Gear Reviews, Tech & Photography
Here are a selection of photos I took at the Offutt Air Force Base Air Show in 2011. It was a good show and I was glad to go with a friend who had a good time. See all of my photos on my G+ page. G+ is my new home to display most of my photos in edition to here. I did not renew my Flickr Pro account. No use in paying for something I can do over on G+ for free.
In February I decided to start building a studio in my basement. At the time the weather was cold and I was out of things to work on in my house while it was still cold. This was always something I had wanted, so I built a Backdrop stand out of PVC, bought some fabric to use as a backdrop and found a good deal on some great studio lights through a contact at Awesome Camp 2011. About the time this was finished the weather got warmer and I started work on remodeling my garage. A couple of weekends ago a good friend came over and we played around in the studio for a couple of hours. She brought lots of clothes and we had fun mixing and matching. I am looking forward to future studio time to learn. I still have a ton to learn about studio lighting but i think the results below turned out pretty good.
I ended up firing the Alienbee B800’s I have wirelessly with my Canon 7D with the built in wireless flash firing trigger built in. This is a great feature, it was guess and check to get it set right but so far it seems to work great, and quite reliable. I shot tethered via USB to my old laptop using Lightroom to see the shots as I took them. This was cool and my model really liked being able to see every shot as they were taken. I think for the next shoot I will bring one of my external monitors so the images are larger. Other things I learned was I need a bit more width to the room to move lights further away from the source. For big shoots I might have to push furniture to the sides of the room and setup there. I will have to think on this. The backdrop holder worked well. I need to re-engineer one side of it a bit but for the most part it did its job well. I did learn the carpet under the model while nice for her to stand on causes the backdrop to have rinkles. This is distracting in the photography and next time I will remove it. I also learned that I need to iron my backdrops. Not looking forward to this task as it will take forever. Does anyone have a steamer?
I do plan on doing a blog post sometime on the construction of my DIY PVC backdrop holder, and my garage remodel, but I make no guarantee when that may be. In the mean time enjoy the small sample of pictures below and the link to the set on Flickr.
See the rest of this set on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157626682837239/
The annual Offutt Airshow this year was on August 28th and 29th. I went on the 29th with @Rossnelson and had a great time. Security was really tight, we had to go through metal detectors and then most people were wanded after, they did not give second chances of removing more metal to go through again. They were also not allowing bags in so I had to carry my camera around my neck the entire day and only bring one lens. I brought the 70-200 and was glad I did. One last thing about the security was that Ross was wearing a t-shirt from the band Bad Religion and he got a talking to going through security about it. The guard thought he might be trying to make a political statement and said he may have to turn it inside out if asked to do so. Luckily other service men knew of the band and let us through. Security was nearly as tight as an airport. I guess this was because we were on an active air force base.
The day was long and hot, people took cover as the day went on under the wings of aircraft. I loved seeing people sitting in lawn chairs under the huge wings of a B-52 or under the fuselage of a B1. We walked around and saw all the static planes which were too many to list. We then watched the aerial show which was good. My favorite by far was the F-22 Raptor. It was such an impressive fighter plane. The thrust vectoring really made it very maneuverability and agile. It also was so stable at any speed it seemed.
This was the first time shooting anything similar to sports on with my Canon 7D. I used Al Servo and a combination of Auto focus Expansion when on the center point. It put emphasis on the center point (or where ever you wanted it) but also included one above, below, left and right. It worked well. for slower moving planes. For the really fast ones I used the new zonal function AF selection and choose the center group. This grabbed the center 11 points and used them. As long as you kept the points on the object and the AF drive engaged (I did this manually with the AF button) it worked well. I was amazed at how well it would track planes coming at you quickly or going away from you. The hardest part was panning quick enough to keep it in frame. For sports this camera is a huge step up from my old Canon 20D.
Here are a few photos from the day more can be seen at Flickr in this set here.
More can be seen at Flickr in this set here.
I have gotten very interested (With the help of an influential friend) in some of the older classic manual lenses, so I now have a SMC Pentax 55mm F2 Type K in Pentax mount and a Jupiter 9 85mm F1.8 M42 that I have been mounting on my 7D and I wanted to try them out so I went out with a friend and had some fun around town. The 85mm is hard to focus because it has such a small DOF and its goes through 2 converters to mount on my camera so its no perfectly tight. The lens is also a bit stiff, but optically its good. I need more practice. The Pentax is a great lens & I am getting the fever for more. Its very sharp and extremely mechanical. Great little lens. Thanks to my model Megan for the great job, I could not have done it without you.
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Sigma 10-20mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Canon 50mm F1.8
Canon 50mm F1.8
To see the full gallery Click http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/Megan1/
Today we traveled from Barcelona to Madrid via high speed train, it was a nice ride. Speeds reached 300kmh and it was very quiet and smooth the entire way. It’s a nice way to travel.
When we reached Madrid we happened to get a very talkative taxi driver who told us all about the celebration that was happening near our hotel this evening. The Atlético de Madrid futbol team was celebrating its championship in a large parade through town. Our hotel is right on the puerta de sol which happened to be the ending point for the parade. The players got off the bus and went up into a government building to show off the trophies to the crowd. It was really a cool experience. Everyone was singing the team song, cheering, etc. It reminded me of a Husker football game day back home.
The weather here is cold right now. Today it was about 50F with short bursts of rain and even a little hail. Hopefully tomorrow will be warmer with more sun. We also found our favorite European ice cream bars the “Magnum Bars”, they bring back great memories. I wish that you could get them in the USA.
Today I took a lot of video with the new camera which increased the file count and spaced used for today only to 185 files at 9.26GB for a total of 518 files at 14.9GB. WOW!
The Husker Nation sure is a dedicated crew. When you can get over 77,000 people to attend what can only be described as a glorified practice its a good day for a great game. All week the weather was forecast to be rainy for the game. Well the weather men were wrong! It rained before the game but cleared up perfectly for the game its self. The entire game was sunny and warm. You could not have asked for better weather.
I decided to bring my camera to the game because I had great seats (Thanks mom and dad). It has been a while since I had shot sports but considering I was in the sands I think I got some decent results.
