***DSLR/Photography MegaThread***

Might have to make a meet-up of this kind of outing. Be good to have a few brews after the fact.


I'm tempted to clamp a remote flash onto the railing of the pier for some nice fill lighting on the opposite side of their faces as the sunset. They are that close that you could probably pull it off.
 
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These guys are right in the yard so it's fun when I get bored

Shoot through umbrella on the left side
 
A dismal attempt at catching the Perseid shower (there are two visible). I set the exposure for what I thought it would be at around 10:00pm, set the camera up at 8:00, 30 sec exposure with the shutter locked down. Unfortunately the camera ran out of battery at 9:30. When I look through the single shots though I think I caught a few satellites (to dim to show up in the composite)

 
Very nice pics of the hummer, I like your lighting setup. I am wondering though what your processing routine is though, it seems like a lot of noise for ISO 400. Remote shutter release (via pocket wizards)?
 
They are grainy because they came out dark and I had to really pull them from the murk. Thanks to RAW I was able to get them but limited size etc. and lots of noise I'm still working on the exposures etc.
 
This little mirror lens is really freakin' cool!!

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Overcoming camera-shake blur is a challenge, primarily because of the single stop (f/8). On the D3, it isn't a big deal, but to get a decent shutter speed when properly exposed, I found I was having to shoot at least ISO 500 in bright daylight. ISO 1000 gave me the sharpest images with it, since the shutter speeds were in the 1/2000th range with that setting.

Lots of people bitch about this lens's lack of contrast and soft-focus. I say that's crap (click here if you want to look at full-sized images to get an idea of how sharp it can be). It's a non CPU lens, so you have to simply be careful about the exposures you use in Manual mode. It's definitely a bright daylight lens or high ISO lens, though...especially when hand-held. Put it on a tripod, and it still suffers from a bit of camera-shake blur because it's just flat-out too light. I found that adding a little weight to the tripod helped a lot.

The ring-shaped bokeh is either a bonus or a problem, depending upon who you are and what you're shooting. Personally, I think it adds an interesting feel to the backgrounds of these images.

All in all, though, I think this will be a nice little addition to my bag of tricks. It's very light and very small compared to even my 70-200mm f/2.8 (it's about the same size as my 24-70 and about half its weight).

Fun stuff.
 
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Hey RR, what lens are you using on this shot as well as speeds and ap setting?

It's the 17-55 and i get it as close as I can to the feeder and focus a few inches away to get them just as they are buzzing around checking things out. ISO 200 at 250th/sec exp (fastest sync speed on a Canon) at 2.8. The fun usually begins aroiund 6 PM when they get hungry enough to challenge the keeper of the feeder who is vigilent on defending the food. I set the vivitar flash at lowest power about 5 ft away from the shot and throw an orange gel on there sometimes to warm it up a bit. Look at his eye and you can see my flash. (I flipped the one above by 90 degrees so my flash is coming from the top when it actually was from the side but it works well. the hard side lighting brings out the texture of the feathers) There's a white piece of cardboard to reflect the light back and light the other side just a touch.

I have dozens of pics where he is peeking in the side of the frame, he seems to never be centered so I have to crop creatively without leaving too much grain. These pics are very popular on Flickr but not a lot of use for anything else. THey are pretty fun to do because it's kind of like fishing, you sit around waiting for them to get hungry and then there is about 30 sec of clicking and then another 1/2 to 1 hr of waiting.

The camera gets his attention so he will buzz right up to it and check it out as it clicks away. I can't tell you how many shots I have that are out of focus or empty with a wing or whatever in them but if you can get two or three that are just right it makes it all worthwhile. It's tempting to zoom out and get more area but then when you crop it can be too grainy. If I had a pro camera with better resolution I could crop smaller regions (I see the pros do it with hockey shots and it amazes me how small of a portion they can use and still have it be fine).
 
If I had a pro camera with better resolution I could crop smaller regions (I see the pros do it with hockey shots and it amazes me how small of a portion they can use and still have it be fine).

Full-frame, baby. Full-frame.
 
This little mirror lens is really freakin' cool!!

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The ring-shaped bokeh is either a bonus or a problem, depending upon who you are and what you're shooting.

I like it dude. It brings your eye directly to the subject. It would probably bother me if it were in a more complicated scene...ie 3+ layers. But the shot of the guy getting ready to toss the RC, it really works well with the scrub in the background.
 
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