Category: Photography

Guest Contributor – TomD – 11FEB2024 – Photo Talk

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

I’ve done a LOT of studio type macro. If you want the easy way to do macro shots its with a lighting setup. I’ll attach a shot of my light box setup below. BTW: Important that the lights be 5000 kelvin color temp (daylight).

how to 1.jpg
how to 1.jpg

Light box (above). That’s my old Sony A850 on the tripod. I build the light holding framework around the box with PVC tubing. I’ll also post a shot of what I was mostly doing.

A Mexican coin shot using the light box. One reason straight on lighting alone won’t work is that it won’t create the shadowing that defines the shot.

Don Quijote.jpg
Don Quijote.jpg

 

Speaking of cameras, I’m about to acquire another body. It’s been about 6, maybe more, years since I gave my ASPC Sony a6300 to my wife and went entirely to full frame, full sized cameras. When it comes to photographic quality, you can’t beat them, but they lack in one really important respect: full frame, full sized cameras are too big and too expensive to carry constantly. I kept the A6300 with a Zeiss 16-70 f4 with me almost all the time. It’s small enough to fit in a pocket or console and be available. It wasn’t exactly cheap but but if it was lost, stolen or broken, it wouldn’t be like the $5K-$6K hit for one of my full frame bodies + a Sony GM series lens. And, frankly, you would would have to look very hard to tell the difference between most shots from my 6000 series cameras and the full frame cameras.

A significant portion of my favorite shots have been serendipitous.

The wife is attached to the 6300 so I’m about to get a newer A6600 for less that a thousand and I already have the big investment, the lens selection in hand.

Recharging the Batteries

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I’m gonna talk about fun stuff today.  I need a break from Biden and his mush-brain.

I was watching a YouTube video by one of the guys who provides me with pep talks on photography and he said when you’re feeling uninspired the best thing to do is grab your camera and look for inspiration.  Well, Camera Girl has been haranguing me for the last couple of days about the return of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard to the swamp.  Now this is an annual event.  The same pair of mallards (I think) return every late winter to the local water and graze on the slime and ooze and raise up a passel of youngins.  Some of my favorite shots of the mallards involve heavy snowfall.

At the same time, they are very annoying because they tend to retreat from me and my camera whenever I try to capture them.  But this year the battle is stacked more in my favor.  I’ve got the Sony 200-600 lens and with its extra reach I can still get reasonably close up shots from what the mallards feel is a safe distance.

So, I went out this morning with my A7IV, the long lens and my monopod and picked my way between thorn bushes and mud holes until I was at a respectable one hundred feet from the ducks and banged out maybe a hundred exposures.  I used single shot autofocus and a comfortable ISO 1000 to get the short exposure time I needed with the long lens.

The ducks are kind of funny in that the male and female look totally different from each other.

And they have slightly different behaviors also.  The male is more confident while the female seems more cautious.  His head seems to be mostly underwater while hers is above.

He ranges around more while she is mostly still.  And interestingly, I’ve adopted the idea that they work for me and require my approval in order to feel legitimate.  Well today they got the official thumbs up from the king.  I provided them with the royal nod and now they can get on with perpetuating their species without fear of their charter being pulled.  I told them that I am following their careers with great interest and expect to review their progress sometime in the early spring when the latest cohort is swimming and quacking around the puddle.  After all Dunwich must be populated or duckulated or whatever duck increase is called.

I was looking for inspiration today and sure enough, it was fun.  And that got me motivated to download all the files on my camera and at least look at the mallard shots I just took.  And that is the evolution of a good day.  A little research, a little field work and a little work in the office and I have a few nice shots of the neighbors and a nice little illustrated post for the site.

All right.  Now I can stand to hear about what mush-brain has done today.  Hopefully something harmless like taking credit for the invention of shoelaces or something.