Yearly Archives: 2010

Auto Blur

Software

Auto blur.

With smaller and smaller digital sensors lenses get shorter and depth of field grows. It’s tough to beat the laws of optics but, in my opinion, all those calling for ever faster small lenses to limit depth of field and thus differentiate the subject from its surroundings just don’t get it. That’s yesterday’s technology.

The faster the lens, the larger the lens, which defeats the whole purpose of compactness – the very attribute in a camera that makes you take it with you.

What I think is needed is what I call Auto Blurâ„¢. We already have face recognition technology. So why not add technology to blur everything that is not the main subject. Rollover the image to see what I’m talking about (renders fine in Chrome and Safari on my Mac). Refresh your browser if the image is not visible. Will not work on mobile devices.

Thumbsucker before and (mouseover) after AutoBlurâ„¢.

This is a typical G1 image with the kit lens at 18mm fully open at f/3.9. Everything is sharp.

Now, in this case, the background in the mouseover version was tortuously conferred using PS CS2 and the lasso tool – not my idea of fun – but why shouldn’t this be a simple user choice in the camera’s settings?

Software is cheap and weightless. Fast lenses are not.

Follow-up: A reader has alerted me to a Photoshop plugin from Alien Skin named Bokeh which provides many options for the blurring of backgrounds. However, the plugin is seriously overpriced at $199, as the key step – selection of what is to be blurred – remains the exact same time consuming process in Photoshop which I had to use above. So it’s not a solution. Combining face/shape recognition technology with auto-blurring is the approach for those who favor picture taking over picture processing.

Further follow-up: Anothe reader has pointed me to Nik Software’s Viveza 2 – see the Comments to this piece. I see two advantages and one drawback. The advantages are that you do not need Photoshop, as the plug-in will work with Lightroom or Aperture. Further, the selection tool in Viveza 2 is truly amazing – exactly what is missing from Alien Skin’s Bokeh which uses Photoshop’s clunky selection tools which are labor intensive at the best of times. But the key drawback of Viveza 2 is that it does not provide adjustments of sharpness which is what the above piece is all about. Instead (click the link provided at the end of Arun’s Comment) you have to resort to machinations in Photoshop once again. So if only Nik Software could add a sharpness slider to all the other sliders in their tool, that would seem to do the trick until Panasonic or Sony do this with in camera software. Or, even better, if Adobe decides to add this sort of thing to Lightroom – now wouldn’t that be nice?

Roy Hammans

Photographers

A fine English photographer.

Roy Hammans wrote an interesting piece for this blog some thirty months ago on his experiences with Lightroom. Shortly after that I made the move from Aperture to Lightroom, a decision I have never had cause to regret.

What I have learned in the intervening period is that Roy is a fine photographer whose Ash Clippings site regularly showcases his work. It’s unfair to typecast any photographer by saying he or she is a ‘street shooter’ or a ‘landscape expert’ or so on, but I doubt Roy would mind if I pigeonholed him as a fine English photographer because so much of his work features the subtle beauty of England’s countryside, lovingly rendered, whether it be as close as his garden or a Hardy landscape on a grand scale.

What’s most striking about his work is not just the fine eye and technical perfection, it’s also his grasp of a large range of techniques from plate cameras and litho prints to the latest in digital and fish eye gear. If you were to ask me what of Roy’s work speaks to me most it would have to be his Hull Series, as I think of it. Here, he has photographed the hulls of old boats in dry dock, on Mersey Island in Essex, in various stages of discoloration and disrepair and the results are simply an abstract dream. Here’s one of many examples – click the picture for more:

They beauty of abstract work is that the viewer can see whatever his imagination is equal to and this one is so clearly a map of the eastern United States it might as well be the real thing. Suffice it to say that if you like Mark Rothko you will love these.

Roy’s fine eye proves what I have always said – you don’t have to travel to find great subjects. Case in point, look at this lovely, gentle image of a pair of courgettes …. picked from his garden. That guy who did all those peppers would be proud.

Roy’s love of the sculpture of Henry Moore is clear in this beautiful photograph, perfectly lit, composed and rendered.

Again, click the picture for more.

But I started this piece by saying that Roy is a fine English photographer and few pictures could better explain what I mean than this charming, seemingly simple, composition taken in an English garden.

