Canon 15mm Fisheye - First Hours

I added two relatively small items to my gear bag recently. One of which is a Canon 15mm. I'm not a super gear head reviewer, I don't take 100% crops and compare chromatic aberration, edge sharpness or vignetting, but I do love this lens. Many photographers dislike wide angles and especially dislike specialty lenses like this because they don't have a lot of versatility....I disagree.

This lens does not have ultrasonic focusing like my other lenses, so it's a little hard to get used and at first you think that the lens is broken, but this is normal. Because of the 15mm focal length this lens has extreme depth of field, and the hyperfocal distance is incredibly short, so even if your focus is a bit slow, you'll probably capture what you need to.



These are the first few sample shots I took after having the lens for about 3 hours while my Wife and Father-in-law went out for a quick dinner in the beautiful whether Thursday evening.

This first image above shows us the extremely close focal distance. Note: I usually don't whip out the camera at the dinner table, but as our trainee waitress' trainer failed to show up we were stuck with the trainee which drew out every aspect of our meal by three fold. We didn't mind so much because of the perfect evening.

This next image is an image you traditionally notice with fisheyes, any verticles are extremely distorted, but still interesting. (BTW the new self-checkouts at the Eastern Market CVS have greatly improved the lines)

The lens is also great for scenics....of course be careful when snapping pictures from the crosswalk.
I've decided this will be my wide angle lens on an upcoming trip out of the country (along with my 24-70mm) and I'll leave my 16-35mm at home. Using inexpensive software you can easily "de-fish images."



I used PT-Lens, an easy to use software with sliders for various lens corrections and automatic correction for most major lenses (just not fisheyes). This was my first try with PT-Lens and I need to figure out the best way to use it as my setting aren't quite right yet, but you can see the ability to take a fisheye and transform it into a great wide angle shot.



I've rented this lens for weddings before so already knew what I could get with it, but can't wait to spend some quality time with it.

Kristen and Jimmie's Engagement Photos

Kristen and Jimmie trekked down to DC last week during the hottest day of the spring (I think it topped out at 90) and that's hot for the beginning of April. Things have cooled down a bit around here, but the days are still counting down for their summer wedding.

Things started off pretty quiet, but, as you can see, Jimmie is a big ham we all had a great time.

 Here are a few of my favorites:

Lighting a Gym - Home Court Follow up

Besides starting off this post with a lighting diagram, you also get one of the best looking mascots around!



This is a follow up post to when I announced the Home Court Game last week check out that post for why there's a bunch of congressman on the court.

Rarely do we ever do a new technique on our own, but what we do add is our implementation. The trick isn't to copy some one else word for word, because that will NEVER work, it's to learn, understand what's going on, and apply that to your current situation while adapting to what gets thrown at you. This is based on David Hobby's gym post.

I started off in my head with the plan. I had clamps ready...I'd get two lights about half court...good to go. Alas, several problems: 1) No aisle in the center bleachers 2)There was a stage on the opposite side with more bleachers on them 3) there were chairs behind both hoops with about 2 feet of space to the court. 4) I have about 5 minutes to convert everything to take a good looking (I hope) group picture during half time.

My solutions: I wedge a light stand in the top row foot well and caution taped a small box around it. I had to hide a light in a plant at the corner of the stage so as not to block the view of those on the stage bleachers. I clamped a light to a chin-up bar behind the hoop. More on the group shot below.

The key to David Hobby's tri-lighting is to make sure your lights are high enough and angled slightly above the court, so the most powerful center part of the beam doesn't hit anyone directly until they're on the other side of the court, this together with the light fall off (inverse square law) will yield even light on one half of the court. Any place where someone is catching a little too much light on one side their back is usually turned to it and I don't mind the rim lighting being a little hot. Let's take a look at some photos.


Here you can see the nice even light in the key. I'm able to get decent ambient with motion stopping at ISO 640, 1/200th, f/3.2.


Looking across the other side I can position myself to catch the players in front of the light for interesting back lighting:


But even if they're not covering the light, You'll get the spot light effect which I don't mind...makes for something different.  Really look at the shadows cast by the players, gives you an idea of the light intensity coming from my lights.:


Here you can see even when Rep. Baca is standing just in front of the light, the light is high enough to give him some nice rim lighting, yet not nuke him (the light is just inside that corner in left part of the frame  - just a bit higher and angled up slightly):



President Obama's "Body Man", Reggie Love (also former Duke NCAA basketball champion) made a surprise visit.  Here you can see the same effect on the other side of the court, only the rim light above become the front light, and the roles are reversed.....I love physics.  The hoop light is also angled up so #3 is bright, just not too bright.



