Mav's Mentoring & Blog Thread

[Mav]

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[Mav]

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[Mav]

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[TheRival]

I love that last picture and the sense of the future you can see with her shadow being larger then life!

super excited to learn from you Mav!

P.S. Your daughter is beautiful. a bundle of personality it looks like!

 

[Steph]

I highlighted in red where I was using a filter, and I highlighted it because it was essential to use if you wanted a good off-the-camera shot that you wouldn't have to play with later. Specifically I used a Tiffen Color Grad ND 0.6. One of these guys...

Don't you find the use of a screw-on ND grad filter such as the one above a bit frustrating? With one of those you always have to put the horizon in the middle of the frame (as demonstrated by your examples). I find rectangular ND grads + filter holder much more useful.

 

[Emerana]

great photos mav. I went on vacation and didnt have quite the same luck. I left my tripod at home. I did have fun shooting in a mission (we were in san antionio). I didnt get anything amazing, kicking myself the whole time for not bringing my tripod. I did think hard about minimal processing when I took the shot and really kept the number of shots down. Thinkin before clickin...my new motto It helped that my husband was playing with the kids so I could go all zen on it.

 

[Mav]

I love that last picture and the sense of the future you can see with her shadow being larger then life!

super excited to learn from you Mav!

P.S. Your daughter is beautiful. a bundle of personality it looks like!

Thanks! She's actually been a big bundle of larger than life CRABBINESS in the past week, because she's getting four molars in all at once!

 

[Mav]

Don't you find the use of a screw-on ND grad filter such as the one above a bit frustrating? With one of those you always have to put the horizon in the middle of the frame (as demonstrated by your examples). I find rectangular ND grads + filter holder much more useful.

You don't have to park the horizon right dead center in the frame. The gradient is smooth enough that you can get away with putting stuff in the top or bottom third or fourth of the frame and it still looks ok. If you take it beyond that, it's not really a big part of the photo anyways and might not matter too much. I had actually framed a lot of these much lower looking mainly at the waves and beach since there wasn't too much going on in the upper atmosphere to look at. The two I posted just happened to have stuff going on everywhere though, which is why I like them.

Here's the very next shot after the one with the bird in it. The horizon is parked there at about the top fourth of the frame and it still looks perfectly natural. This is also straight off the camera shot in JPEG with no editing done . I'll definitely want to fix the barrel distortion on this in DxO later though.

The Cokin stuff is pretty cool, but you've got to really be big on filters to make it worthwhile including a lot of the special effects stuff. I came pretty close to buying a Cokin filter system once, but thought it'd be too clumsy and annoying so I started off with circular screw-in filters and if I wasn't pleased I'd just get the Cokin stuff anyways. I've never not been pleased with the screw-ins, and they offer me all the flexibility I've needed, so I've never bothered with Cokin stuff.

 

[Mav]

great photos mav. I went on vacation and didnt have quite the same luck. I left my tripod at home. I did have fun shooting in a mission (we were in san antionio). I didnt get anything amazing, kicking myself the whole time for not bringing my tripod. I did think hard about minimal processing when I took the shot and really kept the number of shots down. Thinkin before clickin...my new motto It helped that my husband was playing with the kids so I could go all zen on it.


http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c203/thepagliaros/20080701-IMG_1915-1.jpg


http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c203/thepagliaros/20080701-IMG_1887.jpg

Nice! I like both although the composition seems a bit odd on the second one. I know what it is, but it's tough to get a sense of depth perception and looks a bit flat. Were those both with your 50mm?

My shooting hours were quite family friendly, at least for scenic stuff. From 430 to 630am when nobody was awake yet, and then a whopping 10 minutes from 850 to 900pm. We did all of the play shots earlier in the morning before it go too crowded, hot, and while the light was favorable for photography. Didn't even need my reflector set which made things easier.

 

[Emerana]

I used a rented lens, the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. I really missed the IS for low-light because my XTi gets noise above 400ISO...too much noise.

430am? Wow I think I picked up the wrong hobby!!! Someday on vacation I am going to get up early and hit the streets alone. That is going to be my goal when we go to Charleston next month.

