View allAll Photos Tagged Refocus
37403 Isle of Mull approaches Whitemoor Drove level crossing (west of March), working the return of Vintage Trains "The East Anglian" tour from Birmingham to Norwich and Great Yarmouth. This was the 1Z18 18.11 Norwich - Birmingham New Street leg. 47773 is on the rear. [Pole, 5.5/6 sections (~7.4m)]
The whole tour ran as:
1Z15 07.56 Birmingham New Street - Norwich (37403 leading)
1Z16 13.16 Norwich - Great Yarmouth (47773 leading)
1Z17 17.05 Great Yarmouth - Norwich (37403 leading)
1Z18 18.11 Norwich - Birmingham New Street (via Wensum Jn. and the Wensum Curve - 47774 leading out of Norwich, then 37403 leading after the reversal at Wensum Jn.)
With social plans for this evening being cancelled at the last minute as a result of illness, I initially planned to get this near Prickwillow or Queen Adelaide. The weather forecast suggested sun was possible, but when I got to the Ely area it looked like there was a much greater chance of sun around March - a gap in the clouds looked like it might arrive marginally too late at Ely, whereas at March it looked like the clouds were going to clear completely (and it actually improved when I arrived here). I considered going onto the A141 bridge (in the background of this shot), but I'd been there for the BLS class 50 tour only a few days previously; with the wind having completely died down, I knew I could use the pole without any difficulty.
A bonus was white 66721 only a few minutes in front of the charter, and after photographing that I checked that the camera was still focused correctly... but when I downloaded the images, I found that all the pictures of the 37 were very slightly out of focus (when the shots of 66721 were as sharp as I get with my equipment). I'm puzzled as to why, but all I can assume is that the camera tried to refocus and didn't quite get it right. Thankfully, applying the "unsharp mask" function has significantly improved the picture.
Revised version uploaded 20-7-2023.
Visit Brian Carter's Non-Transport Pics to see my photos of landscapes, buildings, bridges, sunsets, rainbows and more.
Project 365 Week 15 Day 108 - Wildcard Day
Like the lyrics in the song by Panic at the Disco sometimes we need to get a new perspective. We become so busy that we get jaded and no longer pay attention to the things around us and the beauty in them. This bare tree is outside my office and I had forgotten how beautiful it can be. Sometimes to gain a new perspective all we need to do is refocus and look at things in a different way.
Entry #345 CT-7707 ⁛ “Number 7”
//After Order 66 the hallways were always quiet, with the fall of the republic many of us clones lost our spark and spiraled. When the Empire started phasing out clones I knew it was the beginning of the end for us. One day you could be talking to one of your close friends, brothers, people with whom we had spent our entire lives with. Then the next day they would be gone without a trace…//
Entry #346 TK-7707 ⁛
//Patrolling the streets is not the most fun job in the Empire but I sure prefer it over hunting Jedi. As I was one of the most trusted and skilled clones in the republic I was chosen to help lead the hunt. The inquisitor and I were following up on a reported sighting of Jedi Xam su on Daiyu. Walking down the streets of Daiyu was a good distraction from the grim task at hand. I try to scatter my thoughts and think about going to the bar to drink away my sorrow. When I refocus my thoughts I am in a rundown alleyway on the outskirts of the city when we see a figure standing under a streetlight almost as if he was waiting for us.//
TK-7707: Permission to go in for the kill
Inquisitor: No, stand down. I will handle this by myself
Inquisitor: (to Jedi) I thought you died in When the ship went down
Xam su: (to inquisitor) I guess you thought wrong
Inquisitor: Why didn’t you come back for me, do you know what they did to anyone who survived? They had us torchured until there was nothing inside, only the strongest survived, the rest were killed in front of our face! Where were you when I needed you most
Xam su: I,..I
Inquisitor: That's right you….
//That's when the conversation slowly faded away, all could make out was a faint voice in the back of my head repeating “good soldiers follow orders”//
Pew
Name: Xam su
Chain Code: N/A
Status: Dead
TOD: 21:49 GST
Cause: [Redacted]
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This is my application for Dark Times, enjoy!
Another shot of this chipmunk while testing the animal detection focus system in the G9. It did a pretty good job. I didn't have to refocus much at all once it locked on.
I'm back after a much needed artistic reset. Sometimes it's good to step away for a while and refocus.
"sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths."
~ etty hillesum
If the eyes are black, that means it's looking at you.
These spiders are so fun to photograph, surprisingly cooperative on an open plane, unlike many spiders who seem to dislike being out in the open and dart as fast as they can for the edge of my flat empty photo surfaces when I release them there. This one behaved as most of these have when I put them here, being very curious and rotating around in place to check out its surroundings. This makes it a perfect subject for getting many angles of, since I don't have to chase it around while trying to refocus and refocus.
This one was released back outside after our photoshoot, though with the temperatures dropping I was very tempted to put it on a houseplant inside. But I figured if it was outside in the first place, it has ways of dealing with winter.
Further commentary about the current spider population in and around my house is in the first comment below, for those of you who are entertained by that continuing saga.
You can see all my posted photos of these here.
