Sparklers and champagne

Saw this great tutorial and simply had to try it. Great idea, except that it is very hard to find sparklers in New Zealand this time of the year - luckily my son had some.

Settings: f/22, 2 sec and 38 mm focal length. I followed the tutorial for the setup and positioning of the light and tripod and am quite happy with the results

Xmas tree

At last managed to get to the Telecom Xmas tree for photos!

Merry Christmas!

Lens fungus

Haven't done the Xmas lights shots yet as I had an unplanned trip to Auckland and Taupo. Also attended a 2-day Photoshop workshop, which was excellent and I cannot wait to play with the software. Between all of that I bought an ultra-wide angle lens 2nd hand, and wondered about lens fungus. Was worried that if this lens had any lens fungus, whether it would spread to my other lenses in my camera bag.

The short answer: yes, it is possible!!!!! :(

Found this article about lens-fungus and used the rest of the day to check all my lenses

Xmas lights

This week a group of us are going on a Xmas Light photowalk. Still busy reading up, but found this really good tutorial - good tips in here!!!!

Basically, this is what it says: (copied from the site mentioned above, http://strobist.blogspot.com/ - thank you for the great advice)

How to Do It:

1. Arrive early. The best time to shoot is before it gets totally dark. More specifically, get there before what looks like mix light to your eyes, too. Arriving around sunset will give you time to plan your shot before the good light happens. You may have to ask your subject to turn the lights on early - most people don't flip them on until the good light is already gone.

2. Compose your photo in such a way as to include as much sky as possible in the background. Shooting from a low position can help. Even better: If you have your choice of shooting direction, shoot into the afterglow of the evening sky.

3. Once you get your picture framed, set your camera's white balance for "tungsten," as if you were shooting indoors without flash. All of those little lights are tungsten balanced. As a bonus, the tungsten setting will turn your afterglow sky royal blue once your light balances out. The sky will look great - even if it is a cloudy evening. And your lights will gleam crystal white -- or whatever color they are supposed to be.

4. A light (or reflective) foreground, like snow, or a puddle (or the roof of a car) can give nice foreground interest. See what you can find.

5. Use a tripod or a beanbag to steady your camera. You'll be shooting in the range of a quarter second to a full second at twilight. If shooting with a phone or PDA, use both hands to brace the phone against something solid.

6. Now, wait for the light to happen.

Shoot a test shot every minute or so. At first, you'll be exposing for the sky and the lights will appear unimpressive. Check the back of your camera after each shot to watch the Christmas lights appear to "come up" as the ambient light level goes down. Your eye is constantly adjusting to compensate for the dropping light levels, but the changes will be happening nonetheless. Your camera will record them differently from the way that you eye sees them (you can see a much greater contrast range) so shoot and chimp.

Photoshop Collage

Had to try a collage with PhotoShop after watching a tutorial by a fellow Photography Institute student. Thanks Paul - you are brilliant!!!!!

Horse Photography

Would love to take photos of horses, as I do enjoy taking photos of animals and birds. And an invitation of a horse-mad friend to meet up with her and meet her horse might just be the perfect opportunity!

So Google to the rescue again for some research. As always, the same message from all the equine photographers:

• Stay 15-20 feet away from the horse to prevent distortion. Keep your distance, enlarge the prints later if necessary
• Use a telephoto lens
• Best time - 10am or 2pm, these times will give you the best shadow effect
• Have the camera level or slightly lower than the horse
• Make sure the shadow of the horse is on the far side of the horse, in other words the light behind the photographer
• Front or rear shots should be taken on an angle of 45 degrees
• Position yourself so that all 4 legs are evenly spread as you look at the horse. Legs should appear well-balanced, without a huge space between the front and hind legs
• Can get good photos of just a part of the horse - an eye, the hoof, the rider's hands or helmet
• EARS forward!!!!!
• A good setting: f/8, 1/500, telephoto lens

It won't be the right time of day when I meet up with her, and we might be chatting too much to take photos, but at least I am prepare
____________________________________________________________________________________

Had a lovely time and enjoyed the horses!!!!

