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California's Gold Country
19 April 2010, Monday

16    17    18    19    20    21  April 2010           Tech Story

We awoke in Downieville on the river, as does everyone in Downieville.

A walk across the bridge gets us back into town. Here's what's under the bridge.

River, Downieville, California.

River, Downieville, California.

As I recall, I metered off the center right to ensure that the bright water stayed bright.

Now I realize that what caught my eye is the activity at the confluence of two rivers. I should have cropped the image to show just the upper left, and cut off the junk on the right. Let's see:

Commotion, Downieville, California.

Commotion, Downieville, California.

Ahh, much better. All I did was crop a small section from my film scan a week later, giving me a square image with the same angle-of-view as if I had used a huge 500mm lens on a Hasselblad. This is a huge advantage of film: I have so much resolution, I don't need to carry anything longer than a tiny 90mm lens that weighs less than 8 ounces (223g).

The choice of 1/60 shutter speed gave me just the right amount of water motion.

Both made on the same frame of Fuji Velvia 50 with a B+W MRC 39mm 81A filter on a LEICA MACRO-ELMAR-M 90mm f/4 with a LEICA M6 TTL, f/9.5 at 1/60, NCPS process and scan.

 

Bridge, Downieville, California.

Bridge, Downieville, California.

This shot is all about catching your eye with the big red splat on the left, and then taking it across the bridge to the right. This shot has nothing to do with bridges; the red bridgework was just a way to get these patterns on film.

I flipped the film. As shot, the big red splat was on the right, which is not where we start reading a page or an image.

I used my depth-of-field scales to calculate the appropriate aperture to keep everything at optimum sharpness. I used the scales on the lens, and then my secret formula to arrive at the optimum aperture. If I had used a zoom or most modern AF lenses, they don't have depth-of-field scales, so we'd have no way to calculate the optimum aperture. I'm astounded at how critical features, like depth-of-field scales, get removed over time in the name of keeping costs down, while junk features creep in to increase sales instead, and no one except me complains.

Fuji Velvia 50 through a Hoya Series VII 81A filter on a LEICA SUMMILUX 35mm f/1.4 on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/13.5 for depth-of-field at 1/15 hand-held, NCPS process and scan.

 

Red Star, Bridge, Downieville, California.

Red Star, Bridge, Downieville, California.

This is also a big red splat, with drips splattering out and down. There isn't much to keep your eye in the image, but it does catch your attention.

The image is only three colors: red, blue, and more important than blue, the black under the red. To our subconscious minds interpreting the image, the black shapes are bigger, stronger and more important than the smaller blue spaces.

There was a bit of a tree in the rightmost blue space, so I painted it out. I used Photoshop's eyedropper (I) to sample (11 x 11 pixels) the blue from elsewhere, and painted (B, brush) and paint-bucketed (G) over the distraction.

Fuji Velvia 50 through a B+W MRC 39mm 81A filter on a LEICA SUMMICRON-M 50mm f/2 on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/9.5 at 1/60, NCPS process and scan.

 

Fence, Downieville, California.

Fence, Downieville, California.

Just another shot of red over green. The color red comes forward over green, and the red is in-focus while the background is not. This makes the image three-dimensional. It's a backwards F. In retrospect, it would play better with the film flipped, and I should have shot at a larger aperture to lose more of the background.

 

Fence, Downieville, California.

Same Fence, Downieville, California.

Now that I flipped it, I also cropped-off the house from the one side, and stamped-in (S in Photoshop) some green brush over background areas that were a lighter tan.

These are the changes, often along with dodging and burning, which improve images in Photoshop. All the other 32-bit plug-in HDR baloney is meaningless if you can't get the basics down first.

Fuji Velvia 50 through a B+W MRC 39mm 81A filter on a LEICA SUMMICRON-M 50mm f/2 at f/4 on a LEICA M6 TTL, NCPS process and scan.

If I had shot with an SLR, like a $20 Nikon EM and 50mm f/1.8 Nikon Series E, I would have gotten a better picture because I would have been looking through the lens and seen what was happening behind the fence, instead of using a borrowed LEICA which sells new for about $6,600, because the LEICA only sees through a separate viewfinder, so it can't preview depth-of-field, and it can't even see composition because it's looking through a different window than the lens itself!

 

Window, Downieville, California.

Window, Downieville, California.

I saw this on the wall as we went back to the Downieville River Inn and Resort for breakfast.

I had to climb up a bit and wiggle around until I got it reasonably square in my viewfinder.

Snapped on Fuji Velvia 50 through a B+W MRC 39mm 81A filter on a LEICA SUMMICRON-M 50mm f/2 on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/3.1 at 1/60 at 1.25 meters, NCPS process and scan. I forget if I did anything special with the exposure, or just ran with the meter reading.

After a delicious home-cooked breakfast, we headed east on Route 49, passing again through Sierra City.

We made a stop to collect my hat, which I had left there last night, and grabbed this snap of the general store across the street.

 

General Store, Sierra City, California.

General Store, Sierra City, California.

