roger krueger

I've had at least one situation where I'm pretty sure a filter would've broken and caused damage--I took a knee from a low-

flying stage-diver to the front element of my 24/1.4, so hard I got a bloody nose and a fat lip from camera hitting me. The

soft denim didn't scrach the coating at all.

Modern coating is a LOT tougher than people realize, I took a tuning peg off a guitar with the front element of my Leica 19,

but the mark on the lens that initally scared me was in fact paint transferred from the guitar. It took some effort, but it did

come off cleanly.

A lot of urban legends about cleaning and protection are from 50 years ago--early coatings were very different, and very easy

to scratch. Although I suppose kit zoom coating probably isn't up to the level of Leica coating.

A few other contenders:

Shooting the Crowd at Coconut's in Capistrano, I'm getting pretty close to the rythym guitarist with my 19/2.8, shooting away

from my eye to get a better angle. I get hit hard from behind and do a face plant on the stage (no barricade venue). I feel the

camera hit something as I go down. Once the people get off me and I can get back up I see the guitarist standing there mad

as hell. It takes me a moment to realize he only has 5 tuning pegs left. For a minute I thought I was going to get my ass

kicked. Instead he just packs up in the middle of the song and walks out the door. Then the really scary part: A big mark in

the coating of my precious Leica 19. But after some terrified polishing with my t-shirt it all came out, apparently it was paint

transfer from the guitar. Yup, Leica coating is tougher than guitar paint, who'd have guessed.

Shooting the Exploited at the Jumping Turtle in San Marcos, I had some twit try to stage dive over me. Unless your an

Olympian, ain't no way you're clearing the front row coming off a 2-foot stage. His knee caught my 24 dead on. Luckily the

soft denim didn't scratch at all, this is the rare situation where a UV filter probably would've made things worse. I didn't fare

so well, the camera slammed into my face hard enough to give me a bloody nose and fat lip. It's kinda gross frantically

checking your lens for scratches and dripping blood on it.

Same show, during the opener, lessons learned :1) If there's one guy between you and an active mosh pit, and he's got a full

pitcher of beer, it's time to be somewhere else. 2) Weather-sealing is a really good thing 3) But the cute little rubber port

covers aren't worth squat if you're too stupid to put them back in place.

I was at a Cadillac Tramps show at the Galaxy Theater (R.I.P.) in Santa Ana. I was shooting from the crowd after my three

songs in front of the barricade were up. At the start of the encore the singer reaches out to me. I figure he just wants to

shake hands. Instead, he grabs my wrist and pulls. Seems he wants me to shoot the encore from in front of the

barricade.

Taking full leave of my senses, I jump up to go over. Some helpful soul grabs my feet and lifts. Security catches my

shoulders at the ergonomically-correct-for-them waist level. But "helpful" guy just keeps lifting my legs.

So I'm completely upside down, flailing around with a 1dsII+50 in my hand, praying the 24/1.4 and 135/2 in my shorts

pockets stay put.

After what seemed like a week "helpful" guy finally lets go, I get back to my feet, security confers and decides if it's what

the singer wants it's O.K. by them. I look through the finder and everything's blurry. Damn. But I crank the diopter all the way

over and can shoot the rest of the set. Then I realize the whole world's blurry, not just my finder, my glasses are gone. After

some fear over the idea of driving 90 miles home with uncorrected 20/400 vision someone turns up my glasses, miraculously

intact.

In the end the only damage was a divot in the prism, I must've whacked it against the metal barricade while I was flailing upsode down.

I've reread twice and haven't the faintest clue who you think was rude to you. Did the rude post already get zapped by a

mod, or does someone have a really thin skin?

It's not the lack dof markings that are the problem per se, it's the lack of useful distance marking that really make life tough.

But yeah, there are a ton of old manual focus lenses out there that have great markings. I bought my Leica 19/2.8 for the

image quality, but it turned out what I actually liked the most was the great distance/dof scale.

You'd be amazed how good you can get at guessing distances after a while, especially with the DOF of a wide. I've hip-shot my

24/1.4 wide open scale focused and gotten ~30% in focus, with decent lighting/reasonable apertures you should be able to

do a lot better.

Sneaky photography with strangers is one thing, but it's not really something you want to do to people you're around all the

time. One shot you can almost always get away with done right, but targeting the same people over and over someone's

going to catch on sooner or later. Having people you'll never see again thinking you're creepy or a jerk is trivial, having

people you need to continue interacting with feel this way about you is massively bad news.

If you do end up going sneaky, get a remote release, or a camera with a built-in intervalometer (like Ricoh P&Ss). The finger

on the button is the deadest giveaway.

