Disappointed in my Moab trip pictures........

Just got my 10 rolls of film developed from my Moab area trip I took

earlier this week...I'm disappointed. My new Canon 17-40mm lens was

very sharp. However, on about 80% of the pics, there are

small "hairs" or whatever on the corners or edges of the pictures.

They are on the negatives as well; I used two other lenses, so that

tells me these hairs or fibers were on the mirror.

 

I know you're not supposed to touch or wipe the mirror, so I blew

into it a few times to clear dust. I didn't see any hairs when I

composed/looked through the camera & lens. I am heartbroken that

this had to happen during such an important trip; I put 100% into

the 3 1/2 days I was there. I also had problems with shadows (such

as the underside of Double Arch - went there 3 different times @

different hours during the days). Lots of problems with

contrast/shadows/light skies.......I realize film can't capture

extreme contrast.

 

Out of 10 rolls of 36 exposure film rolls, I probably came away with

3 pictures I'm real proud of, plus 3 or 4 that were "good".....the

rest of them can be tossed. I'm mostly just venting here.....I've

been doing photography as a serious hobby for about 5 years now, and

am actually quite good at composition....but most of these pictures

I took just don't have "it". Being married w/full-time job, kids,

house....its hard to spend too much time on this hobby, but I am

passionate about it......at least I was, that may change.

 

Anyone else ever have frustrating photographic outings? Maybe its

just me??

The fibers are not on the mirror. Even if they were, you wouldn't see them in the picture. The mirror is flipped up during exposure. Don't wipe the mirror, it wouldn't help.

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The fibers are most likely stuck in the edges of the shutter. Make sure no film is loaded, use a long exposure time (e.g. "B"), remove the lens, open the back of the camera. When you press the release now you can see the open frame of the shutter. When you see fibers hanging into this frame, try to remove them with tweezers. Make extra sure to not let go off the release while you stick the tweezers into the open shutter!

the dust is not on the mirror, but on the frame that the film sits on. Open the back

of the camera and clean it out if you can.

 

Did you check the negatives with a loupe? Maybe the dust is in the photo finnisher's

printing equipment. Check the negatives, and if no dust exposed in the frames,

have them reprinted.

Starting with the 'hairs.'

Remember, the mirror flips out of the way and shouldn't affect the film at all. Is it possibly a frayed (cloth?) shutter, or frazzled light seals that are 'shedding' pieces onto the film?

 

Find a sacraficial negative and soak it in water for a while. Does anything come loose?

 

Another off the wall idea is cracking of the film emulsion due to bad processing and/or excess bending of the film at some time.(??) Are the cracks evenly distributed all around the frame, or are they limited to the top/bottom edges?

 

I fully sympathise with your contrast problems. On a clear day, the few hours of relatively gentle light can greatly limit your shooting time. After planning for months and driving umpteen hours to get to a killer site, it's hard to step back and say 'this just won't work.' Attempting to find and shoot a Fantastic Shot at every pullout and overlook is (speaking from hard experience!) doomed to failure.

 

If you scan your film, you can take two differently exposed shots and combine them on a computer to compress the full scenic dynamic range into a single image. See http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/cgi-bin/image.pl?gallery=1

 

After a few crash-and-burn vacations not unlike yours, I finally stopped trying to shoot a whole freaking national park in a few days. For me, there's sort of a Zen thing going on. The harder I try, the more unattainable the goal becomes. Even now, I invariable arrive at a vacation site totally buzzing and keen to charge out and grab some killer pics. Yet only when I slow (way) down and start to relax can I actually start to take decent images. If possible, I allocate several days to one campsite and locale and just stroll around, taking whatever pictures the scenery offers, and thinking about how changing light will affect various subjects. (Of course, there's still the mad dash for the local 'killer sunset' site!)

 

Several years ago, as I was just figuring all this out, I reserved a long weekend to drive to the White Mountains and photograph the Bristlecones. Arriving midday Friday, I spent the next 24 hours running around like mad, shooting this and that. By Sat. noon, I was wasted and finally slowed down enought to appreciate my surroundings. I plonked a chair down among the trees in the Methuselah area and during my long rest, started thinking about time, life, death, all the cliche stuff you might ponder while in the presense of 4000 year old 'beings.' Excercising the right brain that way is, IMO, ESSENTIAL to taking good pictures. After stumbling into 'the zone' I took some very nice photographs that afternoon and the next day. The pictures taken earlier were technicaly accurate, but appear 'orthogonal' and 'clinical' in a way that's hard to describe but easy to see.

