Welcome to Noir era

I have been shooting colored pictures in 28 mm for a while now. 

Starting today I decided to embark a new venture. The era of Noir begins.

I'll be sharing more pictures of this sort in the coming days.

Problem: 28mm focal length

This has been very limiting in my street photography for quite some time. 

There are three problems with wide angle:

• Too much detail around my subjects.
• Geometric distortion around the edges.
• Need to get super close to subjects (1-2m).

Solution: 50 mm crop mode

50 mm digital crop immediately fixed these issues without drawbacks. With 50 mm crop I can achieve excellent print quality at 300 dpi with size 11.2" x 7.47" (28.5 cm x 19 cm) a near A4 size or at 200 dpi with size 16.8" x 11.2 " (42.7 cm x 28.5 cm) a near A3 size.

With 50 mm my effective distance for being close to my subjects increased to 2-4 meters. Geometric distortion simply disappeared too.

Problem: Color RAW

Shooting in color and capturing images in RAW format have these disadvantages:

• Big file sizes
• Slow transfer times
• Time consuming post-processing, editing and exporting to JPEG
• Complicated archiving (DNG and exported JPEGs)

Solution:  Black and white JPEG

Shooting in Black and White with JPEG output eliminated all of the above. Removing post processing from the equation forced me to focus on getting the picture right as I shoot it. Black and White allowed me to focus on light, composition and framing without complexity of getting the colors and white balance right.

Problem: View finder

Behavior of public changed against photographers in the past decade. In digital post-Instagram era there are just too many photographers using either phone cameras or digital cameras.

I also noticed taking pictures with phone cameras are perceived "normal"  but if you point your digital camera to people's face while your eye is in the viewfinder, you get a more frowned look. 

Solution: Touch AF + Release

This mode allows the photographer to disguise more effectively. You look like adjusting your mirrorless camera so you won't attract too much attention while touching your LCD screen at the back. In my camera a simple index finger touch triggers a super-fast AF and untouch releases the shutter, just like a mobile phone. 

Alternatively if you have time you can use the viewfinder and manual focus to take well-crafted pictures without changing any setting.  Both modes are inter-switchable with zero effort.

Leading lines - Bradfield Hwy

Leica Q-P, ISO 100, f/11.0, 1/640s, -1.0 EV, 28mm

note: the original picture is un-cropped and unedited. This one has half the resolution. 

Postmortem (why this picture worked for me)

• The main leading line, highway starts with a strong cue, the yellow car.
• Then the road takes our eyes to an easy ride in the city direction.
• The road, the landscape and the sky are in equal footing. All three have different and equally likeable elements. 
• It is important that the road's centre nearly starts off from the lower left corner which was crucial to this picture's success. Should it were slightly higher or lower it wouldn't be so successful.
• There are no ugly elements like trucks or too many grey cars piled up. 
• There are no distractions like a nearby wall or a light pole.
• Vehicle density is just right. It is not congested traffic.
• Clouds have perspective, they diminish towards horizon. You don't have this effect very often. Incidentally they make another interesting layer cutting through the sky extending the leading lines on the ground with a white plane in the sky.
• It has exceptionally well balanced dynamic range (wide range of tones), it is neither too dark nor too bright, as its histogram shows:
  
  
                           
  

  

Natural light

Instagram gave way to a culture of artificial light and artificial color. Popular opinion skews to everything bright. Pictures are bastardised, heavily edited with brighter colors and shadow effects. They become cartoonish representations of nature. They don't look real, they lack originality. They are boring. They are awful.

I do however love original light. Ultimately what I want in my pictures is they must look real. 

Take above picture for instance. Straight from the lens. The scene looked exactly like this when I shot it. The colors were like that. The light was like that. My signature is hardly a signature, I like capturing what I see, not necessarily what other people like to see. 

All I had to decide was whether the timing was right for the best light and whether it was worthy to take it. I felt the urge to take it because this particular scene and time of the day reminded me 19th century impressionist paintings. Dim yellow lights and silhouettes strolling in a premonade have Parisian character. There is drama. There is melancholia. There is heavy hearted Art in it. It is real and it has feelings. Therefore it is worthy to take and worthy to look at.