MG TF/B Pickup, Video Production and…

I haven’t posted to this blog for exactly 4 weeks. I do have excuses. First, I took a little time away from just about everything but my 11 tomato plants. Next, I had some minor surgery on some skin things that are all too common in those of us who are past midlife and didn’t benefit from SPF sun protection, because we didn’t have it until we were well into our 4o’s. Then there are family gatherings, birthday celebrations, short vacations, etc., etc. And, lately, I have been taking a short course in Studio Production at the local public access television station here in Marin.

However, I have been doing some wheeling and dealing and work on my MG TF/B Pickup project. I sold my 1966 MGB V8 Roadster, bought a 1971 MGB GT(not a project car), traded my 1964 Chevy Suburban for a showroom clean 1975 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega and photographed a good deal of product in my photo studio.

So, I haven’t been slacking!

This post is mostly focused on my MG TF/B project.

I recently hauled all the exterior sheet metal, except for the doors, up to Nor Cal Metal Stripping in Windsor, CA. Paul Goode and his able shop foreman, Rick, dipped, stripped and primed everything for me as I was looking at probably 3 to 6 hours of grinding, sanding and rust removal on each of the 17 pieces I left with them. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but the thought of holding onto a rapidly whirling and vibrating Dual Action Sander, tungsten pad grinder, wire wheel mounted 1/2″ drill for the better part of two weeks left me without the desire or fortitude to accomplish what it took Nor Cal about three days to accomplish. I didn’t take the doors as they still retain the original oak wood frames, which are in very good condition.

I hope you enjoy this latest update. Cheers!

1954 MG TF/B Pickup Project Update 7-27-11

It’s been a slow summer and that is a good thing! I have eleven tomato plants bearing fruit, two squash plants doing the same and a Fuji apple tree that is going to deliver several bushels this year. I spent the last week working on my car projects and the MG TF/B pickup has come right along. At this time, though, I have also sold my 1966 MGB V8 and have spent a few days getting it from the 96% finished stage to the 99% finished stage. But, I digress.

This posting is about my TF project. If you have been following this blog, you know that I bought the car as a bona fide basket case last winter. I also purchased a late 1970′s MGB as a donor for the suspension, running gear and engine. This post will get you up to speed on my progress with fitting the engine to the car.

There is still a long way to go on the TF/B Pickup and I anticipate many “2 steps forward, 1-1/2 steps back” scenarios concerning the ultimate finish of the car.

Enjoy!

Turner & Taylor Metal Works 90 second video

In the creative process there is always the period of agonizing over what works, what doesn’t, what tells the tale, what is extraneous and what’s missing. Bill Zemanek and I had shot over 24 hours of live video at Turner & Taylor with three associated projects in mind. First and foremost, we wanted to create a brief narrative piece that told the story of what Taylor & Turner do and how they do it. My goal was to keep the running time to between 60-90 seconds.

Secondly, we were interested in an expanded version of the same; probably in the 7-10 minute range. And, third on our list was a documentary style piece that would run to about 20 minutes.

In this post, I am presenting the finished 90 second video. We shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, using the wonderful Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS lens, a Panasonic AG-HMC150, a Panasonic DMC-ZS-10 point and shoot and a GoProHD.

We used ambient lighting, Cowboy Studio CFL soft boxes and reflected sunlight coming through the roll up doors of the three work spaces where we shot. The cameras were all mounted on various devices, including the traveling platen of the CNC mill and a skate board wheel and abs pipe dolly set up. Some of the clips were website screen captures and still camera photos as well as freeze frames.

At any rate, I am using the excuse of numerous hours at my editing station putting this piece together for not posting to this blog last week. I think the wait was worth it. I hope you do, too. Please let me know one way or another.

Enjoy!

