Silver Streams Galleria: Blog

Why can't we make cars like this anymore?

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:40:47 GMT

Charger-11 Well it has been awhile since I blogged. The back has been acting up preventing me from doing more. So feeling a bit better I have had a chance to update. These past few weeks have been busy photographing Spring sports leagues and some other stuff. Some of it has been pretty darn cool. I had a client that was interested in my services for getting images of his 66 Dodge Charger that is going up for auction. Now this is no ordinary Charger. This thing is amazing. You can hear the Hemi coming blocks away. He says it is time for the car to move on. I just wish it would move on in my direction! The fun part was seeing my youngest son get a ride in the car. Of course there was a burnout involved. You should have seen the smile on his face. I could not get a picture because they were following me to the location. Here is two of the pictures being used for the auction site and then some fun ones on a country road.

Of course I used my Fuji X-Pro 1 for all the shooting and the trusty 35mm lens. I love the way Fuji keeps on updating the firmware. It makes for a new camera all over again. Lighting was provided by a Buff Einstein to counter the sun.

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Just a Blurbin 'bout Racin

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 16:28:21 GMT

Well I had to finally sit down and look at my racing images from the Indy 500 over the last few years. I have had the fortunate experience of getting real close to the the race through the Centennial Era of racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I think that is cool! So taking my best images I decided to make a book through Blurb. (www.blurb.com) I have seen books made by their service, all of which were great quality. Making an account and logging in took no time at all. Blurb's book making software is simple stuff even I cold figure out. The hardest part was selecting and arranging the images in the layout. So take a look at my images from three years of the Indy500.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3937917

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Santa comes early with a Samyang 8mm lens for the Fuji X-Pro1

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:27:07 GMT

I am back with another blog post. About a month ago I purchased the Samyang 8mm lens for the Fuji X series. My first impression of the lens are most favorable. Without getting technical. Its a good lens for the price having a nice solid feel when holding. Image quality is very good. No complaints really. If you are on the fence, JUMP!, you will like it.

When setting up the X-Pro 1 ( I assume the new camera body X-E1 settings are also the same). You want to make the following adjustments in the menus.

1) Shoot without lens to "On"

2) Mount adapter setting, select "lens 5 or 6" and adjust to 8mm. Someone please correct me if I am wrong on this. However by doing this the camera body will recognize the 8mm as a default setting when no other Fuji lens is connected.

3) Set servo motor to "M" not "S" or "C"

4) With fisheye its all EVF not OVF for viewing and composition.

One of my clients is the Indiana Transportation Museum. This year they had asked me to make a few runs to the North Pole with Santa. The images will be used for future marketing. So I made two runs on the Polar Bear Express covering Santa. This guy Santa, is BUSY! I decided to do a day run and then a night run. For the day I used my Nikon D300 and fill flash. Very conservative setup making sure I got some fill light into the subjects.

BUT for the night run I knew what I wanted to achieve and the Nikon D300 was not going to do it. Out comes the most wonderful Fuji X-Pro 1. I wanted to get the mood using the ambient light. These are 1930s rail cars with very dark lighting. There were six cars on this Polar Bear Express with about 175 passengers per trip. The lighting was very different in each car.

All settings were in Manual. I kept the ISO at 6400 and tried to keep the shutter speed above 1/125 because a bunch of old rail cars doing 20 mph gets very bumpy and I was getting blur below this shutter speed as we bounced around. Fun stuff, great challenge.

I got exactly what I was looking for. For one of the very first times, everything for the evening was shot in RAW. Usually I just shoot in the JPEG film modes. But for this trip I wanted to have the benefit of pulling detail out if needed. Side note, I used Lightroom for the RAW processing. Worked just fine for me. To many picky people out there.

As you look at the images, the answer is yes, you are seeing correctly. The train tracks do go down the center of a street. The cars have to get out of the way. As the train approaches the town square, all the stop lights go to red and the train slowly moves through the center of town. Very cool sight to see.

So to all a very Merry Christmas, and yes there is a North Pole, I saw it!

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This was shot on the return from the North Pole. These cabins were very dark.

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Blog-65 From the same intersection as the image above when I was inside.

Blog-71 35mm not 8mm, but I like this image.

