Thread: ***DSLR Thread***

Originally Posted by santiclaws

Fooling around with some hockey pics...

Interesting, can you tell us more about them? Are they actual photos of a video feed?

Playing around with star field shots, which I am really bad at. If anyone has experience doing this, I would love to know. Particularly, what is the best way to do this with a digital? Short shutter at high ISO, long shutter with low ISO and then a difference pass with a shot of equal length with the lens cap on? The first of the two is 8 minutes, and the second is two shots at 8 minutes each laid on top of each other in Photoshop. But I'm getting a LOT of noise from these. Also, it is SO dark, how the heck do you frame your shot? I totally guessed as to where I was pointing the camera.

The story behind the rather bland second shot is I went down to the beach where we were staying this weekend (Sea Ranch, northish central coast), got down there and freaked myself out thinking "what was that? Was that a pissed off sea lion? Oh crap, are there mountain lions around here? Am I going to lose my camera in the tide?" So I moved closer to the house to calm my nerves at the expense of an interesting shot.



Sunset shot of the same beach.

Originally Posted by ValleyFan

Interesting, can you tell us more about them? Are they actual photos of a video feed?

Yep, the Kings-Caps game.

Bitchen star shots

Originally Posted by rinkrat

Bitchen star shots

Thanks! So if anyone is interested, the general consensus seems to be that ISO of about 400, with at around f/4.0, take a ton of 30 second shots (set the camera on continuous drive, manual mode, turn off noise reduction, and hold the shutter with a cable release), layer them in Photoshop using the Lighten layer blending option, or use a more automated program like Startrails to do it for you.

Now if only I lived in a city where I could see the stars to test it out

Spent the last two days down in Escondido at wife's Mom's house. She's an antiques nut and has a big Steinway grand piano, so I did some more still life practice.


Mandolin


Old Dixie Recipes (Complete With Stereotypes!)


Appletini (wife and mother-in-law were drinking these...yucko)


Cracker Jack Toys!


Pianist (I'm getting into this "pictures of hands" thing, I think...)


Steinway Guts

Also tried my hand at some fireside portraits. Holy crap it's hard to make these turn out halfway decent!!







The last one is a tad fuzzy...suitable for small prints and such is all, really. But their faces were perfect, expression-wise, so I had to keep it. That was the first pic I took in the series, actually.

Incidentally, firelight white-balances at about 3300k, in case anyone was wondering.

I was wondering if any of you were able to get in on Amazon's Black Friday deal on Lightroom 2? They had it for $124.99. I missed out on that one, but they relisted it for $134.99 that night, so I still got an amazing deal.

I was on the fence with LR as it was $100 more than Aperture (which I like just fine), but I couldn't pass up a deal that was better than my NBC pricing on Aperture.

Keep an eye on Amazon for Cyber Monday. Word is they're going to have a CS4 deal that cannot be ignored.

Love the mandolin, and I think using something a piano as a photo study is a fantastic idea, there are a lot of great photos hiding in that piano that you found.

To unfiltered, I'll have to keep an eye an Adobe, I've been looking to upgrade to CS4, thanks for the heads up.

Originally Posted by FlyBoeingJets

Mandolin

Beautiful! The DOF is great.

Originally Posted by FlyBoeingJets

Cracker Jack Toys!

I love the blend of the varying colors. Very nice!

Originally Posted by FlyBoeingJets

Steinway Guts

I LOVE it! Anyone playing a piano would love that one for the wall. (I would, anyway. ) Was that cropped?