150 to 600, or the behemoth

If you've been keeping up you know a buddy has lent me a Tamron 150-600 mm lens to see if I like it enough to buy. It weighs a ton, but is half way to being a telescope, and that's on my full frame camera. On my old T6 it would turn into 250-960 mm lens. I'll have to try that sometime.

These are the first mostly serious photos. I think one is cropped slightly just to get the horizon level, but the rest are as is. The point here wasn't to get artistic photos (It just KILLS me not to crop those two poles out of the first one!), it was to get a sense of what the lens would shoot, and what the photos would look like for colour and sharpness. All of them are hand held, with minimal processing in Lightroom.

In one sense, it was a bad day for this, and you'll see why shortly. The construction photos are from the ring road. These first two are from the top of the sound barrier near 130 Ave looking west at the new intersection. First at 150 mm, then 600 mm. You can see how much closer the lens takes you. I'm not sure how far away that bit of scaffolding is, but it's down the sound barrier and across 4 lanes of highway and a bit of a median, plus a construction zone.

These are from just before the bridge on 37th St, looking mostly south towards the new bridges over Fish Creek.

These next ones are in about the middle of the zoom range, where the lens ought to perform the best. Yes, there's a hill. Yes the bright hazy sun washes out the yellow a bit.

This is from 146th Ave, what used to be a little known or travelled short cut to 22X. I've ridden my bike past here a great many times, but without this view. They cut down all the trees to build the highway. Now I wouldn't dream of riding my bike here. This is at 150 mm. Note the excavator bottom centre.

From the same vantage point, this is the skyline at 150 mm.

This is why it's a poor day to test a lens. From the same spot at 600 mm. Look at the haze! This is even with more processing than the rest of the photos to try to reduce the haze.

The excavator looks sad sitting there all by itself. Same one as a couple photos ago, at 600 mm.

All the rest of the equipment is neatly lined up in a herd.

Then down into Fish Creek park near bridge 2, just to see how the lens deals with green and water, though there isn't much water just now. The first is at 150 mm from the bridge, then the same rocks at 600 mm.

Bridge 2 from the bend in the river downstream. Some of you might remember several winter shots from a little over a year ago, three different lens at 3 different distances. This is about the same place as the last shot in that blog, only a bit to the right and a few feet higher. I tried a panorama at 600 mm, but but goofed. Next time. It would be a whole lot easier on a tripod. There's some haze showing up in this shot as well, and the direct overhead light sucks for colour.

This is the part of the bridge at 600 mm that is almost in focus. I got rid of most of the haze in Lightroom.

Even at low water, the stream is pretty.

I hung around for a while looking for dragonflies, but they were too quick for me. Lots of wildlife photographers carry around a big lens so they don't frighten their subject. This is the only bird I saw the entire time. Then again, it wasn't the best time for birding.

The toughest target in all of these. Embiggen and look at the terminator line. There are craters! This is uncropped, on a hazy morning, no tripod but resting on a support, 600mm, ISO 6400, f 6.3 (I think that's the fastest the lens is at that zoom), 1/25 of a second. If you look really carefully you can see some stars. As I've said before, the moon is a tough target. I'll have to work on this more on a less hazy night.

This is a tough lens to hold up to your face for any length of time. I might need to start pushing some weights at Repsol, instead of just hitting the pool, if I'm going to do some serious shooting with it.

Look what the photography elves brought me!

I found this in the bottom drawer of my cabinet at work. In case you haven't embiggened it to see the full impact, that is a 15 inch ruler. It weighs 2 kilos. Yeah.

Here's a few quick photos, hand held, all at 600 mm. The ball diamond across the street from our patio. Uncropped. I'm not sure how far the guy in red shorts is away, perhaps 100 m?

Minimum focus distance is about 9 feet, and I was pretty close to that here.

These are a little further away.

The focus point was on the left most flower and you can see the texture of the blossom. The others are every so slightly out of focus. I'm not sure that's a hand held thing, or just where the plane of focus is for those settings.

I'm loving the colour in the flowers! These are tweaked slightly, but not much. I'll have to do a more formal lens comparison, maybe this weekend.

My buddy doesn't use it much anymore, since she doesn't shoot on a tripod much, and this is a heavy lens. For my photo buddies it's the Tamron 150-600 mm, the version 1, not the new version. I've been wondering how much I'd use such a lens, and now I'll get a chance to find out, since she's happy to lend it to me a few weeks. Then we can haggle for price. Full moon is Aug 26. Hmmm.

Harvest moon meetup

Some of you know my buddy Neil Zeller, the famous Calgary photographer. I actually knew him from before his photography career, when he was the famous Calgary barefoot runner. Every year about this time he does a photowalk. The idea is to show up with your camera, stroll around cameraing, and chat with other people interested in photography. There are about 70 people in the group photo Neil took.

I've been to several of these now, and they're lots of fun. This year I ran into several people I already knew in person, a few that I knew on social media, and a few people new to me. I got several nice compliments on this blog, thank you very much.

Normally I'm out shooting by myself, waiting for the light to be the way I hope for it to be, or strolling along however seems good to me. I can set up where I want to be, subject to safety and consideration of other people that are using that area. Every now and then I've been out with other individuals or small groups, and that's fun too. It's interesting to see what other people shoot and how they go about it. It's quite the change to be around so many people holding cameras all at once.

If you're on Instagram you can see the other photos by using the hashtag #neilzeller. I wasn't in a moony mood, if you'll forgive the phrase. I was more interested in lights reflected on the river. Editing night shots is a little interesting because of the difference in what our eyes see, and what the camera sees. As you edit, the program often assumes you want it to look like daylight, which increases the noise and often looks terrible. But we know it's dark, and I like to edit the photos so they are somewhat dark as well. I try to replicate the colour of the sky, and bring up the reflections in the water.

Some people are playing with composite shots, where they take one photo exposed for the scene with the moon a blinding white ball, then another with the scene really dark so the moon is properly exposed. Then if you properly placate the Photoshop demons, you get an image with both the moon and the scene properly exposed. I haven't done that.

Here's some of my shots.

Courtesy of Brad from Canon Canada, I got a chance to shoot a Canon 6D Mark II. Wow! I am seriously tempted. It feels great in my hands, and once I brought Lightroom up to date, the photos look terrific.

It wasn't a late night at all, even by my standards. I was thinking about doing some more shooting afterward, but headed home. Then darned if I couldn't sleep. My mind was full of photography projects, potential macro shots, a shopping list, and all sorts of photo related stuff. It took a long time to get to sleep.

The great macro 5x inauguation

Most of you know I like shooting things close up. I like to take the 100 mm lens and get right up in the flower's little face. Then I got some extension tubes and got even closer. I've gained a whole new appreciation for the beauty of flowers, and the detail that is beyond my vision.

The next step is a specialized macro lens. I'd looked at reviews for the Canon MP-E 65mm f2.8 Macro lens and while I won't say I was spooked, all the reviews say this isn't a lens for beginners. That there's a learning curve. I decided to hold off for a while and have fun with the extension tubes.

Then a buddy contacted me and offered to sell the lens and flash system to go with it. Such a deal for both of us. He doesn't have the time to use it, and I save some $ over buying new.

Here's the first shots. All of these are straight out of the camera, absolutely zero processing in Lightroom.

My 100 mm says it's 1:1, and I'm not sure that's exactly true, or if it is, it's just barely and only under absolutely optimum shooting conditions. The 65 mm starts at 1:1 and goes up to 5x magnification. So  imagine that you want a photo of something, say, 4 mm long. A flower part, or a cooperative insect. For my American readers, 4 mm is .1575 of an inch, or about 155/1000. If it holds still and I get the focus right, at 5x it will take up 20 mm of my sensor that is 22.2 mm wide. It will fill the screen, and if I've nailed the focus, and the depth of field, and the lighting, the results will be breathtaking.

I'm at the point where I can just see the beads of pollen on the plants. At 5x they're going to look like small rocks. Can't wait!

Here's my first shots with the lens, just experimenting.

This is with the 100 mm lens, aiming at that dimple in the middle of the red patch.

Now with the macro lens. This is 2x kind of aiming at that same dimple, hand held.

This is 3x, hand held, getting lucky with focus.

My tripod isn't quite flexible enough to reproduce that shooting angle, so I picked something else. The intent was to slowly dial in and stay focussed on a particular spot, but I had to move the tripod slightly between shots, even with the slide rails. I found that the flash units project out beyond the front of the lens a bit, and this is a large flat surface. Again, there is zero processing in Lightroom.

This is 1x.

2x

3x

4x

5x

I admit to being encouraged by these first shots. 5 acceptable shots out of 9 (nine!) on the tripod. Admittedly, this isn't moving, so that's half the battle. I think I'll work a bit more on other stationary objects before trying flowers. Stay tuned!

Nearly 20,000 or MacroMonday or HairyAntButts

I couldn't decide on the title.

A year ago I brought home a new Canon T6i. I've been out on any number of photo trips, some hosted by my buddy the famous Neil Zeller, some with other less famous buddies, and some by my not famous at all self. If I believe the image file numbers I've taken just under 20,000 photos this year. That comes to about 50 a day.

All the trips have been fun. The furthest is down to Waterton Park. Some of been as close as our back yard or even inside the house, but I guess they don't count as trips. But the photography itself has been more fun than I had imagined it would be. The camera sees things differently than our eyes do, which has been a learning experience in so many ways. I see the world differently now. I think about composition, and lines and shapes and colour. Even when I'm looking at a flower, I'm realizing there is stuff there I can't see. Plants are surprisingly hairy.

Lots of photos get a big X on first view and they get trashed. There's been about 1000 of them since I last deleted a bunch.
Most are so-so for whatever reason and nothing happens to them.
Some (about 4100 so far) get one star and I look at them again and decide what to edit. I might go back and edit for something else, or someone might happen to see it and like it. Hey, it's happened.
Editing a photo gives it 3 stars (Not quite 1100 of those). These are the ones I'd show people if asked. Lots make it onto the blog.
Then we get into the good ones.
There are 212 with 4 stars. These are ones I like a lot for whatever reason.
There are 55 with 5 stars. These are my WOW! shots.

You can do the math on the percentages in each group. I'm always striving to better myself, knowing that on average 1 in every 400 shots is a Wow. The more shots you take, as long as you are honing your abilities, the more good shots you'll get. You can see lots of my 4 and 5 star shots here, if you haven't looked already.

Some days are better than others. One morning I was up on Tom Campbell hill shooting skyline and I was so disappointed when I got home that only a few of them were in focus. They looked ok in camera. Turned out it was a gusty day and the tripod was moving ever so slightly. That's all it takes.

Today was a great day! I was out this morning with good light and no wind. I put all the extension tubes on the 100 mm macro lens and captured 167 shots. Some were hand held with one tube instead of three. Imagine my astonishment when my initial pass gave me 87 with one star! More than half! Of course, I downgraded some of them when I looked more closely.

I still ended up editing 20 shots, which is a huge percentage for this kind of photography. Here's a few of them, including more hairy ant butts! These are on our peonies. If you look carefully there are two different species.

Here's another random bug I found. No idea what it is.

Not out in the cold dark after all

Last night I decided to take advantage of the clear "dark" skies to have another go at the star shots, even though it's nearly a full moon. Here's a shot of my surroundings, shot in available light with the real camera. Why yes, I think that's a sour gas well, why do you ask?

I consulted the trusty Photographer's Ephemeris app and got into this screen. One is a zoomed in version of the other.

Those rings of colour are an expression of light pollution. Where I ended up was way west of Millarville, about 45 minutes from here. You'd think it would be dark, but no. The moon was bright enough to cast a strong shadow. If I'd brought a book I would have been able to read. As far as I know, there are no communities west of there, yet there was light on the western horizon, even after astronomical dark.

If I'd gone a little bit further and turned left, I'd have ended up in the dark green, maybe the blue, but I've no idea what the road is like. As I was looking later it says the skies south of Longview are dark. Maybe I'll try that in a couple weeks during new moon. Any of my photo buddies up for a road trip?

I got set up and after a few misteps let the camera do it's thing. I saw several airplanes, and what might have been a meteorite or satellite. I'm not going to be sure what the camera saw till the computer finishes processing the images. It's still chugging.

Here we go, 4 airplanes, 1 that might be a satellite or airplane way up high (look for the faint line top right to centre), and 4 what I think are meteorites (look in the bottom part of the screen). Essentially anything that has a circular motion is a star. Any other lines are something else.

Pro tip, clean your screen when you're going to be working with star images. Just saying.

For a first try I'm pretty pleased. The hi resolution version is very nice. All I did was point the camera directly away from the moon, set it to keep taking pictures, and let it run. No composition considerations. Nothing special done to it in Lightroom other than tweaking contrast and haze. Next is to have another go at importing the photos into iMovie or another app that will display them sequentially like a movie.

I did a few other experiments that didn't turn out quite like I thought they might, but it's all a learning experience. One thing was a surprise, I hadn't thought about cell coverage. I was getting 1 bar of 3G coverage, which is pretty pathetic. Maybe that's the case everywhere there is dark skies. For a summer evening with no wind, it was pretty cool. I think I'm going to wear a heavier coat, and maybe bring gloves. I was wearing a warm sweater, a windbreaker, and my bowtie hat, and was almost warm for most of it. Just before leaving it started getting actually cold.

This is the first time I'd actually used the ephemeris app, and it's awesome! There is a ton of info presented to help photographers plan their shots. In fact there is so much I'm going to have to take another run at the tutorial videos. Knowing where and when the sun and moon will rise relative to your location, or any chosen location is a huge advantage to planning a photo shoot. It will even tell you where it is anytime throughout the day or night.

For no special reason (Hi Janice and Janet!), I looked at LaHave NS to see what light pollution was there, and in particular, for the cottage we stayed in last time. Pretty dark. Pity that it's sold and doesn't seem to be on the rental market anymore. I could quite happily have set up the camera on the deck for some great star shots.

Be the best lettuce photographer!

What an amazing weekend!

Friday evening, getting some theory and doing some star shots. I learned the trick of using the live view screen to focus to infinity properly. One of the best pieces of advice from Neil is, "Shoot lettuce if that's what you love! Shoot it chopped, shredded, with the Calgary Tower, whatever makes you happy. Be the best lettuce photographer."

Saturday road trip to shoot a deserted farmhouse and grain elevator, several scenic panoramic outlooks, a ferry ride, and dramatic skies. In addition we were in search of dark skies and lettuce to shoot, but failed on that front. The clouds rolled in about sunset, and the lettuce was elusive all day. We had to console ourselves with a rainy skyline.

Sunday all day, importing photos into Lightroom and working with them. Basic editing. More advanced techniques. HDR in Photomatix. Panoramas. Assembling star shots in Starstax. Compositing in Photoshop. Plus all sorts of tips and ideas.

Most importantly, practicing with the photos we had taken. (I took 607 photos.)There are many different ways to use Lightroom to achieve various effects, and none of them are wrong, per say. The idea is to tweak the photo to match the vision for what you want it to be. This might to make it a better photo, looking as close as possible to what our eyes would see. Or you might want to to dress it up to emphasize certain elements of the scene, or de-emphasize others. Or maybe you like the look of Mordor skies as applied to a placid Alberta prairie landscape. Maybe you want your lettuce to look really really green.

This course was superb value for money! We were all a little disappointed that we didn't find clear skies, but that's the weather for you, and that's the only letdown of the weekend. I'm now happily playing with images, learning what more I can do with them.

Here's a couple of panorama examples. These have been slightly dressed up to look better, but really the main thing was getting them stitched together to look nice. You might want to blow them up to full screen. The way I took the second one gives the original a huge amount of detail that only comes up when you zoom, but then the original is 28 MB. When I get a few minutes I'm going to put it on the TV and see how it looks. I'm wondering how big I could print it out, though if I was going to do that I'd try to tweak the sky some more.

Here's something from Friday night, when it turned out to be the darkest skies for us. I'm glad we went out.

It looks a little like a ladder in the sky, doesn't it? In fact it's an airplane. The sides of the ladder are the steady landing lights, and the rungs are the blinking lights. I took many shots in two sequences and there's all sorts of stuff in there. Several airplanes, a satellite, and moving clouds.

Here's an assembled view of the other sequence of the photos, done to show star motion, two airplanes, and highlight the clouds a bit because they were a cool colour.

I've had one failure at attempting to move the photos into iMovie to show the stars quite still but the clouds moving across the stars. Stay tuned.

Now I'm just bubbling with ideas of stuff to shoot, places to explore, and ways to manipulate those images. So would you be if you had taken the course with us.