20 Arachtober 2015
Magnolia Green Jumper, Lyssomanes viridis, juvenile
My backyard, Alexandria, VA
South Western Railway Alstom "Juniper" EMUs 458509 and 458503 approach Upper Halliford, working 2H50 16.11 Shepperton - Waterloo. [Pole, 4/6 sections (~5.4m)]
I'd photographed this on its way in to Shepperton from the other side of the footpath crossing just behind me, but the sun dipped slightly at just the wrong moment (thankfully this didn't happen half an hour later when a pair of 455s arrived). Lineside vegetation means there isn't a going-away shot at that spot, so I moved to the other side of the big tree by the crossing.
I'd intended to extend the pole by one more section, but forgot to switch off the autofocus... When I realised (because the camera tried to refocus when I took a test shot), I quickly lowered the camera, disconnected the cables, refocused (looking through the viewfinder), reattached the cables, and began raising the pole as I heard the train approaching - stopping when I was high enough to be clear of the fence. Even so, the train was further across the frame than I would normally have allowed it when I started the burst of shots.
I did manage a shot with the camera higher than this, on the pair of 455s which departed half an hour later. But I've uploaded this for a bit of variety. There were three pairs of 455s and this pair of 458s working Shepperton services today - and I'd photographed this pair departing exactly eight hours earlier!
Visit Brian Carter's Non-Transport Pics to see my photos of landscapes, buildings, bridges, sunsets, rainbows and more.
Radiation treatment is a daily chore. 5 days a week. Or for me it was. I needed something to look forward to, to distract me. So I decided to spend time capturing images on the way to and from radiation treatment with a film camera.
I learned a lot.
Old film cameras can have loose seals (light leaks), can have shutters which don't fire properly (not worth repairing), check to make sure when you advance the lever the rewind mechanism moves accordingly (else you develop a blank roll of film, maybe more than once), set the ISO once before you take photos (not halfway through the roll). A shutter speed of 2000 max forces you to shoot with more DOF, unless you have a filter (I didn't and didn't buy one as I wanted to keep it simple and maybe challenge myself), your metering is very different, you meter for the shadows (unlike digital where you meter to retain the lightest areas of your picture. When you forget to meter for darkest areas you cannot effectively recover shadows, you can tell them how to process your BW film to offset an error but you get much more grain.)
The gift?
You slow down because you only have x amount of frames, yes you can load another roll but you have to remember to check your film in this old camera is truly rewound...and if the new film is another ISO you must remember to change it :) Then there is cost and turnaround time (I paid for high resolution scans and declined prints as I have a home printer). But for me I had to slow down much more to get a higher percentage of keepers. I took time to frame and reframe and oh, remember to refocus and oh yeah remember to meter the shadows after your image, hmmmm what was that frame? Stuff like that. But on the positive side my camera's meter works and the batteries are not dead (Pentax K1000 highly recommend, simple and I swear I fell in love with this camera every time I picked it up). Some cameras have an indicator for the battery (which may or may not work). If they don't you can test by doing a sort of 180, swing from wide open to completely stopped down, your indicator in the viewfinder ( a needle for mine) should swing accordingly. In some cameras (Minolta some models) there is a delay before it will do this. Allow for this too.
It sounds like it's tedious right?
Not.
It was in a lot of ways much more rewarding to walk around with the K1000 than even my favorite digital cameras.
I guess because it was not instant. You had to remember all the aspects for proper exposure related to how you wanted DOF or if it was an action shot or a windy day, if a cloud passed over, if you moved from sunlight to shade, to refocus and meter again as you changed your framing, it can matter a lot - (I mostly didn't),.
You take the time to look and relook at the subject to see what was a picture, and for BW film you have to convert color to value in your head and thrown in something unique if it's more grayscale (texture etc). As you moved that camera around to find that image, you saw more around you and took it in. You became immersed in the world around you as you felt the world drop away and you felt so peaceful there. You felt like you were creating phtotos of buildings, nature etc. that seemed insignificant now, but a few months later I've found things I'd forgotten already, some already changed.
With film they are more deliberate memories, people, places you went to, why you went to them and the feeling of nature, light within the season...
You also had to fill that roll (if you are a child like I am) before you could see how they looked.
When I first saw my photos developed I was hypercritical (not a surprise for me. My Oncologist told me many times I am too hard on myself.) But last night I returned to them and pulled a ton out and saved them for future upload. Take them or leave them as you will. I stand by them with all their errors ... They are memories.
I got too tired to keep shooting film. I find a longing to return to it. I will again. I am not an only film or only digital person. Like anything, each has it's advantages and own unique beauty. But I do encourage you to go retro and spend time with a film camera. It's incredibly frustrating in the beginning if it's new, work through it and fall in love with the things film does. They are different and beautiful. Let's not let film be killed by digital (remember that song Video killed the radio star?) Let's keep the good: new and old and celebrate all the beautiful artists in our community.
Let's stop the pixel peeping (reviewers I'm pointing at you, manufacturers, marketers) and look at the image, it's structure, it's emotional impact, what it's saying... not perfect sharpness etc. (Think of the infamous photo all grainy and not focused perfectly of the landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy France)...link below to a copy:
www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/224700/robert-capa-o...
