RB Design

Techno Geeky Friday - Gear

2013-05-24T00:00:00-04:00

You may not know this but I cannot stand getting all techno geeky with my photography. It’s not that I don’t have the capability of understanding the technical or that I find it in some way hard, or even that I don’t know what to do “technically”. It’s just not where I want my head when making images and something I really don’t want to spend a bunch of time on after shooting an image. Yeah I write a lot of techno geeky stuff - more a mission to hopefully help a few people along so they don’t have to waste so so much time covering the same ground.

You may actually find a couple of things I declare a bit contradictory if taken out of context. Maybe but on the whole my intent is just making pictures. Everybody has certain “needs” and little fetishes when it comes to what they are looking for in a piece of gear they will for the most part have to live with. Some of those needs or desires will be critical in helping or hindering making the kind of pictures that you want to make - others are just fantasies or distractions and have nothing to do with your photographic endeavors.

Patrick LaRoque wrote a short piece this week that given his usual cool and pleasant demeanor amounts to nothing short of a rant. I happen to agree with him on his point which I will boil down to photo-arm-chair-quarterbacking and sweeping generalizations of internet gear forum logic that people take to heart is for the most part utterly ridiculous. Things like comparing two really bad images shot with two similar lenses with similar rendering properties and declaring one of those slightly less bad due to some esoteric property like a minuscule difference in “bokeh”. Who cares?

The dangerous part comes in when the internet armchair quarterback mob piles on and somehow extrapolates that nutty “bad” and slightly “less bad” image comparison somehow has any relevance to images that you might want to make. As if some barely noticeable difference in bokeh will translate theoretically into your images being bad or fantastic based on that piece of gear. Pure lunacy.

That brings me around to what does matter in gear. There are some generalities of course but the most important things are probably going to be highly specific to you and your pictures and how you want them to look and how you shoot them. I do not at all dismiss psychological or subjective factors when choosing gear. Some of those less definitive things can be determined prior to your own personal use - maybe. I would however propose that most cannot and should probably be settled upon after your own experience. For your amusement I will briefly share a couple of tangible and not so tangible examples of my own gear geeky-ness. By no means does this mean they will be shared by you. If you shoot like I do and gravitate towards similar kinds of things they might…

First off bokeh. Since the dawn of my own photographic endeavors I have had or used lenses that I liked they way they looked or disliked they way they looked. I couldn’t possibly nail down any one particular factor that would be definitive as to why that is. When I say this it’s absolutely not some anecdotal take a few shots and if they looked good I liked the way the lens “looked” and if they turned out bad I decided the I didn’t like the way that particular lens looked. It’s way more of an overall experience for a very large number of images in a lot of different circumstances that I came to this point of view. More relevantly that was with a large number of what could be considered “good” images shot with a particular lens. Especially with lenses I decided that I didn’t like the way they looked.

Take the image at the top of the post. Just a semi-random selection shot with a lens I use all the time - the Nikon 85mm 1.8 AF-D. I have had this since the mid-90’s. Small, light, well built, cheap, idiotically sharp and… wait for it… the world’s more horrible bokeh. Well if you listen to internet armchair photo logic then it does. Really? I actually really really like the way this lens looks over all. Somehow as time has worn on some ridiculous probably inconsequential remark from someone that may or may not know better about a “bokeh preference” that may even be anecdotal has mushroomed into a collective thought process that some how this lens is the one not to buy because x, y, and z have far far far far far “better bokeh”. Whatever. This was shot at f4 - a particularly “bad” aperture for bokeh on this lens. Ummm yea.

Moving on to cameras etc. Of critical importance is how you feel using a camera. If the camera bothers you and somehow it’s particular properties annoy the shit out of you that is a big problem. If it makes you comfortable - that’s a win all other things aside. There are as many factors to this some extremely tangible and technical all the way to psychological. Some of these factor overlap where tangible differences affect your psychology. Here’s one that’s near and dear to my heart. Digital and the way highlights look. I have mentioned more than once I am a highlight fetishist more than a highlight nazi. Detail, no detail, whatever - how do the highlights look - that’s my “thing”.

Maybe the highlight thing has everything to do with my expectations. Maybe it has to do with what I like to shoot. Maybe it’s how I like to shoot it. Most likely it’s all of the above wrapped up in a way that cannot be untangled - for me. This is probably the biggest reason why I praise the Nikon D600 as if it’s like nothing else before it while at the same time I condemn the D7000. Cameras that most would probably consider so similar it’s not even worth discussing the differences beyond full frame vs APS-C. Maybe - noise performance is on par. Techno IQ specs are really negligible if you are an arm-chair photographer. Maybe some minor improvements in the ultimate measurability. Nits except for that FX vs DX thing. For you maybe - for me - these cameras are a world apart that has nothing to do with DX or FX.

Looking at the image at the top again. A subject with lighter toned caucasian skin. Probably the thing I point my camera at the most. The lighting here is not what you would call challenging in the least. Low ratio soft light. Do we need a shit load of dynamic range? Nope. Do we need crazy ISO performance? Nope. I just happen to like lighter toned skin placed somewhere around the 3/4 mark if you are looking at a histogram. That’s around zone VI or VII with some highlights going into zone VIII in Ansel Adam’s speak. That’s the way I want it to look - that’s the way I like too shoot it.

With the D600 I can shoot it like this all day and it looks great. I can go around to the opposite side and have the highlights leave while rendering that same skin at the same level and everything looks like it “should”. Try that with the D7000 or many other digi-cams. Heck even in this exact same set of conditions I cannot shoot it anywhere near the same. If I put the skin at the same values I will absolutely for sure blow the red channel way before anything else goes. That’s the techno talk. What’s important is that the skin anywhere near that will start to look all digi-shitty to my eye.

Here is a somewhat contrived example but illustrative.

For me that whole left side of the face looks all digi-shitty from a skin point of view. No not just the tiny tiny specular parts. I couldn’t care less about those having “no detail” I care about the blatant (to me) digit-nasty-ness that surrounds all of it getting anywhere near that transition. It looks “off”. For those that are looking for a techno-answer as to why. Here’s about the best I can do.

The red channel has left the building. In truth there is way way more to it than just the ultimate blowing of the red channel or lack thereof. In the end it only matters how it looks. It’s one of the reasons that I am so un-impressed with digital “progress” over the last decade. This kind of shit was stuff that happened with my very first digital SLR. I was absolutely sure that this kind of thing would be the first thing to get solved. Nope. I have had to put up with this crap for more than a decade before the D600.

