Bisti Wilderness Area – Fall 2018 – Afternoon Day 2

I rested during the day, after my early morning shoot, and spent some time studying the photographs in the book gifted to me by John Eric Hawkins.  John Eric went out a bit earlier than I did that afternoon and I headed out again around 5PM.

My destination for sunset photos was again The Nursery, where I would shoot with my Nikon 24mm PC-E lens.  I do not have much experience with this lens, but I thought this would be a good place to use it.  In my morning conversation with John Eric Hawkins, I asked him what he thought of my idea of using the tilt/shift lens in The Nursery.  He agreed that would be a good place to make use of this type lens.

As I neared my destination, I saw John Eric shooting in an area with small features, that I had scouted the previous day.  I recognized that area as a good place to shoot and I had thought that I might get back there at some point during my visit, so I was intrigued that John Eric was shooting there.  We chatted for brief while.  He really liked that little area for shooting and contrasted it to The Nursery.  As we were chatting, he told me that the 85mm 1.8 lens was a good one for shooting here.  I had recently seen other landscape photos taken with that lens and I could easily see that he was correct in his assertion.  I had a Nikon 85mm 1.8 lens back in my vehicle and I had hoped to get a chance to try it out for landscape shots somewhere on this particular trip, but I never had time to do so. Not wanting to distract John Eric for very long from his shoot, I continued on to The Nursery, which John Eric pointed to from our location, indicating that I could walk more directly to it than the route that I had set up on my GPS via a satellite map view.

Arriving in The Nursery, there was no one else around and I had the place completely to myself for the duration of my shoot.  Again the late day light was very good.

I began experimenting with the PC lens before the golden hour, just to get comfortable with the technique of using this unique lens.  I’ve blogged about this lens and technique previously, but here is a brief description of how to use this type lens.  The general procedure that I use, after setting my composition and determining a starting point for an exposure,  is to focus on the nearest object in the composition, using a large aperture, then tilt the lens to bring distant objects in the composition into focus.  At least with large apertures, the focus on the very nearest point in the composition tends to fall out of focus as those in the distance come into focus.  Decreasing the aperture a little helps with this problem.

I found shooting with the PC lens was a challenge, especially determining when I had proper focus on distant objects, as I tilted the lens.  It appeared that only a very small tilt on the order of 1-2 degrees was required to bring distant objects into focus and it was very difficult to determine when the focus was optimum. The PC-E 24mm is an entirely manual lens, with the exception of metering prior to tilting or shifting the lens.  I was also trying to use large apertures with the tilt and still get good depth of field, since this is one of the capabilities with this lens.

I had what I considered good compositions, with the “cracked eggs” in the foreground and the hillsides in the background or an array of the “cracked eggs” and the focus looked good to me in the field.  However, after reviewing my photos on a large screen, I was very disappointed.  Nearly all of the images were poorly focused or had very shallow DOF.

So what went wrong on this shoot?  There may be several possibilities.  Firstly, the very slight tilt range with very slight changes affecting the focus made it difficult to fine tune the focus.  It is also possible that the tilt might have moved slightly after it was set, even if I locked down the tilt mechanism or maybe locking the mechanism might have resulted in a slight tilt.  Secondly, maybe my eyes can no longer properly detect sharp focus.  Thirdly, maybe I expected too much DOF from this lens with large apertures in landscape photos with lots of depth and maybe I should have shot f/11 to f/16.  In hindsight, I certainly should have made each image with a range of apertures, since I had so little experience with this lens.

On the positive side, this was an experiment, which even though, it was mostly a failure, I can at least learn from the poor results and hopefully get better results with the next trial with this lens and I must practice more with the lens before depending upon it in a shoot of this type.

If any readers have experience with using the PC-E 24mm (or any other tilt/shift lens) for landscape photography, I would appreciate your feedback on this topic.

I only deemed 4 (or parts of 4, cropping some of the images to remove out of focus portions) of the 70+ images that I made on this shoot to be presentable and those are included here.

Bisti “Cracked Eggs”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/8, 1/125s, ISO 64, edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Bisti “Cracked Eggs” in “The Nursery”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/8, 1/160s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Bisti “Cracked Egg” Texture. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm (severe crop), f/3.5, 1/500s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Bisti “Cracked Eggs” in “The Nursery”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/3.5, 1/50s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
Bisti “Cracked Eggs” in “The Nursery”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/3.5, 1/50s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

As usual, these images are posted to my Flickr page, where they may be more easily viewed.

