Photo 52 Week 3, "Chopped"

You can see the image I posted for this week's Talk Photography Photo 52 by clicking on the image to the right, but I wanted to post a little extra about it here on my regular blog, mention how I messed up, and how I could've fixed it had I enough time.

The theme this week was "Chopped", which sent quite a few ideas through my mind, most of which required a decent amount of effort to try to avoid the obvious, but I had settled on one specific image in my head.  This wasn't it. :)

My own kitchen is currently a construction site, so I decided to head over to my mother's house to take the shot.  The other reason was that I knew (or thought) she had some props there that I had in mind for the original image I wanted to make.  As it turned out, she didn't. So, I had to come up with something else and shoot it in about 10 minutes, as she was rushing me to get out of the house as she had to leave (and I'd lose my assistant holding the light too).

So, this is what I came up with.  I do like the composition and layout of it, for the most part, but the lighting definitely needs some work.  This is primarily where I screwed up.

I wanted to use a traditional wooden handled axe, but after trips to four or five different local hardware stores I couldn't find a single one that was about the size I needed.  The only wooden handled ones I saw were absolutely massive, and far too big for my mother's kitchen counter (which, as you can see from the image, just wasn't quite deep enough for what I was going for as it was).

The scene was light by just a single SB-900 from above camera right, shot through a 33" TriGrip diffuser.  If I'd had the time, I would've added a second snooted or gridded SB-900 above at the far side of the axe (flagged off from the camera to help prevent flares) pointed at the axe head in order to give it some reflection and show off a bit more of its curved shape and definition.

I might also have possibly put another snooted SB-900 camera left on the countertop throwing a very small amount of light on the back face of the axe head to help separate it a bit from the dark shadow of the countertop.

I do have a couple of other ideas for the "Chopped" theme, but there just wasn't enough time to shoot them when I did this (like I said, I didn't even have enough time to get this one right), so this is a subject I want to go back to in the future to try those out, as well as revisit this particular shot and fix the lighting.

You can follow the progress of my Photo 52 over on my Photo 52 Blog.

Wide Angle Lenses

A post recently came up on a forum I visit regularly regarding the field of view of various wide angle lenses on APS-C sized sensors (specifically Nikon DX ones).  The person who created the thread was trying to decide between several wide angle lenses for a Nikon DX body (I don't remember off-hand specifically which one, but it's not really important).

I'm not trying to directly compare each of the lenses here, just show what's available for Nikon bodies and the different field of view range available with them (which was one of his questions).  That said, after doing some research, looking at comparison photos on the web, and trying some out for myself, I personally decided to go for the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 and don't regret the decision for an instant.

So, let's first have a look at what's available.

• Nikon 12-24mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S DX NIKKOR
• Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 EX DC HSM 
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
  
• Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG Aspherical HSM
• Tokina 12-24mm f/4 AT-X 124 PRO DX II

Now, I know that Tokina also do an 11-16mm lens,  but that wasn't brought up in the conversaion, and the image I made doesn't include those focal lengths, but you should be able to guesstimate a rough idea.

As I said, this wasn't to compare the quality, sharpness, chromatic abrrations, distortion or any other issues between each of these lenses.  I'm not Ken Rockwell, I can't provide reviews or comparisons for products I've never actually used, or even seen with my own eyes.

As well as 10, 12, 20 and 24mm I've also put 18mm on there so that you can get a rough idea when compared to the wide end of a kit lens (18-55mm VR or 18-70mm DX, for example).

I know the focal plane isn't at the front of the lens as it appears to be in this image, it's merely for illustration purposes.

Personally I prefer having the 10mm wide end rather than 12mm, it lets me get just that little bit extra when I need it (which I have needed for some interior shots), and the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 doesn't distort quite as much as some of the others mentioned.

These fields of view shown above are for Nikon DX sized sensors when using specifical focal lengths.  There are various field of view calculators out there if you have a look on Google that will allow you to work this out for yourself if you're on an FX or 35mm body (or if you want to look up other focal lengths for either sensor type).

Bear in mind that DX lenses aren't really going to be much use on FX bodies, so if you are calculating the field of view of a given focal length on full frame make sure it's a full frame lens. :)

Winter wonderland

Ok, so wonderland is probably a bit of an exagerration, but we've have had a fairly nice amount of snow here over the past couple of weeks.  The snow wasn't originally the primary focus of this post, but it has ended up being longer than I'd anticipated, so I'll get back to the original point of this in a future post.

The photo below was shot a couple of days before Christmas at about 4am (it had just finished snowing and I wanted to get out with the camera before the general public had trampled dirty footprints all over it).  It also gave me the chance to do a bit of playing around with long exposures and HDR.

So, this was shot on the Nikon D200 with the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 lens (this lens and its counterparts being the originally planned point of this post).  It's a tonemapped HDR composite of 7 shots from 1/250th to 15 seconds in 2 stop increments.  The camera was setup on a tripod and I used my trusty Nikon MC-20 remote shutter release to capture each shot.  I was not in bracket mode, and manually adjusted the shutter speed for each shot (so make sure you have a rock solid tripod with you for this kind of thing).

To detail the process just a bit, it's a composite of 7 images, all f/8 @ ISO200 and, as mentioned above, each being 2 stops apart from 1/250th of a second up to 15 seconds.  The NEF files shot by the camera were brought into Photoshop for some initial modifications to the white balance, saturation and vibrance and then they were all exported out as JPG files at 100% quality.  The initial adjustments were made to a single image that gave me the best overall visibility & detail for the snow & tunnel, then those identical settings were applied to the other 6 images.

Those 7 JPG files were then loaded into Photomatix to perform the HDR magic.  After some adjustments inside Photomatix, the resulting TIF file was then brought back into Photoshop for a final slight curves adjustment resulting in the image above.

White balancing this one (or these 7) was a little tricky due to the mixed lighting around the area.  Other than the street lights, there was no extra light added to the scene to help with the exposures, and this area is sheltered from the headlights of cars passing by.  The street lamps are a mix of LED street lights and the traditional HPS lights, giving pretty extreme colour temperature variances throughout the shot.

I decided to lean my white balance more towards the warmer tones of the sodium street lights.  I think this helps to lead your eye towards the tunnel and beyond through it.  The blue tones from the LED illumunation just helps to add to the coldness of the snow surrounding it.

So, anyway, that'll do for now.  I'm hoping to get out there and do some more playing around with HDR techniques in the future, but it's way too cold to be going out right now, and I'm getting a little bit sick of snow to be quite honest. :)