Black and White Photography Blog, Vol. I

I walk through the Metropolitan Museum with no desire to know who these statues represent. I notice how the arms are formed; the shortness of the woman (she needs to be on a step ladder); the medals; the power; and how weak we are in their presence. I always say to myself: self, talk into your digicam so you can remember who these big folks are. Otherwise, you’ll never remember. And I never do.

I think the big fella is Baccus — maybe not.  I’ll check it out when I go back there.

I’m lucky as far as memory goes since I never had a good memory - there’s not that much to lose. But I see people around me who used to be sharp as a tack, forgetting simple things like - where they parked the car the day before; or that they’ve already told me a certain story a few days before.

Whether it’s Gods or heroes - that’s one thing we cannot live without. If there aren’t a multitude of Gods anymore - then we will just create a multitude of heroes and heroines. Usually, we’ll destroy them as soon as they’ve become too tedious - but c’est la vie.

I found out the hard way that the application that comes with the G9 is not particularly good at translating their own raw file. At least not for me. I downloaded Lightroom, found some anti-noise settings at LL for the G9, and was able to have some more control over the conversion - and now I’m easily getting what I want without artifacts at 200 ASA, and at a nice 9 x 12 or 11 x 14. Haven’t tried to go bigger yet.

In other words, I’m making progress with the G9 and even have a very pleasing 9 x 12 from the Buddy at 800 ASA shot. I know that watching this sort of “live” progress can be annoying; went through similar stuff when I was shooting IR, and then with the POD, but I don’t have an editor to put it together and clip out the useless stuff.

HERE’S THE FORMULA AT LEAST FOR 800 ASA WITH G9, though I’ve been using it at 200 ASA as well.

For the G9 at ISO 800, Thomas Niemann (of PTLens fame) has suggested the following settings in ACR (or Lightroom) Details page:

Sharpening
amount=60
radius = 0.8
detail = 30
masking = 0

Noise reduction
luminance = 80
color = 100

Clarity = 25

Courtesy of

I shouldn’t apologize for posting boring test stuff - but I know that when I look back on the process these mistakes will be important. I still have an old version of PS - PS CS, but I guess I’m going to purchase Lightroom soon (I’m using trial version).

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Oh, and since I’m doing so many tests with the dancing girls, I dug up a little info about them:

Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott (1861-1938), were executed in Germany about 1910. I was able to find his name on one of the rings of the statue. Resolution surprised me.

how I learned to love digital noise as a new form of impressionism:

1/10th of a second; 16.8 mm; AV 3.5, no sharpening…

The thing that would be nice, possibly awesome, possibly it exists somewhere in the menu system or firmware would be if the zoom showed what step it was at in 35mm terms. Do I know what 16.8mm means? No. I only have a vague idea that I’m a little bit more zoomed in then the 35mm-ish opening gambit.

Also - noise-wise - I haven’t had a lot of success with Noise Ninja (btw this thing can actually shoot at 3200 under some conditions ) I haven’t tried that yet.

I know that “noise” and “film grain” aren’t the same - believe me I know that - but as noisy as this is - it is still less apparent in a print - (for the most part) - then tri-x. The issues are with the edges. Certain high contrast edges do tend to - I don’t know what the word is - pixelate maybe? - with the smaller sensors, where as film produces an equal opportunity grain.

Micky D. get’s his afternoon fix on third avenue.  I’m on a sort of a health kick now, trying to get back into what I’ve come to call the GIFTING SEASON.  I’ve contributed my share to the McDonalds bottom line, but lately I’ve been on a fast which consists of water mixed with lemon juice, pepper, and nutmeg.  I do this every couple of years for a weekend - and besides making me obnoxious - I do feel better when it’s done.  I don’t know where I got this from - oh - yes a friend of a friend who’s a chiropractor (no cracks please).

I should do this on Yom Kippur but my own innate contrariness  gets in the way.  That contrariness has been a blessing and a curse.  Mostly a curse.  At any rate — that’s the context of this photo.  Every 3 or 4 days the frozen patties are delivered, blocking most of the street, and causing people to try and duck under the unloading ramp.  So sometimes, having nothing better to do, I stand around waiting for some fascinating person to duck under the ramp, but so far the duckers simply appear banal.  Maybe someday.

Are the dog walkers everywhere nowadays - or mostly big American cities? Are there dogwalkers that lead packs in Paris? In London? From whence does it arise?  In this particular photo, there are at least six dog walkers in a row.  It’s a sub-culture that fascinates me.   Dogs respond to pack leaders, and the groups of dogs are arranged by size usually.  But when did this all start?  At some point, the urbanite had dogs but no time to walk them.  But why?

A hundred years ago New Yorkers had dogs - no?  But the kids walked the dogs in the morning, and at night.   When I was a kid, I walked our dog before I went to school, and later in the afternoon.  I know there are kids in manhattan — I see them once in a while.  What’s been going on?

