Ribbit

My nine-year-old had a special photographic project to do for an upcoming event. This afforded us the opportunity to spend quality time together with the cameras. Since her project had a water theme, we sought out local ponds and streams.

She was using the Minolta A1 and I had the Tokina AT-X 100-300 F4 mounted on the Olympus E-1. The scene around the pond was pretty good and she was taking some excellent photos. It is an incredible feeling to see your child excel and take an interest in something that means so much to yourself. We had a wonderful time. As we were walking along the edge of the water we heard a splash and looking down saw this frog. For the next ten minutes we photographed it getting closer and closer. Some of her shots were getting me a little embarrassed as she was doing such an excellent job.

I figured out what was going on--she was using the live-view displayof the A1 and was able to get right down to the water level. This was my clue--I was shooting from too high up.

Extending the Tokina all the way out to 300mm, I focused it as close as it would go. This picture resulted. (as usual, clicking on the image opens up a larger version). This is a good justification for the Olympus E-330. Live view with an articulating viewfinder would make these low-level shots much easier than sticking your ear in the mud.

Extreme Telephoto Flower Pictures

When we think of nature and flower pictures, "Macro" comes to mind. How close can we get to the subject? How BIG in the viewfinder can we make it? For that we invest in macro lenses, extension tubes and all sorts of other paraphenalia. However, there is another way.

These pictures were taken with the Tokina AT-X 100-300 F4 zoom mounted on the Olympus E-1. For those not familiar with the E-system, it is a reduced frame system with the imaging sensor about 1/2 the size of a 35mm film camera. This means that the image is essentially "magnified" 2X over the equivelent focal length in our 35mm film cameras. The 100-300 zoom now becomes the equivelent of a 200-600 F4 zoom.



The top picture is of a young maple tree. During RAW conversion in RawShooter Essentials 2006, I altered the white-balance to emphasise the greans and turned the saturation to zero. The shadow and highlight contrasts were adjusted to achieve the tonal density curve I wanted. The focal length was set to around 250mm.

The second image is of a flowering bush that had this branch sticking through the railing slats of a foot-bridge. Focal length was all the way out to 300mm.



This final image is with the lens focused down all the way to the minimum focus-distance and at 300mm.

An extreme telephoto is usually not the typical tool used for photographing flowers, but it is useful some of the time.

Kodak Portra 160VC for flowers

The above picture was taken with the new Kodak Portra 160VC. The film is very fine grained with a wide exposure latitude and excellent scanning capabilities. In this particular image, my goal was to increase the vibrancy of the image as much as possible without blowing gamma which is a common problem with images from digital cameras.

The image was taken using an Olympus OM-2S in Auto mode, a silvernosed Zuiko 100/2.8 and approximately 50mm of extension. Aperture was F4 to give myself just enough DoF for the top flower without busying up the background.

The negative was scanned on the Nikon Coolscan V-ED using the Nikonscan software. Extensive curves, cropping and saturation adjustments were made in Nikonscan and no additional editing was done except to resize and spot one blemish ICE failed to catch.

The "New" Portra 160VC is a very adaptive film during the scanning process. Depending on your scanner settings, it will mimick Velvia, Portra or even Astia. The biggest problem we run into with scanning Velvia is getting the greens to hold without gaining a blueish cast. 160VC provides solid "Velvia Greens" without the typical digital saturation look.

E-6 processing is getting increasingly expensive and difficult to find. The Portra films are processed C-41 and very inexpensive to have done. (this roll was processed in Wal-Mart for $1.76). For those looking for an alternative to Velvia, Portra 160VC is an excellent choice.



In this image, I backed off the saturation and curves to more properly reflect the actual scene. One thing I would like to point out in this photograph is the extensive highlight detail in the flower. Portra has a nice shoulder which gives a smoother transition into digital clipping (out of gammut). Click on the image to see a larger version. The dynamic range, as shown in this photo, is a function of both the film and the quality of the scanner. The NC version of Portra films tend to mute the colors slightly, have less chroma "noise" and a touch more dynamic range.

Click on the image below to see a crop from the full-size scan.



I am no longer shooting Velvia, which had been my mainstay since it first came out. The new Portra films give me better scan quality, greater sharpness due to the flatness of the roll-film feeder, awesome skintones and the flexibility to adapt to your needs DURING the scanning process. I can choose to shoot one family of films for portrait, wedding and nature photography.

Best of all, I can have it processed in 20 minutes at the nearest minilab.