Down to the Beach with New Camera Lens
Excuses to buy new gear
We've been working on some stop motion projects for various toy companies recently and have a Star Trek project coming up that has some pretty small and detailed props. The 35mm is not going to cut it this time, so I went ahead and ordered an RF 85MM macro lens for the job. I have already done some test shots and it looks fantastic.
Today when we did our daily walk, I decided to go to the beach and take the Canon EOS R with me along with the new lens. One thing that I've noticed about these RF lenses is that they are quite sharp compared to the old Canon EF lenses. I am not what you'd call a professional photographer, but I get the general concepts. The following are a few shots that I took while walking along the pier at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro, California.
In the above shot, I pointed the camera toward the beach from the pier. There is a long man-made wall meant to break the waves as the come crashing in. The reason for it, as far as I understand, is to calm the water down before it reaches the LA harbor where all of the containers are being moved around and shipped in and out.
Next, you can see a container ship which looks like it is parked at the moment. I've not sure if it is coming or going. There are so many of these that are constantly coming and going. I was wondering to myself what it must be like to work on one of these ships. Is it a relaxing or stressful job? It seems like there wouldn't be a while lot to do for the small crew once out to sea. But that is with basically no knowledge of how things are run.
Here you can see the wall that stretches way out and surrounds the harbor. Lots of people like to sit against this wall and hang out, even though there is a danger sign attached to it. I think it is really referring to past the sign, as opposed to in front of it. I've not really seen anyone ever on the other side. Although, I wouldn't put it past some of the Mexican nationals that like to sneak past the warning signs to get to a better place to fish. I've seen them walking out to some other dangerous areas where the lifeguards have to coax them back to safety.
This is a covered area sort of in the middle of the pier. I am not really sure what this is for. Perhaps people like to hang out here and have picnics or whatever. In theory it looks like you could do a lot of things in here. Maybe live music and such. But I can tell you now, that would be a bad idea. It gets so windy out here! There are times when the wind picks up so much that I can barely hold onto little Ricky's stroller. I've kind of stopped bringing it for that reason.
My friend @steve.varner ended up moving his boat to Santa Monica for this same reason. It can make sailing a bit dangerous and difficult!
There are lots of lifeguard huts around Cabrillo beach. As you would expect, there aren't a lot of people in the water this time of year. Of course there are always the old guys who love to do Wim Hof style cold water exposure as this part of the Pacific is friggin' cold most of the time. There are always a decent number of surfers around.
About halfway down the pier is where most of the fishermen set up. If I am being honest, there's no way I would eat anything that comes out of here. I think this has got to be some of the most polluted water around with all of the container ships nearby. There are even signs all over the place warning about the types of fish that should not be consumed. It doesn't stop people, though.
There's a sidewalk leading down to the pier from which you can look back at the rocky ledge around the side of the beach. Today was a super quiet day down there. It's funny because for me, this is the idea time to come down because as I've stated in a previous post, I really love walking in the crisp cool wind. But to be fair it isn't that great for lounging in the sand.
At this point I'm headed out of the park. There is a nice little climbing frame area where I like to take the little one to play. However on this day there were a bunch of teenagers smoking on it, so I just decided to save it for another day! On that note, time for me to go and cook some dinner for the family! Fish pie tonight. Here's hoping it doesn't suck!
A professional camera + a professional eye = a group of enticing, excellent photographs. Great work, Mr. Nuthman!
I am certainly no pro, but thanks for the comments!
on the almost unrelated subject :) any tips for stop motion videos? :)
program you use while taking photos? how many fps?
The last couple of projects that we have done, we've used an awesome program called Dragonframe which works well with a lot of DSLR and mirrorless cameras. It is a massive timesaver and makes life a lot easier! I highly recommend it. If you a Canon EOS R that can be dedicated to stop motion, Dragonframe and Canon have teamed up to make a special firmware for it which adds special features. But I didn't do it, being that the EOS R is my main camera body and don't want to put specialized firmware on it.
For the computer, we recently bought a Mac Studio which makes it easy to move around and put wherever we want. A laptop would be even more convenient for actual shooting, but we also wanted a decent machine to edit on as well that was at least somewhat portable. Of course it doesn't matter much if you are just saving to a network drive. My wife does a lot of editing on her Windows machine.
We've been targeting 24fps for the end product, but the animation rate is actually 12fps.
well i also think i will not be installing different firmware on my main camera :D
can you use Dragonframe for taking photos and playback and then edit photos in LR or it makes no sense?
so you do the double shot for every frame?
Thanks.
Friend wants to do a music video, and she never made stop motion anything and i never tried to film stop motion. what can go wrong? :D
So in Premiere, or whatever you use to edit video, you set the sequence to be 24fps. Then when you import your image sequence, adjust the import settings so that each image is 2 frames long. If you don't, you'll end up having to do it manually which is a pain in the ass!
Yes, you can do the whole thing in Dragonframe if you want to. But of course most people will have a lot of editing to do, so you can export the whole project as an image sequence. The software outputs whatever format you want, so you can just export the original raw images and pull them into LR for processing, and/or Photoshop if you need to make changes. Then export the sequence to a lower resolution jpg or whatever. (4k, or whatever the final res will be)
Otherwise you will struggle in your video editor with it not playing back in real-time :p
kinda my life :)
Thanks. This helped a loot, as i had no idea where to start with looking for info.
now only to wait for my friend to make all the models needed for it. :)
Out of curiosity, what camera body do you use mainly? I think I read on one of your posts that you had an R5 or R6. I was wondering if it is worth the upgrade from the original R. I am loving this one.. But to be fair, my last camera was a Canon 7D which I relied on for years, so this was a massive upgrade when I got it.
it is R6, R5 was way out of my league :)
i upgraded from 80D so the upgrade was noticeable as it was my first full frame. Biggest upgrade was in ISO and quality of automatic focus in photographic department. Jump in video resolution and quality was also pretty big.
some were complaining with the megapixels as 20 is not enough. i would say that 99% of the times it is fine. there were some rare rare situations where i thought that maybe i would like to be able to crop a bit more, but that kinda depends on what you shoot and what lenses you have. i lack on the long zoom side :)
i seen that the R6 Mark II is out. so that could maybe be an good upgrade option.
Wow, those are some really awesome shots. I need to get a proper camera one day. I have been watching some of the panorama shots that this famous kid does. I can't remember his name, but he uses old time car models and makes the picture look like it is a real shot. The technique is pretty sweet. I think it has a lot of macro stuff involved. We have a river near where I live that I would never eat the fish out of it. Dow has dumped so many dioxins in the water it is nuts. Growing up around there I am not surprised I ended up with some form of cancer!
I remember there was a Dow Corning plant in Etown KY when I lived there. They employed a lot of people but got a lot of protesters back in the day when the silicone breast implants were making women sick. I don't even think that particular plant made them, but it was the same company. It is crazy how companies can continue poisoning people and keep running, but just end up paying fines when they get sued.
Yeah, it is fun playing around when fancy cameras. You can even get a lower cost DSLR camera body and start collecting high end lenses which you can use on a better camera after you get familiar with the basics. I still have lenses from my first cheap Canon Rebel that work on my new one with an adapter.
That is pretty cool. I grew up using Nikons because that is what my dad mostly used. He had a couple of medium format cameras for portraits and stuff too. We used to have a dark room in our house when I was growing up. It was a pretty cool experience. I never got as into it as my sister did, but now that I am older I'd like to have a nice camera. They are just so expensive. I live right around the corner from the old Dow Corning Headquarters. Now that they combined with Dow and Dupont there isn't a separation like there used to be. Corning people would get pissed if you mistakenly said they worked for Dow back in the day.
I love to see beautiful places. Your camera result is very impressive. No doubt you are a professional camera man. You can capture whole images very beautiful. Second picture is my favorite in your photography. Thanks for sharing. I enjoy it.
Thanks for your nice compliments! I don't consider myself a professional but I like taking photos as a hobby.
The fact you posted about a beach, the beach is my favorite place in the world.
You made some nice memories by capturing a lot of beautiful moments including nature.
I enjoyed reading.
Same here, I love my walks to the beach. This beach has a pretty cold breeze most of the time which is great for walking, but not so much for relaxing on the sand. That's fine with me though! Beggars can't be choosers.
Canon eos R is the camera i'm aiming to buy , after watching your photographies i'm totally convinced, the quality and resolution is just good, i dont see any burned areas in your photos... for how much do you bought it?
Good job with the photos man nice first test!
This is definitely by far my favorite camera that I've ever owned. It's the first mirrorless that I've owned as well. My last one was a Canon 7D which was awesome, but has gotten pretty old at this point. The RF lenses that were designed for this new line are awesome as well! Super sharp and well built.
I think I bought it for about $2000 when I got it a couple of years ago. There are newer models that have come out since then, such as the R5 and R6. But I don't think that they are really that different/better and cost around $2k I think. You should be able to get the EOS R body for around 1400-1500 now, I would think. But that is without any lenses.
nice area! 😊😎🤙 All the pics are really crisp and good. I'm no photographer, so know nothing about lenses and such, but a good pic is a good pic. :)
My wife's cousin works as a cook on a ship. don't know if it's a container ship, but probable similar. He seems happy, so I guess it's an all good job..
That might not be a horrible job, cooking on a ship. I had a conversation with a guy from the Phillipines on a cruise ship a while back and he loved working and living on the ship. But of course, that is a lot different than a container ship!
I think it depends on the inside activity of the ship.
Well , you got some nice shots. Thanks for sharing.
That makes sense. I think the environment can make or break any job!
you are lucky, you have everything, a harmonious family, cute children, always fun trips, even your camera equipment is also great, not everyone can have it all in full.
However, life must be grateful for, I am interested in your cool camera device and it produces quality images, and I hope that one day I will be found by a diving whale and be able to buy adequate camera equipment.
Greetings to you and your family, I hope you are always healthy
Oh goodness, I have to admit I was stuck while reading, the pictures attracted me, and your RF 85MM macro lens did a good job as it felt like I was taking that walk with you reading each text underneath.
Also, give it to people never to heed the Danger sign😂😂... And concerning the farmers and their fish, hmmm, I can't help but the reason how many foods are made.
Thanks, for sharing this, and #greetings😁😁.
Thanks! I am feeling pretty good about the lens purchase. I have been happy with both RF lenses that I have bought, to be fair.
Well, that is a good feeling😁😁.. Enjoy the rest of your day☺☺.