petebrunelli

Tag: photography

  • Street Photography isn’t always on the street

    [This post was drafted in early 2024. As of December 2025 I have cleaned it up and added a bit of new information with the intention of writing a Part II with comparison images]

    Three things that defined my childhood were Music, Radio, and Photography. This was almost completely due to the influence of my father and my grandfather. My grandfather had started in photography in the 1920’s, developing his own roll film and making prints in a home darkroom. He started by installing electrical extensions in homes where the only electrical was one plug in the parlor. Later he worked as a projectionist, and then he started a “mom and pop” Radio, TV and Appliance store. It was literally mom and pop as he ran it with my grandmother. As a result our home was littered with radios and electronics. I started with a little transistor AM radio and unwittingly got into AM DX as I followed Boston Red Sox games while they were on the road.

    Another thing my grandfather had was a darkroom. He picked up photography as a young man and that carried on to my father and then to me. I learned how to develop black and white film, and got to spend time in the darkroom learning to make basic prints. My grandfather started out on something like a Kodak Brownie but quickly switched to 35mm roll film cameras like the affordable Argus C-line. Both my grandfather and my father were low-tech photographers. An internal light meter was a luxury! As such, I was given a Yashica Lynx rangefinder with a dodgy shutter and broken meter as my first real camera. Little did I know I was learning Shutter Priority mode as only the 1/30, 60, and 125 shutter settings seemed to work. Later on I scraped together the cash for an Olympus OM-G and had a SLR with a working shutter and light meter! What joy.

    I’ll be the first to admit that I had no style as a photographer. It took me a long time to get beyond snapshots. It wasn’t until I started using a digital camera that I had the kind of immediate feedback I needed. That’s not much as admissions go but I learned a lot about what kinds of processes I feel engaged with. In music I prefer live performance where the feedback is immediate, and similarly with amateur radio. But it was digital photography where I could have the immediate feedback while using a camera. I think my first digital camera was a Nikon point and shoot. It was poor on specs but a fun camera anyhow. I went through various compact (cheap) digital cameras and then I got a used Nikon APS-C DX format DSLR camera (D50, D200, D300). Those were very good cameras and relatively affordable. I shot with those cameras for years. They were bulky and heavy, but very reliable. Looking for something lighter led me to the Olympus Micro Four Thirds system. These cameras had a good sensor with a 50% crop factor (20mm lens is equivalent to 40mm on a 35mm full-frame sensor. The compact size and relative affordability was reminiscent of why I was drawn to the Olympus 35mm film cameras 30 years earlier. They were small, light, capable, and had excellent lenses.

    I’d say the lens selection for m4/3 is as good any any camera system in production, with the exception of the Nikon F-Mount system. Even the plastic-ish kit lenses are sharp and bright, if not especially fast. The sensors are not great at high ISO, but the in-body image stabilization (IBIS) is among the best available. I shoot almost entirely handheld so this is a huge benefit. I can run longer shutter speeds and keep the ISO lower. After a trying a few other lenses my main setup has been a Olympus EM-1 MK-II with the 14-40mm and 40-150mm PRO zoom lenses. They fit perfectly in a Think Tank sling bag and cover everything I need in focal length with a constant f/2.8 aperture. Compared to my Nikon gear the Oly setup was lighter, more versatile, shot better video, and the lenses were as good an anything I used from Nikon. That bag has traveled the world with me and I took a lot of good photos with it.

    And then a funny thing happened… I shot some film with my trusty Olympus 35SP rangefinder. I was back to a fixed lens camera with a 42mm f/1.7 lens, almost exactly the focal length I used in my old Yashica. Sure, film is getting nothing but more expensive and processing is eye-watering costly, but the feel of a simple camera with a “normal lens” was immensely satisfying.

    I picked up a used Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 “pancake lens” to use on my Olympus, and while I loved the images I could never be friends with the slow autofocus in low light. It isn’t a great performer on Panasonic/Lumix cameras, but it gets even worse when that lens is mounted on a non-Panasonic camera. But the idea was set.

    Meanwhile I was also reviewing thousands of images in my Adobe Lightroom library and doing a lot of culling. Digital has the advantage of letting me make a lot of exposures without fearing the time and cost of processing, but that also means I have a trove of bad images in there. As soon as I started that project I was confronted with the reality that I wasn’t happy with a lot of my images, even the technically solid ones. doing a review of 20 years worth of digital images is a great way to take a step back and think about what you really want out of photography. Sure, there are the travel photos, the special moments with loved ones, the special places and faces. Of course that is essential and something I would not change. But there are also many times when I was using those nice zoom lenses and the results were not great.