 

Leave time for a mid-day snooze and don't let yourself get run down. For me, being run down and tired has produced many utterly wasted days.

 

Is there a local place you can go once a week to keep interested? I've found revisting the same area and observing seasonal changes often draws my attention to things that I never would have noticed on a single drive through. For me the hardest part of taking semi-inspired (halfway decent) pictures is to find something new, unique, and interesting.

 

For what it's worth....

 

Good luck!

 

-Greg

Let not your heart be troubled. Developing an eye for composition is about 80% of the battle. If you have already developed that skill, the rest will come with practice. I recently heard an interview with Jay Maisel who said he didn't give a crap about the quality of the picture as long as he got the shot. He said if you spend alot of time trying to control the quality of the shot, most times you will miss it. Remember we have our dear friend photoshop where alot of our mistakes can be corrected. You can't put detail in picture that is not there or focus an out of focus shot, but many other technical problems can be addressed. One thing that I learned after years of shooting is that when you absolutely cannot afford to miss the shot...bracket, bracket, bracket and use a tripod whenever possible. Doing landscapes as in Arches N.P. you have a little more freedom with respect to time in setting up the shot. As far as problems with the equipment i.e. dust, hairs etc. It is best to try and assess those issues prior to leaving for an important trip. Shoot a test roll, it's alot cheaper than the cost of the trip + lost shots. Go back and take a closer look at your "disappointing" pictures and determine if it is in fact technical issues not compositional ones. If you are proficient with PS, make an attempt to correct the technical problems. Don't get discouraged, just remember that every disaster experienced with a photoshoot is a valuable lesson learned. We have all been in this place at one time or another. You have increased your knowledge base in the photographic realm. Keep shooting.

Gary, could you post a couple of sample images to show us why they are "disappointing"? Without seeing your images, it is hard to make suggestions.

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I waited an hour by "The Windows" for the sun to come out and took the image below. I got lucky that the sun was out for literally about a minute or so. You can read my <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/nature/utah.htm">Utah National Parks article</A> which discussed how it was shot.

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/1139056-md.jpg">

Those two "eyes" staring at me would make me apprehensive!

Well, no matter how cliche it sounds, it's still true: Patience is the one aspect of photography that is the hardest to cultivate. I understand the time pressures you have and it's not necessarily bad that you only came back with 7 total pictures you really liked. Looking at it from the Thomas Edison standpoint, you found 353 ways NOT to shoot the picture so as long as you know why that happened, you can avoid it in the future.

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Another strategy you might employ is to get up early, shoot your morning stuff and then take a nap afterwards to recharge. Then go explore during the middle of the day, looking for other shots to take (avoiding shooting during this time, since midday is awful light in the desert for the most part, interesting storms and cloud patterns not withstanding), and then maybe another nap and shoot evening stuff...You'll feel a little less harried, perhaps.

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Don't be too discouraged...It was more than 5 years of 'serious shooting' before things really started to click for me (probably closer to 7-8).

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Keep practicing,

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-Dave

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<a href="http://www.coyoteimages.com">Coyote Images</a>

It's hard to address shortcomings of photos we can't see, other than, as has been pointed out, the dust is not on the mirror.

 

Whenever I've shot western landscapes it seems to be like shooting fish in a barrel to get postcard-pretty images, but near impossible to get anything more than that, which is why I'm not all that interested in doing it any more.

 

It's possible you're exacerbating your contrast problems with your choice of film (Velvia would be the worst) but you didn't say anything about what you're using.

I had about a year when I was still using print film, and every lab I tried kept over-exposing my prints. I thought I'd lost my talent. I've also come back from trips extremely disappointed, and lost rolls of good images to scratched film (the back of my Nikon F100 seems to like collecting miniscule particles).

 

And it took me several trips to Arches before I really started capturing my best shots. Familiarity with an area really helps - being able to pre-visualize shots and head straight for promising locations without fiddling around is a real plus.

