Category: Camera Stuff

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Disappearing Me

It’s been a busy few weeks between First Holy Communions, Confirmations and a lot of Commercial work. I was recently back in APC Physiotherapy and Sports Clinic. A great team who really know their stuff and had everything ready for a great shoot. Hopefully you’ll be seeing new pics on their web and socials soon.

Mirrors are my nemesis. Usually it’s just the odd mirror over a fireplace and I need to make sure that neither am I in it nor does the bounce off my flash make it look weirdly bright.

But there are some places where there are mirrors everywhere. It’s a necessary part of the functionality of the space: people need to see themselves in action in order to correct their movement or posture. So physios, dance studios, karate clubs all have big mirrors.

Once you know about it, then you can work around it. And in over 200 delivered photos, there was one that I was in (and couldn’t be cropped out of):

Now it’s a minor edit but necessary enough.

Can you see me?

I did a talk for Cork Camera Club about edits like this and it occurs to me that I could probably do about 2 hours of tricks and tips on this kind of thing – there are many little tricks to getting it right. But maybe the AI tools are all doing it now?

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Gibbous

A student on my evening class asked about taking pictures of the moon. It’s a facinating subject and I think it’s become current with a prominent mobile phone Ad boasting the ability to take amazing moon photos.

I’ve never really dabbled but I know the theory, and my course notes have been updated with the following about taking photos of the moon:

  • It’s very far away so it is very small. We often think it’s larger than it looks as our brains have the ability to ‘focus’ on the details of small things. But to the camera it’s small. You are going to need a long lens (or a telescope)
  • It’s very bright, especially in the night sky so balancing the detail of the moon and anything lit with ambient light (or moonlight) on earth is tricky.
  • It’s moving faster than you think. So if you are going for long exposures to balance out the ambient darkness then you can’t go too long before the moon itself will blur as it moves.
  • Most of the stunning moon images you see on the internet are
    • Double Exposures
    • Dramatically enhanced in Photoshop
    • Just pure fake (two images mixed: one of the landscape and a completely different photo of the moon taken with a completely different lens – and maybe not even at the same time).

Having recently finally acquired a long telephoto lens (the Sigma 150-600 Sport) I decided that I should really try and see just how hard it is to take a nice photo of the moon. And this weekend I was in the garden and notice a nice Gibbous Moon by twilight. Now I didn’t have a tripod at home so this is hand-held, so I had to tweak up the ISO and turn on the OS to keep it steady but I think it’s quite nice.

However, this isn’t just the a long lens shot:

  • Taken at 600mm
  • With a x1.4 teleconverter
  • On a crop sensor camera (Nikon D500) – which is worth another x1.5
  • And finally cropped about 50%
  • Equivalent focal length, over 2000mm! Or around x40 magnification

Now this isn’t my specialist field. I do understand that the ‘large’ moons that we see on the horizon appear bigger partly because the light travels through more atmosphere (also making it less clear) but my understanding is that a lot of this is still pretty perceived so I stick by my belief that most of those dramatic moon-rise photos are faked!

So the question remains, how does a mobile phone, with it’s tiny sensor and lens package create stunning photos of the moon? It warrants more research but I read something that seems to suggest that the AI in the phone recognises that the moon is in the photo and ‘intelligently’ blends in stock or reference moon photos to your scene to make the moon look great. Don’t hold me to it, but it makes more sense than it being better than all the tech I used to create this simple image.

Now I’m off to find a landscape to paste this beauty in to…

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Small and wide

What kit do you take on holiday? Do you just go with the phone and try to do justice with the semi-wide angle and reasonable image quality? Do you bring ‘all the gear’ and have to deal with getting on as hand luggage and lugging it around all the time?

I think I’ve finally hit on the best compromise (for me, for general holiday stuff anyway): I picked up the wide angle lens for my trusty, compact Nikon J5. It’s a very capable 1″ sensor and a pretty neat lens. The camera community never really loved the Nikon 1 series but neither had they anything bad to say about the image quality (or the focusing system – which was pretty ahead of itself). The biggest issue was price – and the second hand market has resolved that one!

