Nevermind

Wall art, shot at the Adventure Aquarium, Camden NJ.

Canon 40D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4

There Are Four Lights

Handheld at ISO 3200, f/2.0, 1/30sec

Shot with Canon 40D, and new Sigma 30mm f/1.4

While Driving...

It's been too cold for me to get out and walk around recently, but that doesn't stop me from taking my camera with me while driving. Lazy? Sure. I'll get out and start shooting again soon - I won't be happy with drive-by for very long...



Both shot with Canon 40D and my new Sigma 30mm f/1.4. It's a great lens to take out past dark - f/1.4 picks up a lot of light.

Apple iPhoto 09's Face Detection and Recognition

Click here for a larger view on my Flickr stream.

I'm just getting started with Apple iPhoto 09. I'll post a detailed review later, but for now, I had to show off my first glimpse at its face detection and recognition. I imported all of my photos from Aperture to iPhoto as JPGs.

I had the option to share previews between the two apps so that when I update a photo in Aperture, its preview is shared with iPhoto - however, I'm running out of disk space as it is, and have been considering separating out my photo browsing from post-processing. The extra time required to go back and modify a photo, then replace the copy in iPhoto should be worth it in the long run.

So, for this screenshot, I clicked on a photo that I was in, found a box that was already drawn around my face, then clicked the arrow under it. It presented me with about 20 photos, most of which had me in them. After selecting them, it showed me a bunch more - apparently having a better idea of what I look like.

So far, so good - this is going to be fun!

It's Full of... stars...

Note: View large to see how many stars you never really get to see with your eyes.

I took this New Years Eve, 45 minutes before midnight, (despite the oops-I-forgot-to-set-my-camera-clock-back EXIF data). I thought about taking a photo as the ball dropped... but I'm just not that moved by our time system rolling over one of its digits :)

Now solstices... well now, that's a completely different matter all together!

I can't decide if it's upsetting how few stars we can see with the naked eye, or how many more we can see when we use a camera.

This was my first real test of my new tripod. It's real windy, but my tripod didn't budge. I hung a twenty pound sandbag from it, just in case. If there's any movement in this photo, it's my deck, not the tripod :)

One note about the photo - I heavily adjusted the white balance to compensate for all the yellow put out by the artificial lights. This makes just about everything look better - more natural - except the stars. They're all skewed more towards blue than they actually are. Some of those actually appear reddish, some white, some blue.

Equipment:
----------------
* Canon 40D
* Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 Lens
* Bogen/Manfrotto 190XPROB Tripod Legs
* Bogen/Manfrotto 322RC2 Grip Action Ballhead
* Impact Saddle Sandbag (27 lb Capacity)

Shooting the Haas TL-15 CNC Lathe

Winters are tough for photographers. When it's too cold to go outside, you end up pointing your camera at just about everything in the house. So naturally, when asked to shoot a giant computer-controlled lathe in a machine shop, of course I jumped at the opportunity.

Note: The decision wasn't actually that easy. This still required my leaving the house (remember, it's damned cold out). Had I my own giant computer-controlled lathe, I might have declined, but after 15 minutes of searching, I couldn't find one in my house to shoot, so I happily agreed.

As an engineer, I'm fascinated with machinery, so it was fun just getting a tour of JMT Machine Company. The shop recently acquired this machine, a Haas TL-15 CNC Lathe, and wanted some shots for their website and to hang in their front office. While I'm not exactly sure what I'd do with this thing, that doesn't stop me from wanting one. Unfortunately, I'm a little strapped for cash right now, and have a backlog of camera gear that's ahead of this thing in line.

For this shoot, I decided to make the rather boxy machine a little more interesting by shooting up close with my Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 super wide angle lens. Now, being this close, I was (in retrospect, overly) concerned about getting the back of the machine out of focus. I generally shoot in the 30-55mm range, so I've been burned by too narrow of a depth of field in the past.

So, putting aside all of my ideas on how to shoot this thing creatively and erring on the side of making sure I got a few good snaps before leaving, I decided to be super-conservative and shoot at f/22. In retrospect, this was serious overkill. I should have known my DoF charts better for this lens - but hey, it's a learning experience, right?

If you're not familiar with flash photography, the one major difference between flash and ambient light is that, basically, only the aperture matters. You can't leave the shutter open longer to get more power out of your flash. That's how you get more out of your ambient. If you want to compete with that ambient, your only option is shoot bright and quick, not giving it the chance to burn in. Well, needless to say, f/22 eats flashes. I used a total of four strobes on this thing, spread out and each at 100% power and about eight feet away.

