Lenses for Road Pictures

[skaguy]

I occasionally lurk on here, but I've been posting more of some of my recent adventures on Northeast Roads on Facebook. 

While I've taken a lot of photos throughout the years, I recently upgraded to a Canon 6D, which has a full-frame sensor.  For my road pics, I've mainly been using the kit lens which is a 24-105 mm IS f/4.  It takes mostly above average to sometimes exceptional pictures when stopped down to f/4 even while the vehicle is in motion, which helps with moving objects.  The image stabilization is a plus as well.

Having the versatility of the zoom lens is nice, but it seems a lot of my better pictures come in around the 50 mm range, which does make sense.  Note, a lot of cameras have a crop sensor, so a 50 mm focal length on a full frame is the same as around a 35 mm focal length on a crop sensor.

I already have a prime lens which is a Canon 40 mm f/2.8 and have used it a little, but not much.  I am considering purchasing the Canon 50 mm f/1.4.  There's also the 50 mm f/1.2, which is exponentially more expensive and the "cheapy" 50 mm f/1.8.  I'm not concerned about the focal length (40mm vs. 50mm), but I am mulling whether or not it would be worth investing in a lens for the additional f stops.

[lordsutch]

I'm not sure the extra f-stops below the cheapo "nifty fifty" at f/1.8 are really going to buy you much in road photography, except maybe in very low light. More likely than not you'd end up with some of a sign out of focus and some of it in-focus - heck, even at f/1.8 that's a distinct possibility.

If anything I think the slightly-wide 40mm f/2.8 would be near-ideal in most conditions.

[intelati49]

Ken Rockwell has a great site for all things photography

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm#canonlenses

[oscar]

My 50mm lens (left over from film camera days) is f/1.4, which gives you better low-light capability than the f/1.8 without breaking the bank. But if you have a full-frame digital camera body, it probably lets you adjust ISO sensitivity to give you about as much low-light as you might need.  Mine is normally set at the low end of its normal range at 800, but 6400 is almost as good, and you can run it up to 25200 if need be. Some newer cameras can go much higher. A full frame camera will also let you use a lot of pixels, so if your lens can't crop close enough you can "digital zoom" out unneeded pixels with no loss of quality, reducing your need for a long lens except for "trick photography" shots.

My workhorse lenses, which are the only two I take on most road trips, are a 24mm f/2.8 (what I almost always use for meet group photos) and a 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom. I also use a 17mm f/3.5 ultra-wide angle for bridge shots. I got a fast 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom, but while it's a dandy lens it wasn't terribly cost-effective -- too bulky and heavy to regularly carry around, too intimidating for some people shots. In addition, I have a 300mm f/4 telephoto lens, with teleconverters to further extend the focal length as needed, which come in handy when I want to photograph a bear from a quarter-mile away. But this lens collection is waaaay overkill for my talent level, or for most road photography.

[OracleUsr]

I use a 75-300mm Canon lens for mine.  Never had a problem with the standard settings.

[skaguy]

I'm not sure the extra f-stops below the cheapo "nifty fifty" at f/1.8 are really going to buy you much in road photography, except maybe in very low light. More likely than not you'd end up with some of a sign out of focus and some of it in-focus - heck, even at f/1.8 that's a distinct possibility.

If anything I think the slightly-wide 40mm f/2.8 would be near-ideal in most conditions.

I think you are referencing depth of field, which is why some people say that the f/1.4 lens is superior to the f/1.2 lens, even though it is more than a $1,000 LESS in price.  I'll take the 40mm f/2.8 out and see how it does, maybe even tomorrow for a test run.  The only way to be sure to see how one performs against the other is to have both, but I suspicioned the difference could be negligible enough not to warrant paying additional money.  Yet, as you said it could actually makes other things out of focus as well, so if I do decide to get something with a larger aperture, it could take some experimenting to find the "sweet spot".  As I stated in my first post, I'm not dissatisfied even using my f/4 lens and no matter what lens you use, you'll get some less than stellar pictures.  That's the nature of photography, but I'm just trying to minimize that for this specific purpose.

