Just a quick colour popping experiment with Ping, our Siamese, who has very striking blue eyes:

1/100sec at f3.2, ISO 320 at 50mm

I would have preferred to have taken the shot a little further from his face as the narrow depth of field is quite extreme – about 45cm, which is the minimum for my 50mm lens – with his nose out of focus. But I was trying to keep him amused and with his head pointing more or less at the light source. It’s also an indoor shot, so this was as narrow an aperture as I could manage. I could probably have afforded to push the ISO a bit higher for a black and white shot.

I’ve finished it off with a little bit of dodging and burning, and finally a reduction in levels just under the chin.

I wrote a post a couple of months ago about some problems that I was having with my tripod, specifically that the ballhead was drifting during long exposures. I parked the idea of trying to add a proper head to the existing legs after messing around unsuccessfully with various random bolts and attachments, and accepted the fact that I’d have to put up with it.

That was until a couple of weeks ago when we had a day trip to Ely. I was taking some pictures inside the cathedral with my 24-105mm lens and had to scrap every shot. It’s just to heavy for the integrated plastic ballhead, and the drifting problem returned in force. I also over-tightened the clamp out of pure frustration, and damaged the thread. I decided to take the plunge and ordered up a Manfrotto 486RC2 ballhead from Amazon. I’ve figured out a much simpler way of lashing it to the legs, as per the photo. One slight problem is that the only bolts that I’ve been able to find for sale are metric, whereas the head has an imperial-measure diameter. I’ve used some PTFE tape to bring the M8 bolt that I’ve used up a fraction, which is a pretty solid but non-permanent solution. In the meantime I’ve tracked down a contact back home [Ireland] who should be able to get me what I need.

Manfrotto head and National Geographic legs

…make you a semi-pro? I’m going to suggest that the answer to that question – being a little tongue-in-cheek here 🙂 – is a resounding ‘yes’ as I hit another milestone last week with the sale of my first ever stock image. I earned pennies for it, but was still pretty pleased….