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Have you followed us on Instagram yet? Now’s a great time to, since over the next three days we’ll be turning our account over to Barney, where he’ll be sharing photos from a recent trip to central Mexico. It’s the trip that cemented the Leica M10 as his Gear of the Year, and provided plenty of opportunities to photograph the beauty of the region – from the captivating architecture of Queretaro to the jungle of San Luis Potosi and points in between.
Give us a follow and stay tuned!
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| Joe McNally created this shot in the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, Hungary using the Nikon D850, a 14-24mm F2.8 zoom lens, and strobes. A lot of strobes.
Nikon D850 | AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm F2.8 @ 14mm | ISO 160 | 1/20 sec | F5.6 |
Joe McNally is one of the most recognizable names in photography. As one of the foremost fashion and portrait photographers in the world, his work has been published internationally in books, magazines and newspapers for decades.
In his role as a Nikon Ambassador, McNally had early access to the new Nikon D850. We spoke to him recently to talk through the process of creating one of the most arresting images of Nikon’s D850 launch campaign.
I think the bottom line here is that I’ve seen way too many James Bond movies! I wrote up three separate potential treatments, and this one I titled ‘The High Fashion Heist’. So imagine an elegant lady sweeping down a grand staircase, gown flowing behind her, clutching stolen gems, racing past the sleeping security guard. And the wrinkle is her gown inadvertently is toppling a priceless statue. It’s a heist gone wrong, that type of thing. I also wanted to include the feeling of motion or speed.
The original treatment did not include the toppling statue. I was driving the sense of motion from the flowing gown, and we wanted to emphasize a little more tension, so when I re-wrote the concept I threw in the idea that she’s knocking over a statue.
We had to work outside the U.S., and we came up with a number of locations – one of which was in Edinburgh, Scotland, and one was in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. And one was the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, Hungary. They sent me scouting photographs of it, and it had that feel. The old elegance. The big staircase.
The museum was willing to work with us, it was affordable, and it’s Budapest, which is just an amazing place. So after the idea was approved, we moved forward on the location pretty quickly.
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The column and the head are supported by metal braces. We couldn’t buy a bunch of busts and have them smash on the floor, so we took the column and put a brace against it, and the head, and then touched out the braces in post.
It’s virtually all strobes. We were allowed to come into the museum at around 6 o’clock at night when it was closed, and we worked until 6 o’clock in the morning. So there was no natural light. So if you look at the windows up top, camera left, those are strobes on a crane truck outside. I’d say there were probably about 20 large power packs and heads, and about 10-15 SB-5000 Speedlights.
I shot all manual for this. The D850’s touchscreen is fantastic, because now, if I’m doing something complex with six groups of Speedlights for example, I can just tap on the screen and alter their values.
First off, there’s the resolution. When you shoot in an ornate place like this, you really want to be able to capture all of the detail, and the camera handled that really well. The D850’s sensor has great dynamic range, so I didn’t have to over-light. In the cavernous spaces, I could hint at lighting, and I knew that the shadow detail would be alright. The autofocus is hyper-accurate, which is essential, because you don’t want to get THE expression and THE particular arrangement of the gown absolutely perfect and have any sort of focus issues afterwards.
I was shooting the flashes in manual exposure mode, but I was controlling all of the Speedlights using the WR-10 radio trigger from the camera. So I had a big strobe system on a different radio system, but I also had the Nikon Speedlight system. I was able to effectively control two fields of flash, with the Speedlights being controlled from the camera.
We had a big crew, plus a video crew, the clients were there, we had a props person, hair, makeup, fashion, styling, and a very elegant wonderful model. I had a crew of five assistants! So the convenience of the new technology really helped.
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So far, I’ve used the D850 strictly as a stills camera. I’ve been using it a lot just for simple portraiture and for beauty portraiture, but I’m very much looking forward to going into video mode with this camera. Again, the detail is really pretty luscious and pretty wonderful. I have a small stills and video project I’m going to be shooting in February, and I’m looking forward to it.
I shot the Rio Olympics with my D5, because it’s tough and it’s fast, and I’ve always used my D810’s when I needed resolution. But the D810 doesn’t have the radio controls that I’ve come to be so fond of with the SB-5000 flashes. And the D810 didn’t have things like the tilting LCD from the D500, which I’ve found to be very convenient. With the D850, I can have all of that in one camera. Speed, resolution and convenience.
