roger krueger

The problem with the 2 dollar flashlight is getting it turned on and off at the right

moments, especially avoiding metering it. Not insurmountable I suppose, but a collossal

PITA.

Laser pointers have the same issues, plus there are some places (including San Diego,

where I live) where it's a misdemeanor to point a laser pointer at a person without their

permission.

Of course if there are people, focus assist lights absolutely give you away.

The stealth solution for AF-in-the-dark is active autofocus, using infrared. Sadly, no one

has built a digital with this yet, but several film premium compacts have it: the Konica

Hexar, Nikon 28ti/35ti, Contax G system, the Fuji AF 645 "compacts" (and I'm sure several

I've forgotten).

It's a trade off--the 3200 will have more information in the shadows, but it'll have less

resolution and worse grain.

I like TMY at +2 a lot more than Tri-X or TMZ at 1600. But you absolutely need to use a

compensating developer like Diafine, Microphen, or my favorite, stand development in

dilute Xtol. TMY at +2 in a standard developer is very contrasty, doubly so if you try to

scan it, TMY, especially pushed in standard developers, is the all-time champ at

generating high-density detail that you can see on the light table but that most scanners

can't read.

Re; drums--Just keep watching ebay. I got a Screen 1045ai on ebay for a little over $2000

(+300 shipping and a $500 service call because the idiot didn't secure the head from

moving during shipping) a couple of years ago and I've been very happy with it.

But do your research, there are some real gems amongst old scanners, but there are some

real clunkers too. Especially, if you've got any negs or exposure-challenged trannies, stay

clear of anything with 8-bit internals. And be very sure you get software--most of these

beast need proprietary software without which they're paperweights.

Be sure though, that it's what you want. The scans are beautiful (once you get the hang of

wet mounting) but it's not nearly as simple as firing up the Epson and hitting "Scan".

No colored lights? Wow, that's scary. Do they actually have stage lighting, or is this one of

those Masonic Hall couple-of-fluorescents-left-on-over-the-crowd clusterfks? I don't

think I've ever seen real stage lighting that wasn't gelled.

<br><br>

If there's anything remotely interesting going on with the stage lighting, capture as much

of it as you can. This probably means the 50 near wide open, even 2.8 zooms aren't very

useful for this in really dark places, anything slower and you're pretty much flash-only.

<br><br>

If the lights are colored, 95% chance they'll be red. To mix flash with this and have it look

halfway natural gel it warm. Doesn't have to match, or even be close, it just has to be a

little warmer than the glaring dead neutral of a bare flash.

<br><br>

Practice changing lenses cleanly without setting anything down. You need to have your act

together on this if you're changing in a violent crowd.

<br><br>

If it's going to get rough, try to carry everything in big baggy pockets, bags can end up a

real liability if you're being knocked around.

<br><br>

Micstands are your sworn enemy. Try to manuever so they're not cutting in front of your

subject. That usually means shooting from dead in front of someone at a mic is a big "no".

<br><br>

Make sure you're on the same page with the band about what kind of images they want--

crisp or shutter-drag? head shots, 3/4, full length, or whole-band? This drives what other

glass you might want. I personally love fast and wide, but that's not very possible on a

crop body, maybe the Sigma 20/1.8 IF you can find a good one. Although, as much as I

like the perspecive of sticking something wide right in someone's face, if you're using

direct flash it can make the lighting falloff really ugly--burnt faces and black backgrounds.

<br><br>

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

091506ch3lr/BW1C6420.jpg"></a><br>

Mike Magrann of CH3, 24/1.4 on FF, f2.0, 1/100, a stop or two of intentional

underexposure at ISO 1600. A lot of post, including Neat Image, to get it cleaned up and

presentable

It'll work fine with a compensating developer, something like Diafine, Microphen or stand

in dilute Xtol. With a "straight" developer the 800s are going to be pretty blocked up.

I'm still mystified by all the fuss over this.

This is far more reasonable than the "commercial intent" laws common here in southern

California. Also much more reasonable than the "officer's discretion" policy New York had

previously, which led to the NYCLU pushing them to draw up this very rule that they're

now complaining about.

It's also much better than the San Diego law that makes it an infraction to place ANY

personal property on the sidewalk other than to load/unload a vehicle. It was enacted as

part of the drive to criminalize homelessness, but it clearly completely outlaws sidewalk

tripod use as well. (Not that many/any officers seem to be making that connection, but

counting on continued lax enforcement of a law is always a bad move, even if it is only a

$20 fine.)

You need to clip the red shadow levels really hard in Photoshop. Use the "Image-

Adjustments-Levels" Look at the individual color channels, especially red. None of the

colors should have blank space on the left side of the histogram. For really red lighting

that won't kill the general color cast--nothing will--but it will at least give you solid

blacks that are black.

