± Up for Sunrise

Gonna rise up. Find my direction magnetically.

Tag: camera gear

My first time… with a tripod

May 19, 2010 / / 3 Comments

I got a shipment the other day that included a new tripod, some filters and a wireless shutter release. This should be the last of my gear before the Canada trip (although maybe another spare battery…. there is always something!).

I was driving Brooke home from drum lessons on Tuesday and the sunset looked really amazing. I got to the house, mentioned this to Julie in passing and she told me to go shot it! So I grabbed my gear as quick as I could since the sunset was almost over and drove like mad to a place on the Fox River that offered a decent view. I missed the most amazing part, but this gave me a great chance to try the tripod.  After some minor post-processing, here is what I ended up with. The composition could have been better but I was happy with my first attempt at low light photography. The auto-focus and VR didn’t help at all… next time, note to self.

All three were shot with the Nikkor 18-105mm 3.5-5.6 lens.

ISO 400, .125s, f/6.3

ISO 200, 5.0s, f/10

ISO 1800, 1/30s, f/3.8

Gear up

April 21, 2010 / / 1 Comment

I got interested in photography in high school and through the years have had several different cameras. I stayed with film and an old Canon SLR though the early 2000s. Since then, I’ve owned the following models:

Canon A70
Canon PowerShot S3 IS
Canon SD1100 IS

In Jan. ’09 I had the itch to step up and get a digital SLR. I got a Canon Rebel XSi with the kit lens. I shot with it for a week and then returned it. The quality was not what I was expecting and the low light performance was lacking. I wanted a fast camera that performed awesome indoors. This was not it. So instead I got a Canon PowerShot SX1 IS which did 1080p video an had a 20x zoom. I loved it and here are some shots from Hawaii tht I took with it.

In fact, the banner pic of sunrise (actually sunset, but who can tell the difference… I mean really) used at the top of this site was taken with that camera.

Jan. 2010 rolls around and after reading several books and blogs, I decide that it was really the crappy kit lense that came with the rebel was what dd me in. A friend helped me work though my budget of $1500 to come up with a starter setup which included a switch from Canon to Nikon. Here’s the gear list.

Nikon D90 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens Nikon D90 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens

Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

Nikon SB-400 AF Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras Nikon SB-400 AF Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

I love this camera! So much so that I am taking it everywhere and the quality of my shots has gone way up. Examples:

We are planning a trip to Banff and Jasper in Canada in June and I only have a few more pieces of gear to pickup to be ready. Julie is planning on using the shots I take to decorate the walls of the bedroom so I better work on my composition some more before we leave.

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