Digital Cameras and Digital Photos

When it comes to photography, especially digital, I am no expert. The only part that I am an expert in is how dumb I am or can be.

I started my picture taking with some sort of Instamatic with the rotating cube for a flash. I may have even used a Brownie at one time or another but it didn't belong to my family. The Instamatics were like a 35mm film camera except you put your film cartridge in as a unit. You could see the progression of frames in a little window in the back lid that opened for the loading. These cameras progressed to built in flashes so the cubes went to wayside.

My dad went to England on a TDY mission (Temporary Duty Yonder) for those that aren't military, and brought back with him two Petri 7 English 35mm cameras. One for himself and one for my brother who was showing interest in photography. My brother actually got pretty good. He set up his camera for night shots and took the cars going by our house at night. He even got into taking pictures, not with this camera, in one of those small hobby rocket kits. It launched and when out of fuel it would start to fall to earth where a parachute would deploy and the jerk would pull a lever and a camera in the nose would work. He also sent a mouse up once. It lived but if my memory serves me correctly, it got away. I've never seen a mouse run that fast.

Well, somehow I ended up with one of the Petri's. I believe it was my brothers. He ended up in the middle east after college so I just kind of took it over. The first time I used it I took it to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car track west of Lexington, OH. I had never been there and had never taken pictures of moving cars. A school buddy of mine owned a Fiat 124 Spyder invited me to go. SCCA races the old Camel GT and Can Am series were running there.

There weren't' any attachments, at least that we had, at the time for the camera. Mid-Ohio is over 2.25 miles plus long and you can see most of the track from the infield. There was a decreasing radius turn that was difficult to get to but there was plenty more track to see. The problem would be the distance for the lens. Still, I got some pretty good if not amazing shots for such a rookie. For economics, most of my pictures were on slides. You only paid for the processing of the film, not putting the picture on paper. You could really get low numbers in your ISO film. I think mine was 64 and yet you could still get good action photos. It's been 38 years since the first ones were taken. Long forgotten and poor storage left the 38 year old pictures rendered useless. The film deteriorated to where they turned black. I had pictures of Jackie Stewart, George Fullmer and Mark Donahue (deceased). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Donohue

His son David just won the Le Mans this past summer. I had some, what I would call, really good pictures of the Porsche 917 in action. Possibly the fastest track car ever. Totally unlimited of restrictions like today.

I moved up from the Petri 7 to a Canon AE-1 that my brother brought home with him in 1980. He got it in Egypt of some other middle eastern country while stationed there.

I used this camera until my daughter went to college. I had gotten a telephoto lens and a multiplier lens for it as well as a bounce flash. In her second year of college she needed a camera for class. She was a graphic design major. I gave her my camera and for that I got a total surprise, my wife bought me a Canon Rebel Xti. I couldn't believe the weight difference. I added a telephoto macro lens and a flash to this one also. My daughter got me a filter, which I knew nothing about, but she was a good student and helped me. She still has the AE-1 but I do not have the Rebel or any other part of it.

About a year and a half ago I went to a local camera shop and bought the digital version of my Rebel. 10 mega pixels, I waited for this camera to come out. The reason, I was able to use my film lenses on this camera so I kept my costs down. Everything transferred that I needed. This camera however has a built in flash. That is convenient but I like the bounce better. More control. Yea, this camera also has a hot shoe so either one can be used.

This past summer I went to Mid-Ohio again. This time with the digital and all the gear. Lug, lug. Camera bag, two lenses, mono pod, umbrella (it rained off and on), food and drink because the car can be a long ways off. Great time but I'm an amateur, not a track photographer with the vest and three cameras banging together to take shots.

A couple of weeks ago one of the local camera shops had a three day sale, with vendors on site. I had just read about an all in one lens that covered my two lenses plus some. I took my camera and lenses to do the comparo thing. Yea for me. I thought about the Canon lens but wound up getting the new Tamaron 18.0- 270mm http://www.tamron.com/B003special/index.html. In film it equates to an 18mm /410mm. It is a macro so I can take pictures as close as 19" from the center of the camera body to the object. It even has a anti shake for the semi long hand held exposures. You can turn this on or off, heck, mine is always on. I'm older, I have to do the breath and hold, or in my case let it out, to steady myself more today that in days past. I really love this lens. I am just getting use to it and it has made me do more reading and experimenting with my camera than ever before. I now want to learn my camera. I have been looking for places to actually take some courses in photography. I may even join a photo club.

