Kathy & I make frequent trips to Marion, NC to visit our friends at Bruce’s Fabulous Foods on Main Street in Marion. We stumbled on Bruce’s a few years ago and have been making regular visits ever since. This past Saturday we made our most recent pilgrimage.
Marion Train Station, Marion North Carolina
I’ve had an ongoing love for train stations and enjoy photographing them. Not sure exactly why, but I do. We often plan trips around train stations just to check them out.
This one's for Earl
The station in Marion is one we had visited before, but with a new camera to play with it was time to stop by again! The light was a little tough and we were hungry, so we didn’t spend a lot of time but I got a few shots.
Fire AlarmOld building near the Marion Train Station, Marion North CarolinaGrowing Like A Weed
I’ve gotten a little more time to shoot with the 5D Mark III over the last few days. Saturday I was teaching a digital point & shoot class for The Light Factory, and part of the class time is spent out actually taking photos. What a concept – a photography class that actually goes out and takes photos…amazing if I do say so myself! I cheated a little and took the 5D, with full disclosure to the class, of course. And after using my G12 in the previous session.
Looking Up, Clouds
I’ve still a little vexed by what I feel is most likely a learning curve in Lightroom…my files seem to be coming in flat and dark, and only after applying a pretty aggressive tone curve adjustment can I get them where I want them. I thought maybe I had some kind of Auto Tone turned on, but nothing I see indicates that I do, and even if I did I think the images, if anything, would look lighter instead of darker. I also saw on a video tutorial something about some automatic highlight suppression that Lightroom is doing, but I haven’t found anything definitive about that. So for now I’ve got something that works and I’m using it.
Looking Down
I’ve posted this photos a little larger than usual in case anyone wants to do some peeping. Click on each photo to make them bigger (dare I say “embiggen?”). They look pretty good, I think.
Frame In Need of a FaceWalkingNo LitteringArrivalCrossed
I’ve been amused by some of the press reports surrounding the so-called “light leak” issue with the Canon 5D Mark III. I won’t even link to it here but you can easily Google it if you feel you need the details, but suffice it to say that, while it is admittedly an “issue” it is not exactly a “problem” unless you normally take pictures in the dark with your lens cap on and rely on the LCD backlight while you are metering. Not something that concerns me, but people have made enough of a ruckus that Canon was forced to issue a press release to state that they were working on a “fix.” It amazes me that people must actually spend time trying to find these so-called flaws.
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No Waiting
I’ve had the 5D Mark III for about 2 weeks now, and while a lot of people would have turned over 10,000 images in that amount of time, my schedule has given me barely enough time to become familiar with the camera. I have managed to come up with some initial impressions and conclusions that I thought might be interesting to share.
My first real experience with the new camera was a little time spent walking around Charlotte on a rainy day, shooting some dreary outside scenes and some dark interiors, stretching the ISO limits a bit. I was and remain quite impressed with the relatively low noise at the higher ISOs, although in reality I was shooting much higher than I would seriously consider for serious use, mostly just because I could.
Random photo along College Street in Charlotte, North Carolina
My first actual job with the new camera involved shooting a small event at a local restaurant. I used ISO 3200 because, even though I was using a flash, I wanted the extra shutter speed that the higher ISO gave me. The photos from that event are very nice and I can confidently say that if I was a wedding or event shooter I wouldn’t hesitate to bump the ISO when I needed the speed.
I took the camera with me over Easter weekend when we visited Shenandoah National Park. Most of the photos I took on that trip were taken without benefit of a tripod (because I was too lazy to carry it) and those where I used the tripod were taken in very windy conditions or in harsh lighting, which makes it difficult to really evaluate the files. Add to that a major update to Lightroom, and I have been flummoxed trying to get files to come out to my liking. I’ve finally turned the corner on that, however, and am much happier now.
