Monthly Archives: February 2009

Helicon Focus – improved

Software

Even better

When I first wrote about Helicon Focus some five months ago, an improved Mac version was “….2 weeks away” – the developer’s words, not mine.

Helicon Focus (mine is the ‘Pro’ version) allows you to stitch together a collection of differentially focused images, taking the sharp zones from each to make an overall sharp composite with seemingly vast depth of field.

Well, my version (3.79) has just been updated to 4.0.1 and it does a better job on really tough images.

Here’s the rendering of the 10 images of the silk flower I originally used to show what this magic application can do:


A composite of ten images. 5D, 100mm macro at f/2.8. Helicon Focus Pro Version 3.79

The flower was both very close to the image plane in the camera and at an acute angle thereto.

And here is the composite image assembled from the same ten original images using 4.0.1:


The composite image assembled with Helicon Focus Pro 4.0.1

The differences are clear – in fact the developer used my images to test the new version after I had submitted them for review.

Congratulations to Danylo and his team – it was not for nothing that this journal named Helicon Focus the best application of 2008. And it was worth the wait!

Anyone using the best in digital gear – full frame or medium format – involved in industrial or close-up photography should have this application on his Mac or PC. That and a sturdy tripod to make sure the camera does not move between exposures. Your clients will love you.

A bargain from Apple

Software

What?

Yes, the title does cause raised eyebrows. When did you last use the words ‘bargain’ and ‘Apple’ in the same sentence?

But there’s not other way to describe the Mac Box Set which gets you Leopard, iWork ’09 and iLife ’09 for a very small sum.

If you are still using Tiger (10.4) an upgrade to Leopard (10.5) is recommended. My upgrade was accidental as when Apple finally replaced my first (Tiger) MacBook (bad wi-fi) the replacement came with Leopard. Leopard is no slower on our old G4 iMac than Tiger and offers superior networking between Intel machines, not least the little advertised feature known as Screen Sharing. This allows you to control other like-equipped Intel Macs over the internet with an interactive picture of the remote machine’s screen ported to yours. Ideal for problem fixing on a relative’s machine without the need for panic midnight visits. Further, you must have Leopard with the latest iLife ’09 as iPhoto ’09 will not work with Tiger.

As for the applications, I can testify that Numbers, the spreadsheet app, is finally almost as fast as my ancient copy of Excel from Office X and, at last, spreadsheets can be saved password protected, although you have to de-protect Excel spreadsheets before import. Import is fast and issues clear warning messages for areas where it struggled. In practice, a large, twenty tab, Excel spreadsheets with many complex formulas and some graphs converted fine with only minor formatting issues. It’s now a fully useable product and will see the last Microsoft application on my Mac finally confined to the the trash can where it belongs. No more weekly Excel lock-ups.

iPhoto ’09 adds little to its predecessor. Poorly implemented face recognition technology and the ability to show the location of a photo using GPS if, that is, your camera stores GPS information in the first place. A solution looking for a problem.

As for the other apps, Pages continues solid and easy to use – though there is a learning curve for Word escapees – and I will not be using iMovie, iWeb, Garage Band or Keynote. The latter is Apple’s version of Powerpoint and runs right into Dr. P’s Business Rule #1. No marketers or slide presentations are to be permitted in business meetings addressing strategy. It worked for me for over a decade – once I had the power to enforce this simple rule – and paid back massive dividends. Margins do not come from a spreadsheet and business plans do not originate in Powerpoint or Keynote presentations.

For an even greater bargain, spend $229 for the 5 user family pack. Better still, buy either from Amazon and you will get 8% off and will avoid that legalized form of theft known as sales tax. Starve the Beast!

Babbling

Photographs

Still cannot get over it

The enormous 24″ iMac screen beams a series of studio photographs of my son at me, each seemingly more thrilling than its predecessor. The show, as I flick through the images and cull the losers is, well, nothing short of enthralling.

“There he goes again, babbling on about full frame digital” you mutter. And rightly so.

But when I tell you that I continue to be simply blown away by the combination of the Canon 5D, 85mm f/1.8 Canon EF lens and my three head Novatron studio outfit, as I view the results on that huge screen, it’s not like I’m talking the latest and greatest in gear. But it’s still better than I am.

And where there are errors it’s usually in the area of critical focus not because the 5D isn’t always spot on (it is) but because yours truly swayed a bit before pressing the button. Age not booze, I assure you. And boy, is depth of field limited at these distances or what?

And this, dear reader, is what I have to deal with:

Life is short. Live it well.

