Picture from the Student Demo

This one has been doing the rounds so you may have seen it. Whatever you think of the politics of the protest, I think this is a great shot for a number of reasons: it tells a story - and one contrary to what is being reported. There's a great contrast between the youth and vulnerability of the girls and the violence that has been done to the van. There's a camaraderie in the eye contact between the main two subjects.

Wildlife photography winners

Overall winner shows it's definitely not about technical brilliance, although, personally I don't see this as a particularly strong shot - certainly not as strong as a lot of the entries.

Some amazing technical stuff however, especially the underwater shots.

365 Project

Stumbled across the 356Project website recently. A friend on Facebook is doing it. I have to say I am quite tempted to give it a go. Some of the photos on there are very good and others are interesting from a reportage point of view. Too often my camera sits unused from week to week.

What holds me back is that I'd need a camera with me all the time and I won't be lugging the D90 to work and back every day. I don't really have a compact - although Sarah's old 4MP Ixus has taken a few good shots - and my phone camera is pretty ropey.

Have either of you tried a self-imposed challenge to take a photo a day?

The slow path to very imaginable wealth

FT article

Latest stock sale - ironically it's an article by Roger Protz, who writes regularly for me in my day job.

Image zoomed end of August, article dated 17 Sept, sale of image only turned up on my Alamy records today - again proves that zoomed images months before may turn into sales.

Brings total earned from the stock experiment to just over $500 from around 450 images.

Challenge 10 - Much Less Scary

Here's another one. This time I am a bit more presentable. Taken with off-camera flash behind the sewing machine so that I was illuminated. Manual focus attempt to get my face sharp - not the machine - has only been partially successful. F7.1, 52mm.

Challenge 10 - NSFW

This was an attempt to get away from any vanity associated with this challenge! Me looking at my very worst after 30 minutes on an exercise bike. Do not pixel-peep - you may well be scarred for life.

Off-camera flash pointing straight into the face from below, camera directly ahead. F3.5, 18mm.

Challenge 10 - for me, obvious really...

f8, 1/60s, ISO400, 16-85@56mm, off-camera flash. Chiltern Brewery Bitter, 4.8 per cent ABV.

A very tenuous connection to photography

Challenge 10 - Self Portrait

On reflection, this challenge could turn out to be aesthetically very upsetting. ;)

f8, 1.6s, ISO 400, 16-85@85mm (through 50mm)

Focus issues caused by shooting through the second lens which I didn't have time to nail down.

Challenge 10: Self Portrait

This came to me whilst shaving this morning and trying to think of a challenge.

Take a self-portrait. No excuse: we all have the subject matter and a camera!  But it could be quite tough.... if not a little narcissistic. 

Usual rules: up to 5 photos, as much Photoshop as you like, deadline end of November. The only additional rule is that, obviously, the photograph must be taken by yourself. So get that tripod and remote release out!

Sequence - Toby Picks an Easy One to Do

Just so It doesn't look like I wimped out of the challenge. No more ideas, however.

Challenge 09 - Tom's first sequence

About 10 minutes work with the mini-studio, tripod and off-camera flash. Plus I got a cup or tea at the end of it as a bonus!

Kettle: ISO 200, M, 1/13s, f8, 16-85@52mm
Milk: ISO 800, A, 1/125s, f4.8, 16-85@45mm
Sugar: ISO200, M, 1/15s, f8, 16-85@40mm

Inspiration...

Extremely good example of how it's the photographer, not the equipment, which is important. Nat Geo photographer sent off with a new Nikon P7000 compact and shows how he can get great shots regardless.

From the looks of things he's very much a DX shooter, lots of his stuff done on D70, D80, D90 and recently D300 cameras - again proving it doesn't really matter if a camera is considered "professional" or not, it's what you do with it!

Challenge 09 - Sequence

Firstly, time lapse banned, this isn't just because of my new found dullness regarding interval shooting, but is slightly inspired by it.

Challenge is to submit at a group of photos which as a sequence, or just as a collection, represent a theme or tell a story.