If the lighting is completely monochrome red you have two choices--leave it red, or go to

b&w. You have no color information in your file, so it's just not possible to get a neutral

color image. Yeah, I've seen some people's attempts at desaturating solid red images to

neutral color, and I'd claw my eyes out with a fork before doing that.

I've never seen the problem with red shots anyway. It's a rock concert, not socialite

engagement photos. Neutral color is boring and unnatural in this setting.

The real problem with red light is that it fools your meter--the meter averages the colors

together, and gives you an exposure that leaves blue and green blank, but red blown.

Either through exposure compensation or just manual exposure + checking the histogram

after every shot you want to get a correctly exposed red channel. Blue and green will be

more-or-less blank, but that's life.

I can't imagine anyone shooting 1/5000 under stage lighting. Even 1/500 at 1600 is tough

at most venues.

I had a Polaroid Sprintscan 120 and hated it. Horrid positioning error issues, channels

went in and out of alignment. And this was after I returned 2 of them becuase they were

even worse. Plus it died for good a few weeks out of warranty.

So I spent $2200 on a used Screen 1045ai drum scanner. Best choice I ever made (except

the part about getting screamed at by my wife. It's, um, pretty big.)

For color you'll probably be close enough to happy with the Nikon, but if you've got dense

traditional b&w negs you'll have problems with premature blowouts.

My biggest reason for FF is the 24/1.4. I shoot punk rock in dark clubs and it's absolutely

perfect for that. Nothing remotely that fast and wide for crop formats.

Somebody sorted through a bunch of banal images and found a few real winners--nothing

new there. Seems to me mostly what separates boring street from good street is editing.

Is "1964" a great book because Garry got a winner every time, or because Trudy Wilner-

Stack is a great editor? I mean, I love Winogrand, but my money's on her.

"Art" is about creating something awesome that wasn't there before. If your raw material is

a bunch of random Google shots, so be it.

Yeah, an 80a is a lot better solution than camera WB. Even an 80c will help quite a bit, and

only cost you 1 stop of exposure vs. 2.

Ellis: All a filter like an 80a does is correct the light back to ratios of red/green/blue it

would have in a daylit scene. So there's zero chance it will "throw off the calculations of

the Bayer Matrix color interpolation algorithm to create full color values for each

processed".

And I really have a hard time figuring out how light that's been restored

daylight balance counts as "garbage in".

Q.G. de Bakker: No, you're the one who has it backwards.

<br><br>

There's a rather thorough photonet discussion at:

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003RQo">Callier

Effect</a>

<br><br>

Mark Liddell: 4000 dpi isn't really enough for very fine grained films. You're usually not

losing a huge amount of image detail (4000dpi can pull about 55 lp/mm out of a neg with

65 lp/mm or more, I've found this consistent across several scanners), but because the

grain is far finer than the pixel resolution it ends up being aliased and looks funky. If

there's indiscriminate sharpening in your workflow this aliased grain can get really ugly

really fast.

The Nikon's collimated LED light source produces more "Callier effect" and thus

exaggerates highlight density with silver-bearing negs. Compared to enlargers it's more

like a point-source enlarger than either a diffuser or condenser.

The only way it's inferior is in its highlight handling. For "normal" negs it's trivial, but

dense highlights blow earlier than they really do on the the film. This is especially an issue

for films like TMX and TMY that can retain highlight detail into extremely high density

ranges.

The older Mamiya Universal and Super 23 offer the framing you want for 100, 150 and

250. But they're completely manual cameras, no meter, wind and cock separately, no

double-

exposure prevention, etc.

It's a 6x9 system (although the 6x7 back is considerably more common), and for low light

they've got a really nice 100/2.8 Planar-clone. (but don't confuse it with their mediocre

100/3.5 Tessar). The massive rangefinder base length makes it pretty easy to focus too.

Oh, and they're all-metal, built like tanks. You drop one on your foot you worry about your

foot, not the camera.

Generally minimum shutter speeds on color film are only about color balance--below that

speed the color response may be out-of-specification. If you're shooting skin tones or

color-critical product shots this might be a big deal. But for what you're doing it's a non-

issue.

I've shot a variety of C-41 films way beyond their minimum spec with no trouble (other

than reciprocity of course).

Once you're past the provided reciprocity corrections a good rough rule is that one stop =

3x exposure, not 2x.

JC is right, but that's tough with modern glass--getting at the aperture is no longer just a

matter of unscrewing the front (or rear) group like you can on LF and some MF lenses. A

stop in the wrong place (in front of the lens) may help a little with the spikes, but it'll give

you massive vignetting too.

One of the reasons I love my old Mamiya 50/6.3--I can shoot it wide open and still have

decent DOF and great image quality.

