Yearly Archives: 2006

Another hosing for the taxpayer

Photography

If all else fails, rip off the military for their photography needs.

Tax payer ripoff of the week – DALSA Semiconductor Delivers World’s First 100+ Million Pixel CCD Image Sensor Chip.

From the press release: “DALSA announces that it has successfully produced a 111 megapixel CCD. The active area measures approximately 4×4 inches and 10560 x 10560 pixels. The record-breaking chip is developed for the Astrometry Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory to assist them in the determination of the positions and motions of stars, solar system objects and the establishment of celestial reference frames.”

Now let Professor Pindelski, with the benefit of thirty years of hard earned Wall Street experience, translate this to English for you. And forget about all that garbage about astronomy. How dumb do you think we are, DALSA?

“We came up with this great idea for the spies and gooks in the CIA. You know, these fools still use film for photographing enemy encampments from the air. How about we lay it on them and say how everyone, even Uncle Fred, has gone digital, and isn’t it high time you did too? Tell ’em we can see the brand name of the cigarette the terrorist is smoking from 10 miles up. And just think of the margins when we sell this piece of crap to the poor unsuspecting US taxpayer at $250,000 a pop. Man oh! man, that will make the proverbial $1,000 hammer we used to sell to NASA look like a sick joke.”

A moment’s thought and a tap or two on the old HP12C’s keyboard, discloses this technology is underwhelming. The top of the line Canon full frame digital – I forget the model number, it’s 1DSmark32B Version 3a/II or something asinine – has a 1″ x 1.5″ 16.7 megapixel sensor. Upscale that to 4″ x 4″ and you get 178.1 megapixels, or 60% more than the DALSA version. So our wonderful spy agencies could go to Canon and ask them to stick a few of their sensors together and stitch the images with software and stick a lower bill to the taxpayer. Cost – probably $15k a pop and doubtless the nice people at Canon would give us a quantity discount. Give them a tour of the White House and they would probably do it free. But that wouldn’t do now, would it? Imagine the Pentagon buying from the Japanese. Plus all those retiring generals are going to want to go to work for a company that at least speaks their language, as reward for all those contracts. You get the picture.

And so will the Pentagon. Better buy DALSA stock.

Professor Pindelski’s budget balancer and lie detector – $10 used.

Virtual Reality comes to town

QTVR

Not something you can print and hang on the wall.

If you had told this photographer a while back that he would be creating three hundred and sixty degree virtual reality pictures with a computer and photo stitching software a year ago, chances are the response would have included a recommendation to visit the local loony bin for an extended stay.

What got me intrigued about the possibility of making a Virtual Reality picture was probably a combination of factors. I had long been fascinated by the Virtual Tours that realtors place on their web sites brokering homes. You click and then pry around some unsuspecting stranger’s home. Shades of James Stewart as the Peeping Tom in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Later I came across 360 degree VR pictures on the web of landscapes and famous places like the Eiffel Tower and St. Peter’s Basilica and wondered in awe at this new technology for making pictures. I hesitate to call them movies as the viewer is in charge of what he looks at and in what detail. Hose the cursor this way and that with your mouse and you can look around the Sistine Chapel taking in all the details of Michaelangelo’s ceiling painting, or descend to the depths of the Seine at the foot of Notre Dame.

Simply stated, none of this was possible before the days of computers; once digital cameras became affordable anyone could do it. I’m not sure of this, but I believe the technology was invented and patented by Ipix a few years ago, offering true 360 degree views around a subject of choice. Doubtless before long we will have holographic television with the image floating in space and viewable from all angles.

Lots of smart people have worked around the patents to offer inexpensive alternatives to Ipix; meanwhile Ipix books $2mm of revenue a quarter from its great invention. Another cheer for American entrepreneurship.

The poor man’s approach, then, is to take a bunch of overlapping pictures around a horizontal cylinder (you turn the camera from shot to shot using a tripod head) then add one for the zenith (top) and nadir (base). The zenith can be done on the tripod by tilting the camera up ninety degrees; the nadir is taken hand held by removing the tripod and snapping the ground, trying to avoid your toes.

