The Joys and Challenges of Yachting Photography

Photographing boats and races is another kind of obvious side hobby, and indeed you can read more on my sailing exploits and ponderings themselves at Lost Sea Soul. I have enjoyed taking shots of regattas but often yearned rather to be out sailing in those very regattas. Last weekend I had the opportunity to have my cake and eat it, being out in a RIB one day down the Norwegian "Riviera" and then crewing on a 12mR the other.

It reminded me of the challenges of both disciplines - team work, stregnth and wisdom on the one while a sense for a composition and wisdom on the camera side.

The biggest challenge in sailing photography to me is not having a water resistant camera. For others it is likely to be getting close enough to the action or being able to predict when the most exciting and interesting shots can be captured. The first is fixable with either a different camera system, Pentax and Olympus offering mid end weather sealed systems, while on the other, asking some spectators or race organisers what is going to happen can solve problems of where to stand on the shore, or where to go on the water in a motor boat to catch those shots.

My other challenge is not really my own- it is the percieved need for new fangled stuff all the time and how much more "obsolete" camera bodies are considered these days after they are but a few years old. When i started SLR 35mm photography, you would see a lot of older folk with good Nikons and Canons from the early 70s slung around their necks, seperate light meter round their wrists. There was also the OM revolution and the followers at Pentax and Ricoh. All before we went all "electronic operating system" and then much worse, APS film cameras were pushed onto the market to the detriment of photography in general. These days many hobby photographers think it laughable that I persist with a body launched 7 or 8 years ago, but as I stated before, it is way in excess of what was available to me in the 1980s.

Main system equipment aside, what do you need for a good day's yattin' phottin'?

Firstly you don't necessarily need a boat or loan of a boat. You do then need to be within reasonable distance of sailing, and that means either knowing that the racing is at least in part, going to come near land, or positioning yourself at a natural narrows where boats have to sail regardless. Also another alternative is as I found out, to use local route ferries or tourist boats when racing or other 'muster regattas' are on, such as over to the Isle of Wight, Kilcreggan on the Clyde, Syndey Harbour or San Francisco bay area. How I cursed not having a good camera on the way past Alcatraz when a rather infamous I 14 sailor, "The Captain" Came shooting past the "Rock" in his high performance dinghy, bright spinnaker resonant in the mute californian colours.

Lens choice, given that you have them. Firstly for dock side photting a 28mm eq zoom or prime is quite sufficient and unlike the wider end, does not distort perspective so much on yachts that you become very aware of the wide treatment. For example - 28mm eq

A typical kit zoom in the range 28-85mm eq ff, will provide for on shore images not only dockside, and passing boats close by on the wide end, but what I really personally like and that is "in context" shots of boats in their often beautiful or interesting seaside land- or town -scapes. At the long end you will get kind of cut off shots though of boats racing at distances of a few hundred yards, which are neither between having enough background to give context nor enough detail to be a photo of a boat. The same will be true of primes in the eq nifty fifty 50mm to portrait semi telefoto, but the added speed of a fast prime at 120mm to say 150mm can make up for lack of composition freedom in capturing detail shots when boats are near enough.

When I say detail shots, this is often in the sailing magazines close enough to recognise crew members, which helps sell copy or gives an otherwise anonymous top competition boat, a relevant human face, such as the instantly recognisable handsome profile of Sir Ben Ainsley. Alternatively, they can be technical shots, which show either nice detail on a wooden boat, the motion of the boat in the sea, or particular action or mishap sequences. In harbour the "wide to mid" zoom will suffice, but for shots at greater distances you need to go up to higher telefoto ranges for both detail shots, and whole boat shots when they are further away up the racing course.

At the telephoto end, I have looked at my own EXIF focal mm, and some other folks on and off the water. From the land, I use quite a lot of 300mm for boats sailing on their race courses, but once out in a boat I find that the shots are split three ways in fact:

Whole boat circa 85mm

cropped action in context 100-120

Close up of action and crew 200- 220

The last shot is a bit misleading probably taken at about 80 actually, because we could drive close to them since they had finished racing and were enjoying the spinnaker run to the harbour. But usually this type of close up would be on the race course, keeping a respectful distance at 200mm approx. More on positioning and courtesay later.

I find the longer end off shore is pretty unworkable above 220mm because you usually are bobbing about in a RIB or small boat, so framing shots becomes difficult as can even getting focus on the boat rather than fore or back ground points.  With f stops on my kit being lower, the shutter speed drops too low on programme, or the images get too dark on S, or worse, if you have forgotten auto ISO then it bumps up high.

