p.5 #1 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
mjm6 wrote:
I'm guessing you are young enough to not remember the film days, but people were (and still are) very much attached to certain looks that a particular film would produce. Used film prices for long out of date film stock is an attestation to the merit of developing a specific film simulation. People like the way certain films portrayed the world and some people would prefer to work within those constraints.
Further, you clearly don't know the history of Fujifilm cameras and their partnerships in the past, including lenses and bodies for several Hasselblad bodies and systems, like the now cult-like X-Pan cameras and lenses for the H system when Hasselblad went away from Carl Zeiss. In addition Fujifilm produced many excellent film bodies and systems, including my favorite, the GX617 bodies that utilized their excellent large format lenses in an interchangeable 6x17cm body, for four glorious shots per roll of 120 film.
On top of that, they produced a line of large format lenses, some of which no other manufacturer produced a similar competitor to, some of which came out of their industrial optical manufacturing background and found their way into the commercial space. They're excellent lenses and their coating technologies were second to none back in the day.
I don't personally use film simulations because I want my image captures to be more like a negative than a positive, but I completely see the value and merit of them, even if you don't. ...Show more →
The whole thing about different film stocks back in the day (yes, I come from that era) was very different than the attitude about film sims today.
Back then it was about choosing a film best fit for whatever your were photographing for the most part. If you didn’t need speed and you might print large, your preference might be a low ISO (ASA, actually…) film with small grain. For various reasons, you might prefer to shoot slide stock, in which case you weighed the pluses and minuses of (for example) ektachrome and kodachrome. And then there was Provia… ;-)
You weren’t trying to “look like film.” Film was all there was, so you selected whatever best fit your needs. (I there had been an easy way to use some sort of neutral film that could be pushed in camera from shot to shot in different custom ways, that might have been interesting, but it wasn’t possible except with sheet film.)
Today, sims don’t really serve a purpose at all like that. It is about trying to look like the film stocks of a bygone era, another iteration of the “retro” interest.
Oddly perhaps, today’s raw mode, which doesn’t really “color” things significantly, and then adjusting to taste in post is more like what the sheet film folks did back then. They would make an exposure with the eventual post-processing in mind, and do so differently on each frame. That is essentially, more or less, what raw mode lets us do today. It is far more flexible and adaptable than using a sim that acts like the present qualities of one of the old film stocks.
p.5 #2 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
gdanmitchell wrote:
The whole thing about different film stocks back in the day (yes, I come from that era) was very different than the attitude about film sims today.
That’s an interesting point, and one that I missed. Back in the film days, the film stock was an important decision that affected the look of my work - I remember when I first picked up Velvia and experienced the saturated colors in Sedona.
Now, the “film” simulation can be changed at any time. Before, it was not only pre-processing, it was pre-shooting. So selecting a film simulation and then not post-processing is closest to the film days.
p.5 #3 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
A perhaps interesting tangent to this discussion is what we learn to accept as "about as good as it gets." I'm sure there's a psychological term for it, probably habituation or experiential acceptance, IDK...
Anyway, in film days and especially when shooting chromes, we often had to decide if we were going to let highlights blow or the blacks clip, and usually a little of both in order to render the main subject as accurately as possible. We had only a little more leeway with reversal film, and here especially the limitations of paper-white and print-film or dye-sub black helped in the decision.
Fast forward to today and it seems something similar is happening with digital, especially as relates to web image posts -- including here on FM where most should know better. I frequently see images with clipped blacks, blown whites, oddly clipped colors usually in over-saturated sunrises or sunsets; and even obvious heavy "tone-mapped" edits that leave very visible haloes around every prominent edge and/or totally unrealistic shadow and saturation transitions. All of this in images that could have easily been edited better to avoid it. I see these and wonder to myself, can't they see that!? Yet within a few days the poster of that same image will have a dozen replies lauding the beautiful image. Go figure. I simply cannot wrap my arms around this one...
p.5 #4 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Jack Flesher wrote:
A perhaps interesting tangent to this discussion is what we learn to accept as "about as good as it gets." I'm sure there's a psychological term for it, probably habituation or experiential acceptance, IDK...
