This image is no doubt familiar to readers of this blog, being one of my favorite images from the Crombie workshop series. The models from left to right are: Betsy, Warren, Sam and Nils. This was shot at Petrie Island in the east end of Ottawa.
Go out and grab the Thursday edition of the Ottawa Citizen to see what is hot this week …
And once again, many thanks to Robbi Hay – the editor of the Our Town section of the Citizen – for using my images …
It all seems so inevitable when you look at a graphic like this …
I sure hope that these people are wrong …
Click on it to see it better …
When you decide to change your life style, or at least what you eat, you have to be prepared for setbacks and you have to play the long game. Meaning that you have years to get it refined to the point where you are at a weight you are happy with.
Today I came within a whisker of 78 pounds lost so far, which is pretty decent. I am at a weight today that I have not seen in about a decade and I am pretty pleased with the results so far.
I have blogged this before, but I must reinforce the lesson that you need to find out what works for you. Stay away from fads and just work on basic principles, which are:
These are just some thoughts to keep in mind. It is very hard to get into a mode where you understand that you will be eating much better food for the rest of your life. That you cannot just plow into a bad of Doritos every time you feel uptight or sad. I call it that “switch” in your head. Once it goes on, you are good to go for a while, as you will become immune to the binge eating problem. This is what happens when people make their own health their current “project” …
But once you understand that, you are free to cheat now and again without the severe penalty that binging will bring. Heck, Bill Phillips built his entire system (Body for Life) on the principle that diet and exercise and a “cheat day” will work. It does. I am not following his methods strictly these days, but I certainly understand why it worked for me in the past, and any sensible approach will have elements of that kind of plan in it. If you need a formal prescription, try that one out. It is as good as any. If you need a formal diet to follow, try the South Beach Diet. It is based on solid principles from everything I have read.
My best wishes go out to those who struggle with this.
This week has seen me shooting the moon several times, and the skies are so perfectly clear after yesterdays violent storms that I just had to shoot it quickly before I retired for the night.
I think this is one of my nicer full moons … I really feel comfortable with the 500mm Tamron mirror lens on the G5 now. It is pretty easy to get a great exposure and the images are really quite sharp. But as with any shooting of the moon, “seeing” makes a lot of difference, so you really need to shoot quite a few images and compare at 100%. You will find each having not so subtle differences in edge definition. It is well worth the effort to ensure at least one tack sharp image.
I stopped looking after examine about 6 of the 25 images I shot this evening (which is a quick process when you attach a remote cable release.) The latest one was better than all the others and there was very little room for improvement. I processed this one in color, since it was shot at base ISO and retained a lot of info in the RAW.
The definition of the craters is still excellent, even though it is almost full. there is just enough terminator to make the craters stand out. Remember to click on the image to see the 1000px version.
A big thanks to DPReview.com for this article: http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/07/16/researches-develop-high-speed-subject-tracking-system
It absolutely blew my mind when I saw how well it worked … one of the few truly unique and incredibly useful things to come along in photography in a while in my opinion …
I won’t belabor it as everything you need to know is talked about in the film … but I must mention that the two pan and tilt mirrors that watch the captured image, as opposed to looking outward at the subject, seems brilliant. But like any brilliant invention, it seems so obvious once someone has done it. :-)
I just cannot get enough of trying to get a nice Moon shot … sigh.
Two days ago I shot what I thought might be my best Moon image ever. And it still might. But I like tonight’s efforts as well. Tonight I added the Tamron 1.4x Teleconverter back onto the G5 and mirror lens rig to boost the effective focal length from 1000mm to 1400mm. That’s a pretty darned powerful small telescope in anyone;s book.
I had avoided it the other day because I wanted to see how much detail the mirror lens could resolve on its own. But today I just wanted to see if the extra magnification did the image more harm than good.
Well, I think it is ok …
As a reminder, here is the image from two days ago … I did this in color because ISO was very low and I think it looked very nice.
And here is today’s effort … the ISO is higher because the teleconverter loses one stop of light, making the aperture effectively f/11. That’s a tad slow, although I was still able to shoot at a decent 1/40s.
Contrast is also a tad different, but overall both look beautifully sharp and detailed. Remember that the craters near the terminator are the ones that really stand out. Also remember to click on the images to load the 1000px versions. You may need a second click to expand it in your browser.
To me, it is absolutely axiomatic that the rich generally behave poorly towards the poor and take advantage wherever possible, tilting the table as it were at every opportunity. The stats on wealth and salary make that so obvious that it staggers the mind that (a) some people still don’t believe it, and (b) the rich often poo poo such statements as jealousy etc.
Well, the following video confirms the obvious quite nicely … with such axiomatic empirical evidence as:
There is an old joke …
Q: Why is an elephant different from a BMW?
A: The elephant has an a-hole on the outside.
And now we know where the joke comes from
Anyway … enjoy.
