Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Movie Shoot
outside my livingroom window
Someone was shooting some movie scenes outside our window for hours today. That's the biggest hubbub our sleepy little town of Kyoto has seen since a Presidential visit in 2005, and part of the G8 Summit earlier in the summer, so I snapped a few shots, all from my livingroom window.
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 340 mm — 1/320 sec, f/7.1, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Talent
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 120 mm — 1/640 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Big Production
( Okay, not so big. Perhaps a dozen people in total )
They were there for a long time... at least the six hours that I noticed them. They spent the most time on the shot on the bridge, coming back to it again and again over the course of the day. The two shots above look like essentially the same scene, but they were taken an hour apart.
I had occasion to bring Anthony to the doctor for a fever, and when passing by, I asked the bored-looking sound guy what the shoot was. “A movie about a maiko” (apprentice geisha).
During the day, they shot a few other scenes, but also spent a lot of time sitting around doing nothing...
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 340 mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Union Rules
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 340 mm — 1/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Aggressive Paparazzi
with disposable film camera
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 340 mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Would You Mind Going Around?”
herding random passers-by out of frame
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 185 mm — 1/800 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Take 72
or so
The most time seemed to have been spent on a scene in which a high-school kid with a yellow backpack walked up, sucking on a fudgesicle...
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 175 mm — 1/640 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Greetings, Mr. Fudgesicle-san”
They did this scene over and over, during the course of several hours. It was a hot day, and the supply of fudgesicles kept melting and dripping all over the actor's hand...
Nikon D700 + 70-200mm f/2.8 + 1.7× Extender @ 340 mm — 1/640 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Perils of Acting
melting, messy props
This is the first time I've had occasion to post pictures of the little stream that runs by our place since the condo across the way redid their wall. As you can see in the background of the photos above, the wall along the path is wonderful, tastefully blending in with its surroundings in a subtle, very Japanese way.
I really like it, and appreciate that they spent their time and money on something they don't even see from their own places.
It used to be an ugly cinderblock eyesore, all the more unsightly because each spring it was the background for the explosion of cherry blossoms that erupted from the trees overhanging the path and river. You can see both the cherry blossoms and the ugly wall in some earlier posts: Long Night Exposures and Cherry Blossoms · Getting Started With Cherry-Blossom Pictures · Cherry-Blossom Full Bloom Hits Kyoto · Pictures of People Taking Cherry-Blossom Pictures · Enjoying the Cherry Blossoms · Indeed, the blooms have bloomed in Kyoto.
My “Nikon D3 Shutter Release in Super Slow Motion” post from two weeks ago, in which I offered a nice presentation of the ingenious work by Marianne Oelund, garnered quite a lot of attention, quickly becoming the most popular post on my blog (which perhaps doesn't say much, but in any case, it's still – two weeks later – getting many thousands of views a day).
A lot of people have commented that they had no idea that a camera shutter was so complex, and for the most part, that's okay because, for the most part, photographers really don't need to be concerned with how the shutter works.
For the most part.
There are two situations in which knowledge of how a shutter works can really benefit a photographer:
- when the subject being photographed is moving very quickly (e.g. the prop of a plane)
- when using a flash
If you are a photographer who might ever face either situation, you owe it to yourself to read Derek Miller's most excellent:
It's a really excellent writeup about how the shutter design and operation is deeply related to how flash photography can be done. For example, it explains in a clear, concise manner “flash sync speed” and other mysteries.
Even if you never intend to use a flash, or to photograph something moving really quickly, if you're at all a camera geek, you'll love his writeup.
I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned on Strobist yet. I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/2, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
You're About to be Stopped
if you're a “bad person”
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/2, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ready To Save the World
On our recent trip to my folks', my mom gave Anthony a “Power Rangers” muscle suit. Wow, he loved it.
After a while of playing....
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/2, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pooped Power Ranger
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Inviting
dark path to someone's home, made bright by Nikon
I haven't done much since returning to Japan a week ago. Tired from the trip... overwhelmed with work (that I don't even get paid for)... and spending an inordinate time at the doctor for some acute back problems. It's been a long week.
But I was feeling okay last night, so after Mass in downtown Kyoto, I thought I'd give my new Nikon D700's legendary low-light performance a spin, combining it with the fastest lens that I could get my hands on (that is, one that lets in the most light), the same Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 that I borrowed from Zak for my Artsy-Fartsy in Kyoto post earlier in the year.
There isn't a color camera with better low-light performance, and if there's a commonly-available lens with better low-light performance, I don't know of it. So, the combination should let me get all kinds of rich, full-color glossies, without a tripod, in absolute total darkness.
Or something like that.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Quality Time
sparsely-lit restaurant balcony overlooking the Kamo River
Kyoto, Japan
Besides having no plan beyond shoving the camera and lens into my bag before heading out, I faced two major hurdles...