I even got pretty decent light all the way to center court:



A few more before the group shot:

Keep in mind, I always have complete control from my camera. Not only do I also keep an on-camera flash ready for fill if I'm caught someplace my off-camera lights won't be able to handle, I can also change the power of my lights, or turn them off with my jrx transmitter. Here's one where my on camera flash provided the fill, with my mounted lights providing some highlights:



For the group shot, I again took another page out of the book of Sir Hobby. Ideally for the group shot I would moved the stage light way out to the right onto the floor and had my key light camera left instead of right. But I had very limited time to change set-ups, while dealing with people sitting in the bleachers! So I just turned the stage light and pointed it out to center court, this would act as my separation light. I did the same thing for my bleacher light (this would become my on axis fill- I moved it closer to half court than the lighting diagram suggests). I moved my hoop light and clamped it to the a bleacher aisle rail and cranked up the juice (this became my key). Here's a new lighting diagram:


The first group was nice and small so I could eliminate the rim light. The bottom right is a little darker than I would have liked because I couldn't get my key much higher than a waste high railing in the aisle on the bleachers with everyone getting on and off the bleachers at the same time, I couldn't risk putting a stand over there, but the fill/ambient was enough to ensure he was brought out of the depths of the darkness:

Back row, from left: Reps. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Mervyn Jones, Jr., Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), Andre Carson (D-Ohio), and Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.). Front row: Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas), Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), Joe Baca (D-Calif.), Frank Kratovil (D-Md.) and John Boccieri (D-Ohio).  Senators Casey and Thune were stuck in health care debate and weren't able to make it.

For the entire group I had to pull way back showing off my rim light, but in the end I don't mind it. Gives it a red-carpet feel!  Not bad light coverage for a couple of shoe mount flashes.

Hoops: Congress vs. Professors - Benefit for the Homeless

Between health care partisan politics and march madness, it seems like a great time to talk about a great event coming up this week called "Home Court." It's a basketball game between Members of Congress and the Georgetown Law Faculty. The proceeds benefit the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

This year is the 23rd annual meeting of the Hill's Angels and the Hoya Lawyas, and every year the game continues to be the Legal Clinic's largest source of funds each year. The Game is Wednesday, 24 March at 7:30pm, see the Home Court website for details.

Here are photos from last years game where I had a lot of liberty to roam the court and try a few different things.



For this I was carrying a small portable light stand around to try and put some excitement in it. Turns a simple stretch into something a little more edgy.




Here you can see some of my light set-up for the action...although here I was dragging the shutter a bit to show motion it shows how I clamped a light to one of the half court backboards, David Hobby style. Unfortunately, I was a little timid on my power settings (I didn't want to hang battery backs above heads). Fortunately, I've sold all of my Pocket wizards and am now using radiopopper JRx's so I can change the power setting from my camera! I love these things! Also note: high school gyms are not lit as well as college gyms.

There were two lights on either side of the court (on one half of the court) pointing towards the key of one hoop. I added my own on camera fill, and clearly the ambient was doing most of the work.

Elephants on Parade

I photographed the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus pachyderm parade (a.k.a. elephant walk) yesterday. No matter how old you are it's still a wonder seeing those massive animals marching together, especially through the streets of downtown DC.

I think the last photo helps capture the sheer be-wonderment of the little ones.

There's also a slideshow at the end with a few more.

A Trip to the Dog Park - Snowpocalypse2

A panoramic and from my trip to the dog park:

The Anticipation of Snow - the one that's with you

In anticipation of DC's second major snow storm of the season, I thought I'd give a little warm up from a relatively light snow from earlier this week. Although it was only a couple inches, it was absolutely one of the prettiest snowfalls in history because it was so light that it stuck to every single branch on every tree.

I went out in the morning and walked outside and naturally saw a beautiful scene. It is frequently said (and the title of Chase Jarvis' Book) that the best camera is the one that's with you. I of course didn't have any of my good camera equipment with me that morning, nor do I have an iphone with fancy buttons on it, so I dusted off my 4 year old 6 MP Olympus Stylus 600 that was reviewed on CNET in 2005 and grabbed a few pictures. As you can tell I pushed a little bit of the contrast and colors in a few of these.

Stay safe and bundled up out there!






The snow on the tree looks like cherry blossoms! Almost reminds me of spring.