Some Ernest Advice From The Workshop

I have been let into a few secrets by our senior technician regarding sensor cleaning for digital cameras. Here is a précis of the conversation held in the workshop. I have not included the bit about not scrubbing over the sensor with a steel wool Brillo pad as I figure nearly everyone will know that already. But here's some other thoughts:

Where do flies go in winter? If you have done pondering that, try this - where does sensor dust come from?

Okay, if you have removed the lens of your DSLR or mirror-less camera in the middle of a paddock at ploughing time or in the discharge path of a council mulcher, you may be forgiven for thinking that is the source of your troubles. Possibly, possibly. If you have not had such misfortune consider the other sources of contamination.

1. Lenses with open clearances and a considerable 'pumping 'action that operates upon zooming or focusing, dirt gets near moving section of lens, dirt gets drawn in, dirt gets distributed.

2. Your clean home is...full of cooking oil vapour as well as other sticky components. Also full of cloth lint and carpet fibres as well as dirt brought in from outside on you clothing. Run yourfinger over the top of a picture frame anywhere in the house. Pass inspection? If you think so, lick that finger. No? Thought so.

3. You get ready to change a lens and take the rear lens cap off the new one. You put it in your pocket, then change the lens, then recap the removed lens. With the cap that is now full of pocket lint. Guess where this goes and where it ends up next time you change. And ALL your rear lens caps are probably just as bad...

4. Way hay, let's go to the drag races. Or Barbagallo. Or the speedway. What is that drifting cloud of blue smoke composed of? Tyres. Guess which part of your camera it ends up on.

5. Spots in the viewfinder of your DSLR.? If they are not seen on Live View - and most times they are not - they are not affecting your sensor view or images.

6. On-board sensor cleaning mechanism not working? See No.2 above - you have glued the gunk to your sensor with just ordinary living. Time for a professional wet-solution clean to get off what a tiny piezo-shake will not shift. Not a home-swab-it-with-something-from-the-internet clean which is closer to the Brillo pad that you might think.

7. When I used to rip bones out of people's head for a living, I was required to do it with clean hands. The hospitals were surprisingly insistent upon this, and went to the extent of demanding that I wash not just to the wrist, but all the way up to the elbow for several minutes with strong soaps. Even though I rarely plunged my arm into the patients up to the elbow. The principle was to get cleanliness in a wide radius around where it was needed.

So also with cameras. No good just cleaning the sensor if the rest of the device looks like an ash-pit. And certainly no point in doing it if the back of the lens is a source of continued contamination. Clients - wise clients - would do well to bring their lenses in for cleaning and pay the extra impost to have the entire camera cleaned - it will extend the period of usability no end if the contamination loading is reduced all around.

And a final thought - but not from Ernest this time. I had been plagued with white spots on my images taken of dancers on a dark stage - particularly when flash illumination was used. Wide angle shots were the worst. I blamed the sensor and the curtains and the dancers and cruel fate...until I looked at the bits of dust that had accumulated on the inside of the UV filter that was screwed onto the 18-200mm lens. No wonder I had white spots - an 18mm lens firing at f:11 can see quite a lot close up to itself and if the dust has bright illumination against dark ground... so I removed the filter for inside shots and the spots disappeared.
Heading Image: Either sensor dust or flak..

http://cameraelectronic.com.au/repair.html

The Boxer Rebellion - Or 55 Days And No Peeking

Well, you wanted to know what the manufacturers were doing with the packaging...well so do we...

It's not that bad. Nearly all the products that hit the shop are well-boxed. With the exception of some of the cruder cast-iron and bamboo studio lights and computer-controlled milling machines, nearly everything has been put into attractive boxes. The manufacturers all realise that the visual appeal of the box is part of their sales pitch,

Thus we have seen the use of recognisable colouring for Nikon, Canon, Sony, and Olympus. Gold-and-black, red-and-white, orange, and blue-and-white. You can see 'em on the warehouse shelf and know what you are seeing. You still need to read the endplate carefully to see what is in the box , but several of the makers have added a photo or graphic of the contest to aid you. And they are honest enough not to put parsley and garnishes on the lenses - there is no "serving suggestion" note under the image.

