San Francisco At Night #2

From Baker Beach we moved but a short distance to the headlands right above. This gives a "look down" sort of view onto the bridge and is a location I'd like to go back to when a) it's not blowing a gale and b) there's some fog to soften things down and make for a more interesting feel to the place. Even so, it was a worthwhile stop, even if the strong winds made getting a clear shot somewhat difficult. And yes, this is all somewhat of an excuse to try and explain why I'm only posting the above picture, made by zooming the 70 - 200 mm lens while the shutter was open. I have some others I may get round to working on but nothing really "grabby".

San Francisco At Night

As duly mentioned last week, S and I went up to San Francisco on Friday evening to do a night-time photography course. The schedule called for a 6 pm start at Baker Beach and from there to shoot 4 or 5 locations in and around the city, ending up back at the starting point sometime after 1 am.

I haven't yet processed all of the pictures I came back with, and that's despite taking fewer than normal thanks largely to the extended exposure times making that decision for me! And as always, from even a cursory glance at those I did take then I now see all the pictures I should have spotted instead of the ones I actually took. Sigh. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile and instructional session, well organized and run by the Aperture Academy in Campbell.

Background now duly set, the above was from the beginning of the evening, taken on Baker Beach. We again found ourselves out shooting in the midst of strong winds, a problem magnified five-fold at the next stop! Still, at 7 pm it wasn't yet too cold on the shoreline and the wind did at least move the tops of the waves around to provide a bit more visual interest.

Others, though, are clearly made of hardier stuff than I, including the large naked bloke who was wandering around in and out of the water. He seemed harmless enough, and indeed was quite chatty to some of the female course attendees, but judging by what was being displayed, I'm not sure he had much reason to be parading it all around (though I'm sure he'd just claim it was all down to the cold weather.)

San Francisco, eh? Tch.

BMW Runflat Blues

Those of you residing in the Bay Area will doubtless have noticed just how bad the pot holes have been on the highways and byways of Silicon Valley this year. Not only are there more of them, but they have been deeper and more aggressive than ever, leading to an interesting phenomenon - the canny commuter. Those of us driving the same roads everyday soon learn where the really bad ones are and hence we'll steer round them. It's easy to spot the locals, therefore, because they are the ones weaving back and forth in their chosen lane, for all the world looking as though they are playing some weird version of Frogger. And just like Frogger, mistakes have consequences, especially when you venture outside of terra cognita.

A couple of weeks ago, we hit a huge pot hole somewhere between San Francisco and home, I think it was, with the kind of thump that has you crying out in sympathy for what the poor offside front wheel just went through. When stopped, I jumped out and took a quick look but didn't see anything immediately amiss. With a sigh of relief, we headed onwards ...

Fast forwards to Monday of this week and the Beemer was in the garage for a check up, mostly to see why it was low on coolant. Ultimately, no particular issue was found on that front but while waiting for the dealer to open I did notice a large bulge that had developed in the sidewall of the offside front. Hmm, don't like the look of that. I then went round to inspect the other front tyre and saw a weird wear pattern had developed on the outside shoulder. This wasn't going to be good, which in a garage translates into "that's not going to be cheap, sir".

Despite being runflats, and hence having stiffer sidewalls than normal tyres, that pot hole had nevertheless comprehensively broken that tyre and ruined the suspension alignment, thereby buggering its rubbery chum on the other side. You know where this is going, right? Low-profile runflats; German; dealer has your car up on jacks ....

4 new runflats (rears were anyway getting low after 26,000 miles), suspension alignment and taxes ran me $1,800. Gulp.

If you reckon on how many other drivers that hole must have caught out, it would probably be cheaper for us all to chip in for its repair, thereby saving California the problem of finding enough loose change down the back of CalTran's sofa in order to pay for patching it.

No wonder I cried out at the time - it was just a practice run for receiving the eventual bill. I guess I never was much good at video games, Frogger included.

