I celebrated the Fourth of July this year with some friends on a rooftop in downtown Baltimore. Pretty good view. We were so far away from the fireworks that we heard the finale once there were no fireworks in the sky.
These are shot with my 1D Mark IV and a 24-105 f/4. I hooked up a cable release and shot on Bulb most of the time and timed the exposure for the beginning and end of each firework. I wasn’t in a great location to get a good scenic background of the city or something that was lit up enough.
To add exposure to the city backdrop, I exposed fora longer time (while maintaining clarity in the fireworks), but that resulted in messier looking photos with multiple fireworks in each exposure.
This past weekend, I covered the 2010 Preakness Stakes.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 70 mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)
After a late night covering the rain-delayed Oriole’s game and hanging out with friends, I had to wake up early to set up remotes at Preakness. I got rid of most of my extra cameras after college, so I only had one extra to use as a remote. The other guys covering the event for US Presswire were already setting up remotes under the rail, so I decided to stick my 40d with a 50mm f/1.4 lens on a close-by ladder to get shots of the finish line. The remotes had to be in by 10 so that they could be checked for safety. The rest of the day was sitting around waiting for the big race.
Here are only a few of the dozens of remote cameras that photographers set up.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/800, f/2.8, ISO 100)
I had my 400mm f/2.8 to cover the race as it turned the corner for the final straight. I was going to switch to a borrowed 70-200 on another camera body once the horses got close enough. This is what it looked like shooting down the track with the 400. Pretty cool stuff. This shot is from an early race.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 400 mm, 1/1250, f/2.8, ISO 100)
When it came time to shoot the race, I was ready with all my cameras. The horses were let off and I aimed my camera with the 400 down the track. All of a sudden it wouldn’t focus. I missed the horses coming around the first time because my lens wouldn’t focus. I had just a minute or two to fix it. I fidgeted around with it and couldn’t get it to work by the time the horses came back around. I switched to the 70-200 and covered the finish as much as I could. I later found out that the focus limiter switch had moved to only focus the lens from a close distance.
Lookin’ at Lucky made a last minute move to secure a first place finish.
Here he is pulling ahead.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 200 mm, 1/1600, f/2.8, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 190 mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 400)
Crossing the finish line.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 70 mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)
I was excited to see my remote images. When I pulled my remote down, for some reason it had missed the finish. It got the horses the first lap and about three horses back from the finish. That’s what you get with remotes; it’s hard to depend on them.
This one is from the first lap. Pretty cool shot had it captured the finish.
(Canon EOS 40D, 50 mm, 1/1600, f/4.5, ISO 640)
Lookin at Lucky jockey Martin Garcia gives a thumbs up after the race.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 200 mm, 1/250, f/4, ISO 400)
A lot of my images were picked up following the race. Click the jump to see a few clippings from the weekend.
This post is written for anyone interested in what it takes to make a time lapse film or is looking for time lapse tips and guidance. I couldn’t find all of this information in one place so this is my attempt to put it together and reduce the spin-up time for those getting started in time lapse photography.
I was planning on shooting a short time lapse film so I needed a lot of equipment. I packed up a few days earlier so that I could head straight for State College. Some of the equipment that I took is below:
2 Bogen Magic Arms and Super Clamps, 2 Tripods, 1 Milapse rotating telescope mount for sweeping time lapses, 3 Canon dSLR’s and a bunch of lenses, and 2 Canon intervalometers. These are just the basics. I obviously brought a lot of support equipment like batteries, power strips, pocketwizards (to daisychain intervalometers), laptops, card readers, etc.
Well, THON 2010 came and went. I took off from work early and drove through 4 rush hours (DC, Baltimore, North Baltimore/PA, and Harrisburg) to get there in time to photograph it. My main objective this year was to improve upon my time lapse film from last year’s THON 2009. The plan was to create more of a short film this year composed of numerous time lapse angles of different things. I purchased a bunch of equipment, including a new rotating tripod head to be used for slowly rotating time lapse shots. I will go more into detail about the behind-the-scenes of this shoot in a future post. I captured over 13,000 images that I stitched together in the film below.
I have to thank Scott Lukas for being such an incredible help to me all weekend. I could not have made this film without him. He helped me position cameras, started cameras for me when I was sleeping, and coordinated his whole stage crew to aid me. The crew was awesome and they did a great job not only helping me, but working behind the scenes at THON. At the end of THON, I had two cameras set up in remote, hard to get to, positions. Of course, things also got crazy for them at the end of THON with everything else that was happening on the floor. Within 10 minutes, I had to position a camera in the catwalk, start it, move it once everyone sat down, and then rush down to the floor so that I could shoot the end with a handheld camera. At the same time, another camera that I had positioned 10 feet above the concourse had to be started with a ladder that we had hid on the other side of the arena. Without a LOT of planning and the crew’s help, shots like that could never have happened. I had three cameras going at the same time at TOTALLY different locations very far apart from each other in the arena.
