I walked down to an intersection near me to capture an image of an artistic looking theater on Lincoln Road. Time was around 5pm, when I thought the lighting might be best. I was wondering if the PC lens would allow me to get a heads-on look at the theater, without having to point my camera upwards. After 20 or so attempts, I thought this one was the best I was going to do. My Leica M10 was aimed (close to) level, or so I thought. I expected the late hour to give me great colors, but if I waited until 6 much more of the image would be in shadow.
I thought I did fine, but then sent the result last night to my nephew who is an architect. His comments mean another trip to the theater, perhaps at 4pm. Here’s his comments:
I would step a bit to the right to get the word “LINCOLN” clearer
Also, when you step right, the “Lincoln Road” street sign won’t be cut off.
I do not like the tree canopy at the top right. This is where photoshop could help.
The rain cloud in the top right is a bit ominous, and I would prefer a more blue sky without the slight cloud behind the “LINCOLN” fin.
The sunset timing is nice, but the shadows from the landscape on top of the building across the street are awkward. Maybe fix in photoshop or take at a different time? Is that a bird at the top right? Remove in photoshop?
Not your fault, but the paint on the building is fading.
One last thing - my Leica is still configured to show me the world in b&w, and I liked what I saw in my viewfinder, but now that I see it in color, I think b&w is not as good.
Fuji Neopan Acros 100
(red filter added to improve the sky…)
Temporary thoughts on the above, after sleeping on it from yesterday, the PC lens in my opinion meant I didn’t need to do a PhotoLab correction to keep vertical lines reasonably vertical, which would be a faster solution). The ugly lines on the street bother me. The trees and leaves at the top left (not right) - I think they add to the photo, but maybe they’re just a distraction…
For me, the only interesting bit of this image are the colours in this part of it:
A simple crop as I’ve done is not enough, the intrusive leaves on the left also need to be cloned out, but such a crop is chucking away too much data. In other words, if it was a photo I wanted to take, I’d reshoot with a longer lens to fill the frame with this area.
I was merely commenting that, to me, ‘as is’ this image is merely an ordinary snap and holds no interest for me. However, the abstract nature of the coloured windows did strike me as one bit that might have artistic potential.
If you want to explore that idea then I think you would have to reshoot, to minimise any crop and avoid stuff like the tree and the lights that get in the way.
If you don’t see anything in my view of this scene then don’t do anything, it won’t matter to me.
If you use vertical upwards shift, you get to hide the road and leave more space above the sign, which is currently too tight.
If you’d used the spirit level on the tripod or the D780, your verticals would not have been “reasonably” vertical, they would have been truly vertical.
I went back there a little before 4pm, and stayed until a little past 4:45. The colors captured yesterday in my photo apparently need to be taken much later. According the the data, I took yesterday’s photo at 7:35pm. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go back there at that time - I took similar photos today, but the colors were not there - probably because the sun was still way too high. Here’s a crop of yesterday’s photo:
For today, since a 35mm lens couldn’t cover all of what I wanted, I used my 24-85 on my D780 and zoomed as needed. That means if I want to correct for the perspective, it’s back to PhotoLab. By later this evening, I’ll post the result.
According to my thermometer, it’s now 100 degrees outside. I’m not comfortable even walking there and back, and I’m not about to carry my tripod. Sorry. By the time I got home today, my “get-up-and-go” had already “gotten-up-and-went”.
The 35mm lens makes it difficult to get what I want. I was going to shoot with my 28mm on the Leica, but then switched to my 24-85 on my D780, which allowed me to not only capture the theater, but also the parking structure which I most wanted to capture.
Those leaves I wanted to get rid of - I just had to shoot from out in the street, and they were gone.
As I now see things, using the PC lens was limiting me, but with the 24-84 I could get anything I wanted, effortlessly… but I will need to use PhotoLab to correct what the PC lens allows.
The screen capture you posted up above has a fully lit street, and doesn’t seem to be lighting up the “front” of the building. The street is lit nicely, as it was in the photos I took today. Same scene.
First, download the images.
Second, make dinner, and relax.
Third, select and process one good image of the theater from today.
I like the new forum format. I can post as much or as little as I want, and those who are interested can follow, and those who are not can ignore this. Maybe there is even a tool that allows any of us to “forget/ignore” threads we’re not interested in. If not, there should be. But stupid me, I read almost everything anyway…
The D780 is more powerful, and more configurable.
The M10 is more challenging, and more difficult.
The D780 does what I expect it to do.
The M10 has to be forced to do what I want.
Here’s the final photo from today, but the beautiful colors on the side of the building are missing. I will try again tomorrow, around 7pm.
This photo has everything I set out to do; in most ways, it is better than what I could do before. I probably need to edit out the street light at the right; couldn’t exclude that if I wanted the street sign. Photolab did fine with the perspective.
