Initial Requirements of Architectural Photography
♦ Get wide. The huge physical size of large buildings, often without room to back up, as well as the physical limitations of small interiors with the same problem of not being able to get back far enough, often combine to demand a very wide-angle lens, yet come up with an image without the distortion that is typical of wide-angle lenses.
♦ Aim for optical perfection. Architectural images should be as optically perfect as possible. Some of these areas of perfection include the following:
• Straight and level. The goal is parallel lines and precise right angles, to keep verticals at 90 degrees and horizontal lines dead-level. You want to have as little impact on the designed lines of the space as possible.
In This Chapter
Initial requirements of architectural photography
Using the EOS-1Ds Mark III in architectural photography
Architectural shooting techniques
Architectural postprocessing techniques
• No lens distortion. Various ways in which the lens can distort the image need to be corrected. These include barrel distortion (where the center of the image bulges out at you), pincushion distortion (where the center of the image is pulled away from you), chromatic aberrations (when color fringing occurs), and keystoning, which is when a building appears to be falling backwards.
• Obtain even sensor illumination. Using shifts and tilts (to be explained further on) can affect how the light reaches the sensor, particularly with technical cameras that have larger shift capacity.
Strong overall image quality. You want to capture the image with the finest detail you can, along with the color being as rich and/or precise as the image requires. For example, a particular interior space might have very precise custom colors used in its design, and interior designers want those colors precisely captured.
Elicit an emotional response.
Accomplishing all the technical demands isn't the end, of course; in many ways, it's the beginning. As with any other photograph, you hope to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Do you want the building to look majestic in scope? Awe inspiring in its accuracy and detail? Do you want to show how well the structure blends into the environment? Is the goal to convey power? Delicacy? Tradition? Mystery? All these can be sought after, and hopefully accomplished, by how you take the photograph and then modify it in post production.
Once you take in both the technical and creative skills necessary to produce top-notch architectural photography work, it gets a bit easier to understand how tricky it is and why few photographers are great at this type of work. In figure 11-1, you can see a great example of how the 1Ds Mark III can, in fact, produce strong architectural images. The 14mm 2.8L lens is super wide and optically quite good. The 1DsIII sensor does a good job of tight detail along with a big contrast range.
I'm happy that you'll be receiving a viewpoint of a very good architectural photographer in this chapter: Jon Roemer, who photographs architecture along with other types of assignments and works with the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III for all his work.
11.1 Mall interior. 14mm, 2.8L II lens. ISO 800, 1/400 second at f/4.0
Using the EOS-1Ds Mark III in Architectural Photography
With architectural photography, photographers mainly use their Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III along with the 14mm 2.8L II lens, the 24mm TSE lens, and the 45mm TSE lens as the main lenses. It will be very useful for you to know about sets of equipment and approaches that photographers are using at this point in time for architectural assignments. It's the only way to understand how the camera works well.
Note /As of Spring 2009 Canon released —' 2 more lenses in its quest to provide the tools necessary for the architectural photographer. Most exciting is the 17mm Ts-E tilt shift lens — the widest lens available with tilt and shift controls in the full frame 35mm market. The second is a new and improved 24mm tilt-shift lens — the 24 mm TS-E II. Neither of these lenses were available at press time for editorial testing and review, but they look very promising, indeed.
© 2009 Jon Roemer
11.2 The Lewis Library at Princeton University, designed by Frank Gehry. 14mm 2.8L II lens, ISO 100, 21 seconds at f/8. A great example by Jon Roemer of what the 1DsIII is capable of in this field, I find this image to represent the building well with a drama that's all its own.
Canon IDs Mark III realities
The following are some of the principal qualities of the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III that make it a contender in the architectural field. The Canon system doesn't offer as wide a range of adjustments nor as great a dynamic range as other more expensive options, but it does an incredibly good job at a much lower investment cost to the photographer.
♦ 14mm 2.8L II lens. This lens is quite excellent and has a huge angle of view, wider than the 24mm XL lens available on the ALPA. Optically, it's excellent if not perfect. The lens works very well with the 1Ds Mark III sensor to pull in maximum detail.
♦ 17mm TS-E lens. The newest lens (as of this book's release) offers tilt and shift capabilities in a very wide-angle lens. If it operates as well as expected this lens offers a great solution for Canon photographers.
♦ Easier handling. The 1Ds Mark III is smaller to transport, with less pieces to get lost, and so on.
♦ Limited tilt and shift movements.
The 24mm TS-E lens offers 22mm of shift total, 11mm in each direction.
♦ Reflex viewing. As is always the case with reflex viewing, having the ability to look through the lens before you release the shutter offers a more accurate and predictable way of capturing the precise image you want, including the tilt and shift adjustments you make.
