It’s funny how people get so tied up with the technical side of photography. They worry about the number of megapixels, the sharpness of the lens, and other such mundane things. Sure these are importance, but if you concentrate too much on the technical aspects of cameras and lenses, you miss out on the pure joy of taking photographs – I mean that’s the whole point right? Despite what people think, photography is not really a technical art. Sure there are lots of technical aspects to the art of photography (e.g. chemistry, physics), but these are but a means to an end.
People often tend to believe that fancier cameras and more megapixels makes them a better photographer. It doesn’t. Good photos come from experience, and an ability to observe the world around you in such a manner that allows meaningful photographs to be taken. The device being used should almost be an afterthought, although simpler is often better. Good photographs do not come from Photoshop… if there was no substance in the photograph to begin with, manipulating it in any manner will not induce any more aesthetic appeal, will not add any more meaning.
Good photography is about what you have inside your mind. It is the sum of all your life experiences and your aesthetic point of view, your interpretation of the world around you. A camera is merely a light capturing tool. You can make a photograph using a very expensive Leica, or a cheap disposable. At the end of the day, it is all about the aesthetic you are trying to achieve, and the story you want to tell.
People tend to believe that the more intelligent a camera they have, the better the resulting photographs will be. And there may be an air of truth to that, particularly in the realm of smartphones brimming with algorithms to produce reasonably good pictures. But the thing it that the subject of the photographs, and characteristics like the perspective of the shot are not decided by the camera – they are decided by the artistic-process of the person behind the camera.
It is a combination of the human brain, visual system and intrinsic aesthetic abilities of the photographer that decides what to photograph. The camera is but a tool. You can have the most expensive Leica, with the sharpest lenses, but all that is moot if you cannot take good photographs. Sure, everyone thinks they are a photographer these days. The ubiquity of cameras in mobile devices means that photography is all around us, but apart from a documentary purpose, very little of this is meaningful or even artful photography.
The reality is that human intelligence is much smarter than the artificial intelligence found in digital cameras. Yes, such AI can efficiently process photosites into pixels, and apply intelligent “improvement” algorithms in the process, but they cannot decide what to photograph.
“It’s a great temptation, especially here in Japan, where really beautiful precision cameras and lenses ca be had for a fraction of the cost in the United States, to add just one more to an already over-stuffed gadget bag.
Don’t however, be led into the error of thinking that the answer to good pictures is to be found in a complete set of matched lenses. Just the opposite is true, for there is a very definitive correlation between the number of lenses the average photographer carries, and the worth-while pictures he produces. Unfortunately, this varies in inverse order; in other words, the more equipment to worry about, the fewer pictures of merit!
Special demand will require special equipment. For example, any photographer specializing in portraits or stage photography will find the f2 Serenar 85mm indispensable, but neither this or any number of lenses will do more than allow you to take better pictures. In fact, you chances of becoming a great photographer are probably better with only one lens, than with one hundred.”
Horace Bristol, TOKYO on a five day pass; with candid camera (1951).
About a year ago I decided to take a relook at film photography. After so many years taking digital photographs it seemed like an odd sort of move. My trip back to film began when I bought a Voigtländer 25mm lens for my Olympus MFT camera. It is completely manual, and at the moment I started focusing, I knew that I had been missing something with digital. Harking back to film seems a move that many amateur photographers have decided to make. Maybe it is a function of becoming a camera aficionado… the form and aesthetic appeal of vintage cameras brings something that modern digital cameras don’t – a sense of character. There is a reason some modern cameras are modelled on the appearance of vintage cameras. Here are some thoughts.
Digital has changed the way we photograph, and although we know we will never bungle a holiday snap, it does verge on clinical at times. I can take 1000 photographs on a 2-week trip, and I do enjoy having instant access to the photograph. Digital is convenient, no doubt about that, but there is some aesthetic appeal missing that algorithms just can not reproduce. Taking a digital image means that each pixel is basically created using an algorithm. Light in, pixel out. Giving an image a “film-look” means applying some form of algorithmic filter after the image is taken. Film on the other hand is more of an organic process, because of how the film is created. Film grains, i.e. silver crystals are not all created equal. Different films have different sized grains, and different colour profiles.
