I got some Bayco utility lights a while back from Walmart to see how they'd work for some up close product photography.  Finally got around to playing with it and took some pictures of some dinosaur toys laying around.

The Rule of Thirds

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm relatively new to this concept of the Rule of Thirds. But basically if you make a 3x3 grid on your photos, your subjects should line up with the grid lines. The Rule of Thirds basically just discourages having your subject dead center in the photo. This creates a more interesting photograph. If you look at the balloon man from my First Fridays set in April, I've lined up his body with the vertical right line, and his eyes are lined up with the top horizontal line. I don't know if consciously thinking "rule of thirds, rule of thirds" when you are taking pictures is beneficial. Art and rules don't usually go well together. And, there's always post production cropping that you can do. (I use Photoshop CS5 to crop, so I'm speaking to that example.) When you crop, it creates the 3x3 grid and its easy to adjust the crop to line up your photo to take advantage of the Rule of Thirds. Here is the full Wikipedia definition of the Rule of Thirds:
Rule of Thirds Wiki

I'm pretty new to photography but I found this rule to be pretty interesting. Looking back at some of my older pictures, some of the ones I liked followed the rule of thirds.  Although some pictures look better after a rule of thirds crop, some look better (to me anyway) prior to the crop. I think the main take away was to not have your subject dead center in the picture and it will add some interest. And that's what we all want, interesting photos.

Well, I hope you found this post useful.

Thank you and have a nice day.

The Trinity of Photography:

ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed

If you've been playing around with a DSLR, you're bound to notice these settings. Most cameras have an ISO button, shutter speed is displayed as a fraction (ex. 1/100) and aperture is represented by a decimal preceded by a fancy f (f4 for example).

First I'll go over a little of what I noticed with the three settings, then I'll attempt to give a definition of each at the end. Enjoy!

As I started playing around with settings I noticed that adjusting each of these would adjust how bright my images were. But each had its downfalls. If I slowed down the shutter speed in low light, this would brighten up the photo, but anything moving would be blurred. Lesson learned, the slower the shutter, the blur I'd have. And if I was holding the camera, as opposed to using a tripod, the image was useless. Everything is blurry; I could have taken a picture on my cell phone that turned out better! So, while shutter speed definitely helped expose a picture in low light, it would also blur the photo. And more than once I would have low light settings in a bright area, this results in a white photo, everything is over exposed.

Then I was playing with ISO. When I first started taking pictures I would always try to use a low ISO, because everything I read online said that high ISO=bad. But in certain situations, higher ISO was required or the picture wouldn't be captured at all. The only problem was, the higher the ISO setting, the more grain there was, and personally, I like crisp, clean photos. The 60d changed my perspective on ISO, and opened my eyes to night photography. I also found out that grainy black and white photos don't look too bad. Also, high ISO in proper light would blow out a photo, over exposing it.

Aperture was probably the last thing I understood out of these three. And it ends up being one of the coolest things to understand with photography. Have you ever seen a photo where the subject is crisp and everything else is blurred out, and thought wow, this is cool stuff. This is what aperture does. With a low aperture number, the depth of field is low; causing your focus point to be in focus, and everything else is out of focus. Low apertures also let in a lot of light as opposed to high aperture numbers. The funny thing with aperture numbers is a low number is a wide or big aperture, and a high number is a small or narrow aperture. Here is a wiki article if you want to learn lots of technical stuff about aperture:

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is basically how fast the shutter is. A fast shutter opens and closes... fast. While a slow shutter stays open longer. Here is the cool Wikipedia article about shutter speed:

Shutter Speed Wiki

ISO

ISO measures light sensitivity. The lower ISO numbers are less sensitive to light, the higher numbers are more sensitive to light. In digital photography, higher ISO numbers also increase 'noise'. Noise is seen as speckles in the photo. The speckles are acceptable in black and white, but generally look terrible in color. Different cameras have different ISO quality. Taking my XSi and the 60d as an example, the XSi has a maximum ISO of 1600. Taking a photo at 1600 is very grainy and overall a bad looking photo. The 60d has much better ISO performance at 1600. The 60d also has a maximum ISO of 6400.

