Posted by Kromey at 8:03pm Mar 14 '10Okay, so, I should have posted a shot of this a long time ago, but getting a good snap was really hard given the poor lighting conditions in my apartment and the fact that an on-camera flash ruins more shots than it helps.
Well, today I got a tripod, and coupled with my awesome DSLR (a Nikon D3000) I managed to snap this shot:
Taken using my AF-S NIKKOR 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G DX lens at 55mm (85mm 35mm-equivalent), f/11, ISO-100, 5 second-exposure with on-camera fill flash. (The long exposure negates most of the ill effects of the flash while also capturing more of the ambient light. Essentially, it relegates the on-camera fill flash to do exactly what it's supposed to do - fill in the deeper [private]s - without destroying the [private]s entirely and completely replacing the ambient lighting.) To completely remove any camera jitter during the long exposure, the camera was mounted on a tripod and the shutter was triggered using an IR remote with a 2 second delay (to make sure my hand holding the remote got out of the way).
My baby sis made this for me for Christmas. It's felted, a process I do not comprehend but I understand to be akin to taking a lump of dryer and/or belly button lint and doing magic to it to produce PURE WIN!
My baby sis also made this one for [private]:
(Click for full-size photo.)
Taken using identical settings as Leonardo above, except the camera selected an aperture of f/9 (I was using "shutter priority mode", which lets me choose shutter speed and a few other settings while the camera handles the rest automatically).
Post-processing information:
Both photos were shot using Nikon's NEF raw format. For Leonardo, I allowed UFRaw (a program that handles a bazillion different raw formats) to select auto white balance, and then I tweaked the color levels and brightness/contrast further using Gimp. I sharpened Leo to bring out the details (such as the individual fibers) and blurred the background to keep the focus on him.
For the penguin, UFRaw's automatic white balance looked terrible, so I used the camera's instead; I did not tweak any brightness, contrast, or color levels. I did sharpen the penguin and blur the background as I did with Leo.
Both images were cropped down to just the felted masterpieces; the photos were not scaled at all. Both shots were taken from about 8-10 feet away.
Well, today I got a tripod, and coupled with my awesome DSLR (a Nikon D3000) I managed to snap this shot:
Taken using my AF-S NIKKOR 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G DX lens at 55mm (85mm 35mm-equivalent), f/11, ISO-100, 5 second-exposure with on-camera fill flash. (The long exposure negates most of the ill effects of the flash while also capturing more of the ambient light. Essentially, it relegates the on-camera fill flash to do exactly what it's supposed to do - fill in the deeper [private]s - without destroying the [private]s entirely and completely replacing the ambient lighting.) To completely remove any camera jitter during the long exposure, the camera was mounted on a tripod and the shutter was triggered using an IR remote with a 2 second delay (to make sure my hand holding the remote got out of the way).
My baby sis made this for me for Christmas. It's felted, a process I do not comprehend but I understand to be akin to taking a lump of dryer and/or belly button lint and doing magic to it to produce PURE WIN!
My baby sis also made this one for [private]:
(Click for full-size photo.)
Taken using identical settings as Leonardo above, except the camera selected an aperture of f/9 (I was using "shutter priority mode", which lets me choose shutter speed and a few other settings while the camera handles the rest automatically).
Post-processing information:
Both photos were shot using Nikon's NEF raw format. For Leonardo, I allowed UFRaw (a program that handles a bazillion different raw formats) to select auto white balance, and then I tweaked the color levels and brightness/contrast further using Gimp. I sharpened Leo to bring out the details (such as the individual fibers) and blurred the background to keep the focus on him.
For the penguin, UFRaw's automatic white balance looked terrible, so I used the camera's instead; I did not tweak any brightness, contrast, or color levels. I did sharpen the penguin and blur the background as I did with Leo.
added on 9:29pm Mar 14 '10:
Additional note on the post-processing:Both images were cropped down to just the felted masterpieces; the photos were not scaled at all. Both shots were taken from about 8-10 feet away.