Digital darkroom

Photoshop was in version 3 where I first encountered it, back in 1995, although I had been using an early version of Corel Photo Paint before that.

By the early 1990s, unless one was a hobbyist, scientist, freelance photo-journalist, print media service bureau, very high end commercial shooter or low volume/big ticket fine arts photographer, having a private wet processing lab was on the way out. Running a traditional analogue darkroom had become altogether too cost inefficient, too slow and too impractical for anyone not prepared to work in it full time and gear up for genuine volume. Commercial lab businesses quickly became the way to go for most suburban wedding, school, portrait, ad stock and community event shooters.

This was especially true for advertising outfits which did a variety of things in addition to straight photography. I had been taught essential darkroom skills when I was young but by the time I had a NEED to actually process film, the very idea had passed its use-by-date. Besides, transparencies were favoured for quality print publishing and they had to be processed for us at Kodak or Pacific Labs. Then again, clients often brought in their own trannies, negatives or prints to scan.

By the mid 1990s, for an increasing number of camera jockeys, the Photoshop "digital darkroom" had become the ONLY practical darkroom - many years before modern digital cameras ever came along. If one wanted to optimise an image's exposure, remove or replace a background, get rid of dust & scratches, air brush a model's cheek, enhance contrast or saturate colour, chances were that a traditional film photographer was using a digital darkroom like Photoshop, for the purpose.

Adobe Photoshop is and has always been an essential part of the serious photography/print media process. The work of legendary photographers like Ansel Adams and Frank Hurley were very much about wet darkroom post processing. There is no doubt in my mind that had film scanners and Photoshop been around in their day, both men would have been using them on a routine basis.

It is a little weird, therefore, to encounter the post processing counter culture which has appeared among amateurs in the last few years. You've all seen and heard it. Somehow, people who use Photoshop are cheats, defrauders and generally weak photographers who, (unlike presumably strong MACHO photographers) need to be propped up by "artificial" means. I get a little sick and tired of having some of my best work criticised by macho amateurs along the lines of "..... it's all right I suppose but you Photoshopped it .... you DID didn't you? .... you can't fool me".

Sigh! Spare us these people - PLEASE!

In the next blog I will address myself directly to those for whom "Photoshopped pictures" somehow don't really count.

See my work at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Senseless megapixels part 2

For anyone interested in cameras and (to a lesser extent) photography, there is no website which offers the same amount of information, the same volume of forum traffic and the same meticulous reviews of equipment as http://www.dpreview.com/

I have followed it for many years and can recommend it highly. Recently, dpreview.com reviewed the very popular and highly acclaimed Canon G10 which proudly boasts a 14.7 million pixel sensor. They compared the results with those from the older, 10 megapixel Canon 1000D with the ISO sensitivity set to 1600. There were many pictures captured by both cameras for the purpose and this is ONE of them, examined close up at 1:1 (1 image pixel to 1 display pixel).

Now we all know that more pixels means bigger, better clearer pictures ....... right? When we look at the two images at the head of the article it is easy to conclude that the upper one must have been taken with the new 14.7 megapixel G10 while the lower one must have been taken with the older 10 megapixel 1000D. Right? ............ WRONG! In fact the lower picture was shot by the G10.

In every way, the upper image is superior and there is just no way to get around that simple fact. 10 megapixels absolutely beat the crap out of 14.7 megapixels. It is important to emphasise that every precaution was taken to make the comparison as fair as possible. It is also important to emphasise that this one illustration does not tell the whole story and interested folk should go to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong10/ where the entire article makes interesting reading.

Say what we may, however, the small illustration above IS accurate and for all those who agree with me about the senseless marketing-department-driven megapixel race, the result is not in the least surprising. The central point I am trying to make is that the resolution specifications of a camera are but one small part of the story about how good a particular camera may be for your purpose.

All right then .... WHY does the image captured by the higher resolution camera look so bad?

To begin with, the most important specification for image sensors is NOT just how much resolution is available to them but how physically large they are as well. The sensor in the Canon 1000D (being a DSLR) enjoys a APS-C sensor approximately 5 times the size of the tiny G10 sensor. This means there are many many more "photo-sites" to the square millimetre in the G10's sensor than is the case with the 1000D's sensor. In other words, the "pixel density" of the 1000D sensor is very much lower than the G10's. Beyond a certain point, the lower the pixel density of a sensor, the less noise will be evident in one of its images and the better that detail will be retained in an image as the sensitivity increases. Put simply, "low pixel density, clear picture - high pixel density, muddy picture".

