The naked photographer

I'm just back from a couple of business trips. For the first time in many months I didn't have a camera with me, not even my pocket camera. And it felt odd. For sure there were limited opportunities for photography but I could have made time. Mainly it was just strange not even having the option.

More on natural colour

"This theory of what constitutes fine colour is one of the peculiar traits of the old-time painters, and of the landscape critic who studies nature in the National Gallery...Above all things it must not be natural, or it ceases to be fine and sinks to the level of the commonplace...if one suggests that it has no resemblance to what it claims to represent, they reply, 'Ah, but it is a glorious frame, full of colour!' But colour in painting can only be really fine so far as it is true to nature...Beauty in colour, as in form, depends on its fitness and truth."

T. F. Goodall
quoted by P. H. Emerson in
Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art. 1889

Emerson continues

The vulgar view of fine colour is easily explained on evolutionary grounds, it is but a harking back to the instincts of the frugivorous apes - our ancestors.

Not the weather for printing

Tree of the field, Swaledale, June 2009

Now that all the book making is over, I've been turning my attention to running some prints and tweaking some of my favourites for paper output. This is an activity nicely timed to coincide with a spell of hot, humid weather. This is not conducive to print making. The humidity seems to cause the printed surface to absorb moisture, causing wrinkling of the paper and that is also leading to some long drying times, despite the heat. How do people in warm climes cope with this stuff?

On the positive side, I'm really happy with the output from my recent work. There are a few tricky images with subtle tones and colours that are taking some effort but most are coming straight out very nicely. My whole process is now driven from Lightroom using the custom profiles I built for my printer/paper combos.

Beauty in chaos

Leaves gathered, Hudswell Wood, Yorkshire, June 2009

Nature presents us not with the random but the chaotic. Structured form from complex interactions. Drawing out that structure in a way that the brain can fathom is the mark of great nature photography.

SoFoBoMo 09: my books, wrap-up

End of the beach, Mundesley, Norfolk, June 2009

I've got there, it's over. Here's a summary of what I did, why I did it and what I learnt along the way (with all the self-promoting links, natch).

Part 1: On England's Pleasant Pastures Seen

Norfolk, May 2009

The first two books have titles inspired by Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient times" (better known as the hymn Jerusalem), which is evocative of all that is English. This one covers the rural county of Norfolk.

It was designed from the outset as a print book (available from Blurb with a free print offer!) with the unusual aspect of a bottom-edge binding. This is a layout I've been meaning to try for a while. The online pdf version attempts to recreate some of the experience of that format.

All of the photos wee taken using a rangefinder (Zeiss Ikon) on colour negative film (quelle horreur).

Part 2: Upon England's Mountains Green

Blencathra, Cumbria, may 2009

Following on from the rural landscape of Norfolk, this is about the hills of Cumbria. From the outset it was designed as an online book but in a format that could readily be converted to print. I was experimenting with mixing colour and black and white, multi-image pages, background colour and captioning. Variable quality of images but turned out rather better than I had imagined.

All the colour work was with a Panasonic LX3 camera, all the black and white with a 4x5" field camera on Ilford FP4+ roll film.

Part 3: Under English Skies

Swaledale, June 2009

A purely online effort, using images from a photography workshop in Swaledale, Yorkshire. Title comes from my observation that England seems to have very particular skies, which suits the very particular landscape photographed. Some pretty good photos. Book was designed from the outset as a purely online book, taking advantage of variable page sizes etc afforded by a purely electronic format.
However, I think I'll extend this idea into a longer series of my best landscape work from the UK and turn it into a printed version.

Part 4: Seafront

Fishing on the beach, Mundesley, Norfolk, June 2009

Another effort from Norfolk, this time based around the seafront of the village of Mundesley. Again designed as an online "book" but in a very different format, further exploring the unique capabilities offered by electronic presentation. Of course, it could be printed (large) but that isn't really the point.

Both books 3 & 4 were shot entirely with my Canon 40D.

There we have it - four very different books, four different cameras, two different types of film.

Why so much? Partly my travel schedule - 5 trips during the SoFoBoMo period (not all planned at the start) meant I couldn't really focus on a single topic. So I used that to my advantage to explore different ways of doing books and shooting projects.

I've learnt a few things:
Electronic presentation of photo work has its own characteristics. It is possible to produce entirely satisfying work solely for that medium, if one is prepared to think in a different manner to traditional print layout.
Editing is a tricky business - choosing work that fits together is not the same as picking a bunch of good photographs. For this effort I went for first impressions, quick selections, cutting down the time I applied as exploring the form of presentation was more important than content.
Practice with book layout and workflows for preparing images helps. Editing aside, I can easily assemble a book in an evening (3-4h). Good preparation helps: having text written, images processed (but not sized) and a clear idea of layout & storyline are requirements to do things that quickly.
Putting together presentable work takes less effort than one might imagine. While I'm not claiming any of these as works of Fine Art, they're reasonably good and didn't take a huge amount of effort, shoehorned as that was around a busy work & travel schedule.
Shooting with film is not a good idea for large volume or time-pressured work. The camera time is about the same, and I produce less frames but the processing time is high: develop, scan, dust spot, apply corrections, dust spot, prepare for print, dust spot... I do not intend to use film for SoFoBoMo 2010.

