Monthly Archives: April 2011
4/30/2011: Old Town St. Augustine
Historic home on St. George Street in St. Augustine, Florida. Early evening.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 84mm equivalent field of view, f4.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 280. Programmed Auto. Image stabilization and the high ISO ability of the back-illuminated CMOS sensor make this kind of hand held low light shot possible.
Processed for Clarity and Intensity in Lightroom. It also required some distortion control, and some creative editing using the local brush to desaturate the brand new boards and bright green bush in the lower right corner, which were a distraction.
4/29/2011: Glorious Feathers on Friday!
A Great Egret carrying nesting material at St. Augustine Alligator Farm rookery, St. Augustine Florida.
At the Alligator Farm there is a hierarchy of possible shots, and the stick shot on the wing is the highest (and the hardest). It was this kind of shot that drove my search for a new camera over the past months. This is not DSLR quality, but it is, given what I am willing to carry (and can afford) very satisfying none the less.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 309mm equivalent field of view, f5.4 @ 1/1500th @ ISO 160. User defined Flight mode (Continuous Focus, follow focus, center metering, rapid capture of 5 frames at 8 fps).
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and sharpness (some extra recovery for highlights).
And here are two more from the same sequence of shots. The last shot catches the wing folding that happens on the upstroke to spill the air and maintain lift.
4/28/2011: Florida Sunrises in Panoramic View
Sunrise over the Atlantic from my 3rd floor balcony in Crescent Beach Florida, two mornings this week. Though the Nikon P500 has an Easy Panorama mode, these were done the old fashioned way by stitching three exposures in PhotoShop Element’s PhotoMerge, using the Cylindrical tool. Clicking on either of them will take you to a full screen view.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. Three exposures 1) f3.4 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160, 2) f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. 1) was taken with the Dawn and Dusk mode, and 2) was taken with Sunset.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Lots of extra fill light in both shots. 1) color corrected with the Auto setting.
4/27/2011: Egret on the Wing
One of the reasons for my search for a new camera is the advent of the Back Illuminated CMOS sensor super-zooms. I love my Canon SX20IS and, for a small camera with a longish zoom it produces very satisfying image…but it only shoots something like .8 frames per second at its fastest…not so good for moving birds and especially limiting for birds in flight. The new BIS CMOS cameras are capable of 8-11 frames per second at full resolution, and much faster (like 120 fps) at lower resolutions. The zooms have gotten longer too. The Nikon Coolpix that I am using at the moment reaches 81o mm equivalent field of view, and over 900 if you set it to capture an 8 mp image (instead of its native 12). And it goes to 23 mm equivalent field of view at the other end. And it focus to 1 cm from the lens. All this in a camera slightly smaller and considerably lighter then my Canon SX20IS. Given the kind of photography I do, why would I not want one?
Of course, it has to actually work. Specs are wonderful stuff for sales people and web pages, but it is really all about what the camera can do in the hands of a particular photographer. In my hands in this case. Yesterday at Matanzas Cut, I got my first real chance to test it on flying birds. Preliminary conclusion: it works pretty well. 🙂
This bird was at the limits of reach even given the 810 mm zoom. Both images are cropped from the full frame. The camera has a built in Sports Scene mode, which sets it for things like continuous focus and a burst of 5 frames at 8 frames per second when you press the shutter release, but I concocted my own birds in flight mode and saved it to the User memory, so all I have to do is twist the control dial to U, and the camera sets itself at full zoom for birds. Which is probably more information than you wanted, but…
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 810 mm equivalent field of view, f7.1 @ 1/800th, and f6.3 @ 1/1000th at ISO 160.
Processed lightly in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Some Recovery for the highlights.
And today I am off to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Rookery where I hope to get the opportunity for more birds in flight.
4/26/2011: Atlantic Fritillary
Florida is the place in the spring for Atlantic Frittilary. Wherever you find Lantana, which is common along the coast, you are almost sure to find Frittilaries working the blossoms. Beautiful buttterfly on a beautiful plant. What more could you ask?
I fond this one at the Matanzas Cut parking area. I am still playing with the features of the Nikon P500. These were taken in Sports mode, which captures 5 rapid shots when you press the shutter release.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 810mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/320=1/400th, ISO 160. Sports mode. #3 is cropped slightly.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. I do less level work with this camera…but about the same clarity and vibrance as with the Canon SX20IS.
4/25/2011: Maple Flowers
The Maples are red. Not the leaves this season, but the flowers. From a distance it is a subtle red that teases the eye, except where the maples mass, and then it can be quite striking. Even standing right under a tree the flowers are more a promise than a reality. Only when you get right in close do you see them for what they are…things of real beauty. These are wet with a heavy dew.
