I’ve been wallowing recently, struggling with Assignment Seven, on The Photography Insitute Freelance Photography Course, and I’d like to share what I’ve finally come up with.

Heros are those people at the cutting edge of our particular field of photography. They are the movers and shakers, the ones who excel above and beyond the better than average. Typically we might identify with only one or two. We may not always like everything that they do but we do admire something about what they produce. Heros can inspire us, they can influence what we do, and they can be a beacon showing us what is possible.

If I were to identify one photographer as a Hero, I guess, for me, it would be Dean Collins. His technical understanding of light and his easy ability to communicate his understanding to others while still maintaining a sense of humour was compelling. his Finelight Series has above all else shaped my understanding of photographic lighting.

Who would you consider to be your photographic Hero?

Mentors are those around us, who we associate with, who guide us through ongoing pursuit in photography. They help us to understand processes and prompt us to do and see and strive. They can be real life friends and/or colleagues that we respect or look up to; professional leading lights whose paths we regularly and periodically cross; our tutors and instructors from courses in photography that we might take; or, authors of books to which we regularly return.

My mentors have changed over time: this will always be the case. For me Fabian K. Beal through his book, Photography Explained, is an example of an Author/book that I can not be without. This text to me is indispensible.

Through the Photography Institute course, George Seper and Steven Vote both of whom are decent Food Photographers, are current mentors; George through his texts and Steve through his tutorship.

In Hanoi, three people come to mind that I might consider to be mentors of sorts. Tim Page, former Vietnam War Corespondent and now does much work to support the development of photojournalism in Vietnam, Ed Halpen, an American foreign corespondent and photographer  at large  and Ian Morton, a stock photographer and freelancer specialising in South East Asia.

Who would you consider to be a Mentor and why?

Muses are much harder to find. They are fleeting and their impact whilst sometimes mentally earth shattering can also be fleeting. A muse is something or someone that inspires us, causing us to act, often imediately.

They get under our skin and creat an irrisistable itch tha needs to be scratched. A powerful and pationate infatuation that must be explored regardles of the cost or time. Muses occupy our waking thoughts and our dreams at night. Once in their grip we are held captive until whatever desire to act, to create to emulate has been satisfied. And after, the moment passes with no more recollection than that of a dream.

It has taken me quite some time to unravel this. I am periodically gripped by such photographic muses. But also by other muses that result in photographic documentation. My food blog, The Baitlayer – A Circus Cook’s Diary, contains many references to things done with food that I just had to do, and photograph.

Food is an ongoing thing that I return to. I look at it from many perspectives, documentation, product, illustration, advertising illustration, art; the approach to it can be as varied as any other sort of photography. It is a love and hate relationship. It inspires me and then leave me spent, exhausted, forlorn. It’s almost like being on a bi-polar rollercoaster.

It’s funny now, that I make the connection that two of my mentors are well versed in Food Photography. At the start of my course, I really didn’t make the conscious connection, a “yeah, that’s interesting” and then file it away in the back of the brain somewhere to be promptly forgotten. I tend to do a lot of that. But are my mentors sources of Inspiration? Weeeell, no… Not really. Their photos really cause me to look, to ponder, consider, “Who did they do that?” and so forth, but their images don’t get under my skin.

Allow me to give some examples. A while back I came across a reference to a new IKEA food book, shot by Carl Kleiner and Styled by his wife Evelina. No sooner had I seen the images I needed to do something. So, I baked. And I shot the product, deconstructed as a pattern of ingredients.

More recently, while wrestling with and trying to findan inspiring Food Photographer, I came across Patrice de Villiers  and amazing as her shots were, the photographer who work had me turning in my early morning sleep was Caren Alpert  with a shot of a pod of Star Anise. I had to shoot this, had to do something. In doing so I reconected with a well and truly forgotten technique I’d happend across, (that’s interesting, file in the back of the brain) called focus stacking. Doh! I haven’t finished doing the shot, but believe me it’s burning away in my imagination like a hot, little ember. Now that’s what I call Inspiration!

Which photographers insire you and what have you done as a result of that inspiration?

