The Home of the Hybrid Photographer

Okay, I am officially in a mood. I am in the middle of two big development pushes, sitting on a book that I am not comfortable in completing and insanely busy at home and work. I have not picked up my camera for fun in over a month. Things are insane right now.

When I get like this, I get really agitated over pettiness, bravado, ignorance and plain stupidity. Which is unfortunate, since part of my daily wind down is checking a few photo blogs, message board and checking out Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.

What has been gnawing at me for days is the frequent asinine comments I come across in those venues. I avoid the discussion myself, but I feel its time for me to address some of the common statements I encounter. Here they are in no significant order.

“Presets should be free / No one should ever pay for presets”

Okay, I develop presets that are sold to the public. I also have made quite a number of free presets for Lightroom and ACR over the years. Countless others do the same, but this hits somewhat home to me.

If someone is inquiring to the usefulness of a retail preset package, they are clearly considering using them to assist in the creative workflow. It is complete not germane to the conversation to give your idealistic view of presets should be free. Almost every thread I read in a message board relating to presets has at least one asshat who feels the need to drive home this point.

Feel free to tell them the package isn’t that great, or tell them how you have leveraged it in your workflow. But don’t take the time to reiterate for the thousandth time that they can do it themselves and that presets are simply scripts that should be free. Because the odds are you have never once put 15 hours into developing one set of presets that work reasonably well over a range of differing images.

Guess what hotshot, almost every Lightroom/ACR/Aperture/Photoshop user already knows how presets or scripts are made in the platform, even if they don’t know the actual process by which to do so. Also, consider this, maybe they like the look of a particular preset someone else has developed and do not want to waste their time reinventing the friggin’ wheel. They know presets simply adjust sliders, they know presets are scripts that do just that. Get over it.

This is not to say every preset collection is golden, this is not to say that the creator put hours of loving diligence into designing their product. There is crap out there. I like to think mine are quality products, but you may differ, that is fine. If you don’t like it, don’t support me. If you do and buy, thank you. Bottom line, people put time into these presets, if they give them away great, if they want to be compensated for their efforts they will sell them. You don’t have to buy, but don’t be the repetitive guy who has to lambaste every person asking about presets.

And remember, you can do everything any commercial plug in does with just Photoshop. It just takes a hell of a lot longer.

“Some photographers make art, others just make pictures”

Actually, all photographers make pictures… and they all make art as well… just not what you may define as art. Get off your bloody high horse. Don’t denigrate a photographer by calling their images simple snapshots. One person’s snapshot on a street is another person’s idea of the second coming of Cartier-Bresson. Just because you don’t see art in it doesn’t make the image any less valid.

So, you consider a shot of a toilet taken in low light with Tri-X pushed to EI 12800 art. Others may consider it a grainy picture of a toilet hung on a wall in bad taste. You may find a close up of rumpled bed sheets converted to black and white and heavy contrast to be fine, abstract art. Others see a mish mash of black and white.

All photographers make pictures, some viewers see art. You may see your own image as art… and it is! But to Bob Smith down the road, it may just be a picture of a damn frog.

Statements such as this are broad generalizations based off personal opinion. The statement means nothing in and of its self, and when I read these comments when an image is being discussed it sickens me. Say you don’t like it and move on.

I never liked Andy Warhol’s art personally, but I won’t deny that its art. It’s just not what I want on my wall.

“Photoshop is cheating”

So… then I guess Ansel Adams was a cheater as well, because he manipulated the hell out of his images back in the day. He exposed negative for the express purpose of post production, in the form of dodging and burning, sandwiching negatives and a multitude of old school, analog image manipulation techniques. There is nothing new under the sun… Photoshop did not change this in the least.

Photographers have been using masks, layers, compositing, dodging, burning, contrast manipulations and even cloning for years. Photoshop just made it a whole lot simpler. Ansel would be using Photoshop today, actually any photographer who ever pushed the boundaries of possibilities would be. And they wouldn’t be cheating by doing so.

Stating photographer who use Photoshop is cheating is like saying Graphic Designers who use Illustrator are cheaters as well. In the old days they had do create their works through a multitude of mechanical means, including >gasp< drawing by hand. Because digital technology has made their tasks easier in no way makes it cheating, and they are never accused as such. Heavy Photoshop users are frequently accosted on in this manner.

Not that I personally care much, I am from the school of get it as right as possible in the camera. But that’s more a function of not wanting to work in Photoshop much, as opposed to having some self righteous opposition to people using the tools available.

