Photography
Too Much Polarization
On my recent trips I mostly shot with my Hoya HD Polarizer on. I always adjusted the angle of the filter to get the strongest effect and it always looked good in the viewfinder! Just awesome blue skies. Sadly I couldn’t check the result on the display, because it was too bright outside. Back home I imported my shots to the computer just to see that many of the shots are unusable, because the sky is horribly dark. It looked different through the viewfinder, which is related to the much lower dynamic range of the digital sensor compared to the eyes. (+ The Photo is underxposed)
It’s simply a handling error on my side. The effect of a polarization filter depends on the atmosphere and the angle to the reflecting surface. In the above image the sky was very clear and it seems like I shot in about an 90° angle to the sun. A simple rotation to lessen the strength of the polfilter, and the sky would look much more natural.
So, always check your results! I think I’ll get a Hoodman Hoodloupe for my camera…
Blackrapid RS-4 Quick Review
Today I unboxed the newest gadget I got from enjoyyourcamera.com. It’s a BlackRapid RS-4 camera strap. It also came with the FastenR-2. You simply screw the FastenR-2 in your tripod mount. You can tighten it much further than you might think. And you should do so! I am still kinda feared that it might come off. :/
The belt itself feels very sturdy, although I found it hard to adjust to my size. The RS-4 comes without any manual, but once I adjusted it to fit my body it feels OK so far. I’ll try it out during the next few weeks and will post my final thoughts here on the blog.
Grad ND – Why you DON’T need one!
Earlier this year I was about to buy a graduated neutral density filter. These filters are mostly being used to darken the sky in landscape shots. I did a lot of research and in the end wanted at least two filters in the expensive glass 100x100mm version which I would then simply hold and move in front of my lens to have some flexibility.
In the end I didn’t buy anything for three simple reasons: (1) About 100€ for two good filters is just too much for those rare scenes I would really use them (at least in my eyes), (2) It’s pretty inconvenient to carry around when traveling light and (3) I would need an additional (and expensive) filter holder for long exposures.
My solution (to at least some degree) is to use the Graduated Filter tool in Lightroom. I used this technique a lot on my recent B&W Photos. The good thing is, that you have full control about the intensity, the height, the strength and the position of the effect.
I don’t know if that’s common practice, but at least I wasn’t aware of it and didn’t do it before. Matt Kloskowski at lightroomkillertips.com did a great video about it: link.
The downside is that this doesn’t help in extreme situations. Most people say you have about 1 f-stop backup if you’re shooting RAW. You can go lower, but you will loose quality. So in very extreme situations you will still need a dedicated Grad ND, or you can do HDR or exposure fusing. But for me this technique works well enough.
Below I attached a before and after (-2 Stops) screenshot of the Graduated Filter effect in Lightroom.
Rügen in Spring
In early April my girlfriend and I went (as my birthday present) to Rügen, a small Island in the Baltic Sea in the north-eastern part of Germany. Thank you! It was great, even if you didn’t expect it and we almost died 
. The weather wasn’t always great, but it was a lot of fun walking and shooting there together.
We arrived pretty late at about 5pm, but the ride was fun. My girlfriend had her first-time-ever on a car ferry. We checked-in and decided to visit a small town called Sellin which is famous for it’s pier later in the evening. It turned out that it wasn’t very easy to find this town. There were no signage and our navigation system didn’t know it either. But thanks to Google Maps we did find it tough.
On the second day we’ve been to the northernmost point in Germany called Kap Arkona and a very cute and old fishing village called ‘Vitt’.
The third day, which was also my birthday, the weather was much nicer and we decided to go walking. Our Hotel was very close to Jasmund National Park with it’s impressive chalk cliffs. Over a small stairway we wanted to go down to the ocean – not knowing what was going to happen. We walked and walked. Most people just turned around, but we didn’t really notice that at this time. We kept walking and walking. There should actually have been four stairways on our way, but they weren’t! It turned out that the hard winter here in Germany damaged big parts of the chalk cliffs and let avalanches of chalk and mud fall down into the ocean and the stairways with it. The nice thing about this is that the chalk colored the ocean almost turquoise and created a nice Caribbean feeling. On our way we climbed over many dried mudflows without any problem, but a few kilometers later there was one that must have been very new. I climbed at it, walked a few steps and then suddenly half of me was gone… caved into mud to my hip. I threw my camera over to my girlfriend which was still on secure ground and then somehow managed to pull myself out. Loaded with tens of kilos of mud I went into the ocean to get rid of at least some of it and then wanted to walk back the 10km to our car. But not my girlfriend. We saw a stairway at the other side of the bay, so she (much lighter that she is) somehow managed to find a way over the mud, whereas I just walked through the ocean… An hour later we were back up on the top of the cliffs. But we didn’t walk back to our car, no. We walked all the way to the Königsstuhl and then took a bus back to our car.
The last day we headed home and made a short stop in Stralsund.