So I will be uploading some "terrible" photos. Blurry etc. if in my heart there is "something" there :)
Gary Winograd had many interesting perspectives, which I only truly began to understand by shooting film, because I had to envision, go through a process to capture that vision, then wait to see if it matched my expectations.
Gary Winogrand inspiring quotes
www.photoquotes.com/showquotes.aspx?id=22
I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. - Garry Winogrand
I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by me. - Garry Winogrand - said when he was asked why he photographs.
When asked how he felt about missing photographs while he reloaded his camera with film, he replied "There are no photographs while I'm reloading" - Garry Winogrand
[If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would] do something to shake it up. - Garry Winogrand
I am a tourist. - Garry Winogrand , Documentary Photography - LIFE Library of Photography , Page: 190
No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something. - Garry Winogrand , Documentary Photography - LIFE Library of Photography , Page: 190
I'm also very inspired by what Vivian Maier did for photography while earning a living as a nanny. Amazing !
{شَهْرُ رَمَضَانَ الَّذِيَ أُنزِلَ فِيهِ الْقُرْآنُ هُدًى لِّلنَّاسِ وَبَيِّنَاتٍ مِّنَ الْهُدَى وَالْفُرْقَانِ فَمَن شَهِدَ مِنكُمُ الشَّهْرَ فَلْيَصُمْهُ }
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Every day during this month, Muslims around the world spend the daylight hours in a complete fast.
During the blessed month of Ramadan, Muslims all over the world abstain from food, drink, and other physical needs during As a time to purify the soul, refocus attention on God, and practice self-sacrifice, Ramadan is much more than just not eating and drinking.
Muslims are called upon to use this month to re-evaluate their lives in light of Islamic guidance. We are to make peace with those who have wronged us, strengthen ties with family and friends, do away with bad habits -- essentially to clean up our lives, our thoughts, and our feelings. The Arabic word for "fasting" (sawm) literally means "to refrain" - and it means not only refraining from food and drink, but from evil actions, thoughts, and words.
During Ramadan, every part of the body must be restrained. The tongue must be restrained from backbiting and gossip. The eyes must restrain themselves from looking at unlawful things. The hand must not touch or take anything that does not belong to it. The ears must refrain from listening to idle talk or obscene words. The feet must refrain from going to sinful places. In such a way, every part of the body observes the fast.
Therefore, fasting is not merely physical, but is rather the total commitment of the person's body and soul to the spirit of the fast. Ramadan is a time to practice self-restraint; a time to cleanse the body and soul from impurities and re-focus one's self on the worship of God.
To muslims all over the world I wish you a happy Ramadan :D
"Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn."
~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You
I'm going to take a little Flickr break. I'm sure I'll pop on at night and check streams, but I will not be posting any new images. Nothing serious, just need to refocus & unpulg.
Texture from Ishkamina
Here I lie, tracking the pathways of my brain in the space between consciousness and slumber. I see the world as I wish to see it, decorated in dark mahogany and emerald moss. I see white clouds floating far above, carrying with them plumes of snow drifting softly to the ground like falling stars. With my spirit, I travel the endless planes of the earth in this time when my body lies still. I see at once darkness and light, fire and water. In a moment the world is clear, and I am enlightened, until I slowly open my eyes and forget my journey.
Story time! Sorry about the lack of activity lately. It's been an entirely too busy time in my life. I thought senior year would be the time to get my head straight, and instead, I've been enveloped in a downward spiral. This is me, trying desperately to refocus, grasping helplessly at the last vestiges of hope. I got a new computer for Christmas, and at the end of winter break when I tried to upload the pictures from this photo shoot, my external harddrive which held my photo library crashed. I spent the last few weeks trying to recover it, but sadly, it's lost. What that means is that I had create a new photo library. All of my digital work is lost. My past year of photos, where I shot mostly film, has been salvaged by the fact that it was all on CDs, and I re-imported everything. Basically, I had a break down. Hopefully, this will be an opportunity for a new beginning for me, for I desperately need it. All sadness aside, I really like the way the pictures turned out from this photo shoot, so you'll probably be seeing plenty of them over the next few days. I'm going to try and be more active on this site as far as my commenting goes, because I often feel I am not contributing and no one really knows me that well, but truthfully I love all of you guys.
The girl in this photo is incredibly talented. If you feel like it, check out her photos here, trust me, you won't regret it.
Great day for the Grebe to be diving in the lake. When I got too close for its comfort, it went under the water and stayed long enough for me to have to search for it and refocus. Cute but usually so far away from the bank that serious cropping is necessary. Morgan County, Alabama - 2019
Rolleiflex 3.5e
Schneider Kreuznach Xenotar 75mm f3.5
Fomapan100
9 minutes 30 in Rodinal 50:1 at 20 degrees
Needed to slow down even further with some frustration on lack of inspiration. Using Intrepid 8x10, was able to refocus a bit toward a in the moment mindset. The pressures of today sometimes are best met with time to compose, create, and moving on. Thankfully colleagues in the photography world can relate.
