I live in Toronto and so here is a link that tracks the golden hours in my region: https://sunsetsunrisetime.com/golden-hour/toronto_(canada). The morning golden hours are about an hour long in the morning and in the evening.
The photo shown here is from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(photography). Who prefers the bottom photo than the top one?
I forgot how warm the feeling of the sun near sunset. My condo unit faces south and it's at the right angle to receive a warm glow of the reflection of the sunbeams off a building just south of me as the sun starts to set. I happened to be in the bathroom when I noticed the shower head was engulfed in a beautiful light. I knew it wouldn't last long so I grabbed what was the best camera I have, that is, what I easily have access to, my phone.
The phone did some colour correction so I re-coorected it to show the warmth I saw.
When it comes to outdoor photography, I think we all know an overcast day offers great lighting for our shots. Lights are soft on the subjects. You don't get the harsh lighting condition of a sunny day at noon time. Just a thought here, but do you notice how much sharper your pictures are when the sun is out? You shouldn't be shooting when the lights are too harsh, but things look a lot sharper in the sun. Yes, you can crank up the ISO sensitivity level of your camera to reduce the exposure time to get sharper images in an overcast day, but when it's sunny out, sunlight gives you the speed you need for sharp pictures.
Several years ago, I used to grow tomatoes indoor. I did some time lapsed videos of them growing as seedlings and as small plants. When they were 5-ft. tall, they attracted too many white flies I had to move the plants out on to my balcony.
I remember a film of a wooden carved toy canoe with a native Indian on it that travelled from Lake Superior to the St. Lawrence River. I was either in Ecole Pie-XII or Ecole Enfant Soleil, in the suburb of St. Laurent, Montreal. The film was called "Paddle to the Sea": https://www.nfb.ca/film/paddle_to_the_sea/. This film has so wonderful pictures that I still enjoy it even today.
In some small ways, it gave me inspirations to travel and explore the world from time to time.
I haven't done one of these videos in a long time. I have a GoPro but no seeds to grow at this time.
Wow, this is an impressive camera! I mean, not technically, but I love the look for the classic SLR camera! This is a mirrorless camera. The DX 16-50 lens adds to the classic camera look of the old past but if you like the versatility of a zoom lens, you can certainly switch it out for a telephoto lens.
Looking at the top of the camera, there are dials for everything you need for a quick picture: the ISO dial and capture mode to the left, and the shutter speed and shutter button to the right. The shutter button looks so cool as well! I love the look of this camera and if you take it on travels, people will think you're still shooting film!
You can get yours from Amazon for a small discount today (March 11, 2023) here: https://amzn.to/3XelAmT
Image from: https://en.nikon.ca/nikon-products/product/mirrorless-cameras/z-fc.html
Wow, this is definitely a trend I think. It's been weeks since some ads on Kijiji have been posted. The latest Nikon D7000 + 18-200mm combo kit is selling for $500! That's a steal! I can't believe no one is snatching that up. The 18-200mm lens alone costs at least $500, used, so the D7000 is like, free! That's sad. Well, maybe it's like the housing market. Things have cooled off. Only the ardent hobbyists are still into this seemingly now relic of photography. Of course, I'm one of those people. I still really enjoy the DSLR, how it feels in my hands and how comfortable I have to the controls to take a picture.
Wow, I just woke up and one thing popped up in my head: Lytro! There was this camera that evolved from a concept back in 2006 to an actual product in 2012. It was a really cool concept at the time and it still is where it would capture rays of light so that you can form a picture with any plane of focus and depth of field of your choosing later. It's a "living image". That's a powerful concept. You no longer have to worry about focusing. You just need to worry about image composition. Once the rays of light have been captured, you'd use your artistic acumen to create the final picture in software.
The technology was definitely very cool but it was really expensive to store the rays. An image captured with the first-generation Lytro would take up 16 MB of disk space. Its software would generate an image only 1.17 megapixels big although you can generate any number of images at different focus lengths and angle of view of your liking. The image would be good for a 6x4" print but no bigger than that. The second generation of this camera could produce images of up to 4 MP so it should be good enough for a HD screen. However, according to some user reviews on Amazon, it's just good enough to be displayed on a 4" screen. I want to say the technology was ahead of its time but not really.
