Wallblank offers new limited edition art every day. Today they’re featuring one of my works ("Carnival, 2008") - you can pick up a 12"x18" print for the ridiculously low price of $29 (edition of 100). It will be available for sale for one week, so check it out! Carnival on Wallblank
As if I didn’t have enough different threads of work going on at the same time, here’s another! I find myself on planes rather often, and have flown over some wild country lately - the Great Salt Lake, the Grand Canyon, the mountains of Oregon and Washington…
Mount Hood, Oregon
Great Salt Lake, Utah
Unknown mountains, Utah
Great Salt Lake, Utah
Great Salt Lake, Utah
Sometimes, it pays to screw around. While shooting a new parking garage I found, I was taking a hand held “test shot” just to see what the framing and exposure would look like. I accidentally left the camera on “B”, and started turning while the shutter was open - what I got was useless, but intriguing! An hour later I had a bunch of new studies on the CF card. I’m still developing the idea, but I think it’s got possibilities…
Brent Pearson is a friend of mine and also one of my favorite night photographers. He is constantly pushing his own boundaries - and thankfully for the rest of us, meticulously documenting the process! His blog is full of interesting tidbits from his night photography and light painting experiments, and he is very candid about his processes.
I was excited, then, to get my hands on a pre-release copy of his new eBook, Night Photography & Light Painting. This is a fantastic resource for new night photographers and old hands alike. I definitely learned some new tricks to try out. The eBook has 86 pages of Brent’s amassed knowledge of shooting at night, from equipment to scouting locations to post processing.... If you’re interested in light painting there are detailed instructions on how to build your own killer lighting contraptions. Brent also includes a large number of before and after photos, showing the steps that go into a multiple exposure light painting image.
Full disclosure: Brent included a few of my images in the introductory section of the book, which was very nice of him, but totally incidental to the rest of the book. It’s so full of useful info I suggest you go over and buy this book if you are at all interested in pushing your night photography forward!
Almost forgot to mention: I have three photos going up at the Safe-T-Gallery in Dumbo (Brooklyn) on March 5th. After a taxing adventure trying to get four very large photos framed, crated and shipped to NYC, they arrived in good shape, and next week Jade and I will fly out for the opening. It’ll be nice to see how the 20"x30" prints look under the gallery lights. Check it out if you’ll be in the area, the show will stay up until April 11.
From the Safe-T-Gallery site:
[in this show] the photographers explore both the densely illuminated urban landscape and the stark all-natural world at night, as well as the deliciously ambiguous spaces in between.
And these are the photos I will have in the show:
Which camera to use? Every photographer faces that question at some point, and generally we try to buy the best gear we can afford. I’ve gone through numerous digital cameras, and at present own ten different cameras of all shapes and sizes. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but I have fun with all of them. But when it comes to my “signature” style of saturated color night photography and light painting, I only use one camera. At the time I bought it, my Nikon D300 provided me with the best balance of features and image quality that I could afford. I prefer shooting digital over film for night work for several reasons (which I will reserve for a different post), but suffice to say the flexibility in white balance/color correction, exposure latitude, and not having to be stuck with an entire roll of one type of film keeps me shooting digital at night.
Now, with the introduction of the D700, it has become financially viable for me to buy into a full-frame (35mm sensor) DSLR system. I (like most digital SLR owners) have been using a “cropped sensor” or DX camera. The D300 has, for all intents and purposes, the same body as the D700. It has the same number of megapixels. But the D700 offers those inherent full-frame advantages that people are willing to pay so much for: lower noise at high ISOs, shallower depth of field, a larger viewfinder, wider angle lenses… I must admit, it’s extremely tempting.
However, I’ve decided to hold off at least until we see the hypothetical “D700x”, a full frame camera that packs 24+ megapixels like the new D3X. It’s not a purely financial decision, either. Upon careful consideration I found that for my style of shooting, the benefits of FX are less applicable, and sometimes even counter-productive, for my specific type of shooting.
Now, you’d think a guy who spends most of his time shooting at night would place a high premium on a camera with great low light sensitivity, right? Well, for my kind of work, it’s a moot point - I only shoot at the “native” ISO of the camera I am using. With the D300 and D700, that’s ISO 200. Having the ability to shoot relatively clean files at ISO 6400 might be nice, but I would NEVER use a high ISO for the specific style of night work that I do. I want files that print 20"x30" with no visible noise. It may be true that the D700 gives slightly cleaner results at 200 as well, I have no idea. But the files from my D300 appear totally noiseless in 20x30 prints, so it is of no practical value to me at all.
100% crop of a D300 shot at ISO 200
The D700 gets a big point in my book for having a larger viewfinder than the D300. Framing compositions at night is challenging, and generally the bigger and brighter the viewfinder, the better. My ability to get compositions right without cropping went up steeply after upgrading from a D70, with a tiny, dark finder to my D300. However, the D700 has a hidden disadvantage here as well - while the finder is a bit bigger, the accuracy takes a hit. The D300 finder has higher magnification and 100% coverage - that is, what you see is exactly what you get. The D700, however, has only 96% coverage and slightly lower magnification. That means I risk having to crop more to “fix” compositions that are slightly off due to the inaccuracies of the finder. On balance, not a true benefit for the way I work.
D300, Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D lens
It’s a fact that landscape photographers love wide angle. And on FX, a lens of a given focal length “acts” wider. For instance, a 17mm lens on FX is really effing wide, but on a DX crop camera it is only medium wide. Also, wider angles are possible with FX - there is no DX equivalent of the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, or the Sigma 12mm zoom. You would need an 8mm rectilinear lens to equal the 12mm field of view on DX, and such a beast sadly doesn’t exist. However, for my style of working, a 12mm DX lens (which would be similar in angle of view to an 18mm lens on FX) is plenty wide enough. I’ve actually found myself using longer lenses more and more lately - much of my new work has been shot using a Nikkor 85mm lens. I’m in the market for a longer prime as well, probably a 135mm Nikkor AIS lens. On FX these lenses would lose some of their effective reach, and I would have to step up to longer, more expensive glass to make up the difference.
D300, Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D lens
This is the big one for me. FX cameras have less depth of field for a given viewing angle and f/stop. This can be a great thing when you want to isolate detail, for instance in portraiture or food photography. But for landscape, more DOF is almost always better. The practical result of a switch to full frame for me would be that I would have to use smaller f/stops to get the entire scene in acceptable focus. Probably up to a whole stop smaller. That means instead of shooting 5 minutes at f/8, I’d be shooting 10 minutes at f/16 f/11. Not a huge deal, but then add on in-camera noise reduction, which doubles the exposure, and I’ll be spending 20 minutes per shot. That would cut my productivity for any given time spent shooting in half. True, working slowly can help you make better, more considered decisions, but trust me, night shooting is slow enough as it is ;)
Almost infinite depth of field at f/6.7
The one thing that full frame cameras could provide me with that I really do want is higher pixel counts. I like to print LARGE - I’ve got a trio of 20"x30" prints going up in a gallery in Brooklyn next month, and had a 24"x36" print in my last show. I am one of those users who really can use all the resolution they can get. The 24mp sensor in the D3X would give me a solid, real-world benefit that would be applicable to my style of shooting - but sadly $8k for a camera is a bit out of my reach at the moment. So I’ll wait for the hypothetical “D700x” or “D800” and enjoy my very nice professional tools in the meantime.
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