I took these the other night as part of my continuing adventures with light and f-stops.

I think they're eggcellent...

(sorry, couldn't resist)



(3.2secs, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 100, 09/10/07 19:19)



(1 sec, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 100, 09/10/07 19:22)



(0.8secs, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 100, 09/10/07 19:24)



(5secs, f/11, aperture priority, focal length - 121mm, ISO - 100, 09/10/07 19:29)



(5secs, f/11, aperture priority, focal length - 121mm, ISO - 100, 09/10/07 19:31)



Once again, this makes use of the same approach I took with the dice. I set up using a black silk dressing gown as background this time, as I felt the sheen might work well. My little desk light off to the right, set at different angles (or turned off) depending on the shot and then the camera on a tripod and messing about with aperture a little (as the shot data should show).

I'm fascinated by light when working like this. The shadows and the changes in colour just using things as simple as a sheer piece of cloth opposed to cotton or moving the lights about even a little. If I had the money I'd go out tomorrow and buy the tables you can get for this sort of photography, but the more I consider it the more I actually think they might leave things quite predictable and formulaic. As things stand I find myself wandering the house looking for spare lights, things to set them on and things to use for backgrounds etc.

All these shots were taken in Aperture Priority mode and the shutter times vary incredibly as a result. Interestingly (and something I didn't realise when I started) this seems to have had a fun effect on the actual egg itself, with some of the shots looking quite sinister whilst others look like little Oscars for Martians. aprt from cropping there hasn't been anything else done....yet...

I haven't decided which is my favourite, but I figured this one is in the running.



(13 secs, f/11, aperture priority, focal length - 55mm, ISO - 100, 09/10/07 19:27)

I've a growing list of things I want to try and photograph. Oddities we've picked up traveling or ornaments etc. I may well make it a periodic thing on to try. In this case, we picked up the egg in Austria a few years back in a little rock shop (I kid you not!).

Warning. Geological information follows...

The egg is actually a piece of Iron Pyrite or Fool's Gold that has been ground down to the shape of an egg. I'm told the closer to a perfect egg the artist gets the more valuable they become, but I actually quite like the crevasses on this - they do fantastic things with the light.

The crystals inside the egg actually come up really well in the uncompressed versions of the pictures and make some interesting and unusual pictures in themselves.

Anyone who's new to photography and has spoken to someone with experience has probably fallen foul of the "is that 18 - 55 digital or analogue" question.

Yeah, me too.

I politely replied that the lens was black like the camera because I felt it was nicer and would they stop looking at me funny.

Well, I've asked a few people what this meant and got a few different explanations.

Basically the focal ranges quoted on the lens will either be for a digital camera or a film (35mm) camera. The lens will work with both (assuming it says so on the box. I accept no responsibility for the broad implications of this statement) but since the two cameras do things in different ways, the actual values may vary. The factor seems to be about 1.5

Here, hold on. Dermot explains it better in a post he sent me earlier.

For film cameras the standard lens is the 50mm lens, this is because it matches the behavior of the eye but if you take photos with your old compact film camera, you'll have noticed that the photos don't always match what you remember seeing, this is partly to do with the quality of the camera/film/photographer but also because those cameras didn't have a 50mm lens. Instead to cater for all occasions they were given a 35mm lens to allow people to take loads of panoramic scenic shots. Mystery solved.

 

When the magic of digital arrived, there was a little problem. While with film cameras, the lens size determined what images fell on the negative/transparency, with digital it couldn't behave in the same way, the camera could only see a part of what the lens saw. So if you put the same 50mm lens on both a film and digital camera, you wouldn't get the same image, the digital would effectively have zoomed in by a factor.

 

This factor is multiplicative and it's value is 1.5, so the 50mm lens is really a 75mm. This is why the standard lens for digital is 18-55mm or 18-200mm, with the factor factored in, you really have a 27-82mm or 27-300mm.

 

There are some expensive digital SLRs which have solved this problem but the cheaper ones still use the 1.5 rule.

Hope that makes some sense.

So, if I could offer you one piece of advice  (and since that nice man already told you about the benefits of suncream), I would say "if you're buying a new lens for your camera, make sure the focal range is what you actually want"

Soemthing odd just happened and I appear to have lost my title background image.

Same for everyone else?

I've mentioned I own a polarizing lens.

Someone mentioned it was good for taking the glare out of water as well as giving the sky a funky colour and I want to try this, but here's my question.

Are you ready for it?

My lens has a little white line which (I assume) is for me to aim at the sun to get best results. So what way do I point it when taking pictures of water? At the sun or at the water?

Colour me confused.

http://learningtosnap.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/background.jpg

Some notes about the images that appear here.

Unless stated otherwise, all images presented on this blog are copyright Paul Kavanagh. If you do wish to make use of an image, please let me know.  Providing it's for personal use I'll typically be more than happy for someone to make use of them (there are better out there though!).

All  other images on this blog are copyright their respective owners and were possible/practical permission has been requested to make use of them.

Please feel free to post comments if you have any. All I'd ask is that you're pleasant, and don't just type "you suck" over and over. In fact, if you have advice about improving the images or about techniques which have helped you, please share!

One other thing to note. The images here are all scaled and have had their quality recduced to make them more web friendly. A friend has loaned me the web space to alllow me to host them outside this blog and I don't want to repay him by hosting 200 10Meg images...

Just some testing to see how it all comes together

For years I've owned cameras...

From my first little Kodak instant camera, through those little rectangular boxes with a flash at one end right into 35mm and finally a digital camera which (up until a few weeks ago) was my pride and  joy.

At every stage with film cameras what I saw on the print wasn't what I'd seen through the lens. But like everyone else I guess I was guilty of thinking something as simple as looking through a window and pressing a button was all that was needed to take a picture.

In 2005 when my wife announced we two were to become three, that was it, I needed a digital camera...

Once again, I settled on an instamatic type camera, in my case the Fuji E550. For two years it's been faithful, doggedly taking thousands of pictures and always giving good photo.

But I still ended up with shots which I liked, shots which I hated and shots where I went "What the f..."

So, in an effort to understand the art of photography I've decided to learn. I've also decided to blog my adventures in the hope that typing it all out will make it all sink in.

My name is Paul. I'm learning to snap.