Shooting Drama

Just because 99% of the mind numbing head-shots you see are about as exciting as watching paint dry, there is no reason portrait photography can’t be unique and dramatic.  Photography is meant to be exciting, creative and fun.  Not the typical “sit on this stool, tilt your head to the left and give me your best cheesy smile” routine.  That’s when you go from being a photographer to one of those people.  Don’t get me wrong, those photos do have their place and time – but once you’ve had that shot done you need to get more creative.

I am by no means the Francis Ford Coppola of portraits.  Hell, I just began trying them a few weeks ago – but I find the real and natural shots to be the best ones.  I don’t let my kids strike a pose, but rather catch them off guard to get their natural look.  And for Goddess’ sake, if you need to pose someone, do it in a more dramatic way.

For this shot, I chose to have the natural unsoftened sun off to his right to cast harsh shadows, deep blue sky that would turn deep black in B&W, low angle with a wide lens, and framed so there would be space for some creative text.  OK, my text wasn’t that freaking creative, but I knew when I was setting this up that I wanted something above his head.

Subtle things really make a difference.  Be creative.  Now stop reading and start doing!

Z121s (x2) Z125

A filter can dramatically enhance the scene you are shooting.  A stack of filters can pimp-slap your scene and really wake it up.  Though I am becoming somewhat of a purist in my shots, I believe that the use of filtering is fair game.  But not only for color.

GND8 - Midscreen

GNDs to Stop Down Skies

I love using my Cokin GND’s to stop down the sky when shooting landscapes.  I find that when (especially) doing long exposure of sunsets and landscapes at dusk, the sky just comes out way too bright.  It’s a challenge to balance the light in just a single exposure and though I sometimes will do HDR landscapes, I prefer doing single exposure ones.

In this image to the right, I had my camera mounted on a tripod and my Z-Pro filter mounted to the glass.  I placed in a Cokin Z121s filter -having the gradient stop right below the tree line in the photo- and exposed for 2.5 seconds.  Without the filter, the sky was bright and blown out in the middle, yet the lake in the foreground was just as dark as you see here.  The filter really balanced the scene.

Some people will say why pay all that money when you can filter in Photoshop? Easy, though Photoshop can put in color filters, gradients, ND’s, CPL’s and anything else you want – you are still patching a poorly exposed photo in your post production.  Wouldn’t you rather have it come right off the camera with your curves already in balance?  Maybe it’s just my, but I feel much better about a photo ending up the same way I took it – not changed with software.

Tobacco Filter

Tinted for Ka-Pow!

Not only can a GND stop down the light, but it can also add a splash of color to an otherwise meh sunset.

The shot to the left was taken with the Z125 Tobacco (hand held) in front of my lens.  Rarely do I use the holder anymore, but more on that in a bit.  You can see where the gradient stops here – where the blue and orange meet in the bottom 1/3 frame.

Without the filter, the sky was ok, but bland.  The Tobacco really added to this scene; and shooting a longer exposure through the filter gave some really dramatic effects.  This is NOT Photoshopped.

One nice thing with the color filters is the more you change the exposure time, the more you change the color.  This is 1.6 second exposure.  Drop it below 1 second and there is a much more deep Tobacco (orange/red) to the scene.  The shot at the very top of the page is just 0.3 seconds – but also has two GND8′s placed in front.  But that deeper red is caused by shorter time.  I suggest you play with tons of exposures.

Don’t Mount Your GND Filters

OK, that’s not a rule.  But I am finding this new trick to be great for GND’s.  What happens when you mount for a long exposure is you can get a line that defines where the gradient stops.  It’s not obvious, but you can find it in some shots.

My solution is to not mount the filter, rather, to hand hold it in front of the lens and move it up and down a bit during the exposure.  It really blends that line a lot more – softer is the right word I guess.  Yes, you may get some minor scratches on your filter if you press too hard, but nothing that will affect your shot.  Luckily, I don’t have any scratches on my Cokins as I tend to be be very gentle.

So, if you’re shooting with filters or thinking about starting, get out there and play!  You can really get some dramatic effects.

If you are thinking of upgrading to a D700 – or the promised D700s / D700x – and shoot low light, then read on for my first impressions!

