Tag Archives: equipment

Pano Experiment with a Fisheye

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I will freely admit this is not my idea. It is something that I read about recently on an astrophotography post that caught my attention. I was about to make a visit to a museum where I thought I might end up taking some interior images in confined space. My 16-35mm lens was probably going to do the trick but I wondered whether the fisheye might be a better bet if things were really tight. My only concern with that is the distortion is such a feature of that lens that it might not be worthwhile.

Then I came across the aforementioned article and it talked about shooting panos with a fisheye. The article was concerned with wide sky shots for astrophotography, but I thought it might work for me too. Supposedly, stitching together multiple fisheye shots takes out a lot of the distortion while still giving you the wide reach. I decided to experiment with this in advance to see if it worked.

I played with this indoors but taking a sequence of shots with good overlap between them making sure to catch as wide an image as possible. I was using the fisheye with full frame coverage rather than the circular version of the image. In Lightroom, I had to turn off the profile correction since that plays with the shots a lot and then set the pano function to work. It combined the images very easily and, sure enough, the verticals across the shot were not all vertical and not distorted at all. This could be something I now use a lot in the future when working in confined spaces. I will need to test it for closer subjects first since I suspect that will be a lot more testing for the alignment issues in pano stitching.

Blossoms in the Back Yard

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By the time this hits the blog, it will be the best part of year since I took these shots. We have a variety of plants in the backyard at home and March was the time when blossoms started to make their appearance. Our plum tree had some blossoms, but the other plants also had some cute little flowers too. I dragged out the macro lens to get some images of them. Get up close with these and you can’t easily tell just how big (or small) they actually are.

Wrong Lens for Night Photography

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I had a trip that took me to Los Angeles and, while it wasn’t a photography trip, I did take a camera in case I had the chance to get some images. I took the 200-800 as my one lens since I didn’t know what my shooting options would be so wanted maximum flexibility. The only downside to this choice was that this is a slow lens with small maximum apertures. As it turned out, I got to my hotel at the airport in the evening and the roof terrace was open so I had a chance to get some shots of the planes arriving to the norther complex.

Having a slow lens when doing night photography is not the ideal plan. However, you work with what you have. Also, since I know the R3 can produce some good results at silly high ISOs, I figured I would see what I could get. Even at the the max ISO of 51200, the shutter speeds were very low. While I wasn’t always at the full extent of the lens, this was not going to make things easy. There were areas where the ambient light provided more illumination for the planes, but I still went with high frame rates to see if I could get a few sharp results.

Surprisingly, things worked out pretty well. There was definitely a very low hit rate but the fact that I was getting sharp shots at all was very pleasing. The Enhance AI noise reduction in Lightroom could then do its thing provided the shot was basically sharp to start with. This combination gave me results I was very happy with. If I were to be back at this spot another time, I would definitely bring other lenses along that would provide better light gathering capabilities. Even so, knowing that this can work was a pleasant surprise.

Let’s Experiment with Silly Shutter Speeds

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I have mentioned this in previous posts but the frame rate capabilities of my R3s have encouraged me to play around with some more aggressive settings.  When something is a more important subject and not something I want to risk failing to get, I will be more cautious but there are plenty of other planes that I wouldn’t otherwise care about that provide a good subject to be a bit more ridiculous with.  I was going down to 1/50th of a second shutter speed.  With this, I would go to the 30fps setting on the frame rate or even, occasionally, the 194fps setting just to see what might yield a sharp shot.  The parallax issues are going to be an issue at this shutter speed but when you are directly abeam, you can get a good outcome.  Here are some of the results from experimenting.

Heavy Departures from SEA

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I have had plenty of chances to shoot the departures from SEA when they are on a northerly flow and the afternoon light provides a good option for the jets.  Previously, I have used the 500mm since it gives good reach but, for the larger jets, as you get the jet abeam your position, it will be too large for 500mm.  The arrival of my 200-800 provided a great new option.  800mm provided a tighter view on the jets after rotation (provided the heat haze is not negating any focal length benefit) and the ability to zoom out means that you can keep the aircraft fully framed throughout the climb out.  I took the lens down when I first had an open afternoon and the right conditions and here are some of the results.  As fall moves towards winter and the heat haze and high sun become less of an issue, this combo should get even better.

Struggling With the Kingfishers

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There are two birds that have a good record of thwarting me when I am trying to get shots of them.  The Flicker in one and some recent luck with them will appear on this blog before too long. The other is the kingfisher, and I was hoping that I might have some better luck when Nancy and I headed over to Ballard Locks one Sunday afternoon. There are quite a few kingfishers that live along the water at the locks, and they aren’t so tricky to find because their calls are loud and distinctive and are often a sign that they are flying or about to. They aren’t the stealthiest of birds.

