Seeing the Royals at Windsor Castle

Between April 28th and May 3rd my wife and I spent a couple days visiting our daughter in England (London, Windsor, Stratford-on-Avon), mostly just for (mental) relaxing and sightseeing. On April 30th, we had pre-booked sightseeing tickets to Windsor Castle — and this turned out to be the only day with (cool, but) nice weather during our stay (for the rest we experienced cold, rainy, "typically British" weather). So, we took the train from London via Slough to Windsor. Coming out of the station we were greeted by the impressive fortifications of Windsor Castle (now apparently the largest permanently inhabited castle on the planet!):

Windsor Castle 2012-04-30, Southwest wall & fortifications
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/10, 1/400, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

When we made our way to the entrance (we arrived some 1.5 hours prior to the official opening of the castle gate), however, we were greeted by the following, rather devastating scenery:

Windsor Castle, South side, Castle Hill, towards entrance
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 26mm (39mm equiv.)

There was a crowd of people, all the way up to the entrance of the castle. Our first reaction naturally was "Is this the queue for visitors to the castle?" — we were about to give up, but then asked a guard about the purpose of the crowd. We were told that in about 30 minutes the Queen would "go for a walk" (whatever that means for Royals!). At first, we saw no reason to add ourselves to the large crowd, and went for a short stroll. 15 minutes prior to "the event" we returned and walked up the road, as close to the entrance as possible. People were stacked many meters deep — no chance to see much directly… still, we mingled into the crowd until we were stuck. The rule now was: don't move! If you move, only move forward! — without using our elbows. To Lea's and Deborah's dismay, the girl next to me asked her friend to carry her on his shoulders, so most of what Lea saw was that girl's butt...

Windsor Castle, South entrance & crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, South entrance & crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/10, 1/400, 25mm (37mm equiv.)

(click on the images for a full size view). I was slightly closer to the passage than my companions, but just got an occasional glimpse at the passage from the entrance to the castle. I saw a number of photographers with huge tele and zoom lenses — and found myself confronted with a quick decision what lens to mount etc. — 

As there was no chance to catch anything by looking through the viewfinder I decided to leave the 16 - 35 mm zoom lens on, set to 16 mm (24 mm equivalent @ full frame), so I could catch the widest area while shooting blind (and later select the interesting section of the good shots by cropping and straightening); the weather was beautiful, bright, so I let the camera decide what shutter speed and aperture to use (at the default sensitivity setting of 200 ISO); I enabled slow speed continuous shooting (though I ended up doing single shots, at most 1 shot / second), and I left the autofocus on. This last point may have been a slight mistake, see below — though using manual focus bears the danger of accidentally altering the focus and ruining an entire series of shots.

Punctually, at 11:45 local time, the Queen's Rolls Royce appeared at the entrance to the castle, followed by another car — and there she was, in the rear of the car, as I could see at a quick glimpse — I lifted my Nikon above my head and took shots by pointing into approximate directions, merely making sure I did not tilt the camera too much (I hate the extra work with correcting geometric distortions!):

Windsor Castle, Royals arriving on driveway
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/8, 1/250, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

The car stopped, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II stepped out of the car, followed by HRH Prince Philip:

Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II has stepped out of the Rolls
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/8, 1/250, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

After she greeted the welcoming committee, she (unfortunately) turned around and was guided towards the south-eastern side of the street/place, where she was welcomed by a crowd of kids (presumably scholars of  Eton College) who occupied the eastern side of the passage, opposite our position. Prince Philip at first followed her at some distance:

Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II moves on to greet the crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/8, 1/250, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Inevitably (with autofocus) someone would lift a camera into the focus area of mine, causing an off-focus shot; I might have avoided some of this either by using manual focus (see above) or by restricting the focus area to the center — but when shooting blind, you never know where the area of interest is:

Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II moves on to greet the crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/8, 1/250, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

You might wonder what this "pro photographer" is doing with his 400 mm telephoto lens — merely a couple feet from the Royals — I think I was far better off using a wide angle lens and cropping!!
While in the back the Queen was interacting with the crowd, Prince Philip (luckily for us!) turned to the other side of the street and was walking towards us:

Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II greeting crowd, Prince Philip approaching
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip approaching crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II greeting crowd, Prince Philip approaching
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II greeting crowd, Prince Philip approaching
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip approaching crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

For a split second I saw him standing 3 - 4 meters away from us, now talking to people behind the fence, so I kept shooting blindly — certainly no master photos, but still reasonable (I think), and completely unexpected for us as casual visitors to the castle:

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Windsor Castle, Prince Philip talking to people in crowd
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/9, 1/320, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

Meanwhile (2.5 minutes later, that is), the Queen had (apparently) moved on down the street, and Prince Philip started following her. A few moments later, the Queen's Rolls Royce followed the Royals — I took a couple shots from the car (just for the record); on the shot below I have marked the mirror image of my arms holding the camera in the middle window of the car — proof that I saw nothing at all with my naked eyes…

Windsor Castle, The Royal Rolls, departing
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/8, 1/250, 16mm (24mm equiv.)

