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It's really hard to take photos of a piano with a glossy black finish. Autofocus almost never works, it's hard to manually focus on what you can't see, and it reflects everything in the room, including my ugly mug.

 

http://t2studios.com/Photos/KawaiRX2/pictures/picture-1.jpg

 

http://t2studios.com/Photos/KawaiRX2/pictures/picture-2.jpg

 

http://t2studios.com/Photos/KawaiRX2/pictures/picture-5.jpg

From the album Kawai RX-2

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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Hi Mike. Thanks for the info about the light circles - very interesting.

 

Happy birthday!! I have .........acquired.......... a cake for you.. Regretfully I neither baked nor photographed it myself. I hope it turns out to be neither over nor underexposed; sufficiently GUI, and may provide you with a few enjoyable megabytes. Wishing you a wonderful day. :)

 

Cake for Mike......

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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Thanks guys for the birthday wishes. ;)

 

I had a Facebook chat with our long exposure expert KenElevenShadows and thought I should share what I learned here.

 

I wrote:

I'm new to ND filters but I need one. Want to do some flowing water pics but also need the flexibility to reduce the overall light on a very bright day. Budget is limited. Do you recommend variable ND filters?

 

I do not know very much about variable filters. Given how expensive they are, unless you have varying sunlight, you may want to think about buying two decent ND filters instead, something like maybe a three-stop and six-stop filter unless you wish to do really long exposures.

 

If you do look into variable filters, I heard the Singh-Ray is well made, and the Tiffen is not all that great. I don't like Tiffen filters anyway, so this doesn't surprise me. If you get fixed filters, B+W is excellent. I do not know if B+W makes variable filters or not.

 

And one more thing...if your budget is limited, you may want to consider buying a 3-stop ND filter. If you need another stop or so, you can stop down your camera a lot and/or use a circular polarizing filter, which adds one stop or so. I did this for the longest time without any issues. And if waterfalls are in shade, a 3-stop filter is often enough anyway unless you are going for really long exposures. If it's shady and earlier or later in the day, which is ideal for waterfalls anyway, you can often get between 1-4 second exposures for waterfalls with a 3-stop filter, I've found.

-Mike Martin

 

Casio

Mike Martin Photography Instagram Facebook

The Big Picture Photography Forum on Music Player Network

 

The opinions I post here are my own and do not represent the company I work for.

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Do you ever put music to your photos Ken? They are SO atmospheric.

 

Thanks! No, I haven't. Well, not exactly. But someone on Craig Anderton's forum did:

 

[video:youtube]

 

[video:youtube]

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Thanks guys for the birthday wishes. ;)

 

I had a Facebook chat with our long exposure expert KenElevenShadows and thought I should share what I learned here.

 

I wrote:

I'm new to ND filters but I need one. Want to do some flowing water pics but also need the flexibility to reduce the overall light on a very bright day. Budget is limited. Do you recommend variable ND filters?

 

I do not know very much about variable filters. Given how expensive they are, unless you have varying sunlight, you may want to think about buying two decent ND filters instead, something like maybe a three-stop and six-stop filter unless you wish to do really long exposures.

 

If you do look into variable filters, I heard the Singh-Ray is well made, and the Tiffen is not all that great. I don't like Tiffen filters anyway, so this doesn't surprise me. If you get fixed filters, B+W is excellent. I do not know if B+W makes variable filters or not.

 

And one more thing...if your budget is limited, you may want to consider buying a 3-stop ND filter. If you need another stop or so, you can stop down your camera a lot and/or use a circular polarizing filter, which adds one stop or so. I did this for the longest time without any issues. And if waterfalls are in shade, a 3-stop filter is often enough anyway unless you are going for really long exposures. If it's shady and earlier or later in the day, which is ideal for waterfalls anyway, you can often get between 1-4 second exposures for waterfalls with a 3-stop filter, I've found.

 

Bollocks! That guy doesn't know what he's talking about!! :D

 

...except when he wishes Mike a happy birthday.

 

 

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Thanks, all! Nice to finally be here. Here are some photos I took in Austin a few years ago.

 

14590444659_ed570fa588_c.jpgIMG_5734 by Joe Stone Zone, on Flickr

 

14590402140_f883a04279_c.jpgIMG_5737 by Joe Stone Zone, on Flickr

 

14776763462_2f3675a02a_c.jpgIMG_5782 by Joe Stone Zone, on Flickr

 

and one of my favorite features of Austin...

