The Magic Hour

Or, the Magic Hour-and-a-half, depending on who you ask. Some claim it's the hour after sunrise and before sunset plus the half-hour before sunrise and after sunset. Others say its simply the first and last hours of daily sunlight. Either way, the Magic Hour (also known as the Golden Hour) is the time of day when the sun is low in the sky and offers a direct, warm, golden glow while also providing dramatic shadows and contrast. Some photographers only take out their cameras during that time.

 

Getting the exposure right can be surprisingly tricky during the magic hour, especially when photographing people (and definitely when the subject is running around and moving in and out of the light, as is our little friend in these examples). For landscapes, matrix-metering would give you generally good results, but in this situation I tend to use center-weighted, and occasionally even spot-meteing (usually to keep the highlights in Ollie's golden locks from blowing-out).

Back-lighting can be particularly effective during the magic hour, as in the final photo above, provided you nail the exposure. In this case I used center-weighted metering and didn't worry about the back-lit highlights in Oliver's hair blowing out, because that is the desired effect, after all. Fortunately, center-weighted metering gives a modicum of attention to the areas outside of the center of the scene, so there is still enough detail in the highlights to make this a well-balanced image.

A Napa Landscape

By no stretch of the imagination do I fancy myself a landscape photographer, but every so often I manage to produce one that I can live with - even if it's only because the scene itself is compelling.

This photo is not a particularly special or unique composition. It's reasonably well executed in terms of technical aspects such as exposure and acuity, especially given the weather conditions, but ultimately what makes this image work for me is simply the grandeur of the subject itself. The scene transcends the photography, I think.

 

This is a classic "grab shot" in the sense that I really wasn't prepared for, or even thinking about, taking this photo. While heading back to the Bay Area from Calistoga along the Siverado Trail, I noticed this scene and pulled the car over to the side of the road and snapped away. This was at the tail end of a storm passing through the valley and it was still raining lightly when I took this photo. The view here is facing across the Napa Valley vineyards towards the mountains on the valley's Western flank that separate it from the Sonoma Valley. This is a couple of miles south of Calistoga.

The photo was taken handheld with the Nikon D700 and the new Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF-S, stopped-down to f/11. Shutter-speed was 1/250 of a second and  ISO was 280. Shot in RAW and converted in Adobe Lightroom v. 2.3. Click the image to view it in a larger size.

Keep your eye on the puck...

How does one successfully photograph a fast-moving sport like hockey?

By keeping your eye on the puck, just like the player in the below photos is doing. (Of course it's not that simple, but it's still good advice!)

I've been sporadically photographing my friend's amateur hockey team over the past few years and It's an ongoing challenge for me to come up with well-composed images that convey the essence of the game. It had been just over a year since I last photographed the team and I realized right out of the gate on this latest shoot that my rhythm was off. Hockey is a continual blur of motion, maybe the fastest-moving major sport out there, and a year away from even watching the game was not helpful in terms of my ability to anticipate the action. Muscle-memory eventually kicked in, however, and by the latter half of the second period I felt like I was starting to get dialed in.

     Hockey: the Gentleman's Sport

I brought a fairly large arsenal of gear with me to this game, intending to do a little experimentation. In addition to the bread-and-butter D3 with the 70-200 f/2.8 mounted to it, and the D700 with the 24-70 f/2.8 for wide shots, I also brought along the D300 and the 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 to see how that combo would do for capturing action at the far end of the ice.

At these games my shooting position is at the outside end of the players bench (which is really the only place to shoot with an unimpeded view in the Oakland, CA, ice arena where these games are played) so the action at the far end of the ice relative to my position is a bit challenging for a maximum 200mm focal-length on a full-frame camera. The 70-300 zoomed to 300mm on the 1.5x crop-factor D300 gives me the full-frame equivalent of 450mm, of course, but with the penalty of a maximum aperture at that focal length of f/5.6 - a dubious proposition under the marginal lighting in the arena.

