Almost There..

It has been more than a month that I have not posted anything on this site. I just want to make a note saying that this is almost over.

I rarely talk about my progress on the assignments because it contains too many fail attempts, ideas that go absolutely nowhere. Some of those become rant posts and they all go to Spiral Labyrinth along with all my side projects and all those unnecessary readings/reviews. This blog remains, solely, for OCA tutors and assessors to do their box-clicking exercise.

Right, progress…

This is the first time I ever asked for an extension on the deadline, partly thanks for the varies accidents that happened, partly because I ran out of ideas. Ideas came by but either they are not good enough, or it is too difficult to execute.

All the shootings are done. At least I do not permit myself to make another shoot on this assignment before I send it off to my tutor. Yes, I am not totally satisfied with the work. And, I am sure I can put a better set together if you give me another 10 years, but it is pointless. I want to hit the deadline. I want make this as whatever best I can delivery with a fix timeline. In the remaining time before the deadline (first week of Jan 2013), I need to work on the narrative. As usual, the planning is a little bit messed up. The images I made don't quite stick to the original plan, so I am adjusting the plot all together.

Anyway, I’d better to keep the story short so that I can go back and do some real work (and hit the next deadline). Right now there is only title page. There is a quote that sort of drive the visualization on this subject. I would like to start with, I need to see if there is any space for it at all.

This pain I can see it but I can’t feel it
It haunts me
When I cut myself I can see what the pain
is coming from and watch it heal
And I can easily care for it
This pain doesn’t have a specific place
It moves around and creeps into strange places

Here is the title image.

Assignment 4: Reshoot - Shape

The last shoot to be discussed is the sharp image. Here is the original shoot.

Here is the comment from Alan:

“In this image you have adopted a more dramatic lighting plan with your subject in the same frontal position as in the last image. It is a well composed image but I feel that there is a certain amount of ‘overkill’ in the lighting because the shadow area at bottom right tends to obscure the outline of the shape of the subject.”

The bottom right is where the camera touches the table. I hope I understand this correctly, the bottom of the camera and the table is equally unlit, so you cannot see the separation between them. So is there any way to separate the two? Here are two possible solutions:

1)      Hang the camera in mid-air with fishing line and clean up the fishing line in Photoshop

2)      Fill light

Believe it or not, #1 seems to be the cleaner solution but it is also harder. It is less obvious how to hang a camera when there is only two holes on the side (for the strap) and keep it perfectly still and square to the camera. I need a third points to put the fishing line on, but it is not obvious where. Since I have un-used film inside the camera, I don’t want to open the film cover yet.

On top of it, so far I have never deploy Photoshop in this course. I don’t want to start yet. I have no ethical problem in using Photoshop (apart from I don’t really know how to use it yet), but I feel like I should use it to do something I can absolutely not get around with, instead of cleaning wires.

Fill light is doable, but there is trade off. The original shoot is very dramatic. Any fill from the front will spills to the background and will reduce the dramatic effect. It is possible to angle the light so that it spills less, but I find it impossible to eliminate the spill. It still won’t remove the table, or light up area between the camera and the table, but it gives more clue that this is a camera.

Here is the re-shoot, the fill is angle to a way such that it doesn't spill as much, but it still spill to background.

  

There is something I tried while moving the fill around. At the end I think it is possible to eliminate spill by using a very tight paper snoot, and angle the light directly downward. The effect of it is it gives more clue of the camera. Still, if a light shines on the camera, the aluminium will be brighter than the metal. Therefore, it is unlikely to create a separation using fill, but this method will give more clue that the subject is a camera because it lit up aluminium element at the top.

I think this is a possible solution without damaging the atmosphere I tried to create.

Assignment 4: Re-shoot - Texture

The second shoot to be discussed is the texture image. Here is the original shoot.