“Tea, Earl Grey, Hot”
There are many elements of photography that are missing with digital. Yes, a digital camera can be used in manual mode, but it’s just not the same. For the average person, one thing missing with digital is an appreciation for the theory behind taking photographs – film speed (meaningless in digital), shutter speed, apertures. Some digital lenses allow a switch over to manual focusing, which opens the door to control over how much of a photograph is in focus – much more fun that auto-focus. Moving to pure analog means that you have to have an understanding of camera fundamentals, and film types.
What type of camera to experiment with? While digital cameras tend to have the same underpinning technology, film cameras can be quite different. A myriad of differing manufacturers, and film sizes. Do you want to use a box camera (aka Brownie), or a foldable one with bellows? A vintage German camera (East or West?), Japanese, or Russian? Full frame or half-frame? SLR or rangefinder? Zone focusing? Fully manual, or with light meter (assuming they work). So many choices.
Another part of the organic nature of film photography is the lenses. Unlike modern lenses which can be extremely complex, and exact, vintage lenses often contain a level of imperfections which means they provide a good amount of character. If you want good Bokeh, or differing colour renditions, then a vintage lens will provide that. They are manual, but that’s the point isn’t it? Lastly there is the film. Each film has it’s own character. Monochrome film to render cinematic ambiance, or colour film that desaturates colours. There are also films which have no (inexpensive) digital equivalent – like infrared film (from Rollei, and not really the same as using a filter).
Apart from pure analog, there is also the cross-over of analog to digital, the hybrid form of photography. This is achieved by using vintage analog lenses on digital cameras, providing the best of both worlds. It does mean that functions such as aperture control, and focusing have to be done manually (which isn’t a bad thing), but also allows for much more creative control. There are also effects such as Bokeh, which can not be reproduced algorithmically in any sort of organic manner.
There is some irony in film though. Many people of course end up digitizing the film. But the essence of the photograph is captured in the film and digitizing it does not take all of that away (it does loose something as the transferral from film to paper adds another layer of appeal). To display your work, digital is still the best way (hard to write a blog post with a paper photograph). My foray into film is partly a longing to relive the experiential side of photography, to play with apertures, to focus a lens – it doesn’t have to be exact, and that’s the point.
The downside is of course you will never get to see the photograph until after it is developed. However it’s best to look at this more from a more expressive point-of-view. The art may lie partially in the unveiling. Maybe film photography lends itself more to an art form.
There was a time when photographs had meaning, and held our attention, embedded something inside our minds. Photographs like The Terror of War taken by Nick Ut in 1972 during the Vietnam War. But the digital age has changed the way we consume photographs. Every day we are bombarded with visual content, and due to the sheer volume, most of it makes little if any lasting impact.
Eventually, the visual data around us becomes an amalgam of blurriness and noise, limiting the amount of information we gain from it.
The human visual system is extremely adept at processing visual information. It can process something like 70 images per second [1,2], and identify images in as little as 13 milliseconds. But it was never really designed to see the variety of visual data now thrust at it. When we evolved, vision was purely to used to interpret the world directly surrounding us, primarily from a perspective of survival, and the visual data it provided was really quite simple. It was never really designed to look at screens, or read books. There was no real need for Palaeolithic humans to view something as small as text in a book. Over time visual processing systems evolved as human life evolved.
The greatest change in visual perception likely occurred when the first civilizations appeared. Living in communities meant that the scope and type of visual information changed. The world became a busier place, more cluttered from a sensory perspective. People no long had to use their vision as much for hunting and gathering, but adapted to live in a community setting, and an agricultural way of life. There likely was very little change in thousands of years, maybe even until the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Society became much more fast paced, and again our vision had to adapt. Now in addition to the world around us, people were viewing static images called photographs, often of far-flung exotic places. In the ensuing century, visual information would play an increasing role in people’s lives. Then came the 21st century, and the digital age.
