More Faces of Fall

Last year, I posted about a trip to the mountains to see the aspen turning. It's an annual tradition for most Coloradans, and this year my wife and I set aside the one fall day we both had off together for a drive. I tried to do my research first to find out where the leaves would be peaking that day, but perhaps due to the freeze the night before, it turned out most of the leaves had already fallen where we chose to go - toward Guanella Pass from the south side. So we missed the typical "fields of gold" scenes I photo. However, we were able to revisit a spot we had stumbled on a few years ago - an unmarked and otherwise unremarkable pull-off on the side of the road where a short trail leads to a river - that we can only describe as magical. It's hard to say what makes this particular spot along this particular river so special, but we both felt it strongly. Something about the color of the water and the rocks, the way the river is just far enough into the woods for its banks to be completely natural despite being only a few dozen yards from the road, the fact that it seems so non-descript and thus leads most people to simply pass it by. So no, I'm not going to tell you where it is, exactly. But I can show you some pictures!







After spending some time at "our" spot, we continued further along the road, and while there were little or no turning aspen to be seen, autumn in Colorado can have other charms as well:





Last year, I got to see the aspens on the hillside, but missed the opportunity to walk among and be surrounded by them, which is actually my favorite way to experience the aspen. This year, even though most of the leaves had already fallen, I was at least able experience walking through an aspen grove. In some ways, doing this after the leaves have fallen is even more wonderful (although the "quaking" of the leaves on the trees is not to be missed), as there is something about the tightly spaced vertical trunks I find mesmerizing in itself. And the leaves on the ground still teased with their color:





I still entertained notions of making another trip the next weekend in hopes of finding a place where the leaves hadn't fallen yet. But as it turned out, we got snow, and while I did make it up to the mountains, I got an entirely different kind of picture - one that served as a reminder that I had missed my chance but would be welcome to come back next year to try again:

Road Trip - The Western Slope

Although I've lived in Colorado for over 20 years now, I have spent very little time on the Western slope of the Rockies. So when my friend (and fellow Pentaxian) Ed called with an idea for a quick weekend road trip to Arches National Park and Colorado National Monument, I was game.

On the surface, it seemed like a questionable proposition. After getting in late Friday night after a gig, I'd be getting up early (for me) on Saturday morning, and we'd spend most of the day driving west to Moab, Utah. We'd have only about 4-5 hours of daylight to explore and shoot in Arches. Then we'd be driving back east to Grand Junction, where we'd spend the night and get up the next morning for only another 4-5 hours at Colorado National Monument (and a brief side trip to the Palisade wine country) before we'd need to head back to Denver, where I had a gig that evening. But Ed had already rented the car and was planning on doing the driving anyhow; all I had to do was come along. So I did!

I've driven west as far as Grand Junction a few times before, and there is beautiful country along the way (Glenwood Canyon in particular), but I had never explored the Grand Junction area itself, or driven any further west. The Utah state line is only a few miles from Grand Junction, and Arches only an hour or so from there. The terrain rapidly appears to get less interesting to me after passing through Glenwood, once the novelty of the mesas wears off. Crossing into Utah, I almost wondered if Arches could possibly be as spectacular as what we had already passed through to get there. But of course, its reputation suggested it would be.

Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Within a few miles of the entrance to Arches, things suddenly did get a lot more interesting. Here is a shot from the first stop we made:



Because time was so limited, we explored mostly by car. Arches is very conducive to this, as many of the major formations are close to parking areas, with little or no hiking required to see them. In fact, the view from the car is just as amazing, which is surely what these folks were thinking:



Sometimes, what is most interesting about a place is not the majestic panoramas, but the small details:



In some areas, there isn't that much to look at nearby, but what there is makes you look that much harder, as Ed demonstrates:



One of the more famous rock formations in Arches is the Balanced Rock. It's an impressive structure, although from some angles it looks more impossibly situated than others. Some viewpoints also make the scale of the thing more clear. And from any given position, the light is more dramatic at some times of day than others. Since we didn't have the luxury of planning our visit there to coincide with the optimum time of day for the optimum viewing angle, we settled for making the shots we could, and I do rather like this one:



Scale is everything in trying to photograph scenes like this. Without a person in the shot, it can be difficult to appreciate just how big the formation is, but one also has a tendency to want to see "pure" landscapes. And with limited time and no familiarity with these particular formations and limited experience with this type of photography in general, it was very difficult to capture images that reflect the true feeling of the place. That is especially true when viewing pictures on a small computer screen. I like shots like this one because the people in it are not distracting to the shot, but once you see them, they do help give a sense of scale:



We did time our sojourn through the park so that we would be be near the most famous landmark, Delicate Arch, around sundown. The trial to take you right to the foot of the arch was far too long given the limited time we had, so we instead chose a vantage point from which you can see the arch across a canyon, around half a mile away. Luckily, I had my 500mm mirror lens with me to bring it closer:



After having dinner in Moab and spending the night back in Grand Junction, doubt again surfaced: could Colorado National Monument - located just minuted from town - possibly hold a candle to Arches? While I at least had some idea of what Arches would offer, I really had no clue with Colorado National Monument; it was only a name to me. But as before, there turned out to be no cause for concern. The terrain here is very different from Arches, but no less amazing. I've never been to the Grand Canyon, and most canyons in Colorado are typically experienced from the bottom looking up. Colorado National Monument is home to a system of canyons - Ute, Red, Monument, Echo, and several others - and the road through the park travels along the rim of most of these.

Shortly after the gates to the park, one is greeted with a sense of leaving one world and entering a different one:



The first canyons one sees are relatively small ones. I was completely unprepared for the size of the large canyons one encounters soon enough:



Once again, capturing a sense of scale is difficult. Here's one only partially successful attempt, sitting on the rim with my feet dangling over the precipice, with an absolutely enormous drop below that doesn't quite look as dramatic as it felt:



Some of the rock formations here look almost like ruins from something man-made, the the Coliseum:



On the way home, we stopped briefly in Palisade to take a few quick shots of the vineyards:



I hope to be able to visit the Western slope again soon and spend a bit more time!

The Vivitar 500/8 Mirror Lens

I recently bought a Vivitar 500/8 mirror lens (also sold as Samyang, Phoenix, Opteka, Quantaray, and perhaps other brands). Although it's not a great lens, it's not nearly as bad as some say, once you figure out how to use it. So I thought I'd share some of my experiences. Here's a sample image:



First, though, some background.

If you use an SLR (digital or otherwise) and have ever tried shooting birds or other wildlife, you've probably thought about getting a longer lens. And chances are you've seen ads for "mirror" lenses (aka catadioptric, aka reflex) that seem too good to be true - under $100 for a brand new 500mm lens that's barely bigger or heavier than the "kit" zoom that came with your camera. If you've read up on the topic at all, though, you know that mirror lenses come with some major disadvantages: a small and fixed aperture (usually f/8), poor contrast and sharpness, and very odd-looking donut-shaped "bokeh" (the appearance of out of focus areas).

Now, every once in a while you come upon someone who manages to get good results from a mirror lens, and they'll often steer you toward the more expensive ones, saying the cheap ones are to be avoided. But if you're like me, you can't help but be curious. After borrowing one of the "good" ones (the Sigma 600/8) for a few weeks, I found that mirror lenses were not all bad, although they do take some work to get the hang of - both in use and in post-processing. Here's a sample image that I like from the Sigma:



I'm not going to try to convince you this image stands up to viewing at 100% on my 10MP Pentax K200D as well as an image from top quality glass telephoto lens. And if I'm able to get close enough to shoot with at 200mm or 300mm and still fill the frame the way I want, I can get better results with my 200m prime, or my 50-200 or 70-300 zoom. But if I end up needing a teleconverter and/or having to crop significantly in post-processing to get what I want with one of these shorter lenses, the Sigma mirror lens wins over any of the other options.

Unfortunately, this particular model was discontinued long ago and is kind of hard to find and relatively expensive when you do find it. Worse from my perspective, it is bulky for a mirror lens, and around three times the weight of one of the smaller models. It might seem petty to complain about the size and weight of a mirror lens, because at around 2 lbs even the heaviest are much smaller and lighter than a regular telephoto lens of that focal length would be. For me, though, that Sigma was in a bit of a no-man's land. If I'm going to carry a 2lb lens that doesn't fit in my camera bag, I might as well carry around something even bigger that will do the job with fewer compromises. But will I normally bother to carry any lens that big? I know I'm much more likely to actually use a lens that comes in at under a pound and fits in my bag.

There are other discontinued models from Tamron, Tokina, and others that are considered among the better mirror lenses and are probably worth seeking out, but they may also be harder to find, more expensive, and heavier than one might prefer. Frankly, my experience with the Sigma just made me that much more curious about the cheap models one sees advertised everywhere.

There are basically two 500mm mirror lenses currently on the market, although they are sold under a wide variety of different brand names. There is a 500/8 (normally black) made by Samyang and sold under that brand name as well as Phoenix, Opteka, Vivitar, Quantaray, and probably others. Then there is a 500/6.3 (normally white) that is usually sold under the name Pro-Optic but sometimes Kenko and perhaps others. Both are T-mount lenses, meaning that with a proper adapter, they can work with any camera mount. Usually, these lenses are sold with an adapter for a specific camera, but be aware that you can actually buy one for any camera brand if you don't mind picking up an adapter for your own camera separately (only $15 or so at your local camera store), and you might get a better deal on a used one that way.

I thought for a while about which of these lenses to try. Although the f/6.3 sounds better than f/8, one thing I learned from the Sigma is that DOF is so shallow at extreme focal lengths that a fixed f/6.3 as opposed to f/8 could create more problems than it solves. Plus the f/6.3 version is twice the weight of the f/8, and somewhat more expensive to boot. So I became fixated on the Samyang-made 500/8.

Unfortunately, as you also may have discovered in the search process that presumably brought you to this article, there just aren't many detailed reviews or even sample images from this lens, under any of its various names. What I managed to find didn't seem to resolve anything for me - some folks who hated the lens, others who thought it was surprisingly good, and only a small handful of sample images to support either opinion. Most of the references to the lenses came from people who never used either but dismissed them out of hand. Which left me still wondering how one of the Samyang-made 500/8 lenses would work for me.

I knew from the Sigma that one shouldn't expect stellar results right out of the box. Many people have little experience with manual focus, and the small fixed aperture of most mirror lenses means the viewfinder is quite dim, making focus harder than usual. Many do not realize that long telephoto lenses will create very shallow depth of field (DOF), and that avoiding camera shake at those focal lengths can be very difficult too. Many people don't realize they really need to use a hood with these lenses, or that they are supposed to always use the small clear filter that can be inserted in the rear of most mirror lenses. Many are put off by the donut bokeh that is inherent in all mirror lenses. Many see the low contrast and sharpness on the images straight from the camera and don't realize just how much this can be improved via post-processing.

Therefore, it doesn't surprise me that some think even the better mirror lenses are "junk". But more importantly, if someone reports a bad experience with one of the cheaper models, I take that with a grain of salt.

So as I said in the beginning of this article, I did finally pick up a Vivitar-branded version of the lens. I bought it used, as even the $99 brand-new price tag seemed like too much of a gamble. My assumption was that there are a lot of these lenses on the used market that are perfectly fine but are being being sold by people who just don't "get" it.

I'd say the lens has pretty much met my expectations. Not as good out of the box as the Sigma, but capable with a little work of producing results "almost" as good. As with the Sigma, the results are not nearly as sharp as they would be if I were able to shoot from closer with one of my other telephoto lenses. But depending on the resolution of your camera and the quality of your other telephoto lenses, you may still find that mirror wins if you'd need a teleconverter or heavy cropping to get the composition you want at 200mm or 300mm. Here's an (appropriately post-processed!) example I like from one of my first outings with the Vivitar:



But unless you're careful, it's just as easy to get terrible results that would make you assume the lens was not capable of anything like that. So let's look at some of the things that can make the difference.

As I alluded to earlier, technique is a big part of it if you are not used to manual focus or extreme telephoto lenses in general. Depth of field at 500mm and f/8 is very shallow, so you have to really nail the focus or the image will be out of focus. Fortunately, the focus ring on the Vivitar is very smooth, with good resistance and a long throw. If your experience with manual focus is limited to the "kit" zoom lens that came with your camera, you will probably find the actual mechanics of it easier with the Vivitar, even if the viewfinder is dimmer because of the fixed f/8 aperture.

Holding a camera steady with a 500mm lens can be more difficult than you might imagine. The old "1 / focal length" rule is probably on the optimistic side in this case, especially when used with a "cropped" sensor that makes the field of view narrower than it would have been on the 35mm cameras for which that rule was invented. A good tripod helps a lot. But one of the advantages of a relatively small and light lens like this is portability. And many people wanting that in a lens would be reluctant to use a tripod or even a monopod, even though the fixed f/8 aperture means you may often be looking at shutter speeds below 1/500".

For those wanting to handhold the camera with this lens, systems like Pentax, Sony, or Olympus that employ camera-based stabilization provide a significant advantage over Canon or Nikon. This is true even though camera-based stabilization might not be as effective as lens-based stabilization in general, and even though camera-based stabilization systems tend to be less effective at longer focal lengths. But any stabilization is better than none. I find it awkward, imprecise, and often misleading to express the effectiveness of stabilization as being "X" number of stops better, but I'd say that without stabilization, shutter speeds slower than 1/500" are very likely to be noticeably blurry for me; with stabilization, I have a fair chance at a decently sharp picture at 1/90".

If you don't have camera-based stabilization but still wish to handhold the camera, see if you can find a rock, table, or other surface to rest the camera on, as this can control shake at least as well as a monopod. Otherwise, you will need to increase ISO to get shutter speeds above 1/250" (and preferably to 1/750"). You will want to experiment for yourself to find what shutter speeds you need to get get the results you want. Unfortunately, while the aperture is technically f/8, you will find the lens absorbs so much light that shutter speeds are more consistent with what you'd expect of f/11. I find that on a typical sunny day, ISO 400 can give me shutter speeds of 1/500" or better in direct sun but not in the in the shade, and shooting on an overcast day is similar to shooting in the shade. So you might often be looking at ISO 800 or even 1600, depending on how steady your hands are.

Some mirror lenses come with hoods, but this one did not. When shooting anywhere near the direction of the sun, lens flare is pretty unmistakable - simply using your hand to shield the lens from the sun yields an improvement that is obvious just looking through the viewfinder. I bought a cheap 72mm collapsible rubber hood that might not eliminate as much flare as a hood designed specifically for the lens, but it works better than nothing. Still, it is better to avoid shooting in the general direction of the sun.

The famous donut bokeh is going to be more troublesome in some situations than others, and that requires some experimentation to figure out. Small bright highlights create the most obvious donuts. But the prominence of the donuts also has to do with how far you are from your subject relative to the out of focus areas. In a lot of shots - such as most of the ones I've posted here - I am barely aware of it. It gets more prominent the closer the background is to your subject. A very distant background will be so blurred you will probably not notice. And my impression is, the Vivitar seems less prone to donuts than the Sigma in any situation.

Even if you are careful about all of this while shooting, you will probably be disappointed with how the images look straight out of the camera. Contrast, sharpness, and saturation are all relatively low, and your camera probably doesn't have strong enough settings to fully address this. You will almost certainly be needing post-processing to improve this - and you will be needing to increase these parameters far more than you are probably accustomed to. Also, when using high ISO and then increasing contrast and sharpening in PP, noise becomes even more visible than usual for that ISO. You may need to experiment with both the noise reduction and sharpening settings in your PP software to combat this. I find that doing NR as usual for the ISO but setting a higher than usual threshold for sharpening and being relatively aggressive with amount and to a lesser extent with radius works well for me.

When applying this much adjustment in PP, you can get much better results from RAW than from JPEG. I have created a preset that increases contrast and sharpness while adding a bit more vibrance too. By making this a preset, I can easily apply the same settings to all images shot with this lens in one click. In a matter of seconds, the results improve dramatically. Of course, I can also custom process images after applying the preset - there are adjustments that are best made on a per-image basis using levels and curves adjustments, local contrast enhancement, hue adjustment (color is often cooler than I would like), and so forth. But just applying my basic preset instantly makes the results from the Vivitar much more impressive than they would otherwise be.

When you are careful to observe this advice about shooting and post-processing, the Vivitar can definitely beat the results you might get using a 50-200, 70-300, or another similar telephoto lens, and then cropping to yield the same field of view as a 500mm lens. Of course, you'd hope this would be so, or there wouldn't seem to be any reason to use the Vivitar if you already own another telephoto lens. On the other hand, there is something to be said for actually seeing your subject large in viewfinder - particularly if you enjoy just looking at wildlife. And in situations - like with birds in trees, or birds in flight, even - where you might find yourself focusing manually even with an autofocus lens, having the subject appear large in the viewfinder can help. So even if the Vivitar did not actually beat the results from cropping an image from a shorter focal length, it wouldn't be without its appeal.

But if you need to be convinced, here is a comparison. First is a 100% crop of an image from my 50-200 at 200mm. That means it is blown up as big as it can be without getting "pixelation". Following that is a corresponding crop from the Vivitar, resized to match. The original image is the one shown at the top of this article:




If you look closely, you will see the Vivitar image clearly contains more detail. I should point out, though, that this is apparent only in cases where you need to crop beyond the field of view of a 500mm lens as I did above, or in cases where you wish to print the full image larger than 4x6". If I crop the image from the 50-200 to exactly match the full image from the Vivitar and then print both at 4x6", the results are practically indistinguishable. So don't completely discount the value of cropping. It's only on larger prints or heavier crops where the Vivitar wins.

Still, there is no denying the fact that the Vivitar is capturing more detail, or the fact that it provides a much larger viewfinder image, which is nice in itself. And mirror lenses can be surprisingly versatile. Here's a portrait made at that same location (Arches National Park) minutes earlier:



I imagine the most common use for this lens will be for wildlife, though, and birds in particular. I don't think I have quite reached the potential of this lens for that purpose yet. But here is a shot that came out reasonably well considering it was handheld at 1/180":



I don't particularly recommend this lens for concert photography. 500mm is usually far more than you want, and f/8 (more like f/11 in practice) is usually much too small an aperture to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop subject motion. But I have observed that in most venues where you might need very long focal lengths (200mm or more), the stage lighting is often good enough that you can get away with smaller apertures than one needs in smaller clubs. I tested this idea recently with the Vivitar at a concert in a 300-seat recital hall, shooting from the rear balcony. At ISO 1600, all I could manage was a shutter speed of 1/45". But I'm used to shooting at that speed with my shorter lenses, so I know that stopping subject motion is possible with good timing. By resting the camera on the balcony railing, I was able to get the camera steady enough to take this shot:



For large outdoor concerts, I could see this lens being quite useful.

