A winter of Black and White.

The cold weather (sub-zero temperatures) really lends itself to stretch the post processing muscles a little. This time, instead of doing a bland "average" gradient map conversion, I actually used Adobe Camera Raw's black and white conversion tool, and played with the color sliders a little until my model's skin tones looked 'right'. It's a little more work, but I feel it was worth it.



As usually, you be the judge! I really liked the way this particular photo converted.

Focus on Manual Focus

So in the past few days I've been playing with the thought of exclusively using manual focus for a while. So out come the macros! Yeah, portraiture might be a nudge more difficult using fly-by-wire manual focus. I'll definitely have to practice that. That said, though, I'll have to practice that anyway, seeing as my addition will be fully manual.

Naturally some samples of my plays:


and



That last one was hand held at 1/40sec. Kudos to Olympus for getting it right with in-camera image stabilization!

Tilt/Shift

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately. Knowing the buttons, knowing the numbers and knowing the techniques doesn't make the images interesting. I'm finding myself looking for creative outlets rather than technical correctness. And so I arrived here:


Olympus E-3, OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 @ f/1.8, 1/50sec and ISO 1250. Converted to B&W, with no other post processing apart from "sharpening for web".

Playing with tilt/shift photography. Freelens style. Do not try this at home unless your camera has a good self-cleaning system, as dust is inevitably going to enter the camera this way.

^_^

365/178 Objects That Tell Something About You/1

I think I like this theme! What can I say, any excuse to write about myself, right? Anyway, I'm sure this is a big surprise to everyone:

Lens and camera settings:
14-54mm ƒ/2.8-3.5 II @ 54mm, ƒ/3.5, 1/250sec and ISO 400. OCF camera top right @ 1/4th power.

365/173 Food/3

Much better today. So grapes were my victim today!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.8, 1/80sec and ISO 800.


50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ4.0, 1/60sec and ISO 800.

365/170 Bugs/7

Much better, so to make up for yesterday, I'm posting a bunch! Settings were variable, but needless to say, i shot at a smaller aperture, between ƒ5.6 and ƒ/8, high shutter speed and a high ISO.

365/169 Bugs/6

Not as good today, but what can I say, I did this on 3 hours of sleep and a rough day.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/250sec and ISO 800.

365/168 Bugs/5

Bees are really hard to photograph when you're afraid to be stung, so today you'll get a heavily cropped semi-macro. If it's nice out tomorrow, I'll try again, hopefully getting a little closer this time. It's not horrible, but I'd have loved to have captured more detail. Oh yeah, I shouldn't have to mention that when photographing these creatures, high shutter speed is crucial. To capture them mid flight though, you'll need flash to freeze the wings.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/640sec and ISO 400.

365/167 Bugs/4

I was going to use the story I wrote on ILP, but it's nearly bed time, so I'll share that later.

365/166 Bugs/3

Ants are cannibals, well, they eat other ants. These small ants were eating a much larger specimen of their species, chopping it up into smaller pieces and taking it down into their nest. If you weren't itching before, you will definitely start now.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/125sec and ISO 1250.

365/165 Bugs/2

This is just too much fun. I'm also amazed how much information I can still extract from the Raw files, because these are pretty small crops of the original picture. I think this is where the sharpness of the lens really helps! And I can't imagine how difficult this has to be on Full Frame cameras where the DOF is so minuscule at wider apertures that you can't even get a leg of the flies in focus, so the only way to counter that is lowering shutter speed and increasing ISO and aperture. I like my shutter speed high for these though, just because even camera shake will throw off focus, not to mention these critters are fast!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/200sec and ISO 800.

365/164 Bugs/1

I love this theme already! It's macro on steroids, especially as small as I'm going! I think I want to save for a longer macro lens to photograph these small creatures better.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.8, 1/400sec and ISO 800.

365/163 Light/7

Last light photo! This one has very nice light, but I do admit I underexposed this quite a bit. Somehow I was spared the horrible noise, but it didn't bring life back to the darker parts of Kiddo's skin..

50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.0, 1/125sec and ISO 1250.

365/161 Light/5

Two shots today. One of Kiddo, of course, and the other one I found by accident. Nothing extra technical was done here, except the kid is a B&W conversion and the other shot shows my weakness: macro.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0, 1/160sec and ISO 800.


50mm ƒ/4.0, 1/250sec and ISO 800.

365/159 Light/3

Much better than yesterday, and it happened totally by accident. I looked up in the direction of a window and I saw this wonderful light that was just screaming "photograph me!" and of course I had my camera within reach so it was just a shutter click away.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.0, 1/125sec and ISO 800.


I have also decided that my 50mm is my favorite portrait lens. The sharpness edge to egde combined with the beautiful bokeh at ƒ2.0 is just irresistible.

365/158 Light/2

A little uninspired, but I think my daytime job has a lot to do with that. I find it extremely hard to focus on portraits when I'm tired and just back home from a 10 hour day rushing to get that last little bit of light in. This is what I have instead:

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.0, 1/160sec and ISO 400.

365/155 Negative Space/6

Nothing special today, it was simply too late to "snap" one of Kiddo, so the closest flower is  next on the list. This was al that was in the yard, so it's what you'll be looking at for the next few seconds.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.0, 1/200sec and ISO 400.

365/154 Negative Space/5

One more shot of Kiddo for the road, yes, a head shot, yes B&W, again... I just love the light, and it's definitely negative space so here it is:

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.0, 1/125sec and ISO 800.

365/153 Negative Space/4

We went to the beach at Lake George today (a beautiful lake in New York), and I tried all day to get a nice shot of the kiddo, until I stopped trying and accidentally ran into this:

Lens and camera settings:
14-54mm ƒ/2.8-3.5 II @ 54mm, ƒ/4.0, 1/320sec and ISO 100.


14-54mm ƒ/2.8-3.5 II @ 54mm, ƒ4.0, 1/1600sec and ISO 100.


And a bonus shot, of the kid about to do something bad:
14-54mm ƒ/2.8-3.5 II @ 54mm, ƒ4.0, 1/1600sec and ISO 100.

365/150 Negative Space/1

This week's theme is negative space, and here is what I just randomly saw.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/125sec and ISO 800.


And the color version: