I shot these two squirrels on a road trip along the pacific coast going south of San Francisco on the way to Carmel where Clint Eastwood used to be mayor. My best squirrel-shot so far.
A Squirrel
Coffee
Sometimes the simplest things are the most interesting to photograph.
Nikon D90
The rumours have it that Nikon is about to reveal the D90 camera. It is said to have the following features:
- 4.5 frames per second shooting speed
- 12 megapixel resolution sensor
- live view with video recording capability (and thus the camera is fitted with a microphone as well)!
- a new kit lens, 18-105/3.5-5.6G with VR-II vibration reduction capability
I am sure that more information will be hitting the presses soon…
Fishing
I remember when I got my first fishing rod, I must have been around five years old. My first task was to try to find some worms to put on the hook in order to bait the fish, it was my father who helped me and told me how to get fish to take the bait.
I have ever since enjoyed fishing although I don’t do it very often these days here in Stockholm. This picture was taken as I strolled past a young fella who was trying to put his bait on and I suddenly remembered these old times again.
One of my first jobs was working at a place where fishing equipment was made. Something I did in the summer when I was 16. I enjoyed it very much and I had the opportunity then to spend my money earned on fishing gear which I thought was well spent at the time! Since then the catches I have done (fishwise) are easily counted, but I still have the gear I bought then – in pristine condition.
Photographing the Archipelago
A slow boat to the archipelago
There is a fantastic opportunity for you when in Stockholm to get some greate scenery, take one of the boats into the archipelago, there are several different companies that makes day-tours or similar that you may go on. Most of these boats will take you through the archipelago which is thought of being one of the most beautiful things you can see here in Stockholm.
There are mainly two companies you can check for taking you around the archipelago, one is ”Waxholmsbolaget” and the other is ”Strömma Kanalbolag”. The ship shown here is from Strömma. On the Internet you can find a plethora of information about these two lines, also in English, just follow the links.
There are mainly two types of cruises, one is the get there as as fast as possible and the other is we take it slow, enjoy. I prefer the slow cruises and to have dinner on the ship as well as a great opportunity to view the archipelago.
Equipment
I recommend:
- Wide-Medium lens 18-70mm (24-105)
- Telephoto lens 70-200mm (135-300)
- Hot-shote flash
- Cleaning equipment for lenses
For equipment I would recommend to get both a wide-angle and a telephoto lens. There are lots of beautiful scenery that does the wide angle justice but at the same time you may want to reach out with a telephoto lens and get the shot from far away, there are hundreds and thousands of small islands that you may enjoy through the telephoto lens. Focal lengths should probably be about 18-70mm for your wide angle (DX camera body) and 24-50mm for the full frame camera. The telephoto should probably range 70-300mm in an idea situation although DX cameras may get away nicely with a 200 mm.
If you can not pack two lenses, go for a superzzom, something like 18-200mm and use that extensively. Normals and fixes lenses do have their uses but they are more difficult to use from the boat and better used when you are ashore again where you may use them as you would in any other situation.
Hot-shoe flash is not a bad idea at all, can be used to lighten shadows and for interior shot of the ship as well as good to fill in when taking shots of people for portraits.
Tripod while I almost always recommend bringing it is not very useful on the boat for shooting telephoto, the boat has a lot of vibrations from the engines and the rolling of the waves at sea does not help. However it may be quite useful for you when you are ashore again – though I think that for this kind of trip you might be better off without it.
Cleaning equipment is very much necessary, you may get brackish water sprays at sea and you need to get that off the lens before it dries in and form saline crystals that may scratch your lens badly when you polish it later. Wipe off the water, rinse with lens cleaning fluid and wipe that off as well.
Keep a standard platsig bag for you whole camera if the weather is bad or could become bad, you may want to shoot in the rain anywyay and always bring the towel.
Best places to go
It depends a lot on what you are looking for. My personal favourites are to go to Birka, the old viking city where you have a lot of things to see and photograph, Waxholm is another nice place to go to over the day and of course Fjäderholmarna and the ”Thousan Island Cruise” can be warmly recommended!
If you have more tips you are welcome to leave them as comments!
Flickr Scripts
Here are some of my favourite GreaseMonkey scripts for Flickr that I use almost daily:
- Flickr Refer Comment
- This script allows you to put a small signature when commenting pictures that tells the people where you found the picture. It is a very nice feature and tells people where you are finding their pictures when you comment them – which group, if you are reading through RSS aggregator, in your friends and family collections and so on.
- Flickr Buddy Icon Reply
- This script allows you to reply with a buddy icon and / or name so that people know who you are responding to when making a follow up comment. Lovely script!
- Flickr – Multi Group Sender
- This script allows you to pick from a list all the groups you wish to send a photo to. Normally you have to pick one group at a time and from the organiser you can only send a nuber of photos to one group at a time but with this you can send one photo to several groups at the same time.
In order to use any of them you must first install Greasmonkey, a scripting add-on for Firefox that also can be gotten to work with Internet Explorer.
Spectral Difference
This picture shows the same scene taken in infrared and then natural light. It is a dramatic difference for example how foliage reflects light in the infrared spectrum compared to the visible light spectrum but there are also other, more subtle but at least as important differences.
Check the concrete plate out in the bottom of the picture, or the differences in the clouds. The difference in the water is mainly due to the longer exposure time on the water.
Left or Right
Sometimes we get to crossroad in life and need to chose the path to go. Take the high speed train to the right and leave on a journey that is called out before every stop. Or take the left hand road at your own pace, walk down the road, ride a bike, drive a car, stop when you want without anyone calling the shots and do what you want.
Which road would you walk?
AE-L/AF-L button has 2 hidden functions
Nikon cameras (and most certainly others as well) has a button on the back side of the camera called AE-L / AF-L. The normal function of this button is to lock exposure and auto-focus so that you may recompose the shot and then press the shutter release without the camera attempting a new focus or metering and changing the exposure parameters.
This article will start off on the D70s camera that I have, but should work very similar on most Nikon digital bodies. It may also be the same for Canon and other brands although I have not verified it. If you know, please leave a comment to this effect!
Most people are probably aware that in the camera CSM menu item #15 you can control what this button actually does. The obvious choices here are the following:
- Lock exposure and auto-focus at the same time (AF/AE mode)
- Lock only auto-focus (AF mode)
- Lock only exposure (AE mode)
What people generally do not know is that there are two more modes that are very useful in certain situations. These modes are:
- Auto focus ON mode (AF-ON mode)
- Flash metering off mode (FV mode)
They are not so well described in the manual and so you may want to practice a bit with using them! The rest of this article is to describe some situations where they are quite useful:
Fortsätt läsa AE-L/AF-L button has 2 hidden functions
Sunday Walk with Camera
I set off on a sunday walk and brought the camera along. On purpose I only took my 50mm lens because I really like to find more and more ways of using it.
