Zone Focus Test With the Fujinon 14mm Lens

Wow, was it ever cold in New York on Sunday! The wind chill was brutal, but I was itching to try some focus tests and I was blown away by the results. But first some clarification. Hyperfocal distance is the closest distance that a lens will be in focus and still be able to keep focus at infinity reasonably sharp. Zone focusing requires that the lens have distance indications on its barrel for each appropriate aperture setting, thus allowing the photographer to set the range of distances within which any objects will appear reasonably in focus. When I shot film in my Leica M6 I often used zone focusing, but rarely  the hyperfocal distance. With a very wide angle lens, such as the 14mm, I'm shooting to create a perception of great depth, I don't really care that objects in the far distance are out of focus. But when I shoot street, and especially when shooting from the hip, sometimes the autofocus on the camera either doesn't understand what I want to be in focus (it's often an object or person at one side of the frame, while the focus point for the sensor is set for the center of the frame) or the autofocus lag (even at 1/10th second) misses the shot. The first case scenario happens more than I'd like, the second case much less often - so much less that it's not even worth considering.

When I decided to run this test I wanted to err on the side of caution, so I opted to shoot part of the afternoon in autofocus, just to make sure I'd get some good shots to show for my afternoon of braving the cold. The zone focus shots were taken at f8 (less than that would have narrowed the depth of field unacceptable for the test) and 1/250th second, which put my exposures in the high ISO range - not a problem for the X-Pro1 processor. Here's a calculator to play with to discover acceptable in-focus distances. Remember that this calculation has nothing to do with the quality of the lens, the parameters that affect the calculation are the lens focal length, the aperture setting, and the distances involved. All the rest is pure physics and math. If I set my 14mm lens at f8 and the focus at a distance of 4 feet, my nearest acceptable in-focus distance will be a tiny bit over 2 feet away and the farthest will be 243.5 feet. If I set the focus point for 1/2 foot closer, 3.5 feet, that range drops from 1.9 feet to 24.9 feet. So to achieve a difference of about 1/10 foot closer, I'd have to loose about 220 feet in distance. Given the way I shoot, in close, I'd go for the closest possible I can get and still bet some reasonable distance focus. Even at a focus point of 3 feet I can get an acceptable image from 1.75 feet to almost 10 feet. That last zone is probably the best for me. That's why I love using very wide angle lenses. I would suggest to anyone that they play with this calculator to get a feel for how the calculations work, so that out in the field there is a lot less guessing. If you happen to be a math wizard, you might want to make note of these formulae and when your out in the field do your own calculations (while I take the pictures). 

These first two shots were taken with the autofocus, through glass, and the camera nailed the focus.

Open .... Slurp

Mommy Feed Me

The next two shots were made with an f8 zone focus setting.

So Sad

This last shot was autofocus at an ISO of 6400 - amazing!

Run For The Exit!

My Fujinon Lens Kit

I've been shooting with the new Fujinon 14mm f2.8 for about a week now, and as I've said before in previous posts, I love the lens. For several times out on the street I used it exclusively and there are some things with which I have yet to experiment, but with the results I've gotten so far (see examples on my previous blog posts) I couldn't be more happy. The last time I was out (Friday) I enjoyed the burst of fair weather at a favorite spot in Manhattan, and mounted the 18-55mm zoom lens. Between these two lenses I've got 97.4% of my shooting range covered. I'm looking forward to getting the 55-200mm zoom when it comes out later this year, then my lens kit will be complete (I think). I really like to photograph musicians backstage and during sound checks - when the light really sucks - so I'm sure the 18mm and 35mm primes will continue to get a workout.

I've felt goosed up by having the X-Pro1 and the fantastic Fuji lenses to work with, and once the weather starts to warm up a bit I hope to be out much more. I expect to hit the street again tomorrow (Sunday) so I need to keep ahead of myself in processing and posting images. The first two of these shots were with the zoom lens:

Attitude

Cohiba

I have yet to play with the manual focus and hyperfocal distance settings on the 14mm lens. The big hoopla is that you can set the aperture to f4 and get everything into relative focus because of the extreme depth of field at this focal length. At that aperture you could supposedly get everything from five feet to infinity in focus. But the reality of the physics is not quite that. While elements in the image may be perceived to be in focus, in reality there can be only one point (or plane) in the image that is really in focus, the rest of the image is, to one degree or another, relatively out of focus, depending on the size of the circle of confusion at that distance. Five feet to infinity may seem like quite a large range of distance, but for my style of shooting, which is in very close, if I shot at f4 my depth of field would extend from three to five feet. When I took this shot I was about five feet from him, and used the autofocus on the XP1.

Sunglasses

Some Street Shots From The Past Few Weeks

The first of these shots was taken with the Fujinon 18-55mm lens. Shot at 18mm, f5.6, 1/250th sec. and ISO 640. The combination of the wonderful tonal range possible with the X-Pro 1 camera  and the flexibility of the Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin made getting the separation of the blacks and dark grays of the woman's coat, gloves, and pants possible, but not easy. I could have spent hours in a wet darkroom to get that kind of separation. 