Happy and Safe Holiday season to All

Fall Colors with the X-Pro1

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:39:35 GMT

Well the new Fuji firmware updates have been installed and we are a click-in away. Some areas of the USA have just some beautiful areas to capture the Fall colors. Central Indiana is not one of them! Especially this year we have had the drought and extreme heat. So when the colors started to arrive I was not sure what we would have. Well we had about 4 days of golden and brown color. Fortunately we had perfect weather to go view the beauty. Recently I have had two things slow me down. One is back problems and the other is a camera that demands my time. Anyone know which camera that is? I just can not move around as much anymore, which means I do get more blurry images. So I started using a Benro travel tripod for most everything I shoot with the X-Pro1. Including my portrait sessions. For the price the tripod can't be beat. Its aluminum. I just can not see an advantage to carbon for the price.

So again, I am shooting all these images in Vivid film JPEG. Looking at the images below I have been shooting exposure bracketing and post processing in NIK software suite of HDR and Color Efex Pro for final output. I do live in Lightroom and NIK software. However one of the companies that has recently peaked my interest is On One Software with their new 7 suite. I may have to give that a try once it arrives at the end of this month.

Another item I am interested in is the Samyang 8mm wide angle. For the price the web reviews sound very promising. So maybe you will see my review of these coming products in my X-Pro1 imaging. Now on to the images.

If you like what you see, I have all images for sale in my gallery.

http://atokarzphoto.zenfolio.com/p675893290

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Very little post process in this image. Straight from the camera VIVID JPEG.

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This image has a bit more processing. I used NIK color Efex Pro to do a very little cross processing otherwise it is a VIVID JPEG.

_DSF2218_HDR-Edit "Mystic Woods" done in NIK HDR and Color Efex from a bracket shot in the X-Pro1.

_DSF2296_HDR-Edit Same processing as above. I had beautiful light coming through and this dark rail line. This was as good as the Fall colors got around me.

_DSF2305-Edit My favorite of the bunch. Starting as a VIVID JPEG HDR and having about three NIK filters added. Out of camera was tack sharp and I wanted to soften it a bit.

_DSF2317_HDR As I was getting ready to leave this one hit me. The light was just right to get the texture of the tree. Its an HDR image in Vivid JPEG with very little post processing. That is all color from the camera. Now that was some golden light!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111682288655903295700/posts

Fashion Models and an X PRO 1 Update

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:34:16 GMT

Today was education day. I had not taken a class in a long time. Seeing that Sandy Puc was coming through Indianapolis, I looked at my schedule and made it happen. Being that this was a hands on workshop, question to myself, what gear will I bring. These types of classes are always fun. The sponsor bring all their goodies for us children, umm I mean Professional Photographers, to play with. For my portrait work I have moved almost exclusively to the X Pro 1 camera system. My Nikon gear has moved to my events and group work. Now the timing could not have been better. Tuesday morning arrives and the first thing I do is update the Fuji firmware to version 2. I think its great how Fuji keeps the updates coming. But gosh guys, do you have to wipe all the setting after every update? ANNOYING. That alone has stopped me from making a whole bunch of custom settings knowing they may not be there long.

So I show up at the Sandy Puc class with my small bag carrying the X Pro 1, 35mm and 60mm lens. Everyone else is toting their Canon and 70-200 lens around. When its my turn at the first model I rip out the camera and everyone goes HUH? What the hell is that? For the next ten minutes I spend answering questions. Funny.

Up to this point I had not done any sampling with the update. Was not sure how it would do. It went great. Now to make matters a little more difficult I shot in quite mode, which of course also turns off the AF light. So now in the dark situations the focusing was really being put to the test. I can not see anyone complaining about focusing after having installed this update.

With this camera system my workflow has slightly changed. With my Nikon D300 bodies I always shot portrait sessions in RAW. Just the opposite with the X Pro 1. If I do shoot RAW in the Fuji system, its for the ability to edit the image in camera not in post processing in Lightroom. Fuji JPEGS look that good. Now having said that I still do most of my post processing using NIK software as a plug in to Lightroom. How about that Google/NIK software announcement this week. Who saw that coming.

These images were all processed through NIK software from Standard JPEG out of camera.

