Walking the Plank: First Kiss About two million years ago, when I was fifteen years old (I am 49 now), a wonderful young woman asked me to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. That first kiss was sweet—followed by another, and another, and another—a thought I shall always cherish. Below, you will find my “first kiss” with the Nikon D3x digital camera. The image, “2Faced,” was shot in early February 2009, about seventy miles from my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Devoid of winter snows, it was an unusual time of the year for me to be out in the field. Shirt-sleeved weather ruled the day, and the cobalt blue skies reminded me that drought is a real possibility for the year. The ruins at my shooting location were familiar. I have photographed these ruins for years and know them like the back of my hand. Such familiarity and the dead quiet surroundings were perfect for my first outing with “The Beast,” as I have affectionately named my new Nikon D3x. “The Beast” was sporting his new Zeiss ZF 2/35 lens. As a team, we had practiced our choreographed image-making around the periphery of my home, but this would be our first effort together in the field. The subject matter needed to be automatic, as all concentration was needed on taming “The Beast.” The color matrix metering on the D3x historically trails back to the legendary Nikon F5 film camera, which exposed delicate “chromes” with exacting authority. The legend of Nikon’s matrix metering continued on with the Nikon F6 film camera, and by body from the F6 into today’s D3 and D3x digital cameras. It seemed idiotic for me to outguess such a well-educated camera function as Nikon’s color-matrix metering. But it is important to note that Nikon’s color-matrix metering is set up to make “pretty pictures,” not perform to exacting levels on its own. I knew this from my practice with the camera before the fieldwork. Nikon has made an assumption about lighting conditions and expected contrast with its matrix-metering system, which tends towards “average” in terms of lighting conditions. My shooting conditions tend to be anything but “average.” An “offset” compensation would have to be dialed in against the matrix metering to accommodate the high contrast typical in my fieldwork. Needless to say, the compensation would need to vary from image-to-image, and with sun angle. The advantage of using matrix metering with a compensation dialed-in, rather than just manual metering, turns out to be “not much”—that is, unless the light is dynamically shifting, wherein the matrix metering can keep up with the light changes once contrast issues are dialed-in and offset. My first foray into the field was dominated by my endless tweaking of the compensation offset for the color-matrix metering, then watching the histogram display like a hawk for signs of trouble. I was quite concerned that I would end up clipping the image highlights, rendering the RAW files useless for fine art print-making. But I felt proficient enough with “The Beast” and the Zeiss AF 2/35 to not make a fool of myself during out first efforts together. Soon, I fell into old work habits, with more concentration on the subject in front of the lens, than with the camera body behind it. The light was beautiful, the air was very clean, and deep shadows from the trees played across the walls of the ruins. I wanted to make the most out of my photographic outing. Two hours later, and I was on my way home—ninety-six exposures made. Given the type of shoot, I would guess that about one-third more exposures were made than would have been typical for me with film. This shows my inexperience with the camera and the need for further refinement of my metering methods. I am not sure that Nikon’s color-matrix metering really benefits my type of image-making. For future fieldwork, I may return to manual exposure, with spot metering off of the brightest objects in the frame, rather than using matrix metering. With a generous compensation offset dialed-in to the spot-metering system, it can quickly yield pinpoint accurate exposure results. This is a method that I used extensively with the Kodak DCS 760m digital monochrome camera, and it worked very well. Back at home, I had my first hint of reality in trying to back up the ninety-six RAW image files onto DVD optical storage. My fieldwork would not fit on one DVD! Sadly, I had to split the shoot onto two DVDs, which is a heck of a lot of storage. I was soon making up my own new theme song, titled, “When R We Getting R Blue Ray ME?!” I now have a clear-cut need for 25 GB optical storage and sure hope the cost point of Blue Ray burners, discs, and associated software gets down to plebeian levels soon. I played with the shoot’s RAW files for a few days before I launched my efforts to get serious and make a fine-art image out of one of the candidates. There are so many RAW converter options available that it makes one’s head spin. We will get more into the issue of image-processing technique and the effect of RAW converters in future columns, but suffice it to say for now that a bad RAW converter can make one’s expensive, high-performance lens look really lousy. I don’t have the “final word” yet on what RAW converter works best for me, but I have found a little experimental gem that seemed to outshine most of the big guns. Stay tuned. With film, my normal workflow would usually require a minimum of three days to create a fine art image. Scanning and spotting were good for a day, and then image-sculpting would take a few more days—maybe even a week of total effort. “2Faced” came together in a ten-hour marathon push. I really, really wanted this image to come alive and be glorious (to me) straight out of the first shoot. I went through all the apprehension of a “first kiss.” Knees knocking at all stages, wondering when to make my move—a little here, a little there. Suddenly, there was an image! Upon completion of “2-Faced,” all I wanted to do was sleep—and sleep for days—due to shear exhaustion. It wasn’t the work of the moment that had sapped my energy, but six months of anxiety leading up to my switch over from film to digital. This image was the proof that I needed that the Nikon D3x was fine-art capable. In closing, I should comment that most readers know my work because of my efforts as a fine arts monochrome photographer—so what is with the color in the image, “2Faced”? Have I lost it (monochrome or my mind)? Am I onto something new? Why color? It is too early for me to answer the question, because frankly I do not know myself. This particular image seemed to call out to me to be in color in final form. I have not had the luxury of that decision in quite a number of years, having made the vast majority of my works from black-and-white negative film. We are in a new age of photography. I should state for the record that “2Faced” was made using techniques that allow me to take the “color” off of the image, work on the image structure as a black and white image, then “glue” the color back on during final image formation. “2 Faced” is a composite sandwich of color, on black and white, of a single image. It could only be formed by means of the advanced math and computer processing power available in our era. From my “first kiss,” it looks as though I have a new tool in my image-making arsenal after fifteen years of intensive monochrome work—and the new tool is ironically “color.” It makes me wonder how far I can take it, with the constant strength of monochrome at its base. One final thought: Go out and kiss your sweetheart today—and pretend it was your first! Do it in honor of “The Beast.” Pete Myers Archives (click) --------------- |
© Red Dog Journal, 2008 |