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March 20, 2014

Photography, Portrait, Technology | 0 comment

Leaf Shutter Lenses Part 2 – Tech Thursday

Outdoor portrait with leaf shutter lens and flash - ©TimeLine Media

Last Tech Thursday, I had the first post on using leaf shutter lenses. In doing a little research, there are not too many of these that are available in convenient or “affordable” kits. The ones that are available cost most than most DSLRs bundles with lenses – for the lens alone! These are normally in the realm of the medium format cameras with much larger sensors, and much higher price tags. A new medium format camera is in the $15,000 – $40,000 range with the accompanying leaf shutter lenses starting at $4500+.

So you can see why I was excited to learn that the relatively inexpensive Fuji X100s has a leaf shutter. As a refresher, here is a photo taken without any added flash outside. It is the metered exposure from the camera, and has a nice shallow depth of field with the trees and the shed going out of focus. The settings were 1/1000^th second at f/2.0 ISO 200. The shutter speed was very fast due to the open aperture. There was bright sun that is starting to set but is still high overhead.

Flash Photography Test

Flat outdoor portrait without fill flash - ©TimeLine Media — Flat outdoor portrait without fill flash – ©TimeLine Media

With a typical DSLR, you would not be able to use these settings to get proper exposure*. The 1/1000^th of a second exposure time is too fast for the flash to fully expose the frame. You will have a black bar along one of the long sides of the frame where the shutter is still covering part of the frame. You are limited to 1/200^th or 1/160^th of a second on most cameras. To find your, look in your manual, and look for the maximum flash sync speed. On the Fuji X100s, however, the leaf shutter lens is able to sync with the flash up to this fast shutter speed. This is the biggest benefit to using these types of lenses – having more control over balancing the available light in the scene with added light from a flash or strobe.

You can keep the nice darker blue sky, and saturate the other colors by underexposing the background with a high shutter speed. The flash power you can control from the strobe or by adjusting the aperture. Even though in some of these, the aperture was not wide open, it was only closed about 1 stop which keeps the background nicely out of focus compared to your subject. I cannot wait to do more shooting with this setup! It gives a lot more flexibility in what time of day to make outdoor portraits.

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March 13, 2014

Photography, Portrait, Technology | 0 comment

Leaf Shutter Lenses Part 1 – Tech Thursday

ballroom dance photography - ©TimeLine Media

The wintry weather finally broke for a little bit last week! I finally had a good chance to test one of the best features of the Fuji X100s camera – the leaf shutter lens. Most cameras produced today have focal plane shutters which have a curtain that opens and closes in front of the sensor. With a leaf shutter lens, there are blades built into the lens itself that opens and closes as the shutter opens and closes in the camera. As you press the shutter button on the camera, there is no difference in the operation between these two types of lenses. Where the big difference comes is in the fastest flash sync speed that is possible when using a leaf shutter lens. This opens up a lot of creative possibilities!

Camera Tech

On typical DSLRs, between 1/160th to 1/250th of a second is the fastest shutter speeds that you can use if you want the flash to fully expose the frame. If you use a strobe with a DSLR and have your shutter speed set higher (ie 1/500^th second or higher) you will start to get a large black band on your photo where the curtain is still covering a part of the sensor since the shutter speed is too high. This is not a limitation for leaf shutter lenses such as the one in the Fuji X100s. When shooting indoors, like ballroom dance competitions, this limitation is not a problem as 1/250^th second is plenty fast to control the light coming into the camera.

The limitation of 1/250^th really impacts outdoor shoots. If you want to use a flash, and you have to keep your shutter speed at 1/250^th or slower, that means you need to close down your aperture – f/8 or higher depending on how bright the sun is outside. In viewing these photos, everything including your background will be in focus making it difficult to separate your subject from the background. One solution is to not use a flash since you have plenty of light, but now all the tones in the scene are very similar making the image flat, and not as dynamic. Next week, I’ll show you how the leaf shutter lens really changes this photo with the change of a few settings in the same scene.

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March 5, 2014

Family, Personal, Photography, Technology, Travel | 2 Comments

Tatay and his Camera

My dad and his Nikon at the Grand Canyon

From yesterday’s post, you can see I still like to get in front of the camera sometimes. My father was the family photographer. His Nikon was always around his neck, and he brought it on every special outing. Looking back, I am now much more interested in what he was shooting, what lens, what camera body, perhaps what film he was using. I’m thankful that my dad did not shy away from having his photo taken. It would have been a shame to have so many family photos, and not have many of him on film.

Family Vacation Photos

If you are the family photographer, be sure to get out in front of the lens! Spending all your time behind will no doubt make your photos better, but after so many years, family will want to see you in there too. Since my dad only had the big SLR camera, all of these were taken with other point and shoot cameras, or maybe disposables. With these subjects, it really does not matter how they were captured, I’m just enjoying looking back and the times that we took time as a family to visit places away from home, and spend time together.

Just writing this post, I thought of a new assignment for myself. With the evolution of Nikon cameras, they have decided to keep the lens mount the same. I should do a shoot with my modern cameras using only my dad’s old manual focus lenses. They still mount on my cameras, and maybe they will make some different images. Will I be able to tell the difference? I’ll give it a try – see if you notice the difference! Thanks to Tatay for getting good glass that I can still use. I’ll be sure that they don’t rust away on the shelf.

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703-864-8208

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