Fireworks 2018

Nikon 810, 28mm (28-105), 2 sec., f/4.5, ISO 100

This year I thought I’d try something new for Fourth of July photos. A Petapixel article described a technique that produced puffy, flower-like images. My results differed, but I’m nonetheless pleased with what I got.

The trick was to set the shutter for long exposure (I went with a second or two), start with the lens completely out of focus and then snap to clear focus while the shutter was still open. The result is an image that’s partially in focus and partially out. It ended up creating an illusion of depth of field, which altered the perceived size of the subject (kinda like the tilt shift technique).

Our eyes work in ways quite similar to our camera lenses. So we're used to a more or less infinite depth of field for subjects at a distance but a narrower field for things that are close to our faces. That's why the part-in-part-out focus of the fireworks photo creates the illusion that it's a smaller object closer up.

Nikon 810, 28mm (28-105), 2 sec., f/4.5, ISO 100

I also brought the wrong tripod (going with the heavy one for stability but forgetting that it can be kind of a pain to point up at any angle greater than 60 degrees or so). So several of my sky burst photos were hand held, producing another interesting effect even when I wasn’t changing the focus mid-shot.

Nikon 810, 28mm (28-105), 2 sec., f/4.5, ISO 100

Tattoo machines

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000, focus stacked

The topic for this week is focus stacking. This is a handy digital post-production tool that allows you to create shots with a ton of depth of field even if your lens and lighting conditions made you shoot shallower when you were in the field.

Take a close look at the four photos below. The light in my friend Danny’s tattooing room generally isn’t the best for photography (though when he’s working he uses a better light). As you can see from the tech specs, I’m pushing my equipment nearly as far as I can. The shutter is at 1/40; any slower and I’ll start getting camera shake. The aperture is at 4.5, the wider end of the lens’s range. The ISO is at 1000; any higher, and the photos may start showing grain and inaccurate color.

But with these settings, I can’t keep the whole subject in focus. As you can see, each shot blurs at least part of the rack of Danny’s machines.

That’s where focus stacking comes in. Photoshop (and other software packages) will automatically combine several photos into a single image, using only the crisply in-focus parts of each shot. It also rotates and shifts photos automatically so they all line up. So all I have to do is make sure I shoot a series with enough partially-focused shots that Photoshop can then merge into a wholly focused image.

The outcome is the picture at the top of this post. The results aren’t always completely perfect. You can see some awkward blurring along the left edge, which I would have cropped out if I wasn’t using this as an example. But it’s way better than the unwelcome bokeh I was getting thanks to the limits I was working with.

Not that bokeh doesn’t have its place, even in this shoot.

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Exile Tattoo

Nikon D7000, 10.5mm, f/4, shutter 1/60, ISO 450

This shot shows you some of the advantages of shooting with a short focal length lens, in this case a Nikon 10.5mm lens. Lenses with extremely short focal lengths are sometimes called “fisheye” lenses for reasons that should be obvious when you look at the pictures they produce. Though there’s no official definition of the term, the fisheye bending effect is usually visible at lengths shorter than 15mm or so.

The biggest disadvantage to fisheye lenses is of course the distortion. Subjects toward the center of the shot usually come out okay, but the closer you get to the edge the more bending you get. Look at the doorway in the lefthand side of the shot, The frame is more or less okay on the right-hand side, but the left looks like something out of an old carnival funhouse.

Because fisheye lenses pack so much more information into your picture, it can be tough to get absolutely everything in the shot completely perfect. This exposure is good for the room on the left, but the exterior window way down the hall to the right is overexposed. Here it doesn’t ruin the shot, because the people are important and whatever might be going on outside the window isn’t.

Still, such lenses can be challenges. Try taking one outside on a cloudless day and you’ll soon find just how hard it is to keep the sun out of your shot.

On the other hand, fisheye lenses are great for capturing scenes. The wide angle allowed me to get not just the tattooist at work but also the rest of the shop, which of course would have been impossible with a longer lens.

For what it’s worth, this photo was actually inspired by another one I took a couple of months earlier:

Nikon D3000, Lensbaby wide angle, no f-stop, shutter 1/100, ISO 800

I shot this one with a Lensbaby Scout with wide angle optics installed. The focus problems are partially my fault; I’d been shooting closer to the subjects and forgot to readjust, and Lensbaby lenses don’t work with the camera’s autofocus feature. I might also have been able to reduce the vignetting (the darkness in the corners of the picture) by using an f-stop, which I would have needed to manually install prior to shooting.