ridiculously excited
May. 22nd, 2010 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I am ridiculously excited to take pictures tonight. I have already taken hundreds of photos of roller derby, but this time I have a different rig. Work let me borrow one of the new-ish Nikon DSLR bodies-- the D5000, which has been out around a year. I wanted to borrow the D-90, of course, which is the top of the consumer line (the fanciest one that still has the scene mode dial, instead of requiring you to use it in manual settings all the time). But we didn't have any in stock. So I got this one instead, which has the same sensor, just a smaller body and a few other features that make it about $200 cheaper. The main thing I wanted to try is that my old Canon has a) very poor low-light settings, meaning I can't shoot it in high ISO mode without getting crappola for results, and b) a slow card reader / frames per second, meaning it's locked up writing to the card half the time when I want to take another picture. (I shot a scrimmage with it in continuous mode, i.e. press the button and hold down and it takes up to about six or seven pictures-- and I'd do so, and it would then have to sit and think for about thirty seconds, which is a damn long time during a sporting event that occurs in two-minute maximum increments. So I shot the last game with it in single-shot, which was fine except that I'd take a picture, and then have to wait seven or eight seconds to take the next one. Next time you're in a car accident try counting seven seconds. Just saying, it's a damn long time.)
So we'll see how this goes. I also borrowed a fantastic lens and a somewhat expensive off-camera flash. I couldn't believe they let me use that much equipment at once. So I made a padded neck strap cover for the borrowed, slightly manky neckstrap they gave me along with it. The neck strap says the store name on it, which I embroidered on there because I realized that stenciling it would take longer including the work of cutting the stencil. I'd have to find my fabric paint, I'd have to look around for the stencil stuff, I'd need to get a fresh Xacto blade... and the embroidery floss was right here, and the needle right there, and the scissors right there, and I could just do this now and make it happen... So I did. I counted how many letters there were in the name, drew it tentatively on paper, drew it straight onto the fabric with a water-soluble market, and just sat and did it. About two hours' worth of stitching, all told, while Z was napping and I'd've been bored and disillusioned anyway.
Then I had to assemble it. Which didn't go fantastically well. I'd embroidered too close to the edge, and the fabric, "upcycled" from an already-dismantled old pair of work-issued uniform pants two jobs ago, was fray-ey. (It's lined with bamboo-cotton muslin, and padded on the neck side with some bamboo batting-- we'll see, as it's muggy today, whether that stuff really is good in moisture.) And the loaner Singer was a piece of shit and preferred leaving big tangles of fabric to actually sewing, you know, seams.
I was in the midst of struggling with this, having set it aside last night knowing I'd need to seam-rip the whole thing, when I got a call from Singer that my machine was back. I said I didn't think I'd have time to pick it up, but then I put the phone down and looked at the seam ripper in my hand and looked over at Z and said, "Can we spare an hour?"
So we did. I went and got my machine and it took me all of three minutes' sewing with it to finish assembling the strap. It's beautiful.
I think I'm going to suggest to my boss that I start writing blog entries for the store blog, because I've got some fantastic material by now. But I'm only doing it if I get paid, I'm not doing it on my own!
Anyway. Got my fishnets on, am wearing a shirt entirely covered in sequins, have done all my makeup etc. already so I don't have to fight over the bathroom with Z's prolonged moustache-waxing routine, and have packed up a camera bag I scavenged from work (having intended to dismantle it for parts). I'm bringing the old Rebel too; it's only got a shitty lens and I can't find my good memory card, so I can only take 70 pictures with it, but it's a good backup. If the other photographer there, who shoots Canon, has a spare awesome lens, as he'd mentioned he might, I will shoot a few pics with it; otherwise, it's just a backup. I don't have a spare battery for the D-5000, but I think it'll be OK. Well... we'll see. I'm excited anyway.
