Digital Photography

[wingspar]

at some point my camera switched from 1600x1200 pics to 3072x2048 or something, so the quality deteriorated (always does at max settings). But I also figured out finally how to switch to ISO400 and set my shutter speed up to 1/320 - 1/500 without losing a lot of light (fast shutter speed for some reason makes things really dark but I'm not a photo pro so maybe wingspar can tell me why this is).

 

Must be a forum setting that doesn’t send email in threads one is participating in when one hasn’t logged in for a while. Any way. I’m not too familiar with using a point & shoot camera, so all I can do is take a stab at your question. If you increase your shutter speed without opening up your f/stops, less lights gets into the camera. You can see the same thing happen if you stop down your f/stops without slowing down your shutter speed. If you were using the camera in Auto Program mode, the camera should compensate, but the limitations of ISO and f/stops on your camera may be so that the camera can’t compensate enough, but will still take a photo. Sometimes, being a little underexposed (dark), but not too much, can be an ok thing, because you can bring out the detail in post processing.

 

Here are some shots I did a couple of weeks ago in the only day game I’ll see all season. For the high school games anyway. The editor at the paper is working on a media pass for me at a U of Oregon Ducks game. Those will be day games. I hope that works out. I’m excited about shooting a major college game.

 

Wish this was more of a head on shot, but still a decent expression on his face.

 

These two are a fumble in progress, recovered by the team in black.

 

[momoceio]

You need one of these badboys, you can then screw on a 52mm filter to it.

 

http://www.lensmateonline.com/newsite/A620A610.html

[wingspar]

ah, so...my camera can do all of that except I don't have the polarizing filter =(

 

how much do they cost? are they camera/lens-specific?

 

Polarizing filters work like polarized sun glasses if you’ve ever worn those. They help to reduce the glare from the sun, and only work at certain angles to the sun. They can also be used on cloudy days to reduce the reflection from the sky in water. If you just want to darken a sky, take a meter reading, note the shutter speed and f/stop, then put camera in manual mode, and either speed up the shutter speed or stop down the f/stop, or a combination of both. Neutral Density filters will also help in this fashion in letting less light thru to the lens. Of course, doing this will darken the landscape. I made the shot of the sun in my sig with a telephoto lens, and used the spot meter on the sun. No filters were used.

 

To use filters, you will have to go thru your manual to see how filters are attached to the camera. In the photo of your camera in this review, it does not show any threads for screwing in a filter in front of the lens, so you will have to find out how filters attach to your camera before you can start looking at filters. The most common is the Circular Polarizer.

 

You can look at polarizing filters here. B&H is to the camera world as Newegg is to the computer world. The best out there. Filters can be overwhelming. Once you know what kind of filter fitting works on your camera, you can filter the filters down tremendously by using the filters on the left of the screen. A lot like Newegg.

[wingspar]

You need one of these badboys, you can then screw on a 52mm filter to it.

 

http://www.lensmateonline.com/newsite/A620A610.html

 

That would probably work. It looks like they would cause vignetting, but they say not. If you went that route, a filter like this one would probably serve you well.

[Angry_Games]

it helps to have a nice SLR camera I'm sure. I know my camera can never pull off the type of shots yours can Wing. My brother got himself a nice $1000 SLR and then a nice $300 lens so I might ask him to bring it down and see if I can play with it for a little while.

[wingspar]

it helps to have a nice SLR camera I'm sure. I know my camera can never pull off the type of shots yours can Wing. My brother got himself a nice $1000 SLR and then a nice $300 lens so I might ask him to bring it down and see if I can play with it for a little while.

 

Travis... I wasn’t trying to show off or demonstrate how much better a good camera is. Those were photos I was thinking about posting anyway. Your football shots just motivated me to post.

 

Once you use an SLR, and learn the camera, you will wonder how you got along without one, but from what I’ve seen of your photography, you do quite well with what you have. Even the pro bodies have their limitations at night and poor light situations. Take some photos with your brothers camera, and post them up with your thoughts on the camera. There is a learning curve to getting the most out of todays dSLR’s, but I doubt you would have any problems there. Remember, it’s the photographer that is the most important part. A camera is just a tool.

[Angry_Games]

no no man, I know you are not showing off. I'm simply stating facts that you are a real photographer with what I consider "real" cameras. I mean, my A620 is a pretty damn good little camera, but I can't even come close to the shots my brother's SLR can take, and I'd say I'm almost an expert with my camera (knowing what it can do and how to do it for the most part) while he's still fumbling along with his.

 

At first I could still take better pics, but within 2 weeks of him just using it and reading the instructions each time he wanted to do something different with it, he instantly started throwing out much better images than I could...and that long-range lens REALLY makes a huge difference.

