It’s been a few years since my last airshow visit. This year I was lucky enough to go with my father, brother, and Isabelle. The biggest worry I had was the temperature, being in the middle of a big heat wave and all. Luckily we came prepared with two camping umbrellas, chairs, and several soft-sided coolers packed with ice-cold beverages. Still, it was uncomfortably hot in the sun on the brown grass and tolerable with the shade. Thanks to the preparation, nobody got sunburned but the dust mixed with sunscreen made for a sticky day.

Knowing that I would probably regret packing my heavy gear, I gave the big lenses a pass and chose the 70-300VR to go with the D3x to try to get as much reach as possible and mainly sat and enjoyed the show without being “on”! The 70-300VR still amazes me with its great bang for the buck. Sharp, quality images are definitely achievable.

Tips I’d like to pass on:

• Try to shoot with a shutter speed that permits propellers to be blurred otherwise the aircraft look funny with stationary propellers. This is probably around 1/640s or slower. This does then introduce the possiblity of getting an unsharp image due to aircraft motion or camera shake (remember I could be shooting at a 450mm equivalent or greater hand-held). So take a burst of several shots just to increase the chance of getting a sharp picture in the bunch. The VR probably helps a little here as well.
• Be careful of dust on the sensor. Because I ran with a comparatively slow shutter speed (see above), the apertures ran around f/11 or smaller even at ISO 100, so I ended up with lots of dust particles on my images. Nothing a little healing brush couldn’t take care of, but what a pain nonetheless. I hardly ever shoot stopped down that much on a regular basis unless I have to so dust isn’t a big worry of mine normally. Dust is pretty inevitable when changing lenses in that sort of environment even when taking precautions.
• Depending on the autofocus sensor layout, autofocus can be a pain because more often than not, the sensor gets placed on a plain blue patch of sky and you lose the focus. It could be worthwhile just focusing once at the lens hyperfocal distance and leaving it, and allowing the depth of field to cover it. I used the AF-On button to control the focus along with moving the AF point around with the thumb controller so it wasn’t too bad.
• Black lens barrels get very hot in the sun, especially metal ones!

Backgrounder

I recently had a chance to compare some prints made on the new "dry printing" technology from the photo labs at London Drugs.  I had a print previously done by them on the traditional photographic chemical "wet" process (often referred as silver halide technology) and was able to informally compare with a new print done on their latest dry technology of the same digital file.  London Drugs' photofinishing equipment supplier is Noritsu, who have provided both the wet and dry technology printers.  London Drugs recently received some publicity from Noritsu on the launch of their new printers.

In this blog post, I’ll outline my initial thoughts and impressions on the two technologies and do a bit of an informal shootout in a few categories.

Technical

Going beyond the marketing speak, Noritsu's "dry print" process incorporates at its heart Epson's four-colour inkjet technology, an excellent basis to start from.  I figure the term "inkjet" evokes the wrong image in the minds of consumers, specifically low-cost home printers, which are notorious for costing less than the cost of ink to refill them, and this association seems to compel marketers to substitute terms like "dry printing", or in fine art printing circles, the term "giclée".  This association is unfortunate, since there is a large gap between cheap consumer inkjet and high-end inkjet, as much as there is in between car makes and models.  Inkjet done properly can be very good indeed.

Inkjet technology, traditionally a higher-cost medium, is approaching a price point where prints from specialized high volume printers can start competing with the traditional silver halide minilab machines.  The environmental benefits of dry printing are also obvious -- the wet process requires lots of chemical mixing and the printers discharge effluent that has to be treated, while the dry machines do not.  Colour inconsistency caused by variations in chemical strength is substantially less of a problem on inkjet, also helping to reduce overall waste from having to redo unsatisfactory prints.

The Prints

While scanned images of the prints don’t really convey what they’re like in person, I'll show them here for completeness.  The inkjet print of Amy to the left is more faithful in colour to the original digital image although the real differences in colour aren’t as dramatic as it is here; I blame the scanner’s automatic exposure and colour settings in this case making the scan of the wet print a bit warmer in colour.  My descriptions are based on looking at the actual 4”x6” prints side-by-side, not at the scanned images, so you’re better off taking my word for it!