     

Shot with the Fujinon 14mm lens, f5.6, 1/250th sec., ISO 2500. I'm still working on the angles. I wish I hadn't cut off the woman's feet so that there was a better  balance between her and the mannequin. Shooting from the hip with the super wide lens requires that I be in really close, but the angle of the camera is critical. I think I'm going to get into NYC again tomorrow to practice more shots like this.

Shot with the 14mm lens, f8, 1/250th sec, ISO 500. Two scary looking guys. With the super wide lens it was possible to aim the camera at a spot past the second guy's right shoulder and still compose the image. 

Shot with the 14mm lens, f5.6, 1/250th sec., ISO 2500. I shot this from the hip, got the comp right on. Sometimes I just get lucky.

Why having a project is important

When I began my creative journey through life I was deeply influenced by two mentors who couldn't have been more different (as in different, not better, not worse, not more, not less) intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass music, took me in as a young hotshot from New York and taught me to play bluegrass fiddle. After I resigned from Monroe's band to study classical violin (at the ripe old age of 23) I found my way to Raphael Bronstein who was a world renown violin teacher and a direct descendant pedagogically of Leopold Auer who mentored Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein (not that either of them needed any mentoring, you understand). As I said, the two men (Monroe and Bronstein) couldn't have been more different, and yet the lessons I learned under Monroe's tutelage were the same as those Professor Bronstein taught me (with different language and more sophistication). And, by the way, they were pretty much the same as I heard from my photography mentor, Mario Cabrera. The core of that philosophy boiled down to this: It's all about the means, not the end. How you arrive at the end result of your creative endeavor(s) is more important to your never ending growth as an artist than is the result of your efforts. I could write pages and pages about this, but the subject of this blog is about having a project, so bear with me, and on to the next step.

Bronstein used catch phrases with his students to communicate key ideas of his pedagogical philosophy. One of the most important was, as he used to say, 'Attached is detached, detached is attached' or put another way he might say, 'Like it is it isn't, and like it isn't it is'. This is not a simple idea to get across, but here goes. Let's say I have a musical phrase with which to work that's maybe twelve or fifteen notes long and I want to make a beautiful creation of it. So I think about this melody and how I would like it to sound, I pick up my violin and play the phrase as I hear it in my mind's ear. Invariably when I did this for Prof the result was never what I wanted, it sounded like crap, and the lesson would begin. He showed me, for example, how to systematically dissect the phrase and imbue each little group of three, four, or five notes (he called them faces) with its own special character - in essence breaking the phrase down into small parcels (detaching them) to make each a special creation, and then gluing it all back together again (attaching) keeping those discreet parcels in mind. The end result was far more beautiful than anything of which I could have previously conceived.

How does this relate to having a photographic project? Well, it matters not with what I am creatively involved - be it writing, music, photography, etc. What does matter, however, is having a project in mind, and being able to articulate what the project is and what its end goals are. Having this in hand helps me to understand the steps I need to take to put the whole thing together. If I don't keep the end in mind and go out to shoot photos, I usually come home with a hodgepodge of images with no thought focus, and the result of the day is a collection of detached images. Some days it's good to do this, go out to shoot, have fun, and click away. I've gotten some great images that way. But if I go out with the project in mind, know where I have to go to get what I want, what light I'm looking for, what type of character I want to photograph, and so on - in other words, I have clearly defined goals - then I can't help but grow from the experience of shooting and afterwards reviewing the images. On the best of days (which doesn't happen all that often) I can go out with this idea in mind yet be flexible enough to to grab unrelated images when they happen around me.

Anyone who knows me personally who saw me without my camera would think I was seriously ill. I always have a real camera with me (I've not yet used my phone's or iPad's camera). I don't go out to shoot, I just go out. Photography is a way of life for me, as was music earlier on in my life, and it affords me the means on which I thrive and grow. The projects don't have to be grand ideas or profoundly meaningful, just enough to channel my thinking. I have several ongoing: I am always drawn to men with interesting facial hair (sometimes women's also) and men who smoke cigars (always women who do). Here's two shots I got yesterday as I walked on Madison and Fifth avenues.

Fujinon 14mm f2.8 Second Day Out - Part 2

There's a major snow storm in the area so I'm not sure I'll be able to get out this weekend for more shooting. As I process the images shot with the 14mm lens I see wonderful potential for experimentation, especially with point of view. 

I like the expression and the wonderful character of the age lines on the gentleman's face in the first image.

The animated hand gestures of the woman grabbed my attention as I walked by these two people conversing on the corner of Fifth avenue and 54th street.

Fujinon 14mm f2.8 lens Second Day Out

Adjusting to this very wide angle lens is a work in progress. When I first got the Leica 21mm f2.8 lens I had some of the same problems, and it's been a long time since I used that lens. So I'm sure I'll have to spend a few more days on the street with the Fuji lens to get comfortable again with the focal length. Oh darn.

