Traveling the Journey of Light | Photoblog Thoughts, feelings, and techniques behind the photography of Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston

135mm of Pure JoyPosted by drfl on April 12th, 2010

After over a year of waiting and much debate, I decided to order a Canon 135 f/2l lens.  Being primarily a landscape/wildlife photographer, this lens wasn’t on anywhere close to my future purchase shortlist (I was holding out for a 17 or 24 tilt/shift) for quite a while.  Reviews of this lens are nothing short of rave.  On every merchant website I visited this lens never scored below a 4 out of 5 and the vast majority of those reviews were 5s.  I have never seen any product that didn’t have at least 1 bad review since usually, there’s one or two people out there ready to throw out a bad review for any little thing.  This lens had none of that and there were literally hundreds of reviews. 

So what were the main motivating factors that pushed me towards this lens?

• As my portraiture kept picking up, I needed a lens with a fast autofocus (lots of fast kids). 
• Compatibility with Canon teleconverters, both the 1.4x and 2x support autofocus on all Canon cameras (making it a 189 f/2.8 and a 270 f/4 lens).
• I needed a lens that allowed me to capture a greater rate of in-focus photographs in lower light.

The 135 arrived on Friday so I spent the weekend field testing it.  As I am not into photographing brick walls, looking at charts, or studying diagrams I am going to include my subjective thoughts and observations into today’s posts.  If you need charts and graphs, feel free to look at the hundreds of sites dedicated to that.  Frankly, it gives me a headache and keeps me from shooting.

I’ll begin by what I expected.  Since this lens is at the top of every portrait photographer’s list and is recognized for its sharpness, I expected to receive a lens that was sharp, provides a good working distance between my subject and I, and gave excellent bokeh, color, and contrast.  When I finally had it in my hand and attached to a camera I found that I was wrong on 4 counts.  The lens is extremely sharp, has incredible bokeh, fabulous color, and phenomenal contrast.  In short, the lens exceeded my every expectation (well, except my working distance one, I guess, but how do you improve on that?).

Next, I’ll mention how it compares to what I already own.  In the normal and short to long telephoto arena I currently own a 70-200 f/4l (Non-IS), 300 f/4l (IS), and a 50mm compact macro lens.  The “fastest” lens I had owned previously was the 50 which opened up to 2.5.  This lens gives me some great depth-of-field, and it has some good bokeh associated, but the autofocus is horrendous and the working distance was a tad close.  The lens is primarily meant to be a macro lens with the primary mode of focus being manual so it often hunts to obtain focus.  This makes this “fast” lens not so fast when it comes to snapping portraits, especially of constantly moving children. 

My  300 f/4l focuses quickly and was my sharpest lens.  Not great as a general-purpose human portrait lens (as opposed to animal portrait), but it has great bokeh.  This was the sharpness benchmark that I expected the 135 to exceed.

The 70-200 f/4l covers the 135 focal range and was the primary reason I held off on purchasing this lens for so long.  I have owned this lens longer than any other and I use it frequently for portraits.  The focus is fairly snappy, however, this lens lacked when it came to focusing inside and was not as fast as I needed more often than I was willing to admit. 

Finally, I’m going to post some photos.  These exemplify the beauty of this lens.  My focus rate was extremely high and I used various focus points.  Really, I felt like I was holding a whole new camera, the autofocus was that fast!  The sharpness of the lens and the way that the rest of the image melts away from the area in focus is simply superb. All photos below were taken with a Canon 5d (Original flavor) and 135 f/2l.

Taken at f/2.5

Taken at f/2.5

Taken at f/2.8

Taken at f/2.5

Taken at f/2.5

Frankly, this lens begs to be used at wide-open apertures. I never saw myself stopping down beyond about f/3.2, except for a test. If you have any reservations about this lens, cancel them now and order.

As a side note, when I was researching this lens, many forums discussed the benefits of placing the 1.4x extender on this lens, but there were no examples, so I will be discussing that aspect of this lens in tomorrow’s post.

An End of Year Retrospective for 2009Posted by drfl on December 29th, 2009

At the end of every year there is a deluge of “Best of” lists.  Wholly subjective and different for every person, these lists hopefully celebrate the successes and identify the failures so that the next year can be even better.  It is during the cold wintry months I sit down in a warm location and review my previous year. I look at my work, look at how I grew and changed artistically and ask myself a few key questions (summarized):

1. Did I accomplish my artistic goals that I set last year?
2. Were my business efforts met with success?
3. What images did I fail to capture the mood/scene/emotion that I wanted? 
4. Did I surprise myself?
5. Do I still enjoy what I am doing? (Most Important)

 
If #5 is a Yes! (and it has been year after year), I look to next year and ask myself a few more key questions:

1. What artistic goals do I have for this year?
2. What locations should I focus on photographing?
3. What types of lenses/filters/techniques should I try?
4. What business ideas should I implement or push this year?
5. What hasn’t been successful and what should discontinue?

 
So what have I found by asking myself all these questions?  To follow the lead of others, here is my ”Best Of” list to illustrate my triumphs and to help answer those questions.  This is a collection of my favorite images, perhaps not the most profitable, but the ones that I feel exemplify my artistic growth.

#5 (Tie) Glorious Sandhills Sunrise and Toadstool Dawn

One of my ongoing projects is to photograph Nebraska, especially the not often seen places. I want to show the diversity of the state and the beauty that exists. These two photographs each show a different region of the state and places that many would overlook.

Read the rest of this entry »

What is “Acceptable Sharpness”?Posted by drfl on December 23rd, 2009

A few weeks ago I wrote an article entitled “How to get Sharp Enlargements: Breaking the Megapixel Myth”that gave some tips on creating images that could be greatly enlarged. Now, I am going to address the issue of “Acceptable Sharpness”. In a perfect world of capturing sharp photographs we would all have a remote similar to the movie “Click” in which we could simply hit the “pause” button and everything would simply stop. At that point we could setup our gear, put our tripod in place, connect our cable release, set the mirror lockup, choose the sharpest aperture, put on the best lens, fix the lowest ISO, and then finally capture the image. Unfortunately, no such device exists and so we are left to deal with breezes that blow, animals that run, and hands that shake and As a result, not all nature images are studio perfect. When zoomed in and analyzed imperfections may be noted, perhaps a little motion blur, perhaps a bit of depth of field issues and of course, hand held photographs will almost always be less sharp than an image from a tripod mounted camera. Does this mean that these images should be tossed out due to technical imperfections? At what enlargement point would these images degrade? These are the questions that led me on my path to finding my “Acceptable Sharpness”.

Read the rest of this entry »

How to Get Sharp Enlargements: Breaking the Megapixel MythPosted by drfl on November 18th, 2009

Myth: More megapixels will always lead to a sharper enlarged image.

This is without a doubt the greatest myth perpetuated by the camera industry today.  Marketing tells us more megapixels=better camera.  Back in the film days there were only a few choices, 35mm, 4×5, 8×10, 110, etc. In those days, (with a few exceptions, of course) the film size DID dictate how far an enlargement could be taken.  I remember years ago taking my 35mm black and white film that I had developed in the dark room and making test strips, then enlarging it to 6×9 and then to 11×14.  The sharpness of the image would begin to break down around that point.  The three main things I had to remember in achieveing the sharpest, largest prints in those days was 1: Shoot big film. 2: Proper focus when taking the photograph and 3: A grain finder.  For those of you who don’t know what a grain finder is, well, let’s just say its the equivalent of 100% zoom in Photoshop.

So, if larger film led to sharper, larger enlargements, shouldn’t more megapixels do the same thing?  I mean after all all those technical sites speak about resolving power and lines per inch and its always better bigger - right?

Well, the answer is somewhat elusive and lies in three basic parts.

Read the rest of this entry »

How to Create the “Orton” Effect - Tractor Series Part VPosted by drfl on September 18th, 2009

For the last in the 5 part series, I will demonstrate a variation of the “Orton” technique that I occasionally use. The Orton technique was popularized a few years ago and has gained momentum. Many ethereal modifications to photographs have been using different techniques centered around one goal - giving an image a slight blurry, other-wordly look.

For this image, I loaded the RAW file into Adobe Photoshop and tweaked the temperature, contrast, etc. until I had the image processed to my liking.

I then copied the background layer by right-clicking and selecting “Duplicate” and naming the layer “Blurring Layer”. This new layer will be selected. I then chose “Gaussian Blur” under the “Blur” options and picked a radius of “30″.

Going back to my layers menu, I changed the opacity of this layer until I had the effect for which I was going, on this image it happened to be 51%. For a final touch, I created a curves adjustment to add a little more contrast to the photograph, being liberal with the curve.

To recap:

1. Load the RAW file into Adobe Photoshop and set the temperature, contrast, etc.
2. Copy the background layer.
3. Use the “Gaussian Blur” filter with a radius of “30″.
4. Change the opacity of this layer until desired effect is achieved.
5. Create a curves adjustment to add a little more contrast.

Technical Details:
Canon 5d Mark II, 70-200 f/4l @ 109mm, f/8, 1/500 second

How to Create the “Old Time” Effect Using Nik Silver Efex Pro - Tractor Series Part IVPosted by drfl on September 17th, 2009

Continuing in the steps of yesterday’s image, I wanted to convert a close-up of the headlight on the tractor to monochrome, but I wanted it to have a bit of a sepia, faded feeling like photographs from another era. Just as before, I loaded the RAW file using Adobe RAW and set my temperature, contrast and other settings close to how I would want the image if I was going to publish it in color. Once again, I used the grayscale option to help me to visualize how the image would like in black and white to help perfect my options.

The Large Conversion

Once I have everything set, I then activate the Nik Silver Efex filter and begin scrolling through my options on the left. About 2/3rds down the page, I find a couple of options for sepia toned images. I think that the Dark Sepia version works the best so I choose that one. It turns out a bit dark, so I use the brightness slider to increase it just a tad. I also up the contrast and structure a little bit from the defaults. While some of the pipes are falling into the darkness a bit, I don’t mind that, but I want to show a bit of detail so I did move the shadows slider up. The highlights slider I left alone.

Adding That Little Extra

Since the tractor consists mainly of reds and white, I choose a green filter which helps lighten the reds and create more a sepia tone across the whites. I didn’t like the effect full on, so I moved the intensity to 64%. Because of the quality of the lenses in the past, many of the old photos have a bit of a vignetting to them. My goal with this is to not make it too noticeable, but give the viewer a bit of a lead in into the photo. I moved the vignetting down to -7 which darkens the corners slightly, but not too noticeably.

To recap:

1. Load the RAW file into Adobe Photoshop and set the temperature, contrast, etc.
2. Use Nik Silver Efex Pro to find a sepia setting close to the desired result.
3. Tweak the Brightness/Contrast/Structure settings.
4. Modify the Shadows/Highlights settings.
5. Experiment with different colored filter effects.
6. Vignette if desired.

Technical Details:
Canon 5d Mark II, 17-40 f/4l @ 40mm, f/10, 1/400 second