    So I did two things: I put that 20mm Panny onto my EM-1 and started shooting with it again; and I started looking at fixed lens compacts. The Panny is as I remember it. It makes beautiful images, but as soon as the light dims the autofocus heads for the exits. I loved the compact feel of ditching the big zoom for a pancake lens, and I loved the way it brought my focus back to the composition instead of “zoom to compose”.

    On the search for a compact camera there were a few options that rose to the surface immediately: Fujifilm rangefinder style compacts with the X100v sitting at the top of the heap; The Sony RX-100 VII with insane autofocus and exposure capability and a superzoom lens; Canon G series camera of which I have owned a few and like them; and this oddball camera from Ricoh called the GR III. I had seen the GR before, and I knew Ricoh because my dad had a Ricoh 35mm SLR that used Pentax K-mount lenses. The Ricoh full manual SLR was about the least expensive point of entry into 35mm SLR in the 70’s and into the 80’s. It was even cheaper than the Pentax K-1000, the cockroach of the camera world (durability and ubiquity, not revulsion).

    Any research into the Ricoh GR III immediately brings you into the world of street photography because it combines a 24mp full frame sensor and excellent image quality with a pocket sized basic-black point and shoot that looks like a toy. On the street this is akin to a secret weapon where you look like a clueless tourist but you are getting the good stuff. Subjects who might recoil at the sight of a “real” camera just go about their business when you point this little chunk of camera at them. It is also seen as a good alternative to the “unobtanium” status of the Fuji X100-V, a camera in low supply commanding twice it’s sticker price. The Fuji is a great tool, though it isn’t actually compact like “in your pocket” compact. Styling-wise it is a dead-ringer for the rangefinder classics of the 50’s through the 70’s, which I love. Sadly it also has a certain hipster cachet that has helped pump up the street price. The list price is about $1300 USD but finding one for under $2000 is rare. Also, at that $2k+ point many photographers start looking at Leica as an option, as opposed to looking for cheaper alternatives.

    At the end my decision came down to the Sony RX100 vs the Ricoh GR. Simply, the Fuji wasn’t small enough and the Canon wasn’t going to give me the image quality I wanted. The Sony is an excellent camera and I have pixel-peeped some raw files and I think it is the best 1″ sensor camera out there, but one of my goals was to make a step up from the IQ of the 20mp Micro 4/3 sensor in the Olympus. It’s not that the Oly is bad, it is actually a great sensor and Olympus packages it with great technology and lens selection. The problem I have is the resolution/look for the actual digital negatives. I shoot in RAW+JPG and edit my RAW files in Adobe Lightroom (actually now Luminar Neo). The Olympus RAWs are just what you would want. They can take a lot of manipulation and hold up great to any kind of preset edits. It turns out that I’m not a true “pixel peeper” but I found some of the Oly images wanting.

    So that leaves the Ricoh, and I decided that the GR IIIx was the way to go. I like shooting wide, and I can see where a pure street photographer could make use of the extra width of the 28mm GR III even just for some wiggle room on framing/cropping when shooting from the hip. But I wanted to go back to the boring days of a fixed normal lens and the IIIx is the best option for me.

    About two months later I was in a local (since closed) camera shop, yes a real camera shop, and they had a Sony RX-100VA for a very good price. After not much thought I purchased the Sony and now have a little competition going on.

    In the next post I’ll put together a mini review and my first impressions. Thanks for reading. P

  • RIP ISO?

    Digital cameras have become ubiquitous, to the point where it is almost impossible to be somewhere out of reach of someone’s camera. It has reached the point where Panasonic has announced a cellular phone with a 1″ sensor camera (actually, a camera with a GSM chipset), replete with Zeiss optics. Whether that appeals to you or not it is a sign of the widespread commodification of technology that was only available in specialized camera gear just a few years ago.

    With that backdrop it has become truly rare to see an advance that changes your mind about where the technology will be in two years from now. For me, that happened when I watched this video:

    Nice video, yes. But it was shot on a Sony A7s mirrorless camera, with a full moon as its only light source. Yes, f/1.4 optics and dizzying ISO numbers are employed. The author states that the bulk of the video, apart from the opening two scenes were shot at 1/30th, f/1.4, ISO 12,800 (I’m assuming that 1/30th is based on 30fps video). That is “bonkers” as we say in my neck of the woods.

    Sony release their own video showing a dawn campfire scene, with similar dropping of jaws:

    “Bonkers” aside, it points to a benchmark for the next generation of sensors that will be in cameras like my Oly E-M10, and not just in a $2500 USD Sony body. Not that $2500 is astronomical money. You would spend much more on the pro offerings from Nikon or Canon, and the good folks at Leica will gladly take 8,000 Tricky Dick Fun Bucks in exchange for a bare M8 body. None of those cameras will do what the A7s does in this video. The implications of this kind of high-ISO performance: Setting Auto ISO with an upper limit of 12,800 and actually using it, not paying a brutal price in terms of noise and digital “grain”, and not needing a shutter speed that would make Edward Weston weak in the knees… That is where this video points.