Since I was too lazy to shoot the picture squarely, let's square it up using Photoshop's Lens Distortion Tool, with the Rotation, Vertical and Horizontal sliders. I'll also use the healing (J) tool to spot-out the power feeds.

I set 1.93º rotation, and +17 on the horizontal slider in Lens Correction:

General Store, Sierra City, California.

General Store, Sierra City, California.

Now it's got the horizontal lines straight, but I lose the square corners.

If I crop to a rectangle:

General Store, Sierra City, California.

General Store, Sierra City, California.

And if I crop off the sides so the size grows when limited to 768 pixels wide:

General Store, Sierra City, California.

General Store, Sierra City, California.

The vertical slider in the same filter could have made the vertical lines parallel, but also would have made the image much more boring.

Likewise, this bigger image is fine and dandy, but I still prefer the first, uncorrected image. Why? It's all about the sky: I love the sweeping effect given to the clouds, which winds up getting cropped after all the other "corrective" transforms.

Ultimately, you cant' shoot it again and you can't fix it on a computer. I needed to take a step to the left before I pressed the shutter.

The moral of this story? It also would have been faster to FART and take a step to the left than doing these transforms in Photoshop, much less wasting your good time trying to learn how to do them. Photoshop is for the gang that can't shoot straight, not for shooters. I'd much rather have taken a good FART first than try to simulate it in Photoshop.

Also, if I had taken one step forward into traffic, I could have made the bottom push-out, and thus cropped-off the distracting election signs on each side, in-camera.

Shot on Fuji Velvia 50 through a Hoya HMC 55mm 81A filter on a LEICA ELMARIT-M 21mm f/2.8 ASPH on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/11 at 1/60, NCPS process and scan.

We kept heading east on Route 49, hung a left to go north on Route 89, another left to go north where Route 70 joined Route 89 through Quincy, about where we saw a nice open field and a couple of junk trucks.

 

F, Maybe near Quincy, California.

F, Maybe near Quincy, California.

This is 1/4 of a Ford. I stuck the F on the left to balance with the green on the right.

I snapped this with on Fuji Velvia 50 with a B+W MRC 39mm 81A filter on a LEICA MACRO-ELMAR-M 90mm f/4 with a LEICA M6 TTL, f/6.7 at 1/125 at 0.78 meters, the close-focus limit of this lens. NCPS process and scan as usual. Heck, I dropped all this film off at the same time, so what do you expect?

We continued north, hung a right near Paxton to stay on Route 89, and headed into Taylorsville to see the Indian Valley Museum.

This is the cemetery next to the museum.

No Fun at the Cemetery, Taylorsville, California, 2PM.

No Fun at the Cemetery, Taylorsville, California, 2PM.

Snapped with my Canon S90.

We continued to Greenville for lunch at 3PM at the pizza place. As our delicious pizzas cooked, we wandered about the town.

 

Greenville, California, 3PM.

Greenville, California, 3PM.

As I'm sure you're starting to see, this is a big, light cyan triangle set against blue. The three windows add some rhythm, and the tree on the left balances things. I could have cropped-off the white window on the right, but it plays against the white cloud, and three of something is usually more vibrant and balanced than the two similar black windows.

I added +2/3 or +1/2 of a stop when I metered the light wall to keep it light.

I snapped this with on Fuji Velvia 50 with a B+W MRC 39mm 81A filter on a LEICA MACRO-ELMAR-M 90mm f/4 with a LEICA M6 TTL, f/9.5 at 1/250, NCPS process and scan.

After lunch, we headed back to Taylorsville.

 

Simon, Taylorsville, California, 4:24PM.

Simon, Taylorsville, California, 4:24PM.

Simon is out standing in his field, with the shirt he got at St. Charles in Downieville Sunday night.

I popped up the flash on my Canon S90 to add light to Simon, who was in shadow. The S90 was at the long end of its zoom range, auto A3 WB and VIVID settings as usual. The S90 obliged with its smart Auto ISO and picked ISO 125 to keep the shutter at 1/500 at f/4.9 to eliminate blur. That's the beauty of the S90: it did all this by itself; all I had to do was turn on the flash, the rest was already set or was set by itself as I lined up my shot.

 

Taylorsville, California, 5PM.

Taylorsville, California, 5PM.

This shot was hard to see. I had to close one eye, since with both eyes open I saw great things with the fence in 3-D, which won't capture on flat film.

Luckily the light obliged, and the clouds piled up in white at the barn to draw your eyes into the center. Obviously the fences draw your eyes in as well.

If I was a master, there would be some reward or punchline for your eyes after they followed the lines, but tough, not today. I was very careful not to cut the fence poles, and in fact, I cropped-in from the let and right to get them close to, but not cut by, the left and right frame edges.

Shot on Fuji Velvia 50 through a Hoya HMC 55mm 81A filter on a LEICA ELMARIT-M 21mm f/2.8 ASPH on a LEICA M6 TTL. NCPS process and scan.

 

Taylorsville, California, 5PM.

Taylorsville, California, 5PM.

This is about color: the warm in front, and the blue and green in back. The light obliged, and I employed the ultrawide lens' natural central emphasis (corner light falloff) to emphasize the top center, and deemphasize the corners.

