gbohannon wrote:
The 105 shooting black and white looks good, nice processing and composition Curtis! Keeping the bike theme going too
G
That shot definitely happened because of the conversation on the thread. Of course, Marin with Mount Tamalpais and it miles of hilly roads and country lanes makes it a center for both mountain and road cycling. In fact, what was once a fine natural grocery store has recently been turned into a sort of museum dedicated to mountain biking, which some argue originated in Marin by folks determined to surmount the rugged fire roads running up and down local mountains. Unfortunately, the website created for the museum is in lousy condition but I found this Yelp review that includes a dozen photos. You'll see a reference to a fireroad called "Repack" because going down it assures you'll need to repack your wheels once you've reached the bottom. I've hiked both up and down that road and it is not for the faint of heart. I can't imagine riding a bicycle either up or down...
I stopped by Marin Community College yesterday afternoon to scope it out. I've done a bit of shooting there in the past and recall some quite fine buildings. I'd put the 35 f/1.4 AI-s in my bag a few days ago and it seemed the right lens to do some architectural shooting. Yes, I would love to have a PC lens for such work, perhaps even a PC-E lens, but I don't do enough of this work to warrant the investment. Flickr will say these were shot with the 5.8cm f/1.4 which is the slot I slipped this lens into. I thought I'd made the change in the camera, but apparently I didn't push all the right buttons... it happens to the best of us.
CGrindahl wrote:
I stopped by Marin Community College yesterday afternoon to scope it out. I've done a bit of shooting there in the past and recall some quite fine buildings. I'd put the 35 f/1.4 AI-s in my bag a few days ago and it seemed the right lens to do some architectural shooting. Yes, I would love to have a PC lens for such work, perhaps even a PC-E lens, but I don't do enough of this work to warrant the investment. Flickr will say these were shot with the 5.8cm f/1.4 which is the slot I slipped this lens into. I thought I'd made the change in the camera, but apparently I didn't push all the right buttons... it happens to the best of us.
thanks, tack sharp, too - first moment I zoomed in I knew this was a good one. eye lashes of the guy on the left, and great hair detail on the right. Just lucky they lined up so perfectly across from each other.
However, I had to cheat and grab the right tail light from another frame. These LEDs don't light up constantly and at really short shutter durations, you sometimes only get one or none of them. But I had plenty of other frames with that right light lit up from the same angle and distance.
Peter - love the car racing set. I admire the moving car/blurred background look, I guess because I can't do it. I try to track cyclists and when I move the camera, everything goes blurry, negating the point of the technique. So I admire when others can do it - but my favourite is the 3rd shot; the dark blacks, the strong colours, the yellows and red.
Curtis - love the second shot; really simple, classic composition of converging lines. Don't want to sound like the vignette police.......but......we seem to be using a lot of vignette?
Samy - no matter what you say about about bright viewfinders and metered framelines I don't know how you manage with rangefinder focus. I had to sell my M9 after months of struggling with it. Got to the stage where I was dreading using it because most of the shots would be unusable. I'm sounding like a spoilt brat aren't I? But I've got so used to looking into an EVF and being able to see exactly the shot the camera is taking, and focus magnification to fix focus. You and Leighton took the same pic of the train station - but he included cloud?
Having returned from 4 nights camping/stargazing in the Outback I have enjoyed browsing through ten pages of the thread this morning.
Good work people ! I've enjoyed it all including the Top Bantz oh and welcome back David.
I have a few to process but it was really a break for us having spent a month apart on opposite sides of the Globe, enjoy watching the birdlife, read a book or two, drink a few bottles of the red stuff by the camp fire, look at the night sky through my new telescope and try and take a few astrophotographs with the D800 mounted on top of the equatorial mount.
Forgive me but here is a shot of the gear taken with my phone at sunset on the first night. My wife did actually take a couple of me setting it up with her iPhone but nobody wants to see my ugly mug
Taking a quick break from packing for a family trip to Northern California. Hope to have a few snaps to share when I get back. Some really nice images over the past few pages.
