Shooting with Capture Curve is an advanced implementation of digital photography. Digital photography is more than filmless photography, it’s measured photography. Accurate measurement allows the verification that you’ve crafted into your image, the emotional communication you’re after, knowing it will properly fit the paper target you’re printing on.
The T2 has an ability to craft custom transition of tone, allowing the photographer to fit the scene in front of the camera onto the printing press with the emotional intent intact.
The T2 currently maps the 12 bit capture directly to 8 bits. This allows you, the photographer, to be responsible for the look of the image when it prints. MegaVision’s Color Coded Light Metering and Capture Curve work in concert allowing the 8 bit data to be crafted primarily with lighting, and secondarily, with software by selecting from the 12 bits, those that display as 8 bits, rather than remapping after the capture. Note that this is different from Tone Correct which remaps the density (moves the data) to a place other than where it fell with regard to the exposure of the scene.
MegaVision approached digital capture differently from the other digital camera manufacturers. MegaVision wondered how many bits were necessary for the proper printing of a photograph. It turns out that you can put at best, six and one half bits on a good printing press. This means the 8 bits that are sent from Photoshop or from Quark to an imagesetter is more than enough to make images print as we’d like them to. In fact, that is all you can send, only 8 bits (or 256 levels). However, we’d like to capture as much dynamic range between highlight & shadow as possible because we all like those subtle transitions inherent in expressive images, which is why our acquisition is 12 bits. If we know 12 bits is preferred but 8 bits are all we can send to the imagesetter we need to decide where that bit reduction should take place. MegaVision believes it should take place on the set. And we also believe that if the photographer could see the 12 bits reduced to 8 bits on the monitor display, he could use lighting (always do as much as possible with light) in addition to software remapping to optimize the 8 bits that can be sent to the imagesetter. That is exactly how Capture Curve works.
To first learn the use of Capture Curve, shoot a scene with a start curve. Go to the Tone button in the functions area of our interface. At the bottom of the curve display, you’ll see large and small arrows. Try a start curve of 2 big clicks up on the large quarter tone arrow, two big clicks up on the half tone arrow and two small clicks down on the highlight arrow. Note that each arrow set includes two arrows where 10 small arrow clicks equals 1 large arrow click. You should have a curve that looks like this:
This start curve should be saved into a folder you make in the Photoshoot application folder. Call the new folder, Tone Curves. Name the curve Start Curve. Use this curve when you start to shoot an image.
This start curve has a few important attributes. It smoothly transitions tones into the highlight. You can see the transition smoothen from Zone VIII to the highlight at Zone X. It also has a linear transition from the shadow (100% or Zone 0 on up, you can see the curve effectively placing everything starting from black, on the straight line section of the curve except for the highest 20% or Zone VIII to X. Read the curve by understanding that as the transition line deviates from linear (corner to corner, indicated here as a red line) it gains in adjacent contrast as the curve gets more vertical and it smoothens adjacent contrast as it deviates more horizontally. The greatest adjacent contrast increase occurs just below the transition to smoother tones, from Zone VI1/2 to Zone VIII1/2. Notice also that Zone VIII now falls slightly more than one zone higher than it was when linear.
Try this curve and adjust it as necessary. Should the low values in your scene lack density, push them down using the arrows, click the big arrow for rapid depression and the small arrows for lesser depressions. If you push down the shadow you’ll increase the contrast because the transition line will steepen. If you push down the 3/4 arrows you flatten the contrast because the transition line will start to deviate more horizontally from the shadow to the 3/4 anchor. Play with the curve and note the adjacent contrast changes and the value changes that accompany modifications in the transition line. Use these changes effectively and you’ll increase your ability to fit images to the target. We recommend the Epson color printers as inexpensive targets to learn the use of Capture Curve.
When you shoot with a Capture Curve you’ll need to enable the Capture Curve feature. Setup>Capture Curve>Enable will do the trick. Select the curve you want with Setup>Capture Curve>Select, navigate your way to the Tone Curves folder and select the Start Curve you’ve previously saved. If you want to modify the curve, do so, save the change and select the new, changed curve. Change the name to avoid overwriting the original Start Curve.
If you’d like to modify a curve you can Save and Replace; that will limit the buildup of files in your Tone Curves folder. If you are close and you want to try a change you can save the change with the old file name and add a “B” to denote a slight modification. Go back to the first curve if you don’t like the change. Photography seems often to be a circular process; we often find our first inclination is the best one, but sometimes need to go through the cycle to discover our first instincts were right. That’s one of the cool attributes of the saved curve, you can go immediately back to any version by selecting the appropriate curve, assuming of course that you’ve saved it.