Photography Matters

Non AI Nikkors on the D700

2011-09-24T22:53:00.000+01:00

Having converted 24mm, 35mm and 105mm Nikkors lenses to AI, I've been itching to try them out to see how they perform on full frame digital. There's some stuff on the internet that suggested they would be nice and sharp and my initial findings confirm that.

I suppose I should compare them against newer prime Nikkors to see how they measure up but that's for the future. For now, I can say that I'm more than happy to pair the old lenses with the D700, particularly the 24mm.

I wasn't sure if they would meter on the D700 and was expecting to have to estimate the exposure and check it on the LCD screen. The good news is that they work perfectly in aperture priority auto. Obviously there's no way to control the aperture from the camera but I can still use the wheel just aft of the shutter release to dial in some exposure compensation so the whole thing works quickly and intuitively.

There are a few pics below from a trip we had to Montrose earlier today. The first four were shot with the 105 with 100 percent crops and the rest were with the 24mm. These are all from raw files but little was done in post processing apart from a little work in Silver Efex Pro 2 and no sharpening was applied.

That macho feeling

2011-09-20T19:18:00.002+01:00

I'm feeling quite manly today. Walking around something like Steve Martin and John Candy after they'd spent the night in the same bed in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The reason is that I can now look my fellow man straight in the eye and say, "I've used a bench grinder".

To be honest, I was never really sure what a bench grinder was before and I've no idea where the one in my garage came from - I certainly didn't buy it. It came in very handy, though, when I decided to convert my old pre-AI Nikkor lenses myself instead of sending them off to have the job done.

This is something I've been planning to do ever since I got the D700. I bought the camera with new 85mm f1.8 and 35mm f2 autofocus Nikkor lenses and added another three secondhand lenses - the 28-105 and 70-210 Nikkors and a 19-35 Tokina. It was annoying to know that I also had 24mm f2.8, 35mm f2.8 and 105mm f2.5 Nikkor primes gathering dust because they were non-AI versions and not compatible with the D700.

The sensible thing to have done would have been to parcel the lenses up and send them off to someone capable of carrying out the conversion from non-AI to AI. I thought about this but inertia always seemed to get in the way. When I started researching DIY options on the internet, the conversion didn't look too difficult.

My plan was to figure out where metal had to be cut from the aperture rings of the lenses, mark them up and take them to a small machine shop in the next street and ask them to mill the surplus material away. However, the guy at the machine shop was very reluctant to do the job, complaining that it would be difficult to secure the aperture ring in place for milling. He was also, understandably, reluctant to halt the fortnight's work backed up on his milling machine to do what, let's face it, was a piddling job.

So what to do? The three Nikkors didn't cost me an awful lot when I bought them years ago for a Nikkormat FT2 but they date back to the late 1960s and were in nice condition. I certainly didn't want to have a cack-handed bash and screw them up. But then I thought, "how difficult can it be?" As it turns out, it wasn't very difficult at all.

Following the instructions on Rick Oleson's page about AI conversions, I scribed lines where metal (aluminium in the case of the Nikkors) was to be cut away and removed the aperture rings, a job that involves unscrewing five screws on each lens and not much else. It was then either a case of hand filing the material or using the bench grinder. One would have taken a wee while and the other, I guessed, would be over in a couple of minutes so I went with the bench grinder. Never having used one before, I was a bit wary but I took it slowly and it was very straightforward.

I did the 35mm f2.8 first because I didn't have a great need for it and it's not the sharpest of lenses anyway. That was just as well as I found out that the bench grinder didn't have a square-enough shoulder to take a right-angled bite out of the aperture ring, giving it a gentle curve instead - not too good. For the 24mm and 105mm, I used a file to cut the right angled edges and then removed the material in between with the grinder. The only thing remaining to be done is to apply some black enamel to the filed areas.

The end result is that the 24 and 105 work just fine on the D700 but the 35mm doesn't index properly so I can't use the meter. That's not a problem, though, as it was always my intention to estimate the exposure and make whatever adjustments the LCD screen told me were needed. The shot of Molly, the "top" dog, was taken on the 105 and the one of Maggie on the 24. They're were both having a snooze after their morning walk.

I've always felt that the best lens line-up, in 35mm terms, comprised 24mm, 35mm, 85mm and 200mm primes and I'm not too far away from that now. I might have a look on Ebay for a cheap 200mm pre-AI lens now that I know that it's easy enough to carry out the conversion myself.

Couldn't resist...

2011-09-19T23:19:00.000+01:00

This is our hallway which is in need of some new paint on the woodwork. I've sort of started doing it up but, in my usual fashion, it takes me a while to build up a head of steam - especially when there's a nice light coming in through the door.

I grabbed the D700 which already had my 35mm f2 attached and shot off a couple of shots. As you might already have wondered, the chair doesn't usually sit in the middle of the hall like that. I felt the photograph needed something extra and got the chair from an adjoining room to fill in the large empty space.

The tonal range is quite large and there was no way to hold detail in both the brightest parts of the light coming in through the etched glass in the door and the dark frame of the chair. I processed this shot to make the chair stand out as a very dark structure against the soft light coming in through the door and reflecting off the floor.

