technique – Wolfgang Lonien

April 27, 2023April 27, 2023

Cookie from today, with the help of several tools

I took this photo with my 50mm macro lens from the 4/3rds system today:

7e7_4275367_sfx_015_rt-cookie — Cookie, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

I had the camera set to black & white already, but converted the raw file using the OM System raw converter on Windows without changing anything yet. Then I loaded the .tif file into Silver Efex Pro 2, also on Windows, and applied a preset called 015 “Full Dynamic (Harsh)”. Back in Linux and using RawTherapee 5.9 I still applied an own contrast-enhancement curve and some blacks to the image. The format is the camera’s full 4:3 this time, so here we have 16 Megapixels. No further enhancements.

And that was that. Like always, thanks for viewing.

P.S.: the camera and lens used, taken with my mobile phone:

pxl_20230427_143353436.portrait — My camera, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Thanks for viewing.

February 17, 2020

That Pen-F look

Olympus has had this special camera, the Pen-F (talking/writing about the digital one here, not the original half frame film version from days long ago). And that digital Pen-F was special because no other camera did black & white as good as that one, in my humble opinion. They really should consider their decision not to continue it, it was simply brilliant, and lots of people loved it (at least those who bought and owned it).

Now a fellow photographer who has both the Pen-F as well as the OM-D E-M10 Mk2 (which I also have) has managed to get pretty close to the look of black and white images from the Pen-F when using his E-M10 Mk2. So here’s Rob explaining how he did that:

How to Get That Olympus PenF Monochrome Look On your OM-D ep.210

Of course I immediately had to try that, and I used the Mono-2 without grain settings to try. I also noticed that indeed applying a -0.3EV compensation helps with keeping a bit more infos in the highlights. Look:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49547749286/

Zuleikha, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020

That’s really very close to Kodak Tri-X if you ask me. And although this was at ISO 1250 it’s still much cleaner than film ever was – if you want to apply grain you can still do so with a few mouse clicks.

Cool. Thanks Rob, your tips help a lot. Really appreciated!

December 25, 2019December 25, 2019

Merry Christmas MMXIX

To all those who celebrate it, we wish a Merry Christmas 2019.

I don’t have any new music (yet), just a few photos:

7e3_c221847bwo-early-sunday-morning-cat-portrait — Early Sunday morning cat portrait, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2019

This is an in-camera black & white photo (also simulating an orange filter) of Tuna from early Sunday morning. She doesn’t eat much since then, so at the moment we’re a bit concerned about her.

We’ve also got a nice Christmas and season’s greetings card from Shi – and I had nothing similar to send as a reply (I’m really not that good in the graphic arts as she is), so I took a photo of an old Welsh song which I’ve played with the orchestra this season. Also uploaded it to Wikiloops to greet all other musicians as well:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49268453321/

Deck the Hall (for Bass), Mörfelden-Walldorf 2019
Happy holidays 2019 from a bass player…

This is more a New Year’s than a Christmas song, and you can read more about it or hear it if you wish. I took this and the following photo using Mitchie’s nice little 20mm f/1.7 Panasonic Lumix G lens.

The next photo is of Tuna again, close up and with Mitchie’s lens wide open at f/1.7, so just one eye is sharp – and everything else more or less blurry. I also used a black & white conversion in software this time, and simulated an Ilford HP5+ film in RawTherapee. Midtoned as usual, which means the whites are white, the blacks are black, but those middle tones are more brownish than grey:

7e3_c251859-tuna — Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2019

Two different light colours in this one, natural daylight from outside, and artificial light in our living room. And I liked that high contrast effect from the film simulation in this case.

Edit: here’s another photo from today. In this one I simulated a colour film, Fuji Astia – and also cropped it into a 3:2 format like from the time we were still using film:

7e3_c251864-tuna — Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2019

Hope that our cat is better soon.

As always, thanks for reading, and for viewing. Nice holidays to you all.