[skaguy]

Ken Rockwell has a great site for all things photography

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm#canonlenses

I've been on there quite a bit recently and use it as an opinion.  I generally don't have an issue with him, but some people despise the man.  However, I also think it's good to talk to people who use something for a specific purpose.  The general basics of photography are the same no matter what the intended purpose, but getting ideas from people with a similar interest is good as well.

[skaguy]

I use a 75-300mm Canon lens for mine.  Never had a problem with the standard settings.

Is this the only lens you use?  If you are using it on a full frame, at 75 mm, that's the threshold that I personally have noticed a decrease in the sharpness of pictures going down the road I've seen with my current camera.  If you are using it on a crop sensor, that's a minimum of around 110 mm going all the way to 450 mm.  My girlfriend used my current camera at a 105 mm focal length going down the road and it was way too far zoomed in for me.  Granted, you can use it further back, but in my experience you also risk a blurry image as well at larger focal lengths.  I have a 70-200 mm f/4 as well, but generally use it at overlooks to get a nice zoom when needed. 

I use to use a Nikon D3100, which was a crop sensor with an 18-55 mm lens and I would most generally sit in the 24-35 mm range, which is 40-50 mm on a full frame sensor.  I took a ton of pictures with it, mainly storms/landscape, commonly going down the road.  If the 75-300 mm works for you, then that's great.  There's no right or wrong way to do it, but I'm speaking from my own personal experiences. 

[skaguy]

My 50mm lens (left over from film camera days) is f/1.4, which gives you better low-light capability than the f/1.8 without breaking the bank. But if you have a full-frame digital camera body, it probably lets you adjust ISO sensitivity to give you about as much low-light as you might need.  Mine is normally set at the low end of its normal range at 800, but 6400 is almost as good, and you can run it up to 25200 if need be. Some newer cameras can go much higher. A full frame camera will also let you use a lot of pixels, so if your lens can't crop close enough you can "digital zoom" out unneeded pixels with no loss of quality, reducing your need for a long lens except for "trick photography" shots.

My workhorse lenses, which are the only two I take on most road trips, are a 24mm f/2.8 (what I almost always use for meet group photos) and a 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom. I also use a 17mm f/3.5 ultra-wide angle for bridge shots. I got a fast 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom, but while it's a dandy lens it wasn't terribly cost-effective -- too bulky and heavy to regularly carry around, too intimidating for some people shots. In addition, I have a 300mm f/4 telephoto lens, with teleconverters to further extend the focal length as needed, which come in handy when I want to photograph a bear from a quarter-mile away. But this lens collection is waaaay overkill for my talent level, or for most road photography.

I think you have all the bases covered, which is a very good thing.  I personally probably wouldn't use the 300 mm telephoto much, but I certainly wouldn't mind having it either.  You can never have enough lenses and can always find uses.  The weight of a lens is always a factor and it's one of the reasons I chose not to get a telephoto lens with image stabilization.  If I felt I would've used it more, I may have considered the Canon 70-200mm IS f/2.8, but the thing weighs almost 3 pounds!  I ended up going with the 70-200 mm f/4 without IS and it weighs less than a pound while costing considerably less money.  I've enjoyed having it and has performed well, even without the IS.  I've considered getting a 24-70 mm f/2.8, but since I already have the focal lengths covered, it's not a high priority right now.  The other lens I have is a 16-35 mm f/2.8 and that thing is a beast.  I was using it at the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles and I was getting pictures I didn't know were possible to take.  I was almost right under the space shuttle Discovery and could get capture the entire thing in one picture at 16 mm.  I can think of many instances I could've used this in the past, especially for landscape.  I'm certain a 17 mm prime lens would be wonderful for shooting bridges.

