- Hi, everyone, I'm Adrian,
and I'm here to share with you the best tips and tools
to help you improve your own landscape photography.
I'm here in the beautiful Australian rainforest today.
And I've set myself a challenge to shoot
with just a fixed focal length on a prime lens.
Specifically, I'm gonna be shooting
with the Sony 85 mil F1.4
(calm music)
(birds chirping)
The 85 mil lens that I've purchased,
I've used predominately for head shots, portraits,
mucking around with my kids in the backyard,
or if we're on a family vacation,
but I haven't actually ever used it
for forest or landscape photography.
So let's talk about what I'm going to cover off today.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about the challenge.
Gonna talk you through some of the sort of
photographs you'd expect from an 85 mil lens.
I'll talk you through the Sony 85 mil 1.4 G master
and a little bit of my thoughts
around that particular lens itself.
And then we're going to talk through some of the constraints
that you need to consider when shooting
with 85 millimeter lens as well.
So with that in mind, let's head in to the forest behind me
and let's have a look at that first photograph.
(calm music)
So really I want to push myself out of my comfort zone
so I can challenge you all as well around,
actually looking at other ways
to capture forest and woodlands.
So traditionally I've been using my 24 to 105
and focusing on those focal links between say 40 and 80 mil.
I'm really comfortable in that zone essentially.
So then I brought out my 85 prime
to really give it a workout because I rarely use it.
I bought it for things like head shots and portraits
as I said earlier on,
but now the opportunity to come out here in field
and really try to make the most of this fantastic lens.
All right, let's give it a go.
So I've photographed this tree a number of times,
at least two trees.
They're beach myrtle trees,
here in the cool temperate rainforest
of southeast Australia.
What I'm trying to do here is using the 85 mil lens to
really compose a more intimate scene.
So the photographs I've taken proves
I've tried to really get their presence in the photograph
as like the two, I think I've talked about previously,
two opposing sisters.
I'm thinking of my daughters.
Because the trees are actually branching off
in each direction.
So I'll show you that in a moment,
but first things first, I've set my white balance.
So it's quite cool here.
It's actually very cold.
It snowed over the weekend,
so there's a little bit of snow left on
the ground around me.
It's probably only about one degree.
And so I've set my white balance quite on the cool side.
So I've set Kelvin at 4,800, so on the cooler side.
So, you know, you can adjust this in the light room
and post-processing, but at least this way,
I get a fairly true, accurate, how I feel,
and that's probably even a little tad too blue
now that I look at it.
So I might just that slightly up to five one potentially.
In terms of exposures, as I said, it's quite,
even though it may look quite light on the video,
it's actually quite dark in here.
So I'm currently sitting at F8.
So I know this lens is actually very sharp F1.4,
which we'll do a few images shortly as well,
but I also know F8, F11, certainly is a sweet spot for a,
for a lens, certainly for a landscape,
to get things front to back in sharpness.
So, F8, one sixth of a second, ISO 1250.
And we got a lot of fog in the background as well,
a low cloud coming through setting a really mystical theme.
So I'll show you what I've framed up on the screen now
for the first shot.
So as I said before, you can see this log over here,
coming in from the bottom of the scene.
We've got some ferns, lush green ferns on the bottom here.
We have that sapling just here coming in.
And as I said, we've got the two beech myrtle
branches coming up and sort of balancing it.
And then if it looks through, into the scene,
given we're at at F8, we're getting sharp
all the way through, in this example, through,
and there's this kind of drop off behind
the two Beech Myrtles, which are in the background here.
So those are the two main subjects of the tree here.
So I've turned on manual focus.
So I've got the manual focus peaking on showing
that everything is in focus.
And I've just taken a test image to check,
and we've got the five second timer on.
We're just gonna wait for the wind to blow through.
Well, actually, maybe we're okay.
We're at a very slow shutter speed,
so just want to make sure.
Let's have a quick look at that.
Looking great.
And so I'm also looking for motion blur at this point on,
because it is, there's a slight wind.
Look at how sharp that is.
So that's the 85 mil F.14 at F8.
(bright ambient music)
So looking at the image when I got home,
you know, I noticed that the log in the right-hand corner
of the frame was quite heavy.
I've done a poor job of creating depth in the image
by not being able to separate the trees
in the far background behind the two beach myrtles
and overall a bit disappointed with the image.
All part of the experience,
and that's why I love photography.
You never stop learning.
Let's get back to the video.
I will next try a shot at the lowest aperture,
which is F.14.
So my intent here is to try and blur the foreground.
so the leaves, possibly even that log coming in
from the left-hand side and just see what that looks like.
So at a wide scene like this, it'll be interesting to see
sort of the shallower depth of field we're getting,
whether that look appeals or not,
so let's take that shot now.
So one of the first advantages of dropping the aperture
back to F1.4 and really opening up the lens
is we can drop the ISO back.
So I've dropped the ISO back to the expandable ISO
on this camera, which is the Sony A73.
So at an ISO 50, shutter speeds increase,
so now at 1/13th of a second and F1.4.
Okay so as you can see here, so I slightly underexposed it,
but we're ISO 50, F1.4, 13 seconds.
You can see here how sharp,
hopefully you can see it on the camera,
how sharp the foregrounds is, those the ferns,
the log, the beech myrtle here.
And then it drops off behind scene.
So you can see it's a beautiful show
of depth of field through to the two main beech myrtles
there that are subjects in the background.
So we might do two shots.
So we might do one with the foreground in focus and then
blur it for the second shot.
Let's try that first.
So I'll leave the settings as they are.
So just switch back to manual focus,
make sure its all in focused in the foreground,
as you can see there, fantastic we are.
So let's take that shot now.
(bright ambient music)
Okay, so I've changed the focus point,
so mainly focusing now on the two beech myrtles
at the back there so you can see they're in sharp focus
and we can see, we're still leaving some
of the foreground here.
So I don't think this is going to win any awards,
this photograph, because it's not really balanced
now that it's blurred,
but we'll take this shot anyway.
So you can have a look what it looks like.
but before I do, so I thought I'd pass the question off
over to you.
What's your favorite focal lens in landscape photography?
If you have an 85 mil prime in the back of the cupboard
or even a nifty 50, are you willing to give it a go
in landscape photography?
Let me know in the comments below.
If you're getting value out of this video,
I'd really appreciate it a like, thank you so much.
So perhaps you don't own an 85 mil,
you own a crop sensor camera.
So if you put an 85 mil lens,
full frame lens, onto a crop sensor,
it's going to end up at about 127 mils.
So if you remember the science behind it.
So 1.5 times the focal length will give you the extra focal
length on a crop sensor.
So if you're keen to get the 85 mil lock on a crop sensor,
all you need is about a 50 mil, 56 mil lens as well,
and pop it on the front of the camera
and you'll get the 85 mil effect.
If you think about, the lens is just a tool
to help you express your own creativity.
So whether at wide at 24, 60 mil, 40 mil,
or up at the 85 mil, as we have been today,
it's really about expressing yourself
and telling the stories that you want to tell
in the focal length that you're comfortable with.
If you enjoy forest and woodland photography,
the next video I'd recommend you watch is the one I've done
recently on a circular polarizing.
How to increase color saturation and get richer colors
in your photographs.
Stick around for next week's video.
As I'll share part two of my 85 millimeter challenge,
and how some of the constraints of a fixed focal length
really tested me.