My Gear: MY R60 Red Filter
Todays digital technology has all but eliminated the need for filters. However, I like the traditional approach and the use of screw-on filters, to accomplish what I feel is a better overall altered image. I compare it to the difference between optical zoom vs. digital zoom. Which, if you’re not familiar the former is vastly superior.
So that being said, I recently acquired an R60 Red Nikon filter in 52mm, the only size it was available in. At that size, the only lens I have that it fits, is my 50mm.
- My R60 Red Filter by Nikon
The R60 filter is used for shooting B/W. The main purpose of which, is to add contrast. The part that always stands out the most to me, is how much darker it will make a blue sky.
- A shot with no filter or Digital manipulation (other than to turn it Monochrome)
- A shot with no Filter, but with Digital Filter effects (Red) turned on
- A shot taken with My R60 Red filter, Note the deep dark sky and rich contrast
Skyline about time
I finally got some decent skyline shots. If you recall, I was struggling to get a good shot of downtown Minneapolis. Well, I got a couple different ones, that I think turned out ok. The first two are from a walk bridge over 35W, one daytime, one night. The 3rd shot is from the top of the Eastern parking garage at the Mall of America.
Downtown Minneapolis from the south, on walk bridge over 35W (Daytime)
Downtown Minneapolis from the south, on walk bridge over 35W (Night)
Downtown Minneapolis from the Eastern parking garage @ the MOA
Photographic Tendencies
While going through my photos, it occurred to me, that I have a propensity to photograph certain things no matter what I’m supposed to be shooting. Things, that if I see them, I can’t resist the temptation, and I have to snap a couple photos of them. I want to share with you a couple of these “obsessions”. Most of these photos have been taken over the course of the last 2-3 years.
Clouds and Cloudbursts:
I can’t help myself, this is probably the single biggest of these fixations. When I see clouds that have a high level of definition, or sun rays streaking through them (Cloudbursts), or even the sun behind them. I have to snap a few shots.
The Sun
Another element that’s always around, and always attracts my attention, is the sun. Not always the easiest of subjects to capture correctly. It’s only really worth taking pictures of in the mornings and evenings, when it’s close to the horizon. The midday sun doesn’t offer a lot of contrast, and can be damaging to your eyes and possibly your camera. I guess i don’t really take too many pictures of just the sun, but will try to work it into my other photos (see my previous post on lens flare).
The Moon
Yet another celestial body that tends to be wherever I’m shooting. This is another one of those subject that I’ve taken a lot of shots of over the years, because I’ve been attempting to perfect the capture of it. I have some pretty good shots of it, but I still feel that I could do better.
Flowers
I sometimes think of myself as a flower collector. I just happen to collect photos of them. I’ve tried to avoid taking duplicates of flowers that I’ve already captured, but sometimes it’s hard to know if I already have shots of a particular species, and so inevitably, I end up with duplicates.
Airplanes in the sky
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had an obsession with things that fly. Helicopters in particular, but in general, anything aviation related, has always fascinated me. So naturally, if I’m outside shooting, which I frequently am, and a low flying plane or helicopter catches my attention, i’ll of course fire off a couple shots.
Riding Shotgun
On occasion, my wife will actually drive us somewhere. It’s rare, but it does happen. Well, if we’re going somewhere, and I’ve brought my camera along, I of course will inevitably end up messing with it and subsequently end up taking a few shots of the road in front of us. Possibly some of the worst photography comes from shooting through a windshield, but what can I say, I get bored easy, so I have to keep myself entertained.
Objects on my desk
I didn’t really want to share this, but I’ve included it because it’s unfortunately true. I have a tendency to snap pictures of the items on my desk, whenever I’m playing with my camera settings, or trying some new technique. It just so happens that when I’m playing with my camera, I most often happen to be sitting at my desk. And for whatever reason, I don’t delete these test photos.
I’ve included all the photos for this post in Collage form, to keep it from getting way out of hand, size wise. I would have loved to have shared the full size images of most of the cloud shots (those are my favorites), but didn’t want to make the article lopsided either. So they got the collage treatment as well. The collages are clickable though, and they do get much larger.
The sheer scope of this particular article is why it’s taken me so long to post, I could have very easily spent even double the time on it (I have a lot of pictures to go through), but really felt I should get something published. Until next time, and I hope that’s sooner, enjoy the photos.
