Cedar Creek Grist Mill

AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
Our local grist mill isn't quite as photogenic as the olde ones with the big water wheels since it was built in 1876 using a newfangled Leffel turbine to drive the mill. Still a nice old building so yesterday I spent some time there to see how fall colors were coming along. Still early for our colors but workable tints were present.

I was on a binge for 24mm TS-E shooting so here are a pair of shifted panoramas of the mill:

Cedar Creek and Mill

Cedar Creek and Mill

Cedar Creek with a Grist Mill from 1876. Clark County, Washington.

One from the trail area. I often go out of my way to make everything in the frame focused with the TS-E just because I can although the comp may be a bit busy for some:

Cedar Creek Grist Mill

Cedar Creek Grist Mill

Cedar Creek Grist Mill in Clark County, Washington.

C&C always welcome.
 
Ben Egbert

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
This is a neat old building in a lovely setting. I am also a fan of everything ion focus, at least for landscapes. I prefer the first one.
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
TimMc said:
The character of the building is great. How do you like your tilt shift lens?
Click to expand...
The 24mm TS-E is my favorite lens when it fits the scene. It is razor sharp and acts like a prime lens compared to my zooms so whenever I have a scene suited to 24mm or shorter it comes out. In a TS-E panorama like the ones above the sensor does not move when I use the shift to capture the second (or third) image. This results in less distortion for panorama scenes like the above images than I would get by using a 17-40mm with a crop and with none of the side effects of stitching a pano from two separate images where the sensor/camera has been moved.
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Hey Alan,

It's great to see that you are out shooting again! That is really awesome! :)

I like both of these, and using the TSE to shoot a pano is a really sweet way of using the lens. I like #2 the most, I think it's an intriguing composition with the building kind of tucked away in the forest. In #1, that's a very nice scene too, but that large leaf along the right edge is really distracting my eye. I would crop off the right side to lose it, even if it changes the pano crop some.

Jim
 
BarryHamilton

BarryHamilton

Founding Member
Again you make me tempted to try a TSE......arrrrrgggghhhh!!!!
Wonderful imagery here. I really like your tasteful and subtle processing and color. Really nicely done!
I agree with Jim about that leaf, though I would be tempted to content-aware/clone it out to keep the overall comp.
 
T

TimMc

Well-Known Member
I am discovering that I don't know enough about tilt shift lens shooting. If I understand correctly, the camera stays fixed and the lens is tilted sideways to get the panorama?

Universally I hear everyone really happy with the sharpness of their tilt shifts. This just might need to go on to the road map of new equipment considerations. Thanks
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
JimFox said:
Hey Alan,

It's great to see that you are out shooting again! That is really awesome! :)

I like both of these, and using the TSE to shoot a pano is a really sweet way of using the lens. I like #2 the most, I think it's an intriguing composition with the building kind of tucked away in the forest. In #1, that's a very nice scene too, but that large leaf along the right edge is really distracting my eye. I would crop off the right side to lose it, even if it changes the pano crop some.

Jim
Click to expand...
It's nice to be able to carry all my gear and shoot with two hands again.

I knew that leaf in the first image was going to drive you crazy when I left it in. I was guessing that the second one would drive you nuts since there were so many distractions in front so you surprised me by preferring that rendition ;)

BarryHamilton said:
Again you make me tempted to try a TSE......arrrrrgggghhhh!!!!
Wonderful imagery here. I really like your tasteful and subtle processing and color. Really nicely done!
I agree with Jim about that leaf, though I would be tempted to content-aware/clone it out to keep the overall comp.
Click to expand...
I will play around with the leaf.

TimMc said:
I am discovering that I don't know enough about tilt shift lens shooting. If I understand correctly, the camera stays fixed and the lens is tilted sideways to get the panorama?

Universally I hear everyone really happy with the sharpness of their tilt shifts. This just might need to go on to the road map of new equipment considerations. Thanks
Click to expand...
Not quite - the tilt-shift lens has two types of motion with independent controls - tilt will change the nature of the focal plane front to back in the scene while shift moves side to side and changes what is in front of the sensor. In this case I only barely tweaked the tilt function to get a deeper level of focus. The second image shows this by having both the foreground and background in focus at the same time. TS-E lens tactics could easily be a topic for the gear forum.

The result of using shift is that I can take one image with the mechanism centered and then when I shift the lens either left or right it moves the focus of the image to the left or right. End result is that I can take up to three overlapping images without moving the camera. The critical point here is that the camera sensor never moved while I took the images for the pano. The ones shown above are stitched from two images in each case.
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Ha ha.... so you left the leaf in to purposely drive us (me) crazy??? :eek:

Well, you did accomplish your goal... :confused:
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
With #2, I think with those 2 "Y" or "V" shaped trees on both ends, really sets some nice bookends. So you were able to draw me in and allow my brain not to pick up on any distractions in this one.

Yep, I really like #2! :)
 
Kyle Jones

Kyle Jones

Moderator
The first was my favorite and the edit makes it even better. I love the details. Great choice for a featured thread as well!

So when you mentioned using the TS to keep everything in focus. How did you do that? As I understand it (and I'm new to TS lenses), you use the detail to adjust the plane of focus. But when there isn't a clear plane of focus (especially like the second image with the trees extending vertically through the frame) I'd expect that to be challenging!
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
Kyle Jones said:
The first was my favorite and the edit makes it even better. I love the details. Great choice for a featured thread as well!

So when you mentioned using the TS to keep everything in focus. How did you do that? As I understand it (and I'm new to TS lenses), you use the detail to adjust the plane of focus. But when there isn't a clear plane of focus (especially like the second image with the trees extending vertically through the frame) I'd expect that to be challenging!
Click to expand...
Getting tilt right is a lot harder than using the shift mechanism. In the case of that second image I made a seat of the pants stab and moved the tilt downwards about 1 notch on the scale for the lens tilt. This assumes that the stuff at my feet is the base of the focal plane and everything else above is tilted back from there. Tilt is incredibly sensitive and it doesn't take much to turn a shot into either a great image or a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.

There is a pretty good tutorial from Canon on using TS-E lenses:

http://learn.usa.canon.com/galleries/galleries/tutorials/tiltShift_laforet_gallery.shtml

I wish this series had existed when I first got mine. I spent a lot of time in my backyard making highly deletable images before I got used to how to use it.
 
dan swiger

dan swiger

Well-Known Member
AlanLichty said:
Getting tilt right is a lot harder than using the shift mechanism. In the case of that second image I made a seat of the pants stab and moved the tilt downwards about 1 notch on the scale for the lens tilt. This assumes that the stuff at my feet is the base of the focal plane and everything else above is tilted back from there. Tilt is incredibly sensitive and it doesn't take much to turn a shot into either a great image or a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.

There is a pretty good tutorial from Canon on using TS-E lenses:

http://learn.usa.canon.com/galleries/galleries/tutorials/tiltShift_laforet_gallery.shtml

I wish this series had existed when I first got mine. I spent a lot of time in my backyard making highly deletable images before I got used to how to use it.
Click to expand...
Some sweet compositions. Continues my appetite to visit these gems

Dan
 
Ryan10

Ryan10

Founding Member
This building must be photographed a lot. I think I've seen it many times, but not sure if it is the exact same one. I have not read through everyone else's comments, but I would like to have seen the entire building in the shot and not cut off; however, I'm not sure if that's possible. Does the building extend a long way?
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

Moderator
01Ryan10 said:
This building must be photographed a lot. I think I've seen it many times, but not sure if it is the exact same one. I have not read through everyone else's comments, but I would like to have seen the entire building in the shot and not cut off; however, I'm not sure if that's possible. Does the building extend a long way?
Click to expand...
Actually that is the whole building and any more to the left will show a maintenance shed and the parking lot.
 
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