Anyway, in film days and especially when shooting chromes, we often had to decide if we were going to let highlights blow or the blacks clip, and usually a little of both in order to render the main subject as accurately as possible. We had only a little more leeway with reversal film, and here especially the limitations of paper-white and print-film or dye-sub black helped in the decision.
Fast forward to today and it seems something similar is happening with digital, especially as relates to web image posts -- including here on FM where most should know better. I frequently see images with clipped blacks, blown whites, oddly clipped colors usually in over-saturated sunrises or sunsets; and even obvious heavy "tone-mapped" edits that leave very visible haloes around every prominent edge and/or totally unrealistic shadow and saturation transitions. All of this in images that could have easily been edited better to avoid it. I see these and wonder to myself, can't they see that!? Yet within a few days the poster of that same image will have a dozen replies lauding the beautiful image. Go figure. I simply cannot wrap my arms around this one... ...Show more →
The answer is simple: Very few people look at an image the way you do (or I do). Most people, even if they are into photography, react to what they see with feelings and emotions, rather than analysis. Some of my images are edited to a point where I myself have to say: Wait a minute. But they do communicate a certain impression or feeling I had when taking that shot, something that made me take it in the first place with some edit in mind. Call it artistic freedom.
But I agree with you that editing can be overdone easily - and is overdone quite often in today's world.
p.5 #5 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Jack Flesher wrote:
A perhaps interesting tangent to this discussion is what we learn to accept as "about as good as it gets." I'm sure there's a psychological term for it, probably habituation or experiential acceptance, IDK...
Anyway, in film days and especially when shooting chromes, we often had to decide if we were going to let highlights blow or the blacks clip, and usually a little of both in order to render the main subject as accurately as possible. We had only a little more leeway with reversal film, and here especially the limitations of paper-white and print-film or dye-sub black helped in the decision.
Fast forward to today and it seems something similar is happening with digital, especially as relates to web image posts -- including here on FM where most should know better. I frequently see images with clipped blacks, blown whites, oddly clipped colors usually in over-saturated sunrises or sunsets; and even obvious heavy "tone-mapped" edits that leave very visible haloes around every prominent edge and/or totally unrealistic shadow and saturation transitions. All of this in images that could have easily been edited better to avoid it. I see these and wonder to myself, can't they see that!? Yet within a few days the poster of that same image will have a dozen replies lauding the beautiful image. Go figure. I simply cannot wrap my arms around this one... ...Show more →
One’s “better” is another’s not quite good enough.
p.5 #7 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Nielk Mike wrote:
The answer is simple: Very few people look at an image the way you do (or I do). Most people, even if they are into photography, react to what they see with feelings and emotions, rather than analysis. Some of my images are edited to a point where I myself have to say: Wait a minute. But they do communicate a certain impression or feeling I had when taking that shot, something that made me take it in the first place with some edit in mind. Call it artistic freedom.
But I agree with you that editing can be overdone easily - and is overdone quite often in today's world. ...Show more →
Agree 100% Mike. But when you and I say wait a sec on our own image, we’re just evaluating it more deeply, which is something not happening generally…
p.5 #8 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Jack Flesher wrote:
Fast forward to today and it seems something similar is happening with digital, especially as relates to web image posts -- including here on FM where most should know better. I frequently see images with clipped blacks, blown whites, oddly clipped colors usually in over-saturated sunrises or sunsets; and even obvious heavy "tone-mapped" edits that leave very visible haloes around every prominent edge and/or totally unrealistic shadow and saturation transitions. All of this in images that could have easily been edited better to avoid it. I see these and wonder to myself, can't they see that!? Yet within a few days the poster of that same image will have a dozen replies lauding the beautiful image. Go figure. I simply cannot wrap my arms around this one... ...Show more →
Ain’t that the truth.
I virtually never comment on those things unless the person sharing the photo asked for feedback, but such issues are really, really common, as is the fact that a lot of folks apparently just don’t see it.