I'm wondering if maybe the ref's got an issue with this guy...

Also an impediment to shooting indoor sports with the 70-300 on the D300 is the fact that ISO 1600 is as high a sensitivity as I'm willing to use on that camera, whereas ISO 3200 is a setting that I routinely use on the D3/D700. In fact, for this shoot I had auto-ISO set on the D3/D700 with the maximum ISO set to 3200 and the minimum shutter-speed set to 1/640 of a second. Those settings gave me a shutter-speed of 1/500 of a second for virtually every shot and ISO sensitivities that ranged from 1200 to 3200. With the same settings on the D300, but with the maximum ISO set to 1600, I simply got too many shots with a shutter-speed of less than 1/250 of a second (often as low as 1/125 of a second), which is not quite enough for fast moving subjects.

In the end, however, it was none of the aforementioned issues that caused me to come to the conclusion that I'd leave at least the 70-300 home the next time. The bottom line is that, optically, the 70-300 just doesn't hold a candle to the 70-200. I did get plenty of useable images from the D300/70-300 combo, but when compared against the output from the D3/D700 with the 70-200, which was far sharper, had way more contrast, and exhibited much better clarity and acutance, I determined that it would just make more sense to work with less reach but better image quality and crop if and when necessary. The twelve million pixels of the D3/D700 has proven to be of high enough quantity and quality to do so.

A very heavily cropped image made with the D3 and the 70-200 f/2.8

As far as photographic composition is concerned, hockey presents its own unique set of problems, mostly related to the geometry of the composition but also related to such logistical matters as players skating in front of the camera and blocking the line-of-sight to your subject at the exact moment you're about to capture your "money shot" (though that particular issue is specific to the fact that I'm shooting from the bench and not from an elevated position in the arena, which is often the preferred location for photographing hockey). Both of the aforementioned issues are usually solved with some judicious cropping.

The biggest challenge presented by hockey for the photographer is, of course, just being able to follow and, optimally, anticipate, the action. Naturally, the more I watch and photograph the game, the better I get at knowing where and when to point my camera. It also helps to have a few preconceived ideas as to what type of photos you'd like to end up with (i.e., a shot on goal and its aftermath, a skater racing to the puck, a brutal cross-check, etc.) It's also important to remember that photos of the action itself isn't the only way to tell the story. Sometimes a portrait of a player coming off the ice or sitting on the bench watching his teammates conveys more about what's going on in the game than anything else.

There's more than one way to tell the story:

Of course, none of what I've talked about so far matters very much if focus on the intended subject can't be consistently attained and tracked, so optimizing the auto-focus settings on my cameras to the particular demands of shooting hockey is imperative. After experimenting at these hockey games over the years with virtually all of the myriad AF settings available on the pro Nikons, I'm satisfied that 9-point Dynamic AF is the way to go for hockey. That setting attains focus almost instantly and tracks the subject perfectly without ever jumping to another player wearing the same color uniform or inadvertently  picking up focus on an element in the background. This recent shoot was the first time that I did not end up with even one mis-focused image out  of a total of well over six hundred that I took. That has never happened before!

     Keeping focus on the intended subject with 9-Pt. Dynamic AF

View the entire gallery of photos of this shoot here.

Would somebody please explain...

...why the auto white-balance functionality of my $299 iPhone's built-in camera works dramatically better under mixed artificial lighting than my $3000 Nikon D700 or my $5000 Nikon D3?

Seriously.

As you might expect of a $300 camera phone, there is no way to set the white balance - it relies on an automatic white-balance algorithm to set a white-balance that is appropriate for the lighting in the scene.

We all know that using the auto white-balance setting on our expensive DSLRs is a crapshoot at best - especially under mixed and artificial lighting. We virtually always end up with an image that is tinted and needs to be color-corrected in a photo-editing program. So we set our white-balance control to a preset that (hopefully) corresponds to the lighting in the room, or we take a reading of the lighting that we apply as a white-balance setting which usually gets us in the ballpark. Some degree of adjustment is still often necessary in post-processing.

