High Speed Too Clean?

[GoodmanS]

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Have only seen a few posts from the latest firmware update, and just wondering how everyone likes it. Does anyone feel like leica went the way of canon? Are they happy with that? I personally like the look of the higher iso's because of their grain, especially in BW. Any thoughts?

thanks

[Jamie Roberts]

Shane, no --it's still got the good stuff in JPEG in terms of pleasant noise. There's plenty of detail there.

 

Of course, you're giving up other kinds of quality shooting JPEG anyway, and it's so easy to add pleasant noise in post, that it's a non-issue.

[Stuart Richardson]

It's always possible add grain in photoshop, but it is not possible to remove grain without losing detail. If they could make 2500 look like 160, I would be happy as a clam. As Jaime said, add it in post...there's more control anyway...

[dpattinson]

I shot a bunch of B+W jpegs on the weekend, and I'm pretty happy with the grain. If you're interested some of them are here: Blair's Party - a photoset on Flickr

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Now this is a thread i never thought i would see after all the moaning about high ISO noise , now we want more. Banging head against the wall:D

[lars_bergquist]

Once when T-Max films were new I overheard two photogs bemoaning their lack of grain. They seemed to feel that large and coarse grain was somehow 'artistic' in itself. (They overstated the case, BTW. I had to expose T-Max 100 at EI 64 and develop in specially modified T-Max Developer to get rid of grain.)

 

People artificially adding canned noise to their images remind me of those Pictorialist photographers around 1900 who scoured their glass plate negs with sand in order to obtain a 'graphical' effect. Pictorialism as a coherent movement died after WW I but the sentiment survived, and in the late 1950's we had a wave of 'Neo-Pictorialism' which was quite simply the religion of grain (and steep gradation producing 'chalk-and-soot' prints). One beloved way of obtaining this was deep-frying pushed Tri-X in barely diluted Rodinal. The two artistic gentlemen above were late believers.

 

I always liked the creamy gradation of a low-grain print. Grain was OK as long as it did not destroy much detail or gradation, was fine and had a non-obtrusive structure. I feel the same about digital image noise. It is a technical defect. It must be accepted that high-gain (high EI or 'ISO') images exhibit it, within reason. It may even add to the mood ... But extolling it, and wantonly adding it is an attempt to make someting look like someting it is not. It is deception (which in order to be effective must start with self-deception). If this is your preferred game, get yourself a SLR and a pocket full of the 'effect' filters peddled on the market.

 

The old man from the Age of Tri-X

[Jamie Roberts]

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{snipped}... But extolling it, and wantonly adding it is an attempt to make someting look like someting it is not. It is deception (which in order to be effective must start with self-deception). If this is your preferred game, get yourself a SLR and a pocket full of the 'effect' filters peddled on the market.

 

The old man from the Age of Tri-X

 

Well, Lars, I was with you up to this most ridiculous point ever. I also come from the age of TriX and box cameras and am not old; grain is *ALWAYS* something we controlled in the darkroom with film choice, developer and development techniques.

 

So why not control noise with the digital tools at hand? The actual fact is, adding pleasant noise often masks unpleasant noise, increases tonality for a print, and in general changes the mood of the thing.

 

So your points about deception and self-deception are, in my brutally honest opinion, unmitigated BS Next you'll be telling me a medium has "integrity" whatever the heck that is

 

 

The Young Man from the Age of Technidol

[wparsonsgisnet]

The next guy that accuses me of integrity better watch his/her step!

[plasticman]

So your points about deception and self-deception are, in my brutally honest opinion, unmitigated BS Next you'll be telling me a medium has "integrity" whatever the heck that is

 

Aaaah - the venerable integrity thread Jamie! I gave it a brief (and probably undeserved) revival earlier this week, when these wonderful examples of 'digital integrity' caught my eye. ;-)

 

Keep adding grain that's mathematically computed according to programmed algorithms - I'm sure the end result really does feel 'natural'. ;-)

[lars_bergquist]

My words were strong, but no apologies will follow – this is my considered opinion.

 

First the matter of controlling grain. Sure we tried – see my previous posting. But no serious photographer did artificially add grain where there was none.

 

Here is a short list of techniques that were in use a hundred years or more ago to make your photographs look less 'photographic'. They were recommended in various publications of the time:

 

• Use pinhole camera

• Breathe on the front lens

• Smear Vaseline™ on the front lens (yes, in the 1890's!)

• Use special soft-focus taking lenses

• Use single spectacle lenses – Zeiss Punktal brand was popular ...

• Kick a tripod leg during the exposure

• Abrade the glass plate negative with sandpaper etc.

• Do bromoil printing, where you actually brushed on the black by hand

• Do photogravure printing, with a visible resin-particle mezzotint grain

• Print through the paper

• Print through a structure foil, adding fake grain, linen texture etc.

