Spring Break (part 2)

We weren't the only people braving a chilly day to visit the beach!

Spring Break (part 1)

Spring Break (part 3)
Spring Break (part 4)
Spring Break (part 5)

Day 2 of spring break involved a trip to Sullivan's Island to visit the beach and then a visit to Wannamaker County Park. I'll work on the visit to the park next, but for now... the beach! Unfortunately it was a chilly, cloudy, drab day. And extremely windy. We got a late start, so when we got to Sullivan's Island we grabbed lunch first. We went to Taco Mamacita, which we discovered in Chattanooga. I really like their take on fusion tacos. We definitely recommend it if you get a chance to try it.

After lunch, we headed to the beach and then the sandblasting began. It was a good day to go to the beach if you needed exfoliation. On our walk to the beach we passed this beautiful house.

Beachfront property. I'm sure they have an ocean view from the upstairs deck

 Next is the lighthouse, one of the two major attractions on Sullivan's Island. The other is Fort Moultrie, which we went to a few years ago.

Sullivan's Island Lighthouse

A closer view

Laughing gull (and here began a strong interest in bird photography...)

 We did walk in the water a little, but it was too chilly to do much more than dip our toes in.

It was drab and windy, but it's still the beach!

And finally I couldn't resist making an animated gif to demonstrate just how windy it was. These 2 shots were about 1/4 second apart.

Spring Break (part 1)

Spring Break (part 2)

Spring Break (part 3)
Spring Break (part 4)
Spring Break (part 5)

Erin and I took a week long vacation at the beginning of April. It was Erin's spring break (Spring Break! WOOOO!), so we decided to take a trip to Charleston, SC to see my dad and some of the rest of my family. We also decided to take a side trip to Jekyll Island, GA for 2 days. We managed to fit in a fair amount of activities during our trip, (and way too many photographs) so I'm going to split this into a few entries.

Day 1 was a trip to Summerville, SC to see my cousin pitch for her high school softball team. It was a tournament, and we missed the first 2 or 3 games they played, including the one she started, so it was looking like we weren't going to actually get to see her pitch. But she got in for the last few innings of the game we did see. And her team won, so I guess Erin and I were good luck. Yay! Anyway, I took some pictures, but didn't feel like she particularly loved them so I won't post any.

After the softball game, we headed over to Azalea Park, which turned out to be a great decision. The azaleas were in full bloom, and we got there just in time for some great light.

Photobombed by a spider!

I love the dark background on this one. Almost like I did it on purpose...

Shootout!

Clichéd walkway picture

Beautiful!

The golden light I wish I always had

The more pictures I take, the more I realize I'm really interested in texture. That makes me want to get a macro lens. :sigh: Photography is turning out to be a very costly hobby!

Photo Scanning

Who needs Instagram?

I recently decided to undertake a long-term project of digitally archiving some old family photos. First up on the list are pictures from my parents' wedding and honeymoon. This all came about because my dad was trying to clear out some clutter, and he was showing me some old photographs asking if I wanted any of them. There were several that were very interesting to me, and I decided it would be a good idea to try to get them digitized since some are showing signs of their age. I'm hoping to get everything scanned eventually, though it's a large undertaking.

To get started I did some research on scanners. The Canon 9000F Mark II seemed to have pretty good reviews, so I settled on it. It can scan both prints and negatives. I haven't gotten a chance to try any negatives yet, but so far I'm quite pleased with the results of print scans. It's also fast compared to the all in one scanners I'm used to.

So my plan is to post here periodically with updates, some before/after postprocessing comparisons and maybe eventually I'll post some pictures from the vacation to South Carolina and Georgia Erin and I took a couple weeks ago.

Star Trails!

My first attempt at a star trail picture

I'm very pleased with this end product. It wasn't terribly difficult to produce either.

Erin sent me the guide here a while back: http://www.jamesvernacotola.com/Resources/How-To-Photograph-Star-Trails. It's a great introduction to what it takes to shoot a star trail. I've had it in the back of my mind that this is something I'd like to try and tonight presented a decent opportunity. I had originally set out to photograph the (waxing) crescent moon. I failed miserably there, but the star trails are a nice consolation I think.

