Scott G Trenorden

A couple of months ago, when sorting RAW files on my hard-drives, I noticed some old photos of the Western Australian Wheatbelt taken with my first dSLR, a Canon 400D.
As my Lightroom and Photoshop processes and skill level had changed dramatically since I first process those Wheatbelt files, I excitedly imported them into LR2 to play with them.

Very rapidly did I come to a sad realisation. The 400D files contain nowhere near as much ‘depth’ as the RAW files from my current camera, a Nikon D700, and thus the heavy graduating filters etc that I would usually apply just rapidly turned the Wheatbelt photos to junk.

Meaning, I was unable to do anywhere near the amount of processing on the 400D files as I would with my current shots – such as my Cambodia photos for example.
[Note: I will simply leave it as ‘depth’ as I don’t wish to talk about the science of RAW files here.. If ever…]

For my Cambodia and Laos trip I lugged around my D700 and 24-70 f2.8 lens, backup lens, laptop and LX3. It was very rewarding, I think, in regards to the resulting images (see the Travel & Landscape gallery from my website if interested: http://www.scottgtrenorden.com.au/galleries-doco.html) but the inconvenience of such a large kit was repeatedly constrictive.
When I visited Thailand soon after I took my OM4 Ti film camera, twenty rolls of film and my LX3 and it was immensely better in terms of portability.

And thus upon hearing about the upcoming Panasonic GF1 I excitedly ordered one for a few reasons:
Apparently near SLR quality images.
Small package with big results.
The ability to combine the manual lenses from my OM4 Ti with the GF1.
Sexy Lumix imagery that I fell in love with on the LX3 (BnW Dynamic? Oh yes!).

And now that GF1 has arrived.

But since ordering the camera, that inability to achieve the look I wanted with the 400D, that I am now used to using with the D700, sat in the back of my head.
“Would the GF1’s RAW files be as equally limiting as the 400D files are?” Would I be able to use this camera as I hoped; could I use the GF1 and OM4 as a much, much smaller and more portable travel kit and still get high quality resulting images?

[Note#2: I don’t mean for this post to be a slam on the Canon 400D in any way. It’s a very good little camera. It’s a simple case of realistic technological limitations.]

“There must be other people,” I thought “that are pondering this same question”. And so I decided I’d do a Before & After blog post with image examples.
I’ve read several reviews on the physicality of the camera – and seen many, many more – but not so many on the usability of the RAW files themselves.
What are the limitations of the RAW files?
How much depth of processing can you apply to them?
Do skies get severe banding quickly or can you apply nice smooth, deep gradients (this was a big one)?
How good is the colour detail and faithfulness?

I thought I’d take some very basic photos in not-so-good conditions (middle of the day for example) and do what I could to make them usable and then post the before and after photos. My reasoning being that if these photos looked good then travel shots of a beautiful vista at 7am would have to look ten times better again, right?!

For this test I used four lenses; the Panasonic 20mm f1.7, Olympus 14-42mm, OM Zuiko 35mm f2.8 and OM Zuiko 50mm f1.4 (the OM lenses are manual focus via adapter).

Keep in mind, too, that I have only had this camera for a couple of days so I didn’t play around with White balance and picture modes too much and thus the ‘before’ shots will look very ordinary. As the RAWs are converted to default settings on import I didn’t worry about these factors for this initial test.
I only spent 10 minutes max on each image.

Also, to clarify, this is not necessarily how I would post produce the images for final products! Instead, I have pushed the post production - much darker gradients than I’d use etc, especially in the last image - in order to find the GF1’s RAW’s limitations.

Panasonic 20mm f1.7:

I shot this in Dynamic BnW (in RAW+Jpeg mode) and so am linking the imported RAW file, not the Jpeg.
before

after

Olympus 14-42mm:
Nature film mode. Jpeg and then processed RAW file.

before

after

OM Zuiko 35mm f2.8:
I shot this using a yellow-green filter and Nostalgic film mode to go for a ‘70s tone. I think I forgot to turn off auto white balance, however, thus the predominantly blue tone… I do like the end result though.

before

after

OM Zuiko 50mm f1.4:

Nature film mode, yellow-green filter again – I wanted a lot of greeny blue in the sky. This shot isn’t meant to be a compositional masterpiece, obviously; I shot it in order to establish how much I could gradient the sky.

There is definitely a lot of room to deepen skies with graduated filters in Lightroom 2+, as should be evident from this comparison. The ‘after’ shot here is just part the point where banding started to show up very clearly. Jpeg compression certainly doesn’t help either.

before

after

All in all, I have to say I am very impressed with the GF1 from a post production point of view.
The biggest issue I have seen is noise levels (even above 400 ISO when viewed at 50% or 100%) but that is countered very easily with Noise Ninja or similar.

The camera definitely isn’t a D700, obviously, but the quality and usability of its images are even better than I had expected to be honest. There is a lot of room for artistic licence within an image.

Most important of all for me personally; I will be very confident in taking this camera travelling for travel photo and Photojournalistic purposes.

Thank you for reading. Please let me know via Comment or email if there are any other tests you’d like performed!

Scott.

In the last few months – culminating in October 2009 – I have been extremely privileged to help bring to life the Graduation portfolio of Designer and Stylist Bek Timson, who I highlighted in my previous blog post.

Dozens (perhaps hundreds..?) of emails back and forward, hours upon hours of planning and several evening design chats between Elsie Tan, Bek and I (and a few too many TimTams) later, we found the day of shooting upon us.
It really is immense, the amount of time spent on such projects. From location scouting to assistant seeking, dress making and model booking, ordering specific makeup from overseas through to acquiring the right lighting gear for the job; it can easily become three months from concept meeting to the day of shooting.

