green and feathery

I have a dahlia problem

I’m more than a little obsessed with dahlias. When I see a dahlia, my trigger finger starts to itch. They are just so perfect and round. I could really shoot them all day long. Longwood is having a dahlia festival this weekend, and I will be missing it! Hopefully, there will be some remnants left when I visit on Tuesday.

My visit to Longwood today felt like one of my last of the season. With hockey fast approaching, and the next 12 weeks at work being mayhem, I don’t know how often I will get there until January. It is such a great place to go and unwind. Farewell for a few months, Longwood Gardens…

The R8 is growing on me. Somehow, the colors look more vibrant in PSE than when I post them here. Also, not sure about this new format, but we’ll see….

Three Angels Oversee Proceedings In Kato Horio (Κάτω Χωριό, Κρήτη) Crete.

One thing I love to do is look at other people’s pictures. I clicked on one of Russ’ links and found terrorkitten. All I can say about his photos is wow. Nothing beats a picture like this to get you inspired to get out there and shoot.

Three Angels Oversee Proceedings In Kato Horio (Κάτω Χωριό, Κρήτη) Crete., originally uploaded by Terrorkitten.

The perfect camera bag? I’m still looking…

Need help finding a bag to hold all your gear? Have no fear…once again, I have done all the research for you. I’m starting to notice a pattern in this obssessive sort of behavior I have:

1. Decide I need to have a product.

2. Spend hours online researching said product

3. Buy product.

4. Love or hate product.

5. Decide I need to have a newer, better product.

It’s a vicious cycle, but one that you can learn from. And save money from, since I can tell you how bad the product does not fit my needs. After all, our needs are exactly the same, right?

When I first got my camera, I needed a small bag to bring with me to hockey games. However, I hate the way traditional camera bags look. They are so boxy and dorky and scream “There is a camera in here!!” Luckily, Tamrac has the Velocity series. They are low profile, sling style bags that don’t look quite so dorky (especially if you get the black, and don’t pose like the guy in the picture on their site).

They are well thought out bags, and seem to be designed with help from actual photographers. I have the Velocity 6X, which holds my D40X with one lens attached, and the other lens on the other side of the divider. It has a slim front pocket for lens tissue, dust blower, etc. The strap is pretty comfy, although a little more padding would be nice. This is a great bag for light duty work. Great for bringing to hockey games, social events, a short trip to Longwood, etc.

When you start to accumulate more camera crap or know you are going to be traveling, you need a bigger bag. The bigger bag is the harder one to find the perfect fit.

The first bag I tried was the Lowepro Stealth Reporter Bag. There was nothing stealth about it. I bought it because it had a great internal configuration with a ton of pockets, but it was waaaaay too big. Like, my 22 pound cat could have slept in it big. So that went straight back to Amazon and my search continued.

My next stop was Crumpler bags. They seemed to have a pretty loyal following on flickr and in general, so I decided to check them out. After the “Stealth” disaster I knew I would have to see the bag in person before buying, so I headed to New York Camera and Video in Southampton PA. (Actually, I went to the one in Quakertown first, but that location was closed, so I had to reroute. Thanks for updating your website guys, I appreciate it!)

NYCV has a fantastic selection of bags. The entire back room is pretty much dedicated to bags, and you can try them on and check yourself out in the mirror. The staff was helpful but not pushy, which was a plus. I probably browsed the bags for about 45 minutes before making my selection. I ended up going with the Crumpler Keystone. Here is what I like about the bag:

1. Super comfortable. It really conforms to your back and distributes the weight evenly.
2. Looks kinda cool.
3. Your camera is not accessible to thieves sneaking up behind you.

Here is what I dislike about the bag:

1. Very very expensive. Like, a lot of money.
2. Just like the thieves sneaking up behind you, your camera is not accessible to you very easily!
3. A lot smaller on the inside than it looks on the outside. The Crumpler website shows it fitting all sorts of stuff, but honestly, I can get my camera and two lenses and not a whole lot else. Right now I also have my two duaflexes in there, and I can fit my two point and shoots. But really, the point and shoot in there is gonna take about 5 minutes to get out, since you have to take the bag off, lay it down, unzip the outer zipper, unzip the mesh zipper, then grab your camera and do it all again in reverse. You’ve definitely missed a lot of photographic opportunities by the time that has happened.

Overall, the Crumpler Keystone is a great bag for when you’re going away for the weekend. You can pack all your camera gear, and even your laptop with no problem. It gets a bit heavy once you add the laptop though. I like to think of the Keystone as more of a staging area for your equipment. Throw it on the hotel couch and work out of it all weekend.

If I had to do it all over again, I’m not sure I would go with the Crumpler. Right now, I have my eye on a few other bags, but hopefully I won’t buy them. So I guess I will give you the full report on my new bag in a few weeks, right? ; )

Missed opportunities

I was rudely awakened by the cat yesterday at 6:30 am. Rod, his usual feeder, is away, and the cat needed me to fill in. I’m not used to being up at 6:30 am, and as I looked out the window to check on the traffic situation, I saw a lovely photographic opportunity.

The morning sun was shining on the road, creating a nice sharp shadow of dark and light that cut across the yellow line at a nice angle. “Hmm, that would be a nice picture,” I thought to myself. “I’ll get it tomorrow when I have to get up early for real. I’m too tired to get the Ricoh out at this ungodly hour.”

Cut to today at 6:15. My alarm goes off, I open my eyes and look at the window. Oh crap. It’s overcast! I get out of bed, thinking maybe it’s just because it’s 6:15, not 6:30. Nope, it is definitely overcast. No pictures of the contrasty, shadowy road for me today. And unless the cat wakes me up again tomorrow, no pictures tomorrow either.