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A day of High School soccer with the X-Pro1

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:23:42 GMT

Summer is quickly coming to an end. Schools are starting around the country. Here in our school district we have one more week before school starts. We start late by todays standards. With the start of school comes Fall soccer. My oldest son made the JV school team this year. Last night was the kickoff game of the season. Go Westfield Shamrocks! If you read down into my blog post you would have seen me experimenting with the X-Pro1 and action shots. I normally shoot this kind of sports action with my trusty D300 bodies and a 70-200 lens. Since there are 18 games to the high school season I figured I give the X-Pro1 another workout with sports. So my setup for the day was the 60mm lens, aperture priority and the B&W Jpeg output. This camera has been winning all kinds of awards for image quality. Yes its that good. Once again just wanted to show a bit of action with this camera design. If you are reading this blog and have a X-Pro1 do you find yourself shooting more with the JPEG film simulation or RAW? For me its the Film simulation.

Oh if your wondering. We won our first game of the season.

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Air Show and the Fuji X Pro1

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:23:36 GMT

Well its summer and that means air shows around the country. Indianapolis has a nice one that has been running in its current form for over 15 years now. About every three to four years I attend. Doing it yearly gets to old. This year the Thunderbirds were in town. Knowing the flight line and the distance to the action, I was not going to get the flyby shots with the X Pro1. This is normally reserved for my Nikon gear. I was not going to lug two camera systems around to cover all aspects. This visit was just about the static displays. Because it was so hot I did not even stay for the flying action. Since my last blog entry I have purchased the 60mm lens. As all the other reports state, it is a very nice lens. I am looking forward to using it for my portrait work.

I have also added a thumbs up device to the camera which adds considerable grip to the body. A worthy investment. So the following images are a combo of both the 35mm and 60mm lens. I don't have a favorite of the two. They are both equally great lens. It all depends what I want to do with the image.

An interesting note. All these images I shot as JPEG fine, using a combination of the film simulation built into the camera. The black and white is so dreamy and smooth along with the pop of the vivid. On my other camera bodies (Nikon D300s) I default to RAW on everything. All images shown have been further processed in Lightroom 4/NIK plugins. My favorite workflow.

Tell me what you think.

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X Pro 1 at the Indy 500 on Race Day

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:21:38 GMT

Blog-43 I have seen it all, weather wise, at the Indy 500. This year it was heat. Not Indiana heat but Texas heat. Man it was HOT for the race. Track temp was over 130F. If you have read my previous post you are aware of my goal to see how the X-Pro 1 capture action. No it is not a high end sports camera. But it does a good job with action. You have to adjust for the way this camera works. So to end this series of discussion I have included images from race day at the Indy 500. These images are an assortment of out-of-camera and artistically enhanced final images. All for your viewing pleasure. I have been fortunate to be a participant in one of the worlds greatest sporting events for the last ten years. The pre-race is a show in itself. All these images are with the 35mm lens.

I just updated Lightroom 4, now supporting RAW. The RAW file size is over 25MB per image. Thats a need for a lot of storage space. This camera does Jpeg so good, I may just reduce the amount of Raw I shoot. Fuji has done a great job with the Fuji film emulation. This is really a shooters camera.

So on to the images.

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Fuji X Pro 1 and action shots YES IT CAN Part3 Indy Cars!

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:59:56 GMT

Well I made it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for "Happy Hour" today. For those of you who are racing illiterate. Happy hour is the last hour of practice when the shade comes over the track and the lap times are usually the fastest of the day. This is my first time of the season seeing the new cars and engines. Normally I work one race before the Indy 500 gets here. Not this year. So after a weekend of soccer pictures off to the Speedway to see what this Fuji X Pro 1 can do with Indy Cars.

Beautiful weather and a small crowd of people allowed me to take my time and try capturing race cars from several locations. I will continue to post more all week. For this week is daily practice leading up to qualifications this weekend.

Besides trying to capture high speed action I was playing more with the B&W. I really like this coming out of the camera. Normally I am using NIK Silver Efix Pro 2, which is the best for B&W conversation, in my humble opinion. But man am I finding it hard to not just let the camera do it.

So what did I learn in my first attempt today. Well to begin with I am rusty. Shooting cars moving at 220-230 MPH takes some learning. Getting myself up to speed normally takes me a good 30 minutes of timing my motion to the cars on the track. Once I have the feel. I am good to go. Otherwise I have a lot of images of empty track.