September 7, 2019

Found via PetaPixel: a short intro to Darktable

This one might be interesting for all of you who don’t like or want Adobe’s subsription-based software (and in music, there are companies like ProTools which do the same). It’s about a free Lightroom alternative, and yes you’ve read that right, it’s both free as in cost as well as free as in free speech (and as such, rights), which is even more important.

It’s available for all major operating systems like Linux, Windows, or MacOS, unlike RawTherapee which I mostly prefer. But it tops RawTherapee in features, especially in the masking explained here, and as such, in its local processing capabilities. Other standout features which I’ve mentioned already include the map for instance, or the profiles for denoising an image.

So go and read PetaPixel, and watch the video right there, or in Youtube.

And as always, thanks for reading.

May 29, 2019May 29, 2019

I simulated film today

I took a photo of Tuna again, using two of my studio strobes and with the PanaLeica 25mm lens on my camera set to f/4.

Then, after “developing” the raw .orf file using OV3 on a simulated Win7 box, I also saved a copy in black & white, using a simulated orange filter (you can do that either in-camera or with Olympus Viewer 3 in post production, the resulting image will be identical).

I also took the colour converted .tif file and loaded it into Silver Efex, trying their 019 “Fine Arts” preset, and also Ilford HP 5 Plus and Kodak Tri-X 400TX film simulations.

And I “developed” all resulting .tif (or in case of SFX, .TIFF) files with Raw Therapee on Linux, and added some meta information. Then I compared the results on my screen for a while.

The “in-camera” (through OV3) black & white conversion was the smoothest of them all, the “Fine Arts” preset of Silver Efex had the most information and almost some kind of a slight HDR look, and the film simulations were very close to each other in this case. In the end, I opted for the most contrasty one of them all which also had some fine simulated grain, which was Tri-X.

As always, I midtoned it to get those grey tones a bit more brownish, and I also cropped it to a 3:2 format like Kleinbildfilm used to have – I thought that also fitted the Leica branded lens on my camera.

Here’s the result:

7e3_5290687_sfx_400tx-tuna — Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

See Flickr for full resolution if you’re interested in that.

And as always, thanks for reading and viewing.

December 21, 2018December 21, 2018

Variations on a high ISO image

I took another photo of Tuna, “our” cat today, like almost every day. She sat in a box and just looked too cute to be ignored. And tho I tried to get a sharp photo with ISO 800 first, it was too dark, and I always had a bit of movement from her – so I used ISO 6400 instead.

In the past this resulted in more or less borderline quality – good enough for small images on web pages or even for postcard-sized prints, but that was about it. Now? I’m amazed about how and/or what they did to the imaging process at Olympus, because if you treat the images with their own “Olympus Viewer 3” raw converter which does the same as the camera would, then even with the noise reduction switched completely off it now still results in very impressive photos.

I won’t stop there of course, and still treat the images with other programs afterwards, because in many if not most cases I prefer a black & white image to a colour one – but Mitchie is the complete opposite of me here, and to just show what can be achieved “in camera” (or with no further manipulation in OV3 which is the same), I’ll show you the originals here, both in colour and also in (in-camera) black & white:

7e2_c210157-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018. Olympus Viewer 3 conversion with no further manipulations (= the same as “in camera jpg conversion”)*

7e2_c210157-oocbw-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018. The quasi “out of camera” black & white conversion (no filters)*

As I just wrote above, I won’t stop there. The least I’d do to any black & white photo is to use my “midtoning” in RawTherapee, which, when applied to the b&w photo from above, would look like this:

7e2_c210157-oocbw-rtmt-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018. “In camera” b&w with toning of the midtones in RawTherapee applied.*

I find that nicer than just accepting the grey tones; I strongly prefer these more brownish ones.

But as nice as the in-camera black & white images from Olympus cameras are already, there are certain programs which are dedicated to the task of black & white conversions which offer many more options than Olympus Viewer or any in-camera conversions could. One of them which is (was) free is Silver Efex Pro 2 from the former Google and former Nik companies (now this belongs to DxOMark IIRC).