I wish I could say that this is the first time I have said “oh, I’ll just get the shot tomorrow,” but the truth is, it has taken me awhile to learn this lesson. You gotta get the shot the first time you see it, because it’s usually not there again the next day. The lighting is different, someone cuts down the tree you were loving, the irises go past bloom by the next time you get there.

Next time I’ll know better!

I’m so point and shoot.

I really hate taking pictures. I don’t like taking pictures in public. As far as composition goes, I pretty much never think about it. I’m truly a point and shoot person, with more emphasis on the shooting than the pointing!

Whenever I take snapshots of people, I bring the camera up and just about as it gets level to my eye, I snap the photo. This results in a lot of pictures of friends and family with stupid looks on their faces. What can I say, it’s a gift!

My other photgraphic handicap is that I hate flash. Hate hate hate hate hate flash! It always makes my cat blink, or wash out an otherwise mediocre picture. I therefore never use it.

You can imagine that my utter disregard for any sort of compositional planning and a hatred of flash is somewhat of a handicap.

When I got my D40x last year, the first thing I did was take it to a hockey game. I strapped the 3.5-5.6 kit lens on there and snapped away. I came home, downloaded the pictures, and proceeded to say “WTF?!!!”

Rod informed me that my lens’ 3.5 aperture combined with the high shutter speed needed for sports would not be sufficient to capture the action of hockey. Wait, what? I just bought this camera and it’s not going to even do what I want it to do? And what’s this “aperture” thing you are talking about? And where can I spend more money to make sure I never have to see pictures of Danny Briere that look like this?

In true obsessive fashion, I proceeded to research the heck out of “faster” lenses. I must have researched quite furiously, because that picture above was taken on October 20th, and pictures taken with my new fast lens were taken on the 23rd. And I ordered the lens online! Just a bit crazy, I am!

By the time my 2 days of research was over, I was throwing around phrases like “That’s a fast piece of glass!” and “sigma for Nikon mount.” In the end, I decided on a sigma 50-150 2.8. It was long enough to get me some good pictures of hockey, and had a fast 2.8 throughout the whole range. Plus, the overall length of the lens does not change during focusing and zooming. For some reason, I love that feature!

The closest comparable Nikon lens was an 18-200 with a 3.5-5.6. That aperture was not really gonna work for my lowlight needs.

I love this lens. I eventually had to buy a sigma wide angle too, but when possible I shoot with this. It is fantastic for candid snapshots, and has a great softness with its depth of field. Here are some example pictures from last year and my first few days with the sigma. I just call him my long lens.

So, as you can see, this is the perfect lens for me! It helps with “portraits” and low light photography! (I was afraid I wasn’t going to come back around to my original point after all that. If you made it to the end of this post, thank you very much for reading!!

Oh, and how does it do with those pesky hockey pictures? This was from my first game with the longlens…Not bad…I still need to work on it, but at least it gives me more light to work with. This year I am going to work on the white balance in that godforsaken arena!

A helpful TTV tutorial…

Of course, as soon as I posted my “tutorial” on how to TTV, I found another great resource online.  Sure, I could just add it to my previous post, but what fun would that be?

It’s an article posted on JPG by Madelyn Herring, aka HighlandGillie.  You can check out her TTV work on Flickr too.

We now return to your regularly scheduled Saturday programming…

I had to buy a new camera

Sure, it cost me money, but it saved me time. After seeing some of the pictures Russ took with his Ricoh GRII Digital, I decided I needed to have one too. (I always forget that it is the shooter, not the camera…) However, I did not really feel like spending 600 dollars on a little camera. Whenever I make a major tech purchase these days, I always eqaute it into “what kind of lens could I buy for the D40 with the money I’m about to spend…?”

So, I decided to research other Ricoh cameras. You may be asking yourself, “Kristin, why would you want a Ricoh camera? The guys at the camera shop don’t even know that they still make Ricoh cameras!!!” Well, the answer is, I wanted a Ricoh because it can shoot in a square format, just like the TTV photos that I love so much. Sure, I guess I could just shoot differently and crop the photos afterwards, but where is the fun in that?

Since I didn’t want to spend 600 bucks, I decided to do some research and see what else Ricoh had with the square format shooting. I came up with either the GX100 or the R8. I ended up going with the R8, because in the end, my main requirement was the square shooting mode. All three cameras have it, but the R8 was the cheapest. The GRII has fully manual capabilities, which frankly, with my skill level, I don’t necessarily need. I can hone my manual skill set on the Nikon.

I haven’t really had the chance to take the Ricoh for a spin yet. I got it on Tuesday and have had to work every day since then. I am off tomorrow to take some pics at Longwood, and hopefully it will perform well in a bright light situation. So far, the indoor macro results have been poor compared to my Canon Powershot SD630. That thing is a monster in low light and digital macro.

Oh, and how did buying a new camera save me time? I don’t have to spend hours online researching and convincing myself that I don’t need a new camera. Now I know I don’t need a new camera!

I have no idea how to TTV

Nobody tells you how to do it. When you start, you figure you must be doing it wrong. So for those of you starting off, this is what things look like.

So it comes out looking all weird, then you have to crop it.

This is what you get after cropping and, in this case, straightening as well. The end result:

After you play around a bit, you will need to build a contraption in order to keep out most of the light. My first contraption was just contruction paper, becuase I am basically lazy and low tech. i think it works pretty well, although you will get some stares when you are out and about.

You can go here and here for ideas on contraptions, and here for more inspiration. For me, seeing this picture made me want to start with TTV. The picture made the camera look so cool that I just had to try it!