Pure White

Just recently, I've sold a few lens. Some of these were fantastic lenses that I wanted to photograph before I sold them, as a kind of history record of my photographic journey. So I grabbed all my gear and laid it out on the floor and took a shot of it. The results weren't very pleasing. After a little experimenting I went for a top down shot of my gear laid out on a blanket. In this case I didn't have to worry about the background but it's still not fantastic.

The Canon Collection

Canon EOS Kiss Digital X with a Sigma DX 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 lens at 30mm EFL, tripod mounted. Exposure Trio: 0.3s, f/5.6 & ISO 100.

Next I thought I'd try some white background shots. All I needed was some wireless triggered flash units and something white to photograph on. The second part proved more difficult. White paper is best since it's smoother than cloth, but all I had to work with was a white blanket. This just meant that I had to fire the flash units much harder to burn out the texture of the cloth. Under my lenses, I used white paper which leaves an edge but it's relatively easy to fix in post using Lightroom.

For these next shots, I used two Speedlite 430ex II flashes to bounce light off the ceiling and create a huge soft box. A third off camera speedlite to shoot some interesting light into the lens, would have been handy but alas, I didn't have one. The speedlites were wirelessly triggered from my 7D using ETTL with +2 flash compensation. A little extra touch up in post to remove the colour cast (my roof isn't white) and adjust exposure. I also needed to burn out some of the remaining texture in a few places in my cloth background too.

Here's a shot of my pride and joy. One of Canon's best, all purpose lens ever made, the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM. That lens with a 16-35mm and a nifty fifty and you've got almost every general purpose focal length covered. However it's a little heavy. Since I'm into hiking, having to carry it along with a tent, clothing and food for a week and those kilos start to add up. Thus I've traded it in for the recently released Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM. I get a little more reach and a lighter lens at the cost of maximum aperture. Some sacrifices have to be made.

Pride and Joy

Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM lens at 45mm EFL, tripod mounted. Exposure Trio: 1/250s, f8 & ISO 100.

Here's another angle. Look at that huge 200mm f/2.8 front element. Almost reminds me of a 300mm f/2.8 lens. Here I used a 28mm EFL lens with about 5 cm working distance. Depth of field was a challenge here too. Next time, I might try some focus stacking to keep it all in sharp focus.

Canon Glass

Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens at 28mm EFL, tripod mounted. Exposure Trio: 1/250s, f8 & ISO 100.

And finally a family shot of my full frame prime lens collection, the EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro, EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, EF 50mm f/1.8 II and EF 28mm f/1.8 USM.

Full Frame Family

Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens at 96mm EFL, tripod mounted. Exposure Trio: 1/250s, f8 & ISO 100.

Next time I'm at a hardware or craft store, I'll try to get some fomecore boards for a base and some larger seamless white paper for a background to make the process easier. An extra off camera speedlite or two with some coloured gels would allow some more creativity too.

Shooting Zoo Wildlife

The other day I visited Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. I usually find zoos rather depressing, seeing large animals caged up with so little open space. However zoos do provide children with an experience to see rare animals more easily. And they also provide photographers the opportunity to hone their skills before trying to capture wild ones.

Even though these animals are captive, they still offer some good photographic opportunities. Natural looking, environmental portraits are almost impossible but close up portraits are a easier, since the animals are a little closer. The real challenge in a zoo environment is removing those ubiquitous bars. When taking photographs we have to deal with the bars between the camera and the animal and the bars in the background. So let's take a look and see what we can do about them.

With the right selection of equipment, those bars in front are seldom a problem. All you need is a relatively long lens with a relatively fast aperture. Here I used a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens with a 2.0x Teleconverter. The foreground bars have disappeared completely since the bars are so far from the plane of focus that, the blur they create is larger than the size of the sensor. They are essentially acting like a neutral density filter.

Squirrels at Morioka Zoo in Iwate, Japan.

Canon EOS Kiss X digital with an EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM + 2.0x TC at 640mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/800s, f/5.6 & ISO 400.

Unfortunately, the squirrel was very close to those background bars so they were only slightly out of focus, but still very much recognisable and thus quite objectionable. To try to remove them we could get a little more distance between the subject and background bars and use a larger aperture.

For this shot of a Japanese Red-Crowned Crane, I removed the 2.0x TC to get a larger aperture. The front bars are gone again and the background bars are far less noticeable. But they're still there. Perhaps a 200mm f/2.0 lens, but they are well beyond my budget. And in any case I'd rather spend that money on a real safari, where I didn't have to worry about bars.

