12 bits Good

I’ve been wondering about noise and image quality and the differences between the various RAW settings available on the D800E (and D800). The most obvious differences are those of file size. With full-size FX images these are roughly as follows:

FX 14-bit lossless compression  40-48Mb
FX 14-bit lossy compression    34-38Mb
FX 12-bit lossless compression    28-34Mb
FX 12-bit lossy compression    24-32Mb

Actual file sizes using either form of compression depend on the subject, and any particular image will give a smaller file as you go down the list, with typically a 12-bit lossy file being a little over half the size of a 14-bit lossless one.

[It is possible to save files uncompressed, but doing so simply makes larger files that are slower to write and usually slower to load into processing software – hard to understand why Nikon provide the option and I assume it is a marketing decision – a useless feature that some reviewers would complain about if it was absent.]

So is there anything to gain from working with the larger file sizes? Opinions on-line vary, though as usual the most dogmatic are the least well-informed. But there are some whose opinion I normally respect who advise on choosing 14 bit rather than 12 bit, and I’ve been doing so for a while. But I’m no longer sure there is any point.

What changed my mine was reading a very detailed and rather mathematical paper, Noise, Dynamic Range and Bit Depth in Digital SLRs by Emil Martinec. It was written in 2008, over 5 years ago, but I think most of his conclusions are likely to still be true.

I can’t pretend to understand all of the maths, but I think I got the gist of it from the non-mathematical summaries. There are some rather surprising points made which perhaps go against the commonly held views on the subject.

At the time he concluded that “Twelve bits are perfectly adequate to record the image data without any loss of image quality” for the currently available cameras with just the Nikon D3 coming close to warranting the use of 13 bits. Any discernible difference would be because the slower reading of the sensor in 14 bit mode increases the accuracy of reading the values.

Things have moved on a little with current cameras, but I suspect that there is still little if any practical advantage in using 14 bit files.

Lower down on the same page, Martinec discusses the Nikon “lossy” NEF compression, coming to the conclusion that because of the noise unavoidably present in light, the compression actually results in no loss of visual information. If I understand what he says correctly, the loss is of the essentially random contribution of noise to the image rather than the true information present.

So I’ve decided there is little or no point in working in anything other than 12-bit “lossy” mode on either the D700 or D800E. Hard disks and large cards may be cheap, but it’s still worth cutting down on the space required, particularly with backups in mind.

There are also some other points of interest in the article, with a discussion about the ‘expose to the right’ rule and also on using high ISO.

Expose to the right is still a good rule, and “exposing to the right at the lowest possible ISO provides the highest image quality” but the reason usually advanced is wrong, and it is simply because this improves the signal to noise ratio.

As for high ISO, above a certain ISO you will get greater dynamic range by underexposing your raw files and correcting this in software.

I’m not sure how you decide at what ISO to start doing this, but on the D800E when working at night I’ve found in practice I get better results by sticking to ISO 3200 and underexposing. Its almost always necessary to underexpose at night by a stop or more in any case to get the effect of night.

But when working at low ISO’s I think he concludes that you should give correct exposure following the expose the the right rule for optimum quality.

There is more to the article than this (including some useful advice for camera makers) with a discussion of pixel size with a conclusion that will surprise some (it did me.)

But it isn’t easy going. A simpler article 12Bit Vs 14Bit Raw And Compressed Vs Uncompressed… Does It Matter? by freelance photographer Francois Malan has some real life examples that I think show fairly clearly there is little if any advantage in 14 bit over 12 bit on the Nikon D7000 (though there is a rather curious colour shift in the heavily underexposed examples.) His article was inspired by the more theoretical work of Martinec, to which he links.

Continue reading 12 bits Good

Resolutions for 2014


Thamesmead – from The Buildings of London

Do I have any resolutions for the New Year? Most days I decide I’ve got to try and do at least something a bit better in future, but my record over the lists I’ve made at the start of some previous years isn’t too positive. Though I suppose it’s better to start with good intentions.

