I first noticed that the lupine were in bloom on a rainy day drive from Kennebunk to Bar Harbor Maine. On both sides of I95 going north there were particularly lush stands of lupine. Of course, even if it had not been raining hard, it is not possible (or at least not wise) to pull over on I95 to photograph lupines.
The following day in and around Bar Harbor was sunny, and while out and about Mount Desert Island I kept my eye out for stands of lupine. I was looking for the proper background. The stand nearest our motel cabin was in an angle between two roads (typical place for lupine), and did not inspire. I saw some lovely stands along the rock shoreline of Somes Sound, but well back on private property and inaccessible. Then, coming back up the quiet (Southeast Harbor/Bass Head) side of the island after a bird walk at Seawall, I spotted this slope running up to the evergreens at the top, and thick with lupine. Not much traffic and a good wide verge, so off I went.
For scale, here is a shot of my daughter, who is about 5′4″, waist deep in the lupine (also with camera in hand).
Waist Deep in Lupine
And already, with these two contrasting shots, we being to learn the lesson of the lupine stand. Point of view can turn a single subject (lupine stand) into an amazing array of image opportunities.
As I have argued before in this space (Why take just one???) part of the wonderfulness of digital is that multiple points of view cost little but the second it takes to frame and press the shutter release. You can take your time back home, at the computer, sorting through the possibilities you saw and captured in the field for the ones that work best in the larger format of you monitor or a framing print. On the other hand, I am not one of those motor drive, sequential shooting guys who just holds the shutter release down and takes 5 shots of every framing. Never saw the point of motor drive unless shooting unpredictable action or candid human faces where the mouth and eyes, at least, are often in unpredictable motion.
My first instinct with this stand of lupines on the hill side against the evergreen background was a low angle, uphill shot. That vision is what pulled me off the road. I flipped out the LCD screen and held the Sony DSC H50 low in the vegetation, looking for a pleasing pattern. The first shot is the best of that bunch.
Next I turned side on to the slope at a long diagonal (similar to the shot with Anna above, which actually came at the end of my session with the lupine). I wanted to capture the mass of the display and keep the evergreens behind.
Along the Lupine Slope
I took several variations, but this one with the strong flower in the corner and the slope leading away is the one I decided to keep.
This daisy caught my eye, buried in the lupine, and I tried a shot around it.
Daisy among the Lupine
I am not completely happy with this as the white on the daisy burned out and I am not sure it is a strong enough focus for the image as a whole to work. Also the very blue lupines in the background distract from the effect I was looking for…so it goes. Sometimes what seems like a good idea in the field turns out, on reflection to be not so good after all.
But in the process of framing this shot, I was pulled in close and began to wonder if a tight detail shot might work. It is a challenge to balance detail of individual flowers with the effect of the massed spike of lupine.
Lupine Close In
This view, with the out of focus flower spike in the background works, I think, pretty well.
For the alternative view, which emphasizes the full mass of the flower spike, I shot down on spike so heavy it was bending under its own weight. This has the advantage of showing off the undeveloped blooms yet to open, which also provide some color relief from the massed blues.
Lupine Head
Along about now I though about compression to emphasize the mass of flowers. My H50 has a long zoom, so I used it, set aat about 200mm equivalent, shooting along the slope of the hill, to press a whole stretch of flowers into the same frame.
Compressed Lupines
I took about 10 shots at this zoom setting, framing different sections of flowers, with different mixes of colors and detail, to sort through later. Mind, I saw some possibility in each frame I shot. No waste, and not random at all. This is just the one, that on reflection, stands up the best.
So there you have it. A lupine inspired exercise in point of view. One subject, many ways of seeing it, many images. Which one do I like the best. I like them all. Each one here says something to me and captures a bit of what I saw. The more important question is which one do you like best? I’d be interested in hearing your opinions.
An even better question is will you remember this next time you are confronted with a similar situation. Shoot low. Shoot high. Shoot far. Shoot close. Use wide angle. Use macro. Use telephoto. Shoot all around your subject. It is part of the creative process. Continue the creative process when you get home to the computer, and make an image of every worthy frame. It is part of the wonder of digital.
We finish with an alternative low angle uphill shot, with a different mix of colors and stronger (maybe) center of focus.
