Michael Forsyth's News

I snapped a shot of Canis Major this morning with the 35 1.8. This is the first time it has seen starlight and I think it performed phenomenally. This shot was at ISO 200, f/1.8, .8 seconds. This is amazing, you could almost hand hold that! Processed minimally in Lightroom, I could do more in PS but I like the way it turned out like this. The sky really was blue as the sun was rising.  The light on the power pole is partially low pressure sodium vapor lamps and partially sunrise. The falloff at the top is due to the increasing darkness as the distance from the horizon increases, and not from the lens (just look at the bottom half).

Canis Major at Sunrise

I was up in Wisconsin this past weekend, and I defiantly miss the cool weather now that I’m back here. It is really beautiful up north this time of the year, and the temperature was perfect! We went to a couple breweries the day before the wedding and I had a little fun pouring beers next to Jim Klisch, one of the founders of Lakefront Brewery. This really meant a lot to me, as I felt that it was much more personable than some of the large corporations. It is a real compliment to have one of the founders of a brewery right on the other side of the table, and really shows that they care about their customers. We also visited Miller earlier in the day. It is neat to see the contrasting operations of one of the largest breweries in the world compared to a microbrewery operation. From Miller’s 5 football field sized warehouse to Lakefront brewery’s 5 excellent outdoor taps, we saw it all. I also got a Pelican case for my camera, ill put some info up on that later.

One of the more interesting things I saw was the light on lake Michigan as we were landing in Milwaukee, with the entire lake covered in shadows and a patchwork of light streaming out of the clouds.

Light over lake Michigan. Other than bringing the highlights out a little in Lightroom, this is straight from the camera.

Free Wi-Fi on the plane!

Me pouring beer next to Jim Klisch.

I shot the tennis match for my school newspaper a couple weekends ago and got some great shots. The action can be hard to follow at times, but after an hour or so I had my timing down to a science. One trick I like to use is to look through both eyes when using the camera. This allows you to keep the player framed tight with a long lens and still see the ball coming. If you try to snap the shot when you see the ball in the finder, you will get a bunch of shots with players after they hit the ball. Your body just does not react fast enough to capture the exact moment. I just set the D40′s auto focus selector to all areas, and it had no trouble at all keeping at least one of the sensors on the player. Obviously auto focus should be set to continuous servo here, and just keep the shutter release pressed half way down until you snap.  I always start with some test shots, and use the TFT screen to fine tune the exposure. In this case, the black background and light players required -1 2/3 EV compensation.

One trick I like to use is to take the picture just before I anticipate the player hitting the ball, as I find this gives the most dynamic results and usually results in the best expressions. I also cranked the ISO up to 400 to make sure I could keep that shutter moving quickly. Tennis is a very fast paced game, and if your not shooting with a fast shutter speed you will end up with blur. Most of these photos were shot at something between 1/1250 and 1/2000, although even at 1/3200 sec. you will still get blur on the rackets as they serve. The other dirty secret to getting great sports photos is to shoot a LOT of frames. This is easy with digital. I shot a little less than 1,000 frames over about a day and a half,  and flagged 41 picks in lightroom. Of those 41, I chose 7 that really stood out from the rest. If you do the math, that is a little more than 4% for the first pass and .7% making the final cut. Of course there are a lot more good photos in there, but I would consider that .7% the best, the ones that have great expression, composition, etc. These are what will run in the papers.

One more thing that I have to apply to this or any action situation, is to keep shooting, even when the action might be at a low. Many great shots can and have been made by practicing this, and here is an example of one I shot while at the match. A player shows his frustration after failing to return the ball, but still went on to win the match.

Ill be up in Wisconsin by tomorrow morning for a wedding. I am also going to visit a couple breweries on Friday, Ill have pictures up from my trip on Sunday or Monday. All I’m taking on the trip is my D40 and 35 f/1.8, a charged battery, and 1 2 gig SD card.

I recently covered a recital by the D’Amore Duo at my school’s recital hall. They are a duo that was founded to explore chamber music for the guitar and oboe, and they are really great.  The two instruments really go well togeather and produce some amazing music.

I had a lot of fun shooting this assignment because it was somewhat of a challenge for me. The lighting on the stage is pretty difficult, with magenta lights in front and tungsten on the performers. This is one of the few times I do shoot RAW so I can go back and get the color balance exactly right in post.  I was shooting with my 55-200 f/4-5.6, so they are all around ISO 1600. I shot another assignment in the same place last night with my new 35 1.8 and it defiantly produced better for me.

The one thing I don’t think most people understand about shooting live performances is that the noise you make is supposed to be kept to an absolute minimum.  I never shoot during the actual performance and have been thanked afterward every time by the performers. I might write something up on this later.

William Feasley

D'Amore Duo, William Feasley and Fatma Daglar

I got my 35mm f/1.8 lens yesterday, It seems to be a pretty nice lens. Its very sharp and focuses fast, and it has easy manual override of the autofocus. The real reason that I got it though is that it is very fast. This means two big things for me, the ability to grab low light shots such as indoor shots without flash and the ability to throw the background out of focus. I don’t have a real in-depth test of it yet, as I have only shot a few frames with it since I got it, but so far I am very pleased! I will have a real review when I get some more usage out of it, but for now I have a few shots of my usual test target, Olive.

Olive. f/1.8, relatively fast shutter speed. Note the background softness.

This lens appears razor sharp at first glance, although at f/1.8 that will depend heavily on focus accuracy. Here is another shot showing the bokeh past the focus plane. It looks great to me, especially that little point of light on the lens cap that has become a perfect disk. Some other reviews and shots I have seen do not report this lens as having the best out of focus characteristics, not that I really care anyway.  I will have more input on this in a few days.

Another test shot. Note the point of light on the cap. This is at f/1.8

I just added an article outlining my lightroom workflow here. I will have more later on my latest work.

So I decided to move away from the hand coded site I was doing, it was just too tedious to update all the time. Please bear with me while I move everything over here, it should be done within the evening or at least by tomorrow morning. Also, there is a new RSS feed to the right.

I just ordered the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens. I really can’t wait to get this one, especially since I have been doing a lot of shooting inside . I will have more on this when I get my hands on it.

I also added RSS to this page, although I don’t know if I’m going to keep using it the way I have been, as I have to manually update the .xml file for it to show changes. I know there is an easier way, I’m just looking for it. (edit: this is the easier way I found, it will probably be in this format for a while)

So I promised some more shots that I made with the off camera stuff that I did last week. The great thing with off camera stuff is that it allows you to engineer the light to work for you instead of just making do with one source that the on camera stuff gets you. It can really do wonders when shooting people, as you can make the light look natural on them and kill the nasty background shadows that would otherwise be present.

Doesn’t look like a flash was used? That’s the idea! Flash was behind me on a stand, fired up at the ceiling at full power. 28mm f/4.2 1/60sec. Pictured: Daniel Hannah.

I use a Nikon D40 for almost every one of the photos you see on this site.  I shot a tennis match today and got a little over 600 shots. Along with all these shots, I did plenty of viewing and showing some other people shots on the TFT screen. After uploading all of them to my computer, my battery meter still showed full.

Other pics and some general news will be up tomorrow night after the second day of the match is over and I have a chance to get my pictures into the paper.