All change

I’ve been kind of quiet the last few days due to an opportunity to evolve learningtosnap a little.

The astute amongst you may have noticed that all my pictures have always been hosted on www.learningtosnap.com?

Well, with the help of Geoff @ opinionatedgeek and Jon (who prefers to remain internet invisible lest the alien overlords come and take him home), the new improved ‘Learningtosnap’ blog can be found here.

So, what are you waiting for?

Go.

Gogogo.

Oh come on, I promise it’ll be full of the same rambling nonsense as this one. More importantly, it’ll be…erm….ahhh….Oh just come over and visit already!

They only come out at night…

I was out last night for dinner with a friend from England I’d never met before. After the meal I got talking with Darrell (not the fried from England I’d never met before, he was someone else) about the projects idea. We then got chatting about night pictures and my lack of luck with some I’d taken earlier in the week. That led us onto the all important public safety aspect of walking round a city at night with £500+ of camera gear and how we’d love to do it, but well, you know….. the whole rob, murder, death, kill, thing might get in the way*

Well, suffice to say that gave birth to the “Night Project”. So, who’s interested in a group of us meeting in the evening for a couple of hours in the centre of Belfast to go take photos of some of the nice things there are round there? I’d suggest waiting a few weeks yet until the early evening is properly night like (where do I find out sunset times for the next few weeks people!?). The plan would be we go take photos for an hour or two, then head to a local pub/coffee shop/pizza place and have some beer/coffee/pizza and upload some photos onto a handy laptop thingy for a squizz.

Film people could of course come along and grumble about technology and the importance of a good dark room and such.

Hell, given my ability with my dSLR I reckon people with disposable cameras will get as much out of it as me, but it could be a giggle!

So, you interested?

*Note, for perspective tourists Belfast is a lovely city (seriously) and it’s quite safe. Certainly safer than a lot of other major cities in the world. After all we tend not to annoy foreigners, being too busy having a go at the people from the estate across the road.

Marvelous Mushrooms…

Nope no pictures, but Darrel mentioned wanting to take a photo of a specific brand/breed/species/thingmabobber of mushroom in a comment recently, so when I saw this I thought of him.

The Ulster Wildlife Trust are having a Marvelous Mushroom Meander at Slievenacloy Nature Reserve in Belfast on the 27th October from 12 until 2.30

Event details are here.

More information on the Ulster Wildlife Trust can be found here.

RSS Is Go!

OK, since Stuart asked about it and it turned out to be a widget option thing, you should now find an RSS widget doofer thingmabob on the little pane to one side.

Sorry to get all technical there.

OK, so who uploaded the wrong photo set?

Yup, I had spent last night taking some photos of another odd object from around the house and I had spent hours trying to decide which I preferred. In the end I decided to montage them all and let people decide for themselves.

Course, that would all be great if I’d actually put the right images online wouldn’t it?

Some Projects

One of the biggest challenges I seem to encounter when playing with my camera is finding a subject to snap. With the exception of Donegal where the picture is set up for you (and I mess it up), it’s hard to find something to snap.

So, I’ve decided to try and identify some projects or challenges for the coming weeks. Ideally each project will allow me to try something different with the camera or look into a trick or technique a little more. Most importantly, it will allow me to keep practising and playing.

So, here’s a couple of projects I’m considering.

Dice - I have a selection of many sided dice from my role-playing, some gems, some solid, most pretty. I’m going to try and get a few nice photos of them. The idea is to let me play with light using an inanimate object, solid backgrounds. That sort of thing.

Traffic - For a while now I’ve wanted to go and take some photos of traffic on my local motorway. I really like evening and night shots of car headlights and tail lights. The aim will be to play a little with shutter speed and low light exposures

Self Portrait – I have a tripod and remote and since nobody else ever wants published I may as well try this. I think I’ll try something obscure here, but it’s on my list.

Anyone any other ideas?

Oh, and I know a few people who read this are also photographers, so how about a bit of fun? We can pick a project and all try it for a week or two, then post up the results and see what we think. Kind of a fujimugs type game. Anyone interested?

It’s all gone quiet over there….

Yeah, I been busy.

