I have been trying to figure out how to do some time lapse stuff with my D90 and it has been a little bit of a challenge.  The D90 is not really set up to do time lapse without some form of external device and, because of Nikon’s unique accessory hook up it really narrows the options in terms of external devices as well.  So far I have discovered three ways to do time lapse with my D90:

- External intervalometer to time and trigger the shutter release.  Looks like a normal cable release and plugs into the unique GPS plug on the side of the camera.  Pros: portable, probably easy to use if you get a decent model, knockoffs are readily available for some reasonable prices on eBay (though the quality may be questionable).  Cons: at this time I am unaware of an official Nikon model (which would be overpriced anyways), the D90′s rare input jack for the GPS makes it difficult to use models for other cameras (there are some sites out there that will help you with a somewhat hardware hack, but you need a device with the right jack on it already that you can cannibalize for the jack), and it is external, the method using the camera’s firmware is VERY limiting.  For other cameras people have created intervalometers using a TI-83 scientific calculator.  This may work for the D90, but again you would need the appropriate cable.

- Manipulating the camera’s firmware.  Pros: on camera, no need to carry around extras.  Cons:  very limited in what you can do.  In the ‘Shooting/Display’ you can set the ‘CL mode shooting speed’ to 1 second and if the shutter is held down (preferably with a cable release) the camera will take one frame a second until 99 photos have been taken.  If the shutter speed is longer than 1 second it will take intervals longer than 1 second, but otherwise that is the longest delay, which is not very good.  Also, 99 photos is not nearly pictures enough for most time lapse situations.

- Camera Control Pro is the Nikon software for tethered shooting.  This not-so-polished and overly expensive software allows you to control many aspects of your camera, can provide a live view, and acts as a remote trigger.  In the ‘Camera’ menu there is an option for ‘Time Lapse Photography’ that lets you set the intervals and number of shots (or ‘until stopped’).  I wish I knew the USB interface as I would love to have an app for my android phone that could act as an intervalometer.  Pros: works well as an intervalometer, has some cool other features like live view and exposure control from your computer, and saves photos directly to your computer so no worries about filling your card or transferring tonnes of photos later.  Cons: Tethered to a laptop so it is bulky, proprietary and expensive.

In the end I used Nikon’s Camera Control Pro to control the time lapse on my D90 while tethered to my laptop by USB, though if I like doing time lapse I will have to find a better way in the future.

My initial experiments with time lapse are nothing special.  One serious issue is camera shake which is very noticeable in both.  The D90 does not allow you to lock up the mirror while shooting (at least I can’t figure it out, just for cleaning and you can’t shoot using that setting) so when the mirror snaps up it shakes the camera (I have it on a Gorillapod) and causes noticeable movement in the videos.  A sturdier tripod and head may alleviate this problem.

The first is of me shoveling the driveway.  The angle isn’t great, but it was my first attempt.  The photos are either 1 second apart and played back at 1 frame ever 0.15 seconds (about 6.6 frames per second).  There were 365 photos used.

The second is just of some clouds moving away from the sun.  Taken at 1 photo per second and played back at 1 photo every 0.05 seconds (20 frames per second).  In this one there were 1300 pictures used.  In the future for clouds I will use a longer interval and hopefully the clouds will be a little more dynamic.  I was also hoping for more traffic on the path.

I assembled these using Windows Live Movie Maker 2011.  I just browsed for all of the photos, under ‘Video Tools”, “Edit” I set the duration to the desired time per frame (experimented until I got what I liked) and in the ‘Home’ menu I saved the movie (I used some custom settings to get it to a reasonable size for the web) and that was it.  The 1300 pictures did slow my computer down quite a bit, but I have an older laptop.

I will play with this technique a little bit more in the future.  There is a lot of cool time lapse stuff out there already, but it is kinda fun, but a little bit time consuming.

We went to Vegas for our honeymoon, but I didn’t take a lot of pictures.  It was a very interesting place and there are plenty of photos to be had, but I really just took a lot of tourist type shots.

This one is of of the New York New York hotel and casino.

ISO 200, f/11, 1/640 sec.

