The last for awhile

I headed home sick from work early yesterday, but quickly felt better (I think the 3 hour nap helped settle things down a lot), which left plenty of time for scanning. I managed to get the 2 rolls done that had been sitting around, the final one from my backpacking trip and the one from Easter. So there are a slew of photos, but probably the last ones for awhile. Now that the recent backlog is done, its time to continue scanning my other backlog. At least I’ve gotten done back through September, that only leaves about 2 years of pictures and 80 rolls or so to scan. Maybe only another 6-9 months of scanning left *sigh*

This was basically the final picture before heading back through the Paw Paw tunnel to the car and home. It was a fun backpacking trip, but I’ll need to try and do a few things differently next time around.

Sigma 24mm f/2.8

Sadly these are my final Cherry blossom pictures of the year. One of these years I am hoping I can get in to DC to do some pictures of the Cherry Blossoms festival. Some year.

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Running around at the Berlin, MD Easter Egg hunt. Jack had a lot of fun, but didn’t seem nearly as interested in putting them in his basket, or holding still for 2 seconds for a picture. That didn’t stop him from being adorable though.

Zuiko 85mm f/2

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Berlin, MD had a large street festival the day before Easter as well. Jack had a lot of fun, especially digging in the sand.

Sigma 28mm f/1.8

Then there was some Easter Egg hunting the following morning on Easter.

Sigma 28mm f/1.8

We all decorated some Eggs, Jack helped.

Sigma 28mm f/1.8

You can sort of see it in the back ground, but there was a beautiful Orchid that I had to take some pictures of as well. The final one is also thanks to my wife as she assisted; IE holding up my black jacket to create the background. I really need to get around to getting a square of black fleece or velvet to create backgrounds for macro pictures, and for that matter cobble up a holder for it.

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Roll two

I’ve finally gotten in to scanning the second roll from my backpacking trip. A couple of the lessons I’ve learned were about night photography. Bracket is the name of the game. Also reciprocity is not your friend at night as what might be a 40s exposure at ISO400 with a digital camera can be more like a 150s exposure with film because of reciprocity failure. Of course if you just want to do star trails reciprocity failure is actually your friend as it allows you to do really long exposures without much in the way of sky brightening.

The first few pictures were from shortly after twilight. The first two were around 40 second exposures the third picture of the star trails was around a 7 minute exposure. Its a bit of a combination of needing to bracket more and a bit of scanner trail and error to get clean scans. There was a three quarter moon which both helped and hindered as it wasn’t quite as much light as a full moon to do moon lit landscape pictures and it was to much light to do a really long star trail picture picking out all of the dim stars. I need to do more in both respects. The Virginia blue bells were from the morning we set off back to the car. The final picture is the canal cutting through the moutains about half a mile from the Paw Paw tunnel. That pretty much brings us back to the car and the drive home. The final day was fairly uneventful other then Field finding his ring in the river after eluding us for nearly 3 hours the night and day before.

 

Sigma 24mm f/2.8

 

Sigma 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

 Sigma 24mm f/2.8

 

Tamron 28mm f/2.5

More and more

Scanned some more of the pictures from the trip. I am going to have to go back and rescan a couple of them as the scans turned out badly (these are, mostly, the ones that turned out okay). That meter issue really was dogging me as quite a few were badly overexposed and I have to see if I can clean them up. *sigh*. I can’t wait to get this new camera cleaned up and the prism replaced.

The next two pictures brings us up to the furthest point that we hiked. We had planned the trip so that we could hike to either Stickpile hill (~8 miles) or Devil’s alley (~12 miles). We had stopped at stickpile hill to rest for about 15 minutes and try to fill our water bottles. As it turns out the park service doesn’t ‘turn on’ the pumps until the weekend after we were there. ‘turning on the pumps’ involved reattaching the handles. As it turns out a single very strong guy or better yet two (or three) guys can operate the pump by pulling up on the top hard to pump it. Field and I managed to operate the pump with some effort (and thankfully had a large pot we could fill as a water bottle is a small target when you have to put it on the ground to fill it).

After resting up we got back on the trail as we talked ourselves in to trying to head out to Devil’s Alley despite a host of aches and pains (field’s hips were killing him from a bad pack waist strap and my feet were none to good). We ended up going about a mile and a half before we gave up and headed back to Stickpile Hill. We rested up for about 20 minutes before we headed back and I took these couple of pictures near where we stopped. The moon had just started to rise over the nearby hills.

Zuiko 85mm f/2

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

We got back to Stickpile Hill and setup our campsite for the night. Afterward we headed to the river (about 100yds away). This is when tragedy struck and Field lost his wedding ring in to the river. To jump ahead the story has a happy ending as we found it in the morning (after 2hrs of looking that evening, a bit after it was dark and then again in the morning). After setting up camping I wandered around a bit and took some pictures of the flowers nearby and also a few campsite pictures.

