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2018 Project - Focused picture a week (WoodButcher)

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Very nice. For a treat, click on Rusty's pic and go scroll around on it at Super Hi Res.
 
Thank you. I had another that was technically better of some little red flowers. It was a three shot stack to get more in focus. This was more eye catching and is just a single shot.
 
Week 13

Well, I rode out to Fredericksburg to spend Saturday riding with friends and coming home early Sunday for Easter with the family. My hope was to get some bluebonnet fields or roadside shot. Nothing caught my eye.

However, we have a screech owl that has taken up residence in the house I put up in the backyard for them. So I've been stalking him some. This week I only went out once, but found a better angle to watch for him. List is around 8pm and getting very dark. I'm shooting f2.8 and high ISO on a 70-200mm lens. Handheld, but sitting in a very stable position. 1/50 of a second. You may notice that I'm using my crop sensor body instead of my full frame with better low light capability. I'm finding that there isn't much more than a stop or stop and a half difference and I'm gaining more than that by using the f2.8 70-200 at 200(x1.6) vs. the full frame with the 100-400mm at f5.6 or so. Because I have to zoom in a bit more on the full frame so the 70-200 wouldn't get me close enough. Next I'll try the 1.4x teleconverter on the full frame with the 70-200mm. But that's for another day. If you click on the image and look at it larger, you will see the noise from the high ISO.

Remember that this was taken almost in the dark. My eyes could see the light wood of the owl house, but not the bird and barely the roof.

IMD_6944-XL.jpg



CAMERA Canon EOS 7D Mark II
LENS Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
ISO 4000
FOCAL LENGTH 200.0 mm (601.1 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/2.8
EXPOSURE TIME 0.02s (1/50)
 
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I drove by some white bluebonnets or at least I thought they looked white, today. I’ll circle back in the next few days and take a closer look. They might be paying for all I know.
 
Week 14

Well, I spent more time this week stalking the owl and actually got some nice early evening shots of the one that hangs out in the bushes, but my goal with this is to be doing something new and attempting to grow my skills. So this week was a combination of wildflower and pet photography. My daughter, who lives in DFW, was pestering me to get a shot of the young German Shepherd dog that owns us. My wife was also behind the idea. So, we finally got a sunny day and I had already scouted a few locations. We headed out around 6pm with the plan of catching some golden hour light. A the first location we were a bit early, but by the time we got to the second location, the dog was calmer (worn out) and the sun was further down. Nothing special from lens and settings. Trying to keep ISO low. 24-70mm lens at 70mm and f4 so most of her head is in sharp focus, but background gets soft. Here's my favorite shot:

IM5_1837-X2.jpg


CAMERA Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
LENS Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM or Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM | A
ISO 100
FOCAL LENGTH 70.0 mm (92.3 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/4
EXPOSURE TIME 0.00156s (1/640)
 
Week 15 Not a great week for images, but did has some good riding :-)

Got some group shots at the Tenerecity ride, but got really interested in watching a pair of swallows build a nest stuck right on a wall. Had to play around a bit to get the exposure right since it was dark bird on a light background. Had to over expose by over a stop to get the detail in the swallow.

IMG_2234-XL.jpg


CAMERA Canon EOS M5
LENS Canon EF-M 18-150mm 1:3.5-6.3 IS STM
ISO 400
FOCAL LENGTH 150.0 mm (388.0 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/6.3
EXPOSURE TIME 0.004s (1/250)

Good observers may notice that it is not my normal camera. This is a Canon mirrorless that belongs to my wife. Similar sensor to my 7D Mark 2, but the lens is not nearly the quality of what I use on the bigger cameras. I have an adapter, but hauling it and larger lenses negates how nice this one packs on the bike.
 
Week 16. MotoGP race week. Sorry I'm slow, but i took almost 3000 pictures and it takes a while to cull out the bad ones (focus, objects in way, poor composition). I decided that this attempt at panning came out nicely. This is Dani Pedrosa during one of the practice sessions. Or qualifying, I can remember. 3000 pictures, two days of shooting, give me a break on this one. Dani had broken his wrist two weeks prior and you'll notice he has two different gloves on. Anybody know which wrist was broken? I thought it was the right one.

IMD_7768-XL.jpg


I took lots of shots This was still a fast shutter speed for panning, but they were moving along pretty quickly. You can see blur in the background and that the wheels are moving, but fairly sharp on the rider and bike. Fairly sharp...not perfect.

CAMERA Canon EOS 7D Mark II
LENS Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
ISO 320
FOCAL LENGTH 400.0 mm (979.6 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/6.3
EXPOSURE TIME 0.001s (1/1000)
 
I thought they were saying it was the right wrist. That glove was bigger than normal to allow for the swelling. I have to say, I am amazed that he did so well during the race!
 
He said he was all used up by the end. Had to use his left arm for support and moving the bike. No weight on right, only braking and throttle. Must have been tough.
 