Now, look at the photo below. It was shot with my new iPhone in a Berkeley restaurant that I frequent and where I've taken literally thousands of photographs with my pro DSLRs. The lighting in this restaurant is a nasty combination of tungsten and fluorescent lighting of various and sundry color temperatures.

 

While this image does have a very slight, almost imperceptible tendency toward yellow, it is way more dialed-in than anything my Nikons would come up with. The skin-tone is pretty much spot-on, which is always the goal when setting the white-balance for a photo with people in it. Why can't my Nikons do this? What does Apple know that Nikon/Canon/Pentax/Olympus, et al., doesn't?

Maybe at some point I'll post an A to B comparison of a Nikon and an iPhone photograph of the same subject taken under the same lighting to better demonstrate the stark difference between the two auto white-balance algorithms. For now, suffice it to say the difference is substantial.

A few more from the 1.4

Here's a couple of portraits taken with the new AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G that perhaps will give you a better sense of how this lens does when shot wide-open than the example images I used in my earlier post comparing it with Nikon's  previous iteration of the 50mm f/1.4. These examples clearly demonstrate the improvements in the optical performance of this lens over the older version. Note the lack of any perceptible light-falloff at the edges and the  sharpness and detail of the in-focus areas of the images. (Bear in mind that at f/1.4, the depth-of-field is quite narrow. Focus was on the subject's eye.) Also note the reasonably clean bokeh (background-blur). It's not especially wonderful, but it's much more pleasing than what you'd have gotten with the older AF-D 50mm lens, which had a sort of mottled appearance.

Not bad for a lens shot at its widest aperture, where its optical deficiencies are usually most apparent.

Both of the above images were shot with the 50mm on the D700 @ f/1.4 with a shutter-speed of 1/125 of a second. ISO sensitivity was 3200. The auto-focus module on the D700 was set to 51-point 3D in continuous-focus mode. The focus-point was selected manually and placed on the subject's eye. The AF- module kept focus on the eye as I moved the camera slightly to recompose. 

Per usual, you can click on the photos above to view the larger images in my galleries.

Nikon's new AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G vs. AF-Nikkor f/1.4 D

 

       Nikkor 50mm f/1.4  AF-S                Nikkor 50mm f/1.4  AF-D

I've had the new AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G since it was released last December and I've been using it consistently on my D700 and D3.  In fact, it's been the most commonly mounted lens on my full-frame cameras this winter because I've mostly been photographing Oliver, whom I don't usually have until his mom goes to work at 6:00 PM when it's already dark. So I'm primarily shooting indoors in dimly-lit rooms and occasionally outdoors under street lighting.

Of course, the high-ISO capabilities of the D3/700 combined with the wide, f/1.4 maximum aperture of the 50mm, make it possible to routinely shoot in those conditions without the use of flash (a real paradigm shift for most photographers) but it generally necessitates that the lens be shot wide-open at f/1.4, which is not typically the sweet-spot at which a lens attains its maximum performance. So while most of my shooting with this lens has been  under less-than-optimal conditions, it's been useful to see what the lens can do wide-open. After all, we buy a super-fast lens to actually use it at its maximum aperture.

 

50mm f/1.4 AF-S @ f/2.0. Not the world's prettiest bokeh, but an improvement over the AF-D.

Physically, the new lens is somewhat bulkier than the AF-D, though not perceptibly heavier. It takes a 58mm filter instead of the 52mm that was standard on Nikon's 50mm lenses for decades. Also changed from the AF-D, the front element of the new lens does not extend forward past the front edge of the lens body when focusing. And like all of Nikon's newer AF-S lenses with a "G" designation, the new 50mm does not have an aperture ring.

