Sensor Size Myth – Again!

Sensor Size Myth – “A bigger sensor gathers more light.”

If I hear this crap one more time either my head’s going to explode or I’m going to do some really nasty things to someone!

A larger sensor size does NOT necessarily gather any more light than a smaller sensor – END OF!

What DOES gather more light is BIGGER PHOTOSITES – those individual light receptors that cumulatively ‘make up’ the photosensitive surface plane of our camera sensor.

sensor size

Above we have two fictional sensors, one with smaller physical dimensions and one with larger dimensions – the bottom one is a ‘larger sensor size’ than the top one, and the bottom one has TWICE as many photosites as the top one (analogous to more megapixels).

But the individual photosites in BOTH sensors are THE SAME SIZE.

Ignoring the factors of:

  • Micro Lens design
  • Variations in photosite design such as resistivity
  • Wiring Substrate
  • SNR & ADC

the photosites in both sensors will have exactly the same pixel pitch, reactivity to light, saturation capacity and base noise level.

However, if we now try to cram the number of photosites (megapixels) into the area of the SMALLER sensor – to increase the resolution:

sensor size

we end up with SMALLER photosites.

We have a HIGHER pixel resolution but this comes with a multi-faceted major penalty:

  • Decreased Dynamic Range
  • Increased susceptibility to specular highlight clipping
  • Lower photosite SNR (signal to noise ratio)
  • Increased susceptibility to diffraction – f-stop limiting

And of course EXACTLY the same penalties are incurred when we increase the megapixel count of LARGER sensors too – the mega-pixel race – fueled by FOOLS and NO-NOTHING IDIOTS and accommodated by camera manufacturers trying to make a profit.

But this perennial argument that a sensor behaves like a window is stupid – it doesn’t matter if I look outside through a small window or a big one, the light value of the scene outside is the same.

Just because I make the window bigger the intensity of the light coming through it does NOT INCREASE.

And the ultimate proof of the stupidity and futility of the ‘big window vs small window’ argument lies with the ‘proper photographers’ like Ben Horne, Nick Carver and Steve O’nions to name but three – those who shoot FILM!

A 10″x8″ sheet of Provia 100 has exactly the same exposure characteristics as a roll of 35mm or 120/220 Provia 100, and yet the 10″x 8″ window is 59.73x the size of the 35mm window.

And don’t even get me started on the other argument the ‘bigger = more light’ idiots use – that of the solar panel!

“A bigger solar panel pumps out more volts so because it gathers more light, so a bigger sensor gathers more light so must pump out better images………”

What a load of shite…………

Firstly, SPs are cumulative and they increase their ‘megapixel count’ by growing in physical dimensions, not by making their ‘photosites’ smaller.

But if you cover half of one with a thick tarpaulin then the cumulative output of the panel drops dramatically!

Also, we want SPs to hit their clip point for maximum voltage generation (the clip point would be that where more light does NOT produce more volts!).

Our camera sensor CANNOT be thought of in the same way:

sensor size

We are not interested in a cumulative output, and we don’t want all the photosites on our sensors to ‘max out’ otherwise we’ll have no tonal variation in our image will we…..!

The shot above is from a D800E fitted with a 21mm prime, ISO 100 and 2secs @f13.

If I’d have shot this with the same lens on the D500 and framed the same composition I’d have had to use a SHORTER exposure to prevent the highlights from clipping.

But if bigger sensors gather more light (FX gathers more than DX) I’d have theoretically have had expose LONGER……….and that would have been a disaster.

Seriously folks, when it comes to sensor size bigger ones (FX) do not gather more light than smaller (DX) sensors.

It’s not the sensor total area that does the light gathering, but the photosites contained therein – bigger photosites gather more light, have better SNR, are less prone to diffraction and result in a higher cumulative dynamic range for the sensor as a whole.

Do NOT believe anyone anywhere on any website, forum or YouTube channel who tells you any different because they a plain WRONG!

Where does this shite originate from you may ask?

Well, some while back FX dslr cameras where not made and everything from Canon and Nikon was APSC 1.5x or 1.6x, or APSH 1.3x. Canon was first with an FX digital then Nikon joined the fray with the D3.

Prior to the D3 we Nikon folk had the D300 DX which was 12.3Mp with a photosite area 30.36 microns2

The D3 FX came along with 12.1Mp but with a photosite area of 70.9 microns2

Better in low light than its DX counterpart due to these MASSIVE photosites it gave the dick heads, fools and no-nothing idiots the crackpot idea that a bigger sensor size gathers more light – and you know what……it stuck; and for some there’s no shifting it!

Hope this all makes sense folks.

Don’t forget, any questions or queries then just ask!

If you feel I deserve some support for putting this article together then please consider joining my membership site over on Patreon by using the link below.

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You can also find this article on the free-to-view section of my Patreon channel by clicking this link https://www.patreon.com/posts/sensor-size-myth-22242406

If you are not yet a member of my Patreon site then please consider it as members get benefits, with more membership perks planned over the next 3 months.  Your support would be very much appreciated and rewarded.

Before I go, there’s a new video up on my YouTube Channel showing the sort of processing video I do for my Patreon Members.

You can see it here (it’s 23 minutes long so be warned!):

Please leave a comment on the video if you find it useful, and if you fancy joining my other members over on Patreon then I could be doing these for you too!

All the best

Andy

Dynamic Range, Mid Tones, Metering and ETTR

Dynamic Range, Mid Tones, Metering and ETTR

I recently uploaded a video to my YouTube channel showing you an easy way to find the ‘usable dynamic range’ of you dSLR:

 

The other day I was out with Paul Atkins for a landscape session in the awesome Dinorwic Quarry in Llanberis, Snowdonia.  Highly dynamic clouds and moody light made the place look more like Mordor!

dynamic range

Looking towards the top of the Llanberis Pass from the middle level of Dinorwic Quarry and Electric Mountain.

Here are the 6 unedited shots that make this finished panoramic view:

dynamic range

As you can see, the images are are shot in a vertical aspect ratio.  Shooting at 200mm on the D800E this yields an assembled pano that is 16,000 x 7000 pixels; the advantages for both digital sales and print should be obvious to you!

As you can see, the bright parts of the sky are a lot brighter in the captures than they are in the finished image, but they are not ‘blown’.  Also the shadows in the foreground are not choked or blocked.

In other words the captures are shot ETTR.

Meter – in camera or external.

