Manual lenses presentation

Here is my presentation for Edinburgh 2010 Photocamp:

Manual lenses presentation

View more presentations from Petteri Hietavirta.

Tips for photographing airplanes and airshows

I have been interested in airplanes all my life so no wonder I have taken good amount of photos of them. Yesterday I visited RAF Leuchars air show and I have been going through my photos and videos of it. There are couple tips I learnt from others and by experiment.

Stationary planes are pretty easy and interesting subjects. Plenty of details and shapes to photograph but in case of museums the lack light is sometimes a problem. Many museums do not allow tripods so fast lenses with stabilizers are handy. At the airshows there are many stationary planes outdoors so no need to worry about lack of light. In many occasions it is possible to join a tour to get a look inside. Switch to wider and faster lens for inside shots as the interiors are cramped and dimly lit.

Flying planes are then a bit different case. Usually there is enough light but you are far away and planes are moving fast sometimes. A decent telephoto lens is necessary here and its focal length should reach at least 200 mm. A good place to practice is the local civil airport with airliners landing and taking off. Depending of your local law and regulations it might be illegal to photograph airport so check that before ending up arrested.

Planes landing and taking off are quite easy to photograph. I use continuos focusing (AI Servo in Canon) with the center point and I keep plane's cockpit under the point. In case of jet planes the shutter speed can be set quite fast depending how much motion blur is wanted for the background. With 200 mm focal length I would use at least 1/500s. Prop planes need slower shutter speed because too fast shutter speed freezes propellers and that looks awkward. I usually photograph propeller planes with shutter speed of 1/200 - 1/250s. Helicopters have even slower rotating blades so you need to find balance between motion blur and general sharpness.

Airshows have fast military jets and planes performing aerobatics. These are much louder so pair of ear plugs might be needed. Fast flying planes require faster shutter speeds in order to get sharp photos. The alternative is to shoot continuously and hope that one of the photos is a good one. The downside is the amount of photos, I usually take ten or more photos of a single pass and that means I end up having 100-200 photos of a single performance. A day at the airshow equals around 1500-2000 photos. Sorting those is not a matter of couple minutes.

Aerobatics with smoke trails are visually impressive and it helps to know the routine a bit. Videos from previous airshows can be found from youtube and those help to find out when and where are the climax moments. Prepare, shoot a burst and hope the best.

With 550D I had the chance to take video as well. Changing between still and video roles is not that simple and I lost some nice spots. In order to switch to video I had to attach the camera on a tripod, turn off lens stabilizer (ruins panning), switch camera mode, check exposure and focus the lens. The microphone on 550D picks wind very easily so the audio turned out to be mostly useless. Tracking fast moving planes performing loops and break turns requires practice and space around the tripod. Not that easy at the packed display line.

RAF Leuchars 2010 photos
RAF Leuchars 2010 videos
Edinburgh East Fortune 2010 photos

LCDVF 3/2 for Canon 550D

The LCDVF 3/2... from Terry Gray on Vimeo.

This is the first review of the LCDVF 3/2 I have seen so far. Looks good, the only issue might be how well I see the screen without glasses or whether it is usable with glasses.

Holiday camera gear

We came back home after two weeks in Hungary and Romania. It was a holiday after all so we did not pack every possible piece of a camera gear with us. The airline restrictions prevented it.

The main parts of the camera gear were Canon 450D and 550D bodies. For them we had three lenses. EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens, EF 70-200mm f4 L IS USM and Vivitar M42 35mm f1.9 prime. We also had set of extension tubes, Canon 430EX II flash, radio triggers, YN-460II flash, SLR Zoom GorillaPod, Manfrotto 745XB tripod with 701 RC2 fluid head, batteries, filters, chargers and some random bits and pieces. Most of this was inside or attached to Lowepro Primus AW backpack. Only the camera with 18-55mm lens was in a separate small bag.

So, what was necessary? Most I would say. We did not use extension tubes or YN-460II flash for some reason. Everything else was used and I don't think we were missing anything else except couple more memory cards. I left the tripod in the car trunk quite often but every time we left the car we took all the rest of the camera gear with us.

We had 2x16Gb cards for 550D and 4Gb+8Gb for 450D. Unfortunately that was not enough for RAW photos so we had to switch to JPEG. That has caused some issues in post processing but most of the photos seem to be fine. There is still good amount of material to sort and video to cut... I think I would need another holiday just for that.

Camera gear trading

It has been busy month. I sold two pieces of camera gear and bought one. No chances of getting rich, I spent much more than I got from sales.

First I decided to sell my old Canon EF 70-210mm f4.0 because I did not have use for it and I do not see it as a collectable item. I put an advert to www.gumtree.com and I got some contacts pretty soon. The idea with gumtree is that is local so no worries of posting and such. Eventually one guy came to check it and bought it. I think both parties were happy with the price.

The second item to sell was something I did not plan to sell. My Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS failed and I was then forced to sell it as a faulty lens. I thought there wont be enough interest in local level so I put an advert to UK eBay. That was the first time I tried to sell anything on eBay. I made an advert with very clearly stating the fault of the lens. I set it up a ten day auction without reserve with 0.99 starting price. It went pretty well, I got reasonable price and I sent the lens away.

As you might seen from my twitter feed, I bought Canon 550D with working EF-S 18-55mm IS lens. The main reason was its video features. I have been trying out various things and I am happy with the quality. However, it is not a point and shoot video camera. Practice is needed to get used to the controls and smooth handling. Couple test videos can been seen on Vimeo.

Now I need to find someone to buy my old Canon 450D body. Two bodies are nice to have but I think there wont be too much usage for the old one. Maybe I will try gumtree again.

How to fix corrupted iPhoto 08 (7.1.5) library

I have no clue what caused this but the fact was that iPhoto crashed right away after launch. Maybe it was recent update to OS X 10.6.3 - who knows. But the main point was how to get it running again.

I was not too worried about photos as I have Time Machine taking backups automatically. But the last backup was two days old because the backup hard drive was offline. Some photos were imported after that so I decided to rebuild the iPhoto library instead of taking it from the backup.

There is a handy tool called iPhoto Library Manager which allows to rebuild the library without touching the original. The small issue with this was the size of my iPhoto library. 147GB was more than I had space on my internal hard drive. But the tool can create a rebuilt library on external drives as well so my 1TB backup drive solved this.

The process of the library rebuilding is slow and takes several hours with a large library. My 1TB backup drive is slow and USB2 drive so no wonder. After I checked and tested the new library I replaced the original with the rebuilt.

Having a recent backup saved me from freaking out but I think the library has gotten too big in any case. I also think that iPhoto '08 is not really the right program for storing raw photos in such quantities. Aperture 3 looks interesting - maybe I'll try the free trial.

Adding features to Canon IXUS 60 with CHDK

I bought my Canon IXUS 60 from Zürich during summer 2006. It was my first digital camera and it served well until 2008 when I bought Canon 450D. After that it has been left mostly unused and that is a shame.

Then I got to know about the CHDK project and saw some exciting new uses for the old IXUS. This Canon Hack Development Kit extends your camera and it allows to run simple applications on it. One example is time lapse photography and, actually, that got me interested.

Installation was quite simple on OS X with scripted CHDK Mac Installer. The only problem was to choose the right version as there are two for IXUS 60/SD600 but with trial and error I got it working. That might sound risky but the installation is done on the memory card so nothing is changed permanently on the camera. For me the right one was 1.00a instead of 1.00d.

The camera starts now from the software on the memory card and it displays CHDK splash screen at the startup. The normal CHDK comes with many new options but for time lapse photography it requires a script. I chose Ultra Intervalometer and so far I have been happy with it. I was a bit worried how long the old battery would last but I managed to take couple hundred shots with one minute intervals. The important power saving trick is to set the LCD screen go off as soon as possible.



I have made couple time lapse videos but they are not suitable for public as they show our messy living room. The plan is to make something better and upload it to vimeo or youtube. Meanwhile, I recommend you take a look at the CHDK project page in case your camera is supported.

Vivitar 35mm f1.9, Amanda De Luxe 135mm f3.5 and SMC Takumar 55m f1.8 review

I finally received my M42 to EOS adapter ring with AF-confirm. The first thing was naturally to take some test shots with my vintage M42 lenses mentioned in the previous post. So how did these around 30 or more year old lenses perform?



