Rocky Mountain National Park...

[Chuck Gardner]

I just joined the forum. My wife and I joined the Lilley's in Colorado last month for a family gathering which of course included a fishing outing in Rocky Mountain National Park where I captured these shots...

Link to Google map of location

[Phil Lilley]

I asked Chuck to join us. He's does a lot of consulting on forums dealing with photography- his specialty is lighting.

[Gary Lange]

Those picture show that he is a master at lighting and shutter speed. He has the Fly line almost stopped in the air but yet still blurred enough to show movement. I am sure I could learn a ton following him around. Thank you for getting him here Lilly and for him showing us those awesome Rocky Mountain Pictures. That is a beautiful place for sure.

[Thom]

Chuck:

Great pictures. Thanks for sharing them. Can you give any detail on what camera you used and what resolution the pictures were shot at if it was a digital camera. I have got in the (maybe bad) habit of shooting at 3.2 or smaller meg so that I can post pic more quickly and store more on my flash card. It is kind of the lazy way out since my sony allows me to resize any pic within the camera software and do the same thing.

3.2 will give me pretty good snapshots and at least 5x7 enlargement without much degradation.

The problem I have shooting at 5 meg is it takes so long to download lots of pics on the net even though the results are worth the wait as your posts here prove.

Thanks again. BTW is that squirrel a professional model. He even smiled for the shots. How did you get him to say hickory nut and snap on the "H" sylable.

[damselfly]

fantastic pictures!! i know that water is clear, but your exposures are great to be able to see so much underwater detail........oh colorado~~~~country roads, take me home!

[Danoinark]

Thanks for joining Chuck. What great shots. I am sure you will get plenty of questions from the guys and gals here in reference to photography.

Dano

[Chuck Gardner]

Chuck:

Great pictures. Thanks for sharing them. Can you give any detail on what camera you used and what resolution the pictures were shot at if it was a digital camera.

Thanks... The nice thing about squirrels and chipmunks for models is that they work for peanuts

I was shooting those with an 8MP Canon 20D with a f/2.8 70-200mm image stabilized lens with a 2x tele-extender. With the 1.6 crop factor of the camera and the extender the equivalent full frame 35mm focal length was 1.6*200*2 = 640mm I was probably 150 - 200 feet away for most of the fishing shots.

Here's what that rig looks like...

FWIW , that photo was taken by my wife with her Panasonic DMC-FX9 7MP camera that is the size of a deck of playing cards... Like they say, women are smarter...

Here are a couple more of Phil taken at Lily Lake at the opposite extreme of the lens spectrum, a 10-22mm wide angle at the 10mm setting with fill flash used lighten the shadows:

Cameras have gotten so good and memory so cheap that its a good practice to capture images at the highest resolution the camera has. The advantage of a 8-10MP DSLR like a Rebel Xti vs. an 8 MP point and shoot is that the larger physical size of the sensor of the DSLR allows for larger pixels which in turn produce less noise. You don't see the difference in a shot saved at 800 x 600 pixels for the web, but its apparent in full resolution images and larger prints. The other difference is that the larger sensors produce shallower depth of field which makes it easier to isolate a subject from a distracting background with selective focus. Small sensor camera lens have actual focal lengths which are so short they have nearly unlimited DOF.

I shoot in RAW format which results in files which are 8MP per shot, but the RAW format allows correction of color balance, exposure, contrast, sharpness and a variety of user error without affecting image quality. I use the Digital Photo Professional application which came with the camera to open and adjust the RAW files then transfer them to Photoshop for further editing.

Picassa, the free editing program from Google for PCs, is also a very nice application for downloading, organizing and editing photos. Belinda uses it on her laptop to edit her shots and e-mail them to friends.

Downloading photos from the camera is simpler by using a USB 2.0 or Firewire card read attached to the computer rather that tethering it to the computer. Many portables and desktop computers have card readers built-in. Needless to say a fast computer is a blessing. I just upgraded my circa 2001 Apple G4 400Mhz to one of the new 24" 2.8Mhz DuoCore Intel iMacs. Here they are side-by-side:

The new one handles photo processing tasks about 10x faster.

BTW - I've got a photo tutorial site with over 40 tutorials if anyone is interested: http://super.nova.org/DPR/ It is mostly oriented towards studio-style lighting and portraiture, but most of the concepts apply to any type of photography:

1) Decide what is most important and what you want the viewer to see as the focal point.

2) Find a way to contrast it with the background

3) Eliminate or minimize any distractions from it.

That's why its always a good idea to put the light behind the subjects and get above them for shots like those. The rim light defines the shape of things, including the line in the air because it contrasts with the dark background. Getting above the subjects and shooting down makes the more of the ground behind them the background than the more distacting stuff you'd capture at eye level.

[Gary Lange]

I tried your link but it doesn't work. Very nice setup that you have. I have been using the Canon 630 SLR's and am now finally using an Elan IIe that I have had for a while. I will be going to Digital soon as I like the ability to download right away. Lately my photography has been photo's of boat making test runs driven by friends of mine.

[Matt Tucker]

Chuck:

Nice photos man! Your number 2 photo in your first post is the pic of the litter in my opinion, the composition really draws you in. The 5th photo is very nice too.

--Matt Tucker

[Danoinark]

Chuck and or Matt

This question was posed to me once. Is there anyway to protect a picture on forums from copy or save as on forums?

Dano