Archive for January, 2009

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Jan
12
2009

Hood Ornaments From The Sharp Age

Hood Ornaments From The Sharp Age

There was a time when having a space-age hood ornament was more important than the lawsuits you’d be defending against when your car perforated a few pedestrians. Those times have changed, but luckily some of these old cars are still around. I’ve been lucky enough to catch the Old Cars show in my neighborhood a few times and the hood ornaments are my favorite. This is from a 1956 Chevy Nomad, but others from this time are just as… sharp. I’ll post more in coming days.
  • ApertureValue: f/4
  • DateTimeOriginal: 2007:09:01 06:45:11
  • ExposureTime: 1/2000 sec
  • Flash: No Flash
  • FocalLength: 45 mm
  • ISOSpeedRatings: 100
  • Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

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Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »

Jan
08
2009

Who Knew You Had To Clean These Things?

In most of my life, I’m a bit of a neat freak.  Until my recent embrace of hobo-ism, my car was the one that people remarked on the cleanliness of while I was pulling out the vacuum.  I just like straightening things up and putting things away.  It’s cathartic or something.  I’m the same way with my camera gear – my lenses and filters are always clean.  Until now, however, I never cleaned the sensor on my camera.  I figured it wasn’t that dirty (I don’t change lenses in the desert or anything) and if you make a mistake, not only will you have a broken camera, you’ll have a voided warranty.  In any case, a photography newsletter I read just published a link to some instructions which included an easy way to see how much crap is on your sensor.  Well guess what?  Mine was filthy:

dirty-dslr-sensor

Hit the jump for the easy cleaning steps.

(more…)

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Posted in Minutia | 2 Comments »

Jan
07
2009

The Last Reminder Of Seattle Snow

The Last Reminder Of Seattle Snow

The aftermath of the snow here in seattle is dirty streets, massive potholes, and broken tire chains everywhere. I don’t think it’s that so many people were driving with them – more like a good number of people driving with them for the first time. Lots of tire chains coming off, lots of tire chains to swerve around on the freeway. Here is the one occupying the corner of our driveway. I love the grain on this Neopan film for the Rollei – it’s almost circular or bubbly instead of being really… well… grainy, I guess. I’ve got a roll of color that I’m going to try shooting now that I know the camera works. We’ll see how that turns out.
  • DateTimeOriginal:
  • Model: QSS-32_33

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Posted in Photos | 5 Comments »

Jan
06
2009

Ari the human lightmeter

Ari the human lightmeter

So I finally got the film back from my first attempt at actually shooting with the Rolleicord. I have no lightmeter and neither does the Rollei, so you have to use the magic guidelines stamped onto the back of the camera and your imagination.  I was somewhat shocked that the pictures came back in any sort of serviceable condition, but I’ll take it. I shot one roll of Neopan 400 and since this is 120 film, it only has 12 shots per roll. Here’s the first – I think maybe there are one or two more worth showing off. I didn’t write it down as I’m a spoiled digital photographer but I believe the exposure here is something like f/5.6 at 1/100th of a second. I didn’t realize how shallow it would come out looking, but combined with the sparse tree limbs and the great angles you can get with Twin Lens Reflex cameras, I like this one a lot.
  • DateTimeOriginal:
  • Model: QSS-32_33

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Posted in Photos | No Comments »

Jan
03
2009

DIY Bokeh or “how to make pretty stars”

Everyone has seen pictures like this with points of light in the background. The technique where shallow depth of field allows you to throw everything but the subject out of focus is known as Bokeh.  What I’ve always noticed is the way points of light look in the out of focus area.   I also learned that you can shape them, and when I finally got around to it I made my own:

star-bokeh-snowman

For more info on how it works and all the nerdly stuff, hit the jump.

(more…)

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Posted in Photos, Technique | 7 Comments »

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