Flash!!!!! It's Photography.

I take a lot of available light shots. I hate the way the flash makes my photos look. It's like taking a bucket of white paint and splashing it all over the Mona Lisa or something. It's just ugly to bath everything in white light and create a unnatural bluish tint. I prefer the soft shadows and the natural look of available light. Give me a wide aperture and available light to shoot my shot. Give me an f/1.8 50 mm over any F/3.6 - F/5.6 zoom lens any day. I'll get nice DOF and the right look. Nothing like a portrait with the face in focus and the fall off behind the ears. I love that look.

The truth is I never really knew how to use a flash on the camera. I started taking photos like everyone else. A little point and shot 35 mm that my grand mom got for me. Use the flash inside she'd tell me. Use the flash it's night. And I always got . . . Well you know what I always got. Those vacation shots a lot of people have. Those family snap shots of Aunt June or who ever. Yuck!!!

So I'm looking at Adorama at the Pentax K20D. I'm going though the Pentax flash on the site and they explain it, all of it. I learned a lot. Why all my photos looked unnatural. I learned when to use the flash even in Sunlight. it was great.

What I learned is that light has 3 qualities. Of course I learned this over time. Some times my photos look warmer (photography word) due to the light. You call that color quality. Some times you use a single light source (AKA Lamp) to create shadows and drama in an image. The definition of direction. Light has a 3rd quality called intensity simply put how bright it is. I have 2 real problems in my past flash photos. Simply the range of the flash is about 3 feet for optima and 15 feet to be out of range. My problem is I put things to close or to far. I need to take my photos at about 3-4 feet if my prime source of light is my flash. I also need to use auto white balance when I'm going to flash. it doesn't take on a blue look of being cool.

I need to remember that due to the direction straight at my target there will be no shadows in my picture. I need to make sure that the other the other sources of light compliment this. This is called fill flash you do this on a sunny day when the sun is at your target's back. You use this to remove unwanted shadows and dark areas.

I'm going to go and take some cool photos now that I learned this and look up the range on my Canon.

Cold War anyone?

Photography is a place with a lot of rules that only seem to apply when you want them to or when they seem to work. Let's look at the rule of thirds. When do you apply it? Well when it works. When do you apply narrow depths of field? When you want to. There seems to be one rule that seems to apply constantly. That rule is the camera cold war.

We've all seen the Camera cold war and some of us even fight it. That's what happens when a Nikon user sees a guy happily shooting his Canon or vice versa.People judge the lenses you choose to use. The tripod isn't microfiber or it's made by the wrong people.

This is really the worst part of photography. I like to take the photos. I like to show them to my friends and my fans.I just hate comparing my equipment to someone else's. There is always more expensive and better stuff. The photo is the only thing that matters.

Since the photo is all that really matters anyway. I've seen good photos taken with the cardboard box disposibles.I've seen excellent pictures taken with point and shoots. it's not really the camera it's the photographer.

What's In My Bag Now??? A Way Point.

One of my first blogs here was a repost of my fantasy photo equipment. I said I never really made it but I keep trying again. Well I simply love my current kit and I figure that since the my thinking has changed and there has been some changes I'll key you in.

DSLR

• D30 DSLR yea I got it.. cheap with all the extra's


• 30D DSLR I wanted spotmetering and the higher speed

Lenses

• Canon 50mm F/1.8 I haven't upgraded yet I decided to keep it when I do


• Tamron 17-50 F/2.8 better reviews then the sigma and cheaper I love it.


• Quantaray 70-300 F4-F5.6 bought on a whim to see what I needed and F4 is the way to go

Looks like I made a good dent and I don't have far to go. The telling thing is the things not in my bag. I'm still debating the 24 - 70 lens as I wonder if I really need to over lap my lenses for my shooting. The film body and the point and shot are just extras and I need to upgrade the film body to maybe an elan 7e or a 7ne. I won't be happy with a classic canon and mostly because ebay is shitty in the idea of camera sales.

So that's where I am.

Where I'm Going

Well kind of....

This is a repost of an article I wrote first on my Live Journal. I wrote it to publish the idea of the perfect SLR camera kit for me. Talking about how I shoot and the results that I like. I'm republishing it as a way point on the road that I want to travel.

It's firmly my belief that you can't reach a goal unless you have a firm knowledge of where you're going and where you been. You also need a time limit. I sat the time limit for a year. That was back in Febuary of 2006. I failed but I keep shooting and learned alot and things have changed a little bit. Also there is no rule that says you can't try again so here is Fantasy Camera Equipment List

I have a new list of fantasy camera gear that I want. I know it sounds stupid to want strange camera gear but it's kinda like computer gear. The more you learn and the more you have the more you want. I mean no one really wants a PII-350mhz machine as there main piece but it really will do everything you want it to do. You can go online with it you can play games but not the newer ones. It's just slow with windows XP, Linux or FreeBSD or any UNIX it's not to bad with. But... Even my FreeBSD machine is has atleast one 1ghz in this day and age.

Point and shot cameras and SLR bodies.

1 Canon G series Powershot. - The G Series are average zoom optical zoom of 3x but take the canon BP-511 battery and allow for RAW digital photos.

1 Canon 20D Body - This would be my new main camera body cool in camera editing features and built in Filters.

1 Canon A2E Film Body - This would be to learn to shoot with a film SLR.

1 Canon D30 Body - This 3.11 megapixal body would be the standard back up camera and replace my digital rebel in my bag. Since I'll have 2 DSLR's if I don't sell my rebel.

Lenses

1 17-50 F2.8 sigma DG lens - Standard lens for 1.6x crop Digital SLR cameras. Also standard EF mount so it will fit the film body as well and give me some wide angle ability for the film body.

1 sigma 28-70 sigma DG F2.8 Zoom - Standard walk about lens.

1 canon 70-200 F4L - long tom zoom

1 Canon 50 F1.4 - portrait lens

And that's the stuff I want in my camera bags.