Want to know what it's like to ride a motorcycle into Washington DC in the morning?  I uploaded a new video that pretty much covers it.

I shot this at the United States Navy Memorial the other day after a morning at the office.  It's kind of grainy because I had to boost the ISO a fair bit (800).  I wanted the ISO high enough to let me use a faster shutter speed than I normally would.  I wanted to "freeze" the water from the fountains.  It was overcast enough that a lower ISO would have required a much lower shutter speed.  I like the overall "moody" atmosphere of this shot.

Thursday, April 26, 2007 1:06 PM

I took this the other day...

The only real reason I took it at all is because I remember taking this a few weeks ago...

I may make a new "project" of sorts where I'm doing a specific shot in the same place every time I walk past it.  I just haven't decided if I want to keep it "plain" or if I want to "spice it up" a bit.  Lemme Xplain...

A "plain" version would be me taking the exact same picture from the same spot, using the same lens, same exposure, same focal length, etc.  Of course, I'm not going to drag a tripod with me every day, so there will be minor variations due to my positioning, but essentially, I'll get roughly the same shot throughout the entire year, which should give a pretty nifty example of how everything changes throughout the seasons, due to both weather and any hooman intervention.  The downside to this... I have to keep the same lens on me all the time, which means I probably won't bother taking anything else with me.  That's MAJORLY limiting!

"Spicing it up" is basically me taking the same shot from the same place, but sometimes a lens is going to be different.  I doubt I'll swap around that much, but I may change focal lengths, apertures, lenses, filters, etc.  Same basic effect as "plain", but I think it would be a bit more interesting, even though it won't be as "smooth" when you view all the shots back-to-back. 

I'll think about it.

Thursday, April 26, 2007 7:29 AM

Ok, enough of the bee stuff...  time I posted up some pictures again.  I may do a few a day to catch up, I may not... we'll see how it goes.

I thought this first one was cool just because of the lights that were here...

I snagged that one about a week ago when I ditched out to take some night shots around DC.  Not many came out well because I didn't feel like toting around my tripod.

This next one is kind of cool because of the colors and composition, but it didn't come out like I was hoping it would...

I had my 18-55mm lens with me and took that shot at f/3.5.  I also pushed the exposure up a stop or two to get the blue color in the sky instead of just plain black.  When I took the shot, I was thinking that the 3.5 aperture would throw the monument out of focus a lot more than it actually did.  I wanted the little fountains to be crisp, but the monument and flags to be WAY out of focus.  The 18-55 just doesn't have the depth of field needed to get what I wanted...  maybe a 50mm f/1.4 would do it. ;)

Friday, April 20, 2007 9:17 AM

Ok, I'm just about done with my recent bee shoot stuff, but there's one post I wanted to make on the whole thing.

The last post was about the process of setting up the hive, but I specifically avoided talking about the photography side of things.  I'm going to go into that now.  This ain't about bees, it's about what I learned taking the pictures of them.

