Moments To Start…
March 28, 2010
My good friend Richard Grimaldo, guitarist and vocalist of the band Bulagta, moments before the band’s comeback gig at Dayo Bar.
shot with Nikon D40, 50mm f1.4
~
Guessing At Light
March 16, 2010Tonight, I’ll try to make like an instructional site, and try to discuss and put up some probably helpful tips for the shooting public.
When my father was my age, he was into a lot of things. Artsy stuf, activist stuff, figuring himself in the usual fights…yep that’s my old man. One of the more worthwhile and common things he dabbled with was photography. I never saw him practice it - in the previous years as kid, I knew how to use an SLR, but I never thought why he shoots with one. I just thought that we had a camera, and it was bigger and bulkier than my friends’.
Enough ancient history.
When my time came to shoot, naturally, I bought a Nikon. I had a Canon before that, but as I’ve handled mostly that brand for quite a bit of time, I thought I’d get a Nikon, a D40 at that. And it turned out to be a wonderful decision - because one of the joys of owning a Nikon is the backward compatibility that allows you to use old lens models on today’s DSLRs.
Cool eh? Especially since not everyone’s on that path of friendliness like Canon, who changes lens mounts from the FD line to the present EF-S.
After buying the D40 kit, I thought of slamming on the old Nikon lenses that my father owned. Presto! I gained new lenses. But being old manual lenses, most camera functions are not supported. For example, you can only shoot in full manual mode, no TTL flash and more importantly, no light meter.
No light meter? In a nutshell, that means you have to guess at exposure. But how the hell does one go around guessing at the intensity of light? It’s a pretty difficult thing to do, and you can only master it as time goes by. People constantly make mistakes on this - one example is they shoot at f5.6, 1/100 w ISO200 indoors by the lightbulb. Then they’re suprised that almost nothing comes out.
So how does one go around to guess at exposure?
Enter the Sunny 16 rule.
That rule is somewhat a golden rule for anyone learning to shoot. Quite simply, the rule states that on a sunny day, set you camera at f16 and the reciprocal of the ISO as your shutter speed. For example, if you use ISO100, you’d have to have settings of f16 at 1/100. Some cameras have 1/125 only, but that can be used as well. The point is you get as near as you can to the ISO raiting you’re using. This rule is very useful to calculate for exposures. Remember that apertures come in 1/2 or 1/3 stops. So if you want to use f8 on the same sunny day, you’d have to set your shutter speed at 1/200. This is because f8 lets in twice the amount of light than f16. Remember that shutter speeds and apertures come in pretty much the same denomination.
I use a Nikon EM with a busted meter, so it’s no longer useful as an aperture priority design. I do use it in an unorthodox manual mode, which simply involves me playing with the film speed indicator to get the speeds I need.
Below are some examples of things shot with the Sunny 16.
50mm, f5.6, 1/300, ISO100
50mm, f8, 1/125, ISO100
Of course, to save us from the troubles of having to calculate exposure on the field, we can use a light meter. There are digital designs used for studio work, but in general are too expensive for the usual hobbyist. After all, almost all cameras nowadays do have some kind of mechanism to do the guessing for us. But for those who continue to use manual lenses on DSLRs, have busted light meters or none at all, a light meter, even an old mechanical one would work wonders.
Just a few days ago, I found my old man’s light meter. It’s an old manual Sekonic that he bought for a few hundred pesos back in the 1970’s. To use this light meter, one has to be familiar with the use of a slide rule, or any tool of the sort. You flip the lid, the needle shows a reading. You first turn the wheel labeled ‘ASA’ (that’s ISO for us) to indicate your film speed, then turn the outer wheel to indicate the light reading (black), depending on where it falls. 1 is for very low light and 7 is for very bright light. In case of outdoor shooting with very bright light, close the lid so the eye only sees through a slit then use the other scale (red) for the light reading. After all that, the shutter speed and aperture combinations will appear on the right hand of the inner and outer wheel respectively. You’ll notice tha it only goes to 1/1000 and f22. For other readings, just use this as a guide and start guessing again.
Happy shooting! ~
This Must Be Cycle Number… I Forgot. Hahaha.
March 10, 2010Enlistment is here again. For the record, BUSLAW1 is looking great, but PERTHEO? Seems at this point like the entire class will come down in a big, epic FAIL!
I review, I mean we all do but the exams are something else. Hrrrrr.
Well, to ease off, this image was from my recent shoot, which I finally found the time to give some post processing. Ah, same old CS3 stuff. But enjoy anyways! ~
Shonen Knife @ Nihongo Fiesta [02-27-2010]
March 3, 2010Last February 27, I got the chance to see Shonen Knife perform live in MOA during the Nihongo Fiesta. I’ve never ever seen them, but their name does sound wee bit familiar so I thought I must’ve heard of them somewhere before.
The band hails from Osaka, and is composed of Naoko (guitar/vocals), Ritsuko (bass/vocals) and Etsuko (drums/vocals). I was honestly thinking of some visual kei stuff, but I was surprised with their own brand of girly, grunge-y, food-y, tripesque songs which was loads of fun to listen to.
I’d have gotten better shots if I brought along the 100mm f2.8 but I had to content myself with the kitlens. In any case, the D40 performed well enough under lowlight, and even at ISO3200 (H1), the images are still usable, unlike some of the newer DSLRs that suffer from lowlight performance.
Here are the pics!
[more of the girls here. choose English of course]
~
ah c’est la vie!
