When 'you' want to be in the photo

How many times has it happened, you're out with friends snapping photo's and realize you aren't getting any with you in the frame. So you hand your camera to a buddy to get a pic with another buddy and this is what he/she hands back to you.

I have several examples of this where the background is in perfect focus and the subjects, me and my buddy, are out of focus, framed incorrectly, not zoomed, etc...

Most folks have a digital camera of some sort or another; a few even have an entry level DSLR. I have yet to see any of them carry their camera's or pull them out to take a photo. When I ask them where their camera is the constant answer I get is "in my desk/closet at home." If you own a digital camera, get it out and some fresh batteries in it and start carrying it with you. You will enjoy looking at the photo's you make in later years and can even have fun posting them to the web.

I was finally able to teach Sergeant Maxon how to focus lock and recompose after about 5 minutes and 20 frames and here's how he did.

Not too shabby I'd say.

This post was supposed to be about focus/exposure lock, but it took off on it's own path. I'll do that post next.

Fill Flash or using your flash outdoors

The weather decided Albuquerque needs snow in the middle of March so I decided to take the wife over to Imbibe (a local pub) for a Mai Tai. If we can't have sun, we can make believe we're in a sunny place like Oahu. Here I snapped the wife as she was getting in the car.



You can see how the flash filled in what would have been a dark photo and brightened her up.

Here you can see the snow flakes falling (they were really more like snow lumps than flakes.)

And my lovely wife finally got her Mai Tai after putting up with me taking photos the entire trip.

Vibration Reduction lens and 'does it work?'

My lovely wife and I were at Sneakerz Bar and Grill one night and I saw a nice rose plant. It was kinda far from where I was sitting (and drinking a beer) and I had my 18-200mm lens opened all the way to 200. Settings used; Exposure 0.5sec, Aperture f/5.6, Zoom 200 and ISO 800 for both photo's (these mean little to me, but there are people who want to know this stuff.)



You can see there's a lot of blur in the photo. So I turned the VR (Vibration Reduction) on and snapped again.



I'd say from these two samples, VR works and works well in low light. Get one if you have the means.

P.S. clicking any of the photos in this blog will take you to my Flickr page.

Strobist (or, things you can do with a speed light)

This post is with photos I didn't take today or with two flash units (I just needed to get a post up.) My wife had just bought me the first one last year, a Nikon SB-600, and I was having a lot of fun using it off camera.

This is a photo of my Army buddy, Dawn. I set the flash in her lap and shot her from the front of her desk. It's kinda crude, but I really like the effect of the light and shadows.




In this one I was sitting at Dawn's desk with the flash sitting at the far edge away from me and pointing up with the Sergeant Major standing close to it. I asked him to show me his "War Face" and this is what I got.




Here is one with the flash sitting to Dawn's right and aimed at her.




I really like the effect of using a strobe to direct the light at angles to get light and shadows giving texture to my subject. Something I really have to do is start a notebook and record setting and positions of where I put the subject and where I put the light so I can more consistently make these kinds of photo's. I need to get time and a place to start playing more with my second flash too.

New Strobe

My lovely wife bought me a second Nikon SB-600 Speedlight. Here she's holding them for me showing both firing at the same time. I'm going to be playing with these baby's the rest of the week.

Panning and white balance.

My youngest daughter, Chelsea, was home on leave from the Marines and wanted me to teach her how to ride a motorcycle. During the lesson my Wife comes running out of the house with my Nikon D40 and yells at me for not taking pictures. As a dutiful husband and dad I take the camera and start snapping away. Then I decided to try some panning shots so I turned the D40 to Shutter priority and set the shutter to 1/40th of a second. The camera decided to use f/13 (it's not set for full stops) and I shot away. I did manage to get a few good ones. Here she's going about 10 miles per hour, but it looks much faster because of the slow shutter.

Panning is just following the subject through your view finder, pressing the shutter half way to focus lock on it and shooting. Your camera has to keep following the subject as it moves or it won't work.



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A few days later I read on Ken Rockwell's site about white balance and how he uses the cloudy setting even in sunlight for it's amber, warming effect. It was early morning in Albuquerque and my 50mm lens was on my D300 body so I opened the front door, set my white balance to sun and here's what I got.



Changing the setting to cloudy I snapped again and here's what came out.



I have to admit, I like Rockwell's way better and keep my WB setting on cloudy most of the time now.