Now, I won't lie - I have taken sharper landscapes, portraits, wildlife pictures, and concert shots with my 200mm and 300mm telephoto lenses. But I cannot stress enough that in order to get those results, I had to be much closer to my subject. If I tried shooting from the distances I was dealing with in these examples, I would need to crop the image very heavily in PP to get the same field of view. And as the comparison I posted above suggests, the Vivitar is capable of giving better results than simply cropping an image from a shorter lens. BTW, I find teleconverters usually give results that are not even as good as cropping, although this depends on the specific lens and TC involved.

On the other hand, if you don't have enough light to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop subject motion or camera shake, a mirror lens is not the best answer. Again, neither is a teleconverter, since they will reduce most telephoto lenses to f/8 or worse as well. Cropping a shot taken at 200mm or 300mm can be a very viable way to get a usable image as long as you don't need to print too large. But mirror lenses like the Vivitar are a fun and effective way to get the shot without cropping.

In conclusion, I hope I have set your expectations for what this inexpensive mirror lens can and cannot do, and how to get the most out of it. A lot of people are extremely disappointed by this lens, and of course, it does not come close to matching a high quality 500mm glass telephoto lens. But I do think most of the naysayers are not taking full advantage of the potential of the lens - shooting with questionable focus and stability, without a hood, and not enhancing for contrast or sharpness or color. It is capable of taking pictures you are not likely to get any other way from a lens of this price, size, or weight.

Concert Photography - Technique

I'm going to assume you've already read my article on equipment, or else you are already satisfied with your equipment choices. To summarize, you'll want a camera that gives you acceptable quality at the high ISO speeds you will often be needing, and a lens or lenses with a relatively wide maximum aperture (f/2.8 or better, ideally) in a focal length range that provides the sort of field of view that works for you. For me, that means a DSLR (Pentax K200D) and lenses in the short to medium telephoto lengths. 100mm is the sweet spot for me on APS-C, although I know others prefer wider angles, and longer is useful if you can't shoot from as close to the action as you otherwise might. Although I mostly use primes, I think a 50-135mm zoom would be ideal for most people.

Pretty much any camera that satisfies these basic requirements - good high ISO performance, wide aperture lens - should also give you control over ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. It doesn't really matter whether this is done via a completely manual mode, or via the use of aperture priority or shutter priority modes combined with exposure compensation, exposure lock, or other manual overrides. Basically, any DSLR should do the job, but a film camera or full featured fixed lens camera that provides this same type of capability would be fine too.

Before we go further, I should point out that my main musical interest is jazz, and that affects my photography in some significant ways. For one thing, it means my photographs tend to be more about individuals than the the "band", because such is often the nature of jazz. It means that my subjects are often playing wind instruments, which have their own set of issues regarding focal length choice, composition, and focus. It means I am often working in small clubs with very simple but very poor lighting - not the type of elaborate lighting displays typical with some rock bands. And the listening environment is often pretty quiet compared to typical rock shows. So if some of my comments seem strange to you - like if you cannot possibly imagine anyone caring about the sound of a DSLR shutter - then feel free to take those with a grain of salt. Still, I expect most of what I have to say will be relevant to anyone who has stumbled upon this article.

Here's an example of the kind of photograph I like to take:



Even if you have a different creative vision than I do, you may still find my technical commentary useful.

Basic Settings

Beginners are often bewildered by the various settings on their cameras. I can cut through some of that by telling you there are only three that really matter - ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. These are the basics of exposure and have been since the dawn of photography. If your camera provides controls over sharpness, contrast, saturation, and so forth, that's fine, and feel free to mess with them if you like. But none of those things make a fundamental difference to the image in the same way the basic exposure settings do. And especially if you shoot RAW - more on that in a moment - you will find that the exposure settings are the only things that are fixed when you take the picture. All else can be changed later.

I personally use "M" (manual) mode to control my exposure. I did this at first because with my old manual lenses, it is the only way exposure can be controlled. But I soon realized I liked the control it gave, and I found I would get more consistent results that way too, so now I use it all the time even with my modern lenses. The optimum exposure doesn't vary from shot to shot nearly as much as an autoexposure system will tend to think. Consider a person wearing light colored clothing in a spotlight standing against a dark colored background in the shadow (a typical situation). As long as the person doesn't change their clothes or move out of the spotlight, there is no reason for exposure to change. But an autoexposure system can easily be fooled by such irrelevant factors as how much of the dark background is visible in the shot, whether the lighting on the background changes, whether a second person enters the shot, whether an instrument or microphone happens to catch a reflection from the spotlight, whether the spotlight itself is in the picture, etc.

Also, the autoexposure system often recommends a shutter speed that is too slow to stop camera shake or subject motion. In low light concert photography, you often need to be prepared to underexpose in order to get a sharp pictures, and then expect to improve the exposure in post processing (PP). You will probably be needing to override the default suggested exposure more often than you think. So some amount of manual override is often necessary no matter what mode you shoot in.

On the other hand, if you are not used to shooting in "M" mode, it can be daunting at first, and you are indeed likely to blow some shots until you get the hang of it. Stage lighting often varies in color from one part of the stage to another, and sometimes in intensity as well. An exposure that works for one musician in one area of the stage might work another musician in another area of the stage, but it might not. It will be up to you to monitor changes in lighting across the stage, and also over time - systems that change the lighting every couple of minutes are common in some venues.

So anyhow, as I see it, you have two choice: use "M" mode and watch for changes in lighting, or use an auto mode and watch for everything else. Your call. If you use an autoexposure mode, you need to either make liberal use of your exposure-lock control or expect to be constantly adjusting exposure compensation based on your read of the scene. Otherwise your exposures may vary wildly for no good reason, even when shooting what seems to be the same scene, and some will be blurry from too slow a shutter speed.