By “put up with” I mean compensate for it by either modification of the scene via lowering the contrast with gear or underexposing it. Either way - shooting subjects really really really flat or underexposing and “fixing” it later just bothers the crap out of me personally. Why the fuck to I have to shoot it so it looks bad on the back of the camera or at a lower contrast than I want to just to fix it later? I never had to do that before - this sucks. Of course I can get the exact same results or so close you cannot tell. I had to for more years with commercial clients when I shot digital. It’s just something that I didn’t “like”. Hey the light is perfect - it looks great now I have to shoot it one way or anther “wrong” - just didn’t register with me. I did it of course but didn’t like it that way. D600? Not any more. Common scene pretty light - I can actually shoot it the way I want to and have it look good on the back of the camera - at least to me.

The point being that it’s at least as much a psychological issue to me that nagged at my head when shooting. Anyway you slice it that’s not a good thing. That’s why one of the reasons I love the D600 and didn’t like the D7000 so much - much more of a meh… Does that make the D7000 a bad camera that is useless? Of course not. At todays prices that camera is a deal. It’s just the factors for my own comfort where I live in my photographic world are night and day - to me. I shoot fairly close, I have a particular very limited set of focal lengths I gravitate to. I have a way I like skin to look with not a lot of work. I like certain lighting conditions. Etc, etc.

I found all of the factors, limited selection of focal lengths with properties I wanted, the so-so rendering of skin in lighting conditions, etc to be lacking on the DX D7000. For you it might be the perfect camera. It’s fluid, it’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s compact. You may like tele lenses. The bottom line is it’s really really hard to know until you actually work with different gear, you know what you like, what affects your thinking positively or negatively when you are using it and how you feel.

Just like the Fuji XPRO-1. Great camera but it just didn’t float my boat. Was it smaller than my DSLR - for sure. Just not enough smaller for me to make any sense. My go-to kit was about size neutral compared to my D600 so for me it was a wash. X100 - completely different story for my needs, wants, and desires. That camera hit all the right notes for what I wanted. If the XPRO-1 was the same size, with the same sized lenses - in other words an interchangeable lens X100 - EXACTLY, then it would have been what I wanted.

I would suggest you figure these out for yourself with your own eyes and your own experiences instead of trying to extrapolate them from other people with completely different points of view at best and completely full of shit at worst.

D600 OOC Results, Window Light, and Other Questions

2013-05-20T00:00:00-04:00

The first two lighting field guides have been out for a month or two now and to be candid I have been extremely happy with the response so far. They are proving a bit more popular than I expected and the feedback overwhelmingly positive - so far. I have received a couple of questions from photographers that have read them though. As usual those questions are never what I would have expected. I probably should have but I didn’t. While I answer all of them via personal email and address answers very specifically there are a few things that have come up that I thought might interest a broader audience than one so here is a mixed bag of things that could be considered themes.

Actually they aren’t specific how-to’s they are more curiosities that needed to be satisfied. Why not - in the interest of full-disclosure and in no specific order…

Curiosity #1 - I used one standard preset - VSCO and Lightroom 4 for all of the images in the lighting guides. No local adjustments. In the case of window light auto white balance, etc, etc so not to pollute the matter at hand - lighting and what OOC results “should” look like. The question was - what do the images look like with no VSCO preset. You asked so here is an example.

This happens to be in Aperture 3 since I am boycotting Adobe ATM. It’s an image I shot specifically for the window light eBook but didn’t end up using. I am sick of the other ones.

The above was with VSCO film 02 Kodak Portra 400NC - a tweaked version. The following is OOC with nada…

Those are at 100% if you open them in a new window to see all the pixels. Why? To kill a couple of other birds with one stone.

Curiosity #2 - Could I have shot this with the X100/XPro1 instead of the D600, Why did I get rid of the XPro1 and keep the X100, Does the X100/Xpro1 have “better” skin tones than the D600, Should I buy an X-series or a D600, etc. All Nikon vs Fuji stuff.

Well sure I could have shot the eBooks on any of those cameras or any number of others. Doesn’t really matter. I didn’t use any exotic features of the D600. No hyper speed sync stuff no lenses outside of what you can do with an XPro1. I just reach for the D600 as a general purpose tool more. If I have a camera bag and lights and other gear I may as well use the D600. I also felt that using something like the X100 was a little too fuji cultish. There’s still a little bit of ummm fetishism associated with the X-series cameras. I wanted to make the guides more general with no associated “magic” ingredient that might exist in someones mind associated with using a camera outside the “norm”. I thought it might turn them into more of a Fuji thing. Maybe I will do a guide using just the X100 down the road who knows.

As for what should you buy… Obviously it’s a personal choice based on need and desire but I had to pick one and only one out of the X-series or the D600 I would have to say the smart money is on the D600. Better, stronger, faster, IQ that’ a generation or more ahead of any of the X-Series. Better physics, more convenient, more fluid, a far far better value for the buck with the proper selection of glass, more refined, almost perfect.

Moving onto skin tones etc. Honestly this has far more to do with the way each camera chooses WB than most other things. Secondarily some of the JPEG settings on the Fuji might be a hair better for people - maybe than the Nikon OOC JPEGs. If you shoot raw then I call foul on “better” skin. The D600 has fantastic rendering of skin and hair and just about anything else. One of the reasons I like it is that it’s probably the first DSLR that crosses the rubicon in terms of image aesthetics that I give a hoot about. I can shoot it how I want to shoot it to get OOC results I prefer and not play stupid games in post to get what I want or even close to what I want.

Take the shot at the top of the post - another shot that I hope will kill a couple of birds. I shot it for the window light field guide but also didn’t end up using it. The first bird to kill being image aesthetics I care about. In the past I have ranted and raved about how I dislike the way digital capture renders certain things in an extremely ugly way - at least to my eye - compared to film. Subtle highlight differentiation being one thing, certain common fine detail the other. It’s not about pixel peeping the fine detail it’s more about a holistic way it “looks”. Specifically hair and leaves never looked quite right to me under a lot of various and common conditions. Check out the hair in the top shot. Trust me this looks really really good for digital with no monkey business. This is the way it should look under these conditions to me. This is the way I like it. I can almost assure you that very few cameras will render hair like this under those lighting conditions at that exposure level.