For me there are allusions to that great park scene in ‘Blow Up’, the scent of the English countryside and the sound and feel of a light breeze before the rain.

Be sure to stop by either Roy’s Ash Clippings photo site or his Weeping Ash site where he writes with the benefit of great experience and knowledge about photography and photographers. And if you want to die of envy, check out Roy’s purpose built darkroom/lightroom.

Lugs and wombats

Micro Four-Thirds

Monty Python to the rescue.

One reason the news is always bad is because good news is boring.

Never was this made clearer than by the fellows at Monty Python who, responding to this sad fact, crafted a ‘Good News’ news broadcast. The presenter, big smile and all, repeated variations on the theme ‘And in more good news today, no wombats were killed on the freeway’.

The Wombat Good News is at 2:50 into the clip.

And chat boards are, for the most part just like the news and hospital waiting rooms. Both specialize in bad news. You don’t go there when all is hunky dory.

So it’s difficult to make sense of the fairly common complaint on Panasonic G1/GH1 discussion fora that has it that Panny’s best and brightest suffers from a potentially fatal defect whereby a strap lug will detach itself, leaving your favorite in pieces on the concrete sidewalk. I mean, ‘No strap lug detached itself today’ is right up there in wombat country. You won’t read about it. It’s a skewed sample whose statistical significance is impossible to determine.

Anyway, here’s hoping yours remain attached. Using a wrist strap doubles the load, of course, so I have $650 set aside in case one of my lugs fails and that I fail to prevail over the schmuck warranty lawyers at Panny USA. (It’s not personal Panny – I administer equal opportunity offense to the whole profession).

Lee Miller

Book reviews

A woman conquers a man’s world.

It’s hard to imagine being successful at any one of Lee Miller’s callings, let alone all three.

I don’t mean dilettante dabbling. I mean as good as it gets.

Famous model, surrealist artist, war photographer. Miller (1907-77) did all of these with aplomb and was at all times in the center of the action. Whether posing for Genthe and Stieglitz in her modeling days, making a career as a surrealist artist when married to Roland Penrose and living with Man Ray, or being the only woman war correspondent to set foot at the scene of the crime waged on mankind in Dachau, whence she reported and photographed for Vogue magazine, Miller was as good as they get.

This is a splendid book and highly recommended. When you read that Sir Roland’s son, Anthony, did not learn of his mother’s many accomplishments until shortly before she passed away – she didn’t care to speak of any of them – your sense of wonder and admiration for this very special woman only increases.

Her beauty needs no words. Her originality is there for all to see in her art works. And her heartbreaking reportage from the death camps is the sign of a supreme professional. After witnessing the SS torching Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s retreat in the mountains, she was among the very first to enter his Munich rooms and proceeded, in true surrealist fashion, to take a bath in his tub. As she explained – and there’s a picture of her in the act – she was washing away the evil which she had witnessed and photographed just hours earlier. Just ask, which of us would have had the courage to do that, given the chance?

All of this is expertly set forth by experienced art curator Mark Haworth-Booth in this simply splendid book. The extracts of her searing prose for Vogue are almost as powerful as her pictures, many of the latter so horrific that they never saw publication. Seldom have I read such a clear eyed exposition of the German people’s utter complicity in the crimes of their leaders.

A woman for the ages. Any photographer or historian with an interest in Miller’s era should read this.

Another EVF SLR

Cameras

From Samsung, unsurprisingly.

Samsung is rolling out its NX10 mirrorless DSLR any day now – much the same concept as the Panasonic G1/GH1 but with the larger APS-C sensor and using superior rear LCD screen technology. Boy, if anyone knows about LCDs it’s Samsung as they are one of the largest manufacturers of these in all sizes.

Sadly it’s still modeled, like the Panny twins, after the conventional DSLR silhouette, with that silly prism hump, but that will not last long, I am sure. Overall it seems about as small as the G1.

I can only applaud. It’s another nail in the coffin of the flapping mirror/pentaprism design which has seen its day in the sun. The user gains compactness and a quieter tool with less weight. So the tool gets used more as a result.

Can a full size sensor variant with no prism hump be far behind?

Now Sammy, where’s the British Racing Green version, please?