Category Archives: VARIOUS

Three things

Cameras and Photography, VARIOUS, ,

OK, here are three unrelated topics for today.

Kodak model 3A Pocket Camera
  1. My “new” camera: Lynn is really sweet. She saw this while out at an antique show and bought it for me. It’s a Kodak No. 3A Folding Pocket Camera, Model B-2, Serial no. 48805-A, and was made (as far as we can tell) around 1910. If you search the web you can find several sites with information on old cameras, download manuals, and even buy roll film to use in them. The camera appears to be in working order, except that the shutter sticks at slower speeds. It would be interesting to run some film through this one, but I doubt I’ll get around to it – I have so many photo projects on my list already. There are some very interesting features like a minimum F/Stop of F/128! The camera had an optional back (alas it didn’t come with this one) with a ground glass screen for focusing. Without the ground glass, you estimate the distance to the subject and use the distance scale on the rails to focus. It also has a perspective shift, but again this can only be used with the ground glass. To me it is very interesting to think about how much photography has changed in 100 years. Today’s cameras are much more sophisticated tools, but they still capture photons and to be good, the prints made from the captured photons will still have the same characteristics. Additional photos of the camera are posted here.
  2. Stock photography: As an experiment, I’ve joined the on-line stock photo agency PhotoShelter. I plan to post some of my photographs to see whether there is any realistic market for them.
  3. Software review: I haven’t wanted to join the Aperture vs. Lightroom debate, but here goes anyway. I tried both programs when I first started shooting in RAW, and ended up selecting Lightroom for my use. At the time, my main computer was a Mac with a 1.5GHz G4 CPU. Lightroom would run on it (although slowly and I had to close everything else). Aperture performance was just too painful. I’m sure Aperture performance has improved since then, but Lightroom has improved too. Another item to note when selecting which program to use is the frequency of software updates. Lightroom RAW support is built into the program. I believe that Aperture relies on RAW support built into Mac OS X. Lightroom supported RAW format on my Canon G9 from the very first time I used it. OS X still does not support G9 Raw. I also like the fact that Lightroom is cross platform and Adobe includes both versions in the box. My $.02.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Seaworld

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Orlando, Theme Parks,

I took my new Canon G9 to Seaworld to get used to it and see how well it works. First impressions are very positive. The photo quality / color is about the best of any point and shoot I’ve owned. The features and controls are plentiful and relatively easy to use. Noise does get noticeable when you use a higher iso, but it does pack a lot of photography creation tools into a very portable package.

Garden at Seaworld

The rest of my photos for this post are here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Road Narrows Ahead – North America's highest paved roadway

Cameras and Photography, Colorado, Must do list, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, , , , ,

Mount Evans is about 35 miles west of Denver. We left early (before 6) and were up on the mountain by 9, but we stopped quite a few times on the way. It could take you more or less time depending on how many stops you make and what the traffic is like. since we went up on a weekday, we saw very few cars. To get there, take I70 west out of the city, to the 3rd exit for Idaho Springs (route 103 south).

Summit lake, clouds and flowers on Mount Evans

The Mt. Evans road is the highest paved road in north America and is 14,200 feet at the top. I’ve been to Denver many times but hadn’t heard about it before. I’ve been listening to the Nikonians Image Doctors podcast and they recommended this place a couple of times (ID#39 adn ID#45) so I wanted to see it while I was out there. It is very much worth the trip! If you go, try to make it on a weekday. The weekends are supposed to be very crowded. This Mt. Evans website has a lot of helpful information.

Our drive was quite spectacular. It started out very cloudy, with some light rain, but the top was above the clouds and on the way down, it began to clear. We saw a lot of wildlife and July is apparently a very good time for wildflowers.

Elk herd near mile marker 8 on Mount Evans

Lynn and I are both flat-landers from Florida and we were out of breath at the top at even the slightest exercise. You’ll want to plan carefully and prepare for any hikes you want to do. There are some very spectacularly fit people out there. We saw several riding bicycles all the way to the top.

You’ll probably use a wide angle lens the most. A long lens will be helpful for some wildlife, although you can get very close to the goats and marmots.

My gallery of Mount Evans photos is here

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Sunday morning macro: flowers in the mall parking lot

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique,

Lynn and I were at the mall yesterday and noticed some new flower beds. I just got a 60mm f2.8D micro Nikkor lens for my D80, so I went back this morning to see how well it works. This is the first true macro (1:1 magnification) lens I’ve ever had. I like it a lot, but it will take a while to get used to.

Macro flower

Some observations:
– Focus is very critical at high magnification ratios, since the depth of field is so small (even at f16 or f22). The auto focus works well, but it’s difficult to get it exactly on what you want. The D80’s ability to select which focus sensor to use helps.

– Camera shake is worse at high magnifications, too. I took most of these handheld, and using a shutter speed of 1/focal length (x1.5 for the sensor size factor) wasn’t fast enough to freeze my motion. Luckily, it was bright enough that I could use a fairly high shutter speed at f16.

Today’s flower photos are here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Before and After

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Ocala, Technique, ,

I listen to the Digital Story podcast . The June 2007 photo assignment is “Before and After”. The idea is to submit two images showing how you “developed” the final photo.

I also just bought the book Examples, The Making of 40 Photographs , by Ansel Adams. He writes about how he re-visited his negatives over the years and was able to make better prints with additional effort / technique.