“Film is dead”

And so is vinyl, but there are always new LP’s on sale at the few music stores left. I shoot film; most of my photographer friends shoot film to one degree or another as well. It is a different experience from digital photography, and has its own strengths and weaknesses, but is just as valid today as it was years ago.

Others point to external factors for film’s demise, aside from <sarcasm> the vast superiority of digital </sarcasm>. Case in point, Kodak filing for bankruptcy andFujicutting their film lines, both big issues for film photographers. While it is true these are not exactly great for film photography, it is far from killing it.

Kodak has stated that its film division is still profitable, doing much better than other business segments. What killed Kodak was their inability to be agile in the early days of digital technology, not developing good products and selling shovel ware crap re-branded cameras, amongst other really bad ideas. Kodak has cut film stock from their offerings, but they have also added new stock to their offerings in the past years as well. Kodak film is going nowhere for the time being.

And if Kodak goes under, there is a thriving craft market of film manufacturers inEurope. Hell, the Impossible Project brought us semi-functional Polaroid type instant film again. Rollei/Maco is producing beautiful black and white films, and Ilford is still doing what that brand name has been doing for years.

There is a multitude of other small market manufacturers breathing more life into film, and a few businesses are doing their part as well… Freestyle Photography and Lomography both keep the love alive. Even if I hate the lomography movement, I still love the movement keeping film rolling through the processors.

Film is not dead. You may just be too lazy or cheap to be bothered with it, and that is okay. But don’t sound the death knell for something you no longer have any interest in.

“Film is superior to digital”

And Vinyl is superior to iTunes AAC, but the odds are if you heard both in a dark room, you couldn’t tell the difference, aside from the pop and hiss of the turntable.

I shoot primarily film, I love film. I love its organic nature and stark simplicity. But it is not superior to digital or vice versa. They are simply different mediums for the same style of art.

Sensor vs film frame. If I were to take my son’s Minolta Vectis APS SLR and photography the same subject with my bother’s Sony A200 what would I see? Both images are made on the same basic dimensions (Actually, the Vectis is shooting in APS-H format which is slightly larger than the A-200’s APS-C sensor).

First, the odds are that the digital image will have better resolution, in terms of resolving power. At the frame size, I am getting 10 megapixels of quality image from the A200. Scanning the APS negative on a Nikon Coolscan at the maximum 4000 DPI setting renders me 12.5 megapixels. But it is over resolving the film, pulling out dye cloud structure, not more image. Subjectively, I will peg APS film on a Nikon at 10 megapixels, and that is being favorable to the film.

So, from two semi-equivalent image sizes, we should have two identical images, right? Not really. The demosaiced raw file from the A200 will generally have better sharpness than the film scan. This is due to the size of the grain converted to dye clouds in the film, versus the size of the pixels in the Bayer array of the A200. But what about dynamic range, you ask? Negative film has about a 12 stop range normally, slide film as between 6 and 8 depending on emulsion. The Sony A200 at ISO 100 and full RAW goes about 10 stops. Better range than Slide but slightly worse than Negative film. It’s a wash.

So, the digital image has one up on the film image, general sharpness and detail.DynamicRangeis a washout. So how about color fidelity? The A200, shot in RAW with properly set white balance will show a slight divergence from the real world colors. This can be corrected in Lightroom or ACR with a camera profile, but it will never match real life exactly. The Vectis will produce the colors that the film stock creates. If it were slide film, it simply would not match the real world at all; you get what the film gives you. Negative film is a slightly different matter.

But when is the last time you saw the “real” colors produced from negative film stock? The orange mask of the film makes that equation a bit crazy. If you scan your own film, you can take care to correct completely for the orange mask, and upon inversion, get the colors produced by the film stock… which again strays from reality quite a bit. And if you send your film off to a lab, the odds are it gets scanned in a Fuji Frontier machine and color corrections are done by the machine automatically, deviating even more from what the film captured.

What about darkroom prints then? Well, color printing requires the use of filter packs to correct for the orange mask and color balance. Then you are at the mercy of the printer, of if doing it yourself, your own eyes. Color fidelity is a joke of a metric anyways. Choosing a film is like choosing your paints, it defines the appearance of the image. Much the same as your camera picture settings or camera profile in Lightroom, or hell, what presets you apply.

The advantage goes to digital right, well not so fast. There are more variables to consider. While the digital image may be shaper in general, the grid array of the sensor leads to jagged edges in the image, due to the pixel structure. This is corrected with anti-aliasing. This decreases the overall sharpness, yet it still tends to be sharper than most film images and it does not eliminate the appearance of jaggies at large print sizes. Film handles this much more organically with the film grains, which are random, and the dye clouds, which tend to blur together.

