Hand Coding

My friends Erica and Chris got married near the end of May and I brought my camera along for their reception and took a few shots. I wasn’t the official photographer or anything — just some guy that brought his camera along to try his hand at a few shots.

Still, even though I’m pleased with how things turned out overall, I do regret that I wasn’t able to salvage any shots of Erica or Chris :(. As luck would have it, either the lighting was working against me during those shots, or other guests unknowingly ended up stepping into the frame at the time. D'oh!

As I did with my trip down to SXSW, I once again rented Canon’s 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens. That lens hasn’t let me down yet and I probably ought to buy it outright rather than simply stuffing the pockets of the lens-rental companies ;). (All kidding aside, lensrentals.com came through for me yet again and their service has been great.)

My friend (and coworker) Matt recently adopted a baby daughter, Gracie, and asked Michelle and I if we would take a few family portraits at the Dallas Arboretum. This was right about the time of the yearly “Dallas Blooms” festival (where the Arboretum plants shedloads of flowers) and we just couldn’t pass that up. So, we headed down to the Arboretum one Saturday morning earlier this month and took a handful of posed and candid shots of Matt and his family.

As it turns out, I had just recently bought my Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens and this presented a great opportunity to put it to use. I stuck with the lens throughout the morning and I was really pleased with how things turned out. Admittedly, the focal length took a little getting used to — I had to remain about 20 ft away from the subjects even for sitting-in-the-grass types of shots. It wasn’t long, though, before it all became second nature.

Oh, one last thing — in the photo set on Flickr, you’ll see some shots from Michelle and some from me; as you might guess, the ones labeled “Photo by Alex” are the ones that I took.

Michelle and I went down to the Dallas Arboretum over Chocolate Rabbit Day for their recent Dallas Blooms event. During the event (which runs March 8 – April 13 this year), the Arboretum plants a whole heapful of flowers:

Dallas Blooms will feature more than 400,000 spring-blooming bulbs, over 3,000 azaleas and thousands of another annuals and perennials spread throughout the 66-acre garden. The 2008 festival is a fun-filled five-week, six-weekend event and is the largest outdoor floral festival in the Southwest.

I had a hard time getting shots, in part because the only lens I had at the time was Canon’s 50mm f/1.4. (I now also have Canon’s 85mm f/1.8, but as it would happen, that isn’t exactly great for landscapes either.) It’s a great lens in general, don’t get me wrong, but with the 40D’s 1.6x crop factor, that 50mm lens had an equivalent focal length of an 80mm lens on a traditional full-frame SLR.

So, while it may have been a normal lens on a full-frame camera (that is, a lens with a magnification roughly equal to that of the human eye), I was dealing with a somewhat telephoto lens. And, for landscape photography (where wide-angle lenses are often the lens of choice), it felt a bit like trying to hit balls into the outfield with a Wiffle bat. All things considered, I’m pleased with how these shots came out.

As I do every March, headed down to Austin earlier this month for SXSW. I also brought my new camera along, a Canon 40D which I’ve had since around February. To go along with that, I rented Canon’s 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens from lensrentals.com (an awesome online lens rental shop, if you ever need that kind of thing).

I had always heard generally good things about image-stabilization including some reports of being able to hand-hold shots down to 1/8 sec or even 1/4 sec. Given that I seem to encounter a fairly average amount of camera shake (as opposed to an extraordinarily low amount of it), I was cautiously optimistic about how much the image stabilization system might be able to help me.

In short, I couldn’t be more pleased. If the phrasing wasn’t so religiously-exclusive, I might even be tempted to call this the Jesuslens (see also: Jesusnoun.) Or, put another way, if this lens wasn’t around $1,000, I probably would have bought it by now. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I knew that I’d be hand-holding shots at SXSW and I was hoping that this lens would come through for me — it sure did. I managed several keepers at 1/8 sec. and even down to 1/6 sec.

With the aid of the back of a chair in my hotel room for additional sturdiness, I was also able to work through a set of four 1/2-second exposures of the Austin skyline which I then was able to stitch together to form a panoramic. (Incidentally, Photoshop CS3 is more intuitive than I thought it’d be for making panoramas. They’ve really improved that functionality over CS2.) I may have to try that panorama-thing more often — that was kinda fun.

I saw my parents and brother over Chrismakwanzakah (well, mostly Christmas, in this case) and I took some shots during my visit. As it worked out, I took 44 shots and I’ve posted six of those. (Ok, laugh it up, fuzzball. Yeah, I know it’s March.)

I like to post just those shots that I’m happy with, so it’s par for the course that I end up posting fewer shots than the number of times I happened to have hit the shutter. Still, I usually aim for a higher ratio than this. What happened, as I discovered, is that while some people can hold hold a shot at 1/30 of a second, well, I’m apparently not one of those people. Candid shots are my bread-and-butter and hand-holding the camera goes right in line with that.

