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mvneyshot · 4 years ago

Photo

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆

[ simay barlas . 20 . female . she/her ] just saw 𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐀 𝐂𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑 dragging their suitcase up the steps to 𝐁𝐀𝐗𝐓𝐄𝐑 . good luck living with 𝐇𝐄𝐑 , i hear that that they’re 𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂 , 𝐀 𝐏𝐄𝐎𝐏𝐋𝐄-𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐑 , 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄-𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐃 & 𝐎𝐁𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐓 . makes sense the chose that house now , doesn’t it ? let’s hope this new living situation doesn’t affect their 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐎𝐑 year of 𝐀𝐃𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 & 𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘 [ oliver . 22 . they/them . est ]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒

sports run deep in your family. your grandfather, your father, your older brother : the triple threat of sports, each cutting their way through their own league ( the mlb, the nhl, and the nfl — RESPECTIVELY ). you were never as gifted as any of them athletically — good enough, smart enough, but nothing more than a decent athlete that could hold your own. no, instead you picked up a camera and this is how you fit in.

AESTHETICS: she is like the summer nights when the stars are far away and the fire is dying out, the sun’s warmth a comforting memory and all the potential of tomorrow ready to be spread out before you ( worn out timberland boots, pink lipstick, short and flowy dresses, fireflies in a jar, a denim jacket covered in patches, the heat of a sparkler against your fingers, do no harm but take no shit, coy smiles because you want something, the smell of balsam and pine needles )

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘

— she was adopted when she was just under two years old from turkey when her parents decided they wanted a little girl, so the clearwaters have always felt like her family to her. she knew the greater part of growing up that she was adopted, it just never was an issue for her. recently, though, she has felt like she should reconnect with her native middle eastern heritage.

— the clearwaters are a triple threat in sports : her grandfather retired mlb player and coach, her father a retired prominent defenseman in the nhl and current dartmouth men’s hockey coach, and her older brother michael ( 26 and always mikey to her ) is making a splash in his third year in the nfl as a wide receiver. however, her parents made sure she and her brother had a ( fairly ) average “middle class” bringing up, though they had their fair share of money in the bank. didn’t have to struggle, really, but didn’t get everything she wanted either. had a summer job scooping ice cream for two years in high school.

— grew up in norwich, vt, real big on nature and hiking and all that jazz. she’s always down for an adventure and to go hiking.

— when she was ten she got one of those kid’s polaroid cameras ( u know the ones where the film is only a little bigger than a postage stamp ) and she was obsessed. she worked her way up through cameras over the years, having a natural eye for it.

— one of the first games she ever shot was one of her brother’s high school football games which sounds sweet but it was actually because she was so bored out of her mind and wanted something to do. needless to say, though, that was the start of it. some might say it was kind of inevitable she gravitated toward sports somehow — she was a clearwater at heart. since then she has gained a lot of knowledge and respect for all different kinds of sports.

— for college she was torn between dartmouth, nyu, and halston. she ultimately chose halston because it was somewhere new, though the elite photography program at nyu was hard to pass up.

— her freshman year ayla was at as many games she could physically get it every weekend, shooting and shooting and shooting, until eventually the office took notice of her. her sophomore year she split time between the men’s hockey and football teams ( and a few other games of other sports where she could grab them ). a couple of her photos have been used for the banners outside the football field and hockey arenas, one across the header of the football team’s website, and several in the yearbook, including a two page spread shot of roo carlson that she’s very proud of.

— PROFESSIONALLY, she has managed to shoot a few kings, dodgers, and lakers games as well. she’s held an internship with the la galaxy from the spring of her freshman year to early fall of her sophomore year. she then accepted an internship with bernstein associates, official photographers of the la kings, clippers, dodgers, and lakers, this past summer.

— she does a little freelance work as well ; mostly for friends or friends of friends, though she’s been considering lately trying to make her skills and business available in a more professional manner to begin building an image for when she graduates. she does do a lot of photographing for herself — a lot of candids ; she thinks they capture the true spirit of a person moreso than when they’re posing or prepared for a photo.

𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐂

— just got a new camera + lens ( nikon D500 + fancy zoom lens ) last summer as an early birthday present to herself. she practically become one with it over the course of the summer and she’s rarely separate from it. that thing cost her so much money and is her baby okay.

— she hopes someday to be the team photographer for a professional team, hopefully in one of the “big four” ( mlb, nfl, nba, or nhl ), and she thinks her prospects are looking very good.

— she played field hockey and lacrosse through high school.

— ayla thinks she’s better at shooting people. part of what she loves about being a sports photographer is how active and unpredictable it is to shoot a game. she’s had to learn a lot to try to predict what she can. they say you make your own luck and for a sports photographer that is true. part of it is down to chance, but there are things you can learn about the game in order to increase your chances of being in the right place at the right time.

— very much a morning person. has never had a problem waking up in the morning. typically goes for a run at sunrise, and has showered, gotten ready for the day, and is at a local cafe shop editing photos / making graphics and drinking an iced mocha by 8. truly couldn’t be me…

— you can often find her watching practices, not just to practice shooting but to learn more about what makes each team and player tick in order to improve her ability to predict their tendencies ( which in turn makes her chances of getting a good photo go up ). she takes her craft very seriously.

— she has a policy of not sleeping with or dating players on the teams that she shoots — it’s called professionalism, boys !! she likes to be respected and somehow doesn’t think that sleeping with the players goes very far for her in that regard. that doesn’t mean the players don’t try, though...

— she has struggled a bit with people who think her opportunities have only arisen because of her family pedigree ( which some have gone so far to tell her they’re “not her family” — which, don’t even go there, lads... ), and that has made ayla work all that much harder to prove that she’d gotten where she has on her own merits.

— so desperately wants to be that girl with tons of cute aesthetic plants in her room but tragically plants always die in her care no matter what she does. probably has gotten one of those tiny tabletop sand zen gardens to make herself feel better tho she still keeps trying with plants. so far the only ones that have lived any length of time are the air plants. there is no hope.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

— she’s generally well liked, with a hint of sass and humor. she comes across as a bit of an air-head at times, but that’s part due to a persona she put on from a young age. she has an observant eye that drew to her photography in the first place and will often allow her to draw certain conclusions about people.

— ayla has a very down to earth outlook and approach to life, often taking things as they come. she’s adaptable to situations, but manages to usually stay to the original path she saw for herself.

— she’s well versed in all the sports she shoots, something that tends to surprise a lot of people, but how is she supposed to be good at her job if she isn’t ? if she gets bothered during games she typically shuts people down with wide eyes and some obscure bit of knowledge in her cute, raspy lil voice. dareisay… elle woods, what like it’s hard ? energy ?? she’s a hard worker, and strives for everything she posts or hands in to be perfect.

— a few of her downfalls include her narcissism and need to be liked. she looks to look and feel pretty, by her own standards, and is a queen of the self-timer and remote self photography : has two instas because of it – one for her sports photography and one that’s a “personal” and mostly just pictures of herself.

— her need to be liked is something she doesn’t even realize. she likes to be seen in a positive light and it can on occasion lead to her agreeing to do things she doesn’t really want to. at the same time this is constantly in conflict with her desire to be independent and be her own person.

— she also just believes that everyone just does like her because she is a likeable and very down to earth person — both of which are true for the most part, but reveals the blurring line she has between confidence and arrogance. she can be quite judgmental at times, especially towards those who are overly dramatic, but they’re confined more to just thoughts than any actual voiced words or actions. in a way, this feeds into a sense of her own self-arrogance.

𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

— alya stands at 5′3″ with a slim but athletic build. she has a runner’s body, deceptively strong, lithe, and built for distance.

— warm brown eyes that look like they’re laughing more often than not.

— her hair is naturally brown, but is dyed to have blonde highlights near the bottom. often styled half up & half down, kept down and loose, or in a messy bun.

— she does not need glasses or contacts and has no tattoos.

— piercings & jewelry: both lobes and cartilage. often wears simple black studs in all of them ; has an affinity for simple silver rings, often wearing two on each hand ; a black timex watch she bought for $20 at target that’s waterproof

— style : she’s almost always wearing the same pair of beat up timberland’s she’s owned since like sophomore year of high school. she likes to be able to move easily ( bc homegirl absolutely cannot walk in heels at all ). despite this, she also likes to look cute at the same time, often pairing them with short, flowy sundresses or skirts + crop tops. when she shoots games, however, she’s dressed rather practically in skinny jeans, a crop top, and a cardigan ( if necessary ).

— PINTEREST BOARD HERE

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

— pretty girl like you ( any )��: someone who does not understand why ayla is “wasting” her talents on sports and thinks she should try moving into the fashion or modeling business. i don’t think this is necessarily a negative connection — it could be well intentioned, or maybe it is truly just meant to be scathing.

— you & me were never meant to be ( any, female wld be real lit tho 👀 ) : an ex from her earlier years at halston. i imagine they broke up either before the summer of her sophomore year or early in her sophomore year. there’s not much ayla loves more than her photography, and i think maybe they didn’t understand. could have been mutual, could have ended poorly, could have just.... fizzled out. pretty open !! i’d just like her to have an ex.

— you just don’t get the message ( male ) : someone who is just relentlessly pursuing her ( not in an overly creepy way, y’know tho ). someone she’s told no multiple times and yet he still keeps trying rip. — TAKEN BY OWEN

— my brother, what ? ( any, probably female tho ) : just someone who is a big fan ( honestly fan or like... fan 😉, y’know ?? ) of her brother and she’s like please stop my poor ears don’t want to hear this.

— and i just love to vibe ppl !! ayla is a pretty friendly and outgoing person so... let’s just have at it :)

𝐎𝐎𝐂

hello friends. oliver/ollie back here again ( 22, est, they/them ). i also play caz !!

#halston.intro

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alifeingrain · 5 years ago

Note

Do you have a camera rec? I really want to get into taking pictures, for myself mostly, but I have honestly no clue what good cameras are out there

Hello lovely Anons,

I hope you don’t mind but I took some photos of my cameras and explained them a little for you. Under the link!

This is my main camera. It’s a Pentax K1000 from some point between 1977 and 1990. I chose this as my first camera because it’s a completely manual 35mm: you’re in charge of focus, you’re in charge of winding onto the next frame, you’re in charge of exposing the picture correctly. I didn’t have any knowledge of photography before I came to shooting on this and I knew the best way of learning is to do EVERYTHING. It’s heavy and metal and I’ve had a few lumps on the head from beaning myself with it, but it’s a solid workhorse. It just doesn’t let me down. And you can usually find a decent one on ebay between £70 and £150. 35mm in camera speak is the size of the little rolls of film you saw your parents or grandparents use back in the 80s and 90s. It’s the size of the frame that you’re putting your picture on inside the camera! 3.5cm!

What I love most about Pentax is their range of top quality lenses. The glass is SUPERB. The lens attached to the camera in the picture is a 50mm 1:1.7 - what you would usually use for street photography. The small lens next to it is my main lens - it’s what I use for all the landscape photography in Wales and Scotland etc. It’s relatively rare - a 28mm 1:3.5 lens - and cost me more than the camera (about £150), but the sharpness is BRILLIANT. The big, long lens in the picture is a 75-150mm zoom lens which I use when I’m travelling in cities. Being able to change your focal length in one lens is much easier than stopping to change lenses, but the downside is a loss of sharpness. For the most part, all zoom lens are inferior to prime (non-zoom) lenses in terms of sharpness but this one does well and only cost me about £75.

If you don’t know anything about focal length in lenses: the smaller the mm length (eg. 28mm) the wider the angle. Wide angle = good for landscape. But if you wanted to concentrate on portrait photography, you’d maybe go for a 105mm lens - this means you can keep a little distance from your subject but still have a nice, tight frame. This isn’t a hard and fast rule by the way! But it might help you decide on what lens you want to initially spend your money on.

This is my BEAST. It’s so bloody heavy. This is a 120mm (also known as medium format) camera - my Pentax 645. Because the size of the film frame is larger (120mm as opposed to 35mm in the Pentax K1000 above) it’s able to capture a LOT more detail. I don’t use this a huge amount as it’s so heavy, but its so fun to use. The sound of the shutter is like gunfire. It’s NOT for street photography as there’s no way you can blend in while making such a loud sound. If you’re looking to get into 120mm photography - this is a solid choice. Or if you have the money, its fancier, sharper sister - the Pentax 67.

This is my baby. I love it. I love just looking at it. I love the pictures it takes. It’s a Rolleicord Vb from the 70s. For a 50 year old camera it takes the most mouthwatering photos. Like the Pentax 645 above, it’s a 120mm (medium format) camera so it uses a larger film roll than the 35mm. Whenever you see a square framed picture on this blog, THIS is the camera that took it. You can’t change the lens and you have to look DOWN into the camera while holding it at chest height. You see the image through the top lens (the top round circle) and the picture is taken on the bottom lens (the bottom round circle). It doesn’t have a light meter so I have to use an app on my phone to get the right exposure.

This camera requires some thought when taking a picture - you can’t just snap away on it - but it rewards your patience like HOOOOOOO BOYYYYYY. Go have a look through my rolleicord tag - look how beautiful some of them are, particularly the landscape ones. If it’s ever out of focus that is because of ME and my crappy eyesight.

You can see I have a lens hood and the original box for it in the top picture- this blocks stray sunlight so I can try and avoid sun glare on the images. The little purple glass lens below it is what’s called a Rolleinar. I attach this to the camera lens and it changes my focal length. So I can go from landscape to portrait without changing cameras. The Rolleicord has a fancier sister - the Rolleiflex, which again has sharper glass but it comes with a bigger price tag.

I’d really only advise going for a TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) camera like my Rolleicord once you have some solid experience of working on a manual or semi-manual 35mm camera.

This is a lot of information, I’m sorry about that anons! But if you want a good starter camera for film: go for a Pentax K1000, an Olympus OM or AE1, or a camera from the Nikon FM series. All are good, solid cameras, with a nice range of lenses for not too much money on ebay.

If there’s any more questions, just let me know :)

#what's in my bag #sort of?#film photography #camera rec #anonymous

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luckyspike · 5 years ago

Text

Adventures in America, Ch. 14 - An All-American Angel

told you i didn’t forget about this fanfic

in this chapter: thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening, hoag-IES

(and some scrapple, and some scrapple here we go, magnifico)

Start with Chapter 1 here (or on AO3 now!)

Refresh on Chapter 13 here

or check out my fic tag for more!

The storms came, later that day, to the skies over Nebraska. Lucky and Adam had pulled the laptop into the back seat at Rachael’s urging, and were studying the radar patterns together, occasionally pointing at something or other and muttering about wind shear and relative atmospheric pressure. Above, dark clouds gathered. In the front seat, Noel was sat back in the driver’s seat, snacking on a stick of jerky, while Rachael was resting her face against the window, eyes on the sky. “So?” she asked after a while. “What’s the verdict back there, do you think?”

“It doesn’t look tornadic,” Lucky said, while Adam nodded in agreement. “I dunno, I’m not seeing enough instability coming from these two fronts.”

“I agree.” Rachael turned around to grin. “But it certainly looks like a storm’s shaping up out there, hm?”

Adam nodded. “Yeah. I mean, there’s still a big cold front moving down from the north, and this chunk -” he waved his finger at the screen, “- coming from the Gulf of Mexico has been carrying really high humidity the entire time, so there’s plenty of moisture.”

“Which means?”

Lucky grinned. “Lightning.”

“Lightning,” Rachael agreed. “And?”

“Hail,” said Adam.

Noel grumbled, “Yeah. Hopefully not big stuff today. Windshield’s already got a little crack in it - not sure how many more hits it can take before we need to swap it out.”

Rachael shrugged. “We’ll see. So, where do you guys think we ought to move to get the best lightning data?”

Adam and Lucky looked around the truck. There were pulled to the side of the road in the little village of Cedar Bluffs. Around the truck, little houses squatted on the prairie, surrounded by miles of farms stretching out in all directions. “Well,” Adam said, half-joking, “probably not right here.”

