Apertoire

Fighting with the image back log

2011-05-01T09:32:00.003+01:00

It has been quite busy with other things during the early 2011 and I haven't had too much time or interest for the photography. One reason might be the huge amount of photos waiting to be sorted. That might sound familiar for you, too.

Having 15 000 RAW photos sitting on your hard disk takes up space and makes the back ups unnecessary large. I have been trying to sort photos but the problem is that after couple months I simply don't remember why the photo was taken.

So the only solution seems to have a strict rule to sort photos right after the import. Use the rating tool or something similar and mark those photos you want to keep. And delete all the rest.

Winter time and camera gear

2011-01-09T20:24:00.006Z

It was -24 C in Finland during my xmas holiday there but it did not prevent me from photographing. Cold weather like that just requires some preparations. The most important one for your gear is to prevent condensation.

Condensation happens when cold camera is brought indoors. Fog appears on lens surfaces etc and that moist can damage your camera internals as well. Preventing condensation is simple. You need put a camera inside a plastic bag before entering indoors. Wrapping camera inside a bag prevents the warm and moist air reaching the cold surfaces of the camera. Take the wrapped camera indoors and wait half an hour or so to let the camera to warm up.

Cold weather affects camera and accessory batteries as well. In cold they do not hold their charge well and you end up running out of battery sooner. Have an extra battery and store it inside your coat to keep it warm. When the cold camera battery runs out of juice, swap it with the warm one. You should be able to get some extra shots from the empty one after it has warmed up. Do not put the camera inside your coat because of condensation issue.

Especially with older manual lenses the lubrication used in the gears gets stiff in freezing temperatures. There is not much you can do without putting the whole lens apart. Modern lenses use synthetic lubricants and they are not that prone to get stiff. But modern equipment has a lot of plastic parts and some plastics become very brittle in freezing conditions. So be extra careful.

Last but not least is your own body. Keep your fingers and head warm!

Manual lenses presentation

2010-11-02T17:57:00.002Z

Here is my presentation for Edinburgh 2010 Photocamp:

Manual lenses presentation

View more presentations from Petteri Hietavirta.

Tips for photographing airplanes and airshows

2010-09-12T11:28:00.008+01:00

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

2010-07-03T11:01:00.003+01:00

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

2010-06-18T22:16:00.004+01:00

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

2010-05-07T21:01:00.004+01:00

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

2010-04-03T09:01:00.007+01:00

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

2010-03-27T15:44:00.007Z

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

2010-03-19T22:42:00.006Z

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

2010-03-14T17:14:00.004Z

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

2010-01-28T21:22:00.002Z

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.

xmas card 2009

2009-12-11T12:37:00.004Z

This year we used some christmas lights and long exposure:

Click to view in larger size.

Have a nice holidays and hopefully Santa brings new photography gadgets!

Stolen photo and how to deal with it

2009-10-23T18:49:00.004+01:00

I was expecting this to happen sooner or later. Someone copied a copyrighted photo from my flickr account to a blog. He did not ask permission and I have 'all right reserved' as a license. Actually, I could not have given permission as the photo features three students. They are clearly recognisable and I do not have model release from them so using such photo for commercial usage is out of question.

The blog happened to be a marketing tool of a company providing some kind of educational services. I contacted the company and requested to remove it. This happened soon but they ended up replacing it with someone else's copyrighted photo. I don't know if permission was asked... I doubt.

There are couple things a photographer can do to protect his assets. Watermarking is quite common but it adds an additional step to the workflow and distracts viewers. Uploading low resolution version only is another way to prevent photos ending up in magazines but it wont stop bloggers.

In case you see your photo used without permission you should contact the admin of the website. Sometimes they react and the photo is removed. In case of printed media like magazines removal is impossible so you should be able to receive some kind of compensation. I am not an expert so I have no clue how much and so on.

But sometimes the website's admin wont do a thing and photo stays online. Depending where the site is hosted a so called 'DMCA takedown' notice could help. I have not tried it myself but I found good information how to write such and to whom to send it.

Canon EOS utility and tethered shooting preview quality

2009-10-13T19:57:00.002+01:00

Canon DSLRs come with a software bundle and one of the applications is EOS Utility. Among other features it allows you to transfer your shots right away to your computer over USB cable and it also displays a quick preview of the photo on the computer screen. This is pretty handy because it is much easier to see results on the big screen. Obviously the USB cable length limits your movements so I guess people will use this for studio shots mostly.

I was playing around with this feature and I noticed that the preview had rather bad quality. After trying out different settings it turned out that shooting in RAW+JPEG mode instead of RAW only resulted better previews. Apparently the quick preview's RAW conversion outputs only low resolution images.

