Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012

The transit of Venus happens in pairs eight years apart - but then with more than a century between cycles. During the pass, Venus appears as a small, dark round spot moving across the face of the sun, like a bug on a dinner plate. Here in South-West Ontario we were blessed with clear skies and relatively low humidity during the whole transit.

I was able to follow and photograph this astronomical spectacle from start at 6:04 PM until the Sun disappeared behind neighbor’s roof around 8:30 PM. It was well worth the time.

The equipment I used was Canon Rebel T1i, 75-300mm lens with 1.4X extender and arc welding filter plate in a place of dedicated Sun filter. Considering that the filter plate is a mass production piece made out of polycarbonate (Plexiglas) and not an optical quality glass, the photos are quite sharp. This particular filter has a gold coating that reflects the sunlight and keeps the filter cool. Simple setup that did what I wanted.

If you look very carefully you will see 5 Sun spots in 2 groups: at center left are 3 spots on top of each other and second group in center right has 2 spots.

Another Countryside Sunrise

One more HDR processed image. It is almost impossible to capture a decent sunrise without shutter bracketing at least 3 photos. For this shot I used 5 photos: Normal, +1.5, +3, -1.5 and -3 stops. For tone mapping I used Photomatix Pro v.4.2.

Time-Lapse Photography – First Experiment

Few weeks ago I have ordered intervalometer for my camera to try my hand at time-lapse photography. As is the case with most photographers that try this technique for their very first time, my first subject was moving clouds. I tried straight time-lapse and HDR time-lapse and was blown away how dramatic HDR sequence was! On second look I have realised how often I have seen HDR time-lapse clouds on television, especially in opening scenes for a golf tournaments. People that do not know about HDR photography just see great looking dramatic images without realising that there is quite a bit of computer “magic” involved. Photographers that are familiar with High Dynamic Range technique know how much work and especially time it takes to come up with a 10 seconds long sequence. Every HDR frame takes 3 images (normal, underexposed and overexposed frames) and every second of movie takes 24 frames.
24 x 3 x 10 seconds = 720 exposures. Yes, 720 photos for 10 seconds “long” movie.

This video is 4 seconds long and was taken with 1 frame evry 4 seconds.

HDR time-lapse.

Shooting Outdoor Close-Ups in Dark

Technique to separate main subject from busy background.

Few days ago I was shooting blossoms of our peach tree but I wasn’t entirely happy with the outcome – the background was way too busy. Cutting one branch and bring it in the studio wasn’t an option and neither was placing some background behind the branch with blossoms. One fool-proof option opened to me was to wait till dusk and shoot with flash. And that is exactly what I did and results were not bad at all. I know that I should have used tripod but this was more about technique then producing a book quality image. It is too late now to re-shoot the peach blossoms, they are way past their prime, but I will use this technique for more outdoor projects where I want to separate main subject from the background.

 

Original image shot in RAW, 100 ISO, 1/125 sec @f/5.6, auto-focus with pre-flash assist, off camera E-TTL flash with prism lens and diffuser, 1^st curtain, Flash Exposure (FE) -1 stop. For razor sharp image I would have to use tripod and strong light for focusing.

During RAW conversion to JPEG I adjusted levels and blacks so that background was more or less black.

After conversion I opened the image in Photoshop and cloned away the remaining background. Then I cropped and tilted the image. I was left with just a peach branch with blossoms against black background. Total time spent in Lightroom4 and Photoshop was less than 10 minutes.

Sunrise on First Day of Spring (Vernal Equinox)

When I looked outside this morning about half an hour before sunrise I thought that it will be just a regular partly cloudy day show. I packed my gear and headed out anyway and I wasn’t disappointed. What struck me, though, was that sky directly opposite to sunrise (due west) was more spectacular than actual sunrise once the sun got over the horizon.

 

Sunrise at 7:30

Western sky at sunrise at 7:39. Notice the long shadow of my tripod and a car. It is impossible not to have the shadows in a photo with the sun directly behind me. The shadows were about 75 yards long!

Stormy Clouds

This morning I was checking the weather radar on Internet and saw big storm coming. One look outside got me scrambling to grab my camera and head to countryside to get shots of some most incredible clouds that I have seen in a long time. Some actually looked like that a tornado funnel was forming. Interestingly enough all we got was rain and very little wind. As soon as it started to rain, all the clouds turned into a regular gray sky. I was lucky to capture them, they lasted only about 15 minutes.

Snow Shadow of a Tree

Yesterday we had most unusual weather that I have ever seen here in South-Western Ontario. It was a beautiful sunny morning with temperature hovering around freezing point. Then, within few seconds, no exaggeration, we got hit by a blizzard that reduced visibility to about 30 yards and covered lawn in a blanket of snow. Just as suddenly the clouds disappeared and it was sunny again. When I looked outside I noticed that all the snow has melted except in shadows. That is when I spotted the tree clearly outlined by snow. By the time I grabbed my camera, adjusted all settings and shot couple of frames the snow that laid where small branches were has already melted. Two minutes after this shot all the snow was gone. We got few more one-minute blizzards after that but I have not seen the shadows again. Still, I consider myself very lucky to see this.