This weekend was my first “pro” shoot of a concert with my ass-kicking D700.  I am the official photographer (sounds nice, eh?) for Agrippa93 – a progressive industrial/metal band out of Hartford, CT - featuring the vocal talents of Agrippa and the new addition of guitarist Scott Williams (a legend in his own time).  Their last show (with the old line-up) was over 7 months ago and shot in similar light with my D80 and my 50mm f/1.8 prime - blah.  The light was so horrid that I was forced to try ISO 3200 – but the grain was vomit-inducing-unacceptable.  It resembled the planet Hoth inside the auditorium.  But, clicking back to ISO 1600, the grain was still heavy, but almost useable.  Yeah, almost.  I was forced to push them to B&W and give it a real industrial gritty feel to salvage the shots.  I felt so insignificant shooting with that set up – especially without flash.

So, for this shoot, I was able to finally use some real gear.  My Nikon D700 and aSigma 24-70mm f/2.8.  Merlin’s beard, this is heaven.

First of all, I hate flash in live shows.  Flash is the crutch of a weak camera at a concert.  Studio work, flash away.  So, I started out shooting at ISO 3200 and in AP and set it to f/2.8 – but was getting wildly varying shutter speeds and not the crisp action I wanted.  That could be my inexperience at shooting in low light though – very likely. So, I flipped over to SP and set it to 1/40 of a second.  The lighting wasn’t great, so I set the exposure to +1 EV and presto – I was shooting on cloud nine.

ISO 3200 is such a dream on this camera.  I would assume it is that much more for someone that really knows what they are doing in this situation!  As you can see in the shot above and to the right – virtually grain free.  And even in this low light with zero flash, the musicians are bright and sharp.  The only blurs I was getting the whole night was from the drummers and guitarists hands.

Post Work

I shot about 500 photos on Friday, all in RAW and auto-WB.  So there was virtually no in-camera processing.  I even forgot to turn on noise reduction for high ISO!  I exported all the photos into Photoshop CS4 and did a very light touch to the curves to better define the dark shadows.  I then did a slight high pass (1.2) to bring some of the soft features to a more crisp shot.  That was it.  The color and exposure were left completely alone.  About 1 minute processing time, nuts to bolts.

So if you have any questions on “should I upgrade to a D700 / D700s / D700x for low light shooting” the answer is HELL YES!  No Ton-Tons needed to hide from the horrible snow of the D80 with this beast!

Natural Light Shooting

To make shooting even more confusing for me (while starting to learn strobist shooting at the same time) is shooting in natural lighting.  There are so many varieties of natural light – set by time of day, overcast sky, rain, shadows or what have you.  So, I will begin to post my experiments into natural light to see what kind of affect it has on my shooting.

Bright Daylight

It’s funny – but some people think shooting the bright sun is the best time to take photos.  It’s actually the worst for portraits.    Without the help of flash (yes, flash in bright in daylight) or reflectors, bright daytime sun casts hard shadows and can easily over-expose skin, wash out skies, etc.  But sometimes you just can’t avoid shooting in the bright sun.

The photo above was taken with the sun high in the sky with no clouds and no shade.  But the moment was perfect, so I quickly adjusted the exposure and aperture to get the skin somewhat balanced.  But as you can see, the shadows are very hard.  To soften this more, the use of a reflector to the bottom right of the model would have reduced all the shadows and dark spots.  Sadly, I didn’t have one with me, but the shot worked.

Rainy Day = Soft Shadows

Overcast / Rain

These days provide some exceptional lighting for portraits.  Better than you can do with flash and diffusers – and best of all, free. This shot to the right was taken on a rainy afternoon – at about the same time of day as the one at the top.  But notice that the rain and clouds diffused the shadows to almost non-existent.  There was no flash or reflector here – just the naturally diffused sunlight.

The Magic Hour

The best natural light (in my book) is dusk.  Why not dawn?  Too damned early in the morning.  But dusk sunlight is very diffused – and best of all – very golden.  I am hoping to get some good examples of that up on my stream soon.  I thought I had some to show for examples, but sadly I don’t.  The ones I have taken at sunset seem to be B&W for some reason.  Maybe I’ll get my daughter out tomorrow to try again at dusk.  I’ll update this post when I do.

SOOC

In my quest to become a better photographer, I am getting into a phase where I want to do as little post work as possible.  Not because I am über lazy – that’s an aside, but because I want to shoot as pure as possible.  I want to point my D700 at something pretty, grab the shot and then upload it to Flickr, or where ever – no middle man.

