Ok. Short blurb. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out why I love this image, and it really doesn't have anything to do with it's quality as a photographic work of art...but of course as a document of my wife and daughter, who were having a wonderful time cooking for a dinner at a friend's house yesterday afternoon. Caught this moment, which was only really there for about a half a second before my daughter turned back to the task at hand. Love it. Sure, the light isn't great, I had to use high ISO due to the available light in front of them...but I got the shot! Minimal PP (a little color management and a very light skin soften on my wife).
How do you choose AF region so fast? With my E-PL3 I have to press left on the wheel, move to the correct area, press OK, and then take the shot. Works great for slower stuff, but how do you do it for a shot like this?
Thanks! Anyway, touch area I want to focus on, press shutter button.
I was already taking pictures of them, so the focus point was already in the right area, but that's one thing I love about the newer m4/3 bodies (and I think the E-PL3 does it too, doesn't it?). Anway, both my GH2 and GX1 have touch to set focus point, and it's one of my favorite features...just tap and go.
Ah right, I completely forgot about touch-to-focus! The E-PL3 doesn't have a touch screen, one of the few missing features. Instead, the screen can be flipped up and down, which I ultimately prefer.
Yeah, I thought it would be a gimmick when I first heard about the touch screen in the GH2, but it is absolutely my number 1 favorite thing about the newer bodies vs. my previously owned E-P1, GH1 and G1. I love the swivel screen on my GH2 (especially when using a tripod), but if I could only have one, touch or swivel (or tilt), I'd take the touch. It really does just make everyday use of the camera so much faster.
Sony NEX-5N @ ISO 100, 1/20 second + Voigtländer 15/4.5 @ f/5.6.
Cropped ~25% and an aggressive, dedicated contrast curve was applied in PP, as well as some vignetting, dodging, burning and cloning out of small bright things that would only look like artefacts after downscaling.
I was on my way home from work, very tired and exhausted. But I thought that I should at least try shooting some instead of going home, because then I would only fall asleep.
I found this nice pattern and it took me a little while to figure out how to capture it without any distracting background. So I used the widest lens I had with me (out of 15, 28 & 50 mm), held the camera pointing downwards at arms length and shot a few frames before I got something that would do. Unfortunately my arms were too short to reach the middle of the "cross", but it worked quite well with some tilting in PP.
This is the pure definition of things I want to shoot. Ordinary stuff that is transformed into something interesting, just by eliminating the context. I like it particularly because it wasn't just a snap. I had to think and work to get what I wanted....Show more →
i think this is a great thread idea. i haven't contributed till now because i haven't had time to do any real shooting lately.
anyway i finally got a little time for a walk while there was still some (a tiny bit) light out. there is a beautiful view of the city (san francisco), bay, and distant hills just a few blocks from my apartment that i often shoot from. along the ridge is this weathered handrail with lots of lichen growing on it. i'm continuously trying to take a picture of the hand rail that i like which includes some of the overlook and have been consistently failing for some time. due to the distance between the rail and the city it is impossible to get both in focus at the same time without using an ultrawide, which sucks all the drama out of the distant landscape. i have basically decided that the only way to do it is with a narrow dof shot that allows you to still recognize the city. all my attempts at that to date have so far been failures due largely to getting an angle i like. when i went out yesterday it was quite foggy/cloudy and began raining by the time actually got out. this obscured most of the city and distant hills, which actually liberated me to try different angles that just hinted at the distant scenery rather than trying to show more. low and behold, less is more i finally got a shot i actually like.
the shot is actually a small stitch with the leica 40/2 summicron (which i just got and was planning on testing the landscape performance on). shot wide open on a NEX.
This thread idea is a good thing so I'll bump it with a story.
The other week I had a day when I worked from home. After lunch I thought I had done good so I thought I'd go out for an hour or two to check out a graffiti thing that had appeared in a certain place. Rule is (by the city) to remove any graffiti within 48hrs so it was sure to be gone soon and despite rain I went out to check it out. I posted that image and this (the below) in a Zeiss thread and got comments on the graffiti shot but not on this one.
While going to the car garage I walked by a wet tree which almost looked like a lizard foot or something. I did not take a photo, but later while searching for the graffiti thing I could not forget the "wet foot". Rain continued, graffiti was found and shot and then I got back and parked the car. Now I was into the "foot". It was still there, looking for 3D I took some 8-10 shots from different angles wideopen or close-to. Some PP here to reinforce what I saw as SOOC looked kind of flat, but all the potential was there.