Any light meter basically looks at a scene (or part thereof) and AVERAGES the tones that it sees.  This average value value is then classed by the meter is MID GREY and the exposure is calculated in terms of the 3 variables you set – Time, Intensity and Applied Gain, or shutter, aperture and ISO.

But this leads to all sorts of problems.

All meters are calibrated to an ANSI Standard of 12% grey (though this gets a bit ambiguous between manufactures and testers).  But you can get a good idea of what ‘light meter mid grey/mid tone” looks like by mentally assigning an RGB value of 118,118,118 to it.

However, we – humans – find 18% grey a more acceptable ‘mid tone grey’ both in print and on our modern monitors.

NOTE: 18% grey refers to the level of REFLECTANCE – it reflects 18% of the light falling on it.  It can also be reproduced in Photoshop using a grey with 128,128.128 RGB values.

So problem number 1 is that of mid tone perception and the difference between what you ‘see’ and what the camera sees and then does in terms of exposure (if you let the camera make a decision for you).

dynamic range

128RGB grey versus 118RGB meter mid grey

Click on the pano image from Dinorwic to view it bigger, then try to FIND a mid grey that you could point your camera meter at – you can’t.

Remember, the grey you try to measure MUST be exactly mid-grey – try it, it’ll drive you nuts trying to find it!

This leads us to problem number 2.

Take your camera outside, find a white wall.  Fill your frame with it and take a shot using ZERO exposure compensation – the wall will look GREY in the resulting shot not WHITE.

Next, find something matte black or near to it.  Fill your frame with it and take another shot – the black will look grey in the shot not black(ish).

Problem number 3 is this – and it’s a bit of a two-headed serpent.  An exposure meter of any kind is COLOUR BLIND but YOU can SEE colours but are tonally blinded to them to some degree or other:

Simple primary red, green and blue translate to vastly different grey tones which comes as a big surprise to a lot of folk, especially how tonally light green is.

Scene or Subject Brightness Range

Any scene in front of you and your camera has a range of tones from brightest to darkest, and this tonal range is the subject brightness range or SBR for short.  Some folk even refer to it as the scene dynamic range.

If you put your camera meter into spot mode you can meter around your chosen scene and make note of the different exposure values for the brightest and darkest areas of your potential shot.

You camera spot meter isn’t the most accurate of spot meters because its ‘spot’ is just too big, typically between 4mm and 5mm, but it will serve to give you a pretty good idea of your potential SBR.

A 1 degree spot meter will, with correct usage, yield a somewhat more accurate picture (pun intended) of the precise SBR of the scene in front of you.

Right about now some of you will be thinking I’m hair-splitting and talking about unnecessary things in todays modern world of post-processing shadow and highlight recovery.

Photography today is full of folk who are prepared to forego the CRAFT of the expert photographer in favour of getting it half-right in camera and then using the crutch of software recovery to correct their mistakes.

Here’s the news – recovery of popped highlights is IMPOSSIBLE and recovery of shadows to anymore than a small degree results in pixel artifacting.  Get this, two WRONGS do NOT make a RIGHT!

If the Mercedes F1 team went racing with the same attitude as the majority of camera users take pictures with, then F1 would be banned because drivers would die at an alarming rate and no car would ever make the finish line!

So, one way or another we can quantify our potential scene SBR.

“But Andy I don’t need to do that because my camera meter does that for me…….”

Oh no it does NOT, it just averages it to what IT THINKS is a correct mid tone grey – which it invariably isn’t!

This whole mid tone/mid grey ‘thing’ is a complete waste of time because:

  • It’s near impossible to find a true mid tone in your scene to take a reading off.
  • What you want as a mid tone will be at odds with your camera meter by at least 1/2stop.
  • If you are shooting wildlife or landscapes you can’t introduce a ‘grey card’.
  • Because of the above, your shot WILL BE UNDER EXPOSED.

“Yeah, but I can always bracket my shots and do an exposure blend Andy so you’re still talking crap….”

Two answers to that one:

  1. You can’t bracket shots and blend if your MAIN subject is moving – de-ghosting is only effective on small parts of a scene with minimal movement between frames.
  2. The popular “shoot and bracket two each end” makes you look like total dickhead and illustrates that you know less than zero about exposure.  Try doing that on a paying job in front of the client and see how long you last in a commercial environment.

By far the BEST way of calculating exposure is the ETTR method.

ETTR, Expose to the Right.

If you meter for a highlight, your camera will treat that as a mid tone because your camera ASSUMES it’s a mid tone.

Your camera meter is a robot programmed to react to anything it sees in EXACTLY the same way.  It doesn’t matter if your subject is a black cat in the coal house or a snow man in a snow storm, the result will be the same 118,118,118 grey sludge.

Mid tones are as we’ve already ascertained, difficult to pin down and full of ambiguity but highlights are not.  So let’s meter the brightest area of the image and expose it hard over to the right of the histogram.

The simplest way to achieve this is to use your live view histogram with the camera in full manual mode.

Unlike the post-shot review histogram, the live-view histogram is not subject to jpeg compression, and can be thought of as something of a direct readout of scene tonality/brightness.

Using your exposure controls (usually shutter speed for landscape photography) you can increase your exposure to push the highlight peak of the histogram to the right as far as you can go before ‘hitting the wall’ on the right hand side of the histogram axis – in other words the camera sensor highlight clipping point.

Of course, this has the added benefit of shifting ALL the other tones ( mids and shadows) to the right as well,resulting in far less clipping potential in your shadow areas.

So back to Dinorwic again and here’s a shot that has been exposed ETTR on the live view histogram using spot metering over what I deemed to be the brightest area of the sky:

The red square indicates the approximate size of the spot meter area.

I was a naughty boy not recording this on video for you but I forgot to pack the HDMI lead for the video recorder – I’ll do one shortly!

The problem with using the Live View Histogram is that it can be a bit of a struggle to see it.  your live view screen itself can be hard to see in certain light conditions outside, and the live view histogram itself is usually a bit on the small side – no where near as big as the image review histogram you can see here.

But looking at the review histogram above you can see that there’s a ‘little bit more juice’ to be had in terms of exposure of the highlights because of that tiny gap between the right end of the histogram and the ‘wall’ at the end of the axis.

Going back to the video the maximum ETTR ‘tipping point’ was centered around these three shots:

Clipped

Not Clipped (the one we allocated the star rating to). Exposure is -1/3rd stop below clipped.

Safe, but -2/3rd stop below Clipped.

The review histogram puts the Dinorwic shot highlights firmly in the same exposure bracket as ‘Safe, but -2/3rd stop below Clipped, and tells us there is another 1/3rd stop ‘more juice’ to be had!

