As hinted in my overview of last years images I’ve set some definite goals for myself this year. My goal is to finally transform my photography into a source of partial income and use that goal to challenge myself into learning new techniques and refining what I already know.
In my overview of last year I noted that my aborted project 365 finally allowed me to explore using my iPhone in my photography. I’ve had a camera phone for quite afew yaers, but I never embraced shooting with any of them before the iPhone and I needed the push that a 365 gives to really embrace it.
Well, another year gone by with the camera more or less grown on to my hand. However, even though I took more than enough photographs during the year, somehow I’m left with the feeling that I should have done more. Note, this will be an exceptionally photo heavy post.
During the summer I bought a Sigma 50mm/1.4. While initially I reported that it didn’t have any focusing issues I was slightly mistaken.
It’s true that the 50mm at 1.4 has an extremely shallow DOF and thus most focusing errors will be user errors but there some cases in which the fact that the camera was front focusing became very clear. So I finally took some time earlier this week to set up a tripod and the focus test chart from Jeffrey Friedl (I used the 15% version) and took some test shots while changing the micro adjustment. And writing down which steps I took.
The setup shot
First, let’s look at the result with no adjustment. The images link to full-size pictures for pixel peeping. And warning, they linked images are about 10MB each…
100% crop before micro adjustment
Here you can clearly see that it front focuses a bit. Not too badly, but just a bit. After five different shots with varying micro adjustments I finally settled on +13 which to me is quite good.
100% crop of test after micro adjustment
Of course, I immediately tested the changed setting by shooting a couple of snaps of our dogs that were hanging around. Focusing on Topi’s eye, the image was dead on as you can see:
As the final installment of the Sotkamon Syke 2011 photographs we get the final artist of the evening – Amorphis (previously The Man-Eating Tree, Tarot). Initially I was hoping we’d be getting some pyros during the show, but unfortunately none were set up and I found out from the crew that the stage was too small for them to use pyros. I was also fairly certain that the gig would be challenging lighting wise – as Amorphis practically always is. Especially during the first three songs.
Early on into the set it became apparent that during the first three, Tomi wouldn’t be getting any significant amount of light in his face so I concentrated on getting good silhouettes of him and trying to get good shots of the rest of the band. Continuing from the audience after the first three with a longer lens then let me get some good shots of Tomi that were lit a bit better.
And I also got the chance to get some shots that showed the rain that had been plaguing us all evening.
Since we’ve seen the play quite a few times and I have a good amount of solid and typical concert photography shots of the band I really decided to explore the possibilities that the strong backlight and raindrops on the lens would give me. This is one of my favorites:
The Amorphis set was as solid as they usually are and contained most of the typical songs they play in a festival setting. Majestic Beast was a great exception to the typical set.
As always, more pictures in our gallery.