“Good call,” Lucky said with a snort, still studying the laptop screen. “I dunno I think … well, we probably wanna find somewhere without much around, right? How about northwest?” He looked up, in the direction he was indicating. “Looks like mostly farms out that way, right?

“Pretty much.” Rachael reached into the back seat and Lucky handed the laptop over. “Good job, guys. You’ll be regular meteorological pros by the time we’re done with you. Okay, Noel? You heard the boss: let’s drive.”

“We should do a timed competition with the set-up, now,” Noel said conversationally as he pulled the truck onto the road and pointed it out of town. “You guys are comfortable with it, yeah?”

Adam and Lucky looked to one another and shrugged. “Pretty comfortable,” Adam conceded. “I dunno that we’re that comfortable.”

“And I’d rather it be done right, yeah.” Rachael grinned at her companion. “But if you wanna time it, go for it. Even without racing, we can see how much faster you guys get over the next couple weeks.”

“Yeah, alright.” Adam looked out of the window as the little town rapidly fell behind them and crop fields started to yawn out on either side, green from the roadside to the horizon. Quickly, he glanced to the side mirror, and was reassured to see the now-familiar grill of the big, black SUV following at some distance behind. When he looked away, Lucky caught his eye, and he just nodded once, wordlessly. The other boy slouched back a little more comfortably.

Rachael, meanwhile, was fiddling with cameras. “Alright … I think I’m gonna shoot with the long lens today, for the most part, but in case we get more underneath it than we’d like - which one of you want to do the short lens? I can trade you if it’s really on top of us.”

Lucky raised his hand. “I’ll take it.” He grunted a little as Rachael passed the heavy bag back to him. “Do I need to do anything?”

“No, it should be ready. So Adam, that means you’re on video. Is that okay?” He voiced his agreement, and Rachael nodded, satisfied, and turned over her shoulder to grin at the two of them. “Alright, guys. Fingers crossed let’s see some lightning, hm?”

They wasted no time setting up once Noel found a suitable place along a side road to pull over. The clouds were gathering, thick and full in the sky above, and dark as soot. Noel timed them while Adam and Lucky ran around like men possessed, darting from one instrument to the next, ensuring they were secured and operational before jogging back to the car to wait.

“Not bad,” Noel appraised, glancing at his phone. “You’ll get better.”

“What was it?” asked Lucky, panting a little, hands on his hips.

“Twelve minutes and change. It can be done in eight, if you book it. But you’re learning - you’ll get there.”

The boys exchanged a determined sort of look. “Eight minutes,” Adam repeated. “We got that.”

“As long as it’s done right,” Rachael said from behind the lens of her camera, already shooting the leaders that were still a mile or more away, “I don’t care if it takes twenty minutes. I need the data; your set-up times aren’t publishable, unfortunately.”

Noel grinned at the two students. “Nice not to waste time with it, though.”

“We can do it.” Lucky and Adam high-fived. “We’ll get there. Hang on, I’m gonna get the camera. You’re already set up, Adam?”

“Yeah.” Eyes narrowed and blonde hair blowing in the wind, he watched as the first bolts started to reach for the ground, closer now. “Over near the front of the truck. I’m gonna head over now, I think? Will the picture be any good this far away?”

“Eh.” Rachael shrugged, and snapped another rapid-fire burst of photos as the first bolt they’d seen connect with the Earth flared to life. “Maybe not, but might as well - we have plenty of space for the videos, and I can always pare them down later if it ends up being a wash.”

Adam hummed his agreement, and headed toward the video camera, fiddling idly around with a few of the settings before deciding the zoom was as good as it was going to get, and settling in to film. The thunder was quite loud by now, rumbling through the air around him as well as the clouds overhead, making the bones of his ribcage rattle with each tremendous clap. The air cooled, started to feel damp, and gooseflesh erupted on his arms. He sucked in a deep breath, watching through the viewfinder as the thunderhead drew closer, and tasted the storm on his tongue.

Not a tornado, he thought, but a big storm. He’d seen the radar and here, on a cracked old road in the middle of a cornfield, he could feel it too. As the first few drops of rain began to spit down, Adam shifted the camera around gently to an area that looked to be generating more lightning than the main bulk of the storm, and did his best to get as much of the storm in frame as he could.

At first, it looked like a decent storm for lightning, although Adam wondered if they’d missed the mark a little in their lightning instrument setup: most of the strikes looked to be occurring to the south, rather than the north. Cedar Bluffs might yet have been the right place to set up, he thought, right there on the main street: not like it was a metropolis or anything. Still, with all the buildings around it would have been more likely that the lightning would have hit one of those rather than the metal antennas that were attached to Rachael’s instruments, which were almost the tallest thing for the next half mile, out here, power lines excepted.

It changed, though. It was slight at first: just a few bolts a bit closer, a bit nearer to the truck and the instruments. Adam grinned as he looked through the camera, alternating between checking his shots and watching with his own eyes. Although he’d come out here to see tornadoes, he had to admit that lightning was pretty incredible: beautiful, powerful, and unpredictable. Not well-understood, either, although Rachael had already taught him miles more than he’d known when he first arrived. He was appreciating it now, adjusting the shutter speed a little to see if he could catch more of the discreet flashes rather than the more easily-filmed single bolt. When an upward leader climbed up off of a power transmission tower, he breathed out sharply, awed, and hoped it hadn’t been so fast that the camera had missed it; the actual bolt struck a half-second later, arcing down through the sky and searing into the cornfield.

“That’s what I’m looking for!” he heard Rachael whoop from the other end of the truck, joined by a happy shout of laughter from Noel. “Let’s keep ‘em coming!”

There were a few more bolts after that that were just as spectacular: it was a very active storm, and try as he might he couldn’t catch all of them on film. He did his best though, which was why when the first unusual bolt struck, he saw it.

It was off by itself. The storm was quite close now, still not raining where they were but looking as though it might do soon enough. The sky was dark, and the clouds flashed and grumbled just to their south. The lightning was nearer, too, although still not quite to the line he and Lucky had arbitrarily set at the border of the irrigation ditch with the instruments. He was panning slowly along the cornfield, hoping to catch another leader or something similar, when the bolt struck.

The first thing Adam noticed was that it was slower than the others before. The second thing was that it hardly forked at all, instead only zig-zagging a little as it seemed to search for something on the ground, before flaring to life and cracking through the sky to strike the transmission tower nearest to them on the road. The tower screamed, electricity arced, and one of the fuses blew with a shower of sparks. Rachael yelled. “Shit! Did you see that?”

Adam swallowed. “Should we get into the truck?” he called, still looking fixedly through the viewfinder. “It’s getting kind of close.”

“Nah, we’re alright for a minute yet,” he heard Noel reply. His stomach squirmed a little at that, but he looked away from the view quickly, a careful glance down the road, and took a deep breath when he made out the black bulk of the 4Runner, half-hidden behind the young corn stalks. Not to mention the pale shock of hair next to it. Okay. It was alright. Just a lightning storm, he thought, and returned to filming.

The next odd bolt struck one of the instruments. Rachael cried out triumphantly, crowing about a direct hit, but Adam winced. He’d felt the hair on his head stand on-end briefly, and the backs of his arms had erupted into gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the rapidly-cooling air. Too close. “Maybe,” he just heard Noel say over the peal of thunder that followed, “we oughta get into the car.”

“It’s getting kind of close, yeah,” Rachael replied. Adam felt a few rain drops patter down and he shivered a little. “Looks like it could produce hail, too, so -”

Adam smelled the ozone before he saw the upward leader. In spite of himself, he didn’t jump: he hardly had the time. The leader blindly reached up from the dirt on the side of the road just opposite to him, and a second later another strangely slow, direct bolt tore through the air to make contact with the leader. He was blinded by the light a second later, deaf from the thunder, his arms raised to protect his face and his nose and mouth full of electricity. He might have screamed, but it was lost in the thunder, and he bolted for the truck, camera and tripod clenched in his fist which had slammed shut with the strike, either from terror or residual current. His senses were returning to him by the time the door slammed shut, his vision still dazzled but clear enough to see Lucky sitting in the seat across from him, wide-eyed with terror.

“Did it hit you?” The other boy asked, his voice thick in Adam’s ears.

Adam found himself trying to talk with a mouth that was too dry. He was vaguely aware of Rachael and Noel in the front seat, but paid them no mind, instead fumbling a bottle of water until he managed to open it and take a mouthful. “Are you okay?” Rachael asked, leaning into his field of vision which was, gradually re-widening from the too-narrow tunnel it had been. “Adam? Did it hit you?”

“Didn’t hit me,” he replied, breathless but already feeling better for the water. Rain was lashing at the truck now, interspersed with some hail, and he shivered in spite of himself as another bolt found purchase in the road just in front of the grille. “Almost, but didn’t.”

“Lands, that scared me.” Noel laid his hand on Adam’s head, and then let his arm fall to his shoulder, pulling the boy into as much of a hug as he could considering he was in the driver’s seat and Adam was just behind him. “I thought it had you, Adam, I really did.”

“It almost did.” He took another gulp of water, and turned back to the window, looking out to the gray rain-soaked road he’d just been. A charred patch of asphalt was still faintly smoking. “It was … literally right there.”

The four of them jumped as one when another bolt hit the truck proper, this time on Rachael’s side, blowing the mirror off. Lucky yelped and ended up practically in Adam’s lap, as far away from the window as he could be.

“Is it targeting us or something?” Noel yelled. “Cheese and rice, look at that! The mirror’s gone!”

Rachael had shut her laptop and set it on the floor mat, as far away from herself as she could. “We could drive away and come back for the instruments later. I doubt anyone out here will be looking to swipe them …”

Noel waved to the windshield. “It’s coming down in sheets; I couldn’t see to drive anyway. Just no one touch the doors, stay away from the windows if you can, and we’ll get outta here as soon as I can see.”

They sat silently for a few minutes while the storm battered the truck, Adam and Lucky huddled together in the middle of the back bench, Adam still shaking a little and Lucky still as calm waters, his shoulder against Adam’s warm and reassuring as long as Adam didn’t make a note of how pale his face looked.

“You got a direct hit, though,” Noel said quietly, after a bit. “On one of those instruments. Oughta get some good data out of that.”

“Ought to, yeah.” Rachael glanced into the backseat, to the two students, and then looked to Noel. “It was … strange, that lightning, don’t you think?”

Noel winced. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen lightning do weird stuff before, but to move that slow and so … like it was direct, didn’t you think? I thought it looked pretty straight-and-true, for lightning.”

“Me too.”

Adam didn’t say anything. As soon as the conversation had started, he had looked to Lucky, and found the other boy already watching him carefully, face slack. “Direct,” mouthed Lucky silently, echoing Noel. Adam nodded slowly in return. Lucky’s eyes flicked backwards, searching down the road for the 4Runner, but it was too dark and rainy outside to see if it was still there. Likely, though, Adam thought, because there was a glow back there in the rain. Headlights, probably, he thought. Crowley and Aziraphale. He took a breath and nodded to the other student, whose shoulders sagged visibly with relief.

“It’ll be interesting to analyze the data later,” Rachael muttered, watching the storm bluster outside. “Right, looks like it’s calming down. This might be our break?”

“Let’s head back to town. I could use a coffee. You got a flashlight for later?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” Noel turned the truck on, flipped a U-turn, and started back down the road, through the rain which was at least not completely ruining visibility, and toward Cedar Bluffs. “You guys alright with this?”

“Yeah,” Adam replied, watching the 4Runner carefully as they drove past. No sign of Aziraphale or Crowley outside of the car, but it looked like they were inside, maybe with the interior light on, if the soft glow in the car was anything to judge by.

“Yeah,” Lucky echoed, voice faint, still huddled up next to Adam. “Yeah, I think that’s super alright.”

Although the lightning may not have looked different initially, Aziraphale had noted something almost immediately. Even Crowley, whose senses were blunted to the sacred and holy, felt something off.

“What do we do if they try to do something?” Crowley murmured, the two of them leaned up against their car, watching the storm roll in. “And what about you, in the middle of all of this?”

“You’re quite sure you can’t manipulate the weather?”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale for a second. “No,” he answered after a stunned pause. “What? No! I’m a demon, not Zeus.”

“Well, you stopped time once.” Aziraphale replied snippily, glowering at him out of the corner of his eye. “Just thought I’d ask.” He frowned as another bolt flickered up in the clouds, never appearing beyond the borders of the thunderhead. “Would you be able to do a … a shield, sort of thing? Or discourage the storm from harming them?”

“Dunno.” Crowley frowned, brow furrowed. “Probably could manage something. Er … well, if we’re worried the big threat is lightning -”

“I’m rather hoping it will be, yes.”

“What? Hang on, we’ll come back to it, anyway, as I was saying, if the big threat is lightning, there’ll be a negative charge that’s strong enough to attract the positive charge from the clouds, so I could kind of … scramble the electrons …” as he’d been speaking, he had moved away from the car, stalking around Aziraphale until he was positioned near the engine. He stared ahead, watching the flickers of movement around the red mass of truck, and then nodded suddenly, satisfied. “Right, got it. Okay. So what was that about lightning?” He turned on his heel, swaying a little after he spun, to face the angel. “Did you say you want there to be lightning?”

“Yes, rather.” Aziraphale was still watching the storm, expression mildly interested but with a weight to the air around him that Crowley had come to recognize through the years as one brought on by deep thought. “I’ve not done this in a while, but with a proper strike of lightning, I think I could manage to pull another angel through.”

“Oh,” Crowley said simply, wide-eyed. “Naturally.”

“You didn’t know that? Here, dear boy, do you still have that chalk on you?”

Crowley produced the box of chalk from his pocket. “Rain’s just going to wash it away in a bit,” he warned Aziraphale as the angel considered the available colors and, at length, chose yellow.

Aziraphale bent over and started ponderously drawing out a series of sigils. “It’ll last long enough,” he said, encircling a cluster of symbols with a perfect, flawless circle in spite of the cheap chalk and cracked asphalt. “I can’t remember the exact name but …” he straightened up and propped his hands on his hips. Closer now, a crack of lightning split the sky. Crowley started glancing frantically back and forth, between his husband and the truck, unsure of who to watch more closely.

“Bit important that, don’t you think?” He twitched his nose and flicked his tongue out quickly, and then, with a wince, snapped his fingers, rearranging the electrons around the truck just so.

“Not as much as you’d think,” Aziraphale muttered, now tapping the chalk against his lips. “I believe demons are fussier about exact terms and names, honestly. Ah, yes, I think this ought to do it.” He bent down again and deliberately wrote a handful more symbols. “There. Now, where is the lightning?” He dropped the chalk back into his pocket and turned around. Crowley pointed to the northwest but didn’t dare look away from Adam and Lucky. The air was sharper now, all around, and he’d seen the first strange bolt searching blindly for a target.

Aziraphale watched politely for a minute and said, “Er, Crowley?”

“Yeah?” The second odd bolt struck, and Crowley winced, scenting at the air again right after and huffing out a strained breath as he snapped his fingers. “Bit busy, angel.”

“Obviously, of course, but er …” Aziraphale folded his hands behind his back and cautiously took a few steps toward the demon, leaning around Crowley’s shoulder a bit further into his field of vision. “I don’t suppose you could help me out a bit?”

“With what?”

“Well, you’re manipulating the charges around the truck, I see - and a wonderful job you’re doing with those electrons, my dear, really - but I don’t suppose you could make my circle a bit more prone to a lightning strike?” He shuffled his feet. “Just a bit. I won’t need much.”

“Angel.” The clouds above rumbled again and Crowley winced. A drop of rain plopped onto his jacket and, after a minute, began to steam. “It’s not as easy as I make this look, you know.”

“Of course not! Naturally. But, well, you stopped time once …” Crowley glanced over - just for a second - and Someone help him Aziraphale might have actually batted his eyelashes. Crowley rolled his eyes. “Please?”