The transient nature of digital information has likely changed the way we perceive the visual world around us. There was a time when viewing a photograph may have been more of an ethereal experience. It can still be a magical experience, but few people likely realize this. We are so bombarded with images that they fill every niche of our lives, and many people likely take them for granted. Our visual world has become super-saturated. How many Instagram photographs do we view every day? How many of these really make an impact on our lives? It may be that too much visual information has effectively morphed what we perceive on a daily basis into a dull noise. It’s like living next to a busy rail-line – what seems noisy at first over time gets filtered out. But what are we loosing in the process?
[1] Potter, M., “Meaning in visual search”, Science, 187(4180), pp.965–966 (1975) [2] Thorpe, S., Fize, D., & Marlot, C., “Speed of processing in the human visual system”, Nature, 381(6582), pp.520–522 (1996)
For years I wrote scientific papers on various topics in image processing, but what I learnt from that process was that few of the papers written are actually meaningful. For instance, in trying to create new image sharpening algorithms many people forgot the whole point of sharpening. Either a photographer strives for sharpness in an entire image or endeavours to use blur as a means of focusing the attention on something of interest in the image (which is in focus, and therefore sharp). Many sharpening algorithms have been developed with the concept of sharpening the whole image… but this is often a falsehood. Why does the photo need to be sharpened? What is the benefit? A simple sharpening with unsharp masking (which is an unfortunate name for a filter) works quite well in its task. But it was designed at a time when images were small, and filters were generally simple 3×3 constructs. Applying the original filter to a 24MP 4000×6000 pixel image will make little, if any difference. On the other hand, blurring an image does nothing for its aesthetics unless it is selective, in essence trying to mimic bokeh in some manner.
Much of what happens in image processing (aside from machine vision) is aesthetically based. The true results of image processing cannot be provided in a quantitative manner and that puts it at odds with scientific methodology. But who cares? Scientific thought in an academic realm is far too driven by pure science with little in the way of pure inventing. But alas few academics think this way, most take on the academic mantra and are hogtied to doing things in a specified way. I no longer prescribe to this train of thoughts, and I don’t really know if I ever did.
This picture shows motion blur which results from a moving subway car, whilst the rest of the picture remains in focus. The motion blur is a part of the intrinsic appeal of the photograph – yet there is no way of objectively quantifying the aesthetic value – it is something that can only be qualitatively and subjectively evaluated.
Aesthetically motivated Image processing is a perfect fit for photographs because while there are theoretical underpinnings to how lenses are designed, and technical principles of how a camera works, the ultimate result – a photograph, is the culmination of the mechanical ability of the camera and the artistic ability of the photographer. Machine vision, the type used in manufacturing facilities to determine things like product defects is different, because it is tasked with precision automated photography in ideal controlled conditions. To develop algorithms to remove haze from natural scenes, or reduce glare is extremely difficult, and may be best taken when thee is no haze. Aesthetic-based picture processing is subjectively qualitative and there is nothing wrong with that. It is one of the criteria that sets humans apart from machines – the inherent ability to visualize things differently. Some may find bokeh creamy while others may find it too distractive, but that’s okay. You can’t create an algorithm to describe bokeh because it is an aesthetic thing. The same way it’s impossible to quantify taste, or distinguish exactly what umami is.
Consider the following quote from Bernard Berenson (Aesthetics, Ethics, and History) –
‘The eyes without the mind would perceive in solids nothing but spots or pockets of shadow and blisters of light, chequering and criss-crossing a given area. The rest is a matter of mental organization and intellectual construction. What the operator will see in his camera will depend, therefore, on his gifts, and training, and skill, and even more on his general education; ultimately it will depend on his scheme of the universe.’
Crafting Pixels 