Initial Impressions

The dry print gives an extremely good first impression.  When viewing the dry print after the wet print, there is an impression of greater clarity in the dry print that is instantly noticeable -- the difference between is like viewing a scene with and without a glass window in the way.  The dry print paper also has a different surface texture and visual quality.  Depending on the lighting, the dry prints have less glare to them, adding to the extra impression of clarity.

Colour

Blacks are deep, dark, and black, without becoming the muddy brownish-bluish colour it is on wet prints.  Shadow details close to black are also rendered very well, keeping their details well.  This is probably the greatest difference I see between the two.  Amy’s dress is black, and details in the dark fabric definitely show better on the dry print than the wet.

The gamut (the range of colours that can be reproduced) of inkjet technology is wider than silver halide prints, so saturated colours like deep reds and purples that traditionally lost small nuances of details in a wash of similar colour are very well reproduced on the dry print.  Flower photographers should rejoice!

Compared to the original digital image on a colour-calibrated monitor, the dry print also matches the colours very well, so the overall ability to get a good colour match against what you see (presuming a colour-managed workflow) is good, thanks to the wide gamut and accuracy.

All in all, the colour on the dry print pops.  So much so that people might be a little surprised at first, sort of like when CD’s first came out and people were a little unused to the accuracy, clarity, and dynamic range of the sound.

Feel

Like most inkjet prints, fresh-off-the-printer dry prints have a slight vinegary smell that dissipates in a few days.  Fresh-off-the-printer wet prints have a similar sort of chemical smell, though less acidic, and also dissipate.

The wet print has a thicker, smoother coat on top of it that is shinier and reflects more glare back, while the dry print is a little grabbier in texture (it can squeak more if you run your finger over it) and better anti-glare properties.

The paper stock used for the dry print is not quite as thick as the Fuji Crystal Archive paper used for the wet print.  However, I've recently heard that the thick Fuji paper may no longer be available and that some thicker inkjet paper may be coming on the market.  So I think this concern may ultimately be resolved.

I did an informal scratch test on the paper surfaces using my fingernail.  I initially expected the grabbier dry print surface to perhaps be a little less resistant to scratching than the slicker wet print, but I was able to scratch both with about the same ease.  In fact, I think the wet print suffered more ultimate harm than the dry print as once you scrape to the paper below, the surface coating is easier to scrape off (just like if you are scraping paint, once you get through between the surface and the paint, the paint comes off easier).  It was a bit harder to do the same on the dry print.

Image details

Inkjet printers do not print continuous tone images -- they are made up of microscopic dots of ink dye of one of each of the four ink colours.  The dots are more noticeable in large areas of lighter colour, where fewer ink dots are required and they stand out more in contrast with the white paper, and I find that it imparts a slightly grainier feel to the image in these areas.  Grain isn’t always bad thing as it can impart an illusion of high detail or texture even though they aren’t present in the first place.  Normal viewing of my prints shows good crisp, sharp details on both, and the only area where I saw any appreciable difference between the two was on an area of the image with fine hair (fine hair is always a good torture test for resolution and sharpness).

Below are the small crops (inkjet left, silver halide right) of that area.  As a reference, this is a magnification of an area of about 1/2” wide on the print.  There is difference in extremely fine details, such as in the fine strands of hair and eyelashes that is only just visible when viewing the print at normal distances.  I found this somewhat unusual since both prints seemed quite equal in sharpness except in this area.  I feel that these differences could be in part due to differences in the resampling of the original image to the specific printer resolution and sharpening algorithms applied to the dry and wet prints.  You can also start to see the individual ink dots, or at least the grain effect, as well.

Banding

Extremely small banding artifacts are sometimes visible at very close inspection.  Banding is the appearance of faint horizontal lines caused by microscopic variations in the feeding of the paper through the printing mechanism (the print head traverses back and forth on one axis as it lays down the ink dots and the paper has to be fed through extremely precisely on the other axis).  Any subtle variation in the paper alignment or feed rate may show as a line in the print where a slightly wider gap or overlap with the previous print head pass occurs.  A similar problem with lines running through the print can also occur on inkjet printers if a print nozzle is clogged, but it is very obvious when this happens.  If you stare at the following image (about 1” wide on the real print) long enough, you might see a subtle, horizontal line about halfway down (right below her fingernail) that runs across the entire width of the image.

Again, in most normal print viewing distances this is usually not visible, but continuous areas of the same colour could make it easier to spot banding if it does occur.  I presume that proper maintenance and calibration of these machines will be extremely important to retain good performance.  Similar problems can happen with wet printing technology as well -- dust or other grit can also get embedded into the soft parts of rollers or squeegees and cause scratches to occur on the print surface.  These problem prints are normally spotted by the operator and never get into the hands of customers.

Getting the best quality

Out of camera JPEGs should look really good on the new dry technology.  London Drugs' philosophy of having the lab technicians colour correct and inspect each image does help to deliver overall pleasing images; their overall "look" favours punchy, contrasty, saturated, customer-friendly images. 

Having viewed and printed thousands of images myself, my personal feeling is that all images do need some level of adjustments for best results, and while automatic correction technology has come a long way, there's still no substitute for the human eye to spot and correct colour variations.

So while most people are best off allowing the lab operator to colour correct images, there is always the option to request images, especially those with a deliberate colour treatment, be printed directly without corrections.  It goes without saying that if one is to use this option and perform the image corrections manually, then it should be done with a properly colour managed and calibrated system.  For example, laptop displays typically tend to be on the bluish side in order to provide an impression of brightness, and these tend to skew colour.  The best colourspace to set your files to for printing to get a good match, as with most photofinishers, is sRGB.

Though problems have been a rare occurrence in my own experience, London Drugs has always been very accommodating of reprinting items to my satisfaction.

Conclusions

The jump in quality of pictures on dry compared to wet technology is quite obvious and has to be seen to be experienced.  The ease of obtaining image quality previously only available through much costlier home inkjet printing is a great thing, and is as easy as submitting images to one’s local London Drugs.

While I have written about downsides such as the lack of continuous tone, detail loss, and potential for banding, in actual practice and normal viewing distances, they are hardly noticeable by most people (if they are present at all), so the edge goes to the dry technology for its superior colour fidelity.

For professionals, the ability to get high quality prints at competitive pricing may make the need to maintain ones’ own inkjet printer (and the associated cost of ink, paper, and wasted paper) a lot less compelling.  Personally, I’ve chosen not to have my own printer for that very reason.  I hope to test the London Drugs offerings in the future to see how their enlargement sizes compare to both high-end inkjets and traditional wet process.

Having had the (messy) experience of darkroom work, I do lament somewhat the passing of photographic paper, which, as I discovered in my analysis, still puts up an impressive fight against the newcomer.  But there's no denying the stronger and more accurate colours that the new dry printing technology brings, nor is there denying or slowing down the inevitable march towards the new technology just as there was with digital imaging.  Also the “green” aspect of dry printing is something that we can all enjoy.

* Full Disclaimer:  London Drugs is a client of mine.  This evaluation was conducted purely on my own time and without any prior knowledge or pre-arrangement on their part.  I use London Drugs for my personal and professional printing needs and recommend my professional clients do the same.

I was asked to shoot a photo at the Richmond Go Kart Track for their Silver City cinema campaign.  The campaign included various posters and a slide on the rotating advertising slideshow on the big screen prior to the movie previews. 

The track is a great family outing: the karts are easy to drive, and while one can pretty much drive flat-out through the whole track without braking, it’s a more relaxing setup than going to one of the other local tracks where you’ll spin out into the weeds or barriers if your driving skills aren’t up to snuff.

They were in a bit of a rush to get the images under a deadline, and there was very little time to set up as I could only disrupt the track operations for only so long.  To top it off, it was an extremely overcast day that later turned to rain, not exactly ideal situations for a spring/summer campaign -– grey, shadowless, flat light -- ugh.

So in order to simulate sun and bring out at least a little punch, texture, and modeling on the cars and people, I set up a single Hensel Porty light out on the track, triggered it with Pocket Wizards, and set to overpower the sun slightly.  I arranged the cars and selected a focal length and shooting distance to get the right compression effects on the cars.  A few dozen shots on the D3x and the 70-200VRII later, we were done and the track was back in operation (and I was dodging karts while hefting my gear back to safety).

A shot of the setup courtesy of Isabelle, who was shadowing me:

Here’s the finished movie version, courtesy of Talia Cohen, the designer:

And the poster:

I think they look great!

I've had the fortune to have these two lenses to shoot with for a while now.  I own the Nikon (Nikkor to be exact) and the Sigma was a nice loaner from Gentec International, the importer for Sigma in Canada.  I figured I might write down a few thoughts.

Introduction

The "normal" 50mm lens is typically one of the cheapest lenses, included with many a film SLR.  On full-frame, it is a normal lens, offering a perspective that is fairly close to what the human eye sees, whereas on a cropped sensor camera, it offers a medium telephoto view, quite suitable for portraiture.  That being said, I rarely use one!  Why?  Simply because I prefer to use either the wider Nikkor 28/1.4, the longer 85/1.4, or for weddings I'll use a zoom for flexibility.  I have recently become reacquainted with the 50mm range with these two lenses and it's been a nice change of pace.

Build Quality

The Sigma certainly makes an impression with its size and heft.  It is a hefty beast -- you get the feeling that the Nikon could easily slip inside it.  It's a bit hard to believe that these are both 50/1.4 lenses -- in fact, the Nikon 85/1.4 is just about the same size as the Sigma.  It's obvious that Sigma threw their technological know-how at this lens.  It has a huge 77mm filter diameter, a huge front element, and is packed with aspherical elements, none of which are to be found on the Nikon.  The balance is pretty good, and it has a decent, solid feel.  The surface finish is a slightly rubbery, textured finish that seems to be flocked on, but I'm left wondering how durable it is.  I've always found Sigma's cosmetic details just not up to the same quality, and this has probably nothing to do with the internal quality, but just purely the little details that are different.

Nikon's offering matches their cameras, as would be expected, with the same textured plastic housing as its consumer-grade lenses.  Its build quality is different from the Sigma -- not necessarily better or worse, just different as it almost feels like a different target market.  It has a rear rubber gasket to help seal off the gap between the lens and lens mount, has a useful lens indexing dot on the housing to help align the lens properly when mounting it.

Performance

Both lenses are awfully close in performance in many, many respects.  I don't test lenses methodically with resolution charts, rather with real-world subjects, so I can only give you a qualitative feel for them, but my findings appear to echo the general sentiment on the Internet.  So here goes:  Both are sharp wide-open in the centre, but the Sigma may have a tiniest of an edge.  The Nikon appears to better the Sigma in the corners.  Wide open, both lenses do have a slight veiled softness to them, as would be expected.  By about f/2 or f/2.2, both lenses have cleared up, with Nikon probably still a bit ahead in the corners.  Above about f/5.6, they're really tough to tell apart.  They're as sharp as can be, even on the D3x I was testing with.

One thing that struck me right away was that the Sigma isn't a 50mm lens.  Or the Nikon isn't.  The Sigma is maybe around a 45mm lens in relation to the Nikon.  The difference is definitely noticeable when comparing both lenses side by side from the same shooting spot.  This may be focus breathing (i.e. the focal length changing a little depending on focus distance), but my shots were taken over a distance so that shouldn't be a factor.  My particular sample might suffer from a tiny bit of a centering issue, with sharpness not quite the same from edge to edge, but you would have to be pixel peeping the D3x image to see this.

Fall-off (vignetting) is noticeable on both, but the Sigma is definitely better than the Nikon.  The Nikon takes until about f/2.8 to be mostly visibly clear of the darker corners while the Sigma is similar by f/2.  The Sigma's ability to evenly light the frame is impressive, no doubt due to the oversized front element.

Bokeh appears better on the Sigma as well, wide open anyway.  The Nikon isn't too bad, and it's certainly better than the AF 50/1.8, which I think is one of the uglier lenses in this department, at least in my lens collection.  However, the Sigma is definitely smoother and somehow able to generate larger blur circles than the Nikon.

The Sigma is a faster focuser than the Nikon, but louder.  The Nikon is extremely silent.  I may have noticed perhaps a little bit more AF hunting on the Sigma, but it might just have been me.

Bottom Line

Not too surprisingly, the lenses are quite similar.  Sigma has taken a bit of a brute force approach with the lens, probably with a mission to make it the best 50mm SLR lens for full- and crop-frame cameras.  The lens gives sharp, smooth images, focuses very quickly, and feels good in hand.  It feels more biased towards someone that has some very specific needs for shooting wide-open or close to wide-open and retaining very good bokeh and optical performance as well, especially corner fall-off.  You can definitely shoot some nice portraiture on this lens.   The downside is that it is a fairly chunky lens, something that one might think twice about putting in the bag.