11.3 Big skylight. The combination of the 1Ds Mark III along with lenses such as the 14mm 2.8L II, can capture a great amount of fine detail. Highlight Priority aided in maintaining detail in the sky. ISO 400, 1/2500 second at f/3.5.
♦ High ISO availability. Clean high ISOs open up a world of lighting possibilities, such as capturing the beautiful low light of magic hour, and so on. You can hold the shutter open on a MF back, as well as on the Canon. However, to start with higher clean ISOs offers an advantage, particularly at times where the camera can't be locked down firmly enough for long exposure. An example would be shooting on a windy day.
♦ Live View. Live View gives you the ability to compose before pressing the Shutter button and is a fast, efficient way to work. Either by working off the rear LCD, or, better yet, on a computer screen if you have one along and are tethered to it, Live View allows you to compose and view the image on-screen with more detail and feel than you can get perhaps by looking through the viewfinder. Live View also allows for precision focusing when using manual focus lenses such as the Tilt and Shift lenses. By zooming in on the live image you'll find it much easier to obtain sharp focus than looking through the viewfinder with a manual focus lens.
♦ Auto focus. Although not always a concern when you can photograph at f/11 or determine hyperfocal distance, it sure is nice to have this feature along when using autofocus lenses.
♦ Greater depth of field. Often in other areas of shooting one is looking to open up the IDs Mark III's aperture and thus have a narrower range of focus, to look more medium format by pulling the background out of focus. In the case of architectural work, however, depth of field is usually your friend, and the 35mm-sized sensor offers greater depth of field per/stop than the larger 645 aspect-like frame of medium-format digital backs.
11.4 A nicely designed space in a small apartment. The actual distance to the TV wall is only 9.5 feet. Only the 14mm 2.8L II lens could pull this off in my opinion. ISO 100, 1/8 second at f/4.
Jon Roemer and the IDs Mark III
Jon Roemer is a gifted photographer who finds himself shooting different types of assignments on a day-by-day basis. The following are some comments from Jon, as well as images from a recent project capturing the Lewis Library at Princeton University. You can see more of Jon's work at www. jonroemer.com.
Here's what Jon has to say about his choice of the 1Ds Mark III for architectural work:
© 2009 Jon Roemer
11.5 Inside the Lewis Library. This image is a seamless composite of six images: two to cover the exposure range, and the other four to capture the various subjects. ISO 100, 1/4 second at f/11, 24mm TSE lens.
"My work is a mix of people and place photography. One day I am shooting portraits for an editorial client, another day I am photographing a building for an architectural client. The Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III excels in this environment. It can easily bounce between the two disciplines and provide a level of image quality that leaves room to spare. Additionally, Canon's support via its lens lineup and professional program are also reasons why I stick with them.
That said, there is room for improvement. It's well accepted amongst pros that Canon needs to update its wide-angle lenses. Canon is working in this regard, having released updates to its 14mm, 24mm, and 16-35mm lenses. This is helpful but often falls short. It's common practice to have to add post-processing steps including chromatic aberration removal, lens distortion correction, and perspective correction, when using the Canon system to photograph architecture. I have found that with the 20-plus-megapixel resolution of the IDs Mark III, especially, you must test each lens so that you can pinpoint its strengths and avoid its weaknesses.
No one digital camera system is perfect for everything. You can certainly achieve a higher level of image quality in architecture photography by using a digital medium-format back in combination with a pancake-style view camera and optimized-for-digital-view camera lenses. But that rise in quality comes at a huge jump in price and significant changes to your on-location and post-production workflow. You'll need to decide for yourself which system is best for your needs or your clients' needs."
© 2009 Jon Roemer
11.6 Looking upwards, Lewis Library. 14mm 2.8L II. ISO 100, 1/13 second at f/8.
Another Perspective: Tim Griffith and the ALPA 12 MAX/Phase One P45+
Tim Griffith is an award-winning architectural photographer who photographs around the world. (You can see more of his work at www.timgriffith.com.) His comments follow:
"When well handled, such as in Jon Roemer's case, the Canon files can be very good and for a lot of applications are probably comparable to the MF files when reproduced at smaller scale. What I find frustrating and/or limiting when using the Canon is that the available lenses dictate how you compose an image rather than selecting the right lens for the right view and refining that. It seems that getting maximum results from the Canon relies solely on post-production (in terms of correction lens distortion, chromatic aberration, perspective, and so on), whereas shooting with an MF back on something like an ALPA MAX (or similar) allows you to get most of the way optically straight to the chip.
In addition to that, the sharpness across the field and the implicit control that comes with shooting the larger format provides me a greater degree of confidence in the resulting images. It's a never-ending argument with tangible benefits on both sides. My outlook is that some circumstances are better with each of the platforms.
For the range and scale of work that I do, I much prefer to shoot with larger-format cameras and a digital back."
- © 2009 Tim Griffith
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