Canon parts will sell you a new plastic cover for $5 or so.

And it can't be an IR filter, the VISIBLE focus assist light has to go through it too!

Is there any special reason they'd want to?

I mean, yeah, if you're Katie Holmes' cousin and have Suri pics, sure, you need to scan them yourself. And you might want

to think twice if it's home porn.

But beyond that, I can't see what their motivation would be, it's at the very least their job if they get caught. If Bauer-Griffin is

giving them $50k for Suri pics it's worth the consequences, for more ordinary stuff it isn't.

I've never run a photo film processor, but when I was running an imagesetter and its roller film processor 15 years ago, yeah,

crap building up on the rollers was an ongoing battle. I'd be more inclined to think dev. and fix chems coming out of solution

than silver, but that detail isn't terribly important.

Just because the Nikon has a 25,000 setting doesn't mean it does any better than--or even as well as--the Canons do

underexposed this far (via exposure compensation). It just has seriously aggressive noise reduction in-camera, a job which

can be done far, far better in post.

<br><br>

AF assist beams are absolutely useless with fast-moving performers. They also add enough delay it's a lot harder to wait and nail the perfect

moment/expression. And they disable AI Servo mode. Besides, about the third time your AF assist pattern shows up in the shot of the guy

next to you, you get yelled at.

<br><br>

Not sure why you think the 5d won't AF as well in low light, the one time I rented one it had less trouble than my 1dsII. The 1dII's AF

system as pretty much the same as my 1dsII's so my money would be on the 5d doing better. Although having fewer AF

points in the 5d is limiting it's not the end of the world.

<br><br>

If you're doing small clubs I'd definitely go with something full-frame, there aren't good fast wide primes for crop cameras.

The 24/1.4 on FF is absolutely awesome for this kind of shooting; there's no equivalent. Nikon's nearest is the 28/1.4, for crops there's

nothing even close.

<br><br>

If you can wait 2-3 month there keep being rumors about a 5dII/3d/whatever coming out. The 5d is by far Canon's oldest

current model, it's due. The noise improvements of the 1dIII/1dsIII brought to a lower-density FF sensor would be really nice

for this sort of work.

<br><br>

<a href="http://www.punktures.com">

<img src="http://www.punktures.com/images/20071012PansyDivisionlr/AW4C8344.jpg"><br></a>

Chris Freeman of Pansy Division, 1dsII, 24/1/4

<br><br>

Roger Krueger<br>

<a href="http://www.punktures.com">www.punktures.com</a>

Copyright has nothing to do with it, what you're dealing with is misappropriation, the commercial use of someone's identity.

Really, if you're going to all this effort, I'm stunned you haven't just gone to a decent lawyer specializing in this field. This is

complicated stuff that varies wildly between countries and even beween states, and the consequences of getting it wrong

can be horrific.

My U.S. layman's opinion on this is that "nobodies" in an image with folks as famous as the Beatles would count as

incidental use, and be safe. The book being fiction could make a difference in some scenarios, but it's not decisive in and of

itself. But I have no clue how other countries would handle it.

Are you putting yourself in legal jeopardy? Sure. People sue for the silliest things, especially if they think they're going after

deep pockets. You can be dead right, win the case, and still end up selling your house to pay your lawyer.

As often as they need it. When I'm shooting punk shows, probably 99% of the time.

Not cropping worked for Cartier-Bresson? Hey, good for him. Doesn't make it gospel. It's especially funny to hear people

spouting this mantra when they don't even understand why he didnt crop. (And, for the record, at least one famous image of

his IS cropped.)

Although if you ever get big enough to have a solo show, it is a cleaner presentation to have everything the same aspect

ratio rather than a mish-mash.

But the "I don't crop--neither should anybody else" thing does serve a useful purpose--it's nearly 100% accurate at pointing

out pretentious twits who wouldn't know a good photograph if it was framed in concrete and dropped on their heads.

What discipline you impose on yourself is your business. But trying to ram it down the throats of others is just being a jerk.

I've found a week loses you about a half stop in the very faintest shadows. But it doesn't really matter, this is detail you'd

never come close to seeing in normal processing anyway.

If, however, you're a film-abuser (Hi, my name is Roger, and I'm a film abuser.) trying to wring EI 12,800 out of some hapless

roll of TMZ, yeah, it matters.

Regarding theft, an important precaution is to never put the camera in the trunk after you've parked. Someone sees you do

it, and you're an instant target. But if they have no reason to believe there's anything interesting in there you've got a lot

better chance. If that means you stop a few miles from your destination to do the move, so be it.

And, assuming your family will fit, get a sedan with a real trunk, not an SUV or a minivan.

