David's Shutter Bug Club

[David In Indy]

Awesome pictures Kerry and Rob!!

Kerry, you captured the Sydney skyline beautifully. I can see why they refer to Sydney as the "Emerald City"! It's a beautiful skyline and you photographed it perfectly.

Rob, I love the colors in your photos; especially the second one (the photo of Melbourne). The pink tree against the dark sky really made the colors pop. The colors in all of your photos are very good, and you composed the shots well.    Thanks for sharing them with us!

I hope you both post some more pics. They are all wonderful!

[David In Indy]

Dad and Cody

I did a terrible job of composing this picture, but it's cute. You can really see Cody's personality in this photo.

My Dad is about to feed Cody a cookie. I used a faster shutter speed since Cody was very excited at the prospect of receiving his dog biscuit. He was bouncing and bopping around, and anything less than 1/500 would have resulted in image blur...

Conditions: Partial sun
Camera Equipment: Sony CyberShot F-717
Camera Mode: Manual
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
White Balance: Auto
Light Meter: Center Weight Average
Exposure Compensation Value: - 2/3
ISO: 100
Flash: Off








Conditions: Partial sun
Camera Equipment: Sony CyberShot F-717
Camera Mode: Manual
Aperture: f/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
White Balance: Auto
Light Meter: Center Weight Average
Exposure Compensation Value: - 1/3
ISO: 100
Flash: Off
Other: Optical Zoom x2.5

[injest]

David, do you have any experience with photo editors??

[David In Indy]

David, do you have any experience with photo editors??

I really don't Jess. At least not enough to offer tips and give suggestions. I goof around with Canon's editing software a little, and I own copy of ArcSoft Camera Suite, but that's about it. I know Milli is quite experienced with photo editing. Maybe we could persuade her to come over here and teach us a few things.

[David In Indy]

ISO Settings - The Pros and Cons

ISO stands for International Standards Organization. The ISO will determine the sensitivity of your camera (or film in non digital cameras) to light. The digital camera becomes more sensitive to light as the ISO number increases. This means the photographer can often obtain a properly exposed image without a flash in poorly lit conditions. Image blur from camera shake also becomes less of a problem because faster shutter speeds are possible. Most digital cameras come with user selectable ISO settings ranging from ISO 100-300 to ISO 80-800 or even 1600 on high end cameras. Most digital cameras can also be set to "auto" which hands over the ISO decision making to the camera's on board computer. With film cameras, the ISO is determined by the film speed; the number indicated on the outside of the box. For most film cameras, if the ISO needs to be changed, the photographer must remove the film from the camera and replace it with a faster or slower film. Most film cameras will rewind the film so it can be safely removed from the camera, while remembering the last frame number. When the film is placed back inside the camera it is advanced back to the next unexposed frame.

Image noise is a problem for both film and digital cameras. Increasing the ISO often increases the chance of image noise, referred to as "film grain" in non digital cameras. ISO settings above 500 run a high risk of image noise. With ISO settings of 800 or above, image noise is almost guaranteed. Fortunately most of today's digital cameras include imaging processors powerful enough to remove some or much of the noise, but the photographer should always be wary of the chance some noise will be present in the image.

The following three photos were shot within a 5 minute time span, between 3:10 - 3:15 am.


ISO 100, shutter speed 10 seconds

This first photo shows an image free of image noise. A low ISO of 100 definately helped. It is slightly blurry but this is because even with the image stabilization turned on, a shutter speed of 10 seconds was too long for the camera to be held in my hand. I should have used my tripod. There is some fringing evident in the picture, and by setting a lower exposure compensation value I probably could have eliminated some or all of the fringing problem. But this has little to nothing to do with ISO. The glow you see in the sky is normal. This is caused by the lights from downtown Indianapolis and is not the result of the ISO or any fault of my camera. The sky towards downtown always remains fairly lit up at night.







The next image was taken roughly 2 minutes later. The picture is a bit lighter, but it remains clear and relatively free of image noise...

ISO 200, shutter speed 10 seconds






ISO 1600, shutter speed 5 seconds.

