Calling all Photography nerds!

One from one the last best days of shooting downtown L.A. this year and then another moving up the coast to the iconic and famous Bixby Creek. Bridge in Big Sur. Both with Canon lenses on Fuji GFX system, 500mm for the DTLA and a 50mm tilt shift for the bridge.

 

Salton Sea, Ca- burrowing owl.

 

Posted these on another thread... been following these babies for a few weeks now.

 

From ten days ago at the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve outside of Lancaster, Ca. A classic example of using a lens tilt to alter the plane of focus to keep from near to far in focus.

 

Excellent photo, thanks for sharing; would be interesting to see the same shot stacked. In theory should almost be a duplicate.
Cheers

 

Hi. Focus stacking on something like this is always problematic because all of those flowers are blowing around in the wind and then it becomes very hard to match frames. I do a ton of very complicated focus stacked images in the studio but nothing is moving. This was the perfect place to use the tilt as it's more or less a flat plane for your subject, so a downward tilt it all that's needed. I use both Helicon Focus and Zerene Stacker for those other focus stacked images and they both generally do a good job.

 

Thanks for the insight. I completely agree with stacking and subject movement, nearly impossible to eliminate My subject matter is minerals (they don't move and stacking works great) 80% of the time, other 20% is landscapes. I like your lens tilt photo and will investigate more. Again, thanks for the insight.
Cheers

 

Yeah, pretty much anything that stays put is good for stacking. No minerals here but new and old tools and lots of macro stuff of bits and pieces of musical instruments. Here's one I did for fun, well, I guess it was fun. Took about three weeks total. 248 focus slices all with a Fuji GFX 100s on a Novoflex focusing tilt-shift bellows with the phenomenal Rodenstock 105mm f/5.6 APO Digaron Macro FLOAT lens, probably the sharpest, most contrasting lens I have ever used, but then, at that price, it ought to be. Even after stacking, there's a lot of Photoshop, like 30-40 hours.

 

That's fantastic. From your two photos is obvious you are more advanced than I. I get concerned when I take 30-50 shots to stack and spend 3-5 hours adjusting/processing. Most of my work is for me and the self satisfaction of being able to make the photo look real thing.
I'm including a photo of a cluster of three smoky quartz crystals as an example. I dug this out of the ground and spent several weeks cleaning it. Not on the scale of you Irwin photo, but now and again I can produce satisfactory results.
Cheers

 

Sasquatchian, is that you?... used to read your posts on the now defunct DPReview

 

Whatever you're doing here with the crystals is looking pretty great. What are you using lens wise for the crystals? I don't really see any areas I'd change.

Some of these are easy and quick and some of them just look that way. I started focus stacking about twenty years ago but only with two or maybe three images for bowls I was shooting for a client and then I just kept pushing the boundaries as computers got faster and more capable. I think about it completely differently than I did back then. Then I started buying different macro lenses and discovered that extension tubes only made things worse and graduated to reversing my old enlarging lenses on the bellows system, which worked pretty well but always felt like they were leaving something on the table, which led me to that sick Rodenstock macro lens with its manually adjustable floating element to optimize it from one third life size to three times life size. And that as about the same time I bought my first medium format Fuji GFX 100mp camera, which, in itself has been an interesting and sometimes frustrating learning experience. Images like the pliers I just make to amuse myself as a personal challenge, as no client these days would dream of spending what I would really need to do these for money - probably about $25K, but who knows.

These days I just shoot what I like and have fun with it. I do a couple of CD/LP covers a year now but that also includes all the graphic design as well and then I do a lot of retouching for Castrol and Garrett Turbochargers. Used to shoot a shit-ton for Garrett but now I just fix their crappy stock photos, and in some weird way I just fine with it.

Post some more of your shots. I'd love to see them. And congratulations for just doing it.

 

Is it me? Well, that depends on which me you're talking about, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. I posted there once in a while but mostly found that place frustrating. DPR seems to still be creaking along a day at a time but I have no interest in it. I spend some time at Fred Miranda but am mostly interested in pushing the limits of what I can do with the Fuji GFX.

 

Ha yea I know what you mean - probably why it's going offline soon. They kicked me off for not being 'serious' enough.

 

When you're owned by Jeff Bezos and you're not making any money, you're not going to last anyway. I mostly got tired of so called experts who simply had no idea of what they were talking about, or they'd know the theory but never understood how theory and reality veered apart in the real world. I'd like to think that I've learned a few lessons in over half a century in photography.

 

There was no room for enthusiast photographers like myself. I go out, I shoot with mid-level equipment, I get mid-level images.
They're good, but they're not great or sophisticated. I would post images (like I do here) and critique was welcome but trashing was uncalled for.
I don't own $25,000 in equipment, I'm not a pro, I just like to get a good image now and then and share it around for grins.

I belong to a different forum now that is cool about that - I get great ideas from the people who post and get good non-judgemental advice.

Anywho - happy shooting.!

 

Tanzanian Leopard
Nikon 5100
Probably my 28-80 lens
Reflection in Left (pic right) eye might have been my last day on Earth had he been interested.

 

Sasquatchian

Most of what I mange to get done is accomplished with a 40mm 1:2.8G lens and some time NISI close up lens. Any thing out of the mineral world. I use a70-3004:5.6G. Neither is atop quality lens but I like to push past the limits when ever possible. Here's a few more examples as requested.

 

That's a bit too close for this chicken-shit person. If you still have the raw file you can deduce the lens etc.
Great shot.

 

Yeah. I don't understand that attitude at all. After all, everyone has to start somewhere. We all aren't born as a fully realized Ansel Adams, but the nature of internet forums seems to breed that sort of animosity or just people needing to put people down. I started going there about a year ago to lean more about the Fuji GFX cameras and found that, very quickly, through reading and then with hands on using the cameras, I was all of a sudden one of those who knew more about the fine points and oddities than the people I had been reading in the beginning. Then, as my knowledge grew, I'd see the weakness in some of those experts who often didn't understand some of the basic photographic principles that guide us all. Arguing with that is pointless, so I'd often comment and just never check back. But sometimes it would be sharing images like the one above of the diagonal cutting pliers and talk about how that was done, hopefully in an effort to share the techniques and the knowledge if others wanted to try something similar. In the meantime I go about my little retouching and designing jobs and play as much music as I can in between.

 

I'm loving those crystals. I just really like finding items that are interesting enough on their own to makes images of, and making images that let you see these objects at a scale that you wouldn't normally be able to view them. For me, the next step would be to experiment with tiny mirrors and/or tiny direct lights to see if that might add some pizazz and pop, but I like the direction you're going here a lot.