Hello, all. No local camera shops in Orlando do simple servicing of DSLRs so, unfortunately, I will have to ship my camera off to Nikon. The process of shipping it off, them cleaning it, and me getting it back could take anywhere from about 10-14 business days. So I guess the website will be back mid-April.
Author Archive for David
I hate to have to do this, but I need to put the site on hold for a little while. I’m not sure how long it’ll be (not more than a week or two). My camera is having problems and I need to have it serviced. If I can’t find a local shop to do this, I need to send it to Nikon. If I need to send it to Nikon, it apparently takes about 10 days on average. Check back for further updates. Sorry again!
Just a brief entry today due to poor timing on my part. I just want to quickly show the benefits of a good angle, which is somewhat embodied in the image to the left. I believe it is safe to say that this shot is more interesting than a shot would be if it were head-on this stained glass window. You should always experiment with angles! Subjects that are seemingly boring can be made interesting with a simple change in your angle. Give yourself different options, and always make sure you try to test them out.
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
ISO Speed: 200
Today, I bring you what has been called by many (meaning one friend) a “thrilling discussion on depth of field.” Let’s begin.
The aperture size used for this picture was ƒ/5.6, which is a relatively large aperture size, hence the small depth of field. This, by the way, is one of my problems with photography. Everything seems to be opposite, which is tough for me to get a hold of. The bigger your ƒ-stop number, the smaller your actual aperture size. The smaller your aperture size, the greater depth of field you have. A great depth of field means less of a blurry background/foreground by the way.
DOF is a great way to add interest or focus one’s attention on an area of a photograph. Here, the depth of field extends from being sharp in the middle, to blurry on the top and bottom. Alternatives could be sharp on top and blurry on the bottom, or vice versa. I probably should have shot the aforementioned alternatives to match them against one another in a fight to the death, but alas, it did not come to mind at the time.
My main beef with THIS photo is that the blurriness on the bottom seems sudden. I’m not sure how it happened, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a transition between the sharp oats and the blurry oats, at least towards the bottom. Oh well.
Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Program: Shutter priority
I caught this little guy clinging to a tree by the lake. Luckily I had my 70-300mm lens so I could grab a shot without getting to close and sending the gecko scurrying away. This is another instance where I got a little ahead of myself and payed less attention than I should have: his tail is clipped. Barely, but it still runs off the top of the photo. I feel especially silly about this because this guy really wasn’t going anywhere. He sat pretty still for several minutes, and I had plenty of time to make sure he was entirely in the shot.
Besides this, I do wish that the gecko had been a bit further up so I could crop the bottom leaf out of the way. I don’t think it really adds anything to this photograph.
I’m not quite sure what else to say about this picture. I think the angle is pretty good, and I like the similarities between the gecko’s color and the tree’s color. I suppose another cool shot would’ve been to zoom a bit more and get a head-shot of the gecko. Maybe another time.
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/9
Focal Length: 300 mm
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
ISO Speed: 200
This is a portrait of one of my friends when I was in the midst of a college search. She is sitting in front of the Sarasota Bay looking very depressed indeed. When I recently asked her why she looks sad, she responded with, “Cause my hair is ugly.” It has recently been cut.
One of the first things I notice about this picture is an odd phenomenon: an angle. Yes, when inspected closely (except for the fact that close inspection is really not needed to see this), the picture is angled. I’d say by a good 2-3°. While this number may seem relatively small, it’s obviously very noticeable. Angling can be very artistic when the angle is bigger but, in this case, it was a simple mistake. The right edge of the picture is also a bit too close to the girl and, speaking of the girl, I wish she’d not slouch as much.
There are also several background elements which I wish weren’t there. The random tiny boat, for instance, and maybe even the buildings on the horizon. They are so small that, when focused on, are simply a bit distracting rather than adding to the picture.
One thing you may notice about this photo is the defiance of the Rule of Thirds. Ah yes, the dreaded Rule of Thirds. For those of you not in the know, this rule states that, when divided into a 3×3 grid by using two horizontal and two vertical lines, the four points made by the intersections of these lines should have some interesting element there. Well, if you were to grid this image, you’d find plain ol’ sky on one of the intersections. If you want my opinion, keep the Rule of Thirds in mind, but don’t treat it like a bible by any means. I think this picture looks perfectly alright without some crazy clouds at that point of sky. Although now that I think about it… crazy clouds would be kind of cool. Curse you, good weather!
Today, I have more homework to do than I usually do. Coupled with that, ’tis the season for midterms. Due to these time constraints, I present to you a cropped entry featuring examples of bad crops.On this week’s “What the Crop?” we look at bad crops of nature’s best: prettyful flowers.
