Garden, Al, and C-Train

 

For lack of a great project, I decided to just putter in the garden, continuing my work with my 85 f1.4, with and without my shortest extension tube. While without, the 85 is sharp over a large area, with it it has a very small sweet spot, not correctable off axis by refocusing. Pity the lens has a 2 foot minimum focus - I seem to keep wanting to go a bit closer.

The image of the 69th street station was with my Zeiss 15.

Print Size and Image Processing

I shot this image from Writing On Stone Provincial Park in 2010.  In 2012 I had a canvas print made, about 30 inches across (single image from my 5D2 cropped in height). Though the colour was excellent, the print was a tad dark - a bit too dramatic. Quality of print on the canvas was borderline for its size.

In 2013 a client asked for a really large print from  the same image, preferably double in size (ie. 60 inches wide). I tried to persuade him on a slightly different image with out sky that had been stitched and would easily print well onto canvas at that size, but no, he knew his mind (and I didn't blame him, I too preferred this image).

Several attempts were made to enlarge the image with various sharpening techniques. I even went back to the raw files, all without any real progress. Once he'd settled on this image for definite, I returned to the raw image, thinking to not sharpen till neared the end of the editing, and noticed that my usual controls for contrast, darks, lights etc. were missing, it had been processed with the 2003 Camera Raw technique. I had forgotten that the raw processing method had not been dramatically updated between 2003 and 2010 and it was in 2012 that it went though a big change. Going to the processing setting and changing to 2012 method changed everything. The image contained more detail, the sharpening in Camera Raw significantly better.

Bottom line is I am happier with the 2012 processed image at 60 inches than I was with the 2003 processed image (done in 2010) - a pretty impressive change. Interestingly, the 2003 processing made a big difference to older images, which makes me wonder what would happen to those really old files processed with the latest Camera Raw two generations later. I may just have to do a lot of image reprocessing.

When the 60 inch print arrived, I was not entirely happy. Lying on the sofa, it was way too bright. I hung it on the wall, brightness issue solved. I still had some colour issues and although it wasn't too dramatic like the canvas print made last year - it was all too incipid - all the drama had gone where I only wanted to tone it down a bit. Some further editing and I'm going to get the print remade.

I knew this was a risk in making the print and had charged the customer appropriately so I'd not lose if I needed to do this. Print one is ok, but it's lost the magic. Here's hoping print 2 will be the ideal.

Should I criticize the canvas printer? I think not. Even on my own profiled monitor, brightness is the single biggest thing that is hard to get right, hard to emulate, and most likely to change over time, despite best efforts. Accurate colour is easy peasy in comparison.

In hind sight, perhaps the best thing to have done would have been to mail the printer a smaller paper print and ask for the brightness to match.

Vancouver Harbour

Updating Equipment

Took a laundry basket of camera gear to The Camera Store to be sold on consignment. Gone is the 5D3, my 17-40, 50 2.5 macro, 24-70 L, 1.4 telextender, also my GH2 and 14-140.

I'm keeping the 70-200 f4L IS, the 24 tse, 90 tse, for possible use if Canon produces the camera I want.

I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing with the Panasonic GH2 - sweet camera, works well, but I'm getting much better pictures with the fast lenses on the Nikon wide open (so far just the 35 1.4 sigma but I'm going to give the 85 1.4 Nikon a go. IS doesn't help if the people move and fast lenses and high ISO are the only solution - did think of a fast lens on the GH2 but time to clean house.

I returned the Sigma 180 IS macro - not because of any problems, simply because at my age I can't hand hold fore and aft steady enough to focus - so having IS doesn't really make any difference - I'm going to have to use a tripod anyway - and the lens is big and heavy.

In the mean time, low light live view focusing is driving me crazy on the Nikon D800E but I'm willing to live with it.

 

I shot this hollow stump last night, supposedly before sunset, but a storm came up and the light went down, and focusing stopped down became near impossible, especially as I was shooting at f11 with my new Zeiss 15 mm.

The image isn't perfect, even a 15 needs focus blending this close. Upper left is about 3 inches away and remains out of focus and there are parts of the image that are not optimally sharp, but I really like the image. I hugely opened the shadows and I know I couldn't have done that at base ISO on the Canon 5D3. The image above shows much more detail than I could see looking in.

