Octopus Overlords

Rented the Sigma 50-100 for the weekend. My wife's friend wants to have some pictures taken and I figured that was a good enough excuse to rent it. I spent like 30 minutes with it after work and HOLY CRAP it's ridiculous. At 1.8 it's got a DOF of nothing, but stop it down a bit and it's just flat out ridiculous. I HAVE to buy this sometime soon. I have a softball game and then the photo shoot tomorrow. Hopefully I have a couple of good examples on Sunday.

Here are a few shots I took last week while on vacation in California.








There are a few more on my 500px profile through those links but I won't image-spam them all here.

On a related note, getting a speck of dust on your camera sensor and having no skill at cleaning it sucks. I tried using a bulb of air, lens tissue with a spritz of lens fluid, etc. Probably going to take it into a camera store and have it professionally cleaned. Any advice on this front? This was the first time I've tried to clean a detachable-lens camera and while I had good luck with my lenses, I can't for the life of me get the sensor spot off, and don't want to risk damaging the camera through my lack of skill/knowledge. Thank heavens for Lightroom.

Sad meerkat could totally become a new meme with that picture.

I have like a million pictures from this weekend. That 50-100 is MONEY. I need to get it. I cried when I brought it back on Sunday.

Here's one of my fav. from the shoot I did for my friend. Got about 45 keepers in an hour of shooting.
20170429-JAG_9025 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

Zaxxon wrote:Here are a few shots I took last week while on vacation in California.








There are a few more on my 500px profile through those links but I won't image-spam them all here.

On a related note, getting a speck of dust on your camera sensor and having no skill at cleaning it sucks. I tried using a bulb of air, lens tissue with a spritz of lens fluid, etc. Probably going to take it into a camera store and have it professionally cleaned. Any advice on this front? This was the first time I've tried to clean a detachable-lens camera and while I had good luck with my lenses, I can't for the life of me get the sensor spot off, and don't want to risk damaging the camera through my lack of skill/knowledge. Thank heavens for Lightroom.

Is the dust showing on the photo? I keep on getting specs that are only on the view finder and cleaning that was pretty easy. The actual sensor I just run the camera cleaning and cross my fingers. And use spot removal in LR. The specs generally only are obvious if you are shooting at a really close aperture like f22. So first thing is figure out what kind of dust you have.

Yeah, it does show (there's really only one significant one) and I've (fortunately) been able to remove it via Spot Removal. I don't think it's dust per se; I think it's a spot caused by something wet having touched the sensor and dried there. It doesn't move at all when I try to force it out with my bulb of air.

Ya I'm pretty sure you don't want to be blowing air into there as it's just going to throw dust all over the place. My friend sent me a link to a tool that you slide over the sensor to clean it, but me personally I would just take it in for cleaning if you aren't comfortable. I haven't done it myself, the steps are easy, but if you screw it up you could break something. Actually if it was me I would just not clean it and just remove it in LR until I get a lot of spots.

This was the tool...
https://www.ebay.com/p/?iid=26174249302 ... rue&chn=ps

You just lock the mirror up and slide this all over the sensor. He swears by it. But again I've never actually bothered myself.

I really like the snake btw. For the seagull did you try dropping the highlights at all? I think you might be able to get some more detail in the white parts. Or I could be crazy. Or both.

Octavious wrote:I really like the snake btw. For the seagull did you try dropping the highlights at all? I think you might be able to get some more detail in the white parts. Or I could be crazy. Or both.

I did, and it does reveal more detail. I actually went back and forth on that before settling on the brighter look. I like the contrast to the relatively dark background. Nuking some highlights would definitely have been the more realistic-looking choice, though.

Zaxxon wrote:Yeah, it does show (there's really only one significant one) and I've (fortunately) been able to remove it via Spot Removal. I don't think it's dust per se; I think it's a spot caused by something wet having touched the sensor and dried there. It doesn't move at all when I try to force it out with my bulb of air.

