Pics Chosen: January 2019

Thursday, January 31, 2019

In the jungle

Internet is full of debates on which focal length is better for street photography. I think technical properties or limitations of cameras and lenses should not limit creative possibilities, they are not necessarily constraints on the type of photography you want to achieve. True there may be cases when you may need to compromise. But it is your skill, hard-work and creative vision are what matter most.

This picture is a 50 mm crop of lower part of a 28 mm photograph. It has vertical aspect. Because the camera was tilted to capture the whole of white high rise building at the back, we have a rather amplified perspective distortion added to wide angle distortion.

In this photograph though, amplified distortion and crop worked to my advantage. The picture shows it was taken in modern times, but it also shows how the CBD of Sydney was developed in almost a fast motion picture, how buildings spurred like mushrooms in every space and in every direction they could be built. It would be very hard to achieve the same effect with a narrow angle lens.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Pedestrians

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Nature's revenge

Story: Lavender Bay Parklands include several heritage parks with monumental trees from the beginning of 20th century. This picture and the one below depict how a tree with its strong roots slowly but surely took back what belongs to it, the earth stolen by humans. Recently the council had to build new stairs next to the old one claimed by the tree.

Monday, January 28, 2019

The door and beyond

Friday, January 25, 2019

Morning riders

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

A rather unfortunate incident

Macros always delight me. When the weather is poor or you have to stay indoors and you are iching for photography, why not invent some macro scenes at home and have fun.

Here is one I called "a rather unfortunate incident", showing a rooster seconds before hit by a Mustang.

Crop or not to crop that is the question

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the father of street photography worked with a Leica rangefinder and a 50 mm lens for almost all of his life's work. Most street photographers either use 35 mm or 50 mm. 28 mm is quite rare.

35 mm focal length is a good middle ground. You need to get a little closer to your subjects compared to 50 mm, but again getting closer is a good technique you need to develop anyway.

I was a bit worried of being stuck with a fixed 28 mm lens with Leica Q-P. On the one hand I could take great landscape or architectural photographs with a wide angle lens. But it was too wide for street photography. .

I had made some calculations earlier by carefully considering print sizes, dynamic range, sensor size and sensor pixel count. I figured out I could live with 35 mm crop. After running intensive tests, the idea turned out to work really well in practice.

35 mm digital crop offered me an additional advantage I could not initially think of. During post-processing it gave me ability to adjust the frame with a good degree of freedom for a better composition.

In this post I will explain how I used 35 mm crop with my Leica Q-P.

But first I need to tell you about my goal.

My goal is to take great pictures of street photography and present them in printed books or exhibitions where I need to frame each picture in fixed size with consistent quality.

Without crop, Leica Q-P's 28 mm lens produces images with a size 6000 x 4000 pixels (24 MP).

With an f/1.7 OIS capable 28 mm lens, a camera with a full frame sensor, a lightning speed focus and a 35 mm digital crop, I could achieve these:

Great dynamic range and image quality.
4,800 x 3,200 pixel (15.4 MP) image size.
16" x 10.67" photo quality prints in 300 dpi.
24" x 16" good quality prints in 200 dpi.

Tip: In digital photography ability to apply arbitrary crop sizes pushes the photographer to laziness which often curbs their ability to compose, a skill they need to be good at. My advice is, work with fixed size digital crops such as 35 mm or 50 mm. Like old masters who did not have the crop option, get into the habit of forming good compositions while shooting. Most rangefinders or EVFs show you a crop rectangle frame (Leica Q has one), so that you can frame your composition prior to shooting. Even if you make mistakes, for example an unwanted element creeps inside the frame, or you want to achieve a better composition, you can always move the crop rectangle in your image editing software.

Leica Q produces full size raw images regardless of crop mode set during shooting. The image processing software I use, DxO PhotoLab 2, disregards crop settings and the image is shown in 28 mm proportions. I developed a script that allows me to draw a 35 mm crop rectangle on all of my images in one go. Here is an example after running the script.

This is how I framed my composition when I took the picture, but in this case it is not what I wanted. This is an action photograph, the riders were riding fast, and I was using the track focus mode. I missed to include the rider at the back of the pack which resulted in an undesirable composition.

