2007.12.11
Dear Midwesterners, Sorry
18.46.19 - Mark
While the Midwest is getting slammed by a winter storm, I've spent the afternoon riding my bike around Mount Airy in shorts and a t-shirt taking photos of things that don't feel like winter. Although I wish winter would arrive in North Carolina. As nice as it is to be riding my bike in mid December, it's also weird. December is supposed to be cold.
I love to take photos in winter. As amazing as fall colors are, there's nothing quite like taking the camera out after a fresh snow, or taking some macro photos of branches and bushes after an ice storm and everything looks like it's encased in glass. Plus the sky never seems clearer than in the dead of winter. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wait until the new year for much chance at winter photography. There's a 3% chance of a white Christmas (and there's a good chance that's very optimistic), and I suspect that those odds don't improve much the last week of December.
Link | 0 Comments | fall images life Mount Airy NC photography photos weather winter
2007.12.08
From the Department of Lost Files
20.38.35 - Mark
I don't know why I didn't post this one back in August closer to when I took it, or when I ran it though noise reduction, but I was reminded of it while talking with a friend the other day. This pre-dawn photo of Raven Knob is one of my favorite pictures period (even if I woke up at 4:30AM to take it) and it's a shame that it's near impossible to make a good print of it, even after noise reduction, but it's still a treat to look at (it's one of the few photos I've slipped into my desktop images folder).
No flash, no lights, just a tripod, a near full moon to my back, and a 15 second exposure.
Predawn Raven Knob - View Large (2816 x 2112)
Link | 0 Comments | images longexposures photography photos Raven Knob touchups
2007.12.03
Hunting for something
10.27.13 - Mark
Yesterday my family went Christmas tree hunting. It still feels too early to start celebrating Christmas, but my mom wanted to get the trees yesterday so we drove up to Santa's Delight Christmas Tree Forest in Virginia. The place lets you pick and cut (and drag) your own tree, and picking and cutting down our Christmas tree is an old family tradition going back farther than I can remember. The farm and Virginia is nested in between a few mountain peaks, and is really photogenic so I armed myself with my camera. I took a few good photos, mostly family, but towards the end of our hunting a colorful sunset started forming.
It's probably the mountains, but truly beautiful sunsets are rare in North Carolina, and I've yet to see one that really matches the sunsets we had in Iowa where dirt and debris provided deep rich sunsets. Last night in Virginia however, something was working right, so I turned on exposure bracketing and snapped a few series. I was hoping to get a short HDR panoramic series, but for some reason Canon doesn't allow exposure bracketing when shooting in manual so unless I can work some major photoshop magic I'm not getting a panoramic. I did however get a good single frame set, and after playing with it in photoshop for an hour, I've managed one rich HDR photo from the farm:
Sunset over the Trees (View Large - 2793x2088)
Link | 0 Comments | christmas HDR holidays images life nature photography photos sunsets Virginia
2007.11.30
Blue Skys
22.01.28 - Mark
The best part about living in a mountainous area is that there is no shortage of beautiful vistas. That said I'm sure I'll run out of stunning panoramic images. However that day is not today. This one was taken at Pilot Mountain a week or two before peak color, but there are a few trees that offered some color. I may crop this image whenever I get it printed (the left fence rail bugs me a little bit), but I'm having a hard time deciding where to make the crop, so for now I'm posting the cleaned up, squared off version.
Blue Skies at Pilot Mountain
View Medium (3575 x 1024) Suitable for on screen staring.
View Large (9119 x 2612) Suitable for printing.Link | 0 Comments | images North Carolina panoramic photography pictures Pilot Mountain
2007.11.25
The Panoramic: Season 2
23.36.39 - Mark
A couple weeks ago I made my way up to Raven Knob for some fall photography. I was a few days late for peak color so a lot of the photos I took around camp don't have those stunning fall colors, there were a lot of leaves already down. I have a few photos that still have some great color (and I still need to play with them some in Photoshop) and I still got some beautiful photos, but hiking up to 1860 feet (give or take some elevation) gave me a stunning view of the area, in aggregate fall was still in full swing. This panoramic doesn't come close to doing the scene justice. I sat down on the rocks taking the view in for about 15 minutes before I even bothered unpacking the camera. I'll probably print up some copies of this image like I did the summer Raven Knob Panoramic but it's going to be a while before I order more panoramas, they're not cheap to print. Anyways, enough talk, no point in trying to create 1000 words when the image is worth more than that.
