More work with Earl Kendall for Target last week, except this time it was on location. We did two days at a loft in Minneapolis, and two days at a McMansion in Eden Prairie. It was a tiring week; I logged 55.5 hours in 5 days. Just because I can, here is a view of Minneapolis from the balcony of the 5th floor, $0.5 million dollar loft on Washington, via camera-phone:
© Nate Twedten
Anybody else notice a lot of 5’s?
Right after my grandma died, my parents decided to pursue their lifelong dream of owning a cabin in northern Minnesota. We had been renting a cabin at Broadwater Lodge on Woman Lake for some time, and they liked the area, so they looked for a place nearby. They bought one on Girl Lake at the edge of Longville, a town with a population of 180 and the Turtle Race Capital of the World.
The cabin is small, under 1000 square feet, but it has plenty of room. It has two crappy docks that we never remove in the winter. It’s set back from the lake in a channel with marsh on both sides. Here is a satellite image of the lake (you can see the marshy area on the north central part of the lake). I should have pictures of it, since that is apparently what I do, but my dad is working on renovating it a bit, so it’s not very pretty.
Maria and I took a short trip up there last weekend. It was supposed to be a big family get-together for Memorial Day, but the weather was cold and rainy, so no one went except us. I love it there, even when it is cold and rainy and when there is work to do. Going there is a vacation and yet it is a home away from home.
A small addition to my website: here.
To use the page, hover over the thumbnails to change them and click the thumbnails to toggle between the original and the retouched version. I might need to put instructions on the site. I just needed a way to show employers that I can use Photoshop.
A good portion of my heritage is Norwegian. I’m definitely a mutt, but at least I can say I have the name. Twedten is a variation of Tvedten, which is a variation of Tveiten, which was originally from the word þveit, which means “clearing” - there is a region of Norway where clearings in the countryside are common - the -en ending simply means “the”.
I’ve never been to Norway, but New Scandinavian Cooking on PBS with Andreas Viestad makes me want to visit. In the episode I saw today, he made a special sandwich with gjetost (a.k.a. “fudge cheese”), ham, lingonberries, butter, and fresh rye bread cut with an axe, then washed it down with a wild strawberry milkshake made with milk straight from the cow. On another episode, he made cream of mushroom soup on the top of a mountain.
I’ve been working at Fox Studio since last week, and I’ve got more with Earl Kendall next week. I heard a rumor that it has turned into a location shoot, so that should be fun. Also, I was booked for a two and a half long shoot in July today. So far, freelancing has been slow to start, but I am not without hope.
Edit: two and a half long shoot in July cancelled.
I don’t blame you for not reading that last post.
Everyone seems to have something to say about this topic, but I have to say something about it, even if I’m cliché. Many people, including some professional photographers, believe that digital image quality is synonymous with final image size measured in megapixels (MP). But this is a gigantic farce. Even 6 MP can be enough for an image printed smaller than a standard 8.5×11 page. Of course, it’s always nice to have the option of going bigger. Thus, most commercial photographers in Minneapolis have either 16 or 22 MP cameras. However, there is a school of the digital back, and there is a the school of the DSLR.
Just for clarification, DSLR stands for digital single lens reflex. It is a camera that most people identify by its ability to change lenses. DSLRs such as the Canon Digital Rebel, are priced so that consumers can purchase them (less than $1000). Other DSLRs, such as the Canon 1DS Mark II, are more common professionally because of their 16.7 MP chip and high price tag ($7,000).
A digital back, on the other hand, is part of a system even more modular than the DSLR system. It consists of only a light sensing chip mounted to an image processing unit. The backs are made to attach to most medium format and large format cameras and are exclusively used by professionals because of their 22-39 MP image sizes and very high cost ($20,000 - $30,000).
Because image size after a certain point is usually irrelevant, here is a comparison of Phase One’s P25 to Canon’s 1DS Mark II excluding the difference in image size:
Phase One P25
16-bit color depth (65,536 shades) per channel
12 f-stop dynamic range
9 micron pixels
48.9 x 36.7 mm CCD size
excellent lenses available (can use any camera system)50-400 ISO range
35 captures/minute
best to shoot tethered
cumbersome
Canon 1DS Mark II
12-bit color depth (4,096 shades) per channel
10? f-stop dynamic range
8.2 micron pixels
28.7 x 19.1 mm CMOS size
decent (not the best) lenses available50-3200 ISO range
8.5 captures/second
easier untethered shooting
less cumbersome
Color depth is the total number of colors possible on each channel (red, green, and blue). Dynamic range is the range of light brightness that can be captured. Larger pixel sizes and chip sizes serve to reduce noise in the final image because of the way that photons are interpreted by them. Smaller pixel and chip sizes can also be negatively effected by lens sharpness to a greater degree than larger ones.
And so, while DSLRs can be more useful in many situations, digital backs produce the highest quality image (hands down) because of their greater color depth, wider dynamic range, and larger pixel sizes (and therefore larger chip sizes).
If you found this post to be excruciatingly boring, please excuse my gearheadedness. Apparently, this topic is all I can stand to write more than a few sentences about.
I love you but
Don’t talk to me
I’m working.
Sometimes I need the utter quiet
Of the middle of the night.
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