02_07_22 Fall Sunrise over Western Pulaski County featuring Pinnacle Valley

Autumn Sunrise over Western Pulaski County, Arkansas

A composite image taken in 3 parts with a DJI Mavic 2 Pro Drone. The fall colors were just about peaked on the ridge in the foreground, and had already pushed past peak in the valley. I wanted to included the Maumelle River in this shot as I loved the look of it’s graceful curve at the bottom of the image. The Arkansas river flows in the background. The sky that morning was special with a wonderful peak/pink color and the rising sun popped the colors of the trees on the ridge. I found very few spots in the state in 2021 that had as much fall color as the Walton Heights Ridge.

Paul Caldwell

06/13/20 Sunset over Western Little Rock and the Big Dam Bridge

Stormy skies over Little Rock, and the Big Dam Bridge

Taken with a DJI Mavic 2 Pro. For this shot I was forced to use multiple AEB bursts of 5 shots each, knowing that I would be throwing most of them out. However it’s the only way to get a a full reach of dynamic range from this drone as DJI really did a poor job on the raw capture process. But that’s another story in itself.

This was one of those wonderful thunderstorms that just rolled in quickly after the sun had dropped below the horizon. I started taking the shots right at around 8:00 pm and was able to shoot well towards 8:2o. This shot was one a rare shot as I was able to catch the full thunderstorm to the right of the shot and then the clear evening sky to the left. I used Capture One software to convert the raw files. I took 10 shots for the bottom portion to finally get a single file that was not too noisy. The sky was much easier to capture with just the normal 5 exposures. Once I had the images completed in Capture One, I opened them as tifs in Photoshop and layered the sky over the bottom of the image, doing this for the right and left half of the shot. Then I used Photoshop’s panoramic software to combine the final two images. Photoshop will do OK most of the time as long as you don’t have a pure blue sky or any other type of solid sky. The longest exposure was 1.6 seconds, which I feel is about the longest you can go with a drone in most conditions.

Paul Caldwell

06/13/20 A sunset with a stormy sky over Pinnacle Mountain

Stormy Sunset over Pinnacle Mountain Little Rock Arkansas

A panorama taken with a DJI Mavic Pro 2

Taken with a DJI Mavic 2 Pro. For this shot I was forced to use multiple AEB bursts of 5 shots each, knowing that I would be throwing most of them out. However it’s the only way to get a a full reach of dynamic range from this drone as DJI really did a poor job on the raw capture process. But that’s another story in itself.

This was one of those wonderful thunderstorms that just rolled in quickly after the sun had dropped below the horizon. I started taking the shots right at around 8:00 pm and was able to shoot well towards 8:2o. This shot was one a rare shot as I was able to catch the full thunderstorm to the right of the shot and then the clear evening sky to the left. I used Capture One software to convert the raw files. I took 10 shots for the bottom portion to finally get a single file that was not too noisy. The sky was much easier to capture with just the normal 5 exposures. Once I had the images completed in Capture One, I opened them as tifs in Photoshop and layered the sky over the bottom of the image, doing this for the right and left half of the shot. Then I used Photoshop’s panoramic software to combine the final two images. Photoshop will do OK most of the time as long as you don’t have a pure blue sky or any other type of solid sky. The longest exposure was 1.6 seconds, which I feel is about the longest you can go with a drone in most conditions.

Paul Caldwell

03/21/19 Broadway Bridge over the Arkansas River in Little Rock–Featured Arkansas Photography

Little Rock images Broadway Bridge Arkansas River

Twilight on the Broadway Bridge, Little Rock Arkansas

Taken with a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens, 4 vertical photos, stitched into 1 landscape panorama.

The new Broadway Bridge in downtown Little Rock/North Little Rock has been a eye catching subject since its’ completion. I wanted to catch the bridge in the magic 30 minutes of light after sundown, when the sky is still showing a slight blue tint. The motion of the cars moving over the bridge turned into a painting of light due the very slow shutter speed I selected of 3 to 5 seconds. This photograph is a combination of 6 different images as I also had to bracket my shutter speed to capture the full dynamic range of the scene.

I used a tripod to keep my scene as level as possible and did not worry about a nodal point. To be honest, way too much is made of finding a nodal point with modern stitching software. You just don’t have to worry about it as much. I had no trouble getting the railing in the immediate foreground to line up at all. I used Phase One’s Capture One software to develop the images and then stitched them together in Lightroom. I also had to work a bit to get the building straightened out since my camera was pointed up slightly. I went ahead and picked a aperture of around F10 to help with the star burst from the street lights.

Written for www.photosofarkansas.com please do not reproduce this image or any of the written material without permission.

