Panasonic Lumix GH1

Of video and dSLR’s

One of the curious things that I noticed over the last year and a half at the University of Missouri–at least among the photojournalism students–was a rabid fascination with video from the Canon 5D Mark II.  I was one of the first ones in the program to actually buy one (August Kryger beat me by about a week and a half) in December 2009.

Other cameras sprang up that could do video, but people in the program seemed to wear blinders and were obsessed exclusively with 5D II video even though they did not even own a Canon camera or lens.

I say that this is frustrating because I know from first-hand experience that the 5D and the 7D are both very frustrating to use as video cameras, even though the resulting video looks great.  But for every second of good footage I’ve recorded, I’ve lost at least a minute of good material because of all of the physical limitations of using a dSLR for video: framing is a bit of a pain, autofocus is slow, setting up the exposure is also slow, daylight makes it hard to see the rear screen, and you can’t hand-hold it to save your life.  Despite these flaws, I believe that Canon and Nikon have been overly effective at making people believe that they are the only game in town.  Perhaps Olympus is a distant third.  This culture of ignorance of anything that is not Nikon or Canon appears to persist among those who should know better.

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Tags: equipment, video
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Canon 1D Mark II N body and accessories for sale - two chargers, two batteries, original (un-used) strap, and AC power adapter

I tried to sell my 1D II N on eBay the other week as a “buy it now” outright purchase, but there were no takers.  It’s now listed as an auction.  Happy bidding!

Tags: EOS 1D Mark II N, for sale
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Asian Bighead carp | source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bighead_carp_b.gif

This May I assembled a committee of three faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism–Jackie Bell, Bill Allen, and David Rees–to oversee my final project to complete my graduate degree.  The product will be a multimedia story on the effect on the economies of the Great Lakes states should Asian Silver and Bighead carp enter Lake Michigan via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, or the negative effects upon Illinois’ economy should that state shut down that man-made canal.

For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to make some progress, but I realize now that I’m only going to make headway if I’m face-to-face with the 923 feet-deep body of water that these fish are attempting to colonize: I have to go home.

I grew up near the shore of Lake Michigan, and I can only hope that being an “insider” of a sorts will give me an advantage as I attempt to tell a complex story.  It’s ambitious, but I have hopes that I can do it justice.

As this post is going up I am traveling north from Columbia, Mo. to Racine, Wis.–a healthy nine-hour drive.  I hope to have a progress report soon.  Wish me luck!

Tags: Asian Carp, Master's Project
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Abandoned barn in late-afternoon light on Hwy. 146, Gilman, Iowa, in November 2004. | Canon 10D and Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX HSM lens @ 12mm; exposed 1/100 sec. @ f/20, ISO 200.

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine from my days as a student at Grinnell College asked me if I had any landscapes of Iowa that she might frame up for her apartment.  For one reason or another it took me a while to get back to her–sometimes, my e-mail inbox gets a bit clogged.

Original capture of the barn

While going through my landscapes from Iowa, which were less abundant than I expected, truth me told, I found this image of a barn near Gilman, Iowa, which was just a stone’s throw from Grinnell on state Highway 146.  I remembered this image when I saw it: I remembered that I never had the right tools to process it, even though it had a perfect exposure (the histogram went “to the right”).  It’s sharp, too–that Sigma 12-24mm was a strange but surprisingly sharp piece of glass.  At least, my copy of the lens was.  As with anything from Sigma, your mileage may vary.  I purchased it early in 2004, back when it was first introduced for about $500, and there were not many options for getting a truly wide perspective on the APS-C cropped cameras.  Interestingly, the Sigma 12-24mm is now sells for $800.  Crazy little world!

At the time I made this image, I was using Capture ONE from Phase ONE as my primary RAW converter, and found this image to be far too difficult to tone properly.  But here it was, sitting in my Lightroom database, long-since converted to a DNG file (the universal RAW format that all manufacturers should be using, but that’s a topic for another day).

I set a custom white balance, and then established a black point and white point.  Then I adjusted the curves to make the black a little richer–I don’t find going beyond about 9 on the black slider in either Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW is very effective.  Three brush strokes and a gradient later, the image was ready to go into Photoshop for some final tweaks–normally unnecessary, as I find the global adjustments with the brush and gradient tools for localized toning to be sufficient for my images.

