bravin_neff

<p>I have misused some words in this thread, and some folks have picked up on it. So I should clarify some of my points.<br />1. It is true perspective is a function of distance only. I have been ambiguous on this thread and have used the term in multiple senses. Perspective is controlled by the distance between between subject and camera (or subject and eyeball). There is no actual, technical, "perspective correction" other than physically moving your location, despite the fact many of us fall in to the trap of using this "perspective correction" language, which seems to permeate the photographic literature. There is optical manipulation via moving lenses in relation to each other, and there is digital manipulation using software, but this is not the same as correcting perspective. Photoshop even uses the term "perspective" when cropping, despite the fact it can't actually do anything about the perspective.<br>

<br />2. The converging verticals thing is a function of perspective just as horizontal vanishing points are. The two are exactly the same phenomenon. One way of looking at this is that reality doesn't distinguish between "vertical" and "horizontal." There is just distance, in 3 dimensions, and with distance comes perspective. If buildings were made with crazy anglular structures in between horizontal and vertical, those structures would be subject to the same physics of perspective and distance as everything else is.<br>

<br />3. The practice of straightening out lines in wideangle exterior architectural photography (and certainly not all of it - I'm overgeneralizing here) seems only to apply to verticals, not horizontals. This is clearly a manipulation for psychological reasons. Point #2 states that perspective affects all dimensions, not just the vertical ones, yet the vertical ones are the province of exterior architecture manipulation, or so it seems to me. Again, generalizing here.<br>

<br />4. I'm guilty of this stuff too. I haven't been shooting 4x5 for very long, but my very first shots got me almost immediately in the habit of keeping the camera level to ground and shifting the lens up with buildings. It's almost hard to fight the habit, I have found. Maybe I'll get better at fighting it.<br>

<br />5. I'm not complaining about this, but remarking that it looks stranger and stranger the wider the angle of view. With the normal and tele lenses, sometimes it is hard to even see the manipulation. With wider lenses, it is fairly obvious. With ultrawides, it looks, dare I say, um, sometimes I think it looks ridiculous. But that's just me. And if I had an ultrawide lens for my view camera, I'm sure I'd be tempted to do it anyway. It's almost like it feels "expected" when buildings are in the shot.<br>

<br />6. The statement that you should just do whatever you want is obviously correct. For artistic expression or whatever, do whatever makes sense to you. But I have the sense there is a commercial expectation from clientele, or from professional peers, or for reasons relating to professional reputation, or whatever, when it comes to commercial architectural shooting. At least from what I can tell, it seems most prevalent in the commercial architectural world, though I could be wrong about this. Amateurs like me seem to just go about doing whatever they want, but once you cross that line into professional architectural shooting, it seems like an expectation.</p>

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<p>As and architect an an amateur architectrual photographer I have to agree with you - sort of. I think it's really about camera location realtive to the building and how tall the building is. For skyscrapers, a corrected image is has more infromation and shows the building more clearly but has an artificiality to it - but one most people have learned to accept.</p>

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<p>That may be the main thing I'm missing: how tall the building is. Skyscrapers with parallel verticals taken from ground level with ultrawideangle lenses definitely appear more artificial looking than more modest buildings, mainly as the intellect tells you something isn't right. The shorter buildings have less to be wrong about, so to speak, so there's less offense.<br>

But then again, the shorter buildings let you get closer, which some shooters take advantage of... allowing them to exploit the lens shifting thing some more.</p>

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<p>On a shorter building, if the camera position makes you feel your are looking <strong>at it</strong> in it's surrounding, converging verticals just look amateruish and sloppy. If you get close and create a feel that you are looking <em><strong>up at it</strong></em> then non-converging verticals look strange. Watch North by Northwest sometime and see what a master does with converging and nonconverging lines to get the point across (it even starts with the opening credits).</p>

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<p>Good point. Now I gotta check out that scene.</p>

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<p>I wonder if you are referring to those shots where the lens also does have a lot of internal distortion, like most 35mm camera lenses. I shoot a lot of architecture on jobs, use a 75mm on 4x5 fairly often and rarely get residual distortions--especially on exterior shots.</p>

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<p>I was actually speaking about large format photgraphy, as this is where the practice originates and still dominates, but I suppose the format doesn't matter. When I said 90mm wides, I guess you could speak about 28 or 24mm wides on 35mm film. I posted in the large format forum because of the large propensity for this practice with large format, but there's no reason it can't apply to the smaller formats.<br>