I recommend using shutter prioirty at base ISO, there is usually more light than you think at first and shadows and quarter tones can be lifted in post. Shutter speed wise, I find that I cannot get sharp images by in large at under 1/320th and prefer at least 1/500th. Remember if you have a fast lens that this will be pushing the aperture more open and reducing your depth of field, which can be an issue for example here :

If you look closely, you can see that the depth of field is quite shallow and the nice, shiny chrome winches are out of focus, while the hatch is sharp. Be aware to too thin a DOF with boats.

On exposure and light conditions, the vast majority of boats white or light coloured sails and also a large number have white hulls these days, and even ye olde varnished hulls reflect a lot of light. Also as mentioned there is a lot more light around at sea because so much reflects up from the water. I prefer to use a polarising filter which reduces reflections and total, scattered light from the sea and therefore that kind of odd brighter blue in images from the sea. This helps with texture of the sea, while also helping tone down the white of hulls and sails allowing more detail to come out. White, blocky hulls and sails detract from photos IMHO and a polarising filter is a good means to vastly reduce this glare, while maintaining a balanced exposure.

Of course a digital optimised polarising filter reduces the scene by up to -2EV.  Alternatively a ND (neutral density) -0.5 or -1.0 EV filter can be used to achieve some of the effect, and also open the aperture up just a little more to get thinner DOF on very bright days, when you want to throw the background.

Once on the water, in a small boat, it is pretty desirable not to change lens because no matter how waterproof the camera is, when the body cavity is exposed, it is highly vulnerable to water, and salt water is so much more dangerous. Filters can also be fiddely to mount while bobbing about, which is another advantage of a polarising filter because you can vary the darkness or density by rotating it.  Also given my tips based on years of photting myself and recent EXIF checks on some 'pro' flickr images, it is best to have a zoom lens with a range of around 80 to 250mm, and not change lenses.  "Big Whites" or those "Bigma" long telefotos with sub f5.6 apertures, are the reserve of either land based photting or being on quite a substantial vessel where roll and spray are minimal for the same weather conditions.

Camera techniques out of the way, as with any sports photography,  or landscape photography if you like context as I do, knowing your subject and what is about to happen next makes the difference between " i took some shots at a sunny regatta" to the "wow, see what we captured!" Direction of light and time of day are important, with the shadow cast by the sails to one side of boat something to either avoid or take advantage of. For the non sailor reading this, generally speaking boats under sail go through three interesting 'states' and do a couple of interesting manoevres in terms of action beyond "boat heeled over on water"

1. Beating - this means the boats have their white sails closely hauled in, with often elegant curves on their trailing edges. They are sailing up towards the wind, so you can work out where they are going to be next, as they zig zag in that direction.

From the front of the boat, approaching you is the best angle usually, with the bow wave and crew being points of interest, and worth taking multiple shots at high shutter speeds to select the most interesting wave or crew shots.

2. Reaching - This is when boats cross the wind at about right angles, and for many boat types this is their fastest point-of-sail. Often racing boats will have spinnaker up, and out to one side. Sometimes this angle can put a lot of pressure on the sails, and the helmsman is on a knife-edge of being overpowered and spun round into the wind in what is known as a "broach", in spectacular fashion sometimes. One note is that the boats will be sailing fast away from where ever you are stationed.

3. Running - Here the wind is behind the boat, and the white sails are either pressed out, often like "goose wings" on either side of the boat, or on many racing boats, the bright spinnaker will be most prominent, out to one side of the boat. Given a good light direction, then this can make for spectacularly colourful shots, and also with a degree of shadow with back light, interesting semi silouhette shots can be had. Here the light was failing, and I had a polariser on a non WR lens, so this is how it turned out, a little dark and flat:

The manoervres of interest racing boats do are

1) Tacking their bows through the wind in order to zig zag up to the direction the wind is blowing from

2) Gybing - the opposite, swinging their sterns through the wind with it behind them,  and changing sides with the sails, often in interesting fashion with the spinnaker up.

3) Starting - Most boat races have a common mass start, so the boats line up and start all at once. In competitive fleets this means a neat line of boats which is amenable to a 28-35mm from the water. It can be very difficult to spot a given boat btw. It is the sprint, the most stressed point in sailing and crashes do happen.

4) Taking up and down sails (hoist and drop/douse). Usually racing photographers get shots of the spinnaker work as it is a coloured, interesting sail and involves a lot of team work on deck to handle up and down- see image above of a boat 'fishing' with its spinnaker, while the crew do their best to haul it onboard again after it was droped. But other sails can be just as interesting.

