Mini Photo Studio

I bought a Dolica PS-240 Portable Photo Studio Kit. It contains two studio lamps, a small camera stand, a dual-sided non-reflective background screen and 4 background drops (black, white, red and blue). The main element of the kit is a bag, where you can store lamps, camera stand and background drops. It is very easy to install, in fact the bag itself is a tent. The dimensions of the tent are 45 * 9 * 45 cm (17.5 * 3.5 * 17.5 inches). Its price is very low approximately 60 USD. Of course, it is not the highest quality photo studio kit, but, it is a quite good solution for hobby purposes. Studio lights are just a lamp having professional design. Unfortunately, they can work for no more than 10 minutes without a break.

So, I was working (or playing) with this kit. Before starting, I had to iron out the background drops. Well, I am not very good at ironing and I was afraid of burn the background. Some process of ironing lasted for about half hour. The white background looked better; the black one remained a bit creased.

The first subject to be captured was an old Soviet camera. I decided to use white background. It was my first experiment with lighting. My approach was far from scientific; I just switched on the lights and moving them checking the result. I did not have much time to experiment, as the light can work for only 10 minutes. However, this stage is very enjoyable. Believe me. :)

The most problematical was the usage of the camera stand. Fixing the camera is not easy. I had to hold the camera, find its horizontal position and fixing the bolt at the same time. I hated it.

The tent and the camera stand stood in a table. It was also a problem, as I could capture only the top of the subject. The only solution was to bend the tripod. Here, there was a possibility to play again while fixing the camera. I had to say this camera stand is not my favorite. Later, I took it away and use my tripod instead.

At the end, I could take some shots. The subject, the old camera was black with some shine metallic lines. I realized that a bit overexposing the photo, the white background became almost invisible.

This technique works well until the subject is dark. If you examine the sample shot, you can realize that the background is not white enough. It is because I used the automatic white balance. It would have be better to use manual settings.

I met a problem during using the white background. I was in a hurry to install the photo studio so mush that I forgot to take away the tablecloth. I cannot realize it until I switched on the lights. Then I was too lazy to take the tablecloth out. Now, I have a pretty nice shot, where you can see its pattern through the white background. :(

I had some problem with the black background, too. As I mentioned it was not smooth enough, as I was not very good at ironing. The tine waves could be seen on my every shot.

I started playing with exposition like in case of the white background. Of course, I wanted to make my capture darker. But, it did not work well. The subject itself became dark too.

I do not have PS, as it is too expensive not for me but for my wife. :) She tries to limit financial outgoings on my new hobby. Well, I would better buy a DSLR camera instead of PS. Fortunately, the GIMP is always with you. I made a small postwork on my shots with black background with gimp. With adjusting color levels function I cut off the black tones from my capture. Such way, I got a nice black background instead of dark waves.

Shots Of Ducks

Everybody hates shots of ducks. According to my friends’ opinion, capturing ducks is good-for-nothing. Last week, I read an article explaining needless of taking such shots. However, I am sure everybody took shots of ducks. I believe everybody had so called duck period in his/her life.

I admit that there are dozens of photos of ducks and these shots are very similar. It is very good to take interesting duck photos. In addition, I admit I do not find interesting such shots including my ones. It is interesting why people do not count capturing lowering sun useless. There are dozens of such photos. They look the same, not counting some interesting captures. What is the difference between duck photos and shots of the lowering sun? I do not know. Why is so funny to capture ducks and why is not funny to capture the lowering sun? I do not know. What about the flowers? You must be very talented to take interesting shots of flowers. You must be very creative if you would like to take a unique shot of flowers. Are flowers better ducks?

Please, do not misunderstand me. I know that most of duck shots are not interesting. Look at this photo taken by me. Nothing special.

My most interesting photo of duck is capturing a water drop with the duck. But, this shot is not very interesting.

However, taking shots of ducks was very important to me from point of view learning photography. I tried to capture other bird, too. But small birds can be taken hardly with my bridge camera. From this point of view, ducks, mallards and swans are ideal subject. They do not fear of people, so you can go very close to them.

I learned much taking such these half-wild birds. For example, I was very proud on my swam shot, until somebody did not mention that it was too white. The title of the shot is White Hunter. Somebody made a comment “It is indeed white”. :) From this point, I have started to use exposition correction. I do not know where this shot is. I can show you other shot of white swam like an example of a bad shot.

What can I say? Do not be afraid of taking ducks. Your photos may not win the photo of the year award, but you can learn much about the photography and you can earn useful practice.

Last but not least, you can enjoy the moment of pushing the shutter button on your camera. Is not it the most important for a hobby photographer?