Don't get me wrong. At ISO 80, the G10 will produce an image which seems every bit as good as the 1000D. Unfortunately, as you strive to capture more and more ambitious images under less than optimal lighting conditions or as you try to freeze faster moving objects or as you attempt to increase depth of field, increased sensitivity is desirable, revealing the limitations of pixel dense sensors.

To make matters even worse, pixel dense sensors place greater resolution demands on lenses. The same lens will appear to resolve images less clearly with more densely populated sensors than it would with less densely populated ones.

These simple facts seem to be ignored by the camera manufacturers who appear to be betting on newcomer ignorance to carry the day. It is easier for purchasers to digest steadily higher numbers of pixels than to appreciate the issue of optimum pixel density.

Thus the senseless increase in megapixel specs carries on unchecked while (in all but the best possible lighting conditions) the pictures themselves get noisier and fuzzier. Ridiculous isn't it?

See my work at www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Senseless megapixels

The image above is a sunset I took recently looking west across the railway tracks at Blackheath. As displayed here, the image measures 408x274 pixels (111,792 pixels in all).

Ken Rockwell is a blogger who is well worth a read. He got to be well known by making controversial statements and expressing over-the-top opinions. Why not? Doing the latter has made him very successful. Check out this article entitled "Your Camera Doesn't Matter" at http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm

One of the things that makes Ken annoying for many people is that very often his seemingly outrageous views are spot on. "Your Camera Doesn't Matter" is a case in point. For potentially serious photographers, the message is clear. Beyond a certain easily reached point, for all the things that REALLY matter in a great image, the alleged differences between cameras and lenses don't matter.

I'll go further. Despite what the pixel peepers will tell you, for most display purposes, under optimum conditions, there will be no real noticeable difference in image quality, no matter what modern camera you buy. If you are obsessed with finding out the truth about which of those shiny new cameras in the Harvey Norman display case is actually the BEST, forget it. There IS no BEST camera. Almost ANY new digital camera will be capable of providing terrific image quality .... end of story.

This is not to say that all cameras are created equal. Each device is optimized for use under particular conditions and for specific purposes. But the REAL quality differences between images invariably come about because of non equipment factors such as lighting, composition and a photographer's technical skill.

A lot of new photographers (and even some photographers who should know better) have been led to believe in the universal digital camera "goodness" factor. Manufacturers would love you to believe that "the more megapixels, the better quality the image". That keeps everything nice and simple does it not? If one succeeds in convincing new camera purchasers that "more megapixel good - less megapixel bad" it then becomes simple to massively increase sales of one's product by just increasing megapixels. What could be easier? Yet another triumph for the marketing department.

Here are a few facts to help explode the megapixel myth. Go to this address: http://www.pbase.com/yp8/image/22187488

This is one of the beautiful images to be found on Yves Pinsonneault's wonderful galleries. It may prove useful to explore his website and let yourself become inspired. In any event the image I asked you to find looks good on your computer screen does it not? That image, as displayed measures 800x554 pixels and could theoretically have been shot by a digital camera with a 443,200 pixel sensor i.e. a little less than HALF a megapixel. When you consider that most images are now viewed on computer screens, it seems almost ridiculous to be obsessing over 15 megapixel sensors (30 times the resolution), doesn't it?

What on earth, therefore, is the benefit of all those megapixels so often gushed over by the salesmen at the counter? The answer, as always, is .... it depends. One thing in particular needs to be emphasized. Increasing the number of pixels in an image (beyond a point reached several years ago) has little or nothing to do with improving image quality. It IS for the purpose of increasing an image's potential display size.

In the interests of saving time here are some sweeping (but accurate statements) about resolution.

If all you want to produce are lovely images on a computer screen and sharp 8x6 inch prints, a 3 (that's right! 3!) megapixel camera is as much as you will ever need. You will not see any increase in image quality for those display purposes on the basis of higher resolution alone.

If you want to produce A4 or (say) 12x8 inch prints, 6 megapixels is more than enough. NO visible increase in image quality for those display purposes can be obtained using higher resolution sensors. In fact I have often produced beautiful 18x12 inch prints from 6 megapixel images which were effectively indistinguishable from the same subject shot with a 10 megapixel camera. For computer display, email sharing and such you will need to actually REDUCE the size of 6 megapixel images.

If you start with a solid noise free image, I find that you can interpolate an image by up to 50% without any loss of picture quality that yours truly can detect. Thus a 6 megapixel image is really a 9 megapixel image and an 8 megapixel image is really a 12 megapixel image in any event.

