240 - Grainy - January 21-27, 2018
Paul-
Not far south down Highway 77 from Princeton—no, not that Princeton, the unincorporated community named Princeton here in Nebraska—there is an intersection. It’s an intersection much in the same way that a 1985 Yugo is an automobile. You have to be charitable on both counts. But the Yugo had tires and seats, and the road crossing HWY 77 seems graded.
Now, look to the east of this intersection and you will see boredom at its sprawling best—land that was already pretty flat leveling off even further…if such a thing is possible. There’s some trees in the distance too…maybe. However, turn to the left and you see what I’ve captured for this week’s theme.
Trains once flanked 77 along a large berms and embankments supporting the machine, cargo (presumably grain and lumber), people, and the local economies. At some point, when highways, trucks, planes and larger communities popped up like dandelions, the tracks grew silent save for channeling prairie winds back and forth. The berms and the bridges are still there of course, and for a long time the tracks were, too. Then they gradually disappeared as well. The 38-mile stretch from Lincoln (where I live) to Beatrice (where I work) underwent a year’s long rails-to-trails transformation. It was finished about three years ago. (If a strong enough wind is with you, you can coast for a while. If it’s not, everyone but Darin will start burning lactic acid at some point.)
Anyway, this small little bridge—which will likely no long support a train anymore—will support cyclists, and allowed me to frame a part of the farmstead not far beyond it.
I would have liked to shown more the of the bridge, but modern day road signage appears on either side—to include them would have meant an anachronistic skew to the picture which is meant to appear several decades older than it is. The fence on top is probably suspect as well for the era I was trying to imitate, but I opted to keep it in.
About half the work post was done in Lightroom. However, I also used Analog Efex Pro because the of additional control it gave me over how I wanted the grain to appear, neutral B&W tonality options, and the ability to select a “vintage camera” as the tool used to capture the shot.
A granular breakdown: (7:56AM, facing east) Nikon D5200; aperture priority; 55-200mm lens focused at 78mm; ISO 1250; -1/3EV; 1/200 sec. at f/14; pattern metering; Auto WB. The camera was hand-held and set for B&W.
Not far south down Highway 77 from Princeton—no, not that Princeton, the unincorporated community named Princeton here in Nebraska—there is an intersection. It’s an intersection much in the same way that a 1985 Yugo is an automobile. You have to be charitable on both counts. But the Yugo had tires and seats, and the road crossing HWY 77 seems graded.
Now, look to the east of this intersection and you will see boredom at its sprawling best—land that was already pretty flat leveling off even further…if such a thing is possible. There’s some trees in the distance too…maybe. However, turn to the left and you see what I’ve captured for this week’s theme.
Trains once flanked 77 along a large berms and embankments supporting the machine, cargo (presumably grain and lumber), people, and the local economies. At some point, when highways, trucks, planes and larger communities popped up like dandelions, the tracks grew silent save for channeling prairie winds back and forth. The berms and the bridges are still there of course, and for a long time the tracks were, too. Then they gradually disappeared as well. The 38-mile stretch from Lincoln (where I live) to Beatrice (where I work) underwent a year’s long rails-to-trails transformation. It was finished about three years ago. (If a strong enough wind is with you, you can coast for a while. If it’s not, everyone but Darin will start burning lactic acid at some point.)
Anyway, this small little bridge—which will likely no long support a train anymore—will support cyclists, and allowed me to frame a part of the farmstead not far beyond it.
I would have liked to shown more the of the bridge, but modern day road signage appears on either side—to include them would have meant an anachronistic skew to the picture which is meant to appear several decades older than it is. The fence on top is probably suspect as well for the era I was trying to imitate, but I opted to keep it in.
About half the work post was done in Lightroom. However, I also used Analog Efex Pro because the of additional control it gave me over how I wanted the grain to appear, neutral B&W tonality options, and the ability to select a “vintage camera” as the tool used to capture the shot.
A granular breakdown: (7:56AM, facing east) Nikon D5200; aperture priority; 55-200mm lens focused at 78mm; ISO 1250; -1/3EV; 1/200 sec. at f/14; pattern metering; Auto WB. The camera was hand-held and set for B&W.
Jerry-
I set my little Sony to ISO 51,200 and fired away at Mr. Skull who was resting in the fresh snow. The grain effect was not all that great so I jazzed him up in photoshop a bit. It’s too bad I don’t have one of my old Nikons that got really noisy after ISO 400. Not that I miss them. So here you go. Lens was the 16-70 zoomed to 29mm, exposure was 1/2000 @ F16. Exposure bias pumped up +1 to keep the snow whitish.
I set my little Sony to ISO 51,200 and fired away at Mr. Skull who was resting in the fresh snow. The grain effect was not all that great so I jazzed him up in photoshop a bit. It’s too bad I don’t have one of my old Nikons that got really noisy after ISO 400. Not that I miss them. So here you go. Lens was the 16-70 zoomed to 29mm, exposure was 1/2000 @ F16. Exposure bias pumped up +1 to keep the snow whitish.