So here are a few things I’m going to try and do or do better in 2014

1.   Get back to working more with panoramic images, particularly on the River Thames and the Thames estuary.

I’ve never really come to terms with moving away from using film in panoramic cameras to using digital cameras. I need to concentrate on subjects and find ways to work which are less tied up with techniques.
I’m intending to work with just two basic formats, roughly corresponding to my earlier panoramas from the Horizon or Widelux and X-Pan cameras, but taken with the D800E.

2.   Try and panic less, think more and take fewer pictures.

All too easy – both with film and more so with digital to get excited and keep taking pictures rather than keep carefully assessing the situation.

3.   Make sure to keep a closer eye on the settings the camera uses in automatic modes and avoid messing things up.

In particular I’d like to avoid finding I was using silly slow shutter speeds before I’d taken lots of pictures with camera shake or subject movement rather than after I’d taken a lot of pictures. Auto-ISO can help here, though it doesn’t always work as I’d like.

4.   Check my lenses are clean more obsessively

Ruined too many pictures last week on a longish walk with one of my sons because there was a greasy fingermark on the lens filter, which produced flare that hardly showed up in images on the screen on the back of the camera but is annoyingly obvious when you view the images on the computer screen.

5.   Cut down on equipment; carry less and sell things I no longer use.

Perhaps there are also more things I can do with the Fuji cameras rather than the Nikons to ease the load on my shoulder. And some of the old film cameras I’ll never really use have appreciated in value with current fads among some amateurs for film. It’s unlikely to last, so its time to cash in.

6.   Learn how to use more of the settings etc on the D700 and D800E

I began this today, and  think I have managed to sort out  what the four shooting menu banks on the D800E are meant to do. Basically they retain some of the shooting menu settings you had before you switched the camera off or changed to a different bank.   Its a feature of limited use as it doesn’t allow you to save a setting so you could start at the same configuration each time you open a bank, and because more of the settings you might like to store aren’t on the shooting menu.  There is a similar set of banks for the Custom Settings menu also.  I’m sure some users will find these useful. I’d always looked at them and thought they would be useful if I found out how to use them, but somehow hadn’t got further than being totally bemused by the manual before today. It’s been rather a disappointment to find out what they actually do, as almost all the things they store for you are those I’d probably set the same in all four shooting menu banks.

7.  Get on with scanning my work from the 1980s and start publishing my major project on London’s Buildings.

One of the first things I put on line back in the 1990s was a site ‘The Buildings of London‘ from a project I worked on for around 15 years. It is still on line, more or less as I first put it there in 1996, with a few more images I added the following year.

8. To republish some of my earlier books as PDFs with more pages and larger images.

My books on Hull and the Lea Valley both contained pages with 4 or 6 images printed rather small, mainly in order to keep down costs of these volumes. Although PDF versions of these books are available, they currently still contain small images of many pictures, following exactly the book layout. I hope to republish these as PDF only versions in which all of the images can be viewed at a reasonable size.

The Hull book in particular should be of added interest since Hull is to be the UK City of Culture 2017, and I also hope to make this work more readily available on the web in advance of this.

And finally I hope as ever to take better pictures and write more interesting posts here!  Let’s hope that the new year, 2014, is a good one for us all. Happy New Year!

Continue reading Resolutions for 2014

Walking Backwards for Tibet


Tibetans walk backwards in front or Parliament in human rights protest

I spend quite a lot of my time covering protests walking backwards, and have the bruises and scars to prove it from various encounters with curbs, vehicles, lamp posts and other street furniture. Fortunately none of these occasions has been seriously damaging, other than to my dignity, long since a lost cause.

Human rights for Tibetans in Tibet also seems increasingly to be a lost cause, as Western nations eager for business with China put their own national interests in profit above higher concerns. Of course its always been so, and we even once went to war with China to force it to allow our drug traders to operate.