That was it for our encounter with the Royal Family! The street soon cleared up, and (thanks to the pre-ordered tickets) we were lucky to be among the first to enter the castle, once the gates opened for the public, some 30 minutes later (OK, it takes another 20 minutes to get through the security checks). We enjoyed visiting the castle! Photography is only allowed outside buildings, though — so, I conclude this post with just two representative shots from that afternoon:

Windsor Castle, garden below central tower
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/10, 1/400, 17mm (25mm equiv.)

It was an interesting day — with an encounter that we would not have dreamed of!

Windsor Castle, palace guards, patrolling
Nikon D300, AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 16 - 35mm f/4G ED VR
ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/160, 35mm (52mm equiv.)

A Light Leak in my D300?

In summer 2009,  some 18 months after switching to the Nikon D300 body, I noted a strange artifact on some of my photos. Here's a sample shot that highlights the problem:

18 - 200 mm super zoom @ ISO 200, 27 mm, f/11, 1/320"

Initially, I didn't even notice the defect which was most conspicuous when it fell onto a clear sky or other monotonous area. I just thought "strange!" — and patched it away in Aperture. My primary suspicion was that this may be a reflection caused by the skylight filter that I used to protect the front lens of my 18 - 200 mm VR super zoom lens: sun light (the artifact seemed to be linked to pictures taken in bright sunshine) can be reflected from the filter in front of the sensor, then reflected back on the backside of the UV or Skylight filter, producing an extra reflex / artifact — this is a known phenomenon. However, if this was the problem, why then would the artifact always appear in the same location??

My next thought was that it might be some object / dust particle towards the back end of the zoom lens, which might explain why the artifact looked like a diffraction pattern (with dust on the sensor I would expect well-defined, dark spots). So, I was hoping that better lenses would cure the problem. Wrong.

In spring 2010 I switched from the super zoom to professional (full frame) quality 70 - 200 mm f/2.8 and 16 - 35 mm f/4 lenses; I did not use an extra UV filter, just to make sure this does not cause extra headaches. The lenses produced very good, high quality, clear images — but sure enough, the problem was still there! Sometimes it took while to realize the issue was present, like here:

70 - 200 mm f/2.8 @ ISO 200, 105 mm, f/10, 1/400

But once I realized that it was at a given location in the raw image, it became hard to ignore it:

One some background it wasn't easy to make it disappear — sometimes I needed to use Photoshop, or at least very careful patching in Aperture. Here's a close-up look at the artifact in the above shot:

Now I was more worried about my camera body. But — if it wasn't the lens(es), could it still be some strange kind of dust particle on the sensor filter? I took a series of blank, defocused shots of a uniform surface, at various lighting conditions — nothing at all, not the tiniest sign of sensor dust anywhere, let alone such (not so) funny circles!

So, I continued investigating and noted that the artifact only showed up when I had direct sunlight on the camera body — and particularly when the sun was almost or directly in the picture. My hypothesis then was that only a tiny light leak at some distance from the sensor plane would explain the circle-like diffraction pattern on photos, and why it would only appear when direct sunlight fell onto the front part of the camera body. In October 2010, I sent the body to Nikon for repair, along with pictures highlighting the issue. The warranty had expired, but the repair was done at no cost; the repair sheet spelled out some warning about not letting dust enter the body — but I'm sure this was not the issue! I took some shots with the sun in the picture — and I'm glad to report that the problem is gone and has since not reappeared:

24 - 120 mm f/4 @ ISO 200, 36 mm, f/10, 1/400"

24 - 120 mm f/4 @ ISO 200, 36 mm, f/14, 1/800"

Airshow Photo Attempts

On June 25th, 2011, the Swiss army air defense troops celebrated their 75th anniversary, and on this occasion they organized an air show in Dübendorf, just about 6 km from the place where we live. The setting was an old, venerable military airport (formerly also Zurich's civilian airport) that is in the process of being dissolved: it is located within the agglomeration of Zurich, in a relatively densely populated area — we all (even 4 - 6 km away!) still remember the very disruptive, rumbling noise caused by the Mirage IIIS jet fighters starting with afterburner!

