J'ai décidé de fermer Apprenti Photographe. En partie parce que je suis fatigué de la plate-forme agée et rouillée de Typepad qui me coûte de l'argent tous les mois, et en partie parce que je ne veux plus séparer les différentes choses dont j'ai envie de parler. En conséquence de quoi, ce blog fermera dans un avenir proche. A ce moment là, il sera redirigé vers mon nouveau domicile virtuel chez tumblr:
Je vais transférer une partie du contenu présenté sur Apprenti Photographe vers Analog Impressions dans les semaines à venir, et ensuite je mettrais en place une redirection, mais vous pouvez dores et déjà lire mes réflections photographiques (et plein d'autres choses) sur le nouveau blog! Pour ceux que ça intéresse, j'ai également une galerie de mes meilleures photos sur 500px, et j'ai ouvert depuis peu un compte Instagram sous le nom benfelten.
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I have decided to decommission Apprenti Photographe. Partly because I'm tired of Typepad's old and clunky system which is costing me money each month, and partly because I don't want to have separate blogs for the various things I want to share and talk about. As a consequence, this blog will close in the near future. At that time it will be redirected to my new home on tumblr:
I will be porting some of the content on Apprenti Photographe over to Analog Impressions in the next few weeks, and after that I'll be setting up a redirect, but you can already follow my musical ideas (and all sorts of other stuff) over there! For those who are interested, I also have a gallery of my best shots on 500px and have recently joined the Instagram community under the handle benfelten.
After months of buzz, the Lytro "light-field" camera appears to be very close to commercialization. When I first found out about the concept I thought a lot about its implications both to me as a photographer and to photography in general. Of course, not having used one, the following is nothing but speculation, but it helps me form my own mind as to whether I see the development positively, whether I think it has a chance as a commercial product and whether I think it's the end of the world (of photography) as we know it.
First, in case you've been living under a rock, here's what we know about Lytro:
Lytro is a new type of camera that captures light fields as opposed to a frozen light pattern. See it as a super-extended RAW file: in RAW you can manipulate exposure after the fact to an extent. With light-field shots you can manipulate sharpness and focal points after the fact. To an extent also, I'm guessing. The specs say that the camera captures 11 light-fields, although we don't know how these are determined by the camera and the flexibility they allow after the fact.
It's a new and original "square torchlight" form factor that certainly looks different. It also looks unwieldy to me when it comes to actually shooting photographs, but that remains to be tested, I guess.
The output format is a proprietary image format that will allow viewers (and not just the photographer) to play around with depth of field and focus when viewing the picture (online). I'm assuming that the processing software (only available on Mac to begin with) will also allow you to output a specific version of the light-field photo to jpeg, but that's pure speculation on my part.
The lens has a fixed F/2 aperture and no shutter lag, so it should be very fast even in low light (again, to be verified).
The retail price will be $399 and up depending on flash memory in the camera.
This new camera raises questions because it can either be seen as a gadget that won't last a couple of years or as the most revolutionary invention in consumer photography since the polaroid instant camera. I've heard and read a number of questions about it since I started documenting myself on this, and I guess it might be worth addressing those from my own point of view/ Here are some of the questions I read or heard:
How will a new digital only viewing format ever become adopted?
That's probably the crucial question and the one that Lytro is betting the house on. There's a number of issues here. The first one is how the format will spread and be shared. I'm assuming that Lytro has tried to anticipate that with smartphone and tablet apps as well as plugins for a variety of social networks, facebook first and foremost. They're also offering hosting for the photos, which will allow them to enable the interactive viewing experience at the same time. Not sure it will work, but it could work if it feels seemless enough to the viewers. The second is will people want to interact with the pictures. That I'm less sure about. If we're talking holiday snapshots of the kids, then the answer might be yes, but by and large I suspect most people will click a couple of times to change the focus or DOF for novelty effect and then stop interacting. If that's the case then the whole point about the Lytro is actually questionable. Finally, will the images ever be anything else than files? Certainly if the Lytro is to have any future in fine arts, they will need to be, but if displaying a picture in a gallery requires an ipad, that's going to be an issue...
How will it change photography?
Assuming the Lytro enjoys a commercial success, will it change photography as we know it? My own view is that this initial camera won't and can't. Simply because at the price point it's at, it's unlikely to produce high quality pictures. There will be some severe limitations to the output and as such will not be of great interest to anyone who is serious about photography. To the average holiday shooter it might make a difference in that it will eliminate the risk of badly focused shots. If the public loves the Lytro and it's a commercial success, then we might see the emergence of higher end cameras that could actually produce high quality output and start encroaching on the territory of current photography.