More tips for moon and scenery photographing

2009-10-12T19:15:00.007+01:00

If you have read my previous post about moon photographing you already know the basics at least. But photographing the moon with scenery can be tricky. Let's say there is a night time scenery like sea and the moon light casts nice lit path on the waves. Very romantic you know.

First you take a photo so that the sea is more or less correctly exposed. Because it is pretty dark, you have to use long exposure. Naturally this is not an issue because you have brought your tripod. When you check your shots, you will notice that the moon is badly overexposed.

Unfortunately most of the digital cameras have rather limited dynamic range compared to your eyes. This means that you cannot get both the sea and the moon correctly exposed. But you can always cheat a little bit and take two different shots. I used the image above for the sea and then I took another photo of the moon with my telephoto lens. With these two images it was simple to copy the correctly exposed moon over the overexposed one.

As you see, I also moved the moon down and made it bigger compared to the original. How good that looks is matter of taste but at least the moon is not overexposed anymore. Sometimes you have to manipulate your shots a bit and I think it is fine as long as you are not working as a photojournalist.

Becoming a strobist - YN RF-602 ordered

2009-10-10T17:45:00.005+01:00

I ordered Yongnuo RF-602 radio trigger with two receivers yesterday. The reason for ordering this set is that I do not have any way of using my existing Canon 430EX II flash off camera. I was thinking buying a remote TTL cord but I dropped that idea after reading about radio triggers.

There are many different brands for radio flash triggers. Some are quite expensive like Pocket Wizards and some are cheaper. In my case I did not want to spend too much so I took a look at the eBay selection. Most cheap triggers like Cactus V2/V4 use 433 MHz frequency but Yongnuo RF-602 uses higher 2.4 GHz frequency. This should give longer range and better reliability based on reviews. RF-602 might be a bit more expensive but 40 GBP for a transmitter and two receivers is not too bad.

At the moment I have only one flash but I am trying to figure out what kind of flash should the second one be. It should have manual power control, reasonable power rating and low price. I do not need any automatic features so there is no point of buying another Canon 430EX II. Yongnuo produces flashes matching my requirements and they are pretty cheap (27-30 GPB ebay). Other option could be a second hand flash unit but popular models are hard to get.

Hopefully my trigger package arrives soon. Waiting new gear to arrive is always difficult...

Edinburgh Photocamp 2009

2009-10-04T21:26:00.003+01:00

Today I attended a photocamp event and I have to say it was a day well spent. It was the very first Photocamp event in Edinburgh. Photocamps are very informal seminars and they share quite a lot with more IT specific Barcamp events.

The main idea of a Photocamp is that anyone is free to join, present and collaborate. There are no fixed plans and anyone is free to present a topic. In my case this meant having a quick presentation about camera lens qualities and how they affect the final photograph. I was not too well prepared so I felt a bit nervous. Luckily the atmosphere was warm and welcoming so it was not that bad thing to do after all.

Along many informative presentations there was also a possibility to try out small studio setup with several flashes, soft boxes and reflectors. I ended up in front of camera as well even though posing is not my favorite act. It was a first time for me to try out studio shooting with such a setup so I was a bit clueless what I could achieve but at least I got a chance to try out different light setups and so on.

In between sessions attendees were busy chatting about their interests, expressing their opinions and sharing their flickr contacts. For some people it was the first time they met their online contacts in real life. Such event is very good for networking and I also got plenty of advice for my plans to get couple radio triggers.

I understood that this kind of Photocamps are relatively new thing in the UK so you might not heard about such before. But if there is one being organized near you do not hesitate to participate. Having a presentation is not compulsory.

Edinburgh Photocamp

Photography podcasts

2009-09-28T19:25:00.004+01:00

I have to spend around 1.5 hours commuting every day so I have plenty of time to listen podcasts. Recently I found out that iTunes store has many photography related podcasts. There are even some videos in addition to ordinary audio podcasts.

Because I discovered existence of these podcasts only very recently I cannot recommend any yet. But there seems to be some good ones and at least TWiP (This week in photography) sounded interesting based on one episode. I guess after couple weeks I can publish my favorite list.

Lens stacking

2009-06-20T09:44:00.005+01:00

Sometimes I read about strange sounding ways of photography and lens stacking is one of them. The idea is to connect two lenses together in order to get higher magnification for close up shots. This can be done with a cheap stacking ring but it requires lenses to have the same filter thread size.

I tried out combining my Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS f3.5-5.6 and Canon EF 70-210mm f4.0. I attached the 70-200mm to the camera body. The problem with this kind of setup is to find suitable settings for each lens. I left focus to manual on both and did not try to adjust that at all. The zoom settings define the magnification and it should follow this simple formula: magnification = focal length of the primary lens / focal length of the reversed lens. So in case of my lenses I have range of 1.27 - 11.7 magnification - in theory.

