Picking up the pace

Despite what I think has been probably some of the scrottiest weather over the last couple of months, where my photography has suffered a bit of a lack of attention, I’m still quite excited about a few of the photos I’ve managed to grab. I’ve also picked up some new (to me) photographic hardware, recently.

Since moving towards prime lenses and away from general-purpose standard zooms, I found myself constantly changing lenses. On a recent photography traipse this resulted in 11 lens swaps in a single morning, between the 17-35mm and 85mm lenses. These, it transpires, are my two main lenses for general photography. The problem here is that every time you swap lenses, you run the risk of introducing dust onto the sensor. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s having to spend ages cleaning off dust spots from photos I’ve taken.

To resolve the problem, I picked up a 2nd D800 in excellent condition and with a low shutter count, listed on Gumtree.

Problem solved. Kinda. For the last couple of days I’ve been out shooting and not had to switch lenses at all. There’s a down side, though, and it’s that the additional weight of yet another camera body makes carrying my camera bag back-breaking.

It’s extremely heavy now and in fact may turn out to be too heavy. I’m currently pondering life choices and probably will have to change tack slightly.

For now I’m mostly working out of the car, grabbing the camera/lens combination that best suits the particular image that I’m looking to capture, and staying close by. But this is not how I want to proceed. The whole plan for my photography is to park up and take a walk. I need to reduce the weight of my camera backpack without limiting my capabilities in the field.

I anticipate this will mean adding yet another camera bag to my arsenal, from which I can select lenses that I want to include for a particular excursion. I already take three camera bags with me every time I go out to take photos – one with the D800 bodies and lenses, one with the D5300 and Sigma 150-600mm, and one with the infrared-converted D3000. A fourth “lens reservoir” bag looks like it’s on the horizon. At least I won’t have to buy a new bag; I already have more than enough of those.

Not only but also

As part of a package deal – “buy one D800, buy another thing as well.. or no sale” – I picked up a new lens for my infrared-converted D3000. Until now, I’ve had the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 almost permanently affixed to the D3000, where it has performed spectacularly well. But at 14mm, its offering on a DX body is locked to an equivalent 21mm. This has meant that I’ve been perpetually stuck with super-wide angle photography with the infrared camera.

To be perfectly honest, this isn’t a bad focal length for this, since it’s usually the big skies and expansive views that look most compelling in infrared. But, nevertheless, I’ve come to realise it’s a creatively constrictive limitation. There’s a lot more to explore with infrared than just vistas.

I’ve previously tried venturing away from the Samyang onto standard zoom lenses, but have always experienced a defect known as the “infrared hotspot issue”. This manifests as a centre-frame blob of low contrast, which is also often discoloured. This happened with the Nikon DX 18-70mm kit lens, the pro Nikon DX 17-55mm f/2.8 and by far the worst, the pro Nikon DX 12-24mm f/4.

As I understand it, it’s caused by internal reflections within the lens, and gets worse as you stop down the aperture. With infrared photography, since light focuses slightly differently, I find it helps to stop down to around f/8 or so. However this can then introduce the hotspot issue. The Samyang doesn’t suffer this problem and I’m looking for a zoom lens that also doesn’t have the issue. I’m hopeful the 16-85mm is that lens! Well, fingers crossed at least. So far so good! 🙂

Gallerific

Despite the weather and quite intrusive hours at work over the last few months, I’ve still managed to get out and shoot at least a bit. I’ve broken down this last quarter’s images into four small galleries. 

General Photography

General imagery that I’ve captured on excursions this quarter, that I don’t think I’ve shared on my blog already:-

Red Kite Photography

I spent a morning photographing red kites at a location not too far from home, where I’ve found that these birds like to hang out. Thanks to the lighting that day, I captured some of my best red kite images to date:-

Kingfisher Gallery

My favourite local nature reserve is fortunate to be regularly frequented by a pair of kingfishers. On a recent visit, even though the light was a bit lacking, I still captured my best kingfisher images so far. One or two of these images, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to beat:-

Trees In Mist Gallery

Captured one misty morning in December, at Otley Chevin, I caught some very satisfying images of trees enveloped in mist. I’m particularly pleased with the colour grading that I caught, it being the exact time in autumn when the leaf colours were at their peak:-

I’m scheduled to work quite a bit over Christmas and New Year, but hope to get out and shooting again mid-January. And, of course, from here on the days are scheduled to get longer, too!