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Welcome to the Pine River Review. Our sight is dedicated to our little homestead located along the Pine River tucked inside the Chippewa Nature Center's 1400 Acres of wild in Michigan's lower penninsula. We love to share our pictures, video, comment, and our own homespun music. Step inside our world as we celebrate this beautiful nook!


Friday, November 12, 2010

Weekend Reflections II


Taking the Plunge

I am one month into my Digital Single Lens Reflex camera experience and coming from a point and shoot background I can tell you that there are a lot of surprises both good and not so good. Just taking a Dslr out of the box and cracking the cover on the manual is a bit daunting. This "big boy" camera seemed an overly complicated tool destined to achieve a relatively similar final result for three times the money. It's like the old point and shoot is a jack of all trades, agile and efficient. In good light I did not see a whole lot of difference in Image quality from my ancient Fz20 and my new Canon T2i. The colors were not as saturated straight out of the camera and it was, after all, still ME shooting the pictures so the GREAT improvement I anticipated was not immediate. 

The concept that began to help me was understanding this machine to be a refined light gathering tool. It needs to be dialed into a particular task with a particular lens to take a certain kind of picture. With that knowledge comes the realization another $1000 worth of lenses are in your future to take nearly the same pictures you were already taking faster with a fixed lens on your $350 P&S!

Next comes RAW, the creme de la creme of picture files. No longer do your little Jpegs pop up in good old Picasa for you to fiddle with. Your assignment is to delve into the bowels of your images deciding on the sharpness, saturation, color tone, highlights, and shadows of every single picture. About this time your 'significant other' begins to get a little annoyed with you and your obsessive compulsive behaviour related to the silent hours wrestling a decent picture out of this Dslr thing that might resolve your growing buyers remorse.

Then it happens. The aperture, Iso, shutter speed, focus and subject come together in an alchemy of fortunate accidents and you take your best picture ever. You stare at it for hours transfixed in a happy glow peeping at your beautiful pixels and you are hopelessly hooked.

       Said the boy(Dslr user) shivering in the ice cold river, "Come on in the water's fine!"

                             To see more "Weekend Reflections" click on the link below!

                                                 http://newtowndailyphoto.blogspot.com/




33 comments:

  1. Quite a funny photo and great reflection!

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  2. Well. I guess the investment was worth it - with this wonderful photo. It is truly amazing.

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  3. Fantastic! Such a delightful, amazing and funny photo and reflection! I would say it was definitely worth the investment you made in the camera! Look forward to more like this!! Have a great weekend!

    Sylvia

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  4. Extraordinaire ! La photo est parfaite et que dire du reflet ? Vraiment très intéressant !

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  5. Thanks for passing by my blog.
    Your reflection is AMAZING
    And by the way, I´ve added my video of "Live and let die" I hope you´ll enyoy it.
    Best regards from Argentina
    Elisa

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  6. Hi there ! I totally agree with you and the 'discovering' of pixels world !! I recognized myself a lot in your words ;-) !
    And ! you shot is really great ... you sure had the right combination speed aperture iso etc etc
    stay hooked ;-)

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  7. I love gulls, and your picture is absolutely fabulous!very unic and strong! and the reflection is perfect! great shot!!

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  8. The DSLR may require a little more fine tuning than a point and shoot, but imho the rewards far outweigh the drawbacks. I took the plunge a couple of years ago, and could never go back. What is really wonderful is how big you can enlarge the images while still retaining high levels of detail... far superior to any P&S I've seen so far... allowing cropping of details in images with much more flexibility. Good luck climbing the learning curve while keeping the other half happy too ! Not easy !

    Now, is that really a live seagull or duck or goose or whatever diving in the water, or is it a very realistic looking female decoy posed there in order to entice males of the species to approach ???
    :-)
    Sorry... I know, bad joke... but there doesn't seem to be much of a splash, hardly a ripple for a diving bird ???

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  9. Thanks to everyone whose dropping by The Pine River Review this weekend! It took until the last shot on day four to finally get this picture. I wanted so badly to share this reflection, which I had seen dimly on a few hundred near misses,and it was well worth it judging by your kind comments.
    As Owen points out these wonderfully complicated DSLR's have an amazing pixel density. My new camera is taking 18 megapixel images! This gull photo is perhaps 1/8th of the full frame.

    Buns Up!
    Springman

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  10. This is a hilarious shot - so well caught. I haven't got the courage for a DSLR yet - my Panasonic bridge camera seems to do most things I want, reasonably well.

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  11. Wow! Fabulous shot! Thanks for sharing.
    When I'm rich I'll buy a real camera and I'll try to compete;o)

    ***
    Have a beautiful weekend****

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  12. Great post! I share your turmoil with the significant other glaring behind your back while you tinker on one photo for eons. The image is gorgeous - your work is paying off!

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  13. This is just wonderful and so glad that you shared the trials and tribulations of your conversion. This bird and his reflection is frozen in time!

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  14. Extraordinaire ! Quelle précision, quelle rapidité, quel cliché étonnant ! Je reste sans voix devant tant de talent... En un seul mot : bravo !

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  15. If you have managed this after one month with a dSLR, you have a great future!

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  16. Wow it's wonderful!Fantastic capture, you are very skilled at photography, congratulations and thanks so much for your kind visit and comments in Bonjour Luxembourg, your blog is really beautiful!
    Léia

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  17. Not only learning how to use your camera but knowing what to look for when photographing is also a skill that not everyone has. In this picture you have demonstrated that you have both skills.

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  18. Waouh ! Absolument magnifique ! J'aime.

    Thank you for your comment.

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  19. Wow, that's an amazing water reflection picture.

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  20. Wow, this is an amazing shot! Well done!

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  21. Welcome to world of DSLRs and RAW! This is a fabulous shot!

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  22. Outstanding picture!!

    Thanks for your kind comment :))

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  23. sweet shot of the headless guy!
    By the way, i wouldn't consider watermarks 'marring' photos. I've had issues with people using photos without permission and i don't really appreciate it.

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  24. Very nice. Wonderfully captured.

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  25. Mr Springman, you just really sprung from P&S to this marvelous shot with your DSLR. Goodness, I only haave a 10.2 mp compared to your 18.

    I have read your few posts down, to crop or not to crop. All photos are worth posting. Keep up the good work. There is no turning back to P&S once you master the DSLR. But I can use an underwater P&S.

    Congratulations!

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  26. That is a superb shot in all respects, and a beautiful reflection. Congratulations, keep shooting like this!

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  27. Beautiful picture of the gull kissing the water. Enjoyed reading this post - brought back to me my own struggles with my first DSLR.

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  28. I'm still using my point and shoot camera, so I cannot get nearly this close, but I am in awe of your ability! This photo is so funny!!

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  29. What a great timing! Now this is an outstanding capture, Springman!

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