Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

Yesterday – Good Friday – I had the chance to go out and take another crack at spring wildflowers. I had last gone out shooting woodland wildflowers on Monday, and so just over three days had passed since I was last in the woods. It’s amazing how fast things can change in just a few short days. The blue hepatica were mostly gone, and Spring Beauty was now everywhere. On Monday I saw one or two Spring Beauty Blooms, so I must have been in the woods just before they all decided to burst out. I had taken a closer look at the Blossfeldt book, Natural Art Forms and was more interested than ever to capture the isolated blossoms, trying to highlight the detail of design and color inherent in each. So I put much more emphasis on that, than on environmental portraits. Unlike Blossfledt, I was not interested in working in a studio setting, and rather wanted to take the shots in the field, using the available light, and not destroying the subject while photographing it. Seeing the very short window of time for the blue hepatica made me feel better about last spring, where I missed them entirely. I’ve seen years where they have lingered on for a couple of weeks, but apparently with the right weather they come and go in a heartbeat. Here’s a photo of a blue hepatica, petals now fallen to the ground. Apparently, that’s what happened to all the other thousands of them in the last few days. Spring beauty is a wonderful wildflower, and truly lives up to its name in the beauty department. But, I have to say it can be a bit boring to work with. Unlike the hepatica - which offer up a myriad combination of colors, petal shapes, and even petal numbers – Spring Beauty is a pretty consistent plant. The are subtle differences in the stamens between new blooms and those that are a little older, and some variation in petal shape, but not enough to make each subject feel fresh and interesting. Fortunately for me, there were still some hepatica around. Most of them were white, but a few had a wash of blue or magenta in their petals.

But more exciting, was the emergence of other wildflowers. The warm, wet weather has helped many wildflowers move along, and the diversity of subjects between Monday and Friday has increased dramatically. Trout Lilies are now beginning to bloom, though I a remain as frustrated as ever trying to photograph them. False Rue Anemone has also made it on the scene. Again, like Spring Beauty, the variation between individuals makes this a difficult flower to work with in terms of getting a fresh perspective.

Bloodroot has also come on with a vengeance. A few days ago I saw a few emerging buds, but now the plants are in their full glory, or even a little past. I expect that they will be gone for the year by next week. And the big surprise of the day was the emergence of the first Trillium. Trillium is one of the later emerging wildflowers, and it signifies (to me) the peak of the wildflower season. Barring a spate of cold weather, the Trillium will probably peak in the next week, and after that the local woodland wildflowers will start to fade for another year. Of course, I visit a handful of locations, all very close to one another. Locations to the north generally run a few weeks later, and those by the Lake run later and slower still, since the temperatures there are cooler and slower to change.

But still, It’s amazing to see the spring wildflower season come and start to peak so quickly. Yesterday’s visit was fun and productive – though it was very warm, the high overcast clouds made of a duller, flat light, with fewer options for use of reflectors and diffusers.

 

Technical details about these photos: taken with pentax *ist-D, ISO 400, SMC A* 200 f4 macro.

T.S. Elliot may have felt that April is the cruelest month, but I have to respectfully disagree. I spent a good chunk of the day today out working the emerging woodland wildflowers in Southwest Michigan. Today, at least, April was far from cruel. The warm temperatures brought the wildflowers out to their early glory, hinting at the full splendor yet to come. Walking into the woods at early morning, a small band of white tailed deer drifted alongside me. Although they were several years away with lots of trees in between us, they seemed particularly tame for deer in an open hunting area. Maybe they’ve figures out that hunting season is months away… Aside from the Hepatica, Bloodroot and Spring beauty have made their appearance. I ultimately found myself reflecting on the similarities of shooting these little wild flowers and shooting snow crystals. In both cases, the challenge is to present an intriguing natural form, one that all too often gets overlooked.

As with snow flakes, no two wild flowers are exactly a like. And, technically, the challenge in capturing both subjects lies in the selection of the individual specimens, and the lighting of the shot. In the case of snow crystals, lighting is accomplished by manipulating the flashes and filters that go with the “studio” lighting setup – if you can call an unheated garage a studio! With wildflowers the challenge lies in lighting with reflectors and diffusers. Most of these wildflower shots are taken with direct sunlight filtered through a diffuser. A gold or white reflector is used to direct some light horizontally across the subject, in order bring out surface texture and detail. The setups sometimes require pretty elaborate contortions – holding both the reflector and diffuser in place, while focusing and firing the tripod mounted camera at the same time. Adding to the challenge is the incessant breeze, that seems to keep these little flowers perpetually in motion.

