Panorama with my 50mm

For the last several years, I have been delving into the world of panorama photography. The main lens I have used has been the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 . This is an amazing lens, and you can get broad-sweeping panoramas with it at 14mm. However, lately, I have been using my 50mm f/1.8 . While I have been very unhappy with this lens' performance in a studio setting, it has served me well in landscape photography.

Below are a couple of the panoramas that I recently shot with my 50mm lens. Immediately below is a petroglyph that can be found on the McConkie Ranch outside of Vernal, Utah. I was just several feet away when I snapped this panorama. It's a 60-photo, 49-degree (FOV) HDR panorama. Just a side note: It's a quick trip to the ranch from Vernal, and it's a great place to see ancient rock art, if you're into the natural history gambit. I am.

The next pano I shot was of Independence Monument, located in Colorado National Monument. This gem of park can be found just outside of Grand Junction, Colo. While I was a few feet away from the rock art, I was several hundred feet back from the rock monuement. Both are panoramas but the distance from camera to subject make for a dramatic difference in the photo composition.

To see what I use to shoot my panoramas, go... here!

Photographer's Deja Vous!

I took this photo of Norwegian speed skater Mikael Larsen at the Olympic Oval in Kearns, Utah, on Jan. 21, 2012:

Apparently, three years earlier, I took this photo as well (cue the Twilight Zone theme):

Same skater, skating for the same country, shot by the same photographer, using the same equipment... only the date has changed!!

Success Rate

I am an evolving photographer! How do I know... because as I once lived by the "spray and pray" philosophy of shooting, as of Jan 21, 2012, I'm a lot more selective about holding down the shutter release button on my camera. I came to this realization when I went to the Essent World Cup of speedskating here in Salt Lake City. I found a sweet spot at the apex of one of the turns and busted out my (now defunct) Nikon D300 (with the MB-D10 battery pack) and my Sigma 120-400 f/4.5-5.6 lens with the hopes of photographing some of the best speedskaters in the world, in addition to many of the Olympic hopefuls.

Per my last post, I turned off the image stabilization mechanism and decided to be slightly more judicious in my shooting. With the battery pack, my camera fires of about 6 frames per seconds. My original philosophy was to hold the shutter release button down and find the best one, maybe two, images from each burst. However, my success rate was horrible. I'd come back with some 1200 photos and find maybe 50 good photos. Ultimately, It felt like I wasn't giving the lens an opportunity to focus as I tracked the subject.

When shooting sports, my camera settings are as follows: Continuous Focus; Short Tracking; and I use the secondary focus button on the back of the camera (not the shutter release button). So, with the focus settings in place, OS off, I did several short bursts as each skater negotiated the bend. Having the OS off netted sharper images, and the shorter bursts allowed the lens to focus faster as I tracked the subject.

At the end of the day, I still came away with 900 photos and found that close to 200 of them were in focus, sharp and framed appropriately.