Seeing in colour

This came about because I kept thinking about colour and the use of colour. I was also told by a colleague that I should set-up my camera to use the same colour space as Photoshop and my printer. Not that I print many pictures, as my printer is knackered, but doing this is intended to make sure that the colours in the original photograph don’t change unexpectedly during processing. Specifically, I should be using Adobe RGB rather than sRGB as it’s bigger and allows more colours. Probably good advice, and no harm done in following it.

On the other hand, all the effort I put into my pictures is lost if they are viewed under different lighting. A dull print can sparkle on a computer screen. Colours can merge or change depending on the lighting. If you have ever tried to paint-over old white paint with new under incandescent light, you will see the effect (try it under blue light). For a more dramatic effect, go diving. Water absorbs colours unevenly, so objects seen underwater change apparent colour with depth.

I’m old enough to remember selecting film for its specific colour rendition: some was good for greens, some for reds, some had neutral tones with no bias. But the thinking bit I mentioned was that we don’t all see colours the same way, and we don’t even see the same colours.

Just as an aside, dogs are red/ green colour blind, but they can probably see into the UV spectrum a bit so they will see more shades of blue than we do. I expect that’s why dogs are happy at the beach. Mice can also see just two colours rather than our three. I wonder if that makes ginger cats invisible? The winner is the mantis shrimp though, which can see into the IR and UV ends of our visible spectrum and can also see the polarisation of light. Why the aside? Because there is a small proportion of people, all women, who have four colour sensors in their eyes rather than the usual three. They can possibly see more colours. You could say that they have a bigger colour space. But how would they describe them? I struggle with names like taupe, and that’s a colour I can actually see.

If you could see into the infrared

Which brings me to the idea that we may not even describe colours the same way. There has been some research on Basic Colour Terms: the words that a language has to describe basic colours. For example, English has eleven – red, yellow, green, blue, black, white, grey, orange, brown, pink and purple. But speakers of Slavic languages have twelve, as they have separate terms for light blue and dark blue. (Strangely though, we agree that a rainbow comprises seven colours.) There are other languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, Namibia or Angola where there may be only two or three BCTs. The speakers of those languages can discriminate between as many colours as anyone else, but can’t name them. If you read something like Through the Language Glass you’ll find that our language – what we are able to say – is shaped by our culture and thinking. So one outcome is that dogs shouldn’t drive cars, as they wouldn’t understand traffic lights. But seriously, in a language that has very few colour names, the difference between some colours must not be important enough to make the distinction. If a speaker of Berinmo merges green and blue together into the single name of nol, then the difference between green and blue must not be important to them. I suppose the other extreme is the apocryphal tale of how many words the Inuit have for snow.

In everyday life I can feel the effect of lacking words to describe colours. I’ve got the basic eleven down just fine, but then I look at a paint chart and there are colours that are somewhere between green and blue or grey and red. I can see the differences between all the shades, but I have no way of describing them. That may be because it’s never been important to me to be able to do so, so I’ve never learned how to describe colours. And if you think I’m odd, take a look at a Robin (the bird, not the crime-fighting chum) – their chests are orange, not red.

And yet… I think it was Anil Seth who said that limited perception is favoured by evolution. You only need to be able to sense enough to get by, and any finer perception is a waste and a disadvantage. So my eleven basic colours and my limited span of the EM spectrum would make me a poor mantis shrimp but is no disadvantage at all as a human.

I started my photography using black and white film, so I used to carry and use a set of colour filters. Theses changed the tonal relationships between colours, so I could darken skies or lighten grass and trees. I use an equivalent process when I convert a colour image to mono in Photoshop, as it lets me change the tonal values of colours just like the old days with bits of coloured glass over the lens. Digital photography has recreated the controls I used to have from using different film types or from filtering mono film.

You can buy film that sees the world like this

So where I’ve got to is that we don’t all see the same colours. We may merge colours together under a single name or split a single colour into two. There are limited ranges of colour that can be printed or displayed and some sets have more colours in than others. If you choose to convert a colour picture to mono, then you can change the way colours are mapped to tones. But there is no guarantee that what you make is what I see.

The one set of colours that every living creature seems to agree on though, is black/ white or light/ dark. This seems to be the first-evolved visual sense and all the colours were added later. So if I continue to shoot a lot of black and white, I can be reassured that even molluscs can see them. So I can share my work and not be shellfish. (Sorry).

I think my conclusion is that I’ll use the biggest available colour space for my camera as it retains as much information as possible. I can always choose to reduce it later, but as a deliberate choice rather than a constraint. I am happy that I can see lots of colours, even though I can’t name most of them. I’d love to be able to see like a mantis shrimp, but I’m happier at my end of the food chain. And dogs shouldn’t drive cars.

PS – there’s a more technical description here and an essay about the Greeks here. Plus there’s some research on what the world looks like in UV.

