The Fourth Of July - The Doggie Dilemma

Happy Fourth of July: Two peninsula cities, Foster City and San Mateo, each scheduled their own Fourth of July celebration. In Foster City, there was a Pet Parade, followed by a band performance at Leo Ryan Park. Families had already laid claim to their place on the lawns for their picnics, and in years past, a place where they would normally watch the fireworks display over the lagoon. San Mateo planned for a band to perform on a stage erected on the baseball diamond in Central Park just for the occasion. Since this two-fer gave me two venues to work from, I decided to attempt to make a photo of the Pet Parade. then drive north to San Mateo for the Dance Party.

Experimenting: I've always tried to find different ways to photograph pets from their perspectives. I carry two Fuji bodies: a  T4 with a fully articulating LCD panel, and an older T2, which has an LCD panel that only rotates up or down, while staying aligned with the lens axis. If I'm looking straight down onto the camera  when making a long-angle shot, I much prefer the T2 because the LCD is easier to stay in alignment with the subject. I mounted my 10-24 zoom lens because I knew that I'd be working very close to my canine subjects. Finally, to the best light possible, I rotated my flash head so that when I held the camera at waist level, the flash would be pointing directly at my chest. I made a quick test shot of this dog whose owner was wearing these lovely heart-shaped sunglasses. After a few tries, I resigned myself to the fact that I was winning my Pulitzer here.

This tight cropping of one of those attempts does successfully illustrate the effects of my camera and flash setup. In the reflection you can see the silhouette of my shoe-mounted flash with the light bouncing off of my light-colored shirt. You will also notice that the light will fall on the subject from above the lens axis, which changes the size and nature of the catchlight. There is a problem with the camera-to-subject distance. As you can see that the farther from the subject you and your camera are positioned, the flatter the lighting becomes. You can see that there is almost no shadow beneath my subject's nose.

Photobombed: I was determined to make that full-framed photo of a patriotic puppy using this lighting setup. As I was preparing to photograph the dog with the star-spangled neck kerchief, this brave little Corgi decided to walk directly into the frame. You can catch the expression on my original subject, and almost see both the surprise and indignation in his eyes. However, the effect of this shirt-bounced flash on the Corgi was exactly what I was looking for.

Having been so upstaged, my enthusiasm for the venue fell through the floor, and I resigned myself to winning my Pulitzer with a photo for San Mateo. 

Head 'em up, move 'em out. Keep them doggies moving.

The Viltrox 28mm F 4.5 In Use

1/200 second, F 4.5, ISO 200, 3-stop neutral density filter.

Sharp! I've been playing around with my new Viltrox 28mm F 4.5 quite a bit, and am very impressed with both its wide angle outlook on life, and the high degree of clinical sharpness. My assessment has been quite favorable so far, although adapting to the fixed F 4.5  aperture is still a work in progress.  But sharp it is, and this quality alone might justify a higher suggested retail price.

Now just for fun I included a cropped portion of the lead photograph. You can easily see the embossing on the bridge of my spectacles, which is a performance level well above its pay grade. Going back the lead image, I really liked how the out-of-focus background was so softly rendered

The Fixed Aperture: This particular lens has an aperture fixed at F 4.5. With low ISO settings, aperture priority exposure mode setting, and an outdoor subject this is definitely not a disadvantage unless you want/need greater depth of field. But as you may have guessed, I tend to think about what I would need to do if I wanted to employ a flash, and how this fixed aperture size might complicate a shooting solution. Since all of my current  interchangeable lens mirrorless bodies sync at about 1/200 of a second, the F 4.5 aperture makes it almost impossible to use it with flash outdoors. Que the ND Filter.

Bring The Darkness: Neutral Density (ND) filters can darken an image by reducing the amount of light passing through the lens. The one I purchased decreases the light throughput by 3 stops, turning my F 4.5 lens to an effective F-stop of between F11 and F 16. If you examine the lead shot's exposure data and adjust the aperture to accommodate the ND filter. the settings closely correspond to the values derived from the "Sunny Sixteen Rule". The combination of filter and fixed aperture allows my to properly expose a sunlit subject at a shutter setting low enough for effective lash application. The exposure settings gave me the cyan sky I so adore, but shadow detail has been sacrificed to achieve it. The facial illumination? I used a shoe mounted flash bounced off my neighbor's  white garage door.

Here's my Sony Alpha 7 with, from top to bottom :

• Hoya PRO ND filter,
• Vivitar 52mm filter with the glass and retaining ring removed,
• Filmatura 52mm filter adapter (triangle logo), and
• Viltrox 28 F 4.5 autofocus pancake lens.

Conclusion: This has been an exercise in extending the capabilities of an inexpensive, albeit useful, lens into the possible deployment into the "flash zone". Now all of this could be duplicated by using an 18mm APS lens on any of my Fuji bodies and mounting a neutral density filter for use with the F 4.5 shooting aperture. This flash, ND filter, and lens combination produced an interesting image with foreground detail and a softly rendered background. Again, just the sort of trick that might come in handy someday.