There's something to be said about small aperatures and me. As a commenter mentioned on my last picture post, I like close up shots of objects. I feel this stems from a lack of focus in my life in general. I've never had the capability to throw my creative passion in to an outlet and never been able to focus it well. I constantly see images, places, scenes in my life that I wish I could capture and mold, in order to express my own world view but have rarely had the chance to. I guess that since I've bought this camera I've been overcompensating, purposefully focusing in on the little details around me to make up for the time I haven't had the ability to do so before. So for right now a bug, a leaf, someone's smile, a railing, whatever I see and want to focus on will be my subject. At least until I fufill this desire to see the fine details and allow myself to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Until then, this is what you get:
I also got(as a steal) a telescopic lens. Canon 70-300mm USM. It works well when its bright outside, other conditions not so much.
Jeykll, Island, GA
Direct Positive is a fun filter
The cottage we stayed at in Nova Scotia
Fort Liousberg, NS
On Cape Breton, NS
Sunset in Inverness
House down the beach from our cottage, what a view!
Advocate Bay, NS
Yours Truly
jekyll island to nova scotia? how the hell does that happen?
ReplyDeleteyour pictures are great. you've got a good sense of framing— my favourite is probably the one of the rocky coast and the house in the distance.
there's nothing wrong with taking pictures of the specifics. it's good to notice the little things. someone's got to notice them— how do you think mendel discovered the cell?
how much was the telescopic lens? if it was that cheap, it was good that you picked it up, but in all practicality telescopic lenses aren't terribly useful— in most circumstances it's best to get closer to your subject if you can. it's only usually useful in nature photography when you're photographing animals in their natural habitat (you don't want to get too close). it's also useful for private investigators:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz5DkTF2RW8
for some reason, it's a popular thing to want a telescopic lens these days— i'm not sure exactly why. they use that as a selling point for digital cameras and camcorders, and unless you have an extremely still tripod, it's difficult to get a shot when you're that far zoomed in. in addition, because of the nature of the lens, (and you might have noticed this already since you talked about it not working except in very bright sunlight) a telescopic lens is automatically going to need a smaller aperture (when the hole is smaller, the number is bigger— go figure), which means you're going to need a longer shutter speed. i don't know if i told you this before but shutter speeds and apertures have an inversely proportional relationship— the smaller the aperture is, the longer the shutter has to stay open to capture the same amount of light on the sensor (film or digital). which if you don't have a tripod, is going to be very difficult to hold the camera still for the amount of time it will take due to the smaller aperture size.
the best option for your style is probably to use the lens that came with the camera, zoom out a bit in other words, and get close to the subject.
you mentioned a filter. is it a physical filter that you put on the end of the lens, or is it a digital colour altering filter that comes on a lot of cameras (you know, "black and white", "sepia", etc.)?
i wouldn't bother trying to use the telescopic lens too much at this point, especially since you don't have a tripod... what i would try to do is make the most out of the lens that came with the camera (by the way, what's the range of focus— the one that came with mine is 28-90mm and i can't tell you how often i need it to go wider rather than more telescopic) and continue using those large apertures and quick shutter speeds. i never found much interest in that, but you seem to have a knack for it. you might want to experiment with having several "layers" if that makes any sense, going away from the lens (ie: one layer at 3 feet, one at 10, one at 20) using a large aperture you're going to end up with one that is very in focus and the rest are going to be very out of focus. that's one thing you've got to remember about the large apertures, you're going to have a very narrow part of your picture that is going to be in focus, you experiment with that (as you already are!).
Thanks for the thought-out comment!(and compliment!)
ReplyDeleteI got the lens for a steal, a professional photographer was selling it on craigslist for $100(it's a Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 iii USM) and I managed to bring her down to $80, so well worth the price I hope :)
For most situation, and by default, I use the stock lens for the exact reasons you listed, the telephoto is more difficult to use when framing because of how zommed it is, however I am discovering when it is appropriate and utilizing it to the full extent. I can't tell you how useful it was in nova scotia for some of the whale shots, as well as some of the landscapes(though most of those were with the stock).
To be honest I haven't had much trouble with lighting conditions and the smaller aperature, I find that 4-5.6 works fine for most situations, even when it's getting dark. I have Adobe Lightroom which helps heaps with correcting lighting conditions when the shot comes out too dark. And holding the camera hasn't been too much of a problem either, I took a few shots at a baseball game I went to on the 4th and they turned out great despite the low light and far distance:
http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/269147_1954210611192_1120471979_32976884_3168534_n.jpg
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/269608_1954212531240_1120471979_32976889_4789512_n.jpg
http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/263450_1954212211232_1120471979_32976888_6792935_n.jpg
The filter is a physical filter, I got a deal when I bought the camera and it came with a few basic filters. I have a UV, a CPL, and a TFL filter. The UV stays on whatever lens I'm using at the moment as a general protective covering for the lens, and I've used the CPL when on water(which turns out magnificently).
I'm not sure what you mean with the layering. Is there someone to combine the images in photoshop, or just playing around with different settings to see what I like as far as focus goes?
