Was Designers etc , now Photographers etc
Was Designers etc , now Photographers etc
- Subject: Was Designers etc , now Photographers etc
- From: Bob Marchant <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:09:34 +0100
On 18 Apr 2008, at 22:56, edmund ronald wrote:
There are now millions of digital SLR
cameras out in the hands of consumers, all professional photography is
done with them,
Hi Edmund.
Ever the pedant, I have to disagree a little. At the high end we're
using digital backs on a number of platforms. Most of my studio work
is shot on Sinar backs on a Sinar 'view' camera, that's view now in
terms of 'live' video rather than ground glass , and 'live' as in
terms of a few seconds ago .
and the experience is definitely NTSC - never twice
the same color. Use a different camera even sometimes from the same
model, or change the lighting, change the Raw converter, change
anything at all and you'll never get a
picture of the same subject that looks the same.
Even without building custom profiles for the camera backs, Sinar do
a pretty good job of matching back to back using their proprietary
calibration ( that's not to say that I agree entirely with their CM
workflow however).
If you change the spectrum of the lighting , then you might expect
some change in colour , even if recalibrating the camera.
We wouldn't be using a different RAW converter for two reasons. The
first is that we use the proprietary Sinar software as a matter of
course. The second is that we do the former because we have no choice
( our Sinar files are not compatible with Camera RAW ).
We do use a number of different backs and the occasional DSLR on
location , and by applying a little logic it's fairly easy to get
consistency across the board in terms of colour.
The real issues occur in terms of noise and sharpening . Different
camera manufacturers employ different strategies to "improve" the
output from their products. One of the main reasons for choosing
Sinar initially was the 'purity' of the output. The original backs ,
and some of the newer models , don't have anything on board apart
from the chip and cooloing mechanisms. No screen and no onboard
storage means no extra heat , leading to less noise. One of the
backs we have hired in the past employs heavy duty software fixes to
overcome noise problems incurred by the overhead of no fan and plenty
of onboard gizmos. The results are fine for glossy beauty shots , but
get a little strange when shooting interiors with fine textures such
as carpets. We had a situation where the carpet lost its tufts and
became linoleum. The same back removed a set of fine lines from a
bottle label ! Yes , you can switch the noise cancelling off , but
then you get noise across the whole image.
As to sharpening , the fact that there is "negative" sharpening in
some manufacturers software shows what is happening in the
background. Wonderful though it may look on the monitor when
comparing backs, I would prefer a level playing field when it comes
to sharpness. It's an often overlooked fact in addition to the loss
of dynamic range incurred by squeezing ever more pixels into the same
space , there is a real problem with lens technology keeping up with
chip resolution.
And of course there are issues shooting on CCD and CMOS at the same
location. Having said that of course , we do try and use the
particular characteristics of digital cameras creatively , much in
the same way as we used to do with film stocks.( For all the high end
kit , one of our favourite machines when not shooting commercially
is an old Canon Ixus 60 compact. It does a mean impersonation of
Kodak Tri-X when used in monochrome, and get's wild when you assign
a few odd custom profiles.)
Apologies for the rant on issues other than colour on this list , but
thought I'd flag up some of the other little areas of debate we
photographers have.
Having said all of that though , for our studio the key point is
that no matter what the inherent foibles of digital capture are , we
wouldn't go back to film voluntarily for any other reason than a
client that would pay an extra premium over our existing digital
premium for doing so( Yes , as the old saying goes , we know what we
are , we just negotiate on the payment <BG>). The only insurmountable
problem is what to do with cupboards full of 10x8 , 5x4 , 6x7 and 35
mm film cameras , other than using them as doorstops.
Regards,
Bob Marchant.
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