Chuong, love the Chicago shots. I think your take on the "bean" is one of the best I've seen.
Scott, I agree with Chris. The lighthouse at night image is pretty special.
Curtis, really enjoyed the monochrome architecture set.
Peter, terrific mirrored wing image.
Chris, great colors.
Glen, nice work at the falls.
Ken, cool ships and bridges.
Ben, Philippe, Samy and Kristian, super street work.
bruni wrote:
Peter - love the car racing set. I admire the moving car/blurred background look, I guess because I can't do it. I try to track cyclists and when I move the camera, everything goes blurry, negating the point of the technique. So I admire when others can do it - but my favourite is the 3rd shot; the dark blacks, the strong colours, the yellows and red.
ben
Ben, I get about 5% keepers at 1/60s, maybe 2% at 1/30s, and I've done this for a long time. I used to be a lot better at this - panning is a total practice thing. I know people who can do these shots at 1/10s and nail 25%, but they use VR glass. You still have to match car speed, the VR just compensates for up and down, I think.Canon has some lenses with stabilization modes that are pure panning cheater tools, or at least so I am told.
Ignoring those modern cheater lenses, you can still get results, just plan on a lot of waste. The key to a good pan is to find a place where vehicles are at a somewhat constant speed while you need to be placed in a location that is close to the turn radius center. Never works out perfectly (well, Portland Intl. Speedway has a turn or two where it is perfect), but here it was pretty close. The above shot is turn 1 at Road America where they are done braking but the turn is a long 90 degree bend, and these amateurs in their fancy old race cars are coasting until much later when they see the exit of the corner. Pro racers are rarely at a constant speed.
If you are positioned along a straight stretch of road, the best place to do this is where vehicles are braking, as they will optically "explode" slowly into the zone closer to you, so as the perspective increases their visual closing speed they decrease actual speed. Hard to explain, but if you practice a few hundred frames you'll see what I mean
If cars or bikes are approaching you during a pan, the best that can happen is that you get a small segment of the image in focus, while around it everything will be blurred like in a zoom pull. cool effect when it works, but I usually get a lug nut or the rear wing plate in focus, rarely the driver's head or car center
example below (75-150mm f/3.5 Series E on D600) was shot along a straight with cars accelerating at me. The only part that is in focus here is the number on the door. Everything else around it is more and more blurred towards the edges.
This effect is minimized with longer lenses. If you can stand far enough away to do this with a 600mm f/4 like the image below, you a) don't need such long shutter speeds to blur out the background and b) the radial blur effect is non-existent. On the original of this image you can see the screw driver marks on the bolts that are holding body parts to the car, but wheel and background are a total blur. Basically, long lenses are easier to pan with than shorter glass, if you can hold them
The "Like" button and I have been greatly enjoying the recent image posts.
Ben, you have an eye for expressions, gestures, and interactions that ensures that your unique style never gets boring.
Peter B., like Ben's photos, your panning shots and car images in general are always new and different. I particularly like the collage of mini-subjects (engine parts, SUV, buildings, clouds) and the perspective in the fourth image of post #1 on this page.
Lestor, your fireworks photos are very imaginative, with unusual points of view.
Here are a few monochrome photos, each quite different from the others, but all taken at Moorecroft Regional Park in Nanoose Bay, just north of Nanaimo. All were captured with my D800E and the following lenses, respectively: 50 f/1.2 Ai-s, 85 f/1.8 HC, and 135 f/2 Ai-s (x2).
pburke wrote:
Ben, I get about 5% keepers.........
....... Basically, long lenses are easier to pan with than shorter glass, if you can hold them
Very instructive Peter, thank you.
Is a tripod with just free rotation around the vertical axe an option? A monopod can help as well to keep up and down movements under control? Or in some way they limit the precision and the fluency of the panning?
Thank you all for likes and comments to my recent posts.
oh and welcome back David.
