2013 Weekly Photos - part 2

[Shadowman]

Nice action.

[Letrow]

Nice shots Geoff. That last one is great with those faces all squeezed up for the fall.

[Geoff F]

Thanks for the comments.

Turned out nice at last, and the past two days have been sunny. Started shooting the next event without flash but found with a low angle sun (evening) I was getting harsh shadows from the quay wall and sometimes from spectators.

So I had to revert to using high speed flash. I find this can be tricky; when using speeds like 1/800. Results can be variable, particularly as the sunny area to my right was influencing my exposure readings.

Essential to get the flash output compensation correct. But there is only chance to get it right, without any test shots. And the next shot can require a slightly different tweak. Camera on manual controls, flash using ETTL.

[Geoff F]

Week 32 - More from the Regatta

I still have masses of images to sort through, but here is a quick mixture from the past week.

Queen Mary nearly came to our regatta.



7D with Canon 70-200 lens 1/500 F9 Iso 200.

Went to get some sailing photos and by a lucky chance I looked seaward just as this liner was passing. They are normally over 10 miles offshore but for some reason this time it was only 2 miles out. Possibly it had to make an unscheduled stop at Plymouth which is a few miles along the coast.

Rowing - Four-oared Ladies Race

This is always a close hard fought competition.



7D with 70-200 lens. 1/400 F7.1 Iso 800. Poor evening light and I needed sufficient shutter speed to cope with the action, so all I could do was to increase iso then recover what I could during editing.

Mud Race



7D with Canon 24-105 lens. 1/500 F11 Iso 400

This event always attracts plenty of keen runners. Part of my job, besides photographing the event, is to be on the mud to help anybody who gets stuck. And the little mud covered girl (not shown here) who struggled home way behind the pack got a special merit prize!

Fishing Boat Race



7D with 70-200. 1/500 F9 Iso 400

And right on cue, the sun disappeared behind dark clouds until the event had finished. I shot partly with this lens and also with my Sigma 150-500; but another struggle to get decent results under hopeless light.

Air Display



Another occasion where I shot by switching between the 70-200 and 150-500. This was with the 70-200. 1/250 F11 Iso200.

I was limited in shutter speed by the need to blur the propeller.

Being a stunt plane display it was difficult to obtain and keep focus when they changed direction. Used the AI Servo focus but still had a lot of rejects.

Exposure compensation was another problem. Eventually I went to manual settings based on what seemed to be working; and this proved to be the most successful.

[Geoff F]

And if you want to know what the pilot looked like . . .

[Brownbear]

Beautiful fun captures and gorgeous colours as always.. Amazing plane shots!

[Geoff F]

Week 33 - The Vintage Machinery Show

Just a few at random, from all those which are still waiting to be processed. I mentioned elsewhere that my general purpose lens stopped working; so these all had to be shot with my Canon 70-200 F4.

Not too much of a problem for the working field events but too limiting for other subjects.

An Austin Iron Duke Tractor. Something which I hadn't seen before.



1/250 F8 Iso 400.

Ploughing by wire and two steam engines.

I pulled back a bit (zoomed with my feet) to show the whole scene and location.



1/640 F8 Iso 400

Little and Large.

Those little Ransomes Crawlers were very useful for the Market Garden side of farming, which mostly supplied seasonal produce to local outlets.



1/320 F14 Iso 400.

Another bit of machinery built for the horticultural side of farming.



1/320 F14 Iso 100. I tried to get a shot from in front of him but the light was wrong and there were too many things in the background which I wanted to exclude. It was a very variable light. A mixture of dark cloud and occasional sunny patches.

Fordson Major ploughing.

One of the most popular tractors at that time. But they could be difficult to start by hand during cold weather.



A Farmall Tractor. Slightly more modern design.



1/320 F11 Iso 400.

[Brownbear]

Wonderful images, Geoff. My favourites are 8,9 and 10... beautiful

[geoz]

Nice set Geoff. Composition on all are very good. I've danced with one of those garden tillers. Keeping them straight is not as easy as it looks.

George

[chauncey]

My evening scooter ride resulted in a bit of irony...someone overseeing our local park thought that anchoring fake swan in the pond would help keep the local birds away...didn't go as planned.
This Cormorant thought that it makes a nice roost to preen and sun itself...





The GBH was feeding in a adjoining stream...


.

[Letrow]

Those steam machines look great Geoff, it is nice to see they are still in use now and then. Those planes look good too, nice lighting on those. If you used the 70-200mm they must have been relatively close to where you stood.

[Geoff F]

The planes varied in distance, Peter. At the top end of the displays they weren't much more than specs but they also came down low where I tried to lock on to the servo focus and stay with them until the angle was correct.

And I wasn't at sea level; I managed to find a spot on the paved area outside of the library which overlooks the harbour and is quite a few steps higher than sea level.

The Sigma 150-500, with its slow focusing, was a bit of a struggle at times but it produced good quality for a large hand held lens. Part of the reason for switching over to the 70-200 was to have a second option in case the larger lens was giving focus problems.

Probably if I had added my 1.4x converter to that lens it would have been sufficient for most of the show.

And at the vintage show, it is always good to see steam power actually doing something. There was also a steam engine powered threshing machine but I couldn't get a decent angle with my lens limitation.

