You can't do That with medium format

[Rob C]

I suspect there are quite a few users that simply stay away from this thread (due to its title and its author).

That's effing uncalled for.

Rob C

[James R Russell]

Thanks Fred,

There is a nice story to this and if it's off topic or anyone doesn't want to be bored by it, this just skip it.

Last year was approached by an Atlanta Ad agency to shoot some kind of spec spot for a soft drink.  You know, using real people in real situations.

I was in our Dallas studio so I thought I'd go out to this dirt track, Devil's Bowl Speedway and location scout it.  

Once I got there I shot a few frames in succession with a D3 and D700 and kind of flipped through them and they looked great in sequence, so I thought what the hell, just shoot the still camera like a motion camera and kept shooting.

I shot about 2,000 frames, color graded em' in lightroom and stuck them together in the non linear editor and like the look so then we storyborded the project brought out a couple of models and went back two weeks later to fill in the blanks and give it a "commercial" look.

The commercial part just didn't work.  Well it did, but it kind of ruined the whole idea and at this point it morphed from a commercial project to something I cared about deeply.

BTW:  Dallas is like any Metropolitan area.  I know most people probably think it's cowboys and Redneck Strip Joints (and there is some of that), but it's mostly high end restaurants, Scoop, Prada, Mercedes and Toyota Pruius'.    In other words kind of sissified like the rest of the major metro world.

Now if you go 40 miles out of Dallas it turns into the real world of people that get dirt under their fingernails, eat corndogs on a stick, cheer for the local hero and say excuse me if they stand in your way.

So I shot the second session with  the Nikons and a 5d, licensed a great song by Noreen Braun and cut the piece together.  I love this piece and am proud of it.

Heres the video.

http://russellrutherfordphoto.com/#/Motion%20Imagery/Motion%20Imagery/1

A side note is between going back out, I made a couple of prints for those to gentlemen in the photograph Fred linked to.   I explained that I loved this image and these prints were for them.  They both looked at the two prints and kind of stood there a little worried looking.  I asked what the problem was and the driver said, "uh, gosh these are very nice, but how much do we owe you?".   I smiled and siad, look you don't owe me anything, in fact I owe you and the driver said, "yes, but I know making prints like this must be expensive so we should pay you.".

Another side note, is one of the model's from LA said "hey this is great, I have to tell all my friends.   I said please don't.   These are nice people and the last thing they need is someone walking up to the concession stand, asking for an arugula salad.

These people are doing fine, so leave them alone.

JR

In fact, you need the camera that suits you. Not more, not less. More importantly the design and operation in your hands.
That's why testing in hand is obligatory. Not specially the magical IQ, because nowdays most of the cameras are capable of producing the quality you need.

The current models with no skin look is because of cultural codes, being introduced in many ad campaigns by some brands. This plastic unreal and quasi-mortiferous imagery has a lot to do with our plastic, dead and artificial societies (in the so called first world)...

I must say that I see the same cold imagery in arquitecture photography also nowdays. Perfect exposures, perfect textures, everything is clean, DR is perfect and all ends boring like hell.

My favorite picture of James Russell is this one, not specially the "cleanest and most elaborate" of his portfolio:
 
Link is here:http://russellrutherfordphoto.com/#/Sports/Sports/20

[TMARK]

I've shot a few times in Austin and Waco, once for an insurance company and once for Dr. Pepper.  Nice, nice people.  Tall, too.  I told the crew that they would see a few things in Texas:  a man on a horse (working); a man with a gun on his hip; and road side advertisements that are a cross between Rauchenberg's Combines, folk art, and late 40's advertising.  They saw all this, and more. 

West has really good Czech food.

After eating at Diamondbacks' in Waco, we were walking back to the Hilton when we noticed a large parking lot party.  Trucks, reefer, beer, football talk.   A gaffer from New York said, all excited:  "Its just like Dazed and Confused out here!"  And it is.

[James R Russell]

Though born and raised in Texas I left young and remember it quite different.