So we'll see how this goes. I also borrowed a fantastic lens and a somewhat expensive off-camera flash. I couldn't believe they let me use that much equipment at once. So I made a padded neck strap cover for the borrowed, slightly manky neckstrap they gave me along with it. The neck strap says the store name on it, which I embroidered on there because I realized that stenciling it would take longer including the work of cutting the stencil. I'd have to find my fabric paint, I'd have to look around for the stencil stuff, I'd need to get a fresh Xacto blade... and the embroidery floss was right here, and the needle right there, and the scissors right there, and I could just do this now and make it happen... So I did. I counted how many letters there were in the name, drew it tentatively on paper, drew it straight onto the fabric with a water-soluble market, and just sat and did it. About two hours' worth of stitching, all told, while Z was napping and I'd've been bored and disillusioned anyway.
Then I had to assemble it. Which didn't go fantastically well. I'd embroidered too close to the edge, and the fabric, "upcycled" from an already-dismantled old pair of work-issued uniform pants two jobs ago, was fray-ey. (It's lined with bamboo-cotton muslin, and padded on the neck side with some bamboo batting-- we'll see, as it's muggy today, whether that stuff really is good in moisture.) And the loaner Singer was a piece of shit and preferred leaving big tangles of fabric to actually sewing, you know, seams.
I was in the midst of struggling with this, having set it aside last night knowing I'd need to seam-rip the whole thing, when I got a call from Singer that my machine was back. I said I didn't think I'd have time to pick it up, but then I put the phone down and looked at the seam ripper in my hand and looked over at Z and said, "Can we spare an hour?"
So we did. I went and got my machine and it took me all of three minutes' sewing with it to finish assembling the strap. It's beautiful.
I think I'm going to suggest to my boss that I start writing blog entries for the store blog, because I've got some fantastic material by now. But I'm only doing it if I get paid, I'm not doing it on my own!
Anyway. Got my fishnets on, am wearing a shirt entirely covered in sequins, have done all my makeup etc. already so I don't have to fight over the bathroom with Z's prolonged moustache-waxing routine, and have packed up a camera bag I scavenged from work (having intended to dismantle it for parts). I'm bringing the old Rebel too; it's only got a shitty lens and I can't find my good memory card, so I can only take 70 pictures with it, but it's a good backup. If the other photographer there, who shoots Canon, has a spare awesome lens, as he'd mentioned he might, I will shoot a few pics with it; otherwise, it's just a backup. I don't have a spare battery for the D-5000, but I think it'll be OK. Well... we'll see. I'm excited anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 11:42 pm (UTC)Don't be afraid of using a camera which lacks a scene dial! You very quickly get used to shooting in Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority. for indoor low-light shooting, setting the camera to Aperture Priority and using the lowest f-stop your lens will aloow reliably gets you the fastest possible shutter speed that will still allow a decent exposure (which is what you want if you're trying to freeze motion).
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 04:39 am (UTC)Oh, I never shoot in the scene modes, I just can't afford the D300S. I shot tonight mostly in the aperture priority mode, because I had a 2.8 lens and wanted to utilize it. I ventured outside of the 2.8 setting a bit, watching my shutter speed-- trying to keep it at 100 or more, but not always succeeding-- because I had an off-camera flash, but it wasn't a very *good* off-camera flash. If I was confident in the flash, I could drop the shutter a bit and count on the flash to freeze the motion enough, but I wasn't confident in the flash. I really didn't have a good reflector/diffuser on it.
I zoomed in on a few of the shots to see if there was a lot of noise at ISO 3200, and I thought there was, so I didn't shoot much over 1600-- but even that was miles better than my old camera. I just really really dislike ISO noise a lot more than I dislike slow-shutter motion blur, so I'd rather err on the side of having motion-blurred shots than noisy ones. I shot a representative sample at 3200, and then let the rest be slower.
I am totally retarded at Shutter Priority. I tried it for a minute but I don't get great results; I'd rather set the aperture and see what the shutter's doing, and control it that way. I'm kind of dumb about that sort of thing, though. I don't notice the camera giving me errors, which is why it took me so long to notice that my card was about to be full. Durr. A 12 megapixel camera can fill up a card a lot faster than a 6 megapixel one.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 05:21 pm (UTC)And you're not kidding about how fast these new DSLRs can fill up a card! (Especially if you shoot RAW, which I'm not yet brave enough to do.) It's a bit ridiculous, really, when you consider that most of us are never going to make really large prints of anything we shoot. Talk about complete overkill!