I had planned to get up early the next morning and shoot again at sunrise in the area with the many wing like hoodoos with the Nikon 14-24mm wide angle, which is easier to get more DOF with than the 24-70mm; however, as I walked back to the parking area with the desert rapidly going into darkness, feeling the tiredness setting in, I realized that with a long drive ahead the next day, that it would not be a good idea to start that drive after a short night of sleep and after hiking into and out of Bisti again.  A morning shoot would have resulted in a late start on my long drive, so I slept in until just prior to sunrise Monday morning.  When I peeked out the window, just after awaking, I saw that it was going to be a glorious sunrise with colorful clouds in the eastern sky and I immediately regretted my decision not to do the early morning shoot.

After getting everything packed away and ready for the road trip, I wrote a note to John Eric, since I had not seen any activity from his RV.  As I was about to leave the note on the driver’s side door of John’s RV, he called to me from inside, telling me to come around to the sliding door side.  He and Jean were just finishing breakfast and they were planning to leave that morning, too.  He commented that I must have had a very good morning for shooting and I had to inform him that I had not gone out.  I thanked John again for the book and we chatted for a few minutes before I got underway.

It was only late in the day, as I approached Amarillo, that I realized that my decision not to shoot that morning was for the best.  Otherwise, I would have probably been driving after dark, tired, and less alert, resulting in less safe driving.

There may be only one more minor post related to this fall trip.  I do not know when I will get time for another photo trip.  I expect it will be in the New Year before I get time for another trip, so either there will be an extended break in these posts or, maybe, I might blog about much earlier trips, as I do have several interesting stories and photos that I could share from past years.

Here’s hoping and wishing that you all have a happy end of the year holiday season!

Ken

2018 Colorado Fall Color Road Trip – Day 3 – Part 2

After the early morning photo shoot, I continued along Owl Creek Pass Road, enjoying the fall scenery and looking for a place for mid-morning photography and some experimentation with PC (Perspective Control in Nikon terms) lenses, commonly referred to as tilt/shift lenses.

Tilt/Shift lenses are typically used in product and architectural photography.  The shift allows one to make vertical objects, like buildings, look vertical, rather than tilted, as they do with ordinary lenses.  The tilt function of the lenses allows one to get a deeper depth of field with a large aperture, rather than having to go to a small aperture for a deep DOF.

Within the past twelve months I purchased a couple of used PC lenses from local photographers.  The lenses are quite expensive, if purchased new and not cheap, when a good used one is found.  The first one that I purchased was a Nikon PC-E 24mm.  The photographer that I acquired it from had used it for wedding photography, a surprising use of this lens, I thought; but one can get some special effects with it that makes for unique photographs.

The second tilt/shift lens that I acquired was an older Nikon PC85mm.  The photographer from which I purchased it had used it for product photography.  I had seen some interesting landscape photos taken with such a lens,  so I wanted to experiment with one and not wanting to spend a fortune on a lens that I might not use often, I knew it would be more economical and practical to get a good used lens.

These lenses are all manual focus, which can be a challenge for us older folks as our eye sight becomes less sharp.  The metering is also manual with PC lenses.  The PC-E (E designating electronic) will meter with the lens in the non-tilt, non-shift mode, so the exposure needs to be determined prior to shifting or tilting or one might shoot test shots and adjust the exposure by trial and error.  I found it best to estimate the exposure prior to tilting, shoot a test shot after tilting and tweak the exposure as appropriate.

Thinking that a forest might be a suitable place for experimentation, I found a couple of places near Silver Jack Reservoir where I could walk into an Aspen forest just off of a roadway.  A few of the test shots are posted below.

Experimenting with a tilt-shift lens, Nikon PC85mm. Note the line of focus in the upper third horizontal portion of the image with blurring to either side. Nikon D850, Nikon PC85mm, f5.6, 1/125s, ISO 64. Note the large aperture. It is possible to get a large depth of field with large apertures with tilt-shift lenses.

