DeltaSigma wrote:
5.17pm according to the clock.
Not a pano but a slightly cropped frame this time.
The bright lights, illuminating the purplish building with the clock faces, are from Times Square.
The upstate wild fire smoke created a great looking sky that was changing very quickly given the sun had set 25 minutes earlier.
Nicely done, it's amazing that there's something for the eye to study any direction you look from that vantage point. As usual, top notch execution. I see the high ISO in the EXIF, but what fstop do you usually take these cityscapes at? Nice amount sharpness extending thru the shot. I also see it's tagged location wise, do you capture the GPS locating with your phone connected to the camera when photographing?
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AdaptedLenses wrote:
Pull!
Too far out for a great shot but no complaints in the sharpness off the 400mm f/5.6.
Kevin, ironically enough it wasn’t even on my radar as a lens that existed till recently! Didn’t know what I was missing.
Nicely done Matt, very apropos caption. This must be the AI non-IF version that was on the FS boards here recently?
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Oosty wrote:
Having had a PC glitch recently many of my keywords in Lr have been lost so I've been looking through my 30K images - this one popped up and I noticed it had been shot with the 500mm f8 mirror lens. Camera was the D7100 which was a great camera until I sold and replaced it with the D500.
Enjoyed these a lot, well done on the color for the color shot. I usually struggle under stage lighting, never quite landing in a happy spot from a purely white balance perspective. Do you adjust color beyond setting the white balance?
pbraymond wrote:
Nicely done, it's amazing that there's something for the eye to study any direction you look from that vantage point. As usual, top notch execution. I see the high ISO in the EXIF, but what fstop do you usually take these cityscapes at? Nice amount sharpness extending thru the shot. I also see it's tagged location wise, do you capture the GPS locating with your phone connected to the camera when photographing?
Nothing fancy with Geo-tagging. I pin the image to the Flickr map. Really easy.
One of the Flickr Pano groups requires it before your image is considered.
These are not shot wide open. I usually start at f/8 and open up the aperture to f/4 if needed.
I let the ISO auto drift up to 3200 and alter the f-stop to give as much depth of field as possible whilst keeping the shutter speed faster than 1/5th of a second. A 2-3 frame burst at that shutter speed usually gives me at least one useable sharp image. I have said it before - the 24 mega-pixel sensor and IBIS combo in the Z6ii is really outstanding when the light drops off.
So, I end up with a lot of images and have to select the best ones to use in a pano.
If I have enough useable frames to create a pleasing night time pano then I do noise reduction on each image in LR before stitching. Another step in PP but that's the price I have to pay for only having a 50mm prime with me whilst observing a ban on tripods in such locations. Once done I delete all the individual, noise reduced, DNG files to save disk space. I can recreate them if needed.
Ray, that’s correct. Quick study said it was a good version, I’d say I’m happy with its IQ, especially for a legacy lens. It can be a bit hard to see plane of focus with small movements while zoomed in but it isn’t too bad. Here’s one from this morning, a bit more interesting.
pbraymond wrote:
Enjoyed these a lot, well done on the color for the color shot. I usually struggle under stage lighting, never quite landing in a happy spot from a purely white balance perspective. Do you adjust color beyond setting the white balance?
Thanks! For this particular concert, the singer asked me to try to match a photo she was using for her album. Capture One has a "shot match" tool for this. But it really wasn't possible to do even a close match: her album photo was shot with natural light and was very warm but also desaturated. The stage lighting was, well, stage lighting: a fairly warm spot mixed in with overly magenta lights to the sides. Using Shot Match made the stage photos look really awful, all washed out and very noisy. So I applied Shot Match as a separate layer and dialed it back until it started looking okay, around 50 to 60% reduction in blend. I also did some selective saturation (on her colourful shawl) and adding a bit of mid-tone detail here and there. I think I also added a little saturation to the aquarium behind the guitarist. Those fish have the best seats in the house and they get to listen to great music six nights a week for free. And they get free food to boot.
Normally when I shoot concerts I try to find something that is supposed to be white (e.g., the whites of a person's eyes or their teeth, or any white clothing, sheet music on a stand, etc.) and use that as a reference point for white balance. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I battle with the stage lighting and sometimes I just give up and let it have its way. It almost never looks natural and can't be made to look so. And maybe it should just look like what it is.
The club gave me a seat right in the front, just a few feet from the musicians, so I had to turn on silent shooting as I didn't want to distract them with my clicking shutter. I've experienced banding there before when using silent shooting, but I did a few test shots and didn't see any problems so I kept on with it. Only when I got home and started processing the photos did I discover that the light on the piano player runs at a different frequency and I had strong banding on most of the photos of him and couldn't use them. Fortunately I snagged some photos of him at the piano during their sound check before they put the stage lights on! I've shot over 40 concerts at this club but I learn something new every time.
