Tag Archives: high

Tripods and Shooting in High Winds

December 3, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

I recently saw – and replied to – a question posted in a photography forum regarding tripods and shooting in high winds. The poster wrote something very similar to the following:

I realized that many shots from a recent trip are blurry because of wind shaking the tripod. Even hanging 10lb weight did not help. So now, I am looking for a new tripod that won’t be affected by wind.

What the writer has discovered is that no tripod is immune to strong winds, especially if you make long exposures and/or use long focal length lenses. Even if you had an absolutely rock-solid tripod, in a 40 mph wind your camera and lens will vibrate enough to create a slightly less sharp image.

So, what to do? You could get the heaviest tripod you can find and weight it down with bags of rocks and what not. But then you are stuck hauling around the dead weight of this tripod the other 95% of the time when you don’t need it. Yes, get a good solid tripod and a good head with good camera brackets, but other things can help in high winds and, in fact, may be necessary even with the best tripod:

Use a shorter focal length if possible.
Use a higher shutter speed, even at the expense of a higher ISO, larger aperture, and accept the slightly increased noise or slight loss of DOF.
Consider using image-stabilization (IS) even with the camera on the tripod in extreme conditions.
Don’t extend the tripod legs all the way – if possible shoot from down low to the ground with the legs retracted.
try to brace the tripod against something – rocks, your legs, anything that will dampen vibrations a bit.
Try to use natural wind screens when you set up – sometimes being in the lee of a wall or tree or rock can diminish the wind enough to make a difference.
Time your shots for moments of less wind.
If your exposure times are not extremely long, gently resting a hand on the lens or camera body can dampen the wind-caused vibrations.
Rather than relying on a single exposure, make many redundant exposures – some will likely be less affected by the wind than others.
If you have a strap attached to your camera, take steps to make sure it doesn’t flap. Wrapping it around the tripod may be sufficient.
If conditions permit, consider removing your lens hood.

I recall once shooting on top of a bluff at the far reaches of Point Reyes, normally a very windy place and on this day windy enough to almost be scary. But the light was beautiful and I wanted to make photographs from the edge of the bluff. I ended up retracting the tripod legs so that the camera would be lower to the ground, sitting with the tripod braced between my legs, using IS, leaving a hand on the camera to dampen vibrations, raising the shutter speed, and making many exposures. In the end, a good percentage of the images were adversely affected by the wind… but among them were some good ones that were sharp.

Point Reyes Shoreline

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

First Light Above the Buttermilks, Autumn Storm

November 8, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

A faint rainbow briefly glows in dawn light on the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada above the Buttermilks as an autumn storm builds.

Since I wrote previously about acting on a hunch to be in this spot in time to catch a few minutes of dawn light, I won’t recount the whole thing here – though I would like to describe the phenomenon a bit more and perhaps make a point or two about light and opportunities.

The photograph is of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada above Bishop, California and was made on an early autumn morning of a day that brought one of the first winter-like storms of the season. I found myself in this spot (as described at the link) for the very few minutes during which this light was present – and afterwards the light was simply gone and the rest of the day was overcast and rainy. The circumstances have me thinking about a few things about light and “being there” at the right moment.

Sometimes, even on a “poor light day” – though I like overcast conditions! – there can be a few brief moments of exceptional light. Catching them involves some combination of anticipating that these moments might occur, being there, and – let’s admit it! – dumb luck. In this case, all three were at work. I did not know that this light would occur, but I knew that the conditions offered a possibility. A clearing in the clouds along the eastern horizon allowed a horizontal beam of light to briefly hit the mountains right at dawn. It began by striking the clouds above the Sierra crest, soon hit the highest peaks, moved across the face of the range, and within minutes the show ended with light on the high desert. The band was so narrow that only one of these subjects was generally illuminated at a time – and the whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than five or ten minutes.

That description might make it sound like I’m saying that I’m just plain great at predicting such things and planning to be there. Not quite! If you had asked me a few minutes earlier, when I made the spontaneous decision to abandon my previous plans and high-tail it out to this spot, what the odds were that I’d see light like this I might have estimated them at perhaps 10% or less. In other words, if I repeated this little adventure 10 times, I’d guess that I’d fail to see light like this nine out of ten times. However, if I only go for “sure bets” (which I’ll take when I can get them!) I know that I’ll miss lots of special conditions that are not subject to prediction.

