Don't Let Your Ambition Get In The Way

I have ambitions. Some loftier than others. And sometimes I let my ambitions stop me from being productive.

For example, I have ambitions for this blog. I want it to be informative, interesting, humorous, quirky. I want the photos to rock and the words to rock along. But sometimes I don't feel neither informative nor humorous. Nor interesting or quirky. So I won't post. Or I'll procrastinate (I love procrastinating. I'm pro-procrastinating).

No more! I shan't be a slave to my ever-changing altruistic dreamy ambitions. I shall strive to be mundane, boring and ordinary. At least until I get some stuff done.

Say no more. Here are some wonderful captures of some wonderful faces. Enjoy.

Perfectly Normal (another pre-upshernish shoot)

I love normal. It just flows. Its natural. Sweet.

I have gone through more 50mm lens than I care to admit. Just for the record:

Canon AF 50mm 1.8 (acted as a 80mm on my cropped sensor Canon)

Nikon 50mm 1.8 AF

Nikon 50mm 1.4 AF-D

Nikon 50mm 1.4 AF-S

Nikon 55 mm 1.2 Auto

Nikon 55mm 2.8 Micro AI-S

Sigma 50mm 1.4

2 Canon 50mm 1.2 FL

Hasseblad 80mm (which acts as a 50mm on a medium format body)

The 50mm lens (on a 35mm body, aka "full frame") gives a "normal" perspective. Not wide angle (dramatic), not telephoto (compressed, sometimes a bit flat), just right. Its actually Goldilocks very favorite focal length (though sometimes she opts for a 35mm).

Every camera company makes a cheap 50mm and most camera bodies used to come with one as their "kit" lens (before zooms were any bit decent).

Problem is I'm having a really tough time finding one that I like (a lot). A great 35mm is easy to find (Canon, Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, they all have them).

Problems:

Canon 50mm 1.8 doesn't fit on my Nikon and anyways doesn't get really usable until 2.5ish (and it's made like garbage). Nikon 50mm 1.8 has the same issues just is a bit less garbage. Nikon 50mm 1.4D isn't sharp until 2.2 ish and has slightly obnoxious bokeh (pentagonal shaped). Nikon 50mm 1.4G is slow to focus (though very accurate) and isn't as sharp as I wish. Nikon 55 1.2 was the sharpest of the bunch at wide apertures but was really hard to focus due to it's age and the spherical aberrations wide open (and you're always focusing wide open unless you're using live view. Which I don't.). Nikon 2.8 Micro ai-s is sharp, easy to focus and has beautiful bokeh, but its not wide enough (2.8). The Sigma is awesome, sharper than the autofocus Nikons with better bokeh but ridiculously inconsistent autofocus, rendering it almost useless below 2.2 for subjects that don't sit still (i.e. kids). The two canons are manual focus and don't fit on my Nikon and I haven't developed any of the film from the canon film bodies so I can't speak for them. The Hasselblad is sharp as heck but I'm having major issues focussing it.

Does a perfect, large aperture 50mm lens exist? Yes. the problem is it doesn't mount on my cameras, its manual focus (not the end of the world) and it costs $4,999. It's the Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH. Unfortunately its out f my price range (not to mention I'd have to buy a $8000 Leica M9 to use the thing).

Okay so what are my other choices. I could give up and just use what I got. I could get the Canon 50mm 1.2L which is pretty darn good, but I'd need a Canon body, which unless I spend $4500 won't autofocus properly (or I could get the Canon 1V which rocks and is only $500, but its film). Or I could pick up a Contax 645 medium format film camera with an 80mm f/2 (in 35mm terms that would be a 50mm with the DOF of a 1.2). But the prices on those have been skyrocketing (on another note I was going to buy one a few months ago for $1600 and was talked out of it. the prices now are around $2800). So I think I'm left with a Mamiya 645 and a 80mm f/1.9. It's manual focus but with that nice huge viewfinder shouldn't be too hard to focus. Now I just have to sell my Hasselblad kit (its on Craigslist if you're interested). Or I could pick up a recent model of the Leica 50mm f/1.4 R which can be adapted to fit on my Nikon, though it's not as great as the M version it's still pretty rad. But that will cost around $1000. Or I could pick up a Voigtlander 58mm 1.4 for under $500, but that's only really sharp in the center and is a bit longer than I'd like. Or the Nikon 50mm 1.2 ai-s which is mighty sharp but very nervous bokeh wide open. Or the Nikon 58mm f1.2 AI-S which is an an outstanding lens but costs around $3000.