You may have heard that old adage about taking 1/ focal length to estimate the minimum shutter speed at which a handheld shot can remain acceptably sharp. (For instance, according to the adage, an 80mm focal length would need at least a 1/80 sec shutter speed in order to have a good chance of being sharp.) That’s said to be true for 35mm film, but the math does need to be updated a bit for digital cameras. Due to their smaller sensors, the “1/ ” part needs to multiplied by the crop factor of the camera (which is typically about 1.6 for Canon bodies and 1.5 for Nikon bodies).

Since I was shooting most of the time with my 50mm lens, the rule would suggest that I’d need a shutter speed of at least 1/75 sec. in order to get a good chance at a sharp image. Well, with the caveat that everyone is a little different — and some people may be able to hold a camera more steadily than I can — I can confirm that the rule is a pretty good guideline. Or, put another way, that would explain why the dozen or so otherwise-good shots (that happened to have a shutter speed of 1/30 sec.) didn’t have the sharpness I was looking for.

If I’m in a similar situation again, I think I’ll try increasing my ISO speed; most of my not-sharp shots were taken with an ISO of around 200-320 and there probably wouldn’t have been much to lose if I had increased the ISO to 400 or even 800. (Since doubling the ISO value captures twice as much light, those forget-about-it shots at 1/30 sec. might have been saved by a 1/60 sec. shutter speed.) I’d probably hesitate to use ISO 1600 if I could help it (as that’s when digital noise can start getting in the way), but from what I’ve read, most modern DSLRs can handle ISO 800 with only trivial (if any) levels of noticeable noise.

I first upgraded my car audio in 2002, primarily to get Sirius satellite radio, but also as a step up from the factory audio system. The system worked very nicely until about a fortnight ago when one of the channels in my amp died. And, since it had been about five years since I had bought it, the amp was well out of warranty.

Since I had to buy a new amp anyway, I told myself that I may as well upgrade my subwoofers as well (hey, why not?). Though my previous subwoofers, a pair of 10" MB Quart subs, had served me well, I had always hoped for a little more bass extension. So, after doing a bit of research, I picked up a pair of 12" JL Audio 12W3v3 subs. In my old configuration, I was running my MB Quart subs off a multichannel amp — not to worry, it was a 5-channel amp — but I figured that I'd go for a separate amp for the subwoofer this time. So, I picked up JL Audio’s 500/1 monoblock amp for that.

I just had the new gear yesterday and, as a whole, I’m very pleased with it. It certainly has the bass extension that I was looking for. Depending on how you look at it, it’s almost too much of a good thing — after driving around town for a bit this afternoon, all the while listening to Sirius at normal volume levels, I noticed when I got home that my ears were ringing a little bit. Feh. My best guess is that it may not have seemed as loud as it actually was since the frequencies were so low. Either way, the last thing I want to lose it my hearing, so I’ll be adjusting that straight away.

PS The lighting in the shot above may look a bit weird, but rest assured that I don't have a sodium vapor lamp in my trunk. (Those are the ugly yellow/orange lamps commonly seen around parking lots and the like.) Rather, the sun had already started to set (I took that picture with a 13 second exposure around 6:30 p.m.) and, while I was able to correct the color balance for the exterior sunlight, that meant that the incandescent light within my trunk was going to look a little exaggerated.

Update 2007-02-19: I took my Radio Shack sound level meter (similar to this one, but an older iteration) out to the car to look into my volume issues yesterday. That particular meter has both “Fast” and “Slow” response modes that control how fast the needle moves. The “Slow” mode is good for getting an average sound level, but I set it to “Fast” in this case so that I could get differentiate the second-by-second sound levels within songs.

I turned my key to the “Accessories” mode and then chose a Sirius radio station that was playing a song that I liked. As it turned out — listening at ordinary volume levels — the normal parts of songs were around 70–72 dB. When the bass started to come in, though, I could see fraction-of-a-second spikes of up to 95 dB. Well, yikes, that would kinda explain the ringing in my ears from the other day.

I soon went about reducing the subwoofer gain and ended up on what happened to be its lowest setting. From there, I took some more measurements and found that bass-heavy musical phrases were only reaching into the lower 80s (whew). I may do some more adjustments later (if only to see if I can further level the frequency response), but at least my hearing should be safe for now.

Update 2008-01-25: I’ve sold the camera (body + kit lens), the 50mm lens, and the 4 GB SD card.

I’ve decided to sell my Nikon D80 in pursuit of an upgrade. Here’re the details:

I have a Nikon D80 with the 18-135mm kit lens. The camera works just fine and I can see no visible scratches on it. (I’m not ruling out that there may be a faint scratch somewhere, but I just couldn’t find any when I looked.) To help come up with a fair price, I checked the prices online; the lowest price that I could find from a non fly-by-night retailer was about $1050, so I figured on offering the body and kit lens for $800.

As you might guess, that includes everything that came in the box, including the D80 body & camera strap, the 18-135mm kit lens, its battery and AC battery charger, its USB cable, and the manual. And, just to make things more interesting, I’ll also toss in a spare 3rd-party battery and a 1 GB Sandisk SD card.

In addition to the D80, I also have a couple accessories which could go along with that:

• I bought a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens back in September. That’s currently going for about $270 online and I’d be willing to sell mine for $200.

