I'm up in FNQ (Far north Queensland) enjoyng it, So little time and no reason to blog (otherthan its overcast & raining). before I travelled north I wtshe some of the sessions on B&H's recent Optix conference, and Stop motion phtography caught my interest. There was a lngthy list of gear (its was B&H running it after all) and I though I've gott most of that, perhaps I need to read up a bit about the intervalometer, perhaps not.
I have a great view to the east out over the coral sea, So it was back to early morning getting up. At least its not cold. In case you've never tried it, a dark to light stop motion is a challenge, But I like a challenge.
The earlt starts can be rewarded in other ways. Even when They are just glimpses.
Go figure I'm a keen photographer, but not really into Stories or Reels, bit over all the ads popping up on YouTube and definitely not in into Facebook or Tik Tok. I set up this blog primarily to share what I was discovering about digital photography. So, what happened?
My suspicion is the rise of social media has gobbled up original content, and used it to keep you watching so they can charge advertisers (and they make squillions). The actual creatives get lost in the millions of copycat wanna-bees and if they receive anything it's a pittance. See my post about Danny Gregory's recent essay.
Really unfortunately we the viewers of social media gets suck into the black hole of the death scroll, picking up the photo to look at social media way too often, swiping and swipe again without really paying attention, not properly looking, swiping and swiping some more. At the end you don't feel refresh, you are more likely to feel frustrated or depressed. As Adam of Firstman Photography points out you are much better off spending the time actually out photographing, getting the benefit of exercise and being out in the real world, perhaps even nature.
It worth watching to the end because Adam gives some very heart-felt encouragement for those of us with a deep passion for and care about photography to stick in there
Well am I doing anything about it! YES
You can make the change too. It's easy to put down your phone and pick up your camera (or click on a different icon/app on your smartphone, phones can be good cameras too).
Ok what about sharing your photos? That will be an upcoming post (soon but not exactly sure when),
My attempt on the photowalk to demonstrate how to get a starburst effect really just showed I needed to clean my lens. BUT here is what I wanted to show. If your camera can stop down the lens to a small aperture (a high f number such as F22) do that. It is then a very small hole for the light to come through. Then find a place that the strong sun light (even though it was overcast) is peeking through (such as a gap in the branches of the silhouetted tree). It's that easy.
Remember to change the F stop back after taking the photo to avoid the diffraction (allowing you to get the starburst effect), causing problems in your normal photos.
What happens if you take a white sheet A grey Sheet and a Black sheet and photograph them separately.
Fill the veiwfinder with just a single colour.
If you have trouble focusing, you can move the center of the viewfinder to the edge and half press the shutter button. Don't push it all the way and move back into the center of the sheet and full press the shutter button.
Hmm, is this what you expected?
All the photos look a pretty similar grey! Is there something wrong with my camera? Well no.
So now put a small reference card in the middle of each sheet. This little card could be a photo, it just needs to contain a decent tonal range (eg from very dark to very light. Take the photos again.
These were all taken with the same camera. The only thing I did was push the shutter button once i has focussed on each sheet.
One hint is my camera is working exactly as it should. There is nothing wrong with it.
Try this out yourself. You can do it with just two sheets (eg black & white).
If you want you can leave a polite comment explaining what's happening but I might leave my further discussion for a couple of weeks.