P.S. I haven't had time to yet, but I have a solid 9 or 10 panoramas to stitch with photoshop that I took in Nova Soctia. Rudely epic landscape shots I can't wait to get up! Check back for them soon :)
nah, when i meant layering, i mean working with things at a distance from the camera— no photoshop. say you had several objects, you put one at three feet from the camera, one at five feet, and one at seven feet, all in the same shot. then focus on the one at five feet. use a large aperture (small number) and you should get an interesting shot. that's sort of what i meant.
ReplyDeletethe polarizing filter explains the contrast in some of your shots— it gives a very nice effect. uv is a good filter to have since film/digital can't reproduce UV or even regular violet light, it receives the light and the sensors interpret it into usually some kind of lavender or white.
for some reason i don't like fluorescent filters... i'm weird i guess. i like it when i take a film that leans towards green anyway (for some reason kodak 200 does this) and shots under fluorescent light turn out greenish (i think it's an artifact of what i mentioned before, how cameras can't really detect some colours and it just kind of rolls the die and spits out a random colour), but fluorescent light is usually pretty consistantly greenish. it makes it seem aged or something. i like it. i took one shot on a beach that turned the entire beach green. maybe i should send some of these shots your way so you can see what i'm talking about.
the reason you're not having problems in the dark with using smaller apertures is that you're getting them mixed up with larger apertures— it's okay, it's easy to mix up.
basically an aperture is how big the hole is that opens to show light to the sensors. the size is measured weirdly, the formula i don't really understand all that much, but it's measured in f-stops. the lower the number is, the bigger the hole is that's letting the light in. for example, f/2 (or on cameras it usually says just something like 2.0, and doesn't include the f prenom) to around f/5.6, even though the number is small, it describes a large opening. numbers that low are large apertures. as the number increases, the size of the hole decreases. f/16 and above is a pretty small aperture, and the smaller it goes, the less light it lets in and therefore the more the shutter would have to stay open. f/60 was ansel adams' favourite aperture because it gave a very great depth of field but would require setting the camera up on a tripod for a very long time. i've taken some pictures with pinhole cameras that are at f/150 or so, they take forever but nothing is out of focus— it doesn't matter how close or far something is from the camera, it's in focus. interestingly enough, using a pinhole camera you don't even need a lens because of that.
the price, yes, that's amazing. lenses with plastic mounts usually start at around $300, and that's just your basic lens, what came on your camera. macro lenses are up from there, then telephoto and tilt-shift lenses can start around $2000, but those are more niche and aren't really commonly used.
hmm that last sentence doesn't make any sense. scratch the bit about telephoto and tilt shift lenses being niche and both costing $2000. don't know why i wrote that. it should read something like this:
ReplyDeletemacro lenses start at around $500,
telephoto lenses start at around maybe $500-600 or so
tilt-shift lenses are at least $1000,
and if you want really high quality metal mounts on the lens and have specific tastes, any of these lenses could run you $2000 or more, but those are more niche and aren't really commonly used.
As for the aperture mix up, it was a more of a mix up of words on my part rather than not knowing how to handle the settings :) I've had plenty of time to figure out larger aperture(smaller f-stop) means more light with shorter depth of field and vice versa. However those very small apertures(f-60) are new to me! I've been doing some reading up on Wikipedia about deep/shallow focus and how aperture size affects all of this. I have to say I am constantly amazed at the subtlety and freedom at my disposal at every stage of composing a shot -- having a real camera and being able to utilize all of these settings has given me much greater appreciate for photography as an art form.
ReplyDeleteAnsel Adams, though I've heard the name, is also quite new to me, and shows how much I know about the hobby I'm getting in to haha. His work is beautiful!
If I may, can you tell me a little bit about your background in photography? It's become more and more apparent that I'm talking to someone who is vastly more vetted in this field than myself!
ansel adams is awesome. my favourite picture of his is this one he did of a canyon— i can't exactly remember *how* he did it, but it involved him opening the shutter while the side of the canyon was lit up and the sky was dark, and then he left the camera there until the middle of the night, and he opened the shutter again and got the moon over it. it was incredible... maybe i can find it. here:
ReplyDeletehttp://photomentors.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ansel-Adams-Moon-Half-Dome-1960-SOLD-3K.jpg
so basically you've got two pictures merged into one, no photoshop or post-editing.
he only used black and white photography as far as i know, and he used solid colour filters to emphasize certain parts of the picture. for example, if you're using black and white film and you're taking a picture of an apple tree, you put a solid red filter over the lens and when it comes out, the apples will be much brighter than everything else in the picture.
a lot of people in the film world think it would've been better if colour film hadn't been invented for another 20 or so years because of the degree of creativity you can take with black and white film. for example, psycho— look at that blood. it's so realistic looking, but it's chocolate syrup. i think that's why hitchcock used black and white stock on that film even though colour film was available— it's almost more like painting your own view of the world, in a way.
i don't have any professional training— i'm just an amateur who loves photography. i'm kind of into everything a little bit. film has gotten expensive for me recently so i've backed off quite a bit but i'm still into it.
I've got a new picture post up if you'd like to take a look...
ReplyDelete