Mav's Mentoring & Blog Thread

[Mav]

...........

 

[BoblyBill]

[SIZE=+1]OUTSTANDING![/SIZE] :thumbup: :thumbup:

I love the composition. Seeing the foliage and the small bit of light on them helps with perspective and adds some color, and then it's nothing but a clear star filled sky. Is that some lower atmosphere clouds in there, or is that really Milky Way type galaxial features? Extra credit for being up at 1am. I hear a clear shot off of my deak to see stuff like this, but way too much lighting in the crawl-n-sprawl DC area drowning out stars like that. So I hardly ever see anything like this in my area, which is why I like it even more.

The only thing I can really critique on is gear related. I think the photo itself, and your composition and the timing were perfectly executed, but even in the small web version you can start to see some noise which might be distracting in print size. Did you do any post work on that? Might be able to tweak it a bit. If you like doing this sort of stuff, this is what the exotic ultra-wide and ultra-fast primes are for. Wow, 80 seconds at f/4 and iso800? That's -5.3 LV! I don't think it ever gets that dark in my area, even at 1am. Too much urban lighting.

Thanks for the comment... This was the Milky Way and I really would like to upgrade to some fast primes because long shutter and high ISO's never seem to blend well, especially for something like this because if you were to zoom in on this those stars are actually lines because of the rotation of the earth . If I do it again, I'll be sure to have a 14mm f2.8 which will give me an extra 2.5 stops (if I did my math right). Also, this would nice to have a motor drive the followed the rotation of the earth. I think I then could jump it down to ISO 100 and get much less noise. You right about the noise I did my best to get it out.

 

[Mav]

I looked at the shutter speed and was wondering at what point you'd start to get star trails, so I guess you're already getting them at 80 seconds. Yeah that'd call for either a much fancier camera that'll do high ISO better, or some more exotic glass. f/2.8 is only 1 stop though vs f/4. 40 seconds instead of 80 seconds at iso800, or the same 80 seconds but only iso400. You'd probably want at least a 2 stop improvement from f/4 so you could shoot at 40s/iso400, but even better might be an f/1.4.

The Nikon guys use the exotic and discontinued 28mm f/1.4D lens for this which is sharp corner to corner and has very little CA even wide-open, which makes it ideal for astronomical photography. They also use the also discontinued :roll: Noct series f/1.2 lenses which are phenomenal. I have no idea what the equivalent lenses might be in the Canon system. Maybe the 24/1.4? LOL, at only $1200 that's a steal. The Nikon 28/1.4 didn't sell for any more than that new, but now that it's discontinued it's a classic collector's item and they've been going for north of $3k on eBay. The D3/D700 are only adding fuel to the fire. So if you want to do more of this, good thing you're shooting Canon. You're hosed at the moment within the Nikon system, unless you pay for a D3. f/1.4 would let you do 20 seconds and iso400 which would probably be pretty good vs f/4.

 

[BoblyBill]

I was looking into that 24/1.4 actually but even the at 15 seconds you can start to see star trails, but that could be a good start. I think it would be a fun engineering project to make a home made motordrive so that I can follow the stars without star trails and still get good long exposures at ISO 100.

 

[Mav]

Wow, even at 15 seconds you get star trails? OK so get an f/1.2. :mrgreen: Do they actually have commercial systems that'll rotate your camera setup for this stuff? I think for any normal print size that 15 or 20 seconds would be OK though. A buddy of mine with a Nikon D50 and his 50mm f/1.8D was passed out on his deck drunk and just happened to have his camera with him, put the thing on bulb and rested it on his chest. Was a 15 second shot and aside from just a bit of blur from breathing it looked great!

Or just let it go for a very very long exposure and let the star trails do their thing. I once saw at photo.net an awesome shot that pretty much ran the whole night, and the stars made nearly a full circle. Was shot on a film camera, probably slow 50 speed slide film, and just set on bulb for pretty much the whole night. No idea about settings but it looked great.

 

[Emerana]

Too much noise above 400?

Post a full image and then a 100% crop of something at 800 or whatever you're not pleased with. I'd honestly like to see for myself. Canons have always had very good noise reduction processing that maintains detail well but still cleans up noise nicely, or am I wrong? I have no problems shooting my D40 at 1600 if I need to, but do like to keep my D80 at 800 or below. Too many pixels on the 10MP D80 results in lower sensitivity. I doubt my D80 is even a stop better than the XTi though, so maybe I'm more tolerant of noise, or there's something funny about the noise characteristics on the XTi??

