James Shanks Photography Blog

BEFORE AND AFTER - 22 MOFFAT, BROOKLYN, NY

2011-03-01T09:07:00.008-05:00

BEFORE:

Three images captured with a Canon 5D MkII and a 24mm TSE II lens. The lighter lower exposure is only for extra detail in the shadow areas. The building didn't quite fit in a single capture; the files were stitched together using Autopano Pro to generate a 16 bit file from the original raw files.

AFTER:

After levels and curves corrections, hue and saturation adjustments, burning and dodging and perspective controls - oh, and a new sky.

LOVE AND HATE

2011-01-28T14:17:00.006-05:00

Every now and then I'm going to try and post some quick things that I love or at least like a lot and some quick things that I don't like (hate is sometimes not too strong a word) since I never seem to have time for more in-depth reviews. For what it's worth:

LOVE: The "Up-Strap". This thing does what it says, keeps the camera strap from constantly slipping off your shoulder. They never responded to my email regarding a simple modification that would make it even better though...

LOVE: The Sennheiser MKE 400 shotgun microphone. Works great on the Canon 5D MkII when doing video and is really small and lightweight.

HATE: LaCie hard drives. I was suckered into getting one again last Fall ("Rugged" haha, right) and it, like every other LaCie drive I ever had before, quickly died. To be fair, they did replace it but only after a 6+ week long email exchange that was something out of a Monty Python episode. Seriously. I have the drive here but will only use it for transporting unimportant things back and forth between home and the studio or if I know I already have several back-ups elsewhere. On the other hand, I LOVE the G-Drive Mini. I have a few and have never, ever had a problem with them.

PROJECT MAH-JONGG

2010-10-29T11:27:00.005-04:00

Project Mah-Jongg is still on view at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through January 2nd, 2011. I photographed an array of items for this exhibit that were printed in the 2wice publication, "Crack Bam Dot" - design by Abbott Miller of Pentagram who also designed the exhibit.

PHOTO EXPO SHOW NYC 2010

2010-10-29T10:49:00.006-04:00

I went to the Photo Expo at the Javits Center yesterday. Not much to report. It's surprising to me how much smaller the show is now compared to years past, I hadn't gone in a while but I remember it being twice as large. Noticeably absent was Apple and Adobe. I remember I was at the show when Apple launched Aperture in 2005 and their booth was ginormous.

I did buy a "Steadepod" which I had seen online and was intrigued by. I haven't used it yet. It seems like a good concept but I have to say it feels rather cheaply made.

Seems like everyone is selling inkjet paper. So many booths of these little companies selling paper and printable canvas including my favorite, "Freedom Paper" whose booth was complete with a giant Stars & Stripes image and a Bald Eagle. You can't make this stuff up.

I had a long talk with an engineer from Canon and told him my list of grievances as well as my suggestions for future products. He seemed to be genuinely interested in what I have to say - we'll see if my feedback goes anywhere or not... Here's some of what I had to say:

5D Mark III should have a built-in clinometer
5D Mark III should have a fold out screen like the 60D
EOS Utility Software should not have screen resolution restrictions so it can be installed on netbooks
The TS-E 45mm lens is need of an optical redesign to bring it up to par with the other TS-E lenses

737 COCKPIT HUD

2010-10-27T11:36:00.003-04:00

I really like this image I did a while back - I literally put the camera in the pilot's seat of this private 737 with the HUD (Heads Up Display) down and in view. You can see the beautiful control tower built in 1962 at Laguardia Airport in the distance (which is now being replaced with a new, modern tower that will function better but not look as nice).

Sigma 12mm lens on Canon 5D

NOTHING NEW

2009-08-24T14:42:00.004-04:00

I really enjoyed this article from Saturday in the NY Times by Bill Marsh. It showed what I've been saying for years - that image manipulation isn't anything new and it certainly wasn't invented by Adobe's Photoshop. This ubiquitous software has become a verb more than a proper noun as people proclaim that they "photoshop" images meaning to retouch or manipulate them but this has been done ever since the invention of photography (it's just faster and easier now with this software.)

