The Rainbow Girl (Ricoh GXR Part III)

Lately I've been blathering on about how much I love black-and-white—and I do, I do—and I know I said just a couple of days ago that I'd probably shoot only black-and-white with the Ricoh GXR I'm trying.

But, to misquote auld Rabbie Burns, The best-laid plans o' Mikes and men / Oft go awry*. Reality has a way of wagging its finger at you when you try to get all doctrinaire and purist with your photo technique. Yesterday we had our annual neighborhood block party, thanks to the yeoman efforts of our neighbors and most excellent hosts Bill and Peggy Macgregor (whose house, as it happens, was behind the streetlight in my picture "Wisconsin #7," TOP's very first print sale offer from way back in '06). They put on a relaxed and enjoyable party, not a trivial matter with 40 or 50 people attending.

As they do every year (thanks guys), the Waukesha Fire Department showed up to let the kids douse each other with the hose from a pump truck.

And some pictures just don't cut it in black-and-white...

...Even I know enough to shoot this in color. I don't actually know whose child this is, so I don't know her name. It sure looks like she's found the proverbial end of the rainbow though, doesn't it? Two of them, in fact. By rights, there should be pots of gold about even with her feet to her right and her left.

A few user details, for those expecting a review: The GXR handled focus pretty well (only a few frames lost) although, like most compacts, it's pretty deliberate in terms of speed. It focuses "carefully," is how I might put it—not fast, not too slow—and there's a short but distinct lag as it writes the RAW file to the card. So you're not going to be rattling off any quick bursts in RAW mode.

It's funny, but I absolutely love compacts...up until the time I need to shoot in earnest. As soon as I saw the firehose get going I knew I had on my hands what is known as "a photo opportunity," and when the old instincts kick in and you go into coverage mode, concentrating 100% on shooting, that's when you wish the GXR would magically transform itself into a D3s or something. (No helpful leprechaun in that rainbow in that regard.)

On the good side of the ledger, the annual block party is a killer for scene contrast—lesser digicams do not cut the midday sun and shade, something I can attest to from experience. And the GXR does unusually well in that regard for a compact. It seems to like to keep the histogram "exposed to the right," which is quite helpful, and shadow recovery is good if you want it. And I haven't done a thing with different RAW converters yet—haven't even loaded the Ricoh software, whatever it might be, on to the computer yet.

Our dashing local teachers
Then, earlier today, I got a chance to use the GXR to do a quick portrait of my wonderful neighbors Rose and Pete Lange, dressed to kill and off to a wedding. (We arranged this yesterday at the block party.)

Rose and Pete, who live in the house down by the corner and have three sons, are both local teachers—art and music, respectively. The vintage Miata (a 1990 NA) isn't actually theirs. They have a sweet arrangement with a friend who goes away on vacation around this time every year—they water his flowers for him while he's gone, and he lets them borrow his Miata. Pete provided the stepladder, and I made a dozen or so quick shots before they hit the road. Elapsed travel delay, less than five minutes.

This shot works equally well in either color or black-and-white, and I might have to try it both ways before deciding which way to print it. I suspect it might make a prettier print in black-and-white.

But I have to admit, one more time, that there's something fundamentally unsatisfactory to me about shooting a digital camera in black-and-white mode. It doesn't matter what you can do with the file, it matters what's in your head—and I've always found (this is just me, now) that I see how a camera sees. When I'm shooting black-and-white film and have no option available to me, I visualize in black-and-white. And I find that very satisfying. (I would have shot the rainbow girl differently with B&W film, concentrating more on her and her gestures and ignoring the rainbow.) And when I'm shooting with a digital camera that sees color, I see in color. I'm not saying that's good or bad, and I'm certainly not saying it's something anyone else should or shouldn't do. It's just the way reality happens to be for me.

The GXR did just fine for this portrait. Exposure comp was easy to access and the file will make a dandy print, I'm sure. This, naturally, is another shot that needs to be bigger than you see it here, because of course what the viewer of the print will want to see are Rose and Pete's smilin' mugs.

Now farewell light, thou sunshine bright, and all beneath the sky!**

Mike

*Yes, I know, the old Scots is "gang aft agley," but "agley" means "awry," and you have to be Scottish know what "agley" means nowadays. If they even do, I dunno—would someone from Scotland chime in on that, please?

