (i.e., no flash), say, at a rock concert, you will want to use a high ISO, say, 1600. That will mean that the resulting image will appear much coarser. For film this is because the film grains are larger and so if each grain holds one unit of the image and you are now dividing the image into fewer segments, each segment will hold less information. Same principle with PPI (pixels per inch). When you resize an image for the web (usually to 72 ppi), you are dividing the image into fewer pixels.

Sometimes, for artistic reasons, you might go for a coarser image. Coarser can look gritty, like downtown shots, people in trouble, street scenes; more noise can be emotive at times. BUT, when you examine the shot perhaps in the LED or in Photoshop, be aware that it will look somewhat different when printed. The coarseness can be a problem. Here’s two shots I took of some dishes, one at ISO 6400 and the other at ISO 200.


Both shot at f/4. The IS0 6400 image was shot at 1/10 second and the ISO 200 at 1/320 sec. ISO 6400 is 5 stops from ISO 200 (i.e., from 200 you have to double the value five times to get to 6400, 200-400-800-1600-3200-6400) and you also have to double 10 five times to get to 320 (10-20-40-80-160-320). If I needed that extra speed, maybe because it was a sports’ shot, flying birds, nighttime, interior with low ambient light, you should take advantage of the higher ISO. If you keep the camera on A or P, you will never learn much about this and lose control over your picture taking.

With digital cameras, you can freely choose your ISO settings, changing it to whatever matches your needs. This is one way that digital beats out film. With film, you are much more limited. All film has an ISO rating. My Tri-X is 320 or 400, for large or medium-format film. While I can fiddle with the ISO setting either on the meter (when shooting large format) or on the camera, like the Pentax 67 where the ISO is set manually (for use by the on-camera meter), you are much more limited. Generally photographers, at least me, set the ISO a stop or so below the film rating, partly because we feel the film producers are too conservative. I shout my Tri-X 320 at 200 and I like the result. But if I try shooting 320 film at 1600 I just won’t get much of an image. Nothing will happen to the film except that I will meter for much less light. For film cameras, if you want to shoot with a high ISO you need to change film to that rating. Definitely not as convenient as for digital.

In very sunny days, I can always get away with using a low ISO on a digital camera because I know I’ll have enough light. My Beauty Salon, shot on the Lower East Side of New York, was taken on an extremely bright day. It’s a digital shot and the ISO setting was 200 (using a Rebel which can’t go to 100). With the fierce sunlight, the shutter speed was 1000, so there was no visible camera shake.

Play around with ISO settings. Try the extremes of your camera and see what the result looks like. This is especially fun for fine art photography, even still life photography.

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What You Need To Develop Black and White Film

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Ron

A quick note: This article only addresses black and white film. Black and white photography is pretty easy to do at home. Color film photography is another matter. There are at-home kits but I believe they do not offer any advantage over sending film out and have many disadvantages.

For black and white photography you will need the following:

1) A totally dark room or a CHANGING BAG. If you go the room route (primarily for developing large format film which requires many minutes in darkness), this usually means your bathroom. You have to cover the windows (if you have them) and use a dark plastic bag over the door frame anywhere light can come in. This is not as difficult as it may sound. If you have friends also interested in film photography, you can join together on this.

For 35mm and medium format film development (i.e., roll film) you only need total darkness for a few minutes and in this case, a changing bag can suffice. A changing bag is a large doubled bag with sleeves. The inside of the bag is kept free of light. It’s not tremendously comfortable to use but it does work OK. I’ve used one to change 8×10 negs, so doing 120 or 135 film is NOT difficult. You only need to use the changing bag when you load the roll of film into the film spools.

Here’s a picture of a changing bag. The larger, the better. You can get them at Adorama or B&H Photo Video.