Here is an excellent article by Thom Hogan about the relationship between megapixels and image size: http://www.bythom.com/printsizes.htm

The point I am making is that for the vast majority of us, 6-10 megapixels is MORE than enough to produce breathtaking images for most display applications we are likely to encounter. Certainly the 15-24 megapixels offered by the latest models is (for most of us) decidedly overkill. The pity is that as we rush headlong into ever higher resolutions, picture quality starts to DETERIORATE rather than improve. I'll show you why in the next article.

See my work at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

The great Instamatic days

The very first camera I ever owned - full stop - was a Kodak Instamatic 200. It was one of nearly 60 million such cameras sold world-wide by the Kodak camera company between about 1963 and 1970. It was perhaps the last great hurrah for American camera manufacture and marketing before the Japanese industry effectively took over the world.

The first Instamatic to make an impact in Australia was the model 100 (pictured above) which was actually manufactured here. Philosphically it was a direct descendent of the Box Brownie series which had brought photography to the masses at the turn of the twentieth century. It was a genuine inspiration and consisted of a pretty little box which opened at the back to allow a brilliantly conceived film "cartridge" to be dropped in. It was incredibly simple to operate, offered a wide angle lens which had so much depth of field that focussing was unnecessary, a simple shutter release and a film advance lever. Provided that the conditions were bright and assuming that your shaky hands could live with a 1/90 sec fixed shutter speed, the average person could get an acceptable colour picture every time. Thus uncounted millions of sunny day family "line ups" at back yard picnics were committed to film.

For those who might actually take a picture in other than sunny circumstances or who might want to get a little closer to their subjects, my Instamatic 200 was a surprisingly important step up. It was manufactured exclusively in England and was possibly the best thought out non-exposure metered super cheap camera ever made. It provided four basic aperture settings which covered most circumstances: bright sunshine, low sun (early morning & late afternoon), light overcast and dark. It had four broad focus zones from close up to infinity and a slightly longer (and more flexible) lens.

Looking at some of my earliest slides, I can see that the old Instamatic did a creditable job, but when I used to compare them with the slides of a very dear friend of mine (who owned a proper 35mm camera with a really good lens) I quickly became dissatisfied. The rest is largely a sad history of frustration, expense and just plain foolishness during which I thrashed around looking for the perfect camera and lenses which would make of me the perfect photographer.

Some years ago it dawned upon me that I would NEVER become the "perfect" photographer. If I was ever to make money in photography I would need to learn to become a "good enough" photographer. Moreover, being good enough (beyond a certain point) had little to do with equipment, perfect or otherwise.

See my work at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Nostalgia time

Well I have talked about most of the cameras I ever owned and here are two more for now. I shot this image just yesterday as part of my pbase "Photo a Day" activity. The lighting was the issue that occupied me the most but in the end, the subject itself looked so fetching that I simply HAD to include the picture here.

What do you think? Isn't it beautiful? This old OM10 was part of the famous Olympus "OM" series which began with the ground breaking OM1. The little silicon chip icon on the front of the body was to indicate that this camera was among the first to incorporate "computer technology" into a metering system.

Mind you, I purchased this camera for personal use back in 1980, just when the old Apple 2 computer reigned supreme. It is difficult to imagine that either the OM10's circuitry or its firmware was able to do anything especially clever. Nonetheless I took countless nice images with this device - mostly running Kodachrome 64 or various of the Ektachromes for transparencies.

I especially love the glow that cameras of the period get when you light them half decently. Most especially those wonderful old lens coatings used to reveal so many colours when you lit them like this. When you pick up an old film SLR it somehow has a solidity that even very expensive DSLRs lack. Sigh! I loved it back then when one breathlessly waited for the slides to come back from Kodak. For all the improvements which digital cameras allow us to achieve in our images, I still miss the magic of the little yellow boxes.

Some people are never satisfied - wouldn't you agree? This is especially true of silly old codgers with rose coloured glasses.

Of course the first half way decent 35mm camera I ever owned (from 1967) has a special place in my heart and of course I sold it (like an idiot) many many years ago. It was a classic rangefinder type - the Minolta Himatic 7s . This picture is from Matt Denton's terrific website, part of which is a kind of classic camera museum: http://mattdentonphoto.com/camera

The time of my life in which the Himatic 7s played a part was well before I ever made money from images but my experiences with that camera helped turn my soul toward photography like no other.

See my work at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Semi retiring cameras

You know how it is - or perhaps you don't. You look longingly at the idle years ahead in retirement only to become a little frightened as you actually creep up on them. Perhaps I should continue to work just a bit .. keep my hand in ... avoid feeling irrelevant ... head off boredom ... keep fit .. stay mentally active etc etc. I know!! I shall go and shoot pictures for realtors marketing properties on the web and in glossy magazines. In truth I had been doing this on and off for many years. This time it would be the main game.