Rachael Cross, Stephi McLean and Amanda MacDonald accepted our requests to model Bek’s dresses and Rachael’s mother, Tracie, joined us to provide her invaluable hair-styling and on-location assistance.
Jeremy Hall, Megan Henderson and Magdeline Lum answered the call to assist as photographer’s assistants on this ambitious undertaking and the day was set.

Bright and early, the girls gathered at Bek’s place to begin makeup, hair and dress fittings, while I ran around trying to find a small enough tension screw to fit a flash bracket… Bunnings to the rescue once again!
Delivering coffees, hot chocolates and muffins, I found a mellow house quietly a’bustle with pre-shoot preparations.

Elsie applies the finishing touches to Amanda’s makeup

The first half of the day belonged to Elsie and Bek (with hair styling assistance from Amanda and Tracie) with Elsie applying beautiful makeup to three models in record time (great work Elsie!).

Jeremy, Mags, Megan and I set to putting the softbox together, changing the flashes’ batteries and other pre-shoot tasks. The use of wigs meant that we didn’t need the assistance of a professional hairdresser which helped take some of the pressure off, time-wise.

Before we knew it we were piling into cars and heading south towards our pine-plantation location.

This shoot was the first in which I was able to utilise my new studio-style softbox and QikMount system (purchased from Image Melbourne) and I was excited to see what sort of light it was going to throw across the scene.

Megan was entrusted the job of moving the softbox around and adjusting the dual-flash outputs. I have greatly appreciated Meg’s help over the last few shoots I’ve done and she worked tirelessly yet again. Thanks Megs!
Utilising the extra flash mount bracket for the QikMount I was able to put both a Nikon SB-800 and Nikon SB-600 through the softbox.
Coupled with the softbox I used a YN-460 speedlight through a white shoot-through umbrella (controlled by Jeremy) and another YN-460 into a silver reflective umbrella (handled by Mags).

The softbox was positioned to the right of camera, between 20° and 50° in front of the model(s), shot depending.
The SB-800 was usually kept on full power, the SB-600 at 1/2 power.
The silver reflective umbrella was used for enhancement/hair lighting only and was usually positioned about 45° behind the model, camera left, shifting between 1/3 and 3/4 power.
The white shoot-through umbrella stayed between 20° and 50° in front of the model, camera left, supplying subtle fill light at all times, also shifting between 1/3 and 3/4 power.
All flashes were triggered via Cactus v4 triggers.

The general floor plan is seen in this graphic:

Big thanks to Nguyen Dinh for creating the base template for this layout: www.lightingdiagrams.com

The sun was getting low as we began to shoot, providing some good leading lines via shadows from the pine trees.
From the outset we wanted to give an element of weirdness to this shoot (as is pretty much essential with a Design school brief it seems!). Apart from the not-so-normal situation of photographing models in 18th Century styled gowns having a tea party in the middle of a pine forest at night, we wanted to add a dimension of ‘disruption’ (which is the title given to the whole project by Bek).
To do this we added in an Alice in Wonderland style clock to some shoots and gave the models elevation where suitable.

Elevation was achieved by having the models stand upon a small stool, as is seen in the above shot of the pine forest.

The following two shots highlight the general lighting setup and atmosphere of the setting. In this first scene, Stephi (solo) is modelling a long purple gown, while standing upon the stool and trying to act up while keeping her balance.
She did a sterling job, of course.

The end result can be seen in the final image slideshow at the bottom of this post.

I’ll include a few more ‘environmental’ shots for those interested in seeing how I went about setting things up.
The lighting was generally kept as per the diagram above to create uniformity between the different settings/scenes. The power ratios did not change a great deal.

As you can see from the next three shots, the dual flash softbox setup throws a lot of nice, warm light. This aspect of the lighting setup was crucial to the overall success of the shoot in my opinion; a lot better than what would have been achieved if I’d used the ‘reflective’ umbrella softbox that I used in previous shoots, what with its narrower and more washed out light.

In theory it is possible to put four speedlights through the softbox, though I’m not sure how I’d literally manage that as there’s not much space left when two large flashes are used. But technically, the light seen below could be greatly amplified.
My next experimentation will be to see whether I can fit the two Nikon flashes and two (wider but squatter) Olympus T32 flashes through the QikMount setup.

The unit itself is rather light yet sturdy when constructed (allow a good 20-30 mins to get it all set up on your first attempt!) and overall I’m very happy with the setup as a whole.

Elsie applying touch-ups to makeup in near darkness. You go girl!

All in all the day was a big success.
Packing up gear in darkness is never fun, nor is dealing with mosquitoes and ticks, but the effort was entirely worth it.

Congratulations to Bek Timson for designing and creating such stunning outfits and for styling the shoot so brilliantly!
Thank you to Elsie for your tireless makeup work, to the models for sticking with the tricky shoot and to Tracie and my three photography assistants for spending a long day helping out. It was all greatly appreciated!

The final images from the shoot can be seen in this slideshow:

Some higher quality images are available on my Flickr page, along with the option to leave feedback.
Larger images are viewable in the Fashion gallery on my website at www.scottgtrenorden.com.au.
Feel free to leave your comments at the bottom of this post.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in working out an estimate for an on-location shoot: scott@scottgtrenorden.com.au

‘Disrupted’ shoot info:
Clothing Designer & Shoot Stylist: Bek Timson
Makeup Artistry: Elsie Tan
Models: Rachael Cross, Stephi McLean & Amanda MacDonald
Assistants: Tracie Cross, Jeremy Hall, Megan Henderson & Magdeline Lum
Photographer: Scott G Trenorden
Shot on location in pine forests south-east of Armadale, Western Australia.