The second bird to go down - semi related to the way that hair renders is why I didn’t use some shots. This shot was not used because I completely failed. I didn’t use it because it certainly is not reproducible on demand on any given day with any given camera or any given window without a bunch of gear. The lighting conditions are such that it will be rare. Worse yet is that I don’t include enough of the scene to illustrate what is going on here. Lastly even if someone else did the exact same thing this hair looks way better than most digi-cams in these conditions. Bottom line - putting ego aside I wanted all of the images to be representative, illustrative, and reproducible easily. I did however cover very similar looks in the simulating sunlight field guide.

Curiosity #3 - I mentioned vaguely that the guides while very focused on a single topic are also a backdoor stealthy way of introducing people to some pretty advanced studio concepts and hopefully nuanced use of lighting gear. Even though the first two guides use either no purpose built gear or one and only one speedlight. How is that. Well if I said that then it wouldn’t be stealth would it? Kidding. The lighting field guides are designed to be completely stand-alone but also hang together as something cohesive when taken as a whole. Each one reinforces a couple of very key lighting concepts while introducing and focusing on one specific one. They don’t cover the same ground but hopefully I am presenting the material in such a way that readers will make the critical connections intuitively and go… “oh my… I get it. This concept is a whole lot like this other one and they hook together real nice…” My whole goal is that instead of a couple of recipes to replicate readers will get a real understanding of what is going on with any given lighting scenario - how to use it - how to replicate it. Why things look the way they do and use it to make their own things they way they want them to look.

I hope that cures a few curiosities. Anything else.

Ps. An international reader let me know that some non-US credit cards were being rejected. Obviously that was not wholesale. It had to do with non-dollar currency techno crap that was card/bank specific. I cured the issue with an obscure paypal IPN option. If you had trouble buying my eBooks without a paypal account it should work now.

The Making Of A Photograph - Process

2013-05-19T00:00:00-04:00

That series of posts I started a short while ago regarding thought process etc. on making a particular picture - good bad or indifferent - has generated a few interesting conversations so I figured I would continue it with a slight twist today. Instead of one image it will be a whole bunch of them. Partially just for the hell of it and partially to consolidate a few points of conversation I have had sparked by a few of those other the making of posts. It’s only natural to be curious of other photographers working method and process. I certainly am intrigued when I get a glimpse into other photographer’s processes. That’s part of the drive behind my contact sheet fetishism.

The image at the top has nothing to do with the rest of the photos I am going to share today with the exception that I shot it on the same day and it happens to be a worst case example of the “IQ” produced by the Fuji X100 - the old one at that. Why worst case? Well my chosen presentation format for this contact sheet of sorts today happens to be a video hosted on Vimeo and I wanted to level set the actual IQ of the RAW files so that anyone that cares to can just take the video for what it is and not associate it’s rendering of still image quality representative of the X100’s output. I say worst case because the shot at the top was @ ISO 3200 and boosted another whole stop in post (damn “intelligent” metering) which is way worse than actually shooting it at 6400.

Okay disclaimers aside, on with the show. This particular session I did with the X100 was exploratory in nature, playing with using it as well as a 35mm focal length in particular ways. I shot it in a similar style with how I planned to use it on an ongoing personal project - exclusively. I wanted to play with how the various imaging characteristics of this combo felt when using it in various ways. Could I make it feel intimate, could I make it feel distant, was I capable of using just that 35mm perspective both horizontal and vertical orientation while dealing with background elements that weren’t carefully arranged? These among a bunch of other operational questions were the things I was trying to work out…

Now for the context - maybe interesting to a few of you. Definitely of interest to the one person that asked. How fast to I work, how many shots do I take, things like that. In this case the entire session represented by the following video contact sheet was shot between about 11am to 2pm. So three hours. That’s not the whole story though. This was a side endeavor. During that time here’s what else I was doing in those three hours…

Drank a bunch of coffee and a bunch of smoke breaks.
I shot a response to the LaRoque challenge.
Shot 4 different setups for my simulating sunlight eBook
Also re-shot a few things quickly for the window light eBook
Shot two setups of something completely different that I haven’t discussed and have nothing to do with this blog or the eBooks.

So three hours 10 sets, 8 wardrobe changes, 2 hair and makeup changes, coffee and a bunch of cigarettes not including any of these shots which were “in between” that other stuff. This might give you the impression that I am an insane task master that works everyone in front of my camera to death. Not the case in the least. I probably shoot far far less frames than most people do. I mostly talk about shit that has nothing to do with the picture taking matter at hand. I swear I spent more time chugging coffee and chit chatting then I did behind my DSLR.

Now how many images is that? I really don’t know total - I could count but what does that matter. The video represents exactly half of the total images I shot with the X100 out of all of them I shot in that particular limited physical space. I made about 30 or 40 additional images before this and after this segment but didn’t feel they were quite right to include here for a bunch of quirky reasons.

I processed all of these exactly the same. Aperture 3 with one VSCO preset. Specifically film 02 Superia 1600+ with the grain overlay (yea I have it now - got it for practically free). Part of my look and feel experiments. I figured the video re-re-re-re-encoding was so dirty why not use the dirtiest starting point. In terms of shooting I used a random mix of aperture priority auto and manual exposure. I used ISO settings that were either 400 or 1600. I didn’t need to use for light levels that were all over the map. I choose them specifically to get either high shutter speeds or very low shutter speeds. Same reason I choose either f2 or f4 for apertures. The images with no motion blur are higher shutter speeds. The images that have apparent motion blur are low - specifically a little bit of motion blur was about 1/20 a whole lot of motion blur was 1/10.

A fairly narrow range of stuff here but chosen for specific effect. Same goes for the aperture to a little lesser degree. The mix of f4 and f2 was primarily shutter speed driven but when combined with the switch to either 400 or 1600 ISO for shutter speed that I wanted it also gave me that halation or lack there of that the little fuji does so beautifully.

That’s the tech of it. The more interesting part to me was two things that the video contact sheet demonstrates far better than words - a narrow but specific choice of view points is the first. I shot at one of 4 points of view. The first being one I never use which is slightly above subject eye level. About 6 to 8 inches. I also shot exactly at eye level for a few. The other two points of view are my normal modus operandi - slightly below eye level - about 5-6 inches or slightly below waist level. The differences should be night and day between all of these 4 viewpoints. The second thing I did was to play with the background composition in a non-prepared, fixed and very limited space. A factor that plays in that long term personal project. I wanted to see if I could do anything remotely interesting with circumstance and surroundings that were somewhat out of my control for locations I had in mind. I also wanted to see if “micro backgrounds” played with the 35mm perspective the same way they did with my normal 50mm preference for this type of thing.