Take it from me, folks: when photographing with a particular subject in mind, remember to keep the subject completely in the picture… If there’s a part of your subject that the photo would look better without, you can always just photoshop it out later. Play it safe and always photograph in full.
Exposure: 1/5000 sec
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 28 mm
ISO Speed: 200
I’m going to try something a little different today and do a comparison between two shots of the same thing. The comparison shot is…. a chapel! As you can see, this first shot has a lot of sunlight at the top of the picture; there is way too much, in my opinion. Interestingly, this is despite using the highest shutter speed available to my camera (1/5000 of a second). Even opening for that short of an amount of time, my camera still was able to pick up too much light. If you guessed that this is because of the aperture size, you’d be correct. When outside during a sunny day, you should always change the aperture size to control light rather than the shutter speed. With an aperture opening as big as f/3.5, you’re probably always going to end up with a lot of light hitting the lens, especially when angling upwards toward the sun. So what should be done about this picture? I could either set my camera’s mode dial to A and change the aperture whilst letting my camera handle the shutter speed, or I could be adventurous and set it to M and change both the aperture and shutter speed manually. I believe what I did was the former, and the result was this:
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/13
Focal Length: 28 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Now that the aperture opening is down to f/13, this shot is definitely darker. My camera set the shutter speed to 1/640, which also probably helped. Unfortunately, there still seems to be quite a bit of light in the upper left. Due to the change already taking place on the chapel itself, I fear that further changes in the aperture opening size would darken the shadows around the chapel before the amount of light in the upper left was actually lowered enough. In this situation, your best bet would be to wait a few minutes in hopes that a cloud will pass between you and the sun, and do your best to make that cloud look fantastic with the light behind it. Another good idea could be to simply come back later when the sun is lower and closer to the horizon so that it’s not right behind the chapel as it is in my pictures (I was a very impatient boy). The former would give a very interesting sky, and the latter could cast oranges and reds across the chapel that could be depicted very beautifully. Both are good ideas that would give very different photographs.
This shot is actually a bit old (I took it several years ago) but I thought I’d put it up due to it being one of my personal favorites thus far. I shot this rhododendron (I hope that’s what it is) prior to one of my cousin’s weddings in Boston a few years back. It’s one of many white flowers in a bush (as you can probably tell from the background) and I took a bunch of shots of the bush, but I liked this one the best probably due to its large depth of field (DOF). In fact, the depth of field may or may not be too large. That is one thing I might be inclined to change about this photograph.
Were I presented with the opportunity again, I’d try to take a shot with a smaller aperture opening (higher f-stop number). The aperture size I used (listed below) gave a very large DOF, which makes the background blurry and helps focus attention on the subject of the photo. It’s a great effect to use in order to divert attention while still keeping the background interesting. In this particular photo, however, some may believe the background to be too blurred. Were I a true photographer at the time, I would have taken multiple shots at different settings. Alas, I did not. But hey, that’s a pretty good idea now that I think of it.
One other thing that I notice is just a little thing, but I accidentally cropped off a bit of a leaf on the right side of the photo. I personally don’t think it really detracts from the photo, seeing as how the subject is the flower and not the stem it’s on or its leaves. However, some may be inclined to disagree with me. Speaking of crops, now that I think about it, I do actually wish I had left a bit more space between the edges of the flower and the edge of the picture. It seems a bit cramped on the right side.
One final thing I wish I had done was use this flower to test my lens’s macro function out. Of course, this may or may not have been a good idea because I didn’t have a tripod, which would have made for a possibly blurry close-up. Anyway, here’s the EXIF:
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
I caught a shot of this heron (I hope that’s what it is; maybe a crane?) while walking to the campus center to grab lunch. It was just sitting on the post posing, ready for its closeup. One thing I wish I knew was what type of bird this is, so I could properly title the picture instead of just referring to it as “bird” but oh well.
There are a couple things I wish I did differently with this picture. The first is minor, but I wish I had managed to catch the tip end of the bird’s tail rather than cropping it. A minor nuance for me, but I’ll mention it anyway. The second thing is fixable in photoshop, but I haven’t fixed it yet. Perhaps I will soon. I’d like to see what this picture would look like were the bird more of a silhouette and less of a simply shadowy bird. Maybe that didn’t make sense, but maybe when I upload a fixed version you’ll see what I mean. It’s just a simple matter of changing the picture’s levels. Anyway, here’s the EXIF data for this picture:
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/10
Focal Length: 220 mm
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
Orientation: Horizontal (normal)
Exposure Program: Shutter priority
Focal Length In 35mm Film: 330