Equipment used:

• Canon EOS 6d camera
• Canon 24-105 f4 lens
• Cheap tripod
• Vello Wireless ShutterBoss

Here's what I did:

1. Setup the camera on the tripod
2. Framed my shot
3. Fired off a few test shots to try to get the exposure reasonable. I had to balance a pretty bright neighborhood with still trying to get a significant number of stars showing up. Luckily I managed to hide the worst offender (a street light) behind the tree. I finally settled on 24mm, f5.6, 30s, ISO 400.
4. Set the camera to bulb mode, with the settings I settled on above dialed in.
5. Set the intervalometer to continuously fire off 30s frames. I ended up with 120 frames, exactly 1 hour's worth.
6. Load all the frames into Lightroom. I adjusted the white balance, cropped out the little bit of my house that I had in the top right corner (oops) and darkened the overall scene by 1 stop of exposure (the houses and tree were much too bright. I then synced those to all of the frames.
7. Exported the frames and loaded them into Startrails.
8. Made the star trails image using Lighten-Screen-Blend mode.
9. Then made a time lapse video. I tried to set the resolution higher, but it just caused Startrails to crash, so I settled on 480 pixels wide. The default setting was for 15 frames per second, but I think that's a bit too fast for just 120 frames. I ended up using 5fps for the video below.

Around the 8 second mark, you can see where Erin and I were playing with the green laser pointer.

Peninsula Park

It's been a while since I posted. I've got the pictures for the next photography class post, but they're really boring so I haven't been particularly motivated to post them. So instead I'm posting some pictures from a visit Erin and I made to Peninsula Park in Georgetown yesterday. There's a short walking trail that makes a loop, running along the backside of a neighborhood and the Elkhorn Creek. I'm quite pleased with a few of the pictures I took.

Turf Wars

Two male robins that we think were fighting over territory ahead of mating season.

Super Bowl Party Photo Booth

So Erin and I decided to have a photo booth at our super bowl party. We went to a friend's wedding in December, and the booth there seemed like it went over really well.

I also recently acquired a flash (Canon 430EX II) and some supporting equipment. So it seemed like a great opportunity to put them to use.

The setup will probably sound more complicated than it actually was. It was pretty quick to get going, and I think it worked pretty well. I had the camera facing a plain off-white wall, with the focal length set as wide as I could and still only have plain wall in the background. I set the flash up at about a 45 degree angle from the center of the frame at camera right. The flash is shooting slightly downward, and into a shoot-through umbrella to soften and diffuse the light. The flash is connected to the camera via the cable and PC sync adapters from the Strobist kit linked above. The camera was triggered using a Vello Wireless Shutterboss Timer remote. I ended up setting the flash to 1/2 power output, and the camera was set to f/9 and ISO400 with a 1/200 shutter speed. The camera exposure was low enough that it took black frames without the flash, so that I didn't have to worry about getting white balance right with ambient lighting. We also wrote some quick instructions, though those weren't really necessary for such a small party.

On the support side, I ended up tethering the camera to a laptop running Canon's EOS Utility. I used the Remote Shooting mode, which has a Quick Preview window that shows the last shot taken so that photos could be reviewed immediately. I also set the laptop screensaver to come on after a couple of minutes and cycle through the directory where the photos were being stored.

The photo booth wasn't as popular as I had hoped. I think the Super Bowl was too much of a focal point. I certainly enjoyed myself with it. Here are a few of my favorites that came out of it.

Photo Class 4/30

Zoomed in shot. Seemed relevant for a focal length lesson

Lesson 4.  This one's all about focal length.  The objective is to see the differences in focal length, as well as demonstrating "zooming with your feet".  Following are 18mm, 25mm, 33mm, 43mm, the previous 18mm cropped, and 55mm shots from the same spot.  They are all on a tripod.  The last picture is a 18mm shot, framed similarly to the 55mm shot.

18mm

25mm

33mm

43mm

18mm, cropped to a similar field of view as 55mm

55mm

18mm, "zoomed with my feet" to try to frame it similarly to the 55mm shot above

I made the pictures extra large to try to make comparison easier.  First step is comparing the 55mm shot with the 18mm shot that I "zoomed with my feet" to take.  Very obvious are the different reflections in the mirror and the fireplace marble.  That shows very clearly that the pictures were taken from different locations.  The light is also showing through a different part of the vase.  Finally, the way the plant overlaps the vase and the owl overlaps the candle is different.

Second was supposed to be to reduce the 55mm shot's size and overlay it on the 18mm shot.  Instead I cropped the 18mm shot.  Comparing them, the only difference I see is that they were exposed differently.

As far as perspective distortion, I recommend reading this.  Focal length doesn't affect it.  I think the 18mm cropped vs 55mm photo shows this pretty clearly.  That's it for lesson 4.  Lesson 5 to come someday...