Panorama Shots

Interesting part of landscape photography is panorama shots. There are special cameras for this purpose and many other cameras support panorama captures. My camera is one of them.

I liked the wide panorama captures and I wanted to take such shots. It is very easy. Panorama shots can be created without any support if you have a picture manipulating software like Photoshop or GIMP. All you have to have is a tripod. Just mount the camera to the tripod, make a shot, turn your camera horizontally, take the second shot and so on. In the end, you will have series of captures, which can be united with GIMP or other software. The only requirement is that pictures must have common parts.

I have a good book, the author of which suggested marking the first and the last picture of the panorama series. His method is simple. Before taking the first picture, capture your finger and after finishing the last shot, capture two of your fingers. Such way, you will know that images between “fingers” belong to one panorama series.

I applied this method. Later, when I uploaded photos to a computer, I realized that it was not necessary to do, as my camera supports the panorama shots and it put series into different folders. Now, I have very good capture of my fingers. :)

The software of my camera is able to create a panorama shot from the standalone photos. It is very easy; I selected the photos in the preferred order, set the direction of moving the camera and pressed the Create button.

The software cannot create a panorama shot from one of the series; other shots were good. I do not understand the reason of failure. I just suppose that I left too much time before two shots and the landscape changed too much. Do not forget, clouds fly over the sky, and if the sky is fairly big on the shot, then it is difficult to find the common part.

Now, I know there is no time to waste. I must take shots without delay, just turn the camera and press the button and turn and press, very quickly.

Landscapes

Recently, I started taking shot of landscapes. I enjoyed watching awesome landscape shots taken by others. Once, I got a book written about my home county. This book contained many photos of the countryside. The photos were awful. They were so awful that I could not describe them. I am still a newcomer hobby photographer, yet I knew I could make better photos.

When I was on holiday, I grabbed my camera and sat in my car to travel around and take some shots. This trip was very enjoyable to me and I took many photos. Of course, I met challenges. Before going to this trip, I read some books of landscape photographer. These books said the photographer must have woken up early to catch the wonderful lights of sunrise. I planned to wake up early morning. But, it was just a plan and when I went out of the town it was about 10:00 AM. I missed the colorful sunrise. :(

I was sure that I was wasting my time, but I did not give up and continued my tour. I stopped my car very often to take shots. Some interesting clouds swam across the blue sky.

The first challenge I met was setting the proper exposure values. I measure the light on the sky and the fields became dark. Measure light on the field, the sky became whiter and the clouds disappeared. Clever books I read did not say anything of this problem.

I tried different settings of the camera, and the optimal seemed measuring light on the clothes and increasing the exposure collection by about one positive number. Such way both the clouds and the fields were shown on the shots. Maybe it is not the standard way; however it gave the best result for me.

As I mentioned, I took many photos breaking one of the rules. This rule said that the photographer had to give a title to a shot before taking it. With other words, the photographer must know the reason of taking shot. Capturing wonderful landscape is not enough, as there are many shots of awesome landscapes. This rule is easy to understand, but very hard to keep. :)

Later, when I was browsing among the photo files, I learned importance of this rules. Next time, I will not waste my time capturing lovely but boring landscapes. I will save my time to find something really interesting.

Night Shots

I enjoyed watching other peoples’ shot taken in late afternoon or night. I was reading a lot about this theme and I knew I did not have any chance to take nice shots without a tripod. I bought a tripod and there were nothing, what would stop me going to take photos.

In the articles, I found an often-mentioned phrase named as “blue hour”. Blue hour is the end of the afternoon or the beginning of the night, when the sky has wonderful blue color. According to other articles, the sky has many colors from the red to the blue color. Then what is the blue hour? Honestly, I have no idea. I do not know, but it does not have a real meaning. I will explain why a bit later.

Well, I grabbed my camera and went out to the street at about 7PM. I found an interesting subject, the building of the parliament and set up my tripod. There was nothing to do just to wait for the blue hour.

I decided to take shots during waiting. It was a very good decision, because while I was busy with settings of my camera, I realized the color of the sky was changing in every second. Some minutes later, I realized that car owners switched on headlights and the street lamps started to work.

I was taking photos, as many as I could, the lights and the colors was changing permanently. I do not know if the blue hour arrived or not. I was too busy to listen to it.

I can suggest you to take photos when you see the subject is beautiful and do not care of the blue hour. However, you must hurry because the lights and the colors of the sky changes very quickly. You do not have second chance. If you miss something, then you must come next day to compensate your failure.

It is worth to use small aperture (the biggest value), then the lights radiating from the lamps look like a stars. Usage of big aperture size convert sthe light of the lamps into a ball.