I'll deal with the specifics of setting exposure later. For now, I want to run down the other camera settings you can make before you start shooting and mostly leave alone.

First, as I alluded to before, you'll want to shoot RAW. Whatever you might think about doing PP, it's almost always going to help a lot in concert photography, and need not be particularly time consuming in order to be useful. Batch setting white balance, noise reduction, and perhaps a global exposure adjustment can be done in seconds for an entire cardful images, and will turn a set underexposed, noisy, orange-colored images into something you can really be happy with. There are programs that try to provide this same level convenience to JPEG, but the very nature of JPEG is such that you will not be able to maintain the same quality when doing these sorts of adjustments. If you insist on shooting JPEG anyhow, be my guest, but expect to never be able to get rid of of the stage lighting color casts, and expect any shots you underexpose in order to get a fast enough shutter speed to never look anywhere near as good in terms of detail or noise as it could - it is just not possible to PP that type of JPEG image to the same extent as with RAW.

If your camera or lens features some form of stabilization (IS, VR, SR, OS, AS, or whatever the manufacturer of your gear calls it), turn it on unless you are using a tripod and the manufacturer recommends it not be used with a tripod. Most stabilization systems work fine with a monopod. If you don't have stabilization, a monopod is a cheap way and relatively unobtrusive to improve stability.

If your camera gives you a way to quickly switch between auto and manual focus, find it and learn to use it. Pentax DSLR's have a button that can temporarily disable AF while pressed without needing to actually switch to MF mode; I find that incredibly useful. Others like to set up their cameras so that pressing the shutter does not perform AF at all, but instead a button press does. That's an option too. What we're looking for here is a way to achieve focus on a subject, then make sure the camera doesn't refocus while you fire off a string of shots of that subject.

If your camera requires you to do something special to turn off flash, do that now. If you plan to shoot with flash, you can safely skip the section on exposure, because it won't be relevant. You'll have to turn elsewhere for help with flash exposure. But do make sure you know flash is acceptable before assuming you'll be using it. As a musician myself, I can tell you it's never acceptable during my performances, but that's my world. Yours may be different.

Although ISO is one of the three exposure parameters that in theory might vary from shot to shot, in practice, light levels are often low enough that you'll just want to set it as high as you stand (in terms of noise) before you start shooting and not mess with it again all night. I shoot at ISO 1600 practically all the time in my concert photography.

Positioning And Composition

Once your camera is set up, your next step is to position yourself and frame your shots to get the results you want. This is the part that is the most personal, so my advice here will be pretty general.

In general, the closer you are, the better. You'll be able to capture more detail, you'll have more dramatic perspective and depth of field effects, and it will be easier to position yourself to avoid obstructions. You'll also be less intrusive to fellow attendees if you are between them and the band than if you are continually pushing through the crowd. Although you do want to be respectful and not stand directly in someone else's line of sight for long. Nor do you want to be so close you are distracting to the musicians. But shots like this can't be taken from further back:




If you are close and you want a shot of the whole band, you'll need a wide angle lens, and if you don't have anything suitable, standing further back will have to do. Sometimes the only convenient spots to be near the stage don't allow for unobstructed views of all the band members, so some shots might have to be taken from further away with a longer lens. This is obviously very specific to the venue and band. Depending on the arrangement of the musicians and where you position yourself, you might be able to capture shots of the whole band from surprisingly close with a 50mm lens, or even 70mm, as I did here:



While occasionally it works out that you can get all the shots you want from one position, more often than not you'll be better off moving around. To minimize disruption, it is usually best to do all the shooting you need to do from one spot (including lenses changes as necessary), then move to another spot, rather than constantly flitting around. On the other hand, you may also want to minimize lens changes, and that might suggest taking all shots you think you will want with one lens, moving around as necessary, then change lenses and repeat.

Because my main musical interest is jazz, and jazz is so much about personal expression, I tend to be primarily interested in capturing images of individual musicians more so than shots of the entire band. I usually take one or two band shots just to have them, but I mostly focus on more intimate portrait-like shots, as you can see from the examples I am including. Because so much jazz involves wind instruments in the front, and piano, guitar, bass, and drums further back, I can often use a longer telephoto lens and still incorporate the whole instrument than I could if I were mostly shooting guitar players in the front line. But all this varies according to the specific band and how they are set up on stage. One of the things I do in planning my shots is think about what focal lengths I will need to capture head-and-instrument portraits of each musician from a variety of different vantage points.

Obviously, you will never be able to completely anticipate every shot you might want. You will likely find that moving around suggests shot to you that you might not have thought of otherwise. But if you try to keep these ideas in mind, things usually go smoother. Here's a shot I had not planned to take, but once I arrived in the spot where I was planning to shoot the pianist, I saw an opportunity to shoot the whole rhythm section:



Any shot you can take while leaning against a wall, or post, or other support - or seated - is likely to come out sharper than any shot you take while standing unsupported. Camera/lens stabilization and monopods can help, but still, the steadier you are yourself, the better.

All basic compositional concepts you might learn about in any book on photography technique - or drawing or painting, for that matter - apply. However, given that you should be expecting to post process your shots to some extent, and that can include cropping, it might not be worth obsessing too much about composition while shooting. But there are some things that you are much better off paying attention to now than trying to deal with later. When lining up a shot, try to be aware of things that are in the frame but might turn out to be unnecessary or distracting, such as overly busy backgrounds, objects or people in the background that appear growing out of your subject's head, etc. When shooting singers using microphones or people playing wind instruments, it is often best to shoot from an angle to either side so that you can still see most of the face:



On the other hand, sometimes with a wind instrument especially, the "coming right at you" look can be quite effective too, even if it partially obscures the face:



I also like to be on the lookout for interesting geometric shapes formed by the musicians, their instruments, and whatever else is in the frame, to create the occasional semi-abstract shot. I don't know or care if anyone else would find this shot interesting, but I do, and that's all that matters to me:



For maximum impact, try to get the most contrast you can between the subject and the background - usually a light figure against a dark background. Even "black" skin in a spotlight will often be lighter than an unlit background:



Of course, a darker figure against a lighter background will "pop" just as well, and that can happen at times even with "white" skin if the lighting is right:



