You know, I never bothered to look at the pictures I took a few weeks ago. My digicam is pretty much always in the scanning rig with a macro lens on it, so I very seldom use it in the wild anymore. But a few mornings this spring I did head outside with the long lens to take pictures of the neighborhood hawk, and 3 weeks ago I quick like snapped pictures of my poppies before the gophers ate them, then promptly forgot about it all.
Here are some samples. I’d like to say more to come, but who knows? I may not be interested in digging through old digital files any time soon.
Red Shouldered, I believe. A pair have been courting recently and they spend a lot of time screeching for each other until the crows come by and try to chase them away. In flight pics are rough — I spun the ISO too high and for some reason didn’t open up the lens to F8 where it’s fast and sharp. At least I was smart enough to do so when he perched on the telephone pole.
Last year I watched them grab claws and spiral to the earth, pulling out just above the trees across the street, on two occasions. Always drama with the raptors. But now when I hear the screeching I head outside hoping to see it again. Alas, it hasn’t happened this year, and never with a camera in my hand. But at least I got a nice portrait before the crows chased him off his perch.
Trying to get pictures of trains today. I dragged the Fuji out, with the goal of practicing with the tilt to get flowers in the foreground and a 1/30 shutter speed on Velvia to get a slightly blurred train in the background with sharp surroundings. It all sounds like a lot of work for two frames, and it is, but I also caught a freight train that I didn’t realize was coming, so I climbed out onto a rock in the lagoon to get a perspective that’s hard to nab with the giant camera.
There was a nice lady on a paddleboard in the water just to my right who was chatting with me while I was climbing down the rocks. She caught my attention as I was hiking out and told me she hoped the pics come out — she had counted the cars on the train and everything. Nice to know someone was pulling for me.
The setup, I was looking for flowers in the foreground:
The train tracks run across a bridge. I took one less florid train shot from the trail, but the best digital shots were from along the lagoon, or perched on a rock a couple feet out into the water.
And, since I have nowhere else to put them, here are some random pics from along the trail, and a couple from Terramar that I took over the weekend. I had the Z6 set up for landscape, but the reflections on the water were so amazing I really wished I had the long lens to get some shots of the egrets. Another day.
This is mostly another image dump. I’ve just been taking pics of random stuff. Birdies, kitties, dragons, flowers, and the like. The dragons were actually taken while I was shooting video, since they were fighting and vying for territory so I thought it might be a fun challenge. And I was stalking Lucy as well, hoping to test the pet face/eye detect I have programmed into a user setting. It seems to work, even in the shade, though exposing a black cat properly is still difficult.
The camera shots are a GX680III (non-S) with the tilt and shift adjustments. I just got it and decided to try and focus on the stump and the telephone poles at the same time. We’ll see how it came out when I get those slides processed. My goal was to get a shot just as a crow jumped off the telephone pole and swooped down to the trees below, which they were doing every few minutes. If such a picture doesn’t appear here in the next couple weeks, you’ll know it didn’t work out. Until then, enjoy the setup and pics of the new camera.
This is a roll of Ektar. Like the previous Portra 400, it’s just snapshots from around town, taken during my evening walks. The dredging photos are all unique, I was experimenting with hyperfocal distance and framing on those. The duplicate shots on the seawall are just cropped to see what 8×10 vs 8×12 looked like.
I was using a Nikkor 28-105 AF-D lens, which I got for dirt cheap. It’s a walking around lens, not the highest of all quality. It’s much more prone to lens flare, and it’s not quite as sharp, as my 28mm prime. Yet it’s sharp enough, and from 35mm up not distorted. In fact, it’s a good bit lower distortion than the newer zooms that replaced it.
If I’m shooting only landscape at 28mm, I can grab that lens. but for random street shots, I’m sure not complaining much about something that only cost me $85. It’s truly a bang for the buck bargain.
This will be a big picture dump. Mostly so I can share with a friend. I’ve shot some more film, and some of it on 135. I’m using an F6, which should be far more foolproof than my Fuji. And just about any film camera ever made, for that matter. My goal in getting it was to do experiments like bracketing exposure that are expensive in medium format, or taking more dynamic shots that are kind of difficult with a 12 pound beast on a tripod. The camera writes exif data, so I can work faster and match up exposure data when the scans come back.
The F6 I just set the exposure compensation up 2/3 of a stop. The Ektar I shot with the 680 I fudged up to the next stop
My first two rolls were Kodak. First Portra 400, then Ektar. I wasn’t completely happy with what came back. While technically correct, even shots taken using Program Auto were still a little dark, the Ektar was kind of red with lost details in the shadows, and the Portra seems a little grainy.