I always scratch my head in wonder at people that wax-poetic on truth and honesty in photography. As far as I'm concerned, it's all fake, every single picture. The moment you have chosen to use this particular lighting from this angle with this lens at this moment using this shutter speed and aperture setting you have already greatly manipulated the image, period. The very idea of translating a four-dimensional space (I'm including time) into a two-dimensional small rectangle is a very huge stretch of the imagination and is, by it's very existence, an abstraction and manipulation of "reality."

People don't want "reality" - they don't want to look as they actually do (belly and wrinkles and all) they want to look "good" or like the ideal of their image as they would like to perceive it. Likewise, my clients don't want to see a building that they have designed with garbage piled in front, broken down cars parked outside and scaffolding hanging on the facade - they want to see them at their best, as they envisioned them, and I'll do anything I can to facilitate that.

I guess I don't care if people look at my images and believe what they see - I just hope that they like what they see.

Faked Photographs: Look, and Then Look Again - NY Times

SMOKE AND MIRRORS - A TUTORIAL

2009-08-21T15:29:00.013-04:00

Well, there's no smoke but there is a very small bathroom and a mirror...

I had to shoot this bathroom recently and there was really no room at all for the camera or lights. I set up the camera on the tripod literally touching the back wall and was only able to compose by using the Live View function of the Canon 5D MKII and my laptop. I taped a lightstand to the tile wall with gaffers in the only place it would fit (above the toilet), the problem was that it was obviously showing in the mirror along with the cable to the camera and the power cord to the head (image 1).

I shot the image like this then moved the light in front of the camera while being careful to not touch the camera or tripod. I did another shot with the light bouncing off the white ceiling in the new position (image 2).

Now all I had to do was stack these two shots together in Photoshop and create a layer mask on the second image so that the only part of it that was showing was the image in the mirror. Since this was a rectangular shape it was easy and took only a minute but this could have been done regardless of the shape - it would just take more time to create the mask. (images 3 and 4).

I shot these from outside the bathroom controling the camera with the laptop. Here is the final image after a little more work to straighten things up and after I retouched the cables out (image 5).

This is yet another one of those situations that I DO NOT think I could have done the shot with film - at least not as easily.

File info: Canon 5D MKII with Sigma 12-24 @ 15mm, 2 sec. @ f/14, Dyna-Lite 1000XL @ 1 pop

NY TIMES READS MY BLOG?

2009-08-21T15:18:00.003-04:00

No, I don't think they do but I did find it very interesting that this recent article by David Pogue bore a striking resemblance to my post from June 29th.

Low Light Becomes a Highlight - NY Times

HELICOPTERS ARE FUN

2009-07-14T08:57:00.003-04:00

A shot of me from Friday. It was a really clear day except for the hour that we were in the air - just one of the frustrations of shooting aerials. Pilot communication can be another. I can see why people that shoot aerials frequently like to work with the same pilots if they find a good one. All in all I was quite happy with the shots I needed to get though; it will just take a lot of time to go through them.

LIGHT BULBS AND ILLUSIONS

2009-07-06T18:01:00.010-04:00

There was an interesting NY Times article yesterday about light bulbs. What does this have to do with photography? Well, if you photograph room interiors - a lot. Basically the incandescent bulb is not dead despite what you've maybe heard or read to the contrary. In fact, there is a lot of research and innovation going into the incandescent bulb to make it far more efficient. I'm very happy to read this because I hate compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs); I think they are awful and I will not use them. I don't like CFLs light quality, you can't dim them, their color is inconsistent (even from the same brand) and of course they contain mercury - that's not very "green."

I recently went to The Green Depot with some friends. There they have a booth with all different types of light bulbs installed. I think the idea is for you to turn on all the different options of bulbs to see for yourself what they look like so you can choose which one to use. Well, I walked out and exclaimed, without a doubt, I had found a winner - it was the standard incandescent bulb that I think was there merely as a comparison.

The problem has never been that the standard light bulb is a bad design, it's just never been updated to take advantage of modern materials and manufacturing to increase it's efficiency. I'm hoping this new generation of incandescent bulbs will soon compete with CFLs in both energy use and cost so that architects and designers will start using them ubiquitously.

