Just Some Nut

In motorcycling circles there's an old saying in regards to problem solving: "The most commonly defective part on a motorcycle is the nut that connects the seat to the handlebars". Car guys have a similar adage dealing with seats and steering wheels.

Regardless of the frame of reference, I continue to find truth in the meaning behind these words.

Earlier this year I rented a 100-400mm F4-5.6L Canon lens. The 'L' stands for 'Leave your wallet and go'. Actually it stands for 'Luxury', but regardless, this is not an inexpensive piece of glass. Renting it was painless enough, but the results were so good that it's got me seriously considering one of my own.

As that kind of financial commitment is currently not possible, I've been experimenting with my 100-300 to find ways to get the most out of it. After playing around a little I've been really pleased with the results.

Here's a quick comparison with similar types of shots:

Eastern Kingbird in the Park with 100-400L


White-Breasted Nuthatch in the Backyard with 100-300


See an appreciable difference in quality?

I don't, and I agonize over minute details of all the photos I take until Randi is ready to drag the keyboard out of my hands and beat me with it. The reason the 100-300 shot turned out so well is that 'the nut between the camera and the shutter' was working a lot better when I took that shot.

As I continue to learn about photography, both technically and creatively, I've become much more aware of the limitations of both myself and my equipment. Part of this is adjusting the way I shoot to make the most my equipment instead of expecting it to do things it was never designed to do.

In this case, the 100-300 isn't particularly sharp until around f11 and has no IS, so it needs a lot of light to keep the shutter speed up. Under these conditions it has the potential to really shine.

Is it more limited than the 100-400L? Sure, but it's also a third of the weight and an eighth of the cost. As long as the boundary conditions in which it operates optimally are understood, it makes for a very nice telephoto zoom.

I have no doubt that I will invest in better glass in the future, but for now I'm working with what I already have and really enjoying learning to make the most of it.

Prime Time

The alternate title for this was 'Fast Primes at Ridgemont High', but I'm not sure if even I'm that big a dork.

Recently, Randi and I went back down to Morgantown for a visit, and as is quickly becoming a tradition, I packed up the Crumpler and lugged my 40D and several lenses down to document the festivities.

Despite my recent heavy use of zooms in Maine, Hawaii, and for the motorcycle races at Mid-Ohio, my first true love was a prime - A Canon 50mm f1.8 II to be exact. Unfortunately I sold it along with my XTi to my good friend Bob, who is now putting it to excellent use. To replace it I bought a 50mm f1.4, which is a slightly faster, better built, but overall similar lens.

My initial impressions of the 1.4 were a little disappointing, and even after having Canon service fix the autofocus issues I was having, I often left it in my bag in favor of a more versitle zoom (in most cases my truly excellent 28-135).

But then, you can never really replace a fast prime with a zoom lens. Sure, some of the versitilty is lost, but the increase in sheer light consumption, low weight, and forcefull push to find the creative vantage point for a shot really add something to the experience. The fact that both composition and focusing technique really need to be perfect has a certain appeal to me as well.

Here are a few shots taken while down in Mo-town with the 50mm. They certainly can't be mistaken for anything else in my bag.

My love


Peppers for Dinner - I love the extremely shallow depth of field in this one.


One of the cats - again, the depth of field from a really fast lens just can't be had any other way

SmugMugged

I have officially been mugged.

Fortunately instead of being beaten senseless and lacking a wallet, I have been merely taken in by an excellent photo hosting service.

Actually, the term "photo hosting service" is doing Smug Mug quite a large disservice. It's essentially a fully customizable way to showcase a portfolio or even run a business. It is certainly an excellent place to host photos, but the amount features they offer for both basic and truly advanced customization are extremely impressive. The standard layouts are very nice, and offer an instant, pleasing way to showcase photos, with the added ability to print high quality prints in just about any size imaginable.

The real power behind SmugMug though is the nuts and bolts customization offered through HTML/Java/CSS re-coding of nearly the entire site. There are some incredibly talented coders and web developers (i.e. not me), who have taken the base framework and completely re-worked it to make some amazing custom sites.

Fortunately, for those of us who never bothered to learn how to actually code for web development, they have an extensive resource/knowledge base in the Digital Grin Forums. Here, many of the aforementioned talented individuals are more than willing to provide whatever advice is asked for on coding for style.

After pouring through the tutorials, forums, and FAQ's, I have finally come up with a format that I think is passable, which can be found here:

Will Robbins Photography

I am still refining the formatting and layout, and hope to eventually go beyond the basic black theme, but for the time being I'm not ashamed showing it to others.

If you are so inclined, feel free to leave me a comment on the layout/format and let me know what you think.

Also, since this is a photo blog, here's a cute picture of our cat, Nalla:

Mid-Ohio 2009

Dad and I have been coming to Mid-Ohio for nearly a decade now (next year is the big one-oh), and I still look forward to it every year.

This year I decided that I wanted to try my hand at getting some decent pictures. I took my 100-300 to the MotoGP races at Indy last year and got some ok shots, but Mid-Ohio is a much friendlier from an amateur photographer's point of view, so I wanted to make the most of it.

The Canon Photography Forums highly recommended Lens Rentals, so I thought I would give them a try and rent a lens that would be pretty much out of my reach at this point.

I wound up going with the Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6L IS. This is Canon's long-range high-quality zoom lens that gives excellent versatility, reasonably light weight, and a nice image stabilization system. The retail is ~$1500, but I was able to rent one for 7 days (inclusive) for about $100.

The Lens Rentals process was as smooth as I could have asked for, with excellent communication, and a handy pre-paid shipping label, so all I had to do was use it, tape it back up, and drop off at FedEx. I'll definitely use them again.

The 100-400L itself is an absolute dream. The build quality is outstanding, and although it's not super fast @ f4.5~5.6, the copy I got really shone with some decent light. At around 3 pounds, it was much heavier than I was used to, but I wound up hand-holding it for pretty much all of Mid-Ohio.


Photo courtsy of B&H Photo

I wanted to get at least a little practice before Mid-Ohio, so I went to the local park to try my hand at some bird shots. It was much more difficult that I had imagined, requiring lots of patience, and quite a few shots to get anything decent. The light was great that evening, and I wound up walking away with these:

Female Red-Winged Black Bird:



Eastern King Bird:



Needless to say, I was blown away by this first outing, and very excited for the race weekend.

Without drawing it out too much further, the race weekend was great. The weather cooperated, and there was some great action on track. I took ~1000 photos, and wound up with about 400 that didn't get deleted. Out of those, I had about 100 that I was pretty happy with.

Here are a few of the real keepers:

Aaron Yates coming into the Esses


Larry Pegram on the Ducati 1098R


Yamaha R6 in Turn 9 during Daytona Superbike Qualifying


Corona Extra Honda CBR1000RR


Ducati 1098R coming into the Esses with Suzuki in hot pursuit.


I shot most of these hand-held (although I did use my monopod for awhile) at f7.1~8 and 1/640~1/1000 and the lens performed really well. I'm hoping to make some prints out of a few of these.

Overall, a great experience that I hope to be able to repeat with a 100-400L of my own some day.

The Maine Event

Randi and I recently got back from a trip to Maine with our good friends Bob and Kat Wollyung (hence the long span without updates). It was a fantastic trip, and one of the most relaxing vacations I've ever had.

Mount Desert Island is an amazing place, and Acadia National Park is now high up on my list of favorites. The hiking trails were some of the best I'd ever been on, and the sheer number to choose from was staggering. The close proximity to the Harbors and their bevy of excellent restaurants and shops didn't hurt either.

I took roughly 900 pictures throughout the week, and wound up with 200~300 that I was reasonably satisfied with, and at least a dozen that I was truly happy with. Hopefully I can continue the trend of increasing my keeper ratio with each trip.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Looking out into the Harbor near sunset:






Neat old cabin near our cottage edited to black and white:


Seagull portrait:


I took many, many more photos on this trip. The rest can be found on my SmugMug site.

