Photo Fredericton Field Trip to the Moncton Zoo

Our Photography Club went to the zoo in Moncton yesterday - it was better than I expected! They had Halloween happenings for the kids, and the weather cooperated for the most part.
I just got my new (refurb.) Canon 40D the day before, and brought it along to try it out. Too bad it had issues out of the box, so I switch to my trusty 20D, and shot all my photos with my Canon EF 70-210mm f3.5-4.5 USM lens.
In record time, I have selected and edited a number of my fav photos from the trip.



-André

Photo Club Summer Experience Show

Our first club meeting will be showing members photos on the theme 'What I experienced this summer...'

Here are my entries...
(a few are repeats from earlier posts)

Bouctouche!

At the end of June, Photo Fredericton went on a weekend trip to Bouctouche, which is about 30 min. north of Moncton.

We went to a variety of locations to take photos, and while I thought the area was better suited to a week long family camping trip than to an abundance of photographic opportunities, I enjoyed the time out of the city to talk photography and focus on picture taking.

We went to a variety of location and I will share some photos from each. I usually used my Digital Camera - the Canon 20D, but also shot a roll of medium format film on my Zeiss Ikon folding camera, using Ilford FP4+ developed and scanned at home. These were taken at the Irving Park - The Dunes.



We stayed in a wonderful place called Auberge Le Vieux Presbytère de Bouctouche. It was located across from an old Convent, now museum, and next to a cemetery. I guess it was the Priest's residence originally, but the church had burned down some time ago. Here are a couple of photos from the environs...





Our first sight was the lighthouse at Cap Lumiere, while not a real light house, it did offer a number of photographic opportunities.




More to come....


-André

Spring in New Brunswick means Lupines!

There are tons and tons of lupines here in New Brunswick, and while they are common, they are varied in their colour and size. They provide many opportunities for exploration in composition and experimentation.

Click here for Wikipedia info on Lupine.

They are only out in their prime for a few weeks, so you need to act if you want to photograph them.




I am a little behind in my editing and blogging, but these were taken June 14, 2009 at midday in a buggy farmer's field about 15 min from my home. I love the one with the bumble bee - it was a huge bee and its legs were covered in pollen as you can see in the photo. I was practicing the technique of having blurry foreground elements present to help place and frame the subject.

There were a few daisys out as well...




Most of these photos were taken on a Canon 20D, with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens set on aperture priority at f/2.8 and zoomed to 50mm, and using a polarizing filter.

All RAW files were tweaked in post production, but mainly just a slight colour balance, and exposure correction. The first daisy photo was a horizontal crop from a vertical photo, and vignetting was added.

-André

Photo Collage Workshop

Originally, the idea of a photo collage did not really appeal to me. I think it was partly because I did not know how to do it effectively, and partly because I thought they were a little cheesy.

Our photoclub had a workshop on the weekend, and I had a great time learning and building photo collages!

Here are the collages I created during the session:







The trick is making an effective border so the images pop off the background. These were done using a large paintbrush tool, and then going around each photo so only the edge of the brush affected the photo. Also the background is usually made from a photo in the theme you have selected - do the colours are similar - and then the photo is blurred to create a background. I dound it was also effective to choose the photo, and invert it. This way you get colours which are literally complementary to the colours in the photos you have selected (like in the haircut photo collage).

I will be building more, I am sure!

1930's Ansco Box Camera

I just felt drawn to Value Village about a week and a half ago - wasn't sure why...but here is the reason!

I picked up a box camera for $9.99! It is an Ansco brand, and from my research, it looks like it was made in the 30's. Two big bonuses here - a) It works!, and b) It takes 120 film (which I have). It could have taken 116 or 127 or 620, etc... which I don't have, and you can't readily get any more.

From what I read, it has an aperture of about f/8-f/11 and a shutter of about 1/30 sec. The inside of the camera says to use Ansco Plenachrome film...?
Most sites suggest using a 100 speed film for sunny days. The sunny 16 rule would indicate that a 30 ASA film would be good for a 1/30 sec. shutter at f/16. This would mean 60 ASA at f/11, or 125 ASA at f/8 (assuming the given aperture and shutter speed are correct).

I took it for a test run at the park on a very overcast day. I probably should have used 400 ASA film, but I used 100 and pushed it to 200 in development. Here are a couple of the images:





The shots were scanned on my Epson 4490, and given a contrast boost and some sharpening in post production.

Spring is on the way.

I have titled this post 'Spring is on the way', because it is about flowers. However I struggle with this as it is Easter weekend and it has been snowing for two days. Oh well.

My brother-in-law is a managing partner at a green house - I have not taken advantage of this fact enough. Yesterday morning I went in an hour before the store opened, and spent some time shooting. I set a custom white balance on my Canon 20D and, using an adaptor, I mounted an old Nikon M extension tube (27.5mm extension) and then put on a Nikkor 135mm f/3.5 (AI mount). I found this combination pretty good for getting a half decent magnification while providing some working distance. On my first trip out, I chose to use the M extension tube with my Micro Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 (Non-AI), for life size magnification. Unfortunately the tripod to table display distance was too great for me to get close enough. A little research shows me this:

Total extension used / Focal length used = Magnification
for my setup this was...
27.5mm / 135mm = ~ 1/5
However the 135mm lens does extend about 10mm when focused to its closest setting, so the maximum magnification may be up to ~1/4
While 1/4 life size is not great for 'Macro' work, I do get a lot of working room, and fairly close up. Compare this to the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 which has a max magnification of 0.13x (or about 1/8th)

Here are the photos!