Golden Eagle Photography Day

Today I went to my local forestry centre who do Golden Eagle photography days - this was a gift bought from Groupon for a mere £30 which turned out to be a great value purchase!

The day involved watching a short video/slide show of inspirational photographs followed by a morning session where the handlers simply took out the birds and held them while we all took photographs. Then after lunch we went back out and the handlers dragged rabbit lures across the ground while the Eagles swooped down and took the 'prey' which made for some great action shot opportunities. Then we finished off by holding the birds ourselves and taking a few pictures of that.

As I was unsure what the day was going to involve, I took along my two longest lenses and my ultra-wide lens (as it is my fastest). 
Upon seeing the example shots I immediately decided I was not going to have a great day photography-wise, I had left behind my kit lens which has limited zoom but fast autofocus, and my two longer lenses had to be used in manual focus really (the Sony SAL-55200-2 does autofocus but VERY slowly).

As it turned out I was greatly mistaken, the SAL-55200-2 was the perfect lens for the job, great enough zoom to get close up shots but also crystal clear focusing (my manual focus skills were put to the test but came out just fine). I never used the Minolta lens at all and put the ultra wide lens on briefly only for it's autofocus features whilst taking snaps of us holding the eagles.

I managed to get some really great close up images of the eagles heads in fine focus, some facing the camera images with their eyes in great focus (golden rule) and some great location shots when the eagles sat happily on branches, rocks and stumps throughout the forest, lake and bridge settings.

When it came to the afternoon and getting in-flight shots I didn't fare quite so well, I decided the best option was to focus on a specific point, set to sports mode, and as the eagle flew towards that point I just snapped away. It resulted in a lot of photos, in which the eagle flew from out-of-focus to in-focus to out-of-focus again as it passed through the point I had focused upon. The result was that I did manage to get a few in focus shots so I was happy with that. We had very limited opportunities and on one occasion my camera went into battery saver mode just as the bird took off - should I do this again I'd have got a few more good shots I think.

All in all it was a great day and great to get back into a bit of photography!

A few of my favourite pictures are below, the rest are available on my Flickr page: Flickr

Hooded Golden Eagle

Eyes of prey

Swooping in to catch prey

London Baby!

This week I was away in London on a training course with work, so I thought I would take advantage of the situation to take a few pictures out and about in London.

As I was travelling light I didn't want to lug my entire kit around so I opted to take just my standard kit lens and my new pancake lens with ultra wide angle converter. I was particularly keen to use the latter as I felt it would lend itself very well to city based photography. I also wanted to capture some night time-exposure pictures with the city lights, perhaps of tower bridge etc. - so I needed a tripod as well, I opted for my gorillapod as it is compact and easy to carry around whilst still offering excellent stability.

As it transpired I only had a couple of opportunities to get out and take photographs, both times were at night which was good for trying to capture the time-exposures I'd hoped for.

Night 1: I made my way to London Bridge, this allowed me to take shots of Tower Bride in the distance and the Shard also. I soon found that the 'night' mode was not going to produce the kind of photographs I was hoping for and switched to 'S'peed priority to enable me to set the shutter speed for a longer exposure. The tripod was a must for these shots obviously, but in hindsight there was probably still small vibration being transmitted from the passing cars into the bridge which prevented the very distant Tower bridge from being tac sharp in the shots.

I received some critique from the guys on the Fro Knows Photo forum of these pictures and one suggestion was to avoid the leading lines in The Shard photograph which leads your attention out of the picture - although at the time I had thought the light reflecting on this wall was nice I do now see how it affects your view. Both pictures also had an orange glow from the clouds & ambient light - something I addressed on night 2 when I took more shots. The best from night 1 are:

Tower bridge from London bridge

The Shard

Night 2: This time I decided to get closer to Tower bridge and get a better close up of it from the side bank. This also removed the risk of potential vibration from passing cars on the previous night. Having adjusted the exposure compensation settings I managed to avoid the orange glow from the clouds and was quite happy with the resulting pictures. 
The final one I took whilst stood on the bridge itself and managed to get a nice view down the road during a break in the traffic - I think this probably stands out as the best picture of the group! The best pictures from night 2 are:

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge

Again I submitted for critique on the Fro Knows Photo site and something which was pointed out was that the first 4 pictures would benefit from something in the foreground - I of course instantly realised that having spent so much time concentrating on getting decent time-exposures I'd forgotten one of the golden rules of what is essentially still landscape photography, and that is to always try and have something in the fore & middle ground as well as the background.