No matter what I do, it’s a compromise. If I want the beautiful shades of color on the side of the theater, I get those ugly shadows on the front of the building and the street. Oh well.
Finished. I don’t doubt that some of you can find ways to improve this even more, but other than waiting until 7pm tomorrow, I don’t know what else I might do.
One more failure. I wasn’t aware that my tripod had a bubble level. Found it, and it’s so easy to use. I guess I’m all set from now on, when I use my tripod.
The D780 has a level adjustment for both Live View (which I knew) and the viewfinder (which I was unaware of until you told me. The M10P has a level indicator, but not my older M10. Given time, I can get close to level, but as you found out, not good enough.
I’m not “better” than what some of you think about me, I’m most likely “worse”. Things were easier many years ago, but to be honest, nobody ever “pushed me” like what I find in this forum. All the “pushing” is good for me, as even a year ago, I never could have created an image as good as the two images I did today. I’ll post the other one tomorrow. Then there’s a fact that until recently, I could “process” 20 or 30 or more images in an hour. Nowadays, it’s more like one image, with a few re-do’s until I am satisfied me. Anything critical I say about anyone else’s photos, I say to myself, sometimes with not very nice language (you dummy, how could you have missed THAT!!).
This almost three hour long training video starts out easy enough, and makes total sense to me, but half way through it I am getting into settings I never used, never thought of, and there are so, so many of them that it’s more than I can handle, let alone remember. Several times now, I’ve gone through that video from beginning to end, with my camera in front of me, setting all the adjustments based on what I was learning. Good result - for the most part, my camera is set better than ever before - most of the time. But how and when to use those other possible settings becomes a blur. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s my cognitive ability, or lack of. Maybe it’s because this new camera is so, so, much more complicated and confusabobbled than my D3, where I thought I understood most everything. Maybe it’s partly because it is almost a three hour video. I wish he had published it in several shorter videos, perhaps on on exposure, another on focus, and so on. I think what I might want to know, is there, but it’s easier to watch other people’s videos on perhaps “camera settings”, explaining what to use, and when, and why, but of a limited amount of settings. Oh, and this is “just the basics”. The fellow who made this video sells a FULL explanation of the D780, which I haven’t yet bought, as if I don’t properly understand his free three hour explanation, I’ll have even more trouble with his “full” training class.
Maybe everyone should ignore all the above, and ignore things I write, unless they also understand what I’m writing about. Obviously, things that make sense to me don’t make sense to others (you and George, for one example) because I don’t describe them in the correct words. Fortunately, the other way 'round does work - it took a while, but eventually I understood what I was being told about shift lenses. Me - I just wanted to use one. But because they are at least as stubborn as I am, now I actually DO understand things that made no sense whatever to me a month ago. Same thing for many functions in PhotoLab, but I’ve learned enough such that when I finish, I am mostly pleased with my edited image. Until others (or my nephew) point out things I was oblivious to. And invariably, when I look at it the next morning, I find corrections I need to make to what I thought was “finished”.
Final thought - because (or despite) all this, I enjoy photography now more than ever. I’ve long since flunked out of @wolfgang’s course, and the chances of ever passing are slim to none, but thanks to this forum, while I’m unlikely to win a contest, I’m much happier with my photography now than ever before. I should also say that you are a wonderful teacher. When I’m ready to give up on something, I feel compelled to make it into something you consider acceptable, maybe even good. That is now part of my challenge in life - since everybody else I know just tells me how wonderful my photos are. Meaning I don’t learn anything on how to improve. Sigh…
EOF - I didn’t intend to write so much.
herman
(Leica M9 | iPhone 16 Pro | iMac M1 | PL6, FP, VP | Photo Supreme)
11
Seems like a computer with a lens bolted on to me
Seriously, using a camera should be as simple as loading a film, setting ISO in the light meter, pick appropriate aperture and shutter speed for your subject, frame, focus and shoot. No rocket science involved at all.
Perhaps sell your Nikon gear, use your Leica and go on with your life?
And that is where folks get all “confusabobbled” because, somehow, they seem to think they need to know how the “computer” works, just to take photos.
I have a Nikon D850, which is like the big sister to the D780. I can use the paper manual to stop a table from wobbling, it is so thick. Fortunately, the manual is also available in searchable format online. I have never read the entire manual, because it is not a book, to be read from cover to cover; it is a “reference” that can be searched when necessary. And I have certainly never bothered searching out tutorial videos.
Here is my “manual”…
Set the ISO using the ISO button and the rear wheel
Select spot metering mode
Find the brightest part of the scene to meter for around +1 to +2EV
Set the aperture using the front wheel
Set the shutter speed using the rear wheel
Set the focus using the rear button
Frame the desired subject
Press the shutter
My camera menu settings are the same as they have been since my D100 and I rarely ever need to go into the menus, except for the odd esoteric stuff once every blue moon.
