This week I have the honor and pleasure of being the Curator of the Bistro Gallery. The Bistro is a Nikon Users group in the flickr community.
If you have time pour yourself a drink, pull up a comfy chair, and visit this week’s gallery. You’ll see the work of a few of the many talented photographers who call the Bistro “their local”.
Like this photo titled “Strike a Deal” by Ken Lunders
Photograph by Ken Lunders
I’ll be the Curator thru July 3, 2011 please come by often as I’ll be adding photographs daily.
While I do really like my Induro CT213 I am finding it really heavy when doing long, steep hikes. I’ve been shopping for a lighter alternative and finally made up my mind on one.
I’ve just ordered the C1691T Benro Travel Angel tripod. I am most impressed with the BO Dual Action ball-head. For being small it can carry a ton of weight. It held a Nikkor 80-200mm lens mounted to a D300s without sagging at all! That’s what sold me.
This week I have the honor and pleasure of being the Curator of the Bistro Gallery. The Bistro is a Nikon Users group in the flickr community.
If you have time pour yourself a drink, pull up a comfy chair, and visit this week’s gallery. You’ll see a few of the many talented photographers who call the Bistro “their local”. I’ll be the Curator thru July 3, 2011 please come by often as I’ll be adding photographs daily.
Achim Sack a fan of time lapse photography and tinkering has created and revised his Intervalometer. For those who like to hack and tinker this might be right up your street.
Features:
No power supply needed: The circuit “steals” in the operating current (only 10µA at 5V and 2.5µA at 3.3V) from the signal lines of the camera
Interval adjustable from 0.4 seconds to about 18 minutes
No controls, setting of the intervall via “teach-in” from the camera
Ultra-portable: the circuitry fits into the housing of a 2.5mm stereo plug
Update: Reader Stargazer 95050 emails,
The link to that cheap timelapse controller was fascinating. $2 for that !! It sounds too good to be true — tough technically he is right. !!
There is a catch of course : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharpshutter/5918737334/
I had been looking forward to a good friend coming to town for months. We planned a reunion of sorts. Big Jay, myself, Downhill Dali, Tj, and the Cheeky Monkey spent the day up in Northern CA shooting the landscape then we met some more Photographer friends here for a Night shoot. We arrived early enough to catch both the high tide, and sunset.
The Point Reyes is an abandoned wreck that is quite a tourist attraction in this little town along Hwy 1.
Nikon D300s| Nikkor 17-35 mm @ 17mm| f9| 1/60 sec| ISO 200| Manual Mode| Tripod
Inverness, California, Point Reyes National Seashore; Wreck of the Point Reyes
If you’re looking for software that will handle your new Nikon camera’s RAW files take a look at Nikon’s very own Capture NX2! It will read your RAW files perfectly.
Choose your region and download the free trial here.
Looking for a free option to convert your RAW files with limited editing options download Nikon’s ViewNX
Update: Reader Andy emails, ” Regarding Capture NX2 — I think it has several unique features worth mentioning.
The noise reduction is excellent.
Also the dust-off and spot healing are very helpful if you forgot to clean your sensor
Reading all camera parameters instead of just a few
Changes are stored in the original RAW file but can be reversed, and you can have several post-processing versions stored in the same file
The downside — no one else but Nikon can read thos PP changes made to the NEF file”
Independence Day in the United States is just around the corner. On July 4th families and friends will get together to celebrate this holiday. Plans are being made for pick-up games of baseball, volleyball, or swimming. There will be picnics, and barbeques will be fired up. Dads all over will be grilling hot dogs, and burgers, watermelons will be split, seed spitting contests will ensue, and the colors of the day will be Red, White, and Blue.
When the sun drops beyond the horizon the celebrating doesn’t stop. Countless cities and towns will put on a great show of fireworks, and many families and friends will be gathered in their favorite viewing spot to watch the show. Many of us will want to photograph these.
Steven Christenson an avid night, and astro-photographer who is a longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area shares with us one of his experiences about photographing fireworks, and gives us some tips on how we can capture these stars bursting in air .
Rain on Golden Palms
Photograph by Steven Christenson
Q. Tell us about this location.
Steven: Oyster Point Marina in San Francisco, CA. It was a local radio station KFOG event called Kaboom. An annual outdoor concert held in May. In addition to the concert there is a Fireworks show which is synchronized to a soundtrack broadcasted by the station.
The reasons for choosing this location were twofold: 1. Get far enough away to be able to fill the frame and ideally somewhere that we could be sure to have an unobstructed view (nobody could get in front of us without getting wet!), and 2. Get reflections in the water. HOWEVER, to get good reflections, you really need to be well above water level and it helps if the water is calm. We had roaring wind that day!
And it doesn’t hurt to make it a social occasion! I had set up a Photography Meet-up event around this KFOG event. Anne De Lemos, a photographer in our group would have become a Popsicle if people hadn’t brought extra blankets.
Q. What time of day?
Steven: Just after dark at 9:20 P.M.
Q. How difficult was this to capture?
Steven: Fireworks are always challenging, especially if you’re a first timer at taking them on. Fortunately, I had cut my teeth on several prior fireworks events, including the KFOG Kaboom event the prior year. Manual exposure is the only way to go, and I sometimes fiddle slightly with the settings after chimping a few shots (i.e. looking at the histograms).
Q. What camera and lens did you use for this shot?
Steven: A Canon EOS 40D with a 70-200mm f4L IS USM lens
Q. How did you expose for this shot?
Steven: 121mm, f11, 2.5 seconds, ISO 200, Manual Mode
I learned that two things are important:
1) A relatively small aperture – this increases the contrast since the fireworks are very bright,
2) A reasonably short exposure (1-6 seconds).
The not too long exposure allows enough time for the firework to bloom, but not so much time that later fireworks or overall glow weaken the contrast in the shot. I usually fire the shutter as soon as I see the burst. The lag time between when I see the burst and when I press the cable release button is just about perfect to get the firework bloom just as it has expanded enough to be noticeable, but is not completely formed. Another shooting strategy is to continuously expose 2-4 second shots. Sooner or later a few good ones result. On this night I used two cameras and both shooting tactics. This image was from my human actuated shutter, however.
Use a sturdy tripod, and a remote cable release or remote to trigger your shutter to avoid shake.
Circadianreflections Blog 
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