A bit (OK, lots) of research on the web showed that this is still very much a nascent technology when it comes to art photography. No one place really seemed to explain how to do things, but piecing them together and reading bulletin boards and chat rooms got me on the right path.

I thought that a fisheye lens of some sort was essential to making Virtual Reality pictures but it turns out that is far from the case. Any reasonably wide lens will do. The wider the lens the fewer pictures have to be taken to generate the 360 degree whole; for that matter, you do not have to go the whole hog and can simply generate flat wide panoramas for viewers to enjoy. However, as I am having such great fun with Canon’s full frame Fisheye lens I thought I might give the 360 degree rendition a shot in the interest of less work. Less work is always a good thing.

My earlier efforts with stitching flat pictures from my Rolleiflex together into panoramas were disappointing. I used Photoshop and really struggled to get things to line up. So I put the idea to the back of my mind a few years ago. Look at the following picture taken in 2003 and you can see the objectionable bowing out of our house front, not to mention the stitching.

The Atherton estate at dusk. From four pictures on a Rolleiflex 3.5F,
Kodak Portra, stitched in Photoshop CS.

Now the chaps who are really serious about VR photography think nothing of spending $600 on an expensive tripod bracket which allows the camera to be rotated around the nodal point of the lens, rather than around the axis of the tripod bush. The nodal point is the right way to go to minimize distortion. Well, I wasn’t about to blow that sort of coin on an experiment, and after sniffing around a software package or two concluded that as long as you held the camera at the same height when taking the multiple pictures for your VR composition, and didn’t tilt things too much, you stood a pretty decent chance of getting a good result.

What do you need to make VR panoramas?

A camera with a 50mm lens or wider which can be set to manual exposure. Film or digital, though film will be a lot of work.
A tripod or monopod, or a really steady hand and good eye.
Software to stitch the pictures together.
A viewer to allow playback on your computer.

For a camera I used the Canon EOS 5D with the 15mm full frame Canon fisheye lens, using my trusty Bogen/Manfrotto monopod and Leitz ball head to mount the camera at a constant height.

Pictures are taken with the camera oriented vertically to maximize height and minimize the size of the holes at the zenith and nadir of the sphere that have to be filled in. As the Canon full frame fisheye has an effective vertical angle of view of some 88.41 degrees (Canon says it’s 91.73 degrees but that’s incorrect for this use), six pictures will nicely complete a circle with substantial overlap, making stitching easier. From what I have read a circular fisheye needs only four pictures but I would guess that the edge aberrations are significantly worse than with a full frame one. Speculation on my part as I have not used a circular fisheye.

One other thing to remember before snapping the pictures is to switch off auto exposure (you want sky tones constant), switch off auto white balace if using a digital camera (much the same reason) and switch off autofocus. You want a small aperture with maximum depth of field for this to work. Don’t ask…. Exposure has to be determined so as to accommodate the brightest and darkest parts of the scene where details are required. Not as easy as it sounds. I measured both and averaged. Finally, switch off the auto-rotate feature in your camera or you will spend time later turning each picture through ninety degrees – the stitching application does not support auto-rotate so the picture will come in horizontally, which is not what you want.

To keep things simple I set the camera on JPG, not wanting to convert a bunch of RAW images, and opted for the lowest quality setting to keep file sizes down. Each picture file was some 1.3mB in size.

Stepping outside the front door, 5D and fisheye on the monopod, I took ten pictures from one position, generously overlapping each with its predecessor. Ten, as I was not too confident about getting away with six – better too much overlap than none. Then I pointed the camera up and snapped the zenith picture – mercifully the Canon fisheye does not flare into the sun, so I could get away with this. Then taking the camera off the monopod, the nadir image was recorded by pointing the camera down.

