Old Technology New Pictures

Tuxedo Thunder - The only way to dress for a bike race.

I recently picked up a Nikon D2X a few weeks ago.  A Nikon D2X you might ask, what the hell is that?  Well, click the link and you can read all about it or check the review on DP Review.

Basically this thing sold for around $5,000 in 2005 and you can pick one up for between $600 and $800 depending on where you look.  I have been pretty happy with the group at www.fredmiranda.com and purchased one from a seller.

This thing is built like a brick you know what.  I think I could easily drop it off a building, throw it from my car or hit it with a sledgehammer and it would still function perfectly.

I have had this thought about older technology and digital and am beginning to think that staying behind one generation is not a bad thing.  Yes I have the D700 and the D7000 and am REALLY happy with those images.  But for some reason I thought I would like to try something a bit old school, okay maybe 6 years old isn't really old school, but in digital it is.

You have to live within the constraints of the technology and that is fine for me.  The reviews state that the images from this get a bit noisy above ISO 800 but I intend to use this as an outdoor camera.  It is perfect for that purpose.  It is weatherproof and at 5 frames per second is adequate for the bicycle racing images I had in mind for this past weekend.

The Chicago Cyclocross was held by Montrose Beach this past Sunday and I brought out the D2X and a Nikkor 180mm F2.8D.  Yep, another older school lens.  The 180mm is light, sharp and fast.  I think I had one of my higher hit rates with this combination of camera and lens than anything I have shot with.  I even committed the sin of not reading up on the various focusing options the camera provides yet I still had a great capture rate.

When I arrived at the event I pulled out my trusty Sekonic L-398A Studio Deluxe III and took an incident light reading of 1/250 at F4.  Since the day was overcast and the light so consistent it made sense to get a standard exposure reading.  And the light never changed so I was assured of a consistent exposure regardless of where I pointed the camera.  Additionally, the camera's auto-exposure meter won't be thrown off by changes in clothing color or strong backlighting.

After a few test shots I modified my shutter speed and F-Step a bit based on the histograms I was seeing in the camera and opened it up to 1/200 at F2.8.  You are reviewing your histograms and not trusting the image you see in the LCD, right?!  Remember that you want to expose to the right with digital, meaning that you want to be more over-exposed than under-exposed as digital is more sensitive to hightlights than shadows.

I was a little concerned about shooting at F2.8 in a sporting event as I was shooting straight ahead at the cyclists who were coming right at me.  This is very challenging for auto-focus cameras as the focus is measured before I press the button and the riders are still in motion.  I thought about dropping shutter speed to 1/100 but then I was concerned about stopping the action and I had that old rule of shooting a shutter speed no less than your focal length.  Since I was shooting a 180mm lens, I wanted to stay close to 1/200.  Nonetheless, although some images were not razor sharp and F4 would probably have been better, my results were more than satisfactory:

Straight ahead auto-focus is not easy, especially at F2.8.

This is the reason to take an incident meter reading.  The cameras exposure meter and the scene's strong backlight would completely underexposed the riders.

Even off center Nikon's autofocus captured a nice sharp image.

Had to add this one.  Anyone this brave deserves all the attention they can get.

More pics at www.picsimage.com/cyclocross.

Thanks for reading,

Arn

Shot at Night

To get better at photography I read books on photography, I take classes, I watch how-to videos and review other people's work.

Being a child of the 60's and having a father in the furniture business we had a LOT of televisions in the house and my eyes were glued to the TV.  Especially so when that big 24 inch color Zenith Console came into the living room.  Hence my addiction to the visual.

I have been teaching the Intermediate class at the Chicago Photography Center on Thursday evenings. It is not my full time position but rather my opportunity to give back to the community.  I am amazed at the people who risk themselves to raise their skills and am always left in wonder as they progress and extend themselves... it is an amazing process.  The challenging part as an educator is to keep the material fresh and find a vocabulary that clearly expresses a complex distinction in a manner that will enable another to fulfill their artistic vision.  Do you know how long I worked on that sentence?!