    And as nerdly as that idea is, it has real implications for those of us who shoot primarily in available light. I might shoot with flash once a year. Maybe not even once a year. So rarely, in fact, that I started practicing with a flash for no reason other than I didn’t want to completely forget how to use one. It has implications for me personally as I shake down my E-M10 and compare images to both the geyser of images on the internet taken with similar mirrorless systems, and my archive of images taken with my Nikon D300.

    Every camera system is a web of trade-offs. Your parameters are physical size, resolution, focus speed, max shutter speed, low light performance and other dynamic range considerations, firmware/processing/raw specs, and overall ergonomics. I’m sure there are more but those are the big ones that come to mind. Accessory issues like lens selection, flash system, compatibility with legacy lenses… those also play a part. But if you shoot in low light and want to be able to use normal shutter speeds without suffering with noisy images, then you really care about dynamic range and noise, and as long as you get a few good lenses you can call it a day.

    So there it is. Sony, the company known for horrible user interfaces, worse software, and even worse tech choices (minidisc, beta-max…) kicks sand in the face of the cool kids over at Nikon, Canon, and Leica. Sure, those guys all use some of Sony’s sensors. But they don’t have this kind of performance. I give them  a huge amount of credit, maybe enough to put their camera on my wish list (I still have PTSD from some earlier Sony purchases).

  • How big is Micro-Four-Thirds?

    I began to share my experiences with my Olympus OM-D E-M10 in two previous posts. The transitions from my Nikon APS-C gear has been a mixed bag. Technically it has been fairly easy. Artistically it has been more challenging.

    My expectation was that the steepest part of the learning curve would be adapting my Nikon routine to a new system. And sure, the Olympus menu system is different, and in some ways more complicated/arcane. That turned out to be  a one time thing. How often do you really rework your everyday settings? For me, not often. I now know the Olympus menus well enough to get what I need most of the time. I have been thrown off a few times but once you remember that all the time/bulb/comp modes are in the manual shutter settings it solves most of those problems too.

    The real joyride has been artistic, with a side of camera capability. The photos from the Olympus have a different look. The exposure curve is different. It does not demand a maniacal devotion to underexposure the way the Nikon does. I don’t think I ever intentionally used a positive exposure compensation on the Nikon. That would be suicide in anything other than deep overcast conditions. You would be asking for a world of blown highlights.

    Conversely the Olympus seems to have broader latitude, and a more accurate matrix metering system. There is a caveat: areas of high tone seem to block up without being clipped. If I am shooting an area of white, like clouds or sea foam, the image will lose detail in that bright zone.

    the SABINO, Mystic, Connecticut

    Here is a photo of the steamboat Sabino. The image is not overexposed, but the chine of the hull is lacking detail. It doesn’t look awful, but it does lack depth. This would not have happened with my D300.

    On the other hand, I took a few images at an indoor farm market, under mixed lighting, where I was not expecting much and the result is:

    Wild Mushrooms, Matane Public Market

    Beautifully saturated colors and crisp detail, without having to resort to much in the way of post-processing. That is the kind of image that has kept my D300 in the bag.

    The difference between my two systems reminds me of the differences between color print films, or color transparency films. You liked Kodak, or Fuji. You probably did not like both. With DSLR you probably fall in with Nikon or Canon. I think of Nikon as Kodak and Canon as Fuji. You get more pop and saturation out of the Canon. You get a warmer, natural image out of the Nikon. If that is the case, then the Olympus is leaning more toward Canon. The images out of the camera look amazing. Sure, the M43 systems give up some resolution, and the images seem a little noisier. But the combination of the glass, sensor and firmware combines to generate some extremely pleasing images.

    Speaking of glass, I sprung for a Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens and it is very nice. Sure, the automatic focus can be glacial, and the manual focus control feels like a greasy zoom control. However, the images are very good, very flat (in terms of distortion) and the focus speed only becomes an issue in low light. In combination with the OM-D it is a lot like shooting with my old Oly 35SP rangefinder: light, fast, crisp, and easy. What it leaves me wanting is a real old-school manual focus control, and having the aperture on the lens barrel would be cool too. At least I know what I want out of my next fast prime.

