50 Lux Issue 6 May 2014

50 Lux Street Special ____________________ Catherine Bell Oli Sansom David Wadelton Technical Guides ___________________________ Photoshop Interface Raw files The Shutter Buying a Film Camera __________________________ Pentax ‘M’ series

Issue #6 | May 2014

Call for Content

Have you enjoyed reading this and previous issues of 50 Lux magazine?

Then read on....

We are seeking feature articles, study-guides, essays, and practical classroom / workshop materials from practicing and former professional photographers, Arts and Media teachers, and feature writers. You must have a background in professional imaging, photography, and video production.

Your writing must be of a professional standard suitable for students, teachers, and other photographic educators.

We are also seeking high quality photographs and photographic media from students, and emerging professionals. This usually takes the form of 1-3 images from secondary students and a folio of 10 plus images from tertiary students and graduates. If we are interested in your work we may arrange a feature interview.

We regularly feature current working commercial and artistic photographers, and photojournalists. We can accommodate suitable work from video and hybrid artists.

Photography covers a wide range of topics and 50 Lux has so far covered, buying film and digital SLR cameras, setting up a darkroom, processing film, and printing negatives. We also cover photography related events, gallery exhibitions, and have preservation and display features ready for publication.

With the introduction of the National Arts Curriculum from years F to 10, we are particularly interested in Lesson Plan’s and Unit’s of work aimed at younger primary and middle years photography students.

We are also interested in submissions for feature articles for tertiary students that include the setting up and running of a photographic business, selfmarketing and promotion, and developing an on-line presence.

If you have suggestions for other photography related topics please contact us with a sample or links to your writing.

Interested? The first thing to do is read our style guide and terms and conditions. Remember we are a not for profit organisation. Images must be 300DPI TIFF, PNG, or PSD (flattened) and be at least 5-10 megabytes. Very large JPEGs maybe considered, but tend to pixelate on newer high resoultion screens. Please do not watermark your images. Written submissions must be 1500, 2000, or 2500 words in length and be submitted in .DOCX, .DOC, .TXT, or Pages format. The submission deadline for issue 7 is Friday 30 May 2014.

Contact us: editor@50lux.org 2

Issue #6 | May 2014

r ) e s s

Welcome Hi everyone,

If you are a new reader, we hope you like our mix of interviews with great photographers and artists, plus the back to basics tutorials.

All issues, except number 1, are still available to download here.

We also hope you will subscribe.

To coincide with the retrospective of Rennie Ellis images at the Monash Gallery of Art, this issue has a look at what could be broadly described as street photography. One of the very first photographs was of a street scene in Paris in 1838-9, and Deagaue’s image also shows the first two people to be candidly photographed. They are there simply by the virtue of being relatively stationery during a long exposure.

It’s over 180 years since those beginnings and technology has come a long way. However, the reality is we are still interested in what is going on the streets. Catherine Bell an artist and lecturer at ACU took a series of images whilst in New York of nannies and their charges. Many of these images are in a co-exhibition currently at MGA.

Issue #6 | May 2014 50 Lux Magazine PO Box 319 Croydon Victoria Australia 3136 Published by: Andrew Renaut editor@50lux.org To advertise contact: sales@50lux.org Web site and layout: Andrew Renaut Graphic Elements: Meg Armstrong Animation: Victoria Gridley Marketing: Meg Sceri

We are also fortunate to have Oli Sansom. Oli recently won the Emerging Photographer of the year prize for 2014. Using a mix of very old and new film stock, plus an old twin-lens Yashica, Oli’s images of New York make for a strong contrast with Caherine Bell’s.

David Waldelton’s image of a boy on Merri railway station caught my eye about 2 years ago. The image is one of thousands he has made since the mid 1970 around inner Melbourne. Although he didn’t set out to make an historical record of Melbourne life, his beautiful photographs are now an important part of a fast fading inner city.

Although we have finished our initial series on the darkroom - expect more film based photography in the future - we are continuing our series of looks at film cameras. This time it is the Pentax ‘M’ series from the mid 1970s.

Our technical series moves onto setting up your Photoshop workspace and working with raw files. Our how it works series looks at the camera shutter.

And don’t forget that you can subscribe to our mailing list, and be informed when each issue is ready for reading.

Andrew Renaut Managing Editor editor@50lux.org

Notice To Readers and Advertisers: The publishers of 50 Lux Magazine take every care in the production of each issue of this publication but we are not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error. In the case of advertising material supplied, we as the publishers, make no representation and provide no warranty as to the accuracy of descriptions or offers within said advertising.

As publishers we accept no liability for any loss, which any person may incur while relying on the accuracy or description of any statement, image or photograph herein. The views expressed by all contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher.

50 Lux Magazine reserves the right to decline any advertising for any reason.

Copyright 50 Lux Magazine 2013: ALL of the content published in this magazine is subject to copyright held either by the publisher in the whole or in part by the contributing photographers, their agents, or estates.

Any infringement may incur legal action. No part of this magazine may be used in part or in full in any way without the express written permission of the publisher.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 3

Contents

4

Welcome

3

Catherine Bell

6

Oli Sansom

30

David Wadelton

54

Tech Talk - User Interfaces

72

Editing raw files. Part 1

78

Using Your Camera - Shutter

108

Review - Pentax M Series

112

Parting Shots

102

Issue #6 | May 2014

Featuring Catherine Bell Catherine Bell doesn’t consider herself a photographer, but her arts practice relies on the medium. Here we look at some of projects that have a strong association with photography both her own nannies of New York, plus the “found” images from her childhood.

Oli Sansom Oli Sansom is the 2014 Emerging Photographer of the year. Oli’s journey to photography has been via Illustration and computer graphics.

Oli has also been to New York, but his images are very different to those of Catherine Bell. Oli was working with well out of date film and an old twin-lens camera.

David Wadelton David Wadelton began photographing Melbourne on his journeys from Geelong to what is now RMIT Bundoora in the mid 1970s. His images have become a quirky, but vital record of an Inner Melbourne that is all but lost.

Cover

David Wadelton usually works in black and white. This image was made in Warnambool in 1993, and refelcts his eye for the the things that most people would take a sencond glance at.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 5

In Conversation With...

Catherine Bell

Dr Catherine Bell has an impressive list of credits. She is a multi-disciplinary artist working in a wide range of media forms. These include: drawing, sculptural installation, and performance documented on video or as photographic stills. Catherine Bell has had a multitude of exhibitions around the world including Berlin, Asia, and England. She is currently a Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, and National Course Director Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design, at the Melbourne Campus of the Australian Catholic University.

Here we look at the work she did in New York during an Australia Council for the Arts, Visual Arts Board Greene Street Residency (2010). The project observes up front street photography with some covert video in New York’s Central Park. Images are currently being projected as part of a larger focus on Street Photography at the Monash Gallery of Art. When did you get your first camera?

I got my first camera in Year 8 at high school when I was thirteen. It was an Olympus camera that my uncle gave me when he upgraded to a newer model.

I was so thankful for it, because it recorded my high school years. I was lucky to have it because none of my friends had cameras and I was able to document our teenage lives. I was the resident go to person to take photos of school dances, camps, sports days, and excursions. Many of my images appear in the school magazines. Of course it was film back then and it was quite expensive, so I was fortunate that my father supported buying the film and processing the images. It would be weekly processing in those days, that evolved to overnight and one hour processing.

It would always cause hype and excitement when I brought the pictures in to school.

That started a love of archiving the everyday in photography. I always enjoyed looking at old photographs. My mother’s studio portraits of her wearing fifties fashion, in TAA promotional photographs as an air hostess and then glamorous shots of her in the social pages during the 60s and 70s at army balls. My grandparents used to take slides when they went on overseas cruises, and when they came back we would have the slide night with the whole family gathered in a darkened room.

My grandfather would also buy the slides that were

6

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Catherine Bell.

Mum’s the Word (2011) Digital print on synthetic felt. Installation detail.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 7

available in the souvenir shop. I always thought his were much better though. They were much more candid and you would experience the trip through his eyes.

I have this nostalgic love of looking through old photo albums. I would trawl through my parent’s albums and remove all the glamorous black and white photos of them from the 1950s and 1960s and put them into picture frames so everyone could see them. I’ve even got a hand-coloured photo of my mum on my office wall from when she was 15. She looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor.

When I got my photos processed I wouldn’t throw away the bad ones. There was always a way of salvaging them, like drawing sunglasses on closed eyes with a sharpie. There has been a real shift in the way we value photography. In the past there was the ritual of printing a roll of film and the suspense of viewing the outcome. It was so exciting removing them from the sleeve and sifting through them. With the digital age we rarely print images and put them in a physical album. Often there is no time to put them into folders on the computer they end up being on the same timeline in chronological order. I really miss those beautiful studio photographs that were taken. How people would dress up. My mum would always have her beautiful outfits photographed when she went to a dance or a debutant ball. In the world of the “selfie” we tend to be inundated with images, there are no boundaries between public and private.

The glamour has evaporated or the decorum anyway.

It’s interesting, on the train coming in there were two pre-school children taking photos of each other, photo bombing each other’s images.

I’ve just had my three young nieces stay for five days. The iPhone was never out of my 12 year old niece’s hand. She was taking selfies all the time and posting them to her friends. It wasn’t about looking at the world around you and appreciating it in the moment, but experiencing the world through the photos she had taken. It’s like a mediated experience through the image. Young people have become very conscious of how they look in the image and how to compose it. What filter makes them look the best, which angle, facial expression makes them the most attractive. They know which photos to keep and

8

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Catherine Bell.

Nanny Safari (2010-11) Video installation, dual audio visual projection, artificial grass. HD DVD 1.54 min and HD DVD 2.35 min 50 Lux | 50lux.org 9

which to delete and a lot of the time it is based on attractiveness. The skill of editing out has become acute in this generation.

We never saw the images until they were developed, there was always a delay, so there was an appreciation of trying to capture the perfect image in the moment, so light and composition had to be considered as there was no way of touching it up after the fact. That elusive image was much harder to capture because we only had 24 frames to work with. You might only get one good picture on a roll of film, the others might have been blurred or the people had their eyes closed. It’s a big change from today when you can edit images on the camera and have filters at your fingertips to make yourself look better using a soft focus effect.

When I was taking the street photos in New York, I was working with a small point-and-shoot camera with a very small screen, so there was a similar delayed response to seeing the image. I couldn’t see what I had taken in the bright sunshine. I had to wait until I got back to the studio and uploaded the images to see them on a computer screen.

Did you continue with photography through school?

We didn’t do photography as a subject at high school.

We just had the standard painting, drawing, ceramics, and textiles. Cameras were really quite expensive, so I was lucky to have that camera in my possession as a teenager. My grand parents had cameras in their house, but they were box brownies and were defunct. They were really just artefacts that weren’t used, although they were still useful because you could take them apart to see how a camera worked, you could push the button and look through the lens.

So having access to the Olympus was a privilege. I was lucky to have the film processed, and not just sitting in a drawer. So I was able to see the outcome and teach myself how to take a good photo. I have boxes and boxes of photos, but I was also generous with them. I would give the ‘second print’ to people because I thought it was important for them to have their own archive rather than me being the keeper of the images.

When I went to art college I invested in a better camera. It was a Pentax. I used that more for documenting my art work and archiving the artworks

10

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Catherine Bell Nanny Safari Pop Up (2011) Diabond sign 1560 x 1150 x 3 mm digital print with santex laminate, wooden stakes to reverse side.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 11

that I had made. I was making sculptures then. We did have a dark room at QUT but no one was there to teach developing, you could just go in there and experiment. I did a series of photograms in first year but got bored with the process of developing.

I was more interested in taking a powerful picture.

So while I was using the camera to record my work I was still interested in documenting the everyday, and portraiture. Taking images of events was important too. I can really relate to the Rennie Ellis show, capturing 21st birthdays, ski trips, days at the cricket, fancy dress parties, and things like that. Things I did with my friends. Those 1980s and 1990s years, I can relate to Rennie Ellis’ works capturing the debauchery and the freedom of youth.

I lived overseas for eight years, so the Pentax was useful for recording my travels and other artists’ work. I refer to those images in art works later. I took a lot of video too. I could document my performances and use the still image function. It was like a little ritual where I could view the work later, but also use the video within my art installations. The stills were my own private record of the performances I made and I would use these as support material in grant applications.

I see the camera as a multifunctional tool within my wider practice where I can document my performances and installations, but also for capturing resource materials as well.

It’s funny because I don’t identify as a photographer, but I do use a lot of photography in my practice. As an artist I always thought that there was a bit of snobbery with pure photographers. The notion, that unless you study photography as an undergraduate, and then do post graduate work focusing on pure photography, you are not a real photographer. Unless you take control of each step from preproduction, lighting, processing and the final image you are an imposter and a fake. I admire people’s obsessiveness and focus in doing that, but I also think as an artist it is smart to not so much outsource certain aspects, but to work with someone who is an expert in the technical side of things. The technology is always going to be constantly evolving and you need to update your skills. So I think it is important to work with someone who can get the best photograph from what you have taken as a final piece with their knowledge of printing and photoshopping.

12

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Catherine Bell.

Mum’s the Word (2011) Digital print on synthetic felt. Installation view.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 13

That is why I got such a buzz when I was curated into the MGA exhibition, New Photography From The Footpath 2014. The MGA brands itself , “the home of Australian photography” so if you take photographs this is the place you want to have a show. I don’t see myself as a photographer, but when I was asked to show this work in the context of ‘Street Photography’ I was excited as this was the true spirit in which the images were taken. I’ve studied visual art, but these days the disciplines of fine art are blurred, the painting department doesn’t teach painting, students are working in the medium that best supports their concept. I think photography is an inclusive medium and should be assessable to every visual artist to use as a tool in their work. They shouldn’t be excluded from exhibiting their photographs in photography galleries because they don’t have a degree in photography. So that is why I stressed that point in my artist talk at MGA, it’s encouraging for people to know that when they go to that show that I’m not a photographer. You can use photography in the spirit that it was invented. Like Flaubert documenting real life. Capturing your generation and what interests you at a particular point in time.

There’s also a certain analogue / digital divide that goes on. If you haven’t grown up working in a darkroom processing your own film and prints, you haven’t really experienced the process or understand how a camera works, so you can’t call yourself a photographer.

I would tend to disagree with that. I see a new generation of people coming through who use both, but in different ways. A little like the revival of vinyl records, or ‘Polaroid’ instant processes.