I was playing with the word distortion. Lens shifting is often said to "correct perspective distortion," but with ultrawides I said it introduces its own kind of distortion: the kind where the photograph doesn't match what the unaided eye ever sees. In reality, there is no such thing as parallel verticals with near-to-distant objects, such as as with tall buildings. Perspective requires that verticals converge as distance falls away. Incidentaly, this happens in both the vertical and horizontal planes, yet in the kind of shooting I am talking about - wideangle exterior architectural shooting - the horizontals are left alone while the verticals are forced to parallel. There is a strangeness to this while also being accepted practice.</p>

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<p>I think most of the shots look pretty "normal" to the eye.</p>

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<p>My conclusion thus far is that "normal" fits with lens shifting on the longer focal lengths, like say 120mm and up. With the wider focal lengths, and particularly with tall buildings closeup, taken from (or near) ground level, the forced parallels on the verticals just strikes my eye as very strange. I think its one of those things where, once you see that you are being tricked, you can't ever get tricked again and you always see the "trick." Of course I dont' reall mean people are being "tricked," but you get what I mean: the manipulation of perspective.</p>

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<p>Although we see keystoning with our eyes, we actually mentally correct it and rarely, unless we think about it, will remember the building that way but rather as being straight. Longer lenses actually correct much of the issue naturally because of the distance between the vantage point and the subject--you can lay on the ground or shoot from a helicopter, but a building that is off in the distance will not show keystoning.</p>

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<p>I think you're speaking to my point about lens-shifting looking better with the normal-to-longer lenses. Your point about mentally correcting the keystoning seems right, but I'm not sure its true with the extreme perspectives ultrawides can fit in. I know that when I look at ultrawide exterior architecture shots with parallel verticals, I immediately notice that it doesn't look "right" to me. I don't notice this discomfort with shots taken with longer focal lengths, even though analysis of the shot still reveals lens shifting. The further perspectives associated with normals and teles by their nature require less shifting, and I might be reacting more favorably to the fact their is less manipulation.<br>

<br />I also might be reacting against my day job. I look at blue prints all day, and they are always drawn from orthographic perspective... which literally doesn't exist anywhere in the universe. In orthographic perspective, both horizontal and vertical vanishing is taken away. With some exterior archictecture shots, the same thing happens except only in the vertical plane: the horizontal perspective is allowed to perspective.</p>

<p>There seems to be a consensus among traditional or commercial exterior architechtural shooting that lens shifts are necessary for removing keystoning effects. I understand the motivation, and I think the resulting shots can look "natural" (or at least fit what our eyes have been trained to see), but I feel this is only the case with focal lengths on the normal-to-longer side of things.<br>

<br />When it comes to wider lenses, say 90mm and wider, with buildings filling the majority of the frame, I think the perspective "correction" actually looks like a <em>distortion </em>and seems unnatural. Particularly with tall buildings and ultrawides. It seems to me there is nothing about what the eyes actually see that resembles this type of look, where ultrawide shots nonetheless have parallel verticals. The natural perspective differences between the tops of buildings and the ground (i.e., when you are also on the ground) results in a natural keystoning, and I'm not sure why many feel it necessary to remove this.<br />I realize I'm painting this in somewhat all-or-nothing type of language, which it certainly is not. But it does seem most pronounced with the commerical shooters. Can anyone explain the reasoning behind this practice?</p>

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<p>Do you mean because the Wista above doesn't have a Graflok back, I can't use a roll film back?</p>

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<p>There are also flat-surace rollfilm backs that are designed specifically to fit under spring backs. The main ones are Calumet C2 and C2n models, and I think there's a Toyo one as well. They come in 6x7, 6x9, 6x12 and so on. KEH has a few right now as a matter of fact.</p>

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<p>Thank you Charles and Ray for the thoughtful responses. They have forced me to relook at the underpinnings of how I'm printing in Vista 64. I'll experiment with ICC profiles and Lightroom-controls-colors printing in Vista to see if things get better.<br>

Regards,<br>

Bravin Neff</p>

<p>I don't read many people have this problem, but it has got me totally flabbergasted. I built an i7 computer earlier this year, with state of the art RAM and processor and other hardware. The motivation was the benefits of 64 bit computing and lots RAM so I installed Vista 64 bit on a harddrive. I bought the 64-bit version of Lightroom 2 and do my photo-managing from there.<br>

