Ranger Adventure
 

I was inspired by all the great photographer on this site. I like to share mine.

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more to come.

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more of shots.

wow
 

nice find.....true voyeur:):)

This is fantastic....nice work ranger!

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I post my collections.

more adventure
 

more of action packed weekend in the past.

Hot summer day
 

Can't wait summer..

more of this series
 

hot day

Last of series
 

come back again.

extra
 

final. end.

adventure continues
 

more action.

more of this
 

hard to capture right moment.

end of this
 

final pics.

Just FYI Paul...

The reason your focus is all over the place, and many images the focus is just not where you want it to be:

It's because you are letting the CAMERA choose the focusing point. When shooting upskirts, you NEVER want the camera to choose the focus point, because the camera has no idea where the good bits are.

When shooting ups, you definitely want to choose the center focus point, & force the camera to only use this point (check the manual). Most cameras, especially Nikon & Canon DSLRs (like your Kiss X4) have a much higher sensitivity / accuracy on the center focus point, as well as being able to find contrast lines in both vertical & horizontal directions. This one simple change in the settings will save you a lot of heartache when you go out next summer. Nothing worse than getting home & realizing a ton of your hard fought pics have come out bad.

You might also consider bumping the shutter speed up a notch or two... 1/320th of a second is just barely enough when you have the lens racked all the way to 300mm, 1/500th would be safer if the light is good. Personally, I'd bump the ISO higher so I could keep the shutter speed higher. Anything up to ISO 1600 can be cleaned up pretty good in modern software noise reduction, maybe even 3200 on a cloudy day.

Freeware like PhotoME lets you check all your shooting data, including focus points, after the fact, if your editing software does not show this data.

You are SO right. Any camera that cost more than $100 should flash red and yell "Do you REALLY want to do this?" if autofocus is enabled.

DR

They do, actually. On his Canon DSLR, he would have seen little red squares flashing in the viewfinder to indicate where the camera was planning to focus. This is the default mode, because it's easy / theoretically helpful for beginners. The camera chooses what it thinks the best focus point in the scene is. The problem is that in quite a number of his pics, those little red squares were nowhere near his subject (this is clearly visible by loading his photos into PhotoME).

The secret is knowing that if you switch the focus mode to "Single Point AF" (in Canon-ese), you can force the camera to always use a particular point of your choosing. Every camera is different in how this works, even among Canon DSLRs, so it requires a quick look in the book to see how to set it up. Once this is done, you prevent the camera from making any bad decisions and ruining your uppies. And as I mentioned previously, but is worth repeating, while you can select any of the available focus points (each model has a different number, the more expensive models having significantly more), the center point is almost always a much higher quality / precision, so that's the one you want.

Some of the cameras made in the last few years have an additional mode called face detect. And while this can be great for shooting friends & family, it's not at all good when you are trying to shoot uppies, thus it should be disabled.

Thanks
 

Thanks for great suggestions and information. I was wondering this focus point thing. I practice for upcoming season now.

So true
 

AndyR is so right. Those are what my camera had gone wrong in so many reasons.

mmm
 

I do have to do practice wax on, wax off everyday.

more bad pics
 

I thought 300mm lens couldn't focus with even Stabilizer on.

wow wow
 

F7@#$ing great catch!!!

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send us more plz...

Aunt flow.. Is that you lol:D

That's what I call being a sport of a subject. The girl in yellow busted our hero and gave him the finger but she kept her knees up and legs open.

Figuring out focus will reduce risk. Instead of banging off frame after frame praying for one in focus you can get in, take a couple in focus and then get out. This situation could have turned ugly if she had a boyfriend or some other white knight jerk hanging around.

more adventure
 

more from past adventure.

I have a question about Europe. Is it safe to go there in this coming summer? As I read news report, immigrant crisis is all over ruining European way of life.

Paul, PM me if you want my top picks for a Euro trip, including exact locations in the cities. Don't think this info makes for a good post on a public, Google search ranked forum.

The girl across the fountain with the period stained panties was a fantastic find. You must have been very disappointed & a bit angry too when you got home and looked at them full size and seen how only a few turned out sharp & clear.

The key to this game if you shoot still pictures (as opposed to video), is to move from being a first encounter under enemy fire "Spray & Pray" army private to an Elite Special Ops Sniper. Yes, pro photographers call it "spray & pray" just like military guys do. Both situations involve "shooting" after all, just very different types.

You need to be fast. Uppertunities don't wait for you to figure out what is wrong with your camera. The longer your camera is pointed at a target, the greater the danger of being noticed, and the greater the risk to you.

You ***MUST*** know your camera inside out, every detail, and how to make it do exactly what you want within seconds. If you don't, you will fail. You do not need to take photography classes to lean this. Read the manual. Read the internet. Practice.

You can practice with your camera any time, any where. Any subject material will suffice, you do not need to be shooting ups.

