Negril Beach, Jamaica

Friday, June 25, 2010

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1604

So I realized yesterday that seeing an image taken in the middle of the winter may not be the most appropriate thing to post at the beginning of the summer, so I decided to send you all off to your weekend with a nice beach shot. That’s actually a totally garbage anecdote, I just needed a way to start off today’s post, other than just saying “Hello, everyone!” Hope you enjoyed it.

Yes, this is another shot from my Jamaican vacation a little while ago. I’ve still got a ton of pics left from that trip, but I’ve basically covered all the major themes. (I’ve got a beach shot, a beach shot with a boat, a sunset shot, a sunset shot with a boat.. you get the idea.) But, as long as I space them out a bit, I figure it’s ok.

Now, for the meaty part of the post. I believe I’ve mentioned at least once or twice before how useful a polarizing filter can be. (In fact, I think I said something along the lines of “If you go to the beach without one I’ll hunt you down and say derogatory things to you until your self-esteem is significantly worse than it was before.”) So it turns out that, while I was in Jamaica, I was playing around a bit with the video feature on my current SLR (Canon T1i), and I took a couple movies with the polarizer on there, so you can see what it actually does for you. It’s one thing to talk about it, but it’s another thing entirely to actually SEE it. In case you’ve never seen or used one before, a circular polarizer is a filter that you screw on to the front of your lens like any other filter. However, unlike most filters, it’s actually comprised of two pieces, such that the actual glass part of the filter can freely rotate on your lens, because the polarizer does different things depending on the angle of the light. In practice, this changes the effect of the filter from being almost negligible (well, it basically changes it just into a neutral density filter, which has the effect of just dimming the light, like sunglasses, without affecting the color at all) to being full-on polarized. Thus, when using one, you rotate the filter to get the effect you want, then you take the picture. So, in the video below, that’s what I was doing, just rotating the filter while recording the video. This doesn’t really require explanation if you actually watch the video, but watch what it does to the water, and you’ll understand why you should never go to the Caribbean without one.

Right, on that note.. Have a great weekend!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens with circular polarizer. 1/200s, f/9.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm, cropped.

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Rose, Woodland Park Rose Garden

Monday, June 21, 2010

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1597

Hey guys! Sorry for the late post today. Most of you probably won’t even see this one until tomorrow, so you won’t even realize that this was Monday’s post. (Which means I’m already planning on waiting until Wednesday for the next post – I’ve got to give each post enough time to sink in, right??) Also, I’m sorry that my posts have been rather anemic the last few weeks. Hopefully today’s entry makes up for it, it’s going to be nice and meaty. (And I’m saying that even though I’ve barely even started writing it yet!)

It’s almost the end of June now, which means that the Woodland Park Rose Garden here in Seattle is almost fully in bloom. That meant it was time to bust out some new stuff that I hadn’t yet had a chance to play with, and you can see above one of the results.

A little while back, I found a new (to me) macro lens on Ebay, and I snatched it up. It’s a Kiron 105mm macro. It gets all the way to 1:1 magnification without needing any extension tubes or anything like that. (Which differs a little bit from another old lens that I got that was advertised as 1:1, but that was only when you used the “1:1 attachment”, which was simply an extension tube like any other.) The focus and aperture controls are totally manual, there’s nothing auto on this lens. It’s made for a Minolta mount, which means a few unique challenges when you’re shooting with a camera with a Canon EF-S mount. But it’s totally, amazingly awesome. And I love it. Woooo!

So.. where do I start? I suppose I’ll start with the 1:1 magnification. I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll just give a quick refresher here. The magnification ratio is how large something is in real-life vs how big the projection of it is on your camera sensor. Actually, I flipped that around, it’s how big the projection is vs how big the real thing is. Whoops. Anyway, as an example, let’s say you’re taking a picture of something that’s exactly 35 millimeters across (And, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll say you’re using a 35mm camera, or a digital SLR with a full-frame sensor). You grab your first lens, which has a magnification ratio of 1:4. You zoom in as far as you can and focus as close as you can. You’ll notice that the object (let’s call it a bug) covers one quarter of your sensor. It’ll look pretty big on the screen, or if you print it out, but the actual light from the object will measure 35 divided by 4 millimeters as its shining on your sensor. Now, if you switch lenses, to your 1:2 lens, that same object/bug will take up half your sensor, and if you use a 1:1 lens, that thing will stretch across the entire frame. Meaning, the projection of the bug will be 35mm on your sensor, and if you blow it up to 12×18 or whatever, the image of the bug will be 18 inches long. Make sense? Most lenses that have the word “macro” in the name generally top out at around 1:4. To get any closer than that you need to find a “real” macro lens, which will get you to either 1:2 or 1:1 depending on the lens. (And there’s one that I know of from Canon that actually gets you up to 5:1, but that’s just crazy talk.) So, this lens I got gets me 1:1. Since I shoot with a Canon T1i, which is NOT a full-frame sensor (it’s actually 24mm or something across), that means if I’m shooting something that’s only 24mm across, it’ll fill my frame. Awesome!

Now, here’s what I think is a more interesting topic: mounting old lenses on your new digital camera. The two main concerns (that I care about) are the controls, and the actual attachment to your camera.

By controls, I’m talking about the focus and the aperture. It’s easy to take those for granted with these fancy modern cameras. You hold the shutter button halfway, and the lens magically spins around and focuses for you. Magic! But with a lens with a mismatched mount, the electrical connections are different, so suddenly your lens is dead-weight. And by dead-weight, I mean you’re stuck with manual focus. Aperture is also tricky. The way most cameras work (mine works this way anyway) is that it keeps the aperture wide open while you’re framing the shot. Then, it closes down the aperture to the desired size when you actually press the shutter. This one’s actually even worse than focus; every lens that I’ve ever seen at least has the controls for focusing manually, even if they’re not that handy to use. But most modern lenses don’t have controls for aperture at all! Thus, you’re stuck using the lens wide open! (This is one of the biggest problems with reverse mounting a lens, if you were wondering..)

One way around these is of course to get a mount adapter that hooks up to the electrical connections on both the lens and the camera, and translates the signals as required. I’m assuming things like that exist, although I’ve never actually looked for one, because I’ve never tried to use a lens that was eligible, to use a term that’s not quite applicable. There’s still one huge, glaring caveat that I’ll talk about in a bit, but for the most part you’re good to go at that point. Except, not in this case. I’m using a fairly old lens, which doesn’t do auto focus or auto aperture at all. (Well, to be fair, the term “auto aperture” means the not closing down until you’re snapping the picture, not having the camera set the size, but whatever, I’m going to overload the term, and you’re going to like it.) So, to use this lens, I’ve got to focus it myself (which isn’t really a problem, when I’m shooting macro I always use manual focus anyway, and I do my focusing by swaing back and forth until I’ve got it right), and I’ve got to set the aperture myself. The second one’s actually kind of a pain in the butt. As you all should already realize, shrinking the aperture means letting through a lot less light. But, if you’ve got less light, that means things are, umm, darker! So, when you’re trying to focus using your, you know, eyeball, if you limit the amount of light you’ve got to use, it can get really hard to actually see enough detail to focus. This is just one of those things, I haven’t found a great way around it. I suppose if you’re using a tripod you’re fine, because then you can focus with the aperture wide open, then close the aperture, then take the picture, knowing that your camera isn’t going to move between when you focused and when you shut the aperture. But if you’re going hand-held, that doesn’t work at all. Blah. Whatever, back to the topic at hand.

So, that’s the deal with the controls. But what about the mount itself?

A particular camera mount design has a couple really important characteristics. The first is of course the actual physical connection. You know, square-peg-in-a-round-hole kind of stuff. The hardware has to actually fit. That’s the more obvious one. The more sinister one is the fact that the lens has to be designed to fit on the body in such a way as to have a very precise distance between the optics of the lens and the sensor. Moving the optics back and forth has the effect of changing the focal range you can work with. Meaning, if you’ve got it just right, you’ll be able to focus to exactly what is specified by the lens manufacturer, probably something like from a few feet in front of you at the near end, out to infinity at the far end. If the optics are too close, the closer edge moves further away, so you might not be able to focus on anything closer than, say, 10 feet. (All of these numbers are totally 100% pulled out of my butt, if you were wondering, please don’t take them literally.) If they’re too far away (the interesting case, I’ll tell you why in a bit), the close end moves even closer, but so does the far end. So **you can no longer focus to infinity**. Instead, you’d be able to focus from let’s say one foot away at the near end to about 20 feet away at the far end. It’s worth noting also that the total size of the range shrinks dramatically, from, well, infinity, down to a few feet, or at more extreme ranges, down to a few millimeters.

