Of course, wide angle lenses take in a wide field of view.  They also have a  larger depth of field when compared to normal or telephoto lenses.  And they are also very good at helping you vary the perspective of your image.  What’s perspective?  It’s the relative scale of nearby and distant features.  This is what I want to discuss today.

Take a look at the two photos below.  Both have the same subject matter.  They were both shot with similar focal lengths, but the perspective differs greatly.  In the first photo, the nearest tree is only about 1/3 of the length of the fort in the distance.  In the second, the same tree is almost as tall as the fort is long.  This is a huge change in the relative size of the image elements.

How can you achieve a similar effect?  Wide angle lenses exaggerate the size of things that are close, and make things farther away look smaller.  The wider the lens, the greater this effect is.  When you have a wide angle lens on your camera, you can move closer or farther away from things so that you can control the relative size of close image elements and those that are farther away.

I wasn’t happy with the composition of the first image.  I made the second by moving in closer to the trees.  Since they were nearby, and the fort was in the distance, the trees were enlarged much more than the fort.  Simply adjusting where I placed the camera allowed me to vary the relative size of the trees and fort.

Castillo de San Marco at sunrise, 17mm focal length, f/4.0 @ 1/800 sec, ISO 200

Sunrise at Castillo de San Marcos #4, 16mm focal length, f/11 @ 1/13 sec, ISO 200

Now that you understand this basic principle of photography, you too can use it to control the relative size of the elements in your composition.  I will leave a discussion of why wide angle lenses aren’t used for portrait photography very often as an exercise for the reader.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The “senior PIGs” often get questions about why we do things a certain way, or how to do a specific thing. I think it might be interesting to others if I post the questions and answers. When a junior PIG want to know, others may want to know too. So this post is the first of what may become a series. We’ll see how it goes.

Q. How do you make photos at night?

One member of our club has a trip planned to Yosemite. He (let’s call him “Donuts”) wants to do something a little different and make photos after dark. Do you need special equipment? What settings do you use? How do you focus when you can’t see anything?

Now before we get started, we’re talking about outdoor, landscape and nature photos, not your regular dinner party photos. That would be a completely different post – somewhere else.

A. Slowly and carefully

I’ll write this for people with DSLR cameras. Most of the principles will apply if you have a point and shoot, but your camera may not have the controls or flexibility you’ll need. Still, you should experiment – you may discover some good work arounds with the equipment you have.

1. Night Landscapes

Night landscapes can be different and add some interest to your portfolio.

Moonrise at sunset, a pasture near Orlando Wetlands Park – Base exposure: f/8, 2 seconds, ISO 200. Second exposure (for moon): f/11, 1/25 sec, ISO 200.