Other Equipment 

I am going to invest in a second weather resistant camera, most likely the Pentax K series with a single, WR lens the 18-135 (just the ticket as it covers all my usual focal lengths, and with the latest 16 and 20 / 24 mpx sensors without AA filter, cropping can compensate for lack of 300-400mm reach) , but for those of you maybe either with a water proof DSLR or not, a second waterproof 'tough' camera like the Olympus TG4 or a good water resistant mobile can be a good option, despite the fixed or short focal ranges- here a boat is handy to 'leg zoom' near to the action, while often tough compacts and mobiles have a nice do it all 35mm FF eq focal legnth. 

Weather jackets for cameras are a good idea for any DSLR camera on the salty sea, because salt is not worth the risk of getting into your camera- a single tiny grain will destroy a sensor or lens mechanism. No amount of being careful will stop a sudden wave splash reaching you on a small, open boat. A full waterproof diving box may be a bit excessive, but if you have many thousands of spondoolics in equipment, worth perhaps the bother. Water proof 'kayaking' bags are a good idea too, just taking a single camera 'snout pouch' bag as I say on a RIB (rigid hull inflatable boat ) or the like,m you dont want to change lenses really at sea.

Tripods are ok for cruise liners, but on a small boat or busy public ferry alike, you are better with a monopod to add maybe that one to two stop benefit in steadyness, while also synchronising with the hull's movement on the water, so at least cancelling out your own body's weather leg movements and getting you used to when you will have the subject in frame as you bob up and down. IBIS/ILIS andbest shot selection, will generally speaking be enough to compensate in light conditions at mid shutter speeds for the combined effects of your boats' movement, your body's movement and the subjects movement. 

"Eplilogue" in a non Police Squad sense 

I hope this has been of some use and inspiration to sailors in particular, to get out and take shots of their sport from a motor boat or even land. Use your knowledge of how races operate to position yourself for the best images, and decide what type of shot you are setting up for. Remember to get out of the shadow side of the yacht or course unless you are looking for silhouette effects that is. Take bursts of photos in manoervres, when boats cross each other or if you are trying for a close up 'people shot' -. Otherwise for 'in context' shots or general shots, position yourself and wait until the boat is at the sweet spot, and perhaps use an exposure bracket series if light conditions have either high contrast or very flat light.  Remember to just check that the camera is focused on the points of interest or tracking the boat well, the dof is not too shallow on the subject, you are using shutter priority at say 1/500th or faster, that you are not overexposing white sails and hulls or getting that unatural 'denim' blue from the sea.

For the non sailor, get to know the basics of sailing and racing and look up some youtube clips to understand what boats are up to and when is interesting to get shots. Being on land may severly restrict you if there are no racing bouys near by, but 'narrow' sounds, harbour entrances or peninsulas can get you close to the action. As can using a ferry or tour boat if you cannot persuade someone to take you out in a boat and spectate actively.

Remember that a RIb infront of a boat racing can be both a destraction, a potential collision hazard and casue a wave as you gvet out of the way which can slow a racing boat down,so keep the engine running keep clear by several of their boat legnths , don't make large waves near competitors or which will roll through the whole fleet as you blast off to thge next spot or home with your 'catch'.

The safest and best places for photographing a race on the water are usually just outside the triangular or in effect diamond shaped racing course layed out with three bouys, sometimes it is just two. The 'diamond' shaped racing area in a typical race round marks, is usually about 20 times wider than the start line, and often the start line is half way up or at the 'foot' of the course in relation to the wind blowing down the middle. Best, safe spots outside this 'diamond' are usually to the left of the start line by 30 meters or so, being just slightly ofrward of the bows when they gather and start; being at the windward mark, longest up towards the wind direction where the boats turn and often hoist spinnakers, and being at the converse 'leeward' mark where the boats sail with the wind behind them and usually spinnakers up, and then take them down and go back up to hauling their sails in and sailing in the typical zig zag fashion up wind. 

Other races work in longer distances following the coast sometimes or heading offshore. Typically these have an inshore start and finish line near land, the latter could ential much waiting if it is a long race with variable wind during the day. Also often an inshore 'harbour' or club house start or coastal course  will necessitate the boats passing a harbour wall, or an estuary mouth, and coastal courses often have to pass headlands or peninuslas and want to use minimum ditance to do so, so that is where they come closest to land.

A weather sealed camera system is really what to get if you are going to be on the water often or in rough water, and that is what I am investing in, before I explore the joys of on water yacht photting more!

What Next for DF , a Df ? what system next

You know I very nearly jumped ship from Olympus as soon as the Nikon D90 was on the market, and only the recession continuing to bite kept me away from that camera and a three lens set up.

However despite being bitter at Oly' for never making an E6 or as it may be an E8 and E700 now with the sony 16mpx chip, I do not regret holding onto my E450 and three lens line up. It has forced me to live within limitations of the camera while exploring my own new territories. For an entry level camera it has SO many features you do not get with CanNikon, and it is really neat in size. It gets mistaken for an OMD these days.