Will it make every bumpkin with a Lytro think they're a pro photographer?
It might. Again though, unless the output is of amazing quality and more importantly unless processed photographs exported into traditional formats (assuming that's possible) can compete in terms of exposure, dynamic range and sharpness with good quality cameras, the public will see the difference. In fact, thinking that shooting sharp or mastering depth of field is all that distinguishes a good photographer from a casual photographer is missing the point. The Lytro won't help you frame, expose, choose your subjects or any of these skills acquired through hard work and experience. So a Lytro wielder might think it makes him more of a pro, but I doubt it'll make that much of a difference.
All in all, while I don't think this will be the revolution it's touted as, and certainly think that Lytro has an uphill commercial battle ahead, I'm still curious about the device and would love to try one. I shoot concerts, and I'd be interested to see the possibilities that this offer in post processing to rethink shots in low light where sharpness is hard to obtain and the compromises are many. I'm also curious to see what talented photographers could do with it.
But I think photographers can sleep easy. The Lytro might be an interesting development, but it's not going to rock their world for a long time to come, if at all...
Au début de cette semaine, j'ai été étonné et heureux d'apprendre que j'avais gagné la seconde place pour ma première participation à un concours de photo. J'ai soumis trois photographies au concours photo du festival Nancy Jazz Pulsations. Le NJP est un des principaux festivals de jazz en France et ils organisent un concours photo annuel dont le thème cette année était "Des Hommes et Des Cuivres".
Je n'étais pas sur place pour la remise des prix, mais d'après ma cousine Annabelle (que je remercie ici pour m'avoir indiqué le festival et être allé au vernissage à ma place) mes photos étaient parmi les seules en couleur. Subtile tactique de ma part ;-) Ci-dessous les trois photos soumises (vous pouvez cliquer dessus pour plus de détails).
Earlier this week I was stunned and thrilled to learn that I won the second place in my first ever photo contest. I submitted three photographs to the Nancy Jazz Pulsation photo contest. NJP is one of the foremost jazz festivals in France and they organise a yearly photographic contest around the festival. The theme for the photos was "Des Hommes et des Cuivres" which translates to "Men and Horns" (without the innuendo).
I wasn't on location for the award ceremony, but according to my cousin Annabelle (who deserves my thanks both for letting me know about the contest and going to the ceremony in my stead) my photos were amongst the only color shots. Subtle tactic on my part ;-) Below are the three photos I submitted (you can click on the photos for more details.)
Ever since I did my first exhibit this summer I've been wondering about prints and the best way to make them available to those who would want to purchase them. In parallel, I have also been wondering about the most interesting way to make my photos visible. I might have found a solution to both issues, although it's not quite ready yet. I launched my 500px site this week-end. 500px is a kind of Flickr with a high degree of quality and a greater emphasis on the photographic work itself. 500px also features a rudimentary blog platform, but it needs to evolve in the coming weeks. If I'm happy with the results, I might migrate this blog directly over there.
Meanwhile, I uploaded what I consider to be some of my best photos, and I activated the Fotomoto plugins which allow users to order prints wherever they are in the world. You can already if you so wish order some prints of the photos currently available on my 500px site. If you do so, please let me know and tell me what you think of the final result!
Depuis que j'ai fait mon exposition cet été, je me pose des questions sur les tirages et la meilleure manière de les rendre disponibles pour qui voudrait s'en procurer. Parallèlement je m'interroge également sur la façon la plus intéressante de rendre mes photos visibles. J'ai peut-être trouvé une solution aux deux soucis, encore qu'elle ne soit pas tout à fait prête. Je me suis lancé ce week-end sur le site 500px, une sorte de Flickr avec un plus grand degré d'exigence et une plus grande attention aux photos elle-mêmes. 500px offre une plate-forme de blog très rudimentaire mais qui doit évoluer dans les semaines à venir. Si je suis satisfait du rendu, j'envisage de migrer ce blog directement là-bas.
En attendant, j'ai mis en ligne ce que je considère comme certaines de mes meileures photos, et j'ai activé les plugin Fotomoto qui permettent d'automatiser la commande de tirages où que vous soyez dans le monde. Vous pouvez dès à présent si vous le souhaitez commander des tirages de photos qui sont disponibles sur mon site 500px. Si vous le faites, tenez moi au courant et surtout faites moi savoir ce que vous pensez du résultat final!
