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October 26, 2014October 27, 2014

Selecting autofocus point for soccer photography

My default autofocus point selection for shooting sports is the central one, because it is the most precise sensor that is able to detect contrast gradients in the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions (I am using a Canon EOS-1D X, but this applies to any DSLR, since the central autofocus point is typically the most precise one, regardless of the specific technology).

When shooting soccer games, I sometimes switch to the bottom point to capture the moment when the players jump to receive a high-flying ball with their heads. When I anticipate such moment, for example, when a goalie kicks the ball into the field, I quickly switch the autofocus sensor to the bottom one. I have the sensor selection assigned to the joystick on the back of the 1D X, and one neat feature of this control assignment (which is customizable in this camera) is that pressing down on the centre of the joystick returns the focus selector to the previously used position. I also assign separate default sensors to the landscape and the portrait orientation of the camera (my default for the vertical orientation is the bottom sensor to capture the jumps).

On the other hand, when the action comes closer, I switch to the top autofocus point to focus on the faces of the players.

October 25, 2014October 26, 2014

A day on the water

Head of the Gorge regatta. October 25, 2014.

Today has been a very wet day for me: shooting the Head of the Gorge rowing regatta from an umpire safety boat under rain, followed by a soccer match under even heavier rain (but from a relative comfort of a tent, which was set up just for me). My gear (Canon EOS-1D X, 5D Mark II cameras and the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM and 300mm f/2.8L IS USM lenses) stood up to the challenge beautifully.

I took about 4,500 images from the rowing race and about 1,000 images from the soccer match. Having just finished going through the rowing photos, I must say, the rowing action is not as exciting as soccer, because the motion of the rowers is very repeatable. To add some variety to the final selection of photos, I mix the action shots (both closeups of the facial expressions and wider shots of the entire crew) with portraits of the athletes and the coaches.

During the soccer game, I was confined to the location of the tent, while usually I like to move around the pitch to shoot different perspectives of the action. Fortunately, today’s extreme weather conditions added sufficient interest to the shots. Another plus of the cold, rainy weather was a free cup of hot chocolate, courtesy of UVic.

AA5Q0040_10-25-2014

October 24, 2014

Making math look good: advertisement photoshoot for a calculus course

Last summer, my wife was involved in designing a short course in calculus for incoming first-year students at UVic. To help promote this course, we set up a staged photoshoot with current students and instructors as models. Armando and I set up the lighting (studio strobes with softboxes and umbrellas) in the actual classroom where the course would be taught. We had a relatively short shooting list: couple of shots of individual students writing on the board, a group portrait of them having a conversation in front of the board with formulae written on it, and a group portrait of the students talking to the instructor.

The key image, shown above, is a composite of two photos: a shot of the student pretending to be writing (he was holding the marker in mid-air) and a shot of the math formulae written on a white board with a blue marker.

Here is how I made it:

Opened both photos in the same Photoshop document: the portrait on the background layer and the shot of the board on the layer above it.
Created a Curves adjustment layer above the top layer.
Clipped the adjustment layer to the layer below it. To do it, I clicked the left-most icon at the bottom of the Curves menu, which looks like a square with an arrow pointing down. This makes the adjustment layer affect only the layer immediately below it, not all underlying layers.

Screenshot 2014-10-24 22.26.46

Increased the exposure (by dragging the midpoint of the curve in the layer menu upwards). The purpose of this is to over-expose the image of the white board, so that everything, except the text, becomes solid white.
Selected the layer with the board image, and clicked on the white colour with the magic wand selection tool (activated by pressing W). I held Shift key and click inside all areas enclosed by the blue lines, such as the areas inside the loops of 6’s. This created a mask containing everything, except the blue text.
Pressed Delete key. This removed the white board and left only the blue text.
Removed the selection by going to Select > Deselect in the top menu bar (or pressing Command-D).
Selected everything in the layer (i.e. the text) by going to Select > All (or pressing Command-A).
Went to Edit > Transform >Flip horizontal to create a mirror image of the text.
Selected the move tool (by pressing V) and dragged the image of the inverted text to align it with the marker in the student’s hand.
That’s it! I saved the Photoshop document to preserve the layers. The flattened composite image can be saved in any format afterwards as a copy.