I'd welcome criticism, creative or just what's wrong since I do like it so much myself :-)
As a side note, a remote friend of mine very interested in photography but not 3D/lenses/tech (he's photographing people 100%) thought this image was utterly nonsense.
Strange that no one else is posting in this thread. Doesn't stop me from posting.
Here is a ladybug in flight, which I think I was incredibly lucky to get in some sort of focus, considering it is shot with the Contarex 85 Sonnar f2 on bellows. NEX5N.
This is my favorite from this week. I've driven past this a bazillion times and finally pulled over and stopped. It's off the highway; in fact, I took this from my car, out my passenger window. E-M5 with Oly 40-150:
Great skies on that shot Jordan but the foreground seems a bit lost to me in saturation.
This is probably the best shot that I took while I was in costa rica. It cost me a migraine. I was out in the sun riding ATVs all day and when everyone else went home, I stayed out a bit longer to do some photography. I ran out of water, started driving home and kept seeing wavy lines heat mirages everywhere, got to the house, drank soda, jumped in the pool then the migraine hit.
Somehow during the trip I forgot my Lee Filter holder although I remebered to bring all my 4x6 filters. So I had to hand hold and it didn't turn out too well. I gave up and ended up just using a Marumi graduated filter. That presented it's own problems due to vignetting at 24mm on the ZA 24-70mm F2.8 since I was using a 82 to 77mm adapter.
The screw on filter though let me be a lot more flexible in moving the camera around and I've started to wonder at myself if the resin square filters make sense for my style of shooting.
If anyone knows of a good lens distortion correction profile for this lens, I would appreciate it.
Sony A850, Zeiss 24-70mm ZA F2.8
Yes, I know I have to fix the vignetting but I'll do that after I fix the distortion.
Is your monitor calibrated, or a lower gamut? I definitely punched the saturation a fair bit, but on all my monitors (both at work and at home) and on my tablet and phone, it's not so saturated that I'm losing detail or blowing the green channel.
We were out in funky Venice Beach when we wondered by this crazy antique store. It was cramped, but I remembered "looking up" and seeing a whole bunch of "stuff" hanging from the ceiling. I just had a 100mm lens (and was kind of wishing for a 60mm-80mm) but I thought it was as good of a composition I was going to get, and still capture some context.
The best camera you have is the one you have with you right?
Made a quick ATV trip down to the beach, didn't think I needed my camera as I was just doing some recon for a shoot later but ran into this scene. Overall, there's too much digital noise and not enough DR but I like the effect anyway.
This photo is originally from 2009. I had just acquired a G1/7-14/14-45/45-200 and was evaluating moving away from APS-C Canon DSLRs. I had about ten days in the Death Valley area, mostly in remote areas. I loaded up on some good inspirational composition and photography books as well.
I planned a day or two around Eureka Dunes and had wanted to explore their southern portion which is smaller in height but expansive. It was getting late in the trip and had been hot for a number of days. I started trudging out to the southern dune field in the afternoon, was going to be at least two miles across the apron to get there. Well the apron turned out to be awful, kept randomly breaking through packed sand into soft sand. It was an annoying slog, it looked like the sky wasn't going to be great for sunset, and I was having trouble imagining doing the slog back again in the dark. I was getting pretty pissed actually.
Finally I just stopped and stood there in frustration. It seemed unlikely I'd be in any condition to be creative if I kept marching. Probably stood there a good five minutes deciding what to do (keep going or give up). As I stood there I noticed some interesting forms and shadows on the distant highest dune, I'd been telling myself to try more telephoto landscapes as well. So took the camera off my belt, put on the 45-200 and snapped a few photos handheld mostly just to have something from my walk. I turned around and trudged back. Later that evening from a high vantage point over the valley I captured probably one my very best images ever - so the day turned out OK. But when I got home I was surprised to discover this composition grabbed in frustration worked out nicely.
THIS WEEK, I revisited the image to provide examples of high-key and low-key processing in a thread. I had never envisioned this as a low-key shot (original processing was close to high-key), but as I did the example I was surprised that it worked quite well! So that's the second part of the story, and the "this week" part of it as well.
