Discount digital cameras

The nature of photographic media has changed. That is the
obvious part; but what can surprise you is that the lens filters
that worked so well with your film cameras don’t always achieve
the same results in the digital realm. Photographers who’ve
discovered this are either abandoning their old filters and
using nothing or using whatever software comes standard with
their Photoshop or similar program. If you’re interested in
getting the same quality for your portrait photography that you
used to get with film and filters, you need to know that it can
be done!

Like many people who’ve made the switch from film cameras to
digital, I’ve discovered that the lens tools I once used so
effectively on my cameras to soften, diffuse and vignette my
images for quality “finished” professional results won’t do for
digital what they did for film.

I’m sure it’s arguable by some that their diffusers still work
fine, and I too have discovered that some tools still work okay
under some circumstances but as I’ve learned, not all
circumstances; my Ziess Softar #1 seemed to offer decent results
when photographing a single subject in the studio but not
without substantial cost to image contrast. I also knew that the
black netting diffuser that I used so effectively with my
Lindahl Bell-o-Shade and medium format camera no longer worked
on the new digital zoom lens without showing lines in the image.
I also knew that my other softeners made the images look too out
of focus. Not a risk I was willing to take professionally so I
just stopped using the Lindahl shade and drop-down filters.
Intimidated, I stopped using any filters.

Then it happened. A savvy carriage trade-minded customer brought
in a wall portrait that she had purchased several years ago by a
photographer obviously using medium format lens tools like I was
used to using in the past with my film camera. She wanted her
new wall portraits to have that same “softened” look. So I
arrived at the portrait session armed with my digital camera
equipped with the very mild Softar Filter that worked okay in
the studio on single subjects.

Understand that I knew any diffusion used on an entire family
group portrait would be more exaggerated by their relative head
sizes but I had explained that to her and she assured me she
liked her portrait images “very soft”.

While the images looked good on the small camera monitor, once I
opened them up in Photoshop and printed them out as proofs I
knew they were too soft. I called a colleague who is a digital
expert and explained to him what I had done. He told me that you
simply cannot use on-lens filters anymore for professional
softening and diffusion without creating mush on 35mm type
digital camera images. This leaves the special effects job now
to the computer and not the camera. I told him I’d tried using
Photoshop CS in the past for their diffusion tools and what I
got didn’t look like real photography, at best it degraded my
images or made them look grainy and out of focus. He agreed that
Photoshop’s filters weren’t the right tools either to mimic the
professional photography filters of the past but told me that
there is a company that has a software program that is a plug-in
for my Photoshop and has filter tools to recreate believable
results for various levels of softening and diffusion.

The software is called “PhotoKit” and is available from Pixel
Genius for only $49.95. I bought the Mac version and it is
wonderful. I have played around with it now and have found that
you can get varying degrees of whatever you want that looks
similar to what you used to be able to do with your old lens
filters and drop-down tools. Even more possibilities are now
available to you. One of my favorites is the ability to lasso
areas and “clear” the results of diffusion keeping eyes and
teeth sparkly and sharp.

Now that you are no longer needing actual lens filters you may
make the same mistake I did originally and not have your lens
hood or bellows shade on the digital camera. This is a mistake
especially with digital; you still need to shade your lens from
any ambient light even more than you did when you used film as
the exposure latitude is not as great as it was with film and
milky images are even more devastating with digital capture. You
will get vignetting from the shading device at wider angles but
just do what you did before you had access to zoom lenses and
take the hood off when using wide angles. (Most pros using
medium format film cameras did not have zoom lenses.) You
shouldn’t use anything below a normal lens for portraits anyway.
(The 35mm lens setting with digital cameras).

If there is a downside to doing your diffusion in the computer
now it’s that the customer can’t really see the results on the
proof, so they have to “trust” your artistic license. But it was
like this with retouching too so there will be a short new
education curve for your clientele to learn, or to save yourself
from disaster you might offer a second proof appointment to show
the customer a proof of their selected images with the added
softening or diffusion. It’s going to take more time and you’ll
end up with having to rework some things more than you want so
I’d only recommend this for customers like mine who’s initial
concern was the diffusion issue. You may also consider adding
fees for “enhancement” to your price list just like you did for
retouching and put such things as vignetting, softening and
retouching all under the heading of “enhancement”. You can even
charge a proofing fee for those who want to proof how the
finished results will look, or else they “sign-off” that they
accept any modifications sight-unseen.

In summary, softening and diffusion can be done effectively and
professionally but it’s not as easy as it used to be when you’d
just pick the filter you wanted and pop it over the lens. Your
old on-camera lens filters will often turn your digital images
to “mush” or images of weak contrast that may or may not be
salvageable.

About the author:
-Tom Ray is a Certified Professional Photographer through the
Professional Photographers of America. If you are interested in
his full story please go to: www.rayphotography.com/EbookAD.html

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.