Sequences should be of at least three photos, no more than five.

No more than three collections submitted.

End of October seems a good deadline.

None of us seemed to get much on the standing challenges, but think Autumnal thoughts as a side challenge!

Time lapse nerdery

As usual, trying to constrain the detailed nerdery to here, rather than Facebook.

Was hoping to do a sequence like this under the dark and clear skies of Scotland, but ironically, got the best results out the back of my folks house in the suburban sprawl of the North East.

After a few false starts on previous nights, best results seemed to come from M, 30s, f8, ISO 800. Camera was on tripod, with focus preset to infinite and as wide as possible (I shot from inside, through french window, so was a little limited on framing).

I switched NR on this time, but would probably do without next time I try.

D300 interval shooting menu is an absolute masterpiece of confusing UI - however I eventually worked out how to set it to take one exposure every minute, leaving a 30s gap between.

Camera set to shoot jpg, at medium settings to allow around 700 images onto a 4GB card.

However all three times I tried this over the week, battery never lasted longer than 200-300 exposures. Everything done to optimise it, switched off image review, freshly charged battery etc. I'd probably try again without NR, which I suspect eats up some power, but figure people who achieve eight hour exposures use the AC adapters or some sort of jury rigged power unit based on car battery for remote use.

Earlier experiment with camera on tripod in car, shooting through windscreen, saw even fewer exposures - due to cold draining battery quickly.

Images were then dragged into iMovie untouched (I probably could have set up a PS action to process them all identically but for this initial test, didn't see the need), set to display for .1 sec, then exported as a medium sized MV4 file.

New camera for Susan...

Camera buying hats on please. Susan's six year old Olly has done her spectacularly well, however she's starting to get frustrated with it and run into the particular problem of xD cards no longer being for sale.

(frankly I don't blame her for wanting to change, the LCD screen on the back in hilariously small!)

However, her requested specs look like she's going to struggle to find something:

Wants viewfinder
Would like articulated LCD screen, like on David's Nikon
Doesn't want anything bigger or heavier than the current camera
Lens to be about the same as the Olly - x10 optical
I imagine budget is not going to be above £200-£300, if that

Any ideas?

I'm hoping she might compromise on the viewfinder/articulated screen - which widens the choice massively.

Cheers - Tom

Edit: This is what she has now, I think.

Edit: Susan has said she'd be prepared to compromise on the size/weight if it meant she gets the eye-level viewfinder and vari-angle screen...although I don't think she's quite realised that could mean a camera the size of David's Nikon!

If anyone wants to buy my negatives, I'm sure we can come to a deal....;)

Ansel negs bought for $45 could be worth $200m

Sometimes I wonder...

..why I bother with the cost and hassle of the DSLR.




(One image taken with the Nikon D300, plus Sigma zoom. The other with my Fuji F70 point-and-shoot. Both at "300mm" (although not strictly comparable due to sensor sizes). I'll leave you to work out which is which.)

Actually, I do know why I bother. The F70 image has had to be cropped heavily and then resampled, while the D300 image hasn't (although there is some cheating...it's actually a stacked composite of two images to get the wings and body in focus, while keeping the shallow depth of field for the background).

No control over depth of field on the compact - colour rendition also pretty hit and miss.

This was in bright, afternoon sun which allowed shooting at 200 ISO - anything above 400 ISO starts to lose masses of detail with the NR smearing on the F70.

Slooooow. Fuji one of fastest compacts I've used, but still enough shutter lag and blackout to mean anything moving is a hit and miss affair.

Macro madness

Didn't want to overload Facebook with photo-nerdery - but here are a couple more in the "Tom stands in the garden with his zoom out" series.

As I said, used the Sigma 70-300@300 and in macro mode.

I've got a bank of settings designed for "sport" which is set up to use a limited auto-ISO mode (200-800), upping the ISO to keep the shutter speed above 1/200s.