So lengthening the exposure by 1/3rd stop and changing from 160th sec to 1/50th sec gives us this:

The red square indicates the approximate size of the spot meter area.

Live View Histogram ETTR

Live View Histogram plus 1/3 stop more juice! Highlights STILL below Clipping Point and shadows get 1/3rd stop more exposure.

That’s what it’s all about baby – MORE JUICE!

And you will not be in a position to confidently acquire more juice unless you find the USABLE DYNAMIC RANGE of your camera sensor.

The whole purpose of finding that usable DR is to discover where your highlight and shadow clipping points are – and they are very different between camera models.

For instance, the highlight clipping point value of the Nikon D850 is different from that of the Nikon D800E, but the shadow clipping point is pretty similar.

There is an awful lot more use to discovering your cameras usable dynamic range than a lot of folk imagine.

And if you do it the precise way then you can acquire a separate meter that will accept camera profiling:

dynamic range

You can create a dynamic range profile for your camera (and lens combo*) and then load it into the meter:

and then have your cameras usable dynamic range as part of the metering scale – so then you have NO EXCUSE for producing a less than optimum exposure.

(*)Note: yes, the lens does have an effect on dynamic range due to micro-contrast and light transmission variables – if you want to be super-picky!

AND THEY SAY HANDHELD METERS ARE DEAD, OLD TECH and of NO USE!!!

Anyone who says or even thinks that is a total KNOB.

Your camera dynamic range, the truthful one – FIND IT, KNOW IT, USE IT.

And don’t listen to the idiots and know-nothings, just listen and heed the advice of those of us who actually know what we’re doing.

NOTE:  The value of grey (gray) cards and how to use them for accurate measurement is a subject in its own right and provides the curious with some really interesting reading.  Believe me it’s far more expansive than the info I’ve given here.  But adopting an ETTR approach when exposing to sensor that you KNOW the physical behavior of (dynamic response to light/dynamic range) can alleviate you of all critical mid-tone concerns.

This article has taken me over 8 hours to produce in total, and is yours to view for FREE.  If you feel I deserve some support for doing this then please consider joining my membership site over on Patreon by using the link below.

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ETTR Processing in Lightroom

ETTR Processing in Lightroom

When we shoot ETTR (expose to the right) in bright, harsh light, Lightroom can sometimes get the wrong idea and make a real ‘hash’ of rendering the raw file.

Sometimes it can be so bad that the less experienced photographer can get the wrong impression of their raw file exposure – and in some extreme cases they may even ‘bin’ the image thinking it irretrievably over exposed.

I’ve just uploaded a video to my YouTube channel which shows you exactly what I’m talking about:

The image was shot by my client and patron Paul Smith when he visited the Mara back in October last year,  and it’s a superb demo image of just how badly Lightroom can demosaic a straight forward +1.6 Ev ETTR shot.

Importing the raw file directly into Lightroom gives us this:

ETTR

But importing the raw file directly into RawTherapee with no adjustments gives us this:

ETTR

Just look at the two histogram versions – Lightroom is doing some crazy stuff to the image ‘in the background’ as there are ZERO develop settings applied.

But if you watch the video you’ll see that it’s quite straight forward to regain all that apparent ‘blown detail’.

And here’s the important bit – we do so WITHOUT the use of the shadow or highlight recovery sliders.  Anyone who has purchased my sharpening videos HERE knows that those two sliders can VERY EASILY cause undesirable ‘pseudo-sharpening’ halos, and they should only be used with caution.

ETTR

The way I process this +1.6 stop ETTR exposure inside Lightroom has revealed all the superb mid tone detail and given us a really good image that we could take into Photoshop and improve with some precision localized adjustments.

So don’t let Lightroom control you – you need to control IT!

Thanks for reading and watching.

You can also view this post on the free section of my Patreon pages HERE

If you feel this article and video has been beneficial to you and would like to see more per week, then supporting my Patreon page for as little as $1 per month would be a massive help.  Thanks everyone!

 

Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CC 2018 tips

Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CC 2018 tips – part 1

So, you’ve either upgraded to Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC 2018, or you are thinking doing so.

Well, here are a couple of things I’ve found – I’ve called this part1, because I’m sure there will be other problems/irritations!

Lightroom Classic CC GPU Acceleration problem

If you are having problems with shadow areas appearing too dark and somewhat ‘chocked’ in the develop module – but things look fine in the Library module – then just follow the simple steps in the video above and TURN OFF GPU Acceleration in the Lightroom preferences panel under the performance tab.

Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CC 2018 tips

Turn OFF GPU Acceleration

UPDATE: I have subsequently done another video on this topic that illustrates the fact that the problem did not exist in Lr CC 2015 v.12/Camera Raw v.9.12

In the new Photoshop CC 2018 there is an irritation/annoyance with the brush tool, and something called the ‘brush leash’.

Now why on earth you need your brush on a leash God ONLY KNOWS!

But the brush leash manifests itself as a purple/magenta line that follows your brush tool everywhere.

You have a smoothness slider for your brush – it’s default setting is 10%.  If we increase that value then the leash line gets even longer, and even more bloody irritating.

And why we would need an indicator (which is what the leash is) of smoothness amount and direction for our brush strokes is a bit beyond me – because we can see it anyway.

So, if you want to change the leash length, use the smoothing slider.

If you want to change the leash colour just go to Photoshop>Preferences>Cursors

Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CC 2018 tips

Here, you can change the colour, or better still, get rid of it completely by unticking the “show brush leash while smoothing” option.

So there are a couple of tips from my first 24 hours with the latest 2018 ransom ware versions from Adobe!

But I’m sure there will be more, so stay tuned, and consider heading over to my YouTube channel and hitting the subscribe button, and hit the ‘notifications bell’ while you’re at it!

Become a patron from as little as $1 per month, and help me produce more free content.

Patrons gain access to a variety of FREE rewards, discounts and bonuses.

 

Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

September 9th to 16th, Norway Musk Ox and Sea Eagles.

Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

Left to Right: Mark Davies, Sigbjorn Frengen (our specialist Musk Ox guide for Dovrefjell), “Some Bearded Fat Git”, Mohamed Al Ashkar, Paul Atkins and Malcolm Clayton.

All four clients have been on numerous trips to Norway before, but for everyone, including myself, it was our first time in the Dovrefjell–Sunndalsfjella National Park and the magnificent Musk Ox that call the place home.

Firstly, I have to say a massive thank you to our specialist guide for the Musk Ox, Sigbjorn Frengen.

