Matt’s Blog > Photography

I tend to look skeptically on claims of megapixels. As I think I’ve mentioned before here, I have a 20×30″ print hanging up, taken by my 6-megapixel EOS 10D. Now I shoot with a 10-megapixel XTi, but typically keep it down at “Medium” quality, which is a 5-ish megapixel image. The reason is that I [...]

Yesterday I was in the back yard working, when I noticed the setting sun was illuminating a fern in the woods, causing it to glow brilliantly while its surroundings were black. This would be a good photo.
By the time I came back out, the fern had fallen into the shade, but the light continued to [...]

I was pleasantly surprised by what my little 55-200mm Sigma can do! I’ve noticed that if you’re not exacting in aligning the polarizer, you lose a lot of contrast, BUT it’s very easily fixed in Photoshop. I’ve also noticed that, short of focus problems, most everything is easily fixed in Photoshop. (I’ve stopped thinking of [...]

I think the best thing about SLRs isn’t their elimination (well, exponential reduction) of shutter lag, nor the support for high ISOs, or even advanced exposure and metering modes. It’s that even at relative high apertures (f/5.6), you can keep a shallow depth of field. Consider this photograph:

(Does anyone know what type of flower this [...]

I joined my family today in central/Northern New Hampshire. It was opening day at Clark’s Trading Post, a favorite of my brother. My brother encouraged me to go with them, and the forecast called for a decent day, so I figured I’d tag along. The area’s always been quite photogenic, and I figured it’d be [...]

I brought my brother to organ lessons today, which are held in an old (18th century, I believe) church in Amherst. So I brought the camera along in anticipation of some more HDR fun.

This is a so-so interior shot. Note that it’s kind of noisy (grainy), I’ll touch on that in a bit. Also note, [...]

I’ve posted before about High-Dynamic Range photography, with, err, lackluster photos to demonstrate the concept. I’ve been trying my hand with Photomatix, which has given be slightly better results:

It’s worth noting that those were dark, ominous clouds. I shot this with auto bracketing on in my camera, meaning it took one “normal” shot, one overexposed [...]

I came across Ken Rockwell’s site the other day, and, as I perused a lot, I came across his interesting mention of the Casio EX-F1. I’ve “graduated” from integrated point-and-shoots to digital SLRs, although this camera costs more than my digital SLR and three lenses put together.
Photographically, it’s mediocre. 6 megapixels. Except you don’t buy [...]

I’ve had yosigo in my Flickr contacts list for a while now, as I’m a fan of their work.
Check out this photo, for example. It’s a very simple photo, and any of us could have taken it. He didn’t do a ten-minute exposure with a special lens, and he didn’t use any fancy filters. Contrast [...]

Between Andrew’s amazing panorama created with Hugin, and Garrett almost simultaneously sending me a link to a Lifehacker* post about Hugin, I figured it was only fitting that I try it out. It’s essentially a software app (OpenSource no less) to stitch together a series of shots and create a panorama.
Since I don’t like reading [...]