MGA Gas Tank in an MG TF

I had been thinking about how I would mount an MGA fuel tank in my MG TF/B pickup project vehicle when it dawned on me to create some hanging straps from 1/8″ x 1-1/4″ mild steel bar stock. I had attempted to fit the tank between the frame rails, but they are not parallel and the forward mount area would need to be “relieved”. So, I got out my Porter Cable Tiger Claw, installed a metal cutting blade and removed the spot weld flanges on the inboard sides of the rails where I needed the room to fit the MGA tank. However, it was still hanging up a bit when I attempted to slide it into the space. On further inspection, it became clear that the fuel line attachement for the pickup in the tank was just hitting the right side rail. I used my Makita 4″ grinder with a cutoff blade to cut a relief into the rail. I was also concerned about being able to put a wrench on the union once the fuel line was connected. Of course, this meant I would have to create a “pocket” in the frame rail and weld in some steel angle to maintain it’s structural integrity.

All in all, it was a pretty straight forward modification, once I got over my reluctance to cut the frame. I ran a weld bead on the cut edges of the frame rail “C” stock where I had removed the areas that were spot welded at the factory. I also welded in a 3/4″ square tube cross piece to which I attached the hanger straps at the forward most mount area and used the rear round crossmember as a base for the rear most mount areas. Once It was all welded together, cleaned up with a grinder and test fitted I contact cemented some rubberized vinyl to the straps as a rub buffer. The tank fits snugly and will be prevented from coming out of the hangers with a plywood floor unit which will serve as the storage shelf for the spare tire under the floor of the pickup bed. I plan to use a modern compact spare unit with a surplus knock off hub welded to it in order to keep the weight down and the vertical height of the spare storage area to 5″. My pickup bed will be about 14″ deep as that will line up with the highest point in the TF side panel behind the rear door hinge post area of the body. The pickup bed will probably extend the overall length of the vehicle by about 10-12″ giving me a 50-54″ x 42″ wide bed.

There are still lot’s of details to work out but I am confident that the finished product will be quite “spiffy.”

Garbage In, Garbage Out. Fixing the Photo Faux Pas.

“Garbage in, garbage out”, is a computer axiom alluded to by Brabbage and later by the psychoanalyst Fritz Perls in reference to human interaction and the human condition. It definitely applies to the process of photography.

I was looking for an email address this morning and came across this email I wrote to several of my photographer friends and colleagues back in 2009. One of them had been using a new software application for post processing RAW image files and was waxing ecstatic. I downloaded the application and gave it a try. The application interface was significantly different from PhotoShop CS4 and was not as user friendly. Now, I will admit, I have used PhotoShop since 1991; the 2.0 version which came on 14 floppy discs, and it wasn’t very user friendly either, but the PS crew has been very good at accommodating photographer’s needs over the years. At any rate, I suspect there are a lot of photographers looking for the panacea to images that are not top notch due to technical issues or operator errors. Below is my response to that dilemma:

“I shot my first digital image in 1994 with a Dicomed Scan Back on a Horseman 4×5 with a Schneider 150mm lens. My computer at the time was a Mac 2Cii; a 30 megahertz processor speed computer running 8 megabytes of RAM. I had an internal hard drive of 80 Megabytes and an external hard drive of 250 megabytes. Everything was connected by SCSI cables.

We set up about 4000 watts of tungsten light on a tabletop set at about 4 feet from the stack of Gap sweaters. I focused the camera, looking down on the sweaters at about 45 degrees, while using Scheimphlug movements for maximum depth of field and set the aperture to f16. The 75MB scan took about 6 minutes and the computer took 5 minutes to open the file. No small feat considering there was no disc space left once the file was opened. Pretty much all I could do with the file was check exposure and focus in PhotoShop 3.5. But, and this is big, there was NO NOISE! and the file was ready to send to pre-press. Each image was transferred to an 80 megabyte optical disc for manual transport to the pre-press operators. We could shoot about 4-6, styled product shots in a day. The tungsten lights put out as much heat as a small convection oven, melted plastic items and shifted colors, sometimes confusing the Dicomed algorithms.