Japanese Red Crowned Crane at Utsunomiya, Japan

Canon EOS 7D with a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS USM at 320mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/400s, f/3.2 & ISO 400.

An option to remove those annoying bars is to photograph from an angle where the background bars are not in the shot, as with this cougar.

Cougar at Morioka Zoo in Iwate, Japan.

Canon EOS Kiss X digital with a EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM + 2.0x TC at 640mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/160s, f/5.6 & ISO 400.

Another option is to get in really tight with the animal so there isn't any background to worry about, like with this shot of a Condor.

Condor at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo – Japan

Canon EOS 7D with a EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at 640mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/640s, f/5.6 & ISO 3200.

With the right distance between the foreground bars and background bars their, caged environment will disappear, with a shallow enough depth of field. Long, fast lenses help with this goal. A 200mm f/2.8 is probably a good starting point but 300 or 400mm
would be better.

A side effect to this technique is that most photos will require a little extra saturation and contrast to look more natural.

Most Popular Lens

While surfing my catalogue of photos using Adobe's Lightroom, I had a look at my most popular lens. It turns out to be Canon's EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens. It's responsible for around 30% of all my DSLR photography and I have around 10 lenses to choose from these days. So why is it so popular? Well Interestingly enough, this just happens to be my very first lens purchase for a DSLR camera. I also lack a standard zoom for a DSLR camera and therefore have to choose between a wide zoom or a long zoom lens. The long zoom happens to be my second most popular lens. I guess I prefer the wide end.

So what's a good subject for this lens. Well, looking through my collection again, I see that about 20% of my photographs belong to the landscape genre and about the same belong to the architecture genre. Two very good uses for such a lens. Here are some more examples from my collection.

The most obvious use for a wide angle lens is, to wind it back and get more into an image. Just like I did here. With such a wide lens there's no need to stop down to f/22 to get everything in sharp focus. At 10mm and f/7.1, the hyperfocal distance is only 75cm away.

The Thar Desert, Rajasthan - India

Canon Kiss Digital X with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 16mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/125s, f/7.1 & ISO 100.

Another great use for such a wide lens is to get real close to a foreground subject and still have a vast depth of field. This also greatly exaggerates the relative size of foreground and background objects giving a sense of z-axis movement, a feeling that we could walk into the image. Here, the foreground rocks are about half a meter tall and the waterfall in the background is over 50m high.

Aiku Otaki Waterfall, Miyagi - Japan

Canon Kiss Digital X with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 22mm EFL and 3 stop ND filter on a tripod. Exposure Trio: 2.5s, f/11 & ISO 100.

Another advantage for a wide angle lens is the relatively slow hand-holdable shutter speed. With an EFL of 16mm, the general rule is 1/16s. With a little extra ISO, this often makes a tripod redundant, even after the sun goes down. I quite like it for doing hand-held street photography. Especially after it rains, when the streets are much more reflective and colourful.

Wet Streets, Kagoshima - Japan

Canon Kiss Digital X with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 16mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/15s, f/3.5 & ISO 800.

Now most zoom lenses are not without their faults. It's got some barrel distortion at the wide end and some pin cushion at the long end. However there's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where there's almost no distortion. For this lens that's at 17mm or 28mm EFL. A nice focal length for architecture. And if you have the space to step back and don't mind cropping, you can get the effect of a tilt-shift lens for free. Just keep the camera level (not up or down) and all your architectural lines will turn out straight like they're supposed to be.

St John's Church from Kyoto at Meiji-Mura (Architectural Museum), Inuyama - Japan.

Canon Kiss Digital X with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 28mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/80s, f/6.3 & ISO 100.

Zoom all the way in for 35mm EFL and get a nice focal length for environmental portraits. In this case my subject was an old cart, slowly being reclaimed by the surrounding vegetation.

Old Cart, Chiran - Japan

Canon Kiss Digital X with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 35mm EFL. Exposure Trio: 1/200s, f/4.5 & ISO 200.

That's certainly not all this lens is capable of. There are as many uses for this lens as there are owners of this lens. These are just a few ways that I put this lens to good use.

EFL 1280mm

Sounds interesting, but what's it all about? Well I'm glad you asked. To get this impressive figure, I'm using a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with a 2.0x tele-converter and an APS-C sensor. However, this setup doesn't have Image Stabilisation, Auto Focus and it's a very slow f/11 lens.