Thunder broke overhead, and Crowley snarled, managing to snap again. A fork of lightning veered off at a 90-degree angle, suddenly finding a more invitingly-positive stalk of corn about 20 yards away from the boys. “What do you need?” he asked, trying to keep the shake out of his hand. The rain was falling a bit harder now, a proper drizzle, and he could feel his corporation aching a little at the joints, exhaustion seeping into centuries-old bones as the true, more metaphysical version of Crowley started to press outward, the better to see the electrons all around. The clouds above were positively boiling with them, just looking for a place to strike. And, he thought, maybe a bit more organized than he’d expect an ordinary thunderstorm to look, not that he’d done much checking before today.

“Just a positive charge around my circle there, if you’d be so kind. I just need one bolt, if you can.”

Crowley grit his teeth. “No idea if I can. I can try.” He could feel the air around him, too-thick and full of particles. He warned, “Nothing about this is going to be even remotely controlled.”

“Understood.” Wisely, Aziraphale took a step backwards, positioning himself just behind the demon. “Let me know when you’re ready so I can be prep -”

“Now!”

A few things happened at once: first, there was a blinding flash of light from the clouds above, as a swarm of particles congealed into one place and promptly superheated to the point that any surrounding elements vaporized instantly into plasma. Crowley saw this, and also saw that at that very same moment, there was an absolute dearth of any kind of negative charge around Adam whatsoever, for feet to all sides. With a snarl, he acted, his form rippling at the edges and black scales flickering into existence across his skin, but no matter. It was working, was the important part, and even though the effort of it made his head swim he couldn’t help but feel intensely proud as he dipped his metaphysical hands straight into the particles around Aziraphale’s little summoning circle and flung them 100 yards down the road, toward Adam, buffering the boy with a cloud of electrons.

The lightning forked, just below the bottom edge of the cloud. The largest fork - the one initially intended for Adam, Crowley was sure - tore downwards toward the boy but was deflected, searing into the road just in front of Adam with an ear-splitting crack. Behind Crowley, another smaller fork arced into the summoning circle, and although there was a bit of a squeak about his tone, Aziraphale managed to blurt out something in the language of the angels. Amid the heavy smell of ozone and the washed-out white of his vision, Crowley suddenly sensed another Holy signal - an angel, not Aziraphale - at his back.

Down the road, just before Crowley realized the road was coming up to meet him, he saw Adam, Lucky, and the other two bolt into the truck. “Oh, good,” he said, as his cheek smacked against the asphalt and he promptly passed out.

He came to in the car. He was covered by Aziraphale’s coat, and the first thing his mind alerted him to was that his clothes were soaked. The coat was warm - probably a minor miracle, if he had to guess - and that was going a long way at the moment, but the sensation of wet clothes was still deeply unpleasant.

Then again, he thought muzzily, the prospect of miracleing them dry at the moment just seemed a bit much. He made a quiet little noise of discontent and tried to wriggle deeper into the coat, hissing in irritation as his shirt caught on … on his scales, yeah, that’s right, it would do, wouldn’t it, he’d have to work on getting them put away in just a second.

“He’s cool, right?”

The strange, thickly-accented voice cut through Crowley’s post-unconsciousness haze and he bolted awake, spinning around in the seat, wide-eyed, to face the voice. Aziraphale’s hand settled on his shoulder, reassuring. “Yes. He’s cool. Crowley, it’s alright; this is Moroni.”

Crowley blinked. The angel in the back seat - dark hair, olive skin, and a dark green shirt - blinked back before timidly offering up a little wave. “‘Ey.”

“Aren’t you the one responsible for Mormons?” Crowley squinted, trying to bring the new angel into better focus, and halfway succeeding. Well enough, anyway, to see the word ‘Eagles’ emblazoned in white across the front of his shirt, and to make out a two-day beard along his chin. “Right?”

The reply, when it came, was muttered. Embarrassed. “Yeah. Kinda.”

“Golden plates, hm? Were those actually real?”

Moroni huffed. “I dunno, pal, was that apple really the key to all knowledge or was it just an excuse?”

“It was the key to all knowledge,” Crowley snapped, bristling. “The fuck kind of angel are -”

“Moroni,” Aziraphale cut in suddenly, gently shoving Crowley back into his seat a bit, “was just telling me about the goings-on in Heaven. Such as he is aware.”

Crowley boggled a little. “They still talk to you? You started a cult.”

Moroni sat up a little straighter, pointing toward Crowley as his expression twisted into something ugly and bitter. “Listen, asshole, I didn’t do shit about a cult, I was just supposed to renew faith with those things but it ain’t my fault that -”

“Yeah, okay,” Crowley scoffed, cutting him off. “S’that how you justified it to your boss?” He sneered. “Surprised you didn’t enjoy a complimentary free fall into the old sulfur spa after that cock-up.”

Crowley figured it would get a rise - that was the whole point, after all. He hadn’t totally expected the other angel to take a lunge toward him though, winding up for what looked to be a practiced and very competent right hook. Crowley didn’t flinch away - he was a demon after all, and what kind of demon shies away from taking a hit now and then - but before Moroni could land a punch Aziraphale scrambled in between them, one hand flat against Crowley’s chest and his other clenched into a fist around the collar of Moroni’s shirt. “Enough!” the Principality snapped, and both Crowley and Moroni froze.

For a solid thirty seconds, the only sound was the rain lashing at the car and the thunder rumbling outside.

Crowley was the first to relax, slumping backwards against the steering wheel and craning his head around toward where the red truck had been. The rain was falling too furiously to make out the bulk of the truck itself, but the red tail-lights were bright in the gloom, the yellow flashers blinking underneath. He nodded, satisfied, and turned back around.

Aziraphale was watching him sternly, and once Crowley had turned back around he nodded once, an affirmation. Crowley returned the gesture, but kept his eyes on Moroni even as Aziraphale eased up his grip on the football jersey collar. “Alright?” Aziraphale asked, more to Moroni than anything. “I have a few questions, and once they’re answered you’ll be free to return to … wherever you were.”

“Philly,” Moroni murmured sourly. “Fine. Long as your snake keeps his mouth shut.”

A sharp look from Aziraphale cut Crowley off before he could reply. “Crowley,” Aziraphale snapped, once he turned back to Moroni. “His name is Crowley. I’d thank you to remember it.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” Moroni looked out of the window, jerking backwards and out of Aziraphale’s grasp to sit, arms crossed and legs spread, across the back seat of the car. “Fine. What’d you wanna know?”

“Well, it’s just as I was saying before you woke up, Crowley.” Aziraphale sat back a bit, not really relaxing but obviously wanting to give that impression, his eyes flickering back and forth between Crowley and Moroni. “It appears there is a … a movement from Above to re-start Armageddon. Or, well, at least to terminate the former Anti-Christ. What do you know of it?”

Moroni shrugged. “Nothin’. News to me.” He sniffed, and looked sidelong to the other angel. “You think it’s gonna get goin’ again?”

“I’m not sure; that’s why I’m asking. Have you heard anything from Above about a … a re-do, as it were?”

“No.” Warily, he looked to Crowley. “You shouldn’ know any of this, demon.”

“I’m not exactly on good terms with your opposition,” Crowley responded tightly. “Hardly as though I have anyone to tell.”

Moroni harrumphed. “Guess so. But yeah, no, no re-do s’far as I know. I jus’ saw Uriel last week too, in town for some blessing or something, she didn’t say a word about it. In fact …” he looked furtively side-to-side, and lowered his voice. “Well, this doesn’t go anywhere, right? But we had a few drinks after, got some hoagies, an’ we were talking about, you know, stuff.” He shrugged. “Earth stuff. Nothing serious. She’s an Eagles fan, you know? Fly Eagles Fly, baby.”

Aziraphale and Crowley looked blank. Moroni shook his head mournfully. “Gotta get you off that island some time, Aziraphale. Anyway, the way she was talkin’ - an’ she didn’t say anything super specific, y’know, but just talkin’ - was like she thought things were just situation normal. Leadin’ up to that whole thing a few years ago, s’all she would tell me about, how things were goin’, preparations bein’ made, all that.” He huffed and shook his head. “I wasn’ too pumped for it, an’ she pro’ly knew, but I played the part. But this was like all the times we talked before then. Just, y’know, normal conversation.” He shrugged. “Sports, gossip, all that. You know Gabriel’s been spending more time Earth-side?”

“Has he?” Aziraphale blinked. “Doing what?”

“No one knows. He goes all over, too, she said - like he’s lookin’ for something. So I dunno, maybe he’s doin’ something, but doesn’t sound like it.” He sighed. “An’ Michael’s, y’know, still ramping up for war whenever it happens, but Michael’s been doing that for, I dunno, what, five thousand years?” He spread his hands. “Nothin’ new there.”

Aziraphale frowned. “No. And Yeshua -”

Moroni barked out a laugh. “You think they let me know anything about Yeshua? C’mon Aziraphale - I’m pro’ly the only other angel that gets kept at arm’s length aside from you. I got nothin’. Last I heard they had Raziel watching him, but that was years ago.”

“Hm. Yes.” Aziraphale stayed tight-lipped while Crowley involuntarily grinned, remembering their unusually memorable Christmas a few years back when Yeshua had given old Raziel the slip and spent the night. “Alright.”

“Y’know it makes sense though,” Moroni said conversationally. “If someone offs the old Antichrist, Hell can place a new one and it’ll start all over again. ‘Course, that assumes Hell’s in on the whole plan and Old Scratch is up for having another kid.” He looked at Crowley. “Hm?”

Crowley snorted. “If you think Downstairs talks to me anymore you’re crazier than the guy you -”

“Yes, Crowley, please don’t.” Aziraphale silenced him with a glare, prompting Crowley to slouch backwards against the door and cross his arms. “Your point is well-taken.”

Moroni snorted. “At this rate you’re gonna know more about Heaven than Hell.” He pointed out of the windshield, toward the taillights of the truck ahead. “And watching that kid, hm? Sure you ain’t an angel?”

A hiss slipped out, mostly unprompted, although Crowley might have thrown a little extra umph into it once he realized what he was doing. “Very.”

“It wasn’t a threat.” Moroni raised his hands. “Jokes, man. You ain’t no angel, I know that.” He made a show of checking his watch. “Hey, uh, are we done here? ‘Cause the Phillies got a night game -”

“Yes, I think we are.” Aziraphale looked to Crowley, who nodded slowly, not looking away from the other angel. “Yes. Oh, and the rain’s slowing. How convenient.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll fly.” Crowley looked away as the holy light flooded the car. When he looked out of the window, the red truck with the boys in it drove by, heading back toward town. “Let you get back to work there with your kid, Guardian.” He snorted at Crowley, who snarled in response. Moroni looked away, the back seat of the car suddenly filled with dazzlingly white wings, and nodded to Aziraphale. “Good luck. Lemme know ‘f you’re ever in town. Thanks ah … well, don’t tell anyone I said this but uh, thanks for not lettin’ the world end. Both of youse, and that kid.” He beamed. “Gave me a whole year to enjoy the Eagles bein’ Superbowl champs.”

Aziraphale’s smile was a bit brittle. “How lovely. It was our pleasure.”

“I’ll treat you to some scrapple, hey? Uriel says you like food. Get you some local delicacies.” He punched Aziraphale companionably in the shoulder and ignored the snarl he got from Crowley in return. “Some pork roll, cheesesteak obviously, an’ hey if it’s nice I know a guy who does water ice, ‘ey? Lemme know.”

He flapped his wings one time as much as he could in the cramped confines of the car, and then went spectral, phasing through the roof and rising skywards, through the clouds, presumably darting away with the cover of the storm.

Crowley waited for a long moment before he grumbled, “No wonder you didn’t want to talk to him. Prick.”

“He’s been through a lot.”

“We’ve been through a lot, and I’d hope we’ve got more bloody manners than that wanker.” Still grumbling rather incoherently, more out of a general feeling of annoyance than any particular string of words, Crowley re-situated himself in the driver’s seat and turned the car on, a delighted shiver coursing through him as the heaters blew on. “That’s alright. Bloody freezing in here.”

“Oh, of course; you’re still soaked. I miracled the coat to be warm and dry,” Aziraphale said, but Crowley was already pulling it on anyway, wrapping the old thing around his skinny torso and hunching down into it with a contented sigh. Warmth miracles aside, Aziraphale’s coat was just … nice. Crowley loved it, although he would never admit it out loud. “Will you be … well, Crowley, do you think you ought to be driving?” Aziraphale dithered. “What you did back there with the lightning was remarkable, my boy, but it seemed to take rather a lot out of you.”

Crowley shrugged his shoulder and tried not to sag down in his seat, although now, with the other angel gone and the warm comfort of Aziraphale’s coat wrapped around him, he would admit his angel had a point. He wondered where the boys would be setting up for the night, and whether or not the crappy motel beds would do the job, since he certainly wasn’t feeling up to miracleing a bed into being. He could always ask Aziraphale to do it, of course, but then they were trying to avoid unnecessary miracles, weren’t they … ?

“Crowley?” He startled a little, and realized he’d been sitting at a stop sign and staring blankly ahead for the past however-long. Aziraphale was watching him with no small amount of concern. “Crowley, I do know how to drive.”

“No, you don’t.” The demon shook himself and sat up a little straighter. “Which way’d they go?”

Aziraphale sighed. “That way, and then left onto the main street again.” Neither of them spoke until they caught sight of the red truck parked along the curb across from the town’s only bar. There were a handful of other cars clustered around it, and warm yellow light spilled out from the front window of the bar. “Looks like a few people decided to wait it out inside.”

“Smart.” Crowley cruised past the bar slowly. “You see them?”

“N - Yes! Yes, there the four of them are. Near enough to the windows, anyway, if you can find a spot that I can watch them.”

Crowley yawned. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” The town wasn’t exactly populus, and he had little trouble finding a space to pull over and park. With the car stationary and firmly in park, the radio playing some tropical-sounding song softly over the speakers, Crowley scrambled from the driver’s seat and into the back seat. “You mind if I - ?”

Aziraphale was already shaking his head. “I’d rather hoped you would. Rest up, Crowley - I’ll keep watch.”

“Great.” The 4Runner’s back seat wasn’t exactly meant for sleeping but, well, Crowley had slept on worse. He curled up under the coat as much as he could, eyelids already sliding shut. A bit of wriggling until he found the most comfortable position possible, and then he breathed out, feeling the thick fog of sleep starting to settle over him. “Hey, Aziraphale?” he asked, slurring his words around his sleep-thick tongue.

“Yes, dear?”

“What the fuck is ‘wooder ice’?”

#the one where they go to america #good omens #good omens fanfiction #good omens fanfic #adam young #warlock dowling #crowley #aziraphale #i wish i didn't enjoy fanfiction so much

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ourredminote7review-blog · 5 years ago

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Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review: one of the best budget phones money can buy

The design of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 is fine, as designs go. It feels a little bit chunky and heavy in the hand, and the bottom bezel is slightly thicker than you might prefer, but it's by no means an ugly phone – there are display curves in all the right places and the teardrop notch isn't too intrusive.

Remember this is a phone you can pick up from as little as £179 – the starting price of the iPhone XS Max is more than six times higher. Does the iPhone offer a more premium finish and feel? Yes. Is it six times as better-looking as the Redmi Note 7? Absolutely not.

The 6.3-inch screen gives you plenty of room to work with and is bright and sharp enough to a more than satisfactory degree. Like a lot of budget phones, the resolution is pegged at 1080 pixels across, but we found the screen fine in day-to-day use – you're not really going to notice this too much.

From pretty much every angle, the Redmi Note 7 looks stylish. Black and blue are your colour options (at least in the UK they are), but the blue actually offers a subtle blue-purple gradient that looks really nice – if you want to turn a few heads when you're pulling the phone out of your pocket, that's the shade to go for.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

The dual-lens rear camera bulges out a little bit, but not so much that it's annoying, and the back of the phone features a classy and minimal design broken up only by a fingerprint sensor and a small Redmi logo besides the camera.

