Exposure Madness

A few days ago, I was driving back from college and saw this beautiful evening lit up sky. It was a full moon and the way clouds were lit was just unbelievable. I saw it being lit like that a few times before, but never had the opportunity to take some pictures. But this day I was comming back home from college at around 7 pm and as soon as I got home, I grabbed my camera and drove a mile or two from my house to an open field where I took some pictures. This is one of them...

It was pretty dark...you almost couldn't see anything on the ground. Just the clouds were lit up from above. It was a beautiful sight.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 390 sec (390)
- Aperture: f/18
- Focal length: 45mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Flash Not Fired
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 22.01.2008

Why the Exposure Madness title? Take a look at the exposure time. It's 390 seconds. That's 6 and a half minutes. In order to do that I set my camera on Manual mode, set the exposure time on "Bulb", set the aperture to f/18 and ISO to 100. I would then put the camera on a sturdy tripod because of a strong wind that was blowing. I also put the tripod and camera behind my car where the wind wasn't that strong. I used the Canon RS-60E3 Remote Switch to remotely trigger and hold the shutter. I held it for 390 seconds and then let go. That's it.

The original picture came out darker than the post-processed one that you can see above. But because I shot it in RAW I was able to play with brightness settings. Also some contrast and color correction were done. Plus a vignette.

Candles

First I have to apologise for not posting any pictures for quite some time now. Hopefully I'll have more free time to post pictures from now on.

I did a picture for a "Good Use of DOF" Assignment at DPS website a few days ago. I wanted to experiment with DOF (Depth Of Field) so I decided to take a picture of four tea light candles and focus on the first one. And this is what I got...

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.04 sec (1/25)
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Focal length: 300mm
- ISO: 200
- Flash: Flash Not Fired
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 20.01.2008

I used my Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 II zoom lens. I don't like this lens because it's one of the worst lenses to work with. But when I needed a zoom lens with focal lenght up to 200mm or more, a couple of months ago, I really didn't have enough money to buy a better one. And I really needed one, so buying this one was my only option at the time.

I put the camera on my tripod and zoomed in on the candles. I used manual focus and I focused on the first candle. I did a couple of test shots to correct my white balance and focus. I also added bit of unsharp mask in Photoshop.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the way this picture turned out. Especially considering the kind of equipment I worked with. What do you think?

My Grandfather

Yesterday we went on a Christmas visit to my grandparents' house. And as we were sitting down at the table and eating some food I took this picture of my grandfather.

It looks like his eyes are shut but infact they're not. He's looking at all the delicious food my grandmom made. Click on the picture to enlarge it.


About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
- Aperture: f/5
- Focal length: 41mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Flash Fired (Canon Speedlite 580EX II)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 25.12.2007

No special settings this time. I shot it in P (Program) mode with ISO at 100 and I bounced the flash of the ceiling. There was quite a bit of postprocessing done in Photoshop.

Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year

Little late, I know. Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to you all!

I've been having a lack of free time lately and this is the reason why I haven't been posting much. These holidays are keeping me busy enough. But I'll be posting a lot after I get back home from Prague where I'm gonna spend this New Year's Eve. So keep your eyes open for any new posts.

Wish you all the best in 2008!

Gino & the Band

I went to shoot a band called Gino & the Band (the site is in Slovene language) this saturday. Here are some of the pictures:









It is always hard to shoot concerts and live shows because of the limited amount of light. So in order to be able to shoot at fairly decent shutter speeds I used the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens which enabled me to shoot at around 1/60 of a second at f/2.8. I used the manual mode and ISO at 1600.

One of the problems I had to deal with is the fact that I had to use the aperture of f/2.8 or less which in practice means shallow depth of field. In another words... only a small part of image is in focus. And that can sometimes be quite disturbing and annoying. The pictures you see above are not post-processed in any way.

Got any advice or suggestions for concert/music photography?

Grega's photoshoot

My friend Grega needed some portrait photos, so we made a mini photoshoot a few days ago. First we tried to do a couple of pictures at his house but those didn't came out as nice as I would like them to. So we went outside and shoot by the Škofja Loka castle here in my hometown. It turned out to be a nice location in the end. Here are just a few of many pictures we took.




Grega is a badminton player so we did some pictures with his prop - the racquet. We didn't have any stylists or make-up artists for this shoot. Although I could always use one. So if someone might be interested in doing make-ups on my shoots just let me know ;)

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.013 sec (1/80)
- Aperture: f/4.5
- Focal length: 50mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Flash Fired (Canon Speedlite 580EX II)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 12.12.2007

*I used the same settings on all of the pictures as I was shooting in manual mode and with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens.

It was hard to shoot these pictures because of the cold that we have here right now. My hands were nearly frozen most of the time and my eyes were watery because of the cold, so looking through the viewfinder and assessing if the subject was in focus or not was a hard thing to do. It was a cloudy day with a few tiny drops of rain that almost ended our photoshoot before it even started. But the raindrops turned out to be moderate so we were able to pull it off.

A little bit of post-processing was done in Photoshop.

Young At Heart

When I was little my grandmother had a friend who would be around a lot. We would go to their house for a visit frequently. And her husband Pavle was there most of the times. He was always a man I was affraid of because of his looks. But that was 15 years ago. And once I grew up and my grandmother stopped babysitting me I lost contacts with those people. I mean I've been seeing them around but that only happens a couple of times per year.

But yesterday was a Saint Nicholas day who is a festive gift-giver. He's sort of like an European version of Santa Claus but not as commercialised. And what happens on the night of December 5th? Saint Nicholas goes from door to door and brings gifts for children. And I decided to go with him this year and take a few pictures. So we went from one house to another and finally we got to this house where my grandmother used to take me for a visit. And as I went inside I saw this man I used to be affraid of and took a picture.

He's a nice old man and was a bit affraid of all those devil figures that are walking around with Saint Nicholas. And I was only there for a few minutes. But him and his wife were actually very happy to see me. Too bad there was almost no time for a chat. We had to keep moving so that Saint Nicholas could visit as many children as possible in one night.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Focal length: 55mm
- ISO: 400
- Flash: Flash Fired (Canon Speedlite 550EX)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 05.12.2007

In order to take this picture I pointed the Flash unit towards the ceiling and bounced it. My camera was in Aperture priority mode so I chose an apperture of f/5.6 and pressed the button. But it all happened so quickly. There is no planning involved in this picture. The reason I shot it with ISO 400 is because it was fairly dark in that room and I needed to compensate that so my moving subject wouldn't be blurry. A lot of post-processing was done on this picture.