Fujifilm uses black boxes but thankfully marks each one with big grey letters and numbers to identify the contents. Sigma and Zeiss use white boxes and have to be more specific with the end plates to let us know what's inside. All good as long as the lettering is big enough. To their credit, the new Sigma boxes are easier to read than the old ones.

Olympus stepped sideways a little with the packaging of some of their mirror-less OM-D system cameras and lenses - they opted for black as well. We have to be careful shelving that they do not get confused with other black boxes. Elegant enough, but you need good lighting to see what you've got.

Big stuff - printers and monitors and backdrop rolls are always in brown cardboard cartons. Kudos to the design teams who clearly label the things on more than one face - stacking boxes sometimes means that you need to see what is in without having to remove and revolve - any time you do this there is muscle and trouble involved.

One final note for the box designers: We applaud you putting the clear markings on the outside of boxes - telling us what is inside and listing the contents is a very good idea - some clients are desperate to have a box that has never been opened and sealing it with vital information inside is fatal.

Put the serial number on the outside.

Tell us the filter size for the lens, the proper lens hood for the lens -if you do not provide one inside the box, and the proper battery for the camera in case the client wants to purchase a spare one.

Now, in the next packaging column, we look inside - to see who are good people and who are bad people. And you will be surprised...

Uncle Dick

When Power Is Never Enough Or Far Too Much...

A client called today with an interesting studio problem. She has been thinking about it, experimenting, and doing the science correctly, so I learned something.

She shoots in a small space. She wants to do work at a wide aperture - wider than f:4. Even with one single light from her 400 w/s set and her camera set to a very low ISO, she still has too much light for the subjects.

She's tried the temporary dodge of covering the front of a softbox with a grey chiffon, but this contributes an unwanted colour cast. Basically she just has too much light.

Tempting to trade it in and get lower power, but she may have larger premises one day or be taking photos of big groups out in big halls...so keeping the power is good too.

The best solution would seem to be the Lee company and their theatrical gel material. It comes in large rolls and can be had with either clear colours or clear grey or translucent finish to drop even more light.

I hope she tries it and can report results. There are a lot of people who might be in her predicament - if the Lee material works I'll report it on this blog.

Note: I shoot studio too, but sometimes need to have all the power I can get for tiny apertures. Different subjects, different vision.

The Camo Card And The Stealth Filter - Lens Coat

We had a training session on the Lens Coat range of goods today. I'm glad it was in the clinical surroundings of the laboratory - had it been held in the garden or bush, the products would have disappeared from view...

Lens Coat make a series of fitted covers for telephoto and zoom lenses - they can fit out lots of examples from the Nikon, Canon, Sigma, and Tamron range. We've had them on lenses in the rental department for some time and they form a pretty good way to reduce knocks on these long lenses. When they are in camouflage colours they help to disguise the outlines of the lenses when shooting in the bush.

It is sort of like putting Hello Kitty neoprene covers on mobile phones except if you are going to Africa with your 400mm telephoto lens you don't really want to say hello to some of the kitties they have over there - thus the blend-into-the-grass colours.

The real surprise was the extent to which Lens Coat have taken these camouflage fabrics for other products.

The first one is a wallet designed to hold CF memory cards. You can get a range from 6 to ten of the cards in them and there are models that fit SD cards as well. And several patterns of camouflage colour to blend into wherever in the world you will visit. The one for the Las Vegas Strip is pink.

The second product is a dirty white and grey camo for two filters - a little teardrop-shaped pouch that hangs on your belt and lets you tote a polariser and a lens cloth very conveniently. The colour combination is intended for Alberta in February or Toronto any time...

The Deserted World - Ten Stops Of Solitude

We all remember that famous picture of the Parisian boulevard taken at the start of the photographic era - wide, clean, deserted, with only a disembodied leg propped up on a box on one sidewalk...eery...

It wasn't an 1840's  zombie apocalypse - it was the extremely slow speed of the first photographic plates that required such a long exposure that every moving object failed to imprint upon it. The buildings and pavement did not move and so eventually made their mark.

 The detached leg belonged to a man who was getting his boots shined on the street. He had the foot on the bootblack's box long enough for it to be the first record of a person on a street. I daresay he went to his grave all those years ago without ever knowing his fame.