That second reminded me of something. I have a new method based on what I read on someone’s site — I don’t even remember where I read it — but the writer said that he was shooting portra up 2/3 of a stop if it was meant to be scanned. Like, he’d shoot Portra 160 at iso 100, but not push the film at all. So the most recent roll of Portra 400 I ran through the F6 I just set the exposure compensation up 2/3 of a stop. The Ektar I shot with the 680 I fudged up to the next stop, since that camera only works in whole stops. When I bracketed, I wanted to see the exp on the dark shot and a + with the angry beeping on the light shot. In fact, I’m not convinced that for anything with more than 4 stops of range, if I don’t get the overexposed warning I might consider another shot at one stop longer exposure time.
I’m happier with what I got back this time. Both the medium format Ektar and the Portra 400 in the F6. If I stumble across that website again I’ll have to drop a thanks to the author for that suggestion, assuming it wasn’t written 15 years ago.
Enough writing. Here are some photos.
Portra 400 from the first roll in the F6:
And the first roll of Ektar. The bird and surfer shots are all hand held, so while the pelican is a little soft and underexposed, getting sharp enough to see him taking a shit at 500mm, offhand, with no monopod or tripod, I am going to count as a win.
I needed some magic from the photo shops to bring up the shadows in the photos along the bluffs, and they’re very red. Strangely, pointing straight into the sun works better, the sunset shots are almost exactly what came back from the lab.
For contrast, here are a few shots from my third roll in the F6. For most of this roll I had the camera set with +2/3 exposure compensation. And, yes, they’re very random. I had no goal in mind other than burning a roll of film to see if the exposure compensation worked.
More exposure seems to mean less grain there. Important with the higher speed film, and it’s pretty hard to blow a highlight with these negative films, so I’ll fudge up from now on.
Here’s the roll of Ektar. I was playing with filters as well as bracketing. Even 1.3 stops over exposed (from the meter reading) I like it better than shooting at what the meter tells me.
This next gallery wasn’t here when I originally posted as I didn’t get the film back until after I made the post. But nobody reads this blog so I’ll add it here to make for an easy reference since it’s the same scenes.
Portra 800, shot at the same time as the Ektar above. I metered at 640, then fudged up, so everything would be at least a quarter stop over, but as much as a stop and a third over. Most of these shots the camera was beeping and flashing +, so it thought I was overexposed. The first three have very little editing, the bottom two I pulled the highlights back, but they were more than 5 and 6 EV over the reeds. The fact that I was able to compress the dynamic range enough to get it all printable means I’m on the right track with my shoot 2/3 stop over method.
We had an Exmas visitor today. This is a Red Shouldered Hawk. They’re smaller than the Red Tailed Hawks we normally see around here, though they feed on the same things.
Unfortunately, I was standing in the street taking these pictures and a car came just as he saw some pray and swooped off the perch, so I didn’t get it. And I mean just as it happened. The car came up beside me, I stepped aside, looked up and he was swooping down after something in the neighbor’s yard. So I didn’t get the money shot, but it’s still a handsome bird.
The Black Phoebe was out again, trying to roust the mockingbird who has taken residence in the berry bush. He’d land on the wire and cheep cheep cheep loudly, then the mockingbird would hop on the fence above the berry bush and scare him off.
I have noticed the male mockingbird has picked up finch sounds, as well. Except not the sound of a finch, he makes the sound of a bunch of them arguing and chattering at each other. Makes it harder for me to locate the actual finches, which I pretty much do by ear.
I was also able to catch this hummeringbird feeding off the cactus flowers and then resting on the wire above. I’ve been trying to get one feeding in the wild for a long time, so I am happy I was able to get a reasonable shot.
And targets of opportunity, a female house finch posing on the wire after the hummingbird left, and some bees in flight.
House finch, Mockingbird, Black Phoebe — which, in addition to being a bird sounds like a good song title. I should take pictures of this dude to put on the album cover.
And from last night when it was cloudy, another mockingbird shot. This one has been following that black phoebe around and and now emulates it’s call perfectly.
This afternoon there was a lovely, broken, high cirrus with no scud on the horizon and little possibility of the marine layer blocking a glorious lighting of the high clouds. It was going to be a perfect sunset for photography.
I put the ultrawide on the film camera, and camped on a spot where I saw several strings of pelicans flying by at low altitude, and where I expected plenty of options for subjects beneath the spectacular glow. Then I watched the sky as the clouds dissipated, leaving me with nothing above the horizon. Instead of a firmament of ping, purple, and yellow I got mostly blue, with the only color being right where the sun hit the horizon. And the pelicans never again flew past. That’ll teach me to get excited for the weather.
At least I had the digital with a 24-70 lens, so I spent some of the time experimenting with powerful backlighting. The tide was extremely low and the breeze was out of the north. Plenty of seagulls were using the jetties for lift, at some moments congregating in groups a dozen strong, and I got a few cormorants heading north for variety. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but at least it was a fun way to spend an hour outside on a chilly evening.
I dumped a smattering of the images to jpeg and I’ll just leave them here.