• Use a tripod to steady your camera. Hand holding a camera at night just won’t work — unless you’re only trying to make sunset silhouette.
• Compose carefully. All the normal landscape concepts still count for night photography. Composition (e.g. the rule of thirds), and having something of interest in the foreground as well as the middle and far distance will help your photo. You might want to use a bubble level in your camera’s hot shoe so that you can make sure your shot is level.
• Focus carefully. The light level might be too low for your camera to focus automatically. If your camera has a live view mode, it can be a great help for manual focus at night, since you can zoom in to see detail. If not, you can estimate distance and set your lens manually. If you’re using a wide angle lens, depth of field will help you. You can also stop your lens down to provide additional depth of field (f/11 or f/16) and make the focus less critical. Try focusing 1/3 of the distance into the frame if the main subject is close to the camera, and 2/3 in if the main subject is far away. Again, you may want to set your camera / lens to manual focus after you get it adjusted properly.
• You’ll need a remote release too so you can avoid shaking the camera when you press the shutter release. For many exposures, the light may call for an exposure longer than your camera’s longest shutter speed (typically 30 seconds). In this case you’ll need to put your camera in Bulb mode and use the remote release to time the exposure by hand (more on this later).
• Exposure is tricky. Your camera’s auto exposure mode may work, but will probably make the scene too bright. You can adjust this a bit in post processing to make it look more like a night scene. You can also chimp your shots to make sure you’re in the ball park and the result is close to what you want.  If not, use your exposure compensation – usually to dial in a bit less light.
• Here’s one trick to try for determining proper exposure for very low light situations: Set your camera’s ISO as high as it will go and make a photo. Chimp the shot to see if it is what you want. Then set your ISO back to its base value to get the highest quality photo and slow down the shutter speed by the same ratio as the ISO change. For example, if your exposure looks correct at f/8, 4sec. @ ISO 3200, then it should also be correct at f/8, 64sec @ ISO 200 (4*3200/200 = 64).
• Many DSLRs limit the slowest shutter speed to 30 second. How do you make an exposure of 64 seconds? Use manual mode. Set your aperture, and use Bulb for the shutter speed. Hold the shutter open with your remote release and manually time the exposure.
• Long exposure noise reduction: With any exposures over a second or two, sensor noise will probably be an issue. I use Nikon’s long exposure noise reduction in these situations. When turned on, the camera will take a second exposure with the shutter closed to measure noise and then subtract the noise out from the first exposure. Try it on your camera – it works well on mine
• For more advanced projects, stars (and the moon) will leave trails in any exposures longer than a few seconds. One nice effect is to scout a good landscape scene to the north and make a very long exposure. The circular star trails will be centered around the north star. You can also make spectacular photos under a dark sky by placing your camera on an equatorial mount so that the camera follows the earth’s motion. I’ve seen beautiful photos of the the Milky Way behind spectacular scenery made this way.

2. Shooting the moon

The moon is interesting and one of the easiest astronomical objects to photograph. But it isn’t easy. You’ll need to set up carefully, expose correctly and have your camera as still as possible. Your photographs will benefit from as much magnification as you can get.

The Earth’s satellite – f/11, 1/50 sec, ISO 200 (click the photo to go to Flickr, where I’ve uploaded the full res, uncropped version).

• Use a tripod to steady your camera. Hand holding a camera to make a photo of the moon might work if you have very good image stabilization in your camera or lens. But with a high zoom ratio, hand held photos will hardly every work out, especially when you zoom in so you can see some detail.
• Zoom in so you can see some detail. A 300mm lens on a crop sensor camera (~450mm equivalent) should allow you to make a decent photo. Much smaller than that and you’ll need to crop the result quite a bit – which will lower the quality. I made the photo above with my Sigma 150-500mm zoom at 500mm (750mm equivalent) on a Nikon D90. It’s uncropped and doesn’t fill the frame, but this combination does yield some nice detail.
• Focus carefully. You might want to set your camera / lens to manual focus after you get it adjusted properly. Don’t bump it later, and don’t forget to put it back in auto focus mode when you’re done.
• Your camera most likely will not expose the moon correctly. With a lot of dark sky in the frame, the moon will probably come out way over exposed. For your exposure, use your camera’s spot metering function and then set your exposure compensation to about -1 EV. Chimp the result and adjust as necessary. If you don’t have a spot meter, then try using the “sunny 16″ rule in manual exposure mode and adjust from there. For those of you that haven’t ever shot with slide film and a manual exposure camera, this rule of thumb says that for bright sunlight, your exposure should be f/16 at a shutter speed of 1/ISO. Since the moon is lit by the sun, this rule of thumb will get you close to a good exposure.
• You can do even better if you have access to a telescope. It’s relatively easy to use a point and shoot camera to take a photo through the eyepiece of a telescope like I did below. If anyone is interested in this, I can provide more information.

Hand held, autoexposure, Nikon Coolpix P1 through the telescope eyepiece

I’m sure you’ll come up with more ideas as you practice this. Good luck, Donuts. And don’t forget your flashlight and bug spray.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Swampy sunrise

We didn’t see many birds at first and the water level was down a little bit.   I’m not sure why since I think we’ve had a good amount of rain lately. Perhaps it was due to tides.

