Posts Tagged ‘focal length’

Will My Poor Vision affect my shooting? Or Am I THAT blind!

Friday, December 17th, 2010
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Guess what?  I am pretty blind too without some type of vision correction. Most of my friends don’t realize this until those few times they see me with glasses on.
How blind am I?  Well, my contact boxes are at -4.25 left and -4.00 right and my eye glasses are .25 stronger to make up for the effect of the lens being 1/4 inch away from my eyes.

Without glasses… Actually it's much worse.

With glasses on

Pretty scary!!!!

If you ever want to know how bad someone’s eye sight is, look through their glasses. What you see will be the reverse correction to what is being re-aligned in their vision.

So how do I shoot? Quite well, actually. As long as I’m using some form of vision correction, I’m pretty good 20/10. Keep in mind, I have been working around this little problem for more than 20 years. I have been wearing soft contacts for most of that time. And I follow the protocols closely, so my eyes are no different than they were 20 years ago.

An interesting side effect of my blindness is my affinity for CLEAR images and a love for great use of depth of fields. I tend to notice the little things that may be a bit out of kilter, like an errant hair, or  lint on someone’s clothes.

What about RK for correction?
Every vision correction service will run from you after you tell them you’re a professional photographer and you have to be at 20/20 vision or better. They won’t take the chance that things won’t go right. So, for the time being I’m staying with my contacts, glasses, corrected scuba masks and such, until they get it right. Then again, I am highly skeptical of vision correction people that won’t give you a 20/20 guarantee. You paid for it, make them get it right!

Yes, I’m a dive master too, and I have corrected mask and a un-corrected mask.

Popularity: 17%

Know your angles

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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Really Great Photo of Jane

This image was taken at 24 mm focal length. With a 550ex flash.

Wide angle lenses are great when you’re putting the whole subject in frame. But they do have their limitations. Distortion of the image occurs when you shoot short of 50 mm. I chose to stay at eye level with the subject, but even then that was a huge challenge. Models are usually shot at 85 mm so that every part of the body is kept in proportion.

Whenever you can, ALWAYS shoot longer than 50+ mm to keep things in proportion. You will need be further from the subject but the effect will be well worth it.

“Jane” is a very leggy, 6 feet tall and for what this shot was used for (10 second bar shot), it worked just fine. Unfortunately, in my professional opinion, it does not do her justice at all. We will be getting together later to do some other work and I will update this blog with what she truly looks like. Trust me, she is a great person.

Popularity: 2%

It’s all in the Point of View

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
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Ever think about how different people, animals, or fish view the world? We walk around seeing with our own  (for me, 6 foot) point of view. And let’s face it, it gets boring because that is what we see every day. But the interesting thing about photography and life is that when we change our view, we can actually see something different. Gee, is that train really that big?

So that’s how tall I look to my nephew.

This pup above has only one thing on his mind and that would be the treat the owner put on my head, so he would look right into the camera’s eye. Yea, this shot would have been better if I had gotten down to his level, but it’s still great as it is!

So, play with your prospective with shooting and life. You might find a that you get a better view and a better life

Popularity: 2%