Initially I tried using the autofocus, but the Sigma is just too slow and with a busy background and small subject, was ending up locking onto background objects too often. Had more success switching to manual focus - or towards the end, manually getting the focus plane pretty close to where it needed to be, then flicking to auto (continuous) to let it make the last adjustment and continue to adjust if I fired off multiple shots.

Looking back at the shots, both full manual and manual/auto focus approaches had about as many hits as misses.

As you'll see from the bigger sizes, even the "hits" are pretty soft, which shows up a) the lens and b) the difficulty with trying to get things in motion with a razor thin plane of focus! Light levels let me go up to f8, but even this, as you'll see, doesn't give any depth of field at all.

I've also had to crop in the finish photos from the wider shots (the 300 macro doesn't get that close), which hasn't helped quality.

General learning from the process:

Hoverflies are good - they tend to hang around the same bushes for several minutes at a time, there are lots of them and they stop and hover - as the name suggests!

Patience - like most photography it's more about the willingness to stand around and take 200 photos, then any particular talent!

Use both eyes - because the Sigmas macro mode locks you into 200-300mm, was having to find where flies were with eye away from the finder, then try to locate them in the finder while zoomed, which proved difficult at first, but with a bit of practice and keeping both eyes open you begin to get the knack of "seeing" the wide scene with one eye, the zoomed image with the other and somehow navigating your way round both to get the insect into the middle of the frame!

Insect backsides are fairly boring - and they're not very helpful and keep moving around, so I had to rotate around them quite a lot to get the more interesting views. Hoverflies again nice subjects as they didn't seem that bothered with me standing very close.

A bit quiet around here....

Have we all given up?

Here's a picture of a pine cone on a wall. Took it for some homework of Imogen's but decided I quite liked it. 

Not likely to happen to me...

See this article. I know it's in the Daily Mail (and I feel dirty for linking to it) but the other news reports didn't have the photos. 

Challenge 8 - A home for the birds

16-85@16mm, f8, 1/1,250s, ISO 400

Want one!

Ok, so I'm definitely not looking for something to buy, and even if I were, I would not have thought that this would have been on my list of potential acquisitions.

However, my mind has been playing games with me, and, you know, I am really quite taken with the idea of doing massive panoramic photographs with multi-gigabit resolution.

This thingy:
http://gigapansystems.com/gigapan-epic-pro.html

It's too expensive, too cumbersome, too fiddly, the files are too large, it's just completely impractical.

But I want one. I really do. Too be filed in the draw marked "Dreams of Tilt and Shift Lenses and other Curios".

Challenge 8 - Some Photos

Not really had much inspiration with this one. Here's a few:

1. A "home" made by Verity for her Playmobil people. Experimented with the flash behind to try to give it some interest with mixed results.

2. Looking down at the road home. Taken from the Malvern Hills facing Worcester.

3. Click your heels together and say "There's no place like home!"

4. Number 37. 

Challenge 8 - Tom's first

Seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time standing in stations recently, waiting to go home. So these seemed apt.

A usual a favourite and a close runner up.

Challenge 8 - Home

Thought I'd go with something suitably vague, after Kev's rather specific challenge last time.

So...Home. Whatever the word means to you really: it can be a pictures of the interior/exterior of your home, it can be pictures which suggest various meanings of the word, it can be trying to capture the feeling of home...whatever takes your fancy.

Five pic limit, as much or little PS'ing as you like.

New galleries feature at DPReview

Sure you've probably noticed, but DPR offering free hosting space to users.

Kevin's Best of 2009

Definitely this one. Wandering round midtown Manhatten on a September evening. The Rockefeller Centre looks like nothing during the day, but at night, it's stunning. I think I found an angle to show off the buildings to their best.

ISO 3200, f/4, 1/10s

It was a toss up between this and the blue glass building / reflections shot from Prague.

Best of 2009

Found this on dpreview this morning, their meta-best-of-2009, some superb shots here.

http://www.dpreview.com/challenges/Challenge.aspx?ID=2398

So.... what's your best/favourite shot taken during 2009? I'll have a think and come back with my entry.