Photo365-20091231 – All Chopped Up, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/80 sec @ f/2.0, ISO 125, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
Our friends invited us over to their place for a low key New Years Eve party tonight. Not only was it New Years Eve, but the Virginia Tech Hokies were playing in their bowl game tonight. To go along with the other festivities, our friends cooked a prime rib roast dinner. The food was beyond excellent, the company fun, and the Hokies had a convincing win over Tennessee. Of course I had my camera in tow, equipped with the trusty 50mm f/1.8 lens.
I took most of the pictures for the night while dinner was being prepped. Today’s photograph was taken without disturbing the scene at all. When I saw the knife on the chopping board, I had this composition in my head immediately. When I was cropping the picturing during post-processing, I opted for the square chop so that I could get the angle of the knife just right.
I really like all the detail that came out in the knife after I applied some sharpening to the RAW file. What is odd though, is that I do not recall seeing those details in the knife in person. Perhaps the sharpening was taken too far and produced an unrealistic effect. Oh well….I still like it.
Photo365-20091230 – The Force: A Collection, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/30 sec @ f/2.0, ISO 250, 5.1 mm
I have been working late every night this week trying to finish off a project by the end of the year. I took a short break for a few minutes tonight to take a picture of a coworker’s cube on my floor. Just about every day over the past few months I have been walking by this cube taking notice to the miniature Star Wars model collection on display. Tonight was the first time things fell into alignment to allow me to get my long awaited pictures.
I tried several different techniques to capture an image which showed the complete collection. Unfortunately, the Leica point and shoot has a large maximum aperture. Because of this, I was unable to get a deep enough depth of field for all of the models to be in focus. I decided to change my approach to only capturing a few models and blurring the rest.
In today’s photo, the first model, at the bottom right, is in relatively good focus while the rest of the models blur significantly as the eye follows the line of models up the frame. As the eye starts to follow the back line of models from right to left, many will recognize the shapes of familiar Star Wars battle planes. It is my hope that these users will be able to visualize what the rest of the models are which are not as recognizable due to being out of focus.
Photo365-20091229 – Peek-a-boo Bird, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/15 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 1600, 200 mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM)
I have been finding it more and more difficult to dedicate the time I need every day to take a quality, well thought out photograph. It is also getting more difficult to process and post the photographs on a daily basis. As a result, I am about two weeks behind in posting my daily photograph. Do not worry though, I have not missed a single day yet in taking the pictures. They are all stored and backed up in multiple places. Over the next several days, I plan to work diligently to get caught up and start to make a push to the finish line.
With today’s photograph I wanted to play around with a strong bokeh element in the frame. My subject is a Christmas Advent calendar near our front door. When I framed one of the birds correctly, I was able to get the Christmas tree lights from across the room into the frame. Because of the wide aperture ( f/4) the depth of field was shallow enough to only allow the bird to be in focus and throw the Christmas tree lights deeply out of focus. While the photograph certainly is not a masterpiece worthy work of art, it is a stepping stone for me. The concept and techniques I learned while taking this photograph will be useful in future photos I will make.
Photo365-20091228 – Please, No More Needles, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/80 sec @ f/2.0, ISO 160, 5.1 mm
Leila had an appointment with the vet today. She was not pleased when her “sister”, Mela, did not get to come along for the car ride. Leila was even more unhappy with the three shots she received to bring her current on her vaccinations. You can see the displeasure in her eyes.
This shot was captured with the Leica D-Lux 4 point and shoot camera. For Christmas, I received a nice leather case with a shoulder strap for it. I have found it a lot easier to always be carrying a camera now. It was a breeze for me to whip out the camera for a few pictures while Leila and I were waiting inside the exam room for the doctor to see her.
When I took the photograph, I saw the distracting cat poster in the background. I thought that by using the smallest aperture possible, I could make the poster go out of focus. Unfortunately, it was not the case. Instead, I relied on a white vignette to bring the viewer’s attention back to the middle of the photo where Leila, my subject, is positioned.
Photo365-20091227 – Wasabi Merry-Go-Round, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/125 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 250, 12.8 mm
My fiancee and I were out and about today with a few missions in mind. One of them was to find the last few remaining presents we need for my family’s late Christamas celebration in a few weeks. The other mission was to find our wedding bands for our wedding coming up in September. We know the date is going to be here before we know it, so we are trying to take care of as many of the details as we can right now. We lucked out big time at Bailey, Banks, and Biddle. They are going out of business and we caught them with only nine days left to go. Almost all of their jewelry was discounted by sixty to seventy percent!
After checking off one of the two to-do items from our list, we decided to grab a bite to eat. As we were walking towards the end of the Tyson’s Corner mall where all the restaurants are located, we stumbled upon this fancy restaurant smack dab in the middle of all the stores. The restaurant is called Wasabi, “Modern Japenese Cuisine”. We did not eat at Wasabi today because both of us were in the mood for food that is more hardy then sushi. However, that did not stop me from whipping out the Leica point and shoot camera and grabbing some pictures from the second story of the mall and down below at restaurant level. We are looking forward to returning to the mall to try out Wasabi in the near future. When we do, I will update this post with a mini review.
Photo365-20091226 – Peace in Lomo, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/15 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
I know I said no more pictures of the tree. That is why I am going to call this a picture of an ornament, and definitely not the Christmas tree. It is very difficult to ignore our huge tree in the house when I have no ideas coming to me late at night.