**Burns again....

The stuff I've been using:

Ricoh GXR body shell
A12 33mm (50mm-e) ƒ/2.5 macro module
A12 18.3mm (28mm-e) ƒ/2.8 module (all shots in this post)
VF-2 external LCD electronic viewfinder

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by John Roberts: "Although the Ricoh GXR doesn't interest me in the least as a prospective purchase, I have really enjoyed this series of reviews. I appreciate that you've been taking the kinds of photos most people would take when trying out a new camera instead of the usual brick walls, studio set-ups, and 'artsy' subjects. To me, the kinds of photos you've included in this review tell me more of what I want to know than the usual fare included with many camera reviews."

Mike replies: Glad you're enjoying it, John. I figured only a minority would be actually considering this camera, so I'd better try to make the posts at least pleasant to read for those who aren't.

P.S. I don't do artsy, I do lifesy.

Featured Comment by Dave Stewart: "One thing that makes me see differently when shooting B&W film is the yellow filter!

Mike replies: Yes, I always shot with SLRs and K2 filters in my day, too. For those who haven't: imagine looking at the world through yellow sunglasses. It does tend to help you ignore colors.

...And I suppose I should add, for those who wonder why in the heck someone would do that: colored filters can change the spectral response of black-and-white film; they tend to lighten their own color and darken their opposite. With older films especially, which didn't have very natural spectral response (they tended to be less sensitive at the red end of the spectrum), yellow filters were considered to be normalizing, making a rendition that was closer to how the mind perceives values. I always liked the medium yellow filter (Wratten #8, Kodak K2) because it tended to make caucasian skin tones smoother and de-emphasize (reddish) blemishes, and it darkened blue skies and brought more tonal gradation out of "white" clouds. Orange and red filters did the same only more so—red filters are how Ansel got his tradmark "black" blue skies, visible for instance in his picture "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome." The only thing you had to look out for was large areas of open shade (the shade of a big tree on a bright sunny day, for instance) because open shade infills with blue light from the sky without the balancing white light from the sun, and the yellow filter makes blue go darker. So sometimes open shade areas could be too dark. I think Ansel talks about forgetting about this when he was photographing a craggy cliffside with an orange filter—he'd chosen the filter for the sky and forgot that it would make the shadowed areas on the rock face too empty. That's a long-ago memory, so I could be wrong. I would imagine it's in the book Examples.

Comments

[Herman]

In regards to how one views a scene when shooting with either color or black and white film, when I shoot in black and white, I think of lines. When I shoot in color (rather rarely), I think in terms of areas.

[a scotsman]

Please - "gang aft agley" - and yes, we do....

[Bruce]

My home town, Dunedin, New Zealand, has a large statue of one Robbie Burns in its central Octagon. We learnt several of his poems by heart, together with Scots accent, ( NOT Scotch accent!!), although we learned your line as "gang aft a-gley" . No, we didn't know what it meant either !!!!

[Alex Vesey]

Mike,
This is a bit of a tangent but your discussion of B&W and color images raises a question for me, and this is the best site I know to ask it.

I am in the process of creating a web site of images (objectives: non-sales for the moment, just personal expression and sharing with others), and I will be posting both b&w and color images My question is:
Is it preferable for gallery comment to be determined primarily by content/theme/ genre and thus both kinds of images may appear side by side, or is it better to separate b&w and color images into different sub-galleries, even if they are very similar in content?

I realize this is largely a matter of personal preference, but in my limited experience with photo books and exhibitions, it seems b&w and color are treated separately.

Perhaps a discussion of "display methods and reasons" might make an interesting topic, as the choice would certainly affect the way we see individual images in the display.

As always, thanks for the quality of the site.

Alex

[Mike Johnston]

"Please - 'gang aft agley'"

Whoops--thanks--I knew I had that wrong.

Mike

[Jessica Sweeney]

Fun portrait. Great angle to shoot from. I'm sure they're extremely happy with it.

[Mike Johnston]

"My question is: Is it preferable for gallery comment to be determined primarily by content/theme/ genre and thus both kinds of images may appear side by side, or is it better to separate b&w and color images into different sub-galleries, even if they are very similar in content?"

I'm very firm in my opinion that they should be kept separate. They're very different media to me, and I am seldom convinced by presentations that mix the two--in fact I'll even say I see it most often as a mark of amateurism. (With the caveat that I stand ready to be convinced otherwise by exceptions.)

Others may well differ in their opinions but my own mind is very clear about this one.

Mike

[Mike Johnston]

"Fun portrait. Great angle to shoot from. I'm sure they're extremely happy with it."

Thanks Jessica. They haven't see it yet! I posted this at 4:00 and took the picture at about 12:30. I told them it would be on the web when they got home--I'm looking forward to finding out what they think of it.

Mike

[Ed Kirkpatrick]

Hey, how's that K5 working out too...?

[McPhailure]

Mike you seem to have a real nice neighbourhood there....
But about the Rabbie Burns stuff - we try to keep up, but nowadays that's mostly us oldies, and those who annually attend Burns Suppers.
If you want to dazzle your friends with your command of old Scots words, I recommend Betty Kirkpatrick who regularly covers such arcana in this online newspaper http://heritage.caledonianmercury.com/author/brendan/

Cheers - enjoy your ramblings.......

[David Dyer-Bennet]

The problem with your use of the Burns quote, as I see it, is that the alteration of the second half (to something that sounds similar to the original and means about the same in modern English), and the clever deliberate change in the first half of "mice and men" to "Mikes and men", fight with each other. With BOTH halves different, it rather damages the effect.

I think the Burns quote is famous enough to leave in the original. If nothing else, Google will instantly tell you what he said and what it meant, if you don't already know.

[Stuart Borland]

'Agley' means wrong in old Scots. Not a Burns scholar but I am very familiar with his work and my own native tongue. I live half an hour from the town of Ayr where Burns was born and brought up.

[Miserere]

Mike, I hope this is a silly question: Have you updated the firmware on the GXR and its lensors (yes, they have their own firmware). I ask because I shot with the GXR for one whole day with the original firmware and the AF was terrible. When I got home I updated to the latest firmware and the AF performance improved enormously (and I am not exaggerating).

[Mike Johnston]

Miserere,
I should check, I guess, but I'm assuming the camera has the latest firmware--the camera is on loan from Ricoh Japan and just arrived here on Thursday last.

Mike

[Randolph]

"It's funny, but I absolutely love compacts...up until the time I need to shoot in earnest."

The "killer app" for compacts is focus speed. Could be that Olympus has finally licked that one.

We'll see...

[Joe]

I shot B&W exclusively for almost 20 years (Tri-X 400 mostly) but once I went digital, like you, Mike, I just saw in color. On a digital camera, B&W feels like a photoshop trick — though in the right hands, it's gorgeous.

[John Camp]

About the display of color and B&W separately...I agree with Mike. Color is simply too powerful, whether or not it's any good. If you put color and B&W next to each other, the B&W looks weak, even if it isn't. It's like having a flat panel TV, tuned to Fox News, hanging on a wall next to a Monet. Quality is trumped by jazziness.

[Will Whitaker]

The worst thing I can do is to carry both color and black & white film in the same bag. It's one or the other; if I'm given the choice, then I can't see at all.

[robert e]

I agree--a wonderful, fun portrait of a dashing couple!

[Neil]

I agree entirely about needing to visualise in B&W when shooting B&W. I have my Panasonic GF1 picture mode set to one of the B&W options, which means the live view screen on the back shows the image in B&W when shooting. I find this a great help... is that option available on the GXR? As I shoot RAW the actual image still contains the colour info, but is converted to B&W in Lightroom.

[LM]

Do we really see / visualise in colour when taking photographs? I don't think I do, and I think there is some scientific analysis out there that indicates that the brain when processing visual signals gives emphasis to tonality, shape and proximity. If there is a significant colour motif, or theme in a scene, then we do start to focus on it - if we are shooting colour, but otherwise I think it's light, shade and composition. In which case it would seem that there is no need to consciously visualise a B+W result.

[Alexander Vesey]

Mike,

Thank you for the feed back on gallery contents. Your view certainly correlates with decisions that have influenced other galleries that I have seen.

Again, I think a discussion of good display techniques would be highly prized by the audience of your blog.

Alex

[Adrian Malloch]

I also shoot in camera with the intention of producing either in Black & White or colour. The decision is helped considerably by clients who give the nod in advance to B&W, removing any vacillation on my part.
For a couple of decades I was seen as the B&W darkroom guru; always looking for the 'perfect' print, so when i transitioned to digital fully in 2001 my colleagues were not surprised that I continued the quest on the computer for the perfect B&W expression.
Yes, B&W on digital is different to film; much different. If you shoot in raw, visualise in black & white, expose to the right with pinpoint accuracy, process carefully, place the highlights and shadows precisely, and then treat the tones in-between with respect, then your black and white prints could well be much better than comparable film examples.
However, it is very difficult to get those magic translucent highlight tones like we could with film. Difficult but not impossible.
The payoff though is the amazing shadow detail that just keeps on going and going.
It's a mistake to attempt to reproduce with digital what we once achieved with film. Instead, go with the medium's strengths and minimise its weaknesses.
On the home page of my website you can see a gallery of photos that best shows my approach of making the most of the shadow detail.

