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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entrance Gate Detail
Kajuji Temple (勧修寺)
Kyoto, Japan
Today's post is a continuation of yesterday's look at the Kajuji Temple during its bleak winter phase. Even then it was quite nice.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/4, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Rustic”
There's a fine line on the spectrum of disrepair between “quaint rustic” and “ugly dilapidated neglect”, and I found this temple to be well situated on the pleasant side of the line, much like the fences at the Gioji Temple.
Just inside the gate was a weird barren bush of the likes I'd never seen....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Razor-wire Bush
Actually ニシキギ (“winged spindle” or “burning bush”)
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/4, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looks Painful
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lurking
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Funky Leaves
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Oh Well
BIF (bird in flight) on short notice
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lingering Color
still on Dec 15
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Detour
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Paul
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lantern
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Generations
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Paul
being Paul
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/4, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Detail
lots of detail in the full leaf
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/4, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Must Have Been Exquisite
back in the day
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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Desolate
Lake at Kyoto's Kajuji Temple (勧修寺) in Winter
京都市山科区の勧修寺、冬の氷室池（去年の12月). 真冬でも美しい所ですが、夏は全然違うでしょう。
In an article in yesterday's Japan Times, “A heavenly retreat amid the bustle of Kyoto”, about the Kajuji Temple (勧修寺) in the Yamashina area of Kyoto, the author waxes about the temple's many botanical wonders, especially water lilies and lotuses. I happen to have gone there in mid December last year, perhaps the most bleak season for the temple.
It was still very nice even then, and remains high on my list to revisit. The article reminds me to post about that earlier trip, and to schedule another one soon.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entrance
The Kajuji Temple (勧修寺)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Initial Survey
of the lake
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Seen Better Days
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tight Squeeze
the lake was very shallow at the edges, but the carp seem to manage
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
¼ Around The Lake
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Herons on the Island
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Turtle
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Murky
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Back Path
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Island from Behind
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Broken
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ruins?
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/2, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Funky Tree
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Other Visitors
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hallway
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Garden
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Detour
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Intersection
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ample Free Parking
It really was nice, so now that I'm reminded that there's a season where plants are actually alive, I'm excited to go back.
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So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I happen to have acquired a Nikon D4. I haven't used it all that much yet, but it mostly seems okay. However, my strongest impression so far is utter disappointment in the one feature that I was really really really looking forward to: focal-length-aware Auto ISO. It's implemented so poorly as to be essentially useless to me. The one feature I was really looking forward to.
I realize that many people will never care one way or the other about the Auto ISO feature, but this plays a part in almost every shot I take, so it's a very big deal to me.
I've been a part of creating some big products (Yahoo! and Lightroom), so I'm quite familiar with the spouted opinions of ignorant know-it-alls bitching about how wrong something is when it just happens to not be how they personally wish it to be, perhaps for very good reasons beyond the ability of the so-called expert to comprehend. I really don't want to be that way... I know I'm not an expert in camera design and marketing.... but really, as an engineer and photographer I can't possibly imagine why Nikon choose the implementation that they did, one that seems to me to be gratuitously sucky.
It's pretty obvious how to do focal-length-aware Auto ISO smartly, and I submitted an official request to Nikon many years ago (circa 2006? 2007?) detailing it, as I'm sure plenty of other folks did. It's so obvious. You allow the user to enter a “focal-length multiplier” for the minimum shutter speed; if the user enters a “1”, then a 200mm focal length would result in a minimum of 1/200th of a second. If “1.5” is entered, the minimum would be 1/300th of a second. If “0.5” is entered, it'd be 1/100th of a second. Simple, obvious, and intuitive. The only twist that comes to mind would be to have a separate multiplier setting to be used when VR (anti-shake) is active.
But no, Nikon had to do something more complex and less intuitive. But at least they avoided documenting it in the manual or anywhere else that I can find, to keep it a “fun” and ongoing mystery. I'll have to do a bunch of tests to figure out just what's happening behind the opaque “faster/slower” labels they use. Sigh.