A 3.5mm headphone jack is included up at the top, so you can carry on using your existing wired headphones, and down at the bottom of the phone you've got the USB-C port and two speaker grilles (but actually just one speaker). Volume and power buttons are at the side – they feel a little budget and basic, but still fine.

We do like the tiny LED notification light on the chin at the bottom of the phone, though it seems a bit odd to have it off to the side like it is – it helps you see at a glance whether you've got any notifications to check up on, and it's something we wish that more phones would offer.

Overall, while the Redmi Note 7 isn't going to win any design awards anytime soon, it's still a fine-looking handset, especially for the price. As with many budget and mid-range phones nowadays, it looks more expensive than it actually is, so it has to be a thumbs up for the look and feel of the Redmi Note 7.

These are our favourite small phones on the market XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 7: SPECS AND POWER Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

Under the hood the Snapdragon 660 processor is a perfectly respectable choice at this price point – in fact, it's more than respectable, and should give you more than enough power for all but the most demanding tasks on mobile. We certainly didn't notice any lag or slowdown in our time with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7.

Our review unit came with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and this is the sweet spot as far as configuration goes – 3GB / 32GB is cutting it a bit fine in terms of system resources, and while 128GB of storage is great, it costs quite a lot more too. Considering the phone has a memory card slot, 4GB and 64GB should be fine.

Plenty of Chinese brands are using the Snapdragon 660 in their budget and mid-range phones at the moment, but outside of China the 660-toting handset you're probably most familiar with is the Nokia 7 Plus. That's where we're talking in terms of power.

It's at least on a par with other phones at this very low price range, and may well outperform a lot of them. In terms of Geekbench 4 scores at least (see the separate box out), the Redmi 7 Note does better than a phone like the Moto G7 Plus.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

We tried to put the phone through its paces as extensively as possible, but whether it was scrolling around in Google Maps or racing around a beautifully rendered track in the latest Asphalt game, the Redmi Note 7 was up to the task.

Occasionally there's a millisecond or two of a pause where you might expect a smoother experience if you've downgraded from a flagship phone, but it really isn't anything to panic about. As with every other aspect of the Redmi Note 7, you have to balance performance with price – and considering how much (or how little) you're paying, the Snapdragon 660, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage combination is very decent indeed. It's only slightly below the Pixel 3a, which costs twice as much.

Of course we can only talk about the first few weeks of using the phone: buying a more expensive handset usually means it's going to stay faster for longer, though phone makers and software developers seem to be getting better at stopping this from happening.

Based on our time with the Redmi Note 7 and the benchmarking scores it was able to hit, you should have no problems at all with it in the performance department. You won't hit the frame rates or the loading times of something like the Samsung Galaxy S10, but you will find it perfectly responsive and up to all the tasks you give it.

GEEKBENCH 4 BENCHMARKS – XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 7

[CPU test]

Single-core: 1,635

Multi-core: 5,918

[Compute test]

RenderSript Score: 5,681

[Battery test]

Battery Score Estimate: 5,517

The very best phones that Samsung sells right now XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 7: CAMERA Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 comes packing a dual-lens rear camera, and one of those camera lenses offers up a whopping 48MP of resolution – a very high watermark for a phone at this price. It's accompanied by a 5MP snapper, so on paper the phone should be capable of getting some very decent shots.

We're happy to report that's the case – most of the time at least. On the whole, pictures came out sharp and vibrant, though in one or two shots we did find there was a lack of clarity and sharpness in the details. That was only really visible when zooming in though, so something you'd never notice on a social media feed.

Unless you override it in the settings, the Redmi Note 7 actually takes photos at a 12MP resolution, using the extra pixels from the 48MP sensor to do some clever image processing. Considering 12MP photos are as big as you're every likely to need, we're happy with that.

We did find there was a slight, almost imperceptible lag in the shutter speed on the Redmi Note 7. It's not going to get in the way of you taking the snaps you need, but it's something we noticed compared to the very top flagships on the market (which, sorry to labour the point, cost a whole lot more money).

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 camera impresses, on the whole.

In good light most pictures are sharp and feature a nice balance of colour.

It's not the most advanced camera in the world, but it won't disappoint.

Close ups usually include lots of detail and sharp focus.

For the majority of the time, you can just point and shoot to get great results.

The portrait mode on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 seems responsive and effective.

With a bit of light, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 camera can get decent results at night.

As with most phone cameras, as the light goes down, the noise goes up. Next At night the Redmi Note 7 coped pretty well with the shooting tasks we gave it, as long as there was some form of illumination coming from somewhere. It's in the darkest scenes where noise starts to creep in and the phone's rear camera doesn't hold up to the Pixels of this world. The dedicated night mode does help a little, but we found it a bit hit and miss in terms of balancing noise and illumination.

As in most other areas though, the Redmi Note 7 camera goes above and beyond what you would expect from a budget phone down at the bottom end of the market. There's no optical image stabilisation (so keep your hands as still as you can) and no laser autofocus, so it might take a little longer to lock onto subjects.

You won't find much in the way of shooting modes or enhancements here – bar a rather gimmicky "beautify" mode – but there is a portrait function for blurring the backgrounds behind subjects. It's basic in its implementation, especially compared with the flagship phones of the moment, but in our tests it does a very respectable job.

On the front there's a 13MP single-lens camera which we found to be very much up to the job of taking decent-quality selfies when needed. A second lens for a wider angle would be welcome, but we wouldn't expect one at this price point.

Get yourself a phone for less: the best cheap phones XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 7: SOFTWARE AND FEATURES Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

If there is an area where Xiaomi phones fall down, it's in the software it slaps on top of Android, and the Redmi Note 7 is no different in this respect. Xiaomi's MIUI isn't hideous, it's just a bit more bloated and a bit more busy than we would really like.

You get a ton of Xiaomi Mi apps that you can't uninstall, plenty of prompts to set up a Mi account that you don't really need, and no app drawer (something we like to have on Android, but your mileage may vary).

Every app Xiaomi adds on is like a cheap imitation of what Google does – like the "App Vault" that appears when you swipe right from the home screen. Of course you can use the Google apps instead and ignore the Xiaomi ones, and even revamp the entire interface with a third-party launcher, but in our eyes MIUI is still the weakest part of the overall Redmi Note 7 package.

You do at least get the latest Android 9 Pie running under MIUI, but whether you'll get Android Q anytime soon remains to be seen. Like most phone makers, Xiaomi tends to take months to get all its handsets updated, whether you're running one of its budget models or something at the high-end.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

Aside from the software, the phone doesn't offer any sort of waterproofing, which is pretty much par for the course at this price level. Ditto wireless charging, which isn't available, though 18W fast charging is. You do also get dual-SIM capabilities, if you need to juggle work and personal numbers.

One of the advantages of lower-powered components and a lower-resolution screen is better battery life, and the Redmi Note 7 scores well in this department too. We often found ourselves with a third of the battery still left at the end of the day, and sometimes more, with light-to-medium usage.

If you really push the battery hard with games, GPS and video you're going to need a recharge by the end of the day, but on most days you're not going to have to worry about making it to bedtime. At the same time the phone isn't going to revolutionise your life with two days between charges either.

In the regular battery test we run, the Redmi Note 7 went down from 100 percent to 87 percent after an hour of Netflix at maximum brightness and medium volume, a fairly average result That works out at 7-8 or so hours of video watching between charges – a result that's about average for a phone in 2019.

The top phones out of the MWC 2019 event this year XIAOMI REDMI NOTE 7: VERDICT Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 review

We're sure you're bored of us saying it now, but: the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 can be yours for as little as £179 (or £199, for the version we tested). Everything else about the phone has to be viewed in that light, and from the camera to the design to the performance, the Redmi Note 7 manages to exceed expectations by some distance.

The few reservations we had about the phone, including a lack of waterproofing and the rather overbearing MIUI software, aren't enough to dissuade us from what is a very good deal right now. The quality, finish and power of Xiaomi phones have been steadily improving over the years, and it's trickled down to the budget Redmi line too.

The Redmi Note 7 isn't going to take photos as well as a Google Pixel can, or look as stylish as an iPhone, or race through tasks as quickly as a Samsung Galaxy – but in terms of the bang you get for your buck, we'd say it beats pretty much everything out there at the moment.

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tinabritton-photography · 5 years ago

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Seeing the Light . . . Portrait Research and practice. Not complete!

Today kicked off a brand new project brief called ‘Seeing the Light’. This brief is designed around capturing 4 portraits, family, friends or strangers, in natural light. In this brief we can use either or a combination of a diffuser, scrim, flags or reflectors in certain situations according to how intense the natural ambient light is.

What are the Qualities of Light?

Natural light is any light generated by the sun. The light of day can be harsh or diffused, depending on the weather, cloud-cover, heat and cold, direction, or even time of year.

Without the benefit of light, there can be no image. The frame would be void, black and lifeless. So one could say that each image has a symbiotic relationship light. There is a push and pull between the areas of shadow and the lighter areas of an image, irregardless of whether the light falling on our subject is natural or lit with studio lighting.

Characteristics of Light

The Golden Hour

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Portrait Lenses

(note: I have not included the 35mm here because headshots taken with the 35mm exhibit distortion. That being said, with distance, the lens can be good, however, it is just not a portrait lens and will never truly be as good as the ones listed below.)

I think that lenses should be chosen by, not only where the image is going to be taken, say, i.e. a very small studio, or on walk-about around Glasgow, but also available light

The three prime portrait lenses that really shine for me are -

50mm - The 50mm prime lense has a wide aperture and is a great standard portrait lens. It has a fantastic shallow depth of field, and though it has less distortion that a 35mm, there is still some barrel distortion with headshots, so I would stick to half-body or full-body captures.

What is barrel distortion? See below.

Barrel distortion is an aberration and “happens because the field of view of the lens is much wider than the size of the image sensor and hence it needs to be “squeezed” to fit”. (Mansurov, 2019)

“Some barrel distortion is present in most wide angle lenses and zoom lenses with relatively short focal lengths.” (Mansurov, 2019)

(Mansurov, 2019)

Since we have spoken about barel distortion, we have to include pin cushion distortion. Pin cushion distortion in zoom lenses, in particular, consumer grade or even some pro lenses. More expensive lenses contain compensating elements that reduce pincushion distortion to acceptable levels.

(Mansurov, 2019)

The above are examples of optical distortion.

Below is what happens when you capture up-close images with a wide angle lens. This however, has to do with perspective distortion and not lens distortion. Lenses have no perspective. I will be researching this further in a later blog.

(Mansurov, 2019)

See below - focal length does not impact perspective distortion when you are far enough away from your subject.

(Lightroom, 2019)

However - perspective distortion is caused by the distance between the lens and the subjects face, NOT focal length.

(Lightroom, 2019)

85mm - Most photographers would agree that the 85mm is the best lens for portrait photography. It has a wide aperture, shallow depth of field and less of the distortion that we get with the 35mm and 50mm lenses, however there is still some barrel distortion. It is still a go-to lens though because close-up to our sitter we capture a flattering perspective of our subject’s face. Also, 85mm at 1.4mm - 1.8mm will make the background melt into a creamy background, even with waist-high shots, and full length shots. At full length there is still a wonderful 3D feel to the shots with a decent amount of background if you so choose.

135mm - The 135mm prime lens has a wide aperture and longer focal length which gives gorgeous bokeh. I have a manual 135mm lense and the bokeh is swirly and beautiful and it produces sharp images, however, it is manual focus, so would be better in the studio imo. I do note however that, the 85mm is a better choice for closeness to the subject you are shooting. A conversation can continue and a rapport can be built to put her or him at ease. (Abbott, 2019)

Nikkor DX 18-105mm lens - This has been my go to lens when I am out shooting street photography or street portraits. It spans the ranges I need for portrait photography. For example, see the 4 images below . . .

TinaBritton Photography 2014

TinaBritton Photography 2017

105mm (full frame sensors) - This is my next prime lens. Yes, the 18-105mm I already own expands to 105mm, however, I want the constant large aperture the Sigma lens offers.

What about zoom lenses?

What if you only have a 70-200mm (as with the 18-105mm above) in your bag and cannot afford prime lenses right now? The 70-200mm can work for you in many portrait situations. Now, I like to be close to my models. It’s more personal and while I am shooting, I can have a conversation with he or she. This puts the model at ease. With this lens we can still shoot in that range, however, that being said, capturing a portrait, though I have to stand further away, at say, 200mm at 2.8mm creates a beautiful background and unique perspective. Watch out for distortion. (Hull and >, 2019)

*****************************************************************************************************

How do we control the light?

What is a Scrim?

Scrims is a woven fabric on a frame that reduces the light by about 1/2 stop. “The Full scrims will dim the light intensity across the entire beam spread, while 1/2 and graduated scrims are used to even out the beam spread when lighting a subject or background from an angle.”

(Anon, 2019)

What is a Flag?

A flag (black refector) is used to block or control (shape) the light in your scene. It can be used to fill in shadow (negative fill) and to increase contrast. It can stop flares from reaching your camera, almost in the same way a lens hood does.

(Digital-photo-secrets.com, 2019)

What is a diffuser?

A diffuser (or silk) goes between your light source and your subject and produces a finer light, like a softbox. It reduces glare and is flattering to your subject.

(Ghionis, 2019)

What is a reflector?

A reflector helps light reach your subject and also helps to soften the light meeting your subject. It comes in silver and gold and white. Many come in a kit as the one seen below. Be careful using the silver as it can be harsh if bouncing bright sun. Gold gives your subject a golden hour look, however, in some situations, can give your sitter a strange glow. White gives your subject a soft glow.

(Digital-photo-secrets.com, 2019)

Choose 5 Photographers -

1. Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born to a successful textile manufacturer and his mother (1908-2004) in France. The master of capturing a candid moment, Bresson was the father of street photography and photojournalism. It was his belief that photography was about capturing the spontaneous or the ‘decisive moment’.

Throughout his career, Bresson took hundreds of natural light portraits of famous people, many of them well known and important artists of his era.

It was in 1947 that Henri and some of his peers started a cooperative photography agency called Magnum Photos, dedicated to the premise that photography had become an influential communicative tool. Bresson’s responsibility in the agency was to travel to India and China, but he also travelled to countries such as Greece, Moscow, Egypt and America. His most beloved assignment was his trip to Moscow. “He was the first photographer allowed to enter the USSR after the death of Stalin in 1953”. (Huxley-Parlour Gallery, 2019)

Photograph of Pablo Picasso by Henri Cartier-Bresson. (Ipoxstudios.com, 2019)

Photograph of Pablo Picasso by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Ipoxstudios.com, 2019)

Photograph of Henri Matisse by Henri Cartier-Bresson. (Ipoxstudios.com, 2019)

2. John Loengard -

John Loengard is an American photography born 1934 in New York. Harvard educated, he learned his craft at the International Centre for Photography in New York. His photographic journey began when he was 11 years of age when he began capturing images of his family.

It was in his senior year at Harvard when Loengard was asked by Life magazine to freelance for them by photographing a freighter run aground on Cape Cod in 1956. This began his work with the Magazine.

In 1972 Life magazine suspended its weekly publication and it was then that became the picture editor of Life Special Reports. At the time, he was also the picture editor of People magazine during is formation and for the beginning 3 months of its publication.

Loengard helped in Life magazine’s rebirth and was its picture editor until 1987. While working for Life and other magazines, the photographer authored 10 books and in 2005, He was named “One of the 100 most influential people in Photography” by American Photo. He was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2018.

Below is an image of Georgia O'Keeffe sitting on the roof of her home in 1967.

Georgia O'Keeffe photographed on the roof of her Ghost Ranch home in New Mexico, 1967. John Loengard—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images. (Time, 2019)

Image of Richard Avedon by John Loengard, 1994. (Photographers, Books and Hours, 2019)

Annie Leibovitz with her Assistant, Robert Bean on the Chrysler Building by John Loengard. (Johnloengard.com, 2019)

Brassai's Eye by John Loengard. (Johnloengard.com, 2019)

3. Alfred Eisenstaedt -

was a German-born American photographer who was well known for taking black and white shots of celebrities and is famous for using the 1.5 Armature. What is the 1.5 Armature?

“1.5 Armature: There are two ways to break down a 1.5 rectangle. The most basic is the 1.5 Armature. It is created by drawing two diagonals from each corner of a negative. Then draw their reciprocals from opposing corners, which intersect the diagonals at 90°. Through the Eyes of the Diagonal and their reciprocals, draw vertical and horizontal lines through their intersections. The 1.5 Armature was a very popular method used by Cartier Bresson early in his career.” (PetaPixel, 2019)

Below we have Marilyn Monroe in a black and white sweater. Her hair has a soft sheen and is worn natural. The background appears to be a barn structure and give the image a mid-tone grey texture.

Marilyn Monroe (Black Sweater Landscape), 1953

Below is an iconic image seen from around the world. A crowd of happy people gathered on the street in celebration, a man tilts his girl back for a long overdue kiss. I have always loved this image and the start black and white contrast.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, VJ Day in Times Square, August 14-1945, Robert Mann Gallery (PetaPixel, 2019)

What can I say? We all know who this man is in the photo below. Albert Einstein sits writing. Love the rich blacks and the striped batter of the chair against the grey of his sweater and white of his hair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Albert Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey, 1949, Robert Mann Gallery. (Artsy.net, 2019)

4. Stanislav Puchkovsky (Sean Archer on 500px) is self taught photographer from Yekaterinburg, Russia. He picked up his first camera in 2012 (a Lumix G3) and hasn’t stopped shooting since. And his light source? He uses natural light to capture his classically beautiful images. Amazingly, he shoots all his portraits in his apartment with window light. (Sarkar, Kosa and Sarkar, 2019)(Diamond, 2019)

(Diamond, 2019)

(Sarkar, Kosa and Sarkar, 2019)

(Archer, 2019)

5. Magdalena Berny

Berny is a self-taught photographer born in 1976 and based in Poland. Her natural light child portraits have been recognised and published in “various press dedicated to photographs such as Digital Camera, Click Magazine, Modern Lens Magazine, Magzter, Great Inspire, just to name few.” (Symposion 2019, 2019)

(Dreams Factory Photography, 2019)

(Instagram.com, 2019)

Today we went on a walkabout from class in Glasgow to take images of each other (students). The group I was with only chose a silver/white reflector. The diffuser disappeared with the other students.

Here are but a few of the images I captured on the day . . .

Intensely Adam . . .

We used a refector to get light into the ‘cage-like’ structure. I like framing my subjects. I should have had Adam hide his earphones. I can always take them out in Photoshop. Here we are using a silver reflector. I can only assume that the colour cast on Adam’s face is from the rust covered bars surrounding him.

I’m not perfect. It has been a long time, and the excitement of taking images out with the class was the only reason I can fathom why I would make such a rookie mistake as allowing the top of the stone fence behind Adam to run right through his head. No refector.

I like taking images of my subjects that help tell a story about who they are. Adam is extremely talented and has great instincts in photography. Here we are using no reflector.

This is a woman with her dog. She was walking on the pathway where we were practicing and I asked if we could take her portrait. She was reluctant at first, but said yes. I could tell she was all about her dog. This image is a dog portrait with their human. (Again with the wall. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were through her shoulders.)

The lovely woman put down her dog and allowed me to take her photo. She didn’t take off her sunglasses.

Adam being inquisitive . . .

Adam relaxing on the wall.

Adam rules on the wall . . . a bit over exposed on his face me thinks?

Adam peering into the lens.

My brief, well underway . . .

For my first portrait, I chose my husband. We actually took photos for this portrait the same time and day as I was also working on my #Who project. This worked out well. I love the small Laundry cabin that is situated in the beautiful Finlaystone Country Estate; a large country estate in Renfrewshire near Glasgow, seat of the current Chief of the Clan MacMillan. We have visted here a few times, and I love walking about the trees. The laundry cabin is awesome with its old world objects.

For my second portrait, I chose my friend Andrew. We travelled to Glasgow and visited our favourite place to eat because I knew they had big beautiful windows. The thing about the windows, they are not clean on the outside, so they diffused the light really well. The weather was 13 celsius and it was a cloudy day. Exposure was 1/100 sec at f4.5 using my 50mm lens. I had him sit really close to the window. What I noticed was, there was this white powdery looking dust on the outside of the window and it seemed to make the entire window, even though it was cloudy, glow with light.

For my 3rd portrait, I am going to capture images of strangers, either on Glasgow streets, or perhaps walking in the woods. I have taken my first images of a very talented woman singing on Buchanan Street in Glasgow. I loved her soulful voice. I walked up and stood in front of her until I caught her gaze. I pointed at her, as she was singing, and pointed at my camera then to her. She nodded yes to my silent request. She kept singing while I took a few shots.

I will take further portraits of strangers in the coming week.

For my 4th portrait, I have captured images of my 93-year-old mother-in-law. She is a beautiful woman who lives in Port Glasgow high above the Clyde. There is a gorgeous veiw from her window. I wanted to use that as my backdrop as she has strong ties with her community and has been living in the same house for 65 years. As a matter of fact, my husband was born in the house.

Mum is always talkative, and she never sits still. She is the most inquisitive woman I know to date. Because I knew this setting up for our session, I asked her to stand next to her favourite place, the large picture window in her living room. She continued to ask questions so I took many images in an attempt to get the ones I really wanted.

Mum was getting tired, so I had her sit every once in a while, every second that passed changed the available lighting dramatically.

I decided later to go outside and capture mum in her window, as she can often be seen by the neighbours looking out.

I mixed some more portrait shots of my mum in with the last. OOPS. The last shot was a dramatic silhouette of mum.

Prakel, D. (2007). Lighting. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA, pp.56-70. (Prakel, 2007)

Lightroom, P. (2019). Choosing the Best Focal Length for Portraits. [online] Pretty Presets for Lightroom. Available at: https://www.lightroompresets.com/blogs/pretty-presets-blog/best-focal-length-portraits [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019]. (Lightroom, 2019)

Mansurov, N. (2019). What is Lens Distortion?. [online] Photographylife.com. Available at: https://photographylife.com/what-is-distortion [Accessed 4 Oct. 2019]. (Mansurov, 2019)

Hull, C. and >, M. (2019). What Is the Best Lens for Portraits? | Photography Equipment. [online] ExpertPhotography. Available at: https://expertphotography.com/best-lens-for-portraits/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (Hull and >, 2019)

Abbott, J. (2019). Three prime lenses every portrait photographer needs to consider. [online] digitalcameraworld. Available at: https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tutorials/the-best-portrait-lens-three-lenses-every-portrait-photographer-needs-to-consider [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (Abbott, 2019)

Cambridgeincolour.com. (2019). Making the Most of Natural Light in Photography. [online] Available at: https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/natural-light-photography.htm [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019]. (Cambridgeincolour.com, 2019)

Neirynck, F. (2019). Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) | Le Couperet. [online] Lecouperet.net. Available at: http://www.lecouperet.net/hcb/en/portraits-by-hcb [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019]. (Neirynck, 2019)

Ipoxstudios.com. (2019). You are being redirected.... [online] Available at: https://ipoxstudios.com/proof-that-henri-cartier-bresson-used-dynamic-symmetry-in-photography-4k-video/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Photographers, A., Books, p. and Hours, O. (2019). Age of Silver: Encounters with Great Photographers | powerHouse Books. [online] Powerhousebooks.com. Available at: http://www.powerhousebooks.com/books/age-of-silver-encounters-with-great-photographers/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2019]. (Photographers, Books and Hours, 2019)

Huxley-Parlour Gallery. (2019). Henri Cartier-Bresson | Photographer's Biography & Art Works | Huxley-Parlour Gallery. [online] Available at: https://huxleyparlour.com/artists/henri-cartier-bresson/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2019]. (Huxley-Parlour Gallery, 2019)

Johnloengard.com. (2019). John Loengard – Photographs. [online] Available at: https://johnloengard.com/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2019]. (Johnloengard.com, 2019)

Time. (2019). https://time.com. [online] Available at: https://time.com/3491091/georgia-okeeffe-invincible/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Sarkar, G., Kosa, M. and Sarkar, S. (2019). Stanislav Puchkovsky (Sean Archer) - Incredible Portrait Photographer from Russia - 121Clicks.com. [online] 121clicks.com. Available at: https://121clicks.com/showcases/stanislav-puchkovsky-sean-archer-incredible-portrait-photographer-from-russia [Accessed 13 Sep. 2019].

Archer, S. (2019). Sean Archer on Fstoppers. [online] Fstoppers. Available at: https://fstoppers.com/profile/37142 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Diamond, D. (2019). Stanislav Puchkovsky (aka Sean Archer) is a Master of Natural Light Portraits. [online] Fstoppers. Available at: https://fstoppers.com/bts/stanislav-puchkovsky-aka-sean-archer-master-natural-light-portraits-9584 [Accessed 13 Sep. 2019].

PetaPixel. (2019). The Great Compositions of Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. [online] Available at: https://petapixel.com/2013/04/15/the-great-compositions-of-photographer-alfred-eisenstaedt/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (PetaPixel, 2019)

Artsy.net. (2019). Alfred Eisenstaedt: Portraits of the Past | Robert Mann Gallery | Artsy. [online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/show/robert-mann-gallery-alfred-eisenstaedt-portraits-of-the-past [Accessed 30 Sep. 2019]. (Artsy.net, 2019)

SLR Lounge. (2019). The Flash Modifier You Already Own - SLR Lounge. [online] Available at: https://www.slrlounge.com/workshop/the-flash-modifier-you-already-own/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Sekonic.com. (2019). Working with the Sun | Photography How To Articles – What's Your Specialty? Photographer. [online] Available at: https://www.sekonic.com/united-kingdom/whatisyourspecialty/photographer/articles/working-with-the-sun.aspx [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Digital-photo-secrets.com. (2019). What in the heck is that thing for? A photographer's guide to using the black flag :: Digital Photo Secrets. [online] Available at: https://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/6721/guide-using-black-flag/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Anon, (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.adorama.com/dodsck.html [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Ghionis, J. (2019). How to Perfect Natural Light with a Collapsible Diffuser feat. Jerry Ghionis. [online] Westcott University. Available at: https://westcottu.com/using-the-omega-reflector-as-a-diffuser [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Instagram.com. (2019). #magdalenabernyphotography hashtag on Instagram • Photos and Videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/magdalenabernyphotography/?max_id=1254958811895111547 [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Dreams Factory Photography. (2019). MAGDALENA BERNY - STUDIO PORTRAIT. [online] Available at: https://www.dreamsfactory.co.uk/event/magdalena-berny-studio-portrait [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Instagram.com. (2019). PAGE1 (@page1mag) • Instagram photos and videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/page1mag/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

Symposion 2019. (2019). Magdalena Berny | Children Portraits. [online] Available at: https://www.symposion.photo/en/magdalena-berny-en/ [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].

#seeing

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 5 years ago

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Trail (Part 1)

As promised, Azula & Zuko as cryptid hunters. Not at all inspired by Supernatural or anything. Like, Wrought Iron Machine this is a new and improved version of an older fic; https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12720884/1/The-Hunt

In this chapter they are going after Nessie.

The loch has the appearance of a bowl of soup, murky and with steam coiling up in thick blankets from the broath. Azula never had any such love for the water, much less being in such a flimsy boat. Though Zhao is rather adamant that his boat is the sturdiest in the whole of Scotland.

She squints out into the fog, trying her hardest to get a sense of anything really. The weather vexes her to a degree--just how the hell is she supposed to get a magazine worthy shot in these conditions?

At the very least, she supposes that she has the satisfaction of winning another debate. The one wherein Zuko had insisted that her rather pricey waterproof camera equipment was a waste of cash. She carefully shields her camera under the protective layer of her new camera cover.

With careful hands, she cleans the lens with her shirt and holds the camera out. She messes with it for a moment or two, zooming in and out trying to find an optimal focus.

"Can you put that away!?" Zuko snaps. "We're not here to take pictures this time.”

Perhaps he isn’t, but she is. It is how she funds getting new equipment and their trips as a whole from gas money to hotel fees. She is about to remind him as much when he continues. “We're here to get rid of that thing once and for all!"

"Get rid of it?" Azula asks as she snaps a test picture.

"Kill it, lass." Zhao clarifies

"I know what he means." Azula grumbles. "Killing it was never part of the plan."

"It's what we brought ye here tae do." Zhao shrugs.

Zuko nods in agreement. "That's what I came to do. I didn't sail all the way to Scotland to gawk at the thing."

Azula is none surprised to hear it. “We don’t need to hunt down everything that has a vague sense of mystery to it.”

“We’re cryptid hunters.”

“I prefer, investigators or researchers.” She counters. All the same she is certain that she won’t get through to him. He has a vicious passion that she doesn’t share. A certain blinding need for vengeance. She recalls with vivid clarity standing in a graveyard on a dreary morning like this one, peering at a grave marked with their mother’s name. Perhaps she doesn’t share his hot-tempered bloodlust because she wasn’t as close with the woman. Or perhaps it is simply that she handles her mother’s passing differently--her temperament is starkly different from her brother’s. “There is only one Loch Ness Monster, if we kill her, we waste research opportunities.” She doesn’t want to admit it, but she has a soft spot for certain monsters. Something she attributes to having been accused of being one for the better part of her life.

It is a strange feat to know that it is Zuko who adores the fame and glory that comes with conquering the town terror. It is more like her to covet the thrill of a conquer.Such has been her nature since she had learned to speak. And yet she finds herself enjoying the smaller aspects of the hunt. Much like Iroh, she had a knack for adventure, the roads they constantly take to provide her with a sense of ease and clarity. Her camera doesn’t just capture the unknown. Its lens have captured mundane beauty and the average road trip sights.

More like herself, Azula also enjoys the intellectual acclaim that came from studying the remains and the behavioral patterns the cryptids had once exhibited in life. She enjoys seeing her photos in the glossy pages of various nature magazines, and on the odd occasion featured on the cover.

Curiosity and prestige, vengeance and a need to protect. She supposes that it is good that they have differing goals. They can pick up what the other lacks.

Azula sighs as a light rain begins putting a dampness in her clothing. She hopes that it won’t worsen, it is hard enough already to make out anything in the dense mist. The girl yawns, they have been out here for hours now just drifting idly along. So far she has only jumped at false alarms.

The misty rain thickens into a thicker shower. Nothing unbearable but still a nuisance. She leans against the railing, staring blankly into the depths of the water.

“This is ridiculous.” Zuko throws his hands up. “Why did you insist that we try to find this thing in the fog? We’d have better luck with clearer weather?"

"Nessie doesn't like to show 'erself in the sunlight. Ah only ever see 'er in the mist." Zhao pauses. “All’a us only ever see ‘er in the mist.”

Azula rolls her eyes, she should have seen the squabble coming, bored as they all were. As their bickering progresses continued, Azula studies the water with a closer eye. A sandy cloud beneath the water seems to swirl as though more dust is being kicked up. Azula reaches for her camera. The other two are paying her no mind, heavily engrossed in their argument.

Whatever is responsible for the peculiar motion darts deeper into the water, where a visual is even harder to come by. For a long moment the water is still save for the bobbing of their boat, it puts an instinctive pounding in Azula’s heart. The underwater cloud disperses revealing a coiled indent in the sand. Azula snaps a quick picture before very softly calling, "Zuko."

"It ain't too rainy, ye just be a weakling, lad." Zhao declares boldly.

"Alright, you tell me what you see out there." Zuko points at an extraordinarily dense patch of fog.

