Assignment 4: Say Hello to your camera

Assignment 4: Say Hello to your camera

I believe that one of the first things to do in photography is to get to know your camera really well.. Know what it can do and more importantly, know what it can NOT do..

So, the lan for the next 2 weeks is to use a feature of your camera gear that you have never (or not really) used before.. what you shoot or the subject is not really important... and when i say camera, i mean camera, lenses and the accessories..

The idea is to getting to know your camera better.. time to dust off the manual may be or go online and find a bit about your camera.. just try using a main feature of your camera that you haven't used at all or may be, used it once and never really worked on it later..


Rules
No restrictions on what you can shoot.. If anyone feels that they have tried everything their camera/lenses/filters/tripods/flashes can do, then let me know and we will figure something for you..

and No, Iphone camera won't count for this assignment, since you cant really do more than pressing the shutter there :-)

If u are not sure about the assignment, please ask questions..

Greenery

Windows at Mac World!

I had almost given up on trying to get a shot for this assignment and here it was right in front of me today.

We were enjoying beers during the team outing today afternoon at Los Gatos Brewing Company and I noticed these incredible stained glass windows behind us! So there was my pattern.

Shot with my iPhone.

Coined Pattern

Very tough topic indeed.. after trying out many subjects , decided to make up a pattern myself..

Pardon the dust

ISO: 100
Exposure: 1/4 sec
Aperture: 5.0
Focal Length: 28mm

The Perfect Lie

Anyone know how many dimples are on the average ball? Well...too many to count....but, the legal ones have between 250 - 450. I think I got about 100 of them here. As you can see, this is clearly an unused ball. Mine usually have scuffs or tree bark smeared all over. I think natural light would have been optimal here....as you can see some glare.

ISO 400
Aperture: F13
Focal Length: 200 mm
Shutter: 1/2
Metering: Spot

No cat on a hot red roof

I searched far & wide for a pattern but gave up because I was over analyzing it. Finally when I was out throwing the trash the neighbours roof was staring at me..& voila there was my pattern. I did feel like a voyuer standing on a stool in my backyard trying to get closer look(at the roof..you sick people). So, I asked for their permission. Definitely better than getting the cops at our door.

Leena says the moral of this story is to help her take the trash out more often.

Road Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference


Robert Frost

Rock patterns at Grand Canyon National Park

Here is my first post on this blog. As it turned out, we visited the grand canyon right after this assignment was posted. So, I picked the rock patterns from grand canyon. This picture was taken a little after noon on March 16th, from Lipan Point on desert view drive (south rim). The Hance rapids part of the Colorado river is visible in the center of the image.


Here is some other information about the picture -
Camera - Nikon D80
Lens - Nikkor 18-200mm
Focal length for shot - 18mm
Aperture - f/3.5
Shutter speed - 1/1600
ISO - 100
I did some minor bits of editing in photoshop to improve contrast (don't typically use photoshop).
I don't have any filters, so I was a bit handicapped due to the glare and the haze. The visibility was pretty good (could definitely see things ~60 miles away)

i think its an arrow pointing somewhere interesting.. do you ??

i walked into my other bedroom of the apartment (something i dont do all that often).. and i saw this.. it also helped i got home early from work that day... and i think this looks pretty much like an arrow.. i didn't change nothing, no tricks etc..





No flash used and its all natural ligght (and the lack of it in parts of the image).. i did jack up the ISO a bit.. Its a pretty sharp shot, u can see the 100% crop of the image..

Shadowed Pattern

Here's an interesting pattern that Anjali noticed from our lamp. I edited it slightly in picasa to add a bit of light and enhance the shadow. Was hoping to make more shadows come out but couldn't make it happen. Not quite sure how to do that.

Stands like a statue, stings like a bee

Ok, I know that this is a bit late for this assignment, but 2 days after it closed, and after chasing blur for 2 weeks, the blur came to me. Hey, you just can't tell when inspiration will hit! The pictures are posted on my picasa account at: http://picasaweb.google.com/amit.rele/200903015ChhabSSFTrip#

Anyone objecting to my tardiness will get summarily punished on Wii Boxing! :)

Here's a sample. :)

Assignment 3: Patterns

Topic: Patterns

Patterns around you. Natural or man-made.

Assignment posted by Ranjeet.

Rules

• You cannot create your own patterns
  
• Example: Facade of a building. Petals of a flower.
• If u are not sure about the assignment, ask questions
  

Tried capturing two cars overtaking each other within the still frame of two trees. Got the two cars very close to each other. Still trying to get a hang of the right shutter speed to choose. In a series of 10 shots in the same location this was the only salvagable one. How do you choose the right shutter speed?

Amar

It's a circus....

