Paul Lester Photo

# 23 – Tony Lessssssssssstttttteeeeerrrrr

During Saturday’s basketball game, I found myself wishing for the good old days of my SRT-201, manual-everything camera! My D300 has, to put it mildly, several levels and groups of menus.

Auto-ISO
I noticed that my camera was set for auto-ISO. Basically, it will change the ISO, depending on the light levels to make sure that you get the fastest shutter speed that is at or above your minimum shutter speed. For example, if I say that my minimum shutter speed should be 1/125 of a second, and my ISO can vary from 200 – 3200, the camera may take the ISO all the way up to 3200 just to get that 1/125 of a second exposure.

Well, it has been a while since I’ve shot basketball (early August), which I usually shoot at f/5.6 and shutter priority, or Time Value, at a speed of 1/125 of a second, letting the camera choose its own aperture. I turn on Auto-ISO to make sure that I can get the shot no matter what. A very fitting mode for sports.

Under pressure
The game was in full swing and I noticed, while reviewing some of the photos, that the ISO was creeping up to 3200 and things were looking a bit grainy. Then, I remembered that at one of the games, this past summer, I had been shooting in a particularly dark gymnasium. Well, the gym that I was shooting in now was well-lit and I wanted to lower the maximum ISO to 1600, or perhaps 1100, but could not, for the life of me, remember how to do it! I got lost in the menus. Further, as the gym was so well lit, I was a bit confused why the ISO was so high. I was shooting with my 50mm f/1.8!

After missing a few plays and fumbling with my menu system, I decided to take a test shot, move to manual mode, and finish the game. Perfect. I find that manual usually works well in a gym, as the lighting is very consistent. There are bright spots that tend to throw off the metering system, though, so manual is a great friend.

After the fact
In trying to diagnose why my ISO kept going so high, I finally figured out where that danged setting for auto-ISO was located. When I went to the minimum shutter speed setting, I found that it was set to 1/2000 second. ??? I must have accidentally set it there, but I don’t remember!

Next time!
There is a feature that I have not used on any of my cameras. It is a custom menu setting. You can add frequently changed, or hard-to-find/deeply nested menu items to this custom menu. I’ve started using it now! No longer will auto-ISO confound me! I’ve also added the multiple exposure menu item there, as I want to play with it, but never think about it!

Back in my day …
Oh for the days of the lollipop and the stick! For you young folks, that was what we called it back-in-the-day. In the Minolta manual cameras, there was a small metal arm with a circle on the top (lollipop), and another without a circle. When the two (the lollipop and the stick) were aligned, the exposure was correct. The shutter speed dial moved one, the aperture, the other.

Nearly every time that I reach into my bag to pull out my camera or to perhaps change a lens, I see my Lensbaby 2.0 sitting there. Many is the time that I wonder why I bought it. I’ve considered placing it on e-bay a number of times, but haven’t done so. I’ve used it perhaps 5 or 6 times, but the total number of shots that I’ve taken with it probably comes to much less than 100. I’ve written about it before and seem to vacillate between liking and not liking it.

I was first introduced to it by Craig Tanner at a Radiant Vista Inspirational Weekend. He had done some nice portraits with it, so I figured that I’d get one and give it a try. My initial impressions were not favorable and the Lensbaby was still in the bag, but relegated to dark, dusty, ill-used corner of my bag. Exiled, so to speak.

Giving it another try
This morning I was in a mood to give it a try again. I just had a feeling that I could finally do something with this lens. As a side note: It’s funny, manufacturers spend millions of dollars perfecting their lenses to get the absolute best sharpness, color fidelity, coverage, etc. on their lenses and what do we do? Go out and buy a lens that intentionally distorts the pictures!

So, away I go. I figured that I’d go to one of my favorite places to shoot. The gardens and UNCC. When I arrived, my first thought was to take my tripod, bag, etc. Instead, I decided to leave myself no choice but to use the Lensbaby. So, I just took the camera and the LB and away I went. I wanted to fill one 4GB CF card. I considered my mission over when I had done that. 197 shots later, I was done.