The law is only as good as your ability to get it enforced, and sometimes that's not

possible without spending a lot of money.

Big photographer wins like Nussenzweig v. diCorcia, Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame v.

Gentile and Mattel v. Forsythe all involved legal fees far, far beyond the average or

even modestly prosperous person's budget.

Jeff's right, California's "annoy or molest" law is incredibly vague. In at least one case it

was used successfully to prosecute a man following boys around a waterpark and

photographing them. In another case public photos of girls who didn't know they were being

photographed (but a guard noticed) were deemed not to violate the statute because you

can't annoy someone if they aren't aware of you.

So you've got a couple of outlying cases, but nothing coming anywhere near the

circumstances of actual street photography. I don't find the law per se so scary, I have

a perhaps-unjustified faith that a genuine street photographer wouldn't get convicted.

But the police are generally able to read laws broadly in determining what consitutes

"probable cause" to arrest. As the saying goes "You can beat the rap, but you can't

beat the ride". And as Lewis Vogel found out in Texas a few years ago, you can't beat

having your face sprayed all over the weekend news as a pedophile before the D.A.

comes in Monday morning and stops just short of calling the arresting officer crazy,

So fix it!

I shoot rough punk shows, I've killed the AF in mine twice, $90 and it's good as new.

Which is a heck of a lot cheaper than killing the AF in my 135/2 ($180) or 24/1.4 ($250)

was.

I've never had a band complain about flash either. BUT I shoot punk, and I think Jeff

shoots some rougher punk and metal shows too. Start banging away with a flash at

some shoegazer show, or guy-on-a-stool-with-an-acoustic, and yeah, you'll be a royal

pain in the ass.

<br><br>

I generally prefer venue lighting when it's usable, but a lot of times it just plain isn't.

I don't much care for direct on-camera flash, except for fairly subtle fill; it looks a lot

nicer if you bounce it, or use an off-camera cord. If you absolutely must use on-camera

flash it usually works better in b&w.

<br><br>

If you're doing posed promo shots, you first need to first think through what you want,

and only then figure out the equipment to get there. Promo shots seem to run the

gamut from intentionally ugly noonday sun to serious pack-and-multiple-head pro

lighting. A cheapo flash or two and the means to trigger them remotely (probably a radio

slave, but get an off-camera cord too) is a better use of money than a nice full-TTL

flash.

<br><br>

My preference is always wider and closer, a 100/2.0 is not remotely what I'd want for a

second fast lens, especially on a crop body. In a small venue all it's going to be good

for is headshots, and there a real limit to how many of those can be interesting per

show. If you've got the stomach for Sigma roulette the 20/1.8 or 18-50/2.8 might be a

place to start.

<br><br>

<a href=" title="Germs Pat

Smear gets his guitar licked"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3027/

2567444232_9cf0eaf632_b.jpg" width="639" height="426" alt="Germs Pat Smear gets

his guitar licked" /></a>

<br><br>

Pat Smear's guitar takes a lickin' (Germs show).

<br><br>

FF, 19/2.8, f8, scale focused, Sunpak 322 on a PC cord, 1/2 power, gelled 1/2 CTO

from a Roscoe sample book (free from a theatrical supply house, swatches are just the

right size to tape over a flash head), diffused with a Dilbert desk calendar page.

Scale focus + flash was the only reason I got this one. I saw it happening, and was just

barely able to thrust my camera in the right direction and fire before it was over a half-

second later. No way I'd have got this futzing around trying to get my AF to lock. Pretty

lucky composition (this isn't cropped) for an away-from-the-eye Hail Mary.

Ben: Downsampling may make an image pixel-for-pixel sharper, but it destroys fine

detail.

<br><br>

Daniel--I hadn't seen the Charles Cramer article, yeah, that appears to be using a lot

more resolution. Not sure why he couldn't have made the images the same size on

screen, though. Was the 4x5 composed that much looser? And he doesn't say what he

scanned at, only what he interpolated to. Probably an insignificant omission, but if MR

made the same omssion I'd be suspicious.