03/20/19 Auto Rotate for image playback on Phase One IQ4 still problematic

At March 20, 2019
By paul
In Articles/Reviews, Phase One & Arca Camera
0

Yesterday 03/19/2019, Phase One released a new firmware for the IQ4, their top end Digital back. This is the 2nd official firmware on the back and the first firmware to offer something new (and it brought back a few older IQ3 features see this post).

However there is still a small issue with IQ4 playback, autorotation. Auto rotation, is a feature that Phase One along with all other camera manufacturers usually include for playback of a portrait orientation image. When you take an image in portrait mode, (with the camera vertical), the image will playback in the same vertical orientation.

: Phase One IQ4 Landscape orientation image playback correct

: Phase One IQ4 Portrait orientation image no Auto Rotation on Playback

The image on the left shows a IQ4 image taken with a XF and 55mm LS Phase One Lens. The image is displayed correctly, as the the image was captured in landscape orientation and playback keeps it there. However the image on the right is showing a portrait orientation image and how it’s played back. The image should be vertical however the back is playing it back in landscape mode.

What is interesting is as long as the IQ4 stays in the portrait orientation, the image during playback is displayed correctly. But once you rotate the back to the horizontal (landscape) orientation, from that point on, all portrait orientation images will be displayed in the horizontal orientation. So when you shoot with the IQ4 in portrait mode, make sure you check your images before rotating the camera from that position. Attempting to check a vertical image displayed horizontally is very difficult.

For my work, this is problematic since I take 65% to 75% of my work in portrait mode since I want to blend the multiple portrait images into a panorama. For now you have to remember to preview your work while the camera is still in the portrait orientation.

Another interesting observation is that when you load the files into a Capture One 12 session, all the vertical images will start out in the horizontal orientation, but as Capture One creates the previews the images will rotate back to the correct vertical orientation.

Hopefully Phase One will resolve this soon but it looks like it will have to come with another firmware update.

03/18/19 IQ4-150 Firmware 1.03.26 – Released–It’s official now!!

At March 18, 2019
By paul
In Articles/Reviews, Phase One & Arca Camera
0

It’s now official. You can update your Phase One IQ4 to the latest firmware which is 1.03.26.

The process itself will take approximately 8 to 10 minutes and the last four minutes, the back will power off the LCD and only gives a blue light blinking at the bottom. I found that a bit disconcerting, but overall the process did work as it’s supposed to.

With this update you gain a few new features for the IQ4 and get back a couple of IQ3 features that should have been there from the start, (unless Phase One replaced them with something better which the did not).

Old IQ3 features that have now been returned:

Power share: which allows the XF and IQ digital back to share power. Important for field use as the IQ4 uses about 1/3 to 1/2 more battery in normal use. Power share allows the XF to send power to the IQ4 once the IQ4 battery reaches a certain level of discharge. This is a good thing since the XF takes very little power compared to the IQ4.
Auto Gain for Live View: simple feature that has been in place with all IQ CMOS backs, since the days of the IQ250 back in 2012. Left off the IQ4 for some reason. With auto gain Live View you the back will pick an ISO level depending on the ambient lighting. It also added a bit more contrast to the Live View screen which I felt helped in critical focus. This feature was removed with the IQ4, and has not been available since December 2018. Instead Phase One offered Exposure simulation which showed allowed the Live View to display a representation of the currently selected ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture. Great in good light outdoor, not so great in low light (sunrise or sunset). I have not tried the new Auto gain yet, but hopefully it will work as well as it did on the IQ2 and IQ3 backs. You also have the ability to use the Auto Gain Live view with your selected aperture, or wide open which is a great feature.

New IQ4 features that have been added:

Live View zoom up to 400%. You now have the ability to zoom into your Live View screen as much as 400%. The details are still present and the ability to achieve very sharp critical focus on smaller distant details in a scene has improved.
Self timer for ES (electronic shutter). Pretty straight forward, you now can trip a self timer while in the ES. Not that big a deal for me as I have a remote 12 pin that allows me to fire the ES without having to press the shutter button on the IQ4 LCD.
While in Live View, 3x (triple) tap will take you all the way to 400% and or you can use a two finger pinch to zoom to any level from 0 to 400. Nice addition.
The brightness slider for Auto Gain Live View is easily accessed view a single swipe from the left side of the LCD.
AFr Zoom to Focus on the IQ4 with the XF Focus & Recompose feature

Overall, these are great improvements for the new IQ4, and hopefully they will assist photographers in the field.

However a few pretty important features still seem to be lacking surprisingly.