  • A tip of the hat to Olivier Longuet

    I have been taking photographs about as long as I have been playing music, which is a long time… about back to age 8 or 9.  My father and grandfather were amateur photographers with a darkroom in the basement for black and white processing and printing.  For my grandfather it goes back to the early days of photography, and the economic realities of the day.  The day was, more specifically, the Great Depression. Photography was not inexpensive, but if you developed your own film and printed your own photos, you could do it on a budget.  Later on, in the days after WWII, my father had more of a tolerance for the cost of commercial processing, but was still a rabid economizer.  I learned film processing, use of a changing bag for loading tanks without a darkroom, and basic processing.  That is not unrelated to my interest in both chemistry and cooking!  It is all a matter of recipes and knowing what is actually going on in the process.

    Music was a little different, but my dad had a few el-cheapo stringed instruments like a ukelele and a tenor guitar (Zim-Gar!!!).  The tenor was my favorite.  I was not tuning it in fifths (it was meant to be tuned like a tenor-banjo), but EADG, like a bass.  When I got my first guitar, a nylon string folk guitar, I played that the same way… picking out bass lines on the low strings, chunking through some basic open chords, and baffled by the asymmetrical B string!  One day a friend of my dad’s saw me playing and basically told him: “Paul, I hate to tell you this, but your son is a bass player.”  That was that.  By the time I was 13 I had a really awful Fender P copy (a Memphis… ugh), with a bad neck and worse electronics.   I ripped the frets out of within a year and that was all she wrote.  I have been playing bass since… over 34 years now, which is mind boggling.

    Which is a long way of saying that music and photography are two constants in the way I approach the world.

    As a result I always bring a camera to gigs, and if I am lucky I find a balance in time to perform music and time to capture images.  At an event like the NHIC Verge-Fest back in April of 2011 I was in charge of running sound, and had plenty of time to concentrate on photography.  At an event like Rochefort en Accords I had no balance.  It was 95% music music music… and then the time for an occasional snapshot opportunity.  The goal was purely that of capturing a few snaps as “souvenir”, in the true French meaning of “memory” or “memento”.  I am glad I did, because I would not have the great image of Charly Doll stoking the charcoal grill with a hairdryer!  …or the murky images from Charly’s bonfire, or the beer-tent party after the Friday rain-out at Rochefort, or the iPhone panorama of the school kids, or Nini Dogskin practicing the Saxhorn… and so many more.  See the Flickr set HERE.

    A Rochefort I was surrounded by a bevy of fantastic musicians, and it was all I could do to keep up.  World class singers, songwriters, instrumentalists, and solo performers, all opening themselves up to what other musicians had to share.  I also met a few people who were putting all their energies into making images.  Christian Duchesnay and Olivier Longuet were the two I saw the most often.  Chris was the official photographer of the festival, and Olivier was working for himself.  Photography is different from music in many ways, but one difference that is central to this observation is that you have no idea what the photographer’s images will look like until you see them.  I can tell a few things about musicians by their gear, their mode of dress, and maybe their “entourage”, before hearing them play.  With a photographer you only see the person with a camera and think “nice camera” or “nice lenses” or something like that.

    After I returned from Rochefort I saw some of the work of these photographers.  I believe that I have yet to see ChrisD’s complete work from the festival, but I have seen a good selection of what Olivier was up to.  Wow… the guy is very very good.  He has a few images featuring yours-truly, but to be honest they are not the best of his images.  I am flattered and also honored to be in the frame.  The extra added bonus from Rochefort, as if I needed one, is that in addition to the influence of the great musicians I worked with, I have this influence on the photographic side.  I will keep adding links as I find more stuff on the interwebs.  Right now there are a lot of small collections on Facebook, but I am not linking to those here.

    LINKS:

    Solong’s Photographies

    Chris-D Website

    Chris-D outtakes at Poudriere Blog

    The Poudriere is a facility across the road from the Clos in Rochefort, and is the site of a really great selection of music events.

  • Misquamicut Beach

     

    Misquamicut HDR, originally uploaded by petebrunelli.

    A High Dynamic Range (HDR) image taken at Misquamicut Beach this winter. HDR is a process where a range of exposures are combined to create an image with broader dynamic range than any one of the source images. Using Aperture Priority and exposure bracketing (changing apertures to alter the exposure will create perspective changes, so you fix the aperture and use varying shutter speeds). Many cameras have a bracketing feature. I’ve used the Canon G10 and Nikon D300 with success. Faster shot-to-shot speeds can make for better HDR because there will be less movement between shots, like the waves in this image. I might have avoided blowing out the sun area if I had gone with a 5-shot bracket, which might be -2, -1, 0 +1 and +2 stops. This was a 3-shot, -1, 0 and +1, and i often use exposure compensation to keep the 0 frame where I want it (no blowouts on either end of the histogram). This was handheld, and the HDR software (Photomatix) handled the alignment.