Here is the comment from Alan:

“You have chosen to concentrate on the stippled area of the body of the subject.   In my opinion there is too much strong contrast in this image because the unlit areas in the frame are almost too dense to discern any detail. You have avoided this problem in all your other images by the arrangement of your lighting to fill the shadows. An image which showed some of the areas of brushed aluminium or the carrying strap would have also been quite appropriate for this task.”

So, the problem with this image (according to Alan) is the contrast is too high. It is possible to put a fill light in to reduce the contrast, and bring up some details on the originally unlit area. Let’s try this one first. This image was the one that I took earlier but didn’t select for the assignment. It is on a different orientation, because I prefer the details on the exposure dial instead of the rewinding knob. The idea is the same, one side of the prism area is lit by a hard light to show the texture of the leather, but this one has a fill for the front.

My feeling is: it is a little bit too distracting. There are more things to look at instead of just texture on the leather. It might not be the first thing viewers will pick up on.

Personally I prefer the original image. In theory the viewer can only focus on the aluminium and one side of the leather: One is smooth and one is rough. The contrast is very high, but I think it is more obvious on where you should look.

I wonder if I should have chosen something different to photograph on “texture”. I have another image on colour, which shows the texture on the strap quite well. However, I choose this one as the “texture” image, because the strap is the only thing that has strong colour in this camera, and I want to keep the strap associated with “colour” as much as possible. On the other hand, I could have done a macro shot with the leather fills most of the frame, I can have less contrast while showing the texture across the board. At the moment, I cannot try this type of shoot because none of my lens has marco capacity and cannot focus that close. I think maybe the next gear I should buy is a lens reversal ring to try this idea out.  

Assignment 4: Reshoot - Form

My tutor got back to me on assignment 4 two weeks ago. Because I have to work on the Life in the UK exam, I can’t get around to reshoot some of the images.

This is the first tutor report I got from Alan. The comments are generally quite positive. To be honest, it is somewhat too positive for someone at my level. Somehow I wonder if this is how the British education system works. When I was young, I don’t remember getting a nice word unless your work is so stunning that it shocks the teacher. I have a look at the last assessment result in July. Only one person get above 80 for this course, which is consistent with what it was like in my Chinese composition class. My teacher used to say if you get above 90, that is Literature with a big “L”.     

Never mind, let’s focus on the negative comments.

Reshoot

There are three images I am looking at: Texture, shape and form. I will put them into three posts. So let’s start with the shape. Here is the original image.

  

This is Alan’s comment.

“This is a good angle and lighting plan to demonstrate the principle shape of your camera.  Unfortunately, although the manufacturer’s logo on the front panel is sharp, I am afraid that the rewind knob on the right and the lettering on the ring on the front of the lens have both drifted out of focus.   I suspect that the aperture was too wide open to create sufficient depth of focus.”

The re-shoot in theory is simple, but it takes a while to setup the subject, camera and light roughly the same to the original shoot. After some trial and error, here is at f/32, flash at full power (compare to the original image at around f/13).

We can see that the “Nikkor” letter is sharp, while there are more detail on the rewind knob. Still if we look at this at 100% corp, the knob is sharp but not exactly pin-sharp. I think there is limited depth of field (DOF). I will go into this in more discussion later. However, since the DOF is limited, I prefer to have the front “Nikkor” to be as sharp as possible instead of keeping the knob sharp. I think it is too easy to spot if the letter is not sharp.

DOF

I have to admit that depth of field is one of the thing I rarely pay attention of. Why? Because most of the photographs I took are sport related. Most of the time I need to shutter speed to be very high. Trying to keep the ISO noise to a manageable level, there is rarely any room to maneuver the aperture. To be honest, I am not sure how small I should set the aperture in assignment 3 when I do urban landscape piece. It is more of a guess work if this f-stop is good enough.

As a result I look at the DOF calculation on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field). The calculation is done by using thin lens equation in classical optics, combining with some geometry (similar triangles). I replicate the formulas and put it on a spreadsheet. Here are couple questions I am interested in:

1) What was the DOF of the setting of this shot?
2) Apart of from stopping down, what else can I improve on the DOF?

