April 29, 2010

Played with HDR a little bit -I had the flowers sitting by an open window with an aluminum top as a reflector.  In the back, I had a large piece of black fabric to null the background a bit.  I think I need to try the HDR on a proper landscape . . .

April 28, 2010

My wife let me use her as my subject today.  I need to learn portraits, and this one has been one of my best so far!  I was using my 50mm wide open, which is still my favorite lens.  I just love using the manual focus - it feels like I'm really taking the picture.  I won't knock auto-focus - it's a lot faster, but it's not as much fun!

April 27, 2010

It was a cool day, but the youngest was enjoying the swings anyway. I wasn't too happy about the focus-  but the shot wasn't planned out, so I can't complain too much!

I've also noticed that it's the time of year to start breaking out the Hoya r72 filter.  I had a problem with some odd banding across my IR pictures, but read somewhere to cover the  eye viewer to cut down on excess light bouncing around inside the camera.  Turns out that it works!

April 26, 2010

Not much to say about this one - the skeletons are made of wood, and the doll heads will make some nice zombies when I set them up.

April 25, 2010

For a lazy, (mostly) rainy Sunday, I put together wood puzzles with the kids.  We did a giraffe, a skeleton (I have three more to do), and this biplane.  They are a lot of fun, and they go for 2-3 dollars each at Michael's crafts.

I've been playing with aperture mode,but not in this shot. I should have gone out to maybe f/2.8, but I love that narrow DoF in f/1.7 so much!