Zooey, aka Wiggles

More fiddling with the NEX 7. It’s not what I’d call a “great” low light camera, but it does Ok. One thing I love about it is the OSS built into the 18-55mm kit lens. The steady shot feature allowed me to get this shot at 1/4 sec, hand-held. Zooey is a tough target. She’s a rescue dog and she’s a little skittish. She managed to hold still here for at least 1/4 sec with nothing more than a little ear wiggle. Added a subtle vignette and a little sharpening on her face and, voila!

El Rincon

I passed by this little place last night and thought it was worth getting a shot. So, I got my camera and came back. I tried some brackets and a bunch of different single shots all hand-held. I should have gotten my tripod out but with all the traffic it would have been hard to concentrate and mess with the camera since I’m still learning how to use the NEX 7. I worked on one HDR image but the framing was too close and it felt crowded and the colors were bugging me. I liked this framing much better and I decided to do a black and white version. There’s a lot to like about the NEX 7 but it is a little noisy with longer exposure and increased ISO. And the 18-55mm has some hideous distortion but ACR lens correction will handle that pretty well. With some noise reduction, lens correction, straightening, a few filters (I don’t even remember which), curves adjustments, and elbow grease, I managed to come up with this.

Winter Color

Finally, a blog post! Had a chance to stroll through the park yesterday and found this little gem. Still getting used to my new NEX 7. I LOVE carrying this thing around. It’s like carrying… nothing. The 24 mega pixels is way overkill and I would have been happy with 16, but of all the mirrorless cameras out there, I felt this one was the right one. I did a LOT of research and people generally are not impressed with the Sony lens lineup, apart from the Zeiss 24mm, which is not cheap. I settled for just the 18-55mm kit lens for now and I’m pretty happy with it. Going to find myself a nice, petite tripod and I’ll be good to go. Ah, the joys of mobility!

Silver Stalker

Spider season is here! You really have to watch it walking outside after dark. These guys like to spin webs in the trees that overhang the sidewalk. There’s nothing worse than walking through one of these. I used my Nikon 70-300mm, so it’s not a real macro shot or anything, but I was able to get some good detail on the body, mostly because this thing was pretty big. Nothing real complicated about the processing. I used Perfect Effects from onOne Software. Lots of great filters in there. This one is from the black and white presets called Dawn Treader. A little sharpening and contrast and not much more.

California Living

While cruising through Venice, this little apartment building at the end of the alley caught my eye. You honestly couldn’t pay me to live down here… way too crowded for my taste. But there are some interesting sights to be seen. This is a 5-exposure HDR, although a single exposure probably would have been fine. As usual, I added a couple of onOne filters and also a little Topaz Adjust.