For those of you who are portrait and landscape photographers. Let me give you an idea of the speed we are dealing with. If you stand out facing the front straight at the start/finish line. Staring straight ahead without turning to see the coming cars. You blink and you will miss half the field of 33 cars. Its that fast. I have a landscape photographer friend who had visited me during practice a few years ago. It took him a full day and a half before he captured a car on the track. He told me hummingbirds were nothing compared to this. Too funny.

So I was in full manual. Shutter speeds were anywhere from 1/250 to 1/1000 depending on how much blur I wanted in the action. The App I kept around 4.0 ish. ISO 200 all day. JPEG Normal. To begin with I kept the servo focus in C. Fuji, if you are reading this. While in C mode make your focal point a box and not a cross OR make the cross darker. It hard to see in the OVF on a bright day. (Minor Issue) This is what I am discovering about the C vs S mode and action. For me at least the C mode works well on action of normal human activity, like my soccer pictures. For bullet fast cars the S was my favorite. And this is why. I could move my focus point. Fuji, who can't I do this in C mode???? So I setup my OVF view to have the focus point all the way to the left. As I am panning and watching the car come int the OVF square. I figured out that The combination of view-to-focus point- to holy sh** hit the shutter put me on target and focus. Thats it!! The beauty of capturing race cars is those drivers are consistent. The shutter lag on the X Pro 1 is constant. The variable is my eye to finger movement. Nail that and you have the image.

So on to the images.

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This is is cropped in. Car is doing about 200MPH as it enters turn 1.

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The Captain and the Penske crew at practice. Will Power Car.

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Love this image. I am at the exit to the pits. Car is moving at about 50-55 MPH at this point. The new chassis look like bat mobiles.

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Will Power between practice laps.

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This is a good image to show the dynamic range. No blown highlights or clipping in this image. Straight out of the camera, like the rest. Bright sun to shade. I was not ready with camera in hand for this shot. Turn camera on focus, shoot. no problem.

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These last two are the cars in the entering the apex of turn one. The first shot is at 1/1000 the second is at 1/250. Cars are starting to accelerate again over 200 MPH. I used S mode on the servo focus for both of these. So the camera is tracking the cars moving away from me.

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Fuji X Pro 1 and action shots YES IT CAN Part 2

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:35:58 GMT

Well upon further action shots of soccer action, I can say this camera beats the D300 in image quality. Yes the focus is slower. But it does not miss. Because I just have the 35mm lens I had to wait for the action to come to me. I could not go hunt for action as if I had a 70-200mm in the front. But what you can do is crop the heck out of an image and still get amazing resolution. I can not wait to see what RAW looks like from this camera. Come on Adobe and Fuji lets get the updates.

Next up is Indy Cars! Fuji are you there. Can I borrow a 18mm and 60mm. Really looking forward to see what this camera can do with 230 MPH cars on a straight away. Stay tuned for more.

And on to todays images.

Blog-18 This was happening right in front of me. I had little time to turn on and compose. Fuji X Pro 1 came alive fast.

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Blog-20 Full action with the Keeper sliding for the ball. The Fuji X Pro 1 was in C mode. One shot and all in focus.

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Blog-22 This play was just awesome. One kick over the defender and head it back in for the assist and score!!!

Blog-23 This is interesting because it is highly cropped. The action was in the center of the field. Even with all the cropping camera resolution was great. The Fuji X Pro 1 action work looks great and matches anything in resolution a D300 and 70-200mm lens can do.

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Blog-25 This is my fav from the weekend. In game action with the ball screaming by from right of frame. I am not going to get this with my Nikon. I love the B&W this camera puts out.

Blog-26 The final charge of the game everyone at full speed.

Blog-27 And yes this camera is a champ. So are our boys teams for the weekend. Great results very pleased with both son and camera.

Fuji X Pro 1 and action shots YES IT CAN Part 1

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Sat, 12 May 2012 23:05:23 GMT

If you are here reading this you like many others are interested in this new Fuji X Pro 1 camera system. I have read what it can and can not do. What is good and what is bad. Many, many people writing about this camera. This is part one with more action images to follow. Ending with images from the Indy 500. More on that later.