It began as an occasional outing but gets to be pretty full on at times. My retirement is really only SEMI retirement at best. Nonetheless I have presently struck a pleasant balance. As for the future? We'll just have to see, I suppose.














At any rate I needed tools. My D100's were sold while they still performed well and continued to be worth something, my D40 couldn't be expected to work for a living on a permanent basis. The choice seemed to be between the incoming D300 (a handsome beast indeed) or the outgoing (but handsomely priced) D80.

Back when I was using Minolta SRT101s, you could expect a well built body to last 10 or 20 years. Film was the same no matter what you loaded it into. The gear was unlikely to be made obsolete from genuine technical innovation affecting the end product.

Digital is different. After 3 or 4 years of use, one can expect a DSLR to pale before the onslaught of the latest models, offering more pixels, less noise, better metering, larger screens, clearer viewfinders, more effective sensor cleaning, faster operation and sexier features. Some of these things can represent savings in time, greater efficiencies in operation and just plain better product. Moreover the risk of circuit failure grows larger with time along with shutter problems and the need for pixel re-mapping - all of which represent expensive servicing. The cost of modern gear must be written off against the earnings from no more than 3 or 4 years and when you're in a lower tax bracket (part time income only), deductions for depreciation, lease payments or service costs are correspondingly less helpful.

At the same time it was undeniable that the new tools would not be asked to work flat out every day, they would not need to offer super rapid operation, would not require the last word in low light performance and (given that they would mostly operate from tripods) should be less likely to suffer falls.

In the end I got two Nikon D80 bodies for less than the cost of one D300 body and haven't looked back. They are very suitable work horses, do a more than adequate job in every respect, offer back up should bad luck befall me and will each owe me a lot less money when they themselves come to the end of their working lives.

See some of my real estate work at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs/real_estate

You little beauty

Walking around with a relatively large and heavy device like the Nikon D100 gets a little wearing after an hour or two. Hiking long distances into nature parks, covering community events, attending car shows and such can be an exercise in severe pain before one is through - particularly when one is getting on a bit.

About twelve months or so ago, reducing work commitments to part time, I decided to get myself a capable camera for personal use which could be lived with for hours at a time without the need for paramedics, high end pain medication and/or hospital emergency rooms by day's end. So I bought a Nikon D40 with basic 18-55mm zoom lens.

Now I know that there are a lot of experts posting to dpreview.com (with positively months of experience) who will swear that it is well nigh impossible to obtain high quality images with anything less than a $3000 kit. I am here to bust that myth. I have been through the mill a few times, have run a few thousand rolls of film over 40 years or so and have recently learned to tell a good image from a poor one. I am far from the best photographer in the world but I HAVE come up with a few nice images in my time.

I have to tell you that the D40 is very much my camera of choice. In fact I will go so far as to say that the D40 is the nicest compromise between performance and convenience I have EVER used.

It is light enough and small enough to carry around all day and to hide under parkas when it rains. It is so uncomplicated and undemanding that one can learn to get the most out of it very quickly. It contains all the features I need (i.e. only several times the features of any film SLR). The kit lens is astonishingly good, producing excellent low distortion results at almost any aperture and focal length. It is extremely good to handle, such that even at the end of a long day it is easy to obtain camera shake-free images. It is quiet and fast. It can deliver surprisingly clean images at ISO 1600 from its low pixel density sensor.

In short, it releases a photographer from all of the appalling encumbrances which most other cameras thrust upon one - so much so that he/she can simply get on with the task of capturing images. In the words of the old Minolta ad for its legendary SRT 101. "It never says no to a creative challenge." I am simply delighted with it.

Of course the D40 is not designed for use in professional circumstances. If I was to work it every day (hundreds of images at a time) it might ultimately fail me. On the other hand, it is now so cheap that I could buy FIVE D40 kits for the same cost as ONE D300 with 18-200 lens. If the camera ever lets me down I will go buy another one (or whatever replaces it). Big deal.

See lots of D40 pictures in my "picture a day" gallery at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

DSLRs changed my world

Within 6 months of my buying the Canon S30, affordable digital SLRs began to emerge. I went out and bought a Nikon D100 mainly because my latest film camera was a Nikon F80 (that's N80 to you Americans), I had enjoyed good experiences with it and I already owned a few Nikkor lenses.

In those early days (2003), so called "affordable" DSLR bodies like the D100 still cost over $4000 Australian but I felt that the investment was worth it. Before the end of that year I had bought a second D100 as the amount of straight photography I was then doing had increased a lot and I needed a back-up.