A last thought. Most of the time the works that inspire us are the works of friends, colleagues, associates, etc. I have a list of Favoite images on Flickr  which are, “Ohhh! Ahhh! Wow!” shots that for wahtever reason at the time caught my imagination.  As a process of this reflection above, I’ve identified many photographers that I admire and find interesting, but there is also a background against which all of this plays itself out. This is best exemplified by the fantastic source of archival images, Masters of Photography  to which I periodically return to browse and explore. Highly recommended. Also, thanks recently to Jenn Oliver of Jenn Cuisine for a great list of sites and resources for inspiring Food Photography.

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

They spent time to make us comfortable, and to show us aroundd this former, grand capital of an empire. My birthday lunch was in a restaurant that traced it’s continuous operation back to 1447, and we were also blessed to be able to watch a Greek Orthodox Ceremony – The Blessing the Waters on the Danube Channel. Lastly, we had a lovely afternoon tea with our friend’s mother, in a wonderful appartment overlooking the Karlskirche Square.

This is the first time anyone from my family has been back in this city, for three generations.  it is hard not to walk around wide eyed, naieve and blind to the daily operations of this city. I enjoyed my visit, but it has given me pause to think… and distractedly think… for Vieneese people can be described as friendly, aloof, or downright rude. One wonders the reason for such rudness. But then you look around at the remnants of a former glorious capital of a recently downsized empire made redundant by external factors maybe there is reason for it.

By recent, I mean within the last one hundred years. And by examining this it is not hard to see where this apparent rudeness might come from. Once these people were the Princes of the Universe, when the banner or the Austro-Hungarian Empire owned the air that coursed through the lungs of Europe, and Vienna, a capital populated by people, with a born to rule mentality. There are still some alive who can recount the days of former Empire, and a vast generation of those brought up in the shadow and dust of it’s calamtous overthrow. The rudeness does not come from arogance som much but from a deep, internalised bitterness over the sudden change of fortune of a noble ruling class and their underlying societal strata that bouyed them up, a strat in which everone knew their position, and status was respected.

Now, no longer the home of the ruling elite, or the city at the heart of the sun, the people of Vienna have fallen from grace and are no more special now, than anyone else in the world,  the person on the street just another individual. Yet that unfocussed, personally internalised and unacknowledged bitterness remains, even to be commented on by the Vieneese themselves, sometimes when a waiter of a well established venue my rudely rebuke a customer for not knowing the local practice or custom. Uppety waiters that smack the hand that feeds them, information desk clerks that snap answers that are more comfusing thatn the situation that caused the asking, their time is passing, and they feel it, and thus the bitternes grows.

Vienna is a town of stunning architecture, grand boulevards, long history and long established businesses, of people who are friendly, generous, helpful, and bafflingly rude. But then, so too is Hanoi.

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight

Blurry…

BLURY?!?

It’s not blurry, it’s soft!

It’s a pinhole image!

You should have seen some of my earlier work! Blurry…    

But like with all criticism, it behooves one to go back and take a look with fresh eyes, after all the image, to be fair, was hand held, for an exposure time of 0.7 seconds.

Canon EOS 7D, 0.2/40mm f/200 BCPH, 0.7 sec, ISO 12800. (35mm eqv. approx. 50mm)

On review there’s no noticeable motion blur, so… blurry?

Pinhole Softness

This begs the question. After all one person’s softness is another’s bleary eyed vision the day after the night before. So, in Pinhole Photography, what is considered an acceptable level of softness in an image?

We’ve been here before, right?

From all the guff that is out an about on the web, there are as may opinions on this as there are people taking pinhole photos. However universally, the larger the format, the sharper the image, but for each format, and at each focal length there appears to be, in general, an optimal sized hole. Or to put it another way, for each hole diameter, there’s an optimal focal length – distance between the sensor, or film, and the pinhole.

Now, the hole used for the above shot was a hand drilled, 0.2mm hole. The optimal focal length for said hole is 22.5 mm. Body cap mounted on my Canon EOS 7D the focal length (hole to sensor distance) is around 40 mm +/- a poofteenth.  So this hole is mounted 17.5 mm too far away from it’s optimal (sharpest) mounting point. Perhaps, that’s why this image may be considered a little soft.