My point is: I was using state of the art equipment in 1994. I did not then, nor do I now, use any other image processing program other than PhotoShop if I can properly expose the scene. However, I will admit to trying just about every post capture imaging program developed for Mac in the intervening years and I always come back to PS. The one caveat is I rarely use NoiseNinja on selected areas of under-lit architectural interiors. I have used NN on one file in 2009.(I have not used it since then.)

My #1 rule of photography: Shoot with the best equipment you can buy based on what your clients needs dictate and you will need to do less after the shoot to deliver the best images.

I shoot all my location work with a Canon 5DMk2, Canon EF prime, Tilt-Shift and Zoom lenses. I shoot most of my studio work with a Canon 1DSMk2 as the predominance of those images are for catalog, newspaper and insert ad projects. Both cameras have full frame sensors. I paid 5,000.00, used, for the 1Ds and 2,700.00 new for the 5dMk2. At the beginning of 2009, I purchased a used Phase One P30, Hasselblad H1, and Hasselblad HM lenses; 28mm, 50-110mm, 120mm and 300mm. About 22,000.00 in USED equipment. I shot one project, loved the look of the images, hated the boat anchor weight of the equipment and stayed awake at for about 6 weeks worrying about how to amortize the investment. Ultimately, I sold all the Hassleblad equipment at auction and only took a 700.00 loss. Hey, if I had rented all that stuff for a week it would have been about the same amount. Plus, I learned that I didn’t need the file sizes for my commercial work and I wasn’t comfortable carting all that heavy stuff around to shoot landscape. Not to mention that my best gallery sales are of images 24×20 and smaller and the 5DMk2 is more than capable of producing beautiful single image files for that size print.

If you are thinking of upgrading your camera, get a full frame sensor! Yes, they are more expensive, but the files will be bigger, cleaner and there is no sensor crop conversion factor requiring you to use ridiculously wide lenses to get 35mm wide results with less than satisfactory image quality,. ie. barrel distortion, pixel noise, fringing, etc. that requires additional multi-application processing. And, as mentioned, the newest crop of cameras have crazy big ISO specs. My 5DMk2 is great up to 800ISO, okay at 1600 and usable at 3200. I have pushed it up 2 stops in post processing, but you can’t really use the files for print larger than about 4″ x 6″.  And, the low light video is stunningly beautiful! I am working on a short film featuring my wife, artist Susan Bercu and the footage on the beach, in her studio and in the yard all looks great!! Now for the editing… after spending maybe 10 hours with the Final Cut Express how to videos and making a lot of dumb mistakes due to lack of long term memory, I might get it put together by Christmas. But, I digress.

I downloaded the DXO software today and tried it on several RAW files. I do like the toolbox interface with pretty much everything you need to optimize, correct and output files. I don’t like the way any of the corrections you make have to be “processed” before viewing your changes. PS uses a proxy system that allows previews of changes almost instantaneously. The side by side before and after window feature is nice but toggle “do/undo” or through layer adjustments works as well.
For me the overlaid layers of PS are more useful for judging changes in files. At 199.00 with an application that can be tailored to your camera and lens system, it’s a good deal. The auto correction features coded for each lens and system seems to do it’s job quite well. However, I still think my main point of getting the best hardware will obviate the need for “fix it” software. Garbage in, Garbage out!

Wow, that was quite a rant! Maybe I should start a blog. Get a lot of pixel peepers wanting to give me molten lead pixel enema beat downs.

Cheerfully submitted,

Ken”

There, you have it! My #1 Rule is still in effect. I am now shooting all my commercial assignments with the Canon 5D Mk II. It will deliver a 70+ MB file that is clean, crisp, colorful and content rich. I know Phase One, Hasselblad, and other MF systems can deliver up to 200 MB files in 2011, but none of my clients need anything bigger than what the 5D Mk II can produce. And, since I could probably couldn’t convince any of my clients to pay more for a bigger image, I would have to amortize the cost of upgrading to a Medium Format system through a home mortgage re-finance. Not something one can obtain easily in this New Era of banking. Besides, who’s printing ANYTHING these days larger than newsprint tabloid or 150 screen glossy magazine? 70 MB is more than adequate for those formats.

