Along the Thames last night

ianmarsh

ianmarsh

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A few from an afternoon/evening along the Thames:

1. London Eye and County Hall, 13 shot pano with a Canon 35mm tilt-shift lens on Fuji X-T1

1602_Shifting_040-Pano by Ian, on Flickr

2. Elizabeth tower and Westminster Bridge (3 shot pano)
1602_Shifting_068-Pano by Ian, on Flickr

3. One from forty-five minutes later as the sun set

1602_Shifting_065-Pano by Ian, on Flickr
 
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All cool takes and renditions, Ian!

I can see the care and good work you invested in these, BRAVO!

…and thanks for the pleasure! :)
 
Thank you chaps

minnnt said:
I have no idea about t&s but i really like these Ian. The mono is a lovely conversion.
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Neither do I! I've only had it a couple of weeks and I am still playing around with it. The one of London eye worked well enough but on the fuji it is a 50mm equivalent so despite shifting it to the maximum I also still had to pan the tripod head. But Lr did the merger easily enough and I'm happy how that came out.

But when I moved on to doing the clock tower I get something wrong as all my sets of three vertical shots are out of alignment. I think the lens was mounted with a bit of rotation so my up-centre-down sets were really up & right - centre - down & left which was annoying. It was pretty crowded there with at least five of us within a ten metre stretch waiting for over an hour for the light to come good and about a million taking more or less the same shot as they strolled by.
 
Does your tripod base have a bubble level on it? That must be level before you start moving the head around. The first shot is lovely though, just the right amount of motion blur on the eye for me.
 
Craig_85 said:
Does your tripod base have a bubble level on it? That must be level before you start moving the head around. The first shot is lovely though, just the right amount of motion blur on the eye for me.
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Afraid not but I am not sure why the tripod base makes much of a difference...? If I had got the camera aligned properly on the ball head (though I didn't in this case because the tower shots have a slight lean) and the lens was not rotated then I think the pano would have stitched fine. Or am I missing something?
 
I think all three have a large expanse of river which is contributing nothing to the overall image.

I realise these are all an exercise in pano stitching, but I don't think the extra area of water is adding anything to the subject, particularly 2 & 3 which I would crop just below the first bridge pier.
 
Agreed. I was a bit disappointed the reflections of the tower and bridge weren't stronger so there is too much uninteresting space. I have a square crop close to your suggestion but it still doesn't look right. I think ideally I would have included more of the Houses of Parliament to the left and made it a horizontal shot but there is scaffolding over lots of it at the moment. I don't mind the river in the first shot but again, I could see other crops working there too. In an ideal world the wind would have been stronger and I could have tried for more streaky clouds and less water but it was a still evening. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
 
ianmarsh said:
Agreed. I was a bit disappointed the reflections of the tower and bridge weren't stronger so there is too much uninteresting space. I have a square crop close to your suggestion but it still doesn't look right. I think ideally I would have included more of the Houses of Parliament to the left and made it a horizontal shot but there is scaffolding over lots of it at the moment. I don't mind the river in the first shot but again, I could see other crops working there too. In an ideal world the wind would have been stronger and I could have tried for more streaky clouds and less water but it was a still evening. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
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Yes, I noticed the scaffolding on the H o P the other day, it's a pain and from what they have been saying about the place, it's likely to get a lot worse over the coming years.
The whole Palace of Westminster is in a dire state and needs millions spent refurbishing it.

I think the biggest problem with the water is the long(ish) exposure, which, at the same time as creating the "smooth" effect also removes all detail.
If you want reflections, other than light flare, they are not compatible with extended exposure times.
I've taken the second two shots many times and I think they always seem to work better in portrait as opposed to landscape orientation.

The other problem with reflections and the River Thames is that the river is always in motion, so you never get a good reflecting surface like you would on, for example, a lake or even a canal.
 
