Picture of the day...

[annk]

Sheep in the sun

Trollstigen, Norway, July 16, 2006
Canon 350D
1/160
f 7.1
98 mm
ISO 400

Saturation lowered and sharpness increased in iPhoto

 

[FleurDuMal]

Unfortunately, this one didn't take the size/quality reduction too well. It's made it look a wee bit out of focus I think, but never mind. C&C welcome

"Rising Daisy"
Stockport, Cheshire, UK, 18/07/06
Nikkon D70
Nikkon 18-70mm 'kit' lens @ 70mm
1/80 @ f5.0
ISO 200

 

[kylos]

So many nice pictures posted here. I love the colours and the effect of the sharp petal edge against the unfocused green background in your pic, Clix Pix. The picture of the sky is beautiful, Kyle. Deefuzz, the unusual close up perspective of the guitar makes the picture very intriguing. There's some dust or distortion under the strings on the right hand side, though. I think the picture would have been better without that.

"Yellow Flower"
Linderud, Oslo, Norway, 22.07.2006
Canon PowerShot S3 IS
1/160 @ f2.7

I'm still enjoying my new camera. I'm posting a macro that I'm very happy with. It's quite cliché, I think, but it's the first macro I've shot that immediately looked appealing to me. It is reasonably in focus, and the background is anonymous enough to make the flower stand out. I did edit the colours slightly and use the vignette effect in iPhoto, but not much editing was required and that is what I like most about the picture.

I've really enjoyed this thread as well. I'm just an amateur, so it's a fun challenge to find shots that are even partially worthy posting to this thread.

Oh, and I really liked your shot of the horse just above. Very nice pose. How are you liking the S3 IS?

 

[gekko513]

I've really enjoyed this thread as well. I'm just an amateur, so it's a fun challenge to find shots that are even partially worthy posting to this thread.

Oh, and I really liked your shot of the horse just above. Very nice pose. How are you liking the S3 IS?

Thanks. I'm just an amateur also, and this thread is a great inspiration. One idea of mine, as beginner's excersises, is to take some of the photos here that I like the most and try to reproduce them more or less accurately to try and figure out what makes them work and what's less important.

So far I like the S3 IS a lot. I'm still experimenting with all the settings to see what results I can get. Some other day I hope I will still be able to find the horses where I found them yesterday, because I want to go back and shoot them without having the ISO set to 400. I forgot that I had set the ISO for an earlier shot, so the horse shots turned out much more coarse than I had intended. *grumble*

annk: Nice shot. It's making me home sick. I think you've captured much of the essence of rural Norway in that picture.

 

[seenew]

Make: Canon
Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 second
F Number: F/4.5
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Date Picture Taken: Jul 21, 2006, 8:06:28 PM

 

[BigMäc]

Piercing - 7/22/06

Camera: Canon EOS 30D
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50 mm
Shutter/Aperture: 1/100 @ f4
Lens: EF 50 mm f1.8 II

Must have entertained the models... damn fence

Edit: should work now

 

[ashley]

"Sky"

Drive-by shot taken June 19, 2006 just south of Wawa, Ontario
Adjusted for exposure and levels in iPhoto




I can't recall; the image may have been shot through the blue sun filter at the top of the windshield.

Camera: Canon S3 IS
Exposure: 1/800 @ f8
Focal Length: 6mm
ISO: S3 IS does not record ISO

Pretty! I love the clouds.

 

[snap58]

Camera: Canon EOS 30D
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50 mm
Shutter/Aperture: 1/100 @ f4
Lens: EF 50 mm f1.8 II

Must have entertained the models... damn fence

Edit: should work now

The fly really sets it off, I like it!

 

[snap58]

dog

Don't do many people , but here's the dog...

Back Yard
5/27/06
Canon 5D
135L F2.0
2X tc = F4.0 = 270 mm
1/60

 

[otter]

Sweets
On my table...
July 21, 2006

 

[snap58]

Sweets
On my table...
July 21, 2006

That's a pretty cool picture.

 

[annk]

Don't do many people , but here's the dog...

Back Yard
5/27/06
Canon 5D
135L F2.0
2X tc = F4.0 = 270 mm
1/60

I never manage to get that almost 3-D look that you have here. That's not really the right way to put it, but you maybe know what I mean - the dog doesn't look flat, he stands out from the background.

 

[Abstract]

Wow, I haven't been in this thread for like 4 weeks since I didn't have enough time to catch up on what's going on.

Blue Mountains, June 17th, 2006.

I haven't taken any decent photos since then because I have no time. I really feel bad about not taking any for the assignment, since "Yellow" was my idea, but "c'est la vie."

 

[freebooter]

A Higher Power

This was taken July 4, 2006, during a monsoon rainstorm near Daegu South Korea. I run up a local mountain, Yongji-bong, about every second day, and I recently secured a little waterproof camera to bring on the wet runs (summer is the wet-season here). In a short time, I've gathered a lot of images I would otherwise have missed.

Pentax Optio W10
ISO 64
55mm (35mm equiv.)
f/7.2
sh.sp. 0.0125

 

[Abstract]

^^ Awesome. Did you take the photo through a window (in a building on top of the mountain?) of that shape?

