[soosh]

A couple of bats there huh?

a few. took about fifteen minutes for them all to get out.

apparently in October, it gets really crowded.

[soosh]

both boys have really strong blue eyes. mine are kind of greenish-blue-grey and the ex’s are green.

we were surprised as hell that neither boy ended up red-headed. ex is a red-head, and my beard is about half red.

[soosh]

going back home to see the boys’ grandparents and uncle. They’re in OKC/Dallas, but we made a grand driving tour of the hill country and gulf coast the last week of June.

It was hot, but it wasn’t the brutal kind of hot that august can bring.

[soosh]

What, exactly, is the frame rule? I’m not seeing an issue with the shot…

generally, only a plain black outline of a few pixels is allowed as far as framing your image in software. Addition of picture frames or other adornments isn’t allowed.

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doesn’t MaudlinMutantMollusk‘s entry of 2011-07-20 09:55:58 PM, the stairs at the Bret Harte Hotel, violate the frame rule?

I love the shot and voted for it, and then just really noticed the frame.

One of these days I’m going to remember to use this shot in a contest like this one.

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Blimey, I like that!
Is that a glass bottle it is on?

nope, that’s a thumbtack/pushpin

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that tokina is a hell of a lens. I have a gallery at the manufacturers web site.

http://www.thkphoto.com/gallery/g-07.html

[soosh]

While you’re in a ruling mood, can I get a ruling on these:

http://www.fotojuju.com/fotojuju/fark/100901/S-IMG_0316.jpg
http://www.fotojuju.com/fotojuju/fark/100915/S-IMG_0317.JPG

Are either of those cloudscape-y enough or do they have too much of a terrestrial element to them?

I would think that those would be pretty much spot-on target photos for the theme.

[soosh]

well, with macro, I’m starting to think you can’t beat enlarger lenses and a bellows, and I may be moving on to microscope objectives pretty soon. fascinating stuff.

The Tokina 12-24 is one of my very most favorite lenses. I use it for all kinds of stuff.

Mirror lenses can vary in quality and can also give you some strange out-of-focus bokeh that is kind of donut-shaped, but I’ve seen some good results from them. They all do seem to have pretty slow aperture speeds.

The Vivitar lens seems pretty well made, but I don’t like the fisheye effect. I rarely come across instances when I need something wider than 12mm, and when I do, I can just stitch photos together. I think fisheyes are good if you’re going for the curved/rounded look, but not so much for anything else.

50mm, for me, is an awkward lens length to use on a 1.6 crop camera. I find myself much more likely to use a 35mm or wider or an 85mm or longer approach to things. I just don’t seem to run across a whole lot in the 50mm range to take photos of. If I do, I’ve got a manual-focus Contax-Yashica lens I picked up in a pawn shop for $5 that goes to f/1.4 (and only f/1.4), so I use that.

[soosh]

ooh! So tell us, what software for stacking? Lots of detail, there…

Zerene Stacker

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so I was out shooting some mosses yesterday and had an opportunity to do some wildlife macro shooting.

click here to see if you’re not bug-averse

I’m blown away by the resolution I’m getting.

[soosh]

Alas, one of my favorite family shots is one where I set up everything on the camera down to the flash, exposure compensation, aperture, focal point, focal length, and exact positioning of the camera. But I didn’t have my tripod that day, so my sister had to be the remote shutter release. Just don’t feel like I could submit that since she pressed the shutter.

I’ve always been interested where the gray area ends with this. If I use a remote shutter, I’m telling the remote to tell the shutter to open and close. If I set up a shot and have someone else press the button, isn’t it pretty much the same? Using them as a remote, if you will.

I was thinking about it when it came to the x-rays last week. If I went in for an x-ray and was able to set up everything but wasn’t allowed to press the button, wouldn’t me telling the operator to press the button be pretty much the same thing?

Anyways, that one’s a little more arbitrary. I’m thinking in this situation it’s a fair photo to use, Elsinore.

well, see, no, with the x-ray, it’s not your camera, your studio, your layout, or anything. you’re the model.

but in el’s case, it’s her camera, her setup, her strobes, her post-processing, just not tripping the trigger itself. in that case, you’ve got one other person doing a lot of work and one person pushing a button.

Some may want to draw lines between having someone else trip the shutter of a scene you’ve set up and want to be in and the use of a remote, but I think they’re the same thing, and in both cases, it’s still your shot.

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that’s pretty arbitrary. she just did one little step in the process to help you out. she wasn’t directing any of it. It’s your picture, isn’t it? she was jut part of the apparatus.

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Congratulations, Caradoc. My youngest just turned 13. They grow up quick. It’s the best thing you’ll ever do, raising kids.

[soosh]

If there was a farktography shop for prints, well, that would turn me off of doing farktography quite a bit. One, because I think it would attract an element of people who didn’t care about the contests, they were just trying to market their photos. Two, if someone wants to buy a print of one of my shots, they can contact me and I’ll make them one and mail it to them. I’ve had that happen from farktography contests before. I just don’t want to enter photos in a contest that are going to end up in a web shop. I don’t like the “click here to order a print from MPIX” or whatever kind of turnaround. Just not what I’m looking for.

Photo.net can be a lot like that, and it keeps me from spending more time there. Not everything has to be about turning a profit or making a buck. I like the Farktography contests because they are strictly photos being voted on by the masses, not a commercial enterprise.

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