Borneo Reflections: Part One - The Bigma

Before we went to Borneo, I decided to invest in a long lens. After considering focal length, speed and cost, I bought a Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3, a.k.a The Bigma. It's a beast.

Back in July and August, Lou and I ventured off to Warren Gorge, a wildlife centre in the middle of Chafford Hundred, to practise using our new kit - Lou with her Canon 7D and me with the Bigma.

One thing came quickly to light: the Bigma requires muscles and a steady hand.

The model I bought was the one without OS, optical stabilisation (the OS model hadn't been released at the time and the non-OS version was about 2/3rds the price). With a full-frame sensor on the 5D Mk II, I became aware that I needed to use the rule of "shoot faster than 1 over your focal length", i.e. 1/500th of a second at 500mm (or faster), 1/300th or faster at 300mm, and so on. I knew that I wasn't going to take a tripod to Borneo so shooting hand-held was going to be the only option.

During our first day at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge in the Danum Valley, we encountered some long- and pigmy-tailed macaque monkeys high in the trees. Although the sun was bright, most of the light was obscured by the trees, so shooting at high speed was hampered, even wide open, which is f/6.3 at 500mm on the Bigma, unless you bump up the ISO. I didn't want to have to shoot at high ISOs, because Canon haven't managed to develop low noise at high ISOs as Nikon have. Reluctantly, I was shooting at ISO 6400, meaning the images would need cleaning up quite a bit in Photoshop/Lightroom back home.

Here's a crop of the original version of one of the macaque pictures:

Photo 1: Macaques fighting in the trees, cropped.  (1/500th @ f/6.3, ISO 6400.)

... and here's the cleaned-up version:

Photo 2: Cleaned-up version of Photo 1.

Reviewing the photos of the macaques, I've learned that ISO 6400 is just too high for the 5D2 to handle properly.  The pictures are passable, but certainly not the high quality you'd expect from one of the top cameras on the market.

Later on in the holiday, I decided to make use of a function I've hardly used before on a camera: Tv, Time Value, or, in English, shutter priority.  Usually, I use Av (Aperture Value/priority) so that I can control depth of field as a priority, but with a long lens, I found that the importance was on selecting a fast enough shutter speed to avoid lens blur.

With the camera set to Tv, I chose 1/500th at first, then 1/640th later on (and even faster when on the boat cruise around the Kinabatangan River - up to a 1/1000th).

I also set the ISO to Auto, again, something I had never done before.  I got the idea from a lady at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge who had a Canon but had set it to Custom Auto, which pretty much works as a point-and-shoot (I've always thought this was a pointless setting, but nevermind).  Thankfully, when set to automatic ISO, the 5D2 only goes as high as 3200.  Anything higher than that - it goes up to 25600 - and the noise is too pronounced, as I mentioned above.

Finally, I switched between Auto and Manual Focus, as I found it to need a slight tweak here and there.

Photostream

Here are the photos so far: Borneo Days 1 & 2.

Summary

The Bigma is a beast!  Apart from being 1.65kg in weight (58.2oz, for those in old money), it's also quite a tricky lens to get working nicely with the 5D2.  Of course, I'd love a Canon 100-400mm with Image Stabilisation, but at £1,270, it's a tad pricey for now.

The secret to using the Bigma was to set the camera to Tv and choose auto ISO.  I made sure that Custom Function 3 (C3 on the dial) was set up for the Bigma for low light conditions and Tv/Av were used when light wasn't an issue.

Borneo Reflections: Part Zero

Having just returned from Borneo, I thought I'd record my thoughts about photography in one of the best places I've ever been to.

I'm going to start at the end, simply because I'm typing this during a six-hour wait at Kota Kinabalu airport using the iPhone and the only photos I have available are ones I've taken with it. (In fact, just looking at the options available to me on this site, I don't think I can upload from the phone anyway, so I'll just tease you and tell you what's coming soon).

So actually, this is Part Zero: Introduction. In subsequent posts, I'll write about the challenges of shooting in 90% humidity while carrying a 3-kilo camera kit, the most useful settings on an EOS 5D Mk II in jungle and low-light conditions, the advantage of having a wife with a 7D and how to be REALLY geeky with total strangers and by the end have them asking questions like "so what is this ISO setting business on my point-and-shoot camera?". I'll also share the "Black and White Borneo" photo project with you. Bet you can't wait...

There are photos of rare birds, monkeys, apes, elephants, insects, turtles, sunsets and sunrises, night photography, underwater films and more. I want to share the photos with you and give a bit of commentary as well. Hope you enjoy it as much as I/we did taking the shots while experiencing some amazing sights.

I fell in love with Borneo during the two weeks we were there and I hope that some of the pics (to follow, after spending hours and hours in Lightroom sorting them all out) convey that feeling.

Step back in time

Lou's getting a haircut this morning so I thought I'd do the same and take the camera along to kill the other 2 hours until she has finished.

The Pentax MZ-M: Small but mighty.

But I'm not just taking any camera; I've got the Pentax MZ-M. Film camera. Fasten your seatbelts.

I dug it out a while ago when I gave the case it was in to a friend while he borrowed the old 10D and I always threaten to shoot off a few frames for old times' sake.

The first problem was that the battery indicator was flashing - having sat for a few years with no action, the CR2s had slowly died. First stop - WHSmith or somewhere similar to buy some new ones.

More easily said than done, evidently: AA, AAA, square 9v, CR123 and CR2032 but no CR2 in the Wickford branch. In Rayleigh, Martin's only had 'normal' batteries but thankfully there is a Boots nearby with a photographic section. £9.99 later, the MZ-M was alive.

I went to get my hair cut first then ventured into the woodland area of Rayleigh Mount, just off the high street. With a ISO400 film loaded, I knew I didn't need direct, bright sunshine for fast enough shutter speeds.

There were a number of things which struck me as I was shooting off a few (9) shots: the lack of control over ISO (fixed at 400 like I say), manual focus, which takes a bit of getting used to, and no screen on the back. Yes, after just about every photo I looked in vain at the blank back of the MZ-M, muttering "idiot" to myself each time.

A good exercise. Photos? Yeh, I'll get them developed eventually...

Photo project

I've always been impressed by people who put together really well thought-out photo projects. For example, Rick Nunn, a photographer from Lincolnshire, recently completed Fifty of Fifty, a project which saw him take 50 photos over 50 consecutive days using a 50mm lens.

I'd like to do something similar, but don't want to plagiarise the idea (much). I also cannot stick to things too easily, especially when the nights are starting to get darker, so by the time I get home, it'll soon be dark and taking a photo is mainly restricted to indoors, flash photography or long exposures under street lights.

I'm thinking of doing a black and white project, as I've always loved shooting in mono. Perhaps I'll give that a go.

Any suggestions/ideas?

Something I see every day

Iron, originally uploaded by Dave Romanis.

A while ago, the Chaffstoke group had a weekly challenge called "Something you see every day."

I have a bit of a morning routine, where I iron the shirt for the day as I'm watching breakfast TV and before I have a bowl of cereal. It's something I've done for years and although I love the idea of ironing 5 (or even 10, if you're REALLY enthusiastic) shirts on a Sunday to avoid having to rush around each morning. In fact, I think I may have talked myself into ironing 4 shirts this evening (I'm not in the office on Wednesday).

There's another photo in my photostream which I'd LOVE to blog here, but I know my wife will probably kill me. The link is here. I love the sentiment of the photo and the concentration on her face as she does her hair - not something she can do 5 times on a Sunday and avoid having to do for the rest of the week, of course...

The technical bit

I set the camera to monochrome for the shot above and the one of Lou drying her hair - I've recently discovered the amazing C-settings on the 5D2 and have set up C1 to be my black and white configuration. It also uses ISO 800 and f/4 as default.

When I loaded the CR2 (RAW) files onto the computer, I went through the usual steps and converted the CR2s to DNG before then importing them into Photoshop and exporting as JPGs.

This is where I came across a little problem; the 5D2 obviously records the picture in colour and applies the B&W setting separately, because when I converted the shots to JPG, they were all in colour! I had to go through Digital Photo Professional to get the B&W versions.

And some say that you can't convert black and white shots into colour, eh?