Making lemonade

[David R Munson]

I've only ever had a quasi-friendly relationship with color in general, but digital has been good to me in this regard. I put color film in a camera maybe three times a year and only then because I have some particularly strong urge. And even then, half of the shots I choose get converted to b&w. But with digital, it's easier for me to fiddle with it, to play and get it just so. Because if I'm going to do color, I'm going to do it my way, which is never the usual way (though it would be easier if it were).



This is from a project I'm working on in Shanghai. It's all digital (Canon 5D Mk II), all in color, and is a major change of pace for me for both of those reasons. I still cling to film cameras much of the time, but I'd be lying if I were to say that digital has been anything other than a freeing thing for me. So I say shoot film as long as you can, in the ways that you can, but don't begrudge digital when it steps in to take up the slack left by big, heavy things that get left at home. The photographic toolbox has never been bigger, so why not play with it?

P.S. I have a bit of gout, too. Nothing near as bad as yours, just enough to make me more stubborn.

[Struan Gray]

Update.

Exploration of colour continues. What works well is areas of artificial colour, so the images I am most happy with are taken in urban environments. The natural world seems resistant to being tamed, and I find myself raging against the default decisions taken by camera engineers, in the same way I used to rage about the default decisions taken by emulsion scientists. Then, you had the option of trying other emulsions. Now, the least bad solution is a RAW workflow and a lot of tedious minor adjustments. I haven't find a catchall way to reach my preferred look, certainly nothing as simple as shooting LF Portra with standard development and scanning.

So I lug the LF when I can, and play with blotches of primary colour when I can't. Old dogs can learn new tricks, if pushed.

The council finally put a convenient bridge over the railway. Once their new offices were on the far side. There's a contemporary trend, or schtick, for coloured glass panels tarting up otherwise boring facades, and Swedish public buildings have embraced it with passion.





We've got some interesting new plantings too.

David: I too value the control over colour digital provides. I never understood the supposed purity of an all-analogue workflow: you have to disregard all the little tricks and wheezes embedded in the emulsion by its designers if you want to sustain that myth. Ironic then, that I have developed such an attachment to the look of an analogue medium, albeit mediated by a scanning step.

Oren: stop by for a chat any time you're passing. Our house is the one with the rampant biodiversity out front :-)


As for the gout. I'm a couple of months into medication - allopurinol - that is supposed to help regulate uric acid levels. The rollercoaster ride of bad attacks has smoothed out, but at a level where I cannot take exercise, and only risk lugging LF on the very best days. On the other hand, I can now play with the kids in ways I couldn't before, in the face of which all photographic concerns seem minor. I count my blessings - anything else seems spoilt and juvenile.

[Oren Grad]

Struan, thanks for the update - it's always interesting to see what you're working on and thinking about. Hope you can get the gout further under control and gain back a little more maneuvering room.

[Bruce Watson]

Rather, I think the root cause is the tendency of digital colours to migrate to the corners of their color space upon almost any manipulation. It is just too easy to saturate channels, or to bump up against the edges of the color space polygon.

The German company Arri (cinema cameras, not still cameras) figured out what the problem is. It comes down to digital being RGB (additive), while negative film is CMY (subtractive). Where film reaches maximum saturation in the shadows, digital reaches maximum saturation in the highlights. This is bad for exactly the reasons you have articulated. Arri's answer is to restrict saturation of the highlights at the processing chip level. So even RAW files from Arri cameras have this reduced saturation of the highlights.

The effect is a more film-like response, which people (cinematographers, DOPs, etc.) like so much that the Arri cameras have taken over the markets. The effect on skin tones in particular is remarkable. Arri now dominates in serious cine cameras even though they were very late to market digital cameras. They were late because they were doing the most R&D apparently.

So, here's the lesson, if there is one, from Arri. Build a mask for everything mid-gray (maybe down to 40% gray, I don't remember exactly) and up towards white, and use this mask to desaturate your source image. Arri reduces saturation in the range of 40-50% IIRC. You might want to research this to be sure, and if I run across the source I read this in again, I'll try to post a link.

My theory of operation here is that if you start with more "normally saturated" mid tones and highlights, you'll mitigate the "tendency of digital colors to migrate to the corners of their color space upon almost any manipulation."

Give it a shot. What have you got to lose?

EDIT: Found the link to that article on Arri by Art Adams.

[Struan Gray]

Bruce, thanks very much for the info, and the link, which made for fascinating reading. I have always envied the control over colour that seems to exist in graded movies, and it's useful to get some insight into how they achieve their effects. The scientist in me favours a brute force approach, capturing linear data with a wide gamut and lots of bit-depth, adding any interpretive effects later in post-capture, but I can see how that might use excessive storage for movie use.

In good light I already will often underexpose by a stop or so to preserve highlight colour descrimination, and it is interesting to see Arri keeping the lid on saturation from mid-grey upwards - which makes them even more conservative than I am. In bad light it's a toss-up between ugly highlight colour and noisy shadows. On 4x5 Portra, I enjoy taking long exposures in twilight and then bumping them back up to daylight equivalent brightness after scanning, but none of the digital machines I have used make that a pleasurable process.

On the other hand, digital does have lovely glossy blacks and detailed shadows. Film can't win them all.

Scabious, sorrel, bedstraw

This photo has caused me endless grief, particularly once when the conversion to CYMK for printing in included. The red stems of the sorrel can end up all over the colour map, depending on how you go about nudging the bedstraw flowers towards tintless white. True, the lighting included a great deal of blue skylight, and down in the undergrowth there were heavy green casts from all the foliage, but sheet film Portra would handle this with ease, even with a scan step before digital printing.

This, on the other hand, would never look as good on film. At least, not when taken by me.

Tadpoles in the retting pond. Attared sawmill

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[Natenaaron]

Sweet jesus, Struan, the second image in the opening post is Freaking amazing.

[Struan Gray]

Thanks Natenaaron. Taken at a very special place in Coigach, Northwest Scotland - a perfect storm of interesting geology, flora, birds and wildlife. The scene is weird enough when the dock stalks are new and bright green, but it just gets odder as summer progresses and the docks turn red.

[Struan Gray]

Update. Still feel like I'm shouting, but at least I'm shouting things I want to say.

http://struangray.com/family/Stockholm_Typology/


PS: Gout sort of under control. Carrying big cameras not impossible, but risks putting me on crutches for two weeks. Normal life livable, its the fun extras I'm having to self-censor on. First world problem.
Struan

[r_a_feldman]

Struan,

Do you have a version of Stockholm_Typology that does not use Adobe Flash? I have uninstalled Flash because it is such a malware magnet, and I refuse to re-install. I find your earlier images impressive and would like to be able to see your latest.

Bob

[Struan Gray]

Thanks for the kind words Bob. I'm hampered by the need to keep some legacy software running, so I'm on a machine and OS that can't run the updated, Flash free gallery generators. For this kind of thinking out loud, it works well enough, although I get increasing numbers of complaints from people who only use iOS devices.

When I figure out what I'm doing, I'll settle into some 'real' galleries. I'm at a stage where I can see a consistency of presentation and composition, but the thematic material is all over the place, so it ends up looking like one of those enthusiast's galleries organised by the camera used, rather than a coherent photographic project.

Working title is 'Adult Colouring Book'. It probably sounds like I'm over thinking, but I'm actually having a lot of fun. Just trying to avoid the worst colour cliches. And ('Hello moderators!') Using a lot of my LF experience to create a 'look', even it's not obviously LF-ish.