A quick glance down this page will soon tell you that there have been no new posts in a long while so the title of this post would appear like stating the obvious!So, what have I been doing all this time?Well, a lot of photography for a start which has led me to conclude that I don’t want to be a full time blogger. With a great deal of new work to show and new directions to head for I have designed and set up (at last!) my own new website, Objectively Speaking - The Fine Art Photography of Ian Talbot. It has taken a while but the site has now definitively gone live! Do come over to Objectively Speaking for a visit.You will be very welcome!

Here’s the problem - I’m out in my garden early in the morning with my new D200 with 70-300mm zoom attached. At the back of the garden just in front of the back fence, in partial shade, is a Yucca with the soft morning light just brushing it. I could have run indoors to fetch my tripod - even early morning light doesn’t change that quickly - but what if I wasn’t at home and had no tripod with me? So I decided that I would simply bump the ISO setting up to a point where I could comfortably hand hold the zoom (at it’s longest setting - effectively a 450mm lens, albeit a lightweight one). To be on the safe side and taking into account my advanced years I figured that 1/500th at my chosen aperture of f8 would be fine. That entailed a setting of 640ISO and I took the shot.

Importing the shot into Aperture, the initial editing was very quick and easy, just a tweak of the white and black points, a lift in the mid tones and very small adjustments to the quarter tones. Now the D200 has a very good high ISO performance, certainly better than my old D70, but quite clearly there was noise starting slightly in the mid tones and increasing beyond there downwards through the darker tones.

Exporting the file to Photoshop I could have fairly painlessly cleaned the noise up in Noise Ninja but I’ve never much liked doing that, despite the fact that Noise Ninja really does a very good job of it. Even at low ISO settings where there is no noise to speak of I’ve never been fond of that smooth grainless “digital” look to out of focus areas. To me it always tends to look “unreal”, or should I say “unphotographic” as if the eye needs some texture or “tooth” to latch onto. Well, maybe that’s just me, but I decided to take the file into Alien Skin’s Exposure plug in and, after tweaking the color balance with a Polachrome setting I had saved, to make the image a little “cooler” I played around with the grain settings until I attained the size, amount and tonal spread that just blended with the noise already present in the image and made it look like slight grain instead of just dark tone noise. Here you have to be quite careful as if the noise is already harsh in the image and you then try to add an over grainy effect to attempt to cover it up the grain interacts with the noise in some rather strange ways and you end up with a totally unreal looking mess. Gently does it is best but it really can work well.

As I’ve said I do somewhat miss the look of grain, even if it’s ultra fine Kodachrome grain, in digital so I actually add very slight grain to most of my digital color images. I just prefer the look!

Oh yes - and here’s the final image, although please not that the grain is not really apparent in the small jpeg here but certainly is, though subtle, in the full size image.

Click here to buy this print at ImageKind

Oh dear, another weekend - time is just flashing past in a blur!

Here is my selection of the best links I’ve seen on the web for the week just gone.

Fiftieth Anniversary of First Digital Image - “It was a grainy image of a baby—just 5 centimeters by 5 centimeters—but it turned out to be the well from which satellite imaging, CAT scans, bar codes on packaging, desktop publishing, digital photography and a host of other imaging technologies sprang.” I take it they mean the image (5cms X 5cms) not the baby.

Non-Photography (No Rules, Street Photography) - “no special gear (too heavy), no instruction books (too boring), no calculations (too calculated).” The perfect antidote for all those “tech heavy” photo sites out there!

Diego Velazquez: 17th Century Spanish Painter - Nice summary of the work of one of my favorite painters and arguably, with Rembrandt, the greatest of all portrait painters. Rewarding study for all photographers.

Penfold’s surf tips - lesson 2 - Not a photo link but it made me laugh out loud!

Studio Lighting Tips from Joe McNally - Old article but ties in nicely with the series of posts I’ve done this week on hot shoe flash units.

Well, that’s it - hope you enjoy them!

Have a happy and safe weekend.

With my recent purchase of a Nikon D200 I commented in a previous post, Cheap Chinese Made Photo Equipment, about my intention to buy some cheap Chinese accessories for it - after baulking at the price of the Nikon equivalents! After cruising on eBay I put in a order for a Remote Shutter Release and a Pop Up Shade LCD Hood. The remote cost me $9 and the shade was $11.

Well, they arrived and so far so good. The remote works as expected and at a great saving on Nikon’s one as well. How long it’ll keep working, of course, remains to be seen but as it is such a simple item I see no reason why it shouldn’t. The hood is a very handy pop up replacement for the Nikon supplied clear plastic LCD cover and is very handy in sunlight etc. and is effective in making it easier to view the LCD and offers full protection when closed. In fact it also had a clear plastic cover inside but as that arrived already quite badly scratched I popped it off and use the hood without it - no loss really and for the price I can have no real complaint.

So am I pleased? You betcha! The saving was considerable and the build quality (scratched cover apart) seems reasonable. Any D200 owners out there who want to give these articles a try I’m sure you will find them easily on eBay. At those prices what have you got to lose?

In my recent posts about the techno wizardry of small hot shoe flashes like my SB800 I mused as to whether most of us are really using their capabilities to the full. As is my usual idle wont I pointed you towards Dave Black’s excellent set of tutorials for more information on how to get the best out of them. If you followed the link you will have seen that Dave uses some pretty exotic set ups with multi SB800s and dials in various combinations of exposure compensation for the separate groups he uses in his banks of flash units and he uses them on the TTL setting. Meanwhile, over at the excellent Strobist David Hobby advocates a more, shall we say, “budget” approach with extensive use of older (and cheaper!) SB24s, SB26s and SB28DXs etc. and he uses his flash units almost exclusively on manual. Both these guys are highly respected working pros and really know their stuff, both produce terrific work. So which one is right?

OK, you’ve probably guessed it, they’re both right, of course! Dave Black’s approach will work for most of the time, especially when you factor in Dave’s long experience in knowing when and how to tweak his settings. Ditto for David Black, especially when you factor in etc., etc. The real point is you are still going to have figure a lot of this stuff for yourself and experiment to settle on the working practices that suit you and your particular photographic vision - and that’s leaving budgetary considerations aside that may well constrict your choices in the first place.

In the past I’ve been a bit leery of any auto exposure systems - it seems to me that they always seem to subtly change exposures when you know damn well the exposure should stay the seem when the same conditions prevail. Then again, when you look at Dave’s (Black, that is) work you can’t help but be tempted to give his techniques a try. That fits in entirely with my philosophy of figuring out what you want to achieve and then test, test, test.

Now, if only it would stop raining, I would be out in my back garden trying all this stuff out for myself!

This is a follow up to yesterday’s post with links to a couple of extra excellent resources.

I’ve written before about using small softboxes, snoots, grids etc. with small but powerful hot shoe flashes like my SB800 but how many of you knew that these tiny marvels have more than enough oomph to use with much larger softboxes, softlites and other light shapers? OK you can put your hands down all of you smart ones out there but for those who didn’t know already here is a link to an excellent tutorial/resource with a comprehensive discussion on this and pointers to the sort of equipment you can use plus techniques etc. It’s written by Julia Greer who, like me, uses Nikon gear but as she says I see no reason why the same tips wouldn’t apply to Canon users and others. The only real difference to my practice is that I favor and use Chimera softboxes - pricier but arguably the best you can get. Anyway, if you need portability and flexibility in your lighting set ups the suggestions she makes are right on the money!

One last tip - Julia uses and recommends the Lumiquest snoot for when you need to narrow and direct the beam on your flash unit but I recently noticed a recommendation on the Strobist site for the Honlphoto alternative. It looks better than the Lumiquest and it costs less. I have one on order but I’m sure you wouldn’t need to wait for a report from me on it - the snoot and, indeed the other stuff in the range, looks just the ticket.

Are you getting the most out of the technological wonder that is your TTL hot shoe flash unit? If you’re anything like me the answer is probably no. Heck, after paying fairly heftily for my SB800 for most of the time I use it on manual and tethered to the camera with a bog standard PC cord! Actually, I can easily defend this modus operandi because for the sort of table top close up work I mostly do sticking the SB800 inside a softbox and adjusting the manual power setting until the exposure looks right has proven to be the most straightforward and consistent way to get the results I want. Of course, springing for such a technologically advanced piece of gear in the first place might be a bit more difficult to defend but if you don’t tell the wife I think I can get away with that one!

Now, however, as I contemplate venturing out into the wide world more often with my gear I will definitely be exploring the many modes and capabilities of my SB800 more fully. I don’t know about you but I find Nikon manuals (for both cameras and flash units) pretty impenetrable - Canon etc. may well be no better for all I know - so any tips and info from someone who has already figured all this stuff out is most welcome.

Now for some good news and some bad news. First the bad news - if you were eagerly rushing to read this post hoping for some neat tips and tricks from yours truly you are bang out of luck. That would be like the blind leading the blind! But - hooray - now for the good news. Someone has figured all this stuff out. His name is Dave Black and this link will take you to his site where you will find everything you always wanted to know about using your SB800 to the fullest limits of its capabilities, whether you own just one unit or are fortunate enough, like Dave, to have several units at your disposal. Just dive in and, after studying the profuse and detailed walk throughs that Dave is kind enough to share, start experimenting. That’s what I intend to do anyway!

Oh yes, and by the way Dave is also one of the very best sports photographers around so there’s plenty of fine work in that genre to inspire you (if that’s what you’re into) or just to enjoy even if it’s not exactly your preferred field of endeavor. All in all a thoroughly recommended resource!

It’s been a quiet week online for me - I’ve been a bit busy on other matters - but my selection is still, I believe, interesting enough to be worth a look!

The Photography of Mary Ellen Mark - Thomas Hawk’s blog post takes a look at the work of one of the most consistently excellent exponents of “concerned” documentary photography of modern times.

Harpo and Dalí: a surreal double act - This article on a new Tate Modern, London, exhibition caught my eye because of the sheer incongruity of its title!

Jon Brock Landscape Photographs - Beautiful large format landscape images that seem to me to successfully capture the unique essence of the British landscape experience.

The Unarchiver - This one is for Mac users only! For some unaccountable reason I’ve recently run across some Mac .sit files that, no matter what, won’t successfully “unstuff” using Stuffit Expander but this open source alternative has handled them with ease. If any of you fellow Mac users have had the same problem - here’s the answer. It also handles most other compression formats and is now my “unarchiver” of choice.

Well, I told you it was a short list this week but quality over quantity I hope!

Wishing you all a happy weekend.

Last night on BBC 2 I saw a documentary entitled “Race Hate In Louisiana”. The documentary was about the repercussions of an incident that took place at the local High School in Jena, a small Southern town in Louisiana. I’m not going to comment on the incident or express an opinion, mostly because I doubt I would be in possession of all of the the facts and nuances of the case on the strength of seeing one documentary and, besides, as an internal US issue it’s most probably none of my damn business. No, the thing that most shocked me, to an unexpected degree, were 3 old still images that the program started with.

The 3 images in question were of lynchings in the Old South. I have seen the images before - they always bring to mind the old, brooding and shattering Billie Holiday masterpiece “Strange Fruit” - but I was quite unprepared for the visceral shock of seeing these images again flashing quite quickly - 1-2-3 - across my TV screen. I say unprepared because along with the physical shock I felt a deep - almost soul deep - sadness. Nothing surprising there, you may say, an entirely natural reaction but… We all see and have seen many shocking images (too many) and the capacity for these images to really shock must, to some degree, be diminished by sheer quantity - shock fatigue for want of a different term. Also, at the time, it struck me that I wouldn’t have been so shocked if these had been firearm murders or executions so it probably was some deep seated revulsion at the choice of method involved in these heinous crimes.

Truth to tell, I’m not entirely sure myself as to the exact reasons why these particular images had such a capacity to shock me more than any number of others that I could think of but it does illustrate the power of certain images and that was something that I had tended to grow cynically doubtful of. I had cultivated a sort of world weary “Nothing can shock me anymore” attitude. It took these 3 images to remind me again of what I should have known all along.

I first became aware of Frans Lanting and his exquisite nature photography in the 1980s. Even then, looking at his early work, you were aware that in a field of photography where it was often an achievement to get any sort of image here was something very special. Since then I have followed with interest as Frans’s work has just got more and more astonishing culminating in his seminal book LIFE - A Journey Through Time (visit this site and be sure to “Start the Journey” as prompted - and prepare to be amazed). The work in this ambitious book reminds a little of the BBC/David Attenborough TV films - there’s the same feeling of “Sure, plenty of other people do this stuff and do it well but this is just on an entirely different level”.

I’ve said before that I grow weary of much “art” photography with it’s hyped up nonentiies whose work needs reams of inane gobbledygook by some “art critic” to explain just why the work is so important - not so much “a picture’s worth a thousand words” as “these pictures need at least a thousand words to persuade you that they are worth anything at all”. There’s a visceral visual delight in looking at the work of a real pro at the top of his game - a category that Lanting most certainly fits in.

Go see for yourself!