Chapel of St John the Divine, The Friary
The photography of this windows was not ideal. In a perfect world a 50mm or 60mm prime lens was needed, but the best I could manage was a wide zoom. Though an ‘L’ Series lens, I already knew image quality was quite soft at the edges. However, because 40mm was technically too wide for this window, I was able to benefit from using more of the centre of the optics.
As I started editing this piece, I quickly realised that it would have been sensible to have focused upon a single light rather than the entire window! It was hugely complicated and the illumination dropped off dramatically from top to bottom which was going to require a lot of careful balancing.
Once complete, I was delighted to have worked on the whole window. However, I quickly realised that I would need to revisit The Friary with my Canon Extender EF 1.4x III, in order to capture better Comper’s signature wild strawberry.
Dominic Price (2019) East Window [Ninian Comper, 1911 – Chapel of St John the Divine, The Friary]
- Canon EOS-1D X Mark II
- Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L II USM
- 40mm | ISO-50 | f/8.0
- Exposure range: 1/160sec – 1.6sec
The image is the result of the exposure blending by hand of 25 separate images.