This shot was taken with a focal length of 60 mm and though the statue of liberty and the empire state building replicas are not that close together, they were both far enough away from me that they might as well be at infinity.  I used f/11 so that i was leaning to the deeper depth of field side and they would both be in sharp focus, but for all intents and purposes this is a who cares aperture.

The first two assignments dealt with deep depth of field and shallow depth of field.  Small apertures (f/16 and smaller) create a deep depth of field and allow the picture to tell a story relating things that are close by to objects in the distant background.  Wide apertures (around f/5.6 and wider) isolate objects at a certain distance from the lens and blur everything else, giving the photo a singular theme.  But what should you do if everything in the frame is about the same distance away, say something (maybe a leaf) lying on the ground, or a landscape where everything is way off in the distance (everything is essentially an infinite distance from the lens)?  What aperture do you use?

In Understanding Exposure Bryan Peterson calls these “Who Cares?” apertures.  It doesn’t really matter from a depth of field point of view which aperture you use (from a depth of field point of view) when everything is the same distance away, but there are other considerations as well.  The main consideration when depth of field no longer matters is sharpness.  Lenses have a sweet spot when it comes to aperture and it is usually around f/8 or f/11.  Wider apertures tend to scatter light and thus reduce sharpness.

Another way sharpness is affected by wide apertures is actually influenced by the depth of field.  As discussed in the shallow depth of field assignment the margin for error on your focus distance right is quite small so if you don’t focus just right for the photo where everything is the same distance away, your entire photo will be blurry, or at least not as sharp as it could be.  Going the other way, a very narrow aperture (with a deep depth of field) will give you a lot of leeway with the focus but it often reduces the amount of light getting in to the point where you now need a slow shutter speed.  It may get to the point that you can no longer use a tripod.  So, the solution to these two problems is to use an aperture somewhere in the middle, say f/8 or f/11.

You would need to experiment to determine the actually sweet spot for your lens, but it usually somewhere around f/8 or f/11.  Some examples of situations where these “Who cares?” apertures are used are things like portraits against a wall, something on the ground or hanging on a wall, a sign, a landscape with no foreground, etc.

The Assignment

The assignment for this one should be obvious.  Take some pictures using a middle of the road aperture where the depth of field doesn’t really matter and the intent is for the entire photo to be sharp.  Make sure it makes creative sense to do so.

I know I have some photos the meet this criteria already so I may look for some examples from my previous work as well as going out to get some new shots.

Click here to see all of the assignments.

Click here for the results so far from this assignment.

In the first assignment we looked at using a small aperture to get a deep depth of field (objects different distances from the lens are all in clearer focus).  The topic of the second assignment is the exact opposite – using a large, wide open aperture to get a shallow depth of field.  The apertures we are talking about here is on the order of f/1.4, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, or somewhere in that range.  The smallest f/number available to you depends on the lens you are using.  The fastest lens I have right now is f/1.8 on my 50 mm prime.  The smallest f/number available for a particular lens is often referred to as its speed.

For a lot of people (i.e. at least for me) this large aperture (small number) is a lot easier to use than the deep depth of field obtained using a small aperture.  The reason is that when your aperture is wide (or close to wide) open there is a lot of light getting into the camera (remember, when you double the f/number you halve the amount of light getting in and therefore you must halve the shutter speed or double the ISO).  When a lot of light is getting in you can use a faster shutter speed and therefore can hand-hold more often in lower light conditions.  This is a practical reason for using a smaller aperture and is why many sports photographer use the huge and very expensive lenses, especially at night games.  The large aperture allows them to use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action, even in less than ideal lighting.  Another reason to use a large aperture is to take advantage of the associated shallow depth of field for creative purposes.  The shallow depth of field allows you to single out your subject from other objects that are nearer to your lens or further away.