So, what can you do with it? Put it on a tripod, Crank up the ISO, learn how to manually focus with live view and take photos of birds that aren't moving too much.

Here's a few examples.

A Common kingfisher's breakfast. He's going to need around 60% of his body weight in tiny fish every day. At f11, It's very hard to blur away the background.

Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 2.0x TC (EFL 1280 f/11), tripod mounted with mirror lock up and remote release. Exposure trio: 1/60s, f/11 and ISO 100.


A Great Cormorant perched on a tree stump in a lake. This photo was taken from one of several public hides around this bird sanctuary on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 2.0x TC (EFL 1280 f/11), tripod mounted with mirror lock up and remote release. Exposure trio: 1/160s, f/11 and ISO 400.

A juvenile Little Grebe learning to fish for himself. In summer, the adults are rather more colourful with chestnut cheeks & foreneck and dark chocloate-brown crown, nape & upperparts. Manually focusing while he was swimming around was very challenging. I needed a bit of luck to get something close to sharp around the eyes.

Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 2.0x TC (EFL 1280 f/11), tripod. Exposure trio: 1/200s, f/11 and ISO 200.


A Grey Heron perched in a tree overhanging a river. From where I was it was a long way away and rather hard to spot. A good subject for 1280mm of EFL. F/11 didn't do me any favours with the background. The whole tree is pretty much sharp. Environmental portrait perhaps?

Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 2.0x TC (EFL 1280 f/11), tripod mounted with mirror lock up and remote release. Exposure trio: 1/640s, f/11 and ISO 400.

The 400's Early Days

After finally being able to pick up a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens, I've been wanting to get out and use it. Since this is a relatively long slow lens without IS, I usually only take it out on bright sunny days. This might sound like a severe limitation but I primarily use it to capture birds in flight and in this case, it's one of the best assuming lots of light. However the weather hasn't been very cooperative lately. Either it's been raining from one typhoon after another or it's just gloomy and overcast.

On the few sunny days I have managed to get out with this lens, I haven't captured any award winning BIF shots. I've been distracted by having twice the focal length as before and all the new bird photography now open to me. I still need to work on my long lens technique and squeeze out the sharper images I know this lens is capable of. However I'm really enjoying the extra focal length over my last birding lens.

Here are a few examples from this lens so far.

This is the ubiquitous Eastern Spot Billed Duck, so called for their bright yellow tip on the end of their bills. They are resident in lakes and rivers, year round.

Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (EFL of 640mm), using a tripod. Exposure Trio: 1/250s, f/5.6 and ISO 200.


The equally ubiquitous Carrion Crow. Easy enough to catch in flight and provide a nightmare for getting a good exposure. At least here there is some definition on the wing while not blowing out the sky.

Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (EFL of 640mm), handheld. Exposure Trio: 1/1250s, f/5.6 and ISO 100.


Another shot of an Eastern Spot Billed Duck, having an early morning stretch.

Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (EFL of 640mm), using a tripod. Exposure Trio: 1/2500s, f/6.3 and ISO 800.


A Great White Egret spots breakfast while hunting in an old rice field. He wasn't bothered with my presence at all. I ended up switching to a shorter 70-200mm lens for it's faster aperture, zoom convenience and Image Stabilisation.

Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (EFL of 640mm), handheld. Exposure Trio: 1/1000s, f/5.6 and ISO 100.


A Eurasian Wigeon out for a early morning swim on the lake. These guys only come around in the winter and migrate back north over the summer.

Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (EFL of 640mm), using a tripod. Exposure Trio: 1/500s, f/5.6 and ISO 200.


An young Azure Winged Magpie searching for a mid morning snack. I needed to really boost the ISO on this one since they were in the shade and highly mobile, making a tripod useless.

Canon EOS 7D and a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens (EFL of 640mm), handheld. Exposure Trio: 1/1250s, f/5.6 and ISO 2000.

Focal Length Quest

After visiting a park in northern Japan and capturing a few birds on sensor, I've taken a greater interest in bird photography. At that time I had a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens. On a cropped sensor, this gives an EFL of 320mm, rendering these sparrow sized birds quite small in the frame.


Canon EOS Kiss X digital with a 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM giving an EFL of 320mm. The image was exposed for 1/100s at f/8 and ISO 200. This camera has a 10 MP sensor and the file was still cropped around 50% to get this image. Even still the Eastern Great Tit Minor is relatively small in the frame.