Winston is seven

Photographs

A few thoughts on color balance

If accurate sound reproduction is your goal, then listening to the human voice (no, not some drug addled rock star; try German lieder or opera) or the piano (the one made by Steinway, not Roland – no electronics are involved) is the most critical test.

Humans know how a piano or human voice should sound. There is no such capability when it comes to electronic instruments as there is no ‘standard’ to refer to. This whole concept of a known reference is as valid for judging pictures as it is for determining accurate sound reproduction. With human subjects the equivalent of the piano or voice is the color of the subject’s flesh. We know what accurate flesh tones are. That is a known reference point.

Each year we take a studio portrait of our boy to document his early years. Inevitably, color balance is all over the place and adjustments need to be made.

No one has ever accused the Canon 5D of accurate color balance with artificial light sources, but a small investment in a white balance card easily fixes that.


Winston at seven. 5D, f/5.6, three Novatron flash heads, ISO 50

It takes seconds to do.


With the white balance card

The subject holds the card and a test snap is made. Later, in Lightroom, the eye dropper in the Develop module is simply placed over the white card and clicked.


Before

This renders the card neutral in shade, and all other colors are adjusted accordingly.


After

And the result, true skin tones and all, is at the beginning of this piece. Note the substantial drop in the Blue component in the ‘After’ picture.

There’s no need to restrict this approach to the studio. Place the card in a landscape, for example, and the result is the same. Add proper screen and printer profiling and true colors are a snap – no more messing about with sliders and suspect visual memory.

If you routinely take pictures in identical lighting, it’s easy to save a preset for the color balance adjustment in Lightroom, obviating any future need to use the white balance card in like lighting. Useful for studio work where lighting can be replicated exactly.

You can buy white balance cards for a few dollars or make your own from a nice piece of white card. There’s no cheaper way of getting true colors and when it comes to flesh tones the issue is binary – they are either right or wrong. My white balance card includes an 18% reflectance grey card which is also useful for exposure measurement.

Barry Lyndon

Movies, Photographers

A must see

Like the great English film maker David Lean, the American Stanley Kubrick made but a handful of movies. As with Lean’s oeuvre, there’s not a dud to be found. Indeed, I recall many years ago buying my first DVD player and the first movie I bought to see on it was, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But if it’s visual richness you crave, then the Kubrick movie you will like most is the little played Barry Lyndon. In addition to a superb performance by Ryan O’Neal (when did you last use those words about O’Neal?) there is the sublime beauty of Marisa Berenson. Kubrick was nothing if not technically competent, having started life as a stills journalist photographer, and I recall at the time of its release stories circulating of Kubrick’s use of special Zeiss still camera lenses on his Mitchell movie camera.

Well, here’s the scoop from Ed DiGiulio, the expert who adapted the Zeiss f/0.7 (f/0.7!) 50mm lens for Kubrick’s camera, which Kubrick proceeded to use for the candlelight scenes in the movie. The effect is magic. The lens – like the fabulous Leitz 180mm f/3.4 Apo-Telyt-R which I used for many years on my Leicaflex SL – was commissioned by NASA.

This is a very long, slow paced film and one which is essential viewing for those with non-American attention spans – meaning you can sit still without popcorn and colored, sugared water for 3 hours – and a love of visual beauty. It’s the sort of movie that makes you go out and buy a 100″ screen for your home theater. I did.

Here’s a schematic of the Zeiss Planar lens together with the enormous (over 5″ diameter) Kollmorgen wide angle adapter which DiGiulio refers to:

Marisa Berenson? None other than the great-grand-niece of that art plunderer and self-appointed Renaissance expert, Bernard Berenson, but a whole lot nicer to look at.


Marisa Berenson by candlelight in Barry Lyndon. Staney Kubrick, Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lens

Kubrick’s last movie was Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999, the year he died. Another visual masterpiece, it is also distinguished by another actor who couldn’t act before he crossed Kubrick’s path, Tom Cruise. Watch it for a radiant Nicole Kidman.

Update June 2013:

Watching Barry Lyndon in the newly remastered Blu-Ray version is a revelation. Maybe the best art film ever, with luscious cinematography by Joe Alcott whose credits include three other Kubrick masterpieces – ‘A Clockwork Orange’, ‘The Shining’ and the unsurpassed ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Update July 2015:

There’s a fine 6 minute documentary on the Mitchell cameras, the Zeiss f/0.7 lens and the costumes here.

The March 1976 issue of American Cinematographer with details about the cinematography can be downloaded here.