Although I dare say I could spend more time on late curtain flash  and some other little used stuff on the E450 it is now high time I moved on. I no longer see the challenges of getting some shots, rather the frustrations of ISO image noise, no IBIS and fairly slow glass even at f2.8.

I still love my E450 and have no intention of selling it, but what next?

Freds Needs

1) I need something like the LX100 or if there is a 1" sony chipped XZ3 . THis is not a replacement to a DSLR, it is a supplement to my general enjyment of image capture, and would be pulled out when my mobile currently is.

2) I need then another slightly more serious camera system

3) I want weather proofing for sailing and skiing

4) I want good ISO 3200

5) I want affordable glass which does the following

a) FF eq 24mm -400mm in two lenses, ie the same as buying the Zuiko 12-60/50-200

b) a compact prime either at eq 32/35mm somewhere or at 80 - 120 mm

c) A very compact pancake

d) some retro lens conversion

e) a market for second hand glass, with some people dumping it off!! LOL

6) IBIS then over the need for all lenses to be OIS

7) Video is becoming a must after this years blue grass festival and a sailing event. Why carry a camcorder and a DSLR like i did at the festival? Why not have the kids playing ball in HDMI? 8 mpx frame selection for stills would be cool in camera too, but can be done in post anyway.

8) Wifi is nice to have now c'mon it is a must these days

9) the consumerist in me wants to explore something new! Sad but true.

10) doesnt need wafer thin DOF, and does not correspondingly need to break the bank

Not far down the list and in combination with not spending the earth, then the WR points one way and that is the not exactly foible free, Pentax

But wait, the K50 is a stunner of a camera, ok not the latest video but Nikon APSc standard AF and ISO performance, and "kit" lenses which are WR and pretty much pro lenses of years gone by from Canon without a metal flange.   The rubbery look is actually starting to look retro, like some kind of 1992 EOS competitor that never was.

You could say though that I could do all I want with a WR version of the FZ1000, or I could go find some other MLILC system to suit, but you know, I often feel my oly is small in my hands !

Pentax has its limitations but really the "kit" glass is pretty specialist, sharp and the thing is it is NOT slower than the supposedly royal performance of the FT olympus lenses in f2 and f2.8. That equates to f 4 in APS-C, so hold up! Bokeh is fine, and then you have higher ISO to go beyond the exposure.  I dont subscribe to the concept punted of " total light", it is a linear relationship.

It is a big jump in size though, so I will need to go get touchy feely. The other big deal is that Pentax cameras depreciate like hell when a new model comes out, as the stores sell off the k30 right now for example. They are a bit quirky, like olympus in FT days, so some just fall away because their CaNikon flocking mates take better shots than they can, or just slag them off. Others get pretentions for full frame of course. and then you dump the whole system on the market to raise the deposit and first three payments on an FF with two lenses.

First purchase is not a DSLR no matter what, enthusiast compact zoom cameras have come so far that now you really have choice at 300 euros to 1000 Euros. The most exciting is the LX100 but the best value is the XZ2, presumably an XZ3 is on the way. Then you have CaniSony erm, yeah those two, and Leica for some more cash and then the p9000 from NikoNikon ahem, yeah.

Sad as I am I still get excited about the E450, but also fall back into stopping myself and thinking, will there be camera shake? will there be any Bokeh or enough so POST can auto select the subject for laying on blur? Basically the E450 will not blow-away enthusiast compacts any more, used mediocrily a canon G series could eat it three years ago. Still it makes great images and will be in the family for years to come what ever I get next.

Olympus Leave A Generation Behind....no DSLR, No Play

My little foray into the LX100 and wish list for mFt are kind of side shows to what is creeping up on me.

It is not for me that my DSLR is out of date, a 2010 model. If we had no digital and it had not been stolen and divested then my two body OM system would have been serviced and used today, I did not like AF when it came out and get frustrated by it now.

My problem is that I am finally outgrowing my Olympus E450, I have gone to many of the edges of its performance envelope and come back happy, but increasingly frustrated.

I was set to upgrade through first the swd 12/60 and then a new body and the 50-200 but the E5 was a bit of a too little too late from the company who obviously had their eyes set on bigger gross margin in the PEN series. Okay you could do a really good travel pro set up for under 4000 euros or dollars but  then you just were not really getting a pro level camera.. Then the D90 blew it away, all be it without weather sealing.

Olympus have tried with the OMD EM1 to put on chip PDAF as we predicted so that it would function with the expensive glass. But wait, I dont have the glass and it does not work ALL that well anyway. Also the OMD has less than great ergonomics for me. Yeah, small light and weather proofed.