It’s true, there is a revival of instant processes. The new cameras are cheap, but the film is still expensive.

I got one of the FujiFilm cameras in New York for $38.

I was going to do a project where I approach women holding their babies and ask if they could take a photo of me holding their child. First I would take one of them holding their child and would give that photo to them. Then I would challenge them to see if they would let a stranger hold their baby and get them to take a photo as evidence. It didn’t go very far, because I couldn’t find any mothers with their own babies, it was all nannies looking after someone else’s baby. It was also going to be a very expensive project as I would be giving away at least half of the Polaroid images.

14

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Catherine Bell.

Mum’s the Word (2011) Digital print on synthetic felt. Installation detail.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 15

You seem to be quite family orientated with your photography.

Yes, I like an image that tells a story. There are the images of Richard Billingham. (Ray’s a Laugh) His work documents his own family. His father is an alcoholic and his mother is morbidly obese and they constantly bicker and fight. He doesn’t hide his family’s dysfunction. The images are quite visceral; you can almost smell the photo’s. You can see the degradation of the flat… I love that social realism!

But what I appreciate even more is when an artist makes themselves vulnerable in their work. He’s exposing himself through the images of the family.

There is an element of risk involved. The glamorous photos of my parents that I described earlier are the antithesis to these, but it could be argued that their glossy exterior masks the dysfunction inherent in all families.

Are you exploiting your family to create your art?

One of videos I made called Live and Let Die 2011 was in a touring show around Asia called Selectively Revealed. The catalogue is available for download here.

It was candid, unrehearsed video footage of my Dad just before he died. The premise of the show was how artists make the private public. My father would sometime put on his great grandfather’s woollen togs (bathers) with the shoulder straps and belt.

They were really, really itchy to wear. He would do these funny poses with my mum’s training weights.

He would do impromptu performances wearing the togs for the family when my aunts came over. A little burlesque show. When I told my mum it was going to be shown in the travelling exhibition she was really upset. She saw it as private and only for our family.

I wanted to share it because it was so private and really, funny and entertaining. He was ex-army and had been posted around Asia – Malaysia and Vietnam – so he would have been thrilled it was touring to those countries.

That idea of making the private into a public thing seems to be very popular these days. Perhaps it has always been there in a way. It is like looking through someone else’s photo album, it is a little voyeuristic.

The images documenting someone’s life are sacred and it is quite melancholy to think who is going to take on this collection of photographs when you have

16

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Catherine Bell.

Mum’s the Word (2011) Digital print on synthetic felt. Installation detail.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 17

passed away. Sometimes they end up accumulating in second hand shops. There are artists like Patrick Pound and Elvis Richardson who collect those images as archives and make profound artworks out of them that make you question your own mortality and the inevitability of where your photographs will end up.

What happens to all the images on Facebook when you pass away, will they just end up in a kind of limbo?

Who is going to be the keeper of those images? Are they entombed in the computer forever?

It will be interesting to see what happens to those images in 5, 10, 50 years. When will they start to cull them? They can’t forever keep expanding their server farms…

We recently upgraded our computer here at work. I had to cull things really quickly. It was hard making decisions… you’re gone, you’re gone, you’re gone. I’ve got suitcases full of photos, even though I tried not to keep all the doubles. My mum wants me to edit hers, and then there are the ones from my grandparents.

I’ve become the keeper and the editor. I can see why artists are really interested in that process and ethical dilemma. How do we keep, contain and archive all that photographic imagery? That becomes another whole layer to being a photographer!

David Wadelton is an artist who has been documenting Northcote since moving to Melbourne in the mid 1970s. Simple street photographs of daily life, mostly on film. A couple of rolls each month.

I like it when photographers do that. It is part of a ritual without thinking necessarily what the final outcome is going to be. Like a flaneur, they are just documenting modern life.

That was what I was doing with the nannies. It was more of a social commentary, and you are doing it through photography, but it is only when you start to get the images together as a collection that you start seeing patterns. It is something that happens intuitively, it is not ‘I’m a photojournalist and I’m going to have them exhibited in a newspaper. It’s more that you magnify something in your daily life and making the invisible, visible to others. It is perhaps David’s daily walk, a ritual, almost an existential expression – I was on this earth at this point in time. This is my contribution. There is a philosophical underpinning

18

Issue #6 | May 2014

Images copyright: Catherine Bell.

Home Sweet Home (2006) Inkjet prints on canvas.

Series of 14 showing 9.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 19

that is also about the artist leaving their mark as a starting point for the next generation to riff off.

When I say I’m using photography as tool I’m not concerned with having the most expensive camera and how big the lens is, or how much resolution the camera can produce. It is about feeling compelled to document something immediately because it moves you and you are having an emotive response in the moment. You have no control over your subject, you can’t ask them to stand still or stop. That is how the nanny project evolved it was more about observing something that seemed to be like an epidemic. The nanny’s were invisible to everyone else. People were oblivious, but they were everywhere. I guess working as a nanny myself in the UK for three years compelled me to document this subject matter. It seemed like a fascinating proposition to point out to people. It wasn’t about judging the nannies or judging the mothers. It was about opening up a discussion about race, gender, motherhood. When I presented this work the movie The Help previewed in Melbourne and I thought that there would be more discussion about these issues in relation to the work.

Alas, there wasn’t, but hopefully the series makes people think more about their street, their lives, and how they are recording those daily rituals.

As teachers we need to make our students see the world around them from a micro as well as a macro view. Give them confidence that what they are saying in their artworks and photography is important. They are so over saturated with Hollywood and special effects that they think that is what they need to aspire to, rather than something that is more meditative and observed. They seem to be always looking for the next ‘high’ before the last one is finished. They don’t seem to be interested in the journey, it is more about when are we going to get there and is there sugar at the end?

We seem to be bringing children up with so much digital technology that they are loosing that sense of the world around them. So when they are out in everyday life walking through a park, the environment doesn’t seem to give back to them in terms of smell, the heat; the ecosystem that is around them isn’t translating to something meaningful in their lives.

Children go to kindergartens that are air-conditioned

20

Issue #6 | May 2014

Images copyright: Catherine Bell.

Home Sweet Home (2006) Inkjet prints on canvas.

Image detail.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 21

and have playgrounds protected from the weather, they walk across a footpath and get into and airconditioned car, and go home to an air-conditioned house without a back garden to play in. It’s not like us when we explored little creeks, and there would be large groups of children playing out on the street.

Yes, it is hard to imagine that this generation would ever take an Instagram image of a tree. The images are all people focused and it all about how those people look and pose. It is not marvelling at something beautiful in the environment. That’s why I liked the Claudia Terstappen show at the MGA. There wasn’t a person in sight. Yet, the images make you think about the impact of the population on our environment.

This generation may find it difficult to understand the environment they live in simply because they don’t experience it in any meaningful way. Perhaps movies like Avatar try to get the message across, but the colour is hyper-saturated. The environment they have created maybe rainforests and deserts, but not as we really know them. Strangely, Claudia’s images have more of an otherworldliness, than the animated ecosystems in Avatar, they are haunting images that appear to be subterranean but are accessible to those who are willing to leave technology behind and discover them.

How do you think that sterility relates to your work in New York? Are the nannies just in the wealthy parts of downtown New York?

The images were not only taken in Manhattan. I’d go to Coney Island, Queens, New Jersey, and the Bronx.

You’d still see nannies pushing the babies around all over New York. You don’t have to live on Park Avenue to have nanny. It appears to be the norm over there, both partners have to work, and perhaps that’s the only way to maintain a functioning household. It’s not something that you see in Australia. I think over there it is simply cheap labour.

Do you think that is why these nannies are so noticeable?

Partly. It was fortuitous that I was there in summer.

People’s skin was exposed because it was so hot. If it had been winter everybody would have been rugged up against the cold and the babies wouldn’t leave the house. In the Summer you could see the adult and baby’s flesh exposed and the differentiation of the skin colour revealed the baby wasn’t being cared for

22

Issue #6 | May 2014

Images copyright: Catherine Bell.

Home Sweet Home (2006) Inkjet prints on canvas.

Image detail.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 23

by her mother. Even the images taken from behind show the nannies braided hair, and there might be the white foot of the child emerging from the pusher.

Everybody goes outside during the New York Summer because it is expensive to run air conditioning all day and there are lots of festivals and concerts happening in Central Park. People are sitting on seats on their front steps watching street life. Central Park is like an oasis. It is usually ten degrees cooler because of the trees and water. It is quite pleasant sitting there on the grass.

I also did a video series where I covertly filmed the nannies in Central Park. The work is called Nanny Safari 2010. You can see the blades of grass in the foreground. It is quite primal because the children are climbing all over the nannies. It is like they are the aunty lions looking after their pride. Much of the time the nannies are on their phones, lying back with the children crawling all over them. It is interesting because the children are doing their own thing, but the nanny isn’t quite in tune with what is happening.

We don’t seem to have that nanny culture here so much. Perhaps it is because the grandparents look after the children?

Yes, I think that is true. In western cultures we generally put our parents into nursing homes, but perhaps that happens a bit later here. I don’t know if the nannies live-in in New York, but in London I was a live-in nanny for three years. I’m not sure if that is the case in New York because a lot of them seem older. They must have children and grandchildren of their own, so they must have to travel quite a vast distance to and from Manhattan to get to work each day. So it makes you think about who is looking after their children. It is likely though that some of them are live-in nannies.

I think of the nanny in Gone with the Wind or The Help, with multiple generations of the family brought up by the same live-in nanny. In The Help the nannies are depicted as being the ones giving love to the children and nurturing them. The mothers are depicted as being remote and cold, yet when the children grow up they treat the nannies quite badly.

Then you see the same thing with archetypes like Ja’mie in Summer Heights High and how badly she treats her mother. The exact opposite of depictions like Alice in the Brady Bunch.

24

Issue #6 | May 2014

Copyright: Catherine Bell.

Top. Head Over Eels (1996) Performance still.

Bottom. Live and Let Die (2011) Single-channel HD digital video/audio 1.23 m.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 25

Not the representation of life in the Fran Drescher show The Nanny then?

That show was quite funny but totally unbelievable.

You get paid so poorly as a nanny you couldn’t afford the designer outfits she wore. Most of the time you have to get up before the family and be in the kitchen getting the breakfast and kids ready for school. She looked so high maintenance she would have to wake up at 3am to set her hair and do her makeup like that every day! Of course she had Niles and the kids were a bit older, so maybe she had a bit more time to herself. It was totally unbelievable really, although the whole having an affair with the boss thing was quite prevalent when I was working in London.

There is a lot of insecurity with the mothers, when I was working as a nanny they would want me to photograph the events they couldn’t attend. I took the children to their school sports days, their swim meets and music concerts. I once went through the kids albums, they were all my photo’s but the mother had written all the captions as though she had been there. She was re writing history, but I was the one who was witnessing and documenting it. She was pretending that she was the one who was there at the events taking the photos. I was the one using her camera to be her eyes, to be her presence, so that when the children grew up they would think that their mother was actually there. She would edit the photo’s so that any that I happened to be in would be used photography from old slides, or photography removed, so there was no record in the images that as found image. The images were printed on canvas I had ever existed. and had text overlaid. I’m interested in using those How does your photography work in with your images as well, a kind of recycling. I don’t have to other art pieces? Is it simply a tool or is becoming have taken the images myself, but there needs to be a connection with place and time that is autointegral? Is it beginning to stand on it’s own? biographical. My mother would point to an image I believe it is. It is not like my photography is and say where it was and where it was taken. “Your written into the history of photography. However brother David was born there”, for example. It it is beginning to appear in things like Anne Marsh’s began to create a narrative of the army wife. It is a book; Performance, Ritual and Document (Macmillan very nomadic existence. A photograph is a layered 2014). Photography is no longer considered just a portrait about what it says about you. by-product of a performance piece. It is standalone I’ve always used photography in my practice. Have product in its own right.

I had solely photography exhibitions where I show a I also did a show called Army Brats. It looked at how body of photographs? Well no. The MGA exhibition growing up in a family where the parent was in the is really the first time I’ve shown images in that army impacted on the lives of the children. My father context. Previously they were exhibited as felt was in the army for twenty years. When I researched banners at the Sutton Gallery. You can view more it with my mother we had lived in over twenty homes. about the exhibition here.

My mum had collected postcards of the hotels that we stayed in while waiting for a house to become They were something you could touch. It’s almost available. The project is an example of how I’ve sacrilegious to touch photographs because the oils 26

Issue #6 | May 2014

Video productions stills. Copyright: Catherine Bell in your skin do so much damage. I liked the idea of The intention was that when you walked into printing the images onto felt because you can touch the space, you were seeing the subject the way I experienced it. It was important to me to show the it, it is so sensual, and textured. images that way, not framed, or on a smaller scale.

The idea of photography as installation really The installation gives the impression that the nannies appeals to me. How you can challenge the notions are everywhere you look and that is what it was like. of photography through its presentation and the material you print it on. It doesn’t have to be on Do you think that the display technology, 100 x paper. The felt banners were 3 x 2 metres. The soft 150mm prints, electronic projection on a wall - or flowing material is like flannelette and was almost even film slides, the banners etc. has an effect on like incorporating the bunny rug that I would see the way people interpret your work? over the pram, into the image. I noticed the pram wheels would often run over the baby’s bunny rug The presentation of the work definitely has an and it would get bruised, dishevelled, and filthy as it effect on the interpretation. The banners suggest a dragged along the footpath. Similarly, the banners backdrop, there is a classical feel to the drapery as draped onto the floor. I like the idea of the banners it nestles onto the ground, people can’t come too billowing to the ground. Their size enveloped the close to the image or they will step on it. So the viewer and put them in the city. You are seeing the display does influence how the viewer experiences photographs as you move across the installation. the work. Printed on felt they provide an intimate Because they are life size you get the sense that they viewing experience as the audience has a familiar are moving and you are witnessing these nannies relationship to the surface as a material, it is quite sensual, and there is cosiness to it that reminds you traverse the city. of childhood and flannelette pyjamas. I didn’t know 50 Lux | 50lux.org 27

how the images were going to be displayed at the time I took them. I did like the fact that in New York there are lots of billboards, the advertisements displayed in Times Square, are large and glitzy. There are the large posters of Broadway productions on vinyl. So I did like the idea that the images could be displayed large and outdoors. I didn’t like the idea of the wallpaper or stencil type billboards, but I liked the idea of the vinyl or the plastic hessian because that is partly what the strollers are constructed from. So I was thinking of advertising materials and techniques when time came to consider how I would display them.

