Just Before Dawn
Just Before Dawn
Written by Friday, 13 March 2009 00:00
"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." Ansel Adams
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Dawn During this photo session we wanted to shoot birds and landscapes. Two cameras came with us, both capable of high ISO settings (D300 and D700). We chose the D300 mainly because of its cropping factor which allows 50% more reach; we mounted on it the Nikkor 300 mm f/2.8 coupled with a 1.4x Kenco teleconverter. The D700, which we believe to be a reliable landscape camera with tremendous capabilities came with two lenses: our trusted Sigma 28mm f/1.8 and the newly acquired Sigma 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens, which we chose for its extreme depth of field. The Tamron 180 mm macro lens was also in the bag, ready to be attached on whichever camera was less “needed” at that time. We could probably get along with much less in terms of lenses, e.g. the Nikkor 18-200mm mounted on the D300. Admittedly, this could have worked well (and take away a considerable amount of weight from our necks and shoulders). Having said that, we are always willing to get that extra image quality a good prime lens will give us, especially when we are not about to carry the extra weight for long. That aside, the D700 performs considerably better in low light conditions which is something we wanted in terms of image quality. In some cases good primes, coupled with the right camera body can make a world of a difference. We noticed that going for a photo shoot at 7:30 was already too late so we decided to wake up really early and be in the field well before 7 am. Given that the sun rises over Hymettus mountain and we were shooting in the fields just below, this should give us some time to play with the light. Let’s take a walk together. The photos are presented in chronological order. One hour before sunrise, on our way to our favourite spot, a blackbird starts singing on an electricity wire, becoming a nice silhouette against the dark blue sky. Once in our favourite spot, we took two photos of the surroundings. To take the first photo we walked really close to a tree and shot it against the sky. Later on it was the time to use the fisheye lens and take a picture of the foreground still dark, half an hour before sunrise. The next photo is taken with the telephoto / macro lens since we wanted to capture the first ray of the sun hitting a plant. When the sun came up behind the mountain we could not resist a highly underexposed photo with a very small aperture which created the beautiful star-like sun. Two minutes later, the first ray of the sun touched a yellow plant just a couple of meters away; the background is still in the shade. Finally, while returning home, we heard the cheerful song of another blackbird, which we located easily. The long telephoto lens came in handy to take a nice shot of it, with the rising sun, the mountain and the sky reflected in its eye. The images we got from both cameras had some noise (the D700 photos to a much lesser extent) which was easily removed with Neat Image since it was always kept at a (surprisingly) low level. We believe our other Nikon cameras (D70, D80 and the D2x) would not be able to yield the same results at such high ISO settings. Photos by Marina Parha and George J. Reclos Shooting data: 1. Camera: Nikon D300 6. Camera: Nikon D300 |
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