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Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 08, 2013 12:46 am

For flip-mode: Sunset in Rockwall, shot in wide-angle with the 6D and 24/2.8 IS USM. Even got some longer exposure shots in there, with possibly more to come.

Image
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 08, 2013 1:08 am

Also went to a (relatively) near by park with the 100L Macro and tried my hand at some closeups. Definitely far fewer keepers than rejects, but I do like this grasshopper (click for the full set).

Image
 
flip-mode
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 08, 2013 6:11 am

Beautiful shot of the fountain. You've been a picture taking machine lately.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 08, 2013 10:35 am

flip-mode wrote:
Beautiful shot of the fountain. You've been a picture taking machine lately.


Thanks! Targets of opportunity really, though I was happy to have the time to stop and shoot :).
 
PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 08, 2013 2:11 pm

A near IR attempt with a Tamron R2 filter I had lying around since the 80s. About the same as a Kodak Red 25.

Image

Just fooling around. I extracted the RAW to a tungsten balanced setting then extracted the red channel. This is definitely quick and dirty but looks interesting. The Fuji X-E1 has a weak low pass filter and should respond well.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 08, 2013 10:12 pm

And a false colour one. I am most definitely getting a Hoya R72, which is pretty well black as it is a 720nm filter.

Image

The effect is really fairly subtle with the Tamron R2, red filter, but there is an unusual brightening in several areas. Whether that's actually an IR effect I'm not so sure.

Nearly all digital cameras will do this quite well but the real fanatics get the IR filter removed. Maybe because the bayer filter is missing on the Fuji X cameras is why the IR filter is quite weak.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 09, 2013 2:13 pm

Three in a row, all just fooling around. This time an astrophoto.

Image

So that is the 60mm @ f2.4, 6.5 secs and ISO 6400. It is at that speed because of the 600 rule. It states that if you divide 600 by your 35mm equivalent focal length, mine would be 90mm, that number will be your shutter speed with no star trails. There are 10 light exposures and two dark ones and Deep Sky Stacker did the rest producing a pretty big TIFF. I did perhaps lean on that a bit too much in the 'shop' but it's just an experiment. I think that might be Vega. I just shot it for something to aim at.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:06 am

East Texas at Night, click for full set:

Image
 
flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Fri Jun 14, 2013 9:20 am

Fantastik shot!
 
PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Fri Jun 14, 2013 1:39 pm

Nice shoot. There re some fine ones in there.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:24 pm

Looks like I have come full circle. I first bought a camera for the telescope I had at the time, a 6" Newtonian Reflector and I wanted something to take some pictures. This is back about 1974 or so. There was an FM2 and lens for sale so i bought that. I took a few pictures through the telescope and then was swept away by the camera and started my photographic career. It went fairly quickly to an addiction and I spent 16 years or so really into it. I learned to soup my own film and setup a darkroom with a fairly complete set of equipment. Then I fought with slide film. ASA 50 and no dynamic range but wonderful quality. I learned to mask among other things.

Now I am loving my Fuji X-E1 and it does some things very well indeed. One is high ISO stuff and after getting this kind of stuff. Dead simple 14mm @ 25 secs, f 2.8 ISO 6400:

Image

I'm hooked again.

Now we have come a long way and the options are many.

For starters a camera modification. Remove the UV/IR hot mirror filter and replace it with a piece of optically clear glass, preserves the optical path. This allows the CMOS sensor in the camera to see it's full spectral range, from about 300nm to nearly 1100nm. That is far beyond the normal range.

Filtered:
http://kolarivision.com/images/transmis ... Xpro-1.png
Filter removed:
http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/Physi ... se-ccd.jpg

Don't panic we get to keep the normal operation by simply putting the UV/IR hot mirror filter on the lens.

This allows astrophotography with a sensor that sees far beyond what we can see and the near IR is a very useful band, with enhanced detail and many objects that have little visible light output becoming spectacular. The other end, into UV, also yields many gains for an astrophotographer.

As well the whole area of serious IR photography opens up with just a filter needed for anything down to 1100nm.

I'll be sending off the Fuji at the beginning of July and I'll get the hot filter pulled and replaced with clear and I will pay extra for added cooling for the sensor. I'll do that here, they seem to be the best although perhaps not the cheapest:

http://www.spencerscamera.com/astrophot ... Mgod9TcAcg

About $625 including the two UV/IR hot mirror filters I need.

The next step will be something like this, Vixen makes nice stuff:

http://shop.vixenoptics.com/p/polarie-a ... ount?pp=12

Will track as well as I need for anything I can do with the camera. The very light Fuji X-E1 has a big advantage here. Even with the heaviest lens I can buy for it the whole package is about 1 kg. Half the weight of a DSLR and lens.

I'll worry about stuff like this next year although I want:

http://shop.vixenoptics.com/p/vc200l-wi ... user?pp=12

It is amazing how cheap all this stuff is now. Japan's recession is good for us in some ways.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
http://carnagepro.com
"Everything ... they eat everything, and fear is their bacon bits."
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 15, 2013 4:58 pm

Keep 'em coming PenGun- you're getting me hooked on Fuji :).

Now, I'm not ready to dive feet first into astrophotography, but I did just pick up Samyang's 14mm F/2.8 full-manual lens for wide angle and atmospheric shots, though I'll likely have to wait for a good front (may be a while...) to clean the atmosphere up in North Texas. The lens rates higher than Canon's 14/2.8L with respect to some highlight aberrations like coma, and it's dirt cheap if you get it from Adorama or get a local retailer to price-match it. Here are my test shots at F/5.6, focused on the roof of the car port:

Essentially out of camera:
Image
Distortion corrected with online profile:
Image
Minor post-processing:
Image


I'm thinking I may have gotten a decent copy though I feel very unqualified to make that determination, so I'll be beating on it as much as possible before the end of Fry's return window.
 
TheEmrys
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 15, 2013 6:42 pm

Very nice. Like the pp. I can definitely see the distortion in the original. Its a very good correction. Just picked up the Sigma 50/1.4 HSM which doesn't suffer the AF issues it does on the Canon (or was it Nikon?), so I'm pretty thrilled. Probably the best 50mm for sale new right now.
Sony a7II 55/1.8 Minolta 100/2, 17-35D, Tamron 28-75/2.8
 
PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:40 pm

The Fuji X-E1 corrects it's own lenses in the camera. The 14mm needs very little. It also allows you to correct both barrel distortion, as above, and pincushion distortion in the camera for non Fuji lenses. You can specify your adapted lens and the correction you want. Fuji recommends you shoot a sheet of graph paper to set this. You can also correct colour shading variations across the frame as well as peripheral illumination, or vignetting.

It is of course the JPEGs that the camera will process but the Fuji RAW converter software will do the same thing for your RAW files.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:48 am

Just remember that this is 14mm on FF; so the same as 21mm-22mm on APS-C. Your choices get real limited there :). I was shooting 15mm APS-C with my 15-85mm lens, and it was great at it, but it's not nearly as wide as this lens is on FF.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:55 am

TheEmrys wrote:
Very nice. Like the pp. I can definitely see the distortion in the original. Its a very good correction. Just picked up the Sigma 50/1.4 HSM which doesn't suffer the AF issues it does on the Canon (or was it Nikon?), so I'm pretty thrilled. Probably the best 50mm for sale new right now.


Thanks!

Re: any 50mm on Canon- basically, at 50mm, Canon users are screwed.