Knowing where my head was should provide enough context for you to check out what I was going for here. Without further delay here’s exactly half of the images - a video contact sheet. Warning - PG-13 NSFW.

BTS from Robert Boyer on Vimeo.

I don’t really do the whole online gallery thing. I am kind of unsure how I want to do presentation of some of my personal projects so this is also an experiment. I know I will produce hard prints as one form of output. As for online… I am experimenting with video as well as PDF. Maybe the PDF next time. If you have a preference or ideas for online delivery of stuff like this speak up even if it’s just a feel or a perception or something you would like…

The issue I have with video right now when presenting stills is this… The video rendition inside Aperture is pristine. The output rendered in H264 at “best” quality is pretty good. Unfortunately it’s also 2.4 gigs for 3 minutes. At “good” quality it’s meh IQ. After Vimeo gets ahold of it, it’s friggin horrible - for stills.

Hopefully you find this look inside of another’s process interesting or at least amusing.

Lighting Field Guides

2013-05-17T00:00:00-04:00

Nothin’ like a little shameless self-promotion so here it is. Actually this is better than self-promotion it’s a reasonably rational review by a great photographer - Patrick LaRoque - of my newest lighting field guide simulating sunlight. I probably would have written a similar kind of thing if I would have reviewed it. My review would have used a whole lot more words and sounded a little less ummmm… gushing but I did absolutely love one of the quotes - very much my kind of assessment.

if it sucked I wouldn’t be writing about it. Patrick LaRoque

That’s fair. Actually funny because I have been seriously thinking about branding for about a year. The driving force I keep coming back around to is pretty much “Stuff that sucks less” - that’s just the way I am wired.

Actually Patrick did use a lot of stuff that I couldn’t possibly bring myself to say that was quite flattering and I really do appreciate his kindness and praise as well as his taking the time to give the eBook a shout-out on his blog. All kinds of flowery stuff like this…

Everything in this book is done with a single speedlight and believe me, the depth of what can be achieved is quite impressive. Just goes to show how much you can accomplish once you’ve mastered the primary concepts.

and…

Robert possesses an almost encyclopedic knowledge of light and isn’t afraid to share. He covers everything from lighting ratios to controlling spill, simulating windows, controlling the edge of shadows, creating patterns…

even this…

In fact, some of these experiments made their way to a few client shoots recently. Anything this inspiring should be required reading.

High praise indeed. I am almost embarrassed.

In case you don’t follow his Patrick Laroque’s blog - you should. I don’t say that often as you know. It’s one of the couple that I do. What’s more is it happens to be the only blog without an RSS feed that I regularly visit. I actually go there at least 3 times a week to see what he’s been up to. He definitely makes photographs that don’t suck.

Ps. I may be mistaken regarding the RSS feed - I haven’t looked for one in a while and might be too daft or lazy to actually find it in the 4 seconds that I looked for one a while ago. It doesn’t matter I manually subscribe anyway…

Photography - Some Thoughts On Tools

2013-05-14T00:00:00-04:00

Kind of a strange week of posts for me. Probably too much anger over the whole Adobe shafting a lot of it’s customers or at least positioning for the big shafting to come. Maybe a bit too tool focused be it Aperture 3, or Lightroom, or VSCO, or the Fuji X100S. Enough of that for now, it’s not about the tools really - it’s not. As long as the tools are competent to some degree you’re golden. Limitations, constraints and obstacles can be a good thing in a lot of cases as I have written about a number of times before. All of them cause you to work differently and think differently. As you can probably imagine I happen to prefer tools that just get the hell out of my way. Even if they have their own set of limitations. You may view that statement as a bit of contradictory things. In my mind it’s not depending on your definition of limitations as well as your interpretation of “getting the hell out of the way”.

To illustrate my thoughts more clearly let me use a bit of hyperbole. If I had to choose between a camera that quite literally eliminated every single photographic obstacle that one could imagine - low light, IQ, focal length choice, size, weight, everything that is floating your boat right this second but it had this robotic arm that came out and poked you in the eye after every shot vs say a camera that only had one focal length, was “so so” in the dark, and had a lot less “IQ” but it didn’t poke me in the eye. Guess which one I would choose.

Obviously nobody would design something like that on purpose and the example is over the top. One mans poking in the eye is probably a bit different than another’s. I would suggest you would be better served by choosing the tool that doesn’t poke you in your metaphorical eye rather than go for the “features”. I have posted quite a few things about forgetting how much I liked working in Aperture 3 and it’t true - I haven’t really been inside Aperture since the end of 2012.

Having kept myself busy working on the lighting field guides through all those depressing winter months. I made a decision early on to not do any special post processing with the illustrations and to use Lightroom as it’s a bit more universal for people in terms of how it looks OOC. Import - one click preset of a know quantity - export - done. I hear a bunch of things all the time regarding tools and the critical need everyone seems to have for things a specific tool doesn’t do. Whether it’s some camera function, some lens, or some post processing tool. Heck I get caught up in it sometimes. Thank god I usually snap out of it pretty quick and get back to business. I criticized the the living crap out of the Aperture 3 version of VSCO lately - as compared to the ACR/Lightroom version was really the context. I was probably being way way too harsh especially without context. It’s just a tool - no tool is going to be exactly perfect for everyone. What was I expecting? Well I was expecting perfect - who cares - it works - it’s easy to fix it’s shortcomings - and it’s easier than rolling your own looks.

There were a couple of things that helped snap me out of the whole “the tools aren’t good enough” mindset of the moment…

The number of positive responses I got to a random tweet I shot out regarding all I really need in an image processing tool regarding the whole Photoshop Adobe controversy. It was something like “Thank god I only need decent color tools and a curves adjustment”. Really that’s about it. The rest of it’s gravy. I’m not a photo illustrator - I don’t want to be.
Someone asking me if VSCO could be made to work in a simple way in Aperture 3. Of course it can. I was just being lazy. It’s just a tool I know how to get it somewhere near what I want.
Some other positive response I got to a random shout out on twitter regarding my preference for Aperture 3 - the meat of the matter is that I like tools that reward you more as your experience with them grows as opposed to tools that make you ever more frustrated as you are more and more familiar with them.

There is a very big difference to me between tools that are “easy to learn” vs tools that are easy to use after you have gained experience. I will take the latter any day of the week and that’s just how I feel about Aperture 3. Same goes for cameras I like vs ones I don’t. On and on. You have to live with these things and I rather that be more and more enjoyable rather than less and less as time goes on.

I guess that brings me to my point here today. It’s probably far more productive and rewarding to really learn your tools that you actually use to make images you want to make and dealing with the matter at hand - photography - than it is worrying about what they don’t do that are edge cases or you don’t really need to deal with in the first place. Endless preparation for problems you might have is worthless. It all changes - figuring out what you might need down the road is a fools game and has nothing to do with making work right now. Use what you like - make sure it’s enjoyable and if it’s not make sure there is a damn good reason you are using it.

Case in point - the image at the top of the post. Nothing super special, just part of a series I did in getting to really know my X100. First time I actually tried to use it seriously and was working through a number of things like how the camera’s meter reacted and if I was “faster” using it one way rather than another, etc, etc. Turns out I will use the X100 and X100S a whole lot like I use every other camera I have ever owned.

During this sequence I was trying out evaluative metering and aperture priority and playing the “out smart the camera with exposure bias” game. Hey I am a romantic - I want to believe that some day this will be a good option for me. Not today. I successfully outsmarted the meter a few shots prior with an exposure comp of +1.33 as confirmed via chimping. Too bad Anastasia moved just a hair revealing 0.000003% more of that window right behind her. Checkmate - the camera outsmarted me. I lose. Seriously just a hair and wham this shot was way underexposed. Too bad it’s the one I liked the best. It has the worst IQ but the rest of it works better in terms of gesture and expression. I guess I should have used exposure comp and AE lock. Screw that. For 90% of how I shoot I am way better off and quicker with manual where the camera just does what I tell it to do until I change the scene or change my mind. Of course if there is no way I can keep up I will use aperture priority.

Here’s how horrible the IQ is in all it’s pixel glory and how much I needed to increase exposure…

I had ISO 1600 set on the camera and boosted the exposure in Aperture 3 by a whopping 1.4 stops and added a bunch of contrast. No matter what camera or software you are using this is not a recipe for squeaky clean images. In the above screenshot if you open it in a new window to see all the pixels. What you cannot see is the noise I caused by all this monkeying around. Sure you see a ton of noise but you cannot see any of the camera noise - what you see is VSCO 800Z grain overlay. Yep used VSCO for Aperture 3 and their grain scan overlays. Dialed in additional exposure, applied VSCO 01 Fuji 800Z, dialed back saturation, added the grain. Done.

Would I like this image better if Aperture 3’s noise reduction was better? Better than the current king - ACR7? How about better than that? Who cares. What if all the tools were perfect what if it looked like I shot it at ISO 50 on an H4D? No noise. Again who cares. For a lot of things tool features and comparisons of which one is “better” are irrelevant in most cases it just doesn’t matter. What about the ones that do matter? Well to tell you the truth I am very unlikely to like an image better or worse if it needs to be pristine based on some relative performance of friggin noise reduction. It’s shot wrong in the first place and will suck slightly less. Who cares if it sucks or sucks slightly less. Images that “pristine” is a requirement - which is a not a whole lot of them - the whole comparison on “better” ways to fix IQ problems you caused is idiotic - who cares - you shot it wrong it it sucks or it sucks slightly less. The ultimate armchair quarterbacking in photography. Comparing which lousy ill-conceived, mis shot, bad choice images suck less depending on what software you use. Really - this is what we are doing with our time? This is what we are thinking about? Everybody smack yourself - or the guy next to you. There I smacked myself.

Here’s another one - sorry for the NSFW but I just had to use this one as it’s the same story as the last one. Exactly with one additional thing I and others gripe and complain about from a tool perspective constantly. Specifically Aperture 3’s lack of integrated profiled perfect lens corrections.

Check out the door on the right edge of the frame. This is absolutely a worst case scenario for the X100 or any other camera/lens for that matter. The X100’s lens is not perfect from a distortion point of view. Not horrible but not perfect. That line doesn’t look all bendy to me. Maybe Aperture 3 is dealing with it automagically - it does with Micro 4/3 stuff so it can. Maybe it just doesn’t matter - for a good 90% of my shots - the things I shoot I couldn’t care less about some slight distortion. I don’t use it much in ACR, there’s just no need. Let’s pretend that the line was all curvy and it was bothering the shit out of me and I was correction-less because Aperture is just so so so lacking on critical features we cannot live without. Think I could manage that crop? Typically the lines that bother you are going to be on the edges. Lines real close to the edge are not a great idea anyway. Who cares.

Do you have a camera that Aperture 3 doesn’t support? Or whatever software you like the best because it’s enjoyable for you to use? If not who cares about camera support. Right up until you buy one that’s not supported I guess. Deal with that when it’s actually an issue. I just made a tool (Aperture 3) that is “useless” because it doesn’t do all kinds of critical stuff and well as a set of presets I like less do exactly the same thing for me as the other tool does. There is no way you could tell the difference. I can - maybe - but even so I enjoy working in Aperture 3 in every other way by a large margin. I will take the enjoyment rather than worrying about VSCO’s slightly less than perfect calibration or some lack of “good noise reduction”. My point isn’t Aperture 3 - my point is enjoyment and taking factors that may be more important for your photographic life into account than some ultimate comparison of “features”.

Enough philosophy today. Let’s go make some pictures. It’s spring.

Aperture 3 - Can VSCO work?

2013-05-11T00:00:00-04:00

So a question came up while chatting about VSCO for Aperture 3 that was actually pretty pragmatic. Simply “is there a simple way to make VSCO work in Aperture 3”. Work meaning make it look a whole lot more like VSCO for Lightroom and ACR. The answer is a mixed bag I will give you my take and you decide. The short version is generally yes.

The problem with the film 01 version - the one I own, I cannot speak to film 02 for Aperture - arises from a few different areas I will take them one by one. Even if you don’t use VSCO there may be a couple of things here of interest for Aperture users.

First off is Aperture 3’s default tone curve on most RAW files. At least for all the cameras I have ever used with it. It renders mid tones on the dark side but still with a lot of initial contrast. Specifically it still renders upper highlights really really bright. The multiple curves that VSCO adds seem not to take this default into account so it pulls the mids down even darker and pushes highlights up even further. Every single preset has as it’s last curves control a fairly drastic s curve that pulls lower mids down further than in pushes them up.
Second Aperture 3 has tons of saturation by default and VSCO only adds more. In some presets it does it directly in with the saturation control. For every one it uses an RGB curve vs a luminosity curve which serves to further and further ramp up saturation to what could already be considered over the top.
Third is sometimes a killer. Some of the presets have “toning” all of them have a toning curves control - it’s the middle curves control. For some of the presets like Fuji 400H it cuts off the red channel hard. When you combine this with some extremely narrow color control ranges in the reds it does really really bad things.