Tractors

From Pioneer Acres, North East of Calgary, all using focus blending with Helicon Focus, varying amounts of Akvis Enhancer but nowhere more than 50%.

Zeiss 15 vs. Nikon 14-24

I think I finally figured out what's going on with the varied comparisons between these lenses.

1) the Nikon suffers from focus shift, making testing iffy

2) the Zeiss has field curvature in the corners (towards near), great for foreground, lousy if there happens to be something at distance in the corner, almost the opposite of the Nikon

3) the Zeiss is sharper than  the Nikon over most of the field.

4) the Nikon is sharper in the corners (see 2) above)

In theory live view would fix the focus  shift but there is so much depth of field that one would need to open up and adjust the exposure, both inconvenient and negating the workaround for the focus shift. The Zeiss doesn't shift and can be focused in the viewfinder - I haven't tried live view with it yet but no doubt it too will have the same problems focusing stopped down.

Zeiss 15 mm. on D800E

I spent weeks going over reviews, test pictures, comments and so on, trying to figure out whether to get the Nikon 14-24, or the Zeiss 15 mm. All my reading really didn't settle the question. In some testing the Nikon came out ahead, in others the Zeiss, and there was no consistent pattern to the kinds of problems found in these lenses.

So, off to The Camera Store here in Calgary, and I borrowed a Nikon first. It had a hitch in the zoom that was most unpleasant, and was near impossible to focus - live view at f8 had so much depth of field that it was 'why bother' focusing. I worried that the focus shift reported would cause autofocus problems and in fact it did, producing a significantly blurred image.

I tried out the Zeiss - no diff. focusing, using manual focus of course (it isn't an autofocus lens) and focus confirmation in the view finder.

Corners were noticeably soft at f 5.6 but the vast majority of the image (probably 80+% was very sharp.

I tried another Nikon - no hitch but still challenging to focus. This time I did get a good image. Right, back to the Zeiss at f11.

Corners are decent if not wonderful but the rest of the image is great, and we're now talking 95%of the image. Not only that, it's easy to focus, buttery smooth, and feels nice in hand. I bought it and headed over to The Bow to photograph Calgary's newest tall building.

 

The piece was created by Barcelona-based designer Jaume Plensa.  It's a face and here we are looking past the chin to the underside of the nose, with the Bow in the background. Both the building and the sculpture are a superb addition to Calgary. Oh, and the Zeiss 15 is damn fine too.

Strapping

Just lying on the ground  - steel strapping, railway spike, tire iron? and part of a car fender. Focus blended.

Concrete

Photoshop CC

The vast majority of reactions to Adobe's announcement about cloud access and monthly subscriptions are ill informed and just plain inaccurate but none the less, here is a fundamental change - from charging $200 every 18 months or so for an upgrade to the latest photoshop, to currently $240 per year and likely soon $480/year subscription - given the introductory price and the 'regular' price this would make the 'upgrade' cost over 18  months $600 - gee that's only a three fold increase in upgrade price.

Given that one only need access the net every 90 days with a yearly subscription - I can live with that - though others won't be able to - traveling or no web access for security reasons.

I like that for this $600 I get access to all the other software - though the only one I'm likely to use is In Design and that on a pretty casual basis - certainly not a good deal for me. There is an option for Photohsop only, for current $10/month, likely $20 in the future - bringing the cost down to $240/year - that's at least in the ballpark for what I now pay for Photoshop upgrades. I think I can live with the new system. I never like paying more for things - but really - it is my choice - stick with Photoshop 6 for years to come (lots of people use old versions of Photoshop) or invest in the new. Hell, there's even Elements and Lightroom as well as third party software.

People seem to think that they are going to have problems opening files if they don't keep paying - well anyone who routinely saves images in multiple layers is pretty silly - not just for the disk space but also for the time to save and load images. I doubt that flattened .psd files will be any problem for years to come.

Fewer amateurs are using Photoshop and more are relying on Lightroom for all their editing, but Photoshop is still king for those of us trained that way and able to take advantage of the tools and add ons.

I'll be signing on for CC, a) because I still need Photoshop and b) because I have several images with camera shake just begging for the new camera shake filter - and that alone will be worth the admission price, and $400 a year to do business is not really an issue for me.

For those who dabble in Photoshop, there are alternatives - it's just that many of the tutorials and magazine articles show how to do it in Photoshop - and many tools are not available in other brands of software. I sympathize, but Adobe is a business and people can choose.

