The Official S-T.N Photography (methods) Thread

[Marcster]

I'll have to read through this when I have more time, but one of my favorite photo perspectives is head on, down low:



Love the blue color from under his neck (taken in Escondido):



Who says shooting into the sun is bad?:



And selective coloring is fun too:

[Marcster]

Wife and I went to Sydney back in 2002, these are taken with my Minolta X-700 (print camera).

Sometimes you have to do the tourist photo:



You can't escape the standard photos:



But the unexpected close-up is fun too:



Sometimes perspective can make the photo:



I like photographing people too:



And candids are fun (damn, this was the best corn on the cob me & the Mrs. ever had, at an outdoor flea market in Sydney):



Giraffe enjoying the sites:



Mother & baby (I shot 2.5 rolls of film at the Koala Bear exhibit in Sydney):



Mom's tired:



Meercats are very cool:



Mrs. Marcster and me:

[vitaminC]

Okay, now I'm really kicking myself for not yet having purchased a "super zoom"  

Last Sunday I was hiking at Pinnacles National Monument, and a group (flock?) of California Condors flew overhead. 70mm was not enough, though I imagine 200 or 270 would have been!



Oh well, at least I got a nice flower pic:


Pinnacles Pics

On Tues I went whale watching, and again needed a longer lens, though this time someone loaned me a 500mm! It was a fixed length, fixed aperture, manual focus lens, however, so most of the pictures are duds. Still, I think a few will be okay. Just need to find the time to go through them...

[torags v2]

Oh boy, he's got it: NAS (Nikon Acquisition Syndrome)

I've got a condor story. The shot below was taken with an 18/200; I couldn't get close enough without frightening them. This was the most Condors I've every seen. It was on an ocean backwater at Cambria, CA.

I have gone back at least 5 times to see them again, since I have longer glass now. Nope, no luck. This is a stop for me from the Baja races now.



Rags
 

[Johnny Monsoon]

I was playing with my settings, going polar opposite with F vs A & mixing ISO to suit.  Some were taken with a really high F and low A, then conversely.  I found that I wound up getting very good results in heavily backlit areas while retaining good detail and 'timbre'/mood.

[Johnny Monsoon]

[doodah man]

Those are really good exposures for having the sun in frame.  Were you shooting per the camera's metering?  And what the heck is F?  Usually it is shutter (T or S) versus A (aperture).

Fair amount of barrel distortion on your lens at wide angles, what lens was it?

[Johnny Monsoon]

Those are really good exposures for having the sun in frame.  Were you shooting per the camera's metering?  And what the heck is F?  Usually it is shutter (T or S) versus A (aperture).

Fair amount of barrel distortion on your lens at wide angles, what lens was it?

F = shutter speed.

Yes, the camera was setting the metering; I was poking around with shutter speed and aperture settings, and adjusting the ISO as required.  I intentionally left some of the photos a little under or overexposed to try to give them more of a sense of mood.  I found that I got better results shooting at either end of the spectrum for particular desires.

The lens is the one that came with the kit.  I had initially thought that as well on some of the more 'horizon/open space' shots but it isn't.  The land actually rises on either side.  As you place a flat edge across the water, you'll see there's actually very little distortion; I was a bit surprised at that.  The lens is a Nikon Nikkor DX18-135mm 1:3.5-5.6G ED

I still have a ton to learn.

[torags v2]

Depth of field example:

My bride was in the middle of preparing for a dinner and I thought it was a good opportunity to test my 50 1.8 on food. Depth of field is razor thin at 1.8 so I used f2, iso 200, 50mm @ 1/50 sec.

With that aperture I only got 6-8" of sharpness (depth of field). From the edge of the pie look up to where it begins to blur. Lesson learned: Not good for this pie, but think about a person subject with some blemishes - a nose focus would be in order.



(I really got to get a life).....

Rags

[doodah man]

Mmmm....pie.  

[doodah man]

Did some more night photography last night, this time from my car...too freaking cold to shoot outside.  I braced the two rear legs of my tripod against the rear doors and the front leg against the dash (visible at the bottom of the photos).  To do this, you need a tripod that will let you increase the leg angle to almost 90 degrees from vertical (i.e., the legs are almost horizontal at this point).  I shut off my auto power-off function and used a wireless remote to trigger the shutter.  I used f/16 and tried both 15 and 30 second exposures.  Some of the light effects were pretty cool.  On the last one I also zoomed the lens during the exposure.

[Jeff]

Those were freakin cool doodah.

Jeff

[FZ1 Matt]

More fun with the 18-200.






I went to a 3 hour ice race yesterday -- It's what WI people do for fun  









My main problem I realized after I got home -- I kept the ISO at 800. I forgot to set it down to 100 since taking the cat pics in the morning.   There's no way to see in the view finder or display on the D80 unless you go check it manually.

[Marcster]

Very cool!  I bet you could one leg of each the tripod behind each of the seats and the third up on the rear seat's seat back to get the tripod leg out of the photo...  Even if it took someone in the back seat to hold the camera steady.

Cats make great subjects!  Here's one of mine:

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

This one looks like it could have hurt 

[ctbandit]

Wow there are some really good photographers on STN!!

I'll have to dig up some personal faves and post them up.

[kurtw]

Beautiful photos, Matt!  I love those ice racing photos and the indoor photos look great!

[torags v2]

ditto... Interesting ice racing. Good white balance BTW (tough on snow)

Rags

[FZ1 Matt]

ditto... Interesting ice racing. Good white balance BTW (tough on snow)
Rags

Thanks. WB set to +2. I switched to +1.5 later after reviewing images. It was kind of silly checking images out there though -- sooo bright! I also had a cir polarizer on front. It was also 6 degrees out so that made it interesting just taking any pictures, let along messing with the settings.

[Jeff]

Love the photos Matt. Especially the last two ice racing ones.

Jeff