Nikon, on the other hand, has opted to keep the spirit of the 50mm lens and kept it pretty compact and light, yet endowing it with excellent performance.  It gives a different combination of characteristics, favouring corner performance and small size and while giving up a little on bokeh, fall-off, and autofocus speed.  It's perhaps a bit more of an all-rounder, jack-of-all-trades lens.  And it's cheaper than the Sigma by over $100 CDN.

Which one to choose?  I think it's pretty clear you'll get stellar images from either and they'll be pretty tough to tell apart if you stop down a few to f/5.6 or better.  If you're shooting wide open to gain a specific look, like great bokeh, or really crave the best low-light performance, the Sigma does everything a pro or discerning consumer would want from a 50.  If that isn’t quite your cake and you simply want something to put in your bag for the rare occasions when you encounter low light, or you want amazing quality across the frame, then the lighter, cheaper Nikkor would be the way to go.

Friday night, New York City.  The body is aching, the stomach is still full, the brain is shot.  Welcome to the final day of the 5-day workshop by Jay Maisel.  I have mixed feelings:  I'm tired, mentally overloaded, and homesick, yet feeling sad that this all-too-brief little world of 8 people is coming to a close.  We've come from all over the world to learn: Sydney, London, Vancouver, L.A., San Francisco, Boston, and Connecticut.  We come from different walks of life: a doctor, a couple of pro photographers, me, a mining engineer, a barrister, a retired librarian, and a salesforce efficiency analyst.  A fun point: all the men shoot Nikon, all the women Canon.

We've been eating well and varied, too, part of the reason for being here -- good food and drink, great company, and total photographic immersion.  Japanese, Italian, Greek, American, Jewish Deli, and Vietnamese to name a few.  "Good Food Poisoning", Joe McNally, one of the attendees, called it.  I feel I need to cleanse my system with some bread and water.

Why am I here?  Perhaps as a cleansing journey as well.  Many workshops show you how to do things, like work with lights, or to work with hard light, or how to pose people.  Few tackle the really hard question of what makes a good photo, or break things down into sterile rules.  I've been trying to figure that out recently, spending bits of time in topics related to human perception and gestalt, trying to get photos that can make people react.  Jay's workshop was very timely.

Jay's retired from commercial photography and is focusing his time on his personal projects and street photography now.  I have never been much for street photography, yet his workshop is all about street photography for the shooting exercises, so here is an opportunity to jump into the deep end.  So much of what I've seen is boring, voyeuristic captures with super long lenses of inane, uninteresting moments.  A quick grab of someone walking and talking on their phone just doesn't do it for me.  I'm dreading this, but I am approaching this with as open a mind as I can.  Empty vessel, empty vessel, I repeat to myself.  Jay sends us out into NYC alone, each person going his or her own way to find worthy photographic opportunities and to work them.

The light is tough.  Greyish overcast hangs over Manhattan for much of the time, only lifting one morning to provide glorious contrasty backlight.  When the skies finally open up with rain I'm happy as well with the new opportunities -- it seems that there are way more umbrellas here per capita, compared to Vancouver.  But as I know from weddings, it's about doing the best you can with what's available, and the overcast gives a soft light quality for portraits.  It's easy to get fooled by great light and forget about the point of the picture, just like glorious sunsets are easy to photograph, but so many of them are empty and pointless.  I do things I didn't consider before, like stalking worthy subjects up and down the block, waiting for them to be framed perfectly, or to do something interesting.  Or stake out a good spot for 15 minutes for an actor to walk onto my stage.  It's a blast!