 

As to your shadow problems, that is a "feature" of high desert photography. The best time to photograph Double Arch is in the early morning, but you still get the shadows. Sometimes you have to use shadows and accept them as part of the image. Tom Mangelsen has a recent set of Maroon Bells images taken early on a Fall day; with a cloudless sky and still waters, the image is striking in color, but there's a really harsh shadow on the mountains to the left - he still considers it publishable (and so do I).<div></div>

So you shot about 350 frames, and only about 6 or 7 were "keepers" by your own standards. Maybe a little tough as a ratio, but I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. If anything, it shows you have a high standard, and that will be a huge advantage in the long run. As one of my teachers pointed out many times, willingness to throw shots in the round file is one of the most powerful tools you have. The fact you were shooting in a location that gets photographed like crazy makes this even more true.

 

I shoot mostly underwater, and I sometimes have a keeper ratio about like yours. The relatively high cost of shooting even a single roll u/w can make for some serious frustration! Having some technical thing screw it up is even worse. In the end though, the successes make it all worth it. Cheers...

I was shooting Agfa Ultra 100, Kodak UC100, & Kodak UC400. The shots w/Kodak UC100 turned out the best. Believe it or not, my best photos were shot at Canyonlands @4:00 PM, on a lightly overcast day.

 

I will try to scan a couple of pics & post them here to show you the problems I had.

 

By the way, my attitude is better now that I've had time to reflect on things for a few days.......I'm even more determined to be a better photographer.

Gary...

 

Don't beat yourself up over it. I am pretty much in the same boat as you...3 kids, house, married, full-time job, etc. I have been where you are too with frustrating outings. In an earlier post, someone mentioned about getting in the right, relaxed frame of mind. This is so true. Because of my other responsibilities, I have had to change my expectations about what I am looking for from my love of photography. I have learned to happy now if nothing else, to be able to relax and have a few stress free hours and imersing myself in the creative process. I don't have time to anything more.

 

You may also want to consider digital. The biggest advantage of shooting digitally is the ability to check the composition right now and to recompose if it's not what you were looking for.

 

 

Joe

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip, that didn't turn out. The 1st one is of Turret Arch, @ 7:00am, using the Galen Rowell graduated ND filter. I thought it'd brighten up the foreground. Notice the hairs/fibers in the corners

 

The 2nd picture was also taken at Arches of a tree. Notice the dark dark shadows in the rocks to the right (note the extreme shadows, although they weren't that bad when I was there). Also notice the hairs/fibers.

Here is the 2nd one:

Gary...

 

Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but do the 'hairs' appear on the negative? If not it may be a problem with lab. If they are, then the hairs should be visible with the back of thew camera open and the shutter open (bulb position).

 

Joe

Gary, Im not sure about the "hairy issue" but have you made these scans from the negatives? If this is straight from the lab it could be your prints and scans.... i had a problem with no details in the shadows with a bunch of prints from a trip to the tetons. When i scanned the negatives i found that i could easily correct the image (and have prints redone)

I put the camera on "bulb", snapped the shutter w/no film in.......sure enough, there were a couple of hairs inside. Not sure how they got there.......had to pull them out with a tweezer.

 

Any suggestions/comments on the harsh shadows? I'm assuming Velvia slide would give me similar problems? Maybe I need to try a different, less "contrasty" film or slide film?

Looking your two samples, there is no commercial film on earth that will span full dynamic range from sunshine to shadow. A cloudy sky can diffuse the sun and make shots like this possible.

 

The other solution is a digital 'blending' of two spaced exposures. See

http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/cgi-bin/image.pl?gallery=1&showThumbnails=1

and

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/blended_exposures.shtml

for a tutorial

 

As for the hair, it's either a fraying shutter or, far more likely, disintigrating light seals.

Look up ebay item # 3819122082 for an example of what to look for.

 

FWIW, I bought this chap's seal kit and am very happy with the results.

 

-Greg

I think what you were asking for is why you were so disappointed in your images? Here is my opinion. I think the first image was composed very nicely and was shot at the right time, but you should have used a graduated filter then metered off the ground and get the rocks exposed for the red glow properly.

 

For the 2nd one, I would have gotten closer to that tree and used the side branch on the right to frame the rocks in the background.

 

I can't comment on your "scratches".

Those 2 pictures were not my best pictures by any means.....I just posted them to show problems I had with the hairs, & with the graduated neutral density filter.