The application I used to stitch these together is called PTMac. It costs $59 and runs on Apple Macs only. A downloadable database stores settings for lots and lots of cameras and lenses – here’s just a partial list:

Of course, wouldn’t you know it, the 5D + 15mm Canon EF fisheye is not in the list. After some messing about and help from chat boards, I determined the settings which are as follows – you can save them in a database of your own:

Getting these parameters right is key to a frustration-free path to generation of a VR picture.

Now PTMac is a tad clunky. Little is automated. Sort of like using logarithm tables in lieu of a scientific calculator. Mercifully, the current version (4.x) automates the generation of what the vendor calls ‘Control Points’ – points in areas of overlap between adjacent images which tells the program how to stitch things. It generates no fewer than ten control points for each pair of images – something that would take hours to do manually. When it comes to panorama generation, I save the file in the QuickTime Cubic VR[.mov] format. Control point generation and stitching took some five minutes on my 2 mHz PPC iMac G5 which is equipped with maximum RAM of 2 gB. That’s not too bad when you think of the insane number of calculations the application is going through – witness the loud fan noise from the iMac’s normally near silent self. That CPU is working hard.

To view the panorama you need Apple’s QuickTime which is available free here. There are versions for Mac OS X and for Windows.

I clicked on the generated file and got a somewhat distorted picture:

Zooming in fixed that, but I did not want the viewer to have to do that, so after some more hunting around on the internet, I came across Cubic Converter from an Australian company company named ClickHereDesign and after a quick trial I determined you could save a zoomed-in version which was much nicer to look at. Another $49 gave me a license to save the revised file in Quick Time format. Now things looked like this:

Cubic Converter also has the ability to allow the viewer to start looking at the picture while the file is still downloading, with increasing quality resulting as time passes. Instant gratification in the best tradition of The American Way.

Here is the result – my first Virtual Reality picture. The file is 1.5 mB in size, so a broadband connection is recommended. You can zoom in or out by using the Shift and Control keys or by clicking the + or – signs on the screen.

While some of the limbs of the tree need work, I’m pleased as punch at this first pass and much of the learning curve is behind me. Getting smooth gradation in the sky is no mean feat. Next I’ll get more serious using a tripod with a degree marked pan and tilt head (actually a felt tip pen and some ingenuity, before you get too excited) to get things just so. The $600 fancy tripod head can wait.

Twenty photographs

Photographs, Photography

Think of twenty.

I do this often, and it’s a great vision improving exercise.

It’s not just a party game like naming the states or their capital cities. The winners at that game, in my experience, are usually professional sportsmen as they have travelled to each. No, what’s at stake here is building a mental library of pictures that drive me to excel and set a standard to be beaten.

Not equaled. I think I can do better. But you need a target. And I like to set my sights high.

Want to know my current twenty in no particular order? Here goes:

The bowler hatted gent jumping the puddle – Henri Cartier-Bresson
The couple in the convertible watching the drive-in screen – O. Winston Link
The Spanish revolutionary soldier at the moment of death, faked or not – Robert Capa
Chez Mondrian – Andre Kertesz
Churchill – Yousuf Karsh
Margaret Thatcher – Anthony Armstrong-Jones
Glyndebourne with cows – Tony Ray Jones
Eleanor with her son – Harry Callahan
Damaged – Walker Evans
Lisa Fonssagrives with elephant – Richard Avedon
Pepper – Edward Weston
Hell’s Angels – Irving Penn
Distorted Nude on the Beach – Bill Brandt
Nudist camp – Elliot Erwitt
The Krays – David Bailey
Prostitutes at Night – Brassai
Racing Car – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Building the Golden Gate – Peter Stackpole
A Face in the Car – Robert Frank
Dog with Tweeds – Thomas Pindelski

Here’s mine:

Dog with Tweeds. Leica M3, 90mm Elmar, Trix/D76 at 800 ASA.

The other aspect of this little test is to look at changes when I redo the list in a few months from now. It always shows me the direction in which my work and interests are going and point to useful avenues of study and discovery.

To make this a useful exercise, write down your five, ten, twenty or whatever, favorite photographs. Now look at the list produced the next time around. What changed? What is attracting your focus? What did each of your choices do for you and why did they drop off your list?