Those are the things that need to be dealt with. Be for I get into what I consider the simplest way let’s take a look at a default preset like 400H and that last problem area I discussed.

The extreme saturation of the default RAW processing combined with that first curves control shown above with that hard red channel cutoff combinded with further jacking up of saturation both in that curves as well as the next one down combined with this kind of thing…

That last color control block - check out the pink/red I have highlighted. See how narrow the range is. See the amount of negative saturation here and how narrow that range slider is. All of those things add up to funky artifact-y weird strange shit like you see here in the lips. That’s just one example there are a bunch of little things like this that go wonky.

You can also see the other two issues here. They may be hard to relate to but one is overall saturation since it started high and got jacked through the roof with ever increasing RGB contrast added. Anastasia’s skin is more like whipped cream than oompa loompa orange. I also shoot with very liberal exposure compared to what most of you probably do. All of the lower mids here are way way way darker than the JPEGs or what they look like in ACR. Too bad the extreme highlights are about the same. If you think this is extreme here’s the 800Z preset…

If I keep the simple mods to the first two control blocks of exposure and enhance vs modifying the VSCO applied stuff here is some general things to try.

A combination of increased exposure and most likely additional recovery dialed in to bring some of the extreme highlights back down. For most of my images this will work just fine. Generally speaking if you expose like I do you’ll probably need about .3 stops more in the slider. If you expose conservatively as a lot of digital shooters do you’ll need more.
You’ll probably want to dial back black point a bit as well. I would probably say 1 is a good starting point. This lowers the overall contrast and saturation a bit and also opens up the shadows a bit. While your at it turn off the highlights/shadow control that every preset adds. You don’t need it and it just sucks CPU. Sure use it if you need it but every images certainly doesn’t.
So far that’s the good part. If you stay in the exposure block the VSCO presets won’t touch your modifications. Too bad we also need to dial back the saturation in the enhance block. Some presets use this and overwrite your mods, some don’t. Keep an eye on them if you are checking out the various film emulations and re-re-re do what I am about to suggest. Dial the saturation back to around 0.8 for a more realistic film saturation maybe a little higher up to 0.9 if you really love your crazy saturation.
Last if you have artifacts and strangeness still going on in your reds it’s you have a couple of choices. Most should be fixed by now but ramping up the exposure may have put you back in the same boat. Scroll down to that color control block that I showed you with that red/pink with the really narrow range. Either widen that range out or do what I do since I already bumped saturation down a lot. Just put the saturation at zero instead of the extreme negative value it has. All the presets seem to have it. Looks like an oooops we went too far let’s fix it at the end kind of thing. Ummm yea - sometimes that’s not such a great idea.

The results of this are at the top. Alternatively you could use that first curves control that VSCO does nothing with to get to the same place as I do or if the image is just not going to take additional exposure/recovery to put the mids where you need them. You’ll still need that dial back of saturation as well. So yes - VSCO can be made to look a whole lot more like it does in Lightroom. I just wish VSCO would have done that and matched up their own results to the Lightroom/ACR versions.

One last note - the grain overlays. The way they are implemented is creative for sure and don’t look too bad compared to other things I have seen but they will bloat the crap out of your library if you use them a lot so be warned.

Hope this helps those of you that have VSCO film 01 for Aperture at all…

A Tale Of Two VSCO's

2013-05-11T00:00:00-04:00

Okay, so a couple of people have asked me what the hell I am on about regarding the Aperture 3 version of VSCO and why I am so hypercritical. Well… I posted this quite a while back but I guess that didn’t quite tell the story clearly enough. I swear this is the last time… maybe. Here we go.

Image at the top - my goofy “Kodak-y” preset that I have had laying around in Aperture 3 for like 2 years or more maybe longer versus the ACR 7 Lightroom 4 version of VSCO Portra 160. It’s similar to my own “presets” that I lifted and stamped back in Aperture 2 - of course taking into account the RAW defaults that Apple changed a hell of a lot since Aperture 2.

The biggest difference is probably a few points here and there with White Balance of the two images. I didn’t even use VSCO as any sort of model for this. My go to Kodak-y negative thing has no fancy shamancy toning applied nor does it have any grain and it’s still pretty darn close heck mine may be “more similar” to real Portra depending on what day it is. Now let’s have a look see at the VSCO for Aperture 3 Portra 160 v that same image rendered in LR4 with VSCO for a hundred bucks…

Subtle isn’t it. What the… really? really really really? REALLY? Hmmm if I have 8 vodka martinis and stand across the road and squint my eyes and turn my head really fast they might look sorta kinda similar kinda maybe. WTF?

Let’s see my lowly old preset with one color adjustment block and one curves adjustment along with a hair of negative overall saturation in the enhance blocks vs. 17 curves, blocks, 3000 color adjustment controls, some highlights and shadows to slow things down a bit, and a partridge in a pear tree. Ummm I’ll take my do-it-yourself thanks. What the hell were they smoking? Sniffing maybe? Some sort of toxic waste near the office have some effect? Who the hell knows.

Now don’t get me wrong - I still think their products for Adobe are about the only thing worth buying when it comes to presets. Very well thought out, very well supported, great updates, some very clever work-arounds to the limitations of ACR based RAW controls - awesome company. This is the odd man out for them. I have tried to get to the bottom of it. I have even resorted to begging them to re-think the versions for Aperture. I even tried to get some sort of clue as to what they were thinking and why this is the way it is? I get very polite answers that are sort of more like - ummm that’s nice now go away.

This has nothing to do with what one “likes better” - if you are a member of the blocked up artifacty looking hyper-contrast loving over processed club you might even “like” the Aperture 3 versions. Not my point. How can something that is attempting to emulate a particular film just be so so so so so so so off - not just from the actual film but from itself? What was the target here? Certainly not real portra and from what I can tell not even their own “carefully calibrated” Lightroom version. The only thing I can possibly guess is that someone sat down in Aperture and attempted to copy the curve shapes and color stuff that they did in Lightroom with no account for what the Aperture 3 defaults actually look like. I am probably way way off in that guess but the curves have a similarity to them from a casual glance. I am way to lazy to reverse engineer that and actually confirm or deny that guess.

I have half a mind to just reproduce the Lightroom version from top to bottom in Aperture 3 myself - at least the ones I use. I don’t think it would take me more than a day or so if I can find the time. I just wish they would do it. Heck pay me to do it. It’s not rocket science.

