Category Archives: Cameras and Photography

Keeping up

Cameras and Photography, Maine, , , , ,

Photography and image processing software innovation continues at a staggering pace.  It’s hard to keep up!  Companies are coming out with new versions and even completely new programs to compete with the Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom standards.  And Adobe is fighting back with new updates to keep their customers happy.

Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park 2Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park (2).  16×9 crop from a 7 frame IR panorama, processed in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Topaz Sharpen AI 

This is almost all good for photographers.  Competition results in new innovations that genuinely help us with our images.  If you save your RAW source files, you can reprocess a photo and often get improved results.  What’s not to like?

A small, quiet spot in the forestA small, quiet spot in the forest. Along Great Head Trail, returning from Sand Beach. Single frame, processed in Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar, and Topaz Sharpen AI

There are a couple of downsides I can think of.  First, we usually have to pay for  the changes.  If you use Adobe’s products, their subscription model makes sure you have the latest.  Some other companies are moving to subscriptions too, but many are still charging by the upgrade.  Either way, it takes money to keep up.  You also have to invest your time.  Just knowing what software is coming out takes effort.  And having the software doesn’t do a lot of good unless you understand the new features and when / how to use them.  You have to spend time learning the new software. Time that you could use making photos with your camera ends up being spent in front of your computer.

Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park 1Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park (1). A second 16×9 crop from the same 7 frame IR panorama, processed in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Topaz Sharpen AI.

So is it worth it?  I think so.  If you want to make the best images you possibly can, then you can’t afford to ignore progress.  But of course, it depends on you, your needs, and your available resources.  And it depends on what’s changing in the software too.

Anyway, a large number of recent product releases made me think about this again.  I decided to update one that I often use (Luminar) and skip a version of another (DxO Optics Pro).  After downloading the software, I dug out some photos from the archive so I could play around and learn about the new things.  A friend’s recent visit to Acadia made me re-look at my images from there.  These three photos haven’t been on the blog before and result from processing old images in new software.  Better? Probably.  Revolutionary? Probably not.  Worth the time and money?  I think so.  Your mileage may vary.

And don’t get me started about camera upgrades.  That’s a completely different story!

By the way, Happy Thanksgiving – enjoy spending time with friends and family next week!

I’ve put many more of my images from Acadia National Park in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72157646280743144.  And please click on the photos in these blog posts to view them in higher resolution on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2019, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

iPhone 11 Pro – Camera Comments

Cameras and Photography, , ,

I’ve been using the iPhone 11 Pro camera for a bit and thought I’d post some sample photos and a few photographer type thoughts about it this week.

This isn’t a comprehensive review – you can find many of those on the web if that’s what you need.  This also isn’t a “should you buy it” post.  That’s a personal decision only you can make.

Ultra-wide

Morning Light on a Majestic OakMorning Light on a Majestic Oak. I think I’m going to like the 13mm eq. FOV ultra-wide lens

The iPhone 11 Pro has three cameras and the ultra-wide is new this year.  It’s a bit limited compared to the other two: It’s widest aperture is f/2.4 so it doesn’t gather as much light.  It also doesn’t have stabilization, it’s fixed focus, doesn’t support RAW format, and doesn’t support night mode.

Wide angle at the mallWide angle at the mall

I’m not sure why Apple designed this camera with those limitations.  But at a 13mm eq. field of view, it truly is ultra-wide.  That’s going to be very handy in a lot of situations, especially where the light is good.  It’ll probably mean I use panorama mode on the phone a lot less.  And I think one of the main benefits of the ultra-wide is the inputs it provides for computations Apple can do.

Portrait mode

Narwhal the kittenNarwhal the kitten helping me test portrait mode

Narwhal modeled for me so I could test the latest Apple implementation of portrait mode.  I think his image above looks great and would be pretty hard to tell apart from one taken with a high end camera and a large aperture lens.