So while the west has made noises about human rights violations by China since the invasion of Tibet in 1959, these noises have been getting softer and softer over recent years and are now a mere formality, while China has ramped up its efforts to completely eradicate Tibetan culture, committing atrocities against the Tibetan people – with over 1.2 million deaths. In recent years around 130 desperate Tibetans have set fire to themselves in protest, and the Chinese response has been to arrest and torture family members, charging them with abetting self-immolation.


They started to protest in Parliament Square but were soon told to leave by the GLC’s ‘heritage wardens’

Human rights are indeed going backwards in Tibet, and Tibetans decided to march backwards in London past the Houses of Parliament to Downing St to highlight what is happening there and as a direct response to China becoming a member of the UN Human Rights Council, despite its own terrible human rights record and its record of support for human rights violations by other countries.


Blue, white, red, yellow and a little green in the flags – and one man wears a Union flag as well

Protests by Tibetans are always colourful, with so many of them wearing or carrying the brightly coloured Tibetan flag – something that would rapidly lead to arrest and torture in Tibet. At times the colours tend to dominate the pictures and I sometimes find it overpowering. Visually you can have too much of a good thing.


They are walking backwards but it isn’t very obvious.

It was also a slight problem to convey the fact that people were walking backwards in a still image. People walking backwards do look rather similar to people walking forwards, and it’s something that makes far more impact in a moving image than a still. There is something about the postures in the images from a distance, but working close, I don’t think it is possible to tell.


Walking backwards in Whitehall – but impossible to tell.

However it was a welcome change to be able to walk forward while taking the photographs!
More about the protest at Tibetans Walk Backwards for Human Rights.
Continue reading Walking Backwards for Tibet

Cops Off Campus & more

I’d been busy with other things in the first week of December and had missed covering the student occupation of the Senate House at London University, only hearing about it too late to easily change my plans. Living twenty miles from the centre of London also makes me rather less able to react at short notice than those living closer. So I didn’t witness the scenes of police brutality during the eviction around 8.30pm on Wednesday Dec 4th, though I did see some images of rough treatment taken by others, mainly by students who were either taking part or reporting on the occupation.

The following day I had arranged a meeting in the afternoon, and wanted to keep it, so although I covered two events earlier in the day, I missed the emergency protest at the university when the police again assaulted protesters. It wasn’t until the following afternoon – Friday – that I caught up with the what was happening at the University of London.

I was particularly sorry to have missed things earlier in the week, as the occupation had arisen out the student support for the low-paid workers on the campus, which is an ongoing story I have been covering for quite a while. But one person can’t be everywhere, and I also have to take things a little easier these days than when I was younger.

But before going to the university that Friday there were other events to cover in a very busy day for me.  Late the pervious night I’d heard the news of Mandela’s death, and as an active member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement since the early 1960s (and still a member of its successor) I wanted to report on this, and started my day at the Mandela statue in Parliament Square. I took a few pictures of the flowers and other tributes and those coming to pay their respects before going on the the next event on my schedule – and returned to later in the day both there and to the South African High Commission in Trafalgar Square. You can see a few pictures in Tributes to Mandela.

The next event in my diary was very different, with EDL supporters at Downing St in support of Marine Sergeant Alexander Blackman, who was due to be sentenced having been found guilty of the cold-blooded killing of a prisoner of war. The EDL were calling for him to be freed arguing that he acted under extreme pressure and that his victim was not a prisoner of war but terrorist. There didn’t seem to be much happening – as you can see in EDL Protest Supports Marine A, and having talked to a few people I left to go to another event that seemed to promise more interest.

Another cause I’ve long had an interest in is the many unexplained deaths that occur in custody – in police stations, prison cells and closed mental wards. It’s difficult to be precise about numbers as what official statistics there are have been defined in a way that omits many cases.

Few of these deaths have been investigated in a timely or even professional manner, with the proper questions seldom being asked and at times with those officers involved refusing to cooperate with investigations. The official response has often been to knowingly issue misleading statements and to waste time before a flawed investigation by the IPCC following which the Crown Prosecution Service gives their standard response ‘not enough evidence to prosecute’. Since 1990 there have been 1433 deaths in custody, many under highly suspicious circumstances and there has been not a single successful prosecution.