The first is that I haven't yet opened the D700's manual, so I don't know much about it beyond what I brought over from having used the D200 for a few years. It's not really fair to put equipment to a test like this when it's likely that any failure will be what, in polite conversation, is referred to as “user error”.
The second problem is that there are a lot of things conspiring against getting accurate focus:
- At f/1.2, the depth-of-field is very thin, so focus must be perfect to have any chance.
- It's hard to focus in the dark, especially when it's so dark that I can't clearly see what I think I'm aiming at.
- The Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 is a manual-focus-only lens. Autofocus won't work with it.
- The stock focus screen on the D700 is designed for autofocus; it's horrible to use with manual focus. The first time I put the D700 to my eye, I thought the lens I had on it was broken because I couldn't get it to focus, even by hand. It took a few moments to realize that I'd been so used to the sharp “focus snap” of the Katz Eye Focusing Screen I'd put in my D200, that I'd forgot how extraordinary it really is. (Sadly, Katz Eye doesn't yet make a focusing screen for the D700.)
- From what I've heard, the “live view” mode on the D700 would allow me to easily get perfect focus, but like I said, I haven't yet cracked the manual, so I don't know how to use it.
Anyway, never to be daunted by the harshness of certain failure, I set out for a 20-minute walk around the Kyoto-nightlife area of Kiyamachi / Pontocho, with the lens fixed at f/1.2, and the camera set to automatically bump up the ISO sensitivity as high as it needed to in order to maintain at least a 1/100-second exposure.
Of course, night photography is relatively easy if you have a tripod and the thing you're photographing isn't moving, so I've posted plenty of tripod-assisted night shots taken over the years with my D200, including cherry blossoms at dusk, a lantern festival, cherry blossoms over a river, Kyoto nightscape, small stream and cherry blossoms, Itsukushima shrine, and cherry blossoms in Gion.
No tripod on today's trip, though.
All the images posted here are straight out of the camera (well, straight out of Lightroom) without any extra post-processing, except for resizing for my blog. (They were shot in the inferior “12-bit NEF” mode, because I didn't realize until today that the 14-bit NEF mode is not the default.)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Discards
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tea Room No. 634
Metering for a reasonable exposure was generally difficult due to the extreme dynamic range in most of the scenes I was drawn to. Often, 99% of the scene would be really dark, with just a few points that, even though they weren't very bright, were so much brighter than the rest of the frame they totally screwed up the metering.
So, both spot metering and exposure lock were my friends, as well as occasional positive exposure compensation.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/80 sec, f/1.2, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
almost pitch black, but
Not As Dark As They Thought
There was so little light in the scene above, I could tell no more than that a couple was sitting there, and I had no hope that anything would come of the picture. Indeed, the result is boring unless you realize that in reality, the scene was almost pitch black. Private investigators (and peeping toms) will love this camera.
This was the dingy entrance alley to some kind of entertainment/food establishment, itself off a tiny passageway running between two small streets (Kiyamachi and Pontocho). It was “out of the way” to several orders of magnitude, and in more meanings than one.
Much of the lighting came from the establishment's sign at the end of the alley, which is nothing more than a washed-out square of white in this photo because in exposing for the dinginess of the alley, the light from sign itself totally washed out the image sensor. (If I'd had a tripod and the inclination, I guess I could have tried to take multiple shots and create some HDR-like composite, but the whole point of my short stroll was not to make lasting art, but just to see what the camera could do.)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
I... Uh.... Dunno
I couldn't tell what the thing was in this scene at a shuttered karaoke place, except a monster of some sort. Now that I can see much more detail, I still can't tell.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Legs
sadly, woefully out of focus
There was plenty of light in this scene, but I had to use spot metering and +2/3 exposure compensation to avoid a silhouette situation.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Brisk Business
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 — 1/100 sec, f/1.2, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Just This Side of Ambiance
This place looked quite nice from outside, so I should have gone in for a cup of coffee, or something. It's right across from the church, so maybe someday I will.
Overall, I'm pleased with what I ended up with, although I really would like to get a better focusing screen.
Genevieve (Jena) Marie Kreta
19.5 inches · 7.5 lbs · 100% love
( 49.5cm · 3,400g )
Congratulations to my sister Marci and her husband, Marty, who on Thursday welcomed their second child, a little girl, following two and a half years after their son, Josh. (Josh has appeared on my blog many times, most of which are linked in the “Related posts” box below.)
Jena's great grandmothers on Marci's side were Genevieve (my mom's mom) and Marie (my dad's mom). My mom's mom actually did go by “Genevieve”, but this week's new arrival will apparently go by the more casual “Jena”.
Marty and his Daughter
In March or so, after my sister-in-law Natalie delivers their first, Anthony will have five cousins!