This pic has quickly become one of my favourites which just goes to show that you don't always have to jump in the car and drive for an hour to find something worthwhile to photograph. I'm going to get the Rolleiflex out to shoot it again on film. That will no doubt further delay the paintwork but you have to get your priorities right in life...

On Minimalism

2011-09-18T20:11:00.001+01:00

This year has seen a bit of a change in the style of photograph I've been seeing and taking. It follows a conscious effort to move away from the scattergun approach that seemed to describe my photography. Although I still liked a lot of the pics I was taking, I found they were a little too literal a translation of the scenes that caught my eye. They were also too diverse in subject matter.

The more I looked at my own photographs and others on the likes of Flickr, the more I thought they tried to say too much. There was too much "going on". My goal has been to distill the elements in a photograph down to the bare essentials through choice of subject matter, viewpoint and depth of field.

One of the corollaries of this approach is that I'm shooting a lot less and spending more time looking for the right subjects - and it's not always easy to find them! Now that I've got my CLA'd Rolleiflex 2.8F back from Rollei repair expert Brian Mickelboro, I've also started carrying it with me. The simplification of my photography has extended to my camera bag which, for the last while, has consisted of just the D700, 35mm f2, 85mm F1.8 and the Rollei.

The Minimalist movement started in the US in the 1960s and one good definition I came across is that it should, "be seen as extending the abstract idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing." That sums up nicely what I'm after.

Return to Film

2011-09-12T15:01:00.000+01:00

My massively-behind-schedule darkroom project is still progressing and is now at the point where I'm just about able to start making prints. Bizarrely, I seem to have thrown out some essential items such as print tongs, safelights and small measuring jugs (big ones, too). I'm not sure why I did this as it was always my intention to get a darkroom up and running at some point and I've held onto other stuff including enlarging lenses and 12x16 print trays. Oh well. I'll no doubt be able to pick them up on Ebay.

I'd built up a backlog of unprocessed films over the last few years and I've spent the last week or two developing them. It took a couple of attempts before I started to feel comfortable with the process but I'm "back in the groove" now and it's becoming second nature again. The developing tank I use is a big Paterson affair that takes five 35mm spools. Developing film can be quite time consuming so it's better to be five times as productive and do a batch all at once rather than spend more or less the same time developing one film.

A few of the rolls were Tri-X rated at 1260 ISO and destined, when I shot them, to be developed in two-bath Diafine. I found this combination to be a match made in heaven when I last used it a number of years ago. The trouble this time was that Diafine isn't the easiest developer to find in the UK and I didn't fancy buying a new pack just to develop a couple of old rolls the contents of which were a complete mystery to me, so long ago did I use them.

Lurking under the stairs, however, were the brown glass bottles that I kept the Diafine in and it transpired that I never actually drained them. The date I mixed it up - November, 2006 - was written on the labels. Could five year old Diafine still work? Only one way to find out. I've read about some people using Diafine that was up to three years old but I can't remember anyone being daft enough to use five-year-old brew. As it turned out, it wasn't daft at all. Diafine's legendary keeping qualities are well-earned as the half-decade old developer produced perfectly normal looking negs. I was gobsmacked, to say the least, even if the images on the rolls looked less than inspiring from a creative point of view.

The pic at the top of this post is of a small batch of Adox CMS 20 that I developed using the recommended Adotech developer. The results are very fine grained as you'd imagine but there is very little lee-way when it comes to the highlights, even using the Adox developer. I've mixed my own two-bath developer along the lines of the Barry Thornton recipe and that's what I'll be using for my black and white films from now on. I might mix up some more with half the recommended amount of metol in the first bath to make it very soft working to test whether it's capable of taming CMS 20.

Two-bath is the best developer I've used when it comes to ease of use, consistency and tone control. It's not necessary to be bang on with the temperature of the developer or the development time so it's just about impossible to go wrong. There are, not surprisingly, two developers, A and B. The film is immersed in bath A for four minutes with agitation every minute. This causes it to become saturated with developer although little development actually takes place because the chemical that really kicks the process off is in the second bath. Bath B doesn't get any agitation where 120 roll film is concerned and just one inversion half way through the four minute development time for 35mm.

What happens is that the developer in the second bath quickly becomes exhausted where it has to do a lot of work, i.e. developing the highlights, almost guaranteeing that they will not become too blocked up and unprintable. The shadow areas, however, where the developer has less work to do, just keep on developing throughout the four minutes. The result is nicely graded negs which are fine-grained, sharp and very easy to print. With no or very little agitation required during the second four minutes, I use this free time to mix up a stop bath and prepare the fixer and water rinses that I give the films after fixing.

I wash the films using the Ilford recommended technique: fill the tank and given it ten inversions, drain and refill for twenty inversions and again for forty inversions. I normally do another 40 inversion stint to be on the safe side.

As the second pic shows, I dry the films in the shower. Run it for a few minutes so that the water droplets pull the dust out of the air, wait for the moisture to clear and then hang the films up. I used to use a rubber squeegee to remove the surplus water from the film but I seem to have thrown that out as well! Just now I'm using a new chamois leather cloth which does the job almost as well although it's vital to keep it clean in between films to avoid scratches.

