Fann Art

Penny in SF

2009-08-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics I took of Penny when we went to San Francisco.. She's growing up so fast!

Modeling shoot in Malibu

2009-04-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

My wife's friend Meghan is interested in becoming a model and since I'm interested in photography it made perfect sense for us to go and have a photoshoot together. I got a new Canon 50D for my birthday from Masae and this is the first time I've ever used it. It definitely took a while before I figured out how to use it, but eventually things started to click (no pun intended).

We started off in Santa Monica but there were way too many people around so we hopped into the car and drove to Malibu. We found a decently empty spot on the beach that wasn't too hard to get to. It was a completely overcast day which actually make it easier to shoot because the shadows were very soft. We started around 5pm and shot for about an hour before it got too dark.

At first I tried using Av mode (Aperture Priority) but the camera kept underexposing because of the bright sky so I went full manual. I think manual is the way to go when the sun is behind the subject.

Here are the shots.

This one looks like her legs are in the sand.. I need to watch out for these things next time.

Trying to make it look like a Victoria's Secret catalog in these.

This one seems to be the crowd favorite. I actually shot this one with the Rebel XT and the 55-250 IS lens. One thing I've been learning about taking photos of people is that its more flattering to stand further away and zoom in to get the proportions of their face correctly. If you stand close with a wider lens, it tends to make the nose look bigger, which most people don't like.

Eyes are kind of dark here. I think a bounce reflector would help in this case.

Cancun

2009-03-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

These were shots I took in 2007, and decided to look at them again and see what worked. I did some post-processing on some of them. Again, these were all taken with a point and shoot camera.

Full Moon

2009-03-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

It was a full moon a few nights ago. I grabbed my tripod and my 55-250 IS and attempted to photograph it. Its not as clear as I had hoped it would be. Also I can see the limitation of the Rebel XT with 8 megapixels and only 250mm reach, the photo here is a 100% crop, no resizing, so I end up with only 720x720 photo. Definitely too small for any kind of print. I think with a longer reach lens, or more image size I would be able to get a larger photo and probably more clear.

The settings on the camera were:
ISO 100
Focal length 250mm
f/10
1/200 shutter

Mammoth in March

2009-03-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

Took my Rebel XT to the mountains to work on some snowboarding photos. I love snowboarding, and I've always wanted to capture the excitement of snowboarding that showed more than the run-of-the-mill snapshots that people tend to take when they snowboard. I used my Canon 55-250 IS lens (aka "nifty-two-fifty") exclusively, because of the reach it gives me, as well as the portability of this lens. The fact that the lens is fairly inexpensive ($255 shipped) makes me not worry about it as much. As always, I have the front element protected with a B+W Multi-coated UV Haze filter (not the cheapest filter, but they say that cheap filters degrade the quality of your images).

In some of these action shots, the sky was really dark and I had to turn up the brightness to make the sky look somewhat blue. As you can see, the blue was really dark and not realistic. I think this is the problem with shooting snow. Snow is very white and it makes the camera think that the shot is overexposed so it compensates by turning it down a lot. I could have probably prevented this if I used a complete manual setting, but I wanted to freeze the action so I had it on shutter priority.

This one was taken at Red Rock Canyon on the way back from Mammoth. I love whenever the moon is visible during the daytime.

Chichen Itza

2009-03-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

These photos were from 2007, when I took Masae to Cancun and proposed to her. Back then I wasn't into digital SLR photography yet, but I did enjoy taking photos. These photos here were all taken with a Canon point and shoot digital camera. With some photoshop techniques (curves, levels, sharpening, burning, etc.), I was able to create a dramatic look that was vastly different from the original photos.

Pet Photography

2009-03-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

This past weekend Masae and I went to visit my dad and introduced Penelope (our Yorkie pup) to him for the first time. After spending a little bit of time with her he decided he wanted a dog too! My cousin and her family were also over so I took a few photos of Penelope and my cousin's dog.

I was using the 55-250 IS lens which takes surprisingly good photos, especially outdoors where light is abundant. I found it quite difficult to take photos of my cousin's dog because he's a black poodle mix with something else. Black makes metering very difficult and it was hard to get the right exposure for the shots. Good thing we were outdoors for the most part.

This are the two shots where I used my 17-55 f2.8 IS to get the wide angle.

Hawaii

2009-02-25T18:31:00.000-08:00

Took a trip to Hawaii with my wife, Masae. It was sort of our official honeymoon since our honeymoon to Taiwan was filled with planning a banquet and visiting relatives. Most of these shots were taken with a Tamron 28-75 f2.8 or the Canon 50mm f1.8 (nifty fifty).

I've been reading up on composition and what makes a good photo good. There are some good articles here: http://photoinf.com/ One of the main points that I picked up is that you should concentrate on the background once you've found your subject. A good background will really make a subject stand out, while a bad background will take away from the subject.

Regarding post-processing photos (i.e. Photoshop), I've learned that sometimes less is more. You can't really fix a bad photography in post-processing, but you can enhance a good one.

In this shot, I used a circular polarizing filter for the outdoor shots to bring out the clouds.

Point and Shoot Camera

2009-02-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

This is a photo of my lovely wife on Halloween 2008. This photo wasn't taken with an SLR but I really like this photo. I used my Canon SD1100 digital elph in manual mode. I didn't realize that I could change the ISO settings on this camera until I really dug into the manual settings. I bumped up the ISO to 1600 and disabled the flash for this photo.

Penelope

2009-02-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

Our first day with Penelope, our 11 week old Yorkshire Terrier puppy. I had to snap some quick photos of her because she was just way too cute. These shots were taken with a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 lens on my Rebel XT body. No flash was used.

Let's Begin

2009-02-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

In September of last year, I embarked on a journey down the road of Digital SLR photography and was not sure if it was for me. I've always considered taking up photography as a hobby but was never that interested in spending that kind of money on something I wasn't sure I was going to take seriously. After playing with my friend Stan's Canon 40D for a little while we were in China last summer, I become more interested.

While surfing Fatwallet.com, I found a thread that said you could trade in an old broken Canon digital camera and get a refurbished Canon Rebel XT Digital SLR camera with a basic kit lens for $299. $299 wasn't too much of a commitment and I had a Canon SD400 digital Elph recently crap out on me so I just went for it. Also I picked up a "nifty-fifty" 50mm f1.8 lens from Amazon because it was cheap ($85) as recommended by my friend Austin.

So now, 6 months later.. I'm really into this photography thing and I've got several pieces of new equipment to go along with my refurbished Rebel XT.

Here's what I have now:
Canon Rebel XT
(2) 4 GB Compact Flash cards
Lowero Slingshot 200
Canon 430EX II External Flash
Sto-fen Omni bounce
Manfrotto Tripod
Opteka Battery Grip (just as good as the canon version for much less)
Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM Lens
77mm B+W UV Haze multicoated filter

Here is what I've sold:
Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 Lens (sold it after getting the 17-55mm)
67mm Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter
67mm B+W UV Haze multicoated filter
Canon 2400 gig bag
Canon 50mm f1.8 prime lens
Canon Kit Lens

So now I'm basically just using a 17-55mm f2.8 as my walk-around lens. My next lens is probably going to be the Canon 135mm f2 L.

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Here are some photos from my first day out with the SLR. My buddy Jason and I both picked up the same Rebel XT and took our cars out. Most of my shots were taken with the Tamron 28-75 f2.8.