The setup was very simple. I placed two teddys on a paper and placed a YN-460II flash on their right. The flash was triggered with YN RF-602 radio trigger. The camera used was Canon 450D and it was placed either on a gorilla pod or a tripod. The shutter speed was set to 1/160s and I changed flash power based on the aperture setting. Each lens was focussed using camera's live view.

Of course the setup is not ideal as the camera angle and amount of light was not fixed but it should give some idea how each lens performs. The test photos can be seen in my flickr set: M42 Bear test

The first lens to test was Vivitar 35mm f1.9. I hoped it would to perform well as I am planning use it indoors a lot. The focal length nearly matches 50mm in a crop sensor camera and the f1.9 makes this lens fast. But with wide open aperture it is clearly a bit soft. Luckily sharpness improves at f2.8 and onwards. Unfortunately I did not have Canon EF 35mm f2.0 to compare - I guess it would be sharper wide open.

The mysterious Amanda De Luxe 135mm f3.5 was next. This lens was softest of all three and lacked contrast all the way. Well, I did not expect too much...

Finally it was time for tiny SMC Takumar 55m f1.8. This multi coated lens was supposed to be pretty sharp and it did not let me down. Already at f1.8 it produces surprisingly sharp results and at f2.8 it is very nice.

I am not disappointed as none of the lenses was total disaster. Compared to their price they are good enough and SMC Takumar 55mm f1.8 seems to be excellent. As soon as possible I will take them outdoors one day and try out more. In any case I will keep them all untill I run out of storage space.

Back to the 70s - vintage photography

Maybe I saw it as a cheap way to get some decent prime lenses or maybe it was just interest in experimenting. In any case, I ended buying bunch of old camera gear from an elderly gentleman. With reasonable price I got Asahi Pentax Spotmatic F film SLR, Vivitar 35mm f1.9, Takumar SMC 55mm f1.8, mysterious 'Amanda De Luxe' 135mm f3.5, light meter and some accessories. I think most of them were manufactured during the 70s.

The primes have M42 mount so I will be able to use them with my Canon 450D as soon as the adapter arrives. But I could not wait and I had to go and buy a roll of film. The first surprise was the price of the film. I have forgotten that taking a photo actually costs something with film camera and paying 4 GBP for a roll made me think. I also needed battery for the light meter of the camera. Other than the that it is completely mechanic and does not need electricity to take photos.

I had to do some research on how to use the camera and each lens. The easiest one is the Takumar SMC 55mm f1.8 and it is quite close to how modern DSLR works in manual mode. I start by setting the aperture first. Then I check the light meter reading and I adjust the exposure time. Finally I check the focussing - there is no autofocus or focus confirmation light.

With Vivitar 35mm f1.9 I need to check light meter value using a switch on the camera. This sets the aperture of the lens to my setting and light metering can be done. In case of the Takumar the light metering was automatically adjusted based on selected aperture. So there is one more step compared to that.

The 135mm is even more complicated because it does not have a way to preview aperture. This makes things tricky as focussing is difficult with small aperture. Therefore you need to do light metering with the selected aperture first, then open the aperture and focus the lens. After this you must return the aperture setting to the previous value. And all this must be done assuming no changes in the situation.

After taking a shot I have yet another thing to do. There is no EXIF data on film so I have to write the settings down on my notebook. Of course this is optional but I have been trying out new lenses so I want to know how they perform in different situations. At least I do not have to write down ISO... it is same for the whole roll of film.

I have not seen the results of my film shooting yet so I have no clue how well Spotmatic F works and how the lenses perform. I have to take couple more shots and then take the roll to the film processing. I guess there will be some places still doing it with reasonable price.

Just a couple days of film shooting has thought me many things. Most importantly I have much more respect for photographers prior to digital age or autofocus. Capturing the right moment with manual gear required quite some skills and experience. Photography is so much easier today. But the artistic side of photography is as difficult as ever.

Apple iPad and content publishing

Yesterday was the day of the expected iPad tablet computer from Apple. Check my blog post on my other blog: My thoughts about Apple iPad and eNewspaper/eMagazine publishing.