All in all I was happy with the resulting pictures and appreciated the critique as it gives me something to concentrate on next time I attempt similar shots!

Sony ultra wide angle converter

As described previously, I purchased the 16mm pancake lens so that I can use it with the 2 Sony converters which are available - the fisheye converter and the ultra wide angle converter.

My initial intentions were to buy the fisheye converter first and have a good play with that, then if I was happy with it I may consider the ultra wide angle converter as well.

As soon as I got my pancake lens I checked on these converters and found the ultra wide angle converter was no longer available new at such a cheap price which just reaffirmed my intentions to get the fisheye converter first.

However, as it turned out, the ultra wide converter came up for sale on ebay shortly afterwards for a potentially good price.

Sony ultra wide converter

I did a little more investigating into the lens converter to try and decide whether or not to place a bid and found very good reviews on various websites from people whose overwhelming opinion seemed to be that this was a great converter and well worth purchasing - a lot of people said that the picture quality through the converter appeared to be improved over just using the 16mm lens on it's own and that they wouldn't be detaching it from the lens - definitely good recommendations!As far as the achieved wide angle, the converter has a focal-length reduction factor of 0.75×, this means it takes the 16mm lens and effectively converts it into a 12mm lens which is a very wide angle lens.

I couldn't help but put in a bid and I managed to snap it up for a bargain price.

When it arrived I was delighted to see that everything was in order and the product looked in great condition (though was disappointed not to have the rugged protective case for it).

The converter attaches to the 16mm pancake lens in much the same way the lenses attach to the camera, line up the dots and twist into place - with a release button for removal. When not attached you would not know the 16mm lens was designed to have any attachments and equally when it is attached you could be forgiven for thinking this is just a single lens!

My first test was an indoors shot and I have to say the 2 pictures I shot with & without the converter attached are very different - with the converter attached this truly is a wide lens! The increased angle of view really does make a big difference and I straight away started thinking of lots of different pictures I am looking forward to taking with this lens / converter!

16mm pancake lens (left), with wide angle converter (right)

The first thing which sprung to mind because of the test shots I took was the video I had taken whilst on holiday laid on my lilo floating around the pool with just my feet in view - had I taken it with this lens it would have made for a much better picture with a lot more showing in it. I'm also looking forward to taking shots within a built up area - city shots I think would work particularly well with such a wide angle and I will be interested to see how landscape shots come out.

Altogether a great purchase I am really pleased with - I will still be buying the fisheye converter but that was always for novelty / fun purposes really whereas this converter I think will make for some really great pictures!

A note on lens statistics

Following a couple of previous comments I feel I need to expand a little on some of the lens statistics and more importantly what they mean. This is by no means an exhaustive guide to lens buying, more just an explanation of the basics as I understand them.

Ok, I currently own 4 Sony lenses which Sony very handily list their statistics on their site so I will use these for comparisson. 

SEL-16F28, SEL-1855, SEL-30M35, SAL-55200-2

The lenses are:

SEL-16F28 - my new 'pancake' lens, a prime lens which is compact and good for travel etc.
SEL-1855 - my 'kit' lens, a zoom lens and by far my most frequently used lens so far.
SEL-30M35 - my macro lens, again a prime lens so no zoom.

SAL-55200-2 - my 'telephoto' lens, much greater zoom than the 1855 so used more for long distance shots.


The statistics of these lenses are:

Product Code	SEL-16F28	SEL-1855	SEL-30M35	SAL-55200-2
Product Name	E 16mm F2.8	E 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OSS	E 30mm F3.5 Macro	DT 55-200mm F4-5.6 SAM
35mm equivalent focal lengthwhen used with APS-C sensor camera	24	27-82.5	45mm	82.5-300
Min. Focus (shortest distance from image sensor to subject); m	0.24	0.25	0.095	0.95
Dimension(Max. Diameter x Length); mm	62 x 22.5	62 x 60	62.0 x 55.5	71.5x85
Weight( approx.) ; g	67	194	138	305

The main statistics are:

Focal length - measured in mm. This is the measurement of the distance from the camera sensor to the lens glass and determines how wide an angle shot can be taken and also how much magnification the lens is capable of. While in older simpler camera lenses a 200mm lens would literally be 20cm long, modern optical systems use multiple lenses working in combination, which means that the light path can be shortened while still maintaining the same effective focal length.

