Treeline at 200 mm

New Users Corner

Lens types and terms

There are a confusing number of different lens types available for DSLR cameras along with equally confusing terminology.

• Zoom lenses
• Ultra-zoom lenses
• Prime lenses
• Macro Lenses
• Focal Length and aps-c
• Wide Angle lenses
• Ultra Wide Angle lenses
• Telephoto lenses
• Oddball lenses

Zoom lenses

If you come from the point and shoot camera world then you are familiar with zoom lenses. They are lenses that have a variable focal length range. The kit lens that comes with most DSLR bodies is always a zoom. Often a 18mm to 55mm.

Zooms are versatile lenses and are relative new comers on the photography scene. Twenty five years ago they were rare and expensive. Computer lens design software combined with computer controlled lens grinding equipment has made them ubiquitous. These lenses in the less expensive versions tend to be on the slow side.

Things to watch out for are: does the lens change length when it is zoomed. Lenses with internal focusing do not and are more desirable than the ones which do change length. Does the front of the lens rotate when the lens is focused or the focal length is changed? This can cause problems with certain filters since some, like polarizing filters, need a a certain position to work as you want them to do. That means you have to readjust the filter everytime you focus.

Prime Lenses

Before there were zooms there were primes. These are lenses with a single fixed focal length. Some people prefer to called these fixed focal length lenses rather than primes.

Prime lenses are often faster, meaning they let more light into the camera. They can be lighter weight than zooms. And they are usually considered to be optically superior in many cases. The sharpest lenses are are almost always primes. This is because the lens design is simplified for a prime lens over a zoom lens which has to physically move lens elements around in the lens barrel as the focal length is changed.

Of course with a prime lens you have to use the two footed zoom, you will need to move closer and further away from the subject with your feet instead of twisting the zoom ring.

Some extremely fast primes are made like the Canon f/1.2 lenses in 50m and 85mm. Canon has even made a 50mm f/1.0 lens. These ultrafast lenses are specialist lenses and tend not to be as sharp as normally fast versions. That f/1.0 lens is four stops faster than a kit lens at f/4 which means that if you shot at 1/25th of a second with the f/4 lens you could have shot the same scene at 1/500th of second with the f/1.0 lens or 1/250th of a second with a f/1.2 lens.

The longest telephoto lenses also are primes. Canon has made a 1200mm f/5.6 lens and the rumor is that they would still make one if someone was willing to pay for it. They do have a 800mm f/5.6 lens currently available as does Sigma. Sigma also has some very long telephoto zoom lenses.

Macro lenses

Macro lenses are one area where you cannot believe what you are told by the manufacturers. Strictly speaking a macro lens is a lens which which can focus down to 1:1. That means the image size on the camera sensor is the exact same size as the real object. Something one centimeter wide at 1:1 will create a one centimeter wide image on the camera sensor.

However manufacturers advertise some of their zoom lenses as being macro lenses. This is always a pure and simple lie. All macro true macro lenses are prime lenses, although I suppose a manufacturer could design a zoom macro, none do so. Besides focusing very closely macro lenses are very sharp as a rule. They are also commonly used as portrait lenses. Primes are commonly made at a f/2.8 aperture which means they are moderately fast lenses.

Owning a macro lens will open a whole new world to you as you can zoom in on bugs, slugs and flowers along with anything else that you fancy shooting. A macro around 100mm in focal length is often recommended as a good starting prime since it will let you get a little further away from the subject than a 50 or 60mm lens will and is lighter and cheaper than the 150mm or 180mm lenses.

Lens Focal Length

What makes a lens a wide angle or a telephoto? The 35mm camera industry has adopted the 50mm lens as the normal or standard lens. There are all sorts of mythology attached to how this came about but the truth of the matter seems to be that Oskar Barnack the designer of the Leica 35mm camera back in the 1930’s seems to have settled on the 50mm as lens on that could be produced for a good price with excellent optical properties.

The normal focal length range for a 35mm format camera extends from about 45mm to 55mm and lenses with less than those focal lengths are known as wide angle lenses. And lenses with greater than those focal lengths are known as telephoto lenses.

Complicating the situation for DSLR cameras is the fact that most DSLR bodies use some form of the aps-c sensor size rather than a full frame 35mm sensor. These are commonly called cropped frame sensors. Olympus uses another even smaller sensor called the four thirds sensor.

Effectively what this means for owners of aps-c cameras is that they need to multiply the stated focal legth of their camera lens by a crop factor to get the effective focal length. Now this doesn’t explain what the real situation is but for everyday use you can think of it that way. So for Canon cameras you would multiply by 1.6 which would mean that a 50mm lens is actually a 80mm lens. No longer a normal lens but now a short telephoto. Nikon uses a 1.5 crop factor making the 50mm lens an effective 75mm and Olympus uses 2X making a 50mm effectively a 100mm lens.

Perhaps a better way to think of the situation is this, imagine you take a photo with a 50mm lens on a full frame camera and print out a 8X12 inch print from the image. If you take a pair of scissors and cut out the center 62.5 percent of the print that would be what the Canon aps-c sensor sees and what you would get in your image file. The percentages for Nikon’s and Olympus’s would vary but the situation is the same. You can see from this where the term crop sensor comes from.

Now this as a practical matter has some consequences for you. Lenses tend to be the sharpest and have the least amount of distortion in the center of the frame. Crop sensors only use that central part of the image and thus make some marginal lenses work better than they would on full frame sensors. That is good. Since you effectively multiply the focal length that 300mm lens is now a 420mm lens. That is good. But what you win on the telephoto end you lose on the wide angle end. That 30mm wide angle is now a 48mm normal lens.

The normal lenses are considered to have about a 45 degree Field of View (FOV) which is the angle that they ’see’. If you look at that image I placed in the prime lens section, it was taken with a Sigma 50mm f/2.8 Macro lens. Since that lens is effectively a 80mm lens is has a 25 degree or so FOV.  Look at the trees in the center of the skyline, now look at the shot on the top of the post taken with a Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS set at 200mm and the same trees are much larger, the lens FOV is smaller, efectively about 7 degrees. The shot down in the ultra wide section was shot at 11mm with a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. It has an effective FOV of 100 degrees and the trees are just visible but you get to see a much wider view of the grass flats.

Wide Angle lenses

Traditionally wide angle lenses ran from 40mm down to 28mm or so. With a rare and expensive 24mm occasionally seen. With the crop sensor effect this means that you need a range of 25mm to 16mm or so to give you the same effective  (FOV). And on the Olympus you need 20mm to 14mm.

Wide angle lenses let you take a wider shot of the scene. You can squeeze more people in on a group photo and you can get a wider panorama view of landscapes. Kit lenses (18mm to 55mm) cover a wide angle to short telephoto range.

