Fisheye Sunset

I have always been a huge fan of the fisheye lens and since my wife purchased it for a birthday present last year, I have had nothing but fun.  It took a little while to figure out focusing since it is a pure manual lens, but once I mastered that it has been a true gem in the camera bag.  Being down a tripod, I grabbed a piece of driftwood and tipped the camera up while setting the base on the ground to get the largest view of the sky I could.  It was a very colorful and dramatic sunset this evening.  Enjoy!

Ominous Outlook

Dreary days bring out some of the best clouds during daylight hours.  They are very pretty to look at, but are very difficult to photograph.  Many times, I have tried and failed to take a picture and have it look the way I saw it with my own eyes.  I imagine a day in the future where the dynamic range of a digital sensor will be up to par with the range the human eye can see.  I imagine that camera will cost a pretty penny, but it would be a very awesome tool to use.  Having said that, we use the tools we have to make the best of what we see.  I have witnessed many times photos of trees stretching into the shadowy clouds giving a very ominous view of the world.  I haven't really tried anything like this in the past, but with my wife's urging, I ventured out to see what I could capture.

Once I was on location, finding the best trees was a difficult task.  Once I found some strangely fingeresque trees, I placed my camera in position and began snapping away.  I tried all types of angles and determined that vertical photos showed what I was seeing the best, but I had to have the camera very close to the ground.  So I laid down beside the camera and let the magic happen.  I shot a couple with one lens.  Then switched over to the fisheye for a little different effect.  It provided a unique perspective that I feel has been missing in the photos I have seen.  I really enjoyed photographing this scene and will definitely have to go back to see what other interesting things I can find.

Thanksgiving Sunsets

Over the Thanksgiving break I took the opportunity to enjoy some warmer weather and take a series of sunset photos.  The clouds were ripe for a great sunset, but just before the sun went down the wind had a different idea.  The wind picked up and cleared out what was going to be a very colorful sunset and left with this little band of clouds.  I attempted to do things right in camera and not use HDR for this sunset.  I used a 3 stop hard edge neutral density filter since there is practically no elevation differences in the landscape of the northern plains to even out the exposure.  I then transferred the files into Photoshop after my usually adjustments in Lightroom and added an LAB processing effect to the photos.  LAB processing brings out the natural oranges in the photo and adds to the saturation without degrading the image.  I toned that layer back to get the sunset the bright orange that I experienced that night.  I put the sun in the center of area toward the bottom third to get the most amount of sky possible and to crop out the farm buildings to the right side of the photo.  I normally would include those in the photo, but these wouldn't have added to the photos.

This photo was taken just a minute or two before the very top photo.  To see the difference in LAB color effects and regular process scroll back and forth between the two.  I cropped the other file to a 16:9 ratio because I didn't like the fence line in the photo below.  

These were the clouds on the backside of the sunset.  I thought these would stick around long enough, but again, the wind had a different idea. I took this photo with my fisheye lens and marginally straightened the horizon line in Lightroom.

Starry Nights

Over Thanksgiving, I took the opportunity to sneak out during the night hours to see if I could capture some night sky photos.  In my previous attempts, I was either too tired or clouds were present and it just wasn't worth it.  Since everyone was tired from turkey and the rush of the day, there was an early turn in.  Knowing the area as I do, I had a good idea where I could go that I wouldn't be disturbed.  I also knew that I didn't have to go to far out of town to get a good area to see the stars.  If the night started out a failure, I could take the 5 minute journey back home and get myself to bed.  The night wasn't as cold as I thought it was going to be so it things started to work in my favor.

I initially planned on getting a couple night shots, try a night panorama where I could get the entire Milky Way in the photo and do a little star trail action.  I purchased a remote timer some time ago and never really used it to date.  I tried to familiarize myself with it while sitting in the car at the time, but it just wasn't clicking in my head.  So I tried to do a lot of the stuff manually.  The initial challenge with this is keeping the proper shutter speed to keep the stars sharp.  In night photography you can only have a certain amount of time before the stars start to blur.  If you want a crisp photo of the stars, you have to use 600/focal length.  This will give you the longest shutter speed you can use without trails.

I tried 3 different lenses over the course of the night for a couple reasons.  I read that a fisheye would give me the greatest amount of sky in my photos; therefore, giving me the best single shot of the Milky Way.  The initial problem with this is the fisheye lenses aren't known for their sharpness at their widest aperture.  I had to set my fisheye at f/5.6 to get nice, crisp, sharp stars.  This cuts down on the amount of light that reaches your sensor and doesn't provide as many stars.  The good thing about the fisheye is it is very wide, 8mm.  This gives the best opportunity to use a longer shutter speed.  I was able to capture a couple different shots between 35 and 39 seconds.  Second I used my Tamron.  I like my Tamron because it is fairly wide for a APS-C sensor lens at 17mm and it is sharp as a tack at f/2.8.  This gives me the chance to take photos at about 23 to 25 seconds.  The last lens I used was my Tokina.  That lens is a wide lens at 12mm but only a f/4.0 aperture.  It however is also sharp as a tack at 4.0.  Instead of sitting out in the cold for the entire shoot, I set the tripod right next to the vehicle.  I rolled down the drivers window, had a seat, and pushed the shutter button on the remote in the comfort of my bucket seat.  Most astrophotographers set their cameras up with the remote and leave them to do there thing for hours.  I didn't want to do that at all.

So where are the images.  Well, I have only had a chance to process a couple and not sure if the others are worth the time since they are kind of the same stuff, but I think this was a good start.  I might wait for a little warmer weather before I try the next round.

One cool thing to note from the evening, there was some type of meteor shower I didn't know about.  I saw in the hour I was out, four shooting stars.  I happened to catch 2 of them in my photos.  For next time, I need to focus on composition and post processing noise reduction.  Some of my images were very noisy.

Rokinon Fisheye @ 8mm, f/5.6, ISO 2500

Tamron @ 17mm, f/2.8, ISO 2500

Tokina @ 12mm, f/4, ISO 2500

This is a panorama of 8 different photos.  I attempted to get the entire Milky Way into the photo, but I cannot get them to line up when I attempt to make the panorama.  I may need to take a couple more photos up to get the entire system.  

Lastly, here is the one attempt at a Star Trail.  This is a single exposure using my Rokinon 8mm fisheye.  This exposure was 4 minutes long at ISO 1600.  It was a good start, but I was far too tired to continue getting the next 20 photos needed for a good star trail.  I hit the brakes of the car to give the foreground a little light.

Illuminations

Epcot is not only famous for well being Epcot, but they have a very cool light show every night called Illuminations.  The fireworks last for about 15 minutes and are very awe inspiring.  I used my fisheye lens to capture as much of the show as I could.  I didn't have room for a tripod in my luggage so I had to use my shoulder to keep the camera steady enough through out the 1.5 to 3 second shots.  There were some blurring photos, but the majority of them turned out great.  We camped out under a tree due to the amount people nesting their way around the lake.  Some of my shots had a nice tree view; however, it didn't spoil the mood or effect of the fireworks that evening.

The Last Few Weeks Random Shots

It has been some time since I posted anything and you may have been wondering if I had fallen off the face of the earth.  Maybe you didn't even notice or care.  If you have been one of those wondering, I have been busy these last couple of weeks with lots of awesome family time.  We went on a little vacation.  Then, the oldest and I spent a chilly 35 degree night in a tent, camping at Jubilee.

Going to such an awesome place as Disney for vacation, I couldn't help but bring along a camera.  I blew threw almost all of the 68 gigabytes in storage I took for the trip.  It was so much fun seeing the kids enjoying "The Happiest Place On Earth".  Mom and Dad were truly exhausted by the time the trip had come to an end, but I think we did enjoy a few things before we were done.

Almost all of the shots taken during the trip were family oriented, but I did take some time to snap a couple for the blog.  Maybe you can recognize a few of them.

This is a picture of my youngest admiring the enormous Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot.

And a view from the other side

A view of the fountains in front of the big ball

From the Magic Kingdom, Cinderella's Castle from the Rose Garden.  Most shots you see if this castle are from Main Street USA, so I thought I would try something a little different.

This was one of our favorite rides from the trip, Big Thunder Mountain as viewed from the Liberty Ferry.  There may be no inversions or loops, but this ride is probably one of the longest roller coaster rides I have been on and worth the wait in line.

Walking through Epcot in the Germany wing, we were greeted by a little rain storm.  It quickly passed and provided us with a little color.  I was only able to capture this little section of the rainbow since my card was low on space, but it definitely fascinated the crowds passing by.

We had to stop and see some of the favorite Cars characters.  I thought this an excellent opportunity for some fisheye fun.

Feeling Fishy

My beautiful wife decided that for my birthday she would surprise me with a fisheye lens.  I have been thinking of a fisheye for some time, but seeing one at a recent wedding got me thinking again.  The images it can produce are truly unique to any other lens out there.  Just a simple tilt of the lens and the scenery can give you a great big smile.  These are some of my first images taken with the lens.  All of them were within 15 minutes since it was a last minute test.  All photos were taken with the sunset at my back.  You can see from the 4th image the large cloud bank that had developed just before the sun set blocking any chance at a great colorful evening.

This photo was taken of the exact same spot, just tilted the camera up a little bit to get a little more sky.  

I decided to move down the road a little and split the difference.

The heavy cloud bank on the left was blocking out the sun so I turned 90 degrees to get some of the color from the fading sun.

To see more from the shoot, please check out my webpage by clicking on any of the photos above.  You can also visit my landscape gallery at alderimages.com/landscape.

Thanks for viewing!