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Malice

Malice

Member Since 14 May 2016
Offline Last Active Nov 24 2019 03:26 AM
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#39593 Flower with empty background - supportive or boring?

Posted by Malice on 12 June 2016 - 01:57 AM

If you have your photo in your gallery space, you can use the image linking feature you seem to be using.

 

That's exactly what I'm currently using.

 

I will have to give the media link method a try.

 

Which reminds me, I still haven't cleaned up my flickr space.

 

Nice picture, btw. 




#39589 Flower with empty background - supportive or boring?

Posted by Malice on 12 June 2016 - 01:21 AM

Picking up the well founded suggestion of cropping differently, here a go with a square format.

 

First, this is the uncropped image:

 

gallery_13750_618_5416.jpg

 

As you can see, the overall picture isn't as dark and gloomy as my first try at cropping. I lost a lot of cropping options though, by not paying enough attention when taking the exposure and cutting of that flower on the lower right part of the picture. I.e. my intentions with cropping are in this case: get rid of that mistake in composition and make the detail with the small bug a little more pronounced.

 

 

This is what it can look like with a square crop:

 

gallery_13750_618_1756.jpg

 

Since I found that piece of the tubular part of the flower remaining in the picture on the lower right corner still distracting/disturbing, I tried to stamp that away with the repair tool in LR.

 

 

Square crop, version 2:

 

gallery_13750_618_29520.jpg

 

 

I think the square crop is an overall improvement (so thanks for the idea), because it removes some of the murkiness or "mud" on the left hand side. Since I rarely print pictures and mostly display them on digital screens, I tend to forget to go for any format that's not roughly screen shaped (that's also why I rarely do portrait-orientation shooting; these pictures just don't work well on screens in landscape-orientation).

 

 

A question on the side: is there a way to have smaller previews of linked images in a thread? I find it difficult to get an overview of an image, when it's displayed so large.




#39585 Tele lens and moving insects

Posted by Malice on 12 June 2016 - 12:39 AM

Thanks a lot for your input, Jerry_ and Merco_61!

 

You're right, I should try to get to higher aperture values, to gain a little more depth. Usually I try to stay as low with ISO values as possible, as I often find my images grainy or noisy even at ISO 100 (mostly visible when I have larger monochrome areas in a picture, like e.g. a stretch of blue sky). I can get rid of this noise with Light Room in post-processing, but (as you know) at a certain point this is counter productive when trying to preserve small details in the exposure. When I try to counter this effect by increasing the sharpness in LR, this results in artifacts.

 

Some of this might go back on LR maybe not being the best tool for this kind of processing, but I'm sure the major part is my lack of knowledge about how to use there tools correctly.

 

Regarding the focus points, this is actually what I tried to do, but most of the time, the insects were too quick for me. Even though I was sitting quite close to the plants/insects (pretty close to the minimum focal distance for the Tamron at 300mm), small movements of my hands still had a pronounced effect on the angle of my line of sight. I.e. I often hit left and right of the insects instead of following them with the focus point. Therefore I was thinking of letting the camera choose the focus point/area. But I'm not really sure the D3100 is up to this kind of decision making process.

 

Again, thanks for the advice.

 

If I get a patch of dry weather on an afternoon next week (at the moment it's pouring down here), I will return to the same spot and try again with higher apertures and different AF modes and see what works better.

 

And Merco_61, you're right. The bumblebees follow a vertical bottom to top pattern, when "farming" these plants. So parts of their movement can be predicted. Maybe with a little more patience and practice my hands will also be a little steadier when aiming with the Tamron (which is quite heavy in relation to the body of the D3100).




#39569 Your Best Photo, Week Ending 12 June 2016

Posted by Malice on 11 June 2016 - 08:23 AM

As my single best of this week photo, I personally nominate the following (the rest I posted in "Critique") :

 

gallery_13750_618_101869.jpg

 

This is a flower of Cornus kousa, which is also called Kousa dogwood or Chinese or Korean or Japanese dogwood.

 

Taken with a Nikon D3100 and a Nikon AF-S DX 35mm 1:1.8 (shutter: 1/200 sec; Aperture: f / 4.0; ISO: 100) right around the corner of my office.




#39568 Tele lens and moving insects

Posted by Malice on 11 June 2016 - 08:23 AM

After reading a thread here about macros of insects, I decided to try something along those lines. Instead of using a macro-lens (I don't have one), I tried to get as close as possible to those little critters with my Tamron tele-lens (Tamron AF 70-300mm 4-5.6 Di SP VC USD) on my D3100.

 

As focussing mode I used a single focus point with continuous focus. Shutter speed was set at 1/500 sec. (I tried to minimize the wing blur), aperture and ISO I left for the camera to decide. The lens was fully extended to 300mm.

 

So here are the results:

 

gallery_13750_618_47568.jpg

 

1/500 sec; f / 5.6; ISO 140 (auto)

 

 

gallery_13750_618_37363.jpg

 

1/500 sec; f / 5.6; ISO 160 (auto)

 

 

gallery_13750_618_45535.jpg

 

1/500 sec; f / 5.6; ISO 160 (auto)

 

 

 

As you can see, even though bumblebees are not really the fastest of insects out there, I still had major trouble hitting them in time with my selected focus spot and release the shutter. I did a little better when they were sitting in a flower, but even there the keeper-rate was pretty low.

 

So, my conclusion: sitting and waiting about 1.5 or 2 meters away from the target area and trying to "zap" bumblebees or bees accessing flowers isn't the method of choice to get clean close up pictures of the insects.

 

If I get the chance, I will probably return to the same spot next week and try again. But this time I'll probably let the camera do the focussing and see where this will get me.

 

Either way, I'd also appreciate any and all comments or advice on how to do get better results in situations like these.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 



#39567 Flower with empty background - supportive or boring?

Posted by Malice on 11 June 2016 - 08:02 AM

This is a flower of Silene latifolia ("bladder" or "white campion") with a small insect (please don't ask me what kind this is) just leaving the centre of the flower.

 

 

I'm a little on the fence about this one myself. In one moment I think the emptiness of the mostly featureless background makes a good contrast for the flower itself. In the next moment, I find it quite bland.

 

Therefore I'd appreciate your thoughts about this.

 

Other comments are equally appreciated.

 

 

gallery_13750_618_11687.jpg

 

Picture taken with a Nikon D3100 and a Nikon AF-S DX 35mm 1:1.8. Shutter: 1/200 sec; Aperture: f / 4.0; ISO: 100

 

 

Thank you for looking in!

 

 

 




#38994 Post your Blood Moon shots!

Posted by Malice on 22 May 2016 - 07:19 AM

Thanks a lot for the info and the link. I will look into this.

 

 

Edit: I changed my post with the attached image; hope I got the instructions right.




#38987 Post your Blood Moon shots!

Posted by Malice on 22 May 2016 - 03:56 AM

My apologies for being so late for the action and I hope I'm not acting against any forum traditions by resurrecting an old thread.

 

Anyway, I just found this thread and wanted to share my own take at the blood moon and lunar eclipse. In part also to get to know the forum software and find out how uploading works. So here it is:

 

 

gallery_13750_618_482229.jpg
 
Setup:
D3100 with Tamron 70-300 f/4.0-5.6 Di SP VC USD on a Velbon Sherpa 600R Tripod, using aperture priority and the camera's own timed shutter release.
 
Note: the Sherpa isn't really suited for jobs like these (gear too heavy) and the Tamron can't be connected directly to the tripod (at least not without extra equipment). Result: I got a lot of shakey pictures. But some of them were good enough to use them at low magnification.
 
 
Edit: replaced the attachment with a gallery-link



#38710 Welcome To Nikon Forums!

Posted by Malice on 14 May 2016 - 04:54 AM

A quick "Hello" to everyone.

 

After reading through these forums - and really liking what I saw - for the last couple of weeks, I decided to get registered today. At this stage mostly to get better control over which threads I have already read and which not. But this is only the beginning. ;-)

 

Photography has been a past-time activity of mine for quite a few years already, but I have never really gotten "into the gears". I.e. I've been taking snapshots here/there and now/then, but not much more.

 

Sometimes work has kept me from delving deeper into the subject, sometimes it was my own motivation. Or rather lack thereof. Especially when not being able to turn what I saw with my own eyes into the kind of photo I wanted to shoot. I'm sure, this is most of time caused by my lack of skill and not a limitation of my gear.

 

Anyway, by participating in these forums I hope to (a) learn more about ways to get closer to the results I'd like to have and (B) through exposure (no pun intended) to the subject sort of "condition" myself to stay more involved with the hobby. I mean, I know that inspiration through the work of others, as well as positive and - maybe more importantly - negative feedback will go a long way in terms of improving one's own skills and maybe mindset as well.

 

Currently, I'm mostly using a D3100 and a few different lenses (the Nikon 18-105 mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, a Sigma 10-20 mm f/3.5, a Nikon 35 mm f/1.8 prime, a Tamron 70-300 mm f/4.0-5.6 and very rarely also a Lensbaby).

 

Of course, I've been thinking of upgrading (the FX format is _very_ tempting), but I've forbidden myself to do so, until I've actually reached (some of) the limits of my gear and until I've actually gotten into the habit of using my camera on a regular basis, instead of just storing it for months in the cupboard or just taking it along on vacations. Up to now, this part of the self-discipline is holding up. ;-)

 

So, thanks for reading and for what you have already given me to read.

 

See you around,

h.