LensProToGo 52 Week Photo Project - Week 3 Submission

My submission for week 3 - My Favorite Thing.

You can click on the image to see a larger version.

It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to photograph as my favorite thing. I initially came up with a few different ideas:

• My camera - but that seemed all too obvious.
• My cat Tiger - but he's not a thing to me. He's the child Donna and I never had together. At least that's how we treat him.
• The TV Remote - but that shows I spend more time watching TV than I should.
• My wedding ring - it's not really the ring that's my favorite thing it's what it symbolizes, my marriage to Donna that is a favorite thing.
• Wildlife - the bird feeders in our back yard. We love spending time out back with the birds. Our backyard has become the bird sanctuary of the neighborhood. Yesterday afternoon I counted a dozen Chipping Sparrows sitting on the fence just waiting for Tiger to go inside so they could feed on the feeders.
• Alligators - love to shoot them but they are dormant this time of year so trying to find one to shoot for the assignment would be difficult.

Finally it came to me - sunrises. I think watching the movie Bridges of Madison County helped because Clint Eastwood's character talked about wanting to shoot one of the bridges at sunrise. My next problem to overcome was when to shoot one. The submissions run from Monday of the week through Sunday and my normal work schedule has me getting to work before the sun actually raises. Fortunately yesterday being a federal holiday I was off and was able to shoot the sunrise.

I try to learn something on each planned photo shoot and I learned several things on this one.

1. When it's 29 degrees outside you'd better bundle up! Fortunately I was prepared. I had on a heavy coat, watch cap, and gloves.
2. Using a remote shutter release is more handy than I originally thought. I shot all of the photos using mirror lockup and so being able to tap the shutter button on the remote was easier than reaching around to the front of the camera each time.
3. Fully charged batteries are a must. The combination of the cold and using live view extensively really drained the batteries. I'm glad I had the battery grip installed so I had the power of two batteries working for me.
4. Live View rocks! I have been somewhat disappointed with it in the past because it's really hard to see the screen on a bright sunny day (Guess I need one of those hoodman Loupes). but in the dark live view is great. I was able to instantly see changes in exposure by adjusting the shutter speed and it made composing the shots very easy. I'm now a big fan of live view in low light situations.
5. I need a graduated neutral density filter. Pretty much as soon as the sun broke the horizon I quit shooting because it was blowing out the highlights.
6. I only have 3 or 4 apps on the iPhone that will show a bubble level or give you some indication that your camera is level. Did I use any of them. No! But I will next time.
7. Experimentation really is fun. While shooting yesterday I tried several different things such as putting the horizon in line with the top line of the Rule of Thirds grid. Then I'd move the camera to have the bottom line on the Rule of Thirds grid line up with the horizon. Afterwards it was neat to see the difference it made to the overall scene.
8. Manual mode is my new best friend. Ever since Donna and I went on the citifari photo walk in New York my camera have been kept on manual mode. I'm finding that using manual mode slows me down and makes me think more about each shot I'm going to take and my photography is improving because of it. At least I think it is :).

Oh BTW, not that anyone is counting but this is my 100th blog post!

Induro Adventure AKB0 Tripod Review - Introduction

Ever watch the John Belushi movie Continental Divide? If not it's the story of a Chicago journalist that goes up into the mountains to write and article about an Eagle researcher. There's one scene where he's down to his last cigarette and he's in a world of hurt because he's out of shape and has been huffing and puffing his way up the mountain to see what this Eagle researcher does. That's pretty much how I was feeling the day that Donna and I set out to find one of the waterfalls in upstate South Carolina that was listed as "moderate" in difficulty. Clearly the person that rated it moderate must be part mountain goat because that hike for us was down right hard! Of course it doesn't help being out of shape and lugging my camera backpack with extra lenses and my Induro CT314 tripod with me. Long story short Donna and I made it to the waterfall, got some great pictures and made it back to the car without killing ourselves. One valuable lesson I learned that day was traveling light is the way to go on waterfall hikes and hauling around my camera backpack and heavy duty tripod was clearly not traveling light!

Thus began my quest for a lightweight tripod to use when shooting waterfalls. Since I'm obviously a huge Induro fan I checked out their tripods first and read about the Adventure AKB Series of tripods. These lightweight tripods come with matching ball head and carrying bag. They are available in three sizes: AKB0 which is designed for loads up to 10.3 pounds and weights 2.6 pounds, the AKB1 which is designed for loads up to 12.8 pounds and weighs 3.6 pounds, and the AKB2 which is designed for loads up to 18.7 pounds and weighs 4.2 pounds. For comparison my CT314 and BHD3 ball head are designed for loads up to 40 pounds and weigh 7.2 pounds. I spent a good amount of time reading about these three tripods but couldn't decide which one I wanted. My first choice was the AKB2 thinking that it even though I wouldn't be coming close to its load capacity that it would be better to have a tripod that can support way more than I would need but it weighs nearly double what the AKB0 weighs and I really wanted to go as light as possible. I knew that the good folks at Induro had read my previous write up I had done on the CT314 and ball head so on whim I contacted them and told them I was in the market for a lightweight tripod and wanted to know if they happened to have any of the AKB series tripods available for a trial basis. I figured they may have some that didn't meet QC specs or something like that they would be willing to send me. They said they did have something I could test with, faxed me the agreement which I signed and faxed back and a few days later the UPS box arrived.

Inside was not a some loaner tripod that has been used by others and was passed along to me but instead it was a brand new AKB0 tripod. Our agreement was for me to keep the tripod for a few weeks, test it thoroughly and then return it to Induro. For this review I plan to document the following aspects of the tripod:

• Introduction - this post
• The Tripod
• The Ball Head
• Use in the Field
• Short Post Accessory
• Comparison to the CT314
• Summary

Induro Adventure AKB0 Tripod with Donna's Canon Rebel T2i with 18-200 lens