PF Photography: Tips, Tricks, & Photo Sharing

[drizzle]

Wow, fabulous Andre. Love it.

 

[Andre]

Thanks, drizzle, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/IMG_yellow.JPG is the original if you like to add it to your wallpaper collection, or maybe make a big print of it.

Notice that I cropped the lower right corner and then mirrored it vertically to get the composition I liked the best.

 

[I_am_learning]

My eye. :) (Selfshot)

 

[Andy Resnick]

Nice Andy, Camera obscura?

Good guess, but no... I'll give you partial credit, tho :). No post-processing, either.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here's one I took last night, called "it's starting to feel a lot like christmas":

[PLAIN]http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/9467/dsc05552m.jpg

becasue a 1:1 crop shows:

[PLAIN]http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/9839/dsc05551z.jpg

 

[Andre]

Good guess, but no... I'll give you partial credit, tho :). No post-processing, either.

Maybe then:

http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/bokeh-Kit/

 

[Andy Resnick]

Maybe then:

http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/bokeh-Kit/

Ha! I don't have the kit, but that's the method. Longer focal length lenses use larger patterns- the photos above, using my 85mm, require patterns about 1" across (the front element is about 3" diameter), while my 24mm needs patterns smaller than 1/3"- too small for me to fabricate- I just print a design on paper and cut it out with a knife (under a microscope).

 

[Andre]

I tested a new optical device today, the crystal sphere.

[PLAIN]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/crystal-bulb.jpg

This picture is intended as example in a photo challenge I'm going to host in DPReview next month. The title is "Still life: Raw and Product" and here we see quartz stones of which crystal spheres are made.

 

[NileQueen]

Ohhhhhhh I see there is quartz in my future...well coversands are quartz too.

So is that a quartz crystal ball or a glass one?

 

[Andre]

Should be crystal, at least the shop that sells them tells that These spheres are made by first crushing natural quartz into fine pieces, then it's melted, removing most of the impurities. then it's poured into molds and finished / polished etc in traditional crystal ball methods.

But I had no chance to check it.

 

[Andy Resnick]

A great article today about photographing/filming food commercials:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/business/in-food-commercials-flying-doughnuts-and-big-budgets.html

 

[Topher925]

I'm very excited here. I just got my brand new Pentax K-5 in the mail today and oh boy do I like it. Still learning how to use it but I absolutely love the build quality and low light performance. Below is a picture taken with the 18-55mm kit lens in a very poorly lit room (F4.0, ISO3200, F/25 i think). The image resizing really doesn't do the pic justice.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I don't go for 'camera pr0n', but I'll make an exception for this:

[PLAIN]http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8355/dsc1376r.jpg

A colleague in the art department (www.markslankard.com) graciously lent me one of his view cameras to work with. We are doing a 'lecture exchange' next semester, he's going to talk to my Physics II class about photography and I'm going to talk to his Photo II class about imaging. The view camera gives complete control over the location and orientation of the plane of best focus, and I asked to borrow it because I'm having trouble getting a clean shot of this:

[PLAIN]http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9868/dsc1354zk.jpg

It's a vinyl record that is lit with grazing incidence- when the angles are just right, those colors pop out. For some reason, the area ion the left (closest to the lamp) is always fuzzy- it doesn't matter what I do. I'm hoping some time with the view camera will give me a better sense of how to control the plane of focus.

 

[Kinase]

My brother skiing in CO.

 

[Andy Resnick]

That's really excellent! Did you use any filters/polarizers to get the sky so dark?

 

[Borek]

Andre's dragonfly reminded me of a picture I took in Spring, during some training exercise over Zalew Zegrzyński.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I found my next lens:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110776273456+

Christmas is coming up... hint, hint!

 

[Andre]

Hmmm with some panorama stitches you can do what that lens does.

My http://regality.hubpages.com/hub/Canon-EF-1200mm-f56-L-USM-Lens-review is a lot more modest.