I mentioned in the previous post that I preferred AV mode of the camera. This case the AV mode is not the best solution. It worked well until it did not become very late. Later, my camera could not find the proper shutter time related to the selected aperture size. The capture remained very dark. The best solution for the night shots is the manual mode. You probably use tripod, so the settings can be done easy, as you can use both your hands.

On the first day, the sky was deep blue on my shots. Later, I can capture the sky having reddish and bluish tones. They were beautiful, also. As I mentioned the colors of the sky would change permanently. But, do not forget, any light is essential to take shots. If your photos remain hopelessly dark, then you have to find a lighter object with lamps. Alternatively, maybe, it is the time to finish taking shot for today. The black sky does not look nice on the photos, even with awesome floodlit building. You will know when the day will end. :)

I like some abstract photos. Playing with the lights and the part of the building makes excellent conditions to take such shots.

Shooting Modes

The real photographer never use automatic mode. The professional photographer takes shots only in manual mode. I often hear such sentences. It is interesting that I read many books written by professional photographers and I never met such sentences in their books. It is also worth wondering why the cameras have many shooting modes and why some of them are called creative.

I decided not to listen to people who demand other to use only manual mode. I admit the manual mode is extremely useful and it cannot be avoided in some situations. Furthermore, I admit taking photos in manual mode is cool and it has unique atmosphere.

In most of cases, I prefer aperture mode (AV). This mode gives me freedom over DOF and it help me in calculation the related shutter speed. I welcome this help. However, the calculation sometimes does not meet my requirement. In this case, the setting the exposure correction illuminates the problem.

I sometimes decided to capture in Program AE mode. For example, when I was too excited to waste time with camera settings or in case of landscape shots. A week ago, I found a fantastic scene. Imagine a large cornfield on a small hillside with a fresh green tree in its middle. I jumped out of my car and take some shots. I realized that the shots were not taken according my will only at home, some hours later. I wanted sharp spikes in the foreground and the sharp tree in the distance. The automatic module of my camera did not know it and only the spikes became sharp in the picture. So, I will remain in the aperture mode to avoid such problems.

Of course, there are cases, when the only solution is manual mode. In night photos, the camera settings will not be the best. I usually take macro shots in manual mode, too. Please, understand I am not against the manual mode. I sometimes like it. Just I like to use the features of my camera. It is big help for me. Usage of AV mode prohibits me to listen to other useful things, like the subject of the photo or the composition.

Moon

In January, Moon and the Venus stood very close to each other. It was very beautiful and I wanted to take a shot of them very much. That time, I had LC50, which has creative modes. The only problem was that I had never used any of creative modes and I had no idea how to do this. I was disappointed during taking photos. The moon looked very small and it looked like a white – yellow patch on the photos, without the detailed view I liked on other peoples’ captures. The only acceptable captures I could make were shots from the distance.

Therefore, I was very happy, when I received SX10 camera. I was sure that I would capture the Moon in its beauty. So, I grabbed the camera and went ahead. I took shots and I became disappointed again. I do not even paid attention on the size of Moon. It was not necessary, as there was only a white patch on the photos.

There was nothing to do but reading what I did wrong. Some articles later, I realized that I did nothing wrong and it was the problem. I had used automatic mode of the camera including autofocus.

I made a try again. At this time, I used manual mode, as the articles said. Moon looked nice!

Now, after taking dozen shots of Moon, I know that the most important thing is manual focus. Auto focus modes do not work properly and Moon looked like a patch nothing more. So, before taking shots, set your camera to manual focus mode and set the distance to infinity or beyond the infinity. You will realize the result at once. If you take shots late night, then setting the focus manually is enough to take good photo of Moon. Its size was a bit disappointing. But what to do. I have to accept the limits of the camera.

However, I recommend using spot metering mode and select the most wonderful colors changing the white balance. Finding the right aperture and the shutter speed makes your capture better.

If you want to capture great craters then you better to take shots of growing or decreasing Moon, when the light reaches its surface from the side and makes pretty shadows. Look at the moon pictures, you can see nice crates only on the inner side of Moon. Full Moon is also great but you hardly will find cool craters on it.

I like these photos. I wanted more. I wanted the background to be blue instead of dark. It seemed very easy. I just must go out afternoon when there is not night and Moon is on the sky. I met new problems taking shots of early Moon. In this case, settings of aperture and shutter speed are essential. Forget about the viewfinder; the LCD screen is your only friend now. It is worth verifying the captures after the shots. The lights are fragile and checks are indeed important.

The last advice is the most useful. Always use tripod unless you are a superman.