Wikipedia article on ISO:

ISO wiki

Aperture

There are multiple blades inside a camera lens, these blades are adjustable. The Wikipedia article shows what they look like, but basically when you select a high aperture number, the blades are closer together, and the opening for light is small. This lets less light in, and creates a deep depth of field. When you select a small aperture number, this opens up the blades, letting more light in. This also decreases the depth of field, so only a select portion of the picture will be in focus.

Here is a wiki article if you want to learn lots of technical stuff about aperture:

Aperture Wiki

Well, I hope you found this post useful.


Thank you and have a nice day.

Sunsets

I think as a new photographer, everyone has taken pictures of sunsets.  Sunsets are always fun to photograph because they have a nice range of colors.  I took this one from my driveway.  Well, its not one, but multiple pictures stitched together.

I burned the photo a bit in photoshop to black out the trees and roof tops, this also brought out a deep blue on the left half of the photo.  This is one of my favorite sunset photos.  The other cool thing about sunsets is they are pretty easy to photograph.  They have plenty of light, so you can use a pretty narrow aperture (f setting on your camera) to get everything in focus without worrying too much about your focus point.  Along with the light thing, you can also use a low ISO number to reduce noise, and a fast shutter to avoid any blurring caused by shaky hands.
This one I took at Tempe Town Lake in Arizona.  Arizona is blessed with amazing sunsets pretty much year round.

Well thats all for this post. Thanks again!

We're having some amazing weather here in Phoenix!

My Gear

Camera Body:
Canon 60d



My main reason for getting this camera was the video mode.  I was reading review after review comparing this camera to the T2i and T3i.  The 60d has more cross type focal points, but other then that its the same as a T3i, same sensor, same tilt/swivel screen.  It was more expensive, but I never look back on my decision.

My old camera body is an EOS Rebel XSI

This was the first Camera body I used.  My wife uses this one because its smaller then the 60d.  Still takes great pictures.

Lenses:
Canon 18-55mm IS

This lens came with the XSi Body. This is pretty versatile lens, and, as you can see by the link, inexpensive. I use this lens for video, its the only lens I have with the Image Stabilizer (IS) and I also use it with the wide angle extensions mentioned below.
It has a minimun aperture number range of 3.5-5.6
3.5 minimum at 18mm and 5.6 minimum at 55.
The Depth of Field is adequate on this lens.  I haven't noticed the aperture setting of 3.5 being extensively soft, but the lens is definitely sharper at higher apertures.
At 18mm you get a subtle wide angle effect.

Canon 50mm 1.8

This is currently my favorite lens. Mainly due to its wide aperture. Its what known as a prime lens.  It doesn't zoom, so you have to move around alot more when taking your pictures.
Its minimum aperture number is 1.8.
1.8 is a very shallow depth of field and most of the time is unneeded.  Wide apertures have less in focus, and unless you are very accurate with manual focus, you will end up with bad, out of focus pictures.  I tend to use 2.0 and above.  It still gives you a nice intimate depth of field, and you have more wiggle room with you focus.
This lens seems to be my sharpest lens right now.  Later on I will do a comparison at different apertures to determine if this is in fact reality, or just perception.
The manual focus on my lens (MKI) is smooth and easy to use.  The MKIIs lack the range meter the MKIs have, but to be honest I don't use it.  I could see it being beneficial, but if you're walking around taking pictures, you are either going to use autofocus or manual focus looking through the camera.
The auto focus is loud on my MKI, the MKIIs seem to be quieter.
It performs well in daylight, but can sometimes miss the mark in low light.  Over all, the autofocus is pretty good.

Canon 75-300mm

Being a non IS lens, its really only good in bright daylight or on a tripod.  And being a 75mm minimum focal length eliminates it from alot of photography I end up doing.  Although I have been taking more pictures outside, from further distances, so its use has increased.  I have used this lens to take some pictures of the moon that have turned out pretty well.  Although I don't use the lens much, it tends to be very sharp.  And I find myself enjoying the pictures that come out of it.
Minimum aperture numbers are 4.0 to 5.6.