Auto Rotate: Simply stated if you take a vertical image the image will be displayed vertically in playback. Currently the IQ4 displays such an image horizontally. I still find this really disappointing as I show a lot of panoramas and use the vertical orientation to stitch with. I cannot think of any $99.00 point and shoot camera that can’t do this, and it surprises me that Phase One did not include this in December and now almost 4 months later still can’t implement it!. This is shooting preview 101, basic stuff and Phase One will require yet another firmware update to implement this.

Adhoc, where is it. Phase One seems to have a totally different direction now. I guess more pointed at studio work. Since day 1 of the previous IQ backs that had wifi, there was an adhoc option. Simply and clean created a static ip address that you could connect to in the field and thus use Capture Pilot from an iOS device. Phase One now only allows Capture Pilot use if you are connected to wifi over a router, again what the heck? Who thought this was a good idea? You have a great solution for field use of your software tool for iOS devices and then you just cut it off. Phase One has made limited low level statements that “adhoc” will return with a later firmware update. I still feel this won’t be possible as much system boards on PC’s or Mac, have all the networking capability hard wired in. Hopefully Phase had a way to implement adhoc without issuing an EC (engineer change) which would require all existing IQ4’s to be returned to the factory.

Heat and battery life, no mention as to if anything is being done to help on this. Currently a 3400 millamp Phase One battery will show totally drained when there is still over 20% of the battery left. The IQ4 also gets considerably hotter than the IQ3 and Phase One left out the feature that showed existing heat of the back that was quite popular for the IQ3. I wonder why?

written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell please do not reproduce any of this content without permission.

03/14/19 Sunset skies over Pinnacle Mountain–Featured Arkansas Photography

pinnacle mountain state park pictures of Arkansas

Sunset skies over Pinnacle mountain

Taken with a Nikon D850 and 80-400 lens, ISO 200. 4 vertical shots combined into 1 final image.

Love the area around Pinnacle mountain in western Pulaski county. All day long the skies had been grey and dark, no color. But right at sundown, the clouds broke open and the sun started to shine. It was still raining a bit, but I headed out to try and capture at least 1 sunset shot. I was working with the D850 and 80-400 lens, (a lens I have mixed feelings about) and no tripod, so I pushed up the ISO to 200 and shot brackets. I really should have pushed up to around 400 or even 800, but I was still able to get my shot. There is a bit of noise in the foreground, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. The skies were just loaded with color and I loved the way the various layers of clouds were moving across the skies.

I used Capture One to convert the images from raw files and then used Photoshop CC 2018 to create the panorama. It’s not really a true panorama, but more large format image. To capture this, I took 4 vertical images all hand held then used the panorama tools in Photoshop to create the final image. Photoshop does a great job most of the time and was able to get this image converted fine.

Pinnacle is an amazing looking mountain in western Pulaski County, Arkansas.

Written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell, please do not reprint or reproduce any of this content without permission.

03/12/19 Blood Moon Eclipse over Little Rock–Featured Arkansas Photography

Blood moon eclipse over Little Rock Arkansas

Blood Moon Eclipse, over Little Rock Arkansas. Taken with a Nikon D810A and Nikon 200-400 lens over a 1 and 1/2 hour time frame.

On the evening of January 20th, 2019, there was an excellent situation for astro photographers. There would be a “super” moon combined with a “blood” moon. The super moon denotes the larger size and greater brightness of the moon, and the blood moon refers to the blood red/in this case orange color of the moon. Full lunar eclipses happen often, but the combination of a blood and super moon during a full lunar eclipse is rare.

I have tried multiple times to capture a blood moon, but have been thwarted due to weather, or poor photographic technique. On this night, the sky remained clear throughout the entire eclipse and offered excellent viewing opportunities.

For the capture, I used my Nikon D810A, which has a slightly better high ISO dynamic range over my D850. I did sacrifice a considerable amount of resolution in doing this, but I preferred to have a great chance of capturing the overall full eclipse. The results were impressive. I used the Nikon 200-400 F4 lens at 400mm the entire time of the shoot. I varied my ISO range from 800 to 5000, and found the best results were when I took slightly longer exposures in the ISO 1200 to 2500 range.

Written for www.photosofarkansas.com on 03/11/19, please do not reproduce any of this content without express permission from Paul Caldwell

02/20/19 A Tale of two creeks Richland and Falling Water–Featured Arkansas Landscape Photography

At February 22, 2019
By paul
In Articles/Reviews, Featured Arkansas Photography
0

Fall scene featuring Richland and Falling Water Creek at their confluence.

A tale of two Creeks, Falling Water and Richland Creeks, Newton County Arkansas taken November 2018.

