I feel like I’m going backwards. Forty-three days in and this is what I show up with? Jeez.
D7000, Nikon 75-150 f/3.5 E Series at ~135mm, ISO100, 8 seconds, f/8.
Hipstamatic Disposable update 9 – the El Mario camera
Desaturated. Orange Light Leaks. A Sort-Of Interesting Border.
If I start up another one of these, I’ll be turning the light leaks off and shooting with B/W and that neat border in mind… But that’s a big if.
Take the 99 cents you were going to spend on this camera and go bury it in the neighbor’s yard, or give it to the next person that asks you if you have anything to spare, or stick it in the pocket of those pants that change always falls out of and go ride roller coasters until it all falls out of your pocket and is lost forever.
All of these are better uses of your hard-earned change, and I think Synthetic should be ashamed of their efforts on the 99 cent unlimited cameras, all of which are uninspired and appear rushed attempts to appease the users who were upset by their pricing model of the D-Series app.
Oh well.
Hipstamatic Disposable update 8 – the Gregory GR8 camera
Well…
I find Gregory GR8 pretty meh.
Fat White Border. Faded Orange Color Overlay To Make It Look Old.
Good brightness and clarity overall, but not so much that I didn’t wish I still had my 99 cents… And I definitely won’t bother loading up another one of these…
The slider takes a bit of the orange cast off, but doesn’t do much beyond that.
I wish I had something more to say, but I think the random shots speak for themselves.
365.42 Ohne Titel
I sorta ran myself out of time, what with a mid-week grocery run, fetching diesel for Hank the Golf, paying off bills, and other Wednesday inanity, so I went back to macro…
But I wanted to switch it up this time, so I pulled out the magnifying glass (from day 26), the 36-72 E Series, the macro reverse ring, the 49mm worth of extension tubes, and the cat toy that is partly visible in day 7, and started shooting.
I got some pretty good shots through the magnifying glass, uploaded them to the computer, and started to take everything down, when I decided to take a shot without the magnifying glass.
Ends up, the magnifying glass only blurred the image! It didn’t magnify anything! (I think this is because of the distance between the lens and the subject—about 5 inches—but that’s just a guess). If you have a better idea, please pass it along!
This was the D7000, Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series, reversed, on 49mm of extension tubes, ISO100, 6 seconds, f/16.
The 5 Elements of Photography – tl;dr version
Ok. Let’s make this quick.
There are 5 things that go into any and every photograph.
In order of importance, these 5 Elements of Photography are:
All of these terms are broader than you probably think:
- ‘Light,’ here, includes the entire spectrum of light, from radio waves through gamma radiation, and is in no way limited to the visible forms with which we’re mostly familiar.
- ‘The Photographer’ is a human decision-maker, but may or may not actually operate the camera directly.
- ‘The Subject’ is just whatever is captured and transferred to film/paper or 1s & 0s, but may be extended, depending on the emotional, aesthetic, intellectual, and other qualities of the image.
- ‘The Lens’ can be anything from a hole in a piece of tin to a $11,000 Leica Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH thing, or even the light collecting parts of a massive, multi-billion dollar radiation-collecting satellite; its job is to gather light and transport it to the camera.
- ‘The Camera’ can be pretty much anything, from a coffee can, to the fanciest Leica or Phase One or the recording parts of the aforementioned satellite: all of these ‘capture’ the light and fix it in an image.
More thoughts are available in the articles linked above, and I make no claims to be an authority on any of this. I am merely (and only recently) a geek whose current focus is on photography, and I am constantly learning new things and coming up with new ideas.
365.41 Maneki Neko
I started out today’s 365 time with plans on doing some more multiple exposure experiments, intending to try to make this little Maneki Neko figure look as if it was lit by multiple strobes, even though I have only the one SB-700.
I took about 20 multiple exposures (60 shots) holding the SB-700 with a small snoot on the end, zoomed to 85, and varying power from from 1/4 – 1/16 within each multiple exposure (1/4 for the key & 1/16 for the fill, for example).
That got old with a quickness, and took a long time, and I couldn’t seem to strike a balance between blocking out the ambient light and blowing out the highlights.
So I abandoned the multiple exposure test, and went to playing with the flash and waiting for the screensaver to look just right…
After about 45 minutes: success! And with some evidence of Maneki Neko’s waving hand to top it all off! GoGo!
D7000 with Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series at 150mm; ISO100, 1/4th sec., f/3.5. SB-700 at 1/16th power, handheld, triggered by a Cactus V5, bounced into a $4 car window reflector at lower camera right, and reflected off of a second $4 car window reflector to the left of the subject.
365.40 Multeh Bokeh
On with my experiments in multiple exposure. This time: testing what happens when multiple exposures meet shallow depth of field.
I started out with a still life of sorts, but quickly noticed that these beads made some great bokeh, so I got rid of everything else and focused on the beads.
Or, rather, focused on different sections of beads.
And then I ran out of light, so out came the SB-700 and the CerealBox StripBox(tm).
This shot was the result of an accident.
First shot (without flash, due to my failure to remember to wake up the Cactus V5s), focused on the far end of the beads, ISO100, ~1/4, f/1.8.
Second shot (with the flash this time, 1/4 power, through the stripbox with its diffuser in place), focused on the same spot, ISO100, 1/4, f/1.8.
Third shot, focused on the beads in the near ground, with the flash (same as above) and the same settings as above (if I recall: I once again forgot to write stuff down… for shame).
All shot with the 50mm 1.8G: great lens, fyi.
This makes a nice, dreamy effect, much like I imagine wiping vaseline on the lens would do, but with some planes in reasonably sharp focus, while others are totally blown out.
All in all: Good Times!