Well, about to be. My hummingbird image is heading up the Ottawa Citizen’s “Our town” section thanks to its editor Robbi Hay. Many thanks again to Robbi for supporting my work so frequently.
As always, grab yourself a copy of the Citizen this Thursday, 18 July to see what’s hot in Ottawa over the next week or so …
I like shooting planets and the moon. Most people do, I suspect. It’s just so much fun to get a good result. I’ve had a few decent shots of Saturn, but I do find that manually focusing the Tamron by looking through an EVF is a fairly pure form of torture.
Still, I’ve had some nice results with the 100-300 and I thought I’d give the 500mm mirror lens another try. This time without the 1.4x teleconverter. I reason that the extra magnification is offset by the blur introduced by a teleconverter, even the very slight blur induced by this fairly nice one. The details are just too small on the frame to be able to take it …
So I got several adequate frames and at some point I would like to try stacking them with Registax. But for now here is one of the better ones:
This was, of course, shot at f/8 (mirror lenses have a fixed aperture) and 500mm (1000mm EFL) and the shutter speed was set manually to 1/25s. The planet is clearly separated from the rings in one of the best examples I’ve managed so far. It does not, unfortunately, enlarge very well …
A bit messy, that.
So after trying my hand at Saturn with a modicum of success, I moved to the front yard where the half moon was considering the option of setting. It was hanging pretty low in the sky, but I had the tripod i n hand and plunked it down on the grass and got on my knees to pray to the focusing gods and the “seeing” gods to try to get a few good frames.
Well, considering the poor luck I have had with the lens on m4/3 so far, I was a little surprised that I got quite a few very nice looking frames. Here is one of the best, processed for high saturation to bring out the color on the seas … I think it looks pretty terrific.
Now remember that this is 1000mm, which means that if the image is decently clean, then it should look like a telescope shot it, since many smaller telescopes have focal lengths in this range or a bit higher. I think you will agree that this definitely does not suck. In fact, I am thinking that this is the best moon image that I have ever shot. Which makes this a banner day for astrophotography for this hack :-)
Please click on the image to see it as processed (basically 1:1 pixels.) I quite like it … how about you?
I don’t do this nearly often enough, but yesterday I popped over to the Stony Swamp area to wander over to the beaver lodge and see what was shaking. Not much, of course, as the sun was rather brutal so everything was staying out of it and the lighting was terrible for photography. But there were lots of squirrels, chipmunks and dragonflies around and of course the plants cannot go anywhere as they have limited mobility … and a walk in the woods is always relaxing. So it was worth the try …
The very first creature I encountered was a lovely grey squirrel. he was a long way off, but the G5 with the 100-300 is the great equalizer at 600mm effective focal length (EFL.) Here, I shoot the lens at f/7.1 to avoid the loss of contrast you suffer wide open yet leave it fast enough to get decent shutter speeds and bokeh. Still, the deep woods is darker than you think it is and the camera needed 3200iso to get a shutter speed commensurate with 600mm.
The dappled sunlight was really challenging but managed to not ruin this shot. the background is controlled and the squirrel has a lovely softness and dimensionality to it with terrific detail in his fur. I am loving this camera, and in fact any of the m4/3 16Mp sensors.
I was carrying three cameras in my shoulder bag – the G5 with 100-300, the GH2 with 14-140, and the GX1 with the Samyang 7.5mm Fisheye. The 14-140 is sharp and makes lovely wide shots and close ups with its 280mm EFL and very close focus. However, I did not shoot the GH2 at all because there was little to shoot at that distance that the 100-300 could not handle from somewhat further away.
I did encounter a nice scene almost right away with the fisheye … the GX1 handled the image very nicely, but I do have to process this output quite a bit. The Samyang is almost too sharp, leaving a very busy impression, so I tend to make the image a bit more “dreamy” by adding a lot of saturation and some “glow” … in Lightroom this is trivial with the clarity slider moved backwards.
To illustrate what I mean by the harshness of the normal presentation of these shot sin the woods at fisheye levels of detail, here is an image basically unprocessed. The GX1 was shooting JPEG + RAW so this is the JPEG straight out of camera (well, resized and exported by Lightroom.)
And here is the image with similar processing to the upward facing image previously shown …
There will be a few people who prefer the more “realistic” approach, and that is there prerogative. The fact that they are completely wrong should not deter them on iota :-)
Clearly, not a rolling stone …
There is a Wild Bird Center on the property, and this is the second time that I have seen a buzzard recuperating in their large outdoor pen. I wonder if it is the same one … but staying here for years?
This, by the way, is absolutely brutally challenging lighting, as he likes to sit in dark shadow with only his head in the bright sunshine. Once in a while, he moves into a position where you can get a shot that does not completely suck.
I got another really nice shot of a creature at the wild bird center. The reason I like this one is that it is tack sharp, and that’s not easy to get at 300mm in the dark part of the woods. This was again at 3200iso …
As I entered the meadow area, I noticed a young woman half way across carrying a huge insect net and a camera. Nice to see young people revel in their nerdyness :-)
Fairly tall grass with bull-rush like pods dominate this area …
I have always had a thing for daisies … even these wee field daisies …
And of course the airy look of the dandelion seed pod …
This lens is particularly adept at getting that “water color look with its excellent bokeh. There are advantages to shooting at 600mm …
I’m going to show an image shot at base ISO where I made a huge mistake of fixing the ISO and not allowing it to climb to support a faster shutter speed. I normally would not bother keeping such an image, but it is illustrative of why it is necessary to keep an eye on your shutter speed. This terrible shutter shock double image shows up at speeds this low (1/100s) and simply turning on auto ISO as I did a few moments later would have solved it.
It would have been a very nice image with a better exposure.
This one came closer as the shutter climbed to 1/160s … but there is still blur if you look at it at 100% and that shows through … so again no cigar …
Here is an example that perfectly illustrates why shooting at mid day is such a bad idea. This shot has the detail I was after, but it has harsh lighting that is just plain ugly. The background is close enough to be quite obvious and the harsh lighting on that area is not helping at all.
Here, the subject dominates enough to make the lighting a secondary issue. I am happy to see the boardwalks getting some regular maintenance …
There’s a spot along this section where there are bladed plants that stick up pretty high. These look like classic aquarium plants but for something like 3 or 4 feet tall. Very nice … and in this case I was able to get a nice soft look that ended up as an abstract.
Approaching the beaver pond with lodge, it is a nice warm day with a lot of greenery. The lookout is pleasant because of the shade.
The lodge is visible on the right side of the pond.
The burnt out area is still struggling to recover. I think it will be a while.
Stumpy here is a real fungi …
Little yellow wild flowers along the trail look especially nice when photographed against the deep woods behind them.
The second lookout over the swamp has one of those gorgeous blue dragonflies flying around … every time he lands, I try to capture him.And with the water and various nicely lit plants, the background looks again like a water color painting …
A more mundane dragon happens to land in the perfect pose in front of some bright highlights … and the results is pretty neat.
I then rattle off a bunch of images of the blue dragon again and this is one of the better ones.
Some more of those lovely mini daisies a short way down the trail …
Lots of young maple trees juxtaposed against the background foliage … very pretty …
And of course the ubiquitous ferns …
And the last image I shoot on my way out is a wild flower in white … not a great shot, but I like the background. the deep woods really work well when your subject is in dappled light …
So while I abhor midday light, there are definitely images out there to be shot. Just put some effort into your exposures and your backgrounds. Get the best angle for the shot as the background makes all the difference when the light is not great …
A quick peek at my garden back in May …
You can see the growth starting around the patio and you can get a glimpse of my broken table, which finally bit the dust last year. So a week ago I got inspired and decided to do something about it based on plans I found on the internet. My original plan was to reuse the table frame and to “hang” the new table top on top of it. So I deigned it to fit around the table and just sit there, later anchored by strapping of some sort.
Well, that sucked. Once I smashed the plexiglass to get it out of there, I found that the frame had no strength. It was designed to be stabilized by the presence of a sheet of glass. Well, I ended up tossing it to the curb, literally. Two days later, it was gone.
After adding legs to it, this is what it looked like from the air …
Not terribly flat though … and if someone sat or stood on it, well … that would not go very well. Still … not bad looking …
This is a good view to show you that some of the boards are warped and thus they are more springy that they should be.
You can see the entire series in my garden 2013 album … http://letkeman.net/Gallery/Nature/mygarden/mygarden2013?show=16645
I love it when the robins pose on my fence …
Here they are, cut and waiting for installation.
Note that I shot this final series with the little GF3 and the Sigma 19mm 2.8 set at f/4. Lovely lens. I had a bit of a brain fart in that I shot them all in JPEG and 16:9 format, but that has not really hurt them at all. Turns out that the GF3 JPEG engine is quite nice. I had the camera set for video though, so I had to boost saturation and contrast a bit in Lightroom.
Here, the spars are secured to the side rails.
I spent a bit of time last night at Home Depot to find very flat and relatively straight spars for this job. I am pleased with the results.
Here is a last look before I flip it over and secure each slat to the two spars.
It was extremely hot while I was doing this work, but after half an hour, all the slats and spars were well connected.
And now it is flat …
You might wonder why I splurged and went with two spars instead of one in the middle …
Well, aside from the significant increase in strength and stability, I am still toying with putting in an umbrella hole
The whole project, including the new spars, cost me around 100 bucks … I highly recommend that you check out the cost of real wood tables of this size (over 7 feet long and 4 feet wide) and contemplate building such a table yourself. It is painstaking work and cost me at least 10 hours … but then, I have not built something like this in a long time.