Taken with a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens. Image capture in 3 horizontal images @ 24mm. I used both a CL-PL and ND filter to slow the exposure for the water.

If I had to pick a favorite spot in Arkansas, it would have to be Richland Creek. Most defiant a love/hate relationship as Richland alone has cost me more in camera gear than any other location I like to photograph. Just this fall I lost both a Nikon D850 and 24-70 lens upstream from where this shot was taken. Totally my fault and lucky for me, the creek was much lower so I was able to recover the gear and Nikon USA was able to repair it at a reasonable cost. But that’s another story.

Richland Creek is one of the fascinating creeks in Arkansas. At medium to high water levels it’s a great kayaking stream. The creek is lined with hardwoods most are 2nd generation growth as the creek was logged back in both the great depression and again in the 60’s-70’s. Most of the old growth trees are long gone but if you hike far enough upstream where the mules and loggers never reached you can still find some huge white oaks.

The creek also winds through some of the most remote parts of Arkansas, that are still remaining. Most of the watershed is now a wilderness area. There is a primitive hiking trail that works it’s way up the left side of the creek (left side facing upstream). This trail will lead all the way to Twin Falls and Richland Falls, well worth the trip.

For most the season, Richland hold water, but in the fall it’s very rare to find a good flow like the one shown in this image. Instead the creek is usually barely covering the rocks. The fall colors are getting tricky to catch also. In the past the peak display tended to be around the middle of October now the peak seems to be more in the first week of November. But the display is now hard to catch in full. Notice in this shot most of the larger trees on the left have dropped their leaves, but the willows and smaller hardwoods lining the creek are still in full color. However upstream many of the larger trees are still hold leaves. So you just have to go and see what you have.

To take this shot, I had to wade out into the creek to mid thigh deep. I found a rock that allowed me to place my tripod and camera safely above the creek. Still after the disaster I had just 1 week prior, I was a bit shaky on working in the creek. Still it was just too much not to get out and risk the shot. There was little to no wind and just as I arrived the deeply overcast sky started to breakup and gave me some nice mixed light.

Due to the high water levels, I was able to catch Falling Water Creek on the left of the shot. Falling Water Creek runs into Richland at the Richland Campground. Falling water breaks into several channels near the it’s mouth with Richland and this one is the smallest. It hardly ever flows unless Richland is running at a high level. So I was grateful to catch both creeks in the same shot with some of the most amazing fall color I have seen on the creek.

Written by Paul Caldwell for www.photosofarkansas.com. Please contact the author before using any part of this in a separate publication.

09/18/18 Sunset from the Broadway Bridge Little Rock Arkansas–Featured Arkansas Photography

Sunset scene from the Broadway Bridge–Little Rock Arkansas

Taken with a Nikon D850 and 19mm PC-E lens, 2 12mm shifts from center.

The new Broadway Bridge over the Arkansas River in Little Rock/North Little Rock, is a brand new bridge, just finished earlier this year. The construction is very applying to the photographic eye. I have been trying to figure out where to get the sunset, feature the bridge and the skyline of Little Rock for a while now. For this shot I was on the North Little Rock side of the river and waited until the sun was right on the horizon. To get the sun in the shot, requires you to move too much to the right and thus loose the skyline. During the peak winter solstice, you might be able to get the sun into the frame as it will have moved to the left as far as it’s going to.

For this shot I used a Nikon D850 and 19mm PC-E lens. Ideally the best lens to frame the shot would have been a 24mm to 35mm, but Nikon’s 24mm PC-E is very weak on the corners before shifting and once shifted IMO is pretty worthless. Nikon doesn’t make a 35mm PC-E and the 45mm would have been too much lens. The 19mm is tack sharp even with a 12mm shift. You need to watch your framing and check the focus as the ideal focus spot will shift as you shift the lens. There is a bit of vignetting, but that can be corrected in post. It would be nice if LR would get a lens profile done for the 19mm, but so far there is not one. Typical again for Adobe as the 19mm has been out now for over a year.

I used Lightroom to create the panorama, and only used the left and right shifts as the center just provided the same details. Lightroom still has trouble blending the exposure on this type of shot and tends to cut a demarcation line right down the middle of the frame. You can export the same 2 files to Photoshop CC and get a much better blend, but Photoshop CC doesn’t have the boundary warp option, which I use all the time. And you are no longer working on a dng/raw file instead the panorama image is converted to a tif once the panorama process is complete.

This image was shot at the base ISO of the D850 of 64 which is very clean even when pushed. Since there was no wind the evening this shot was taken I was able to get by with longer exposure times.

Written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell, please ask permission before using any part of this article in a different publication.