Among what we might call serious photographers, those things are regarded as significant problems, on the same level as playing the wrong notes in a musical performance or not knowing your lines in theater — just the basic, mechanical stuff that we are supposed to master. (The “artistic expression” thing is somewhat counterbalanced when you think of it this way. If you went to a fine restaurant and the dishes expressed the feeling of the chef but were undercooked/overcooked, not carefully cleaned, over-salted… you would not be happy. Same with a musical performance where the performer plays the wrong notes. These things interfere with that expression.)
I’ve often wondered if there is a polite, kind, helpful way to address this without being a jerk.
Recently someone commented on a photograph that I shared mentioning what they saw as my light hand with post-processing. Oddly, it isn’t uncommon to do a LOT of post processing to get an image to look that way!
p.5 #9 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
gdanmitchell wrote:
Ain’t that the truth.
I virtually never comment on those things unless the person sharing the photo asked for feedback, but such issues are really, really common, as is the fact that a lot of folks apparently just don’t see it.
Among what we might call serious photographers, those things are regarded as significant problems, on the same level as playing the wrong notes in a musical performance or not knowing your lines in theater — just the basic, mechanical stuff that we are supposed to master. (The “artistic expression” thing is somewhat counterbalanced when you think of it this way. If you went to a fine restaurant and the dishes expressed the feeling of the chef but were undercooked/overcooked, not carefully cleaned, over-salted… you would not be happy. Same with a musical performance where the performer plays the wrong notes. These things interfere with that expression.)
I’ve often wondered if there is a polite, kind, helpful way to address this without being a jerk.
Recently someone commented on a photograph that I shared mentioning what they saw as my light hand with post-processing. Oddly, it isn’t uncommon to do a LOT of post processing to get an image to look that way!...Show more →
Light-handed . Yes, the way I learned was if you couldn’t tell for certain exactly what had been done, you were doing it right!
Like you I want to scream, “Can’t you see that 10 pixel white line running between the sky and mountains?” But alas, I don’t say anything at all… But it’s still hard for me to ignore.
p.5 #10 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Speaking just for myself, I feel like I have different standards for my own work than others. I was there and took the photo, I usually try to faithfully reproduce the beauty that I could see. For others work, I wasn't there and don't know how it "should" have looked and tend to be more accepting of what might be an unlikely look, to a degree. But I really don't like overcooked highlights and shoot with negative exposure comp quite often, it looks better to my eyes. Bokeh is another interesting topic in that it obviously isn't really the way background looks. Yet we all seem to accept optical/lens look manipulation over a post processed one. Post processing remains my biggest challenge that I need to improve at. A downside of the Capture One/Fuji combo is fewer resources to learn PP.
p.5 #11 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Jack Flesher wrote:
…the way I learned was if you couldn’t tell for certain exactly what had been done, you were doing it right!
My main career was as a college music faculty member. (My degrees are in music theory and composition, with a specialization in electronic music.)
In my electronic music classes, in which students created their own musical projects, I used to say something similar about effects, particularly reverb: If people listen to your music and say, “that sounds great,” you are on the right track. If they listen to your music and ask, “how did you get that reverb?,” probably not.
p.5 #13 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
gdanmitchell wrote:
My main career was as a college music faculty member. (My degrees are in music theory and composition, with a specialization in electronic music.)
In my electronic music classes, in which students created their own musical projects, I used to say something similar about effects, particularly reverb: If people listen to your music and say, “that sounds great,” you are on the right track. If they listen to your music and ask, “how did you get that reverb?,” probably not.
100%, exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.
p.5 #14 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
chez wrote:
So yours is nice and others is yuck…gotcha.
No, don't self-reference your take on my meaning here, that's not at all what I was implying. Since you seem to think snarky is erudite, I'll further explain in a way you can perhaps more easily understand. Firstly, I think LOTS of other posters here post really great images. Many are a lot better than some of my own and I do enjoy looking at them; and I will usually comment positively on them. Most of these really good images I know were edited in some way (as are virtually all of my own), but what precisely those edits were is not obvious while viewing the image on-screen.