Time to hold still, to refocus, to be grateful for what I have and how I live. Time to clear out my home from things that distract me, that I never use nor need. Time to clear out myself on mindsets that keep me down. To clear out thoughts that harm my peace; routines that hinder my happiness. Welcome new morning and new evening routine. Welcome thankfulness and trust. Thx @anasophierose for your energy and for sharing my path with me. Thx @iamjulikakyelle for your wonderful singing, dancing and those infectious smiles yesterday. | www.instagram.com/p/B959xDFqWdi/ | www.zielecki.com
Herne Bay, testing my 'new' lens that came yesterday
The lens is from 1970s, all manual, varifousl, (You need to refocus when you zoom) Constant f2.8, made by Kino Precision (Kiron)
Needed to slow down even further with some frustration on lack of inspiration. Using Intrepid 8x10, was able to refocus a bit toward a in the moment mindset. The pressures of today sometimes are best met with time to compose, create, and moving on. Thankfully colleagues in the photography world can relate.
Sometimes anger at thwarted plans for my life, and frustration at constant, persistent declining abilities can feel like they are taking over hope in life. Must harness that frustration and anger and refocus toward abilities that still remain, and blessings that life still contains.
Digital art on ProCreate application beginning with Silk” project, then continued using ProCreate application. Finished 06Feb2021
Here is an 8,000 pixel-wide version of my 80,000 pixel-wide San Francisco panorama. I just realized that I had never posted it to Flickr, so here you go! No HDR and no Gigapan machine required. I'll explain below and don't forget to fave and share it on the internet if you like it. I always forget that when I look at panos.
Have a look at the super-super-big 8,000 pixel wide version!! C'mon, you know you want to!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/587464094...
Most gigapixel images are created during daylight hours or well after dark, conditions at which the light is consistent over dozens (or hundreds) of shots. However, I wanted the entire panorama to be done during the rapidly changing light that occurs just after sunset. It was not as easy as I first thought!
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Settings etc.
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112 11-second exposures (they were almost all 11-seconds to keep the city lights constant)
All shots were taken between 20 and 27 minutes after sunset on several nights over a 6-week period.
The final size is (13,423h x 80,540w, 1×6 ratio)
AutoPano stitching software to start, but 50% was hand-stitched
Canon 5D mark II with live view set to 10x magnification to help with precise focusing
Canon 500L F4 lens with 1.4 extender (after the 800 rental expired!)
3 rows of portrait oriented shots with about 35-40 on each row
25% overlap on each shot
Refocus every 3rd shot with extra care on the towers and hillside to the left
Refocus on Bridge towers to make sure that every bolt can be seen clearly
No grad filters
No polarizer.
No HDR
ISO 200 (to reduce the exposure time a bit but not too much to induce noise)
RAW files processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF files processed with Photoshop
Tripod – 1 home depot bucket with a circular 1-inch thick plywood board rotated on top to create panoramas. Jessy calls it "The Pano-Pod!" I like it!
Amazingly, If I had simply used the 500 with no 1.4tc, I might have been able to do it all in one night with about 60 shots. But the extra resolution meant I could print it at 36ft @240DPI instead of about 20 feet. Big difference!
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Story
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I wanted to create an image that would look like a single photo taken during that 5-10 minute period about 20 minutes after sunset where the softening natural light is about equal to city lights. A photograph created at this time will not have blown-out highlights but still have the glowing atmosphere of a nocturnal view. Since I needed to shoot over 30 photos per row and at least 3 rows tall, I knew that it would take several favorable days to shoot them all. This is because there are only a few minutes with good light after sunset and each exposure would take around 7-12 seconds to shoot. Also, with the 800mm lens I rented from borrowlenses.com you have to be very precise about focus, and setting the focus using the Live View feature adds even more time to each shot.
Shooting
I was excited to begin. The next 10 days looked clear and warm, so off I went. This was last November, but it was warm. The first obstacle was how to stabilize this huge lens during 10-second plus exposures when it is perched on the side of a hill exposed to strong ocean wind. The Golden Gate is the easiest place for wind to pass through the California coastal mountain range so there is a lot of it passing through. The sturdiest tripod is no match for these breezes so I had to come up with another solution.
I headed over to Home Depot and bought a 1-inch thick rounded and sanded plywood wheel that is about 18 inches in diameter. It is about the size of a very large pizza. Also I bought a plastic bucket, a short 1×4 and some thin wood shims. The idea is to place the plywood onto the bucket and then put the lens on the plywood. Then it is easy to rotate the lens right and left. The bucket is low to the ground and very stable even in high winds with the big lens on it. Also, it is easy to level the entire thing using by moving it in the dirt until your line of sight across the wheel is level with the horizon. I cut the 1×4 to a length of about 6 inches and cut notch in the middle so that the end of the lens would rest in the notch. That stops the lens from rolling around. The thin wood shims are then used to raise and lower the camera side of the lens. With this setup, you can shoot an entire row, insert or remove some shims and then shoot another row.
