M
Mitch Alland
Guest
A few weeks ago I wrote that I bought the D300 a day before leaving for a 2-1/2 week trip to Namibia. Here are a few B&W pictures from the trip. In shooting with small sensor cameras, mainly street photography, I've been printing in B&W almost exclusively, but in reviewing the 1,200+ pictures that I shot at Etosha National Park in the north of the country and in the Wolwedans Reserve in a desert in the south I thought that I would print in colour because of the beauty of the landscape and the game. Nevertheless, in making a first pass through the pictures I was immediately attracted by the possibility of making some expressive B&W prints, some of which you can see below.
Perhaps what pushed me towards these B&W renditions was that colour shots of landscape and game tend to look like everyone else's pictures: in a game park you are shooting from an open Land Rover, which you cannot leave and which cannot be driven off-road in the game park — this gives you the same view as everyone else, often far from the subject.
The Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which I used for most of the pictures, is spectacular and its VR system works very well. As I usually prefer more rather than less depth-of-field I started the first day by shooting this lens mainly at f/8 and found that I wanted more DOF and shot at f/11 the second day; and then I tried f/9 on the third day, which I found that I preferred to the other two apertures because it gave a bit more DOF than f/8 and was sharper than f/11.
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 200 78mm [117mm EFOV] f/8
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 200 70mm [105mm EFOV] f/8
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 800 200mm [300mm EFOV] f/6.3
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 800 | 130mm [195mm EFOV] f/2.8
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 400 | 200mm [300mm EFOV] f/9
17-35mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 200 | 35mm [52.5mm EFOV] f/8
And finally, here's the first picture that I wanted to do in colour, but, then, I tried it in B&W as well and found it yielded delicate, beautiful tones: obviously, as befitting the subject, quite different from the rhino picture above, which is more in my usual style in which I try to avoid an "exquisite" look. Of course, these delicate tones and gradation — even at ISO 800! — are quite different from what you get with a small sensor cameras.
Any reaction to these pictures? And any reaction to the last B&W versus colour rendition, particularly in the context of the difficulty of making colour pictures of these subjects that are not very much like those of everyone else?
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 800 | 200mm [300mm EFOV] f/2.8
—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/
Perhaps what pushed me towards these B&W renditions was that colour shots of landscape and game tend to look like everyone else's pictures: in a game park you are shooting from an open Land Rover, which you cannot leave and which cannot be driven off-road in the game park — this gives you the same view as everyone else, often far from the subject.
The Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which I used for most of the pictures, is spectacular and its VR system works very well. As I usually prefer more rather than less depth-of-field I started the first day by shooting this lens mainly at f/8 and found that I wanted more DOF and shot at f/11 the second day; and then I tried f/9 on the third day, which I found that I preferred to the other two apertures because it gave a bit more DOF than f/8 and was sharper than f/11.
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 200 78mm [117mm EFOV] f/8
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 200 70mm [105mm EFOV] f/8
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 800 200mm [300mm EFOV] f/6.3
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 800 | 130mm [195mm EFOV] f/2.8
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 400 | 200mm [300mm EFOV] f/9
17-35mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 200 | 35mm [52.5mm EFOV] f/8
And finally, here's the first picture that I wanted to do in colour, but, then, I tried it in B&W as well and found it yielded delicate, beautiful tones: obviously, as befitting the subject, quite different from the rhino picture above, which is more in my usual style in which I try to avoid an "exquisite" look. Of course, these delicate tones and gradation — even at ISO 800! — are quite different from what you get with a small sensor cameras.
Any reaction to these pictures? And any reaction to the last B&W versus colour rendition, particularly in the context of the difficulty of making colour pictures of these subjects that are not very much like those of everyone else?
70-200mm f/2.8 lens | ISO 800 | 200mm [300mm EFOV] f/2.8
—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/