First day with a new toy

About two weeks ago I got my new toy. My first real uberlens. :)

The venerable Nikon 18-200 3.5-5.6 AF-S D VR

Needless to say I'm very happy with it. It's just about the most lens you can get for under a grand. And it replaces the need to carry two lenses. Thats not to say it doesn't have its downsides. For one thing the lens grows by about 200% when you zoom in. Imagine attaching a roll or paper-towels to the front of your camera-body. Yeah.

The other down-side is that it more-than doubles the weight of my camera, and all that weight is in the front. This means that a day of shooting comes with significantly more wrist-strain. Truth-be-told, I'm discovering new ways to hold my camera to account for this factor. I now almost always wear my camera's strap and use it take some of the pressure off my right hand.

Well how about some photos. Here are two photos taken on my first day shooting with the 18-200.



The truth about this image is that the focus isn't really as hard as it looks in the "medium" view. When blown up there is some blur in the texture of my shoes. Still, I like the foreground blur afforded to me by the long lens length.


Ok, it's pretty obvious what I'm doing here. I'm playing with the distance. Fine, you caught me. Its a long lens, and I think its cool. :-)

It's time to get caught up.

Wow,

Sorry about that I just realized how long it's been since my last update. Let me try to fix things:

I took this photo with my 50mm 1.8 lens, and it shows. Lately I've been coping with the low-light noise issues associated with the D50, this shot doesn't have the problem since I was able to shoot it at 2.2. In a little while I'll post one of my pictures from Rollerderby. It's a start contrast.



Something about this shot has a very "commercial" feel to it. If it wasn't a picture of my Dad talking to Kate I'd say it was generic stock photography.

A Day at Mystic

An unexpected day-off turns into alligator madness!


Alright, I admit it! This picture has no photographic merits what-so-ever - err.. except that its a decent snapshot. No, the real reason I'm posting it is this:

Q: How often do you get to pet/photograph an alligator.

A: If you live in the North-East, not often.

More Beach

As the weather gets a bit better, expect to see more beach photos... at least until they start requiring a sticker. Then they'll probably fall off.



Kate, Dylan, Max and I went on a rather impromptu trip to the beach with Sasha. I was shooting with my new lens - I got some pretty cool shots, while shooting wide-open. I had to strap on the CPL just to reduce the incoming light. Here's Sasha being a dog. To be honest, I don't think this is my favorite picture from the day, but I has a neat style (that it acquired in post).

See the other pictures.

At the beach

Recovering from our karaoke madness required sleeping for the better part of Sunday. If for no other reason then having not slept the night before. Never the less around 5pm we found ourselves at Sherwood Island State Park.


This was shot with my new lens - I'm still (yes, still) learning on it. I like to be able to shoot wide-open, but there's just too much light when I'm shooting at the beach. I think I may have to slap on either the CPL or the ND2 and see if that alleviates the problem in an acceptable way.

Ermm.. Saturday Night

I have no good pictures. We sang a lot. Maru. Karaoke. NYC.

Scary Gary Revisited

I've been playing around a bit more in a studio-like environment. Now, don't be fooled - my idea of a studio is my workbench, a white card, some translucent plastic and a 500W fresnel. This particular shot was back-lit using Rosco Kelly Green and the translucent plastic.



Still scary.

AHHH!!

Ok. Well. Hmm.



Yeah, I'm not sure I have any words about this picture. I don't recommend looking at it after 8pm. Or ever, really. Gary has a tendency to sneak into peoples dreams.

In other, slightly less interesting news, I shot this in my make-shift studio basement area. I'm going to be playing with my setup in the next couple of days, but this was a good first try. I shot it under a single 6" fresnel against a piece of white card. High tech, huh.

More new lensy-ness

Well, I'm still experimenting with my new lens. So far the results have been mixed. It's a big change shooting from mostly-wide to mostly-narrow. I find myself having to back up a lot. On the other hand I often find I now have too much light, which is a great problem to have!



Close scrutiny of this shot of Gizmo reveals the other problem I'm coping with: Getting the focus just right. At 1.8 the depth of field is so shallow that its hard for me to distinguish what's in and out of focus in the viewfinder. In this shot you can see that feathers and beak are the sharpest, while Gizmo's eye is a bit soft. The lens also has some subtle vignetting which I'm having to correct for.