Sound familiar? Right. That’s exactly what you’re doing with a macro extension tube. You’re moving the optics away from the sensor, which means you gain the ability to focus on things that are really close (and when you move closer to things, they appear bigger, right?), at the expense of not being able to focus on things that are far away, and having a super small depth of field. Wooo!! We just made a connection!

So, if you’re mounting a lens built for a different mount on your camera, two measurements suddenly become critically important: the lens-mount-to-sensor distance that your camera expects, and the optics-to-sensor distance that the lens expects. Fortunately for Canon users, the mounts used on modern Canon SLRs (EF for the full-frame sensor cameras, and EF-S (which can also use EF lenses) for the reduced-size sensors) expect a distance that is smaller than most other mounts. Why is this fortunate for Canon users (and unfortunate for other folks)? Because it means that both the camera and the lens agree that they want to be further apart than they would be if the mounts were compatible. Meaning, you’ve actually got room in there **TO FIT THE ACTUAL MOUNT ADAPTER THAT YOU NEED**. As an example (again, made up numbers), let’s say the lens wants to be 20mm away from the sensor, but the mount on your camera would put the lens 15mm away. That means you can stick a 5mm adapter in between (with appropriate fittings on each end), and bam, the camera is happy (since it’s mounted 15mm away) and your lens is happy too (since the optics are 20mm away from the point where the light is supposed to be focused.) Congratulations, you just made another connection! A physical one this time.

So, that’s all well and good. But what happens if that gap doesn’t exist? Or, in a more extreme example, what happens if the lens wants to be closer than the camera would allow it to be mounted? That means that, in order for the light to correctly focus on the sensor, you would need to mount the lens INSIDE THE CAMERA BODY! Which umm isn’t really possible. So, you’re essentially left with two options. First, you can just deal with the fact that you won’t be able to focus to infinity with that lens/camera combo. You’ll always have essentially a very small macro extension tube on there. Depending on just how big the difference between desired optics-to-sensor distance and the actual distance is, you may still be able to use the lens somewhat normally. But, probably not. The second option is that you can get a mount adapter that actually contains an optical element to correct for it. The problem here just comes back to the old adage that your lens is only as good as the lowest quality optical element in it. So, if you get a super high quality 3rd party lens, and toss a super cheap optical adapter on it, congrats, you’ve now got a low-quality 3rd party lens. If you want to use the lens badly enough, you can try to find a higher quality adapter of course, but it probably won’t come cheap.

Back to the example at hand now. The lens that I got (a Kiron 105mm 1:1 macro, remember) was built for an old Minolta mount. So remember how I said that the Canon EF mount wants a shorter distance than most other mounts? Well, the word “MOST” is the important one in that statement. The Minolta mount of old is one of those mounts that’s actually shorter than the Canon EF. That’s great if you’ve got an old school Minolta camera and want to use a fancy new Canon lens, but not so great the other direction. UNLESS YOU’RE SHOOTING MACRO ANYWAY!!!! WOOOOOO!!!! Or, to put it differently and somewhat less enthusiastically, this isn’t actually a problem if you have no intention of using the lens to shoot things that are far away. There’s no harm in having what essentially amounts to a small extension tube on there if you’re planning on potentially tossing another tube on there anyway. It just means that, while somebody using a Minolta mount camera would get 1:1 magnification with this lens, I’ll actually get a little bit closer than that. To pull another number out of my butt, let’s say I’m getting 1.2:1 magnification or something.

Okay, that’s enough blabbering for one day. But it’s definitely fun stuff. They made some fantastic lenses back in the days before digital, so if you can actually find a use for one, they definitely come cheaper than the modern equivalent, and at the very least it can be a lot of fun to play around with this stuff and figure out what you can get to work. Good times.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Kiron 105mm f/2.8 macro (Minolta mount). 1/320s, ISO 400. Aperture unknown (forgot to write it down).