Next, reels for the film. You will need to unwrap the film (after it’s been exposed, of course) and feed it onto the reel. There are several types of reels. The film is spooled onto the reel as if you were putting film into a film reel. Once the film is on the reel, the reel is placed into the development cannister. ALL THIS MUST BE DONE IN TOTAL DARKNESS. Take it from me, you can’t move faster than light! Any light at all, any, will ruin the film. You will probably waste some film rolls getting the hang of it. I would do it first with your eyes opened in a lighted room. Just try inserting the film into the reel, comme ca. The film is covered by a paper backing. You don’t want this backing. Once you have successfully loaded the film onto the reel several times with your eyes opened, try it with your eyes closed. And then, try it in a changing bag. You must have the development cannister, the reel and the film all in the bag at the same time. The cannister has a couple of parts: The cannister itself, usually a rod that goes through the center of the reel; a cup at the top where the chemicals are poured in. Once the film on the reel is in the cannister and the funnel top is in locked in place, you DON’T NEED DARKNESS!

I prefer this brand of reel. It has wide flat flanges to insert the film. I find it much easier than other types. Also, I prefer plastic to metal, but it really doesn’t matter too much which one you choose. I would buy three or four reels. When you use the changing bag, have several of them in the bag. Sometimes film doesn’t thread very easily on them. This is a problem I’ve had. The bigger problem is: once you’ve unrolled the film and found that it won’t go onto a specific reel, what do you do? You can’t expose the film to light, so you will have to leave it in the changing bag until you can get another reel inside.

2) Chemicals: You need Kodak HC110 Developer as well as Kodak Rapid Fixer (2 containers); also Hypo Eliminator, and Hypo Check (I’ll explain what they do later on). There are other developers like HC110; many of them. I settled on HC110. You can look at the Massive Development Chart for times and dilutions of other developers and of course, look up on line other developers.

3) A film development thermometer. All film development is calculated at 68 deg Fahrenheit (20 deg Centigrade). So, you have to get the water (for the developer only) to 68 deg. I actually get it to 67 or 66 deg because handling the film development canister heats it up a bit. The cold water from the tap is usually around 50 deg so this temperature is easy to get to.

4) Several 2000ml graduated flasks. These should be plastic. You’ll need one for water and one for developer. Label the water flask “Water” or “H20″ and the Developer flask “DEVELOPER.”

5) Three brown storage flasks. One for the HC110 and TWO for the fixer.

5) One 100ml graduated cylinder (glass).

6) Clips to hang the film when done.

There! That’s all. Now you’re ready to develop film….just kidding! Remember, this might sound like a lot of stuff, but the alternative is many $1000 on a digital camera. If money is tight, film is MUCH CHEAPER and in many many ways, MUCH SUPERIOR.

Next time, I’ll show you how to unwrap the film after it has been processed in the camera and how to actually develop the film and what that means.

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Film Development At Home Part I

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Ron

Film photography lets you into the big time on a very low budget. A medium format film camera, like my Pentax 67, with a couple of Pentax lenses will run you about $800 (the lenses are where the cost really is; but note: my Canon 24-105mm L lens is $1059 at B&H; the Canon 200mm L is $1200, so with a Pentax, you are actually getting off cheaper). A comparable medium format digital camera, even the as yet unavailable in the U.S. Pentax 645 digital, is going to set you back into the $20,000-$50,000 range (with a 40mP sensor). So, film photography is definitely a very cost effective alternative, especially for black and white photography. Many of my images, like my French Tulips were shot with a medium-format camera. The Holga is even cheaper at $25 for the camera (the lens is part of the camera). Twenty-five dollars for medium format!!! The scanned equivalent of a medium format negative is between 16mP and 20mP (at 720dpi, which is the TIF output setting I use with my Adobe RAW converter), so you get quite a bump with this.

With black and white photography, you need to develop black and white film. Now, you can, at the beginning, send the film to a company to develop them for you but at those prices you will not be very happy. Also, you’ll have no control over the results. (Color film is VERY HARD to develop at home so you’ll have to send all color film out for development). Much more on what you need to develop black and white film tomorrow (part II).

So, to get you started with black and white film photography, I strongly suggest a Pentax 67 or Pentax 645 or even an extremely cheap (like $25) Holga will do just fine. In fact, a Holga is a great way to get started. Search for “Holga” on the net and see what the images look like. They are absolutely amazing, gauzy, emotive, fun. The Holga is a MEDIUM-FORMAT camera. It’s extremely cheap with a crappy lens but that’s its beauty, its attraction. Check it out.

