Snow Snow Snow

Snowed yesterday. Wet heavy snow. when it all but stopped i grabbed the D90 and went for a walk. I quickly found out my lens choice could have been slightly better. I took my Tamron 70-300. I think i took 30+ shots in all. Got a couple good ones. Played around with exposure compensation, because i was shooting snow scenes i added +1 to my exposures using the exposure compensation meter.

To see a few of the pics i took either use Facebook and search for Pacific Freelance Photography and/or check out PacificFreelance.weebly.com



These are the sites i will be updating the most. And with warmer weather will come much more pics this year.

I also received my AlienBees transmitter/receiver this week. I also bought a small sealed lead acid 6v battery to use with my 285HV Vivitar flash so no more replacing AA batteries every 100 shots. Found a video on the youTubes to modify my flash so i can use a larger battery, pretty easy.

Software and HDR

That whole HDR thing. still not sure im diggin it. Went to the Two Rivers Photography club meeting last friday night and the photo that won 1st prize was a shitty looking HDR "photo". There was nothing to it that reflected an actual photo at all. it looked 100% cartoonish and the closer i got to it the more retarded it looked. I do think HDR can be used to make better photos but there is a line were it goes from photo to ... something entirely different. From what ive heard Photomatix is one of the better programs for merging HDR shots but im not a big fan of paying for programs unless i really need too. I did a Google search for "HDR open source" and found a free HDR program. Unfortunately it didnt work so well with my Windows 7 64-bit OS. Ive installed it on my other WinXP machine [32 bit] and my laptop, but i havent actually done any testing on those yet.

Black and White

Here we go. For what ever reason i was under the impression my D90 could only take color images that could then be converted to black/white either with its in-camera processing or an external application. However after looking through the camera settings for some other thing i stumbled upon the settings for black/white [monochrome] shooting. nice. So yeh. Ill probably be shooting a lot of black/white again now that i know how to set up the camera to do so.

Can hardly wait to be done with this semester of Computer Science classes so i can start taking photography classes. Whether it be at the local Comm. Coll. or online classes like NYIP. Has anyone taken one of the NYIP courses? Care to share with me your experience?

Tethered Shooting

Very cool. Since my Nikon D90 doesn't come with [that i know of] software for Tethered Shooting im using Adobe Lightroom. I do know [as far as i know] there is other software available provided by Nikon for an additional charge that i can use, but i need to put my money elsewhere if i can.

So anyways, i used a 3 foot USB cable plugged into the Camera and the laptop, opened Light room and started tether capture, took a few pics and BANG, pics displayed on my WinXP laptop. very cool. After digging around in my box of cables i also found a 4 foot USB extension cable so combined i have at least 7 feet until i can find a longer USB cable, which im sure i have around here somewhere, just got to do some more digging. So now, i have the option of viewing my pics as they are being shot on the cameras 3" LCD screen OR my 17" laptop. I also have a portable 10" DVD player im going to see if i can use. i wont be able to hook that up with the USB cable, but maybe the audio/video out from the camera. but i also have doubts that will be as good as the laptop since i have had the A/V out hooked up to my 37" HDTV and the quality was surprisingly lacking.

This doesnt really restrict me too much for the "studio" type shots im going to be trying later tonight at a friends place because my off camera flash is also on about a 10 foot tether until i can afford an AlienBees flash transmitter/receiver set, so, not too bad for now.