Hockomock Digital Photographers

Hi everybody – I didn’t want to email this out and invade everybody’s inbox, but figured the blog would be a good place for this. I’m selling my Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di II VC (Vibration Control – “Image Stabilization” in Canon-speak) lens. I’m scrounging up funds to upgrade to a 5D, and this being an EF-S mount is the first to go. I didn’t use it much, so it’s pretty much impossible to tell from new – only thing missing from how it came from the store is part of the top of the box which I had to cut out to send in for a rebate. Comes with front/back caps, lens hood, box, and documentation. It’s $600 after rebate new, I have it listed elsewhere for $500, but will sell to a friend for $450.

Pics available here: http://imgur.com/a/g7cBR

Hi everybody! It looks like I’m going to have some time on airplanes in the next couple of weeks, which means that I’ll be looking for something to do. One of the options is work, but that’s…..not ideal. I figure another option is writing up some new content for this blog. That sounds much more fun. I’d like to make it something that would be helpful for people (like this post hopefully was).  So in that vein, does anybody have a request?  I do have some “behind the scenes” shots from one of my sessions with my twins that I could use for a walkthrough, but I’m open to any other ideas.  And hopefully if there’s something that I don’t know, someone else can volunteer to write the entry!

Also, as I am a geek, I often peruse the relatively geeky website “Reddit”.  A few months ago, someone took the time to write up a photo class for the site.  You can find it here.  For beginners who have questions about some of the terminology thrown about in image study, or elsewhere, it’s a pretty handy resource.  Hope it’s helpful!

For those of you who were at image study last night, there were two broad themes – sharpen/contrast and focus on what the subject of your image is.  I mentioned that I crop “out” from the center instead of cropping in, and here’s a brief video showing that technique.  i use Lightroom 3, but I assume this can be done in other software as well – possibly without “bringing down the lights”, though. The image I use is a great example of things that we were discussing – the boy is the subject, and most of the background is of dubious value at best, but there’s an awful lot of that background.

I have two babies that go to bed around 7, and need to be fed again around 10:30.  I also have a wife who goes to bed around 8:30 so that she can be relatively rested after dealing with baby wakeups during the night.  This means that from 8:30 until feeding time, I get to play with my camera.  Last night, it was water-drop photography, and tonight was dropping-stuff-into-water photography.  It’s actually pretty easy to do, so I’m going to do a quick writeup.  The important thing here is that the flash(es) provide all the light.  Like, ALL the light.  And because the flashes fire so, so fast, the shutter speed doesn’ t matter – whatever you’re lighting with the flash will be absolutely frozen because the light is on for such a short time.  Pics and writeup after the break

continue reading…

Hi everybody.  I’ve recently started playing around with off-camera lighting, specifically Strobist-type setups.  If you don’t know what Strobist is, check out http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ for all the details – the site is run primarily by a guy named David Hobby, and he’s all about getting professional-looking light out of minimal equipment, for minimal cost.  To get started, I finally pulled my flash out of TTL mode this weekend and started playing.  I’m DEFINITELY not an expert in this field, and I”m sure some club members know far, far more than I do about this, but I figured I would document as much of my learning process as I can, and hope that it helps others. Click the “read more” link below if you’re interested, and feel free to post additional info/questions/comments below!.

continue reading…

Hi everybody! I’ve taken a bunch of photos of the babies recently, including some with a borrowed Canon 24-105 F/4L lens. I have the 70-200, which is great for closeups, and great for ONE baby, but not quite wide enough for two. However, the Canon lens (or the 24-70) is out of my price range. Very far out of it. So I started looking around at other options like Tamron, Sigma, and Tokina. Does anybody have experiences with a decent, fast lens from brands other than Canon or Nikon in this zoom range? Any recommendations? I’d like to buy one used if I can find it, to further the keeping-on-a-budget factor.

Thanks!

I’m sure that everybody in the club has a list of websites that they frequent, but since this is a blog, I thought I’d talk a little bit about photography blogs, and how I follow them.  If there’s interest, I can write more about blog readers in the future, but here’s the quick overview:

RSS

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” – the idea is that it’s a way for computers and programs to keep track of websites that change regularly – blogs, news sites, etc…  This is done through an “RSS Feed”, which is a file that usually ends in .rss or .xml.  You can see the RSS feed for this site by clicking on the “RSS” link in the right-hand menu.

Blog Readers

Blog readers (also known as “aggregators” or “feed readers”, among other things) are software packages that can either be web based, or a program on your computer.  It’s increasingly common to see them as web applications.  I use Google Reader, mostly because it integrates easily into all of the other Google services that increasingly run my life.  If you already have a Google account, you can access Reader at http://www.google.com/reader.  I’ve used www.bloglines.com in the past, but prefer some of the little tricks that Google Reader offers.  Once you have an account with a reader application, you can start adding RSS feeds (the files I mentioned above).

My Feeds

I follow a few blogs, as well as some custom searches (which I’ll explain in a bit).  You can subscribe to all of my feeds by adding this feed to your reader.   Now, you might want to pick out some of the individual blogs, because if i add or remove any subscriptions, that will be reflected in that link.   Some of the ones that I’ve found especially useful/interesting:

• Digital Photography School - http://feedproxy.google.com/DigitalPhotographySchool
• Strobist (note that people usually either LOVE or HATE this blog) – http://strobist.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
• Photoshop Insider by Scott Kelby – http://www.scottkelby.com/feed/
• The Big Picture – http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/index.xml
• Slickdeals Canon listings -
  http://slickdeals.net/sdsearch.php?&search=canon&perpage=20&mode=forum&forumchoice%5B%5D=9&rss=1
• Craigslist Canon postings – http://boston.craigslist.org/search/?areaID=4&subAreaID=&query=canon&catAbbreviation=sss&format=rss

The last two on the list there are examples of custom searches.  Many forums and message boards will have the option to save a search as an RSS feed.  Once you’ve done a search, look for a reference to “RSS” on the results page.  As new posts show up in the search results, they’ll automatically be delivered to your blog reader.

What else?

Does anybody else follow photography blogs? Any that you’d recommend?  Post the RSS feeds in the comments!

Some excellent advice in here for the portrait photographer in all of us…

Hey everybody, welcome to the HDP blog! This blog uses Wordpress to handle all of the posts/comments/photos/etc, so if you’ve used Wordpress before, you’ll be perfectly familiar with the setup. However, if you haven’t used it, I created a few quick videos to show you the ropes. Couple of quick notes:

• If you want to post anything (comments or full posts), you’ll need to create an account. Use the “Register” link on the right to setup your account. In order to prevent spam, however, your first comment on a post will be held for moderation. One of the moderators (currently me and Frank) will need to approve that first comment to authorize your account to post comments. Additionally, when you first create the account, it will only have privileges to comment on other people’s posts – if you want to create your own posts, an administrator will need to up your privileges.
• You can post photos from either your hard drive, or from the web. The videos below explain how.
• If you have any questions, send me an email and we can try to figure it out. I may or may not be at the next meeting, it will all depend on babies arrival date

How to create an account and comment on other people’s posts:

Basics of making your own post, and pulling in an image from another website:

More detail on making your own post, including uploading an image from your hard drive: