On 4/24/2020 5:37 AM, Wayne Shumaker wrote:
At 4/23/2020 09:50 PM, Mike and Moose wrote:
On 4/23/2020 4:28 PM, Mike Gordon via olympus wrote:
<<<Finally, the cover shot for my book "Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park"
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=Travel/NorthEast_2009/MtDesert/Misc&image=_MG_7928n.jpg>
I remember and love that shot. Well done.
Thanks!
Yes, that is a great shot. And typical of WA shots, horizon is center.
Although I'm generally aware of the desirability of a level camera for UWA, here the framing was visual, trying to get
all the elements in. As it happens, that put the horizon almost dead center.
One of the constraints of the UW?
Sure, or, less negatively, one of the factors to consider in choosing subjects and setting up shots. Just, as, for
example, air and subject movement affect long tele shots.
I remember testing that idea, how to use the UW with Horizon non-centered. Here
was one experiment (not great shots, just out in back of my house) with the
12mm/5.6 version of your 10mm CV.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/oAvsfFGyTY1Pdatq8 - CV 12mm/5.6
Had they all been taken from the same place, with the saguaro in the same horizontal place in the frame, and in the same
light, they would work better. I tried overlaying them, with short, wide pano format, but they are too different to work.
The point I wanted to make is that the three would be very similar as pano
crops.
What I decided is that what matters is what is of interest in the foreground
and how stretched the corners can be without being a problem. You can see in
these shots, the vertical objects like to be in the center. The non-centered
horizon has a disorienting feeling to it. But is a great way to get in the sky.
The new sonie 20mm is a good compromise for me and ease of use. It has good
close focus ability. My favorite thing on Brown's Ranch is this dead cactus.
The interesting thing is that I am very close in the last shot, (inches) yet it
does not feel that way:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/xV1gBA9owCoibXXY6
I think we are talking, at least a bit, at cross purposes. If I were heading out in visually limitless desert landscape,
I can't imagine taking a 10 mm lens. The only things one can do with an UWA there is hopeless landscapes of tiny things,
close-ups, as you have done with the 20 mm, and visually large foreground subjects against visually small, but in-focus
background landscapes, as you've also done.
Imagining taking a lens for an outing to see what I can find for it? There are indeed fewer appropriate subjects for 10
mm than for 20 mm out in nature.
The approach that has had me on a HWA or UUWA quest is something of the opposite. While out photographing whatever
catches my eye, I encounter subjects, objects, rooms, buildings, and so on, that I want to capture whole, but where it's
not possible to get enough distance to capture the whole thing without a really wide lens.
It's really a parallel to the situations where I spot some small detail in a large visual field, and the answer is a
super tele or a macro, or a combination.
If you consider the example photos I included in my post, virtually all fit this criterion: the shot couldn't be made
with a narrower AoV lens. In a way, they are a story of Moose with his back against a wall, door, floor, balustrade,
bog, cliff, etc.
In many cases, I would have been happy to use a longer lens. If 24 mm would always get the shot, I'd be saved a lot of
trouble. :-)
Given a reasonable size subject and unlimited space, one may play with details of perspective, DoF and relative size of
subject and objects in the background, as you did with the dead cactus root ball.
Some more 20mm and 2 with 90mm. It was partly raining that day, so the desert
look moist. The 20mm close up perspective is another WA use. I normally thought
of WA as landscape scene, so close up is a discovery for me. Thinking about
lenses versus using them are two different things. I did not have the 12 on me
that day. I just grab the cameras and headed out to catch the interesting
weather:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6QK6EAJMfJJXfn3h7
I'm liking this 20mm, especially compared to 24mm focal length.
I'm glad you are enjoying it. I've got nothing against that FL. My general UWA is a 14-28 mm eq. zoom and the 20 mm-ish
FL range gets a share of the shots taken at 18-28 mm eq. But the widest FLs get the lion's share.
For subjects that look good cropped to a narrow horizontal band across the
center, they are fabulous.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Lenses/Heliar%2010-56/HWAoV.htm>
I fully realize this is just an AOV illustration but one can see how it takes
compositional skill to use these UW's well. Anything close on the sides gets "the
stretches" from volume anamorphosis --most of the time I don't like that look.
Yup, that's a good reason to go with pana crops. All the old, film based ultra
wide cameras did that for practical film and mechanics reasons, but it also hid
most of those problems. There is also width stretching at the horizontal edges,
but it's not as noticeable.