Which brings up the subject of luck. I often read that one should be able to know in advance what the photograph will look like, and that careful and full preparation will lead to good photographs. Well, sort of, but maybe not quite in the way that some imply. (There is an element of “preparation” in all of this that I’ll write about eventually, but that is a different thing.) Frankly, these subjects are too complex and too fleeting and too unpredictable to be subject to that sort of careful and precise planning in any sort of consistently useful way. The photographer cannot make that small band of open sky appear along the horizon on an autumn morning when a storm is building along the crest – but if everything goes right a photographer might be there at the right moment, prepared to make a photograph of it.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Tree-Covered Ridge, Mist

November 6, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Mist from an autumn storm obscures trees growing on a steep ridge near the rim of Yosemite Valley.

Since I’ve written about this series of photographs of cloud- and fog-shouded subjects in Yosemite Valley several times during the past week, I’ll keep the background short on this one. I used a long lens to isolate small scenes in which the clouds of an autumn storm alternately hid and (sometimes barely) revealed trees, cliffs, and rocky spires along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

In a few of the photographs I was thinking about how close I could get to having very little or almost no detail in the photograph and still make it work. Here the only real detail is in the diagonal of trees and rocks that is mostly obscured by the clouds, with only a few bits of tree being a bit darker. What I’m thinking of is more along the lines of suggesting the presence of the bit of cliff and trees than actually trying to show it explicitly.

This is, for me at least, a tricky thing! The temptation is to boost contrast in post to get more definition from the tree shapes, but that quickly leads to something that has a very different mood than that of the actual scene – and which can easily look phony. I think I’m heading in a direction I like here, but I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I have a chance to try a print in a week or so.

(By the way, if your monitor is even a little bit “off,” you may see some colorations in this monochrome image that aren’t really there. Sorry! :-)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sunrise Rainbow and Virga Above the Buttermilks

November 3, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Brief sunrise light produces a rainbow and virga over the Buttermilks in the eastern Sierra Nevada above Bishop, California.

I have a story to tell about this photograph and how it came about. I’ve been in the Buttermilks — the rounded hills between Bishop, California and the actual Sierra Nevada — on a number of previous occasions. I’ve photographed there in the early morning when the first light hits these hills and the peaks of the Sierra, and I have some potential images filed away in my mind, waiting for a time when the light is right. I also know the Sierra well enough – though certainly not completely nor perfectly! – that I can pick up on developing conditions that might not apparent to someone less familiar with the range.

On this early October morning I was camped up in the Bishop Creek drainage. The forecast was for rain and wind and, sure enough, during the night the wind picked up and it began to rain. I woke before dawn and at the first light it was apparent that it would be overcast. This is not necessarily a bad thing for photographing fall color, but it can mean that subjects that would otherwise work at dawn might need to wait. I was thinking about how to modify my aspen photography plans when I noticed a bit of incipient color in the still-dim clouds, and it occurred to me that a special set of conditions might occur. Although I couldn’t see to the east from this campground, I know that sometimes clouds above the Sierra end a ways to the east over or beyond the White Mountains, and when this happens there is a narrow band of clear sky right above the horizon — and if everything works out just right a strip of dawn light shines through this gap, first hitting the clouds and then working its way down from the peaks to the lower foothills before quickly disappearing and leaving very bland light.

No sure thing at all, but I decided to dash down the road (past the steady stream of aspen photographers streaming up the road!) and see if I could get to the Buttermilks in time. I left the main road and headed up a side road that I know, somewhat resenting a (very reasonable!) 25mph speed limit near some roadside residences as I began to see the clouds above the crest starting to light up. As I hit the last section of gravel road the sky began to glow and I sped up, heading for a specific spot where I had photographed this scene before. With seconds I saw the light pick out a band of virga (rain that does not reach the ground) and a rainbow began to form in front of the eastern escarpment as I arrived at the hilltop where I planned to shoot. I quickly set up my tripod and mounted the 70-200mm lens (which I already knew would be the right one for this shot) and literally ran up a nearby knoll which I knew would put the foreground hill in a decent place in the composition. I was ready just as the soft light hit the foreground and I made this photograph. Within a minute the rainbow as gone!

Sometimes you just get lucky…

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.