1.6 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 200, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) Photojojo.com had an article a few days ago showing “How to Photograph a Ghost.” I decided that Halloween would be an appropriate day to use the technique for my Photo365 project. I chose the doors leading out to the back patio as the scene because that was where my fiancée and I were watching television together.
When I tried to frame the shot using my normal tripod, I realized that I needed to take a portrait-oriented shot to get the best composition. Unfortunately, my “normal” tripod is meant for video cameras, so the head does not allow me to swing the camera into a portrait orientation. While thinking about how best to use the table to prop up the 7D into a portrait orientation, I remembered that I had a miniature tripod which allowed the head to flip.
I grabbed the mini tripod from the office and promptly screwed the 7D onto it. Slowly I changed the orientation of the head to the vertical position. I feared that the 7D would be too heavy for the mini tripod which was only designed to hold a point and shoot. Lucky for me, it held steady.
I used the wireless remote to take several pictures of me standing outside the door and several more with me entirely off camera. In post processing, I followed the instructions provided by Photojojo’s article to make the ghostly image. When I was done in CS4, I brought the image back into Lightroom and applied the Selenium Tone preset to it.
1/250 sec @ f/13, ISO 400, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) I used the macro box again for the photograph today. However, this time I did not put the subject inside of the box. Instead, I put the flash in the box and used the entire box as a light modifier. This technique was demonstrated in the same Strobist Lighting DVD on location segment I mentioned a few days back.
I wanted to show everyone what the Super-Secret Spy Lens attachment from Photojojo looked like when put on a lens attached to a camera body. I figured that I could practice some lighting at the same time. The lighting for the shot consisted of two flashes. One 580EX II in the macro box at camera right. The second flash was placed camera left, behind the subject and pointed directly at the wall. I wanted to light the wall seperately to get a nice seperation between the wall and the subject.
1/50 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) The Photo365 project was the last thing on my mind tonight. The Hokies were on Thursday night football and I played host to a couple of friends for the game. I knew I needed to take a picture for the night and I desperately needed something to take my attention away from the poor football being played by the Hokies.
I grabbed the 7D and a flash and sat back down on the couch in front of the game on TV. I did not have any ideas of what I was going to shoot. I just had the camera and flash at the ready in case a moment came along. I was really lucky to capture Leila’s expression in this photograph. It is almost as if she is watching the game with us and in shock as much as we were at the score.
1/250 sec @ f/16, ISO 200, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) I left the DIY macro box set up over night and decided to use it again for today’s shoot. I grabbed the travel alarm clock that I shot back on October 8 as my subject for today. I thought that keeping specular highlights off of the large amount of glass on the clock would make for a good challenge. It actually wound up being much easier than anticipated. The white fabric on the macro box sides did an excellent job of turning the small flash heads into much larger perceived light sources, thereby reducing almost all specular highlights on the glass.
1/200 sec @ f/14, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) While I was doing my cardio workout at the gym tonight, I watched some on location segments of the Strobist Lighting DVD’s. One particular segment was about constructing a do it yourself macro photo studio. In the segment, David Hobby demonstrated how a $10 project could greatly improve your macro photography at home and while on site. Lucky for me, I had already built the same macro lighting studio several months ago when I was photographing jewelry and custom-made coins. The segment made me want to rush home and set it up with two flashes instead of the two desk lamps I had used in the past.
When I was photographing the coins and jewelry, I used constant light sources. In fact, I used two totally different light sources with different qualities to their lights. After watching the segment from the DVD’s, I learned that I could use my two hot-shoe flashes instead. Once I got home, I promptly pulled the macro box out of storage and found an old camera in the office to be used as my subject.
The final setup had the 580EXII at 1/128 power and the 430EXII at 1/64 power. Each was positioned about two feet away from its respective side of the macro box using the stands which came with them. Getting to the final image was a process of trial and error playing with aperture settings and subject orientation.
If case you are interesting in building a $10 macro studio of your own, there is a post on the Strobist blog which offers the same information as the DVD.
15.0 sec @ f/18, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) I was at a loss tonight trying to figure out an interesting subject for today’s picture. When this happened in the past, I went outside of our house and found something in the nearby area to shoot. Tonight was no different. I opened the door and saw this tree about thirty yards away. I grabbed my tripod and camera from inside and made the trek across the street to the mailboxes.
I set up the tripod on the edge of the street and configured the 7D to bulb mode. I set the ISO at 100 in order to eliminate as much noise as possible. Using the wireless remote, I tripped the shutter for five seconds. Five seconds proved to be too short for a good exposure, so I worked my exposures up five additional seconds at a time until I arrived at today’s fifteen second exposure. One thing I forgot to configure in the camera was the long exposure noise reduction. It would have been a good experiement to play around with turning this feature on and off and then comparing the results later in post-processing.
I chose f/18 for this photograph in order to get as much of the tree in focus as possible. I have read that f/18 is usually the smallest aperture you should shoot at in order to stay in the sweet spot of the lens. I probably should take some time in the future and try this out by setting up a product shot and shooting at apertures above f/18. Then I will be able to see if I can descern a real difference at the smaller apertures with my 50mm f/1.8 lens.
1/1600 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400, 39 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) No, I did not photoshop myself into this picture.
I returned to Red Rock Overlook Park in Leesburg today for another hike. I was hoping to grab some nice pictures of the fall foliage. The original plan was to head out to Skyline Drive in Winchester, VA and drive the scenic road through the Blue Ridge Mountains for the afternoon. Unfortunately, painting the 14 foot ceilings and walls in our middle floor bathroom took longer than anticipated.