Watch your subject for motions that keep repeating and see if you can identify a spot in the cycle where the subject is holding a pose for a moment - that will allow you to shoot with a relatively slow shutter speed and still get a reasonably sharp picture. For example, for anyone who rocks back and forth, there is always a point of zero motion at either end of the "rock". On the other hand, shots of musicians engaged in an action that cannot be stopped at the kind of shutter speeds you will be using can be effective too - nothing says motion and excitement like a little subject blur. Particularly if parts of the subject are in motion but parts are not. I usually strive to freeze the face but show motion in the limbs, at least for instrumentalists:



One more word about the sort of portrait-like shots I usually take. I tend to go for shots showing moments of intensity, often featuring almost pained looks on the faces of the musicians:



These seldom turn out to be the musicians' favorite pictures of themselves. So I do try to capture them smiling or otherwise looking as they might like to see themselves:



Exposure

Once you've settled on a basic location and composition for a series of shots, you need to set exposure before you can actually shoot. Yes, I know - your camera has autoexposure, and in other settings it works just fine to just point and shoot and let the camera take care of the rest. But for various reasons that I alluded to above, this doesn't usually work so well for concert photography. I will be more specific about this now.

When shooting a single lit figure against a dark background - something very common in concert photography - a camera autoexposure system will typically try to exposure the background to "medium" brightness, like an 18% gray card. This will virtually always result in an overexposed figure, and depending on your aperture and ISO, probably too slow a shutter speed to stop blur. You want to expose for the figure in the light, not the dark background. Here is an example where the dark background would have led the camera to suggest a shutter speed that was unusably slow, yielding a blurry subject and blown out detail in places, and it would have ruined the effect of the dark background as well. If you think the cord growing out of the keyboardist's back is distracting now, imagine how it would looked if the background were a stop brighter:



Conversely, if there is a bright light in the picture frame, most cameras will underexpose the shot in order to avoid blowing out that light and to keep the average brightness of the scene down. This picture would have come out almost completely black except for the spotlight if I had just blindly accepted the exposure suggested by the camera:



To some extent, overexposure and underexposure can be dealt with in PP, but best results are always obtained when you get thing as close as practical in camera. The trick is in learning how to do this efficiently.

Instead of letting the camera choose an exposure based on the whole scene and then trying to figure out how much adjustment might be necessary and in which direction, I usually find it more effective to use substitute metering - setting exposure based on a scene that is dominated by the kind of lighting I want to expose for. Spot metering can be useful for this, although I actually prefer center-weighted. Either way, you can point directly at your subject and zoom in to center the meter on him or her, then set and lock the exposure using the exposure lock control or simply by being in manual exposure mode. Or you can use a spot on the floor or wall that is in the same light as your subject if that works out better. Once you have set the exposure in this way, you can shoot any composition you want containing that subject with confidence that your subject will remain consistently exposed regardless of how the rest of the scene changes from shot to shot.

For example, the camera-suggested exposure in the following shot would have been far too low because the spotlight in the frame would have fooled the meter. The singer would have lost in the shadow:



But the following shot, taken moments later, would have been overexposed because the spotlight was not in the shot, so the dark background would have fooled the meter instead:



By carefully metering on the singer himself in the shoot, and then leaving that exposure alone while shooting, I was able to capture both scenes as I wanted them, without having to dial in different amounts and types of exposure compensation throughout the series. The same exposure worked for all shots of that subject form that vantage point, and that is going to be true more often than not.

As I mentioned before, I use manual mode more or less exclusively. Pentax cameras provide a button that quickly sets what it thinks is an appropriate shutter speed while I am pointed at my chosen metering target, so I can still take advantage of the camera's metering system, and I can then adjust that suggested exposure as necessary to get the subject as bright as I want. Once set, I can and do simply leave exposure alone until the lighting changes or my attention turns to a subject in different lighting.

Even when using substitute metering techniques, you might still need to use compensation at times, however. For instance, positive compensation is often needed for subjects under bright spotlights or else the camera will try to expose to make your subject look only medium bright instead of looking like he or she is in a spotlight. Or, if you are deliberately trying to create a silhouette against a light background, negative compensation might be necessary if metering off the subject. Also, shots taken under strongly colored lighting are likely to cause one color channel of the camera to "clip" - and therefore lose detail - long before the picture looks overexposed as a whole. So you often need to underexpose in strongly colored light. For these reasons and others, compensation can still be necessary. But it is much easier to adjust based on your subject and how you want it to appear, rather than trying to figure out how to adjust an exposure your camera is making based largely on one aspect of a scene (like a dark background or a spotlight) in order to make a totally unrelated aspect of the scene (like your subject) come out the way you want.

I should note that in practice, I actually don't bother going through all of this very often. At some venues where I shoot regularly, I know before I arrive what exposure settings with work. ISO 1600, f/2.8, and 1/45" is so typical at one venue, for instance, that I can set that before leaving my house and never revisit it. Usually, when I first begin shooting at a venue I will take test shots of different spots on the stage to see if exposure needs to be adjusted up or down from one spot to the next because of the arrangement of lights. I then memorize the shutter speeds that worked: 1/45" when shooting most of the musicians but 1/30" for the drummer and 1/60" for anyone at the front microphone, for instance. Again, using manual mode makes it simple to actually get the camera to use the settings I want, as long as I remember to change shutter speeds when appropriate.

You might find that your favorite venue lets you be similarly consistent about exposure. If it is especially well lit, you might not need ISO 1600 or f/2.8, or you might be able to get a faster shutter speed. If it is not as well lit, you might need to increase ISO further if your camera allows, or use a larger aperture if your lens allows. Or, you might just settle for an underexposed picture in order to keep shutter speeds high enough, and hope to be able to correct this in PP. I routinely shoot a little underexposed at ISO 1600 and push exposure up to a stop or so in PP - giving me the equivalent of ISO 3200 - and still get acceptable (to me) results in terms of noise. That depends on your camera and your standards. But if you're thinking that you'll be able to shoot with a typical f/4-5.6 zoom at ISO 200, you are likely to be extremely disappointed.