La plateforme Google Plus n'a que quelques mois, mais elle est déjà très populaire auprès des photographes, amateurs et professionels. Par dessein ou par accident, Google a créé un outil qui rend le visionnage, le partage et les commentaires sur les photos très facile et qui dont a naturellement été adopté très rapidement par les photographes. Je dispose de 150 invitations pour Google Plus et je propose d'en faire profiter les lecteurs d'Apprenti Photographe. Ca ne coûte rien et je pense que vous ne regretterez pas l'expérience. Just email me and you'll get an invite!
The Google Plus platform is only a few months old, but it's already very popular amongst photographers, amateurs and pros alike. By design or by accident, Google created a set of tools that really facilitate the viewing, sharing and commenting of photographs, and so naturally it was rapidly adopted by photographers. I have 150 invites to share for Google Plus and I want to get those out to readers of Apprenti Photographe. It costs nothing, and I suspect you won't regret the experience. Just email me and you'll get an invite !
J'ai réussi à obtenir une invitation pour Google Plus dans la première vague, comme quelques centaine de milliers de personnes sans doute. Mais ça manque un peu de photographes ou d'amateurs de photo à mon goût pour le moment ! S'il y en a parmi vous qui sont sur G+ et veulent m'y rejoindre, c'est très facile, il suffit d'aller voir mon stream ici et de me rejoindre.
I managed to get a Google Plus invite during the first wave, like a few hundred thousand people probably. It's lacking in photographers or photo lovers in my opinion! So if some of you on G+ want to join me, that's very easy. You just have to go to my stream here and join me!
Flattr est un nouveau service sur le web qui permet d'encourager ou de récompenser les contributeurs bénévoles de contenu qui vous intéresse. Le principe est simple: tous les mois on contribue un crédit (qui peut être au minimum de $1 je crois). Au fil du mois, on clique sur les boutons Flattr des sites qui disposent du service et dont le contenu nous plait. A la fin du mois, le montant contribué est distribué équitablement parmi tous les sites sur lesquels on a cliqué. Je me suis inscrit. Vous remarquerez donc le bouton à droite qui indique Flattr this. Il vous suffit de cliquer dessus si vous êtes inscrits à Flattr. Merci d'avance !
Flattr is a new web service that enables rewarding of free content you find interesting. The concept is simple: every month you credit a certain amount (a minimum of $1, I think). During that month, you click on Flattr enabled sites which have content you find interesting. At the end of the month the contributed amount is shared amongst all those sites you have clicked on. I've subscribed today. You will therefore notice the button on the right which indicated Flattr this. You just have to click on it if you subscribe to Flattr. Thanks in advance !
One of my early reasons for getting an ipad was the ability to load photos while preserving RAW format on the device while on the road, and also to sort through the photos and eliminate the obvious duds. I tend to be conservative during that elimination process, because the screen remains small and I'd rather keep a dud than risk eliminating a photo that has defects but can be worked on to produce something good.
Meanwhile, I've found dozens of other uses for the ipad, but one thing that didn't work for me until now was photo processing. I got a fair few photo processing apps, most of them priced at a couple of bucks, so I was willing to take risks.
The first one I got was Photogene. It was cheap, it could process RAW files (I shoot RAW only) and seemed to have a fairly full set of features for one wanting to process a photo for (say) blog publication. I used it a little, but in the end the interface wasn't that good, and more importantly I felt like it had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Things like vignette for example, need to be delicate, to the point that while it affects your perception of a picture, you don't think "ah, the corners have been darkened". With Photogene I felt like every bit of processing was visible and this simply wasn't what I was after.
Then I got Touch Up, which turned out not to be a processing tool after all, but rather a tool to do partial desaturation, and I don't like partial desaturation. Plus, my fingers simply aren't precise enough to be used as a brush to select areas to work on. I've never processed a photo with it (but I could have researched it a bit more before buying).
Recently I got PhotoForge2 on the recommendations of a friend, not realising that it was an iphone only app. Oh well.
Then came along Snapseed. Some months back I downloaded a trial of one of Nik Software's Lightroom Plugins, and I've been on their mailing list ever since (not a big deal, they don't spam, just send an occasional newsletter). That's how I heard about Snapseed. A photo processing tool for the ipad by the guys who produce the most recognized black & white processing tools in the trade seemed an interestiing proposition, and at less than 5€ I thought I needed to test it.