Back at Jay's bank-residence-studio, we go into the boardroom for daily critiques and presentations.  Juan Jose quips upon our first invitation, "someone is going to be fired."  Nervous laughter.  It isn't that bad.  If there's a nervous feeling about the quality of any picture, it's probably warranted, and normally results in a bad critique.  I learn to be objective about my work, taking all emotion out of them, and I get better.  Who cares how much effort it was to take a shot if it's bad?  Even so, I feel a bit nervous even with stuff I like, and handing in the USB stick of images each day brings back memories of handing in a test in university.  Though tough on his critique, you know he just wants to make you a better photographer: "It's the sin, not the sinner", "If you're not your own severest critic, you're your own worst enemy".  These and many other Jay-isms will stay with me, as will the anecdotes from a life of photography.  Straight and to the point "Boring", "Doesn't work for me", "What's all this shit in the corners?  You're responsible for every square millimeter of your frame!"  Yet one can't help but love the guy who guides and nags us along our journey using colourful aphorisms and streams of f-bombs. 

As the days go on, it becomes easier, I become bolder about getting the shot, which includes a lot of waiting, running after the prey, and putting up with the dirty looks that people give when they see you.  My critiques get better too, thankfully.  I realize that street photography is very similar to wedding photography, namely opening myself up to the multitude of photo-worthy places and moments around me, anticipating them, setting up the camera, composing the frame, focusing, and capturing the moment.  I'm learning to let go, to truly have fun, and to take the chance to either succeed gloriously or fail gloriously.  Each day the pictures get better and the honest critique is such a refreshing change from the inane "that's pretty good", "nice" platitudes that are so often uttered in hopes of not quashing feelings regardless of the quality of pictures.

Jay brings a fresh, child-like enthusiasm for life, not just photography, and realizing this is where the workshop goes past how to take better pictures to touch on how to live a richer, happier life.  As we go through his work and ours, we start gaining a sense of what makes a photo interesting.  Jay distills it down to three things: light, colour, and gesture.  While light and colour are pretty self-explanatory, gesture is really what gives the image its finishing touch, its soul, its sense of movement.  As we start to incorporate one or more of all these elements in our photos, they get better and better.  Looking back just to the start of the workshop shows definitive improvement for everbody.  Photos we were proud of on Monday now seem mundane and embarrassing.  Our baseline for what constitutes a good photo are forever changed. 

Surprise guest speakers drop by Jay's workshop; apparently nobody has refused him.  This time around, we had Barbara Bordnick, Duane Michals, and Walter Iooss.  I hadn't previously had the pleasure of seeing Barbara's work in various fashion magazines, but she has some of the best flower pictures I've ever seen; Duane is a hilarious, stream-of-consciousness speaker; and Walter is a celebrated SI sports and swimsuit photographer credited with bringing Fuji film to the US among other things.  All have had successful commercial careers, but they are also just as interesting for their personal work that they shared with us.

This post would be incomplete without mentioning Jamie, Jay's assistant, who made everything painless, had everthing organized, from the posters we all got to take home, to hand-stamping our name cards.  How he does all he does yet keep calm is a mystery to me.  Both Jay and Jamie make everything easy, pleasurable, and fun.  The overall experience is amazing, from the food, to the ever-changing artwork for us to admire, to the gifts like camera straps (an Upstrap, no less), memory cards from Sandisk, posters, T-shirts, and books.

A trip to the upper floors of the bank reveal room after room of stuff.  One floor looks like his overflow storage area.  Rooms are stuffed old tools, coral, seashells, gears, ball bearings, marbles, and other bric-a-brac held onto simply because they are interesting.  Interspersed with these are some artistic works-in-progress: a tray containing electric toothbrushes topped with rubber eyeballs anyone?  If it weren't so darned organized, somehow cohesive, and uncluttered, it might be a trip into a rogue hoarder's home.  Rooms on other floors are set up like galleries, with Jay's work adorning the walls.  The visual senses are stimulated past overload.

Tonight, instead of going out, we had a wonderful dinner upstairs in Jay's residence on the 6th floor.  His wife Linda is a great cook and host and we're all welcomed like old friends.  We chill out and also get to meet Joe and Jamie's wonderful wives Annie and Jenny.  We also have a chance to go up onto the 7th floor roof and shoot the NY skyline with Joe's 600/4 lens.

All too soon it is over and we're back downstairs packing up and saying our final farewells.  I'm sure as I reflect over the next few days on this workshop it will very likely join my list of pivotal, once-in-a-lifetime experiences.  It is a substantial investment in time, no doubt, but one I'm happy to say is supremely worth it.  To the other attendees: you guys rock, thank you for being a wonderful part of it.