 

14776764262_beb3553e33_c.jpgIMG_5795 by Joe Stone Zone, on Flickr

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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The piano pictures look cool, maybe higher resolution would be required to judge what's properly unsharp as a consequence of DOV and what the camera mocked up a bit.
I was definitely going for a narrow depth of field with those, if that's what you mean. I was also enjoying the morning light coming through the nearby window and playing with that.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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I would agree that pianos often look good with a narrow depth of field. I have never shot anything black and glossy like that, but I would think that much of it would have to do with the angle of the light as well as the color temperature of the light.

 

As far as manually focusing on the piano, which is what I would do, you could pull a trick from us night photographers, and brightly illuminate whatever it is you wish to focus on so you can see what's going, then take that light away.

 

Regardless, there's a bunch of cool photos here, and I'm happy to see Joe posting some of those cool ones as well!!!!

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http://kenleephotography.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/3172-2014-07-11-0057-186sf8iso250-buscloseupredinterior-kenlee_carforest-1000px.jpg

 

Fasten your seat belts. If you can find 'em.

 

Outside the historic mining town of Goldfield, NV, in a desert dotted by Joshua Trees, you can see a field of old cars that are wildly painted and jammed into the ground at unlikely angles. This is the International Car Forest of the Last Church, created by Michael "Mark" Rippie and painted by Chad Sorg. In July 2014, I stayed in Goldfield and created night photos with light painting to enhance the bold colors of the painted cars even more. Light painting photos of this nature are often best done near a full moon, and although occasionally plagued with cloudy skies, I managed to get some photos I was happy with here at this strange art installation.

 

With a nod of gratitude to Troy Paiva and Lance Keimig, who largely pioneered this sort of light painting photography. I don't do this sort of light painting often, but their two books definitely had an influence on this photo. I used an LED flashlight and SB-600 with gels to light paint. All colored light work was done during the exposure, and is not a Photoshop creation.

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I have the Austin street sign in the form a T-shirt. Love that. Great shots Joe!
Thanks, Mike! Did you get the t-shirt in Austin? I've been wanting that sign on a shirt as well as a sign I could put up in my studio since I first saw it. (I admit to not having looked online. I haven't thought about it much until seeing the photo again.)

 

P.S. Your bug photos are great. I've tried to get close shots like that of butterflies but they either move or put their wings in a position that isn't photogenic.

 

I would agree that pianos often look good with a narrow depth of field. I have never shot anything black and glossy like that, but I would think that much of it would have to do with the angle of the light as well as the color temperature of the light.

 

As far as manually focusing on the piano, which is what I would do, you could pull a trick from us night photographers, and brightly illuminate whatever it is you wish to focus on so you can see what's going, then take that light away.

 

Regardless, there's a bunch of cool photos here, and I'm happy to see Joe posting some of those cool ones as well!!!!

Thanks, Ken! That's an interesting tip, though I'm not sure it will work. Maybe what I would need to do is put something on or just in front of the surface, focus on that, then move it away.

 

P.S. Your photos blow me away. I can hardly even tell what that last one is from the angle, but it's fantastic. (It's a bus, right?)

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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If you know how to merge parts of pictures in a gradual way (e.g. layers with transparency blend patterns), you could consider making a few pictures from a solid tripod, each focusing on a different depth, and blend them together digitally, and if necessary add a graded DOF blur. Not very easy, but should be possible, except for getting a film-like DOF, that's actually quite hard, usually a lens does the best job, but cameras interpret the pixels they record to get a certain feel of sharpness, which might be in the way.

 

Anyhow, cool pictures. Is the color realistic ?

 

T.

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I would agree that pianos often look good with a narrow depth of field. I have never shot anything black and glossy like that, but I would think that much of it would have to do with the angle of the light as well as the color temperature of the light.

 

As far as manually focusing on the piano, which is what I would do, you could pull a trick from us night photographers, and brightly illuminate whatever it is you wish to focus on so you can see what's going, then take that light away.

 

Regardless, there's a bunch of cool photos here, and I'm happy to see Joe posting some of those cool ones as well!!!!

Thanks, Ken! That's an interesting tip, though I'm not sure it will work. Maybe what I would need to do is put something on or just in front of the surface, focus on that, then move it away.

 

P.S. Your photos blow me away. I can hardly even tell what that last one is from the angle, but it's fantastic. (It's a bus, right?)

 

Thanks, Joe. If you cannot see what you are focusing on, then illuminating something will surely help. You can do variations on this by illuminating something by leaning a small LED flashlight right where you want to focus, or illuminating a matchstick placed on the plane where you want to focus, or something like this, but I promise you, it will work. IF you can see it, then it'll work. If I can do this by illuminating a statue from 20-30 feet away so I can focus on it while it's completely black outside with no moon and no streetlights, I guarantee this will work on a piano. But the point being that you want to be able to see where you are focusing on, so any variation on this illumination will work. It's the principle on which we all photograph when we can't see what we're photographing. There's other techniques as well, but they are considerably more confusing.

 

And thank you very much about the photo. It is indeed a bus. It just happens to be a bus at a rather strange angle.

 

 

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If you know how to merge parts of pictures in a gradual way (e.g. layers with transparency blend patterns), you could consider making a few pictures from a solid tripod, each focusing on a different depth, and blend them together digitally, and if necessary add a graded DOF blur. Not very easy, but should be possible, except for getting a film-like DOF, that's actually quite hard, usually a lens does the best job, but cameras interpret the pixels they record to get a certain feel of sharpness, which might be in the way.

 

Anyhow, cool pictures. Is the color realistic ?

 

T.

 

If you want a really really shallow depth of field, what you want to do is open up your lens to the widest aperture possible. f/1.4, f/1.8, etc. will yield very very narrow depths of field and get that creamy bokeh, or blur, that you are looking for.

 

http://kenleephotography.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/stephanie-alternate-091911.jpg

 

This is shot with a Nikkor f/1.4 50mm. It's probably either on f/1.4 or f/1.8 because when you get something that opens up this much, it's almost like a drug at first, where you have to keep shooting wide open to see what it can do. :D

 

Anyway, this is a photo shoot I did for a client maybe three years ago where she wanted me to shoot her chihuahua. I chose some more unusual angles, such as this one, in addition to more traditional shots of dogs, dropping to their level. But on this one, I let the narrow DoF fly.

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Low depth of field is addicting. I love to shoot wide open. The challenge I have is shooting wide open is not often the right thing to do. I have too many photos were the focus area ends up being a little too shallow.

-Mike Martin

 

Casio

Mike Martin Photography Instagram Facebook

The Big Picture Photography Forum on Music Player Network

 

The opinions I post here are my own and do not represent the company I work for.

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I've done that too. Especially when you get the lens at first. You think, "Yeahhhhh.......creamy blur.....yeaaaahhhhhh!!!" and you start forgetting that you don't have to shoot that narrow of dof, and you start forgetting about the overall image. You just start thinking, "I have that beautiful creamy bokeh...and I'm going to use it!!!!!" So addicting.

 

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If you have access to a quality blur filter (I sometimes use the heavy free Nvidia Cuda "blur" demo program), you can try out that you need a hell of a resolution to capture a blur credibly.

 

It's the interaction of the (optical) lens blur, the camera's pixel interpretation "program" (usually pretty "flat" in comparison with film cameras), and the low pixel count on a web image and the jpg encoding that causes problems with getting a believable DOF.

 

T.

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Yeah, I love me some narrow DOF. I might have some in the queue...

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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Nice! I never see "complete" trains like that, except when you see an Amtrak somewhere.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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You guys must be psychic - all this discussion about DOF...... Guess what I have been doing for the last few days...? I think I may have finally figured out a way of crowbarring some DOF into my iPad pictures. YAY!! :D As a consequence, you may have to put up with me experimenting a bit...... Here is my first attempt....

 

14785574001_c305cfabb6_b.jpg

Hollyhocks by xxKnuckles, on Flickr

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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Ken - thanks for posting the videos. I like seeing photos treated like that - makes you look at them completely differently. Quite a compliment to you that someone took the trouble to do that.... and made such a good job of it. :)
"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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How can we have a photography thread without cat pictures? The interwebz will stop working if we no haz cat pikturs.

 

14607739550_15546cecec_c.jpgIMG_7452 by Joe Stone Zone, on Flickr

 

and of course, keeping with the short DOF theme... :)

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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