Category: Photography

Yesterday I went to my 6-year old cousin’s dance recital. It has become the family custom in the past few months that Chris and I are the family photographers for almost every event, so much so that other members of the family now leave their cameras at home. This even partially extends to my aunt’s “extended family”, which includes people who have been friends of the family for many years. Although, for dance recitals, it would be nice to be informed of the reliance ahead of time, as it makes it easier to acquire shots of the desired child.

Now, on to the real point of this post, lens envy. When I was setting up for shooting at the incredibly dark event (think typical dance theater type lighting), in walks the professional photographers of the event. One is carrying a Canon DSLR with a lens assembly longer than my arm, as well as another who is carrying a Nikon D2X armed with a Nikon f/2.8 70-200mm AF lens (or a very closely similar lens). Quite jealous was I. I do not know how I would ever transport a camera that size with that type of lens, I would be terrified to carry it to most things I like to photo.

I think I did OK with the equipment I have, but a little more light sensitivity would have been nice, but I’m not quite ready to spend $1,500 on a lens that I will only have a need for once a year. Maybe next year, if I am in the photography business, I might consider acquiring one. I shot nearly 1,300 images yesterday on the performance. I have only had the chance to glance through them, not really focus much on them at all, so at some point today I have to go through and throw out the absolutely useless images, work on the ones that are salvageable (ISO noise issues, dark, etc), and prepare to distribute anything good. I’m not extremely confident in my photos from yesterday, but I do think it was a good learning experience for me, including learning that RAW is a very resilient format (although too huge for normal use).

Everyone remember the picture of the lens that looked like a torpedo a few weeks ago? No? Well, here. I went to go see this beauty in person. I went to Best Buy (I so desperately miss Circuit City) and asked to see the lens on a D60. That turned out to be difficult, so I was shown the lens on a D40 (close enough, just a difference of the sensor). The things I noticed about the lens were that it is clearer than my 55-200mm AF-S lens, the extra 100mm of lens DOES matter, and finally, the lens is more light receptive than my other lenses, making it better for low-light situations with a lower aperture. I went to look at the lens because I am giving it serious consideration, and before I got too far decided on the lens I wanted to make sure that the weight wasn’t unbearable with the low weight of the body (which Chris still calls a tank, against his petite Nikon P90). The optics and focusing mechanism of the 70-300mm lens is absolutely incredible. I now understand the cost associated with the lens. Now that I have decided to get the lens I just have to decide where to buy it from and figure out where to find the money (if only my desires came with a built-in ATM).

I do consider the concept of purchasing the lens to be a good investment in advancing my photography, since there is a clear difference in the clarity of the optics.

Recently I have been wondering about the aesthetics of film grain. I see some images that look ok with film grain, or even look more real with film grain, and others that look horrible with it. Also I keep thinking that the professional opinion on the film grain effect in digital photography caused by a higher ISO is ALWAYS a bad thing.

On this image, the only really telling sign of the ISO and grain is in the top corners and dark places, where I feel that it detracts from the image. On the flower itself it is barely noticeable and where it is noticeable, I feel that it adds a bit of warmth to the image and makes the flower feel less plastic than a perfect ISO 100 image would. The image is also tack sharp, which is something that would have not been possible at a lower ISO value (modest light, slight breeze, 200mm, 1/400 or faster is best). What do you think? (view full size to see all the details)

This image, on the other hand, is a sunny ISO-100 image, absolutely minimum grain. It feels overly reflective, a little more plastic and not quite as attractive. The intense clarity makes me feel the warmth of the day, an almost too uncomfortable warmth from the sun (perhaps from too many days picking strawberries with my mother and grandmother and feeling very sick afterwards). The image above does not cause that discomfort, it feels more pleasant and almost zen.

This image was shot at ISO-400. It has a nice balance of softness from the ISO, but is not as distracting with the amount of grain, although, in the full size version, it is quite obviously present.

I am still completely undecided on what I really think. I suppose it has its advantages and disadvantages. ISO-1600 is a very extreme ISO value, but it allows me to stop motion easily in most lighting conditions. ISO-100 is grain-free, but rarely produces a very sharp images, unless you have a lot of light. I kind of like the grain of an ISO-400, it has the feeling and depth without the harsh bits of unusable pixels.

Funny, this whole damn thing started because I was searching for something to use as a desktop background and I was inspecting each image for its usefulness at a large size, and now I am even more undecided about what I want to use, since I went diving for exemplars of the other ISO values. I still may use the first one I picked at ISO-1600, since its grain is not that distracting.

BTW, Anyone notice the low file number of the ISO-100 sample? On May 2nd my camera rolled over from 9999 to 0001, I have taken over 10,000 images on the D60 since December

I have recently been shopping for a new lens for my camera, something to extend my range and give me some new  perspectives to work with. I have been looking for decent deals, but have discovered that with my camera, that may not be easy. For my to use a lens on my camera that can be focused by the camera, I have to use the AF-S series of lens, because my camera does not have an AF power drive motor. For the most part, this has not been a problem when looking at  lenses in the past, because I have either been in the lower series of Nikon lenses, or I have been looking at lenses that are completely manual. Now that I am looking at the Nikon 70-300mm range, I am finding there are options. At a cost of $150, there is the standard 70-300mm Auto Focus lens, unfortunately, that becomes manual focus on the D60 because of the absence of the motor drive (not having the motor drive makes it more energy efficient, as well as lighter and smaller). So, I must look at other options, and the only other option Nikon offers is the 70-300mm AF-S lens, at a cost of about $550, much of the cost due to the integrated servo focus mechanism.  The lens I looked at also has the problem of being a different filter size, at 67mm (compared to 52mm for my current lenses and 55mm for the Fuji). For the type of shots I would be doing with it, I don’t anticipate really needing filters though, since the 55-200mm that I have currently would still be the most versatile of the set.

The whole idea of adding a new lens to my set is probably a little crazy, but I am finding that some of my subjects are just barely out of reach, something that 100mm more (150mm comparable to 35mm) would resolve quite nicely. I have tried my 500mm lens in a variety of situations and I can not keep the shake down enough to make it work for general purpose, and of course, focus is not something easily done through a viewfinder.

My IR pass filter arrived this morning. I have done a few subjects with it. Not much yet though, as it requires a lot of time to use this filter (like 15-30 seconds per frame).

The wind today made these shots a little hard to get and thus, they are a little low in quality. The fun part of the IR photo process is that you can never really see what you get out of the image until you finish post-processing it. I did not shoot in RAW today because I was not aware of this, but on future IR adventures I will use RAW to store my images for a more simple post-processing job. The original images came out quite a bit different than these finished versions. The originals were bright pink as a result of the red/black filter in use. I processed out the pink color by using the pink as the neutral color.

The cool thing about IR is that it is not color sensitive at all. As you can see in the first image, the red tulip and its green leaf are almost the same color in IR, this is because the image is composed of only the IR radiation that is reflected back off an object. I do not know a lot about IR yet, but a few of the articles I have read suggest that that object density determines what hue it will appear as on the image.

Yesterday I made probably one of the silliest purchases that I have made in a long time, I bought an IR pass filter for my D60. I have no clue about infrared photography, so I suspect at the least it will be a fun learning experience. I have only seen infrared photos in the form of some small thumbnails online and it did not seem that interesting, more just color shifted, but I am hoping to see something somewhat dramatic when I try my filter. My primary focus is going to be on emitted vs. reflected light stuff at first. Might be kinda cool to play with some of the potential X-ray effects of IR, but not hoping for much there, since the camera is technically filtered against that (although, Nikon claims it is very much possible).

For those that are not familiar with IR Pass filters, they are pieces of glass that have been coated in such a way as to mostly block the visible light spectrum, allowing only the IR to pass to the sensor. They could be called “Visible Light Filters”, but then people probably would not make the jump to connecting them with infrared photography.

I have also been told that UV is interesting to analyze as well (and is more available to the camera), but it is a little bit more expensive to go to that side of my friend Roy G. Biv.

All this being said, I would have loved to have purchased my new filter in person, but so few places have camera filters and almost none have IR pass filters. Retailers are really sucking for my needs.

Now that my camera bag has been ordered (went with the Case Logic), I decided to see what other types of cases (non-backpack style) existed, perhaps for other purposes. I was surprised by this particular case. It is Opteka’s Hard Case. It is pretty cool in concept for protecting valuable hardware (and if I get the $3,000 Nikon 200 – 400mm lens, I will buy this case), but it comes across a bit like a camera case for a member of the mafia.