We were more than half way around the loop when we came up on two pools on the left hand side with quite a lot of bird activity. It turns out there were large numbers of small minnows in the pools and a variety of herons, ibis and egrets were flying back and forth between the pools feeding on the fish. Situations like this provide a wonderful  opportunity for photographers. Just as in the nest building scenario I wrote about a few weeks ago, the birds act in a somewhat predictable, repeatable way. You can study them and position yourself for good light and to show the birds’ activity in their environment. I was looking for something a little different and spotted this break in the reeds with the sun coming over my shoulder. I only had to wait a little while for an obliging Little Egret to pose between the reeds for me.  Now, if it had only raised its crest!

Remember when you’re making photos of very white birds like this to check your histogram. Make sure your exposure isn’t blowing out the white highlights so that detail is preserved in the white feathers.  If you do have pixels up against the right side of the histogram, use a little negative exposure compensation to move them back toward the left.

Once again patience and persistence paid off for us and everyone in the group had a chance at some very good photos.  I’ve also written here before about not putting your camera away until you’re back in the car.  Yesterday was another example of this very important rule!

Click on either of the photos above to go to Flickr, where you can view them larger.  You can also see other photos I’ve made at Blackpoint in this set on Flickr.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The point of the game is to remind you that you need to look around and find the non-obvious photos wherever you are.  Go ahead and get the “trophy shots” (photos that everyone takes at a popular spot), but don’t forget to share your unique vision, perspective, and outlook with others.

Want to play? Here goes…

Clue #1: An interesting wall.

Clue #2: Nice light on an Ibis.

Clue #3: Flowers, leaves, sky.

Have you guessed where I was yet? If not, here’s some more clues:

Clue #4: Blue wall, red windows.

Clue #5: River landing and flowers.

Do you have it yet? If not, here’s a couple more.

Clue 6: Surprise and delight.

One last clue:

Clue 7: Rhino profile

If you haven’t guessed yet, then go to this set of mine on Flickr for additional clues.  I’ve added a total of 21 photos there. Some are obvious and some are not. Hopefully they all let you see this place through my eyes.

Thanks for playing my little game.  Now, go out there and look past the obvious shots.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Bird photography can be very hard, and photographing birds in flight is even more so. In this article, I’ll point out several things that may help you improve your photos.

Great Blue Heron in flight, Orlando Wetlands Park, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, 300mm, ISO 320

First of all, here are several links to information elsewhere on the web. They cover a lot of things you should do to improve your percentage of “keepers” when photographing birds.

• “Birds in Flight”, Andy Lang: http://www.firstlighttours.com/birds_in_flight_article.html
• “Photographing Birds In Flight”, http://www.wildlife-photography-tips.com/photographing-birds-in-flight.html
• “They touch the heavens”, Moose Peterson: http://www.vividlight.com/Articles/2303.htm
• “Tips for learning how to photograph Birds in Flight”, Jay Paredes: http://www.evergladesphotosociety.org/articles/flightpart01.html

One thing I didn’t see mentioned is how great nest building season is for bird flight photography.

Great Blue Herons like the one above frequently nest in the tops of palm trees. The female will generally stay at the nest, while the male retrieves sticks for her to use. If you come across this situation like we did yesterday at Orlando Wetlands Park, you should take advantage of it to really boost your ability to get good frame filling photos of birds in flight.

Why? Well when they’re building a nest, the birds can be very predictable. The nest is in one location, and frequently the male bird will return to the same tree or general area to get another branch for his mate to use. The nest building usually goes on for quite some time and predictable flight paths together with multiple opportunities are a huge advantage for the observant, prepared photographer.

If you watch the activity for a while, you should be able to determine where to position yourself for the best chance of a good photo. You want to be along the flight path close enough to fill the frame, and have the sun in a good position to light the bird.

Optimize your camera settings for this type of photo and take time between flights to double check your results.

• Do you have a high enough shutter speed (generally 1/1000sec or better)?
• Is your aperture appropriate (one or two stops down from wide open would be best for image quality and depth of field)?
• What’s your ISO set to (as low as possible given the light and desired shutter and aperture)?
• Have you set continuous focus mode and high speed release?
• Did you turn off bracketing from your last HDR shot ?