• First...  as with anything that you plan to take decent shots of, know what you're shooting!  In this case, I didn't really have a clue.  I was expecting maybe a few bees to be flying around and as long as I didn't move around too much, I'd be fine.  Oops!  I did NOT expect them to be EVERYWHERE and I didn't expect them to be as active as they were.  Honestly, if I had known, I would have probably used only the 75-300mm lens and the tripod from quite far away.  The whole up close thing was really pretty freaky and is not something I'd want to repeat without some protective gear.
• Second...  know your lenses.  I actually learned a lot about my two lenses after processing all the pictures.  I only had a vague idea of how the lenses behaved before this.  I'll go into detail about the differences I noticed between the two lenses a bit later in this post.  Had I realized how much of a difference there was between them both, I would have made some totally different choices about what shots I was taking with each lens.  Suffice to say for now, the Tamron 75-300 would have gotten a LOT more use on this shoot if I'd done some real comparisons beforehand.
• Third...  Expect the worse to happen.  There were two things I could imagine going horribly wrong with this process.  This first is a trip to the emergency room when someone got 200 bee stings.  The second was a dead or broken camera.  Luckily neither happened, but going into it expecting to get stung made it a lot more bearable when I did get my one sting of the day.  I'll go into that in more detail some other time.  The camera did it's job and didn't give me any hassles.  That's a good thing, because I can't even afford lenses, let alone a backup camera.  Had it failed, I simply wouldn't have been able to take any more pictures.
• Fourth...  Bring lots of memory.  I started with an empty 2Gb card, which I filled up about halfway through.  I then had to dig for my 4Gb card and use that for the rest of the shots.  I should have started with the 4Gb.  I had really considered ONLY taking the 2Gb card in the morning, but did snag several others as I ran out the door... "just in case".
• Fifth (and finally)...  Know your gear and keep it handy.  I had NO chance to use the tripod for half the shots, mainly because I'd chosen a bad spot to set it up and partly because I abandoned it when the bees started bouncing off my head.  I'm really glad Rob rescued it for me, as it's really hard to get crisp shots on that 75-300mm lens without the tripod.  Also, I'd set my camera to 100 ISO.  This is mainly because I always try to shoot 100 ISO unless I'm doing night shots...  That whole "fear of noise" thing.  I should have bumped it up to 400 right off the bat.  The sky was overcast, we were under trees and the lighting generally sucked.  Bumping up to 400 ISO would have gotten me much clearer pictures and I'd have more of them.  I ended up tossing about 150 shots because the shutter speed wasn't high enough to stop the camera shake.  I'll be taking a lot more shots at 400 ISO so I can figure out it's limitations and get used to change in shutter speeds and aperture.

Ok, let me talk a little about the lenses here.  I started shooting relatively close to the hive with my kit lens, a Canon EF-S 18-35mm f3.5-5.6.  It's a cheap lens, but it's fairly flexible.  Compared to my other lens, this one lets in a lot more light, so I can get a higher shutter speed.  It's also much faster to focus than the other.  The depth of field is also easily managed...  I can blur out the background when I want to, but still have a fairly decent range that's in focus.  The problem with it is that it's REALLY soft.  This isn't apparent until you compare it to the Tamron.  The Tamron is an AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD.  Here's an example...

The picture on the left is done with the Canon 18-35, the one on the right is done with the Tamron 75-300. You're probably going to have to click on them and show all sizes in Flickr to really see what I'm going to talk about.  I'd recommend the large size to see what I'm talking about.  For this discussion, just ignore the brightness... that was my choice of camera settings and post-processing and has very little to do with the lenses.

The Canon shot (on the left) has a wide (or long) depth of field... shorter lenses generally do.  You can see that almost everything from the front of the hive box all the way to Rob's gloves and jeans are pretty much in focus.  You can see a bit of a blur in front of the box opening, which is a bee that's between me and the hive box.  You can also see the ground behind the hive box is somewhat out of focus.  You can tell there are leaves and twigs and a driveway behind that, although it's not at all sharp or crisp.  At full size, you can see there are a few spots on the driveway and can probably make an educated guess that they are leaves.

Now let's take a look at the Tamron shot (on the right - again, I recommend you open it separately and view the large size).  Notice how the corner of the hive box is in focus.  Some of the bees on the shipping box are in focus, but as you get near the entrance, they start going blurry pretty quickly.  You can see there's a bush or something behind the hive box, but after that it's just a green blur.  This is a narrow depth of field, which is normal on long lenses.  It's not a problem (and I quite like it most of the time), but you have to keep in mind that this will happen in order to plan your shots. 

I knew about and was prepared for all the DOF stuff I just talked about.  What I didn't know and wasn't prepared for was the lack of clarity on the Canon lens.  If you look at both images at large or original sizes, you should be able to see that the parts of the Tamron shot that are in focus are really crisp compared to the Canon shot.  I'm finding this more and more as I shoot with the Canon lens.  It's really starting to bug me.  The odd thing is that I think the Canon should be sharper than the Tamron.  Shorter lenses generally take much clearer pictures, simply due them having less to cause any kind of "pollution" to the light coming into the camera.  Both lenses are "cheap" - pretty much bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but I really expected the Canon to blow the Tamron out of the water when we're talking about image quality.  Not so at all.

That kind of sucks for a couple of reasons.  The first is that the Tamron does not do well in low light scenarios, which is what I prefer to shoot.  It can only go down to an f4, and it really needs a tripod to get rid of camera shake.  The second reason is that the Tamron is just really hard to shoot with.  It's such a long lens on my camera that it's nearly useless unless you really WANT to zoom in. My camera is a 1.6x crop factor sensor, which means that the functional focal length is basically equivalent to the lens focal length multiplied by 1.6. So, that 75-300mm lens becomes a 120-480mm lens.  We're getting into long-distance wildlife shooting ranges there!  Great if you're on safari somewhere, but lousy for walking around town with.  "Hey, that's a neat statue I want to take a picture of... let me walk 2 blocks away from it so I can fit it all in the frame."

So, what's the solution?  Probably just save my pennies and get a 50mm f1.4 lens.  That's pretty much a compromise between the two lenses I have.  Since it's a prime lens (no zooming), it should automatically be clearer than both of my existing lenses, just because it has much less glass.  Also, prime lenses generally have better glass in them to start with, which increases the image quality even more.  The 50mm on my camera will effectively act like an 80mm lens, which I think is a good "walking around, shoot everything" length.  Plus, being able to go all the way to f1.4 means I'll be able to take some crazy night shots. ;)

In the mean time I'm going to take a lot more test shots with both lenses.  I plan on checking each lens at different apertures in order to see if they have a "sweet spot".  It's possible the Canon can get a lot sharper, but maybe only at f4 or so instead of wide open at f3.5.  That will give me a much longer depth of field (not always a good thing), but it'll be nice to know if I can use the sharpness when the DOF doesn't matter.

Summary

I learned something about how my lenses behave and I figured out what I want to do to explore them some more.  That's kind of what it's all about. ;)

Posted by smthng | 0 Comments [Edit]

Filed under: Photography, Tamron, Canon, Depth of Field, Lenses, Thoughts, Bees [Edit Tags]

Friday, April 20, 2007 9:12 AM

Executive Shadows

Time to try getting back to my semi-regular pictures.  Here's one from this morning...

I know it's crooked AND it has some barrel distortion, but I still kind of like the shadows and harsh highlights.  I'll post up another one from the same spot someday when I get some good light and maybe do a side-by-side comparison.

Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:09 AM

Ok, the metal isn't really falling, it's a sculpture on the National Mall...  I just thought the whole thing looked kind of cool.  Turned out to not be one of my better shots, but it's still kind of interesting. 

I'll post up more later this afternoon, I hope (and maybe I'll pontificate on my lack of posts if you're exceptionally lucky).  ;)

Lousy composition, but decent colors in the sunrise. There's lots of ways I could have done this better, but I don't feel like getting into it right now (I ranted enough this morning).

Just a neat line up of police bikes I spotted the other day.  Could have gotten a better picture, but I was being harassed by the White House officers as it was and I didn't think whipping out the tripod was such a good idea right then. ;)

Don't think I've done many water pictures yet... here's a good one I took yesterday. 

This is again outside the National Museum of the American Indian.  It's one of the fountains they have on the north side of the building.  I waiting quite a while for the light to be right for this one.

This was taken with the Tamron 75-300 lens and a tripod... I couldn't have gotten a shutter speed slow enough to blur the water with my other 28-85 lens.

Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:06 AM

Warning... this is probably gonna be quite a lengthy post!

This is the US Capitol Building taken this morning around 7 am.  The light on this building can be really cool in the morning.  This probably would have been better if I could have waited another 30 minutes or so for some more sun, but I don't remember what time they turn the lights off on the dome and I didn't want to chance it. The other morning, there were some gorgeous oranges and reds, but I only had my short lens and couldn't get the framing right.