Then again, they don’t need to be too stealthy. They are quick and agile so I imagine that they can do well when it comes to avoiding predators. I don’t know if they have many predators but good luck to them if they do since it would seem to be hard work to get one. Photographing them is hard enough! Getting good shots of them is tricky because they are small and fast. You need a long lens, but you also need to get them in the viewfinder to track them. I was making use of technology to overcome inability. The 200-800 meant I had plenty of reach and the R3 has some amazing focusing capabilities. Basically, I had no excuse because I was the weak link in the chain.

The birds were not totally cooperative, but they did give me a fair chance. Most of the time they would be flying off in the distance, but they would come close sometimes. Then they would trick me. One would take off and fly away and I would be busy track it as another flew right in front of me. I was convinced that they were taunting me. On a few occasions, though, I managed to get a tracking solution on one long enough to get focus and a few shots. The results were surprisingly pleasing. US kingfishers are not as colorful as European kingfishers and they are a bit larger, but the shape is similar, and they do make for an interesting subject. I’ll have to come back on a sunny day sometime to have another go.

This Stabilization is Amazing

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Another episode in the testing of the RF 200-800 for today’s post.  This is more focused on the image stabilization in the lens.  When shooting stills, I have commented on the slightly odd jerking effects visible in the viewfinder.  I think this is most apparent when panning very slowly and I think the camera is trying to work out if you mean to stay still or not.  However, one area which is really effective at showing the capabilities of the stabilization is video.

I have some footage below that is taken with the lens at 800mm and hand held.  No tripod or monopod here.  The rabbit was at the other end of our back yard while the bees were on the lavender plants in our beds.  You can see that the image is remarkably stable.  It is amazing to see it lock on so well.  I have also shot some video of an F-35B in the hover, also at 800mm.  It was interesting to see a lot of movement in the viewfinder for a moment and then it seemed to lock in on what it was doing and then things get really solid.  This tech is most impressive.

The Hummers Are a Quick Test for the New Lens

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One of the things that I knew would be a limitation of the RF 200-800 was the aperture which is a lot smaller than for really expensive lenses (yes, it is also expensive but not in the tens of thousands type of expensive).  In low light, this is going to be an issue and it would be interesting to see how things worked out.  When I got home with it, I was sitting on the deck when some hummingbirds started feeding on the flowers in one of our beds.  This area is in shade a lot of the time so light was limited.  I was rather pleased with the effectiveness of the focus, the sharpness at full zoom and the relatively limited noise related issues from the R3.  This is a combination that looks like it could be quite useful for a wide variety of occasions.  Not the solution for everything but definitely versatile.

Initial Impressions of the RF 200-800

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When Canon announced the RF 200-800 lens, I was mildly interested but not too bothered by it.  However, in an example of how easily a weak mind can be influenced, when I watched some reviews by those that had used the lens, I started to be more curious.  The focal length range was always of interest, but the aperture range had initially put me off.  The reviewers suggested that the excellent ISO performance of modern mirrorless cameras meant this wasn’t an issue.  Also, while not in anyway cheap, the lens was very well priced for the range it offered.

I went to my local shop and placed a deposit for one of the lenses.  This was many months ago.  After that, things got very quiet.  I was beginning to think that I would never see an actual lens.  Then I saw something on a Canon rumor site that said August was likely to be a time when a lot of lenses got delivered.  Whatever the blockage had been, there seemed to be some relief.  The last Tuesday of July (stuff seems to get delivered to stores on Tuesday I guess), I get a phone call telling me that my lens has arrived.  Hurrah!

After work, I headed down to pick it up.  I then headed down to the water in Kenmore – a short distance from the store – to give it a quick go.  I didn’t have a lot of time, but I got a quick feel for some of its quirks.  Initially I was a little unsettled.  The stabilization seemed very effective, but it did make tracking things that were moving slowly a bit jerky as if the stabilization didn’t believe that I actually wanted to be moving.  I worried that this would be an issue.  However, the images seemed to be rather sharp so maybe it knew what it was doing.

When I got home, I did spend a little time looking at the hummingbirds on the bushes.  The light was very low, which should be a problem for a lens with smaller apertures, but it seemed to work very well and the images were surprisingly sharp and clean.  I then took it to its first airshow.  Again, results were really very pleasing.  The 800mm reach was so helpful since the show line was quite distant and I was veery happy with the framing I could get.  The jumpiness in the viewfinder is still something I find rather distracting but it doesn’t seem to be an issue for the images, so I guess the stabilization knows what it is doing.  I also shot some video at 800mm handheld and, while there was initial wobbling, there comes a moment when it seems to get what is going on and then it is rock steady.  Quite bizarre.  I think this lens could be a key part of my shooting going forward.  We shall see as my experience grows with it.