King's Canyon Cliffs

Things are getting Strange...

If you've been keeping track of the news, you know that Russia is sending equipment and some troops to Syria. You also know about the disaster that's happening in Europe with all the refugees. As I'm in Russia right now (Crimea) I get these stories every day, with a Russian slant. Fortunately, the government hasn't limited my Internet (yet) so I can also read the Western press to get another perspective on these events. It would appear the two sides are headed for a collision, like two big horn sheep smashing heads. The noise is almost too much to bear but it's the underlying heat I worry about. There are too many hard heads and hardened positions at play in this mess and I really am concerned that the two sides may be getting themselves into positions where they have no reasonable way out. If Russia actually puts ground troops and jet fighters in Syria (a real possibility from the chatter I hear) they will cross a Rubicon that the West  has indicated is unacceptable. It could very easily lead to confrontation in the air at the very least as there are American jets (among others) bombing across the country. Russian pilots are highly trained and very effective and there would most likely be casualties on both sides and lots of destroyed hardware. What will these two bulls do in that case? There are massive egos involved and too much political capital to be lost should one of them back down. This is how wars start. It's getting very hairy around here and one false move could spell disaster. If you are religious, now is a good time to start praying.

Sometimes the Best Plans Run Astray...

It's funny but cameras sometimes don't see the same scene as the human eye. It may be the transition to 2D which flattens the image or it might be color and light ... sometimes it's not even obvious why the image from the camera is so different from what you remember. Today's image is a perfect example of this phenomena. I was in King's Canyon National Park (near Sacramento), traveling along the King River. There's a spot, about halfway between the park entrance and the far end of the road where a massive cliff rises from the valley floor to tower over the road. I noted this spot on my way in and, while driving out, stopped to take an HDR panorama. The cliff was super impressive with lots of texture and color. Down at the bottom, perhaps a 1000 feet below, was the river, raging through the narrow gorge. It was a really impressive spot. I grabbed the camera and tripod and very carefully crawled out on a narrow and dangerous ledge so I could shoot down into the canyon as part of the pano. The ledge was covered with loose gravel and dirt and I was very concerned that I might slip. But I felt the scene was too impressive to just back away. So I clung to the ledge and very gently took my pictures. I put them in my computer and waited for a time when I could process them into a majestic picture.

Jump forward a few days. I finally found time to set up the computer and did the usual work of merging my images into HDR and a huge panorama. Because the images were from the cliff face the pano software had a hard time finding matches. It took over an hour to get a final image. Imagine my disappointment when it finally emerged. To say it was lifeless would be an understatement. Several issues came to light ... first, the river all but disappeared in the distortions created by the panorama. What was an impressive torrent became an afterthought in the final image. It all but disappeared. And the cliff ... well, let's just say it was less than earth shattering. What I saw was a bland wall of gray with a few colors and one or two plants. Nothing like the massive stone wall I'd photographed. Maybe if I'd taken another row higher up, showing some sky, it would have impressed me more. who knows. So, disappointed, I put the image away and forgot about it.

King's Canyon Cliffs

A few weeks ago I was working through my backlog and came across the cliff picture. It was still bland and disappointing but I saw a glimmer of hope. Back into Lightroom it went and I started manipulating all the sliders I could find to see if something, anything, would emerge. Lightroom gives you a lot of power to tug and coax color out of your photographs. I didn't add anything (cheating) but used every bit of latitude Lightroom gave me to get an image that's not only acceeptable but even a bit tantalizing. This is, at some level, the image I remember as I clung to that ledge. It's not perfect but still ... perhaps worth teetering precariously above that abyss after all. I'll let you decide.

King's Canyon Cliff - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Los Padres Sunset

DaVinci Resolve

I've been spending the last week learning about new things. Lots of reading from the internet and dipping my fingers gently into new software. All in preparation for the next cycle when I want to get more heavily into video and extend my mastery of the photographic and the moving image. I'm not sure yet what type of project that will be but it happens in and around LA. I'm narrowing my choice for the next camera (hint ... it's between the Canon 5D Mk 3 and the Sony A7 Mk 2). I'm convinced I want to stay away from the really high resolution rigs for now as they are 1) very expensive and 2) fraught with issues. With the 5D Mk 3 I can get reasonable resolution (22.1 Megapixels) plus can install Magic Lantern and get 14 bit raw video at HD resolution and up to 30 fps. Imagine ... video with higher color depth than a professional movie camera costing a large fortune. I've seen some of the video from this hack and it's almost orgasmic. And I can color grade it in DaVinci Resolve (lite for now as the full package costs almost a grand). So, for the last several days, I've been reading and playing with a very powerful and capable system to color correct and grade my footage. It's not for the faint of heart as the software is the exact same code used by the major studios to grade their movies. But mastering this package gives me the ability to really extract the maximum from that raw footage. That's if I get the Canon ... no such capability from any of the Sony cameras unfortunately. All 8 bit and that's not all that good. One would get the impression I've made up my mind ...

Los Padres Sunset

I drove the California coast from north of LA to almost Eureka and saw an amazing number of beautiful shots. I've got thousands of images to work through and that's going to take some time. But one of the best images came from an overlook in the Los Padres National Forest somewhere south of Big Sur. I was just driving along the coastal road and came upon this place. As is always my way, I parked the truck, ate some lunch and took out my tablet to read while awaiting the sun's end. One never knows what to expect as the afternoon drags on ... will it get too foggy or will all the clouds disappear or ... will everything come together and give me a special image to capture. That's what makes this business so interesting and so damn frustrating. I've read stories of photogs who hung out in one place for days awaiting that perfect set of conditions. I didn't have time for that this cycle but next time I'll be doing just that ... spending days in one place, taking the same images each time but waiting for the best conditions. I'll be covering southern California very thoroughly so expect some really interesting results.

Anyway, this is an HDR panorama of the little bay as the sun set behind some really nice clouds. It wasn't exactly stormy but could have been. I think the plants at the bottom are a form of sage which was blooming at the time. It's always nice to have living ground cover instead of ugly rocks. Would have been nicer with some waves but one can't be too choosy given I only spent one afternoon there. So, grab a beer or something more refined and sit back to enjoy the view.

Los Padres Sunset - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Santa Monica Pier

Burning Man is Over

I guess the latest burning man ended on Sunday. I've always wondered what it would be like to spend a week in the dust and heat of summer Nevada with 70K other slightly crazy people. I've heard it was much better before it became a success so maybe I'm not really missing anything. That's always the problem with these things ... they start out as really cool ideas and then, because they're cool, they become popular and then mainstream and then ... they're toast because all the people and all the expectations destroy that which made them good in the first place. Every festival like this should have a limited shelf time ... a few years ... and then should be discontinued as a bad idea. Nothing good lasts forever. Humans attach themselves to anything that's too good and destroy it. So it is with burning man ... the extremely wealthy carve out their own little 'gated community' and fill it with million dollar buses and keep everyone else out and ... ruin the whole thing. There ought to be a rule that excludes anyone with too much money. Can't the rest of us 'little people' have something that's exclusively ours?

Santa Monica Pier

It's probably one of the most photographed ferris wheels in the world. Right on the beach, just below the million dollar flats and expensive homes and high class hotels ... there sits the pier. It costs a lot of money just to park there for a few hours. Fortunately, for us photographers, that's not a big concern. The parking concessions shut down around 7 at night and don't start up until well after sunrise so I was able to skip most of the costs. But I had to walk a long distance with my heavy equipment so that's the trade off one has to make. Anyway, I got to the beach just after 7 and lugged my gear down the beach sidewalk until I was pretty close to the pier. Most people had already abandoned the beach and most of the exercisers had already finished their routines and headed for the showers so it was just me and a handful of other photogs wanting to get that signature image. In the spring there's already afternoon fog so getting a blazing sun behind a thin layer of clouds is a long shot at best. And, the air is already pretty heavy with smog so it's problematic one can get that iconic shot. So I put the 70-200 f/4 on the camera and concentrated on the pier. It's really quite colorful with the lights on the wheel and the brightly painted rollercoaster so there's plenty to please the eye. It's a 3 exposure HDR and finished in Lightroom. I worked with the sliders quite a bit to bring out the colors. Hope you enjoy the ride. Keep your arms and legs inside the car at all time and absolutely don't scream!

Santa Monica Pier - 70mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Grand Canyon Sunset from Desert View

The New Cameras...

It's been a big year for some of the camera manufacturers. They've been busy pushing the envelop with new sensors and new bodies plus more than a few new and exciting lenses. Canon fired the first shot with the 5DS(R) cameras containing a mind boggling 50 megapixel sensor. The photos are amazing and I think many serious Canon shooters have already made the transition. However, the sensor does have some serious noise issues (as do all Canon sensors) and the files are very large. This is a tripod only camera for in-studio use and for dedicated landscape photographers who are comfortable with that. Not good for action and, seriously, only outputs HD video ... when many in the world are already shooting 4K resolution. Hope that's just a software issue and not a limitation on the hardware because Canon, who really pioneered video from DSLR cameras, is now behind the 8 ball on that score. Then came Sigma ... yes, Sigma ... who are creating a whole new line of lenses called the ART series and these are really good glass. I think they just introduced a new zoom but the primes are truly amazing. I'm looking at the 24mm f/1.4 for astro work and it's as good as the much more expensive Canon offering. At less than $900 it's a real bargain. On my wish list as I write this. Then Sony came out with the new A7R ii and it too is an amazing camera. A forest of new features including 5-axis in-camera stabilization, 399 cross focus points so the camera can track action, a new back-lit sensor that is very low noise and sensitive and has 42 megapixels and 14 stops of dynamic range at low ISO. Almost ... and I say that with great hesitation ... almost a perfect camera. But there are increasing reports of overheating when recording 4K in-camera video (4.2.0 which isn't great but a first for a mirrorless camera none the less and 4.2.2 to an external recorder). Not a good thing if you plan to use this camera as a backup or primary when recording interviews or other long time sequences. Seems the problem is so bad the camera shuts down after 15-20 minutes even in a cool environment. If I was primarily planning to shoot video I'd bypass this camera but I'm not ... I'm shooting high resolution, high dynamic range stills mostly so I don't think this is an issue for me. So, as I type this the A7R ii is on my wish list too. It's not cheap ... only a few hundred below the Canon 5DS so I'll be selecting based on performance and how clean the images are. Oh ... and Sony has a lossless compression in the mix so that's also an issue. Why, I wonder, would they go to all the trouble of developing this amazing sensor and then crap all over it with a lousy compression algorithm? Rumor has it they've been listening to the wailing and are working on a new software fix to give users the option of getting the 14 bit RAW right from the sensor as an option. I hope so. Even if it slows down the shooting speed a bit. Please, give us the RAW data ... we can handle it.

Grand Canyon Sunset from Desert View

As you enter the south rim of the Grand Canyon on Rt. 64 there's a campground called Desert View. In the early days they constructed an observation tower on the rim so you could see the Colorado River deep in the canyon. It's a much quieter place than Grand Canyon City further to the west and the views are even more spectacular. I spent several days there, capturing sunsets and the amazing beauty of the canyon. This image was taken from a vantage point to the east of the tower and shows the river and red bluffs in beautiful detail. This is, of course, an HDR panorama. If you haven't been to Desert View, I strongly encourage you to make a stop the next time you're in the area. You won't be disappointed.

Grand Canyon Sunset - 16mm(1.6 crop), f/18, HDR, ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Golden Gate Bridge

Where am I?

I'm not ignoring you ... I'm just off doing other things. I have a family that needs some attention from time to time and I'm still working on that software project. Plus I'm starting to think through what I want to do on the next cycle which starts probably after the new year. I'm thinking hard about spending a long time in and around LA to work on my timelapse video and then what do I do? I don't want to be driving nearly as much as I did last time ... almost 10k miles and a lot of money. This time I want to be more localized and concentrate on southern California. I think that's possible. And since I want to do a nighttime video I can sleep during the day and avoid most of the issues around night camping and rule breaking. There's lots of issues to be resolved and plans to be made so I'll be busy for the next 4+ months. I'll still try to cull my photos so there's a constant stream of new images but I have other fish to fry too so bear with me while this gets done.