Along the trail to Stony Man Mountain summit in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
Handling
My first impression of the camera when getting it out of the box was that it has a nice feel. The surface has almost a “stickiness” to it that makes it comfortable to hold, and the grip areas are shaped just right for my hands. It feels well balanced with all of my lenses, most especially the 17-40 and the 24-105. Sticking a 70-200 2.8 or a 100-400 on the front of any body makes it a beast, so there’s not much to say about that. I have yet to put the 70-200 on it, which is weird since it is my favorite lens. Soon! I promise!
The controls are pretty well laid out, although it does have a couple of useless buttons, the “Rate” button and something called the “Creative Photo/Comparative Playback/Direct Print button that can’t be programmed for anything else. After a little fiddling with some of the custom controls I have managed to get things pretty much where I want it. I’ve purposely stayed away from the custom controls on the mode dial, figuring that I wanted to get a better feel for the choices before I started trying to come up with “canned” settings. As I did with some of my other cameras, I’ll probably create a setting for general nature stuff when shooting from a tripod, one for shooting hand-held, and another for shooting action.
I really like the addition of the “My Menu” (remember I’m coming from an original 5D) for commonly used functions like mirror lockup. I’m still playing around with what I put on there. It seems pretty useful though, and while navigating the main menu isn’t that hard, it’s nice to be able to recall the frequently used functions easily.
View from Stony Man Mountain summit in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
Focusing
I haven’t had a chance to use the capabilities of this camera shooting action, but for what I’ve done so far the focusing ability of this camera is impressive. It took a little effort to figure out how to change modes and move the focusing point around, but once I did it’s a piece of cake. Focusing is fast and accurate, although I’ve found that I have to be very careful with depth of field. After spending a lot of time using point & shoot or crop-sensor cameras I’m gaining a new appreciation for being careful with depth of field. It’s easy to get lazy with a tiny sensor camera, and moving to a large sensor makes you pay attention. On the other hand, getting shallow depth of field when you want it couldn’t be easier. I’d love to put a fast prime on this baby!
Unnamed cascade along the Rose River in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia
Image Quality
This is the one area where I want to spend some more time, but the impression I have so far is that quality is very good. The photos I’ve taken that I’m happy with show an amazing amount of detail. The downside is that the ones that I’m not happy with tend to exaggerate my mistakes!
One area that I feel like I see the most improvement seems to be dynamic range. I seem to be able to pull a lot of detail out of the shadows and control of highlights seems pretty good. Some of that may be the improvements in Lightroom, too. But the results look like the combination will be a good one for what I do.
The thing I haven’t done yet is to make prints from these files, and I am very much looking forward to a chance to do that. Hopefully I’ll have some time this weekend to waste a little ink and paper.
"7"
Conclusion
So far my only complaint about the camera is that I haven’t had enough time to enjoy it! In just a few short weeks though I’ll have a nice two-week vacation to Alaska and California, giving me plenty of time and lots of subject matter to finally put this camera to the test, and I’m really looking forward to that. Hopefully between now and then I’ll be able to make some more photos, work with all of my lenses and settle on the equipment that is going to make the trip. I change my mind every day (Kathy rolls her eyes) but eventually I’m going to test-pack the bag and see just how much stuff it will hold.
Rocks and lichen, Hawksbill Mountain in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - Canon 5D Mark III
Kathy & I spent the Easter weekend in Shenandoah National Park, meeting up with our good friends Bill and Cathy from Ohio. We stayed at Skyland – which they now call “Skyland Resort,” presumably to appeal to the upscale Washingtonians – that is actually an historic mountain lodge operated for the National Park Service by Aramark. The rooms are rather rustic, but the restaurant is decent and reasonably priced. It’s a beautiful location for a weekend or a week, as it is one of only two lodges in the park, and the only one open this time of year. Big Meadows Lodge is our favorite, but it doesn’t open for the season until May. There are miles of hiking trails accessible from right at Skyland or within an easy drive.
