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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 10000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shoren'in Temple, Kyoto Japan
青蓮院、京都
I had an amazing afternoon at an ikebana (flower-arranging) show held at the Shoren'in Temple. 600 photos to sift through.... above is one that caught my eye.
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Nikon D4 + “unknown lens” — 1/640 sec, ISO 100 — image data
Toeing The Line
( this photo is almost entirely black; この写真はほとんど黒い、下を見ると分かる )
Nikon D4 + “unknown lens” — 1/500 sec, ISO 100 — image data
Big Production
( this photo is almost entirely black; この写真はほとんど黒い、下を見ると分かる )
Nikon D4 + “unknown lens” — 1/200 sec, ISO 100 — image data
Props Set Aside
( this photo is almost entirely black; この写真はほとんど黒い、下を見ると分かる )
(If you can't see the photos above, try viewing your screen from an extreme angle, perhaps from way above, and the image should somewhat appear. Or, scroll down...)
(カメラのレンスのミスのせいで上の写真はだめに成りましたけれども、アドベLightroomというソフトで半分まで立ち直る。)
Fourth-grade Anthony had his school Sports Festival today. Wanting to keep my baggage to a minimum, I chose the Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm Zoom for the day. I loved this lens when I first got it two and a half years ago, but it quickly developed CPU problems that caused it to “freak out”. I ended up having it replaced twice, and while the third copy's CPU seemed okay, its image quality didn't really seem up to snuff, so I lost interest.
But, I picked it today for its versatility, and paid the price. Halfway through the 1,102 photos I shot at the sports festival, it started to fritz out again. When its CPU goes dark, the camera thinks that a non-CPU lens is attached, and the default settings on my camera for a non-CPU lens is for the most-delicious Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 (which sadly does not have a CPU).
So, shots taken during these moments are severely underexposed, as you see above.
Of course, because I shoot in raw-sensor format (instead of JPEG), I can tap into its latitude for exposure correction and in Lightroom can recover from disasters to at least some extent.
Here are the three photos above, after having invoked Lightroom's “Auto Tone” on them, and added a lot of noise reduction:
Toeing The Line
Big Production
Props Set Aside
The quality is horrible, of course, and these particular photos are all throw-away shots anyway, but it seems that all the photos of when Fumie did one of the silly events together with Anthony were ruined by the Sigma, so this is the only way to have any photographic memory, which is a lot better than nothing.
Shoot raw.
And perhaps be wary of Sigma. My lens will be on its way to them (for the third time). I've owned only two Sigma lenses in my life, this 50-500mm and many years ago the 30mm f/1.4, which also went through three copies before I got one that seemed reasonable. (That link, to a post about the lens six years ago, is quite the blast from the past for me, to back before Lightroom when I painstakingly processed each photo in Photoshop, without the burden of skill.)
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In a comment on my “Low-Quality Photographic Lighting Has Me Seen Green” post from two days ago, RoyReddy suggested a product that might help (an X-Rite Color-Checker Passport). It looked like a good idea, so I ordered one yesterday, from Amazon Japan.
This morning I was disappointed to see the “delivery estimate” of “October 21, 2012 - October 27, 2012”. Drat, that pretty much means that the Amazon store I bought it from is just an office that imports things on demand (e.g. from America) and when they receive it, forward it to me. I was disappointed to have to wait that long when I could have just ordered it from The States myself, at a much lower price.
So I was happily surprised when I came home today to find it in my mailbox.
Amazon Japan still says the “Oct 21-27” delivery estimate, so I don't understand where the mixup came, but it seems to be a running problem. I'd ordered some large free-standing shelving units a few days ago, and the order-status page estimates an “Oct 11-15” delivery, but also in my mailbox this evening was the “sorry we missed you” note from the delivery company.
If you've got to have problems, these are good ones to have. 🙂
Now my next problem is processing the 1,102 photos I took at Anthony's school sports festival today...
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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — image data
It Has Begun
leaf in Kyoto
The fall colors won't get going in earnest in Kyoto for another month and a half, but I came across this leaf yesterday that seems to have begun things with gusto.
京都の秋はまだまだですが、この葉っぱは元気で速い。
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/8, ISO 8000 — image data
Veritable Rainbow
even some purple in the lower left
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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/100 sec, f/10, ISO 2000 — image data
Green With Envy
for folk who have real studio lighting
All pictures on this post photographed by Stéphane Barbery,
selected and processed by me
You might not particularly notice it the first time you see the photo above, but once I point it out, you won't be able to miss it: my skin has a decidedly green tint.
質が悪い蛍光灯を使うと、肌は緑ぽいになってしまう。
This is a classic side effect of fluorescent lighting not specifically designed for photography, which is apparently what Stéphane and I used during one of our portraiture practice sessions.
Unfortunately, I had bought bulbs that were specifically advertised as “for photography”, sold and branded by a company that makes photo-studio lighting equipment. I simply got ripped off. )-:
I'd bought Gorgeoust (the company's name) “Super Bright 500W equivalent home photography use fluorescent light bulb”. They're huge curly bulbs... you can see them on the company's page. They're garbage.
ゴージャストの「超明るい 500W撮影用家庭用蛍光灯電球」はめちゃ悪い。ゴミ。色が悪い。明るくない。
They're advertised as being “500W equivalent”, which means that they should be brighter than eight 60W room lights, but they seemed to me to be about as bright as, well, one 60W room light. Maybe one 100W room light if I'm feeling generous.
I had eight of them running at once, which produced what seemed to be a nice white light, but the photos all have the green tinge. What a waste of money.
If you're lucky, you can recover a bit in Lightroom. I found that if I adjust the “Yellow Hue” slider, I can turn the green into a pinkish orange, which at some point along the slide gets it to mostly match my skintone...
Color Corrected
sort of
You can also go the B&W route, of course.
De-Color Corrected
sort of
Of course, the “yellow hue slider to pink” trick works only if there's no green or yellow in the photo. Luckily that day I had on one of my ¥780 Uniqlo Dry Polo shirts and some jeans I got at Uniqlo as well...
Original Green
The real problem shows up when you have a smile... teeth are never truly white, and they get affected somewhat by the slider, leaving an orange-tinged smile. Ugh. So to process reasonably, you have to go in with a desaturate brush (while at the same time getting more earnest with the tooth brush).
So, I'm in the market for high-quality fluorescent bulbs. Any suggestions?