Paul Lester Photo

A bird for Dennis

My friend and coworker, Dennis, has inspired me with several posts over the last few months. Our daily conversations are varied and wide. Today rolled over to my desk, as we sit back-to-back, and said something like: You seem to be into the people pictures right now. Probably not an exact quote, but close enough. I considered this for a few moments and thought about what a great statement that was. Now, all I had to do was to figure out why, or at least give it some thought.

I told him that what I photograph is a factor of many things, mainly mood, situation, camera, and season. In the fall, I prefer color and fall scenes, even if they seem cliche. In the summer, I’m more apt to shoot early morning shots, mainly because of the heat and the bugs, etc. When I was shooting with the 645e, as it’s a big camera, it was very suitable for the tripod and therefore static subjects, like landscapes or cityscapes. During basketball season and indoor color shooting, certainly the D300 hits the mark.

Now, having a rangefinder or two, I can branch into areas that I’ve never really delved into before. Sure, I’ve taken photos of people on the streets, both with and without their knowledge, but I’m broadening my horizons, now. Today, I was really in a blue mood. I felt quite down and out. I knew that I needed to do something, anything. I didn’t want to go directly back to the apartment and stew in the funk. There’s a festival in town called MOJA, it’s here from September 24th through October 4th. It’s a celebration of African-American and Caribbean art. Through the time here there are many free events such as poetry readings and story tellings. Each one of them is held in small, intimate locations. Today’s poetry reading that I attended was held in a small coffee house. All told, there may have been 30 people there to listen, a full house!

Today, I wanted to find out just how quiet is the shutter of a rangefinder. Before the reading started, I found a table, sat down, had a glass of iced tea and a scone. Right before the reading started I took a couple of readings. This was going to be tough. I would be shooting at f/2 @ 1/30 second or less! This would test the rangefinder’s ability to shoot at low speed settings as well as it’s quietness.

I can certainly tell you that it’s quiet! No one even noticed as I snapped photo after photo during the poetry reading. No one! I could hear the quiet snick of the shutter, but no one even turned around. Mind you, this was in a small, intimate cafe with no conversation going at all. There was nothing but the ambient noise filtering in from the streets. I would have been certainly afraid to use my D300 in this condition. The mirror slap is quite loud and would have been very disturbing. Though I don’t know for sure, but she probably would have asked me to stop. It certainly would have been more convenient to have used the D300 because I could have cranked the ISO up to 1600 and had some light to work with; however, I had to settle for shooting with ISO 125, as I didn’t have any 400 or greater speed film with me. I’m quite excited to see what develops (pun!), but you’ll just have to wait with me. I only took 20 shots of a 36 exposure roll. I’ll see about using the rest tomorrow or Thursday.

Anyway, it’s interesting how getting another tool can expand your horizons, or perhaps change your perceptions, if you let it. BTW, today was the first ever poetry reading that I attended. Interesting. The poetry, in my opinion, wasn’t anything profound or earth shattering, however, watching the people sure was a great way to spend and hour or so. On second thought, the poetry was pretty good. She put a lot of heart into it. Who am I to say that it wasn’t good?!

End of Summer
I learned about hyperfocal distance a long time ago. I used to use it to get maximum depth of field in my landscape photography, when I was going for that type of thing. However, with the birth of auto focus, I never really thought much about it anymore. However, now that I’m doing everything myself, focus included, it has started to become useful again.

The other day I went out to the beach. Now that the summer season is officially over with the passing of Labor Day on September 7th, the beaches are clear of the tourists. Now, the locals can reclaim the beach. Myself included. I consider myself a local now. Anyway, I wanted to try some decisive moment type shooting. I remember reading that many of them used hyperfocal focusing. That is they selected an aperture that would maximize their depth of field, set the hyperfocal distance, set the corresponding shutter speed, then away they went.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I had a 50mm lens, not a 35mm or 24mm, which would have guaranteed me a much greater DOF. However, I was game to try. I set my camera to f/8, metered, set the shutter speed, and the hyperfocal distance for f/8. Then, I walked around seeing what I could see. I was careful not to touch the focusing ring.

I was quite surprised at the sharpness that I got! For me, these images looked like I intentionally focused on the subject, but was not the case. According to my lens markings, my range of ‘acceptable focus’ was between 15ft and infinity. When I wanted to take a photo, I simply framed it, and took the photo. That makes for some lightning fast photography. No need to futz around with the focusing ring or the AF button, etc. See. Frame. Shoot. You can squeeze off a shot so quickly that no one even notices! I was able to do that several times.

Room to play

If you’ve never tried it, you ought to give it a shot. You can do it on an auto focus camera, but you’ll have to make sure that you are in manual focus mode and, more important, that your lens has the appropriate markings to show what your depth of field will be. I had a look at the Nikon 24mm, 35mm, and 50mm lenses, all have the markings.

Nikon D300: ISO 3200 f/6.3 @ 1/30 – Tamron 18-270mm @ 270mm
I’ve spent much too much time reading stuff about Leica’s M9 and X1. I’m not really even interested in owning either one, but I am very much interested in the interest that people have in them, moreover, the things that people are speculating about. One peculiar thing that always gets mentioned is the high ISO performance. How much noise does this camera, or that, have at ISO 1600, 3200, 6400, etc and why don’t they go higher?! This is in direct contrast to the number of photos that I’ve ever seen shot at such high ISOs.

I do find high ISO performance useful. It was useful when I had my D2x, which could go up to 3200. Mind you, 3200, though useful, was very noisy, but it beat coming home without the shot. So, in that respect, it was useful; however, it would not have been a deal breaker. That is, I certainly could have done quite well without it. Enter the D300, which stepped up the game quite a bit. It’s ISO 3200 performance was leaps and bounds above the D2x!

The photo that accompanies this text was taken at ISO 3200. What’s impressive is that even without using any noise reduction software, it looks pretty good. Even at print size, it’s a nice shot. I took it when I went to see my niece graduate from college. This speaker was quite animated and a joy to photograph, very expressive. I was standing quite a bit back from the stage using my Tamron 18-270mm, racked all the way out to 270mm. She was even smaller in the frame than this. This represents about a 55% crop, based on original pixel size and cropped pixel size. As you can see, it doesn’t really look very noise, at least not to my eyes.

Other useful places for high ISO are gymnasiums. They may look well lit, but believe me, our eyes are great at compensating to available light. Depending on the lens that I have, I will usually have to shoot somewhere between 1600 and 3200. Expressed as a percentage of shots, I use high ISO about 0.5% of the time, so you can see why it would not be a deal breaker for me.

So, in some cases, especially indoor sports, I can see why one would use/need high ISO with reduced noise; however, for the general population, those arguing in the forums, I can see little use for it. Most of the blogs/galleries that I might visit that show EXIF information, the images are shot at ISO 400 or less.

Would you look for high ISO performance in your next camera? Would it be a deal breaker for you if it didn’t have it? If you have good high ISO performance, how often do you use this feature?