Afraid, I'd need an adaptor for this one

 

[Andy Resnick]

This weekend I tried taking photos of fire and smoke: two objects that are fairly common this time of year, but are also vary unusual in that they do not have two essential visual elements (in the traditional sense): shape and form. I didn't want to work with (say) a candle flame or incense stick- those have been done to death. Go big or go home!

I approached these subjects from the scientific perspective, based on my exposure to them back at NASA- both are multicomponent fluid flows. Fire is a chemically reacting multicomponent system with strong thermal gradients, while smoke (soot) has electrostatic interactions. When imaging fluid flow, shutter speed is the dominant consideration- and for inspiration, you may want to check out Physics of Fluids "Gallery of fluid motion" for some really excellent examples:

http://pof.aip.org/gallery_of_fluid_motion

Of the two, fire was much easier to photograph. First, work with a long lens- I used my 85mm f/1.4, but a 100mm macro may be even better. Second, manual focus only, and you probably want to work in shutter priority mode or total manual mode if your camera likes to think. I noticed that no matter how fast I set my shutter, the image improved, so I worked at 1/8000 s (the fastest I could go) exposures only. Since fire is luminous, I could get away with this. However, I also had to use the lens wide open in order to get sufficient light, so the depth of field is small. In any case, here's a few examples:

[PLAIN]http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7376/dsc2085.png

[PLAIN]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2789/dsc2078.png

[PLAIN]http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/2218/dsc2084.png

I like the textures- the flame fronts appear as a flexible sheet, and it's totally invisible to the eye.

Fire is the easier to photograph because it doesn't move. That is, the fire is changing, but the location of the fire doesn't move. Smoke, by contrast, was much harder to photograph since each 'puff' stuck around for only a few seconds. Creating laminar flow conditions is essential, and the other essential part is to light from the side. I got reasonable results at 1/1250s exposures, but again I had to work at f/1.4 and ISO 1600 to get enough light on the sensor. This led to the main trick- I left the lens as close focus (2 feet) and constantly moved around in order to get anything of interest in focus.

[PLAIN]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6522/dsc2181.png

[PLAIN]http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/7668/dsc2018.png

[PLAIN]http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/5620/dsc2221.png

I think I could get better images by going with a short focal length lens to increase the depth of field- the smoke tendrils/sheets are fairly large and move in all three dimensions.

 

[Andre]

That's a good fire Andy,

Edit: I'd wondered what I could do to reduce that noise in the last frame.

Apparantly something with fire here too:

This is what you might see, if you're very lucky, when waiting for the sunrise and you happen to look the other way. But you have to realize that you have to drive back down into the valley to capture it in a more dramatic setting.

 

[khemist]

For smoke I would recommend using high powered flashes. You shouldn't really have to be going all the way up to 1/1250 to get a sharp image of smoke.

I would think even 1/320 would be sufficient, in which case you could lower your ISO to say 400 and increase that f stop to f8.

 

[Andy Resnick]

That's a good fire Andy,

Edit: I'd wondered what I could do to reduce that noise in the last frame.

not bad! I posted images straight off the camera (jpg) since I was unusually busy today- no time to post process...

For smoke I would recommend using high powered flashes. You shouldn't really have to be going all the way up to 1/1250 to get a sharp image of smoke.

I would think even 1/320 would be sufficient, in which case you could lower your ISO to say 400 and increase that f stop to f8.

Yes, definitely- a (remote) flash would make my life easier. I don't have one, tho. As for the shutter speed, I still had blurring at 1/320-ish; but to be fair it's not clear if that was from not being in focus, me moving around, or some combination of the two.

 

[Andre]

not bad! I posted images straight off the camera (jpg) since I was unusually busy today- no time to post process...

Sure, I know how that feels. Anyway, generally I was irritated by the noise in general and not very happy with the standard noise reduction, losing detail and sharpness. So I did a web search to see if there were smarter solutions. I think "neat image" is doing a superior job, as you can see. So no more grainy pea soup.