That’s because I corrected some issues with the way the phone algorithms rendered depth of field in the original photo. Things like whiskers and hair are difficult to show correctly.  Look at the image below to see what I’m talking about.  Click on it to open, and then click again to enlarge.

Correcting depth of field flaws

Look at the crop on the left – it’s the Portrait Mode photo produced by the phone.  If you’ve enlarged it, you can see that Narwhal’s whiskers have been clipped by inaccuracies in the algorithm.  Bright highlights and low contrast have confused the depth map info.  The middle photo is with portrait mode turned off.  In that one, all of his whiskers are visible with no depth of field / bokeh effects.  On the right side and in the full image I blended some of the middle image with the left one to show the focus rolling off more naturally.

Portrait mode has improved this year.  You can make portraits with both the wide and tele cameras.  And the depth mapping algorithms are better – but they can still be improved.  You may not notice or care much about these things and compared to previous attempts, the algorithms are better and the results look great.  Important photos could be manually edited to fix them.  If we can do this manually, eventually the software wizards will  figure out how to automate it into the phone algorithms.  iPhone 12 super pro?

Night mode

I complained last year, that other phones had low light modes and Apple didn’t.  They listened to me (ha ha) and added it.

Night mode street scene

I think it captures low light situations very nicely.  And the image stabilization is unbelievably good.  I made this next photo of the constellation Orion in my back yard, hand held!

Orion

Other improvements

There are other changes that I haven’t tried yet and don’t have examples of.

  • If you shoot in landscape mode with the wide (1x) camera, it saves information outside the frame using the ultra-wide.  This allows you to correct perspective distortion or rotate your images after capture without cropping(!).
  • “Deep fusion” is still in beta.  It captures multiple frames and combines them pixel by pixel for the best results.  The demos are super interesting and I’m looking forward to trying it.
What about RAW format and manual control?

So many of the improvements in phone cameras now come through software.  But the hardware has changes too.  In addition to a third camera, the sensors and lenses in the wide and tele cameras are improved.  And (except for the ultra-wide) they have all the RAW format and manual control capability they’ve always had, with a little better output.

A touch of colorA touch of color. 4 RAW frames, stitched and processed in Lightroom / Photoshop

So manual control is still possible.  The question is: “When should I bypass auto mode and use manual?”

With the software getting so good, and so much computation going on in the background, there are more and more reasons to use these cameras in automatic mode.  As a photographer, you’ll need to really understand your phone camera capabilities and be able to wisely choose when to bypass it.  For common situations, I think the answer is becoming “Use auto, most of the time”.

I believe that what I said last year will be true for a just a little longer:

Should you give away your non-phone cameras?  No, not yet.  Phones are still at a disadvantage in some ways:  Lens selection and sensor size are two important ones.  And the interfaces on dedicated cameras are better and allow quicker control.  But in some (many?) cases, your phone is an excellent photo (and video!) tool.  And they’re going to get better.  Just make sure you’re up to date on how to use the latest functions.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2019, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Computational Photography at KSC

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Kennedy Space Center, , , ,

You may know that I’m very interested in computational photography (image capture and processing techniques that use computer processing instead of / or in addition to optical processes). My last post on this was about a year ago (https://edrosack.com/2017/11/26/more-computational-photography/), and things are still changing very fast!

Lynn and I went over to Kennedy Space Center a few weeks ago with MaryKate and our nephew Ted.  I thought I’d try out the new iPhone XS and use some of the resulting photos as examples to discuss updated capabilities.  So this post isn’t really about KSC – if you’re not interested in computational photography, feel free to just look at the photos or go on to something else.  Or if you’d like to see some other posts about KSC, please look at the links   on this search page:  https://edrosack.com/?s=Kennedy+space+center.