Shot on Fuji Velvia 50 through a Hoya HMC 55mm 81A filter on a LEICA ELMARIT-M 21mm f/2.8 ASPH on a LEICA M6 TTL. NCPS process and scan.

After Taylorsville, we headed towards the secret town of Pulga (Spanish for flea), and then into the party town of Chico.

As everyone checked into their rooms at The Vagabond Inn and relaxed, I went for a walk not more than 500 feet from our rooms and made some shots. I keep telling everyone that I get my best shots of the day at dusk, which is when most people have packed it in and are making themselves Martinis.

Thunderbird, Chico, California.

Thunderbird, Chico, California.

I made this shot about 10 minutes too late. Tough, that's when we arrived. If we had gotten to Chico 10 minutes earlier, the sky would have been blue behind the sign, instead of boring black.

I shot this on Fuji Velvia 50 with a LEICA SUMMILUX-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/1.4 at 1/15 hand-held. NCPS process and scan. I used no filter, since I wanted as much light as I could grab.

 

Golden Waffle, Chico, California.

Golden Waffle, Chico, California.

It's easy to get wild colors by looking at signs and neon at night. I had lost my sky light, but so what; I used what I had. Artificial light always takes on colors on film. This scene looked ho-hum to my eye, and I know that fluorescent light goes vivid green on film.

I used no filter, since I wanted as much light as I could grab. I stopped down to f/2, and as expected, the foreground is soft due to the limited depth-of-field.

I played in curves in Photoshop to lighten my scan a bit. I also straightened it in Photoshop's Lens Correction Tool, since my hand-holding wasn't quite level. I didn't have any extra image area to want to crop to restore this image to a proper rectangle after the filter's transform, so I used the Paint Bucket (G) tool to fill the edges with black, so the resulting rectangular image drops onto this black page, albeit with apparently trapezoidal edges.

I shot this on Fuji Velvia 50 with a LEICA SUMMILUX-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/2 at 1/8 hand-held. NCPS process and scan.

 

Golden Waffle, Chico, California.

Golden Waffle, Chico, California.

I knew the artificial light would beget weird colors.

I held the camera to the window for the long exposure.

I shot this on Fuji Velvia 50 with a LEICA SUMMILUX-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH on a LEICA M6 TTL, f/3.4 at 1 second, hand-held. NCPS process and scan.

I played a little with levels and curves to get the look I wanted. The slide looks great projected, but it sometimes takes some tweaking to make it look good on your monitor, which can't possibly reproduce the vibrancy of the actual slide, which has a 10,000:1 (4.0 D-log-10) contrast range.

I cheated: I flipped the film so the image reads from left to right. I got a side benefit: since the lettering on the window is painted so that it's visible from the outside of the diner (duh), it's backwards as seen from the inside. By flipping the film, it reads correctly!

Here's how it looked before I flipped it:

Golden Waffle, Chico

As dealt, it's much more confusing, because it expects your eyes to read it backwards, from right to left.

If I was really paying attention, I would have cropped-off the piece of window that says 2PM. It's not adding anything, and by removing it, the productive elements of the image become bigger:

Golden Waffle, Chico, California.

Golden Waffle, Chico, California.

I removed the meaningless "2PM" from the left, and removed the bottom of the frame, which was just a big, empty table. I painted-in the distracting light at the top left, and darkened that corner to keep your eyes out of it.

I also darkened the distracting table in the foreground, and painted out the distracting reflection of the light.

I want your eyes to go into the the image at the big dot on the left, read Golden Waffle, and follow the lines to the right. If I left the bright distractions in the table or at the top left corner, your eyes would have gone to the wrong place.

This final shot is a long cry from what I had when I was there, and all this comes from deliberate screwing with the viewers' eyes, and not from anything that I couldn't have done in Photoshop 3 from 1992, or in a chemical darkroom and on the prints with Marshall's oils.

I made these shots in a few minutes. Dave only gave the group 15 minutes to unpack, then it was off to dinner at Madison Bear Garden.

Madison Bear Garden, Chico, California.

Madison Bear Garden, Chico, California.

Snapped with my Canon S90. Auto ISO pulled ISO 800, then 1/20 at f/2. The S90 shines in no light because of its fast f/2 lens. I spun the front ring to give me +2/3 exposure compensation up 1-1/3 stops from my own default of -2/3. Of course my S90 was set to VIVID as usual, and thus this is what came out of the camera with no fiddling.

 

Ceiling, Madison Bear Garden, Chico, California.

Ceiling, Madison Bear Garden, Chico, California.

I like this one. It's all about orange, and the big wheel on the top right.

It's like the clichée of Fallen Roof ruin in Cedar Mesa, Utah, but better, because a zillion photosnappers haven't already made the same photo 3,398 times before.

For this shot, my Canon S90 pulled ISO 1,000 in auto, and 1/20 at f/2. I spun the front ring to give me no exposure compensation, since I leave my S90 at -2/3 for my own default.

 

NEXT DAY > >

 

16    17    18    19    20    21  April 2010           Tech Story

 

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