Nikon Coolpix P500 on macro, 1) 620mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, 2) 115mm, f4.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160, and 3) 68mm, f4.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Program mode.
The three shots show the different effects of macro at various settings of the zoom, visible most clearly in the bokeh.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. (The Nikon takes a very similar processing to my Canon SX20IS.)
4/24/2011: Happy Easter! Lilies and Daffs
My original Easter post follows, but I could not resist updating with this image from this morning. This, better than any words I could say, says Easter to me.
The Lily is not an Easter Lily, and neither, of course, are the Daffodils…but Happy Easter anyway. To me they carry the Easter Morning feeling. Resurrection in all its glory…in all HIS glory. And overflowing praise which has to be our response.
And these are first results of yet another new camera. The Fujifilm HS20 EXR I have been experimenting with the past few days went, with regrets (but no doubts), back to Amazon. I bought another camera to try yesterday morning. Free advice: never buy a new camera on a raining hard, almost snowing, day. I was reduced to shooting flowers and knickknacks in doors…at the end, with flash!
Still, there is a sunny side. I have these shots for Easter morning!
The top one is natural light. The bottom one is flash. Both are on the macro setting. Both are handheld, testing the limits of the camera’s image stabilization.
Nikon Coolpix P500. 1) 60mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/15th @ ISO 400. 2) 370mm equivalent, f5.6 @ 1/60th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity (very lightly) and clarity. I actually had to turn Vibrance down a notch.
And of course, I have absolutely nothing to say about Easter that has not been said a thousand times before by better men and women than I. It is glorious. It is wonderful. It is amazing. It is the doorway that opens us to an encounter with a living savior…not perhaps the guarantee of our faith…but its ultimate affirmation. What you experience on Easter morning, in the end (and in the beginning) says everything about who you are. I rejoice at the risen one…and I want the whole world to rejoice with me. That is Easter. That is me.
4/23/2011: Kennebunkport Panorama
I am beginning to have doubts that the new camera is going to work for me…I am seeing too many digital processing artifacts in the images. They look fine…even great…at screen resolution…but they would not make a good print. Still, there is no doubt that Sweep Panorama is an amazing feature! You just set the shot up in camera, choosing the direction and angle (120 to 360 degrees), press the shutter release and turn in a circle until the camera has captured the full swing. The camera does all the stitching, evens out the exposure where needed and produces a seamless panorama. Since the camera takes a lot more exposures than are needed for overlap, and certainly way more than any human would attempt, it can do a pretty amazing job of building the pano. View this one at full monitor width by clicking on it to open the window in Smugmug.
What we have here is the sweep from the point at Cape Ann, on the left, all the way around to the breakwater at Kennebunkport harbor, on the right.
Fujifilm HS20 EXR. Unknown number of exposures, processed to pano in camera. Nominally f8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200.
Processed very lightly (the Fuji does not require much and will take even less…really heavy artifacts appear with the kind of processing I used for my Canon SX20IS).
4/22/2011: Bridle Path, new eyes
I am trying out a new camera…bought primarily to increase my reach and chances with birds in flight…but it has to work, of course, for my bread-and-butter landscapes. This is from the first outing with the camera, late in the day yesterday (after UPS finally delivered it :). Having a new camera is like having new eyes…you have to see everything again…even if you have seen it, and even photographed it…many times before.
This is at 24mm equivalent field of view. The 24mm end of the zoom is by far the widest lens I have yet owned and I am interested in what it can do…what it does do…when pointed at the world.
There will be lots of learning over the next few weeks!
Fujifilm HS20 EXR at 24mm equivalent field of view, f3.6 @ 1/450th @ ISO 100. Landscape Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom (a new camera also means refining my Lightroom routine…the Fuji requires significantly different processing than the Canon did…still learning).
4/21/2011: Light, line, texture and angle
I have actually attempted this shot several times over the past few years. I see it every time I go to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge early in the morning…or at least some variation of it. This line of trees which are slowly slipping with the land under them, further down the steep cutting of the Merriland river. They are well rooted and the slant is all the landslide has achieved so far. But of course, it is as much about the light as the slant…the way the light, strikes down just here and illuminates the trunks, bring out both line (modeling) and the contrasting textures of the bark. I shot this twice, but this tighter crop using more of the zoom works better for me…and this is the best of my many tries over the years. I think that is a matter of the particular character of the early spring, early morning light of this particular day.
Canon SX20IS at 70mm equivalent field of view, f3.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160. Program Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom, with special attention to the balance of highlight and shadow and a bit of color adjustment.
And, since someone else is probably already thinking it, this is an image that might work well in Black and White. So, with some judicious conversion in Lightroom, this is my attempt at the B&W version. I was surprised by the different B&W effects I could produce by altering the color temperature of the original.