The D100 has since suffered a lot of nit pick criticism for all the things that it wasn't. It must be remembered, however, that for a short while in the Australian market, it virtually stood alone as the viable tool for small-scale photographers wanting to take advantage of the wonderful business efficiencies that digital could provide. Many gripes were made in the light of later models by johnny-come-latelies looking at old spec sheets. The D100 was not replaced until the D200 came along a whole three years later. It becomes very much easier to produce better cameras when you have a long working career like the D100 to learn from and later technical innovation to take advantage of.

Neither of my D100s ever let me down, most operations were virtually instant, picture quality was everything I could have asked for and despite their hand-me-down F80 construction, they continued to labour on without complaint despite the hard life I put them through. I have since sold my D100s to amateur photographers who (at last report) remained very pleased with them.

One thing that so many people choose to forget is how much more technically advanced the first DSLRs were, compared to even the very best film SLRs. In reality, film SLRs in 2003 were still only highly refined versions of innovative 1960's models. DSLRs were a world apart, providing capabilities we could only have dreamed about previously. While it was possible to whine about the ultimate resolution shortcomings of 6 megapixel digital images compared with film, the fact was that the quality of what I was producing did indeed soar, my running costs did indeed plummet and the speed at which I could get completed work into layouts and over to clients had left film spinning in the dust.

If cameras like the Canon S30 had served notice that film's days as the resident imaging technology were numbered, cameras like the Nikon D100 arrived with the sherrif brandishing an eviction order.

See my work at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Came the dawn

Having gone back to film SLRs and scans for most professional applications, in 2002 I purchased a handsome new digital camera. The Canon S30 was one of that generation of devices which gave due warning to the film industry. "Your days are numbered". It was beautifully made. Picture quality was more than adequate for gorgeous 10x8 inch prints. It had a nice colour screen, the zoom lens was handy enough and speed of operation had improved hugely. The compact flash memory card had arrived, providing a practical solution to storage at long last.

Of course the technical competencies which cameras like the S30 could offer were not the real reason that film was on its way to retirement. After all, film SLRs were still vastly more suited to the rigours of day to day photo-journalism and film was still much superior for most forms of commercial work. Nonetheless most people could quickly see that with a camera like the S30, their ability to produce genuinely fine images had just improved out of sight. Photographers could see the result of what they had just shot immediately and if they didn't like it, they could shoot another without financial penalty. Even more, with the aid of software like Adobe Photoshop, their computers could provide all of the image optimization power of a traditional darkroom.

This was a moment of much genuine excitement for keen amateur photographers. It was a moment when many casual photographers BECAME keen photographers.

When the Canon S30 was released for sale, affordable digital SLRs did not exist and so "point & shoot compacts" were effectively the front line of digital image capture. Excellent 3 megapixel sensors quickly grew to an entirely satisfactory four and five megapixels and even to a distinctly superfluous six megapixels ... and there they should have stayed.

I have comments to make on the idiotic megapixel race in compact cameras but that discussion comes in a future post. In the meantime, do you like the above picture of the S30? It was taken today, handheld at 1/15th of a second. Not bad eh?

The old Canon still looks and works as if it was brand new. Ah they don't make 'em like they used to.

Have a look at my work: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

Let's have a coffee and talk cameras

When digital cameras first came along, not many people thought that they would mean the virtual end of film and all that rich history of analogue imaging that had lasted a hundred and fifty years.

The first digital camera I ever owned was a Logitech Fotoman. It cost me about $1000 Australian back in about 1991 - the dark ages before Windows 95. It produced tiny greyscale 150 kilobyte files with very low resolution. It was slow, cumbersome and extremely limited in what it could do.

For all that, it had opened the door to a brand new world.

The whole idea was that film didn't have to be processed into negatives and/or prints and then scanned into digital form where (after copious amounts of time trouble and expense) it could finally form part of a publishable layout. Instead, with Fotoman, I took the picture, sat the camera in its cradle, selected an image from the line of thumbnails which appeared on screen and dropped it into my (early version) Pagemaker layout.

Whoever or whatever was being promoted could be featured in an illustrated advertising flyer design (start to finish) within minutes. From the viewpoint of today it is sometimes difficult for people to understand (or remember) what a revolution that was.

Despite its potential, digital photography was to remain an expensive indulgence for several years yet. Back then, few people like me could believe that such devices would begin to threaten the very existence of film photography and the massive world-wide industry which supported it.

Of course all that is history now, but didn't it all come with a rush when it DID?! Yep, a fascinating topic. I'll have a soy milk cappucino please.

See my work at http://www.pbase.com/davidhobbs