I had intended to scan some of the negs for posting but my computer set up was completely rejigged recently and I can't seem to reinstall the scanner software. Anyway, the whole point about negatives is that they're designed for the darkroom and not some half-arsed digital compromise!

Circulades

2011-08-30T21:36:00.000+01:00

Steps leading to the central square of Aligne.

In the far south of France you can find what amounts to Europe's first stab at town planning - the circulades. These ancient villages nestle in Languedoc-Rousillon and share a similar layout of concentric rings, often leading to a central castle or stronghold. Older than the more familiar, grid-patterned bastide villages, the circulades date back a thousand years.

Aligne

Successive generations of French families have lived and died in these tall, narrow homes, their cheek-by-jowl living conditions forging community bonds that are as resistant to incomers as the villages themselves once were to outside attack.

Spiralling up baked hillsides in this hot and dusty part of France, bounded by the Mediterranean to the east and the massive bulk of the Pyrannees to the south, the circulades grew up in the 11th and 12th centuries, a turbulent time when security and safety were tenuous notions.

The D700, with white balance on auto, does its best to make

sense of the competing light sources.

The rings of houses provided a succession of ramparts that could be defended by small forces and which shielded the core – usually a castle or church – from marauding Catholic crusaders. Sometimes fortifications – a deep ditch or a wall – were built outwith the villages for extra protection. It’s still possible to see the remains of these defensive barriers outside some circulades.

Today, the villages are under attack from a much more benign force – tourists – who love to wander the winding lanes intersected with little alley ways and flights of ancient stone steps.

A typical townhouse in Pauligne

One of my favourite pursuits on holiday in France is strolling the narrow streets and alleys of these characterful settlements, camera in hand, eager to see what's around the next corner...and the next. I try to visit them during the day to take a few shots and get a feel for the place. Then, just before the sun dips below the horizon, I return to take some night shots over a 15-20 minute period when there's still enough light in the sky for it to register something other than black.

The romantically sounding La Digne d'Aval

Although they appear throughout Languedoc-Roussillon, circulades are mainly found in two departments, Herault and Aude, and are concentrated in a triangular-shaped area which has Montpelier, Carcassonne and Beziers at its points.

Last month we spent twelve days in Pauligne, a wee circulade and one of several in the area. I managed to visit a few of these and have great memories of the beautiful late evening calm, the cool shade of the closely-packed houses and the amazing ability of the Nikon D700 and 35m f2 AF-D Nikkor to capture relatively noise-free images in the gloaming.

Couldn't resist this character enjoying the cool of the evening in La Digne d'Aval

All of the night shots here were taken using the 35mm f2, an ideal focal length for the compact circulades. Most of the time, I managed to keep the ISO to 3200 or below, shooting wide open or just a stop down when conditions allowed. Occasionally I found myself pressing against an ancient stone wall in an effort to fit everything in but, overall, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better combination for night shooting.

No Entry

2011-04-18T20:07:00.000+01:00

Fisherman

2011-04-16T22:34:00.000+01:00

I've been tied up doing family things for the last week and haven't had much time for adding to the blog. At the moment, I'm working on an article about long exposure photography that will answer some of the questions that people have been asking me. I'll probably post it next week sometime. In the meanwhile, here's a shot I took a few weeks ago that I just got round to processing tonight. D700, 70-210 Nikkor

A Grey Day

2011-03-31T00:26:00.000+01:00

It didn't look too promising for some long exposure (LE) photography today but I had a couple of hours to kill in Arbroath so I packed the D700 and tripod in the car and took off. The photograph above is my attempt to show what it felt like, rather than looked like. It was one of those days that we seem to specialise in up here in Scotland. Grey skies and a constant drizzle that occasionally worked itself up into heavyish rain.

As I've said before, one of the great things about LE is that it doesn't matter too much what the weather is like. As long as it's not sunny with blue skies then there's always the chance of going home with something interesting. That leaves about 360 suitable days where I live then.

There was a bit of what I call "action" on the water (white tops on the waves) which is just about a prerequisite for this type of work.That was about the only point of contrast in the all-pervading greyness.

The pic above is of what I used to believe were tank traps designed to stop the Germans from invading the east coast of Scotland during the war. However, I've since found out that they are nothing of the sort. There's a curving line of them leading from the shore to the breakwater at the harbour and it turns out that they were piers for a narrow gauge railway that was used to ferry supplies to the breakwater while repairs were going on in the 1960s.

This one looks a bit mysterious and shows that it's possible to glamorise something as unpromising as an old sewage outfall pipe! This went out of use many years ago thankfully. The round hole and studs you can see towards the top of the pic must have been some sort of access for inspection. The water was lapping over the pipe with the result that the access point was as often under water as above it.

The last one is a straightforward pic of the end of the breakwater. I've learned a few things in the weeks during which I've been taking long exposure photographs and, since I've had a few people asking me about it, I'll write a blog post setting in some detail what I've found out so far.