Kathy & I have stayed at either Skyland or Big Meadows numerous times over the years, and I traveled there with my family when I was a kid. I have numerous fond memories of the place from all of our visits there. One of the things we have always liked the most is that once you are in the park you have always been pretty much removed from civilization. At the lodges there are no room phones, most of the rooms don’t have televisions and until recently the cell phone coverage was non-existent. Both lodges have managed to add wireless internet in the main buildings, but there is no coverage in the rooms and cabins. For many this is a huge inconvenience, and I saw a number of people schlepping their iPads and laptops to the dining room at meal time, but it was exactly what I hoped for. Kathy refers to this as being “off the grid.” I call it the way to take a vacation!
Spring color along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia - Canon 5D Mark III
I made sure that my iPad had plenty of reading material on it – not a problem since I have managed to accumulate quite a backlog – and spent the entire 5 days in “Airplane Mode.” I did have my phone with me, so I was able to get my e-mail when I wanted it, but since most of the places we went either didn’t have cellphone coverage or were places I wouldn’t want to be talking on the phone anyway, I just left the phone off until we got back to the room. I left the laptop at home, figuring that I had plenty of memory cards and knowing that I wouldn’t be taking the time to work on any photos. I spent some time reading some technical papers on some of the new features of my camera, as well as looking through the manual for things I might have missed. Interesting stuff, right? Scoff if you will, but there is sometimes some good information to be found in the manual!
View of Skyland Resort from Stony Man Mountain in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - 5D Mark III
This wasn’t a photography weekend per se, as it was arranged as a way to meet up with our friends, Shenandoah being about equidistant for both of us. But being a guy with a new camera there was a fair amount of photography to be done. I didn’t get up early or stay out until sunset, and for the most part the skies were crystal clear blue and it was very windy, so it was not ideal for the kind of shooting I usually do, but I did manage to put a few shots on the new gear.
When I got the new camera, my first shooting opportunities involved conditions that allowed me to try out the stratospheric ISO capabilities, so for this trip it was nice to slow down into a “normal” ISO range of 100 or 400. I used the tripod for a few shots but mostly carried the camera and a single lens while we hiked, shooting random nature shots along the trail. I also carried the X10 for a few shorter hikes, since it is ideal for those times when I don’t want to carry a bunch of gear but want to have a camera with me.
Gnarly tree, Hawksbill Mountain in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - 5D Mark III
Most of all, the weekend provided me some time to get familiar with some of the basic functions of the camera. It’s got a new (to me) focusing system and a few new controls to get used to. It’s actually pretty intuitive, since I am familiar with the Canon menu layout from my previous cameras. I got used to it pretty quickly and now feel like I am almost to the point where I can use it as intuitively as my older cameras. While the new 5D has some interesting new features, I tended to stick to the basics, preferring to learn how to use it in “regular camera mode.” There will eventually be plenty of time for playing around with the in-camera HDR, multiple exposures and picture styles, but for starters I just want to be sure I know how to take pictures with it!
Early spring along the Rapidan Fire Road in the Big Meadows area of Shenandoah National Park, Virginia - Fuji X10
Now that I am back to “reality” I have been working on trying to get up to speed on processing the files in Lightroom 4. I’m finding that a lighter touch is required in the new process version in general, and while the files from the 5D are very nice, I am trying to figure out how to get the new process version set up to produce files that look the way I want them to look and that I am happy with. All of my old presets are essentially obsolete, and simply duplicating the settings from the old version end up way too contrasty, oversaturated and – interestingly – too dark. I’ve been playing around with a custom Tone Curve that, when combined with some other settings, tends to get the files back to where I want them. I don’t think it’s a matter of the camera underexposing the files as much as it is just that the standard settings are somehow darkening the files, especially in the mid-tones. I haven’t had a lot of time to search the usual message boards, so I don’t know if this is just me or if it is a common issue. It’s probably me.
Anyway, I’m back in gear for a few weeks, getting ready for the next big adventure. By then I expect to have my workflow up to speed with all of the “bugs” worked out of my processing. I’m teaching a Lightroom class on May 5, so I definitely need to be up to speed on Lightroom 4 by then. I think a little more work will just about get me there.
Wood grain in a fallen log on Hawksbill Mountain in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - Canon 5D Mark III
For those of you who I forced to spend a few extra days in March…sorry. The weekend got away from me and before I knew it, well you know.
