I posted a link about Mark Rebilas' blog last week, I think. Doc Freud (good friend and mentor in Seattle) turned me on to it. If you haven't subscribed to it I highly recommend it:
http://markjrebilas.com/blog/?p=7008#more-7008This issue was about last week's NASCAR festivities at Phoenix. But there's a hell of a lot more than just roundy-round racing. The dude is a Nikonian, but I'll forgive him for that. His techniques seem lest mystifying to me than when I first started following his blog, but he makes a lotta use of ISO changes....I saw a max of 2500 (I didn't check each one) but it seems that he uses it almost like I'd use aperture. Having started (like most of us) with film cameras, I've become used to setting it at one value and using aperture and shutter speed to control exposure. Apparently Rebilas sees it (and probably rightly so) as just another variable in the equation. I'm not sure how he makes his calls on it, but at least I think I see what he's doing.
Another observation: He doesn't require a knife-edge sharp shot to make it a keeper...and more than just the "accidental blur" that me mentions. He shows one shot with panning blur of a distracting background that I probably would have discarded, same thing with a shot showing cars coming by the infield and its painted logos.
Maybe most interesting of all (to me...and in addition to his seeming ability to be everywhere at once) was the sheer number of shots he got published in print/web media. I dunno if he's acting thru an agent or just has the ins with the individual outlets like USA Today and ESPN. But he sure got a lot of "press" for 3 days of shooting. I'm sure he worked his butt off, but how many of us have done the same without even the thought of selling any photos?
That's my story and I'm stickin to it.Ohh...I did some experimentation with the fill flash that Carl posted about. I dunno if fill is even the right word for what I did. But my results are sorta all over the map, although the only thing consistent was the fact that I had to stop down MUCH more than I expected, with and without the hanky over the flash. The meter said 1/250th at f8 (pretty much the same for 100 and 400 ISO...and I fiddled with that before I even read Rebilas' blog and made that observation) and I finally got the best results at 1/320th (high-speed sync) and f20 or 22. Might have been the reflective nature of the subject (I used what was at hand...a seal-pack with a fluorescent light bulb for my porch...I thought afterward that it was kinda ironic, shooting a photo of an inactive light source while testing a different source) or it might be the alignment of the planets. I dunno. But the results are here: http://www.raytherat.com/photoblog/200911/ along with the last photoblog entry (the HDR image of the leaves and Mt. Olympus.) I dunno what can be taken from that, except the fact that I used my 40D and 28-135 lens that needs to be repaired...but they were handy and I just grabbed 'em. The other thing is that I use a Canon 220EX flash that doesn't have the +/- EV settings on it. I bought it on the advice of a friend who used one and seemed to think that it was perfectly adequate for fill flash purposes. Well, I have a 430EX on my Amazon wish list now and I'll use the 220 as a remote when I sell the 20D and the Sigma.
And finally, the good news. For the first time in about 2 or 3 weeks, my vision isn't totally blurry. I can actually see the computer screen pretty clearly. I'm about 8 inches closer than I'd usually be, using the same glasses, but anything's an improvement and maybe I won't look like the conjunctivitis poster child old man when we get together on Saturday...at least not too bad.
RtR