Given the f stop equivalent of APS-c for the fast lenses is about f3.5 then you start to see that DOF control is still lacking in the mFT system for the price of those rather extortionate fast lenses, especially the new zooms. There is no legacy glass to call on which will work acceptably.

Surely Olympus should look at the figures and just see if it is worth putting the tooling out to Thailand OEM and getting the 16mpx sony chip into the E5 body and making a cheaper non articulating lens version also with WR to compete with the only other sub 1000 usd with lens system, the pentax K50?  Alas no. OMD sells in torrents, PENS in deluges so sating the tiny appetite of keen E series users is.

Actually I dare say you could do a whole load of tests and conclude the K50 with its two base zoom lenses f3.5 are actually better than the E5 and the 12-60/50-200mm at well under half the price. So olympus would be making a new system which is likely to be twice as expensive as its main rival in quality, with the only advantages being size/weight and glass investment assets from before.

The really irritating thing for me wanting to upgrade is the fact that so many Olympus users ARE enthusiasts. There are not the droves of CaNikoSon where there is a good second hand market and people often just want rid of stuff they got as presents, or see as no longer trendy or just not used. So Oly have held their value of the dearer glass. 400 euros for the two serious first lenses each, the 50mm macro and the 14/54 Mrk II both of which will be five years old or more, and both of which will have been well used by said enthusiasts.

As with Olympus OM glass and all the Tamron - sigma OM mounted guff from the 80s, even a good enough lens fantastic for its day will loose any value. In fact holding on to them just too long means that suddenly, suddenly everyone wakes up to see that the world has moved so far on from your original system that it is obsolete. Worthless.  The value of putting SWD as a new or used purchase onto EM1 is negligible , you are getting an oversized, over priced, bad deal.

I have seen one 14-54 and one 12-60 bundled in with a Exxx hundred series camera and the kit lenses, for around five hundred euros, but you know what, a five year old lens which has the E5 as the latest usable body is not worth that. I would pay 700 euros for the two SWD zooms, not a penny more and they would have to work.

Olympus Blues ....Are the Greens and the Shakes

After a bit of a break from taking photography seriously - a bit unfocused if not diffuse - I have been using the E450 for more or less snapshots and I have been with the family all the time this summer so the "better " more thought out shots have been actually compromised into being ever so slighty better but often lacking.

So this summer for the first in four years of E450 joy, I produced no signature portaits of the kids and no perfect landscapes.  In fact: Quite a lot of mediocre results due to various factors, mainy of course concentration, but also some limitations of the camera: My main bug bears are then:

1) camera shake / movement blur
2) using too wide an angle
3) composition needing cropped which could have been in camera zoom or "shanks pony" zoom/ shifting my backside
20m
3)b) titled images needing rotating and cropping out good composition
4) Olympus Greens

On the latter, the green,  green grass of home is ever so slightly too green. I guess this is because olympus have chosen to optimise their system into producing stunning sky and sea blues and flattering skin tones (in contrast to panasonics crappy jpeg engine). I shoot only jpeg Large Fine now because without a full photoshop investment and a lot of time on my hands, olympus have hard coded the best jpeg conversion chip in the business and i cannot do better.......except for those garish lawns and hillsides.

I was a bit taken a-back by olympus having a vivid setting as factory default but more disappointed that "natural" still produced garish greens and rather flattering skin tones are more apparent. Reds and blues become more realistic thought.

The fix for images with a lot of green, such as lawns or grassy summer mountains is to set the camera to "muted" which suddenly makes the greens very natural and even adds depth and texture to grass details.

Just remember muted will give rather dowdy blues, yellows and reds while also losing some flattery in skin tone.

On the green issue i coud advise someone who is clued up and who has lightroom, corel 64bit or photoshop to then shoot raw and adjust per "keeper" shot first, then running a batch conversion on the series from the shoot. I would rather be behind the camera on location than in Post personally.

On being behind the camera, this brings me to point 3.

The main draw back with the earlier olympuw E series cameras through to the latter day last of the 10mpx my dear old 450 , pre E3 /30 ,was the small view finder. The OVF gives less than full view of the actual chip frame size and is small and difficult to use with glasses. I often find I am trying to catch my kids in full flight and at the right moment, head out of camera ,and i more or less end up shooting with a "blind" eye to the actual composition TTL.

This leads to most often shots which are too wide, shots which are tilted badly off plumb or zoom shots which are cropping off limbs.

For kids-in-action shots there is just going to have to be more praqctice in setting up and knowing what focal length will work best. CAF focusing in ljive view is too slow, but can be useful for candid shots of people at ease. Also a better eyecup is probably available for spectacle wearing clots like me. This then covers two.

I think i need to go back to looking at some posed, stock library family shots etc and get a feel for composition and then fire off lots of frames when i feel the golden moment is in there.

