Just another reason to love Williamsburg!

Impromptu pictures of bubbles are hard to accomplish when you have to do it on your own.

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Further justification for a macro lens.

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Happy orchid is happy.

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You did a great job on this. It is a difficult subject.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3749/...69abe06e_b.jpgIMG_0639 by streetmanor, on Flickr



https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7401/...69b19599_b.jpgIMG_6226 by Scrape Artist, on Flickr

*crickets*

What have you guys been up to?


Here, enjoy a new bubble.


https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7356/...63b09d95_c.jpg

Trying to get the car ready for Zdayz... Not sure if I'll have everything done in time. My biggest hurdle is modding my headlights. I have a feeling its gonna take me more than a day to do them, a d I only have one day available a week and I don't want to rush it...

Zdayz 2014!!

Anybody have experience doing event photography, like in a club setting? I'm going in for a party and looking for any last minute advice. I've got my D7000, an SB-800 with a diffuser (not sure if this is really necessary), and I rented 17-55 f/2.8 and a 10.5 f/2.8 fisheye just to play around with. I didn't think my 18-200 was suitable for lower light environments.

35 f/1.4 is where it's at bro, check out the sigma version, it's fantastic

Kewl!

In that environment, it may be easier to shoot manually if it's dark. Get your settings where they need to be and just keep shooting. The wide aperture lenses will help, but in a club setting it's hit or miss since the lighting is constantly shifting . You can only pump the ISO up before it gets really grainy and if you use strobes, it will pretty much overpower everything. It really depends on the look you're after so I'd try out a bunch of combos to see which ones you like.

yeah i have a 35mm 1.8 nikon lens that i like, and i figured i wouldn't be shooting full open just to maintain some DOF on the groups i might get. i am hopeful the 17-55 will do okay for it.

i am likely going to put it in shutter priority, see what the computer spits out, and then play around in that region to see what i get. i did get a remote cord so i can take the flash off camera if i have to, but not sure yet. i see people all the time taking photos with flash on camera, so....yeah.

Selling my Paul C Buff studio flashes if anyone is interested.

http://www.the370z.com/misc-items-sa...buff-gear.html

Recently went to the Maryhill Loops Road in Central Washington with the ZCCW and Northwest Z, had a lot of fun!

^Sweet photos Titan!

That is a good road. The whole north side of the Columbia River through the gorge is loaded with great roads. I do like the Historic Cokumbia River Parkway on the Oregon side. Nice days on a weekend kinda suck though with falls traffic. Great shots.

That Parkway is awesome, our club takes that route to The Dalles where we stay the night before heading up to Maryhill. Traffic there now isn't too bad relative to the summer months, we got lucky and hit some of the best twisty sections nearly completely empty, particularly highway 30 around the Rowena Crest Viewpoint.

Are there any SD card recovery apps out there that are free and let you select which files to keep?

Shots from my favorite sports photographer. Dig the equipment he was using. I did a quick "retail" count and it's about $38,000 worth of equipment.
http://markjrebilas.com/blog/?p=20125

Went to an aquarium in Wilmington, NC today.

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/g...isher-7660.jpg

Good work.

I've been practicing HDR photography lately since I haven't rented a macro lens yet. Here are a few from Mission Concepcion yesterday. They probably aren't straight since my head is crooked. :p
I liked them but to each their own, right?

:tup:

Spent most of yesterday and today in front of a TV :)

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2910/...2f0ff042_b.jpg

I love nature photography until......

lol...

Badly HDR'd and probably crooked. I need a new laptop for editing as it didn't appear that saturated when I was editing. Shrug.


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Those of you who dabble with HDR, what software do you use? I bought Photomatix Essentials but it's way too basic to get the kind of pictures I want. I'm not so sure the Pro version would help me any more than their basic.

It really depends on the "kind" of look you want to achieve. I've used multiple programs over the last 7-8 years, and I don't use any of them now. Many leave artifacts behind that hinder image quality and also scream "HEY IVE BEEN HDR'ed!!" such as haloing and unrealistic colors.

If you shoot RAW, using Adobe Camera RAW gives you crazy levels of modification and also the glamorous Clarity slider, which IMO will render better results than any HDR program. Yes it can be time consuming to manually try and do what HDR programs do, but the payoff is better. As a professional photographer, I couldn't possible put out work that has Haloing, color issues, JPEG artifacting, noise, etc caused by HDR programs.

The industry secret to HDR = Dodge and Burn ;)

So yea, that's crazy. Jus' hangin' wit' duh bears. :eek: :icon14:

Or layering your own. (I have never really liked the auto HDR tools) Then use PS layering tools to bring in the detail for how you visualized the shot. Great shots usually have great amounts of work behind them.

I have not used CS6 HDR tools yet though.

I dont think anything changed in CS6, but IDK. You can layer your own exposures, but you still have a lot of work from there to achieve true dynamic range. FYI, if you look on youtube for tutorials, some are 30-40-50 minutes long and those are with pro's doing the work. One HDR shot could take 2-3-4 hours easy.

:iagree:

That's one reason I avoid HDR like the plague^ I'm a big fan of K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid). Get as much as you can done in the camera and you avoid hours of work, per image, after. Sometimes that's just unavoidable, however. It's all in how you shoot and the subject. Guess the intended result is part of the equation as well. If you want it to look like a painting, HDR is the way to go. If you want it to look more realistic, you can usually get what you want in one RAW exposure.

Could go for some advice on DSLR lens. Almost all of my photography that I do it at night, when I have free time. I really would like to do a little bit of astrophotography. I saw that canon released a new lens today, 10-18mm, but the downside is the F stop ,4.5-5.6. Anyone have experience with the Tokina 11-18mm f/2.8? I am thinking of pulling the trigger in a day or so.

Why the hang up with the F stop? If you're shooting with a tripod its just a marginally slower shutter speed? Can you be more specific about what you like to shoot at night?

The upside of the slightly slower lens is that it will very likely be lighter. If you ever intend to walk around with it, could be a factor.

Lets put it this way: if you can afford the better F stop, do it. You'll be thankful you dished a little extra when you're not dissatisfied later because of its lack of ability. That is unless you have a dedicated purpose for it and won't ever need to stop that low, which you may not doing night shots.

:iagree:

It's why I saved up my pennies and bought 2.8 glass. It is heavy, but I don't take it rock climbing either.