A funny story about these crocuses (croci?). When producing the previous post (a comparison of the Sony Webbie HD and a compact HD camcorder from Sanyo) I took two still shots of blooming crocuses in our yard and posted them to Flickr, since I wanted to be be able to link from the blog to the full resolution files. They immediately started to draw comments. People like flowers. People apparently like croci. So, of course, I had to go out with my real camera (Sony DSC H50) and take a few shots. It was late afternoon by then. The light was failing fast and I was pushing the aperture down for maximum depth of field,which lead to longer exposures than I should have been hand-holding. And, of course I had to try some extreme macros. The published close focus on the Sony H50 focuses is 2 cm, but I know from experience that it focuses closer than that. I tried a few shots where the leading petals of the flower were actually touching the lens so that I was shooting right down inside the blossom. Since there was a strong side-light by that late in the day, I was getting just barely enough light coming through the pedals to actually take an image with the camera inside the bloom. Though the stamens, when I took at look at the images on the computer, were not as sharp as I had hoped (despite spot focusing), there were some very strong images from a graphical standpoint. So I started experimenting in Lightroom to see what kind of interesting effects I could produce: softening the whole image and then popping the colors for an abstract, almost surreal look. That lead to some experimental selective luminance changes, using the HSL panel in Lightroom and the tool that lets you chose individual colors in the image to alter directly. I pumped up the luminance of the orange stamens and surpressed the luminance of the purple veins. This is lead to images that were even more graphic.
Surreal Crocus
A reader, when I posted the image on my Pic of the Day blog, commented that she could see it wall sized and hanging over a black leather covered bed. Yup. With fake fur trim, stainless steal and glass bed-side tables and lava lamps. Just the thing.
This image was even more popular on Flickr.
Still, for my own satisfaction, I needed to get the same effect with a more realistic image…one where stamens were critically sharp. That required more light, so the next morning, as soon as the sun was fully on the crocus bed, I was out there on my hands and knees with the H50.
Real Crocus Macro
In this image you can see the polen pores on the stamen.
Of course I took a lot more shots. With such an interesting subject how could I not.
Crocus Chalice
Crocus Is In
And finally, I had to do a little video.
Of course the croci are still blooming. This might not be the end.
There have always been what amount to Point and Shoot video cameras, but only recently have the files they produce become as easy to deal with as jpeg image files. During the last year, and especially the last month or so, the number of HD flash based digital cameras has grown dramatically. These cameras are HD, high definition to match today’s HD TVs, and feature either 720p or 1080p resolution (compact or full HD) and often both. Generally less expensive cameras offer 30 frames per second equivalent. Some offer 60 frames. And they record in ACHD format (MPEG-4, or .MP4) directly to a high-capacity, high speed flash card, just like the ones used in digital still cameras. These files can be imported directly and played on almost any computer: just pop the Flash Card (SD, XD, Memory Stick, etc.) into a card reader attached to your computer…or the cameras will output directly to HD TV in either Composite HD or, on some, HMDI (if you have an HD TV you know what I am talking about. If not, try Google).
side by side and open for business
ACHD (or any MPEG format for that matter) used to be hard to edit, but would-be epic makers now have a number of options, some quite inexpensive, for creating their masterpiece. These programs import ACHD and .MP4 files directly, and offer a full range of transitions, effects, and text features, as well, often, as the ability to add music and a voice over. (See, Video Editing on a N’tbook for a review of one such system.)
Of course, one of the things that makes the .MP4 format so attractive is that it can be uploaded directly to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. With a little persistence, your home brew HD masterpiece can appear on thousands of computers around the world, with the kind of quality we only associated with move theaters and Blueray DVD in the recent past.
The business end of the Webbie HD
And, what is more, the prices for all this goodness are falling rapidly. This year we see the first under $200 full scale HD video cameras. I am not talking pocket wonders like the Flip. These are real cameras with real zoom lenses and all the usual video amenities (or most of them at any rate). Some even offer respectable still image capture (2-5 mega-pixels) as a side-line.
This piece started out to be a review of the tiny Sony Webbie HD, a $200, 5 MP, 5x zoom camera in a conventional horizontal format that records to Memory Stick Duo Pro in both ACHD (720p and 1080p) and 5 MP JPEG stills. Along the way it turned into a comparison of the Webbie and another, also brand new, and almost equally as compact, flash-based HD camcorder from Sanyo: the VPC TH1, which records 720p .MP4 and 2 MP digital stills to SDHC cards, and features (deep breath) a 30x zoom, digital image stabilization, something called face chaser, and a pallet of exposure and focus options that should satisfy the creative urge in almost any aspiring film maker. The Sanyo also includes in camera video editing (trimming and joining clips, etc) and, if that is not enough, comes with a full featured suite of video editing software for your Windows computer (supplied OEM for Sanyo by Arcsoft). All this for just $100 more than the Webbie.
