Tv and Av are Shutter Priority and Aperture priority respectively.

I think it kind of depends on what your goal is with your shooting. We were at an outdoor track meet last weekend, and knowing that I wanted to get some shots of my sister-in-law running, I set the camera to shutter priority, set the shutter speed to 1/320 to prevent motion blur and let the camera handle the aperture setting.

If I'm shooting portraits with a tripod, I might go for aperture priority, set the aperture wide for a shallow depth of field and let the camera sort out the shutter speed.

Little spooky in a Village of the Damned kind of way.

Can anyone recommend a good beginner book on flash photography?

Getting my dad a speedlight and diffuser for his D50 and want him to have some idea on how to use it properly

While I haven't picked one of these up (since I don't yet have a DSLR or external lights), I'd put a good deal of trust into the opinions from the Strobist website. You may also want to check out the "Lighting 101" series.

Light Science & Magic (although not directly about speed lights)

Wow. For anyone who has Picassa installed, they seem to have a new feature that picks out faces in all your pics. (People section on the left nav tree)



Pretty amazing to see all your friends, family, statues, celebrities, poker players, random guidos, statues, paintings, etc. in one place like that.

That looks like a good feature.

re: sea of japan

At first i was like "meh" but the more i look at it the colors are super cool together

Goin to Vegas for my first time in June, if anyone knows some good spots that I can set up a tripod at night with a good view preferably high up please let me know. I think most hotels don't have a balcony but maybe there are some public places that would be good for this.

stratosphere or paris IIRC

I'm downloading the photomatix demo version right now. So, from what I understand, I change the AEB to -2,0,2, take three shots and put it in this program eh?

Let's see what I can do!

terrible...

it's so fuzzy. anyone got any tips on shooting HDR?

If you're bracketing shots for HDR, shoot in aperture priority mode or manual and adjust the shutter speed only. If you set it in program or shutter mode, the camera changes the aperture to alter the exposure and your depth of field changes, which could make things look fuzzy.

Did you use a tripod?

I'm using manual ~1/8 F7.1.

Tried both.



btw, what's with this orange shade? I just learned about white balance and I had changed my AWB --> Tungsten and the single pictures came out fine. It's just when I mush them all together this oj tone emerges.

attempt #900:

Its going to be very difficult with moving objects especially that close up. Some people do hdrs from a single image(though i havent had success trying) which would help but with that shot in that low of light your shutterspeed may not even be fast enough to be sharp regardless. Also there's not as much of a point to do it when you aren't dealing with a wide dynamic range. The last one looks really good.

I spent some time today trying to get a outdoor sunlight HDR. Didn't work out. Meh.

pick a better subject. Something still. (trees, plants etc are not still except on a competely windless day)

Light it well

try to take a base shot that you could have handheld. f/8, 1/60th or something

shoot at manual, lowest ISO possible

if necessary manually bracket your exposures. f/8 1/15, 1/60, 1/240. keep constant aperture

Ughhhhhhhh the new 200-400 vr2 is supposed to be out soon. I just got the vr1 at the end of last year in preparation for my summer trip, figuring there hadn't been an update since 2003, why would there be one in the next 6 months?! I also intend on selling the lens upon return, assuming this would result in a small loss less than the cost of renting, and would also allow me to practice with it for a while before leaving.

From what I'm reading vr2 is quite a bit better than vr1, so do you think it might be worthwhile to sell the vr1 soon and then get the vr2 when it comes out? Should probably at least wait for reviews, and this could be annoying because that lens size won't be super liquid on eBay, I don't think (though there is pretty much 0 supply on there, so maybe).

2 other issues:

1) I'm not planning on using a flash for this trip because (a) I wouldn't know what I'm doing, (b) vast majority of shots will be either no flash allowed or during daytime, (c) they're bulky, (d) seems much more valuable to put a GPS in that area. Sound OK?

2) Thoughts on 1.4TCs? I'm mostly curious about this for safari. According to bythom.com, 500mm is preferred, and even more would be good, but he says that the 200-400 "leaves me a little short of where I'd truly like to be (500mm) at the long end, but for more reach I just crop rather than risk dust entry by putting on a TC." So should I go with this and avoid the inconvenience/dust factor of the TC?

I'm really wanting to nail down a stunning time lapse before we head home, but I understand its pretty hard on the camera? like I've probably done 3 of these now, say ~500 frames each, and I'm thinking maybe I should learn to get a bit better at this before i waste any more shutter life? thoughts?

Was having trouble framing a good shot with my 10-20mm sigma and thought I was running out of time so i just set it to run and ended up with pretty poor results IMO

Phuket time lapse

my gf is by far more familiar with capturing better shots with this 7D but we can't seem to try to teach eachother things without bickering & ending up in ****ty moods.

I think maybe a better choice would be to focus framing the island with quite a bit of zoom on my 28-135 because nothing interesting really happens with the land(light movement at the end is somewhat interesting but not worth boringness early on imo) and the mountain up the side just looks awful.

I could maybe find a different spot to shoot from but it'd be cool if i could make it work from this point because its from the balcony of our apartment(sentimental or w/e)

I believe I should be using a relatively small stop because i want a deep depth of field? so i should be shooting in aperture priority, yay?

youtube really hacked the vid but i wanted something that wasn't going to take a long time to upload. for reference i will include a few random frames from the sequence. time lapse caps

oh, and shot at 15s intervals and i composed it at 10 frames per second. i did this stuff hastily and can definitely do some more research on getting better results by adjusting both of these timings, but if anyone has quick advice here too it would be cool... u guys are awesome

Some more self portrait debauchery.

This time I ate **** really hard, too. With camera in hand - The camera was fine, and it was on continuous mode so I captured the whole thing. I'll post those as I edit them - but it's cool. Trust me.

Canon 15mm fish + 5d + Pocketwizards...one in my hand (or pocket with camera on continuous) and one on the camera.






This is what it feels like to hit a rather large jump:






And here is me skipping down the back of that jump. I called last run like a fool. Rode all day without falling once and then this. It looks worse than it is, the camera never even hit the ground

And damn, I keep my composure well for the camera.

your shots are so sick. the second shot close up on the rail is my fav.

thorleif: you have to compose an interesting shot for the timelapse to really be good. sky w/ clouds is almost required. I'd shoot with a decent aperture but nothing tiny--you still need to have a reasonably fast shutter speed. If you have VR on your lens, turn it off.

Mike, you're awesome...