'Digital' wide angle and macro lens extension

This lens adapter I got for fun.  I plan on getting a real wide angle lens when money allows, but for now this lens is plenty of fun.  It does have distortion when you're zoomed out all the way with the 18-55mm, but if you zoom in a little distortion isn't bad, and you still get that wide angle/fish eye effect.  For less than 15 bucks, not bad in my opinion.

Now, before I let you go, when I wrote about aperture, I incorrectly listed the lower numbers as minimum.  I did this to eliminate some confusion I had when starting photography.  Saying Maximum, and putting the smallest number always threw me for a loop.  The way aperture works, the smaller numbers are know as the Maximum aperture.  If you look at the blades inside the lens, when set to the smaller aperture numbers, the blades open up, reaching the Maximum opening of the blades, or Maximum aperture.  This is probably the most confusing thing I found with cameras, understanding aperture.  I will go over ISO, Aperture, and Shutter speed (the trinity of photography) in a later post.

Seeing the world differently

I have been playing with cameras for a few years now, but recently something clicked. I started seeing pictures everywhere. The way streets would line up with buildings, human interaction, architecture, nature. Everything had a more vibrant and beautiful quality to it. If you ever have your camera and think "there's nothing to take a picture of." you aren't looking hard enough :) There are pictures everywhere, you just have to look.

Why do I take pictures?

I've always liked looking at pictures. 
In high school I had to opportunity to take a photography class.  I didn't have money for an SLR at the time, so I used point and shoot cameras.  In the class I don't remember going over much of the fundamentals of what makes a good picture, the rule of thirds is something I've only recently come across.  What we did do in the class was develop film.  Nothing beat watching a blank sheet develop a picture.  I didn't really realize it at the time, but this class started a love of photography I still have today.
Since I used point and shoot cameras, I didn't have any settings to play around with, it was flash, or no flash.  I used to go through multiple point and shoots when I'd go on trips.  Some pictures turned out, some didn't, but it was always fun to shoot.  I always ran with a "the more the merrier" when taking pictures.  The more I took, the more that turned out.
After high school photography kind of trailed off.  I still liked looking at pictures though.  I was into cars so I had some car magazines and their pictures were always fun to look at.  The different cars, the angles used to make them interesting.  My wife, well, girlfriend at the time, had a Samsung digital point and shoot that took decent quality pictures.  We went and did a photo day with our cars and I liked how the pictures turned out.  I played with angles I saw them use in magazines to see if I could get something interesting going.
Fast forward a couple years and I'm married.  My wife wanted to get a good camera to document our family.  So we picked up a Canon XSI.  This opened up a whole new world of photography for me.  I remember the first things I did was play with the long exposure the camera was able to do.  I took some low light shots of bathroom soap and night time shots of the road by our apartment, making cool looking light trails.  The love of photography I had in high school was coming back.
Along the theme of low light experimenting, I played around with light painting.  I set my camera to a long exposure in the dark of my garage and painted my car with a flashlight, the picture below was the result:

Had the hood up, painted the engine with the light, dropped the hood and painted the hood.  I thought this ended up pretty cool looking.
Well I think that's enough for this post.
More milestones to come!
50mm 1.8
Landscapes/sunsets
Body upgrade to Canon 60d
Seeing the world differently

For the First Fridays night photography I recently did, I used my 60d and 50mm 1.8 MKI.  Using high ISO settings (800-6400) shutter speeds around 120-200, and aperture was 2.0-2.5.  I don't like using 1.8 too much because more often then not I end up out of focus.  I needed shutter speeds relatively fast because my subjects were moving, and I was shooting free hand, so I had ISO cranked up.  Better to get the photo with a high ISO then lose the photo is what I say!

For anyone following this blog, here are the pictures from First Friday, Phoenix

Balloon animal guy

I plan on going downtown this weekend to do some street photography.  I've never done street photography before and I'm kind of excited to try it out.  I'll post up some pictures asap