Picture of the day

Just scanning more back negatives. This was from about this time last year. Its amazing how big he has gotten since.

Sigma 28mm f/1.8

Beach pictures

With only a week delay here are the pictures from the recent family trip to Ocean City. It was a lot of fun, but also a little exhausting. A 15 month old doesn’t really slow down until they fall asleep. The Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 got a bit of a work out on the trip and I am coming to like this lens. It isn’t the sharpest certainly, though it is acceptable wide open and pretty sharp stopped down a stop or two, but the wide aperture and zoom range are very nice. Still not as fun as a prime, at least to me, but I like it for just walking around or when I don’t know what I am going to be shooting (like a toddler running from 8ft away to 2ft away being able to zoom from 70mm to 28mm to take the picture quick). All of the B&W was shot on Ilford XP2 super and I used my OM-1n with a Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 sc lens attached. I used this combo in the leather case as 1) The camera meter doesn’t work properly anymore, so I care less about the camera getting sand in it (if it happened), 2) I care the least about this lens then any other I have, so if sand got in it I wouldn’t be devastated, 3) the leather case does cut down on how much sand gets in it, 4) primes just have more fun.

Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8

Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO

Win some and lose some

As the title suggests. I’ve been using a self refurbished OM-1 lately and it had been working wonderfully, until I got my latest roll developed, and first roll from this camera. All of my flash pictures came out horribly underexposed. Turns out the FP-X switch was set to FP instead of X, so it was firing the flash as if it was a Focal Plane flash instead of a standard flash. I never noticed since I don’t have any FP flashes all my other cameras are permenantly on X. So either I bumped it when refurbishing the camera or it came that way and I didn’t notice.

Bummer.

Anyway, I did get my Sigma 28-70/2.8 test photos done and a few other good photos on the roll. The Sigma 28-70/2.8 is a pretty decent lens, a bit soft wide open, but nothing horrible and it sharpens up quite a bit when you stop it down.

New gear

Early birthday!

Via B&H and my wife I have an early birthday present(s). I picked up a used Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 which is proving to be fun to play with, a used 1m synch cord for my 285hv flash, a Lumiquest mini softbox and cinch strap, mostly for macro photography. I’m having fun playing with them and hopefully I’ll have some real thoughts (beyond fun) and tests from both (lens and mini softbox) soon.

Swine flu Monday

The whole family has Swine flu this morning. Okay, really I am just making fun of the whole ’scare’. We do all have a cold though, and frankly it stinks, or it might if I could actually smell a thing right now.

I did want to throw up a picture of my Son though. I’ve been slowly, but steadily getting through the back log of negatives for scanning. This one deffinitely turned out better scanned then the lab printed it originally (they cropped in WAY to much).

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

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.