bdimit Posted April 2, 2012 Share Posted April 2, 2012 Hey guys, I was searching around for places to photograph around Houston, abandoned buildings and other good places to shoot as I'm new to Houston, and stumbled upon this site. When I started cruising the site, I found this discussion and decided I'd join as I think I may be able to help a little. Just a little background on me: I received a BFA in studio art emphasis in photography in Dec 2011 and I am currently working at the Houston Center for Photography in the education and outreach department, which is why I'm now in Houston. I've been really photographing since 2004 and was always helping my dad shoot weddings and other events for his friends. In short, I've been around photography for a while now. (I'm not trying to sound pompous or anything, I just wanted to let you all know where I'm coming from.) And if I make any mistakes on quoting or anything really, just let me know. Now, for the help... I hope. I thought this was aweseme: "The f/stop controls how much we see and don't see in the background. F/3.5 means only "three things" will be in focus. F/22 means "22 things" will be in focus. (Not really but I'm using that as a visual cue to help you remember the concept.)" -Kathy Adams Clark http://kathyadamscla...background.html I have to say I'm not particular to this teaching method of f/stop and its functionality. The f/stop does not control how much we see and don't see in the background. The f/stop is the aperture in the lens and controls how much light is let in to expose the medium (film/digital sensor). The way I like to teach f/stop is that it controls the aperture of lenses. It acts just like your eye does. When you open your eyes up as wide as you can, you let in a lot of light. Skwint and you let in less light. But, and this a big but, f/stop does not alter the depth of field, i.e. blurring and creating bokeh, all that much with standard lenses (non-telephoto and non-macro). One cannot magically change what is and is not in the background by simply changing the f/stop, though that would be awesome if it were possible since it'd make life much easier. The f/stop does control depth of field, and in macro and telephoto lenses you will get bokeh, as samagon explained. But, you can achieve this effect fairly easily with any lens depending on the focal length of the lens and where you are in relation to an object. Every lens has an effective focal length letting you know how close you can be to an object for that object to be in focus. So, for example, with a 50mm prime lens the closest you can be to an object and retain focus is 1.5ft. Anything out of that 1.5ft sweet spot will be out of focus. Likewise if you were to be closer than 1.5ft but chose to focus on a different object outside that 1.5ft, the foreground object would then become out of focus. This creates that blur, or bokeh. Bokeh is easy to achieve but not as simple as changing the f/stop outside of macro photography. Also, an f/stop of 3.5 does not mean only three things will be in focus and an f/stop of 22 does not mean 22 things will be in focus. A good example is Ricco's photos. As you can see he has a low f/stop but everything in the images is in focus because he is within the focal length of his lens (everything in the images are within the distance that the lens can clearly focus on) despite shooting at a low f/stop. This is because the f/stop is the aperture which is how much light is let in to expose the film/sensor. In this regard, a low f/stop, wide aperture and long shutter speed is necessary because he is shooting at ISO 100 in low light. For a good, although tedious (he calls it that himself!) explanation on f/stop, check this site out: http://www.uscoles.com/fstop.htm Aug 10, 2011 ISO: 100 Exposure: 30.0 sec Aperture: 18.0 Focal Length: 18mm This is an example of one of my first attempts at full manual, adjusting the armature, white balance, and focus. There is the "starring" we talked about previously, but I was also using the 17-50mm kit lens. This was me using my new (to me) 28mm 2.8 lens. Note: No starring. ISO: 100 Exposure: 2.0 sec Aperture: 3.5 Focal Length: 28mm The trick I found with not finding someplace to focus on is to simply aim to a viable object to focus, move to your object and shoot. the other is to simply learn how to focus manually, or set the lens to Infinity and you should be able to get decent results. I took an opportunity to sneak a camera into a concert and was able to take good pictures, problem was that I had to really push up the ISO. ISO: 800 Exposure: 1/100 sec Aperture: 2.8 Focal Length: 28mm I am by no means an expert at it, but practice and tips always help. Edit: Just realized I essentially did a double post and already covered this. Good god, how will I be when I get old(er)? Ricco, first I think your pictures are really good (yours too samagon). I wanted to address your issue with starring in your long exposure images. The reason you are getting that starring effect is because of the long exposure time. With long exposures the shutter remains open for a set amount of time, in the case of the above "starry" image, 30sec. All this time light is streaming in to the sensor exposing that area with all the light coming from the streetlights and essentially what is happening is because of all that light, all that exposure, the sensor is overloaded with data (or in the case of film, the film is essentially overexposed). The digital sensor is made up of many small squares that record the