Photo of the Week: December Deluxe

The Deluxe Diner sits at the intersection of Devon and Clark, at the cross roads of Edgewater, Rogers Park, and points west in Chicago.  It's not a restaurant that I visit frequently, but it does seem to be one that I find my way to once a year or so.  The first time would have been about 1996 or 1997.  Back then it was called "Stacks and Steaks" and I can attest that the stacks were large though I never tried the steaks.  At the time, I had a friend who went to school at Northwestern and our options for a late night cup of coffee were limited to the IHOP at Howard and Western, or the Deluxe.  There's not a whole lot open in Evanston past midnight.

I have two distinct memories from the Stacks and Steaks days: 1) They had curtains between the booths, and 2) there always seemed to be someone in there who was talking to him or herself.  Once, there were two people talking to themselves simultaneously, as though they were carrying on a conversation with each other but from opposite ends of the restaurant.  That was an odd night.

Today the curtains are gone, and the crowd isn't as "interesting" as it once was (though at 2am anything's possible), but The Deluxe Diner still manages to satisfy my desire for greasy diner food on rare occasions.  For a couple of years they tried closing at midnight (which was stupid), but recently they've come under new management and it's open 24 hours again.  I wandered over there last week during a snowstorm, the first of the year, and captured this photo.

Photo Details: Canon S95 at 28mm, 1/15sec at f2 and ISO500.  The "DINER" lettering is actually red-- I used a red filter (in post processing) to make it appear white.  I thought the image could use a little more pop.

holding it together (before and after)

Canon S95 at 28mm, 1/15sec at f2, ISO250

This is the Clark St. Red Line platform.  I titled this photo "holding it together" because I felt the guy in the lower right kind of holds the composition together.  (it also looks like he's holding it together, too).  Without him, this would be a nice, but rather ho hum shot of a subway platform. 

This photo was taken with a Canon S95 and took an interesting journey from start to finish.  Here's the original RAW image, opened in Photoshop and converted to jpeg:



Um, where's the dude's head?  The answer is, it's not there.  Here's what happened: The S95's sensor captures 3648x2736 pixels (which is a 4:3 aspect ratio), however, it gives you the option of capturing at 16:9, 3:2, 1:1 or 4:5 instead.  A cool feature, and I've been using 3:2 (3648x2432) because that's the same ratio that my DSLR records.  I assumed the S95 discarded those extra pixels, but it turns out I was wrong.  Here's what happens when I open the RAW file with DXO Optics Pro (instead of Photoshop):



Bingo, the full 3648x2736 is there!  Cool.  I'm not sure why this happens, but clearly whatever Canon is doing to delete those extra pixels is being ignored by DXO.

Now, normally this would not be very helpful.  If I'm composing for 3:2, I'm composing for 3:2 and I don't want the extra pixels on top or bottom.  But in this case it worked out-- I knew immediately I had mis-composed this photo, but the guy in the right corner moved before I could take another shot.  The extra pixels in this case helped me create an interesting image out of what would have otherwise been a throwaway shot. 

Festival of Lights: A Tale of Two Photos

Canon S95 at 28mm, 1/15sec at f2.0, ISO400


Nikon D7000 with 35mm lens, 1/100sec at f1.8, ISO1600

I took these two photos during and before the Festival of Lights Parade in Chicago on November 20th, 2010.  Both are attempts to take essentially the same photo-- a shot of the crowd, but beyond that, they couldn't be more different.  The first photo is during the parade, and captures the excitement of the crowd with hints of the parade going by in the background-- it's strictly an editorial image.  The second was just before the parade began, and reveals more mixed emotion in the main subject, who is isolated from the out-of-focus background.

Technically speaking, the top photo was taken with a Canon S95 and the bottom with a Nikon D7000 and 35mm lens.  Due to the Canon's tiny sensor I was able to capture a large depth of field even though this was shot at f2 (it's VR also did a nice job keeping things in focus at 1/15sec and ISO400).  Where as, with the larger sensor in the D7000, a shallow depth of field was almost required.  Due to the low light and lack of VR in the 35mm lens, this was shot at f1.8 and ISO1600.

People often will say that camera equipment doesn't matter-- only the photographer matters, they'll tell you-- but this is naive and never entirely true.  The fact is, I would have had a hard time capturing the top photo with the D7000, while the shallow depth of field of the bottom photo is simply impossible with the S95.

Photo of the Week: paper thin

The Red Eye gets a lot of flack in Chicago and deservedly so-- it's a pretty shitty newspaper, whose only real upside is that a) it's free, and b) can usually be found discarded on the CTA.  In the case of this photo, it would seem mother nature isn't too found of it either, as the recent winds took their toll on this box.

I photographed this with a recently purchased Canon S95-- which I've been having a lot of fun playing around with.  I'm going to post a review (or at least some impressions) of this new camera in about a week.

Photo details: Canon S95 at 105mm, 1/20sec at f4.9 and ISO80