When I think of the art of photography, part of it is composition; part of it is lighting; part of it is the focus on a subject. If you take away the focus issue, would it still be fun to take pictures? For most people, I think it is. For most people, the camera does all the focusing for you, right? It finds a face, and focuses on that. For some others, you'd prefer to set the focus plane on your own for the artistic effect you want to create. So, if the premise of this camera is to remove the art of focusing from photography, would photography still be a fun hobby? I don't know. I like to have control of the field of depth and focus at the time when I take a picture, but sometimes, I also like to be able to have change that during post-processing, especially when you work with macro photography--you'd need a living image to do that.
The concept is very cool but practically speaking, I'd rather use a DSLR or my phone camera.
Anyways, my tiny things are posted in my Only Tiny Things blog.
I have a Nikon D50. It has been sitting in the drawer for the last 15 years, I think? I took it out to check that it's still in working condition. It was dead. Well, the battery was dead. It was self-discharging all these years. I still have the charger so I charged it up. It's back up and alive now. No problem whatsoever.
The D50 is a 6.1MP camera. It feels heavy in your hand. Very solid construction. Battery life is great. It's a great camera for street photography. It takes only SD cards up to 2 GB but image files are small so that's completely fine. (You can get a Sandisk 2GB SD from Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3YuP0M8). It's a great camera still I think--remember the megapixels aren't that relevant for most of the stuff you do and what matters most is that stuff 6 inches behind the lens!
If you don't have a DSLR and want to learn photography with a DSLR, I'd say grab a D50 or something like that. It's super super duper cheap now. You can find one for $50 or maybe even less. Add a nice 50mm f/1.4 lens and you'll have a fun camera to play around with! On the cheap, you could find an 17-55mm kit lens which probably goes for $50 used also nowadays.
To get you started with a D50, check out this cool video I ran across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs0pAI0ZS5g. By the way, the reviewer in the video doesn't like the neck strap--neither do I!
The D50 is still a great camera. Alas, it will stay in the drawer because I have a D7200.
Since day one, I removed the Nikon neck strap--as I had mentioned before, it's a pain in the neck if I had to carry the camera around my neck! So, Now, my fingers are like steel in a crouching tiger grip!
How much you need of megapixels depend on what you plan to do with your images and also with your lens. Some lenses are simply not sharp enough to give you the details to fill in all the pixels, and if you're simply displaying your photos on a computer screen, you won't need more than 3-6 MP! If you're thinking to do prints on paper, you still don't need much unless you're a pixel peeper!
Instead of explaining it myself, I'll refer to this video made by Simon d'Entremont who provided an excellent dissection of this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThpQWhOfKO4. You'll be surprised.
I wouldn't necessary say that you should buy an old Nikon D50 if you can afford to buy something much better for a little more. Much better here means not just the megapixels but also more sensitive sensors for low light conditions or support for built-in HDR and Active D-Lighting as in the Nikon D7200. However, if you normally shoot in good daylight, an old Nikon D50 with 6 MP will do just fine!
With the D7200, you can use the Nikon WirelessMobileUtility app on your phone to pair with the camera. From the camera you can choose which photos to transfer or you can do that from the phone as well. It looks like photos transferred out this way are resized which is great for sharing. Once the photos are transferred to the phone, you can share it in WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook, here on Blogger, etc.! It's quick and convenient. If I were traveling, that's what I'd be doing now.
After my walk yesterday, I thought I'd post something about how to carry your DSLR. I've seen many Kijiji ads where people uploaded a photo of their DSLR with the original Nikon camera neck strap. I don't know why manufacturers still make those straps. They're a real pain in the neck (no pun intended). Long ago, I realized how much stress the strap created so I got either a hand strap like the Small Rig so the DSLR is always on my hand for short walks, or a sling strap like the BlackRapid Sport strap here. If you think the name brand is a bit expensive, you can get a cheap alternative like this one on Amazon which doesn't offer the same quality and features as the BlackRapid but will do. On travels, that's what goes with me virtually everywhere. The camera is slung around toward your butt and you keep the camera from most eyes by 
I took a stroll around harbourfront with my Nikon D7200 this afternoon. It was a good opportunity to try HDR again and see how it fares outside. You can be the judge of how things look.
Active D-Lighting (ADL) pictures are on the left and ADL + HDR pictures are on the right.
Covered sidewalk: I like the details that HDR brings out.
As per my observation from salability of DSLRs on Kijiji, it would seem that there has in fact been a huge decline in the use of DSLRs. The following is a screenshot of the top five camera types used on Flickr as of March 4, 2023. The graph says everything. Where is my DSLR in the list? Where is any DSLR? The Canons and Nikons used to dominate this graph as I remember it.