The protest outside the CPS Offices at Rose Court came as an inquest jury was hearing evidence over the killing by police of Mark Duggan. The evidence given by police officers to the court appears to contradict that of other witnesses and of other evidence. The jury have yet to reach a verdict.


Marcia Rigg starts her speech at the Crown Prosecution Service with a tribute to Mandela

But among the speakers was Marcia Rigg, the sister of Sean Rigg, killed in Brixton Police Station in August 2008. The IPCC investigation took 18 months to decide the police had acted “reasonably and proportionately“. Almost four years after his death, following a considerable campaign by his family, the inquest was held and concluded that police used “unsuitable and unnecessary force” that “more than minimally” contributed to his death, highlighting the failures of the IPCC; a later independent external review found that they had failed to secure the crime scene, failed to prevent officers involved conferring and to ensure that all gave statements, had waited six months before interviewing them, had not examined the CCTV along with many other failures.

There is unfortunately little reason to assume that the treatment of Sean Rigg’s death was very different to that of many of the others who died in police custody; what made his case different was the strength and tenacity of the family in their continuing campaign to get to the truth. It still remains to be seen whether justice will be done. More pictures in Bereaved protest at CPS Failures.

I was sorry to have to leave this event before all of the speeches – there were others there who are still campaigning over the cases of their friends and relatives who have died. I was even sorrier when I arrived to find nothing happening – I found when I got home that evening it had been cancelled an hour or so earlier. One day I’ll have to move into the 21st century and get a phone that can keep me in touch while I’m away from home – my current antique mobile merely makes phone calls and just occasionally deigns to receive texts.


‘We Are Peaceful – Why Aren’t You #CopsOffCampus’ asks one of the placards, and it was a good question

It did mean that I was early for the next of the student protests, waiting outside the University of London Union in Malet St as people arrived for an emergency protest over the police actions on the previous two days. I’d had a few minutes to walk around the area and had seen police vans parked down many of the nearby streets, and there was one just a short distance from the ULU, as well as a number of blue-bibbed police liaison officers mingling with the crowd.

The liaison officers would have heard along with the rest of us that the organisers who spoke before the protest moved off intended to peacefully march around the streets and visit different parts of the university as a protest against police violence and the university management calling police on to the campus and also taking out an injunction against occupational protest. They made clear that they did not want there to be any violence and that they had no intention to occupy any part of the university in breach of the injunction.

It appears to have been a message that fell completely on deaf ears so far as the police were concerned. As the march approached the bottom of Malet St police appeared and formed a line across both ends of the street and the only side road. Students who tried to walk between the police in the line were ordered to stop and thrown roughly backwards.

It seemed clear that the police had intended to contain the students on Malet St, but had apparently failed to realise that there are several entrances onto the campus on the east side of the street. The students went through the main one and crossed the campus to Russell Square, where there were no police. They then went north and then west, passing the top of Malet St. I’d expected to see the police who had previously been there trying to stop them, but they had apparently followed the students rather than wait to stop them.

A group of around twenty police ran up behind as the back of the protest turned into Gower St, and obviously did not know what to do. Most of the protest had already passed and there were too few to make an effective cordon across the wide street. The students went on to briefly enter the courtyard of University College before heading down University St and then back down Huntley St towards their starting point.

By this time there seemed to be police vans going in several different directions and creating some chaos in the late afternoon traffic while having zero effect on the student protesters. It seemed to be a total waste of public money and a totally ineffectual over-reaction to a peaceful protest, which had caused far more disruption to Bloomsbury than the protest itself.

I left the students as they walked down into Torrington Square towards SOAS. I’d had enough of walking and had been on my feet for far too long and it was time to go home.
Continue reading Cops Off Campus & more

2013 Review – Part 6: September-December

The final instalment of my review of my own work – around 120,000 exposures – from 2013, these are some of my personal favourites from the year from my landscape format images which form the bulk of my work. The captions link to the stories from which the pictures come – and in a few cases there are two pictures from the same event.

September


DPAC at BBC – Tell The Truth


Love Russia, Hate Homophobia



DPAC take Pants to IDS




EDL March returns to Tower Hamlets


Arms Trade Die-In at Parliament


Aurora tells Shell – Stop Arctic Drilling


National Gallery Human Chain over Arts Cuts


Hizb ut-Tahrir Women March for Syria


Druids Celebrate Autumn Equinox


10,000 Cuts – Deaths After Atos Tests


Sudanese Call for Regime Change

October


UK Uncut Road Block for Legal Aid


Scrap Royal London NHS PFI Debt


Police & Developers Evict Soho Working Girls


Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar


Teachers March against Government Plans


Stop Shipping Tear Gas to Bahrain


Don’t Be Blind to DR Congo Murders


Vigil at Work Assessments Appeal


Movement Against Xenophobia


Chinatown Says ‘No Entry UKBA’


Climate Deniers told ‘Frack Off’


Southall Black Sisters Protest Racist UKBA


3 Cosas Defy London Uni Protest Ban


Cleaners Invade John Lewis Oxford Street


United Families & Friends Remember Killed


Russia, Free Greenpeace Arctic 30

November


LoNdOn ZoMbIE WaLk VII


Free Kieron & Arctic 30


Anonymous March on Parliament


Bonfire of Austerity Blocks Westminster Bridge


Free Shaker Aamer March in Battersea


End Drone Attacks in Pakistan


4:1 legal minimum NHS staffing


Cultural Workers against Zero Hours


Islamists Protest Angolas Ban on Muslims


Cyclists ‘Die in’ at TfL HQ

December


PMOI continue Hunger Strike


‘Cops Off Campus’ Protest Police Brutality


Bereaved protest at CPS Failures


Human Rights Day Candlelit Vigil for Syria


Cops Off Campus National Student Protest


Against PayDay Loans and Austerity


Reinstate Colombian Mayor Petro

Of course there are a few more days of December left, so perhaps I may take some more images that deserve to be included, though I have been trying to have a rest after a rather busy year.

Continue reading 2013 Review – Part 6: September-December

2013 Review – Part 5: July-August

Continuing my review of my own work – around 120,000 exposures – from 2013, these are some of my personal favourites from the year from my landscape format images which form the bulk of my work. The captions link to the stories from which the pictures come – and in a few cases there are two pictures from the same event.

On Hiroshima Day I had a final opportunity to photograph Hetty Bower who spoke briefly at the event. She died in November, aged 108.  I was away for two weeks of the month, including a week in Edinburgh, where I took some time off from the festival to photograph the Scottish Defence League and the protest against them.

July


SOAS Cleaners’ Independence Day


Divided Families Day


Against Undercover Police in Protests


Swan Upping


London University Cleaners Protest


UK Uncut HSBC Food Banks


Our Lady of Mount Carmel



Rev Billy at HSBC



Save Legal Aid

August


Victory Celebration at Vedanta AGM


Al Quds Day March


End Zero Hours Contracts – Sports Direct



Cleaners in John Lewis Westfield


Stop MI6 Lies About Shaker Aamer


Hiroshima Day


Against Live Animal Exports


Putin, ‘Hands Off Queers!’




SDL and UAF in Edinburgh




Obama Don’t Attack Syria


Counihans Celebrate Anniversary

Continue reading 2013 Review – Part 5: July-August

2013 Review – Part 4: May-June

Continuing my review of my own work – around 120,000 exposures – from 2013, these are some of my personal favourites from the year from my landscape format images which form the bulk of my work. The captions link to the stories from which the pictures come – and in a few cases there are two pictures from the same event.