The post processing gives this picture its magic. I used a Matt Kloskowshi Lightroom preset called Matt’s Lomo Effect (Strong Blur). There have been several days when I tried applying this preset to a picture, but it never looked right until today.
Photo365-20091225 – Open?, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/50 sec @ f/3.2, ISO 400, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
I came prepared to Christmas morning over at my fiancee’s sister’s house for some “major” photography. I loaded up the trunk of the car with more gear than I thought I would need to capture the moments of the day. I took my tripod, two light stands, two umbrellas, and most of the flash modifiers from my gear collection. I had about thirty minutes to get set up before the kids woke up to tear into the gifts.
I wound up using two strobes, each extended as high as they would go on their respective light stand. Both flashes had a stofen-type light spreader on its head to send the light out in every direction. I wanted the flashes to act as if they were light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
I placed the flashes set on their stands in the back corners of the room and positioned their heads so that they were pointed and tilted to the center of the ceiling. I then worked on determining my camera exposure and flash power settings. I set the camera to manual mode and locked the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings to where I wanted them. I walked around the room and took pictures of the back of my hand to see what type of light the strobes were producing. By doing this chimping, I was able to determine the proper power for my strobes. Thanks to the Canon 7D body, I was easily able to make the changes to the flash power using the menus in the camera body.
Today’s picture is just one of the many I was able to capture using this setup. I would have liked to have a bit more shutter speed then I wound up with, but my flashes were already set at 1/2 power. At 1/2 power, I was able to fire off about a frame every two to three seconds and get the light coverage I needed. I could have increased the aperture, but I would have given up more depth of field. The other option was to increase the ISO, but I knew from experience that at ISO 800 and above, the noise generated by the 7D sensor is not easy to remove. So while all of my shots were not keepers mainly because of motion blur, I was able to get some great shots of the day’s joyous events.
Photo365-20091224 – Hungry Hungry Duckling, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/100 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
My lovely fiancee helped to create thedconcept for today’s picture. I wanted to capture the destruction of the ginger bread house. The concept of a duck eating the house was too funny to pass up when she suggested it. If you look closely at the left side of the frame, you may also notice a fist punching a hole into the front wall too!
I used the ambient light in the room to capture the picture. The lighting is far from bright in the dining room, so I had to bump the ISO up to 1600 in order to get an adequate shutter speed. When I shoot with the 50mm f/1.8 lens, I really do miss the image stabilzation feature that I have on my other lenses. I often find myself having to shoot at high ISO’s even with the aperture wide open at f/1.8. Maybe we should just get some better lighting in the house.
I was really hoping that the Canon 7D would perform better at high ISO’s then it does. Unfortunately, Canon decided to go with more mega pixels instead of better low light performance with the 7D. Do not get me wrong, I still love the 7D body. The advanced auto focus system and wireless flash control are worth their weight in gold. I just wish it produced cleaner images at moderate to high ISO’s.
Photo365-20091223 – A Christmas Masterpiece, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/2 sec @ f/11, ISO 1600, 20 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)
I am pretty sure this will be the last Christmas tree photo during the project. I am not going to promise anything, but I will try. You never know what opportunities may come when we take down the tree in a week or two. I am hoping that we take the tree down in the next week or two instead of leaving it up until sometime in February or March like we did last year!
With this picture, I wanted to capture the finished masterpiece that my fiancee put together this year for our tree. While last year’s, Virginia Tech themed tree still remains my favorite, this one is a close second. We never were able to figure out why half of a strand of lights completely went out the day after putting the decorations on. We decided to live with it instead of pulling off all the ornaments and stringing a new set of lights.
I used two flashes for this picture. Each one was set up on a flash stand and coupled with a reflective umbrella. I placed one umbrella and strobe combination atfar camera right and one far camera left. Both were set to a height roughly the size of the tree. The umbrellas were then pointed down at about forty-five degrees. If I had to estimate, each rig was about ten to twelve feet away from the base of the tree. I wanted to ensure that the light would spread evenly across all visible parts of the tree. I had to play around with the direction of the umbrellas to eliminate the spectral highlights on the walls of the room as much as possible.
In the end, I was able to produce today’s image. The ISO got a bit higher than I normally like to shoot with. In order to get more light out of my flashes, I was “forced” to raise my ISO so that I could keep the other elements of the photograph as I liked them. For example, I did not want to increase my aperture from f/11. If I allowed more light in by increasing my aperture from f/11 to, say f/8, I would have lost the star-bursting effect on the tree lights. I also did not want to slow my shutter speed down much more than 1/2 second. At 1/2 second, I was able to achieve a believable balance between the white light of the flashes and the yellow-colored light from the tree. If I slowed the shutter down to 1 second, I risked letting the yellow-colored light from the tree contaminate the rest of the light in the room and making it look more artificial.
Photo365-20091222 – Christmas Tree Bokeh Tree, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/10 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 800, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
Tonight I decided to try playing around with custom bokeh shapes. Usually, bokeh appears as circles of out-of-focus light when shooting a wide aperture. However, you can easily change the shape of the bokeh by placing a sheet of paper or card stock with a cut out directly in front of the camera lens.
For today’s picture, I used an Exacto knife to cut out the shape of a Christmas tree from a sheet of notepad paper. I then held the paper up against the end of my lens so that the tree cut out was centered on the lens. I set my lens to manual focus and threw the image of our lit Christmas tree completely out of focus.
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....