For the first 10 days, visibility over the bridge was perfect but it was hot and the city lights twinkled. Twinkling when viewed through 800mm of lens makes the entire frame flicker back and forth as though you are looking into a swimming pool on a windy day! During daylight it is not too bad because you can have an exposure time of 1/100 or less and things may look a bit wavy but at least they are sharp. At night, an 11-second exposure with the heat shimmering will make the entire image soft in a similar way to what you might see on a long exposure of ocean waves. Even my morning shooting suffered from atmospheric distortion. After 10 days with that magnificent lens I had nothing to show for my efforts! Needless to say I was a bit discouraged. However, I am not one to give up easily, so I borrowed a friend’s 500mm F4 and a 1.4 extender for a total of 700mm of magnification. Fortunately, he was very patient because it took about 4 extra weeks to get the images I needed.
Eventually the weather cooled, the atmosphere stabilized and the twinkling was dramatically reduced. Next, my hope was to get some mist in the atmosphere over several days to get through the entire panorama with consistent light. I made a total of about 20 trips to my spot before I had all the images I needed. All of the images used to make the final pano were captured on five of those evenings.
There were other problems during shooting besides the atmospheric distortion. First, the focus. The city is far behind the bridge, so when I was shooting the towers in front of the city I had to stop down to about F29 and focus extra carefully and do an extra long exposure. On the left side of the panorama were some foreground hills, so I had to refocus there too as well as every few shots throughout the panorama because the focus ring might get moved just a little. Most images, however, were made at F11. This allowed me to get enough depth of field to keep everything sharp. The DOF at F8 (the optimum setting) is too shallow and would cause something in each frame to be out of focus. I kept the exposure time down to 11-seconds by using an ISO of 200. There was very little noise in the final images.
The next problem is that I had to come back on successive days and pick up where I left off. So I had to arrive well before sunset to set up and practice what I was about to do. It is easy to not be perfectly aligned with a row from the day before. If you are not perfect all the way across then you don’t get enough overlap for stitching.
The other big problem is that the light was changing quickly and was different from the far left side to the far right side. This is a very wide-angle image so this is to be expected. So if you attempt a gigapixel image at dusk, study the direction of how the light fades and start shooting from the darkest areas and move towards the lightest. By the time you get to the lighter areas, they will be closer in brightness to the darker side. This way, the overall image will be more evenly lit.
Processing
I brought the images into Capture One, a RAW processing program. It has lots of settings which allow you to gain a little extra dynamic range and still have the image look natural. I collected the best images from all the shoots into one folder and carefully adjusted them for brightness and color. This went fairly smoothly, though there were a few images where I had to dig deeper. The idea is to have all the images be the same brightness.
I saved each one as a JPG because I knew the final file would be huge and I don’t have a super powerful computer! Also, I didn’t touch the JPGs until I had created a PSB file after stitching. TIFF files can only be 4gb in size and a 16-bit file would be 5gb. I ended up creating an 8-bit file but I kept it in PSB format, anyway. I did not lose any information as would be the case if I edited the JPGs directly. And JPG files have a 30,000 pixel width limit.
Originally I planned on using the highly rated Autopano stitching software. It did a great job until it reached areas where the bridge cables were in front of the bay water. As you can see in the small portion below, one cable or a bridge section looks like the next. The stitching software became confused no matter how I adjusted the settings. I auto-stitched as much as I could and then I stitched the remainder of the image (about 50%) manually in Photoshop. Fortunately there was plenty of overlap and after about 80 hours of work, the image was completely stitched.
After stitching, I went over the TIFF image carefully while viewing it at 100% magnification. I cleaned up any bad pixels or stitching errors. There was a bit of noise in some of the darker areas so I used the Photoshop noise reduction and that worked fine. Then I looked at the entire image to make sure that the entire scene looked evenly lit. A few places needed to be brightened or darkened but the adjustments were small because I was careful when creating the first set of files from the RAW files..
The combination of the 500L lens and the 1.4 II teleconverter along with close attention to focus created a final image that was very sharp. Most of the image needed no sharpening, though some areas were sharpened a bit just to get things as close to perfect as possible.
The total amount of time I spent doing recon, 20 trips to the location, and post processing was around 160 hours. Was it worth it? Yes!
The glasses appeared suddenly from behind another shopper when they were almost upon me. There was no time to refocus so I took the shot anyway. Sharpness is overrated I say.
It's been a while since I took this data, but I finally have a processed version that I like. The cool thing is that I took this data off my balcony, and now that I have an autofocus set up with my lens I can take data like this and not have to go out and refocus the lens every 90 mins or so. :)
- MASPhotography Getty Images Gallery
R/G/B : Ha/0.4*Ha+0.6*OIII/OIII
Gear:
- ASI 1600MM-C @ 300 gain 50 offset
- ZWO EFW filter wheel
- ZWO Ha and OIII di - 7 nm filters
- Canon 400 mm f/2.8 IS @ f/2.8
- Celestron AVX mount
- ASI-120MM-s guidecamera
- Orion mini guidescope
- QHY Polemaster
Software:
- PHD2
- Sequence Generator Pro
- PlateSolve2
- Stellarium
- pixinsight
Ha @ -20 C
46 - 180 s Lights
30 - 180 s Darks
20 - flats
OIII @ -25 C
78 - 300 s Lights
30 - 300 s Darks
20 - flats
Superbias from 300 frames in pixinsight
I'm continuing the cityscape theme with a small portion of a bigger 64-shot panorama created with the Canon 500L F4 lens. I'll be back at doing the landscape in a few weeks. No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the tourists in this super big 1800 pixel version!!