A few feet ahead the water churns and splits. What little light that is able to peirce through the mist, glints off of whatever is emerging. "Zuko." Azula repeats with a hint more urgency, but not enough concern to put her camera down. This could be her one chance to get the perfect snapshot, to provide definitive proof…

She can earn them a very stable income.

"Ah ken see a buncha trees." Zhao interrupts her thoughts.

"Those aren't trees they're large rocks."

"They're trees, ye arse."

The creature begins to rise, slowly and gracefully, its motions tantalizing Azula. With a grin, she takes another picture and another just in case she somehow managed to miss her first shot. From what she can see in the gloomy half-light, the creature is obsidian black in color with a green sheen when the light hits it just right. And with, as she perceives, a smooth texture. She thinks that it is more akin to dolphin skin than fish scales. It could probably pass for an eel if it weren’t so massive and hadn’t it such an impressive maw. "Zuzu” She tries again and with more volume. “I think that you’ll care more about this than winning your petty…”

Zuko threw his hands into the air again, "The sun could be beaming red-hot into my eye sockets, I'd still be have better luck sighting Nessie than I do right now!"

By now, Nessie has been well and roused by their dispute. Her slender neck rises completely from the water. Azula can faintly make out what looks like a dorsal fin. The creature opens its mouth to reveal something akin to a set of shark teeth. Geniuine concern begins to set in and Azula wonders if she has been mistaken in think that Nessie is a more demure and friendly beast.

The fog curls ominously around the creature’s long neck. With a half satisfied and half horrified expression, Azula takes her magazine quality shot. To Zuko she hollars at full volume, “you'll have a better chance of sighting her if you turn around and look!"

Zhao spares her only an uncarring backwards glance, "Eh…what's the lass fussin' aboot?"

In one final display of immaturity, Zuko looks right at the sea monster and says pointedly to Zhao, "I don't know I can't see it through the mist." Azula has to admire that reckless brazeness of it all. She rolls her eyes as Nessie surges.

Ever an oppertuinist she smugly remarks, "I told you that I'd need it eventually."

“Really, you want to do this now?” Zuko grumbles.

“You and Zhao blew me off for petty debates.” Azula shrugs as Nessie slams into their boat. Azula stumbles and clutches her camera protectivly.

"Lassie, get yer priorities taegether." Zhao remarks.

The boat rocks with the collision of the beast's body and sea-sickness sets in. Upon gazing at a decently large dent in the ship’s steel haul, Azula recalls that swimming is not her strong suit.

"Still don't want to kill it?" Zuko asks hopefully.

Oddly, she doesn’t. She frowns in concentration as she fights to get the boat’s engine whirring again. Unlike herself, Zhao didn't seem to have come all that prepared for this endeavor. She looks at the dashboard. "You didn't happen to bring any extra fuel did you?"

"Int it much left, but Ah goat some." Zhao rummages through his belongings.

"Hurry up and find it!" Zuko grimaces as the Loch Ness Monster lands a third strike. Zuko, despite Azula’s protests, takes hold of his gun again and cocks it. He ignored her outrage and took aim, firing a shot at the patch of water wherein Nessie had been last spotted.

"You're just going to make her angry." Azula cautions. "We won't stand a chance then."

"If I hit the right spot…" Zuko starts.

"We're not killing it!" Azula argues again.

"It'll kill us."

She can’t quite refute that line of reasoning other than pointing out that they had picked a fight in Nessie's territory. Regardless, Azula very much wants to escape with her life and her camera. Reluctantly she releases her hold on Zuko’s arm.

He steadied his gun once more only to have his nearly perfect alignment stolen by another blow. This time the boat overturns. The option to right it once more is stolen by Nessie's stubby but powerful tail coming down on it with a vengeance.

"Ah shite." Zhao yells as he finds himself dipping beneath the waves.

"Shut up and swim." Azula instructs. For her it is easier said than done with the extra weight of her camera. But she'll be damned if she lets their efforts go completely to waste. She scans, with a swelling sense of panic, the water for a chunk of the boat or any large sea debris. Some distance down the lake she spies a fairly large log. All she has to do was make it there.

She is about to vocalize her plan upon realizing that this seems to be a case of every man to himself, for Zuko and Zhao are a good many strokes ahead of her. She doesn’t think that they mean to leave her behind; she has an athletic history, why would they fret over her? Even if such isn’t the case, neither of the pair pay any mind to each other either. With nothing else to do, and a sea monster hot on her trail, she takes a deep breath and pushed herself through the water as fast as she could muster. She is distressed to find, that she isn’t fast at all between the camera and the bagginess of her clothing. Azula curses to herself, her belly tying itself in knots as the gravity of the situation begins to settle in.

She tries to gauge the distance between herself and the shoreline.

It was so far…

So far and she knows damn well that she can’t swim. She shudders as Nessie draws nearer. They have already lost their parents to these creatures. She doesn’t want to die. Not like this, not helplessly treading water. She tries to kick herself forward but the motions are so foreign to her. Her body slips beneath the surface and she finds herself truly hoping that Nessie would devour her. It seems less agonizing than suffocating. Less dismal than sinking to the bottom of the loch, water logged and gathering barnacles.

.oOo.

Zuko is panting furiously panting heavily by the time he reaches the shore. His limbs are completely spent and his energy terribly depleted. He'd put so much time into this trip and will gain nothing from it, and with the world just as infested as it has ever been. The famous Loch Ness will still plague the waters a hazardously as before. He slams his fist into the sand. What kind of hunters are they if they can’t even take down one beast.

One of a lower threat level at that.

"Laddy, Ah don't see yer sister anywhere." Zhao interrupts his furious thoughts.

Zuko bolts upright and scans the beach for himself. "She's here, she has to be." He scrambles to his feet and screams her name, only to have it echo back it him. "Azula!" He shouts again. The world around him is so terribly quiet. Even Zhao has nothing to say.

Zuko balls his hands. He can’t lose her too. At times she is downright dreadful to work with, controlling and condescending. But he can’t lose her. He can’t let the supernatural claim any more of his family.

But the loneliness of the beach tells him that he already has.

The rain is falling in sheets now, even if he tries to make out her tiny form, he doesn’t have much hope of spotting it.

"Ah think we should gather a search party, aye?"

"That's not going to do any good." Zuko mumbles. "Not in this weather." It’ll be too late by the time it clears. He doesn’t think he can handle seeing her body anyhow. She looks enough like their mother to hurt him twice over.

This time Zhao doesn’t argue. "If ye wanna stand 'ere n wait then ye do that. Ah am gaun tae get some help."

Zuko supposes that he should thank the man. Instead he stares blankly at the thrashing water. A ways off, he can swear that he is able to make out the silhouette of his foe. A dark shape drawing ever closer and this time he doesn’t have his gun. Much like Azula, that seems to be lost to the sea. Yet the sheer force of his anger roots him in place—somehow, he'll avenge his sister, he’ll die doing so.

Death doesn’t seem so bad with his mother dead and his father missing. And with his sister so freshly claimed. Even still, he can practically hear her making an commanding him to stand down and let Nessie off easy.

Time crawls slowly. Nessie languidly coasts along with no sense of urgency, none the wiser to the fury she was heading towards.

Zuko can see her with more clarity now, the creature that has haunted the loch for so long. She is every bit horrifying as the locals had warned. Those eyes, large and glassy, bare into him. Fully aware of the folly it is, he takes a sizable rock in his hand. Before he can throw his rudimentary weapon, Nessie bows her head.

As if it were some mundane, every day occurrence, Azula leaps off of the creature. She looks battered, her lip bleeds at its corner. “Azula.” He whispers.

She gives him a small wave, she leans against the monster for a tad longer.

“Get away from that thing.” Zuko shouts.

Azula rolls her eyes. “This thing saved me.”

“She wouldn’t have had to if she hadn’t attacked us in the first place.”

“Honestly, Zuzu, we drove a noisy boat into the middle of the loch and began screaming and yelling…” She trails off. “Personally, I wouldn’t take kindly to someone kicking our hotell door in and causing a scene.” She runs her hand over the monster’s hide.

“That thing is…”

She cuts him off. “If it is like the creature that killed mother, then I’d be dead already.” To drive her point home, she begins stroking its snout. He cringes all over as her hand nears its mouth. She goes much too far to prove herself correct. The sea monster nudges Azula’s forehead, throwing off balance. And with a rather great sound and a surprising speed, darts back towards the cloudier parts of the loch.

With a cocky grin, Azula holds up her camera. "I still have the pictures too."

Zuko sighs, unsure if he is impressed or furious that she had managed to hang onto the camera. “So?”

Azula shrugs. “I don’t think that I will release them.”

"What do you mean you aren’t going to release them?" Zuko roars. "You went through all of that trouble to protect the damn camera and you're not going to release the photos?"

"I'm glad you're okay too, Zu-Zu." Azula waves him off. "No, I won't. None of the clearer shots anyhow. She doesn't need more people like you going after her. If they get real proof, they will go after her.”

"So what you’re trying to say is that this trip was pointless?" Zuko asks. All the same, he is grateful to be having this argument with her rather than crying over her lifeless corpse.

"Our hunts don't always have to have a point.” Azula pauses. “Not everything has a point, sometimes things just are." She shrugs. "But if it makes you feel better, no, it’s not completely pointless. I have a few decent shots, they're of better quality than most of shots of Nessie. I'll sell those."

Zuko sighs as things fully settle in. "I guess it doesn't matter right? As long as you're okay.” He has his arms around her before he realizes what he is doing. Try as she may, she isn’t able to evade his fluff and sappiness this time. “I’m also glad that I’ll never have to see Zhao again."

"I don't know about that last thing, Zu-Zu. He told me that he'd be interested in joining our duo."

"He what? That's not the truth. Please tell me that, that's not the truth."

"I don't know, I think it would be interesting to have him tagging along with us. I'd love to hear what he'd say if he came face to face with a some of the nastier beings.”

“He is not joining our team.” Zuko says firmly, he for one, could do without the visual. "I supposed we should catch up to him though. Before he gets everyone and their long dead ancestors to go looking for you."

"I don't know, I think that I might be fine with the attention." Azula smirked. She slings her camera case over her shoulder and follows Zuko up the beach.

.oOo.

She is wiped and aching up and down and wants to do nothing other than return to their hotel room. But Zuko insists on stopping for a bite to eat. She supposes that she is rather hungry too so she lets him have his way. Smelling of dirty lake water and drenched to her very soul, Azula sits in the booth and goes through her pictures. She feels a sense of pride, she has done very well this time around. They have all come out so clear and unmistakable. For a moment, she forgets about her discomforts and her faintly burning lungs. “They’re perfect Zuzu, look at them.”

He looks up from his coffee. “Yeah that one is pretty nice. But which ones are you submitting?”

Azula scrolls through the camera’s library and shows him a few. The ones that are somewhat blurry, but still distinguishable. “They’re clear enough to get attention but blurry enough to leave room for debate.”

Zuko nods.

“Aye lass, laddie.” Zhao greets.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Zuko scowls.

“I told you that he wants to join us.”

“Do Ah need tae submit an application?” He asks.

“Yes.” Zuko answers as Azula asks, “can you fire a gun?”

“Ah ken, very well, lass.”

“Are you any good at running?”

“Ah used tae be on the track team.”

“Are you easily frightened.”

He shakes his head no.

“Hired.”

“What!?” Zuko spits his coffee back into his cup. “No. No way.”

“I think that we can use an extra hand.” Azula shrugs. “Especially if we’re actually going to start taking the hunting aspect more seriously.” For the longest time they have been going back and forth trying to decide if they should take on higher risk cryptids.

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. “We can’t afford…”

“Ah ken pay fer meself.” Zhao cut in. “Ah ken even take my own car.”

On a normal day, she would have a business card to hand the man, but those are floating at the bottom of Loch Ness. Instead she scrawls her number onto a napkin. “We’ll be in town for a few more days, until uncle finds us a new job.”

.oOo.

Zuko watches his sister pick through a pile of sheets, newspaper clippings, headline printouts, and marked up maps that she has spread out on the floor. She has a pen dangling from her mouth as she narrows her eyes in concentration.

She takes the pen from her mouth to check off the box next to, ‘track Nessie’. He follows her gaze down the list.

“Uncle has a lot of options for us this time around, which one do you want to go for?” She asks as she riffles through a few of the printouts before holding them out to him.

Zuko picks his way through them and he knows that she knows what he is going to say. “I want to track the wendigo. What do you want to do?”

Azula peers at the marked map. Just as well as she knows of his goals, Zuko knows that she is trying to decide which being will bring them closer to where they’d last heard from their father. Evidently, that puts their choices in alignment for once.

Looking over Iroh’s reports she mutters. “I’ll book a flight to Canada.” He can see on her face that she doesn’t like it. She isn’t any more fond of the cold than he is. ��In the man time,” she holds out a small sum of cash, “be a dear and get us some winter wear.”

She gives the notes another scan. “From the looks of it Canada has quite a few creatures out and about this autumn. We can make a few side stops along the way.”

#Avatar #Azula #Zuko #Iroh #Fanfiction #Cryptid #Zhao

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lies · 6 years ago

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Oy. Tumblr.

@echojar, I started answering your ask about what I’m using for bird photography, saved it as a draft, and now Tumblr has seen fit to send it... somewhere. Not sure where. Anyway, it’s gone.

So this is your response, unfortunately no longer including your actual ask. After a cut to spare dashboards b/c tl;dr.

Back in September 2018 I bought a camera to use for birdwatching. It was a Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ80 (link is to Amazon, which is where I bought it). It looks like this:

It’s a “bridge” camera, in the sense that it’s meant to fill the market niche between camera phones (which have mostly replaced compact digital cameras) and high-end DSLRs with detachable lenses, which take better pictures but are also much more expensive.

The FZ80 cost just under $300. I also bought a faster, larger-capacity memory card ($14), and an extra battery with an external charger ($24). I’m very happy with all of them.

The FZ80 has a good reputation among birdwatchers; I’ve run into several other local obsessives who use one. Among bridge cameras it’s optimized for telephoto work, with a zoom lens that goes to the equivalent of about 60X and image stabilization that does a decent job of keeping things steady even though I’m taking pictures handheld.

These days when I go birdwatching I always bring binoculars, phone (for eBird and field guide apps), and the camera. It’s light enough that I don’t mind bringing it along all the time. I usually keep it in a fanny pack, but when I’m in-progress on picture-taking I’ll hang it from my neck and lace it through the right side of the binoculars’ shoulder harness, such that the camera ends up hanging next to the binoculars but (mostly) doesn’t bump into them, and I can raise either one as needed. It looks super goofy, but I crossed that bridge a while ago and these days I just tell myself to try not to think about it.

I carry the spotting scope and tripod less frequently now that I have the camera. The camera isn’t a complete replacement for the spotting scope; the hierarchy of how well I can see details on a distant bird probably goes like this, from low to high:

naked eye

camera, zoomed, looking through the viewfinder (I almost never take pictures looking at the camera’s larger LCD screen)

binoculars

camera, zoomed, reviewing a photo on the LCD screen after taking it

looking through the spotting scope

camera, zoomed, looking at the photo on my computer screen at home

But the spotting scope with tripod is a lot heavier and more cumbersome. I don’t mind carrying it so much, but I really dislike the extra lag time it adds when I see a bird and want to look at it through binoculars, but I can’t get on the bird quickly because I have to set the spotting scope down first. So these days I bring the spotting scope for things like wetlands, sea watches, or stationary hawk watches, but otherwise I leave it at home. If I see a distant bird that’s too small to identify in the binoculars I can take a quick photo and check it out on the back of the camera.

(Oh, and I also bring the spotting scope when I’m docenting or leading a bird walk, because I can point the scope at a bird and let people take turns looking through it.)

But back to the camera. I’m not very experienced (at all) at photography, so there's been a steep learning curve. I’ve ended up with the following approaches that I use most of the time:

If I’m shooting in poor light, or trying to get as pretty a shot as I can, or just generally futzing around I’ll usually shoot in “P” (Program) mode where the camera picks the shutter speed and ISO setting.

