Photo Shoot: A Day in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park

I don't make it up to San Francisco very often but I think I might need to go up there more after spending the day in Golden Gate Park this past Saturday with my friend Jock, a fellow Nikon shooter. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was pretty crowded when we got there but we were lucky enough to find a parking spot by the lake where people ride in the pedal boats. We started walking around the lake and we spotted a Canon shooter with one of those big grey tele-photo lenses and she was shooting some Big Blue Herons nesting on top of some trees. It was a bit far away for my 340mm lens (200mm plus 1.7 teleconverter on my Nikon D700) so this is the best I could get after cropping:

Then we continued around the lake and here comes the goose family with the little goslings. Those guys are pretty cute (click on the pic to make it larger):

And there were a lot of people just hanging out and relaxing.  It reminded me that I need to do this sometimes instead of always being on the go and always doing something.  Here is a pic of some elderly European folks.  Not sure if they were tourists or locals:

And we saw so many cute kids along the way. We ended up near the de young museum and the California Academy of Science and there were plenty of people hanging around there. It’s nice having a telephoto lens to get the stolen shots. Yeah, I should probably ask permission of their parents to take their pics but you got to shoot in the moment. Sometimes I offer to email them the pics and sometimes they take me up on it and sometimes they say no. I guess most people have a lot of pics of their own kids. Most kids are usually very happy to oblige and be my model. Here are some of my favorites of that day:

Then we went across the street to the Botanical garden and not much to see as far as flowers but a great place for people watching. Lot’s of people hanging around on the grassy areas:

These cute girls were posing for a pic for another photographer.  We could not pass up the opportunity to steal this pic:

This couple seemed to be having fun!  Was it wrong to take this pic?  ;-)

We decided to call it a day and went back to the car. On the way out, we saw a guy on the side of the rode aiming his big lens at something so we pulled over and got out and saw the great blue heron over near the water so I quickly grabbed my camera.  The heron was just standing there like a statue.  I guess that is what they do.

We started chatting with the other photographer and started comparing equipment. He was using the Sony A850 full frame camera. He said he paid $1999 for the camera body, which would make it the cheapest full frame camera on the market. The only problem he said is that anything above ISO 800 is pretty grainy. He was a very nice guy and it was good talking photography with him while the great blue herons will just sit there like a statue, I’m assuming looking for food, unless something startles them and causes them to move.   We must have been talking too loud or something because he just all of a sudden took off and flew to the other side of the water.  I was caught off guard so I only got his landing:

Fortunately after about 15 minutes he decided to move back to our side so we started clicking away!  This is where the shutter burst comes in very handy!  My camera does 5 bursts per second.

He stood in that spot for a while then decided to take off again.

And with that, we decided to call it a day since we were both wiped out.  It was a great photo shooting day.  You never know what you are going to find when you go out shooting but Golden Gate Park turned out to be a great place to go to shoot a variety of pics.   See the full photo album at:   http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwmorris/GoldenGateParkApril2010#

High ISO Sensitivity Photography

Last September, my friend Javier invited me to his brother's wedding.  It was my first time attending an hispanic wedding and it was a great experience.  I decided to take my new Nikon D700 camera to test out the high ISO sensitivity capabilities, which is the main reason I decided to invest in this camera.  It is suppose to be one of the best high ISO sensitivity cameras on the market.  I had already used it at ISO 3200 at my night time softball games and had good results, but I had not really tried it at an indoor event.  If you are thinking, "What the heck is ISOsensitivity?" then you are not alone.  Read the last paragraph of this blog entry below for an explanation of what exactly this is. Here is a picture of my friend Javier and his brother using a high ISO setting (1/60 shutter speed, f2.8 aperature at ISO 1250):

There was a mariachi band playing so I took a few pics of them.  I started taking pics in aperature mode but was realizing that the shutter speed was too low at 1/20 and 1/30 so I was getting some blur so I switched to manual mode and set the shutter speed to 1/100 and still had plenty of light at ISO 3200 and f2.8.  This was one of my favorite pics.  She had such a serious look on her face while she was playing (1/100, f2.8 at ISO 3200).

Here is another shot of some of the other Mariachi band members (1/100, f2.8 at ISO 3200).  They were pretty good performers. 

And of course, what is a wedding without some kids.  I noticed this one very mischievous little girl. She had just bitten a boy on the hand.  I called her over to my table and asked if I could take a few pictures of her.  Of course a few pictures turned into many pictures and she was all to willing to oblige with her many faces and poses.  She was pretty cute.  I was thinking she will probably be some kind of actress one day.  I never even got her name and I have no idea who she belonged to (1/80, f2.8 at ISO 3200).

