Photo taken at midday, 1/320s, 200mm, f/9, ISO1600 with D3100 Nikon and Tamron 75-300mm LD Di A17 lens, it is very dark, don't you think?


1/200s, 185mm, f/6.3, ISO1600, still not getting enough light and lens is quite soft already with such open aperture:



1/125s, 120mm, f/6.3, ISO1600, this is a crop which shows how poor image quality is with such high ISO and open aperture:


Still under exposing heavily, but also image quality is poor.

I have started to believe that this time of year it is perfectly impossible to take great photos, but maybe it is still just my lack of skills?

Oh yes, I guess I have been bit absent, not much going on with cars as doctor took my license because I loose eyesight randomly and now they talk about early retirement too, so I guess my car hobby is done for, have attempted to sell cars, but so far no luck. However cats are fine and well

I'm glad you've posted Jani, had noticed your absence.

I'm sorry to hear about circumstances, I'll have my fingers crossed for you. I agree with you about the light, how much daylight do you get there at the moment?

Chris_C wrote:I'm glad you've posted Jani, had noticed your absence.

I'm sorry to hear about circumstances, I'll have my fingers crossed for you. I agree with you about the light, how much daylight do you get there at the moment?

4 hours and bit over 50 minutes from sunrise to sunset, mostly very cloudy though, but when sun is well up my shadow is well over 50 meters long if I get to open spot, trees block sun most of the places, so not sure if there is much to be done to improve pics in these conditions.

Well, life is how life is, sometimes it is just better to move on and enjoy what one still has

Sorry to hear about your circumstances.

Given a low lying sun, cloud and shade, and the fact you're using a zoom lens I'd be very surprised if anything greater than 1/200th actually came out at all. I'd be looking at 1/60th- 1/100th in those conditions, particularly if you can't get an F stop below 6.3

V6 Man wrote:Sorry to hear about your circumstances.

Given a low lying sun, cloud and shade, and the fact you're using a zoom lens I'd be very surprised if anything greater than 1/200th actually came out at all. I'd be looking at 1/60th- 1/100th in those conditions, particularly if you can't get an F stop below 6.3

My lens is bit poor with wide open aperture, makes things glow and be quite blurry, anything below f/9 starts to be quite poor if doing cropping, so usually I just stop shooting at all during winter as I have not been able to get shots way I want them.

That means not using tripod most of the time

1/100s with 200mm would probably need a tripod, as result otherwise would be probably closer to wide open aperture, which is very soft.

Luckily it starts to be better in two months or so.

Hello jtbo

The cat is beautiful... so much so that I took your darkest image and did a click of the auto-adjust button in Corel-photo-whatsit and it looks like this...



.... how's about that then? And, how's about a lazy summer day...



...well, almost!

Hi Jani.
Glad your back at the key board. I myself was medicaly retired from work
in August this year due to ill health. I can know longer tinker about as much
with the cars and may have to give them up in the future
Hope you keep well.
Cheers Mark.

bogbasic wrote:Hello jtbo

The cat is beautiful... so much so that I took your darkest image and did a click of the auto-adjust button in Corel-photo-whatsit and it looks like this...



.... how's about that then? And, how's about a lazy summer day...



...well, almost!

I think that you need to tone down saturation quite a bit which happens when stretching light levels, also in 2nd image lack of image data starts to become obvious as there are those artifacts around, but of course I could take photo that is lot brighter from stationary cat and edit light levels from raw file which allows much more corrections, but do not want to, need to get that shot straight from camera

For example this is cat diving in potato field, ISO3200 shot, 165mm and 1/100s handheld, with some corrections with software it is not too bad, considering slow shutter speed and high iso.


