What is full size, let alone a 100% crop?
in Discussion Forum September 28, 2015, 13:18


I think your article and any others I have seen on the subject are very misleading. How the full size looks will depend upon what you are looking at and where. I usually use my Smart TV as a monitor which is 1920 by 1080 so, presumably I can only see 10% linear of a 19200 by 10800 image at 100%. On another TV which also is 19200 by 10800 but is a lot smaller, the image quality will look even better at 100%. So you can only make comparisons if you keep to one viewing device and the results are only relative, not absolute.


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Are lenses that rely upon software correction to be avoided and more?
in Discussion Forum September 28, 2015, 11:15


Hello from a new member, but hardly a junior at the age of 71 with 62 years experience of photography!

I had a private conversation with Juza some time ago and he said he liked my first serious effort with the Sigma 12-24 mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM. This was of Glencoe in the Highlands of Scotland and I have used part of that image for my avatar here. That was on film and I since moved to digital with a Nikon D300 which I bought in 2009. I already have some of my landscape work with this camera and lens at www.ipernity.com/home/contrajur and I intend to copy the very best of it here. The quality of pictures at juzaphoto is very high.

I am sticking to this camera, the Sigma and my two full frame Nikkors, none of which have noticeable distortion. That is not because of in-camera software correction on any of them. I am completely against lenses that distort and rely upon software. Take the Olympus m.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 PRO, for example. The native results at the short end are wild if you shoot RAW and do not want to be forced into opening your RAW files with Olympus Viewer 3 or the few compatible products available, probably including Lightroom.

There is a rather laborious way around it and that is to first use the Adobe DNG Converter, provided your RAW developer can read DNG. If you save to DNG 1.1 you get the lens corrections embedded in the DNG files, not just stored as instructions for later stages of processing. Converting to DNG is also useful if you have an older version of Photoshop like me (CS2) and Camera RAW in it cannot read RAW files from your camera. But then I do not use that, because I use Machinery HDR Effects (MHE) instead to get things started.

I choose my RAW developer very carefully and now use MHE. It is not expensive but very good, giving me the best tonal mapping of anything I have ever used. It also is very easy to work with. Typically, I save two different results from each HDR merge of bracketed exposures of my landscapes, separating out adjustments for the sky from he rest of the picture and using different brightness settings to optimize for each. Then I combine them in Photoshop, tweaking both layers with Levels to give the best balance.

Not only does MHE work well with single frames, it is in fact intended primarily to merge bracketed exposures. Using it I am able to get great results in landscapes which, even without thinking about it, I prefer to shoot against the light. Hence my name Contrajur, which I spelled that way because in most places on the web, the correct French spelling already was taken up.

In the last four years I have used PTGui a lot to stitch together frames across a panorama but I do no like them at all when there is obvious distortion or the format is too elongated. So now I am begiining to use the camera to shoot two rows in landscape orientation rather than one in portrait. It is very diifcult to do that successfully but it is worth the effort.

One of the issues for me with PTGui, brilliant though it is. is that the tomal mapping is not up to MHE standards. I have found a way around that but it is a lot of work. First, you merge each view, the different exposures for each in MHE and then stitch the results together in PTGui.

I wonder how good lenses need to be on more recent cameras with the latest sensors to do well and not have their weakness shown up. My Sigma 12-24 mm and two full frame Nikkors from my film days are fine with 12 mp on APS-C, I get very good results, but I decided against full frame for a number of reasons. Firstly, I can get very good quality A2 prints from my D300 and I think that 12 mp is enough for my kind of work. I do not think my Sigma 12-24mm was quite good enough towards the edges when I used to use 35mm film but on the Nikon D300 the images are even across the frame, not aggressively sharp but then for good landscape pictures, as opposed to merely photographs, I am not sure that being really biting sharp is an asset. When I used to use film, I preferred to use good zoom lenses rather than primes, precisely for that reason.

As I age, my capacity to walk any distance with my equipment is diminishing, even with the camera and only the Sigma in a small holdall. Very recently I was thinking of down sizing to an Olympus Micro Four Thirds and the new m.Zuiko 7-14 mm F2.8 PRO which has had good reviews instead of my D300 and Sigma 12-24 mm, but only because I do find the weight an issue with my outfit. I had had a look at one of the Fuji X series but did not like the camera because the electronic viewfinder is poor compared to an optical one in a DSLR or a Leica M series, more so than Olympus.

The m.Zuiko 7-14 mm F2.8 PRO does distort, although not nearly as badly as the 12-40 mm. Even so, I thought better to stick to what I have, which gives me excellent results. I had thought of upgrading to a D750 or D7200 but doubt if I actually would benefit from either of them. I never shoot in light where I need a higher ISO so the poor results with the D300 above 800 is not an issue for me. Also, although the latest cameras have a better dynamic range, I would still want to have bracketed exposures against the light, when their headroom would be a little in danger of being insufficient. I am interested only in the best pictures I am capable of, works of art or as near to that as possible. I have no interest in the kind of approach that focuses on technology and technicalities, fascinating though they are.

There are many beautiful pictures at juzaphoto and the general standard is very high. That surprises me when most places I visit are mediocre. When I was young back in the 1960s I always made my annual visit to the London Salon and the Royal Photographic Society's Annual Exhibitions. I was in awe of the standard and the beautiful pictures there. The RPS exhibition continues to this day but, to my way of thinking, is little better than trash now. Also, I used to belong to photographic societies way back but abandoned them more recently because any I can find near me are dreadful. In the twelve years I lived in Toronto, I used to go to a society called Focal Forum. What a great name that is. So was the work there from everybody, so I felt up against it - a spur to my efforts. Not so today, so I compete against myself.


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