Mercury-Atlas rocketMercury-Atlas rocket: John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962 when he launched in his Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft on an Atlas rocket.  Smart HDR  mode, ISO 25, f/1.8, 1/22000 sec

In this first photo, I deliberately shot into the sun.   I wanted to see how it handles very high contrast situations.  I have the camera’s “Smart HDR” mode enabled in settings and I used the Lightroom CC iPhone app to shoot in RAW mode.  The file it generates is a .dng file that includes the Smart HDR processing.  I waited for the photos to sync to my desktop computer and processed them there.  I think the colors and exposure in both the sky and shadows look excellent.  I’m amazed that even the writing on the capsule in the shadows looks good.

Here’s another example that shows the amount of flexibility and recoverable detail that’s present in these RAW files.  This next image is the default capture with no editing.  You can see that with even with Smart HDR on, the extreme contrast causes loss of detail in the highlights and shadows.

This next one is the same image after editing the RAW file – there’s much more of the scene visible in this version.  In situations such as this, the secret is to shoot and process RAW files!

Here’s what Apple says about Smart HDR:

Leveraging multiple technologies — like faster sensors, an enhanced ISP, and advanced algorithms — Smart HDR brings more highlight and shadow detail to your photos.” Apple

I’d say it does that!

I’d also like to comment on the enhanced bokeh effects (blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image) and adjustable depth of field.  DPReview has a good article comparing iPhone bokeh to a high end portrait lens.  You can read the article yourself, but the bottom line is it compares very favorably.  And these capabilities aren’t just for people portraits.  Some examples:

Atlantis shuttle rear viewAtlantis shuttle rear view.  iPhone XS rear camera, Portrait mode, ISO 640, f/2.4, 1/30 sec

Shuttle robot arm close upShuttle robot arm close up.  iPhone XS rear camera, Portrait mode, ISO 640, f/2.4, 1/30 sec

In these images, I adjusted the simulated aperture after the images were taken to focus viewers’ eyes on the subjects.  It’s very easy to vary the amount of blur in the background to get the effect I wanted.  I’ve also used the “portrait mode” for actual portraits, and while it’s improved from earlier versions, you can still see issues if you look for them.  For example, the depth map and processing has occasional (but fewer?) problems with stray hair around faces (blurs them when they should be sharp).

I use an iPhone, but Android users also benefit from developments in computational photography.   For instance the Pixel 3 phone has a “Night Sight” feature that is reportedly amazing.  See this article for details:  https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/14/google-pixel-night-sight-launch-sample-photos-comparison/

I hope Apple can add a similar algorithm!

Should you give away your non-phone cameras?  No, not yet.  Phones are still at a disadvantage in some ways:  Lens selection and sensor size are two important ones.  And the interfaces on dedicated cameras are better and allow quicker control.  But in some (many?) cases, your phone is an excellent photo (and video!) tool.  And they’re going to get better.  Just make sure you’re up to date on how to use the latest functions.

You can read more about this at the Apple iPhone XS Camera specifications web page.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2018, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

My new, old camera

Cameras and Photography, , , ,

Whoops – I did it again!  I bought another old camera.  I’d never noticed one like this before.  When I looked it over, it seemed to be in good shape – too good to pass up.

Auto Graflex Single Lens Reflex camera

It’s an Auto Graflex Single Lens Reflex made by the Folmer & Schwing Division of Eastman Kodak around 1920.  The company was in operation from 1898 to 1973 and was owned part of that time by Kodak.  They built a variety of models, but by the 1920s this basic design type was typical.  It came in several sizes and some models used roll fill while others used sheet film. This one has a non-revolving 3 1/4″ x 4 1/4″ roll film back.

Auto Graflex Single Lens Reflex camera roll film back

The controls work surprisingly well for a wood and metal device that’s about 100 years old. The aperture functions and the exposure times are slow, but could maybe be adjusted back into spec.  Pretty amazing for a mechanical device this old!

Auto Graflex Single Lens Reflex camera - controls

You set exposure by changing the size of the vertical focal plane shutter opening (using the crank and window marked “F”), and how fast the shutter moves over the film (with a tension setting using knob “B” and window “G”).  There’s a handy cheat sheet riveted to the viewfinder hood that translates these settings to equivalent exposure times.  The range from 1/10 to 1/1000 second seems large for a camera of this era.