Golden Gate Bridge at Night

I spent a total of 2 days in San Francisco. I've already explained why I cut my stay short so I won't bore you repeating the obvious. I spent almost all that time around the bridge as it's the most obvious landmark in SF. Such an amazing construction and one of the few man made structures that actually enhances it's environment. The guy who designed it made a really excellent choice with the color ... international orange ... which lets the bridge stand out from it's surroundings while actually complementing the colors of the hills and city. A true work of art. And, if you've noticed, one of the few human constructions that appears in my pictures.

It wasn't easy taking this panorama. I had originally hoped to take this picture from the highest observation point in the park but fog got in the way. I was parked high above the bridge, awaiting sunset and the chance to take some really awesome pictures but, as is often the case in northern California, the afternoon fog rolled in and pushed the ceiling down until the bridge disappeared totally from this vantage point. I was forced to work my way down the observation overlooks as the ceiling fell until I was pinned at the lowest observation point. But the insults weren't finished yet. Every time I got out of my truck to set up, some clown would pull into the parking area and leave his lights on so my shots were ruined. Finally, in total frustration, I crawled into my truck and hunkered down until very late ... almost midnight ... when all the gawkers had finally gone home to bed and I had the place all to myself. Fortunately, the fog remained just above the tops of the bridge stanchions so I could see the red fog lights and traffic flowing across the span. It's a very nice picture but not perfect. The fog and mist gives all the lights a halo which is both nice and not so good. Also, some of the sections are a bit overexposed. I plead to frustration ... after all the negative pressure going back many hours I was just rushing to get any image and get back into my truck. At midnight it's really cold and raw up in those hills and standing outside for long periods trying to get the perfect picture is very uncomfortable. If I get back there this next cycle I'll do better ... I promise.

Golden Gate at Night - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Shiprock Sunrise

There's More to Life Than...

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy with other things. I'm working a lot on my software project ... an application to help me remove flicker from my timelapse sequences. You've seen the flicker ... the video looks like something from the old hand cranked camera days with each frame having a different brightness. It can be very disconcerting to see something like that in a modern sequence and I work very hard to avoid getting that effect. Sometimes it's impossible to avoid like taking a sequence of images at a waterfall in the moonlight. The amount of mist changes from shot to shot so the intensity of reflected moonlight causes the image to 'flicker'. In that case you can do very little to fix it as it's part of the scene. The flicker I'm talking about has more to do with variations in shutter speed and aperture from one shot to the next and I can do something about that. I've been working on this program for several years now as it keeps getting shelved as my interests shuttle from one project to another but this time I'm intent on getting the thing working, at least for my purposes. It may never see any commercial success but that's OK. I want this for my purposes and that's good enough for the present. Right now I'm working to get bugs out and to make sure there's enough capability for my workflow which, at the moment, means making sure I have the ability to read in images in the correct format and to output images in the proper format. Right now that means being able to read Adobe .dng files and to output the same or DPX movie frames. I got that working yesterday (all except for the .dng output part). I also want to add some capabilities to the effects I can use to give me more latitude in how I fix the flickering. I think that takes maybe a few more weeks. When I'm finished I'll post a few examples so you can see what I'm doing.

Shiprock Sunrise

My first stop on this last cycle was Shiprock, NM. It's in the 4-corners area. I've written about it before so won't bore you with a rehash. I slept on the indian reservation so I could be at the rock at sunrise. When I awoke, the sun was just starting to lighten the sky so I was able to set up my camera and take a quick panorama of the colors in the sky. It was the first sunrise I'd seen in a long time and was very spiritual in a way. There's something very different from a sunset which has an ending quality about it. With a sunrise there's renewal and the feeling that there's hope for the new day. At day's end you know whether there was success or failure and your emotions are colored by those outcomes. The new day offers a chance at starting over and that's special.

