Photography – Page 2 – Geoff Fox: My Permanent Record

How I Shot The Moon

Truth is if I took my Canon Xsi and set it on auto it would produce the same type of shot you get from a point and shoot–overexposed and a little blurry.

I went out and shot the Moon last night. A reasonably pedestrian shot, but it got a bunch of comments on Facebook and Twitter. That’s probably because lots of people try to shoot the Moon with little success. I’ll give you my secrets.

If you’ve got a camera that’s full automatic you’re screwed! The moon will be white and totally featureless. Sorry.

However, it’s possible your camera isn’t as automatic as you think! Lots of point and shoot cameras also have manual modes or ways to play with the settings a little.

My shot is underexposed! Well, it is to the on-camera metering system.

The Moon is small enough in the field of view that the camera is willing to think it’s an anomaly and set-up for what’s in the rest of the frame–black! I told the camera, “use your judgement then subtract two f/stops.” That made the finished product darker than what auto called for.

Even with my 200mm lens the Moon was small in the frame. I cropped the shot with Photoshop. You can easily crop or cut away the unimportant parts of shots with Picasa , from Google and free, or at Picnik.com, also free.

Cropping a photo is almost like zooming in farther. You’ll be showing part of the frame in the same space you’d normally show all of it. That exaggerates any motion and increases the chance of a blurry shot. To combat that I set my shutter speed reasonably high at 1/640 second and mounted my camera on a monopod for extra stability.

No monopod or tripod? Sit the camera on a stationary object like a car or a fence. Lean up against a tree or building. If you’ve got a jacket use that to cushion and steady the camera and give yourself a little more latitude in where it’s pointed.

I wasn’t confident my lens would properly focus on the moon so I focused manually. I’m not sure if that helped, but I was more confident in my abilities that its.

This photo was sharpened after it was downloaded to my PC. Almost all my photos are. Again, this is something Picasa and Picnik both provide which really help. Sharpening a photo a little can make it pop out at you.

When I post photos I’ll often be asked what kind of camera I used. Truth is if I took my Canon Xsi and set it on auto it would produce the same type of shot you get from a point and shoot–overexposed and a little blurry. Spending a few seconds to manually adjust can make a world of difference.

A Few More Vegas Pics And Their Stories

Las Vegas is very photogenic. That’s indisputable.

Las Vegas is very photogenic. That’s indisputable. In addition I’ve found it very conducive for HDR photography. HDR is the technique which extends the range of brightness levels seen in a photograph by compressing the range. I know–confusing.

Your eye sees can see dark darks and bright whites at the same time. Cameras can’t. HDR produces a photo closer to what the eye sees. The raw material is usually a series of three photos taken in rapid succession.

Using different shutter speeds you end up with one underexposed, one overexposed and one properly image. A computer program combines the three produce the HDR.

Unfortunately it’s easy to overdo HDR and come up with some “Elvis on Velvet” results. I read complaints from the photo cognoscenti all the time. I mostly agree.

The reason I thought this shot would work was because of the bright clouds above and deep shadows within the Mirage Volcano. A standard photo would show detail in one or the other but not both.

I’ve already posted one photo from our little journey to Blue Diamond, NV. It was very dark and very cold! We really had no idea what we’d see. Actually the photos from Blue Diamond produced detail not visible to the naked eye. It was just too darned dark!

I am disappointed in most of this series of photos including the one I posted earlier. The exposure was too long allowing the Earth’s rotation to smudge the stars. This is one of the shorter exposures–only 22 seconds which cuts down on the motion.

For those interested it’s f/3.5 ISO 400 using a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens at 44mm. I tried manually focusing by looking at stars, but mostly just trusted the infinity mark on the lens. There’s a little help from Photoshop in bringing down the ambient brightness of the sky and helping illuminate the dimmer parts of the butte.

I have no idea how close the butte is, but probably a mile or more away. We were standing on Bonnie Springs Road just off Route 159 pointing reasonably north.

One night we went downtown to Fremont Street. Years ago before the Strip was developed Fremont Street was the heart of Las Vegas. Nowadays it’s an open air pedestrian mall surrounded by older, seedier casinos. There’s entertainment in the street and a pretty good atmosphere.

As we waited for the overhead lightshow to start this guy walked by! I have no idea what he was doing or why he was there. I only had one shot! What you see if what I got with no cropping.

My Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens was on the camera. That’s a lot of lens for a darkened area. I dialed up to ISO 1600 and 1/250 second for the shutter. The image still needed a little Photoshop help boosting the levels and killing the noise. It looks a little soft and runny to me probably more because of ISO 1600 than anything else. It’s still worth showing.

In the movie this guy will be played by my friend Rick Allison.

Finally a shot from our first night in town. We went to dinner at Mon Ami Gabi a restaurant attached to the Paris Hotel with an open air patio overlooking The Strip.

It was cold that night! Luckily Mon Ami Gabi (and loads of other places) have these radiant gas heaters.

This was a shot I visualized before shooting. It came out just as expected. The soft background is what I wanted and very pleasing.

This was shot with my Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens wide open and fully extended. ISO was a noisy 1600 and the shutter speed was 1/125 second.

What To Do This Weekend?

