Category Archives: Technique

Comparing landscape and wildlife photography

Cameras and Photography, Lake Jesup, Technique, ,

I enjoy both nature/landscape photography and wildlife photography. I was thinking about this recently and it occurred to me that these can be quite different from an equipment, skills, and approach perspective.

Lake Jesup flood waters after Tropical Storm Fay
Landscape: Lake Jesup flood waters after Tropical Storm Fay

Great Blue Heron profileBirding: Great Blue Heron profile

Here are some of the things I think are different about the two:

Landscapes Birding / Wildlife
The quality of light is important (e.g. “Golden hour”). The amount of light isn’t too important: You can make long exposures from your tripod. The amount of light is important. You need lots of light to get your shutter speed up.
You need to know the location, and figure out sun timing and position.  May still be hit or miss depending on the weather. You need to know about the animal and its habits, and where you might find them.  May still be hit or miss depending on the animals (and maybe the weather).
1. Composition, 2. Exposure, 3. Focus 1. Focus, 2. Exposure, 3. Composition
Probably better by yourself:   Your location, your vision. Can be better in groups.  Many eyes can help spot things one person will miss.
Good tripod with good ball head.  Wide angle lens, small aperture for greater depth of field, long exposure.  Frame rate not too important. Very long lens, large aperture for a fast shutter speed. High frame rate body.  Maybe a tripod with a gimbal head.
Not as expensive Can be very expensive
HDR no HDR

Have I missed anything?  What else is different about these two types of photography?

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

 

Grandfather's Pocket Watch

Technique, VARIOUS, ,

Not all of your photo ops need to be outdoors and wildlife or nature related.  In fact, there’s some wildlife that probably shouldn’t  be photographed.  And what if you can’t get out because the weather’s bad, or you stubbed or broke a toe?  Well, you can look for a photo-op closer to or even inside your home.  Here’s a set of photos I made to document a watch passed down to me from my Uncle.

This is my Granddad’s Elgin pocket watch.  The model number (marked inside the front cover) is “Wadsworth Referee 20 year 5069868”.  Based on the movement serial number, it was made in 1921. We don’t really know the history on this watch, but we do have some documents from my Grandparents’ wedding and think that my Grandmother gave this to him on their 10th wedding anniversary.

1921 Elgin ” Wadsworth Referee 20 year” 5069868, Serial number 25010969

We’re also not completely sure about the spelling used to engrave his name.  It could be that this was an accepted alternate before Rosack was standardized with the “ck” ending.  It’s more likely a mistake, in which case I bet my Grandmother wasn’t too happy about it.

Inside back case, with engraving

Here’s what the movement looks like.  When thinking about how to show this, I wanted to do something more than a straight on standard macro photo.  So I positioned the watch movement at an angle to catch its reflection in the back case and made the final image using Helicon Focus software and the techniques I described here.

My Grandfather's Pocket WatchMovement macro-photograph (click on this image to get to a larger version on Flickr)

We wanted a nice case to display the watch and found this one.  One issue with making this photograph was dealing with reflections in the glass.  I was able to reduce them by using a polarizing filter, making multiple exposures and moving the lighting between some of them.  Then I combined the results in Photoshop to get this final image.  I like the way the lighting places the emphasis on the watch, but lets you see what the case is like.

You can buy pocket watch glass display cases

We did take the watch into a local watch repair place (not this one, the place we took it didn’t have such a nice sign).  They cleaned and repaired it and it now works fine.  The only problem seems to be a weak spring – it keeps great time, but not for a whole day.  The repair cost was about equal to the watch’s resale value, but to us of course the watch is worth much more.

Elgin watch jeweler sign – it’s fun to watch for related photos while you’re out and about

It was fun learning about this watch, getting it working and making these images.  Do you have something similar you could document?

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Be ready to make the photo

INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique

I was at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm yesterday morning. There’s still a lot of activity going on with everything from eggs in nests to young birds flying around.  It’s definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been this year.

Tri-colored Heron with raised crest
Tri-colored Heron with raised crest

When you’re out photographing, you have look for conditions that will enhance your images.  You also need to think ahead and have your camera set-up and ready to go.  Otherwise, you’ll miss shots like the one above.

I saw this Tri-colored Heron and the first thing that struck me was the background.  A great deal of the time (especially at the Alligator Farm), birds are in among the bushes and there are usually  distracting twigs, trees, and other birds behind your subject.  A busy background will detract from your image quality.  I like to look for situations where there’s  space behind the bird and this one  had some.  I also thought that having my Sigma 150 – 500 OS lens set wide open would be enough to blur out the background.  I was a bit worried about the low light level, but I had a flash mounted to help so I made sure I had the right compensation dialed in.  I got into place, pre-zoomed, pre-framed,  and waited for the bird to strike a good pose.  When it raised its crest, I was able to make  two quick photos before it moved again.  I like the way this one turned out.  In the other, the beak is down and it’s not nearly as good a pose.

If I hadn’t seen the opportunity and been ready, I would have missed this photo.  Keep your eyes open and be ready!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Before and after – another photo reprocessing example

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Viera Wetlands, , ,

Ansel Adams said that the “negative is the score, and the print is the performance”.  In modern terms, the RAW file is the negative and the processed jpg / print is the performance.  Ansel was famous for re-printing his photos to try to get the best possible image from his negatives.  Some of his later prints are thought to be better than earlier ones as he experimented and gained knowledge about how to “perform” the print.

All photographers should take this to heart and not be satisfied with previous processed versions of their photos.  I like to look through my Lightroom catalog sometimes for images that may merit some re-work.

This morning I reprocessed a photo that I made last October at Viera Wetlands.  Below is a series of images that show you a progression from the original images to the final result.  Look in the captions for details on what I did, and scroll to the bottom of the post to see the most recent version.  You can also click on these to see larger versions.

This is the first image I made (RAW, unprocessed).  It’s focused on the tree and the two birds are also in sharp focus.  Because of depth of field, the moon is out of focus.  The color balance could be better.

 

 

 

This is the second image I made to solve the problem with the moon focus.

Great Egret, Ibis, and MoonStep 3: And this was the processed version I  posted to Flickr last October.  I masked in the in-focus moon, did some sharpening and noise reduction, but didn’t spend too much time on it.  It’s since gotten a lot of views, but re-looking at it now, I’m not happy with several things in the photo (e.g. color balance, noise reduction, masking) and this morning I decided to go back and reprocess it from the original RAW files.

Great Egret, Ibis, and Moon

And this is the new version that I posted to Flickr this morning.  In Photoshop, I was much more careful masking in the in-focus moon.  I then created a meticulous selection of the blue sky so I could use it in the follow on steps.  Then I applied noise reduction just to the blue sky and sharpening just to the  birds, moon, and tree.  I also used the Topaz Adjust filter just on the birds, moon and tree.  Finally, back in Lightroom I adjusted the white balance off of a sample on the Ibis.  I like the vertical crop better as well as the color balance, sharpness, etc.

What do you think?

Thanks for visiting – now go make some photos!

©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The Sigma 150 – 500 returns and more flowers

Cameras and Photography, Technique, ,

I mentioned at the bottom of this post that I was having trouble with my Sigma 150 – 500mm OS lens and that I’d let you know how it turned out.  I said that I’ve been very happy with it and one of my few complaints was that the Optical Stabilization was a bit noisy.  Lately, it’s developed a “chatter” where it sounds like the OS motor is vibrating back and forth.  While it does this, you can see the image vibrating through the viewfinder.  I sent it back to Sigma to have them check it out.

Sigma called after about a week and said that it tested OK for them.  I described what I’d seen happening in detail and they agreed to look at it one more time.  They called again and said that it still checks out OK and that they were sending it back.  They did mention that cold weather (which can lower the power available from the camera’s battery) might make this happen.  But I shoot in Florida, so I doubt that’s it.  They also said that hitting / knocking the lens can make the OS oscillate.  I’m very careful with my gear and don’t remember hitting it at all, much less the several times when it’s done this, so I don’t think that’s it either.  It arrived late on Friday (after work, so I actually was here for the UPS guy!).  I’m under the weather with another bad cold, so I haven’t had a chance to try it out.  But I will.  I do have two more years of the extended warranty remaining, so I’m not too worried.  If I learn anything more, I’ll update you.

And just so this poor blog doesn’t go too long without an image, here’s one that I reprocessed this morning.

Composite Black and White Image

Composite Black and White Image

The original photo was made in October of 2004 with a Minolta Dimage 7Hi.

Source image

Flowers in glass water bowl

This morning, I ran it back through Nik Silver Effects Pro with four different settings and re-arranged the results into the single B&W image that leads this post.

© 2004 and 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Borrow the Bouquet

Cameras and Photography, Technique,

If you’re a photographer, one side benefit of romantic relationships can be residual bouquet photo ops.  Just be careful to make sure your significant other doesn’t think too hard about why their arrangements are so photogenic. You are, of course getting the flowers for them.

Flowers are an easy photo op, although many of us don’t bother since so many flower photographs have already been made.  But there are reasons to try:  It’s good practice with your equipment and technique.  Maybe you’ll come up with a different and beautiful approach.  Maybe you can learn a new lighting or processing technique.  And maybe it’s a convenient subject when you don’t have several hours to load up and go out in search of birds or other wildlife.

Tulip

Tulip

I bought Lynn some tulips for Valentine’s Day and wanted to make a few photos while they were still looking good.  Please don’t tell any Strobists out there, but I used a flashlight for illumination in these images.  Using a constant illumination light source instead of a strobe, allows you to see exactly how the light looks on your subject before you make the photo.  In this case, I was trying to “spotlight” the front tulip to isolate it, but at the same time leave the tulips in the background just visible.  I tried various positions for my light and no one single position worked.  The ones that looked best had blown highlights on either the right or left side of the front tulip.  I ended up making two exposures, intending to spend some time blending them by hand in Photoshop.  Here are portions of the two exposures showing the front tulip:

Source photos for image above

After loading them as layers in Photoshop, I made an attempt to blend them by hand without much success.  Instead, I hit on the idea of changing the layer blending mode to “darken” instead of “normal”.  The lead image in this post is the result, with no hand blending at all.  I like the effect and I like the smooth, out of focus definition of the tulip in the background on the left.

I also wanted to try one more thing before these tulips had to be retired.

Tulip two

Tulip two

For this second shot, I wanted to make the flower look like it was illuminated from the inside by shining the light up from the bottom.  I also wanted to make the stigma / stamens as sharply focused as possible to contrast them with the out of focus flower petals.  The outline of the petals framing the inside was a bonus.  I’ll let the reader figure out what other techniques I used in this image (hint:  I’ve written about it before).

So – go ahead.  Ask your significant other if you can borrow the bouquet.

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

In Defense of Post Processing

Cameras and Photography, Indiana, Technique, ,

This is another article on technique. It’s not so much a “how-to”. It is more of a defense or justification.
The Mayberry Cafe - Danville, In.
The Mayberry Cafe – Danville, Indiana (final B&W image)

We have a few people in our Photography Interest Group that are relatively new to high end DSLRs. They’re used to point & shoot cameras and one question I hear quite often is “why post process?”. Their argument seems to be that the photos “straight out of the camera” (SOOC) are much better than they were with their old cameras and they don’t understand why anyone should waste time learning about software and processing photos on their computers. I even have one friend that uses the “I’m feeling lucky” button whenever photos need some adjustment.

Now, I’ve been using Photoshop since sometime in the ’90s, so I really have to stop and think when someone questions why they should use photo software. My answer comes down to: Control, Quality, and Change.

Control: If you understand post processing, know what your software is capable of, and have the skills to use the software, then you can take control from your camera and choose how your photos will be processed and what their final appearance will be. You decide exposure curves, fill light, sharpening and noise reduction levels, etc. Or even color vs. black and white.

Quality: If you want the best results, post processing allows you to optimize things (e.g. selective noise reduction and sharpening, various filters). You also can try different approaches and use the one that works best.

Change: Especially if you use RAW format, you have the ability to modify many of your settings after you make the photo. And if you need to adjust some parameters (e.g. white balance, saturation, exposure) you can do so after the shot. Also, software constantly improves – witness how much better recent noise reduction algorithms are today than even a few years ago. As the software improves you can apply the updated versions to your existing photos to keep making them even better.

Here’s an example that might illustrate the possibilities. I like to make photos that are “timeless” in the sense that they could have been made a while ago, or don’t give away when they were made. I saw this dinner and old sheriff’s car as I drove through a small town in Indiana. I thought the scene might make a good photo and since I had my camera in the car, I went around the block and made this image hand held through the open window as I passed by a second time:

The Mayberry Cafe – Danville, Indiana (SOOC)

This copy above is SOOC – nice, but too much clutter, and kind of drab. I post-processed it to remove the clutter, selectively reduce noise in the clouds, adjust white balance and exposure, add saturation, etc. Here’s the result:

The Mayberry Cafe – Danville, Indiana (post processed)

This is a lot cleaner, the clouds and sky are brought out, and the colors and contrast are better. Could I have done this in the camera? Some of it. Would the results have been as good? I really doubt it. And if I want, I can keep reprocessing a photo whenever I learn a new technique or get some new software. Should you reprocess every photo? Of course not – if you did you wouldn’t have time to make any more photos. But you definitely need to make an effort when a photo shows some promise.

Finally, I thought this image would be more “timeless” as a black and white photo, so I converted the image above to get the result at the beginning of this post. If you’d only seen the B&W photo, when would you think it was made?

© 2007 & 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Two Image Pano / HDR / Focus Stacking

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Viera Wetlands, , , ,

Intro

It’s been a while since I posted an in depth technique article, so I thought I’d do another one.  Warning: Major photo geek out ahead.  If you’re not into HDR, panoramas, post processing, etc. please move along.

…

OK, now that it’s just us photo nerds left, wanna see some sausage made?  Let’s get started.

My question to you:  What if you want more pixels in your final image, more dynamic range in both highlights and shadows, and better depth of field, all by using a much simpler technique than you might normally use?  How would you go about it?  I’ll explain one approach I used recently to make this lead photo from my previous post:

Sunrise at Viera WetlandsFinished image (click to view on Flickr)

I made this with a 12 megapixel Nikon D700, but my final image file is 4238 pixels wide by 5776 pixels tall (about 24.5 Megapixels).  It has good depth of field with objects from very close out to the horizon in focus.  It also has good dynamic range with both the ground and the sunrise & clouds well exposed.

Details

If you were going to create an image like this using conventional techniques, it could require 6 or more exposures.  You’d mount your camera on a tripod and manual focus. You might analyze the scene to decide on an optimum exposure.  Then you’d make three bracketed exposures around that, first of the lower portion of the image, then shifting your camera viewpoint up toward the clouds – three more bracketed exposures.  Then you’d use panorama software to combine the three pairs of images at each exposure value, followed by HDR software to combine the three resulting panoramas into an HDR file and tone map it.  You might have to play with the result quite a bit to eliminate noise, ghosting, etc. introduced by the HDR software.  And if you wanted to stretch the depth of field, you might go through this twice with different focus points, and combine them too.  In some situations, you could also try using graduated neutral density filters to control dynamic range.

Whew – that could be a whole lot of work!  I didn’t do all that.  Instead, I used a much simpler idea.  Basically, I just combined two images manually in Photoshop.

If you’re still with me, read on (it might look complicated, but it’s actually harder to read about than do).  Here are the details.

  1. I hand held my camera and used an image stabilized lens so I didn’t have to worry too much about longer exposures.  The camera was in landscape orientation.  I used aperture priority, with matrix metering auto exposure, and auto focus using the center focus point.  When I made these, I held my camera very carefully to make sure there was no side to side movement and that the horizon was level so there was no rotation between shots, and I made sure there was at least 30% vertical overlap between the two images.  I also shot in RAW mode for the best dynamic range and control over processing.
  2. For this first photo, I pointed at the sky and let the camera auto expose for the bright clouds and sunrise.  It also auto focused on the clouds in the middle of the frame.  It’s at 16 mm, ISO 200, and f/8 @ 1/160 sec.  Here’s the unprocessed RAW source image for the sky:
    3. RAW source image for the sky
  3. For this second photo I pointed down at the ground and this time the camera exposed for the dark foreground.  It auto focused on the ripples in the water just short of the first coot  (again in the middle of the frame).  It’s at 16 mm, ISO 200, and f/8 @ 1/25 sec. (almost 3  stops more exposure).  Here’s the unprocessed RAW source image for the ground:
    4. RAW source image for the ground
  4. Then I processed the RAW photos.  I used Capture NX2 and converted them to TIF, but you could use Photoshop to convert them and not need CaptureNX2.  I set picture control to neutral, white balance to daylight, enabled distortion correction, and tried to bring both photos closer in overall brightness.  Here are the two processed images:
    5. Sky image after RAW conversion
    Ground image after RAW conversion
  5. Next I loaded the files into Photoshop as separate layers in the same file, and used Photoshop’s Edit / Auto Align Layers function to place the two images relative to each other.
  6. At this point, I added a layer mask (reveal all) for the sky image and then painted black to remove the portions below the horizon that I didn’t need.  It was fairly easy to blend the images by changing the brush opacity and either erasing or painting in until it looked correct.
  7. The final steps then are the same ones used for any photo:  crop, sharpen, levels, apply any creative filters you like, etc.

Once you go through this a few times, it’ll be easier and you can, of course vary some of these steps based on your own preferences.

Conclusions

I think this “Two Image Pano / HDR / Focus Stacking” technique can be really useful and it has several advantages over standard approaches normally used for this kind of image.

Benefits

  • It’s simpler than conventional techniques, and yields very good results.
  • You can hand hold in many cases, especially if you use an image stabilized camera or lens.
  • It uses the camera’s auto exposure effectively to expose correctly for the different areas of the image.
  • You can post process with just Photoshop – other software isn’t required.
  • It greatly increases the dynamic range of the final image without requiring HDR processing or software.  It doesn’t require a straight line horizon like graduated neutral density filters would.
  • Depth of field can be increased over that in a single exposure or in a conventional pano / HDR approach.
  • It also substantially increases vertical field of view.

Limitations

This technique is situation dependent: It’ll only produce portrait or perhaps square orientation output images (although you’ll have lots of pixels to crop to other formats).  It only works where the scene is easily divided into two portions where the brightness varies vertically.  Also,the dynamic range increase available from just two images may not be enough in all situations.

So, should you use it?

Why not?  Under the right conditions, it can generate very good results with minimal effort.  Now that you’ve heard about this technique, you can watch for scenes where you may be able to use it.

Then you can try it – and please let me know how it works for you.

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Correcting blur with Topaz InFocus

Technique,

3/19/19 NOTE:  This post is no longer current.  As of March 2019, Topaz has a new product – Sharpen AI  They’re offering a free upgrade for owners of Topaz InFocus, although I’m not sure how long this offer will last.

Introduction

Topaz Labs recently introduced their InFocus plug-in to refine detail, increase clarity, and rescue blurred images.  It uses deconvolution and micro texture in addition to the more common unsharp mask algorithm.  If you go to the Topaz website, you can  read much more about this and their other plug-ins, download the manual as well as a free 30 day trial, and also examine some very impressive examples of this software at work.

So, how well does the plug-in actually work with a real world example?  I decided to give it a try.  I selected a photo of a hawk that I made recently.  You can see the full image here on Flickr.  I was happy with the original photo and most of it is sharp, but the bird’s feet are blurred – I think it was shifting positions when I made the photo.

Here’s a crop showing the appearance before I used Topaz InFocus:

A portion of the image showing the hawk’s blurry feet.

And this second crop shows the improvement after processing with InFocus:

The same portion of the image, showing the improvement after processing with InFocus

Conclusions and recommendations

InFocus helped me remove a great deal of the blur in this photo.  The improvement is good, but not perfect and not quite as dramatic as some of the samples on the Topaz site.  It’s very possible that a more experienced / knowledgeable user could do more with this image.  I’ll be looking for other examples to try it on and  re-reading the manual / watching the tutorial videos to make sure I know how best to use it.

One thing I did notice while playing with the software:   The InFocus settings needed to de-blur the hawk’s feet couldn’t be applied to the whole photo without introducing artifacts.  I ran a duplicate layer through InFocus and then selectively painted it onto the bird’s feet in Photoshop.  You  may need to do this too to get the best results.

Should you get a copy of this software? Well I bought one.  It seems to work better at de-blurring than I’ve ever been able to do with Photoshop’s built in tools.  It’s also quite handy for capture sharpening, even when a photo isn’t obviously blurry.

If you do buy it, spend the time to learn it so you can get good results.  You can find the manual and tutorials here (sorry – no longer available).

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Macro photography – D7000 or D700?

Cameras and Photography, Technique, , , , ,

There are many kinds of photography. I tend towards landscapes, birds & wildlife, and sometimes macro. When I was using a Nikon D90 and a D700, it was pretty easy to decide which camera to use for what. They had roughly the same number of pixels and well known ISO performance. I would use the D90 as my primary bird and wildlife photography body (especially in good light), and the D700 for almost everything else.

Now that I’ve swapped the D90 for a D7000, these questions have become a little harder to answer. The D7000 has better ISO performance than the D90, and more pixels than the D90 or the D700. Clearly, the D7000 is still a very good first choice for bird & wildlife (unless they’re especially cooperative and close), even more so than the D90 because of its improved autofocus and resolution. And in dim light, the D7000’s ISO performance should make it even more useful than the D90, although not as good as the D700. Using the camera now for a couple of weeks has confirmed all this.

But what about landscape photography and macros? This isn’t as easy a question. They’re most often done with a tripod and therefore ISO performance isn’t a factor, so you can use the camera’s base / optimum ISO (D7000 @ ISO 100, D700 @ ISO 200). Which body to use probably comes down to magnification and depth of field vs. diffraction. I hadn’t had a chance to explore using the D7000 for macros, so I decided to do a little experiment today.

My subject is a rosebud from our front garden (by the way, if you know what kind of bugs those are on our rose bush, let me know). The setup was fairly simple: Tripod mounted camera, using the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR macro, and a Neewer LED ring light with the rose against a black background. I used matrix metering, with an exposure bias of -3EV to avoid blowing out the red channel (every digital camera I’ve owned – including the D7000, has overexposed red roses). I tried to keep the positions / setup as close as possible but unfortunately, I had to go back and re-take the D700 photo and it isn’t exactly positioned the same. I used an aperture of f/11 with the D7000 and f/16 with the D700, since those values should give the most depth of field without any degradation due to diffraction. I also used the cameras’ base ISO settings. I then ran the two photos through Capture NX2 with the exact same adjustments ( daylight White Balance, vivid Color Control, Noise Reduction off, and Unsharp Mask set to 30/5/2) and created a .jpg of each.

Rosebud: D7000, ISO 100, Nikon 105mm macro, 1/20 sec @ f/11Rosebud: D7000, ISO 100, Nikon 105mm macro, 1/20 sec @ f/11

Rosebud: D700, ISO 200, Nikon 105mm macro, 1/13 sec @ f/16Rosebud: D700, ISO 200, Nikon 105mm macro, 1/13 sec @ f/16

So what conclusions did I draw from this? With a sharp lens, using base ISO, the D7000 makes full use of all of it’s pixels and therefore has very good resolution when compared to the D700. For macro photography, the extra magnification, pixels, and increased apparent depth of field will almost always be an advantage. So my first choice for macro photography now will be the D7000.

What about landscapes? That adds a couple more things to consider (e.g. dynamic range, field of view), so it needs some additional thought and experimentation. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Note: A click on the photos above, will take you to Flickr where you can select Actions / View all sizes to see full resolution JPGs.

©2010, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.