100% Crops and Some More HDR

I brought along my 5D Mark III and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM lens on my walk yesterday morning. The low morning sun created some nice lighting for HDR scenics.

First is a bush in the middle of a field of cattails which for some reason makes me think of an African savannah. This image was shot at 200mm and I needed a faster shutter speed for the hand held shots. I used ISO 800 and f/6.7 for increased depth of field and the shutter speeds of the five images ranged from 1/90 sec. to 1/1500 sec.

There was a line of Canada Geese flying North not too high up and I decided to try and capture the group and see what it looked like cropped in close. I didn't get the zoom ring all the pay to the maximum so this shot was made at 195mm. Here is a 100% crop which you can click on twice and scroll across to see the whole image.

Finally, here is an industrial scenic of the back side of the Momentive silicone plant North of Waterford, NY. This is again a five image HDR composite followed by a 100% crop of the top of the distillation towers from a different image.

Nighttime HDR Street Scenes

For something a little bit different, I walked over to the Village of Waterford after sunset and shot some scenics under artificial lighting. I had with me the 5D Mark III and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.

I was able to hand hold five image bracketed shots by using f/2.8 and ISO 1600. Here are a few of the resulting images.

Daytime Sports With Different Gear

I always use my EOS 7D with an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens for nighttime or cloudy sports activities. This past weekend, however, I was shooting a daytime sporting event which started out in full sun so I decided to experiment with using my EOS 5D Mark III with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L paired with a Canon 2X III extender.

The crop frame 7D with the 70-200mm lens gives you a full frame field of view of 112-320mm while adding the extender to the zoom on a full frame body gives you a 140-400mm field of view. The big difference, of course, is that the 70-200mm lens on it's own is f/2.8 while with the 2X extender it is f/5.6. The former is needed when lighting is less than optimal but the latter will work in daylight.

The other big difference between the two combinations is that the 7D is designed for fast shooting, the 5D III less so. The addition of the extender slows down the auto focus of the 5D III even more, resulting in an almost unacceptable combination for action sports. As the light faded late in the game, AF was almost non functional.

As usual for sports, I used manual exposure control, adjusting the ISO as needed for lighting changes. Here are are some of the better shots with setting information included in the caption. By the way, the match took place in Schenectady, New York between Hartwick College and Union College

230mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec., ISO 200, cropped to 4:3

390mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec., ISO 200, cropped to 4:3

400mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec., ISO 200

140mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec., ISO 400

Foggy Mornings

Late, late Summer or early, early Fall offer great opportunities for morning shots with fog, haze and sun. This morning was one of those occasions.

This morning's walk with my 5D Mark III and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens had some really nice opportunities. Every scene I shot was a 5 image bracket and I haven't spent a lot of time processing them all. But I feel a few of the scenes are worthy of sharing at this point.

A Familiar Scene, Three Years Later

There was some very nice light on my morning walk today with a low rising Sun and reflections off the water. I took the opportunity to shoot a familiar scene which I documented almost exactly three years ago in a blog post on HDR processing here.

Three years ago I used a Canon 5D Mark II and an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens, bracketing three images, +/- 2 EV. Today, I used a Canon 5D Mark III and an EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens, bracketing five images, +/- 1EV each.

You can see that New York State has been doing some work stabilizing the old Cluett, Peabody and Company textile plant which is on the grounds of Peebles Island State Park. The framing of this scene is pretty much determined by trees to the left and the bridge structure on the right. You can see the shadow of the bridge in all the shots.

September 23, 2012

September 15, 2015

September 23, 1012

September 15, 2015

Tugboat Roundup 2015

The annual gathering of tugboats in Waterford is happening this weekend. There was some nice weather early but pretty much rain once Saturday got underway.

This is a fun event to photograph and I've done several years now catching the boats arriving on Friday evening and then shooting them docked on Saturday morning. This year was no exception.

Here are a few samples. You can view the entire gallery here.

Here is an embedded slideshow of the gallery:

First Soccer Action of the Season

Last evening was my first opportunity this year to shoot college soccer as I traveled to Oneonta, NY for the Hartwick College women's match against Wells College, of Aurora, NY. Game time was 7:00 P.M. and this time of year that means starting in late daylight and ending under full artificial lighting with everything in between.

I was using a Canon EOS 7D with battery grip and a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM lens. opening up the lens to f/2.8 and leaving there is a constant in order to gain separation from the background and isolate the main subject or subjects. I wanted shutter speeds of at least 1/750th of a second and started out at ISO 1,600 using evaluative metering, achieving shutter speeds generally between 1/750 and 1/1500.

By 7:30, though, ISO 3,200 was needed for the same shutter speed range. I also switched to a manual shutter speed of 1/1000 and then 1/750 once the daylight faded and the lighting was constant.

Focusing was far more accurate with this Canon lens than with the Sigma 50-150mm lens I was using last season for sports. Returning home from the game at around 11:00 P.M., I had 61 images processed from RAW by midnight and uploaded to a Zenfolio gallery by 2:00 A.M. thanks to a Time Warner Cable Internet glitch forcing me to resort to my still active Verizon DSL connection.

Here are a few samples from the game.  To view the gallery in its entirety, go to http://trulandphoto.zenfolio.com/hartwick2015

UPDATE 9/14/15: Shots from yesterday's match added to the gallery.