Nikon D800E Experience

I now have some real shooting behind me with the D800E and thought I'd write about my experience. The camera is fairly intuitive and it hasn't taken me long to get comfortable using it. 99% of my work is on tripod and using live view. I set the camera up so a single press of the centre back button zooms to 100% (not the highest zoom that seems to be over 200+ and interpolated and somewhat pointless).

I was working in relatively low light last night and at small apertures and did find the noise on live view to be a problem. Canon does live view at wide open which reduces this tendency, and at the same time reduces depth of field so it's easier to find the sharp point, but with the risk of focus shift (of which we are hearing more and more). Some lenses are more prone to focus shift and it's hard to pedict which - largely it is worse with fast lenses, but the Sigma 35 mm. 1.4 doesn't have focus shift while the 2.8 Nikkor 14-24 reportedly does. I can live with Nikon's way to do things and it wasn't a huge effort to open up, focus and remember to close down again before the shot.

The camera stopped working properly at one point last night and nothing would fix it - turned out the battery was low, but the camera didn't indicate it was anywhere near totally out. I won't make much of this for now and it's even possible reinserting the old battery might have solved the problem - but either way something is odd. Mind you my old 5D2 used to lock up occasionally but it's a bit disheartening to see it so soon in a new camera. I have not yet updated the firmware so that could fix the problem. Will report back.

 Image quality on live view is decent but def. not as good as on the 5D3 - but I can live with it. I don't like that the self timer has no beep or flash or in fact any way to know it is counting down on the back of the camera (a light flashes on the front - lot of use that is to me).

But what about the quality of the photographs - after all, that's why I switched? To be honest, it needs a pretty big print to see any difference (50 inches) and even then it isn't a do or die situation. That said, it seems to me the images hold up better to editing and perhaps don't need as much editing (early days yet). It's remarkable to see images on screen at 100% magnification that look like they aren't magnified.

I'm really impressed with the 70-200 f4 Nikkor - and I'm not convinced that switching to a series of fixed focal lengths is a better option - given  how often one's position is not adjustable nearer or further from the subject - usually yes, but probably 25% of the time it isn't and I'd have to crop if I used a fixed focal length lens (85, 135, 200).

I had occasion the other night to photograph indoors with the D800E and used my 35 f1.4, wide open, ISO 2500 - and was very pleased with the results. My Panasonic GH2 with its slow 14-140 sure couldn't have handled this, and the depth of field at 1.4 worked just fine - ie. not much depth but adequate for faces.

Absolutely no regrets picking up the Sigma lens - my first non camera brand lens if you don't count my Lens Baby.

Bridge and Chimney

Bridgework

Abstracts

Had an hour before supper so headed out with the D800E and 180 Sigma macro IS (on tripod and IS off). I did find that with the D800E, one must check the magnified focus in all four corners as well as centre else a sig. number of shots will be out of focus somewhere due to lack of parallelism. Of course, focus blending covers that if one has the whole range covered but there are times I didn't think I should need to.

Weekend's Shooting

 

 

1) Weaselhead, Calgary
2) Industrial Bin
3) Wheel Barrow

1) and 2) are stitched, while 3) is focus blended.

Lenses For The D800E

So, before even purchasing the D800E, I gave considerable thought to the lenses that would work with such a high resolution camera. I was quite prepared to buy nothing but Zeiss glass, manual focus, no zooms.

For reference, I used The Digital Picture and the ISO 12233 crops which I think have been an extremely useful resource. I also used the information on the D800 from Lens Rentals.

The recent articles from DXOMark on lenses for the D800 were also useful.

Photozone was of some use but consideration had to be made as to what camera the lenses were tested on - anything less than the D3x was pretty useless.

The 85 f1.4G was widely considered the sharpest lens available for the D800E, so even though I had little use for such a fast, large and heavy lens, I elected to start with that. Soon the reviews on the faboulous Sigma 35 mm. 1.4 came out and so I picked that lens up. Knowing my most frequently used lens on the Canon was my 70-200 f4 L lens, I decided to try the equivalent Nikon lens, with the idea that if it didn't pan out, I'd return it.

Initial impressions were that it didn't come close to the 85 anywhere in the image - not a big surprise, though at distance and 200 mm. it seemed quite capable - not what some reviews suggested and not what the digital picture website suggested.