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7 Mile Beach, Negril, Jamaica

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1564

Here’s yet another Jamaica picture. As promised, I’m dribbling them out to you guys one at a time. The last part of that sentence is actually not very interesting, as ALL of the pictures I toss out to you guys are “one at a time”. In fact, unless your eyes are ambidextrous, you would probably have difficultly digesting them more than one at a time, even if I put two of them right next to each other. So… umm. Right. Here’s another Jamaica picture.

I’m not gonna lie – you will probably see other pictures that are REALLY REALLY similar to the ones you’ve already seen at some point. I still haven’t had a chance to actually go through all the pictures I took on the trip (it’s a lack of motivation thing, not a lack of time thing), so I don’t actually know with any confidence that this is the “best” glass-bottom-boat-and-water picture got. All I know is that it’s “a” glass-bottom-boat-and-water picture. So, don’t be surprised. That’s all.

As you’ve probably been able to surmise by reading the, I don’t know, title of the page, this was taken on the 7 mile beach in Negril, Jamaica. As I’ve mentioned, it’s as beautiful as you would expect a Caribbean white-sand beach to be. Yes, the water really is that color. There’s also a reef a ways off shore, and a lot of folks have these little glass bottom boats that they use to take you out to the reef on a snorkel tour. I actually went on a couple of them, although neither one was done by this guy. (I went with “Famous Vincent” both times – if you’re in the area, ask around for him, he’s cool.) But, this guy’s got a cool looking boat, so… he wins. The snorkeling itself is great. It’s a nice shallow reef, lots of fish, all that goodness. I’m hardly a snorkeling connoisseur, so as far as I know it may really suck compared to other places, whatever. My guess is that it’s probably not “world class”, as in someplace you have to see before you die if you’re a hardcore snorkeler, but it’s probably right up there with lots of other “great” spots that you’ll find throughout the Caribbean. For what it’s worth, the BEST snorkeling I’ve ever done was on a boat tour of the British Virgin Islands on my honeymoon. We stopped at these weird finger-shaped rocks poking out of the water off some island, and there was just a huge wall of coral that we swam around. I have never seen such vivid colors before or since. It was helped by the fact that the water had an unreal clarity around then. I don’t know if that’s just due to the time of year (it was late June) or what, but it was truly fantastic. (In Jamaica, the water was definitely clear enough, but not as clear as on our honeymoon. As mentioned, that was June, whereas Jamaica was late March.)

Another note of interest: when I was walking along the beach on the day I took this shot (I had just finished my 2nd snorkel tour, and I asked Vincent to drop me off up the beach a ways from our hotel) I was walking at about the same pace as this lady. I kept passing her, but then she’d pass me when I stopped to take some pics. We struck up conversations a couple times, and she mentioned that she was a travel-planner type person, based in Kingston. (She said she herself was just out in Negril for a weekend holiday.) I felt that this was mildly interesting, and told her so. But then she decided to share her opinion that the best time to get pictures was either just after sunrise or just before sunset, that at the time that I was currently taking pictures (about 11am), I would most likely not get good pictures. I thought this was a very subtly rude thing to say. Basically “I see you trying really hard, it’s kind of sad that your pictures will all suck.” I explained to her that, under normal circumstances, yes, she was right. Normally noon-time light drains all the color out of stuff, and makes super harsh shadows. However, I explained to her, I had found from my own personal experience that at sunset, with the sun behind the water, all you could see was the orange from the sun, you couldn’t see the white sand or the turquoise water, which is sort of the whole point of being in Negril. In the early morning it’s also not ideal, and not just because I’d still be sleeping. In this particular case, the sun being directly overhead led to the best results, because that really lit up the sand underneath the water, which is exactly where the turquoise color comes from. That, combined with a polarizer filter to remove glare from the surface, I had found to be the best combination to get the picture that *I was going for*. I tried to illustrate for her exactly what I was talking about, showing her both the images that I was currently taking, as well as pictures that I had taken the previous day just before sunset. She shrugged me off as CLEARLY an amateur, and reiterated that, no, the best pictures cannot be taken at noon. And that was that. So I said thanks for the tip, and we resumed our similar pace down the beach. That wasn’t awkward at all.

What am I trying to say here? Not sure. Maybe this is just yet another example of the fact that there are no hard and fast rules in photography. Every rule is meant to be broken. Really, it’s all just guidelines. To get the most out of anything you learn about photography, you need to actually *understand* the rule, not just follow it. You have to know *why* it tends to be helpful, so that you can break it most effectively. That’s right everybody, listen to me, because I am awesome. Wooo!