Fuji X100S RAW And Aperture 3

2013-05-10T00:00:00-04:00

It’s Friday so this will be a bit of a mixed bag of things but could also be considered the first in a small series of posts regarding Fuji X100S RAW files and my thoughts on how Aperture 3 handles those. I know the back story - yea Lightroom “sucked” but now it’s better, Capture One is the ultimate for XTRANS blah blah blah. To tell the truth the kind of things I care a lot about in terms of IQ are probably not making myself cross eyed searching for some “water color effect” across 7 pixels under certain circumstances when the moon is full. So if you are counting on me to point out some minor “gottcha” in terms of artifacts vs other RAW processing of the same file vs yet another I am not your man.

Instead I am just going to focus on Aperture 3 and the X100S and my thoughts on if I like it or if I don’t along with any major show-stopping kind of things. For this first installment - and it is the first as I am just learning the X100S imaging characteristics - I want to kind of level set where I am coming from as a reference point to any opinion I offer going forward for this combo. I am actually going to do something today that’s a bit out in left field in discussing RAW files and a RAW converter. Instead of using some other RAW processor as a baseline I am going to use another camera - my D600. I use it enough to be familiar with it so why not. Wouldn’t that be a fair way to evaluate RAW processing of X-TRANS in Aperture 3?

In doing this I guess it’s actually a bench mark of X100S performance and imaging overall as well. Possibly more valuable to people that don’t already own one to. Please don’t get upset if I upset an apple cart or two here - I am going to be as objective as one can be so the X100S will definitely suffer the slings and arrows of not “winning” in this level set as compared to one of the best cameras on the planet from an IQ perspective. Don’t be mad at me please - I love my X100 and my X100S even more. I am just not delusional when discussing it like a Leica guy…

Let’s start with the sacred cow - color… Ohhhhh the Fuji has such transcendental mystical magic color properties. Ummmm no. It’s pretty much the same as any other modern camera of good performance out there. Let’s take the casual snap I made just to get this out of the way. Here’s the D600. I was using a 50mm lens vs the 35mm equiv but I made the framing as close as I could without actually doing math and stuff…

Now for the X100S…

They are the same - same same same same. I said it before I will repeat it again - White balance selection made by the camera as well as what particular WB preset values chosen by a camera and camera manufacturer are far far far the most deterministic factor in perceived color differences across various camera RAW files - assuming the same RAW processor and target profile. This is how close a Nikon and Fuji are with me just randomly matching the WB using a target in the picture that probably has so much variance that it will give me a couple of points different every time I sample it. If I shot some sort of scientific test they would be exactly the same. This is not bad they both have very good color. Good as in they can differentiate well between very similar hue values at both ends of the color wheel here. Pinks are tough. Especially saturated pinks.

Before all of the fuji-fans point out that the pinks in the Fuji picture are a hair “different” in saturation or luminance or any other minor nit (they aren’t hue wise) please don’t. They should be but it’s Fuji’s fault they aren’t - you see the base ISO is not even close to 200 if you measure it based on how it compares to other cameras default RAW processing. Not just in Aperture 3 but all of the RAW converters very very consistently show me the same thing. The X100S is two thirds of a stop slower than ISO 200. More like ISO 125. I had to bump up the exposure in post by 2/3 to make them comparable and this is not a perfect process. You pick you want me to shoot them at the exact shutter/aperture/iso or do you want me to match them up and show you different ISO’s and apertures? I chose this way because they are so close it makes no difference photographically. No this is not the “metering” choosing a different exposure this is both cameras set at ISO 200 f8 @ 1/200. Note - keep this in mind when metering. Honestly I have no idea why people seem to think they need to keep their exposure comp at -2/3 like some reviewers have suggested. Looks like it’s already built in to me. Don’t listen to me about this or anyone else - choose for yourself - do your own experiments to get to know your camera.

Moving on to overall RAW processing quality. The screen shot at the top is a 100% view of those two files. Looks okay to me. Aperture 3 does a damn fine job on the D600 files and I would say the X100S is comparable. Now before you somehow think that the Fuji should somehow be way way better than the lowly old Nikon get that out of your head. That Nikon secret sauced Sony is at the top of the heap. It probably has one of the best tuned AA filters I have ever seen in terms of eliminating crap that it should while maintaining awesome pixel level accuity. I can tell you first hand it can still excite stair-step artifacts on certain fine detail at certain angles just like a camera without an AA filter just without the horrible moire and color stuff that sometimes goes with that.

Both of these RAW files are using the default Apple RAW fine tuning which are identical. If you want to see serious detail just open up a RAW fine tuning adjustment block and ramp up the detail slider to have all the AA filterless “fun” you want. I wouldn’t but then again it would probably make what I like to shoot look worse. In all seriousness Aperture has very tame defaults - if you love acuity in your 100% pixel views play with the RAW fine tuning detail adjustment.

Let’s take a look at what that can do if you so lean…

Now there’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout - enough to make any pixel peeper all hot n bothered. Seriously if you want more acuity the RAW fine tuning block is your answer. The trade off is proably more decode visible artifacts you choose what suits your needs best.

Okay that’s the end of my initial installment so I guess I need an initial verdict. I proclaim that Aperture 3 is not only usable for X-Trans files. It’s damn good. Of course I have looked at way way way more files than this StupidCrap™ flower comparison. I have even shot a whole lot of comparisons with my D600 of many scenes. For the little X100S with it’s little tiny APS-C sensor and tiny little lens to be remotely comparable to one of the meanest IQ machines on the planet in Aperture 3 it has to speak well of Aperture 3’s X-Trans RAW processing goodness. There will be other installments - if there are major show stoppers in terms of situations that Aperture 3 falls on it’s face that I discover I will let you know. I know it’s a bit of a departure from the usual let’s pixel peep one RAW converter vs another but to tell the truth I think it’s just as telling to compare a great camera with a mainstream sensor to the new guy as well.

To make this even more of a mixed bag and to get out of the fuji-fan dog house I do want to bring up Fuji color again. This time Fuji JPEG’s - now there’s where you will get no argument from me at all. The secret Fuji color sauce is absolutely night and day with the Fuji JPEG recipes as compared to Nikon or just about anybody else’s JPEG recipes. I mentioned the other day that I would not be releasing any X100 simulation presets to match up Aperture 3 RAW processing with OOC JPEGs. I changed my mind. I figured out how to handle the blue/purple situation to my satisfaction and have what I would consider beta versions for each and every Fuji X100S JPEG rendering - they work great and if you happen to like OOC X100S JPEG color they will be right up your alley. I hope to get them out next week but I want to test them against additional real world scenes some more to make sure I have it right. I have plenty of real world scenes for the ProNeg-H - problem is my camera never leaves that setting so I have to go out and shoot all the other ones in the real world.