• I also have a 4 GB Extreme Ducati-Edition SD card from Sandisk. (The Ducati Edition is their very fastest model line.) Their online price is about $100 and I could sell that for $70.

Anyhow, if any of this is of interest, just drop me a line. And if you’re in the Dallas area, I’d be happy to show any of the gear to you.

PS As mentioned above, I’ve sold the camera and the accessories. I’ll be sure to update this post once I’ve sold the camera. Or, put another way, if you’re seeing this post (and I haven’t mentioned otherwise), you can assume the camera is still available :).

My parents moved to a new house in the Charlotte, NC area over the summer (more specifically, to Cornelius, NC) and I went to visit them over Thanksgiving. Naturally, I took my camera along and I’ve posted my shots from the trip.

In addition to my usual camera gear, I also took along my WhiBal white balance card and it worked a treat. In particular with the turkey preparation scenes within the kitchen, the lighting was an amalgamation at best — there was cloudy-sky natural light coming through the windows, a few overhead CFLs and the occasional splash of incandescent light from the adjacent rooms. I’m not sure any sane person would have known how to manually set his or her camera’s white balance to properly account for that, but it was a complete non-issue with the WhiBal. Such a handy gadget, that.

The Dallas Camera Club holds a photo scavenger hunt each year — sometimes it’s in downtown Dallas while other times it’s elsewhere in the metroplex. (It’s confined to a general geographic area each year to help level the playing field.) Indeed, this year’s scavenger hunt was held downtown on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago. Here’s what was on this year’s list:

• Reflections — it hadn’t rained recently, so street-reflections weren’t really in the cards, but there were other reflective things to find.
• Geometric or Repeating Patterns — this was pretty tough, but I think I found a shot for this.
• Looking Up — we just had to find a shot that looked upward, which might seem easy, but doing so artistically took some figuring.
• Humanity — this one covered people, which might seem like a slam-dunk, but was actually tough since downtown Dallas is a bit deserted on a Sunday morning.
• Texas or US Icons — I guess this primarily encompassed Texas or US flags, though I would imagine that other Texas- or US-themed items would qualify as well.

Anyhow, I’ve posted my scavenger hunt photos. I was pleased to be able to get a shot in each category, but that doesn't mean that I've “won” — the club hands out awards for the scavenger hunt based on the number of categories completed and the quality of those shots. The awards haven’t been announced yet, so I’m looking forward to seeing how those turn out.

I’ve really been enjoying my new camera (a Nikon D80) since buying it in January. And other than the occasional blown highlights, I find that it usually takes pictures just as I’ve intended.

One helpful tip which I picked up from my brother (who also has a D80) is to manually set the white balance in each new shooting environment (such as incandescent, fluorescent, sunlight, or others). I don’t mean to imply that the D80 is bad at guesstimating a scene’s white balance on its own, but it’s an easy setting and often makes a real difference. (The D80’s white balance settings are covered on p.58 of the US-English manual, for what it’s worth.)

If you’re into photography, you may already be familiar with gray cards — a uniformly gray rectangle that can be used to fine-tune a shot’s exposure. A seemingly related device — but one which serves a completely different purpose — is a white balance card. These are also typically rectangles and they're usually gray. Rather than an exposure tool, however, white balance cards are used to provide a white-balance reference point within images (I’ll explain).

If you’ve ever played around with your camera’s white balance settings (or even if you’ve stuck with your camera’s automatic white balance mode), you’ve probably run across the occasional shot which ended up with the wrong white balance — one common symptom is Caucasian skin looking a bit yellowish or even orange-tinged. This happens because the light within the scene may not have been “white” in the first place; for instance, light during a sunset of very often reddish or orange. And even though the human eye can quickly adapt to varying colors of light, cameras aren’t always so lucky.

This is where a white balance card comes in. A white balance card is calibrated to a specific shade of gray; so, when it comes time to color-correct a photo, you can tell your image editor (such as Photoshop) to “adjust this photo’s color until the point under my eyedropper matches this certain shade of gray”. And if that sounds complicated, it’s really not — Adobe Bridge (a sister app to Adobe Photoshop) has an eyedropper that’s preconfigured for just this purpose. I’ve had a WhiBal white balance card for the past few months and I’ve been impressed by how easy it’s been to get perfect white balance in my shots.

Consider the photo at the top of this post, for instance. If you’ve seen my shots from this year’s SXSW, you may recognize it as one of my shots from the Helvetica screening. As it turns out, I had been taking some shots outside earlier in the day and, as it was cloudy at the time, I had my white balance set to “cloudy” — when it came time for the screening, though, I forgot to change it back to a more appropriate white balance setting (d’oh!). However, because I had taken a few WhiBal shots while I was there, none of that mattered. It’s like having a bottomless stack of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards when it comes to white balance.

I consider photography one of my hobbies, but I’m not one for frivolous baubles. Having said that, I make an exception for my WhiBal. It’s easy to carry around and the benefits are really there. And if you don’t quite have your head wrapped around this “white balance thing”, not to worry — the WhiBal site has section with videos that go over white balance and an example workflow with a WhiBal. I don’t have any affiliation with this company — I’m just a really satisfied customer.