October 23, 2014

Close-quarters shooting using a fisheye lens

As a part of collaborative research of hybrid-powered ships, my colleagues and I recently visited the first diesel-electric vessel in the BC Ferries fleet, M.V. Tachek, which operates between Quadra Island and Cortes Island. I new that we would have an opportunity to visit the machine compartment, among other areas that are normally restricted to passengers, so I wanted to photograph them to document the site visit and to promote this research project on the web.

I expected to shoot in a highly-confined environment with poor lighting, so I packed my Canon EOS-1D X DSLR, which has remarkable low-light performance, and fast lenses (35mm f/1.4L USM for extremely low light and 16-35mm f/2.8L USM for extremely tight quarters).

Also, Armando lended me his Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens, pointing out that it would be better for photographing people than the 16-35mm f/2.8L. He was absolutely right. Of course, the fisheye creates a lot of distortion, but this distortion is of a different kind, compared to that of a rectilinear lens, such as the 16-35mm f/2.8L. Since a rectilinear lens is designed to preserve straightness of straight lines, objects near the edge of the frame appear to be stretched and enlarged, which is not flattering to human faces. On the other hand, a fisheye lens covers the 180° field of view by reducing the scale of objects towards the edge of the frame. It also does not preserve straight lines, but since a human face does not contain many straight lines, this is typically not a problem.

As it turned out, the machine compartment of the Tachek was more spacious than I thought, but the fisheye lens produced fun images with a unique perspective.

Here are some tips for using a fisheye lens:

Compose a portrait so that the face of the subject is located close to the middle of the frame to minimize distortion.
If there is a horizon line, place it so that it crosses the centre of the frame – this way, it will not be distorted.
In many situations, such as sports or other action, for example, it is a good idea to switch the lens to manual focus and manually focus just short of infinity. Because ultra-wide angle lenses have huge depth of field, compared to normal or telephoto lenses at the same f-numbers, almost everything in the frame is going to be in focus all the time, regardless of there the focussing point of the camera points to. Turning off autofocus can maximize the framing rate, particularly in low light situations.

October 22, 2014October 22, 2014

Building wedding portfolio: staged photoshoot

A staged wedding photoshoot at the historic Empress Hotel in Victoria was one of the major photography projects for me last summer. Armando and I wanted to expand our portfolio beyond sports, so we approached our friends, who work at Lugaro Jewellers and the Empress, as well as colleagues, relatives and local models and makeup artists and proposed this collaborative project.

The shoot involved three photographers (Armando, Ilijc and myself), two male and two female models, and my wife, who was involved in all aspects from brainstorming the shooting list and posing ideas to coordinating the jewelry inventory. The preparations were fairly involved, and literally every aspect required multiple iterations and coordination with many people. We had to find a date that worked for everyone, contact local bridal boutiques to borrow a wedding dress (one of the models had her own dress) and visit the location beforehand to decide on the lighting setup and the shooting list.

The day of the photoshoot was quite intense, as we planned a lot for the eight hours. We shot in two rooms: first in a library, and then in a banquet hall. At each location, we had two lighting setups operating simultaneously, and the models rotated between them, changing the outfits and jewelry in the process. We used Paul C. Buff Einstein E640 studio flashes with various diffusers and umbrellas to modify the light. We shot with Canon DSLRs (1D X and 5D Mark III) and various lenses, from 35mm f/1.4L USM to 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM (the most useful one) to 85mm f1.2L II USM (most spectacular one).

As I look through the images after being focussed on other projects for a few months, I am glad that I had this pause to become a little detached from the whole planning/staging/shooting experience. Looking at the photos with fresh eyes helps me appreciate how much effort everyone involved put into this project and how much I learned from it.

October 21, 2014October 21, 2014

Converting a noisy photo to black-and-white

I wrote in another post about reducing noise in low-light photos, but sometimes the amount of the recorded light is just too low to yield adequate results. Suppressing the noise in those situations would lead to the loss of details that would not be acceptable. I particularly dislike colour noise – random occurrence of alternating red, green and blue pixels in close proximity to each other.

Sometimes, a very noisy image can be salvaged by converting it to black-and-white. The reason why the resulting monochromatic image looks better than the original is that the colour noise now appears as luminance noise. In other words, there is no longer a visible variation in the colour of the neighbouring pixels – just in their brightness.