 

[BoblyBill]

Here's a shot from the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon at approximately 1:00am Sunday morning what do you think?

1. 40D, 17-40mm L @ 17, f/4, 80", ISO 800

 

[Mav]

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[Mav]

I used a rented lens, the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM. I really missed the IS for low-light because my XTi gets noise above 400ISO...too much noise.

Too much noise above 400?

Post a full image and then a 100% crop of something at 800 or whatever you're not pleased with. I'd honestly like to see for myself. Canons have always had very good noise reduction processing that maintains detail well but still cleans up noise nicely, or am I wrong? I have no problems shooting my D40 at 1600 if I need to, but do like to keep my D80 at 800 or below. Too many pixels on the 10MP D80 results in lower sensitivity. I doubt my D80 is even a stop better than the XTi though, so maybe I'm more tolerant of noise, or there's something funny about the noise characteristics on the XTi??

Have you tried the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS? That has IS and would make a great "do everything" type of lens. My Nikon 17-55 doesn't have it so I just have to hold it extra steady or try to brace against something. A friend of mine who shoots Canon has the 17-55 IS and it's a great lens.

430am? Wow I think I picked up the wrong hobby!!! Someday on vacation I am going to get up early and hit the streets alone. That is going to be my goal when we go to Charleston next month.

Don't knock it till you've tried it! Definitely get outta bed early and do it.

No kids whining and complaining, no spouse to "bother" you, no noise from traffic and other people. Just you, some beautiful scenery, your camera, and nobody else. Even though I didn't include it in the original post, I actually really like the photo up in post #8 now, simply because there's less going on and it's a very peaceful and tranquil photo to me. Because of the lower composition there's less clouds to distract. There's no bird in this one either. I look at that photo now in crappy online size and am instantly transported back to the beach, feel the warmth of that sunrise, see and hear the waves crashing, and that nice inviting piece of beach in the whole lower left portion of the photo. It draws me in in a way that the more complicated and busy composition doesn't. Shortly after this the light got too harsh and ugly, and then more and more people were stumbling out of their hotel rooms and onto the beach which ruined the atmosphere for me.


This is one of my favorite "get up early" photos, taken in Chicago. You don't even need to see the EXIF data to know what time it was taken at either.

Very nice golden light coming up over Lake Michigan, enough light hitting the upper atmosphere to turn it a nice blue, and Old Glory blowing slowly in the wind. That was iso800 on my D40 at 1/15s, 30mm, and f/2.8. I did some minor work on this in post, but didn't really have to. Just minor distortion correction to get the building straighter looking and that's it. Didn't have to touch the photo if I didn't want to.

 

[Mav]

Here's a shot from the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon at approximately 1:00am Sunday morning what do you think?

1. 40D, 17-40mm L @ 17, f/4, 80", ISO 800

[size=+1]OUTSTANDING![/size] :thumbup: :thumbup:

I love the composition. Seeing the foliage and the small bit of light on them helps with perspective and adds some color, and then it's nothing but a clear star filled sky. Is that some lower atmosphere clouds in there, or is that really Milky Way type galaxial features? Extra credit for being up at 1am. I have a clear shot off of my deak to see stuff like this, but way too much lighting in the crawl-n-sprawl DC area drowning out stars like that. So I hardly ever see anything like this in my area, which is why I like it even more.

The only thing I can really critique on is gear related. I think the photo itself, and your composition and the timing were perfectly executed, but even in the small web version you can start to see some noise which might be distracting in print size. Did you do any post work on that? Might be able to tweak it a bit. If you like doing this sort of stuff, this is what the exotic ultra-wide and ultra-fast primes are for. Wow, 80 seconds at f/4 and iso800? That's -5.3 LV! I don't think it ever gets that dark in my area, even at 1am. Too much urban lighting.

 

[TheRival]

Thanks! She's actually been a big bundle of larger than life CRABBINESS in the past week, because she's getting four molars in all at once!

ummmmmmm OUCH... keep your hands away from her mouth!!!!