pincushion distortion on long-focus lenses of telephoto
configuration.
Every lens manufacturer sets its own minimum image
quality acceptance standards. Higher prices often mean
stricter quality control, so to satisfy the critical demands
likely to be made of you, it is sensible not to economize in
this area.
SPECIALIST
HARDWARE FOR
IMAGE CAPTURE
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3
RECORDING MEDIUMS:
FILM VERSUS DIGITAL
The era of high quality digital imaging has now well and truly
dawned and digital imaging has become the mainstream
alternative to film and, in some areas, the dominant
alternative. It is an area that all practicing photographers will
be addressing seriously, if they have not already done so. The
aim of this chapter is to clarify and lay bare the facts of
traditional silver halide photography in comparison with
those of modern digital technology.
Both film and digital image capture share many common
characteristics. Both record light reflections received at the
image plane onto a light-sensitive medium, with the objective
of reproduction at some later stage. While the eventual
output can appear very similar, the routes to achieve it are
technologically quite different. The silver halide technology
of traditional photography produces an analogue, con-
tinuous tone image where quality is limited by the grain size
of the individual halide crystals. Digital images, by compar-
ison, are electronically created, stepped-tone images based on
the binary digital system where ‘0’ is black and ‘1’ is white, in
its simplest form. An image is recorded as a framework of
millions of ‘pixels’: the smallest distinct units, or picture
elements, of a digital image that are encoded with the varying
intensities of the colours red, green and blue that make up the
image.
Being well versed in the practical aspects of film
technology, as most of us are, this section will feature Ashley
Morrison, a photographer with several years practical experi-
ence of shooting interiors digitally. He runs an extremely
successful business, working for interior magazines, top
companies, advertising agencies and design groups. Ninety-
nine per cent of his work is shot digitally and he has no regrets
over making the transition from film-based photography.
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Ashley Morrison
Ashley Morrison runs AMP Studios with two associates in
the beautiful countryside of Northern Ireland. Three-quarters
of his work is shot on location and much of this is interiors
work for the magazine and commercial markets. Until two
years ago, most of his work was shot on a medium-format
Hasselblad system using conventional film.
Jumping in at the deep end, Ashley was the first UK
photographer to buy the MegaVision T32, a three-shot area
array back using the Philips 2k × 3k chip. The chip is rated at
ISO 32 and an exposure is made through each of the RGB
filters in turn, taking about 8 seconds. While designed
primarily as a medium- and large-format studio back, the
T32 can also be converted to a portable digital camera using
an adaptor plate and 35 mm SLR lenses. This goes some way
to overcoming the problem of wide-angle digital photog-
raphy resulting from the small size of the chip (the size of a
35 mm film frame) relative to the covering power of lenses
designed for medium and large formats. For interior location
work, Ashley found that a Nikon 18 mm lens on the T32
actually gave him a wider field of view than the 40 mm lens
on the Hasselblad. A degree of shift could also be employed
using the Nikon 28 mm and 35 mm shift lenses.
Two years on and the T32 is now studio bound, sitting
on a 5 in × 4 in Horseman, and largely used for pack shots.
Ashley found the three-shot system good in quality but
RECORDING
MEDIUMS: FILM
VERSUS DIGITAL
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Figure 3.1 Ashley Morrison, digital
interior photographer (photo copyright:
AMP Studios)
difficult and frustrating to work with on location: nothing
must move between exposures (not even trees blowing in the
wind outside the window) and the natural light must remain
constant. If the sun went behind the clouds between the three
exposures, he had to start again. For his location work, the
T32 has been replaced by the Phase One H20: a single capture
digital back that creates high quality 48 Mb files from its
16 megapixel Kodak chip (36.9 mm × 36.9 mm in size). Rated
at ISO 100 it can cope with long exposures of up to 16 seconds
if required, producing massive files that can ‘give a 5 in × 4 in
tranny a good run for its money’. The H20 back is connected
to a G3/500 PowerBook laptop computer with an internal CD
writer, which enables the client to go away with all the images
on CD at the end of the shoot if required. Under less rushed
circumstances, Ashley prefers to view the images on the
21-inch screen back at the studio for fine adjustments in
Photoshop before handing over the images.
A big bonus with digital, Ashley finds, is in the lighting.
First, he can make white-balance adjustments to eliminate
colour casts from artificial light sources, completely doing
away with the need for a colour meter and any colour
RECORDING
MEDIUMS: FILM
VERSUS DIGITAL
Figure 3.2 Ashley Morrison working
on location with the Phase One H20
digital back connected to a laptop
computer (photo copyright: AMP
Studios)
correction or compensation filters. Second, to overcome the
problem of lighting difficult areas, he can shoot a series of
shots, lighting each area separately and bringing them together
in Photoshop. Being careful not to move the camera, change
the aperture or point of focus, he can adjust exposure for
different parts of the image by changing the shutter speed. He
can even place lights in the middle of the frame if necessary,
so long as he has taken a shot with the light out of frame on
a different exposure. A copy and paste operation in Photoshop
stitches the separate elements back into a coherent whole.
Despite the smaller image area of the CCD chip (than the
6 cm × 6 cm format of roll film), Ashley and his colleagues
find that the standard Hasselblad lenses (the widest being the
40 mm) give sufficiently good coverage 95 per cent of the
time. For the other 5 per cent he uses a Horseman DigiFlex II,
which is effectively a 35 mm SLR camera body exclusively
designed to take high-end digital backs and Nikon F-mount
lenses, thereby making full use of the covering power of the
wide-angle lenses available. With the DigiFlex II, Ashley uses
a series of 35 mm SLR Nikon lenses, ranging from the widest
at 18 mm to the 35 mm shift lens. The 28 mm shift lens yields
excellent results, and is often used when joining two or more
images together.
In common with most interior and architectural photog-
raphers, Ashley believes in maintaining the verticality of the
camera back to avoid the problem of diverging verticals from
pointing the camera down slightly. If, however, the camera
has to be tilted, he would correct it later in Photoshop using
the ‘skew’ tool.
Finally, what Ashley sees as possibly the biggest advan-
tage of digital over film is that he gets to see exactly what he
has shot in a matter of seconds after exposing the image: no
more guesswork or reliance on Polaroids! He supplies the
client with CMYK or RGB files, along with ‘proof’ or
‘match’ inkjet prints.
A summary of the equipment that Ashley currently uses
is listed below:
Location system.
Cameras:
two Hasselblad 553s and a 503 body with 40, 50, 60,
80, 120, 150 and 250 mm CFi lenses;
Horseman DigiFlex II with 18, 24, 28 shift, 35 shift, 50,
55 macro, 85, 135 mm Nikon manual lenses;
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VERSUS DIGITAL
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Figure 3.3 (facing page) A fine
example of digital work by Ashley
Morrison with the Phase One H20.
Notice the sharp detail throughout the
full depth of the image (photo
copyright: AMP Studios)
. has no regrets
over making the transition from film-based photography.
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INTERIOR
PHOTOGRAPHY
31
Ashley Morrison
Ashley Morrison runs AMP Studios. but
RECORDING
MEDIUMS: FILM
VERSUS DIGITAL
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Figure 3.1 Ashley Morrison, digital
interior photographer (photo copyright:
AMP