Zoom and shake

Zoom and shake. I did this shot at 1/6 th of a second as the zoom action of the lens was moved. I did another shot at 1/60 and combined them to produce this
Well anybody can get it in focus and do it the easy way!

The steam and heat caught caught in the rays of the January Sun.
Early morning mist on a cold January day

Lens Baby

I did this shot yesterday with Lens Baby 2. It really is a great portrait lens and with its 'Sweet spot' and distortion it can give almost infinite possibilities.
With this shot I could have stopped down to give the shot more DOF or a bigger 'Sweet spot' or I could have opened up to f4. 2.8 or even f2 and headed in the real creative world of Lens Baby

Fisheye.

The Peleng 8mm fisheye lens is a very interesting lens. On a full frame 35mm it gives a 180 degree circular picture but on a crop frame DSLR things get even better.
For this shot I was standing up against the rail in the picture. This is very near a 180 degree view.

Peleng 8mm at F4 pentax K10

Using the lens is only limited by your imagination. It can produce some great pictures with most subjects. The only thing I don't use mine for is landscapes, unless I only want the foreground interest. Anything a few hundred yards away may as well be on another planet with the Peleng's FOV.
The Distortion ? I love it and again the effect and degree of distortion is only limited by your imagination. It's fun to have distortion work for you, the perspective distortion is out of this world. There is also a very convincing argument that fish type distortion is in fact a more realistic view, after all the world is circular.
The Peleng is a good quality lens at a fraction of the price of other fisheyes. It will outperform the Sigma fish and is more on a par to the Nikon fisheye. The Peleng is manual focus and preset aperture.

Painting with light

30 second exposure at f8, A 1,000,000 candle power spot light was used to paint some light on the tree. It was a stormy very windy night, the full moon was only exposed for part of the exposure or it would have been far too bright.

‘Painting with light’ is easier than it sounds. With a time exposure you have plenty of leeway and the results can be fairly predictable. Like anything it is just something you have to try in order to get the hang of it.

Disused

Interior of one of the many old buildings at the Swindon Railway works

Exposure 1/20 @ f 8. 28mm Tamron lens on Pentax K10

Fishermen’s Jetty

Pentax K10 and the 18-55mm lens

Digital Lubitel

For the many who are interested in my ‘Digital Lubitel’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19339435@N00/364675436/

I have just posted two test photos from it showing the difference at f4.5 and f22
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64956578@N00/2208435145/

The Big Issue

I took these this morning with the Pentax K100 at 1600 iso. The lens was the manual focus SMC Pentax-A 28mm lens.
1600 iso is very good with the Pentax and I don’t hesitate in using it if required. Even 3200 is good and excellent results can be obtained by doing a black and white conversion in RAW and reducing ‘Colour Noise’ to smooth out the shadow areas a little.
The same applies to the K10 but 1600 iso is its limit. In praise of the K10 I do find 1100 iso to be exceptionally clean and would not hesitate to use it.

The 10 by 7 inch print of this BW version shows no noise and is in fact far better than the same size print from iso 400 35mm film.
A note about these pictures.
Most amateur photographers appear to ‘Sneak’ around with their camera. They don’t approach people and many even avoid them by concentrating on static landscape or architectural pictures.
Photography is very much a social interaction pursuit, even if you like to do candids it is always polite and often wise to speak to your subjects.

A link to my good friend Ian’s Blog
http://www.ianskyphotosite.blogspot.com/
Ian shoots with a Canon 5D, 20D, Ricoh GRD and GX100. I note he has been leaving me some nice comments
As we are both Ex photo journalists we do seem to see eye to eye.

Shake Reduction

I am posting this photo to show the Shake reduction on the Pentax DSLR. It was taken hand held at 1/10 sec. The full size version really is pin sharp with no sign of shake.

Taken the same day. This is again hand held. I wanted to capture some movement in the water and use slow shutter speeds. This one was at 1/8 sec.

All shots with the Pentax K10 and Pentax 18-55mm kit lens

Complete Flash outfit

This is my complete 'Portable' flash outfit
I should start by saying I do try to travel 'Light' and believe simple is often better, so all of this doesn't often leave the car boot.
Above are really two outfits. The gear in the case is what I call my extras
My basics would be a couple of Vivitar 285s and a couple of 2500 plus clamps, diffusers, flags, gels, radio and optical slaves. All that will fit into a small shoulder bag

Below is all I need for most situations
The whole lot ready to go. The case and two stands and shoot through brollies are not heavy and take up little room in the car boot.
You can see there are a total of 9 flash units shown here. 4 can usually cope with most shooting situations but extras are sometimes needed. Also when doing a shoot it is often better and timesaving to have extra lighting (Or part of it) set ready, the shoot can then 'Flow' along without having to stop to reposition all the units.

I will always have the minimum of 2 flash units and the wherewithal to use them off camera in my bag or pocket. I rarely use stands, I have a tripod base for my monopod which will hold a flash unit if I need it and clamps take care of fixing units in most positions. Of course it is useless having 9 units if you can't fire them. I have two radio receivers and six optical slaves, two of the slaves will sync two flash units 1 via hotshoe and the other with the sync plug.