Auto Graflex Single Lens Reflex camera - settings plaque

The lens is a Kodak Anastigmat f/4.5, with a focal length of 5 1/5 inches (just about equivalent to a 50mm lens on a 35mm full frame camera).  According to the web, it was highly rated at the time.

Auto Graflex Single Lens Reflex camera

The viewfinder is usable but dirty.  I think running film through this would be difficult, since that type of roll film isn’t made anymore.  But I took it out in the back yard so I could look through the viewfinder in bright light.

Here’s a close-up of an image through the camera’s lens on the focusing screen inside the viewfinder.

I enjoyed researching this and playing around with it.  It’s an interesting collectible and looks good in my camera cabinet next to a couple other old Kodaks. You can find out much more about Graflex cameras on-line.  Start with these links:

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2018, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

More Computational Photography

Cameras and Photography, Georgia, Technique, , , ,

As an Electrical Engineer and a long time photographer, I’ve been interested in computational photography for a while.  You can read some of my  earlier posts on the subject at this link. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition:

…”digital image capture and processing techniques that use digital computation instead of optical processes.”

I’d change this slightly from”instead of” to “instead of or in addition to”, but that’s a small quibble.

Moore’s law keeps driving the computing capabilities in phones and cameras ever higher and it’s fascinating to see what companies do with the extra potential.

Towalga River below High FallsTowalga River below High Falls, Georgia. Composite – iPhone default live view and Long Exposure, merged in Photoshop

I made the image above on our recent trip using an iPhone 8+ and Apple’s “Live Photo” mode. After I made the photo, I edited it on the phone and enabled the “Long Exposure” effect. The Long Exposure effect of blurring the moving water is computed from ~3 seconds worth of frames that Live Photo captures.  This is Apple’s web page explaining the feature.  Here’s what it looked like before I changed the mode – it’s not nearly as photogenic:

Towalga River below High FallsDefault iPhone live view

Until iOS 11 added this feature, I wasn’t too interested in Live Photos.  Now, I’m watching for places to use it. You can get a better image with your high-end camera and traditional optical techniques, but this is easier and a lot of fun to play with.

Here are some hints:

  • Pick a suitable subject:  moving water, traffic on a road, blurring people in a crowd, etc.
  • Motion blur with a traditional optical approach requires a slow shutter speed – either low light or using filters.  Since computational methods works by processing multiple frames, you can use it in bright light without filters.
  • Apple says it works on their newer phones (6+ and later).  You’ll need to have iOS 11 (or later) installed.
  • The Long Exposure effect has to align Individual frames and then crop where there’s no overlap so you’ll lose pixels around the edges.  Ideally, use a tripod – but that sort of defeats the idea of pulling your phone out of your pocket, doesn’t it?  Just hold the phone as steady as you can to minimize cropping.
  • Make several exposures and pick the best one later.
  • Long Exposure resolution seems to be lower than default iPhone photos.  This isn’t a huge problem for the moving parts of the frame – they’re supposed to be blurry.  For the static portions, you can load both versions into layers in Photoshop and use masking to paint in higher resolution where you want it.  I did this for the first photo above.
  • You can set a Long Exposure photo as your wallpaper.  You’ll see the static Long Exposure version until you press on it from the lock screen.  Then it changes to show the three-second animation – cool!

I hope Apple enhances this in future updates.  It’d be good to have some control over the blur effect.  3 seconds is nice, but some subjects will look better with less (or more?).

iOS 11 includes other updated computation photo capabilities (e.g. portrait lighting) – but that’s a subject for another day.

Photography’s changing fast – it’s a wonderful time to be a photographer, isn’t it?  In today’s digital world, many advances are likely to be computational and not optical.  Keep up – don’t be left behind!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go compute some photos!

©2016, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Any Micro 4/3 Camera Regrets?