Speaking of lenses, this is the first shot I've posted that I've taken with my Tamron lens.  It's functionally equivalent to 480 mm at this zoom level (yes, I took my tripod to work today).  This shot was actually taken about 4 blocks away from the building (check Flickr for the map if interested).  While I like the zoom ability, I'm going to have to become accustomed to dealing with lens flare with this lens.  You can see the flares as a couple of little pink dots to the left of the dome.  Those are presumably from the closest street light, which also has a few flare spots in it if you view the full size version.

This shot is totally unmodified, other than resizing for Flickr.  Hence, it's a touch on the dark side (I normally underexpose a little bit to get shadow details and then use Photoshop's levels to get the exposure back up).   The colors were still good and the picture is pretty sharp, so I'm glad I took the time to set everything up and get this one.  If the weather is similar, I may go back tomorrow and wait a bit longer to see if I can get some better light and/or find out when they turn off the lights.

BTW... since I have all of these historical and political buildings on my blog, some of you may have gotten the impression that I'm in to politics.  I'm not... at all!  But, the buildings are cool.  I really couldn't care less that this is "The Capitol Building" (sorry Mom), to me, it's just a cool building with good lighting. ;)  This is DC... it's nearly impossible NOT to take a picture that doesn't have some kind of political drama surrounding it.  Trust me, they're just pictures. 

BTW... thanks to my nameless friend for pointing out that I forgot to include the actual picture.  He's not nameless because I'm protecting his identity or anything... he just doesn't deserve a name any more. :P

This is a piece of the National Museum of the American Indian.  I believe this is the newest building on the National Mall.  It's right next to the US Botanical Garden on the Capitol Building end (if you click the pic and go to Flickr, it's mapped if you want to know exactly where it is).

It's a pretty neat building.  Hopefully I can run by there on the way home tonight and get some more pictures (I have a tripod today).  Sometime real soon the wife and I are going to have to go and check it out.  It's one of the few national museums we haven't been to yet.

This is another picture that I have mixed feelings about.  Let me cover the good first, since that's pretty short...

The good...  It's a really cool building.  It's also got some fairly rich detail and color, although my photo doesn't show that.  The garden is also quite nice when it's "alive".  Right now, it's pretty much all dead other than the yellow things that are just starting bloom.  This is the Smithsonian Institution Building (commonly called Smithsonian Castle).  I forgot what's inside it, but I just like the building.
Before I get into the bad stuff, here's the pic:

Ok, let's get on with the bad parts.  I've already mentioned the dead looking trees, so I won't harp on that.  I was walking to work in the morning because I knew it was going to rain on the way home.  Normally I walk to the train in the evening if I have time, so I'm used to evening light conditions, not morning.  The lighting here is horrible.  Everything is faded and washed out.  The colors were incredibly weak and I've boosted them quite a bit just to get some kind of contrast out of this picture.

It's an "I was here" picture.  While the composition technically fits the "rule of three" (er... well, it did before I cropped it), it's a dead-on shot with no interesting angles or anything.  Could it possible be any more symmetrical?  BORING!

Now the sky... WHAT SKY?  I wasn't using the polarizing filter, which might have helped slightly.  Ah, who am I kidding?  A polarizer would have gotten a slightly bluer tone to the sky, but it still would have been drab and boring.  There was absolutely no texture in the sky... it was a dull and dreary day. 

Finally, there was a bit of barrel distortion caused by my lens.  I had to tweak that a bit with Photoshop by altering the perspective slightly.  No big deal, but it unfortunately put a few "jaggies" in on the right tower windows.  Hard to see on the picture here, but if you click on it to go to Flickr and then view the large size, they're definitely there.

In short, I like the building and the picture isn't terrible.  I'd never waste my time printing this though.  While there are quite a few negative bits to this picture, they all teach me something about what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong.  That's pretty much the point of this whole exercise, which is why I ended up posting this one. ;)

Now I'm off to go take some shots with my new Tamron lens.  Laters!

Posted by smthng | 0 Comments [Edit]

Friday, March 16, 2007 7:10 PM

Ok, back to regular pictures...

I spotted this little smart fortwo at the metro station yesterday and had to snag a pic.  Too bad it wasn't a cabrio!  These are cool little cars and if the quality is anything like the Euro models, it's worth every penny. 

