2018 Project 52, First Quarter by Mike Sachtjen

[sachtjen]

I've really only been "in" to photography for a little over a year. As far as areas to improve, it is going to be pretty much all of them.

Right now what I'm struggling with the most is taking enough photos and approaching the world with a photographers eye. I have a lot of fun with my camera and learning my craft but at the end of the year when I looked back at my photos I thought to myself "I thought I took more photos than this."

Composition and comfort with my camera are the two areas I want to focus on the most. I don't know how often I've taken a number of photos, get them in post and only then realize how many have the same distracting stick in the shot, or cut off hands, or any number of other flaws which I should have seen in the camera and been able to correct at the time of the shot.

Style-wise I've been doing a lot with black and white and I'm really enjoying that, but I'll be doing some color photography as well.

As an inspiration a lot of my photos will come from this list: https://dogwood.photography/52weekchallenge2018.html

I also have photo assignments from my local camera club and based upon feedback I get from here I may also chart my own course from time to time.

My gear is pretty simple:
Nikon D3400
18-55 mm "kit lens"
85 mm f/3.5 macro
35 mm f/1.8

Post process in Lightroom CC Classic and a little Photoshop

Looking forward to this challenge!

[pnodrog]

Very impressed with the weekly challenges. Well thought out will certainly help in extending your skills. Good luck.

[Shadowman]

Nicely planned out challenge.

[sachtjen]

WEEK 1 -- Vision: Look Ahead

Assignment Description: New year. New beginning. New you. Look ahead. Interpret as you wish.

I don't usually Instagram my food, but I was rolling various ideas in my head for the week 1 assignment when my wife made breakfast tacos and I opened a new bottle of hot sauce. I love trying to varieties of hot sauce but I have a rule, no more open bottles. I can't open a new one until an old one is finished. Bottom line: breakfast, new bottle of hot sauce; that sounds like a new beginning to me.

As far as improving my skills go, I tried to have more awareness of the full frame in the view finder. I was contentious of the table edge, how I was (or was not) cutting off the coffee cup, balance, etc. I made sure I had shots both with the cup cropped and with it completely in frame. Ultimately I decided it was OK to crop across the coffee cup because it is an out of focus background element, but at least I gave myself the shots to make that decision after the fact. I only made a minor cropping adjustment in post.

I know the lighting cast harsh shadows. I was holding up everyone's breakfast and didn't want to spend much time trying to figure out a better solution.

[skitterbug]

WEEK 1 -- Vision: Look Ahead

Assignment Description: New year. New beginning. New you. Look ahead. Interpret as you wish.

I don't usually Instagram my food, but I was rolling various ideas in my head for the week 1 assignment when my wife made breakfast tacos and I opened a new bottle of hot sauce. I love trying to varieties of hot sauce but I have a rule, no more open bottles. I can't open a new one until an old one is finished. Bottom line: breakfast, new bottle of hot sauce; that sounds like a new beginning to me.

As far as improving my skills go, I tried to have more awareness of the full frame in the view finder. I was contentious of the table edge, how I was (or was not) cutting off the coffee cup, balance, etc. I made sure I had shots both with the cup cropped and with it completely in frame. Ultimately I decided it was OK to crop across the coffee cup because it is an out of focus background element, but at least I gave myself the shots to make that decision after the fact. I only made a minor cropping adjustment in post.

I know the lighting cast harsh shadows. I was holding up everyone's breakfast and didn't want to spend much time trying to figure out a better solution.

I like the idea of your new year beginning, new bottle opening and breakfast! <yum> For me, your picture is a success because it makes me hungry! The white table cloth (?) seems a bit bright but overall, I believe your photo works well.

Posting the settings you used for your photo would really be helpful to me. I'm still very much a beginner in the craft of photography so I'm always interested in how the photo was taken (ISO, speed, aperture). But of course it is totally your call.

Cheers!

[sachtjen]

Hi Sandy,

Thanks for the feedback. I thought about removing the runner but I was afraid that without it the browns and yellows would dominate too much of the frame. However, I should have tried it without the runner, and maybe also with the plate directly on the runner. I suspect the later would have been far too much white.

Technical details:
85mm (130mm equivalent) Macro Lens
ISO 1600
f/3.5
1/125s

I will include technical details from now on.

[Geoff F]

This sort of scene can be surprisingly difficult, Mike; at least I find them tricky.

Exposure looks OK to me, the whites aren't over exposed nor too dominant. Sometimes a little bit of hard shadow can be effective in adding a bit more 'real life' to the scene so that works for me.

The only thing I would like to change is the depth of focus which is rather shallow. The foreground is sharply focused which is good but I would have liked to see just a little bit more of the main subjects in sharp focus. Probably, I would clone out those small over exposed hot spots on the bottle.

[skitterbug]

Hi Sandy,

Technical details:
85mm (130mm equivalent) Macro Lens
ISO 1600
f/3.5
1/125s

I will include technical details from now on.

Thank you extra much Mike!

[purplehaze]

Good start to the challenge, Mike. My nieces were shooting food setups with my equipment a couple of weeks ago. To keep things simple, they were shooting on a tripod by a large set of windows providing reflected light. They were amazed to see how efficient holding a reflector at the right angle was at softening shadows.

[Cantab]

Technical details:
85mm (130mm equivalent) Macro Lens
ISO 1600
f/3.5
1/125s

Mike, overall I like the photo.