Ultra Wide Angle Lenses

Because of the crop sensor effect a lens that would be considered to be very wide angle on a full frame camera, is not so on a crop sensor body. To get the same FOV on those bodies you need a very wide angle lens, and these are called ultra wide angles. They generally range from 10 to 12mm at their widest end and go up into the 22mm range at the top. A 10mm lens on a crop sensor body give the same FOV as a 16mm on a full frame body.

The Canon system has lenses that are designated as EF-S mount and those lenses protrude into the mirror box of the camera at the back end. The smaller aps-c mirrors clear that end of the lens when the camera shutter fires, but the larger mirror on a full frame body would slam into the lens with disastrous effects. Thus those lenses are designed not to fit on full frame bodies. Lenses with the EF mount fit on all Canon bodies and most canon lenses are EF mount.

Other systems, so far as I know, don’t have this problem. But they still have lenses that are designated for aps-c use only. The lenses will physically work on full frame bodies but they are optically designed for aps-c sized sensors and will not illuminate the full sized sensor. This is called vignetting. The Tokina lens I used above only works at 15-16mm on full frame bodies for example.

These ultrawide angle lenses will produce distortion. This not because the lens is defective it is because you are squashing the very wide angle image onto a flat surface. The distortion can be dealt with in editing software like Photoshop if it bothers you. I rarely bother since I just accept it as a part of the ultra wide lens use.

You can minimize distortion by good camera technique. You need to hold the lens parallel to the ground. Tilting it up or down will increase the perceived distortion.

Fisheye lenses.

The lenses we have been talking about so far in the wide angle category are rectilinear lenses. That is they produce a image that fills the sensor from edge to edge and while they are distorted the distortion is not extreme. There is another type of wide angle lens called a Fisheye that makes no attempt to minimize distortion. They produce round image circles with a LOT of distortion. Julie K has a gallery with some of these shots that you can look at.

Peleng lenses are a cheap way into the fisheye world. I believe they only work in manual mode which probably isn’t a major problem with this type of lens. And you may need an adapter to use it on your camera. Sigma, Canon and Nikon all make higher quality fisheyes.

I’ve never felt attracted to this type of lens and have never owned one. These lenses may not produce a full circle image on aps-c sensors. And there is software called defishing software that attempts to convert the images into rectilinear form.

Telephoto Lenses

Telephoto lenses have focal lengths greater than the normal lens. The provide narrower FOV, all the way down to 2 degrees or so with a 800mm lenses on an aps-c sensor.

Short telephotos are popular as portrait lenses since they tend to have a pleasing perspective. Look at Ken Rockwells site linked above for some of his ideas on the subject.

Longer telephotos are needed for nature and critter photography. Many people think you need at least a 300mm lens for most bird photography and many people use 400mm lenses. Lens prices for prime telephotos tends to skyrocket at the 300-400mm range. A very high quality 300mm f/4L IS lenses runs around $1200 at this time. The 400mm f/5.6 is about the same but doesn’t have IS and is slower too. But the 500mm f/4L IS is $5800. So for most people a 300 or 400mm will be the absolute end of their lens buying possibilities.

Zoom telephotos exist in three types for Canon lenses. There are the cheap low quality lenses sold to new users in the 70-300mm range. These junk consumer grade lenses are slow and have really poor optical quality. I think they lead many new users to give up in frustration since they will blame their inability to duplicate high quality images on their lack of skills when a large part of the problem is the lens that they are using.

There is a perennial argument in photography circles over what is the most important factor in making excellent images. Some people claim that a highly skilled photographer can take great shots using poor equipment. That may be true, tho I have my doubts, but the truth of the matter is that most photographers are not at that level of skill. On the other hand buying expensive gear will not help you make great images if you lack the skills to use it. I know of people who have sunk ten of thousands of dollars into gear and still make mediocre photos.

So in my opinion having equipment that is suited to your skill level is important. Poor equipment matched with not so great skills is going to lead to poor photography.

Canon has an intermediate level of lenses. The Canon 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS lens is a pretty good lens with IS. It runs about $550. For slightly more you can get the very excellent Canon 70-200mm f/4L lens without IS but it is a very sharp lens with very good autofocus speed. It is a good way to get started with L glass. And there is a little known but good quality lens available if you can find a used copy. The Canon 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 EF lens. Not the macro version which is firmly in the junk category. You can often pick up one of these gems for $250 or so from Keh.com. It is sharp and has good autofocus speed. The one defect is that the lens runs out to its longest length when allowed to hang down. A minor irritation.

Again I don’t know enough about Nikon lenses to make recommendations. They have at least two grades of lenses, the consumer grade junk and the excellent top grade. I don’t know if they have a mid grade range of lenses.

Lens Speed

Lens speed is related to the widest aperture of the lens. The lower that number the more light it allows to hit the camera sensor. And that means that you can use it in darker environments. Indoors for example without flash use.

Your kit lens will be a slow lens with an aperture range in the f/3.5-5.6 range. That makes these lenses very hard to use in low light. Happily both Canon and Nikon sell excellent low price 50mm f/1.8 lenses. The Canon runs around $85 and I think the Nikon is slightly more. These lenses are called plastic fantasticks since they have cheap plastic construction but good optics. These lenses will let you do low light photography.

Canon makes a whole series of fast prime lenses starting with the 50mm f/1.8. There is also a better quality 50mm f/1.4. There series continues with the 85mm f/1.8, 100mm f/2, 135mm f/2 and 200mm f/2.8 lenses. The prices start around $300 and get up to $600 when you get to the 200mm lens. These are not L lenses but they have very sharp optics and fast autofocus. And of course they are all ‘fast’ lenses meaning they have a wide maximum aperture. If you can break your reliance on zoom lenses these are an excellent way to expand your lens collection.

Oddball Lenses

Lens manufacturers make all sorts of odd special use lenses. Some portrait photographer like a soft look so Canon makes a 135mm soft focus lens. I’m not sure how much value it has in the era of Photoshop.

There are lenses that produce intentionally distorted images, LensBaby. They make no sense to me but someone is buying them.

There are lenses with swing and tilt adjustments for architectural and product shooters. The Canon TS-E series. These lenses are so important to some photographers that they have switched camera systems so they can use them. Nikon finally came out with one in 2008.

And I’m sure you can find other oddball lenses if you look hard enough.

Summing Up

Well so much for my 1000 word goal, this post is almost 3000 words. A lot of the opinions above are my opinions and there are people who will not agree with them. They can get their own blog I guess, heh. Next up in the New User Corner will be a post on what new users should do next once they have that DSLR in their hands.

I’m planning a post of CF card speed in between tho.