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, VARIOUS, , , , , ,

The short answer is “Nope, not really”.  For the longer answer, read on…

Sometimes I’ll take a camera by Bear Creek Nature Trail in our neighborhood (the middle of Tuscawilla, along the north side of Winter Springs Boulevard).  On this particular day back in January of 2017, sunlight was filtering down through the trees and hitting the water at a bend in the creek.  The light refracting  through ripples in the surface created interesting patterns and colors I thought were worth a shutter click.

Bear Creek ripples 1aBear Creek Ripples 1a  (28mm eq. focal length, f/8, 0.5 seconds, ISO 64)

This was a month or so after I started using the Olympus E-M1 Mark II camera.  I’d sold my Nikon D-800 and lenses so I could afford to upgrade my Olympus kit and I was still getting used to the new gear.  I’d had the D-800 for over four years and it’d worked extremely well for me.  It was the very best camera I’d ever used so getting rid of it was a big step and I was still second guessing my decision.

Why did I sell the Nikon gear and move exclusively to Olympus?  And how is it working out?  Glad you asked!

It seems that discovering micro four thirds cameras is a big thing on the web, lately.  Here are a few links with a lot of information you can investigate:

I won’t repeat these discussions.  Everyone will have their own opinion and reasoning for the camera equipment they use. I’ll just summarize by saying that for me, no regrets.  The smaller and more modern design has many advantages with few real issues.  For what I shoot, I haven’t seen much downside.

I can carry much more camera capability with far less weight.  And the new gear does things the older Nikon equipment doesn’t.  Really, the only thing that concerns me even a bit is star / astro photography with the smaller sensor.  I haven’t had much of a chance to test this yet and hopefully ease my concerns, but even if the Olympus isn’t as good at this type of photography, I’m not very worried.  I don’t do it all that often and if I need to, I can always rent / borrow a different camera with a larger sensor or use something like the iOptron SkyTrackerTM  to make really long exposures. Your mileage may vary of course, and you should investigate thoroughly before you make such a significant change.

If you have questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  I’ll be more than glad to try to answer.  And you can click on the image below to go to Flickr and browse through an album of the images I’ve  made with the new camera:

Great Egret head shotGreat Egret head shot

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – no matter the camera you have, go make some photos!

©2017, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Photography related advice for April

Cameras and Photography, VARIOUS,

Now that it’s the first day of April, I thought I’d pass on some information I’ve collected on photography related subjects.

But first, every post must have a photo.

Wood Stork in Flight?

Feel free to use all of this advice  and pass it on.  Or not.

Cameras and Settings:

  • Don’t make photographs in a sandstorm.  They’ll turn out grainy.
  • What’s wrong with most cameras that won’t take good pictures?  The nut behind the viewfinder!
  • Military photography:  Why is flying an F-16 better than flying an F-22?  It’s one stop faster!
  • Street photography;  Two photographers are walking down a street and pass a beggar. One keeps walking. The other stops. Later when they catch up with each other the first says to the second. “I saw you stop for that beggar. What did you give him?”.  ”Oh” says the first, “1/125th at f5.6”.
  • How to tell if someone is a real photographer: Ask them this question. Suppose you’re walking through the woods and come to a clearing.  In that clearing is a lake and in the lake is a man is obviously drowning. Now you only have time to do one of the following – save his life or take a photo.  Here’s the question: Which lens should you use?
  • How to make a photo at the North Pole?  Use a North Polaroid.
  • During the holidays: Shoot the kids, hang the family, and frame the wife.
  • What should Mozart do when his Olympus camera breaks?  Borrow Pachelbel’s Canon.
  • Photographic spirits:  A photojournalist was caught out in a rain shower when he saw a dark gloomy house. He was drying off in the house, heard scary sounds and saw a ghost coming towards him. He grabbed his camera to take pictures. The ghost asked him what he was doing, he said “I just want to take your picture for the newspaper.” The ghost was glad for the exposure and posed for the photographer. When his film was all done he thanked the ghost and rushed to his office to get the film developed. When he saw the results he was terribly disappointed: they all came out black – underexposed.  The moral of the story is: The spirit was willing but the flash was weak.
  • How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb?  50. One to change it, and 49 to say “I could have done that”.

Photography Safety

  • A photographer made a selfie in the park.  Since it was dark, he used the built-in flash on his camera.  He got arrested for flashing and exposing himself.
  • Two photographers are in the restroom. One uses Canon cameras  and the other uses Nikon.  Nikon finishes first and simply heads for the door.   Canon says “Excuse me, Canon photographers wash our hands when we’re finished”.
    Nikon replies: ” I understand, but Nikon photographers don’t pee on our hands”
  • Any photo of a chicken nibbling my butt has an unusual ass-pecked ratio.

Photography, business, and money:

  • The quickest way to make money at photography is to sell your camera.
  • How do you get a professional photographer off your front porch?
    Pay for the pizza.
  • What’s the difference between a frog hopping down the street and a photographer walking down the street?  The frog might be on the way to a job.
  • How do you make a small fortune in photography? Start with a large one.

Working with models:

  • If your model didn’t show up to the photo shoot because of acne…that’s a pore excuse.
  • Most photographers will pick a model with photographic mammaries.
  • Don’t pick these kind of models:  Two new models are waiting as the photographer sets up equipment.  One says to the other, ”What’s taking so long?”
    The other replies: “The photographer’s getting ready to focus”.
    To which the first model exclaims, ”FOCUS, we haven’t even been paid yet!”

April Fools!  I’m sorry for the poor humor.  I hope no one was too offended or groaned too much.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2017, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Three Photography Observations

Cameras and Photography, Cocoa, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, , ,

When I left to meet Kevin K. and Tom M. for some photography before dawn last Monday, the sky was clear, the stars were shining and I didn’t think the sunrise would be very good.  If I hadn’t been meeting friends, I might have gone back to bed!  Looking at the photos in this post, it’s easy to see I was wrong – the sunrise was beautiful.

Observation 1:  Go.  You can’t always anticipate what you’ll see when you’re out photographing.  But if you stay home, you know you won’t see anything.

Calm Blue HourCalm Blue Hour.  14mm (equivalent), ISO 64, f/5.6, 10 sec., Hi-res mode.

We ended up at Cocoa Riverfront Park.  The clouds were moving in and the light and colors changed as we watched.  There were several interesting directions to point the camera.

Observation 2:  Arrive early and stay for a while when photographing sunrise.  Watch all directions.  Bring several lenses to vary your exposure, composition, and perspective.  Work the scene!

Fire in the skyFire in the sky.  70mm (equivalent), ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/50 sec., multi-frame stitched panorama

Photos 1 and 3 are from the Olympus E-M1 Mark II camera in hi-res mode.  You may remember this post (https://edrosack.com/2015/08/09/thoughts-on-processing-olympus-om-d-e-m5-mark-ii-high-resolution-photos/) where I wrote about motion anomalies with E-M5 Mark II hi-res and how to manually fix them.

Observation 3:  My conclusions from the earlier post are all still true – except for one.  I’m happy to report that with the E-M1 Mark II camera, Olympus has made a great deal of progress with hi-res mode.  I didn’t have to fix any motion anomalies in either of these photos.  Well done Olympus.

Dew on the BoardwalkDew on the Boardwalk. 14mm (equivalent), ISO 64, f/5.6, 8 sec., Hi-res mode.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Now, go make some photos!

©2017, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

A Couple Composites

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, Orlando Wetlands, , , , , ,

I went for another walk last week at Orlando Wetlands Park with Tom M.  It was a pretty morning and in addition to the normal bird suspects, we also saw Soras, Purple Gallinules, and heard reports of Bald Eagles and many Black Crowned Night Herons.

In this post though, I want to discuss compositing.  Wikipedia says:

“Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene.”

