[Tim Schulz]

Thanks for the nice comments and helpful suggestions guys.  Compliments from this group mean a lot to me, but I value your critiques too.

Neal:  It is a wonderful, magical place; a mecca for many.  Here are couple iconic shots that might be familiar to a few people:

[Tim Schulz]

Holy cow.  I bet you could match this hatch with a small floating Rapala.

[Tim Schulz]

I’d like to personally thank everyone who leaves Michigan off of their list of best fly fishing states.  

No fish there.

😉

[Tim Schulz]

Neal,

I don’t know much about Detroit-area fishing, and several others are giving you good advice on the ‘lower northern’ part of Michigan that I do know a bit about.  

I know much more about the ‘upper northern’ part of Michigan, so if you have the time to drive north 290 miles to ‘the bridge’, then 270 miles west, I’d be happy to show you some remote water.   😉

It is a shorter drive from Detroit to Baltimore than it is from Detroit to my house.  And I am actually in the state of Michigan.  

Tim

[Tim Schulz]

Thanks guys.

[Tim Schulz]

Thanks for the comments Neal.  The top photo is my most recent, and I used one of my new snoots to isolate the light on the flies.  The paint on the fish is glossy, so I’ve been struggling to avoid the specular reflections.  I appreciate your suggestions, and I’ll try them.  I have plastic diffusers, a mini soft box, and pocket bouncer at my disposal.  I just ordered an off camera shoe chord, so I’ll soon have both of my flashes off camera.  

I’ve been using a Canon 580EXII on camera and a 430EXII off camera, but the 580 was used only as the master for these shots. All of the light has been coming from the 430, which I’ve been moving around by hand.

I’ve been having a ball with this, and your advice on this board and your blog has been very helpful.  Thanks!

[Tim Schulz]

Thanks for all of the helpful comments.  You can order framed prints of some of Life’s photos, and I purchased one from this issue.  It is very nice.

I’ve been experimenting with Lightroom profiles that emulate Kodachrome 25 and 64 colors for my Canon 7D.  The 64 is nice, but the 25 can be harsh with some scenes.  Extreme reds and high contrast.

Cheers.

[Tim Schulz]

Bill,

You might have seen this already, but, if not, this is a good place to start if you are interested in emulating Kodachrome colors:

http://www.defocus.net/2009/03/fun-with-the-dng-profile-editor.html

And you could look into the Alien Skin Exposure software.

[Tim Schulz]

Kurt –  You are correct. I have the original magazine, and the photographs are much better than they appear in the scanned versions that are in Google books.

[Tim Schulz]

Will,

For an example, here is a link to a 1961 issue of Life Magazine:

http://books.google.com/books?id=blMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA0&dq=life+magazine+1961+december+22&hl=en&ei=BNl2TYyZEIHqrAH0xJT5CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

I’m most interested in the photographs on pages 94 through 100, those on pages 99 and 100 in particular.  (You probably know this, but you can enter the page number in the little box at the top of the viewer.)

Thanks,
Tim

[Tim Schulz]

John Voelker called them ‘lobsters’, but I like to think of them as ‘green trout’.  

(I haven’t been able to keep up with IA board for a while; I hope everyone is doing well.)

[Tim Schulz]

David,

I’m not sure about their past approaches to file management, but now, as far as I can tell, you can set up any file and directory structure you desire.  The original image files can be anywhere you want them to be, and they are not changed by the use of the Lightroom software.

Tim

[Tim Schulz]

One of the reasons that John Voelker (aka Robert Traver) gave for fishing in his “Testament of a Fisherman” is

. . . because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters . . .

Much has changed in the near 50 years since the judge wrote those words, but the spirit of his message still rings true.  

HOWEVER, it is a good thing that cell phones allow people like Neal to fish AND fix us when we break.  

[Tim Schulz]

Hex have more of a drake-style body:

[Tim Schulz]

Zach,

If you took a photo with the same lens (50mm, f/1.8) on FX and DX cameras, then either the distance to desired focus or the field-of-view would need to be different.  

If the distance to desired focus is the same, then the field-of-view will be different.  In this case, both sensors will show the same defocus blur, but the DX sensor will record an image that is cropped relative to the FX sensor.  