<br />The computer also has an XP OS drive that I can alternately boot to, but it is my goto drive because XP prints to my Epson R1900 and HP5400 (whatever-its-called) printers, whereas the same files printed from Vista 64 give me wildly different colors. The prints from Vista don't match my monitor at all.<br>

<br />I have downloaded the latest 64-bit printer drivers from Epson and HP. The drivers are also current on the XP drive. Can anyone explain why I can't get consistent colors printing from Vista 64 bit? I'd like to once and for all graduate from XP, but until this is solved, I can't. Keep in mind that both my XP and Vista64 drives access the same Lightroom 2 libraries, access the same exact hardware and printers, etc.<br>

<br />I realize these discussions often turn into ones about color management, but I'm trying to steer this specifically as a printing-from-Vista-64 issue. I use a Spyder 2 colorimeter and calibrate my monitors. Sometimes I let Lightroom manage printing colors, sometimes I let the printer. In XP it almost doesn't matter.<br>

<br />Let me repeat: from XP I don't have any problems. None. The prints looks great, they match my monitors (reasonably well) and I have no complaints. But I really want to print from Vista 64 bit (and Windows 7) and this issue is making that impossible.<br />Thanks,<br />Bravin Neff</p>

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<p ><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=477916">John Williamson</a> Nov 26, 2009; 05:17 p.m.</p>

 

<p>Don't confuse the D in a lens, like AF-D with the D in this lens. ED stands for Extra Dispersion, which has to do with one or more of the glass elements.</p>

 

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<p>Actually I think that means "extra LOW dispersion."</p>

<p>I think Provia looks good. I think Velvia looks not as good.</p>

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<p>Who could ask for more? There's practically no grain at all.</p>

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<p>That kills me.</p>

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<p>I also use the Mamiya 7's meter as a (relatively large) spot meter. I frequently meter multiple times in a given scene irrespective of the lens attached. This practice, of course, requires you to know where in the scene the meter is corresponding to, but this isn't hard once you corroborate your meter readings with a handheld meter. While the viewfinder's frame lines may change with the lens or point of sharp focus (the frames move in an attempt to correct for parallax error), the area that the meter corresponds with does not move. So once you find this area, simply memorize it. On my 7, it is basically right in the middle. So in the middle of my viewfinder I basically have a (relative large) spot meter.<br>

<br />I find the real problem with the 7's meter is that it doesn't give you anything other than full-stop readings. This is why, when using the 7 handheld, I'll put the camera in AEL mode and simply take a bunch of readings. This gives you a "sense" of the overall scene, and if its acceptable, I simply point it at what I want the mid-tone to be, lock there, then recompose. This has worked every time for me, and is really no different than taking spot-meter readings with a dedicated spot meter.</p>

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<p> What if you could choose between a Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta, or Leica that all took 220 film, and after decades of refinement had become sleek little ergonomic wonders like the 35mm cams we have today?</p>

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<p>Man that would be awesome.</p>

<p>The near-focus limitation of the Mamiya 7 cannot be stated strongly enough. I read about this issue a million times before buying the camera, doubting that I would care about it too much. I was overzealous and wrong. It is a serious limitation, particularly if you're accustomed to exaggerated perspectives with SLR-type cameras that let you shove wideangle lenses close into things to give you... well, you know, the exaggerated perspectives wideangles give you. I am junkie for that kind of shooting, and the M7 will not allow you to do this kind of shooting. At all. Not even close to it.<br>

But its a great camera nonetheless and I love it. The chromes are simply glorious. But I may end up selling mine because of this limitation as exaggerated perspective is what wideangle is for as far as I'm concerned. FWIW, I read that RZ67 lenses are nearly as good as 7 lenses, though I cannot vouch for this claim.</p>

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<p>in aperture priority mode it actually adjusts the shutter speed during the exposure since it reads the light off the film and not the scene.</p>

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<p>Wow, that's very cool. Never heard of that before capability before. At any rate, and FYI, I just got done doing some riverfront panoramic-style nighttime city scapes witha a 7, using bulb and 15-30 second long exposures. The camera worked great.</p>

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<p>Dave Luttmann said:<br />"The real issue though is that he had the 31mp Phase Back showing it exceeded 4x5 by at least 50% in rez. Now with the Phase One Back at shy of 7000 pixels wide....a 50% reduction puts that at about 3500 pixels wide....or an 8mp sensor. So we are now to believe that an 8mp sensor is the same as 4x5 film. No wonder the OP didn't want to address the issues that we commented upon."<br>

