inspiration: david duchemin -- a mentor i never had

Painting with Camera

1/20 sec @ f/32, Nikon D700, 105mm

"Perfection is overrated, and technique without passion is like vision without a voice, it rarely moves the heart." -- David duChemin.

These words are sweeter than the sound of the mockingbird.

are we having fun yet?

 wheee!!

1/200 sec @ f/2.8, Nikon D700, 28mm

Thought I'd post some new work for a change. All this talk on technique, gear, and technology is pointless if you're not having fun. Yep, having fun is a requirement, 'cause if you're not having fun, why bother?

sunny 16

Cumulus Clouds 

1/200 sec @ f/16, ISO 200, Nikon D700, 28mm

When I was 14, my best friend's dad taught us how to use the camera. I don't remember exactly, but from what I recall, he told us to set the aperture to f/11 or f/16 on a sunny day, f/8 on a hazy day, f/5.6 on a cloudy day, and f/4 when it's foggy. I really never asked why.

Then somewhere along the way I read about the "Sunny-16" rule of thumb for exposure, which goes something like this...

      On a sunny day, set your f/stop to 16, and shutter speed to the inverse of your ISO.

For example, if the ISO is set to 200, set your shutter speed to 1/200s, and aperture to f/16. That would produce a good ball-park exposure. And in film (well, negative film anyway) days, ball-park was good enough.

And leaving the ISO and shutter speed where they are, on a hazy day you'd open up a little bit to f/8 to let in more light. Still more on a cloudy day to f/5.6. And so on. Kinda makes sense huh.

Try this: on sunny day, set your camera's aperture to f/16, and point the camera to the blue sky, and see if it suggests a shutter speed that's (roughly) the same number as your ISO setting. Worked for the clouds pic above!

bits and pieces

"256" on my abacus

Today's special is a 3-course dinner. You have two choices for appetizer, two choices for entree, and two choices for dessert. How many different combinations can you get?

2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

Now if we have 8-bits to represent different shades of gray, how many of them can we have? Well, each bit can either be 1 or 0, so two choices for each bit.

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 256.

24-bit color? No problem. 8 bits for the Red Channel, 8 bits for the Green Channel, and 8 bits for the Blue Channel. Quick, whip out that abacus. 16,777,216 colors. Man, that's a lot of colors. Not enough to represent all the colors in the world. Nope.

When you see 32-bit color, there's usually 8 bits dedicated to the Alpha channel to control transparency or opacity, so you can do fancy layer stuff in Photoshop, for example.

What about CMYK? That's for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, for laying down ink on paper. That's another discussion.

Sometimes instead of using 8 bits per channel, we could have 16-bits for each color channel in the super-duper modes.  For example, when you shoot RAW, the camera may use 10 or 12 bits to record each channel. Adobe Camera Raw, for example, in Lightroom or Photoshop uses 16 bits per channel for processing. Your monitors can't display all those colors, but after the fancy adjustments, the image is converted back to 8-bits per channel so you can see the result on the screen.

How do they convert color images to grayscale or black-and-white? Fancy math. For example, you can take 30% of the red, 59% of the green, and 11% of the blue, stir well and get a standard luminance value for the gray image. When you convert the mode from RGB to Grayscale in Photoshop or GIMP, this is probably what's done behind the scene. And arguably one of the worst in terms of contrast. There are literally infinite number of ways of black-n-white conversion, but the idea is the same, and you can map different RGB colors to different shades of gray. If you ever play with Grayscale Mix sliders in Lightroom or Camera Raw, this is what happens. (Incidentally, in RGB mode, when the three values are the same, you'll get a shade of gray.)

That, boys and girls, is some of the bits and pieces.

auto pilot

Portland, 2010

Nikon FE, 35mm, expired Kodak T-Max 100 film

Every morning as I get in the car this is what I go through

• Unlock door
• Open door
• Place right foot inside car
• Sit down in the driver seat
• Bring left foot in
• Close door
• Place key in ignition
• Turn key past 2 clicks until engine starts
• Reach over left shoulder for the seat belt
• ...

You get the point. I suspect if you drive regularly this is rather automatic. You probably put the car in Park, turn off the engine, unbuckle and remove the key in one fell swoop. Now, is it possible to become as proficient with your camera gear and techniques?