There are some practical issues with this combination. Setting the focal length of the primary lens to 70mm vignetting occurs and cuts a good amount of corners off. At 210mm vignetting is gone but the lack of light makes focusing difficult. A good live view helps a bit but I ended up using bright led lamp to lit up the target during focusing. The actual photo is then lit by a flash.

Focusing is done in practice by moving the camera until the right part of the target is sharp. The depth of field is extremely shallow and high magnification shows up any camera shake. Shooting handheld with this long stacked lens is pretty tricky.

I uploaded some of my experimental shots to flickr under stacked tag

More information about the theory
http://www.peterforsell.com/macro.html#Magnification_of_stacked_lenses

Cheap tripod is better than no tripod

2009-05-10T15:45:00.007+01:00

I think the first accessory I bought for photography after the camera was a tripod. I had no clue how serious I will be with photographing so I did not feel like investing in an expensive tripod. Instead, I bought the cheapest one.

My choice was a brand new Hama Star 63 and I paid around 12 pounds for it. After half a year usage it is still in one piece but I am somewhat fed up with it. As one might guess, it is not the lightest one. Most of the parts are made of cheap plastic and it is somewhat unstable no matter how much you tighten it.

But even this low level tripod allowed me to take photos which would have been impossible to take hand held. Long exposure shots became possible as well as light painting. I think a tripod is one of the most cost effective photography gear.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory...

2009-04-27T21:16:00.004+01:00

I just realized I have been downgrading my photos because of a low quality UV filter. The bokeh looked horrible and focus seemed to be off so ended up setting up a test setup and shooting plenty of frames with different settings. Soon It was quite clear that cheap Jessops branded filter was the culprit. But I also learned quite a lot about how autofocus works and what might cause it to miss the spot. But more later with example photos.

My next purchase

2009-04-18T21:14:00.008+01:00

My colleague lent me his Kenko Extension tube set for couple days and I have to say that it is a must have. An extension tube is just an extender without any lenses inside. With the extension tube attached between the camera body and the lens you can sharpen closer and therefore photograph things in bigger size. Unfortunately long extension tube usually prevents auto focus so you have sharpen manually. A set of extension tubes is relatively cheap because of the simple construction and it takes less space in my camera bag than a proper macro lens.

But how sharp photos you can take with extension tubes? I think it depends how good your lens is. A good prime or a very sharp zoom lens are good candidates. I shot this example with Canon EF 70-200mm F4 L IS USM. The photo of 1 Swiss Franc coin year digits is cropped to show 1:1 size.

f8, 70mm, 1/100s, ISO 100 and full stack of Kenko extension tubes.

As mentioned above I do not own such tubes, yet. I have been postponing the purchase as I made a promise not buy more photography gear this month. Luckily it is already 18th...

How to photograph the moon

2009-04-08T18:37:00.010+01:00

Taking a decent moon photo is not too difficult but you need to have some equipment for it. The most important one is a proper tripod or similar support for the camera. Almost as important is a decent telephoto lens. A sharp 200 mm telephoto lens is a good start for photos like this:

But even if you have the best possible gear you still need to see the moon. So, check the moon phase calendar, weather forecast and head to a dark location. Usually cities have way too much light pollution and this reduces the contrast between the sky and the moon. Find a dark area with solid ground for your tripod.

Then set up your tripod as stable as possible. Do not extend it completely unless really necessary. Select your telephoto lens with longest focal length and remove any filters you have. Even high quality filters can cause unwanted flare.

Use low ISO setting to avoid noise - ISO 100 works well. I do not pay attention to white balance as I shoot on RAW which allows more post processing options. Use mirror lock up if available and use long timer to trigger the shutter. These help to reduce camera shake and therefore improve image quality. The choice between manual and automatic focus is up to you. When using a lens without distance view the autofocus might be a better option.

Finding the right aperture for your lens needs some experiment. Most lenses have their sweet spot around f8-f11. Any higher aperture number causes diffraction which reduces image sharpness. Too low aperture number leads to soft photos especially on cheaper zoom lenses.

After all this setup the last step is to aim the center of the moon and select the right exposure. There are calculators for moon photography but couple test shots give you a good idea anyways. Depending on your camera its exposure metering it might give totally misleading results so feel free to ignore it.

Take plenty of shots with different aperture and exposure times. At the post processing I use only green color component because it seems to have less noise compared to red. I also reduce saturation so the end result is black and white. Apply some sharpening, crop tight and upload to your favorite image gallery for feedback.

Edit: I added more tips for photographing the moon. Take a look!

