I love old building photo's, great finds. I've seen some of your images with the modded Sony, do you see it replacing your M9 Charlie? Quite impressive improvement.
chrislee wrote:
I love old building photo's, great finds. I've seen some of your images with the modded Sony, do you see it replacing your M9 Charlie? Quite impressive improvement.
I guessed correctly. There is a pretty obvious color palette/tonality difference between those from the a7 and those from the M9. Each are very consistent. I guess part of it is also knowing that you're pretty much a SOOC, minimal PP kind of guy, and that the a7 files, like a lot of Canikony CMOS cameras tend to initially be a bit on the flat/open side. Certainly at my experience with the Sony cameras...
So... finally got around to processing some of the snow photos from last Monday... Really had a lot of fun exploring the snowdrifts out on the frozen wetlands area nearby. Seems to be the right conditions for this at least once each winter and I think this time some of the drifts were really quite interesting in how strongly they were sculpted. It was at times like wandering through a scene of sculpted styrofoam.
Unfortunately I ran out of time/light.
I tend to find in this kind of 'visual overload' situation that I'm looking around at everything, trying to find some order/sense/meaning in the chaos. I think I see a lot, and shoot a lot, but later while reviewing the images, feel the results often don't necessarily match the 'heightened sense of place' (not sure if that makes sense) I thought I felt while out there. So goes the creative process... at least for me. At the least, it was a great exercise in observation and composition.
The tonality of light on snowdrifts tends to be relatively low contrast, even if it's direct sun, due to so much fill from the surrounding snow. This presents some technical challenges, depending on PP preferences. My habitual urge is to want to pull as much tonal range out of these scenes as possible for greater impact. But stretching tones to this extent, even from 14 bit DNGs, sometimes appears to hit a limit. Some of these I might revisit if my preferences change, but here's what I came up with as the light and my PP mood changed... (going from high-key to moody over the next few posts)
M240 & 28 Cron at top, 90AA x2, 50 Lux ASPH for the rest. These are all stopped down a lot, in the f/11 range and most were also with the EVF for ease of framing.
Edward - fun sets, particularly the second, of which, the last image reminds me of how I felt going to Sunday School each Sunday morning of my early childhood...
Shu - very cool. It's great to be able to spend that kind of time with your daughter. And it seems you've moved up to the 50 Lux ASPH?
I hadn't really thought about it, but sense of scale does get a bit lost in these. Everything is generally in the space of a few feet, as you've likely figured out.
Again, the way the wind sculpted the snow was fascinating, in places. Trying to work a 'wave' I found.
M240 & 50 Lux ASPH for first and last, 90AA for middle two.
Ron, I figure if a lens is going to be my one and only, it might as well be the best I can get. The 50 Lux ASPH is something else! Regarding the scale of your images, I feel like they could have been vast landscapes taken from a helicopter ... all that's missing is a small figure in each to really solidify the grandeur of the landscape I envision.
Edward, love your street shots. I particularly like the one a page or two back of the old gentleman laughing. Everything looks nice and normal and then BAM! no teeth! Great capture.
Adam, gorgeous portrait, must be nice to have an in-house model as beautiful as your wife
Charlie - nice pics with the 75lux. Pretty luxurious bags as well...
Ron - I like this snow series of yours. It can be a challenging (as you know) to process snow/ice pics, especially in harsh light.
Edward - awesome stuff on this page! I love Sonnar output and find it especially good in lower light situations for some reason.
Adam - beautiful! Like the subtle B&W here.
Shu - congrats on the 50lux! It is also one of my most favorite lenses.
Adam - very clever use of light tones, particularly in the background. The trouble of shooting into the light at wide apertures often is how oogly the bokeh can get in the highlights — great big blobs, for example, such as the ones that we often see in Noctilux pictures shot at full aperture. You solved this by making the background into very light ones — beautiful light tones! BTW, did you use a VSCO preset that you adjusted further? If so, which one did you use?
Mitch - I started off with a color preset, but I didn't like it. So I converted to black and white, and kept playing with the lvls and colors, and everything else until I got a preset I liked. Once done, I saved it and now that's my go to BW preset for portraits in Cali light.
VSCO has SOO many BW files, I'm sure there's one similar. I think at the end of the day, there are only so many adjustments you can make.
Great work Edward, Ron, Ryan, Rene, Shujert, and Adam
Re A7.mod vs M9. For me it's no contest for many reasons, but I am very happy to have a second body which can actually shoot alot of M glass decently, including the SEM21 and 28 cron. Editing the M9 raws is a joy, while the Sony Raws are awful for me, but maybe someday I will learn to get the best from them.
