by chphoto | Jul 18, 2014 |
Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at night reflected on the Mississippi River. Photographed from Harriet Island. Photographed well after the sun was down, it was dark enough to make long exposures with little need for ND filters. The long exposure helps to smooth out and intensify the lights reflecting on the water as well as to smooth the surface of the water. You can also notice that the clouds moved during the exposure, resulting in a streaking appearance. ISO 50 – f/11.0 – 60s – 28mm – Tripod – Single Exposure Canon EOS 5D MkII Body and Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L Lens with circular polarizer. Photographed in St Paul, Minnesota on 7-18-2014 at 9:00...
by chphoto | Jul 18, 2014 |
Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota reflected on the Mississippi River. Photographed from Harriet Island. Photographed well after the sun was down, it was dark enough to make long exposures with little need for any filters. The long exposure helps to intensify the lights reflecting on the water as well as to smooth the surface of the water, removing waves and debris. When making long exposures it is often convenient to shoot at the lowest possible ISO and maximum aperture (f/22) to achieve the slowest of all possible shutter speeds. However attention needs to be paid to the diffraction effect caused by the narrow aperture setting. Every camera body has a diffraction limit, effected by the aperture setting of the lens, a point at which the image begins to degrade when the aperture is set near the maximum setting. Most camera and lens combinations are optimal at around f/8 to f/11 aperture setting. The star effect on the lights is created through exploiting aperture diffraction which among other things causes the bright lights to appear as stars. This same scene photographed at f/8 only moments before this shot did not have any stars at all, the lights all appeared to be round (and boring). ISO 100 – f/16.0 – 120s – 40mm – Tripod – Single Exposure Canon EOS 5D MkII Body and Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L Lens with circular polarizer. Photographed in St Paul, Minnesota on 7-18-2014 at 9:30...
by chphoto | Jul 16, 2014 |
Downtown St. Paul, Mississippi River and the Wabasha street bridge. Photographed from Harriet Island. ISO 50 – f/11.0 – 1/4s – 40mm – Tripod – Single Exposure Canon EOS 5D MkII Body and Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L Lens with circular polarizer and 2 stop graduated ND filter. Photographed in St Paul, Minnesota on 7-16-2014 at 2:30...
by chphoto | Jul 16, 2014 |
Several weeks ago during the flood there was a brief story on the local news about the giant clam shell floating down the river. Some people were a bit concerned, thinking this was some prehistoric creature. The shell is not real and was part of the play ground on Harriet Island in St. Paul. I was walking around at Harriet Island today and I saw the shell parked on the shore, returned to its home. ISO 100 – f/11.0 – 1/50s – 40mm – Handheld – Single Exposure Canon EOS 5D MkII Body and Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L Lens with Circular Polarizer. Photographed in St Paul, Minnesota on 7-16-2014 at 2:30...
by chphoto | Jul 3, 2014 |
The clouds were providing a very ominous background to the city skyline yesterday until the sun went down and then turned into quite a spectacular display of colors. I used a 2 Stop Graduated ND filter to balance the sky and a 3 Stop ND filter and allowing me to get an exposure time of 25 seconds. The long exposure time creates the smooth texture on the water which also helps to illustrate the movement of the river. Single Exposure – ISO 50 – f/22 – 25.0s – 28mm Canon EOS 5D MkII Body and Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 Lens. Photographed in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 7-3-2014 at 8:00...
by chphoto | Jun 27, 2014 |
Looking towards Minneapolis and the Third Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River at sunset. I started shooting long exposures of some of these scenes and I really liked the effect which it created on the water by smoothing out the waves and making the reflections very bright. It occurred to me that If i was to use Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) to make one image as normal, one image -2 EV to expose for the clouds and bright sky and one image at +2 EV to expose for the details of the buildings that they could all be merged together to create one image impossible to capture with normal methods. The name for this technique is called HDR or High Dynamic Range because it creates a much larger range of brighness than normal range between the dark shadows and bright sunlight. The +2 stops over exposed version has little detail in the sky but because it was a 6.0 second shot it has the beautifully smooth water reflecting the sunset. The -2 stops under exposed version has excellent detail in the sky and clouds but the bridge and buildings look like a silhouette they are so dark. Most DSLR cameras have an AEB feature (it could have a different name) which when switched on will make your camera shoot in groups of usually 3 photos (sometimes 5 or 7) but i think three is plenty. By using a tripod and shooting groups of three photos in rapid succession I was able to capture the exact same scene exposing once for the sky, once for the shadows and once for...