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The Rokinon/Samyang AF 50mm F1.4 FE ($ 500) and AF 35mm F1.4 FE ($ 800) represent the South Korean manufacturer’s first foray into the autofocus lens market. The 50mm F1.4 is a steal compared to Sony’s own Planar T* FE 50mm F1.4 ZA ($ 1400). So what do you sacrifice, and is it worth the savings? In short, it’s enough to say this lens is no gem in a bargain’s disguise. But it’s not a bad piece of glass either.
The housing is made of metal like the Planar T* and the build quality is reassuringly dense – nothing rattles around when you shake it (a very scientific test indeed). It’s a little bit smaller than the Planar T* (the filter ring is 67mm vs 72mm), as well as lighter (645g / 1.4lb vs 778g / 1.7lb). But the Planar T* is by all accounts a large, heavy prime, meaning the Rokinon too feels hefty to lug around. It left this reviewer yearning for the comparably tiny/light-weight Sony Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA instead.
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| The Rokinon/Samyang AF 50mm F1.4 FE, shot wide open. ISO 100 | F1.4 | 1/5000 sec |
Photographers considering the Rokinon AF 50mm are likely doing so because of its F1.4 maximum aperture. Wide open, it’s not terribly sharp, but photos shot at F1.4 are certainly usable, especially if you add more sharpening in ACR or Photoshop. As you’d expect, sharpness improves as you stop down (until you hit diffraction territory). For a full stop aperture progression, head to the end of our gallery.
There’s a considerable amount of longitudinal chromatic aberration (purple and green fringing), and it can be really distracting around high contrast edges – see the second image in the gallery. While this can often be removed – to an extent anyway – in ACR or Lightroom, it’s often difficult or very time consuming, and comes with the risk of desaturation of other areas of your photo. Lateral CA corrections were left off for images in this gallery, and while you can turn it on in-camera or in Raw processing software, lateral CA seems to be well-controlled in this lens.
The other significant reason photographers are likely to consider this lens over the cheaper manual focus Rokinon 50/1.4 is its autofocus. Unfortunately, we don’t have a whole lot of good news in this department. In use, the AF motor is very noisy, not unlike a distant submarine distress call. That, or a very near dental tool. Trying to use it paired with the Sony a7R III in AF-C is a nightmare. Focus speeds are slow, loud, and AF is easily confused, sending the lens into a painfully long hunt. Performance and focus accuracy are far more reliable in AF-S. Eye AF, one of our favorite Sony features thanks to its uncanny ability to grab a subject’s eye and lock focus is sadly inaccurate and unreliable when used with this lens.
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| This would not be my first choice for a normal Sony FE lens with AF, but it’s still capable of lovely results. ISO 100 | F2.5 | 1/1000 sec |
The lens also has some issues with bokeh. Take a look at the onion rings in the out-of-focus highlights here, and if you search around the image above at 1:1, you’ll see slightly out-of-focus highlights having distracting holes in their center.
The takeaway: If you’re on a budget and want an FE 50mm F1.4 lens with autofocus, well, you don’t have a lot of options. Seeing as you can get some nice, usable images wide open, I wouldn’t steer you away from pulling the trigger on the Rokinon. But I would probably try to convince you to settle for F1.8 and save up for the Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA ($ 900) instead (quality-wise it is far superior to the Sony FE 50mm F1.8 – $ 200).
That said, optically this lens actually performed better than I expected a first-generation AF lens to. And I’m pretty excited to see Rokinon stepping into new territory.
See our Rokinon AF 50mm F1.4 FE gallery
This year saw plenty of new lenses released, including several excellent zooms. We’ve used a lot of them, but we want to hear from you – what were your favorite zoom lenses of 2017?
Time is running out to vote for your favorite cameras and lenses in our year-end Readers’ Choice Awards! In this category, we’ve rounded up the seven of the best high-end interchangeable lens cameras for enthusiasts and pros.
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The iPhone X shares the iPhone 8 Plus’ camera specs with two notable exceptions: both of the X’s main cameras are stabilized, and the telephoto lens boasts a brighter F2.4 aperture. Additionally, the X’s front-facing ‘TrueDepth’ camera makes it possible to take selfies using Portrait Mode. Take a look at what Apple’s newest flagship device can do.
See our iPhone X sample gallery
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President Trump has signed a bill that reinstates mandatory drone registration in the US, reversing a court ruling from earlier this year that eliminated the requirement. Mandatory drone registration was first established in the U.S. in late 2015 by the FAA, but the requirement was reversed earlier this year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after it ruled that the FAA lacked authority over such devices.