To my mind, in New York, it began about 7 years ago, maybe a little longer. Most of the dog walkers I’ve talked with, at least here in Manhattan, are immigrants from Eastern Europe; working their way through school.

I suppose I’m just curious as to why it began at the time and location it began. I can’t imagine that you had dog walkers a hundred years ago in New York.

There are, of course, more important things to concern myself with - but this has been flitting through my mind for the last few years, and so I ask - if anyone has information about the origins of urban (and I assume it’s only urban) dog walking.

P.S. - serious answers only - unless they are very imaginative.

The hotel in the background reminds me of the Overlook Hotel. I’m now pretty comfortable with the G9, and have it in b&w mode / raw most of the time.

Hazy Shade of Winter (Dancing Girls)

Okay - it’s not Yosemite - and it’s not a Hass. But it’s a fun camera to use. It is still noisy at 200 - though I haven’t given a full noise elimination routine yet. I will say this - from an ease-of-use p.o.v. - it’s got everything, including the tic-tac-toe screen that I like from my old MF / LF days. But as noted, it is still a small sensor with a lot of transistors crammed on it - and no way is it as clean as a modern Canon DSLR at the same speed. I knew that would be a drawback going in - so let’s see what the prints look like.

I bought the G9 yesterday, and as expected, it has given me the nudge I needed to get out and about. Also, as expected, sales dropped off to near zero over the last week - and so I have time to visit my old haunts. If you want careful and well-thought out opinions on the camera — visit Paul Butzi’s site. I can’t bring myself to do any more reviews of anything other than maybe pizza, or movies. It is the first camera I’ve used with Image Stabilization - and that is a good thing.

Put simply - I like it. I am using it in RAW mode without any lag issues. On the other hand (or arm) my subjects weren’t moving quickly today at the museum. In fact, they weren’t moving at all. Just looking wistfully at each-other. The museum is always a sad place for me - with the pictures of dead people, or never-existed people, done by dead artists. Hmmm, maybe that’s why it’s graveyard quiet. Respect for the dead.

This is probably Athena — pretty much anyone in this room was either Athena or Hercules. I miss those days when Gods had faces and bodies. It would be much easier for me to converse with a spirit if I had a rough idea about what they looked like, and what kind of personality they had. That’s just me I guess. It must have been very hard for people to chuck all their godly trinkets. Especially if they were used to chatting with them every day.

The guides hover around - somewhere between the real world - and the museum graveyard. They have the only job halfway between cherubs and jerks.

Now the fact that all these people have their likeness and naked bodies on display is bad enough - but do they always have to lose their arms through the centuries? What’s so tough about keeping your arms with you?

And so many of them have completely lost their heads. What’s up with that? They almost always keep their torsos, but even if they’ve kept their heads, so many of them have lost their eyeballs.

I only ran into trouble once with one guard who thought since I was moving the camera while looking at the LCD that I was taking a movie - which I just found out - is not allowed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. No movies, sir!

Why no movies? That’s got to be a YouTube prejudice. Well anyway - I don’t understand so many things about the world, that I’ll just chalk add the no-movies at the Met rule to the long list.

Untitled as of yet

Flower Shop Window (83rd Street)

The East River, this morning. (Still a little too lazy to shoot film yet).

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Stephen — nope, doesn’t matter. It’s the little red engine that could. On a tech note — just wondering — does anyone make a digicam p/s with a BIG sensor, i.e. DSLR size? The NOISE issue - even after this is run through cleaning programs - is annoying to me.

My digicam wishlist:

1) Swivel LCD

2) BIG DSLR sized sensor

3) RAW mode that’s fast enough to use

4) LOW NOISE at ASA 400

5) It doesn’t need a zoom lens, fixed lens is fine. If it has to have a zoom, then some click system for various focal lengths.

6) Viewfinder not needed if it’s the typical P/S viewfinder.

Those are the main things… but the first three are most desired.

As the previous season of packaging and printing happily fades - I start to walk around the city again.  Carefully at first.  Trying to get a feel for the old camera.  I raise the camera now and then, but I’m uncomfortable on the street like in the very beginning.  I know from experience it will take me a few days at least to get used to taking pictures of strangers again.  But it will come back.  It’s not a natural thing to do.  I’ll ease into it, as I usually do, by going to the park to walk around.

Later, I toss away the m6 (two more frames to my credit) and take this shot of Buddy sleeping tonight. He’s about 5 inches (I kid you not) from the A640 with flash on, macro mode, lens in his face, flash underexposed two stops, AV mode underexposed two stops, tons of screen swivel, and me just trying to keep the plastic camera from creaking as I inch closer to the wild beast… Okay, maybe you can’t see the rapid eye movement - but this cat was having a lively dream.

He’s always been such a good subject. I’m sure I’d jump out of bed with a start if someone did that to me, but he opened his eyes to a narrow slit once - gave me that - are you at it again Beckerman - look, and back into REM sleep he went. Don’t you wonder what cats and dogs dream of. Isn’t dreaming all the proof you need of a sentient creature?