So no quick fix there, only a back to the basics, experiment and experience. At least i stand inspired as i have hardly lifted my olympus to eye this year!

Finallly the real bug bear for E450/420 and I suspect many other non image-stabilised E series cameras: low shutter speed .

Programme/ Auto mode in Olympus favouritises aperture wide for faster shutter for the same exposure. This is okay if you own the faster, over price f2.8 glass wear, but for the vast majority of we "hundred" series owners we dont own, and we cannot just go over to standard shutter priority and dial in because we have poor non base ISO. We shoot ISO200. Or can we?

Well we have had the sun here and i have bet on 1/320th on S mode as often as i remember to set the camera up. I then shoot even -0.3 a lot of the time to get nice saturation and further more I have been using a polarising filter all summer, whipping it twixt the two kit zooms it fits. The thing with the E series is that you can pull detail and colour out of the three quarter tones into the shadows, but the quarter tones are often poor and the highlights clip in.

So here I have dozens of S images and a good few high light range images which can be lifted, but you know what? ? I like underexposed landscapes and people shots and town or boat shots because it kills off blocky highlights and adds depth with heavy shadows which have good gradation into them.

My investment then for the end of the summer with no work contract for August yet, was a half price monopod which is a full 1669 mm extended ,almost eye height, which i will experiment with to see how much this improves my camera shake issue to free me up for A priority and low light shots.

I am inspired to do a blog based on the very theme post shooting. Watch this space.

What Makes a Good Picture?

I was offered the chance of lecturing in photography to sixth form college media, design and visual communication students and I wondered where I should start in talking about true image qaulity, not just the pixel peeping IQ of the talentless technophiles.

I came upon a kind of Venn diagram as a way of showing how the various forces interact with the "sweet zone" where they all overlap.

<I chose the following as you will see as three spheres or you could think of them as axis too, where a single photo has a "plot point" where it falls in relation to the three poles.

As you see I have chosen to represent the sweet zone as the center where all three converge but also where composition and "take out" feeling or message converge because here you may not start with a technically particularly good photograph.

This venn my friend ! It is aimed at when you are out taking shots, on a shoot, and what you should be thinking about when you are preparing for a shot, and what you may want to experiment with.

Technical is all about exposure and focus, but also you can include some post processing improvements: for me in as an E450 user, this means "Pushing the negative" like old days, shooting a little dark at a lower ISO 200/ 400 max and then pulling out detail in the shadows and altering the overall exposure in post'.

Composition revolves around two main concepts- does the photograph have a distinct subject which should be the emphasis of what you want to capture and convey? Or is there a wider composition such as a landscape, a street scene, a pattern in nature or a real Brugel-the-Elder image of the masses ? This is worth a blog in it's own right, in this blog then we concentrate on Subject emphasised images.

Are you then achieving an overall artistic feeling or a particular message you want to convey? Or have you found something new? Has post proc' editing revealed something, such as close up details, high-tone or low-tone, which you could integrate to your setttings and composition in the field  or studio ? This is worth endless bloggs - - as many as there are photographers and photographic shoots! 




You can also use this as a wheel: At the top of the wheel you have a simple check that you have at least the camera on a standard P setting or your preferred aperture or shutter priority. This is not taken for granted! My E450  camera holds the previous sessions software settings and at the moment that has been on firework and candle where Oly's art filters actually surpass my own manual and post processing attempts!

You can actually leave your last shoot by setting the camera to your preferred "Base Settings" to steel a rig tuning term from sailing- this is a good discipline. Or for example if you have a fast lens on ( f2.8 or faster) then you may want to set up aperture priority, max open aperture or fast shutter speed on S - if the camera has good-acceptable  high ISO performance then you may want to set this on AUTO - some cameras allow you to limit the range it hunts in, but this in most cameras means that it will go to ISO 100 in bright conditions and 1600 in dark.

Alternatively of course you have the scenario of the day, shoot or moment in front of you and you want to go through a quick sanity check of the best forseeable settings you then dial in.

Here I have split  the arrow  up because there are a series of relevant settings you have to double check to establish the technical basis for your shots : you have of course shutter as a real key here I will come back to, but if you are hand-holding on a non image stabilised camera then you need really 125th of a second absolute minimum for still subjects and 300th for moving subjects as a rule of thumb.  This means either selecting shutter priority and on my camera as above, AUTO iso or having a check of what the camera is offering you in shutter speed on P (programme).

The next is to think of the aperature and the type of depth-of-field you will be achieving with the lens: a fast sub f2 lens will require more careful selection of focal points on your subject and you may want to focus-bracket (some but very few cameras have auto focus bracketing  , alternatively you can use Live View focus peaking to show what areas are in focus on more modern Olympus offerings etc)

Here you have a scenario: taking a shot of a moving sports car on a shower ans sunshine day with the Olympus Zuiko 50-200mm f2.8 SHG lens on any E series camera except the newest E5 for this arguement.