Oh, one more thing, just to reiterate: don’t go NEAR a beach without a circular polarizer! I’m serious!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens w/ circular polarizer. 1/200s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.

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Dandelion

Friday, April 23, 2010

http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1534

Oh, sure, today’s post is all significant because it’s the last one this week and everything. But just wait till Monday’s post. That’ll be big doin’s. Awwwww man, Monday’s a big deal. And yes, I’m being intentionally vague. Right, anyway…

In the last couple weeks, I looked outside and noticed that things had started blooming. Springtime once again. So, I decided to pick up where I had left off last summer with my macro toys. To give a quick refresher, I started out with a standard telephoto “macro” lens (quotation marks because it’s only 1:2 magnification, not even 1:1 like a “true” macro lens). Then I started doing stuff like buying little “macro kits” (little magnifying lenses that you attach to the front of your regular lens), and I ended up buying a reverse-mount adaptor near the end of the summer. I’ve talked about it many times before, but it’s a little metal ring that you screw on to the front of your lens like a filter, and it allows you to connect your lens backwards to the camera body. This gets you ridiculous macro, all for the exorbitant price of 12 dollars. (Although you lose nice things like autofocus and aperture control, since the electrical bits of your lens are no longer attached. – you can mitigate that a little bit by not using your fast glass – I’ve been using my kit lens – but it takes what is already a frightfully small depth of field and shrinks it further.)

Oh, before I move on, I should explain something. Magnification ratio. That’s a fairly important concept when it comes to macro. The magnification ratio is the ratio between how big something is in real life vs how big the projection of it is against your camera sensor (or <retch> film). So, an object that is 35mm across, when using a 1:1 magnification lens, will be projected life-size on your sensor, and if you’re using a 35mm camera or a full-frame sensor digital, it will take up the whole frame. (And then, when you print the picture or view it on your computer, it’ll be effing HUGE.) With most digital cameras (mine included), the sensor is actually smaller than the full 35mm, so in the case of the 35mm object, at 1:1 magnification it would be *larger* than the frame. So, a 1:2 magnification ratio means that the projection on your sensor will be half-life-size. Most standard telephoto zoom lenses have a 1:2 or 1:4 magnification ratio, for your reference. True “macro” lenses usually achive 1:1, and Canon makes this one crazy 65mm macro-specific lens that STARTS at 1:1, and goes all the way up to 5:1. 5 to 1. Think about that. The thing you’re taking a picture of will be FIVE TIMES BIGGER than life size on your itty-bitty sensor. That means that a fly’s eyeball will take up your entire sensor. Now imagine that you’re looking at a picture of a fly’s eyeball blown up to poster-size. Yeah, crazy, right?? That’s where I want to get someday. But that lens costs 1000 bucks, so someday is not today.

ANYWAY… all that talk about magnification ratio, and I actually have no clue what kind of ratio I have on this picture. I’m going to guess somewhere between 1:2 and 1:1. But using the reverse mount, I’m pretty sure I can fairly easily get past that magic 1:1 mark. When you’re using the reverse mount, the usual rule of “larger focal length means more zoomed in” is no longer true. If you’re using an 18-55 lens (like I was), the 18 end is the super close in end (which is actually too close in to really be usable) and the 55 end is more of a normal ridiculous macro. This shot was right out at the 55 and, and you can tell it’s still pretty neat. You’re looking at a dandelion, if that wasn’t obvious.

Why all this talk about macro stuff? Because I bought more macro stuff. Some of it should be getting here today! The rest, hopefully tomorrow, maybe Monday. What’d I get? Well, two things..

First, I got a set of macro extension tubes. Amazon link. You use them by attaching them between your lens and your camera. This moves the optical elements of your lens further away from the sensor, which essentially zooms you in. (Although it also makes it so you can focus closer in, at the expense of being able to focus to infinity.) Basically, it gets you wicked close. How close? Not sure. I’ll let you know after I play around with it. Although, I do know that it has a much more dramatic effect on shorter lenses. As in, if you attach your super-long telephoto lens with them, it won’t change that dramatically, but if you hook up your little tiny 50mm prime, you’ll rock your world so hard they’ll feel it in Australia. Or so I’ve heard. We’ll see. There’s no optics in the rings, they’re just hollow rings. But they DO pass through the electrical connections, so you can USE YOUR APERTURE! WOOOOO! We’ll see how this goes.

