Bug on the Brink

Minolta A1
1/250
f7.1
ISO 100
Oversharpened with Neat Image

I'm not sure if the oversharpening shows up in this smaller jpeg version as much as the full size file, but I think this is a good example of the type of sloppy technique that I often have that really bugs old school purists (pun intended). I really should have been using a tripod (preferably a heavy one with one of those adjustable macro focus tracks for minute adjustments in close focus.) If I had a tripod I would have likely been able to nail the focus on this bug - instead the plane of focus seems to fall just a little behind him on the flower's petal. But I am lazy, and don't dedicate enough time to spend taking and setting up a tripod, and I'm cheap I don't own a really decent tripod let alone one with one of those macro focusing tracks. So instead I end up oversharpening an image in an attempt to get what I didn't in the field. But life is a compromise. I have the free time at night to work on images on the computer, and I generally have very limited time during daylight hours. Sort of a curse for a photographer. But of course this will not always be the case, and trully if I wanted to carve out the time I could. I think an ideal vacation for me right now would be to live in a simple hut (with electricity for my laptop of course) for a week and hike with my camera during the day, and process photos at night by the side of a crackling fire. Ahhhhh, dream on.

Green Between

Minolta A1
image altered in Adobe Photoshop Elements

I was visiting a friend's house and took time to photograph this moss that intrigued me between the bricks that was set off by the very bright light of the noon sun. I got a quizzical look from my friend of course when she saw me pointing the camera down at her patio, at macro distance - about a foot, and concentrating on getting the focus.

When I am interested in a particular subject visually I become so engrossed in looking at it and thinking about the various factors that might go into taking a photo that I become oblivious to other things going on around me. I've noticed this in others to - as an example a good friend who trully loves photography is often left way behind on hikes when he decides to take a photo and his family get tired of waiting for him.

Another humorous example of disregarding socially appropriate behavior for the sake of a photo happened to me a few weeks ago. While walking the dog, I had noticed some very beautiful japanese maple seed pods in a nearby front yard. I returned the next morning at about the same time to take a photo of them with the light transluminating the pods and I was there about 2 minutes trying to get a good shot when the owner of the home came out to inquire what I was doing. I had of course been hovering quietly behind her tree with a camera and must have seemed like a stalker! I apologized and explained what I was doing, but by the time I returned to the shot my camera battery had conveniently to died (I was using the old Nikon with 4 AAs as the Minolta was visiting Laredo.) I did not dare to return with fresh batteries for fear that I might have to explain myself to the police!

I think this aspect of losing oneself to the photo, the capacity to step out of one's usual sense of time, is very relaxing and hypnotic. I am pretty sure my pulse and blood pressure must drop when I can concentrate on a photo. The practice of giving myself, or perhaps my wife giving me, a protected segment of time to go and take photos has been very enjoyable and good for my mental health.

10/23 update - here is a link to an article in Nature Photographers Online Magazine by Guy Tal that eloquently describes the beauty of getting lost in a visual, or any experience, and how the creative process develops through the familiarity that comes with such experience.

Bumble

Minolta A1
1/250
f7.1
ISO 100

Orange Flower

Minolta A1
1/160
f6.3
ISO 100



With Neat Image filter

It was a perfect autumn day in Yakima with the smell of hops in the air, a bright blue sky, and a slight nip in the air. I spotted this small flower on my walk back to get the car (it seemed to be looking at me too!) The color of it, and the way it was glowing in the light captured how I was feeling at that moment. It makes an interesting contrast with the drenched black eyed susan below photographed just a few days before in Portland!

End of Summer

Minolta A1
1/80
f4.5
ISO 200
Neat Image noise filter

This is my first full example of the Neat Image Photoshop filter on a photo. I was able to get some shots of this Black Eyed Susan earlier in the day when the light was better, but then noticed that I had not nailed the focus on the foreground. When I came back later with a tripod the light had faded, and the image was very noisy before the filter.

10/26 update - I am donating a 10 x 14 in. print of this photo (one of two) to the Mary Rieke School Foundation Auction this coming Nov 4. For details see Red Thorn above.

Dusty Miller in the Rain

Minolta A1
1/125
f 5.6
ISO 200

It seems like the rainy season has begun here in Portland and so I expect that the bulk of my photo posts over the next 6 months or more will feature rain. I need to set up a ziplock bag to cover my camera when I run out during bright periods during the day to protect it from the drizzel. I thought this photo of my new favorite plant was interesting since it seemed to thrive this Summer with no water in an area that typically bakes in the sun.

