365.298 aaarrrghhhh! My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is especially difficult with gusty winds, though some of the problem can be overcome with higher shutter speeds (not that I did that here…).

So I decided to take the new macro rig on a walk today, and take along the SB-700 and the Cactus triggers. I also decided to add the broken battery grip, as I experienced a bit of wrist pain yesterday from the way I hold the D7000. The grip adds an extra couple of inches, and I can hold the camera in a more wrist-elbow-shoulder friendly manner.

Of course, this meant that I lost the stability of a second hand on the camera, and added maybe 2lbs to the rig. The weight wasn’t much of an issue, but a second hand definitely would’ve come in handy.

I’ve been reading up on diy flash brackets, and may drop $60 on RAM mount pieces to build one, but I promised myself there would be no more photography expenses this year. I may have to go back on my word, there, as I’ll be needing some sort of flash bracket if I plan to do much walk-around macro work with off-camera flash, and while there are far cheaper pre-made flash brackets—and even cheaper diy alternatives—many of them get rather poor ratings for stability, and the RAM build seems to be a popular and sturdy method.

Anyway.

The title is another throw-away line from the Simpson’s: the episode where a movie adaptation of Radioactive Man is being filmed in Springfield. The villan has Radioactive Man (played by +Rainier Wolfcastle) tied up in a warehouse, and Fallout Boy (+Milhouse Van Houten) is supposed to come to the rescue in the nick of time. Unfortunately, Milhouse backs out of the production, leaving Radioactive Man with a only a small pair of plastic goggles to protect his eyes from the radioactive sludge.

As you might imagine from the title, above, things don’t go so well…

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO100, 1/30th, f/8. SB-700, handheld, with its diffusion panel in place, at 1/4, held slightly less than arms length away, camera left, and triggered via a pair of Cactus v5 triggers. About 5 minutes of processing in Aperture to bring out some detail and bump up the contrast a bit.

Stockyards Photowalk & Scavenger Hunt

This morning found me in the Fort Worth Stockyards, taking part in a photowalk and scavenger hunt MeetUp with the North Texas Photography Explorers Meetup Group. The weather was beautiful, and I ended up being more interested in the walking than the shooting, though I did manage to take 320 pictures…

Here is the Scavenger Hunt List. Did I miss anything?

    • Something Risky
    • Horns
    • Amazing
    • Spanish Influence
    • Old West
    • A Sign
    • The number “5”
    • S
    • Triangle
    • Box

All in all, it was a fun time, and I was glad to bump into Judy, with whom I’ve walked and talked on a couple of photowalks now.

Photowalks are always more fun with a buddy, for sure.

Everything was shot with the D7000 in Aperture Priority mode, and everything except the Bee was shot with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4. The Bee got his from the Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 that I’ve been playing with lately. This was the first time I’ve taken a second lens on a photowalk, and it might become the norm: it was nice to be able to whip out a decent macro set up at a moment’s notice, and the kit weighed less than a pound and fit easily into a jean pocket.

The street photographer’s guide to shooting domestic poultry

I don’t often post links to other people’s work… perhaps I should. This article suggests that I should, but I wonder if it isn’t geared toward the pro-am, wannabe, semi-pro, and pro photographers out there.

In any case, I don’t often post links to other people’s work, but when I do, you should clicky immediately.

Andrews, Blake. “The street photographer’s guide to shooting domestic poultry,” R uMB lIngsF RO MTh ePho TO GRAP hic Hin TERL And S (blog), October 17, 2012. Retrieved 20 October, 2012.

365.296 almost

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is especially tough when your subject darts around like a mosquito.

Don’t look too closely at this one… The [whateverthisis] portion of this picture was tortured beyond all reasonable requirements to make it appear, at first glance, to be in focus. Trust me, it’s not, and if you look closely, you can see all the post work I subjected it to.

If you’ve been following the 365, you know this is out of character for me, so I apologize.

Anyway.

