Hold The Eye Images

New Podcast entitled "Be In The Moment"

I have not forgotten the blog! Unfortunately I had a couple of minor health issues that kept me occupied for a few weeks but I'm back. Here's our latest podcast, but you may have missed last weeks since I didn't post on this blog. You can check it out on the sidebar or go to iTunes under Hold the Eye Podcasting. 

 

Ideas to Improve Your Photography

Getting stuck is a common occurrence in photography, so Brian and I decided to do a podcast on ways to improve your photography in hopes of jump starting your photographic work. So here's our podcast on this very subject. 

 

What's wrong with photography today?

It's digital? It's become a low priced commodity? Technology has lowered all barriers to entry? Cameras become obsolete in  little over two years?  Seemingly every gadget will have a camera built in? Film is dead? Photography is no longer about the image; it's now all about post processing? It's all about the gear? 

To one degree or another all these things are true but added up there is nothing wrong with photography. Photography is digital, explosive, and requires new skills but in the end, it is all about the image, the body of work, and the story. You can use film or pixels; any camera you learn how use, any lens you intuitively understand. Passion for your subject helps a great deal because the road is bumpy and passion always trumps mild interest. But passion doesn't just wake up one day and speak to you, it comes after taking different paths, experiencing failure and success. All of this takes work. Work means shooting, shooting, shooting. Finding personal projects that interest you, building skills and perspective. 

And guess what, digital photography makes this road so much easier today than a few years ago. In the days of film, what was the barrier to shooting, shooting, shooting? Pure and simply cost. When I was in college, I couldn't afford film so I had to buy with friends bulk rolls of black and white. Today, I can buy a camera and shoot to my heart's with little or no expense compared to film and processing. Sure there's a digital learning curve but nothing like the film days.

So what's wrong with photography today? Nothing, in fact there are more great photographers than any past era, more great photography, more opportunity, better equipment affordable to most everyone. World news is being captured everyday by cell phones, and yes that has a consequence but it's a fact of life in a rapidly changing world. 

I love photography for the stories it can tell, the ease of capture, and the ability to impact the viewer. 

For me everything is right with photography, the only barrier is yourself.

Copyright, Can You Protect Your Images on the Web?

First rule in protecting your images is embed the correct information; copyright, name, etc. in the software you use to organize and import your images. In this way, legitimate companies printing your images will have your contact info. Now to learn more about protection, listen to our latest podcast entitled Copyright, Protecting Your Images. 

 

 

The Leica M, under low light conditions

So how good is the new Leica M? Is it a big upgrade? So I took the "M" out this evening for a few test shots under very difficult conditions. I know because I have done a lot of photography of musicians under similar lighting and several times under the exact conditions as tonight with a Nikon D4, Nikon D800E, and a Leica M9. None of these cameras performed well enough to shoot without lighting. You could get photographs but the noise level and resultant image softness just didn't work for me. 

So I thought a perfect test, take the M out and see how it looks under the same conditions. Here is the very first shot of a bluegrass band. I was shocked at the quality. Right off I could tell it was better than anything I had seen under similar circumstances from the cameras I named. This was shot at ISO 3200, 90sec/f2  Summicron 50mm/f2 lens. Unless otherwise stated, all shots were taken with the same settings. No color correction by me.

So let's crop this image. Keep in mind these images are straight out of Lightroom with no adjustments other than what the conversion does. I did not move any sliders.

From my experience this is pretty remarkable! Let's go with some more images. On the image below, I just turned, focused and fired. Same settings, 90/f2/ISO3200. 

Doing a crop gives you a closer look but keep in mind at f2 the depth of field is very limited. I focused on the "Thank You" only because I could see it better. 

 

Turning again to another lighting situation the bar/cash register, you can clearly see the depth of field bokeh.

So let's crop again, no adjustments. 

 

In this image, I just turned further to the right and focused on the chef/cook. I did try to level this a bit but it's still off. 

So now comes another test. I just turned at my table and shot my wife(sounds bad). She had virtually no light.

I did change the exposure adjustment on this image in lightroom but did nothing else. 

Again, I could significantly improve this image but this is straight out of lightroom with only exposure moved to the right. Now back to the band as they are back from break. 

Now a crop of the above image. 

 The fstop is 4.8 all else remained the same for the image below.

 

Here's were the image was a bit off straight out of lightroom. The camera is on auto WB and the sign is actually in red lettering "Little Lou"s......." I will figure this out but it is white or sort of instead of red. This shot was f3.4 all else the same. 

 

 

 

 

Now just a few more grab shots. This one f2.8 all else the same. The last one was f2.4 all else the same. 

I shoot under these conditions a lot and have never been able to get images of this quality straight out of the camera. So needless to say I'm really impressed. Now I'm not going into ease of use, video, live view, focusing, etc. and all the other bells and whistles since my main concern is image quality for this blog. I didn't  attempt any scientific testing, resolution scales, etc. mainly because I can read about this on the web and have no interest or skill at doing these myself. These files have a lot of data, the camera does a great job with low light conditions, better than anything I have shot with. So there you have my evening with the new Leica M. I will likely write more about this camera later. 

The Best Camera Bag For You

Brian and I talk about gear and what camera bags work best for a variety of photographic subjects. We cover everything from wildlife, hiking, street, to even landscape photography. We talk about bags, brands, sizes, and configurations for a best fit.