So I pretty much took all my holiday snaps with this one combination. I’m a lover of the wide angles anyway and it suits most scenic work and it gives a different perspective to the standard views of most well-known places.

Nikon J5 + 6.7-13mm – the happy walk-around. Image straight out of camera
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The State of Me

Self Headshot – Work in Progress

I do so many headshots these days that I set myself the lockdown project of trying a self portrait (again). I even bought a remote release to make it easier.

It’s going to take a bit more work.

Apart from the normal ‘oh god do I look like that’ thing (and a few more grey hairs), just being alone is weird: no one to do what I do for everyone else. But I guess that’s in the nature of a selfie.

In fairness there are a few in there that are worth looking at in more detail. I’m not gone on the studio feel but this is where I was today.

But I think I’m not really sure what mood I was going for today – and TBH not really in the mood. And there was no one there to ‘make the magic happen’ except me.

I didn’t realise this was going to be so difficult.

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One Filter

A lot of lens filters pretty much died out with film: all those weird coloured filters you used with black and white film, fancy 1970s effects filters, even gradient filters (for most people). All can be replicated in post production. Doing it in post just makes it easier – and saves wrecking a good capture with poor filter choice.

But one filter still has a place in my bag: the circular polariser. That’s because some of the effects of the polar filter can’t be replicated in post. It works in three dimensions to affect a 2D capture.

It came in handy this week for what should have been a pretty standard external view of an office building. With low sun on the building, the windows had strong reflections that wiped out the branding on the window.

Polarising the light largely removed those reflections. The reflected light as a particular orientation which can be removed by the filter if you rotate it to the correct plane.

Can’t do that in photoshop!

Now we can also now see the crap in the window of the apartment above – and I’ll have to remove the bird poo in photoshop. But the branding is now clear.

The other main use of the Polarising Filter is to saturate your skies. Now that you can do that in Photoshop but the filter gives you a head start.

I do get questions about filters and this is it: just the Circular Polariser. And buy a good one.

People are still sold UV filters to protect their lenses. Hopefully you spent as much as you could afford on a good lens that has coated elements throughout to optimise the image and reduce internal reflections. So why put a cheap bit of plastic (or even more expensive glass) on front and undo all that? Unless there is a real chance that something nasty is going to get on your front element: salt spray, mud, snow – or you are up a proper mountain – use your lens hood to protect your lens.

If you are a serious landscape photographer then you probably should learn to use gradient filters. But for us mere mortals, we shoot RAW and apply a gradient filter in Lightroom.

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Upgrade Ingredient List

So here’s what it took to upgrade my working camera system (in chronological order):

  • Computer: A new camera will produce larger files.  To move all that extra data around effectively I needed more processing power and more memory.  Otherwise there’s going to be a lot of waiting around.  Now this was actually forced on me with my old one dying but in fact doing this first makes a lot of sense so you’re ready for the files when the new camera comes.
  • Lightroom Upgrade.  I was getting by with an older version with one-off purchase.  I need an upgrade for a newer camera RAW files.
  • New Main Body – obviously. I chose a Nikon D850.  Second hand from a large dealer in the UK.  Reasonably low shutter actuations and 12 month warranty.
  • XQD and SD cards.  New camera takes different cards.  And bigger, faster cards to manage those larger files.
  • XQD card reader.  I prefer to download cards from a reader rather than connecting the camera to the PC every time.
  • Spare cards.  So having got one to start off with, I shopped around for spare cards.  With the costs of the XQD cards I’m only carrying limited spares.  With the D700 I had a bank of CFs available.
  • Screen protector for the LCD.  I use the thin ground glass, stick-on ones.
  • Spare Battery.  I bought a third party spare which came with a USB charger which allows me to charge at home and at work as a bonus.
  • L-Bracket for the tripod.  The ability to mount the camera vertically on the Tripod is really useful.  L-Brackets are fitted to each body so you need a new one for a new body.
  • Upgrade my 50mm. So this was always my weakest lens (although not a bad one) and the higher resolution and faster focusing of the new camera has shown it up to the point where I can justify the upgrade.  The others look good for now but the 50 needed to be changed.  Again, take advantage of a good second hand market across the EU.  Lots of people buy these lenses and end up not using them much (unless they take portraits professionally).
  • Battery / Vertical Grip.  I used the vertical grip the whole time on the D700 but I am enjoying the reduction in weight not using it on the D850.  I rarely needed the extra battery.  So I wasn’t going to bother.  But for jobs when I’m shooting a lot of head shots the vertical grip is useful.  Then I got a deal on a third party grip in the US so I got it just for those jobs where it helps, rather than to be permanently attached.
  • File Backup / Archive.  Those larger files are now eating disc space as well.  I Archive all the original RAW files as well as maintaining an archive of the finished client files.  I made some changes to the way that works to make it more cost effective per GB and bought more disc space.
  • Backup / Second body upgrade.  Initially I just used the D700 but it’s very different to the D850 (and uses different cards and batteries).  As I get more used to the new camera, the D700 is a less effectively back-up / second camera.  Ideally you’d buy an identical body as backup but that’s a lot of cash.  In the end I bought a D500 second hand.  Same cards, same charger, very similar functional layout, same focusing system.  Crop sensor!
  • More cards.  My two bodies now use the same cards and batteries so I need another spare.
  • Another screen protector for the D500.