Thanks to my friend and film editor, Ian Jefferys, who did a fantastic job editing the film. Thanks to my friend Jason Davoli for providing me with his music from his new CD for the soundtrack. You can check out his new CD at www.jasondavoli.com. You can actually see Jason and Dan (who plays the fiddle in Free) and their band, Lowjack, performing at THON at 1:37 in my film. If you watch closely, you can even see me shooting them up close halfway into the shot.
I stitched together a few images to create this panoramic image. Funny enough, I didn’t even remember this, but when I was zooming in on it, Tucker Haas is performing on the stage. You can see the photo bigger here.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 4 17mm images, 1/60, f/4, ISO 640)
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 29 mm, 1/60, f/4, ISO 640)
I thought it was cool that they created a heart.
(Canon EOS 40D, 44 mm, 1/30, f/4.5, ISO 200)
The final line dance.
(Canon EOS 40D, 44 mm, 1/30, f/4.5, ISO 200)
I was one of the few people to know that there was going to be confetti shooting off during the announcement of the total because the stage crew was helping me with my cameras all weekend. I know they worked hard to create the confetti shooters and were excited about it. I thought it went really well and looked good.
I had to be up in the catwalk above the BJC so that I could move one of my cameras after it captured the sit-down to a different position to capture the final announcement. After everyone sat down, I quickly (but very safely) moved my camera to the other side of the catwalk and rushed all the way down to the floor (which included multiple ladders, a lot of stairs, and several crowds to wade through) to get in position to shoot the announcement with my handheld Canon 1D Mark IV. I didn’t have enough time to get through all the people to the back so that I could get a straight-on shot, so my shot sucks. But I knew I had the backup shot from the top of the catwalk (see first image in this post), so I didn’t feel too bad about it because I knew no one else had that shot.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, 31 mm, 1/100, f/2.8, ISO 800)
The mass of people trying to leave the Bryce Jordan Center.
(Canon EOS-1D Mark II, 15 mm, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 100)
Work has been canceled for me the past two days so I spent the time doing a much-needed portfolio update. I printed out contact sheets of all my best photos and cut them up into tiny little squares to organize them into categories. I came up with some new categories and eliminated some others. I haven’t done a significant update to my portfolio in about 2 years so it feels much better to have my latest work on display instead of old stuff as I’ve gotten much better.
I just got back from Germany. I start my new job on Monday, pending the snow doesn’t make it impossible. I was in Hamburg visiting my friend, Chris. We took a short trip from Hamburg to Berlin. It was quite a trip to Germany. I got my wallet stolen and then recovered (with cash and cards) by the police, we were ditched by our ride back to Hamburg from Berlin, and a 45 minute flight delay because of a little snow in Hamburg caused me to stay an extra night in London. Overall though, it was a ton of fun.
I’ve been shooting with the 1D Mark IV for a little under a month now and I have to say that I really like it. It’s a huge improvement overa all cameras that I’ve owned. My biggest gripe is that I’m unhappy with the ISO performance as I was expecting a performance boost over the 5D Mark II that I loved and instead experienced a downgrade. I have noticed that the files are considerably noisier than the 5D – where I wouldn’t hesitate to go up to 3200, I now think twice about going to 1600 on the 1D.
I’ve been back from Kenya for about two weeks and I’ve finished my photos just in time for my trip to Germany this week.
I’ve really been working on my editing technique which you can see in the photos. We had a lot of fun in Kenya; saw lots of elephants, giraffes, buffalo, baboons, lions, cheetahs, leopards, and more. I flew into Nairobi and visited four parks while there; Sweetwaters, Masai Mara, Lake Nakuru, and Amboseli National Park.
In total, I shot 5,366 photos, 70 videos, totaling 143GB.
All photos are available to see in this gallery.
The photos are geotagged and you can see them on a map by clicking on the “Map This” link above each photo or view all of them here.
New Feature: you can now order prints of the photos right from within the gallery!
I also shot some video directly on my still camera. The Canon 5D Mark II captures really excellent video and, although none of it is production quality because I didn’t have the right supports and wasn’t there to capture video, it’s very interesting to watch nonetheless.
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/640, f/2, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/4000, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/30, f/2.8, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/5000, f/2, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/640, f/4.5, ISO 640)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 19mm, 1/200, f/9, ISO 50)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/250, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1000)
