City Stroll and Other Stuff

Ok, first things first, I have a new desire. This. It's a 200mm Nikon lens that stops down to f2. CRAZY! Here's an example of the pictures it can take:

Of course a spectacular picture isn't just made by a lens, it's the setup too:

Tell me that's not insane?

Well, now that's off my chest, today Suhey and I ventured around Downtown Miami in search of some street photography. The last time we did this was about five or six years ago, so we revisited for old times sake. I think this time I took much better pictures. Here are some:


Like with most things in life, shooting the street is all about timing. For those two shots above, there's several that I missed. You just have to keep going I guess and remember to shoot first and ask questions later. I'll eventually get over my issue with photographing people. In this day of identity stealing, it seems that more folks are concerned with not being photographed. So what's a photographer to do? Put on a telephoto lens and shoot them from where they can't see! :)

Click here to view all the shots from that day.

I've also got to plug this AMAZING Thai place we ate at. It's called Thai Churo and it's near the Government Center in Downtown Miami. It's a hole in the wall. But everyone know's that's where to get the best meals, right? It's got excellent food and a awesomely friendly staff that waits on you hand and foot. Their red curry was the bomb! And for dessert we had this sticky rice with coconut sauce and mango. Mmm...makes me hungry just thinking about it! This is from the entrance to thier shop:

In other news, I did some more experimenting with HDR this week. With this picture of the 812 that I ride home in the evenings:

No tripod on this one, but the images were close enough together for Photoshop to recognize and realign them. Getting the shots taken was a bit of a pain. One of the complaints I have about the Nikon D60 is it's lack of exposure bracketing. While you can do this yourself, having to press buttons and finagle the camera increases the chances the shots you take aren't going to be similar enough. Oh, and setting the exposure compensation is a pain too. But that's what you get from a entry-level SLR. I only wish I'd had the money to spend on a D300!

That's it for this week. I'd say it was quite productive photographically, even if it was at the expense of sleep. I leave you with a great little Youtube tutorial from photographer Joe McNally who offers a nice tip for holing the camera. This is a trick for all you left-eye focusers our there. All the right eyes (like myself) can do this too. How do I do it? I look through my left and keep both eyes open (I can only close my left eye). That's a little trick I learned during a short time when I was a videographer for weddings. If you shoot with both eyes open, you maintain a better awareness of your surroundings and can easily adjust if you see something more cool happening somewhere else. It's a little disorienting at first, but becomes more natural with time.

OK, enough yapping from me. Now I present Mr. McNally:

Nikonical becomes Fotojunkee

This weekend I realized Nikonical is too limiting. Yes, I love my D60 to death, but there's more to photography than Nikon. For example, I just bought a new Pentax *ist D.

Well, "new" is a relative term. My *ist D is new to me, but the actual camera is about five years old. I purchased it on eBay last week for the bargain basement price of $223. Its purpose is to give use to several Pentax manual focus lenses I have from my ME Super. These lenses include:

• 28 mm F2.8 prime
  
• 50 mm F1.7 prime
  
• 135mm F5.0 prime
  
• 70-200mm F4.0

Who can leave lenses like that to waste? Not me, so bought a digital camera that would let me use them. The *ist D was Pentax's first foray into the digital world. Like most of Pentax's creations, it's superb. What amaxed me most about the *ist D is that it's a little smaller than my D60. In 2003, when it was first released, the *ist D was the smallest DSLR out there. It seems there's a chance it could still be the smallest.

When I went shooting this weekend, I used only the Pentax. Sure, it's only a 6MP camera, but that's more than enough to print excellent high-res pictures. Here are some from my weekend trip to the Biltmore Hotel:





Click here to see all the pictures I took.

I also employed a new post-processing technique this weekend called Tone Mapping. It mimics the appearance of an HDR image and does a lot to enhance the quality of a photograph. Here's the tutorial I used to learn.

The Fair! Be there!

Last night was my second round at the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair. It's been about ten years since I've attended. Nothing's changed. But this year I had a new perspective on it, a world brought into focus by my Nikkor lens. With my tripod slung around my back, my photographer friend Rigo and I set out to shoot.

Our first stop of the night had nothing to do with photography. I'd been craving Elephant Ears since the fair arrived. After carefully eating the fried treat, and trying desperately to keep the powered sugar from falling on my D60, we left to our next stop, the giant Ferris Wheel.

I've been wanting to make an HDR image for some time. When I saw the wheel, I thought this might be a good first try. I wanted to catch it in motion, so I set up my tripod and snapped away. Below are the resulting shots, compiled from five separate exposures each.



Right around the corner from the Ferris Wheel were the bumper cars. I tried some shots with my SB-600 trying to bounce off the rides ceiling. This didn't work out too well. Instead I decided to try a photographic technique called panning. Panning is when you shoot at slow shutter speeds while following the subject with your lens, resulting in a blurred background and in-focus subject. Easier said than done. I was very satisfied with my results at the bumper cars.


But not so happy with the shots I took at the neighboring merry go round.


I still like the photo, but wish the horse could be more in focus. It was a hard capture because I had to sync with the left and right motion of the plastic beast as well as its up and down movement.

That's about it. I wish I could have gotten more good shots, but not bad for the first time shooting at a fair I think. For the full set of pictures on Flickr, click here.

It's all about the light.

Because I work during the day, it's only logical many of my photographs are taken at night and indoors. Most of these pictures require flash. Until now I've been using my camera's on board flash in manual mode. I've also employed an aged Pentax AS200 F (pictured right) that worked with my old ME Super. Now that was an OLD unit. Because it wasn't compatible with my D60, I controlled the flash intensity by adjusting the f-stop and my distance from the subject. To achieve correct exposure, I had to go by a handy, dandy table on the back of the flash. The head on this unit didn't rotate, so to get bounce or diffusion I employed several forms of improvised engineering. Two of the more effective inventions are the use of an index card and rubber band or white plastic table cloth wrapped around the unit, also held in place by a rubber band.

As of yesterday, however, I have moved into the present. Gone are the times of manual flash! I am now the owner of a Nikon SB600! I haven't gotten to experiment fully with my new toy, but these preliminary pictures show some of its amazing awesomeness. Thank you Einstien for being such a patient and candid subject.