The photo below was shot by a GAP art director in my studio in the old American Can Building in San Francisco in the spring of 1995. I’m on a 12 foot ladder, leaning out to set the aperture on a 150mm Schneider lens. The Gitzo tripod had to be raised onto upended apple boxes to get the 12 feet we needed to cover the laid out sweaters on the floor. We were using a Horseman 4×5 for the Dicomed Scan Back and only had visual confirmation of focus. Later, Michael Collette, inventor of the Dicomed, now BetterLight scanning backs, added a focus confirmation module to his control software, meaning I did not have to look through the camera back with a loupe to fine focus; it could be done with confirmation on the monitor screen. Live View in the Canon software allows me to focus with the LCD screen on the camera back in 2011. A wonderful thing!

MG TF/B Pickup Project Video Update

If you have been following this blog, you know that I bought a serious project car last winter. When I say “serious”, I mean a project car that was not only incomplete, but in rusty and rotten condition. However, it is a 1954 MG TF Midget “1500″ car, of which, only 2,700 or so were imported into the US of A. When I saw the car advertised on Craigslist in the Chico, CA area, I did not hesitate to call the owner and make the deal right then and there. Sight unseen, is not the usual method of buying a car, but this one was rare and a model I had coveted since the early days of my obsession with automobiles.

I took my retired British car mechanic friend, Doug Jackson, along for the ride to pick up the car in Oroville, CA. I wish I had a photo of his face when he saw the car! I know he thought I was crazy for buying it and a number of bricks shy of a load for thinking I could make a running, driving vehicle from a thing in such a distressed and repellant state. I, on the other hand, had no illusions of what I would find, but still could not mask my disappointment at realizing that this rolling wreck was sporting a heavily bastardized MG TD radiator shell, that, in no way, would pass as correct. It was an unfunny joke, created by a very heavy handed, talentless lout with a hacksaw and a brazing torch. I could see what had been attempted, but the result was a monstrosity on the level created by Herr Doktor Franken-Shteen!

 

New grille shells are virtually non-existent as are used units. Fortunately, I have since purchased a very nice used one from another MG T-series car freak in British Columbia.

So, here we are about 5 months later and I am posting an update to the resurrection, or rather redirection of purpose for the TF/B. I completely stripped the car down to it’s frame and laboriously scraped all the paint off that covered the coat of rust it was intended to hide. Around the same time, William Shaw of Corte Madera British and European offered me a 1979 MGB Roadster as a donor car for the suspension, drive train and engine. I got it cheap, so I was not too disappointed to find the engine in need of a full rebuild. Converting the TF to MGB suspension was fairly straight forward with only the need to cut and rethread the tie rods. Adapting the rear differential, however, required cutting the spring perches off the tube axle and having them welded back on at about 1/2″ out board of their original position. Mounting the transmission required cutting the original TF mounting out of the frame, cutting down and welding the B crossmember and creating some mounting plates on the underside of the TF frame.

I have written about all the above on the MG Experience web forum site, so I only touch briefly on those subjects in the embedded video here.

Ken Smith Interviewed at Room Gallery for BlipTV on May 21, 2011

The second Friday of the month is Artwalk in San Rafael, CA. On May 21st, I was interviewed for BlipTV by Agne Correl of Room Gallery. The interview video is about 10 minutes in length. The videographer didn’t want me to look at the camera or Agne, which leaves me talking to a spot off camera. In the interview, I give an abbreviated version of my resume, background and activities. I also discuss the basic technical aspects of shooting digital infrared landscape images and try to explain what and how an IR camera works. One of my previous posts has a brief  overview of infrared photography in a comparative context, but here you get to see and hear me extemporize on the process. As usual for the subject of a camera, I look older and less sexy than in my mind’s eye. Enjoy!

http://blip.tv/episode/5227745