So, I went ahead and drilled another hole. as far as I can tell, it is a 0.3 mm hole. It’s optimal focal length is 50.6 mm away from the sensor, but it is mounted 40 mm away from the sensor. That is 10.6 mm closer to the sensor that it should be. So the images should be a little sharper, yes?

Let’s see.

Canon EOS 7D, 35mm f/2.0, f/16, 0.5 sec, ISO 100. (35mm eqv. approx. 56mm)

This first image was shot using a lens to give us a benchmark for sharpness.

Canon EOS 7D, 0.2/40mm f/200 BCPH, 121 sec, ISO 100. (35mm eqv. approx. 55mm)

This next shot is with the same pinhole as the one used for the street scene above.

Canon EOS 7D, 0.3/40mm f/133 BCPH, 30 sec, ISO 100. (35mm eqv. approx. 55mm)

Can you see a difference? I’ll be buggered if I can. But looking at the piano name, perhaps… ?? I dunno.

However, not one to rest on my laurels, I still have one trick up my sleeve. These pinholes are mounted at 40 mm from the sensor inside a bodycap. This is achieved by using a plastic 35mm film canister cap. Removing this cap allows me to place the pinhole against the inside of the body cap. Giving an effective pinhole to sensor distance of around 48 mm! Which is 2.6 mm short of the optimal focal length. Well, that should be sharper than the others, right?

Let’s see…

Canon EOS 7D, 0.3/48mm f/160 BCPH, 30.0 sec, ISO 100. (35mm eqv. approx. 70mm)

I’m still not so sure… But, that Ladies and Gentlemen, is about as sharp as I can get it – short of gluing it to the front of the body cap…. hold that thought…

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

Addendum.

Did you hold that thought? An extra, approx. 2 mm increase in focal length, that’s 50 mm!  Which is 0.6 mm too short, and 0.001 mm in diameter too small – do you wanna hand drill that correction?

Canon EOS 7D, 0.3/50mm f/167 BCPH, 4 1/2 min, ISO 100. (35mm eqv. approx. 85mm)

…and on that note I’m not doing one jot more. The hole is good, the distance is almost optimal, dust can’t get in and I’m comfortable with the degree of softness that this produces, which is reminiscent of a soft focus filter.

Sunny 16 Exposure for ISO100 is 1.09 sec. When taking an exposure reading, I have to increase the exposure time by around 6 & 1/3 stops.

Alternatively, with lens on, I could up the ISO to 400, take a hand/palm exposure reading at f16, dial it in to Manual and lock in the reading, then Exposure Compensate by around +3 EV, and swap in the pinhole, before taking the shot.

For the grainy look at ISO6400 this translates into a very, very hand holdable, 1/60 sec +1/3EV exposure on a bright sunny day. Daido Moriyama anyone?

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight

The main problem I have with my current pinhole is softness, so soft that, well… it’s just blurry images. Nice in a dreamy like way but, I desire better. Going back to the drawing board, and using Mr Pinhole’s Pinhole Camera Design Calculator, and carefully going over the specs for my camera I’ve come up with what should be the standard specs for a Canon EOS APS-C camera bodycap mounted pinhole.

Now, the distance from sensor to lens mount on the Canon EOS 7D is 44 mm. This means that the pinhole needs to be almost flush with the lens mount. That is, the pinhole needs to be mounted inside the bodycap on a 3mm shelf, to meet the above specs. That’s pretty difficult and fiddly.

Using what I have available, bodycap and black film canister cap, the actual focal length comes in at around 40mm (+/- a poofteenth). Re-jiging the calculator values renders the following data:

Thus, with the equipment available, the following data and specifications should create a pinhole that has the equivalent coverage of a ‘Normal‘ Lens for APS-C format.

Consider, all Canon’s dSLR’s have a sensor to lens mount distance of 44mm. It follows then that using a black, plastic, 35mm film canister cap (stopper type) as the pinhole mount inside a standard EF/EF-S-mount bodycap, reduces the focal length to 40mm.

So, on Canon EOS dSLR, 1.6x crop sensor cameras, the above data produces a 48mm ‘Normal‘ Lens equivalent pinhole; on Canon EOS dSLR 1.3x crop sensor cameras, the above data produces a 39mm ‘borderline wide angle‘ Lens equivalent pinhole; and, on Canon EOS dSLR full frame sensor cameras, the above data renders a 30mm ‘wide angle‘ Lens equivalent pinhole.

So much for the data. I’ve been back and forth and over and over this. This should produce ‘sharp‘ images. Should…

The problem with sharpness is myriad-fold. First, the optimal focal length, by calculation, is 40.1mm – 1/10th of a millimeter leeway. That’s almost the thickness of a pinhole shim! And the glue, etc. Next, as this is lensless photography, diffraction, and time of day, will effect how different wavelengths of light achieve focus on the sensor. On top of this, hand made pinholes rarely achieve 3 decimal accuracy, especially at less than 1mm dia. e.g. 0.26mm => 38mm focal length; 0.27mm => 41mm focal length; 0.2666mm = 40mm focal length – the tolerances here are very fine indeed!

It follows than that, there will be a certain level of ‘softness‘ in the image. The question then becomes an artistic one, rather than an academic one, How much softness is acceptable; and, when does softness become, just a blurry image?

Looking at how the figure work out, it’s probably best to make as small a hole as possible and then to progressively enlarge it and test against a standard target until you reach something that works for you, or err on the large size and target a nominal 0.27mm dia. pinhole.

Time to start remaking that pinhole for my camera. The previous one was 43mm, no wonder the images I create with it are so dreamily soft.

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

Addendum [2011.12.1]

Just spent the morning making pinholes.The first one turned out to be just about on the money, 0.3mm BUT I didn’t have the right measurement settings in Photoshop so I continued to drill out the hole and stuffed it up. Six tries later I finally drilled a 0.2+ mm pinhole. and It’s shooting really nicely.

Closeup of Christmas Decorations. Camera to Subject, 40cm. Foreground to Background distance 80cm. 0.2/40mm f/200 BCPH. Canon EOS 7D. Exposure 241sec approx. 4 min. Post processed in Lightroom 3. Overcast + Rain.

As a final note, I’ve been thinking about how to define, in simple terms, a pinhole as used either on a bodycap, or on a camera. Standard lens nomenclature, specifies the lens focal length & widest aperture. This doesn’t quite work for pinholes. Plus if a pinhole is placed on a camera at non-optimal focal length for hole diameter, then additional confusion arises. I think, that the most appropriate way to address this is to use the following nomenclature:

pinhole diameter/image plane to hole distance Apparent F-Stop Pinhole PH, or bodycap pinhole BCPH, etc.

e.g the above pinhole that I’ve just built would be referenced as a, 0.2/40mm f/200 BCPH

Addendum [2011.12.5]

It’s always a marvel to me that when you seem to have gotten things sorted out, and figure that you’ve got all the bits defined, something new turns up. Well here it is. There is an easier way to do all this and almost anyone, handy, should be able to make a very good bodycap pinhole for the Canon EOS camera.

First let’s look at the camera body. From sensor to lens mount is 44mm (44.1 mm to be precise). The bodycap measures, from the edge that sits flush with the lens mount, to interior cap end, around 4mm. The lens cap plastic is approx. 2mm thick thus by using the lens cap we have available two focal lengths based on whether you put the pinhole inside the cap or outside. These are, 48.1mm and 50.1mm respectively. Now, the pinhole shim takes up a bit of space as well, and based on a soda can, which is what I used, we can more or less figure it out to be about 0.01 mm thick or a shade less. this changes our focal lengths to 48.09mm or 50.11mm.

Now, it turns out that if you drill a 0.3mm hole the optimal focal length is 50.6mm and that the optimal hole diameter for a 50.11mm focal length is 0.298mm Even in Photoshop with a 600ppi scan, the measurement accuracy is only down to 0.1mm. Tell me, can you drill to a three decimal accuracy and measure it effectively? I’ll be buggered if I can. So, 0.3mm is as good as it gets for me.