When the bird takes off (probably into the wind) concentrate on keeping the focus mark on the bird (the eye, if possible). Pan smoothly as the bird flies. For better composition, try to leave a little room in the frame in front of the bird. Wait until there’s a lull in the action before you chimp the shots. Make sure they’re what you expect. If not, adjust and wait for the next flight.

And don’t forget to get some photos of the male as he passes the stick to the female.

One more thing – after the chicks hatch, you can still use this tip. The birds will be out searching for food for the babies, and you can stake out the nest in the same way as they return with a meal.

Great Blue Heron in flight, bringing stick to mate in nest, 1/2500 sec, f/5.6, 300 mm, ISO 640

I hope you liked this photo tip. Let me know if it helps you.

(Note: You can click on either of these photos to see a larger version on Flickr.)

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

One macro photography challenge is to get the desired portions of the subject in focus without using such a small aperture that the image quality is degraded by diffraction effects. One solution is to combine multiple images focused at different depths within the frame to extend depth of field. In this post I’ll talk about how to do this, including software that can be used to automate the process. I’ve posted one focus bracket image before in this blog. That image was created manually. Using software to help is much easier.

Note: double click any of these images to view them on Flickr, where there is a larger version available. You can also visit the entire set at this link or view a slide show at this link.

Back-lit Orchid – 15 separate captures at f/8.

As with all macro photography, good technique remains important. Focus bracketing will not make up for poor composition and exposure or sloppy camera handling. But for stationary subjects focus bracketing can give the photographer complete control over depth of field, background appearance / bokeh, and help optimize image quality. I used a program called Helicon Focus for this experiment. I think you can accomplish the same thing using Photoshop CS4, but I don’t have this latest version, so I haven’t tried. Helicon Focus is available as a fully functional 30 day trial download, so you can experiment with it too.

The Helicon Focus web site has a lot of information on how to use their software. To learn more, browse these links:

• http://www.heliconsoft.com/focus/help/english/index.html
• http://www.heliconsoft.com/focus_workflow.html
• http://www.heliconsoft.com/focus_articles.html

Here are some of my additional hints based on what I learned while evaluating the software.

1. Use good macro and general technique
   • As for any type of bracketing, a sturdy tripod will help make sure all images are aligned.
   • Use a cable release or remote so you don’t jar the camera.
   • Use the mirror lock up function on your camera with low shutter speeds
   • Know your lens and camera.
     • Which aperture has the best image quality? (Usually ~ 2 stops down from wide open)
     • Make several test images at a different apertures. Use them to select the aperture to use with the focus bracket series. You can also use one of these later if you like the background bokeh better than in the focus bracket result.
     • Where does diffraction start to affect the image quality? (About f/11 for full frame cameras and ~f/8 for APS C size sensors
     • Don’t forget about composition.
       • Eliminate unnecessary image content
       • Remember (or not) the Rule of Thirds
       • Isolate the subject and make sure the background isn’t distracting (e.g. bright spots)
2. When you’re ready to start the focus bracket capture, set your camera in manual focus and exposure modes. Also set your camera to a manual white balance, or do this post capture if you use RAW.
3. Make a series of captures working from far to near and varying the focus slightly closer for each one. I found that the smallest movement of the focus ring that I could make worked best.
4. I saved the images in RAW format and processed them through Capture NX2 in batch mode to apply the same pre-processing edits (overall lighting adjustment, some highlight recovery, a little dodging and burning and some basic sharpening) to each photo. I also used NX2 to convert the RAW images to TIFF format.
5. Then I ran the TIFF images through Helicon Focus. By the way, it is Intel i7 aware and so it runs pretty fast on my iMac. The only change I made to the default settings was selecting Lancos8 resample quality.
6. My resulting composite image had a few areas that could be improved by cloning from one of the source images. Helicon Focus supports this with a “resampling” mode which allows you to clone from any of the source files into the final before saving.
7. Once I had the final composite output saved, I opened it in Photoshop. Since I liked the bokeh of the f/36 image, I cloned from that background into the composite – and I was done, except for importing into Lightroom where I added some clarity and adjusted contrast.