Overall it's been fun, it's got me out when I might otherwise have stayed indoors and it's taught me a lot (again) about my photography. It pushed my meagre time-management skills (although I work well to deadlines). I continue to develop the running themes in my work and see some large chunks coming together. And it was fun.

I've now downloaded around 50 of the other books and I'll be posting some comments on them in due course.

Swaledale barn

Swaledale barn walls, June 2009

A picture, as this is a photography blog.

Li-Ion battery management

Colin Jago had a post recently in response to Panasonic's decision to restrict camera battery use to on-brand only through firmware updates. It seems all their firmware updates are getting the treatment. I realised that the opinions (mine included) seemed rather ill-informed conjecture. So off I went to investigate the whole Li-ion thing, this post is the result.

I had two mind beginning this: the cynic in me regarded the Panasonic decision as pure marketing wrapped in a dodgy safety message, the engineer in me wanted to understand the risk and whether I was actually placing myself in harm's way.

I've included some handy references at the end rather than pepper this thing with links. I read a bunch of stuff, the links provided give all the information in a handy to digest form. Of course, you will have to make up your own mind, I cannot be responsible for your actions and I'm not advising anyone to follow my lead. Caveat lector.

Side-bar: testing batteries
Scott Kirkpatrick provided this link to some testing of Olympus batteries which highlights some of the problems. What do these tests show? First that there are products out there that do not have the protections built-in that they should have. Also, that there appear to be many products using common components (partly supporting my theory of limited manufacturers).
What these tests do not show (in any way, as they didn't try) is that the OEM or high-end third party products are any better. By not dismantling the Olympus product they don't support the premise Panasonic is working under that their products are inherently better. There is also no evidence that any particular manufacturer provides a consistently reliable (or unreliable) product, these being single sample tests.

As I see it, there are 4 parts of battery care: charging, handling, storage, device design/usage

There's not a lot a user can do about the last of these, that's just the kit you use. So what about the rest?

Charging - One of the sources of risk in using Li-Ion batteries comes from the battery being over-charged. There are 2 ways this is controlled, through a charging algorithm in the charger which limits the voltage and current during the charge cycle and shuts down the charger when it's done. The second part is an over-voltage protection circuit in the battery should the charger not provide the protection or fail. Both need to fail or be absent to present a failure mechanism.
Handling - carrying, inserting etc. Most batteries have mechanical control to prevent wrong insertion (i.e. the shape of the battery and compartment must match with only one orientation allowed). In order to prevent dangerous failures of the battery out of the equipment, it should be prevented from short-circuit (which seems to present more of a risk than older types due to the internal chemistry) and protection from overheating. Again, batteries should have protection circuits for both of these problems. The US Department of Transport (DoT) rules on carrying batteries in luggage are aimed at minimising the risk of short-circuit by enforcing a carrying method that specifically stops it happening.
Storage - Similar to handling, batteries should be kept from overheating and short-circuit. There is another aspect and that is battery life. The life of Li-Ion batteries is greatly extended by storing them at less than full charge (40% seems typical advice) and at lower temperatures (e.g. refrigerated but not below 0degC).

Low-quality, no-name batteries are more likely to have poor protection circuits which means you are relying more on the charger and device to prevent problems, which increases the risk by increasing the probability of an event happening. The consequences are the same, however.

Side-bar: Panasonic and the Law of Unintended Consequences
I don't know exactly how Panasonic enforces the restriction but i presume it is some sort of electronic tag in the control circuit. Maybe they'll license it to respected manufacturers, maybe not. even if they don't, I expect a bunch of unscrupulous companies to clone their batteries. Likely the sorts of companies that don't include proper protection in their products today and spoof the exterior packaging too. If the technology isn't licensed, then the chance of poor third party products being used goes up as there aren't the reputable ones around. So the problem doesn't go away.

For Li-ion batteries they should have control circuits with over-voltage protection, over-heat protection and short-circuit protection to help minimise the risks from poor handling or usage. It does not eliminate all the risks. But then that is not unique to this particular power source (remember the old, leaky zinc-carbon batteries?).