Heads Up

Just a warning - off to do some night shooting this weekend so there's a fair chance that this will continue to look like a photo blog for a bit longer yet. However, on the plus side then it's almost time for the American Le Mans series to roll into Laguna Seca at the end of the month so by June at least you'll get a break from the landscape/cityscape shots!

Canon 1D Mark IV: An Update

Given that I've been posting shots from the Mk IV for a while now, I thought I'd therefore take a break here and provide an update on impressions so far.

Just to be clear at the outset, this is not a technical review; frankly, it's nothing other than a set of subjective notes based upon my own personal experiences with the camera, set against the sorts of things I like to shoot and how I like to shoot them. So there. And now, on with the show.

Handling: compared to the 20D it is of course heavier but actually not that much, and really once you stick a decent sized bit of glass on the front then the difference is much smaller than you first think. Compared to the Mk III the physical feel is all but identical, though that's not all to the good as will be covered later.

Reliability: no issues so far in that department. I've run a couple of thousand shots through it so far without suffering any physical hiccups. Along similar lines, one of my reasons for going to a 1 series body was to get away from the curse of dust always collecting on the sensor, and so far that goal, too, has largely been satisfied. I did get a few specs show up while in Death Valley but having cleaned those off then things seem to have stayed spot-free since.

Image Quality: With the caveat that I've done very little at ISOs higher than 800 then I've been very happy indeed with with results. Firstly, straight out of the camera images have better colour, clarity and presence, and hence require less processing in order to get close to what you want the final result to be. Secondly, the extra pixels mean that you have more leeway when cropping before image quality degrades. Thirdly, files take sharpening very well - at least for screen viewing - but I've yet to print many Mk IV shots so I'll reserve judgement a little on what works vs. what doesn't in that area until I have some more experience. Lastly, image noise is very well controlled. At the per-pixel level, it's comparable or better than a Mk 3 and up to a stop better than a 20D, but the extra pixels add about another half stop to the first comparison point and a full stop to the second. In short, forget about it. Noise isn't an issue: this sensor is better than film and perfectly usable up to 1600 without you having to give it much of a thought.

Features: There are a slew of new capabilities added to the Mk IV but here I'll concentrate on the things I've found useful. Starting at the top, I am now a devoted fan of live view. Before trying it then I was sceptical to say the least that it was worth all the attention it has drawn. I have other cameras that are mirror-less that of course use the same basic approach and frankly always missed the viewfinder option. However, when doing landscape shots or for night shooting then I now default to live view and rely almost solely on the screen on the back of the camera. For landscape work you can place the camera in hard-to-get-at locations, very close to the ground for example, and yet are still able to compose, meter, focus and shoot without having to contort yourself to find a place where you can look through the viewfinder. For night shooting you can use the 10x magnification capability on live view in order to focus, a revelation to me and something that on its own makes this technology all worthwhile. Bliss. Live view is now a regular part of my shooting and I'd very much miss it if I had to give it back. And along with live view we of course also get HD movie recoding. I will get round to testing this at some point, I promise, but not yet. Try me again after ALMS at Laguna later in May! Other stuff? Auto bracketing can now be set for up to 7 shots and exposure compensation is available for +/- 3 stops, both of which are worthwhile improvements. And yes, auto focus is much better than on the 20D and, subectively at least, feels better than on the Mark 3.

Features Missing: For a start, most of the electronic toys first seen on the 7D, such as an electronic level, for example; dedicated movie switch (going between live for for stills and movie mode requires going back into the depths of the menu tree and you are best served using the FEL button - itself too tiny - for movie recording); still no way of using what the camera knows about itself to calculate DOF and display the result; no way to set narrow focus with the centre point unless you have a lens with available "stop" button; no built-in auto-shot timing al la the TC803 remote; no built-in WiFi or GPS. Seriously, $5k and now with a body and features that are largely 5 years old? Come on Canon, this is not good enough. The simplest of these - leaving off adding a dedicated switch between movies and stills - just feels like Canon was too cheap to change the body of the Mark III in any way at all.