Things to consider (specific to using a DSLR for candid shooting, other types of cameras may vary):

Since you need to work fast, you don't always have time to completely stabilize your body, arms & hands while shooting. Higher shutter speed is ALWAYS better. A shutter speed of 1/125 or below is too low for any type of candid shooting, although it is perfectly fine for many other types of photography.

The Canon 75-300mm IS lens is no screaming hell when it comes to sharpness. It is especially poor when you rack it all the way to 300mm. When you hit the stops, consider racking it back a fraction of a turn to about 280mm. Fewer sharp, in focus pixels are ALWAYS better than more, blurry, out of focus pixels. No amount of sharpening in Photoshop will fix a blurry image, however if you shoot RAW, or the very highest quality JPG, you can always upscale a smaller than desired image by 20-30% without any appreciable loss of quality. Note that Canon Image Stabilization always creates some strange looking blur around the edges of the image, this is normal.

Look at your images, evaluate what went wrong. Learn to spot the difference between the blur cause by camera losing focus, and the blur caused by camera shake:

Blur caused by camera shake is fixed by higher shutter speed. Your best bet here is practicing what you are personally capable of, every human is different. Quickly focus on something & snap off a shot at various focal lengths. What shutter speed do you need to make it come out perfectly sharp (remembering you will be under more stress when you go shooting candids)? These numbers will become your minimums that you will never go under when shooting candid.

Blur caused by camera losing focus can be caused by not setting the focus mode correctly (as you now know), but it can also be caused by choosing to focus on something with no contrasting lines for the camera to pick up. For example, a long expanse of flesh tone thigh gives the camera nothing to focus on, nor does an expanse of solid color panty. But the mottled grey stone of the step / curb just below her panties might be just the ticket, and close enough to the same distance away to nail nice sharp focus on the ups you want.


For what it's worth, here are a few settings that I used to use frequently...

Sitting / Lying / non-moving subject, flash OFF:

Shutter Priority (Tv) 1/500sec, (aperture adjusts automatically), ISO never below 400
Center focus point, One Shot (not continuous) AF, Drive mode continuous shooting

Moving subject:
Switch to AI servo continuous focus (still using only center point), possibly up shutter speed to 1/640 or 1/800

Sitting / Lying / non-moving subject, flash ON, bright to deep shade or early evening:

Manual mode (M) 1/200sec (limited by X-sync of camera), aperture f8, ISO never below 400
Center focus point, One Shot (not AI servo) focus, Drive mode continuous shooting
Note 1: Flash must be decently powerful off-board of same make as your camera - eg Canon 580EX v2 - get one cheap used, but avoid the 580EX v1 like a plague.
Note 2: Camera must be set to ETTL II = AVERAGE (this is not the default) to avoid the reflections from water bottles and reflective safety stripes on clothing from totally under-exposing the shot.

Sitting / Lying / non-moving subject, flash ON, bright sun:
Same as above, but use Tv (shutter priority) mode, attaching the off-board flash will automatically lower the shutter speed to X-sync (which is 1/200sec on your camera).

When you use flash, do NOT go much past 200mm, certainly no more than 250. Make sure Image Stabilization is on, and steady you body & hands as much as possible. The extremely short duration of the flash (~1/2000+ sec) helps capture a sharp, crisp image, but don't push your luck.

Yes, you can use flash at many tourist attractions, because everyone else is too. NO ONE NOTICES!!!!

Thanks
 

Thanks for great suggestions. To be honest, I have totally lost last 1/4 of your suggestions. I try to understand learning from manual and other info and practice more for sure. It is still three months to go.

adventure continues
 

more action.

more action
 

but no cigar......

.....
 

Great shots,seems like we have another great upskirter among us...:):):)

Thanks
 

Sir, I was inspired by you and others you may recognize easily.

action and adventure
 

continues.....

nice
 

But can you work on the focusing? All are a bit to quite fuzzy. See past posts on this...and good luck and happy hunting....

:)

This is what I expected, however it's not critical to understand, it's only necessary to plug my suggested settings in as a baseline for configuring your camera. Obviously, it's better if you do understand why certain settings work, and others don't, but you can learn this over time, if you have the desire to do so.

Let me illustrate with some examples. I will be breaking this into multiple posts, since I can't seem to make this forum software flow descriptions around images.


Lets get started with the very first candid shot I ever took on a SLR. Notice I say SLR, not DSLR. This was back in 1995 on a Canon film SLR. Basically, I'd been loaned a basic Canon EOS with a couple lenses, one of which was the 75-300mm Image Stabilized... yep, they really did make that exact same lens for over 10 years (it was replaced by the 70-300mm IS in 2005)!!!

At the time, I'd never used any type of camera at all. Since the camera had a full automatic mode, I just put it in that mode, thinking it would be "good enough"... well, as it turns out, it's wasn't anywhere near good enough. Fortunately for me, in those days there was only ONE auto-focus point in the dead center, so at least I didn't have the camera making bad decisions about that too.

This image you see below is blurry. This particular type of blur is what is known as "motion blur". Motion blur occurs when either the subject or the camera (or both) moves during the time that the shutter is open. The solution to undesired motion blur (some photographers use it for artistic effect) is to raise the shutter speed. I will note that this is a tremendously common type of blur, probably 40% or more of all smartphone camera shots suffer from this kind of blur, but for now lets stay "focused" on (D)SLRs.

The question then becomes, how much do we need to raise the shutter speed to avoid motion blur. The old school textbook rule of thumb is 1/<focal length>. So for example, if you were using a 200mm lens, then 1/200 shutter speed would be required. I have a different opinion on this, especially in relation to candid photography. You are going to be moving quickly, and you are going to be under stress, so the shutter speed needs to be higher than this old school rule of thumb. Hence the values I suggested in a previous post.

My final point regarding this image is this... if someone had said to me, "Andy, if you want to get a sharp, clear photo with a telephoto lens like that one you've got on your camera, you are going to want to set the camera to Tv mode, and set the shutter speed to at least 1/320, preferably more if lighting conditions allow", well how cool would that have been?? My photo would have come out better, and that one tip would have cut months off my learning curve. But back in those days, the internet was just getting started, and there were no forums discussing photography, I didn't know anyone in the real world who was knowledgeable in photography. So I struggled.

motion blur also occurs when one gets really excited when an opportunity of a great uppy shot presents itself...in the heat of the moment you really start rushing to get the shot,or you wanna get the shot before anyone else notices and most of all the HEART starts pounding faster due to the RUSH....its a combination...one has to remain calm,relaxed and one will obtain a good SHOT...:):):):)

Thank you for that great observation, Tonto. However, I'm sure that Paul knows *EXACTLY* how he feels when he is shooting. As one person on these forums is fond of pointing out in his sig, we are all unique.

It was my intent to stay focused on the technical aspects here to try to help Paul figure out how to get the most out of his DSLR, which is considerably more difficult to use than your little point & shooter pocket cam. But you make a valid point. Emotions are part of shooting, and it's worth a quick mention.

You may remember a few posts back I talked about moving from being a newbie private to an elite spec ops sniper. This analogy holds true not just for technical operation of the equipment, but for your emotional state as well. Most experienced military people will tell you that emotions will get you killed (for this analogy killed = in jail, in court, beat up by a hero, or other unpleasant result).

Well, if you are feeling excited, and in this case, we'll define excited as "all the blood leaving your brain & rushing to your pee-pee", then you are not paying attention to your camera, and most importantly, you are not paying attention to your surroundings. This WILL get you KILLED. PERIOD.

Situational awareness. If you don't have it, you will end up in trouble, sooner rather than later. Emotions destroy situational awareness. Especially letting yourself eroticize over your subject like one of the visual voyeurs who sit there staring up a skirt, burning the image into their brain and fingering themselves through their pockets.

Pretend you are a professional photographer doing a job. You are taking pictures of towels and sheets for a "Bed Bath & Beyond" catalog. Study meditation. Meet with a Buddhist monk. Whatever it takes to rid yourself of emotion. Save the emotions for when you are SAFELY home with a GREAT collection of pictures.


I'll leave you with this one image. If you are smart, it will scare the crap right out of you...

One fine day in France in the 2000's, some kind of BIG "problem" came up at the Eiffel Tower. The whole place was evacuated in minutes, leaving a crowd of thousands of confused tourists being told to leave the area quickly by the Gendarmes.

For me, the light-bulb moment, the realization that "oh, crap, I need to be much more careful EVERYWHERE I go" came when I saw, quite literally, HUNDREDS of people whom I'd presumed to be tourists & locals slipping on orange POLICE arm bands. Rastafarians, hippies, businessmen, CUTE BABES, **homeless dudes lying on rags** and many, many more, all of them jumping into action like a suddenly awoken zombie army. If that cute blonde woman didn't have the orange police armband on, and I didn't have a big pink arrow pointing to her, you'd NEVER know she was a cop would you?

DO YOU KNOW WHO IS WATCHING YOU ???

If you are grooving to the sensation of your pee-pee throbbing in your pants, I' SURE you don't...

(and if you think this only happens in France, I've got bad news for you)

(NOTE to Mods: I've blurred out everyone who is possibly under 18, and also a portion of the undercover officer's face. Please allow this image stand as is for educational purposes)

,,...
 

well said and.....will keep an eye out also,thnx

Thanks
 

I am trying. To be honest, I am still an amateur level to shoot with a bit of courage and determination. I truly appreciate you, Tonto, Andy and other's efforts. At the beginning, it was erotic thing I admit, but now it became more of the good shooting right moment at right place. I want to execute shooting exactly what I want to capture the prey I found attractive.