In terms of optical performance vs. the older AF-D version, there's no question that the new AF-S  model is a step up in quality. It is noticeably sharper at wider apertures, particularly at f/1.4, than the older lens and it has a more pleasing bokeh (background blur) as well. This is most likely due to the newer lens's nine rounded aperture blades (as opposed to the AF-D's seven non-rounded blades). Vignetting seems to be very well controlled, even at wide apertures, and corner-to-corner sharpness is quite reasonable, especially when stopped-down.

50mm f/1.4 AF-S @ f/5.6.

Chromatic aberration is also very well controlled, with one major caveat. While the new lens does a very good job with lateral CA (which, when present, is very easily fixed in most advanced photo-editing software), it introduces a quirk not found on the older AF-D lens: longitudinal chromatic aberration. In certain situations, mostly involving very high-contrast specular highlights, color fringing that almost completely encircles the highlight can occur and, unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to fix in software. On the bright side, it seems thus far to be a fairly rare phenomenon (I've encountered it in less than ten images out of literally thousands I've taken with this lens).

50mm f/1.4 AF-S wide-open @ f/1.4. Excellent sharpness for such a wide aperture.

Another unpleasant surprise is the presence of slight, but nevertheless visible, barrel-distortion, something not really expected on a 50mm lens. This is, of course, very easily remedied in software, but it's a shame it even has to be an issue. There was certainly no detectable amount of barrel-distortion on the older AF-D lens.

50mm f/1.4 AF-S @ f/8.0. Stopped-down, this lens is tack-sharp.

Other than the optical performance characteristics discussed above, the primary difference between the AF-S and AF-D lenses (and presumably the reason that you'd upgrade from the AF-D to the AF-S) is, of course, the auto-focus functionality. The new AF-S uses Nikon's latest, super-fast, built-into-the-lens, silent-wave motor technology to acquire and track focus, whereas the older AF-D is screw-driven by the camera body. The expectation in this regard is a much faster-focusing lens than the AF-D. The reality is somewhat more complex than that.

If you're expecting the type of almost instantaneous, snap-to-focus performance that you are used to with most of Nikon's AF-S lenses, you will likely be disappointed, at least at first. The Screw-driven AF-D is actually faster at acquiring focus than the AF-S, and by a fairly noticeable degree. However, once focus has been acquired, the AF-S truly shines. It tracks focus far more quickly and accurately than the AF-D, especially when the subject is moving in quick, jerky motions (think kids and pets). In this regard, the new lens leaves the older one in the dust.

It's just when the AF-S has to move its focus-elements a significant distance in order to acquire initial focus that it is very noticeably sluggish as compared with the AF-D. When shooting in continuous focus mode, I've gotten in the habit of waiting an extra fraction of a second before firing-off my first shot, and that has largely remedied the problem.

(I've tested the new AF-S on both the D3 and the D700, as well as the D300, and have found it's auto-focus characteristics to be the same on all three cameras. So I'm confident that this aspect of the auto-focus performance is a function of the lens, not a particular camera body.)

50mm f/1.4 AF-S @ f/2.0.

Bottom line? If you already have the older AF-D, the new lens is a worthwhile upgrade, even in spite of its substantially higher price, provided you are aware of, and adjust for, its particular quirks. If you have never owned one of Nikon's fast 50mm lenses, this is a great, lightweight, walkaround lens that opens up low-light environments to your photography. And if you are the owner of one of the Nikon camera bodies that only accept AF-S lenses (D40, D60), you can now have a fast, normal-focal-length, prime lens that actually auto-focuses on your camera!

Ollie goes out for Chinese Food

Oliver always seems to get into a playful mood when we go out for dinner. I can always rely on him to make his funniest faces for me when we're in a restaurant.

He's an incurable ham...