Even worse, though, is that it doesn't work at all when a non-CPU lens like my beloved all-manual Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, my favorite and most-used lens. It simply shuts down and defaults to a useless 1/50th of a second.
Can there be a technical reason for this? The camera knows the focal length of the lens, which is the only extra thing the camera needs to know with respect to this focal-length-aware Auto ISO, so I can't fathom a technical reason why non-CPU lenses disable the feature. Can not fathom. But it's such an odd, unexpected restriction that there must be a reason... mustn't there?
I'm so very disappointed, but it gets worse.
Even if I can quantify what it does with a CPU-enabled lens, to take advantage of it I'd have to swap back and forth among settings every time I change lenses, something I might do 50 times on a single outing. (Really; I like primes and change lenses often, doing so at least 65 times on this outing last year, for example.) I would have to turn it on when I switched to a CPU lens, and turn it off and select a specific minimum shutter speed when switching to a non-CPU lens. This is a hassle made all the worse because Nikon inexplicably removed the ability to put “Auto ISO Settings” into the easily-accessible “favorites” menu, meaning that I'd have to hunt for it in the menu system every time I wanted to do this. What a hassle! It was just dandy on the D200 and the D700, so why did they go to the extra trouble to disallow this one particular menu item from the “favorites” menu on the new camera? One believes that there must be a technical reason, but the engineer in me is left without the slightest hint what it might be.
Nikon's computer software has a reputation for being horrible in every respect (slow, kludgy user interface, inconvenient workflow, etc.), so when looking at these inexplicable software choices for the camera firmware, it's hard to come to any other conclusion but that Nikon simply has no clue how to do good software.
I'd sure like to help. Does anyone know how I can talk to Nikon firmware engineers? I'd make a special trip to Tokyo just to chat with them, in Japanese no less, for 10 minutes. I really would.
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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Watching The Evening Pass
As I mentioned the other day on the impromptu portraits post, I picked up a Nikon D4.
説明書を読まずに、買ったばかりニコンD4で夜の撮影遊び。
I actually ordered it the day it was announced, but ended up canceling the order for lack of excitement about what I'd get over the Nikon D700 I've been happy with for years. But despite having canceled the order, the shop shipped one to me a couple of months later when they finally got stock, and well, not ordering is one thing, but returning is another, so here I am with a D4.
I've used Nikon bodies for years, so many of the basics felt familiar, and with that insufficient head start, I took it with me on a late-night outing with Paul Barr, who had just arrived in Kyoto. I slapped on an f/1.4 lens and set the Auto ISO to go as high as 12k, so I hoped that combination would compensate in the dark evening for my lack of experience with the camera.
(I'd done something similar years ago when I got the D700, as seen in “Impossible Photography: No Light, No Tripod, No Hope. D700 and a 50mm f/1.2”.)
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Low Tide
I was to meet Paul on the Sanjo Street bridge (the one featured a few days later in “Kyoto’s Quasi-Annual Flash Flood”), so I just hung around in the pleasant warm evening and snapped whatever went by...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 7200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Much Brighter Than Reality
though it gives us a peek at the heron that couldn't be seen in real life
Dark scenes kept overexposing, so to maintain a realistic sense of the scene, I had to dial in quite a bit of negative exposure...
This was annoying, and mimicked my experience with the Nikon D700, until I suddenly had an epiphany about exposure that made me feel like a total idiot... something one should learn as the first stop beyond “camera noob”... something that I realized I knew the moment I actually thought about it: the camera attempts to set exposure to create an “average” result, and that works fine in most average situations, but when the scene is particularly bright (e.g. a sunny day over a blanket of snow) or particularly dark (these evening scenes), an overall “average” brightness will be unnaturally dark (resulting in gray snow) or bright (an evening scene that looks almost like day). So, you must dial in some compensation to tell the camera to shoot for an overall brighter or darker result.