Blue Window

Minolta A1 (It is back finally and looking good so far!)
1/60th
f 4.0
ISO 100

Bloom Blurs

Original unaltered photo from Nikon 3100




Ligthing/Lens variation added in Adobe Lightroom



Another lighting/lens effect added in Adobe Lightroom



Photoshop Elements smart-blur effects.




Bloom Scotoma
Central out of focus area accentuated with blur in Photoshop Elements

I took some time to play around with a photo I took several weeks ago with the Nikon point and shoot camera. I think that like many amateur photographers I have this sense that altering a photo with Lightroom or Adobe Elements is sort of cheating. I'm not sure this is a valid belief, since many different techniques similar to what can be done in these programs may be done in the darkroom too.

This series shows an original unaltered photo, a couple different fairly dramatic lighting changes, done in Lightroom, and then some progressively dramatic blur effects from Elements.

In the last image I thought I would try to blur the central area of the photo to accentuate the original image's out of focus area in the center area of the flower (something that usually I find very annoying). I thought that this would provide a somewhat annoyingly provocative image with a blurred central area and a periphery of the frame with sharply focused background that has also been accentuated by the earlier lighting effects that were added. In a way this image's alterations are driven out of the origial photo's shortcomings, and my frustration about not being able to improve them after the fact. (In particular I need to work on making sure that I get the FRONT of a subject fully within the depth of field when taking macro shots.) It sounds planned out when I explain the post photo alterations but I really just arrived at this last image by playing around with filters in Lightroom and Elements to find something that I would find interesting.

Starburst

Nikon E3100

Here is a relatively uninspired close up I took of some flowers I bought at the grocery store. It has been some time since I've posted anything. The Minolta should hopefully be back from Texas by Friday, and I'm hoping that will give me some new inspiration. I think one road block I've run into is that the type of photos I love - macro nature photos - are most of what I post here. But seeing so much of the same thing seems to be unexciting to me. I want to be more creative, but I have not recently had the energy or time to spend either developing (or altering) photos like the last post, or trying to "see" different interesting perspectives in unaltered photos. I have also been viewing many other photos online, and it is frustrating and inspiring at the same time to see how much better macro nature photography can be done.

Flower composite #1

Nikon E3100
Composite photo created using Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Then Minolta A1 is packaged back up and awaiting shipment back to Laredo Texas. The CCD sensor replacement is working well, but there is some dust or dirt on the sensor that should not be there. It dosen't show up except in situations when there is a large area of one color, like a blue sky without clouds. Unfortunately the dirt is on the upper left hand corner of the sensor image. I guess I could just always take landscapes holding the camera upside down, but somehow that dosen't seem fair. I will post some examples in the next few days.

More Purple Flowers with Shadows

Minolta A1
1/40
f8.0
ISO 200

Another Spider, not Van Duzer.

Minolta A1
1/160
f 3.2
ISO 200

Yikes, I am finding more and more spiders to photograph!
I really liked the sun effect on his or her web, and the partial transillumination of his/her body.

Mt. St. Helen's and Mt. Rainer seen from Council Crest Portland

Minolta A1
1/640
f7.1
ISO 100

Happy Birthday Dad!

Bee on mystery flower

Minolta A1
1/500
f7.1
ISO 100
No noise reduction except for Adobe Elements RAW conversion noise filter.

Spider Van Duzer?

Minolta A1
1/80
f4.5
ISO 100
Macro +4 filter

I was very brave getting this close to a spider, particularly since it's web was blowing around in the breeze. I took about 5 shots and I think I was lucky to get this one in such good focus! This guy by the way was only about 5 mm in diameter, so not much to rev up my arachniphobia. I like the distortion of the web on the far left of the photo. I think this effect may be due to the macro filter.

It was nice enjoying a little sun on this breezy September afternoon!




Cropped version for comparison with Neat Image filtered image below.



Neat Image filtered version.
What do you think? Is it worth $35? Interesting to note the jpeg artifacts around the web in both versions.

more drops

Minolta A1
1/100
f4.5
ISO 100

Here is a version with slightly different color levels/saturation:




Here is yet another comparison of the Neat Image filter (image below).


And the cooresponding original image below:

drop crop updated

Ok, to be fair I added a cropped down version of the photo in original format. Below you can see the filtered image, and then the original in the size I originally posted it.