Defining SOOC (for me)

Every photographer has their own idea what it means to shoot straight out of the camera (SOOC).  For the purpose of today’s post, I’ll give you my definition:

• Image shot RAW – WB applied at import (you have more control this way)
• Photoshop used to add border or text / copyright
• Filters (on camera) are OK (Cokin Filter System)

That’s it.  There are no color curves, high pass filters, color boosting, etc.  The only thing I apply post is the WB (and of course the copyright text).  The image above is an example of my SOOC standards.

Testing DOF with SOOC

Why Shoot SOOC?

For me, it’s an inner challenge.  Photoshop (PS) can become a crutch for shooting poor.  You can adjust your exposure, adjust your colors, brightness, take out annoying artifacts or other objects, deepen tonal contrasts… you get the idea.  Don’t get me wrong, use PS CS4 all the time to adjust my curves of nature shots to bring out highlights and shadows.  You can really make a good picture great with a few adjustment.  Also, while shooting on the D80 with lesser glass, I always used PS CS4 to high pass and/or smart sharpen some areas.  I am finding with my newer glass and D700, this is not a necessity, though I do it out of habit quite a bit.  Wanting to stop that.

So, this challenge for me is to become a better shooter, not a better post-production engineer.  I want to learn to use the power of the D700 to see the shot and take it in the final form.  It forces me to learn better camera control.  Better use of light metering, better framing of my subject, using a tripod to get the shot tack sharp right out of the barrel.

The shot here was done without a tripod, but the shutter was quick enough to have it sharp.  The colors and sharpness are right from the camera.  The text and border was added, but that’s all that went on.

Cokin Filter + Color Boost + Highpass

Why Photoshop Then?

Because sometimes good just isn’t good enough.  Sometimes there was a bug that flew into a perfect shot.  PS can whack it.  Sometimes you screwed up your exposure to an otherwise clean shot.  You can fix that (when shooting RAW).  Sometimes, that extra little punch of color will really make a photo scream.  All that happened on the shot to the right.

This shot was done with Cokin filters (Tobacco Z125 GND8) at 24mm for 1 second.  The color is from the filter on the camera, not from post work.  It was a little muted from how I saw it through the view-finder, so my post work involved putting it back to how my eye saw it.

Also, a mosquito landed on the filter during the exposure – right in the nice blue water.  Other than the little smudge he made while walking around, it was a clean shot.  So, the power of the healing brush healed his ass right out of the scene.

Patience

I think patience is what I need most.  I always look back to purist Edward Weston.  He didn’t shoot digital.  He didn’t have Photoshop to clean up his mistakes.  He shot and developed in a dark room.  Yes, you can tweak contrasts that way (think Ansel Adams), but Weston was a purist.  I am not turning myself down that road, but I really want to be exposed to shooting RAW and clean.  It won’t be all the time though, as I really love the extra boost of color, contrast or sharpness that PS can give you.

Carl Zeiss 85mm f/1.4

My newest debate is what will be the perfect portrait lens.  I loved the 50mm on the D80 – but it’s a much more wide lens on the D700.  So, I am digging for a great, sharp lens that will be the golden lens for me.  I’ve narrowed my hunt to the 85mm prime.  Now, for the maker…

Carl Zeiss

One of the ultimate names as far as lenses go.  My research is showing that this is an exceptional lens on the D700 (and I assume on the D3 / D3x / D700x / etc).  I’ve read on a dozen sites that the bokeh isn’t great on this one  - but have read on a dozen more sites that it has the best bokeh.  I’ve also read that this lens is exceptionally sharp, but wide-open tends to be a little soft.  Shooting portraits from a tri-pod, no brainer – bring it to f/2 and be crisp and sharp.

Why a tripod?  Because this baby is manual focus.  That’s not a big deal to me as I love using manual focus and really enjoy that challenge.  For some people, it’s a show-stopper.  Having to do something manually on their $3000?  How uncivilized! For me, it’s a nice retro throwback.

I have read some amazing things on this lens and very happy with what I have found.  But there is a lens that may be as good, and some claim better due to AF qualities.

