First good day of playing with my DRebel

[jared_kipe]

I will look up Newman on a tricycle. Especially since he was elemental in starting the camp that has become one of my favorite places in the world!

Anyway, with regard to the hot wheels, thanks for the comment. Actually, no, I didn't pose them. That was the whole point. They were in a fenced in basketball court, and I couldn't even reach them (well, without hopping the fence). I was just struck by the care with which they were parked. Especially since they were his and hers.

Good luck, I can never find that picture, and I've looked. It was in some book about a famous hollywood photographer I skimmed through in BN one time.

 

[jared_kipe]

Don't know if you all care, but check out what I took tonight.

 

[mkrishnan]

Don't know if you all care, but check out what I took tonight.

I'm thinking from the filename, that I was right in guessing that it's a spider.... What kind? Where did you find it? I personally am not overly fond of spiders, unless they're restricted to nursery rhymes, (actually "not overly fond" is putting it nicely), but it is a nice capture.

 

[wdlove]

Don't know if you all care, but check out what I took tonight.

Nice picture, quite impressive. It's amazing that you could get that clear of a picture.

 

[emw]

I liked this one I shot yesterday:

 

[mkrishnan]

Nice, emw! I like the defocused cluster of buds to the right. The pinks of the...what are they called...stamen? They are very nice too.

Go team n00bs with SLRs!

 

[emw]

Thanks! I thought the lighting was fantastic for that shot. I've taken several hundred pictures in the past couple of weeks, and managed to get some nice ones. I liked that one especially.

 

[mkrishnan]

Thanks! I thought the lighting was fantastic for that shot. I've taken several hundred pictures in the past couple of weeks, and managed to get some nice ones. I liked that one especially.

Don't you love how an SLR can buffer shots, so you don't have to wait for the previous one to save before snapping again? I've taken a fair number myself. It's been raining here for a couple of days (today might be better), but I'll try to get another flower cleaned up from Tuesday and put it up.

 

[emw]

Don't you love how an SLR can buffer shots, so you don't have to wait for the previous one to save before snapping again? I've taken a fair number myself. It's been raining here for a couple of days (today might be better), but I'll try to get another flower cleaned up from Tuesday and put it up.

Rain can sometimes yield good shots - wet flowers, etc.

Note that none of the pictures I've posted, for better or worse, have been touched. No cleanup, no contrast, no anything. Straight from the camera. I've got one I want to clean a little bit that I call "Evan was here..." that I enjoy. I'll post later today.

e.

 

[mkrishnan]

Rain can sometimes yield good shots - wet flowers, etc.

Note that none of the pictures I've posted, for better or worse, have been touched. No cleanup, no contrast, no anything. Straight from the camera. I've got one I want to clean a little bit that I call "Evan was here..." that I enjoy. I'll post later today.

True that about the rain. It wasn't one of those rainstorms though. Well, except right at the beginning. It woke me up around 4 in the morning the first night with thunder and lightning. That's when I should've gone out there....

Yeah, I haven't really been doing a lot of touch-up either, except for cropping...I'm in love with weird aspect ratios, so half the time I have to crop to get what I want. And then there's the issue that I'm not really using a macro.

Here is one that involved some USM though.... Tell me what you think? I was interested in how the buds look when they're contrasted to the bloomed flowers. From a tree in the yard of the Veterans' Administration hospital here.

And I look forward to Evan.

 

[mkrishnan]

This one, too, rocks the Unsharpen Mask. These flowers were competing for the light! I guess if I had a reflector or something, I would be a total nerd but I would not have shadows....

I am experimenting with Unsharpen Mask with high radius on flowers...it seems to work. But I need to bulk up on exactly how to use USM effectively..... Although I agree that I still want to spend more of my time on perfecting the shot and less on cleaning it up!

 

[emw]

Here's a couple more. First, the unavoidable flower shot (all of these have been in our yard so far):



The next is my "Evan was here" shot. My son, who is 17 months old, was wandering through our yard carrying a cup of Rice Krispies. I'm taking different shots, and I happen to notice his cup sitting on a bed of pine needles under one of our pine trees, dropped in favor of who knows what. I thought it contrasted nicely with it's more natural surroundings:

 

[mkrishnan]

I like the flowers, although I think the ones that are in front of the focal plane at the bottom are distracting. It looks like it's been as bright there as it was here up until Tuesday!

LOL, too, 17 month olds are hilarious. That makes me miss the kids at camp (although none of them are that young). I won't get to go there again until June.

I actually have a question that I'm kind of embarrassed to ask at FM.... There are a lot of photos of flowers, that people take in bright daylight, where they light meter on the brightest part of the flower (esp. white flowers). The result is that, even though it is sunny outside, everything except the flower is essentially black. From my understanding, the DRebel has partial metering built-in, where I can isolate the metering to a spot at the center of the image.... but it does not have spot metering, where I can manually select a spot.

Is there a way to get this effect without additional hardware? Is the trick to bring the bright part of the flower (which usually will not be in the center of the photo) to the center, do a partial meter, and then lock exposure? I'm confuddled about how to do this, but I lust after that effect.

 

[mkrishnan]

Seems I sort of answered my own question...it seems that this is exactly what I should do, and that the Rebel is not the best camera in the world for it (because the spot is pretty big -- almost 10% of the image, and it is locked to the center and not the focal spot). I guess I'll play around with it, though....