Odaiba - Tokyo

The other day I was running errands in the neighbourhood of Odaiba. It's located across the bay from downtown Tokyo. After finishing my errands I took the opportunity to take a few photos of this area. It's main photographic attraction is the view of Rainbow Bridge which gets it's name from the coloured lights used to illuminate the bridge at night.

This area is a popular spot for Tokyoites to visit with a number of waterfront restaurants offering stunning views of Rainbow Bridge and the Tokyo skyline. After dark it's also visited by numerous restaurant boats offering an alternative viewing location. This spot's also quite popular with photographers much like myself. While I was there I met several other tripod toting photographers with a bag full of lenses.
 
Here are a few shots...
 

Odaiba Waterfront
 Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF-s 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM at 35mm EFL
2 sec, f/4.5 & ISO 100 with tripod, MLU & remote release

A panoramic view of Tokyo bay from Odaiba with restaurant boats and Rainbow Bridge in the background.

Bridge & Boats
 Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM at 136mm EFL
0.4 sec, f/2.8 & ISO 100 with tripod, MLU & remote release

A tighter shot of the bridge with a few colourful restaurant boats in the foreground.

Restaurant Boat
Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM at 136mm EFL
0.4 sec, f/2.8 & ISO 100 with tripod, MLU & remote release

One of the many restaurant boats that frequent this area after the sun goes down.

The Bridge
 Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM at 136mm EFL
2.5 sec, f/8 & ISO 100 with tripod, MLU & remote release

Rainbow Bridge which crosses Tokyo bay linking Tokyo and Odaiba.



Sleeping Seagulls
 Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM at 136mm EFL
1.0 sec, f/8 & ISO 800 with tripod, MLU & remote release

I don't know how it is that so many seagulls try to sleep with so much light around but they do.

Before and After

Here is one of my very first images taken with a digital compact camera back in 2003. At that time I was given a film SLR camera but I alos bought a digital camera so I could experiment and practice composition, and not have to worry about film development costs. Once I found a good composition, I would then switch to the SLR to capture that high quality shot. However after a few months using the digital camera, I abandoned using the SLR. I seldom found good compositions so I stopped carrying it around and focused solely on improving my composition and technique.

For a long time I've looked at this image, wondering how I could have made it better and for a long time, I couldn't think of anything. However 8 years later, I've come to a point in my development as a photographer where I can now look at this image and see faults I couldn't before. Here is the unadjusted image straight from the camera. A lucky shot for a beginner.

Original Capture
Canon PowerShot S30 at 40mm EFL, tripod mounted.
1/15s at f/4.5

 When I look at this image these days, I get an overwhelming sense of red, especially in the shadows and the sky just above the buildings. To fix this using Lightroom, I used the white balance tool and looked for an area in the image where it should be almost black but there's a little red, and made a selection. I chose a place just above the buildings on the right hand side. The software makes a calculation and adjusts the colours in the image so that my selection is neutral grey. In this case Lightroom adjusted temp by -44 (it was a .jpg file) and tint by -5. Now my blacks actually look black and the colours in the water separate more, making them stronger too.

I also straightened the horizon, cloned out a few stars (noise or dust) in the sky and gave it a little extra saturation (+10). However they are minor adjustments. Removing the colour cast had the biggest impact on the final image.

After Post Processing
The colour cast is gone allowing the other colours to separate and become stronger.



Some people have also commented to me that they would like to see a more panoramic crop to remove the foreground. So here is a 2:1 crop. I'm quite partial to panoramic images but I kind of like the foreground as an anchor for the viewer. If I was to shoot this again, I would use a much wider lens and keep the foreground but add some more of the city on the left and right.



Alternative 2:1 Panoramic Crop
It's a nice city shot but I'm not sure I like loosing the foreground.



Birds In Flight

Well, I've had the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM for a couple of months now. I added this lens to my collection for it's stellar reputation and performance at capturing birds in flight. I still have a lot to learn about this genre of photography but so far it's been quite exciting. My subjects are just a few common seagulls but since they are mostly white, they present a significant exposure challenge and therefore make great practice subjects.