The New User Corner

Buying a lens

Buying a lens is a serious project, or at least it should be. Camera bodies come and they go after a few years. But a good lens will outlast many bodies. There are plenty of photographers who are still using lenses on their new DSLR that they may have bought back in the 1990’s or even earlier for a film SLR. Thus you should buy the best lens that you can fit into your budget. Waiting until you save money to get a better lens is often better than buying a cheaper low quality lens now.

However there is an active market for used lenses so you can probably sell a less worthy lens for a good fraction of what you originally paid for it. I unwisely bought a Canon 55-200mm lens when I bought my first DSLR ( a Canon 350D and that lens is not the current version with IS). I think I paid a bit over $200 for it and was able to sell it a couple years later for $155 on eBay. So you can correct early lens buying mistakes without a lot of pain.

What do I look at when buying a new lens?

• Focal Length
• Lens optical quality
• Maximum aperture
• Autofocus speed
• Build quality
• Other factors like weight, IS, and noise. And always price.

Focal length

What usually prompts me to start thinking about buying a new lens is when I notice a gap in my lens collection. Or if I feel that one of my current lenses has some blemish on its desirability in my eyes. My last lens purchase was to replace a current lens which I felt had too much flare and ugly hard to edit out flare at that. But I would think that focal length or focal length range in the case of a zoom, would be the most common reason that people decide that they need a new lens.

I have heard from some people who think that they must have a lens that covers every possible millimeter of range from the ultrawide to the long telephoto. I don’t really think that’s true. Right now I have an ultrawide 11-16mm Tokina and the next lens up in my collection is a 50mm prime. I don’t feel any burning desire to cover that gap from 16mm to 50mm. That is what feet are for. You can walk nearer or farther away from a subject and cover the gap without the expense of adding another lens to carry around with you, which will make your camera bag that much heavier too.

Just a note I am going to cover the various lens focal ranges in another post.

Once you have decided on a focal length range it is time to start searching the review sites. Some of the ones I use frequently are:

• Fred Miranda
• Photodo
• Photozone
• Digital Picture

Fred Miranda’s reviews are all user reviews and as such you have to read them in bulk and not accept any one review as being too important. I always assume that someone who is angry about some product is more likely to get online and write a nasty review than someone who is satisfied is likely to get online and write a favorable review. But that being said, if I see a high number of nasty comments I tend to take them seriously. Fred Miranda seems to have an undeserved bad reputation among Nikon users.

Photodo and Photozone reviews are more technical and are based on actual objective testing. So they will give you an idea of the quality of the lens. Digital Picture is oriented towards the Canon equipment line and has spotty coverage. There are a number of other test sites and using google with the lenses model designation will find more reviews. I also check out the manufacturer’s sites:

• Canon
• Nikon
• Sigma
• Tamron
• Tokina

I guess a word or two about lens manufacturers is called for here. You first source for lenses is your camera manufacturer. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus and others. But third party manufacturers have cracked the camera manufacturer’s codes and produce good lenses. I feel that with the highest grades of lenses from Canon and Nikon those companies are still producing the best lenses. That would be the Canon L grade lenses and the equivalent Nikons. I do not know enough about the other camera manufacturers to comment on their lens quality.

Many of the lens manufacturers provide MTF diagrams on their lenses and look at those can help you judge the lens quality. This is a semi-technical undertaking and the charts were produced by the lens manufacturers so have to be taken with that in mind. The not so technical among us may prefer to skip MTF charts.

Below the top grade lines of lenses the third party companies are in the race with Canon and Nikon producing some very good glass and just like Canon and Nikon producing some junk grade lenses too. You absolutely need to carefully research the lenses you are thinking about buying. No matter who makes them.  They all make bad glass and you don’t want to be stuck with one of those.

The third party companies do have a certain reputation. Sigma has been historically fairly safe to buy from but recently they have been getting a lot of complaints about the quality control of their telephotos. One lens rental company has stopped carrying Sigma glass because of the high level of complaints. This situation may have already turned itself around. Tamron has had a reputation of having poor quality control in the past but may be getting better. Tokina has had the reputation of producing ‘built like a tank’ quality lenses but with less than stellar image quality. They still make well built glass but have produced a number of excellent high quality lenses recently. They have the smallest number of models in their inventory however.

Those comments are just based on my subjective observations and may or may not be true at any particular time. You should form your own opinions. And they are not meant to discourage you from buying from third party manufacturers. I own lenses from Canon, Sigma and Tokina and very much like the ones I have. Tamron just never floated to the top when I was done making my evaluations but they do seem to make some nice consumer grade zooms. I just haven’t been interested in those lens ranges.

All of the companies do have a reputation of taking lenses back and recalibrating them or replacing them fairly promptly. But this should make you want to buy from a vendor with the highest reputation so you’ll have someone else to complain to, if you have a problem.

You can also seek advice from Yahoo groups if you are a member of a list there or from local camera clubs if you are lucky enough to have one near you. The least useful source of information is a camera store or big box store. The salesmen get higher bonuses for selling certain products and are thus likely to push those on unwary buyers. You may be lucky and have a camera salesmen, that you know, who is highly ethical.

Magazines also publish reviews but these have to be read carefully. The magazines live by selling advert space and they are not going to enrage a big advertiser by writing an overtly bad review. But if you read the reviews with this in mind they often drop lots of hints. Phrases like the ‘best that can be expected of a lens in this class‘. Faint praise in other words means it is a piece of junk, stay away from it.

Lens optical quality.

Lens quality and cost are somewhat related. You can expect that a better quality lens will cost more since higher quality and more expensive materials are used to make it. Exotic glasses and difficult to grind lens curves are also more likely to be used. Take a look at this video to see what goes into making a $6400 lens. There are several other videos in the set.

The same review sites above will also give you an idea of the lens quality. Lens contrast is also an important part of the optical quality. Some very expensive lenses have the reputation of producing low contrast images. Lenses can also add slight color casts. Some have a reputation of producing ‘warm’ images for example.

Maximum aperture.

The larger (which actually means the smaller the number is) maximum aperture of the lens is also tied to its price. Faster glass costs more and the lens will be heavier. The Canon 70-200mm f/4L lens costs about $600 while the f/2.8L faster version costs $1200. One extra stop doubles the cost of that lens. It also changes the weight from 1.56 pounds to 2.8 pounds.

Better lenses also have a fixed aperture, those lenses above are always f/4 or f/2.8 no matter what their zoom position is. Cheaper lenses will have variable apertures which generally get slower as the lens is zoomed out. Consumer grade telephotos will often start at f/4 at their low end and as you zoom the lens out they will change aperture up to f/5.6. This makes them more difficult to use in low light situations.

Another linked feature is that better lenses usually have non-rotating elements which means that a filter used on the lens will not rotate when you focus the lens. Cheaper lenses will sometime have rotating elements which means that filter will move and you will have to reset it every time you focus. That is important if you use polarizing or special effect filters.

Autofocus speed.

Autofocus speed is how fast a lens focuses. If you are trying to track a flying bird or a running child you want fast autofocus speed. Again better grade lenses often but not always have faster autofocus speed. Some very expensive lenses are notoriously slow to focus and if that is important to you, then check it out carefully. Macro lenses are one class of lenses which often are not quick to focus but most people feel that is less important in that type of lens.

Build Quality.

Like other features this generally tracks price. Some manufacturers have a better reputation, at least in their better grade of lenses. Canon, Nikon and Tokina make sturdy lenses. But it can vary from model to model so check out the one you are interested in. Sometimes you just accept a cheap build quality to get a good optical lens and a low price. The Canon and Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lenses are examples of this. Plastic construction, good optics, and very low prices make these good buys.

Other factors.

There are a lot of other factors that may influence your decision. Is the lens really noisy, some are. Noisy in this case means loud. Does it have IS (if your camera uses lens based IS). I don’t think IS is all that important in shorter lenses but once you get to 200mm and beyond it gets to be very important. The weight of a lens can be an issue. That Canon 70-200 mm f/2.8 IS version weighs 3.5 pounds. Add that to the Canon 5D mk2 body which weighs 2 pounds and you are holding the equivalent of a 5 pound bag of potatoes up to your eye and hanging it from your neck all day.

How the lens focus and zoom rings work can be an issue. Some lenses un-spool and run out to their longest focal length when they hang down. That can be irritating.

And of course price can be very important. No matter how much that Canon 600mm f/4L seems to be exactly what you need, that $6400 price may keep you (and me) from getting one.

Summing up.

So buying a lens can be a long process. But it is one I usually enjoy. It gives me an excuse to search all of those sites. I usually start out with a general idea what I’m looking for, a ultrawide zoom or a long telephoto for example and narrow the list down to 3 or 4 possibilities. Then I use the review sites to focus in on one or two models. I usually ask on a Canon list or two to get thoughts from people I know.

All this takes months for me. I often make a decision but have to start saving up to get what I want. But it is all worth the effort if you get a great lens that you will still be using 10 years from now.

Lake Eaton star trails

How to make star trails

There are a couple of different ways to photograph the night sky with stars. If you shoot a reasonably short exposure then you get stars that are pin points. The exposures have to be fairly short because of the earth’s rotation. More than 30 seconds or so will start to draw the stars out into ‘trails’. You can get a longer exposure but you will have to mount the camera on some sort of drive that will rotate the camera in sync with the sky’s movement. You can make a mount to do this called the barn door mount out of a couple of boards, a hinge and a screw.

Google “barn door star photo”

and you will find many references and instructions for making one of these.

You can make stunning photos with that technique. Look at this one by John Moran

But our subject for this post is making star trails not avoiding them. To make the shot above I took 6 shots, each with 180 second exposures. And combine them using a technique called stacking.

A comment about that shot. I do not claim it is one of my best shots but it is the only successful star trail shot I have so far, so there it is. The red in the sky was from the urban lights from the City of Ocala about 15 or 20 miles away. The red comes from all the forest fires in the area, from the smoke not the flames which were 7 miles behind me. That area across the lake did catch on fire the next afternoon however, causing us to beat a quick retreat before they closed the highway out. Click on the shot for a larger version.

I could have made a single 18 minute exposure rather than 6–3 minute exposures. But the bane of night shooting is sensor noise and the longer the sensor is run the hotter it gets. By dividing the shot up into shorter intervals you can reduce the heating problem.

Now this shot was taken to the north but not quite far enough, the pole star is just off frame to the right. But getting a shot due north will give you concentric trails like this by Harold Davis. You can tell he has had a lot more practice than I have. Unless you live down near Key West or Brownville Texas in the US you won’t get the same effect by shooting south since the southern axis is below the horizon.

The stuttered dotted effect of the shot above was because I let a minute of so go by in between shots to demonstrate the effect of stacking. If you shoot them closer together you will get a continuous trail.

How I did the Stacking

I have Photoshop CS4 extended which includes stacking modes. Standard CS4 does not, CS3 extended does. The version Adobe sells as the educational/academic version is the extended version. So that being said I suspect that most of you will not be able to follow this method, but there are other ways. So I:

• Shot the images and loaded them into Adobe Bridge.
• In Bridge I compiled them into a stack by selecting them all and right clicking and selecting group as stack.
• You can then open tools–>photoshop–>open in photoshop layers
• Or you can download Russell Brown’s scripts which will add a Dr Brown’s Services menu item under tools and one of those services is Dr Brown’s Stack-o-matic. He seems to be having a problem with the scripts but they will show up on this page. He has CS3 and CS4 versions. He has a lot of good Photoshop material on that page too and the scripts do more than stacking. Select maximum mode from his script.
• Anyway, without Dr Brown’s help, go into CS4(or 3) and select all the layers then go to Edit->Auto blend  layers. You may need to auto align the layers first but do not unless you have to do so.
  
• Then Layers–>smart objects–> convert to smart objects
• Finally the Stack Modes menu item will be visible on the layers menu, select maximum mode there. There are a lot of modes and you can play with them.
• If you have a lot of layers in the stack be prepared for long waits as photoshop does the work.

You don’t have PS Extended.

In that case load the shots into layers in Photoshop as above then try to combine them using blend modes and opacity. Screen or lighten mode are likely to work the best and the opacities should probably be 30  percent or so. But you will have to experiment yourself or hit Google.

Other Stacking Software

There are a lot of non-photoshop ways of doing the stacking:

• Image Stacker (look at Max Lyon’s excellent panoramas when you are there)
• DeepSky Stacker
• Registax
• CombineZ

You are on you’re own with these since I haven’t used them. If you have a favorite let me know and I’ll add it to the list. I don’t know of any other photo editing software that does stacking but some may do so.

I’m probably going to step away from night shots for awhile and do some posts for new camera users.

A quick look at editing

Let’s take a quick look at editing. I say quick because I haven’t figured out a way to squeeze this into a reasonable length post if I go into great detail and add screen captures to show the steps in Photoshop. If there is any interest in that I’ll give it a try.

Look at the image above, it was taken at Lake Eaton in the Ocala National Forest this last Friday. I took my son there on a scout camp-out. The light on the horizon is the urban area to the west.  You can see some stars in the sky but it is basically black. As is the foreground. The whole image is dull and low contrast.

After ten minutes in CS4 we get this below:

This is still no great image and it does look a lot better in larger sizes. But now we can see that there are a lot of stars. The sky is midnight blue. The lake water now pops out in a reflection of the orange sky and clouds. There was a large forest fire to the east of this area and that was imparting the smoky orange tones. There is now a boat visible in the right foreground. Let me note that this shot was a 3 minute exposure but the histogram was mostly to the left since I actually shot 6 of these images and intend to stack them. But that is for another post.