In case you are unclear on the tradeoffs between ISO, apeture, and shutter speed, you might want to read up more on exposure elsewhere. What I'll say here is this: higher ISO means more noise (graininess); larger aperture - represented by smaller f-numbers - means shallower depth of field (DOF) which can make getting your subject in focus more difficult; slower shutter speed means blur from camera shake or subject motion. Expect to need ISO around 1600 and aperture around f/2.8 in order to get a shutter speed fast enough to combat blur. The faster the shutter speed the better, so even if I have the luxury of having enough light to not need ISO 1600 or f/2.8, I'll often leave ISO and aperture there just to take advantage of faster shutter speeds. But if your camera or lens does not perform well enough for you at those settings, by all means, decrease ISO or stop down the lens when you can do so without introducing too much blur.

I find 1/30" a good benchmark for controlling blur from subject motion if my timing is good, and it's fast enough that between the stabilization technology built in to my camera and taking advantage of whatever physical aids I can (walls, posts, chairs, etc), I don't have to worry too much about blur from camera shake even when using my 135mm lens. Of course, 1/30" won't stop a subject in active motion, but as I said, if my timing is good, I can expect a high percentage of reasonably sharp pictures.

If necessary, I'll shoot slower, but I expect to need to take more shots in order to get lucky enough to have one come out acceptably sharp. I've occasionally resorted to speeds as slow as 1/6" and managed to get good results, but that's not something one can count on. Here's one where I got lucky at that speed:



At 1/120", unless you are shooting at long telephoto lengths (200mm or beyond on APS-C) or not supporting yourself and the camera at all, you can reasonably expect most shots to come out sharp. Some musicians I find notoriously difficult to get sharp pictures of because the move so much, but if I can get them in a situation where I can use 1/120" or faster, I can usually nail them. So although f/2.8 is usually adequate for me, I am happy to have a 50mm lens at f/1.7 to help me get those those kinds of shutter speeds when I really need them:



Most of your shots will probably end up between these extremes, so your success will come down to your timing and ability to stabilize yourself and the camera/lens.

Focusing And Shooting

Focus similarly can be done using a combination of automatic and manual techniques. The main problem with simply pointing and shooting is that often, the camera will notice a microphone or instrument and focus on it instead of the musicians' face. This is of course most likely not what you want. Also, AF tends to be slow on many cameras in low light, and erratic in highly colored stage lighting, causing you to miss more shots than you might like. Plus, when taking multiple shots in a row of the same subject - something you should be in the habit of doing in order to increase your chances of at least one coming out blur-free - you don't want the camera stopping to refocus (and possibly getting it wrong) between shots. So just as with exposure, you will often want to set focus once, then shoot a whole series.

The specific of how to do this vary with camera brands and models, which is why I suggested looking into this when initially setting up your camera. As I mentioned, I have mine set up so that a button on the back of the camera temporarily disables AF. I'll half press the shutter to perform an initial focus, and if I judge that the camera was successful, I will then park my thumb on the AF cancel button while I snap as many shots as I want. Others will use a button to focus and have their cameras set so that pressing the shutter does not refocus, which accomplishes the same goal: focus once, shoot as often as you like.

That initial focus, of course, is very important. Many of my favorite concert lenses are manual focus only. That takes practice, but I am pretty good at it by now. When using an autofocus lens, I will usually let the camera try, but knowing that it might miss, I rarely accept its focus without verifying it for myself in the viewfinder. Most modern Pentax lenses allow you to override focus manually after AF lock has been achieved, without having to turn off AF, and I use this facility quite often. So even if you mostly use AF, having good MF skills can help a lot.

Psychologically, many of us have a tendency to make the same mistake the camera does: to focus on a microphone or instrument in front of the subject rather than the subject himself. You have to be very careful not to allow the camera to do this when using AF, and also not to do this yourself when using MF. Here's a shot where an AF system might have been fooled, but focusing manually I was able to get what I wanted:



I will often take a test shot and examine the results on the LCD at high magnification. Only after convincing myself that focus is good will I take more shots. I might do this several times before being satisfied. Luckily, musicians usually tend to stay in one spot long enough - or at least return to one spot often enough - to make this feasible. In that sense, it is easier than most sports. So by all means, check images and/or histograms on your LCD periodically to make sure you are getting the shots you think you are in terms of exposure and expression as well as focus. But be aware that depending on the setting, the bright light from the LCD might be distracting.

Speaking of distractions: for all their other advantages, DSLR's have a reputation for loud shutters (and Pentax DSLR's especially so). Even the quietest DSLR makes more noise than is normally acceptable during a quiet classical concert. I try to time my shots to occur during moments when it is not likely to be bothersome. For some concerts, that means I can shoot whenever I want, of course. For others, it means avoiding shooting during certain tunes only. For others, it means waiting for the loudest passages, or perhaps only when the applause starts at the end of a piece (but hopefully before musicians have put their instruments down).

I've given my opinion on flash elsewhere, but again for the record: don't use it unless you know for a fact it won't be disruptive. And I don't know about any other musicians, but from my own perspective, I can tell you it's always disruptive to me. If you do shoot in a situation where it is acceptable and you don't think the light from the flash will ruin the mood of the shot, that does of course change everything regarding exposure, but you'll have to turn elsewhere for advice on that - it's just not my thing.

One final note: I usually shoot with some sort of objective in mind. For instance, to capture at least one good shot of every musician, to capture different group poses that seem representative of the band as a whole, to capture of a shot of someone playing a specific instrument that I have not captured them using before, and so forth. When I think I have shot enough, I usually put my camera away and go back to just listening. This frees up space for other photographers if I am in the front, but it also allows me to enjoy the music more - which is, after all, presumably related to why we shoot concerts in the first place.

Creative Improvised Music - A Wakeup Call From Ken Vandermark

I attended a show recently that featured saxophonist Ken Vandermark, and it got me thinking.



I first became aware of Ken almost 20 years ago. At the time, I was mostly into very mainstream jazz - Charlie Parker, Bill Evans, etc. I was knew of, had respect for, but didn't really listen much to, certain "free jazz" musicians that had strong ties to the tradition - Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman in particular. And at some point after moving to Colorado in 1988, I began subscribing to Cadence magazine. Cadence covers jazz, but also more generally "creative improvised music" - much of which exists outside the radar of the mainstream jazz media. And it seemed that every other CD they reviewed at that time featured Ken Vandermark.

