peak bloom (blossoms and tourists)

The Cherry Blossoms are finally in peak bloom. However, so are the tourists. Jess and I showed up at the Tidal Basin at 5:30am to catch some early light for our photos and we were quite surprised to see people all over. Stand-out tourists, families, people on their way to work, TV trucks, and tripod upon tripod set up along the walks. I wasn't really able to focus as much as I wanted to, but I was still up for the challenge. Not to mention, the light/sky wasn't exactly ideal -- hazy blue-gray sky, harsh glare right after sunrise -- you know, typical DC conditions. If anything, it was nice to just absorb the sights in. Next walk I take there, it will be sans camera... Anyway, here's my fav five from this practice:

cherry blossoms in bloom

The original forecast called for the blossoms to be in peak bloom on 27-28 March. Considering Monday 27 March was going to be the only sunny day this week, I felt inspired enough to pull myself out of a warm and comfortable bed at 4:30 in the morning to endure 30-something degree temperatures to catch the sunrise and get the best lighting for some photos (before going to work). Not to mention, the tourists (literally from all over the world) usually don't swarm the Tidal Basin at six in the morning. Turns out the blossoms were not in full bloom and the forecast has since changed to predict full bloom on Thursday 30 March. The lighting did end up being fairly good though -- not as harsh as midday sun -- and it was so serene having the whole Tidal Basin to myself for a little while. Out of the 100+ practice shots I took, here are five of the better ones:


Cherry Blossom Detail


Jefferson Memorial


View along the Tidal Basin


Washington Monument


Tidal Basin

2006 cherry blossom festival

The Cherry Blossom Festival in DC kicks off the tourist season and the spring event season at venues all around town. After three months of winter hibernation, the city comes back to life to make the most of temperate spring weather before "hazy, hot, and humid" becomes the norm. I've scoured some event calendars for the big events so I can have all the info in one place -- text descriptions courtesy of the websites I've linked to.

DC Environmental Film Festival
16-26 March 2006
Collaborating with over 50 local, national and international organizations, the Festival presents 100 outstanding films from around the world for 11 days in March. From 23 countries, the films include 45 premieres and promise to expand and challenge our understanding of life on earth. Dedicated to diversity, these environmental screenings and discussions reflect the astonishing variety of our planet. Through the opportunity to experience documentaries, features, animation, archival and children’s films, we encourage audiences to explore our world.

National Cherry Blossom Festival
25 March - 9 April 2006
The 2006 festival marks the 94th celebration of the original gift of the 3,000 cherry trees from the city of Tokyo to the people of Washington, DC in 1912.

Smithsonian Kite Festival
25 March 2006
Grounds of the Washington Monument
This year, as the Smithsonian Kite Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary, we reminisce about the decade of its origin – the 1960s. Whether or not you can personally recall that legendary decade, we challenge you to help recreate it in the sky over the National Mall with your grooviest, most far-out kite. With psychedelic kites "blowin' in the wind", perhaps we can all experience a little bit of that peace, love and harmony.

Anime Film Marathon
1 April 2006, 11am, 1:30pm, 4pm, 7pm
Meyer Auditorium at the Freer Gallery
In celebration of this year's Cherry Blossom Festival, the Freer presents a day-long festival of four animated films, all presented in glorious 35mm. This year's festival celebrates the work of anime masters Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo.

45th Annual Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival
8 April 2006, 11am - 6pm
12th Street and Pennsylvania Ave, NW

Kenny Endo in Concert
8 April 2006, 1pm
Meyer Auditorium at the Freer Gallery
A true innovator of musical fusion, Kenny Endo blends traditional Japanese music with influences from around the world. He opened for The Who in 2004, appeared with Bobby McFerrin in 2003, and has performed in Cairo, Paris, Brussels, London, and Hong Kong. He is joined by an ensemble of musicians on koto, shakuhachi, vibraphone, euphonium (brass), and taiko.

Hokusai exhibit
4 March - 14 May 2006
Sackler Gallery
An unprecedented exhibition of works by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), whose iconic woodblock print "The Great Wave" is one of the most recognized images in the art world, is on view at the Sackler Gallery March 4 through May 14, 2006.

Mt. Fuji Seen below a Wave at Kanagawa from Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji
Katsushika Hokusai

Too cool -- I can't believe I'm going to get a chance to see this Hokusai print in person...

gone digital

So, with the trusty Canon EOS Elan IIe in my sis's good care, I've finally (after several years of reluctance) gone digital with the Canon Digital Rebel XT paired with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 prime lens. The convenience is wonderful and I'm satisfied with the quality, but there's no doubt there's a noticeable difference between film and digital. Composition aside, the pictures my sis took (in my previous post) definitely have a different feel than the ones I took. Film seems to look a little "warmer" than digital. I guess there's still a difference between light striking silver halides (AgBr, AgCl, and AgI) on film and light striking an array of capacitors on a digital charged-coupled device (CCD). My speculation is that there is a degree of randomness in the arrangement of the light-sensitive silver halide salts on the film that produces a visual effect that cannot be mimicked by the regularly-spaced light-sensing capacitors on the CCD. In other words, digital has dense, but evenly spaced pixels while film has dense, but randomly spaced crystals. This is just my theory though -- I'll keep searching for a real answer. Ok, I'll spare everyone the engineering talk for now and just show the digital pictures...