How did I get from the first image to the second image?

Edits

In ACR5

• Increased fill light to +67
• Added contrast and just a little more exposure
• Added clarity and vibrance
• Decreased the color temperature to 3050
• Use 5 adjustment brushes
• Reduced noise

In CS4

• added a layer copy
• used noise ninja on the whole layer

Starting with the ACR (Adobe Camera Raw 5) work. The histogram was pushed to the left (Histogram 1 below), so I pushed the fill light slider far to the right from almost zero to +67. That moved the histogram a little to the right (Histogram 2) and brightened the stars and foreground. This revealed the boat.

The only reason I can do this is that this shot was captured as a raw file. That gives you 1.5 to 2 stops of leeway at both ends of the histogram. You can recover both shadow detail, as I did above or recover blown highlights on the right side of the histogram. In a jpeg file this is not possible.

I then add just a little more exposure and some contrast which makes the stars pop out a bit more. I reduced the color temp from 3150 to 3050 to make the sky more blue but this makes everything else bluer too.

Why dod I pick the various adjustments? It is just from my experience working in ACR. I make adjustment until I like the effect. You can always go back on these adjustments if you think you went too far.

All of this can be done in CS3 and ACR4. But in CS4, Adobe added adjustment brushes to ACR5 and you can use these brushes to add local changes in exposure, contrast, clarity and several other adjustments to the image by brushing them in. I used this feature five times to brush in more contrast and less exposure to the sky. More orange and adjusted the exposure on the lake with another brush. And used a third brush to do similar adjustments to the skyline and clouds just over the trees. A last couple of adjustment brushes dimmed the foreground weeds and lightened the boat.

All of this added a lot of noise so I used the noise reduction feature in ACR to reduce this. And then moved to CS4.

All I did in CS4 was do a single run with Noise Ninja to reduce the noise further. And I added a copyright watermark.

Why work in ACR?

Everything I did in ACR could be done a different way in CS4 or CS3 (and probably earlier versions of Photoshop). The adjustment brushes could be duplicated by selecting the area and creating a mask. You could then use dodge/burn, curves and saturation to recreate the effects. But by working in ACR you are working in the raw linear data and changes are easily reversible and do not introduce as much image damage.

You could also duplicate this in other editing software. The ability to use layers and masks would make that easier.

So I wanted to give people a brief look at what I do in editing. I probably could have picked a better sample image to work on. I have no hesitation to do any sort of editing that I think improves the image.I never claim that my work is a representation of the scene as it naturally appeared.  The sky was black, the only star really visible was Venus and the boat was dimly visible to my eyes. But it is a representation of my ‘artistic’ vision of what I want to create.

Urban and Industrial Night Photography

Shooting in Urban and Industrial sites poses it’s own set of problems.

• Safety issues
• Color Balance
• Access

Safety

The safety issues were discussed in the first post of this series for urban areas. If you are shooting in industrial areas, like the one above or abandoned sites, then those have their own sets of problems. Industrial areas will have high temperatures, steam, electrical dangers, fall hazards, moving equipment and traffic problems. You should never be in these areas unless you are familiar with the dangers, have permission to be there or are escorted.

Shooting at abandoned sites is popular but the dangers there can be real. These sites are not maintained and there can be uncovered pits, fall hazards and the possibility of a wall collapsing and falling on you. There can be enraged security guards and maybe guard dogs to deal with too. You don’t want to end your shooting adventure in a hospital or jail. I would be sure to have someone along with you for backup in case there is a problem.

You can also run into urban outdoorsmen living on these sites who may not welcome the intrusion.

Equipment and Exposures

The equipment you’ll need for this type of shooting is less than for dark environment shots.

• Tripod
• Remote release
• Flashlight with gels
• Lens Cloth

The equipment is discussed in this post

Exposure durations will most of the time be less than dark areas with the possible exception of abandoned sites. They can be very dark. Just take a guess and watch your histogram. Adjust exposures up or down based on the histogram peak. Too far to the left, add shutter time and if too far to the right then reduce shutter time. ISO should be low, 100 or 200 and try a mid range f/stop like 5.6 or 6.3 to start.

Color Balance Problems

Take a look at the shot above. This site shows at least 5 different types of industrial lighting. Starting at the tower on the left I see blue, orange, green, yellow and white lights. Probably several different types of sodium lights, HID and mercury lamps are present.

I just don’t worry too much about color balance unless it is obnoxious. There is no way you could ever correct that shot above. But I actually like the effect in that shot.

But sometimes, if one light type predominates on the scene, you can tweak the color temperature or use curves to correct the color in post processing.  And sometimes with yellow or orange lighting you will want to do some correction. I don’t try to guess the color temperature and set it on the camera either. I just use automatic white balance and shoot in raw. I do my adjustments in Photoshop and ACR.

Light Painting

This type of shooting is natural for light painting, you can put a gel over the lens of your flashlight and add light and color to the scene.  The traditional way to get gels is to get a sample kit from one of the manufacturers like Rosco. However the manufacturers are not giving out the sample kits like the once did. You can try to request one but it might take some creative form-filling-out skills to succeed.

You can buy gels from B&H and others but you’ll end up with a huge sheet which will be a 100 year supply of that one color. So there is no great solution. Too bad these people don’t sell the sample kits. It would be worth $20 to get a sample kit.

–update– I have a comment that say that B&H does sell the Rosco sample kits for less than $10. I just spent 10 minutes trying to find the sample kit but could not; but Rosco has thousands of different items on sale at B&H so I may have used the wrong search terms.

Finally

Like other night shoots these images will also require a lot of post production. But you can produce wonderful images. So get out and give it a try.

Flags in the mist

When do we need Long Exposure Noise Reduction?

Roger Clark had some comments about Canon cameras and Long Exposure Noise Reduction. He basically wonders if we really need it most of the time. And he suggests that you can just take a series of separate dark frame exposures at different temperatures and just keep those to manually subtract from the image in Photoshop. The noise map apparently doesn’t change very quickly.

Why do we even think about using Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) or as it is more generally known dark frame subtraction? Sensors heat up as they are used, if we are talking a typical short exposure, maybe 1/100th of a second, the sensor doesn’t heat up very much. But once the exposure lengths get into the multi-minute range that sensor will get hotter. And a hot sensor is a noisy one.

Astrophotographers actually cool their sensors down, sometimes to very low levels–hundreds of degrees below zero–to hold down noise. That option isn’t open to us. But taking a dark frame image essentially maps the noise generated by the sensor and you can have the camera automatically subtract that from the image. Hopefully this reduces the overall noise in the image. The dark frame file, captured separately by shooting a shot with the lens cap on, can be subtracted later in post production.

The problem with letting the camera do the subtraction, is that it doubles the duration of exposures and seems to me it may heat up the sensor even more since you are keeping it on twice as long. That also uses up the battery faster.

