swarbrick.com - the blog

Now that's interesting...

Having not posted anything for a very, very long time - mostly, in my defence, because I've been too busy taking photos - I decided I needed both an excuse and a mechanism to revive the blog.

The mechanism came first - this was written using TypePad Mobile on my Palm Treo 650 - so all I really needed was an excuse.

Until I get a better one, I'm going to pick some of the pictures that are most highly rated by flickr's controversial Interestingness algorithm and tell the story behind the short. What made me take it? Was it what I intended? What were the camera settings - and why?

We'll start not with the most 'interesting' but with the first photo I took that made Number 1 on flickr's daily Explore page - however briefly!

It was taken last November - the day I collected my D200 from Gray's (and shortly after I dropped it - see the earlier post).

I was really just trying to get the hang of the camera and had been experimenting with very high ISO settings. It was late in the afternoon, mid-December and I was walking down London's Embankment towards Albert Bridge.

I'd just taken a shot of the sun setting over the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park on the opposite bank of the Thames when I turned back towards where I'd parked the car.

The line of lamps and trees lining my route and Albert Bridge in the distance had a certain appeal, with the post-Buncefield sunset casting a warm glow over everything.

I took a couple of shots - playing with the perspective - and contnued my walk.

It wasn't until I got home and converted the RAW file with Nikon Capture that it really came together, though. D-lighting to lift the shadows and a little extra warming up helped a lot - as did a later crop and the removal of a very bright truck tail light, both at the suggestion of other flickrites.

Why do I think it hit Number 1? It's an OK shot, but I uploaded it the day the D200 was launched. The world was keen to see what the camera was capable of and it was the best of what turned out to be the biggest batch of D200 shots uploaded that day. Even this disaster had almost 1500 views...

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Small wonder

With the cycling season over - if only until the end of January - I need something to keep me busy on dull winter weekends and I've been finding plenty to do with the camera.

Inspired by the Macro competitions on the DPReviews forum, I had a couple of attempts at lashing together a macro rig by reversing my 50mm f1.8 lens. I didn't really know what I was doing but I quickly discovered that the D70 won't take a picture without a lens attached. I knew you could buy a reversing ring - and ordered one for a tenner from eBay - but I couldn't wait. I later discovered that the trick is to hold the lens in front of a regular lens, but I tried something similar but slightly more Heath Robinson - I fitted a teleconvertor onto the body and taped the 50mm to the front of it.

Coupled with the SB-800 mounted off-camera, alongside and slightly above the object, the setup worked fine - once I'd figured out how to fire the flash remotely in manual mode. The magnification was a little extreme but then I remembered I had a T-mount adaptor to use the camera with my telescope which I've never used because the camera is too heavy for the guide motors on the 'scope to cope with. It was separated from the telescope with an extension tube about 10cm long, but that unscrewed, allowing the 50mm to be connected (albeit with some insulating tape) to the mount. The first competition subject was 'Objects' and the sprocket above and the hardware shot (left) were the first shots I took. I was reasonably pleased with the results. But I took them on the last day of the competition so I didn't get a chance to act on any feedback.

 

The next competition was on the subect of food but I didn't manage to get an entry in during the week it ran. I did have a few attempts - this time using the extension tube from the telescope mount to try to vary the magnification. For some reason, any attempt to light the objects with the SB-800 resulted in an intense patch of light in the centre of the image which I suspect was caused by reflections on the shiny inner surface of the tube. At some point I'll try spraying the inner surfaces with some matt black paint.

By the third week I was feeling fairly confident and, with the subject set as 'Hands and feet' I decided to do something from left field and took a couple of shots of watches. Sadly, I hadn't read the small print and the hands and feet in question were supposed to be attached to a human...

Somewhat deflated, I left the camera on the tripod with the lens attached (with electrical tape, remember...) and went to bed. When I got up in the morning, the T-mount was still there but the lens had fallen a metre and a half onto a wooden floor during the night. Amazingly, it still worked - at least for the first couple of days.

It then stopped providing metering information to the camera and I thought it might be relegated to a full time macro role (one now secured by the reversing ring which arrived the same day), but a bit of fiddling around (removing and replacing the block which holds the electrical connectors) has restored this ridiculously good sub-£100 lens to its former glory. And this week's competition is The Christmas Spirit. Watch this space.

 

Remember, remember...

  Ooooh...Ahhhhh...
  Originally uploaded by swarbrick.com.

...the 5th of November? Well, it was a while ago, but I've been busy!

Much as I love taking sports photos, it's nice to do something else for a change. Faced with being dragged out on a freezing cold evening to a fireworks display, I decided to make the most of it and take the camera.

I took the 50mm f1.8 with me, but I didn't use it - preferring instead to use the 18-70 to increase the chances of getting a firework in the field of view. We were the first ones to arrive so I was able to set up right by the safety fence - I actually had one leg over the fence with the other two right up against it to keep the legs as far away from kicks and knocks as possible.