We rented a smart forfour on our vacation a couple years ago in Mallorca.  A little diesel stick shift jobbie...  That little critter would hustle, even loaded down with four people.  We drove that thing all over the entire island and only gassed up once.  These are really sweet little cars.  I'd snag one in a heartbeat if I needed another vehicle, although I'd REALLY like to get my hands on the roadster BRABUS. ;)

On a slightly separate note...  I processed this pic with Lightroom instead of my usual Elements.  Looks a bit washed out to me in IE, but looks fine in Lightroom.  That might be a calibration thing here, but I'd be interested to know what others are seeing...  Rich colors, or all faded and washed out?

Not much to say today, just have to toss out the occasional motorcycle pic.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:18 AM

Nothing fantastic, but I thought this was too good pass up. ;)

A little change up here...  I'm posting a 1024 pixel image up tonight.  Sometimes they just don't look right at reduced sizes.  This is one of those...  It looks even better at 3569 pixels, but I'd eat up my Flickr space if started posting those.  If you've got a small monitor or are stuck in 800x600 resolution or something... well, sorry about that. ;)

Heyya,

Real quick one for you today...  Just a shot I grabbed when I ran past this building.  Nothing extra special, just kind of cool.  I haven't mapped this one in Flickr yet, but will eventually.  Also, I'm hoping to get some posts up this weekend.  Cyas!

Ok, I'm kind of cheating again, but in a different way.  I've had about 4 days of really poor shooting and I haven't been posting often (I'm almost done with DST so I'll get some time back soon).  So... I'm doubling up this time.  Not really a bad thing, since these two were similar. 

First, a tree (probably a Japanese maple of some kind).  I was mostly playing with the depth of field (DOF) and focal lengths here.  I like the way it came out because this pretty clearly shows the DOF you can get on a high-contrast picture.  You can get a slightly narrower DOF by using a wider aperture, but that would have sped up the shutter speed and the snow would have been shown up as specs on the picture.  You takes what you gets and you lives with it sometimes.  The B&W conversion was done in Elements... it does a better job than the on-board engine.

The second is a vine (yes, I know it looks a lot like the tree).  This is a pretty poor picture.  But, it shows the falling snow the way I wanted it to.  You'll probably have to go to the larger sizes in Flickr to see it, but it's there.  The snow flakes are streaks, not specks.  The snow was falling much heavier in this shot compared to the last one, which is why you can see it.  I did this the easy way...  I just took a bunch of shots at different speeds and this one worked. Ain't digital great?  :)  It just so happens that this was taken at exactly the same aperture and speed as the previous shot.  Dumb luck.

BTW... I know it's out of focus just a hair.  That was camera shake caused by me.  I was getting a bad case of "wet camera fear".

No photo included with this post, just a cool story...

I stopped by the Jefferson Memorial on the way home from a late night at the office the other day to take some pictures (all my Jefferson pics we junk, so I didn't post them).  This was the same night I took the Washington night picture from across the river.  There was a couple at the Jefferson Memorial taking pictures of each other with a little point-and-shoot digital camera.  They asked me if I could take one of them together.  I happily did so, but their little digicam wasn't up to the task.  The pictures were worthless.  So, I offered to take a picture with my XTi and email it to them.  I ended up taking a couple without the flash which didn't turn out so well (I'm trying to avoid the flash until I get a bit more feel for the regular exposure settings).  I finally tried a shot with the flash and it was reasonably good... good enough to print, but probably not good enough to sign my name to if it came down to it. ;)

I emailed them a link to it and got a reply back a little later.  It turns out that as soon as I had finished my photos of them, took a few more of the memorial (or is the Jefferson a monument?), the guy had proposed to the girl!  So, she was thrilled that they got a good picture of them that night...  kind of a lasting memory.  She's assured me that my picture will be in their album.

Pretty cool, eh?  It's nice to know that a simple effort to help someone out sometimes has much better results than anticipated. :)  Good luck you crazy kids!