Stopping TIme

I had a couple of specific photographic aims on my recent visit to Scotland; one was to have a go at stitched panoramas (a topic of a previous post) and the other was to use my Lee Big Stopper filter. For anyone wondering what on earth that is, in simple terms, it is a filter which enables you to make really long exposures. For anyone wondering why on earth you would want to do such a thing, consider the effect of blurring anything that is moving, water for instance.

Clearly then, the ideal situation to use this filter would be one in which there was plenty of movement to affect. Unfortunately, this was not such an occasion. The picture above was made shortly before sunrise on a very still morning when the only movement was in the clouds and even they were only moving very slowly.

This, however, was a 16 minute exposure. Really! 16 minutes! Now, a word of warning if you plan to try this yourself - if using a digital camera with a long exposure noise reduction facility, do turn it off beforehand. I didn't and that meant that, following the 16 minute exposure, the camera spent another 16 minutes processing the file. That is an awfully long time to be standing around for a single exposure and, worse still, there was nothing I could do while I watched the sky turn a subtle shade of pink.

This was it then - my only attempt with the filter so far and not the most dramatic effect. It has, though, resulted in quite a pleasing image which seemed to lend itself to black and white.

Featured Photograph for November 2012

This is to be the first of a regular series of posts featuring one of my photographs, giving some sort of insight into how or why it was made. I was tempted to call this 'Phil's (or Fell's) Featured Photograph' but felt that was perhaps too much alliteration for one blog. I hope you enjoy it.

This month's image was made in November last year, shortly after the sun had risen. The location is Llyn Crafnant in Snowdonia. I had been asked to do a talk about landscape photography for the local photographic society (Frodsham & District Photographic Society) and decided that it would be interesting to base it around a single day; the planning, preparation, execution and even the trials and tribulations involved. The day was obviously chosen with reasonable expectations of decent climactic conditions (part of the planning) so didn't represent a huge risk but the location was one I had not visited previously - it looked promising on the map. As is usual, I planned to get there around 30 minutes before sunrise and worked backwards from that time to calculate how early I needed to leave home - in this case, around 5am. In truth, I had been hoping for some light cloud cover but the day dawned clear and cold, a light frost covering the ground - just as good. The far end of the lake was shrouded in mist which, as it was burnt off by the sun, created a wonderful glow separating the land from it's almost perfect reflection. I spent a magical few hours at Llyn Crafnant that morning, in perfect peace with not another soul around but reluctantly dragged myself away in order to expand the scope of my planned talk. As it happens, heavy cloud interceded around midday and the increasingly gloomy light in the afternoon offered little in the way of photographic inspiration - but it didn't really matter; the morning had surpassed my expectations, I had some images which looked promising and all the material I needed for my talk.

Prints are available from my website: www.landscapeandlight.co.uk

Stitched Up

It is hard to deny that I came late to the digital age; for a long time clinging on like a dinosaur to my medium format camera and Velvia. And so, while I still believe in trying to create my image 'in camera' as far as possible, I am beginning to come round to the idea that tools like Lightroom and Photoshop can be used to improve an image without altering the essential truth. One such example of this is the creation of panoramic images from a number of individual pictures stitched together and this was something I decided to try out in earnest whilst in Scotland recently.

6 images, 105 mm, portrait format

This picture of Glen Finglas dam was one of my first attempts and illustrates an important early lesson. One of the things that attracted me to this scene was the wonderful curving road which draws you in and helps create an impression of depth. Unfortunately, I composed the individual images to tightly - fine on their own but, when stitched together, the necessary crop all but eliminated the road. Such an important part of the composition, I had to resort to cloning a large area of foreground grass in order to retain more of the road. It's ok but, sadly, not what I had hoped for.

6 images, 58mm, portrait format

For the second picture shows Loch Achray shortly after sunrise and is the second of two attempts. At first, I used aperture priority feeling that it would allow me to operate more quickly but I realised that the changing exposure might make stitching seamlessly more difficult. The second attempt, therefore, was made using manual exposure ensuring a balanced exposure.

5 images, 70mm, portrait format

The final scene is also of Loch Achray, again just after sunrise but on a very different day. It is, I think the most successful of the three but might have benefited from a slightly wider angle to allow a bit more room.

I used the D800 for all three of these pictures which makes for some huge files (each one created a TIFF file in excess of 1Gb). Consequently, you need to be very patient - the processing is very memory intensive. What does help, is to make as many adjustments on the individual images before stitching and this is where Lightroom is a boon since you can make the adjustments to one and then sync the changes made to all of the others.

In addition to creating a wider view than normally possible, you avoid the distortion from an extreme wide angle lens and end up with an incredibly detailed and very big file which, in theory, should enable you to produce a really big print. The only problem I have now is paying for that big print and getting it mounted - oh, and the inevitable new disk to house all the huge files.