Or I could just get over myself and rely on my composing and framing skills to deliver awesome images instead of relying on the unique look of a wide aperture lens. Nah.

//End Rant.

Onto some photos I made (though mostly took) with a wonderful family in Laguna Woods Canyon Park (mostly shot with the aforementioned horribly autofocusing Sigma).

Up North and Black Again (again. This time with a 24mm.)

Every few months I travel up to Northern California for a Kosher cheese run at Rumiano's in Crescent City. It's around 6 hours North of San Fransisco. I usually fly (as I did this time) which doesn't allow me to bring my tripod (unless I shell out $50 bucks, which I'm not willing to do). Crazy airlines. What's even crazier is their carry-on policy. Anything checked costs $25 each way. If your carry-on is too big, they allow you to take it through security and on the tarmac they check it underneath for free. My luggage went underneath but they didn't charge because I "carried it on" to the tarmac. The only loss is the no liquid rule. (They stole my PB + J!!)

The airplane flys into Arcada Airport near Eureka, I rent a car and drive an hour and a half north through the redwoods to Crescent City. On the way theres this tiny town called Trinidad which has the most awesome supermarket. They have a larger selection of organic and healthy food than most health food stores in SoCal (Whole Foods included!). Being as the only food I had was a loaf of homemade sourdough bread (thank you Estee) and some cheese, I filled up on greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, olives, mustard, sesame oil, some (real) soy sauce, a six pack of this awesome beer (forgot the name), and a metal bowl (for the salad). I'm into my food. Added some feta cheese when I got to my motel and voila - a ridiculously amazing salad.

After the supermarket raid, I made my way down to the beach there to dunk my newly purchased bowl in the world's biggest mikvah. Commited dunkage, took a bunch of fotos (way too many wide open at f/1.4. Because I could.), picked up a hitchhiker (he was a student from Albany, and he hitchhiked from Atlanta. He was aiming for Bend, Oregon.) and made my way to my motel to prepare my feast.

I don't take nearly enough non-people pictures. It's nice to be able to take time (to some extent) to compose (a tripod would have really helped). I need to train myself to slow down.

The weather was pretty bleak so the processing kind of reflects my mood then.

For the record, the sign by the elevator reads: "WARNING Please be advised the parking elevator will not operate during a power blackout. Consequently, because we are unsure when a blackout may occur, we suggest that you use the stairs to avoid entrapment."

Right.

The two photos before were shot wide open at 1.4. How cool is that (if you care about such things)?

Stops & Stops and yes, Stops

A few days ago I received this cryptic telegraph from China:

PHOTOGLAPHY MAN STOP I AT DLY CREANERS AND SEE BLOG STOP VELY NICE STOP I WATN KNOW WHAT IS STOP STOP HOPING YOU CAN HEPL STOP UP STOP DOWN STOP OPEN STOP STOP I DNOT GET IT STOP HOP ON STOP STOP STOP ON HOP STOP THIS GETTING BROODY EXPENSIVE STOP MUST USE ACLONYMS STOP PHIFAIFIAGN STOP TY STOP

For the record I don't normally get telegraphs. And while it is an option on my contact me page I never really expected anyone to actually use it. Just goes to show that it's always better to have more options just in case (which is entirely untrue).