I think that’s it.  For now!

Do I need a couple of DX lenses (including a standard zoom) for the D500?  Maybe but I’m not yet convinced.  I have an old 17-70 DX which will do and the 17-35f2.8 sits quite well on it too – for the uses I have for it.

Otherwise my existing lenses cover me and are all good.  Most have a replacement which is ‘better’ but also is going to cost me considerably to upgrade – even if I sell the old one – and realistically the benefits are pretty marginal.  The most obvious is my 85f1.4D which is a little battered and not optimised for modern high res digital but it’s not a main lens (I use the 105f2.8 a lot).

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Update Complete

After nearly 12 months, my equipment update cycle is pretty much complete.

My old D700 bodies were still going strong but they were reaching end of life and I decided to go for a controlled upgrade in advance, rather than facing failure in the field (even though I have backups for everything) and having to do everything at once in a hurry.

I also decided to go largely second-hand.  With Nikon on a major upgrade cycle itself right now, there is an opportunity to get well looked after second hand gear – from reliable sources – from the previous generation of cameras.  That’s plenty for me and the savings are significant.  The risks are minimal if you’re careful about who you buy from.  Worst case it goes back to the seller or needs to go to repair (so some contingency is set aside for that ).

The best second hand buys need patience: waiting for the right one to come up at the right price.  So having time to shop around is also good.

Finally I decided to upgrade and not switch.  There’s a lot of talk amongst photographers about switching camera brands – especially to Sony mirrorless.

There’s a lot of good tech there but nothing really I need that I can’t get from the current (and previous) iterations of Nikon DSLRs.

The biggest reason not to switch is the cost of replacing the supporting equipment: I have a lot invested in lenses, flashes etc.  The new ones and ones from different manufacturers may be marginally better in specific circumstances but again, is it really worth spending a considerable amount of money to change everything?

Remember this is a business that fundamentally needs to feed my kids.  A lot of camera gear is bought on a ‘want’ basis.  Much is bought on a ‘might be useful’ or ‘if X happens then I’ll need this’.  These days I look at everything from a Return on Investment basis.  If I spend €1000 on an upgrade which makes no tangible difference to my client or my workflow, then that’s money I can’t spend on my family.

In the next post I’ll go through the full itemised list of what the upgrade took.

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See Me

More product photos in the office today.  They can be tricky: balancing out white / shiny / transparent materials on a 255-white background.

As usual, the trick is to get  as much done in-camera and not rely too much on post production for whiting out the background, controlling / eliminating shadows etc.

But sometimes there just isn’t anywhere to hide – especially when you’re photographing curved shiny things.

In the surface of this bottle top, you have: my main light, the pack which is alongside it and all of the office around the other side.  Now I screened off most of the office junk with some black card but in post I noticed this weird reflection.