Real Job vs. Fake Job
As it should be abundantly clear, I’m not a professional writer, nor am I a professional photographer. I am actually an IT Professional and I do have a real job. One that takes a substantial amount of my time, this time of the year in particular. See, I work for a school portrait company, and our busy season is this time of year, when all the kids go back to school. I’d like to take a moment to note the irony of my place of employment, and my chosen pastime. I can assure you that I’m not, in any way, associated with the Photography portion of my workplace. Portrait and special event photography is a noble task, documenting the milestones in people’s lives is hugely important. But it’s just not for me. I enjoy photographing my family, my kids in particular, but I’m not looking to become a portrait photographer. So yes, I’m into photography, and yes, I do work for a major photography company, but the two are unrelated.
Now back to the point I was trying to make. I’m currently working nights, while my wife is going to Pharmacy School at the University of Minnesota. I spend nearly 12hrs a day at work, because it’s our busy season, from 3:00pm to 3:00am, plus over an hour commuting. For those of you not fast with the math, that means I have less than 11 hours in a day to do whatever I want. As long as whatever I want includes at least 4 hours of sleep (about what I get in a day). Because at about 9:30am-10:30am depending on when she got to bed the night before, my 2 year old wakes up. And from then on, it’s just Go! Go! Go! At times it feels like I have no time for anything else, including this blog.
Now it may sound like I’m trying to make excuses. But really, I’m just trying to give an explanation for why it’s taking so long between blog posts. I have every intention of continuing this blog, I have tons to write about, but lately, life has just been a little too crazy. So be patient, I’ll try to keep the content fresh and interesting. When I have the time…
The following are some portrait and special events pictures that I’ve done, but again, this is not my preferred form of photography.
My wife, a picture I took for her UofM Blog: http://jamiemachtemes.wordpress.com
The kids, a portrait I took for Christmas cards last year.
My Co-worker Kelly's wedding, shot from my seat in the church.
My cousin Allison's wedding, again, shot from my seat.
My Gear: My 50mm
Let me start by saying, I Love this lens! (See Image 1) I often refer to it as my cheapest, best lens. The common misconception among non-photographers, is that a lens has to be huge in order to be any good, essentially, the bigger the better. I’ll admit that I use to think that way and up until about a year ago I had no idea how awesome a prime lens could be. And it certainly has nothing to do with their size, it’s mostly attributed to their speed.
You can get a reasonably priced 50mm f1.4 but I opted for the even cheaper f1.8. At f1.8 it’s plenty fast for low light conditions. However, with that kind of speed and wide open aperture, you lose significant depth of field. In fact, at f1.8, you only have about an inch of focus depth (meaning, 1” forward or backward of the point of focus, and you’re out of focus.) (See Image 2) This can lead to one of my favorite effects in Portrait photography, Bokeh. I’ll write more on Bokeh later on, but for now, if you don’t know what it is, it’s basically the appearance of the out-of-focus elements in the background, particularly the highlights. (See Image 3) The Bokeh, is one of the major reasons people use these high speed primes.
The use of primes is not for everyone, because you’re working with a fixed focal length, if you want to get a closer shot of something, YOU have to get closer to your subject. And sometimes, that can equate to you missing the shot. I for one enjoy the challenge of trying to get myself into the right position for the shot, instead of just depending on my zoom to do the work for me.
In closing, I love my 50mm and I think every photographer, should have at least one prime lens in their camera bag. If you’ve never used one, you don’t know what you’re missing. Yes, they’re that good.
My 50mm f1.8
My Macbook Pro, showing narrow depth of field, note how quickly it goes out of focus to the front and back of the focal plane
My daughter Phoenix, showing Bokeh in the highlights behind her.
Lens Flare, the good, the bad, and the ugly
What is it about lens flair? I find myself asking that question every so often. And to be honest, I’m really not sure. I know that I find it appealing, in the same fashion that I like fisheye images, or portraits with a heavy use of Bokeh. To clarify, certain types of Lens flare are appealing, while others are not.
Examples of what I feel are good Lens flares are the discs, and star shapes in Images 1&2. Most importantly, good lens flare needs to add to the overall image, while bad lens flare distracts from it (Image 3).
Ugly lens flare, sometimes called ghosting, would be the kind that you get when you have a filter on your lens. I know it’s commonplace to use a UV filter to protect the front element on your lens. Most people I know use them. I’ve actually started removing mine, mostly to avoid this undesirable lens flare (Image 4), and then without the UV filter (Image 5). It should be noted, in my experiences, this type of flare is more common at night.