Business end of Sanyo: controls much easier to reach
I bought the Webbie because I need to make a series of short instructional videos for our website at work, and the video from my Sony DSC H50 just was not getting the job done. After two weeks of trying to get the job done with the Webbie, I ordered the Sanyo. I have spent the past day or so comparing the two (anything to keep from actually doing what I bought them for).
My conclusions: While the Webbie wins nicely in tricky indoor lighting situations (as long as the lighting is constant…see white-balance issues below), and provides both higher resolution video (1080p) and stills (5 MP), it simply has too many weaknesses for me to recommend it to anyone.
Somewhat uncomfortable Sony grip
1) the color overall lacks saturation. The Sony captures a muted world. It is okay inside, with people moving and talking, but outside it just looks dull, as though something vital has drained out of the world.
2) the auto color balance (or white-balance) can not hold a blue shirt to the same blue two clips in a row. This immediately disqualifies the Webbie for instructional video (admittedly a reach for a $200 camera anyway) since you have to be able to string clips together seamlessly.
3) the camera is awkward to hold and operate, with the record button located so that it continuously strains my thumb and the zoom rocker where it just does not feel secure. The camera is just slightly too tall to rest comfortably in the palm, and lacks the conventional hand strap that keeps most video cameras stuck to your hand. Plus the Still shutter release is so badly positioned and so hard to push that it makes the feature all but useless. You have to stretch a finger back to reach it, and, with my hands, it hurts. Because it is awkward, it is next to impossible to get a still, stable, sharp shot.
Sanyo fits the palm better.
4) All controls are automatic, with the exception of 4 scene modes (Sports, Landscape, Low Light, and Backlight). You have no control over even the basics of exposure or focus. It makes for simple shooting, but it also makes for a lot of less than optimum footage.
5) The LCD, while adequate inside (though on the smallish side), is totally worthless outside. With any sun you can not see what you are shooting. Period.
6) Sound recording is disappointing. Audio seems to jump in and out unpredictably, soft and loud, and the recording quality is somewhat thin (probably due to inadequate mics). There is no wind filter, so recording in a breeze is not a breeze.
7) The Webbie has only Composite HD output, no HDMI.
1-5x Zoom on the Sony Webbie HD
Then too, the software included with the Webbie is pretty nearly useless. It is essentially a browser for your video clips, with no editing capacity. It will help you to upload your vids to YouTube, etc., if and when you get any worth the bandwidth. If you want to edit video, you will need to purchase one of the few apps that handles the ACHD format. Do your homework before you buy.
While $200 is not a lot to pay for an HD camcorder, in my opinion, the Sony Webbie HD is not even worth that. It is on its way back to Amazon.
By the way, you do not have to take my word for any of this. I have included a set of comparison videos with this review. Take a look for yourself.
So, does the Sanyo, for $100 more do any better? $300 is still not a lot to pay for a HD camcorder, especially one with the features outlined above. Does it do the job? Short and sweet: mostly yes. Mostly.
1-30x Zoom on the Sanyo
1) The colors recorded by the Sanyo VCP TH1 are vibrant and well saturated, and white-balance seems much more stable, but
2) it does not handle inside light, at least in full auto, as well as the Sony. That added contrast and vibrance does not necessarily work indoors, where the Sony excels. The Sanyo does have a Soft setting, buried way deep in the Settings Menu, which helps considerably, yielding a video of people inside which very like the Sony Webbie HD in its normal Auto setting. Soft apparently applies to the contrast, not to the sharpness of the image.
3) The camera fits my hands just about perfectly. It sits in my palm and my fingers fall naturally on the controls. The hand strap is very secure and comfortable. The only strain is reaching the 5 way rocker switch which, in shooting mode, controls a set of user specified shortcuts to frequently needed menu items, but you do not have to reach it while the camera is recording, and it can be done without hurting yourself. Not bad really. And having those menu shortcuts right there under your thumb instead of somewhere under a button on the face of the camera and buried three layers deep in a menu system is nothing short of brilliant.
Uncomfortable Still button on the Webbie
4) As mentioned previously, the TH1 offers a full range of controls…amazing in a camera at this price point. It has the usual scene selections: Full Auto, Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Night Portrait, Snow and Beach, Fireworks, and Lamp. It has Multi zone exposure metering, Center weighted, and spot metering. It has Programed Exposure, Shutter preferred, Aperture preferred, and Manual. It has Auto White-balance, Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, and One Push manual setting. It has Auto ISO, and manual settings 50-1600 (in Video mode). Are you getting the picture here? This is a highly sophisticated camera. It even has the above mentioned face chaser mode which optimizes focus for people in the video, and digital image stabilization (not as good as mechanical or optical stabilization, but better than nothing). Then there is something called 3D Noise Reduction, for image noise in low light, and Wind Noise Reduction for shooting in the wind. Honestly, I would have been surprised to find this level of control and automation on a camera costing several times as much.
