Uploads from episa, tagged prague

Riverside Prague in Spring.jpg

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:32:03 -0700

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 55mm f/2.8N mounted with Zork. adapter. Taken on Gitzo Tripod at ISO 200, 1/1250 sec at f/5.6.

Panorama Prague river and castle with Zoerk PSA on Nikon D800E - 95 Mpixel picture!

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:36:42 -0700

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya A 150mm f/2.8 mounted on Panorama Shift adapter from Zoerk. Taken at ISO 100, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6.
This Horizontal Panorama is made from 4 pictures taken in portrait mode (3 pure horizontal shifts and 1 rotation to extend even more on the extreme left). This is made possible because the 75mm diagonal of a 645 medium format lens gives 32mm of additional space (shift) compared to the 43mm diagonal of a 35mm format camera sensor. This is why we can take 3 photos shifted (one with no shit, one shifted left, and one shifted right) and still be within the diameter of the medium format lens. Using this technique the stitching is quasi perfect with no need to crop due to loss of coverage in the upper or lower section of the image, usually created by a a curvy horizon when panning/rotating with a non perfect leveling.

The resulting picture is 95 Mpixel size (50MB Jpeg file). I exported a smaller size file on flickr (19.6 Mpixel - 22MB) to allow you to see some details. I attached a link to my dropbox folder:
www.dropbox.com/s/kkt87ezxu85wv3c/H-Shift%20Panorama%20Pr...

There you will see the complete original file of 95Mpixel resolution. It should give the goose bumps to those of you who are "pixel peepers" like me. :)
There you will be able to read clearly the time displayed on the church clock on the left side of the photo or how many sunshades there are at the terrace of a cafe in the upper middle part of the photo. It is impossible to see these details with the naked eye without the high resolution file.

P.S: the answer is respectively 11:32 for the time on the clock and there are 4 sunshades on the terrace.

Vertical Shift Panorama with Focus Stacking (Zork PSA on Nikon D800E)

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 10:35:44 -0700

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 55mm f/2.8N mounted on Panorama Shift adapter from Zork. Taken at ISO 100, 1/800 sec at f/5.6. For more information on the Zork adapter and what it does, check my extensive explanations at
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8604568576/in/photostream

This vertical Panorama is made from 2 Horizontal pictures. each horizontal picture is a composite made from focus stacking one photo focused on the lamp and another one focused on the church. Focus stacking and stiching was accomplished using Adobe Photoshop CS6. The overall resulting picture is the equivalent of a 56 Mpixel camera and has almost unlimited depth of field (from 2 meters to infinity).

Normally, extended depth of field - beyond the traditional closing of the aperture which has its limit due to diffraction beyond f/8 on D800E - is acheived with tilting the lens plane forward using a Tilt adapter. or a T&S lens called PC-E lens in Nikon portfolio. Well the same result can be achieved with a regular lens and focus stacking; it is not just for macro applications - which is the most popular use of focus stacking - but also for Panormas where we want for example that the picture to be focused from the flower in the foreground (2 meters away) to the mountain at infinity , for example.
I intend to use more and more this function of Photoshop ("File/Automate/Photomerge") that does both Panorama stitching and focus stacking automatically (it recognizes the content of the loaded files). The workflow under lightroom is easy as well:
- For Panorma stitching: select the 2-3 photos to be stitched, right click and select "Edit in/Merge to Panorma in Photoshop". Once photoshop is open, it is self explanatory.
- For Focus stacking: select the several pictures to be focus stacked, right click and select "Editin/Open as layers in Photoshop". Once Photoshop is open with all the photos as inidividual layers, highlight all the layers then select "Edit/Auto-Align Layers" then "Edit/Auto-Blend Layers". Once the work is done select all the layers with built in masks created automatocally, then do "Layers/Flatten Layers". Finally you can save the resulting image as a JPEG or TIFF as you wish and reimport it in Lightroom through the normal "File/import photos and Video" menu of Lightroom 4.

If you wish to combine Panorama stitching and Focus stacking and you do not have have specialized software like PTGui or Autopano, you can use Photoshop as I described above as long as you do not have multiple rows/columns to stitch. The results are really excellent. Just remember to do each action separately:
- first you do the focus stacking function to create the final images to be stitched
- then you use the created stacked images with the "Merge in Panorama" function to create the horizontal or vertical Panorama final image with huge depth of field.

I posted only a scale down 2MB jpeg file on flickr and cannot appreciate fully the breathtaking resolution and depth of field of the composite I created. However you can still see the details on the clock and on the lamp when viewing this photo at its maximum size in flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8603934110/sizes/o/in/photost...

The purpose of using a medium format lens on a 35mm DSLR is to use make use of the larger diameter of the medium format lens and shift it in any desired direction compared to the sensor of the 35mm camera in order to stitch the several images into a higher resolution file.
This is made possible because the 75mm diagonal of a 645 medium format lens gives 32mm of additional space (shift) compared to the 43mm diagonal of a 35mm format camera sensor. This is why we can take 3 photos shifted (one with no shit, one shifted left, and one shifted right) and still be within the diameter of the medium format lens. Using this technique the stitching is quasi perfect with no need to crop due to loss of coverage in the upper or lower section of the image, usually created by a a curvy horizon when panning/rotating with a non perfect leveling.

Morning Patrol over the river

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 01:08:55 -0700

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with Lens Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/2.8G VR and Teleconverter Nikon TC-17EII mounted on Monopod Gitzo using a Gimbal Head to track the bird in flight.
Taken at ISO 1250, 1/800 sec at f/6.3.
Post processing using Nik Software Color Efex Pro4, and Viveza2

The bird occupied 10% of the initial picture so this is a huge crop that introduces noise/grain. Although the final result is not suitable for a poster, it still is appealing to the eye for desktop background. I like in particular the reflection of the wings in the water mirroring the bird in flight. Had the river been still the reflection would have been more spectacular.

Take-off

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:29:20 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with Lens Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/2.8G VR and Teleconverter Nikon TC-17EII mounted on Monopod Gitzo. Taken at ISO 1250, 1/1000 sec at f/7.1

Pretty funny picture to see a heavy bird like this literally "walking on the water"

a Flight Ballet

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:13:57 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with Lens Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/2.8G VR and Teleconverter Nikon TC-17EII mounted on Gimbal head and Gitzo tripod. Taken while panning at ISO 1250, 1/800sec at f/7.1.

This couple was very far and I had to crop the image 60% to extract this photo. The sharpness of the AF-S 300mm f/2.8G VR is superlative and will accommodate use of TC and cropping.

Attractive Cafe - Prague

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:17:46 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 55mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/250 sec and f/5.6

No doubt that the beautiful and soft 3D effect produced by the mamiya lens is visible on this picture....

I really enjoyed shooting an entire afternoon with only two Mamiya 645 lenses mounted on my Nikon D800E (A150/2.8 and 55/2.8N). Bokeh, sharpness, tones, 3D rendering, everything is there and more...
Extremely difficult to focus manually without using Live view and magnification. To increase my keepers rate, I use also a Hoodman Loupe applied on the rear LCD in view mode.

Since I found few example on the internet of photos made with Mamiya 645 lenses on D800 or D800E, I decided to post many more photos than I usually allow myself (oen or two per week max to be very selective and remain interesting to follow). This time I decided to post more than a dozen at one time to illustrate the quality of this camera-lens combination.
Hopefully this will fill a search gap for future photographers looking for alternative lenses to match the resolution of their 36 mpixel camera.

Souvenir Shop

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:07:11 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/1000 sec and f/2.8

Promenade

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:02:41 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/2000 sec and f/2.8

Selective focus technique with pre-focusing at a certain mark and waiting for tourists to walk into it. that is the only sane way to get sharp picture with a razor thin Depth of field with Manual focus lens on high resolution DSLR

Fine Dining

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:08:15 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/640 sec and f/2.8

Point of focus was on the glass on the table.

Just One

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:40:56 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/2000 sec and f/2.8

Porn Fan

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:47:34 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 55mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 200, 1/500 sec and f/4.

An enthusiastic customer of the erotic store in the background must has signed the "guest book" with red paint at the back of the traffic light :)

Using an f/4 aperture I was able to isolate the red graffiti on the top left (back of traffic light) while still leaving the name of the store readable in the background.

Pause for a smoke

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:30:09 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/4000 sec and f/2.8

Quick Healthy Lunch

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:37:04 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/2500 sec and f/2.8

Hard Rock Cafe -Prague

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:28:03 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 55mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/400 sec and f/2.8

Surviving

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:29:06 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/3200 sec and f/2.8

Directions

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 10:03:01 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/1250 sec and f/2.8

Alcoves in Pastel colors

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:43:44 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 55mm f/2.8N mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 1000, 1/50 sec and f/2.8

for "Sport" Bars in Prague

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:17:37 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 55mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/4000 sec and f/2.8

Advertising Man

nobody@flickr.com (episa) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:01:52 -0800

episa posted a photo:

Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 mounted with Fotodiox Pro adapter. Taken hand held at ISO 500, 1/1000 sec and f/2.8

This man was advertising for a Thai Massage shop in the main street where tourists wander. He pro-actively accepted that I took his picture by showing his two fingers - a more encouraging sign that a single finger display :)