Spring in the Japanese Gardens
Back in the Water Gardens in time for the Spring Blossom – one very fine reason to be back in England.
The Japanese gardens where we live are at their best at this time of year, but they have been a photographic challenge for me ever since we arrived. At the moment the place is a riot of colour, particularly in the blossom orchard which is strewn with a carpet of petals, and daffodils. The problem is, as ever, there is too much stuff in the shot, and most of it is white. Straight-on photographs often result in blown highlights and a mass of unresolvable detail.
My old approach to a lot of detail was to shoot wide, and get it all in the frame. But our experience of photographing temples in Myanmar taught me, that where there is a mass of detail, instead it’s often better to shoot tight, and separate out the interesting stuff with depth of field. So this time I used a very long 70-300mm telephoto lens.. I used two cameras, each with the same lens to see how they worked. Day 1 it was my little Nikon V1, which turned the lens into a 540mm superzoom. Day 2 (actually 3 days after as it rained non-stop in between) was with my spiffy Nikon D800 and the same lens. I was expecting the D800, the highest resolving DSLR yet made, to easily exceed the shots from the V1. The results really surprised me. See if you can tell which camera took which shot. The D800 by the way is a full frame pro camera, with a 36 Mpixel sensor. The V1 is a point and shoot for enthusiasts, with a 12 Mpixel sensor that is 1/8 the size (by area). I could tell in Lightroom which camera was which, but only at massive magnification. Answers are given at the bottom of the post.
Here are the photographs. As usual, instructions on viewing them are at the end of the post. If you see an error message, try reloading the page (F5).
Spring 2014 Japanese Gardens
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To View: If you have Flash the photos are best seen in full screen (press FS in the bottom right hand corner), and in slide show ( press SL). If you don’t have Flash, i.e if you are using an Apple iPad/Pod/Phone, or a Nexus 7/10 tablet, or any Android tablet running 4.1 +, you can now see them as well. Just click any of the thumbnails and a full screen slide-show should start. Information on each photo can be seen by clicking on the ‘i’ symbol in the upper right corner of the screen show.
Which was which? Nikon D800: frames 1,2,7,8: Nikon V1: frames 3,4,5,6