5) Sound recording, with the above mentioned built in wind noise reduction is superior outdoors, and is richer and more balanced for both voice and music indoors.
6) The built in image stabilization is useful up to about 5x zoom, maybe 10 if you are really steady. However, do not expect it to handle 30x. For longer zoom work you will need a tripod.
Card slot, on/off, USB/Composite Video and HDMI ports on the Sanyo
7) The LCD on the Sanyo is considerably larger and it is visible even in full sun. The Sanyo has HDMI output as well as HD composite video.
So, yes, as far as video goes, the Sanyo VPC TH1 gets the job done, and done nicely.
The 2 MP (interpolated) stills are nothing special, but nice to have in a pinch. (For comparison stills, see below, under the videos.)
Add the full suite of Arcsoft video software: image and video management, video editing, DVD authoring and burning, and a bonus Panorama maker, and you have a one stop solution for your home video needs. While less powerful than the AVS4You products reviewed on Cloudy Days and N’tbook Nights, the included editing software will make a decent little video and do it quickly and easily. I have not yet experimented with the built in, in camera, editing functions, but they also look promising for those times when you just can not get to your computer, and you need to hack together a little video of the party, while the party is still on.
LCD comparison. Sony on left.
And, of course, I have not highlighted the zoom on the Sanyo. 30x. From approximately 43mm to 1290mm in 35mm equivalents. That is a lot of reach. It makes, for instance, field recordings of small birds at reasonable distances possible. Of course, as mentioned previously, the digital image stabilization is not much help at extreme magnifications, but tripod mounted, the long zoom can produce impressive results. See the Song Sparrow clip below.
If some of the features of the Sony Webbie are really necessary for your happiness, you might want to wait a month for the arrival of the Sanyo VPC CG10, a similar camera by the specs, but in the pistol grip configeration, and with Sanyo’s image stabilization and more comprehensive controls. It is scheduled for introduction at the same price as the Sony Webbie HD.
(Addition: since writing this I have experimented with the in-camera video editing features of the Sanyo. IMHO, these features, limited though they are to basic cut and join, enhanse the value of the camera considerably. For one thing, it allows editing of video clips without a decompress/compress cycle, maintaining higher quality in the final edited clip. For another, it is considerably faster than importing the video, editing it, and saving it…in fact, it is very fast compared to any computer based editing system I have used. Finally, it makes it possible to shoot and edit small clips and upload them directly from the camera (connected to the computer in Card Reader Mode) to YouTube, Flickr, SmugMug, Vimeo, etc. I am impressed once more with the overally quality, and depth of features in the Sanyo…in what is defiitely an entry level HD camera.)
The one exception to the above is that if the majority of your shooting will be people, inside, doing things, and you do not want to dig into menu settings to find the appropriate mode, you might take a more serious look at the Webbie. In normal shooting mode, the Webbie has a clear edge in well lit (inside, daylight, with lights on) party situations. To equal it, you have to do some menu browsing (it is, believe me, way deep) on the Sanyo.
The conclusion here for me is that whether you go for the Sony Webbie HD or spend a bit more on the more full featured Sanyo VPC TH1, good quality HD video, in a P&S format, is now readily available for the home film maker. Go do it.
Comparison Videos:
Scenic… (notice also the effects of the Sanyo wind filter in the wide scene, and image stabilization in the 5x view.)
Indoor Color…
People Inside…
Music (for sound)… (shot before I discovered the Soft setting on the Sanyo)
Action…
Song Sparrow (30x zoom)…
Comparison stills… click image to open flickr page…then choose All Sizes to see the image at up to full resolution.
For some years now landscape photographers have relied on graduated neutral density filters to control exposure where bright skies would otherwise dominate an image…or where the sky would go white because of overexposure when the image was properly exposed for the landmass.
With Lightroom 2.0, Adobe introduced a Graduated Filter effect as part of the local adjustments panel (along with some other retouching tools, including the Adjustments Brush). I have been experimenting with the Graduated Filter effect recently. Let me walk you through editing a sample, seen above, selected not because it is a great photo, to to show off the GF effects.
(Disclaimer: I am by no means a Lightroom expert. I am just learning as I go along. What I share here is just my first fumblings with this effect. I am sure there is a lot more to learn.)
