Worst golf slump ever

I have been playing golf for a long time, and I am not the worst player ever played, as I sport a 6 handicap at the moment.

But, that is about to change. I have been struggling of late. I am hitting the ball fair, putting is a bit inconsistent, but over all what is puzzling is that my scores have been far worse than it should be. What this means is that I am not thinking my way around the golf course very well.

In many ways this is similar to photography. My camera seems satisfactory, lenses I use are top rate, but my pictures are always crap.

Oh well, I hope to work my way out of this soon.

Pentax K-7

DA 40/2.8 ltd

1/125 @ f/4

0 ev

ISO 200

RAW

Worst fish eye photo part 2

I have a lens called lensbaby that everybody despise. I like it though. You can buy different kinds of lenses that pops in and out of a base module. This attaches to any dslr camera regardless of the brand, although you do have to buy a specific mount for your own camera.

Fish eye lens is another lens that I can pop in. It comes with discs that have holes of various sizes that control aperture.

I need to play with it a bit more. Very interesting though.

Pentax K-7

Lensbaby/fisheye 13mm

1/60 @ f/2.8

0 ev

RAW 200

Carl Zeiss lenses

No no no, I did not buy yet another lens.

3 months or so ago I bought a Carl Zeiss planar T* 50/1.4. By the way, it is focal lengths/max aperture when I say 50/1.4. I suppose I ought to explain that kind of thing for the millions of beginners who are reported to be reading this blog daily.

I love this lens. It is manual focus only, which is fine with me, of course. The color, and the bokeh are just awesome. I am certain that if a tech nerd was to analyze the sharpness numerically, the result will probably not be so impressive. But something about the make up of the lenses and the aperture blade shape that render such weird effect. No other line up of lenses do that. If I ever buy another lens (other than MF lenses), it will be Zeiss. I wish they would come out with Pentax MF mount lenses. That would be something.

Pentax K-7

Carl Zeiss planar T8 50/1.4

1/30 @ f/2.0

0 ev

RAW

Focusing dilemma

This was a tough one.

A dead bird found in our backyard in the hands of my little girl.

A young child is first hand experience of death, literally with her own hands.

I did not want to focus, particularly on this bird's eyes. I didn't want this picture to be about the death of this bird. But at the same time I did not want to focus on my little girl's hands. Somehow by doing that, her very hands seemed to be directly responsible for this bird's death. Si, I had to pick a plane to focus, somewhere between the eyes of the bird and her hands. Only with manual focusing you can pick and choose a target like that.

Pentax K-7

Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50/1.4

1/8000 @ f/1.4

-0.3 ev

ISO 200

RAW

Over exposure in digital photography

Over exposures are a bit more difficult to deal with digital camera, compared to its film counterparts. For some reasons, with digital sensors the area of over exposure is more pronounced, occurs often when least expecting it. I noticed when I first picked up my K10D. Then K-7 came out, and there I noticed a quite bit of improvement. Here, at the very center of the picture, there is an area where the details of the polka dots are being sort of obscured due to reflection of sun light. The thing is that when you try to cater to that particular area, you lose details of the other area. With K-7, this is much much easier to deal with. People typically run into this kind of problems when shooting a subject who is wearing a white shirt under bright sun light, perhaps against a white background. My advice is to not make it so challenging for yourself . . . . .

Pentax K-7

DA 35/2.8 macro

1/320 @ f/7.1

o ev

ISO 400

RAW

Worst child portraiture

I have been taking pictures, almost continuously, since my little girl was born almost 4 years ago.

Since then, she has gotten very used to taking her own pictures taken. She looks at her own pictures, or at herself on a mirror, and then practices this pose or that.

Now she is beginning to pose for specifically for a picture. She seems to understand the difference between "staged" pictures and snap shots. Kids are weird.

Classic teaching on portraiture, I am certain, is that you open up your aperture as much as the situation allows it, so that the background will be blur, accentuating the subject. Been there, done that. Here I closed the aperture as much as I can, bringing the details of the background into the picture. It looks terrible.

Pentax K-7

DA 40mm/2.8

1/500 @ f/8

0 ev

ISO 400

RAW

Worst fireworks picture

Low light photography is very hard. It is needlessly hard. But there are ways around it, if you have lots of cash. There are so called "pro model" which is heralded for its ability to shoot noise free clear photos where very little light is available.

You can also buy lenses that have low aperture, or so called "fast" lenses that has the ability to take in more light than its cheaper counterparts. In fact this is part of what you pay for when you guy expensive lenses.

My camera Pentax K-7 is famous for having lots of noise. Some users dispute that, and I do neither, because I really don't care. All I know is that even with K-7 I take crappy pictures all the time.

Pentax recently came out with their medium format digital camera 645D. Its ability to take amazing pictures under low light is reportedly out of this world. I would hope so since it costs nearly $10,000.

Being July 4th, and practically not knowing anything about low light photography, I thought I gave fireworks a try. It looks terrible.

Pentax K-7

DA* 50-135/2.8

1/60 @ 2.8

+1.7 ev

ISO 1600

RAW