On a completely different note, a blog reader sent me this link:

The blue and the green

This is a VERY cool optical illusion where the exact same color appears to be two total different colors because of how our brains work. I love stuff like this.

WHEN REALLY WIDE ISN'T WIDE ENOUGH

2009-07-01T10:30:00.042-04:00

I recently had to shoot a new 26 story NYU dormitory building in the East Village of Manhattan. The building is located on a fairly narrow street and, as in most cases when shooting in Manhattan, one of the toughest things to do was to find a vantage point to shoot from. After a whole morning on the phone, I was able to track down the owner of the building across the street who eventually gave me permission to shoot from his roof. The roof was about one third as high as my subject and offered a far better vantage point than the street. This situation was further complicated by the fact that the building faces north and except for very early morning on a few days in summer it would never be fully illuminated on a sunny day. Oh, and the sidewalk was scheduled to be torn up in a few days so if I didn't shoot in the next few days we had no idea when everything would be ready to shoot again. Sounds fun doesn't it?

I made my way to the roof opposite my subject on an overcast morning. I still had the problem of fitting this tall building into the frame from such a close distance. The widest lens I have is the Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG. I'll be the first to say that this lens is not the best optically but it comfortably covers a full-frame 35mm sensor with almost no distrotion and when the situation calls for it, this lens is just great. At 12mm the building barely fit but looked terrible (figure 1). This tight crop also didn't allow for enough room to straighten the perspective in Photoshop.

My solution was to use a technique I've used many times - stitching. Most people only think of doing this with panoramic landscapes but I find it can be useful in many different situations, including building exteriors. I shot the building in sections using a longer focal length lens and was careful to make sure I had plenty of overlap from one frame to the next. I'll usually try a few different variations in focal length and amount of overlap just to make sure I'll get images that will stitch together well. In this case I chose 4 images to combine (figure 2).

The stitching capability of Photoshop in later CS versions (located under: File -> Automate -> Photomerge...) has been, in my view, one of the most improved features. Photomerge has been around for a while but until recently it did a pathetic job of combining images together. Now it's pretty amazing what it can do. You can choose files to combine from a folder on your hard drive or select images open in Photoshop as long as the images have been saved. You then select the type of layout from the menu on the left (figure 3). Auto usually does a good job but if you aren't happy with the results I would recommend using the Interactive Layout.

As good as Photoshop's Photomerge command has become, there are still better options for merging images. On certain images you can have areas where the stitching still doesn't really quite work in Photoshop. You need to review the stitched file carefully to look for problem areas (see figure 4). The best software I've found for stitching files is an application called Autopano Pro by a Kolor, a french software developer.

The advantage of Autopano Pro, besides just usually doing a better job stitching, is that it has extensive editing capabilities before the final stitched file is generated. You can specify the center point of the image and adjust for vertical perspective. I don't usually do any levels adjustments or color corrections in Autopano Pro although there are options for doing so. It's important to note that for this type of stitching you should make sure your projection is set to "planar" (see figure 5) this will keep your lines straight.

After Autopano Pro has rendered the stitched file (this can take a while depending on the file size) I'll go back into Photoshop to do all the cropping, levels and curves adjustments, retouching etc. The final image is one that I really don't think could be created with a single shot from such a close distance (figure 6). Even if you can get a good shot of a building or an object without stitching, you may want to use this technique on the rare occasion that you need a REALLY high resolution file. You might be doing a gigantic, wall sized print or you may want the ability to zoom way in on an image - in either case you can use this technique to increase the resolution of your camera almost indefinitely (the more segments you shoot, the higher the resolution file you'll have.) It's important to note that you can also use this approach with film, just stitch the scanned images together as you would the digital files.

CANON 70-200 f/4L IS STABILIZATION TEST

2009-06-30T15:04:00.007-04:00

I've been testing the image stabilization on my Canon 70-200 f/4L IS USM lens and I'm really impressed. I would never think that I could hand-hold a 200mm lens at a 30th of a second and get sharp results like this. I don't have an opportunity to use this lens very often with the type of work I do but I wish I did. I've tested the f/2.8 version from Canon too and decided that the extra size, weight and cost didn't make up for the slight increase in brightness. This is by no means a thorough lens review but I do highly recommend this lens.

STOP THE MEGAPIXEL MADNESS

2009-06-29T13:00:00.030-04:00

This inaugural blog post is an appeal to all digital camera manufacturers to stop using megapixels to market cameras and start making image quality better by decreasing the megapixel count. The average person has little to no idea how digital photography works and they, understandably, look for some way to quantify "better" when comparing cameras. The megapixel count fits the bill perfectly: it's a number that is always advertised and often times printed right on the camera itself and this simplistic idea that a higher number means better quality is easy to swallow and the camera manufacturers know this.

When people talk to me about digital cameras (a conversation that is almost always instigated by the other person when they find out I'm a photographer) they invariably ask how many magapixels my camera has. In their mind this is a measure of the seriousness of what I do. They then go on to ask me about this or that camera seeking my opinion and I usually have to say that I don't know because I don't follow all the latest camera models. "But I just got this XYZ camera. It's 12 megapixels. That's good isn't it?!" I usually don't know what to say so I just reply, "Sure. Sounds good. OK. Yeap."

The reality is that the number of pixels don't matter, the physical size of them does. In fact, unless you increase the physical dimensions of the chip, then you MUST make the pixels smaller in order to increase the number of pixels. The math is pretty basic. As you make each pixel smaller you make the quality worse. You get more noise, less detail and an increasingly limited value range. If more magapixels really meant higher quality then why would anyone pay $4000.00 (body only) for a 10 megapixel Canon 1D MkIII when you can buy a 12 megapixel Nikon Coolpix S700 for a hundred bucks!?

If you really want to measure the image quality you need to look at the pixel density. As opposed to megapixels, this actually does give you a good idea of what you can expect when comparing quality between one camera and another. You express the pixel density by saying how many megapixels there are per square centimeter of sensor real estate. It's a little more involved than a simple number and to further make this less appealing to the macho-photo crowds, the lower the number the better.

Even if more megapixels did make the image better quality (which it doesn't) then you still have the problem that in order to actually see that better quality you would have to make prints large enough to use all that pixel information. I've never taken any scientific survey to see what people do with their digital images but from what I've seen at labs, heard from talking to friends and family and what I've read online - most people don't even print their pictures at all much less make large sized prints so why would they even care that their camera has ten, twelve or more megapixels? A six megapixel image can produce a beautiful 16x20 print with zero interpolation. How many people are printing larger than this on a regular basis? Not many I think. Some people never even have their 12 megapixel cameras set to the highest resolution anyway and only look at their images online so what's the point?

What it all boils down to is that camera manufacturers need a reason for you to keep buying new camera models. You might want to get a camera that is faster or has better optics and those can be arguably good reasons to buy a new camera but a lot of people I talk to are buying new cameras because the megapixels keep getting higher and higher and it sounds like a good thing. I have a Canon G9 and it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I love the body design and the features but overall I'd say this camera kind of sucks. Unless you're in really bright light and can use the lowest ISO settings of 80 or 100 then the images are so noisy that they really aren't usable for anything serious. There is no reason this camera should be 12.1 megapixels (yes, not just 12 but 12.1!) The chip is still the same tiny sized chip Canon has been using in the G series cameras all along. If Canon put a high quality 6 megapixel chip in the G9 body you would have a very serious camera that I would use a lot. In terms of print quality, I almost prefer my 4 megapixel Canon G2 that I've had for almost 9 years. And now the Canon G10 is available with 14.7 megapixels and I can only assume that the image quality has gotten even worse. Come on Canon!

I don't expect this to change. In fact, I expect the small point and shoot cameras to start coming out with 18 or 20 megapixel chips soon and I'm sure people will eat them up. I just hope that the camera companies will preserve the professional level DSLR focus on the real factors that increase image quality and keep this foolish megapixel numbers game out of the picture.