For film I’d strongly recommend staring with Kodak’s Tri-X 400 Medium Format film in the 120 format. 120 format means medium format film with 10 negs in a roll. (35mm film is called 135 and usually has 36 negs in a roll). Medium format film also comes in 220 format, meaning 20 negs in a roll.

YOU DON’T NEED A DARKROOM TO LOAD THE FILM IN THE CAMERA OR UNLOAD IT. You will need several rolls to start as you will probably screw things up a couple of times. But roll film is very cheap, $2-$3 per roll

Next time, I’ll show you how I load the film into my Pentax (the Holga is the same). Part II discusses what equipment you’ll need to get, what I recommend, etc. Part III is how to measure the chemicals; and do the processing from start to finish.

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What Is Your Theory of Photography?

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Ron

Say you are an artist, or, perhaps, someone who hopes that someday you’ll be regarded as an artist, as a photographer/artist. What is your theory of photography? Do you have principles by which you take pictures? I’ve already written about Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams, and how different they were in how they took pictures (and of course, many, many, many others have written about them in far greater detail). But did you know there are or were actually artistic theories of photography?

In this age, it seems that anything goes and there are no theories about what constitutes proper picture taking. I’m glad for that. For me, whatever works is good. BUT that wasn’t the case in the past.

The Pond-Moonlight (Edward Steichen)

Manger (Gertrude Kasebier, 1899)


In the early period of photography, say, around 1900 (well, the early period started in 1839 but let’s leap ahead). At that time, various advances in photograph (the Kodak #1 handheld in 1888) and the much greater ease for making prints greatly expanded the range and power of photography. Before then, taking pictures usually meant a large bellows type camera, glass negatives and difficult (and still practiced) printing processes. It required devotion. But by around 1900, as the photographic process became easier and the role of the artist/craftsman-as-photographer became less important, several photographers, notably Alfred Steiglitz, Gertrude Käsebier (Manger), Edward Steichen (see his The Pond-Moonight at the top of this article, which, just to note, sold for $2.6 million in 2006) and others, formed a group called the Photo-Secession, which was devoted to photography as Pictorialism, a more paintly view of photography. Look at the images from these artists and you can see what I mean.

Later on (not much later), people like Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and others formed the Group f/64. f/64 is a very small aperture for the lens. At f/64, only for large-format cameras like my Deardorff, the depth of field is huge and the entire image area is extremely crisp.

Manuel Hernandez Galvan (Edward Weston)

The clashing idea behind these two movements is this: Is the important thing the photographer’s vision or the photographic image? For the f/64 group, the picture’s power comes from the object in itself; for the Pictorialists, it is the mind the photographer, perhaps the feeling they are trying to convey by the image.

So, what are you? A member of Group f/64 or a Pictorialist?

Of course all of these photographers were black and white photographers (color photography was not very good at the time, apart from that very odd and totally amazing Russian photographic genius, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who developed his own color process and shot his own color photographs between1909 and 1912. You should check up on this guy as his work is absolutely amazing. Anyway, that was just an aside)

Norma Shear (Edward Steichen)

Edward Weston, Pepper, 1930

As for me, I think I am more of a Group f/64 kind of guy, but I take notice of the emotive quality. My shot of Aspens is just a shot. So is SoHo At Night. Night shots are often more purely emotional; so much is more is unseen or mysterious. On the other hand, what to make of my Engine With 8198 ?

I’m not advocating that you need to adhere to one particular theory or another, but that you should think about what you are doing, why you shooting a particular scene or object or person and why you are printing it in one way and not another. Are you saying something about yourself, your feelings, or are you letting the scene speak for itself? Do you crop your pictures or don’t crop them? Color or black and white? Or something else altogether?

Posted in Art | 1 Comment

Roughing It (For Art)

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Ron

I don’t think true art comes easy. Not that good or great art is greater because making it was hard. But the process of getting to art can be really difficult, physically, psychically, even health can be affected. When I got access to a nearly abandoned building to take pictures, I was overjoyed. If you know my work at all you know I love decay, ruin, age, abandonment (not making a comment on me, I hope!) so this was a great opportunity and I made the most of it. Getting access to these kinds of sites is usually very difficult and often dangerous. If you do get lucky and gain access to abandoned buildings, or buildings in serious decay, you should not go alone. You should take face masks; wear long sleeved shirts and long pants; be mindful of bugs, mold, and holes in unexpected places (like floors in a nearly pitch black hallway). In my abandoned building, there were no lights in the apartments at all. The halls had lights; the elevator worked, but the apartments were in ruins. In nearly total darkness, I almost fell through the floor (it was smashed through).

