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Polar Lights 2
May 31 2009 23:53 | 19 Comments
Few days back I posted a photo I took a few years back, "Polar Lights". Today I was playing around with long exposures some more, and my eye fell on the bear statuette from that older photo, what a perfect opportunity to compare when I did then with what I can do now I though. Above is my favorite photo from the set of shots I took. Two more photos after the jump.
Photo of the setup. A small tripod to hold the camera in place during the long exposure, and the index page of a cook book to use as a background. On the book, the small LED light that I used in both this photo, and in the "Playing with lights" photos.
Finally another photo from the same set, but without the book. Quite liked the reflection on the table.
Tibul
Excellent photos as always really wish my photo taking abilities were as good, would you highly recommend the LX-3 as I've been looking at it for a while now and it looks really impressive, currently have a fujifilm 60fd
Tibul
@Tibul, although after having a quick look around my 60fd looks like a good comparable camera to the LX-3 maybe I just have a lot to learn about taking photos :)
Michael Flux
@Tibul, Hmm... I must say, I really do like it, but it has its downfalls I would say. Two of my biggest complaints about it is the lack of a viewfinder and the almost nonexistent zoom. I would say if you never use the viewfinder anyways or never shoot anything at long ranges, its quite an excellent camera, the colors are great, the low light performance is some of the best out there when it comes to point and shoots and the burst speed is pretty decent. The prices on it are a bit weird though. One week you can find it for 400, then the next it spikes up to 700, then down to 500... seems like the sellers are arbitrarily pulling numbers outta their rears.
But if there is some camera store in your area where you could take a look at a range of cameras, the ones I would suggest taking a look at primarily, other then the LX3, are the...
Canon G10 - love its physical buttons for all the manual control, though its not too good at night and the video mode is lacking.
Nikon P6000 - Quite a good night mode, and a feature I absolutely love, GPS. That is to say whenever you take a photo, its location will be embedded in the metadata - quite nice if you're using iPhoto 09 (if you're a Mac user), you'll get automatically get all your photos on a map.
Ricoh GX-200 - Has an awesome external swiveling viewfinder, and most importantly, something that neither of the other cameras have, ability to do time lapses.
Sigma DP1 - Doesn't really have any features which would make it stand out from the crowd, but overall, its quite a nice package and as all Sigmas produces quite nice photos.
More or less, those four, plus the LX3, are the 'top tier' of the point and shoot cameras at the moment. Quite honestly I would even get them over any of the "beginner" dSLRs such as the D40. I mean with the low level dSLRs all you get is the ability to change lenses, but beyond that, they all, from any manufacturer, are quite mediocre at best. The low light performance on most of them is nonexistent, they're slow, the image quality overall is well, crap and so on and so forth.
But yeah, I can't really just say "get the LX3" because I don't really know what your specific needs and wants are, but do take a look at those cameras before getting either one. Of course if you have any other questions, feel free to ask. ^_^
Tibul
@Michael Flux, Thanks a lot for this just what I was looking for had a quick look at the other suggestions and they all look like they have there advantages.
I'm looking for a good all round camera that I can take some macro shots with as well as general landscape etc and has great quality images, also needs to have good settings e.g. exposure times as my current camera can only do 1 second, basically just something that allows me to take great photo's similar to yours although I know I still need practice myself :)
Tibul
@Tibul, To add I'm trying to avoid an DSLR as I'd like something that's easy to carry around day to day
Smithy
Great photos! ^^
One silly question perhaps... how did you get the light that way, did you just hold it and movie it there? Or shine it from an angle, distance?
Is that a Velbon tripod btw?
Michael Flux
@Smithy, During the long exposure just circled it around the bear and all the other ambient lighting is from the same light. The exposure was 8 seconds long if not mistaken.
The tripod, no. Few years back I just forgot my regular tripod at home and needed one for a few photos I wanted to do, so I just stopped by some store to pick up the cheapest tripod I could find. Ended up finding this little one for 30 dollars so just grabbed it. Not my favorite thing in the world, but it works well enough for the small things.
julio
nice fotos, btw anyone can tell me any good anime to watch... i've got to much free time
Michael Flux
@julio, Quite a few good recommendation in the comments in this post: What I'm watching.
lightningsabre
Wow that's an untouched photograph? I need to learn how to do this 0.o
I thought it was a photoshop manipulation... My mind is always in that mode for some reason ^^;
Michael Flux
@lightningsabre, Yup, 100% outta the camera like that. Nothing done with neither the color nor the light effect ^_^ All that was done in Photoshop was the watermark :p
lightningsabre
@Michael Flux, AHAH! So there was some Photoshop work with it! I knew it!! XD
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