Tilt-shift effect experiment

Didn't have to opportunity to take a new photo specifically for the tilt-shift effect, ended up playing with an existing photo - just to work through the tutorial. Now that I know it works I will find a photo asap to do it again.

The purpose of the tilt-shift effect is to make the photo appear as a model scene - it works!

The 'BEFORE' photo

The 'AFTER' photo!

 

Creating a mini planet

Playing a bit more with PhotoShop and while I type this PhotoShop is busy in the background, resizing my panorama - in preparation for my mini planet!

Definitely not perfect, but a jolly good first try!

First of all, create a panorama:

• Open all the photos to be used in the pano in PhotoShop
• Select all
• File - Automate - Photomerge
• In the Photomerge dialog box, click Auto under Layout; tick the Blend Images Together and the Vignette Removal boxes
• The center column will be empty, click Add Open Files
• Click OK
• Wait for the magic to happen.............be patient!!!!!!
• Get the Crop tool and tidy up the pano
• Make the image smaller and save as a jpeg

Now, create the planet:

• Use a 360 degrees panorama
• Re-size and rotate - prepare the image for the Polar Filter by stretching the height of the image so that the image is a perfect square:
  Image - Image size - uncheck Constrain Properties - set the height and width to the same value
• The above takes quite a long time as we are working with huge files
• Rotate the image 180 degrees
  Image - rotate canvas - 180
• This takes forever too!
• Apply the Polar Filter:
  Filter - Distort - Polar Coordinates
  In the dialog box: select the 'Rectangular to Polar' setting
• Rotate and clean up:
  Rotate the planet to your liking
  Adjust the contrast and colours
  Clean up sky and edges
• All done!

What I now know:
Choose a panorama with lots of blue sky at the top, with nothing 'touching' the edge (for example the trees) and choose a photo with 'empty' space in front, for example lawn - this will form a nice round, green circle in the middle 

A good tutorial if you get stuck

Tilt-shift effect

I want to use PhotoShop and create a tilt-shift photo. Found the tutorial, now just need to go out and find the right shot!!!!! Going to explore one of the bridges close to the waterfront this weekend - will hopefully get the right photo to apply this technique to

Actually also want to shoot another panorama, something different this time, with more buildings, or at least a building, in the photo

Yes, big plans this weekend!

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Open image
2. Enter Quick Mask Mode:
   Q on the keyboard or from the Tool Palette, choose Quick Mask Mode
3. Choose Gradient Tool:
   Select the Gradient Tool icon or G on the keyboard (Choose the Reflected Gradient option)
4. Draw a vertical line, start point will be the in-focus area and the end point will be where the transition from in-focus to out-of-focus is completed (draw line up!!!!!). The area of focus will appear as a red band across the image
5. Return to standard mode:
   Q on keyboard or press icon in the Tool Palette (Edit in Standard mode)
   The top bit of the image will show as selected
6. Open Lens Blur Interface:
   Filter - Blur - Lens Blur
7. Review the effect and tweak settings:
   Will see the effect (focus effect)
   Top bit should be out of focus
8. Exit Lend Blur Interface by clicking on OK
9. Remove selection boundary:
   Press Command + D to remove the selection boundary
10. Open Hue/Saturation Adjustment Interface:
    Boost the Saturation to improve the effect - a model scene is often brightly painted
    Image - Adjustments - Hue Saturation
    Boost Master Saturation to +40
11. Open Curves Adjustment Interface:
    May help to increase the contrast of the image slightly, using the Curves adjustment
    Image - Adjustments - Curves
    Adjust Curves, do NOT overdo. Use a small S-shaped curve
12. Finished!
13. Save image

Panorama

Camera:  Olympus e-5 with the 14-45mm lens 

For a long time I wanted to shoot a panorama shot. Read up about it quite a bit, and the same message came from all the sites:

