Even after living in Vancouver for coming up to two years, there still seems to be an endless number of photographic opportunities, even just within sight of my apartment building!
It feels like a while since I've done a Vancouver 'city and water' blue hour photograph, so I figured I'd go out and make sure I hadn't forgotten how. It was also a good chance to make sure that my replacement 16-35mm lens still gave me the starburst effect I'd loved in the original lens -- clearly it does!
This was shot from the north-east corner of the Coal Harbour Marina, looking towards the waterfront apartment buildings -- mine can be seen at the far left.
Even at 16mm, I wasn't able to quite fit this into a single shot, so this is two photos stitched together, each shot at f/8, ISO 200, 15 seconds. This was long enough to make most of the people walking on the seawall disappear.
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
Stunning image Alexis!! Thank you so much for giving the settings - I haven't tried night time shots yet and it is really helpful. What a lovely view you must have from your apartment - lucky you!! Another Fav!!
I have a question then. First, amazing shot as usual!! Love it! Would a wide angle lens (wider than you have at 15) be able to accomplish this? I don't know how to stitch things (yet...I always hold out hope I'll learn), but I love the effect you have of this shot(s). Would you be able to enlighten me?
In theory, yes, a wider lens than I have would be able to capture this photo. However, there are very few lenses that are significantly wider than my 16mm lens. Remember that I have a full-frame camera, so my 16mm lens is as wide as a 10mm lens would be on your T2i.
There are some lenses that are slightly wider than that -- for example, for crop-frame cameras, there is the Sigma 8-16mm lens, and for full-frame cameras the (now discontinued) Sigma 12-24mm lens. A lens like this will have a horizontal field of view of about 110 degrees, vs. about 95 degrees for my current lens -- this is incredibly wide, but still probably not quite enough to capture all of this scene in one photo (which I'd estimate at about 130 degrees)
Currently, it's not possible to go wider than this with a rectilinear lens (this is a lens which keeps straight features straight), so we'd enter the world of fisheye photography. With a fisheye lens it's possible to go much wider than this. At the very extreme there is the Nikon 6mm fisheye lens, which covers a field of view of 220 degrees -- it can actually see objects that are behind (and off to the side) of the camera. It's a bit of a crazy lens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkiboo/5877392203/
And also costs $160,000! Of course, there are much more reasonably-priced fisheye lenses which could also capture this scene in a single shot, such as the Sigma 4.5mm fisheye lens (for crop-frame cameras), which is relatively expensive for a consumer lens, but not going to cost you a kidney! This lens can capture a full 180 degree field of view, so would be more than sufficient to get everything in this scene in a single shot. You would then either need to put up with the fisheye appearance (where everything appears curved), or transform the image in post-processing to remove the fisheye distortion.
Just beautiful
In theory, yes, a wider lens than I have would be able to capture this photo. However, there are very few lenses that are significantly wider than my 16mm lens. Remember that I have a full-frame camera, so my 16mm lens is as wide as a 10mm lens would be on your T2i.
There are some lenses that are slightly wider than that -- for example, for crop-frame cameras, there is the Sigma 8-16mm lens, and for full-frame cameras the (now discontinued) Sigma 12-24mm lens. A lens like this will have a horizontal field of view of about 110 degrees, vs. about 95 degrees for my current lens -- this is incredibly wide, but still probably not quite enough to capture all of this scene in one photo (which I'd estimate at about 130 degrees)
Currently, it's not possible to go wider than this with a rectilinear lens (this is a lens which keeps straight features straight), so we'd enter the world of fisheye photography. With a fisheye lens it's possible to go much wider than this. At the very extreme there is the Nikon 6mm fisheye lens, which covers a field of view of 220 degrees -- it can actually see objects that are behind (and off to the side) of the camera. It's a bit of a crazy lens:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkiboo/5877392203/
And also costs $160,000! Of course, there are much more reasonably-priced fisheye lenses which could also capture this scene in a single shot, such as the Sigma 4.5mm fisheye lens (for crop-frame cameras), which is relatively expensive for a consumer lens, but not going to cost you a kidney! This lens can capture a full 180 degree field of view, so would be more than sufficient to get everything in this scene in a single shot. You would then either need to put up with the fisheye appearance (where everything appears curved), or transform the image in post-processing to remove the fisheye distortion.
Let me know if you have any questions!