Bowling Club Triptych

2011-03-25T20:30:00.000Z

Our house backs onto a bowling club (crown green, not ten-pin) and there are certain times in the year when the bowlers let their hair down and the muted noise from their big night drifts through the night. I remember a while back when the sounds of jollity found their way into one of the upstairs rooms in our home and I got my camera out to see if there was anything worth photographing.

I took quite a few but never did anything with them. Just the other night, though, I was looking through some old files when I came upon them and thought they might make an interesting triptych. It's probably not your normal triptych subject matter - in fact, it could well be a bowling first.

The bowling clubhouse is a long, single story building and the panorama format of the windows was ideal for this triptych. I had some pangs of guilt wondering if my photographing the revellers was a bit of an intrusion but they quickly passed. ;-)

Flickr Faves - What's the deal?

2011-03-23T19:53:00.000Z

I've been a member of Flickr for a few years now but have never really got too involved in it. I upload pics mainly so that people can see what I get up to if they ask me. It saves them having to trawl through this blog, despite that being a lovely, warm experience. I've uploaded most of the long exposure photographs that have appeared here and some others to boot.

Looking through Flickr groups recently, I came across a couple that I really like. One is for black and white long exposures and the other is its sister group which covers the same ground but with the provision that you must have at least 50 "faves" on a pic before you can upload it. I'd really like to be able to upload to the 50 faves group as I turn 50 at the end of the month and the idea just kind of appeals to me. The problem is that the most faves any of my pics have is 30 (that's it above) and most of the others struggle to make it into double figures. (Interestingly, almost all of my most "faved" pics are medium format film shots).

That got me wondering about the best way of achieving favourite status for images. Presumably I'd need to be much more active and on many more groups to get the kind of exposure that could lead to the magic 50. I posted a message on the 50+ group asking for advice on reaching the required quota but never got a response.

Help me reach the Big 5-0
That's when I thought that I should really be asking you all if you can chip in with any suggestions. I know there are some very good photographers who follow Photography Matters and I'm sure many readers will be active on Flickr - or at least more knowledgeable than I. Please feel encouraged to get in touch either through the comments section or by emailing me if we've communicated in the past - or even if we haven't! My contact details are in the "About Bruce" section above.

Of course, if you have a few minutes to spare and want to visit my long exposure set on Flickr to see if any pics merit favourite status in your eyes, I'd be only too pleased. It would be a nice birthday present if I could crack the 50 faves barrier before I reach my personal half century. We've got six days left in which to do it.

Efex Pro 2 borders

2011-03-20T00:07:00.001Z

I use Nik's Silver Efex Pro for nearly all my black and white conversions. A new version is now out that has some enhancements, most of which I haven't tried yet. One I do like, though, is the ability to add arty-looking borders to images.

There are 14 preset borders and they can be tweaked to achieve just the look you're after. They all seem to have a black border of some description around the image but add an additional white border beyond that. You wont see the white border in the pics above as it's the same colour as the page background.

The white border can be increased in size as can the inner black border. The black border can be further adjusted for a clean look or a rough one. It's quite a versatile and quick way of adding a border.

There's another new feature that looks promising and I'll be spending some time getting to know it. It's known as "soft contrast" and it gives images a contrast boost without giving them a soot and whitewash appearance. I haven't worked out yet what's going on but it is an attractive look that can enhance some pics.

If you take a look at the boat pictures above you can see what soft contrast has done to the original boat image that I processed. It's a look that sits well with my long exposure seascapes.

The beast arrives

2011-03-17T20:59:00.000Z

I mentioned in the previous post that I'd "invested" (as Gordon Brown used to say when he actually meant "spent recklessly") in a mystery film outfit for my long exposure work. Well, here it is, a Rollei SL66 and a clutch of Zeiss lenses. It cost an arm and a leg and was only possible because I have my 50th birthday coming up at the end of the month and several drawers-full of gear I no longer use and which can be sold on Ebay to pay for it.

I thought long and hard about this purchase for two reasons. The first is that digital is so much more convenient and, sorry about this, easier and I didn't know if I still had the discipline and patience to stick to a film-based workflow.

The other concern was what economists call the "opportunity cost" of getting the Rollei kit. I had been planning to buy a Panasonic GF-1 to take advantage of its square format as all my long exposures are square-shaped. That's not going to happen now.

The thing that got me thinking about a 6x6 film camera was partly the format but also the fact that most of my long exposure seascapes would be easy to print under an enlarger. Unlike into-the-light landscapes with trees and hills breaking the horizon, I wouldn't need to resort to complicated burning and dodging in the darkroom to even up bright sky and dark foreground. Most of the time my square photographs will have a perfectly flat horizon and it will be a piece of cake burning skies in or holding back the sea.

If you're a regular visitor to this blog you'll maybe have read that I hate the output from inkjet printers. I know some people say they can produce prints that are a match for the best silver gelatin prints but I can't and I've long since given up trying. My expensive HP B9180 A3+ printer has been sitting idle for well over a year ever since I took the decision to go back to darkroom printing. The initial plan was to build a darkroom in a shed but I've now decided to convert our garage to a darkroom/studio and work will start on this in the next month or two.

I've got a cracking Durst 5x4 enlarger for the Rollei negs and a Leitz V35 for 35mm negs. This is equipment I could only have dreamt about before digital took over and the secondhand price of much film-based stuff started to fall. I'm looking forward immensely to the smell of fixer and brown stains on my clothing.

