Two weeks already. One picture a day, one lens, for 85 days.
Day 15 – 2012 01 13 – 10:38 h. – ISO 100 – f2.0 – 1/800sec
A simple orchid, on our window sill. My wife loves to grow orchids, this one is probably a cheap one from Ikea. Again at minimal focus distance, I should buy some extension tubes one of these days 🙂 .
Day 16 – 2012 01 14 – 11:03 h. – ISO 100 – f2.0 – 1/640sec
We moved some wood logs this morning, and the boys worked together finishing off. We enjoyed the good weather on this saturday morning.
Day 17 – 2012 01 15 – 16:23 h. – ISO 100 – f4.0 – 1/250sec
An afternoon walk with my brother and his wife in the ‘pays des collinnes’ – the walloon counterpart of the ‘flemish ardennes’. Nice views, nice but chilly weather and plenty of sun. Overexposed about 2 stops to compensate for the backlight.
Day 18 – 2012 01 16 – 08:12 h. – ISO 100 – f4.0 – 1/30sec
We had such beautiful sky colors today, both in the morning and in the evening. Just after the children left for school this morning I went up the attic (where is my so called studio room) and grabbed this view from behind our house. You can see the flock of birds just setting of.
They gathered on the wire and made a lot of noise. I don’t know what made them leave. This image was taken at 1/30th of a second. Sometimes I dare go way below what is called a safe shutter speed. A steady hand and a window sill to pose your elbows can do miracles.
Day 19 – 2012 01 17 – 13:56 h. – ISO 100 – f2.0 – 1/15sec
This strange thing called optics. I wanted to do a shot with my other great lens, the 135mm. thought of a product shot first, but then I changed my mind and wanted to do something with the wide aperture of this short telephoto lens. At f2, it seems like the lens has no aperture, and is just a wide open tube with some glass elements in it. Then I was curious if I would have been able to get a subject in focus trough an open lens. As you can see, I have to focus quite far in front of the lens, to get the subject sharp. You can probably calculate how far you subject needs to be, when the lens is at infinity, then how far your camera need to be etc. … but I’m just not into maths today. Taken on the wood floor of my home studio, with natural light falling trough the roof-window.
Day 20 – 2012 01 18 – 18:55 h. – ISO 1600 – f2.2 – 1/25sec
I had another very busy day in my 3D-animations business, so I only got to photography just before dinner. At home we have a stove, yes such an old-fashioned wood burning stove. To say more, in our living room it is our main and only heat source. This means we have to get wood every couple of hours to keep it going. It is not only used for heating the room, but sometimes also for keeping food warm, or even for cooking. The large pot you see here is the famous flemish stew, softly simmering for tomorrows dinner. We’ll bake some sausages then to complete.
I had to push ISO’s really high up to keep it steady, to 1600 ISO, but the 5D mark II copes well. Corrected the white balance partially, to keep the warm home feeling a little in the image.
Day 21 – 2012 01 18 – 18:27 h. – ISO 500 – f1.8 – 1/40sec
During my walk with the dog today, I tried some different things, panning was one of them. I shot this ‘mobylette’ at 1/40th of a second, just long enough to get some movement in the surroundings, and short enough to keep things sharp. I should exercise more if I want to use longer shutter speeds. Pushed ISO to 500 to get enough light. Cropped the image a little in post-processing, and I pushed the exposure 2 stops. With the streetlights you get a terrible color cast, but I didn’t want to remove it, otherwise all color disappears from the shot.