 

[Andy Resnick]

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2550/dsc2504.png

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1443/dsc2503.png

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/523/dsc25031.png

If you're up for a challenge, try to photograph smoke.

These were taken with my old film 50/1.8, object distance at close focus.Exposure at 1/100s (khemist was right) ISO 1600 using a white LED for illumination (no strobe).

The last one is a 1:1 crop from the middle one.

 

[sourlemon]

Andy, the pictures look awesome! I love the first picture of the fire! I wish I could take up your challenge, but no fireplace :(

Andre, that's the sunrise? I thought it was the sunset at first because of the color. All my sunrise are clear and bluish :( Beautiful picture :!)

 

[Andre]

...
This is what you might see, if you're very lucky, when waiting for the sunrise and you happen to look the other way. But you have to realize that you have to drive back down into the valley to capture it in a more dramatic setting.

...

Andre, that's the sunrise? I thought it was the sunset at first because of the color. All my sunrise are clear and bluish :( Beautiful picture :!)

To be more clear, you are looking at the full moon, making herself up to set below the horizon, as the sun is about to rise. Obviously the dawn is coloring the clouds.

As said, I went down a bit in a valley to have the moon closer to the little hill slope there.

 

[drizzle]

Lovely Andre :)

 

[Andy Resnick]

These are the last smoke images for a while- too many upcoming deadlines. Here's a few single images and a series of a 'smoke drop'- all full-size images are available on my blog. My graduate advisor and I are going to try submitting one or a few to the AIP Gallery of Fluid Motion- stay tuned for that. The images were processed in Neat Image (thanks, Andre) at either 'remove all noise' or 'remove half of the noise' settings, and a final gamma and level corrected applied in ImageJ.

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/7027/dsc26611filtered.png

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7531/dsc2505filtered1.png

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/4349/dsc2654filtered1.png

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/419/dsc2781filtered.png

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/9215/montage2.png

Coincidentally, when I was out last evening, an airplane contrail evolved into this:

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/4237/dsc28351.png

The pattern was fairly uniform and long- I only captured 10% of the trail- and was very stable.

 

[lisab]

*wonders if Andy has taken up smoking *

 

[Andy Resnick]

I was wondering when someone would ask :) My vice of choice is EtOH- preferably a mug o' Wild Turkey.

In the interest of science, I went through an entire box of White Owl cigars- nothing but the finest! That's another reason why I'm done with the smoke photos for a while- my lungs are not happy.

Such pretty photos, such an ugly back-story...

 

[chroot]

Andy, I really like the 4x3 composite of the smoke changing over time. Beautiful!

- Warren

 

[Andy Resnick]

Thanks! It was amazing to see- the time from the first image to the last was about 30 seconds, and the whole time I was thinking 'is this really happening? I hope I'm getting this...'

 

[Andre]

..

I decided to enter it in a contest but before that I did some tone mapping to brighten the shadows:

 

[Topher925]

I've been trying to do a little astrophotography lately but I'm having focusing issues with one of my lenses. It doesn't seem to want to go to infinity causing all my pictures of the night sky to be blurry. Anyone know of a way to fix this? I've attached a sample image of the orion nebula taken at 300mm with the focus ring set all the way to the focus stop.

 

[Borek]

Could be you are focusing BEHIND the infinity. Try to focus slightly closer.

And I am not joking, some lenses are built this way - infinity is not at the end of the focusing ring range, but a little bit earlier.

 

[amal]

Might be just another cliche but this is the best I have caught

 

[sourlemon]

Andre, good luck with the contest. It's a really good picture. (haha, and yes, you caught me. I was confused whether that was the sun or the moon.)

amal, that's beautiful. I really like how you captured the branches in with the mountain.

 

[Topher925]

Could be you are focusing BEHIND the infinity. Try to focus slightly closer.

