Posts from the ‘lens test’ Category
Spring photo project, March 2015: floral landscapes
This is a research on creating landscape photography on plant subjects. Spring is blooming and high is the temptation of shooting single, static, wonderful objects like flowers and buds. However, where is the photographer interpretation in reproducing single objects? The creation of floral landscapes pushes the photographer to look for shape repetition, pattern development, light focusing, background uniformity, series building and contrast search. Below the results.
Colorful sticks
Winter fruits
New and old
New on old
Needles and spikes
Leaves or flowers ?
Pictures shot with Nikon D800 in live view mode plus Nikon 50 mm f/1.4 G at its soft spot (f/5.6). Click each picture to enjoy full details.
Lucerne Jazz Orchestra at Mehrspur (Zurich, Switzerland): musical and photographical joy!
A 20 line musical score: piece of cake for the director of Lucerne Jazz Orchestra, David Grottschreiber!
Brasses first…
add a bass in the background …
a drummer to keep the beat ….
A solo for the sax …
Lead voice ready.
… and now the solo of the guitar-man!
You are my man!
Well, I am only a photographer, not a music director, and I regret I will never lead such an awesome group of instruments. This concert of Lucerne Jazz Orchestra was at the Mehrspur in Zurich, one week ago. Don’t miss their amazing performances and pass by Mehrspur when you are in Zurich: free (!!!) jazz (!!!) music every Friday! Gratis and quality music don’t come often in one package …
All pictures shot with D800 and 50 mm f/1.4 with no flash and no tripod in a quite dark environment, not bad, uh? Times around 1/100 secs, Iso 800 to 4000, aperture f/1.8 to f/ 2.4
Kienbesenzug 2014 exclusive pictures – The amazing Liestal Carnival: Nikon D800 passed the proof of fire!
If you missed the very hot Carnival of Liestal 2014, the Kienbesenzug, mind the date for next 2015! In the meantime, enjoy it through my pictures. I am glad my D800 survived the heat-waves as charriots of fire approached: my eye-lashes didn’t ! Bone-fires and torch-light, pulled through the streets of the lovely town of Liestal: enjoy the show!
All pictures shot with the fire-proof Nikon 16-35 f/4 – times from 1/20 to 1/50 secs, hand-held along the night. ISO between 1600 and 6400. Click each picture to magnify. Why exclusive pictures? I did not see other D800 challenging fire in first line tonight >)
The ever changing (cropped) panorama at the seafront of Istanbul: D800 36 Mpx “vs” Nokia Lumia 1020 41Mpx
The following pictures are near-to 100% crop from shots with D800 + 16-35 F/4. Click each to magnify.
Walking towards to “golden horn“
The Galata bridge and tower
The “Bosphorus fires” at sunset
The Ataturk bridge
The Suleiman Mosque
For example, the first picture of this post is cut out of the below one.
Cropped pictures showed here are not as crispy as with a zoom (the mounted lens is the Nikon 16-35 f/4 wide-angle), but they are still better detailed than the Nokia Lumia examples you can find here . Of course I should have had both cameras at hand in the same moment… but it is clear how useless the 100% crops from Nokia are, unless light conditions are optimal like here. Pity, I thought a Nokia Lumia 1020 could have been useful when my back refuses to carry the D800.
Nikon D800 astrophotography: constellations and Perseids. To boldly go where no artborghi has gone before!
Star Trek quote apart, give a look to the pictures I shot on Brienzersee in a wonderful hot and dark night, two rare conditions in most of middle Europe. Even more exceptional, I had my sturdy Manfrotto tripod along!
Not only these pictures are so clear that at least 7 constellations are clearly visible.
Even weak Perseids are detected. Do you see constellations and falling star(s)? Click on pics to magnify. If some help is needed, click on the mapped pictures here below.
All pictures shot with Nikon D800, around 20-30 sec exposure on tripod, ISO between 1600-3200, mounting the awesome Nikon 16-35 mm full open.
The tempest by D800 and 16-35 mm
Hast thou, spirit, perform’d to point the tempest that I bade thee?
All hail, great master! grave sir, hail!
I come to answer thy best pleasure
be’t to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curl’d clouds
to thy strong bidding task Ariel and all his quality.
Click on each picture to magnify
What might be the D800 1/8000 for?
It for freezing time! If the light is strong enough for low ISO… if the subject is as thin as a f/2.8 focus plane… then the 1/8000 time option of the D800 let you capture unusual points of view. Like these upside-down single droplets out of a fountain . Click the picture to magnify. Here below the full size picture: find the waterman!
The artistic side of infrared photography with a 850 nm filter and the Nikon 50 mm f/1.4 G
Enjoy some views of the Botanical Garden of Zurich through the 850 nm infrared filter I recently got.
These pictures were shot without focusing through the IR filter but removing it, focusing and remounting it.
They are quite soft because of the AF system calibrated not for IR light but for visible light…
… nevertheless, these pictures are still giving some thrills, don’t you think?
Click pictures to magnify. Btw, plants reflect IR light, that’s why they are so white…
How good are the several D800 continuous autofocus modes with bird (swallow) shooting?
Click the panel for 100% size or here for more swallow pictures (small insets, full picture)
Shooting swallows is quite a challenge as these birds are fast, small and unpredictable. I tested 3D tracking, single AF point and dynamic area 9 points, just because I wanted to have a couple of pictures enough in focus to crop them 100%.
On my D800 I mounted the 70-200 mm VR-II on a quite cloudy day. Times between 1/1600 and 1/4000 at f/2.8 to /4 trying to avoid high ISO.
So, which continuous autofocus system scored best?
– 3D tracking, which should follow moving shapes and colours?
– Single AF point, the middle AF in this case?
– Dynamic area 9 points, which should keep in focus what’s inside the inner 9 AF points?
Read more…
Pure infrared (IR) pictures (850 nm) on Nikon D800? Yes, we can!
Some time ago I doubted IR shooting could work on D800, having tested my single (!) wavelength filters. Just to be sure, I got a cheap 850 nm filter and tested it on my D800 today: and it worked!
The reason being, every wavelength above 850 nm goes through this filter, while single wavelengths in the IR spectrum are too weak to be detected.
Pictures can be converted to black and white only, no blue skies, due to complete absence of red green and blue. Here below the procedure how to work with pure infrared pictures on D800:
Read more…