There is an aspect that I've not talked about, and that is internal failure of the battery. The large laptop battery recall a couple of years ago highlighted this. While the chargers, devices and batteries all had the correct protection circuits all failures came from internal manufacturing defects that were not protected by the circuits. The actual number of failures was low, maybe partly determined by usage pattern as inherent risk. That's easily the biggest case of Li-ion battery dangerous failure and it had little (if anything) to do with usage.

My conclusions: It appears that Panasonic aren't guaranteeing a camera's power usage control, by implicitly requiring the protection circuits in he battery itself. They can't guarantee which charger is used, regardless of battery used, so I presume expect their batteries to provide the protection. The actual chance of failure, regardless of battery type, seems very low indeed. So the decision does not, to me, represent an appropriate response to the risk, they could just as easily have issued an indemnification as part of their warranty. Then there is Law of Unintended Consequences (see sidebar). So, to my mind, this is pure marketing wrapped in a thin safety veneer.

Risks come from: poor charging, easily controlled by using quality product. Short circuit controlled by handling regime (US DoT response is a good, risk-based approach in this regard), poor device control and there we're in the hands of the manufacturer.

My regime: I buy branded non-OEM batteries. They are cheaper but should still be good quality. I avoid the low-quality, bargain priced units. I carry and store them in a protective case and will like now store them in my refrigerator (alongside all that film).

Some links:
Good place to start is (as ever) Wikipedia.
There is a lot of information at Battery University, not just on Li-ion. Specifically they have information on Li technologies, usage and safety. There is also this nice article on Li-ion battery chargers, which explains the best how they work.

Three types of camera user

The new Olympus E-P1 is causing some buzz and there is some interesting comment over at Colin Jago's photostream. This got me thinking about who actually uses cameras and how. I have quite a lot of first-hand knowledge as I seem to be "camera guy" in my circle of friends, family and colleagues.

Type 1: the point and shooter

Easily 95% of camera users are the casual snappers - holidays, social events and the like. They want easy. they want decent pictures. Auto everything, please, and make sure the exposure is right. Most frequently asked question: how do I turn off the auto flash? (No, really.)

If Olympus thinks that the E-P1 is simplifying the DLSR in a way that will appeal to this lot, I think they're way off base.

Type 2: what do these buttons do?

I reckon this is the majority of DSLR buyers. Want some more control and better image quality (I won't say better quality pictures, hah!) but largely use auto stuff. P-mode abounds, all auto focus, auto exposure. Exposure compensation is advanced. Dabble in RAW but don't want the hassle. go on courses to learn what the buttons do (manual, what's that?). most frequently asked question: what aperture should I be using?

The E-P1 might appeal to this lot but it does have largely the same features as a DLSR and costs way more than an entry-level from the big manufacturers. I think price alone will stop this group buying it.

Type 3: I want it my way

Of camera buyers, they aren't many, but I bet they're a huge chunk of the spend. Gear mad, or very focused on particular usage. All the advanced amateurs and pros are in this group. Know how they want to the camera to work and want to be able to set it up that way. gripe about all manner of nuances in features, performance, ergonomics. Post-process everything. (I'm one of these.) Most frequently asked question: how do I set the ?

No camera will ever satisfy all of them but some will figure out how to get it to do good things. I think it is those type threes that can live with the compromises that will try the E-P1.


Notice I haven't said much about camera type. Type ones buy P&S, whichever was recommended to them, type twos tend to buy entry DSLRs and may have a cheap pocket camera, type threes probably have a bunch of cameras & lenses, small to large. they want small cameras to be as fully-featured as the top-end DSLRs. Why should the new E-P1 behave like an entry-level P&S?

And it's not just Olympus. I think all camera makers are missing some vital points. Most people want basic, simple cameras that give good results. The top end want a bunch of features that lets them shoot the way they like but wrapped in different sized packages.

SoFoBoMo 09 pt1: in print

"On England's Pleasant Pastures Seen" Blurb book cover

I got my print copy of "On England's Pleasant Pastures Seen" from Blurb this morning. Exciting stuff. This is this best quality book I've had yet from them - the print quality, colour reproduction and depth of colour are spot on. I do allow for lower quality than I can produce with a tuned print on top quality paper but this is very nice. This time I went for the standard hardback with the loose cover which seems to work well for this one. As a total package it is very satisfying.

I also like the layout that I chose - bottom edge binding so the pages flip down. Nice for perusing while sat in the arm-chair and my choice of text layout works just the way I wanted.

On England's P...

A view of the coun...

By Martin Doonan

Book Preview

So now I'm happy, it's available for all the world to purchase from Blurb. I'd really like a few folks to buy a copy, particularly so I can get feedback on the unusual layout. As an incentive, I'm going to offer any one who buys a copy a print of any one of the images in the book at no extra cost. Printed on Harman FB Gloss paper, shipped to anywhere. Just drop your email address in a comment (won't be published) to get in contact.