Ropes and cameras?

Well, I leave a rope in my backpack now, just in case I need to climb down a snowy slope, which is what I did last Saturday. Bring it along anywhere you go in the winter. It is useful.

Close up and up close

Get up close for the close up shot when your lens is not powerful enough to stand a few metres away to get a close up shot. Swans are the perfect subjects for these photos. This swan was just a couple of feet from my camera.

It was too bad the sun was not to my right. Otherwise, I would have been able to capture the glimmer in their eyes.

These photos were taken today in a park in Toronto.

Hiking through the snow, part 2

My battle with snow continues. Yesterday, I decided to use my leather casual shoes that I weat to work for my hike. It has a thicker sole than my winter boots and is probably warmer too. The only downside I figured was that I would get plenty of snow in my socks if I were to walk in deep snow. Well, I did not have to walk in deep snow fortunately, except for a couple of times. While no snow got into my shoes or socks, I was standing in the snow long enough that my shoes started to get wet. Lo and behold, I started feeling the dampness of it.

It makes a world of a difference when your feet are dry and warm versus wet and cold. You would enjoy the hike and taking photographs much more.

So, I do not have any footwear suitable for hiking in a wet environment but before my next excursion, I will get a new pair of winter hiking boots, possibly those ones below from Sears.

LCD, bright, but not bright enough

The Nikon D80 LCD is wide and bright. It is absolutely a delight to be able to review a photo on a big LCD display. Brightness is also good -- the brighter it is, the clearer the image will be on a bright sunny day. However, when it comes to sun and snow, there is little to overpower the reflective power of snow. I could barely see anything when shooting photos this morning at Webster's Falls or I would have seen the sun glare in the photo in the previous article. Well, it could also be that the snow blinded me.

Another thing to check

Well, here is another thing to check for before taking a picture.

First, there are the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO speed. The combination of these three settings define your exposure in a given light condition.

Then, there is the composition or framing of your photo. Your artistic sense will define this.

And then, there is the front lens element or the filter. I was shooting the waterfall from 20-30 metres away and at times you can get a fair amount of the sprinkles on you, and therefore, on the camera as well. After some sprinkling, I forgot to wipe my filter dry before taking some more shots. I wasted a number of shots, just like this one here.

Here the sun is to my upper left. I did not fit the lens hood on so there is a bit of a sun glare, but with the water droplets on my lens filter, the glare was ever more apparent.

Darn it. Another thing to check.

Get up close

Sometimes, it's about getting up close, and not getting the close-up shots, to give the perspective of its real size. I was about 30-35m from the fall. This is Webster's Fall in Hamilton, ON. It is tiny compared to Niagara Falls but standing beside it, you can feel the full force of nature.

For this shot, I set the aperture to f/16 to get enough depth for me to appear somewhat sharp in the picture, and set the shutter release delay to 20 seconds, just enough time for me to gingerly trot over to that place I stood.

Always shoot with the best lens?

I should take a look at the lens specifications of the Tokina 80-400mm lens. I took a picture of the lunar eclipse last night but it was a little fuzzy. I wondered how the picture would turn out had I used my 18-200mm lens. The moon would be a quarter the size of this picture but if it were zoomed in, would the details be sharper or just as fuzzy.

For this shot, I mounted the lens on the tripod and used a 2-sec shutter release delay. I forgot to use the other 0.45-sec capture delay mode. The ISO speed was set at 800 (mistake I made), aperture set at f/5.6 at 400mm, and shutter speed at 1/3 secs.

Compare the photo above with the full moon I shot in Frisco, TX over the xmas holidays: moon from Texas

Dust on the sensor, part 2

Well, Cesar might have saved me a trip to the Nikon repair centre. I used his Optex "Digi-Blower Deluxe Blower" air blower to remove most of the dust on my sensor. I still have a few dust spots here and there after two operations but they are noticeable only at aperture setting f/16 or smaller. I tried to blow the dust out yet a couple more times this afternoon. It would appear that some dust got welded onto the low pass filter (in front of the sensor) so if you look at the before and after photo, you would see a few spots that remain. They are small and not obvious at all at a bigger aperture than f/16, but if I get annoyed with the few dust spots that remain I will have to take it to Nikon for a wet cleaning operation.

