Saturday, December 1, 2007

12.01.07 - hello december (long post)

December is here... I have a feeling this month is absolutly going to fly by and before you know it I will be boarding a plane to hawaii to really learn what I'm doing. I ordered the 250d which is a "close up filter" for my 28-105 lens. I wasn't all that impressed with it at first since it was a a little over $80 but what I'm imagining is the possibilities. Here look at the results. I shot using the mirror lock up function for the first time. It locks up the miror before the exposure is taken so that there is even less vibration. When you have it on the timer it locks up the miror then waits 2 seconds and takes the picture. This is a nice way not to have to wait so long for the timer. But as I stepped back I watched my tripod sway a bit (i had my center column up all the way) I should probably buy a shutter release. Anyway...

this is as close as I could get without the filter and have the quarter still be in focus.



and this is how close I could get with the filter and still keep things in focus.
quite the difference huh?

I bought the 250d (close up filter) in light of the fact that even though i'm not much into shooting flowers, I might only be in hawaii once in my lifetime so I mise well shoot some flowers while i'm assuming that there there since they have quite an array of beautiful flowers there.

I'd love to be able to get in even closer with tiny things, but the reality of it is, is that most flowers are going to be at LEAST double the size of a quarter when in bloom and that means I can shoot the flower to fill up the full frame. Thats plenty.

I was looking for timelapse photography and found this photographers site along the way. It makes me very excited to go to kona. :)

As far as timelapse photography goes I found this site. Definitly check it out... I want to be able to do this type of thing... I have no clue who he gets it in movie format and is able to pan with it though... that blows my mind.

Doing this type of photograph would require this...
That is going to be about $150 after all is said and done...
I'm not sure if I can make that splurge before I go or not...

I'm trying not to allow myself to think of this upcoming school as THE event in my life... although I do expect it to be an amazing experience I have this strong desire to go out and buy every peice of photography equipment I think I could ever need to make sure I make the most of these three months. When in reality this three months will be TRAINING so that the rest of my life as I gather the gear I can continue to take pictures no matter where I am. Haha... I did however put the last of my music equiment up for sale today. A bunch of professional cymbals.. if you know anyone that is interested let me know. My thought process was just that those cymbals in my basement that haven't been used in over a year is really a new lens...


I took this photo yesterday, this is our new pastor. I don't know how it all came about but I do all of the staff pictures for my churches website. I'm not at all complaining, I just don't remember how it happened. You can see the pictures I've taken for the church here. I'm pretty proud of those shots on there, I feel like they are different than your standard "headshot" and they have some character to them. Everything else on the site is just stock photography.

I shot the other night in Baltimore. I went and heard Chris Hidey speak about missions at a youth group for young men that he leads and after we went into baltimore. He didn't have his camera but was a good sport about letting me shoot. If I'm in the city I always buy gas at this royal farms because its like 10c cheaper and we just went exploring and went from semi gheto area and took a turn through a gate and BAM we were in the middle of this brand new apartment complex where everyone owned a boat on the harbor. I only got 4 shots. 30s exposures take a while, well 30seconds plus the time it takes to process, plus it was cold and we weren't trying to get in any problems with the security or anything so we didn't stick around to long. I didn't think I got anything to great but the last shot I took I just edited up a bit (had to fix a crooked horizon line) and did my usual other touch ups and I'm really happy with how it turned out.


I figured out when I got home that a really smart thing to do when I'm shooting in extreemly low light situations is to snap off a frame at a high iso and a fast shutter speed so I can check the composition and then change up my settings back to a low iso and a long shutter to get the final shot once I know my composition is correct. This would only work if you were shooting with a tripod.

When i started this blog I had no clue that it was going to be such a long post. I'm not even done, i've got a lot of other things i want to say.

I'm glad I've gotten out there and just been shooting a ton over the past few months. I think its helped me to learn a lot. Here's a list of tangible things I can think of... with links to the moment I probably realized them.

- shoot at ISO 100 as much as you can
- Never use iso 1600
- use the timer when doing long exposures
(I didn't write anything about it, but this was pre having a tripod and I was setting up the camera on trashcans and using the timer)
- when shooting low light set your camera to burst mode and snap off multiple frames
and try not to shoot slower than your focal length this is just asking for blurry pics
- and the most recent lesson which is posted in this blog is snap off not quality frames (high iso, fast shutter) when shooting in extreme low light so you can see the composition

There is probably more lessons I've learned but thats all i can think of right now.

OH! Make and keep tangible lists of places/concepts/ideas you have that you want to shoot.

I printed out and read the strobist lighting 101. Its pretty much the off camera light resource. I played with my flash a bit last night too (the thing really makes no sense to me) and but I learned some new cool things that I can do by just looking through the instruction books for my camera and the flash. Thats where I learned how to do the mirror lock up (i had heard of this technique but never done it) and also learned some more controls on my flash.

Have I bored you enough? My break was really good... granted it was only like a week, but I felt like it was a little mini retreat only I was still living life. Maybe one day I'll post more about this and what I was learning. (Life things not photograhy) Maybe I'll combine the too and try to explain my thoughts with pictures as well.

adios
jim baker

p.s if you need family portraits for this upcoming holiday season please let me know, I'm sure we can work out some kind of deal.

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