Sunrise

Sunrise in Wisconsin

The Puget Sound area is incredibly beautiful, but with mountains on both to the east and to the west, the mountains block the sun when it is really low on the horizon when it is coming up and going down.  So the last couple of times I was visiting family in Wisconsin, I’ve wanted to capture a nice sunrise or sunset but never got around to it.  This morning I got my chance.

The Equipment:

• Tripod
• Canon 5D Mark II Camera
• Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS Lens
• Circular Polarizer (I used a B+W Slim Circular Polarizer)
• Remote Shutter Release (I use the Canon TC-80N3)

The Set Up:

1. I had the 24-105mm lens mounted on my camera at the time.  When the sun starts coming up, you really have a  small window of time to catch it because it moves pretty quickly off the horizon.  To get this close to the sun, ideally I would have used a longer lens, but I didn’t have time to change it.  Probably 300-400mm would have been ideal (I would have had to settle with my 70-200mm since that is my longest lens), but obviously you can make due with what you have.
2. The lens was zoomed to 105mm and the camera was set to aperture priority, f-stop set to f/9.0, ISO 100, which gave a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second.  The metering was set to spot metering and exposure was set to -1 stop.  I would recommend trying a variety of settings to see what works best for you, but this may be a good starting point.
3. I wanted to add some interest to the photo by including the tree branches on the right.

The Post Processing (Using Lightroom 2):

Original photo before cropping and post processing

1. I knew I’d have to crop this one pretty substantially, but with the 21 megapixels of the 5D Mark II, I was able to crop a ton and still get a 1076×717 pixel photo, which may not print huge, but views on a screen pretty well (in terms of High Definition TV, it is similar to the 720p size).  Here is the original:
2. I changed the white balance to cloudy (this could have been done in camera when the shot was taken as well)
3. I adjusted the blacks to +21
4. For the Blog, I exported at 550 x 367 (just set the long edge to resize to 550 pixels), sharpening set to “screen” and “normal”
5. That’s it – not much work needed for this one.

Shattered Glass

Shattered glass from a broken car window

Our car got broken into a few weeks ago (fortunately our losses were very minimal) and I noticed some of the tempered glass in the back seat was shattered but hadn’t fully fallen apart yet.  As you can see these pieces had an incredible pattern to them and, of course, I wanted to capture the pattern with a photograph.  Along with the photo, I thought I’d share how I get the shot you see above.

The equipment:

• Homemade light box for product photography (you can do a google search to see how to make one yourself)
• Tripod with a center column you can switch to horizontal so your camera can get inside the light box (I used a Bogen Manfrotto 055XPROB with a 486RC2 Ball Head)
• Macro Lens or extension tubes (I used a 5D Mark II with a Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro)
• A computer to tether your camera to since you won’t be able to see the screen or viewfinder to focus.  Canon’s EOS Utility that comes with the camera is what I used to control the camera with my computer.  Connect the camera to the computer using the USB cable, turn the camera on and start EOS Utility.  When the EOS Utility screen pops ups, click on “Camera settings/Remote Shooting”.  From there, click on “Remote Live View Shooting”.  Compose your shot and then click on the magnifying glass to zoom to 100%.  The shutter button is near the top right side of the window that you clicked on the “Remote Live View Shooting” button. 
• Tempered glass that is shattered but still together

 The set up:

1. For the lighting, I used both the left and right side lights.  No light from above or below.
2. I set a custom white balance in the camera by taking a photo of the white tagboard background and using that as my white balance reference.
3. The glass was placed on clear plexiglass; the clear plexiglass on white tagboard.
4. The camera was mounted on the tripod to face straight down at the sheet of glass so that the camera sensor was as close to parallel to the glass as possible.
5. I set the camera to aperature priority, ISO 100, and an f-stop of f/8.0 to maximize depth of field but to minimize diffraction effects.  Shoot in RAW.
6. Using the computer monitor as my live view screen, I zoomed to the 100% view to get the focus exactly where I wanted it (slightly below the surface).
7. Because the shutter speeds are very slow, when clicking the onscreen shutter button, I positioned myself as far from the tripod set up as I could and stayed as still as I could.  Even little movements can cause camera shake and therefore blurry photos.  Fortunately you can see how prone your set up is to shake by keeping an eye on the live view screen.
8. I took a few shots to make sure I got one without camera shake.  The other nice thing about having the camera tethered to the computer is that you can instantly see full size photos on your computer screen.

The Post Processing:

1. I use lightroom 2 for almost all my post processing. All the settings below will be in reference to lightroom 2’s Develop Module, and I’ll only mention the settings I changed.
2. Convert to Grayscale
3. Blacks increased to 42
4. Clarity increased to 100
5. Point Curve set to Strong Contrast
6. Highlights set to +62
7. Lights set to +52
8. Darks set to -62
9. Shadows set to -100
10.   Sharpening Amount set to 57
11.   For the blog, I exported at 550×367 pixels, sharpening set to ”screen” and “high”.

Should you use a UV filter on your lenses?

It is very common practice for people to invest in a UV filter for each of their lenses.  I explore the pros and cons of whether this practice really makes sense in the latest article on my website.

Compact Camera (Point and Shoot) specs explained!

I’ve been asked a number of times by friends and family which compact camera they should buy, and the answer is always “It depends on what you want to use it for.”  I’ve written an article to help people sort through all the specifications, starting with the specs I feel are most important when looking for a point and shoot camera.  If you are looking at buying a compact camera or want to know what any of the specs you may see are, I have recently posted the article to the website:

Point and shoot specs explained

draagynphoto is now on twitter!

Now you can follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/draagynphoto!

Back on track after failed hard drive

Late last week I was derailed by a failing hard drive; fortunately I didn’t lose any data other than maybe a few bookmarks.  I was most nervous about getting my Lightroom work all back and connected, and it turned out to be a pretty simple procedure thanks to help from the Lightroom Queen.  Check out her website for all things Lightroom related – it was a huge help to me.

Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 on full frame sensor

Even though it was designed for a crop sensor, the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 fits and has been used on full frame sensor cameras, but how well does it work?  I’ve done some testing on my 5d mark II and will be posting an article on draagynphoto.com/tech_home soon.

Update: The article is up on the site – Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 on full frame sensors

Canon Fall Rebates

Canon’s fall rebate lens program seems to be up and running – this Canadian site has the rebates along with prices at a few of the major online retailers in the US: http://www.photoprice.ca/us-rebates/.

Website up, but still under construction

The beginnings to draagynphoto.com are online!  I have a couple of articles started, and once I get two or three finished and uploaded, I’ll be removing the “under construction” labeling from the header and we’ll be rolling.   Look for an update in the next week for the “official launch” of the site.

Update: The “under construction” has been removed from the Technical Articles section of the site

Welcome to the official blog for draagynphoto.com!

This is where you can be kept up to date on new technical articles posted on draagynphoto.com, photographic projects or techniques I’m working on, or just links and comments for topics that are important to the photographic community.  To help keep things organized, you will find the topics organized in appropriate categories in the menu on the right.

If you have any topics you’d like discussed, feel free to leave a comment for me and I’ll do my best to address it.