If you have been reading my posts for a while or have already looked at my discussion of the first assignment you know that I love the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.  This is an absolute must read for anyone just starting out in photography.  In the book Bryan calls these large apertures singular-theme apertures or isolation apertures.  He addresses the topic from a creative standpoint as opposed to the practical low light applications.  When you intentionally blur almost everything in the photo aside from your subject the viewers eye is almost instantly drawn to the intended subject.  It can make the subject really standout even if there are a lot of distractions in the background or foreground.  If you don’t have the book it is also covered extensively online, i.e. at the digital photography school.  If you do have the book one of my favourite examples in it is on p.29, the one of the closed sunflower.

This technique is useful for things like portraits where the person or people may otherwise be lost in a busy background.  This is contrary to the first assignment where you want to show the environment around the person.   Depending on the background you may only want to blur it slightly so it is still recognizable (maybe use f/5.6) or maybe blur it until it just becomes a soft almost unrecognizable blob of colour using f/1.4, f/1.8 or the widest aperture available on your lens.

Isolating your subject in the midst of objects in the foreground is also a useful and sometimes very pleasing technique.  You can frame your main subject with blurry foreground objects.  An example is this shot I posted alittle while ago with some other ultimate frisbee shots.

I was shooting wide in interests of fast shutter speeds to freeze the action, but this also works from a creative viewpoint.  I like how the cutter and defender frame the handler, but are blurry enough to not distract from the main subject.

One thing to consider is that the margin of error for getting your focus right is smaller with a wide open aperture.  When you have a deep depth of field you can get your focus distance not quite right for your main subject not quite rite (say the eyes of the person in a portrait) and you won’t notice, but when using a shallow depth of field a small error in focusing may make the main subject blurry compared to some other object in the frame.  The viewers eye will be drawn to what is in focus, even if it is not the main subject.

I will revisit some of my older photos to try and find a few good examples, but I will also start a new assignment.  My main lens, the 18-200 mm has a varying widest aperture of f/3.5-5.6 depending on the zoom level.  I may use that for some, but to get some seriously shallow depth of field my 50 mm prime has a largest aperture of f/1.8.

The Assignment:

I am going to try to take some pictures using large apertures (small f/numbers) when it makes creative sense to do so.  This doesn’t mean just using it in low light in order to get a faster shutter speed, but using it when it is the creatively correct aperture to use in order to isolate the main subject from its surroundings.

I don’t have a time frame for this and I will continue to work on assignment 1 as well.  I will post some results as they come in and maybe even compare some similar photos with contrasting aperture settings.

Click here to see all of the assignments.

Click here for the results so far for this assignment

Jessie’s Ultimate Frisbee team, Stella, was playing in the 2010 Ontario Women’s Regionals here in Ottawa on the weekend and I went out to take some pictures.  ’Some’ turned into almost two full 4 gig cards.  I filtered it down to 230 and posted them to the Stella site.  Here are a few of my favourites, though there are some other good ones.  I posted so many to the Stella site so that I have most, if not all of the players covered at least a couple times, ‘cuz who doesn’t love looking through pictures from an activity and finding a few of themselves.

Taking pictures of the huddle is tough.  I got some decent ones when they all move close together for the cheer.  I like this one because it gives some context to the day, and I can picture it being a two page spread in a magazine with title and text in the negative space.

I found that because I am often so far away from the action, even my 200mm lens doesn’t get in close enough so I had to do quite a bit of cropping.  For this set I cropped them all to the same aspect ratio (some landscape and some portrait), just for consistency (and the landscapes fit nicely as wallpapers on new widescreens).   Sometimes it wasn’t the optimal crop, but cropping in close makes for much more dramatic pictures and removes some distracting elements both on the field and in the background.

Wasn’t Jessie’s hand block awesome!  I’m glad I caught it on film.  One problem I have had is maintaining focus as the conditions around my main subject change (like people running through the scene as I am focusing on the handler and marker).  When I knew where action was going to occur I would auto focus and then hold the focus lock (nicely positioned for my right thumb beside the eyepiece) so that the auto tracking feature would not try to change the focus as other people moved.  This lead to some cool shots of the handler framed by cutters in the foreground, such as the one below.  Sometimes I did forget to let go of the lock button.  Practice.

