Lars Christians blogg

No more midnight sun

lars — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:19:32 +0000

As always northern Norway has shown how beautiful it is. We had many days and nights with sun, but also some rainy days. When we left the sun had started just setting below the mountains, but it still doesn’t get dark.

Midnight sun, almost…

Another lichen wallpaper

lars — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:17:51 +0000

From my house there is only a short walk to get into the woods. I love photos with lots of empty space and bokeh as my wallpaper. The lichen is a strange organism that has beauty of it’s own. Lichen is a symbiosis between algae and fungi. Read more about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

High res: 2640x1760

Feel free to download and use this image under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Green L Close-up +2 review

lars — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:15:36 +0000

I already have a dedicated macro lens. A Canon 100mm F2.8, but I wanted to test close-up lenses on my Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS. The best option is with no doubt Canons own close-up lens 500D, but at $150 it’s a bit over my “just-for-fun” budget.

First I purchased a Fotga +3 close-up lens for $5. The combination with the 70-200 was so bad that cropping and interpolating is much better. (However, it performed much better together with my Tamron 17-50. Guess it’s better on shorter focal lengths ) Then I ordered a Green L close-up +2. At the pricetag of $7 I didn’t expect to much. This lens is as I understand it equivalent to the 500D in terms of magnification. To my suprise this combination also worked much better.

Tulip photographed with 70-200 F2.8 and Green L close-up +2

Immediately when looking through the viewfinder I saw that the clarity and sharpness was better with the Green L lens. The drawback of a close-up lens is the that it not only reduces the near focus limit, but also the far focus limit. A quick tape measure gave me a near focus limit at about 54cm and the far limit at about 72cm measured from the camera body, thus only giving about 20cm of working space. This is where I do most of my macro shots so I can live with that limitation.

100% crop of the tulip photo

Zooming in to 100% I’m surprised by how sharp it actually is after a little post processing and a unsharp mask. It also doesn’t seem to affect colour saturation either. While I was shooting this short test a butterfly was kind enough to pay me a brief visit.

A Small Tortoiseshell butterfly stopped for a brief moment

As a conclusion I can recommend the Green L +2 close-up lens as a companion to Canons 70-200. It’s not as good as a dedicated macro lens, but at just $7 it performs surprisingly well.

A mouse

lars — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:26:59 +0000

At first I thought it was a bird that sat in the topp of some plants. However it seemed to act strange, so I went closer to get a better look. To my suprise it wasn’t a bird, it was a mouse. A Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus). I didn’t have my dslr with me, but the ixus 860 can perform quite well too.

Mouse in a plant

Vipera berus

lars — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:34:18 +0000

I’ve long been wanting to photograph the Norwegian viper (Vipera berus) and today I finally came upon one in the wild. Sitting still it circled around me several times, but it was not me it was interested in. There also was a female hiding in the grass. The other viper was more shy, so it was hard good photo of it. When I left the two snakes were snuggled up so I left them alone to reproduce.

After twenty minutes it finally came up close.

The viper is courting a female.

Lichen wallpaper

lars — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:13:28 +0000

Just a quick post today. Went for a walk with the stroller this morning and stopped to take this picture as I thought it would make a great wallpaper. Lichen is actually a great subject for macro photography.

Feel free to download and use this image under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Abstract wallpaper

lars — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:26:30 +0000

What better for #WhateverWednesday than an abstract photo taken through the windshield when running my car through the carwash.
#WallpaperWednesdayContest #snart

A mini review of Green L ND filters

lars — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:24:58 +0000

Sometimes its desired to get long exposure time to blur everything moving or you need to get exposure time up to allow for use wider apertures in bright light. To control exposure one can use neutral density filter, or ND filters. They cost from a few bucks on eBay to more than $100. I wanted to play a little with ND filters to learn more about photography techniques. To start off I ordered a couple of Green L filter for less than $6 each from eBay. For that price I weren’t expecting the best quality.This is a preliminary first test of the filters. Not great photographic work. I just put up my tripod when I had an opportunity and fired away some test shots. I also shot with a couple of polarizing filters for comparison. The filters tested was:

Hama linear polarizing M72
Hoya 77 super circular polarizing 77mm
Green L ND4
Green L ND8

Step-up rings were used to attach the polarizing filters. Camera was a Canon 600D with a Tamron 17-50 F2.8 lens. All shots at F11 and evaluative light measuring with a +2/3 exposure correction. Raw developed with default settings in Aftershot without any auto levels or other adjustments.

This is not a very scientific test, but it gives a small clue about the performance of the filters. The light metering in the 600D did not produce constant exposures times of this scene. There where some variation. Also it seems to underexpose more the more the denser the filters got.

All the filters except the Hoya produced some flare. The Hama filter was as it says in the case equal to an ND4 filter in terms of density. The Green L ND4 filter had a little colour shift towards red/green that could need a little correction in post processing. The ND8 filter was even worse to the point that it seems like its no easy task to correct in post processing. Stacking both the ND4 and ND8 filters produced a strong red shift to the point that the combination is useless for anything else than black and white photography.

Black and white post processing with ND4+ND8

Black and white post processing with Hoya circular polarization

While the Green L filters has some colour shift problems they will become a part of my photographic toolkit for now. If end up needing ND filters more often I’ll probably upgrade them sometime in the future. All in all they perform well for filters at under $6 each!

Edit:

Just an update on this post with another test photo. This time only with the Green L ND8 but with a more classic ND filter use. Unfortunately my QR-plate for my tripod was still attached to my 70-200 at home, so I didn’t take more than a few shots holding the camera to the tripod. Photo post processed and colour corrected as good as I managed in a fair amount of time.

Here is what I’ve done to the colours in AfterShot:

Additional testing.

Yesterday I went for a walk and took a couple of test more. This time I combined the two polarisation filters. A linear and a circular polarisation filter stacked behaves (and probably is the same) as a variable ND filter. This way it’s easy to get much longer exposures. This time I had to handhold the circular filter in front of the linear. This combination preserved colours much better than the dedicated cheap ND filters and also give me longer exposures if I want.

Here no color adjustments is done. Colours are boosted because of the double polarisation filters. Exposure is 2.5 s at F10 ISO 100.

a white tailed eagle

lars — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:07:54 +0000

Order plane tickets today for a vacation to Bodø this summer. Looking forward to a relaxing time and good photo opportunities. Here is the white tailed eagle from last time I was there. It’s truly a big bird!

A white tailed eagle grabbing a meal

My wallpaper entries for Precise Pangolin

lars — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:13:08 +0000

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin is scheduled for release 26th of April. I had an entry in the wallpaper submission group on Flicker, but my photos was not selected this time. Here are the two wallpapers I submitted.

When I were in Namibia in 2008 I took this photo of the sunrise while we were waiting for the gates to Sossusvlei to open. The sky was lit as on fire as the sun came up and the gates opened.

Feel free to download and use these images under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.