Tag: camera

So Much to Do!

And, of course, not enough time.

I admit, I love dawdling around and just following my inclinations.  I also like checking things of as Done! There are days when all I do is chores, none with any sense of pleasure; days when I am overwhelmed and cannot figure out where to begin.  This weekend, though, there are a lot of interesting things on the agenda beyond the usual chores of bills, laundry, housework.

One is the completion of a year-long project is in its last week.  Because of this, I have been busy doing all sorts of stuff, like editing HTML, playing with code in my haphazard way and getting it right (hooray!).  Another is one class is ready to launch into their externships, and a new class to begin in the classroom – always an exciting period.

With these two are nearing points of departure, doubtless, I will also find more things to swamp me, but I also will have more time to return to painting.  I have not written anything about it, much less done any, because I have been too busy to slow down.  Hobbies such as cooking or photography or knitting can be picked up for a minute or two, and put down as necessary, but painting requires a bit more focus, and it means quiet and solitude.  I also want to pull out my watercolor paper and reconsider painting in that medium.  Photography makes me want to see what I can do with light in painting.  “Suck” is the first word that comes to mind – but the allure is always there.

For fun, though, this week our little photography group met, and we did food.  How to light it.  How to make it sparkle.  How to choose positions and viewpoints and consideration of depth of field to emphasize the subject.  And how the hot lights make everything dry up!  Below are some of the images I took.

I like this one for its composition and cheery colors.

This one is simple in composition, and I like the bit of lace to the lower right corner of the photo and the bright white surrounding the rest of the cherries.

First shot at fresh papaya and blackberries – no glycerin or oil spray.  After about 10 minutes under the hot lights it looked pretty sad!

I like the perspective here, but see the mount under the left side?  That should not be in the photo!!

Papaya and berries sprayed with olive oil mist and drops of glycerin.  You should have seen it before . . .

Fresh salad, no glycerin or oil.

These are looking pretty tasty.

I just like this perspective of the salad.

Anyway, for our next class, the assignment is food, with both narrow and wide depths of field.  I think something for the Valentine season could be fun.  Our next meet will be outdoors at the local botanical garden, which will be wonderful for broad landscapes as well as plants of all kinds.

Hit Man for the Nikon Mafia

Ok, there really is no hit man.  More of a pitch man.  “This is why you need a Nikon.  Look at what you can do with a Nikon.  You really should get a Nikon.  Nikon is always ahead of everyone with their technology.”

I am giving myself several months to choose a DSLR with interchangeable lenses.  Right now there are so many new offerings just out, or out soon (just in time for the winter holidays), that it doesn’t make sense to buy one now.  Later, the reviews will be in, and the prices should drop.  Of course, there will be newer things as well later on.

My thoughts on cameras run in all directions.  Buy good glass, and not be too nutso over the body.  Buy small cameras which are easy to hold, and have good lenses.  Buy something that feels good in the hand with both large and small lenses.  In other words, try the camera on for size.

Nikons are what my friend who lent me his keeps telling me to get.  I think he has been using them for forty years!  Or, as a second choice, he says, get a Canon.

All well and good, but part of me just doesn’t want what everyone else has.  I’m rather ornery that way.  I was drawn to the micro 4/3 system when it first came out, but to date it does not seem as if any of them are really having superb lenses to go with them.  Nikon does have excellent lenses, as does Canon; not too sure about Sony or Olympus or Panasonic in their smaller cameras, though I do believe Leica lenses can work on the Panasonic.  There is argument, though, for and against the Japanese-made Leica glass versus the German-made Leica glass.  Eek!

One which has caught my eye very seriously is the Pentax K-5.  I like its really, really solid construction.  I drop things and spill things all over the place, so it sure does have appeal that way.  Another especially attractive element is the fact that the K-5 is backward compatible with all K-mount lenses.

An attractive smaller camera is the Panasonic Lumix GH2.  I really love my little ZS5 – it takes some really great pictures, and it is what has gotten me really interested in the DSLR world more seriously, especially using manual exposure factors.  For a point-and-shoot camera that fits in your pocket, it is phenomenal as far as I am concerned.

Sony is also interesting.  The Alpha 55 looks like it has a lot going for it, especially in size.  Good reviews are coming out about it, although opinions of its lenses vary.

Price is also a factor.  A good, used Nikon may be had, but there is always part of me which likes to buy something new.  However, that seems sort of silly at times – people are always selling off perfectly good techie toys because another model is out.  And, seriously, this may be the route I take, but I think I need to make a choice of camera itself (brand) before I buy lenses.  And that is where Sigma is interesting – it makes third-party lenses for most major camera manufacturers!

I’m willing to spend on good equipment – things made to last, that work well, that don’t become unfashionable in a few weeks time – all appeal to me.  I’m doing my research!  In the meantime, I am very lucky to have a Nikon D70 to play with.

Resurrection

The other day my photo buddy and I got together.  He just acquired a Nikon D200 DSLR for a song, and in a fit of generosity (as well as a ploy to convert me to a Nikon fan!), has offered me the use of his Nikon D70 DSLR for play.   Isn’t that great?  And I admit, I am really excited about the idea of being able to use a DSLR with interchangeable lenses.  All my digital cameras have had fixed lenses.