My original plan for this spring was to try to do more work showing the whole plant in its environment. A few shots turned out that way, but ultimately I found myself striving to isolate the flower, to present it as an object of design and structure. When i got home, I pulled Karl Blossfeldt's Natural Art Forms" down from the bookshelf. Working in the field is a completely different experience. His work was done entirely in the studio, and gained a lot of it's effect by portraying botanicals in a stark, plain setting. But his work also provides inspiration to explore the structures of botanical subjects, not merely as an act of documentation, but rather to record the inherent sense of design found in these subjects. I guess that’s also the underlying theme and rational for photographing snow crystals.

As always, click on an image for a link to a larger version. The work today was all digital. In my opinion, digital is unrivaled for macro shooting, so I just left the medium format gear behind and shot exclusively with the *ist-D. I brought a passel of CF cards and an X’s drive with auxiliary batteries to capture the day’s work. 

A lot of my photography is based on technical precision, sharpness, clarity, and accuracy. I haven’t talked much about that stuff on this blog (yet), but you can see examples in the site’s general Photo Gallery. It takes a lot of technical effort to successfully shoot birds, insect macros, and especially micro photos of snowflakes, and these are subjects where technical perfection goes a long way to making the shot work.  Shooting that stuff sometimes feels like wearing a suit – if you are going to do it you have to do it right, and if done right it looks good. But there’s always a feeling of constraint and limitation that goes with it. That’s why I love the Holga.

If you are not familiar with it, the Holga is a cheap (usually available for under $20) plastic camera. It uses 120 medium format film and has a single element 60mm plastic “optical lens.” The camera has one shutter setting and two aperture settings, though there is some debate over whether or not there is any real change in aperture when you switch between the two settings. The photo to the left , “Fence Row” was shot on Classic Pan 200 using a Holga, and is typical of the character that this marvelous camera delivers. Holga’s come with either a 6x6 or 6x4.5 film insert. There is a small slider on the back that can be flipped so you can see the counting marks on the back of the 120 film roll for the appropriate format. You can also stuff a roll of 35mm film into the Holga – but if you do you still have to use a 120 spool for film uptake and also have to black out the frame counter window (a little electrical tape will do the trick.) Personally, I just rip the film inserts out of my Holgas, which results in the nice vignette effect. If you do this, you need to block off two small holes located in the top of the film chamber (and usually blocked by the film insert.) Those holes will spill daylight onto your film, and while light leaks are part of the appeal of the Holga, these holes leak so much that unless they are covered, they will pretty much ruin your shots.