One of my favorite sunrise locations at any time of the year is Pounding Mill Overlook, on the Blue Ridge Parkway just south of the junction with US-276 that runs between Brevard and Waynesville. It’s either hit or miss here, but generally speaking if you aren’t socked in with clouds you’ll get something worth pulling the camera out for. Fog in the Pink Beds is always a good bet, and a nice golden glow from the rising sun makes for a doubly special sunrise.
Things may be a little quiet here for the next week or so as we head out on our next adventure, but with any luck I’ll come back with some nice shots of the Shenandoah National Park area. They had a little snow at Big Meadows this morning, so you just never know what you might run in to!
Uptown Charlotte in Fog - Canon 5D Mark III @ ISO 3200
The world is a noisy place, sometimes. Our workplaces are full of overheard telephone conversations, unattended cell phones, conference calls in “speaker phone voice” from an open cubicle with multiple participants, casual chatter between cube-neighbors. People leave televisions blaring in an empty room that is so loud it hurts my ears, and there’s no one there watching it. We go out for a meal to a restaurant filled with televisions AND loud music in a room with concrete floors and high ceilings that creates “atmosphere.” Actually it creates a headache. Heck, spend a couple of hours on the Blue Ridge Parkway and count the number of loud, noisy cars and motorcycles that roar by in a given period of time. “OUT ENJOYING THE PEACE AND QUIET ON YOUR HARLEY, HUH? WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER MY RADIO.” Why does a motorcycle even NEED a radio? HUH? Nevermind.
Morning Coffee - Canon 5D Mark III @ ISO 6400
Kathy & I seek quiet. We avoid noise whenever possible. We sometimes sit at home in the evenings and the only sound is the clicking of one OF our clocks. Lovely. No television, no music, and hopefully no neighbor’s barking dogs. When I sit at my computer I listen to an acoustic guitar channel on Pandora. Softly. When we think about traveling we think in terms of places we can go to get away from noise, at least man-made noise. Ocean sounds, waterfalls, wind? Those are no problem. We’ve even learned how to find the quiet places on a cruise ship, which is no small feat when sailing with 3 or 4 thousand of our closest friends.
Charlotte Plaza Building Lobby - Canon 5D Mark III @ ISO 25,600 - "Because I Can"
The thing I love about photography is that it takes me to quiet places. Even in the middle of a city, it gets my mind and attention away from the sounds and they become nothing more than background. I shut all that noise out and just think about enjoying my time with my camera. That’s the reason I don’t generally photograph with groups. I have a lot of good friends that are photographers, and while hanging out with a few of them at a time is great fun, much more than that and it’s hard to find the quiet place I look for when I’m with my camera.
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Like these photos? Maiden voyage of the new machine. I made them a little larger than usual – click on them to make them bigger.
Historic train station in Salisbury, North Carolina
Yesterday, Paul Lester & I made a trip to Salisbury, NC to meet up and do some photography with fellow photographer and blogger Earl Moore, aka “The Earl of Salisbury.” Earl and Paul had met previously, but while Earl & I have been following each others’ blogs for a few years we had never met.
Paul & Earl at the historic train station in Salisbury, North Carolina
After a cloudy and damp start it was a great day. Earl was the consummate host, showing us around town for a few hours, then treating us to lunch at a nice little Thai/Chinese/Japanese Sushi place called “Bangkok Downtown” before a final stop at the Salisbury National Cemetery. Well, final in a figurative sense, not in a literal way. 🙂
Indecision?
Amazingly for me, it was my first visit to Salisbury. I’m sure I had passed through at one time or another over the past 17 years, but I had never spent any meaningful time there. Salisbury has a beautiful and historic rail station, is the birthplace of Cheerwine, headquarters of Food Lion, has a beautiful downtown area and a number of beautiful and historic homes & neighborhoods.
One of many church steeples on the Salisbury skyline
As is typical of a Southern town, Salisbury has a lot of churches. Most of the popular denominations seem to be represented. There is probably a covered dish dinner going on somewhere in town every day. Just like at the mall, there is truly something for everyone.