Many of the Aspen trees along the roadway into a parking area at Silver Jack Reservoir had initials or names, etc. carved into the trunks.  I happened to note that the tree on the left of the above image had my initials on it.  (No, I did not put them there).  Your eyes are ok, the image is blurry except along a horizontal band in the upper 1/3 of the photo.  The technique for getting such an image is to focus on a nearby subject, then tilt the lens to bring more distant subjects into focus.  You will notice that the large f/5.6 aperture gives a good depth of field through a portion of the image.

Experimenting with a tilt-shift lens. Nikon D850, Nikon PC 85mm, f/8, 1/125s, ISO 64. Moving to smaller apertures gives a broader area of focus through the central portion of images.

The photo above is also taken with the PC 85mm, but with an f/8 aperture.  Moving to a smaller apertures seems to widen the area of focus, as it increases the DOF.

A PC-E 24mm image in an Aspen forest. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/8, 1/125s, ISO 64.

The 24mm PC-E is a bit easier to work with than the PC 85mm.  It seems to give more leeway in acquiring focus while tilting than does the PC85mm.  In the above photo, I first focused on the rough bark on the tree on the left, then tilted the lens to increase the DOF.  Tilting the lens also affects the near focus a bit, so that a portion of the near object goes out of focus as the more distant objects come into focus.

Nikon D850, PC-E 24mm, f/6.7, 1/125s, ISO 64.

The lower photo above is the same composition as the previous one, but with a larger aperture.

Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 64.

The same composition as previously, but at f/11.  I think the wider focus area is apparent.  The lighting changed, as well as the aperture, so the exposure is a bit different.

Perhaps these are not the best images for illustrating the effects obtained by these lenses, but I’m thinking the tilt function can be useful for emphasizing certain aspects in an image, perhaps with a “tunnel” vision effect.

These lenses also rotate, so one can put the tilt and shift at various angles.  So far, I’ve only experimented with vertical tilts; but I think tilting at various angles to the camera will be appropriate in some situations.

These lenses all are configured by the manufacturer with the tilt and shift at 90 degrees to each other; but, as I have learned in my research on these lenses, these can be easily reconfigured to have the tilt and shift aligned in the same direction, making it possible to keep vertical objects vertical, while also increasing the DOF with the tilt function.  I have not yet tried this, but I am thinking that I might.  One might pay Nikon or a professional camera shop to reconfigure a lens, but it is an easy do-it-yourself operation, just be careful with the E versions, since there is wiring within these lenses and one cannot rotate the lens parts more than 90 degrees or damage to the wiring is probable.  Information on how to modify these lenses (Nikon and Canon) can be found via an online search.  Here is one link that describes the procedure for Nikon PC lenses http://www.achim-sieger.de/en/axis-change-pc-e-nikkor-24mm/

The 24mm PC-E is a very sharp lens and can be used in a non-tilt, non-shift mode as an ordinary 24mm prime.  While shooting with no tilt and no shift, I noted that occasional breezes shook loose leaves and I thought shooting them as they fell might make interesting photos and maybe brief time lapse videos.  I could not use the built in time lapse function of the D850 very easily, since the breezes were not predictable, so I elected to just shoot a series of shots using the remote release, whenever the leaves began to fall.  I did not even take time to set the camera to continuous mode, I just used the remote release to shoot as quickly as I could press the shutter release button.  It is best to view the following photos and time lapse videos on a large screen, otherwise the falling leaves are not easily observed, in this very brief video.  To make a longer video, would have taken much more time and many more shots and I did not think it worthwhile to expend that much effort to do so. (This video is also posted to my Flickr page).

Falling Aspen Leaves. Nikon D850, PC-E 24mm (cropped), f/11, 1/125s, ISO 64.

The falling leaves are fairly easily seen in this cropped version (just above) of one of my images.

Look for very brief yellow spots within the video to see the falling leaves.  If nothing else were moving, I might have made gotten leaf trail type images (similar to star trails); but if nothing else were moving, there would be no falling leaves, either.

I got feedback from one of my blog followers regarding the video format (mp4).  Apparently, not everyone can view these formats.  While I can convert an mp4 to an avi and other video formats, I cannot view an avi on my MAC computer, so I have no idea how the avi looks or even if it will work in this post.  I tried to insert an avi into this post, but I’m rather sure that it would not be visible, so I removed it.  At this time I have no solution for this problem.

I later used the PC-E 24mm to photograph at Bisti in New Mexico and I will post photos from that shoot in a later post.  I’ve not yet had time to review those photos in detail, so I hope I have suitable ones to share from that shoot.