Posts Tagged Daisy
June 27, 2011 – Daisy
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day on June 27, 2011
Daisy
Monday, June 27, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2531
I’m going to call this a daisy. It might not be a daisy, I don’t really know. I don’t even remember for sure which lens I took it with, so the one listed below is not much more than just a somewhat educated guess. Educated in that I know which lenses I own, so there’s a pretty good chance it was one of those.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/9, ISO 200. Focal length: 50mm.
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February 10, 2011 – Orange Daisy
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on February 10, 2011
Orange Daisy
Thursday, February 10, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2167
I think this picture would have been better had I not clipped off the end of that leaf. Dang.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/3.5, ISO 400. Focal length: 50mm.
Popularity: 13%
January 7, 2011 – Bee and Flower
Posted by Dave in Animals, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on January 7, 2011
Bee and Daisy
Friday, January 7, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1718
Wait, what?? This blog is still getting posted to? Man, I thought it was dead there for awhile. But then, BAM, just like that, a new post.
That’s right, folks, I’m getting back on the horse! The horse meaning, of course, the habit of occasionally posting pictures, maybe a few times a week if you’re lucky. I spent some time out of town over the holidays and all that, but I’m back now. Perhaps eventually I’ll even toss up a couple photos from that trip. But, not today. I haven’t even downloaded them from the camera yet, honestly. Hopefully soon, we’ll see.
In the meantime, here’s another insect and a flower. It’s true, this one is very similar to a photo I posted a long time ago. But, while it was taken at the same location (the Rose Garden in Woodland Park), it was taken about a year later, using different equipment. So it’s totally fair game. Because, you know, it’s all a game, with rules and stuff. And I hate breaking the rules.
Have a great weekend everyone! I’ll try and put up at least two posts next week, but I totally want to ease everyone back into this, so I’ll definitely take it slow.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 90mm macro lens, Phoenix macro ring flash. 1/160s, f/20.0, ISO 100.
Popularity: 25%
July 21, 2010 – Bee and Daisy
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Animals, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on July 21, 2010
Bee and Daisy
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1611
So I always seem to gravitate towards posting some kind of macro shot, either of a bug or a flower (or, well, both..) on Fridays. Not exactly sure why I feel that way (that’s a total lie, I know exactly why, I just don’t feel like sharing), but it’s the truth. And, I know, this isn’t Friday, it’s Wednesday. But it might as well be Friday, because I’ll be out of town the next couple days, and thus I won’t be posting anything. Which means that you get to look at this little guy for the rest of the weekend.
This is the first picture I’ve posted (and among the first I took) with my new (to me) Tamron 90mm macro. So far, I’d say I’m reasonably happy with it. I had some decent results, but I also had some that were less than stellar. I’m not going to blame the lens for those just yet though, and to be fair I’ve only taken the lens out on a couple walks around the neighborhood, and it’s definitely shown some promise. Hopefully you’ll all get to see some more pics from it in the coming weeks and months and years (I know, bold statement, given that I’ve only been doing this blog for just over a year now.)
Have a great weekend!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens. 1/250s, f/10.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 90mm (duh!).
Popularity: 19%
November 17, 2009 – Daisy
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on November 17, 2009
Daisy
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1048
Yeah, I know, I know. Another picture of a daisy. I told you: they will never end. You’re lucky that I’m at least trying to space them out to only come once every few days. It could be so much worse, you don’t even know.
Since there’s really not much to talk about with this picture (hey look! A daisy!), I guess I’ll try to come up with something else to cover. Oh, I know! Whitefish mountain resort (as in, the physical mountain itself) has a twitter feed! Either that, or it has cleverly decided to commandeer a human to write a twitter feed, phrasing the tweets as if it were coming from the mountain itself. I’m leaning toward the former, but I can’t be sure. Anyway, the mountain stumbled on my entry yesterday, and kindly linked to me. You can see it here: http://twitter.com/SkiWhitefish/status/5801182897 . Terribly exciting, right?? I know!! The most unexpected part is where all the traffic that came via the twitter feed comes from. About half of those people are from… wait for it… MONTANA! Okay, not very unexpected. But I had to fill up the space somehow.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300 mm macro lens. 1/250s, f/10.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 300mm.
Popularity: 9%
November 2, 2009 – Daisy
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on November 2, 2009
Daisy
Monday, November 2, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=395
Hey everyone, hope you all had a great Halloween! I had a bit of a hard time today deciding whether to end that first sentence with a period or an exclamation mark. Using the ! seemed to come off a bit too cheeseball-enthusiastic for me, but the period just sounded grumpy. I went back and forth, but you can all see the final choice.
This is another daisy. That’s my assumption anyway. I know very little about flowers, but it sure seems like they are all some kind of daisy or another, so that’s usually my default guess. If I’m wrong (about this or any other picture) please do let me know. When I say something like “this is a [whatever]” and end the sentence with a period (not an exclamation mark) it comes off as me saying it like it’s a fact, when in reality I’m really not that confident in the information. (The exclamation mark has a different connotation entirely. That’s like me being proud of the fact that it’s a [whatever], as if I’m a 2 year old kid who just learned how to say the word. Maybe I’ll try that one tomorrow. This is a FIRETRUCK! No Dave, that’s a burrito.)