You can definitely tinker with the ISO and shutter speed as well, especially if you are at a fixed location.  I typically use lower ISOs to avoid graininess and I think an ISO of 6400 is a pretty good threshold and cutoff point.  Sony is touting an ISO of 409600 with their new full frame camera and I see it as nothing more than a marketing ploy.  I tinker with the shutter to dictate how much light comes in at a low ISO and have found even on cheaper cameras that this is a good technique in low light situations or after dark, sometimes even handheld.  In normal shooting situations, I use aperture priority mode, where I manually control the f stop and the camera then automatically chooses the ISO and shutter speed.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I use my stock Sony SEL1855 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6, but since my camera is APS-C and not full frame, it works like a 28.8-88.

I just picked up some pretty old glass (mid-1980s) from a family member who didn't use it... a Minolta 28-85 F/3.5-4.5 zoom and a no-name 75-200 F/4.5 beer can (seriously, I found it online under easily eight different names). I haven't tried any of these yet (need a LA-EA4 adapter), but I might use them for roads (they will yield 44.8-136 and 120-320 respectively with my camera due to APS-C crop).

Since I usually shoot while driving, I use a slightly high ISO. Conversely, the aperture remains somewhat small: my AF is slow, so I need a deeper field to keep the signs sharp. Having a longer zoom lens might change this. I'm still experimenting.

[J N Winkler]

If you are using it on a full frame, at 75 mm, that's the threshold that I personally have noticed a decrease in the sharpness of pictures going down the road I've seen with my current camera.

Even mild telephoto entails some invidious compromises in behind-the-wheel shooting.  Composition is harder, motion shudder is more likely to show even with image stabilization, and there is less depth of field and therefore less margin for error when the autofocus chooses the wrong thing to focus on.

By default I zoom my camera to a "normal" viewing angle loosely equivalent to 50 mm (35-mm frame).  This is partly because I learned serious photographic technique on old Pentax screw-mount cameras (produced, if memory serves, from the mid-1950's to the early 1970's), where the default lens (which was quite cheap since so many were produced) was a 50 mm f/1.4 Super Takumar.  Most Pentax screw mounts were manufactured at a time when adjustable zoom lenses were still optically quite inferior to prime lenses and either 50 mm or 55 mm was considered the ideal default focal length for the prime lens sold with the camera body because it matched the viewing angle of the human eye.

However, it has been ten years since I shot film, and I long ago packed away my Pentax bodies and lenses rather than try to figure out how to retrofit them with CCD sensors.  Nowadays I shoot digital only, with a Canon PowerShot A640 P&S with a full-manual mode that I use by default under bright sunlight and in cloudy weather when I am prepared to take the extra time to bracket.  My main motivation for continuing to set the adjustable zoom just off its widest angle setting (trying to match the viewing angle of the human eye) is to minimize pincushion/barrel distortion and the swayback illusion while retaining enough depth of field to keep autofocus errors forgivable.

You can definitely tinker with the ISO and shutter speed as well, especially if you are at a fixed location.  I typically use lower ISOs to avoid graininess and I think an ISO of 6400 is a pretty good threshold and cutoff point.  Sony is touting an ISO of 409600 with their new full frame camera and I see it as nothing more than a marketing ploy.  I tinker with the shutter to dictate how much light comes in at a low ISO and have found even on cheaper cameras that this is a good technique in low light situations or after dark, sometimes even handheld.  In normal shooting situations, I use aperture priority mode, where I manually control the f stop and the camera then automatically chooses the ISO and shutter speed.

My go-to ISO for bright sunlight is 100, mainly because this allows me to work with a book exposure rule of 1/125 sec at f/16 at 100 ASA (another holdover from the Pentax screw-mount days--I think this very exposure was cited in Herbert Keppler's book on how to shoot with a Pentax).  Of course my PowerShot can't handle f/16, so in practice it boils down to 1/500 sec at f/8.  Its ISO actually bottoms out at 80, but I don't like working with thirds of a f-stop.  Its maximum numerical ISO is 800 but pictures shot at that setting are unacceptably grainy.  I frankly disbelieve claims of good shots at higher ISO from other cameras in the absence of testing that shows clearly that the low grain is a result of inherently absent sensor noise and not aggressive software noise suppression.