The one place where you do have to get a little technical (at least to use the camera in all lighting conditions) is in regards to exposure. Unless you are using flash (the Holga 120S does have a working hotshoe) controlling exposure is almost impossible – you have one shutter speed (reputed to be ~1/100th of a second) and possibly 2 apertures – f8 and 11. (I say ‘possibly’ because some folks claim that there is no real change in aperture setting when switching the aperture selector. I have two Holgas – one older, on newer, and the aperture changing mechanism is clearly different between them. So this may apply to the older cameras, not the more recent releases.) What it boils down to is this – you have to control exposure through film speed, both in the selection of the film ISO you are using and by push or pull processing. For me, the problem is almost entirely in the category of having to push film – I don’t do a lot of photography out in direct sunlight, and even on a sunny day once you get under canopy of tree leaves, even ISO 400 at f8 won’t cut it. My approach is to use films with wide exposure latitudes (traditional B&W films primarily) and then take a few light readings as I’m shooting to see how far off the exposures are. I then figure out how much to push process the roll, to get most of the images into a printable density range. For extremes in push processing, I lean toward Microdol X diluted 1:4. The fine-grain characteristics of this developer make it ideal for push processing, since it counters the graininess that often results from pushing exposure. And the chief draw back of Microdol – that it may soften the image a bit – is kind of mute when shooting with a Holga (which is inherently soft anyhow.) A few final tips on using the Holga: 1. Keep your lens cap. Not that protecting the plastic lens is a high priority, but rather, you can prevent accidental exposures by keeping it on. 2. On the flip side – be sure to remove the lens cap when shooting! 3. Always tape the camera shut or use rubber bands to hold the back on. I don’t worry about trying to block light leaks with tape, but the clips that are meant to hold the camera back in place can and do fall off unexpectedly. 4. The newer Holgas have foam rubber pads near the film rolls that act as tensioners for the film – as a result, you get a somewhat tightly wound roll of film when you’re done shooting. The older models don’t have that, and while you can improvise the film is always loose on the roll. In either case, avoid changing rolls in bright light (or with an older model – any light at all.) If you are going to shoot a lot, bring several cameras (they are THAT cheap) or bring a changing bag and film canisters to handle the exposed film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I gambled on the weather, and fortune smiled on my wager. Plus, I got in a first round of wildflower photography. Woodland wildflowers are one of my favorite subjects. The Botanicals section of the main website holds a sampling of these beautiful little flowers. These plants eek out their existence in a unique environmental niche. Their habitate is the forest floor, and emerge for a few short weeks in early spring when the still leafless trees allow the sun’s rays to fall directly onto the forest floor. They burst forth out of the leafy mulch that covers the ground – usually starting to emerge just as the last vestiges of winter snow are melting. Spring beauty, Hepatica, Bloodroot, and Trout Lilies (a.k.a. Adder’s tongue) are the first to emerge. Later comes the Trillium Wild Ginseng, Marsh Marigold, and Wild Geranium. Along with the wildflowers come the first stirrings of insect life – native bees and wasps, midges, and spiders. The shot above shows these flowers in their native setting – pushed up from the dry leaves that cover the forest floor, nestled between the roots of a large tree. Each wave of wildflowers quickly gives way to the next. Depending on the weather, they can come and go in a matter of weeks or days. Last year I missed the first round of wildflowers. This year I’ve been more vigilant, and have been visiting favorite spots at least weekly, looking for the first blooms. Yesterday I wandered into a favorite nature preserve. Wild garlic was up, but far from its full reign. After looking around for a while I saw only a few traces of wildflowers, and concluded that they were not yet out. So instead of wildflowers, I packed up the medium format 6x7 camera and started shooting landscape shots in B&W. The leafless early spring setting didn’t present a lot of obvious shots. So far I’ve only developed one of the 4 rolls shot, but here is a preliminary out take from the day’s landscape effort. After a few hours, in early afternoon, the temperature reached a tipping point, and I suddenly noticed an abundance of hepatica all around me. As the temperatures rose, more flowers burst onto the scene, and I shifted over to the *ist-D digital camera and started working on the Hepatica. As always, the spring breezes kept the flowers hopping and bouncing, making getting a clean shot a constant challenge. But now and then these little dime sized flowers would hold still enough to allow their portraits to be taken. For the final round of shots, I was treated to a crab spider, resting on a Hepatica bloom – waiting, no doubt, for an unwary bee.

 Today the temperatures dropped precipitously, and a cold rain lashed down in the morning, followed by an even colder misty drizzle. I developed a couple more rolls of the B&W film from yesterday, and plan to work with it in the next few days.

Technical details for photos shown: Color photos taken with Pentax *ist-D, SMC A* 200mm macro. B&W photos taken with Pentax 6x7, 67 SMC 55mm f4, and Efke 100, developed in Rodinal 1:50.

Update, March 19, 2009: A new set of test images can be found here.

Over the last several days I’ve posted a few essays on the relative qualities of film vs digital photography. What I haven’t done is post any actual comparisons of photos. I was planning to head out today to do just that, when I realized that I had on had photos taken a couple of years ago, that would do the trick perfectly. This photo is called “Weedy Sassafras.” It’s a favorite of mine, and it’s done OK critically. Last year, a 20 x 24 inch print of this image was juried into a regional fine arts exhibit, the West Michigan Area Show. It has also been a consistent seller in local gallery exhibitions and art fairs. I took this shot in October, 2004. It was an overcast day, a light rain had just stopped. This is the edge of an Oak Savannah in the Allegan Forest, a spot that in the spring hosts a dense population of the endangered Karner Blue butterfly. Although I had been shooting both medium format and with a digital SLR for about 1 year, this was my first fall color outing using either of these cameras. And so, just for the fun of it, I shot the exact same shots with both. I’d just pop one off the tripod, and pop the other on.

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A few years ago, when I first started with medium format photography, I decided to test out as many of the available B&W emulsions as possible. I’m pretty flexible (some might say fickle) and I tend to change brands in all things, so it was natural to just buy a few of everything and proceed.