Here’s a series of images to illustrate.

Wet Back-lit Orchid at f/5.6. At this aperture (2 stops from wide open) the lens optical quality is very good, but the depth of field is shallow. Parts of the flower and the stem are not in focus. The background is completely blurred out.

Wet Back-lit Orchid at f/36. At this very narrow aperture, the depth of field is maximized. The out of focus leaves and background are pleasing. But the small aperture is causing diffraction to degrade the optical quality of the capture.

Wet Backlit Orchid – focus bracket. In this composite photo made using the Helicon Focus program and 16 individual captures at f/5.6, the depth of field covers the entire flower and stem and the background is completely blurred. The optical quality is improved since the wider aperture does not suffer from diffraction.

The final image: Wet Back-lit Orchid – focus bracket with small aperture background. You can completely control the background. If you prefer the bokeh / background of the f/36 image, selectively clone it into the focus bracket image.

Conclusions: Focus bracketing is a useful technique that can give photographers a tremendous degree of control over depth of field in situations where the subject matter is still and there is time to set up, capture and process for it. If you add a manual step to the final output, you can selectively enhance the bokeh. Helicon Focus runs well and does what it is supposed to – make this process easier.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Nikon D80 @ ISO 100, Nikon 70 – 300 lens @ 260mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec.

I made this photo back in April of 2007 in the bird rookery at the St. Augustine Alligator farm. The version above is “straight out of the camera (converted to JPG with Lightroom 2.5). It has potential, but the blown sky is bad and the levels and sharpening need work.

The version below was processed in CaptureNX2 for levels and curves. I also created a version that was sharpened, and a third version that adjusted the sky. I then opened all three in Photoshop and used layer masks to choose the portions of each that I wanted in the final photo. After saving the result, I imported it into Lightroom, tweaked clarity and vibrance, and cropped it slightly before once again exporting this JPG.

Same, photo: re-processed and slightly cropped.

I guess you can tell I’m not a straight out of the camera, photo journalist type photographer. I like the second version much better than the original. Do you?

The interesting thing to me is that almost 3 years after I made the photograph, I can go back and reprocess it with better software and better techniques. Since I captured it in RAW, I have much more flexibility in what I can change. Processing RAW is like having the original light and framing fixed, but being able to tweak the camera settings. Do I need Photoshop, CaptureNX2, and Lightroom? No, but each has strengths and I believe that if you want the best image you can get, you need to have SW and understand how to use it.

Or at least shoot in RAW so that when you do get the software and techniques, you can go back and have another go at things.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

On the map, you can also see two paths that lead there.  Our plan was to work our way over and along the finger into the lake to make some photographs from the new location.  Here’s a photo I made from the fork in the path at the beginning of our explorations.

You can’t tell where a path ends from the beginning – Nikon D700, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 @ 24mm, f/8.0, five exposures: 1/15 sec – 1/250 sec, Photomatix. Edited with the Topaz Adjust filter to bring out more detail in the clouds and to make the foreground slightly brighter.

We walked down this open and inviting path for a while until we were suddenly blocked by a solid mass of bushes and underbrush.  I really wonder why this is here if it leads nowhere.  Maybe it has been open in the past.

We trudged back out the way we came, and went up our normal route a little farther to the next path leading east.  This time, we managed to follow it for quite a ways – before it suddenly went under water.  So, we then backtracked again and circled around the lake clockwise for while, but we just couldn’t find anything interesting to photograph.  At this point, we were hot, tired and getting frustrated at our inability to get to where we wanted to go and the lack of photographic targets.  We started heading back to the car.  And that’s when we began to notice interesting things.  Here’s a photo of a butterfly hiding in the damp grass:

Butterfly, flowers, dew – Nikon D90 @ ISO 200, Nikon 70 – 300 @ 300mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec. Processed in Photoshop and Lightroom.

And here’s a photo I made of a hunting Little Blue Heron.

A Little Blue Heron catches a worm. (Is that an alligator to the left?) – Nikon D90, ISO 200, Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 @ 300mm, f/8.0, 1/250.