A different kind of approach
Using the Lensbaby requires a different kind of approach. As the lens is full of distortion on the edges, I now needed to pay more attention not only to my subject, but to the way the lines around the periphery of the subject looked. Also, as I don’t have the latest version of the LB, which stays in place, I have to keep bending this lens and snap as soon as I see the sweet spot come into focus. To work with a tripod would have slowed the process down too much and would not have allowed me to experiment as much.

An acquired taste
When someone says something of food or drink being an acquired taste, I’ve always wondered by you go back if it doesn’t taste good in the first place?! Well, the LB didn’t ‘taste’ good the first few times, but … I guess that I have my answer.

What I’ve learned
I’ve seen quite a few LB photos. Most of them, honestly, I don’t like. I like a lot of Craig’s work because I feel that these lenses work very well in portraits. Most landscape shots that I’ve seen taken with them give me motion sickness! It makes it look like things are moving that shouldn’t be moving! Yet, I was determined to give it a try on landscape.

In the beginning, I wanted to give up quickly … which is why I didn’t take my other lenses with me; however, I forced myself to stick with it. Soon, after a few dozen shots, I realized where the LB worked for me. Close in. When I get closer to my subject where the majority of the frame is ‘sweet spot’, with somewhat blurred edges, then I start to like what I see. The further away that I move and the image starts to look like I’m looking into a hole, well, I just don’t like that.

Of the 197 that I shot, I got about 5 or 10 that I liked. None that I’d probably print, but I liked them nonetheless. I guess that I’ll just keep practicing with the lens and, who knows, in time I may come to enjoy it. I want to try it with portraits. We’ll see. My favorite of the bunch was the speed limit sign.

Anyone else have any experience, positive or negative, with the Lensbaby?

There is a task that I will have to do sooner or later … probably later. I will call it reunification, for lack of a better word. I have two computers that have pictures on them: my laptop and my desktop. My laptop travels with me. Therefore, everywhere that I go that I take my camera, the laptop travels. I download pictures to the laptop and then, sometimes, I transfer them to the desktop when I get home, though not always.

Thankfully, I categorize my photos by date, so I’ll have a folder structure like 2008/2008-10-12, which means October 12th. This makes it easy to see what’s missing from the desktop. I can just select those folders, create a catalog, export it from the laptop, and import it into the desktop catalog.

At the end of the year, I close the catalog and start a new one. So far, I have 3 catalogs: 2006, 2007, and 2008, which of course, is a work in progress. This year I’ve been slipping in 2 categories: 1) keywording. I was doing pretty well at that, but then just got lazy about it. 2) Synchronizing my laptop and my desktop, with the desktop being the main holder of all the images; the laptop, just those out of town images.

Once synchronized, I can do a backup to another disk, then all is well. I don’t have anything fancy going on like a RAID system, but I considered it. I’m thinking about revamping my catalog structure, but haven’t given serious thought to it yet. I guess that it will give me something to do on those long, cold, dark winter nights.

If you split pictures between multiple computers, how do you keep track of them?

I guess one might call this a pet peeve, but there are a couple of words, that if mentioned in the context of how to take better pictures, I cringe. Never and always. Both of them exclude any possibility of playing, experimenting, learning, or growth if you adhere to the advice.

I was surfing around on the web one day and happened across some article on how to improve your shots. One bit of advice was to NEVER center your subject either horizontally or vertically. Also, you should NEVER divide the image in half, so to speak because it confuses the viewer. Poppycock!

I would generally agree that the ‘rule of thirds’, or more the ‘suggestion’, tends to work better most of the time, but there are those times to throw out the rules and just have at it! Sometimes symmetry is good. It’s the same as ALWAYS needing to fill your frame with the subject. Here, the girl is the subject, but she is quite small in the frame; however, that blazing magenta colored jacket is an attention getter.

I was at the park the other day enjoying the last bit of fall weather. As I composed this shot, I thought that both the trees and the reflections were as equally important as the little girl climbing on the rocks. Of course, I could have composed this any number of ways; none of which would have been wrong, but I chose to put the water/land separation right in the middle and move her a bit to the right. Also, as an experiment, I decided to crop it square. Some things just look right in a square format, to me. I just felt that contrariness bubbling up within and had to break the rules!

Oh well, rules are made to be broken, I suppose!