Insert Clever Title Here

So I ended up choosing to get a Kenko 2x Teleplus Pro 300 DGX for my latest camera toy.

A few quick impressions.  Yes the Sigma 150-500mm will try and auto-focus with this converter…. but and it is a big one.. it won’t be very successful.  In bright light you can get focus but it requires a tripod and a lot of luck at the long end of the range.  So you are better off switching to manual focus.  In fully auto mode I found the d7000 tended to over compensate for the F stop which pushed out to f13 at 500mm, and so the ISO jumps to 1600.  So, once again push to manual. Even my Nikkor 18-105mm does autofocus with this teleconverter.

It is going to take me a while to get the hang of this new teleconverter, but first impressions they say are the ones that count.  My impressions are nice.  Yes images aren’t as sharp, there are issues with focus.  But the EXIF data is all correct, the Kenko works with my Sigma perfectly.

Part of the major issue with focus is that most of my lenses don’t hard stop at infinity.  Which means looking through the view finder to get the image as sharp as possible. Quiet hard to do when a mm movement will reduce sharpness dramatically.

And if you have ANY dust devils on your sensor… you will notice them straight away.  I am going to have to get the D7000 cleaned before the Point Cook Airshow, at f13 the shots are full of dust.

So here are two moon shots the settings in camera and are copied from one shot to the other in lightroom3 so are identical. These are the uncropped versions, click on the images for the bigger versions on Flickr. ( But I did do a dust clean up on them )

The Moon at 500mm

The Moon at 1000mm


The Set up:

Enjoy.

( See also 11mm to 1000mm a slideshow showing shots from one location zooming in on the complete focal range I have access to. )

This shot is from 8.5km away…

Tags: D7000, Missing from the Exif, Photos by Wolf
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Finally getting some more money from all those kind folks that have purchased stuff from my Redbubble Account.

Due to the Wolfcatcubs currently (and for the next 30+ years I think) Redbubble is the only money that I have to spend on new toys for the camera. ( Hint hint hint )  Of course in the last few days I have no offers on my $5999 print, so no new d4 for me, but I will have about $400 to spend in the next few weeks.

With so many toys I still NEED, I thought I would put out my list of possibles and see what others think.

I could get one of the following… to go with a Nikon 90 and D7000

• AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G
• Cokin U960 Z-Pro Graduated Neutral Density Kit
• or either the 1.4 or 2x Teleconverter for my Sigma 150-500mm

of course I’d like all of these… but you can’t have it all can you.

Perhaps there is something else in the ballpark that I really should get?

Thoughts below please…

–

update: brought a Kenko Teleplus Pro 300 2x Converter.

Tags: D7000, Missing from the Exif by Wolf
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Now, regular followers of mine on Twitter and this blog know that I am a keen amateur photographer.

But that is not to say I will just give away my work.

In light of a number of recent posts people have done about “free” photography and the real cost of getting some of these shots, I have done some thinking around commercial use of my photography. I have decided in no way related to the announcement last week of the Nikon D4 that the shot below is worth USD $5999 RRP. (for the autographed version ( Limited edition of 1 ))

–  Update –

In NO way related to the announcement of the Nikon D800e today… none what so ever… I have decided that this image is on sale at USD $3300

—-

I could tell you about how much the camera cost, the lens, the tripod, the fuel for the car to get to the location, the time and planning to get the shot, the years of waiting for just the right moment, the software and computer equipment to process the shot.

I could point out how this has a lot more going for it that a shot of a field ( even if that shot is 3meters across ) and is dramatically cheaper.

I could say how people want to just use my shot and give me credit for it in the hope that it gives me more publicity…

I could just tell you about the new Nikon D4 and how cool that camera sounds.

( Excuse me whilst I wipe drool up from my keyboard )

Completely unrelated to the last statement I promise….. this shot is now worth the same as the Nikon D4….

and all the details on when and how this shot was taken are in my Missing from the EXIF blog post

or you can buy it Redbubble but that version is unsigned…

The $5999 version will be signed. Perhaps it is my signature that is worth the most money after all.

