The Photographers' Corner 2013-2020

[Walt34]

Airplane spotting was such a great hobby!

Still is, and those shots look great to me.

Martinsburg Airport also has a WV Air Guard Reserve air base there and they have C5 transport planes going in and out. (The airplane is HUGE!) I shot these from my back porch. They very rarely fly over the housing development but I like the photo ops when they do if I can see it coming.

In this case we were out on the back porch and I could see the landing lights but not the aircraft yet as it approached. Fortunately I already had the 55-300mm telephoto mounted.

And the sky really was that color.

 

[Walt34]

Originally, the photo included my iPad on a holder just beneath the mic, displaying sheet music. But, even using double exposures, I couldn't get the screen to look right.

Hmm. How about darkening the room entirely if possible, using a long exposure for the iPad screen, and then flash to light the headphones and mic all in the same exposure?

 

[FIREd]

Still is, and those shots look great to me.

Martinsburg Airport also has a WV Air Guard Reserve air base there and they have C5 transport planes going in and out. (The airplane is HUGE!) I shot these from my back porch. They very rarely fly over the housing development but I like the photo ops when they do if I can see it coming.

In this case we were out on the back porch and I could see the landing lights but not the aircraft yet as it approached. Fortunately I already had the 55-300mm telephoto mounted.

And the sky really was that color.

Nice shots! That aircraft is truly a behemoth!

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

Hmm. How about darkening the room entirely if possible, using a long exposure for the iPad screen, and then flash to light the headphones and mic all in the same exposure?

I thought about it; the iPad screen appears to have polarization of some type. I got the exposure, but it still looked off. The screen showed uneven gradations in the photo. Could be the iPad was not completely 90 degrees to the camera, which caused the problems. I used f32 to get the right exposure for the mic, and that would make for a long timed exposure lol.

 

[frayne]

Cool shot Ronstar.

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

Reposting this because I realized -too late - the first I uploaded was too dark. It bugged me, and I couldn't go back and change it.

 

[Walt34]

That's an interesting object to light well. I doubt DW would want me to hang it on the wall though.

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

It's the backbone of a sailcat. The back (other side) is similar to a Roman shield, you can see the crucifix in this image, and when you shake it, it rattles, sounding like dice in a cup. Hence the nickname: Crucifix Fish.

 

[Walt34]

Ah. It's interesting to learn the etymology of how that was named.

 

[FIREd]

Reposting this because I realized -too late - the first I uploaded was too dark. It bugged me, and I couldn't go back and change it.


View attachment 18843

I like this version too. How did you set up the lighting?

In my small apartment, I don't have much room to store big studio lights, but I do have a small collapsible light box. I should play around with it more.

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

During the recent HDR discussion I wanted to post a 1 exposure (AKA 'fake') example but couldn't find one where I'd saved all the right bits. So I'll use a photo I took yesterday.

It was too windy for a multi exposure hdr. I exposed so the sunset would be a little blown out, the boats dark but still with detail and hoped I could recover detail from both in post processing.

I was shooting raw. This jpg was extracted from the raw file, scaled and cropped:



A. I pulled the histogram to the right to open up the darks:



B. Started over, pulled the histogram to the left to expand the highlights:



If you're familiar with Luminosity Masks (LM), the rest is a summary. If not, the rest are manual steps on each layer with a lot of (fun) tweaking along the way.

Base layer was B (expanded highlights)
Next layer was a LM on the darkest 25% of A (expanded darks), in overlay mode
Next layer was a LM on the lightest 33% of A (expanded darks), in normal mode

The result combined the visual parts of the 3 layers. This new layer is the basis for any additional processing.

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

This should make it easier to see the difference between the first and last photos:

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

I like this version too. How did you set up the lighting?

In my small apartment, I don't have much room to store big studio lights, but I do have a small collapsible light box. I should play around with it more.

Same basic lighting pattern: a bare bulb flash from the left, a bit lower than normal and a white reflector on the right. The bone is leaning against a leatherette camera bag. The light is feathered; it's not pointing directly at the subject, but off to the right, which accounts for the top right part of the bag getting a bit more light.

The first copy I posted was edited on an LCD screen, which my eyes have problems with. It looked correct, but after I posted it and saw it with my iPad I knew it was wrong. So I put it in my iPad, and opened up the exposure, and reposted it. Vanity lol.

The studio lights make things easier, but they aren't necessary. The studio flash has a modeling light, so I can see the shadows, and a slider to adjust the power level. Flash isn't necessary either. A light bulb is sufficient, and let's you see the shadows before shooting, which a regular flash doesn't. Easy to store. Just have to do some fast tests to get the color balance correct.

Difficult part in an apartment is getting the room dark, so ambient light doesn't interfere with the lighting.

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

This should make it easier to see the difference between the first and last photos:

View attachment 18850

The golden highlights look nice against the shadows. Have you the software to do the layers in RAW format?

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

Same shot as previous, using a 100 watt halogen desk lamp (leftover from college), handheld, no reflector (needed other hand to activate the shutter). I keep pushing inexpensive lighting, so I thought I ought to back it up. Just used camera's meter reading, because I was in a hurry. It required some color correction on the iPad, because I didn't adjust the camera for color balance. Could have used a daylight bulb, if I'd wanted to spend any money.