1) Shutter- you will want to use shutter priority. Given you have cloudy and then sharp light conditions, if you are happy with ISO 800 then set this as a limit in AUTO or be prepared to post process darker images. 1/1000th up-over which will be placing you on max aperture which then of course affects DOF ( depth of field)  as does the telephoto length.

2) This lens has very fast focusing but on a sports car it may chose the wrong point and this lens is a PDAF optimised Sonic Wave Drive focusing which means that it will not track the subject and may miss focus on background in particular. Also you have the DOF issue with your chosen focal length- see below in composition.

So now you have a couple of options: a try and manually track the car and shoot - which should be okay on a shorter end at equiv to 100mm on a 35mm camera of old- a portrait legnth likely to be capturing the whole car on a fairly level race track.

However at the high end of magnification on the zoom,  when you are maybe going for a cockpit and driver shot, at equiv 400mm (200 maximum on the lens) then you may want to prelock the focus - you can experiment luckily with the beauty of digital cameras now- in two ways -

a) half holding the shutter- this is fine, focus on the piece of track you expect the car to run onto which should be fairly predicable and as the car approaches having second guessed this, fire off a series of shots ( oh you will want to have multi burst shooting selecting in settings- maximum frames per second upon shutter release until you remove your finger!)

You will want to select the centre point only in the PDAF focal menu

b) olympus hides a little focus lock on the AEL/AFL button which takes a bit of finding in settings and is really annoying if you leave it on BTW! However this gives you a hands free way of pre-locking the photo- it works the same as half depress but you use the AEL/AFL button / function when you have the point you want and then it is held until you press the button again.

The latter overcomes some of the issues that olympus has versus the superior Nikon DSLRs for example- olympus E-series  lens-camera systems can hunt and be too slow or select a point long in the distance.

Olympus really missed a simple trick for all their lenses which could have been a system update or integrated to the last few of E series cameras - E30, E620, E450 and E5: Focal Range Locking - which would limit the hunting on SWD and the Contrast Detect Optimised lenses to a set range and fire off a default shot mid range if nothing focuses.

The whole area of focus bracketing and focal range locking is very under developed in cameras IMHO especially for sports photography. Half release is of course a no-brainer for maybe 95% of enthusiast and pro' cameras  situations, but there are especially sports,macro, wild nature and street people photos which could benefit greatly from such in camera features.


4) Now you come to composition and that in this case relates to the zoom magnification and what you want to have in the frame. Luckily motor races tend to have warm ups and many tens of laps so you have time to experiment, but unluckily today you have vastly varying light conditions.

Composition here will be a lot about what your own preferences are, but you may want to convey more of the speed and drama. Back to the drawing board? Do you want a panning - blurred effect ?

5) You then want to consider what effects and artistic impression you are getting and if you are capturing what you want to from the action: which is just that- are you just freezing the cars in a non dramatic way, as if they are just toys arranged on the course?

Do you want to run off a hundred panned shots with driver cockpit- helmet as the main subject content of the photo? Do you want to separate out the back ground more by using exposure or angle ? eg a high key image where you white out the sky by using a low angle on the subject as the cars maybe descend a rise.

Aha, here comes in a composition basic- no zoom lens will get you into the best spot to compose your photo from - you have to get yourself there, and as above the DOF at the longer telefocal end may influence your choice of stand point and of course lens: you may want to back up to achieve hyperfocal distance on your subject, or move in to blur background-foreground relatively more.

Appraising Your Test Shots from "Brand's Hatch" Racing Day Shoot

Most likely you will encounter two or three issues with your first test shots today

1) Boring Composition
2) Technically Poor images
3) Poor Figure-Ground Separation
4) Lack of Artistic Merit or Relevance to Objective

1)  Boring Composition : I covered  this above so read back if your images are "so what!?" : it relates very much to the composition diametry- you either have a complete composition scene- in this case the whole field of cars, or maybe the cars and grandstand, that is to say the atmosphere: or you have the subject in which case you want to consider frame composition by zoom,  post proc' cropping and figure-ground separation most of all.

2) Technically Poor Images : This is likely to mean out of focus, blurred by low shutter speed or camera shake in this scenario of a day's shooting at the grand prix. Also it will mean that out of maybe 200 shots you have not framed the action correctly and you have cut off interesting parts of the image, included too much junk in focus, or worse, cut off the main subject.

Alternatively you may have good composition and good sharpness but poor overall exposure and subject-background isolation.