Reflections on the D800

 

This is only going to be a very short post. I have just begun processing pictures made during a week in Scotland with the D800. It was my first decent spell of landscape photography with the camera. As expected, the detail captured is astonishing. However, a less expected outcome of combining small apertures with such a highly resolving sensor is that it shows up every blemish on my aging filters. A fair amount of cloaning has been required to remove the telltale signs of filter abuse. I have a horrible feeling I'm going to have the expense of replacing my most often used 0.6 and 0.9 hard ND grads!

"Early for a Thursday"

I often struggle to come up with titles for things like photographs and blog posts so I make no apologies for stealing the title for this post from the three young people shown above; after all, the post is largely about them. They are the Jaywalkers and the photographs here were all taken last week at the launch of their new CD at the Chester Music Theatre, the title of which is "Early for a Thursday". You might be wondering what contrivance I can possible come up with to make this fit with the title of the blog and all I can say is that it is more about the 'light' than the 'landscape'.

These three incredibly talented musicians are Mike, Lucy and Jay and they play a mixture of folk and bluegrass music. Now, despite having what I consider to be a fairly eclectic taste in music, folk and bluegrass are two genres that I have never really paid much attention to; in fact, I would go as far as saying that, until recently, I would simply have dismissed it. However, I was predisposed to giving the Jaywalkers a chance since Jay is a good friend of my eldest daughter. K had often told us that her friend had a wonderful voice but I wasn't really prepared for just how good or that she was such an accomplished fiddler (so to speak) and guitarist. I first heard them when I borrowed K's copy of their first CD, "16 Miles" (I've bought my own now) and was, frankly, surprised not just by how good they were but also how much I genuinely enjoyed the music. Then I saw them live and was blown away! There is a whole different level of appreciation which comes from seeing the Jaywalkers live and I think it was only then that I truely realised how talented they are. I can't honestly say whether I now like folk and bluegrass of whether I am just a Jaywalkers fan but I do know that I will be far more open minded as a result of seeing and hearing them. I would also urge everyone reading this to go and buy their CDs and, if you get a chance, see them live. You won't regret it.

And so to the boring bit about the camera. This was yet another opportunity to test out the D800 - this time in low light. All the images here were handheld at ISO 6400, the highest native setting on the camera. As with all my observations, there is nothing very scientific about what I have to say but it certainly appears to be every bit as good, if not a little better, than the D700 in terms of noise. The exposure was good - a little overexposed when using matrix metering but perfect when I switched to spot - to be expected considering the dark background and spotlighting (a bit of a lesson for me in gig photography). I also had a bit of a play around with the formats available; the nature of the seating meant I could only really use my camera from where I was sat (about half way back and to one side) or from the back of the hall. I was fairly comfortable that the resolution would make cropping very easy but I also discovered that switching to DX format allowed me to effectively crop 'in camera'. The pictures here are a mixture of formats and both approaches have worked well.

The Dorothy Clive Garden

I did say in my last post that I would be doing a series of reviews of my new camera but, despite this being my first trip out with the camera, I don't intend to say much about it.

For a relatively small country, it is a little surprising that you can so often stumble upon somewhere or something new to delight; it is probably a sign of my advancing years that gardens would probably feature prominently in my list of such places and the Dorothy Clive Garden is the latest.

J and I took the somewhat unusual decision to venture out on a Bank Holiday a couple of weeks back (mainly due to the fact that it was the only day with a decent forecast during the week) and headed out to Powis Castle as it had been a while since we had been there. On arrival, we discovered that there was a Jubilee event on and the place was heaving - not at all the quiet day out we had envisaged. So, we turned around and headed back into Staffordshire as I had made note of a couple of gardens which I thought might do as fillers. The one we settled on was the Dorothy Clive Garden and what a delight it was.

If you've not already followed the link I can tell you that the garden was designed in 1940 by a local landowner who wanted somewhere for his wife, Dorothy, to exercise as she suffered from Parkinson's disease. Sadly, she died 2 years later but he continued with his plans and set up a trust so the gardens would, instead, remain as a memorial to his wife and it is hard to think of a more beautiful tribute.

The garden is situated on a hill with the pond (above) being situated at the bottom, adjacent to the car park. There are a series of paths and lawns which take you up the hill to a point about halfway up where you find the cafe and small shop (more about this shortly). The whole garden is very peaceful but the I particularly liked the planting in this section referred to as the Hillside Garden which is comprised of a mixture of shrubs and borders with what seemed to be an incredible variety of flowers and a riot of colour.

Despite all of this colour, I was impressed by an area predominantly planted with white flowers which was surprisingly effective.

So, on to the tearoom where we enjoyed an excellent cup of coffee and shared a generous slice of orange and cranberry cake - a combination I've not come across before but it really was delicious. The tea room itself is clean and fairly spacious with an outdoor seating area at the back which is perfect for people with young children having a mini playground with the softest flooring I have ever come across. However, the best feature is the lawn at the front where you can sit and relax with wonderful views across the garden to the countryside beyond. It was here we witnessed three robins striving for territorial superiority; it made for an entertaining interlude.