On closer inspection: it’s ME!!! – my shirt and my hand on the shutter release.

Now I could go back and reshoot with the cable release or the self timer but I think in this case photoshop will do.

Although part of me wants to be immortalised with the product.

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Tech or Technique

The last couple of years we’ve had these guys nesting in the roof (no idea what they are!).  For the last three weeks the parents have been diligently supplying food to their brood, at times coming every 2-3 minutes to the nest at high speed, banking late and popping into the hole between the gutter and the roof.

It’s amazing to watch.  And it happens so fast it’s very hard to photograph.

But could my fancy new camera with it’s super new auto-focus 3D tracking system handle it.  Would I be able to work it sufficiently well to make it work.  Well worth a try.

Indeed, sometimes they come down the length of the garden, so you get a good look at them coming.  It should be possible to pick one up and track it into the nest and fire the shutter when it starts to bank.  How hard can that be?

Impossible.  When you actually watch them, they don’t come straight in very often.  And the vantage point from the bedroom window doesn’t give you direct line of sight down that flight path anyway.

So forget the tech, experience and technique are going to make this happen.  Time to start turning off:

Trap Focus.

The AF isn’t going to pick them up early enough to track them.  Or at least, I’m not able to get it to and then zoom and hold the frame.  But their destination is fixed so I know where they will be when they finally open their wings to bank just before entering the nest – within a certain degree.

So I can manually set up a zone of focus just beyond the nest, reaching back as far as I can and take the shot as the bird enters that zone.  That’s called trap focus.

So higher F-stop the more depth to the zone.  But it turns out the birds are moving really fast and I need at least 1/1000th of a second of shutter speed to stop the wing movement.  So compromise is needed – and a boost to the ISO to make that happen even though it’s broad daylight.

Manual Exposure

I’ve set pretty tight constraints on the exposure now – I need as much depth of field as possible and I need a high shutter speed.  And I have a dark bird against an open sky.

So I’m not going to take any chances of the camera not noticing the bird and making the wrong choices.  Fix everything with manual exposure and ISO.  Keep an eye on the lighting in case it changes (sun coming out or denser cloud) but otherwise manual will do

Tripod

There’s a lot of waiting around here.  They are busy but sometimes they do disappear for 5 minutes foraging then come back unexpectedly.  This is the 70-200mm lens and it’s getting heavy.  But again, they are coming back to a fixed position – albeit from different directions.  So stick everything on the tripod and use the cable release to just sit any wait for a bird to come into the frame.

Crop

Having fixed the frame, I need some latitude of error so I can catch a bird no matter where it appears from (they don’t just come up the garden but from both sides and behind sometimes).  So widen the frame a bit to give me some margin of error.

Now this is where my new tech finally buys me something: all that resolution means I can crop heavily and still get a decent image.

In fact, I realise that if I set the camera to DX Crop Mode, I still have a handy 20MP but I can now zoom back a little and use shorter focal length (105 instead of 200mm)- and buy myself some more depth of field.

That seems to work well – now it’s the same thing as just pulling back and cropping the larger image but it also saves me some image size.

Timing

Just like good comedy, wildlife photography is about timing.

So now I have everything tied down: when a bird enters the frame in the zone of focus it will get focused, frozen in time and correctly exposed.  I just need the bird in the frame doing something interesting.

That takes patience and time and patience and a bit of practice to get the timing of the exposure right.

Just sit and click…

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The Right Stuff

Times were tough as a 1980’s Lego Spaceman.  Long before Benny shot to cinematic fame, mini-figures where out there surviving against all odds.

In those days, if your head got stuck on tight, taking it off with someone’s teeth was the only way to go.  And you proudly bore the scars from finally getting it off.

Fun Fact: in the 1980s we didn’t actually have blue spacemen on this side of the Atlantic: only red and white.

Testing the macro set-up for a product shoot next week: Nikon D850; 105f2.8 macro @ f5.6; single SB-800 flash off-camera with shoot-through umbrella; SB-700 Master unit; Nikon CLS.  All Manual.