Nowadays it is also fashionable to stretch exposures to the breaking point - though modern digital cameras and film emulsions can not go down to the low sensitivity of those first metal plates. We need extremely dark filters to allow the technique to work.

The Lee company make them - so do the Kenko and the B+W companies. 8, 9, and 10-stop neutral density filters that you screw or slide onto the front of your lens to dramatically reduce the light falling on the sensor. If you camera will keep the shutter open for as long as you wish - and many of them will - you can experiment with cleaning the people out of the world.

You can't focus through these filters, and neither can your AF mechanism. Focus with the manual focus setting on your lens before you attach the filter.

You can't hold your camera steady for 20 minutes - zombie apocalypse aside - so put it on a good tripod. I use a Cullmann Concept.

You can't keep your finger on the button for that long either, so use a remote release with a locking mechanism or the "T" setting if you camera has one. Cable remote releases are most reliable. Mr. Hahnel is your friend.

Now this long exposure technique will soften water, clean out skies, and make trees into fantasy cotton wool balls. Waterfalls become veils of mist. Consult any amateur photography magazine of the last two years to see these effects...

And when all else fails, pick your time and place carefully....and you don't need a filter. Just put the camera on a tripod, make the panorama shots, and then hold hands and try to contact the living...

* Maylands on Saturday morning. They hope the water will stay there rather than seep back into the land they built those big houses on...

Doing The Twist - With Hoya and Chubby Checker

Okay, we don't actually have Chubby Checker but we do have Hoya.

And if you don't know who Chubby Checker, the Peppermint Lounge, or the Twist were, there are classes in retro conducted at TAFE - we suggest you enrol yourself...

Any rate, this post is as a result of seeing advertisements on the net that miss out on one of the basic fundamentals of the business - when you need to show the pack you need to show the pack. Many times the lighting on the packs has been arranged to illuminate it but obscure the surface detail - the product isn't seen effectively.

The glare of reflected light off the surface is what is doing it - and the answer to the problem is as simple as buying a good polarising filter and keeping it one the front of the lens.

We sell lots of polarisers to landscape photographers who wish to darken skies, see through water surfaces, or correct colours outside under a blue sky. They use up a stop of light but clean up the scene remarkably. What the studio shooters may not realise is that these same filters can do a good job inside under artificial illumination.

The pack shots of a portion of my lunch are a case in point. The illumination box being used is a simple Optex Studio-in-a-Box rig. We sell them for $ 249 and they are magic for small,quick advertising illustration. There are two curly fluorescent tubes sitting either side of the box that shine though adiffusers. They generate enough polarised light themselves as to obscure details on shiny surfaces. Look at the side and front views.

Then look and see what happened when I put a good Hoya HD polariser on the front of the Fujinon lens ( X-E2 and an 18-55 ). Cleaner colour and clearer detail. As it is a studio setup with a tripod the extra exposure time makes no difference.

In a studio? Try a polariser.

Seeing Clearly Through Clear Glass

Well, I seen it. The customer brought it in and told me about it and I was just about to dismiss it as nonsense...but I took a look and he was right. I seen it.

He was concerned that the lens on his Nikon camera was playing up - that or the focusing screen. He said that when he took pictures of a bright light source on a dark field that he got "ghost" images all around the image. I was initally going to dismiss it as either a figment of his imagination or lens flare but I took his camera over to the bright LED lights on the new Nikon cabinet and looked.

You could see flare alright - no way you can expect not to. But there on either side of the main image were two separate faint images of the light. They moved around when you waved the lens past the light. Ghosts, but perfectly formed ones... ooeeooeeooeeooee...

A different lens showed none of this effect - you could get flare but no perfect little ghosts.

The culprit turned out to be an old uncoated Focal UV filter on the first lens. Clean enough, but every time you screwed it on the ghosts came back.

We screwed on a multi-coated UV filter from Kenko - not an expensive one, either. Ghosts exorcised!

Moral of this is listen to the customer, and throw out your old cheapjohn film filters and get some modern ones. There may be a lot of your image that is being obscured by ghosting right now that you do not even realise.

