Possibly my favorite photo that I’ve seen
Film? What?
Man, I miss having a digital camera. I thought I’d be OK using a decent camera that Amy had that takes 35mm film, but I guess I had been taking for granted that what you see in a viewfinder in a digicam is generally what you will get in the photo. With this film one (apart from the lens cover not opening all the way) what you see in the viewfinder is slightly to the left of what you will get. So a perfectly centered truck becomes half a truck and the left side of a remote that was out of the frame I had established. Supposedly focused letters are not, and macro shots are terrible.
I liked being able to see the photo right after taking it. Then I would know if it was super fuzzy, washed out from the flash, or not where I wanted it in the frame. I can’t blame the camera – I realize that people have taken photos for a really long time without the ability to preview them. I just had not considered that I would need to compensate my frame. At least I have a roll and a half that i know I need to do this with.
Hopefully I will be acquiring one of these. A dear friend of mine is upgrading and I have requested the privilege of buying her old model. I’ve wanted a DSLR for a while, which is part of the reason I had left my camera in Paraguay. In doing some research, I was considering purchasing a Canon Rebel XS or Nikon D3000, but fortune smiled upon this lad. I like this idea better because I will spend less on a probably superior camera (thought it’s a bit older), and it’s a great entry into the DSLR world. Now my mediocre photography will become slightly less mediocre!
-j
Project 365
I don’t have a camera anymore, but I plan on fixing that soonish. No, it didn’t get stolen again; I gave it to my friend Marcelo in Paraguay. For now I am borrowing a camera my sister has that she got from my grandfather. The only thing is it’s a film camera, and I haven’t used one of those in easily 7 or 8 years. But it’s a good camera, and I’m up to it. It’ll be weird not being able to see the image right away.
I wanted to get into a photo project. I’m no amazing photographer, but I like to pretend I am. I read about this thing called “Project 365“, which is – much as it may sound given the context – a 365 day project in taking shots. I might just start with a Project 31 to see if I can actually do it for a month. It’ll be kind of weird because I’ll be starting it out on film until I am able to get the camera I want (I want it to be good), so the photos might be a little post-dated.
If this gets anywhere, I will post some links here.
-j
Photography Project
I picked up a couple new Angels today and I decided I wanted to take some photos. I experimented with flash and zoom settings, and I found out things I did not know. First, flash photos produce crisper pictures, and it’s usually closer to what it really looks like than just using the tank light. Second, it’s *really* hard to take pictures of moving fish.
Here is a little breakdown of what I was able to come up with. Take a look at these photos and guess which was flash and which isn’t (click ‘em to see the big one).
The one on the left was taken with a flash, and the one on the right was without flash. These are the original photos. Initially, the flash one is much better.
After some Photoshopping, here is what was produced:
What’s kind of odd is in the doctored non-flash image, the lighting looks more natural and reflects what the tank looks like. However, the doctored flash image shows better what the fish looks like. I’m sure it has something to do with the wood he’s chillin’ under. At any rate, this was just my first experiment, and there will be more pictures and experiments and different cameras, so expect to see more posts like this.
And if you’re interested, the camera I used was an Olympus Stylus 400 digital camera with built-in flash. I also used a tripod.
The rest of my photos can be seen at my Aquarium Advice gallery.
-j