[Sticky] Submit your glamour shots!

Canon R5 and R6 came out today along with new telephoto lenses. For years Canon did not innovate all that much compared to other brands and they were criticized for it. About every 10 years Canon turns the world upside down and they did it again. The specs on the R5 is mind blowing. Just when some of the other brands started to play catch up where  Canon does best which is tele zooms they buried everyone again.  8 stops of image stabilization, defractive optics and light weight materials  for their new tele zooms makes professional sports photography king again and just like what happened in the 90s where no one could touch Canon in this area because of their use of fluorite glass.  I highly doubt the way the camera industry is headed with Olympus having to shut down bringing an end to micro four thirds  and Nikon in severe financial trouble  Canon is going to cement the professional market even though the consumer segment is shrinking and still become profitable for another decade. The only competitor that has the capital to play catch up is Sony but their cameras reliability and eco system is crap.  

In the end Im happy to have gone Fujifilm which appeals to a different segment that is not competing with the other brands except for Olympus and Panasonic for crop and is now dominating the Medium format  segment away from Hasselblad and Mamiya.  

 Be happy with what you have because new camera and lens prices are going to be priced out of range of most hobbyists.  Hyper inflation is already killing the camera market with lenses that use to cost $1.5k to a ridiculous $3k which is just crazy. People are probably going to stretch out their old digital  bodies like they did in the 70s and 80s and not buy new gear. 

Here is the auto Sears 55mm f1.4 wide open. The lens is being treated with UV to get out the brown pigment caused by the radioactive thorium but hopefully in a week it will clear up.  

 I got a little bit of the soap bubble effect. Very nice lens for $90.  It has so much character and color. It almost covers the full sensor too. 

I made a small trip on Sunday with another Spyder owner and captured this. 

@dev

It's been a few years since I've been to the lincoln memorial (used to live in montgomery county) so I don't quite remember what tint the glass up top has / the lighting situation (ambient or otherwise). Were you able to have the photo appear black and white due to the lighting, or was it done in post, or shot in black and white film? What time of day was this taken?

Also, I really enjoy the composition of the shot. 

Posted by: @ria

@dev

It's been a few years since I've been to the lincoln memorial (used to live in montgomery county) so I don't quite remember what tint the glass up top has / the lighting situation (ambient or otherwise). Were you able to have the photo appear black and white due to the lighting, or was it done in post, or shot in black and white film? What time of day was this taken?

Also, I really enjoy the composition of the shot. 

   Thanks, I was inspired by the House of Cards show where they show you the monuments in that perspective.  

  The specs of the shot was ISO 100  28mm f3.2 @ 1/25 sec on my knees.  This was a difficult shot to capture because it was at the worst time of the day 10:30 am where the sun is extremely hard and bright on the statue.  If you remember off to the side behind the pillars there is an area where there are letters on a wall. That whole area is in dark shadow at that time of day.  At that slow of  shutter speed I was free handing it  without the aid of a monopod and it wasn't easy  but with the focus peaking and focus zooming in the view finder I was able to bob  back and forth to achieve critical focus on a manual focus lens.  After the shot was made I could review the shot in the view finder and see if I archived critical focus which happened on my third attempt and I was done.  I no longer use the display screen so much so I turned it off permanently  and if I have to show someone the shot I just made I let them look in the view finder because it looks much better for reviewing shots than a screen. Mirrorless is a game changer that makes display screens obsolete in my opinion. 

  Now that I have my shot I have a problem. The shadow areas are too dark and the statue is too bright.  It had to be shot like this so I could balance the shot in post to take advantage of the dynamic range. I also had to crop out the hard vignetting from the lens because it was designed for full frame so in that process I lost some resolution and dynamic range but it is still better than a full frame shot. I had to lower the exposure globally to get the statue properly exposed and then I had to lift the shadows in the foreground using exposure brushes in post. Because this camera has a very high dynamic range and very good iso performance being iso invariant I was able to preserve the details without any noise. If it was my last camera It would be impossible or impossible for most cameras. This is where medium format mirrorless is worth it not to mention the 4:3 perspective which in my opinion makes it superior for framing shots like this than 3:2 which is too long and too short on the sides. 

 As for the choice of black and white I thought it was the best way to go especially for the hard lighting which can be used to my advantage. The nice thing about Fujifilm is their film simulations that are both in camera or can be applied after the fact in post using Capture 1. If used in camera it will embed a file attached to the raw. I used the Acros film simulation which matches their B&W film closely.

Unfortunately this website cant display good resolution of the image. If you seen it in its full resolution it's amazing and I cant even imagine what it would look like if I had it printed because screens are limiting. 

@dev any Neowise shots yet? 

Posted by: @marsrock7

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@dev any Neowise shots yet? 

I might try. I never did astral photography before.  I do have a lens that can do it. From what I understand not all lenses are capable because of a lens issue called coma. 

I had many ask me why went medium format.  I tried to explain the compression factor that gives it its own look along with the 4:3 perspective.  Some said they you can use a different lens or reframe the shot and get the same image.  I finally found a website that actually shows you why this is not possible and why sensor size is gives you a different look. This is only one reason and there are others including depth of field, detail and dynamic range. Your 35mm lens on a crop camera does not become 50mm lens. Your cellphone will never give you the look of a digital SLR camera but maybe one day with multiple lenses and a fancy algorithm  they can do perspective stacking. 

http://www.bokehblog.com/photography/post/Medium-Format-vs-Full-Frame-vs-Crop-Sensor.html

 This was with my 135 f2 Zeiss APO Sonar.  This was last weekend.  Exceptional lens.   

My first attempt at landscape.

@dev What shutter speed on that landscape shot? Really got some cool movement of the clouds almost going towards the sun as a vanishing point.

Posted by: @ria

@dev What shutter speed on that landscape shot? Really got some cool movement of the clouds almost going towards the sun as a vanishing point.

 It was shot using an 8 stop ND filter. F32 @ 20s  on a tripod. 
Apparently the movement of the clouds is due to the slow shutter speed.

A camera is a camera but this camera is synergy with rethinking the way I shoot. It will spank you but if you slow it down like the way photography use to be it will reward you.  
 

Excuse the low quality because I pulled this off my instagram (too lazy to find original file on computer) but this is one of the first long exposure shots I ever shot on film. It's of an ambulance blazing by at night. Set my nikon n80 down on a concrete pillar and I believe the film was kodak ultramax 400. Lense was 35-70mm nikkor.

And here's a random sunset shot. Ive found that whenever you dont properly expose fuji superia or you under develop it it becomes all magenta. Prob has something to do with why the greens are so in your face with this film.

Very nice. I’m planing to try some long exposures car shots in motion. I did this during my film days along with double exposures but after digital I forgot how fun trick photography can be. 

Good thing about digital post is being able to color correct. You can get color cast out as well as CA. You can also clean up skin tones.  The Fujifilm profiles have that film warmth to them unlike those photoshop add ons. I do miss the grittiness of film.