A good description I read to explain this is to stand in a corridor with an open doorway at the end. The closer you are to that doorway, the more you can see of the room beyond. Compare my lenses on the table above and you can see that the pancake lens has the lowest focal length and therefore can see the most of the room beyond. 

Conversely, the telephoto lens has the highest focal length ranging from 55 to 200 depending on how much you zoom in with the lens. This is the equivalent of you standing right at the furthest point away from the doorway, you can only see a small amount of what is in that room.

Another analogy is that of pretending to be a pirate and looking through a tube. The eye end is that of the camera sensor, the other end is the end of the lens. The focal length represents the length of the tube - the longer the tube (higher focal length) the less you can see out of the other side.

The focal length also defines the magnification as well, a greater focal length = much greater magnification (similar to the pirate but using a real telescope).

That's great, but what does it mean for your pictures?

Traditionally with a 35mm film camera, the focal length of a 'standard' lens (one that pretty much takes a picture of what you see with the human eye) is approximately 50mm. If you had a 100mm lens, you would have approximately 2 x magnification, but only about half the angle of view.

Most digital cameras have a sensor that is smaller than a 35mm film frame, so these calculations can be performed by increase the focal length by x 1.5 so a 30mm digital lens is the equivalent of a 45mm on a film camera.

So for digital lenses, a 33mm lens is pretty much the human eye equivalent. 66mm is 2 x magnification but half the angle of view & so on.

Going back to my lenses, my 18-55mm kit lens ranges from nearly 1/2 de-magnification to 1.5 x magnification. Little wonder it is the main lens used as it has the most versatility around the 'standard' lens.

My 50-200 telephoto lens means it goes from a minimum of 1.5 x magnification to approximately 6x magnification. (& my Minolta 50-300mm lens extends to approx. 9x magnification)
Conversely my 16mm pancake lens is equivalent to 0.5 x magnification, so it fits quite a lot more into the picture than the human eye would.


F-stops - without going into a mass of detail about F-stops and how it is calculated, the F-stop figure represents the maximum aperture size the lens is capable of. This figure though is not a diameter, instead it is a ratio. The reason for this, if you imagine having a telephoto lens, it take less light to fill the lens when wide open than it does when at full zoom because the internal area of the lens is smaller. If this is hard to visualise, just image you were filling it with water, a fully zoomed lens has a greater capacity so requires more water. So saying that a lens had an aperture of 20mm diameter would still give different results depending on the internal dimensions of the lens.

Instead the figure is a ratio based on how many times the diameter of the aperture will fit into the length of the lens.

So, F2 means the diameter of the aperture will fit into the length of the lens twice.

F3 = 3 times and so on. 

What does this mean? Well, lets go back to filling the lens with water. If the lens is 50mm long, it only requires half as much water to fill it than if it was 100mm long.

The speed the water flows into the lens is restricted by the diameter of the aperture so the wider the aperture, the faster the water can enter the lens. If you had a 50mm lens with a 10mm diameter aperture, and you had a 100mm lens with a 20mm diameter aperture, then they would both fill at the same speed - so would both be the same F-stop. 

This is the key thing, the F-stop rating is a way of comparing different lenses capabilities. Regardless of the dimensions of the lens, an F2.8 lens is faster and therefore better at low light photography and usually gives sharper pictures, than an F3.5 lens. If you are looking for a specific type or size of lens you will see quite obviously that the lower the maximum F-stop rating, the more expensive they are! 

My new 16mm pancake lens is F2.8 compared to F3.5-5.6 for the 18-55mm kit lens, so the 16mm lens lets in more light which makes it a faster lens. What this means is that the aperture needs to stay open for a shorter time to correctly expose the picture, the less time the aperture is open for the sharper the resulting picture. 

Needless to say this also means the lens performs better in low light situations.

As I said, my 18-55mm kit lens is F3.5-5.6, this means that when the lens is 'wide open' at 18mm it has a maximum (lowest) F stop rating of 3.5, however when zoomed in to 55mm it only has an F-stop rating of 5.6, obviously when at 55mm the size of the area inside the lens is much greater so it takes longer to fill it with light.

The macro lens is F3.5 at 30mm, the same F-stop as my 18-55 at 18mm - so the macro lens is a much faster lens which is often greatly desirable for macro photography.

(for a fantastic full explanation of F stops, click here: http://www.uscoles.com/fstop.htm )

Minimum focus distance - this is quite self explanatory - measured in metres, this is the minimum distance at which the lens can focus (shortest distance from the image sensor to the subject).

My 18-55mm kit lens is 0.25, so the closest it can be to it's subject is 25cm
The 16mm pancake lens is 0.24 so pretty similar to the kit lens.
The 55-200mm telephoto lens is , so as you can see, you have to be further away from the subject in order to focus on it. 
The Macro lens is 0.095, so only 9.5cm distance between the image sensor and the subject.

I hope this is of use to some people, as said it is useful to aid in choosing lenses if you actually know what you're looking for. 

Another new lens!

Whilst investigating the Sony Macro lens, I was also distracted by another lens, the Sony 16mm Pancake lens. This is a prime lens, which means it has no zoom facility, it also is considerably smaller (length-ways) than any of my other lenses which compliments the compact size of the NEX-3 making it virtually the size of a compact camera!

Sony SEL-16F28 (taken from www.sony.co.uk)

Now brand new this lens is £200 so when I first saw it I dismissed it, not really seeing much point in it - but as time went on I started to see the appeal, not just of this prime lens but also the extra attachments which Sony have created - namely the fisheye and the ultra wide angle lens attachments!

Really, fisheye lenses are a bit of a toy, a bit of fun, though you can get some really creative results with them and they are of course great for recording movies as well (just look at some skateboarding movies to get the idea). I've always wanted one, always liked the look of them, but until now it's never really been an option.

The more I investigated though the more I saw the appeal of the ultra wide angle attachment for capturing great pictures in small spaces where you have no room for manouver or where you wish to cram in as much as possible such as outdoor landscape shots etc.

In turn, I realised the 16mm prime lens on it's own would give some degree of these benefits - I also realised that using this much shorter lens would be ideal to use it for a couple of things: Travel, and Sport.

Travel - because I take my camera everywhere, but sometimes it is just a bit too big & bulky to be carrying around with me at all times, a smaller camera would be easier.

Sport - lets not get confused with the sports action pictures taken with absolutely huge lenses, I'm referring instead to the ability to carry my camera with me whilst taking part in sports such as mountain biking and snowboarding. In both of these hobbies I see some pretty breathtaking amazing sights but am never really able to take pictures along the way. I would never dream of taking my NEX-3 with me for risk of damaging it or the lenses, but with the 16mm lens on it becomes so much smaller and compact it could potentially slip in my backpack no problem!

However along with the official cost of the 16mm lens being nearly £200, the pancake and ultra wide lens attachments are a hefty extra price so again I was put off. 

In the end though, I saw the pancake lenses selling second hand on Ebay for around about £100 and found that the fisheye and wide angle attachments were available new through Amazon for a mere £80 each - and I did have that Sony £30 cash back to spend on something... :)

I decided to go for it and snapped up a pancake lens from Ebay which arrived shortly after my holiday (all the way from Thailand).

My first thoughts after opening (& getting over the inevitable "will it work" concern of buying second hand) were just how small and light it is. Compared to the SEL-1855 lens at it's shortest this lens is less than half the length and certainly makes my camera more portable which as I expected will make it handy for travel.

Size comparison of SEL-1855 vs. SEL-16F28

After marvelling over the diminutive size of it, I then pondered the size of the front lens glass. My 18-55 telephoto lens has a large glass lens on the front of it, filling most of the 49mm diameter of the lens. The 16mm lens however has a tiny lens on it, very similar to the SEL-30M35 macro lense. The reason for this if you think about it is quite obvious, if you were looking down a tube through one eye (like a pretend pirate) you would see a lot more through a tube with a 50mm diameter end than you would through a 15mm diameter tube. The eye-hole diameter wouldn't matter so much because your eyeball is not 50mm diameter so can happily look through a smaller diameter eye-hole. 

I took a couple of pictures and was not overly surprised to see that the wasn't a huge amount of difference between the 16mm lens and the 18-55mm lens at 18mm. The 16mm lens did capture a slightly wider picture but that was about it - as expected really.

SEL-1855 (at 18mm) on left, SEL-16F28 on right

There is another benefit to this lens however, it has an F-stop rating of just 2.8 (compared to the 3.5 of my main kit lens) which means that it will be a more suitable lens for lower light situations and should produce sharper images as a result. I will test this over the coming weeks I'm sure!