As I have come to expect from Lightroom, the GF tool is amazingly powerful. When you first drop the panel down you see a menu of -/+ selections for Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Clarity, and Sharpness…plus a little color box. You can create a GF to apply any of these effects to the image by selecting the -/+ for that effect, or by picking the effect from the drop-down menu at the top.
Graduated Filter Effects Panel
Advanced control sliders
Or, to apply multiple effects to the same area, you can click the little switch icon next to the drop-down menu on the right.
This opens a series of effect sliders, one for each effect in the list. This is, in my opinion, the most powerful way to use the GF effect, and the most intuitive.
To create a filter you just place the mouse over one edge of the image, left click and drag the filter down (across or up) the image. As it expands you will see that there is a dark circle roughly in the center of your covered area, and a white line at either border. The white line where you started dragging is the beginning (darkest) area of the filter, and the white line at the other edge is roughly where the filter effect fades to nothing. The dot at the center is, well, the center of the effect. You will quickly realize that the filter can have any orientation to the image. It can be horizontal, vertical, or any degree of diagonal, just as you drag it out. The black center indicator is always there unless you hide it. It turns white when the filter is not selected (for editing).
Drag the GF across the image where you want it.
First filter effect
Once the filter is in place, you can make adjustments using the effects sliders. For this image I reduced the exposure to darken the sky significantly (for added drama). I also boosted the saturation and contrast to deepen the detail in the clouds, and added some clarity for the same reason. Clarity when applied to clouds seems to bring out the transparancy of the more subtle regions of the cloud mass. You can, of course (this is Lightroom) see the changes applied in real time, as you make them, without any worry about the original. Any change is reversible simply by resetting the slider, or you can remove all effects by clicking the reset button at the bottom of the panel, or, if you need another option, you can select the center dot of the filter and press the Del key to get rid of the whole thing.
The combined effects yielded this preview.
Preview of first set of effects...
An improvement, I think, but we can do more.
settings for the second GF
Applying a second GF, this time dragging up from the bottom, and angling the whole filter slightly, I again adjusted exposure, this time bringing it up slightly to pick up the details in the foreground. I also added good deal of saturation and contrast to make the yellows of the rabbit brush pop, and some extra clarity for detail.
It is important to realize that these adjustments take only seconds, and that you can see what you are doing in real time. You simply move the slider until the effected area of the image looks the way you want it to. Too much? Move the slider back.
This is the preview of what the second GF did.
Effect of second GF
Much improved! (IMHO). Note that the edges of the filter indicated by the white lines are not exact: generally the outer edge in particular, will cover the whole width of the image, even if, as in this case, it appears that a corner is cut off due to the angle of the filter.
Global changes...
The image is almost there. For final changes, I dropped back out of the GF panel, and made a set of global changes, using the Recovery, Fill Light, and Black-point sliders, and the Presence panel, as well as the Sharpen landscape preset.
Recovery pulled the sky back further, adding detail to the highlights. Fill Light brought up the foreground without lightening the sky. Sliding the Black-point to the right intensified the colors further. Clarity made the details really pop, and Vibrance pulled the yellows up even further without oversaturating them. Finally, I cropped out a bit of the heavy black clouds at the top for balance.
And here is the final image. Original first, for comparison, then the Lr version. Time invested: less than 3 minutes start to finish.
The original
Final: significantly different than the origianal in less than 3 minutes.
Still not a great image, but much more satisfying than the original, and, considering the dull day, and the inability of the sensor to do it justice, much closer to what I actually saw…maybe even a little better than I saw in real time…but I will never tell!
I am in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the North American Nature Photographers Association Summit a day early, it turns out, so I spent my first afternoon shopping for a New Mexico speciality: color! It is part of the culture. It is everywhere. New Mexicans, Albuquerquians, are not ashamed of color.
The hotel is downtown next to the ultra modern Convention Center, but just around the corner from Historic Route 66, Central Avenue, and only about 2 miles from the color headwaters, the original color spring, in Old Town. So, of course, I walked down Historic 66 to Old Town. Honestly once you get past the Convention Center section of 66, which is colorfully seedy, it is not a great part of town until you get to Old Town.
Still, if you have to have grated storefronts…
Locked Down Color
Of course the color really gets interesting once you reach Old Town. This is Old New Mexico at its most intense.
Turquoise!
The late afternoon light made the color pop, but also cast heavy shadows that I had to deal with.
Out of the sun, the shadows were cool, and light levels were surprisingly low. I found myself using higher ISOs than I might have preferred.
