Sony Archives - Nathan Firebaugh Photography

Jun 27
0

The Lighthouse Mid Day

By | Canon 6D, Georgia, Landscapes, Lightroom 4, Photography Blog, Photoshop | No Comments
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Tybee Island Lighthouse Mid Day

 

No tripods allowed sir! You’re going to have to either leave that with us or take it to your car…. The dreaded words!

I can understand not up in the lighthouse maybe, but come on give me a break. Anyway if you plan to visit the Tybee Island Lighthouse leave the tripod in the car. It’s no use to argue with the lady at the ticket booth, it will get you nowhere… So this photograph was taken about mid day as I was going up into the lighthouse, nothing fancy, no fancy post processing ( other than to remove the people standing in my way) I really wish I had updated the firmware on my Sony NEX-5N before this trip or even put it in my bag for that matter. I can shoot handheld HDR’s with it fairly well I have recently found out… like the last photograph I posted “Sunset Through The Purple Vetch” handheld 3 exposures while lying on my belly.

Wanted to share a coastal themed picture to get me in gear for my trip next weekend to the coast of North Carolina…. OBX here we come! I can’t wait to wake up early in the morning to grab those awesome sunrises on the beach and the late evening sunsets at the many lighthouses, piers, and marina’s. Stay tuned plenty of photographs to come!  Oh and the NEX will be in my camera bag!

 

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Jun 16
0

Sunset Through The Flowers

By | Floral, HDR Software, Landscapes, Lightroom 4, Nature, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, Sony HDR Photography, Sony NEX5N, Topaz Adjust, Topaz Clarity, Virginia | No Comments

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Sunset Through The Purple Vetch – Blue Ridge Parkway, VA

I took a trip up on the parkway to capture what turned out to be a beautiful sunset yesterday. The tree’s at the overlooks seems to block lots of the views and make for crappy photo’s. So coming up with a good composition is always a challenge! For this one I decide to lay down and shoot the sun rays through the small flowers on the ground. I used the Sony NEX-5N for this shot and captured 3 bracketed shots handheld, with the 18-55mm kit lens.

I then processed this shot using Photomatix Pro, Photoshop CS6, Lightroom, Topaz Labs Adjust and Clarity. If you haven’t seen my review on Topaz Clarity you should check it out! This is an excellent piece of software to make contrast adjustments in landscape photography.

Sunset Through The Purple Vetch

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Some of my landscape prints are available here.

Jun 04
0

Rainy Day Photography

By | HDR Photography, HDR Software, Lightroom 4, Nature, Photography, Sony HDR Photography, Sony NEX5N, Topaz Adjust, Topaz Clarity, Virginia | No Comments
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HDR Photography With The Sony NEX-5N

 

I’ve been trying to work on my eBook Photographing Bodies Of Water  which is going to be “A beginners guide to taking photographs of water” the past few weeks. Mother Nature must have other plans though, every time I plan to shoot it rains or storms… So I bought a waterproof housing for my Sony NEX5N now that won’t be a problem. 🙂 The housing allows me to use the 18-55mm kit lens and gives me full control of all the buttons on the camera other than adjusting the lens. So far the image quality looks great and I have no complaints! This camera I bought mainly for my walk around camera, but with the release of firmware version 1.02 now it has more use. With now being able to shoot a 3 frame bracket with up to 3ev exposure, HDR photography is now a reality. Sign up for my email list if you’d like to receive updates when my eBook is released!

 

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Stiles Falls at Camp Altamons Shawsville, VA

 

 

Oct 28
0

Sony NEX-5N Review

By | Tech Talk | No Comments

Recently I have started using my Sony Nex-5N  a little more and thought I would share some results of what I like about the camera and  also what I dislike about it. First off the camera is much smaller than my DSLR which makes it a perfect every day or carry around camera. The kit lens 18-55 mm F3.5-5.6 seems to be pretty good with the limited shooting I have done so far. The added features of the camera are great some of the effects built in to it are great, while others aren’t of much use. The three that I think are very useful are the miniature effect, soft focus, and the selective color (red). I know lots of people who like to see edited black and white photographs of their children on a red bicycle, car, or whatever it may be but have the red bicycle still in color. If they owned this camera it’s as simple as setting the camera to JPG format turning on the selective filter under color and brightness and taking the picture! No software editing needed. The soft focus setting provides a nice soft focus effect to make photographs more dreamy like which sometimes can create and excellent image. The miniature effect works similar to a tilt shift lens, making parts of the image blurred out but retaining a section in focus. This creates the effect of taking a picture of a scale model. I have posted a few photo’s on my flickr photostream using this technique and I will share one with you below. This was taken in front of the Peaks Of Otter Lodge on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the only editing done was a simple crop and vignette was added in Lightroom 4.

 

Naked Tree

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The things I don’t like about the camera is the menu system seems to me like its a little hard to navigate, it’s okay but I think it could be better. The Auto HDR feature isn’t that great and as far as HDR goes I would recommend using other cameras, but it can be done with this one. The auto bracketing settings only allow for a .3 step increment which in HDR is pretty much useless, and I would rather have something with a 1 step increment. Overall I must say the image quality is great and some of the features are awesome. I would recommend it to people as a every day camera, which is super fast mirrorless, good image quality at 16.1 mp, very lightweight which makes it easy to travel and has lots of options to get creative.
Sony NEX-5N 16.1 MP Compact Interchangeable Lens Touchscreen Camera with 18-55mm Lens (Black)