May


Cleaners at Clifford Chance


London’s 101st May Queen


Boishakhi Mela Procession



End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing


London Marches to Defend NHS


Bring Shaker Home


Daddy’s Pig heads for the Trough


Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid


Muslims march for Lee Rigby

June


London Supports Turkish Spring


Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying


Cull Politicians, Not Badgers


Save Legal Aid & British Justice


For and against Gay Marriage


London University Security Guards


Outrage outside G4S AGM



J11 Carnival against Capitalism


‘They Owe Us’ G8 Protest


Turks continue fight


Waiting for Assange


TUC Support for Turkish Protests


Dykes March


Gurdwara Rebuilt After Arson


Cleaners Surprise Senate House Invasion


UAF Oppose, EDL Don’t Come



Pride Celebrates Love and Marriage



Morsi must go say Egyptian People
Continue reading 2013 Review – Part 4: May-June

2013 Review – Part 3: January-April

I’ve scheduled this post to appear on Christmas morning, though Christmas day is the day in the year I’m least likely to turn a computer on. And any pictures I take are probably going to be family pictures that won’t appear on-line. Christmas Greetings to all readers of >Re:PHOTO. I hope you have a good day. And wouldn’t it be great if there were fewer things next year that we need to protest about. 

Continuing my review of my work – around 120,000 exposures – from 2013, these are some of my personal favourites from the year from my landscape format images which form the bulk of my work. The captions link to the stories from which the pictures come – and in a few cases there are two pictures from the same event.  One of the two pictures from the march to save Whittington Hospital is of the remarkable Hetty Bower, then 107, who died aged 108 in November.

January


Pussy Riot London Solidarity Demonstration


Anti-fascist Solidarity Against Golden Dawn



Save Lewisham Hospital

February


Waltham Forest Milad-Un-Nabi Procession



Friern Barnet Library Victory Celebration


Poulters Pancake Race


Shaker Aamer – 11 Years in Guantanamo


Thames Path Greenwich Partly Open



Reclaim Love Valentines Party


Fuel Poverty Rally & DAN Roadblock


Hillingdon Marches Against Cuts

March


Fukushima 2nd Anniversary


Jackie Nanyonjo Murdered by UKBA



Whittington Hospital March Against Cuts


Syria – Two Years Fight for Freedom


Budget Day Protest against Cuts & Austerity


Barnet Spring – Save Local Democracy


Barnet Spring – Save Local Democracy

April


Who wants to evict a Millionaire?


Outlaw Caste Discrimination


Stand Off at Venezuelan Embassy


Gurkhas Call for equal treatment


March of the Beekeepers

To be continued….

Continue reading 2013 Review – Part 3: January-April

2013 Review – Part 2: Portrait Format

Portrait format images get rather a raw deal in this age of looking at images on screens, even though most on the web are used at sizes that fit perfectly adequately upright. When I upload a set of pictures to Demotix, the lead image is always supposed to be in landscape format, and as on many other sites, portrait format images are displayed at a smaller size, to fit in the same vertical measurement. And the design of the monthly index pages of my own ‘My London Diary’ only really works for horizontal images.

The same happens of course in projections and other digital ‘slideshows’ though here on >Re:PHOTO  they get treated rather better, as on this site it is the width that is restricted – to around 450 pixels. So landscape images appear in the posts as 450x300px, while portrait format displays at 400x600px. In fact the landscape images are present at 600x400px, and can be seen at that size by right clicking and selecting ‘View Image’.

When I first came into photography in the 1970s, the books still gave the advice to ‘miniature camera users’ (a not too subtle put-down to those working with 35mm) to take both landscape and portrait versions of your pictures to submit to magazine publishers. Those working with medium format 6×6 cameras were told to photograph so that the square images could be cropped to either landscape or portrait. Of course I took no notice of such nonsense, always working to the frame. If it was good enough for Cartier-Bresson it was fine with me too! Though I was rather less successful than him both in taking pictures and in persuading editors they shouldn’t crop.

One of the ‘signs’ of a professional photographer apparently used by those security guards who are out to harass professional photography is that they take some pictures with the camera on its side! There are some subjects that fit the frame one way and others that work the other way (it’s seldom a good idea if you are taking video.) . Just occasionally I can see how to work with the same subject both ways, but they are often very different pictures.

