We all cry for Eye-Fi

If the only pictures you ever take are with your iPhone, iPad, or whatever iteration of smartphone or tablet the cool kids are using these days, you may be able to skip this blog post and get back to that hotly contested game of Angry Birds you've been playing since Memorial day.  If however, you still take pictures with an actual camera (how Paleolithic of you), then you may want to read on. 

Before we move on to the description and review of today's product, let me set the stage a little bit.  I have been a photography nut for over 40 years.  Obviously, I started with a film camera and I loved shooting film.  I loved everything about it.  The smell, the feel, the ritual of opening the box, then the foil pack or plastic cup and pulling the leader out and threading it into the camera.  The slight feeling of dread that maybe you didn't get it hooked in quite right and the film wouldn't advance.  Then of course, you never knew if the picture was going to be any good until it came back from the lab.  Nothing like that feeling of opening the package of prints or the developing canister to see if the pictures or negatives were worth keeping.

I left the film world kicking and screaming, I still have a film camera and 4 or 5 rolls of film.  I resisted going digital for way longer than I should have.  When I finally took the megapixel plunge I fell hard and now I love everything about digital photography.  I think the average person does too, based on the fact that every day over 30 billion pieces of content are uploaded to Facebook.  Of course easily half of those are either cat photos or hand-held smartphone self portraits of teenaged girls.

Now we get to the fun stuff.  If you take actual pictures of actual things with an actual camera you want to do something with the photos.  I mean other than carrying your camera to the family reunion to show Maw-maw 436 pictures of little Henry from the past year on a 2 1/2 inch screen (Maw-maw doesn't see as well as she used to), OK, sorry, I've digressed again.  If you actually want to do something with those photos you have a few choices, none of them are bad.  You can hook up a wire from your computer to your camera, you can pop out the memory card and put it in a card reader on your computer, or you can take the memory card to Wal-Mart and put it in a reader there.  All these options are fine, but when you take as many pictures as I do it can get a little tedious.

Enter the little orange technological  marvel known as the Eye-Fi card.  Plug this little card into the SD card slot in your camera and when you take a picture, it automatically shows up wherever you want it to.  You can decide during set-up.  The photos can go to your lap-top, desktop, website, tablet, the cloud, your Flickr, or Facebook accounts just to name a few.  The Eye-Fi also geotags the photo with exact time date and location of the photograph.

 

I was given a couple of these babies to try a year or so ago and didn't have a lot of luck with them.  They wouldn't connect and the photos wouldn't upload properly if at all, so I sent them back and did things the old fashioned way.  Well recently I got one of the "new and improved" generation 2 cards.  I didn't hold out much hope and didn't rush into trying it. It comes with the card and a little cheap looking plastic USB card reader. See below.

 

   This time things worked.  I plugged it in to my laptop and things went very smoothly.  It connected immediately to my home wireless network and started guiding me through the setup process.  The whole thing took 15 minutes and I was taking test shots in no time.  This thing works really well and the payoff is that if you set it up right, you can take pictures at the reunion and when you get home they are already on your computer waiting to be edited.  Or, if Maw-maw has wireless internet and you have your tablet, you can show her the shots you just took, on a format a little easier for senior eyes to see.

There are a few drawbacks.  It would be great if you could feed directly into Lightroom or some other workflow product and avoid the tether for studio work, but it won't work like that yet.  Also if you set it up to feed directly to Facebook or some other social media site, be aware that every picture you take will be beamed immediately to the page you choose.  On the other hand, your pictures of the reunion will be on Facebook hours before the rest of the cousins even get home.  It can be slow, so don't get into a hurry but it has never failed me in thousands of shots.  The capacity  is small.  I have the 8 GB version and that only holds 250 or so pictures if you shoot in RAW like I do.  If you shoot RAW + JPG then the total will be significantly less.  You can set it up for "endless memory" which means it erases the file after it has been uploaded to make room for new files and you can shoot continuously, but I don't trust that feature yet. 

The cards are not cheap, street price about $60 for the 8 GB and $85 for the 16 GB but they have dropped in price quite a bit recently and should continue to get less expensive.