In photography, there are a lot of rules. And, like all of the best ones, they are all made to be broken. By that I mean, there are generally a lot of general things to do that generally make a picture more interesting. You can follow them to the letter every time, and you’ll usually get a pretty great shot. But sometimes you can break the rule, and the result can be pretty striking. Today’s example is the rule of thirds. The first thing they teach you in photography class (I assume… I haven’t been in a photography class since freshman year of high school, and I honestly have no idea what they told us) is that you should try to put the subject of your photo at either the 1/3rd or 2/3rds mark. As in, either one third of the way from right-to-left, or one third of the way from left-to-right. Or top-to-bottom. Or, even better, both! As in, if you draw imaginary horizontal and vertical lines at the 1/3rd and 2/3rds marks, put your subject at one of the four intersections. Make sense? It’s really amazing how much that little tidbit can help an image.
That being said, look at this picture! Oh my effing god, how fun is that?! It’s… RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE! Because I broke the rule. Because you can do that sort of thing. Because the rule was meant to be broken. Get it?
The key takeaway here is, you really can’t do anything “wrong”. Except not take pictures. That’s wrong. So don’t do that.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm Macro lens. 1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 400. Focal length: 300 mm.
Popularity: 3%
October 9, 2009 – Bee and Daisy
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on October 9, 2009
Bee and Daisy
Friday, October 9, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1094
Another bee, another daisy, whatever. Awhile back I said I had a feeling in my gut that taking pictures of bees on flowers just may become my new obsession, and that turned out to be right on the mark. I have so many of these pictures that if I don’t spread them out, I’m going to scare away my whole audience. Well, “scare” isn’t the right word. “Annoy” is probably better.
If you’ve been reading and paying attention to this blog for awhile, you’ll know that the word “macro” can mean a lot of different things. As in, there are several levels of macro. I think the word itself (at least in the context of photography) generally just means focusing on things that are close (ie, “macro mode” on a point-and-shoot). In practice, it generally means taking pictures of little things – usually flowers – and having those little things be the big star of the show. There are a lot of camera lenses you can buy that say “Macro” on them, and it’s not entirely clear what exactly that means. I mean, there are true MACRO lenses, on in particular that I know about that has a magnification ratio of up to 5:1….
Hold up, let me take a step back. This confused me for awhile, so it’s worth talking about. Magnification ratio. I think we all know what the term is ABOUT (making things look big), but what does, say, 5:1 mean, exactly? Good question, let’s address that.
Right, magnification, magnification.. Let’s start with the easy case. A magnification ratio of 1:1. So, you all know basically how cameras work, right? You have this lens that focuses the light into a spot inside the camera, onto the sensor (or the film, in the case of a non-digital camera). In the case of a traditional 35mm camera, the target is, yes, 35 mm across. In most digital cameras, it’s a little bit smaller. (Although there are digital cameras, usually the higher-end SLRs, that have a full-size (meaning 35mm) sensor. I’m not going to go into what differences that makes here.) Regardless, there’s a target where the light coming through the lens is focused. With me so far?
Normally, when the light that will be making your picture is shining on the target/sensor, it’s quite a bit smaller than the real thing. If you’re taking a picture of a mountain, or a person, the real thing is almost certainly less than 35mm across. Let’s say that you are taking a picture of your buddy, and for simplicity let’s say that you’re using a 35mm camera, and, also for simplicity, let’s say your buddy’s face is exactly 350mm across. If you take a picture where the edges of your buddy’s face exactly touch the edge, then you’re working with a magnification ratio of 1:10. Make sense? The number before the colon is the size on the target, the number after is the size in real life. So, 1mm on the sensor represents 10mm in real life. Let’s say you get a bunch closer, and zoom all the way in, so that now you can only fit in half of the face. Well, now the ratio is 1:5, since you’ve got a 175mm (350mm divided by 2) object that’s 35mm across on the sensor.
So, following that pattern, we can get to the idea of 1:1 magnification. Meaning, something that’s, say, 10mm across (like a bug) will be exactly 10mm across in the image being shined on the sensor. 1:1 is actually a very LARGE amount of magnification as far as cameras are usually concerned. Because if you then view that image on your computer screen, that 10mm bug (that’s a centimeter) will take up a third of the frame. That’s BIG!
So, to take it one step further, imagine what happens when you get to, say, 2:1, or 3:1. Now the image on the sensor is BIGGER than real life, and the results will be more and more ridiculous. This is the part that got me for awhile, there is a **HUGE** difference between a magnification ratio of 2:1, and a ratio of 1:2. (Well, there is a 4x difference, to be precise.)