On the sixth floor I found the Ruined Bedroom. I was overjoyed because it had everything I wanted in a photograph. Unfortunately, it also had about twenty years of dust mixed with pigeon droppings. Dangerous in the extreme!. I had plenty of backup lights, extra long cables, and a couple of friends with me, but they wouldn’t get close to this room. Still, the room was ideal for black and white photography and I’m glad I found it. When I did my shot, I had on two surgical masks, long pants and a long-sleeved thick shirt, even though it was mid-August and over 90 degrees. I was drenched, but I think it was worth it. If you look at my main photography site, you’ll find several other shots from this building, an abandoned kitchen, with cobwebs, open cans of food and general filth. It was abandoned in the early 1980s.

If your idea of art is to look out your bedroom window and take shots of what goes by, that may be wonderful. But if you feel the need to venture into dicier situations, you need to be very careful. Take surgical masks (depending on where you go); make sure people know where you are; bring water, phone, and some minor first aid. Try to avoid being alone, if possible. And, be nice!! You may be dependent on the kindness of others. I am never confrontational. It’s only photography. There are other pictures.

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Film Or Digital?

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Ron

In my last entry, I showed how digital photography can provide capabilities that film-based photography (to my knowledge) cannot or certainly cannot as easily. It was a good argument for using a digital camera in some circumstances.

BUT….

There is a counter argument to be made about the superiority of film over digital. Actually, several arguments.

The first, the biggest, is cost. My high-end full-frame Canon 5D Mark II cost me $2,600. That’s a lot of bucks. Granted it does a lot. But the sensor is about the size of a 35mm film camera, which would go for, well, a lot less. The Nikon FM10 runs about $310, new.  And on eBay.com, you can find hundreds of used film cameras for under $100. The beauty of the film camera is that it will last a long, long time. The newest HTC Droid Incredible has an 8mP camera; it’s closing in on the Canon Rebel Xsi in terms of sensor size. How soon is your big digital investment going to look so last year? Probably sooner than you want. So, in terms of camera cost, advantage film.

Second, processing. OK, digital is easier. You have to upload the images to your computer. For film, if you are going to be printing from a digital printer, you need to somehow get them into the computer. That means, film development, then scanning. You have to buy a scanner. A good Epson Perfection 700 runs about $600. Cost wise you are ahead of the game with film ($80 camera, $2 roll of film; $600 scanner).

Detail: Definitely advantage film. You need to be in the 21mP range to approach film quality, especially if you are going to be printing larger than on 81/2 x 11 paper. If you jump to medium format, you are automatically way beyond even a full frame digital camera. You would have to upgrade to a medium-format digital camera back, which will cost upwards of $20,000. On eBay, a good medium format Pentax 67 runs about $200. Would you want to invest $20,000 for a 30mP camera only to see everyone’s iPhone sporting a 20mP sensor in two years? Yes? No?

Of course, with film you have to learn about film development. That is a downside, no doubt about it. BUT, I can guarantee it’s very very easy. I could teach anyone how to do it in about an hour.

My picture of Central Park, which I took with my Pentax 67, is an example of the level of detail you can EASILY and AUTOMATICALLY achieve with a medium format film camera.

Just saying…

Look, if you are interested in becoming a serious artist you should be open to a variety of tools. You should NOT limit yourself. If you seriously consider film cameras you will not be disappointed.

On this site, I have many examples of digital as well as film photographs. Each photograph is labeled as such. With a very good digital camera and some good skill in using it, you can achieve film-quality shots, but it is not easy. Nor is it cheap. I may be going against the tide, but film is definitely a cheaper alternative. If you want to learn more about this, check out my entry, What You Need To Develop Black And White Film, a topic I will return to many times.

Posted in Cameras, Medium Format, Taking Pictures | 33 Comments