Fall from 1860 feet
View Medium (3175 X 1024) Suitable for a multi-screen desktop
View Large (7453 x 2404) Suitable for printing
Link | 0 Comments | autumn fall images panoramic photography photos Raven Knob
2007.10.24
Dynamic
18.49.20 - Mark
I've been wanting to play with High Dynamic Range photography for a few months now. Every once in a while I put my Canon S3 into exposure bracketing mode and shoot a few sets, and when I get motivated I try out some software that merges them. At that point I normally get frustrated when I don't get results like I've seen in the HDR flickr group, and then table the idea again.
At least now I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to understand how much more there is to HDR photography than simply taking a series, merging them, and admiring the results. I spend over a couple hours working though HDR tutorials and playing with images in Photoshop last night, but the results I got illustrate the point.
Left: Average exposure from camera. [View Fullsize]
Center: HDR image created with Photoshop CS3's Merge to HDR feature. [View Fullsize]
Right: HDR image created manually in Photoshop CS3 (following this tutorial) [View Fullsize]
The pictures are from The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Savannah, GA. I've got a couple more HDR sets from the church, but I may try out some more local scenes first. I think I want to try and match what I can actually see before I use HDR for surreal effects.
Link | 1 Comments | HDR images photography photos Photoshop
2007.10.17
Orange Night
17.31.22 - Mark
Orange Night - Fall is here
Last night I was the monthly meeting of Mount Airy's Photography Club, I on my way home I drove past a small park at the end of main street, and the lighting and arrangement of stuff looked cool in the orange glow of the street lamp, at least more interesting to me than in broad daylight. So I circled around Main Street, parked at the end of the otherwise deserted street, and grabbed my camera and a tripod and snapped away. I really like manual settings. I couldn't have taken this image with automatic white balance and unadjusted exposures.
I've got some good evening images of Main Street (at the Mayberry end of Main) I'll post later. Mayberry at night has an interesting feel to it.
Link | 0 Comments | autumn fall images Mayberry Mount Airy night photography photos
2007.05.22
Seeing the big picture
17.35.02 - Mark
Today's adventure in photography is panoramic photography. This is a photo of Camp Raven Knob (from the upper knob) that I've been wanting to take for years, but have more or less lacked the experience, tools, and skills to pull it off. That's changed - when I was at the local art council's photography club I knew one of the members had some experience with digital panoramas and asked for some tips after the meeting. The tips were take the photos on full manual controls, take the series in the portrait orientation, then stitch them together in Photoshop by hand - aligning them in layers, then using layer masks to smooth out sharp lines and other misalignments. I have to say that his tips worked out really well, and the results are worth the extra time and effort involved.
Here's the first stitched image, A 15 or 16 image series forming one horizontal row. It's not particularly well suited to serve as a desktop (unless your desktop is a flight simulator or you have 3 or 4 wide screen monitors as your workspace). I took a series with two horizontal rows, but I might try and get a 3 or 4 row series later on. I'll stitch the two row series together next, and if it turns out well that may make a better candidate for desktop images and prints. I also might have to dig around for some QTVR software and use one of the 360 series to make a panoramic movie. For now, I really want to make a panoramic photo into a poster, but I want to have the image first (then worry about finding a reasonably priced large format printer...)
View Medium (4764 X 1024) Suitable for a multi-screen desktop
View Large (12100 x 2600) Suitable for printing - maybe
Link | 0 Comments | geek images panoramic photography photos Raven Knob tips
2007.05.17
Light Drawing
23.49.28 - Mark
A bit of fun with long exposure settings and a mini Maglight. Here's a howto article on Instructables.com
Link | 0 Comments | images light lightdrawing photography photos
2007.05.16
Tourist in your own town
23.48.07 - Mark
A couple years ago Mount Airy had some consultants come in to state the obvious for piles of money, one of the obvious (at least to an objective observer) things that they suggested Mount Airy do to increase tourism was to promote tourism within the the city limits to citizens. I think their words were "to be a tourist in your own town" at least for a day or two. Like all reports from outside consultants it was never widely circulated, but I had been interviewed in their research and knew enough to pay attention to the public meetings.
The idea is a good one. Most people who live in one area for a long period of time never realize what their area offers, more so if you live your whole life in the same geographic area.
