Author: Kyle Clements

Kyle Clements is a Toronto-based artist and nerd. During his thesis at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Kyle began working on his Urban Landscapes series, a body of work that aims to capture the energy and excitement of life in the fast-paced urban environment. After graduating from OCAD in 2006, Kyle spent a year living in Asia to gather source material and experience in a different kind or urban environment. His work is vibrant and colourful. Whether painting the harsh Northern landscape, or capturing the overwhelming buzz of life in the city, his acrylic paintings hover between representation and abstraction.

D70 vs. D600 ISO Comparison

(Note: It’s 7am as of my writing this, and I have things to do this afternoon, so I’m going to declare this post a work in progress for now and go to bed. more details to come.)

My recent YouTube video comparing the nine year old Nikon D70 to the 9-months old full frame Nikon D600 has received a lot of attention. And it has also received a lot of criticism for being a very sloppy, uncontrolled test. The intention of the last batch of tests was to show the differences you get when you just pick up the camera and go. The output was neutral profile Jpegs, no sharpening or noise reduction. Each of the cameras exposed the shots differently, rendered colours differently, and handled noise differently.

This second batch of tests was a lot more strict. Auto white balance was the only area where the camera got to think for itself.
I used manual exposure mode, and used the exact same settings between cameras.
I shot RAW, not JPEG, to ensure the cameras weren’t doing anything sneaky to the images.
I took screenshots from inside Darktable, my RAW editor of choice, showing each of the images zoomed in to 100%, along with the camera settings.
The results were saved as PNG files, so there would be no softening as the images were compressed.

I’ll go from worst to best, starting with the D600. Click on the image to see the original, full size PNG screenshot.

D600 25600

Continue reading D70 vs. D600 ISO Comparison

I created a Subreddit for artists who want to gather and “Talk Shop”

ArtistMaterials is a subreddit I created earlier tonight.

Upon graduation from art school, I found it difficult to ‘talk shop’ with other working artists, as the internet is filled with many amateur art hobbyists on one end, and a bunch of obscurantist critical theorists on the other, and nothing in between.

I want a place where artists can gather to discuss the properties of cadmium vs quinacridone pigments, argue over the merits of 2 piece vs 3 piece moulds, discuss cobalt drier to oil ratios, talk about sand casting aluminum at home, list expected oil drying time per colour, exchange tips on using the mische technique, or work together to solve the mystery of how something was made.

So, if you are a redditor, head on over! And if you are a regular reader here, don’t worry, Most of the content posted there will come from either right here, or my YouTube channel.

Charcade!

KYL_0679

Some friends of mine are working on a really cool project for Burning Man 2013 – The Charcade!, which can be described best in their own words:

We’re building an arcade and it’s rather non-traditional. (Translation: We’re building the CHARCADE and ALL THE GAMES SPEW FIRE) (quote taken from http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/Site3/charcade-burning-man-2013)

To turn this quick and succinct story into a long and boring one, last night, I was an idiot and locked myself out of my studio, and one of the project leads is excellent at getting past pesky locks. I have him a call, and ran over to my place, broke me in, then headed back for the “flame test”. As soon as I heard the words “flame test”, I knew I had to grab my camera and run over to experience (and document) the action!

Continue reading Charcade!

Sakura Trees at High Park

I’ve used my new Samyang 14mm f/2.8 for a lot of architectural shots, working on collecting new source material for a batch of new paintings that I will begin production on in the near future. But I can only photograph so many cubes before I long for rougher, rugged, irregular shapes. I wanted to take my new lens out into the wilderness and get some landscape shots!

Of course, there isn’t a whole lot of wilderness to be found in downtown Toronto, so I headed off towards the next best thing: High Park. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom this weekend. If you’ve never seen High Park’s famous Sakura trees in full bloom, then you are missing out.

KYL_7110

Continue reading Sakura Trees at High Park

New Lens: Samyang 14mm f/2.8. Correcting the Moustache Distortion

(Warning: Extreme levels of photo-nerd talk below)

With the acquisition of my Nikon D600 several months ago, the world of ultra wide angle photography opened up to me. At first, I thought I could make due with my excellent Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 DX wide angle lens. No – I’m not crazy, I really was using a DX lens on an FX body. The image circle projected by the 11-16mm when it is zoomed all the way out is large enough to cover a full frame sensor.

DSC_2113The Baldwin Steps, Toronto, ON. Image taken with a Nikon D600 and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8

The problem is that edge sharpness takes a nose dive, and the vignetting is terrible. And while the 11-16mm gave me beautiful images on my-6 megapixel D70, on a 24-megapixel D600, the limitations of this lens were apparent. It’s just not as sharp as I would want a lens to be. Since wide angle photography is something I enjoy, and I really want something sharp and wide. The old phrase “go big or go home” came to mind. Looks like it was time to buy a new lens.

Immediately, there were 3 options on my radar:

Tokina AT-X 16-28mm f2.8 Pro FX for Nikon
Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G IF ED
Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G IF ED

Continue reading New Lens: Samyang 14mm f/2.8. Correcting the Moustache Distortion

D600 Sensor Dust Timelapse Part 4.

After having the camera serviced by Nikon, my D600 is still suffering from an accumulation of dust, even after 5000 shutter releases.

The spots that are appearing now are a lot more faint, the accumulation of new spots has slowed, but it’s still happening. If I shot above F8 (which is 90% of the time) it’s not a problem at all, the spots are invisible, but if I stop it down any more than that, a few faint spots are visible on clear, bright flat areas.

Nikon D600 Sensor Dust Timelapse part 3

I just realized I never posted part 3 of my D600 sensor dust test to my blog:

Part 3 of this video is another timelapse sequence combining 1000 photographs using the camera’s built-in intervalometer. The shots in this series range from #2681 to #3680, so I’ve broken that magic 3000 shots threshold that seems to be where things start to clear up for the D600.

In the comments to my previous videos, a number of people mentioned that the problem is oil/lubricant spatter, not dust (which explains why the spots will not blow away). And that this is a problem with new cameras, one that will go away after taking several thousand shots. So I figured, why not do a third sequence of 1000 shots and post the results?

Same setup as the first video:
I set up a time lapse sequence of 1000 shots with my 50mm 1.8D lens on my D600 body
I did not change lenses throughout this video.

I did use a hand pump blower to blast away any loose dust that had build up, and that did eliminate several spots, but the vast majority of them remain stuck to the sensor, and a DIY wet cleaning would void the warranty, which I am not prepared to do on a piece of equipment that is only one week old.

As you can see, while there is much less dust and oil landing on the sensor this time around, there are still a few new spots appearing. These look more like dust than oil spots.
I can deal with dust with a blower, it’s a minor annoyance, not a deal-breaker.

The camera was dropped off in person at a Nikon service centre on November 27th, and I am waiting for a call from them to let me know it’s time to pick it up. Then I will be able to see if the dust and oil problem has really worked itself out, if they have removed the excess lubrication, or if they’ve just spent two weeks doing a wet clean on my sensor.