The dreaded dirty sensor, it happens to all of us at some point. Look here and here.

Ah yes perfect that's the exact page my friend sent for the sensor. I'll have to save that into memory.

Thanks, gentlemen. Just ordered one.

Zaxxon wrote:Thanks, gentlemen. Just ordered one.

You'll read/hear a lot about how scary / delicate / dangerous the process is, but honestly if you're using the right materials and not a total klutz, cleaning the sensor is no big thing. It'll be easy

Not the most interesting picture in the world, but OMFG look how that lens isolates. I NEED IT.

20170429-JAG_8783 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

The parents on the other team stole the show in the last game. So animated. This series of pictures would be nothing without the guys reaction in the background. And I'm starting to warm up on my 80-200. I'm getting fantastic pictures the last couple of games once I figured out the quirks. Plus I realized that the saturation was way too high on my pictures. I've been dialing it down the last set and I'm very happy with it.

20170508-JAG_9649 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

20170508-JAG_9650 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

20170508-JAG_9651 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

20170508-JAG_9652 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

20170508-JAG_9653 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

For my experimental film project I bleached a bunch of 35mm film strips. The bleaching was putting bleach in a tub of hot water and dropping a bunch of short strips of film in the bleach water until the film emulsion started to disintegrate. After the strips dried and photographed each frame using a 100mm macro lens. Recently I've started playing around with the individual macro photos in Photoshop to see what I could come up with. Here are a few of my Rorschach like images.


35mm Film Frame-2.jpg


35mm Film Frame-6.jpg


_MG_1533-Edit.jpg


_MG_1637-Edit.jpg


_MG_1673-Edit.jpg

Cool!

Wow some of those are kind of freaky. Very cool.

I know the guy in the second pic. Not sure what planet he is from but never play cards with him.

Enough wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:Yeah, it does show (there's really only one significant one) and I've (fortunately) been able to remove it via Spot Removal. I don't think it's dust per se; I think it's a spot caused by something wet having touched the sensor and dried there. It doesn't move at all when I try to force it out with my bulb of air.

The dreaded dirty sensor, it happens to all of us at some point. Look here and here.

Well, bad news, gents. My sensor cleaner arrived but did not remove this one problematic spot. Hopefully it's not a scratch. I guess it's off to a professional cleaning for my camera... I do appreciate the recommendation as I'm sure this product will do great for normal cleanings.

Probably nothing, but might as well get it looked at before you do any more damage to it. So far I've had good luck with dust. Which is odd as I'm terrible about being careful.

Yeah, I don't know what I did to get this in there. I try to be careful, pulling lenses off with the body facing down and putting another lens or the body cap on within 5-10 seconds max.

Girl scouts were making a ramp today. Got a ton of great photos. This is my best attempt at a stock photo.

Zaxxon wrote:Yeah, I don't know what I did to get this in there. I try to be careful, pulling lenses off with the body facing down and putting another lens or the body cap on within 5-10 seconds max.

It invariably happens to me. In the meantime it's possible to automate spot removal with some utilities as a time saver for non-essential images. I still do manual spot removal on my keepers.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

PS, you can do this with Lightroom too, I can't remember what you use to post-process.

source

source

Light Lines Symmetry


Sea Glass Abstract


butterfly pattern

Hey, remember my sensor spot that I couldn't get off on my own? Good news! I'm not an idiot--the camera shop can't get it out either. Other good news: I sent it in a few days prior to my warranty expiration, so they are now sending it on to Fuji.

Bad news: That'll take at least 4 weeks.

Wow that's weird. Wonder how that happened? Sucks to be without your camera for so long, but at least you won't have to pay for it from the sounds of it. I have a backup camera, but I would surely miss my camera if I didn't have it for over a month. I heart it.

Reminds me that I haven't posted anything in a while. Went on a boat cruise and then wandered down to the WTC on Saturday. Fun little trip that was.

Daughter in the Oculus, with her boat cruise hat. Kind if wish I wasn't lazy and grabbed my flash from my bag. Could have gotten an amazing picture.
20170610-JAG_1606 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

Statue... Nothing amazing, but it came out well. I try to avoid pictures of things that have been taken 900 millions times, but when you are at the Statue you take a damn picture.

20170610-JAG_1460 by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

Nice.

Yeah, it should be nice to only pay shipping, but I also have a trip coming up in late July. Really hope to have it back before then.

No idea how it happened. I don't recall any incidents that were out of the ordinary (spills, dust storms, etc). I try to be careful whenever I have the lens off. Guess I just got unlucky.

Seems like it. I'm not super careful and been using my camera a lot and haven't cleaned the sensor yet. And I was at the beach a few times. There I'm super careful as sand sucks balls.

I'm planning to try to participate in the Eclipse MegaMovie project on 8/21. Anyone else going to? Looks super cool. I believe my equipment barely qualifies--my most telephoto lens maxes out at 230mm, slightly above the APS-C 200mm minimum. Full-frame sensors require 300mm.

Hmm I'll have to check that out when I get home. I have a Tamron 70-300mm lens. Great lens and it was super cheap. (Well for a lens) Paid 300 on Amazon and it came brand new even though it said used. So no warranty, but shrug.

I have not read up on my cross-brand lenses. Thus far I've got a Fuji camera and Fuji lenses. The cheapest Fuji that's significantly higher than my 230mm is.. .$1899. That's not happening. How does one go about easily figuring out what other lenses are compatible?

Zaxxon wrote:I'm planning to try to participate in the Eclipse MegaMovie project on 8/21. Anyone else going to? Looks super cool. I believe my equipment barely qualifies--my most telephoto lens maxes out at 230mm, slightly above the APS-C 200mm minimum. Full-frame sensors require 300mm.

I feel like I should take some vacation time and go hang out in the path. While it's just a tiny thing, it's a thing of weird human history you only get the reasonable opportunity to experience but 3 or 4 times in your lifetime.

Zaxxon wrote:I have not read up on my cross-brand lenses. Thus far I've got a Fuji camera and Fuji lenses. The cheapest Fuji that's significantly higher than my 230mm is.. .$1899. That's not happening. How does one go about easily figuring out what other lenses are compatible?

For Fuji I have no idea without looking. Canon and Nikon are easy as you have Sigma and Tamron pumping out stuff for both all the time. I did a quick 5 second look and it looks bleak compared to Canon and Nikon, but I also could be missing something.

LordMortis wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:I'm planning to try to participate in the Eclipse MegaMovie project on 8/21. Anyone else going to? Looks super cool. I believe my equipment barely qualifies--my most telephoto lens maxes out at 230mm, slightly above the APS-C 200mm minimum. Full-frame sensors require 300mm.

I feel like I should take some vacation time and go hang out in the path. While it's just a tiny thing, it's a thing of weird human history you only get the reasonable opportunity to experience but 3 or 4 times in your lifetime.

Do it, man! I'm going to be driving a few hours north to populous Glendo, WY.

Octavious wrote:

Zaxxon wrote:I have not read up on my cross-brand lenses. Thus far I've got a Fuji camera and Fuji lenses. The cheapest Fuji that's significantly higher than my 230mm is.. .$1899. That's not happening. How does one go about easily figuring out what other lenses are compatible?

For Fuji I have no idea without looking. Canon and Nikon are easy as you have Sigma and Tamron pumping out stuff for both all the time. I did a quick 5 second look and it looks bleak compared to Canon and Nikon, but I also could be missing something.

Thanks. That generally jives with my (small) research. Canon/Nikon are the big dogs, and there doesn't seem to be as much for Fuji from 3rd parties.

Almost skipped past this one from last weekend. Scrolled back through and was like hmm. After editing it I really like it.

20170610-JAG_1578-Edit-Edit by Jeff Garnett, on Flickr

That is a gorgeous image Octavious, great job on the post too!