To sum it up, is this the only SD card I would carry?  No, or course not, but this card is always in the number 1 slot on my camera.  I haven't seen any loss of picture quality.  I love the automatic uploading and geotagging.  Even an inexpensive digital camera paired with a properly set-up Eye-Fi card is sure to be the hit of your next reunion.

keith@keithlewisphoto.com

Visit my website: keithlewisphoto.com

 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/KeithLewisPhotography

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KeithLewisPhoto

My Home Town

I am from Charlotte, NC and compared to a lot of my friends, I am an anomaly.  I am a native Charlottean.  While not all that uncommon for a person to still live in the city in which they were born, Charlotte seems to have more than its share of imports, and often when I tell someone that I was born here, I get a response like "wow, you're the first native I have met" Often this makes me feel like a fossil or at least a subject of some rare curiosity like Piltdown man or Bigfoot.  Then when I tell them the next line, they assume I have lived in a cave for 50 years.  You see, I have never lived or worked anywhere more than 3 miles from where I live right now.  I am a throwback to the days when people were born, lived, worked and died all within a few miles radius.  But before we start making funeral arrangements (Forest Lawn Cemetery is literally 3 miles from my house) take a look at a few pictures of my hometown, Charlotte, NC.

If you are from Charlotte you may recognize some of the places.  Some are shots of places that were established long before I was born.  If you have moved away, some of the pictures may be unfamiliar to you as things have changed quite a bit over the years.

Click on any picture for a larger image

Above and below are some of the art pieces at "the square" the corner of Trade and Tryon.

 Above is the old Coca-Cola Bottling Co. on Morehead St.  all decked out for Memorial Day.

Below is the entrance of the old Wachovia Building.  This was quite an impressive building back when it was built.  It was a landmark of the night skyline for years, bathed in bright white light on all four sides.  Wachovia was recently acquired by Wells Fargo.

 Above is the sign from Ratcliffe's Flowers, a now closed uptown Charlotte institution. 

 The sign now hangs outside of a restaurant.

Below is Fuel Pizza.  It resides in an old Pure Oil service station on Central Ave.

 Above is Herrin Brothers Coal and Ice Co. on 36th Street

Below is the statue of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg that greets all travelers at the Charlotte airport

 Above is a shot of the outside of the NASCAR Hall of fame 

Below is a shot from inside the Hall of Fame

I am working on a calendar of iconic places in Charlotte. 
Maybe one or two of these pictures will make the cut.

E-mail me if you have a suggestion for a must-have shot for the Calendar

keith@keithlewisphoto.com

Visit my website: keithlewisphoto.com

 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/KeithLewisPhotography

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KeithLewisPhoto

...And the band played on.

Today I happened upon a concert.  Actually I heard the music and walked over to the nursing home next door.  The facility was celebrating National Nursing Home Week with a big cookout and a concert by the band and orchestra from West Mecklenburg High School here in Charlotte.  I did what any practitioner of the photographic arts would have done in a similar situation, I took my camera and snapped a few pictures.  

I love taking nature and animal photos and I really like product shots, but for sheer human interest you can't beat people.  In a crowd of people, there are always plenty of great subjects at any given time.  The key of course is to be in position to get the shot at just the right time.

These kids were great and what a joy for music and dance they brought.

Here are some of my favorites:

Click on any picture for a larger image

This is orchestra director Johnathon Sullivan conducting.  I love that his hands are blurry showing motion.  This is accomplished by using manual settings and a lower shutter speed, in this case, I believe it was 1/40 second.

Band members waiting their turn to perform.  The orchestra went first so the band had some time to kill and I liked the visual of these guys just sitting with their instruments, obviously enjoying each other's company.  This is much better as a candid than if I had posed them.

This young lady, a ninth grader, performed a beautiful violin solo.

I'm not sure why I like this one but something about the sousaphone and drums on the ground and the band members chilling out while the orchestra plays.

I really liked this shot of these girls getting ready to play.  A tight shot like this is often more interesting than a wider shot.  Look for opportunities to get close when you are shooting in a crowd.  Be sure to get some wide shots but always look for an interesting close-up.  For me the fingernail polish makes this one.

I liked it so much, I cropped it and desaturated everything but the polish.

A nice close-up of the drum line. A slower shutter speed blurred the drumsticks.

 The bright sun glinting off the brass makes a nice shot.

 This talented young lady was one of the dancers.

The concert is over and the only thing left to do is load up and head back to school. I liked the way these music stands seemed to sprout out of the grass.

The next time you are out riding around, keep your camera with you and your ears open, you never know what you might encounter.

Visit my website: keithlewisphoto.com

 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/KeithLewisPhotography

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KeithLewisPhoto

It's really Spring this time

The last time I posted, way back in March, it wasn't even officially Spring yet, though it seemed like it because the weather was so warm.  As my Father used to say "if you don't like the weather in NC, just wait a day" Spring has officially sprung now but the weather thinks it's Summer.

I took a walk in my back yard today.  If you read my blog much, you know that my yard is my favorite place to take nature shots.  So today I grabbed my D7000 and a 100mm Macro lens and went for a few flower close-ups. 

A few tips for flower close-ups:
  
Get close, then get closer. A good close up is not "half-way"
   
Depth of field is your friend. If your camera allows you to set the f stop      manually then use a bigger opening to blur the background.

Keep steady.  if the wind is blowing or you are shaking then your flower could be blurry, use your body or a piece of cardboard to block the wind from shaking the flower.

Look for good color contrasts.  See beyond the subject to the background and take it into account, even if the background will be blurred, you will still see the color contrasts.

Think about using a fill-in flash to lighten shadows and make the foreground pop.


Without any further ado, here they are...click on any picture for a larger image.

                                            A couple of red roses (Mr. Lincoln) 
             On the lower one, I desaturated the green from the               background to make the red roses stand out.

 Above: Clematis,  Below: Banana Shrub

 Above: Kale,      Below: White Ladybanks Rose

Above: Trumpet Vine,       Below: Fringe Flower

 Above: Honeysuckle,      Below: Wild Blackberry

 Above: Immature Blueberries,     Below: Rose (Dr. Van Fleet)

Spring is a great time for photography, so grab your camera and get out of the house.

Visit my website: keithlewisphoto.com

 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/KeithLewisPhotography

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KeithLewisPhoto

Staying home

If you have read many of these posts, then you know I like to stay home and take pictures in my own yard.  I never seem to run short of subject matter.  Today is one of those days that makes you glad you live in the South.  Not even St. Patrick's day yet and the temperature is almost 80.  Instead of piling in the car and joining the crowd, I decided to stay home and shoot pictures in my back yard.  Here is what I saw.

Click on any picture for a larger image:



Yellow Pansies:

Dill starting to emerge:

 Heirloom lettuce growing in plastic containers:

Peach trees in full bloom:

Radishes ready to pick soon:

The bird already left this nest:

Spring is a great time for photography, so grab your camera and get out of the house.

Visit my website: keithlewisphoto.com

 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/KeithLewisPhotography

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KeithLewisPhoto

"Spring is busting out all over"

Seems odd since my last blog post was about an unexpected winter storm that dumped six inches of snow on us.  Well welcome to the South.  Like my Daddy always said, if you don't like the weather here (the Piedmont of NC) then wait a day or two.  Actually the snow was gone in a day and a week later it was in the sixties.  Today was one of those great days in early March that makes you want to plant something.  Bright sun, no wind, temperature in the mid sixties and so many people out walking or jogging that it is hard to drive a car through a neighborhood.  

I took advantage of the day to take a few pictures in my back yard.  It started because the pussy willows are bursting their buds with that familiar tuft of softness and I wanted a good close-up of them.  I grabbed my camera and a 100 mm macro lens and proceeded to take lots of pictures.  Then I turned my macro lens on my garden.  I ended up with a handful of decent shots that I thought I would share.

click on any picture for a larger image:


I will start off with the reason I went outside with my camera in the first place - pussy willow  (salix discolor)

These are some mixed salad greens:

Radishes are starting to sprout...won't be long now:

This is baby kale, great in soups or salads:

More mature kale is good in soups, sauteed or even made into chips in the oven:

Peas emerging from the soil thanks to warm weather:

Even the Bonsai tree is putting out new shoots for Spring:

Spring is a great time for photography, so grab your camera and get out of the house.

Visit my website: keithlewisphoto.com

 Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/KeithLewisPhotography

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KeithLewisPhoto