I knew this as a textbook fact, and practically speaking I knew to compensate in bright situations, but in my formative years with the D200, it was simply out of the question to take these kinds of evening pictures, so I didn't internalize the textbook knowledge on that side of the scale. When the ability for these night shots arrived with my D700, I remained ignorant, which was simply stupid. Glad to have finally fixed that.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/50 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Oops
slight backfocus 🙂
The D4 has a bunch of different autofocus modes that I didn't know anything about, but I thought I'd play with them before actually reading the manual. The focus miss in the shot above is actually interesting, I think, when you look at the big version... the lawn and path in the background are rendered with such a nice mood.
The next shot (with even more questionable focus) is much darker, perhaps because of the car headlight that had just entered the scene...
As people walked by while I waited on the bridge, I tried what seemed to be an appropriate autofocus mode for tracking people as they moved nearer. I had mixed results, but this next shot impresses me for the overall feel and exposure in such a dark, complex scene...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Straight Out of the Camera
(actually, straight out of Lightroom, with only a bit of added noise reduction)
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waiting in Traffic
with lots of “negative highlights” in Lightroom to tame the LEDs
There were some other autofocus modes that I tried and it was a total disaster. I got a local tough-guy-poser kid to, well, pose for me, but managed to get only the writing on his sleeve in focus...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 7200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wasted Opportunity
After milling around for a while with the camera, Paul and I developed a hearty thirst that required quenching...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
To The Rescue
We sat at a counter overlooking a little river, with the windows in front of us hinged at the top and opened halfway, leaving the windows as half mirrors in front of the leaves of a tree...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hazy Self Portrait
I shot a few more “Kyoto Night Scenes” on the walk home...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Typical Gion
just past midnight
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tidying Up Shop
in front of their flower shop, which was still open at midnight
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/4 sec, f/4.5, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Path To The Chion'in Temple
long exposure while propping the camera on a short light post
I've since sat with the camera's manual and tried the various autofocus modes, and have not been able to make heads or tails about most of them, so I'll have to study more.
My biggest impression with the D4 so far is extreme disappointment. The one feature that I was really really really looking forward to, focal-length-aware Auto ISO, is implemented so poorly as to be essentially useless to me, but I'll rant about that another day.
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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1000 — image data
Cliché At Every Level
there's a reason Abercrombie & Fitch does not use 46-year-old models
Let me say up front that I know the photos on this post are ridiculous. I think the type is ridiculous even when done seriously (e.g. in a “fashion” catalog), but all the more so when done by someone my age. I'm just trying to learn to cut loose a little while also learning about off-camera flash; I'd appreciate if your laughs are with me instead of at me.
この記事はとんでもない写真ばかりですが、友に笑ってくれば嬉しい。この記事のテーマは撮影スタジオのスピードライト(光のストロボ)の試しレポートです。撮影者も撮影対象は私です。「撮影者」の方は本気で、「撮影対象」の方は冗談ポクで遊びです。
As I noted last month in “Trying a Little Formal Portraiture” and a couple of weeks ago in “Impromptu Portraiture Practice”, I'm interested in improving my ability to take portraits. Technically, I'm comfortable with natural light, but I'd also like to have confidence in using artificial lighting, so I set up a little home studio in my living room for an afternoon of testing.
And in the spirit I mentioned in the first link, of feeling the need to learn how to be more comfortable in front of the camera as well, I used myself as the “model”, a role I'm definitely not comfortable with.
I'd bought a Savage “EasyCloth” black background roll and hung it from the curtain rails. I don't really have enough space for full-lengths shots of me without using a wider lens, so my feet are cut off, apparently an unforgivable mistake. Still, so long as I don't invite Nils over, I'm likely the tallest person I'll have to consider. And anyway, my goal was to practice lighting, not produce a usable portrait.
