SOU basketball – Eric Thompson (edited)

@SOURaiders

The SOU men’s basketball team continues their road games tonight against Simpson. This will be their fifth (of ten) consecutive road games. Today’s photo comes from their game against Simpson in Ashland earlier this month.

I sometimes have photographers (who have never been in the Riehm Arena) tell me how lucky I am to have such good lighting in a gym. HA! They have no idea how happy I will be to see the new gym lighting when McNeal Pavilion is torn down and the new facility is built. I have shot in many gyms and McNeal has the most difficult lighting. It is a yellow flicker. Most high schools have much better lighting.

Anyway, to give you an idea of how much I have to edit to come up with the photo you see above, check out how the original image started below.

SOU basketball – Eric Thompson (unedited)

Posted on November 25th, 2014 under only in ashland, people. Tags: AF-S Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G ED lens, basketball, Nikon D750, photography, Raider Athletics, Southern Oregon University, sports photography. Comments Off on SOU basketball still on the road

jpg image, straight out of the camera

I have mentioned several times before that there are situations where images shot as jpgs are “throw aways” that had they been shot in RAW format could be salvaged.

Today’s comparison is one such example. With a rainbow outside a dimly-lit gym, I had the choice of shooting the rainbow and getting a nearly black gym (above) or shooting the action on the court and getting a white sky (not shown). By shooting in RAW I was able to process the above image to come up with what you see below.

Ashland High School volleyball – rainbow out gym window in front of Grizzly Peak

By the way, Ashland won last night, advanced to the Sweet 16 in state, and will be playing in St. Helens on Saturday. The winner moves on to the Elite 8 round.

Posted on October 29th, 2014 under nature, only in ashland, photography. Tags: AF-S Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G ED lens, ashland high school, grizzly peak, Nikon D750, photography, rainbow, raw vs. jpg jpeg, sports photography, volleyball. Comments Off on RAW vs jpg (#6 or 7 or something)

Nikkor 18-200mm G VRII Lens for Nikon cameras

I haven’t used this lens in over a year. In fact, I no longer have a DX camera or this lens, but I used it quite a bit when I was learning how to shoot with my first DSLR camera.

This was one of my first test shots with my Sigma 85mm f/1.4 lens, a lens that I still use regularly.

Posted on June 20th, 2013 under photography. Tags: nikon 18-200mm vr ii, nikon d7000, photography, sigma 85mm f/1.4. Comments Off on AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II Nikon Lens

Depth of field at f/1.2

The other day I was in Medford for work. On my way I met someone via Craigslist who was selling a couple of manual Nikon lenses. Having never used a manual lens before (although I have used my AF lenses in manual mode on occasion) I was interested to try them out. Plus the price was crazy cheap so even if I didn’t like them I figured I could unload them at a profit.

Most of my lenses are largest at f/2.8. My Sigma 85mm goes to f/1.4 though. This 50mm lens that I picked up has a maximum aperture of f/1.2. It may be the only Nikon lens with an aperture so large. I had a half hour to kill so I dropped into the Medford library to try it out. The above was my first shot. What do you think?

I used it at the Stoneburner show too. My keeper rate at f/1.2 with manual focusing went down of course, but the ones that came out OK are pretty cool.

Posted on March 19th, 2013 under outside of ashland. Tags: bokeh, Nikon 50mm f/1.2 Nikkor AI-S Manual Focus Lens, Nikon D600, photography. Comments Off on Betty Boop

Photo of the Year 2012 – Top 100

Three photos I submitted to the “Photo of the Year 2012” contest made the Top 100 and can now be voted on (until January 27, 2013). If you would be so kind I would appreciate your vote for my entries which can be found here, here, and here. You have to vote for 10 photos in total so pick another seven to go along with my three for your vote to count.

Posted on January 14th, 2013 under nature. Tags: photography. Comments Off on Photo of the Year 2012

I’m not a big Photoshopper. I like my images to look real. Usually the only things I do in Photoshop are crop, photomerge, and do minor work on lighting (to make things look more like they actually did–not less). I’m not a fan of HDR.

However, the original for today’s photo came out sort of strange. The grass near me had a dreamy, out-of-focus quality that I decided to push onto the rest of the image somewhat. I also lightened the shadows on the soccer player. What do you think?

Here is the original .jpg with no alterations:

Posted on August 29th, 2012 under only in ashland, people. Tags: Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II, nikon d7000, photography, Raider Athletics, soccer, Southern Oregon University, sports photography. Comments Off on Soccer dreaming

I’m in Los Angeles for a few more days. Here is a photo I took on Thursday as I was pulling into town. Actually, this is a number of photos merged together spanning more than 180 degrees. On the far left is Griffith Observatory. On the far right is the Hollywood sign. Click on the image for a lot more detail. I’ll be posting more photos of Los Angeles on my other blog.

Posted on April 14th, 2012 under outside of ashland, places. Tags: california, los angeles, nikon d7000, panorama, photography, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens for Nikon. Comments Off on Los Angeles Panorama

Yesterday was a really beautiful day in Ashland. Unfortunately, I had to work most of the day. However, I did get this shot off on my way to work. Actually, this is five shots merged into one in CS5 and probably covers about 150 degrees. That’s why Grizzly Peak, on the left, looks so small even though I wasn’t that far from it.

Other than the sun being too much, I really like how this photo turned out. I’ll have to try it again someday when the sun is behind a cloud.

Posted on April 7th, 2012 under nature, only in ashland. Tags: clouds, grizzly peak, landscape, nikon d7000, panorama, photography, snow, spring, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens for Nikon. Comments Off on Ashland panorama

I previously mentioned how I was getting better results working with RAW files in concert lighting situations. When going through my jpg image results I almost deleted the above image because the amazing clouds my eyes saw were totally ruined in the jpg file. Before hitting delete, however, I decided to see what I could do with the RAW file. Here is the result:

Posted on March 28th, 2012 under nature, only in ashland. Tags: clouds, grizzly peak, nikon d7000, photography, raw vs. jpg jpeg, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens for Nikon. Comments Off on RAW vs. JPG (RAW isn’t just for weird, indoor lighting)