Another Praktica

There’s one thing about Prakticas – they made a lot of them and they seem to last. Actually, that’s two things, and I’m not going to start a Spanish Inquisition routine. That aside, they do seem to be the VW Beetle of cameras.

I came across this one as a camera body in a box of ‘£5 per item’ bits at a camera fair. The shutter speeds seemed to run in progression and it focused with a borrowed lens, so why not? The light seal material at one end of the film door was perished, but it was a quick job to replace. The cover of the battery chamber was seized, usually a sign that the battery has leaked. Take the bottom plate off the camera and the battery holder lifts out. Fit a new battery, refit the bottom plate and … no meter. Oh well, I’ll have another go at cleaning the battery contacts and if that doesn’t work, I have a light meter.

This model is the Super TL 1000 which dates it to 1979-86. It’s the fourth generation of these cameras, with through-lens metering (or not) and a vertically-run metal shutter. It has their weird take-up spool arrangement which I have struggled with, but I’ll have another go with it. I’ve not got on well with it before, but they made enough of these cameras that the fault is probably me not having the knack.

So I had a tweak of the battery contacts and the meter needle now moves. Unfortunately it completely over-reads, so something in the electronics was possibly damaged by the leaking battery. More likely though is that I’m using the wrong voltage battery. This camera may have been set-up to use a 1.35v mercury cell. I’ll try using a zinc-air battery and see if that works better. I also had a go at loading the camera and the take-up spool caught and worked first time. It must have been my awkwardness in the past, so I take back most of what I’ve said about Praktica’s odd bit of wire. And now it’s loaded, I might as well use it.

So yes, it works just like a camera. The focusing screen has a split image and microprism and seems to work well enough. It has a pop-up flag in the viewfinder to show that the shutter has been fired and the camera needs winding. The film advance is a short stroke. Because it came as a body it got taken out to play with a Helios 58mm and a Pentax 35mm lenses. There’s nothing wrong with screw-mount lenses and there’s plenty to choose from. Their only downside is that they are slow to swap. But Prakticas are cheap enough to fit one to each lens.

The results on the film were encouraging. The frames are evenly spaced and the exposure looks OK across the speeds and apertures I was using. Not bad for a camera that’s at least 37 years old and was rattling around in a box of bits.

So what we’ve got is a boxy camera that will take a huge range of cheap lenses and will probably work just fine. If you were thinking to recommend a beginner’s film camera, this could be it. Or maybe not – the beginner would be straight into apertures and shutter speeds with no soft introduction. But perhaps that really is the best way to learn? Load this thing with some Kentmere 100 or 400 and go take some pictures. Learn by doing and enjoy a camera that is cheap and effective.

Do it now

This idea came from someone who was also describing a bout of the can’t be bothered blues. Their remedy was to get their images processed and viewed on the same day they were made. The idea was to retain the excitement of making the images and to get immediate feedback. If you were excited enough to fire the shutter, then you should be excited to see the result. Leave it too long and you won’t remember why you took the picture, which feeds back into the feeling that you shouldn’t have bothered.

This sounds like it should be simpler with digital as there is no development or processing to be done. But you still need the discipline to pull the images out of the camera, look at them, label them and (in my case) delete the flops. Even if it seems simple it still needs to be done, and the temptation with simple jobs is to put them off because they are simple. And then you end-up with a mountain of simple.

Following the job right through immediately also avoids the problem where the backlog of delayed processing becomes a chore, so you put it off. And since it is the nature of backlogs to grow, the anticipated pain increases too, until you can’t be bothered again. So pause now to count: how many undeveloped films or unread memory cards do you have, watching you silently and remorsefully? I know that cataloguing the pictures can be an admin arse-ache, but it’s the only way you will find them again or make use of them. That’s why I use the quickest and simplest system I can – the only useful filing is escaping from jail.

So having brought your pictures to visibility, what do you do next? Mull. Put the ones you like in a place where you will see them. Small prints are good, but I’ve also previously set them up as a screensaver slideshow. Anything that puts the pictures in front of your eyes is what you need. You will then work out which ones you like, which ones could use some improvement and which ones don’t work at all. If you are thinking of putting a set of pictures together this also lets you test the order. As an example, I put together a photobook of pictures for my mum. The centre pages had portraits of mum and dad on left and right pages facing in to each other. The rest of the pages flowed out from that pair. It may sound trite, but it was better than having them face apart or be on separate pages.

Early version, seen in Rome

The idea of letting a picture soak for a while works for me in checking the tone or look of the image. I tend to do my tweaks and then wait a while. After I have seen the image a few times, I will often (usually) go back and change the contrast or colour saturation. Usually these are to make the picture less startling, but sometime to push an aspect of the picture even harder. I have some infrared pictures that I often go back to, to push the contrast even harder. What’s the point of dramatic lighting if it isn’t dramatic?

So I guess the message is to process the images quickly after making them, to maintain the excitement. Then to live with the results for a while to make them more like what you intended and to get them in the right order. Then do something with them.