 

So don't think I'm calling you out on anything, I most definitely am not. I'm actually a bit jealous that you got the skills and the equipment to throw up those beautiful pics. I very much appreciate your input in this thread as while this is a bit of a hobby (I'm the master of macro shots of motherboards/chips/circuits haha but I had to be for the DFI job and this forum), I really enjoy capturing great pics and I enjoy others seeing them and commenting on them

 

Anyway, I was just out killing some wasps and I happened to see this dude on my flowers (which never bloomed at all until about a week ago...I have no clue even what they are):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and here's a strange bug I snapped right before we moved out of the house in Boise:

 

 

 

 

 

I love bumblebees. I am not quite sure why, but I really dig honeybees and bumblebees...but i hate wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, etc.

 

As for this strange bug...any thoughts on what it might be? I did find a cool site not too long ago when I was searching to find out exactly what a "daddy long legs" is (harvestmen, not a real spider) that has a resident entomologist that deciphers what all these are...maybe if no one knows here I'll submit to him and see if he knows.

 

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am supremely fascinated by bugs (insects/spiders etc heh). I always have been since I was a child and I used to drop some black ants into red ant nests and watch what happened, as well as dropping a red ant or two into a black ant nest and watching...and then I used also sometimes catch stuff like grasshoppers and toss them into a spider's web and sit there and watch fascinated for 15 minutes while the spider injected paralyzing poison into the bug, then wrapped him up in a cocoon and began sucking the life out of him or just left him for a later meal (leftovers lol).

 

I'm just weird I guess, but I'm just extremely fascinated by bugs!

 

 

edit: ps my favorite bug is the praying mantis, and I've found 3 of them since we moved into this house but my cats got ahold of two of them so no pics could be taken...I mean, I could have, but teeth marks and ripped bodies doesn't make for a good pic, and the other one was the second day I was here in the house and had no clue where my camera was, but it was brown until I dropped it into a green little box to take it outside and forgot it for a few hours and when I came back it was of course green

[Fogel]

Great action shots Wing - do you use a tripod for those?

 

Great bug shots, great detail - you are definitely a man of the macro shots lol. What plants are those? I can't say I share your enthusiasm for bugs. I definitely wouldn't be that close to a bee, but then again somehow a yellow jacket found its way into one of my clothing drawers that I open maybe once a year (if that) and stung me when I put my hand in there. And no, I didn't know it was there - it was between the socks and my old sport gear.

 

No clue on that funky bug you found. If I had half a mind I would have taken a pic of SUPER FAST running bug I found in my APT in D.C. because it is driving me nuts as to what could run that fast. Put it this way, my eyes have been trained fairly decently to track fast movements and it was a blurr for me. When I finally found it, I smashed the living crap out of it - no lie it scared me ...mostly because I couldn't track what was moving so fast.

[Angry_Games]

dunno what plants those are =/

 

I got those and some rosemary plants from our new landlords and that was back in mid-summer, and they looked like they do now except they didn't bloom at all until about a week ago. I'm still stuck on "florida time" with plants because I spent 12 years down there, so I nearly forgot all the plants that grow around here (and I have to tell myself that FL plants won't grow here except weeds haha).

 

I really love spiders...those mothers can move extremely fast...I think I remember reading in my Weekly Reader in 5th grade or something that if you let teh fastest human on earth run the 100m dash and gave him 9.5 second head start, a spider of equal mass to a human would still win the race (they move at something like 100mph in relative speeds I think).

[Fogel]

Oh I can believe that! It always amazed how fast they can run given their size. That is what scared me about that silver bug that I had in my apartment. It had to of cleared all 3 walls of my living room in at most a second. It was like something you'd see on the Outer Limits. I'm surprised there was no sonic boom from that thing. It wasn't tiny like a spider, it would probably be about 3/4 the size of most female palms and almost looked like a leaf bug but was silver.

[Angry_Games]

man, i found a GIANT dragonfly today also out in the yard...I wanted to take a shot of it but it was dead already (just barely dead though). As wing will tell ya, dragonflies are almost impossible to photograph because of their flitting and flying heh.

[Fogel]

Oh that would be tight. I've seen a super sized moth - was probably 8in + long. I think a super sized dragonfly would be cooler tho. lol

 

Someone was telling me about this rare plant in either South/Central America that for centuries no one knew how it was being pollenated. And some old scientist, I want to say Benjamin Franklin, guess it had to be some huge moth pollenating it at night. Someone finally put a video camera nearby and caught it on tape. Largest moth ever recorded that no one knew existed.

 

Some weird . out there we still don't know about.