Law of Diminishing Returns and the Canon 50d

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an art auction fundraiser for Art City Toronto, a store-front art drop-in centre for under-privileged kids in Toronto. I donated a couple of works to the silent auction and I'm delighted to report that an 18x12 framed print of my Phonehenge image sold for nearly $400. Here's the image:


It was fascinating to watch people in the silent auction as they looked at the artwork. For this particular image, a lot of people did a double-take when they noticed the old English phone booths (the photo was taken on a farm in southern Ontario in Canada). Many people walked up close to the photo to look at the details and, I'm happy to say, at 18x12, the details hold up just fine. The photo is quite sharp at that size.

Nowadays, I take most of my photos with a full-frame 12.8 megapixel camera, a Canon 5d, but the Phonehenge image was taken with an 8 megapixel APS-C camera, the Canon 20d. With the recent advent of the 50d and the 5d mk II, I've been starting to think about upgrading the 20d. In fact, I've placed the 20d on permanent loan to my son while I cogitate about an upgrade.

You can imagine my interest level when DPreview published an in-depth review of the Canon 50d. After reading the review and looking at the resolution stats and the RAW noise levels of the new camera, I must admit that I now have misgivings. With the current state of the art in sensor silicon, it looks like the sweet spot for APS-C sensors is around 10-12 megapixels. Any larger and noise levels start to increase. Not only that, but system (i.e. camera and lens) resolution becomes a matter of diminishing returns. Look at the following tables extracted from DPReview:

Camera	Measurement	Absolute resolution	Extinction resolution
Canon EOS 50D	Horizontal LPH	2250	2700
	Vertical LPH	2200	2700
Nikon D300	Horizontal LPH	2200	2600
	Vertical LPH	2100	2600
Pentax K20D	Horizontal LPH	2250	* 2300
	Vertical LPH	2250	* 2500
Sony DSLR-A700	Horizontal LPH	* 2200	2900
	Vertical LPH	2100	2800
Canon EOS 40D	Horizontal LPH	2100	2300
	Vertical LPH	1800	2300

Camera	Measurement	Absolute resolution	Extinction resolution
Canon EOS 30D	Horizontal LPH	1850	2100
	Vertical LPH	1650	2100
Nikon D200	Horizontal LPH	2100	2250
	Vertical LPH	1700	2200
Canon EOS 5D	Horizontal LPH	2300	2500
	Vertical LPH	2000	2500
Canon EOS 20D	Horizontal LPH	1850	2100
	Vertical LPH	1650	2100

Looking at the absolute resolution, moving from 8 MP (20d) to 10 MP (40d) to 15 MP (50d) results in a gain in horizontal resolution from 1850 to 2100 to 2250. If this was correlated to the number of megapixels, you would expect 1850 to 2336 to 3608. Clearly, there is something (e.g. lens resolution) hitting the wall that is preventing these new sensors from delivering on their promise. Not only that, but noise seems to go up beyond 10-12 megapixels, so the extra resolution may be getting obliterated by extra noise.

All other things (i.e. automatic sensor cleaning, larger LCD, LiveView) aside, is it worth paying $1,500 to get an uplift of 22% in resolution at the expense of more noise? Consider this in the context mentioned above, where an 18x12 image produced at a resolution of 1850 lines holds up to a room full of people examining the image up close.

I'm thinking that I might wait for the 40d to come down in price and buy a good used model instead.

Mounting Prints Part II

At a recent workshop with Alain Briot, our group was sitting around a hotel room listening to Alain review prints from some of the participants. The next person to have his images reviewed was a photographer named Loren. He'd been on a few Briot workshops before, so he knew the drill very well. As a result, he had a collection of very nice images from a previous workshop and he knew that the presentation of your portfolio was very important. While the rest of us had presented naked images, basically as they had come off the printer, Loren had mounted his prints on matte board and had brought them along in a portfolio case. As a result, his images were presented beautifully and he came across as being a notch or two up the ladder compared to the rest of us.

Alain made a point of stressing that the presentation of your work is very important. If you don't love your work enough to mount it and sign it, why should anyone love it enough to buy it or exhibit it?

In my previous post, I described Natalie Briot's mounting method, a method that I've now adopted for all my portfolio candidate images. But, I neglected to talk about cutting mattes, a subject that comes up sooner or later in the career of every photographer. There are four stages of matte cutting:

• Stage 1: you pay other people to cut mattes for you. This is problematic on two fronts. First, it is expensive. Second, it encourages you to produce standard size images that are easy to matte instead of cropping images where they want to be cropped.
• Stage 2: you start to cut your own mattes using a steel ruler and an Xacto knife. For low volumes, this is certainly an option. But, it takes lots of patience, steady hands and tolerance for the occasional little error. Try not to throw the knife or the ruler when you manage to screw up a matte on the fourth edge!
• Stage 3: after putting up with stage 2 for a little while, you realize that you are accumulating a backlog of images that need to be matted. It's time to get some help. Fortunately, there is gear that can help. I recommend Logan Matte cutting tools from the Lee Valley Catalog. For just over $100, you can start to produce nice neat edges in a reliable way. The cat no longer need worry about dodging flying tools.
• Stage 4: if you are good and lucky, you'll start to sell your work in volumes that demand a better tool set. Enter the computerized matte cutter! Be warned, the price isn't quoted, but you can have one of these babies for as low as $79 a month. This is the method used by pros like Alain Briot.

I've graduated to stage 3 and can produce a decent matte in about 10-15 minutes. The process is relatively fool proof and is perfect for my relatively modest print output. I aim to produce 1-2 portfolio quality prints a week.

If you want a little more detail on this, Alain Briot has written a tutorial on the subject.

Mounting Prints

I'm still working on my review of the Alain Briot workshop, but thought I'd pass on a tidbit of knowledge that I gleaned from Natalie Briot, Alain's better half. Natalie is the brains of the Briot operation and runs all the logistics of the workshops as well as assisting Alain in the field. She also does all the matting and mounting of Alain's prints and does a fabulous job. Here's how she does it:

1. Pick a standard outside dimension for your matte board. It is wise to choose a dimension (e.g. 16x20) that fits standard frames.
2. Cut two identical matte boards. One will be used for print attachment and the other will fold over to matte the print. In other words, your print will be sandwiched between the two boards. The back one will provide support and the front one will present your work for viewing.
   
3. Your images should be cropped to suit your art. Alain was adament that you not crop to fit a standard matte. Sometimes photos just want to be an odd size and you should crop accordingly.
4. Print your photos to fit inside a rectangle so that there is plenty of white space around the image. For example, on a 16x20 inch outside dimension board, I'll crop my photo so it fits inside a 12x16 inch rectangle, allowing a minimum 2 inch boarder.
   
5. Mount the print to the back board using archival quality plastic photo corners.
6. Measure the size of the print and subtract a quarter to half an inch to ensure that the matte fully covers the image. Cut your matte to frame your photo.
7. Attach the matte front board to the back board with an archival quality linen tape hinge. The tape needs to be moistened and attached to the boards.

Hey presto, you're done and your image is now framed in a durable double layer of matte board, suitable for framing or suitable for showing others your portfolio.

Just don't forget to sign your work. You should sign the actual print itself somewhere where the signature won't show through. Depending on the paper used, you might be able to use a pencil or might have to use ink. You should also sign the matte board below the image in pencil.

LensCulture and Contemporary Photography

I don't know about you, but I admit to being a little bit lost when it comes to contemporary photography. I've read widely on the subject and I try to see as much of it as possible, but I'm pretty much incapable of telling the good stuff from the bad and frankly don't get some of it.

To use a musical analogy, landscape photography is a little like classical music. The landscape was manufactured a long time ago, just as most of the classical repertoire was written a long time ago. Musicians and photographers are adding their own interpretation to well-known works. I was thinking of this as I photographed Mono Lake last week along with a bunch of other photographers. The parking lot was full before sunrise and people kept getting in the way of each others' shots. However, it is still fun to see the way other artists interpret Mono Lake and I'm sure, given changing lighting and cloud conditions, there is still something unique to say on the subject.

I'm currently singing in two musical groups: The Toronto Classical Singers and The Ensemble Tryptych. The former is a large oratorio choir that specializes in traditional masses and features a large orchestra during performances and the latter is a chamber choir that has a more varied repertoire. By chance, both groups are performing Handel's Messiah this year, so it has been very interesting comparing the approaches of the two conductors. Jurgen Petrenko of the TCS has to cope with a large chorus of over 100 voices, so he stresses simplicity and musical singing. Lenard Whiting on the other hand is working with TET's smaller, nimbler size and can go for a much more detached musical treatment that won't get muddied by the size of the ensemble.

Two groups, two conductors, two unique interpretions of one master work. Similarly, we have had generations of landscape photographers interpret the same scenery in different ways. The constancy of the subject matter allows the viewer to focus on the interpretation and to get a sense of the message being conveyed by the way the artist has arranged the subject and the light.

Not so with contemporary photography. Just as modern music throws out the structures of classical music and all notions of timing, scales and melodies, contemporary photography seems to dispense with the structures of classical landscape photography and substitue a free-for-all.

I've been looking at an online contemporary photography magazine called LensCulture recently and there are lots of examples of interesting work. Some of the work I get. For example, there's a gallery by Hanne van der Woude entitled Natural Red Hair that I find quite compelling. The portraits of redheads are quite lovely and, being married to a redhead, I find them very attractive. The settings are very interesting landscapes as well and the lighting is wonderful.

I also really like a gallery by Jim Vecchi called Markings: Art Underfoot in San Francisco's Sunset District. This is a beautifully composed gallery of images of brightly painted sidewalk pavement arranged in unusual shapes. The images turn sidewalk art into a superior art form.

On the other hand, I just don't understand the attraction of Ebbe Stub Wittrup's Out from Under. Here's a gallery of mediocre landscapes where the images have been de-saturated, given a colour cast and in some cases blurred. To what purpose? Here's what the accompanying blurb says: "In his most recent work, the landscapes are hardly recognizable monochromatic surfaces. But still, Ebbe Stub Wittrup obviously knows exactly how to bring this mental abstraction to life. " The only mental abstraction that matters to me is the one in the head of the viewer and my eye only saw pale, ghostly imitations of landscape as if the photographer had used really old film in a camera that over-exposed each image. There was no "bringing to life" for me.

Similarly, the portfolio of Alexei Vassiliev entitled Here and gone: 21st century anonymous portraits leaves me wondering what all the fuss is about. Here's an entire gallery of blurry portraits of people. I guess this is supposed to convey a feeling of anonymity and de-personalization, but all I see is a photographer who can't seem to find the right focal point or shutter speed.

Of course, there are lots of landscape photographers that I don't like either, so finding contemporary art that doesn't speak to me should come as no surprise. It's only that I feel on firmer ground in the world of classical landscape photography. Contemporary photography kicks all the props out from underneath and I feel uncomfortable passing judgment in case I'm missing something deep and meaningful. Perhaps I'm lacking the context required to interpret these works and enjoy them.

Nevertheless, I recommend LensCulture and hope that you visit it often and join me in developing my appreciation for contemporary photography and developing my taste buds.

Galen Rowell

One of the most delightful discoveries of my recent workshop to the Eastern Sierras was Galen Rowell. I'm pretty sure that I'd heard of Galen before, but I'd not seen a lot of his work. For part of our workshop, we stayed in the town of Bishop California (Population 3,600), home of the Mountain Light Gallery, dedicated to displaying the works of Galen Rowell.

Galen was an adventurer and mountaineer who combined his love of the outdoors with photography. Photography was not an end, but a means of recording his life as he journeyed to the ends of the world looking for wilderness.

His images are not for the faint of heart! They tend to record brilliant sunrises and sunsets, big mountain vistas and wild animals in their natural terrain. Color abounds. Rowell used Nikon 35mm cameras that he carried with him everywhere and made good use of Fuji Velvia slide film to record the world in live and living color.