He’s a superb guide, the font of all ecological knowledge, has a driving passion for what he does, is as fit as the proverbial Butchers Dog, and is only in his mid 20’s.  He took guiding a bunch of geriatric old farts like us well in his stride; totally oblivious to the fact that we were all mighty jealous of his youth and fitness and secretly wanted to kill him for it!

And yes, I immediately booked him for the Dovrefjell part of my September 2017 workshop!

Musk Ox are animals not to be trifled with – they may look very benign but they weigh in at between 400 and 600 kilograms and can outrun Usain Bolt with very little effort.  They are quick to temper, but the signs of the oncoming rage are subtle and difficult to spot even at 60-70 metres. Subtle head-shaking and snorting are the main give-aways that you are causing some displeasure:

Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

A lone female Musk Ox snorts her displeasure at the presence of the photographer. She wants to rejoin the herd but the camera is in her way, so she blows mucus out of nose as a sign of annoyance.  Canon 1DX Mk2 + 200-400 @ 560mm 1/2500th sec @ f7.1 and 16,000ISO – YES SIXTEEN THOUSAND!

 

The above image shows brilliantly my other main task for the week – testing the Canon 1DX mark 2.

Most people know me as a Nikon shooter, and that I have a love-hate relationship with Canon – yes, I’m a troubled person!

I’ve waxed lyrical about the Canon 200-400 f4 many times on this blog and elsewhere, and the fact that I consider the Canon 61 point Reticular AF System to be the best on the planet.

You will also know that I loathe the sensor output of the original 1DX, and Canons daft refusal to give us the Uncompressed RAW Recording capability – spoilt see, Nikon user!!

I managed to get a couple of hours on the Canon 1DX Mk2 back in July and promptly set about testing the improved AF algorithms – by jingo was I impressed.  I was getting 40% less dropped shots on the Canon 1DX Mk2 at 10 frames per second than I was used to at 6 frames per second on the Mk1.

And as for the sensor output in general, the shadows adjustment latitude and high ISO performance – well, it was a revelation.

The Musk Ox above (click the image to view the full rez) has virtually ZERO noise reduction on it – none in post, and LOW on the in-camera High ISO NR menu setting.

Canon 1DX Mk2

A baby Musk Ox lying by its mothers side on a soft bed of lichen, Erica and rare alpine plants. ISO 2500, 200-400 @ 560mm, 1/2500@f7.1

Why use such a high shutter speed Andy?

It’s brain-in-gear time folks – breezy conditions, lowish light levels, hair on the subject that’s over 1metre long, and wispy grass stems – all these move way faster than the bulky Musk Ox itself – under peaceful circumstances of course!. If these little tiny details suffer with motion blur it ruins the image – provided you have a sensor that can ‘deliver the goods’ at the resultant ISO-stupid.

I’m also shooting hand-held off the knee, with and effective 560mm angle of view on a 20Meg+ sensor, so I’ll need at least 1/1600th to combat the shakes, and I am indeed ‘testing’ a camera, so shooting at sub 1600ISO is not doing the job.

I’m using ‘spot AF’ and partial metering, and my AF point is bang in the middle of the point pattern.

This all neatly brings me to my first problem with the Canon 1DX Mk2 – or at least the one I was using – look at this image from a few frames before:

Canon 1DX Mk2

A baby Musk Ox lying by its mothers side on a soft bed of lichen, Ericas and rare alpine plants.

If you examine the two shots closely you see something odd.

At this distance, around 70 metres, the f7.1 aperture should be generating around 1 metre of DoF.

In the first shot the AF pont was pretty much on babys head, but the DoF run-out is a lot greater beyond that distance than it is closer to the camera.  If the shot had been taken wide open at f5.6 then the subject would not be as sharp as it is.  More of babys body should be sharp, and less foreground sharpness.

In the second shot I’ve wavered slightly right, so now the focus point is on mums ass. This SHOULD push the plain of focus further back – and thus that 1 metre DoF.  And it does – a bit! There is still too much foreground DoF.

The point is this, the focus tends to ‘bounce a little’ rather like the fault with the Nikon D4. This was caused, in the D4, by ‘mirror bounce’. But in the Canon 1DX Mk2 I get the feeling that it’s due to a nano-second miss timing between the AF sensor and the mirror starting to move for the next frame.

Why do I think this?  Because if I drop the frame rate from 10fps to 7fps the ‘AF bounce’ disappears completely.

I could put more images up to illustrate my point further but that would be pointless as it could be a fault unique to the camera I was using.  Having said that, there was another Canon 1DX Mk2 with a 200-400 shooting right next to me, and that showed exactly the same characteristics!!

But there is ONE thing I truly loathe on the Canon 1DX Mk2 – and the D5 and D500 come to that – the rear screen resolutions.

They are all too high in resolution.

I understand WHY they have such high resolutions, but when you are shooting stills at long distance, where focus placement is super-critical, they CAN lull you into something of a ‘false sense of security’ when you use them to check fine focus tolerances at 1:1.

You check the images on the camera and they look sharp.  You get back to base and offload the images to your storage drives then review them on a 13″ MacBook Pro with a damn 227 dpi Retina display and the still look sharp.  You get home and view them on your 90-odd dpi 24″ Eizo – and some of them look a lot less perfect!

I suppose with use it’s something you’ll get used to, but if you are moving to a Canon 1DX Mk2 from an older Mk1 or 5DMk3 then bare it in mind and check your images VERY carefully if you’re using big glass under critical conditions.

Anyway, back to the stunning Musk Ox again:

Canon 1DX Mk2

A solitary bull Musk Ox stands watch over his harem of females under the gloomy light of late afternoon in the Dovrefjell National Park in Norway.

Canon 1DX Mk2

Stormy skies form a backdrop to a bull Musk Ox standing watch over two females in his harem, ready to chase away any other bull that he may consider a threat to his dominance.

Canon 1DX Mk2

“Bam-Bam does Lunch”

Lack of Lemmings meant the Arctic Foxes were still up in the high ground, so with that and a very wet forecast for Sunday we elected to leave Dovrefjell a day early and do the 7 hour drive to Lauvsnes in order to gain an extra day with the Eagles.

Monday morning saw us in the boat at just after 6.30am and myself an “Mad” Mark Davies had one shot weighing heavily on our minds – Backlit Eagle!