The experience has been mostly positive, hence my decision to post this review. I encourage you to watch this quick video to familiarise yourself with how the app works:
So, in a nutshell, here's what I think if this app:
The Good Stuff:
The interface is great: it's intuitive and easy to use, it doesn't sacrifice precision to achieve ergonomy, and most of all, it's consistent accross all modules. The notion that menu items are toggled by sliding up or down and intensity is set by adjusting left to right is extremely simple but very effective.
The processing capability is considerable: while this isn't a full substitute for Lightroom (if only because it's destructive), the ability to tweak pictures offered by Snapseed is very broad, and the functions in the first panel cover most of what you might expect from packages that come 10 to 100 times what Snapseed costs. I did miss a few explicit functions (I'll cover that in the Cons) but not many.
Control Points are awesome: One thing I didn't expect was to find features that I wish Lightroom had. Control points is one of those features. Control points is a system to do local adjustements on a picture. You place a control point in the area you want to affect, you squeeze it with your fingers to determine the area it will affect and then apply the changes in brightness, contrast and saturation you want. The control points intelligently determine what the area covers (based on color and exposure from what I could determine) and are hugely useful. One thing I always struggle with, for example, especially for concert photos, is deep shadows around the eyes. You can have a perfectly exposed face with deep shadows around the eyes. In Lightroom, burning those areas to lower the contrast between cavities and the rest of the face is pain-stakingly difficult. With control points, place the point on the eye, squeeze down the area they affect to the eye cavity, et voilà! To be honest, the coherent area selection doesn't seem to work 100% of the time, but it works often enough that it's a huge boon already.
Creative editing options are cool (if addictive): The Creative Editing options include multiple black & white options (excellent), vintage processing (emulating various non-specified flavours of old films), a series of drama options (high contrast and micro-contrast), a series of grunge tools (essentially a combination of vignette, textures and coloring), center focus (several selective focus solutions) and frames. It's a very rich set of tools although it's also a bit more directive than the basic tools.
The Stuff that Could be Improved:
You can't run a full workflow on Snapseed: There are a number of small functions that are missing from Snapseed to allow you to run a complete workflow, and it's a shame because it's not much but forces you to do some finishing touches elsewhere. Essentially, here are the three biggies: you can't see your photos at a decent size when opening the original pic (which means you need to review elsewhere before launching Snapseed), you can't resize pictures (they will be exported at the original size) and you can't watermark.
The app doesn't view or carry accross EXIF information: This is a really annoying omission for an app that otherwise targets serious photographers.
A few basic editing functions are missing: Some of the functions that you would expect to see in a high-end processing tool (and again, that's what Snapseed is, despite the low price tag) are missing. The three I came accross were vignetting, sharpening and noise reduction. The first two exist as components of pre-sets in the creative editing options, but you can't control their application. The last one isn't there at all, as far as I can see.
Too much randomness in texture options: Texture options (in Vintage or Grunge) are all applied randomly or sequentially, but you have limited control and replicability there. This is an issue because it makes it hard to really think of them as part of the creative process. Looking at the photos in the Snapseed group on Flickr, I see that many have had the same issue I had: you just use them by default, because you can. I forced myself to stop, but I can see this becoming another HDR: an interesting technique that is used by default and mars more pictures that it enhances. Can't really blame Snapseed for that, I guess, but something to keep in mind nonetheless.
Few frame options, all funky: There are few frame options, and none of them are clean. It doesn't seem like it would be complicated to simply allow you to do a clean black or white (or whatever color) frame...
One issue with editing photos on the ipad is that because it's strongly backlit, the screen is a lot more luminous than most computer screens. As a consequence, photos that can seem adequately bright on the ipad turn out to be underexposed when viewed on any other screen. One suggestion for the Photogene people is to maybe offer an option at the end of the workflow to correct exposure based on the ipad's brightness before export...
Overall, my Snapseed experience is very positive. For the first time, I've processed photos on the ipad that stand on their own without me thinking "I need to process that again in Lightroom as soon as I'm home..." This app is very promising, and provided future versions integrate a few changes to allow the whole workflow to be done on-app, it could completely change my own habits for photo processing (to tell you the truth, I've already wondered how I should proceed to shift some of the old RAW files on my computer back onto the ipad...)