data, since it's digital it's 1s and 0s, and basically what happens is that data overflows to other squares on the sensor because of the time the shutter is left open causing the starring effect. A factor to this is the ISO. With digital the ISO is reversed from film ISO. Digital ISO requires a higher ISO for lowlight exposures whereas film requires a low ISO for lowlight exposures. The second image you took, the convenience store on Dowling, you had an ISO of 1600, which allows the sensor to gather more light data in lowlight situations. In your long exposures though, you were shooting at an ISO of 100, causing you open the shutter for a longer period resulting in the streetlights starring. With the last image before the singer, though, you were much closer to your light sources and therefore had more light available to make the image without having to boost the ISO and leave the shutter open. As a side note, the focal length also comes into play in determining available light to properly expose an image. The longer the focal length, the longer it takes light to travel to the sensor and the more light is required to get a properly exposed image. Samagon, you did a fine job explaining this in the first post . I hope this helps a little and it wasn't too long winded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricco67 Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 While cruising the Internets, I found this mentioned on another site that helps with one of the fundamentals with photography. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Broadfoot Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 I shoot those pesky Sony bodies and Carl Zeiss lenses. I get buy (i guess)... The Carl Zeiss "wide angle" glass seems to suffer from excessive flare in night shots where you have a light source pointed at you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolie Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 Here is my current setup Nikon D700 17-35mm f/2.8 50mm f/1.4 24mm f/2.8 105mm f/2.8 VR Plus flashes, tripods, etc. Previously I used a Nikon D70. I like night photography. Here are a couple of my favorite pics that I've taken in Houston. Untitled by wools, on Flickr Construction Worker by wools, on Flickr The Machines Rest At Night by wools, on Flickr flower by wools, on Flickr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolie Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 I have to say I'm not particular to this teaching method of f/stop and its functionality. The f/stop does not control how much we see and don't see in the background. The f/stop is the aperture in the lens and controls how much light is let in to expose the medium (film/digital sensor). The way I like to teach f/stop is that it controls the aperture of lenses. It acts just like your eye does. When you open your eyes up as wide as you can, you let in a lot of light. Skwint and you let in less light. But, and this a big but, f/stop does not alter the depth of field, i.e. blurring and creating bokeh, all that much with standard lenses (non-telephoto and non-macro). One cannot magically change what is and is not in the background by simply changing the f/stop, though that would be awesome if it were possible since it'd make life much easier. The f/stop does control depth of field, and in macro and telephoto lenses you will get bokeh, as samagon explained. But, you can achieve this effect fairly easily with any lens depending on the focal length of the lens and where you are in relation to an object. Every lens has an effective focal length letting you know how close you can be to an object for that object to be in focus. So, for example, with a 50mm prime lens the closest you can be to an object and retain focus is 1.5ft. Anything out of that 1.5ft sweet spot will be out of focus. Likewise if you were to be closer than 1.5ft but chose to focus on a different object outside that 1.5ft, the foreground object would then become out of focus. This creates that blur, or bokeh. Bokeh is easy to achieve but not as simple as changing the f/stop outside of macro photography. I feel the opposite; aperture has a big affect on DOF in typical real world use, and the differences between f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8, and f/4 are extremely significant in how a photo will look. And yes, focus distance is one of the factors in DOF (focus distance, focal length, aperture, sensor size). You can move closer to your subject to create a shallower DOF. But this also changes your perspective. Sensor size is also really important. Given the same perspective and field of view, you'll get very different DOFs with different cameras. Let's take 40 degrees FOV as an example. On a "full frame' 35mm camera, this is a 50mm lens. On a "APS-C" camera, about 35mm. And on compact cameras, it could go down to something like 8mm. If each of these lenses was at f/2.0 and photographing the same subject (same distance), they would all produce roughly the same photograph and require roughly the same exposure time for a given ISO. But the DOF between them be very different. The full frame camera would have the shallowest, increasing to the compact camera which would have the widest. Ricco, first I think your pictures are really good (yours too samagon). I wanted to address your issue with starring in your long exposure images. The reason you are getting that starring effect is because of the long exposure time. With long exposures the shutter remains open for a set amount of