Have a great weekend.

Film Emulation Presets For Aperture 3

2013-05-09T00:00:00-04:00

So… I have had more than a couple of chit-chats with people that seem eager to get their hot little (or big) hands on some Aperture 3 presets. Some of that was because I asked. Some of it was shared anti-adobe sentiment, some of it was that I am not the only lunatic out there that thinks VSCO for Aperture three is kinda off the deep end. I swear I am not a big fan of random presets - I am more of the school of just make-um yourself but I am the odd man out I guess. In any case I am now commited to re-arranging some of the mess that I use for myself in Aperture 3, organizing them so that they are at all understandable, and putting them out there for consumption.

I’m sorta a little apprehensive because I am quite possibly one of only 5 or 6 people that somehow think film actually looks great and not all forked up. Honestly I have no idea where the notion came from that film has wonky color, bad blacks, horrible hideous color casts, crazy saturation, all mixed up with crazy graininess. When I shoot film it doesn’t look that way - maybe I’m doing it wrong? (Sarcasm).

Whatever the case may be the film-y presets I use for myself in Aperture are mainly a couple of color adjustments, mostly a massive modification to tonal response, and a couple of other very subtle tweaks. No really bad blacks, no grain overlay (never looks right - too resolution dependent and shows up all over which it shouldn’t). So be forewarned these will not be instagramy nor will they be a magic bullet of any sort.

Just for a baseline I decided to chuck up an image on twitter to support a conversation I was having of real Portra 160 vs a similar shot I made with digital. Not the best photos for sure but served the discussion.

Here is the Portra 160 shot…

Not bad for obsolete tech. Now Here is the digital.

Here’s how I got there. First off remember this screenshot from the other day?

I referred to that as my Kodak-y treatment. What I meant was that I generally modeled it after what I like about the Kodak Portra films in terms of skin rendition and tone curve response.

Step one - Applied that particular preset.
Step two - matched up the WB a bit better than OOC to the color correction done by the Noritsu auto scanner at the drug store. I used the skin-tone WB tool in Aperture 3 and then modified it a bit with the slider. This is a BIG deal.
Overall tone and color were about right but it needed a sort of split-tone color cast added to the shadows and highlights so I did a quick and dirty skew toward green-cyan in the shadows and a skew toward yellow-orange in the highlights while leaving the mids neutral. I probably used the curves tool but may have used the tint wheels just as well.

That’s it - my Kodak-y preset plus WB plus a subtle split tone treatment. I typically don’t do the split tone thing. I could probably get closer if I spent more than about 2 seconds to shoot it up to twitter but good enough.

I know what you are thinking - hey man the watermelon looks WAY better on the real Portra - ummm yea it does. Different watermelon. The first snap was the real juicy really red part near the center. Leela is queer for watermelon and the only stuff left was the nasty bit close to the rind that doesn’t look real appetizing. As you can see she was not pleased.

Moving on. Here’s what’s in my head in terms of Aperture 3 presets.

A kodak-y pro negative film look and a Fuji pro negative film look. Each with a few minor variations.
Some optional add ons like various shadow/highlight toning and things like that. Nothing crazy wild.
Maybe a reproduction of all the Fuji JPEG looks in terms of tonal response and a flavor of various color treatments in those but I am telling you the blues will never look as bright.
Some guidelines for use.
Possibly a “really bad blacks” preset if people insist on one. Otherwise I will leave it out.

Let me know what you think.

Ps. For the one person that asked here’s a screenshot of the on import RAW without the Kodak-y preset I typically use.

What About The D600 And Aperture 3

2013-05-08T00:00:00-04:00

Had a chat about the Nikon D600 with an eBuddy yesterday. Specifically my opinion on the camera and if it was a worthy competitor to the D700. You can probably guess my response - especially at the price point that was being discussed. A low low $1600 used. That’s a steal unless it’s broken. I think the Sony 24 megapixel sensor that camera houses is one of the best available at the moment. I really have no complaints about it’s performance. It’s a great balance all around.

In the spirt of my anti-adobe mood this week I brought up a couple of random D600 RAW files in Aperture 3, did a quick fine tune on them and shot a couple of screen shots his way to evaluate what kind of performance he could expect. I just had to fine tune the default RAW rendering as I am not a big fan of Aperture’s defaults - I never have been. Their target is pretty damned consistent across cameras at this point which is a plus it’s just I don’t get the target. I can take flat as a default but I have no idea what they were thinking in terms of the default tone curve and color.

In any case even with my extremely liberal exposure policy on the D600 the default RAW rendition has mids that render far too low and for the most part - contrast in all the wrong places… I haven’t really done any work on the D600 in Aperture 3 as I have been preoccupied with shooting, culling, and processing iamges for the lighting field guides all of which have been done in Lightroom with just a VSCO preset on import as a universal baseline. I almost forgot how frigging good Aperture 3 is from an IQ point of view and how nicely calibrated a lot of it’s basic tools are. The curves tool is a dream - probably the best out there. Same goes for the WB controls, etc, etc.

Just for grins here are a couple of screen shots I shared with him as well as some I just couldn’t help myself from taking a look at processed in Aperture 3. I think I am going to put a bit more effort into the Fuji XTRANS X100S files using Aperture 3.

All these are from the D600 at 100% on my 27” screen you can open them in a new window to see them as I see them with all the pixels. The shot at the top is a pseudo Kodak negative kind of look. Shot with my $350 50mm 1.4G.

Here’s one I shot to hopefully confound LaRoque. Also with the 50mm. A bit more of a Fuji negative film look.

A slightly different Kodak-y treatment

How about some Fuji Pro Neg on steroids…

Ramp that down a hair and skew things a bit more toward yellow maybe just for kicks.

And back around to something a little more kokak-esque…

Some random stuff shot with one speedlight, the D600, and my 50mm. You can see the ISOs, apertures, and shutter speeds displayed at the bottom. All of them except the one with a ton of motion blur plus a bit of rear-sync goodness hand held. Yea the D600 is crazy good from an IQ point of view and not too shabby with Aperture 3 in charge of decoding the RAW files.