ISO - The Next Step

The first thing I played around with in the creative modes on the Canon was the Manual Exposure Mode. This leaves the shutter speed, f stop and ISO in the photographer's hands. I wanted to get a good handle on one thing at a time, so I started with ISO. Still housebound due to extreme temperatures, the next obvious subject was the dog. Not a toughie, because she isn't too excitable and will lay reasonably still for minutes at a time.

The room she was lying in has a large window and lights up well even under grey skies.I set the white balance to auto and adjusted the ISO to 1600. The f stop default in the mode was 5.6 and the shutter speed at 1/60. I also set the Picture Style to Monochrome for black & white and manually adjusted the focal length to 43mm. This was the first non flash picture taken.


Not bad. A little heavy on the highlights on her belly. I took a look at the White Balance settings and saw there was one for overcast conditions. I set it, then snapped another one at 55mm.


This turned out pretty good too. I was pretty exited about getting images this clear and not being dependent on the flash like the Kodak. The next project would be waiting for a slightly warmer day and trying the ISO experiments outside. I had to wait six days for the first opportunity. We finally got a blustery day with a high of -8C. Time to rock 'n'roll. The day was overcast again, but I was thankful for that to avoid a lot of glare off of the snow. Went for a walk down by the river and practiced doing shots of bare trees and shrubs.

I reset the White balance for sunny conditions, since it was still pretty bright out there. Again set it to Manual mode and Monochrome. Lastly I set the ISO to 400. Completely blown out white shot, so I dialed it down to 100, the lowest setting.


Not that great. Still quite whited out. I thought that it might be worsen by the sky which looked a lot darker, but was still the sky and emitting light. Reset the white balance to overcast and tried one more shot with the river and Nuns Island as a backdrop.

Nope. It was clear that the wind coming up didn't help the photo at all. But there was still the light haze to everything. Back to the drawing board. Tomorrow I'll show you what happened when I started playing with the shutter speed.

First Week

The first couple of months with the the 1000D were forcefully all indoor work. Our harsh winters here had me scared to take the camera outside until it was warmer or had a camera bag. I spent about three days with the manual reading everything about the basic modes. Then I started looking for things around the house to practice on.

Being a cook it made sense to start by taking photos of things I cooked. The subject wasn't going to move on me and it would allow me to play around with angles too. One day I made a tray of vegetarian lasagna and figured it was as good a time as any to do some shots. First was a pic of the full tray of lasagna.


This was shot in basic mode with the built in flash. All the settings were on auto. There was no digital editing done to this photo. The reds and yellows seemed well defined and the angle worked. Next was to get a frame of the finished product on a plate. All the same auto settings, but it took a few shots to get the focus right because of steam rising from the lasagna itself. End product turned out pretty good.


All in all it was a good start. I have been cooking for over 20 years and seen people paid crazy money to produce far worse work for menus. My next challenge was to figure out how to shoot without the flash. This was the night the Creative Modes section of the manual got read. No turning back.

Warning: Kid Friendly Zone

Some people just don't have a knack for getting kids to sit still for a perfect picture. I don't believe this is something that would work for me. I'm a big guy. Kids are always wary around me for the first couple of days. Sit down shots are not going to work. So I rely on subterfuge and reverse psychology to make nice photos happen when I'm around kids. I never stoop to bribery. But if someone else has already loosened them up with a well timed treat I will be there to swoop in.


One of my favorite MOs is to walk outside and find a place to review and cull through my recent shots away from the kids. After a few minutes they will come find you. The silly things they do when they think you are busy make some of the best pictures. Especially if they are unaware you had the camera switched on. These two little girls avoided the camera all morning then were curious where it went.


Another is playing with the child and seeing what kind of mischief they can get into when they don't know the camera is on and ready to shoot. This only works well with one on one situations because you can steer the kid away from real trouble easier than trying to calm down three or four after they are wound up. It also works better with boys. Here is an example of a young man who thought it would be fun to splash water from a rain barrel and didn't know how cold it was going to be.


A good example of a way to get great photos with a group of kids is Hide & Seek. You can either follow the children around, or play as 'IT' yourself. Both ways give you all kinds of opportunity to catch them at their giddiest. Be prepared with an extra battery because they will want to see the pictures after each round to make sure you caught them.


And finally, the all time greatest way to get candid shots of kids in a group situation: The Kids Table. Hey, it gets them laughing, thinking you have been banished from the adult realm. It gives their parents a chance to get plates ready in peace and builds trust with the children. Just don't try stealing anybody's juice. they take this stuff seriously nowadays.


All of the above photos were taken with the Kodak DX6490.

The Relaunch

This page had fallen victim to the oldest blog pitfalls in the book – lack of direction and questionable motives. So, instead of looking out for the things that I find wrong with this fair city and province that I choose to call home, I have decided to turn it around and explore some of the stuff that are unique and beautiful about Lower Canada – with a camera.

I will first drop the two great footnotes that will define the new page. 1) I am a hobby shot. This is my learning curve with a camera. I’ve been taking pictures for years and finally got around to learning something about it. 2) I am a man without wheels. The stuff I visit and find to shoot will be decided by who I got where with. Most of the subject matter will be Montreal based. That doesn’t mean it will get boring. I promise to work hard to bring new and vibrant things to these pages.

Even though I take photos every day, I won’t necessarily be posting a new daily shot. Probably more like day off safaris spread out over the week. I will keep a stable of horses to trot out in an orderly fashion and try and spread out shots taken on the same outing even if they are not of the same subject matter.

