Hyper focal it!

You know, sometimes I feel like a noob. A complete beginner. That makes me feel sad but happy at the same time. It tells me that I can still grow as a photographer. Everybody knows the saying 'You're never too old to learn'.

When you purchase a new camera or a new lens you need to do 2 things:
1. You need to get acquainted with your new purchase. In case of a new camera, learning all the new functions will be overwhelming. But it is necessary. Nothing sucks more then being in the middle of nowhere with a camera that does not do what you want it to do. I'll give you one example I've encountered since working with the 5DmkII.

When shooting in aperture priority mode I often find myself compensating the exposure time. Especially in wintertime. All that snow and ice often demand an overexposure of sometimes 2 stops. Now the 5DmkII has a 'short cut button' on top of the camera that quickly let you set this up (or so I though). Big was my surprise the other day that this thing didn't really do much. BUT when I went into the menu and compensated exposure there, the results where what I expected. Strange. So I came home and had to look it up why this was happening. Turns out that that button is the Flash exposure compensation button! And 'duh' NOW I do see that little lightning icon next to it. How stupid am I? Was I blind? Why did Canon choose to change the EV button (like my Rebel has one) into a flash EV button? I don't see the logic in that. Yes I know when you look through the viewfinder whilst turning the big dial on the back this will change your EV compensation. But if you are like me and shoot from a tripod 90% of the time it is anoying Cabon deleted this small button. I thought it was useful. I guess pro's shoot so much with flash that that button serves it's purpose. But I want to bet money on it that it does not.
My little story shows you that you need to know where everything is inside the menu structure of you r camera and you need to know exactly what everything does. Don't be too proud if you have to look something up in the manual.

2. The other thing you need to check is focus and if you're a landscape photographer, where your hyper focal point lies on your new lens distance scale. Before you do that, there are numerous websites out there that let you calculate these distances. One of them is http://www.dofmaster.com/. If you wish you can even download there app but I think that is kind of beside the point. Once you know your hyper focal distances, just write them down and you're golden.
On my 24-105 L my hyper focal distance for the 24mm setting at ƒ11 is 1.73m. Everything from .86m to infinity will be in focus or will have acceptable focus. Finding that 1.73m mark on your distance scale is the tricky part though because the focus distance ring jumps from 1.5m to 3m. So somewhere 'in between' the two should suffice. I did a lot of tests during my lunch break and I found out that that 1.73m mark is right in the middle of those two. Now isn't that helpful!
With the old camera and lens combo I knew EXACTLY where that hyper focal point was. Not that I ever calculated it but I knew out of experience.

I've been planning on doing this test since I got the new camera but I thought 'I will not be that far off.' Turns out I was miles off! And that is why I was very disappointed with the sharpness of my pictures lately. Turns out full frames cameras are more sensitive to focusing errors. Lesson learned!

Shooting nothing

We are having quit the winter here in Alberta. From periods with lots of snow to almost spring like temperature. Lately we are back in the deep freeze.

I always here people complain about the weather. Especially photographers. 'too cold', 'flat light', 'boring skies' and so on. Sometimes it is just plain annoying. This is actually a fun time to be out!
Most of the times you are alone, it is quiet and yes everything looks white. But that is just the fun part of it. You can do a lot of cool things with white. The only thing is, you need to open your eyes.

What I've been doing lately are these minimalistic looking shots. They look quit simple to do and to some extent they are easy to 'do'. But it can be a good exercise to train your eyes. Shapes, lines and contrasts (even if they are subtle) begin to play a big role in these compositions.

I just think it is a lot of fun to find these pictures and make them as simple as possible. You should try it!

Abraham Lake, a well kept secret

Yesterday we returned from a beautiful 3-day trip to Abraham Lake. What a special place this is.
Photography wise it was ok. I am still getting acquainted with the new camera. The main problem I am struggling with is focus. You should think with the live preview function on the 5DmkII that should be a breeze. Adding to the fact that there is no real depth scale on the 24-105 ƒ4L.  I find it rather difficult.

We had a great time at the Aurum Lodge. Before we left I hoped that I would NOT bump into other photographers at the lodge. I was there to enjoy myself not to, you know, talk technical with each other about cameras and stuff.
One guy we had to pleasure to meet was Paul Wakefield. A photographer from the UK who shoots his personal landscape work on 4x5. Check out his website. He has done some beautiful stuff in the past.Awesome guy to talk to and he can tell stories like no other.

So we were there for 3 days. Unfortunately 2 of those 3 days were 'cloudless blue sky days'. Unfortunately?! Well photographically that means boring skies.
Luckily the last morning (I had to drag myself out of bed by now) I got lucky. The sky was on fire for about 5 minutes. It makes for quite a sight together with the coolness of the ice.
It was cold and windy in the mornings. By cold I mean temperatures between -30C (the first morning) and -19C (the last morning). But it warmed up pretty good during the day. We did manage to do some hikes as well. What a stunning place this is and so no developed like Banff or Jasper. It's like a well kept secret nobody really knows about.

I am slowly working my way through the images I took. Of course I had to start with the most spectacular ones. Here's a little sneak preview.

I'm still alive!

Weather has been awful for the last two weeks. With temperatures ranging from -30C to +10C it's been wild to say the least. I have not been doing lots of photography lately. Because, well, there is nothing to photograph (unless you are heavily into photographing sludgy brown snow). There where a few good sunsets but I was always in the car driving home from work.

Last time I took the camera out was two weeks ago. Has it been two weeks already? Wow time moves fast. Anyway, it was a beautiful winter day with cold temperatures and clear, dark blue skies. I was driving around the range roads around Cochrane and I came across this wall (about 3-4 meters high) of snow. It was an unbelievable sight. I threw the car on the side of the road and 2 minutes later I was swimming in snow (so to speak). I found this cool overhanging ledge. The colours where beautiful. It was like a mini glacier.

When I was taking the photograph I was keeping a close eye on my histogram. But the 5DmkII did a remarkable job on rendering this scene. No clipped highlights or shadows. Pretty amazing dynamic range if you ask me.

After some post processing I was happy with this result.

On a side note. Last week I did a quick check on some pinhole cameras I hung a few weeks ago and everything is still in place. It's been almost a month now. I am excited!