Portugal

As my holiday to Portugal approached, I spent a bit of time preparing my camera bag and which kit I was planning on taking with me. I decided to leave the Minolta lens at home but take the Sony SAL-55200 telephoto just in case. I didn't anticipate much use for a telephoto lens whilst there but figured I take it just in case (as my camera bag had space for it!). I also took my macro lens and very glad I did as I got some of the bug pictures in my previous post. Then for everyday use my SEL-1855.
I opted to take both my Gorillapod and my tripod as well.

Every holiday differs and some just offer more photo opportunities than others do. This holiday was a very relaxed affair and we didn't spend a great deal of time visiting places so I didn't get a huge array of pictures - some of the activities I did such as scuba diving and visiting a water park meant that I couldn't really take my camera anyway.

I did find myself using the panorama mode quite a bit though, it really is a great way to capture a scene and I took plenty of landscape shots with it of the view from our villa and from the highest point in the Algarve. One or two panorama shots I took on the beach at Praia da Arrifana highlighted a bit of an issue with the panorama mode which is that when taking the pictures, obviously the camera stitches the images together but if all that is in some of the shots are moving waves then it struggles to match a moving target. The result is what would have been a beautiful picture being corrupted and useless. Sadly I didn't realise this had happened until I returned home and reviewed on my laptop.

Corrupted panorama

I guess there are 2 possible solutions to this, one is to always have something else (such as sand) in the picture for reference, the other is to move the camera through the panorama quicker to reduce the amount of wave movement.

Some of my favourite pictures from the holiday were:

Bird drinking - multiple times every day, swifts would dart over the swimming pool and take a drink mid-flight. I managed to capture this picture on one of the first days there but was determined to get a better quality image. The birds however seemed to have a different idea, whenever I sat there equipped with my telephoto lens they just stayed away - it must have been the camera which put them off because at other times they would fly down and drink while we were still in the pool!

Bugs - as already mentioned, my macro lens was used to full affect and I got a couple of nice pictures of the local wildlife!

Flower - just a quick snap of one of the flowers whilst I was hunting for bugs, the macro lens allows close up focus and I like the way the colours extend beyond the end of the image - I could imagine this as a canvas on the wall.

Tree frog - this little guy appeared one evening and whilst trying to get a picture of him he jumped onto my arm, at which point my wife took over photography duties and got this nice little snap of him!

Landscapes - as mentioned, I used the panorama mode to full effect to capture this great landscape panorama from our villa.

Pool panorama - another great panorama picture, this one really captured the full effect of our living / pool area as well as the view beyond. Just not possible without a panorama shot.

Water droplets - at first I took a picture of my daughter through the fountain but then took a faster shot to capture the water droplets (just as my daughter lost interest and turned away).

Monchique art - there were a number of decorated walls like this but this one just seemed to be perfectly framed by the 2 trees and my patient daughter happily posed on this one. I just really like all of the colours and the composition of this shot.

Dolphins - I took my camera along on a dolphin watching trip armed with the SEL-1855, zoomed in to the max I set to high speed repeat capture and just snapped away the whole time. I took a total of 90 pictures and maybe a quarter of them had reasonable shots of the dolphins, these were the best.

Bugs

As I said previously, I find macro photographs of insects very interesting, these creatures have so much more to them than we realise. So when a fly happened to land on my curtains one day while my macro lens was attached I took a few snaps - these were all hand held and the fly was constantly moving so I had little chance to do much in the way of focusing but the result was an interesting first attempt:

House fly

I then went on holiday to Portugal for a fortnight and whilst there I found lots of opportunities to snap pictures of a variety of insects. One of the biggest problems I faced was the fact that these critters simply would not keep still. Even using the autofocus and snapping away I struggled, particularly with the ants which ran about like wildfire! 

I did get a few interesting pictures though. The first is of a wasp which happily sat still for a  while and I was able to play with the depth of focus a bit to produce this result. I also managed to get this one decent picture of a soldier ant, though it's head is a little out of focus - I spent ages trying to capture pictures of ants, they were constantly running around transporting things but with their speed I really struggled. 

Wasp

Soldier ant

Another macro insect picture to add to the list, this grasshopper landed on our living room window and stayed put for a while - though it kept moving around to get away from my lens and was a little too high up making it awkward to do a great deal of focusing, I still managed to get a few shots showing the finer detail of it's body.

If you compare that to a picture I had taken some months ago of a grasshopper using my standard SEL-1855 lens you can see a clear difference:

I'm not 100% sure on the best approach going forwards, bugs which don't move (or not much) are the ideal subjects, but also I think I need to have a little play with my camera so I can have exactly the right mode set up ready when I am using the macro lens in order to get the best results!