Over the remaining days I have to say that we were spoilt something rotten with opportunities for this most enigmatic eagle shot, here is a tiny fraction:

Canon 1DX Mk2

Canon 1DX Mk2 Canon 1DX Mk2The Canon 1DX Mk2 performed perfectly on this job, no one could have asked it to do more.  Shooting this at 10 frames per second was epic as it captures more of the ‘money shots’ with the spray trails.

Here is a continuous burst of 77 raw files at 10 frames per second, from when the eagle begins its approach to when I can’t basically be bothered any more:

Canon 1DX Mk2

And they are tack sharp from the first:

Canon 1DX Mk2

To the last:

Canon 1DX Mk2

 

I won’t say that by the end of the Thursday session it was getting boring, because I never cease to marvel at these awesome birds – but the hit-rate of the Canon 1DX Mk2 was getting a tad monotonous.

While a ‘crossing’ subject is not so taxing on the AF system as head-on subjects, the huge amounts of lens flare you encounter when shooting the style of image are notorious for playing havoc with auto focus.  When you get to the point of maximum rim lighting neither you or the camera can see very much of anything at all, and most older systems will hunt focus for a frame or two if you are not careful with your settings.

I shot sequences like this using both AF Point Surround and 9 point Zone AF – both of which performed superbly.

I’ll have to add a caveat though – the camera only performs this well if your technique is SOLID.  If you struggle to keep your AF group on target, or are just plain bone-idle, and try Large Zone AF or God forbid Auto, the cameras AF system goes into melt-down doing this sort of shot.

And yet AUTO on the Nikon D5 does a very good job at these sequences – weird!

So after a week of working the Canon 1DX Mk2 quite hard here’s what I think:

First, if you own a Mk1 1DX you NEED to upgrade, if only for the much superior IQ of the sensor.

Canon will probably hate me saying this, but the Canon 1DX Mk2 is ‘a bit of an animal’.  You could ‘wobble around’ a bit on the AF tracking with the Mk1 and get away with it.  But the Mk2 will bite you in the bum for doing the same thing – and when you least expect it.

With head-on targets the AF can both surprise and disappoint, methinks there will be a firmware upgrade at some point that will tidy the systems response to rapidly closing subjects at shortish distances.  That’s what happened with the Mk1.

Canon 1DX Mk2

There some other settings I need to play with on this beast of a machine before I feel I can formulate a descent opinion, things that I never had a chance to try in Norway, and others that only occur to me when viewing images on a PROPER SCREEN!

There is more to this ‘box of tricks’ from Canon than meets the eye!

And has anyone noticed just how CRAP the manual is – Jesus, I don’t think I’ve seen such a ‘sketchy’ document since I perused the Nikon D5 manual….sometimes I get the impression that both Nikon and Canon are a little clueless as to how there own gear works!

Makes me smile – and that’s a good thing!  But then again, it’s not my money being spent here – it’s yours.

A big thanks has to go to Paul Smith for supplying his camera and lens for this first evaluation – Cheers Matey!

And as always a big thank you to my clients, Mark, Malcolm, Mohamed & Paul for being such good sports, making a fun group dynamic, and for having a damn good laugh for week – usually at my expense!  Cheers for your continued support guys.

And lastly, Ole Martin – thanks again for yet another great week. Only another 9 months and I’m back for two weeks solid – Christ, won’t that be fun!!!

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Lee SW150 Mk2 Filter Holder – Review

The Lee SW150 Mk2 Filter Holder

PURE SEX - and I've bloody well paid for this! My new SW150 MkII filter system for the Nikon 14-24. Just look at those flashy red anodised parts - bound to make me a better photographer!

PURE SEX – and I’ve bloody well paid for this! My new SW150 MkII filter system for the Nikon 14-24. Just look at those flashy red anodised parts – bound to make me a better photographer!

I’ve just finished part 1 of my video review of the Lee SW150 Filter holder system for super-wide lenses and uploaded it to my YouTube channel:

First off – please forgive the shirt folks!

The SW150 Mk 2 filter holder is designed to fit a list of different lenses:

  1. Nikon AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED

  2. Nikon 14mm f2.8 D AF ED

  3. Canon EF 14mm f2.8 L II USM

  4. Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC

  5. Sigma 12-24mm f4.5-5.6 DG HSM II

  6. Tokina AT-X 16-28mm f/2.8 PRO FX

and according to the Lee website, additional lenses will be catered for; as the need arises I presume.

I never subscribed to the original incarnation of the SW150, for two reasons:

  • It ‘leaked light’ at the rear surface of the filter (though that was fairly easy to correct with a home-made baffle mod).

But that was of no consequence to me because Lee always gave the impression that:

  • They would not produce the Big & Little Stopper filters in 150mm square format.

So I’ve always stuck with either the 100mm Lee system or used a B&W 77mm screw-in filter on the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 or a wide angle prime; and I’ve shot many a well-selling image.

nik14-24_24-70

But, the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens has more than one advantage over its sister lens:

  1. It’s sharper – by a country mile.
  2. It resolves more ‘line pairs per millimetre’ than the 24-70mm.
  3. Its focal length range is more ‘in keeping’ with landscape photography.

And, like all the other lenses in that list above, that vast front element collects SO MANY MORE photons during the exposure.

So, now that I’ve got the opportunity to use the advantages of the 14-24 f2.8 from behind high quality 10x and 6x ND filters – well, let’s say the purchase of the Lee SW150 Mk2 system is a bit of a ‘no-brainer’ really.

The main improvement to the holder itself is the inclusion of a new baffle or ‘lightshield’ as Lee call it – this can be purchased separately as an upgrade to the original Lee SW150 Mk 1.

But you’ll have to do without the sexy red anodised bits that come with the new Mk 2 version if you go that route – these have just got to make me a better photographer!

Part 2 of the video review is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0AkHV8RsDw&t=3s

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Photoshop Save for Web

Save for Web in Photoshop CC – where the Chuff has it gone?

“Who’s moved my freakin’ cheese?”

Adobe have moved it……..

For years Photoshop has always offered the same ‘Save for Web’ or ‘Save for Web & Devices’ option and dialogue box:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,

The traditional route to the ‘Save for Web’ dialogue in all versions of Photoshop prior to CC 2015.

But Adobe have embarked on a cheese-moving exercise with CC 2015 and moved ‘save for web’ out of the traditional navigation pathway:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Adobe have ‘moved your cheese’ to here, though the dialogue and options are the same.

If we take a closer look at that new pathway:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

…we see that wonderful Adobe term ‘Legacy’ – which secretly means crap, shite, old fashioned, out dated, sub standard and scheduled for abandonment and/or termination.