For this first post I want to discuss some of the cameras I have owned. Like most teenagers, beer money was way more important than photography equipment. I bought a Vivitar snap shooter when I was 17. Flashy and blue. It was small and great for bringing along to punk rock shows and parties. It lasted me a couple of years before giving out. The only actual metal on the camera was the ring that held the wrist strap on.

After that came a Kodak Advantix T60. One of the APS rigs with the panoramic function. Went through about 50 rolls of film and did not have a lot of wasted shots because of focus problems. It had a flip up flash, so red eye was well under control also.

In 2004 I got a great deal on a Kodak DX6490 digital camera. It was a 4mp that had 10x optical zoom. I used it through until Christmas 2010 and it served me well over the years. By this time I was taking pictures every day. Pictures of the family. The dogs. Clouds. Out taking pictures in snow storms. In six years and two months I took 25,493 shots with that camera. I still keep it in my camera bag as a back up and if I need to shoot video. The realization that I would have to upgrade came one day when I bought a 4GB SD card and the camera would not recognize it. When it was built 128 MB and 256 MB cards were the craze.

For Christmas I got a Canon Rebel 1000D (XS) with the included 18-55 mm EFS lens. Since then I have added a kit that included an EFS 55–250mm lens, a lens hood, a UV, Polarizing and FLD filter kit, and a tripod. After six months of studying the manual and religiously reading online resources (the best of which I found to be Geoff Lawrence’s dot com Tutorials and Tips), I am ready to start sharing my learning adventures. Here we go!

It's all greek to me.....

Montrealer loses battle to paint Greek flag on garage door in Quebec Superior Court

ALAN HUSTAK

The Gazette

Sunday, August 24, 2008

MONTREAL - A Pierrefonds man has been ordered to remove the huge Greek flag painted on the garage door of his house because it violates the borough's esthetic standards.

Quebec Superior Court judge France Charbonneau ruled last week that nothing prevents Theodore Antonopoulos from flying the Greek flag on his property, but that by painting blue and white stripes on a garage door he has violated a municipal bylaw that governs the overall look of the street.

"A municipality has the authority to set uniform standards within its jurisdiction and for the buildings within it," she writes.

The ruling has taken Antonopoulos by surprise.

"It's a shock to me. I haven't been informed, and the flag is still there," he told The Gazette this morning. "I will speak to my lawyer and see if there are grounds for an appeal. None of the neighbours have complained to me about it. None at all."

© The Gazette 2008

Now I don't know about you, but why the fuck would a superior court judge, who is so backed up, what with meth addled rapists and such waiting years to get their day in court, feel the need to take such fast action about the color coding of one poor bastard's garage door. I mean there are all kinds of better ways to spend his time. Personally, I think if you want paint a mural of Ron Jeremy and Bill Clinton playing poker with those dogs from the painting, knock yourself out. There are whole blocks, metro cars, buses etc. looking like something straight out of the Road Warrior thanks to graffiti and tagging, but this guys garage door is an obscenity. You just know that people are going to bombard the newspapers with photos of buildings painted white and blue from all over Quebec. I wonder if they would have bullied this man if it had been a Canadian flag guarding his Geo Metro.

Memoirs of an Idiot Hunter, Part I

I was out for an early morning stroll on Wellington street in Verdun today (picture oldschool small town main street, shopping district 15 blocks long) taking in the sights ( breakfast cafe patios, hookers with their thongs showing in three or more places) and smells ( fresh croissants and danishes at Gaummond, roofing tar on the next block) and came across something I just didn't understand.

In the doorway of a down and out pet shop, was a pink cardboard box. I go to check it out. On top of the box is marked " kittens, two months old" in blue marker. The box was then taped up eight ways to Sunday, and laying in the already ruthless sun. Oh, I forgot to mention that the saint who did this poked two holes in the top of the box with a Bic pen.

So this wonderlunk had the brains to leave the kitties with their mother till they were weened, looked after all their needs, then stuck them in a cardboard box to roast for a few hours before the pet store owner sobered up and decides to open. Real genius. I'm surprised he hadn't tried mailing them to Bubbles in Sunnyvale.

I looked around and spied a stack of boxes in front of the Dollarama, bound for recycling and walked down, got a good size crate and folded it in three. At least this way I could shelter them from the sun without killing the airways.

I'm gonna go by in the afternoon tomorrow to check in on them at the store. Hopefully they made it.

Finally The Pendulum Swings Back.....

I was really pleased this week reading stories out of Ontario, that municipalities are starting to take a stand against bottled water. London is phasing the sale and distribution of it out of all public buildings by the new year. Now Toronto is looking into similar steps. Sure there will be public outcry ( hello smokers and cell phone toting vehicular death machines) for the first little while.

Its not a total ban, just the governments saying they have to do their part. You can still sit in your 2 1/2 apartment smoking up a storm, and rest easy, knowing that you have both of your closets half full( gotta save room for a few flats of WildcatXXXmax Dry) of that water that was on sale at such a good price last month. But all your clothes fit on the shower rod anyway. And learning sponge bath without hot water will be easy - especially when you realize that the five quarter full, lukewarm bottles from yesterday are enough to do it. Now you are truly recycling my friend.

I can't wait for Montreal to jump on the bandwagon. Its great that the STM has finally put paper recycling boxes for their newspapers, but placing bins for plastic at exits would be a great idea too.

It's not like we don't have good tap water in the northeast. It's not as if it tastes like fertilizer(howdy Saskatchewan). Time to give it a try.