–

Update:

ok.. really the just confirmed D800 is best suited to my style of photography…  36megapixel FX with 15.5megapixel DX for my DX lenses…  drool…..

–

Tags: D7000, General, Missing from the Exif, Photos, Redbubble by Wolf
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These are my top 10 images from 2011.  Some are shots that are for sale, others are stories and events.

I’d like to thank all those that encourage my photography over the last 12 months from those that purchased prints, to the countless who RT’d my tweets and left comments here and on Flickr.  And thanks for putting up with all the #wolfcatcubs photos as well.

Hopefully next year I will be able to get out some more… but I doubt it.

Wolf.

In reverse order of date taken.

Now that is a bolt of lightning

Finally got a nice clear bolt of lightning… now if only I had a clear view of the sky…..

Monstering Melbourne

Over 20,000 views makes this my most popular image on flickr.

and all the details on when and how this shot was taken are in my Missing from the EXIF blog post

And for sale at Redbubble

Simplicity

This has a Japanese feel to it for me. Shot from the End of North Road, at 500mm.

And for sale at Redbubble

Dancer

Something about this shot sings to me. The simplicity, the story and the power.

And for sale at Redbubble

Mum and Zara

Choosing one shot of the #wolfcatcubs was hard, this one for me says it all.

Red and White – Moomba Fireworks

The first time I actually went to Moomba.

And for sale at Redbubble

The Belly of The Beast

After a number of trips to Avalon, I finally got lucky. Not only did I have the right gear, (Nikon D7000 + Sigma 150-500mm Lens) but I got to see this aircraft fly.

Contemplating the day that was

One of the first shots taken with my Sigma 150-500mm. A lens that 12 months later I am still in love with.

Step by Step, showing the Lightroom processing for the the shot here

And for sale at Redbubble

Keep your Cool

(from one of the only out of the city photo trips I did all year)

And for sale at Redbubble

The long shot… North Road Jetty #nyemelb

Details and Background about this shot here

And for sale at Redbubble

Tags: cubs, D7000, Media, Missing from the Exif, Nikon D90, Photos, Redbubble by Wolf
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Must say it is nice to have 10 min to myself to finally update the blog with a non Wolfcatcubs related photo and Behind the Exif Blog Post.

So this is the story of this image…

I’ll break down the day as it happened as was planned.  Now Melbourne is not known for its tropical storms.  This is both good and bad for me.  Good as I hate humidity and the last few days in Melbourne have been torture, but very bad for taking storm photos. The BOM had been saying for a few days that big storms were due.  So the night before involved checking all the gear, making sure the camera was charged, the Solmeta GPS was charged and the cards were emptied.  Nothing worse than a rare storm event and not having something right

The above radar image shows the time I left home. I’d been watching the weather all day and had a rough idea on when it was due, seeing this cell and its track meant I knew it would miss me, but it would provide some good shots.

Lucky for me, there was a second cell on the radar.  The second cell was the one that I would get my shot from.  The first cell did provide some nice outflow clouds and I saw a few lightning bolts, but nothing on camera.

There were a number of people down at my fav location.  The trusty End of North Road location.  The advantage of heading here was that I knew how to look at the radar on my HTC Incredible S in comparison to my location which told me to stay longer than the first cell passing as well.

So with all the gear set up, I was ready for the storm.  The second radar image is approx when the shot was taken.

And thus here is the gear as the storm moved in.

It was also the first time I got to test out my new tripod the Manfrotto MT294A3 290 with 804RC2 Head.  Must say it worked a treat even in the strong outflow winds.  (Look at the strap on the camera)

The shot is taken on manual mode to address the issue of the balance from the dark side of the image under the cloud with the bright side of the sun coming through.

Post processing consisted on a small lens correction and crop, with a touch of a graduated filter to address the slightly over exposed right side of the image.

As the storm got closer I timed the run back to the car with about 1/2 second to spare. Whilst the D7000 is listed as water resistant, the Tokina 11-16mm and the Solmeta GPS Pro aren’t. Further given the solid wall of rain that was coming sideways, I’m sure the D7000 would not have coped.