I am pretty photographic education agnostic so when I noticed that Calumet Photo Chicago had a short class on Night Photography presented by Paul Berg of Paul Berg Photography, I had to consider a higher authority...  Once my Wife granted entrance to my house of worship I signed up and attended the class.

Myself and about 10 others met at 2:30pm at Calumet Photo Chicago's location and listened to Paul present very useful points on evening and night photography.  After which we went out to the north end of Goose Island and photographed the North Avenue bridge.

North Avenue Street Bridge - (c) Copyright 2011 Arnold Klein

 
What was interesting was the process I go through as I learn something new.  As I get older, I seem to be able to take a more studied deliberate approach.  I am paying more attention to the process and the little nuances and distinctions of learning a new skill.  In my youth, I just heard something and then thought I knew it or understood it.  As I get older I recognize the massive gap between understanding something and being able to re-create it.

Paul suggested that we learn at least one new function on our cameras.  I hate this as, of course, I know everything about my camera.  After I discovered that my camera had the ability to capture in TIF, and I figured out how to perform a mirror lockup and then realized I have been shooting in 12 bit Raw mode and that my Nikon D700 can shoot in 14 bit raw mode; well that was more than the one item Paul had asked for.  Of course I stress reading the manual in my class and hence I felt like a complete idiot at having been ignorant of some pretty basic functionality.  Oh and to put a little candle on the cake I finally got to use my Nikon Remote Cable Release (MC-30) which, while not being a new learning experience was something I have had in my bag for at least 6 months and never used.

For me the real lesson came once I got home and had a chance to review the images.  I tend to lean towards the review and process side of workflow as opposed to capturing everything in the camera perfectly.  I see things a little differently from a framing standpoint than what the standard viewfinder/sensor presents as the raw image and I also seem to be more relaxed in the post-production side and can take the time to let my eyes linger.  I am getting better at this in the field but that is an area that definitely needs some work.

After photographing the bridge a fellow classmate and I walked over to the southwest side of Goose Island and started to shoot this industrial processing plant.  I like shooting industrial buildings as they are becoming so anachronistic (yeah, I had to look that up too).  They just seem so out of place in a world where everything appears on a screen

Two of the images I had captured caught my attention and I considered being worthy of working with.  The industrial plant had great lighting and a mix of lighting coming at it from a variety of angles along with a lot of varied lines and geometric patterns.  I have been working to simplify the image, to work more on getting at the element or elements that drive the image and hold the eye.

Industrial Plant along Chicago River, original capture  - (c) Copyright 2011 Arnold Klein

I stared at this for about 5 minutes before I realized that what caught my eye was the repetition of the silos and the gradient of light along their edge. I also liked the juxtaposition of the silos as played against the repetition of the windows and the added diagonal line of the ladder... so with a little cropping, sharpening and slight increase in Lightroom's vibrance slider I ended up with this image:

Industrial Plant along Chicago River, post processed - (c) Copyright 2011 Arnold Klein

The city, particularly the industrial areas, and the oddness of the elements that are present are in such contrast to nature's beauty.  But the city does have it's own beauty and I keep trying to find those viewpoints.

As we were walking back to the class for an hour of critique, I spotted the reflection of railroad tracks in the concrete of the street and while that was the first thing that caught my eye, the image I captured was more the result of simply wanting to capture something quickly since we were running out of time.  So without much thought I captured this image:

Cherry Street, original capture - (c) Copyright 2011 Arnold Klein

Once again, I opted for more of a narrow presentation and cropped accordingly.  I have a tendency to capture images in a more straight ahead approach yet I know that deep perspective draws the eye into the frame.  Still, in the moment, I don't always see that initially.

Cherry Street, post processed - (c) Copyright 2011 Arnold Klein

I heightened the sharpening and dropped the saturation to move towards a more black and white style.  It doesn't take much to move a night image like this towards a more b&w style.  The colors are already pretty compressed at night so any bright colors that are present jump right out.  And while blurred auto lights are kind of interesting I think they have become a bit overdone.  Yet here, with the very evident Taxi-cab along an empty street the mind can imagine a variety of stories about where it is going and what the evening will bring.

...more lessons learned.