Photography, how it’s going 8/27/10

I went out on the river for three days, mostly to get photos as the river is still high and muddy and fish are hard to find. I had a problem with my new camera yesterday, I picked up two hairs in the viewfinder. Switching lens from 35-55mm to 55-250 exposes the inside of the camera and since I am doing this quite a few times each day in the boat, the risk of dropping a lens or camera in the water is high enough but I found I can also pick of carpet hairs from the camera bag or the boat carpet. So I tried to brush them off. So anyway I saw the hairs, removed the lens and looked inside without knowing what I was doing. I used a lens cloth which is supposed to be lint free and gently wiped off that smoked glass piece, what ever it is and I was shocked to see it was now completely covered with gobs of lint and carpet hairs. I tried to gently wipe if off but I just couldn’t get it clean. I was a little upset, this in my new $500 camera body. So I headed home, tried using a vacuum cleaner, a new small paint brush, Q-tips with alcohol water mixture and I was able to get it pretty clean but not completely. So I read up on it and found this glass piece doesn’t affect the actual image, and that the mirror flips up for cleaning and it flips up when the photo is taken, and that smokey glass piece is for light sensing and stuff for the camera to make adjustments before the image is taken. So luckily there was no real damage done.

Before I learned about this I checked ebay and found a used Xti Rebel body for about half price and it is a better model and has video and other features and it sounds like it was only used indoors and is in good shape. I figure I can no longer keep changing these lenses while out in the boat and the only options are to go back to a point and shoot with less quality or to move forward and use two cameras in the boat. I am missing shots anyway by having the wrong lens on. Now I just need to figure out how to store two cameras and have them easy to access in my boat and without them banging into each other. I think I will use one small bag along with the big camera bag with all the accessories etc in it.

I found that birds by a big city aren’t near as shy as birds in the wild. To get good closeups in the wild and even near cities I need at least a 400mm lens, which a decent one will cost me $1500 minimum. These lens go for $10,000 and even higher for really good ones. With a bigger lens I will probably need to use the tripod which makes fishing much harder as using a tripod is time consuming and I would also have to sit and actually watch one bird which can get boring after a few minutes for me. So far this year I have spent over $1000 on new cameras.

People see photos on the internet and they think it’s just a photo and they use it and post it on their websites or some people even use it in their logo or have signs made. Its like photographers were born rich and they just like taking photos for something to do, this is not true, most are in desperate need of money to live. I’ve even seen photographers take other peoples photos and post them on their website, its a dog eat dog world out there. There is people who make logos and signs and they just go around and steal images off the internet. T-shirt designers just look at other peoples shirts and steal their ideas. These people should know better but people just disrespect photographers, artists, cartoons and anyone else who has an idea they can steal. I have seem some of my secret lures that I shared on my website being picked up by someone else and they now sell them. It’s so bad I have people right now stealing my business name. They steal my photos, my art, my cartoons, my inventions and now my business name. What people don’t expect is that at some point and time there is a good chance someone will find the stolen work. All one has to do is a quick google and the names will take you right to them. OK I’m ranting and I will stop.

I really enjoy this photography, sometimes more than fishing. I can slowly troll around with my electric motor and watch for birds and wildlife with camera in hand. I have boats behind me everywhere I go but when I’m not really fishing hard I just don’t care and that in itself is enjoyable.

Bad news, Pelicans in our path, everyone bail out!

Bad news, Pelicans in our path, everyone bail out!

New DSLR Camera

I’m just not happy with my new kodac point and shoot z981, it’s just too slow to start up, shuts off after 3 minutes and I can’t turn that off and the quality is not what I need for landscape, low light conditions and zoom so I finally bought a SLR professional camera. Some things are shocking and some things are great. Taking pictures is not easy, the camera has to be reconfigured every time the light situation changes and these aren’t easy to learn quickly but I am happy with how it’s going. The quality is as good as I expected in some situations but other times it is a let down and I must learn more on how to get better quality. Like with a lot of zoom, the quality doesn’t seem any better than the kodac other than they are raw files that can be edited much more and they are larger and no compression. Hopefully I will be able to start showing a big improvement with quality. The hard part is with longer exposures a tripod is required and since I take most photos from a boat that rocks it will be hard.

The camera I finally decided on is a Canon Rebel XS. I did buy a larger zoom lens for it too, a Canon 55-250mm IS. It is an entry level camera, but that’s all I could afford right now. I will keep my kodac point and shoot, I’m sure it will be used as much or more than the new one.

One thing I am learning is to not take a bunch of photos and try to get a good one out of them, but rather to take one shot and try to get it right because these images are very large and will fill up a computer in no time, and my external hard-drives, and editing the photos is very complex and takes a lot of time. I will be posting on how it’s going with this. I do have some decent photos of the river I will post soon, but so far I really don’t have a lot to show that’s any better then the point and shoot photos.