With Silver Efex Pro 2 I often use just one of their many great presets, and the one I often like most is the “019 Fine Art Process” one, which brings out a lot of fine detail in those grey (and later toned) tones, and just refines photos, for lack of a better word. I also like the “Type 14” simple white border of SFX (Silver Efex Pro 2). Together with my usual midtoning in RawTherapee, the image of the cat would become this:

7e2_c210157-019wb-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018. Colour raw conversion from OV3, 019 Fine Art Process and white border type 14 from SFX, midtoned in RawTherapee*

This is a very nice result already in my opinion, and again I’m amazed at how clean an image with ISO 6400 from a Micro Four Thirds camera can be these days.

But “clean” isn’t always my preferred goal – I used to develop black & white films myself when I was younger, and enlarge those negatives in our parents’ bathroom. And as I’ve written a few days ago, my most used films when I was younger mostly were either Kodak Ektachrome 400 colour slides, or Ilford HP5+ (ISO 400) or FP4+ (ISO 125) black & white ones (together with also using Ilford paper in most cases).

And of course modern programs try to simulate the look of films like these, even RawTherapee now has this. But SFX has a really nice simulation of Ilford’s HP5+, and together with the other treatments mentioned above, the photo would look like this:

7e2_c210157-hp5+wb-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018. Colour raw conversion from Olympus Viewer 3, Ilford HP5+ film simulation and white border type 14 from SFX, and midtoned with RawTherapee5.*

Way more contrasty and harder (tho you could manipulate that as well), and more gritty than all photos above – this would be my favourite by far. The image may look grainy in your small browser windows (or even on mobile phones?), but this would still make a very nice 30x40cm (about 12″x16″) print. So in that regard, quality wise, I have arrived and made peace with digital. This last one I would sign and hang into a gallery if anyone on earth would be willing to pay for just viewing it 😉

To you, as always, thanks for reading and for viewing.

Edit, from a few hours later:

And just because Mitchie likes colour photos much more than single coloured ones, here’s a simulated colour slide from a Kodak Ektachrome 400 film, colour made with Color Efex Pro 4, and image border and exposure number made with The Gimp (“filmstrip” effect):

7e2_c210157-ekta400-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018. Simulated Kodak Ektachrome 400 film slide.*

Thanks again for viewing.

December 16, 2018December 16, 2018

Old lenses, and film simulations

I love my old manual lenses from the film SLR cameras, like my Olympus OM-2n. I have two 50mm lenses (f/1.4 and f/1.8), and Mitchie has another 50mm/3.5 macro. Zuleikha has a fourth 50mm/1.8 on her OM-1 film camera. Plus I also have a 135mm/2.8 lens which is quite wonderful.

The difference between these lenses and more modern ones is that they are manual (no autofocus), they aren’t as “bitingly” sharp – so more forgiving for portraits which is a good thing IMO, and they’re also less contrasty and often deliver a more pleasing look when compared to the more clinical modern counterparts.

I also loved using film when we were younger, mostly Kodak Ektachrome 400 colour slides, and Ilford HP5+ black & white film. I still do that today from time to time, but time hasn’t stood still, and film and those chemicals have some costs which add up quickly. So let me show you how I sometimes use those old lenses on a modern digital camera, and then simulate those films. Here are two examples:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/44522160490/

Zuleikha, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

That is a photo of Zuleikha, taken with my 135mm/2.8 lens fully open, mounted (via adapter) to my OM-D E-M10 Mark 2 camera with ISO3200. I used an Ektachrome 400 simulation from Color Efex Pro on this one, and I will show you the differences in a moment.