Multiple exposures are a subset of compositing, and are much easier to produce in today’s world of digital photography.  In addition to creating an illusion, they can be used to show things that are difficult for a camera to capture in a single frame and better show reality.  Examples are panoramas, focus stacking, HDR, etc.

There’s a lovely Pink Trumpet tree on the west side of the main path into the park.  It’s in bloom and that morning the moon was setting behind the tree.  This snap from my iPhone shows how the tree looked against the sky and moon.

Moon behind Pink Trumpet tree
Moon behind Pink Trumpet tree

I wanted to isolate one bloom with the moon and clouds behind it, but the depth of field with my telephoto lens was too shallow to show both in the same frame.  So I made two,  with one focused on the flower and the second on the clouds / moon.  Then in Photoshop it was relatively easy to combine the two frames to show what I wanted.

Moon, clouds, and flowerMoon, clouds, and flower

Here’s a second example:

Ibis flight sequenceIbis flight sequence

This one is from a sequence of a single White Ibis flying by in a little under 2 seconds.  I brought all 25 frames into Photoshop on separate  layers and aligned them.  Then I used the focus select function to mask the birds from each layer into a single composite.  I ended up having to omit every other frame to avoid overlapping birds.

If you’re willing to dive into Photoshop or any other image editing software that offers layers and masking, you can do the same sort of work.  Think about techniques like these when you’re out photographing.  If you capture the source frames you need when you’re out, then when you get back to your computer you can use them to solve problems and enhance your creativity.

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Now, go make some multiple exposure photos!

©2017, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

 

Cruising Wildlife

Cameras and Photography, Cruise Ships, , , , , ,

Lynn and I were fortunate to be able to cruise the Caribbean once again earlier this month. I love watching birds and wildlife and trying to make photographs of their behavior.  On this trip we both saw something for the first time.

On more than one occasion, birds followed our ship and dove for fish right along side.

Brown Boobies were following the ship and diving for fish right along side.Brown Booby

There were mostly Brown Boobies with a few Masked Boobies mixed in.

There were a few Masked Boobies fishing tooMasked Booby

Flying Fish were also plentiful along our route and the ship’s wake seemed to scare them up as we passed.

Flying Fish were plentiful along our route and the ship seemed to scare them up as we passed.Flying Fish

A closer look at the Flying FishA closer look at the Flying Fish

Photographing the birds catching fish wasn’t easy. You have to track a bird (at high magnification) as it moves just above the water and focus / shoot continuously – then hope you catch the right moment before your camera buffer runs out. I managed to get a few frames although the quality is not high. This is probably the best one.

Just before the catchJust before the catch

I was using a new camera (Olympus E-M1 II) for the bird / fish photos.  The frame rate and continuous focus capabilities really helped.  There’s a new “Pro Capture” mode on this that I couldn’t use (didn’t have the right lens).  It captures frames with the shutter button pressed half way and saves them with a final frame when fully pressed.  It would have made this use case easier.  I’m looking forward to seeing how the camera works in other situations.

We also saw Magnificent Frigatebirds. They seem pretty common in the Caribbean – mostly in the harbors. I’ve only seen a few here in Florida, along both coasts

Magnificent FrigatebirdFemale Magnificent Frigatebird

Cruise directors plan interesting things for passengers to do while at sea but these may not appeal to everyone.   It’s good to have an alternative activity available like wildlife observation and photography when you’re looking for something fun to do.

I’m collecting other photos from the trip in this album on Flickr.  And I have several other blog posts that feature photography from cruise ships.  If you’re interested, see this link:  https://edrosack.com/category/photo-ops-categorized-by-place/cruise-ships/

By the way (no.1): I realize that some spam filters may reject the email for this post due to the names of the birds.  If it happens to you, sorry.  You can always read the latest content on the web at https://edrosack.com

By the way (no. 2):  I think the search problem on the blog is resolved.  If anyone still has issues, please let me know.

By the way (no. 3):  Happy new year!  I hope all of you have a great holiday and prosperous and delightful 2017!

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2016, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved