Lessons learned... and exif graphs

[Groucho]

I've finally gone through and added focal lengths to my pictures that were missing them, so I was able to run an exif analysis tool on them. But first... what I learned and what I'd do differently next time. (This thread has a picture and description of everything I brought.)

Two camera bodies... I'd definitely do it again! True b/w film has dynamic range that cannot be replicated with color, plus I was able to take full 180' fisheye photos in color, which I couldn't do with the DSLR. The camera itself is small, light, and thin when no lens was attached (which is how it usually tucked, tucked in a corner of the camera bag with a body cap on it) so there was little reason not to have it.

Bringing several lenses (six total)... I would leave the big 400mm behind as I never used it. It was just too big and bulky. I did bring it to the parks just once but never put it on the camera. There just aren't enough reasons to need a long zoom - there are times, but they're rare. More on individual lenses when I get to the graphs.

Full-size tripod... For night photography, you just can't beat it. I also used it a little in Animal Kingdom for long-zoom animal photos. I'm also very happy that I got a carbon fiber one, the lighter weight really made it easy to live with, and my jury-rigged strap helped when I wasn't able to keep it in the bottom of the stroller.

Monopod... Not sure if I'll bring it next time. They can be useful but my big heavy aluminum Bogen monopod was a bit much to carry around for the usefulness it had. In the future, I might lean towards just carrying the tripod and extending one leg if I need monopod-type support. A much lighter monopod would probably be handy.

Memory cards... I had two high-speed 2-gig SD cards plus a couple 512m cards and shot RAW exclusively, except for JPGs for some on-ride photos (to get more out of my camera's limited buffer size.) This was a good size, two days I filled both 2-gig cards but both days I still had plenty left on the one 512 card I used. If I see one for very cheap (buy.com had one free after rebate a few days ago!), I might pick up another 2g card, but it's not high on my list.

Clamperpod... not used a lot, but occasionally handy. Tiny and very light, there's no reason not to bring it.

Table-top tripod... probably skip it next time, just not real useful when you have a "real" tripod, and it's very flimsy with a DSLR attached.

Remote shutter release... a must-have with the tripod, and very nice for fireworks photos, where the camera's on the tripod and you can watch the fireworks and take photos without ever looking through the viewfinder and while keeping your arms at your side.

Filters... I only used my cross screen (aka 4-point star) filter a few times and usually didn't like the look of it... but I did forget to try it during Spectromagic. It's definitely a gimmick filter but occasionally can produce fun results. As for my circular polarizer, I was pretty disappointed. There were differences in sky tone and glass/water reflections but they were not as pronounced as I had expected. Plus, the loss in light occasionally meant going uncomfortably slow in shutter speed. I would assume that most polarizers should work about the same (?) so I doubt it was just that I had a cheap one or anything. (It's a Promaster that I picked up used.) I'd probably need more experience to get pleasing results with it.

Op/Tech straps... worth every penny! Between the Pro Strap on the DSLR and the SOS Strap on the camera bag, I didn't get nearly the sore neck and shoulders that I would expect to get carrying the gear I did.

What I SHOULD have brought but didn't... some kind of sensor cleaning gear. I had nothing and started with a slightly dirty sensor, which had several very noticable dust blobs by the time I was done. I had since bought a kit with pec-pads, etc. You can't fly with the cleaning liquid, but I'd definitely bring the Giottos Rocket Blower with my in the future. Plus, my focusing screen got really filthy a lot - yuck!

I'd also have liked a faster wide-angle (not fisheye) lens, and a faster telephoto - probably both primes in order to get some real speed.

On to the graphs! I made these with ExposurePlot.

As you can see, the 50mm 1.4 was clearly the favorite lens! This was partially due to 50mm being a nice length, but also because of the extreme depth of field control, and the superb image quality from the lens (usually regarded as one of the best 50mms ever made). I was starting to like primes more before I got this lens... now I'm leaning towards getting into primes almost exclusively.

The 16mm is the Zenitar fisheye, as you can see, it got a good amount of use, too - a very fun and versatile lens.

The other lenses were the Sigma 28mm 2.8 (very nice but hampered by the manual focus - usually you're moving so fast that it's hard to focus quickly) and the two Pentax zooms, 18-55mm and 50-200mm. Both nice lenses producing nice results, but not quite as sharp as the primes and definitely slower than the primes.

You can also see that by far, most shooting was done at 50mm and below. Take out the live animals at Animal Kingdom out and you're left with very, very little need for a long zoom.

Here's the apertures.

The F0s are the Zenitar, which is full manual so doesn't report the aperture to the camera. Again, you can see that a lot of pictures were taken at wide apertures, which just aren't possible with most zooms.

