Cityscapes from the Tokyo World Trade Center in Japan

[daggah]

Hey guys, I took my Olympus E-M5 OM-D to the World Trade Center yesterday. I actually took a day of leave (I'm in the US Air Force) when I saw that the weather forecast was supposed to be pretty nice. I leave next month, so I figured...what the hell. I am happy that I did!

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The Tokyo Tower amongst the sprawling Tokyo metropolis by davidgevert, on Flickr

For this shot, I intentionally shot at f/22, because, despite the risk of diffraction, I wanted the sun star. The crazy lens flare is in part due to shooting through the WTC's glass window.

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Sunset viewed from the Tokyo WTC by davidgevert, on Flickr

And finally, a 4-second long exposure during blue hour:

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Twilight over Tokyo by davidgevert, on Flickr

Thanks for looking! It was a nice change of pace shooting with my OM-D. I'm usually using my D800. On this outing, I primarily shot with the 12-50 f/3.5-6.3 and the 17 f/1.8. I chose the 12-50 in part because the lens hood I have for it is not a petal-type hood, which meant that I'd be able to stick it right up against the glass to help with reflections.

 

[Firedogg]

Very nice photos there. Especially love the blue hour.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[arch stanton]

You've just given me an idea to reuse some old rubber collapsible screw-on lens hoods I have - they'd eliminate reflections well and let you reframe with the flat rubber pressed against the glass.

 

[Ian.]

You were there at the right time of day!
I went up there at the same time of day with my work colleague. And he was surprised I wanted to stay. He thought we'd seen it all before the sun had set. But soon realised how beautiful it was becoming. I'd set my camera up for a timelapse too that seemed to take forever. But got the sun going down and the lights coming on and the trains whizzing by.

 

[tkbslc]

Very cool pics.

 

[MadMarco]

3 great shots, love them.

 

[agentlossing]

Glorious!

 

[SiamK]

Great photos. Thank you for sharing it with us.

 

[NoSeconds]

I heard a good trick for minimising reflections when shooting through glass, get a square meter of black cloth and attach a hooked suction cup to each of the top two corners. Cut a small X in the center of it for your lens to poke through then place it up on the glass where you are going to shoot from and click away...

Supposedly even reduces the weird double reflections created by double-glazed windows too...

 

[hazwing]

Nice images OP! Do you not get sunstars at F11? Or are they just smaller?

I heard a good trick for minimising reflections when shooting through glass, get a square meter of black cloth and attach a hooked suction cup to each of the top two corners. Cut a small X in the center of it for your lens to poke through then place it up on the glass where you are going to shoot from and click away...

Supposedly even reduces the weird double reflections created by double-glazed windows too...

Interesting idea... might look a bit weird, but still worth a go

 

[daggah]

I heard a good trick for minimising reflections when shooting through glass, get a square meter of black cloth and attach a hooked suction cup to each of the top two corners. Cut a small X in the center of it for your lens to poke through then place it up on the glass where you are going to shoot from and click away...

Supposedly even reduces the weird double reflections created by double-glazed windows too...

I have a few tricks that I use, myself. If I'm on a tripod, I just use a hoodie over the camera held up against the window...it basically does what you're describing.

Or I just put the lens right up against the glass, so that the lens hood is physically touching the window. However, I was getting some weird flaring mainly from the window itself not being perfectly clean in this case.