In general we are looking at two different media for the same art style.

“Digital is Superior to Film”

First see above. It’s a wash at the same sensor size in general. So, let’s look at 35mm 135 format film vs a Full Frame sensor. At 4000 DPI, a film scan yields approximately 24.1 megapixels. Some modern Full Frame cameras exceed that in 2012, others fall short. This also discounts film quality, some stock will be better than others; Fuji Velvia scanned is pretty damn close to being equivalent to 22 megapixels, other films fall short of that.

So, Digital is now in the driver’s seat with resolution and resolving power. So it’s a win right? Not really. Remember the megapixel wars? How many pixels do you really need? Velvia in 135 format can make wall sized prints that look good if so desired, just as good as a 30+ megapixel full frame camera to be honest. Digital still has pixelization and jagged edges at large sizes.

But we can always step up in film format. Medium format anyone? The modern Digital medium format cameras utilize the 645 format (4.5 cm x 6 cm). Phase One has a back that does 80 Megapixels! Scanning a 645 negative on the no longer available Nikon 9000 can render a 645 frame at just less than 67 Megapixels so win for digital right? Yes and no. Film can always be shot in an 8×10 camera, which at 2400 DPI (under the possibility of over-resolving most films) can yield 460 megapixels. Just saying.

And if you print film opically, the discussion of megapixels is moot anyways.

Another film advantage over digital is in the area of highlights and shadows. Film’s response to light is logarithmic, as it’s a chemical function, digital on the other hand has a linear light response, because it’s well… digital. This means on two, otherwise equal shots, as demonstrated in the APS battle earlier, film will have less blown highlights and more recoverable shadow detail than digital. Day in and day out. Sure, if you are scanning, you will have to use multiple scanner exposures, and merge the image to retain all the shadow and highlight detail, but you can. You have to bracket images and merge an HDR to do the same in digital. The point is, film handles light much more gracefully.

Either way, it is still a draw betwixt digital and film.

Anyways, that’s enough for today. I have a second part to this coming up as well, with more comments that royally piss me off.

Michael

 

 

Well, LIDF has been going in some manner for quite some time, but it has been sitting stagnant. I think its time to call it a day… sort of.

I will no longer be producing “content” for LIDF. By content, I mean what I have been doing so far.  Instructionals, presets and what not. I cannot maintain this type of content with my duties with X-Equals, its time to let go.

So, after this post, LIDF will become more of a personal blog. I will be sharing my photos (primarily film shots) along with penitent technical details. I will occasionally drop in for one of my rants or random thoughts. Don’t expect any cohesive articles, I am just going to be talking here. I hope you drop by and visit occasionally.

So, I’m eliminating content, but I am not going to stop producing content. It just wont be here anymore. I’ve been talking with Brandon of X-Equals, and I am hoping to include more of my traditional photography content on his blog. I already write a lot about digital photography, Lightroom and develop presets for X-Equals. Since my film workflow is centered upon Lightroom, it still fits at X-Equals.

So, if you are looking for fresh traditional photography content, I will be posting it at X-Equals. When I do, I will be sure to comment on it here and link you over.

If you are looking for presets, again, go to X-Equals. I am the preset platform developer for X-Equals, and all of what I have produced for LIDF is now available on X-Equals, most of which is vastly improved… check out XeL: Black and White for my newest renditions of classic black and white films for digital.

I will maintain all existing content, including all of the free LIDF presets here. But be warned, my old presets will likely no longer work properly in Lightroom 4. If you like these presets, there is a way to convert them to Lightroom 4, which I will be detailing soon on X-Equals, or look at XeL: Black and White and the forth coming XeL: Color for my newest renditions.

I may drop an occasional beta preset here, or I may do a quick write up on a process I am using. But, in general, most all that will be at X-Equals.

So, I want to make an offer to thank everyone for their support over the years. Brandon has authorized me to offer a 75% off coupon for any product offered in the X-Equals store. With this coupon, you can get XeL:Black and White for $5. Please consider giving it a go, the preset emulations in this collection are much better than the black and white presets available here. And within the week, we will be updating the product for Lightroom 4. If you purchase XeL: Black and White now, you will get an email with a free download link for the updated product as soon as its available.

So, head on over to X-Equals and use the coupon code LIDF at checkout to get 75% any purchase.  Offer Expired

I hope everyone continues to drop by now and again. I might have some interesting rambling or an image that you might enjoy.

It’s been a hell of a ride, but its time to let go.