Now if I was the kind of guy where money is no object, I'd pick up a 500 or 800mm lens and crank out masterpiece after masterpiece. Sadly, I'm not. Even a modest 300-400mm prime would set me back the best part of 150,000 yen. However, all is not lost I do have an f2.8 L lens, I could just add a relatively cheap 1.4x or 2.0x tele-converter. I went for the 2.0x version since as they say with bird photography, “you can never have enough focal length”, giving me a 400mm f/5.6 lens that's weather sealed and still has Image Stabilisation.

I was aware before getting the 2.0x TC that image quality might take a hit, but I reasoned that it couldn't be worse than a consumer lens like a 55-250mm. On paper it's just as fast but has an extra 150mm of reach. I don't have a consumer zoom for a comparison but I mostly shoot for the web and I don't plan on cropping excessively either so hopefully it shouldn't be a problem.

On my first day out with this new lens combination I realised a far greater limitation for this combination, glacier like autofocus speed. It's really not the lens' fault here. I was trying to focus on birds in the shadows or on overcast days. In these conditions, it hunts for focus sometimes giving up all together. However in sunny conditions, it's much better. It's also a good idea to stop down a little to avoid the worst of any image degradation.

I also tried some BIF shots, one of the more technically challenging photographic genres. Even on a sunny day, shots in focus were less than 20% and from those perhaps 10% were artistically pleasing images worth keeping. However the challenge of capturing birds in flight was very captivating. I needed to acquire more capable equipment.

Earlier this year, I upgraded my camera body to a Canon EOS 7D and last month I finally paired it with a lens that could realise the full potential of it's powerful action sports like auto focus system. After some careful consideration between the affordable 3-400mm options, I settled on the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM lens. It really came back to focal length and that you can never have too much for birds.

Wow, this lens is fantastic. I had know idea what L prime glass was capable of. It should be no surprise really, as it's MTF chart puts it near the top of Canon's best, with only a handful of other primes outperforming it.

The subject for this lens test was some dead palm leaves in the back garden. Images are 100% crops from the centre of the frame. I was quite surprised at the resolution difference. The first image is with the 70-200mm and the second with the 400mm.



Both images were taken with a Canon EOS 7D at f/5.6 and ISO 100 while mounted on a tripod and using mirror lock up and remote release. However the 70-200 was also using IS and was exposed for 1/20s where as the 400 didn't have the advantage of IS and was slightly slower at 1/10s. Perhaps the light changed a little between shots.

The next representative comparison is taken from the real world. There's a bird sanctuary just 20 minutes from my house. It's home for a common kingfisher that attracts a handful of photographers every day. Many of these photographers sport 500mm or longer lenses since this bird is rather small and is often found perched some distance from the water's edge.


Before my lens upgrade, I gave it my best shot (no pun intended). This image was taken with a Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM with a 2.0x TC giving an EFL of 640mm. I was shooting handheld with IS on and exposed the image for 1/500s at f/7.1 and ISO 200. Here we can see it's a kingfisher but there isn't much detail in the feathers. It's not the best composition but it was the only shot I could get of the kingfisher that day.


This second image is of the same kingfisher on a different day and in a different but near by location. Again I used my Canon EOS 7D but with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 and 2.0x TC giving an impressive EFL of 1280mm. I also used a tripod, mirror lock up, remote shutter release and 10x live view manual focus. The image was exposed for 1/25s at f11 and ISO 100. Even with such a slow shutter speed and still using the 2.0x TC this photo comes out so much sharper. The eye looks just a fraction out of focus but the wing feathers have so much more detail in them.

I still have a lot to learn about using long lenses, but so far, I'm very happy with what this 400mm lens can do. Even with a 2.0x TC attached, it's quite usable for static/portrait shots when there is time to set up a tripod and manually focus the lens.

Waterdrop Worlds

The other day I thought I'd try taking some photos of flowers reflected in waterdrops. Most people probably try this kind of photography after it rains with plants available in their garden. However for me this sudden interest struct late one night and on a dry night at that. Not wishing to pass up a moment of creativity, I grabbed a couple of pot plants from the garden and brought them inside. I used a water spray bottle to simulate rain on the flowers and created some nice waterdrops. I was ready to start photographing.