Here’s another one:

7e2_c160059-sfx-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018*

That is of course Tuna the cat, taken with my OM Zuiko 50mm/1.4 lens at f/2.8, mounted (via adapter) to my Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark 2 camera which took ISO6400 for this one. I used an Ilford HP5+ film simulation from Silver Efex Pro for this. Plus I midtoned this as usual with RawTherapee.

The differences to digital images? Have a look at the thumbnails in my file browser (Nautilus of the Gnome desktop):

The black & white photo preview has more contrast, tho I reduced that about 10% in SFX already. And the colour preview shows that even in those ancient times, people knew about colour science, didn’t they? That simulated film image looks a lot less dull and boring than its “digital” counterpart (and yes, of course they’re all digital, but still I hope you’ll get my point).

I should do this much more often. I love manually focusing such nice lenses, and I also love the results.

Thanks for viewing, and for reading.

December 14, 2018

In-camera black & white

Yes, the Olympus in-camera black & white mode is great. I also love the fact that with modern cameras of the “mirrorless” category you can have a preview of the outcoming image right in your viewfinder or on the rear display, in black & white. And if you use the camera makers’ raw converter program, you *could* still have it in colour, but you *don’t have to* even see colour once in the whole process. Which I’ll describe for this photo of our cat from today:

7e2_c140035-tuna — *Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018*

So the first thing of course is to take a photo. For this one I used the black & white mode of my camera, and ISO 200 at an aperture of f/2 – which meant 2 seconds exposure time, and a tripod.

Then I loaded the raw .orf image into the Olympus Viewer 3 raw converter on a virtualized Windows 7 machine, but only to check exposure, sharpness and contrast, and then to convert it into a 16 bit .tif image.

This resulting .tif I loaded into Silver Efex Pro 2 (still on Windows) to use its “019 Fine Art” preset, and to create a white border (no. 14) around the image. Saved again as a .tif (Silver Efex makes this a .TIFF)

Back in Linux, I then use RawTherapee with my self-produced and saved midtoning, which leaves the blacks & whites alone but tones those mid grey levels to a brownish tone – looks much nicer than just grey. In RawTherapee I also set the title, correct some Exif error from Silver Efex, and add some keywords like “cat portrait”, or “b&w” (you can see those in Flickr).

Final step: I used The Gimp to add the image title to the white border as well – good for prints or if you’ll have the image out of context somewhere.

So this is my routine for black & white photos, which I still love since my brother Willi and me developed our own Ilford films and made “prints” with his Durst enlarger and some chemicals in our parents’ bathroom…

Thanks for reading.

August 25, 2018August 25, 2018

My currently most used camera gear and technique

This week was a big one, at least for Nikon – they announced their new “Z” line of mirrorless cameras together with three “S” lenses available for those, and while they don’t replace their current DSLR cameras, it’s clearly Nikon’s way into the future (together with what is probably the greatest and most intelligent change, their new and bigger lens mount).

Do I need one, or maybe one of the pretty similar Sony A7 models? No, I don’t think so. Tho one of my cameras and my most expensive lens got stolen by pickpockets in Paris lately, I can still live – and live very good – with what we have already. And I used the favourites of our current gear for this for instance:

Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

Just took this today with my Olympus OM-D E-M10 (first generation), and with Mitchie’s Panasonic Lumix 20mm/1.7 lens used at an aperture of f/2. The camera chose ISO 1600 and 1/15th of a second for exposure, and I had the preview in the camera set to black & white, together with a simulated yellow filter.

I love black & white, and to be able to preview it before even taking the shot is the first of many advantages of mirrorless cameras vs. those with optical viewfinders.

I still took the raw file, which I “developed” using different software products on different operating systems as follows:

1. Olympus Viewer 3 on (a virtualized) Windows 7 (I also have a virtualized and even a bare metal (dual boot) Windows 10 on my machine, but using these is in most cases just overkill).

I’m using the camera makers’ raw processor in almost every image, simply because it gives me the best lens correction and settings which I also have in the camera itself, and because the default conversions look exactly the same as in-camera jpg images. For black & white, even the display of the raw image is still in black & white, tho you can of course change it back to colour at this point. However, the fact that I *don’t have to* look at a colour image is exactly what I want. So at this stage of the process I generally crop only, and I think about if the simulated filter and exposure or contrast settings are good enough to go on. I cropped this image into a 5:4 format (1:1 is too square, 4:3 or even 3:2 or 16:9 are too rectangular in my point of view – I love 7:6 or 5:4 formats which were used in large and in medium format film cameras in ancient times, last millenium or so 😉 ). For this image, cropping was all I did in OV3.

2. Silver Efex Pro2 with one of its presets

Still on my virtualized Windows, I then usually fire up Silver Efex Pro2 which I downloaded for free from Google while they still owned it (it now belongs to DxO and costs a bit of money again, but IMO it’s totally worth it). I mostly use one of the different presets, which I sometimes still alter a bit, but they’re incredibly good. For this image (and most others) I used their “019 Fine Art” preset, because that saves you tons of work in other raw processors, and it brings out detail like no other. Just love it. I save this as a .tif like the original conversion from OV3, so I have both and can still compare and decide which one to use later – but in most cases, SFX just has an easy win. It’s also really great if you want to simulate film, their “grain” alone is totally worth it.

3. RawTherapee on Linux

Back in my main operating system of choice (Debian GNU/Linux, which I use since 15+ years now), I use the free and open source RawTherapee converter to finish the image. I mid-toned it with the settings described a few days ago, and I also add an Exif title, and IPTC tags for categories which describe the image (like animal, cat, cat portrait, bw, and so on).

And that’s it, if I don’t have to make local instead of global adjustments (like on hair or skin for instance).

So here you have my currently preferred gear, software, and techniques on how I make photos. Would I want or “need” “full frame” – that horrible description of cameras with a sensor size of Kleinbildfilm, which was 24x36mm? No, not really. The dynamic range and depth of field I’m getting from my Micro Four Thirds camera are just perfect, the image quality (“grain”) at ISO 1600 looks pretty much like film did (and Silver Efex accentuates this quite nicely as well), and the handling and weight of that small camera is just perfect. I even love that its display “only” tilts up or down, while Mitchie’s E-M5 Mk2 has a fully articulated display a la Canon and others. With my tilting-only display I can still simulate an old TLR (twin lens reflex), and view it from the top, so it’s just perfect for me.

If I would earn money with photography, then I would probably think about additional cameras or gear – but since I’m a humble amateur, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got. I’m trying to make the best out of it, and if people like my shots (like on Flickr), then all the better.

Thanks for reading, as always.

August 15, 2018August 16, 2018

B&W toning – but in the midtones only

Looking down my own blog entries, and finding the one about Laura Wilson (mother of Owen and his brothers), I wondered how that horse photo of hers was made. So I checked, and the values for RGB in the midtones of this black & white image were decimal 150, 145, and 141, or hex 96, 91, and 8d. Which explains why it looks brownish rather than grey. But the whites are white, and the blacks are black – so I tried that myself. On this 16:9 selfie one:

Interesting. I made a preset in RawTherapee for it, so I don’t have to perform that many mouse-clicks to (re) produce these mid-toned black & white images.

So here’s one from the colleagues photo session from last month. Same treatment as above:

And here’s my ColorChecker with that same treatment:

Finally, a direct comparison between neutral grey and the treatment from above, as thumbnails from my nautilus file browser:

So that’s the reason I’m doing this.

Thanks for viewing, as always.

Update/Edit from August 16th, 2018:

Sorry – totally forgot to show you where to find this in RawTherapee. Well at home I have version 5.x, but even version 4.2 at work has the possibility to do this, under the ‘Color’ tab, and then under ‘Color Toning’. Just select the right method of Shadows/Midtones/Highlights, then adjust those midtones as you see in my example of Sarah:

Thanks again for reading.