The 2010 Handcar Regatta

Here are some shots from this year's handcar regatta in Santa Rosa, California.

 My Nomination for Best ...

Street Machine

Mother Daughter Fashion

Official Official

Doctor of Mystery

Dancer

Embodiment of the Regatta Spirits

Sprite

Artistic Talent

Embodiment of Body Art

Renewed Friendship

Wild and Crazy Music Fest

Lookout

Witchy Guard

Buck Rogers Tribute

Reclined Cycle

Official Photographer

Fat Pig pix

Here is a selection of photos from The Rep’s final dress rehearsal of Fat Pig by Neil Labute.

150mm, 1/200 sec, f/3.2, Exp comp: -1, ISO: 1600.

I did a lot of shooting from the back of the theater using the telephoto lens. Being back only about 25 feet, I could get great close shots with the telephoto lens without being in the actors’ faces.

75mm, 1/250 sec, f/3.5, Exp comp: -1, ISO: 1600.

70mm, 1/100 sec, f/6.3, Mode: Av, Exp comp: -1 1/3, ISO: 1600.

I moved around the theater with the 24-70mm zoom lens to get different relationships between the players. When they were at different distances, as in this scene, I set the aperture to f/5.6 or higher so they would all be in focus.

32mm, 1/80 sec, f/8, Exp comp: -1 1/3, ISO: 1600.

200mm, 1/800 sec, f/2.8, Exp comp: -1, ISO: 1600.

130mm, 1/125 sec, f/2.8, Exp comp: -1 1/3, ISO: 1600.

200mm, 1/200 sec, f/2.8, Exp comp: -1 2/3, ISO: 1600.

Some of my telephoto close-up shots failed because I didn’t have sufficient depth of field. I forget how shallow the depth is when making a telephoto shots in low light. This picture worked because the actors were in the same plain.

165mm, 1/800 sec, f/4.5, Exp comp: -1 1/3, ISO: 1600.

The image above, which I considered one of my best shots, was spoiled because the camera focused on raised hand. Of course, I blame the actor! In this case, f/4.5 wasn’t sufficient to focus both Dan’s hand and his face. I should have used f/8 or greater, and changed the ISO to keep the speed up.

170mm, 1/200 sec, f/4, Exp comp: -1, ISO: 1600.

200mm, 1/125 sec, f/5.6, Exp comp: -1 1/3, ISO: 1600.

The Man of La Mancha Concert

The Napa Valley College Performing Arts Theatre had its inaugural performance last weekend with a concert version of The Man of La Mancha by Wasserman, Leigh, and Darien. It was also the first performance shot with my new camera, the Canon ESO-1D Mark IV.

 

The new theater space is grand, here in a panorama shot from the top seating. I pieced these together from three hand-held shots using manual exposure settings. Settings: 18mm, 1/20 sec, f/5.6, Mode: Manual, Metering: Center-weighted average, ISO: 2000, Flash: Off. I used Photoshop Merge, but had to attach the right-most image manually since the image was tilted a bit. The space is grand.
Next, I wandered backstage to gaze up at the 65 ft fly space. It was too dark to see the ceiling, so it was an opportune time to try the camera’s very high ISO. Here’s the hand-held result:

Settings:24mm, 1/8 sec, f/3.2, Mode: Av, Metering: Multi-segment, Exp comp: -1, ISO: 12800, Flash: Off.

 

Settings: 24mm, 1/100 sec, f/4, Mode: Av, Metering: Multi-segment, Exp comp: -2 2/3, ISO: 800.

Above is a wide-angle shot from the back of the theater, about 75 feet back. Below are a few shots from the back of the theater with the telephoto lens. I’ve never been able to crop such high-resolution images from a telephoto shot before.

Since the singers were in front of the orchestra, I wanted as narrow a depth of field as possible to make the foreground stand out in sharp focus, so I used f/3.2 to f/2.8 as often as possible when zoomed in. For the wide-angle shot above, I used f/4.0.

To show the audience, I took two Av shots from the side balcony, one with the exposure set by focusing on the stage, and one with the focus set on the audience, all with the f-stop at f/4.5. At home, I used Photoshop to layer the two partial images together. It’s not perfect, but it does give a representation of dynamic range the eye sees from that vantage point.

The performance was excellent, and rewarded with a standing ovation.

Wonka promotional shoot, or fun with flash

What goes into shooting for a play’s promotion? Just like a performance, there is a call time for actors, costumers and the promotional people, and the photographer, me. I usually arrive about the same time as the call so I can set up my portable studio in the theater lobby. We discuss the objectives of the shoot, in this case, to show Willy and Charlie having fun with candy.

mollie, the promo manager, giving some instruction to Willy.

If you know exactly what the actors need to be doing, a shoot may take only a few minutes, much shorter time than the preparation. But often the shoot is used to experiment with a number of different poses to get a good selection of shots.

Zane as Willy, and Michael as Charlie, awash with candy.
62mm, 1/60 sec, f/5.6, Mode: Program, Metering: Multi-segment, Exp comp: -2/3, ISO: 250, Flash: On.

In this case, someone pointed out that Charlie needed to appear like a boy compared to Willy, even though the two actors are both tall.

Since the actors were in colors other than white, I used a white backdrop so it could be stripped easily from the subjects for the finished promotional image.
The hardware for the shoot was similar the one below, with the camera on a tripod, and two monolights on either side of the subjects. (This picture is from an earlier photoshoot in the same space.) In the Wonka setup  I used the camera’s attached flash unit in addition to the two monolights. The attached flash not only provides central fill lighting, but its flash triggers both monolights.

Using an attached flash unit simplifies the exposure settings because the camera automatically adjusts for the light levels. (When I don’t use the camera flash, I have to use the manual exposure settings. For more on this see the Shooting Actors book.) The two monolights were set at low light levels; I wanted them to soften shadows caused by the central flash, such as Willy’s arm shadow on his coat.
We proceeded to take about 168 images, covering all the configurations we could collectively think of. Here’s the final selection I made to give to mollie, shown here as a contact sheet.

And my favorite from the group:

32mm, 1/60 sec, f/5.6, Mode: Program, Metering: Multi-segment, Exp comp: -2/3, ISO: 250, Flash: On.

 The white drop in the background can be stripped away using Photoshop’s extract filter.

The image appears with a white background because I’ve turned the Photoshop image into a JPEG for this blog. In the Photoshop format, the background is transparent, so that the background can be replaced with anything, appropriate or not.

Improving image resolution - what does it really buy?

Here’s a chance, not only to show off our border collie Riff, but to “justify” my new camera purchase.

What is the benefit to having a higher pixel count? The image with the higher pixel count can be blown up larger without the pixels being visible. Film has the same limitation, but instead of pixels it's film grain.

 

I magnified a strand of hair near his right ear, outlined by the oval.

Here’s the same image with the pixel count, reduced by Photoshop to match my older-generation camera with its 3888 pixels horizontally. The resolution improvement will make details standout dramatically on stage. I can hardly wait to try it.

What does this mean for my theater photography? I’ll be able to provide larger blowups and high-resolution crops.