Nature Photography March 13, 2011

Today was about experimenting with my camera. My most recent camera is a Pentax K7 DSLR that I got last year. I wanted a Pentax DSLR so I could use my older Pentax lenses that I purchased back in my 35mm film days. Today I used my old Pentax 80-200 zoom with a matched 2x multiplier. Though It looks that I am pretty close to my subject matter I must say that I did use the crop feature of the camera to provide the images displayed.

It has been several weeks now but I am happy that the birds are back in town. I hope that is a good sign that Spring is around the corner. I have had enough of Winter.

Even the squirrel came out to look around for food. I need to get a handful of nuts and toss them out for the locals. Yes they dig around a bit but I am ok with that.

As usual I am glad that the sun was out today. I know, I know, Mom always told me not to look directly into the sun. However, this photo was taken with the sun behind a cloud. It was a cloud that was transparent enough to filter the brightness and to provide an interesting effect.

The photos above were also edited a bit in Photoshop using the curves adjustment. except the image of the sun. I am looking forward to taking more pictures as time permits.

What I learned today was that because it was cloudy I needed to kick up my ISO setting in order to capture the color I obtained and a usable shutter speed. As many of us know, when you kick up the ISO it also adds more grain to the image so as the images are zoomed in on and cropped there is more grain in the image.

I also took a look at the White Balance adjustment of the camera.afterward I took my pictures. I may have altered that a bit to get better colors, that is something I will have to tinker with a bit more in the future.

When it comes to film vs. digital, let's face it, I would not have posted these pictures so quickly to share them with you. Scanning film negatives or prints would have lost out to more grain when I finished cropping the images and I would have been a bit disappointed in the outcome. Digital pretty much provides more options for me that I had been used to with film so for todays pictures I am pleased with digital.

Black and White or Color

From time to time I take portrait photos and this picture is of one of my favorite subjects, my daughter. Many years ago when I was learning about photography I had to shoot and develop my own black and white film. That was quite a learning experience for me. These days with a DSLR or photo editing software it make it quite easy to view images in both dimensions.

Below I have posted the color format of the image above. What I would like is your thoughts on these images providing me with which picture you may find more interesting and why. I look forward to reading your responses.

Many Thanks!

Make Polaroid Images Digitally!

I like to tinker with digital images from time to time and recently I was introduced to an application I had not heard of before. Before I tell you the name of the application I want to go back to the days of my youth when my Father had a Polaroid camera. Though it was a bit cumbersome it provided images that were pretty quick to develop. Polaroid cameras did advance and the ease of use and the print technology did improve.

Even though I still have my Dads Polaroid camera from the mid 1960's I would not venture to take pictures with it these days. However, I sometimes wondered what some of my photos would look like with a Polaroid camera. Now I can find out. Let's take the following picture for example ...

This is a picture of me and my son taken on the beach in Florida. This was taken with a Pentax K7 using automatic settings. One day I was listening to a favorite tech podcast and they mentioned this application called "PolaDroid" I emphasize the "D" for search purposes. It sounded interesting so I downloaded the application and installed it. It was easy to install and use.

I dragged the image icon on my desktop over the application icon and waited, just like a Polaroid picture it developed right before my eyes on the screen. Here is the resulting image of that application ...

WOW, this is kewl! I added the text on the bottom of the print with PhotoShop but all in all I enjoyed this little application. If you would like to experiment with the "Poladroid" application here is a link for you Poladroid. Give it a shot and share it with your friends.

Feel free to connect with me on Twitter @TMSphotos!

My Children

My  wife LOVES this photo of our children! I admit, it is one of my favorites also. Like I have written about in previous postings, inexpensive cameras can take great photos. This photo was taken in 2007 with a very inexpensive digital camera. It is just one of those moments of being in the right place at the right time and using the tools I had.

These days, I have a DSLR and a Nikon Cool Pix. I am still learning about the capabilities of both of them. With todays technology you can get some amazing shots with cell phones. The thing to keep in mind with digital photography is the mega pixel rating of the camera. Newer phones today like the iPhone are capable of taking really decent pictures. So why don't I have one? Well it's simple, I get my daughters hand me downs so I have to wait.

However, I personally would not rely on an iPhone to capture the pictures I want, I would use it as a back-up. DSLR's provide for me a quality and feel that I enjoyed in my 35mm days.

My recommendation is that whatever digital camera you may have or will purchase, take the time to learn how to use the camera. Learn how it responds, play with various settings and understand how and why you would use them.

Enjoy Life! Enjoy Photography!