If I’m trying to shoot birds in flight (like at a hawk watch), or just generally when I’m being more serious, I’ll switch to S (”Shutter Speed”) mode and set the speed to to around 1/800, or sometimes faster, because I find that I have better odds of getting a sharp, identifiable image if I crank up the speed, even though that tends to give me higher ISO settings and correspondingly noisier/grainier images.

There’s been a lot of trial and error involved. For example, in the first week I had the camera I took this photo of a Blackpoll Warbler (PJH represent):

I shot that in S mode with the speed set to 1/500, because I figured that’s what I’d need to do to freeze the motion of a fast-moving warbler. Helpful birder and experienced photographer Dika, though, pointed out to me that in the early-morning light I was shooting in, that caused the camera to crank the ISO up to 3200, resulting in a grainy image. If I’d just shot in P mode I would have had a slower shutter speed, but it turns out that probably would have been fine for freezing motion and I would have benefited from the lower ISO setting.

In good light (e.g., a sunny day with the sun behind me and the bird well-illuminated) that’s pretty much all I worry about. But usually the light is poor, or the bird is backlit or in shadow, or something else is making things difficult. If I were just taking pretty pictures I’d write those situations off. But since I’m more interested in documenting what I’m seeing I’ll often try to make those situations work by setting the f-stop up or down to get the exposure on the bird as good as I can. Again, a lot of trial and error. I can’t imagine what it was like to try to do this back in the day when each shot wasn’t essentially free and you couldn’t see the result right away.

Oh: speaking of: I almost always shoot in “burst” mode, where I hold the shutter button down and just go snap-snap-snap-snap-snap as fast as the camera can write to the card. Later I throw away 99% of the shots for the few where the bird is looking the right way and the light is glinting on its eyeball just right and all that. With the 32G replacement memory card I bought I can store several thousand pictures; there’s only been a few times when I’ve been out so long that I’ve needed to take a break to purge rejects to make more room.

And focus. More than any other technical aspect of getting the shot, I worry about focus. Especially in the early days I had a lot of otherwise-decent shots that were fuzzy. Grr.

For birds in foliage or on the ground I use the autofocus mode where the AF sensor is just a tiny little box in the center of the screen, then do my best to keep that dot on the bird’s eye. Or, if the bird is big and/or close such that it fills a lot of the frame and I want to actually compose the shot as I’m shooting it rather than later while cropping, I’ll use the separate button on the camera back that lets me set and lock the focus while I’ve got the little AF spot on the bird’s eye, then hold the focus while I pan to whatever I want the actual shot to look like before shooting.

For birds in flight, like at a hawk watch, I can’t keep that little AF spot on the bird, so I switch to the mode where the AF area is a big diamond shape that takes up about half the field of view. When I see the bird in the air I’ll usually go first to binoculars to try to ID it, and then switch to the camera. I’ll point the lens in the general direction of the bird with just a moderate amount of zoom, then gradually zoom in trying to pick out the bird in the viewfinder as I magnify. Hopefully I eventually pick up the bird, then do my best to keep the bird centered, or at least in the frame somewhere, as I crank up the zoom all the way and start shooting. In the early days I’d practice on anything (clouds, airplanes, crows, red-tails); now I’ve got the technique down to where I can save it for when I see something I really want to get a shot of.

One technique that’s definitely helped is learning to adjust the camera controls without looking. When I’ve only got a second or two to try to get an identifiable shot I really don’t want to have to look at the camera.

My usual workflow when I get home is to sit down with the camera in my lap and go through the whole set, punching the button to mark the good ones as “Favorites”. Then I delete all except for those favorites and transfer them to my computer. After that I wipe the rest of the photos from the camera, swap out the battery and put the depleted one in the charger, and I’m ready to take more photos.

On the computer I’ll go through the photos and pick the best one of each bird (or multiple photos for a tricky ID or a rarity), and upload them to eBird. It’s been super-helpful for learning; there’s nothing like posting a misidentified bird to eBird with an accompanying photo to get a lesson not only on birds, but also on cognitive bias and hubris.

I take fewer shots these days than I did when I first got the camera, but I still take a lot.

Whew. Nothing like a brain dump of something I’ve been obsessing about to generate a shocking amount of verbal spew.

#birds #photography #echojar

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armory-rasa · 6 years ago

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Long tutorial time: How to Take Product Photos That Don’t Suck

If you’re trying to sell your handcrafted work online, then your photos matter so much -- I daresay almost more than the work itself.

“Upcycled” items that are literal trash (but attractively photographed!) can sucker people into paying actual money for them. And on the flip side, the best-quality leatherwork in the world is going to look dubious af when the product shots were obviously taken in someone’s kitchen, lit by fluorescent lights and a camera flash.

You will get more sales and you will be able to charge more for your work if you have professional-looking product photos -- not fair, maybe, but true. So today I am going to show you how to create decent-looking stock photos, ie, a picture of just the thing itself on a backdrop.

(The cat is unrelated -- clickbait, really.)

I’ll admit upfront that I am very, very far from being a photography expert, and I'm sure an expert could do better than me, but I can't afford an expert and probably neither can you. And this isn’t about the mechanics anyway, it’s about the setup, and just making these small changes can seriously up your game.

Step one: camera

Unless you've already got a good camera, your best bet is going to be a smartphone -- and make no mistake, smartphones are a close second, not a distant one. Modern smartphones are phenomenal, they’re far better than even slightly-dated digital cameras. They can't get you the soft-focus background that an actual, professional camera can (the lens simply isn't long enough), but you can approximate that effect with photoshop if you want to, and the set-up I'm demonstrating here doesn't need a fuzzed background anyway.

The only critical feature is that your camera can take sharp, in-focus pictures.

If you don't have a good smartphone, find a friend who does and beg/wheedle/blackmail/bully them into letting you use it for a bit.

Honestly, I've got a good camera, and half the time I still wind up using my phone because I’m too lazy to bust it out.

Step two: backdrop

There are a lot of artistic things you can do if you're taking pictures of a product in situ -- action shots, still lifes, pictures of it worn by models -- and all that will help your customers visualize themselves using the item, but it's also vital to have pictures of JUST the thing, pictures that cleanly and clearly show exactly what the customer is going to be receiving in exchange for the money they throw at you -- aka stock photos.

And for stock photos, you don't want to get creative with your background. In fact, if you can use the same background for many/most of your images, it will contribute to an attractive, coherent look for your shop. That means finding a neutral-toned backdrop that will work with any color item you put on top of it -- white, black, grey, beige, basically.

White can mean a lightbox...

(And there are a million tutorials online for how to rig up your own DIY lightbox)

...or another popular alternative is a white table pushed up against a white wall; the seam between the two is visible, but discreet enough that the eye glides right over it.

Black, you can do with cleverdick manipulation of the settings on an expensive camera, or you can find a non-reflective black backdrop -- which is easier said than done. Fine, dense, matte black velvet (think theatre curtains) is the go-to black backdrop, just make sure you run a lint roller over it before taking pics.

Any other color is going to depend on the backdrop you choose -- I personally have had excellent luck with some warm-grey velvet (?) yardage that I picked up for pennies at a goodwill a million years ago. (I’m not sure what it is -- it has the pile of velvet, but shorter?) I didn’t buy it for that purpose, but it’s since proven to be an incredibly versatile backdrop, and I’ve taken to using it for everything:

etc.

And even if you’re not stumbling onto a super-good-deal at goodwill, a yard or two of your chosen fabric will generally do you fine.

What I don’t recommend is:

- shiny fabric (anything shiny is overall more difficult to photograph -- and shiny spots will draw attention to themselves, rather than your product)

- vivid colors (limits what color items you can display on it; will often clash if the item is close-but-not-quite-the-same color (and what looks fine to your eye may not look fine on film); can distract from the item you’re showcasing)

- patterns (again, distracts from the centerpiece; draws attention to the background; moreover, is hell to clone-brush)

Here is all three of them being the perfect storm of not-a-good-stock-photo:

Which is not to say you can’t do something artistic with it...

...but it’s not very versatile, and it’s not exactly “stock photo” anymore.

One of the reasons I really really like velvet for a backdrop is that there’s nothing in the world easier to clone brush. Which happens, for instance, if I get my roll of photos transferred to the computer and realize there’s some lint I neglected to brush off, or if I was too lazy to iron my backdrop so it’s got wrinkles/creases in it, or if the angle I had to take the photograph from clipped the edge of the backdrop--

--it is super fuckin’ easy to clone all that out. (It also takes the burn tool really well, to darken the edges and point the viewer’s attention toward the middle of the picture, see above.)

Other backdrops that can work are fur (or faux fur):

The great outdoors: mulch, leaves, dirt, sand, etc--

(That was taken at my shitty old apartment complex, so I had to carefully remove the cigarette butts from the shot first. -_-)

(I admit I’ve mostly stopped using these kind of outdoor backdrops -- they’re harder to pull off than wood/concrete/fabric -- but in the hands of someone with an eye for composition, they can definitely be used to good effect, so I’m including them here anyway. You just want to make sure that the background isn’t distracting from the item, which you can sometimes do in post by darkening/fuzzing the background relative to the focal object.)

Concrete:

And wood:

In short, there are many things that are (1) unobtrusive and (2) neutral-colored that will make excellent backdrops.

Professional photography backdrops (essentially, the velvet I have) are close to true neutral, not affecting the “feel” of the picture at all, and there are tons of tutorials online to make your own DIY photography backdrops.

Conversely, you can also use a specific backdrop to help create the mood you want to convey for the piece -- concrete for gritty and urban; fur to evoke a rich and sumptuous feeling (or a primitive one, depending on what you’re selling); wood or rough-spun cloth for something rustic; dirt and leaves to take it back to nature.

I’m not going to say the sky’s the limit, because we’re talking stock photos not ARRRRT!!, you gotta rein it in a bit, but you do have a lot of options -- anything that’s not going to clash with the mood or distract from your product.

Step three: lighting

USE THE FUCKING SUN.

Don’t ever, ever use a flash for product photography, seriously, are you some kind of SAVAGE?

Cardinal sin right there; go straight to hell, do not pass go, etc. Lighting like that, your product looks like it’s drunk at a frat party.

Moreover, unless you are a wildly over-funded professional, and possibly not even then, there is no light source superior to the sun. Sure, if you finish your project at midnight and can’t wait to share it, take some snapshots in your shitty studio light and send them to your friends--

--but do not make that your product listing photo. You can do so much better.

(And notice the color difference too -- natural light tends to be much better at capturing color that is true-to-life. The second picture is far more accurate to the actual item.)

That said, direct sunlight is a HELL NO go. The shadows it casts are way too stark, and details can get lost because the camera has trouble navigating the gap between the super-dark parts of the picture and the super-bright parts.

And it turned out that I’d never bothered to keep any of the photos I took in direct sunlight (because they sucked), so for the purposes of this tutorial, I had to take a couple of my WIPs outside and go make some.

Direct sunlight:

The glare and the obvious shadows make these photos look strikingly amateurish. It draws attention to the background, highlights the fact that the bracers are just sitting in some lame dead grass. These photos look like someone finished making the bracer, carried it ten feet out into their backyard, and snapped a picture.

Which, yeah, is what we’re doing, but it doesn’t have to look it.

By contrast, indirect sunlight, when I move it four feet over into the shade of the house:

Right away, the diffused light (sort of soft-focus?) is more in line with what you see in professional photos. They still need editing before they’d be ready to roll out -- fiddling with contrast/saturation/white balance; clone-brushing out some of the distracting elements in the background; darker shading around the frame to center attention on the product -- but they have the potential to be decent photos now, instead of being critically flawed from the get-go.

When you’re using sunlight as your source, you’re usually going to be setting up either outside in the shade, or inside next to a window.

The context for some of these shots can also be hilariously un-sexy when you zoom out:

Sunlight tends to be much better at retaining the textural details of your work too, because more light means your camera can take a much quicker shot (low light = camera compensates by leaving the lens open longer to collect more light = blur).

If you want to really capture the fine texture of an item, natural light coming from one side (like through a window) is perfect, because of the shadows it casts:

On that note: if you’re trying to use a window as your light source, you may have trouble with the far side of the object being completely lost in darkness:

Which can be artistic, but doesn’t make for a great stock photo.

The solution is not to use another light source, but to use a reflector -- my go-to is white foam-core posterboard:

Which can fill in the shadows that are obscuring parts of your work:

Mirrors or foil can work for this too, but they tend to cast stark/uneven light, whereas the white board diffuses it, and diffusion is pretty much always what you want.

On the subject of diffusion: overcast days are your BEST FRIEND. They basically turn the whole sky into a lightbox for you. You get soft, beautiful light from all directions, muted enough to reduce glare, but there’s still more than enough light to keep your camera happy and your details sharp.

(Man I wish there were more clouds where I lived.)

Here’s an interesting little contrast -- this one was taken on a sunny day, but in the shadow of my house, using a white reflector to move light around:

And then the very next day we had rain, and I was like, hell yeah, and took it outside for more pics:

Obviously both have had the contrast increased to bring out the details, but the mood difference between the two is 100% the weather.

And that is FAR from everything there is to say on the subject of photography lighting, but for the purposes of amateur product photography, those are the important bits.

TL;DR:

- Natural light

- Diffused light

Step 4: post-production

This is also not something I’m an expert in, I’ve learned just enough to get by and called it good enough. (It’s why I lean on overcast days whenever I can, because it eliminates a lot of the lighting problems that I don’t know how to fix in post.)

But here are some of the things that you will find yourself needing to know, and should be looking up how-to’s on for your graphics editor of choice:

White balance/saturation

Light comes in different colors, but the human eye automatically compensates for it, so often times something looks good to your eyes, but then comes out way funky on film.

Indoor lighting tends to be yellow-hued, because that’s what feels warm and comfortable to humans, but it looks nasty in photographs:

Natural light tends to be white (which is why it gives you more accurate colors), getting more blueish as it heads toward evening:

You can compensate for both by adjusting the white balance, in which the program figures out what white is supposed to look like, and then calibrates all the other colors in the picture accordingly.

Brightness/contrast

Is it bright enough to see the details? Is the contrast high enough to make the details POP, instead of blending together into a muddle?

You can apply brightness/contrast adjustments to the full image, and then (if necessary) go in by hand with the burn/dodge tool (brightness up/brightness down) and add extra highlights.

(Don’t go overboard on this though -- this isn't art, this is a product photo, and if you take it too far from the real object, you are lying in your advertising.)

Blur/sharpen

Are the focal points sharp? Sharp areas of an image are what draws the eye, so if your photos are blurry, they’re no good and there’s no fixing them -- grab your camera and go take some more.

Is your background less sharp than the foreground? A too-sharp background will distract from the central point, so sometimes you can put a very subtle blur on it to trick the eye into ignoring it. (Dropping the brightness and the contrast are also both ways to make the background less eye-catching.)

Clone brush

Basically a mini copy-paste tool, you grab parts of the image and copy it onto other parts. This is good for tidying up your background -- coloring in corners that your backdrop didn’t cover, or removing distracting irregularities.

Again, this is one to be used sparingly, because this is product photography, it needs to be accurate, not idealized. You don’t get to scrub off the imperfections and make it look like you’re better at [whatever] than you are.

The only time I consider it acceptable to use the clone brush tool on the actual product is for editing out flaws in the leather itself. It’s a stock photo; customers are not going to be getting the exact item shown in the photo. I’ll be making a new one for them, one that’s not going to have those exact flaws. (It’ll have excitingly new and different flaws! Such is the nature of organic materials.)

Edge gradients

A subtle shadow around the edge of your picture brings the whole thing together, makes the background recede a bit, and directs the eye toward the centerpiece. Too heavy a hand with this will still look nice, but more staged; it alerts the viewer that you’ve been photoshopping and kills the “I woke up like this~” illusion.