 

[snap58]

I never manage to get that almost 3-D look that you have here. That's not really the right way to put it, but you maybe know what I mean - the dog doesn't look flat, he stands out from the background.

If you were to go and visit the "Wizard" he would probably tell you to take your camera off of "Program Mode" and set it to Aperture Priority : )


You can get the separation by using a very narrow Depth of Field to blur out the background (and foreground) surrounding your subject. This seems to work better with longer lenses than wide, since by their nature they have a more limited DOF.

The lens with the dog photo is 270 mm, at F4.0 and say 12 feet away, it has a depth of field of about .13 feet (about 4 cm since you are not from Kansas), so 2 cm in front and 2 cm behind the focus point.

I don't know what lens you have, I guess some sort of zoom, maybe it goes to 150 mm and f5.6 for the widest aperture. With the 350, and say 10 feet away you would have a DOF of about 8.5 cm. The closer you can get, the less the DOF will be, at 6 feet it's only 3 cm, if you can focus that close.

Just set your lens to it's widest aperture, look for something with a contrasting background behind it, take some pictures and see what you get. Note with a narrow DOF, you may not get the whole subject in focus, so pick out an interesting part, most portraits go for eyes and lips. Notice Clix Pix does this with her flower Macros, same principle, smaller scale.

 

[cookie1105]

Camera: Canon EOS 30D
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50 mm
Shutter/Aperture: 1/100 @ f4
Lens: EF 50 mm f1.8 II

Must have entertained the models... damn fence

Edit: should work now

I really like this photo, it made me smile. Good capture + composition.

 

[freebooter]

^^ Awesome. Did you take the photo through a window (in a building on top of the mountain?) of that shape?

Thanks. No, that's the magic of Photoshop. Though I've only just started to use it regularly, I love Photoshop. To get the shape, I used a Flaming Pear plugin filter called Flexify 2.

 

[iGary]

Camera: Canon EOS 30D
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50 mm
Shutter/Aperture: 1/100 @ f4
Lens: EF 50 mm f1.8 II

Must have entertained the models... damn fence

Edit: should work now

The fly on the nose, the drip of snot on the ring...very nice. I loves me some EF 50 1.8 II.

 

[annk]

If you were to go and visit the "Wizard" he would probably tell you to take your camera off of "Program Mode" and set it to Aperture Priority : )


You can get the separation by using a very narrow Depth of Field to blur out the background (and foreground) surrounding your subject. This seems to work better with longer lenses than wide, since by their nature they have a more limited DOF.

The lens with the dog photo is 270 mm, at F4.0 and say 12 feet away, it has a depth of field of about .13 feet (about 4 cm since you are not from Kansas), so 2 cm in front and 2 cm behind the focus point.

I don't know what lens you have, I guess some sort of zoom, maybe it goes to 150 mm and f5.6 for the widest aperture. With the 350, and say 10 feet away you would have a DOF of about 8.5 cm. The closer you can get, the less the DOF will be, at 6 feet it's only 3 cm, if you can focus that close.

Just set your lens to it's widest aperture, look for something with a contrasting background behind it, take some pictures and see what you get. Note with a narrow DOF, you may not get the whole subject in focus, so pick out an interesting part, most portraits go for eyes and lips. Notice Clix Pix does this with her flower Macros, same principle, smaller scale.

Thanks, I really appreciate the fact that people take time to give feedback in this thread.

That particular technique, I'm aware of (I do use aperture priority and the other manual modes, I just use the program modes if I want to point and shoot. ). Blurring the background is one thing, but there was something about that dog pic that really made the dog come alive, some how. Part of my problem is I lack the technical terminology to say what I'm seeing.

I mostly use a Sigma 18 - 125, 3.5 - 5.6 lens.

Anther thing - - that great shot of the bull that BigMäc took - I have that 50 mm 1.8 lens, too, just got it yesterday - - he must've been CLOSE to that bull to use that lens.

 

[gauchogolfer]

My first lightning picture, taken last week in San Sebastián, Spain during a very nice storm.

Minolta Dimage A2
15 seconds at f/2.8
ISO 64

Any comments or suggestions on taking long-exposure shots like this for lightning, fireworks, etc. is appreciated.

For the pictures posted above, I'll second my like for the nose-ring shot, as well as the one from seenew. I've seemed to like almost everything they've posted.

 

[BoyBach]

My first lightning picture, taken last week in San Sebastián, Spain during a very nice storm.

Wow!

 

[iGary]

My first lightning picture, taken last week in San Sebastián, Spain during a very nice storm.

Minolta Dimage A2
15 seconds at f/2.8
ISO 64

Any comments or suggestions on taking long-exposure shots like this for lightning, fireworkds, etc. is appreciated.

For the pictures posted above, I'll second my like for the nose-ring shot, as well as the one from seenew. I've seemed to like almost everything they've posted.

Those are hard, I have been playing with lightning myself.

I like doing short exposures so you can see the feelers and other parts branching off without overexposing the main branch, but yours is much better from a beauty standpoint. Maybe cut your shutter speed in half and see what happens...I still haven't mastered it yet.

 

[Josh]

Here's a pic I took in Boston last week.

ISO 200, F2, 1/8000

 

[mrzeve]

[original found at: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=195196313&size=o

Lombard Street, San Francisco, 7/20/2006