Another important advantage of black-and-white conversion for low-light photos is that a monochromatic image would actually show more detail than the colour one. This is because all three RGB channels (red, green and blue) are now contributing information about the contrast and brightness gradients that can be perceived visually. In an extremely low-lit scene, such information is very limited, and any single colour channel might not carry sufficient amounts of it to be processed by human brain. Incidentally, this is why we see night scenes mostly in black-and-white. Any colours that we do perceive at night are either very desaturated or actually produced by our brains based on our prior experiences of adequately-lit objects.

Finally, noise in black-and-white images is more acceptable than in colour ones, because digital noise looks like physical grain in black-and-white film emulsion, which is associated with fine art images. In fact, there are many plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, for example, that simulate various film grains.

How to convert a photo to black-and-white

There are many ways of doing the actual conversion, but perhaps the most important this to remember is that it is more than simply desaturating the colour.

Using a channel mixer (go to Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer and click the “Monochrome” box at the bottom of the menu) provides great control, but is a bit difficult to master due to a large number of possible adjustments.

Personally, I use a packaged solution – a Nick Collection module called Silver Efex Pro. I usually start with one of the provided presets and adst some parameters slightly, while watching the preview. My favourite presents are “High structure,” “Full dynamic range” and “Film noir.” I rarely use the image in the form it comes out of the preset, because the adjustments do not work equally well for all elements of the photo. I either modify the effect using control points within the Silver Efex, or make several layers in Photoshop, each containing a different effect, and then masking portions of each layer as appropriate. This, by the way, is a general rule for avoiding a cookie-cutter, Instagram-filter-like effect – a post processing effect needs to be applied to parts of the photo selectively.

October 20, 2014October 20, 2014

Best walkaround lens for a Canon DSLR

When Canon 5D Mark II came out, the camera was available as a kit, bundled with a 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. I really liked the lens, and for a long time, it was my favourite walkaround lens – something than can work in most everyday situations. I shot landscapes, street travel photos and family portraits with it.

The problem is that while the 24-105mm f/4L works well for almost everything, it is also not particularly spectacular in any given situation. It is, basically, a compromise, albeit a very good one.

The wide end of the zoom range (24 mm) is not wide enough for creating really unusual perspective of confined spaces and wrapping the view around corners, which works well for closeups of architectural details (the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM or the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM are better for these types of shots). The 104 mm focal distance is also not long enough for compressing perspective and isolating far-away details of landscapes (the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L II IS USM is better for this, although it is quite a bit more expensive).

Also, the maximum aperture of f4 is Ok, but not fantastic in terms of bokeh and simply does not gather enough light for indoor sports or concert photography.

Currently, my favourite walkaround lens is Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM. (The photos in this post are taken with this lens.) It may seem less flexible than the 24-105mm f/4L, but in reality, it is not so. I find the 35 mm focal lens ideal for portraits and street photos. I need to get very close to the subjects for an interesting composition, though. The sharpness is superb. The wide aperture allows shooting in near darkness with a modern DSLR and produces very pleasing bokeh and subject isolation.

There are a few challenges, of course. The fixed focal length (lack of zoom) means less flexibility with composition. To complicate this aspect further, if you are shooting wide open, at f1.4 (and why wouldn’t you? After all, this is the main feature of this lens!), the depth of field is so shallow that you cannot half-press the stutter button to focus on the subject and then re-compose the shot, as slightest change in the angle of the camera after focus has been obtained will cause a blurry image. It took me quite a while to get used to, but with practice, getting close to the subjects, placing a focus marker exactly on the subject’s front eye and not re-composing became second nature.

The super-wide maximum aperture is really the key feature, and not only for light-gathering capacity, but mostly for the incredibly shallow depth of field it produces. The ability to isolate the subject in almost any situation is what often makes the difference between an artistic photo and a snapshot. I really appreciated it during our recent trip to Disneyland.

Basically, the 35mm f/1.4L makes no compromises, and is unforgiving because of this. But for the same reason, it can produce unique images.

