With all the amazing landscape photographers (as well as photographers of other genres) who have portfolios on PhotoShelter (www.photoshelter.com) I am honored to be their featured landscape photographer on the buyer page! Thanks PhotoShelter!

See my photo of Shiprock Pinnacle in New Mexico and link to my website on the PhotoShelter buyer page at www.photoshelter.com/buyer.

Both of my efforts so far can be seen on Vimeo.com.  The first video “Flow” was a good way to tie together some of the test video I had been shooting which involved motion – from flowing water to flowing traffic.

Flow

Or go here to view it on Vimeo.com.

And my latest film, Rush:

Or go here to view it on Vimeo.com.

As always I love to hear your comments!
Ken

Without Pentax 12-24mm profile correction (some purple fringing on edge of plate)

Using Pentax 12-24mm profile correction (for Tokina 12-24mm lens) in Lightroom

Oh, and before anyone says anything: the edge of the plate was NOT supposed to be in focus. It was at the edge of the frame and in the foreground. I was shooting up close with this lens at f8 with the center of focus further away from the edge, so this is more of a depth-of-field kind of thing rather than edge sharpness. I’ve been very pleased with this lens and I’ve heard the latest updated version is even better (and more expensive).

Here’s the July/August 2011 Sailing World article (click on it to see the more readable, full-sized version) – and there’s also a photo gallery of images from the event on the Sailing World website:

And this article is in the July 2011 issue of Sailing magazine (click on it to see a more readable, full-sized version):

As Nancy mentions in her article, when you edit your profile you can upload five different photos in each of those spaces to feature your work on your page or, as you can see by my example, cut one photo into five discreet photos to appear as one panoramic image. 

First of all you will need to select an image that will work in this size format. I measured the pixels (a very handy way to do this on a Mac is to press the command (apple) key, shift, and number 4 key together to get a screen selection box that shows pixels dimensions as you drag it around – then press escape after you’ve finished measuring) and found that the overall dimensions of the composite photos including the space between each element is 810 pixels X 150 pixels. Each individual photo is 150X150 pixels and the space between them is 15 pixels.

So in Photoshop I selected a suitable image to crop to 810X150 pixels:

Then cropped it to 810X150 pixels:

Using this image in Photoshop (yes, I’m using a primitive version 4 of Photoshop Elements) I created 5 new layers by using the rectangular marquee tool to select a 150X150 pixel region of the image starting from one end of the photo. Be sure to have the info window showing so you can see the pixel dimensions of your selection.

The subject for these photos is a foot long triangular shaped drafting type ruler that I used in some of my early stock photos (which rarely sell, for good reason). It was setup so that “0″ point on the ruler was at the lens’ minimum focusing distance with the rest of the ruler angled away from the camera. The idea was that if the camera/lens wasn’t focusing where I intended it to focus, I could find out where it was focusing or if it was ever in sharp focus at all. In these photos the focus on the lens was adjusted (very, very slightly) so that the 1/2″ mark was a perfect in focus as I could get it. I used a Canon 40D in aperture priority metering mode with the ISO set a 800 so that the longer exposures at smaller apertures wouldn’t become too much of a factor in evaluation sharpness. Without changing focus I took 8 photos at f32, 1/13 sec; f22, 1/20 sec; f16, 1/50 sec; f11, 1/100 sec; f8, 1/200 sec; f5.6, 1/400 sec; f4, 1/800 sec; and f2.8, 1/1600 sec. On the 40D the focus was adjusted manually by using the live view mode set at 10X magnification for as much precision as possible. On a side note, I’ve found that using the live view at 10X also helps you to make sure there is absolutely no movement of the camera equipment and/or subject. The images were taken in RAW format, then converted to PSD in Lightroom 3. I didn’t perform any changes or add noise reduction in Lightroom with my default sharpening set at amount: 25, radius: 1.0, detail: 25, and masking: 0. (On another side note, if you have any good suggestions about a better starting place for a “generic” sharpening amount in Lightroom, please let me know.)

In Photoshop I stacked all the images together into layers in one image so that I could do one crop at 100% magnification and they would all be cropped the same (just figured out how to do this myself today). Then I copied each layer into a new image file and saved it as a separate image.

My observations (besides noticiing the incredible amount of dust and goop that’s obviously on my sensor at f16 and smaller) are that the lens seems to be doing its job very well and that even the slightest movement of the focusing ring can change the focus by 1/16th inch at these close focusing distances.

If you have this lens or any other macro and, like me, you’ve been wondering if the lens is as sharp as you’ve heard it was or thought there might be something wrong with it or suspected that your macro technique isn’t as  precise as it should be, you might want to duplicate these tests yourself with your equipment. One other note concerning macro technique: I started out in my “studio” area using a very flimsy music stand as a support for ruler. I usually like this stand because it will raise stuff up high enough that I don’t have to torture my back with low camera placement. That combined with living in a pier and beam (or actually just beam – but that’s another story) house that easily transmits vibrations throughout caused me to rethink that approach and settle on the kitchen counter which is a lot more stable. If you haven’t tried viewing with live view magnified to 10X you probably have no idea how much vibration there is even with a pretty good tripod and tripod head.

One other thing I learned is that if I going to shoot a lot of really close 1:1 macro images I’m going to need to get a good macro focusing rack. There’s always something.

So, check out these test photos! Click on an image to see the 100% crop of the original  photo.

So for the obligatory photo to accompany the article and make it all easier to understand, I’ve included this staged photo taken with my cell phone of me editing and correcting a rough draft.. After all, a picture is worth a 1000 words. Sorry, just had to say that.

Keep checking this blog for more updates about this event. There was a lot going on and it’s going to take me awhile to relate my experiences in words and pictures. In the meantime you can go to the Texoma Sailing Club website for more information about the club and to their Lakefest Regatta page for more detail, including results, of the regatta.