Spent the Weekend in CT

Sort of a vacation, so I didn't shoot much. Anything serious, anyway. Took some snapshots.

This one is a bit cliche, but was done for someone, so I simply tried to do it well.
Since I've been seeing a lot of photos like this lately, I figured I'd throw mine in the ring.

Here's my Cat's Eye. Click for detail.

Sorry for the lack of Updates.

I've been spending a lot of time working on construction sites with my father.

I Sort of Made a Short Film

It's called "Hannah." I guess. It's about 1 minute long. I highly suggest right clicking on the following link, selecting save as, and saving it to your desktop. You will then want to put on a jovial mp3, preferably with a nice quick beat, and watch it. I didn't include sound because I couldn't decide on a song, and I didn't really do anything to this besides automate a few tasks in photoshop and import all the images I shot using burst mode when I first took the canon out of the box.

RIGHT CLICK HERE AND SAVE AS. (Flash version. I'm working on a better compressed avi or mov. I don't have any of the authoring software though, and don't feel like getting it. lol)

20D came today

Didn't really have much time to fool with it, I'm sort of low on energy as well. Basically took it out of the boxes before I even got home, tested everything to make sure it worked, and played with the burst fire settings a bit, and took a few snapshots (well, I consider them such, since I didn't have my lightmeter and spent no time setting up or anything). Here's Hannah.

That's the smallest I could get it, pretty much. I'm working on figuring out how to animate these without having amazingly huge file sizes. The starting images were shot on the lowest setting on the 20D, but are still huge files if taken on a total frame basis, versus individual frames. The quality of the animated gif is really nice though. I can see this thing being an LJ icon factory.

I'm pretty pleased with the image quality so far. The above picture was taken at 800iso, and taste/composition issues aside, lol, the image quality seems like it would make a 9x12 easy, 8x10 very nice, and possibly even larger. I'm sure when shooting on a low ISO in studio, it could be even better. Sure, it's nothing like working with the medium format digital backs I've been used to now, but it's certainly nice bang for your buck. Since this is really sort of a more fun camera, the only lens I got with it so far is the EFS17-85mm F/4-5.6 IS USM lens that came with the alternative BH kit. I'm eyeing the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, and I think I'd probably stop there for a while, considering this is my secondary system. Any major lens recommendations?

I'm going to spend the next couple weeks making sure I know this camera inside out, and working with it a bit for more studio type stuff. It will probably end up getting most of its use for weddings/event work, but I think it's probably more cost effective than Polaroids for studio work.

Photography News.

July 15th, 2005: My entry(s?) to Photographer's Forum's Best of Photography 2005 made it to the finalist group. Whichever one or ones they chose will be published in the anual book, Best of Photography, and will also go on to compete for further recognition. The winners are also published in Photographer's Forum magazine. This is the second time I've been published by Serbin Communications, I also was awarded a certificate of excelence for Bitshift, which was published in the Best of College Photography Annual 2005. Wish me luck!

July 15th-17th: I shot some film at Connecticon 2005. A free shoot was awarded to the winner in the Journyman Cosplay rank, for craftsmanship. They were tired and decided to go home with my card, so I grabbed a couple people I found interesting. You will be seeing those photos as soon as possible.

July 18th, 2005: I am currently

Student of the Week

over at the Student Photographic Society! SPS is the student devision of Professional Photographers of America. My work will be featured on the site publically for this week, and student members can see the mini-portfolio they put up in their archives, possibly forever. I got 10 free rolls of 35mm Across Fujifilm. I guess I'll have to use my 35mm camera more, wasting film is a shame. :D

Experiments In Digital Noise

So, while looking at a lot of photographs online, we often see a lot of digital noise (called grain in film, though the look of it is different) and it seems most people take offense at it. We've come to believe that the less noise, the more professional the image.

Generally, a lot of times, this is true. When using professional equipment, metering the light correctly, exposing correctly, and shooting under controlled conditions, we often see a lot less noise. We usually work to minimize it.

However, I've realized that in critiquing other people's work, I have sort of fallen into a stuck up opinion of noise and overexposed images (where the highlights are blown out). To try and overcome that, I've challenged myself to maximize the use of digital noise, and try to see what I could come up with. I decided to try this out during a shoot for images for a friend's small poetry book.

I borrowed a 10D (I'm familiar with its noise patterns, though I don't own one myself, as I've used it to shoot stage before), and set it for 1600 ISO. The higher the ISO, the more noise or grain generally evident in a shot. I then used very simple low light hot lights (just some regular light bulbs in reflectors on stands), and collapsible reflectors for lighting, as using strobes usually gives you a softer light (well, not always, but don't worry about that now, lol). I also wanted the color shift from the lighting, so I did not set the color balance on the camera. Most of the effect was achieved in camera, though I did a little in processing the RAW files.

For the one you see above, I under exposed the image and brought it up two stops in RAW processing, which generally makes the grain more evident. This one below I overexposed in the highlights and underexposed in the shadow. It was pushed a tiny bit in processing, and slightly nudged in terms of contrast and saturation, but most of the color is simply achieved by leaving the color balance way off and using a gold reflector. Both of the shots were lit with just one light, and a very inexpensive one at that. Most of you can probably do something like this, and many of you probably have without knowing exactly why. Hopefully it's some food for thought. :)