Hiking and photography

Still on my wish-list for next year:

Inspiration

These are all from my inspiration folder - I have unfortunately lost the sources for these images :(

Exploring timelapse

Still exploring timelapse techniques and scouting for good locations. In the meantime - here is a newly released stunning sequence from the international space station. Will be slightly difficult to top that location.

Buying an iPhone 4S... nearly

About 80-90% there now - below an example of a video fully shot with the phone. In the beginning you can sort of tell but later scenes are simply amazing.

Timelapse photography

Did my first technical timelapse experiment this morning. Not feeling too great yesterday so why not spend an early Sunday morning with some coffee and sun?

Doing this video was actually really fun and it tied together many of the things mentioned here before.

First things first - finding the sun
A sunrise is over quickly and it is vital to be positioned at the right place before the first rays enter the picture. The Photographers Ephemeris is a free application that allows you to see in detail the angle of the sunrise and sunset. This allows you to plan the exact location of where you should stand. As an example - below is the plan I used:

Timelapse gear
Once on site a few things are required:

• Camera (duh)
• Fully charged battery and spare (many shots=lots of energy)
• Tripod
• Plan on final video (length/number of frames etc)
• Coffee, newspaper and patience (will take a while)
• Intervalometer

The last component is key - an intervalometer triggers exposures at regular intervals. As luck would have it, the Magic Lantern custom firmware mentioned earlier is now much easier to use (new release in August) and also includes a software version that is sooo convenient. Works for most of the modern Canon cameras.

Editing
This is all created in Lightroom with the support of another free application called LRTimelapse. The homepage contains several great video tutorials on how to use it and timelapsing in general. Basically, it allows for intelligent and streamlined bulk editing of all settings stored in the .XMP-companion for each RAW-file.

There is also several pre-sets for the video encoding that is really helpful once the output is ready. It is a joy to use and it also allows for correcting the "jitter" that shows up. I still havent really learned how to do all of this yet but there is always a next time.

Lessons learned

• Plan in advance how many shots to take - for 8 fps or 12 fps between 480 and 720 shots are needed for one minute of movie
• Make sure the histogram is shown for each shot - very quickly the highlights will begin burning out when the sun appears
• Get a bean bag or something to remove that motion jitter occuring every now and then
• Protect the lens better - used my polarizing filter now which is not really adequate
• Take even more shots or over a longer time period - it is not a video camera..
• For multiple scenes - take a minimum amount of shots for e.g 20 seconds on screen - that would be 160 or 240 shots
• Shoot in manual mode and make sure white balance is not set to "Auto"
• Read up more on timelapsing techniques on the TimeScapes board
• Spend more time in editing :)

The inspiration for this really came from this video:

Fantastic scenery and he also uses a dolly to create the panning effect. Specifically this dolly, which seems really nice...

High-end photography

And since I am walking into the gear territory, here are some shots from the new frickin amazing Canon EOS 1D X. An example shown below:

EOS-1D X / EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS II USM / 1/1,000 F2.8 / 0EV / ISO51200
That last figure is just.. way out.

Mobile photography

Really keen on the new iPhone 4S with the upgraded camera. This would really allow for some mobile photography in the spirit of the last coupe of posts. Features include:

• 8 megapixels
• 1080p
• “73% more light“
• Faster picture-taking
• Improved lens
• Real-time stabilization

I am particularly interested of the improved lens which is an f/2.4 at about 30 mm. Below a sample photo and here are some more

Point and shoot

Inspired by this excellent post from David duChemin I dug through my old equipment storage and found an Ixus 750 that has seen very little use since my Australia trip many years back. During a run today I shot the photos below as an experiment, quickly and without stopping.





In general, I want to increase both the number of photos I take and the amount of feedback received in combination with a travelling lifestyle. I did the same in the military by taking a small APS camera with me to places where all other equipment would be either too big or too delicate. Further - these smaller, quicker digital shots allow for easy sharing and it's really fun to shoot them off to friends through e.g WhatsApp on the phone.

It is also neat to try out some of the more insane post processing alternatives to simply learn what works and what doesn't. Will most definitely use this as an optional way of bringing photography into the average day.

Portfolios

Checking my Lightroom library I now have 11 499 photos from today and all the way back to the millenium shift. In a previous post some of the ways of I have been sharing parts of this library was discussed.

However - one thing I still haven't really figured out is what a portfolio of the best work I have would look like and how I would maintain it. A dear friend just created one and I am really intrigued. Will try to work something out soon!

Getting back into it

Had some work and life come between me and and the writing. Will begin to post stuff here again regularly now. Below - a video using wide angles and slow motion that just felt.. really autumn and soft. I really like the color scheme as well, will try to recreate it in Lightroom asap. More!

Online output formats

Currently working on the output question - what are the ways you can show off your photos online? I have shot several events this fall/summer and my standard way of showing them to participants is to do a private set on Flickr and then distribute a Guest Pass link in whatever way I can (e.g email, facebook...). This allows me to at least in theory control who sees what and it also generates some interesting statistics. I often take shots when people are not aware that they are being photographed and I would not feel comfortable just exposing them freely to the world. Guest Passes can be quickly expired and then the door is firmly shut.

As I shoot events I often end up with a sequence of shots that tell a small contained story. I am now experimenting with framing several shots into one jpeg to emphasize this connection. The Print module in Lightroom seems to support this, but Im not sure if it is the most convenient way. Will try to show an example during the weekend.

What I would really like is something similar to the "Origami" setting in the ipad photo app, but a bit more dynamic. Havent found anything like it yet (a sort of mozaique-like layout). The only alternative I see right now is using Scribus to create a .pdf that could then be shown in an online pdf-viewer but that seems a bit overkill. Will try it though :)

A really nice alternative to Flickr could be 500 pixels, but it is more focused on creating an online portfolio with limited privacy options. They have a really inspiring 'Popular photos' section.

Light painting, night photography

Following last weeks attempts at light-painting I browsed around a bit more on the subject. Apart from forgetting the vital connector-thingy to my tripod, the main trouble I had was actually focusing on the subject. See... its dark... so I upped f-stops and made a wild guess. Apparently the simple way of doing night-time focusing is simply to buy a cheap laser and highlight the subject. Since autofocus works on some sort of light-phasing principle it can use this small beam to automagically focus - no need for flashlights.

Stumbling along I also found the group Light Painted Tunnels at Flickr, looks neat! Heres the Flickriver link

Video and encoding

This weekend I tried to shoot video for the first time and the results are both interesting and mixed. As an example I tried to do some narrow depth-of-field effects as shown in the video below... (mute the audio!!)

...however the result is a bit mucky. The parts that are out of focus are severly "blocky" and generally poorly displayed. I'm now trying to understand where and when this happens or if maybe this type of composition is not 'possible' technically.

My next attempt at this will be to use a different color profile to capture more detail in shadows. As shown before - the color profiles affect the algorithm for the video codec. Recently a new profile was released after one year of development, the Cinestyle by Technicolor.

The effect of this profile is clearly shown in the video below - just look at the immense difference in detail in the shaded areas between the different profiles:


Anyway - back to experimenting!

Photography weekend

Had a great weekend of photography with friends, a lot of gear in one place! Shot mixed videos/photos, will see if I can create something with it over the coming days/weeks. Below one of our nightshots - had some real fun with flashes and mobile cameras


ISO 200, 18 mm, f/7.1, 20 seconds, light: iPhone 4 flash

Even more video

Having fun exploring what my camera (EOS 550D) is capable of in the right hands and with the right complementary tools. This guy uses a combination of stuff to take this BMX-ride in the park to a different level.

Gear
Shooting mode: 60fps on camera
Shutter speed: 1/1000 to 1/2000 for freezing the action
24-105 L lens: responsible for those narrow DOF shots

Applications
Twixtor: From my understanding this is an application/plugin that is able to intelligently slow video down way lower than usual without artifacts
After Effects: Video editing suite to add the graphical elements to the video

Anyway, here it is!

David duChemin

One of the first books on photography I picked up was Within the Frame by David duChemin and I have not been able to let that one go. It is part photography, part philosophy and simply shock-full of photos that make an impact. After testing out a few different forms of taking photos this is the direction I would like to pursue for the time being. Set your sights high and all that. I just ordered his Vision and Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book and will try to use the information there on some of my existing shots to get the full workflow going.

David also has an extensive blog and portfolio. The shots below are from his Flickr account.

50 mm video

Ack! My camera (shooting the video), my lens (at east one of them) and a polarizing filter which I already have. No excuses!

Continued experimentation with 50 mm

Still trying to learn how to use this lens effectively. With the capability to very narrowly set where the focus will be the "story" of the photo must be thought through before shooting. A few examples below, click each image to see details:


OK photo! A bit too blurry in the foreground perhaps and the composition is so-so


Focus is where I wanted it to be, eye slides from left to right, vertical spoons "pop", texture of table cloth nice


Poor photo, key elements in foreground out of focus without any good reason.


Same here! Need to work those f-stops better!

Custom firmwares for Canon cameras

After some random browsing on photo-related sites I started to see references to a "new" phenomenon called Magic Lantern for Canon cameras. Apparently some clever hobbyist have reverse-engineered the firmware found in most major Canon models (5D, 550D, etc.) and built extensions on top of the standard functionality. The following is list of new stuff relevant to both shooting video and photos:

• Bit rate control (QScale parameter) for the H.264 encoder


• Zebra stripes for overexposed / underexposed areas


• Spotmeter, histogram


• Cropmarks (16:9, Cinemascope, Fisheye)


• Intervalometer (classic or HDR)


• Trap Focus: camera takes a picture when something comes in focus


• Remote release with either the LCD face sensor or audio trigger


• Rack focus


• Stack focus (Live View only)


• Lens data computation


• Onscreen audio meters


• Manual audio gain, selectable input source, disable AGC and digital filters


• Display time remaining during video recording


• Debug functions (display CMOS temperature, screenshot, logging)


• Fine tuning for ISO and shutter speeds; also ISO 25600


• Kelvin white balance


• Clean LiveView display without any overlays (selectable)


• On-demand auto tuning for ISO, shutter & kelvin white balance


• Quick access to some useful settings like HTP, ALO and contrast

Below a visual example of a really neat feature, focus assist:

Introduction video to Magic Lantern (a bit long)
Vimeo group for Magic Lantern here

This project is apparently built on the Canon Hack Development Kit where they have added some really interesting capabilities to the Point-and-Shoot range. I have an old Ixus 750 that I'm thinking of upgrading - shooting RAW-files seems really neat :) Primary added features:

• Professional control - RAW files, bracketing, full manual control over exposure, Zebra-Mode, Live histogram, Grids, etc.


• Motion detection - Trigger exposure in response to motion, fast enough to catch lightning.


• USB remote - Simple DIY remote allows you to control your camera remotely.


• Scripting - Control CHDK and camera features using ubasic and Lua scripts. Enables time lapse, motion detection, advanced bracketing, and much more.

Mountain ranges

Two things about the movie below:
(1) whoa.
(2) I want to go hiking in/near mountains again with my camera gear! And soon! That scenery is just amazing.

Early summer

Those light-green hues are just amazing, but it takes some fiddling on the back-end to make them "pop" as they do in reality. Apparently the camera still thinks its winter...

More video

Still trying to sort out how to drive a video workflow. Below, two videos from the same event but with very different styles. Both shot with Canon 7Ds, at the Holi festival in Spanish Fork, Utah.

I want to be here again

My current background - zen during workshops (with a black background)

Trying out the "video"-mode

Tried to shoot some video today, using the new lens. First useless attempt included below - fiddling around with the settings I managed to locate the full manual controls for the video mode and had very limited success in capturing one of our cats. Manually controlling focus using the screen on the back of the camera is difficult to say the least, one of those z-finders would be nice, or to arrange the scene for fixed focus/using high f-stops.


Technical test - it can only go up from here..! Shot in 50fps, a bit jerky when playing it back.

After an hour or so of experimenting the battery was severly drained - any more serious attempt at shooting something would probably require one or two additional batteries or one of those battery grips.

I currently dont have any solution for editing videos, searching for open source software yielded nothing and my current hypothesis is to use Adobe Premiere Elements 9, a scaled down version of their full offering.

First prime - 50 mm 1,4

Purchased my first prime! 50 mm 1,4 - this thing is delicious and almost pure glass. Very easy to get nice DOF-effects, but also very easy to misplace the focus. As shown below, with a small aperture things that you never had to worry about before such as noses and ears can now be out of focus.



Will work a bit more with that DOF-calculator mentioned in an earlier post, need to find some comfortable ranges for some standardized scenarios. Need to take more shots!

Shutter speed and equestrian sports

I visited the family farm this weekend and tried my hands at shooting live action. In this case it was my sister riding her new pony and trying out some jumping exercises.

From my previous attempt I knew that the shutter speed often needs to be way lower than expected. Freezing high-speed movement requires 1/1000 sec or much lower, and a moving horse is just acceptable between 1/500 to 1/1000.

Bumping ISO to 800 and the shutter speed to 1/640 (F4.5) resulted in the pictures below:



I borrowed my fathers Nikon D80 for this which is a very good camera but that introduces a fair amount of noise with high ISO values. The image has been noise corrected - the new Lightroom options are magic as shown below (before to the left):


I only had a 18-70mm lens for this exercise, would probably need a new position or a longer lens to get really close. Would love to try this with a 50mm 1.4 though, fast enough to really freeze things.

As a bonus, a proud cat on a car with dirty paws:

The Sartorialist - Snaps of others

Well, this is probably an obstacle I want to get over at some point or other, illustrated in that "Syria"-video below as well - photographing people unknown to me. This guy has made a highly successful career out of it (bought his "book"). I'm just trying to imagine what the conversation would be like!

Architecture arts

Re-discovering the city using a camera is eye-opening. When I have some time over I will try to read up on the major architecture styles as in general I have no clue of what it is I'm photographing beyond the basic forms. This at least is curtains awnings.

Five minutes of Syria

Would be just great to summarize my next trip in this way :) From the comments:
* He spent three weeks there
* Canon 5d mark II with 70-200mm IS and a 50 mm 1,8
* Everything shot hand-held without stabilization
* Video grading achieved by converting the file to CMYK format and then boosting the Cyan channel, apparently the standard way to achieve that "movie" look

Bat(man) on Fire

Bat(man) on Fire a photo by minamac88 on Flickr.

Had some luck with light-painting during Christmas with my new flash and torches, but this is a way cooler version from down under :) Exif information here

Nordic photographers

To learn more on what is possible with photography I have visited a few different venues to learn the names and works of some established photographers. I have by no means enough experience to really have a strong opinion but below are some of those that I find really interesting for one reason or other. One of these days I need to dive deeper into the whole history of the thing...

Morten Krogvold



Norwegian Black and White photographer, winner of several awards. Saw him first on the annual photography fair, the photo of Nelson Mandela is just stunning, as well as the Italy series. (Note: I got the portfolio pages to work in IE, other browsers may only see the first image)

Sandra Freij



Swedish fashion photographer with very vivid and dreamy photos. A lot going on, and those shots are really beautiful up close

Mikael Jansson



Just bought his "Speed of life" book, covering Formula one racing in a new way. A Swedish fashion photographer with some seriously heavy merits.

Will try to find more as a I go. As I was searching for links to this I also found this site: 500 Photographers by Pieter Wisse containing a wealth of links and images. Will dive in once I have more time :)

Photography and the iPad

On one of my US trips during the autumn I finally surrendered and bought an iPad. Besides being a really laid back device for reading websites and news it has some really interesting features for photography. Below are some of the applications and stuff I've found that makes taking photos easier and more inspired. Some might even work for the iPhone.

Simple DOF calculator
Easily calculate depth of field based on camera, f-stop, lens and focus point. Really nice for experimentation

Lights, Camera, Capture!
More or less a whole book on lighting theory and practice for a ridiculously low price. Includes a wealth of videos for nearly every shot where the photographer describes how he took it and considerations he had to make. Goldmine.

Lightroom 3 101 tutorials
Three HOURS of high quality video based Lightroom tutorials, walking through nearly every aspect of the application. A highly recommended full-on course in the workflow, with explanations of some settings and features that may otherwise have been overlooked but that greatly simplifies the process.

Introduction to the Canon T2i : Advanced Topics
Relatively expensive video based course that in detail goes through the more advanced options available on the camera I have. Given that the camera wasnt exactly cheap to begin with, I see this as an investment to get the most out of what I've already paid for. High-paced tempo and a lot of information packed into this, some of which I will be returning to when I have more experience.

Digital Photographer Magazine
There are many photography-focused magazines in the store, this is the one I'm currently following. Prices for single issues is about a third of what a regular paperbased copy would cost, and it is much quicker to browse through. Geared towards the beginner/mid-range photographer there are some very basic but also fairly advanced stuff in here

The Photographer's Ephemeris
I havent actually bought or tried this yet, but from the description it has some features that seem really interesting. The Photographer's Ephemeris (TPE) helps you plan outdoor photography shoots, particularly landscape and urban scenes. It is a map-centric sun and moon calculator: see how the light will fall on the land, be it day or night, for any location on earth. You can even determine when the sun or moon will be visible behind nearby hills and mountains.

I also have to mention the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, a fairly cheap piece of gear that expands the use of the device immensely. When plugged in, you can import photo directly from the camera (even standard RAW-formats) and get immediate feedback on that great display. It also unlocks more advanced photo management options in the device, that strangely enough are not present in the normal configuration. This is great in combination with the free version of Photoshop Express for more advanced editing. The USB connector also opens up new functionality such as keyboards, speakers and microphones. Some of this is broken in the new update, but still...

(Pet peeve - Safari on the iPad can only load ~6Mb of images on one page before it starts showing question marks instead of images, seriously limiting some photo sites)

Any other applications/stuff you use? iPad/iPhone/Android/whatever?

What's in the bag

On the equipment side - found some really neat videos where photographers talk about their gear. Learned a lot by just listening to them.

First up - DSLR video, interesting guy (and cats):



Second - freelance photographer (not as laid back, may not be a shining example but has some interesting stuff):


A bunch of other videos here.

We Are Super Famous

An inspiration more or less every day - their archives are a true goldmine:WEARESUPERFAMOUS.com