Some years they also have an engine driving a large circular saw bench.

George. One of the people we recently interviewed as part of our history society oral record recordings started a market garden in the early 1950's and he was saying similar things about these machines. You could only use them downhill; there isn't any level ground here!

[dje]

Hi Geoff, I enjoyed the shots of the farm machinery and the birds very much. Very interesting and well captured shots.

Dave

[Geoff F]

Week 34 - A Hot Lazy Day at the Marsh

Firstly a general overview of the scene.



7D with my new Tamron 24-70 lens. 1/160 F14 Iso 200.

Closer shots of the sleepy cattle.



1/80 F14



1/125 F14. All on a tripod. I should have been able to hand hold but I sometimes find using a tripod gives me a little more time to study a scene before pressing the shutter.

I was on a low bank beside the marshy area.

It is often difficult with crowd scenes like this to get everybody looking in the best direction so I took quite a few shots before ditching all except these.

The cattle were very generous and willingly shared their collection of horse flies with me!

Exposure was always going to be a problem, particularly with the last two shots. So I exposed for the highlights and made 3 versions from the Raw files, with different exposure settings, etc. Then combined the layers with masking.

Too much movement, particularly with tail flicking, for more normal bracketed 3 shot exposures.

[Brownbear]

Beautiful images Geoff.. #1 being my favourite for the overall scene.

Are you combining 3 exposure versions because it is just not possible to have everything perfectly exposed when you have dark subjects and water? ie; something that I should learn to do?

[Cantab]

...Are you combining 3 exposure versions because it is just not possible to have everything perfectly exposed when you have dark subjects and water? ie; something that I should learn to do?

Geoff, I know this can be done but have never done it myself. Do you produce three versions, one each for good exposure for highlights, shadows and midtones? In addition to landscapes, etc., I'm wondering if this would be useful for birds with white and dark feathers. Is the masking a time consuming process?

I enjoyed the photos. Is this a coastal marsh or inland?

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Geoff. I find your concept and postings interesting, but they are way too long to follow. I confuse easily. Is there anyway to separate each image into a different thread. Maybe as the first statement at the top of each new thread you can have a standard statement about this being week #X in a continuing series ...

Just a thought for your consideration.

[Cantab]

Geoff, I find your current way of doing things works well for me. Since I'm subscribed to the thread, I know that I won't miss any of your weekly postings. Without the subscription, I'm sure I'd miss some of the photos.

[Geoff F]

Quite a few questions here. So let's start with the Weekly Photos concept.

In January 2012 it was suggested that some members might like to start a challenge to upload at least one photo a week throughout the year. Using a communal thread was discussed but it soon became clear that this would be too large.

So entrants each started their own thread but kept to just one continuous thread each because some people, like me, wanted to produce something of a photographic diary whilst others wanted to show experimentations in shooting or processing methods which could be expanded to cover an entire year.

Some people have continued with this project for 2013. I have split my postings into two sections this year. Maybe doing it quarterly would be something to consider next year.

Next, multiple Raw conversions.

This works out as being similar to HDR shooting. But not a true HDR with actual different shooting exposures. But that requires a static subject which isn't always possible.

The alternative is to pick an average exposure for shooting. Ideally something which doesn't quite blow the highlights or lose shadow detail. Sometimes just two variations will be needed. This can be considered at the time of shooting. Usually one extreme will be the dominant factor.

In this case, black and white cattle were going to be the main problem so I exposed for the highlights. Some loss of shadow details would be acceptable. It may be the other way around on other occasions.

When it came to Raw conversion, I made the first copy to suit the midtones then one for highlights and one for shadows. Adobe CS5 allows you to create a Raw conversion as a Smart Object which can then be copied and the copy returned to ACR for further editing.

These converted copies are arranged as layers. Other software will work slightly differently. Then it is a relatively simple task to add a suitable mask to the required layers and edit it to either show or hide specific areas.

Some careful use of 'black or white' brushes is required, but usually not too difficult. I normally use a low opacity (say 20-30%) soft edged brush and gradually build up the effect.

In these cases, the average exposure layer became the background image and the highlight/shadow layers were hidden, then the required parts were 'brushed in' as needed.

This method does require a little bit of experimentation but isn't overly complex, providing you have a 'cool head' for such things.

But it does require suitable software. I suppose you can do something similar with just one average image and using Adjustment Brushes. I sometimes do similar things with Adjustment Layers.

However, returning to the original Raw file for slightly different conversion settings should give slightly better quality results.

Proper HDR exposures at the time of shooting is always the preferred method though; but sometimes this isn't possible. Even when I do shoot with different exposures I have rarely been happy with any of the auto HDR results.

So I still come back to manually editing the exposures as layers with masks.

Certainly something which is worth an experiment to see if you understand the theory; and can be great fun when you get things to actually work correctly!

[Cantab]

... So I still come back to manually editing the exposures as layers with masks.

Certainly something which is worth an experiment to see if you understand the theory; and can be great fun when you get things to actually work correctly!

Geoff, thanks very much for the detailed explanation. I do my RAW conversions in LR but for HDR work will try doing it all in CS6. This HDR process will definitely be an experiment but the process obviously works well for those who know how to do it.