Been a while?

Yes, its been a while - but we're getting things fired back up. Watch this spot for more soon!

May 4, 2013

"Service" - Shot 2013-05-04, Arlington, VA.

Canon 5dII, 40mm lens, ISO 100 f6.3 @1/160 sec. Shot in color, converted to B&W

Was out for a walk on a spring morning, taking laundry up to the cleaners. Sunny day, mild weather. Took the camera because, well, why not. I've walked or driven past this hydrant hundreds or thousands of times. Always there, always faithful, always ready to serve. Weathered and peeling, but still there, still standing, steadfast.

February 5, 2013

No picture today - yet. No published pictures yet here this year.

Did some updates to the DNS and hopefully should be seeing the results of those a bit later today.

August 16, 2012 -- Shimano 105 rear cogs on a Gunnar Sport

Playing Macro a bit. Canon 5dII + 40mm lens and a Macro Extender tube. I hand held a 430exII speedlite with a Rogue FlashBender setup as a snoot. Flash was fired via a Canon ST-E2.

The bike was my birthday present to myself. Cyn had gotten a new commuter bike earlier in the year, and my older bike, a GT Karakoram mountain bike was around 17 years old - it was frankly painful to ride for any distance. I test rode a couple bikes, without having found one that felt right. We were about ready to head out, and the sales guy we were working with at Spokes Etc pointed out the Gunnar up front. I took it for a spin and was hooked. Expect to see more bike and biking photos in the future!

June 20, 2012 - First world problems...

First world problems -- does one pack a 24-70 f/2.8 zoom or three primes, 28 f/2.0, 50 f/1.4, 80 f/1.8mm plus a 1.4x macro extender? 21mm wide or 17mm fisheye?

June 17, 2012 - Bees of Bluemont

June 17, 2012 - Bees of Bluemont

Bluemont park is walking distance from my house, along the system of trails which connect to the W&OD here in Arlington. Among the features of the park are several gardens, which always have something blooming. Today was this orange colored something with smallish flowers. The bees were clearly enjoying themselves.

Photo Details - Canon 5DmkII, Canon 70-300 f4-5.6 IS USM L lens. Image was shot at 300mm, ISO 100, f/7.1, 1/500th.

June 3, 2012 - Frog at Riverbend Park, Fairfax County VA

June 3, 2012 - Frog at Riverbend Park, Fairfax County VA

This was taken on a hike - though it was a bit more like a walk in the woods than a hike - at Riverbend Park in Fairfax County, VA. Riverbend is one of a string of parks which can be found along the Potomac - it is traversed by a trail called the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail. I was with a couple friends - we drove out and parked, then headed north along the river. The trail here is well marked and generally flat. There are a few rises, but even for my out-of-shape condition, were a pretty easy walk. After one of these, we descended into a small glade with a large algae covered pond. There were several small wooden over looks at the water edge. We could hear the sound of many many bullfrogs and took a few minutes to grab some photos.

The above is one of several good ones I got. I also have a wide angle photo that I'm currently using as the background on my monitor at work. The above was shot with my Canon 5dII and my Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom, at 300mm. The camera was set on Auto-ISO and picked 1600. Aperture was f9.0, shutter speed 1/250th. I rather like shooting with the Auto-ISO on some days - I still can/do assume control over the shutter and aperture, but it seems to help make sure I end up don't end up with as many blurry, long shutter speed shots. And, thankfully, the 5dII is pretty good as far as sensor noise, even at higher ISO's.

Yes, I do still believe in knowing what all the settings do, and I believe any photographer should know the relationships between aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, etc - but I also believe that there are times when the computer brain can do things better and faster than I can. I have no qualms about using some of the "auto" settings, if it will help me get more consistent results.

May 12, 2012 - Looking a little lost

May 12, 2012 - Looking a little lost


This is one of my nephews. I grabbed this shot while we were all attending his half-brother's Bar Mitzvah. Everyone was dressed nicely, we were all there at temple a bit early, waiting while the photo pro shot pictures of the family. I look for these kind of pictures - the little guys always seem to get a bit overwhelmed at times, looking sorta lost in the sea or a forest of tall people.  Many of the adults, even if they're family, are basically strangers from out of town, seen only at times like these when extended families come together.

This was shot with my 5dII, using my now somewhat dated Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L zoom. The lens is big and heavy, but is pretty much perfect for shooting at gatherings like this. It covers a nice range, is bright enough to use inside, and is built like a tank.  Its is the first L lens I bought - and one I have no plans on giving up. This image was shot zoomed to 70mm, at ISO 200, f/3.5 and 1/125'th. The zoom compresses things some, the larger aperture gives us some good blur in the background. Did some quick retouching in Lightroom.

May 11, 2012 - New Old Lens

May 11, 2012 - New Old Lens


This is a fairly recent addition to my collection of older manual focus lenses. It is a Takumar 1:4 17mm Fish Eye. They're not too hard to find on eBay, but always seem to drive a premium price. After watching for a while, I found one at the lower end of the scale, bid, and won. It isn't a perfect example, but the flaws are minor enough for it to be perfectly serviceable. I'm less interested in spotless museum quality collectors items than I am functional, interesting bits of gear to enjoy actually using.

Haven't yet shot very many frames with this fish-eye. Haven't really had the time. It is VERY wide - 180deg FOV. Found it is very very easy to include fingers and such in the frame.

Am using these older lenses on the 5dII by way of various M42 to EOS adapters. Have tried a couple different ones. Have a "pro" Fotodiox right now which seems to be the best of the bunch - and even that one sometimes doesn't mate well enough for the focus chip to function. Most of these are made over seas. The chips work, but seem like a real hack. Mostly an after thought, they're typically just glued onto the adapter ring. However, since the 5dII doesn't have a split-prism focus screen available, unless you have really good eyes, the chip is a necessary evil. Of course, with a fish-eye, like this, it isn't quite as much of a worry as with other lenses.

May 10, 2012 - Lytro Day 2

May 10, 2012

Second day with the Lytro. Above, the freshly unboxed camera.

Starting to get the hang of it, but still have a ways to go. Did post a first "living picture" to my personal Lytro page. It isn't great, but shows some of the "refocus" capabilities of the camera.





You can click around the frame there and pick what you want to focus on, and zoom in here and there. I've not yet found a way to adjust the exposure in the frame - it just isn't available in the software. Hopefully that's a "not available yet."

Shown in the photo is a bit of my back 40. We planted the daisy looking flowers last summer - they've so far been pretty hardy. Have already learned that they're going to need to be kept managed or they'll get out of hand.


Back to the Lytro Camera - it is still in the early adopter phase here, I think.  Interesting gadget which needs some refining and tuning. Off the cuff downsides, it doesn't perform very well in lower light conditions, the view finder is postage stamp small and doesn't really work well at anything other than straight on viewing. There's not any way to lock down the zoom, and, since it is based on a touch sensor along the top edge of the back of the camera, which is near the shutter button, zoom tends to get out of whack unintentionally. The lens cap seems to be easy to lose. It is held on by a magnet, but its closer to the strength of a fridge magnet vs the rare earth stuff in certain proprietary power supply connectors.

Most of these things have been noted elsewhere - and weren't unexpected. The cool factor of the gadget, and its unique if still very early features are for me, still appealing. More to come, as time goes on.

Lytro

My Lytro arrived last night. Haven't had much chance yet to play with it - first attempts weren't great. It doesn't have quite the ISO an sensitivity of the 5dII. Is going to take some getting used to. The small postage sized rear screen is a bit tough to use for composing - biggest thing is that it can be hard to see at odd angles.
Form factor is different from any camera I've ever used before. Fits in the hand well, but feel like I want a case of some sort for carrying it around. Finding one of quite the right size should be fun. The front lens cover is magnetic - not sure why but there isn't a similar one for the back.

Tried a few more frames this morning, but managed to get out of the house without the cable. Going to have to wait to see how any of it turned out.

Stay tuned...

Too Long

Been far to long since I've been updating this. Time to rectify that.

January 24, 2012 - State of the Union or 4 More Beers!

January 24, 2012 - State of the Union or 4 More Beers!

In honor of the State of the Union address tonight - we have here "Four More Beers!" Hopefully this should be amenable to folks from either side of the aisle, give or take the teatotallers party, which I'm not too concerned about.

The beers pictured here include the 80 Shilling from Mad Fox - shown here ensconced in a Outer Banks Brewing Station Growler, Oude Kriek from Hannsens's, La Trappe Quadruppel and Winter Solstice from Anderson Valley. Yes, these are "just the beers in my fridge" at the moment. Or, rather, some of them. Some are local, some aren't. In the spirit of bi-partisanship, we'll drink each of them.

Photo was taken with my Canon 5dII and the Zeiss 28mm lens. Used flash - mounted on a light stand, to the right of the photographer. Shot the flash through a white "shoot through" umbrella, which you can see clearly if you look at the reflections on the bottles.

January 22, 2012 - Elecraft XV222

January 22, 2012 - Elecraft XV222

This is the weekend of the ARRL annual January VHF Sweepstakes. It is one of the many radio contests - this one is specific to VHF and higher frequencies. The idea here is to work as many other stations in as many different Maidenhead Grid Squares as possible over the contest weekend, which runs from 1900UTC on Saturday to 0300UTC on Monday. I made a total of 36 contacts - no, not anywhere near winning. Was just nice to get on the air.

Biggest things from this weekend - found I could tune my old G5RV on 6m, after having changed out the old Balun for a newer one, and, got the XV222 transverter, pictured here with the FT-817nd "IF rig" working. This was pretty much the first chance I'd had to put it on the air and make some contacts. Was a fun build. I built the kit last fall. Am overall very pleased with the quality of the product and the experience I had building the kit. Had one mis-queue with the inductors (had 2 sets of them swapped in the position they needed to be on the board) but, with a bit of email support from an Elecraft Engineer, was able to get that sorted out and get things working. It is, based on today's experience, about 3kHz off - to work on 222.110mhz or 28.110MHz on the IF rig, I need to tune to about 222.112.90 or 28.112.90 on the IF. Could be worse.

Photo was taken with the 5dII and the 28mm Zeiss lens. Flash, somewhat obviously, off to the left just a bit lower than the shelf on which the radio was sitting. ISO 100, 1/60th, f/4.0 - E-TTL full auto. Flash was gelled with 1/4CTO. Shot this with the ambient lights turned off - though there were a couple of computer monitors running.

January 21, 2012 - QSL Cards from the Bureau

January 21, 2012 - QSL Cards from the Bureau

Letting my geek show here a bit. Got a few QSL cards from the bureau today. Yes, I'm an amateur radio operator, and yes I still send QSL cards back and forth to confirm my QSO's, even with all of the electronic logging and online logs like the ARRL's Logbook for the World. My dad is a ham, and I grew up seeing him get cards from all over the world, and eagerly waiting for envelopes from the bureau.

This was a small bunch - only 5. I suppose perhaps they got sent as postage rates are about to change. I never know quite when they'll arrive. These are all Europeans, not really any that I needed to confirm. The oldest is from 2006, the newest, late in 2011.

The photo was shot with the 5dII and 28mm lens - pretty much the same setup as yesterday with the beer, only I added the white shoot through umbrella for this. Flash is off to the left. ISO 100, 1/60th, f/4.0.

January 20, 2012 - Victory Headwaters Pale Ale

January 20, 2012 - Victory Headwaters Pale Ale.
Victory Brewing Company of Downingtown Pennsylvania is, in my opinion, one of the best breweries in the country. Their beers are always well crafted, flavorful and very fresh. The subject of today's picture is a bottle of Victory's Headwaters Pale Ale. This is a fairly recent addition to their lineup - hoppy and refreshing. At 5.1% ABV it falls into what I'd consider a sessionable beer - you can have more than one without needing to consider dialysis. So many beers these days have adopted the "imperial" moniker and thrown in more of everything. This isn't one of those beers, rather, just a well made drinkable pale ale. Would that more breweries could concentrate on making quality styles, versus trying to outdo the other guy. Cheers to Victory!

Photo details: Canon 5dII, Zeiss 28mm f/2.0 ZE lens, hand-held. ISO 100, 1/60th second at f/7.1. Used a canon 430exII flash off to camera right, gelled with 1/4 CTO, triggered with an ST-E2. Retouched slightly in Lightroom.

January 18, 2012 - Quebec 7yr Cheddar from Cheesetique

January 18, 2012 - Quebec 7yr Cheddar from Cheesetique. Went to dinner at Cheesetique. We were going to go to Screwtop, but aborted that, after not getting seats. Dinner was pretty good. Picked up some of this cheddar afterwards. It is just wonderful stuff. Very piquent flavor, a bit dry and crumbly texture. There's some crystals as you bite into it. Know its available a few other places around, but this alone makes the trip to Cheesetique worthwhile. Also grabbed a chunk of Chimay cheese, which is not pictured here.

Photo was taken with the 5dII, 28mm Zeiss f/2.0 ZE lens and the 430ex flash. The flash was on a camera stand to the right of the camera. Had a bit of paper around it to try to limit the spill of light around the cheese.

This is a bit the opposite of yesterday's photo - this is just a sea of light colors. Needed to keep from overexposing it, while still maintaining some contrast.

January 17, 2012 - Lioness

January 17, 2012 - Lioness
I do, honestly, intend to avoid posting cat pictures. Tonight, the best I can say is that it isn't a panther picture. It is a beautiful lioness statue that our friends brought back from a trip to Africa last year. This statue is very dark wood - and so, tends to be referred to as a panther here at home, though it isn't. CKB suggested this as a subject, pondering how it would be possible to get a picture of something this dark.

The trick, of course, is that the statue is fairly reflective and has good contours, perfect for creating specular highlights and giving texture to what would otherwise be an inky sponge for light. I just needed to provide enough light coming from a couple different directions at once. This took some experimenting.

My set was the dining room table. For a backdrop, I used a red crushed velvet curtain - I think was intended for CKB's apartment, before we got married, but got shelved for years until I dug it out for photo purposes. I threw that over the back of a couple chairs and spread it out over the table. I used two cork trivets underneath as a stage for the statue.

As far as lights go, I currently only have a single flash - the 430ex. This I mounted this on a light stand behind a white shoot-through umbrella. It was triggered remotely with an ST-E2. I started with the light stand to the left of the camera, generally above the statue. Shot a few frames like this, adjusting aperture and shutter speed until I had almost the look I wanted. This frame ended up at ISO 100, 1/60th @ f/4.5. The flash was the "key" light, and was aided by a chandelier from directly above, plus a CF off to camera left. If you look close, you can see reflections from each source.

From there it was mostly a matter of framing by moving myself around and adjusting the angle of the lights. Going with the "available light means using any light source (or modifier) you have available," I added a small bit of fill with a reflector almost flat in front of the statue and another off to one side. For these I used a couple of 14" pizza pans I had on hand in the kitchen. The light stand eventually got moved around to the right and the umbrella was positioned fairly close to the statue.

The frame was cleaned up a small bit in Lightroom. Cropped and straightened, then adjusted the contrast and fill light. White balance remains "as shot." Enabled lens profile corrections and then added just a touch of post crop vignette. Titled it, added it to the target collection and published to SmugMug.

Thanks for reading, comments welcome!