Doing some exploration on the web, and this pertains to Canon DSLRs mainly, there is some info on the matter. Canon suggests on their European site:

The long exposure noise reduction performs a dark field subtraction – in other words, it calculates the fixed pattern noise and then removes it from the image you have just shot. In practice, it’s not worth turning on unless you are planning on taking images with an exposure time of more than 2 to 3 minutes.

Andy Frazier a well known night photographer and Nocturnes member suggests an even longer duration, 5 or 6 minutes. And DPReview has reported no benefits on the Canon 40D with or without LENR for 30 second exposures. Joe Reifer has some tests on the Canon 5D where he suggests you have a problems around 8 minutes or so. And that noise becomes a problem on older Nikons around 3 minutes. But the 5D is older technology now, superseded by lower noise sensors and Nikons too have better sensors. Joe Reifer has some comments about the Nikon D200 here.

So from all this I’d say that we probably don’t need to worry too much about sensor noise on shots less than 4 or 5 minutes on newer Canons and probably something like that on newer Nikons. And possibly for even longer exposures. This would depend on the age of your camera, older models could be noisier. If you need to know where the break is you should do some tests on your own system. Any of you using other brands may want to think about using Google to see what noise characteristics your model is.

Not using LENR will certainly speed up operations at night and let me capture twice as many shots.

How I do a night shoot

OK I decide to head out for a night shoot, I gather all the equipment together. But I generally keep it all in my truck. I watch the sky anxiously as sunset approaches. I want a clear to lightly cloudy sky. Too many clouds spoils the photo, but I sometimes head out hoping for the best. I have almost always, pre-scouted the place where I will be shooting but sometimes not, especially on the more distant locations.

The descriptions are for a sunset shoot but of course apply to a sunrise shoot as well. The sequence would be reversed, you need to get out on site an hour before sunrise and the beginning shutter speeds will be long and get shorter as the sun gets near the horizon. Being there an hour before sunrise can mean getting  up at 3 or 4 AM.

Having a Canon DSLR and never having used a different brand my terminology is going to be influenced by what I know. If you use a different camera brand you’ll have to dig into your manual for the equivalent instructions. It should be obvious what I am talking about if you are familiar with your camera, and shame on you if you are not.

When I get to the location I set up the camera on my tripod with a remote attached. I mostly use an ultrawide lens, the one I am using now is a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. I used a Sigma 15-30mm before that one. While I am fond of ultrawides there is no reason you can’t use any lens if it is reasonably fast. The perfect location is a site with water between you and the sunset/sunrise. The foreground should be interesting to you. Sometimes I use a grassy plains instead of water. The water works very well since it will pick up colors and reflect them.

For this type of shoot you don’t want much moon in the sky, so either a moonless night or before or after moonrise/moonset at best. A first or last quarter moon is OK since those will not overwhelm the rest of the image. The moon getting close to full will blast so much light into the scene that you won’t be able to capture much of anything else with out some trickery.

I set up a chair and wait for the sun, if the sunset itself is good I’ll shoot some sunset shots while waiting for the sun to slip below the horizon. Once the sun goes under the horizon I get going. If your camera has live view and you can use that for focusing, then you may want to try to use it for critical focusing.

My initial conditions are usually:

• f/5.6 to 6.3
• Aperture Priority mode
• ISO 100 or 200
• shooting in raw
• camera set to long exposure noise reduction

I then start firing off shots and look at the histogram after each of these. I want the histogram off the left edge of the frame and preferably out approaching the center of the frame. This is easier when you are shooting near the sunset but calls for longer and longer exposures later on. If the histogram looks good I’ll just fire off occasional shots every minute or two.

Shutter times will get longer and longer and will eventually reach the 30 second mark. When this happens it is time to change to manual mode(M) and increase the shutter duration to the bulb setting(B). Bulb as I mentioned holds the shutter open as long as the shutter button is activated. Either with a finger (bad idea) or the remote shutter trigger.

I’ll start at 30 seconds and watch the histogram. You will have to guess at increasing shutter speeds, if 30 seconds produces a shot with the histogram peak all the way to the left try 1 minute or 2 minutes. I find that after a certain point the shutter speeds will stabilize often around 5 or 6 minutes. But dark nights will mean longer exposures, I have used up to 15 minute exposures. Watch the battery indicator it will start going down quickly. The small flashlight can be used to check camera settings.

At the 30 second point on Canon DSLR the long exposure noise reduction kicks in. The camera will make the exposure that you set, it will then make another equally long exposure with the shutter shut. It then subtracts the second exposure which recorded shutter noise from the first exposure. This is called dark frame subtraction.

The practical result of this is that exposures have now become twice as long. A five minute exposure is now ten minutes. A 12 minute exposure is now 24 minutes and now you will appreciate the chair rather than sitting on the rock with the snakes. Keep an eye on that battery indicator.

At this point I usually look for interesting foregrounds, trees hanging over the water, docks or whatever you can find. A boat going by can leaving interesting ripples. Move the tripod around to try different spots. You can use the big flash light to try some light painting.

That is basically the process. Like most digital photography it is less than half of what is needed to produce a high quality art photo. The rest of the work will be done in front of your computer running Photoshop or whatever you use. Look at the image at the top of this post. I assure you it did not come out of the camera looking that way. If you believe that a photo is made in the camera then this type of photography is not for you.

Long exposure shots will almost always need serious noise reduction. You will also use curves to adjust the tones and give you a nice dark velvety sky. If you succeed in getting a good histogram with the peak near the center, you will not be happy when you look at the image for the first time. It will need serious post processing to look like a night shot. But the extra data you captured will hold the noise down and produce a much better end result.

I’ll be doing a post on star trails and urban night work in the near future. And one on moonlight photography. And I will do some posts on post processing these images. Keep tuned to this channel.

Update: take a look at this post for more thoughts about long exposure noise:

Amusement park ride

What do you need?

Lets take a look at what gear you need to do night photography in dark environments. I say dark environments because there is actually another type of night photography: urban and industrial night photography where there may be a lot more ambient light. Like the shot above. I’ll talk about that sort of work in another post. This post is about gear for long exposures, at least 10 seconds up to many minutes.

Safety First

John D Moore has pointed out that we need to first think about safety while engaging in any sort of photography but especially night photography in unfamiliar areas. He has an excellent PDF file available on this subject which you should read.

Gary Crabbe recently took a dive off a 40 foot cliff at midnight and woke up four hours later  much worse for the experience. So be like a boy scout–prepared. Try to look around where you plan to shoot during the day to get an idea of the hazards and the lay of the land. Carry a flashlight when moving around and use it.

