Felix and the technicolor dream coat

Staff. Sgt. Israel Pou with the 402nd Civil Affairs Battalion checks his map in the dark during the Night Land Navigation portion of the Best Warrior Competition at NAS Pensacola on March 23, 2011. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)

I can't for the life of me find the original of this image and the metadata has been stripped out of the copy I do have. Conspiracy? You be the judge.

   Regardless, this photo I like. No, it's not perfect but the colors I love. I know I just talked about how night time is a great time to use flash. And it is. But lets say you don't have a flash, what do you do then? Well, be lucky!

   Okay, well that's not entirely true. In this instance you can see my subject had a few sources of light, a fairly bright light from a near by parking lot, a yellow/orange light from a nearby building, and his big red flashlight.

Note 1: His red light is a great example of how light accumulates on a sensor/film.

His flashlight produces only red light, not white, or yellow or orange, just red.

   Why so many colors? Because as the light accumulates on your sensor or film it will eventually turn white. There is more light in the center of his beam and less light as you go outwards. So here, the colors represent brightness as well as color temperature.

Note 2: Do you see the purples and the blues? You can almost see where the light from the parking lamp (which produces cool blue light) mixes with the red light, making purple. Neat huh? I thought so.

Note 3: Do you see some yellow tint around to top part of the photo, top part of the solider and some of the grass area? That light came from a nearby building

Okay, so now that we know how we got all those neat colors lets talk about some technical aspects about this photograph. 

   I used a tripod to keep camera shake on my end out of the equation. However, as we discussed yesterday, if the subject moves we would get blur. I had to stay around the building/parking lot because as my major source of light (I didn't have a flash with me) I simply wasn't able to get any photos outside of that area that weren't nearly black.

   I wish I could tell you exactly how long I had the shutter open, but unfortunately I can't tell you how long this exposure lasted. I would guess it was longer than 1/2 second, you can see some motion were his head was moving but you'll notice it ends up just looking like a blur/smudge.

   I also wish I could tell you what my ISO was at, but it was probably over 400. How can I tell? Well even the sharp parts of this photo aren't very sharp, if you zoom way in you'll see noise [off color pixels]

Note 3: With film as you increase your ISO you increase your grain. Grain in film is like adding texture, which is different from noise which are digital aberrations. In digital  as you increase your ISO you'll produce noise, random colors appearing as tiny pixels. More noise, more random colored pixels.

Grain is kind of like having a sore throat. Noise is like losing your voice.

Example: My voice is raspy and has texture, its certainly not normal, but it's not terrible and some people might prefer it [that's another topic] Noise is like losing your voice. Every so often I squeak or go silent, there just isn't any consistency to it, that's similar noise.

So, back to this photo, I like it. It's not technically perfect but I enjoy the colors. Do I wish it was sharper? Yes. Do I wish I would have used Flash? Yes. But that is why we take pictures and look at them with a critical eye, to see how we can improve our technique.

Leading Lines Part V: Night Vision

A UH-60 Blackhawk lands at Camp Liberty, Iraq on December 24, 2008. The Blackhawk and the 315th Tactical PSYOP Co. from Upland, Calif. will disseminate thousands of leaflets over specific areas of Baghdad, Iraq during the 4th Infantry Division's Operation Iron Blizzard. The leaflets are part of a greater effort to arrest and bring to trial suspected and known terrorists operating in Baghdad. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)

   If you're just joining us, we've covered blending leading lines with the rule of thirds, lines that add to your photo but were not necessarily intended, lines that lead us to our subject, and lines that, well, are the subject.

   Light, is a great leading line. This light emanates from our subject, [the most important part of the photograph] the helicopter, which pulls the viewers eye towards the landing zone; where our subject is heading. The viewers eye may follow the light back up to the helicopter, and might follow the natural line of the helicopter's fuselage back to the light on the helicopters tail.

The helicopter is clearly in a point of interest. The light starts

from a point of interest and  leads us towards another point

of interest. Also good. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)

   That's pretty much it for this photograph, it's a helicopter landing at night. I would have liked to have been much closer, with a much wider lens. At an 45 degree angle to give it some depth.

As it stands I feel this photo is just plain flat.

   The two things which makes this interesting, in my opinion at least, is that most people don't see helicopters landing too often; so there's the novelty factor. Also I used a night vision adapter which is another novelty.

   Regarding the night vision, it wasn't part of my kit until I arrived in Baghdad. Our team was doing an inventory of our Conex's and the Morovision Astroscope just so happened to pop up along with a Canon 5D. Unfortunately form me the Cannon only came with the body. Since I didn't have any Canon lenses with me the big beautiful full frame of the 5D had to sit in a box while I used my Nikon D200. Oh well.

   For the record, I don't particularly favor Canon or Nikon, they're both great companies and they make great products. I enjoy using both.

   So, with my new found toy my commander asked if I could take photos during night missions. Which is great because I had been spending 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week doing graphics, so any opportunity to go out and shoot was a welcome one. The downside was that my days then increased to 14-16 hours since these night missions obviously happened after normal working hours. Oh well.

Ordinarily I would have liked to have gotten at least a part of the helicopter

in the photo to give the viewer a sense of  actually being there, but I just

couldn't get back far enough in the tight confines of the Blackhawk.
 (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)

   So, the Astroscope sits in between the camera body and the lens,

which turns even a stubby 5inch 35-70 into an very unwieldy 12 inch beast. 

Which, really was okay, but I found myself wishing I had a full frame body because I was constantly leaning back to adjust for those extra added inches.

This experience is why I dropped the 35-70mm from my list of preferred lenses. It just don't do anything well, certainly not on a camera body with a crop factor which makes it a 55mm to 105mm. Two bodies, one with a wide lens one with a long lens is the way to go in my opinion.

   Of course if I could find a 1.2 lens that had a range of 10mm to 300mm I would just take that, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
 

Pfc. Josephn Quakenboss poses with a UH-60 prior to a leaflet operation on December 24, 2008. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)

Part of a UH-60 Blackhawk as it flies over Baghdad, Iraq  during a leaflet operation on December 24, 2008. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)