The other thing I got is a macro ring flash. Amazon link. This is basically a ring flash that you mount on the front of your lens. It, you know, shines light on stuff. In this case, stuff that’s right in front of your lens. One of the side effects of taking pictures of little tiny things is that you’re dealing with dramatically smaller quantities of light than, say, typical landscape photography. So you have to deal with things like high ISO and low shutter speed. Hopefully, this flash will help out. I started out with a cheapie-cheap one, so I can play around with it and see how well it works. the “real” ones cost much more, like 500 or 800 dollars. So I’m not there yet. Someday, someday. Not today.

So, hopefully next week (maybe even Monday?? Nah, already got a picture picked out for Monday) you’ll get to see some initial results! I can’t wait! Have a great weekend!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, reverse-mounted 18-55mm kit lens. 1/500s, ISO 800. Aperture unknown. Focal length was somewhere around 55mm, but reverse-mounted.

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Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1004

It’s been quite awhile since I put up a shot from Shi Shi Beach, so we’re all about due, right? Yeah, I think so. So here we go. Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park. You’ve all heard the story before. If not, go searching through the archives, there’s about a hundred pictures from here that I’ve posted already, and they’re all just incredibly awesome.

You may have noticed over there on the right that I added a “most popular posts” widget. It’s not based totally on post views, it uses other metrics too, like number of comments and incoming links and stuff. You can change all the values for how strongly it weights each thing, and I think I need to tweak it some. But, definitely check it out, and then go through and click on your favorite posts a bunch of times so they end up at the top of the list. Remember, hold down shift and hit refresh. Woooo!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/125s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 46mm.

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Insect and Flower

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=985

Whoa, not sure what happened there, I completely missed yesterday. I guess I was just.. kind of busy, so I sort of.. completely forgot to post a picture. Sorry about that! I’d say “I won’t let it happen again”, but obviously I will.

I realized today that it’s been almost a month and a half since I posted a picture of a bug. How could I let this happen?? Clearly, I had to remedy that situation immediately. I don’t really know what kind of bug this is (my first guess is always “bee”, but that’s based only on the fact that it’s standing on a flower, so clearly I’m not the authority), but it was willing to hang around for pictures, so it hardly matters.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, taking pictures of bugs like this is purely an exercise in patience. Obviously, they move. A LOT. Also, you’re dealing with microscopic depths of field, so if you tend to sway back and forth when you take pictures like I do, you might think you got the perfect shot only to find out later that you accidentally got the hindquarters of the bug in focus instead of it’s head. Depending on what macro method you’re using – as in, super-expensive-macro-lens, ordinary macro lens, macro kit (like this one), reverse-mounted lens, etc – you may get a larger or smaller depth of field, but it’ll always be super small. So, to counter both of those issues, you end up just needing to take a TON of shots, and hopefully a handful of them will turn out okay. (When I got this picture, for example, I took about 40 frames, and got 5 or 6 that were decent enough to hold on to.) So don’t get discouraged, just keep shooting, and be ready to dig through piles and piles of crappy ones to get what you want.

Notes: Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 109mm.

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Purple Coneflower

Friday, February 19, 2010

http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1325

See? We’re back on schedule, just like I promised. This is a purple coneflower, I saw it when I was walking around my neighborhood late last summer. It was just before sunset, so the light was doing some really cool stuff, both giving a nice warm glow to the petals, as well as lighting up those little spiky things in the middle, making them seem like they were lit up from within. I thought it was a pretty cool effect. The difficulty comes in because of the short depth of field I was using. Depending on if you focused on the very tip of the spiky things, somewhere in the middle, or back on the petals themselves, you’d end up with wildly different shots, some of which just.. didn’t look right. In this one you can see that I went right in the middle, but I have examples of the others that I may post here someday so you can see the difference.