So days of planning went into this shot, and oh yeah mother nature help as well

This shot is now my most popular on flickr for favs and comments…  so thanks to all of your for the comments.

And of course you can buy this image as well ( just think Xmas is coming   )

And the EXIF Data

Tags: D7000, gps, Missing from the Exif by Wolf
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We all know that a huge percentage of photos are right time right place.  For me this was even more so yesterday heading home from work.

Those that know me know I carry my DSLR camera with me nearly everywhere.  Yesterday proves why.  The best photo is always the one you get with the camera you have.  To that end it is preferable that you have a better camera. So walking through town on my way home mother nature kindly put on a very nice rainbow. ( This shot for example is from my phone)

I had no more than 10min to spend getting shots by which time the rainbow had gone.

I used a Nikon D7000 with the kit 18-105mm lens.  When I could see where the rainbow was facing, I quickly walked up to Fed Square so I had the foreground element I was after.  Rainbows are all very nice, but framing a foreground adds an extra dimension to the shot.  I didn’t have my 11-16mm Tokina on me, so decided to go for the stitch later panorama series of photos.

When shooting panoramas it really helps to move the camera off Auto Mode as well.  This way your shot has even lighting across the whole image.  If you shoot them in auto, you will end with dark and light banding as each shot has a different exposure.  You can if you have time shoot in manual to pull up the dark parts of the shot if you want, but I was racing the setting sun with this one.

This shot had a bit of post processing as well.  Given I was racing time to get all the frames for the panorama as well. In Lightroom all that I did was just apply the lens correction to all of the shots.  This takes out the barrel distortion and vignetting as well making stitching much easier.  Then I exported all the full size images as JPG’s to Microsoft ICE.  I did try Photoshop, but ICE did a much better job of stitching.

Then came the fun part.  Images never look the same on a monitor as they do on the back of the camera.  In this case all of the Fed Square was to dark.  The sky was balanced how I wanted it, but not the people.

In Photoshop I created a Curves adjustment layer, then created a mask for the bottom half of the image. Then I adjusted the curves to help pull out the rich golden tones that I hadn’t pulled up in the raw shots.

All up, about 30 min of processing work for this shot…

I’m a really pleased with the final image and hope you are as well….

(P.S Now you can buy it as a large photographic print as well as in a mounted print…. )

Tags: D7000, HTC - Incredible S, Missing from the Exif, Photos, Redbubble by Wolf
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As you may be aware and the large bags under my eyes from lack of sleep attest to I have just become a father to twins.  Now being a keen photographer as well, I wanted to make sure I captured their first moments in this world.  I thought whilst I still had a touch of sanity in my brain left I’d write down some pointers for taking photos, and tech..I’ll leave all the machines that go ping to the hospital of course.

You’ll need to do a bit of planning, but given that you get one moment to experience, well in my case two, you do kind of want to get it right.

Firstly, work out with the one doing all the work what she is comfortable with.  This will stop arguments down the track before you start sharing photos that she and possibly the rest of the world doesn’t want to be seen.  As a friend on Twitter told me..“What has been seen, can’t be unseen”.

Whilst the best photo you always get is the one with the camera you have on you at the time, there are still a few things to make life easier.  You will want to check that you can take photos to begin with.  Some places get a bit funny about it and you certainly don’t need to be having an argument with the doctors at that time

Next, don’t take all your gear, you won’t need it. In my case I took a D7000, and 178-105mm lens and a 50mm f/1.8 and my SB700… Not even using the 50mm lens till much later in the day. Then make sure it is all charged, days in advance. If you have a real flash, take a spare set of batteries, and spare cards for the camera as well. If you wanted to use a friends camera make sure you are familiar with it, even in automode before hand.

Double check the timestamp on your camera is accurate.  You will want that to be correct in the years to come.