The biggest plus so far is that I can get in really close to people as I pass them and get the subject with room to spare around them in the frame. With the 18mm lens, when I shot from the hip, I usually had to aim the lens on a flat horizontal axis or tipped slightly up so as not to crop the top of the subject's head. The difference of 4mm focal length - which translates to about 7mm for a 35mm image size - doesn't seem that large, but that small difference translates into about 1/3 to 1/4 the total focal length of the two lenses. That's quite a big difference which requires a complete rethinking of how I aim the camera. I found today that I got much better results if I tipped the camera down a bit. But then again, that creates a whole different set of issues with the autofocus and the proper focus point. Half the shots today when taken this way were out of focus. This is definitely a work in progress.

Another issue I had to deal with today when looking through the optical viewfinder arose because the image through the viewer had a 'normal' persepective - much as my eye saw the scene. But the lens, because it is so wide, created a much deeper perspective and pushed background objects further away in the resulting image. That's one of the most attractive features of using a very wide angle lens. That wasn't a problem when I shot with the Leica lens, because I used the Leica 21mm optical viewfinder which fit into the flash shoe on the top of the camera, and that amazing piece of glass showed me pretty much how the final image would look. I'm going to try using that same viewfinder in the XP1 flash shoe. In general, after going through the keeper images to decide which ones I'll process, I was very impressed with how crisp and sharp they all are.

As I walked past the Main branch of the New York Public Library on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street I was scanning the crowd, and I saw an unusually dressed gentleman coming down the steps of the library - so my interest was piqued. From a distance he noticed me observing him so he tried to look nonchalant and oblivious to my attention. When he got closer I realized it was Tom Wolfe (author of Bonfire of the Vanities and many other blockbuster hit novels). I got several shots of him as he walked past me, but I couldn't get him to look at me. I'm sure if I had approached him to say hello and tell him how much I enjoyed his books he would have been gracious and allow me to get a good shot of him. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Fuggedaboutit!

There were a number of the 'beautiful people' out and about on Fifth Avenue stocking up their daily needs at Gucci, Armani, Cartier, et. al. 

Some wore cashmere sweaters, mink coats, and all their bling to go slumming at Bloomie's.

And there were some who were not happy about me testing my new lens on them.

Fujinon 14mm f2.8 Lens - First Impressions

On Saturday I went to the South Street Seaport Museum to see a street photography exhibit that was the results of a juried competition sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York. I had entered ten images for the judging - of which none were selected - and was curious to see the images that caught the eyes, minds, and hearts of the judges. I usually don't submit work to these types of competitions because on any given day and at any given hour for any reason at all the judging is ever so subjective. In this case however, since the genre was very narrow and there was no entrance fee I made the plunge. I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in street photography that they see this exhibit. The most outstanding image of the show, the one out of the more than a hundred on the walls, that stuck in my mind was a b/w image shot in the 1980's on film by Harvey Stein - who is a master in the field.

Then on to the real business of the day, I hit the streets of lower Manhattan on Saturday to give the Fujinon 14mm f2.8 lens a run for its money on my X-Pro1. No pixel peeping review, no technical analysis of curves and graphs - I leave that information processing to better minds than mine. I judge a lens by how it feels in my hand and how it performs in the field doing the work that I love. Probably the most important criteria of all to me is does the piece of equipment give me the feeling that I can't wait to get out and play with it again and again. After an afternoon with this lens, the answer is a resounding YES!

For the first eight months of using the XP1 I shot with the 18mm and 35mm prime lenses and loved the results. Since I got my hands on the 18-55mm zoom lens It hasn't come off the camera - I've talked about it extensively in previous posts of this blog. I have been looking forward to getting the 14mm lens since it was first announced by Fuji. My favorite lens for my Leica M6 was the Leica 21mm f2.8 lens. Since having the XP1 with the widest option of 18mm, I've had to always make accommodation the narrower field of view than I would like to be able to get the shot without looking through the viewfinder to frame the image. Getting back to using a prime lens just felt sooooo gooooood.

The response of the lens is at least as good as the 18mm lens. But then, I've never had a problem with the focus response time of the camera with any of the Fuji lenses that I use. The image quality is astonishingly good. Sharp from corner to corner with absolutely no chromatic aberration that I've been able to see. I've read some complaints about the aperture ring being too loose and turning too easily. It's about the same as the 18mm and 35mm lenses. I've found that putting a rubber band on the aperture ring adds just enough friction to counteract the looseness. The bitch that many of these trolls have is that for a lens to be this expensive it should be perfect. So it isn't .... perfect that is. I would challenge anyone to show me a lens, no matter how expensive, that is perfect. Not going to happen.

Esthetically speaking, the angle of view and the look of the perspective that the lens renders is ideal for my shooting style. I love to be in close to a person or situation, and yet be able to capture the surrounding environment to create a feeling of context for an image. This lens absolutely does the trick for me.

To wit: