Holy Trinity

Here are some photos I took of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where I will be getting married in May.

I'm posting these images for two reasons: one, they're fairly good shots and two, they were taken with my old compact camera and I wanted to explore the differences between that one and my new Canon 20D by considering what I'd do differently with the new camera.


Holy Trinity Angel
Fuji FinePix S602, 46.8mm, 1/12 @f/2.8, ISO 200

I like this shot for a number of reasons, primarily the composition and the compelling main subject. There are, however, a number of problems that are present in the image that were simply unpreventable with the equipment I used.

First, the good stuff. Classic rule-of-thirds shot putting the angel right on a vertical one-third line. The many diagonals provide a strong sense of perspective contrasted with the straight verticals of the angel, the wooden post behind her, and the short side of the bricks. The strong diagonals of the implied triangle of the wooden beams also work nicely against the perspective diagonals. Shapewise, this is about as compositionally good a photograph as I've ever taken.

Now, the problems. Note in the exposure info that this image was taken at wide open aperture. Still, every detail of the background is as sharp as the main subject. I can say with certainty that, had I shot this with my 20D at wide open aperture, the window and the design on the wall would be markedly blurred and the focus of the image would remain on the main subject. Also note the focal length of 47mm (35mm-equivalent: 210mm)...this is fully zoomed in. With my 20D, my reach is increased to the 35mm equivalent of 480mm and I would've been able to frame the bottom a little tighter. Finally, this is a 3.1MP image that is automatically upsampled to 6.0MP using Fuji's SuperCCD (go to the SuperCCD III section) technology. This results in a higher resolution recorded image, but it adds a good bit of noise in the process and adds too much accutance to edges. With my 20D, even at ISO 1600 this image would have been less noisy and edges would have remained as soft as they were to the eye in the hazy sunlight streaming through the windows. The hazy light would intensify the mood of this and the following two images, working well with the harmonious neutral coloration inside the church. (I would've actually taken it at ISO 100 to reduce noise to an absolute minimum since there's no avoiding the use of a tripod with such low levels of light.)


Holy Trinity Prayer Candles
Fuji FinePix S602, 7.8mm, 1/4 @f/2.8, ISO 200

The idea of this shot is solid. Its execution was limited once again by my equipment. Because of space constraints, even zooming out to the 35mm-equivalent focal length of 35mm was not enough to get everything in frame without moving to a drastic perspective. This has the effect of compressing the space occupied by the statues dramatically, which is unfortunate as they are the centerpiece of the shot. Even with a steep perspective and wide angle, I still could not include the kneeler and the entire left candle bank without throwing off the framing or upsetting the horizontal. With the 20D, I'd have slapped on my Canon 17-85mm IS lens, moved around the front a bit more, included the entire kneeler and both candle banks. Hopefully I could've moved around front enough to get the plant mostly between the two larger statues...I'm not thrilled that the right statue almost seems like it's coming out of the planter in this shot.

My Fuji compact camera has an electronic viewfinder, which means it does not see to the corners of the image, making such exact framing difficult. Though it probably wouldn't have been possible to get the left edge of the left candle bank in frame, I could've picked up a little more if I hadn't left any air on the right. This would have been preferable because cutting the edges on both of the candle banks would've implied a long line going out of frame in both directions. As it is here, it just seems sloppy.

Finally, the dynamic range of this camera is somewhat more limited than that DiG!C II processor in my 20D. I expect I would've picked up an extra stop or so of dynamic range, bringing up the detail in the dark wood of the left candle bank while leaving a bit more detail in the blown out upper right portion of the image.


Holy Trinity Pews
Fuji FinePix S602, 9.7mm, 1/3 @f/2.8, ISO 200

The repetition of the pews and prayer books make this shot. Unfortunately, this shot was handheld and lost critical sharpness as a result of camera shake. I'm not sure if I could've addressed this without the use of a tripod using the 20D. I probably could have gotten close through a combination of higher ISO and image stabilization, but to maintain the same depth of field I would have had to sacrifice several stops by closing the aperture on my 17-85mm. (I would've had to set the focal length on this lens to 28mm...that would make the shot on both cameras the 35mm-equivalent of 45mm.) On the other hand, this shot might have made more sense with less depth of field--the repetition would not be lost just because the foreground pattern is not critically sharp...in fact, I suspect it could get well out of focus before the repitition element of this image would be lost.

Overall, the above three images are good photographs that display limitations of my old setup. I'm glad I did this--I'm realizing that it's a valuable exercise to note the different approaches that are not available to me because I've upgraded from a compact to a dSLR. I think I'll continue this exercise over the coming months, posting more of my favorite images shot with my old compact camera.