<br />I don't think you're doing the arithmetic right.<br>

<br />Wouldn't 50% of the linear (width or height) represent 25% total surface resolution? In other words, if the Phase One device was 7,000 x 7,000 (I know it's not, but go with me for the sake of the arithmetic), then it's total surface area would be 49mp (7,000 squared). 50% of this would be 19.5mp, and the linear width (or height) would be roughly 4,400 on the side (square root of 19.5 million).<br>

<br />You are saying his claim that 4x5 film is equal to an 8mp image should be restated to say that it is one half of the Phase One, or 31/2 = 15.5mp. Of course I think 4x5 is "equivalent" to neither of these sizes, as I'm sure you agree, but I'm just trying to straighten out the arithmetic here. You can't cut one dimension half and say you've cut the total resolution in half. You have made it 1/4th as big.</p>

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<p>I just found this thread. This is really excellent. I'm looking at a Coolscan 8000/9000 and want to run it with my Vista 64 i7 machine.<br>

Can anyone comment improvements to scanning speed? Have scan times gone down with the 64-bit OSes and quad cores? Thank you!</p>

<p>Outstanding.</p>

<p>Those are some seriously good colors.</p>

<p>Sorry no one has answered your post until now, but I have found it very informative. Thank you for your work and contribution to this site! I'm interested in the LS-8000 and your work has made it even more meaningful. Thanks again!<br>

Regards,<br>

Bravin Neff</p>

<p>I've purchased many things from KEH and have found them to be the single most satisfactory place to do business on the internet as far as used items are concerned. I recommend them without hesitation.</p>

I know that was just a typo, but... 500 and 600 f2.8 lenses, those would be awesome!

Tom, what camera did you shoot that with? That exposure is seriously lowlight.

I have done a lof of this kind of shooting, in small local clubs shooting small budget local bands. Typical lighting necessitates exposures in the ISO 1600-3200, f2.8 & 1/60 to 1/125 at best range. Shutter speed is always a problem, especially with pre-D300/D3 Nikons since the high ISO with the older Nikons is much worse than the current generation (and the Canons of the last few generations). I have found a workaround.

 

What i have done to help myself is to rely on longer shutter speeds with faster glass (read: primes, like 35mm f2 @ f2, 50mm f1.8 @ f2.2, Sigma 20mm f1.8 @ f2.2, etc.) and lower the ISO as much as you can if you can get away with it. Spot meter on faces and constantly adjust -- this means manual mode.

 

Shutter speeds in the 1/15 to 1/30 range have been very typical for me. I know you're thinking "that's too slow, you'll have subject movement." Stay with me. The biggest thing to do here is to think and act like a musician. I am one, so I find this natural but some people may need to adjust. What I mean is this: when you watch musicians -- say a guitar player -- their stage movements are often rhythmic and timed to the music (hopefully!). Think of a pendulum swinging. At the peak of either side of that motion, there is a brief period where the motion stops to change course the other way. This is precisely where 1/15 to 1/30 will work (no, it won't happen all the time, particularly with higher tempo music, but work with me here).

 

I am NOT guaranteeing anything here, nor am I saying you'll get tripod-like sharpness (not!) but in a statistical manner of speaking, you can and will get away with sharper images more often if you anticpate this portion of stage movement. It does work and you will get great keepers.

 

To make it work you also have to compensate for your biorhythmic delay and your shutter lag. That means practice, and going for the shutter button a little before the actual ideal moment so that after the delays have transpired it actually coincides with the right moment. Once you are comfortable with this, you can nail 1/30 and 1/20 type of shots with the less than -100mm glass. I have even done this with the Nikon D80's .400 second mirror-prefire to further reduce the shake caused by the mirror (talk about trying to anticipate delay!). The subject's arms and other elements of the photo may still have motion, but you can get faces pretty sharp. It takes practice, but it is totally doable.

 

With these lower shutter speeds, you will have put your exposures in the area of ISO 3200 @f2.8 and 1/80 or 1/125, except you'll be at ISO 800. The photos will look fine.<div></div>

FE-2 with any 1980's + Nikon flash works perfectly TTL. Ata any aperture.

 

I would even go so far to say that my FE-2's TTL kicks the living crap out of any of my Nikon DSLR's with iTTL.