In the interest of completeness, here's the ISO and shutter speed graphs.

To sum up... overall, I'm quite happy with my results, I took over 2,500 DSLR pictures total and ended up with 616 (plus some non-DSLR pictures) on my online gallery (all ones I deem "worthy to share"), plus there's a number of good "family" photos that I didn't put online - I think that's a pretty good percentage of "usable" photos.

Next time - no monopod or 400mm lens, will bring something for sensor cleaning, and hopefully will have more fast primes.

 

[Groucho]

Oh, one other thing - I spent most of the time with the camera set to spot metering, and I think I should have kept it on center-weighted. Somehow I found myself with several outdoor photos that were pretty underexposed, which hadn't happened before with center-weighted. Fortunately, I was able to tweak most of them from the RAW to look pretty good, but I'd prefer good exposure out of the box.

The spot metering did work pretty well indoors, especially when taking short-DoF pictures with a distinct subject as the primary element in the photo, where I would point at that element, do a half-shutter-press to lock in the focus and exposure, and then compose the shot.

 

[spoon2003]

Groucho,
Thank you for the detailed analysis... This helps with my planning in April.

Sue

 

[foto202]

Very cool. Do you not shoot in ISO 100. I tend to use that the majority of the time. I do love my 50 1.4 as well. Sharp as a tack and super fast. Plus, you gotta love the bokeh!

 

[foto202]

Comp USA had 2 gis Sandisk Ultra II's for 44.99 . I just added 2 more to my bag. However, I do bring my laptop to Disney and I just empty the card everynight.

 

[Groucho]

Yes, the bokeh is lovely with the 50mm, no question! Much better than many lenses I've seen.

The 6mp Pentax cameras have no ISO 100... apparently they decided that with the Sony sensor, it was not good quality at 100. The Nikon cameras that used the same sensor are the same way, no ISO 100 (though they top out at 1600 rather than the 3200 of the Pentax, but you can probably "push" 1600 up a step and get about the same results with the Nikon.)

I forgot to mention my camera unloading procedure, which was to dump to laptop nightly. The plan was to burn DVDs but I forgot that the laptop I was using at the time only had an old +R burner and I brought -R blanks - oops! Fortunately, I (barely) had enough hard drive space to fit them all.

As for the memory cards themselves, I use "lesser name" cards - an Ultra 133x for $20 and a PQI 150x for, I think, $23. I won't pay Sandisk prices, especially for a slower card. Some people feel that it's worth the extra for the potential of greater reliability, but I'm not convinced that they're really any better and even if they were, that they're worth the significant jump in price.

 

[MassJester]

Hey Groucho,

Great post--I've read it five times, and will likely go back and read it again.

You mentioned depth of field control in regards to your 50mm. I've just done some reading on that precise topic, and I confess to still being a bit confused. If you get some time, could you talk about that?

 

[Groucho]

Hi Paul, I'm glad you enjoyed the write-up. I think it would have been better if I was more organized, but I wanted to get SOMEthing written up! As to your question, sure, I'll be glad to try to explain that better.

The obvious benefit of a "fast" lens is to be able to take a photo in a darker environment without having to resort to a flash, a high ISO, or a shutter speed slow enough to cause blur.

But the other thing that can be as or more valuable (especially as you become more comfortable with it) is greater control over depth of field, specifically the ability to create a very small depth of field, which you can use to emphasize a specific object in a photo.

Here's an example. This is at F2.0, ISO 200, 1/125th second.

At the aperture gets larger (and the number gets smaller), the DoF shrinks... here's one at F1.7, ISO 400, 1/90th second. You can see that not even the whole lettering on the glass is in focus - only the middle and bottom.

That's an example of how critical focus can be at the larger apertures. A minute adjustment and the whole label probably would have been in focus. Here's another one with the same aperture where I'm completely happy with the focus. F1.7, ISO 400, 1/30th second.

F1.4 is thinner still but you can still get good results with it if you're lucky (or skilled, but in my case, I'll throw it towards luck. ) F1.4, ISO 200, 1/180th second.

Most of these have been indoor photos, but of course, the same applies outdoors. You can do creative control on outdoor objects as well. F2.0, ISO 200, 1/1,500th second.

The other thing to remember is that a prime often has a smoother, nicer-looking bokeh (ie, the out of focus parts of the picture) than most zooms, which is important for these small DoF photos.

Hopefully that helps. If you want, I have a series of photos I took of the same object at every F-stop that my 50mm had, from F1.4 to, I think, F22. I can toss a couple online if you like.

 

[MassJester]

That's a very nice explanation. Thank you for taking the time.

I'm working on my understanding of the triangle as I try to break away from years of letting the camera make decisions for me.