Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
Daily photo for 1/22/12 - Venice Pier at Dusk
Tripod, Nikon D80, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ND grad filter, f/22, ISO 100, 6 second exposure
Timing - Although I arrived before sunset, I waited for a while afterwards to get these colors. The sun set at 5:15; this shot was taken about 5:30. Continue reading »
Circular polarizing filters are great for saturating colors and preventing unwanted reflections. At least that’s what the internet says but it’s no substitute for discovering on my own, so I spent $150 on a 77mm Promaster filter down at Tuttle Cameras when they were having a big sale. Check out the dramatic difference in these unedited photos:
 Minimum polarization... |
 Maximum polarization! |
I mean, wow. Right?
I wanted to share a couple of first impressions. First, there’s a light loss of about 2 stops. That’s like shooting at 1/60 instead of 1/250 or f/5.6 instead of f/2.8. Or just setting your camera to -2 EV. In a more practical sense, it means you might need to use a tripod when you wouldn’t normally have to, like after sunrise or before sunset. Continue reading »
My wife and I recently returned from an amazing 3-week trip to South Africa and Mozambique. Along the way, I used the Photosynth app on my iPhone to capture full 360° panoramas of all of the places we stayed and a few places we visited.
Now I share them with you.
Church Square in Pretoria, South Africa
Each of the links below will open in a new page on photosynth.net, where you can pan around and zoom in/out. Be sure to try it full-screen.
My wife makes many cameo appearances, as does my shadow and feet. Not all of the panoramas are complete due to space constraints and/or laziness. Please ignore any weird artifacts or ghosting effects – Photosynth is a quick-and-dirty tool. OK, let’s get started!
As I’ve been using my iPhone for the One/Day Project, I’ve developed quite an interest in the various ways to enhance the iPhone’s camera. Unfortunately, the genre of iPhone photography seems to have already jumped the shark. In addition to some truly ridiculous physical add ons, there are literally thousands of apps available. Of course the vast majority are terrible. Just terrible.
One area that I consider legitimate is panoramas. Since your phone is now a camera as well as a computer, it’s cool that you can take and stitch multiple images into panoramas with the same device. Panoramas allow you to create higher resolution images than is possible with the camera alone. It’s great for capturing the big picture and being able to immediately share it.
Palisades Park - my daily photo for 4/23/09
My interest in panoramas has pointed me towards three apps – Pano, AutoStitch and Photosynth. All three have their pros and cons which I’ve briefly laid out below, along with some sample photos of the same scenes for comparison. Continue reading »
Yikes, what an official name. If you want to know what AF-S, VR and IF-ED means, head to Ken Rockwell’s page about it. I’m going to go ahead and call it the Nikon 70-300mm, because that’s what a normal person would call it.
70-300 w/lens hood on my D80
I bought the lens from Adorama – a factory-refurbished model at an additional discount, so it was a great deal. It came with only a 90-day warranty and no fancy packaging, but I’ll live. As you may have read in my previous post, I was planning on renting a fixed 300mm f/4 for an upcoming Africa trip, but it was simply too heavy. The 70-300mm is one stop slower (f/5.6 instead of f/4) and in general lower quality, but it has vibration reduction and it’s half the weight! And half the price!
Size Comparison
You can see from the photo above that it’s by far my biggest lens, although it’s only 6 ounces (170g) heavier than the 18-200mm. I plan on taking both of those zoom lenses to Africa and leaving the macro and f/1.4 lenses behind.
Zooming is a big plus! In theory I like the idea of using a high-quality fixed lens and moving myself to ‘zoom’ in and out, but I won’t have that luxury on the safari since I’ll be in a Land Rover 99% of the time. Looking at other folks’ photos from Kruger outings, we’ll almost certainly see animals close to the road, and I don’t want to be stuck at 300mm if that happens.
Regarding the photo at right, however, God help us if we are ever that close to a hippo. But hopefully you see my point.
I have a big trip planned, worthy of a big lens.
Sharing
Later this year I’ll be in Kruger National Park in South Africa, where there be many animals. Of course I’m struggling with what lenses to bring, and I want to share what I’ve learned so far, a bunch of photos, and why I won’t actually be taking this lens.
In the past I’ve rented a massive Sigma zoom and an ultra-wide Tokina lens and haven’t been particularly impressed, so I wanted to stick with Nikkor this time around. I wanted a long lens (obviously) but wanted the superior quality of a fixed focal length, rather than a zoom lens. I looked around – mostly at Nikon’s website – and settled on the 300mm f/4, which is the equivalent of 450mm on my Nikon D80′s DX sensor. Continue reading »
This is my first blog post setup photo, meaning that I’m writing a bit more than I usually would on my previous setup photos. Questions? Leave a comment!
Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera with no editing.
See (and purchase!) the photo on the One/Day Project website.
The key to the lighting in this photo is the off-camera softbox. I used an SB800 with a Lumiquest LTp. I fired it using my D80′s on-camera flash in commander mode, and I used large white foam board to reflect some of the light back – that’s what you see on the bottom of the peas. I set my on-camera flash to 1/128 power to fill in the shadows a little, but I’m not sure it had much of an effect. The SB800 was on 1/8 power. I used an aperture of f/11 and shot straight on to get all of the subject in focus. Continue reading »
My One/Day Project is now 75% done, after 3 years and 1095 photos. It’ll be complete on leap day (February 29th) in 2012. Of course, I might just keep going after that…
Panoramic crop of my final photo in Year 3 - the Santa Monica Pier
Like last year, I wanted to do some reflection on the previous year as well as look forward to Year 4. Since no one has volunteered to interview me, here are some questions I asked myself:
The following charts show the breakdown of camera models used in each year so far. Continue reading »
My One/Day Project has recently featured some water droplet photos. I hope that each one was more impressive than the last, because it was an ongoing process to discover how best to set up and light the drops.
Five Days of Water Drop Experimentation
Before I get into this, let me give some credit where it’s due. I saw the basic technique at a casual hands-on lighting class taught by Paul Van Allen at the Aquarium of the Pacific during Photographers Night. You can see his setup on Flickr. There are countless other sources for droplet stuff, such as this Strobist post. Search SmugMug or Flickr for ‘droplet’ or ‘water drop’ and you’ll see plenty more. Ok, moving on… Continue reading »
On 9/8/10, folks with an iPhone 4 could upgrade to iOS 4.1 and get HDR capability on the rear-facing camera. If you don’t know what High Dynamic Range photography is, do a quick search.
I’ve never been a fan of HDR – it looks over-saturated, washed out and generally fake. Most of the shots in Flickr’s HDR group back up that claim. That’s not to say it can’t be done well – I’ve liked plenty of HDR shots. The main difference is that I couldn’t immediately tell that they were HDR, because they weren’t screaming “that HDR look.”
I consider HDR more of a trendy novelty style rather than real photography. Regardless of my current views, I was eager to see how the iPhone 4 executed its HDR functionality.
Below is a collection of HDR shots that I’ve taken over the past two months and some comments. I included a wide variety of subjects and lighting conditions. Hover to see the non-HDR version (by default, the iPhone saves both versions). You can view the full size images here, should the mood strike you. Everything is straight out of the camera, no editing. Continue reading »
