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The Missing Person
Looking through years & years of family photos I can't help but notice a common element: There's somebody missing. (That would be me.) I love to take pictures of things we do, places we go, and I like to include friends & family members in pictures whenever I can. As I look back through our snapshots & albums, I realize they mean so much more when friends & family members are included. The problem is that I'm the one who usually takes the pictures, so I'm rarely in them ... a missing piece of the puzzle in our family's pictorial history books. Family history - that's what family picture albums are really all about, and they really do need to include everyone.
Solution: The Nikon D2H's "Invisible Photographer"
The Nikon D2H's built-in Intervalometer provides automatic unattended photography. The camera can automatically take pictures at an interval of your choice between 1 second and 24 hours, cranking out as many pictures as your specify, up to 999 frames (or the capacity of your memory card, whichever comes first).
Although I originally thought of the Intervalometer as just a gadget for occasional stealth wildlife photography, I now also use it for everyday candid family pictures. (That way I get to be in the pictures too.) And because it repeatedly shoots sequential frames, the intervalometer gives me the post shooting advantage of being able to pick & choose after the fact instead of having to constantly carry the camera around looking for (and often missing) a photo opportunity.
The D2H on a tripod has become my "invisible photographer".
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Family
fishing fun
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With the camera up on a
tripod on the far side of the pond, I zoomed the 70-200 lens
to a field of view that would cover our activity, aimed the
center focus point at some shoreline reeds, set the
Intervalometer for one shot every minute with a 120 picture
maximum (good for two hours), and went fishing with the
family. This time I got all three of us in the
picture.
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Father
/ Daughter Fence Project
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My daughter & I had
to put up 400 feet of double-sided electric fence to keep
the goats in the adjacent pastures from butting heads with
each other. If we didn't keep them from head-butting, they'd
tear up the fence and hurt each other in the process. The
low-current wire run at head-butting height should do the
trick once the goats learn the discomfort of the harmless
(but certainly uncomfortable) shock.
Again, I set the D2H on a tripod, but this time I set the interval at two minutes, aimed at a central point in our 400 foot work path, and set the camera's aperture at f/16 to give a deep depth of focus so that no matter where we were working, we'd look reasonably sharp.
And unlike earlier family projects, I'm in the picture.