It was digital that got me back into photography after a break of a few years but I've become a little bored with it. I'm fed up sitting in front of a computer chasing pixels around a monitor. It just isn't rewarding or satisfying any more. As far as black and white photography goes, I can think of nothing better that deliberating over a scene, carefully making one or two exposures, developing the film and then sliding a strip into the negative carrier before producing a beautiful 10x10 inch print. Yes, it takes longer, it's smellier, and the results don't quite carry the same cast-iron guarantee as digital but so what. At least it will get me printing again after a few years of doing little more than storing files on a computer and it will make the whole process of photography so much more meaningful and enjoyable.

Another consideration was the fact that I want to start selling my work. It's something I've never done before and I don't know how successful I'll be. But everything I've read says that galleries, collectors and people who don't mind spending a bit of money on photographic prints prefer traditional silver gelatin prints to digital output - and who could blame them.

So, all roads led to a 6x6 medium format outfit. There were a few systems I could have gone for, some of which would have been much less expensive. A Mamiya C330 made a lot of sense as the B+W 10-stop filter necessary to achieve long exposure times is impossible to compose through - but not on a twin lens reflex. Its big brother, the RB67, is capable of superb results and there's not much to be said against the Hasselblad. Then there was the Mamiya 6 rangefinder, Bronica's SQ cameras and older models like the Kowa 6 and Bronica S2A. At the end of the day, it was the superb Zeiss lenses available for the Rollei, it's fantastic build quality and its unique (for a 6x6 SLR) in-built lens tilt that guarantees front-to-back sharpness at any aperture-and razor-thin depth of field if tilted the other way-that swung things in favour of the SL66.

It just arrived yesterday and I've been spending some time familiarising myself with its eccentricities before giving it its first outing. That might have to wait a week or two as time is limited at the moment. I've got a 40mm Distagon (equivalent to a 24mm in 35mm terms), an 80mm standard Planar and 150mm and 250mm Sonnar telephotos. With those lenses, I could have tackled any long exposure work I've been doing lately with the D700.

But this doesn't mean that I'll be giving up completely on digital. I want to start shooting a lot of stock photography pics and the D700 is ideal for that. The D700 will also accompany me on photographic forays with the SL66 for those occasions where a blended exposure would be a better way of capturing wide-ranging tones. However, I'm hoping those will be few and far between.

Glen Clova

2011-03-10T00:04:00.000Z

I love the look of this pic which was taken on the Konica Hexar. We were having lunch in Glen Clova about a 45 min drive away and these chairs were randomly scattered outside on the terrace. As you can see, it was a lousy day but it did have a certain atmosphere to it.

I burned the sky in a little to add to the mood but the Hexar has a very agreeable knack of adding it's own atmosphere to a shot. The 35mm f2 lens has quite a bit of fall off when used wide open which adds some nice edge burn. This pic was shot stopped down a stop or two but the Hexanon lens has still stamped its own character on the scene.

I'm getting to like it the more I use it but it may have to go on Ebay along with a lot of other little-used gear to fund the purchase of a new secondhand film outfit that I'll be using for my long exposure work. It will be in my sweaty palms in four or five days at which time I'll reveal it's identity to the world.

I'm still doing a lot of long exposure photography, by the way, and getting quite a kick from it. I'm also improving and seeing square shots more readily. Below are a couple I took the other day on the D700 and 28-105 Nikkor.

Finally splashed out on the B+W 10-stop

2011-01-22T23:12:00.000Z

Well, after experimenting with stacks of filters and the frankenfilters of previous posts, I sent off for the B+W glass - all £55 of it. I'm not sure why it should cost quite so much, even if it is fine Schott glass from Germany, but that's the deed done. I had my first chance to try it out today but the weather just wasn't very good for long exposure photography.

It was a still day and there was hardly any movement on the water which meant that even with a 30 second exposure there was little sign of the characteristic milky blurring. I also ran into a problem I'd encountered before and which I'd put down to using the filter stacks and welding glass. I'd noticed quite a few shots had bright, horizontal banding lines and thought they would disappear with the B+W filter but they were still there.

A quick bit of research on the internet found that they were probably due to the fact that I wasn't using the viewfinder blind and light was leaking onto the sensor that way. Next time I'll make sure I close that little blind.

The first two pics were taken today with the B+W and the bottom two, which show the tank barriers at an entrance to Arbroath harbour, with crossed polarisers.

Hexar: A little affection but still no love

2011-01-20T00:52:00.000Z

I wrote back in September here and here about my Konica Hexar experience. At that time, I was so disappointed I was all for getting rid of the Hexar. This, after all, was a camera I'd lusted after for a few years. Being a generous sort and willing to give everyone and everything a second chance, I decided to persevere with the Hexar to see if it would grow on me. Sadly, not yet. However, it does have certain qualities, almost all related to the 35mm f2 lens.

I took the Hexar for a walk through the park on Saturday, really just to see how much snow was still lying on the public golf course where I spent much of my youth. I feel that I'm beginning to understand and appreciate the camera a little better but it still has these huge uncertainties in use that I find it difficult to come to terms with.

