Bright Yellow

I’m pretty happy with my life right now, so I thought I’d post something that relates. Here are some bright yellow flowers, haha….

Flare

Here is a photo of fireworks for my daily post. I need to process some photos and upload them so I can post something new haha….

Sunset Over the River

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been pretty busy transitioning into school again. I also haven’t been taking many pictures lately, but don’t worry! More is to come! Enjoy this shot I took on that familiar river bank…

Cloudy Reflections

I took this shot from the river bank near my apartment. I planned to capture the sunset, but I forgot to take into account the hills from that viewpoint and missed it. The sun was already below the crest of the hill. So I looked around for other shots to take. I saw the cloud in the water and liked the color, so I took this shot…

Dry Mud

Here’s a shot I took very recently. I went down to the river bank just after sunset (I was a little too late). I noticed the dry mud that had cracked and made interesting patterns. Here is a macro shot of it…

SmugMug

I’m now selling my photos on SmugMug. I could use the extra cash to fuel my hobby spending. Right now I only have my HDRs up there, but I’ll try to get more on there. If you like what you see, go ahead and buy it! I’d highly appreciate it! Thanks!

http://limeredstudios.smugmug.com/Rebel-Studio

Shooting Modes Part III: Auto Depth

Today I’ll talk about Auto Depth mode (or A-Dep on your camera’s mode dial). This will be a shorter post, as there isn’t much to Auto-Depth. In this mode, the camera decreases aperture until all its focus points (the 40D has 9 in a diamond shape; other cameras vary) are in focus.

If you are capturing something that takes up the entire frame and doesn’t have much depth to it, then your aperture is likely to remain big. If it has some depth (under some focus points), then your aperture will be smaller. For instance, if you are photographing a group of people and they are standing in a straight line, then the aperture will be big (because they are in the same focal plane). If they are spread out depth-wise, then you aperture will be smaller. If one of the focus points does not overlay someone, the camera will keep the background in focus as well, possibly making you shoot at f/22.

I find that I use this mode when I am taking shots of something that takes up most of the frame. You must be careful though. This mode works best during the day, as there is plenty of light to work with small apertures. I never use this mode at night. Without flash, your shutter speed is just unusable (maybe usable with a tripod). Using flash in this mode just sets the camera to use the flash sync speed (depends on camera, flash, and ISO).

That’s it for shooting modes. There is manual mode and full automatic mode, but I think those are understood already.

Fire in the Sky

I took more fireworks shots on July 4th. I think they came out pretty well. If you want to take shots like these, read my post on it from way back when here. Take a look at my other fireworks shots here. Enjoy!

Shooting Modes Part II: Shutter Priority

I think it is way past time to continue my tutorial series. So here we go:

Now we’ll talk about Shutter Priority mode (or Tv on the mode dial of your camera). This mode is most useful for capturing sports in my opinion. It allows you to select a shutter speed, and then varies aperture automatically to capture the proper exposure. In sports, you want a fast shutter speed to capture motion without blur. In most cases this is 1/500 or faster. Keep in mind that the scene has to be fairly illuminated, or else the picture will come out darker than it should be. You shouldn’t have a problem if your outdoors during the daytime, but if you’re in a covered stadium, artificial lights may not be enough. You may need to increase your ISO. Unless you’ve set it to automatic, the camera will not change it (for most cameras I think). Of course fast lenses help in this regard. Sports photographers love those Canon f/2.8L lenses. Take a look at the photographers’ cameras next time you see a game

Taken by me at 1/640

In some cases, you may want to chose a slow shutter speed. Recently I wanted to capture a spinning carnival ride with blur. I think I set the shutter speed to something like 1/60 in Tv mode and was very satisfied with the results. Then I turned set it to 1/640 to capture the hilarious face of one of my friends.

There are many many uses for Tv. Check out panning on flickr.

Taken by Mazda6 (Tor) at 1/60

Globes of Light

This was taken on top of one of the buildings above Ruby Falls if I remember correctly. It was foggy, so any source of light looked much bigger than it really was…