Moomba festival, the yearly fun for everyone, rides, games and fireworks!

To some people it is a time to have fun and to some people it is an opportunity to practice the night shot. Yes, slow shutter, tripods, lights and fast movements. This year I’m rather pleased with some of my shots, since I actually brought by tripod again. Last year I came out with very little usable night shots simply because I can’t be bothered to bring a tripod (so I can do more things with less hassle).

Slow shutter hand held

That doesn’t mean that without a tripod you can’t take any picture, all you have to do is know your minimal shutter speed, ISO and steady hands. The shot on the left was shot hand-held at 1/30 s, f/3.5 ISO 800. The resulting image shows how fast the movements were and it actually gives a hint of happy people on board the ride. Thanks to the bright lights from the ride itself, the children on board were illuminated quite well!

Here’s another picture (right) that I took hand held, good lighting in the venue really helps with these shots. When it comes to fireworks however, there is no escaping from using a tripod. There are also different pointers and tips that I’d like to share with you when taking picture of fireworks.

Photographing Fireworks

If your camera is capable for full manual control, this is the time to switch it on. Forget about auto-focus and auto exposure, most camera will not be able to calculate the settings correctly. What I did was:

1. Set the focusing to infinity. Auto focusing will be quite hard or impossible since there is nothing to focus in the sky until the moment the fireworks started and it’ll be too late.

2. Set your aperture high to preserve the details (around F16 and above).

3. Set the speed around 2-4 seconds. With this low speed, the fireworks trails can be recorded and more fireworks can be captured.

4. Set the camera trigger to wireless remote (or you can set timer for 2 secs or lower), this was needed to avoid camera shake by hand when pressing the trigger button.

5. Arrive early to get a good (and if possible comfy) spot.

And that should do for the settings. As for the picture taking, I mount my camera on the tripod and adjust the position to where I estimate where the fireworks will be displayed. Then, just enjoy the show while snapping the pic (peering into the viewfinder and adjusting as well obviously).

Moomba Fireworks

The picture on the right was taken using f/25, 4 s, this way the fireworks trails was evident and the smoke appears hazy. There are a lot to learn about photographing fireworks and I’m still learning as I go as well. However the pointers above are the ones that I have learnt and applied for a while. The fireworks was not the only exciting thing however, there was this rock band playing pretty good music too.

Of course because this is a photography blog, I can’t help but to share a bit of phototaking for these kind of situation. A band, low light and glaring spotlights, requires something more than full automatic settings.

I shot those two using spot metering and speed priority mode. In order to get the singer’s face into the correct exposure, spot metering on the face is needed, otherwise the camera will think that the scene is too dark and it’ll boost the exposure. Usually leaving us with very bright white faces…overexposure. On the other hand I left it to the speed priority mode to get a decent hand-held speed (about 1/200 for the above shots) while maintaining the correct aperture settings automatically. Apart from that the iso was set to 1600, a bit grainy, but it does the job.

Hmm…and the last thing, I can’t help but think that some clown statue can be quite scary…they should be made cuter or funnier…

Southern Star Observation Wheel

Today I was fortunate enough to be able to go out and enjoy the festivities of the long weekend on Australia Day, in particular at Docklands. There are bands, attractions, people and lots of stuff to see.

Sand Sculpture at Docklands

Check out the sand sculpture to the left for example, isn’t it amazing? The description said that it took 1 tonnes of sand to make this sculpture, incredible. Also to our surprise, this piece of art can withstand 3 days of rain!

While I was strolling about the complex and taking a few photos, I suddenly remembered the thing about cameras that most people do not really understand how to use, and that’s the metering mode. I have this sudden jolt of idea to put this up in this blog when I took the picture of the interesting entertainer on the right.

Horsemen Underexposed

The picture of this funny “horsemen musicians” was very dark when I previewed it. I was using aperture priority mode (I control the aperture the camera decides the shutter speed) with matrix metering. That’s when I immediately remembered to change the metering mode in my camera to fix this. Of course there is another way to avoid this kind of problem by ensuring the right direction of the light source, checkout the “Frequently Missed Items” post.