This last image was shot about 2 minutes later (3:15 am) and helps to illustrate the power of a high ISO setting. The picture is well lit and almost looks like it was taken in the daytime. However the image noise is excessive and totally unacceptable.

[underdown]

So, Rob, you've not seen David Williamson's play, "Emerald City," set in Sydney? I think it was later made into a film. I recall Sydney being referred to as the Emerald City long before Williamson wrote his play, however.

Huh ?
Who ?

Crikey (quote),
I spend too long at my desk.
No wonder I don't have many photos of Sydney.
Aaaah, but, this weekend, all that will change !

[underdown]

I really don't Jess. At least not enough to offer tips and give suggestions. I goof around with Canon's editing software a little, and I own copy of ArcSoft Camera Suite, but that's about it. I know Milli is quite experienced with photo editing. Maybe we could persuade her to come over here and teach us a few things.

Actually, (blowing my bags here) I don't know much about cameras, and all that technical stuff is making my head spin, but I have several photo editing packages that I use quite a lot, 'though they are not top end, expensive ones. I think photo editing is just as important and as much fun as taking the photo in the first place.

I like that example of lightening in stages of a dark photo, David.
One reason I don't bother much with flash. It can make a photo look too stark, and shadows can be a problem unless you use a slave flash. It's easier to use editing software to make the light corrections. Noise can be a problem, of course, but there are ways to correct that, too. And, of course, flash isn't much help for anything at a distance.

It is quite amazing what one can do with editing software. I don't use morphing or image distortion (where fat can become thin - and no I don't do that), but even the basic tools can be fascinating to experiment with. The reason I use a few packages is that not all have every feature or the same quality of particular tools. One is good for balance, one for touch-up, another for cropping, etc. It is an inexpensive way to play around with digital photos. There is some quite good software for free on the net, albeit fairly basic.

Ummm ... I don't want the job of editing expert, because I'm not, but I'll just do my best to help if I can.

 

[David In Indy]

There you go Jess! It looks like Rob is a good person to ask your photo editing questions! And I might tug on his ear too with some questions of my own.

[underdown]

.... it's cute. You can really see Cody's personality in this photo.

Awwwww. He is, too. I love dogs. And they are so photogenic !!
Another favourite subject ... they almost invariably look cute in some way.
Do you think we could have a Pets Corner ?
I have a few of puppies and horses etc.
 (even spiders and snakes, but they are in another thread already) 
 

[David In Indy]

August Eclipse

Actually I rather like the way these pictures turned out. These are pictures from the lunar eclipse last August. The eclipse was very difficult to see in my part of the world. It was very faint. They warned us of this beforehand, but I figured I would go out and try to photograph it anyway. The camera picked up the colors and the light much better than I thought it would. The pictures show the moon in much brighter colors than was visible to the naked eye. I achieved this by using a very slow shutter speed, a high exposure value, a mid range aperture and ISO setting, switching on my noise reduction system in my camera and manually white balancing my camera with a gray card in the acual shooting conditions. Fortunately the eclipse took place in the opposite direction of downtown, otherwise the moon would not have been visible at all.

I shot these pictures with my Sony CyberShot, and I think my Canon G9 would have done an even better job. Unfortunately the eclipse occured several weeks before I purchased my G9.

I didn't have my tripod handy (I broke it a few days earlier) so I used a fence post to stabilize the camera and tilted it up towards the moon. So, this is why I am pleased with these moon pictures.

Conditions: Dark / Very dim moon light
Camera Equipment: Sony CyberShot F-717
Camera Mode: Manual
Aperture: f/5.0
Shutter Speed: 4 seconds
White Balance: Manual / Custom
Light Meter: Spot
Exposure Compensation Value: +2
ISO: 400
Flash: Off
Other: Noise reduction system ON


The eclipse started with the moon disappearing behind the earth's shadow....







.... until it nearly disappeared.







Then, at the height of the eclipse, the moon turned dark red and remained like this for about 10 minutes before reappearing from the shadows.