Though we still live in LA and NY my wife wanted us to buy a building and though I know nothing of real estate I knew we were at the top of the bubble and I couldn't see buying 500 sq ft. in NY for a million, or 2 million in LA to live next to a bowling alley, so we flew to Texas over the Holiday's to visit family and met a realtor in Dallas.   4 hours later I bought the building.   A really great building, that I probably paid too much for, but after looking at the numbers we saw on the coast, it was a steal.

Anyway, I like it there, Dallas is much more metro than Austin, a little less fun, but the people are nice, the traffic not bad, the taxes pretty good, the weather ok and I wish I could spend more time there.

We've shot some nice images there.

I actually would have preferred to buy in Austin, but I didn't want to make a connecting flight to all the places we traveled.

I haven't seen anyone working on a horse in downtown Dallas, though it might happen, I have met a lot of nice folks, though overall I mostly see people with Iphones in one hand, an espresso in the other, updating their face-book page.

Now 40 miles away is much different and a lot of fun.

JR

P.S.   Next time you want a Dr. Pepper, ask for a Dublin.  They're little bitty Dr. Peppers, made in the original plant in Dublin Texas, with pure cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

They're good.

[fredjeang]

The other day I was looking for information on internet about a Grass Valley product (Edius) and falled... on a Dallas city map...(nothing to do with video!)


James, the video you linked is fantastic in all aspects. The color tones, the montage, the little boy (very important IMO), the inboard views, and maybe the highest point is that it transmits you did it with big passion. It's very sensitive, like a tribute to those people and the esthetic is extremely well executed.  

Cheers.

[ondebanks]

I'm quite confused with the translation of focal lenghts. My favorites for portrait were a 100mm Macro and the 70-200mm Zoom. According to a Phase One translator, 100mm would mean 161mm in a 645 system (Hasselblad H1), 183mm for 6x6 (Hasselblad V) or 211mm for 6x7 (Pentax). I don't get what this means for the actual photo. The difference between 6x6 and 6x7 is that I have some more space (1cm) on one axis, but shouldn't the rest of the picture be the same? And now I'm starting to go in circles: What lense will I put on a Pentax 6x7 with a 645 back? I think the focal length should be oriented at the limiting 4,5 cm, wrong?

Well a Pentax 6x7 doesn't have interchangeable backs; but if it did, yes, you would match the lens to the dimensions of the actual format being used. And in MF digital it gets even more complicated, because there are at least 5 different digital sensor sizes (none of them actually as large as 645 film). So you must relate the available MF lens focal lengths to the actual sensor size and see what angle of view each gives you, then compare those numbers to the angles given by lenses for the format you are most familiar with (for most people this means full 35mm). It's actually very easy to do this in a spreadsheet. In Microsoft Excel, enter these data and formulae:

In cell A1 put the width of the sensor (mm)
In cell B1 put the height of the sensor (mm)
In cell C1 enter the formula for the diagonal length of the sensor:                  =SQRT((A1)^2+(B1)^2)
In cell D1 put 43.27 (which is the diagonal length of a 35mm frame)
In cell E1 put the Medium Format lens focal length (mm)
In cell F1 enter the formula for the angular field of the MF lens                      =DEGREES(2*ATAN(C1/(2*E1)))
In cell G1 enter the formula for the focal length of the equivalent 35mm lens    =($D$1)/(2*TAN(RADIANS(F1/2)))

If you paste in the formulae exactly as I've derived them here, it will work.
You can then copy the complete row 1 to other rows, changing only the MF lens focal length, to see how the range of lenses work out.
Or change the sensor sizes in A1 & B1, to see how that affects things.
Of course this also works equally for film - just put the film frame dimensions in cells A1 & B1.