You may have noticed that I put a small watermark on this set.  This pictures get passed around and Facebooked quite a bit, so I thought I might as well put my name on them.  I don’t really care at this point if they get used elsewhere and the resolution isn’t the greatest anyways.  I currently do these games for fun and practice, but I do like that people know where they came from.  I will work on a better watermark (I have an idea) and I will discuss how I make them and batch apply them in a future post.  It isn’t as easy as it should be with Photoshop.  I know third party software exists, but I am surprised Adobe hasn’t made it easier.

The last one is another of my favourites, though it has some flaws I will try to remedy in the future (such as the cutting off of some feet and legs).  I still think it’s a cool shot and would also make a neat two page spread, or a good wallpaper since there is some negative space to put some icons.  I may do that.

Again, all of the Pictures are posted on the Stella Site.

While at the F1 race in Montreal I had a good view of the Biodome, one of the buildings constructed for Expo ’67.  I took several pictures of it, but none seemed to really pop.  After looking at it and trying to make it work in Camera Raw, I thought it may be a good time to try adding some texture.  I’d never done it before, but I think the result is interesting.

The original was taken in the middle of a sunny day and seems somewhat flat and washed out.  In Camera Raw I converted to grayscale and played around with the grayscale mix sliders.  Darkening the blues makes the sky darker and gives the image a little more tension since the sky contrasts the trusses in the geodesic dome.  In the basic sliders of Camera Raw I set the blacks really high and upped the clarity slider.  This further increased the contrast and also made the lone cloud stand out a little bit more.

Better than the original, and not bad on its own, but I somehow got it in my head that it should have a grainy-grungy look to it.  I tried the add grain feature of the new Camera Raw, but I wasn’t thrilled with the results, so I figured I should try adding some texture.

I didn’t really want to buy a big pack of textures since this is my first attempt at it so I googled (it’s a verb, no point in fighting it) for a while and came across bittbox.com who seems to regularly post freebies, including some sets of free textures on most Tuesdays.   I looked through a bunch of the freebies and found this one

in his Grunge Frames set.  I converted it to grayscale (because I wanted my end result to be black and white) and opened it in Photoshop.  I copied the entire image and pasted it on top of the Biodome picture.  Ctrl-T allows you to transform the frame and I stretched it to the size of the original picture.  In the drop down menu at the top left of the Layers window I set the blending mode to overlay and dropped the opacity of the layer to 31%.  This was just trial and error until I got it to what I think looks good.

I was going to stop there, but I still didn’t feel that it was done.  I liked the subtle scratch marks just to the right of the cloud and wanted to add more of that.  I hunted through more of the freebie textures and came across this

from bittbox’s ice textures.  I again converted to grayscale and flipped it along the vertical axis so that the vertical scratches would be above the Biodome, just right of the cloud.  I pasted this as a new layer over the picture, transformed it to fit, set the blending to overlay and dropped the opacity way down to 11%.  I sort of liked what was going on, but the scratchy look wasn’t quite right so I went into the curves of just the one layer and adjusted the curve to up the contrast and make the darker parts of the layer stand out.

I like the end result.  I think it adds some tension to a somewhat bland picture.

I’m not sure if I will use textures too often, but it seems like a good tool to have to add some punch to an otherwise boring picture.  One of the biggest challenges here was finding the right texture to emphasize the picture.  I think it worked out here, but it’s hard to know what you’re really looking for and where to find it.

I was extremely fortunate and got hooked up by Red Bull with some tickets (and hotel, and meals) to the Grand Prix du Canada Formula 1 race in Montreal.  I am an F1 fan so this was quite an experience for me.  I was not in an optimal spot for taking pictures of the race, but that didn’t stop me from taking a lot of them.  This post covers some of my experimentation with race photography during the second practice on Friday afternoon.

A little while ago I read a blog post by Scott Kelby about his shooting at the Honda Grand Prix in St. Petersburg, FL and I used his suggestions for shooting car races to try and get some good shots at my first race experience.  Scott suggests that when a car is coming directly at you it’s OK to just use a fast shutter speed and freeze the motion (more on this in a future post) but when you are looking at a profile of the car a fast shutter speed will make it look like the car is just parked on the track.