Dogwood in full bloom
I took over 250 photos, which is a lot for me, but there was a lot to see and shoot. Mostly it was enjoyable to spend time talking and photographing with friends. A number of the photos I took have more of an “urban decay” theme, and while they are interesting I won’t post them here because they don’t suit my intention for this article. I’ll probably use them to illustrate another article I have in mind, but for now they will remain unshared.
Not all of the windows are real!
I truly enjoyed my time in Salisbury and hope to return there again soon. The train station itself is a place where I could spend hours. The cemetery will be lovely when the grass greens up, but before summer’s heat takes its toll. And there are a lot of shops and restaurants to explore…I’ll definitely be back!
One of our challenges as photographers is to try and expand our horizons a bit in order to grow our skills and refine our vision. Often that involves getting outside of our “Comfort Zone.” Hopefully is doesn’t take us so far as our “Panic Zone” but that is always a possibility. Coincidentally one of the topics of our workshop this past weekend dealt with just that – getting outside our comfort zone.
This was already on the schedule before the workshop and ensuing discussion, but the manager of our favorite restaurant told me that he needed new photos for his website, Facebook page and Open Table and wondered if I was interested in giving it a go. After a big “gulp!” I told him I’d love to do it, we just needed to set up a date.
As it happened, the weather forecast for this past Sunday was perfect, Tim (the manager) was available and the time change the night before made sunrise a much more hospitable hour than it would have been just the previous day. So off I went at 0-Dark-Thirty to shoot landscape photos in a restaurant. No problem, right? Actually it was no problem at all. Tim had gotten there early and had everything set up, and just like with a landscape shoot we just had to wait for the right light. Once it got good, I rattled off a series of shots and it was “in the can” as they say in show biz.
It was a great creative exercise for me, and stretched my boundaries just a bit. Not all of the shots are as great as I (and the client) think these are, but they will be a huge improvement over what they had been using. I don’t think there’s any danger of me becoming an architectural photographer any time soon, but it has gotten me thinking about looking for a tilt-shift lens!
I attended one of Les Saucier’s “Refining your Photographic Vision” workshops this past weekend. I think it was the third or fourth one I’ve attended. I seem to always get something out of Les’ workshop that makes it worth the time and cost. This time was no exception. The thing that I find most fascinating though is that a lot of the things I learn don’t always come from the instructor or even the other participants. Sometimes the best “nuggets” are things that I learn about myself.
Part of the day’s activities involves a critique of images we have selected and brought in to share. Les goes through everyone’s images and comments on what he sees, how they might be made better and he usually has some good suggestions on things to work on and look for the next time. One of the participants showed an image that, while it was not taken with an iPhone, it was processed to look like it was done with one of the popular apps. Les’ comment was that – and I’m paraphrasing – the effect should not be the subject, that the software effects used in processing our images should be used to obtain or achieve our vision for the photograph. The photograph should not be “about” the effect. I found this interesting, because I feel that too often an image is shared to show off a technique, rather than to show someone what the photographer saw or how the photographer felt. I wrote about this several years ago in a post entitled “Don’t Make It About the Technique” where someone had suggested something similar to me about my use of camera movement to show motion in an image. The same concepts hold true here.
During the introductions, one of the participants mentioned that they were using all the latest Nik and Topaz software. Les asked how that person knew when to use what software, since the software is a tool to achieve our vision, not a vision in and of itself.
Several people in the class mentioned tools or software or equipment that they had purchased but “hadn’t had time” to use, hadn’t learned how it works or hadn’t even taken it out of the box. The problem I have with that is that too many people buy stuff without really understanding whether they need it. They just think that if they have something then they can take pictures just like the person who sold it to them. That may be true, and it may be absolutely OK if that’s what you want, but the best tool in the world won’t help a bit if it doesn’t help you achieve your intended result. And it does nothing for you whatsoever if it never comes out of the box. We spend way more time searching for recipes and magic buttons than we do actually figuring out what we want to say. Unless, of course, “look at all my stuff” is our message.
At another point in the day there was a discussion about tripods. Les gave us his “Good, Better, Best” talk and showed us his choices for Better and Best tripods. He told us that he couldn’t recommend the Best tripod because it costs too much. But the Best one is the one he uses, and also happens to be the one I use. I realize that there is a point at which we all have to determine what our needs are, and that helps us decide what price represents an appropriate amount to spend for a given tool. But when I ran those numbers for my own purchase several months ago, I decided that Best was what I needed and wanted, and while the difference was fairly significant in dollars it was relatively small in terms of my overall investment in equipment. Now that the money is gone, I never ever question my decision to buy the Best tripod. It is exactly the tool I need and has made a noticeable improvement in the sharpness of my images (notice that I didn’t say that it has made a noticeable difference in the quality of my photographs!). Again, we all have to make a choice, but for something as important as a tripod, I’m not sure the Better is good enough when Best costs only a little more.
The best nugget for me was during the critique of one of my photos when Les suggested cloning out a few distracting elements. I agreed with him and had actually thought about doing that when I originally processed the image. I thought about his comments later and remembered that the reason I hadn’t cloned them out originally was because I couldn’t get the result I wanted in Lightroom. Lightroom’s healing brush doesn’t work well on larger areas and to do it right I was going to need to use Photoshop. My desire to do everything in Lightroom (a nice way of saying ‘my hard headedness’) makes me avoid Photoshop obsessively except for the few things that I just can’t do in Lightroom. But as I thought about it I realized that it was foolish of me to allow my choice of tools to influence my artistic decisions. It’s no different from someone else using a tool or software indiscriminately to determine their vision. If I need to use Photoshop to get the results I want, then I just need to use Photoshop. So as soon as I have time I’m going to go back and re-work that photo in Photoshop to get the result I should have gotten to start with.
Overall it was a great session. I learned some things that I think will be valuable. Les’ biggest lesson is that we need to get our cameras out and go practice. So Sunday morning I did just that. This had already been planned before the workshop, but I stepped out of my comfort zone, got up well before sunrise and went out and shot some commercial photographs for a restaurant in Charlotte. But that is a story for another day.
The nature photography group that I belong to is an affiliate member of the Photographic Society of America, or PSA. We have recently begun participating in a number of their competitions, some of them for projected images but most of them for printed images. Because I consider the well-made print to be the intended final result of my photography, I began to submit some of my work to be considered for entry in these competitions. We’ve got a lot of members and each club is limited in the number of images they can submit in each category, plus each photographer is limited in the number of their images that can be in any one submission. It’s all very complicated to me and I have a hard time figuring it out so I generally don’t bother trying. I just send my stuff in and if it gets picked it does, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. No big deal either way.
I did have one of my photos win an Honorable Mention in one of the projected image competitions a couple of years ago, and that was nice. I’ve been working hard at getting better with my printing and am very proud of some of the work I have submitted, so I was hoping that one or more of my prints would do well.
I received an e-mail this morning with images of the winners from the most recent competition. Mine was not included in the list of winners or those receiving honorable mention. I won’t go into a lot of detail regarding how I feel about the winners, since they obviously appealed to the people who were doing the judging. But I’ve come to the conclusion that, at least for the purposes of these competitions, the kind of work I’m submitting isn’t what the judges are looking for. I’m just not using enough software.
This is not intended to be sour grapes or anything, and to conclude that would be missing my point. But I’d be interested in knowing if there is some place or some way to get meaningful and constructive feedback on printed work that is more representative of traditional photography, rather than heavily manipulated and/or highly processed images. Maybe I’m just entering the wrong category in these competitions, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only one experiencing this. Does anyone actively participate in a print review group? Is anyone interested in starting one? It’s something I’ve considered for a while, but there just aren’t that many people printing their work these days. And of those who do, it doesn’t seem like there are many people whose goals are similar to mine. I’d be interested in knowing the thoughts of anyone reading, and might even propose that a few of us give it a try and see how it goes. Send me an e-mail or reply in the comments.