A quick look at the metering modes

At the very basic level, most of modern cameras would have: matix metering, centre weight metering and spot metering.

When using matrix metering, the camera estimates the amount of light needed to capture an image by averaging the light intensity in different parts of the image. So if you have a camera with say 15 dynamic areas metering, it means the camera basically divided the current scene into 15 areas and uses them to average out the light needed. The downside of using matrix metering is when the subject is dark and the background is very light, the camera is fooled into thinking that there is enough light needed, like the horsemen underexposed picture.

The solution that I decided to use is setting my camera into centre weight metering where the camera uses the centre part of the image as an average area of reference for its calculation. You can normally see the area used for the centre weight metering calculation through your viewfinder; ie. the round marking in the middle.

Horsemen Centre Weight

After using that metering, there result is as “Horsemen Centre Weight” picture. The camera is no longer fooled by the light background.

Another more accurate solution is the spot metering, with this activated, the camera relies on a certain point in the scene as the point of reference. Normally this can be seen in your viewfinder as the smaller circle or the square right in the middle of the scene. I used this metering to take a picture of the band below. The scene was tricky because the subject moved around and most of the background was very light.

Band Underexposed

Band Right Exposure

I locked the spot exposure on one of the band personnel, compose the scene and took the picture.

More festivities

Mini Children Tennis

As I moved on, more interesting attractions are scattered along the area. Even the excitement of Australia Open can be felt here, from the big screen and from the children playing.

I’d have to say that this area has become much more alive than it used to be a few years ago. Lots of shops, restaurant and of course the Southern Star Observation Wheel are now in business. With the weather as nice as today, it was indeed a great day out for recreation!

Docklands Shops	Festivities at Docklands
Melbourne Sunny day

Last time I talked about understanding macro photography technique and composition, therefore I now present the variety of lens solution that you can use for macro photography. The range of solution varies a lot with image quality and price range (as usual).

If you own an SLR Camera and an existing lens:

You can use magnification lenses for macro photography if you already own an existing lens. This is by far the cheapest possible solution to get macro shots.

Magnification Lens

Magnification Lens

The amount of magnification with this lenses varies with their power. The bigger the number the stronger the magnification. In the image example above I have the +1 lens coupled with a +3 lens which makes up to +4 magnification.

There are trade-offs when using these lenses however:

1. The more magnification lenses you put in front of your lens, the less light getting through the lens. Which means your camera speed will be lower than normal. Say in a certain condition you have 1/100s speed, when you screw on these lenses you might end up with 1/60s speed.
2. The depth of field will be shallower than a true macro lens. With these lenses its slightly harder to get the background of the object sharper without losing the speed.

As I said previously, this is the most affordable quality solution.

If you are planning and have the budget to get a new lens:

Dedicated Macro Lens

Then get the true macro lens. These lenses offer very high magnification and incredible detailed result. Depending on your budget, you might want to look at third party providers as well. I use Tamron macro lenses myself and to date I have been very satisfied with its results.

With this lenses, you will have full control of the aperture, speed and focus. Many of these lenses have fixed focal lens, meaning that you will not have an option to zoom in or out. That’s okay, considering you don’t get that far or close from your macro subject most of the time.

If you want to get a semi-slr:

Macro in Compact Camera

Don’t forget to consider and semi SLR camera with macro capability. My old DiMage A1 did very good macro before I switched to the SLR. It gave good details when printed up to A4, above A4 however we might start to see the compression noise. This is because of the nature of Semi-SLR that has smaller image sensor than the true SLR. Ont he other hand, as technology grows, the semi SLRs are getting better and better in its quality. Best way to find out is always to check out the sample shots for a particular camera.

Reverse lens technique:

This a technique that can also be explored if you feel adventurous. Basically you use the other end of your lens to be attached to the camera body, then you will get massive amount of magnification. Of course you will have to buy the converter to do this. The downside of this technique and why I never use this as my permanent solution is that you might get your bottom end of your lens (the body connector part) scratched.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to start doing macro shots. I wouldn’t recommend those macro settings in a compact pocket camera however because of their lack of control and their depth of field is never shallow enough.