Most of my time is spent looking for things to photograph and then waiting for the best light to photograph them by.
Apart from physical control differences, the above list is exactly the same as I would use for my wooden large format camera.
Nah, it’s still a computer with all sorts of tempting options to distract from the business of seeking and taking photos.
I have mentioned it before but Mike seems determined to make life difficult by holding on to a vast collection of “stuff”, like lenses that overlap and need changing from shot to shot. Apart from specialist studio work, I tend to use one lens for everything, my 28-300mm, which produces stunning results, when used in combination with the appropriate DxO lens module.
I no longer own my D100, or my D200, or most of the earlier lens, because they served no purpose except to fund buying newer gear.
Life is so much simpler. I want to take a camera out with me - it’s the D850 with 28-300 mm lens. No decisions to make, just a camera that I know like the back of my hand and can use at the drop of a hat.
On the other hand, I mostly use it more or less just like I used my D3. When I got my D750, I found some “recommended settings” and used many of them
The D780 has all that “stuff”, but having gone through several of those videos on what settings to use, I simplified by going through them one by one, deciding what I wanted for default settings, and that’s what I’ve got now. I should add that Joanna suggested a lot of “auto” settings to ignore, or turn off. Most of them included “auto” in the tool name. I’ve decided, after a lot of “coaching” here, that I would rather be deciding things myself, rather than allowing the camera to do so (which is why the camera now stays in manual mode). It’s also true that “one size fits all” doesn’t apply to cameras. For shooting sports, I go back to what I did so much with my D3. For shooting birds, I have other settings (recommended by one of the better bird photographers, who has his own forum (Back Country Gallery) for that purpose), Steve Perry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxQhuMQEwLU
Despite how much more difficult it is, and maybe because I’m doing most of the work, my Leica M10 is the camera I am most satisfied with when I get home. The D780 makes things so much easier - but the suggestions in this forum have improved my ability to do so - or so I think.
Nope. The Leica is a challenge. The Nikon is a sure thing. I’m spoiled by the automation (focus, exposure, and so on). Quality photos from my Nikon are mostly determined by me. Quality photos from the Leica means not only what I normally do, but some of the auto controls it lacks. Then to, with my D70, D90, D2x, D3, D750, and now D780, for basic stuff it’s up to me to not mess up. Focusing on the Nikon is automated. Focusing on the Leica is supposed to be easier, but…
I could sell my Nikon or gear easily, as it’s all easy to replace.
If I sold my Leica gear, I could never afford to replace it.
A lot of it is worth more now, than what I paid for it.
Guilty as charged. Not so much to do the “best” things, but more so to not do the “wrong things”. Focusing is the first thing that comes to mind. Manual focus, auto focus, tracking focus, eye detection, face detection, and so on. The basic stuff I know, but I haven’t really fully figured out the last three things I mentioned.
Guilty, as charged. I’ve never read any manual from cover to cover, although I’ve tried to occasionally, like when I’m stuck on an airplane for many hours. But I watch lots of “how to” videos. Some are junk, but others are great - like learning trick stuff in PhotoLab, or excellent settings for bird photography.
I also pay lot of attention to photos posted in this forum, for many reasons. I wish many more people started new threads to post many more of their photos.
One of the things on my to-do list, is to go down to the ocean before sunrise, and get sunrise photos like what I love to do in India. I need to make that happen fairly soon.
One last question:
Am I correct that the reason you select “spot metering” I because you’re finding the brightest part of the scene to meter for around +1 to +2s stops? Do you always do this, or only for special photos. Oh, and you might add one more to the list, setting your camera to (M)anual mode.
Not that it matters, because I know you do it right, but I’ve been suggesting to people for ages to not press the shutter release. Most of them push the camera down, when doing so. I suggest they lay their shutter release finger over the shutter release, resting their finger on the convenient cylinder that surrounds the shutter button, and instead of “pressing down”, just increase pressure on the shutter release. Camera is much more likely to stay still.
Durn, there are so many people selling “soft release buttons”, which make it impossible to do this correctly. The fellow who seems to be the godfather of the Leica Forum, @jaapv, wrote a long article about this that I read decades ago. I doubt most people know about this.
If I owned one today, I’d likely be searching for a digital back.
More realistically, if I owned one today, it would be all set up like that, to permanently reside on one of my shelves.
It’s like my memories of old motorcycles and cars.
Way back when, it was “just a camera”.
Maybe I’ll find one in India, that nobody wants anymore.
And you would be disappointed. To get the same resolution as my D850, you would be looking at a sensor that measures about 27,500px x 22,000px, or 605Mpx. Even scanning a 5" x 4" sheet of film results in a 110Mpx image, which is roughly equivalent to Fuji’s MF cameras.
Only $500? That is just a cheap monorail. You would have to part with the better part of $4,000 to get your hands on an Ebony like mine. Then you’ll have to consider a few lenses.