Oosty wrote:
Having had a PC glitch recently many of my keywords in Lr have been lost so I've been looking through my 30K images - this one popped up and I noticed it had been shot with the 500mm f8 mirror lens. Camera was the D7100 which was a great camera until I sold and replaced it with the D500.
DeltaSigma wrote:
I don't know anything about guitars either but I think you missed 6 items - the strings?
I'll bet those are not original.
I also reckon the guitar shop was not expecting images of such high quality.
Colin
As I was processing the photos, I had the same thought about what the fellow at the shop would think. When he got back to me, he did comment on the beauty of the guitar and thanked me for the level of detail in the photos. So if he was impressed by the photographic artistry, he kept his enthusiasm to himself.
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Jim Markus wrote:
The finish?
No, but you're getting warmer!
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leighton w wrote:
The neck?
And now you're getting colder.
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spoupard wrote:
I'll take one more guess and say the bridge/saddle.
I guess it's time to solve the puzzle. It's the flower decal on the headstock that you can see in the second photo.
I have two pieces of happy news in the guitar front. The first piece is that the shop agreed to sell that guitar for me and they expect it to go for about the same price that I paid for it, including the installation of the second pickup. As a result, after they take their commission, I'll get more than I expected from it. The second piece of good news is that the seller of the guitar I want to buy accepted the price that I offered. So all is looking up for my musical future. Now I just have the problem of waiting for better photography weather for Nippi.
AdaptedLenses wrote:
Ray, that’s correct. Quick study said it was a good version, I’d say I’m happy with its IQ, especially for a legacy lens. It can be a bit hard to see plane of focus with small movements while zoomed in but it isn’t too bad. Here’s one from this morning, a bit more interesting.
Excellent control of the highlights. I have the late ais version whose lenses are pristine, but the outside looks like it was used as a club. However, it produces excellent IQ, and pairs with the modified TC-16A well. When I added a D7200 that triggered a better support series of acquisitions. Enjoy your 400 - I think it is an underrated lens.
AdaptedLenses wrote:
Ray, that’s correct. Quick study said it was a good version, I’d say I’m happy with its IQ, especially for a legacy lens. It can be a bit hard to see plane of focus with small movements while zoomed in but it isn’t too bad. Here’s one from this morning, a bit more interesting.
Nice Matt. The contrast and post work are spot on.
DeltaSigma wrote:
Nothing fancy with Geo-tagging. I pin the image to the Flickr map. Really easy.
One of the Flickr Pano groups requires it before your image is considered.
These are not shot wide open. I usually start at f/8 and open up the aperture to f/4 if needed.
I let the ISO auto drift up to 3200 and alter the f-stop to give as much depth of field as possible whilst keeping the shutter speed faster than 1/5th of a second. A 2-3 frame burst at that shutter speed usually gives me at least one useable sharp image. I have said it before - the 24 mega-pixel sensor and IBIS combo in the Z6ii is really outstanding when the light drops off.
So, I end up with a lot of images and have to select the best ones to use in a pano.
If I have enough useable frames to create a pleasing night time pano then I do noise reduction on each image in LR before stitching. Another step in PP but that's the price I have to pay for only having a 50mm prime with me whilst observing a ban on tripods in such locations. Once done I delete all the individual, noise reduced, DNG files to save disk space. I can recreate them if needed.
Thanks for the details, very well considered and sounds like it's endlessly and well practiced. IBIS and cleaner high ISO has been a game changer moving to mirrorless.
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bjhurley wrote:
Thanks! For this particular concert, the singer asked me to try to match a photo she was using for her album. Capture One has a "shot match" tool for this. But it really wasn't possible to do even a close match: her album photo was shot with natural light and was very warm but also desaturated. The stage lighting was, well, stage lighting: a fairly warm spot mixed in with overly magenta lights to the sides. Using Shot Match made the stage photos look really awful, all washed out and very noisy. So I applied Shot Match as a separate layer and dialed it back until it started looking okay, around 50 to 60% reduction in blend. I also did some selective saturation (on her colourful shawl) and adding a bit of mid-tone detail here and there. I think I also added a little saturation to the aquarium behind the guitarist. Those fish have the best seats in the house and they get to listen to great music six nights a week for free. And they get free food to boot.