Source: https://www.flickr.com/cameras
It's amazing how the iPhone has taken photography by storm. It's no surprise though: the megapixels, image processing, convenience, beautiful pictures. Even myself, I use my phone more often than my DSLR because the best camera is the one that's on you. My phone is no where close to the capability of my DSLR but it has taken beautiful HDR pictures very simply at times when the DSLR was struggling.
Even the mirrorless cameras aren't making it to the top of the list. The mirrorless camera is like a point-and-shoot, essentially what a phone camera is. The convenience and availability factors make it clear why phone cameras are the first choice for most people.
I was curious, very curious, to know if there are any Chinese manufacturer of DSLRs. I mean, I've only seen the big Japanese and German names out there for the past twenty years and not paid attention to anything else, until recently. So, I looked up Google and guess what I found!
I was interested in getting a copy to play with as it's so light and small but alas, there is nothing on Kijiji or Amazon. It's strange because there is a ton of other, cheap Chinese (not necessarily mirrorless) cameras and action cameras on Amazon. I don't know if anyone in Toronto has one or if they did, perhaps they threw in the eRecycling box already. There hasn't been any reviews since 2016/2017. It looks like this camera didn't go very far. There was a hype about six or seven years ago because of its price but like a ghost, it disappeared mostly from the North American market. I did spot a copy on Amazon India's website. It didn't get great reviews there. So, it came with a bang and left without telling anyone.
How do you clean your camera lenses? That was something I was worried about when I first bought a DSLR I believe back in 2007. I was so worried about smudging it and dirt landing on it I went out to buy some lens cleaning kit. The kit was pretty simple though--an air blower and a brush. I didn't want to use any lens cleaning fluid for some reason. In retrospect and after over 120K shots, I came to realize it wasn't all that important.
My 18-200mm always had a Hoya UV filter on so the lens was never exposed to the elements. Sometimes though, specs of dust do creep in between the lens and the filter. I'm not sure how but they do. It's possible simply because I did have to remove the lens filter every now and then to clean it.
Cleaning the lens filter didn't require anything fancy. I intially used the brush and if there is any dirt that seems to stick around, I ran the filters under water with a bit of soft soap. I'd wet the filter with water first, then lather up the soap with water before applying it on the filter just as you would when washing your car. I'd let the water run down the filter and it would remove all of the soap. Soap is a bit abrasive but I never really had to clean it often so no scratches that I can see so far. I'm sure microscopically, there are some scratches but it's really nothing. I haven't seen anything on pictures I take. I do the same soap cleaning method for my eyeglasses by the way.
If my lens needs to be cleaned though, I'll probably need to use lens cleaning fluid and a microfiber tissue. There is no way I'd use soap on the lens itself.
I got my Hoya filter from Henry's before but you can get the same filter for cheaper now from Amazon: https://amzn.to/41KDqPZ. Don't get the cheap brands. It makes a difference to the colours you capture.
I asked ChatGPT what it thinks about photography as a hobbit for the retired. I like its response. I'm thinking to give my D7000 to my dad who owns a old SLR. This might be a good thing to pick up again.
Anyways, ChatGPT answered it this way:
Photography can be an excellent hobby for retired individuals. Here are some reasons why:Overall, photography is a great hobby for retirees as it provides a combination of creative expression, physical activity, learning opportunities, social engagement, and relaxation.
- Creative Outlet: Photography provides a creative outlet for individuals, allowing them to express their creativity and capture beautiful images.
- Physical Activity: Photography can also be a physically active hobby. Retirees can explore new places and take photos while walking or hiking, which can help improve their health and wellbeing.
- Learning Opportunities: Photography also offers learning opportunities, such as mastering new camera techniques and editing software.
- Social Engagement: Photography can also be a social activity, allowing retirees to connect with other photographers and share their work with others.
- Relaxation: Photography can be a relaxing and meditative hobby, allowing retirees to focus on the beauty of their surroundings and reduce stress.
Some retirees tend to be more senile. I think a hobby that gets you out and that make you think is very healthy for your physical and mental states. There is nothing worse than lying down and watching TV or doing nothing the whole day for years on end.
When I retire, I want to travel more with my DSLR. It'll be time for building more adventures that I find hard to find time for now. That's for sure.
The Potensic Atom's Follow-Me mode is one of its "intelligent flight" modes. It's a really nifty feature that uses visual...
