I had been hoping to jump into flickr right at the same time that I had 1000 photostream views and get a screen shot, but I missed it. It jumped up to 1008 today. I checked photostats, and as of this post, I have 4,701 views on individual photos. Closing in on 5,000. Does it matter? Not really, but it is nice to see that people want to look at my photos. One cool thing is that 20 of my photos have been selected by people as favorites. Cool.
What is normal? Well, the 18-55mm kit lens that comes with the D40 is considered a normal zoom lens. I would really like something faster. This is a common theme with me and lenses at the moment. I am also not convinced that the lens I have is all that sharp, but I have yet to try to take real test shots. Continue reading
I was trying to find out how many times I had pressed the shutter on my D40. I came accross a web site that can dig into ALL the EXIF data from an image. Jeffery’s Exif Viewer. I found that my camera has 13,229 actuations on it. Holy smokes. That’s a lot of pictures in less than a year. (Seems like it to me). Then I thought, wait, I bought this reconditioned. Maybe there were 10,000 on it when I got it. Nope. I dug up the first “role” that I shot on the camera. 216 on what I think was my first picture. Not too bad. I had feared that there would have been more.
I posted about the Cousins Day at the farm last weekend. I finally got to putting the pictures up on annieandchris.net. Most of them turned out fairly good for unposed candids in pretty harsh light.
I don’t know how I would manage it, but I have been reading about using reflectors and diffusers recently. I have been rereading Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography 2. It is all about lighting. A lot about studio lighting, but there are many things to learn/remember that could be useful. I would just have to buy more gear. There is always something.
Today, David du Chemin talked about just those kinds of things. There are the very expensive studio kind, and the just a little expensive, portable, they work pretty well kind, that maybe I could consider.
Now I just have to figure out how to get Kate to walk around and be my assistant.
Update: Here is another blog entry on using the diffusers.
So, I decided to create a “business card” from one of my pictures. I don’t really need a business card in the traditional sense, but it would be good to have something to hand out. I never seem to have a pen when I want to tell someone about my site. I really should put my flickr address on there too. Maybe on the back.
I’ve had some comments about the picture and the font. The font seems inconsistant and leaves some pretty big spaces between some of the letters. I don’t have kerning on elements, which is unfortunate. Not sure if would fix this font. Might need to try another.
I kind of like this picture, but others have said that it makes them think of a florist, or that it is not a striking photo, or some such thing. What do you think?
Well, here is hoping I was wrong, and that the D90 is about to be announced July 1. Nikon Rumors believes it confirmed that a full frame D300 and a couple of primes are coming July 1. They are also holding out that the D90 will be announced on that day. Here’s hoping. I have been hoarding my pennies for a few months now. I wonder when it will be available, even if it is announced then.
I was out at a family event, on a farm in Rochester with several families and more than a dozen kids. I decided to make myself the family photographer, as it gave me something to do. I was using my Nikor 55-200 f4-5.6 to get pictures of the kids. It was great during the day, but as the evening came, and the sun started going down I was getting frustrated.
In shadow, I could no longer shoot at ISO 200 with any sensible speed. I was down to a shutter speed of 50-60. Too slow to get kids. I bumped the ISO up to 400 then 800, but the shutter was still slower than I wanted. The lens is just too slow.
What are the options? Not much. The Nikor 70-200 VR f2.8 is huge, with a huge price tag of $1700. Yikes. Sigma has one with similar specs, no VR for about $800. Getting better. Even still, this wish item is likely to stay a wish.
I use 1 and 1 as my web provider. Can’t say that I am completely happy with them. The site can be slow at times, and yesterday and today there have been periods where it was down completely. I do like that I have a full working shell, and can SSH and SCP files to and from that box easily, but the shell can be ridiculously slow. I tried to look for a replacement. I signed up for dreamhost for a bit. When I started with them, it seemed good. The shell seemed much better… but gallery sucked. Gallery is what I use with the family photo site. After looking around the internet, I discovered that many people did not like running gallery on dreamhost for performance reasons. I heard it was the use of remote NFS shares for drive space, but don’t know for sure if 1 and 1 did anything different. Sigh.
I probably should have posted this earlier, but I just wanted to welcome anyone that was coming to this blog for the first time today. I sent an email (spamed ya) out to friends and family to let them know that I was officially up and running again. Nice to have you here.
Happy Fathers Day to me! ( Oh, to you to Dad. ) So, this Fathers Day I was presented with a new pack. I love getting camera accessory gifts! This is a great pack. Thanks Annie and Kids. Click “more” to read more.
