174. Leaf - October 9-15, 2016
Paul-
Earlier this week I was shooting family pictures for Sara’s niece and her 5-year old daughter. I do it every year. It’s a nice thing to do for them, and I get more practice behind the lens. Win-win, right? Among the places we visited was the Sunken Gardens. (Yeah, that place again.)
In keeping with the Jedi wisdom Kevin revealed to me when I was his Padawan learner—“pixels are free!”—I shot over three hundred frames and figured I was good to go. However, a few steps before leaving the garden entirely, I saw this leaf and the back-lit flower behind it. I shot off a few more frames and didn’t think much more about it. Later, when I viewed one of the images, I thought it might have some potential so I played around with it.
I kinda like the result. It has that almost timeless Hallmark condolence card look to it.
My friend Flora stopped by to say: 18-55mm shot at 39mm; ISO 1250; 1/180 sec. at f/8; aperture priority; pattern metering. I boosted (slightly) the contrast, blacks, and noise reduction settings. I spent a little more time getting the vignette effect I wanted, as well as tweaking the saturation of the greens. Finally, a quick export over to PhotoScape (so what else is new) to “deepen” it a tad. “Deepen” (which you can control in 1% increments) is a nice little feature in PhotoScape. One of these days I should really get off my lily-white tuchas and figure out precisely what it does to all those free pixels.
Earlier this week I was shooting family pictures for Sara’s niece and her 5-year old daughter. I do it every year. It’s a nice thing to do for them, and I get more practice behind the lens. Win-win, right? Among the places we visited was the Sunken Gardens. (Yeah, that place again.)
In keeping with the Jedi wisdom Kevin revealed to me when I was his Padawan learner—“pixels are free!”—I shot over three hundred frames and figured I was good to go. However, a few steps before leaving the garden entirely, I saw this leaf and the back-lit flower behind it. I shot off a few more frames and didn’t think much more about it. Later, when I viewed one of the images, I thought it might have some potential so I played around with it.
I kinda like the result. It has that almost timeless Hallmark condolence card look to it.
My friend Flora stopped by to say: 18-55mm shot at 39mm; ISO 1250; 1/180 sec. at f/8; aperture priority; pattern metering. I boosted (slightly) the contrast, blacks, and noise reduction settings. I spent a little more time getting the vignette effect I wanted, as well as tweaking the saturation of the greens. Finally, a quick export over to PhotoScape (so what else is new) to “deepen” it a tad. “Deepen” (which you can control in 1% increments) is a nice little feature in PhotoScape. One of these days I should really get off my lily-white tuchas and figure out precisely what it does to all those free pixels.
Jerry-
I've enjoyed many a good leaf over the years and for the sake of this assignment, decided to mix a leaf with my inclination to burn things. So here is a well worn leaf with some additional color added to spice up things. This took several tries. At first I thought a slow shutter speed would be good but the leaf moved quite a bit as it caught fire. So I went with a high ISO of 25,600, a shutter speed of 1/30 and F16 aperture. The lens was an old 105 f4 Micro-Nikkor attached via an adapter to my Sony A6300.
I've enjoyed many a good leaf over the years and for the sake of this assignment, decided to mix a leaf with my inclination to burn things. So here is a well worn leaf with some additional color added to spice up things. This took several tries. At first I thought a slow shutter speed would be good but the leaf moved quite a bit as it caught fire. So I went with a high ISO of 25,600, a shutter speed of 1/30 and F16 aperture. The lens was an old 105 f4 Micro-Nikkor attached via an adapter to my Sony A6300.
Don-
Leaf caught on the side of a tree...
Leaf caught on the side of a tree...
Byron-
This theme is timely. I have a Maple tree in my front yard that is beautiful this time of year. The trick for me was finding a way of making a leaf presentable.
ISO 100, 125 sec, f5.6, 100mm
This theme is timely. I have a Maple tree in my front yard that is beautiful this time of year. The trick for me was finding a way of making a leaf presentable.
ISO 100, 125 sec, f5.6, 100mm
Kevin-
As usual I wound up taking multiple approaches to the WPOTM photograph. I thought about alternative definitions of Leaf of course, and considered asking Byron if I could borrow one his old Hasselblad lenses, and disassembling the leaf shutter in the lens. But as it is certain that I could never properly reassemble it again I decided that was a bad idea.
Fortunately Minnesota has leaves turning color this time of year. So I decided to go the traditional route and photograph an autumn leaf. But I also wanted to avoid a studio shot this time. The forecast said we were going to have rain one morning. So I found some promising subject leaves and thought that they might look interesting laying on the ground with raindrops on them.
Now the resulting images weren't literally true to Paul’s request to photograph a single leaf, rather than leaves, but I felt the size difference and position made it quite clear which leaf was the subject.
Still, I wanted to do something different. So my next challenge was to capture a leaf as it was falling to the ground. This is not as simple as it sounds. Even with a fast auto-focus system on my side seeing a leaf falling from a tree, aiming a long telephoto lens at it, getting it in focus and capturing a frame or two is all but impossible.
So I collecting some promising looking-maple leaves that had already fallen, and had them dropped. There was a lot of wind, and they fell fast with unpredictable paths, but I was able to capture some nice frames with great back-light shining through the leaf.
Nikon D4s, handheld. 70-200, f/2.8 Nikkor Zoom Lens set to 200mm. 2X teleconverter attached to make the combination a 140-400mm f5.6 set to 400mm equivalent). ISO 800, f/5.6 @ 1/1600th of a second.
Perhaps opening up the aperture another stop or two would have given slightly more definition to the out-of-focus background trees. But of course it’s always a trade off of a slower shutter speed or a higher ISO. So I decided to “leaf” it as is.
As usual I wound up taking multiple approaches to the WPOTM photograph. I thought about alternative definitions of Leaf of course, and considered asking Byron if I could borrow one his old Hasselblad lenses, and disassembling the leaf shutter in the lens. But as it is certain that I could never properly reassemble it again I decided that was a bad idea.
Fortunately Minnesota has leaves turning color this time of year. So I decided to go the traditional route and photograph an autumn leaf. But I also wanted to avoid a studio shot this time. The forecast said we were going to have rain one morning. So I found some promising subject leaves and thought that they might look interesting laying on the ground with raindrops on them.
Now the resulting images weren't literally true to Paul’s request to photograph a single leaf, rather than leaves, but I felt the size difference and position made it quite clear which leaf was the subject.
Still, I wanted to do something different. So my next challenge was to capture a leaf as it was falling to the ground. This is not as simple as it sounds. Even with a fast auto-focus system on my side seeing a leaf falling from a tree, aiming a long telephoto lens at it, getting it in focus and capturing a frame or two is all but impossible.
So I collecting some promising looking-maple leaves that had already fallen, and had them dropped. There was a lot of wind, and they fell fast with unpredictable paths, but I was able to capture some nice frames with great back-light shining through the leaf.
Nikon D4s, handheld. 70-200, f/2.8 Nikkor Zoom Lens set to 200mm. 2X teleconverter attached to make the combination a 140-400mm f5.6 set to 400mm equivalent). ISO 800, f/5.6 @ 1/1600th of a second.
Perhaps opening up the aperture another stop or two would have given slightly more definition to the out-of-focus background trees. But of course it’s always a trade off of a slower shutter speed or a higher ISO. So I decided to “leaf” it as is.