The first one is simple. At f=70mm, the subject is about 40cm away (near the minimal focus distance). Let’s say the distance is 50cm since the subject has depth. With the circle of confusion set at 0.02mm, I get 3.98cm with f/22 and 5.63cm at f/32. The subject depth (from the “Nikkor” to the knob) is about 10cm. Thus, it explains why the knob is not sharp enough even at f/22. f/32 barely makes it, but as I said earlier, the knob is not exactly pin-sharp.

The second question is more interesting. In the solution to the DOF calculation, there are 4 variables: focal length, subject distance, f-stop (which is the same as focal length/aperture diameter), and circle of confusion. I can adjust each of them to get more DOF. So what is the post and con?

Circle of confusion (CoC): The most foreign term is the fastest way to improve DOF. The CoC is defined as the diameter of a spot to spread to be considered to be unsharp. It has to do with the grain or sensor size. The larger the sensor grid (not the number of pixel, but sensor size divide by the number of pixel), the bigger CoC. Some says viewing condition as well, but it is less controllable. This is a short extract from Wikipedia, with the calculation of the DOF at f/22 and f/32.

Image Format	Frame size	CoC (mm)	DOF at f/22 (mm)	DOF at f/32 (mm)
APS-C Nikon	15.7 mm × 23.6 mm	0.019	40	56
35mm Full Frame	24 mm × 36 mm	0.029	58	82
6×6 Medium Format	56 mm × 56 mm	0.053	106	152
8×10 Large Format	203 mm × 254 mm	0.22	540	999

One can see that, while I only have 5.6cm to maneuver in an APS-C frame, I will have three times more in a 6x6 medium format. Simple! However, as Henry Louis Mencken said, “For every complex problem, there is a simple answer – and it’s wrong.”, here is the price list:

Image Format	Example	Price (GBP)
APS-C Nikon	Nikon D7000	559
35mm Full Frame	Nikon D600	1,429
Medium Format	Hasselblad H4D-60	22,962
Large Format	Deardorff View Camera V8 (film)	3,795

The Hasselblad H4D is not a 6x6, but something like a 4x5. It costs 41-times more than my D7000. There is no digital large format camera around, so I find a film one, it still cost 6 times more than what I have. Then, I also have to process my own film because there is no shop that does large format film processing.

Focal Length and Subject Distance: These two go together. Unless I corp, I cannot move the subject further away and maintain the composition. Assume that I don’t corp, then I have to increase the focal length as I move the subject further away. Re-run this calculation, this is what I get.

Focal Length (mm)	Subject Distance (mm)	DOF at f/22 (mm)
70	500	38.67
135	1,000	41.79
200	1,500	42.91

I am not sure if this works at all, given that I am not getting even 1cm worth of improvement.

Aperture: I went all the way down to f/32. I am glad that my lens is old enough to have f/32. Most modern lens only got as low as f/22. If somebody is making an f/64 lens, I can put it in and get a DOF of 109mm. Here is a problem: someone told me that with small sensor camera (like mine), I have to worry about diffraction when the f-stop goes below f/16. I am not sure how to check diffraction pattern in an image. I can’t see anything very exciting at f/32, but will it be the same at f/64?

The Airy disk function is just a 2D Fourier transform of a circular aperture. Adding two together side by side will give me an idea on how close they have to be for the sensor to fail to detect two peaks. To be honest, I haven’t done math for a while. Therefore, I used the online calculator from Cambridge in Colour (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm). At f/32, the diameter of the Airy dist is only 41 micron, larger than the CoC of 21 micron. A quick calculation with the thin lens equation assuming that my maximum resolution at the sensor is 41 mircon, with 70mm focal length, at f/32, subject at 50cm, it implies that I will not be able to resolve two points that is 0.252mm apart (only at the 50cm plane).

