Photo365-20100118 – Bottoms Up, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/250 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
To unwind from a hectic day at work today, I poured myself a small drink to enjoy while my fiancee and I watched some television together. I brought my camera bag with me down into the basement in case any bright ideas came to me while we were relaxing (no pun intended). I did not even get to take a sip of my drink yet when I thought of an idea to bottom light the brandy sniffer glass. The glass coffee table top was finally going to be put to a good use rather than constantly getting dirty.
I whipped out the 430 EX II flash and set it up below the glass table top so that it fired directly up into the base of the drinking glass. I do not remember if I was using manual mode, or if I was using ETTL with flash compensation. More recently I have found myself using ETTL to control the power of the strobe for me. I have found that setting the camera on manual mode and letting the ETTL system set the flash power has resulted in very satisfying images much sooner in my shoots when compared against having to set the flash powers manually. I plan to continue working in both manual flash and ETTL flash, but I believe it is a good approach to know both methods well.
Photo365-20100106 – Jim’s, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/4 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 400, 5.1 mm
Tonight I headed into Philadelphia with a few coworkers to do a cheesesteak challenge. The plan was to two hit up two cheesesteak joints in close proximity and eat a cheesesteak from each place in order to compare them. Luckily, I had someone willing to split a sandwich at each place with me. The two joints we went to were Jim’s Steaks and Ishkabibble’s.
Today’s photograph is of the steak we ordered at Jim’s Steaks. The Cheese Wiz is spread with a butter knife directly onto the bun before it is loaded with your meat and vegetables of choice. In this sandwich, we ordered onions and mushrooms. I have to be honest though, this steak was very dry compared to the one at Ishkabibble’s. And even though I have not had Pat’s or Gino’s in a few years, I am almost certain that a cheesesteak at either one of their establishments would be better than the two I sampled tonight.
The photograph is a no thrills snapshot. I did not want my sub-sharing partner to have to wait while I took tons of pictures of our rapidly cooling sandwich. I at least tried to spice up the picture with a couple of “creative” edits in post-processing.
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.
Photo365-20091224 – 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.
Photo365-20091218 – Ginger-yum House, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
25.0 sec @ f/14, ISO 400, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
Today my fiancee and her nephew made a ginger break house together. Upon coming home and seeing it on the dining room table, I knew it was going to be my subject for today. It was practically in the perfect place too, right in front of the tree. In order to get the star bursting effect on the tree lights, I knew I would need a small aperture and a long shutter speed.
I set the camera up on the tripod and placed an Apollo softbox at camera right. I then set up the white disc reflector on camera left to open up the shadows on the left side of the house. I took a few shots to determine the best flash power settings to light the ginger bread house. I quickly determined that I needed to modify the light from the flash with a CTO (color temperature orange) gel to more closely match the ambient light from the tree. After getting the ginger bread house lit to the way I wanted it to look, I started to slow down my shutter speed little by little until the exposure of the tree was spot on.
In hind sight, I should have corrected the white balance during post processing. It seems that there is an abundance of yellow in the final picture. My guess is that the 7D auto white balance chose a flash setting instead of a tungsten setting. I should have manually set the white balance to match the color of my gelled flash to avoiding having to make an adjustment during post.
1/60 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 800, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
Giant was giving away free brown and serve rolls during checkout a couple of days ago. Today I whipped up a little upgrade to them by brushing some melted butter on their tops and sprinkling on a few herbs and spices. After a ten minute tan in the oven, they were ready to be eaten.
I snapped this picture while I was waiting for the oven to preheat. I locked the ISO at 800 and the shutter speed at 1/60. I then took the aperture as wide as I could to still get a bright exposure. I would have liked to get a bit more depth of field in the picture so that more of the rolls were in focus, but I was too lazy to pull out the tripod so that I could use a longer shutter speed.
1/30 sec @ f/2.5, ISO 200, 5.1 mm
My fiancée and I had dinner at the new Vietnamese restaurant in Leesburg tonight. The food was decent. Pho 99 in Herndon, VA is still my favorite though. However, the convenience of this new restaurant in Leesburg is…..well…..convenient!
This is a picture of a summer roll with one bite taken out of it. I got as close as I could with the Leica point and shoot. I was carefull not to get too close and have the food touch the lens. Surprisingly, this type of booboo is very easy to do if you are paying too close attention to the LCD screen on the back of the camera and not where the front of the lens is.
During post-processing, I tried to crop away as many of the distractions in the background as possible. I also ran the photograph through Noise Ninja to clean up most of the noise.
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....