It's been years since I read Strobist, having given up on ever feeling comfortable with artificial lighting, but a few tips came back to me, especially since I played with one light last month for “Prucia Plum Wine from France, and Some Dramatic Lighting”.
First, I picked an exposure that crushed the ambient light.... if I took a photo without any flash, the result would be essentially black. This allowed me to take the ambient light out of the equation, giving me full control (sort of, see below) of any light that made its way to the final result.
I had borrowed a bunch of speedlights so I could try pretty complex stuff, but I thought it best to start with something really simple, something that's been done a million times before. As an artist it's not good to be cliché, but I think it's important to at least have the basic ability to be cliché before discarding a technique. I learn by doing, not by being snobbish about being an “artist”. So, I embraced it and went full-on cliché all the way.
In this case, that meant a simple two-light setup, one almost-directly on either side of the target...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1000 — image data
Flashes
one easy to see at lower left, another on the table midway-up on the far right
Of course, when I took the real photos, I used a zoomier lens to exclude all but the black backdrop and the me standing in front of it.
There's a little square of tape on the floor in front of the cloth... I pre-focused to that point by having Anthony stand in for me (he was actually in the photo above, but I removed him for this post), then tethered the camera to Lightroom so that I could see the results of the shots right away. Sometimes I'd use the 5-second timer to take the shot myself, and sometimes when I could wrangle him I'd have Anthony press the button.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1000 — image data
High Tech Pro-Level Equipment
flash on camera left
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 640 — image data
Super High Tech
flash on camera right
The baffling around and above the flashes is to prevent light spill, onto the black backdrop and, more importantly, onto the ceiling. The room's ceiling is white, and reflections from it were filling in the shadows that I hoped the hard light from the bare speedlight would create. My makeshift baffles in my makeshift studio helped to some extent.
I tried various manual power levels for the two flashes, for example, the flash at camera left at 1/40th power and the flash at camera right at 1/20th power. Through trial and error I could come up with different results, though unfortunately the data about what flashes were at what power was not saved anywhere, either by the camera or by me.
Once I got a basic handle on the setup, I turned off the air conditioning and did a bunch of pushups, as I always do before I ever touch a camera, of course.
I'm holding a Nikon D4 in the photos (as a prop because, you know, my hobby is photography and, you know, I always have my shirt off when I take pictures), but I used a Nikon D700 to take the shots because it can control the two flashes directly, something even the D4 can't do.
This kind of shot is all about creating shadows, so I pushed the camera-right flash slightly behind the line I was standing on, to try to create a bit more shadow across the body. The result, though, strongly depended on the slight changes in how I stood, so the immediate feedback from tethering to Lightroom was very useful.
In post processing, I crushed the blacks and the contrast. The former drops out any hint of the background, and the latter helps accentuate the shadows. (Otherwise, it really is me; most people I showed these to in real life who haven't seen me lately thought I had Photoshopped my head onto someone else's body, but they normally don't see me without a shirt, and I think it's fair to say that I've made some progress in working out in the two months since I faired so badly on a simple mountain hike.)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1000 — image data
A Bit Moodier
having stood a bit further back to let the camera-left light wrap more
And just going with the flow of this dark, high-contrasty look...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/160 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1000 — image data
“Raging Bull”
or something like that
The difference in flash setup (power and location) was minimal among all these; what I really learned is how a subtle change in body angle can make such a big difference in result. It wouldn't be the case, I'm sure, if the light was “soft” (e.g. from a wide area like a large window), but with the hard light from the small area of an undiffused flash head, small movements can have huge effects.
After I got a shower and had started to pack everything up, I realized that I had missed the most cliché shot of all, so quickly snapped the shot that leads this post. I must have already removed the baffles on the flashes because the shadows are not nearly as sharp. Or maybe the pushups had worn off.
I really need to get some jeans that fit, but that's difficult for someone like me in Japan. (Update: I eventually got in good enough shape that I could get a 32x34" from Uniqlo and it fit, and eventually after that, even it got too big!)