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What’s in the new camerabag?
I recently wanted a new Camerabag, because my old Lowepro Inverse 200 AW just got to heavy and wasn’t a good carry around bag. I wanted something that fits all my stuff when I’m on a train or plane. Well, I actually thought that bag has more space, but it hardly fits all my current gear.
So, what’s in the bag?
- Nikon D90 + Nikon MB-D80
- Nikon 50mm f/1.8
- Nikon 70-300 VR
- Tamron 17-50 f/2.8
- Nikon SB-600
- Nikon MB-18a
- Hoya HD Polarizer
- Lumiquest SoftBox III
- Joby GorillaPod SLR-Zoom
- 15″ MacBook Pro
- 120Gb Backup HDD
- Lee Sample Filter Pack
- Some cut gels (CTO, CTB, CTG)
- Eneloop AA Batteries
- Technoline BC700
- Hama Optic Paper
- Hama Dust-Ex
- Microfiber Cloth
- Ethanol
- Velcro Stripes
- Screwdrivers
- Some cables
- iPhone charger
It does fit, but I was actually looking to buy a macro and a wide-angle lens.
Edit: Forgot to mention the new bag is a Tamrac Aero Speed Pack 85.
Edit2: Just discovered that there are three more small pockets on the side access. Lol.
Animal Photography
One of my resolution for this New Year was to try different things in photography. I wanted to learn more about lighting, wanted to get into portrait and animal photography. Well, the year is almost half done and I just started…
It was a lot of fun to shoot these animals and since I’m currently into all this black and white stuff I tried both, color and b&w. The latter mostly just looked better in my eyes.
All images shot with Nikon 70-300VR. Developed in Lightroom.
Going Black & White
I am recently very interested in B&W (No, not Bowers & Wilkins, but Black&White). I was digging through my unedited photos today and tried B&W conversion on some older ones from last winter that I actually found rather boring because of the flat light.
Here’s my favorite so far:
I played with contrasts, clarity, color channels, added a graduated filter and so on to get this look. Here’s what it looked like out of the camera:
What do you think? Did I overdo it?
My first attempt on photographing the moon
Last night we had a very clear sky over Frankfurt, Germany so I tried to take a picture of the moon for the first time just to notice that it needs a really long lens. I took this shot with the Nikon 70-300 VR ranked out to 300mm and still this is a 1:1 crop. Beacause the 70-300 VR tends to get a bit soft at the higher end I sharpened the image quite heavily. Maybe too much?
How to Clean Your Camera Gear
Inspired by a conversation on Twitter I thought I’d tell you how I clean my gear. I read many posts by professional photographers out there that suggest to use commercial and expensive stuff like Lens Clens, Eclipse and so on, but most of them are just re-labeled alcohols. I also read through several forums about alternatives, but it often becomes a question of faith.
I used to use Methanol, but it can be hard to purchase here in Germany because it’s highly toxic. Now I use Ethanol, it’s non-toxic (in fact it’s drinking alcohol). You can get it inexpensively in most pharmacies and it works almost as good as Methanol. Don’t use Isopropyl. It’s hygroscopic and leaves a lot of residue after evaporation.
My cleaning procedure is pretty simple and inexpensive. Except the (M)Ethanol you need a Rocket Blower, a Microfiber Cloth, Lens Tissues and some Q-Tips.
The very first thing I clean is the Camera body and the lenses. To do so dismount the lens from the Camera body and put all the caps on. Then use a dampish microfiber cloth and wipe off all dirt from your body and lenses. If you have a zoom-lens that extends when zooming, zoom it all the way out.
The next thing I clean are the front element of my lenses and my filters. Take off your front-cap and use the Rocket Blower to blow away any dust because it might scratch the glass. If you have fingerprints or spots on the front element, put one drop of Ethanol on a wadded lens tissue and wipe it with very little pressure in circulating movements from the inside to the outside. Don’t do this on the rear element of your lens because they are very damageable! Just use the Rocket Blower to blow away any dust!
From time to time I also clean the contacts of the lens and the lens mount. To do so, put some Ethanol on a Q-Tip and twist it along the contacts.
The last thing I clean is the sensor. I don’t do wet cleanings myself, but I usually don’t even need to. Just don’t change your lenses in dusty environments. If I ever get visible dust on my sensor (which only happened once after shooting in the desert and on the beach on my Trip to Egypt) I bring my camera to a local camera store and let them clean it.
All I do myself is blowing the dust off. To do so you need to lock the mirror up in your camera’s menu (full batteries required). Then use the Rocket Blower and throw some hard blows on the sensor from a short distance. But take care to not touch the sensor.
How often should you clean your gear? Well… as less as possible and as often as you need to. I have cleaned my coated lenses with Ethanol for a year now, and I don’t see any damage to the coatings, nor have I found any serious reports on the Internet about it. But you should be careful and don’t overdo it. I usually clean the body and lens after each shoot and the front element only if it’s dirty.