In contrast to that, some of what gets posted here AND then occasionally lauded as great, does in fact look pretty "yucky" to me. Since I already indicated above what many of the all too common and obvious edits I see as "yuck" factors are, I won't bother repeating them. That others feel different and enjoy them regardless is totally fine with me -- beauty is in the eye of the beholder
p.5 #15 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
gdanmitchell wrote:
The whole thing about different film stocks back in the day (yes, I come from that era) was very different than the attitude about film sims today.
Back then it was about choosing a film best fit for whatever your were photographing for the most part. If you didn’t need speed and you might print large, your preference might be a low ISO (ASA, actually…) film with small grain. For various reasons, you might prefer to shoot slide stock, in which case you weighed the pluses and minuses of (for example) ektachrome and kodachrome. And then there was Provia… ;-)
You weren’t trying to “look like film.” Film was all there was, so you selected whatever best fit your needs. (I there had been an easy way to use some sort of neutral film that could be pushed in camera from shot to shot in different custom ways, that might have been interesting, but it wasn’t possible except with sheet film.)
Today, sims don’t really serve a purpose at all like that. It is about trying to look like the film stocks of a bygone era, another iteration of the “retro” interest.
Oddly perhaps, today’s raw mode, which doesn’t really “color” things significantly, and then adjusting to taste in post is more like what the sheet film folks did back then. They would make an exposure with the eventual post-processing in mind, and do so differently on each frame. That is essentially, more or less, what raw mode lets us do today. It is far more flexible and adaptable than using a sim that acts like the present qualities of one of the old film stocks....Show more →
I don't quite agree. Back in the film days films were also chosen for the subject matter (not just for speed and grain) because different films have different looks. Initially Kodachrome was the choice for landscape photographers because of its colour palette only to be overtaken by velvia. Velvia in particular had a habit of producing some amazing surprises, as well as dissapointments because of the way it shifted colours. Portra and its predecessors were widely chosen by wedding photographers for its ability to make skin tones look attractive. Gold was a good general purpose film but also known for warm renderring. Fujifilm was known for its greens.
I choose custom settings including 'recipes' when shooting in the same way, that is, based on the subject matter. Its a form of previsualusation. I look at the subject, imagine how i want the photo to look then choose a recipe from custom settings. Its like being able to choose a different film for any shot. You can think of choosing "recipes" as doing most of the post processing before you shoot.
Agree its not as flexible as RAW. On the otherhand, with the right recipe choice you can be confident you are getting an output with reasonably broad appeal. It can also pleasantly surprise (as well as dissapoint) by producing results you may not be expecting. On the otherhand photographers editing RAW to their own tastes can be a bit like people cooking at home seasoning to taste. They are thinking because they are controlling every aspect they are outdoing Michellin chefs, when often they are not. And they miss the opportunities for an accidents that works. Many musicians talk about some of their best, most original stuff happening from accidents rather than from writing a song according to their taste.
Bottom line though is there is no universally right way. What works for one won't suit everyone.
p.5 #17 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Joseph. wrote:
If all these typing were put into taking photos, we'd have a Peter Lik showroom by now.
Sure. And if people who post comments like yours actually looked in the image threads in this forum plus the other dedicated photo-specific forums on this site, they'd know many of us typing here do also regularly post images.
p.5 #18 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Geoff D F wrote:
I don't quite agree. Back in the film days films were also chosen for the subject matter (not just for speed and grain) because different films have different looks. Initially Kodachrome was the choice for landscape photographers because of its colour palette only to be overtaken by velvia. Velvia in particular had a habit of producing some amazing surprises, as well as dissapointments because of the way it shifted colours. Portra and its predecessors were widely chosen by wedding photographers for its ability to make skin tones look attractive. Gold was a good general purpose film but also known for warm renderring. Fujifilm was known for its greens.
I choose custom settings including 'recipes' when shooting in the same way, that is, based on the subject matter. Its a form of previsualusation. I look at the subject, imagine how i want the photo to look then choose a recipe from custom settings. Its like being able to choose a different film for any shot. You can think of choosing "recipes" as doing most of the post processing before you shoot.
