Gained in Translation – Award Gained and Hall of Fame

Not being a native English speaker, I make my share of errors in using that language. Only recently did I learn, for instance, that my expression ‘photo club’ is not the common one—it should have been ‘camera club’. To soem extent, that would have been the better translation too! For the Photo club I belong to, often is much more of a Camera club: the guys keep talking about new cameras, selling their old gear and buying new, etc. Much less talk is about making photos. Until recently! Last club evening was surprising in that we talked about taking pictures and about how to get the best prints from them. So for the first time it really was a ‘Photo club’ rather than a ‘Camera club’—something was gained in my wrong translation!

And it seems that this attention to photos instead of cameras and other gear paid off! Because even more recently, even more was gained. For the third year in a row our camera club (let’s use the official term) took part in the regional competition for best photos and best club. The first year, 2006, I was on my own as the others who had agreed to send in some photos withdrew at the last moment. Last year, in 2007, we still had one drop-out and instead of the ten pictures, we only sent in eight. Therefore we did not qualify for the club competition. But the good news was that one of the photos was selected for the exhibition of the thirty to forty best of the region; it was Eric’s English landscape with hay stacks. But this year we had a full contribution and although most of our club’s pictures were just average, according to the jury, Louis’s ‘Escalator’ gained the award for best individual picture! It got a ‘gold sticker’, meaning it was judged ‘excellent’.

In terms of competitions, that was the best performance ever of our (dare I say it?) Photo club. The only thing that came close was my gaining a ‘silver sticker’ in a national competition with a colour slide of a landscape in Zion National Park, Utah, USA. That was back in 1992 or 1993, when we all were so much younger. And when digital photography was still much beyond our horizon. And I’m still not happy with the scan I once made of it—nothing beats the translucent quality of good old colour slides!

So here’s our Photo[!] Club’s ‘Hall of Fame’! Funny that in both pictures, patterned lines play a major role.

Raindrops on a window--a window of opportunity

Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami published a book with major publisher Gallimard, called Pluie et vent (Rain and wind), filled with photos of one night's rainstorm. The little note about the book in Air France's inflight magazine (Nov. '08) went accompanied by a photo much like one I saw from Mr. E. in my photoclub, of raindrops on a window pane--his was nicer because he had mini-mirrors of the brick pattern of a wall a few metres behind the wet window. And just for fun, I add some drops from this afternoon's rainshower on my home window...

It's just that we amateurs don't think of turning such pictures into a book. Is seeing such a commercial window of opportunity the difference between amateurs and (successful) artists? (Damien Hirst was mentioned on the same page of the inflight magazine--talking of commercial windows of opportunity...)

Pictures at conferences

Tomorrow I'll be a speaker in a conference, so it will not be my task to take pictures. But if it is your task or wish to do so, clicking here will lead you to some good tips--and nice examples as well of lively portraits and overviews.

Flooding around Hanoi

Heavy rains led to floodings in Northern Vietnam and Southern China, maybe you heard it in the news. In the Hanoi area, around 50-60 people lost their lives. When I landed at the Hanoi airport, just after the weekend, the rain had stopped (more or less), but along the road between the airport and the city, flooding was only too visible: rice fields were drowned, people were fishing where they ought to be tending the rice.

This is cause for documentary photography! The facts must be made known, esthetics should be second-place considerations.

Still, esthetic questions do turn up: the facts should be put into pictures that are remembered as pictures. One of mine is a clear failure--it is so bad I hardly dare show it, but since it is the only one of the occasion, still I leave the picture here where behind the motorbike two men are lowering a net into the water (the last photo in this entry).
Documentary photography is often black-and-white. Black-and-wite is associated with misery, apparently. I tried, quickly, to see if the following pictures were better in black-and-white, but to my mind the (subdued) colours do not detract from the message.
Since these were all made from the car driving by, I did not hesitate to use cropping to these pictures, and I even burned the sky in the first picture shown, one with the two guys wading through the water to their chest (great tool in Lightroom, this graduated filter!). It may be getting to the limit of keeping truth in documentary photography...



I'm glad I saw nothing worse than this. Wouldn't make a good journalist, would I?

Noise reduced: firmware update Sony A700

Good to have a photoclub, for I had not been paying attention to the Sony website lately: a new version of the firmware for the A700 was published already in September! Version 4 is meant to tackle my main issue with the A700: noise in high sensitivity settings. Or more completely (from Sony Europe):

* The choice to select auto exposure bracketing (single & continuous) with 3 shots in 2 EV steps has been added. [That is nice for HDR pictures! I'd like to start that discipline once.]
* The choice to turn [Off] the High ISO NR feature has been added. [Great! I want to be in control.]
* Improvement of the image quality in high ISO setting. [This is the main improvement for me]
* Improvement of the auto white balance and D-Range Optimizer performance. [One of my reasons for always shooting RAW is that the auto-white was not always to be trusted. I'll keep shooting RAW, though. I don't use the D-range optimiser; also a matter of wanting to control things myself.]
* Improvement of reliability for communication between camera body and vertical grip. [Don't have that thing.]

Of course I immediately made a quick try of higher ISO settings. My impression is that ISO 1600 is as good now as ISO 800 was: quite usable. There is a visible reduction in quality from ISO 1600 to 3200. See first set of compared photos. This (out-of-focus) detail from the top-left corner of a picture shows this effect.

The settings of the noise reduction do make a difference. My impression is that setting the noise reduction to 'high' is a big improvement for larger areas, but may make edges and shadows a bit too 'rough'. Look at the left side of the picture frame in the comparison of two photos below.


Thanks to Dieter for telling me about the firmware update!