I thought I had a decent balance between an ultra long exposure (the guy next to me was up to 8 minutes by the end) with smooth but zero detail and my 30 seconds which keeps some impression of detail, especially in the second shot which is pretty much as hoped for. But of course this is down to taste a lot. And yes, the river flow limits the reflections which I had hoped would be stronger - not so much a mirror effect which I don't like, but just some impression of reflections. Again the second shot was close to what I wanted with the bridge supports and tower clearly creating reflections but they weren't strong enough. Your comments are very applicable to the first shot of course.
 
That first one is a cracker.

New owner of a tilt-shift here too. I'm loving it, although it means dragging a tripod everywhere... and I've already snapped the hood thread off.

Suggestion for the reflections is to find the time when the tides change. I noticed it once a few weeks ago down by the O2. The water becomes really, really calm. Obviously getting this time and the sunset to coincide might be a bit of a waiting game. :)
 
entoptika said:
That first one is a cracker.

New owner of a tilt-shift here too. I'm loving it, although it means dragging a tripod everywhere... and I've already snapped the hood thread off.

Suggestion for the reflections is to find the time when the tides change. I noticed it once a few weeks ago down by the O2. The water becomes really, really calm. Obviously getting this time and the sunset to coincide might be a bit of a waiting game. :)
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I really like using the tilt-shift, probably because it is my newest lens, but 35mm on the crop sensor is a bit too long. I'd love to get something wider but there isn't a well-priced solution for Fuji that I can see. I am thinking of getting a Sony a7 just to be able to use this lens properly.

I fancy shooting around the O2 so that tide changing tip is a good one. I'll check this out. Many thanks
 
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entoptika said:
That first one is a cracker.

New owner of a tilt-shift here too. I'm loving it, although it means dragging a tripod everywhere... and I've already snapped the hood thread off.

Suggestion for the reflections is to find the time when the tides change. I noticed it once a few weeks ago down by the O2. The water becomes really, really calm. Obviously getting this time and the sunset to coincide might be a bit of a waiting game. :)
Click to expand...

You can check the Tide Tables on the PLA Website
 
Beautiful pictures. Love the colours, composition and the effect of the long exposure. Beautifully done.
 
ianmarsh said:
I really like using the tilt-shift, probably because it is my newest lens, but 35mm on the crop sensor is a bit too long. I'd love to get something wider but there isn't a well-priced solution for Fuji that I can see. I am thinking of getting a Sony a7 just to be able to use this lens properly.
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Is it not possible to use a focal reducer such as the Speed Booster or Lens Turbo II? I've been trying to think what would go wrong, but at first glance it seems as though it should work.
 
dave.hallett said:
Is it not possible to use a focal reducer such as the Speed Booster or Lens Turbo II? I've been trying to think what would go wrong, but at first glance it seems as though it should work.
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I had been thinking about it but I read that the focal reducers have a bad effect on the edges and that kind of defeats the object of getting the tilt-shift. But I haven't used one myself yet, and even an expensive one would be cheaper than getting a new body.
 
Great images.
I really like the first one but I have to say I love the colours/light on the second one.
 
CanonLady said:
Great images.
I really like the first one but I have to say I love the colours/light on the second one.
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Me too, that is my favourite. Coming back to these shots after a while, and bearing in mind Brian's thoughts above, I cropped this shot losing some of the river and it is an improvement. Once my frames arrive it will go up on my office wall.
 
ianmarsh said:
Seems it should work OK: http://www.fujix-forum.com/threads/using-tilt-shift-lens-via-metabones-speed-booster.24281/
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Good find! And I was thinking only about the shifts, so it's good to hear that it largely works out with the tilt as well. If you want to try it out more cheaply then the Lens Turbo II is reputed to be a significant improvement over the original LT. But in either case, if it doesn't work, I expect you could sell it on at little overall loss. My plan is to get an EOS LTII, not because I want to adapt EOS lenses but because many mounts can be adapted to EOS (Pentax, Nikon, M42, etc.)
 
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