‘THEY’ don’t want you to use it!

I have no idea why they have done this, though there are plenty of excuses being posted by Adobe on the net.  But what is interesting is this page HERE and more to the point this small ‘after thought’:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

That sounds really clever – especially the bit about ‘may be’……. let’s chuck colour management out the freakin’ window and be done!

So if we don’t use the ‘legacy’ option of save for web, let’s see what happens.  Here’s our image, in the ProPhotoRGB colour space open in Photoshop CC 2015:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

So let’s try the Export>Quick Export as JPG option and bring the result back into Photoshop:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Straight away we can see that the jpg is NOT tagged with a colour space, but it looks fine inside the Photoshop CC 2105 work space:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

“Perfect” – yay!…………NOT!

Let’s open in with an internet browser……

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Whoopsy – doopsy…!  Looks like a severe colour management problem is happening somewhere……..but Adobe did tell us:

SFW4

Might the Export Preferences help us:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

In a word……..NO

Let’s try Export>Export As:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Oh Hell No!

If we open the original image in Photoshop CC 2015 in the ProPhotoRGB colour space and then go Edit>Convert to Profile and select sRGB; then select Export>Quick Export as JPG, the resulting image will look fine in a browser.  But it will still be ‘untagged’ with any colour space – which is never a good idea.

And if you’ve captioned and key worded the image then all that hard work is lost too.

So if you must make your web jpeg images via Photoshop you will only achieve a quick and accurate work flow by using the Save for Web (Legacy) option.  That way you’ll have a correctly ‘tagged’ and converted image complete with all your IPTC key words, caption and title.

Of course you could adopt the same work flow as me, and always export as jpeg out of Lightroom; thus avoiding this mess entirely.

I seriously don’t know what the devil Adobe are thinking of here, and doubtless there is or will be a work around for the problem, but whatever it is it’ll be more work for the photographer.

Adobe – if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it !!

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Lightroom CC 2015 Crash Fix.

***Attention – if you are looking for help with the problems associated with Lightroom CC 2015/Lightroom 6 version 2.0 – October 2015 – then please go to this latest post page HERE and scroll down the page for the Temporary FIX.  This Lightrom crash fix/rollback method applies to both Mac & PC users***

Lightroom CC 2015 Crash & Performance Issues – (first release).

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There are a great many folk out there experiencing crash or freeze problems with the new Lightroom CC 2015.

The biggest problem, and the one that has effected me, is random crashing in the Develop Module, and a ‘jittery’ crop rotation tool.

If you have suffered from this then you will most likely have an ‘not too new’ nVidea GPU – or so it would appear.

Lightroom CC 2015 makes use of the graphics GPU acceleration on your computer, and this is ‘turned ON’ by default upon installation of the application.

But it seems that older nVidea chipsets are causing some quite considerable speed reduction problems, to the point where the application can run out of ram and basically crash.

Adobe are supposed to be creating a fix (according to the forums) but you can get around the problem really easily.

Open up Lightroom CC 2015 and go to your Lightroom preferences:

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

On the preferences panel you’ll see a new tab called ‘Performance’

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

You will see a checked ‘tick box’ for Use Graphics Processor – UNTICK IT, close the preferences panel and restart Lightroom CC 2015.

I’m on a mid-2009 Mac Pro running 10.10.3 Yosemite and a bog standard (for the day) nVidea Geforce GT120 512Mb graphics card.

Lightroom CC 2015 was slower than Lr5 on this machine, it would crash, the crop tool occasionally looked like it was a ‘motor neurone’ sufferer, and the heal/clone tool was harsh, pixelated and quite slow.

Turning OFF GPU acceleration has seemingly cured all my woes, and now it runs as smoothly as Lightroom 5 did but with the Photomerge options and other benefits of Lightroom CC 2015.

On that same performance tab there is a ‘system info’ button you can press that’ll give you the specifications of your machine and Lightroom installation:

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

The word ‘Passed’ next to the Open GL support means nothing, and if you you click the ‘Learn More’ link on the performance tab of Lightroom preferences it’ll take you to THIS PAGE on the Adobe support website.

On that page you will see this:

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

Now this explains A LOT!

Running a standard (sub 2K) 24″ monitor with sub 1Gb of VRAM, even with updated driver support for Open GL 3.3, means you are running at a resolution of 1920 pixels long edge and in effect you will not really benefit from Lightroom CC 2015 GPU acceleration in the first place.

I’m also running Lightroom CC 2015 on a mid 2011 27″ non-retina iMac with a horizontal resolution of 2560 pixels and an ATI Radion HD 6770M 512Mb graphics chipset.  This machine hasn’t crashed as such, but is certainly better run with the GPU acceleration turned OFF too.

Here is a very rough test you can do:

  1. Open a FULL RESOLUTION image in the Develop module.
  2. Pick up the Heal/Clone tool and set it to Heal with the opacity & feather controls to 100%
  3. Paint a random stroke on the image, and while painting, look carefully at the white edges of the stroke – are they smooth and feathered, or harsh and slightly granular?
  4. If they are the latter the go and turn OFF GPU acceleration and repeat the process – you will see the edges of the stroke look much better.
Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

Click to view LARGER

So, think of it this way; Adobe have put a facility into Lightroom 6/CC 2015 that makes use of very latest up to date computer graphics systems AND it’s ‘active’ by default.

If you run a new iMac 27″ Retina then you are running 5120 pixels on the long edge – that’s 5K graphics, and the new GPU acceleration will help you.

If your system fails to meet the operating criteria then having the acceleration active will cause you problems.  The severity of the problems you experience will be proportional to how ‘out of date’ your graphics are; so TURN IT OFF !

I can’t speak about installations of Lightroom CC 2015 under the Windows operating systems, but looking at the forums it seems that the same sort of problems exist for PC users.

A friend called this morning saying that the default installation ran smoothly and at warp-speed on his new retina macbook, but was noticeably slower than Lightroom 5 on his desktop PC – same problem, same fix.

Crash and slow-down problems with Lightroom CC 2015 are not OS problems – they are GPU VRAM/RAM problems, so don’t waste your time defraging hard drives and running system ‘junk checks’ if Lightroom 5 ran well.

 

Lightroom CC 2015 Launch Hang Problem?

Lightroom CC 2015, crash fix, speed fix, slow down fix, clone tool,heal tool,crop tool fix, Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,Creative Cloud,Photography Package,bug fix,Lightroom,Photoshop

If you are experiencing launch hang, splash screen hang or crashing of the application on launch then GO HERE where you’ll see the instructions in the image above.