I'd had a quick look on the web before I went and the advice there seemed to be pretty consistent - set the lens at around f8, focus on infinity, point the camera at the sky and open the shutter for 5 to 7 seconds at a time. And that's all I did. Just tried to time it so that I opened as the blast started - which got easier as time went by and I got used to how fast the rockets and mortars travelled.

I shot RAW and I have to say, I'm quite pleased with the results - especially after tweaking the exposure and resetting the black point. There were a lot of empty skies and many that didn't quite work, but some of those that did were as good as many 'pro' shots I've seen. I haven't put these on swarbrick.com as I'm trying to restrict that site to sports and automotive photography but if you want to see some more they're in my flickr collection.

More flash stories

Well, I had thought the season was coming to an end, but I've shot another 3 events over the last couple of weeks and had more - but still varied - success with the flash.

The first event was Palmer Park Velo's club track championships. Palmer Park's an outdoor velodrome but the light was very variable - ranging from bright sunshine to really quite thick cloud. I used the flash for most of the event - from varying distances and on various settings - or, at least, various camera settings. Despite saying in my last post that I'd try fixed, guide number based settings, I stuck to the SB-800's AA mode.

There are a few I quite like but, for the most part those taken with flash are (mostly) hopelessly underexposed or (occasionally) hideously overexposed.

What I find frustrating is that I can't seem to find a pattern. The picture to the right was taken with the flash and diffuser and is a good example of what I've been expecting to get from it.

The picture below was taken from slightly further away, but without the diffuser. This one's slightly underexposed, but it's perfectly acceptable, so I know that the diffuser isn't the factor.. I'm still at a loss. I think I'm just hopeless!

The other problem I had been having with the flash was battery life. I'd attempted to address that with some high capacity (2300mAH) rechargeables. They seemed to do the trick, easily lasting the whole session and taking well over 200 pictures, rather than the 150 or so that Nikon estimate. I've ordered a couple of sets of 2500mAH batteries and a quick charger from www.7dayshop.com, so that problem, at least, should be solved.

A week later and I was at Hillingdon for the Central Division Circuit Race Championships where the day started bright and ended in gale force wind and rain. Again, I used the flash to try to counter the horrible flat light for most of the game and I had the most success I've had at any event so far with both straight fill-in flash and some 'effects' with rear curtain synch. Maybe I will master it after all.

I've got a couple of real tests coming up over the next month or so - a couple of Gorrick mountain bike races in the deep shadows of Swinley Forest on the Berkshire/Surrey/Hampshire borders - one of them at night!

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Reading Track League

I really am struggling to get the hang of this flash! At last week's Reading Velodrome Racing Monday Night Track League meeting I took it along for the first time and the batteries ran out. I ended up chatting to people all evening because I'd become dependent on it - even though I'd been using the pop-up flash all season!

This week I'd bought some rechargeables and they lasted the whole evening, but it wasn't very successful, frankly. Shots were either under exposed or over exposed, riders complained about being blinded by the flash (in shots that were underexposed). I'm not quite sure what to do.

It doesn't seem to cause anyone any problems during the day, used as a fill-in flash, which isn't a great surprise. And, at night, if you get close enough it seems to be OK with the diffuser on - but the range on that is less than pathetic. Without it, it blinds people and there seems to be a 2m wide window between hopeless over exposure and darkly despondent under exposure.

The only consolation is that this was the last race meeting of the season and I have until next Spring to figure it out. The bad news is I'm not sure how I'm going to get any opportunities to figure it out when there's no racing on!

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Tour of Britain

Having attended the Tour of Britain last weekend I've learned three important lessons - first, I've still got an awful lot to learn, second, the LCD screen on the back of the D70 is almost useless and, third, it's easier to clean dust off the sensor before you shoot 3000 images than it is to clone it out in Photoshop later. Or, to be fair, I''ve re-learned all three lessons.

I was keen to go anyway, but Palmer Park were invited to take part in the Go-Ride event and organised a coach to get up to London, which seemed as good an excuse as any. I didn't want to lug the Lowepro full of gear around London all day, so I took a cut down set of equipment - just the 80-200, the 18-70 kit lens and the 1.7x teleconvertor in a little gadget bag I got free with a Tamron lens (now sold on eBay).

With the 80-200 in place (along with the new HB-17 lens hood, which shouldn't fit, but does), the SB-800 on top and wearing a t-shirt from the swarbrick.com collection I walked past a section of the crowd control barrier set up like a pig pen. It quickly transpired that it was set aside for press photographers although, initially, I didn't realise that. As I approached the pen, the steward near by opened it up to let me in, so in I went and there I stayed for most of the day.