These photos, by the way, were made with the Nikon D700 using the 51-point 3D dynamic auto-focus mode, which is excellent at tracking focus on a moving subject. Just focus on an eye and the AF module will select new focus-points dynamically as the subject moves around the field of view, maintaining focus on the eye. Considering that the depth-of field is extremely narrow here (given the very large f/1.4 aperture used in this dimly-lit restaurant) it's no small feat for the AF module to track focus on a subject that is not only moving laterally in a very quick, jerky fashion, but forward and backward, as well.

New Look!

I finally got around to paying some serious attention to this blog. The first order of business was to change my blog hosting service to Blogger, which offers a much nicer interface and far more configurability than Wordpress, my former blog host. That enabled me to integrate the blog into my website much more gracefully, without the need for iframes and scrollbars as in my previous implementation. I think the orginizational structure and overall readability of Blogger pages also far surpasses  those of Wordpress, so those issues should no longer be an impediment to the functionality of this site.

Now that I have the  blog nicely dressed up and incorporated into my website, the next step is to actually add some compelling content from time to time. ;-) At the very least, I'm going to try to consistently post when I've uploaded new batches of photos to my galleries, and  link to them. I may also post and comment on some of those photos here on the blog. I am also planning on writing more about photography, in general, and the gear I use, specifically. This blog is really an exercise in improvisation, so we'll see how it goes. If nothing else, I will definitely use this space as a forum for my dispatches from my routine visits to China and other travels I hope to embark on.

Speaking of China, most of the older content (2004 - 2007) currently posted here is actually a collection of the un-edited e-mail that I sent out to various friends and family describing my experiences and adventures while spending as much as ten weeks at a stretch on some of my visits to that country. Those dispatches are hopelessly overwrought, for the most part, but I love them anyway! At the very least, they are a visceral window into my state of mind while in China.

Photo Processing Notes

How does Dave Process the photos on his website? Not with an old-fashioned wet-darkroom, as pictured here. Welcome to the Digital Domain!

All images on this site were post-processed in Adobe ACR & Photoshop CS2 and/or Adobe Lightroom2 from the original RAW files, then converted to JPEG and resized and optimized for the web to 800x536 pixels (maintaining the 3:2 aspect-ratio of the original file) via either Adobe ImageReady or Adobe Lightroom. Consequently, the EXIF data attached to each image specifying its 'Original Size' refers to the resized JPEG and NOT the original, out-of-camera RAW image. All other EXIF data (available by clicking on 'More Details' under each image) is accurate and refers to the original RAW image as captured by the cameras.

Original out-of-camera image dimensions:

D70: 3008 x 2000 (06 Mpx);
D80: 3872 x 2592 (10 Mpx);
D200: 3872 x 2592 (10 Mpx);
D300: 4288 x 2848 (12 Mpx);
D700: 4256 x 2832 (12 Mpx);
D3: 4256 x 2832 (12 Mpx).

Bright Primary Colorful China

One of the things that I particularly enjoy about photographing China is that it’s a far more colorful country than most people give it credit for.

I think that most people, if they have any sense of what China looks like at all, tend to imagine dull, washed-out reds, golds & greys and muted greens & browns. While not entirely inaccurate, modern China certainly has a far more expansive color gamut.

Viewers of my photos are often surprised at the abundance of saturated primary colors that are more remeniscent of Central America than of China. Bright, eye-popping color is especially evident in the interior, rural towns and cities of China, and is exemplified by the all-too-prevalent storefront signage and advertising that seems to line every city street, country road, and back alley. Even many rural villages now are now painted in predominantly bright primary colors.

I’ve even had people ask me if I intentionally increase color saturation during post-processing of my photos, but a close inspection of the images reveals that these intense reds, blues, yellows, and greens simply appear all-the-more saturated when juxtaposed against the often grey skies and polluted air in the Chinese interior.

From a photographic perspective, the often stark contrast between highly luminant and more subdued color in the same scene serve to underscore one of the overarching themes that I try to capture with my camera in China: the dichotomies and contradictions that seem to underly virtually every aspect of life in this country.