Amazing what you can do with your images now that you couldn’t–or, at least, didn’t know how to–do a few years ago.

What gems are gathering dust in your archive?

Tags: Canon 10D, landscapes, nature
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Entrance to the Devil's Ice Box, Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens @ 20mm; exposed 87 seconds @ f/11, ISO 400.

When I first looked into the opening of the Devil’s Ice Box, I wasn’t sure what would happen with a time exposure.  There was barely enough light to focus on the rocks–I was lucky that all of the mist above caused by the hot, humid air hitting the cool air from the cave was creating a giant diffuser.  Essentially, localized cloudy conditions on a sunny evening.  I was surprised at the colors that were revealed in the first time exposure–I started at 30 seconds at ISO 800.  I re-adjusted for a bulb exposure at ISO 400 for less noise.  You can see this same sliver of stream passing underground through the cave system in the photo below:

Looking down into the Devil's Ice Box, Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens @ 16mm; exposed 13 seconds @ f/16, ISO 400.

Tags: EOS 5D Mark II, landscapes, nature, Rock Bridge Memorial State Park
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Rock Bridge Memorial State Park boardwalk to the Devil's Ice Box, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens @ 34mm; exposed 1/2 second @ f/16, ISO 400.

I took an excursion–albeit brief–to Rock Bridge Memorial State Park in the early evening hours tonight.  A sudden thunderstorm that passed through Columbia this afternoon had left the colors saturated, and the boardwalk to the Devil’s Ice Box (an extensive cave in the park) was slippery.  As I turned back to see the way I came–taking a cue from Dewitt Jones’ sappy, but helpful mantra “Look around, Dewitt”–I saw the sun bursting through the tree canopy.  Normally, for a scene like this, I wouldn’t worry about stopping down beyond f/9, possibly f/11, but for maximum sunburst without risk of image deterioration due to diffraction, I chose f/16.  I prefer to avoid a lens’s minimum aperture–you can test the theory yourself, and you will find that your lens becomes less sharp, not more-so, at its smallest aperture.

Tags: EOS 5D Mark II, nature, pictorial, Rock Bridge Memorial State Park
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Lightning over Discovery Lake, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens @ 30mm; exposed 6 seconds @ f/8, ISO 800.

Last week, my friends Jakob, Calin, and Jamie called me up to join them on a small lake near Discovery Parkway in Columbia, Mo. to fish.  Well, they fished.  I fished for lightning photographs.

Unfortunately, while the picture above is tack sharp, it’s not quite satisfying.  Later in the evening, I made another image that is far more pleasing–great color, great lightning strikes, including one on a cell phone tower–but is way, way out of focus when viewed at 100%.  Interestingly, when sized for this blog, it’s hard to tell that it’s soft, so I’ll share it here:

Lightning strike on the cell tower, Discovery Lake, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens @ 43mm; exposed 2 minutes, 36 seconds @ f/8, ISO 100.

Tags: EOS 5D Mark II, landscapes, lightning, nature, pictorial
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Lightroom 3.0 is on its way after a long beta-testing period.  Ian Lyons has broken down the new features quite well on his Web site.

One of the more interesting changes is that Adobe has re-engineered its RAW processing engine to the point that it isn’t exactly backwards compatible.  Photos processed in past versions of Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW will be labeled “Process Version 2003″ (the year that Camera RAW became a standard feature in Photoshop).  Photos processed in the new version will have “Process Version 2010″ appended to them.

The difference?  Supposedly, the noise reduction and sharpening tools have been improved dramatically.  The change in the way RAW files are converted to TIFF, JPEG, etc. is supposed to yield a greater quality image as well.

One of the other changes to Lightroom is support for DSLR video files, although my understanding is that the implementation is rudimentary.  You cannot play back a video file within Lightroom–it launches your preferred video viewer (Quicktime, Windows Media Play, etc.).  What I do not know yet is whether there is at least some ability to put video files inside of Collections to keep them organized.  I would certainly hope that this functionality was not overlooked.

I did not participate in the Beta program because I simply didn’t have the time as I was enrolled in classes at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, but now that I am working on my final project I have a more flexible schedule, and am looking forward to the changes in Lightroom.

The upgrade for users of Lightroom is only $99.00 at Amazon; the full version is $299.

Tags: Adobe Lightroom, software
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