I haven't forgotten this fact (being a non-native helps that) but stay in one place long enough and even the most aware people loose track of little joys. Yesterday I happened to to go the local art council's photography club and as part of their meeting they conducted a brief photowalk. It didn't take time for locals to "welcome" us to Mayberry (can't blame them, what else do you assume a dozen, mostly older, people with cameras are?) I'm not a fan of the whole Mount Airy Mayberry connection, but I can't deny it and too many baby boomers are too nostalgic for Mayberry for it to fade away anytime soon. The walk reminded me of that, but it also reminded me of some of the other little joys the area offers.
So, don't forget to take some time to be a tourist in your own area. Chance are you'll find something interesting.
Link | 0 Comments | images life Mayberry Mount Airy photography photos random tourism
2007.04.27
Lizard Love
23.50.02 - Mark
Lizards in Love
I've found (and photographed) at least three lizards creeping around in the yard, but these two are the most fun to watch, plus they're so preoccupied that after a minute or two they simply stop caring about any observers. I've got a short video of these two as well. I'll get around to putting together a video sampler in a few days - the S3 really does have a great video mode.
Right now I'm both looking forward and dreading tomorrow. There's an air show at the local airport and I plan on going over with my camera. The only problem with that is that I know going will flare up my desire to learn how to fly, which of course I can't afford...
Link | 7 Comments | cameras images life lizards photography photos
2007.04.24
For the birds
18.07.35 - Mark
One of several photos of Hawks in flight that I took at Pilot Mountain last week
A Robin that happened to perch on a stone retaining wall in the backyard earlier today
I love my zoom lens, but I really need to find a better way of posting photos online. Maybe time to fire up the flickr account again...
Link | 2 Comments | birds images photography photos
2007.04.20
Damn good day.
23.55.55 - Mark
Today was a very, very good day. From waking up an watching a couple movies to taking my camera out to Pilot Mountain, or building a $2 macro photo studio and fixing some other stuff around the house. It's been a very enjoyable day. I didn't even need it and I feel immensely recharged, so right now life is very, very good. I'll save the writing and photo sorting until after I've had a good night's sleep.
Link | 0 Comments | happy images life photography photos
2007.04.18
Light Catcher
16.50.10 - Mark
I once again have a working camera, and all is good. Having worked out the features I wanted and needed nearly a month ago, I've had plenty of time to stew over various cameras and read almost literally hundreds of reviews. In the end what it came down to was size. I can get cameras that have all the features I wanted in just about any size I want, but to even get close to having it all I was looking at paying close to $800 for a compact camera. Compact cameras seem to command at least $150 to $200 more than their larger brethren, so with that in mind I opted to get a larger high end shooter. Specifically the Canon S3 IS (DP Review | DCRP) It's a year old, but newegg.com had it for $310 with 2GB SD card. On paper it meets every one of my wants and needs except for its physical size and the lack of RAW shooting modes (tho' there's a firmware hack that may fix that). In reality, I've very happy with the decision.
UPS showed up with the camera about quarter to 2 and I had it unpacked and taking pictures by 2, and it didn't take long to start getting used to the controls and start playing with the advanced features. The interface is quick and logical, the images I've been taking are stunning and the optical range is great from the super macro mode to the fully extended 12x zoom. The one thing that's really stunning is the movie mode. The quality is great, and although I haven't done anything more than a sample video the zoom while recording and stereo sound captured my heart instantly.
There are a lot of features I haven't tried yet, but I honestly can't wait to. I'm even going to read the manual to make sure I'm not missing anything (hint: I almost never read manuals). Now for the hard part of this post - picking sample pictures...
Link | 1 Comments | cameras images photography photos
2007.03.22
Camera Shopping (Warning: Long Rambling Post)
04.01.57 - Mark
I've been itching to replace my dead (via my own stupidity) Canon SD300 for a while now. It more than proved its worth but I'm only now starting to get the cash to replace it. What I'm finding however is there isn't a camera out there that matches the feature set I want. The following is a lot of thinking out load. The meat of the post is in the last paragraph or two.
Needs
- Size Matters. I'm looking for a small camera. Preferably both size and weight. As much as I love the versatility of SLRs, I'm looking for a point and shoot camera I can keep on me at all times. The SD300 is hard to beat in this field, I usually had it in a pocket or, for longer shooting excursions, a case with a belt loop that held the camera plus extra memory and batteries. The newer SDx00 are nice, but they still have some of the shortcomings I'd like to avoid
- Image Quality. It's not hard to find a 5MP+ camera, but its harder to find one that actually takes a good picture. The SD300 had a fairly good image quality, and offered plenty of image controls. The only downfall really was that it was easy to get motion blur due to the camera's weight. Newer point and shoots are starting to offer image stabilization, but I'm relying on Flickr's Camera Finder to see how image quality stacks up.