And while I'm honored that one would have go through all this trouble to contact me in this way I fail to comprehend exactly what is being requested here. The word STOP seems to be a bit repeated which seems to stress its importance (although, of course, the telegraph operator may have the typing equivalent of Tourette Syndrome, you never know). So I'll pose my own question and answer it (how lame is that?).

What the heck is a stop? I see it in all photography literature. Close down a stop. Up the ISO a stop. Slow the shutter speed a stop. English?

Good question (thank you).

First of all we have to understand an aperture. Every lens lets light through it to the sensor (digital or film) to record a photograph. Every lens allows you to adjust how much light it allows in (either to quicken or slow down the shutter speed, to change the exposure, or for depth of field choices). The apparatus inside the lens which closes down is called an aperture.

The job of this aperture is to stop the light from coming in. Each time you close it down a notch it is called a stop. Stopping down is done in halves (and opening up is done in doubles). Each time you close down a full stop you allow half the amount of light in as before.

On most modern cameras the aperture changing is done from the camera, not the lens.

Okay, so now we know that each stop effectively halves or doubles the light let in. So the beings in charge decided that all three criteria for changing an exposure (ISO, shutter speed an aperture) should be measured in stops. So if you have a correct exposure but you'd like to open up your aperture two stops (for less depth of field) you have to increase your shutter speed or decrease your ISO by two stops (or one of each). If you want to slow down your shutter speed from say 1/30 of a second to 1 second (5 stops: 30-15-8-4-2-1) (say, to blur the motion of water) you'd have to close down your aperture or decrease your ISO by five stops.

(Most modern cameras allow adjustments in half or third stops also.)

Kapish?

On to completely unrelated topics. Mazal Tov to my co-cow-watcher Nechemiah Newman on the birth of a daughter. May the high pitched voice, the mood swings and cuteness balance your 3 crazy (good crazy) boys.

Here's a shoot I did a few months back with them before C's Ushernish.

Yes, I do notice the vast number of "walking away from behind" shots. I'm not sure what's up with that either.

It's an older shoot so the pictures aren't nearly as consistent as I'd like, but Devorah is reading this and I must speak nicely.

This month Baruch Hashem should be quite busy so check back often for new posts.

(And much luck to the chinese dude.)

Levys & Co.

Question:

Howdily-doodily Mr. Photography man person,

I came across your blogididly and you have indeedily-doodily wonderful images.
In my old (but oddly non aging) age, with the grace of G-d I have taken up photography in an attempt to record the life of my wonderful kids (even the one with all that devil hair) before they grow up (which they haven't been able to do in the past 22 years, but one never knows when they'll start), and I wanted to ask how exact-diddly-act-ily do you set focus on an object, lets say a child and the rest is perfect-o-diddlyo blurred out? Okily-dokily, I think that's it for now. Thank you in advance for your reply and for doing the Lords work. Amen.

Your humble servant,
Ned Flanders

Answer:

Hello Ned,

It's nice to hear from you again. It's been what, 17 and half years? Well anyways, I hope you are doing well. To answer your question (its pretty simple, but I am going to make it as complicated as possible):

There are two concepts that come into play. There is subject/background separation and depth of field (from here on called DOF). We'll deal with DOF first.

First of all the definition: Depth of field is how much of the picture is in focus. In simple terms there is (to a certain degree) an ability to set (either in your settings or choice of equipment) how much is in focus. In reality however there is always only one part of the picture in focus (in more accurate terms one distance), however there are degrees of unfocussness or blurriness on the rest. Since the falloff to complete blurriness is not abrupt the DOF is not an exact number. In photographic terms the part of the photo which has acceptable sharpness is called the circle of confusion (i.e. how much of the photo our mind is tricked into seeing as sharp). This depends on three things: How accurate our vision is, the size of the print (or desired viewable screen size), and the viewing distance.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, there are four things that affect the DOF.

1. Aperture. How much light the lens lets in. The larger the aperture the less is in focus. (For a beginners guide to this stuff check out the pioneer woman's "what the heck is an aperture" series.)