Week 17 - Semi macro time. Some of the guys were posting pictures of closeups with their macro lenses and I hadn't had mine out in a while. So I got it out and did some shooting. While this shot isn't a true macro 1:1 shot, it is about 1:2. Shot towards the sun and that got light penetrating the flower and the colors are nice and deep. This is the same shot I had in my macro thread a couple of days ago.

IMD_0393-X2.jpg


This is uncropped in post processing, but highlights reduced, some sharpening and a very little bit of vibrance. I will probably crop out some of the negative space and remove that spider web and lint from the upper left.

CAMERA Canon EOS 7D Mark II
LENS Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro
ISO 200
FOCAL LENGTH 105.0 mm (168.5 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/7.1
EXPOSURE TIME 0.00313s (1/320)
NAME IMD_0393.jpg
SIZE 5472 x 3648
 
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:clap: That is the best rendition of red I've seen in a digital shot ever.
 
Thanks. Yep, reds are hard. Dark pink and magenta too. The trick is not to over expose and don't boost the highlights or whites in post.
 
Week 18 - Sorry I'm late in posting this one. I flew out to Phoenix for four days to attend my youngest sister-in-law's wedding. She's actually only a year older than my son and they grew up together. I was not "the" photographer, but hauled my full frame camera, a 24-70mm and 70-200mm lens out there, along with a couple of flashes and a diffuser for the flash. I stayed well out of the way of the pro photog, but she was fine with me shooting some of the posed group shots after the service. During the service I just stayed way in the back and used the length of the 70-200mm lens. It was a 5pm wedding, outdoors, in Phoenix. They reversed the bride and groom sides to the groom had to stare into the setting sun. This is early in the service. Cropped in about halfway. Amazing what you can recover since the light was so strong. I just made sure not to blow out the highlights and hope I could recover the shadows.

IM5_2063-X2.jpg


CAMERA Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
LENS Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
ISO 100
FOCAL LENGTH 200.0 mm (339.2 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/6.3
EXPOSURE TIME 0.00625s (1/160)
 
Week 19 = Well, with the BBQ event going on at the house this weekend I didn't have time to really plan anything out. Was too busy to take pictures during the BBQ, but the owl came out during the day and I took a few shots. However, I'm not going to bore you with another owl picture. It will have to do something spectacular to show up here again. On Friday evening there was a Northern Cardinal high in a tree just singing away. The breeze was pretty stiff at times and he was swaying all over. The golden light of the sun going down really lit him up.

IMD_0618-XL.jpg


CAMERA Canon EOS 7D Mark II
LENS Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
ISO 320
FOCAL LENGTH 400.0 mm (2521.1 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/5.6
EXPOSURE TIME 0.00156s (1/640)
 
Week 20 - My daughter was in town again this weekend and found this little fellow all defenseless in the yard. She got him to climb onto the stick. The stinger was very long. This one shows the body better, but I have a two shot focus stack that I find more interesting, but this one is closer.

No crop on this one, BTW. 105mm macro lens on a crop sensor camera. Handheld, no flash.

IMD_0716-X2.jpg


CAMERA Canon EOS 7D Mark II
LENS Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro
ISO 250
FOCAL LENGTH 105.0 mm (168.5 mm in 35mm)
APERTURE f/6.3
EXPOSURE TIME 0.01s (1/100)
 
Week 21: Well, I could post one of the live music shots that Scott and I got together, but I had a mission of a shot I wanted to get. Well, not so much this particular subject, but I got some new filters for doing landscape shots. A circular polarizer and some neutral density filters. One thing that you can do is take longer shot during the day with them. So in moving water it give you creamy looking water. We have some small falls/spillway in Round Rock so off I went on Monday to get this shot. I'm including 3 today, but only one is my "weekly" shot.

30 second exposure, f/11, ISO 100, the latter two being the constant in all three shots. This was with a polarizer to cut down on water reflections (also helps with leaves) and a 10 stop ND filter. Which means it blocks 10 stops of light. You can see movement in the close vegetation. The moving water is blurred though, the rest is fairly sharp. Yes, on a tripod. :-)

IM5_3088-XL.jpg


This shot is polarizer only, 1/40 of a second. The polarizer is about 1-2 stops of light reduction, so still kind of slow, but the water is crisp and sharp.

i-3L6L5tB-XL.jpg


The last is the other end of the spectrum. Polarizer, 10-stop ND plus a 6-stop ND. 122 second exposure and I still needed to bump it up in post processing. More motion blur of plants all over. Lost some reflection under the trees due to underexposure, but you get the idea of what happens with longer exposure.

i-B4KprNf-XL.jpg


Anyway, it was fun learning and I plan on doing more practice. I need to get a better handle on calculating expose before my cross country trip at the end of the month.
 
So which is the official shot?

I like the middle one.

I wonder how traffic shots would look during the day time with a long exposure?
 
There’s a photographer that uses something like 20 or more stops of ND filter and he photographs busy highway’s and downtown areas which are devoid of cars. It’s quite eerie.
 
Official shot is the first. This weekly project is to try some new things, build skills So that is what I did with #1 and #3. #2 was so I had something to compare to.
 
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