If you want to find out whether you have some dust on your sensor (on the filter actually), use a telephoto lens, set it to the smallest aperture possible (e.g. f/36) with the lens fully extended (zooming), then point and shoot a white piece of paper. It does not matter that the picture be in focus -- just shoot.

At f/36, the dust spots are very noticeable (see first photo, above left.) The colour (gradient) is uniform except for the dust spots. They look like black dots on the image.

Make room for viewer's imagination

I took a picture of the Smokey Hollow gorge. Upon review I thought I would crop it. Because it cuts out a lot of the surrounding, it leaves it up to the viewer's imagination to fill in the missing details. More interesting photo you think?

Oilified

Here is an interesting artistic effect in Gimp2. It is called oilify. It creates an impression of an oil painting, does it not?

Smokey Hollow Falls

In case anyone is interested in visiting Smokey Hollow Falls, Waterdown, here is a bigger view of the creek flowing away from the fall, taken from the viewing platform at the top of the fall:



For a map of waterfalls around Hamilton: http://www.gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/maps/hamiltonarea.shtml

Ok here are my first pictures of this year. I took these pictures this weekend at UTM. The sky was blue and perfect for winter pictures. I took these pictures around principal’s road. I think this bridge has a name but I really don’t know the name.

Dust on the sensor

Well, I have numerous dark spots on my images now. I wonder if this resulted from my excursions into the cold over the last couple of weeks -- but how?

Anyhow, the dust spots are very apparent when you shoot something with a small aperture. In my case, at f/10 the spots become visible, and even more visible at a smaller aperture. The photo below was taken yesterday. I set the aperture value to f/16. Can you see the spots?



I am waiting to hear back from Nikon about the cost of cleaning the sensor. If Nikon is too expensive, I will learn to clean the sensor myself -- there is a number of good articles out there on sensor cleaning.

Water fall in the winter

Water falls can be extraordinary in the winter. Today I decided to hike around Smokey Hollow in Waterdown once more. This fall pours water into Lake Ontario in Hamilton.

I was expecting to see some ice formation around the mouth of the fall, and there indeed were some interesting ice formations.

Here are a couple of shots.





I could not take a front shot of the fall unfortunately. I might return to the fall tomorrow or next week, but I would need a rope just in case I cannot climb back up the snow covered hill slope.

Hiking through the snow

I am starting to like hiking in the snow, but as I found out last weekend, my boots are not keeping my feet really warm and dry when the snow started to melt around the seams of my boots.

So, I found these boots at MEC. They are called Hi-Tec Yeti 2. Excellent for hiking as winter boots. Well sealed. Nothing but good reviews. I have not actually bought them yet as they are not in stock at the Toronto MEC store. There is only one pair my size in Alberta I think. Go figure.

Shooting on cold days, part 2

To follow up with my first post about shooting in the cold and how I feared of getting water condensation inside the camera when swapping lenses, I did some research about this and as far as what my good senses tell me, it is okay to change your lenses outside. Just make sure that you do this outside when the air feels dry and cold, and not inside your car. There is way too much humidity in the car -- remember the snow you bring in the car and the heat you turned on.

When bringing the camera into your car, you should always wrap it in a plastic bag and even wrap the camera in some cotton cloth first. This way, any moisture that gets in the bag would be trapped by the cloth. Then, wait until the camera feels warm again before taking it out of the bag. Well, I did not do anything of this but I did not change my lens either so I guess it was sort of ok.

Feeling lonely and cold?

Don't these grasses make you feel lonely and cold?? :)


Or, this fog-like snow storm:

Shooting on cold days

You may have noticed how many of the photos I have posted recently were of winter scenes.

I am not sure how one would deal with this issue but when I went out in the cold to shoot, I never changed my lens. There were times I wanted to switch to the 80-400mm lens and other times I wanted to mount the 50mm macro lens apparatus on the camera. My fear though was humidity and condensation.

Originally, I thought maybe I can swap my lenses in the car. However, it was evident that my car was quite warmer than outside and there was a lot more humidity in the car than outside. There was no way I would remove the lens in that condition. My sensor would fog up immediately.

Coming to think about it, perhaps I could have swapped the lens in the cold though. Outside, I think the humidity was very low so I would not introduce much humidity into my camera body. I should do some research first before attempting this.

Is this minimalism?

