Thursday, August 13, 2009
At the Lake
Did some camping a week or two ago by a lake, here it is. First at late afternoon then again at about 10:30pm.
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People sometimes ask about the gear that I use, so here it is:
- Canon EOS Rebel XSi (aka 450D)
- EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
- EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS
- EF 50mm f/1.8 II
- Sunpak 622 Super Pro flash
- Yongnuo YN-565 EX
- Yongnuo RF-602 Wireless Flash/Shutter trigger
- Polarized Filter 58mm
- 33" Shoot-though Unbrella
- SDHC Memory Card 8GB
- Remote shutter release
- Velbon Sherpa 550R tripod
- Extension Tubes
- Canon PowerShot A510
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- Raw Therapee For tweaking and processing RAW photos.
- Picasa For organizing and viewing.
- Hugin For stitching photos together.
- AndreaMosaic For creating photo mosaics like this one.
- Ubuntu My operating system.
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Since June 13, 2009
© 2010 Joel MacKenzie
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Joel, very nice I like them both.
ReplyDeletevery interesting. in the second one i noticed that the water almost has a dull hazy kind of look. yet it still looks like it's smooth as glass, just no glassy reflections. I'm guessing because you left the shutter open long enough that all the little ripples and waves would just blur inter each other. i think it would be really cool to try doing that on a river or something with a lot of trees and stuff to reflect on the water. see what it looks like.
ReplyDeleteThe second photo here is a 72 second exposure.
ReplyDeleteThat would be interesting to see what happens. I suspect the water would be a flat greenish blur and, if there's any wind, which you'd want to create waves, the trees on the shore would be a blur as well, although would probably have a different look to them then the water since they'd be moving in a different way. I'll give that a try sometime. It'd be nice to try it during the day to get nicer colours, but with the shutter open for so long, I'd need some other way to control the light coming in. Even with the aperture closed all the way, the most you'd get is a second or two.
I`m glad you add me because I have the oportunity to see your work. Very good photos, clear landscapes. I like them. Good lights:)
ReplyDeletehmm that's a good point, i think it would be ideal to have really no wind or just a tiny breeze, the water usually has plenty of ripples without much of a breeze. the water should be moving more than the leaves i think. but yeah, getting it during just the right time of day would be key. I wonder if you could use some kind of dark filter on the lens, like wearing sunglasses. it would let less light in allowing you to keep the shutter open longer during the day, so you keep the colors. I would imagine the filter would have to be really dark tho. i dunno, would that take away from the colors though?
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about a lake for some reason, but you said river. So, yeah, you wouldn't need wind to move the water.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking of dark filter for a while now. I have a polarized filter, that might help a little, but I think the best thing would be two polarized filters, then you would have very precise control over the light coming in. In theory from 50% down to 0%, and it shouldn't have any effect on colour. I checked my filter and it has threads on both sides so stacking many filters isn't a problem, I just need to get another one.
hmm yeah getting second polarized filter would be prime i think! could open up some interesting possibilities to be able to have longer exposures during bright times of the day.
ReplyDeleteI guess there is something specially made for blocking light: It's called a Neutral density filter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_density_filter) There's a large verity of them that block different amounts of light so in order to be flexible, one would have to carry a bunch of them around all the time. When trying to make a photo you'd have to try different ones through trial-and-error (at least for someone at my level of experience) to find the right one for that scene, it'd be annoying, you'd be screwing different ones on and off all the time.
ReplyDeleteI still think my idea of the double polarized filter would be better, very simple and easy. I've yet to find anyone talking about doing that on the internet. Did I come up with a new technique? That'd be cool. Maybe there's some reason why no one dose it. Some people seem to be very picky about how many pieces of glass light has to travel through since it reduces quality each time, that could be a downfall, I guess, but not a big one for me.
One thing the Neutral density filter has in it's favor is a type called Graduated neutral density filter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduated_neutral_density_filter). It's darker on one side and fades to lighter or clear. This would allow you to darken only a portion of the scene to bring the whole scene into a more narrow dynamic range. For example, you could darking a bight sky, but not the dimly light shadows of some rocks or something in the foreground. There's a lot people that still prefer to work that way, but I would probably take multiple, bracketed exposers (many shots with different shutter speeds so you have a range of shots of varying brightness) and edit them later with a computer, a technique known as HDR (High Dynamic Range), which is often over-used/over-exaggerated, but when done right is quite nice, I think. The first photo in this post is an example of this. The dynamic range (the range of light and dark) in that scene is too great for the camera to record, either the sky is too bright and loses the detail in the clouds while the foreground is properly exposed, or the the foreground is too dark and the sky is good. This one was pretty simple. It's only two photos, the dark one on the top and it starts fading to the lighter photo, on the bottom, just under the horizon. The bottom photo is totally opaque just above the canoe. Normally I'd use a tripod to do this, but since the transition takes place in the water, nothing needs to line up very well.
I think I've rambled on long enough.
An excellent example of the pros and cons of a Graduated neutral density filter:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/awfulsara/51300446/
that's really interesting about the first picture actually being two. cool technique. But I would think that would be better than using a Graduated ND Filter. It seems to me that I could be tricky to compose your shots using that. What happens when you want your picture to have more sky than ground, wouldn't you have to use a filter that has more darkened portion than clear? and would the transition in the filter be very noticable. I would think your method using a computer is much more controllable.
ReplyDeleteAlso I wonder if Polerized filters do anything to the colors? Perhaps that's a reason why people would use a large collection of ND filters rather than easily adjustable dual Polerized filters. if your picky about color it would make sence. But as far as I know polerized filters shouldn't do anything with colors. But I'm no professional.
I know that on many prosumer video cameras they come equiped with an ND filter built in which moves into place with the flip of a switch. It comes in handy during sunny days. They normally only have one shade option tho.
I haven't read a lot about them, but I think Graduated ND Filters can be used without attaching to your lens and are quite a bit larger then the lens so you can hold it in front and move it around, adjusting the ratio of light and dark. There's different types with varying transitions from dark to light, some are harder or softer, but it's always strait across. Some people like to do everything in-camera. Either because they're using film or they think it's better or they just don't know how to use a computer. These people tend to have a lot of filters.
ReplyDeletePolarized filters may do something with colour, I guess. Since they're used to get better contrasts out of the sky and clouds and they can saturate colurs a bit and affect reflections. So that could be reason not to use them, but I think all those things would be desirable most of the time.
I saw a point-and-shoot camera the other day that had an ND filter built in. Thought that was neat.
I'm not the first to think of the double polarized filter thing :( There's a product for sale that includes two filters. Although, it's around $400!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.singh-ray.com/varind.html