(Ignore the compression blobs, they are not there in the real version!)
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/519375661...
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Settings etc.:
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Canon 5D Mark II - 6 portrait photos (64 total in the Panorama) stitched with Autopano version 2
Canon 500L F4 (with live preview magnified to 10x to get it perfectly sharp with the background soft.)
Be careful, as a lens cools down after being in a hot car, you have to refocus every minute or so!
6-second exposures @F6 (to speed it up but too narrow DOF now, F13 better.)
No grad filters
No polarizer.
ISO 300 (to speed it up a bit for the big pano to follow)
RAW files processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF files processed with Photoshop
Tripod - 1 home depot bucket with a circular 1-inch thick plywood board rotated on top to create panoramas. (this setup far more stable than the most sturdy tripod and only US $15!) I'm not kidding!!! Make sure it is perfectly level so that the entire panorama is level.
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The Story
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As I mentioned last time, I've been commissioned to do some extremely large 2-gigapixel-sized panoramas with a Canon 800mm lens. But it is difficult to get the entire thing with the perfect light shown here. So this is a small portion of an alternate panorama with the 500mm that is 16,000 pixels tall x 80,000 wide = 1.6 gigapixels. Maybe that is enough?
In addition to the problems below, I discovered that even at F8, the foreground people and hill (> 1 mile, 1.6km) away are out of focus when the city is in focus. So I have to go to F13. Still, at f13 it is all sharp and I notice no degradation of the image. The atmosphere has been warm and unstable so I only noticed this after a week of shooting!
Eventually I'll post more from these panoramas. They take forever to process since they are not just a giant gigapixel shot that you see often now, but rather more like a single shot with that good light that lasts for just a few minutes... but blown up big!
Problems reposted from last time:
Since each photo is a 5-10 second exposure and the eventual gigapixel photo will be 3 portrait shots high by 30 shots wide, and you only get 5 minutes of good light like above, I had to come up with a way to do each photo quickly. However, moving a big lens on a tripod requires quite a while to settle down to stability for each shot. So, I went to the local Home Depot (hardware store) and bought a large plastic bucket, some door shims (small angled wood slices to go under the camera to adjust the lens up or down), and a round piece of 1 inch thick sanded plywood to rotate on top of the bucket. It worked perfecty for a super sharp 30,000 pixel pano I did last night. Even in the wind, the lens does not move at all even when viewed in live preview at 10x.
The road up here on the Marin Headlands was just rebuilt and just reopened. You used to be able to drive right to this spot (amazingly) and shoot this photo right out of your car door! (Though a 500mm lens would shake too much.) It is an amazing cooincidence considering that this spot is over 1 mile to the Golden Gate Bridge and 7 miles to the Transamerica Pyramid Building seen through the opening in the tower. However, there is no place to stop now because of a guardrail and some earth moving work so you have to park below and hike up to this location. I'll include the exact spot on the map.
Once I was there, I set up my bucket and wiggled it around in the dirt to get it flat and stable. Then I placed the round plywood board on top and moved it around to make sure it was perfectly flat.
Then I put the camera with the huge lens on the wood and used wood shims to get the lens pointed up to the top row and shot a small panorama of a few shots on each row to practise my speed and accuracy. Just add shims under the camera to move to a lower row. I'll explain the rest of the procedure when I show the a portion of the bigger panorama. It would not fit into the Flickr scheme of things but the detail is incredible. I really could hardly believe it!
The map shows the exact location.
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Other stuff
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My pictures are featured on the front page of the newly redesigned
The state Gov. of California website. Have a look! It is Flash with my pics cut into layers for a 3-d slideshow. If you are into building apps, the State has opened up lots of data to the public, so check it out!
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Resources:
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Google Earth
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
This is a small 1600x2400 crop from about 12 images of the final 80,000 pixel-wide panorama. It will be printed 36 feet wide at about 240 DPI at the headquarters of SmugMug! . It is not up yet however. I'll update the status here. I'll try to explain as much as I can below. Also, I have lots of new seascapes and stuff so stay tuned. No HDR and I did not use the Gigapan machine!
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the extra hi-res 1600x2400 pixel version!!
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/533412487...
The making of:
news.smugmug.com/2011/02/15/the-making-of-a-gigapixel-image/
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Details about the entire panorama.:
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112 11-second exposures (they were all 11-seconds to keep the city lights constant)
All shots were taken between 20 and 27 minutes after sunset on several nights over a 2 month period.
The final size is (13,423h x 80,540w, 1x6 ratio)
AutoPano stitching software to start, but 75% was hand-stitched (see the story below)
Canon 5D mark II with live view set to 10x magnification to help with precise focusing
Canon 500L lens with 1.4 extender
3 rows of portrait oriented shots with about 35-40 on each row
25% overlap on each shot
Refocus every 3rd shot with extra care on the towers and hillside to the left
No grad filters
No polarizer.