[erlik]

Just curious: how did you process the first photo? It kinda looks pushed to me.

BTW, I wouldn't agree about putting BW and colour in different galleries. As can be seen in the latest gallery under Current, on my site. :)

[Gijs Langelaan]

Mike, You didn't have a "photo opportunity". It was a KODAK MOMENT.

cheers

gijs

[Colin]

Agley = "a gley" which comes from "gleckit" which means "squint". Normally used to describe someone with squint eyes and also not very smart "he's awfy gleckit looking"

Colin, far Ardrossan although now in California
http://ww.mclaughlan.org/kaadian

[Mitch Alland]

I'm very firm in my opinion that they [color and B&W] should be kept separate. They're very different media to me, and I am seldom convinced by presentations that mix the two--in fact I'll even say I see it most often as a mark of amateurism. (With the caveat that I stand ready to be convinced otherwise by exceptions.)

Don't agree, as I think it's a question of intent — of what you want to express. A book called Tokyo Dance by Chikashi Kasai, a photographer "discovered" by Nan Golden, is in color with a section of high-contrast B&W photographs in center — and works very well. Similarly, Moriyama Daido has some color sections in his, mainly B&W book, Buenos Aires. Not in the same class, but I have a series that intentionally mixes B&W and color, called Paris au rythme de Basquiat, which I feel suits the subject matter and intent of expression.

—Mitch/London

[psu]

I have the same problem with shooting color and then converting to B&W.

But, with my Nikon and Panasonic cameras I have come to an uneasy peace by setting the cameras up in their B&W modes. In these modes all of the previews and live-view screens are black and white while I am shooting, which seems to work out.

The only time the picture flashes in color is in Lightroom, but this is avoidable as well if you apply the appropriate black and white processing preset on the picture at import time. I generally don't do this because I usually have a mix of color and black and white pictures in any give batch.

It took about six months for my brain to adjust to this working method, but it's pretty good now. I can even occasionally convert the odd frame that I accidentally shot in color to black and white.

[Craig Norris]

I can see it now... the posts on Flickr and dpreview discussion forums - in which the 'experts' are commenting on the quite obvious chromatic aberration visible in those images...

[Andrew Burday]

Mike, if you get a chance it would be interesting to hear whether you've observed any differences between the two modules' sensors. After all, the availability of multiple sensors is the unique feature of the GXR.

[Mike Johnston]

psu,
Very good point--we do learn. I probably haven't stuck with it long enough to get used to it.

Mike

[Mike Johnston]

Andrew,
The two modules I've used so far both have the same sensor. I do have the zoom lens with the small sensor, but I haven't tried that yet.

Mike

[John Driggers]

I've been shooting/learning my new GXR too. I've found the in-camera sepia (the TE mode) to be as stunning as the BW. Another handy feature is the JPG color mode bracketing. I have mine set to produce a color jpg, a BW jpg and a sepia jpg. Processes all from one exposure.
There is a lot to explore with this camera and reading the manual would be a good investment of your time--at least I found it so. Cheers JD

[Rob Atkins]

And the phone number of the people who loan out their Miata is...?

[eolake]

I find that the Panasonic GH2 is about as responsive as a DSLR. Very fast.
Especially with the 14-140mm, although of course that adds some bulk. But it may also be the best 10x zoom I've tried, so I consider it a semi-pro outfit in a handy package.

[Lukasz Kubica]

Mike replies: Yes, I always shot with SLRs and K2 filters in my day, too. For those who haven't: imagine looking at the world through yellow sunglasses. It does tend to help you ignore colors

Well, I love BW on film (so much that I gave up digital recently), but I hate looking through those color filters. It certainly does not help me ignore colors - instead, it simply drives me mad :-) And yet color filters are absolutely essential for BW work.

[Mike Johnston]

Lukasz,
The solution to that is very simple...just use a rangefinder camera. That way you can use color filters on the lens and not have to look through them.

I imagine you know this already....

Mike

[James.M]

Alex - I'm with Mike on not displaying black and white and colour photographs together. But then lots of things make me nervous: mixing aspect ratios, cameras, focal lengths... I'm a bit precious.