Which, in many ways, was my first deliberate mistake. The pros came and went during the course of the day. Most never came back and those that did, didn't stay long. The reason? The press pit was in a great location just beyond the finish line, but it was completely in the shade and the sun was directly in front of you, the other side of the finish line. Exposure was a nightmare, even with the SB-800 trying to fill in.

I got a few OK shots - and even managed to get one of Paolini crossing the line, despite the fact that the legit press pack were all bunched on the road in front of me at that point - but most are too under exposed to recover even in Photoshop.

Worse, though, are the few I took halfway through the race when I wandered around the circuit trying to get some variety. Along the Embankment there was no light at all, even with the flash. I had to throw them all away.. At the corner where the Embankment meets Parliament Square there was plenty of it, but all in the wrong places and still having the flash on meant they were all hopelessly over exposed. I'd never got so many shots so wrong in one day - although I didn't realise how wrong they were until later. I went back to the safety, security and poor light of my pen...

As well as the full set of photos on swarbrick.com, I've been putting a few pictures on Flickr, which is quite an interesting place. So, it turned out, had a lot of other people so if you're interested in seeing shots from the earlier stages - and shots that went right elsewhere on the Westminster circuit - try the Tour of Britain group area.

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Indoor velodromes - Part II

Well, all in all, it went quite well. As expected, I'm still struggling to find the time to process and update the (1500 plus) images, but the f2.8 lens certainly made all the difference.

The lighting at Newport is poor. Only about 25% of the ceiling lights were on and they were supplemented by a very small number of perspex panels in the roof - although it was amazing how much difference they made when the sun snuck out from behind a cloud.

Larry Hickmott, British Cycling's official photographer was there and we had a chat about the poor conditions. He remarked - as I did before the shoot - that I would struggle without a flash, and he was right - up to a point.

I started at ISO 640 but shot most of the day at 800, resorting to 1250 towards the end of the day. It was a very uneven light and, of course, mostly from above, so there were a couple of problems...

The biggest problem was the focus. The D70's pretty good, if not a patch on the pro dSLRs, but it was struggling at times to find focus. By playing around a little I found I was able to get a good lock by focussing on the handlebars of the bikes and using what reflected light there was from the track surface.

The riders themselves were mostly in shadow and the bulk of the post-processing work will be boosting shadows and higlights to get around the lighting problems. A fill flash would have solved the problem, but the built-in Speedlight on the D70 - remarkable though it is - is too harsh and takes too long to recycle to be much use.

The value of the f2.8 lens really hit home when I took some shots of the medal ceremonies with the kit  18-70 lens, which is f4.5 at the long end. It was utterly hopeless without the flash, which was struggling to recycle - partly because it does anyway and partly because I'd stupidly left my second battery on the charger at home and had to resort to the 'emergency' CR3 lithium battery pack,

The results aren't bad. There's not much visible noise and the colour balance is about right, despite the odd lighting conditions.

The bottom line is that I need that SB-800 - and it's on its way. I finally gave in and ordered it this morning, funded by my first 'commercial' shoot - of which, more later...

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Indoor velodromes

  Manchester 2005
  Originally uploaded by swarbrick.com.

Most of the cycling photography I've done this year has been outdoors. Most of that has been at velodromes - Reading, Welwyn, Herne Hill and Halesowen - but I've taken a few shots at time trials and road races (or, at least, circuit races).

Mostly with lots of light and lots of options to move around.

Tomorrow, though, I'm off to Newport for the final day of the British Cycling Youth Track Championships and, frankly, I'm not looking forward to it.

So far I have only had two attempts at shooting indoor cycling. The first was at Calshot, but was with my old 'point and shoot' Panasonic DMC-FZ10. It didn't go well because I wasn't happy using a flash in that environment and the camera just wasn't up to the job of shooting in available light.

The second was at Manchester at the British round of the Track World Cup. It went better, but it was pretty much my first time out with the D70 and I had a couple of problems.

I naively thought that auto ISO would be a good idea. It wasn't - everything ended up being shot at ISO 1600 and was hopelessly grainy. And I thought my Tamron 28-300 Di lens would be a good idea. It wasn't - it needed so much light that it was forcing Auto ISO to 1600 all the time... The few good shots I got were taken with the 'kit' 18-70.

This time I'm hoping for better results. I have 6 months more experience and a Nikkor f2.8 lens, both of which will help. I'm also much more confident about using flash without blinding the riders, although I really do need to fork out for the dedicated Nikon SB-800 Speedlight flash soon. I also have my 'antique' 50mm f1.8 which embarasses my kids but might be quite good fun.

I'm away for most of the weekend, so it's unlikely the results will be posted before the middle of next week - I have a Reading Track League to shoot on Monday and the final Hillingdon Tuesday night circuit race of the year the night after. But once they are up I'd really appreciate any feedback you might have. And if you want to buy some photos, it'll help fund that SB-800... :)

Guy

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