So, even though our explorations this morning didn’t succeed, we did end up getting some nice photos.  And we didn’t get them until we forgot about exploring and headed back toward the car.  The moral of this story is the title of the post.

Have you had a similar experience?  Post a comment about it.

These and a few more photos from this outing are on my Flickr page here.  As a special treat to my loyal readers (especially you, Mary!), I’ve uploaded this photo set as full resolution jpeg files and changed the license to an “Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license“. Click on any of the photos, then click on the “all sizes” icon and choose a size to download.

Oh, and Happy Halloween.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

I’ve finally gotten through the rest of the photos that I made.  The only ones left to process are the “people pics”.  When I finish these, the final part of my post processing will be to go through everything and then selecting a “best of all set” to try making into a photo book.

Before we get started, please note that the photos in this post are linked to my Flickr account and you can click on them to go to Flickr where you can see a higer res version.

First of all, here’s my favorite photo of me from the trip.  It’s a picture of Lynn and I that Sully made.  We spent a lot of time sightseeing from our balcony, and looking at this really brings back memories.

Ed on vacation with three cameras. Lynn on vacation with two glasses of wine.; Canon PowerShot A700,11.546 mm,1/80 sec at f / 3.5,, Dimensions are 2816 x 2112, Photo by Marin Sullivan

There were quite a few impressive sunrise and sunset opportunities.  I often shot in “panorama mode”.  Most of these I took hand held and they seem to have worked out quite well.  I was careful to line up the horizon or another feature in the terrain with one of the marks in the viewfinder, and this really helps when you stitch.  I’ve also found that running Nikon images through CaptureNX before I stitch them in Photoshop really improves the final image quality.  The key is to use the CaptureNX function that corrects lens distortion.  Here’s a sunrise from our final morning on the ship.  It’s composed of 4 images stitched together vertically.  In the full res version, you can see the planet Mars (if my astronomy software is correct) underneath the moon!

Seattle sunrise panorama with moon and Mars(?); NIKON D700,48 mm,1/50 sec at f / 2.8,ISO 800, Dimensions are 4312 x 7619

Here’s another one I really like. I took this in Juneau, when Lynn and I went gold panning. I had just my Canon G9 with me (in a pocket most of the time – it was raining), and I used a flat rock in the creek as a tripod.  By the way, Lynn and I both found flakes of gold in this creek!

Juneau, Alaska – gold panning creek; Canon PowerShot G9,7.4 mm,1.0 sec at f / 8.0,ISO 80, Dimensions are 4000 x 3000

And here’s one last photo for the blog of some trees at the Lake Washington Ship Canal.  I’m not sure what this tree was and whether it was turning already for fall, but I really liked the color contrasts.

Trees; NIKON D90,19 mm,1/50 sec at f / 3.8,ISO 100, Dimensions are 2848 x 4288

As before, I’ve posted the rest of the photos for this blog entry in two ways.  I added a set of “other” photos here to my photo galleries.   You can also look at our Alaska photos together in a single time ordered set of 72 photographs here on Flickr.  Clicking on one of the photos above will also take you to Flickr, where if you click on the “all sizes” button, you can see the photo in a higher res version.

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

In an interesting temporal coincidence, I ran across this post on Jay Kinghorn’s blog today, where he talks about Seadragon , which is Microsoft’s tool for creating deep-zoom images on-line.  This looks like it would be one way to present high res images that you can zoom into and experience the sensation I described.  Another link in his article leads to the Zoomify website .

Since I don’t think I can do everything I need to with Seadragon on my Mac, I took a look at Zoomify.

Zoomify Express seems to offer the capability I think we need to show photographic level of detail.  It is a free zoom and pan authoring, publishing and viewing application and has downloads for both Mac and Windows available.  It also makes it difficult to download the high res version of the photo.  I didn’t have time tonight to figure out how to embed the Zoomify window directly into my posts, but that is something I want to do.

Here’s the result, using the same photograph of a gator that I posted before.

What do you think?