I documented them in the earlier posts but they mainly concern the viewfinder and autofocus. Yes, the viewfinder is nice and big and bright and the framelines are clear but the parallax correction system leaves me with no way of knowing where the right hand and bottom of the field of view is at closer distances. I also experienced some more autofocus problems when the camera didn't focus where I'd pointed the centre spot. There may be a reason for that, though. I've read on a forum that it's possible the centre spot suffers from "parallax" at closer distances as well and moves in tandem with the framelines. What this would mean in practice is that the visible cross hairs in the viewfinder stay in the same place but the actual centre spot the camera uses to focus moves down and to the right.

Anyway, enough of my complaints. What's good about the Hexar? Well, the lens is as special as other people have said it is. I hate to waffle on about things that are notoriously difficult to prove but I've noticed a 3-D look to some images. There's a rounded-ness under certain conditions that looks a little different from what might be expected using other lenses.

The Hexanon's bokeh is lovely as well. Backgrounds melt away very nicely and there's little in the way of distracting double lines or other artefacts to draw attention.

The shot of the sandbags at the top of this post just needed the inclusion of a Lee Enfield to look like a second world war recreation. It was taken at f2 so there isn't a lot in focus. It was also getting quite late in the day by this time and the 100 ISO Superia Reala meant I had to use a shutter speed of a fifteenth. It's an atmospheric shot which shows off the Hexanon's bokeh quite nicely - and also the fall-off the lens experiences wide open.

The photograph above of the light and walkway was just taken to show off the bokeh - again at f2. Maggie was the subject of another bokeh test. I think you'll agree that the Hexanon certainly has its own way of dissolving backgrounds.

560 seconds @ f4 @ 1600 ISO

2011-01-17T10:50:00.000Z

Remember the welding glass frankenfilter that was so dark it appeared to allow virtually no light to pass through it? Well, appearances weren't deceptive in this case. I set the K10D up on the kitchen worktop pointing out onto the garden and tried a few test exposures with the darker of the two frankenfilters in place.

I've become used to an exposure of around 30 secs at f16 and 100 ISO being there or thereabouts when stacking ND and polarising filters so, using that as a rough benchmark, I decided to give an exposure of ten minutes at the same settings whilst I made my porridge for breakfast. I think I saw a glimmer of light from somewhere in the resultant image but it was basically complete darkness.

In an effort to get an idea of the correct exposure, I increased the ISO to 1600 and opened the 70mm DA lens out to f4. Two minutes later and a gloomy, ghostly, green image appeared on playback. The proper exposure, it turned out, was in the order of ten minutes at f4 at that ISO. Now, I'm quite prepared to wait patiently during long exposures and I'm sure that massively long exposures have some merit but I'm not willing to sit around for 40 minutes at 400 ISO as the K10D's battery is drained of life.

If you choose the right time of day, it's not even necessary to have outrageous ND filters for long exposures. The shot to the left was taken with a relatively normal ND8 as twilight approached. The exposure was about two minutes at f22. I wouldn't normally have waited until so late in the day but, as history has shown, even English kings can't control the tides. I was waiting for the water to rise until it was just six inches or so beneath the wooden planks on this old walkway. It would have been virtually dark by the time the tide reached that height, however, and my shoes were already soaking from the waves that splashed around my feet so I took the photograph, made my excuses and left, as they used to say in the News of the World. I was perched precariously on slime-covered rocks wondering how I was going to get back to the safety of the promenade without doing myself an injury. Life would have been easier with a pair of wellies so they'll be going on the shopping list along with that B+W filter. At least I got a nice image for my troubles.

Thanks AJ!

2011-01-09T18:16:00.001Z

AJ Carr, in a comment yesterday, suggested that I could use two polarising filters at 90 degrees to each other to cut down the amount of light reaching the D700's sensor for long exposure photography. I was aware of this possibility but had read that it can lead to uneven patches in the sky so I never considered it.

However, after AJ recommended it, I thought I'd give it a go and it worked out very well. The location was Auchmithie again (below), an old fishing village at the top of a steep climb up from the beach which is about a fifteen minute drive away. I'd actually been aiming for a particular location at Arbroath but the way the tides worked out I was about three hours too early. I'll give the Arbroath location a try tomorrow.

Anyway, I attached an ND4 filter to the 35mm Nikkor and put the two polarisers in front of it. One was a 52mm which fits the lens and the other was a 55mm. Fortunately, the 52 was a tight push fit inside the ring of the 55 so it all worked out rather well.

The results are above. Don't look too closely at the files as they were eight bit basic jpegs which I worked up in Photoshop in the kitchen whilst making a steak, Guinness and wine pie for tonight's dinner. I think most of the Guinness went down my throat rather than into the pie...

One of the good things about this type of photography is that it doesn't matter too much what the light is doing. We can get some spectacular light in Scotland but mostly the weather is a bit grey and overcast. Whether it's sparkling or leaden, the results of long exposure photography are nearly always interesting.

Failure or art?