October 19, 2014

Photographing Palio di Siena: logistics of organized chaos

In the Summer of 2009, my wife and I spent three weeks travelling in Italy, and one of the major highlights of the trip was a five-day visit to Siena during its most famous event – the Palio. Palio di Siena is such a unique phenomenon, that to describe it simply a bareback horse race along the edges of Piazza del Campo, a seashell-shaped medieval square, is to give it no justice. Palio is held twice a year, in July and August, and these festivities are a culmination of a year-long strategic battle between seventeen city wards (‘contrade’). The race itself, which involves ten hired jockeys, is just a tip of the iceberg representing tremendous effort and level of involvement of nearly every Sienese. The rivalry between the contrade are phenomenal.

When we started planning the trip, we quickly discovered that it was impossible to visit Palio and not become involved in it. This is no exaggeration, but rather a part of the medieval tradition, where visitors of the festivities (basically, tourists) would lodge within a certain contrada, dine with the locals, spend money and, by doing so, support the contrada. We delegated the travel arrangements of the Palio-related portion of our trip to Vacanza Italy, a travel agent based in Canada, who has local Italian connections. They booked us into hotel Ciusarelli, located just a short walk from Piazza del Campo.

A side note of a curious episode, which was very representative of the whole Italian approach to life, which was very fascinating to us, since we became quite “americanized” in our views (living in Canada still does it to you): We could not navigate our way to the hotel’s front door to unload the baggage, as it would require driving about 300 meters wrong way on a one-way street. After asking a police (‘carabinieri’) lady what to do, we were instructed to do precisely that (drive against the traffic) and park temporarily on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, “because you have a good reason for doing this.”

Our local contact named Stella met us at the hotel and informed that we would join the ‘Lupa’ (she-wolf) contrada. We were delighted to wear out black-white-and-gold scarves for the next four days and to get into the Palio spirit. Unfortunately, it was ‘Civetta’ (owl) contrada that won that time.

As far as photography is concerned, the main challenge with the race itself is getting into the good position close to the track. The best opportunities for shooting are during the practice races that happen twice a day (morning and evening) during the three days before the parade and the final race. Each of the practice races draws an incredibly huge crowd. You can get a sense of the chaos by watching the opening action sequence of “Quantum of Solace”, which is set against the backdrop of a Palio race. To stake a spot by the inner rail of the race track, we had to be there about 3 hours before the event. At the final race, we had excellent seats with the view of the final turn of the track, but numerous delays of the start pushed the race into the twighlight hours, when the light became too challenging to work with. I wish I knew then what I know now about action photography (such as not to be afraid to push the ISO setting very-very high) and that I had my Canon 1D X with me (it did not exist at the time).

Besides the races, there are other tremendous opportunities for travel photography during the Palio: street portraits, architecture, cityscapes, etc. Siena remains my most memorable photography-centered trip. To summarize the take-home message from the experience of photographing Palio di Siena, I can say that it required advance planning of the travel logistics (hotel and tickets have to be booked as a package) and flexible mindset while on site, as things appear chaotic and disorganized, but they do work out – they always have, from the early days of Palio in the 14-th century.

October 18, 2014

Shooting field hockey: best lens and camera position

I was taking photos of our university’s women’s field hockey game last two weekends, and as an experiment, I shot each of them with a different lens.

Shooting field hockey is challenging for couple of reasons. First, the field is relatively small and it is enclosed by a fence, so on one hand, the action can come very close to the camera very quickly, and on the other hand, it is difficult to isolate the players from the background if they are at the opposite end of the field from the camera.

The second challenge is that the players are crouched down while fighting to control the ball, so if the light is harsh, as the daytime sunlight often is, the players’ faces are covered by deep shadows.

Third, the colour of the artificial turf is bright green, which creates an unpleasant cast on the faces of the players, as they bend down, looking at the ball.

The first challenge of the wide range of distances from the action can be overcome by using an appropriate lens. I shot my first game of this season with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. I has a good zoom range, which is great to have when the action is close, it focuses very fast and it is relatively light. I had the lens mounted on a Canon EOS-1D X and carried it on a Y-strap. It was so easy to handle that I was convinced that if I had a single lens to choose, the 70-200mm f/2.8L would be it. Its only drawback is insufficient focal length for far-away shots, such as action at the opposite end of the field and close-up shots of the players celebrating the goals.

