The Package Shot For The Landscape Shooter

I used to be a little reticent about taking package shots - it always seems to be somewhat of a cop-out on the part of an illustrator to just show the outside of the box. Some products had a little printing on the outside but some were the classic " plain unmarked box "...It seemed unfair to make the prospective client buy it with just the promise that there was something in the cardboard.

So for years I tried my best to gently ease the shell open to get the nut out. Some of the Japanese packagers who were origami experts defeated me easily - it was either guess at the possible contents or take after it full-blown with a chain saw. This seemed to worry the management and the customers.

Imagine my relief when the packagers decided to put their own advertising on the outside of good quality printing board. Pictures, descriptions, and contents out there where you could see them. Wow.
Even if they then super-wrapped it with shrink plastic and buttoned it over with Kevlar tape and strap-iron it made no difference -you could still make a decent show of it.

So, herewith we present  the new stars of the modular filter system stage - the NiSi filters. They arrived at the studio all sealed up and By Golly they'll leave in the same condition. If you buy them you'll be the first person to see whether there really is a filter in there.

a. The little one is the NiSi Nano IR ND filter

100m x 100mm at a strength of ND 64 or 1.8 pdf you use the alternate system. Neutral density and neutral colour with a great deal of light stopping power for longer exposures.

b. Next size up is the NiSi Nano IR GND filter

150mm x 100 mm graduated to slide up and down the holders. The power on this one peaks at 8 or .9 in the other measurement. A sky modifier for the land and seascapes.

c. the big one is the Nano IR ND again in 64 or 1.8.

The big difference is that this is the one with 150mm x 150mm size to provide filtration for some of the very wide FX lenses. These would be Nikon, Canon, Tamron, and Sigma special lenses.

d. The white kit pack with the convenient description on the front is the V5 starter for the NiSi system - the 100mm filter holder assembly. Looks as though it contains the holder, several adapter rings, a round circa-pol filter, and substantial hard carrying case. You could stack one round and three square filters onto it if you could figure out what for.

The literature says that the holder is aluminium and the filters themselves glass, coated to prevent excess red in long exposures.

The film also apparently makes a series of round ND and protector filters. And of course there are are the dedicated holders for the 150mm series and all the adapter rings for various sizes.

Come down to the shop and stare at the packages, or go on-line to our Nisi online store

Unscrewing It All Up In The Dark

Did goe to the BP service station at Baldivis South Saturday even and was greatley amused.
It was the site of an unofficial organised impromptu motor car show. A meeting of minds at the McDonalds. A pouring of passion at the petrol pumps. Sort of a cross between Saturday Night Fever and American Graffiti, but nobody looked like Harrison Ford  or John Travolta. There were a couple of contenders, mind, but they were both mature women so I was respectful.

Well, the cars were wonderful and if you want to see more go to hrhoa.wordpress.com but the interesting thing proved to be the way the post-sundown twilight made the cars easier to photograph, and the artefacts that started appearing as soon as the sun was completely gone. Both observations will serve me well in the future.

Note these two pictures of '57 Chevys. Top one is the first taken, and the bottom is the second.

Note the flare and light spots of the first one. That's a clean B+W UV filter on the lens - I keep them on as a matter of course for protection. The second shot has the filter screwed off. Both are tripod jobs. You can decide for yourselves which has most atmosphere, but for me, I think I may be leaving the filter off in still air in the future.

Note as well - every bit of gear for this sort of shooting is right off the shop floor. No special bits - visit the shop or go onto our on-line store to look at Fujifilm cameras, B+W filters, flashes, and Cullmann tripods. Special recommendation for mirror-less - the Cullmann 622T.

March Madness

Well, it's started again - the business of spot sales per day in the shop.

Monday  today - 21st of March.

30% off of all bags, tripods, monopods, memory cards, and screw-in filters.

In store goods only. Purchase today only.

 Spot deal, do the deal, get the deal.

Good deal.