Camera lenses that supposedly do “macro” usually specify a “maximum magnification ratio”. What that means is, through a combination of zooming in and getting to the closest point that the lens will focus, that is the *maximum* ratio that you can get with that lens. In my experience. any lens that will get you to a 1:1 ratio or beyond will cost a LOT of money, as in, at least a thousand bucks generally. And they’re hard to find. But lots of lenses still claim that they do “macro”. Most of those lenses will usually get you to a 1:4 ratio, sometimes 1:2. That’s a big difference from 1:1, but it as long as you’re taking pictures of things that aren’t TOO small (like, a flower, for example), you can get a great image. If you’re hoping to shoot images of the little hairs on a fly, then you’ll need something more.
So, this image, while still in the “macro” realm, clearly isn’t at the extreme end of the spectrum. This one was taken with the lens that I recently settled on to be my primary mid-range lens, the Tamron 28-75 f2.8. (Amazon link: http://bit.ly/z7D8t ). It’s got its maximum magnification ratio listed at 1:3.9. So, definitely not extreme, but enough to get some nice flower shots. And actually, I don’t believe I was at the maximum end of the spectrum either.
There are a variety of methods I’ve used to get in further, which have been covered in some detail in earlier posts. If you want to read more about those, just go back into the archives, or ask me, I’m happy to talk about it at length. But, here’s a quick list: I have a big telephoto (70-300 mm) lens that has a macro mode that gets in to about 1:2, I’ve got a “macro kit”, which is basically a set of magnifying lenses that you put on your lens like any other filter, that help you focus closer and magnify the image a bit, and I have a reverse-mount that I put on my 18-55mm kit lens. THAT gets you some ridiculous magnification. Well beyond 1:1, although I’m not sure how far beyond. Fun stuff to play around with, and all quite a bit more affordable than a $1000+ macro-specific lens.
So there you go. Please do let me know if you want to know more about my macro explorations. I’m still an extreme beginner, but there’s a lot of fun ground to cover. So, have a great weekend!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. 1/320s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 75mm.
Popularity: 4%
September 24, 2009 – Daisies
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 24, 2009
Daisies
Thursday, September 24, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1052
And here we are again. Another day, another picture. I think these are daisies. But, to be fair, I think just about any flower I see these days is a daisy. There’s a lot of different daisies, so I figure if I guess “daisy”, I’ve got at least a 50-50 shot of getting it right, right?
This is another shot that I took in the Woodland Park Rose Garden. In fact, you’ve seen these exact flowers before – remember that shot with the bee? I mean, it’s probably not the EXACT flowers, but it’s at least part of the same bush. But, to be fair, they’re really photogenic.
What makes them photogenic? Funny you should ask that. So, everyone knows that flowers are pretty. That’s sort of the point of flowers. But not all flowers make for great pictures. Flowers that are really really red tend to turn out pretty badly for me. The deep red just overloads the sensor, so you get this jumbled mess than can be painful to look at. Actually, if you’re taking a picture that contains almost entirely one super-bold color, any color, your camera may have trouble with it. Red seems to be the worst for me, although deep blues and purples can be really tough too. (And the dark green trees we have so many of out here in the PNW make forest-y pictures pretty tough sometimes.)
So, I’ve found that the best flowers for pictures are the ones with the most contrast. Multi-colored petals (like these!) are awesome. It keeps the picture interesting, gives your eye something to chew on, it breaks up the uniform field of one color. Also, if the middle part stands out from the rest (don’t you love my grasp of flower vocabulary?), that’s even better. That’s another reason I love these in particular – they’re perfect!
There’s other reasons that certain flowers can be tough though. For instance, flowers that have a lot of depth are hard. Because then you have to choose which part of the flower you want in focus. Things like rhododendrons or [ fill in another flower with long spindly things in the middle ] are really bad for that. if you’re using a setup with a really small depth of field (well hello, reverse-mount lens attachment), this is especially a problem. Of course, you could also look at it as an opportunity to get really artsy, if you’re the optimistic type.
One last thing – with flower pictures, keep your background in mind. It’s easy to turn an otherwise fantastic shot into something that’s just ordinary by including something ugly, like a sidewalk or a building, in the fuzzy part of the frame. Keeping dark green plant-stuff or super-blurry other flowers can make something nice for your foreground to pop out of. It’s all about the contrast.
Before I go, one quick note: I’ve sold out of my original test-run of 3 calendars, so let me know SOON if you want one, I’m going to put in another order. They’re on sale right now at the website where I printed them (I used Shutterfly), so they’re about 14 dollars plus however much it costs to send to you (I’m not making any profit on these), but at some point they’ll go back to regular price, which is $20. I’ll order a few extras, but not many, it’d be easier if you just told me you want one now. Email me at: dave (at) davefry.net .
That’s it, now you can go back to whatever you were doing before.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f/18.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 218mm.
Popularity: 4%
June 11, 2009 – Daisy
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on June 11, 2009
Daisy
June 11, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=467
So I realized this morning that I forgot to post a picture yesterday, and I’m getting pretty close to missing today too. Since I’m kind of busy at work, I need to make this quick. So, I decided to just toss up a picture of some flower that I found near my old apartment a few years ago. Yaaaay pretty flowers.
Map: http://tinyurl.com/npcgsq
Got it exact this time!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/400s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 183 mm.
Popularity: 1%