The Last Two Weeks

Light Weight Tripod

Let me recommend to you this Slik tripod, the  PRO 340 DX leg (really tripod minus ball head), combined with the BH 25 lever ball head from really right stuff

This combination is both lightweight and quite sturdy for its weight.

The legs are foam covered for warm soft carrying, the centre column is in two well fitted sections so you can get low to the ground without reversing the centre column, the legs sufficiently long that usually I don't need the centre column extended, and the legs have three positions including really low to the ground (about five inches for the camera).

Yes, it's not carbon fibre, but it's a third of the price and it's worked very well for me, both for the D800E as a travel tripod, and more often for the Nex-7. I've had no reason to regret the purchase which is more than I can say for many of my previous tripods. It`s so light I can`t imagine carbon fibre being lighter - stronger probably, but this works well and holds my cameras steady.

Do remember that if you don`t have L brackets on your cameras, you need to lean the camera body over to the side and the tripod is both less steady and more likely to just plain tip over so a heavier tripod is needed.

Window And Open Door

Decided to wander round an older part of town, Inglewood, full of art galleries and quaint shops. Shot with the 10-18 on the Nex-7, hand held.

Garage Wall

Found as is against the wall of my garage - photographed with the Nex-7 and my new $200 super sharp Sigma 60 mm. f 2.8 lens - stitched 5 vertical images, camera swung horizontally.

I shot this at f13 for adequate depth of field - even so, the lip of the left hand boot is slightly out of focus but I don't find that objectionable.

I printed this on Hahnemeule Sugarcane - after a two step toning process - purple, then orange, but subtle.

Downtown Water Park

 

The Nex-7 and 10-18 proved ideal for photographing the park. I was able to position the camera over railings and leaning down and very near the falling water in ways that would have been difficult or impossible with the D800E and its lack of a tilting LCD and use of tripod.

I wasn't sure to what degree the image stabilization would be useful with such a wide angle lense - but turns out that for many situations it does replace the tripod. None of these images ended up making use of the HDR that I'd set the camera to, relying instead on Lightroom control of shadow and highlight - an impressive job for the Nex. Picked up a Think Tank Retro 5 for my Nex kit and so far I love it - flat bottom so it can sit on the ground without falling over, no zips to deal with, but a generous flap and two velcros so it won't spill contents, open and close with one hand, and darn, I like that colour and material. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Zeiss 16-70 performs and wonder if it may turn out to be a tad big for this bag - but we'll see.

I may not be producing significant photography, but I sure am having fun.

Iris, Toning

This was shot on the D800e with my 85 1.4, wide open, and I think I had an extension tube on it too. Toning was added by adding a FILL adjustment layer, solid colour, pale orange, then setting blend mode to colour, fading the effect to taste, then double clicking on the adjustment layer to bring up the blending control window. I then used the output sliders (splitting both left and right limits by using the option key) again to taste.

More From Paving

Is Auto Focus The Biggest Boondoggle Of The Last 30 Years?

I have to wonder if photographers weren't hugely oversold on the value of Auto Focus. Many cameras and lenses do poorly - the fiasco of the Nikon D800, the fact that none of the mirrorless cameras is great at auto-focusing, and that even face detection doesn't figure out which is the leading eye that should be sharp.

People use the centre focus spot away from centre, then swing the camera to frame and assume that this will provide the correct focus - it doesn't - it might if the plane of focus is curved (like it shouldn't be) but if the lens is designed properly it won't.

That's why Hasselblad had their True Focus or whatever, to compensate for swinging the camera back to frame - and no other cameras have this.

Granted really good auto focus can be a blessing for sports events and even track, though I have to say none of the cameras I ever owned were good at it and mirrorless don't even try.

The new Zeiss Touit for $900, making it a fairly expensive lens as things go - is both noisy and back focuses - camera problem, lens problem - don't know, but it's back to manual focus. Haven't even tried auto focus on my 10-18 yet - I simply don't trust it for careful work.

Do I ever use auto-focus? I did with the GH2 since manual focus was challenging and it at least had face detection and you'd know it was at least trying - but rthe results weren't awe inspiring. I very occasionally will use auto focus on a flat perpendicular subject.

I have to say manual focus with the Nex-7 is a delight, with both magnification and focus peaking. Focus peaking without magnification is pointless and not nearly sensitive enough.

Could it be this is really the future? Sure is of my photography.

More Construction

 

The first is the inside of a paving machine, the blue coming from the sky as the sun was very low an d not doing much for the machine.

All shot with the 10-18 on the Nex-7, the top image on a tripod (the light was fading and I wanted to keep the iso low - I did get shots at ei. 800 before the tripod.

Culvert

If you check the exif, you will note that this was shot with a Nex-7 and 10-18 mm. lens. I was looking for something compact and with a better viewfinder than my old GH2 - and capable of shooting indoors.

I never completed my Light Rail project so was on my way when I noted some construction debris - concrete and ripper and bucket. I played around with composition till I got this, actually inside a larger piece of culvert, but at least with the bright sun not in this very wide angle lens.

I'd assumed I'd need to HDR it and counldn't figure out how to adjust beyond a +- .3 EV (turns out to be fairly obvious - press the option button after selecting Bracket. In fact, once the images were in Lightroom I saw that the standard exposure was fine so only a single image was used.

So far I'm loving the camera and lens - the IS still useful on a very wide angle lens - and rapid shooting so I don't move the camera between exposures, and magnified view for manual focusing.

A 40 inch print is decently sharp and I could probably go bigger on canvas. So far the viewfinder is working just fine in a bright sunny day which is what I wanted. This thing might just turn out very nicely - oh, and I like the picture.

1/60 second, hand held, IS, f8, ei. 200, shooting Raw of course. Note the shallow depth of field despite the focal length - because I was very close - ? 10 inches.

And Perhaps The Best From The Shoot

More From Ogden

 

 

Simply what I could find this afternoon. The first is two bins facing away from the sun, the second is the contents of a bin, the third another bin in glancing light, and the fourth is the corner by the firewall of an ancient truck lying by the side of the road. All were shot with the Nikon D800E. 1, 3 and 4 were focus blends. I'm happily using a Pixel brand remote release/timer. I did forget my LCD magnifier which in the bright sun was a silly mistake.

Blurb

I recently finished (well sort of) a book of my black and white photographs and had it printed by Blurb. It's not available, and frankly too expensive in hard cover and 12X12 for purchasing, but I wanted to see the quality and to 'test' the concept of such a book.

Although I did check it, there are bugs - looks like one of the images I must have sent them a web sized file, and I need to edit the text and get the title that I had assumed they would put up but didn't.

The book looks very nice. The cover printed very well, images front and back. The granularity of the images is a bit coarse, you don't notice it at first or with all images, but not ideal. Tonality is very good - the images hang together well, and I'm fussy. Colour wise, they all have a selenium toned look which is pleasing. Shadows and highlights are very well printed.

Overall I'm very pleased. I had heard that Blurb prints in Calgary and I even know a fellow who went to the print shop to get his book, but this came from Vancouver. More than likely printing quality varies with where the printing is done. I have seen books with finer screen printing, and books with much worse colour for black and white images, but considering this is a one off book, remarkably good.

To put things in perspective - this book printed better than 95% of the photographic books of 20 years ago, that's how far we have progressed.

After a bit more editing I might make the book available as a paper back.

George

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.