I use Neat Image, a decision I made a couple of years ago when I couldn't get Noise Ninja

to run more than a half-dozen frames into a batch without crashing. I also own Grain

Surgery, mainly because it had a Mac version when the others didn't, and I still think it

does a better job on film grain, but it is sloooow. And there hasn't been an update in

years.

To me the big secret to getting good results is masking--you want a lot of NR in out-of-

focus backgrounds, much less in faces and in-focus textured areas. Sometimes setting the

denoise layer to "darken" helps maximize the denoise/damage ratio.

I usually have two denoise layers--one chroma-only that I apply to the whole image, and

one with heavy luminance denoising that I mask as described above, I do the denoising in

overnight batches and perform the masking later. But I'm dealing with more noise than

most folks--EI 6400 and up shooting punk in small dark clubs.

The thing you need to realize about a tungsten film like this is that it's essentially the

rated speed in the red and green channels, and ISO 400 in the blue channel, with the

increased grain that goes with ISO 400. Which is why there wasn't a 35mm version.

That said, it works fine in larger formats, just don't expect it to be the equal of a daylight

film.

The thing I really liked about NPL was that for a long time it (and maybe the Kodak

tungsten) was the only C-41 film with decent reciprocity characteristics. I've heard the new

Fuji Pro-S and Pro-C are pretty good but have yet to check them out.

If you change your mind about shooting this stuff or have refrigerated leftovers let me

know how much you want for them.

Even ignoring DOF issues the corners on that lens suck until about f16. And that's

assuming you got a good copy, which is always a toss-up woth Sigma. Not that it's a bad

deal for the price, but you've kinda only got one aperture to choose from.

I've never had a confrontation go physical, but it happens. A rather small percentage of

our population are violent assholes, but probability says if you shoot enough you'll run

across one sooner or later.

<br><br>

A thread on streetphoto with some "took a beating" <a href="http://

www.johnbrownlow.com/streetphoto/viewtopic.php?

t=2405&start=0&sid=99a2de4d2c111e67869257ab1af9204a">stories:</a>

<br><br>

And one of my favorite street shots ever, Harold Gee's shot of an undercover intercepting

angry guy on his way to beat Mr. Gee. Sadly, it appears this was a one-off for him, but

still, it's truly awesome:

<br><br>

<a href=" guy flying</a>

It's not so much the focusing technology that makes this lens fragile; it's the fact that the

front element moves--it thus absorbs any front impact directly with the focusing gears.

I love my Leica 19/2.8 just for the awesome focusing and DOF scales. But the 50 is getting

a bit long to conveniently scale focus.

Image quality? I think the newest Leica wides, the latest versions of the 15/2.8, 19/2.8 and

28/2.8 can beat anything Canon has in their range. (Although it's not like I've seen a

bunch of tests of the $7k 15/2.8, but beating the 14/2.8 isn't a paricularly tall order).

At 50 and above though, Canon "L" glass really is spectacular. No Leica longing there for

me.

It probably turns on the exact wording of the agreement--the Salt Lake City Main Street

Plaza case turned on precisely that--

A street was sold to the Mormon church. While the city still held an easement for public

access, the court ruled the 1st Amendment applied. So the city sold the easement rights to

the Church, and the court then ruled that since there was no longer any public control

over the space the 1st no longer applied.

I know 1st Amendment rights were upheld in a similar case involving Fremont Street in Las

Vegas, but I don't remember the precise circumstances.

But I've got to believe the lawyers involved in this project were extremely aware of these

cases and drafted the agreement considering these issues.

Quote: - "They have a no photography policy to 'protect them from people who might

want to use the photographs as part of a story in which they could write bad things about

us."

I actually like that part--that's what most photo restrictions are really about--but it's

apparently a lot more effective to blither about terrorism and store layouts.

It's not like they have a prayer of protecting themselves from people genuinely interested

in doing them harm anyway, whether through the press, ripping off merchandising ideas,

or figuring out how to plant bombs. The first requires at best mediocre picture quality,

and the latter two can make do with the truly awful.

I've shot P-O-P display design "espionage", never been close to being caught. But whip out

a DSLR for a quality artsy shot and security descends on you like flies.

You're on no legal ground--I don't think anybody has litigated this precise subject.

If they were going to I've got to think they'd have gone after Richard Prince by now. He's

the guy whose partial rephotograph of a Marlboro ad went for $1.2 million a couple of

years ago. He did get sued for a rephotograph of a 10-year-old nude Brooke Shields, but

he eventually prevailed there too. although that was more about releases than copyright.

The underlying premise about copyright and fair use is that if your derivitave use is clearly

transformative, and clearly expressive, not merely commercial, you at least have a chance.