On thinking about discussion of my landscapes, it strikes me that the heart
of the matter (problem, if there is one) lies with the inability of OM digital
to
cope with a wide range of illumination.
Thinks of Ansel Adams who pioneered and rationalised thought on this
topic. Hence his Zone System. Zone 10??
Allied with this is the clever or not so clever computer programming inside
the E-3 and E-510. The E-1 is a camera I relate to more; pity Olympus
didn't offer an option for 10+ megapixels inside the E-1 body ...
Take for example, Nathan, CH Ling, Jim Nichols, Marc, and often Wayne
Harridge; their photos frequently exclude sky. They are of concrete, tarseal,
buildings, people, indoors, closeup flowers. There is not a wide range of
illumination where the viewer might expect good detail in all parts - dark and
light.
And their images have good exposure in part (I suggest) because there is
no or little sky.
Ansel Adams managed this with B&W which generally has far greater
latitude than digital or colour transparency, but even he developed a system
to get the most out of the range..
And incidentally, the wider range that colour print film copes with is the main
reason I shoot so much print film rather than transparency film.
For my sins and preference, I shoot mainly landscape; though my g/f prefers
my flower shots and a set I took of male-female flowers (see this lot on
facebook)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9275&id=1027725807&l=cc7871c
adf
so for landscapes I have to do better with managing the cameras which
have the most pixies.
Among the options I am considering currently, I include: (a) the Ambico
system of graduated filters to darken the sky. I have found all the filters and
holders but can't find the shade box. There are some on eBay. This will
lessen the "range of illumination" emanating from the bright sky problem.
(b) Using something like the OM4 to set exposure as I already do for my
manual film cameras - if I have an interesting scene where I will want to try a
range of compositions (and I know that the E-3 will alter the exposure for
every composition even though the illumination of the scene has not
changed one iota), I will want to set one reliable combination of speed and
aperture on manual and leave that constant through the set of shots.
(c) avoid including sky - but there are many times when I might want to
have 80% sky but still require to see detail on the ground.
(d) and having stabilised exposure, I also have to simultaneously find a way
to cause the camera to focus on a spot I decide upon - be it near or far -
while I move the frame to get the composition I want. Easy with film - but
digital ?
As an aside, if you wondered why I spent two hours photographing Mt Cook
et al; here's a shot in the exact same area, under very different weather
conditions. A good view is NOT guaranteed.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=186819&l=be8beb2d85&id=10277
25807
I guess I am feeling grumpy this morning about several sets of issues where
computers are at the core; this Windows machine- the other day it said I had
just 900MB free - and now it has 3.3 Gb free. What has it deleted??
Digital cameras and their computer management, and last but not least, I
have just taken my 4x4 to hospital because at least in part one or more of its
durned computers is/are misbehaving - AGAIN !! I bought that thing to
reliably take me to where the scenes are. Rant over.
Brian Swale.
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