Advert

The Magic Photo Trick - Making People Disappear With A Wave Of the Hand

Well, it's not all that magic. All you need is a backpack sprayer of liquid manure and a hand nozzle. Crowds will melt away, as will some automotive paint finishes. The really difficult thing is trying to sell the images later when the client smells them...that and avoiding dog packs.

Leaving aside this intriguing mental picture ( though I hope it will disturb you for days...) we come to the bit of photographic history that had extremely insensitive recording materials and extremely dim lenses. And big sturdy wooden tripods. Using a plate camera on one of these with the lens stopped right down and a silver or glass plate with an ISO of 0.3 meant that the correct exposure of a Parisian street might be as long as 45 minutes. Long enough for the crowds that swirled through the street to pass by and not record on the plate - while the stationary buildings and other features did. We've all seen the ghostly picture of the street with just one leg on a shoe-black's box. it was the only living thing that was in one place long enough to record.

My bugaboo is people at car shows in front of the vehicles. I find the view I want but it is frequently blocked by the gawkers. They work in tag teams - as one finishes another steps in. I'm sure it is all a function of fluid dynamics and personal living space and bloody mindedness...I am debarred by foolish local laws from carrying a .44 and clearing the way myself - I must wait until they tire of the game and move off. Sometimes it is ten minutes wait until you can get 1/125th of a second for a clear shot.

I think it is time to think outside the square. And to think inside the square - the square of a 10 to 15-stop neutral density filter. Lee make 'em and they have a couple of sizes that would be suitable for use on a DSLR or mirror-less system.

Not cheap - Lee are never cheap - but the facility to increase an exposure in daylight from 1/125 of a second to 40 seconds or longer means that as long as the camera is on a tripod and no-one bumps it, the car will be recorded and the crowds passing in front of it won't. It may sound a bit drastic but then so is the .44 or bursting into tears or yelling " Fire!" to clear away the obstructions.

Note: Camera Electronic sell Lee systems in the shop and on-line. The standard 100mm holders, adapter rings, and Big Stoppers are a very popular sales item - every time there is a landscape photographer running a course in town the stock sells out. The Seven5 size...that's 75mm when they are not being twee...is the one for the mirror-less systems. There is a reduced-size holder and suitable Big and Little Stoppers. Look them up through the on-line store and follow along with the experiment.

I won't have the system in place for the Hyde Park Vintage Car Show but I might make it for the WA Hot Rod Spectacular.

A Beacon In The Darkness - B+W

Those of you who have lived in Darwin, New Guinea, Singapore, or Hong Kong will know what I mean when I say that humidity is not a friend to either your wardrobe or your camera equipment. It might be warm and romantic, but it grows fungus like crazy. You eventually end up taking pictures through the bottom of a petri dish...

We see it in lenses and camera bodies that have been in these climes - see it on the surfaces of lenses and smell it in the mustiness of the equipment. It is bad news, ruining the coatings on optical surfaces and rendering the lenses useless as far as definition or contrast. Getting rid of it once it has attacked the lenses is sometimes not possible - even if they can be cleaned the cost is considerable.

Well, what to do? Stay away from the naked tropics is one answer. So far it has worked for me -  my one trip to Singapore was spent in the dehumidified air conditioning of cocktail bars. I can thoroughly recommend the idea, but it played hell with the liver.

B+W, the German filter makers, have come up with a sober solution. They have put out a device called UV-Pro for Nikon, Canon, and Sony shooters who have DSLR or mirror-less cameras. It generates UV light that kills the fungus spores and prevents the development in the first place.

The component that does this is a special UV-LED. It is powered from a USB port and mounted in a detachable housing. The housing itself is held in a Nikon, Canon, or Sony adapter by magnets.

The adapter is darned clever - one end is for the lens mount and the other lets the adapter clip onto the camera body. Apparently fungus can also get onto the surfaces of glass associated with the sensors of the cameras - they need an occasional zapping as well.

It must be powerful medicine - there is a warning sign on the LED unit itself not to look directly at the light.