The 'shifty fifty' 50/1.8 has horrible bokeh with a five-straight-bladed aperture and questionable AF accuracy when pushed.
The 50/1.4 makes the best 'value' being >$100 less than the Sigma and having reasonably fast and accurate AF, with much better bokeh than the 50/1.8- but no sharper.
The 50/1.2 is slightly sharper and has a 'dreamy' quality to it wide open, but is otherwise unwieldy with slow AF. Worth the price for portraits and little else.
Sigma's 50/1.4 is a nice lens, but as you mention, it's at best equal to Canon's 50/1.4, and competes with the Canon for image quality flaws; longitudinal chromatic aberration, I'm looking at you. Basically, it's better built than Canon's 50/1.4, which isn't saying much. If Sigma updated this lens to the quality of their 35/1.4 Art, they'd have a lens that Canon wouldn't have an answer to.

What I'd really like to see is an updated Canon 50/1.8; if they added IS and real USM like they did with the 35/2 IS USM, they'd have a winner on their hands. Not a cheap winner, but a winner.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:59 am

I took the Samyang 14mm out for a test drive; set it at F/5.6 and focused on a tripod with 10x Live View best I could. This set will be uploading for the rest of the night, it seems, but here's the first shot, click to see the rest:

Image
 
flip-mode
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:03 am

Airmantharp wrote:
Just remember that this is 14mm on FF; so the same as 21mm-22mm on APS-C. Your choices get real limited there :). I was shooting 15mm APS-C with my 15-85mm lens, and it was great at it, but it's not nearly as wide as this lens is on FF.

That's why I'm aiming for a lense that goes to 10. Heh.

Nice lens, Tharp. Keep the pictures coming.
 
flip-mode
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 10:22 am

I haven't posted much lately and that is largely because I've been unable to get out of my usual environment so I feel my subject matter is becoming too well worn. I'll share something...I did take the obligatory morning dew shot (slight pp, and me yearns for more megapixels now) and a picture of a the sun setting over Over the Rhine (moderate pp, me yearns for longer lens):

Image


Image
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:38 pm

Both shots look great! The first one is perfect; and remember, very few good cameras have high MP sensors, and there are significant tradeoffs involved- not the least of which is the need for better glass to make any use of them :).

I do like the colors and contrast of the 'dew' shot. The background is also very smooth, thank Sony for building a righteous kit lens (shame on you Canon!).

You managed to capture a significant amount of haze in the landscape shot, and I don't think a longer lens will help you there- you'd just get magnified haze :). Besides, the composition and colors are great!
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:58 pm

Technical update:

I researched the hell out of that Samyang 14mm lens; I found about 1/3rd of the reviewers screaming bloody murder about how incredible the lens is (when used properly), 1/3rd that claimed it wasn't sharp no matter what they did, and 1/3rd that claimed their copy of the lens was poorly assembled and could never be useful.

I'm still praying that my copy is in the first third, but I've only had it for a day's worth of shooting, so the jury's still out. However, I did come across The Digital Picture's comparison tool which uses the 1Ds III, essentially a slightly older version of Canon's full-frame sensor. Their test reinforces the reports that this lens is best all around at F/5.6 (where I'm using it), or possibly one stop darker as F/8 tests pretty good and the lens does have an available stop between F/5.6 and F/8. Now I just need to get Magic Lantern running on the 6D for Focus Peeking to aid in manual focus, because using even 10x Live View isn't really accurate enough when shooting landscapes (though you can see above that I tried! Well, you will, whenever they finish uploading).

__________
Also, holy ****, memory cards. For whatever reason, I was getting far fewer continuous shots out of the 6D with 20MP RAWs than I got out of the 60D with 18MP RAWs, even though the 60D shot 50% faster at 6FPS versus the 6D's anemic 4.5FPS (Canon is better at artificial product segmentation than Intel...).

So, I went on an SD card hunt, and wound up at SanDisk's 16GB Extreme Pro 95MB/s SDHC card. I have the cheaper 64GB version SanDisk sells as well as an older Patriot 64GB card, and I tried a new Samsung that claimed 40MB/s writes, but none of them could give me more than seven frames on average before the camera stopped shooting for three or four seconds. Basically abysmal performance if I wanted to try and shoot any action and definitely cumbersome for panoramas that would need thirty or forty shots (layering HDR for each FOV) to build.

That SanDisk is rated for ~90MB/s writes, and I can confirm that I get 15x 20MP RAWs off before the camera slows down, and it takes less than a second to recover and start shooting again, just amazing performance. Best Buy sells these things (couldn't find them at Fry's), and they happily price match Newegg, Amazon, B&H, Adorama, etc. A big bonus if you're doing any continuous shooting and/or lots of HDR bracketing, and it may be fast enough for the RAW video stuff that the Magic Lantern team has been developing. I'll work on that at some point down the road :).
 
PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:44 pm

Airmantharp wrote:
I took the Samyang 14mm out for a test drive; set it at F/5.6 and focused on a tripod with 10x Live View best I could. This set will be uploading for the rest of the night, it seems, but here's the first shot, click to see the rest:

Wonderful shots. That's what wide does so well, if you know how. ;)

Yeah I was just boasting about my silly Fuji. 10mm APS-C equivalent is way wide, I know.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Sun Jun 16, 2013 8:22 pm

PenGun wrote:
Yeah I was just boasting about my silly Fuji. 10mm APS-C equivalent is way wide, I know.


Don't mind me picking on you, I'm just jealous :).
 
flip-mode
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:09 am

Tharp, I was just looking through your shots from the lake. You've got some sensor dust, dude. 45 degrees down from the top right corner, you can see it clearly in most of the sky shots.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Mon Jun 17, 2013 12:08 pm

flip-mode wrote:
Tharp, I was just looking through your shots from the lake. You've got some sensor dust, dude. 45 degrees down from the top right corner, you can see it clearly in most of the sky shots.


Yup. At first, I thought it was something on the Bower lens, but it's on ALL of the shots I took that day. I'll have to investigate how to properly take care of that. Uphill aye...
 
PenGun
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:03 pm

Couple more, was a wet day, but nice.

Butterwet

Image

And some grass.

Image

The little Fuji does nice B&W.
Fuji X-E1 Leica Elmar 135 4 XF60mm 2.4 Macro | Zeiss FE 35mm 2.8
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flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Tue Jun 18, 2013 6:57 pm

My first shots with the Sony 75-300, all straight from the camera (my favorite shot is the last one).

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

I absolutely love that last shot.
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:20 pm

They look good, Flip-mode. Congratulations on the new lens.
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Airmantharp
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:22 pm

I love the detail captured in the third and fourth shots in the dog's fur and the bird house, but I agree that the composition of the last shot is perfect, and it shows off the smooth bokeh that the lens is capable of producing (looks better than my Canon 70-300, for sure). I'm also really enjoying the smooth noise profile of the Sony sensor; I'll keep saying it till Canon does something about it, but it puts Canon's crop sensors to shame!

A few things I noticed:
-Each shot looks a little out of focus at the pixel level. This is to be expected, especially on a ~5x telezoom, but it also highlights the need for a stable tripod when shooting at the long end. Also, keep in mind that in-body image stabilization (the sensor shift stuff) that Sony uses is very good for shorter lenses but challenged at telephoto focal lengths, so tripod!
-The colors look perfect; if I were to PP these (and I may for my own benefit later) I'd boost the global saturation slightly (~+10) to make them pop off the screen, sharpen to +50 (out of 200 I think, Lightroom defaults to 25 for me), and add in a small amount of de-noising dependent on ISO, but no more than +20.
-The longitudinal chromatic aberration looks very well controlled at both ends of the zoom, with just a hint of magenta in the edges around the edges of the leaf in shot two, and a hint of green in the fur on the dog's neck. Very easy to correct without introducing artifacts, which is nice!


(I did cheat by looking at the full-size shots on your Flikr page; nothing I mentioned above could be seen in the shots you posted.)
 
flip-mode
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Re: General photography thread [img heavy]

Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:38 pm

Good analysis. You're dead on about the need for a tripod. I knew the shakes would be magnified but I was still surprised by just how much. What also blows me away is how much light this lens needs. Telephoto seems like it might be a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

JAE - thanks!

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