Artists books are another good way of collating and exhibiting works. So I was excited that the MGA was supportive of producing the book of the works on show. The catalogue can be viewed here.

I also produced them as cut outs on Diabond laminate that stood on the grass outside the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts in St Kilda. More on the exhibibtion can be seen here.

large. You see quite a lot of small detail, so you were invited into the image almost immediately because it was human scale. People were quite excited by the ink on the material too. It gave it a sheen in places that abstracted the image when viewed up close.

Because it was felt it created it’s own shading and tone. So it had a sensuous quality, a bit like velvet.

So I just invited touch, and I wasn’t precious about it.

The billowed material was on the floor, and people would walk on it without realising. That was part of the display, to have the white material exposed to dirt and dust. When I took it down I could see footprints on the material. It reminded me of the bunny rugs dragged along the ground by the prams.

The footprints also became an archive of how people were standing so close.

The images were displayed in black and white.

What was the reasoning behind that?

Yes the images are black and white, but the video is in colour. When I showed the installation at the Margaret Lawrence gallery at the VCA recently I added the Kristen Davis (Melrose Place and Sex in the City) images from her magazine spread that talked about how she had recently adopted a black baby girl. I used the cover from Who Weekly in colour.

The image on the sign was located in the grass while the videos of nannies in Central Park played inside the gallery. The sign moved around each day much like how the nannies would claim the same place each day in Central Park with their picnic rug and the child. As it was life size, it would surprise people, as Black and white gives the images a timelessness. this wasn’t something you would see in Melbourne. They look like they might be from the 1970s but then you start to look at the fashion and the cars. The taxi I’d love to go back to New York and put the images up cabs, are modern and not the old ones we expect to where they were taken as enough time has passed see from movies and TV. The nannies in black and that the children would be unrecognisable. I’d like to white are more heroic, and I like the grittiness. I like that it doesn’t so much block out the background, display them in shop fronts. but flattens the image. The colours of the prams and I try to use photography a lot in my work, but I try to children’s clothes are bright and your eye would be challenge the ways in which it is exhibited, so people drawn to that rather than looking at the nanny. get to experience it in an intimate way rather than in a sterile frame with reflective glass. I don’t like how Do you think that there is a sort of stereotype that the framing can create a barrier. There is something street photography needs to be in black and white? nostalgic about the felt I used to print on, a bit like cotton flannelette material that bunny rugs and No not necessarily, the other two projected works children’s pyjamas and sheets are made from. It’s at the MGA exhibition are in colour. I think that speaks more to the ‘selfie’ culture. You rarely see soft and comforting. those ‘selfies’ in black and white. Perhaps it is that We are taught not to touch the exhibits in museums nostalgic look, an “olde worlde” feel. I like old black and galleries, how did people react to being and white films, the old photographs from my grand parents generation. That’s what I grew up with, so encouraged to touch the felt banners? even though I used colour film when I was young, I People would initially stand back and look at them as think people look better in black and white. There a panorama because there were twelve of them on is a greater focus on the light and the tonality of the one wall. Then they would go up very close. You could image. immerse yourself in the work because they were so 28

Issue #6 | May 2014

The catalogue is in black and white too. Some of that came down to cost as full colour is very expensive. I spent a lot of time with the designer as to the size and shape of the book. There was a lot of consultation about how the design affects the viewing. I wanted it to be pocket size. The maps I was using in New York were that size. A lot of the information pamphlets I was collecting were in black and white. It was the way I was experiencing New York – the subway system is grey, you think of the pavements and building as being in monotones .

The video is totally different. You get a sense of the oasis that is Central Park. There is a vast contrast between the streets being hot and steamy - almost like being inside an oven- and the tropical reprieve of the Central Park oasis where it is cooler and there are all the bright colours of the prams everywhere.

The series is not about the children, but the nannies.

The children are dressed in bright colourful clothes, so if I presented them as colour images it would have taken away from the nannies.

had trouble down there trying to take photographs and being told off. Apparently you weren’t allowed to film in Central Park. I had a spy camera so you couldn’t tell. One day I was filming and the police came over to me, it was a bit tense because I had the cord of the camera hidden under a map. I thought I was discovered and was about to be arrested. I played it cool. They wanted to tell me to be careful with my bags because there were thieves around.

When I filmed I would have the lens unit facing in the direction of what I wanted to film, and I would turn to face the other way and look at the viewing screen.

I also got some amazing footage on a crowded subway train. It wasn’t a nanny but a teenage mum, and her child was about 6 months old. The woman was sucking her thumb, while the baby was trying to get her attention. I haven’t actually used that material yet.

Another video project I did was a Community Art Project at Caritas Christi Hospice in Kew. I followed Sister Mary for a year as she went on her weekly rounds replacing the flowers in the rooms and Do you the people you photographed ever felt communal areas. You can view the video on Youtube threatened by being photographed? here.

No, never. In New York there are people everywhere taking photos with much more intimidating cameras than mine. Tourists are photographing all sorts of things. The nannies had this sort of meditativeness about them. If they weren’t on their phones, there was a sort of calmness to the way they were moving through the crowds. It doesn’t always come across in the images, but New York is so over crowded. I usually tried to get into a position where I would just be getting the nanny and the stroller as they walked into the frame. The heat and the noise means that they are focused in getting from A to B. I was trying to be subtle when I took the photograph. My camera fit into the palm of my hand so it was inconspicuous and I probably looked quite harmless. The fact that my camera was so small helped too. Big intrusive lenses and hardware is what makes you standout.

It’s funny, in some of the images it is the children that focus in on me, and the nanny remains oblivious.

She is over eighty years old and is surrounded by people in end of life care. Again I used the spy camera attached to a rickety drinks trolley. The footage was edited down to a ten minute sequence. The collaboration came out of a wider project called The Gathering. The patients build a five metre tall flower tower. We would meet each Thursday and make hand-made flowers. I guess my work has always fore fronted art on the margins, art activism, community engagement, social justice and feminist perspectives.

The catalogue can be seen here.

Thank you for spending your time with 50 Lux.

Do you think it is particularly hard to do street photography in Australia? There are many places like shopping centres, beaches, etc where it is banned. Southbank in Melbourne is a wellpublicised example.

Yes, I remember Southbank. A lot of my students 50 Lux | 50lux.org 29

In Conversation With...

Oli Sansom

Oli Sansom is a relative newcomer to photography. He began his working career as an Illustrator, moving through software development and advertsing. An overseas trip began the change.

To tie in with our street photography feature, we look at a series of images taken last year while Oli was in New York.

Since speaking with Oli for this interview, he has won the Emerging Photographer of the Year award.

We hope to talk to Oli again in the near future about his growing career in photography.

Images copyright: Oli Sansom 30

Issue #6 | May 2014

50 Lux | 50lux.org 31

What was your journey to becoming a photographer?

I went to Mt Evelyn Christian School. Not a tiny rural school, but not a huge city school either.

Comfortably small. After school and Uni, I danced across a number of things. I started as an illustrator.

Really highly coloured pop art type work. Then I moved onto multi-media - animations for children’s software products. Then I just started to bolt on other tools to my armoury. I became an interactive software designer. I ended up as a creative director at advertising agencies. A real mixed bag of things.

Do you do any photography at school?

Yes. My immediate impulse was to say no because it wasn’t something that I paid that much attention to.

I didn’t particularly understand it. It was something in the same vein as maths. It didn’t click, and I didn’t have the interest in it during year 10. I did a module during Studio Arts where we just took photographs of leaves though. I was a strong illustrator, but that definitely didn’t translate across into photography at the time.

It’s interesting because what I learnt as an illustrator is having a massive effect on the photographic work I’m putting out there. A direct effect on my current work.

What brought you back to photography?

I was travelling overseas in 2009. When you work in advertising you are surrounded by people who pickup a camera all the time. So when I started planning for this trip I was after the f1.8 blurry background effect.

It was different to what I’d been doing before. I did a bit of research, bought myself some kit and that was the start of it all. I did that on the side for a few years.

You went to New York last year, what equipment did you take?

I was sick of digital by that point and it got tiring going through thousands of photographs. So I made the point of using just a single piece of gear. I was looking for something that didn’t hinder the process of making the photograph. That turned out to be the Yashica TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) – the poor mans Rolliflex. They are so quiet and unobtrusive. They are held at chest level so they are not in your face, and don’t block the interaction with your subjects. I felt

32

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 33

it was the perfect tool for going around taking street photography. Plus I discovered that many other wellknown street photographers had used them as their kit of choice. So instead of perhaps coming back with three or four thousand images, I came back with 300 or so photographs. So it was really nice having such a small body of work to go back through.

What film types are you using?

Mostly black and white. Some colour. A little bit of Kodak Tri-X because of how flexible it is. I’ve found some suppliers of film that expired in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I’m trying to use that as often as possible. I really like that because it retains the beautiful tonal gradations that were inherent in the film from 50 years ago, but there is a slight layer of imperfection over the top of it by virtue of its age.

Do you need to compensate for its age at all?

There are these crazy charts that suggest that you need to compensate by a stop for each decade. That means I’d be overexposing by five or six stops. I go a tiny bit over the box speed, and it has been fine for me.

Some of it is super-grainy, some of it is cloudy which is apparently caused by cosmic rays penetrating over the 50 years. So it looks really beautiful.

Do you process your own film?

We have a full set up here now. I’ve done a few rolls, but at the moment I have a great relationship with a couple of labs. They know how to handle my old distorted film. I’m definitely working towards doing it all in house. It’s quite costly for personal work to have it done by a lab. It costs about $100 for four rolls of 120 film. It is so easy and cheap to do it yourself.

Which labs are you using?

I use RAW & digital film lab (RDFL) in Sydney. They are quite a young start-up lab, do a great job, and really care about what they are doing. Occasionally I’ll use some local labs, such as Michaels in the city, and the legends at Hillvale in Brunswick if I need super fast turnaround.

We’ve got all the gear here. A couple of enlargers, processing gear. Everything under the sun. A great Epson V700 scanner… We’ve just been too busy to kick it off.

34

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 35

Which software are you using with the scanner?

I tried the standard Epson software, and Silverfast, but I’ve settled on VueScan. My view on software is that you can dance all you like around hoops, and try everything under the sun, but if you invest the time learning one thing from head to toe you’ll end up with the best result. I’m not a fan of jumping around and bandwagoning too much.

The guy who wrote and supports VueScan is fantastic with his support. He gives you all the updates for free too. Something the competition charges you for.

That’s what it’s all about. Connecting with the people who make the things.

Have you had any prints made full size?

No so many yet. I’ve used a small place down in Port Melbourne a couple of times and Haydn Cattanach - a local photographer with some seriously good printing chops, who did a panoramic portrait for me shot on my Pentax 67II. Again once you find someone who does a great job for you, it is important to stick with them. So we’ll get a lot more things printed through him. He cares about the images and does individual test strips. He makes sure the right tonality is coming through. That makes such a difference. It only takes seeing one great print to want to do a whole lot more.

There is nothing like a carefully crafted fine art print.

With the street photography you did in New York did you have any issues? People objecting or being upset that you were taking their photograph?

Not really. Perhaps that was because I didn’t go all in with it. All the great photographs that were there when I was there, I didn’t actually press the shutter for them. I think you learn a great deal about yourself as a street photographer. Just having a go at it because I had never done it before. New York is obviously the perfect place for it, but I didn’t really put myself in a position that would draw a negative response.

I’m really happy with the work I got there, but the greatest thing was learning about hesitation. You see what could be an incredible image, then a little voice comes into your head. It rationalises in ten different ways why you shouldn’t take it. Why you shouldn’t get in close. So I didn’t have any problems there to honest.

36

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 37

There was couple I was following thinking they would make a great image. I was following a little to close and they cottoned on and moved to the side to let me pass. Then I did the same with them. It was a hilarious game of cars chasing cars. That was about it really, it was quite safe.

Do you think that there is a different attitude in New York to here? Would you feel comfortable doing the same thing here?

No, but that is only because of the way I’m in my own city sort of thing. It is a mixture of being disinterested in your own city. You don’t think there are photographs out there because you know the place to well. I think New York is more conditioned to it. I also think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was a tourist over there seeing and observing new things.

I’d love to get out and do more of Melbourne. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of strong contemporary street photography out there. There are a few little pockets. There are some great people within Melbourne Silver Mine for example. People like David Wadelton too.

On the one hand you are seeing the winding back of the big players such as FujiFilm and Kodak. On the other there are the groups of people who are keeping film alive, doing street photography, which is awesome. That is why it is great see these young guys like Hillvale start up. It is perhaps the young guys who are in a better position to start these little businesses and exploit all the modern online marketing tools in the correct way. RDFL is a great example. They are on top of the little marketing tools. You see larger labs dying because they haven’t grasped onto the marketing properly, but the interest in film is still there. There is even a fairly major revival.

It has gone through the decline and revival cycle in ten years, whereas vinyl records have taken thirty.

Yes. Think of the Contax 6x4.5 camera. All it takes is a couple of people within a subgenre of photography to take up that camera and promote the fact that they are using it, and the value of the camera can double in a matter of months. The Contax is now worth three or four thousand, and people were

38

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 39

saying it was overpriced when it was one and half thousand dolloars, so it’s amazing.

I love that the medium is undergoing a revival, even though I wasn’t someone who really grew up with it. Film still has the upper hand when it comes to tonality and resolution when you get into the medium and large formats. It really only died by virtue that it wasn’t convenient for the majority of people. It was the same with vinyl. Technology isn’t a linear thing, a new thing comes along with certain advantages, and the older thing dies off often for the wrong reasons.

It’s just how it works. So it is doubly awesome to see it not going away. It’s great seeing it merge with new technologies.

Thanks Oli for your time. I look forward to catching up with you in the near future for a full conversation.

Click or tap to visit Oli Sansom’s website.

40

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom. Fallen Magazine.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 41

42

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 43

44

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 45

46

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 47

48

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 49

50

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 51

52

Issue #6 | May 2014

Image copyright: Oli Sansom.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 53

In Conversation With...

David Wadelton

David Wadelton must be Melbourne’s most dedicated street photographer. Full stop, end of story. For the past 40 years he has been out almost everyday photographing the Melbourne vernacular. There is little that doesn’t attract his attention in inner Melbourne. Newsagents, posters, shop-fronts, public transport, milk bars.

He came to Melbourne from Terang in western Victoria via the Gordon Institute in Geelong to further his study in art at a time when Rennie Ellis, Carol Jerems and Bill Henson were stealing the photographic limelight. Yet whilst David clearly has the photographic skills and more importantly the eye for photography, he was, until recently, more well known for his painted artwork.

I had a long, somewhat rambling, conversation with David at his studio in Northcote.

Flinders Street Station 2013. Copyright: David Wadelton 54

Issue #6 | May 2014

Flinders Street Station 1976. copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 55

I grew up in Eltham and owned a house in Clifton Hill, things have changed since the days when we would hang out of trains without self closing doors.

Yes, I’ve got photos of trains with the doors open in those days. I originally came from Terang, and took up art school at the Gordon Institute in Geelong. I came up to Melbourne to get more of what I needed in the way of training at the Preston Institute (now RMIT Bundoora). I did quite a bit of travelling because I used to sit in on lectures there, not for any credit.

Back then it was a slow train from Geelong, a tram to the Tyler Street terminus in Plenty Road, and then I hitchhiked from there!

I’ve been photographing milk bars around there, and it is one of the few remaining places with a large concentration. There are over 20 of them around Reservoir. When I started coming to Melbourne I was about 20-21 and started taking the photographs then. They certainly weren’t an exercise in nostalgia at the time. I was just photographing what was there. Taking a photograph of a train didn’t mean I was some sort of train-spotter. The nostalgia comes with time. The images have taken on a completely different life.

It’s a bit sad that so many of the suburban newspapers didn’t keep their negatives.

Yes it’s like the photographs that were taken for real estate office windows. They would have been taken by a professional, and printed on high quality fibre based paper. They probably had their functional life, kept for a little while, and got rid of them. Given they were generating so many of them, they probably just gave them the heave-ho. What a lost treasure-trove that is. There is something about those real estate photographs. Their formality, their functionality. The newspapers always has a human-interest angle, but these are just objective shots of businesses, shops and houses. They probably didn’t even keep the negatives. Simply threw them away after printing.

I was lucky. I kept all my negatives files in folders, and dated them. So when I started to scan them in 2008 they were quite well organised. I started off with a flatbed, and then rescanned them with a dedicated film scanner. It is a lot of work. You have to learn how to drive the scanner, there’s a bit of black magic involved. Then, because it is black and white, there is no automatic scratch and dust removal. Scanning seems to show up all the imperfections much more than printing does. I try to do some each day. I have 56

Issue #6 | May 2014

Myer shop assistants - pen department, 1976. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 57

1700 negatives from the 1970s alone. I categorise them as I go, so at least they are much more accessible now.

The negatives are beautifully exposed and processed.

I studied the rudiments of photography at art school for a few years. I never did colour other than a bit of printing. I concentrated on black and white, and getting good prints. It has stood me in good stead ever since really. I never intended to be a commercial photographer of any kind, but I did want to know how to do it properly.

What cameras were you using?

The first one was a Pentax Spotmatic, which was my dad’s. He gave to me when I took an interest in photography at art school. After a couple of years I bought a Leica M3 rangefinder. It was second hand because the M5 at the time was way beyond any semblance of affordability. So I spent quite a lot of money on what was then a 25-year old M3, and a couple of lenses. A wonderful camera, and wonderful lenses.

It has meant that if I want to enlarge a small portion of the negative, that the resolution is there. Most are uncropped though. I’ve always been a fan of Ilford FP4, and I use Kodak Tri-X if I want something a little faster. In the 1970s I used Ilford HC110 developer my photography teacher told me about. I liked the fine gain and the tonal range it gives. Nowadays I mostly use D76.

I don’t seem to be able to get the same print quality as I did back then. My favourite was the heavy fibre-based Agfa Brovira.

The papers were already in danger back in the late 1970s. I used to like Agfa Portriga Rapid that had a really thick heavy base that gave an image with an almost translucent quality. The resin-coated papers that started to appear in the late 70s were pretty awful.

I’ve now gone down the scan and inkjet print path. I think the subtleties of a really good print are lost on most people for one thing, and on the other hand you can get a really nice inkjet print done these days. You build in the dodging a burning and scratch removal, and with the correct profile any professional can print it in the future. I don’t go overboard with that, I like to keep it as straight as possible with the same 58

Issue #6 | May 2014

Richmond Hairdressers 1976. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 59

parameters I used to keep in the darkroom in the old days. I don’t like over Photoshopping something because I can’t stand the look of it. So it’s a little push there, and little dodge there. Pretty much what I could do with my hands or a some wire with a small bit of cardboard attached like in the old days.

I haven’t printed in the darkroom for quite some time, but I’ve still kept my enlarger, timer, trays, tongs etc. I’d enjoy doing it again if I had the space and could get the ventilation right. Getting the space dark enough is often hard too. There is that period when you have taken the darkroom at the art school for granted. All the great facilities, things set up and ready to go all the time. I think film could be a little like vinyl records. There is an attempt to kill it off, but there are a lot of diehards keeping it alive.

Were the images something that were simply observations to be used as part of your art projects?

Initially I studied photography because I wanted to use it for Conceptual Art photo pieces. So I thought I would do photography as one of my units at art school. Once I started studying it I got more interested in the technical side of it, whereas before I would just take them to the chemist. So I became pretty interested in the whole Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Walker Evans type of photography. I hate the phrase street photography because it has become so debased - perhaps it’s better described as documentary photography. However, that was what I was doing - going out in the Eugéne Atget sense, recording without any form of romanticism, recording in an objective way. Early on I didn’t have a drivers licence or the motivation to go travelling all around the world, so I just stuck to the inner suburbs of Melbourne. So that was the motive. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with them, or where I was going career wise. Even now you can’t make any money from doing that. As much as people are interested in the images, they would never pay for them. So since then I’ve always carried a camera, but it has intensified again over the past five or six years.

What has driven you along all these years? I read that you have been using seven rolls a film a month.

Yes, I was using seven or eight rolls a month for a year at one stage. I really don’t know what motivates me to do this. I’m just interested. I think it was Garry Winogrand who said, “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” You end up with a photograph in your hand - not the 60

Issue #6 | May 2014

Mobil petrol station, Bell St Preston, 1977. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 61

real experience. So I guess I’ve been interested in that idea. Creating a language focusing on the more down beat aspect of regular streetscapes. I had an idea I might do something with them eventually, so I kept them in good condition for later.

That’s quite a different thing to what we do with our camera phones.

It’s a world apart. I did consider myself as an art photographer at the time. That was the context in which I wanted it to be understood. Back then the formal photography scene was very influenced by Ansel Adams. The fine print was big, the zone system, obsessing about technical things, photographing trees at dusk. All that sort of garbage! I couldn’t have cared less at the time. So what I was interested in then, is why people are interested now. They are the things that nobody ever photographed. Train stations, but not from a train spotting viewpoint, bus stops, cafés like the Chat and Chew on Swanston Street, crappy cinemas, billboards, just general scenes of the city. 24-hour diners, the rubbish tips, interiors of taxi cabs, the inside of buses. Nobody though they were of any interest at all in those days.

One of the beginnings of that sort of photography is perhaps Robert Frank – The Americans. And Lee Friedlander. Ed Ruscha is also marvellous and hugely influential. I always admired those photographers who pointed their lenses at the previously mundane aspects of everyday life. A significant amount of our lives are spent in those spaces, but we write them off as no interest. That getting from point a to point b, I found that very interesting, and still do. Looking back, I can’t think of anybody in Australia doing the type of work I was doing. Rennie Ellis was popular, but what we were seeing at the time were his books like Life’s a Beach, which seemed quite commercial and crass.

When we look back on that period we think of Sue Ford, Carol Jerrems, Bill Henson, but they were all doing quite different things. The Brummels/ Pentax Gallery seemed to be quite a focal point of Melbourne’s photography scene.

I went to the Pentax Gallery run by Rennie Ellis a couple of times, but there was also the Photographer’s Gallery nearby run by Ian Lobb and Bill Heimerman.

Ian was a teacher of mine at Preston Institute.

There was also Mark Strizic teaching at Preston Institute at the time. I didn’t have anything to do 62

Issue #6 | May 2014

Amoco service station, Bridge Road Richmond 1978. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 63

with him though. It seemed to me at the time that they were just people from another generation.

Robert Rooney was working with photography back then, making sets and series in a deliberately antitechnical way. He interested me most of all on the local scene. Like Robert, I was taking photographs, but didn’t consider myself a photographer. I didn’t associate with that world at all. They were all gnashing their teeth over whether photography was art. The irony is that from the 1980s photography became centre stage in the art world, but it was a whole new generation of people. Artists who didn’t consider themselves photographers - Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman through to the Beckers, then later their pupils Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.

It was one of the problems with photography in Melbourne at the time. It was insular. There were strong boundaries around the various camps. They didn’t want to interact with one another; there were great suspicions of each other’s work.

What prompted you to put your images up on Flickr and Facebook?

I was browsing Facebook one day and someone in good humour had put up a page called Northcote Plaza Appreciation Society. People were making comments about the characters that hung around the sad run down shopping centre, the rotting fruit, and those sorts of things. So I posted a photograph of what the area looked like in 1976 when was the huge hole in the ground of the brickworks quarry. People were amazed, and asked where I got the photograph.

I said I had taken it. At that time Facebook was mostly younger people. It became a way of circumventing the traditional ways of exhibiting, what now seems like very slow way of having your work seen. You could put up an image and get an instant reaction.

People would come along with a recollection of the location or people even. So I started to put a couple more here and there.

Then I thought I would put up my own page and do it myself. I called it the Northcote Hysterical Society in a self-effacing way. (Keeping my identity hidden).

I put a few up and got quite a good reaction. It was like crowd sourcing historical facts in a way. In one case someone identified her grandparents in a photograph, walking down the street, arm in arm.

There were so many things that I couldn’t possibly have known because they had grown up here in Northcote. So it was the immediate feedback that you get that I loved and still enjoy very much. It’s 64

Issue #6 | May 2014

Port Fairy, 1991. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 65

quite a different experience to mounting a print in a gallery context. People you have never met or are likely to meet with whom you have this online interaction; this wonderful social history that adds layer upon layer of depth to the original image. If you gathered all the comments together in a book it would become a big volume of work, even if I were edit out all the fluff.

There is the example of the former postman in the area who has a photographic memory. He told me the name of a man sitting outside a boarding house in one of my photos. The postman knew a little bit of his history because he would chat with him when delivering the mail. Extraordinary.

The milk bars are popular because they have their own stories. Everybody can remember going into them for their milk and the paper, or for lollies when they were kids. They are rapidly declining, so I’m photographing them for posterity. So although the rumours of their extinction are an exaggeration, and there are still hundreds of them across Melbourne, there is no doubt they are fading.

Some of your images are appearing in colour, is there a shift in your style happening?

I used colour in the late 80s and 90s. I preferred Fujichrome, because I liked the saturated colour.

These days I rarely use a digital camera, but one series I am doing in colour is the letterboxes. It just seems to work better with colour. I quite like digital colour, but have a preference for black and white film. Digital is better for colour because you don’t have to concern yourself with colour temperature, colour-filters, the time of day.

I’d love to try the Leica Monochrome digital camera, but there is no way that I’ll ever be able to afford it, or justify the price. I wouldn’t mind getting an M9 given they are about a third of the price second hand. I have all the lenses I need, but they are just so expensive. So if I ever sell a nice big painting…

Do you agree that the camera is simply a tool though, and it’s really what you do with it that makes the image?

Whilst I agree with you, different lenses render differently. I still have a 1975 Leica CL that came with a 40mm Summicron lens. That is a beautiful lens that you can still pickup fairly cheaply. Compared to the

66

Issue #6 | May 2014

Melbourne Zoo kiosk, 1977. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 67

Pentax Spotmatic I was using it was another world.

The Pentax has a very flat vanilla rendering, where as the Leica has a richness that gives a velvety tonal range from blacks through to the highlights. My photography teacher used to say, “It’s not all about edge sharpness”. The Pentax had edge sharpness, but less interesting tonal transitions. If I hadn’t sold my Leica M3, I could still be using that camera today and it would be approaching 60 years old. I doubt that even the Leica digitals, even though they are built to the same standard as then, will be operating that long. Although I keep an eye on the new equipment, mostly using film keeps me off that treadmill of constantly needing to upgrade equipment. I’m more than happy with my Leica M6, which must be over 20 years old now.

Back to your photography, have you ever had any issues taking picture on the streets?

Not as much as you might imagine. It happens from time to time though. I’m not one of those people who is in people’s faces with the camera. Occasionally you’ll get people saying “Oy, what are you taking a photograph of?” It’s generally resolved fairly quickly when I explain what I’m doing. I had an odd one where I taken some photographs and walked two blocks or so and suddenly had two breathless guys in fluro vests chasing after me… “Hey did you take my photograph?” They’d chased around all over the place trying to find me, all I’d done was taken a picture of a lost dog poster. So I don’t know why they were so guarded and worried. Another example is when I was photographing all the houses in Northcote that didn’t have high fences or big trees in the front gardens. A woman came out of a house next door to the one I was photographing and started yelling at me. Then another person came over and I told him what I was doing, so he invited me to photograph his house! People get their knickers in knot for no reason whatsoever. They have very exaggerated ideas about what constitutes their privacy and what is public domain, but not as much as you’d think. It also depends on the type of camera you are carrying.

People get quite defensive about a big SLR with a big lens, but if you are carrying a phone camera, or a little Leica, they don’t seem to care. I’ve not been able to work that out. Perhaps the big lenses is like pointing a gun at someone, it’s a lot more threatening.

A big thank you for your time David. A bigger thank You can find more of David’s photographs on the Northcote Hysterical Society Facebook page, or on Flickr you for sharing these images.

68

Issue #6 | May 2014

Leterbox series, 2011. Copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 69

70

Issue #6 | May 2014

Milkbar series, 2012. All images copyright: David Wadelton 50 Lux | 50lux.org 71

Tech Talk

User Interfaces

In our last article we looked at colour spaces. Here we begin to examine the Photoshop user interface and some of the basic technical intricacies needed to get the application working smoothy on your computer. We look at setting up the Preferences panel, consider your working environment, scratch disks, and OpenGL. Note you should only change these settings if it your own computer or a workstation that you have permission to change. Scratch disks and other technical settings should be changed with care, changing some settings inapropriately could be detrimental to the performance of the computer. Always take note of the setting before changing it.

The Photoshop interface shares most of the same design layout feature as the majority of other Adobe creative programs. The idea is that once you learn one program you should be able to understand the others. In practice some tools that have the same name can behave differently across the various programs. It is far better than it used to be, but with Adobe being such a behemoth there are bound to be some inconsistencies.

There are a number of default layouts. These bring up sets of tools and panels that Adobe thinks are a good combination for certain types of work. In the default set up the Workspace options drop-down is located in the top right corner and defaults to Essentials.

Changing it to Photography will bring up a histogram, Adjustments panel and the Layers/Channels/Paths panel.

When you click on the vertical row of button to the Here we look at the Photoshop interface. It is the left, Fly Out panels are available for things like Colour, program you are most likely going to have access colour Swatches, History, and Actions. We’ll discuss to at a school or University/College, and it is likely Actions, which automates repetitive tasks, in a later that even if you mostly work in Lightroom or another article.. dedicated photo editing program you will need to use it at some point.

CS6 brought a fairly radical overhaul of the interface design that caused a few upsets around the office.

Adobe have tweaked the user interface more times However, being able to change the brightness and than I care to remember over the past 20 years. The shade of grey for the interface can only be a step last major update was in CS6 when the Application forward. So if you don’t like the default colour bar was removed. The Workspace options are now scheme there are a number of changes that you can accessed via the Options bar that is turned on via the make to customise the interface.

Window menu.

The default interface is almost black on black.

As I am a Mac user, there is an option to work in a (Those of you have read the Hitchhikers Guide to more Windows like mode that holds all the windows the Galaxy will remember that when the group steal within Photoshop together. If you prefer to work this the spaceship from Milliways, Zaphod Beeblebrox way on a Mac, the option is turned on in the Window states: It’s the weird colour scheme that freaks me. menu. Ensure that the Application Frame option is Every time you try to operate one of these weird ticked. black controls, which are labeled in black on a black 72

Issue #6 | May 2014

Most of the things that affect the way Photoshop looks and behaves can be adjusted in the preferences panel. The view above changes the way the user interface looks. After much trial and error, and reading I have my systems set to the above settings. I found the default dark and black settings hard to work with, but the lighter settings were affecting my perception of colours. You will need to restart Photoshop for most of teh changes to take effect.

After changing the colour scheme you can change the dropdown menu in the top right of the screen from Essentials to Photography. This creates a set of panels that include the Histogram, the Adjustment layers.

Panels for Colour, colour Swatches, and History, among others are on Fly Outs to the left of the view here.

These can either be redocked, or broken off and moved around as needed.

You can create custom groups and menus if you like, we’ll look at these and the Actionspanel in a later article.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 73

background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. Hey, what is this, some kind of galactic hyper-hearse?) The black interface is particularly hard to read when using a very large high resolution screen.

Remember too that the ambient light has a colour, and that wall and ceilings reflect the colour that they are painted. These can have a marked affect to your perception, .

Syncing.

The background colour of our canvas can have a noticeable effect on our perception of colour and brightness. Try editing an image using a white canvas anda copy of the same image using a black canvas a day later. It is a horses for courses situation, almost every creative uses Photoshop at some stage. So people using Photoshop for video work will often assume their audiences are mostly watching their product in a darkened space, so they use a dark interface. On the other hand we, as photographers, generally assume our images will be viewed on a bright screen, or on a piece of white paper.

After some trial, error, and reading, I would recommend that the following be your working environment: Select Photoshop (Mac) / Edit (PC) → Preferences → Interface. This opens the Preferences dialog box.

It is suggested that you change the Standard Screen Mode, Full Screen with Menus, and Full Screen dropdown menus to Light Gray. As I generally work on very large screen, I prefer the Medium Gray option.

This also ties in with my work in Lightroom 5 that also has a dark interface.

You can also add white drop shadows to the lettering.

The drop-shadows are a mixed bag. They definitely seems to help with the two darker themes, but become less effective with the lighter themes, and can actually make the interface text harder to read.

You can also increase the size of the text. Again on my big desktop screen I prefer to use the Medium UI Font Size setting. On my lower resolution, and far smaller 15 inch laptop, I keep the smaller font size.

These changes don’t flow through to what you see on the screen immediately, and there is no preview.

So you will need to close and restart Photoshop to see the changes you have made.

You also need to consider the environment you are working in and the screen you are working on. If you are working in a brightly lit place with a high gloss screen, then your output will look different to if you are working in a darkened room with a matt screen.

74

Issue #6 | May 2014

One of the great things that Creative Cloud has brought is sychronisation between your computers.

As a Creative Cloud subscriber you are able to load Creative Cloud onto two computers. This is generally a desktop and a laptop, but could also be a home computer and one at work or your school/Uni. If you go back into the Preferences dialog box, the option below Interface is Sync Settings. This is particularly useful if you have done some changes on site with a client on your laptop and then wish to continue the work on your desktop later, as it means that the file will behave the same. You can see there are quite a few options. I tend to have everything checked.

The most important checkbox from the point of view of this article is the Preferences checkbox. Ticking this means that your Adobe Photoshop CC Prefs.psp file containing your interface settings is synchronised between the two computers.

The steps described have been kept as simple as possible with the sync settings synchronised remotely to Creative Cloud. This is the Keep Remote setting. It can get messy when you add in the Sync Local options. I would therefore suggest that the Remember my choice box is ticked so that things don’t change between computers unexpectedly.

RAM and Scratch disks.

This is something that could be a full article in itself.

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the area where the computer stores the information it is currently working on. It is volatile in that you loose the information in RAM when the computer is turned off.

The more RAM you have the more space that an App has to work in. Remember that the operating system also uses this, as does any other App that you have open. Most of the need for more RAM has come from the user interface, the pretty graphics you see on screen. Of course the images from digital cameras are much bigger than before, especially if you are (and you should be) working with raw files. Add a few layers, and the size of the file you are working on can be enormous.

Synch Settings is a new feature to the Adobe CC suite. It allows the maximum of two machine that your licence allows to be synchronised. This is particularly useful if you work on a laptop for part of the day, and a desktop at other times. You ned to be signed in for syching to occur.

The Performance panel is where you set the amount of RAM, your Scratch Disks, History and Cache, and if available the Open GL settings. A description will apear in the lower panel as the mouse is moved over each area. Don’t be temped to set the RAM to maximum or the system itself will not have room to work.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 75

For those on the Windows platform, the recent end of support for Windows XP probably means you are using Windows 7 or 8, and a computer that has a processor with multiple cores. i5 and i7 processors are either 2, 4, or 6 core. You will find the details in the system details area of the operating system. If you are at a school or Uni you won’t have any control over this, but you should aim for at least 2GB of RAM (memory) per core. Many computers have the option of 16GB of RAM, and that should be your aim if you can afford it. Remember that all recent Macbook Air and Pro models, and many of the Windows laptops, have RAM that cannot be upgraded, so you are stuck with what you buy. All installations of CS 6 and Creative Cloud will only run in 64-bit mode on the Mac. However, you will probably find that Windows machines are still running in the older 32-bit mode.

This means that on 32-bit Windows machines you are only able to allocate 3GB of RAM to Photoshop, the overflow will go to the much slower hard-drive aka scratch disk.

Macs in particular. SSD’s are almost as fast as RAM on newer computers, and make great scratch disks.

Photoshop tries to keep as much RAM available as possible for memory intensive calculations, and moves things like the History state, and last saved versions to the scratch disk. When you open a new image you will usually hear the hard drive working intensely, then as things settle the hard drive is written to when the system is otherwise idle. If you are working on a very large file - especially on a 32-bit mode computer with low levels of RAM, Photoshop starts to use the hard drive fairly early on. This is when things really grind to a halt on older machines as Photoshop is working from the slower spinning hard drive.

If you start to consistently see a decline in performance, you should Purge the cache - save the file first. You do this by selecting Edit → Purge.

There are options for Undo, Clipboard, Histories, or All. Think carefully before doing this though as The History and Cache settings that you choose can it will mean previous changes to the file become have an effect on memory usage as well. The default irreversible. number of History States is 20, but it can be set as high as 1000. What this means is that the anything When setting your scratch disk it should ideally be you do prior to the current State is kept in memory. one that is separate to the drive where the Photoshop (A State is your work between major changes.) If Application resides - what we used to call the “C” you make a lot of changes to a file then all those drive on older machines. It is little use partitioning changes stay in memory until Photoshop is closed. the drive for this as the drive is still sharing the That can add up to a lot of memory usage on a large scratch disk with the operating system and the open multilayered image. Photoshop uses a pyramid applications. However, the SSD’s may have solved structure to save the previous states in a cache. Each this problem. So ideally you will have at least two cached (temporarily stored) image is 25% of the size physical drives in the machine, and allocate the non of the previous cached state. This means that the system drive as the scratch disk. This is generally image will redraw on the screen faster. There are impossible with laptops, but a Firewire 800, USB 3, or a number of compromises made in this system, so better still a Thunderbolt SSD external drive may be a setting the Optimisation buttons is important. If you usable solution. If you are on networked computer, are working with small Web images the Tall and Thin it is not a good idea to use a network drive as the button sets the cache level to 2. If you are working connection could be lost easily, and the performance with large images that only have a few layers, then will probably be dismal.

Big and Flat will set the cache level to 5.

It is also theoretically possible to use a flash drive or Scratch Disks.

SD card if the computer has a slot. However, these generally have very slow read and write speeds, and Photoshop uses your free hard drive space when the could be frustratingly slow.

RAM limits are reached. The area used by Photoshop is known as a Scratch Disk. Information stored in It is generally recommended that you have about 20the area is deleted when Photoshop is closed. Until 40 GB of free space on the scratch disk, but you can recently hard drives were much slower than RAM, but allocate more especially with 4 TB or 4,000 GB drives the new SSD’s (Solid State Drive) are becoming more now on the market for low prices. affordable, and are fitted to many new computers 76

Issue #6 | May 2014

On the Preferences → Performance panel, and with the Graphics Processor Settings - with a supported graphic card - you will see an Advanced Setting button. This brings up the above panel. If your machine is powerful enough you can try the Advanced Drawing Mode and turn on the available check-boxes. This takes a little experimentation depending on your computer.

Graphic Processor Settings and Open GL The final thing we will look at in the article is the Graphics Card. Most, but not all, modern graphics cards support Open GL (Open Graphics Library) that is a programming language for rendering 3D and 2D vector graphics. Although images from a camera are Raster or pixel based, Open GL can help with certain filters and functions. The graphics processor in your computer is responsible for drawing the image that you see on the screen. The calculations it needs to make use RAM, on some computers this is shared with the main RAM. Better graphics processors have their own separate RAM and processors that take processing away from the main processor and speed up the computer substantially. Many cards are able to handle Open GL that enables things like 3D rendering. In Photoshop a number of processes and filters rely on Open GL enabled cards. A separate processor and RAM for the graphics will help Photoshop run more quickly than a equivalent integrated system. Images should look substantially

smoother at certain magnifications when Open GL is enabled. When you start Photoshop it will detect the installed card/s, and give you the appropriate options. If available click Advanced Settings and you will be able to turn on Open GL. Again there is a certain amount of trial and error in getting things working at their best, but it is worth the effort as you will save time in the long term.

There are a large number of other Preferences available in Photoshop, and we will work through those in future issues. The ones described here will affect the basic performance of your computer. As such, you should take care when changing these settings. Take careful note of them before you change them. It goes without saying that if you are using a shared computer, then it is best not to play with these settings without asking the system administrator or perhaps your parents.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 77

Editing raw files

Part One - the basics In this series of articles we look at editing files from digital cameras. Most better cameras will allow the user to save images in raw format, that is the information is saved directly from the camera sensor to the file without any processing by the camera. The images is then processed on the computer giving greater control of the final photograph.

This is the raw image used for illustration in this article. It has simply been opened in Camera Raw then saved to a PSD file in Photoshop.

78

Issue #6 | May 2014

In previous articles we have spoken a number of times about the importance of using raw files when creating images that are not going directly to somewhere like a Web site. A raw file is simply the data that has come straight from the sensor of your camera. It has not been processed and usually doesn’t have a colour profile associated with it. It will, however, have its IPTC data attached to it.

We have also mentioned in previous articles that you need to have a special piece of software to open your raw files. Most cameras that are capable of saving files in this format will come with an editor that opens the files. If you are using an Apple computer the Preview app will open the files for viewing, and recent versions of iPhoto allows for some fairly basic but useful editing.

You may have access to the various Adobe Suites, CC is a subscription-based way of getting the applications. If you are eligible for the student/ teacher programmes, the package is reasonable value for money. CS6 was the final version that you could physically own. It was released in 2012 so while not dangerously out date, it is only a matter of time before Adobe pulls the plug on updates.

The Adobe suites offer three ways of opening raw files; Bridge, Lightroom, and the Camera Raw plug-in that comes with Photoshop. These are the applications that I will be concentrating on in this article. It is debatable whether they are the ultimate tools for photographers. However, they are common in schools and tertiary institutions, are ‘industry standard’, and do a good very job.

Among professional photographers that I speak to there is a growing preference for Capture One. This seems to integrate better with medium format cameras if you are lucky enough to have access to one, and support for the higher end SLRs is also excellent.

These may alternate with JPG files if you have set the camera to record both. If you are using a Canon camera the file extension will be CR2, Nikon: NEF, FujiFilm: RAF etc.

You will probably want to set your file manager so that the application that you want to edit with opens, and not Preview or another default image viewer or editor.

Bridge It is a bit rude to say that Bridge is a glorified file manager. However, file management is one of its major functions. Older versions were quite slow, and processor hungry. This is because the default setting on Bridge creates a thumbnail image each time a folder of images is opened for the first time. I have tended to only use Bridge for batch renaming my files. That is instead of renaming each file one by one, Bridge will allow you rename all the files in a given folder in one go. I tend to do photography that has a short life on my computer, images are taken, culled, renamed, adjusted, and given to the client. They are then archived to high quality CDs or DVDs and stored in two different locations. Bridge allows you to do a lot of cataloging, and other house keeping. Setting up your metadata details - copyright and other information that identifies you as the owner of an image – can be set so that your details are embedded in all your images. You can automatically watermark your images if they are to be used on the Web. You can also ‘rate’ each image so that the better images are easier to find in the future.

If you use Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe suite applications, Bridge is a good thing to get the hang of. It can become an essential part of your workflow.

Photoshop

As most raw files are proprietary, you cannot open Other alternatives include Apple Aperture. This is a raw file directly in Photoshop. So Adobe has the good value for money, has a better interface when Camera Raw Plug-in. This converts the file to a compared to Lightroom, and seems better for standard format allows editing and saves the file in sharing you final images. However, Aperture hasn’t a standard TIFF format. You usually don’t need to been updated for a very long time, and there is no worry about the plug-in part of the equation; it is indication that it will be supported in the long term. now automatically installed. However, you do need to check that: a. it is in fact installed if you are working Once you have transfered your images from your from a school or uni computer, and b. that you have camera you will be looking for the raw files. If you a version that is up to date enough to support your look in Finder or Explorer, the raw files will usually camera. How you check and update this is version have the same file name, but a different extension. specific, so search the Adobe Help systems if it not 50 Lux | 50lux.org 79

clear. Although, I’ve never heard of any Adobe applications being security risks in themselves – their web site is a different matter – it is still a good idea to keep up to date. Camera Raw, gets updated fairly regularly as new cameras are released. So keep an eye on the update icons at the top of your screen.

Lightroom.

Lightroom is a halfway house between Bridge and Camera Raw. At the time of writing, it can still be bought outright separately, or it comes with Adobe CC subscription. Adobe also pairs it with Photoshop CC as a photographer’s package at quite a low price.

This is the way to go if you don’t need Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc. Lightroom is a standalone application designed for photography. It has the same core-processing engine as Camera Raw and the basic editing tutorial that follows works more or less the same way. As noted earlier Lightroom has direct competitors in Apple Aperture and Capture One. All these applications have integrated image management, all have extensive editing control, and all have a wide range of output methods. Aperture and Lightroom also allow you to create Web galleries and Photobooks.

Once the Camera Raw plug in has started you can check the version by selcting Photoshop → About Camera Raw...

Getting down to editing.

If you have you own computer, I would recommend a colour calibration tool. Something like the ColorVision Spyder, or similar, calibrators are now very reasonably priced for their entry-level models. LED monitors are substantially more stable compared to the old CRT monitors that shifted colour within a week or so. Nonetheless, a regular monthly calibration is recommended. Pay attention to the lighting where your regular work-space is too, as this will have a bearing on your perception of colour.

Remember to always work with a copy of the original file. After selecting a file to work on, it is important that the file is copied and work is carried out on the copy. Although in most cases the work you do on the original image file is not saved when the file is transferred to Photoshop, and working in Camera Raw and Lightroom is non destructive, for longer editing sessions you will want to save your work and return to a file in progress. You also never know when the power may fail or the computer may crash, which can lead to a corrupted file. So if something does go wrong it is good to have the original.

There are many ways to open a file. If you have set your camera to record both raw and a JPEG file 80

Issue #6 | May 2014

The main control panel gives access to the image editing controls. At the top is the histogram, highlight and cliping overlays can be turned on and off with the buttons in the top corners. The next area gives RGB values, these change as the mouse pointer is moved over the image. Camera data is also shown here.

By pressing and holding the Option (Mac) and Alt (Windows) key on the keyboard a number of menu options change within the Adobe environment. Above are the options for opening the edited raw file in Photoshop.

Below the actual image area of the Camera Raw editor the colour space, bit depth image dimensions and resolution is shown. Clicking on the information brings ups the Workflow Options dialogue box below left.

The Workflow Options dialogue box allows you to set the default settings for the images when they are imported. I prefer to work at the maximum settings until I need to output the file. Even though your computer screen will only be sRGB, working in low settings such as sRGB at 8bit reduces the image quality before you even start to edit.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 81

together, you will see the two paired together in your file manager. After associating the file extension with your App, double clicking the raw version should open Photoshop/Lightroom/Aperture/Capture One automatically.

the row are the Rotate tools. These tools behave the same way as in Photoshop. Other useful tools are the Red Eye Removal tool and the Spot Removal tool, which can be used to remove the white spots created by dead pixels or the black spots of a dirty sensor. If The remainder of this article concentrates on Camera you are using the same camera and computer all the Raw/Photoshop, but most of the basics also apply to time, the Spot Removal tool can be programmed to the Develop panel in Lightroom. When opening a remove the same defect on a whole batch of images. raw file with Photoshop, you should see Photoshop To the far right is a preview check box for comparing itself open, then the Camera Raw workspace will your editing with the original image, and a button to open, and finally the raw file will open. Camera Raw provide a full-screen view. only allows one file to be open at a time. In this At the bottom of the window the buttons are the selfworkspace you will also find information such as the explanatory Save Image As (Option-click/Alt-click to camera make and model, the exposure settings, ISO, simply save this image in the current format or click to and lens details including focal length and aperture. save in another format such as a .PSD file or smaller The image used in this article was taken with a high- PNG or JPEG image). To the right, clicking the Open end FujiFilm X-Pro 1. Whilst the image is good straight Image button will open the file in Photoshop, and from the camera, as some care was taken with the holding the Option key will perform the more useful original exposure, it was chosen because of its high action of opening a copy in Photoshop and retaining contrast range between the side of the building in the original file as it was before editing. the sun and the shadow areas inside. It is important to remember that while slightly underexposed digital images can be recovered, overexposed parts of an image will loose detail. In high contrast situations such as the scene of this photograph, the highlight warning on the camera should be switched on, and the exposure set to correctly expose the brightest area of the scene.

Finally, just as with Photoshop and other Adobe products, using the Shift, Control, Option and Command keys on Apple computers, and their equivalents on Windows – Alt, Ctrl and Shift – will alter the behavior of many of the actions and controls. This is especially important in the Camera Raw window. On an Apple computer, for instance, holding down the Option key will change the Open Image button in the bottom right of the screen to an Open Copy command. This means that the original image remains untouched and you work on a copy when you get to Photoshop proper.

Tools Once your image has opened there are four areas within the Camera Raw window. The main area is the image preview itself. Above the image area is a series of tools. Perhaps the most useful of these for those new to image editing are the zoom and hand tools on the far left, for moving around in the image (note that holding the Option key will change the zoom control from + to –, consistent with other Adobe programs).

Further to the right is the Crop tool, and at the end of 82

Issue #6 | May 2014

You will also see at the bottom centre of the screen the file properties. Clicking on this will open the Workflow Options dialog box that allows you to change the colour space. Colour spaces were discussed in a previous article. Work in the highest quality you are comfortable with, this should be at least Adobe RGB 1998. Bit depth is also important for retaining detail and colour. Work in 16 bit if possible.

You can reduce the colour space and bit depth again at the end of your editing process if you need to.

Histogram and editing controls.

To the right of the main window are the main image editing controls. These are the equivalent of the digital darkroom and can be used to adjust all the aspects of the image file.

At the top is a histogram that is the heart of all adjustments.

Understanding the histogram is fundamental to image editing. There are six colour peaks, one each for Red, Green, and Blue (RGB), Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. White give an indication of the overall image brightness, more correctly called Luminance.

The Camera Raw histogram provides a preview indication of how the image will look after it has been output to a pixel image format such as .PSD, .TIF, or .JPG. It is influenced by the RGB settings that are selected in the Workflow Options dialog box. It is worth having a look at how the histogram changes when you change these settings on a particular file.

It is especially interesting to see what happens when

The unedited image. Highlight and shadow clipping is turned on. Over exposed highlights if there were any would show in red. The image was exposed to retain detail in the front wall and roof, so no shadow areas, which would appear in blue, are clipped either.

In this screen grab I have returned some of the orginal late afternoon warmth to the image by adjusting the the Temperature from the original 4600K to 6000K. I also set the Tint to zero.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 83

you switch to sRGB 8bit mode from ProPhoto 16bit mode. You will notice that there is quite a bit of ‘clipping’ of the image. Clipping is where part of the information exceeds the ability of the colour space and is cut off.

Many photographers rely on the histogram on their camera for exposure. You should be careful with this, as the histogram is likely to have been built from the JPEG preview image used by the camera, not the raw file. It is therefore based on the reduced 8bit – sRGB colour space. A more useful aid to switch on (if the camera has the feature) is the Highlight Alert function; this will flash black on the areas where there are overexposed highlights.

With the image used here you will note that the colour groups are fairly evenly distributed across the graph, and the peaks are around half the height of the graph. An overexposed image will push the peaks to the right and an underexposed image will push the groups to the left. A thin white line on the far left of the histogram indicates that there is clipping or extreme underexposure in the darkest areas of the image.

Pressing the Basic tab brings up a set of sliders. Start by opening a raw image and turning on the over and underexposure masks in the histogram. Note the slider settings, and move the Exposure slider to the left and right. The Exposure control has an overall range of eight f stops. Four stops over, and four stops under the exposure given in the camera. No camera can cope with a very wide range of light and dark, and printers and screens have even less range. This range is known as exposure latitude, but is increasing referred to as Dynamic Range. Cameras with larger sensors are generally better at coping with wider latitudes between the darkest and lightest areas better than cameras with small sensors.

Because I am working in ProPhoto - 16bit mode, there isn’t any clipping in the shadow areas of the image, i.e. the windows and parts of the trees. However, the dynamic-range is probably greater than the human eye would see. To see the effect of working in a high bit depth - high colour mode try temporarily reducing the image to sRGB 8bit mode. While in the lower mode look at the effect of moving the exposure slider to right, with the highlight clipping turned on.

By overexposing the image by two f stops, little detail is been gained in the dark areas inside the building and in the tree foliage, but a great deal of damage has been done to the side of the building and the lower part of the sky.

A useful related tool appears in the top left and right corners of the panel, and will turn a mask on and off that will show the under- and overexposed areas, respectively. This is similar to the Highlight Alert function on the camera. Pressing these buttons will As the sun was below the horizon, the light was quite highlight the underexposed areas in blue, and the red, and the automatic white balance of the camera overexposed areas in red. has over compensated somewhat. To restore the Basic Tab. warmth of the light I will adjust the Temperature Below the histogram are the aforementioned camera slider. This was moved from 4600K to 6000K. The exposure details, and below that is a set of tabs (the Tint control was reset to zero. names of the tabs appear when the mouse pointer is hovering over them). The default is the Basic tab, which has the functions that are most often used. The next tab, Tone Curve, is also useful as it controls, not surprisingly, the tone curves. Working with curves is a fundamental skill. The Detail tab controls image sharpening, while the HSL/Greyscale tab controls the colours in the image and is useful for removing colour casts (for example, if your photograph is taken on grass under green foliage). It is less likely that you will need to use the following tabs, but the Lens Correction tab is useful for correcting problems with poorer quality kit lenses and creating soft vignetting1 effects (or correcting them) in the corners of images.

We’ll look at the Basic tab in this article, and discuss the other functions in the future.

84

Issue #6 | May 2014

I am actually fairly happy with this image as it now stands, and would probably do no further adjustments. However, for the purpose of this article lets continue and explore the various basic controls to give the image a bit more punch.

Once you have the overall exposure and colour temperature looking as you would like, the next step is to adjust the overall contrast. The Contrast control sets the overall contrast of the image, giving a linear shift in the dark and light areas of the image. If the image looks flat, which is often the case with raw files, or there is too much difference between the dark and light areas, adjusting the contrast can be useful. Again this is something that is done visually on the monitor. However, it is useful to refer to the histogram so that you don’t clip the image.

Here we can see the effect of working in a low colour space - bit depth. Reducing the image to sRGB at 8bit clips the highlights substantially loosing detail and colour. The colour change will not be as visible as the PDF you are reading reduces the images to sRGB at 8bit, but the clipping and histogram tell the story.

Simply increasing the exposure affects the whole image. A two stop increase simply washes out the image.

Using the Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks sliders is the way to control the image on a specific level.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 85

these is the Clarity. This slider adjusts the localised midtone contrast of an image. This can effectively appear to sharpen or soften an image by increasing or decreasing the middle tones of the image while leaving the darker and lighter tones intact. It effectively applies a soft wide-area Unsharp Mask filter to the image. However, if the image needs sharpening the filter should be applied using an Unsharp Mask via the Detail tab. I almost always Leaving the adjustment of the highlights and shadows apply a small amount of positive Clarity to an image until after the exposure and contrast is important, (+5 to +15) from a raw file. Some cameras’ raw files because exposure and contrast affect the overall appear sharper (X-Pro 1) compared to others (5D image and the Highlight and Shadow controls are MkII) out of the camera, so it is a matter of personal restricted to their bandwidths. preference and experimentation.

In our example image, I have moved the Highlight Negative Clarity can be used to soften skin-tones, slider to the left and reduced the brightness of the but the best effect is achieved when this is used with sky and the sunlit side of the building. This has the adjustment brush tool that we will discuss in the revealed extra detail in the weatherboards, and future. I have also come across examples where it some more detail in the sky across the hilltops. has been done to replicate the soft focus look that Moving the Shadow slider to the right has revealed a was popular with black and white landscapes at one corresponding amount of detail in the darker areas of stage. the building front and in the trees in the background.

I have exaggerated the adjustments somewhat so At first glance, Vibrance and Saturation appear to that you can see the effect, in practice I would be far do the same thing – that is, they adjust the overall colour intensity – but each works differently. The less aggressive.

Saturation slider adjusts the colour intensity across Next come the Whites and Blacks sliders. These are the complete colour range of the image. Decrease used to further fine-tune the extremes of the image the intensity and you will remove the colour range. It is particularly useful to have the highlight information entirely. This results in a monochrome and shadow clipping turned on for this process. image. Fully increase the slider, and the colours will Although the Blacks and Whites sliders operate over become unnatural and fluorescent. Colours that are a narrower range, they have a marked effect. They already bright will quickly begin to clip. are not linear in their action – the further the slider is moved from centre, the stronger the effect becomes. The Vibrance slider, on the other hand, increases the colour intensity of areas in the image that have So a little movement is usually all that is required. the least amount of colour intensity to begin with.

I find the Blacks control particularly useful for Decreasing the Vibrance level will not completely hiding detail when taking photographs against dark remove all colour, (as with the Saturation control) backdrops to make them fully black. It can also be but instead leaves muted tones of the more intense useful for bringing out a little extra detail in shadows, greens and reds in our example image. The Vibrance but will reveal extra noise and the effect can be control is setup to ignore skin tones in the mid-range detrimental to the image. of the slider, so skin tones are less likely to turn Similarly, when taking studio images against a white orange. background the Whites control can be used to In our example you can see the effects of the Vibrance deliberately blowout the white background. This can and Saturation control at their extremes. There are be useful for hiding unwanted shadows and marks better ways of creating black and white images, but on the background. Going the other direction, the reducing the saturation in this image has given a tool has progressed to the point where some burnt pleasing older looking effect. out highlights can be recovered. However, lost detail due to over exposure can never be fully recovered. Once the adjustments have been completed, save So the old saying expose for the highlights still holds the copy of the image by pressing Save Image in the lower left of the window. This allows you to choose true. the location of where the file is saved, and the format Now to the last group of controls. The first of Next you can start to fine-tune the image using the Highlight and Shadow sliders. These were previously known as the Recovery and Fill Light controls if you have an older version, and have since been improved.

These work from either end of the image range and reach slightly into the midtone area. Adjusting the highlights leaves the shadows intact, and adjusting the shadows does not affect the highlights.

86

Issue #6 | May 2014

Here I have begun to change some of the parameters. Exposure was left as is, contrast was boosted slightly. The shadows were then adjuststed slightly to bring out more detail in the front waall and roof. To darken the side wall and make the interior visble through the left window, the highlights slider was reduced. This also helped define the clouds more clearly.

Here the effects of going to far can be seen. I have substantially pushed the Whites contol to high and the Blacks control to low. This has clipped the highlights (seen in red) and the shadows (seen in blue).

Note the effect on the histogram.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 87

to which it is converted. When all the details have been completed, press and hold Option/Alt. Once the button changes to Open Copy, press to open the image in Photoshop for saving to a .PSD, .PNG, or .JPEG file, for printing, or for further adjustment.

Conclusion.

The best way to see the effect of these tools is play with them. A disadvantage of Camera Raw is that it doesn’t keep a history of your actions. However, as the sliders are non-destructive reseting to zero by typing directly into the numbers is usually all that is needed. The Lightroom interface at this level is very similar, and works in exactly the same way, plus there is the advantage of an actions history.

As with all image editing, a little is a usually enough.

Although, detail can be recovered from over or underexposed images, just like with film there are limits. One of the big advances in digital cameras over the past few years is the expanded dynamic range of the sensors, and the great improvements in noise levels giving improved shadow detail. Increasingly we are seeing cameras without anti-aliasing filters that slightly blur the image to prevent the effects of fine patterns causing moire, so raw images from the cameras are increasingly sharp (if properly focused) without much need for further work. Keep in mind that it is always best to properly expose your images in the camera, and not just have the attitude that it can be “fixed in Photoshop�. A little extra time when taking the image will save you heaps of time on the computer.

This article has been adapted from a longer set of tutorials. These will be available in the near future from the 50lux.org shop.

88

Issue #6 | May 2014

The effect of the Vibrance control can be seen above. By mov saturation but leaves some subtle colour as the effect is selec

The effect of the Saturation control can be seen above. By m saturation and removes all colour. This is one, but not the be Note the histograms in each image.

ving the slider to the right colour that has low saturation levels is increased. Moving the slider to the left reduces the ctive.

moving the slider to the right colour overall saturation levels are increased. Moving the slider to the left reduces the est, way to create a black and white image. Note the histograms in each image.

Following page. This is final image result output via a .PSD file in Photoshop.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 89

90

Issue #6 | May 2014

50 Lux | 50lux.org 91

Using your camera

Aperture, Shutter, & ISO In this series of articles we look at how your camera works. This third article looks at the shutter. Like the aperture, the shutter controls exposure, but in a different way. The aperture controls the amount of light that travels to the film or sensor, the ISO is how sensitive the film or sensor is to light. The shutter controls the length of time the film or sensor is exposed to the incoming light.

The leaf shutter is usually built into the lens, and operates in a similar way to the aperture in that it is a series of blades. These types of shutters are usually part of an assembly that is removed with the lens. Because the shutter remains closed until the By controlling the amount of light that reaches the exposure takes place, a supplementary viewfinder film or sensor of your camera you can take pictures in is used on rangefinder and medium format models. almost any lighting conditions from bright sunshine The film is placed in the camera after all the set-up to almost total darkness. As we saw in out previous for the picture has been made on a large format view articles the aperture is the other main control. Here camera. Most fixed lens cameras will use this type of we look at the shutter which controls the amount of shutter too because it is simpler and therefore less time that he film or sensor is exposed to light coming expensive to make. through the lens.

While the hole of the aperture is set, and remains The shutter controls light by the amount of time at the set size during exposure, the leaf shutter it remains open. On the majority of film cameras starts fully closed, opens fully, and then closes (excluding the most simple cameras such the Box again. Because it has to go through that cycle, the Brownie and Instamatics) the shutter settings were mechanical limitations are such that this type of in steps that halve or double the amount of time shutter has generally meant a top speed of 1/500th compared to the setting on either side. This is of a second – although some modern units can go equivalent to one full f stop. The main times that as fast as 1/1600 of a second. This type of shutter is can be set range from 1 second, 1/2 a second, 1/4, generally found in medium format cameras and large 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500 and format view cameras. It is also common on point and 1/1000. Newer cameras will extend that range in shoot, and range-finder cameras. both directions. Most modern SLRs will go from 30 seconds to 1/4000th of a second with professional The focal-plane shutter is located within the camera models extending to 1/8000th of a second. On body. It is a standard feature of Single Lens Reflex modern SLR and CSC cameras this can often be much cameras, because part of the function of the shutter more finely controlled with set adjustments in half or is to stop light reaching the film except during the one third of a stop increments. actual exposure. If the lens with a leaf shutter is removed from the camera body, then the film is Leaf versus Focal-plane versus Electronic. exposed unless there is a dark slide fitted or the reflex There are two main types of mechanical shutter. mirror seals the light. This complicates the purpose The Leaf and the Focal-plane. Each has its own of a ‘miniature’ camera. This is less of an issue with Digital cameras of course, because they only record advantages and disadvantages.

The shutter is one of the three main things that controls exposure. Combined with the aperture and the ISO we can control the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor of the camera.

92

Issue #6 | May 2014

the image when asked to. Think of ‘live view modes’ where the shutter is open so that the images can be seen on the screen.

The focal-plane shutter works by moving two curtains horizontally or two sets of blades vertically across the surface of the film or sensor. First one curtain opens and slides across the surface and opens the window.

Then a second curtain follows to close the window and complete the exposure. Early cameras used rubberised cloth curtains, and these generally limited the exposure to 1/1000th of a second. However, ultra thin lightweight blades began replacing the cloth types during the 1970s. These could operate much faster. They can now go as fast as 1/8000th of a second.

At fast shutter speeds only a small part of the film/ sensor is exposed as a slit of light passes over the surface. However, as the shutter speed decreases the slit gets wider. A very slow shutter speed will result in the whole window being open, and the entire frame being exposed at the same time.

A case of don’t try this at home. A partially disassembled lens from a 1930s folding camera. The shutter blades are in the centre. It is operated with a collection of levers, springs and gears.

If you have a film SLR open the back and you will see the shutter mechanism. Never touch the cloth or blades, as they are very delicate. Remove the lens or set to its widest aperture. Wind and release the camera shutter at different speeds to see the action.

Electronic shutters

Using shutter speed for effect

Many digital cameras dispense with physical shutters.

They turn on and off the pixels in a way that replicates the action of a shutter. This is the most likely shutter system use on your mobile phone/tablet as it saves space. It also used on many digital compact and CSCs. Many digital SLRs are also have electronic shutters in addition to the mechanical ones as this allows far greater flexibility with flash exposures. Although electronic shutters have a number of advantages, the way that the pixels sites on the sensor are turned on and off can lead to what is known as rolling shutter.

The top or the bottom of the sensor lags behind the starting point and vertical straight lines appear bent or curved. This is most pronounced when the camera is used for video and the camera is being panned horizontally. However it can also be a problem when panning fast moving objects like a racing car when taking a still image. This is becoming less of an issue as the sensors and processor in cameras become faster and more powerful.

If you are using a stationary object that has no movement, such as a statue or a building, and your camera is on a tripod, then the shutter speed is not likely to make a great deal of difference.

However, if there is any movement, the moving object will blur as it moves across the frame. Similarly if the camera itself is moved during a long exposure the whole image will blur.

Selecting a shutter speed that stops action is generally (but not always) desirable. This freezing of the action generally occurs when a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second or faster is selected. This is because the object doesn’t have time to move across the frame in the time the shutter is open. However, if we were to photograph a very fast moving object such as a sports person in action, a racing car, or a bullet fired from a gun, we would need to use a much faster shutter speed such as 1/500th of a second or faster to freeze the action.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 93

At the other end of the scale we might like to use a long exposure time to create an effect of speed. This can be achieved by panning, or following the moving object, with the camera so that the moving object is sharp but the background is blurred. Similarly, bodies of water, such as rivers and beaches, are often photographed in this way so that the water is blurred giving a soft tranquil mood to the image. In the accompanying imaging of Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway, the camera was stationary on a tripod and the vehicle lights created trails during the longer exposures.

Synchronisation If you have ever taken an image using flash and part of the frame is unexpectedly black? This has been caused by the shutter and flash being out of synchronisation. We won’t go into flash bulbs as they have all but gone, but if you are using an older film camera it may have two sockets, the one marked ‘B’ is for bulbs, while the one marked ‘X’ is for electronic flash. Flash bulbs take a certain amount of time to reach their full brightness, so a small delay was created between when the shutter was pressed – firing the bulb – and when the shutter was released – first curtain opened. Electronic flash is almost instant, so there is no delay between when the shutter is pressed and the flash reaches its peak output.

Flash synchronisation is not an issue on leaf shutters because the whole of the frame is exposed at the same time – synch speeds can now go as high as 1/1600th of a second with leaf shutters. However, with focalplane shutters the slit created by the movement of the two curtains means that at faster shutter speeds only part of the film is exposed when the flash fires.

When electronic flash became a viable proposition in the 1950s and 1960s, cameras with focal-plane shutters could only synch at up to 1/30th of a second.

Today synch speeds can go as high as 1/500th. If you are using a manual film camera the synch speed will generally be marked on the shutter speed dial in a different colour to the other speeds (often red) or have a small ‘x’ against it. The maximum speed for a horizontal cloth shutters was 1/60th, but metal vertical shutters can synch as faster speeds. Check the instruction manual if using a digital SLR camera.

If you are lucky enough to be using studio flash fired by a radio trigger, then there is generally no issue with flash – set your shutter speed to it’s synch speed, and set exposure with the aperture. However, many 94

Issue #6 | May 2014

modern cameras with built in flash will fire a number of pre-flashes to calculate the exposure – they read the exposure from the light reflected from the film or sensor surface. These pre-flashes can then trigger any slave units you have set up and lead to the exposure being out of synchronisation. We’ll go into flash in a future article.

Shutter lag and cycles Shutter lag is a term that you will often hear about.

This is simply the time that it takes for the shutter to open after you have fully depressed the shutter button. This can go from no delay what-so-ever in a mechanical film camera or professional digital camera in manual mode, to almost a second in some digital compacts.

It depends on what you asking the camera to do. If it has to focus, and fire some pre-flashes, and calculate exposure, that takes time. If your camera is set to manual exposure and manual focus it can be instant.

Shutter lag doesn’t actually have anything to do with action of the shutter itself, it is the ‘thinking time’ the camera has to do.

Shutter cycles, is simply the number of times that the shutter is expected to fire before it wears out.

When there were 36 frames to a roll of film, camera bodies generally had a longer expected life. Even 50,000 shots was a lot of film. We tend to take more images with a digital camera. Once upon a time I would take 5 or 6 rolls of film – about 200 frames – when photographing a play or musical. Today I can easily take 3 - 5 times that amount of frames.

So professional cameras might be rated at 250,000 or 300,000 shutter cycles. Entry-level SLR cameras might be rated at 50-75,000 cycles.

Automatic modes The first step to fully learning how to use your camera is to turn the dial from ‘A’. Even the ‘P’ or program mode is a better option. If you are not confident going directly to the ‘M’ or manual mode, then Av or Tv modes are a good intermediate step.

Av (aperture priority) lets you set the aperture and the camera will set the shutter speed. Check that the shutter speed doesn’t go below what you can safely hand hold - 1/60th if you are not using a tripod. If your camera has some form of image stabilisation then you might get away with 1/30th of a second. If you don’t have access to a tripod or monopod, then

Focal-plane Shutters In most single-lens reflex cameras the focal planeshutter is the most commonly used system. The shutter is located directly in front of the film or sensor and can be seen when the back of a film SLR camera is open.

These shutters can be divided into two types the horizontal travel and the vertical travel. Depending on the era and the system used it can be controlled either mechanically by springs or electronically.

The series of images at the left approximate what happens when a horizontal travel shutter is released.

Two overlapping curtains form an adjustable slit or window. The slit effectively moves across the film or sensor exposing it as it goes past.

The first curtain begins to slide to the right. Then the second curtain follows at a distance determined by the set shutter speed.

The images demonstrate what happens when a moderately fast shutter speed is used (perhaps 1/125th of a second). The slit is relatively narrow and only exposes part of the film at a given moment.

A faster shutter speed will result in a narrower slit, while a long shutter speed will result in the whole frame being exposed.

In the mid 1970s shutters started to be made to move vertically, and cloth curtains were replaced with metal blades. These changes allowed faster top speeds, and faster electronic flash synchronisation.

Image copyright: Andrew Renaut.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 95

try to brace yourself against a wall or post.

Tv (shutter priority) lets you set the shutter speed and the camera will set the aperture. This is good for action images because you can make sure the action is frozen by setting a fast shutter speed, and letting the camera decide on the aperture..

Summing up

Shutter Speed As we have seen in the main article, the faster the shutter speed (the shorter the time the shutter is open) the more likely exposure will “freeze” any movement.

In these images you can see the effect of different shutter speed from one the freezes the action, to one where the moving objects have travelled across the frame.

By combining the use of the shutter and the aperture – for a given ISO – you can create an endless variety The three images to the right were taken from roughly of effects for a given amount of light. the same vantage point on a bridge over Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway. In the first image the shutter was A fast shutter freezes action, but requires a wider set to 1/60 of a second with the ISO set to 6400. aperture.

Whilst the shutter speed is fast enough to freeze the A slow aperture allows movement across the frame, traffic has the headlights and ambient light has not but allows greater depth of focus by requiring a had time to have an effect on the surrounding area.

A car in the foreground has been lost in the shadows. smaller aperture.

There are two additional options for controlling exposure.

In the second image the ISO is still at 6400, however I set the shutter the 1/8 of a second. As the traffic is travelling at 100 km/h there is obvious movement across the frame. Light trails are beginning to form and there is enough ambient light to see detail in the surrounding area.

