Tag: Photography

My friend PT and I went out for a quick shoot this morning. This was my first opportunity to use my new ND filter system on my Panasonic 7-14mm and, although tricky, I think a few shots came out great! As far as I can see there is no vignetting even at 7mm!  The location of the sun was the biggest problem noting that flare is the biggest issue with this ultra wide lens. Other issues include dead batteries in my shutter release and my tripod. I’m glad to find these things out now and will get a new battery pack and also bring my monopod since the tripod was overkill for one second exposures. 

Here are some cropped samples. That’s a shadow of me leaning on the railing taking the photo in the second one.
    
   

So thankfully I received my macro focus rail this morning and didn’t fall flat on my face with all of the ice outside. I say thankfully because I have been going crazy not being able to take photos outside in this wicked cold. Here are some samples. I placed the watches at an angle to better demonstrate the stacking method and how you can blend these images to increase the plane of focus and I must say, the movement is quite smooth. It allows for both forward/backward and side to side movement and mounted quite easily on my 701 Manfrotto head. I am looking forward to taking images of some bugs. So I use a shutter release, take the image at f5.6 and then blend them in post-production. Lots of fun!

I have put the snowflake production on hold for today. I found some old watches so I decided to take some shots of those. This is my GH2 with an Olympus 60 mm. They are stacks of 3 images blended in photoshop.

I was mildly frustrated with the jpg engine in my GH2 when I use the extended focus and a 4x zoom. I think I pushed it a little too far 🙂

So I switched back to RAW and decided that cropping was better than shooting jpgs with crappy luminosity and less than sharp corners.

These are my favorites so far!

I tried to see if I could set up inside and then transport snow inside. More comfortable but the snow flakes melt rather quickly. 🙂

You can make out my tripod legs reflected in the melted drop of snow below.

I really need a focus rail.

My friend KE sent me a link to a Russian photographer that does macro work with snowflakes. So I decided to give it a go. Needless to say, it is quite a challenge. By the time I finally got my tripod set up correctly I realized that my batteries in my shutter were dead and so I switched over to the timer on my camera. All the while my fingers got colder and colder. By the time I snapped a few, the night had set.

Next time I will use a focus rail, earlier in the day. I will dress warmer and get fresh batteries 🙂

Across from the cottage is a dry swamp with some interesting trees and other foliage that are the last holdouts against the coming winter. Here are a few with the Olympus 60mm. The last is with my Tokina 11-16mm.

Here are some images from Saturday. The weather was a beast! The first photo is from the morning, the rest beginning an hour later!