As Geoff noted, it would have been good to have more of the main subject in focus (presumably including all the bacon!). Do you have a tripod? The answer is probably no, since you didn't include it in your kit list earlier in this thread. A tripod would allow you to use a slower shutter speed in this type of still life; that would allow a smaller aperture (with increased depth of field) and possibly also a lower ISO if you had enough light once the aperture was reduced.

Geoff has done a lot of high quality close up work so may chime in on the tripod issue.

[Geoff F]

Successful 'still life' photography needs a lot of thought about the scene arrangement, then more consideration over the camera settings. This image is fine for a quick snap; but it could have been a highly praised photograph with just a few changes. The basic scene composition looks OK to me.

The Iso is high and I would have considered 800 to be the maximum but that, together with a narrower aperture would probably have reduced the shutter speed to 1/20 or slower. Which would indeed have required a tripod; or alternatively some form of extra lighting.

As I previously mentioned, this style of photography is difficult, although it can make an interesting learning experience.

[sachtjen]

I do have a tripod. It is not a very good one, but if I use it with the timer instead of the shutter button then it is good enough.

I intentionally went with a narrow depth of field to try to bring the focus to the hot sauce since it was the "new beginning." However, I have been giving your comments a lot of thought.

First, using a narrow depth of field is a rather blunt tool for what I was trying to achieve. Perhaps just the title "new beginnings" with an obviously newly opened bottle of hot sauce would be enough for the viewer to get it without forcing them to focus on the hot sauce.

Second, it has got me thinking about when is "bokah" pleasant and when does it leave the user straining to try to make something come into focus. I think the coffee is OK out of focus and cropped because it is so clearly a background item. The taco is partially in focus and also centered, so even though the hot sauce is my intended subject, the taco comes across as a half out of focus focal point.

Thank you all for your feedback!

[sachtjen]

I'm not keeping up on my weeklies, but I'm not giving up after just one post either.

I got a new toy, a reversal ring so I can connect two lenses face to face for ultra-close macro photography. After a number of failures with image stacking and blotchy, miss-aligned images, have finally gotten something pretty decent.

Objective: Learn to use my reversal ring and image stacking software

Technical Details:

Setup: Ambient daylight. Coffee bean placed on cell phone. Tripod.
Primary (body) Lens: 85mm macro, f/11
Secondary (reversed) Lens: 35mm, wide open
Exposure: 2 seconds
ISO: 200
Stack: 41 images
Technique: Manually changing focus point. No software or calculator; just trial and error to get a feel for how far to spin the focus ring each shot.
Software: Photoshop for both auto-alignment and auto-blending

[Shadowman]

I've had a reserving ring for years, had a good setup at one time and got a few good shots but then needed one of the lenses for normal use and never got around to using it again. Purchased a short focal length macro lens and some closeup filters and figured it was all I needed. Nice effort and challenge for your weekly adventures.

[sachtjen]

Thanks John. All I have is my regular 85mm macro lens and now the reversal ring. For something as large as a coffee bean I wondered if a macro extension tube or closeup filter would be better tools for the job.

[Shadowman]

Thanks John. All I have is my regular 85mm macro lens and now the reversal ring. For something as large as a coffee bean I wondered if a macro extension tube or closeup filter would be better tools for the job.

Hi Mike,

It won't get you 1:1 magnification but will get you in the closeup range of image capture.

[CormacD]

Re yr coffee bean reversal ring exercise

Very good result, Mike. Well worth the experience I'm sure. I like the lighting, the focus and the colour. Thank you for the good description of your technique.

[Wavelength]

Nice images

[sachtjen]

Continuing with image stacking and extreme macro.

Objective: Starting to pay more attention to lighting and composition and tying to think of what will make an interesting macro image at this level of magnification.

Setup is the same as before with the reversal ring, doing image alignment and blending in Photoshop. Converted to B&W this week.

#1 - Tip of a Feather

I adjusted the focal ring too much each step. I should have make smaller adjustments. There are some blurry artifacts, but I liked the composition so I decided to post it anyway.

Technical Details:

Lighting: Ambient Light
Exposure: 1/2 Second
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO: 200
Stack: 9 images



#2 - Feather Landscape

I increased the aperture because I was getting a lot of vignetting. Also, probably overcompensated on the number of images in the stack. At one point Photoshop failed to complete the blending task because it exceeded the 86GB of scratch space available to it!

Technical Details:

Lighting: Lit from the side with a lamp pointed at it
Exposure: 3 Seconds
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO: 200
Stack: 73 images

[rudi]

.......... Coffee bean placed on cell phone. Tripod.

Primary (body) Lens: 85mm macro, f/11
Secondary (reversed) Lens: 35mm, wide open......

Hi Mike, a bit late to the party, but better late than never ....

Let me add a few ideas:

A better way, to my idea, is to use your primary lens wide open and control your aperture with your reversed lens.
Others have explained that in detail and better than I ever could so here a link:
http://extreme-macro.co.uk/coupled-reverse-lens/

This setup gives you a magnification from +/- 2,5x. At f11 your are in diffraction softening region. The theoretical
stepsize at 2,5 magnif , f11 is 0,52 mm.

More on DOF/Stepsize can be found here:
https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacke.../macromicrodof

A little bit about diffraction softening here:
https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacke.../macromicrodof

Hope this helps.