Equipment

My basic night photography outfit consists of:

• A sturdy Tripod
• A remote release and/or intervalometer
• At least two flashlights one small and one larger more powerful light
• Gels and Strobe(s)/Flashes (if you will be doing light painting)
• A timer, watch(with light) or intervalometer
• Extra Batteries
• Something to sit in–ie a folding canvas chair
• A microfiber lens cloth

Tripods:

Lets look at tripods. You really must have a sturdy tripod, and that means a heavy tripod unless you can pay for one made out of the exotic materials like Carbon Fiber. A lightweight flimsy tripod is worthless and can dump your $1000 camera and $700 lens on the pavement. Carbon Fiber tripods can cost twice as much and don’t seem to me to save that much in weight for the extra cost. But a flimsy tripod will not hold the camera steady for 10 or 20 minute exposures.

A cheaper alternative is Amvona who sells Hong Kong knock offs of Bogen tripods. I got mine from them when they were selling on eBay. It is a copy of the discontinued Bogen 3021 (which was selling for over $200 at the time, I paid $40) and is steady as a rock and very well made. The one problem I had was the feet fell off so I ended up gluing the feet to the legs and have had no trouble since then. You should check eBay to see if they are still selling there.

If you buy an Amvona I would not buy the tripod head from them, especially not the pistol grip looking one. I cannot comment on the newer ones they now have. The quick release failed, on my copy of that, and dropped my 350D and Sigma 15-30mm five feet onto a rock ledge.

Make sure you get a set of legs long enough for your height. legs that only open to 58 inches will not be much use if you are six foot two. The tripod needs to be able to support the weight of the camera and the heaviest lens, I think you want one the supports 9 or 10 pounds minimum.

Most tripods in this class will have leg spikes that can be extended to dig into the ground if you are on soil and not pavement. And some will have a hook at the end of the center post, that you can hang a weight from, to make them even more rigid. The extra weight would mostly be of use in windy conditions or if you had the tripod set up in an unstable position.

Tripod heads:

I’m not going to say much about heads. A good one is better than a cheap one. But they can get very pricey. I have an Acratech head and very much like it but my wife was taken aback when I wanted a $275 tripod head for Christmas. Really Right Stuff also makes excellent heads. I’m sure new users are saying you paid how much for a ballhead!? But a good one will help your photography and will lock the camera in an immovable position thru these long exposures. Manfrotto-Bogen make fairly good heads that cost a lot less. the Acratech and RRS are mid-priced heads not expensive ones, hard tho that may be to believe.

Remote releases, intervalometers and timers

To shoot one of these long exposure shots you need to lock down the shutter for the length of the exposure. You put the camera in Manual mode(M) and select Bulb (B) as the exposure duration. B holds the shutter open as long as the button is held in by your finger or by a locking remote control. You cannot hold the shutter button down for long periods without jarring the camera so some sort of remote control is needed.

You can get a remote release either as a wired version or a wireless radio type that has a receiver that plugs into the camera and a transmitter that you can trigger from a distance. There are infra-red triggers but you need to be in front of the camera to use them and they are reportedly of doubtful reliability. You can buy a remote from your camera manufacturer or use a third party version. Those seem to work well enough and are a fraction of the cost. Be sure to get a locking remote because your finger will get mighty tired holding that button down.

You can even make a remote. That link is for the Canon XXX series (350D, 400D ect.) but you can probably use Google to find a version for your camera body. The eBay remotes are so cheap that it hardy seems to make sense to make one. I’m not going to put up a link for those since it would probably go bad in a short time. One word of warning, Canon XXXD series cameras do not use the same plug on remotes as the XXD (30D, 40D ect). So be sure to get one that works on your model.

If you have a plain remote you will need some way to watch the time; either a watch with a light or some other timer. People are using small kitchen timers with a light. You can pick up one for less than $15.

The best way to do this is to buy an intervalometer, that is a remote that has a built in timer. You can set a single time or even set a series of shots with a duration and interval that you set. Again manufacturer and third party versions are available. Most intervalometers work as remote releases too so you won’t need both.

Flashlights, strobes and gels

I carry a couple of flashlights with me. A small led light for looking at the camera settings. And a bigger three cell led with 150 lumen output that is so bright you cannot look at the light. That is for light painting. The gels are to change the color of the light. We will get to light painting in another post. The big light is also good for picking your path in the dark.

Flashes or strobes can be used for light painting too.

Batteries and chairs

Your camera will eat batteries in very short times when you are doing long exposures. The camera uses power to hold the shutter open and I’d guess that my cameras have 60-90 minutes of shutter time in a fresh battery. That somewhat depends on the camera temperature. But 60 minutes means that 6 10 minute exposures will drain your battery. So carry extras. It is discouraging to have the light change from OK to absolutely wonderful and have your battery die.

The chair is somewhere to plant your body in while you wait for those 10 minutes to creep by (actually 20 minutes). I carry one of those ubiquitous folding canvas chairs that can be had for $12 or so.

Lastly carry a lens cloth and keep an eye on your lens. Night conditions are often damp conditions and your lens can fog up. And it’s no fun to get home and find a lot of photos that look like they were taken thru a shower curtain.

Well I see my word count is up over 1200 and I promised to keep these posts reasonably short so we will talk about actually taking night shots next time.

What is Night Photography?

Right now I would have to say that night photography is my favorite form of photography.

Just when does night photography happen? Personally I say it is from right before sunrise, maybe up to an hour before. That is when the above shot was taken. The sun is still below the horizon but you can see, with the camera and long exposures, the light and colors from the sun.

Or you can do it right after sunset for an hour or so, like the shot above. The sun is just below the horizon and is still lighting the sky and clouds and injecting warm colors into the image. You can see the orange color in the water.

And of course you have the time in between these two periods for more night photography of the dark sky with the stars and moon. As above. The color in this image comes from the city of Gainesville which is about 25 miles away.

Let me point out that the camera is seeing what you cannot see with your eyes. The sky was not glowing yellow and orange when I was out at Watermelon Pond taking the shot above. It was as black as the inside of a sack with the faintest hint of a glow on the horizon. But multi-minute exposures show us sights that are denied to us otherwise.

Resources

Some of the resources available on the web for night shooting are.

• The Nocturnes. I would guess that this is the premier site for night photography. Be sure to look at their galleries and resources
• Gorillasite is a site by Andy Frazier. Andy is one of the Nocturnes, who are centered in Northern California.
• Harold Davis’ site and blog. Harold Davis is the author of several books including at least one on night work. He has a blog too and does more than night shots. He has some videos on the web about night shooting and does seminars. He is also in the Frisco area.

Many of the Nocturnes use a technique called light painting. That use a flash or other light to paint a building or other object while the rest of the shot remains dark. I have tinkered with it, but not to my satisfaction yet. I finally bought a very bright 150 lumen flash light that I’m going to use to play with this more. But right now I’m doing more of the straight type of night shots.

