May Monthly Meeting
- Written by Kathy Anderson
May 20th will be our monthly meeting at the Anderson Center in Red Wing in the cafe area as usual. This will be a night of learning! Have things you want to fiind in your camera menu but don't know where to look? Have trouble with setting your white balance or ISO? Just want to know what all those buttons and dials are on your camera and what they do? Bring your camera, manual and your questions! There will be tables set up with facilitators for Nikon, Canon, Pentax, and other camera brands to answer your questions, help you find things in your menu and take your photography to another level using these newly found tools. After a very short announcement period we get started right away! Talk to fellow members for even further advice, find a shooting partner to get together with over the summer, mingle with others who use your camera make. There will also be a table or two dedicated solely to flash and flashes, so bring your hot shoe flash and manual too!
An exciting event is in the works for later this summer! Keep checking your e-mails for further details! This event may or may not be in conjunction with a regular monthly meeting as plans are still being finalized. Hope to see you all there on May 20th for our monthly meeting! Keep shooting!
Check list for your next adventure out
- Written by Jeff Marcus
We’ve all been there. All set to shoot and something goes wrong. The event is starting and your camera is not set correctly. Where do you start looking for what setting is off? The best answer is to go through a pre-flight check before you leave the house, when the manual and a nice reading light is available and you don’t have 25 people standing around waiting for you or the event starts whether you’re ready or not. Listed below are some basic things to check before you leave the house. You need to think about what you’re shooting so you can preset some of the settings.
Tips for Flower Photography
- Written by Kathy Anderson
With Spring finally here and Summer close behind, here are some tips for photographing all the beauty we will find ourselves surrounded by!
My go-to lenses for flower photography are my 70-210 zoom and my 90 mm macro lens. I prefer the longer zoom as it allows me to get a stronger bokeh (blurred background) than a shorter lens can give. It also comes in handy with bees buzzing around a flower if you don’t want to get too close! I will use the lens with a wide open aperture to get the most bang for my buck when it comes to bokeh. When moving to the macro lens, it allows me to get in close and tight for 1:1 ratio shooting. Isolating the center of a flower, isolating an insect on that flower, dew drops or rain drops, abstract isolation of textures within a flower or leaf, these are the reasons I will go to the macro lens. If you don’t have a macro lens and only have a “point and shoot” camera, no worries! Find the little “flower” icon in your menu and use this! It turns your point and shoot camera into a macro camera. You will be surprised just how close you can focus when using that setting on your point and shoot. DSLR camera and no macro lens? Go to your long zoom lens! This allows you to isolate a single flower and get a reasonably close-up image.
