Photos From the Rez

Are up now. Spread the word.

Camera Love: An SLR Primer

Well, she’s gone and done it. Blondish bought a camera. It must of have been months ago when she first asked me what she should get. She told me she was interested in a point-and-shoot, so I recommended a Canon Powershot. Still do, for those who want a point-and-shoot. As I understand it, Canon makes the best of these, providing the best quality and the most control for these kind of cameras. I’d actually really like to have one for myself, but my photo gear list is many pages long, and I’d have to burn through three to five grand before that particular item came up. My favorite photographer who uses this camera is Officially A Mom, on Flickr. She used to have a blog, too, but she rarely posts there anymore. Her photographs, however, continue to amaze.

But if you want a camera with interchangeable lenses (and you do), you want an “SLR.” Stands for “single-lens reflex”. Sometimes you’ll see “DSLR”: “D” for digital. I’m already in trouble for it, but I recommend that you go with either Canon or Nikon. There are many other fine brands out there, and many fine photographers using those brands, but I think going with one of the two big guns makes sense for a number of reasons. Not the least of which are the large communities of users that you can tap into if you have questions along the way.

Canon or Nikon?
With only a few exceptions, most everyone I know shoots Canon. Everyone else I know shoots Nikon. These brands have been around a long time. They both have what are widely considered to be superior lenses, and large secondary markets for lenses and accessories. If you get into this photography thing, you will want lenses. You will want speedlights, and lighting gear, and tripods and eyepieces and filters. You will want stuff that costs all kinds of money, and If you go with Nikon or Canon, you’ll be able find the stuff you want, both new and used, in a number of places. You’ll be able to compare prices, and find more information about whatever expensive thing you’re considering, and how it compares to other, similar less expensive and more expensive things.

First Cameras To Consider:
Canon’s entry-level offering is the Rebel. My good friend Aaryn got started with that, and you can see all kinds of amazing images she took with it, here. Melanie, my new idol over a BeanPaste does all kinds of cool stuff with her Rebel, and K-k-k-katie has a 20D (It’s a step up from the Rebel, but an older model. Canon’s got a 40D now, which Aaryn is presently making use of.)

Nikon’s entry-level offerings, are the D40, D50, and D80. And now a D60, I hear, but know nothing about. I suppose it’s the new D50? I have a D80, which I love. If I didn’t have one or two kids and husband in bed with me every night, I’d probably sleep with it. But the reason I probably love it so much is because it’s been my first camera. I learned to shoot on it; I’m attached to it. I love the way it feels in my hands, and because the camera is a manual as well as a visual instrument, there’s a lot to be said for how it feels in your hands, where your fingers fall in relation to the buttons, etc. . . . So that’s another piece of advice. Before you buy a big-girl camera, go to the camera store and get your hands on the models you’re considering, see how they feel. When you get your hands on the one for you, you’ll know.

Trustworthy places I like to buy online are here, here, and here.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: GET YOURSELF A FIDDY
A normal lens on a digital SLR means a lens with a focal length of 30 to 50mm. “Normal” means not telephoto, and not wide-angle. It means that when you lift the viewfinder to your eye, what you see through the viewfinder doesn’t change that much. You don’t get a telescopic “zooming in” or a wide-angle “stepping back” effect.

Nikon has three good options here, the Sigma 30/1.4 (it lives on my camera), the Nikon 50/1.4 (it’s in the mail to me now), and I think there’s also a Nikon 50/1.8 (cheaper than the 1.4, a fine lens, but not as sharp at all apertures). Canon also has a fast, sharp 50/1.8, which is supposed to be excellent, and 50/1.2, which costs well over a grand—not your starter lens, probably.

A fast normal lens will allow you to shoot indoors, using natural light. And natural light? Makes prettier pictures. These lenses are sharp and fun and you will take beautiful portraits, fabulous night shots, and really get a handle on what your camera can do and your eye can see. Note: these are fixed-focal-length lenses. They do not zoom.

The kit zoom lenses that come bundled with your camera are kind of crap, frankly. Zoom lenses, unless they’re super-fast (like 2.8, which makes them cost about $1500 minimum) are not as sharp, have less attractive out-of-focus areas, and are useless indoors without flash. On-board camera flash creates harsh shadows and ugly highlights, and freezes all the life out of most pictures when you’re starting out. There are good uses of flash, but almost none of them come attached to the camera, and none of them are cheap or easy to figure out when you’re just getting started.

