Hi everyone! Miss me?? I'm in serious internet withdrawal! I posted a few days ago in my DPL thread but forgot to post here. I'm currently without internet at home and have to come borrow my cousin's connection. Hopefully everything will be fixed soon. My DSL modem is broke. I either have to fork out the money for a new one or switch to cable. I was in the process of switching to cable, but they cancelled my install 2 times, then told me I couldn't get the package deal I was supposed to be getting because I already have cable tv. Now they are offering a different deal (though it's actually the same deal), but I'd have to sign a 2 year contract to get it.
Isn't that nuts? I didn't have internet for quite a while recently. I hope you get everything sorted out soon.
Cable is faster than DSL. If you figure you're going to have internet for two years no matter how you get it, the cable thing may be a good deal. Of course, then you're dealing with the cable company, which is never a fun thing. And I too hope you get it sorted out soon!
Hi gang. I'm back from two days of camping with the Girl Scouts. Griz, I'm delighted to hear you were validated!
I finally have a shot to contribute to the beachhouse. Granted, the beach here is maybe 10 feet wide, and it's the Potomac River, not the ocean, but hey, it's sand and water. :)
My random discovery for the afternoon:
if your camera has a built in flash which prevents the use of a softbox or any kind of similar piece of apparatus, it's still possible to sort of diffuse the light by holding a stretched pair of tights wrapped around the flash as it goes off. Who needs proper equipment anyway :p
My random discovery for the afternoon:
if your camera has a built in flash which prevents the use of a softbox or any kind of similar piece of apparatus, it's still possible to sort of diffuse the light by holding a stretched pair of tights wrapped around the flash as it goes off. Who needs proper equipment anyway :p
A couple layers of a tissue (But NOT the lotion kind) works well in a pinch.
My P&S has several layers of tissue taped on with Scotch tape over the flash.
Okay.....I'm in Desat, simply because I haven't done anything in a while. I have never done it before.....Konador has a terrific tutorial in the Tutorials section......and I ended up with two that I was tossed up on choosing. The one that I went with will probably get clobbered and if for no other reason, Lisa wanted me to enter this one.....
Tis one *IS* appropriate for the Beachhouse, though.......8>)
A couple layers of a tissue (But NOT the lotion kind) works well in a pinch.
I have several pieces of tissue paper like you'd put in a gift bag, in different colors. I loosely tape a piece over my clamp lamps to diffuse them, so they hang several inches in front of the lamp. I've also used white sheets and pillowcases, although those tend to be too thick and swallow too much light. I've even used an old translucent water bottle!
One of the things I've learned is that the closer the light to your subject, the larger it appear, so the more diffuse. And the further from the lamp the diffuser is, the more it diffuses.
Put those together and what you want is a very bright lamp a few feet away from your subject and ideally a diffuser 1 inch out of sight of the camera's field of view. That's why those diffuser panels on tripods are so handy, but for now, tissue in front of clamp lamps is working for me. :)
Oh, and that's why it's so great to have a subject close to a big window on a cloudy day - the entire window becomes a diffuser panel.
Eight. BUT...I inherited three when I moved in with my boyfriend, so I'm a crazy five-cats lady, not a crazy eight-cats lady. I just want to make that clear. :D
One of the things I've learned is that the closer the light to your subject, the larger it appears, so the more diffuse.
Could you explain/fix/rewrite this statement? I'm taking notes!
Think of a subject, like a tennis ball, and imagine lighting it with a lamp that's 5 feet wide, but at two extremes of distance:
1) 50 feet away. Even with its large size, the lamp's going to look pretty much like a point source, so you're going to get a sharp shadow line across the ball.
2) 1 foot away. the lamp is so huge compared to the tennis ball, that the light is going to wrap a long way around the ball, creating a pretty soft shadow line.
Heck, I can see it even in an experiment I just did: hold a round coffee mug six inches from your monitor with other lights turned off. The light/dark line will be quite diffuse.
Now move the mug back a couple of feet, and you'll see the line sharpen up a lot.
Now, if you take a light that's really only 3 inches across, like a light bulb, but you put a five-foot wide square of tissue in front of it, the entire tissue square lights up and becomes the effective light source. But the actual lamp has to be far enough back to light up the entire square.
Hence the combination of a very bright lamp a decent distance behind a large diffusing screen, with the screen close to the subject.
I know I've seen diagrams on the Web somewhere ...
Eight. BUT...I inherited three when I moved in with my boyfriend, so I'm a crazy five-cats lady, not a crazy eight-cats lady. I just want to make that clear. :D
Here's another series of pics from this weekend. One of the other dads works at the Agriculture Department. Each of the past two years, he's brought a flag that's ready for retirement, and we have a special ceremony for it. A few girls read a bit about how to honor an old flag, he cuts the flag into pieces, and people take turns tossing them on the fire. It's pretty moving, and it teaches the girls about ceremony in a way that shows the adults acting respectfully.
The guy in the last shot is who I'm talking about. The woman in the second shot is the leader of our group of troops. I worked these up to make 4x6 prints for the people in the shots.
If anyone's interested, this was challenging to shoot because it was just about dusk. I deliberately underexposed to keep the shutter speed reasonable, and went up to ISO 100 because any higher and the noise gets awful on my camera. I also had to zoom in a decent amount. Fortunately, it has image stablization or these really would've been a mess. Finally, no one was stopping to pose, so I locked focus once and just went with it afterward. As it was, it took a lot of strong sharpening limited to faces and the fire.
This might've been a time to use flash, but I don't know whether it would've done much from 15 feet away, and it definitely would've hurt the solemn nature of the ceremony.