Lea and I had been at the Air '04 in Payerne 7 years ago (2004-09-04, in tropical heat and totally blue sky) — I then took pictures with my Nikon Coolpix 5700, with mixed success: for good pictures that camera was simply too slow, the electronic viewfinder too limited. This time I wanted to do better, and so I took my Nikon D300, the tripod, 70 - 200 mm and 24 - 120 mm zoom lenses (only used the former in the end), as well as the 2x teleconverter into my slingbag and was curious to see how things would go. The weather was so-so: mostly covered sky, but at least enough visibility for the event to take place. That part worked out OK, though the contrast was limited with all that gray background. Once it began raining a few drops, but that was just minutes.

So, how did I do? Well, let's start with the downside: we arrived by train, what we thought was "just in time" — but we did not anticipate the extended foot walk due to the route which they assigned to pedestrian visitors! Once we were on site, we spent some time trying to find a good viewing spot: the initial location was not good enough, so we had to walk a while to find a suitable, central location. This was merely minutes before the event would start; needless to say that front row spots were all taken, though that was a minor issue, as things would mostly happen in the air. I had enough time to install my tripod, mount the 70 - 200 mm zoom on the tripod (with the teleconverter), to attach the camera body, and to adjust the tripod height — and (too) soon the event started! In the aftermath I should have taken more time to think about optimum camera settings: most of the shots were taken with "P", I must confess! That alone wasn't too bad, though — but I should have switched to a higher ISO setting: in lieu of ISO 200, I should have used ISO 400 or 800, maybe (above that, the D300 starts to be a bit noisy), in order to shorten the shutter speeds for sharper pictures. Of course I used the VR — but with moving objects this is of limited value.

Some general remarks: most of the pictures were taken from the tripod, though I kept the ball head loose, so just used the tripod as stabilizing support, which worked out OK. I never used the 24 - 120 mm zoom, all pictures shown here are from the 70 - 200 mm zoom, with teleconverter, using the resulting range of 140 - 400 mm focal length (210 - 600 mm equivalent @ 35 mm frame size). In the aftermath, this turned out to be adequate: with a stronger zoom it is hard to capture some of the fast moving actions, and at wider angles (e.g., 70 - 200 mm without teleconverter, or with the same lens setting, but a full frame body) I would end up doing more cropping back home — and then I might need a higher pixel count. A camera with higher ISO range would have helped, though! Note that all pictures are taken with horizontal camera position — with cropping back home, as necessary. On to the show — all focal lengths mentioned are for 35 mm frame size; click on the images to enlarge:

The event started with the PC-7 team (currently still located in Dübendorf), showing off its power in precision formation flight — the selection of a central viewing spot paid off:

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 480 mm, f/14, 1/250"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 600 mm, f/14, 1/160"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 600 mm, f/14, 1/160"

Next in the program was a F/A-18 "Hornet" fighter plane:

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 600 mm, f/14, 1/160"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 600 mm, f/10, 1/400"

Paratroopers showed off a precision landing. When you see these guys sitting in their ropes, that looks rather comfortable — not really comforting, though, considering that international war convention explicitly allows shooting at paratroopers during their descent!

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 420 mm, f/10, 1/400"

This was followed by a Super Puma helicopter presenting some amazing maneuvers: military pilots call this a "truck" — yet it can almost do loopings!

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 m, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

This being the 75th anniversary of the Swiss air defense, they had to show some live shooting at real airplanes — using self-decaying plastic ammunition, of course:

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 480 mm, f/8, 1/250"

The highlight of every airshow in Switzerland is the Patrouille Suisse, showing some spectacular acrobatics & precision formation flights on their six F-5E "Tiger":

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 300 mm, f/11, 1/500"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 300 mm, f/11, 1/500"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 300 mm, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 600 mm, f/11, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 600 mm, f/11, 1/500"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 315 mm, f/11, 1/400"

 ... and their final bouquet before finishing the show with flares:

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

D300, 70 - 200mm f/2.8 zoom + TC-20E III @ 210 mm, f/10, 1/400"

I missed the most spectacular piece where five Tigers are forming a tunnel, and the sixth machine is flying against them at near speed-of-sound, through the tunnel: exactly at that moment a guy in front of me decided to lift his daughter onto his shoulders, right into my view! Well, even with serial shots this is hard to capture anyway.

Given my lack of experience with photography at such events, I was quite satisfied: after processing and selecting I retained  almost 100 pictures out of 160 taken (could probably trash a couple more, though).