Winter

Winter sucks. Or perhaps I need to make more of it. We've had some nasty cold weather in Manitoba over the last few months and it's still going on.

I did manage to take a couple pictures while on the way home from work today. I wanted to capture the bleakness of the start of a winter storm.

Yowsers! It's been a while

Since I last made a post here. It's been so damn cold and I've been working on our basement so I haven't had much time for photography. I did receive my Poverty Wizards (link) in the mail last week and made some test shots with them. It works fine for my needs. I haven't tested with any distance between the flash and the camera (at most about 30 feet) and have had no misfires, so it's all good.

Construction on them isn't great, but I only paid $37 for them with shipping and it feels like a $37 piece of equipment. Now if only other camera equipment was as cheap and worked as well.

*Flash*

On December 31 I ordered a flash from B&H photo and received it on January 11th. No taxes, no brokerage charge, etc from Canada Post, which was very nice. What kind of flash? A fancy pants Pentax AF540 FGZ TTL?

Not quite.

That flash here in Canada is $500. I could have picked it up from B&H for $339 plus shipping, which is a pretty good deal. No, I went a little cheaper... well actually a lot cheaper. I had my choice narrowed down to either the Vivitar 285 or the Sunpak 383S. I decided to go with the Sunpak. It was $10 cheaper than the Vivitar ($79.95 vs. $89.95) and offered a bounce and swivel head whereas the Vivitar only offers bounce.

Yes, I am quite pleased with my purchase. I figured that to learn how to do flash photography I should start with a more manual and basic flash (just as I started in the SLR realm with the Spotmatic II) instead of one that does everything for me. So far so good. The Sunpak does allow for some "auto" settings where you set the aperture on your camera and the flash is supposed to be able to sense when it has used enough light. I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate, but does seem to work ok.

I also ordered a "poverty wizard" from gadget infinity this week. It's a cheap radio transmitter for doing off camera flash work. It was $37 shipped and should be here soon (I would like it to be tomorrow, but it is coming from Hong Kong). I'm really looking forward to getting that unit and getting even more creative with the flash.

As I get more involved I'll update. For now I'm just having fun being able to take pictures in low light without having shaky results.

Learning A Lesson the Hard Way

There was a beautiful sunrise while I was driving to work yesterday. Very nice pastel colours and so very calming. I wasn't going to stop as I was running a little late for work until I saw a couple black spots cross the road up ahead.

I got up closer and saw that it was two coyotes that had crossed the road and were heading across what is a corn field in the summer. I pulled over - to hell with getting to work on time, a few minutes late for a shot like this is worth it - and pulled out the K10D and put my 50-200 lens on. I got out and the coyotes were still close. I got everything composed nicely with both coyotes and the beautiful sunrise starting to spill across the field.

I depressed the shutter button and immediately looked to the screen to see if what I had was good enough. I noticed a funny symbol overlaying the shot. What the hell is that? Then the words:

No card in camera

damn it, damn it, damn it.

I had left my card back in the card reader attached to my computer at home.

So it was off to Walmart to pick up a couple extra SD cards to carry in my camera bag.

The coyotes? Well I guess they sensed I was no threat and just kept on ambling across the field. I swear I heard a laugh.

Photo Review

EXIF Data:
PENTAX K10D
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 second
F Number: F/5.6
Focal Length: 16 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Date Picture Taken: Dec 16, 2007, 10:52:46 AM

I took this picture after deciding to take the camera with me while I walked Cedar. The original was a little dull and I did some tweaking in Adobe Lightroom. After cropping it to a 1x1 format I added the "Cold" preset found in the program. I played a little with the exposure level after that and voila!

This has become the third most popular picture on my Deviant Art webspace in less than 24 hours. I believe it's the accented cold feeling the blues add that makes it easy on the eyes.

Getting creative with household items

Sorry for taking so long between posts but with the holidays it didn't seem like I had much time to post anything. Today I'll talk about using stuff you can find around the house to help out with your camera.

External flashes are expensive. Or, I should say they can be as I just ordered a Sunpak 383 from B&H photo for $100 with shipping, so it's not too bad compared to say the Pentax AF540 which retails for $339 US + shipping.

In the meantime I found this link for the "Finn Bounce": http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/How_to/hc_Bounce_Built-In_Flash/a_Bounce_the_Pop-up.html?page=3

It's a cheap way to give your pop-up flash an expensive bounce flash look. Bouncing your flash gives a more natural and more evenly distributed light. I was a bit skeptical of the Finn Bounce at first until I tried it. It does work. Here is a sample of a shot taken with the first one I made. I've added a shot with the direct flash as a comparison:



Noticeable huh? This shot was taken in the daytime, but it was overcast. This shot was taken with my super deluxe Finnbounce with only a bed lamp offering illumination:


I think it's a nice look considering I'm using a shiny piece of cardboard. I recycled a part of a gift box to make the Super Deluxe Finnbounce as it was much more reflective than covering a piece of cardboard with foil. Here is the SD bounce on my camera:
Just to let you know, you will need to increase your flash power and up your ISO to get a good result as pop up flashes are nowhere near as powerful as a proper external flash. With the K10D I have the flash set to + 1.0 EV and ISO at 800. In moderate light I'll typically underexpose by 1/2 to 2/3rds of a stop to get a decent exposure. The other thing to remember is the height of the ceiling. Anything 12' and higher and you're not going to get as good a result as say an 8 foot ceiling. Different coloured ceilings will also given different colour casts, so white is your best option.

I'd highly recommend checking out the link above to get the general dimensions of the Finnbounce and trying it out.

Brrrr...

I finally got up the courage to take the K10D out in the cold weather yesterday. It was a balmy -20 or so and due to a warmer night led to some very beautiful hoarfrost coating the trees, fences and power lines. I didn't stay out too long as I had some work to do but I thought I would focus on this shot:

I tried to follow the rule of thirds for this landscape shot and I believe I did an OK job. The buildings in the background are the Kilns at Quarry Park here in Stonewall. Along with the rule of thirds I also attempted to get a foreground, mid and background in the shot, which was established by capturing the tracks in the front, the trees mid and the kilns in the back. To accentuate the coldness I added a bit more blue using a hue/saturation layer in Photoshop (only about +5) and a gradient overlay in black and white set to soft light.

The addition of the jet trail was just a bonus in giving some diagonal movement to the shot and also points to the point at which the tracks disappear behind the trees on the left side. I tried to keep the colour to a minimum and allowed the kilns to pop a bit against the white and blue.

For those interested here is the EXIF data:

PENTAX K10D
Shutter Speed: 1/250 second
F Number: F/5.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: DA 50-200 F4-F5.6 ED