• Take a test shot
• Record the correct exposure
• Switch to manual mode
• Dial in the pre-tested aperture and shutter speed - this means the exposure won't change during the shoot
• Use a tripod
• Shoot in portrait orientation - this didn't work for me as the little device I used to turn the camera wouldn't work with the camera in portrait orientation (it is fitted between the camera and the tripod)
• The first shot must include a finger - so that you know when downloading the photos this is where the pano shots start - BEST ADVICE EVER!
• The last shot must include two fingers - to show the end of the pano shots - again, the BEST ADVICE EVER!
• Shoot to the right
• Overlap by at least 25% - easy with the little pano device I used, it automatically overlaps with 30%
• Set White Balance on daylight or auto
• Use continuous auto focus
• For the Olympus the best shutter speed is 1/80 sec and aperture F/9.0, ISO 200
• For some good reading, I recommend:
  http://www.olympusamerica.com/crm/oneoffpages/crm_panorama_jaydickman.asp 
http://dpexperience.com/2010/02/08/shooting-for-a-panorama/ http://www.manfrotto.com/Service/How+To+Lessons/Shooting+Coastal+Panoramas/Shooting+Coastal+Panoramas/3670816 http://www.shortcourses.com/use/using7-1.html http://www.panoguide.com/howto/

F/16 rule

On a lovely sunny day, with some cloud cover I visited the Massey Memorial. Had to climb quite a bit of a hill to get there and puffed like a steam train!!!!!

Decided it is a perfect day for the sunny F/16 rule - therefore only changed the aperture to F/16, turned the flash off and shot away. Was happy with the end-results and absolutely love my new Olympus e-5

Camera:  Olympus e-5 with the 70-300mm lens 

Parades

With the Xmas parade coming up in Wellington, I did my research on parades and found wonderful tips - and managed to break most :(

Camera:  Olympus e-5 with the 14-45mm lens

• Go early, walk the route and find the best position
  Done
• Shade is better than sun
  Found a position in the bright sunshine :( But to my defence, those in the shade were not good as you wouldn't be able to see the parade properly
• Better to find a position close to an object you can lean against or lean the camera on, so that 'shaking' the camera when someone bumps against you won't be a problem
  Done, positioned myself against the traffic lights pole - perfect. It also meant no-one could stand behind me
• Be in front, be in a position where you can sit and shoot 'up' to the parade and floats
  Done................but felt sorry for the three little kids who arrived a bit late and were standing behind the crowd and couldn't see more than our backsides - and told them to come and stand in front of me. Therefore couldn't shoot up to the floats but the dad's thank you afterwards felt much better than the need to get good photos
• Shoot up, therefore not including the crowds as the background, but the blue sky
  Yeah, right...........:(
• Position yourself not to shoot in the direction of the sun
  Sure, just a shame the organisers didn't think about it and that is exactly the direction the parade moved - the sun behind them and me shooting into the sun
• Use a telephoto lens and focus on 'parts' of the parade - the detail on a costume, things others won't necessarily notice
  Nope :( Clever me decided I knew better and took one of my kit-set lenses
• Take an extra battery and memory card
  Done........but left the camera bag in the car with all these extra little things. Thank goodness I didn't need it
• Control the camera by shooting manual or in aperture-mode
  Me? I used auto after a few test-shots and not feeling 100% happy with them :(

Important settings:

• To get the person/object in front to stand out and in focus and the background a bit blurry - f/2.8, f/3.5 or f/4
• To get the entire group in focus - f/14
• ISO200 on a sunny day and ISO800 if overcast - the higher the ISO, the more shutter speed to stop the movement
• Aperture:
  Small f-stop numbers (f/2.8, f/3.5, f/4) = small depth-of-field = large lens openings
  Large f-stop numbers (f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22) = larger depth-of-field = smaller lens openings

Fireworks

Fireworks time!!!! I wanted to go and watch the fireworks since moving to Wellington, but never really managed properly. This time I decided I want to be there and I want photos. When the children moved into their flat in February I 'booked' the balcony for the fireworks. What a view and a prime spot for the fireworks.

Camera:  Olympus e-500 with the 40-150mm lens

Did my research and found the best ever info about fireworks photography. I bookmarked it to be able to go back at a later stage http://www.gavtrain.com/?p=801

Another great tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOf7CfNoaZ4

This little handout now lives in my camera bag :)

 And here are my photos, which I am quite proud off: