Surviving the winter dullness

Winter is here and while some love the snow and the outdoor winter activities i find it to be the worst season to photograph because of the lack of variation of colours!

So i found a solution to my problem: take allot of portraits and other objects using a tele lens. The use of a longer lens not only restricts what i can capture in one frame but it also forces me to be allot more creative!

So my plan is to only use my two favorite tele lenses (the legendary Nikkor 105 2.5 and the equally great Nikkor 200mm 4.0) and take some creative and great photo :)

Taken with the 105 2.5 @ 2.5

Here is the two sets on flickr which has photos taken with these lenses.

NIKKOR-Q 200mm 4.0 F pre ai

http://www.flickr.com/photos/belola/sets/72157623672876653/

Nikkor 105mm 2.5 F pre ai

http://www.flickr.com/photos/belola/sets/72157623585020903/

Do you like the winter season?

How do you find creativity during the cold and gray season?

Auto or manual focus?

To some this is a easy choice, why would anyone ever want to use manual focus when you just need to press a button and the image is on focus?

I prefer manual focus because it allows me to slow down and spend more time on the composition, i still use autofocus lenses when the subject is moving way to fast and i dont have a chance to set the focus manually but since those moments only happen now and then its not a issue for me.

The choice of manual focus does requires me to do some extra calculating but other then that i dont feel disadvantaged compared to using autofocus.

Here is two example shots from the first of may demonstrations were i only used a manual focus lens to cover the whole event and got excellent results:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=1%20maj&w=15505413%40N00

With that said i do plan to get the excellent canon 24-70 2.8 L USM lens for when i need autofocus, but for now i am very happy with my Nikkor 1970:s tele lenses that cover everything i need for taking the photos i want :)

What do you prefer auto or manual focus?

Have their been a moment when autofocus was a disadvantage for you?

The very hard art of sorting images!

I want to ask you a question:

How would you grade you ability to sort through your pictures and find the best ones?

The reason i ask this is that recently i found myself being too fond of the pictures i took that day which resulted in me doing a not so good job of sorting through that days photos.

Thankfully a friend came to the rescue and told me that i had to do a better sorting job which helped me allot to be a better photographer.

As with any situation where a person tells you that you done a not so good job there is the feeling of "how dare that person tells me how to do something!", but after really thinking about it i understood that he was right i DID do a sloppy sorting job!

And that is one of the most important keys to being a better photographer: listen to constructive criticism and learn from it instead just ignoring what other people tell you!

In my case what i got from the constructive criticism was that i now work even harder to sort my pictures and find those great photos that people love to see!

So thank you Lund for your words, as much as it hurts to hear them i am very grateful that you took the time to tell me that i was doing a not so good job :)

How would you grade you ability to sort through your pictures and find the best ones?

The canon 85mm 1.2 lens is wonderful :)

I was invited to be a dinner guest at my friend Johan Lunds place, it was a great evening and part of the fun was when i tried out his wonderful Canon 85mm 1.2 lens :)

The bokeh is just amazing and i now want one too!

Here is one of the photos from that day:

View the rest of the photos from this evening on facebook.

A short introduction to depth of field

One of the biggest reason to get a fast lens is the ability to capture a wonderfully blurred background or as its also called bokeh.

For this photo i used the wonderful Nikkor 105 2.5 manual focus lens at the wide open (2.5) setting and its looks great!

The thing one needs to understand about depth of field is that its a mathematical formula that is based on the focal length of the lens, the speed of the lens and the distance between your subject and your lens.

Lets use the 105mm lens as a example: it has a minimum focus range of one meter, that means that if you focus on a object that is one meter away and use the lens wide open you will get a wonderful blurred background like the picture beneath you.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/belola/5167230825/

The more you increase the objects distance the less bokeh you will get until you reach the infinity setting where everything is in focus.

The best way of learning this is to use the trial and error method where you take allot of photos and learn how this works because it is confusing at first.

When you are ready for digging deeper then there is a bunch of depth of field calculators online, apps for you smartphone for you to discover and play and really go deep into this subject.

Links:

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

http://www.silverlight.co.uk/resources/dof_calc.html

If you feel brave also look at the massive wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

iphone/ipod touch app:

Dofmaster:

http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/dofmaster/id300820570?mt=8

The joy of having a geek meetup :)

whenever i can get the chance i meet up with my friends and discuss various topics, have a bite of food and drink some coffee and just have a great time.

Todays meetup was with a good friend and we talked and compared crop frame vs full frame sensors, the wonderful Canon eos 1v slr and using infrared film.

Here is the picture of the day:

My new creative and fun project :)

Hi there, its time to resurrect this blog again and so i though why not do that with a fun announcement:

I have been feeling under-stimulated lately so as a remedy and a portal to more fun and being more creative here is my new project:

I am creating my own deck of cards, 52 regular and three joker and a box to put them in :)

I am going to select 54 of my photos and choose four themes that has yet to be decided.

Here is a very rough look at a card i created in order to get a idea of the look and feel of them:

The background for this project is that i got into my creative mode when viewing a picture of a set of playing cards and thought that i can do that too!

So as a way to get more creative and find a excuse to learn indesign again i decided to start this project and do by absolute best to actually finish it too!

Its going to be a fun ride and i have set my pre-new years goal to be allot better with starting and finishing stuff i get involved with!

More info and the progress of this project will be posted regularly (that is my aim!)