Agree its not as flexible as RAW. On the otherhand, with the right recipe choice you can be confident you are getting an output with reasonably broad appeal. It can also pleasantly surprise (as well as dissapoint) by producing results you may not be expecting. On the otherhand photographers editing RAW to their own tastes can be a bit like people cooking at home seasoning to taste. They are thinking because they are controlling every aspect they are outdoing Michellin chefs, when often they are not. And they miss the opportunities for an accidents that works. Many musicians talk about some of their best, most original stuff happening from accidents rather than from writing a song according to their taste.
Bottom line though is there is no universally right way. What works for one won't suit everyone. ...Show more →
You have to member that none of the colourfilns were very accurate at reproducing colour. The dyes that formed the image in the layers had to be created in the processing so choice was limited. Generally transparency films were better, Agfa CT18 was reputedly the most accurate and was much used for medical photography but was a bit boring for general use. Eventually we could print direct from slides on Cibachrome paper which for technical reasons had much better dyes, and are much more stable to light, no fading on the wall!
If you used 35mm then slide film was really the only colour option until C41 process films arrived, before that they were very poor, good for small prints only. Kodachrome had a pleasing colour rendering, and it had a thinner emulsion so in theory at least was sharper, the colour couplers were in the processing which was complicated, needing very close temperature control, which was why pretty well only Kodak did it. Environmentally unfriendly too.
Fuji was the only one who gave us rendering options, Velvia was a novelty item, too saturated to give realistic results normally. Provia is nice, I turned over to it quite a while before the end of Kodachrome as Kodak's processing in Europe got very slow, and dusty! Astia too is useful on a very bright tropical day. I still have some of each in the freezer.
We had to put up with whatever the manufacturer gave us. I don't understand why anyone wants recreate those frustrations with digital. Take the RAW and do the post processing to get what you want. The possibilities are almost endless and far greater creative control than the film era. And to paraphrase what @gdanmitchell said above, if someone looks at your photo and says 'that's a great film simulation you've used' you are not on the right track as a visual artist. 100% of the viewers are looking for stimulation of their senses, and 95% of them wouldn't know anything about the technicalities.
p.5 #19 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
gyoung143 wrote:
And to paraphrase what @gdanmitchell@ said above, if someone looks at your photo and says 'that's a great film simulation you've used' you are not on the right track as a visual artist. 100% of the viewers are looking for stimulation of their senses, and 95% of them wouldn't know anything about the technicalities.
p.5 #20 · Why am I using the X-Pro3 more than the a7cR????
Joseph. wrote:
If all these typing were put into taking photos, we'd have a Peter Lik showroom by now.
Thank you for your thoughtful contribution to the discussion.
- - -
Back to on topic…
My point about the different film choices “back in the day” isn’t that they were only chosen (I didn’t use the word “only”) for ISO and gran size. Color preference cold be one reason, or the specific output form (e.g. print or slides) could be another, and so on.
What I was getting at was that back then there were concrete reasons for picking a specific film type that related to the photographic situation, and that those choices could be pretty critical to the nature of the output. Note that they were not intended to replicate some previous sort of output.
But that’s not true with digital where a raw file can be pushed (automatically or manually) in just about any direction we wish. We don’t need film types or their equivalent to get what we want… and we are not limited to the things that specific film types give us.
So today, sims might have two purposes. One is to get one of a small set of canned pre-set “looks” without much or any intervention on the part of the photographer, as opposed to using the power of post-processing to customize the look. Another is to try to simulate the look of old film — e.g. to quickly create some sort of retro look.
To sort of paraphrase something I wrote earlier, I’d rather have someone look at my photograph and simply comment that they like the photograph as the thing it is… as opposed to looking at it and noting that it looks a lot like a kodachrome or velvia or whatever film image. Why in the world would I want the latter?
To try to be succinct: Back then, choosing the film was one of the most important ways to affect the nature of the output. Today, that’s not the case. Today it is (or so I hear) largely about trying to look the way film looked back then.
. Yes, the way I learned was if you couldn’t tell for certain exactly what had been done, you were doing it right!