The price of the unit is well under the $ 200 mark and at that is a bargain for the tropical photographer. We might mention that Camera Electronic has supplied especial drying cabinets for this same problem - the Legend cabinets come in a large range of sizes and facilities - both these and the new B+W UV Pro should be worth their price in protection  - and for classic lenses they may be the only way to preserve them for the collector.

In-store now. Be sure to check out our on-line store as well for tis an other fine B+W filter products.

The Round Of The Staff: Daniel

Did you know we have another contender for the systems filter stakes? I didn't, until I baled up Daniel and found out about it. You see, I believe the goods are only available from our on-line shop - either that or the rest of the staff are just being mean to me...

Nisi. This company turns out to a very complete set of 100mm x 100mm filters, holders, adapter rings, and storage cases. They also make 150mm sizes as well if you are playing with those really big wide-angle lenses.

ND's, ND grad's, polarisers, and some intriguing IR filters. All the good stuff for the landscapist and escapist shooting, and at affordable prices.

I got to see a kit that seemed to be a good start
-out deal - the basic 100 x 100 filter holder, a circular polariser to fit it, and three adapter rings all housed in a fitted case.

Pop over to the Camera Electronic on-line shop section of our website and look at the range of things that they make. Seems a fine idea.

Down The Home Straight - Day 12 - And It's Filters And Cards

Okay. You've borne with us for the last 12 trading days as we've sung the syren song of photographic retailing. You've steeled yourself not to buy any more camera systems. You've steeled yourself not to buy any more lenses. You've even carbon fibre'd yourself not buy a new tripod...even though your old one has only two legs...

What can we say? If you are determined to be unhappy there is only so much we can legally do to cheer you up. But we'll have one final try.

Today. Camera Electronics. Filters and memory cards.

Buy one, get another of the same value  - or less value if that is your wish - for free. That's it.

You get to choose from San Disk, Hoodman, Hoya, Kenko, and B+W products. All top quality goods. All applicable over most brands of camera and lens.

And all useful in the extreme for digital shooters. Don't look on it as indulgence - look upon it as opportunity.

Heck, the writer of this blog is going down to the shop and snag a coupla memory cards. I've got a trip coming up and I don't want the hassle of downloading stuff onto a tablet - I'm just going to fill cards and be done with it. They are THAT cheap!

A-Hoya There Matey - New Filters A'Comin'

We've just gotten a sliver of information from the people who import the Hoya brand of photographic filters that they will be bringing in a new line.

The press release says that Hoya are introducing three new tough filters under the title of " Fusion ". They'll be the three classics of digital photography - the UV filter, the clear glass protector, and the circular polarizer.

The big difference is in the number and nature of the coatings on the glass which are intended to repel dust, water, and fingerprints. It sounds rather exotic as there are to be 9 coating layers to toughen the surfaces.

They'll be in the popular sizes from 37mm to 82mm and look to be quite economical.

We have yet to see whether they will be able to cope with special contaminants - dog noses in animal studios and gummy bears in studios that do children's portraiture...

See the range here - the fusion may not be there yet, but wait for our online maintenance crew, they'll be off break soon :)

Doin' The Maths

Nothing in this column is a surprise to anyone reading it - not even to the writer - Oh, sure, the owners of the business have learned to turn on the computer with the latest posting by using a long stick and shielding their eyes while they do it...but they are a cautious lot anyway...

What I am about to suggest may be hot stuff or heresy or hooey - and you can decide which for yourself - but here goes anyway...

The landscape shooters of Western Australia may be doing themselves an injustice - by doing a product an injustice. In particular when they overlook the Cokin range of filters in favour of other systems they might miss out on affordable opportunities.

Okay, it's your money. And if you come in and buy something it becomes our money - feel free to throw dollars at us all day if you wish - no complaints from the cash register side of the counter...but...

The Cokin system of filters has been an established product for longer than most realise - we saw it in the 1970's and it has burgeoned since then. If we remember some pretty horrible uses of the idea in the 70's and 80's...well, everybody has to have a adolescence and wedding and portrait photographers are no exception. I can take the high moral ground here as I never actually made a wedding portrait with the bride and groom in a brandy glass. I contemplated it, but never had the courage to try it.