The secret is a longer shutter speed combined with panning.

Using this technique you (hopefully) get a car in crisp focus with a heavily blurred background that gives a sense of the speed of the cars.  The above shot of Sebastien Vettel was taken at 1/100 sec., f/16 and ISO 200.   Our seats, for those familiar with Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, was in the acceleration zone after the hairpin, before the final straight.  This meant that the cars were going VERY fast when they passed us and that required some quick panning.  The cars aren’t in crystal clear focus, but they really standout against the blurred background when done right.

This shot of Felipe Massa’s Ferrari was again taken at 1/100 sec., f/16 and ISO 200.  The car isn’t the sharpest, but the background blur and the blur of the wheels give a sense of the speed.  I didn’t have the best angle for really good shots.  It would be awesome to be trackside taking closeups as they move through a slow corner, but it was still fun to try and capture the action.

Above is one of the Scuderia Toro Rosso cars taken at 1/80 sec., f/22 and ISO 400.  Shutter speeds in the range of 1/60 to 1/150 sec. seem to produce good results for these very fast moving cars.  It was getting tough at the slower speeds because these cars were really moving in this section of the track, so pick according to how fast you are panning and how steady you can hold the camera.

To focus I would set the zoom I wanted and auto focus on the track where I had a good view (I was in the crowd, so some angles were blocked by other spectators), I would then push and hold AE-L/AF-L button to lock the focus (on my D90 this button is just to the right of the eye piece and is easy to find and hold with your right thumb while still operating the shutter release).  I then waited for the car(s) to come into view and followed them with the camera as best I could.  I had the camera set to high speed continuous shooting (about 4.5 frames per second and slowing down after about 6 shots, even with a fast-ish SD card) so as the car approached my pre-focused spot I hit the trigger and kept following.   Framing was tough at this speed, but I did my best and cropped later.

It is a difficult technique to master and I was finding that from the several shots I took with each pan I usually got 1 (or none!) that really turned out.  As you flip through them on the LCD you will see several blurry cars and all of a sudden one where the car just pops out of the picture.  That’s the keeper.  And that’s why you need to shoot in continuous mode where it keeps shooting as long as the shutter is pressed.

The above sequence of three shots shows how most of the pictures will be of blurry cars, but there is often one where the car just pops out of the page.  This Lotus was shot at 1/60 sec., f/22 and ISO 400 (the lighting was changing quite a bit over the day, and so were my focal lengths, hence the sometimes inconsistent settings).  This is one of my favorite pictures of the first day.

The last picture I am going to show is taken with a very fast shutter speed, 1/4000 sec., f/5.6 and ISO 800.  I did not pan for this one at all and just held the camera fixed and fired away as the car approached (a lot of empty road pictures resulted).  This took several tries to get a centered car.  The AT&T Williams car looks like it is parked (or moving very slowly) on the track and gives an idea of why the panning technique is important.  Those tires are spinning quite fast to get even a little blur at this high shutter speed.

As a race fan I had a great time in Montreal and it was fun to experiment with some race photography as well.

Jessie is playing womens competitive ultimate with Stella this summer so I will often be tagging along and taking a lot of pictures.  The first tournament was the Toronto Ultimate Festival (TUF) put on by the Toronto Sports and Social Club (TSSC) over the first weekend in May.

The weather was a mostly miserably wet and cold with a little bit of sunshine for the last game and a half.  Even when it was overcast the shooting conditions were infinitely better than when I was trying to shoot indoor ultimate over the winter.  I started shooting at 1/500 sec. and when things brightened up a little bit I moved to 1/1000 sec. to try and freeze things even more.  I definitely notice a difference in the sharpness when the shutter is sped up and I will try to shoot at faster speeds in the future.  On sunny days I can probably go even a little bit faster and I will try that in the future.  Since I was using my 18-200mm lens with a variable aperture I set it to stay at the maximum aperture (minimum f-number) for the current zoom and set it to a variable iso.  This is kind of like using a semi automatic shutter or aperture  mode.  I’m not sure how conventional this is, but I have heard of others doing this.  One day I’ll get a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, but thats pretty expensive.

