Non Aviation Photography Thread

[wingsnstuff]

Very nice.  I really like the composition and colors.

[Jay Beckman]

What were your settings on the Truck Joe?

[Scott Youmans]

Monument Valley - An ancient (by digital standards) shot taken with my first serious digital camera, an EOS-10D, April 2004.

[Jay Beckman]

Simply concrete proof that it's the Indian and not the Arrow...

Love the mood in that Scott.

[Scott Youmans]

Thanks Jay!  Sure helps to have some real weather.

[Jeff D. Welker]

Monument Valley - An ancient (by digital standards) shot taken with my first serious digital camera, an EOS-10D, April 2004.

If you don't start showing some restraint in posting one magnificent B&W image after another, I may suffer from a sever case of Anselitis and start playing with my broken Deardorff again 

Just a wonderful image Scott.

[Joe Copalman]

What were your settings on the Truck Joe?

38 seconds at ISO 100, f/8.  Light in the cab was on the verge of blowing out - the door handle inside the door is actually blown out in this shot.  Quite a bit of fill light added in Lightroom.   

[Scott Youmans]

Monument Valley - An ancient (by digital standards) shot taken with my first serious digital camera, an EOS-10D, April 2004.

If you don't start showing some restraint in posting one magnificent B&W image after another, I may suffer from a sever case of Anselitis and start playing with my broken Deardorff again 

Just a wonderful image Scott.

Thank you very much Jeff.  Studying your work has influenced mine in a positive way.

[Scott Youmans]

Storm Passes Sonoita - Taken with Nikon F100 and 24-120mm on color print film, Summer 2000.

[Jay Beckman]

What were your settings on the Truck Joe?

38 seconds at ISO 100, f/8.  Light in the cab was on the verge of blowing out - the door handle inside the door is actually blown out in this shot.  Quite a bit of fill light added in Lightroom.   

Ok...

Was this a guess or did you have any guidelines with your light sources as to exposure expectations?

[Joe Copalman]

Not a guess, but a compromise.  I did a high-ISO test shot at ISO3200, f/8, 4 seconds to check my focus and composition.  The cab and the right foreground were totally blown out, so I guesstimated a 50-second exposure back down at ISO100.  Again, the cab and right foreground were blown out, and even then, the rest of the image still looked a bit too dark, especially the left side of the truck between the door and rear wheel well.  So I chopped a few seconds off and shot again, which is the shot I posted.  Highlights were acceptable, but the shadows were still too dark.  Then the instructor said he was lighting up the windmill, so I set up to shoot that instead.  

A lot of the lighting set-ups seemed to be pretty haphazard, with no real effort made to limit the dynamic range.  Quite a few hot spots where an LED box was hidden behind a rock closer up to the building than others, and it was either expose to the hot-spot or expose for the rest of the building.  It was honestly the first time I found myself wishing I knew the first thing about HDR shooting and processing.  It's never appealed to me, but was certainly a viable option given some of the set-ups that night, where the contrast was just too extreme to be captured in a single shot.  A few of the other shooters had the same complaints I did when we were chit-chatting during shots.  In terms of guidelines, the instructor said something like "start at ISO400 and ten seconds and adjust from there," but little beyond that.  Like I said, it was far more of a "do" than a "learn" workshop.  Not to knock the instructor, but I checked out his Flickr stream afterward and he's a card-dumper.  Something like 14,000 images total, with several near-duplicates.  I had a good time and got some good shots out of it, but I'm glad I didn't pay more than $50 for the workshop.    

[wingsnstuff]

There is a gentleman at Tempe that does personal one-on-one workshops...a bit more expensive, but comes highly recommended.  I'll dig out his card if you are interested in talking to him.

[Scott Youmans]

I'm no expert in this area but it seems like an incident and/or spot light meter would be a big help. I haven't read all the posts, maybe this has been discussed.

[Joe Copalman]

It hasn't been discussed, and may have helped a little, but the dynamic range of some of the lighting set-ups was just beyond what could have been captured in a single exposure.  I definitely think that some comfort/familiarity with HDR or other methods of blending exposure would have helped out, as would a bit more time out there during the shoot to experiment a bit more.  Obviously, if I had control of the lighting, I would have been a bit more conscious of the dynamic range, but since I had no input there, I just played the hand I was dealt as best I could.

[Scott Youmans]

Joe, understood. Without the ability to control the intensity of the various light sources, a light meter would have only allowed you to see just how bad the situation was. On the other hand it would allow you to determine a good bracketing spread for HDR.