And what's a wedding without the brides maids (1/100, f2.8 at ISO 2500):

So my new camera passed the high ISO test.  I was quite pleased with the results.  It was certainly better than the Canon 50D that I owned for less than a month after deciding to return it.  That camera was only good up to ISO 800, which is why I decided to return it, but it was a much cheaper camera than the full frame Nikon D700.  I'll do a blog post on my opinion of Nikon vs. Canon later.   So at this point, I was thinking who needs a flash?   But is high ISO really a better option than low ISO with flash?  I thought so at the time but now I'm starting to change me mind on this.  More to come on the benefits of flash photography at low ISO settings.

Check out the full wedding photo set: http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwmorris/2009_09_26_wedding#

What is ISO sensitivity?  Before I explain that, let me explain the 3 variables that determine the amount of light that is exposed to the camera sensor.
1) Shutter speed or the time the shutter snaps open and close.  The slower the shutter speed, the more light that will hit the sensor.  For example 1/60 of a second will provide much more light than 1/500 of a second.
2) Aperature or the size of the opening of the lens.  For example, f2.8, a large opening will let much more light in than f11.
3) ISO setting or the sensitivity of digital sensor.  This use to be called film speed before the digital days.  Remember when you use to buy 100, 200 and 400 speed film?  The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the digital camera sensor.  So ISO 1000 will let a lot more light in than ISO 100.  Only issue here is the higher the ISO, the more grainy the picture.  The great part about digital cameras is that you can change the ISO for each picture.

Now back to explaining ISO sensitivity is - It is a setting on digital cameras that allows you to take photos in low light conditions - indoors or outside at night - without using a flash. Even "point and shoot" cameras have this setting but a lot of people don't know they have it.  In the point and shoot cameras, the ISO typically only ranges from 100 to 400 ISO and the camera will typically automatically choose the right ISO (100, 200 or 400).   With a point and shoot camera, the flash will automatically be triggered so probably not as big of a need to go beyond ISO 400.   Check it out on your camera.

Back to Digital SLR's - The only problem is most low to mid level cameras cannot go very high on the ISO (above ISO 400 setting) without producing very grainy pictures. High end cameras like the Nikon D700 have the ability to produce fairly sharp images at the high ISO settings. High ISO would be anything in the ISO 800 to 6400 levels. The lower the ISO setting, the sharper the pictures. However, to take low ISO pictures (100 to 400 ISO), you need plenty of natural sun light or a flash and these two may not always be available.  With high ISO settings, it allows more light to hit the sensor so you can shoot at a higher shutter speed to freeze action.  This comes in very handy with night time or indoor sports.  The high ISO setting also came in very handy when I visited my coworker who has a new born and they did not want me using flash in the baby's face.  I could keep going with this but it would probably bore you....let me know if you have any questions on this.

Not sure where to start here....how about Hummingbirds?

I started taking pictures of hummingbirds in October of 2009. One of my co-worker's Mahesh (pic below) and I headed over to Shoreline Lake with our cameras one Saturday afternoon. We went there to find pelicans to take pictures of but they were no where to be found. So we took pictures of the bluejays, seagulls, egrets and ducks. Got a couple of decent pics but it was not one of the best picture days.

We were about to call it quits when we came upon a hummingbird in a tree. It was a beautiful creature and we just started taking pictures of it. Although the tree was bare, it was hard to get a good picture since he was within a tree with many limbs. He would dash over to a mexican sage bush to get his nectar then zoom back to safety atop of the tree. They are very fast creatures so it was hard to follow him. Here are a few pics I took of this little birdie.

One of the pictures I took this day was chosen as a "Featured Photo" on Picasa.   It was getting late and it was getting dark and the sun was going down and was shining right at us.  Mahesh wanted to go but I had to take a couple more pics.  I used my on camera flash and the colors turned out a bit strange and it was a bit dark.  Almost looks like he is in front of a fire.   It was taken with my Nikon D700 and my 70-200mm lens with my 1.7 teleconverter so it was taken at 340mm.

I almost deleted it since I did not think it was a worth while photo but after messing around with it using Picasa and Photoshop Elements, here is the how the final picture turned out and as mentioned above, this was my first featured photo on Picasa.  http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwmorris/BirdsAndTheBees#5398507790270296354

It's amazing what you can do with a digital photo!

Now my friend Mahesh is happy!