If you want the field-of-view to be the same, then the distance to desired focus will need to increase by 50%.  If you were 2 meters away, you’d have to move back another meter.  If you were 4 meters away, you’d have to move back another 2 meters.  In this case, the size of the ‘circle-of-confusion’ blur for objects that are not in focus will decrease by a factor of about 1/2 for objects close to the focus to about 2/3 for objects that are far from the focus.  In short, the blur for objects in the scene that are close to focus will be 1/2 as much because you will have had to move farther away.  

So, yes, you will get more out-of-focus blur with a full-frame sensor because  you will be able to stay closer to the focused object for a desired field-of-view.  If you use a cropped sensor and want the same field-of-view, then you’ll have to move back or shorten the focal length.  But both of these things will reduce the out-of-focus blur.  (As a rule-of-thumb, the out-of-focus blur is proportional to the square of the focal length, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance to the focused object.)  

Ben and John:  based on the photos you take, you clearly have a sound working understanding of these principles.  

Cheers,
Tim

[Tim Schulz]

As Bob Atkins explains, when you set the field-of-view equal for full-frame and cropped sensors, then the full frame sensor will need a larger focal length than the cropped sensor, and that will result in less depth of field, or more out-of-focus blur.  

Reading the links on this, though, one might come away thinking that larger sensors result in larger ‘circles-of-confusion’.  That would not be correct.  That is only the case for defocus blur with equal field-of-view.  ‘Circle-of-confusion’ blur can also result from fundamental diffraction limits, and these are smaller (relative to the scene) for full-frame cameras than they are for cropped sensor cameras.  

The ultimate resolution for a full-frame sensor camera will always be better than that for a cropped sensor camera (for equal field-of-view and f/#) because the ‘circle-of-confusion’ due to diffraction is larger (relative to the features in the scene) for a cropped sensor than it is for a full-frame sensor.   And with the large number of pixels in modern sensors, this matters.  

As a rule-of-thumb, the size of the diffraction circle-of-confusion on the sensor is the f/# times the wavelength of the light.  To make an easy calculation, use 1/2 micrometer for the wavelength of light, and the diffraction circle-of-confusion (measured in micrometers) is one-half the f/#.   When this is larger than the size of the pixels on the sensor, then you will start to see diffraction blur.  This will happen for a smaller sensor much more readily than it will for a larger sensor.

The diffraction circle-of-confusion at f/8 has a width of about 4 micrometers.
For a 36 millimeter sensor, this is about 1/9000 of the width of the sensor.  This means the sensor could resolve about 9000 pixels across its width.  
For a 24 millimeter sensor, this is about 1/6000 of the width of the sensor.  This means the sensor could resolve about 6000 pixels across its width.
For an 8 millimeter sensor (point-and-shoot), this is about 1/2000 of the width of the sensor.  This means the sensor could resolve about 2000 pixels across its width.  More pixels will start to reveal the blur caused by diffraction.

Sorry for getting a little off topic, but discussions about circles-of-confusion can quickly become causes-of-confusion.  I hope I haven’t been a creator-of-confusion with this post.  
😉
Cheers,
Tim

[Tim Schulz]

I recently bought a Canon PowerShot D10 to replace an older (non-waterproof) P&S camera that had survived a couple dunkings, but finally bit the dust.  I took the D10 to the river and captured the following shot of a mayfly on the water:

Here is the same photo cropped to zoom in on the fly:

I’m still amazed by the shot considering that I was standing in the river holding a rod in one hand and the camera in the other.  It helps not having to worry about getting the camera wet.

I’m thinking the D10 deserves a lot of credit for this one.  All of the modern waterproof P&S cameras seem to be amazing, though, so I don’t think you can go wrong.  

[Tim Schulz]

Great post John.

[Tim Schulz]

The GoPros are hard to find in stock.  If you are interested in one, here is where I bought mine:

http://www.backcountry.com/outdoorgear/GoPro-HD-Helmet-HERO/GOP0010M.html

(Looks like they have over 40 in stock.)

[Tim Schulz]

Wow, thanks for posting these these great photos.

[Author]

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