The fix is easy. Simply moving the crop rectangle without resizing it, would give me the same resolution and image quality but better composition.

Here are the images imported after the crop is applied. The first one has original centered crop, the second one has moved crop.

The rider in the front does not have perfect focus as I intended to have. That's because my shutter speed was left in Auto and this picture has shutter speed of 1/200s while I was moving my camera. But that's another story for "Action Photography".

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Waltzing Matilda

Story: It was a Sunday in Circular Quay, Sydney. This gentleman was playing Waltzing Matilda with harmonica and small guitar. His execution was immaculate, with his deep and authentic outback voice. He kindly let me photograph him with a genuine smile.

Photographic experience: The focus on face was perfect, with gorgeous bokeh in the background and foreground (hand is blurred). The flag was waving. Like other photographs 35mm crop gave me to frame him and eliminate compositional noise, and 28mm lens gave me that intentional perspective distortion, a feel for chaotic action, the depth of reportage photography, that realness, and casual spontaneity. With this picture I realised a 28 mm f/1.7 lens and a 35mm crop make a great combo for close-up, intimate photography.

Story: Tourists in flocks photograph Opera House every day as they walk over the Coathanger (The Harbour Bridge). I have my fair share of many photographs taken from the bridge. Usually you see more photographers in a bright day, people are in race to capture gorgeous southern sphere blueness and deep harbour blueness with the Opera House in distance. But they all look the same and there is not much story in them. I like this one, because the combination of overcast day and the foreground bokeh of the cage make the colors stand back. The sea, grey blue like a skin of a whale and in the front, the white ferry cruising and perfectly framed in a diamond of the cage. No distraction of colors. It has Elia Kazan and Brando's 'On the waterfront' film character. Mysterious docks, union fights and all the rest.

Photographic experience: There was a gap of 10cm between the cage frame and the rail underneath. I leaned and positioned my camera in that gap, half press to focus on the ferry, checked the exposure, raise the camera without releasing the focus and press the shutter release button.

Story: Here is a gentleman, a tourist perhaps. He is innocently taking his snap. You can catch almost a childish glimpse of his excitement with the stalls of the weekend market in the background. This is one of the passages under the Harbour Bridge in Kirribilli.

Photographic experience: Standard get close, point focus and snap.

Story: Elderly tourists on a small seat on the Harbour Bridge, taking a break, updating their schedule, going through the daily chores of touristic endeavours. Life, if we are lucky, is togetherness. This picture depicts that. Growing old can be hard but not impossible, light backpacks, smart and light footwear, airy hats tell us they've done this before, they know the drills, and they know therefore how to enjoy the essentials. I want to say good on them! A hasty analysis of this picture might otherwise make you think they are lonely in their small world. But I challenge that. This picture in fact do show their content, afar from loneliness. It is a testimony of their survival in this crazy thing called life. Being together they have made it, they are now content and peaceful, not a small achievement.

Photographic experience: In a moment of split second decision I stopped, turned 90 degrees to them, framed 35mm, half-press focus and snapped. Leica Q-P is so good in responding to your speedy intent. It is an amazingly responsive street camera. Its stealth color, its tiny size and fast focus, white balance response blow my mind.

Story: Three friends, standing near the Opera House, looking at somewhere in Kirribilli. The man on the right is trying to show them something, perhaps a particular building, maybe his house. Their bodies are close and they lean inwards which shows they are friends. This is an intimate moment of sharing and friendship. It is crisp and motivating.

Photographic experience: I needed to be discreet and got close, focused on the gentleman on the right and snap. My Leica Q-P is so quiet and fast they did not notice me.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Dream Car

This is my dream car. Ford Mustang GT 350 or a later model.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Leica Q-P impressions

I have been reading about Leica cameras for the past 3 months now. Last Friday at last I made my decision and bought a Leica Q-P.

Friday night went with unpacking and running limited test shots at home in low light.

My first impressions can best be described as falling in love. I was mesmerised by its beauty, its built quality, its craftsmanship, its responsiveness, but above all, its unique personality, its connectedness with Leica history.