• Print on special coarse or structured paper

 

Various 'effect filters' to emulate the above were marketed during the years when 'Neo-Pictorialism' became the 'in' thing, and they do still to some extent hang on in various manufacturers' catalogs. Now don't tell me that we shall have a Neo-Neo-Pictorialism again in the digital age! Imagine the horrors, beyond the list above, that now await us, simply because they have become possible.

 

The word 'integrity' is so fuzzy and overused that it has no ascertainable meaning. I prefer the word honesty, which is of course outdated – but so am I.

 

The old man from the Age of Grump

[AlanG]

I often used to shoot the same subject on 35mm (grainy) and 4x5 (not grainy.) Which was right?

[dpattinson]

lars,

 

take a look at flickr... neo-pictorialism reigns supreme - the revolution has already come (again)

 

I'm interested in whether you would also see the deliberate obfuscation of detail using addition of blur by shooting a lens wide open (ie Nocti) as a pictorialist conceit?

[Jamie Roberts]

I often used to shoot the same subject on 35mm (grainy) and 4x5 (not grainy.) Which was right?

 

Or worse--which was honest?

 

Lars--I know it's your considered opinion. When I call you on it, that's my considered opinion too, and I can be just as curmudgeonly, if younger in approach if not in years. So no apologies here either: I calls 'em as I sees em

 

Techniques in photography--all of them dealing explicitly with artifice and representation, and not reality--come and go and come and go. It seems ridiculous to me to consider film grain "natural" as if film sprang out of the soil or something, but digital "grain" or scanned grain or textures un-natural.

 

They're both completely and totally artificial, and that's ok, since it's an artistic medium (used, however, more or less artfully). You may like one and hate the other, but that's your aesthetic; it's only honest insofar as you and others believe in it, IMO.

 

Even "documentary" photography is nothing but a convention of "realism."

 

What--it's not OK to dodge and burn? Now I'm controlling shadows but not grain? Film has no artificial characteristics? Um give me a break, please

Where people draw that line is up to them. Neither is more honest, though: honesty has nothing to do with it.

 

@ David: exactly right.

[Bob Ross]

My words were strong, but no apologies will follow – this is my considered opinion.

 

•Various 'effect filters' to emulate the above were marketed during the years when 'Neo-Pictorialism' became the 'in' thing, and they do still to some extent hang on in various manufacturers' catalogs. Now don't tell me that we shall have a Neo-Neo-Pictorialism again in the digital age! Imagine the horrors, beyond the list above, that now await us, simply because they have become possible.

 

The word 'integrity' is so fuzzy and overused that it has no ascertainable meaning. I prefer the word honesty, which is of course outdated – but so am I.

 

The old man from the Age of Grump

Now Lars,

I recall that you complimented an image in another thread by Norm, that in my opinion, would have fit into the Pictorialism realm. It wasn't a case of grain/noise, but Group 64 would have voted it as trash for lack of detail. I think Pictorialism is alive and well, but like all photography, it can be done well or otherwise. My tastes tend to side with your comments and I spent a lot of time amd chemicals on reducing the grain. Grain/noise is part of the photo image medium, so the question is how does it affect the image, when it shows up......and it will...

I love your signatures, so I'll sign as, The old man from the days of texture screens;)

[lars_bergquist]

I often used to shoot the same subject on 35mm (grainy) and 4x5 (not grainy.) Which was right?

 

Grainy was natural in 35mm, and naturally not there as long as you enlarged your 4x5" within reasonable limits for the format. Grain is not right or wrong per se. It is just a matter of what medium you chose.

 

The old man from the Age of Kodachrome I

[Jamie Roberts]

Grainy was natural in 35mm, and naturally not there as long as you enlarged your 4x5" within reasonable limits for the format. Grain is not right or wrong per se. It is just a matter of what medium you chose.

 

The old man from the Age of Kodachrome I

 

Yes--grain is not right or wrong per se. And also not natural, but also limited by the medium.

 

In other words, grain is not "naturally" in 35 film. It's a result of a historical and artificial, technical processes. The "grain" (noise) in glass plate printing is not the same as "grain" on plastic substrate at all. Different processes; different noise. Neither is right or wrong.

 

The grain from TriX pushed 3 stops is not the grain from Technical Pan pushed three stops (at ISO 24!)

 

So we agree: it's all on the medium you choose.

 

The digital photographic medium lets you select the noise and patterns of noise in any number of ways, including post processing. That they are the equivalent, to you personally, of kicking a tripod (or selecting paper??!!) is irrelevant. The medium lets you do this: welcome to digital photography

 

So again, deception or self-deception? I think not. In fact, I'd say anyone who doesn't get this about digital imaging and the potential image is deluding themselves a wee bit

[lars_bergquist]

Now Lars,

I recall that you complimented an image in another thread by Norm, that in my opinion, would have fit into the Pictorialism realm. It wasn't a case of grain/noise, but Group 64 would have voted it as trash for lack of detail.---------QUOTE]

 

Bob, once there existed an 'exhibition circuit' where avid amateurs sent their prints to be chosen for exhibition (they got a coveted label on their back), considered for honours, and possibly criticism. The standards applied were largely borrowed from the age of academic or 'salon' painting and extremely rigid: composition by the golden section, all movement going into the picture, full detail in all highlights and in all shadows, 'natural' greyscale, apsitively posolutely NO tele or wide angle lenses ("this is not how the eye sees") etc. It was implicitely assumed that the 'artist' could not only move cows and old ladies around, but even one-upping Joshua by moving the sun around arbitrarily on the firmament. And would you believe me, this sort of thing went on even to the end of the 1950's.