Here's a quick equipment check:
* Nikon SB-26, triggered by a Pocket Wizard radio flash trigger
* Canon 430EX, triggered by Pocket Wizard radio flash trigger
* Alien Bees B800 Flash Unit, triggered optically by the other flashes
* Nikon SB-28, triggered optically by the other flashes

My first thought going into this was to completely overpower the ambient lighting with a quick shutter speed and by cranking up the flash power. Well, as I mentioned, f/22 didn't leave me a whole lot of light to play with, and my first attempts at this were underwhelming at best. The flashes seemed overly artificial. Rather than stress out about that, I decided to try to use the ambient. After all - I was in a cool, grungy machine shop -- why hide it?

As it turned out, the existing light was awesome. Rows of fluorescents overhead and some powerful halogen (?) bulbs lighting up the business end of the machine when the door was open. This gave me some pretty cool color contrast to play with, while using my flashes for nothing more than fill. That suited them, considering how much they were knocked down by my choice of aperture. This gave the shot a more natural feel, adding to the shots.

At this point I had the aperture set, the flashes at the power I needed them, so the only variable left was the shutter speed, and that was all just trial and error. I ended up on four seconds. With my new, trusty, bombproof tripod (Bogen/Manfrotto 190XPROB legs and Bogen/Manfrotto 322RC2 grip action ballhead) and well, the tonnage of that machine, I was guaranteed a pretty still subject.

Overall a positive experience. I walked away with a better understanding of how deep a wide angle lens' depth of field is, how finicky optical flash triggering can be when in a large area (or outdoors), and that I shouldn't immediately dismiss the ambient light. And, the owner sent me home with some of his machined parts to shoot as I find the time.

Other equipment used during the photo shoot:
* Canon 40D
* Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
* Bogen/Manfrotto 7' Pro Stand
* Bogen/Manfrotto 9' Basic Light Stand

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Low-Light Handheld Test

Canon 40D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 -- handheld at ISO3200, f/1.4, 3/10 second.

This shot was taken at night in a dark room with nothing but a small nightlight in the corner. Other than that, the hallway light was on, but only partially lighting the floor and a small amount of the wall behind me. I leaned up against the wall, shot at f/1.4, ISO3200, 3/10 second.

I focused this with Live View, which was tough, because even on the LCD screen, I couldn't see her eye, it was so dark. I had to focus on her ear.

Note that the Canon 40D has a true ISO1600, then pushes it a stop to ISO3200 for use when you absolutely need it. In this situation, I did. I couldn't have handheld for any slower than this - even here I was really pushing it. When shooting with a pushed ISO, you should give extra care to expose the shot properly. Any further brightening of the image will introduce more noise.

I just received my new Sigma 30mm f/1.4 yesterday, so I'm running around shooting in every room in my house with the lights turned off (it's been too cold outside). So far, I really love this lens. It's been a while since I've shot f/1.4, so I'm re-learning how tough it is to focus with it. The 40D's AI Servo focus is definitely helping.

Of course I was very interested in the low-light capabilities of this lens. The main reason I purchased this focal length, however, was so that I could shoot near a traditional 50mm - the lens many film photographers left on their cameras full-time. The Canon 40D and most other digital SLR cameras have sensors smaller than 35mm film, which effectively makes each lens a little more telephoto than they would be traditionally. This sensor is 1.6X smaller than 35mm film, so 30mm becomes 48mm.

If you decide to purchase this lens, make sure you get the correct one for your camera body. Sigma makes this lens for Canon (link), Nikon (link), Pentax (link), Sony (link), and Olympus (link). Those links will take you to B&H Photo, where you have 14 days to return the lens if you're not happy with it. If you haven't used f/1.4 before, you'll be amazed at what you can do with it. Just have patience - wide apertures take practice!

Again, this was shot at:
f/1.4, ISO3200, 0.3 seconds

If you're wondering how dark this room was, here's a couple equivalent exposures you could use if you didn't have ISO3200 and f/1.4:

f/2.8, ISO1600, 2.4 seconds
f/4.0, ISO1600, 4.8 seconds
f/5.6, ISO1600, 9.6 seconds

So, go into a pretty dark room where your camera's reading something like that, and you'll get an idea. Try a handheld shot at 9.6 seconds!