Photo album, server

My photo album runs on Fedora 8, powered by an Intel Celeron 1.70GHz CPU. Over the last couple of weeks, my server froze two times, and I started seeing my CPU temperature hitting dangerous zones. My guess is that Gallery2 is more CPU intensive than the old snappy Yappa-NG.

In any case, I shut down the computer and use a cotton tip to get into the CPU heat sink. Now, I was not able to remove the heat sink to clean it so I left it clamped to the CPU and work the dust with the cotton tip. It was rather difficult because you need to get into the grooves as much as you can in between the fan blades. And, do not just wipe with the cotton tip -- you need to stick it in and give it a twirl. You would not believe how much dust has been collecting on the heat sink. No wonder the CPU was overheating!

Well, from here on, I hope that my photo album will stay on for longer than a week! :)

Minimalism

That white piece of paper sticking into the frame is a bit distracting.

Minimalism

Spring knocking, or just the start of winter?

Snow day

The Day After.

Nothing artistic, just a lot of snow!

Mirror lens

A catadioptric lens uses mirrors to reflect light a couple of times before the image is focused on the back of the lens. I have a Nikkor 500mm mirror lens. It is powerful but at the same time, it produces interesting bokeh. Have a look -- to some, the bokeh looks nice but to me, it is distracting to say the least! Perhaps in some situations, it could add a nice background element to the photo.

Backup battery or not? Part 2

Just a quick update on third-party batteries. I mentioned in the last post that my EN-EL3e battery for my Nikon D80 started working again after I found it, well, dead. I was able to shoot maybe about 100 photos but yesterday it suddenly died on me, again. Totally non-dependable for any special occasion. I do not recommend buying those cheap, third-party batteries. If you need a backup battery for you Nikon, buy the real stuff from Nikon. If it is Canon, buy the real stuff from Canon.

Where are you photos? Part 5

If you have read my posts on photo storage, you know I have been running Yappa-NG (for years now). Recently, I started tinkering with Gallery2, a php server-based software. The more I tinker with Gallery2 the more I prefer it over Yappa-NG. There appears to be a bigger support from the community to build new skins and modules for Gallery2 than Yappa-NG. Right out of the box, I can see Gallery2 is bundled with more features than Yappa-NG. As I have said earlier though, I do not look for too many features in a photo album. Because it is a photo album, I would like some easy way to upload photos and a really nice skin. Gallery2 does satisfy these two needs.

So, both of my family and friends photo albums have been converted to Gallery2 now. The conversion is (still is) a bit painful.

Because Yappa-NG creates meta-data files in the photo directories, and because I did not want to delete them yet, I imported all the photo directories as a whole into Gallery2. As a result, all the *php, *txt and _data entries got added. I had to go into the MySQL database and clean up the 300+ non-picture entries from Gallery2. In retrospect, I could have changed the file permissions on those files and directories before the import so that the web user cannot import them. Too late for that now.

The second problem I am having is migrating all the album and photo captions from Yappa-NG over. There is no tool for that. Lucky me, there is probably less than 100 entries to copy over. I could write a script and extract and import but it is probably faster to copy and paste, so I am copying-and-pasting the captions over.

Now, I have to learn a bit more about Gallery2. In particular, if I want to rename a photo album directory name on the filesystem, how can I tell Gallery2 what the new name is, because everything in Gallery2 is stored in the MySQL database. I suppose I may have to write a script to do this -- renaming the directory on the filesystem and in the database at the same time. Maybe someone has already written it though.

Well, I am off to breakfast now. Cheers.

Shoreline, yours to discover

While my mission was a failure this morning, I captured some interesting ice formation and discover interesting things in the cracks of the barrier rocks.


Preserved leaf. It is still orange from the fall, laminated in ice.


Applying vignetting to the above photo yields this:


Turning the original photo into gray scale and applying a cartoon effect gives the following result:


Adding some vignetting:

Softglow effect

This morning I visited the shores down in Port Credit, hoping to capture some wintery scenery after the big snow storm yesterday. As it were though, I was told that rain came down and wiped most evidence of the snow storm. Darn it.

Since I was already down there, I thought I would check out the rocks and hoping to see the sun rise. Well, the sun was no where to be seen and the rocks were not very impressive either. No snow or banks of ice. Darn it.

Well, there were some swans and ducks. I took some photos of them before heading home. Here was one of them, after a softglow effect added in Gimp.




The following is the original (cropped):





Which looks better to you?