To freeze birds in flight, I need to use a fast shutter speed. Around 1/1000s or more is a good start and since this lens is a rather slow f/5.6, it will need a lot of light to achieve this, without having to resort to increasing ISO. So to get the most out of a session, I usually only go out on a sunny day and try to find a location along the edge of a pond where the sun is more or less behind me so I can make the most out of available light.

I usually shoot birds in flight in manual mode. As a base line, I start with the camera settings at 1/1250s, f/5.6 and ISO 100. Once I've found my position with good light, I take a few test shots and adjust the settings as necessary. If shots are a little underexposed, I'll increase the ISO. If they are a little overexposed, I'll increase the shutter speed or I can get a little more depth of field. Over the course of a session, I periodically check exposures and make some adjustments if necessary. I find using manual gets me a higher percentage of correctly exposed images than relying on the camera's light meter.

For this kind of photography, I like to use a Canon EOS 7D with it's high frame rate and flexible AF system. I typically set AF Mode to AI Servo and Drive Mode to high speed continuous. I usually shoot in AF expansion mode but sometimes when the background is mostly sky, I switch to Auto Selection 19 point mode. The other three modes are disabled so it's easier to switch between these two modes. I also assign the multi-controller to AF point direct selection so it's very quick to change the active focus points.

Here's a few of my better shots so far. I love the detail this lens can capture in the flight feathers.



On Final
Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at 640mm EFL.
1/1250s, f/5.6 & ISO 160.




Right Turn
Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at 640mm EFL.
1/1250s, f/5.6 & ISO 320




Touch Down
Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at 640mm EFL.
1/1250s, f/5.6 & ISO 320



Coming in Hard
Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at 640mm EFL.
1/1250s, f/5.6 & ISO 320


  

Follow the Leader
Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM at 640mm EFL.
1/1250s, f/5.6 & ISO 160



One of the problems I've found so far with this lens is that the fixed focal length makes it hard to frame subjects. It's all to easy to clip a wing, especially when they are getting close to the camera.


steve

Praying Mantis

The other day, I was watching a video critique by Craig Tanner from The Mindful Eye. In this video among other things he was looking at the combination of colours and noted that while the image had the potential for a variety of colour pairs and triads, there was an overriding colour of green to the image. I had to agree. I didn't really like the colours in the image at all, too much green. However after he removed the colour cast, green was much less dominant, allowing all the colours to separate and greatly boost colour contrast. It was a subtle change but had a big impact on the final image.

A few days later and I find myself looking at this image below. I liked the pose from this praying mantis as he goes about cleaning his raptorial legs, but it didn't really separate well from the background. While I was staring at the image, I started to realise that there was an overriding sense of orange. Remembering Craig's video, I wondered if I removed this orange cast, would it allow my subject to separate from the background.

Praying Mantis – with orange colour cast

Canon EOS 7D with a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens at 160mm EFL hand held with twin off camera flashes remotely triggered. Exposure Trio: 1/250s, f/8 and ISO 100.

I use Lightroom to develop all my images. If you look closely at the top right corner, you'll notice that this area is almost neutral grey but there is a little orange in there. Using lightroom's white balance selector tool, I clicked on an area that was almost neutral grey in there, but still had a little orange cast to it.

Here is the result. The change is subtle but I think the orange is no longer so dominant, allowing the colours to separate and show the subject more clearly. In this case, Lightroom decreased the Colour Temperature from 5750k to 4950k and changed the Tint from +23 to +19.

Praying Mantis – without colour cast


This image was originally taken indoors with off camera flash and since my walls aren't pure white, the camera's auto white balance feature probably struggled to find a good value. When shooting macro with flash, I use Manual Exposure mode. I set my shutter speed to the fastest flash sync speed (1/250 for a 7D) and ISO at 100. Then I vary my aperture depending on how much depth of field I would like. The flashes combined with ETTL will fire just enough light to expose the image correctly. Ambient light will expose the background and if it's relatively dark, then it will underexpose or just stay black. Some people don't like this but I don't mind the effect.

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.