[LRflex] Vertical integration of digital technology or literally lateral X-Pan'sion?
- From: LEICAFLEX <leicaflex@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: leicareflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 01:15:17 -0800
While we are all tossing and turning to find out how Leica will
implement their IR-color correction fix for the M8, I started musing
on where I sit on the digital vs film fence. Evidently, I am a
contrarian when it comes to the 'modern' world of photography.
My PhD was in medical infrared thermography and have been reading with
interest on all the recent threads re: dark clothes in the Sahara,
etc. However, my aim is not to add to the confusion nor elucidation of
that topic, but to side-step it and disclose that I was writing image
processing software to calibrate temperature readings from scanned
thermograms, adding pseudo-color to denote temperature isocontours,
and more challenging/imaginative, to develop software filters to
remove noise artifacts, enhance vein features in thermograms of
varicose veins and normal saphenous veins in the legs to select vein
grafts for bypass surgery, and ultimately to develop machine vision
algorithms to completely isolate and extract these venous patterns.
Eventually I developed an animated sequence of blood flow in the leg
veins showing only the veins completed extracted from the legs using
algorithms that I wrote laboriously. Maybe I should have gone to work
for Adobe on their Photoshop product, because now Photoshop has many
of the filters and attributes that I developed as a grad student.
(Ted Grant, FYI, I used a footbath to heat the patient's feet to warm
the venous return, which would be nicely rendered as 'warmer' pixels
in the imaged scene. Hence, warmed blood served as a natural contrast
medium for the thermal camera).
Ironically, I was once again the contrarian in that all my digitally
processed images had to be photographed with FILM (!) from the
computer screen and printed in the darkroom by mself for B&W, or color
lab for the thermal isocontour shots. It has been 15 years but my
professor still advertizes my work here:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/projects/pearce/research/thermographic_imaging.html
When I started shooting medical macro-images with 2 and 3 MP cameras
in 2000 for documentation work, I started to really appreciate Leica
rangefinder cameras due to the sudden realization that mass production
plastic digital cameras were going to overtake (in popularity) the
mechanistic, almost hand-crafted metal body cameras of the last
century. Since photography with a IIIf RD ST or a IIIg with separate
rangefinder/viewfinder was too challenging for my eyes, I switched to
M-bodies and soon realized that the feel of the M6 TTL was a lot more
"factory-made" sounding than the M3 and M2 cameras. Hence I got rid
of the M6 TTL and till this day love the M3's....to fondle, to listen
to the quiet but precise shutter, to admire the classic art deco
lines. The MP is something else beyond the M6, but one really has to
pay a premium and I would still buy a piece of history in the form of
a minty M3 SS over a MP.
Today we are firmly entrenched into the merger of photography and
computerized image processing, and each of us has invested into this
new paradigm of self expression in slightly different ways. This is
evolution in process....technology facilitates self expression and
each one of us uses different tools to capture different world views.
We meet here with the common goal of engaging mind and soul through
visual imagery, of portraying our loved ones and shared interests
across cultural and political boundaries, and enjoying all the online
personalities on the list!
In the quest for a new experience and a divertissement from medium
format film or digital photography, I found myself picking up a
Hasselblad X-Pan with 45mm and 90mm lenses, took them on a business
trip then shot off a few rolls during transit in Narita-Tokyo. This
is a Leica M-like rangefinder camera that morphs into a Panoramic
camera at a quick flick of a switch next to the viewfinder. Here are
some of my initial experiments with the Panoramic mode camera for your
curiosity and critique. I have a few more to scan and share, but
since the list has been a bit quiet lately, I am sharing this now:
http://www.fujirangefinder.com/folder.php?id=427
Care to share your thoughts on whether I should keep the X-Pan or sell
it off and continue on a LeiCanon odyssey?
Cheers to all,
Eric Chan
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