The second instalment.  If you’ve been following this blog at all, you might realise that I’ve got bit of a thing about islands. I’m sure a psychotherapist would have plenty to say about that. I particular like the smaller Italian islands, these little droplets of slightly out of time Italian culture, where everything goes slowly, where life revolves around the port, the coming and going of the aliscafi and the traghetti, Tirrenia, Ustica Lines and the others. The sun, the buzz and whine of the precarious ape, the clutter and confusion that soon gives way to tranquility, the classic Italian vacations, the vivid green sea in rocky bays.

So the lure of another small, new to me archipelago, the Tremiti Islands, lying a hour or so out in the Adriatic, was too much to resist. And the jewel, to me, of our all to brief visit, was the island of San Nicola, dominated by its massive, semi-derelict castle and XIth century Benedictine monastery. Just time to grab a quick impression, but one that remains, to be added to the memories of Marettimo, Stromboli, San Pietro and all the others.

The last 6 months have been pretty turbulent on the personal front, and although it remains a constant presence, photography, and especially dedicated photography time, has taken a major step backwards. I think I can count the number of shots I’ve taken on a tripod this year on the fingers of both hands… well, maybe I’d have to include a foot or two. So, although I wasn’t treating my trip to Norway in June as photographic in any shape or form, so far it has turned out to be pretty much the main source of new images for me this year.

This is one of those very few photos which I gave more than a few seconds though to. Even though, it is basically a roadside grab shot. And actually this particular photo isn’t going to make it into the final selection I’m working on, so it’s getting a consolation prize of being featured here.

It’s also quite unusual these days for me to make a straightforward landscape photo, which I guess this is, even if it’s pretty dull.

Norway is a country I’m discovering very slowly, through short chunks here and there. But it’s a pretty fabulous place, even if at times so similar to Switzerland that I wonder if I’m being a bit perverse. After all, why travel 2500km to explore a landscape that’s so reminiscent of the one on my doorstep? Well, Norway is at least less expensive than Switzerland (no, really, it is!).

I’m planning to add a Norway gallery pretty soon, and there are 7 rolls of XPan frames to consider too. So I guess it’s going to be a bit of a theme over the coming weeks and months.

Back in June 2006, several geological eras ago in Internet years, I wrote a blog post which started out like this:

Following earlier posts about this, today I managed to find time to evaluate Iridient RAW Developer 1.5.1 against CaptureOne Pro 3.7.4, for Olympus E-1 RAWs. The results are clear: RAW Developer is extracting more detail and more neutral colour than CaptureOne

Now over 9 years later, I’m repeating the same loop. In recent months I unhappily emigrated from Aperture, and eventually settled on returning to CaptureOne as the best compromise. I painstakingly exported my Aperture library and watched CaptureOne painfully, sluggishly import it. It didn’t do too bad a job - better than Lightroom anyway - and I was more or less able to recreate my Aperture projects within the approximation of MediaPro which has been bludgeoned into CaptureOne. And I diligently set about getting back up to speed with C1, helped by the ample, free tutorial material on Phase One’s website.

I managed to convince myself I (still) quite liked the default “Film curve”, and I was and am impressed by the exposure controls and the layer adjustments, in particular to apply local white balance.  I am a lot less impressed by the total lack of luminosity, or indeed luminance curves/levels.  But I guess I can live with that with some help from the saturation sliders.

But more and more I started getting a feeling that things didn’t look quite right when taking a closer look. I’m no pixel peeper, but even so, once I’ve noticed something at 100% magnification I find it hard to ignore. I was seeing a disturbing “plastic” look in low frequency areas, and lack of definition in high frequency detail like foliage. First I thought it was just a limitation of the small sensor in the Olympus camera I mainly use, or maybe the less than top-level lenses. But then I started down the rocky road of comparing Raw developers. Yet again.

The following nondescript postcard shot from Norway provides a good example - shot with an Olympus E-P5 and 17mm f1.8 lens (actually quite a good lens) at f8.0 (which, yes, is a slightly suboptimal aperture if you’re a pixel peeper), handheld. So it’s hardly a technical masterpiece, or indeed an artistic one.

Within this photo, I’ve compared two areas at 100%, one processed with Capture One 8.2, the other with Iridient Developer 3.0.3.  The differences, at least to me, are obvious.

Left: Iridient - Right: Capture One

Left: Iridient - Right: Capture One

For the Iridient images, I have used default settings, including the Iridient Reveal sharpening mode and default noise reduction. On the Capture One side, I have used default settings, but with Pre-sharpening 2, and noise reduction disabled. Leaving camera default noise reduction on is a real disaster. I cannot for the life of me imagine why people say Capture One has good noise reduction. And I have tried very hard to fine tune it, I really wanted to be able live with it.  At the same time I briefly tried comparing with Adobe Camera Raw (Photoshop CS6) and Aperture 3. Abobe Camera Raw gave pretty much identical results to Capture One. Aperture was marginally better. But Iridient is miles ahead.

Iridient has one other ace up it’s sleeve, the Lab mode curves. Being able to apply contrast with no colour shift using the luminance curve is very nice. It’s also very good for highlight recovery, which is just as well, as Iridient “Extreme Highlight Recovery” slider is not one of it’s strong points. The sharpening and noise reduction are industry-leading, and the general level of control is outstanding.  Of course, there are no layers, no local adjustments, none of that fancy stuff. But that’s what Photoshop is for.

All this really only holds for my personal experience with Olympus micro-four thirds cameras. I daresay Capture One might handle my Ricoh GR better, but that’s out of scope here. I’m sure it does an excellent job with digital backs and high-end DSLRs, but I really don’t think Phase One has much focus on us “little people” - although they’re happy to take our money.

Probably before long I’ll have changed my mind again, but for the time being I’m fully committed to an Iridient-centric workflow. 

Many, many years ago, back when I was working as a glaciologist, I attend a conference of a group of scientists studying the Flichner-Ronne ice shelf, in Antarctica. The conference was doubtless interesting, and indeed a highlight was visiting the brand new Norwegian Glacier museum. But the thing that always stuck in my mind was the magical venue. The conference was organised in a place called Hotel Mundal, a classic Norwegian “belle époque” hideaway lying on the shores of the Fjærland fjord, and owned by the family of conference organiser, Olal Orheim (who was also instrumental in founding the Glacier Museum). The hotel was established in the late 19th century to cater for wealthy tourists visiting the glaciers at the head of the fjord, who until then had no choice but to stay on ships anchored offshore.

Back when I first visited, at least if travelling by land, Hotel Mundal was in the back of beyond. The tunnel that now connects Fjærland to Sogndal did not exist, and although you could drive into the area along a largely deserted road, and through another tunnel, to the north, the only way out was by ferry along the fjord. These days, the road is a bit busier, and the ferry port sits abandoned.

I always dreamt of returning one day, and this year, finally, I did, together with my better half, and her mother, who celebrated her 80th birthday at the hotel.

It turns out we were lucky: Hotel Mundal had been sold several times, and was in decline for some time. Last year did not open at all. But this year it has been rescued, by a wonderful couple, Carrie and Idar, who together with their small but fabulous staff (and unbelievable cook) have undertaken to return Mundal to its prime, an epic labour of love.

Every day it seems new treasures are rescued from the cellars, mementoes of famous visitors such as Kaiser Wilhelm or Walter Mondale, or strange, arcane devices for which the purpose is yet to be revealed.

It’s a wonderful place just to relax and bury yourself in the sense of history and belonging. Clearly it is also painfully photogenic, and I cursed my lack of ability as an interior photographer (or indeed any other kind).  But to get a sense of the place, I think it is maybe appropriate to share some photos from a camera with a least one foot in the past, the Bessa III 667, using Portra 400 film. Possibly, somewhere, in a neglected box, I’ve got some earlier snapshots of Mundal. I guess I should take a look for them.

It’s been quite a while since I last posted anything here. I’ve neither had the time nor much motivation recently. Time, because of two weeks in Norway, taking my mother-in-law around the fjords for her 80th birthday, but also making a number of emergency trips to south west England to visit my mother, who is seriously ill. Motivation, because there wasn’t really that much I felt worth writing about. Life catches up with us sometimes.

Anyway, on the plus side, I’ve got a batch of film & digital photos from Norway to go through. Fortunately my mother-in-law is, in her own way, a keen photographer, so the odd photo stop was not a problem.  But the general restrictions on schedules and locations on such a trip did basically mean that anything more than a few steps from the care simply wasn’t photogenic. And the weather was frequently so awful that no amount of correct clothing could make it right for photography.

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought a medium format film camera on eBay, a Voigtländer Bessa III, which does 6x6 and 6x7 formats. This was a bit of retail therapy, to be honest, but it has turned out to be a very good buy. It’s a delightful camera to use, it produces fantastic results, it’s incredibly light and compact for a medium format camera, and the fact that it looks like an antique, despite being ultra-modern under the skin, helps to make it look unthreatening in a “street” context.  I’ll be publishing some photos from it soon.

Prior to all this, I also managed to slip in a quick trip to Tuscany, and although that was generally very low-key from a photography point of view, I did manage to come back with one shot that I really like. It was locked away in a Kodak E100G canister for over a month, before being released by Studio 13 in Zürich.  And here it is:

It looks more impressive at full size, but most people don’t have a screen 13,500 pixels wide, so I had to reduce it a bit 😊