It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist

My name is Rob, and I'm a Huntsvillian. Huntsville is famous for two things: Rockets, and us thinking we're famous for more than one thing.

We're like those guys who have 7 top-10 radio hits and yet no one knows the name of the band.

We have the nation's second largest research park, right behind Silicon Valley. We're home to Space Camp. Huntsville is one of the top ten best places to live and start a business according to Forbes. We had the most Ph.D.s per capita in the US until recently. Oh, and we developed the Saturn V Rocket which put the human race on the moon.

That's what really sets us apart from everyone else, we built a big freakin' rocket.

What's this got to do with photography, you ask?

Well, anyone who fancies themselves a photographer in Huntsville has one picture in their portfolio of the same thing.

the 1:1 scale model of the Saturn V Rocket at the US Space and Rocket Center.

It was only recently that I capitalized on the opportunity to get my cliche shot of Huntsville.

The vantage point I chose was the over-pass where Sparkman drive goes over I-565. The time I chose was shortly after sundown, because who doesn't like a picture taken at night?

Anyway, without further adieu, I present to the internet my quintessential shot of Huntsville.

Black Tie Affair

My name is Rob, and I know a guy who knows a guy. This guy's name is Dave Anderson, and he's played a show or two with a group called Black Jacket Symphony.

 

This particular group has an interesting premise. Their gimmick is they pick a famous album, e.g. Abbey Road by The Beatles, or Purple Rain by Prince. They play two sets for any given show. In the first set, they play the album top to bottom. In the second, they play some of the greatest hits by whatever band produced the album. For each album, musicians are hand-picked for the talent they can bring in reproducing the album as closely as possible.

When I found out that BJS was going to play a Led Zeppelin show here in Huntsville, I knew I wanted to be there with camera in hand. So, I talked to my friend Dave, who he put me in touch with Jason, who I assumed was the band's manager.

Jason, who was all about some free publicity, was glad to promise me a photo pass and a ticket to the show.

Score.

The gig started off as any other would - with me being unprepared and having no idea what I was about to get into.

Walking up to the will-call window a little later than I intended to, the lady behind the window informed me that there wasn't a photo-pass for anyone, let alone me.

Great, I thought to myself, I just drug all of my equipment half a mile to the venue in 25 degree weather just to have to turn around.

I didn't have Jason's cell-phone number or anything. The only interaction I'd had with him was via Facebook.

I messaged him on Facebook saying I was here and stuck outside. I expected him to be busy preparing for the show,and not even receive the message until it was too late.

Not more than two minutes later, I get a response saying he's got one for me, and to meet him at the merch booth.

Sweet, all is not lost.

15 minutes later, I'm backstage, in my own dressing room no less, getting all my gear sorted out.

As I'm walking back toward where everyone's gathered before they take stage, someone tosses me a black t-shirt.

That t-shirt allowed me to be on stage during the performance.

Double Score.

I've shot several concerts in my time as a photographer, but this was the first show where I had free reign to be wherever the hell I wanted to be to get the shot I desired.

This feeling of Man, I've hit the big time now seems to be happening to me on more of a regular basis these days. This is just the latest example of me establishing myself as a legitimate photographer.

I spent the next 3 hours frantically running around in front of the stage, and on the stage, capturing everything I could see.

It was really pretty surreal. There were at least four camera guys video-ing for the big screen on stage, and one other photographer I ran into a few times.

They nailed the performance. The musicians and crew associated with Black Jacket Symphony are all top-notch. It was one of the best performances I've been witness to.

At the end of the show, I found Jason to thank him for having me along for the ride that night. He immediately invited me back for the band's performance of Purple Rain in May.

I can't wait!

Too see the rest of the photos I walked away with click here

Difference In The Details

My name is Rob, and this sentence isn't at all related to this post. I bought some new toys recently, one of which being a new camera body. If you're one of the lucky folks that gets to hang around me, you already know this, because I've been talking about it for weeks.

There was always one common question that arose.

Wait, you're buying another camera? Don't you already have a fancy camera?

Yeah, but I need a back-up. Plus, this one's full-frame!

Full frame? What the hell does that mean?

It's at this point I generally start my harangue about the joys of full-frame cameras - the better image quality, larger wells on the sensor, a perceived shallower depth of field, better low-light performance.

It's about this point, too, that whoever was unfortunate enough to ask the question starts to glaze over faster than a Krispy Kreme donut at the end of the conveyor belt.

So, instead of describing to you in great detail the difference between crop- and full-frame bodies, I'm gonna describe one difference in rough detail and show you some pictures I took today.

Any given lens projects a circular image onto a plane(the image sensor in this instance). You don't end up with a circular image because the image sensor is rectangular. The image sensor on a full frame camera is roughly the same size as a 35mm film strip. This size sensor just fits inside that circular projection. On a crop-sensor camera, the image sensor is about 2/3 that size.

When you take a picture with a crop-sensor camera, the resultant image is, effectively, cropped. This produces a zoomed-in effect as can be seen in the following. These two pictures are taken using the same lens, in the same spot, using all the same settings in camera. The only difference being the camera body itself - the first being a full-frame camera, the second being a crop-sensor camera.

Here you see the zooming effect first hand. On a crop-sensor camera you're effectively multiplying the focal length by 1.5. This can be handy when shooting things far away, because they appear bigger in the view finder.

The draw back is when you want a really wide-angle shot, because you still get the multiplier. Take this example.

On the full-frame camera the sensor is recording a much larger area than the crop sensor. So much more, in fact, that the corners of the sensor fall outside of the projected circular image for this particular lens. You can tell because of the fall-off in the corners in the above image.

So, there you have it. A quick and dirty example of the difference between a crop-sensor, and a full frame sensor.

Check back next week for something more entertaining!