Maybe when the prices come down, there will be a new Nikon in your future? Right now, they do seem to have the best low-light, high ISO performance of any of the major DSLR brands.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 06:33 pm (UTC)I actually find that Aperture Priority gives me more easy control over the shutter speed, because I can watch the camera adjusting that. I never care *that* much about my shutter speed-- what does it matter if it's at 250 or 200? If it's at 25 or 30? I don't care, I just want a ballpark idea. So I control my shutter speed by locking the aperture where I think it ought to be.
So as far as I'm concerned, there doesn't even need to be a Shutter Priority setting on the camera. But that's where I prefer the D-90 over the D-5000: the 90 has two thumb wheels, not one, and there's a second liquid crystal display on the top of the camera that always shows the shutter speed, aperture, etc. no matter what mode the camera's in. So it's faster to make adjustments, and it's easier to double-check what you're in-- that back screen is showing you the picture you just took, or is showing nothing (expecting you to be looking through the viewfinder), but that second display has your settings showing.
I haven't compared the reviews on the ISO settings of the major brands-- I don't know a ton about the comparative strengths and weaknesses, which I really should make a point of learning. I just know my company's primarily a Nikon dealer, and so if I want a camera, I'm eligible to purchase it directly from Nikon, for an employee discount. It's not much of a discount, but it's better than nothing. I'm sort of hanging on to see if they introduce a new model to replace the D-90, whereupon I would very likely snag a discontinued D-90 if I could get one (or buy a used one if a customer trades it in towards a new whatever the latest thing winds up being, though I'd have to be very lucky). But I have a feeling the D-90's got another year or two on it, so now I'm just trying to hang on until I've got the funds available. Which, you know. That's a lot of funds.
But yeah. 12 megapixels is a lot of freaking pixels and I have no need for that much. But of course I can't bear to turn the quality down, in case I do get a great shot I want a 16x20 of. But I forsee that the 320-GB hard drive I just bought is not going to be big enough, in very short order, if I can take 8 GB of photos in a single shoot. Iiiiiii'm gonna have to start shunting older photos onto an external hard drive, or doing what many of my coworkers do and burning them to DVDs and sticking them in an album with index prints.
Each picture I took last night was at least 6, often 7 megabytes. Each one.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 08:32 pm (UTC)So as far as I'm concerned, there doesn't even need to be a Shutter Priority setting on the camera.
Yeah, Shutter Priority's not much easier than full manual mode, so there's little reason to bother with it. Might as well push the dial all the way to M and be done with it.
But that's where I prefer the D-90 over the D-5000: the 90 has two thumb wheels, not one, and there's a second liquid crystal display on the top of the camera that always shows the shutter speed, aperture, etc. no matter what mode the camera's in.
Those are features my new Olympus E3 has over my old Olympus E510; having two thumb/finger wheels rather than just one makes SUCH a difference! I've got my E3 programmed so that the thumb wheel controls the aperture, and the front finger wheel adjusts the exposure compensation, so making adjustments on the fly is super-quick. It's really a pity that the lower-end DSLRs generally lack those two very useful features in favor of a bazillion useless pre-programmed 'scene' modes on the control dial. They really do make the camera easier to use.
Each picture I took last night was at least 6, often 7 megabytes. Each one.
That's the file size my Olympus shoots when I have it on the next-to-highest JPEG setting (large, fine). I shudder to think how big the average pic's file size would be on the highest setting (large, superfine), which only uses a 1:2.7 compression ratio. I'm not even going to think about RAW... I wonder how much the rapid increase in the average size of an external hard drive over the past couple of years has being driven by the needs of hobbyist photographers? You don't have to shoot much before you've got terabytes of info you need to store! I haven't reached the stage of needing a separate dedicated external hard drive for my pics yet, but I know that time will come eventually. I guess that means I'm going to have to figure out how to really use my photo software (Apple Aperture), so that I will be able to make more than one library and keep most of them off my computer's desktop.
Sometimes I think the film photographers have it easier. The time-honored shoebox method of storage just doesn't work with digital files!
How long has the D90 been out? It seems the big two update their camera models every 2-3 years, and I know the D90's been out at least a year now. Maybe in the fall they'll be an upgraded version, and you'll get lucky.