For the sharp shot, I have to say that I don’t care about a resolution of 0.252mm. It is probably more important if I am doing the texture shot, when the small details make all the difference in the texture.

Anyway, that’s all for the sharp. This analysis is simply too tiring. I am sure I will never finish this course if I keep doing this. I will write less for the next two re-shoots.

Assignment 3 Re: The Churches in the City

Although personally I consider this as unfinished work, I really glad that I can send off the my tutor. There are several reasons why I am sending it off. First of all, the deadline is this Saturday. I think someone in the forum once made a comment saying that we should respect deadline, because in read world, we cannot always ask our client to extend the deadline. I think it is a fair point. At the end, we always have things we want to explore further. A deadline works well here because it forces me to gather whatever is the best I have on hand and make a decision on how I can put limited amount of resources (or result) together.


Secondly, while I find this project very interesting, I don't think the correlation with colour is that strong. For purely satisfying the requirement of the assignment, I think the submission I made on March 15th is better. I do want to continue to work on it as a personal project, but I think there is limited purpose for it to live in OCA space. In fact, when I put the presentation together, I think it will be less bulky if I don't put all the images on it.


I put the presentation here. To view it with Adobe reader, you have to go to view -> Page display -> Two up


https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9vxityaDZ2WVmpIbm1ibjhieFE


Colour wise, it is not as a successful piece. By that, I mean colour is not the main attraction on these series of images. I have trouble deploying Johanne Itten's theory, as it is still not as intuitive to me yet. It could be personally I cannot feel what colour appeal to other people. Since some of these combinations do not appeal to me, I just cannot understand why this combination means this, so I am almost like blind trying to visualize something someone else tells me. 


Hopefully this is just temporary, because in design and advertising, it is very important that I am fluent in this language.

Assignment 3: Colour? Architecture? Culture?

This is the other part of the continuation of assignment 3. Given that the assignment I submitted back in March was about urban landscape (more or less building was all I did), we are down to looking at what type of building I see around London. When I did the assignment, I didn’t visit anywhere particularly scenic. Given that there is strict requirement on colour, I gave up on finding the best looking, or most representative buildings and opts for the one with the colour combination required by this assignment.

About the Colour of Bricks

The colour in an architecture design usually associated with the building material used. For most English residential house built before 1970, the colour of the exterior is determined by the colour of bricks and roofing tiles. Even today, some of the modern housing designs still put a skin layer of brick on the exterior to preserve that aesthetic appeal.

Bricks are used in English housing frequently because of the speed and cost associated with creating a brick. There was a large demand of housing since industry revolution and bricks are often the material of choice. They are everywhere in the city and suburb area, although they are not particular glamorous or iconic.

Although one can put in dye during the brick making process, most of the brick used in the London and south east area are mainly yellow or red. Some bricks may appear to be black/grey. Some of them originally are yellow, but lost they appeal because of air pollution. The yellow brick is known as London stock. It is made soft yellow clay fitted into an iron faced block mould. It was once as seen as fashionable for working class housing.

In Victorian London, the bright red brick was chosen to make the building more visible under heavy fog. The goal was to reduce number of traffic accident in foggy weather.

Most of the roofing tiles I see around London are red. However, I cannot find any note on why they have to be red. I believe the material that made tiles are mainly clay, but what is not obvious is why no one dye it, or use difficult colour of clay. There are houses that recently re-tiled that have black tile.

Culture Aspect (again?) of Colour

While my tutor suggested me to look into culture aspect of colour, my assignment was about urban landscape. For everything to tire together, we are trying to link several elements together: 1) Colour 2) English culture 3) English architecture (at least on residential housing level)

As I note earlier that a major deciding factor of choosing building material is cost and speed (I wonder, if the right word is really availability instead of speed). There is nothing particularly English about the decision. Historically issue that favour yellow (availability) or red (particularity for reducing accident) has nothing to do with the culture here really.