I finally did some real photography and was horrified to find the entire shoot was so poor as to be unuseable even at 13X19 - so was this me, or was it the 70-200 Nikkor?

I staged a test on a brick wall at about 8 feet away, simulating the relatively close work I had been doing - could it be that the lens was crap close up while good at distance?

Very interesting. I had also picked up the 200 f4 micro nikkor. It's hard to focus because even the slightest turn of the barrel makes a big diff. in focus distance, but none the less, it had tested well for me at this distance so it was going to be the comparison lens.

I'm not going to show huge crops, but what I found was that the 70-200 was sharper and had more contrast in the centre - though the 200 was not far behind and totally useable. The micro nikkor was a little soft in one corner but not the other three, while the 70-200 was quite confusing - focus seemed to move away so that instead of the brick surface being sharp (that's what I'd focussed on) the mortar was sharper in places. Elsewhere everything was a bit blurred, while further out it would get sharper again.

I take this as a sign that Nikon have attempted to flatten the plane of focus but now instead of a simple curve flattened out, it is a complex curve - rather like the attempts to make lines straight in a wide angle lens by introducing mustache type curves.

My next experiment is to repeat the test, using something smaller than f8 so that hopefully the whole subject will be included in the plane of focus. The obvious question will be whether diffraction will become enough of a problem that it undoes any benefit of the greater depth of field.

My own experience with diffraction is that it does respond to some degree to deconvolution sharpening, to a certain point - ie. f 16 can be rescued in some lenses but not f22, and definitely not in all lenses.

The 35 and 85 are as good as the glowing recommendations. Composition is extremely important to me and framing the image exactly so vital, and that makes a zoom very handy - and in some situations irreplaceable - eg. standing on a ridge - or at roadside rather than down in the ditch to get distance right. It's fine to say you can move your feet, but that assumes a flat subject and level ground between you and the subject - and that's often not the case in the work I do. If I can work around the limitations of the 70-200, it could well be worth using, and I'll consider returning the micro nikkor (I know that my Canon 70-200 f4LIS lens is superb close up and with extension tube - haven't tested the Nikkor that way yet, but I will.

Eventually I want to round out my lenses with an extreme wide angle. I figure that with extreme wide angles, it is much easier to move to and fro to frame correctly since even a few inches of movement makes a big difference when the subject is close (almost always). I might well go right from 35 to the 14-24, or even just the Zeiss 15.

The other issue I have to decide on is what to do with my Canon gear - knowing that sooner or later Canon will do their own high res body (though they still haven't equaled the D3x that came out, what three years ago). The 24Ts-e is fine for shifting, but a nightmare to focus accurately when tilting - just not sharp enough for accurate focusing when open, and not a lot better when stopped down and therefore not nearly as useful as I'd hoped. The 17-40 won't be suitable with a higher res camera, the 90 tse will probably be ok, not sure about the 70-200 f4LIS, and my 24-70 has already been superseded.

Bin Sides

Well, That Was A Long Break...

Not long after my November 10 blog entry, my father, age 90; fell coming out of the shower and couldn't get up. In his wisdom, he had taken his waterproof alarm off and laid it where he couldn't reach it and spent some 30 hours on the floor before staff at the lodge noticed he wasn't at dinner and came to check on him.

He was rallying quite well when he developed aspiration pneumonia and basically gave up. I think he realized he wasn't going to regain his indepenence.

Anyway, I spent much of November and December in Edmonton at the hospital and he died January 1. It's really only this last week or so that I am feeling better and at least a little ambitious.

Almost no photography has been done during this time but this week, fed up with being unable to supply clients with large prints, I finally picked up that D800E I'd been considering, and have been having some fun with it this weekend.

My arthritis is still limiting my walking so I picked up some peppers to photograph - hardly original but also challenging. Tomorrow I get brave and cut them open to see what can be made of the interiors.

I have the sigma 35 f1.4, Nikkor 85 1.4, two superb lenses, but also the Nikkor 200 micro as well as the 70-200. This latter I was prepared to return, but so far the results are quite good and I wonder if I even need the 85. I do like the micro nikkor for close work though and will hang on to that.

I did make one image in January, from some flowers my sister sent me in lieu of the gorgeous flowers at Dad's memorial that I couldn't bring home to Calgary.