These days all of the cool roadgeeks are using digital SLRs.  However, most of them are around ten years younger than I am, so they will realistically have had very little exposure to traditional handheld SLRs that use 35-mm film.  I wonder how aware they really are of the cost and utility tradeoffs inherent in buying into a camera system.

I have only ever had P&S digital cameras (albeit with LCD displays that give me some of the preview functionality of SLRs, and full-manual modes that allow complete control of exposure and aperture).  The most important reason for this is that they have a better combination of versatility and ease of carrying for my purposes.  However, with image resolution and quality now more or less subject to Moore's law and form factor more tightly bound to fickle consumer tastes, I consider that the camera manufacturers can no longer make a credible commitment to keep a system going for multiple decades like they did back in the era when the working conditions of professional photography and the technical characteristics of film stock changed very little.

In the case of cameras for behind-the-wheel road photography, I would worry less about technical considerations such as image quality, and more about other and possibly less effortful ways of procuring road imagery.

*  Does the state DOT have photologging available online?  If it does, then this may be a better way of obtaining sign shots, since composition will often be better and the imagery will be keyed to reference post.

*  Can you source a camera with GPS control that will record GPS location with each shot and can be configured to take a new photograph at a certain distance (say, 1/100 or 1/200 of a mile) away from the last shot?

[lordsutch]

*  Can you source a camera with GPS control that will record GPS location with each shot and can be configured to take a new photograph at a certain distance (say, 1/100 or 1/200 of a mile) away from the last shot?

Not to get too off-topic, but I don't think such a camera exists, at least not in the consumer range. Probably the closest you could do is one of the following two options:

- Time lapse. I have a Garmin Virb Elite I've been using to do mapping for Mapillary, which works fairly well except: 1. it's not anything close to a DSLR-quality sensor (it's 1/2.3") and 2. the minimum time lapse is 2 seconds between shots,* which means at highway speed you're only getting about 50-60 photos per mile.

I'm thinking of rigging up my Nikon Coolpix A (mirrorless DX with a fixed 18.5mm/28mm equiv f/2.8) manually focused at infinity with a continuous power supply to an external programmable shutter release and GPS adapter. That would get me 1 fps and much better pictures, at the expense of being a pain to rig up on short drives compared to the Virb (dead easy: plug in mini-USB cord, put on beanbag mount, sit mount on passenger-side dash), and I can delete the extra photos at lower speeds after the fact.

Nikon's built-in time lapse won't go over 999 exposures and even if you get past that the battery will die in an hour or two (particularly powering the GPS receiver), hence the need for all the annoying jury-rigging.

* You can get a shorter time lapse by using video mode, but then you'd have to post-process all the images to add the GPS data and lose IQ due to the interpolated frame compression. The new Virb X and XE appear to allow for 1 fps still photos but I can't find any confirmation yet.

- Remote control app. I've played around some with qDSLRDashboard. Unfortunately it doesn't support the Coolpix A (or at least didn't a few months ago), and my D5200 is incredibly annoying to mount stably in my Altima due to the windshield angle and dash, even with a small fixed lens on it. It probably wouldn't be terribly hard to add automatic triggering based on GPS distance to qDSLRDashboard, but it doesn't have any GPS features at present and is closed-source.

[J N Winkler]

LordSutch, my very tentative idea for a "photologging van killer" was something like a GoPro or other video camera with enough battery power to record over a fairly lengthy period (say one day's drive), with the internal GPS sensor rigged to control the taking of a still image at a set interval, rather than continuous video footage.  I don't have a GoPro, so I don't know if this capability has been added to them.

It sounds like the setup you are planning with the CoolPix would be the closest we might come to an off-the-shelf solution, without the image quality and resolution limitations of a GoPro.  But I suspect it would require a newer car with a beefier stock alternator if one wished to hang on to reliable charging system performance, which is exactly what you don't get with aftermarket or custom HO alternators.

I'm not really au fait with the mechanics of aperture and shutter control for digital cameras.  I assume shutter control is accomplished by sensor read time, and the aperture is kept continuously closed rather than actuated by a leaf mechanism when the shutter is fired, but if neither is true for a digital still camera used as a photologger, then there is the potential for overheating or mechanical failure.  I'm assuming the CoolPix (I don't have one) is not susceptible to these particular limitations.