Hot and Cold
Hot!
In a gated passageway into a hidden plaza the shadows were even deeper, and the colors cooler. Such a mass of chillies!
Red and Green
Warming Bench
The hanging peppers for color is a tradition in New Mexico, but I had never seen this effect before.
Pepper Color
And, of course, to offset the riot of color at street level, you have the adobe and stark white of the church spires, which show to particular effect against the deep New Mexico sky.
Spires and New Mexico Sky
Sunlit Detail
Even the smallest nooks are filled with color. Here, deep in a shadowed passageway into a plaza, the afternoon sun finds it way in to light up a little detail outside a shop.
Pushing further into the plaza I found an interesting bucket fountain standing against the intense blue of the window frames behind. I tried a couple of shots here, trying for a balance between the frame of the fountain and the color of the background. This shot, taken at medium telephoto worked best for me.
With a wider shot it was difficult to get both the bucket and the background in focus at the same time.
Water Color
On the way back to the hotel, I found one last blast of color on a very non-Hispanic building…just to demonstrate that color is in the blood in New Mexico.
In the Blood
All in all a succesfull color shopping trip. But then, it is New Mexico. How could I miss?
Jack London State Park is in Glen Elen California, in the Valley of the Moon area of the Sonoma valley. Wine country. It is, as you might suspect, the former residence / homestead of the great American writer, Jack London. He intended to make it a model farm/vineyard. The buildings are of local stone. The hills are terraced with vines. There are groves of Eucalyptus and Redwood, a small lake up the mountain above. All in all a fitting tribute to the best of what he loved in the Valley of the Moon.
I was last there on a rainy day. I almost didn’t go. I almost turned back many times as I wound up the Sonoma valley, but memories of the beauty of my one previous visit, several years ago now, on a better day, keep drawing me on. It was raining hard on and off: misting most of the time, and I kept looking for a break in the clouds, hoping that when I got to the higher elevations at the park, I would somehow get above the rain. Not so.
Mossy Stair to Nowhere but Dreams
Still, I paid my $6 at the self-service entrance and was committed to getting at least $6 worth of enjoyment out of the wet day there. I took two wet hikes, one from each of the parking areas, doing my best to catch some the beauty of the day, while keeping my camera dry enough so the electrics did not short out. Not easy. I spent a half hour standing the lee of a stone barn waiting out the worst of the rain, and I was pretty wet by the time I got back to the car both times.
Was it worth it? The subdued light of the rainy, misty, foggy day produced interesting views of the vineyards (which still produce wine under the Jack London appellation), the hills, the trees, the moss covered stones. Maybe it was just that I was more determined than usual to find subjects and vistas worth capturing despite the moisture, but it seemed that I found images every where I looked.
Plums Fore, Vineyard Aft
Cough Tree Bark
The intermittent rain and the lack of what we might consider attractive light forced me to look closely at everything. (Had to get my $6 worth, you know.) Even the bark of the Eucalyptus trees drew me. Such patterns. The sheen of moisture only brought out the colors more deeply. The Plum blossoms hung gloriously pink against the green, yellow, and brown of the winter terraced vineyards, or gloriously smooth against the rough texture of stone barn walls.
Even the misty fog added atmosphere to what might otherwise have been merely pretty vineyard pictures.
Plums and Stone
I spent about 3 hours there, and brought back 22 images that I will keep in my portfolio. Not a bad deal. That is only $.28 per image. I consider the $6 and the rainy afternoon well invested.
Vineyard in the Rain
You can see the whole set of 22 images, and a few others from that day, in the Vallejo and Sonoma galley on my SmugMug site.
That is the inspirational side. On the technical side, the day posed its challenges too. Low light meant often higher ISOs than I would have liked so it was necessary to fill the frame with detail (which masks the high ISO noise). The fog and mist required some post-possessing in Lightroom to capture the real effect…mostly using the Recovery slider to bring out the transparency of the veils of moisture. I used Program Shift to increase the depth of field in the shots of the Plum blossoms against the vineyard and the stone wall. And I made full use of the full range of the Sony DSC H50s zoom to frame and crop. You can find more detailed explanations of how many of the image were made and processed on my Steve Ingraham’s Pic of the Day blog. Start at 2/6/2009 and work your way forward.
Maybe not the best $6 I ever spent. But close to it.
Every once in a while it is good to return to our roots. Digiscoping roots that is. Last week, while attending the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival in Titusville Florida I decided to dig out my Sony DSC N1 (a small 8 mega pixel digital point and shoot camera with a touch screen and selective spot focus), my Digital Camera Adapter (the Carl Zeiss swing in/swing out platform adapter), and dust off my Zeiss Diascope 85FL with wide-field fixed power eyepiece and do some traditional digiscoping. (For the basics on digiscoping, see Point and Shoot for Wildlife.)
Since my trusty (not!) cable release was broken (3rd one I have broken), I was even without my usual Universal Cable Release Bracket and had to actually push the button directly on the camera for every exposure.
The deal with the swing arm platform bracket is that it holds the camera fairly steady behind the eyepiece while capturing, but swings out of the way to focus and observe. Digiscoping using this rig means 1) finding the bird, 2) setting up the tripod and scope, 3) finding the bird in the scope (with the camera swung out of the way) and focusing, 4) swinging the camera in, 5) pressing the shutter release half way so the camera will focus through the scope, 6) waiting on the bird to do something interesting, and 7) squeezing off the shot.
Inelegant but sometimes effective.
Of course it requires a cooperative bird.
That whole routine is one reason, when the kingfisher who had been ahead of me, post to post and bush to bush, as I drove the Blackpoint Wildlife Drive loop at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, decided to perch up on the mangroves right across a 20 foot channel from the road, I pulled up, grabbed some shots with the H50 out the window, and then sat and debated with myself for a good 5 minutes.
Belted Kingfisher in Context
It was a kingfisher after all. A Belted Kingfisher. They never sit. They are flighty and the slightest disturbance, let alone a large human getting out of car, digging out tripod and scope, setting up tripod, etc. etc., sends them on to happier hunting grounds around the bend, on the back side of whatever cover they can find.
Was it worth getting out?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The light was all but perfect. I did all that.
And I got set up without the bird flitting. And I got focused and took perhaps the best shot of my life of a Kingfisher. Then I zoomed in and took an even better shot.
Belted Kingfisher side view
The short of it is that I worked that bird for the better part of an hour and moved on before she did. I photographed it at all powers, on three different perches as she fished. I came back with over 50 exposures of that bird…any one of which was better by a factor of 10 than any Belted Kingfisher shot I had ever taken before.
It was a magical hour. I spent it totally amazed. Blessed.
And I was reminded once more that one of the major attractions of digiscoping is that, given the right bird and the right light, it can be done with minimal equipment.
Over the course of several trips to Blackpoint Drive and one morning at Viera Wetlands, I got reaquainted with my basic digiscoping rig, and found that I liked it again. I liked the results even better.
An American Bittern at Viera Wetlands.
American Bittern
A Tricolored Heron at BPD.
Tricolored Heron
Least Bittern at Viera.
Least Bittern
And one final Kingfisher.
Kingfisher looks at fotog
Sometimes it is good to go back to basics. Simple point and shoot. Spotting scope. Bracket. Digiscoping at its best.
White bird. Dark background. This is a classic situation where Program shooters need to think about Exposure Compensation. Somewhere in your menu system you should find the EV setting. On my Sony, it is one of the settings placed right along the bottom of the LCD. You don’t even have to go into the menu system to find it. On some cameras it is considered important enough to warrant a seperate button.
EV settings (stands for Exposure Value) generally run from -2 to +2 and, unlike program shift (see In Praise of Program Shift), they do change the actual exposure of the image. Minus values decrease exposure from the Programed setting, making the whole image darker. Plus settings increase exposure above the Programed setting, making the whole image brighter.
As we discussed in our earlier articles on the basic of exposure, there are always compromises in fitting the full range of dark and light that the eye sees into the limited range of tones which any photographic medium, including digital sensors, can record.
In a shot like the one above, even the most sophisticated metering systems, if left on Program or Auto, will read and average the tones in the scene, attempting to the best fit. With this kind of shot, the exposure will be set so that the white of the bird entirely white…with no detail in the feathers, and no shades of gray or off-white. Just the way it works.
To avoid that, I set the EV to -1.7, effectively shifting the center of the exposure range down almost 2 f-stops. This made the water darker than life, but it alowed the sensor to catch much of the detail in the white wings and body of the bird. Even so, the inner right wing is fully saturated…it has reached, and probably exceeded the maximum brightness the sensor is able to record, and you don’t see any feather detail there.
Setting the EV even lower would have caught some detail in the brightest areas, but at the expense of turning much of the white plumage gray. This is probalby the best balance that could be achieved, shooting jpeg with this particular camera. A DSLR shooting raw might have done slightly better, but this image would be a challenge for any camera.
And remember, it is not only white that can cause a problem. Any sufficiently bright and intense color may over-saturate the sensor. It is the pinks in the image below that were the problem.
Roseate Spoonbill: too pink
This shot was also taken at -1.7 EV.
So, when would you use +EV values. A classic case would be backlit subjects.
Blacklit
For this particular image, I did not use EV compensation, but I could have. Instead I used spot metering to meter on the butterflies. It accomplished the same thing, increasing the exposure of the overall image and catching the detail in the foreground. Without it the sky would be deep blue (as it was in reality) and the butterflies would be lost in shadow.
I could have done the same thing in the shots fo the birds above. Spot metering would have exposed for the bird and let the background go dark.
So, which would you use: EV compensation or spot metering? That depends on how fast your subject is moving. Shooting the birds in flight at Sanibel, spot metering would be all but impossible. And spot metering is more difficult were the subject is not in the center of the frame. It can be done, either by locking exposure with the shutter release and re-framing, or by shifting the spot around (if your camera provides for that), but neither work well with moving subjects.
The Agave and butterflies were not going anywhere, so spot metering was an option.
EV compensation is a powerful tool, but it requires both a knowledge of how exposure works, and some experience of how your individual camera responds. It is definitely worth leaning to use.
It always amazes me how much resistance there is among advanced amature photographers to automation. The assumption seems to be that real photographers shoot manual (and RAW of course), figuring out every parameter of the exposure and and white balance themselves (presumably using a hand held spot meter).
Most advanced Point and Shoots, and almost all consumer level Point and Shoots, come with pre-programed scene modes. Sunny beach, landscape, macro, fireworks, portrait, night scene, and, very often, snow.
Snowy scenes, especially in full sun, are next to impossible to expose properly, no matter how good or how experienced you are. If you expose for detail in the snow, then everything else is way too dark (and the snow is often gray instead of white). If you expose for foreground subjects, especially people, then the snow is completely blown out…bright white beyond the ability of the sensor to record any detail at all.
And snow has an amazing amount of detail. It has texture. It has, especially when the wind has been playing with it, wonderful scupted forms. It covers the earth with a blanket that has a shape that both hides and reveals the basic contours of the land.
All of that will be totally lost in snow shots unless you pay close attention to exposure.
Or, you could just set the camera to Snow Scene Mode, and let the camera figure out the correct exposure. Most Snow Modes are not simple exposure compensation routines. Most actually analyze the range of tones in the scene and their distribution with the frame, and then apply exposure compensation that has been tuned to the particular image. Sophisticated stuff. And, if my experience with the Sony DSC H50 is anything to go by, surprisingly effective!
The image above is a classic snow exposure problem. I wanted the texture of the snow. I wanted the delicacy of the shadowing. I wanted the full color and form of the isolated beach plum. Pre-programed Snow Scene Mode handled it amazingly well. The image required practically no adjustment in post-processing.
I took a series of photos that day, in a brief interval of sun between two storms, working fast, using the pre-programed Snow Scene Mode on them all.
expansive snow-scape
Even shots like this more expansive snow-scape, including 1/3rd sky, were rendered very accurately, with a good amount of detail in the snow. I used just a little Recovery in Lightroom, and some Vibrance to punch up the sky, but essentially the pre-programed Scene Mode did the job.
snow and wind make amazing forms
Even this most difficult shot…all light and white and shadow…was rendered close enough so that Lightroom could restore detailed texture in the snow drift.
So, fear not Scene Mode. Give it a try. Chances are you will find the pre-programed exposure routine does a better job than you can in determining exposure…and lot easier too.
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not caution you to try your Scene Mode on something you are willing to lose…or to shoot back up shots using your best judgment for comparison until you determine if the Scene Modes in your camera are as effective as the Scene Modes in the Sony H5o.
Still, I have a feeling you will be pleasantly surprised. Personally, I plan on using Snow when it snows. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
I have been posting a Pic of the Day on Facebook, Twitter, and two of the digital photography forums I belong to. The next logical step is a Pic of the Day blog, where I can detail some of the why and how of each image, and, hopefully garner some discussion of techniques.
I have started filling in back to the my first Pic of the Day a month ago. The pictures are all up. I am adding the why and how as I can. It will probably take me a few days to work my way back. Current entries demonstrate the format.
Click the really big > or < to navigate forward or back a post, or use the Archive link to bring up any post you are interested in.
At the bottom of each post there is a link to the Smugmug lightbox and gallery for the image. There you can see the image in any size up to the original file, and view other images in the same series.
Please use the comment box. This is all about discussion. And let me know what you think of the idea as a whole.
The Sanyo has HDMI output as well as HD composite video. 