Don-
My niece posted this picture a while back in Facebook. I think it was
one that my sister had. The photo was taken in my barracks in
Nha Trang, South Vietnam with a Konica Autoreflex T.
I downloaded it. It was about 1.5 by 1 inch.
I printed it and then took a picture with a macro lens.
Focal was a 105mm macro lens. Exposure was f4; 1/15 seconds;
ISO 100. D810 was tripod mounted no flash. I think its a perfect example
of Uniform Noise.
My niece posted this picture a while back in Facebook. I think it was
one that my sister had. The photo was taken in my barracks in
Nha Trang, South Vietnam with a Konica Autoreflex T.
I downloaded it. It was about 1.5 by 1 inch.
I printed it and then took a picture with a macro lens.
Focal was a 105mm macro lens. Exposure was f4; 1/15 seconds;
ISO 100. D810 was tripod mounted no flash. I think its a perfect example
of Uniform Noise.
Byron-
I purchased a camera last September that has a feature that fit perfectly with this week's theme. Many digital cameras have film simulations. The camera I bought is a Fujifilm X100F. Fuji has made film for many years so they included color film simulations in their camera. They also made a Black & White film called Acros. That simulation wasn't included in any Fujifilm camera until last year. According to an article I read, Fuji worked on that simulation for 10 years before they were satisfied that it truly simulated their Acros film. They wanted to make sure that as an image was captured, the tonal curves matched the how the film would look. In addition to that, the grain was important. If the image was taken at a low ISO the grain is smaller. As the ISO is increased, the grain size increases. The goal was to make the grain look realistic as opposed to looking like grain was added later in post production. I would say they succeeded. The first time I tried that simulation I couldn't believe the result. It looked like I had pasted a B&W print on my monitor. I would have been proud to turn it in to my photo instructor, Marty Nordstrom. Back to this weeks photo. There is a piece of artwork on the backside of the Convention Center that is exudes a peaceful feeling. I decided that that piece would be an acceptable subject to go with the film grain look.
ISO 1600, 23mm, f5.6, 1/2000 second
I purchased a camera last September that has a feature that fit perfectly with this week's theme. Many digital cameras have film simulations. The camera I bought is a Fujifilm X100F. Fuji has made film for many years so they included color film simulations in their camera. They also made a Black & White film called Acros. That simulation wasn't included in any Fujifilm camera until last year. According to an article I read, Fuji worked on that simulation for 10 years before they were satisfied that it truly simulated their Acros film. They wanted to make sure that as an image was captured, the tonal curves matched the how the film would look. In addition to that, the grain was important. If the image was taken at a low ISO the grain is smaller. As the ISO is increased, the grain size increases. The goal was to make the grain look realistic as opposed to looking like grain was added later in post production. I would say they succeeded. The first time I tried that simulation I couldn't believe the result. It looked like I had pasted a B&W print on my monitor. I would have been proud to turn it in to my photo instructor, Marty Nordstrom. Back to this weeks photo. There is a piece of artwork on the backside of the Convention Center that is exudes a peaceful feeling. I decided that that piece would be an acceptable subject to go with the film grain look.
ISO 1600, 23mm, f5.6, 1/2000 second
Darin-
'Looking For A Fight'
Driving back from Temecula late in the day on Thursday, I noticed the great look of the clouds and the setting sun bouncing colors off of them. I knew exactly where to go. My exit is Van Buren Avenue and lucky for me, it is right where the March Air Base Museum is. This is the airplane on the end. It just looks like this guy is ready to scramble and defend our freedom. I went with very little grain, as to not distort it too much.
'Looking For A Fight'
Driving back from Temecula late in the day on Thursday, I noticed the great look of the clouds and the setting sun bouncing colors off of them. I knew exactly where to go. My exit is Van Buren Avenue and lucky for me, it is right where the March Air Base Museum is. This is the airplane on the end. It just looks like this guy is ready to scramble and defend our freedom. I went with very little grain, as to not distort it too much.
Kevin-
Once again I will admit to being really troubled by a weekly photo theme. Apologies but there was an aspect to what Paul was laying out that got to me, and that was his email seeming to equate noise with grain. Grain of course harkens back to the days of film, with photojournalists doing news or sports related work needing to shoot high film speeds (referred to as ASA back it the day) and do “push processing” in order to capture some type of acceptable image in very low light. The result was large, prominent sliver-halide crystals, easily visible on a print. One the other hand you rarely saw much grain in an Ansel Adams print, as his work involved large format cameras (bigger film = smaller relative grain) and tripod which allowed for long exposures so high speed film and push processing weren’t generally necessary.