One thought on the way you illustrated the UW, which is good and point taken.
Howerver, it makes the narrower views less appealing, maybe if they were all
displayed at the same screen size, they might not feel quite as constrained.
Of course they would. Assuming a more visually more compelling subject, they might very well be better photos. I could
go further, and use a long lens from the same spot to make a better photo. But they would not be of the same subject. I
can take a macro of the salt in a shaker and print it at the same size as a shot of the table the shaker is on. But they
aren't the same thing.
It's again a difference of artistic vision. You want a compelling photo of anything that works with the lens you are
using. I want a photo of a specific thing that won't fit in a narrower AoV. If I am able to make it compelling, so much
the better. The shot of the monastery is a good, straight shot of a building, but I wouldn't have gone to much trouble
if it didn't also provide context for a lot of other photos.
In this case, I'd still want it for myself, as aide memoire for that trip.
We visited a monastery in Bhutan. I took lots of shots inside. You saw a shot of the empty benches the monks had just
vacated. I wanted a shot of the outside. I showed how even a 14 mm eq. partially failed me. In this case, I still want
the photo for myself, as aide memoire for that trip.
OTOH, I really wanted a shot of the giant, gold Buddha in Thimpu that was impossible from anywhere near it. 800 mm eq.
to the rescue, from across the valley. It is conceptually exactly the same thing, given subject and distance, what FL
will get the shot. <https://photos.app.goo.gl/6HyWSxEPDtMe7Kek8>
I have been thinking how the 10mm example is closer to what our eye would see,
minus the corner stretching.
It's a single element lens. All sorts of aberrations are corrected in
processing. :-)
A "normal" lens (50mm) is only normal if we crop the view our eyes see.
There are a lot of explanations on the web of why 50 mm. One says it came from motion picture lenses of 25 mm for half
frame. Which only begs one to ask, "OK, why 25 mm?"
Long before 35 mm, "normal" lenses for the squarer LF and MF plate and film formats were determined by the diagonal of
the film/plate.
That would give 43 mm for a 24x36 format. Make the format squarer, say 4:5,and it would be 30 mm. Clearly no route to 50
mm that way.
Others say it's for practical reasons of what could be made at the time. The later, faster lenses may give support to
that idea. The early f1.4 lenses tended to be 55 mm and the first f1.2 was 58 mm.
Consider one lens maker's problem. Film was very slow. These cameras were meant to be used hand held, right from the
first Leicas. Lens coatings were not yet invented. Making a faster lens by adding element(s) was self-defeating, as each
air-glass interface meant light loss. About 4% of light is lost at each surface without coatings. Contemporary coatings
reduce that to about 0.1%
With available glass and lens design techniques, covering the long diagonal of 35 mm film with adequate resolution and
acceptable vignetting with a 40-ish mm lens may not have been possible, esp. with a minimum of air-glass boundaries. A
25% increase in FL makes the solution easier.
The final argument I am aware of is that 50 mm gives a perspective, with people, in particular, that feels natural to
our vision. Not sure I buy this one.
I also noticed, going through many of you photos, they are often either on the
wide end, or the tele end ==>
I freely admit a love for loooong lenses. OTOH, I use wide lenses as the tools necessary to capture many subjects. I SEE
teleshots all around me. UWA shots come up and bite me in the ass.
I'm not sure how to get at that comment, for my own amusement, more than to reply a casual comment. I've visited this
question on my own.
I imagine you've seen only a minority of the photos I've posted over the years. Just looking at JPEGs, which I make
almost exclusively for posting on the web, I find over 4000 web size JPEGs from µ4/3:
12-60, 700 exposures, 76 @ 12 mm, 196 @ 60 mm
100-400, 962 exposures, 113 @ 100 mm, 485 @ 400 mm
That certainly seems to point at a strong tele bent. OTOH, I have shot a LOT of semi-macro close-ups with those lenses
using focus bracketing. So this photo, for example, accounts for 15 of those 400 mm exposures, and is in no way a
conventional tele shot. <https://photos.app.goo.gl/dHNx9mUnqj6JFwpR6>
I'd guess that someone who doesn't know me and sees this shot might wonder how
I got that close with a macro lens.
I took quite a few focus brackets that day. This one, as a result of subject size and how close I could get, was shot @
300 mm, but that would still count as a long tele shot, in any simple accounting.
<https://photos.app.goo.gl/rHZG9C6rpYLx697u7>
The Long and Short of Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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