 

My standards are in no way as ossified as these ... I don't give a damn about Rules. That picture was pleasant and it was seen as it was and captured, not meddled with in order to make it look like something that could have been done better with brushes and acrylics. It was photography. That's enough. And BTW Ansel and Edward were not that rigid either. They just wanted an honest photographic image that explored the until then despised esthetic of the sharp print. Ansel used a Contax RF occasionally ...

 

The old man from the Age of Brovira

[lars_bergquist]

And Jamie, of course 35mm film is not a natural product; it doesn't grow on trees (especially not nowadays). By 'natural' I just mean that any medium defines by its technical characteristics a range of procedures that are 'natural' i.e easy and more or less consistent or self-evident to use. Limits are of course fluid.

 

Of course (too) dodging and burning were reasonable procedures. They put highlight and shadow detail that existed in the negative, on paper that could not match the dynamic range of the negative. But they did not paint in anything that wasn't there from the beginning.

 

There exist a thousand and one ways of messing up a photographic image (and most of them were old hat even a hundred years ago). There are very few ways of making a good-looking and striking photograph. The only infinite variable is the photographer's eye as he stands before the subject.

 

The thousand and one ways are for those that do not have the eye.

 

Regards, The old man from the Age of Technical Pan

[lars_bergquist]

lars,

 

take a look at flickr... neo-pictorialism reigns supreme - the revolution has already come (again)

 

I'm interested in whether you would also see the deliberate obfuscation of detail using addition of blur by shooting a lens wide open (ie Nocti) as a pictorialist conceit?

 

Indeed – and Plasticman's link too. To quote Pogo: "We have seen the enemy and he's us."

 

More speed does mean less depth of field. That's all. There's no intrinsical ethical goodness or badness in f:64 – or in f:1. You use your lenses. The judges of the exhibition circus (oops, not deliberate but I'll let it stand) were as allergic to out of focus areas as to most other things. The eye does not see like this! Everybody knows that we see everything sharp!

 

Once when I was teaching a friend to shoot pistols, I pointed out that he must focus on the front sight, not on the target. Sight misalignment was far more drastically disastrous than a slight misalignment on the target. – He assured me that he saw both rear sight, front sight and the bull's eye sharp ***at the same time***. – I advised him to immediately consult an ophthalmologist, because they would both become instant scientific celebrities. We live in a largely unsharp, fuzzy world in which we pick some details to focus on.

 

The old man from the Age of Smith & Wesson

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped} We live in a largely unsharp, fuzzy world in which we pick some details to focus on.

 

The old man from the Age of Smith & Wesson

 

Ok, last comment from me on this, because we have the "Nocti sees more like people do" argument rearing its head here, and I just don't care that much...

 

BUT--and this is a big but--though I'm not a man from any age of pistol shooting, I can guarantee you a pilot does not see the world this way. Or that we think of a "single point of focus" when we're looking at scenery.

 

Sorry--that's an artistic way of seeing things. Yes, there's an art to pistol shooting evidently. Is it natural? No. Is it the way untrained people think? No.

 

And yes--there are a million--not a thousand--ways to screw an image up. Some of them even involve choosing the wrong medium for your vision.

 

And of course dodging and burning adds what isn't there; contrast is yet another thing to control--not accept as natural, and was yet another reason we picked different films, developers and papers.

 

So I'm sorry Lars, your worldview simply doesn't connect with mine.

 

Art is art: the results count, not the way you get there. I couldn't care less if someone using a box camera and a good shutter kicks the tripod and pirouettes while smashing the "lens" at precisley 1/250 on a 1/125 exposure, shot through a muslin with shiny plastic-y things on it illuminated by a thousand hubcaps arranged just so in the rising sun and accompanied by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Good on 'em.

 

If the results are good, they're good.

 

So while I'm not likely to smear vaseline on my lenses, or rush out and by Cokin filters, that's completely beside the point, and that's my limitation, actually. Smeary can be good. As can other effects--it's all in the hands of the people that use them.

 

And forget the pseudo-artistic terminology. Plenty of fabulous photographers work in deep and rich veins that are not "documentary" in the sense being discussed here. Pictorialism? Rubbish. Some of the best photographers today are re-discovering the fact that, by and large, we in the West still live in a (capital R) Romantic age, and reworking all those influences from fine art and architecture.

 

If they have to add texture to do that, who cares? And what in the name of pete (?) is wrong with using different textured papers?! Paper traditions go back a lot further than photography--thank heavens we can (now) start paying attention to the integrity of paper again

 

(PS--I miss Pogo--on that we agree )