Digital Reflections Chat
Archive for August, 2009
To shoot great photos, sometimes all you need is a different perspective. I don’t have any formal photography training, but I have gotten tips from professionals about doing whatever it takes to get an interesting shot. Sometimes that means moving around your subject to shoot it from different angles, climbing up onto something taller to get a better perspective, or even lying down on the ground and shooting upward.
One of my favorite photos is one I took last summer at Seattle’s Gasworks Park. It was a beautiful sunny day in the hilly park, and I was lying on my stomach at the base of a hill, reading a book. There was a row of five people sitting at the top of the hill, and another person up there flying a kite. The view I had from lying on my stomach was so cool: An expanse of green, rolling grass, brilliant blue sky, and an assortment of people enjoying the day. I pulled out my Canon Powershot digital camera and shot several photos while looking up the hill, varying the zoom and playing with different compositions of grass and sky. I ended up with a vibrant shot that captured both the detail of individual blades of grass and the enjoyment of park-goers in the summer – all because I shot it from a different perspective.
The Cheeseburger festival in Caseville Michigan is held in August. Ten days of cheeseburgers, events, a golf tournament, and yes drinking. I took my camera to the “Parade of Fools” on Wednesday at 6 P.M. and it lasted for over two hours. Quite a long and fun parade for a town of under a thousand souls. Every year the festival gets bigger and more people come to experience the madness for them selves.
This photo was taken during the parade with my old Sony Point and shoot. Which i use when i don’t want to lug around my Nikon DSLR.
The campgrounds and motels are packed so you had better plan ahead. If your hot and female you can stay at my place. 
So grab you camera and get out there and take some pictures. Who knows what will happen.
I would never consider myself to be a serious photographer, but I do enjoy capturing the essence of a vacation experience. In the past, I’ve stuck with low-quality disposable cameras because of their convenience. Then it struck me: disposables aren’t convenient at all. For one thing, they required hours of time spent dropping them off at a store for development and making the return trip to pick up the prints.
I began looking for an alternative to disposables – nothing fancy, just a functional point and shoot digital camera that would allow me to review the photos and print them out myself. Ever since making the switch, I’ve been impressed by the added quality a low-cost point-and-shoot provides. Most of the lighting and winding features are fully automatic, so I don’t have to worry about the technical aspects.
Local festivals are a great place to get out the camera and take some shots that may be different from what you usually take. Just be adventurous and get arrested. Kidding
“The Panasonic TZ5 is a fast, small, digital point-and-shoot with a Leica 10x optical zoom, and 3 inch high-resolution (470,000 pixel) LCD screen. The 10x Leica optical zoom (28mm-280mm equiv.) is a delight to use showing no color fringing (truly surprising) that I could see, and amazing detail.
Whether the action is fast or slow, close up or far away, you’ll always get the shot you want with the PowerShot SX10 IS. This camera has an incredibly powerful 20x Optical Zoom, 10-megapixel resolution, and a DIGIC 4 Image Processor for high-performance face and motion detection.
Manual Focus
I liked the camera’s manual focus ability. When focusing manually, you see the focus area enlarged to help you fine-tune your focus and you also see the distance markings. Truth be told, I find manual focus rarely needed as the automatic focus works really well. Still, bulkier cameras with focus rings, e.g. Fuji S6000fd or real SLRs work best for fine-tuning focus at telephoto.
Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).