>
> After three years of shooting weddings I never ran into the problem. A
> good thing since I was unaware of it.
>
Don't tell Moose, but I believe the 5D Classic is among the better behaved
cameras in this regard. Another very popular model (smaller sensor) is known
to have the problem, though. The Nikons I tested range from poor to hideous.
The second Nikon tested I'm not even going to mention as it was so bad that
people tended to move from it to the newer models anyway because of other
issues that even masked this. It would be like kicking a dead horse. I have
not tested the full-frame Nikons, but I recognized it in a set of wedding
pictures taken on a D300 but do not know to what extent the problem exists.
It appears that the D3/D700 are better than the previous models, but I
haven't personally tested it to know one way or the other.
It's hard to be fair to some of these cameras or films because I'm comparing
them to the E-1 which is obviously an extreme anomoly. The E-3 is able to
reproduce the purples in some brightness levels, but not all. In a dynamic
range test, we found some interesting color shifts with the E-3 which could
be causing a non-linear response to the purples.
Here's the deal. I'm actually doing testing. Instead of my usual unfounded
mouthing off from the hip region, I'm actually going through the troubles of
testing some of this stuff. Whether everybody likes my findings or not is
secondary--do your own tests if you think I'm wrong.
And that's really what I'm suggesting is that we test our cameras to know
what are the limits. It's kinda like flash-sync speeds. The average
photographer slaps the dedicated flash on the camera and sticks everything
in some auto mode. Fine, I have no problem with that--I do the same whenever
I can. But what is the maximum sync speed? What is the maximum sync speed
if you are using wireless triggers and AlienBees? Did you test at both full
and half power?
Or how about this: What is the actual shutter speed of your camera when it
is set to 1/2000 or 1/1000? Today's electronic shutters are way better and
more accurate than the older ones, but it is not uncommon to find shutters
off by 50% at these speeds! Do you know what YOUR camera is doing?
When I bought the A1 and then the E-1, it took me no less than 800 pictures
per camera to do basic testing and learning. I went through White-Balance
testing, lens testing, exposure-mode testing, general education and figuring
out what each and every control does to the point where I'm not feeling
out-of-sorts with the camera. At nearly 50,000 exposures, I can honestly say
that I'm still learning the camera and still don't have a total handle on
the 14-54 zoom lens.
In fairness, I'm not comfortable with the OM-3Ti yet because the metering
system is ever so slightly different than the others. I'm still
second-guessing my exposures! That exposure-compensation dial is a total
mystery to me.
When I was learning how to fly airplanes, one of the important things taught
were stalls. During normal flights you never would stall an airplane--it's
far outside of the normal operating envelope of flying. Stalling was
reserved for when the wheels were kissing the runway. Why then was stall
training so important?
Same thing with dynamic range and spectral response testing. Do you really
know how best to expose for your camera? Michael Richtmann is a proponant of
"Expose-to-the-Right" which makes sense from a mathematical perspective, but
it is entirely possible that the ETTR method is actually wrong for your
camera. Without testing, you really don't know. You THINK you know, but
where is the proof? Is ETTR valid for high-ISO shooting as it is for
base-ISO shooting? Did you know that some digital cameras will blow out the
highlights at ISO 800 even though the histogram seems to be safely within
range? Don't take my word for it, test test test. ETTR is kinda like the old
advice of always down-rating the ISO on your print film. Do you know why
exactly we wedding photographers needed to expose our ISO 160 professional
print films at 125 or 100? It wasn't because the ISO was wrong, it's because
our portable flashes were almost always under-exposing!
Antedotal evidence is no evidence at all. Just because we happen to survive
nicely without ever running into the purple flower problem doesn't mean that
it's not there, it just means that you haven't encountered the situation yet
where that problem has reared its ugly head. Just like the pilot
training--if your instructor ONLY taught straight-and-level, you better find
another instructor.
I'm in the middle of a dynamic range testing project which is yielding some
very interesting results. What we thought was true about the E-3 turns out
to be horribly wrong. For the "straight-and-level" flying experience, the
camera is absolutely glorious, but when you start to stall out, man-o-man,
that thing wants to drop a wing and spin on you. On its best behavior (when
exposed smack on at base-ISO) the E-3 just slaughters the E-1 in every way.
At ISO 800, if you have it exposed perfectly, the camera is still
outstanding. But, throw something odd at it or try to recover a shadow in
post and you're climbing walls. When doing flash+ambient where you are
dropping the background a couple of stops, you get nasty color
shifting--just like Fujifilm 160s used to do ten years ago. The E-1,
however, is remarkeably well behaved at the extremes with no banding or
colorshifts. Another camera which was a massive surprise is the Panasonic
FZ-50. The imager in that camera, when exposed at base-ISO gives pictures
which are actually BETTER than the E-3. When recovering shadows, the FZ-50
was still very good being cleaner and less colorcast than the E-3, but the
details smudged where the E-3 didn't.
Without testing I wouldn't know that Fujichrome Velvia 100 resolves more
than the Nikon D2X and E-3. but both cameras give sharper images. I wouldn't
know that Velvia has a distinct shoulder which yields two additional stops
of tonal detail with no hard over-the-top-bit transition. I wouldn't know
which color print film most closely matches my E-1 allowing for
interchangeable shooting.
Without testing, I wouldn't have known that I can shoot things at high-ISO
in JPEG mode and get exceptionally clean images as compared to RAW.
So, what I'm suggesting is that everybody should go out and buy an African
Violet and do your own stinking tests. :)
AG
--
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