The next game, one week later, I shot with a Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM lens, and the success rate of interesting shots was much higher than I expected. In fact, I had to revise my opinion on what would be a single go-to lens for field hockey. The 300mm f/2.8L is at least a very close contender, if not the winner of that title, in my opinion. There are a couple of disadvantages of this lens: fixed focal length and weight. Both are manageable, though. The challenges in composing shots due to the absence of zoom can be overcome with practice. It took me about one season of shooting to become comfortable with the 300mm. I must add that I am deeply grateful to Armando, who gave me a free run of using his lens, for making this experience possible. The weight of the lens is also not prohibitive for using it hand-held. More importantly, I believe the interesting shots 300mm f/2.8L produces are worth the inconveniences.

To handle the lighting, I think the best angles with respect to the sun are either direct light, where the sun is behind the camera, or backlight, where the sun is behind the subject. The direct light is a bit flat, but produces bright, saturated colours of the players’ uniforms. The backlight produces low contrast and saturation, but creates very pleasant rim light effect on the hair of the players.

Note: The artificial turf is soaked with water before each game, so when its surface is struck with a stick, or even with players feet, a spare of small water droplets is produced. To capture it, a fast shutter speed (minimum of 1/1000 sec) works best. Also, the spray looks very nice when backlit.

October 17, 2014

Photographing fireworks on Bastille Day in Paris

My work as an engineering professor often takes me to fascinating places for conferences and research collaborations. This is a great opportunity for photography. The only drawback is that usually I have no control of the time of the year when I visit a certain location. But sometimes, everything aligns beautifully. For example, last year’s conference in Paris could not have occurred at a better time – it started right after the Bastille Day (July 14), which happened to be a Sunday. My wife, daughter (1.5 years old at the time) and I arrived before the weekend and had a chance to explore Paris, which was getting ready for the festivities.

On the 14-th, we walked along Champ de Mars in the afternoon, took the obligatory family shot in front of the Eiffel Tower and scouted the location for photographing the fireworks, which were happening at 10 o’clock that night.

In the evening, the family stayed in the hotel, and I took a 30-minute metro ride to Champ de Mars, arriving there at about 5:30 pm. I was carrying my camera bag with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the lenses (70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM and Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM), a remote switch cable and a tripod. The whole field (Champ de Mars is huge, by the way) was packed with people, standing, sitting, laying down so close to each other, there were not many places to even stand, not to mention setup the camera. Nevertheless, I picked a spot at the centreline of the field, right at the edge farthest from the Eiffel Tower, and waited until the crowd shifted enough so I could set my camera bag on the ground. Then waited a bit more (I did have more that four hours before show after all, so waiting was not a problem) and unfolded the tripod over the bag, trying to minimize my footprint.

Immediately, people who were sitting on the ground behind me informed me in broken English with a charming French accent that “It would be better for us if you were not standing there.” I assured them that I would not be standing there all four hours before the fireworks – I was going to sit down next to them and enjoy watching the crowd. That seemed to satisfy them, we introduced each other, shook hands, chatted about the Tower (“how beautiful she is”), Paris, photography, work and children. During the next four hours, as the sun was setting, I snapped a few pictures and showed them (on the camera’s LCD screen) to my new friends, who apparently also were photography enthusiasts, but were a bit limited by their pocket cameras and lack of a tripod.

The fireworks and the light and sound show were simply amazing. The energy of the crowd was exhilarating. As a bonus, I managed to take a few good pictures. All this gave me enough emotional boost to be in high spirits when I returned to the hotel after walking with the crowd, carrying my my heavy gear, for two hours after the show (the metro was closed, as it was not feasible to accommodate the masses of people that gathered for the celebration). This is when I appreciated, once again, that my tripod was made of lightweight carbon fibre.

As for photographing the fireworks themselves, the technique that works well for me is this:

Set the camera on the tripod.
Manually focus on infinity.
Set the camera to “Bulb” mode (where the shutter speed is manually controlled by pressing and releasing the shutter button).
Set ISO to 400 and aperture to f8.
Use a remote release cable to trigger the camera when the fireworks begin. Experiment with different timing relative to the explosions and different shutter opening times. I find that shutter speeds from 1 to 6 seconds work well (I count “twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, …” to get the approximate timing).

Note: If the photos look good when played back on the LCD screen of the camera, they would be too dark when displayed on the computer later. This is because the LCD appears extremely bright when viewed at night – just something to be aware of.

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