How do I get the colors and image quality I do?

I got this question in my email and I figured others might want to see the answer to it:

hello, i saw on a post that you shot a lot w/ velvia 100. I use the same film, but can't seem to get anything close to the color and quality of your photos. U think it's the lens perhaps? I am using a kit lens still...i know, it's a sin...

As far as image quality goes...

You have to remember that most of my shots taken with Velvia 100 over the past two years have not been taken with a 35mm camera. Most of them have been taken with my RB67 medium format camera, so the image quality is going to be much higher. This is not the sort of thing that you can fix by getting something better than a kit lens, it's mostly to do with the size of the film. A Lubitel, which used to be a $50 Russian medium format camera before Lomography came along and made it a $350 camera, can still out-resolve most high-end lenses for 35mm cameras.

The Holga is the big exception, largely because the lens is too simple. But there's tons of TLR cameras out there with three and four element lenses that take great photos.

Now, as far as getting good results with a 35mm camera, Kit lenses are usually not excellent, but if you shoot them in the f/8-f/11 range, lenses tend to look alike. The famous landscape photographer Galen Rowell would generally use kit lenses and lighter weight camera bodies because they were much lighter and thus were less of a drag while climbing mountains to get to his really incredible vistas.

On the other hand, getting away from kit lenses is not hard. I make fairly heavy use of my 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is quite inexpensive for 35mm cameras. But, overall, trying to get better image quality by upgrading lenses is often counterproductive.

Now, in terms of colors... Good colors come from a few different techniques, all applied at the same time. It's really a chain, where if you don't get the first part right, you can't make the colors interesting later.

First, correct exposure. As you approach the point of overexposure, saturation goes away and the colors don't look so good. As you approach the point of getting a black slide back, saturation goes away and the colors don't look so good. Careful exposure puts the important colors somewhere in the middle.

Second, you need to wait for the correct sort of light. If it's foggy and overcast, your colors will always be muted. The ideal lighting to make colors pop is generally when the sun is near the horizon and not concealed behind a cloud. As it gets closer, the sunlight gets warmer and more orange. Really excellent light comes when you wait for the sun to go below the horizon far enough that the sky takes on interesting colors. The light will be fairly dim so you will need to use a tripod. Or you can wait till nighttime and do very long exposures.

Third, you may need to use a filter. I make fairly heavy use of the polarizer. It won't do much when the sun is really low in the sky, but a few hours before sunset, I can make the skies a deep blue.

Fourth, careful editing. In the olden days, you'd spend a lot of time in the darkroom dealing with the quirks of cibachrome paper and using contrast masks and different papers. Now, I spend a bunch of time working on the curves layer in Photoshop, adjusting the red vs. blue balance, making sure that the blacks are where I want them to be and such. The curves layer is different for each picture, so it's not like you could make a "Wirehead Look" image macro. I usually try to have at least some part of the image that goes all the way to pure black when I edit.

The nice thing about using a curves layer in Photoshop instead of the curves tool is that it's reversible.