First I am not paid or sponsored by Fuji. In fact, I have only had the camera for a week. Usually it takes me a good three months to get comfortable with new gear. I must say something about the Fuji instruction manual that comes with the camera. Nicely done! Usually these booklets are just plain painful to read. What surprised me was the clarity of the descriptions. Along with the fact you can get through it fairly fast. I think thats because there isn't a lot of stuff this camera does on the side. In essence the manual says "This is how it works, shut up and go take pictures."

Now a little about me. I have been a professional action photographer for almost ten years. My primary gear is two Nikon D300 bodies and associated lens. Each body has over 200,000 actuations and they keep going. On average I shoot over 100,000 action photos a year. Sometimes upwards of 12,000 images in one day. All of my shooting is done in Single action. I NEVER use the continuous modes on my Nikons. One click only per image. I do not make stop action video at 10fps. You must really master single action to shoot fast moving objects with this camera. What I shoot? Well to start a lot of High School performing arts competitions. This includes Dance, Bands, Color Guard, Percussion and High School Sports events, Soccer and LaCrosse mainly. Beyond that I am a seasonal employee for the Indy Racing League. Have been doing this for almost ten years. So I get up close to all the action and then some. Being the month of May here in Indy, I will be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway taking pictures with this Fuji camera. My goal/challenge is to see if indeed this camera can take pictures of quick movement. Especially of cars going 230 MPH at the Speedway!

So to begin with I wanted to see what we can do with the X Pro 1 and the 35mm at my sons soccer game today. Could I get sharp images of fairly fast action. My sons play travel soccer and we play it year round. Kyler my youngest son, in these images, is 11 years old and these boys are starting to get pretty fast with some power on the ball. So the camera had a challenge. It was a beautiful sunny day in the low 80's. So how did I setup the camera?

Because it was so bright out I used the OVF in non zoom range. I do love this view. I can see all the ball action that is coming into view. This allows me to better anticipate the action. I can't wait to try this with Indy Cars. I set the camera to have the OVF and EVF only. Did not use the screen on the back of the camera. Next I set Continuous servo. NOT Single but Continuous. It works just fine. It does work a bit different than the C mode on a Nikon camera. But very functional. Since I shoot single and not multiple frames I left the review on. I like this feature of seeing what was just shot in the view finder. It works for me.

Fuji USA if someone is reading this can I borrow an 18mm and 60mm for the Indy 500? Would love to try these other two lens on fast moving cars.

The images below are JPEGS directly out of the camera. The only thing done to them is cropping. They are "Normal" JPEGS not "Fine" I was also playing around with the various film simulation modes. They look so good out of camera, I am not sure how much RAW I will shoot. Like everyone else, waiting for Lightroom to support the RAW files. So on to the images.

Stay tuned for further images and thoughts on this wonderful camera.

Tell me what you think. Would love to hear comments.

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Blog-5 This is action with the ball coming in. I am focused on the keeper. As good as or better than my D300 bodies.

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Another of my son in goal. You must anticipate the movement. Single shot as he is kicking. Spot on.

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Well he did not stop this one. But I did stop the action! Camera focused on the keeper as the ball slips by. Tack sharp even with the massive cropping.

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These boys are sprinting past my son as he saves the play.The focus locks and stays there.

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Everyone in full sprint. Now my son is out of keep and playing mid. Ball in front of him. Focus locked on to him (Boy on right).

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I love the B&W this camera puts out. The image in Lightroom looks amazing. Again this is cropped in from 35mm.

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Full sprint directly at camera. Camera servo in C mode. Single shot no blur.

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A fine family portrait

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:53:13 GMT

Well working with Emily and daily was a nice time on Sunday evening. It is that time of year for first holy communions. So this family had a bunch in town to celebrate.

Jewula-7 The weather was kind enough to hold off the heavy stuff. Although there was a light drizzle and wind, the big oak tree gave us shelter to work in a relatively dry area.

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This one is my favorite of the day. Just love the expression.

Jewula-4 In all a happy family with great images to remember this important day.

Smokey Mountains National Park

(Silver Streams Galleria) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:12:00 GMT

Who out there has heard or watched the late Bob Ross paint? He was to be found on the local PBS stations. Although I am not a painter( my Grandfather was). I still find his half hour shows informative. For you landscape photographers out there you can gain some information from his shows. Anyway as I was out at the Smokeys for a vacation the other week, I brought home some great images. This one struck me a my Bob Ross moment. I can see him or my Grandfather painting this view. Love It. view my fine art gallery for more great images.