#apochromatic

Under Cover Of Darkness 

It’s a rare scenario when hanging a painting sideways right in the middle of a 20’ wall seems like a good idea! This week presented just such a moment. Paintings conservators sketched out (literally) the elaborate plan and then collaborated with staff from collections management and photography to work out the logistics for this unusual documentation project.

The spotlighted painting is William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall, a star of the Brooklyn Museum American Art collection that must be thoroughly documented prior to a major treatment. Using an apochromatic lens and a powerful flash moved to 50 different illumination locations, we captured images that will be processed using reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) software to create a highly detailed rendering of the painting’s complex surface.

Brooklyn Museum conservators have used RTI on smaller objects, but this was by far our largest-scale effort. The translation of the sketch to the action above may look straightforward, but it required significant pre-planning and on-the- spot troubleshooting, and an additional challenge was that the work space (within the Infinite Blue gallery) was only available for two days. Thanks to a creative and determined team, the mission was accomplished.

Follow along here for the RTI results (coming soon!) and for updates on Deborah Hall’s treatment status.

A special lens element makes these lenses so much better.

There are wonderful lenses made by Leica that photographers aspire to shoot with. With the Leica SL2-S, photographers get the best durability mixed in with the Leica image quality they crave. Everyone also knows that prime lenses are the optics that help create all those images we dream of. So we figured that we’d round up the best prime lenses for the Leica SL2-S. Looking for some beautiful…

This is an exceptional lens in so many different ways.

I truly believe that the Micro Four Thirds format is host to some of the most fascinating lenses out there. It’s also the oldest mirrorless camera system besides the Leica M. Lots of third party lenses, like the Laowa 25mm f0.95, help give it desirable flavor. Compared to Voigtlander’s competitor, more photographers might want to reach for the Laowa optic instead. Besides the beautiful lens…

Get ready for better portraits with this lens!

For more stories like this, please subscribe to The Phoblographer. For my fellow Leica lovers here, if you know, you know. But for the rest of us, you might not realize why this Leica 50mm f1.4 lens is just so special. I could do a very sales-y thing by telling you all Leica lenses are special. But that wouldn’t help anyone, and this site doesn’t do things like that. Right now, the Rare Camera…