On 6/21/2012 12:14 AM, Larry Colen wrote:
On Jun 20, 2012, at 9:53 PM, Walt Gilbert wrote:
On 6/20/2012 11:41 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
On Jun 20, 2012, at 9:24 PM, Walt Gilbert wrote:
First off, apologies for the horrible pun of a title.
Now, onto the photo. I took it today at the mimosa tree in my front yard. I did
some experimenting to see what kind of setup I need. I would've liked the bee
to have been a bit sharper, but I though maybe the blur would lend a sense of
motion. Just not sure if it works.
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/walt_gilbert/7412081522/
That is not the worst picture I've seen this week. Very nice.
Thanks, Larry! Can I quote you on that?
Sure thing. Any time you need a recommendation. How about:
Walt isn't the worst photographer I've seen. Many of his pictures look better
than if they'd been taken with an instamatic by a drunk on a three day binge.
Perfect! I've made great strides.
K20D, Promaster 70-300/4-5.6, ISO 400, 1/400, f/8
I'm guessing I'm going to have to bump up the ISO and shutter speed enough to
compensate for another aperture stop at f/9 to get a little more DOF.
I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions anyone has to offer.
I don't know how much more you could push the ISO with the K20D. It's probably
worth doing a test series with both the K20 and the K-x bracketing ISO, f-stop
and shutter speed to see where the sweet spot is.
That's a good idea. I was kind of hesitant to go much higher than 400, but that
wouldn't be an issue with the K-x. I'll have to give it a shot and see how it
performs.
The thing is, you need to know what your equipment can do, and it's limits
under one kind of lighting won't be the same as under different lighting. In
other words, just because it's noisy at ISO 1600 at 1/10Sec in a dimly lit room
doesn't necessarily mean that it will be as noisy in sunlight at ISO 1600 at
1/100 Sec. For one thing, inside, the light has a lot more energy in the red
channel, so you're pushing the blue channel a lot harder. With my camera, most
of the noise showed up in the blue channel anyways. If you're photographing
something with a lot of the signal in the blue channel, the noise won't be
nearly as noticeable.
This area always seems to have plenty in the blue channel -- lots of sky
in the background in most of the photos I take at it. So maybe it won't
be much of an issue. My biggest noise concern is probably the camera's
internal temperature, given that it's usually in the 90's when this tree
finally blossoms. So far, though, that hasn't seemed to be a problem.
At the very least, in a situation like this, if you have the chances,
experiment. Try pushing the ISO harder, worst case you end up with some photos
you have to delete lest they use up $.02 worth of hard drive. Have you
picked up Lightroom 4 (or even 3) yet? It's ability to defeat noise in raw
files is pretty impressive. Things that just didn't work for me with my K20
three years ago might be well within the ability of Lightroom 4 to correct.
I still don't have any version of Lightroom, unfortunately. I do just
about everything with Picasa and a few Photoshop filters with IrfanView.
Occasionally, I'll pull up Gimp -- but I need to reinstall it as
something has gone haywire between it and UFRAW. I've just been putting
it off.
The other option would be to try using a speedlight. You won't be able to get
a shutterspeed faster than 1//160 on the camera, but the flash duration will be
a lot shorter. If you were to try ISO 100, f/16 or f/22, at 1/125 or 1/160,
then use the strobe to fill in, you should have enough light from the strobe at
short distances to use the higher f/stop, you'll get an interesting mix of blur
and frozen on the bee, and the background will be de-emphasized by being a
couple stops under exposed.
I do have a hot shoe flash that I can use manually and will see what I can do
with it. I appreciate the ideas and tips. Hopefully most of the blossoms will
still be on the tree the next time I get a chance to do it. Got a busy,
early-starting workweek coming up -- beginning tomorrow.
Congratulations. I hope it leaves you some time to spend with your new friend.
We shall see. There's a good chance I'll see her before the weekend's
over. Now, if I can only get her to just chill when the camera comes out!
Thanks again for the pointers!
-- Walt
Thanks again!
-- Walt
Thanks!
-- Walt
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