Kyle Bailey kindly sent me a solution/fix for a windows crash fix if you literally can’t uncheck the graphics acceleration check box:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Andrew, but I couldn’t untick the graphics processor box –Lightroom would crash when I tried. I just spent a couple hours with tech support and thought I’d share our solution:

Close LR first. Open device manager, double click on display adapters, right-click your graphics card (mine was AMD Radeon), choose install drivers, browse system, pick from list. Make NOTE of which is currently active, then change it to standard VGA. It may prompt you to reboot, but don’t do it.

This will make the screen look crazy, but don’t worry! Now, open LR, untick the graphics box, and close LR.

Finally, go back into device manager and change it back to the original driver and viola. Next time you start LR, the box will remain unticked.

Cheers for that Kyle.

 

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HDR in Lightroom CC (2015)

Lightroom CC (2015) – exciting stuff!

New direct HDR MERGE for bracketed exposure sequences inside the Develop Module of Lightroom CC 2015 – nice one Adobe!  I can see Eric Chan’s finger-prints all over this one…!

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Twilight at Porth Y Post, Anglesey.

After a less than exciting 90 minutes on the phone with Adobe this vary morning – that’s about 10 minutes of actual conversation and an eternity of crappy ‘Muzak’ – I’ve managed to switch from my expensive old single app PsCC subscription to the Photography Plan – yay!

They wouldn’t let me upgrade my old stand-alone Lr4/Lr5 to Lr6 ‘on the cheap’ so now they’ve given me two apps for half the price I was paying for 1 – mental people, but I’ll not be arguing!

I was really eager to try out the new internal ‘Merge’ script/command for HDR sequences – and boy am I impressed.

I picked a twilight seascape scene I shot last year:

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

I’ve taken a 6 shot exposure bracketed sequence of RAW files above, into the Develop Module of Lightroom CC and done 3 simple adjustments to all 6 under Auto Synch:

  1. Change camera profile from Adobe Standard to Camera Neutral.
  2. ‘Tick’ Remove Chromatic Aberration in the Lens Corrections panel.
  3. Change the colour temperature from ‘as shot’ to a whopping 13,400K – this neutralises the huge ‘twilight’ blue cast.

You have to remember that NOT ALL adjustments you can make in the Develop Module will carry over in this process, but these 3 will.

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

Ever since Lr4 came out we have had the ability to take a bracketed sequence in Lightroom and send them to Photoshop to produce what’s called a ’32 bit floating point TIFF’ file – HDR without any of the stupid ‘grunge effects’ so commonly associated with the more normal styles of HDR workflow.

The resulting TIFF file would then be brought back into Lightroom where some very fancy processing limits were given to us – namely the exposure latitude above all else.

‘Normal’ range images, be they RAW or TIFF etc, have a potential 10 stops of exposure adjustment, +5 to -5 stops, both in the Basics Panel, and with Linear and Radial graduated filters.

But 32 bit float TIFFs had a massive 20 stops of adjustment, +10 to -10 stops – making for some very fancy and highly flexible processing.

Now the, what’s a ‘better’ file type than pixel-based TIFF?  A RAW file……

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

So, after selecting the six RAW images, right-clicking and selecting ‘Photomerge>HDR’…

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

…and selecting ‘NONE’ from the ‘de-ghost’ options, I was amazed to find the resulting ‘merged file’ was a DNG – not a TIFF – yet it still carries the 20 stop exposure adjustment  latitude.

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

This is the best news for ages, and grunge-free, ‘real-looking’ HDR workflow time has just been axed by at least 50%.  I can’t really say any more about it really, except that, IMHO of course, this is the best thing to happen for Adobe RAW workflow since the advent of PV2012 itself – BRILLIANT!

Note: Because all the shots in this sequence featured ‘blurred water’, applying any de-ghosting would be detrimental to the image, causing some some weird artefacts where water met static rocks etc.

But if you have image sequences that have moving objects in them you can select from 3 de-ghost pre-sets to try and combat the artefacts caused by them, and you can check the de-ghost overlay tick-box to pre-visualise the de-ghosting areas in the final image.

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

Switch up to Lightroom CC 2015 – it’s worth it for this facility alone.

Andy Astbury,Lightroom,HDR,merge,photomerge, merge to HDR,high dynamic range,photography,Wildlife in Pixels

Click to view LARGER IMAGE.

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Image Sharpness

Image Sharpness

I spent the other afternoon in the Big Tower at Gigrin, in the very pleasant company company of Mr. Jeffrey “Jeffer-Cakes” Young.    Left arm feeling better yet Jeff?

I think I’m fairly safe in saying that once feeding time commenced at 3pm it didn’t take too long before Jeff got a firm understanding of just how damn hard bird flight photography truly is – if you are shooting for true image sharpness at 1:1 resolution.

I’d warned Jeff before-hand that his Canon 5Dmk3 would make his session somewhat more difficult than a 1Dx, due to it’s slightly less tractable autofocus adjustments.  But that with his 300mm f2.8 – even with his 1.4x converter mounted, his equipment was easily up to the job at hand.

I on the other hand was back on the Nikon gear – my 200-400 f4; but using a D4S I’d borrowed from Paul Atkins for some real head-to-head testing against the D4 (there’s a barrow load of Astbury venom headed Nikon’s way shortly I can tell you….watch this space as they say).

Amongst the many topics discussed and pondered upon, I was trying to explain to Jeff the  fundamental difference between ‘perceived’ and ‘real’ image sharpness.

Gigrin is a good place to find vast armies of ‘photographers’ who have ZERO CLUE that such an argument or difference even exists.

As a ‘teacher’ I can easily tell when I’m sharing hide space with folk like this because they develop quizzical frowns and slightly self-righteous smirks as they eavesdrop on the conversation between my client and I.

“THEY” don’t understand that my client is wanting to achieve the same goal as the one I’m always chasing after; and that that goal is as different from their goal as a fillet of oak-smoked Scottish salmon is from a tin of John West mush.

I suppose I’d better start explaining myself at this juncture; so below are two 800 pixel long edge jpeg files that you typically see posted on a nature photography forum, website or blog:

image sharpness, Andy Astbury, Wildlife in Pixels, Red Kite

IMAGE 1. Red Kite – Nikon D4S+200-400 f4 – CLICK IMAGE to view properly.

Click the images to view them properly.

image sharpness, Andy Astbury, Wildlife in Pixels, Red Kite

IMAGE 2. Red Kite – Nikon D4S+200-400 f4 – CLICK IMAGE to view properly.