Thank you all,

Michael W. Gray

 

Today is World Photography Day

172 years ago today, the nation of France gave a gift to the world that just keeps on giving. They gave us the gift of photography by sharing Louis Daguerre’s invention of the daguerreotype process.

This process has been refined by others, William Henry Fox Talbot and George Eastman of note to me. Their contributions, with many others, have brought us to the photographic techniques we know and love today.

These gifts have allowed many artists to find their voice and add beauty (and sometimes ugliness) to our lives. They have also allowed every person the ability to supplement memories with images, giving us touchstones to our past, sometimes giving us glimpses of the future.

I’m looking at a photo of me as a child. I am sitting with my grandfather who has passed from this earth. Simultaneously I am in touch with my past and unknowingly I have been seeing the future with the same image. I look at myself in the image and note how much my son looks like me, and my father for that matter. But you never know it’s the future until the present, but the photo lets me see that fact.

A photograph is not merely a pretty picture. It is truthfully a fossil. Let me explain that analogy.

When we see, at its basest, our eyes are capturing light photons that are bouncing off the subject. These photos travel in a wavelength that denotes colors. Our eyes receive these wavelengths and process that data into images that allow us to interact with the world.

Cameras allow us to focus these wavelengths onto a medium, be it film or a digital sensor. When we take a picture, these photons, which just bounced off the subject, are altering silver halide or altering voltage on a silicon wafer, recoding the image of the subject.

This is creating our “fossil”. The image was created by photons physically changing silver halide molecules or digital sensors.

When we develop the film, or when the camera or we render the sensor data, we render an image with these crystals or data. We are still in a sense touching that very light that bounce off our subject.

When we make a print, that same light is in a sense being transferred to paper. We have captured light, and made it ours. Be it 5 minutes ago or 100 years, we are seeing what was then, we have frozen light, and in turn time. We have made lights ours and in a sense gained immortality.

The print you have on your wall or on your desk, it is a fossil. Much like fossils are the mineralized remains of life past, a photograph is the light of the past rendered in silver, dyes and inks. These silvers, dyes and inks allow modern light to create a time warp, letting us look back into the past.

We are gods who have mastered time. Thanks to France.

Happy World Photography Day!

Some days are better than others. Same thing goes for weeks, months and years. This past year, until its waning months, was the most trying time of my life. My personal life was torn asunder and all aspects of my life suffered, including my photography and this blog.

I am not going to go into details regarding my personal life, other than I discovered deep dark places I never want to venture into again. However, I have finally resurfaced, with the help of family and one very special person. That aside, it’s time to get my photographic life back in shape. All I really lost was 2010.

So, I still have no clue as to frequency of posts on LIDF for the foreseeable future, but I am going to make an effort to keep some fresh content up. My writing and development duties over at X-Equals take a precedent over LIDF, and I’m behind over there as well. So the next few months are a time to dig out and make a fresh start.

So content will be slow to come for a while, as I play catch up and attempt to redesign the blog. I have a few post ideas simmering, nothing major, but useful. Once I get my Kodachrome slides in, I will work up a piece on scanning Kodachrome.

Got a new product line of Lightroom presets coming up on X-Equals. XeL is a new preset platform, rethinking the way in which presets are used in Lightroom. There is a full series of XeL toolkits in the pipeline, which will be dropping throughout the year. In case any digital shooter are reading, hop over and check it out.

Also, in progress for a few months are two new eBooks. I have coming a book covering a SilverFast + Lightroom workflow, from prepping film to printed photos. There is also a version of the same book eschewing SilverFast, focusing on a VueScan + Lightroom workflow. Both books focus on how to get the best scan quality possible from consumer grade film scanners. Hope for both of these to be available by July as PDF, ePub, and Kindle files.

Well I’m going to wrap up for now. You all know I’m alive, and hope to be back helping revive film photography quickly. Catch me on Twitter @mwgray.

Be back soon.

Michael

Change, it is somewhat of a constant in life, as contradictory as that may sound. Since LifeInDigitalFilm’s inception about a year and a half ago, the blog has made many little changes, shifts if you will, but never strayed too far from the original purpose. That purpose was to distribute my film emulation presets. However, as with all things in life, its time for a change.

Over the past year and a half, the mere task of emulating film has led me back into the warm embrace of the darkroom arts. I actually shot multiple rolls of each film I emulated to get an accurate feel for each film, both objective and subjective. For a while I was shooting just for the purpose of emulation, but the old Minolta Maxxum 7000 felt wonderful in my hands, and when the test rolls came out of the rinse I started to feel that old magic reignite.