My New Toy

Well, I've just acquired a new toy. A Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens! I bought this lens to fill a need that my D50's kit lens couldn't fill. The kit lens is a 18-55mm but it's aperture at 55mm is a pretty-small 5.6. This makes shooting in low-light a bit of a pain. The new lens is, by comparison, a gaping f/1.8 at 50mm and its built like a truck.



So, will this be my new lens of choice? Well, only time will tell - at the moment it's taking a bit of an adjustment. I'd say with the kit lens I take a lot of wide-angle shots, with this lens that's not even an option. If I want to get more in the picture I have to back up, which certainly isn't the same thing. Never the less, the new lens is very sharp and pretty fun to use so far, so I'm going to withhold judgment till I've got a bit more time on it. One thing's for sure: I love shooting wide-open. The shallow depth of field is chocked full of goodness.

Lost in time

This is a game I haven't played in a long time. Oh my god. It's awesome.

But, wait, don't take my word for it:



And see what happens when you try to pour acid on a horse:



Nice.

More Weather

Here's another shot from my recent wet night out.



This shot is full of lots of shiny, greasy, cold awesomeness. A little bad weather goes a long way sometimes. Bricks, headlights, traffic-lights other stuff.

So Sue Me

I don't think I should even bother trying to say that this shot "just happened". The truth is, I had a bit of technical trouble with it. I knew there was an image to be found when I walked under this phone pole, but the time of day wasn't "just right" and the color of the pole was a bit lack-luster. So I went for the slightly more artificial feel you see here.


I like this shot. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Dave, of course you like the shot. That's why you posted it!"

Fine, you know what! I'll stop saying that.

You people can be so pushy.

PS: Sam informs me that in my previous post I used "telephone poll" instead of "telephone pole". She's correct. But I feel that at this point I should make something abundantly clear: Poland has nothing to do with this. I'm quite certain that all of my poles are made of North-American timber.

She's right

Sam's absolutely right. I am way behind in my posts here. I'm not going to bother making excuses. I'm a bad person.

This past weekend was the first time I've had a good day shooting in months! I took this shot shortly after Friday's ridiculous rains had subsided. I'm going to post another shot from that outing, but I wanted to start with this one.


The bend in the Post road by Centro gives me the opportunity to take pictures of traffic heading right for me. Not sure everyone sees it that way - but thats how I see it. There are a number of reasons I chose this shot: First of all, it has some motion to it... hmm... on second thought that really isn't a good reason. Secondly, I love the highlighted bit of sidewalk on the lower left of the shot, the texture very real. And lastly, I like the way the shot is framed by the trees and telephone poles.

Hmm.. that whole analytical paragraph seems a bit self-aggrandizing. Oh well. Go me!

Happy New Years!

What can I say that this photo doesn't say. We went to Medieval Times for New Years. It was awesome. Our Knight won. Sweet!



So, why did I use this photo? Well, aesthetically, it was the only shot out of over 200 that I actually liked. Good smile, over-the-shoulder lighting, great saturated yellow. Not bad for a "holiday snapshot"

More Shiftyness

Sunday morning, after a rough night, Kate, Dylan and I drove up to Hamden to see the house they're trying to buy - a nice place, but not without its quirks. Afterwards we went to the Milford mall, and then to downtown Westport. I had my camera in tow - F5.6 Lensbaby attached. I actually managed to get a few good pictures!


This is a photo of Kate walking towards Starbucks in downtown Westport. I'm very happy with the light focus on her hair, as well as the texture in her shirt. I think the trick to using this lens is going to be: Have lots of natural light. Lensbaby works well with the on-camera flash as well, but it's a less "genuine" look.

Lensbaby Goes to War

On my recent trip to the city, and to B&H, I picked up some new toys. First-off, I replaced my POS tripod, with a low-end Manfrotto. I also picked up a Lensbaby Original; a neat little tilt-shift lens for an SLR camera. Not quite sure if it's going to be a permanent addition to my camera bag - I suspect that it's not. Hopefully it gets easier to use with practice.



In the toy section of CVS I found a wonderful thing: Plastic Army Men. Not only were there fresh bags of Army men (A toy which I'd figured had gone extinct), but there were two different colors. That means I could have a little war! And if that wasn't enough, it seems that these aren't the cheep ones either. There are no less than 12 different poses for the little warriors.

