Photos of Cameras and Lenses
This is going to be a rather boring blog entry and I'm only writing this entry because I haven't written lately.
My health has been rather lousy so I've been sticking close to the living room, bathroom and bedroom over the past few days. Writing here has been farthest from my mind. I've had breathing issues which is interrupting sleep so I'm overwhelmingly fatigued. I had a cascade of symptoms that started heading toward anaphylaxis so I immediately jumped on extra medications and then some emergency medications. My bones ache. I had some gastro-intestinal issues hence my need to stick close to the bathroom. And, I've had some blurry vision which is mostly affecting my ability to read music at the piano.
So, for the most part, I've been either sitting at my desk or sitting on the couch. I have had a few cameras scattered around me while I work on refining my slow synchro flash techniques for each camera while using a hotshoe flash because we're heading to a weekend wedding at a nearby resort. Like any other event we attend, I hope to get a few photos to help us remember the day.
I had planned to sleep through most of yesterday because I only managed to get about three or four hours of sleep the previous night. Unfortunately, we lost water yesterday morning... then, after they repaired the water main that the crew broke, we still had no water! I had to run around and figure out whether it was our whole block that had no water (nobody was home during the day) or whether it was only our house. It turns out it was only our house that had a problem at this point and it was a problem I didn't have the energy to deal with on my own.
One of the guys from the crew working on the water main helped me troubleshoot the entire house so we could figure out why we had no water. It was quite the time-consuming dilemma but, in the end, we found that our whole house water filter was completely clogged with about an inch of thick mud at the bottom of the filter. The mud had entered the water pipes to the houses when the water main was severed while the crew was digging.
After we found the problem that kept water from flowing out of our faucets, I spent the next few hours flushing our plumbing to rid our pipes of visible mud and sediment. When the water finally appeared mostly clear, then I installed a new filter in our whole house filter. We still can't drink the water though. We'll need to wait a few days for that in case some e-coli or similar got into the water main when it broke open.
So, that was yesterday's fiasco. I was exhausted and not feeling well so that made for a grueling day. Things definitely could have been worse but it was not something I wanted to deal with due to my health issues.
Up until the water problem yesterday, I had been refining some of my photography skills between naps.
I had purchased a couple of new small flash heads for two different brands of cameras I have and use fairly regularly but I hadn't had a chance to refine my skills with these new flash heads over the past year or so. These particular cameras are small so I wanted small flash heads. A normal-sized flash head would seem gargantuan on these smaller cameras. I hadn't yet come to terms with how to effectively use these new flash heads because it was one of those things where I didn't need to use flash so that task was put on the back burner and then I forgot about it. We are attending a wedding this coming weekend and I want to shoot some photos so that moved the flash photography practice to the front burner.
Weddings, particularly receptions and the night-before party, are known to be on the darker side so being good with a flash unit is mandatory. I want natural looking photos... hardly able to detect the flash... with nicely illuminated backgrounds and soft, diffused light on my subjects. I don't plan to capture a lot of photos but I do want the ones I capture to be very good. I hate looking at one of my photos and saying to myself, "uggg, what was I thinking?"
For practice and through trial and error, I spent a few nights shooting photos of Sheila as she sat on the couch reading each night. Then I spent some time shooting objects that were around me as I sat on the couch. I practiced at different distances and in differing light levels.
Part of the reason for this practice was to determine which camera I should bring with me this weekend. That really was a no-brainer though... my Sony a7 always wins when I want the best image quality so that was a very easy decision.
I needed to decide on a lens or two also. I want to keep my gear to an absolute minimum. So I practiced with a few different lenses that I'm guessing will be the right focal length. I've never been to this venue before so all I can do is guess what I would find the most useful focal length to use.
I'm a guest at this wedding and definitely not the "photographer", nor do I want to be the photographer, for this wedding so I just want a few photos of family and perhaps the bride and groom when able. I'm not running around as a photographer... I'm planning to be a guest who is enjoying the weekend and shooting a select few photos whenever an opportunity arises like I always do when we go anywhere.
Anyway, I think I figured out what gear I'm bringing and, out of all my various cameras in various formats, my Sony a7 works the best with flash so that will be the camera to use. I might not even need flash... hmmm... well, I'll probably need some very subtle flash to avoid darkened raccoon eyes. This camera works very well for these types of scenarios so that is the camera I'll be bringing with me this weekend.
The one drawback to this camera is it is perhaps my slowest camera when it comes to autofocus. Focusing with this camera isn't nearly as slow as decades ago but this is not the camera for fast moving people. I don't anticipate encountering any fast moving people though. I should only need to shoot people posing for me so I should have no problems with this camera choice. Another potential issue might be if the light is so dim then this camera might have difficulty focusing. I think I resolved that and, if I must, I can always focus manually. I have no problems doing that.
This is the camera I'll be carrying around at the wedding this weekend...
I have some really nice lenses. That Leica lens above on the Panasonic Lumix camera is one of them. These higher quality lenses by Leica, Hasselblad, and Zeiss are incredibly sharp and that does make a tremendous difference when it comes to making a photograph remarkable... of course, composition is the most important part of a photograph but I don't want to be limited by my gear and these lenses are exceptional.
This Konica Hexanon lens, below, is another one of my favorites. It isn't what I would call a sharp lens like the Hasselblad, Leica or Zeiss lenses but it is a lens that has some very nice character which makes it one of my favorites. It is a nice focal length too at 40mm and relatively bright at f1.8...
Those are some nice photos of some really nice photography gear!
Better still and the main purpose of this blog entry, I managed to figure out the best way to use each of my cameras with a flash head. Now... will I remember everything I learned over the past few days the next time I pick up one of my cameras and need to use a flash with it? Probably not but it shouldn't take long for me to remember.
Comments
Post a Comment