As this is racing a classic shot is the panned shot, and you may have selected the wrong shutter speed or you are composing and shooting wrongly or you need to run off many more frames to get best results.  There may be a surprising crop into a nice blurred action you did not expect to find in post, but adjusting for the day and your vantage points is the best option when you can take many shots as the race is in dozens of laps.

Many technically poor images on first appearance can be improved in post processing, or in this case, on in time for the next lap: Taking post proc' on those 200 shots you have:

a) Cropping into the action. Zoom in around and try cropping the hell You may need to add a dramatic effect such as monotone or high grain, or single colour pick out to make the crop work because you may be going into a "gainier" image ie really getting into pixel prominence or noise being more evident from high ISO images, or you want to achieve better figure-ground separation.

b) Blurring further! You may enhance the speed by blurring the subject more and do a post' proc panned effect for example.

c) Isolating the subject out by various effects: you may have cropped down to the look on a driver's face but in Olympus land the DOF is likely to be including the coweling of the engine and maybe even the crown behind are not as nicely out of focus in the Bokeh you may get from an FF:

c ) i) here you can isolate by blurring- using a mask or just freehand in post proc' as blogged on before

c) ii) or altering the exposure - the kind of reverse of all that hyper-dynamic-range fad : you constrict the dynamic range ! In other words you adjust either adjust the whole image such that the subject stands out more by utilising a high key or low key effect. Or you mask as for blurring.

c)iii) altering the colour over all or in selective masked sections: This could be very effective in motor racing- a monotone image may reduce the colour pollution in an image which portrays something of drama - the eye is lead naturally to the action. Alternatively you can mask off and selectively colour as has been trendy since Schindlers List!

4) Lack of Artistic Merit or Not Capturing your Objective

This comes back most of all to boring composition, but also to a combination of the above. Back off here though- do you want to actually capture the whole atmosphere and drama of the day? Can you take shots of the pits with the expression on drivers or mechanics and team-manager's faces ? Or the crowd? Individuals or a whole mass of people who are focused in awe at the cars or celebrating on the chequered flag?





Recovering On the shoot:

You may then come back to run off some shots on the next lap which give this improved effect in camera-

i) cropping ? - move closer or use a longer focal length, put a longer lens on. Take more shots on the subject you want to get- I suggest a) interaction between several cars 2) single car action  3) Driver close up

ii) figure ground separation ? - move lower for example to isolate against the sky, or higher to isolate against the tarmac or grass or banner boards. Use the highest apertures and the longer focal lengths, backing off if you need to in order to get the right isolation of subject. You may then also experiment with for example spot AF, low key, high key or manual adjustments by wheel turns from the programme mode or  fully manual .

iv) capturing an artistic feeling: the classic is of course a panned shot where the subject  - car or driver close up - is acceptably sharp while the back ground is panned out to a blur. You maybe only need to be down at 1/200th of a second to maximise the combination of panning, capturing and being able to take several shots in the second or two "window" you have to track the car. Alternatively you may want to use zoom blur but on the SWD lenses I do not know how this goes!

Other classic things are to shoot in mono and single colour retouch: You can convert all to mono later, but in camera it will let you see which exposures are most dramatic and technically acceptable as well as how much the composition may be improved by shooting mono and removing colour- pollution.

Other treatments would maybe to focus on portraits and groups of people shots rather than the racing itself.

Another basic approach could give very big artistic and dramatic feel: by getting lower and using the sky to separate the image, lending itself to high key images with dramatic over exposure and good subject isolation. This is most appropriate if you can get a shooting angle up towards the crest of a hill. The alternative "low key" is to have a high vantage point and use the tarmac to isolate out the subject.  On this point, you can then use the lponger end of the 200mm SWD SHG lens to compress the images, where cars appear closer together and this is very effective when combined with the two vantage angels, lieing down low and semi ariel in particular.

In the cold light of the day after or evening pouring through the hundreds of images, you may get your biggest learning points. However out in the field, get your camera into the shadow of your coat over your head and start to check the technical IQ of the images on the camera screen, or tablet if you are on a wifi enabled system; and see if you have sharpness, any nice crop potentials, or if you have acheived good panned shots, and think about the over all composition and exposure.

In the E system cameras bar the E5, you tend to be able to save an under exposed image more than an overexposed image, so you can play with shooting faster and darker or avoid high key.

In our example of cars moving at up to 220 mph you luckily have hundreds of photo-opportunities but don't get blazee. Are you capturing good shots? Are you near enough? What is going wrong technically ?

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I hope in this little blog to have stimulated thought and given a simple three-axial tool to help with your photography and your post processing.

It ran right into a perfect example for the E series Olympus DSLRs with the classic 50-200mm SWD SHG lens and this then illustrated my points very well by in large.