“You’re going to spend the weekend on the sofa.” Really? That makes me seem so boring.

Before she left for California Helaine made a prediction. “You’re going to spend the weekend on the sofa.”

Really? That makes me seem so boring.

I had loose plans to visit with a fellow photographer in New York City. He can’t do it Saturday. The weather doesn’t look camera friendly Sunday.

I’m not sure what to do. These things have a way of working themselves out… on the sofa.

I hope not.

New, Free And Easy Vacation Slideshow Maker

The link led me to TripAdvisor a site we’ve used in the past to help research vacation plans. They’ve gone into competition with Animoto and other online slideshow producers with a service that produces an iMovie type vacation presentation nearly instantly and totally effortlessly.

I woke up to find an email from Helaine with nothing more than a link. True husband/wife communications in action!

The included photos have been on this site before, but the chance to show you the concept makes posting this worthwhile.

Geoff And Helaine And The Phillies Slideshow: Geoff Fox’s trip from Hamden to New York City was created by TripAdvisor. See another New York City slideshow. Create your own stunning free slideshow from your travel photos.

The Vacation Poster I Made

Using nine or ten of my best shots and a little Photoshop magic I can fashion a 16″ x 24″ poster. The finished product looks like something you’d buy in a store, except it’s our photos!

Here I am with around 1,500 shots from our Canada cruise. At some point they will move to a backup drive and disappear. There’s got to be a better way to use them?

“Make a poster,” Helaine said.

I’ve done this before. Using nine or ten of my best shots and a little Photoshop magic I can fashion a 16″ x 24″ poster. The finished product looks like something you’d buy in a store, except it’s our photos!

The process takes a little forethought, but not a whole lot of skill. It’s a series of repetitive steps to get each image the correct size with border effects and drop shadow then properly place it on a grid. It took under an hour start-to-finish.

This is a reduced resolution version to squeeze onto the Internet. The real poster file is 7200 by 4800 pixels or 34.56 Megapixels!

Fishing For Conch on Long Island Sound

Matt is the captain. He likes to work early in the day. We were on the boat around 4:00 AM.

I spent Monday morning on-the-water. Erik Dobratz’s brothers Matt and David are fishermen… or I guess more accurately ‘conchers’. I packed up “Clicky,” picked up Erik and headed to the dock in Old Saybrook.

Matt is the captain. He likes to work early in the day. We were on the boat around 4:00 AM.

The boat itself is called “Free Bird,” though you won’t find that stenciled on the hull. It’s a “Downeaster” — a stubby working boat with a flat deck leading to a totally open stern. A winch and pulley on the starboard side are used to haul the conch pots out of the water. If you’ve watch “Deadliest Catch” you’ve seen winches like this in action.

It’s dangerous. You can lose a finger. Matt has.

Unlike “Deadliest Catch” we were heading into the totally ice free, reasonably flat Long Island Sound. The shellfish the Dobratz boys were going for sat under 90 feet of water off the shoreline between Guilford and Clinton.

The sky was just beginning to turn from black to blue as we headed down the Connecticut River past the two lighthouses at the mouth of the Connecticut River and into the Sound. Within a few minutes the reds of dawn were brightening on the horizon. Sunrise itself was still over a half hour away.

There’s a lot of trust being a fisherman. Matt’s lines are unprotected round-the-clock. Anyone floating by knows they’re full of valuable catch.

“Free Bird” motored through the sound picking up pot-after-pot of conch. Fish or crabs mistakenly caught were thrown back into the drink or left as bait for the next catch.

By the time the day was done 14 orange bags full of conch sat on the deck. They were sold and in an industrial refrigerator on-shore within moments of docking.

My final catch was over 500 photos! Here are my keepers. The rest I’ll throw back.

Here’s a little video I captured on my iPhone over the course of the morning.

Very Close AKA Macro Photography

Most good macro photography is done on a tripod with an on-camera ring light. I’m a little short in that regard.

I’ve taken a few forays into macro photography. Macro photography produces an image larger than the object shot. Most lenses won’t natively produce macro shots. There are a few ways to go about this, but the cheapest way (my way) is with a screw-on close-up lens. It’s like putting reading glasses on your camera!

The net effect allows the camera to focus while closer to where you’re pointing. The depth-of-field, the range that’s in focus, shrinks. Focus and framing become critical. Most good macro photography is done on a tripod with an on-camera ring light. I’m a little short in that regard.

These shots were taken of a few flowering trees in our front yard. The flowers go in-and-out of season in a week or two! The bee should give you an idea of the size of the flowers–tiny.

Helaine asked if I was scared of the bee? No. He was a little too busy working.

More Boynton Beach Birds

They don’t seem to mind my obsession with photography. They don’t know me well enough yet.

I can’t begin to tell you how happy we are with my mother’s progress, even over this very short period. Yes, she’s got pain and she’s taking medication but she’s managing and the pain is bearable. So far so good. She spent most of the day in the living room as my cousins and a few friends came by to wish her well.

By late afternoon I was ready to get out for a while so I walked the 90 seconds to the pond to visit my friends the birds. They don’t seem to mind my obsession with photography. They don’t know me well enough yet.

As luck would have it two young men came by with a bag of bread. The birds were going to be closer today.

Clicking on the photos brings a larger version.