January 16, 2012 - 1991 Penny

January 16, 2012 - 1991 Penny.
Showed the blog to a friend today. He is someone I've known for approximately half my life. He too is a techy and photographer, someone whose opinion I value. He took a read through the blog and pointed out a couple things. First - my critiques sounded defensive. I'm not sure I can argue that without, uh, sounding defensive. I'm not sure I'm even going to try. Part of what I'm aiming for here is a collection of my notes and thoughts on the pictures I take, even if it turns out to be public navel gazing of a sort. I am, for the most part, fine with it - though will perhaps try to turn things around a bit and write more on why I chose a particular image, rather than the things I could have done better, but didn't. He's right, it is defensive, though I do plan to continue sharing some of my thought process.

His next point was perhaps the more important - he asks for more on the thought that went into creating the image. Why did it mean enough of something to capture, process and post? What story is there to tell, rather than the bland tech behind it and the self serving critiquing after the fact.

And, this brings us to tonight's photo - a penny worth of my thoughts. It seemed appropriate, if trite, while I was mulling my friends input. This penny may be about as much as the image is worth - but it is today's story. I do need to think a bit more about what is going into my pictures, rather than just firing away and then posting online. My point here with this blog was not just to take a picture a day, but to get better at doing doing so. Part of getting better is the technical parts, but a larger part is the story and the narrative behind why the picture was worth taking.

This frame was shot with the 5dII and 50mm f1.4 lens, plus a Canon EF 12 II extension tube. Lit the scene with a halogen floor lamp, up and to the right, plus a 430EX flash right and just about level with the penny. Exposure 1/200th at f/1.4. ISO 100. The penny itself is stuck with a bit of gaffer tape to a piece of black granite tile, purchased from the local Big Box home improvement store. I tried bouncing the flash off the wall, from underneath, but was't getting quite the relief I wanted on the coin.

What you see above is was the last shot in the series. I started with the penny clamped in spring clamp used previously, resting on a small couch-side table. I fired a couple shots of this, but thought the clamp cluttered the picture and was holding the penny too close to perpendicular. I next moved to leaning the coin against a small roll of gaffer tape, firing a couple more shots. That improved both the angle and the colors (black, vs blue) - but still created too much background clutter.

Remembering I had a handy roll of gaffer tape, I folded up a small bit and used it as a stand, affixed to and mostly out of site behind the penny. Couple more frames, and I'm feeling like its getting closer. The table itself had some texture, it is wood with a rough slate tile top.

Remembering a trick noted in David Hobby, aka The Strobist's blog post on shooting a shiny new gadget from 2006 (wow, has it been that long??) I dug out my black granite tile and stuck the penny to that. Also added the flash underneath the table, pointed at the wall behind the penny. I shot a few more frames, trading lenses a couple times to get a tight macro view of the coin. I ended up with the 50mm and extension tube. The final adjustment was to move the flash off to the right, sitting on the arm of the couch, aimed at the wall. This helped pick up the relief on the coin - you can see the high-lights on Lincoln's face and jacket, as well as on the edge of the coin and in the lettering.


NB: I did have a little bit of help along the way:

January 15, 2012 - Eastern Market Washington DC.

January 15, 2012 - Eastern Market Washington DC. Ran down here this morning for a bit of shopping. Am a fan - and am glad that it has been revitalized after the fire several years ago. Picked up a few bits of this and that - chili makings, lemons for Caesar dressing, and shrimp to steam for dinner. Today was colder and windy. Not as many folks outside, but still everything was well attended. They've torn down the temporary structure that was used while the market was being rebuilt. Only wish is that parking were easier to find. Sunday shopping - didn't have to pay a meter. Tons of history in this place. It was used as a hospital during the civil war.

Photo details: Canon 5dII, handheld, natural light. 70mm focal length. ISO 100, 1/100th @ f/5.0. Retouched with Lightroom - mostly just color balance and overall exposure. No real cropping, though straightened up the frame slightly.

Critique: This probably deserved more of a wide angle than I shot here. Framing is a bit odd - almost too tight. Was fighting to keep the top of the flag pole and the people's feet in the frame at the same time. Was shot mid-day, which isn't usually conducive to a great angle of light. It is just past mid-winter and the sun is at a fairly low angle. That gives a bit of drama, but also created some odd shadows.