Since the inception of LIDF, I have went from shooting 100% digital to shooting 20% digital and 80% traditional (I truly loathe the moniker ”Analog” for film photography). I still shoot digital for my paying jobs mostly, but almost all my personal work originated in silver salts embedded in gelatin. Keeping a digital focus on LIDF became work, both because I was enamored with the old ways and a guest spot on X-Equals led to becoming a regular contributor to the site. With the gwoing interest in film and a constant workload at X-Equals, LIDF began to suffer.

So recently, while working with Brandon of X-Equals on some upcoming projects, we discussed the future of LIDF. As it is, I am a major part of X-Equals, both in writing and product production, but I didn’t want LIDF to fade gently into the night. We can up with a plan together, which I am going to lay out to you now.

• LIDF has a new direction, one I have been slowly shifting toward over the course of the past year. LIDF is now going to focus on the needs and issues of the Hybrid Photographer. Those who choose to meld the strengths of film with the abilities afforded us by the digital darkroom. Using traditional and modern tools hand in hand to take the art of photography to the next level.
• To further this direction, LIDF will no longer have any digital content. From articles on digital photography to presets, including my film emulation presets. My articles relating to digital will now find a home on X-Equals, as they have been for over a year now.
• The film emulation presets will continue again in the future, they will be found at X-Equals from now on. Make sure to sign up for the X-Equals+Digest to be the first to get your hands on future Cold Storage film emulations. Also, sales of Cold Storage are no longer being done through LifeInDigitalFilm, X-Equals is the sole provider of my preset endeavors. The “Presets for Sale” link at the top of LIDF still works, but all sales are routed through X-Equals infrastructure. Or you can go to the X-Equals Store, instead.
• As X-Equals and LifeInDigitalFilm come more instep with one another, one focusing upon digital whilst the other upon film, there will be changes to LIDF. A new theme is in the works, replacing the excellent Mono theme I have been using. Also a change in hosting is very likely as well. I’ll keep you updated on any expected down time as those events move closer.

So now you know what is changing, here is some of what you can expect.

• Fresh articles on the arcane art of scanning. I started a series a while back on scanning, but other issues prevented me from getting it moving along, however they are well on their way to completion and posting.
• More in depth coverage of the two preeminent pieces of scanning software on the market. SilverFast and VueScan. I have touched upon these before, but both will be recieveing 30-Day Reviews, where I review the software after an intensive month with the software, in the coming weeks. Beyond the reviews, look forward to in-depth scanning workflows for both of these fine pieces of software.
• I’ll keep you up to date on new scanner releases as soon as I find out about them. Plus I will have reviews for the hardware I frequently use and share my thoughts and techniques with you.
• I love Lightrooom, and I find it just as powerful for the Hybrid Photographer as the Digital Photographer. We will look at the non-destructive workflow Lightroom offers, as we use the tools made for RAW files upon our scans.
• Plus, I will completely outline my personal scanning settings, which in the end become my fDNG files. 48-bit TIFFs wrapped up in a warm DNG blanket to provide additional security for your images as well as a litany of metadata to help you utilize your scans in Lightroom.
• We will experiment with some alternative photography methods, from printing in the darkroom from digital “negatives”, “scanning” slides using a DSLR enabling the use of RAW and HDR, to some traditional techniques that you may have never encountered.
• Dig deep into the world of development, from B&W to Color. We’ll even take a look at compounding our own chemisty to take our control of development to the next level.
• And more that I haven’t thought of. There is over 100 years of traditional technique and everyday there is more technology we can apply to the old ways.

So hang around and see what you think.

So let’s see whats coming up in the next moth, as I copy from the draft panel in WordPress.

• The Hybrid Photographer’s Toolkit: A series of posts in which I share what equipment I use and recommend to fully setup both your traditional and digital darkrooms. The stuff I have to have every day for support my hybrid workflow.
• 30-Days Reviews: I got both SilverFast and VueScan on deck and I will share my thoughts and observations made over a full month spent with each of these killer pieces of software.
• Film Photographer Profiles: As I recently introduced, I will continue to choose some of the most talented film photographers and share their work with you. To see what I mean, look back at my profile on the talented Nick Shere.

So keep dropping by and find out for yourself what I have in store for everyone. And don’t forget to add X-Equals to your required reading as well, especially if you were here for my presets and views on the digital world. Its been a great ride so far, I can’t wait to see where we go next.

Forgot to mention, LIDF now has a Flickr Group. Join up at the LifeInDigitalFilm – The Home of the Hybrid Photographer group and lets talk! If you want to hang out and wax poetice over the digital realm of photography catch me at the X-Equals flickr group, X-Equals on flickr – share, interact, inspire.

Michael W. Gray