Back to the illumination for a minute… having that warm light come in from the side and a little bit behind can make for some really cool effects. The most dramatic use I’ve seen for it is with fall colors. If you can get the light just right, the colored leaves (or flowers, or whatever) really shine out with color, it can be really spectacular. On the other hand, if you just have the light shining directly on the subject (ie if the sun is behind you), they just look flat and kind of dirty. You can get a similar illumination effect by having the sun directly in front of you (as in, behind the subject), but that has other issues; you lose your shadows, and it can be so bright that it can wash out the colors you want, or you’ll lose your blue sky, stuff like that. Of course, like any supposed “rule” in photography, even if something in general is undesirable, there are absolutely cases where you can use it to great effect. So, whatever, ignore everything I just said. If you see something nice, take a shot from every angle you can think of, in front, from behind, off to the side, whatever. We’re all shooting digital, right? (Right???) so who cares if you waste a few frames? Take them home, and see what you like best. Here’s a dirty little secret: a lot of the time when I’m taking a picture, I don’t actually have the exact picture I’m going for in mind. I just see that there are a lot of interesting elements, and I know that they can fit together somehow to make a great picture, so I take a whole bunch, trying out different sets of parameters in each one, hoping that I’m able to find the magic mix. Sometimes things look a lot different once you look at them on the big screen, you’ll see some detail that you missed before, that can really pop and make the whole picture. I’m rambling. I’m going to stop now. Have a great weekend!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 800. Focal length: 300mm.

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Mt. Rainier from Crystal Mountain

Thursday, February 18, 2010

http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1304

Hey everyone! We’re back! And, hopefully, stable for awhile now, with no more last-minute swapping of web hosting services required. (Once again, I’ll take a moment to remind you that Lunarpages sucks, Lunarpages is awful, they’re a joke of an organization, take your cashmoney elsewhere.)

You’re looking at Mt. Rainier, a huge volcano that could explode at any moment, which will inevitably wipe Tacoma off the face of the Earth. But it probably won’t any time soon, so you shouldn’t let the threat of looming death deter you from, for example, visiting the Point Defiance Zoo (which I’ve heard is lovely). This is the standard shot, taken from the standard spot, just off the top of the Rainier Express (Rex) lift at Crystal Mountain. Pictures can never do it justice, unfortunately, there’s no substitute for just heading on up there and seeing it for yourself. Pictures make things so small, but it’s really quite spectacular when you see it looming there in front of you, it really is impossibly huge. This view is in itself worth the price of admission on a clear day.

So I’m not sure how closely any of you actually read these posts, as opposed to just checking out the pictures, but the answer is yes, this picture was indeed taken just this past Monday, when I decided to head up skiing instead of posting an image here. So selfish, I know. But it was a gorgeous day, I got several shots that are picture-of-the-day-worthy, so you’ll no doubt be seeing them soon-ish. Probably the day after I force you to sit through another Shannon Creek or Shi Shi Beach shot. Won’t that be fun!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50 mm f/2.8 lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 21mm.

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Some kind of flower

Friday, January 22, 2010

http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1076

Hey look, it’s Friday again. So, I’m not really a flower person. And by that I mean, I love flowers, I think they’re really pretty, and I love taking pictures of them, but I really know nothing about them. Like, unless it’s a rose or a daisy, I have no idea. (And when in doubt, I usually just call it a daisy anyway.) So, I apologize for having no clue what we’re looking at here. But I thought it was really pretty. Pretty enough for a Friday.

And yes, I posted this before 8am. That’s weird. But I’m busy all day, so I tossed it up here now to get it out of the way. See you all on Monday.

UPDATE: One of my Facebook friends told me that this is an anemone. So there you go.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 300mm.

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Green Bottle Fly

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1040

Alrighty, I finished up with that whole travelling to Montana thing. Now, back to real life. My original plan was to use something from that trip here, but honestly, I haven’t had a chance to even BEGIN going through them yet, so instead today I’ll fulfill one of last week’s requests. (If you want to request anything, either leave it in the comments or contact me directly – dave (at) davefry (dot) net. I’ll see if I’ve got anything that works.)

This is a green bottle fly (or at least that’s what my (really) brief research on google suggested), seen through a reverse-mounted 18-55 mm kit lens. I talked about this already at length in this post, so if you’re at all interested in this kind of stuff, please do yourself a favor and read that entry too.    But, long story short, you buy a little adapter for your lens, and then the magic happens. Wooo!

I’ll try to at least do something resembling a first pass on the Montana pics tonight, at least as far as finding one worthy of posting here. We’ll see how that goes.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, reverse-mounted 18-55mm kit lens. 1/320s, ISO 200.

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