Baggage

Since I've been doing some gear organizing recently I thought I'd give an overview of my bags. It was also an excuse to take some photos without actually having to leave the house.

Crumpler 6 Million Dollar Home:



I love this bag. It's the perfect size, style, and fit for walking around just about anywhere, and is able to hold a surprising amount of gear. It's even good for light hiking (which I used it for in Hawaii) and is extremely comfortable.

I also enjoy the somewhat whimsical naming and marketing of the Crumpler products. There's a certain style that for whatever reason I find very appealing. Next thing you know I'll be looking at MacBook Pros...



Lowepro Flipside 300:



Up until I got the Tokina, the 6MDH held everything really well, so it was really the only thing I needed. With the addition of the Tok, things got a little tighter, so I decided to use the Crumpler as more of a 'pack as needed' bag and look into something a little larger for actual hiking and when I need more stuff (who doesnt?)

After reading numerous reviews for about a billion different bags, I stumbled across the Lowepro Flipside 300. It seemed to pretty much be the holy trinity of bag-dom: right size, nice looking, and reasonably priced. It also has a neat rear-entry system to improve security and allow the bag to swivel about the waist for easy access.

After considerable research and debating, I decided to bite the bullet and ordered one for our upcoming trip to Maine, on which there will be considerable hiking.

I must say I am extremely pleased based on my initial impressions. The bag seems to be very well made, and holds all of my gear with a little room to grow. It's got nice straps and a very well padded back and seems quite comfortable. Plus it's small and light weight enough that I won't think twice about the comfort for hiking.

Kittie Cop Out

This is what is known as a cop-out.

I've never been sure why it is called that (although I could probably find out in about 30 seconds on wikipedia), but I am quite aware of what it represents. In this case, today's photo is of our beloved cat Franklin aka 'Little Cat'. He was our first pet together, and with his little sister, Nalla, rounds out our little family.

Generally if I get a new lens or other piece of photographic gear, instead of rushing out to find one of the many interesting events/people/locations/etc here in the greater Cleveland/Akron area, I instead spend my time taking pictures of our cats. And while whimsical and exceptionally cute, they aren't exactly groundbreaking subject matter.

Hopefully I am able to get out and shoot some other, more interesting, local subjects, but for now, here is a portrait of Franklin taken in extreme wide angle, along with all the distortion-y goodness that accompanies it.

Tokina 12-24 mm f4 (1/10, f4, ISO400 @ 12 mm)

MoPar Wanderings

Randi's brother came into town for her birthday celebration, and we spent most of yesterday out exploring the Cleveland/Akron area.

After a nice trip up to Legacy Village, and a rather dissappointing visit to a wine and blues festival, we found out that a huge car show was going on down in Massillon, which is just down the road from our house.

The show was quite large, and there were some really fantastic cars including a Shelby GT500, all the usual 'Cudas, Roadrunners, and such, as well as the only Skyline GT I've ever seen in person.

For the most part, the lighting was terrible, and there were only a few spots on the main street where the buildings were at the right angle to block the sun. Couple that with a general compulsion to walk in front of me while I was trying to get a shot, and I didn't get too many photos.

Really the only one that came out even close to passable was this Camero SS ('67 or '68) with a 502 big block. This car was stunning in person.

Taken with my new Tokina 12-24 mm f4 (1/400, f4, ISO 200 @ 12 mm)



I really like the perspective distortion from the wide angle lens, and the ability to be ~3 feet from the car and still get the whole thing in the frame. I can't wait to take this lens to Mid-Ohio this year.

Lightboxing

The light box was inspired by this thread on the Canon photography forum, which I had found while doing research on DSLR's. I figured that for less than $20, it might be a fun way to learn a little bit about lighting, and would be a good photo activity for days when the weather was less than perfect (quite frequent in NE Ohio).

Additionally, it's been a great way to learn more about Photoshop and get a glimpse of just how powerful some of the tools it includes are.

This is one of the first pictures I took using the box, and remains one of my favorites, as I think both the color and composition turned out really well.

Taken with a Canon EF 50 mm f1.4