2. Subject to camera distance. The closer the lens is focused the less the DOF is going to be.

3. Focal length. The longer the lens the smaller the DOF at similar apertures (i.e. a 180mm lens @ f/2.8 (that's the aperture) will have less DOF than a 50mm @ f/2.8). Now this will be argued by some for some scientific reason, but for most intents and purposes it's true.

4. Sensor size. Okay this one is a bit tricky. The larger the sensor is (the part of the camera that records the photo, previously known as film) the longer the lens used for the same scene is going to be. I.e. an 80-110mm lens on a medium format camera will give you the same picture as (approximately) a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera (and a 35mm lens on a cropped sensor camera like a Canon Rebel or a Nikon D90) and a 10mm lens on a smaller point and shoot and a 1mm on a camera phone. So for the same scene you'd be using a longer focal length leading to less depth of field.

Got it?

Okay, now there is also subject/background separation which is affected by two things (one way more than the other)

1. Distance from subject to background. The further away the background is the less it will be in focus.

2. Lens. Some lenses render the out of focus (OOF) areas differently, sometimes leading to more perceived separation.

Conclusion:

If you are looking for that cool narrow DOF you want the camera with the biggest sensor, a long lens, a wide aperture, and a close distance to your subject.

The cheapest option: Get a Nikon f100 - $200 (film camera) and a few manual focus lens (50mm f/1.4, a 80mm f/2, a 105mm f/2.5 and a 180mm f/2.8 are all awesome lens under $200 each).

Most feasible option: Nikon D90 - $500 used (cropped sensor, i.e. slightly smaller than a 35mm film) and a 50mm 1.8 Auto Focus lens ($80 used) and a 85mm f/1.8 ($300 used, awesome lens) (the D90 doesn't play nicely with manual focus lens. Big shame).

Better: Nikon D7000 (cropped sensor, i.e. slightly smaller than a 35mm film) for $1000 (ouch) and the previously mentioned manual focus lens.

Best (if you really know what you want): Canon 5D ($900 used) and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ($400 used, make sure it focuses properly).

The real question is: Who am I writing this for (the answer: myself). For more geeky articles (way more geeky) see Roger Cicala's articles on Lensrentals.com

I really should put up examples, but I'm a bit (read: ridiculously over) tired. (If you're interested, here is a a previous post mostly shot with the aforementioned 180mm f/2.8 (manual focus)). So I'm posting a recent session instead (ironically mostly shot with a 35mm lens which naturally has a lot of DOF).

Enjoy!

Random Fact: Half of these kids (maybe not exactly half) were from Holland and didn't speak a word of english (though they were ridiculously well behaved). My Yiddish didn't work too well either.

Have a wonderful DOF with nice OOF.

Oscar + Sharon = Awesomeness {Orange County Jewish Wedding Photographer}

Wow. This was a while in the making. I shot this wedding last August (or somewhere around then), and just recently finished culling, processing and editing (I have gotten much faster since then). Almost every picture went into photoshop and I didn't know then that wedding pictures (or any event pictures for that matter) need to have consistent processing as they are usually presented together. So after I finished these I went back and redid them to match a bit better (especially the black and white conversions which were all over the place). Lesson learned.

Actually being my first wedding there were many, many lessons learned. Close down, move in, move out, check your exposure compensation, spot meter, fill flash, watch your remaining shots available on the card (biggie) etc. etc.

Sharon and Oscar were wonderful to work with. Oscar used to shoot weddings back in the medium format film days and helped me a bit with some lighting tips and such. Sharon had this awesome gown and Henna markings going on, and her family was really fun to shoot. (And the wine was good.)

The wedding was outdoors (quite a challenge for me) at Chabad of West Orange County in Huntington Beach.

Overall, while I see many things that I could have done better with I think I did a pretty good job for my first.

Thank you Oscar & Sharon for believing in me (even though I warned against it) and Carol for always vouching for me.

Warning: A lot of photos coming up.