118.365 Happy Birthday Dad!

Thursday April 28 2011.

My Dad. We share the same hair line. :)

Today is his 71st Birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!

Chris.

117.365 Butterfly At The Recital.

Wednesday April 27 2011.

My Daughter had her first dance recital today. She was so cute. The leader of her group. They all were so cute.

This will be something she will want to do for a long time I`m sure. She loved it!

Chris.

36.365 Grave Digger!!

 

Saturday February 5 2011.

They boy and I went to Monster Jam 2011 here in Edmonton today. What a blast. I took my old rebel xti with me and the smallest zoom I had just in case I got hassled by the man. Sure enough security was all over me about not being allowed to have a lens over 3 inches or a camera with a detachable lens system. Good thing I didn't take the 50D with the 8 inch lens and battery pack!

I promised not to take any more photos. LOL. Only a couple hundred anyway. :) As it was the light was not very good for the poor XTI and this is about the best of the images I took.

What a blast though. I highly recommend it to every one. Such an adrenalin pumping experience.

Chris.

328.365 No Answer.

 

Wednesday November 24 2010.

I keep pushing this help button. Pushing it and pushing it. The light never comes on and no one ever comes to my rescue. What good is a help button if there is no help?

Chris.

324.365 Christmas Is Coming!

 

Saturday November 20 2010.

We are a bit early with the Christmas decorations this year but the "kids" are super excited. So we decided to put up the tree and decorate the house early this year.

This is one of my favorite tree decorations. I love moose. They are my favorite animal.

Chris.

266.365 Vortec.

Friday September 24 2010.

Vortec. If you own a Chev truck you probably have seen this before.

Chris.

186.365 Cherry.

Monday July 5 2010.

Dark cherries are very hard to photograph on the black fridge panel!

Chris.

171.365 Happy New Father's Day

Sunday June 20 2010.

I would like to wish a very happy Father's day to Cameron. He's a new dad. Carter here is only 3 weeks old and man is he cute. Mikayla was very fascinated with him.

Cam, welcome to the very scary world of being a Dad. I know you are going to have a blast with your new son and I look forward to seeing him grow up. Congrats man.

Chris.

160.365 Vent Cap LR3 Test

Wednesday June 9 2010.

A friend of mine just go a copy of Lightroom 3 and was kind enough to let me import some photos to test it out. Let's just call it amazing. I've only tested it on a few photos but wow! I'm going to buy it for sure.

This is a vent cap for a 25000 liter fuel tank. I put it on my reflective fridge panel. Nice and clean but not too unexpected until you read this part.

This is shot at ISO 6400 on my 50D! f/16 for 1/40 sec. I've done nothing except import it in. The new process settings in LR3 are amazing. It removed the noise without me even touching the settings. I was able to bring back some of the detail on the side that was smoothed out a bit too much as well.

Wow.

And this one is at ISO 12800! LR3 Rocks. And this is just for noise reduction!

Chris.

Low Light Photography - Camp Fire Photos.

Camping. Who doesn't love it? I love taking photos at the lake. Anybody who's been to the lake with me can tell you that. What about getting some fun shots from around the camp fire? It used to involve a tripod and the subject posing or using the flash for the candid shots. Either way, the shot was not the same. It was either way to "posed" looking or the flash just ruined the great light from the fire.

Recently, I took some photos around the campfire with a very high ISO, 6400, and my 50mm f/1.8 lens wide open to f/1.8. Of course this produced some pretty bad noise. Especially with the ISO at 6400. I could have gone with a lower ISO setting but I really wanted the faster shutter speed to get the sharpest photo I could. Well what to do? I used Noise Ninja to take care of the noise. Here are the resulting photos. I won't bore you with the before shots, trust me it was like looking at a sand painting!

Chris.

Digital Photography Tip # - ISO

It's been a while since I posted a tip. I thought ISO might be a good one this time around with spring here and more and more outdoor activities get started. I'm still planning on lighting tips but I need to learn more on that first.

ISO can be thought of these days as the another variable in your exposure settings. In today's modern DSLRs it has become a very useful setting. ISO is the sensitivity of the sensor to light just as ISO or ASA in film is the sensitivity to light. The more sensitive the sensor is set the faster the shutter speed can be which will affect what aperture you can use as well.

Of course you usually want the lowest possible ISO setting to keep your noise levels down to a minimum but there are times where you just need to raise the ISO in order to keep either the shutter speed you want or a desired aperture.

Be careful though when you choose to raise the ISO. Higher ISO settings are very finicky with proper exposure. If your exposure is not quite right and you have to raise it in post, the noise will really pop out. What I've taken to doing is to slightly over expose the shot and bring it down a bit in post. That hides some of the noise. Of course there is no better plan than to get it right in camera.

Here is a link to my post on the above trick. This trick works great if you don't have a lot of highlight areas that would get blown out by over exposing but if you are not worried about the highlights and it's the only way to get the shot, give it a try.

Here are some examples of higher ISO photos. I'm talking over ISO 1600 here as most cameras and editing software now can handle ISO 1600 well.

A Breakthrough For High ISO Noise!!

I know that many people are having trouble with noise levels at higher ISO's. I don't like to use flash if I don't have to. What do we do???

Like many 50D owners, I've been less than impressed with the high ISO performance of my new camera. I was beginning to think either I was expecting too much or Canon was full of it.

Slowly I've been getting better at working this camera to it's abilities, which by the way are more than my abilities as a photographer LOL. I've gotten better and better results as the months have passed. But today, well today I had a major breakthrough. I was reading some of the threads on groups I'm in here on Flickr and there was a fantastic suggestion on how to handle noise on any make or model camera. I wish I could find that thread to give props to the person who pointed it out. I'll keep looking for it. Here's what the breakthrough is.

Shift your exposure to the right and bring it back down in post. That's it. I tried at ISO 3200, 6400 and 12800. I overexposed 1 and 2 stops then brought them down that amount in post. The noise disappeared. Well enough of it to make even my ISO 12,800 usuable. Look at these shots at full size and see what I mean.

I love my 50D again!!

ISO 6400, normal exposure. Noise not too bad here.

Now the same shot but over exposed 2 stops then pulled back down in post.

Here is ISO 12,800 normal exposure. Pretty much useless. My cell phone looks better.

Now ISO 12,800 over exposed 2 stops then brought down in post. This I could use. Still has some noise but ISO 12,800!! Wow.

I'm pretty sure this will work for any make and model. Let me know if it works for you.

Chris.