Upon reaching the best overlook in the park (there are three) of the Potomac river and MD river bank, I was disappointed to see that the foliage was not completed turned yet. According to the Weather Channel’s site, we are only a week away (early) from the peak season. I decided to make the best of it and setup on the bluff.
This shot was taken using a single strobe placed on the dirt below the camera on camera left. I used the PocketWizards to remote fire the flash which was pointed up at me and gelled with a 1/4 CTO gel. At first I tried a full CTO gel, but its effect was overdone. The same happened with the 1/2 CTO. 1/4 seemed to do the trick. I left the camera on automatic white balance for all the photographs. Thinking about it now, I wish I had played around with the white balance a little more. If I had set the white balance to the daylight setting, I may have gotten better colors out of the water and trees in the background.
What else do I wish I had done differently? I would have raised the flash off the ground and used a light modifier. Thinking back to the setup, I could have clamped the flash and an umbrella mount adaptor to the fence at camera left. Unfortunately, I do not have an adequate clamp yet, like the Justin Clamp or the Manfrotto Super Clamp, which would have worked. I would also use an umbrella or softbox to make the light source appear larger and more natural. Raising the light off the ground to at least eye level and using a medium-sized diffuser would probably have eliminated the photoshopped look in the photograph.
1/250 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) I think I can feel an addiction starting. I starting looking around the web for free presets to use in the Develop module of Lightroom. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips proved to be a fruitful resource. One of my favorite presets found on the site is the one applied to today’s self portrait. This preset is called Vintage New York Look. The present tweaks the colors and appears to add a vignette to the photograph. I really like what it did to this photograph.
The setup for this shot included two flashes on stands, one camera right with a shoot-through umbrella close to my face. The second was placed behind me at camera left with a grid attached. The idea was to have the umbrella be the key light and the gridded flash be a hair. Ideally, it would also provide fill light for the left side of the frame. I do not think the gridded flash created the intended effect.
I have found it quite difficult to experiment with lighting while taking self portraits. This is because I constantly have to move from my mark to make adjustments. Inevitably, when I return to my mark, I have shifted slightly from the previous frame. Even more difficult is when dealing with a gridded flash; it is a challenge to get repeatable results.
However, I really like the end result. I am now using this photograph as my new Facebook profile image. I am considering replacing the About Me picture with this one too. With the endless supply of presets available, I can only imagine the fun that is to come.
1/125 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) I started out taking some shots of Mela running between rooms as we played fetch with her stuffed ball. However, it eventually turned into a full photo shot with two remote flashes in adjoining rooms and the 70-200 telephoto lens on the 7D body. I tried hard to catch both the ball and Mela in mid-air with the setup. I needed the flashes to help me freeze the action in the shot since the ambient light was no where near bright enough for fast exposures.
Unfortunately, none of the action shots came out the way I was hoping. It was not so much photography skills which held me back, but more of my ability to throw the ball to an exact spot with my left hand while holding the camera up to my face with my right. As a result, I am sharing one of the photographs from earlier in the fetch session instead.
This photo only uses the available light in the room. The ISO was set at 1600 in order to keep my shutter priority setting of 1/125 sec. For this shot in particular, there was no need to be at 1/125 other than to keep from having to change shutter speed priority between each throw of the ball. The relatively high ISO is quite noisy when the picture is viewed full size. I really hope Adobe finalizes the 7D camera profile and RAW readability ASAP.
Using Lightroom 3 Beta, I applied a post-crop vignette. The post-crop vignette has been updated in Lightroom 3 to more true to life. Instead of just applying a black or white overlay with a gradient opacity like Lightroom 2 does, the new version adjusts the brightness and exposure of the existing colors in the photograph to create the effect.
1/25 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) Well, I pulled the trigger and bought myself a Canon 7D for my birthday this year. I ordered it from J&R Electronics last week while it was marked as back ordered. I thought it would take a while for the back orders to be filled and my camera to be shipped out to me. I had 3 weeks until my birthday on the day I ordered it. Well, the back order was lifted much sooner than I had anticipated. Before I knew it, I got a shipping confirmation in my email.
The camera arrived today to my office. I was good and only opened the box at work so that I could charge the battery. Once I got home, the fun began. I put my 50 mm f/1.8 lens on first. I wanted to play around with shooting in ambient light and test the higher ISO levels. Being a pro-sumer camera, the 7D should handle low light and higher ISO’s with much less noise than the XSi does.
Unfortunately, Lightroom 2, and even the Lightroom 3 beta have not been upgraded with the final release of the 7D RAW file interpreter. This means that both versions of Lightroom do not render the files from the 7D to the best of their abilities yet. You can basically see noise at all ISO levels above 100. This just is not acceptable for the long term. It is going to be a waiting game for a few weeks until Adobe can release an update to ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) and Lightroom to better handle the Canon 7D’s RAW files. Until that time, I am going to try my best to share the best low-noise shots I can get from my new camera body.
In the picture today is my fiancée playing with her “new” camera. With the arrival of the 7D, she has now claimed the XSi as her own. I could not be happier. I cannot wait to get her hooked on the wonderful world of photography.
A self-proclaimed tech-geek, I enjoy anything powered by batteries or electricity. I'm not happy until I understand the full potential of any new gadget I get my hands on....