This is the first camera Leica designed for stealth action. Like a jaguar it sticks itself to the ground and pounce when least expected. This is the camera I have been waiting for, and it felt like custom designed for me.

Personality

I love it when a product has history, it is cherished and cared by the company that makes it. With its good looks and its industrial design Leica Q-P is unmistakably a Leica. Simply by looking at it and holding it you can feel its connection to the first 35 mm film Leica prototypes built by Oskar Barnack at Ernst Aleut Optische Werke, Wetzlar, in 1913. And that is a privilege.

Build quality

When you hold and weigh the camera in your hands, you just feel how finely built, how robust it is. This is especially evident in Leica Q-P.

I spent agonising nights, reading a blog after another, watching YouTube videos, endlessly browsing user forums, camera review sites and decided that Leica Q-P was the one.

Technically Leica Q-P and its predecessor Leica Q are identical. They have the same hardware, same lens and same software. But when you hold them in your hands and compare the experience, there is big difference.

Leica Q-P has this beautiful charcoal coloured, textured, stealth finish, whereas Leica Q is pitch black, shinier and more visible. Consequently in the hand Leica Q-P feels very robust, but Leica Q feels slippery and insecure.

When you use its stops and dials Leica Q-P has a very assuring tactile feel, whereas Leica Q feels like a plastic toy.

For these reasons alone Leica Q-P worths every penny in the chunky price difference of AUD 1,000. Actually the difference is less, because Leica team threw a beautiful brown leather strap, and a spare battery in the Leica Q-P box.

Like me if you hesitate, I strongly encourage you to ask the Leica salesperson that you want to try them both. Hold them in your hands, and take some pictures.

Street photography experience

I spend the first day shooting 400 pictures in the Sydney CBD. It was a very hot bright day with lots of tourists moving around.

I tried auto mode for a little while, then moved to f/1.7 manual focus when I started to get closer to my subjects.

The wait for focus is non-existent, it is so fast. I tried multi-point auto focus, and face recognition auto focus with success. But most of the time I was happy with single-point manual focus and aperture set to f/1.7. This gave me gorgeous bokeh and versatility to focus on my close-by subjects.

The output of JPEG from camera was good, but to my surprise DxO PhotoLab 2 (my image processing app) had better quality JPEG output. So from now on I’ll stick to DNG only output.

Hickups

Apart from important instructions on maintenance and safety, I don’t really read manuals.

I am a guy who learn things by experimenting. I am very used to tinkering and failing which I see as an integral part of learning process.

Most of the issues I listed below were due to my extreme impatience and ignorance. In all cases I realised my mistakes quickly, I learned my lesson and moved on.

Setting AF

I naively assumed that AF is given when you set the aperture to A (auto).

I wanted to experiment with aperture f/1.7, so I set the aperture ring to that. Naturally I had to use manual focus so I unlocked and slid the focus ring. Wide aperture tests went fine with Q’s gorgeous bokeh.

When I set the aperture back to A though, I didn’t realise I had to lock the focus ring at AF. This resulted in dark grey pictures.

Setting ISO accidentally

The second night I was excited, as I had the opportunity to try out legendary low light performance of Leica Q-P in a party. To my horror the images turned up blurred and white balance out of whack. When I noticed the shutter speed recordings I saw 1/3, 1/4 etc. Those of course explained poor image quality. The root cause of the anomaly was during the day I set the ISO to 100 from Auto and forgot about it. In low light the camera tried to compensate by reducing the shutter speed.

Setting speed dial accidentally

I read that this is quite common. So maybe Leica can improve in this area. What happened was in more than one occasion while placing the camera in and out of my bag or while wearing it, sometimes without noticing I hit the speed dial. This often resulted in camera not responding, because it was busy with low speed shots.

Processing crop images

One of the reasons I liked Leica Q-P was because in crop mode I figured I might take advantage of the full frame sensor for compensating for image quality while resolutions drop to 15.4 MP and 7.5 MP when 35 mm and 50 mm crops are used respectively. 15.4 MP is reasonable and close to film quality (18 MP), and I kind of fancy trying it out in my street photography. In some cases even 50 mm crop could produce reasonable outcome I thought.