Ironically I took some time off work to  do some stuff, including camera things….

And the one thing I haven’t done? Yup, the camera things….

That said, I was away at the weekend and did get it out (so to speak) so I’ll try to post something tomorrow.

If I had a photograph of you….

Geoff asked me a question the other day and I thought I should share the answer.

What’d he ask I hear you cry.

He asked why there were no pictures of people on this blog.

 Well….

 The simple answer is I don’t want to put pictures of people online without their explicit permission. To date the only people I’ve even tried to take a proper photograph of have been my wife and baba, and to be honest they appear in most of the E550 pictures I’ve taken of people as well. Anyway, given the nature of the web and the fact that once a picture is online it’s in the public domain forever we’re both reluctant to put pictures of the baba online where anyone can find them. So, that leaves the missus or me….

 She said no. I didn’t argue.

That leaves me.  Maybe VanGough(?) did self portraits, but not me. No siree.

 So, until one of you lot volunteer or I convince the wife that paying for a model is all about photography and not being a letch, all you’re likely to see here is pictures of things and places.

Hope you all understand.

Would the real Giant Ginger please stand up?

Gak.

I’ve been linked. And in being linked, it’s been pointed out that I never actually reveal my name here.

 This wasn’t on purpose. I actually thought it was on the bit about me thing.

 So it is now, or it will be just as soon as I’ve typed this.

Thanks Geoff for pointing that out.

Aperture – Big holes have small numbers…

Or, as my wife asked me earlier this evening

Why are you taking photos of the clothes line in the rain?

I’d mentioned earlier in the week about being so unhappy with the results of my weekends snapping. One of the problems I had was that I was trying to learn a bit more about Aperture and when I reviewed my results I couldn’t see what went wrong.

Here, let me show you….

(1/160, f/8, metering – matrix, focal length – 47.0mm, 12/08/07 15:56)

(1/8, f/36, metering – matrix, focal length – 47.0mm, 12/08/07 15:56)

Now, apart from the image on the right (or above – damn you blog editor thingy!) being a little darker. Changing the aperture appeared to do squat.

But, the theory I’d been told/read/guessed was this -

Aperture is the size of the hole in the lens that light can get through.

The amount of light hitting the lens can be controlled in two ways

1. By opening or closing the aperture
2. By increasing or decreasing the length of time the shutter is open (shutter speed)

You achieve a level of brightness within the image by complementing aperture and shutter speed. A smaller hole will require more exposure time

Aperture is measured in stops, typically fractions of how much of the lens is open and is referred to as a F number. F/2, F/4….

• F/2 effectively means the lens is half open ie: 1/2
• F/32 effectively means the lens is open to 1/32

OK, so far? Yeah so was I.

Now, apparently a large hole (small number) like F/2 would mean that the depth of field would be reduced. Something to do with less exposure time and beams of light and Star Trek stuff I think….

So, why did my two images with vastly different apertures look basically the same?

I asked a friend in work today (thanks friend!), who didn’t point and laugh and didn’t just mutter under his breath (thanks again friend!), but explained my mistake. Put simply…

The focal point in the shots above is basically infinity (not beyond it Mr Lightyear, no siree) and getting a shallow depth of field on something that far away is always going to be a problem.

He suggested I try to “focus” on something instead.

So, I did.

And here’s the results. Ignore the pictures, or rather ignore the content of the pictures, its just an example.

(0.6s, f/32, metering – matrix, focal length – 55.0mm, 16/08/07 19:19)

(1/5, f/18, metering – matrix, focal length – 55.0mm, 16/08/07 19:19)

(1/50, f/5.6, metering – matrix, focal length – 55.0mm, 16/08/07 19:19)

So, hopefully what you can see here is that as the aperture changed (opened – the number got smaller and the hole got bigger!), the background became more blurry and the shutter speed increased.

So, what are the lessons learned tonight?

1. Big holes have small numbers (Aperture is effectively 1 over the number)
2. Increasing the hole size reduces the shutter speed
3. Little numbers give shallow depth of field (blurry backgrounds)
4. Standing in the rain taking photos of a clothes line may confuse your wife and make you look like a twonk

 

Lord, I hope that’s right.