The "StarBurst" effect

My God, It's full of stars! (Dave Bowman: 2001, A Space Odyssey)

While a large aperture gives you a small depth of field, a small aperture gives you a large depth of field, which means that more content in your photo is in focus. But there is also another effect that can be made to use when using a small aperture.

If you shoot a photo (about f16 and above), especially at night, with a light source in it, this light source will show up in the image as a star shaped light. It will also work with the sun during the day. However, the bigger the difference between the surrounding light and the light source in the photo (that should be brighter of course) , the better the effect. So if you want to use the sun for this, use it during a nice sunset.

Aperture: f29

Aperture: f22

Aperture: f22

Shooting waterfalls

Ever since I saw a YouTube video of Karl Taylor demonstrating the effect of slow shutter speeds on moving water, I am trying to find waterfalls and stuff like that. But since I am living in the Netherlands (not at the sea side), that's easier said than done.

T: 1/800 sec (Fast shutter speed, and it's a bit dark)

So I was pretty happy when we went for a small weekend-vacation to CenterParcs (only 25 minutes of driving from our home), where they seemed to have a few nice waterfalls to my surprise. Of course they were small, and man-made, but hey: good enough to do some experiments and take some nice photo's.

T: 4 sec (Slow shutter speed)

The beautiful thing about moving water is that you can 'freeze' it with your camera, using a fast shutter speed. But when you use a slow shutter speed, the water turns into 'mist', and with this effect some really nice images can be
created.

All photo's in this blog show the same waterfall which was the nicest around, and indoors. The first image of this blog was shot with a fast shutter speed of 1/800 sec. The water in this photo seems, more or less, frozen in time. All the drops that are falling down are visible.

The second photo was shot using a slow shutter speed of 4 sec. This time the moving water is blurred out and seems to have a mist-like quality. Personally this is my favourite way of shooting water.

I moved the camera around a bit, used the zoom lens, and made some more experimental shots. Here are some of my favourites. The first one is just to show what it looks like with a fast shutter speed:

T: 1/100 sec (fast shutter speed, but should have been even faster)

Same position, T: 4 sec, nice :-)

This is my favourite waterfall photo of that day. T: 5 sec

Flash experiments

External Flash, possibly even harder to use than a DSLR itself, at least if you want correctly lit photo's. Therefore it is wise to experiment with it as much as possible. To perform some experiments, I made a small Do-It-Yourself studio in the garage. For now, let's call it 'Studio Le Garage' :-)

Studio "Le Garage"

So what can we find in "Le Garage"? Of course we have a nice (cheap :-) ) tripod with the DSLR on top of it. On the right there is the flash on a not-so-professional stand, with on the floor a even less professional diffuser (an Ikea storage box). We also have a reflector (at the foot of the tripod in the photo) which is a piece of white foam board that I found in the back of a painting that we bought years ago (never throw anything away ;-) ) As a background I use a black piece of fabric that I bought for 2 Euro per meter at the market.
The flash is a Canon Speedlite 430EX II that is remotely triggered by the Canon 600D (wireless).

For my saturday morning experiment, I wanted to create some low-key (dark) photo's.

Experment 1

As a first flash experiment I made a self portret. A low key photo with some pretty harsh shadows. The flash was not on full power mode and not diffused. Also, no reflector was used to create fill light.

Experiment 2

For the second experiment, I diffused the flash using the Ikea-storage-box-diffuser. On the other side of my face I used the reflector which I held myself, just outside the frame. As you can see, the shadows are much softer.

Experiment 3

Next experiment: always nice to use a model so that more photo's can be made using different settings and setups. Unfortunately I only made a few photo's when the flash batteries went dead :-) For this photo, the same setup was used as experiment 2.

Experiment 4

This photo was not made in "Le Garage" but in the living room during a bright day! The background (just normal living room stuff) was darkened out by increasing the apperture (f/32) so that hardly any light reaches the sensor. The light that is vissible in the photo is created by the off camera flash. Using this method, low key photo's can be made without having a special dark background, everywhere and every time of the day.

A new Hobby

In 2012, I decided it was time to start with a new fresh hobby. For a while already my interest shifted from video to photography, so I decided to buy a Canon  EOS 600D with the EF-S 18-55mm kitlens, and a small camera bag with room for an extra lens (from which I wasn't sure I would ever buy) or my Sony HDV camcorder. This all went fine for about 2 months, then the camera bag became too small! The first extra lens was the 'Plastic Fantastic' Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, and the second a nice Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. The 'old-new' camera bag had to make place for a bigger model, the Vanguard UP-Rise 43 Slingbag, which could hold my entire kit, including the camcorder... Until... Until I bought a Cokin filter set, and a Canon Speedlite 430 EX II. But that's ok if I leave the camcorder out of the equation, which is fine. So everything still fits... for now... :-)

Canon workshop

One of the things that 'excelerated' the 'photographic fire' was the 1-day digital photography workshop that Canon provided (for 25 Euro's) with the purchase of the camera. So I went to the 'FotoVakSchool' on a saturday and had a great time with some fellow enthusiasts (and all fresh owners of 1100D, 550D or 600D camera's). The (basic) in's and out's of the camera where explained in a very nice and understandable way. I can really recommend this workshop to anyone starting this great hobby! (But be prepared for the consequences ;-) )

Favourite Lens

My favourite lens at this time is definately the 50mm. You can create fantastic images with it with a very shallow depth of field, as shown in the image above in this post. The price is around 90 Euro's so anyone starting with a Canon dslr should buy it!

Purpose of this Blog

With this blog, I want to share my experiments and learnings in the field of photography. And hopefully it can be of some use to the starting DSLR user, like myself. Maybe we can even help each other out with burning questions!

Let's just see what happens :-)