The reinstatement was included in the National Defense Authorization Act; although whether or not Trump was aware of its inclusion when he signed the bill into law is unclear.
In a statement provided to TechCrunch, an FAA spokesperson praised the registration requirement, saying:
We welcome the reinstatement of registration rules for all small unmanned aircraft. Ownership identification helps promote safe and responsible drone operation and is a key component to full integration.
Operators in the U.S. must register their drone if it weighs between 0.55lbs and 55lbs. The FAA’s registration website currently states, “You will be subject to civil and criminal penalties if you meet the criteria to register an unmanned aircraft and do not register.” Drones weighing more than 55lbs must be registered by paper rather than online.
The agency provides full aircraft registry details here.
After publishing my recent 2017 Gear of the Year article, in which I highlighted a lens I used for shooting the aurora borealis, numerous people reached out to ask if I would write a follow-up article on how to photograph auroras. So, I decided to team up with DPReview contributor, astrophotographer, and aurora tour guide, José Francisco Salgado, to share some insight into capturing this amazing natural phenomena.
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The aurora is the Earth’s own special effects show, seen here from Grundarfjörður, Iceland. |
The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, are natural displays of light that occur in the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere due to interaction between charged particles from the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere.
The Sun releases charged particles (including electrons) into space in a continuous stream, called solar wind, as well as in sudden and violent releases called Coronal Mass Ejections. Several days after leaving the Sun, these particles can reach our planet. Most are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field, but some find themselves inside the magnetic field and populate reservoirs within the field. Different events, including interactions with the solar wind, accelerate these particles towards an oval around the magnetic poles.
The Northern Lights are produced when these charged particles, guided by the magnetic field of the Earth, precipitate through the atmosphere and collide with nitrogen and oxygen. These collisions lead to atomic processes called ionization and excitation, which result in the emission of lights of varying color. A corresponding phenomenon in the southern hemisphere is called the Southern Lights, or aurora australis.
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| The aurora occurs when charged particles, guided by the Earth’s magnetic field, collide with nitrogen molecules and oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere. ISO 6400 | 3 sec. | F2.8 Photo by José Francisco Salgado |
Auroras are typically produced in a band known as the auroral zone, which can be 3° to 6° wide in latitude and between 10° and 20° from the geomagnetic poles. This means that auroras are normally seen at very high latitudes (north and south). The region where auroras occur at any given time is called called the auroral oval. Auroras are also produced in the dayside of the Earth, but since sunlight is about a million times brighter this renders them invisible during the day.
Although it’s easier to see auroras at higher latitudes, solar activity can cause the auroral oval to enlarge, making them visible at lower latitudes, including the northern regions of the continental US. Since geomagnetic activity responds to solar activity several days later, it’s possible to forecast auroral activity to help with your planning.
NOAA provides long-term (3 days) and short-term (30 min) aurora forecasts online. Also, there are several alert systems including email notifications from spaceweather.com or smartphone apps that can provide alerts when the aurora is active at your location, such as My Aurora Forecast & Alerts (iPhone; Android) and Aurorasaurus (iPhone; Android).
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| NOAA’s 30-minute forecast shows the intensity and location of the aurora forecast for the time shown at the top of the map. |
When Northern Lights are forecast to be visible, find an open field with an unobstructed view of the north. If you don’t want to wait for that to happen, or if you want to see the most intense aurora, you’ll need to move to higher latitudes. Before traveling to a particular northern location, consider three factors:
Some locations to consider are:
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| Photographing the Northern (or Southern) Lights is not very difficult, but you do need to get to a location where you can see them. One of the advantages of shooting from frozen lakes in Yellowknife, Canada, is the unobstructed views they provide of the entire sky. ISO 5000 | 5 sec. | F2.8 |
Remember, locations at extreme latitudes will have almost no nighttime close to the summer solstice, so avoid visiting these place from mid-April to mid-August in the northern hemisphere, or mid-October to mid-February in the southern hemisphere.
There’s no ‘correct’ gear for taking pictures of the auroras, but having the right equipment can translate into higher quality images and provide more creative options.
Camera: A camera with a full frame sensor will provide better high ISO performance than those with smaller sensors. That said, modern sensors are extraordinarily good, and it’s possible to get great aurora photos even if you don’t have a full frame sensor, so don’t let that stop you. On a recent trip, some friends of ours captured great aurora pictures using a Sony RX100 III, a camera with a 1”-type sensor.
