Monday, October 10, 2005

If it's gray shoot all day


Storm Trooper on Dewback

After spending the day helping move stuff, mainly a television and a tub, I decided to shoot indoors. The day was cloudy with the look that it would rain any second. Indeed the autumn has kicked in. Gray wintery days are upon us. A photographer once said "If it's gray shoot all day". He was a nature/landscape photographer.

Gray days are nice because you get soft lighting everywhere with the absence of harsh shadows. Of course there's always the chance it'll pour and you'll get drenched. I've had one camera's motherboard get fried due to humidity and that's enough for me.

I decided to build the Mos Eisley Cantina set I've been storing for a rainy day. Number 4501 in the Lego catalog it contains 193 pieces. The figurines include Han, Luke, Ben, Greedo, and a Storm Trooper that rides a Dewback.

Using the 105mm micro lens (Nikon uses micro instead of macro and I don't know why) the details on the tiny faces are difficult to get into focus as the depth of field is so tiny, we're talking millimeters, at that scale. I didn't notice the faces were blurry until I transferred the pictures from the camera to the computer and saw the images on a larger monitor.

I did a reshoot, then shot some more. I've been toying with the idea of creating another animated short using the D70 so I shot a couple of test frames. All in all the lens is pretty nice. I would have liked to shoot some bugs with it this weekend but the only one I saw was a cockroach at the television store. For some reason I didn't think pulling out the camera to shoot the roach was worth it.

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