Ornithologist required

When we told people that we were heading to Borneo, a few of them asked what the weather would be like.  Being that we were in a rainforest, it should've come as no surprise - either to them or us - that it would rain.  Heavily.

"Balance" as seen in my Flickr Photostream.

During an apocalyptic-like rainstorm on Day 3 of our holiday, we sat in the Rainforest Lodge and watched it lash down outside.  Of course, we were fortunate to have shelter - this fella was not so lucky, but for some reason, he decided to balance himself on the (very flimsy) branch of a tree about 100 feet from the Lodge.  The 24-105mm wasn't quite long enough, so I switched to the Bigma and started shooting away.  This is the result.

If anyone knows what kind of bird this is, I'd be interested in finding out!


Technical shooting info...

Being in the lodge meant that I had a few ways of taming the Bigma, i.e. keeping it steady.  At 500mm and as wide open as it goes (f/6.3), I needed to set the camera's ISO quite high to maintain a fast enough shutter speed, in this case, a 1/1250th on ISO 1600.  The bird didn't stick around for too long, but I managed to shoot off half a dozen or so decent shots.

I rested my left foot on a chair and balanced the Bigma on my knee as a sort of makeshift monopod, then carefully squeezed the trigger for each shot.  Manual focus was vital, of course, as autofocus was doing its best to try and focus on the rain falling down around the subject and not the subject itself.

The rest of Day 3's photos are here.

 
 

Capturing moments

There are photos that require little explanation, but sometimes there are pictures which tell a story, and that story needs to be told.

Capturing moments: the hands of the mother and father of the bride.

This shot is one of my favourites from the day; there are quite a few favourites, which I posted to Flickr recently - out of the 1,000 or so I took, about 200 were good enough to process and send to the bride and groom, and out of those, just under 50 are what I'd consider to be my favourites.  This one is in the top 5.

Jos, the father of the bride, sat to the right of Mish (photo-right) and Margs, mother of the bride, sat to the left of my brother, Andy (photo-left), are the owners of the hands.  As Andy and his new mother-in-law were having a chat, she was holding hands with her extremely proud husband, having just given the speech at his daughter's wedding and welcomed a son-in-law into the family.  I thought it was a great moment and couldn't help but take the shot.

I love taking photos at weddings.  I've only been the official photographer at one wedding, which was back in May.  Nerve-racking doesn't even come close.  Thankfully, it all turned out well and the happy couple were pleased with the results *wipes beads of sweat off brow*.

From an enjoyability point of view, I really prefer to be a candid photographer-guest at weddings, as you can relax and take the shots you REALLY want to.  Not saying that you can't take the photos you want to when you're the official photographer, but you know what I mean - there's no pressure on you as a guest photographer.

Andy and Mish's wedding was a fabulous day (and night, and early next-morning for some people) and was enjoyed by all.  I didn't get the camera out until we got to the reception venue for a couple of reasons (being an usher and coordinating a few things tend to take priority).

Camera-geekery bit...

 

When I did grab the 5D Mk II, I wanted to shoot as much using ambient light as possible, and with Project Black and White in full swing, I set the Picture Style on the camera to mono (or sepia-toned) and shot on relatively high ISO and wide open aperture, so that the shutter speed was fast enough to freeze the action.

I decided to use the 50mm f/1.4 as much as possible so that I could shoot using wider apertures and get the faster shutter speeds.  Sure, the grain is quite pronounced in many of the shots I took (some at ISO3200), but I love grain in black and white photos, as it reminds me of when I used to load the old Pentax with Ilford Delta 3200 and get some lovely grainy shots.  You just need to remember to underexpose slightly so as not to overexpose the low light areas, i.e. to bring out the black.

The shot above was taken at 1/160th on f/1.4 with the camera's ISO set to 1600.  Minimal Photoshopping took place - I think I just tweaked the contrast to bring out the darker areas.

Back to blog-like writing...

Removing the technical aspects of the day's photography, I wanted to post this photograph to talk about capturing moments, whether they're at weddings, family gatherings, days out, reunions, gigs, or whatever.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that photographs are created, not just taken.  Anyone can pick up an expensive camera and take a snap; the real skill is in creating photographs, capturing that once-in-a-lifetime moment on film (ahem, sensor) and giving people something that makes them stop and take notice and, if possible, generate some sort of emotion.  I loved flicking through the pictures from Andy and Mish's wedding day as there were so many that made me smile, as I remembered the fun we had.  

Technically, some of them weren't brilliant, like this one here, but I can remember the laughter that accompanied the shot, even though I've forgotten what the joke was.

And that's what the title of this blog post is all about: creating and crafting pictures, and capturing the moments.

Forcing yourself to avoid Photoshop

For quite a few months now, I've been trying to minimise the amount of time I spend on photos in Photoshop or Lightroom. When I take hundreds of photos, I immediately get a sense of dread that I have to trawl through them all to select and process the best ones.


Aux Vieux de la Vieille, originally uploaded by Dave Romanis.

Recently, I set up a C-setting on the 5D2 for aperture priority (as I shoot 95% of the time), JPEG (as opposed to Raw) and black and white. The Picture Style settings using C3 are variations on black and white with contrast pushes, some sharpening and a tint, e.g. sepia.

Lou and I went to Lille for our first anniversary and I carried on Project Black and White, which uses this setting specifically so that I am forced down the route of black and white (note: if you set up Picture Style on Raw as Black and White, you can still revert to colour if you choose, something Henri Cartier Bresson and Ansel Adams would be turning in their graves over, I'm sure).

I used a 17-40mm for this shot at open-wide 17mm. I also focused on the menu at the bottom of the picture to make it a bit more interesting - the obvious focal point was probably the plate or the champagne bottle.

I'll return to the Borneo blog soon, but thought I'd chuck this one in a) to introduce the project, b) to highlight one of the sepia Jpegs, and c) to moan a little bit about having to process FAR too many photos!

I am trigger-happy, but I am also photo-happy!

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.