Nonetheless, a few favorites quickly emerged. Traditional, old style emulsions really have a look that I like, and Plus X, Tri-X, Neopan 400, and the Afga APX emulsions have been among my favorites. A somewhat lesser known film, Classic Pan 200, marketed by JandC Photography, has emerged as one of my favorites, and is more or less tied with Agfa’s APX films in terms of the number of rolls I’ve shot over the last few years.

I've shot literally hundreds of images with this film, including several that have been exhibited at sizes of 24 x 28 inches. Properly handled, this film has produced excellent tonal range, with outstanding shadow detail , excellent grain structure, and fine resolution. Prices for Classic Pan fluctuate, and it often is seen as an inexpensive, bargain film. It is fairly inexpensive, but a titmes the prices rise up to be on par with mainstream films. I typically expose this film at ISO 160 or even ISO 100. My standard for development is HC110 at dilution H (1:64 ) for 15 minutes, with extremely low agitation (a few tips of the tank every 3 minutes.) The result is a negative rich in detail, with virtually no blocked up highlights and excellent detail in shadow areas. The film scans extremely well and can produce exceptional prints. (A note on developing - I develop with the intent of scanning the film, so opt for lower contrast, higher detail (especially shadow detail) processes that might not produce the idea negative for use in an enlarger.)

The photo at the top of this page is an excellent example of the quality this films delivers. Unfortunately, it’s also a great example of the problem inherent in displaying a landscape shot at tiny web sizes - thouch if you click on it there is alarger file. Here is an “actual pixels” crop of this shot – that is, a small portion of the image at the original scan resolution. As you can see – the degree of detail and tonal range is excellent.

Another image taken on CP200 is displayed at the end of this post. I’ve printed and exhibited both “126th Avenue” and “Use and Lose” as 28 x 24 inch prints. This film can certainly hold its own, or even surpass, any of the more well known B&W emulsions! Of course, nothing is perfect and CP 200 has its share of annoyances. For one thing, the film has a tendency to curl, especially when using a hardening fixer. I also have had more problems with light leaks with this film (120 format) than with other brands, so I now exercise more care loading and unloading this film. (Maybe that has something to do with the paper backing or spool, I don’t know.) But despite these shortcomings, Classic Pan 200 is a film I keep returning to, whether shooting with a Pentax 6x7, a 6x6 TLR, or even a Holga.

JandC sells two other “Classic” emulsions – an ISO 400 version of CP200 and what appears to be a completely different film called “Pro 100.” I haven’t used either of these to the extent that I've used CP 200.

Based on maybe 10 rolls of CP 400, it appears to have many of the same characteristics as its slower cousin. I certainly plan to use more of it in the future, and might try some of it in 35mm format (where I lean more towards faster emulsions.). The “Pro 100” is a co

mpletely different film from the others. In my opinion, there are better choices out there for a straight ISO 100 film – I’d take APX100, Plus X or CP200 over it for general shooting. But this film really shines in push-ability. 

Several essays on this blog have been concerned with the shift from film to digital. For photographers, that’s one of the key issues of the day. Digital photography offers a lot of advantages in terms of ease of use and workflow convenience, but as a relatively young and new technology, it still falls short of film in some critical areas.

One way to think about the performance of any photographic format is to consider the amount of area covered by each pixel in the photograph, either in terms of the original capture or a scanned image from film.

Right off the bat, this is a bit unfair to film in that in entails converting an analog recording of light (the exposed film) to a digital medium. But film is still able to hold its own even with that handicap.

Let’s compare the “stuff per pixel” for three photographic formats – a 6 megapixel digital capture, a 35mm film exposure, and a 6x7 cm medium format exposure.

A 6 megapixel digital camera produces an image file that is roughly 3000 x 2000 pixels in dimension. A 35mm exposure, scanned at 4000 dpi produces a file that is about 5500 x 3700 pixels in size, just over 20 megapixels. Finally, a 6x7 cm medium format frame, scanned at 3200 dpi, produces a file that is approximately 9000 x 7000 pixels in dimension, just over 62 megapixels in size.

(I picked those formats and scan resolutions simply because those are the ones I work with. I love speculation and mental experimentation as much as the next person, but ultimately count myself in the reality based population for most things and like to base comments on actual experience and tests.)