In the next post on this series I will go into just what hardware I use to do night photography and just how I go about setting up a shot.

Rainstorm

Taking a look at the different systems

The two biggest companies in the business of making Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras are Canon and Nikon. Between them they control something around 85% of the market. The smaller actors are Sony, Pentax and Olympus and the tiny actors are Sigma and Fuji.

Not only are Canon and Nikon the companies with the biggest market share but they are the two companies that have been making DSLR bodies the longest. They have more lenses and accessories available for their equipment than any of the rest. Pentax was a very important company in the Film SLR market. They introduced the first popular SLR camera many years ago. But they failed to get involved in the change to digital until recently. Olympus made film SLR cameras but also is a late comer to the digital world and they also made a very foolish decision when they move to digital. They have locked themselves into a smaller sensor size than the other companies. The use the 4/3rds system which is a half sized sensor.

Sony has made sensors for the Nikon bodies for years but has recently decided to jump into the DSLR market themselves. The top of the line Sony is getting very good reviews.

Lenses

Let’s take a look at what is available in the lens market for the various brands. This will include the manufacturers own lenses and the main third party lens manufacturer’s offerings (Sigma, Tamron and Tokina).

	Canon	Nikon	Sony	Pentax	Olympus
Manufacturer’s lenses	62	52	21	25	22
Sigma	44	44	33	34	12
Tamron	21	21	15	10	0
Tokina	8	8	0	0	0
Total	135	125	69	69	34

This is not an exhaustively researched table and could well be off a bit.

Canon and Nikon are more or less tied but the others lag far behind. Canon produces about 5 or 6 new lenses a year and they have much more money and a larger staff than the smaller companies. How many years would it take for Pentax or Sony to catch up with Canon and Nikon at the rate of 4 or 5 lenses a year.

Flashes

Looking at available flashes, flashes that fully support the camera electronics and exposure control:

	Canon	Nikon	Sony	Pentax	Olympus
Manufacturers own	6	8	5	4	4
Other brand units	26	33	5	11	8
TOTAL	32	41	10	15	12

We see the same story. Nikon does a little better than Canon, but all of the others are left in the dust. Again this is a quick reference table from the manufacturer’s websites and B&H. So errors are possible. Sony hotshoes use the old Minolta style that is incompatible with almost all other flashes.

Macros come in different focal lengths, generally running from 50mm to 200mm. The shorter lenses are lighter and cheaper but have a short 1:1 focus distance which makes doing bugs difficult since they fly off. Longer lenses are expensive and heavy but have a longer focus distance. Looking at some popular lenses, let’s see what the availability is for different brands.

Brand	Canon	Nikon	Sony	Pentax	Olympus
Number of macro lenses	5	4	2	2	2

Only the manufacturers own lenses are counted. Sony, Pentax and Olympus only have short macros. One of the Canon lenses is a super macro.

Another common lens used by bird photographers especially is  a 300mm lens. These come in two apertures f/4 which is cheaper and lighter and f/2.8 heavier and a lot pricier. Again looking at what the manufacturers offer:

Brand	Canon	Nikon	Sony	Pentax	Olympus
300mm f/4	$1210	$1124	None	$1170	None
300mm f/2.8	$4100	$4500	$6000	None	$5900

Again Nikon and Canon have the better selection and prices as low of much lower than the other three. The Canon and Nikon lenses have Image Stabilization the others do not.

I just randomly spot checked some of the more popular lenses. I didn’t try to look at consumer grade lenses, I’m sure they all have plenty of 70-300mm and 18-200mm type junk lenses.

Image Stabilization

This is the last subject I’ll look at in my biased overview. Canon and Nikon have both settled on in-the-lens stabilization. The other three have in-the-body stabilization. While at first glance it might seem to be better to have stabilization in the body, that does not turn out to be true for lenses where you really need stabilization.

The reason for that is that the body stabilization can only work on short lenses because these systems work by moving the image sensor to compensate for lens movement. The longer the lens the longer the distance the sensor has to move and once you get beyond 100mm or so the sensor cannot move far enough to compensate for lens movement.

The in lens system works by moving elements inside the lens. Thus each lens is optimized for it’s focal length. Canon has an explanation here. Bob Atkins has a general overview here.

Another benefit of the lens stabilization is that you can see the stabilized image in the viewfinder, not the case with the in-body IS. Of course Canon and Nikon have a big investment in IS lenses so that comes into the calculation too.

The truth of the matter is that you don’t really need IS on short lenses. Most people can handhold a 18mm lens down to 1/20th of a second or so. But those long lenses are heavy and hard to hold and they really need IS.

So What?

So what does this mean? When you buy into a DSLR system you are not just buying a camera body. For example, I have one good camera body and one old one. Say they are worth $1400, more or less, right now. I have 6 lenses, a 1.4X extender and some extension tubes. Total value around $4000. (Darn my wife better not read this). So switching to a new body would be fairly painful, but replacing all those lenses  would be impossible. And unlike a lot of other photographers I do not have a lot invested in dedicated flash units. So a serious photographer can easily have four to six times the cost of the bodies he has, tied up in other gear.

So buying into a system, where you soon hit a wall when you want to add a new item that you just have to have, can cause real pain. If that item doesn’t exist for your system. I just listed flashes and lenses above but there are many other system accessories. Wireless triggers, remote controls, intervalometers, focus screens, vertical grips, wireless transmitters and the list goes on and on.

I mentioned the Sony non-standard flash above.I know one budding photographer who found herself unable to use studio flashes with her new Sony camera. She had to sell it at a loss and buy a different brand.

Think!

So think long and hard about buying into one of the lesser brands if you have the least idea that you will get serious about photography. Yes some of the cameras are decent, and maybe some of the lenses. But overall the systems are not. If you are sure that you won’t ever want to expand what you have, then buy whatever you fancy.

—UPDATE —

Roger Clark suggested that I should point out that Canon has prime lenses in 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 800 and maybe 1200mm (rumored to be available if you will pay them to make one) and Nikon has 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600mm primes. Sony, Pentax and Olympus all have no prime lenses longer than 300mm. This is important for bird, wildlife (think of that African safari you always wanted to go on) and sports/action shooters as well as photojournalists. They all want and use long prime lenses.

Canon also has a couple of very fast f/1.2 lenses and you can even occasionally pick up a 50mm f/1.0 (used only, since they are out of production). These are popular with wedding shooters who shoot in dark rooms using available light.

—Another Update—

The final step in buying a camera is to go to a shop that has the models you are looking at and try how they feel in your hands. People often have love at first touch with a certain model. And these cameras are quite different in how they sit in your hands. The lower grade models are on the small sized end and may be too small for someone with big hands. But other models may be too big for someone with small hands. The control layouts are also different. How it feels to you is a major consideration.