Writings on the gardens book, in the minute of a lover’s look

Originally published 10 February 2020

What’s up with the title, you ask? Well, you’ve probably noticed by now that all of the photography entries so far are song lyrics with words that loosely relate to some thing I’m writing about. Yes, I basically modeled this blog on a regressed, pre-teen version of me writing a photo-journal. Just be glad I don’t pick only one genre; otherwise there’s a very real danger of this being a very emo-themed site. Oh, the cringe (but oh, so sweet, nostalgic, guilty pleasures).

Anyway, today’s write up is from an evening’s shoot at Wellington’s Gardens' Magic production. I didn’t take too many shots of the show itself as I only brought the Oly 12-40mm and the Voigtlander 42.5mm, knowing it was going to be running well into the evening. I didn’t get close enough for the 42.5mm, the shot below is already cropped from the closest photo I could get.

*42.5mm, f/1.2, 1/250s, ISO 200 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

Aside from watching and listening to the music, I ended up doing an impromptu photo shoot of some friends.

I stuck with the Voigtlander 42.5mm the whole time due to the quickly decreasing light.

We came across a good spot with some lights in the background. A couple of test shots first…

*42.5mm, f/1.2, 1/1000s, ISO 200 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

I wanted the lights to look more like the shot above with the vivid colours. But as there was still some daylight I couldn’t go as far as 1/1000s - you can see it’s pretty much dark except for the lights. And because I didn’t have a flash on me that would have meant nothing else would be visible!

*42.5mm, f/1.2, 1/200s, ISO 200 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

So I tested a few other settings, until about 1/200s for the shutter speed which still gave me some semblance of colour while bright enough to see other things.

I tried a picture of the couple (who we’ll call Boy and Girl respectively) at 1/160s. It was as underexposed as I was willing to go that I could (somewhat) confidently recover during editing.

This is the unedited image, just cropped slightly:

*42.5mm, f/1.2, 1/160s, ISO 200 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

One of the criticisms against the Voigtlander lens is that it isn’t sharp wide open, but I just don’t buy that. Granted I didn’t shoot it wide open, it was only stopped down one click to 1.1/1.2 (it’s not marked on the lens, it’s the spot between 0/95 and 1.4). But I actually think the photo looks soft because I missed the focus ever so slightly.

If you inspect the clothes, you’ll notice the focus plane is closer to the camera than their faces. So it’s more of a user error than an issue with the lens (in my non-professional opinion). Also I don’t think it helps that I basically had to recover 3+ stops from the shadows.

A slight issue I noticed as well was the way the outline of the big lights were rendered, and the barely-visible-but-can’t-unsee green flares (or ghosting? not sure what it’s called) across Boy’s chest and Girl’s face. But I surmised that it’s likely to do with the lens filter I had on. Next time I simply won’t have bother with the filter (I only had it on to protect the lens).

Anyway, I applied the only solution I could think of to remove the ghosting - black and white!

To be fair I already have a preexisting preference for the black and white aesthetic so it’s not like I did it out of desperation.

I think one of my favourite shots of late is the one below (and the banner image by extension). We were walking around and I spotted the lights set up among the flowers and shrubs. I thought it would make for a good background so I asked Girl and Boy to do one there.

I like the shot because it’s one I can actually say that I put thought into creating and having it turn out mostly the way I wanted to. In hindsight I would have positioned myself slightly differently so there’s less of the brown soil in the lower left corner.

The other thing for me is that I think the colours are nice, but the red lights next to Girl’s face pulls attention away with its brightness. Again, black and white sits more nicely in my eyes.

Also, nailing the focus on Girl’s eyes shows the lens is actually plenty sharp enough. It’s just that the area in focus is so thin at f/1.2, let alone f/0.95, that it’s easy to miss. It also helps if you have a fast shutter speed to counter the camera shake and subject movement - thank goodness for the camera stabilisation! I didn’t notice I had the shutter at only 1/60s.

There was also a bubble machine there which made for some fun photos. It really was getting dark at that time, evidenced by the higher ISO and noise in the pictures. But who really cares about that, what’s important to me is I got some photos I wouldn’t otherwise have!

*42.5mm, f/1.2, 1/160s, ISO 5000 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

*42.5mm, f/1.2, 1/125s, ISO 6400 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

So I consider it a successful evening as I managed to get some good shots despite not having done any photos in these conditions before. A couple of thoughts to take away from this: a) I should probably bring some kind of lighting to help with the low light scenarios, and b) maybe I should try composing photos with black and white as the primary goal? I think my eyes find it easier to process the main point of the photo in black and white, unless of course the main point of the photo is the colour composition itself.

Oh and today’s banger is brought to you by Nightwish.

Writings on the gardens book, in the minute of a lover’s look

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