I was fortunate enough to get some time with the Founder of the UCLA juggling club. Appu wowed L'il Akhil with his hand-eye coordination. This pic shows three balls in flight...all while the juggling master looks straight ahead. Sorry...no data on the image. But, it was with my 18-200 mm.

Light play

Naveen wrote this with the iPhone :)

We actually wanted to try funny faces at different spots. But the light exposure did not turn out to be uniform. Then we tried this .. it was challenging to get all the letters right. Basically you are writing in the air !

And I say 'we' everywhere here as this was a collaborative effort. I learn a few new tricks and it was a fun 1/2 hr, well spent indeed.


Exposure: bulb
Aperture: 4.0
ISO: 400

Urban Rush

I've always been fascinated by lights on the freeway, esp coming down from I880s down Sunol or be in watching the traffic report early in the morning on TV. I thought I'll give this a try.

Few challenges.
1. I crisscrossed at least half a dozen east-west roads between 85 and 280 freeways for a decent overpass to do it, but all of them had grills over 7ft. The metal mesh was a pain to navigate your lens through(now central expwy is coming to mind, doh!)
2. picked a late evening. didn't have enough cars to fill up the expressway to get consistent color in the composition.

I took this shot atleast a dozen times, but couldnt tell where the green horizontal lines at the bottom came from. Too naive with photoshop to figure out layering and stuff.

having been a digital-vari program user all of my SLR life, this was my first time using the "M" mode and mucking with aperture/focal length and such.

Specs:

ISO 200
shutter speed: 25s
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 55mm
Matrix Metering(don't know what this means!)

Question: Would it have helped, if I chosen the twilight time to shoot this - with a tad more natural sunlight? Would it have softened the dark contrasts of the headlights/tail lamps?


Please fire way your comments.

moon fruit

this is what happens when you have time, you get back from work before 9pm, you see almost full moon and you think of a fruit :)



there are a million things wrong with this picture.. i tried quite a few times to fix a lot of them problems.. and i couldn't.. if you have ideas on how to make it (it being an object some crazy number of miles away) sharper.. do let me know..

I didn't pan or blur the traditional way.. i just played with the zoom..and absolutely no photo shop or post processing tricks.. if you need more details, ask me.. I probably would have gotten better results if i tried harder and with few more iterations.. but i guess this will just have to do for now..

Color Blur

Everything's so blurry
and everyone's so fake
and everybody's empty
and everything is so messed up
pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

When I first saw the assignment this week I thought of the song "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd, and that's the chorus.

Anyway..for my assignment I decided to play with one of Akhil's toys. It's something I still play with in doctor's and dentist's office, so I tried to capture the motion of the beads during one pass through.

In retrospect I would've liked to pick a more plain backdrop - I think the apartments in the back are distracting

JPG: exposure 1/60 sec, f/13, ISO 400, focal length 24.0mm, Shutter-priority mode

Big Basin cascade

For my entry this week, I went to Big Basin State Park. Here's a motion-blurred photo from Golden Cascade.

EXIF is included in the JPG: exposure 1/4 sec, f/8, ISO 200, focal length 22mm.

Whizzing by

I tried a few shots & infact will still continue till the Friday deadline. For now, this is the best I have. Got this one on Stevens Canyon road. Went there in the afternoon, so really didn't see as many bikers as I had expected.

I would have wanted the lower half of the biker to be a little more clear, but then again..its all about blur. The more blur the better..I say :) Also, the biker could have been on the left of the picture showing the road ahead.

Shutter: 1/40
Aperture: 18
ISO : 100
Evaluative Metering
AF Servo Setting

I have tried some where the moving object is blur & everything around is in focus. Here are some shots

http://picasaweb.google.com/ranjeetrm/Blur?f#

A blur of fishes

Mom & daughter enjoy the beauty of life under water.

Given that the Monterey Bay Aquarium doesn't allow tripods inside, this was shot hand-held, hence the not so crisp picture. Since it was pretty dark inside, the ISO was set at 1600 (the maximum setting my Canon allows). I under-exposed the shot at f/4, and shutter speed of 1/10sec.

Personally, I would've preferred if Baby/Mom were positioned to the right third of the picture, following the rule of thirds.

"Spectacular" Blur

The subject " Blur "suggested I could shoot something that helps us get rid of it ...

Camera: Fuji FinePix S 9600
Lens: 28-300mm

ISO: 200

Focal Length: 9mm

Aperture: f/4

Exposure time: 0.1sec

Assignment 2: blur

Naveen asked me to send out Assignment 2.  For this week, please post an image that makes effective use of blur.  It could be motion blur, focus blur, or even artificial blur added in postprocessing. Rules for this time:

• Post a photo which makes effective use of blur of any kind.
• Photo must be taken during the assignment period: March 1 through March 7.
• Artificial lighting is allowed.
• Postprocessing is OK.