Rowell was extensively published in National Geographic as well as more specialized outdoor and climbing magazines. This allowed him the freedom of travelling the world looking for projects to photograph. However, his first love was the Eastern Sierras and that's where he came to live, in and around the hamlet of Bishop.

Tragically, he and his wife Barbara (a photographer in her own right) perished in 2002 in an airplane crash. Rowell was 62 at the time and fortunately had amassed a vast collection of images from around the world.

The Mountain Light Gallery displays about 50 of Rowell's best images. In keeping with his big, bold subjects, the prints in the gallery are blown up to huge proportions and are printed on high quality paper. Our workshop participants commented often on how these images, despite their humble 35mm origins, manage to withstand being enlarged to monumental proportions. Yes, you can see grain and the edges are far from sharp, but when viewed from an appropriate distance (like from your chair to your fireplace mantel), the images look just wonderful.

Coincidentally, when I was in Las Vegas just before the photo workshop, I stopped into a book store to find something to read in my spare moments (spare moments that didn't materialize until the flight home as it turned out) and purchased a book by Galen Rowell who was a prolific author as well as photographer and adventurer. The book, called Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography, is a great read and provides an insight into how Galen approached his photography and why he succeeded in getting the shot while others failed.

If you ever find yourself down in the Eastern Sierras, make sure you stop in at the Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop. It will certainly open your eyes as to what's possible with humble 35mm equipment if you have talent and the motivation to be where the action is.

Ken Rockwell Really Knows How to Hurt a Guy

I was just reading Ken Rockwell's daily update and here's a quote that is killing me:

"90% of photography, and life, is showing up. It doesn't matter what kind of camera you have if you're not there. That hit home even hard this Monday morning at 7AM as I write this. I'm in Yosemite Valley, about to head out for a day of shooting, and this is also the busiest day for people reading the Internet. Over 100,000 people will be reading my site today, but only a few people are away from their computers and out shooting. Who's going to get better pictures, you, stuck in your office with your expensive gear sitting at home without you, or my grandma with a disposable camera up here?"

As someone who is stuck in his office with my expensive gear sitting at home, I send a big fat raspberry to Ken Rockwell and hope it snows!

Lightroom 2.1

I'm back from my workshop in the Eastern Sierra's with Alain Briot and will write up my impressions of the experience soon.

In the meantime, note that a release candidate of Lightroom 2.1 has been placed on the Adobe site here. There are many small fixes that are part of 2.1, but the key one for me is a fix to the interoperability between Lightroom and CS3/CS4. One of the fancy things that was supposed to work between Lightroom 2.0 and Photoshop CS3 was a seamless transfer of a photo back and forth between the two products. I remember seeing demos of this transfer and thinking about how good it was.

Of course, when I tried it, I found that the transfer wouldn't work at all. There was a partial work-around on the support forum, but certainly not the seamless experience I was banking on.

Yesterday, I downloaded 2.1 and purchased CS4 (my refund for my purchase of CS3 came through on my credit card). After installing both products, I tested the file transfer between them and, hey presto, the transfer was seamless. I was able to do neat stuff like saving a file under a new name in CS4 and seeing it appear automatically in my Lightroom DB without importing it.

I think Adobe might be getting their shit together at last!

PS: CS4 is a HUGE improvement over CS3 and its predecessors from a UI point of view. The concept of having each open image in its own tab is very well executed. There are several other neat visual tricks too. For example, when you are using the clone or heal tools, the predicted result of the operation is contained inside the circle that are using to define the affected area. You can preview the result and then click with your mouse to apply it. Neat! In addition, the vibrance control from Lightroom and ACR is now available as a Photoshop adjustment.

On the downside, I tried the new transformation function that clones/subtracts out less important parts of the image to shrink or grow it. The controls work fine and the preview looked really good. However, when I tried to apply it, CS4 gave me an "out of memory" error message. I didn't have time to see if closing down some tabs would free up the memory, but be aware that this is a potential issue.