ISO 200 (to reduce the exposure time a bit but not too much to induce noise)
RAW files processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF files processed with Photoshop
Tripod - 1 home depot bucket with a circular 1-inch thick plywood board rotated on top to create panoramas.
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The Story
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Well, it seemed like such a harmless request at the time. The owner of a large photo sharing website wanted a mega giant print for his walls and asked me to do it. Of course I said yes and of course I could not do just another gigapixel image shot all during the daylight or nighttime hours. I wanted a picture that would appear as though it were a single exposure taken just at the moment when the city lights turn on and become evenly matched with the soft fading daylight.
This presents some problems because I came to realize that during that perfect time which only lasts about 5 minutes, I could only shoot about 15-25 frames at 11-seconds each before the quality of light changed too much. So, since the entire thing required well over 100 shots, I had to return several times under the exact same conditions to the exact same spot to get it right.
For most of the first two weeks of my attempts, visibilities were perfect but it was hot and the city lights twinkled. Twinkling when viewed through 700mm of lens makes the entire frame wave back and forth as though you are looking into a swimming pool on a windy day! During daylight it is not too bad because you can have an exposure time of 1/100 or less and things may look a bit wavy but they are at least sharp. At night, the 11 seconds make the entire image soft and unuseable.
Eventally the weather cooled and the atmosphere stabilized. So it came down to getting some misty atmosphere on several days to get through the entire panorama with similar qualities of light and mist. It took almost 2 months before I had all of my shots.
As I mentioned before, I used a plastic bucket and a round piece of plywood on top about the size of an extra large pizza. That enabled me to rotate the big lens and the wind did not affect things at all. Even the most stable tripod was not enough. Also, I used thin pieced of wood to move the lens up and down. And I used a 1x4 with a notch cut out to fit under the end of the lens to keep it from rolling around. I leveled the entire thing by eye, making the horizon cut midway through the both towers, which is the same elevation as me.
As mentioned before, the road up here on the Marin Headlands was just rebuilt and just reopened. You used to be able to drive right to this spot (amazingly) and shoot this photo right out of your car door! (Though a 500mm lens would shake too much.) It is an amazing coincidence considering that this spot is over 1 mile to the Golden Gate Bridge and 7 miles to the Transamerica Pyramid Building seen through the opening in the tower. However, there is no place to stop now because of a guardrail and some earth moving work so you have to park below and hike up to this location. I'll include the exact spot on the map.
I can't wait to see the big print!!!
The map shows the exact location.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Other stuff
---------------------------------------------------------------------
My pictures are featured on the front page of the
state Government. of California website and the new Governor, Jerry Brown's website too. Have a look! It is Flash with my pics cut into layers for a 3-d slideshow. If you are into building apps, the State has opened up lots of data to the public, so check it out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Earth
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
Every once in a while I get a hankering to make a 36K pano. This would've been in color except for a weird color balance shift which happened while taking the pic. It's too late tonight to look into why the shift happened--I do know I didn't refocus during the swing, but you can see the purple in the middle right. It went from the correct color balance to an incorrect balance and back. I'll try to figure it out tomorrow, and sleep on it.
Anyway, here's a mostly-desaturated version, and I may make a color version tomorrow by manually correcting the WB. Fun times!!
A tough conversation with someone I admire last week. This week, is a new week, refocusing and finding inspiration in my own little world and rediscovering everything I love about photography.
I am not exactly sure what I fluffed up here, but probably I simply forgot to refocus after making some portraits. Previously I would never have dreamed about sharing an out of focus image. Film photography helped me get over that obsession with sharpness and these days it is the impact of a photo that counts much more to me than technical perfection.
Film: Ilford Delta 100
Camera: Rolleicord va
Development: Ars-Imago FD
Digitised with a digital camera and contrast adjusted in LR.
The AMC AMX is a two-seat GT-style sports car that was produced by American Motors Corporation for the 1968 through 1970 model years.[2][6] The AMX was also classified as a muscle car, but "unique among other American cars at the time due its short wheelbase".[7] The AMX was also the only American-built steel-bodied two-seater of its time, the first since the 1955-1957 Ford Thunderbird.[8] To a degree, the AMX was a competitor with America's only other two-seater of the era, the Chevrolet Corvette[9] for substantially less money.[8] With a one-inch (2.5 cm) shorter wheelbase than Chevrolet's two-seater, the AMX was often seen by the press as a "Corvette competitor"[10]
Fitted with the optional high-compression medium block 390 cu in (6.4 L) AMC V8 engine, the AMX offered top-notch performance at an affordable price. In spite of this value and enthusiastic initial reception by automotive media and enthusiasts, sales never thrived. However, the automaker's larger objectives to refocus AMC's image on performance and to bring younger customers into its dealer showrooms was achieved. After three model years, the two-seat version was discontinued, and the AMX's now signature badging was transferred to a high-performance version of its four-seat sibling, the Javelin, from the 1971 to 1974 model years.
Here is another one of those “no longer rare” self portraits. The main aim of this shot (other than capturing my beautiful face) is to test my camera.