There’s more I could say (there’s always more to say about cameras) but I’ll stop here with a call-out to all my photographer-grrrrrlz. You know who you are. What do you say when someone asks you what camera they should start with? What lens lives on your camera?

Psyched

Went here last week and became a member. Saving ££ so that I can take this in the fall.

I am obsessed

So, I haven’t told you all but I have new obsession: film photography. It started when my amazing neighbors introduced me to an amazing fashion photographer here in London. She shoots for British Vogue, among other things, and her style—which blew me away—is straight analog. No digital. Her images impressed me for their richness, both in color and texture, as well as their natural lighting. I’ve been wondering about portrait lighting, both in the studio and outside of it, and I had an idea that it was very complex, and since her results were so natural I was anxious to see how it was done. I pictured complex configurations of strobe lights (I don’t even know what strobe is, actually, but I want to know) big translucent umbrellas and softboxes, maybe some of it managed with some unknown program on a computer.

And I was going to get to see it, right? Because this amazing woman invited me on a photoshoot, which I went to just before I left for the States. And I discovered that the natural “effect” that she had achieved was accomplished by using—go figure—mostly natural light. From a new-fangled contraption that all the photographers are using these days—maybe you’ve heard of it? The window? It’s all the rage. At least in London it is. And can I tell you how much this pleased me?

It pleased me a great deal.

So, now I have this vintage medium format camera that I acquired, and I am experimenting with it. I also conned my father-in-law into letting me borrow one of his old 35mm film cameras. It has a sweet little 50/1.4 on it, and I’ve shot three rolls of film so far. I’m hoping to get it developed today or tomorrow. The day I figured out how to work the light meter on that thing was a big day, so I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be getting back, but I’m still looking forward to it. Like Christmas.

Anyway, I’m headed to San Diego on the train right now (alone—going to see Aaryn one last time while I’m here, and meet her family), and I brought only the film cameras. As I was handling them on the train just now, loading film, shuffling them around in my bag, feeling all affectionate towards their sturdy little bodies, there was a moment where I thought of my D80, packed safely away in my camera bag on the bed back at my in-laws, and I felt a little pang in my heart. I have kept that camera on my person, or damn close by, for over a year now. I have gotten up in the night, more than once, just to confirm its whereabouts so I could sleep. This is the first time I’ve gone anywhere intending to take pictures and left it behind, and I—I feel—sad. Like I have been inconsiderate of a friend who has been nothing but nice to me. Like I have run off with some new friends who are more interesting and exciting in the moment, and left my good loyal friend sitting at home, waiting by the phone for me. I mean, I’m not crying actual tears or anything, but I had a genuinely sad moment, where I worried about my camera’s feelings.

Seriously.

Paris, Baby

Hey, Everybody with a capital-E, I am in Paris and it r-o-c-k ROCKS. A photographer’s dream. So beautiful, so stylish, so much amazing food. I have not abandoned you, dear blogworld of mine. I am in Paris, and I am taking pictures.

All I Want For Christmas

Is a bunch of expensive presents. For those of you who are dying to buy me something, here are a few helpful hints:

Because Baybish needs to get with it:

I think this would be a great book for all parents of young babies, whether it’s their first or their fifteenth child. No more free passes, babies! Fix Mommy a cocktail! Also available: Baby, Make Me Breakfast; Baby, Do My Banking; and Baby, Fix My Car. Why not get me the whole series?

While you’re over at McSweeney’s, feel free to get me an international subscription. They’re expensive, but trust me, I’m worth it. I am deeply saddened because I have had to let all my lit-mag subscriptions go since we moved as they’re all too damn expensive to keep up over here. Let me say also, if you have never read any of these and you refuse to buy them for me, then the least you could do is click on over and subscribe to them yourself. Or pick one up at the bookstore and think of me fondly while you read it.

One Story. Just what it says. Each magazine is a pleasingly thin little staple-bound paperback, in a muted color, containing one story. There are 18 in a year’s subscription, so you’re sort of constantly surprised to be getting yet another one in the mail. They are so good, that you will probably fall into the habit of reading it at once. Out of 18 stories they published in 2006, 10 of them were anthologized in collections like Best American, and the O. Henry Prize Stories.