If there is to little light for you desired aperture/ shutter combination, one option is to adjust the ISO – this could be by changing it to a higher setting on digital camera, by using faster rated film, or by push processing your film during development. All of The third image was made with the ISO set to 800. these will result, to some degree, in greater noise or I set the camera to aperture priority mode and the grain. camera set the exposure. The resulted in a 30 second shutter time, long enough for the traffic to have If there is too much light, and you are already on a travelled through the image area. low ISO setting or using low ISO film, then you can use neutral density filters. These reduce the amount If you zoom in on the images you will see that the two of light that enters the lens. This is often done to taken at 6400 ISO have considerably more noise and reduce the depth of focus in bright light. However, have lost some detail, whilst the final image made at with very fast shutters speeds on modern cameras 800 ISO is very clean. this used less often. (Great for those moving water images though.)

Images made on a FujiFilm X-Pro1 at f5.6. Zoom set Ultimately, while the aperture and shutter both to 23mm. All images were made with the camera on control the amount of light that reaches the film/ a tripod. sensor their effects in the final image is different. It is up to you to make the choices. Set your camera Images copyright: Andrew Renaut. on tripod and go to work on trying all the different combinations. (See issue 4) You’ll be able to learn to see which combination works for the situation you are pre-visualising.

96

Issue #6 | May 2014

50 Lux | 50lux.org 97

Buying a Film Camera

Pentax M series

Although the ‘K’ Series that we looked at in the previous was to live on - in the case of the K1000 until the late 1990s - by the late 1970s Pentax was competing more or less diectly with Olympus. In Australia Nikon had the lions share of the professional market and Canon was rapidly moving ahead with camera electronics. Pentax had made a late change to the bayonet mount, and soon after trumped the Olympus ‘OM’ with an even more compact body. Initially there were two models the mechanical MX and the elecronic ME. Although claiming to be aimed at professionals, and with a solid range of lenses and accessories behind them, they didn’t really capture the professional market.

Today the MX and ME Super are the pick of the range and can be great cameras to own and use.

98

Issue #6 | May 2014

In our last two issues we looked at the Pentax Spotmatic and K series cameras. That same basic body spanned almost 3 decades from the early 1960s (Spotmatic) through to the late 1990s ending with the K1000. However Pentax wasn’t asleep.

There were some major innovations along the way, including the lens mount change with the K series in the mid 1970s.

purposes, i.e. mounted on microscopes, sometimes turn up at markets without lenses and are often in very good condition.

In addition to the screens there was a big range of other accessories. These included a 2 frames persecond winder, and a five frames per second motordrive. There was also a 250 frame film back, and a range of remote control accessories.

Olympus really shook up the camera world in 1971 when it released the ‘M’ SLR body. It soon became the ‘OM’ after Leica complained the name would be confused with its ‘M’ line. The Olympus was like nothing before. It was small, lightweight, and had a solid range of accessories to support it. We’ll look at the OM series in a later issue.

The MX had a new metering sensor – which seems to have lasted well – that is mated to a centre weighted meter. The viewfinder displays the aperture, and the shutter speed. Metering is by 5 LEDs. Green for correct, yellow for ½ stop over or under, and red for 1 full stop or more over or under exposed.

In a world of big heavy camera bodies, the little Olympus soon became a best seller, and other manufacturers scrambled to catch up. Designing and tooling up for production wasn’t anywhere as fast as today. Computers were only just being introduced to design, so while five years seems like a long time, back then it was a fairly quick response. Nikon’s to the ‘OM’ answer was the FM/FE pair that could be truly classed as professional cameras. The FM in particular was used by photojournalists as a back-up or lighter alternative to their very heavy F2s and F3s.

So why didn’t the professionals buy it in droves?

The biggest drawback was the shutter and metering.

As it has the older horizontal travel cloth shutter, it only flash synchronises at 1/60th of a second - there were aready a number cameras synching at 1/125th.

Another issue was the limited metering range. It could only meter down to 1 second at 100 ISO, ½ second at 200 ISO, and ¼ at 400 ISO. This severely limits the camera in low light situations. Many press photographers were regularly pushing their film to 1600 ISO in low light, so it just wasn’t a practical press camera.

Pentax, didn’t have the professional market in the same way as Nikon. So it’s cameras started to move solidly into the amateur and enthusiast market. With the change to the new mount out of the way, an all new body was soon ready for release. The MX was the first cab off the rank and was touted as the smallest SLR camera on the market. This was followed by the ME, the ME Super, and finally the MG and MV.

Another big omission is the lack of a Depth of Focus preview lever - something that the small Nikons and Canons had. The Canons and Nikons also went to a more useable 3200 ISO and featured a viewfinder windwo for to read the aperture. The little Nikons also had a multiple exposure control.

MX Released in 1976 the MX was aimed at the professional market. Professionals were very wary of electronics at the time, so the MX was a fully manual mechanical camera. It shared some parts from the K series such as the locking collar around the shutter release, (and probably the cloth shutter itself) but was essentially an all-new body. Whilst it was small, it had a bigger and brighter viewfinder that any of it predecessors. Although the prism wasn’t removable, it did have provision for interchangeable focussing screens. There were quite a large number available for anything from general use to specialised scientific variations. These can sometimes give an indication of the history of the camera. Ones used for scientific

Although the MX was available until 1985, it was replaced by the LX in 1980 as Pentax’s professional camera.

ME The ME – released in 1976 - had a similar chassis to the MX and could use some of the same accessories as its sibling, such as the winder and viewfinder add-ons. The ME was a fully electronic aperture priority camera body. It didn’t have any provision for manually setting the shutter speeds beyond the 1/100th and Bulb settings. These are the only speeds that worked if the batteries went flat. The electronic vertical travel shutter had a range of 8 seconds to 1/1000th – quite impressive for the time. Flash synch was a respectable 1/100th. However, it is also the 50 Lux | 50lux.org 99

Achilles Heal of the body. It has quite a slap when the shutter is released at slow speeds, and as this can be felt through the body on examples I’ve tried, then it is likely that it is going to affect longer exposures below 1/60th.

There is a two stop exposure compensation ring that goes a little way to overcoming the lack of manual mode, but it is still a little limited if this is your only film camera.

ME Super This body was released in 1980 and used a second version of the Seiko shutter. Pentax added a useful manual shutter selection mode to the camera. There is also an updated LED display that matches various coloured LEDs to the shutter speed. It’s a somewhat confusing system to get used to, but works OK in the end.

Other than the addition of the manual mode, the body also feature a 1/2000th second top speed and a correspondingly wider metering range, but the ISO still tops out at a limited 1600 ISO. The winder still runs at 1.5-2 frames per second.

Unfortunately, one thing that wasn’t fixed was the fiddly mode dial lock button. This is the small white button on the shutter release collar that needs to be held down to turn the dial. This was eventually changed on the much later models.

ME F This was the first (although Olympus also lays claim) auto-focus 35mm SLR camera. It is basically an ME Super with the extra electronics. Only one lens auto-focuses with this body – the SMC Pentax-AF 35-70mm f2.8. The lens is recognisable by the large motor housing on the base of the lens. The body/lens combination is quite a collectors item. Don’t expect great auto-focus speed. It’s dead slow. However, I believe the lens is quite sharp for a zoom of the time, and the body gives an audible beep on focus with other lenses. The ME F was ahead of its time, but by the time Pentax got serious with auto-focus a few years later, they were well behind the competition.

MG This was the budget camera in the series and was a sort of direct replacement for the original ME. It has an upgraded shutter with a synch speed of 1/100th of a second with a top speed of 1/1000th. Like the original ME, it lacks any manual shutter control.

100 Issue #6 | May 2014

These don’t turn up very often and may have plastic top and bottom plates as they are noticeably lighter in weight. They have similar finder information to the ME. If you find a 40mm “pancake” lens this could be a good little pocket camera. They have a smaller field of view in the finder 82% compared to the 92% of the MX/ME/ME Super.

MV Yet another version of the M chassis. This was an even more cut down with the smaller finder of the MG, but very simple finder information. Three LEDs indicate Over/Good/Under. There is no compensation dial, but the usual 1/100th and Bulb settings. I’ve seen these go for really low prices, but like the MG, if fitted with a 40mm pancake lens, they could make a great go anywhere camera.

What to look for.

The usual things apply to the M series as to all film cameras. The outside is probably a good indication of the inside. The winder should be smooth, the controls should be smooth and positive. You can expect the foam seals on the door to need replacing, and it is a good idea to have the mirror cushion foam replaced at the same time. As always look for poor fitting backs, damage to the shutters, the vertical travel metal shutters are particularly prone to damage, and mould in the lens suggesting the camera has come from a humid place or be dropped in water at some stage.

All these cameras have some degree of electronics and these are just under the top plate, especially the prism housing. Any major dents should be treated with suspicion. In the ME, ME Super, MG, and MV the LEDs flash in all sorts of combination if the battery’s are almost flat. So if looking specifically for one of these bodies carry some fresh A76 batteries (common in supermarkets). Check for previous leakage in the battery housing.

I’ve not owned a motor/winder for any of my M series bodies, so I can’t say how reliable they are. If the Nikon’s equivalents are a guide then there could be issues with the battery contacts, and the contacts between the motor and the body. Carry some fresh ‘AA’ batteries to check winders. The motor drive for the MX is fairly rare and go for high prices. Be aware that they have a separate battery unit that came in 3 variations. They are professional quality, while the winders are more common; they often show sign of significant wear.

Early versions of the MX and ME had a flash shoe that is prone to being knocked. I’ve seen examples with cracked plastic or missing shoes. This was fixed on later production runs with a metal protection surround.

Next Issue. Minolta ST 101.

Finally these bodies introduced a ‘magic needle’ film loading system. The end of the film is simply pushed between any of the needles and should grip the film.

I’ve seen a few bodies over the years with missing needles. This may or may not stop the camera from gripping the film, but is probable an indication of general poor handling of the camera.

In 1984 the ME Super had a retail price of $399, the MG was $269, while the K1000 was listed at $285.

The professional LX was $1069.

Conclusions.

Like their Spotmatic and K series counterparts, the MX and ME Super are great cameras. They are solidly built and seem to have lasted well given that they could be approaching 35-40 years old. My ME Super still gets used quite a bit. It is reliable, and the autoexposure is surprisingly accurate for quick point and shoot images. The 50mm f1.7 lens is sharp as a tack and the viewfinder is bright and clear. The needle type film loading is faster than the older slots, and is reliable if you push the film under at least 3 needles.

The MX is as reliable as the ‘K’ series, and is smaller and lighter. It has a far better viewfinder too. It’s main drawback is the slow 1/60th flash synchronisation speed and limited ISO range. The ME Super has the faster shutter, a wider metering range, and has a good auto exposure mode, but a fiddly way of setting the shutter speed.

These are really the last of the great Pentax’s. Later models start to include more electronics and plastic.

That means that if something goes wrong it’s not worth fixing. Pentax had one last go at a professional body with the LX. However, while it had great features like the interchangeable prism-finders and off the film exposure reading, there are a number of problems with these bodies such as mirrors that stick.

Our pick is the MX or ME Super. However, if you are looking for a ‘point and shoot’, and don’t need to set the shutter speed manually, then the ME, MG, or MV are still good fun cameras.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 101

Parting Shots As I write this piece, the sad news that Fairfax is again reducing its staff numbers is coming to light.

There are plans for Fairfax staff to go on strike in the coming days. The saddest part of this news is that the photographers are taking such a big hit with thirty of the remaining forty photographic staff about to be let go.

In many ways this was inevitable. Fairfax seemed to have their head in the sand about ten years ago when the Internet and Web really started to become a major force in society. Whilst it was abundantly clear that we would be moving to an on-line world, they still seemed to be relying on the “rivers of gold” classifieds advertising that were their lifeblood for the previous century and a half. Other companies saw the on-line opportunity and sprinted ahead leaving Fairfax in particular behind.

Content is king in publishing. If people aren’t interested in what you are showing them, then they won’t buy the product. As the money from classified advertising dried up, so did the funds to pay the great staff that provided the great content. Never mind the change in format of the physical paper, there is little in the way of content that I can’t get for free elsewhere. The ABC - which is also a shadow of its former self, but has adapted much better and is yet again under thereat from government cutbacks - is now my go to place for news along with blow-ins the Guardian, and other sites like Crikey. So while I still subscribe to the iPad edition of the Age because I like some of the columns in the Green Guide and some aspect of the Saturday edition, I wouldn’t be fussed if I canceled.

The Age in particular was one of the best newspaper in the world, particularly in the 1970s. If you look through the picture archive, the quality of the photography has been incredibly good. These images were created by highly devoted staff, who built very high levels of skill. As we have seen through our interviews with press photographers in earlier issues, the image of hard drinking rough larikins has well and truly been replaced by highly trained professionals.

The Fairfax decision is not isolated, and most major news organizations overseas have been going 102 Issue #6 | May 2014

through this process for a lot longer. However, using an overseas picture agency to source images is going to have a detrimental effect on the quality of the images we see. I don’t know if Getty will employ local staff, or Fairfax will, hopefully, subscribe to the new services like storyhunter.tv and blink.la that are springing up to pool the resources of photographers and video camera journalists.

The problem for former photojournalists from the large organizations is not that they are no-longer able to earn money from their craft, it is the lack of back-office support. Insurance in particular is both hard to get and particularly expensive if you are working in a place with even the slightest danger.

Having to buy your own equipment and maintain it is also expensive. That is what makes it hard for the freelancer.

Many of the photographers will not survive the transition, they will either move onto different careers, or retire. Australian journalism will be all the poorer for it.

Next issue we return with three more young photogrpahers doing a range of exciting things including the talented Jessica Tremp. So don’t forget to subscribe.

When researching cameras to write about I often refer to the directories from Australian Photography magazine. I have about 20 that span the 1960s to the 1990s. The ad above caught my attention because the distributor was Alex Encel. Most people who love their real HiFi systems in Melbourne, and that includes me, would have heard of him. In many ways he established the market for quality music listening equipement in this country. He opened in the late 1950s and closed his shop a few months ago.

Few people will remember him for cameras though. Whilst the Zenza Bronica wasn’t quite a Hasselblad or Rollei SL66, it was a good camera - especially with the Nikon based lenses. His prices were competitive too, promising to substantially undercut U.K. and U.S.A. prices. Bronica was a victim of the push to digital and European laws about lead content. Encel Electronics survived a decade longer. It’s sad to see them both gone.

50 Lux | 50lux.org 103