Normally when I shoot concerts I try to find something that is supposed to be white (e.g., the whites of a person's eyes or their teeth, or any white clothing, sheet music on a stand, etc.) and use that as a reference point for white balance. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I battle with the stage lighting and sometimes I just give up and let it have its way. It almost never looks natural and can't be made to look so. And maybe it should just look like what it is.
The club gave me a seat right in the front, just a few feet from the musicians, so I had to turn on silent shooting as I didn't want to distract them with my clicking shutter. I've experienced banding there before when using silent shooting, but I did a few test shots and didn't see any problems so I kept on with it. Only when I got home and started processing the photos did I discover that the light on the piano player runs at a different frequency and I had strong banding on most of the photos of him and couldn't use them. Fortunately I snagged some photos of him at the piano during their sound check before they put the stage lights on! I've shot over 40 concerts at this club but I learn something new every time.
Very much enjoyed leaning from the details provided BJ. Never would have considered that the lights would have run at different frequencies, so much to look out for. I think I give up and just let it be earlier and more often than I should under stage lighting, and run to B&W as a quick fix.
Haven't posted for a long time, but have still been lurking and liking. Now Brad and Ray's pictures have triggered me to post these concert pictures taken with the Nikkor-E 75-150mm.
A highly underrated zoom lens, which is nice to carry with me in the crowds at the local music hall in my hometown. It has a good reach on the Z50. I use the lens with a TT Artisan M-Z 6-bit and a K&F F-L/M adapter. This gives a green box when you hit focus, although I have to admit the box is so tiny that I usually zoom in to 100 percent for confirmation. I also stopped using the electronic shutter because of banding. Lightroom also does a pretty good job cleaning up the noise so that I don't mind shooting at 1/160 sec. and F3.5 (or f4 with the Z 24-70mm).
Paul Gabel wrote:
Haven't posted for a long time, but have still been lurking and liking. Now Brad and Ray's pictures have triggered me to post these concert pictures taken with the Nikkor-E 75-150mm.
A highly underrated zoom lens, which is nice to carry with me in the crowds at the local music hall in my hometown.
Excellent images, Paul, and really shows the 75~150E as the excellent performer it is! Speaking of underrated: When I used to shoot concerts, I preferred to take my 180/2.8 ED as frankly I felt it made me look "cool" (more like a pro), but seeing your photos I should probably have considered my 75~150E more often as it would have been lighter, and certainly would NOT have compromised the results. As a prime-lens snob I never bought any zooms, but then got the 75~150E for my Wife's first camera setup (with an FA), and she really loved it. I knew it was good for portraits, but I guess it never occurred to me to bring it to concerts, and the 2/3 stop less light and slight reduction in focal-length over the 180/2.8 ED would not really have been an issue.
GroWeb wrote:
As I was processing the photos, I had the same thought about what the fellow at the shop would think. When he got back to me, he did comment on the beauty of the guitar and thanked me for the level of detail in the photos. So if he was impressed by the photographic artistry, he kept his enthusiasm to himself.
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No, but you're getting warmer!
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And now you're getting colder.
---------------------------------------------
I guess it's time to solve the puzzle. It's the flower decal on the headstock that you can see in the second photo.
I have two pieces of happy news in the guitar front. The first piece is that the shop agreed to sell that guitar for me and they expect it to go for about the same price that I paid for it, including the installation of the second pickup. As a result, after they take their commission, I'll get more than I expected from it. The second piece of good news is that the seller of the guitar I want to buy accepted the price that I offered. So all is looking up for my musical future. Now I just have the problem of waiting for better photography weather for Nippi. ...Show more →
I assumed that the decal is a mother of pearl inlay. Congratulations on the consigning and purchase of your guitars!
Paul Gabel wrote:
Haven't posted for a long time, but have still been lurking and liking. Now Brad and Ray's pictures have triggered me to post these concert pictures taken with the Nikkor-E 75-150mm.
A highly underrated zoom lens, which is nice to carry with me in the crowds at the local music hall in my hometown. It has a good reach on the Z50. I use the lens with a TT Artisan M-Z 6-bit and a K&F F-L/M adapter. This gives a green box when you hit focus, although I have to admit the box is so tiny that I usually zoom in to 100 percent for confirmation. I also stopped using the electronic shutter because of banding. Lightroom also does a pretty good job cleaning up the noise so that I don't mind shooting at 1/160 sec. and F3.5 (or f4 with the Z 24-70mm).
Barb has been busy creating wonderful breads again. Ka'ak Asfar (Palestinian Bread) on the left. and Challah (Jewish Bread) on the right. By tomorrow they will be merely memories. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your household. D850 with the Nikkor 35mm f1.4 ais