A bronze propeller (ship's screw) found at the Esquimault Naval Base near Victoria. On each blade, one side had been buffed, the other left corroded. I elected to let the image blur in places and it's a 5 image stitch (as I usually do when making panoramas, hating to crop, even with a 22 megapixel camera. I did use some Akvis Enhancer but toned it back to a maximum of about 45% and then used masking to reduce the effect further as appropriate.  It helped add the third dimension back, while masking prevented loss of the softness of parts of the image.

Victoria

 

Agave

Agave plant from Butchart Gardens, Victoria, B.C. photographed in the rain with my 5D3 which held up very well over several hours of rain.

Fall

Running out of chances to shoot leaves this Fall.

Dinosaur Provincial Park Continued

Dinosaur Provincial Park 2012

Went down yesterday afternoon to catch the evening light, stayed overnight in Brooks and got up early to be there at dawn. This was a single image. Made with my 17-40 @ 17 mm.

Fall Colours

Canon 5D3, Lensbaby Composer, extension tube, and the only editing was to turn down the green a tad, otherwise colour as shot. Be sure to click on it to see in larger size.

HIgh ISO

The Stream and Pool image I posted last night was shot at ISO 1600. I would have never considered this high an ISO in the past but my new 5D3 handles it with aplomb and 17X22 prints should not be a problem. I did it because I could see that on the LCD screen, the ISO 100 pictures had very blurred out water totally devoid of the lovely reflections I was seeing. Even 800 didn't help but ISO 1600 and 1/8 of a second at f11 solved my problem. My intent was to use the ISO 100 images as a focus blend in Helicon Focus, then use one of the ISO 1600 images for just the water, but in the end simply blended the ISO 1600 images because they looked so good, then used one of those images for the pond water, and another for the further stream (moving water doesn't go well with focus blending).

The times and equipment are great.

Further Jura Images

Back To Jura Canyon

Shot this evening. I think everything you see here is natural rather than pictogryphs, though I find the image a little mystical.

Cowboys

 

 

These three images were made on a workshop this weekend with William Allard, he of National Geographic fame. It was arranged through The Camera Store here in Calgary (that's what it's called), and we met with Bill Friday night to dicsuss what was going to happen, then met west of Longview and switched to four wheel trucks to head up to a branding camp, used only a couple of times a year.

The local ranchers rode in and gave of their day to pose, and  ride, and pose some more. These are real working cowboys, two grand parents, his brother, and their two grand daughters.

The workshop was a great success and we met this morning for critiques of the images. I found the experience great as others had ideas I'd poo pooed but they'd made it work, or I hadn't even thought of, or they did a better job shooting action (not my forte). Anyway a terrific weekend, Bill is great and sharing and helpful and I hope to see him again.

Drain Pipe Continued

This is the version that was not lightened for making the print - despite best efforts to profile monitor and printer and correct screen brightness, the shadows were too deep in the print and I'd added a lightening curve. This is what it was before and is much closer to what I wanted.

And here is what the image looks like in black and white. Now to decide which I prefer. Not easy.

Drain Pipe Cropped

I'm quite pleased with the print I made from the version above. As usual, the thrill of making the image tends to ignore any flaws it may have and it might not hold up over the next few weeks, or I might like it more and more. Sometimes you realize it's just silly, or perhaps clever but absolulely nothing else -  no soul - always a risk with this kind of image. Other times it acquires more meaning or more emotion, or makes you think of connections, contrasts, or similes.

People tend to assume that these relationships that make an image for the artist remain constant, but in fact there are many examples of artists providing alternate explanations for an image's value years later, as their circumstances, experiences and mood change. It isn't a big step further then to imagine that the viewer brings their own circumstances etc. to seeing the print and those experiences may be entirely different from what the photographer had, or planned, or anticipated.

And guess what, that's entirely as it should be.

And below, the original full frame image:

 

Both are focus blends of half a dozen images, 24-70 L, Canon 5D3, Helicon Focus for the blending, processed in Lightroom 4 and exported to Photoshop for additional work

Bent Drain Pipe

Highway construction dug up and folded this drainpipe. The side I had seen from the road the previous day was good, the view along the bent pipe better, but the far side, that I had not expected anything from and only checked to be complete, revealed this fascinating combination.

As it stands, I think the composition too complex and while I didn't want to throw away anything, I suspect the image might be better without the top. It reminds me of a carnivorous plant. Stay tuned for further developments.