I walked out to the landscaping out front of the building that shares a parking lot with mine, and started bug hunting. A large gentleman (I’m 6’2″ and about 250lbs, and this guy had 6″ and 80lbs on me) came out with his dog. I looked up and said “How’s it going?”

“How you doing?” he asked. “What are you up to?” he added, suspiciously.

I looked up from my bug hunting, and saw he was giving me the “what are you doing around her, you don’t belong here” look that I’ve come to expect from people, but very rarely actually receive, and a range of responses ran through my head.

I discarded “none of your &%*@#&! business” and “just wandering around my neighborhood” out of hand, and instead regaled him with a 20 minute, very one-sided discussion of the marvels of shooting with reversed prime lenses, and the pros and cons of reversed primes over reversed zooms, and why don’t I just buy a proper macro lens, etc. Every time he tried to turn away, or call his dog, or escape, I moved closer and became more animated.

His look went from suspicion to “jeez, why did I ask?” rather quickly.

Despite prevailing in the first suspicious confrontation I’ve had on a solo photowalk, I still brought myself back home as soon as was feasible (about 10 minutes after the gentleman and his dog went back inside).

A different person would’ve tried to make friends with this guy, or put him at ease, or tell him where to go. But not me, I consciously chose to make him regret even looking at me.

I think he deserved this for his suspicious mind, and hope he thinks twice before bothering a stranger with a camera again.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO100, 1/125th (AP mode), f/8, -1EV. About 17 minutes of post processing to make the bug look in focus and blur out the leaf, which was actually pretty sharp. (If you’re curious, I think this lens is at its sharpest between f/5.6 and f/8, with f/4 being eminently reasonable as well. 1.8 is rather soft, with some improvement at 2 and 2.8. I’ve not shot beyond f/8 yet.)

365.295 closer

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth benefits greatly from stopping down even if it’s a mere 1 and 1/3 stops.

The head, eye, and front segment are all about as sharp as this lens gets (I think… it might sharpen up a bit at f/5.6 and f/8, but I haven’t really tested it), and the composition has improved greatly from yesterday, thanks to a renewed consciousness of it.

Or, at least this one adheres to the rule of thirds…

There’s still an annoying bit: that leaf in the lower right hand corner. It distracts me to no end. I blurred, burned, and vignetted it, but it still drags the eye away from the target. I could crop it out, or clone it out, but I try to limit my post work as much as possible, and this image had quite a bit already, so I left it be.

But now that I said ‘crop’ I wonder if this would look nice as a square… Hummm.

I forgot headphones when I initially went out to go walking, and decided against going back for them. This led to some increased worrying, but I let it wash over and through me, and found a spot to focus on bees and focusing the reversed lens and trying to get a decent composition, and I managed to last about a half hour or 40 minutes, which is about what I hit with music too.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina). ISO400, 1/4000th (AP mode), f/4, -1EV. About 12 minutes of post work in Aperture, mostly to dull back that accursed leaf, but also to sharpen up the bee with the definition brush.

365.294 the elusive eludes

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is difficult. Good exercise, but difficult. And it eluded me today, but I got closer than yesterday, so that counts for something.

At two separate points, I was busily shooting bees, stopped, looked up, found a couple pushing a baby stroller stopped inches from me, and realized I was blocking the sidewalk.

Two different times; two different couples; two different strollers. And two different babies, presumably.

Anyway. This picture has some problems. That the bee is not in particularly sharp focus is the least of its problems. The lighting is mid-Afternoon Awful, the composition is amateurish, and the framing incomprehensible.

All are good reasons to go and try again tomorrow!

Today’s record: the first ~40 minutes of TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light, which sadly was not quite dancy or poppy enough to keep me from worrying, though I was able to power through the worry and force myself to keep going two different times.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO400, 1/6400th (APmode), f/1.8, -1EV. About 3 minutes of slider play in Aperture to try to salvage a bit of dignity from what was a rather nice walk, if a largely poor showing in the photographic arena.