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Sometimes the news flies so thick and fast that items deserving of a look get over-looked. Let’s take in a few such interesting items from the past week or two.
Dissing Digital
Norman Jean Roy is a fashion photographer ‘on the make’. He has shot both George Bush and Kate Beckinsale and his images have graced both Vogue and Vanity Fair. Two weeks back FStoppers published an interview with Jean Roy in which he talks about his philosophy of photography and his take on the camera as a neutral instrument.
Though he shoots digital too, Jean Roy claims to favour film: because it does not have the same instant gratification as digital, it alters for the better the way one approaches a shoot.
Jean Roy says that perfection in photography is destroying it as an art, and he blames digital for introducing the capability of perfecting photographs, ergo digital is killing photography as an art in general and fashion photography in particular.
Rich, Thin Filters
New York socialites say, “You can’t be too rich or too thin.” Cokin has adopted that battle cry for its Pure Harmonie series of filters: Cokin says they’re the thinnest filters in the world! Filters available currently are a UV, a Polarizer, and a Variable Density Neutral Gray.
These filters begin at $50 and go up from there. Just like those New York socialites, these lenses favour those who are . . . ‘rich’!
Another Type of Filter
We’ll close with the sort of filter that is integrated into most modern cameras; anti-aliasing filters that suppress moire. Digital imaging has sharply-defined limits of resolution by frequency (as opposed to film) – because, after all, unlike film, the image is resolved on a grid of pixels – therefore, it interprets certain patterns, such as fine checks on clothing, incorrectly and introduces banding effects.
Anti-aliasing filters eliminate moire patterns at some cost to image quality and they’re a standard part and parcel of digital cameras and other digital imaging equipment.
Fujifilm, like Leica, decided that there was a way to eliminate moire without anti-aliasing filters. This technological step, however, prompted a photographer to compare Fujifilm’s decision to building a sports car without brakes! Is that a valid comparison or a total exaggeration?
