The XMEN Clan Forums

I found two fountains in a duck pond yesterday.

These I cut down to 450x675 & 675x450 and set jpeg quality to 10.



I can't wait until I get my tripod up here, then I can play with slow exposures... like what's 30s worth of fountain look like?

I see you found Mirror Lake. Wait until the week leading towards the Michigan Game when there is a night where everyone jumps into it. That is a sight to see. All those bikini's that some how "slip off" from time to time.

It looks just as good as you pictured when its frozen over and nearly smooth.

Can you get some pictures of the Ducks? I don't get to that end of campus as much as I use to but I remember watching them every time I passes. There was a duck with an evil laugh that only seemed to come out at night and spook anyone coming by.

Ok... duck, ducks, and begging ducks.

I like that first picture of the duck. Looking pretty good.

OOh, the devil duck of OSU.


I like taking fountain pics. If you don't have your tripod you can set the camera on a railing or wall nearby (I did NOT say let go!) and take your longer exposure that way. If you want to be really still, use the timer to open the shutter so you don't have to touch the release.

yeah, that one duck... every time he stuck his head under water he would flap his wings a few seconds later. I am surprised at the blur at 1/125... I would have thought that fast enough for sharp duck's wings...

Time to start a notebook...

#1) 1/50th is dangerously slow for racecars going 80-90mph
#2) 1/125th is too slow for duck's wings
#3) you need to be able to open up more than f/4 to shoot faster than 1/2s in the nocturnal creatures house at the Cincinnati zoo... even at ISO 400 (maybe faster... but 1600 is WAY too grainy)
#4) w/ 8gigs of CF cards, 1 battery is not enough
#5) tiny specs of dust on the wrong part of a lense results in rather large UFOs in the sky
#6) don't drop your 300mm lense... it won't soon forgive you

anything else?

Here are a few more....

High ISO is not too bad assuming your exposure is set correctly to begin with.

ALWAYS carry a spare camera battery with you.

As much as possible, avoid changing lenses out in the field. This just tends to invite dust onto your sensor.

Ditto on dropping the lens. Not good.

When using a VR (or IS) lens on a tripod, turn off the image stabilization. It tends to make things blurry.

Any many, many, many more.....

hehe... did some more shooting around campus... as well as about 150 shots of the ducks... and then there's those nasty speeders around campus!

Ducks




Speeders (ok... at 1/25, almost anything looks fast)



Misc