[BigRedDog]

Since I usually shoot while driving, I use a slightly high ISO. Conversely, the aperture remains somewhat small: my AF is slow, so I need a deeper field to keep the signs sharp. Having a longer zoom lens might change this. I'm still experimenting.

How do you (and others) shoot while driving? I suppose I'm assuming that you mean you actually take a picture while the car is moving - as compared to being the driver, driving a car, pulling over and coming to a stop, snapping a picture, and resuming the drive.

So, if you snap a picture while the car is moving: how? Is there some kind of setup that locks the camera in place so all that needs done is depressing the shutter (or using a remote)?

[Dr Frankenstein]

Not for me. It's all handheld. The tricky part is to shoot blind while looking at the road and not the camera.

Some shots are crooked, but hey, that's part of the game.

Envoyé de mon Nexus 5 en utilisant Tapatalk

[J N Winkler]

How do you (and others) shoot while driving? I suppose I'm assuming that you mean you actually take a picture while the car is moving - as compared to being the driver, driving a car, pulling over and coming to a stop, snapping a picture, and resuming the drive.

Yes, this is usually how it is done.  I've seen a dedicated enthusiast hold the camera with thumb and two fingers of one hand, using the other two fingers on the steering wheel, and the other hand on the gearshift lever.

Some might argue that this is distracted driving, but personally I feel the fluency that comes with practice largely offsets the added task load.  However, it noticeably degrades vehicle sympathy and that is why I don't do it in my own car.  I generally actually stop, park the car, and take a series of carefully composed photos.

On my recent trip to Colorado for the Denver road meet, I was very selective about where I actually stopped because I knew that the complete Colorado state highway system has been photologged (both front and right side for both increasing and decreasing mileposts) and the imagery is available on the Web.

I stopped to photograph just three signing treatments--a special Curves Tighten sign on US 24 just east of Buena Vista, and the prohibitory signs for long vehicles on either end of Independence Pass--and in all of these cases I was prepared to spend up to fifteen minutes for a camera study.  It's a cinch the Curves Tighten sign is in CDOT photologging, so I have photos whose camera angle, zoom level, use of flash, and composition the CDOT photologging van can't match.  I don't know if the Independence Pass signs are in CDOT photologging.  I don't remember them from 2011 SH 82 imagery I downloaded in 2013.  While the signs look suspiciously new, they are also mounted well off the road at laybys in both locations (the last turnaround opportunities for long vehicles), so it is not guaranteed that the current right-side imagery (dating from 2014) has them.

So, if you snap a picture while the car is moving: how? Is there some kind of setup that locks the camera in place so all that needs done is depressing the shutter (or using a remote)?

Some have tried suction-cup windshield mounts, which is generally best for video but can also be used with still cameras with an electronic remote.  (If you remember what a manual shutter release cable looks like--I've never heard of anyone being able to use one with digital cameras--without having to do a Web search, you have one foot in the grave.)

[skaguy]

Taking crooked pictures is nothing that Photoshop can't correct.  As stated in this thread, if you stick to a 35 mm focal length on a crop sensor or 50 mm on a full frame the picture should turn out the way you see it.  If I have someone riding with me, which is fairly typical, most of the time they take the pictures.  However, I have no problem keeping the camera steady with one hand and driving with the other.  I drive an automatic, so it's not cumbersome.  This isn't just for road signs, but for storm chasing as well.  Sometimes the two go hand and hand.

My philosophy is that taking pictures of road signs myself or of other things road related is that it allows me to show the world the way that I perceive things.  Going on a photologging site or Google Street View can be nice for reference, but to take your own picture allows me to remember more as well.  I think combing through a vast amount of data is less enjoyable and is too much to take in.  There's no sense of adventure or exploration for me.

I've enjoyed getting out recently and taking pictures of roads and road signs.  It's something that has never been my top priority in the past, but I've learned a lot by going and also posting things for other people to chime in as well which allows me to learn even more.