“Why ?” I hear you ask…. Well its because this week I installed some “hacked” firmware to my 400D. Because this camera is looooong discontinued, Canon no longer issue firmware updates, so I found someone who does. I now have access to, spot metering, ISO range up to 3000, manual set long exposures (10s to 1hr) and best of all an intervalometer which can be set to refocus after every shot. This means that I can take a leisurely stroll to my position then the camera will focus, then I can alter position or pose and know that when it fires the next shot off it will refocus first. :-)
Physiograms keep for quite a long time if bottled and stored properly. I estimate this one will stay fresh until the year 3025.
One single long exposure here. Two tripods, lens cap and refocus between transitions. Fairly pleased with this one :) Square crop so there wasn't so much blackness in the wings of the frame.
I'm continuing the cityscape theme with another classic view of the city using a friend's 500mm lens! Again, if you're going to shoot a familiar theme, make it good. This took planning. See below. No HDR.
Free wallpaper for over 100 of my images in 6 different screen sizes is now available!
See the super big 1800x1800 pixel version!!
(Even at 1/3 the original size, you can see every rivet on the bridge!)
www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/517227528...
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Settings etc.:
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Canon 5D Mark II - 2 portrait photos stitched with Autopano version 2
(I just did a 14 frame stitch of the city. Wait till you see that! A 90-frame stitch is to follow.)
Canon 500L F4 (with live preview magnified to 10x to get it perfectly sharp)
Be careful, as a lens cools down after being in a hot car, you have to refocus every minute or so!
5-second exposures @F8 (for the finest sharpness)
No grad filters
No polarizer.
ISO 200 (to speed it up a bit for the big pano to follow)
RAW files processed with Capture One by Phase One
TIFF files processed with Photoshop
Tripod - 1 home depot bucket with a circular 1-inch thick plywood board rotated on top to create panoramas. Flickr user Amigo! below in the comments was a witness!
(this is a vertorama but it is part of a panorama)
(this setup far more stable than the most sturdy tripod and only US $15!) I'm not kidding!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Story
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been commissioned to do some extremely large gigapixel-sized panoramas with a Canon 800mm lens. So last week I decided to practise with my friends 500mm since I usually do wide angle photography and have nothing longer than my 24-105. So this is just two photos of a bigger panorama so I can see what I'm getting myself into. I waited for the light to be just right and then made a few exposures and calculated some settings for the big pano.
Problems:
Since each photo is a 5-10 second exposure and the eventual gigapixel photo will be 3 portrait shots high by 30 shots wide, and you only get 5 minutes of good light like above, I had to come up with a way to do each photo quickly. However, moving a big lens on a tripod requires quite a while to settle down to stability for each shot. So, I went to the local Home Depot (hardware store) and bought a large plastic bucket, some door shims (small angled wood slices to go under the camera to adjust the lens up or down), and a round piece of 1 inch thick sanded plywood to rotate on top of the bucket. It worked perfecty for a super sharp 30,000 pixel pano I did last night. Even in the wind, the lens does not move at all even when viewed in live preview at 10x.
The road up here on the Marin Headlands was just rebuilt and just reopened. You used to be able to drive right to this spot (amazingly) and shoot this photo right out of your car door! (Though a 500mm lens would shake too much.) It is an amazing cooincidence considering that this spot is over 1 mile to the Golden Gate Bridge and 7 miles to the Transamerica Pyramid Building seen through the opening in the tower. However, there is no place to stop now because of a guardrail and some earth moving work so you have to park below and hike up to this location. I'll include the exact spot on the map.
Once I was there, I set up my bucket and wiggled it around in the dirt to get it flat and stable. Then I placed the round plywood board on top and moved it around to make sure it was perfectly flat.
Then I put the camera with the huge lens on the wood and used wood shims to get the lens pointed up to the top row and shot a small panorama of a few shots on each row to practise my speed and accuracy. Just add shims under the camera to move to a lower row. I'll explain the rest of the procedure when I show the a portion of the bigger panorama. It would not fit into the Flickr scheme of things but the detail is incredible. I really could hardly believe it!
The map shows the exact location.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Other stuff
---------------------------------------------------------------------
My pictures are featured on the front page of the newly redesigned
The state Gov. of California website. Have a look! It is Flash with my pics cut into layers for a 3-d slideshow. If you are into building apps, the State has opened up lots of data to the public, so check it out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Google Earth
Simply the best way to scout out locations that there is. You can see sun angles and pre-visualize light under lots of different conditions. Sometimes you can actually pre-compose your shots! This has saved me many thousands of vertical feet of climbing by avoiding spots with blocked views etc.
Satellite imagery (choose 'National' for a local US region or use your fave website)
www.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/?wfo=mtr
Tide charting and preditions: (chose your area in US, other countries have similar websites)
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.shtml?gid=235
Wave Heights (I choose 'North Pacific from Global')
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/waves/main_int.html
Or Here:
www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/RP1bw.gif
Photos of every inch of the California coastline from a small plane. Excellent for close in detailed views.
Needed to slow down even further with some frustration on lack of inspiration. Using Intrepid 8x10, was able to refocus a bit toward a in the moment mindset. The pressures of today sometimes are best met with time to compose, create, and moving on. Thankfully colleagues in the photography world can relate.