Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Editorial
“Image Quality”. It’s a term that is used all the time, yet the definition of it can be somewhat nebulous. Whether you’re talking about a camera’s sensor, or evaluating a specific photograph, the term “image quality” often can mean a wide range of things, and different people use the term in different ways.
So what is “image quality?” What does it actually mean? How do you define it?
Being a creative person can sometimes be draining on your mental health. I had a pretty crap December, spending most of it at home recovering from pneumonia. I missed being out taking photos, but I also realised how important health is, both physical and mental. I also realised that the two of these are not separate items, and working in the creative industry can be a strain on both. Everyone has their own pressure points, and discovering those, and learning to work around them is part of dealing with it. One of the issues that I realised gets me too worked up is when I read some stupid nonsense written about photography.
At the start of the new year, I like to outline some of my photography related goals and plans for the upcoming year. Some of these are aspirational, and some are more practical. Many won’t get accomplished, but its still a useful exercise to write things down. While some are more longer term goals, I also have a couple of more short term projects that I want to talk about too.
Wishing everyone a happy new year and a great 2019. I have been a little behind with updates for the last few months for personal reasons, but I hope to be back to full power and full steam ahead for January.
After a few months of slowly ramping up the effort I put into it, my YouTube channel seems to be starting to gain some traction, especially with my Street Photo Diary series. I’ve just published the tenth episode on YouTube, and my channel has just crossed the 3000 mark. These two albeit minor milestones have caused me to reflect and look back on how I got to this point, and where I want to go next.
When you think of photography, the idea of reverse engineering probably isn't something that immediately comes to mind. Yet the concept is actually a pretty powerful learning technique. By examining an image that inspires you and figuring out how the photographer or artist created it, you can learn a lot, perhaps even more than if you were just told the solution.
While Fujifilm has a reputation for the quality of its lenses, when it comes to its primes, they may be good, but they are expensive. At the moment, while Fuji cameras are competitive, for those on a modest budget, it’s still pretty expensive to build up a collection of lenses. In some focal lengths the cheapest options are still really expensive.
With the new mirrorless camera options from Nikon and Canon there has been a lot of discussions about the various specs and pros and cons of these new cameras. Now that the initial craziness has died down a bit we’re starting to see reactions from those actually using these cameras, and for the most part the opinion from those with real world experience seems to be mostly positive. Something struck me though when reading some of the reviews, and also readings some comments on my own content, is that people may be missing the most important thing about these releases: Its about choice.
Many (too many) years ago, at the beginning of my career in television production, I did a government-sponsored course of film and video production. It was how I got started, and I loved every minute of it. I wouldn’t be where I was today without that course, and I’ll talk about that more at some point in the future, but there was one really important lesson I learned in the first week, which has stuck with me to this day and applies across all fields.
An age-old measure of the performance of many types of recording is “signal to noise ratio”. In essence, it looks at how much noise there is compared to useful signal in any given medium, whether it’s an analogue transmission or even a digital recording. There’s one thing that I’ve noticed a lot recently, and that is when people compare cameras they often look at 1:1 crops to compare the results. In particular, they use this to compare noise performance between cameras. However, when comparing cameras of different resolutions, this may not actually give you an accurate comparison. The reason for this is that when doing this you’re only looking at one part of the equation, the noise, without considering the other part: the signal.
Despite the fact that Fuji’s X-Trans cameras have been out for several years now, and despite the fact that the issues with Lightroom are well known, there is still a surprising amount of misinformation being spread about this. What’s worse is that some of it comes from what you would think would be reliable sources. One of the most confusing issues surrounds what people call “worm artefacts”. Here is my attempt to set the record straight.
While we see a renaissance of sorts when it comes to photo editing software, in my opinion, the management side has taken a back seat. If you look at many of the recent developments across newer and updated applications, most of the development has been on the image editing side. Lightroom, for example, has seen only minor changes to the database side of the application in years. There are lots of new technologies out there that would be really useful to photographers if they were all together in one application, and yet, in my opinion, there’s nothing that does everything. At least not yet.
If there has been one company more outspoken than any other on the subject of APS-C sensors vs Full Frame it has been Fujifilm. Because of the insistence of company executives that their X-Trans technology makes their smaller sensor superior to full frame, many fans of the company’s products have been active and vocal supporters of this viewpoint. It has reignited an argument that many had previously considered settled: the merits of full frame vs cropped sensor.
In the world of digital imaging, it's often easy to get overwhelmed by the number of images we create. I personally have hundreds of thousands of pictures, and managing them can be a real chore. It’s also very easy to import a set of images, go through them once or twice, maybe share a few and then never look at them again. I know I’m guilty of this, but It’s important to occasionally revisit your older photos.
There wasn't much announced in yesterday’s WWDC keynote targeted at photographers, apart from some new search suggestions and ways to share in Photos. There was, however, a couple of features in the MacOS finder that could actually prove quite useful. Those are the new gallery view and EXIF information in the finder.
Sometimes, it’s all too easy to get a bit too caught up in getting the perfect shot, or trying to live up to some expectations that you set yourself when out shooting. I do this all the time, and sometimes, I perhaps take photography too seriously. This is fine when its work related or for a serious project, but it's also important not to lose sight of the joy of photography. Sometimes it’s good to shoot something for the fun of it, and not be too worried about the outcome.
Today, Fuji launched the newest camera in its lineup, the budget conscious X-T100. Its kind of a cross between an X-A5 an X-T20, and I have to say, I think this is a really interesting camera. It gives you a well-equipped body, with a high-quality EVF but with a Beyer sensor instead of X-Trans. This means that you don’t have to worry about any changes to your workflow to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of working with X-Trans files, but still, have all the other advantages of a Fuji camera.
I’m starting a new series here on the blog, where I discuss my sources of inspiration. These are the things, and people that have inspired me over the years, both photographically and otherwise. Today I want to discuss the work of the great Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai.