So these two things inspired me to go back to a photo I took in March, reprocess it and submit it to the Digital Story. Here are the steps I went through:

This view looked interesting from the road, and I talked Lynn into stopping (_DSC1423: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

The first photo is the scene as I saw it from the road. Lynn and I were driving to an auction up in Ocala Florida and this looked like it could make a good image. It was a bit cluttered, and the composition wasn’t good, so …

I took this shot after stepping inside the gate. A little under exposed, no detail in the clouds and the road into the trees goes dark. (_DSC1425: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

The second photo was taken after I stepped inside the gate. Better composition, I think. This is how it appears with no adjustments after importing it into Lightroom . I had underexposed it a bit so that the clouds would show up well. As a result, the road into the trees was pretty dark (and there still wasn’t enough detail in the clouds). I played around with it in the Develop module, but still couldn’t get the exposure quite right. So …

I exported two images from Lightroom. One at +2 exposure and the other at 0. This is the result after processing in Photmatix. (_DSC1425d-_+: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

Photo 3 shows the result after I exported two 16 bit TIFF versions of the image from Lightroom and combined them. One with an exposure bias of +2 and a second with it set at 0. Then I used Photomatix to create a High Dynamic Range / tone mapped version. Much better exposure and detail both in the clouds and trees. This was pretty good, but I still wasn’t happy …

I loaded #3 into Photoshop Elements, cloned out the distractions (lights, signs, houses, rags, fire hydrant, wires) and then re-imported it into Lightroom …

I loaded the previous image into Photoshop and cloned out distracting features (powerlines, etc) then imported the result back into Lightroom. This is the final version after converting to B&W. (_DSC1425-_+cloned8bit: 3872 x 2592 Pixels)

Photo 4 shows the final result after using Lightroom’s wonderful B&W conversion tool. You can play around with different color channels to emphasize different things in the picture. It’s like being able to use color filters over your lens after you’ve taken the picture! I think the final result is much better than the original.

Here’s a link to my gallery with all of the images in sequence.

You can see all of the entries in the Digital Story June photo assignment here .

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Shuttle launches from Orlando

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Rocket Launch, Technique,

Tendai asked me about camera settings for shooting space shuttle launches. Rather than write them down, I looked through my photos and posted the ones I’ve taken, along with the EXIF data (where available) giving the settings I used.

Space shuttle launch as seen from Orlando – 1/160 sec @ f/8, ISO 100, 300 mm, Cropped 1936 x 1296, Nikon D80

I took a new set of pictures yesterday. I’m really pleased to be able to see the Solid Rocket Booster sequence from my front yard. (We’re 35 – 40 miles from the launch site). I used my new Nikon 70 – 300, F4.5 – 5.6, IS lens and mounted the camera on a tripod on my driveway. I really like the lens.

My gallery of shuttle pictures is here.

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Way too short a visit: Yosemite National Park

California, Cameras and Photography, Must do list, , , , ,

On May 5th, I was able to go to Yosemite for a day during my visit to San Francisco. The drive from where we were in Dublin, California (east of San Francisco) is about 120 miles. We were on the road at 6 am, and it took us about 3 hours to get to the park.

Two waterfalls: El Capitan, Cathedral Rocks and Merced River

May is a good time to go – The snow is melting and the waterfalls are in full force. There are some wild flowers blooming, but not as many as later in the year. We did see some nice Pacific Dogwoods in bloom. In early May, school’s not yet out, so the traffic is not as bad as it gets in the summer. We were there on a Saturday and I was very surprised by how little traffic there was.

Bridalveil Falls through dogwood tree

Recommended reading – I bought a book on the way into the park called The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, by Michael Frye . I highly recommend it, and I wish I’d had time to read it before I got there.

They’re hiring at the park! While we were checking out in the gift shop, I talked to the sales clerk. He lives in the park and explores every chance he gets. He told me they need 200 people. They pay minimum wage, but room and board is incredibly inexpensive (~$70 / week!). It was very tempting, but Lynn would’ve probably been upset with me if I didn’t come home all summer.

I wish we could have spent more time in the park. We were only there for a few hours before we had to head back. There’s so much more to see.

The National Park Service website for Yosemite is here .

Please take a look at the rest of my Yosemite photographs, posted here.

Mary also took some very good photographs of Yosemite and Muir Woods which are posted here. (no longer on-line as of 2019).

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

A wonderful trip!!! San Francisco and Muir Woods

California, Must do list, , , , ,

So what if you could take a long weekend, fly free to San Francisco, take pictures of scenic locations there, then also go to Muir Woods and Yosemite to explore the photographic opportunities? What if someone bought you your plane ticket? Would you think that life is being too good to you and sooner or later the odds would have to even out? Me too. Here’s hoping that it takes a while for my luck to catch up with me.

I met Mary in Cincinnati on Thursday night and we flew out to SF together. Friday, we ran some errands and then went to Muir Woods National Monument . Saturday was Yosemite. Sunday was more errands and then tourist locations around SF, including Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39. And on Monday, I flew home.

There is a really good overlook in SF called Twin Peaks . On a clear day like we had, you can see quite a bit. I played around with my point and shoot and took several panorama sequences.


Here are my photo galleries of the trip:
San Francisco
Muir Woods
Yosemite

©2007, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.