The garden extends beyond the tearoom, up the hill and takes on a very different look with a gravel garden, waterfall and a mass of rhododendrons and azaleas. We caught these when they were just passed their best but they still gave a fabulous display of colour and were a magnet for bees. From the very top of the garden, there are more views across the Staffordshire countryside and a path leads you down into a secluded area where you find a laburnum arch - not as spectacular as Bodnant but very effective.

A brief note concerning the camera at this point; this image did need a bit of tweaking to bring the highlights down because the camera's meter failed to cope with the contrast. However, given the extreme dynamic range, I seriously doubt any camera would and the detail is still there to be recovered.

We spent a very enjoyable few hours wandering around the garden and would happily have stayed longer had we not had to get back home. We are already planning our next visit in July when we intent to take my Father (well, I did intimate it's an old man thing to like gardens).

Something New

I'm not doing too well with my promise (threat) to blog more regularly. The problem is that this year has, so far, offered very little opportunity for landscape photography and that is what I primarily set out to write about. Luckily for you (ahem), I have decided to broaden my scope and the impetus for doing that come from the purchase of a new camera - the Nikon D800. What was wrong with old camera you ask? Perhaps you don't but I'm going to tell you anyway - nothing! At least, nothing beyond the fact that it had a relatively low resolution compared with many pro-spec cameras today (the D700 has a resolution on 12.6mp). That, however, is not the reason I have bought a new camera. When photographing weddings, Julie and I carry three camera bodies between us; Julie has two DX (cropped sensor) cameras and I have the (full sized sensor) FX format D700. This combination works fairly well and provides some degree of backup in case of failure but, for a while now, I have been feeling that opportunities are being missed with me having to change lenses os a regular basis. It might also be considered a distraction by a registrar or minister while photographing at the front of a church. Consequently, I felt it was about time I got a second body and, ideally, this needed to be FX format. I could have simply bought a second D700 but I suppose I was always a little bothered by the resolution when it came to landscape work, despite the excellent high ISO performance of the camera. D4? I simply couldn't justify the expense. So, it was a happy day when the D800 was announced - particularly given the modest price difference between it and the D700. The one thing that did concern me was whether the high ISO performance would match that of the D700 but numerous reviews convinced me this was the case so the decision suddenly became very easy - if you can ever call spending that amount of money easy.

My new camera arrived just under a week ago and a busy, non-photographic week has made for little chance of testing it out properly. However, I have had a dabble around the house and garden and will offer you my very early first impressions. All of the photographs shown here were taken using what is quite possibly my favourite lens, the Nikkor 105mm f2.8 micro. It might be considered an odd choice given my love of landscape photography but it is just a fabulous lens and one that I use extensively at weddings - I hope you can see why.

This then is one of the first few images from the new camera. After the battery had charged, I just looked around me for subject while I sat at my desk. It was taken at ISO 800 and f3.2. the lighting is possibly trickier than it appears as the ball is in shade but is lit directly from the window behind it. Exposure is good and needed no adjustment. At the point of focus, the detail is astonishing.

Taking the ball outside, I gave the camera an even harder test in terms of exposure. and it coped well.

So then I cast around for even more difficult subjects:

In each case here, the exposure was again very good but, given the tonal range, they did all require a little tweak in Lightroom to take the highlights down. However, they were very minor adjustments and the detail is certainly there to be found. So, all good so far and certainly encouraging with regards to usage for weddings - the D700 has always had a slight tendency to overexpose which can be managed through fine tuning of the metering but is something I found a little irritating.

The next thing was to try it with skin tones as it will get a lot of use here. The photograph, of my youngest daughter, has not been altered at all for exposure or tone and, again, the detail is impressive:

Next I decided to experiment with an alternative crop factor. Having come to DSLR from a medium format camera, I still find myself missing that format, especially for portraiture. The D800 offers a simple menu selection of 5x4 which is much closer to the format I was used to and I was very pleased with the results:

All of the remaining images here were taken using the 5x4 crop and I am certain it is an option I will get plenty of use out of. It is true you can simply crop afterwards but I am still a little bit of a dinosaur I think and I like to do as much in camera as I can.

One thing I have never really bothered with is action photography so the following test is not a comparison with the D700 - I don't think I ever used autofocus tracking in this way with that camera. I was, however, very impressed with how well it worked. The flowers were blown by the wind quite a bit and the camera was hand held very close (they are very small flowers) and yet, in each case, the main subject is pin sharp despite me using a very small depth of field (f3.2):

So, hardly an exhaustive test and there are certainly many more detailed and much better appraisals to be found of this camera. I also suspect that of the very few people who stumble across this blog, even fewer will be remotely interested in the D800's capabilities. However, it has provided me with the motivation to start blogging again and an excuse to share my pictures. I hope, at least, that you like them.