Most modern lens have coatings on the elements to avoid lens flare, that coupled with the use of a lens hood, makes avoiding Lens flare pretty easy. So if lens flare isn’t your thing, and you feel any lens flare distracts from your images, you shouldn’t have any problems avoiding it. In fact, because of those coatings, getting good looking lens flare can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, because you’ll only get flare from the brightest of sources, namely the sun. And even then, sometimes only a disc or two.
In summary, Lens flair can be Good, bad, or ugly. Ultimately, it’s all about your personal tastes. If you have an opinion you wish to share, by all mean, I’d love to hear what others think of lens flare in relation to creative photography.
Times Lens flare was used in this article : 21 (Just so you know, that I know, I over used it.) ;)
Image 1 (Good use of lens flare, in my opinion)
Image 2 (Again, good use of lens flare, in my opinion)
Image 3 (Distracting Lens flare, in this case accidental)
Image 4 (bad ghosting due to UV filter)
Image 5 (No ghosting after UV filter was removed)
My Gear: My Damn Tripod
Yet another sign that I’m strictly an amateur. For about the billionth outing in the last month or so, I forgot my damn tripod at home. This time for the entire weekend. Now if I was a professional, this sort of thing would be inexcusable. Luckily I get to hide under the refuge of being a hobbyist. And not take myself too seriously. Still I’m quite irritated that I did’t have my tripod, because for the weekend, we would be out of the city. And I was hoping to get some cool “Star trail” shots. Ones that are uninhibited by the ambient lights of the Cites. You’ve probably seen the type of shots I’m talking about in books. (Set up camera on tripod, aim it at the sky in a Northern direction, leave the shutter open for about 30 minutes. Presto, you have yourself an image with star trails in it.) Well as you can tell from the length of the exposure, it’s impossible to do without a tripod, and hey, guess who didn’t have a tripod along for the weekend. Coincidentally, there was a really awesome looking sunset over the lake Saturday night too. Would have been nice to have a tripod for that…
So, starting with my Tripod, I plan to occasionally feature pieces of my gear on here. In segments that I’ll cleverly call “My Gear”. I’m so creative, doesn’t it have a nice ring to it?
My Gear: Tripod
I have a SunPak Pro 523PX. (Can be found here ) It has Carbon Fiber legs, and what they call a Pistol Grip QR Ball head. It has Pro in the name, but I would say it’s Prosumer at best. I like it because it’s light weight due to the carbon fiber, and the pistol grip ball head works well for making fast adjustments. What i don’t like about it, is the adjustments are fast but not measurable or precise. It also doesn’t pack itself along when we go out of town, but then, I don’t think that’s a feature of most Pro models either.
My disloyal Tripod
Macro tubes
I recently made an online purchase of some Macro tubes. here For those of you not familiar with these devices, they’re basically spacers that increase the separation between your lens and imaging sensor. The end result is a magnified macro image. They can be used to essentially turn your DSLR into a low powered microscope. I haven’t had a chance to do much experimenting with them yet, but the images that i have captured, have been quite interesting. I’m looking forward to all the creative possibilities. Here is an example of the images that i get with it.
My wife and my wedding rings, extreme close up.
Target Field, a tour or two, and the iPhone 4
I recently read an article on Wired magazine’s website
that talked about a professional photographer that opted to ditch his DSLR and
cover the Tour de France with his iPhone 4. Here
I thought it was interesting, but didn’t agree with the philosophy. That being, that it’s 100% the photographer,
and nothing to do with the equipment. Personally,
I don’t believe you can’t build a skyscraper with a tack hammer. And you can’t expect to get great shots with
the camera on a Cellphone. Say you were getting married, and you hired a wedding Photographer, and he/she showed up with their cell phone. Wouldn’t you want your money back? I think you can get ok shots with a cell phone camera, in fact the iPhone 4, which I have,
has an HDR feature. (Something I’ve been struggling
with lately.) But again, I don’t think
you can get “Great” shots with it. The article
had some shots in it, and they, in my opinion, looked atrocious. The photographer used some sort of processing
app that made all the images look discolored, and the composition looked like
what you would expect to see from any random fan walking around the Tour de
France grounds. Nothing stood out about
them, other than the color was terrible.
I finished the article, convinced that the iPhone 4, with whatever app
he used, was definitely not a good tool for Photography. And still consider the camera on my phone as a
last resort backup, for when I don’t have my “Real” camera with me.
Which brings me to today, and the tradeshow that I attended
at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins.
Now normally, when going to a venue like Target field, I’d bring my
camera. I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity
to snap a few shots. However, seeing as
I was going to a tradeshow, I didn’t think it would be proper etiquette to
bring a DSLR into the tradeshow.
Especially if one considers that I might be accused of corporate espionage. I did have it along, just left in the car. My plan was to go to the tradeshow, and then
spend a few minutes after, snapping some shots from around the area. So I’m at the tradeshow, and I’m looking over
some of the Vendors booths, and I run into one of the Sales reps that I know
from the company hosting the show, and he tells me in 5 minutes, there is
going to be a tour of the stadium starting over by registration. He tells me this, sort of under his breath,
almost like it was a secret. Well,
excited by the opportunity to take a tour of the Twin’s home, I made a bee line
to the registration area, and anxiously awaited the tour guide. When I got there, I quickly noticed that I was
the only one waiting for the tour, and the thought crossed my mind that I might
be getting a private tour. No such luck,
just moments before we started, 4 other guys showed up. Still the same, it was a pretty small group
for a tour of the stadium. Right as we
set out, our tour guide Vicki, tells us that photography is allowed, just not
video. Immediately I’m kicking myself
for not having my camera along, and then I thought back to that article about
the professional photographer, that attempted to shoot the Tour de France with
just his iPhone 4. So here I find myself
doing the same thing. I, just like the gentleman
from the story, didn’t take any groundbreaking shots. Nothing that would take your breath away,
nobody is going to be buying prints of these shots, or asking me for photo
releases. It was kind of fun to enjoy
the tour, and not worry so much about the camera, and what settings I was going
to use to capture a shot down the first base line, or from the Executive suites. Instead I just took it all in visually, and
on occasion when it felt right, I took a shot with my iPhone. I even turned HDR on, in the event that it
might make the images look better.
In conclusion, I still don’t think that the iPhone is a suitable replacement, but I can see the value in experimenting with it. But I’m not a professional, that turned down the opportunity to cover a major sporting event, just to play around with my Cell phone.
So here they are, the iPhone photos from my day at Target
Field, a very nice facility, with a very nice tour staff.
From the Corp Suite level
TC behind Home plate
Twin's Dugout
This is a view towards left field, standing just to the side of the Twin's dugout.
Elusive HDR, and the thorn in my side.
Earlier this week I wrote about HDR images, as well as
trying to get a picture of Downtown Minneapolis. I felt a follow up entry was in order.
In regards to the downtown skyline shots that I was after. I did some research and found that some people
claimed that you could get pretty decent skyline shots from the Stone Arch
Bridge. It’s a walk bridge that spans the Mississippi river just south of St.
Anthony falls. Feeling this was as good
a place to start as any, I took my 2 year old daughter with me, and drove down
to Hennepin Island park, home to the Stone Arch Bridge. We took a walk out onto the bridge, and got
some shots of downtown as well as some of St. Anthony falls, alright, so far so good.
In Regards to the HDR images I made last weekend, and my attempts
to further this technique. Here’s the
thing, I was attempting to get some multi-exposures for making some new HDR
images, so I had my tripod out and everything.
I got plenty of triple exposures, but none of them ever seem to turn out
when I process them with Photoshop. I’m
using the built in tool in CS5, HDR Pro I think it’s called. Also it should be noted, that the downtown
shots I got, where not, at all, what I was envisioning, when I set out to capture the skyline.
So all in all, once again, denied by this little project.
Takeaways from this most recent endeavor:
- Stone Arch Bridge, really cool, but not the
angle of downtown that I want. - HDR the way I’m doing it, is not working out, I’m
going to have to play around with it a lot more - Timing is still an issue, part of why I’m
getting bad images, is because the sun is in the wrong place for the shots that
I want to take. - Maybe I’m not using a small enough aperture
At this point, I’m putting, the Downtown skyline in HDR, on
my hit list. It’s going to bug me until I get something
that I deem acceptable out of it. So
expect to hear about this subject matter again.
Here are some examples of the HDR images I got from the
Stone Arch Bridge trip the other day. As
you can see, they’re still very rough looking.
Although, I kind of like the crazy look of the first one, I’m certain I’m
doing something wrong. I’m going to
continue to refine this process, until I get it right. Stay tuned…
Crazy Downtown HDR
Another HDR image of Downtown Minneapolis
St. Anthony Falls HDR