Shiprock Sunrise - 17mm(1.6 crop),f4.0,2.5 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Zion Virgin River Dream

Sony Takes a Gamble

I've been contemplating a new camera body this summer. I've grown frustrated with how easily my sensor gets contaminated when I switch lenses all the time. By the time I finished the last cycle my Canon 60D took images that looked like they had chicken pox. I had to spend a small fortune to get it cleaned but I know that the dirt will return as soon as the next cycle begins. The only way to keep a camera clean is to never open it. But since I have several lenses (with another one being contemplated for astro photography) the only solution is to buy more bodies and commit each one to a certain lens. I'll do that for my 2 main lenses (the Canon wide angle and telephoto) and only swap in the astro lens when I'm doing night shooting. I'll have to set up a system for making those changes as clean as possible (maybe inside a big plastic bag to minimize environmental contact) and keep them to a minimum.

Anyway, I've been watching the camera market intently since January and it's become very interesting. Canon opened the bidding with their 5D SR, a 50 megapixel monster that sells for almost $4K. It is an interesting offering but has one serious drawback ... the same noise issues that plague my 60D. Canon sensors are just horrendously noisy and there's no getting around that. I'd need to get seriously dedicated to noise reduction and to buy some not so cheap software to help mitigate the issues this noise creates. But I'd at least not have compatibility issues with my lenses.

Sony offers the only serious competition for the Canon bodies. Their mirrorless design leaves room for adapters that allow the use of almost any lens from any manufacturer but, up until now, there were big issues. Auto focus was painfully slow and often failed so manual focusing was almost a given. That's OK most of the time but when you're trying to take candid photos (like on the street) it's a huge problem. And the image stabilization systems in most lenses didn't work very well either. It was a mess and, quite frankly, the first version of their high pixel count camera, the A7R, had some serious issues with shutter noise, vibration and lifetime. I know a lot of pro photographers made the switch but they were not all really happy with it. But, just this month, Sony introduced the next round ... the A7R II, and it looks like a game changer. It has a big sensor, 42 megapixels, so it competes directly with the new Canon but the really exciting ideas involve 5 axis image stabilization in the camera (by moving the sensor) and auto focus is now fast because they have 399 phase detection sensors spread across the sensor and they work with Canon auto focus lenses. I've seen several videos and the system is very fast indeed. They also seemed to be listening to their customers and made major changes in the software so HDR shooters have more bracketing options and video shooters can now shoot 4K internally to the camera. This last item is a huge advance ... a small camera that shoots ultra HD to the internal memory card (not everything is great ... only 8 bit and the color space is somewhat limited but still...). And the new sensor is very low noise so I can do my HDR thing and my star photo thing and even my video thing all with the same camera. Price is an issue ... $3200 ... and $399 for the adapter, but it's still a major step for them and for me. I can now get the resolution I want, a full-frame 35mm image and some really nice features that will make my life a whole lot easier. Now, all I need to do is find that $3600 and I'll be set to go ... hmmmmm.

Zion Virgin River Dream

Take the Zion park shuttle to the very last stop ... the Temple of Sinawava ... and take the path toward the narrows and you find the Virgin River. This river made the Zion Canyon and the narrows and pretty much the whole park so it's a big deal. In this area the river runs through a lot of rock fall, stuff sloughing off the nearby canyon walls, which makes for many turbulent pools and small waterfalls. It's an extremely picturesque area so I spent most of a day there. One place, in particular, caught my attention. Many rocks had pushed together to create an elevated pool which cascaded over the resulting dam and waterfall. I'm always looking for moving water as it gives me a chance to work with my 10 stop neutral density filter (here and here and you'll need an adapter ring to fit your lens). You've seen the effect I'm sure ... cascading water turns into the neatest mist. You achieve this by using this really dark filter which pushes your exposure times out to 30 seconds or longer. The result is an exposure that obliterates all evidence of individual drops and shows only a ghost of what's actually there. You get an image with some really sharp features (rocks mostly) and everything else is so ethereal. It's a really interesting effect.

Anyway, I spent quite a while at this waterfall and took many images. This one is probably the best of the lot although I'll develop all of them to make sure. This is a single exposure, extensively processed in Lightroom. I used several radial filters to highlight the rocks (especially the one in the middle) and worked with the colors to pull out the water and rock colors. Very dramatic I think.

Zion Dream - 106mm(1.6 crop),f/22,30 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0