sharpness is a dead end

In the current world of digital photography we are witnessing a megapixel race that still shows few signs of abating. I've decided to go in the other direction for a while, removing and blurring detail so try and get to the essence of my images.

Getting a 'good' copy of a lens.

Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX HSM @F1.4 Camera EOS 5D

A few weeks ago I noticed that my faithful Canon 50mm 1.4 was becoming reluctant to autofocus. I decided to get a replacement and hunted the internet for the information on what to get in its place. Studying user reviews on the internet you'd believe that about half the products on sale are some way defective, and almost every lens I looked at had disatisfied customers beliving they had a bad copy of the lens or a lens that needed recalibrating to focus on their camera.

I have to admit I've never worried much about lens calibration. When I started shooting seriously it was all film and looking at the kind of 100% close ups that we now take for granted was not easy. You'd either use a loupe on a light table or a grain focusser in the darkroom neither of which were as good or as easy as the simple magnify tool in photoshop. Generally speaking I'd buy the best lens I could afford and would judge it by how good a big print looked I didn't nit pick down to the finest detail. Now you hear countless stories of forum addicts who'd have to send back 5 lenses before they got a good one. The only real issue with sharpness I had came when I had to adjust the rangefinder in a Bessa R before but generally I'd always thought that any softness in a lens would most likely be down to me, and I'd either adjust my camera settings or work on my focusing technique if I suspected it'd got slightly sloppy. Sometimes I'd go and have a sight test, just to be sure.

Then I bought a 5d mark to with its lens micro adjustment feature. Now I can put a lens and camera on a tripod point it at a suitable target and do some simple tests to work out whether I have a good or bad copy of a lens. I did this with my new Sigma 50mm and found it needed an adjustment of -10 which I thought quite big. I test it against my previous Canon 50mm and found to my horror that this lens came out as a +10. So now I discovered why that lens was no good wide open and risky at F2! I'd just put it down to the fact that I always handhold cameras and I shoot mainly portraits so the subject moved or I moved. I also tend to focus on the bridge of the nose when shooting portraits so I'd unconsciously adjusted my focusing for the back focusing Canon.

On top of this I found the Sigma would occasionally dial in huge focusing errors (gross back or front focusing which seemed totally inconsistent. I was faced with two issues, the micro adjustment (Which although I could perform on the 5d mark two I couldn't on my back up classic 5d so I had a lens that was good only on one camera) and the occasional 'freak' errors. I weighed up the pros and cons and decided that instead of returning the lens for another I'd send it with the 5d to Sigma for calibration. It made no sense to me to get a new lens which could be no better than the one I had, although this seems to be the kneejerk reaction of most enthusiasts. I felt that it was always possible that my cameras were out and swapping lenses with abandon would get me nowhere unless I got a lens with the same error. Best I thought to get the camera and lens matched together, eventhough it would mean doing without a camera and lens for an unspecified amount of time. I packaged up the lens and camera and sent it to Sigma Service in Welwyn Garden City.

On receiving the lens they said it could take 2-3 weeks to fix, which seemed a bit long for professional service but in the end I was without camera and lens for a week and got it back just in time to shoot a wedding assignment, which meant I had all my back ups for that job which was a great relief. When I got the lens back it went from 'maybe' being a bit better than Canon's 50 1.4 to being a lot better especially wide open and at moderate distance. Bokeh is certainly streets ahead of the canon as is vignette control, the Sigma is much brighter in the corners than the Canon, as well as being sharper. So all in I may well start calibrating all my equipment either as I get it or when it's due for service. Next is the Canon 50 1.4, which has a failing autofocus mechanism after a few years heavy use. We'll see if it gets closer in quality to the Sigma.

An old negative that I decided to re-visit.

Pure Monochrome

Doing things the old fashioned way. Pentax 67, Ilford FP4+, Lots of dodging and burning

Alison Cain, West Wittering beach

Shoot with Saffi Karina, shot in the middle of the day in bright sunshine, on a beach, just like you aren't supposed to do!

Portrait in West Sussex

From a portrait session last month. To book your session contact me through my website www.tobiaskey.com

Simplicity

Recently I'm feeling that I want to simplify my work. Although I love digital and the flexibility it brings to the shooting and post production process, I feel that I'm incrementally becoming less of a photographer and more of a photo illustrator, tampering with everything in an infinitely malleable digital file. Indeed, it seems the industry is going this way and never really asking the question "Should we do this?". With advent of the photoshop or internet model who will remain stubbornly plain in real life unless someone invents glasses that do 8 hours of retouching on everything you see, I'm simplifying what I do and trying to get by with film, a scanner with some contrast control and dodging and burning. Above is a picture of Lara unretouched and naturally beautiful.

New Treatments of old work

Just reworking some pictures for my new portfolio. It's amazing how time away from your old work lets you edit it better when you return.

Film to Digital and Back Again

I Read an interesting blog post by Mark Tucker on the subject:

http://marktucker.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/overheard/#comments

Co-incidentally I did a shoot yesterday that was my first all film shoot with no digital as a back up or exposure reference. What I found most amazing is that without really feeling like I was holding back I shot only four rolls of 6x7 (40 shots) wheras with digital I probably would have shot 300 or 400 frames. I also found myself directing the shoot a lot more rather than shooting through the OK pictures hoping to get to the good ones. Strange how the equipment you use totally changes your shooting methods without any real conscious effort on my part.

I'll post the results soon.

Good Taste - The most important photographic skill?

Like most photographers, I'm often asked for advice by up and comers, and it's usually technical. They want to know all the details about what equipment I use, what software, you know the usual thing. What I'm starting to think is that most beginners would do better to buy a cheap manual SLR camera, and then spend what they save on the camera buying books of photographer's work and if they live in the right place, going to galleries.

Why do I think this? Because the technical side of photography has never been easier and will keep on getting easier as digital technology develops. The basic skill of creating a well exposed, in focus, professionally acceptable but creatively dull image will decrease in commercial value as the gap between competant amateur and low end professional all but vanishes.

It will become less and less time consuming to learn 'technique' and mastering the technicalities of photography will at a basic level, have no commercial value.

So as a new photographer, what skills can you develop to ensure a career in this precarious business?

The answer is as simple as it is daunting - creativity.

That's why I suggest you get yourself down the library, buy books and go to every gallery show you can, because learning the history of photography and absorbing the work of others is the first step to being more creative.

And creativity is something you can't buy with a credit card at your local camera shop.