Often ones that fit the vertical frame are ‘portraits’ of single individuals but there are other things too. It’s perhaps not a good idea to typecast it as portrait format, though that’s how I still think of it. Though I think most portraits I see in the annual shows at the National Portrait Gallery are landscape format, whether in the photography or painting shows. Not that I’m a great fan of either of these. Looking at some of the paintings I often find myself thinking a half-decent photograph would have done the job better. Then I go and look at the photography show and think exactly the same.

Anyway, here are some of my favourites from my pictures from 2013, and no, they are not all great portraits! The captions below link to the stories they come from on My London Diary.


Reclaim Love Valentines Party


Million Women Rise


PCS Strikers Boo Budget


St Patrick’s Parade Brent


Bring SOAS Cleaners In-house


Independent Midwives Need Insurance


March of the Beekeepers


Lawyers Funeral for Legal Aid


Anti-Fascists Stop BNP Wreath Laying


Save Legal Aid & British Justice


Shaker Aamer Daily Vigil Continues


Turks continue fight


TUC Support for Turkish Protests


Brixton Protests Gentrification & Evictions


Save Legal Aid


Abolish Bedroom Tax


Abolish Bedroom Tax


London University Cleaners Protest


Love Russia, Hate Homophobia


Malta Day Procession


Save Whipps Cross Hospital


Sudanese Call for Regime Change


Don’t Gag Free Speech


Letting Agencies Illegal Colour Bar


End Drone Attacks in Pakistan


Tibetans Walk Backwards for Human Rights

 
Tomorrow I’ll start posting some of my favourite landscape format images.

Continue reading 2013 Review – Part 2: Portrait Format

2013 Review – Part 1: Pans

I’ve just spent a couple of days looking back at my own work over the year, never an entirely satisfying practice. Its always too easy to see where I’ve been thinking lazily, and I don’t think 2012 has been a vintage year for my work. A lot of decent pictures that I can think I did a pretty good job with, but rather few that really make me sit up and think I’ve managed something different.

Financially it hasn’t been too great either. I keep hoping that Demotix is going to learn how to sell photography, but it has yet to happen, if anything they are getting better at giving it away for peanuts. In cash terms I’d probably do better putting my pictures almost anywhere else, except perhaps in boxes under the bed. But I like being able to publish a decent set of pictures along with a story and the alternatives I’ve looked at – other than my own website, My London Diary, don’t work like that.

One very satisfying thing in 2013 was to have a set of ten of my panoramas included in the exhibition Estuary celebrating 10 years of the Museum of London Docklands from May to the end of September. But these were all works from around ten years ago, and this year I’ve made relatively few panoramic images. But its perhaps a good excuse to start with a selection of those I have made.

I started well, on New Years Day, retaking a panorama from the same spot in Northfleet where I’ve photographed several times in the past, making images of the huge cement works. Now all of that is gone and in its place largely mud:

The following month I was by the Thames again, walking along the riverside path north of Greenwich:

[You should be able to see these panoramas larger by right clicking on them and selecting ‘View Image’]

The images in ‘Estuary’ were all made on film and had a horizontal angle of view of around 120 degrees. Now I’m almost entirely working by stitching digital images, and there are no limits – this is I think around 240 degrees. It also has a great vertical angle of view than those I made on film. I prefer to keep the aspect ratio of the image similar to those I made with film at around 2.5 : 1, as I think anything much higher than this becomes difficult to view.

In June I spent some of a long summer day in Docklands again, and made several panoramas around the Royal Victoria Dock.

This shows at left the Excel Centre and at right the view across the high level bridge which I was standing on to make the image.  Although the two appear almost parallel in the picture they are roughly perpendicular, and the entire horizontal angle of view in the image is a little over 180 degrees.  I’m not sure that I like the way that extreme angles of view like this can distort our perceptions.