- Build quality. I try to take care of my cameras, but they suffer their share of abuse. With few exceptions I don't trust plastic electronics. They don't feel solid and are easier to break. The sd300 was mostly metal and its overall build quality was excellent. I used it for a good deal of Cameratossing in addition to regular day to day abuse and it held together. It only died after accidental exposure to a spin cycle in the washing machine.
- Optical zoom. Digital zoom is evil. The SD300 had a digital zoom in addition to a 3x optical zoom, but that was disabled within an hour of getting my hands on it.
- Manual controls. I may be shotting for a point and shoot, but I need to be able to take over the controls on the camera to get the shots I want.
- Low price. Everything else on this list so far has been screaming the opposite, but I need a camera that doesn't wipe out the bank account. I'm aiming for $250ish, give or take some if I need to get new accessories.
Wants (where things get complicated)
- Video. I want a decent video function. I shot some great video with the SD300. Ideally this means 640x480 at 15fps or better with no length cap.
- SD cards. I've already invested in a couple of 512MB SD cards, I'd like to be able to keep using them. Alternatively, I'll settle for Compact Flash cards. CF cards are cheap enough to buy on their own, and there is such a thing as an SD to CF converter. Mainly I want to avoid anything that uses a weird format, like xD or Sony Memory Sticks
- RAW file format. This is more common on DSLRs but there are some compact digitals that support RAW files. I don't have a problem with high quality JPEGs, but higher quality RAW files would be nice.
- Timelapse shooting. I've always wanted to play with time lapse photography. I've done it manually, but I'd like to have the function built in.
- Image stabilization. I mentioned this with image quality, and its a feature I'd like, especially on a smaller camera. I've got a fairly stable hand, but small light wight cameras take in a lot more motion then you expect or want. Good for camera tossing, but bad for snapshots.
- Wideangle (16:9) shooting. There are a few cameras out there that take wideangle photos, some even take that into movie modes. I haven't really seen it in photography, but it makes sense for the same reasons it does in film. It reproduces images closer to how we actually see the world.
What am I looking at. I'm really partial to Canons, not just because of the SD300, but also because I've never been disappointed in their products. I'm looking at the newer Digital ELPH cameras which are decedents of the SD300. That should be fairly obvious. The SD700 and SD800 are both tempting. They have image stabilization, and all of my accessories will work perfectly with the SD800 AFAICT, but they're currently a bit beyond what I'd like to pay and lack some of my wants. The SD800 also lacks some of the manual controls I need.
Other Canon's I'm looking at are the A710, which is essentially the SD800, plumped up on AA batteries and given the option of conversion lenses. The Canon s80 and S70 are tempting, but they've got several strikes against them for reasons not on the list. The s70 does nearly everything I want, except video - which has a 30 second max, and can be purchased for under $300 is also 2 and a half years old. The S80 which fixes video (but drops RAW) is a year older and pushed my budget.
The Panasonic DMC-LX2 and its predecessor the LX1 have a damned near perfect feature set, only lacking of timelapse photography. The downside is that there are pretty strong arguments against their image quality. Watercolors are frequently mentioned in reviews, but shooting in RAW supposedly helps - some. The big downside is the price, which is well above my price range. The LX1 might be affordable off eBay, but it would be pushing it and I'm not fond of buying a used camera.
I'm likely missing a few potential options. For one thing I want to look at more of the Panasonics. I also find myself drifting away from the ultracompacts (like the Canon SDx00's) and more towards the regular compacts like the Canon A710 and the Panasonics. Fortunately I don't need it tomorrow, I've got a couple months to shop before I'd like to have a good camera in my hands, hopefully some prices will drop, deals will show up, and I'll have time to better refine my need/want list as well as compare image quality on flickr.
What bugs me is that camera shopping today feels a lot like computer shopping a few years ago. There's a big emphasis on meaningless numbers rather than on anything useful. When there's a shortcoming in the camera the response is to throw more pixels at the problem, which is often makes the problem worse. They're also taking away features, not adding them. Few of the compacts and none of the ultra-compacts I've looked at have RAW support, things like manual control and interesting features like time lapse photography are stripped away or avoided when all it would take is a bit of software that clearly exists.
Resources:
Digital Camera Resource Page
Digital Photography Review
Flickr Camera Finder