Update - I have been wary of noise plug ins but tried this one called Neat Image which has a limited function plug in (notice the filter only reduced noise in the upper left corner of the image - leaving a slim border of un-filtered photo on the right and bottom of this image.) I still notice some band like noise cutting across the image horizontally in the middle that seems to not happen at lower ISOs and perhaps in better lighting. Let me know what you think. The cost of the full plug in by the way is $35.

Minolta A1 (yes it is back)
1/60
f 4.0
ISO 400 (Notice considerably more noise.)

Well Sony has replaced the CCD on our Minolta A1, and it appears to be working OK so far. Unfortunately, it feels like we have entered the rainly season already, and that opportunities for good light are fading fast. I've been reading more about photography (more than usual during the time the camera was gone) in part trying to convince myself that I needed to get a new 10 MP digital SLR. This essay by Ken Rockwell Your Camera Does Not Matter was very helpful in convincing me that I didn't need to spend $1300 for a new Nikon D80. This was backed up by the fact that I was VERY pleased with some of the shots I took with the old Nikon Coolpix 950. I think that the reason I took fewer photos, and Ken Rockwell comments on this, is that using a simpler camera makes the process of photography more work than a more complex camera that tends to offer more shortcuts. As an example trying to manually focus the NIkon Coolpix 950 can be excruciatingly tedious, but with the Minolta A1 very easy. I think that the trade off is that when you are struggling to focus, (or make some other adjustment on a simpler camera) it takes more time, and one often has the opportunity to THINK during that time and change one's approach to the photo. Sometimes the very nature of the limitation of the simpler camera makes one think differently about how to take a photo.

I have noticed on multiple forums discussing various lenses that people refer to the idea that a lens is sharpest two stops down from maxium apeture. That is in part why I took this shot at ISO 400 - (I normally don't go higher than 200 with the A1 because of noise,) - and stopped down the apeture a bit. I still don't understand the science behind this optical observation and would be interested to hear an explaination.

twinship

photo taken with a Nikon Coolpix 950

This is an Argoflex E Twin Lens Reflex camera that once belonged to my grandmother. It was manufactured between 1940 and 1948 and currently is a fairly inexpensive medium format film camera. The negatives are about 6 cm square.

The upper lens projects to a ground glass plate at the top of the camera that is about the size of the negative. Because I opened the viewing hood you can see some light projected through the plate to the mirror and down to the upper lens that appears bright in this photo.

As you may have guessed the twin lenses are nearly identical, so that the view on the glass plate is as close as possible to what will be transmitted to the film. These types of cameras were of course overtaken in popularity by single lens reflex cameras that eliminated the need for duplication of the lenses, thus facilitating use of interchangable lenses for greater applications (ie wide angle telephoto, macro,) because one would only need purchase one lens of each type.

The story of my relationship to this camera is this: when I was young (I guess 10 to 13 years old) I decided I'd take this camera apart and managed to unscrew one or both of the twin lenses to try to clean them. Of course I didn't think that I probably wouldn't be able to get them back on and calibrated optically so that they would again be true twins! As a result the focus is likely miscalibrated and I don't think I have the skills to set them right. Ooops! Luckily I found a vintage camera shop recently that probably can.

I've been considering questions of the mind as highlighted by photography, in particular the concept of whether a photograph acting as a work of art can convey certain information about what the photographer's thoughts are, both conscious and unconscious, at the time of the photograph (See my post "Thoughts on Photography" Aug 22.) I think that the tiwn lens reflex, and my own unintended sabotage of it, relates to a concept highligted in a recent blog entry I read Knowledge and Experience on the difficulties in understanding and portraying the perspective of another person who has very different experience.

Here are my thoughts: I might certainly through trial and error learn to take decent photos with the sabotaged argoflex by learning the differntial in focus and view provided by the two lenses, viewing and shooting. But this would be very tedious. I would much prefer to have it re-calibrated so that I could just count on the viewing lens's image as being nearly identical to the shooting lens. Or better yet use a single lens reflex camera. I believe that we often gravitate toward presuming our view on the world is the same as that seen by others. This is a convenient shortcut for the mind, rather than taking the time to consider the differences that might exist. I believe the benefit of learning to first guess and then predict accurately what the perpective might look like from the other lens is that one learns the limitations and benefits of one's own lens, and can see or make better photographs one's self. The most difficult step though may be first admitting that the view itself is different.

inversion

Nikon Coolpix 950

Moon Beam

Nikon Coolpix 950

Photo of nearly full moon, through window, overexposed, and altered via levels in Photoshop Elements.