The modern kit from Cokin that supplies three regular or three neutral density filters as well as a basic filter frame is the bargain of the shop. The filters come in a hard plastic organiser case, the filter holder is sturdy and light, and as it can be adapted onto lenses anywhere from 52mm to 82mm, it can go on the front of most of your glass.

The filters are certainly varied - and good quality. There is a useful, if bewildering, variety of graduated neutral density filters in 4 different sizes - you can accommodate some pretty big lenses. There are blue and amber varieties. There are lots of plain colour filters, if you think that is a help.

And now we address the elephant in the corner of the camera bag...some people have been told... and retell the idea... that the Cokin neutral density filters have a colour bias - in some cases people refer to it as magenta and others find some other tint to complain about. Believe what you will, but consider that nearly every cameras nowadays have a colour correction program built into the WB section of the menu. If you have convinced yourself that you are seeing a magenta colour balance, go in there and dial up a slight green correction. If your camera does not have it in the WB or you don't want to fiddle, crank in a slight green correction in the RAW converter.

And there you go - the aesthetic results you want from a plastic filter system that may be every bit as good as another plastic filter system...but at a fraction of the price.

But don't let me stop you from spending money.

Uncle Dick

Staggering Through The Darkness With The New Lee Filters

Well it is strange, isn't it. For a hundred and fifty-odd years  photographers have been trying to get more sensitivity out of their recording surface - sensitising plates, using speed-increasing developers. pre-flashing plates, etc. Developing flash power, flash bulbs, and eventually electronic flash to a very sophisticated level. Making lenses with wider and wider apertures...

And then Lee come along and clap a dirty great black sheet of plastic in front of all the other developments and ten stops of light disappear. People are thrown back to heavy tripods, cable releases and counting their exposure times on their fingers...

The power of fashion, eh? Well, what the heck, Misty waterfalls, glassy oceans, deserted streets - it's almost like Grand Final Day at 2:00 or Christmas Eve in the workhouse.

Up until now many of the fancier wide angle lenses that people wanted to use for landscapes and interiors were handicapped by the design of their front elements. They bulged forward in such an alarming fashion that no filters could be put on. Heretofore in this class of optic only the Nikon 14-24mm f:2.8G ED lens was catered for  - Lee made a holder kit called the SW 150 and a matching set of filters for it. Big. Really big. But everyone wanted graduated neutral density filters for landscape, so the kit sold well.

Now the range that can be catered to has enlarged with the Lee SW 150 Mk II. The following lenses can match to this filter holder:

Nikon 14-24mm F:2.8G ED
Nikon 14mmF:2.8D AF ED
Canon 11-24mm
Samyang 14mm f:2.8
Sigma 12-24mm f:4.5-5.6 DG
Tamron 13-30mm f:2.8
Tokina AT-X 16-28mm

The filters are the 150 size and you can get a variety including the popular graduated Neutral density and the very dark Big Stopper.

As well as the additional mountings, there is an improvement to the rig with the inclusion of a rear light shield in the basic pack. It makes sure that there is no light bouncing from the sides or back of the holder to give ghost images or flare that degrades the image. Of course there is the classic foam sealing of the Big Stopper filter contributing to this glare protection.

The picture of the Big Stopper is not just gratuitous advertising for my little studio - it uses a standardised business card to let you see just how big the dark filter actually is. That's a serious piece of plastic in that tin box!

The devices to which these filters fasten are large. The lenses to which the filter is fastened are large. The camera bodies to which the lenses are attached are large. Hopefully the wise photographer will also realise that they need a sturdy and ( large) tripod to support the whole. And they will be going out a long way on difficult tracks to take pictures of landscape...because that is where they keep the landscape. Good luck troops, and ignore that chuckling sound coming from inside the studio as you head out into the rain.

The Neutral Density Controversy Explored - Through A Glass Darkly

The future, as George Orwell would have it, is grey. We can supply it in varying strengths and configurations, we might add, and it in different diameters. Big Brother would approve.

The neutral density filter makes things go darker. You can make things go darker by one f stop - or two, three, four, six , nine, or ten stops quite readily with commercially available products. You can get filters that allow variable density from 1 to 8 stops - just by rotating the filter. You can get filters that start out at the top with a dark patch and then fade out half-way down. You can even get in-built neutral density filters in some special cameras.

The uses that people out these humble little bits of glass or plastic to are manifold:

 Landscape shooters position the partial filters so that bright parts of their scene are brought into the camera at a lower intensity  - the sensors then cope with the highlights much better.

Special effect photographers stack up extremely dark filters to allow long exposure times - and eliminate people from cityscapes or convert moving water to flowing mists.

Photographers who need to balance flash with daylight and high shutter speed sometimes need to use neutral density filters to make the complex equation work.

Videographers can use the variable density filters to provide fade-out and then fade-in scenes. The variable ones are a bit of a risk for some stills shooters as the angle that the filter may subtend might mean that odd patterns occur during shooting - video people rarely have this problem. Smaller sensor or the fact that the scene is there and gone?

The advent of the frame systems for filter holding ( Cokin, Lee, etc.) meant that rectangular filters could be made that slid readily up and down in front of the lens for the partial blocking of the scene - the graduated ND filter. These are readily available with either a sharp or a gradual transition between density and clear - you pick which makes the image look the best then slide the thing up and down until it matches.

Note: Popular legend has it that Cokin neutral density filters have a colour tinge that the other brand does not. I cannot see it myself, but it's not worth arguing about. Nearly all good DSLR and mirror-less cameras have fine tune adjustment of magenta/green in their menus and if you think you can see something you can crank in a bit of green. You could put it in as a custom channel, I shouldn't wonder.

I am pleased with the 3X ND filter in my Fujifilm X-100. It enables me to use a slower shutter speed out in the sunlight if I am using a higher ISO for the extra dynamic range it provides. And it is just a button click in the menu. The trick is to tie a string around your finger to remind yourself that it needs to be turned off later...

The Blue Blot - Or Why You Shouldn't...

Those of us from North America who remember ARIZONA HIGHWAYS* were always amazed at the wonderful colours in the images. Deep blues in the skies, strong reds and yellows in the landscape. We all wanted that in our pictures - even if we were taking pictures in British Columbia in the murk season. What was the trick?

The trick turned out to be simple:

1. Use Fujifilm Velvia 50 film.
2. Get the printer to pour more ink into the press.
3. Move to Arizona.

I opted to move to Western Australia and the murk season stayed in Canada, so I was ahead already. Then with the advent of digital I could pour more saturation into the computer easily. And finally I discovered the circular polarising filter - this allowed me to make the skies blue and the seas green.

But when I got a very wide angle lens and tried to do the same trick with it that I was able to do on a standard focal-length lens - I ran into another of those optical facts of life. A circular polariser on a very wide angle lens only de-polarises part of the image.

The lens sees wider than the effect of the filter - it is the simple fact that the polarisation of the light in the sky is imperceptible when looking directly at or away from the sun - but is at maximum when you are looking 90º from the sun. You get a big blue blot in the middle of a blank sky.

What to do - take the filter off. Or position the blue blot where it makes a dramatic statement and cover up the other blank bits with buildings or trees. Cactus, if you are in Arizona...

Note - this is also a good hint to look at the graduated neutral density systems that Cokin and Lee make. They can make skies darker evenly, if dark skies are your thing. If you would like to have permanently dark skies move to British Columbia. They've got a murk season there that rivals anything in the world.

* Travel promo magazine.

Humble Advice From The Filter Drawer - The Step Ring Tango

The most overlooked accessory in the shop is the humble step ring.

Now if you're a filter user - and there are some who are, you know - the step ring is your friend. You might have a stable of lenses for your camera that have all sorts of different filter diameters - from 39mm up to 95 mm.