• Bazooka Guy


• Recon/Radio Guy


• Wading-through-chest-high-water Guy


• Crawling-under-barbed-wire Guy


• 30cal-machine-gun Guy


• C.O. Guy


• Kneeling-with-rifle Guy


• Running-with-rifle Guy


• Prone-with-rifle Guy


• Bayonet Guy


• Minesweeper Guy


• Mortar Guy

I'm thinking that with all of my new subjects I might do a war documentary. Something about an embedded plastic journalist inside a platoon of plastic soldiers seems like it could be funny. I just have to keep from running afoul of the plastic censors at the plastic pentagon.

Don't Smoke

Sunday morning, after the Wii fiasco, I headed into Manhattan to take some pictures. Because I had family plans in the afternoon I parked my car uptown (where we'd be ending the night). I then walked from 85th on the east side down to the 30s and over to B&H to buy a new tripod.

My old tripod was a Sunpak and made with an almost supernatural-cheapness. On Thursday night when I went out to take pictures it was a bigger hindrance than a help. So now it's been replaced with the bottom of a good line. A low end light-weight Manfroto with an integrated ball head. The ball joint seems a bit cheap, but it's cast aluminum and it has a long warantee so I'm giving it a shot. It's only 2.5 lbs, but its significantly bigger than my old tripod. I think it'll need to travel in it's own case.

Also took some time to talk to one of the sales people at B&H about the elusive Nikon 18-200mm lens. This lens is by all accounts amazing: Not only is it incredibly versatile (IE: you only need one lens) is ridiculously affordable. Well, the salesman , using similar superlatives, confirmed that it's so rare he didn't expect to see one for a while. He said he expected to see some next year. I'm excited to see if he's right. While we were talking I happened to catch a glimpse of an inexpensive piece of photographic equipment that I've wanted to buy for a while: The Lensbaby.

The Lensbaby is a soft-focus lens which allows you to manually move the focus-point of the lens around by compressing a bellows. Much the same way you would with a large-format box camera. So far this lens has been trying my patience. As soon as I get a shot that I like, I'll post it.



My long walk down the East Side led me to the 59th street bridge. I took some time photographing the cars and the bridge and the cable-cars. But eventually I got fixated on the smokestack immediately South of the bridge. I took quite a few shots of it. This is one of them. Morning light, Polarizer, Rust. Sweet.

Wii-diculously Hard To Get [NAP]

I'm sorry for the irrelevant nature of this post, but I need to vent about how ridiculous it is trying to find a Wii.

My first attempt was on Black Friday: Earlier that week, an employee of the Best Buy in Stratford, CT told me that her store was sitting on a decent sized pile of Wiis. She told me that the store was holding them and releasing them on Black Friday. So at 3:30 on friday morning I got up. Liz, Sam and I got to the store at 4am to wait around for the 5am opening. After an hour we raced through the doors only to be told - not that they'd run out - but that they'd never had any. Words could not describe the depths of my hatred towards this store.

My second attempt was on Sunday - the universally designated Wii re-launch day. This time I didn't even make it to the store before Jeannie called to say, Toys r' Us in Westport only had 14 Wiis, and she was about #44 in line. No rain checks, nothing. Just a "go home, you're out of luck".

There is nothing I can say or do. I hate this. And it has turned me off shopping for x-mas presents altogether. Don't get me wrong. I understand that there's supply and demand and they aren't always equal, I just wish resellers would offer alternatives to the eye-gouging race to the checkout that they hope to inspire.

I'd like to think that negative in-store experiences like these cause a decline in holiday sales. Alas, I don't think thats the case.

Wii-diculous

Okay, Lots of new pictures: Here's a tivo-eyed view of the some wii all-stars. I took about 100 candids of Kate, Dylan, Max and Liz playing the new Rayman game for the Nintendo Wii. Most were pretty dark, but I got a few which look pretty outstanding when displayed large and on a really bright screen.



This image is a perfect example of a problem that's been affecting me more and more lately. Bad monitor gamma calibration. In an attempt to fix this I picked up a Huey. Huey is a monitor calibration tool designed to make sure your on-screen colors are accurate. For those of you unfamiliar with digital image manipulation, this is a problem with some subtle complexities. If my monitor is inaccurately reproducing colors, then the image I'm looking at will look and print differently in another environment. Hopefully Huey makes my images a bit more universally viewable. Too bad half the world uses dim or crappy CRTs. Alas.