Start now.

EDC

Every-day carry: the collective name for a panoply of multi-functional gadgets meant to save you from the zombie apocalypse or to open beer bottles in the woods. But I find that my compact digital camera is becoming my EDC, even though it has neither a screwdriver nor scissors. The reason is that it combines good enough with small enough.

Great for opening things, rubbish for taking pictures.

There are many times I go out for reasons other than photography. If I am going out to take pictures I’ll take the right kit but often the pictures are a side effect rather than the reason. For example, I recently walked a chunk of the Pembrokeshire coastal path. The reason was to walk it and enjoy it, not to document it. But I took a camera (er… four) along for the walk. What I wanted as my main camera was one that was good enough, but not an anchor. My chosen EDC job lived happily in a pouch around my neck and could be used as the urge took me without shedding the rucksack to get a bigger camera out (then swap lenses, take a light reading… ). So I used it more often than the recluse in the rucksack.

It’s not particularly slim and tiny. That award goes to the Sony that is genuinely pocket sized. But where the Sony is small enough to carry all the time, this camera has just enough features to make it a viable alternative to the ‘big camera’. If I’m going out to take pictures, the big camera is the one to take. It has every feature and works with every lens I own. But if I am not sure that I might take pictures then I want something that could still do a reasonable job but will sit in the background until needed. It’s also useful to have a camera that can actually be carried every day. An SLR might be the perfect camera, but it’s a bit of a brick to carry everywhere on the off-chance I might need it.

I’m not the first to do this. Back when the world was young and I was but a lad, my best friend and I were keen amateur photographers. We each used to carry at least one camera body and three lenses everywhere we went. Then one day he turned up with an Olympus Trip. He used his legs to zoom and was very happy with the results. I resisted for a while and then ended-up with an Olympus XA, and I can still remember the freedom of a camera I could carry in a pocket.

So my every-day carry this so that I have a camera if I need one camera is a bit bigger than the XA but far more useful. There is a built-in ND filter (probably just a way of dropping the sensitivity of the sensor) so that I can do ICM when I feel like it. I can change the ISO and exposure and have more control than with something that is fully automatic. It saves raw files so that I can tweak the images later. Best of all, it fits in a coat pocket. It matches the idea of the EDC gadget, if you think of something like a Swiss Army Knife. You wouldn’t use one to put shelves up – there are proper tools for that – but it’s immediately available and mostly useful.

I won this for being best Scout on camp. I should explain that the pale streak is luminous paint and the red tape is reflective.

I suppose bridge cameras were meant to do this. The idea, I assume, was that they were better than a compact camera but smaller and less intimidating than an SLR. But they are not that much smaller than an SLR and have an awkward shape with a protruding lens. The intention of the original Barnack Leica cameras was that they were pocket sized, with a retracting lens. That concept still works, but not with a bridge camera.

Perhaps mirrorless cameras are the thing? They are very capable and the camera body is quite small. They do seem to eat batteries though and depending on the lens fitted they can be as big as a bridge camera. My compact camera has a retracting lens (so you could say it’s like a leica) which makes it easier to carry around. I guess that’s what compact means.

So I think I’m settled on my EDC. It’s an older model compact digital camera with a zoom lens. The prices were pretty reasonable on the usual online bazaar, but seem to have increased sharply recently. The zoom lens goes quite long, and it does have some image stabilisation. It doesn’t go really wide at the other end. This isn’t too bad most of the time but is a bit restrictive where I intended the camera to mainly be used: underwater. On the other hand, when I was looking for a better underwater camera one of these came along at the right price. The lens retracts back into the body, so the package is not too large to carry around casually. I also like that once I develop a good configuration of settings, I can save them as a profile.

If you don’t mind that the lens cover doesn’t shut properly, the price is much lower.

But, if you’ve been reading my chunterings you’ll know that I’ve already broken two of these cameras. One failed due to loose screws inside the camera, the other when I flooded it with water. I’ve got another two that work, as they were cheap enough at the time. That’s not a good recommendation, but they do get a hard life. And the camera was at a good balance point between price and features, which is also the measure of every-day use. There do seem to be a lot of “spares or repair” ones (broken, but let’s see if someone will buy it) on eBay though. That may be a warning.

Of course there are alternatives. For film I have my original Olympus XA, but that has a fixed focal length. Perhaps a better comparison is the Pentax Espio. This has a wide zoom, clever exposure and flash modes and does a good job. It’s actually bigger than the Canon though, and noisier in use. The XA wins here by being almost silent.

So while I appear to be extolling the virtues of the Canon G9, it’s more the concept I like than the specific camera. The Canon is one example of a set of well-packaged and useful cameras that are good enough for “serious” photography, and small enough to fit into the set of keys, wallet, phone when you go out. And a decent camera is much more useful than some combined fire lighter, bone saw and fish hook that usually passes for everyday necessity.