Photo Of The Day 01/23/09 - Mia & Matthew

Sometimes a great image is not technically good, but fun because of the subject. I don't think any of the individual images of Mia and Mathew are technically great.  some are cute, but the lighting is bad, the focus is often very soft and the composition is simply, blah.  However, when they are shown together, I think they make a very fun image.

I wonder if the fact that I have a camera pointing at Mia almost every day makes a difference.  Has she been desensitized to the camera or is her very bubbly character just shining brightly?  Probably a little of both.

The photos were made at the Jackson Park Boy Scout Chili Cook-off in the basement playroom of Jackson Park Elementary School.  Mia was following Matthew around all night and they appeared to have a blast.  For more photos of the night, look at my Flickr photos tagged "ChilliCook-Off.

Camera:  Pentax K20 50mm prime lens  ISO 800 Aperture f/2.4 Exposure 1/125

Lighting:  Crappy school lighting

Image put together in GIMP

See the rest of my Photo Of The Day posts here or just look at the photos on Flickr

Thanks for reading my ramblings,

Photo Of The Day 01/22/09 - Oh no, not me!

I wanted to try a lighting set up tonight.  One where there is a light above the subject pointing down and another just below the subject pointing up.  I believe it is a pretty common set up so I wanted to see what it does.  It would work better with softboxes, but all I have are umbrellas, so that is what I used. 

My hope was to get a really cool photo of one of my daughters.  But Mia was a little too engrossed in her sister's Nintendo DS and Olivia just was not in the mood to model.  I tried to get a good one of Olivia in the time she gave me, but I could not get the lighting just right, so I had to step in front of the camera.  After a few attempts I got the lighting that I wanted, but then it took me another 20 shots to get one where I did not hate the look I had on my face.  I am much better off on the other side of the lens.

So, as much as it pains me to say this, the photo of the day is not one of my beautiful daughters, but instead the one below of me.  Not because I am a good subject, but because I like the lighting and this photo has more of the "feel" I was going for.  I have included a shot of the lighting set up to give you something to look at besides me.  If you can imagine my head was just below the top flash and a bit to the left.  I was looking at the tripod that you can see just sticking over the top of the bottom umbrella.

Camera:  Pentax K20 50mm prime lens  ISO 200 Aperture f/5.6 Exposure 1/180

Lighting:  SB-25 @ 1/8 power into a silver umbrella below and close + Pentax 360 @ 1/4 power above and a bit to the camera left, both triggered with triggered with AlienBees CyberSyncs.

See the rest of my Photo Of The Day posts here or just look at the photos on Flickr

Thanks for reading my ramblings,

Photo Of The Day 01/20/09 - Want vs Need

I wanted to get the camera out, look for a good subject, set up my lights, and play around until I captured a cool image.  I needed to do the dishes.  Guess which won out.

Camera:  Pentax K20 50mm prime lens  ISO 200 Aperture f/2.8 Exposure 1/60 using aperture priority and exposure compensation at -0.5 (too lazy to adjust the flash)

Lighting:  Pentax using P-TTL sitting on a toaster oven on the counter on camera left.  Triggered by on camera flash and in-flash optical slave.

I think a red gel over the flash would be interesting, but I don't have any gels.  Oh well.

See the rest of my Photo Of The Day posts here or just look at the photos on Flickr

Thanks for reading my ramblings,

Photograph Of The Day 01/19/09 - The Three Lettermen

Camera:  Pentax K20 50mm prime lens  ISO 400 Aperture f/8 Exposure 1/45 Lighting:  SB-25 @ 1/2 power into a silver umbrella at camera left + Pentax 360 @ 1/4 power at camera right, both triggered with triggered with AlienBees CyberSyncs. Plus the sun light coming in through windows.

The reason behind this image is mostly for practice.  I have a couple ideas for composite images I want to make, but I have never done something like this.  So I grabbed my three letter jackets (just to make it interesting) and gave it a shot.  I see a couple little editing errors, but that is mostly due to just wanting to get it up quickly.  I am cheap, so the editing was all done with GIMP, a great open source image manipulation program.

At least now I know I can make the images I have in my head.  I wonder if they will look as good as they look in my head.  Stay tuned.

For those who are interested the jackets are from: (left to right) Kaiserslautern American H.S., Germany; Doherty H.S., Colorado; Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

See the rest of my Photo Of The Day posts here or just look at the photos on Flickr

Thanks for reading my ramblings,

Photo Of The Day 01/18/09 - Mia & a 50mm, 1.4

Camera:  Pentax K20 50mm prime lens  ISO 800 Aperture f/1.7 Exposure 1/30 Lighting:  Light from 60 bulb on camera right with some added backlighting from window

If you listen to the podcast, This Week In Photography (TWIP), you know they recommend everyone get a fast 50mm lens.  I got mine this past summer.  If you read my original POTD post you know that I chose it to be the only lens I use for my POTD photos.  I thought the fact that it is a prime lens and I can only zoom by moving my feet would make me work a little harder to compose a good photo and hopefully help me improve by adding that restriction.  We shall see at the end of the year.

Continue reading after the break for more details.

I also knew that having an aperture of 1.4 on this lens would be a huge help and offer a lot of flexibility.  This photo of Mia is a great example of that.  This photo was taken indoors, the only light is what you see coming in the window behind Mia and a 60 bulb to the camera right.  Yes, I cranked up the ISO to 800, but that is not out of a typical range and because of the shake reduction built into my Pentax K20D, I am able to hand hold the camera at 1/30 of a second shutter speed.  But being able to have the aperture wide open, letting in bucket fulls of light really adds a ton of possibilities.  And I did not even have the aperture at 1.4, I dropped it down to 1.7.  Probably not a huge difference, but I think it helps with sharpness a tad.

Because I am a visual learner, I added some images to help demonstrate the difference in aperture.  The first lens sports an aperture of 3.5, still somewhat big.  But compare that to my 50mm wide open at 1.4.  I think the difference is apparent.  Just imagine how much more light can pass through the 50mm.

Of course with such a wide open aperture comes other added complexities, such as a smaller depth of field for focusing, but we will get into that on another day.

See the rest of my Photo Of The Day posts here or just look at the photos on Flickr

Thanks for reading my ramblings, and here is another photo of Mia, just because she is so darn cute!