Photographing the mist at Box Hill

January 11, 2023

In December 2022, I was driving along the top of Box Hill in Surrey and saw a beautiful scene of mist over Dorking and Brockham

Treetops and rooftops were just visible

This is how I photographed the scene

Equipment

Nikon Z6 camera

24 -70 Z mount lens

18 - 300 DX F mount lens with Nikon FTZ adapter

Poor Light

It was around 8.30am by the time I had parked at walked the short distance to the viewpoint at the top of Box Hill.
Although the sun had risen half an hour earlier, there was thick cloud cover which greatly reduced the amount of ambient light

Stability

Due to the low level of light, shooting hand held would have meant using settings that weren’t practical. I didn't want to push up the ISO, or use a wide open aperture, or a shutter speed so slow that the images were blurry.

A tripod would have been ideal, but I didn’t have one with me

In these circumstances I look for ways to stabilize the camera. At this location I was able to rest the camera on top of the Salomons Memorial, and also use a nearby bench. This enabled me to use settings that would, (hopefully), give me reasonably clean and sharp images.

Camera Settings

For landscapes I like to use an aperture of f8 to f11. This is the sweet spot for most lenses producing the sharpest images as well as having a reasonable depth of field.

Ideally I wanted to set the ISO at 100, particularly when using a 300mm lens but I had to increase it slightly for some images.,
This ISO ranged from 100 to 250 for the shoot.

The shutter speed ranged from 1/25 to around 1/200
(see final images below for exact settings)

*A selection of unedited images in the Lightroom*

Composition

I had two lenses with me, a 24-70, and an 18-300mm

The 24-70 is sharper and although I took some wide images with it, I much preferred to use the 18-300 zoomed in on a small area of the landscape.

I felt this really gave a much more dramatic look and really captured the beauty of the mist

Another composition I quite liked was the winding path at the top of the hill vanishing into the mist.

I managed to capture a lone walker on the path which gave a good sense of scale.

A small bird in flight was a lucky addition

Underxposed Images

I noticed that many of the images underexposed, particularly when I switched to the 300mm lens and zoomed in. (The best way to check the exposure is the review the histogram rather than to rely on the monitor.)

As much of the scene was white, the camera tried to adjust the exposure for a mid-tone grey, and underexpose the scene. This commonly happens if you photograph snow, where again, much of the image will be white. Check the histogram, and and add one or two stops of exposure compensation if necessary.

Underexposed image on the back of my camera
The histogram needed to be pushed further to the right

Final Edits

I was happy with the final images although it would have helped to have had a tripod.

My favorite image was one of the spire of Brockham Church above the mist with a few birds around it

Capturing Dance Movement

November 5, 2022

For this shoot I was joined by two fellow photographers to try to capture some dance moves with light trails of the model

Our model for the event was the lovely Jessi Athira who has considerable experience of different forms of dance

The Idea

Jessi was going to do some simple dance moves going from left to right in front of a black background
The camera shutter would be open for anything from 1.5 to 5 seconds while she moved
During that time, she would be lit by the light from the LEDs which would create blurred trails of her movement
Finally, the flash would fire at the end of the exposure, creating a frozen image of Jessi on the right… well that was the idea anyway!

The Set up

A large wide black backdrop was the first thing we set up, followed by a black cloth on the floor.

The lighting consisted of two continuous LED light panels on the left, and on the right, a Godox AD600 speedlight with a gridded stripbox

Finallly, to prevent the light from the LED panels spilling onto the backdrop, we used a large black screen placed close to the LEDs

Cameras welre all on tripods

Props

Jessi wore a vibrant red flowing dress

We used coloured, and white silks, to add some different colours and vary the images

Camera settings

ISO 100
Aperture … f5.6 and f.6.3
Shutter … we experimented with 1.5 to 5 seconds

Two seconds seemed about right

Light settings
The LED panels were on full power
The Godox Ad600 was on 1/4 power

The Shoot

Getting the light to just how we wanted it took quite a time

Firstly, we just used one LED panel, but this didn’t give us ernough light, so we added a second.
This threw out a lot more light so we had to introduce a black screen to prevent light falling onto the background.

With the LED panels positioned, we then tested the power required for the Godox Speelight on the right

This was quite difficcult becuse it was going to be impossible for Jessi to hit exactly the same point every single time.

After a bit of trail and error we settled on 1/4 power for the striplight

Editing

The images straight out of the camera needed quite a bit of editing

Take a look at the before and after images below

Edting took no more than 10 minutes thanks to all the tools available in Lightroom

Cropping the images did away with a lot of the distractions, and then taking down the shadows gave a much cleaner look all round.

A few more tweaks to contrast, saturation, and shadows, and it was done.

Edited

Out of camera

Final Images

Alicia

October 29, 2022

A boudoir shoot with Alicia

Photographing a Partial Solar Eclipse

October 26, 2022

Partial Solar Eclipse
Date : 25th OCtober 2022

Location Epsom , Surrey

Began: Tue, 25 Oct 2022, 10:09
Maximum: Tue, 25 Oct 2022, 10:59
Ended: Tue, 25 Oct 2022, 11:50

Duration: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Equipment

NIkon Z6 camera
18-300mm lens
Tripod
Baader Solar Filter Film

Partial Solar eclipses are not that common, so you’ve got to try to make the most of them when they occur.

I was in Epsom in Surrey for this ecplise, and had hastily taped some solar safety film onto the lens hood of my 10-300mm lens in preperation.

As you can see from the images though, I had made a complete mess of it. The front of it should have been nice and flat with no wrinkles, so I wasn’t even sure if it would work!

Baader Solar Film

Making the filter

The final, very wrinkly, filter

Setting up

With the camera on the tripod, and the lens with the safety filter in place, I extended the lens to 300mm
Then I switched on live view so that I could focus, and view my images, on the monitor.
(Even with the solar safety fim attached to your lens hood, don’t view the sun through the eyepiece)

I then put the camera into manual focus, and used live view to adjust the focus until it was pin sharp on the sun.
The best way to do this is to zoom into your subject when you are in live view, as this really helps to ensure that it is as sharply focused as possible.

The images

At first my settings gave me images that looked clear, and sharp, and although I thought I wouldn’t see any detail on the sun, I tried a faster shutter speed just to see what would happen.

As it turned out, at faster shutter speeds I was able to make out two large sunspots which was a real bonus.

I managed to grab quite a few images, and video, before the clouds begand to drift across the sun and eventually obscured it completely.

It was a good learning curve, and I’ll be more perpared for the next one, which is some time away!

Images

ISO 100
Aperture F6.3
Shutter 1/320

Too bright

Clouds start to cover the sun, but sunspots are still visoble — ISO 100
Aperture F6.3
Shutter 1/4000

This was underexposed and brightened in LIghtroom.
Two sunposts are visible (see below for clearer image)

Clouds begin to move across the sun but the sunspots are still visible

And finally … a short video …