Put some Punk back in your DSLR
By Mr Scribe
26 Sep 2007
Intense vignetting, stark colours, endless experimentation, and an overwhelming feeling of luck; I've been addicted to the world of a cheap Holga and an old Lomo LC-A for a couple of years now. The joy of getting film back, and seeing what's worked and what hasn't, is akin to having a sneaky mini Christmas all of your own.
To maintain a sense of balance, though, I've also faithfully been practising my technical skills alongside. In fact, if it wasn't for a broadband Internet connection and the purchase of a Nikon D50, I would likely never have found out about so many intriguing "alternative" approaches to photography. Probably, I would never have cross-processed a thing. I love my digital SLR though. It makes a hefty "Ker-Chik" when you take a shot.
But my DSLR also confuses me - and no in a technical, "How do I change the flash mode?" kind of way. Oddly for something I've paid more than 10 times the price of a new Holga for, I've been getting a nagging feeling lately that it's just lacking ... something. Uh-oh, the balance is being disturbed. It's time, said a tiny voice inside of me, to get away from all that "properness" usually associated with chunky gear... For all it's shininess, the one thing missing from the D50 is what I like to think of as "Punk".
The joy of Lomography is in the accident. The fun is in relinquishing control, crossing your fingers, and seeing what gets spat out the other end. I spend far too much time just "fiddling" on the SLR - choosing a mode, checking the settings, adjusting the white balance and the focus zone. So I wanted to get away from all this, but not fall into the trap of just using an Automatic mode and producing pictures that could have been shot on any Point-and-Click.
I'd read about "Custom Tone Curves" on the Internet, and was familiar with mucking about with curves in Photoshop whilst trying to bring my SLR's photos "out of their shell" a bit. I'd also been going through a bit of a Black & White phase recently, so was in a mood for something different - high contrast, in your face, instant visual impact, that kind of thing. I could have loaded my LC-A up with some slide film, but Hey, I had this D50 sitting there, being all "sensible". Why not see where it could go with some poking?
After reading around a bit, I downloaded the free trial version of the Camera Control Pro software from Nikon. This lets you, among many other things, upload your own curves (or ones you've downloaded from elsewhere) to the camera. (N.B. Todd Gibbs' ToneUp software is an alternative to this, but I have yet to try it out.) Most, if not all, Nikon DSLRs appear to have this functionality, but other manufacturers seem to vary in their support, so check your manual to find out if you can do something similar.
At this point, it's worth noting you can, of course, do something similar in post-processing by all manner of means. The advantages for me of doing it in camera are:
1. It gets applied automatically to each photo you take, so you can see the result immediately once you've taken it. This also just saves times later.
2. Unless you're exporting RAW (or NEF) images from your camera, the curve processing gets done before the image is compressed to a JPG, i.e. before much of the information has been thrown away by the compression. If you are exporting RAW images, then you can also remove the custom curve processing, but why would you want to do that, eh?
3. Most importantly, you're not tempted to control the level of saturation. You're limited to camera settings, light conditions, and how much time you can or want to spend hanging around a single subject. It's all about the Real World, baby.
The last of these is worth highlighting again. The point of this exercise was not to make highly saturated images, but rather to relieve myself of the worry over intimate detail in colour differences. There are times when it's maybe worth bracketing, and shooting off 10 images of the same thing, but I don't want to do this when I'm just running around a city or an event. I definitely don't want to do this when shooting film, and capturing that "spontaneity" is essential here. The idea is to capture a moment with as much vivacity as possible, as quickly as possible, and "intentional accidents" are one of the best, most satisfying ways I know of achieving this. Photography shouldn't be about staring into a monitor 95% of the time.
Back to the details, however. Using the software, I created a sharply bending S-shaped curve and uploaded it to the D50. (There are various webpages with more instructions, but briefly, here's what to do:
1. In the D50 settings, set the USB mode to "PTP".
2. Hook the camera up to your PC via USB and flick it on.
3. Start up the Camera Control software, which should automatically recognise the camera, read its current set-up, and give you options to control the camera remotely.
4. Under the "Camera" menu, choose "Edit Camera Curves...". This gives you a curves/levels-style interface and a sample picture to show what effect your current curve has.
5. Drag the curve to create a high contrast bend over the central region, i.e. the left quarter of the curve will be close to (or even at) the bottom, the right quarter will be close to (or at) the top, and the bit in between will be steep and probably slightly curved like an S. The flat lines at the bottom left and top right will produce dense regions of shadow and blown highlights respectively. Hurrah!
6. Hit "OK" to upload the curve to the camera.
7. Close the software and disconnect the camera.
After that, you need to tell the camera to use this new curve and set up everything else as you want it. On my D50, I do this: Under "Optimize Image", I choose "Custom", then "Tone Comp" and then "Custom" and "Done". This tells the camera to use the new curve - you can test it out by taking a photo, which should be fairly different to the usual results... Of course, other cameras will do it differently, so check your manual again.
In addition, you can take advantage of the technical controls present in a DSLR to tailor the results somewhat. I found this set-up to work quite well (i.e. I only deleted just over half the shots I took):
* Somewhat ironically, shoot in one of the modes that lets you control everything - e.g. Aperture- or Shutter-priority mode. (I use the former, generally.)
* Set the Metering Mode to Matrix-based.
* My other Custom settings under "Optimize Image" were: Auto sharpening, no saturation and no hue adjustment. Setting it to a Low level of sharpening (e.g. -2) may give more of a Lomo effect. Something to experiment with...
* Most importantly, I set the exposure bias generally anywhere between +1 EV and +2 EV, according to the subject. Mostly about +1.7 EV seemed to work well, but bear in mind that the day was extremely Sunny. Occasionally I jolted it up to over +2 or down to under +1.
The only other thing to do is get out there (oh, and maybe buy the software before it runs out too). Find a good Sunny day, and head somewhere with plenty of colour around. The usual Lomo "rules" apply - try shooting without looking, get up close, shoot quickly and don't look back. Never look back.
To be truthful, it's never going to replace my experiments with film. But it does give me a new sense of freedom with my traditional kit. And, more than that, I get to explore a whole new perspective of my surroundings without worrying about running out of film.
Useful links:
Nikon Camera Control Pro
http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/software/control_pro/index.htm
ToneUp software
More on Custom Curves for Nikons
http://www.planetneil.com/nikon/custom-curves.html
More examples
