Another Portfolio Pic

A Bit of My Portfolio
This is an old shot of mine. The band "Drop Nineteens" were a bit taken aback when they were shown it - the were an American band who weren't at all associated with the image. The art director "sold it" as it was different -to say the least. The shot was taken in a teaching hospital in London, (they were very helpful), we were shown into a big room with stainless steal benches dotted around. Some of the benches had body shaped objects on with covers over them. To cut a long story even longer we found a Technician and told him that we had arranged to photograph a human brain - and he said @right then - how do you want it'. We thought in a jar. So he slapped it in this glass jar and filled it with water and what you see here is the result. This image is not - by any means - digital but shows what old fashioned film could do - and we didnt have to spend hours sweating over a hot computer to get the effect. However the drop nineteens label was added afterwards. The faces on the back cover were also done "in camera". Has anyone heard of this group?
The art direction on this shoot was by Ian Kay of Hills Archer Studios

Adobe-Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom

I thought I would try my hand at software review. I downloaded the trial versions of "Elements" and "Lightroom" to see how they compare to the "Photoshop" type. I am comparing them to the latest CS3 Photoshop as they are, in many ways, interconnected. Elements is probably called "Elements" because it has some elements of the parent Photoshop. All three of these systems perform very well in the fields inwhich they are intended to operate. Elements has some strong editing functionality using most of the tools found in Photoshop. There are obvious differences in both Elements and Lightroom. Elements is designed to handle small (ish) files. It wouldn't touch the panorama that consisted of 15 layers of large digital image files. But then, it was over 100meg. Photoshop takes long enough to load it. The file saving was paerticularly good as it offered a jpeg2000 option. If you don't know anything about jpeg2000 it is worth looking up on the web. There is too much to be said about it here. It's major benefit is that it will compress a file without loss. (you do have the opportunity to reduce file sizes further with a bit of loss but it's still better than the old jpeg standard. I reduced am image from 45,700 to 3900kb in it's lossless mode.
Photoshop CS has the jpeg2000 plugin as an option on the CD in a folder "Goodies", "Optional Plugins", "Photoshop only", "File Formats", "JPEG2000.8BI. Just copy this file and put it in the plugins folder in the Photoshop folder in the Programs directory putting it under "File Formats". You can Comment me if you need any help with this. I will continue this blog later when I will tell you about Lightroom.

Long focal length lenses

I was hoping to use an example of the sort of problems encountered with lenses of 200mm or equivalent, it seems that I deleted it so here is a good one(well OK). To cut a long story short. I borrowed a Canon 350D camera with a Tamron zoom lens that I was using at about 150mm focal length equivalent - 38mm actual . I was using a pretty solid tripod and available light. I had spent hours the previous day trying desperately to get a sharp image. The camera was on a Manfrotto tripod - one heavy duty enough for a 4x5 camera. The lens seemed to become sharp at f16 so that is what this was taken at. To complete the job I set the camera to "Mirror-up" and used the remote control release. Well the shots came out sharp and the client was pleased - and he paid me. However, if I had not have spent a few hours experimenting then it would have been a disaster. When shooting for best quality I try and use the 100 ISO setting as that produces the least "noise" in the picture. The Canon is still pretty good at higher settings but if you want to avoid speckly shadow areas then stick with the slower ISO setting.
As a result of this I was using a shutter speed of 1/2 sec which is far too long for hand holding. In this picture of a full size dining room chair you can see how sharp it is (at least you can in the original). If you are taking pictures in extreme circumstances, without a tripod, try and find something solid to lean the camera on and also shoot several shots at a time. Usually at least one will be sharp. If you are shooting moving objects- and you need to pan the camera with the movement-keep your finger on the expose button. Digital film is cheap opportunities are rare.

Todays Photoshop tip

A quick tip for all photoshop and Elements users:
When using layers, and I hope you are, give them a name. To name the layer is quite simple just click on the layer to get the drop-down menu and at the top click on rename layer. If you get loads of layers in a complicated edit you will find it easier to navigate. Layers can also be grouped together and color coded to make it easier still. I have worked on multi-layered images that have had about 50 layers in 10 groups of 5. When they are grouped together you can turn the whole group off and on - a great time saver when doing multiple roll-overs.

A record cover

This picture for the Irish group "The Frames" is an illustration of depth of field. Tne background to the picture was foil with the lyrics typed onto it with a typewriter that had no ribbon. I was required to make it as out of focus as possible hence the nails through the apple being the only sharp bit. Dont ask me why though - perhaps it's art.

Wide angle - telephoto

In my last blog the illustration I used was taken at mximum wide angle. Todays picture is taken with the lens set at near full zoom. The camera I am using for these shots is a Minolta Dimage 7i. This camera has a 5 megapixel ccd and is more than adequate for this demonstration although a Canon 350d or 400 would be slightly different on the depth of field examples - you have to try this for yourself. The the longer the focal length of a lens the narrower the band of sharp focus you also get a change in perspective. In the not too distant past text books on portraiture would advocate being at least 2metres (6ft approx) from your subject so it would be useful to have a lens that fills the field of view with the subject. In my illustration you will see the depth of field quite clearly when shot zoomed in on the subject. The effect of stopping down is also very noticeable. You will perhaps notice (with your own camera) that your wide angle images and zoomed images behave differently. This is because the focal length to ccd size varies considerably from camera to camera. With the Dimage 7i the true focal length of the lens is 7.3mm which is the equivalent of 28mm on a camera with a full(35mm) size ccd. (the ccd is the part of the camera that is in the 'film' plane and receives and converts the image to digital data).

More on photography

Depth of Field

Many people do not understand depth of field. Simply it is the region, in a picture that is acceptably sharp. What is acceptable is entirely dependant on how big an image is to be reproduced and how far away the viewer is. A picture, of a landscape - for example, that has sharp focus in the middle distance will be acceptably sharp from close-up to the far distance when printed at a small print size (6inch x 4inch) but will only be acceptably sharp at the point of focus at poster size (30inch x 40inch). This you can see for yourself by experiment using your computer printer -for instance.
Depth of field is governed by several things.

1. Aperture: if you have control over your camera and can control the aperture size. The aperture is the iris diaphragm inside the lens system. When it is very small it is said to be stopped down (f8 say) and when it is wide open the aperture will be close to the maximum possible. Sometimes the maximum varies, with some makes and types of lens, the reason we dont need at this moment. When the lens is set wide open the depth of field, at a given focus point, will be shallower than when stopped down the smaller the aperture the more depth of field you get.
2. Focal lenght: most cameras seem to have zoom capability. If this is through changes to the lens and not digital zoom the depth of field at wider angles of view will be greater than with narrower angles as when you zoom-in.

If you want to use selective depth of field, concentrating the attention to a small depthof the image, then you need to set the camera away from the subject and select a wide aperture ie F2.8 or f3.5. You will have the narrowest band of sharp focus at the maximum zoom and maximum aperture and corresponding greater sharpness at smaller amounts of zoom and/or aperture.
In the accompanying photograph I have photographed som rulers indicating the f stop number on each of three images. I will tell you more in my next episode.