Trout lillies

Sigma 24mm f/2.8

Sigma 24mm f/2.8

Not really a trout lilly

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

The first of many

I got the film back from my backpacking trip. A roll of 36 and a roll of 24 Fuji Superia 400. So its going to take me awhile to get everything scanned. I got through a bit more then half of the first roll though. The trip was lots of fun. I got up and was delayed a little bit by the little man (not that I mind). I swung by and picked up my friend Field and we drove out together to Paw Paw, MD to start the hike along the C&O. We started out at the Paw Paw tunnel. Its over half a mile long and really, really dark in the middle (flashlights mandatory). From there the canal cuts through the mountains for another half a mile or so before it comes out and parallels the Potomac again. The C&O meanders next to the Potomac getting closer and further from the river. There were tons and tons of wild flowers that were just about to bloom, and plenty that had. I’ll get in to the rest of the story as I get the pictures scanned to post as what I have scanned only gets us to about halfway through the first day. One note, my OM-1n’s meter has been acting up badly so quite a few of the pictures ended up being overexposed. Not all of them, but enough to really be annoying. I did just get another OM-1 (sorry honey, but it was cheap at least). It needs a new prism, light seals and the back needs replacing for cosmetic reasons, but the meter is dead on accurate and mechanically it works fine. Also fortunately I have everything I need to recondition it (including a new prism) from a parts camera.

Myself and Field (Lt to Rt): Tamron 28mm f/2.5

Paw Paw Tunnel, from the other side: Tamron 28mm f/2.5

Waterfall by the Paw Paw: Sigma 24mm f/2.8

Trees by the tow path: Tamron 28mm f/2.5

Saying that the skies were clear and blue would likely be an understatement.

Also a couple of cherry blossom pictures from before the hike.

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 Macro + Vivitar 285hv

Backpacking

I am going backpacking tomorrow with my friend Field and a friend of a friend Mike (sort of becoming my friend, he’s a fun guy). We are going to ‘tackle’ a 12 mile streach of the C&O canal trail from the Paw Paw tunnel to Devils Alley, camp overnight and then hike back. Our original plans had been somewhat more ambitious, but we were forced to scale them back because of some time constraints. I am taking my camera with me (my first ever backpacking trip with a camera!). I’ll probably turn this post in to a misc. section on photography and backpacking and expand it, not like there aren’t enough articles floating around the internet on the topic, but I figure I’d add my 2 cents.

This is a picture of all of my gear that I am taking with me, it seems like a lot, but unless you want to be really roughing it, it is also required. I won’t bother boring you with details here on what everything is and what I feel is important (I’ll do that in my page on back packing and photography). I am however, after much soul searching, going to take my OM-1n, Sigma 24/2.8, Tamron 28/2.5, Zuiko 50/1.4 and Zuiko 85/2 in my Lowepro Nova 2 AW stuffed in the top of my pack. In the future, especially if this works out okay and I don’t feel like I was missing anything, I am going to conslidate focal lengths and get another lens or two and go with either the Sigma 24/2.8, Zuiko 50/1.4 and Zuiko 100/2.8 or go Zuiko 24/50/100 for my kit. I am also going to get a smaller photobag, such as the Nova Mini AW to fit it in to, as the Nova 2 AW is way too big for 3-4 itty bitty lens and a single camera. I figure for landscape work that is probably what I would use most of the time, especially backpacking. Also I am packing my cheapo Targus tripod. It has the virtue of only weighing about 1lb and even though it offers little support, it is enough for the light primes, especially the wide angles. I am taking it along mostly to try to do star trail photography. Eventually I’d also like to get a small light weight sturdy tripod, like maybe an Bogen 190 series or something even a little lighter. The 055xb would of course remain my tripod for anything other then backpacking. Many pictures to come next week and maybe a fun story or three.

85mm lens test and Toddler photos

I just got the roll back from my Zuiko 85mm lens tests. They are posted up under the Zuiko 85mm f/2 section, so check it out. In addition there are a bunch of cute pictures of my son I took with the lens. I also took several pictures in Potapsco state park a few weeks ago. I’ve been dealing with an issue related to the light meter on my OM-1n where it reads a couple of stops low for exposure (resulting in about 2 stops over exposure). When I got the roll developed…lo and behold all of the pictures from the park were about 2 stops overexposed washing them out some…GRrrrrrr. I appear to have fixed the issue now though (fingers crossed). PS. I am LOVING this new lens, it is so sharp and small.

Sigma 70-210mm f/2.8 APO

I managed to find that darned Heron when I actually had a long lens on me. I just wish I had a 600/4 instead of a 400/5.6, or heck even a 400/4 and a 1.4x tc. I did not have my 1.5x tc with me to try a couple of shots with that and my 400mm.

Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO

Funny story about this one. My wife and I peaked in on the little guy to see how he was doing a few nights ago and noticed he was snuggled up with his frog (a common occurance lately). We debated for a couple of minutes about taking a picture of him, because hey, he was sleeping and we didn’t want to wake him up. Well documentation was required for later in life. He slept through my poping a couple of flashes (in a pitch dark room…pre-focus, f/11 and a 28mm lens saved the day) and then my wife taking a picture with her P&S digital. Didn’t even stir.

Tamron 28mm f/2.5 and Vivitar 285hv

Zuiko 85mm f/2 and Vivitar 285hv

Zuiko 85mm f/2