Taken with my Sigma 70-30mm lens using spot metering at shutter priority of 1/320, without a tripod.

Divvyshot is a very promising new photo sharing site, still in beta. It’s based on public events. Members can create an event such as Macworld Expo, and other people who attended the same event can add their pictures to the event.

When I attempt to take a photo of the moon, it usually comes out as a featureless white blob, due to being overexposed. Thanks to a tip on Flickr, I discovered that the secret to taking a photo of the moon that doesn’t suck is to use spot metering rather than matrix.

With matrix metering, the camera will use both the dark sky and the bright moon to determine the exposure, which usually ends up overexposing the moon to avoid underexposing everything else. Spot metering lets you use only the moon to determine the exposure, which avoids the usual blown out appearance.

For this shot, I used my Sigma 70-300mm lens with shutter priority. Since I wasn’t using a tripod and this lens doesn’t have VR, I used a shutter speed of 1/250 with ISO 3200.

After using the lens for a few days, I’m very happy with it. For the price, it’s a great lens and a good addition for anyone who wants a higher zoom and macro capabilities. It does take some getting used to, but it’s possible to get some excellent results from it. In macro mode, you can get very sharp images with good bokeh.

Since the lens lacks vibration reduction, if you’re not using a tripod, you’ll have to use a very fast shutter speed, around 1/focal length, to avoid camera shake. I find I get the best results using shutter priority and raising the ISO if necessary. For this shot, I used a shutter speed of 1/320 and ISO 1600 at the maximum aperture, which is 5.6 at 300mm.

The focus can be very slow, so in many cases you’ll probably want to use manual focus. The macro switch can be a bit tricky – it can only be engaged at a focal length of 200mm or greater, and you can’t switch it off with the second extension (used for focus) extended. In most cases, that means you’ll have to switch to manual focus to rotate the focus ring.

Despite those limitations, there probably isn’t another lens that offers the same capabilities for under $200.

Today is Flickr’s fifth birthday! To mark the occasion, here is the very first photo I uploaded to Flickr on June 30, 2004 (I actually took that picture in 2003 with my Canon A100).

After trying iPhoto 09 for a few days, I’ve decided to go back to Aperture for several reasons. Although I like iPhoto’s faces & places feature, it’s still missing many of Apertures features. Hopefully faces & places will be added to Aperture 3.

Here are my favorite Aperture features that are missing from iPhoto:

• Aperture lets you store your photos outside of the library, even when importing from a camera. Aperture also lets you move your originals at any time after it’s been imported. I like to keep my originals on an external drive to save room. Even with my originals offline, Aperture still lets me see previews and do anything that doesn’t require a high resolution image, such as set desktop or sync with iPod or iPhone.
• Aperture gives you a lot more power & flexibility in selecting and organizing photos. You can group similar photos in a stack and view them side by side to choose the best of the group.
• Aperture supports editing plugins such as Hydra HDR, which can avoid a trip to Photoshop in many cases.
• Aperture gives more options for viewing & editing metadata, including the ability to embed a copyright notice.
• Aperture gives more layout options for viewing your photos, including thumbnails only, thumbnails plus large photo, and list view plus large photo.
• Aperture lets you maintain multiple versions of a photo as well as the original, so you can try different edits.

My copy of iLife 09 finally arrived today, two days later than it was supposed to arrive. I chose standard shipping, which turned out to be DHL via USPS. I don’t understand why Apple even bothers with DHL as the middleman. It would probably be easier, faster, and cheaper to just ship it directly via USPS.

The only application I’ve tried so far is iPhoto 09. I haven’t used iPhoto in about a year since I switched to Aperture, so most of the photos in my iPhoto library are at least a year old. With over 3000 pictures in the library, converting it to iPhoto 09 took only a few seconds. Scanning for faces took about 45 minutes.

I find that iPhoto’s face recognition is very erratic. It seems to recognize faces only if the person is facing more or less straight ahead. It often misses faces completely if someone is facing sideways.

iPhoto 09’s built-in Flickr support is pretty weak. It always creates a new photo set for every group of photos uploaded, and it doesn’t let you add keywords or a description when you upload. Thankfully, FlickrExport still works with iPhoto 09.

I still prefer Aperture for several reasons. I like being able to store the originals outside the library, so I can keep them on an external drive. iPhoto 09 still doesn’t let you move the originals after you import them, and when you import from a camera, you can only store them in the library. I also miss Aperture’s editing plugins like Hydra HDR.

On the plus side, iPhoto is a lot faster than Aperture. I find that Aperture can sometimes get painfully slow on my MacBook, even with 4GB RAM.

Until now I’ve never considered a non-Nikon lens, but after seeing some of Jonathan Johnson’s sample photos, I’m considering getting this Sigma 70-300mm lens. The price is very appealing (around $150), it has a good zoom range & macro ability, and the reviews are fairly good.

I really like this picture of Cody I took using my 50mm/f1.8 lens today. I challenged myself to shoot with only that lens as long as possible.

Nikon has released development kits for many of their newest cameras, including the D90, as well as a NEF (RAW) file decoding library. The SDK lets you write applications that control the camera directly via USB (like Aperture’s tethered mode).

To get any of their SDKs, fill out this form at Nikon’s site.

I’ve posted a full Macworld Expo photo gallery at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_c/sets/72157612275428504/.

I’m setting up a photowalk for the Monday before Macworld, probably starting around 2PM. We’ll meet near Moscone center, probably in front of the registration area. There should be some great locations to photograph, including Yerba Buena Garden, Powell Street cable cars, and the Union Square area. If it goes late, we can probably start working our way towards 21st Amendment for the Macworld Monday Tweetup.

This afternoon the sky looked like it came straight from “The Simpsons”, so I was inspired to take a few shots of the clouds. I decided to do exposure bracketing and use HDR processing so I could enter them in Hydra’s HDR contest.

When you’re shooting in mixed light, most camera’s automatic white balance can give incorrect or inconsistent results. The most accurate way to get the correct white balance is by measuring it. Most photographers carry a gray card for measuring & setting white balance, but Photojojo has something a lot more convenient: the white balance lens cap.

Instead of carrying around something extra, simply replace your lens cap with the white balance lens cap. Before you start shooting in a new location, measure the light and set the white balance. Then remove the lens cap and shoot normally.

On a D90, press the white balance button and turn the command dial until it shows PRE. release the white balance button and press it again and hold until PRE starts blinking. Set the camera to automatic exposure and snap a picture (which will be solid white/gray). The display will flash GOOD if it was able to successfully capture a reference image. That’s it – you can now shoot normally.

Here are two sample images, taken with automatic white balance and measured white balance, both with no adjustments. The wall is off-white and the lighting is a halogen lamp.

Automatic white balance	Measured white balance

This is why I love the D90. I simply used ‘P’ mode with ISO 3200 to shoot our tree trimming party last night. I really love the lighting, sharpness, and clarity in this shot.

Many more photos here.

The people in my condo really go all out for Christmas, so I walked around and took some photos of the decorations. The D90 still continues to impress and amaze me with its performance at high ISO settings. I simply used Aperture priority with the widest aperture and auto ISO with a maximum of 3200 when I took these shots.

The D90’s video capability also came in handy.

I haven’t had much of a chance to blog in the last week, since life & work got in the way. I had an awesome time Monday night when my friends took me out to dinner at 101 Ocean for my birthday.

People are already starting to put up their Christmas decorations – they don’t even wait for Thanksgiving any more. One of my neighbors put up blue lights & butterflies, as you can see from this photo.

Shooting holiday lights can be a challenge, since the camera will try to adjust the exposure for the background, which will make the lights disappear. Instead, you want to underexpose the picture enough to darken the background and make the lights stand out.

You might be able to get good results using exposure compensation, but to really get it right, you need to use manual exposure. It’s difficult to apply any standard exposure rules, since the ideal exposure depends on how dark it is and the color, size, and brightness of the lights, so you’ll probably need to experiment to get the best results. I took these pictures shortly before sunset tonight and I found that I got the best results using shutter speed 1/30 at f5.6 with ISO 1600. A good way to start is by using one of the semi-automatic modes and noting the shutter speed or aperture it chooses, and adjusting it from there.

The D90’s excellent high ISO performance makes it a lot easier to get good results in these conditions. With a lot of cameras you wouldn’t want to go above ISO 800, so you’ll need to adjust the shutter speed & aperture accordingly.

With all of the focus on the election, there was one very welcome bit of non-election news yesterday. Apple released Digital Camera Raw Compatibility 2.3, which finally adds RAW support for the Nikon D90 to Aperture, iPhoto, and other applications.

For most of my recent trips, I only took a small point & shoot camera instead of my D40x, so I would need only one carry on bag. I really want to take my D90 to Macworld Expo, so I started shopping around for a case that can hold both a laptop and a full sized DSLR camera. I decided on LowePro’s FastPack 250. It has a camera compartment accessible from the side that will hold the D90 with the 18-105mm lens attached, plus several other compartments for additional lenses and accessories. A compartment in the rear will hold a 15″ laptop, and there are several other pockets for accessories.

Bee Ng has created a music video shot entirely with a Nikon D90. The quality really looks great.

As this demonstrates, the time & size limit for D90 video isn’t really a problem if you’re going to be doing any editing. You can shoot separate scenes, which will fit easily in the time limit, and join them.