Category Archives: equipment

Pano Experiment with a Fisheye

I will freely admit this is not my idea. It is something that I read about recently on an astrophotography post that caught my attention. I was about to make a visit to a museum where I thought I might end up taking some interior images in confined space. My 16-35mm lens was probably going to do the trick but I wondered whether the fisheye might be a better bet if things were really tight. My only concern with that is the distortion is such a feature of that lens that it might not be worthwhile.

Then I came across the aforementioned article and it talked about shooting panos with a fisheye. The article was concerned with wide sky shots for astrophotography, but I thought it might work for me too. Supposedly, stitching together multiple fisheye shots takes out a lot of the distortion while still giving you the wide reach. I decided to experiment with this in advance to see if it worked.

I played with this indoors but taking a sequence of shots with good overlap between them making sure to catch as wide an image as possible. I was using the fisheye with full frame coverage rather than the circular version of the image. In Lightroom, I had to turn off the profile correction since that plays with the shots a lot and then set the pano function to work. It combined the images very easily and, sure enough, the verticals across the shot were not all vertical and not distorted at all. This could be something I now use a lot in the future when working in confined spaces. I will need to test it for closer subjects first since I suspect that will be a lot more testing for the alignment issues in pano stitching.

Generative Remove in Lightroom

As with all software tools, Lightroom has been constantly evolving since the initial release. If I were to see the original version of the software, I would probably be shocked at how limited it was. I do come across old edits and, when I convert it to the latest develop presets I have created, it is shocking how much of a change can result. One area that has gone through various updates over time is the tools for healing or cloning. They have been okay but definitely had limitations – not least pulling in odd artifacts from other areas.

A recent addition to the tools has been Generative Remove. This is an AI driven method for selecting and removing elements of the image. I try to do any of this before any cropping because I have previously found cropping to confuse the healing tools by leaving stuff out of sight that it tries to reincorporate. I don’t know whether this matters for Generative Remove or not, but I have stuck with the same sequence just in case.

The selection process is really simple. Brush around an area and it will fill it in. You can refine the selection with brushes to add or remove areas. I have used it a lot to remove power lines where a click at one end and shift click at the other gives you a quick straight line. Then let it do its thing. It will provide three options for the solution, and you can decide if one of them works or make it try again. Generally, I have found the results to be very good and no obvious artifacts as a result of the healing. No doubt they will continue to refine the process, but I think it is a big step forward in cleaning up elements of images that you don’t want and is now something I will consider for images that I would otherwise have cast aside.

Blossoms in the Back Yard

By the time this hits the blog, it will be the best part of year since I took these shots. We have a variety of plants in the backyard at home and March was the time when blossoms started to make their appearance. Our plum tree had some blossoms, but the other plants also had some cute little flowers too. I dragged out the macro lens to get some images of them. Get up close with these and you can’t easily tell just how big (or small) they actually are.

Heavy Departures from SEA

I have had plenty of chances to shoot the departures from SEA when they are on a northerly flow and the afternoon light provides a good option for the jets.  Previously, I have used the 500mm since it gives good reach but, for the larger jets, as you get the jet abeam your position, it will be too large for 500mm.  The arrival of my 200-800 provided a great new option.  800mm provided a tighter view on the jets after rotation (provided the heat haze is not negating any focal length benefit) and the ability to zoom out means that you can keep the aircraft fully framed throughout the climb out.  I took the lens down when I first had an open afternoon and the right conditions and here are some of the results.  As fall moves towards winter and the heat haze and high sun become less of an issue, this combo should get even better.

Super Fast Frame Rate

One of the features that was added to the Canon EOS R3 via a firmware update was a ridiculously high frame rate mode.  The fastest frame rate in normal shooting is 30fps (which is clearly ridiculous itself for anyone that has been photographing for a long time).  The extra mode comes with limitations.  Once you start shooting, autofocus and exposure monitoring are suspended so you get a lot of shots with the same settings.  However, this does allow you to get 194fps!!!  Yes, that is not a typo.  It will only do this for a maximum of 50 frames but that is raw capture – not a jpeg.  You get to select how many frames are taken which I have to admit I didn’t realize until recently.  I was shooting with a limit of 10 frames for quite a while and wondering why.  I’ve fixed that now.

There are relatively few times when this mode is actually useful.  The viewfinder does black out when you use it so, if you are tracking something, a little bit of predictive guesswork is in order.  If you were shooting a baseball pitch being hit, this could be pretty handy.  I decided to use it on the Blue Angels pair crossing during Seafair to see how things work out.  The answer is pretty good.  I include a sequence of shots so you can see what even this frame rate gives you for two fast jets head on to each other.  A limited tool but one that could be utilized.  I have also been using it for very lower shutter speed experimentation but that will be another post.

This Stabilization is Amazing

Another episode in the testing of the RF 200-800 for today’s post.  This is more focused on the image stabilization in the lens.  When shooting stills, I have commented on the slightly odd jerking effects visible in the viewfinder.  I think this is most apparent when panning very slowly and I think the camera is trying to work out if you mean to stay still or not.  However, one area which is really effective at showing the capabilities of the stabilization is video.

I have some footage below that is taken with the lens at 800mm and hand held.  No tripod or monopod here.  The rabbit was at the other end of our back yard while the bees were on the lavender plants in our beds.  You can see that the image is remarkably stable.  It is amazing to see it lock on so well.  I have also shot some video of an F-35B in the hover, also at 800mm.  It was interesting to see a lot of movement in the viewfinder for a moment and then it seemed to lock in on what it was doing and then things get really solid.  This tech is most impressive.

The Hummers Are a Quick Test for the New Lens

One of the things that I knew would be a limitation of the RF 200-800 was the aperture which is a lot smaller than for really expensive lenses (yes, it is also expensive but not in the tens of thousands type of expensive).  In low light, this is going to be an issue and it would be interesting to see how things worked out.  When I got home with it, I was sitting on the deck when some hummingbirds started feeding on the flowers in one of our beds.  This area is in shade a lot of the time so light was limited.  I was rather pleased with the effectiveness of the focus, the sharpness at full zoom and the relatively limited noise related issues from the R3.  This is a combination that looks like it could be quite useful for a wide variety of occasions.  Not the solution for everything but definitely versatile.

Initial Impressions of the RF 200-800

When Canon announced the RF 200-800 lens, I was mildly interested but not too bothered by it.  However, in an example of how easily a weak mind can be influenced, when I watched some reviews by those that had used the lens, I started to be more curious.  The focal length range was always of interest, but the aperture range had initially put me off.  The reviewers suggested that the excellent ISO performance of modern mirrorless cameras meant this wasn’t an issue.  Also, while not in anyway cheap, the lens was very well priced for the range it offered.

I went to my local shop and placed a deposit for one of the lenses.  This was many months ago.  After that, things got very quiet.  I was beginning to think that I would never see an actual lens.  Then I saw something on a Canon rumor site that said August was likely to be a time when a lot of lenses got delivered.  Whatever the blockage had been, there seemed to be some relief.  The last Tuesday of July (stuff seems to get delivered to stores on Tuesday I guess), I get a phone call telling me that my lens has arrived.  Hurrah!

After work, I headed down to pick it up.  I then headed down to the water in Kenmore – a short distance from the store – to give it a quick go.  I didn’t have a lot of time, but I got a quick feel for some of its quirks.  Initially I was a little unsettled.  The stabilization seemed very effective, but it did make tracking things that were moving slowly a bit jerky as if the stabilization didn’t believe that I actually wanted to be moving.  I worried that this would be an issue.  However, the images seemed to be rather sharp so maybe it knew what it was doing.

When I got home, I did spend a little time looking at the hummingbirds on the bushes.  The light was very low, which should be a problem for a lens with smaller apertures, but it seemed to work very well and the images were surprisingly sharp and clean.  I then took it to its first airshow.  Again, results were really very pleasing.  The 800mm reach was so helpful since the show line was quite distant and I was veery happy with the framing I could get.  The jumpiness in the viewfinder is still something I find rather distracting but it doesn’t seem to be an issue for the images, so I guess the stabilization knows what it is doing.  I also shot some video at 800mm handheld and, while there was initial wobbling, there comes a moment when it seems to get what is going on and then it is rock steady.  Quite bizarre.  I think this lens could be a key part of my shooting going forward.  We shall see as my experience grows with it.

What is Wrong with My Phone’s Longest Lens?

The quality of modern phone cameras is really impressive.  I will often have the main camera with a longer lens and use the phone for the wider shots.  Other times, it will be the only camera I have.  Quite often I will shoot multiple images with the longest of the three lenses and then stitch them together when I get home.  This can be quite effective.  However, in playing with some images recently, I was getting very odd results from the shots.  I shoot RAW on the phone, but I understand it isn’t a true RAW file but one that Apple’s software pre-processes to some extent.  This seems to be resulting in some strange image qualities.

The shots will have the resolution that they are supposed to, and the file size is certainly large enough to suggest that is what is happening.  However, the shots look ridiculously smudgy.  Here are a couple of examples that show the problem.  The Allegiant jet I shot at Mesa Gateway is a particularly bad example.  It isn’t even the one shot. All three of them are rough.  I have had some shots with really great quality from this lens on the phone so I have no idea why this should be bad.  The odd thing is that, if I look into the file properties and compare with other shots with this lens, it shows a different focal length.  If anyone has any experience or background on this, please let me know.