What this all means is that, if one takes a hypodermic needle, as fine as you can get, and a shim of soda can, place the shim onto a business card and carefully, carefully drill a hole, it is possible to drill a 0.3mm hole +/- a smidgeon that will be just right for a Canon EOS Camera Bodycap Pinhole experiment. The shim should then be mounted on the outside of the bodycap. One needs to make sure that any raised logos or markings are first sanded away. Of course you’ll need a suitable hole through the cap, and the it might pay to paint the inside of the shim prior to glueing it in place (don’t forget to keep the hole clear of paint) so as to minimize internal reflections. To keep the pinhole dust protected, glue a microscope slide cover slip over the outside facing part of the pinhole, otherwise your focal length will change by the thickness of the coverslip.

Based on all this, new information, the Optimal Specs become,

Ref this arrangement as: 0.3/50mm f/167 BCPH

As a result, we have taken down our Galleries and will be focusing on prepping our vast backlog of images from, Australia, Germany, Czech Republic, The UK, China, & Vietnam for access AND procurement via Global Eye Image’s Stock Photography Portal.

If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, just click on the Stock Photography Menu item to the left of your screen and you’ll be taken straight there.

Well, for today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

The next issue is that blogs in general are not always so photography friendly, however there are a few WordPress Themes around that seem to do a reasonable job. We’ve chosen to use Picture Perfect as our core design unit, as it also allows for a simple design integration of the TTG client selection galleries that we also use.

Now, one of the things that seems to be undocumented in the Picture Perfect theme is the mechanism for changing the images in the slider index on the left. Which is the purpose of this post (… so as I don’t forget sometime later and have to re-look everywhere to find it again….)

• There are eight images used in the slider menu, [jpg's with the names: 1 2 2a 3 4 5 6 7].  Why 2a? I’ve got no clue.
• The images are portrait oriented and 240 px x 300 px in size.
• They are located in the folder area, …wp-content/themes/picture-perfect/imagemenu/images and you’ll need ftp access to change them.
• The number of menu options can be changed by selecting Network Admin (if you have more than one wordpress site) – themes – picture perfect – edit and then choosing Theme Functions (functions.php). In the line, for ( $counter = $count+1; $counter <= 6; $counter += 1) { Change the <=6 value up or down as needed.
• Ensure that you have sufficient images for the number of menu items. Picture Perfect was designed for up to 7 menu items, as far as I can tell, I’m not sure how it’d handle 8 or more menu items. and whether they’d populate with local images. My guess is that they would.
• Menu titles are set by adding Pages in the Dashboard and the Menu populates by the order in which you add your menu pages.
• To link to external sites you’ll need the Link Pages To plugin, and you’ll need to leave the page content empty.
• If you create a multi-wordpress site, then the theme needs to be network activated and then activated on each wordpress site and the menu changes populated via Pages on each wordpress site, which is a bit of work. if you want a consistent look for your overall Site.
• Lastly, so that all Page titles refer back to the main page you need to go to Network Admin – Themes – Picture Perfect – Edit select Header (header.php) and edit the the first  a href tag in the body, <h1><a href=”…”> replacing the characters between the quotes with your homepage address.

And, that completes the most basic tweaks of this particular theme. It took us about a day to make the change over and to populate all the tweaks, then test, but so far it seems ok. One up and coming change to look out for in the future is the addition of a Stock Image library. More on that as developments arise.

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

In essence it’s all about exposure, and deciding the right exposure for a particular situation under the prevailing lighting conditions, be they natural, artificial or a mixture, and being able to reproduce that tonal range using whatever display medium you choose to use. It’s also about colour rendition, but more on that later, maybe.

Now, the first thing to realize is that all this has its grounding and basis in film, specifically black and white film, and in rendering good tonal range and contrast, on a piece of photographic paper. As such, as photographers got more and more into the quality control of their final dark room output, they started to focus on other elements in the workflow, such as chemical strength and age, negative density, and ensuring the best possible negative exposure so as to maximize the image information available to them when it came time to make prints.

Now I remember as a lad, in the dark room, making contact prints and test strips. The contact prints (thumbnails) allowed me to quickly choose which negative I wanted to work with. From there a test strip was made in order to determine the correct exposure of the enlarged negative on the paper being used.  This exposure ruler enabled me to look at my images and make better decisions about how best to print a particular negative.

Photographers like Fred Archer and Ansel Adams took this exposure rule and then applied it to image capture thus developing what is now referred to as the Zone System, (and it seems that the rest of us photographers have been held to ransom over Grey Cards because of it, ever since).

With this methodology and approach to image capture, a scene was evaluated for the range of tones evident. Then the photographer would make a value judgement based on which part of the scene should be put in which zone, what information was important, and what information could be discarded, as not all that information could be captured by the negative, and even more importantly, even less of that information could be presented in the final print.

In order to make exposure easier for photographers, so that they didn’t have to DIY Grey Cards, Adams started advocating Kodak’s 18% Grey Card, as it was the closest match to Middle Grey in Adam’s & Archer’s Zone System. Now this advocacy was so that a photographer could measure the exposure for an average tone, and then look at the scene and adjust camera exposure accordingly. It wasn’t the be all and end of the process, but simply a tool to establish a starting point.

I never actually got that far into it all, to visualize a scene beforehand as to how it might look in print, and to use a standard reference card for measuring exposure, so I never made connection between a zone ruler to my darkroom development exposure ruler. However, in this digital age, I have been forced to re-confront this age old photographic bastion and come to my own terms with it, which I’m finding reasonably comfortable.

The guiding principle rule here with digital photography and using a grey card, I guess, is wysiwyg, and anything that helps to minimize capture errors prior to post-production is worth consideration. But let’s just do a step back for a moment by asking a few questions.

• How with the final image be presented to the audience? (Screen, Print, Projection?)
• What is the dynamic range or latitude of that display media?
• Are the output colours in the same colour space and gamut as your post-production tools? (Computer Display, Operating System, Graphics management, Software?)
• Has your post-production system been calibrated?
• What colour management does your digital camera use?
• Have you calibrated your camera with the rest of your image development and processing system?
• What is the dynamic range or latitude of your camera’s sensor? (Does this change depending on the lenses you use?)

An understanding of how your system works, how it captures colour & contrast and subsequently treats them and represents them in final presentation is crucial to visualizing how the scene you stand before will appear ‘On Display,’ so to speak.

From there, controlling White Balance at time of capture, influences colour rendition. Determining mid-tone exposure dictates the tonal range that is recorded. Playing with these two factors at various times of day will change the vibrancy, saturation and tonal contrast in your images.

Anyone who has taken a photo on a dull day and got grey, washed out, muted colours will know the disappointment that such images bring, and that because, they’ve made basic exposure compensation errors by not choosing where they want the details to appear on a “Zone Ruler” range. In end effect, all this, “Grey News,” is about, “Think first, Shoot later.”

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

Addendum [2011.12.08]

Do you love it or hate it when watching or reading something long after reviewing a topic, “the penny drops” and you get that “ah ha!’ moment? Well today I was watching a series of vids from learnmyshot.com on youtube and during the White Balance vid it hit me smack in the face. just a simple image of a custom WB done with a white card. Why did it look grey? Then Dean Collins joined the chorus of voices in the back of my head.

Of course! “The exposure meter of the camera tries to make everything 18% grey,” so white turns grey, and black also turns grey… How many times have you gone over that statement and said, yeah I get that… but in truth don’t? This is the reason why making a custom WB setting with either a white card or an 18% Grey Card works the same. Plus, these better render colour temperature than using a black card, as the black card tends to absorb everything. “Ah Ha!, I get it!”

What is 18% Grey? Middle Grey? A Grey Card? What’s ANSI Standards got to do with it? And, do I need to buy a Grey Card? Is there another way? Can I make my own?

According some luminaries on the topic, the Kodak Grey Card 18%-R27 (new: Grey Card Plus) was designed to have a neutral colour cast and render an 18% light reflectance measurement when measured with a reflectance light meter.

The trouble with modern digital cameras, apparently, is that they measure 12% Grey, a supposedly ANSI Standard for Meter Calibration. Which begs the question, What do our light meters, meter? (An excellent read and counterpoint to the 12% Grey Argument.)

Now, conventional wisdom dictates that it costs less in the long run to buy a reference card like Kodak’s Grey Card because this allows for standardization across the board, one standard, one expectation, no confusion. Yet, confusion reigns supreme! On top of this, in some parts of this world, there is no easy access to such nice, simple things like 18% Grey Cards (or color charts, or printer/monitor/camera/workflow calibration devices, etc…)

Do you NEED to buy one? No. But you might like to look at the Wiley range of Digital Field Guides for your camera – far more useful, and it may come with a free Grey/Color Checker card inside, mine did.

Can you DIY a Grey Card? Well, Yes and No. Welcome to the equally murky world of Workflow Calibration. By this I mean, calibrating your camera, your monitor, your printer, your printer inks and your printing paper. If you can get this consistent across the board so that the colour you see and photograph is the same colour your view when looking at the final print, then printing a Grey Card (or color checker) should not be a problem.

But just for the exercise, what is 18% Grey? Now there is a lot of discussion and debate as to what is the true RGB values for Neutral Grey or 18% grey, just have a read of some of the above linked articles. You could pick one of these numbers if you like. However, if I were to go about Printing an 18% Grey Card, I’d start with matt photo card and a colour swatch that was filled with Pantone Grey82. According to December.com’s Color Codes this would correspond to CMYK (0,0,0,18) or RGB(209,209,209) which is RGB%(82,82,82). Now this last figure is the one of interest, for me at least.

When I took a photo with a Grey Card in the image, and later did an automatic WB correction and auto exposre correction, I ended up with approx. RGB%(64,64,64) which from the same color chart, listed above, would be 36% grey. To bring this closer to 18% Grey I needed to increase the image exposure in Post by +0.82EV. (I mostly use Adobe Lightroom 3 for post-processing).

Now, all that’s quite nice and academic, but what about printing it. Well like I said before, I’d start with RGB(209,209,209) and print that onto matt photopaper, making sure I had fresh, fully charged ink cartridges and that the printer had had a cleaning cycle run through it first. Why such a high, bright, light, grey? Pick a colour space and gamut, then work from there, and see what works, for you. This is what corresponds to 18% black ink. It’s also the perceptual grey that was closest to the grey card I got in my Digital Field Guide book.

Continuing on, I’d redo the swatch with the nearest Hex Safe Grey, which is #CCCCCC which corresponds to 20% Grey, print that and then run some Zone Ruler Trials on them (see an earlier post) to see what colour casts might show up. If one of these cards work out fairly clean, then I’d get on with learning how using this “Exposure Guide” influences my photography, and the results my camera and work flow produces.

The Grey Card issue is quite a murky world but in the end, you will need to evaluate, just how useful a Grey Card would be for your style of shooting.

Further reading:

• Musings on Grey Cards
• What does your meter, meter?
• The zone system scales explained
• On camera spot/partial metering
• Expose (to the) Right
• Why does Kodak say to compensate their greycard?!
• Re: Help with white balance, please
• Neutral Grey
• Lightness
• Meters don’t see 18% grey
• Why Grey 18% is call Neutral Grey? Why not 50%, 40%
• Digital Materials and Processes - another excellent source of information on photography.

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.

• Evaluative Metering
• Partial Metering
• Spot Metering, and
• Center-weighted Average Metering.

Of these, Center-weighted Average Metering most resembles how my old, Ashai-Pentax SP500 used to actually work, which I always thought and used as if it had Spot Metering. But, I didn’t always rely on just the camera’s meter, my step-father bequeathed me his hand held, Hanimex-Sekonic analogue Light Meter (with low light adapter plate) which allowed me to start to control exposure somewhat more, although it was best used for portraits.

More recently, not sure if it was functioning properly or if it’s recommendations would match those of my dSLR, I bought a new, Sekonic L-308S Flashmate, so that I could test my studio strobes when setting up a shoot in my studio. Here they are, side by side, so to speak:

The great thing about the Zone ruler Exercise, was that I was able to check exposure using all the various meter methods, and guess what, in the controlled conditions of the test, they all came up trumps, all returning the same recommendation. Not bad, not bad at al. I can be reasonably confident, that in spite of it’s age, the analogue light meter is going to give trustworthy recommendations, and due to its small size, this makes it an excellent pocket meter testing or evaluation ambient lighting conditions.

For today, that’s what’s in my

Line of Sight.