Category Archives: Photographs

Wishful thinking

Photographs

Hopes dashed

While the young woman searches for something in her purse and her pup gazes into the distance, the old guy ponders on what might have been.


G1, 14mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 100

No time to even think about this one. Just an instinctive press of the button. At 17th and Hampshire in the Potrero district of San Francisco.

The hand strap shown here is ideal for this sort of thing, though the vendor has seen fit to put a big rivet through the strap half way up – unlike what the picture shows – which limits the extent to which it can be shortened. As it is, the strap is an inch or two too long at it’s shortest setting. I need to find something a photographer designed.

Another snap:


G1, 20mm, 1/200, f/11, ISO 100

And a third:


G1, 24mm, 1/100, f/11, ISO100

The working man

Photographs

Nothing changes

When I was a kid growing up in London, I always used to wonder at public works employees. You would invariably see one man digging a hole while four or five others watched.

Much the same philosophy applies in the US, though as a nominally capitalist economy, we have reduced the worker:watcher ratio to 1:1 which, I suppose, is a bargain for the taxpayer.


G1, 1/100, f/6.3, ISO 100

I watched these chaps for a couple of minutes and can attest that the fat one did absolutely nothing during that time. Spotted in The Tenderloin the other day.

Runner

Micro Four-Thirds, Photographs

iISO does its thing

The iISO function in the Panasonic G1 (“intelligent ISO”), according to the wretched instruction manual which ships with this otherwise fine camera, does the following: “The ISO sensitivity is adjusted according to the movement of the subject and the brightness”. (Page 79). I use this setting in my default setup for street snaps.

Here the CPU in the camera elected 1/500 second to freeze the running boy and an enlarged view in Lightroom confirms that his shirt is, indeed, tack sharp.


Runner. iISO, Panasonic G1

It’s a two edged sword, however. If you want movement blur, it has to be switched off or, much better, simply set the large mechanical mode dial on top to Shutter Priority, in which case iISO is switched off, though that fact is buried in a footnote in the instruction book. As I wrote earlier, Panny must have had some real live photographers involved in the design of this fine camera. Too bad they weren’t involved in the writing of the manual.

A note on AE lock: You can elect whether the ‘AF/AE Lock’ button on the top rear of the body locks focus, exposure or both, much as you can on the Canon 5D, my other ‘serious’ camera (though the G1 is to the 5D as a Ferrari is to a Mack truck). In both bodies I have set the button to lock exposure only, as focus can be locked with a first pressure on the release button of either.

Canon does this right. The AE lock lasts for some 10 seconds – ample time to recompose and take the snap.

The G1 gets it wrong. You have to keep the button depressed to maintain exposure lock until you press the button. That makes for some strange contortions of the hand.

The alternative in the G1 is to enable ‘AF/AE Lock Hold’, a separate choice in the Custom menu, but they got that completely wrong. Yes, it does lock exposure (and/or focus depending how you set ‘AF/AE Lock’) but the camera’s settings remain locked to your exposure even after the shutter is released. You can only unlock things by again depressing the button on the back of the camera. If you opt for a minimal viewfinder display as I do, you don’t know that your exposure is still locked until you notice a super bright or dim screen when making the next picture. You then scramble to unlock things only to find that your subject has gone ….

What Panny should do is change the firmware so that, with ‘AF/AE Lock Hold’ enabled, the lock is released after the exposure is taken. Let’s hope they change this, as selective exposure reading is a useful tool with dynamic range-challenged digital sensors.

Sometimes it does matter

Photographs

Not all posing is right

There’s an interesting article in a recent issue of The Guardian on whether Robert Capa faked the famous snap of the Spanish revolutionary soldier at the moment of death:


Click the picture to read the article

If you click the above there’s an excellent audio commentary with many great Capa pictures – and pictures of Capa – which is worth spending a few minutes on.

I wrote in a light tone on the subject of whether posing a seemingly candid snap made any difference here, and feel it is only appropriate to add that, in this case, it probably does make a difference. If it’s unposed, this is a great piece of photojounralism; if posed, it’s an attempt to manipulate opinion to the photographer’s political leanings. Not good, as the picture was clearly presented as reportage not opinion – not something any of the candids in my earlier piece could be accused of.