You can modify the look of clouds and water with long exposures making them soft and ethereal, but what if you can’t achieve slow enough shutter speeds? That’s were using multiple exposures come in. In this case I have used 9 exposures combined in the camera (a Pentax K10D) each exposure taken with a small delay of about 10 seconds in between. This means that any single cloud will have moved a similar distance as a 90 second exposure, which would be unachievable in daylight conditions even with a strong neutral density filter. The image bellow is toggling between the multi exposure image and a single image taken just after.
When I recently saw stacks of logs waiting to be processed I knew that I wanted to create an image that linked the raw materials together. These two images are merely an intermediate state for these trees and it is for the viewer to envisage a time before and after for them. Either as trees or the end products that surround us.
I have just returned from a trip which required driving through half of British Columbia. There are nearly endless opportunities to photograph on a trip like this so I brought several cameras with me. I took some photographs with the intent of applying the miniature filter of the Pentax K-7 and while stopped at a restaurant and waiting for my meal this is the results I came up with.
I only wish every lens I have was weather proof. The SMC D FA 100mm Macro WR is though and it is an amazing lens with great build that suites the K-7 very well. Manual focus is very smooth with this lens making it ideal for shooting video. As a prime lens and a macro you get an optically brilliant performer and with the curved aperture blades the out of focus areas are rendered in a beautiful creamy softness even at apertures that on other lenses would give an harsher geometric bokeh. So what if anything are the drawbacks to this lens? One fact of life for a macro like this is that in auto focus it can take longer to focus from it’s minimum to infinity and if you miss it can end up doing a bit of hunting. This prevents it from being an ideal all around lens at this focal length but if you take this limitation into consideration the results can be stunning.
As an aside I continue to be amazed at the accuracy of the Auto White balance of the K-7. it just gets it right and there is little or no adjustment required. This is great for video where RAW is obviously not an option.
This still image at the beginning was taken with a mid 1950’s Braun Paxette II which I hope to post about separately after I get another roll of film through it.
As far as I’m aware there were very few wide angle capable point and shoot cameras ever made. Ricoh made several including the R1s that I own, but most point and shoots started around 35mm at the wide end. And then there is the Pentax Espio 24Ew. The EW stands for ‘extra wide’, it’s lens goes from 24mm to 105mm. This camera was released in 2003 right in the middle of the digital camera explosion. I have to admit I only paid about 1% of it’s original cost making the film inside it more expensive than it is. When you first start this camera up the lens is at a position somewhere greater than it’s widest so in order to get it where I want it I have to hit the zoom out button. The lens does some amazing contortions to fit within the cameras 1 1/2 inch depth which then expands to a ridiculous 4 1/2 inches at 105mm. So how was it? It does an admiral job, There is definitely softness at the edges at 24mm, which is really the only focal length of this camera I’m interested in and also vignetting depending on the aperture which it selects and you have no way of knowing what it is. These limitations aside and considering the difficulty and finding anything this wide in a film point and shoot it does a pretty good job.
One of the features of the Pentax K-7 is that you are able to move the sensor by small amounts along the focal plane. The effect of this is to adjust the position of the image formed by the lens on the sensor. This differs slightly from moving the camera and therefore the lens and sensor. Figure 1 shows a lens and sensor positioned so that light from point (A) goes through the center of the lens and reaches the sensor at it’s center (A1). In this scenario point (B) is obscured by point (A) and none of it’s reflected light reaches the lens. Now if we were to move only the sensor using the composition adjustment feature of the K-7 as in Figure 2 The image formed by the lens is relocated on the sensor but because the lens has not moved the relationship of the elements in the scene remain unchanged and point (B) remains obscured. Now if we were to reposition the entire camera as in figure 3 the new position of the lens allows some reflected light from point (B) to reach the sensor. So even though (A1) reaches the senor at the same point in figure 2&3 the image formed differs.
A simple way of demonstrating this effect is to close one eye and hold a piece of paper edge on in front of the other eye. What you will see is a very thin slice of paper, now swap which eye is open and closed while not moving the paper. Now you will see a partial side view of the paper, just as if you repositioned a camera. Of course the distance between your eyes should be greater than the amount the sensor is able to shift so the effect is exaggerated.
Here is the effect demonstrated in practice.
This is the neutral position for the scene
Sensor shifted left
Sensor Shifted Right
Notice how even though the position of the element within the frame changes the relationship does not. The ball appears to just visually touch the right hand edge of the blocks in all three.
Camera shifted right
Notice how in this instance the right side of the block is now revealed.
So the composition adjust of the Pentax K-7 allows you to modify the framing of a scene while preserving the relationship of the elements of the scene. It also allows rotation of the sensor to further aid in composition. This feature is found under “Rec. Menu 2”
It’s difficult to convey a sense of time photographically, the very nature of a photograph is the capturing of an instant. You can use techniques such as using a slow shutter speed to allow moving objects to blur evoking a sense of motion and time or multiple exposures. But the best way is through a series. This example is two images that were taken more than two years apart. I’ve also purposely placed the most recent image on the left to distort time as most viewers will read this image left to right. Great care was taken to frame the scene the same, this was aided by using live view on my Pentax K-7 DSLR. It allows you to see in real time the framing on the rear LCD of the camera. I also used a photograph of the original scene for comparison.
Most of the images that I took of this debris did not have the impact that I wanted. It wasn’t until I got right down amongst it that I was able to convey the sense of being there adequately. I was then able to depict that the waste wood stretched from the foreground to the bridge in the distance using a relatively wide field of view oriented vertically.
I needed to wait around for a few hours so I took my Pentax K-7 and only one lens, the DA35 ltd. These pictures are directly from the camera but re sized.