A little light reflected on the right would have opened up the shadows more.

The focus may be off because I forgot to refocus. Tripod was still in place, so I just popped the camera back on, adjusted the tripod head, and retook the photo, using the same focus locked in from yesterday lol. Getting old....

 

[FIREd]

Same basic lighting pattern: a bare bulb flash from the left, a bit lower than normal and a white reflector on the right. The bone is leaning against a leatherette camera bag. The light is feathered; it's not pointing directly at the subject, but off to the right, which accounts for the top right part of the bag getting a bit more light.

The first copy I posted was edited on an LCD screen, which my eyes have problems with. It looked correct, but after I posted it and saw it with my iPad I knew it was wrong. So I put it in my iPad, and opened up the exposure, and reposted it. Vanity lol.

The studio lights make things easier, but they aren't necessary. The studio flash has a modeling light, so I can see the shadows, and a slider to adjust the power level. Flash isn't necessary either. A light bulb is sufficient, and let's you see the shadows before shooting, which a regular flash doesn't. Easy to store. Just have to do some fast tests to get the color balance correct.

Difficult part in an apartment is getting the room dark, so ambient light doesn't interfere with the lighting.

Thanks for the information. I don't do a lot of studio photography so this is all pretty new to me. But I do have a dark room (bathroom) and all the necessary equipment, so I may give it a try.

 

[seraphim]

Been playing in the studio some more - same subject different settings. I took the WB switch of auto and put it on incandescent. The mic came out looking much more natural, with a bit of warmth I actually like. I also concluded the original shot - taken with a flash and WB on auto - is a bit too cool (bluish). Hard to tell without making comparisons. Later, I'll try a flash shot with the WB on flash, and maybe try out the Nikon's bracketing mode for WB. Using the desk lamp is kind of fun.

 

[seraphim]

been playing in the studio some more - same subject different settings. I took the wb switch of auto and put it on incandescent. The mic came out looking much more natural, with a bit of warmth i actually like. I also concluded the original shot - taken with a flash and wb on auto - is a bit too cool (bluish). Hard to tell without making comparisons. Later, i'll try a flash shot with the wb on flash, and maybe try out the nikon's bracketing mode for wb. Using the desk lamp is kind of fun.

 

[Walt34]

For white balance I really like the ColorChecker especially in mixed light sources like tungsten/daylight. I'll put that in the scene or if a portrait ask the person to hold it next to their face and take a shot. Then in LR it's one click to set the WB for the whole series under that lighting. The arrows point to the default squares for portrait and landscape. Portrait is a little warmer.

One can also set up a camera calibration for that particular lighting. If it's just one source I'll just use the expodisc and set a custom WB in the camera. For some reason I'm really [-]anal[/-] fussy about WB.

 

[Walt34]

Using the desk lamp is kind of fun.

I'll have to try that next winter when it gets cold out again. It looks like one can get some results hard to duplicate other ways.

 

[seraphim]

The Photographers' Corner

Yea - I'm going to play with presets, etc, when I get a few minutes. Got too lazy letting the camera set things automatically.

Ok played with the settings. Seems the lamp is between 2500K and 2650K.

2500k looks best.

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

The golden highlights look nice against the shadows. Have you the software to do the layers in RAW format?

I wish. Whether using multi-exposure or 1-exposure HDR, I produce TIFFs from the RAWs. I work in Linux (darktable, GIMP), so I don't know if it's even possible with lightroom, aperature, etc.

Those highlights are what first attracted my to the subject, along with the backlit Thai flag.

 

[Aus_E_Expat]

A slightly off topic question but do any of you make money from your photography?

Or is it purely a hobby?

If you make money, do you do it through sales to friends etc or do you sell on line etc?

Just curious whether these hobbies can expand to income streams.

 

[Walt34]

A slightly off topic question but do any of you make money from your photography?

Purely a hobby for me. I've given some thought to hanging out a shingle but there's the "running a business" aspect of it that I don't want to deal with. The book Best Business Practices for Photographers was an eye-opener about what it takes to run a professional-level photography business.

That, and I'd have to shell out a bunch of money for additional high-end camera bodies and lenses that I'm not at all sure I'd ever be able to recoup from the business. A client does not want to hear "my camera broke" when they put the effort into dressing up and showing up for a shoot.

It's a tough market out there with lots of microstock photography sites selling photos for almost pennies. I looked at the web sites of some local pro photographers and I'm not sure how they stay in business for the little they charge.

 

[Ronstar]

A slightly off topic question but do any of you make money from your photography?

Or is it purely a hobby?

If you make money, do you do it through sales to friends etc or do you sell on line etc?

Just curious whether these hobbies can expand to income streams.

Just a hobby for me as well. I've tagged along and taken a few shots with my niece's husband on a couple of shoots. He makes a few bucks but I refuse to accept money for any shots I take. Same with hobbies of brewing and woodworking. I don't want my hobbies to become a job, and like Walt said - there's the business aspect that I don't want to deal with.