Have you tried the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS?

I did rent the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS. I liked it but it didnt wow me. I would much rather something zoom in further if I am going to have a zoom at all. I felt like I always needed to switch lenses. I am still considering that one you PMed me about.

Well I don't really know how to post 100% but this is my try
this was 1/50 sec 2.8 800ISO. Granted it was fairly low light and something was very wrong with the focus on the rental lens (it overshot on ever even slightly low light photo). But this is what 800+ looks like. 1600 is much worse. I will try later to just shoot some samples. Anything I shoot with 800+ ISO has to be turned into B&W

 

[Mav]

Holy screen buster!

OK 100% crop generally means slicing out a section of your photo for web display, generally 800 pixels wide or less. Can do this with most basic photo editing tools. I have an easier way though. Sending you a PM.

 

[Crosby]

Hey Mav and everybody. Finally got a chance to do a quick post since after the vacation. Here is a preview of what I shot.

1. Friend's Son

2. Friend's Daughter

3.

4.

5.

 

[Bifurcator]

http://images29.fotki.com/v1010/photos/1/1055548/5664478/DSC_1175-vi.jpg

You let your baby daughter play with a microwave emitting device? Dude...

 

[Emerana]

http://images29.fotki.com/v1010/photos/1/1055548/5664478/DSC_1175-vi.jpg

You let your baby daughter play with a microwave emitting device? Dude...

I totally think she is going to survive :lmao: I let my kids play with mine

 

[Bifurcator]

I totally think you have a very good chance of being wrong.

And what will you do then? Brain cancer isn't exactly something you can just go "Whoops, I was wrong. Here, let me fix that. You want a bandaid honey?"

But I'll say no more. They're your kids.

 

[Mav]

Dude.... it wasn't even in a call!

My globe trotting product design engineering days were spent in the cellular hardware design industry, and if I named which companies I've worked for everyone would instantly recognize them. Now I have a boring desk job and never get to go anywhere, but that's OK since globe-trotting design jobs aren't compatible with raising a family with a wife who's also a professional, LOL. I think a lot of the stuff about cellular phones and links to brain cancer are over-hyped. Even so, cellular phone designs have evolved a lot just for the sake of consumer confidence since the first studies came about and it's really of no concern. At least in the US, there's quite tight regulations on emissions. I can elaborate quite extensively, but that's totally OT.

 

[Mav]

Hey Mav and everybody. Finally got a chance to do a quick post since after the vacation. Here is a preview of what I shot.

1. Friend's Son
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh297/ptcrosby_photo/IMG_0120.jpg

2. Friend's Daughter
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh297/ptcrosby_photo/IMG_0564.jpg

3.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh297/ptcrosby_photo/IMG_0483.jpg

4.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh297/ptcrosby_photo/IMG_0538.jpg

5.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh297/ptcrosby_photo/IMG_0529.jpg

Nice photos! :thumbup: All of them are nicely exposed with no annoying blown out to straight white skies or other highlights. On #2 the friend's daughter's face is obviously backlit. I might have tried a reflector or some fill flash, but you got the exposure right and I still like the mood that it creates as-is. A nice afternoon at the beach! My favorites are 3 and 4. Was this at the Gulf? Some of them do look just a bit soft to my eyes so I might try to add some sharpening in post. Try unsharp mask at 100-150% at radiuses between 0.3 and 1.0 pixels (0 threshold) and see what looks good. It'll help make them pop a little more. #4 is a good candidate for that. I'd like to see the kid just a little bit crisper while still keeping the water nice and blurred and out of focus.

 

[ChrisP]

Hi Mav - I love the pics - great vivid shots! By the way, I rented the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR several weeks ago for my daughter's dance recital. No exciting composures as I was simply trying to get some shots given two 3-minute dances and the no-tripod / no-flash rules for the event. I used an ISO of 800 for most of these shots. Here's a few of my daughter.

I had chance of taking several more pics with the lens - here's the shots.

Both of these taken handheld.

 

[Mav]

Hey Chris, nice shots! Although the two of the dance recital are a bit tough to see due to the small size. I'd say you got it though. Those type of events are always tough unless you have all pro gear. What were your settings including focal length for those? The floral and bird shot are REALLY nice. Were both of those with the 70-200VR too? That's a really nice lens. I'm afraid to even RENT the thing because I know I'll just have to have one after that!