Nikon D7000, 72mm (28-200), 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 200, cropped
First rule of late season visits to Worlds of Fun: leave well before Haunt gets underway. None of the photos I tried to take after dark worked out. However, I did have some fun earlier in the day.
The first ride my group went on was The Patriot, one of the park’s many roller coasters. I managed to find a spot that gave me a couple of good angles. The shot above proved to be a good example of how to imply movement in a “frozen motion” shot via body angles. You can tell that the coaster is moving with some speed because otherwise the seats couldn’t be at that angle.
The other way to convey motion is through blur. I propped the camera on a fence so I could slow the shutter down enough to blur the moving coaster here:
Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/10, f/22, ISO 100, adjusted
Then I decided to have a little fun with it. I shot a series of pictures with the coaster at several spots along the track. Then I used layers in Photoshop to combine them all into one picture that shows the whole sequence.
Nikon D7000, 80mm (35-80), 1/50, f/5.6, ISO 1600, adjusted
Here’s a treat: a creepy photo of a shrunken head. This objet d’art can be found at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas. The Blogger software distorts the colors a bit, but you can still see nice detail.
Last week we took a look at photos of moving light sources shot at slow shutter speeds. Today’s example is traditional “light painting,” using a light and a long exposure to draw something in the darkness.
This is impromptu stuff, shot with the flashlight feature on my iPhone. If this had been anything besides an experiment, I probably would have at least changed the backdrop to a black muslin to reduce the chances that it would show up in the shot (as it does a little here). I should also have removed the UV filter from the lens, as it’s likely to be the source of the faint phantom lines in the shot.
And if I was really getting fancy, I could have thrown in some rear curtain flash so that I would be visible in the shot. Or at least practiced a bit so I could legibly write the word “hello” (and do it backward so it would read correctly in the photo).
Nikon D7000, 45mm (18-55), 3 sec., f/5.3, ISO 800, cropped
For our fun class session last week, we killed the lights, slowed down the shutter and photographed some moving light sources.
Our first subject was Awika, relative of Cosmojetz. I neglected to shoot video with the lights on, but the folks who created it have a good, quick clip. With the lights off, the only visible part of the scene were the sparks shooting out the back.
The first attempt (above) was a little over-exposed. To be sure, it was still a cool effect. The winding key and Awika’s feet are faintly visible. But I was curious to see what we’d get if we played with the exposure a little. First I dropped the ISO:
Nikon D7000, 45mm (18-55), 3 sec., f/5.3, ISO 100, cropped
And then I closed the aperture down a bit:
Nikon D7000, 45mm (18-55), 3 sec., f/11, ISO 100, cropped
Unfortunately, for that test I put the subject on the table upside down, so its body hid most of the sparks. One more try:
Nikon D7000, 45mm (18-55), 3 sec., f/11, ISO 100, cropped
Now the only visible parts of the subject are the narrow light trails made by the sparks. They look like fine hairs or dandelion fluff. Sometimes it’s nice to just play around and see what you get.
Nikon D7000, 44mm (18-55), 3 sec., f/29, ISO 100, on-camera filter, adjusted and cropped
Yesterday was the final in-class session of my fall Photography course. As usual, the last non-online meet was optional, and as nobody who showed up needed to get caught up on anything, we spent the time having some fun.
The main activity was a set of light painting experiments I’ll post next week. But after class I was still in a picture-taking mood so I decided to try a new filter I bought awhile back.
The main idea behind neutral density filters (other than protection for expensive lenses) is to reduce the amount of light getting into the camera without affecting the color or image quality. The new toy in this case was a Hoya 52mm 3-400 variable density filter.
Variable density filters can be adjusted to let in more or less light. The minimum setting for this one lets in 1/3 of the light that would otherwise get through the lens, the approximate equivalent of 1.5 stops. At the opposite end of the scale the filter screens down to 1/400 of the light, around nine stops.
The photo at the top of this post shows the filter near maximum strength. The ISO is down as far as it would go and the aperture closed up as tight as it would go. The result is not much light getting through and not much sensitivity to record what does get through. That’s how I got away with a three second exposure, which otherwise in bright sunlight would have over-exposed the shot so badly that I would have gotten nothing but an empty white frame.
At this speed the water (the only moving subject in the shot) turns into a hazy blur. Compare the long exposure to something closer to normal speeds:
Turning the filter down to its minimum allowed me to speed up the shutter and freeze the flowing water. Though the result is a great deal more “realistic” (i.e. more like what you’d perceive if you were actually looking at the scene), it’s arguably not as interesting to look at. The composition is more chaotic, not as smooth as the longer exposure that records the general flow rather than individual drops.
This semester I’m going to blog a few of the exercises we do in my photography class. I want students who miss class to be able to see what we did. And for those of you who aren’t in the class, these are good examples of some photography basics (even if they aren’t the most spectacularly fascinating photos ever taken).
The topic for this lesson is shutter speed. Our model is a small wind-up device called Cosmojetz, the creation of artist Chico Bicalho.
I took the shot above holding the camera in my hands and using a middle-of-the-road shutter speed.
Nikon D7000, 80mm (35-80), 1/4, f/32, ISO 800
Next I slowed the shutter down a bit to demonstrate camera shake. This is the shot you almost never want, with everything a big blurry mess. As a photographer, you need to figure out how steady your hands are. I can’t shoot anything much below 1/30 (depending on the circumstances) before the blur starts to ruin my pictures. However, if you don’t have four decades of caffeine behind you, your hands may be more stable than mine.
Note that the one thing that doesn’t move in this shot is the dust on the lens, because when the camera shakes the dust moves right along with it, staying stationary in relation to the image recording chip. You won’t see the dust in any of the rest of the shots because when I noticed it I remembered to do my job as a photographer and wipe the lens with a lens cloth.
Next we locked the camera down on a tripod to completely eliminate camera shake. And we set the subject in motion. Here’s a video of what Cosmojetz looks like when it bounces around:
We started with another middle-of-the-road shutter speed:
Nikon D7000, 42mm (35-80), 1/125, f/4.5, ISO 800
As anyone who has ever tried to take a picture of a three year old can attest, rapidly moving objects can be tricky to photograph. Though 1/125th of a second seems like no time at all to us, a moving object can travel quite a bit even in such a small fraction of an instant. Thus the blurring that clearly indicates the subject is on the go.
Nikon D7000, 42mm (35-80), 1/250, f/4.2, ISO 800
Increasing the shutter speed still further reduces the blur to manageable levels, though you can still see a bit here and there. In shutter priority mode, the camera has been automatically adjusting the aperture for us to make sure we get a good exposure. But now we’ve reached the limits of the lens; the aperture won’t open any wider, and we’re starting to sacrifice image quality.
Of course at this point we can fix the slight under-exposure in Photoshop, like this:
Nikon D7000, 42mm (35-80), 1/250, f/4.2, ISO 800, adjusted
But if we want to freeze the motion entirely, we’ll need to speed the shutter up still farther. And that will mean increasing the ISO (making the camera’s image sensing chip more sensitive to light) to get a good exposure.
In the shot below, motion blur has been completely eliminated. The only way you can tell that the subject is moving is that otherwise it would have to be hovering in mid-air.
Nikon D7000, 42mm (35-80), 1/1600, f/4.2, ISO 6400
The lesson ends at the opposite end of the scale. Slowing back down to a quarter second (the speed that gave me such terrible camera shake earlier), transforms the rapidly-moving subject into a ghost, barely visible in the upper part of the photo.
Nikon D3000, 18mm (18-55), 1/250, f/8, ISO 100, cropped
Earlier this week I shot some pictures of the Wyandotte County Courthouse. This is part of a project I’m working on for the Kansas Association for Justice.
I started out with some standard angles such as the one above. But I swiftly found myself captivated by the small details. For example, I liked the oil derricks in this bit of ornamentation:
Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/2000, f/5.6, ISO 280, edited
As you can see from the wide shot, the sky was completely cloudless, and as a result the shadows were fairly harsh. Photoshop helped even out the highs and lows. It also removed some of the perspective distortion that came from shooting from a low angle.
Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 400
I was also quite fond of the details and colors on the fixtures on the front stairs (also visible in the wider shot).