Can’t name five? Ten? Twenty? Hmmm….

One year later

Photography

After twelve months of these columns, what have been the highlights and disappointments?

I have been having a whale of a time writing these columns for twelve months now and have been true to the name of this journal, Photographs, Photographers and Photography.

Content has been fairly equally balanced between discussion of great (and not so great) photographers, photographs and photography, whether addressing philosophy or technique. Ever cognisant that equipment is but a means to an end, I have frequently illustrated these columns with pictures, mine and those of fellow photographers whose work I admire.

To simplify retrieval of older columns, I have added a reverse chronlogy captioned ‘Archives by Day’ on the right hand side of the screen.

The Columns:

On the columns themselves, there was never any lack of ideas for content but a few stand out as having been an absolute blast to write. So much so they pretty much wrote themselves.

Here are my ten personal favorites.

Film is Dead. July 6, 2005. This has not only proved to be one of the most popular pieces, the fact that it caused much controversy when written, being deleted by the twit who passes for a moderator at Photo.net where it was first published, only goes to confirm how true it was. It’s hard to believe that it was written just some eleven months ago, during which time film camera production has virtually ceased in the US and even mighty Canon will throw in the towel soon.

About Cartier-Bresson. June 15, 2005. A tribute written from the heart to the greatest photographer of his time.

Degas – Photographer. July 1, 2005. A man with great vision from the early days of photography – and the last days of painting.

Quality time with Ansel. July 8th, 2005. Recounting my visit to the pretentious Weston Gallery in Pebble Beach. I still smile about the experience today.

Pandora’s Box. February 2, 2006. Because anticipation is so much more fun than getting there and this day marked my final move away from a photographic life pretty much dominated by Ernst Leitz, Wetzlar and their magical products. Something better had finally come along.

Eliot Porter – The Color of Wildness. February 8, 2006. A favorite photographer. A favorite book.

A Break in the Storm. March 4, 2006. Told as it happened. A wonderful moment with gorgeous lighting.

Walker Evans. March 17, 2006. Another personal favorite with a crystal clear vision.

The most fun I ever had taking pictures May 18, 2006. A sort of fond au revoir to the Leica and the great times we enjoyed together.

In search of Edward Hopper. June 14, 2006. An American painter who greatly influenced how I see.

The Equipment:

A simple story. Starting with a veritable cornucopia of film equipment in 35mm and medium formats, all was sold to make way for but two digital cameras. Canon’s superb EOS 5D replaced all the medium format bulk and Panasonic’s jewel-like Lumix LX1 saw the Leicas off with aplomb. And lots of nice eBay shoppers saw to it that my net investment in the new gear was absolutely zero. Well, to tell the truth, I still have some money left over….

Apple really did ‘Think Different’ when they created Aperture, the photo processing application for regular people without advanced computer degrees. Drop the pictures in, press a few keys and prints or web pages emerge. Cataloging and retrieval are similarly simple. The best software product for photographers ever, not least because you can only use it on an Apple, the best hardware for photographers.

When it comes to Really Large Prints, Hewlett Packard paved the way with its fine DesignJet, at half the price of the competing Epson. It’s great to see HP is back with a good CEO rather than a film star wannabe.

Underlying all the problem-free creation of printed and electronic images is the sold underpinning of Apple’s Macintosh computer technology. It bears repeating that no self-respecting photographer who values his time should be suffering with Microsoft Windows. The name alone – ‘Operating System’ – is a joke. What is your time worth?

If Aperture was the most enabling software of the year, then ImageAlign must be the most ingenious. With this bit of magic you can take the rather silly looking results from Canon’s full frame fisheye and have the equivalent of a 12mm hyper-wide angle lens at one third of the cost of Canon’s exotic 14mm rectilinear offering. Without ImageAlign pictures taken with the fisheye are even more tedious to behold than those of your kids. At least the grandparents like the latter.