I will post some shots on this site starting today. What is real interesting with digital is that you can edit what you took if it didnt' come out the way you wanted it to or you want to make some changes. You can enhance to picture to the way you thought you saw it. Here, I need to acknowledge my son-in-law. He's an industrial designer and graphic designer with a world of talent. He sat down with me while visiting one day and showed me shortcuts and how to's in 30 minutes that have been so much help. I'll bend his ear again and show him some stuff and let him advance me some more.

Learning about digital photography

I have had a digital camera for about eight years, however, I have only had one that my old Canon film camera could do for about two years. Now, I am trying to really discover all the ins and outs of the digital world.

I have a niece whose husband played around with a really small digital camera until he got to where he felt comfortable enough to start entering photo contests. Tony took soooooo many pictures of their cats and closeups of flowers that it got almost boring. You could see though that he was learning and improving. I would email him and ask questions and the bottom line, even though he never said it was, practice. There's no cost because there is no film. Take, delete and take again. Tony did this and he won some contests. The big one is that it got him a job on their local newspaper. He was retired from the Air Force and wanted to do something that he liked. This was right up his alley. I go to their website every now and then and look at his work.

Well, now I am going to start practicing. On this adventure I am just going to point out how you can capture time and movement with still imaging. These two pictures were take two minutes apart with different shutter 8 sec and 2 sec times and f-stops f-16 and f-7.1 respectively. Focal lengths are the same, 80mm and the ISO setting is the same, 100. You can see the rain in the distance is moving to the right, in this case it would be to the east. The rain is to the left of the tall tree.

Old post never posted and now.....posted.

The following is a draft I found when doing the last posting. I was going to scrap it but after reading it again I have decided to finish it out. I did say in the last post that I hadn't sold the Miata. In this post I am talking about how I need to take the pictures to put it on the net and somewhat about the proper way in taking pictures. Read on.


Not that anyone really reads this but it is a way to transfer my thoughts. The last posting was a fluke. I have not sold or even really tried to sell the car it yet. I like the car but I don't drive it that much. Being an '02 model and having less than 19,000 miles on it shows how much it is driven. Washed and waxed or the use of McGuires Quick Detailer more than needed shows that I respect the car. What I need is some motivation and probably some of my son-in-laws help. I don't feel comfortable with the picture taking thing but he has taken some pics of cars, his '66 Bonneville, and art work in his house that I appreciate. I guess I need to at least make the attempt. Maybe between today and next Monday I can get the car washed again and then take the pictures. It is suppose to be cloudy on Monday and the best time to take car pictures is actually on a cloudy day. I didn't realize that until I went on the web and checked out how to take car pictures from some experts giving free advice. I took pictures of my buddies Vette, pictures seen in this blog, and now I know why I had such a hard time getting the color right and dodging the bright shiny reflective chrome spots that look like someone is shining a light back at you. Also, one of the selling points to my car, in my humble opinion, is the interior. It is not the normal Miata color, black or light tan, being the SE model, it has a saddle brown color. I have a semi sloped driveway that I can put a ladder on the sidewalk part and park the car just up on the slope and then get up on the 7' step ladder and take overhead inside shots. If the sun is out bright no amount of flash will help to get rid of the shadows. On a gray day a flash will be helpful to pull out the shadows and not be too reflective.


Okay, that was the posting on 6/5/09 that set in my drafts for some reason. Since then on Fathers Day, Greg and Steph came here and I got a lesson about my camera and how to shoot some pictures. Where I was trying to compensate for the lighting etc, all I needed to do was to let the camera do the work and then even the simple program that comes with the computer and or the camera will let you make the necessary minor adjustments. I really learned about the black and white drivers in the tones and level controls. I found that if you take the picture as large as you can and only play with the black and white controls you will have a very good picture as long as you are in focus and the camera can do that too. Now the trick is to play with it more and master it better. We have a pond next to our house and I have been using the wild life as my challenge. They move and they vary in color. Ducks, male and female, geese (hate those) Blue Herrons, all types of Finches and an occasional from or toad will make itself noticed. Lighting around the pond changes and of course the wild life moves when it wants to. No "smile - say cheese" here. Hopefully, now that I have found this old posting I will take the pictures of the car and post them here. Might not find them in the for sale sites yet. I'm going to a car show tomorrow on the 4th and then a British car show on 8/1 where there is about 300 cars and then a race in August so I will have the pits and track action to work with. Wish me luck.