Kevin MacLeod (unranged.com)
Civilization Summit
Twin Peaks, San Francisco.
I've been here before and taken a couple of photos I happen to really like, but this time I came with a different idea in mind.
My dad and I have been growing our arsenal of lenses recently, and Twin Peaks at night is a perfect place to test how these lenses perform in regards to landscapes. An extremely contrasty scene with copious amounts of bright lights, mixed with incredibly sharp architectural elements at every distance, makes for the perfect equipment test field. The lenses I used for this particular shoot were the Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF-D (seen here), the Sigma 35mm 1.4 Art lens, and Samyang 14mm 2.8 ultra wide.
My goal wasn't to create and a perfect shot-for-shot comparison between these lenses - those are boring, and readily available elsewhere for those who care - rather, my goal was to create some interesting pieces of artwork with each of them, with the commonality being the scene and conditions. I plan on uploading an example of a piece of art made using each of the lenses, then a second picture detailing some more technical details and pixel-level analysis. That keeps nicely with my belief that the art you create with a piece of technology is more important than the technology itself, but also feeds my (and potentially your) interest in discussing the nitty-gritty pixel-level detail. I'll also be uploading these pictures significantly larger than usual, to demonstrate more of the low-level detail.
I'll keep a series of posts coming over the next few days, then write an article in summery of my findings that will be available on my site afterwards.
Anyways, on to this picture:
This particular photograph is a two part multi-exposure panorama, taken with the Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF-D lens, and processed in Photoshop.
I've always liked these long-exposure city shots, but I've just never been able to do them particularly well until recently. But hey, if the view from Twin Peaks can't inspire you to take a good shot, you're not trying hard enough! It really is a breathtaking sight, and the way I processed this one, I was simply trying to do the scene justice.
Civilization Summit
Twin Peaks, San Francisco.
I've been here before and taken a couple of photos I happen to really like, but this time I came with a different idea in mind.
My dad and I have been growing our arsenal of lenses recently, and Twin Peaks at night is a perfect place to test how these lenses perform in regards to landscapes. An extremely contrasty scene with copious amounts of bright lights, mixed with incredibly sharp architectural elements at every distance, makes for the perfect equipment test field. The lenses I used for this particular shoot were the Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF-D (seen here), the Sigma 35mm 1.4 Art lens, and Samyang 14mm 2.8 ultra wide.
My goal wasn't to create and a perfect shot-for-shot comparison between these lenses - those are boring, and readily available elsewhere for those who care - rather, my goal was to create some interesting pieces of artwork with each of them, with the commonality being the scene and conditions. I plan on uploading an example of a piece of art made using each of the lenses, then a second picture detailing some more technical details and pixel-level analysis. That keeps nicely with my belief that the art you create with a piece of technology is more important than the technology itself, but also feeds my (and potentially your) interest in discussing the nitty-gritty pixel-level detail. I'll also be uploading these pictures significantly larger than usual, to demonstrate more of the low-level detail.
I'll keep a series of posts coming over the next few days, then write an article in summery of my findings that will be available on my site afterwards.
Anyways, on to this picture:
This particular photograph is a two part multi-exposure panorama, taken with the Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF-D lens, and processed in Photoshop.
I've always liked these long-exposure city shots, but I've just never been able to do them particularly well until recently. But hey, if the view from Twin Peaks can't inspire you to take a good shot, you're not trying hard enough! It really is a breathtaking sight, and the way I processed this one, I was simply trying to do the scene justice.