The Dawn Of Beauty

Landscape photographers are romantics. They must be - they go a thousand kilometres to camp overnight in freezing bush so that they can get up at 3:30AM and hike through bush to a beachfront. Then they haul 500 Kg of equipments over wet rocks and stand there shivering while they are waiting for he sun to rise. They have $ 8200 sitting on a tripod in front of them on the slippery rocks and are waiting only an incautious moment to tip it into the sea.

Then they drive a thousand kilometres back home and spend week of nights in a dark room trying the HDR the result. This seems clear evidence of either romance or madness.

One of the symptoms of this madn... I mean one of the useful and perfectly normal items that every landscape photographer needs is the circular polariser filter. See the opening image for a typical polariser in operation.

The polariser makes blue skies bluer, green seas greener, and white bride's dresses whiter. Foliage loses the blue cast that Western Australian skies put into it and the colours seem much richer. They can also be used to see through water surfaces and glass shop windows to reveal the goods within. It makes everything look like it is straight from the pages of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.

Good? Yes. Bad? Yes. WHAT?

Well, consider - if you want to see bluer skies and greener seas and fluffier clouds, all very well - you can produce this effect and good luck to you. It is charming but fraudulent. If you wish to represent what your eye actually sees in a scene, consider that your eye is seeing the light scatter anyway - remove it and you are interpreting rather than representing.

Morals aside, if you want to get the full effect of the polariser remember that it works most effectively at 90º from the sun. If you try to put one onto a lens that has too wide an angle of view it will work in one portion of the scene differently from another portion. You may be better in these cases to seek your colour enhancement by computer means further down the track.

Please note that the polariser filter and polarising sheets may be a real boon in art copy and scientific work - letting us see what the light scatter spoils. We are seeking science, not art. And generally don't have to stand on wet rocks to get it.

Under The Radar At A Wedding With Lightsphere

Please note the dome in the heading photograph. This is not the targeting guidance system for an Atlas E missile - though they are nice as well. It is a Gary Fong Lightsphere - in this case one of the collapsible ones. Beside it is a packet of gel filters made by Honl. They are the absolute bullet for event and wedding photographers.

Those of you who reel back in horror at the thought of a flash at a wedding - like M. Cartier-Bresson - are welcome to move further down the car. By all means ramp your ISO up and clap a 2.8 zoom to the front of your DSLR and hover over there in the shadows. I'm sure your photographs will be all the better for your artistic decision. I should de-saturate a few of them and tilt a horizon to provide variety. Remember to browse the salad bar at the reception...

I shall be running around in the meantime popping up out of prepared positions to ambush the bride with my camera and the flash attached. That'll be me down there at the front of the aisle as they exchange vows - look for the balding head and the occasional electrical discharge. Note that I will have the Fong Lightsphere firmly attached ( and it does attach firmly ) to my DSLR and a short zoom on the front. And I will be elbowing interlopers out of the way.

If the wedding is to be held in the warmth of a tungsten-lit church I will push one of the amber Honl filter gels down the throat of the Lightsphere to match the prevailing light. Likewise I will push in a slightly weaker amber if I am filling an outdoor shoot in the last hour of the day. My flash will be about the same as the sun then and the subsequent computer work will be so much easier.

If, horror of horrors, the wedding is in a filling station lit only by flickering fluorescent bulbs and the demonic eyes of the guests, I will substitute one of the green filters. Don't laugh - I once covered a wedding where the groom chased the bride through a burial ground with an axe. Nice colours. Nice axe.

The Lightsphere softens and spreads the flash so that there is s pretty good agreement between the illumination on the main subject and the stuff that filters through to the background. Of course you can force the flash to put out more or less light with the controls on the back - all flashes can do this to some extent - and you can force the light to spot the subject by your choice of positioning and distance, but generally you can set a ratio and then just chase the bride at will.

The amazing part of it is that even if you think that your flashes are disruptive, it is unlikely the happy couple will notice. I spoke with the bride from two weeks ago and she did not realise I was working as much as I was until she saw the video from another guest. Thats under the radar. Mind you, if I wanted to promote the brand I would have to have a sign on the back of my shirt advertising the studio to the wedding guests.