time, in the case of the above "starry" image, 30sec. All this time light is streaming in to the sensor exposing that area with all the light coming from the streetlights and essentially what is happening is because of all that light, all that exposure, the sensor is overloaded with data (or in the case of film, the film is essentially overexposed). The digital sensor is made up of many small squares that record the data, since it's digital it's 1s and 0s, and basically what happens is that data overflows to other squares on the sensor because of the time the shutter is left open causing the starring effect. A factor to this is the ISO. With digital the ISO is reversed from film ISO. Digital ISO requires a higher ISO for lowlight exposures whereas film requires a low ISO for lowlight exposures. The second image you took, the convenience store on Dowling, you had an ISO of 1600, which allows the sensor to gather more light data in lowlight situations. In your long exposures though, you were shooting at an ISO of 100, causing you open the shutter for a longer period resulting in the streetlights starring. With the last image before the singer, though, you were much closer to your light sources and therefore had more light available to make the image without having to boost the ISO and leave the shutter open. As a side note, the focal length also comes into play in determining available light to properly expose an image. The longer the focal length, the longer it takes light to travel to the sensor and the more light is required to get a properly exposed image. Samagon, you did a fine job explaining this in the first post . I hope this helps a little and it wasn't too long winded. What you're describing is CCD blooming. CCDs are analog devices. Photons are converted to an electrical charge, and this charge is amplified and converted to a digital value during read out using an analog to digital converter. Each pixel can hold a certain amount of charge, and if a pixel overflows with charge, it can spill out into adjacent wells causing bright spots across relatively large areas. However, most digital cameras have anti-blooming devices to keep this fairly well controlled; it's rare to see examples of blooming except in extreme exposures. The "star bursts" in Ricco's photograph are diffraction effects caused by point sources of light interacting with the physical shape of the aperture blades. In a typical camera aperture diaphragm, there are a number of curved aperture blades. At large apertures (or wide open), the rounded parts of the blades are OK at forming a circular aperture. However, when you step down quite low (say, f/16 and higher), the aperture starts to have harder corners. These corners cause a diffraction pattern, and to a rough approximation the "star bursts" will have the same number of points as the blades in the aperture. You can reduce the effect by using a larger aperture, which will have a more round aperture. Film requires low ISO because high ISO film is terrible. But most good digital cameras are nearly as good at ISO 800 as they are at ISO 100. At higher ISO you get less dynamic range and higher noise, but given a reasonable exposure (not underexposed) it isn't a problem until 800, 1600, or higher. Higher ISOs do give you much less post processing room, though, which is why getting the right exposure becomes much more important. I'm not sure what you're talking about with how long it takes light to travel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lockmat Posted August 9, 2012 Share Posted August 9, 2012 I have noticed professional photographers at the Olympics are not using flash. I'm sure part of the reason is they're not allowed? I know the venues are well lit, but I would think they'd still need them, especially since they are action shots. Are their cameras and lenses just that awesome? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricco67 Posted August 9, 2012 Share Posted August 9, 2012 I have noticed professional photographers at the Olympics are not using flash. I'm sure part of the reason is they're not allowed? I know the venues are well lit, but I would think they'd still need them, especially since they are action shots. Are their cameras and lenses just that awesome?Even at a texan game, I didn't have problems shooting without a flash.Yes. The equipment is that awesome. Saw an article about what they carry, and some of the lenses alone were in the ten grand range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samagon Posted August 10, 2012 Author Share Posted August 10, 2012 I have noticed professional photographers at the Olympics are not using flash. I'm sure part of the reason is they're not allowed? I know the venues are well lit, but I would think they'd still need them, especially since they are action shots. Are their cameras and lenses just that awesome?Then there's this guy.The lenses they have on those cameras are really really amazing. And expensive.Saw this article yesterday http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/an-olympic-photographers-endurance/Guys a hoss, breaking all the traditional rules, and really proving the old adage "it's the Indian, not the arrows" granted the guy uses some really expensive arrows, just not what you'd expect for a sports photog to carry around. Imagine, in this day and age the pro bodies those guys use can take 11 frames a second pretty much till the card is full, he gets one shot, if they go through his frame. Simply amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifuwong Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 The Sony RX100 is out....awesome high end point and shoot..http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/27/3187725/sony-rx100-review Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifuwong Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 This guy is great at explaining everything about photography...i suggest looking at his videos... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifuwong Posted August 28, 2012 Share Posted August 28, 2012 They did a Sony RX-100 comparison: http://www.stevehuff...own-in-for-fun/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifuwong Posted August 28, 2012 Share Posted August 28, 2012 [/media] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenH Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 Even at a texan game, I didn't have problems shooting without a flash.Yes. The equipment is that awesome. Saw an article about what they carry, and some of the lenses alone were in the ten grand range.+1 on the equipment being that awesome. My 5dMkII will go up to about 6500 ISO and with a little work I can get a pretty decent image. I hear the new ones can pull a usable image at 25,000 ISO, or something to that effect. They don't really need flash at sporting events much anymore, but most of those guys still carry them, just in case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifuwong Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 FYI, Adorama via Ebay dropped the price on their Canon 5D Mark III yesterday to $2,750(body only)....they did this for several hours and then they raised it back up afterwards. Canon also is taking pre-orders for their full frame Canon 6D listed at $2,099. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lockmat Posted November 29, 2012 Share Posted November 29, 2012 Some of you may have noticed that I enjoy taking some construction photos etc. I think I need a better lens and need to upgrade from the kit that I bought with the camera. Anyone have suggestions on what type? Wide angle?I have a Canon T2i Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricco67 Posted November 29, 2012 Share Posted November 29, 2012 Depending under what conditions and type of photography uh intend to take. I haven't been able to get a good shoot of the construction at rice because I need a smaller lens (18mm or smaller.) to capture the entire scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Some of you may have noticed that I enjoy taking some construction photos etc. I think I need a better lens and need to upgrade from the kit that I bought with the camera. Anyone have suggestions on what type? Wide angle?I have a Canon T2iStart with a straight 50mm lens. Then get something wider. In construction photography you almost never need zoom, but you very frequently need to go wide. Also, a 50mm lens is just about the best lens you can have for everyday street photography. It's very close to what your eye sees, and they almost always have very few elements -- and the fewer pieces of glass the light has to pass through, the better in terms of clarity, lighting, and pretty much everything else.I once had this crazy huge fisheye lens -- something like 16mm -- and it was HUGE! It looked totally stupid mounted on the camera, but man did it come in useful. I remember one day I was shooting RIverfront Center for Hines, and they wanted a shot that had both towers in it, and the sign out front. Fisheye to the rescue! Though, today I would probably rent a scissor lift and Photoshop a bunch of pictures together instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lockmat Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Start with a straight 50mm lens. Then get something wider. In construction photography you almost never need zoom, but you very frequently need to go wide. Also, a 50mm lens is just about the best lens you can have for everyday street photography. It's very close to what your eye sees, and they almost always have very few elements -- and the fewer pieces of glass the light has to pass through, the better in terms of clarity, lighting, and pretty much everything else.I once had this crazy huge fisheye lens -- something like 16mm -- and it was HUGE! It looked totally stupid mounted on the camera, but man did it come in useful. I remember one day I was shooting RIverfront Center for Hines, and they wanted a shot that had both towers in it, and the sign out front. Fisheye to the rescue! Though, today I would probably rent a scissor lift and Photoshop a bunch of pictures together instead.like this?http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/ef_lens_lineup/ef_50mm_f_1_4_usm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricco67 Posted December 1, 2012 Share Posted December 1, 2012 Like this?That is what I generally carryn but a like my 28mm 2.8Love that lens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sifuwong Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 Adorama is having a sale on entry level full frame camera: Nikon D600 Digital SLR Camera with Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED AF-S VR Lens - Bundle - with Adorama VIP Member Extended Protection Plan, 32GB Class 10 SDHC Card, Camera Case, Spare Battery, External Battery Charger, Remote Trigger, WiFi Mobile Adapter, Cleaning Kit$1,997 with free shipping and no tax for Texas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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