Still it is utterly goo for any large prints and stuff like cropping:


During august I took pic from hedgehog, this is 100% crop from hedgehog's leg from such photo, during bright months it is so much easier to get good results:


I'm thinking that taking pics from fast moving creatures during dark months is probably something that is only possible with kit lens only to level which I would like to get photos, which probably is level beyond my abilities, maybe beyond my equipment abilities

Of course some great photographers say that one should focus more of capturing mood instead of getting that perfect photo, but I guess I'm not so great, but attempting to get impossible good photo must result at least some ok photos as side product

One can only guess what is mood in this one, ears say that scent there could be some other cat or maybe he is just attempting to get high from odors from the wood:



This one I call Panther, as he is black as panther, but also character is very much panther alike, he is also very stubborn, but still quite nice and friendly if he has such mood, even from pic it might not look like such. Shooting very dark cat on quite white surface is not always the easiest thing to do, I think that I had too open aperture and too slow shutterspeed, but then again light did not allowed much room, however I think I got mood into that one also:


Cat's are really awesome, when one spends time so that one understands them, they do a lot of pranks too, some might think that cat's don't have sense of humor, but whacking other to back of head while other is drinking from water bowl counts some sort of humorous thing to me at least. They are just so quick that it is difficult to catch those moments, especially during darker months when indoor photography especially is completely impossible.



I don't really mind loosing license and end of car hobby as there is so much other interesting things, like photographing, cats, cycling and besides driving a car is so heavily controlled activity and there will be even more control over it that in future, so I guess most fun has been taken away from it soon anyways.

Of course it would be nice to find someone that buys cars and restores them instead of just abusing to death, but maybe at the spring time some of that becomes possible.

Sorry to hear about your health issues, it's nice to see that you have a positive light on things as ever. Cats are fascinating. Even as a dog person I really do warm to the cats in my area. This article popped up earlier in the month:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 66580.html

Well, I can't match the photography, but here's another....



...but enough of cats, lets goat it up and pop in a pheasant, too.

I like that cat photo, awesome pose! Nice one BB!

Thanks for that. That one (sadly no longer with us) used to help with the ironing - well, I think she liked the heat...

Chris_C wrote:I like that cat photo, awesome pose! Nice one BB!

Exactly what he says

I like angle of light also in that shot, it brings up all shapes very nicely, like fur being fur and not flat surface

I think there was some 90 degree rule for getting photo that shows all shapes and colours best possible way.

This one did not came out too well, it was one from several hawks that flew in my yard late summer/autumn, quite noisy fellows really, but this one did wait quite long until decided it was time to move south:


Some day I need to check if I can edit it better in Nikon software as it knows how to fix CA and shift colours so that they math, which often helps quite a bit.

This one came out quite well today, ISO3200, 1/125s, 180mm, f/6.3, it was on shadow side, very cloudy day, but sun was almost behind from the cat, so that spot was very dark because of shadow, also having almost black cat against relatively dark background is not best thing, but he was luckily just enough away from branch that some light managed to pass which bring out side fur nicely, it also helps that fur is quite shiny. One can also see how he has very tiny spec of white at chest, making him not truly full black cat, but it is very easy to miss that when looking cat when standing, even there is bit of noise from high iso, I don't think that it ruins this shot.


Lucky thing he did stop, climbed half way that tree behind him and then came down, stopped for split second and run onwards, just made that shot and it is full frame, not even cropped, quite happy with it coming out so nicely, only resize and tiny sharpening to counteract blur by resize.

I like taking pics from this one as he never really stays at one place and usually not even on ground


Also silly thing is that most pics that come out ok from that cat are those when he is up in the air:


That black one tends to climb trees indeed, maybe some day I get a pic when he is half way up one of those very tall pine trees, he tends to do such things too, I just hope he does not climb to the top and then be afraid to come down, there is no way to get him down from there...

First Brown cat photo, sharpness of focus in the face draws your eyes to the cats eyes. Quite striking Jani!

Chris_C wrote:First Brown cat photo, sharpness of focus in the face draws your eyes to the cats eyes. Quite striking Jani!

Some reason part of that photo is missing from my screen, whole tail should be in photo, but indeed that sharpness creates nice effect, also it is relatively easy to get as cat holds head quite level, sensors fixed to target, so rest of the cat is moving to every direction while head moves mostly to one direction.

I wanted to get his target (other cat) into shot too, but it was not possible, I was at wrong place to manage that, proper location is difficult thing with these creatures as they accelerate to top speed in less than a second and their top speed is faster than residential area speed limits, so 50 meter across the yard is just couple of seconds for them.
Another challenge is that they are not very predictable, despite I can read them better than most, when is difficult to predict, they are predators whom way of hunt is surprise after all

I think those challenges make it so interesting and rewarding to take photos from cats, together with how they can be quite funny at times and if one is lucky he can catch that funny moment, but one can not predict it.