Anatomy of Podersdorf Lighthouse

3 vertical merged @
24mm shots @0.6s, f/11, ISO 50

The moment I looked through the window in the morning (around noon...) I knew today would be good photo session day. Patchy clouds, some clear sky and changing light conditions. No time to waste! Just to touch base about noon morning..., I am not so lazy, I simply live in different time zone, shoot at crazy hours i.e. concerts till 1 a.m. then scroll through pictures till 3-4 a.m. and still need some sleep. Next week will be opposite, I will be more on sunrise side, however now in winter it is not such an issue.

Anyway, having seen the sky, I knew I had to head for Neusiedlersee to get some stunning shots. Now in December and for few more weeks sun sets right behind 'famous' Podersdorf lighthouse  This spot is probably the most photographed scene in Austria, if not in Austria, definitely in Burgendland. In any case, I love the place, and every time I go there, I always try to find something new.

Today's challenge or exercise was to practice tilt shift functionality at relatively narrow pier. I was after really wide shot with good expected sunsetting light.

It was about half an hour before sunset, I knew up front what sort of frame and shot I was after, ver low angle and wide utilizing shift and tilt functionality and wanted the lighthouse right im the middle. Piers' wooden planks should lead viewer's deep into the frame. This part was quite simple know the place inside out. New part was new tilt shift lens. Up to now I used to photograph the place with 16mm wide angle having to fight massive distortion in order to get similar effect. 

Good idea to have second camera... framing with reds enhancer

Tilt-Shift lenses have certain circle of view, way bigger than typical lenses, but when in default position you see more or less standard frame as in my case 24mm. But when camera is on a tripod, once you make let's call it standard 24mm shot, you can shift the lens parallel to the whole scene and plane of focus to left or right (or up and down) to get way wider angle of view... and without any extra distortion. You end up with 3 pictures that can be very easily merged together into high resolution panorama. 

Tilting is something different, you swing front of the lens changing plane of focus angle. By doing so, you can extend depth of field. However, if you overdo it, you get very unreal effet. And this is was one of my main subject for today, to practice it and learn the lens and it scale and abilities. For the shot I wanted all in focus, wooden planks in front of me and the lighthouse and infinity, without closing too much aperture. 

Once I got the frame, and focus under control, I needed some proper light. Right at the beginning scene looked quite dull and grey or blue. Started simple shot without any filters, even without polarizer just to see what I can get. Boring. But that shot having correct exposure gave me starting point for current light situation. 

Now let's mount 10 stops Big Stopper from Lee. Since I had previous shot well exposed to 1/4s it is was simple calculation to slow down to 4 minutes. Hehe, I am not so smart, I have those values printed as conversion table and in my bag... some shutter speeds I remember, but sometimes I have to look up for correct down sized values. 

3 shots @ 24mm, 4 min, f/11, ISO 50 + 10 stops filter,  WB30'000K

Lee's Big Stopper has very strong blue cast, and even setting camera to 10'000 Kelvins in some cases does not help. But when shooting RAW this is not such an issue. During post processing I pumped up white balance to 30'000K to get something similar from what I saw with my eyes. 

Light started to change, forget big stopper, no time, I need fast shots to get the most of the light, absolutely all fileters ended up in my bag except Reds Enhancer just for shot. I wanted to play with it see what effect it would have on sort of red orange sunset. After that all went filter-free. Another reason to get rid of all mounting devices to eliminate any possible vignetting while shifting the glass. Anything you mount on the glass, at furthest edges of the shift is causing less or more visible vignette.

3 shots @ 24mm, 0.6s, f/11, ISO 50, WB 7000K

Then sun broke through! For 2-3 minutes the location looked orangish yellow! Those are the moments photographers dream of. Literally few minutes and all was gone. I kept shooting my section - left, middle, right - hoping that light would not change too much in between the shots. 

3 shots @ 24mm, 0.6s, f/11, ISO 50, WK 7000K
Same settings as above, sun got stronger and lower causing flare but illuminating wooden pier...

Finally I set the camera for bracketing - 5 shots at 1EV interval and shot 15 frames for HDR panorama. Wow. It happened.

HDR, 15 shots, 5 for left, middle, right section @ 24mm, f/13, 0.6s, ISO 50

HDR'ed with Photomatix using default exposure blending mode, and then all sections merged together in Photoshop.

In the end, which one is the picture of the day... I need to sleep with this and in some time I will choose. Anyhow it was great shooting experience.

P.S.

Having second camera during the shoot is a good idea. While shooting 3 x 4 minutes exposures = 12 minutes, I thought I would do hand held panorama of the location. 

This is composition of 8 vertical frames - hand held covering 180°. Scene before magnificent sunset.

Off to England tomorrow.

Higher resolution pictures are now on my Flickr

Cheers

Jerzy