I’ve also been on the hunt for a rangefinder camera as I have never used one, and am looking at several on eBay.  I don’t want to spend a fortune, so I have been doing a lot of research.  It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn while looking!  There are so many rangefinder cameras out there – some more popular than others, some with an interesting history, some for pennies, others for thousands of dollars.  To me, what is the most fascinating idea of all, is their supposed portability compared to SLRs.  I’m no expert, but my impression is that the plane of focus can be very narrow, and this gives pictures taken with rangefinders some of their charm – blurred foreground and distance, with razor sharp images in the middle.  As well as this, brilliantly detailed landscapes.

And if I do this – I need to get the pictures developed.  My scanner has an attachment for digitizing film negatives.  But!  I have no negatives that I can find to try it.  Solution?  Dig out my old, and only, SLR – a Canon A-1.

Tragically, I never really learned to use this camera.  My cheapskate side hates spending thousands of dollars on snapshots which I don’t like.  However, with the idea of being able to digitize snapshots, I decided to pull it off the shelf where it has been sitting for too many years.  It has seen better days.  It has been dropped fairly hard, to the point the enamel is down to the metal underbody, and the ISO dial is reluctant to move.  The lens has a haze filter on it, but the entire camera was swathed in dust.  The lens itself was jammed, and a button to release it from “A” for the automatic modes popped out when I tried to move the lens to an F stop.

As you can see, this poor thing has been really neglected.  I got most of the dust off, but this shows you just how much more needs to be done.  Despite this, I went out and got a new battery and the only package of film (Fuji 400 Superia) in the drugstore, downloaded and printed out a manual, which I don’t think I ever even read when I got this camera nearly 30 years ago.  I read the manual front to back.

I pulled out my tripod and set up a few shots, using only the manual elements to do some close-ups of an orchid in the yard, and the dying hop plant.  I tried to do shots with the largest F stop – f/3.5 with the 28 mm macro, and some with f/11 for detail and depth.  I have no idea how they will turn out, but recorded them in a notebook.  It will be interesting to see what they look like.  Hopefully not like snapshots!

It’s pretty amusing to think I used my digital camera (Lumix DMC ZS5) to take these pictures.  If I find myself wanting to use this Canon, we are very fortunate to have a camera repair place here in town that has an excellent reputation.

Time was when one used to be able to buy film in drugstores and grocery stores, but not now.  Online seems to be the place, and camera stores.  The varieties are still myriad, but local availability has dwindled.  Forget having black and white processed at a local lab – it needs to be sent out while color processing stays somewhat local.  It may be worthwhile looking into processing at home or finding a local members-only lab, but that is a bit down the line, and only if I get into it.

How times have changed!

Video: Painting Sunflowers in Sumi-e

There are a lot of “try before you buy” video editors out there.  Some allow you to publish a video without blurbs on the final product which tell the whole world who they are.  Others do it, which is annoying, but they can be removed with some editing.  Some programs are fairly intuitive – which is important if you don’t know a dang thing about video editing – and others come with decent tutorials and help sections.  Some are slow to load, hard to see, confusing, but full of cool devices.  Others are not, but have online resources which you can use to create your own what-is-needed, like a title or template.  To get what I want I have been swapping between a number of programs, but expect I will eventually settle on one.  I really appreciate 30-day windows to try out stuff!  I’ve been rather confused and frustrated, but am beginning  to understand a bit about them. One thing I do know is that over-processing the videos is occurring, and a lot of quality is lost. As long as you don’t watch them in full-screen mode, the quality is okay.

Sunflower Sunday

As always, my weekends are far too busy, but I do make time to have fun.  This weekend I was determined to try out a different set-up for the Zi8.  When I work inside in my studio (office, spare room, whatever!), the camera cannot be easily placed where I usually work.  My painting area is part of an L-shaped computer table, and the camera really is best placed to my left.  Unfortunately, the computer area is also to the left.  I have tried all sorts of gyrations, but nothing was especially great.  Practice will eventually create the perfect set-up.

So, I decided to try it out on the patio, and it worked out pretty well.  I could get the camera over to the left of the chair and angle it so I could film as if the viewer were looking over my left shoulder.  The key was to place the feet of the tripod perpendicular to the table – this way I could scoot the chair back to stay out of the picture, but not knock over everything if I moved.  All this worry creates a very stressful painting situation, but this time I actually felt fairly comfortable, and ended up painting and filming – turning the camera on and off with the remote – for quite some time.

The result was a 15-minute video on painting sunflowers.  YouTube has both a size and time limit, but I decided to try it anyhow.  No dice.  I tried to compress the video into a 10-minute segment, and all I ended up seeing was a black screen.  Thus, I had to divide the video into segments, which was not easy until I got into another software package.  I was able to edit out sections with pauses, and divide the sections into different videos with different titles.  The final result is two videos!

Painting Sunflowers in Sumi-e:  Part One and Part Two

Here they are!  YouTube also allows you to do “audioswap” and add a free (to the video-maker) music track to the video, with the caveat some advertising may appear.  I did it for the Painting Wild Orchids in Sumi-e video, and for the two sunflower ones, which you can see below.  Hopefully the music will add to the proverbial “viewing pleasure” and the advertisements won’t distract.