Relatively natural:

Dramatic!

Watermarking

You want people to be able to find their way back to you when your work inevitably gets cross-posted without the source (fuck you in the face, pinterest), so it’s not enough to put your initials or abstract logo or illegible signature on it, you need your google-able name or company name.

At the same time, people have been known to crop out (or clone-brush out) watermarks that are big and tacky, so it’s in your best interests to make your watermark tasteful and inoffensive. (Also: ugly watermarks just bring down your whole image, seriously.)

Some of the pictures above are old enough that they’re sporting my older & less professional-looking watermarks, but what I use at the moment is this:

(But, y’know, smaller.)

Best way to do watermarks is usually to create another layer over your image and blend the two. For dark logo/light background, the settings for the new layer are 1) blend mode: multiply, 2) opacity: 85% (adjust as needed). For light logo/dark background, the blend mode is probably going to be “soft light.” And then just paste your logo in the corner of the new layer -- the blend mode means your logo doesn’t have to be transparent, the program just ignores the parts that are lighter/darker than the background.

And that, I believe, is the end. o_O I had no idea I had so many opinions on the subject of product photography.

Again -- I’m not a pro. I don’t know how to use 99% of my camera settings or 80% of my graphics program. (For fuck’s sake, my go-to graphics editor is the bootleg version of Paintshop Pro that I acquired in 1997.) This post represents the sum total of my knowledge on the subject.

But it just goes to show that you can do a lot with only a little, and that your composition and sense of aesthetics are far more important than what gear you’ve got.

#y'all should reblog this #because there are people who NEED TO SEE THIS #much obliged #gremble has opinions #tutorial #photography #diy #making this yo business #long-form tutorial

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andmaybegayer · 3 years ago

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I require cheap bird photography camera recommendations. Do you have suggestions? Its winter so good low light performance is desirable

Your best bet for a fast budget zoom camera is probably the Panasonic FZ300 which features most notably a continuous F2.8 speed across the entire zoom range. I don't know that kind of deal with the devil that optics engineer made, but we benefit from it. It's on the upper end of my price suggestions though, at $500 new, although it's regularly discounted to $400 now and can be found second hand for as low as $350. Panasonics are rightfully popular with wildlife photo types and this one has some really useful semi-pro features like a hotshoe and EVF at the cost.

If that's out of your budget, the other camera company superzooms will probably have you covered. The Canon SX740 HS is good, but unless you need the 4k video features you can save a buck with the older SX730 or SX720, which is what I have. Very handy compact cameras and I like Canon's sensor colours, but trades off speed for compactness. The 740 is about $400, used for $300, and the 720 and 730 can be found used or on clearance for about $175-250 if you look around.

If you want something bigger but still affordable, I'd say probably either a Canon, Sony or Nikon bridge camera. For Canon that's the SX540 and it's predecessors, the SX530 and SX520. They're good cameras with a lot of zoom, although they start to lose image quality at the very top end. Bigger and bulkier but with a couple points of extra lens speed. Similar story as with the 740, you can save a buck with the older ones without losing much in the way of image quality, although the 540 is noticeably faster than the 530 and 520. The 540 will run you about $350 with the older ones coming in around $200.

I wish Sony would put their outstanding low light sensor tech in some more affordable bodies, but that's business for you. The RX bridge cameras are far too expensive, well over $1000, so you're stuck with noisier and less well performing HX cameras. I don't know enough about these ones to make a recommendation.

My mother uses a Nikon P610 and it's pretty good, with the only real gripe I have being the poor contrast on the viewfinder and main screen. Lots of zoom, decent stabilization. You can get that for about $250, and it's successor the B600 looks to be a good deal around $300

That Panasonic is most impressive for having such a ludicrously fast lens in a bridge camera, but any of these will do fine well into sunset hours.

#cameras #photography #ask #binary-bluejay

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oppof11-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Oppo f11 pro best mobile review 2019

A Smartphone companies try to maximize screen size it's hard to find phones without screen cutouts for the selfie cam. But there are some more creative options making their way under the mid-range scene and will for gsm marina and this is an Oppo f11 pro review.

The Oppo F 11 Pro comes with a stunning gradient finish ours goes from blue to black to purple and though it is made of plastic. It does look like glass the phone seems pretty durable and doesn't feel cheap even though the plastic but of course at this price point waterproofing is a bit much to ask for it.

Probably wouldn't even be possible either thanks to one of the f11 pros key features the motorized pop-up selfie cam it hides inside the body and comes out when you need it. It isn't slow, but we've seen faster on other phones OBO did an excellent job with the aesthetics here though this healthy cam is directly in the center in line with the rear camera bump it all looks symmetrical and satisfying.

And since the crack is centered the phone doesn't wobble much on a table, of course, you could slap on the included case if you want the most stability. Thanks to the hidden selfie cam the Oppo F 11 pro's big six point five three-inch display has minimal bezels and is not free, unlike the regular f11.

What are the best updates oppo f11 pro?

It's an IPS LCD with a 1080p resolution here you get a great full-screen experience with pretty deep blacks and at 400 PPI content looks crisp. Color accuracy is just average by default, but you can't improve it by turning the color slider to warm in settings maximum brightness sits at 414 it's, and there's no boost.battery life really awesome and you can use whatsapp web perfectly with this model, so download whatsapp apk today to this model if you already bought.

If you're in auto mode is OK for the class though, and sunlit legibility is excellent. Here you can unlock the f11 Pro with the fingerprint reader located on the back it's always on and very fast, and of course, you can open your phone using face unlock.

It's a bit less secure, but it's an excuse to play around with a selfie cam and impress people the Oppo F 11 pro has one loudspeaker at the bottom it posted a score of very good in our loudness test. And quality is excellent with a rich and deep sound plugging in headphones through the 3.5-millimeter jack degrades the stereo quality quite a lot and loudness is only average.

Oppo f 11 storage and chipset

There is FM radio though you get 64 or 128 gigs of storage on the F 11 Pro. and it is expandable through the hybrid slot unfortunately Oppo is still sticking to micro USB ports on its mid-range phones instead of switching to USB see the f11 pearl runs Android 9 Pi with color OS 6 on top it looks a bit different from stock Android you can choose to store your apps in an app drawer or to keep them all on the home screen swiping to the left takes you to smart assistant panels which give you things like a calendar step tracker and a space for shortcuts and swiping from a bar on the right edge of the screen opens a space for shortcuts to there's a game space where you can store your games and change settings for performance and blocking notifications.

And the phone comes with some gesture options, and you can swipe up and hold the Siri synapse swipe from the bottom left or bottom right to go back. And swept up from the meadow to go home oppo f11pro is powered by an Helio P70 chipset neither four or six gigs of RAM. this model has amazing storage even though you not need to download music this smartphone now, because Pandora apk app now helps to listen music online.

It also has a dedicated chip for All driven tasks performance is smooth with no heating or throttling issues games run well. Especially if you take the time to tweet their settings in the game space with a four thousand milliamp-hour battery. You'd expect battery life on the F 11 Pro to be pretty good.

And you'd be right it scored an excellent endurance rating of 109 hours, not proprietary tests the phone also brings 20 watts VOC fast charging. It isn't blazing fast but decent we were able to charge from zero to 40% in 30 minutes the Oppo alpha 11 Pro comes with the dual camera setup.

Oppo f11 camera and features

There's a forty-eight megapixel F 1.8 main cam with face detection autofocus and a five megapixel one for depth sensing in portrait mode. Because of quad Bayer technology the default output of the main cam is 12 megapixels in good light shots come out excellent, there are plenty of detail high dynamic range lively and accurate colors excellent contrast.

And overall lovely processing, we did find one issue in areas of uniform colors there are noticeable patterns of noise. You can toggle on the dazzle color mode, which uses advanced image stacking to improve the dynamic range further than HDR.

It also adds some saturation to the colors, but you lose some beautiful details. If you want to shoot in 48 megapixels, you can do it. But the photos you'll get are far from impressive they're just upscaled versions of the 12-megapixel ones with no improvement in detail the images we took in portrait mode are excellent subject separation works very well.

And transitions from sharp 2d focused are quite smooth these are among the better portraits we've seen flagships included thanks to the bright F 1.8 lens regular shots in low-light come out excellent.

As well way beyond what we expected for the class, there is beautiful detail low noise levels balance highlights and excellent contrast. There's even a dedicated ultra night mode each shot takes a few seconds, but it gives you a brighter exposure and cleans up dynamic noise range is improved, and you get boosted contrast and saturation.

Final conclusion about oppo f11 pro

But you lose some fine detail onto the selfie cam it's 16 megapixels in F 2.0, and there's no auto focus here it does a decent job there are beautiful colors in particular, and dynamic range is suitable for a selfie shooter for video the f11 Pro maxes out at 1080p at 30fps even though the Helio p7 II can handle 4k videos quality is excellent. Though there's plenty of resolved detail accurate colors low noise and stereo sound recording GIS is always on, and dynamic range is average.

Thanks to the high-res sensor you can also shoot videos with two times lossless zoom and their quality are on par with a regular 1080p ones, so that's the Opel f11 Pro with this shiny package you're going to sell the chipset a large nacho screen surpassing battery life and excellent camera experience.

There are only a few things left to complain about the micro USB port is a bummer Plus this isn't the cheapest mid-range er around at around 25,000 rupees or 320 Euros that said if you're looking for a not free device the Oppo eleven pro is one of the best you can find right now.

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#oppo f11 pro #whatsapp #f11pro #wa web #gb whatsapp

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pennyfynotes · 6 years ago

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6.26.18 // 4:00pm // camera gear is expensive

part 2 in my photo series! now you know what all the buttons/settings do (ok, all the important ones), let's talk about the gear itself. if you missed the last guide, find it here. as a beginner myself, here's a little bit about different kinds of gear, what you might want to buy camera-wise, and maybe some useful accessories. under the cut! xoxo, m

a bit on cameras: you can honestly take great pictures on a phone (technology is kinda amazing), but if you want to upgrade a little...

1. mirrorless cameras (or CSC): these include models like sony, panasonic etc. maybe not the super big names when you think of cameras. unlike more traditional DSLRs, these don't have mirrors that reflect the light coming in. the light goes straight onto the camera sensor, which produces the image. Most mirrorless cameras have electronic view finders (EVFs), which basically simulate what you would see on your LCD screen (on the back of the camera), but in the view finder. This shows you exactly what you will get (ex: when you change the ISO, the view in the EVF changes accordingly). Mirrorless cameras are also a fair bit smaller than DSLRs, though they usually tend to have less battery life (in part due to the EVF). There are fewer accessories and lens selections native to mirrorless bodies, though you can get adapters to put Canon or Nikon lenses onto your mirrorless. 2. DSLR: the traditional camera with mirrors. bulkier than the mirrorless counterparts, but with better battery life and accessory variety. they are also supposed to be faster at autofocus, though some sources say the new mirrorless are catching up. (i don't have any personal experience with this so idk) DSLRs have optical viewfinders (OVFs) that show you the image the mirror is reflecting onto the sensor. this means you're not seeing a "processed" version of the image. as such, you won't get live exposure adjustments when you change ISO etc. when you first start out, it's probably a good idea to check the LCD screen to make sure you're exposing properly (i totally forgot to do this and had the ISO way up for low-light, then had decent lighting and took some super blown out photos). eventually, you'll get a better feel of what settings to use. i think the viewfinder should also have a light meter (tho i'm not 100% on this). you can also use live view on your LCD while you take shots to get a more accurate representation of the exposure. 3. crop sensors: basically your sensor is smaller. if you have a crop sensor (or APS-"some letter", for example i have an APS-C), make sure to look up the crop factor for your model. the main thing this will affect is the effective focal length you're shooting at. if you're shooting at 50mm on a sony APS-C (which has a 1.5 crop factor), you will get images that look like they were taken at 75mm on a full frame camera (more on focal length later). generally, when people refer to focal length, they'll be talking about the full frame equivalent. all lenses will be labelled with their full frame focal length. for example, a lot of people refer to the "nifty fifty" or 50mm prime lens as a pretty versatile option. if you're shooting on an APS-C, you'd want to get a 35mm lens for that same versatility. you also don’t get the same depth of field as you would on a full frame at the same aperture? (i feel like this is super disputed on the interwebs but i think its true...) at f/1.8 on a crop, your dof won’t be as shallow as on full frame. 4. full frame sensors: a 35mm lens will be a 35mm lens. the sensor is just larger. also said to have better low light performance (less noise). full frame cameras are more expensive, but i (and most of the photography community) think beginners should be just fine with a crop sensor. also, you can only use full frame lenses on full frame cameras, while you can use both full frame and crop lenses on crop sensors. crop lenses use less glass since there is less sensor to reflect onto, so if you use a crop lens on a full frame, you'll get black parts on the edges of your image since the lens didn't reflect enough light. this makes full frame lenses a little heavier/more cumbersome.

a bit on lenses:

1. focal length: a longer focal length is going to crop in your field of view. basically, i'd use a 16mm (a relatively short focal length) to take a wide landscape and i'd use a 200mm (relatively long focal length) to zoom in on my little sister dancing onstage while i shoot from the audience. 2. fstop/aperture: i talked about this in my previous post but here's a quick summary. low fstop = more light = shallow depth of field. high fstop = less light = deeper depth of field. 3. prime lens: these lenses have a fixed focal length (no zoom) and generally come in wider apertures. the wider the max aperture, the more expensive your lens is going to be. they also generally produce sharper images with less noise and force you to really think through your shots, since you have to move to change the framing. however, keep in mind you don't always necessarily have to frame your shot in camera! 4. variable aperture lens: these are zoom lenses (you can change the focal length) where the maximum aperture width changes with the focal length. for example, the lens might say 16-50mm, f3.5-5.6 (this is the sony a6000 kit lens). this means that at 16mm, the max fstop is f3.5, but it is only f5.6 when at a 50mm focal length. the zoom is helpful when you want to frame shots exactly how you might like, especially when you can't move around. 5. constant aperture lens: zoom lenses with a constant maximum aperture width. more expensive and less readily available/compatible, but you won't have to worry about the max aperture being narrower as you zoom in.

some accessories:

1. a tripod: helpful for self-portraits, long exposures or just general stabilization. as mentioned, i'd prefer to manually focus on a tripod. i have one, though i've lost the mounting plate (which is pretty cheap to replace) tho i've currently misplaced the entire tripod since i haven't used it in years. 2. microfiber cloth: your lens is going to get dirty. you'll want to clean it or you'll get spots in your images which may or not be removable in post. 3. rocket blower: again, dirt will happen. this is good to blow off big particles so you don't scratch anything while cleaning. *do not* just blow on your lens/sensor with your mouth. you might accidentally spit on it which is a nightmare. believe me, i've been there. 4. sensor cleaning kit: this generally comes with cleaning solution and swabs. super helpful for removing crap off your sensor. the cleaning solution is also great for lenses. i just put a bit on my microfiber cloth and gently rub. (you could use swabs on your lens but those are kinda expensive and single use so) 5. remote/wi-fi app: a lot of cameras now are wi-fi enabled. most camera manufacturers have apps that can allow you to use your phone as a remote. they'll also allow you to see what the camera is seeing (it might be a bit laggy) and adjust some basic settings. super helpful for self portraits or long exposures where you don't want to touch the camera. you could also buy a remote, but the apps are usually free. 6. camera strap: the ones that come with cameras are super uncomfortable. you can get slightly better ones for pretty cheap, or much nicer ones if you're so inclined. 7. camera bag: protect your camera when you travel. i actually just use a super old camera bag, but it has a little padding. just make sure your camera and/or lenses don't move around a bunch or knock around. some lenses (cough a6000 kit lens) are pretty fragile. you don't want to spend hours trying to repair one or, even worse, have to buy a new one because you didn't take proper care.

again, a fair bit of info. cameras are expensive, so definitely make sure you do your research before you shell out for one! buying used is also a good option. hope this is helpful!

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