The Business:

I have trashed Kodak mercilessly on more than one occasion over the past year. Part of my ire is that of a jilted lover – I used little else but Kodak’s world class materials for nigh on forty years. It is always painful to see a loved one leave, and sometimes pain turns to anger and remorse. Especially when the loved one does lots of stupid things. You lash out. Guilty as charged.

At the same time it became clear that world domination in photographic equipment was far from restricted to Canon and Nikon. Competition improves the breed and the sheer number of new hardware makers is encouraging to see. We need some full frame digital sensor competition for Canon (the 5D is ridiculously overpriced for lack of any competition), but I cannot believe Nikon or Sony or Panasonic or Casio or Samsung won’t get there in the next twelve months. All photographers will win as prices drop and performance rises. Be assured that Canon’s next 35mm full frame sensor, whatever its pixel count, will be the final toll of the bell for medium format equipment.

The most inspiring event:

Like so many earlier photographers making the switch, I found conversion to digital liberating and artistically inspiring. Photography truly is fun again, with the percentage of time spent processing falling to an all time low, and more time available for the searching out of subjects.

The best vendor:

B&H in New York. No contest. Not only are you assured that an order placed on Monday will arrive at your California doorstep on Friday, when they say ‘In Stock’ they mean it.

The worst vendors:

A tie.

Light Impressions, which I think of as Dark Depressions. If you want to mount some prints before Christmas, better get your order for mats and mounting board in now.

A book vendor calling itself Photoeye is tied for last place with the boys at DD. Slick web site, with innumerable emails about their latest book offerings. Specials on this and that. The only snag is that I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the book you order is out of stock and likely to remain so for weeks or months. I know. And don’t, whatever you do, get on their email list, as clicking ‘Remove Me’ has no discernible effect. What finally worked for me was an email laced with questions concerning the owners’ parentage. Stick with Amazon.

Here’s to the next twelve months.

In search of Edward Hopper

Architecture, Paintings

An American painter who has inspired generations of photographers.

I came to the works of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) late in life. I say ‘late’ as I was well familiar with the great European masters while still a teenager. No, it was not until the early 1980s, when I was in my thirties, that I became aware of this American master. England was not the best place to learn about Hopper. Becoming an American fixed that.

I was traipsing up Madison Avenue on a warm summer day, when I came across what has to be the ugliest building in New York City – the Whitney Museum of Art. Whereas the Guggenheim can be thought of as an interesting building in the wrong place, flanked by stately Fifth Avenue mansions, the Whitney is just plain bad. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim should probably be in the mid-West somewhere to liven things up (please, not in downtown Chicago which boasts America’s finest buildings) but Marcel Breuer’s Whitney is nothing so much as a wrecking ball special. Not even Iowa would improve were it to be magically moved there. In any case, the city fathers would probably reject the offer.

Enough about architecture. So I was about to shuffle past, Leica insouciantly slung over one shoulder, when the poster caught my eye. No, not the iconic ‘Nighthawks’ but rather ‘Early Sunday’ which could have been painted in any number of American cities over the past fifty years.

The lighting was just so, that languorous sun ready to turn another American downtown into a cauldron. No one in sight. It is early Sunday after all. I simply had to go inside. The art was a revelation. On the one hand it played to the manic depressive Eastern European gene in my blood. On the other it spoke to the eternal loneliness of the big city. Here was a man after my own heart. Introspection and solitude permeate his painting – emotions somewhat alien to the American soul.

Over the years since, I have gazed much at Hopper’s art and it has unconsciously become a part of me. Yet, when I press the button on those special occasions, it’s the American master dancing in my head.

San Francisco. Leica M3, 90mm Apo Summicron Asph, Kodak Gold 100

Part of my web site, titled The Lonely, deals with the theme of Hopper and the loneliness of the big city. Needless to add, all these snaps were taken in America – Anchorage, New York, Washington DC, Pioche (Nevada), Pismo Beach, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and, the loneliest place on earth, Los Angeles. They cover a time span of some twenty-five years. I hope you enjoy them.

San Diego. Leica M6, 90mm Apo Summicron Asph, Kodak Gold 100