Now let’s assume that you are taking a head and shoulders portrait of person that is 2 x 3 feet in area – the portrait, that is, not the person.

With the six megapixel digital camera, each pixel in this digital capture represents a or square that is about 1/1000th of a foot, or 1/80th of an inch across. This should be more than adequate to capture fine detail in the subject.

With 35mm film, each pixel represents a square little less than 1/150th of an inch across. Even though the film grain interferes with some of this fine detail, this is clearly a leap ahead in terms of resolution.

With a 6x7cm the resolution takes another leap forward. Even scanning at a lower resolution 3200 dpi, a 6x7 exposure results in an image file where each pixel in the headshot captures a square that is 1/250th of an inch in diameter.

Despite this theoretical exercise, a lot of folks probably couldn’t see any difference between a head shot taken with the three difference cameras. Even though the medium format and 35mm exposures have the capacity to capture a lot more information, it really isn’t obvious in an 8x10 or smaller print.

The bottom line is that this kind of shot just does not have a great level of detail to record. Unless you are going to try to count individual hairs on your subject’s head, or blow the image up to billboard size, the benefits of film, even medium format film, are not obvious for this type of shot.

(That said – the one area where the difference can almost always be seen is in the smoothness of the tonal changes in the image. But this is a subtle distinction.)

On the flip side, assume you are taking a shot of a sweeping landscape, full of fine detail, and are using a wide angle lens to capture an area 100 yards across.

In this case, each pixel in the 6 megapixel digital exposure is sampling an area that is 1/10th of a foot – or 1.2 inches - square. The fine detail in this shot will clearly be compromised.

One the other hand, a 35mm film exposure scanned at 4000 dpi will result in a file where each pixel is about 2/3rds of an inch across. And a 6x7 cm medium format shot, scanned at 3200 dpi, results in a file where each pixel samples an area 0.4 inches across.

Obviously, in this kind of situation, the increased resolution of film is really an advantage. Since there is enough detail in the shot to for the viewer to see, the advantages of film for this kind of shot become clear.

Now consider the other end of the spectrum – an extreme macro, like a snow crystal shot. With snow flake photography I’m typically shooting at 4 to 8 times life sized on the film / sensor plane. That means that the projected image of the subject – in this case a snow crystal that may be 1/8th to 1/16th of an inch in size – is blown up 4 to 8 times that size.

In this case, with the 6 megapixel digital camera, each pixel represents a really minute area of the snow crystal – something on the order of a square 1/4000th to 1/8000th of an inch across! 35m film resolves even more detail, but as already noted, the interference of the film grain and lower acutance of film results in an inferior image. And so far, I’ve haven’t come up with a way to magnify a snow crystal big enough to take advantage of medium format film – so far now I’ll leave that in the ‘impractical’ column.

So what does this boil down to? If you think about your shots in terms of “stuff per pixel” you can quickly determine when you are better off shooting digital, 35mm, or medium format. You can also figure out when a lower megapixel camera will work fine, and when you need step up to a higher megapixel platform. Basically, if you think about how small the relevant details in your shot are, and how those details will relate to the total area you are exposing, it’s simple and intuitive to see when the higher resolution of film is needed, and where digital is better able to do the job.

Here’s a simple shot of Point Iroquois, a northern Michigan lighthouse that sits on the south shore of Lake Superior. This shot was taken under the clear azure skies of deepest summer and a polarizer was used to enhance the colors.

It took me over an hour to take this photo. As I stood there, camera on tripod, many a tourist passed by and took a shot, and at least three tripod bearing photographers set up, shot, and left. My wife toured the museum and gift shop inside the building, went up to the tower and peered at the Great Lakes freighters through the telescope up there, and ultimately wandered down towards the beach as I stood in place. I must of seemed awfully slow, but in fact I was standing under the still clear azure sky of deepest summer, and that dang flag was hanging limp like a washrag draped on the top of mop handle. But the wind always comes on even the stillest days (and it always pauses, even on the windiest) – and so after an hour’s plus wait, a desultory breeze wafted across the lighthouse grounds, and I was able to snap a shot with flag looking as a flag should. It’s not like capturing the decisive moment or anything like that. Rather, in this case it’s about craft. Its about paying attention to a detail, and investing the time and effort to get that detail right. Technical details – shot with a Pentax *ist-D, SMC FA 20-30mm lens, polarizer and tripod.