A nice Altona Beach sunset this week.
My Ultra Wide Angle lens (Tokina 12-24 f/4) needed some love this week. I’ve been neglecting it for a while. Unfortantely this photo isn’t 100% sharp (it’s not bad though). I think it’s due to it being manual focus on my D5000 (lack of motor in the body) and I’ll still finding the actual infinity point (most lenses will focus past infinity) which was quite hard in low light. It could also be related to shooting at f/22 which is beyond the defraction point for my camera (which would typically be around f/8 – f/11).
What I do really like about this photo is the star points coming off the lights. To get this easily, all you need to do is use a narrow f-stop (in this case f/22).
As it’s such a small aperture and in the sunset, this was taken on a tripod. I didn’t have my remote release with me, so I just used the timer (along with “delayed shutter” mode which locks up the mirror for one second before taking the photo).
Processing wise, not much here. I changed the white balance from Auto to Daylight to give it that real blue hue (which is very similar to how I saw it), added a gradient to the sky (which helps make the colours richer), very slight levels adjustment (not much at all though), vibrance adjustment (although it didn’t need much) cropping and sharpening. I did play around with some other effects to see how it looked, but nothing really enhanced it much over the minor changes I had already done.
No snow photo this week. Snow trip was cancelled (right before I got to the mountain) due to most of Mt Buller being closed because of high winds. Hopefully get up there soon. This week, more playing around with the new lens.
A little cliché, especially for these bike racks, but I like it. The repetition is striking.
Very basic processing here. Crop (person was walking on the left of the frame), levels adjustment, clarity, contrast, vibrance (to bring out the blues) and sharpness (not that you need much with the 70-200, especially when shooting stopped down a notch at f/4). Added a slight vignette so the yellow of the wall and the lightness of the footpatch don’t catch the eye quite as much.
I had to get some advice from my lovely wife with this one. I did a black and white version of this as well and couldn’t pick between them. She found the black and white one a little dark for this type of photo. Looking back on it now, yeah, I think she’s right.
Week 33 and some new gear!
Not the best photo to show off the new toy (I’ll get to that later), but a windy and rainy night (along with a crappy tripod) in Melbourne limited my options.
What I like about this photo is the pole itself fading to black. Not quite what I saw but due to the limits of camera contrast, this is what came out, and I like it. This was a quick last minute photo taken on the way home after some failed attempts at long exposure photography. I literally pulled off the side of the road, rolled the window down (well, pushed a button), and took a few photos.
Processing was very simple. The levels went though a very minor adjustment (much less than I normally would do), a little bit of vibrance to make the orange a bit more brilliant, and that’s pretty much it. Due to shooting in RAW, I could have brought more pole detail in, but I like the way this one is, along with the fact that it would have been a very noisy image (Lightroom will only clean up so much noise). The shot itself was taken at 200mm with an aperture of f/2.8 (yep, you read that right) and an ISO of 800.
So, on to the new toy, and boy is this a big one (doubled the value of all my photography gear). Picked up a Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II lens. This thing is big and heavy (around 1.5kg for the lens alone). Overkill on my D5000 camera, but good glass is never wasted, and this lens will last a lifetime (pending accidents) across many bodies (would love to have a D3s to attach it to, but I think I’d get in big trouble with the wife if I bought one!).
One thing I have to say about this lens is that it’s super sharp. The day I got it, I went for a quick photo walk around the city taking photos (didn’t really get anything good), but one thing you could really see was how sharp the photos were. Nothing compares to it. Big problem is now I have a love of ‘fast glass’ (my other favourite lens is my 50mm f/1.4), and of course they’re the expensive ones.
Next week, I’m hoping to have a snow photo here. I’m heading up snowboarding on Wednesday and taking the camera. No, I’m not taking the new lens, my much cheaper and lighter 55-200mm f/4-f/5.6 will do quite nicely I think.
Week 32. No writeup last week, the photo is in the gallery here. Nothing special, probably should have used a bit more depth of field and had the tea candle in focus.
This weeks photo wasn’t the best one I took this week. Unfortunatly I don’t put up photos of other peoples kids without permission, so a couple of nice portraits miss out.
A last minute effort for this one. Really didn’t know what I was going to do, so I went for a bit of a drive. In the end, nothing really caught my eye, so decided to go for some close up detail.
Very basic, but pretty cool I reckon. Not a lot of processing above the normal (brightness, contrast, etc), only real change is a higher level on the clarity slider which really brings out the texture of the sand a lot more.
Interesting to note though. The last few weeks I have been almost exclusivly using my 50mm f/1.4 prime lens. I’ve been after a very low depth of field, so this is the only fast lens I have. With any luck, that will change tomorrow as I have a lens being delivered. Watch this space for some shots from it!
Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk this week.
Was quite fun meeting new people and walking around for two hours taking photos. Good getting other insights into taking photos and seeing the photos that people took.
I might put another couple up sometime during the week. While I had fun, I don’t think I took anything spectacular (won’t be winning any of the prizes).
Processing on this was a bit different to what I normally do. The main change was lowering the vibrance slider (I normally tweek it up a little). This has given the photo a slightly desaturated look without going too far to grey. Sharpness & clarity have been cranked up a bit to really make the leaves pop.
One thing I really like about this photo is the twigs on the ground along with the very low depth of field.