Hope this helps,
Ray

[tho_mas]

http://www.captureintegration.com/?s=focal+length+calculator

[Ray]

I'm quite confused with the translation of focal lenghts. My favorites for portrait were a 100mm Macro and the 70-200mm Zoom. According to a Phase One translator, 100mm would mean 161mm in a 645 system (Hasselblad H1), 183mm for 6x6 (Hasselblad V) or 211mm for 6x7 (Pentax). I don't get what this means for the actual photo. The difference between 6x6 and 6x7 is that I have some more space (1cm) on one axis, but shouldn't the rest of the picture be the same? And now I'm starting to go in circles: What lense will I put on a Pentax 6x7 with a 645 back? I think the focal length should be oriented at the limiting 4,5 cm, wrong?

You are quite right. The rest of the picture should be the same. When adjusting focal lengths to get the same Field of View using a different format of camera (or DB), there is a complication when the aspect ratios of the two different formats are also different, as in the case of 6x6cm, 6x7cm, 6x8cm & 6x9cm film formats.

If the height of a particular scene or composition is to your taste but you want more width, then you can use the same focal length of lens with 6x9 as you are using with 6x6 format.

However, if you want the width that a 6x9 format would give you, but all you have is a 6x6 format back, then you have to use a wider FL of lens with the 6x6 format, ie, 6/9ths of the focal length.

As a rule of thumb, without getting into the specifics of the requirements for a particular composition and the type of cropping that might be appropriate, it's common practice to use the differences of the diagonal of the formats to determine a focal length equivalent, as the other Ray has suggested.

When taking the trouble to compare resolution, noise and other characteristic of different formats, using the differences in the diagonals to adjust FL may be quite acceptable when the differences in aspect ratios are not great, as in the cases of 35mm format and 645, but it wouldn't be acceptable when comparing 6x6 with 6x9, in my opinion.

What I find rather amazing are comparisons between 35mm and MFDB where the photographer hasn't even bothered to adjust FL (or FOV) in accordance with the diagonal differences between the two formats. Such comparisons are meaningless. (Well, perhaps not entirely meaningless. One might deduce that the photographer making such comparisons is either careless and technically incompetent, or is trying to be deliberately deceptive. There's meaning in that.)

[eronald]

James,

 that's a nice little video
 who is singing the Magic Man there?

Edmund

[leuallen]

James post really hit home for me. I am experiencing the same type of scenerio. The last four weeks I have been going to the River Bottom Speedway. It's in central Illinois but I'll keep the location secret as, like James, I don't want to spoil it. Take a Sunday afternoon, a bunch of red necks (in the good sense), some beat up home-built race cars, a hunk of corn field, some Bud, and no rules or prizes, and you have a heck of a time.

I am retired and shoot for fun. Use a m4/3 with lots of adapted lenses (retitle this thread to 'You can't do That with m4/3'). Yes, fast focus is a problem but it can be worked around. I get enough keepers to keep me happy using autofocus and manual. Limited dynamic range, work around that to. It's the pictures that count and I can get what I want.

I have free range to pick the best vantage points except some times they hollar 'Move back - ya wanta get killed'. I sell prints for cost for this is not a money thing but I can't afford to give them away.

This Saturday they are having a benefit and racing under lights. That will really stretch the capabilities of my camera. I guess I'll go for the grainy B/W 'atmosphere' genre.

When I first moved here five years ago I was depressed. Nothing around here worth photographing. In the last couple of months its as if blinders have been removed from my eyes. Now I see stuff all around me, like this speedway. Heard about an antique tractor plowing next Sunday. Sounds like fun.

Too keep to the OP topic, his point was that you can use equipment beyond its normal usage parameters and get results if you try hard enough. That's my point too, only going in the opposite direction.

Larry

[leuallen]

Goofed. Didn't get the other two pics posted. Here they are: the overall scene and a sexy race car.

Larry

[Paintress]

OK, I've moved.

[ondebanks]

http://www.captureintegration.com/?s=focal+length+calculator

Ah! I didn't realise that was available. They did a nice job. Still, I enjoyed putting my own together - understanding the formulae from optical principles.

[Policar]

I've just had a private bet with myself that Jeff will not show us a comparison between the P65+, at F13 and ISO 1600, and the 1Ds3, at ISO 400 and F8, using the same shutter speed with both cameras.

In theory, they should be about the same.  In practice, the Canon is better engineered for this kind of scenario and so will produce a much better image is my guess...

Your comments about diffraction are mostly accurate.  At a given field of view and depth of field (assuming the same print size) resolution is diffraction limited to a specific amount--irrespective of sensor size.  So for some deep focus photography, APS-C digital and 4x5 are turning out the same resolution, even though the 4x5 camera needs orders of magnitude more light.  For example:

At 50mm f8 on 135 (or the equivalent field of view/depth of field on any other format), you're limited to about 35 slightly fuzzy megapixels by diffraction.  So an equivalent lens and f-stop on medium format, while it would require more light, would in theory produce a better image.  But not dramatically better.

At 100mm f16 on 135 (or the equivalent on anything else), your resolution is capped at under 9 megapixels.  Any modern digital camera should be fine.  135 film would be fine, too, except it's grainy.

With film, tonality and grain--not resolution--are limiting factors w/r/t enlargements.  Film is really grainy.  And so increases in film size matter--a lot.  With digital, so long as your lenses measure up, megapixels matter more than sensor size.  With either, when doing deep focus landscapes at tasteful focal lengths, diffraction is usually the limiting factor.  Using the Scheimpflug principle (tilt/shift) or image stitching, you can to some extent overcome these limitations, though.

So the simplest answer is:  for any shots you take below f11, in theory those could be sharper with medium format digital (and yes, f11 is a lot sharper on medium format than on full frame, just as f11 is sharper on full-frame than on APS-C).  But of course you would need WAY more light and better lenses.

Medium format digital capture emulates the workflow of your RB67...it assumes you want to use low ISOs (like with film) because you'll be shooting landscapes or in studio with strobes (and always with a tripod).  The dSLR is much more general purpose.  The article is just trying to argue that medium format digital is a little more flexible than it seems, even if it's not designed to be very flexible.

And besides, the Canon 5D4 or whatever will be out in five years and be 50MP+.  And at that point diffraction limits will make anything else completely pointless.

[tom b]

Shooting antelope… just came across the Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* 1700 mm F4. Find out more here:

http://www.crestock.com/blog/technology/the-worlds-most-extreme-photography-equipment-117.aspx

Cheers,

[Dick Roadnight]

Shooting antelope… just came across the Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* 1700 mm F4. Find out more here:
Cheers,

Shucks, I was hoping it was on eBay!

I have not got anything larger than 600mm and 900mm aero-recce lenses, on Sinar lensboards.

[fredjeang]

Thanks Fred,

There is a nice story to this and if it's off topic or anyone doesn't want to be bored by it, this just skip it.

Last year was approached by an Atlanta Ad agency to shoot some kind of spec spot for a soft drink.  You know, using real people in real situations.

I was in our Dallas studio so I thought I'd go out to this dirt track, Devil's Bowl Speedway and location scout it.  

Once I got there I shot a few frames in succession with a D3 and D700 and kind of flipped through them and they looked great in sequence, so I thought what the hell, just shoot the still camera like a motion camera and kept shooting.

I shot about 2,000 frames, color graded em' in lightroom and stuck them together in the non linear editor and like the look so then we storyborded the project brought out a couple of models and went back two weeks later to fill in the blanks and give it a "commercial" look.

The commercial part just didn't work.  Well it did, but it kind of ruined the whole idea and at this point it morphed from a commercial project to something I cared about deeply.

BTW:  Dallas is like any Metropolitan area.  I know most people probably think it's cowboys and Redneck Strip Joints (and there is some of that), but it's mostly high end restaurants, Scoop, Prada, Mercedes and Toyota Pruius'.    In other words kind of sissified like the rest of the major metro world.

Now if you go 40 miles out of Dallas it turns into the real world of people that get dirt under their fingernails, eat corndogs on a stick, cheer for the local hero and say excuse me if they stand in your way.

So I shot the second session with  the Nikons and a 5d, licensed a great song by Noreen Braun and cut the piece together.  I love this piece and am proud of it.

Heres the video.

http://russellrutherfordphoto.com/#/Motion%20Imagery/Motion%20Imagery/1

A side note is between going back out, I made a couple of prints for those to gentlemen in the photograph Fred linked to.   I explained that I loved this image and these prints were for them.  They both looked at the two prints and kind of stood there a little worried looking.  I asked what the problem was and the driver said, "uh, gosh these are very nice, but how much do we owe you?".   I smiled and siad, look you don't owe me anything, in fact I owe you and the driver said, "yes, but I know making prints like this must be expensive so we should pay you.".

Another side note, is one of the model's from LA said "hey this is great, I have to tell all my friends.   I said please don't.   These are nice people and the last thing they need is someone walking up to the concession stand, asking for an arugula salad.

These people are doing fine, so leave them alone.

JR

A quick meditation of the James picture, out of topic also, inspired by a Rob's post.
Why this Jame's picture is so important to me? because that's a huge peice of photography.

There are many others works in the portfolio that can be considered cleaner, technicaly more acheived or whatever. But this pic tells the big story. That is why it is so good. Who cares about any other aspects like DR, and so on.

This picture is simply brillant because its power lays in the big story.

Ironicaly, to put up a fashion or advertising shooting, a "big story is needed", but where lays that story, in the final image? I think it do not, the big story is in the making-of. In the human adventure that made possible the pictures. On the contrary, the car race shooting tells an apparently small story, simple people, simple life in a texan country. No Ayrton Senna or Michael Shumacher there, no celebrities but just anonymous guys. But the final image is a big story.

[Rob C]

Ah the stories!

It's a funny thing, but I have long believed that 'stories' have nothing to do with actual photography. Stories are the trick through which you sell the idea of the shoot to the client - or vice versa - but the reality, without captions, means that there never really is a visible story, just an excuse for a helluva good time (on a good shoot).
Look at those fashion mags around the place - what do you see?  A headline telling you about the story, but the pictures are generally stand-alone images that sell something very beautifully. Thank God for that; to be tied to some moron's idea of a theme would be murder indeed.

I think I mentioned this here before, but it's perhaps worth the retelling. A calendar client told me that the next shoot was going to be a 'painterly' job in the south of France. I was delighted, and took the Sarah Moon Pirelli into his office to see if that was where his mind was travelling. He almost had a heart attack. The upshot? Some of the French pix on my website - St Paul de Vence, Saint-Tropez, etc. Nothing to do with painterly, but certainly what he was happy to publish for his company. Stories; they confuse more than they help.

So yes, Fred, you are absolutely right: the 'big story' is all about the selling of the act of getting the contract to do the shoot! It's the justification that one level of management feels it owes to the level above itself.

Rob C

[feppe]

Ah the stories!

It's a funny thing, but I have long believed that 'stories' have nothing to do with actual photography. Stories are the trick through which you sell the idea of the shoot to the client - or vice versa - but the reality, without captions, means that there never really is a visible story, just an excuse for a helluva good time (on a good shoot).
Look at those fashion mags around the place - what do you see?  A headline telling you about the story, but the pictures are generally stand-alone images that sell something very beautifully. Thank God for that; to be tied to some moron's idea of a theme would be murder indeed.

I think I mentioned this here before, but it's perhaps worth the retelling. A calendar client told me that the next shoot was going to be a 'painterly' job in the south of France. I was delighted, and took the Sarah Moon Pirelli into his office to see if that was where his mind was travelling. He almost had a heart attack. The upshot? Some of the French pix on my website - St Paul de Vence, Saint-Tropez, etc. Nothing to do with painterly, but certainly what he was happy to publish for his company. Stories; they confuse more than they help.

So yes, Fred, you are absolutely right: the 'big story' is all about the selling of the act of getting the contract to do the shoot! It's the justification that one level of management feels it owes to the level above itself.

I think Gregory Crewdson would disagree.

[Rob C]

I think Gregory Crewdson would disagree.

I don't think he's relevant to Fred's dilemma; I doubt he has any wish to be a hot potato in fashion photography, but you never know.

The triumph of technique over soul?

Rob C