So, we have the gear, we have permission, and everything is charged.  Don’t forget the camera. I know of cases where this has happened.  If you have a checklist for hospital, put the camera etc on that list. Moreover, if you don’t have a checklist for hospital, make one.

<drum roll>The big day…. </drum roll>

Unless you are a professional photographer who can work under intense emotional pressure, put the camera on automode.  You don’t want to be stuffing around with settings at the time.  Make sure if you are shooting on a DSLR, shoot RAW, at the maximum resolution your camera shoots at.. This gives you the option later to tweak white balance etc with no impact on the images.

Most important at this point, pay attention to the moment.  Sure having the photos is great, but missing the moment for a photo, I think not.  I didn’t get some photos because I was in awe at what was happening, so should you be.

Then, we you get the chance, take LOTS of photos.  Babies move a lot, at least with a real flash on the camera, which of course you can bounce behind you in a white room nicely you will get some keepers. Try not to use the onboard flash, it creates nasty shadows and points into very delicate little eyes.  Another option is to shoot at a higher ISO and in shutter priority mode at 125 or higher.

A few other tips for photos, you can act as a sense of scale.  You’ll soon forget how small they were, putting a little hand next to yours will give you that. Shoot the little details as well.  The hands, feet, ears and nose.  People look at these for family resemblance.

If your camera is in fully automode you can hand the camera to the nurses or staff to get a photo of you as well.  You will want shots of you with them as well as them.

I did my 50mm shots of the girls about 4 hours after they were born once things had calmed down a little. Then I did the uploading of the images.  I took my EEPC Slate, which let me deal with the RAW files in lightroom, but onboard processing will do just fine as well for those first shots.

Black and white photos of babies are done for a reason.  It evens out skin tones.  A new born babies skin can be anything from yellow to bright red.  Shooting RAW gives you more flexibility to process these post the event.

Then make a backup of all the images.  There are going to be images that if you lose, you will never get back.  That night I then made offsite backups of the RAW files as well.  You can never have too many backups.

So that covers your photos, but a few other things you are going to need.  If you have a laptop, take the charger for your smart phone as well.  It will run out of charge, you will be making a lot of calls. Get a cheap Bluetooth headset or a mic for your phone as well.  That way you can have a coffee and make all the calls you need to on the day without fretting about running out of charge and still having a hand free.

Finally at this point breath, relax and enjoy those memories of sleep.

Tags: cubs, D7000, Missing from the Exif, Photos by Wolf
1 Comment »

( due to my blog being nuked when my host went down… click here for my ASUS EEPC Slate Review )

One thing comparing the Incredible S to the Desire that has been dramatically improved is the camera.  Not just the bump from 5 to 8megapixels, but the processing software seems to have been given some real attention.  The Desire’s camera was “flat” in the shots it took and for me wasn’t worth using.

The Incredible S however is a very rich, vibrant.  It isn’t a DSLR ( which I carry with me nearly everywhere), but it is a great point and shoot camera for a wide variety of shooting environments.

The camera does low light very well, and limits ISO Noise very very well. One issue with lowlight though is that it pushes more red into images than is necessary.  Whilst the lighting at the nightclub where I took the photos of the Cat Empire, was heavily skewed red, this red dominance also came out in the sunset shot that I took at the river, there at least I had the Nikon D7K to get a much more realistic colour balance out of the shot. Which also is a case of apples and oranges, one is phone, one is prosumer DSLR

The flash on the camera is up to the task, but you will notice that the band shots don’t have the flash on, because I wanted photos of the band, not the back of people’s heads.  You might want to remember that next time you’re at a concert. The great thing is that the Incredible also remembers the last state the flash was on as well, even when you exit the app.  A nice touch, that means you can take photos quickly without having to reset the camera every time.

For reasons that are not knee bone is connected to the leg bone type of logic, if you are using the phone is being used as a WIFI hot spot ( which is great if you don’t have the USB cable with you, or you wish to share it with a few friends ), you can’t use the flash.  I’m sure there is a good technical reason for this, but I can’t think what it was.

I’d much rather that the effects vs the settings could have been switched.  Then I am a lot more of purist when it comes to photography anyway.  The face detection works really well, even if the subject is in the background of the image, and the cameras inherent depth of field gets everything in focus. White Balance etc all seem to work just fine but nested as they are, tweaking one item, such as white balance, involved more clicks as sub items take over the menu structure.

The geotagging feature is great to leave on, but is one that I would have given higher priority to in the menus.  I would love to be able to one click turn it off and on for photos as I went.  Photos from home for example would not be tagged or from a friends place, but out in public tag away is the way I like to shoot.  The GPS seems to get a fix very quickly, often one or two shots in a new location and they are tagged. A cursory look at images I have uploaded to flickr shows the location very accurately as well.

Sure, the camera has nice little effects, to be honest the only one I would consider using is the depth of field filter.  Even then unless it was something I couldn’t get a feel for a particular shot that I was after.  As a rule, and this applies to all photos that you take with your phone etc, don’t and I mean DON’T apply camera filters.  Why, because in 12 months time, or even the day after you won’t have the unedited version.  The photos off the Incredible should print really well, and unless you have the “clean” version you are going to regret not having it sooner rather than later.

But, words are words, images are images…  I let them do the talking… ( ok, with just a touch of voice over…. )

(All images link to full size flickr version )

Dull Sunset Comparison

(Plus the Nikon D7000 that took the shot)

Nikon D7000

Nokia N8

HTC Incredible S

Nokia N95-8gb

Nokia X-6

HTC Desire

JVC GC – FM1

Notes:

The order is how I judge the devices.

Unsurprisingly the DSLR wins , Next is the amazing Nokia N8, which is simply amazing as a camera on a phone. But given the hardware the Incredible S was against, it did do very well.

DPI, the higher the number the better the print.  72DPI is great for onscreen, 300DPI is better for printing, this is reflected broadly in filesize.

The D7000 shot was taken in RAW and exported via Lightroom 3. I do have the Solmeta GPS for the D7000, but it wasn’t plugged in J, the other phones that didn’t get a GPS fix had not been used in sometime and were not already on, when I did the test.

Both the Desire and the Incredible S are lacking much in the way of EXIF data, so a full comparison of EXIF Data is not possible.  Either this is an ongoing firmware issue, or shows the limitations of the HTC Camera System.

Final point, remember that the Nokia N95-8gb is from 2007, so it is the oldest of all off the above devices by a number of years. Still the camera in that phone still stands up.

And here are some more shots from the Incredible S

Good light

Very dark room

The Macro as I said is fantastic.  Add the touch the screen to move the focus point and you can get some great close up photos.  The text in these images is nice and crisp.

This is a pretty sunset….

HTC Incredible Sunset

Nikon D7000 Sunset

As you can see from above, the HTC made the sky a lot pinker than it was.  Whilst most people wouldn’t care.. I do.

And now some night shots..

First from the HTC Desire

Now two from the Incredible S ( at both ends of the zoom).

And thanks for getting to the end of this rather long post…. The camera as I said is a great point and shoot, and is a good phone camera.

Tags: D7000, HTC - Incredible S, Missing from the Exif, N8, n95, n95, nokia, Photos by Wolf
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For something different, this Missing From the Exif, is more about how a photo can tell a different story to the subject matter, the location or even the composition of the original image. To be fair to the original image this is about a 20% crop, to remove some sun flare and the fact the image was a little top heavy.

Yet, this is the image that I saw through the view finder, that is it is the image I wanted. The only treatment to the image was to crop in Lightroom, with a slight push to the blacks. The image was shot in Auto No Flash Mode into a very clear setting sun, with my Sigma 150-500mm Lens at 500mm.

The reason for the 500mm for portrait photos like this, the subject often doesn’t know you are getting the shot. I am also a big fan of portrait photography where a person tells a story, but that the person isn’t the story at the same time. Makes sense to me, so I’ll stick with that as an explanation.

The truth behind this photo is that, the frozen moment isn’t real. Not with the title that I have given it. Whilst this image does feel like someone pausing for a moment in thought and reflection, they weren’t. There was a young couple fishing off the pier, and he was just checking on some lines. He was in this position for only a few seconds.

Perhaps giving away the title of this image will remove some of the magic. For me, it might help you look at photography in more detail. Wonder what the image was, and what both the subject and the photographer are trying to say.

But yes, sometimes a good story, is just that.

The EXIF Data

and the image on Flickr:

Tags: Missing from the Exif by Wolf
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So I finally have a Nikon D7000 to play with.  Sadly it is not mine however, and I shall cry myself to sleep for a while over that.

To put the camera through it paces I thought I would head to one of my usual spots, take just the Sigma 150-500mm lens and see what I could get. Whilst looking for shots, I walked back from the jetty a bit and found the perfect composure I was looking for.  I am a big fan of taking photos of people, where you can’t tell who the person is.  If you want to enter shots into competitions for example, they often want release forms for the subject.  Not having the subject identifiable fixes this issue.

I took 18 shots to get this one,whilst it is either the first or last shot that ends up being the keeper, this was in the middle of the series.  I was looking for a breaking wave and the girls hair to be flowing just the right amount. All the while I was kneeling on concrete to get the right angle for the shot as well.

Here is the Final Version of the Image as you can buy it on Redbubble

Each of these images opens into a new tab/window, in Flickr Lightbox mode so you can see all the details.  These are untouched screenshots, so that you can see the whole process I went through. You will notice a few extra steps, where I tried a few things, which didn’t work, then carried on, such as a black and white version. But I haven’t commented on them.

The time frame for this processing was just under 5 min of actual sitting in front of the computer time.

Stage 1: This is the Raw Shot. So, I know I have the composition right, but the colour balance and weighting of the shot isn’t quite what I was after…

Stage 2: As my Sigma 150-500mm Lens is in the Lens, issues such as barrel distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration can be fixed in one click.

Stage 3: I knew I wanted to pull the blacks up in this image, so I did a quick tweak of the black clipping just to see if it was worth progressing with the image processing. Often, once you start processing, with an end result in mind, you will come across images that you just decide not to finish with.

Stage 4: Ah Autotone… I like you as much as I hate you. It always overblows shots as far as I am concerned. I always end up pulling the shot back, but it can be a good quick fix to a number of issues.

Stage 5: And yep, the next thing after the autotone, is to pull the exposure back from the +0.65 that Lightroom’s Autotone did, back to +0.23. So some of the image is brought out, but not to much.

Stage 6: And like Stage 5, this was a tweak to pull the brightness down, so that the image is a lot more muted over all.

Stage 7: I needed to go back and pull the blacks up a bit more at this point, to push detail out of the shadows that had crept in so that your eyes follow the lines in the image.

Stage 8: Hand holding a 3kg lens of camera and lens in high winds whilst kneeling on concrete does of course mean your shot is never going to be perfectly straight. This was just a tweak to the rotation to line up the vertical elements.

Stage 9: This is a two stage process. Firstly using the Brush Stroke tool, I selected the girl, and the pole she was leaning against so that I could apply a filter directly to just those parts of the image. As Lightroom, remembers the last settings, it of course made them over exposed, but it is handy to see the shapes that I was covering.

Stage 10: Now I just reduce the exposure on the brush tool path, from 1 to -0.88, which drops the colour and the detail from the girl leaving a stronger shadow and removes the distraction of the details of her clothing, but keeps her hair and the rest of the image in balance.

Stage 11: Once you have finished doing the major changes to the balance of an image, what looked straight before may not look as straight again. So this was to fix the aesthetic straightness of the image.

Stage 12: In all the above tweaks the golden colour had become a little washed out. So this was just a tweak to the Clarity and Vibrance to pull the image up a bit.

Stage 13: And to finish off, just a small push to the saturation to ensure the image colour and feel was as rich as I wanted.

And the Exif Data for the Shot:

and the Flickr Version of the Shot…

Tags: D7000, Missing from the Exif, Photos, Redbubble by Me
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