I was learning a little bit about style and technique as well.  One thing I already knew is that in ultimate it is much easier to take pictures of handlers and their throws than it is to capture receivers and catches or exciting D’s.  I do know a lot about the sport so I can sometimes anticipate the action but that often means watching the handler and cutters at the same time.  It’s easier to anticipate down field action on a long huck when you can anticipate where the disc will come down and hopefully some action will occur.  This also gives you time to focus on the people involved.  On shorter to midrange throws (which can result in even more exciting photos) you need to be much quicker.  But the challenge can be worth it.  I may work on getting more receiver photos next time.

Another challenge is positioning.  Figuring out the best place to plant myself on the field was difficult.  The ‘Home’ side of the field can be quite crowded if both teams set up their ‘benches’ on the same side.  Higher calibre teams tend to have a lot of off field spotters how move up and down the sideline and some will give me room and others will not.  Sometimes moving to the ‘away’ side of the field means less of a crowd.  I like to move a little bit on the sideline (at least at the outdoor games) and tend to stay closer near the 1/4 field mark of one end of the field and move towards the end zone as the play goes that way.  I don’t stick to tightly to this and if the weather is bad or I have friends there I tend to not move as much.  Wind also plays a role.  Long throws will tend to go down wind.  You have a good chance of seeing some layouts or fights for the disc at the downwind end zone, where most of the points are usually scored.  One other thing I have noticed is that sometimes you get a more interesting angle if you crouch down (or even lay down) and take pictures up at the players.  I didn’t do this too much at this tournament, but I will experiment more with this in the future.  The general rule seems to be that the most exciting plays will happen at the opposite end of the field from wherever you are.

I did do a little bit of post processing.  Mostly cropping, minor white balance changes and some small exposure adjustments.  Nothing too fancy.  I did play around with some content aware fill to get rid of some distractions on the sidelines (bags and jackets) in a couple of the pictures.  I was just trying out the new feature.  You would probably never be able to tell unless you compared them with the originals or I told you.

These were some of my favourites more are being posted on the Stella Ultimate gallery. I’m sure there will be many more of these posted in the future.  I hope to improve my technique and I may work on improve my post processing and overall workflow.  I dread tagging.

A few more pictures from our small garden this morning.

This one was taken with my 50 mm lens at f/1.8 and 1/800 sec.  The large aperture (sort of) focused on the inside of the flower makes for some very interesting effects because of the very shallow depth of field.  I think it’s cool, but I do wish the focus on the inside of the flower was a little sharper.

The rest were taken with my 18-200 mm lens.  I started with this one because I could zoom in.  I still had to be quite a ways back from the flower.

f/5.6, 1/640 sec.  One of the few profile shots I took.  Most were looking straight down.  There isn’t too much room to move around and the wall behind the garden isn’t a great background.  I used an artificial vignette to tame down some bright spots around the edges in the background.

f/8, 1/60 sec.  I always forget about the ISO.  I wanted to use a smaller aperture to give a deeper depth of field to put more of the plant in focus (and make it easier to focus where I wanted to because the margin for error was wider) and I was getting frustrated that the shutter speed was getting too long.  I forgot that I could adjust the ISO.  Oops.  It still turned out pretty good, but a faster shutter would make for a bit of a sharper photo.

f/8, 1/100 sec.

There are some more flowers on the way.  I’ll try some more once they bloom.

I sometimes stumble around the photography blogs looking for interesting tips or inspirational photos and I think it’s a good idea to link to and discuss some of the interesting or inspirational posts that I come across.  Eventually I’ll link to the ones that I check regularly, but I’ll just mention one I came across today.

Today I came across this new post by Varina and Jay Patel about using elements in the foreground of pictures to try to give more of a sense of ‘being there’ rather than just a far off landscape on the horizon.  Though this is more of an article on composition it relates to the current assignment on small apertures and deep depth of field because a small aperture is needed to ensure both the foreground and things in the background appear in focus.  They provide several nice examples and explain how the foreground objects can give you a better idea of where you are if the background landmarks are kind of ambiguous.