Moving Day

We'll be shipping out on the 30th for California. The yard sales are over everything is getting packed and ready to go into the trailer. I'll be packing up my computer in the next couple of days and wanted to get this last post in before we leave.

It's supposed to be hot and miserable the next couple of days which isn't going to make it easy getting our stuff organized and loaded. All the equipment is packed and ready to go except for a couple of cameras that I'm going to use on the trip. I'm taking an old Yashica 635 camera, A Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515/16 folding camera, an Olympus Pen EE-3 half frame,  an Argus C4, a Horizon 202s Panorama camera and of course my Nikon D3s. I'm going to load Black and White film in all of the film cameras for the trip and develop it after school gets going. Hoping to get some good shots, we'll have to see how it goes.

We're hoping to get to California on the 2nd of September and find an apartment or house to rent right away. I have orientation on the 5th and 6th and classes start on the 7th and 8th. Those are going to be four very long days after the trip. I won't be posting until we get everything set up in California but I plan on posting quite a bit when we get settled in.

I'm very excited to be starting this new chapter in our lives with my wife and youngest child. It will be a great adventure and I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Take care everyone and I'll be back to posting in a couple of weeks.

Robert Gainor

Bike Rides and the Nikon D40X

Recently I started riding my bike again and as one who likes to have a camera with me and not wanting to put my big expensive pro camera at risk, I decided to strap on my old Nikon D40x.

The D40x is a 10 megapixel consumer model that is about a third the size of my D3s. It doesn't have a front finger wheel to change adjustments and the colors tend to be just a bit saturated. The shutter mechanics are also very different than the D3s. It's almost like there is just a bit of a delay from the time you push the button to the time the shutter fires. Another problem is, when in manual mode you have to change the aperture by pressing a button that is in the most awkward place and then move the thumb wheel. (I usually put it in shutter or aperture priority depending on what I'm shooting because of this). It also has no internal motor so most of my lenses have to be used in manual focus, which is not a big problem for me because I tend to manually focus most shots anyway.

All that being said I've had a blast shooting with this thing. especially while going down the trail as fast as my feet can peddle and firing off a shot at a slower than normal shutter speed. I've also tried some narrow depth of field stuff. I've even shot some to convert to black and white with great results.
Here are some of my results:

I've put more pics up on flickr  and will be posting more.

Knowing your camera and it's limitations can help you get some great shots regardless of any perceived shortcomings it may have. I try to turn those shortcomings into opportunities to be creative.

Here is the link to my flickr account to check out some more of my stuff:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgainor/

Brooks Institute MFA Program

I was recently accepted into the Masters of Fine Arts for Photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. For the next couple of weeks I'll be packing up and heading out to California so I won't be posting much here at all after the 26th. I plan on taking some old film cameras in the car with me and plan on shooting the whole trip. I'll be posting some of that here after I get to California.

I'm looking forward to getting there and working with the faculty and other students at Brooks. I also plan on posting a lot on this blog as a record of my time there.

August Quick Tip Shutter Speed

This months Quick tip is on hand holding and shutter speed. Most people push the limit on the slowest speed they use. If your subject is not moving or if you're shooting with flash it's not that much of a problem, but if you're shooting in low light with a lot of movement you're better off opening up your aperture and cranking up your ISO a bit to compensate and set your shutter speed an leave it alone.

If you're hand holding your slowest speed should be 1 over the focal length of your lens or 1/60th of a second, which ever is faster. So if you're shooting with a 300mm lens then your slowest shutter speed should be 1/300th of a second. You can push this a little as long as you have a stable holding technique. 

1/60th is the slowest I'll go unless I'm doing something special or  I'm purposely trying to get some motion blur and when that's the case I'm going a lot slower than 1/60th.

So for this quick tip, if you're in low light situations use shutter priority or manual and set your shutter to the lowest speed for hand holding and adjust your exposure with aperture and ISO.