Leica promotes Lightroom, even bundles a trial package and manuals. Apparently with the crop function in Lightroom you can see the full image (provided that you had DNG output), cropped at 35/50mm equivalent.

I was perhaps naively expecting something equivalent at the DxO PhotoLab side, but discovered DxO PL lacks auto 35/50 mm cropping. All you could do in DxO PL is to drag the 24 MP image to precise pixel count. For example the original image with 6,000 x 4,000 pixels should be reduced to 4,800 x 3,200 and 3,360 x 2,240 pixel in 35 mm and 50 mm crop respectively. But manually adjusting the rectangular crop frame to precise units is quite painful.

As a result I decided to raise a customer ticket with DxO PL to request the Lightroom auto 35/50 mm crop feature. In the meantime I will write a command line utility to edit top files to have custom crop for 35 mm and 50 mm. It is a hassle, but hey, nothing is prefect.

Precise digital cropping is an important requirement for photographers who would like to print their work for a book or an exhibition, so that they would have a uniform, consistent quality in precise resolution for every image. I am definitely in this category. Right now I am experimenting and I am OK with arbitrary crop sizes, but as I get more serious about my work, I would like to have an efficient processing step for digital cropping in my workflow. Hopefully I won't resort to Lightroom to overcome this limitation.

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Leica Q-P first day

Friday, January 11, 2019

Leica Q-P first picture

Around 9 pm I finished setting up. Just configured basic functions. This is a shot from 30+ cm in 35mm crop mode, manual focus to the dog design on the tissue box.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Why do we live?

Photography became my passion in the past 3 years.

I started Street Photography with Ricoh GR II.

Ricoh GR is a great camera with huge cult following. I have learned fundamentals of photography with it and I owe it for keeping my passion alive. Ricoh GR delighted me so many times and in so many surprising ways that I still cherish the experience.

But time has come to grow.

I needed better dynamic range, faster auto-focus, simpler ergonomics, and better low light performance. I needed a more responsive camera with great build quality.

Good bye Ricoh GR II.

Welcome Leica Q-P.

If you follow this blog, from this point on you will only see Leica Q-P related material.

I will share pictures taken by Leica Q-P, a short documentary behind each picture if it makes sense so and a photographic experience retrospective.

I believe every picture should speak itself and tell a meaningful story. A good picture does not have to be explained.

I will be documenting photographic experience to reinforce my own learning, so that I can grow my skills effectively.

Hopefully you find something inspiring in this journey too.

Thanks for staying with me.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Shiny

Ricoh GR II, f/5.0, 1/125s, 100 ISO

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Illusion

Ricoh GR II, f/6.3, ISO 320, 1/80s

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

The Not Motel

iPhone 7+, f/1.8, ISO 80, 1/5s

For me the most important element of Photography is its emotional impact, its ability to bring out emotions from subconscious realm.

This is part of a modern house. But in my mind it emerged as a Motel in a horror movie. Once emotions surface, I can then, as a viewer, fill in the blanks and relate them with other emotions.

It doesn't matter if you don't understand a photograph. What matters is how you feel about it. Does it keep your gaze, does it bring back memories or emotions you can't even describe?

The Slab

iPhone 7+, f/1.8, ISO 100, 1/4s

In this photograph I captured geometry of architecture slicing light textures forming a dramatic story. Everything in this composition is intentionally placed including triangular section in lower left corner. The green translucent light creates an eerie atmosphere, as if someone sinister is emerging from those stairs. The orange yellow light creates a warm, cosy ambiance. The white light in the living room with unseen people awaiting New Year fireworks and thundery sky complete the drama. Conflicts between those lights are neatly stitched and sorted by clean lines of architecture.

The Monolith

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

The Caterpillar

Ricoh GR II, f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/640s, 1671 × 1107 = 1.85MP

DISCLAIMER

I am a street photographer.
All digital photographs I share in this blog are copyrighted by Ergun Çoruh. You cannot process or publish or edit or print or sell them.
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