May 2, 2005, 14:49
<Moderator's Note: The post below originally contained some advertising material and was bordering on spam, but the article itself raised some valid discussion points. Instead of simply deleting the post, It was decided to edit out the parts of the post that contravened the forum rules and leave the rest - Kombisaurus>
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The nature of photographic media has changed. What worked with film doesn't 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 whoâve made the switch from film cameras to digital, Iâve discovered that the lens tools I once used so effectively on my cameras to soften, diffuse and vignette my images for quality âfinishedâ professional results wonât do for digital what they did for film.
Iâm sure itâs arguable by some that their diffusers still work fine, and I too have discovered that some tools still work okay under some circumstances; my Ziess Softar #1 seemed to offer decent results when photographing a single subject in the studio but I knew that the black netting diffuser that I used with my Lindahl Bell-o-shade no longer worked on the Nikon D70 zoom lens at the wider angles without showing lines in the image. Not a risk I was willing to take professionally so I just stopped using the Lindahl shade and drop-down filters for a while.
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 âsoftenedâ look. So I arrived at the portrait session armed with my digital camera equipped with the very mild Softar Filter that works at any aperture on any lens thinking that this was good insurance at getting the kind of âsoftnessâ she could live with.
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 âvery softâ.
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. âBut Iâve tried using Photoshop CS for their diffusion tools and what I get doesnât look like real photography,â I complained, âThe results are terrible.â He agreed that Photoshopâs filters werenât 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.
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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 shouldnât 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 itâs that the customer canât really see the results on the proof, so they have to âtrustâ 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. Itâs going to take more time and youâll end up with having to rework some things more than you want so Iâd only recommend this for customers like mine whoâs initial concern was the diffusion issue.
In summary, softening and diffusion can be done effectively and professionally but itâs not as easy as it used to be when youâd 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 âmushâ or images of weak contrast that may or may not be salvageable.
-Tom
<Advertising removed by moderator to enable post to conform with forum rules>
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The nature of photographic media has changed. What worked with film doesn't 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 whoâve made the switch from film cameras to digital, Iâve discovered that the lens tools I once used so effectively on my cameras to soften, diffuse and vignette my images for quality âfinishedâ professional results wonât do for digital what they did for film.
Iâm sure itâs arguable by some that their diffusers still work fine, and I too have discovered that some tools still work okay under some circumstances; my Ziess Softar #1 seemed to offer decent results when photographing a single subject in the studio but I knew that the black netting diffuser that I used with my Lindahl Bell-o-shade no longer worked on the Nikon D70 zoom lens at the wider angles without showing lines in the image. Not a risk I was willing to take professionally so I just stopped using the Lindahl shade and drop-down filters for a while.
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 âsoftenedâ look. So I arrived at the portrait session armed with my digital camera equipped with the very mild Softar Filter that works at any aperture on any lens thinking that this was good insurance at getting the kind of âsoftnessâ she could live with.
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 âvery softâ.
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. âBut Iâve tried using Photoshop CS for their diffusion tools and what I get doesnât look like real photography,â I complained, âThe results are terrible.â He agreed that Photoshopâs filters werenât 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.
<Advertising removed by moderator to enable post to conform with forum rules>
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 shouldnât 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 itâs that the customer canât really see the results on the proof, so they have to âtrustâ 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. Itâs going to take more time and youâll end up with having to rework some things more than you want so Iâd only recommend this for customers like mine whoâs initial concern was the diffusion issue.
In summary, softening and diffusion can be done effectively and professionally but itâs not as easy as it used to be when youâd 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 âmushâ or images of weak contrast that may or may not be salvageable.
-Tom
<Advertising removed by moderator to enable post to conform with forum rules>