And I am not joking, some lenses are built this way - infinity is not at the end of the focusing ring range, but a little bit earlier.

Thanks Borek but I already took that into consideration. The posted pictures is the absolute clearest image I could get. Setting the focus any closer would make the image even more blurry. I did this all with manual focus though. I'll give the autofocus a try next time assuming these clouds ever go away.

 

[amal]

Hi everyone check this out. They were on my door.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I've been trying to do a little astrophotography lately but I'm having focusing issues with one of my lenses. It doesn't seem to want to go to infinity causing all my pictures of the night sky to be blurry. Anyone know of a way to fix this? I've attached a sample image of the orion nebula taken at 300mm with the focus ring set all the way to the focus stop.

The focus does look a little off. If this is indeed the 'best focus' you can do, I'd like to know 1) how are you focusing (i.e. looking through a viewfinder or at a LCD), 2) are you using a mirror lockup camera setting? 3) are you using a shutter release cable?

The problem may not be focusing but mechanical vibrations.

 

[Topher925]

Andy, I was manually focusing as the auto-focus just wasn't working very well. I was focusing by looking through the view finder (mirror down obviously). I tried focusing using live view but the LCD's on cameras just don't have enough resolution. No shutter release cable, just a 12s delay. I highly doubt its mechanical vibrations. I've used the same mount and setup several times with other cameras at similar focal lengths and never had any issues.

 

[Andre]

Topher, did you consider to leave everything manual and make several exposures whilst mechanically turning the focus ring some increments every time?

Also in 30 seconds exposure time, that cosmos above you does rotate a little. Maybe also try ISO 6400 and a few seconds?

 

[Topher925]

Topher, did you consider to leave everything manual and make several exposures whilst mechanically turning the focus ring some increments every time?

Also in 30 seconds exposure time, that cosmos above you does rotate a little. Maybe also try ISO 6400 and a few seconds?

Andre, yes, that's basically how I got the above picture. Just took several shots at slightly different focal points.

The camera is on an equatorial mount with a relatively decent polar alignment. There shouldn't be much of any star trails with a 30 second exposure.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Andy, I was manually focusing as the auto-focus just wasn't working very well. I was focusing by looking through the view finder (mirror down obviously). I tried focusing using live view but the LCD's on cameras just don't have enough resolution. No shutter release cable, just a 12s delay. I highly doubt its mechanical vibrations. I've used the same mount and setup several times with other cameras at similar focal lengths and never had any issues.

FWIW, when I use the camera timer (even the setting that raises the mirror before 'exposing' the CCD) instead of a cable release, my star images also look fuzzy.

In any case, I am unfamiliar with an equatorial mount- does it actively move to keep the stars in position? How does it move?

Oh- the blur spots appear circularly symmetric- is that correct? Does their appearance change over the field of view?

 

[Andre]

Indeed tripods may not be as stable as you want them to be. Anything around in the environment that could cause vibrations?

But Topher, you'd want to exclude that it's the lens giving the problem, so I would make a lot of test shots of the horizon in bright light, auto and manually focussed with wide open aperture.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here's a stack of 80 0.4" exposures of the Orion nebula taken at 800mm f/5.6, ISO 1250

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/6885/orion1crop.png

The image was severely cropped and shown here at 25% scale. I can resolve the four main stars in the Trapezium, but I'm still working on getting both the nebula and the resolved stars at the same time in the final image.

I'm sure I can get a better image than this with better seeing conditions.

 

[amal]

Andy, I think that it is somewhat noisy. Otherwise fantastic.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Thanks- I keep trying to pull out the faint portions of the nebula...

 

[amal]

Try keeping ISO 800.,Decreasing shutter and increasing aperture by 1-2 stops.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I generally shoot astronomical and near-earth objects (satellites, etc) with a fully open aperture. It helps that the weather is cooler now, the camera noise is noticeably lower and the sky seems darker as well.