Also have a look at the YouTube videos of Lilkiwiguy87.
My Photographic Journey
This is a totally personal – almost non-technical post. Skip it if you don’t care.
During New Year I was thinking back to my first contact with photography, my current photography and what I’d like to improve in 2010.Sadly the post got a bit too gear related and I don’t have any chance to show you some of my old pictures, but I hope you get my intention.
Past
I’ve been told that I had my first contact with a camera when I was 4yo: I played with my dad’s Canon EOS 650.
About a year later (I think when I became 5yo) I got my first own camera: A Fisherprice “toy” camera that took 110 pocket film. When I look at the prints of that camera today: they just suck. Quality and composition wise. But my mom always told me how much fun I had with that thing. Well… I think it just looked funny to see a boy looking through a blue camera with two “viewfinders”, but hey! It’s important to have fun, especially as a child
Another two years later I got an APS-C Camera with a 35/50mm “zoom” built-in. The image quality of these pictures is better and my composition also got better (at least I persuade that to myself). I already took pictures of animals in the zoo and my family. I think I lost that camera when I was 9yo and didn’t have a replacement for years… 
Not having a photo camera doesn’t mean I didn’t take pictures. Well no still pictures, but videos. I had a Sony analog 8mm video camera and annoyed my family by filming everything from holidays to motorsport and family events …
Then came digital. I got a used Fujifilm Finepix 4700 Zoom in 2004. That beast has 2.4Mpixels and a 36-108mm (35mm equiv) lens. The “good” thing about that camera is that it uses SmartMedia cards with just 64Mb of space for 30 images. Also the display sucked so much power that I couldn’t really turn it on to check the results and had to think before pressing the shutter just as with analog. I mostly shot landscapes with that camera (You can see some of the pictures in my blog post about my Trip to Tenerife) and I think I fell in love with photography with that camera.
I used the Fuji for 3 years, but then wanted something better because the low-light performance was actually non-existent – even at the lowest ISO setting the camera showed visible noise so I bought a Canon Powershot A590 in mid-2008 and started playing around in manual mode… figured with aperture, shutter speed, ISO and so on… but didn’t take many (good) pictures with the A590.
Current
Then, in the early 2009‘s, I bought a DSLR – a Nikon D90 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8. The high ISO performance plus that f/1.8 just rock. But on the D90′s crop sensor the 50mm are too long for what I liked to shoot… so I also got a Tamron 17-50 f/2.8. In June 2009 I also bought a Nikon 70-300 VR, a Hoya HD circular polarizer and a Nikon MB-D10 for my Trip to Egypt and just one month later a Joby Gorllapod SLR for long-exposure shots at night on the London & South East England trip. By the end of the year I also had a Nikon SB-600 and a Lumiquest SoftBox III… Let’s just say with the buying of that DSLR I became kind of a gear guy.
I learned a lot about the technique by simply trying, but also by reading blogs of famous photographers like Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Scott Kelby, Chris Marquardt, David Hobby’s Strobist and even Ken Rockwell. Another good thing was to follow them on Twitter and listen to podcasts like HappyShooting, Daily Photo Tips With Chris, DTownTV …
With the buying of the Canon Powershot A590 I started shooting many many frames, and my folder based organization soon started to show it’s weak points. I downloaded the Lightroom 2 Beta and directly bought the full version as soon as it was available and never wanted anything else. Lightroom just fits my workflow perfectly because I’m not a Photoshop guy… I only crop, adjust color, exposure, denoise and sharpen.
Future Goals
Having said that much about the gear I used, let’s get back to photography: I’d say I’m a landscape photographer and I also love to shoot at night… especially cityscapes. I mostly shoot when travelling, but that’s more because my surrounding is rather boring.
My resolution for 2010 is to get creative with lighting and improve my composition. I think still-lifes are a good way to do so. The next things I want to do are portraits, wildlife and maybe street photography. And I want to become more active on the Social Networks to get a bigger audience of viewers.
Gear wise (Note to myself: It’s not the gear. It’s you that takes the pictures… blah ) I plan to buy a wide-angle zoom or a macro for my D90 and a lightweight tripod. Maybe also a Nikon equiv. to the Canon PowerShot G11, because I’ve had so many moments where I missed a possibly good shot just because I didn’t want to carry my DSLR.
Trip wise I am planning my next real photo trip: A 3-week USA Road trip through Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah or a Safari through Namibia or Kenya depending on my budget.
Conclusion
One thing that really helps me is to set goals. My goals really come down to learning to light, improve composition and maybe shoot more frequently. Projects like Flickr’s 365 or Boris Nienke’s Area52 are some really interesting ideas to force you to shoot more often…
You can see my favorite shots on my Flickr stream: Favs, Night, Landscape
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Hi, my name is Chris. I am a wannabe photog, traveler & geek that lives in Hesse, Germany. more about me...
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