If the manufacturers of the lenses wanted to play the game fair they will have used the classical sizes - 48mm, 49mm, 52mm, 55mm, etc. If they were drinking sake at lunchtime they made them with 40mm or 56mm or somesuch nonsense size. There is a special curse for lens designers that specify non-standard filter sizes...

With the regular ones, you can select a filter that is the size of your largest diameter lens - say a 72mm diameter big zoom - and then get adapters to let you use this lens on the smaller lenses in the bag. If you only use UV filters it probably makes more sense to get a dedicated one for each lens and to keep it on all the time. But if you are a polariser user, you might spend your money wisely on a really top-grade Circ Pol and spread it over a number of lenses. The adapters are generally under $ 15 so it makes sense.

If you are dedicated to spoiling the resolution of your camera lens by clapping optical adapters on the front of the standard lens * the step-up and step-down rings let you do this as well. Video camera enthusiasts seem to want to do this a lot and perhaps it works for them - still camera shooters generally do better getting a fresh lens rather than trying to modify an old one.

Experimenters who pursue other optical effects - putting cameras on microscopes or telescopes - or who construct strange light boxes with matt board and gaffer tape** can also use the step ring as a ready attachment to the front of the lens.

* Exception to this rule - the converters that Fujifilm make for their X-100 series of cameras. Both tele and wide converters screw on to the front of the camera lens and do their job without degrading the camera lens performance one tiny little bit. Hooray.

** Guilty.

Analog Drag Racing For Digital Photographers - Buy More Batteries

Okay. If you can remember Californian Poppy and Chiko rolls - favourably - you can appreciate this.

The Cranksters are going to hold a swap meet and drag race meeting called Nostalgia Drags at the Kwinana Motorplex this coming Sunday - 19th of April.

Their swap meet section costs $ 5 and you can then get that off the price of admission to the main drag races. There will also apparently be dirt track racing as well. I'm not sure what stuff will be on offer at the swap meet but if you like to troll the Workshop Camera Club's Photographic Markets every so often, you'll probably find something of interest. I'm looking for a new big end.

The drags should be a fairly smokey affair so if you are into car action this would be a good opportunity to get a zoom on the camera, a fast card inside it, and a couple of spare batteries. ( of which we have a lot right now come in and buy rahrahrah...). Unlike European formula racing, with most drag races the cars do not come off sideways and squash the spectators. There is still the occasional explosion in the bell housing or fire under the bonnet but then you can get that in Coles car park round our house any weekend.

I plan to take the Fujifilm X-pro 1 and the 55-200 for the races, but a fixed 18mm for the parked cars. Also the Metz-0-blindness flash unit in case that will help. Walking around an event it is good to have what you need to cover the thing, but it is also good not to haul the entire studio stock of lenses while you are doing it.

PS: I am hoping for Texas BBQ buns and hot rod coffee food vans but  will settle for a bottle of water and a Chiko roll.

PPS: If your lenses do not have UV protection filters on them, do not go anywhere near a dirt track race...We sell Hoya HD filters for all sizes, so be warned.

Sleepless In Seattle - Spotless In Subiaco - $ 5 Special...

Anyone with a digital camera knows the annoyance of discovering spots on your images - no-one more so than wildlife photographers who take pictures of leopards or giraffes. Thus you can understand my problem yesterday on the African savannah. The elephants were fine - the lions were fine - even the vulture was attractive and co-operative...but the giraffes had spots.

Not on the giraffes, mind. These were the Italian racing giraffes with the two-tone paint job and racing stripes. The problem was spots in the sky above them.

Normally this sort of thing is the result of dust on the sensor of the camera. Dust, skin flakes, insects, or shark teeth - they all leave distinctive shadows on evenly-lit portions of the scene. I noted them in the sky of the savannah shots. The irksome thing was they were happening with a camera body that had not had a lens change...and I was unwilling to believe that the camera company would have sent it out from the factory pre-dirty.

Well, nothing for it, but to carry on and resign myself to cloning it out in the computer - so I changed the lens to the next focal length and carried on. And the spots disappeared.

Arrrgh!

Working back to the first lens, I noted that it was an extreme wide angle...14mm. and that I was using it at f:22 - and focussed at the closest distance that it was capable of. So I looked round the front end of it and...found that there was a spot of dust on the front surface of the UV filter - right in the position of the mark. I experimented by removing the filter and re-taking the shot.

No spot.

It is indeed possible to see the effect of a dirty filter if you have enough depth of field with your settings. So the moral is either take the filter off - or use one of the $ 5 special cleaning kits we have in our shop dump-bin to keep the blessed thing spotless.

Who'da thought...?

Too Much Of A Good Thing - Elinchrom and Fujifilm

I was shooting pictures yesterday of the flight of the Spokane Sun God over the Umgawa waterhole in Zumba and ran into a problem that is rare - too much sunlight. And I had foolishly not equipped myself to deal with it.

The problem was that I did not want to have the waterhole in sharp focus as the Buhl sesquiplane passed over it - just a little out of focus so as not to scare the elephants out of the waterhole. The aircraft was going to have to pass fairly low to have the waterhole appear large underneath it and the depth of field of the lens at small aperture meant that the elephants were going to be in sharp focus.

There was too much light for this - the lowest ISO that the Fujifilm X-E2 goes with a good dynamic range is ISO 200. I would have been forced to use f:16. I really wanted f:2.8.

Had I been wise, I would have employed the Fujifilm X-100, 100s, or 100t because these have an inbuilt switchable 3X ND filter. Or I could have put a three stop ND filter on the 35mm lens that was used on the X-E2. Then the shot could have been done in one. As it is I made multiple shots of the plane and waterhole and made sure that the latter was very deliberately de-focused. It looked fine in the composite, and the elephants did not stampede.

There is more need for this sort of thing than we suspect - the landscape worker who wants to emphasise a foreground by going to f:2.8 or wider would like to focus on the main subject and let shallow depth of field make it pop. The shooter who wants to make moving parts of the scene blur out and needs to have  long shutter speed to do it.

These are the natural customers for he ND filter - of course there is also the specialised landscape shot that also needs a graduated ND filter, but that's another tale. The full ND is available in square Lee or Cokin, or any number of round filters of different diameters. Power can be as weak as one stop or as strong as ten stops.

It is a useful accessory for most camera bags - and I'm going to make sure I have one of the  3-stop variety in place next time.

* Note: it was necessary to set the sun back another 5 metres to get the shot of the waterhole in mid-morning. The dawn shot was easier because the light is lower and more orange. Elinchrom make a nice powerful sun, but sometimes it is too much.

The Light Fantastic - with Olympus and Lee

Looks as though someone is determined to get out and about - and bring back good landscape pictures - without throwing out a cervical disc.

Okay - all this is to introduce three ideas - the Olympus E-P5 camera, the Olympus 9-18mm lens, and the Lee Sev5n filter system - and to suggest them as a viable alternative for keen landscape photographers.

Landscapes are rarely encountered in a studio, unless you are prepared to make your own. ( I do, but I am odd...) Most people go to where the landscapes are stored - up the sides of mountains or down by the seashore or out in the woods. Some of the best landscapes are kept way out yonder and the roads department doesn't even bother to make a decent path to them. People are forced to walk to them and carry their photo gear with them on their backs. Burke and Wills were probably looking for a good vantage point for a seascape, and didn't that work out well...

This partially explains why very few people these days use 10" x 20" glass plate negative cameras for landscape work. They are heavy and hard to carry. And glass is expensive. Most people settle for DSLR cameras that are hard and heavy to carry, with...expensive glass. Sometimes these digital cameras are lighter than the 10 x 20 bellows camera and sometimes they are not. This sort of burden leads to a lot of landscape work being done from a car park.

Well Olympus have a good answer to that - their series of micro 4/3 cameras with wonderful lenses like the 9-18mm and first-rate stabilisation systems. Light, small, precise, detailed, great colouration, easy to use.