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| This photo was captured using a Sony RX100 III, a camera with a 1″-type sensor. The Big Dipper and Ursa Major can be seen in the sky behind the aurora. ISO 3200 | 6 sec. | F1.8 Photo by Steve and Colleen McClure |
Lens: A fast, wide lens will let you capture as much light as possible. Anything wider than 24mm will work, though a 14mm or 16mm lens will allow for more dramatic shots. A lens with a maximum aperture of F2.8 is a good starting point, but faster is better. For example, a lens with an aperture of F1.8 has 2.5x the light gathering ability of a F2.8 lens. That’s a big difference in low light.
Tripod: Exposures are usually measured in seconds, so a sturdy tripod is a must. ‘Sturdy’ is the key word. It doesn’t have to be a fancy, state of the art carbon fiber model. As long as it holds your camera steady it will do the trick.
There are some optional accessories worth considering as well. If you plan to capture time-lapse sequences, an intervalometer is required, and these are included on many cameras today. A remote trigger, such as a cable release or smartphone app, will make it easy to trigger the shutter without touching your camera. Finally, since you’re working in the dark, a headlamp that allows you to see what you’re doing while leaving your hands free to work will be useful. (Fellow observers will appreciate you using a headlamp with a red light.)
Shooting aurora isn’t technically difficult, but every night is different and you may need to experiment a bit. It’s best to operate your camera in manual mode, with manual focus, for predictable, consistent results.
File format: Set your camera to capture Raw files. This provides the best image quality and the most latitude for making adjustments in post processing, particularly useful if you need to tweak settings like exposure or white balance. Don’t depend on a manufacturer’s baked-in Jpeg profile.
Focus: Focusing directly on the aurora is little bit like trying to focus on smoke. Fortunately, relative to your position, the aurora is effectively at infinity. It may be tempting to just rotate the focus ring on your lens to the infinity marker, but on many lenses that’s really more of an approximation.
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| Aurora in Canada’s Northwest Territories. ISO 3200 | 4 sec. | F2.8 Photo by Dale Baskin |
If you’re focusing at night, use your camera’s live view feature. Point the camera at the brightest star you can see, magnify the view to the maximum, and rotate the focus ring until the disk of the star looks the smallest. Once you think you’ve achieved critical focus, take a test shot and review the image for sharpness. If adjustment is needed, repeat.
Once focus is achieved, a useful technique is to lock the focus ring in place with gaffer’s tape to prevent it from moving. Alternatively, you can place marks on the lens with a marker in order to return the ring to the same position. These methods can also be used if you want to focus on a distant object during the day and save the focus position for later.
Aperture: Set your lens to its widest aperture to let in as much light as possible. If you’re concerned about optical performance wide open you can stop the lens down a bit, but doing so will quickly reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor. If at all possible, shoot at F2.8 or wider.
Shutter speed: Optimal shutter speed will depend on the brightness of the aurora and how quickly it’s moving. A short shutter speed will capture detail and structure that would otherwise be averaged out over a longer exposure. On the other hand, a slight motion blur can make an aurora photo more aesthetically pleasing. Take a few test shots to find the optimal balance, but 5-10 seconds is a good starting point to work from.
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| If the lights are dancing around quickly, shorter shutter speeds will let you capture more of the detail and structure of the aurora that would be otherwise be averaged out in a longer exposure. ISO 1600 | 3.2 sec. | F1.8 Photo by Dale Baskin |
ISO: Set your ISO to the highest level that gives you acceptably clean results on your camera. This will allow you to keep shutter speeds as low as possible in order to capture more detail in the aurora. Depending on conditions, you may be able to get by with ISO 800, though you may have to go to 6400 or higher.
Long exposure noise reduction: If you’re planning to take individual photos, turning this on will provide some benefit; however, it will effectively double exposure time while the camera shoots a dark frame. If you plan to shoot time-lapse sequences, leave this feature off to avoid long delays between exposures.
Embrace the landscape. Part of what makes the aurora interesting are the remote places where it’s frequently seen. In Alaska, photos may contain mountains. In northern Canada, it might be silhouettes of trees in the taiga forest. Iceland might present you with glaciers. Each place is unique and part of the story behind the photo.
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| Embrace landscape features and even man-made objects to enhance your aurora photos. ISO 6400 | 8 sec. | F2.8 Photo by José Francisco Salgado |
When creating compositions, think about other features or objects you could include. Snow and water can reflect light from the aurora, though in very different ways. Man-made structures can provide interesting elements in a scene or silhouettes. Since a wide aperture will produce a shallow depth of field, avoid objects close to the camera unless you want them to be way out of focus on purpose.
Know your equipment. Depending on where you are, aurora can quickly go from being a slow, undulating wave to a rapidly moving, multi-colored light show. Be prepared to shift gears and adjust your settings quickly to avoid missing great photo opportunities.
Finally, be patient. Mother Nature works on her own schedule, and you’ll need to work around it. If at first you don’t succeed, keep trying. It’s worth it.
José Francisco Salgado, PhD is an Emmy-nominated astronomer, science photographer, visual artist, and public speaker who creates multimedia works that communicate science in engaging ways. His Science & Symphony films through KV 265 have been presented in 200 concerts and lectures in 15 countries.
José Francisco is a seasoned night sky and aurora photographer and filmmaker. If you would like to view, photograph, and learn about the Northern Lights then you can inquire about his Borealis Science & Photo Tours in Yellowknife, Canada.
You can follow him on: Flickr, Instagram, 500px, Facebook, and Twitter
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In the first part of this series, I talked about shooting Kilauea’s lava surface-flows using a drone. Now, I’d like to take a step back and talk about shooting the lava in a more traditional method: using a DSLR on the ground.
If you’re inside the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and can’t fly a drone, this is the only affordable way of shooting the surface flows. But even if a drone is an option, shooting from the ground is different and will give you unique opportunities and some challenges.
Shooting with a DSLR might be the least technically challenging way of shooting the lava in Kilauea, but it’s not as easy as you might think.
First of all, there’s the challenge of traversing the lava on foot. You’re basically walking on very hard, sometimes jagged terrain, and moving from point to point searching for compositions can be strenuous. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a 7-8 km hike to get to the surface flow area, but there’s much more hiking on location to get the actual shots.
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When shooting, you often want to get as close as possible to the lava, in order to get more detail and/or a desired perspective. This might be a problem in some cases, as the lava is about 1100 degrees Centigrade, and this temperature can be felt very well even from several meters away.
In some of the shots, I felt like I was inside an oven. I had to find my composition quickly, take a few images, and run away, since staying there would become unbearable after several seconds.
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| This particular shot has a slightly narrower depth of field than I’d like it to have. The reason is that lava was flowing underground very close to where I was standing, and because of the intense heat, I didn’t have the time to set the tripod. I had to shoot hand held and run for my life! |
Protective gear is very important. The bare minimum would be a long-sleeve shirt, sturdy, ankle-high hiking boots, long pants and, of course, gloves. The latter are needed both because the skin on your hands is struck by radiating heat from the lava, and because the tripod can get very hot after staying near the lava for some time. I would also recommend a beanie to protect your forehead and ears from the heat.
Don’t neglect listening to your body—if you ignore the heat and the pain, you might find yourself with second-degree burns. I’ve mentioned it before, but a good guide is very important when hiking to dangerous surroundings, and can keep you in the safe zone (if you so wish).
Last but not least, there’s the heat-haze problem. The heat creates this well-known blur, which means some shots cannot turn out sharp, no matter how well-focused they are.
A decent solution can be waiting for the wind to blow the hot air and supply a short relief from the haze, but the wind doesn’t always cooperate. You’re left with the option of talking multiple shots in hope that some turn out relatively sharp. Another approach is using the haze to your benefit in an artistic way. It surely conveys the feeling of heat to the viewer.
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The Hawaiian sunset is brief, which means the really good light is short-lived, and after that’s gone you’re going to need a tripod to keep stable. This naturally makes shooting much more cumbersome, and prevents the shoot-and-run-away technique mentioned above. The upside is that there’s beautiful contrasty details to be shot, which makes for good abstracts.
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Regarding photographic equipment, I mostly used the telephoto end of my focal-length range. One lens I didn’t use was my 11-24mm, since it was way too wide, and the 16-35 was also left in the bag most of the time. The lenses I used the most were my 24-70mm and especially my 70-300mm.
The latter enabled me to get the intimate details of the lava from a safe (or rather possible) distance.
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Next time I’ll talk about shooting the lava from a boat.
Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.
If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the most fascinating landscapes on earth with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in locations such as southern Iceland, Northern Iceland, The Lofoten Islands, Patagonia, Greenland, Namibia and the Faroe Islands.
Part 1: How to Melt a Drone