12.15.2015

This used to be the view walking toward downtown Austin. Now it's littered with high rise buildings. I guess that's not so bad.


I was struck more by the range of colors and tones of this image. It was not taken with one of the modern, super cameras but with an older, Kodak SLR/n. That was a bitchy camera that often stopped to "recalibrate" itself in the middle of a shoot, but when it was good it was very good.

Every model of camera has its own palette. Some more interesting than others. The one area in which the old Kodaks excelled was in the rendition of skin tones and colors. Operationally it was less wonderful. But back then we had to suffer a bit for our art.....

2 comments:

hbernstein said...

"Bitchy"-you've come up with the perfect descriptor of that damn camera. You know, the one that added the watercolor effect to any fine background detail that had a modicum of contrast. The one that felt good in the hand, but required any Homo sapiens that had a nose to mash ones face up against the viewfinder.

But ah, the lovely images when everything was just right!

Ken Norton - Image 66 Media said...

Likewise, the old Olympus E-1 has about the same color characteristics, but minus the attitude problem.

One thing I've found in going back to the E-1 files is just how well they take EXTREME color and contract manipulation. There are few cameras that allow you to pull up the shadows 4 stops and still maintain color and tonal integrity.

Of course, the induced noise of the CCD sensor with additional dithering means that an ISO 100 image is about as clean as an ISO 6400 image from our modern wonderbricks, but there are other ways to measure image quality other than noise.

I still use mine and I also still use film too.

Ken

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