Summary: All-in-all, I'm very satisfied with the main items, image quality and robustness, and am enjoying using it. Sure, there are niggles and things that I think Canon have fallen short on, especially on the level of features appropriate for a camera launched in 2010, but there you have it. If what you shoot matches the well-covered strengths of this camera, and you have the necessary wedge to spend, then go for it. I did, and have no regrets.

Alcatraz #5

At one end of the main cell block complex sits the mess hall and associated kitchen. Although the food preparation area is behind a metal grill, it's possible to shoot through the bars quite easily and to anyway get a feel for how this would all have worked. The kitchen is another of the staged areas, in Alcatraz and one of the items displayed is a knife cupboard complete with outlines, painted black, presumably to make it plain when any particular item was missing. Not a bad idea, especially when your dining patrons include the likes of Al Capone!

(And yes, the blur, achieved by moving the camera while dragging the shutter, was deliberate!)

Alcatraz #4

I really don't know why, but somehow Alcatraz seemed more humane than I was expecting. Now, that's not to say that I'd fancy doing a 20 stretch in solitary there - or frankly getting banged-up for a stay at the Her Majesty's pleasure (or whatever the equivalent is here in the USA) in any federal, err, facility - but given when this place was built then it seemed, well, reasonable, I suppose. A bit short on privacy, perhaps, but just think of the location! The views would be fantastic ... if only you could see them.

Given all that, how then to capture the essence of a place built for incarceration of the most notorious criminals the US has to offer - and let's face it, the development of extreme and hardened villains has become a world-beating industry here over the years so there were plenty of candidates to chose from - locked up for decades at a time in the same cell?

My shot at answering that particular question is shown above!

Alcatraz #3

Something a bit different this time. Walking around the cell block, you'll find that a few of them have been staged in one way or another and the one above caught my eye because it had been set up to show some inmate drawings. I'm not 100% sure the cross-processing effect I used here really works so will likely take another stab at it in black-and-white at some point. Still, it does serve to highlight the drawing above the sink (as well as the headshot above it), which was why I went that road in the first place, it's just that the coloration of the cell door doesn't really seem to work so well. Still, I do like the arrangement of objects in the cell, and in particular the way they are delineated by the bars of the cell door.

Alcatraz #2

Following on from the picture yesterday, here's a classic example of making sure you always turn round and look at what's happening behind you! I did this one in HDR, partly because of the extremely high dynamic range, covering as it does strong and direct sunlight though to deep shade, and partly to get detail into the staircase. Kind of worked, but ultimately this shot went a different way than I was expecting!

Alcatraz #1

Rain. Lots of it. It was pouring, and yet we were booked to go to Alcatraz on the first ferry of the day. Therefore, we went!

Although people were getting soaked waiting in line for the ferry at Pier 33, and then were destined to get wet again walking from the dock on Alcatraz up to the main building, nevertheless the boat seemed full. In addition, it's clearly a popular spot for photographers on a Sunday morning because we weren't the only ones toting backpacks and tripods.

Upon landing, our photo group headed straight to the main cell block to begin shooting in the prison showers, which is basically the place where the tours start from. Given that it was wet then the normal course of events - tourists collect right on the dock where the boat lands to hear an introductory docent talk - wasn't really followed and it was clear that there would very soon be a lot of people milling around the buildings. Therefore, I headed off to photograph the main cell block before there were too many visitors a'visitin'. I found the above spiral staircase at the end of the block and spent quite some time shooting it from all angles, but liked the one above (and maybe one other I'll post too), even though it's a very functional, square-on sort of shot. To me, it's interesting because of its basic symmetry, offset by the mirror reflecting the prison cells in the adjacent corridor. Note, too, the difference between areas worn dark by the passage of countless footfalls in and those bits of floor, under the staircase, for example, where the stone looks much more pristine.