Night shots, failure, please advise

[Marco van Eck]

Wow, thanks for all input and advise folks, it's very much appreciated!


I've used a pretty heavy tripod on these pictures. Used the live view LCD display to focus but didn't know I could zoom in there... Will have to try that!

Being at work I downloaded the images from Flickr but nor Windows nor ExifTool is showing anything that reassembles the focus distance. I'll try getting that info from the RAW file and DPP when I'm back home.

My stock lens (Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II) has AF and IS. I did turn off AF to manually focus but left IS on. I'll also try turning IS off next time I'm using the tripod.

And Dr. Croubie, I took these before having fun at the Crazy Pianos


Thanks again all, will get back on the focal distance later.

Marco

[neuroanatomist]

Being at work I downloaded the images from Flickr but nor Windows nor ExifTool is showing anything that reassembles the focus distance. I'll try getting that info from the RAW file and DPP when I'm back home.

Flickr strips it out. DPP won't show it. Different cameras do display different data in a full EXIF dump from the .CR2 file, such as you get with Exiftool. For example, 7D and 5DII images have Focus Distance Upper and Lower, whereas a 1D X image has a Subject Distance field instead.

[Marco van Eck]

Flickr strips it out. DPP won't show it. Different cameras do display different data in a full EXIF dump from the .CR2 file, such as you get with Exiftool. For example, 7D and 5DII images have Focus Distance Upper and Lower, whereas a 1D X image has a Subject Distance field instead.

Thanks Neuroanatomist.

Like you said, no info from DPP. With ExifTool I found a wealth of information under section MakerNotes from the RAWs, amongst others :

First shot
FocalLength : 37120 mm
FocusDistanceUpper : inf
FocusDistanceLower : 81.91 m

Second shot
FocalLength : 35072 mm
FocusDistanceUpper : inf
FocusDistanceLower : 81.91 m

No idea why the Focus Distance values are exactly the same... There is a time difference of about 30 minutes between taking the two images.

I'm sorry to say that I don't have a real idea yet if these figures are good or bad.


Hope to be able to share some better night pictures with you all soon

Cheers,
Marco

[Sheiky]

Flickr strips it out.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but in my case Flickr shows all the info off my photos including focus distance.

First shot
FocalLength : 37120 mm
FocusDistanceUpper : inf
FocusDistanceLower : 81.91 m

Second shot
FocalLength : 35072 mm
FocusDistanceUpper : inf
FocusDistanceLower : 81.91 m

No idea why the Focus Distance values are exactly the same... There is a time difference of about 30 minutes between taking the two images.

I'm sorry to say that I don't have a real idea yet if these figures are good or bad.

Marco, I'm not sure if this counts for everyone, but I noticed that the number shown in the Focus Distance in EXIF is actually "quite" accurate on some points. On my lenses the distance number shown in the small dial on your lens often mirrors what you will be seeing in EXIF. However: once you get beyond the largers number on your lens(to the point where the lens goes to infitnity) the focus distance number in your EXIF cannot be trusted anymore. In your case this might explain the weird, but constand FocusDistance value.
At least that's what I noticed in my case.