Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Rickenbackers sure look good, don't they?

We need more technical info, please! What camera, lens, film (if any), etc.

Okay, I used my Fujifilm Finepix S3 Pro digital SLR with a Tamron 28-105mm 2.8 zoom. The ISO was set at 400, and I used an 18% gray card to set the white balance and exposure of f/8 at 1/250th of a second under a perfectly overcast afternoon sky. The camera was mounted on a tripod and the lens was zoomed to its maximum focal length. I cannot take credit for the beauty of the subject, somebody else took care of that long ago.

Tubescreamer wrote:Okay, I used my Fujifilm Finepix S3 Pro digital SLR with a Tamron 28-105mm 2.8 zoom. The ISO was set at 400, and I used an 18% gray card to set the white balance and exposure of f/8 at 1/250th of a second under a perfectly overcast afternoon sky. The camera was mounted on a tripod and the lens was zoomed to its maximum focal length. I cannot take credit for the beauty of the subject, somebody else took care of that long ago.

Now, this is photography talk!

Nice use of limited depth of field to pop the guitar out from the relatively busy background. The wonderful, soft light let's us dig in and see what is in the shadows. I am a fan of such natural light, even so much as to wait till sunset, or even getting up before dawn , to do some photography, in what John Sexton calls Quiet Light.

Sexy guitar!

Congrats, great guitar, Dave!

BTW, I don't consider the S3 "old", maybe by digital camera standards, but not by "camera" standards.

I used to own and regularly use mid 1950's cameras (Linhof Technika III and Rollei 3.5E), now those could be called old cameras.

Camera technology has been growing in such leaps and bounds lately, a camera like mine seems old and obsolete already. One of the age-old obstacles in photography has always been film speed. The incredibly high ISOs on the latest models have made many shots possible that were only dreamed of not long ago. There are countless other advances, but the increase in ISO seems most significant to me. I'd really like the new Nikon D800, but I have a guitar to pay off.

Yeah, the march of progress sure is great, for the manufacturers and marketing end of things!

Dave, I hate to ask what a Nikon D800 is going to cost after your guitar comment. For those of us on a tight camera budget do you have any recommendations?

I haven't been in the camera business for a couple of years so I don't really know all that's available right now. The reason I'm looking toward the D800 is because all of my lenses and flashes are Nikon based accessories and I don't want to start over with a new brand. (Fuji's pro cameras were built on a Nikon platform) There are many other reasons why I covet the D800, but you can take great photos with any brand of camera if you aren't already locked in to a system.

A $100-range pocket camera is capable of quality images, if the conditions are optimal. I was at a KISS show a couple of years ago and ended up closer to the stage than I expected. I didn't go there expecting to get any good photos, but my pocket camera is always with me anyway. I decided to try a few shots for a couple of songs, and then enjoy the rest of the show. Concerts are usually very difficult situations because the follow spots are way brighter than the rest of the stage lights. A pro I was talking to told me that KISS's light technician is a photographer, so the scenes are pretty well-balanced. Banning photos at a concert is a thing of the past, so maybe they decided that if you can't stop the people from taking photos, you can at least give them something worth shooting so you don't have a billion ****** photos floating around the internet. I got a lot of good photos in a short period of time, and quite a few not so good ones too, but this just shows that a point-and-shoot camera can make a quality image. I have no idea what the technical particulars are on this shot, but I used a Canon and I did blow it up to a 24x30 print that hangs on my wall.