Photographers legacy

2009-03-31T22:13:00.004+01:00

Recently I got to know about Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and his photographs. What makes his photographs really interesting is that they were meant to be color photographs at the time when color film did not exist.

He travelled around Russia taking photos of various places using his special camera around 1905-1915. His camera took three exposures for each light component. These sets of three black and white photos were very difficult to merge to a complete color print on his time but couple years ago they were scanned and processed using modern technology. Library of Congress has 'The Empire That Was Russia' exhibition and many of the processed photos can be seen online.

I wonder if Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky thought his photos would have such an important historical value after so many years. In our current lifestyle photos usually became useless as soon as nobody remembers where it was taken and who were on it. In case of digital photography I am not too sure how well digital archives survive for one hundred years. And how to write all the important information on the back of the digital image? In any case, I would be very curious to know what kind of piece of history future generations will find as fascinating as these old color photos.

Depth of Field calculator

2009-03-28T13:50:00.002Z

Most photographers know the effect of different apertures. The smaller aperture (=bigger f-value) the longer depth of field. But how long is the depth of field precisely?

I was quite surprised how much the distance from the subject affects the length of the depth of field. Let's imagine that we are taking a photo of a flower from one meter distance with 100mm f2.8 on 1.6 crop frame. Based on an online calculator the depth of field is 9.7 mm. But we want to double that because the flower is not completely sharp.

Stepping down to f5.6 gives depth of field of 19.3 mm. Now the dof is twice as long but the exposure time has become four times longer. In case of hand held photography this might be too much.

Another option is to keep aperture at f2.8 but take one step backwards so that the distance is 1.4 meters. This will give the same depth of field as above but without the expense of longer exposure time.

Canon 500D introduced

2009-03-25T18:57:00.004Z

Today I realized that my less than a year old Canon 450D is obsolete. Canon published new Canon 500D which replaces 450D in their product line. But after checking the specifications and preview from dpreview.com I did not rush to a camera store to pre-order it.

The camera shares same form factor as Canon 450D so there is no improvement in ergonomics except the new and sharper LCD screen. The internals of the camera have received some updates including a sensor with more pixels and a processor allowing video shooting. But the video shooting is clearly limited compared to 5D mark II and there is no possibility to connect external microphone.

The only feature I really would like to have from Canon 500D is its ability to shoot on higher ISO settings. I haven't seen any example shots with ISO 1600 or 3200 yet so I am curious how noisy they are compared to 450D's ISO 800 or 1600. Apart from this I think there is no need to upgrade for 450D owners - especially after checking 500D's price tag.

Bad weather for photographing

2009-03-23T19:30:00.000Z

Some time ago I was complaining about cloudy and dull weather on a photography forum. I was not happy how boring everything looked compared to brighter day. I received some feedback but I did not expect anything as I was just ranting. But that is the whole point. The camera records what you see. If your mood is already pessimistic there is very little chance to take photos telling the opposite.

Getting involved with photography

2009-03-22T16:09:00.000Z

One day I was thinking how and by whom I have been affected in the sense of photographing. I did not simply go to closest photo store and buy DSLR with lenses and other equipment. Instead, there has been slow progress going on for long time. But only until very recently I did not call photography my interest.

My father used to shoot a lot on slide film but I was only involved being a subject. Later on I did experiment a bit with his Minolta 7000i but photos were just casual snap shots. The interesting point with that camera was its broken autofocus so I ended up focusing everything myself.

A distant relative used to shoot much more and talk even more about photography. He also demonstrated the black and white developing and print process. I did not understand half what he said but I did read many camera magazines while visiting him. Maybe those artistic photos featuring women got my attention as a boy.

I did not have my own camera for a long time and the first one was a simple point and shoot. I chose the camera based on its size and ease to use. So I bought Canon IXUS 60. Being such a small camera it served well as a travel camera. I still have it and it is in good condition. But because of its limitations came the need for something else.

Actually, the topic of buying DSLR was brought up by my girl friend. She started to talk about how much better DSLR would be and she also listed up suitable models. I was rather hesitant because of the high price and I did not really see the need for such a camera. However, she managed to plant the idea in my mind and one day I bought Canon 450D with 18-55mm IS lens on the way home.

She has been giving quite a lot of comments about composition and style and I have been commenting her technical skills. Sometimes things get a bit heated but there is only one DSLR at the moment so we have to be able to co-operate. But we are both improving and for my surprise, I am the one spending time studying and trying out new things.

Welcome

2009-03-22T15:59:00.000Z

Apertoire is a blog about photographing and related matters. The author is relatively new in the world of photographing so every moment with the camera or photos teaches something new. Talking about your interest is a powerful way to learn - therefore this blog is established.