Beating the burn

Canon 5D, Technique

In overexposed highlights, that is

I have written before of the tendency of digital sensors to burn out highlight details. While highlights can be recovered using the Highlights slider in the Aperture Adjustments HUD, this is limited to one stop using RAW, in my experience. Thereafter, not all highlight details can be recovered.

Accordingly, in high contrast situations like outdoor sun, it’s far better to underexpose and use the Shadows slider to bring up shadow detail, rather than trying to recover highlights. The technique is illustrated here. A low noise sensor, like in the 5D, can sustain a lot of shadow enhancement before noise rears its ugly head.

Strangely, I find the large sensor in the Canon 5D more susceptible to highlight burn than the miniscule one in the Lumix LX1. Tfhe 5D’s sensor is some 1/2 stop more sensitive than the indicated ISO, compared with the Lumix. Given that HDR cannot be used with dynamic subjects (the three or five images required dictate the use of a tripod on a stationary subject) I simply underexpose by 1-2 stops in high contrast situations. Single image tone mapping can help, but it adds maybe half a stop at best; any more and the effect is garish. Canon provides exposure compensation on the 5D but is is horribly documented in the miserable book with a miniscule typeface that passes for instructions that comes with this camera. For $3,000 for a body only, this has to be the height of cynicism. Canon, please exclude accountants from the design of your machines and instruction books.

The 5D has a two position power switch, illustrated above. (The peeling on the screen is my stick on protector, not delamination of the LCD!). Normally, the switch is clicked up one notch to ‘On’ when using aperture priority – Av on the top left dial. Click it up one more notch to the line and the rear wheel activates exposure compensation, visible on the bottom of the viewfinder. It’s also displayed on the top LCD screen which is much easier to see than the viewfinder readout. By the way, a Manfrotto QR tripod plate is visible in this snap, permanently attached to the 5D’s base. Highly recommended – this is the ‘Architectural’ version with an alignment lip to preserve its position on the relatively heavy 5D body.

Click the on-off switch to the line, take a first pressure on the shutter release button, and rotate the wheel while looking though the viewfinder or at the top LCD screen. You can elect 1/2 or 1/3 stop intervals using the custom functions in the camera’s software. 1/3 is confusing precision with accuracy in my book, so I have it set to 1/2 stop intervals. I dial in the camera to, say, -1.5 stops, then immediately move the switch back to the regular On position to preclude accidental adjustment – the compensation setting wheel is disabled in this way, although the setting you dialed in is preserved. Better still (or not, if you forget), the setting survives switching the camera off. Power up and there is your setting, preserved.

I prefer to use average exposure metering in fast paced outdoor settings (Canon’s matrix metering leave me unimpressed) as there’s rarely time to take a proper exposure reading in the interest of capturing the moment. With this approach, you gain a stop of highlight adjustment while preserving some three stops of shadow recovery. Now that’s what I call dynamic range.

Here’s an example taken in bright sun yesterday:


5D, 24-105mm at 70mm, ISO 250, 1/3000, f/5.6, one stop underexposed

Without the underexposure, the white sheet would have been comprehensively burned out. Here, detail is preserved.

Death

Photographs, Photography

With poetry by an unknown author

Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak and the couplings strain,
And the pace is hot, and the points are near,
And Sleep has deadened the driver’s ear;
And the signals flash through the night in vain,
For Death is in charge of the clattering train.


5D, 24-105mm at 80mm, ISO 125, 1/1500, f/4.5, processed in Aperture

More desaturation

Photographs, Technique

Old subjects dictate old methods

From today’s hot rod show in Paso Robles, CA:


5D, 24-105mm at 24mm, ISO 125, 1/750, f/4.5, processed in Aperture

The technique described here was used.

By the way, if you hit Option-Shift-H in Aperture, the screen will be colored red in areas of burned out highlights – a great tool for those digital sensors sensitive to highlight overload:


Red colored areas indicate burned-out highlights

I have left the exhaust pipe burned out as it heightens the impact of the image.

Botox Bride

Photographs

What passes for beauty today


Lumix LX1, ISO 80

The roots showing, the hair a mess, the lips artificial, the make-up excessive …. today’s woman.

Seen on the street the other day in a Hispanic neighborhood in San Francisco.

Now if she had an iPod I might be interested – at least that way I wouldn’t have to listen to the inane chatter about sitcoms which is doubtless her default topic of conversation.

Cartier-Bresson: Point-and-shoot and Hank Carter

Photographers

Good enough for HC-B

Any book comprised solely of snaps of one great photographer by another is bound to fall into the ‘Silly’ section of a library. Such is the case with ‘Faceless’, a slim book published in 2000 with 36 snaps of Henri Cartier-Bresson taken by David Douglas Duncan. It went out of print almost as fast as it hit the stores. I bought it solely as a memento of HC-B and found a little more to it than at first meets the eye.

Cartier-Bresson may not have taken a memorable snap in twenty years, but he still messed about with cameras. So, as a new generation of Leica film fetishists reluctantly migrates to Leica rangefinder digital in the underwhelming M8 ($5k, lens extra, largely useless viewfinder, fragile optical rangefinder, personalized engraving extra, gold plating on demand if you are a Saudi) these poor boobs (OK, not so poor) tell themselves that HC-B used an M rangefinder for most of his years, so it has to work for them. Snag is, as the above shows, ol’ Hank Carter (as his mates at Magnum knew him), was no longer an M Man. Rather, he had switched to a point-and-shoot Minilux which was emblazoned with the Leica logo but came from points farther east.

So while the M8 set keeps telling itself that its deeply flawed camera (IR problems, execrable quality control, largely useless viewfinder if you use wide angle lenses, manual focus, noisy shutter, no assurance that the poorly capitalized manufacturer will survive the next economic downturn, today’s technology in a geriatric body, ridiculous price for what you get) is just the sort of thing HC-B would use today, the old man had finally got what he always wanted – meaning auto-everything, fixed focal length lens and near silent shutter, allowing all the photographer’s skills to be directed at the subject, not the gear. Plus, you can stick it in your pocket; ever tried that with an M Leica?

No matter; before long someone will come out with a like version with a decent digital sensor; essentially a throwaway camera whose very disposability will make it a better tool. After all, who is going to take risks with a camera like the M8 which represents several months disposable income for most, with the occasional fitness for purpose afforded by a street snapper design? And maybe that digital maker can come out with two versions – one with a fixed wide and one with a modest long-focus lens. And no shutter lag. Put me down for two, and keep the change from not getting an M8 for the gas pump. We’re going to need it.