Its also possible to produce stitched images that are not in panoramic format but still have a very wide angle of view. The next image, made in the same place as that above, has a similar horizontal angle to the panoramas I made on film, but over twice the vertical coverage, resulting in an almost square format. The upper image has a horizontal angle of view of around 180 degrees and that below around 130 degrees. When I create the panoramas I put the angle of view in degrees and the type of projection into the file name, which for the lower image ends “ved137”; however I often crop the final images a little, so the actual angle of view may be less than the stated figure. The Vedutismo or Panini projection was used by eighteenth century Italian painters including Panini and Canaletto and is particularly suited to this image because it keeps all diagonals through the centre of the image straight.  You can see in the upper image that the rough stitch I’ve made doesn’t quite succeed in the cable at right of centre.

From there I took the DLR from West Silvertown to Stratford and revisited the View Tube on the Greenway overlooking the Olympic site. I first photographed from here in the 1980s and made panoramas from close to this point before the Olympic bid was even announced, and have been going back at intervals since – except when the whole area was closed to the public.

The Olympic site seen in an almost 180 degree view from the furthest corned of the View Tube garden. This uses a cylindrical perspective like the swing lens film cameras I have, but with a greater angle of view both horizontal and vertical.

The view looking over the other side of the Greenway, with a similar horizontal angle of view to the film panoramas I worked with for around 25 years.

The final one I made, before hurrying off to photograph an evening protest shows the View Tube and the Olympic site in a slightly less than 180 degree view.

The following month I had a few minutes to spare when in the City of London, and made an attempt to retake an view I’d photographed before on film, but wasn’t entirely happy with the result below. I could never quite get the colour correct when printing the film version, and while this is truer, it seems a little cold and clinical.  It also shows my tendency to go too wide with digital panoramas

That’s a helicopter in front of the cloud, not a nasty dust spot. I think the image benefits from a crop to something more similar to the version I made with a swing lens camera in the 1990s, like this:

And I’ve made just a slight shift in colour too, which looks better on my screen.

In September I made a few more panoramas, both on a visit to Thames Barrier Park on another day with a fine sky (empty blue or grey can kill a scene when many have wide expanses)

and later in the month on a rather grey day, to the Harrow Road flyover near Paddington.

It hasn’t been a very productive year for me so far as pans are concerned, and going through the little work I have done, I’ve made a few resolutions for next year. Like I did last year! Then I picked up the Hassleblad X-Pan with its 30mm lens on Jan 1. I had it with me when I made the top picture in this post, and did take some images on film, but couldn’t bring myself to keep on using it, or never had it with me when I wanted to do so. It’s been sitting on my desk gathering dust all year.

Film imposes a particular discipline – every picture from a particular camera has the same aspect ratio, the same angle of view, the same projection. In the last few years I took many panoramas I was using two cameras, the rectilinear Hassleblad using the 30mm with a 2.4 : 1 aspect ratio and a horizontal angle of view of just under 90 degrees, and the Horizon with roughly 2.3 :1 aspect ratio, cylindrical perspective and an angle of view of  slightly under 120 degrees (the two other swing lens cameras I own give similar images but slightly wider coverage.) Both cameras have useful if not entirely accurate viewfinders.

Digital stitching  is limited only by the characteristics of the projection you choose, possibly up to 360 degrees horizontal and 180 degrees vertical. You don’t have a viewfinder but simply decide roughly where you want the boundaries to lie and then take images to fill that area – with a fair degree of overlap both inside it and across the edges.

High res scans from the Hassleblad or Horizon negatives give images around 7500 pixels wide. Not greatly different from the 7360 pixel width of the D800E sensor. I started thinking about this as I began writing this post late at night, stopped a little after midnight, and woke up around 6am still turning the problem over in my mind, and think I came up with a solution. Or rather two solutions, one to replace the Hasselblad and the other instead of the Horizon. It would be nice too if I could find the viewfinder from the Horizon I wore out and scrapped, but kept somewhere in case I found a use for it. So perhaps next year I’ll really get back into making panoramic photographs.
Continue reading 2013 Review – Part 1: Pans