Light and Timing

A couple of shots showing the challenge of contrast:

F 10 .. 18 mm .. 1/250 sec

F 10 .. 18 mm .. 1/400 sec

The first shot is a yawn: underexposed in the nearground, overexposed in the farground. Though it's not technically perfect I like the drama of the second shot, taken a few minutes later as a cloud sailed by. The result makes the buildings pop far more, and the faster shutter speed keeps the background from fading out.

Shadow Birds

In addition to the unattractive but technically interesting photos of geese on the kaleidoscope water, I got some cool shots of silhouetted birds. My favourites are posted on Images Across The Earth.

The in-flight shots were technically tricky because the light was fading rapidly, the birds were some distance away, and they were moving fast.

Compare the detail below with the second shot in the gallery, which was taken twenty minutes earlier.

F 11 .. 200 mm .. 1/60 sec
(detail)

Technical specs for the gallery shot: F 13 .. 135 mm .. 1/200 sec (detail). The increased shutter speed and different angle captured individual feathers in motion rather than a full-wing blur.

I also got some interesting shots of birds on the water. At a glance the first gallery shot looks as though it is a single bird with its shadow/reflected in the water, but in fact there are two birds:

F 5.6 .. 200 mm .. 1/60 sec
(detail)

Technical specs for the gallery shot: F 5.6 .. 200 mm .. 1/80 sec (detail). The two shots were taken in rapid succession.

Finally, a detail that shows off more of the 18 - 200 lens' capabilities:

F 7.1 .. 170 mm .. 1/60 sec
(detail)

Click the image to see the full-size version. The camera did a fantastic job of capturing the reflected light and texture of the water. Note the concentric ripples around the righthand bird, overlaid on the river's natural weave. This is a full-width version of the original shot, simply cropped to remove the less interesting foreground/background that was out of field.

Dizzy Ducks (actually geese)

This time, a couple of dizzying shots using the 18 - 200 mm lens.

The bokeh gets noticeably more intense at greater zoom, in this case exacerbated by the reflected light, the moving water and the slow shutter speed (VR accommodates camera vibration, not a moving environment).

At an extreme this could be used to make deliberately artsy photos. A faster shutter speed and polarizing filter would have flattened the photos into dull shots of geese.

F 5.6 .. 135 mm .. 1/30 sec
original jpg

F 5.6 .. 200 mm .. 1/30 sec

original jpg

River of Light

A couple of weeks ago I was out with my trusty 18 - 70 Af-S 1:3.5-4.5G DX Nikkor lens, which is what I used for 90% of our China and Tibet photos (and 99% of those that turned out well). It's a great lens which I'd highly recommend.

Along with the usual pretty shots of the Charles River and Harvard there were some technically interesting photos in the set. The blinding reflection of the afternoon sun tricked the camera into using a high speed for a small aperture. The result was good depth of field and an interesting blend of [technically] over-exposed, under-exposed, silhouetted and goldilocks elements in the picture.

Notes:
Composition was very quick and somewhat haphazard since the reflection was blinding and I didn't want to burn out my retina or the sensor.

fwiw, I have also always really liked the way this lens renders water.

F 16 .. 50 mm .. 1/400 sec

F 11 .. 62 mm .. 1/640 sec