<br><br>

But the Luminous Landscape test I was referring to:--<a href="http://www.luminous-

landscape.com/essays/back-testing.shtml">Measuring Megabytes</a>

<br><br>

has this to say about how they arrived at final sizes:

<br><br>

<i>Comparing different sized images:

All captures were made such that the 15.5 inches wide "goal posts" in the test scene

approximately filled the width of the frame, but to make comparisons I still had to

compensate for differences in image size and offset. To accomplish this I started by

setting Photoshop's image interpolation preferences to bicubic. Then I chose the

cropping tool and set the crop size to 8000 x 6000 pixels at 360 dpi. Then for each

developed capture I stretched the crop width to just touch the "goal posts" on the left

and right. After setting the crop width, I then centered the crop on the color checker

cross bar. After performing the crop I dragged each of the nine images into a new layer

of a Photoshop comparison document. </i>

<br><br>

So my memory was slightly faulty, they went to 48mp, not 39mp, but that's still

well under 2000ppi on the 4x5 film, easily far enough from preserving all the detail to

count as sabotage in my book. And this one does look like it was written by

Reichmann, not Cramer.

Looks like the classic bad left turn in front of a bike.

So how did it turn out? Must've hit pretty hard to bend the truck's wheel like that. I

really hope some "helpful" person didn't pull a helmet off a live victim without evaluating

for neck injuries first.

The only online test I've seen was at Luminous Landscape, and he engaged in massive

sabotage by downsampling the LF scan to the 39mp pixel count. So they came out

pretty much the same. Well duh!

So much depends on your workflow I'll join in with those saying to do your own tests. I

know I can blow the doors off my 1dsII with my 6x9, 4x5 should have an even larger

advantage over 39mp. Wish I had a 39mp to test...

But there are a lot more ways to screw up film, especially in scanning. It's also harder

to get the post right--you have to be more careful sharpening due to grain, even more

so if an insufficient-res scan has aliased the grain to be bigger than it really is. So,

YMMV.

In general, digital's strength is glassy, noiseless smoothness, big film excels at

resolving high-frequency detail.

Canon RAW files have a low-res JPG embedded in them that's used for camera-back

display. This greatly limits your ability to zoom in meaningfully. But if you shoot RAW +

L it uses the L JPG for playback and you can check for critical sharpness right after

shooting.

Sure the diameter of the front element is related to the speed of the lens--all things

being equal, the bigger your aperture, the bigger a front element you need.

That said, all things are seldom equal. One huge factor is how far the front element is

from the aperture. A simpler, more compact design can use a smaller front element

because it's closer to the aperture.

Another factor is that there are no lenses that I know of that have a big enough front

element. None, zero, zilch. So they have some vignetting wide open. How much

vignetting the manufacturer was willing to tolerate to lower costs plays a very large role

in how big the front element is.

Re: primes, a huge benefit for shooting with backlighting or in-scene light sources is

that flare and veiling glare are (assuming equal coating quality) mostly a function of the

number of air-glass surfaces. So a 7-element/5-group 50 prime is going to do a lot

better than some 20-element/16-group monster zoom.

(Elements refers to the number of pieces of glass. But if they're cemented together so

there's no air--and thus no air-glass surface--between them, they're counted as 1 group

no matter how many pieces of glass.)

If you need to kill the starburst and have decent DOF, try combining two frames--one

stopped down, one wide open.

Of course, on a huge range zoom like that you're probably not going to have great

quality wide open. You may not even have a round aperture wide open.

This is one of the reasons I love the dirt-slow 50/6.3 on my Mamiya Universal--I can

shoot wide open to kill the stars and still have decent DOF and good image quality.

And lose the UV filter. You seem to have mostly gotten away with it in the image

posted, but in general any filter is going to degrade performance, much more so with

bright in-scene light sources.

The protection thing is insanely overrated anyway. In three years of shooting violent

punk shows I have one small scratch that still adds less flare than a filter. If people

aren't trying to knock you down while you're shooting you should do even better.

Almost all discussion of diffraction limited resolution is about the center of the frame,

and the exact plane of focus. This can be very misleading,

The sharpest stop--where aberrations and diffraction are best balanced--is usually

different at different points of the frame. For most wides, you may lose center

resolution going from f11 to f16, but you're probably still picking up resolution in the

corners.

There's also DOF--even if everything is well within the "acceptable 8x10 CoC" DOF.

Something at the edge of f8 DOF will be much sharper at f16 than f11, even though

things at the plane of focus lost a little to diffraction.

So there are absolutely times when f16 or even f22 is the right choice, but f22 all the

time seems pretty extreme.

<center><a href=" title="DI at

the Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana,CA by Roger Krueger"><img align="center"

src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/117/306741251_268a4d9727.jpg" width="334"

height="500" alt="DI at the Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana,CA" /></a><br>

Casey Royer and Joey Tater of D.I. (using CH3's drums due to time constraints). </

center>

<a href=" title="Franki Doll of

Franki's Broken Toys"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2245/

2366695934_bb19af001d.jpg" width="333" height="500" alt="Franki Doll of Franki's

Broken Toys" /></a><br> Franki Doll of Franki's Broken Toys