Alamo Square (where they filmed the opening credits to Full House)


Door to Exercise Yard, Alcatraz Penitentiary


Alcatraz Watchtower


Wildflowers on Alcatraz Island

camera lenses: prime versus zoom

I, along with many of my relatives and friends, belonged to the camp of buying only zoom lenses for our SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras. The bigger and weightier the lens, and the more powerful the zoom, the better. (Needless to say, you serious photographers reading along now realize I am still very much an amateur.) Anyway, in shopping for a new camera, I came across some advice about how prime lenses are better. How could this be? How can one frame a shot if one can't zoom?! Quoting Philip Greenspun's advice:

The cheap zoom lenses that come packaged with a Canon Digital Rebel or Nikon D50 kit are poor tools for building photography skills or making compelling images. The novice photographer who starts with a zoom lens typically uses it in lieu of backing up or stepping forward. An experienced photographer visualizes the scene first, chooses a focal length, then gets into the appropriate position to capture the scene with that focal length. It is much better to get a lens with a fixed focal length, learn to recognize scenes where that lens can be used effectively, and then add additional lenses once that focal length has been mastered. So even if you have the $1000+ to buy a high quality zoom and the muscles to lug it around it is probably a poor choice of first lens.

The $100-200 lightweight zoom lenses that come bundled with digital SLR bodies have some additional limitations. Being a good photographer starts with the ability to recognize a scene that looks attractive under its current lighting conditions. You need a lens with a wide enough maximum aperture, typically f/2.0 or f/1.4, to capture that scene even when the lighting is fairly dim, as it will be indoors or near the end of the day. An inexpensive zoom lenses will have a maximum aperture of between f/4.0 and f/5.6. At an aperture of f/5.6 you will need 8 times as much light to take a picture as you do at an aperture of f/2.0. Thus the cheap zoom will force you to use the on-camera flash, which casts an ugly flat light and in any case will render the scene completely different than it looked to your naked eye. Flash can be useful, especially with multiple strobes in the studio or as a fill-in light to reduce contrast outdoors, but mastering flash photography is a separate challenge.

The final problem with a cheap zoom lens is image quality. There is no free lunch in this world and when an optical engineer cuts cost and weight the sharpness and contrast are reduced. In fact, you might get a better quality photo with a point-and-shoot digicam than with a heavy expensive digital SLR with a cheap light zoom lens attached.

After doing a little more reading, I found that 50mm is the standard focal length for film SLR cameras and really expensive digital SLRs with full-size sensors, while 30mm is the standard focal length for digital SLR cameras with smaller sensors. (Just as a point of reference, standard zoom lenses that come standard with film SLRs zoom between 28mm (f/3.5) and 80mm (f/5.6).

Turns out a 50mm (f/1.8) lens for my trusty Canon EOS Elan II film SLR (which I've given to my sister) cost $80 -- really cheap considering the relative prices of lenses. The online reviews were right: it felt like cheap plastic but worked like a charm. Two samples using the 50mm prime lens (courtesy of my sis, click for larger version):


Yes, this is film! I was pretty surprised by the results -- almost magazine quality -- and my sis's nice composition of the photo helped too. (I realize this is not a controlled experiment by any means.) Compared with my previous photos using the zoom lens on the same camera, they definitely came out sharper than I'd ever seen before.

Now for my take-away point from this whole experience... If you have a zoom lens on either your point-and-shoot or SLR camera, zoom out as far as you can and use that as your fixed focal point. I justify this for three reasons:

1. When the lens is zoomed out, you obtain the smallest f-stop on the lens, which means more light is able to come through the lens. More light through the lens means that you need less light to take the photo, which then eliminates unnecessary use of the flash.

2. When the lens is zoomed out, you are less subject to blurring in your photos (especially in lower light conditions). Without a tripod, there will always be motion when you press the shutter release button. The more you zoom in, the more sensitive your photo will be to motion blur.

3. It's good practice if you plan on getting a fixed focal length (prime) lens in the future. As Greenspun says, it forces you to step backward and forward. However, speaking from past experience, you have to step pretty far forward to capture what you are eye is seeing at its normal point of view (50mm) when you are zoomed all the way out (about 28mm).

I'm not saying you shouldn't use the zoom -- it is a handy feature and it does help one capture shots that wouldn't otherwise work with a fixed focal point, but maybe the lesson should be "don't zoom in more than you have to, especially if you can take a step forward."