2011-01-08T14:58:00.000Z

OK, hands up. Whose idea was this welding glass thing anyway? I'm just back from another foray into the world of long exposures and I can report that the welding glass sold by my local supplier is rubbish! Or is it?
It must be chock-full of aberrations or maybe the faces of this quite thick glass just aren't parallel. I didn't take any pics using a wide angle lens but when shooting with a telephoto, the defects of the welding glass become all too apparent.

I tried the frankenfilter at the long end of my 70-210 Nikkor and the results were just not usable. I wasn't expecting razor sharpness but I wasn't ready for the almost prismatic look of the images. The two shots in this post were taken with the 28-105 Nikkor at the tele end and, although there is some distortion, it's nowhere near the level of the 210mm effort. In fact - and whisper this bit - I quite like the look.

On the one hand, there's nothing that you could call really sharp. On the other, there is just sufficient sharpness that, combined with an edgy look, gives the photos a very arty appearance, in my opinion. You might well have another view. If so, feel free to vent it in the comments section. I can imagine these shots, nicely-framed, hanging in an art gallery where viewers would struggle to figure out how the effect was achieved and put it down to some uncommon ability and vision on the part of the photographer. In fact, that's how I going to pass them off from now on!

As expected, the files had a tremendously strong green cast when I opened them up. I converted them to black and white in Silver Efex Pro using the green filter setting which lightened the overall tone. The images are very flexible in that they can be printed in a soft, delicate fashion or for a harsher, more dramatic effect. I haven't made up my mind yet which I prefer.

I'd imagine that the pics would look reasonably sharp through a wide angle lens. For various reasons, poor quality filters show up more readily using telephoto lenses. If I'm going to get serious about long exposure photography, then a 10-stop B+W filter looks like a must as not every subject will benefit from the welding glass defects. However, the frankenfilter will remain in my bag and will be brought out whenever its unique look is likely to suit the subject.

Frankenfilter

2011-01-07T12:29:00.000Z

There's a little-known tradition in long exposure photography of using welding glass, the type that slots into a welding helmet to reduce the light intensity during welding, in place of "proper" 10-stop ND filters. But I didn't realise until yesterday just how cheap this glass is. My local welding supplies shop had sheets in four grades ranging from 9 to 13 (the higher the number, the darker the glass) for 47p each.

Why not give it a go, I thought. It's not going to be the best quality glass but would it take the edge off sharpness any more than a stack of filters? Probably not. And, as I said in an earlier post, sharpness is not what long exposure photography is all about.

The first hurdle was how to attach the glass to the lens. Not being a fan of square filter systems, I don't have one of those holders that I could have slipped the glass into. However, I do have some skylight filters which came with lenses I bought secondhand and which I never use. First up was a Jessops 62mm skylight that didn't have a retaining ring to hold the glass in place. I covered it with newspaper, banged it with the end of a rolling pin and the glass just popped straight out.

The second unbranded 49mm filter had a retaining ring but I couldn't budge it so I just gave it another dose of the rolling pin treatment and it succumbed in a kaleidoscope of shards and splinters. These were carefully removed from the filter. Superglue can do funny things to coloured glass and I was wary of using it here so I picked up the only other adhesive I could find - that "no nails glue" stuff used in DIY - and bonded the filter rings to the welding glass. The results look pretty ugly but should do the job OK. I'll touch up the glue with black enamel to reduce the chances of unwanted reflections.

The two glass sheets I bought were grade 9 and grade 12. Grade 9 looks to be about an 11-stop ND filter and I'll be using that on the D700 and 28-105 Nikkor. The grade 12 looks like a black hole, to be honest. I can't seen anything through it at all! It might give me exposure times running into hours rather than minutes!

I held the grade 9 in front of a lamp (left hand pic above) and the image of the curly bulb was strong enough for the autofocus to latch on to it. Note the strong green colour of the glass. I think you'd need to do a custom white balance at the taking stage if you wanted to use this glass for colour work. Now take a look at the grade 12. There's no sign of the bulb at all! The grade 12 will be going on the K10D/21mm DA combination for no other reason than that I have a locking remote release for it and will be able to give it whatever exposure is required, battery willing, of course.

I should be able to get out in the next day or two to have a go with the frankenfilters. Stay tuned.

Long exposure with the K10D

2011-01-05T23:35:00.001Z

This was taken yesterday using the 21mm DA on the K10D. I took the Pentax along with me because I have a remote release for it - something I've yet to get for the D700. At the moment, I'm limited to the Nikon's 30 second maximum timed exposure and the intention was to try a minute or two with the Pentax.

Things didn't quite work out like that, however. I had another stack of ND and polariser filters on the 21mm but the longest exposure I could get was 30 seconds! I cropped this one differently as it was difficult to find a
square composition that worked.

More long exposures

2011-01-05T11:59:00.000Z

What great fun these long exposures are! I haven't had so much enjoyment from photography for a while. It's the antithesis of what I usually do which is walking around with the D700 and shooting hand-held. Now, everything is more considered.

Naturally, a tripod is essential and that immediately starts the process of slowing the whole procedure down. I find it much easier to use the live view feature to compose rather than the viewfinder when the camera is tripod-mounted and that's something else that encourages me to take a little more time scanning the image before tripping the shutter.