Zoetrope: All-Story. This one I enjoy because there is a guest designer for every issue. Each issue features a different artist (photographers, filmmakers, architects, musicians) that handle the magazine’s design and layout for that issue. I am very interested in the interplay of text and imagery, so I always find something interesting, and the stories are good, too. It’s Francis Ford Coppola’s project so the stories are almost always by recognizably famous literary writers.

Tin House. This one I tend to read cover-to-cover. It’s contemporary fiction that is working to retain its edge, but not trying to be as edgy as say, McSweeney‘s. Some of my favorite writers publish there, but there are also new voices in every issue as well. Someday, I would really like to publish a story in this magazine.

And, (sniff), The New Yorker. That one’s easily solved, though, because I could happily read old New Yorkers for the rest of my life, probably, if someone wants to shell out $100 and get me this:

Actually, if you buy it in ££s, it’s only fifty quid! That’ a bah-gain, readers! The short fiction alone is worth that, so buy it for me.

For those of you with money to spend, there’s this little number:

Ahem. The Nikon 70-200/2.8 VR. I won’t list the price here. Let’s just say you might want to run through your jewelry and electronics and think about what might fetch a fair price on eBay before ordering this for me.

And I need one of these:

And I really, really want one of these:

And a green coat, which I could not find a suitable picture of, anywhere. I’m hoping Ann, if she makes it to the end of this incredibly self-indulgent post, will help me out by finding me one. Truly green, please — not Olive. Something tailored and fitted, with smart buttons, maybe, and in a shade that will make it easy for my chickens to spot me in the crowd. And also boots, if you can find them. Brown or black, I don’t care. I would assign the boots to Aaryn, but she’s liable to find me some crazy high-heeled $500 numbers that I cannot live without, which would either cause my husband to leave me or have me tripping into the gap I’m supposed to be minding and falling under a train.

Which just wouldn’t be in the holiday spirit, I’m afraid.

What would be in the holiday spirit, however, would be for the rest of you NaBloJoMoFo’ers to tell everyone what you want (to get me) for Christmas.

Quitter

Right. I have not been blogging. Every day I think about it while I’m working on 13 other things. The day goes by; I am sleepy; I have to get up and trek up the hill in the morning; I am laying in bed with Babe-ish all snuggly and (finally) still in the crook of my arm, and I debate: Get up and work on stuff, or stay in bed and sleep?

Sometimes, I do this thing where I take on too much. Like the time I was six months pregnant and I tried to set up a web business on the sly while working my 60-hour a week lawyer job, taking yoga religiously 3 or 4 times a week, and going to therapy two times a week to figure out how to have a relationship with my mother again. I decided, you know, I needed something else to do, so I signed up for a class in magazine article writing as well. So I paid my money, went to the first class and then never went back again. Too much.

So, here I am in London, managing my kids, getting ready to start a kick-ass writing program in January, doing a cool internship with English PEN, blogging, toying with the idea of setting up a small-scale portrait business, unpacking from the international move, and I decided–you know, because I needed another project–to give the 365days Self Portrait project another go.

Too much.

365 Days is an amazing project on Flickr where you take a self-portrait every day and upload it. You really have to flex your creative muscles to keep a daily portrait of yourself interesting, and then there’s the set-up, shooting, editing and uploading. And the thinking. It’s wonderful because you take so many photographs that you can’t help but learn something almost every day: about the camera, about Photoshop, about perspective, about yourself.

But like all good artistic projects, you get out of it what you put into it, and I can’t seem to half-ass it. I knew it was too much when I took it on again, but I told myself that I’d not overthink it, that I’d take crappy random arms-length shots of myself and call it a day sometimes. But I just can’t seem to do that. And I don’t have time to do it right.

Or if I take the time to do it right I can’t blog and I can’t start getting my head straight for Warren Wilson. So I’m putting 365 aside. Again.

Mind The Gap

365:7 Underground Trains Are Red, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

Underground trains are red, people. My shoes are green.

The Great Pulley-Swing Adventure

In which Boyish

and Turtle go swinging.

And poor duck is left behind.

Look At This

Skin, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

Sometimes she’s so pretty it hurts me.