“THEY” would be equally as pleased with either…..!

Both images look pretty sharp, well exposed and have pretty darn good composition from an editorial point of view too – so we’re all golden aren’t we!

Or are we?

Both images would look equally as good in terms of image sharpness at 1200 pixels on the long edge, and because I’m a smart-arse I could easily print both images to A4 – and they’d still look as good as each other.

But, one of them would also readily print to A3+ and in its digital form would get accepted at almost any stock agency on the planet, but the other one would most emphatically NOT pass muster for either purpose.

That’s because one of them has real, true image sharpness, while the other has none; all it’s image sharpness is perceptual and artificially induced through image processing.

Guessed which is which yet?

image sharpness, Andy Astbury, Wildlife in Pixels, Red Kite

IMAGE 1 at 1:1 native resolution – CLICK IMAGE to view properly.

Image 1. has true sharpness because it is IN FOCUS.

image sharpness, Andy Astbury, Wildlife in Pixels, Red Kite

IMAGE 2 at 1:1 native resolution – CLICK IMAGE to view properly.

And you don’t need glasses to see that image 2 is simply OUT OF FOCUS.

The next question is; which image is the cropped one – number 2 ?

Wrong…it’s number 1…

image sharpness, Andy Astbury, Wildlife in Pixels, Red Kite

Image 1 uncropped is 4928 pixels long edge, and cropped is 3565, in other words a 28% crop, which will yield a 15+ inch print without any trouble whatsoever.

Image 2 is NOT cropped – it has just been SHRUNK to around 16% of its original size in the Lightroom export utility with standard screen output sharpening.  So you can make a ‘silk purse from a sows ear’ – and no one would be any the wiser, as long as they never saw anything approaching the full resolution image!

Given that both images were shot at 400mm focal length, it’s obvious that the bird in image 1 (now you know it’s cropped a bit) is FURTHER AWAY than the bird in image 2.

So why is one IN FOCUS and the other not?

The bird in image 1 is ‘crossing’ the frame more than it is ‘closing in’ on the camera.

The bird in image 2 is closer to the camera to begin with, and is getting closer by the millisecond.

These two scenarios impose totally different work-loads on the autofocus system.

The ability of the autofocus system to cope with ANY imposed work-load is totally dependent upon the control parameters you have set in the camera.

The ‘success’ rate of these adjustable autofocus parameter settings is effected by:

  1. Changing spatial relationship between camera and subject during a burst of frames.
  2. Subject-to-camera closing speed
  3. Pre-shot tracking time.
  4. Frame rate.

And a few more things besides…!

The autofocus workloads for images 1 & 2 are poles apart, but the control parameter settings are identical.

The Leucistic Red Kite in the shot below is chugging along at roughly the same speed as its non-leucistic cousin in image 2. It’s also at pretty much the same focus distance:

image sharpness, Andy Astbury, Wildlife in Pixels, Red Kite

Image 3. Leucistic Red Kite – same distance, closing speed and focal length as image 2. CLICK IMAGE to view larger version.

So why is image 3 IN FOCUS when, given a similar scenario, image 2 is out of focus?

Because the autofocus control parameters are set differently – that’s why.

FACT: no single combination of autofocus control parameter settings will be your ‘magic bullet’ and give you nothing but sharp images with no ‘duds’ – unless you use a 12mm fish-eye lens that is!

Problems and focus errors INCREASE in frequency in direct proportion to increasing focal length.

They will also increase in frequency THE INSTANT you switch from a prime lens to a zoom lens, especially if the ‘zoom ratio’ exceeds 3:1.

Then we have to consider the accuracy and speed of the cameras autofocus system AND the speed of the lens autofocus motor – and sadly these criteria generally become more favourable with an increased price tag.

So if you’re using a Nikon D800 with an 80-400, or a Canon 70D with a 100-400 then there are going to be more than a few bumps in your road.  And if you stick to just one set of autofocus control settings all the time then those bumps are going to turn into mountains – some of which are going to kill you off before you make their summit….metaphorically speaking of course!

And God forbid that you try this image 3 ‘head on close up’ malarkey with a Sigma 50-500 – if you want that level of shot quality then you might just as well stay at home and save yourself the hide fees and petrol money !

Things don’t get any easier if you do spend the ‘big bucks’ either.

Fast glass and a pro body ‘speed machine’ will offer you more control adjustments for sure.  But that just means more chances to ‘screw things up’ unless you know EXACTLY how your autofocus system works, exactly what all those different controls actually DO, and you know how to relate those controls to what’s happening in front of you.

Whatever lens and camera body combination any of us use, we have to first of all find, then learn to work within it’s ‘effective envelope of operation’ – and by that I mean the REAL one, which is not necessarily always on a par with what the manufacturer might lead you to believe.

Take my Nikon 200-400 for example.  If I used autofocus on a static subject, let alone a moving one, at much past 50 metres using the venerable old D3 body and 400mm focal length, things in the critical image sharpness department became somewhat sketchy to say the least.  But put it on a D4 or D4S and I can shoot tack sharp focussing targets at 80 to 100 metres all day long……not that I make a habit of this most meaningless of photographic pastimes.

That discrepancy is due to the old D3 autofocus system lacking the ability to accurately  discriminate between precise distances from infinity to much over 50 metres when that particular lens was being used. But swap the lens out for a 400 f2.8 prime and things were far better!

Using the lens on either a D4 or D4S on head-on fast moving/closing subjects such as Mr.Leucistic above, we hit another snag at 400mm – once the subject is less than 20 metres away the autofocus system can’t keep up and the image sharpness effectively drops off the proverbial cliff.  But zoom out to 200mm and that ‘cut-off’ distance will reduce to 10 metres or so. Subjects closing at slower speeds can get much closer to the camera before sharp focus begins to fail.

As far as I’m concerned this problem is more to do with the speed of the autofocus motor inside the lens than anything else.  Nikon brought out an updated version of this lens a few years back – amongst its ‘star qualities’ was a new nano-coating that stopped the lens from flaring.  But does it focus any faster – does it heck!  And my version doesn’t suffer from flare either….!

Getting to know your equipment and how it all works is critical if you want your photography to improve in terms of image sharpness.

Shameless Plug Number 1.

I keep mentioning it – my ebook on Canon & Nikon Autofocus with long glass.

Understanding Canon & Nikon Autofocus

for

Bird in Flight Photography

Understanding Canon & Nikon Autofocus for Bird in Flight Photography

Click Image for details.

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