Hankins Lawrence Images Photonotes May 2003

HLI PhotoNotes Volume 1 Issue 5 May/June 2003

Published by Hankins-Lawrence Images, LLC of Bethesda, Maryland

http://www.hankinslawrenceimages.com

Welcome to the May/June 2003 issue of HLI Photonotes. We had planned on issuing separate newsletters for May and June – with May’s issue focusing on night photography. However, the weather has been so cloudy and rainy here in the DC area for the past several weeks, that we weren’t able to go out to shoot the images for the do’s and don’ts of night photography needed to illustrate the article. We finally gave up and moved onto other topics at the end of the month. We decided to do a May/June issue and make it a little longer than usual, rather than rush to get two issues out within a short time frame. We expect to be back on our monthly publication schedule in July – and with any luck that issue will feature night photography.

We did get to Vancouver to do some photography early in May. The scenery was gorgeous, the mountains spectacular, the wildlife incredible. We’re starting to edit the photos from our trip, you’ll see some of Bill’s as illustrations to one of this month’s articles. As for my photos of the bald eagles and seals in the harbor – well the best way to them apart is the seals are the little black dots surrounded by water – and the bald eagles are the little black dots surrounded by sky. We’re definitely going to need to get some longer lenses before we try taking those photos again.

Hopefully you’re having better weather for photography than we are – and hopefully June will be a drier month in Bethesda than May was.

Here at Hankins-Lawrence Images, all of our photos become digital images at some point. Either they start as images we take with our digital cameras or they start as photos taken using a film camera, and then are scanned to capture the image digitally. In either case, we occasionally have to deal with noise in the images.

What is noise? It is the speckles in an image that distort what otherwise would be smooth features in a photograph. Take a close look at a portion of a photograph which has a clear blue sky – this tends to be a good place to look, particularly for digital images. Significant noise will show itself as small variations in the color and brightness (if you are looking at a black-and-white image, then the variations will only be in brightness). You can see examples of noise in our web version of this article at (www.hankinslawrenceimages.com/newsletter/articles/neatimage.htm).

Noise occurs in both digital and film photography. In film photography, the noise is due to the film grain, or the size of the crystals used in the emulsion to generate the image. While smaller crystals give a more even tone, they are less sensitive to light and thus have a lower ISO value. In digital photographs, noise is due to variations in the readings given by individual pixels in the camera sensor. Scanning film gives the opportunity for both sources of noise to be present. For both digital and film photography, using lower ISO tends to reduce the noise present in an image.

Sometime noise can be desirable in an image. This is why some films that are considered to have large grain are still popular with photographers. Many times, however, noise can detract from the overall image. With some consumer-grade digital cameras, images taken at ISO equivalents above 100 are noisy enough to distract the viewer from the image. On our Canon D60, we are usually hesitant to go above ISO 400 due to the noise. For these times, a program called Neat Image (www.neatimage.com) can be a life-saver.

Neat Image is a stand-alone program that is designed to filter out noise in digital images. It lets us extend the range of useful ISOs on our digital cameras by being able to accurately reduce noise without sacrificing image quality. Neat Image also works well for scanned film. We’ve found it to be especially valuable when we scan underwater photos, where the blue water frequently has a large amount of noise.

Neat Image is not very difficult to use. First you tell the program what is noise – either by selecting areas without any detail (and thus only noise) in the image, or by specifying a noise profile based upon the specific camera and ISO level. While the site has a selection of profiles on it, it is not difficult to make your own profile by taking a photo of a featureless sky or a 18% gray card. Once the noise profile (either image-specific or a saved profile for the imaging device) is specified, you can see a preview of the filtered image, and tweak the amount of filtration and sharpening until you get the best image. Then, it is simply a matter of clicking on the “Apply filter” button, and waiting for the filtered image.

The Neat Image filter is slow. On a P4 2.4 GHz machine running Windows XP, it takes about 90 seconds to filter a 6 mega-pixel image. The program gets around this issue to some extent by having a nice batch function. As long as all your images are going to be filtered with the same noise profile, then you can set the program to do a number of images automatically while you are doing something else (like taking more photographs or having a cup of coffee).

A downloadable demo of the program is available on the Neat Image website. This demo has limited functions, but it is more than enough to see the benefits of the program. We have the “Pro” version, which can handle 48-bit images – this version is only $59.90. In late May, 2003, Neat Image released the “Pro+” version, which includes the “Pro” stand-alone version plus a Photoshop compatible plug-in version, and sells for $74.90. We’ll be updating to the “Pro+” version soon, since having to flatten a layered Photoshop image, save the file (we use 16-bit TIFF files) and then filter in a separate program gets somewhat annoying. The “Pro+” version will eliminate some of these steps. We’ll include an update evaluating the plug-in in a future issue of the newsletter.

If you’d like to see what Neat Image can do without downloading the demo – we’ve included some before-after sample images on the version of this article on our site (here). This program is not for everyone, but if you have digital images which you find too noisy, we highly recommend this program. Stop by their site and download the demo to try on one of your images – it is worth the time to check it out!

Luminous Landscape (www.luminous-landscape.com) is a website devoted to the art and technique of landscape photography. The website’s is run by Michael Reichmann, who regularly publishes his photographs, reviews, and tutorials on the site. This is a great site for seeing interesting and provocative landscape photographs, with details of the shots, and frequently tutorials on how the shots were taken. Take a look through the myriads of tutorials on digital and film photography techniques; it is a great place to help you work on your own photographic techniques. The site has some slant towards Canon equipment and towards digital photography – the owner has replaced much of his medium format gear with Canon’s latest pro digital SLR camera (the 1Ds) after extensive testing – but most of the techniques discussed on the site are independent of type of photographic equipment. The discussion forum is also a valuable place to visit; there is a wide variety of photographic expertise represented in the forum posters. This forum was where we first heard about Neat Image, also reviewed in this edition of our newsletter.

The site does not receive any external commercial support. It is funded through subscriptions to Michael Reichmann’s Video Journal, which is also worth checking out. Regardless of whether or not you subscribe to the Video Journal, however, the site is a terrific source of information for those who want to improve their photography in general, and landscape photography in particular.

Sunrise and sunset can make for very dramatic landscape photographs. When the sun is just below the horizon (either coming up or going down), the sky can turn dramatic colors, and when the sun is just over the horizon, the light can produce long dramatic shadows. Unfortunately, photographing the great light means two things: 1) landscape photographers keep weird hours, and 2) they tend to spend a lot of time stumbling around in the dark. While we can’t do much for the first, we can help with the second. If you are hiking trails in the dark, then you will want a full-fledged flashlight, but for setting up your gear and checking your camera settings in the dark, we’ve found the keychain LED lights to be incredibly helpful.

We currently are using Inova Micro lights, but a number of companies make similar products – this particular brand was available when we were in the market. You should be able to find lights in the $8-10 range in the US, and a number of web sites sell them. The type that we have includes a small lithium-ion battery with a white LED. The LEDs come in different colors – we recommend white, since we found that red (the other common color) light made our camera LCD settings screens hard to read. A single LED light of this sort will provide illumination for a number of hours, and is small enough to conveniently clip to your keychain or camera bag. In fact, we recommend that you keep one clipped somewhere so that it will always be with you when you are out with your camera. You never know when you’ll be setting up or taking down gear in the dark, and we hate to miss a shot simply because we can’t see to set up our camera. We’ve also used them to walk dogs in the middle of the night, though we really don’t recommend them as your sole light for walking in the dark.

You can check out the type of light we use, and a shot or two that we’ve needed them for setting up, on our web version of this article at www.hankinslawrenceimages.com/newsletter/articles/ledlight.htm. This may be one of the cheapest pieces of gear in your photography collection, but if you are into night photography (more on this in a future issue), or into photographing sunrises or sunsets, one of these lights mean the difference between getting your photos or going home empty handed!

This newsletter is only sent to people who have requested to be added to the HLI PhotoNotes newsletter list. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter, please send an email with subscribe in the subject to

If you would like to be removed from the mailing list, please send an email with unsubscribe in the subject to

Please feel free to forward the newsletter to others you think might be interested in reading it.

Hankins-Lawrence Images, LLC	www.hankinslawrenceimages.com