For this shoot I used my Canon EOS 7D with an EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM lens and 37mm of extension. This gave me about 1.7x magnification or about 13mm edge to edge on the long axis. Since focus was critical I also used a Manfrotto Tripod and macro focusing rail and since I was going for maximum magnification I used 10x live view to focus manually on the images within the waterdrops. Lighting was provided by two off camera speedlite 430ex II flash units with defusers, triggered via the 7D's wireless flash capabilities. One flash provides side lighting to the main subject and the second one provides lighting for the subject in the water drops.

When doing flash macro work I set my camera to Manual mode with a Shutter speed as fast as my flash sync will allow and a low ISO. In this case I used 1/250 and ISO 100. Then I set the aperture to what ever I would like for depth of field and allow the flash to expose the image. The only side effect of this technique is that if the ambient light is too low then the background will be very dark. I don't mind this effect since it draws more attention to the subject. A third flash to blast the background might fix this problem but I've never tried this.

One drawback about shooting in the house was that these water drops act as very effective wide angle lenses and much care needs to be taken to avoid including artifacts (like light switches on the wall) from being included in the waterdrops. Another technical problem I encountered was that my defusers were square shaped and these square shapes show up in the drops, since waterdrops are spherical, at some point on the surface of these drops, the angle will be perfect to reflect the flash into the lens. I personally find the square shape quite objectionable. Next time I will use round defusers since a circular shape looks more natural on waterdrops.

What follows are a couple of my favourite shots from this session. All image were take with the same settings. Only the camera angle and flash location changed.

For the first shot I focused on the largest water drop I could find. These drops are quite small, about 2-3 mm in diameter perhaps because of their method of creation. I'd like a stronger macro lens to really fill the frame with just one drop.



Next I tried to line up my relatively shallow plane of focus so it cut through the most interesting part of the two main droplets of water on this flower bud. That involved a lot of micro adjusting of camera position. Here a macro focusing rail allows fine tuning in the z axis but changes in the x and y axis were brutish at best. More time and patients might have yielded a sharper image but none the less it's a good start.



This last image was interesting. The main flash was a little further away thus creating a darker image. However the main water drop is acting like a magnifing glass for the flash light and creating a spotlight effect on the flower bud. The area around the spotlight is darker since the light for this area has been focused away by the water drop.

Moon and Equipment Comparison

While out late one afternoon doing some macro photography I noticed a gibbons moon rising. I couldn't resist taking a couple of shots with my recently purchased super telephoto lens. After seeing some stunning images of the moon I thought I'd look back through my archive to see how the lens compares with other moon shots.

So here's a brief history of my photographic equipment and the moon shots they're capable of.

This first image was taken in November 2006 in some remote part of Eastern Tibet. Back then my camera kit was a Canon S2 IS. It was a 5 MP camera with a 72mm lens at the long end. I also had a 1.5x tele converter giving me an EFL of 648mm. As you can see the moon is little more than a white smudge in a blue sky.


Canon S2 IS, 648mm EFL hand held for 1/1000s at f/4.5.

Later in 2009 I was out photographing the sunset and then the city lights of Morioka when I noticed the moon and thought I'd have another crack at it. This time my kit was a little more advanced. I borrowed my wife's Canon EOS Kiss X digital and attached my Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens. This time I'm using Canon L glass on a dSLR giving me an EFL of 320mm on a 10 MP sensor. How will this go? Well the moon is a little smaller in the frame so more cropping is required to fill out the frame. However we can now see some texture and detail of the surface. Some of the larger craters are also visable.


Canon EOS Kiss X Digital and Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM giving 320mm EFL tripod mounted for 1/100s at f/8 and ISO 100.

Fastforward to October 2010 and I'm out again photographing the moon. This time I've finally purchased my own dSLR, a Canon EOS 7D and even upgraded my lens to a Canon EF 400mm f5.6 L USM. I use this mostly for birds in Flight but wondered how it would go with the moon. This setup gives me an EFL of 640mm of Canon super tele L prime glass on an 18 MP sensor. This camera also supports live view which makes manual focusing much easier when zoomed in 10x. As an interesting side note, at this magnification, you can actually see the moon move through the night's sky, surprisingly quickly actually.

This time less cropping was required to fill the frame and with a few more megapixils a bit more detail is recorded. Even with the light pollution of Tokyo the detail is quite amazing, especially where the moon receives side lighting. The shadows really help to make the craters stand out.


Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM giving 640mm EFL, tripod mounted and manual focused with 10x live view and exposed for 1/80s at f5.6 and ISO 200. (click image to enlarge)

Next time I get the chance, I'll add my 2x tele-converter for 1280mm EFL at f/11. Should be interesting.