Flashmeter. Some think a flash meter isn't needed with digital. This is rubbish. A flash meter allows you to do balanced lighting set ups and is also a lot quicker to use than trying to work out lighting ratios with the camera histogram. I use it on most shoots and whenever I have left it in the car I always seem to need it.

My simple Monopod stand idea.

This started as a music stand bought from a flea market for one pound. I removed the centre columns and fitted a bar that is the same diameter as my monopod. The foot of my monopod (Spike and rubber) screws off and you have hollow tube that slips onto the home made base. This base weighs next to nothing, folds nearly flat and is 13 inches long. It is fairly strong and can be made extra stable by opening wider and adding a bit of weight to the base (Your camera bag)

Black & white 'Art'

There seems to be an increasing interest in 'Impact' type black and white images. These usually have dark skies and lots of contrast. They are almost replicating the results you get from a well exposed Infra red film.

I am perhaps getting a right bore for this but sorry. it is nothing new it isn't difficult and too be honest it is just being overdone.

I am using a reject image to demonstrate the idea. This is a reject because it has no real subject interest, it is cluttered and frankly it is just a mess (I can write that because I took it)

Just with a simple conversion in Channel mixer this is what you can do with it. That's one simple operation, no tricks no skill.
OK to me it is still a mess, even more so with the high contrast adding even more to the clutter but you get the idea.

Applying this effect to well composed image can work but as with all techniques too many people are just throwing it at every picture they take and so many other inexperienced photographers are saying Wow that's a great shot.

I can't stress enough how simple it is to do these so don't get conned by it. especially if it seems to be a 'Photographers' 'Style'.

Ten years ago

At the beginning of a New Year one often looks back at the past ones.
I'm always looking at my old photos.
This is exactly 10 years ago January 1998. Not the ideal time for messing about in boats but I was keen. By no means a good photo but a good one for my memories.

Picture taken with film Fuji HD camera (Waterproof)

Against the Storm

It would be amusing to write that the girl thought she going to do some glamour shots on a luxury yacht but the truth is perhaps better, She was as daft as me!

A year before she had completed her RYA dingy sailing course, it was November and the last thing she had to do was demonstrate her ability to right an overturned boat but the lake had a layer of ice on it. She wouldn't let them cancel it, she insisted they allow her to complete it in the freezing water.

Even though most of the time I am seen carrying bags full of camera gear and would be the first to admit I take photography very seriously I still take loads of ordinary snapshots. My PS Canon A 80 has done at least 15,000 exposures and my Minolta X20 has just broken after being in and out of my pocket for 4 years.

No matter how serious you are, the day you stop taking snaps is the day to start questioning yourself about what you are getting out of photography?

Producing some great exhibition prints is very satisfying but if you missed all those shots of your family and friends as well as all the other events in your life do you think you are getting the best from your love of photography?

20 years ago

The end of a year and a look back at the decades that have past. I used to spend many a weekend in the wilds of Wales. These shots were from near Rhayader.

Digital Cross processed

There are many methods of reproducing the Cross Processed look. Most of them are simple curve adjustments but this one is much better.
It was showed to me by a good friend so I am passing it on to my friends.

Make a Duplicate copy of your image and convert it to Lab mode.
In lab channels pick the A channel and apply Equalize. Click lab to select all channels then select the image and copy. Paste it onto your original RGB image, convert the layer to color and reduce opacity to about 35%. You then need to apply some blur in order to get rid of any artifacts'
Return to the Lab mode duplicate and go back in the History palate to Lab mode. Select channel B and apply Equalize copy all and repeat the paste, reduce opacity, color and blur actions.
After that play about with the opacity of the two layers for the effect you want.
If you use this technique please leave a comment
This shot of Saelena was first converted to a toned image. It will give you an idea of the potential of this technique.

Saelena from the shoot done at the old railway village

Canon G5 + off camera flash

The whole set is on Saelenas My space pages

HDR

The latest 'Fad' is HDR but it isn't anything new. What is new is the programmes that now allow anybody to do it with a click of the mouse. Unfortunately most of the images look like that is the only time, effort and thought that has been put into them.
Software for HDR can be a Godsend to those who can't get their exposure right and haven't a clue about RAW conversion, Levels and Curves.

These are three variations of the same RAW file. The only adjustment to them is done at the conversion stage using curves. These are 'Basic', no work has even been attempted in Photoshop but it is obvious that a full range of tones and colour could easily be produced from the file without the need for HDR.

My finished version of this shot can be seen onthe Dec 23rd entry

I should add that I am very much in favour of HDR. I used it with digital images from my first film scanner and with all the digital cameras I have owned. Combining exposures to get a higher dynamic range is a great tool and always has been. I and many others even used it in the darkroom to produce some great BW prints.
As said it is nothing new and with digital the possibilities are even greater and better. What I am against are the number of user who overuse this tool or are just pressing the mouse button to produce a load of rubbish.
If and when I need HDR I don't need a program to do a few simple Layer masks and produce the image I want.