Now that we have some of the Lee Sev5n filter holders and graduated filters in to assist with the light control in bright skies there is no reason that the landscapist cannot cope as well as with a larger system. If there is a lightweight tripod like a Cullmann 625T, all the better. No need to destroy the back or knees while trying to haul your own weight in lenses and camera bodies up the side of Bluff Knoll.

Note: Would the marketing teams who dream up the names of products please refrain from mixing letters and numbers together...it mucks up the computer systems something chronic if the bar code is missing.

Out Of the Woods

This view of the Carrie Nation Memorial Forest is brought to you by courtesy of the Lee company. The same people who make the Big Stopper, the Little Stopper, and the Enormously Popular System Of Graduated Filters. They also make large rolls of transparent and translucent plastic sheets that you can put over studio lights to change the colours.

You can have mild filters and wild filters - the weak ones compensate for inadequacies in the lighting and the wild ones compensate for the lack of artistic ability. The rolls are big enough that you can cover the front of a soft box or cut them up to make reusable ones for the smaller reflectors. I sandwich them between bits of matt board or plywood and then hook that over the rim of the reflector. Crude, but effective.

Beware of the heat generated by the modelling lights - Lee make heat-resistant gels for theatrical use that can withstand the stage lights - if you have a choice get this kind.

Roscoe also make this sort of material, and sometimes we have interesting packets of pre-cut gels here in the shop. Heck, they're cheap enough and you never can tell where a colour will be needed. You can wrap them on a speed light and do it out in the field as well. A splash  of green on a bride's face at the altar is always a nice touch...

More On Infra Red With Kenko

Our post yesterday regarding infra-red film from Maco lead me on to look and see which of the infra-red filters are in stock.

Looks like we have a fresh supply of Kenko IR filters in 49mm, 52mm, 67mm, 72mm, and 77mm size. They are dark as and prevent ordinary light from penetrating to film or sensor - only the IR gets through.

The results can be charming, with white foliage and black skies on monochrome or wild colours with a colour setting on a digital camera. Exposure is long, and you need to let the camera decide this for itself sometimes - you can't focus by normal means either - you have to set the distance scale yourself and it has a slight offset for the IR wavelengths.

Serious experimenters would do well to get a book from the library about this, or search out one of the Fawcett publications from the bookstore. Like pinhole photography, IR imaging is a totally scientific and absolutely predictable fairy tale told in a foreign language in the dark in a high wind so be prepared for anything...

No Need To Be Koi About It - Use A Polariser

The Japanese fish in this picture are pretty contented. They live at the Asakusa Temple in Tokyo and are cared for in the ornamental pond - there are a number of signs warning people not to feed them, so I suspect they are sometimes too well cared for. No matter - they are spectacular and friendly. Perfect subjects for a picture.

Except when the skylight blocks out the surface of the water. Then you see whatever is bouncing off that surface. It is the same with shop windows and other shiny surfaces.

Answer is, and always has been, to use a polarising filter on your lens. The older types were known as linear polarisers and did a very good job of seeing down into water surfaces. The newer types are called circular polarisers and may be a little less effective in actually penetrating the surface, but do give a more accurate light meter reading. The Circ Pol's are the ones most often supplied for modern digital cameras.

We've got 'em from Kenko, Hoya, Promaster, and B+W. They are not as cheap as UV filters - never could be - but they are a pretty essential tool for landscape and marine photographers. Useful, too for correcting colours under trees in open sunshine - you can lose the blue fill from Western Australian skies. particularly recommended for bridal work in these circumstances.

Studio? Well there are times when you need to see into things and these can help. You can also use them with sheets of polarising film and studio lights if you are going to copy glossy or textured flat art work. a little more complex than just twirling it in front of the lens when you are out at the beach, but essential to capture the true colours of some canvases.

Note for newbies: Either put a UV on the lens or a Polariser. Not together. Too many glass surfaces, and sometimes you start to unscrew the UV when you think you are turning the Circ Pol.