Similar to Ebola and Rabies, with Grain and Noise we are talking about two very different viruses. Both deadly of course. Yes there are a subset of photographers who choose to still shoot film. So “grain” may appear in their images. And there are a larger group of photographers who choose to add grain effects to digital images in Photoshop (or equivalent) stage or even have cameras with a grain feature. But “noise?” That is a different sort of deadly virus entirely. Noise is what you get when you push a camera to capture an image way outside of what the camera was designed to do. To illustrate this I took my Nikon D4s out to photograph the Morongo Casino/Resort/Spa in Cabazon late at night. Fast film, back in the day, was only ASA/ISO 400. The D4s camera has a “maximum ISO” of 25,600. But the D4s also has four additional settings, High 1, High 2, High 3 and High 4. I turned the camera up to High 4, which gave me an ISO equivalent of 409,600. Then I turned off the high ISO noise reduction. The result? A seemingly impossible exposure and a crappy photograph. Now is there a reason this feature might ever be used? Sure, for forensic work as an example. Monitoring and photographing people in an almost totally dark environment as they plot murders or make drug deals.
But all that is about images which are noisy, or not noisy. Which has nothing to do with Grainy. Now in the film days I tried to avoid Grain like the plague (remember the references to Ebola and Rabies?) shooting very slow film stock like Panatomix-X (B&W) or Kodachrome 25 (color) whenever I could. So I celebrated when digital photography came along, and quickly began to out-resolve film photography without any signs of grain.
But the theme was Grainy. So there was not getting around either having to shoot film (which for me would have meant repurchasing a film camera, setting up a darkroom, etc.) or using some sort of effect or plug-in instead. Fortunately I discovered that Lightroom has a grain effect that I had never used. Now I needed a subject. Having already determined that the casino wasn’t photogenic enough (to clarify it might have been from much closer, but it’s native property, which would mean having to sweet talk tribal security, which seemed really, really unlikely).
So having played around with the effect in some images I had shot previously, I knew that I wanted to do a portrait. And Tom Conrad seemed like a perfect subject. Unfortunately had had come down with a cold, which means that I had to delay until the final hours, waiting for him to recover.
Nikon D850, mounted on a Manfrotto Carbon One 440 tripod with an Acratech ball head, 85mm f1.4 Nikkor lens, one Nikon SB-900 series strobe in a gridded softbox, ISO 64, f/2.8 at 1/250th of a second (flash sync).
I am of course happy with the shot, though I still prefer the non-grainy version…
Once again I will admit to being really troubled by a weekly photo theme. Apologies but there was an aspect to what Paul was laying out that got to me, and that was his email seeming to equate noise with grain. Grain of course harkens back to the days of film, with photojournalists doing news or sports related work needing to shoot high film speeds (referred to as ASA back it the day) and do “push processing” in order to capture some type of acceptable image in very low light. The result was large, prominent sliver-halide crystals, easily visible on a print. One the other hand you rarely saw much grain in an Ansel Adams print, as his work involved large format cameras (bigger film = smaller relative grain) and tripod which allowed for long exposures so high speed film and push processing weren’t generally necessary.
Similar to Ebola and Rabies, with Grain and Noise we are talking about two very different viruses. Both deadly of course. Yes there are a subset of photographers who choose to still shoot film. So “grain” may appear in their images. And there are a larger group of photographers who choose to add grain effects to digital images in Photoshop (or equivalent) stage or even have cameras with a grain feature. But “noise?” That is a different sort of deadly virus entirely. Noise is what you get when you push a camera to capture an image way outside of what the camera was designed to do. To illustrate this I took my Nikon D4s out to photograph the Morongo Casino/Resort/Spa in Cabazon late at night. Fast film, back in the day, was only ASA/ISO 400. The D4s camera has a “maximum ISO” of 25,600. But the D4s also has four additional settings, High 1, High 2, High 3 and High 4. I turned the camera up to High 4, which gave me an ISO equivalent of 409,600. Then I turned off the high ISO noise reduction. The result? A seemingly impossible exposure and a crappy photograph. Now is there a reason this feature might ever be used? Sure, for forensic work as an example. Monitoring and photographing people in an almost totally dark environment as they plot murders or make drug deals.
But all that is about images which are noisy, or not noisy. Which has nothing to do with Grainy. Now in the film days I tried to avoid Grain like the plague (remember the references to Ebola and Rabies?) shooting very slow film stock like Panatomix-X (B&W) or Kodachrome 25 (color) whenever I could. So I celebrated when digital photography came along, and quickly began to out-resolve film photography without any signs of grain.
But the theme was Grainy. So there was not getting around either having to shoot film (which for me would have meant repurchasing a film camera, setting up a darkroom, etc.) or using some sort of effect or plug-in instead. Fortunately I discovered that Lightroom has a grain effect that I had never used. Now I needed a subject. Having already determined that the casino wasn’t photogenic enough (to clarify it might have been from much closer, but it’s native property, which would mean having to sweet talk tribal security, which seemed really, really unlikely).
So having played around with the effect in some images I had shot previously, I knew that I wanted to do a portrait. And Tom Conrad seemed like a perfect subject. Unfortunately had had come down with a cold, which means that I had to delay until the final hours, waiting for him to recover.
Nikon D850, mounted on a Manfrotto Carbon One 440 tripod with an Acratech ball head, 85mm f1.4 Nikkor lens, one Nikon SB-900 series strobe in a gridded softbox, ISO 64, f/2.8 at 1/250th of a second (flash sync).
I am of course happy with the shot, though I still prefer the non-grainy version…