With my stack of ND filters and polariser, I've been getting exposures of 30 seconds at f22. I'd like to be able to go a bit longer but that will have to wait until I splurge out on a B+W 10 stop ND filter. Half a minute is enough to achieve the desired result in some cases but in the slow-moving weather conditions we've had here lately a couple of minutes would have been better.

Shooting at f22 where diffraction takes the edge of sharpness and with several extra layers of glass ahead of the lens, the results I've been getting aren't the sharpest I've ever had but they're better than I thought they would be when I started off. And I don't think sharpness is the be all and end all for this type of photography anyway. It's all about mood and atmosphere.

I might get round to masking the plastic cover on the D700's rear screen to show the square format but for now I'm just being careful to make sure that I leave sufficient wiggle room for a 1:1 crop. That's something that's easily taken care of in Lightroom. After opening the raw file, there's a feature that imposes a square crop on the image which can be repositioned to achieve the best composition.

After converting the image to greyscale in Lightroom, I open it in Photoshop and make any further adjustments that are necessary. The images are finished off by running them through Nik Silver Efex Pro for toning purposes.

The pics above are scenes I've visited many times in the past but the long exposure technique makes them look completely different. What's great about this approach is that I can sit down and think of around six other locations where I could do something similar. It opens up so many possibilities - and at a time when I was beginning to get bored with going over the same old stomping ground.

Having thought a little more about the size of filter to go for, I think I might end up getting a 62mm for use with the 28-105 Nikkor. Having had a couple of forays into long exposure photography, I really can't see the need to go much wider than 28mm. In fact, it's looking likely that focal lengths above 105mm would be more useful.

Slow motion

2011-01-03T22:00:00.001Z

I've long been a fan of those seascapes that use a very strong neutral density filter to enable very long exposures under daylight conditions. The filters, made by the likes of B+W, Hoya and Heliopan, reduce the light hitting the lens by about nine or ten stops. That's enough to give an exposure of 30 seconds to 2 minutes at the height of the day.

Such lengthy times will obliterate almost all detail in fast moving water and skies. The results can be very atmospheric. I've thought about having a go at this type of photography but, to be honest, the thought of paying about £50 for a filter has always been off-putting!

However, I've decided to see what it's like before deciding whether to shell out. I had a brief try today using my cheapskate method of piling a few ordinary neutral density filters and a polariser on top of each other and attaching them to the front of my 35mm f2 AF-D lens. Now I know what you're thinking: all of those filters are bound to cause pretty serious vignetting and you'd be right. That wasn't a concern, though, as I'm only going to be shooting square format photographs and I knew I'd be cropping off the darkened corners.

The pic above is my first effort but conditions really weren't conducive to long-exposure photography. The harbour was flat and dull and the sky was heavy with slow-moving clouds. Despite a 30 second exposure, there isn't much sign of movement. But that's OK as it showed that my "pile 'em up" approach is fine as far as getting a feel for this technique is concerned.

If I decide to pursue this type of photography - and it would be a great way of breathing new life into some old and much-photographed scenes - the first problem would be which filter size to go for. A 52mm filter would fit my 24mm, 35mm and 105mm Nikkors. A 62mm would fit the 28-105 Nikkor and a 77mm would go on the 19-35mm Tokina.

At the moment, my thinking is that I should go for the 77mm and use step-up rings so that I could fit it on the other lenses. The Tokina's a good lenses that goes a bit soft in the corners but the square format would take care of that as well.

Last Post (of 2010)

2010-12-31T22:31:00.001Z

Cath's son John has cystic fibrosis and has to go into hospital on a fairly regular basis for various kinds of treatment. We've been at Glasgow's Gartnavel Hospital the last couple of days with him, staying in a hotel right next door to the hospital.

We were on our way back to the hotel last night when we passed this pond which lies adjacent to it. As usual, I had my current walkabout outfit with me - the D700 and 35mm f2 AF-D Nikkor. (I must be taking more than half of my pics with this combination at the moment.)

It was another twilight shot - 1/30th at f2.5 with the D700 set to 3200 ISO. A light mist was hanging over the frozen pond and there was just enough foreground interest to help the composition. Of course, it's the houses in the background and the reflected lights that make it a worthwhile exercise.

Within about a minute of taking this pic, the mist was gone. Photography is all about being in the right place at the right time but sometimes it can seem hellishly difficult fulfilling both of those criteria.

Twilight shooting

2010-12-27T23:40:00.001Z

I've said in the past that if I had to vote for either digital or film to continue into the future alone, then I'd pick film. However, when you have a camera like the Nikon D700 in your hands, sometimes the choice isn't so clear cut.

The great thing about the D700 is the ability to just up the ISO to suit whatever the prevailing conditions are and not worry to much about noise levels. We took the dogs for a brief walk around the harbour tonight just at that time of day when the light is going.

If I'd had a 400 ISO film in a camera (that's my default ISO for the D700) I'd have been forced to use a tripod to take most of the pics in this post. Tonight it was a case of cranking the ISO up to 3200 and carrying on as if it were daylight. That's what I love most about the D700.

These pics were taken within about 30 minutes of each other just so that I could keep my hand in, so to speak.