Nikon 85mm f/1.4

Nikon

Here’s the dilemma.  Nikon makes a superb 85mm f/1.4 prime.  It has the added benefit of AF and is also built solid like a tank.  These lenses are within $100 of each other so it’s a matter of which ones shoots better.  People who have shot both say there is a much higher percentage of keepers from the Nikon – due to the AF.  But that’s no fault of the lens.

What I need to figure out is what lens is tack-sharp in the greatest range of shots (indoor / outdoor / street / portrait)?  I’ve found a few sites that rent them both, so that may be my next step.

If you have feedback on either of these, please share!

Nikon D700 | f/3.2 | 70mm | 1/60

Like your golf swing, Depth of Field is one of those things in photography that is easy to do until you start to think about it.  Scroll the wheel to “Macro” on your point-and-shoot, walk right up to an object and focus on it and chances are that everything in the background will look all fuzzy.

There, you did it.  That was easy.

Ok, so there is more to it than that.  A point-and-shooter most likely wouldn’t be here reading my blog.  Chances are, you thumb your nose at camera presets, pocket cameras, camera phones – and as any self-respecting shooter, will choose to only roll that dial to “M” for manly.  I mean manual.  Well, now we need to think about this a little more.

What’s in the Word?

OK, we need to define this whole DOF or DoF thing.  What the heck is Depth of Field?  Most people define it wrong in their head and think it refers to the fuzzy background.  But not at all.  Depth of Field refers to the part that is in sharp focus. In the example above, the tree is the DOF in that shot.  Everything else is out of that field of focus.

A shallow DOF or shallow focus is when one area is sharp, and the rest is out of focus.  This is used to emphasize one object over another.  In my example, the tree is being emphasized.  This creates what we call a bokeh background.  Bokeh is the blur or out of focus area of a picture.  And that’s the literal meaning from Japanese: boke which means “blur” or “haze” or the “blur quality.”

Deep Focus

The opposite of shallow DOF is Deep DOF or Deep Focus.  This is when you want an entire image in focus.  In this photo to the right, you can see that everything is in focus – there is no blur, no bokeh.  I’ll get into more definitions soon, but this effect is achieved by slamming a bunch of light into a small aperture.

Aperture is your f-stop.  Though the shot to the right is only at f/7.1 – the hyperfocal distance comes into play.  From Wikipedia, the hyperfocal distance is the distance beyond which all objects are acceptably sharp, for a lens focused at infinity.

We need one more term.  Circle of Confusion – a circle of confusion is an optical spot caused by a cone of light rays from a lens not coming to a perfect focus when imaging a point source. I’ll toss this at you in a bit – so expect it coming your way.

See?   Gets more complicated.

But that’s enough on the definitions for now.  I wanted to get those out of the way so I could just throw around the terms haphazardly and sound mind-bogglingly intelligent.  Did it work?

Getting DOF – Manual Mode

If you like full control of your camera (and frankly, when dropping $3000 on a body and $1500 per lens, who doesn’t?) then you want to know how to control focus to achieve deep or shallow depths in your shots at will.  You’ll become a snob and never use Auto or Program modes.  Those modes were put on your camera for handing it off to a point-n-shootist to to take a snap - effectively turning your $5000 rig into a $100 pocket camera.  At a minimum, use your Aperture Priority (AV on your Canon) or Shutter Priority (TV on your Canon) modes.  If you really want to learn your camera, keep spinning that dial until you hit the Manual mode – and leave it there.

For the camera Gods’ sake, be a man.

That out of the way, you need to choose your lens.  Doesn’t really matter what you use – but depends on how far away from your subject you want to be.  If you are shooting a soccer player on a field, you’re going to need some long glass to get him in your DOF.  If you are shooting the wings of a butterfly, you’ll need shorter glass – preferably macro glass.

Shallow Focus - 50mm f/2

There are a bazillion websites that explain how to calculate the depth, focus, field of confusion, etc.  rather than reinventing the wheel here, follow this link to get the raw formulas.  Grab a pencil and paper and start figuring out all your settings.

Or…

If you’re a lazy-ass like myself, just try this handy calculator.  I have one on my iPhone as well.

What they all boil down to is how far away you can be to get a fuzzy background and a clear object in the same shot.  The longer the glass, the further away you can be.