I don't know that it is possible to describe this music succinctly, because by its very nature, much of it defies convention of genre or idiom. It often involves improvisation that is free of typical chord structures and hence is often atonal. Some people find it hard to identify any sort of structure, but then, many find it hard to recognize structure in bebop.

I started listening to some of this music, including Ken's, and was intrigued. For quite some time I worked incorporating some of these sounds and ideas into my own composition and playing, and I found it very musically rewarding. I even ended up recording a CD with trumpeter Hugh Ragin for the Creative Improvised Music Projects label, which is run by the same folks (Bob Rusch & company) that publish Cadence Magazine.

That was all while having a day job as a software engineer, treating music as a hobby. At some point I realized that playing music "as a hobby" was about as fulfilling as when someone you really like tells you that they like you too - "as a friend". So I quit the day job and went into music full time. At some point after that, however, I had to accept that as personally fulfilling as this "creative improvised music" was, my career pretty much demanded I focus primarily on traditional forms. Between playing a steady gig for many years at El Chapultepec (where it was all about playing "standards"), going back to school to study composition, teaching jazz theory, and any number of other factors, my musical thinking has been much more focused on mainstream jazz again for the last decade or so. It's not that I deliberately turned my back on "creative improvised music", but I did not go out of my way to make room for it, either, and not surprisingly, it didn't make room for me.

When Ken Vandermark came to town last week with Dutch musician Ab Baars, I of course attended, and really enjoyed the performance. It also served as a wakeup call - a reminder of something that had been missing from my musical expression for too long. I'm not sure how I'll respond to that realization, but it was an eye-opener. I still have a lot of straightahead compositions I hope to record soon, and I still expect to be making my living playing mainstream jazz. But I need to keep in mind what it was I loved so much that it set me on this path in the first place.

Here are some shots from the concert featuring Ken along with saxophonist Ab Baars, bassist Wilbert De Joode, and drummer Martin van Duynhoven:









By the way, I was also surprised to see that Ken was about the same age as me, and had actually only just hit the scene when I became aware of him. For some reason, as much as I was seeing his name back then, I assumed he had been around a long time already.

A couple more shots:

Big Birds at Prospect Park

I'm lucky to live in an area with a lot of wonderful parks and open space areas. One of my favorites is Prospect Park, and I've visited it several times lately. The weather has been all over the map the last couple of weeks - from warm sunny days to blizzards - but that's spring in Colorado. And that's a beautiful time and place to be. I've done my share of landscape painting over the years, and landscape photography as well. But for some reason, this month it has mostly been birds that have caught my eye.

I am sure cormorants have been around here longer than I have, but this year is the first time I've noticed them, or knew what they were. A whole flock has taken over a tree on a pond at Prospect Park:



They use the tree as a launching pad for excursions to feed and to collect nesting materials:





The way they are building a network of nests in the tree reminds me very much of the condominium building visible behind the tree:



One day while my wife Wendy and I were watching and photographing the cormorants, a couple of birdwatchers came and told us where we could find a hawk in a tree elsewhere in the park. We were a bit skeptical that it would still be there when we got there, but there it was:



We thought we were lucky to get off a couple of shots, as we were sure it would fly off at the sound of our shutters. But it turned out this hawk was unflappable. We were able to photograph it from as close as we wanted:



On two separate occasions I watched and shot this hawk for probably an hour. It didn't do anything really dramatic, but I managed to catch a number of "moments", such as here when it might have found some prey:



Rather than dive and attack, it started calling out - perhaps to alert the other hawks in the area:



This bird was circling above us the whole time, but never came in any closer:



Eventually, my friend on the branch above me lost interest in whatever had commanded its attention, and went back to more mundane activities, such as scratching its head:



At one point it shifted position and lifted its tail and I was sure it was going to fly off, but all it actually did was poop:



When the wind blew, it would have to do something to keep its balance. In this instance, it apparently decided it was best off balancing on one foot:



It was also a gust of wind that prompted the most dramatic pose offered by the hawk:



I have no idea how long this particular hawk will stay in the area, but I plan to visit as often as I can, as this was just an amazing experience.

Returning To The Scene

As some of you know, I played the piano at a jazz club in Denver called El Chapultepec (aka "the Pec") for a number of years, ending back in July. I hadn't been back since - not because there were any hard feelings, but simply because there hadn't been any particular reason to visit. A few days ago, the saxophonist I had worked with most of those years - Keith Oxman - suggested we meet there and visit. OK, and also to see about maybe playing there again. When they ended our run last summer, they decided not to have anyone there on a steady basis any more on weekend nights but instead to bring in different bands each night, as most clubs do. No particular reason we couldn't be one of them!

So we dropped by last night. It was great to see the owner Angela, the bartender James, and the rest of the crew again. The band du jour was led by trumpeter Hugh Ragin, who was the first musician I worked with regularly in Colorado, going back almost 20 years. This from last night:



BTW, that was shot at 1/6". I was able to rest my elbows on a countertop, so you can't credit me or Pentax shake reduction too much for the lack of camera shake. But for the lack of subject motion blur, you've got to credit Hugh, who has one of the most relaxed trumpet techniques you're ever likely to see.

They've made some cosmetic changes at the Pec over the last few months. Nothing really major - some faux brickwork behind the stage, new carpet in the dining area, etc. But one of the most immediately noteworthy changes was the lighting. At least the way they had it set last night, it was still as bad as ever toward the front of the stage where Hugh was. But the light on the piano was a *lot* brighter and cooler than in the past. Actually, I think it mostly came from a neon beer sign, but light is light. In this shot of pianist Ron Jolly, it's hard to recognize it as the same place, as anyone who has tried to shoot there will attest:



Keith and I sat in and played a tune or two. No pictures of me, of course, but here's Keith, pretty much back to 100% after his bout with cancer:



On those last two, I'll take some credit for good timing in getting reasonably sharp pictures at shutter speeds of 1/20" and 1/15" respectively :-)

Oh yeah - we did talk to Angela, and she's more than happy to have us back from time to time. I think playing there on an occasional basis will be great - it will be more likely that we'll be able to get people to show up to hear us as opposed to just depending on the people who happen to drop in as we always had (it's the busiest neighborhood in the city). So hopefully I'll be seeing some of you there at some point!