Playing with your aperture can give varying results.  For example, standing 1m away from an object with my 50mm @ f/1.4 will giving an amazingly shallow DOF with an incredible bokeh background.  Taking a few steps back will reduce the bokeh and going into the next room will reduce it more – and going into the next town will eliminate it.  Putting on a 10mm lens at F/25 and standing in the same distances, everything will tend to be sharp.  This is because you are moving in and out of your hyperfocal distance with the large aperture, moving your circle of confusion.  In most cases, confusing you more as well.

Putting this into English

Your DOF is dependent on a few simple factors.  Mastering these elements will give you greater control of your DOF.

1. First is your Aperture – the smaller the number (the larger your aperture) the better your bokeh.  Usually.
2. Next, the focal length of your glass – wide-angle is a greater (deeper) DOF.  Everything in focus.  Zooms tend to give a much more shallow DOF.
3. Distance to subject – the closer you are, the smaller the DOF (area in sharp focus).  Simple as that.

It’s the combinations of these (which are infinite) that you now need to learn.  Getting out there and shooting is what will really get you understanding this whole thing.  You can go from having everything sharp and in perfect focus (large landscape, wide angle, small aperture) to having an object sharp and everything unrecognizable (wings of a butterfly, macro, large aperture) – and things in between (subject in sharp focus, everything around just barely out of focus).

Very excited to say I have had my first “photographer” interview this week by a very good friend on Flickr, known as “Yale“.  Yale is one of my huge inspirations in photography and someone I have been following for quite a long time.  It was a huge honor to have this interview by him and shared with the world.

• You can read the entire interview here: http://yannicklefevre.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/interview-raymond-larose/
• You can see his Flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7826218@N06/

In other news, hoping to get out again while the weather is nice to shoot the D700 some more – perhaps some more testing with portrait shots.

Nikon D700 ISO 200 through 6400

Several have asked me to do a quick compare of the various ISO speeds in low light situations.  So, I took the camera out to the lake last night, poped it onto a tripod and shot 3 exposures at about 7:30pm – about 30 minutes after sunset.  As you can see from the spliced images, I first shot at ISO 200 (left), ISO 3200 (center) and then ISO 6400 (right).

The noise increases as expected from shot to shot.  But a lesser camera could not have pulled this off.  This thing is amazing at ISO 6400.  Imagine if I turned on the noise reduction?

Yes, note that I did not use any on camera or off camera ISO noise reduction.  There is zero post work to this shot other than splicing the three shots together and sticking a frame on it.  No sharpening, no curves, no color adjustments.

Hell, not even a white balance.

D700x

FYI – This was posted as an April Fools joke!

It’s what you have been waiting for.  And the cost is right where we expected it to be.  24MP FX, 3 FPS (5 FPS DX): $3,299

Quick Overview

The new Nikon D700x has been the want and desire of every Nikon user out there, amateur to professional.  The rumors have been bounding about for well over a year, with them increasing constantly over the past few months as the D700 began to vanish from inventory around the globe.  Nikon finally announced this beast in all it’s glory.  As suspected, here are some of the juicy details:

Finder

• 95% coverage (of full FX frame, not the tiny DX frame).
• 0.72x with 50mm lens. (D3 is 0.7x and 100% coverage).
• 18mm eyepoint.
• Inferior finder for DX lenses; the D700x doesn’t crop the finder as does the D3.

Auto Focus

• 51 points.
• CAM3500FX sensor array (same as D3X).
• Fine-tuning, if you have slight errors with certain lenses.

Shutter

• 1/8,000 ~ 30 sec, bulb.
• Carbon fiber and Kevlar.
• Tested to 150,000 cycles.

Sensor

• 24MP CMOS, same as D3X.
• 14-bit linear ADC, 16-bit data pipelines, as the D3X.
• 12-channel parallel readout.
• FX (23.9 x 36mm) and cropped DX, just like D3X.
• No professional 5:4 mode.

Resolution

• 24MP in FX, 10MP in DX.
• FX (24 x 36mm): 6,048 x 4,032 (L), 4,544 x 3,024 (M) and 3,024 x 2,016 (S).
• DX (16 x 24mm): 3,968 x 2,640 (L), 2,976 x 1,976 (M), 1,984 x 1,320 (S)

Other Tech

• Two slots: CF card and SD card.
• USB.
• Optional WT-4 wireless and ethernet.

Imagine, all this announced on April 1st…. yes… imagine. (Queue the hate mail…)