[RICHARD L.]

Mauricie is full of these magnificent forest paths everywhere. Tripod-mounted Pentax 67 II + late 67 45 mm f/4 wide-angle lens @ f/16, on Ektar 100 negative film. The image was somewhat cropped to 2:3 proportions.

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[RICHARD L.]

Last evening, I noticed my neighbor had decorated his house with Christmas lights.

Tripod-mounted 645Z + 67 M 90-180 mm f/5.6, ISO 800, 2 sec @ f/8 with focus set on the branches of my Maple tree with LV.

[Lhorn]

Two flashes @ 1/128 power Camera pre-focused

I can't imagine how difficult it was to get that shot, given the unpredictability if insects, the narrow depth of field and timing the shot. Amazing.

[Peter Rockstroh]

I can't imagine how difficult it was to get that shot, given the unpredictability if insects, the narrow depth of field and timing the shot. Amazing.

I learned to photograph insects with film, which has a steep and expensive learning curve.
These attractants work very well and the bees make the proverbial bee line when they get
wind of it. The other approach is making a frame from a wire coat hanger, slightly bigger
than the image you will take and attach it to your camera with the flashes on a macro bracket.
You pre-focus manually on the center of your frame and go out hunting. Since you don´t need
to be looking through the viewfinder, you follow the insects with your contraption and expose
when they are in the middle of the wire frame.

[barondla]

Pentax 645Z and Arsat 30 fisheye. Drove 2 hours to reach this area. After being there a half hour it started spitting rain on and off. Managed to get this before It got darker and I had to call it a day.

Thanks for looking,
barondla

[ivanvernon]

Pentax 645Z and Arsat 30 fisheye. Drove 2 hours to reach this area. After being there a half hour it started spitting rain on and off. Managed to get this before It got darker and I had to call it a day.

Thanks for looking,
barondla

I like that. So much for folks calling the Arsat fisheye soft. That is very credible performance.

[barondla]

I like that. So much for folks calling the Arsat fisheye soft. That is very credible performance.

Thank you. Yes, the Arsat is a good performer. It isn't laser sharp like the 645 HD DFA 35 or 55, but it is very good and works well with sharpening, I find it much more picky about focus than my other fisheye lenses. Must be the longer 30mm focal length. It also works best between F8-16. That ensures the corners will also be sharp.

Thanks,
barondla

[RICHARD L.]

After being there a half hour it started spitting rain on and off. Managed to get this before It got darker and I had to call it a day.

Yes, this time of the year imposes restrictions on our enjoyment of photography. Here we have rain in alternance with snow and darkness begins at around 4h00 PM, so we miss a lot of opportunities to go around and explore our contryside.

Regards

---------- Post added 12-02-20 at 06:43 AM ----------

FA 120 mm f/4 MACRO

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Last edited by RICHARD L.; 12-02-2020 at 04:45 AM.

[maxloxton]

Thank you so much, everyone! So glad you like it... Have wanted to do this picture for years and the opportunity never arose before.

Max...
As for the process, the sky is indeed multiple images combined in post. The rotation covers about 90 mins - faaaaar too long to use a single exposure without the bright parts of the scene blowing out. So it required a large number of relatively short frames. In this case, 3000 frames or so! Then I added a low ISO exposure for the face, so that that area was cleaner. In this case, seeing as it was shot about 2am - 3.30am (and during Covid), there wasn't much aviation activity in the sky - otherwise, getting rid of that would become a time-consuming task!

Thanks for elaborating the process. Which tool you use for that, StarStax or PS. I have to try that someday on my 645z.

[texandrews]

Pentax 645Z and Arsat 30 fisheye. Drove 2 hours to reach this area. After being there a half hour it started spitting rain on and off. Managed to get this before It got darker and I had to call it a day.

Thanks for looking,
barondla

Got a recommendation for you if you don't already know his work: Eliot Porter.

[wa2kqy]

Pentax 645Z and Arsat 30 fisheye. Drove 2 hours to reach this area. After being there a half hour it started spitting rain on and off. Managed to get this before It got darker and I had to call it a day.

Thanks for looking,
barondla

Yeah. I understand travelling quite a ways then having it not be worth it. I took the three hour trek to the North Carolina Outer Banks only to have to take the three hour trek back. And, it was worse as I stayed overnight as well. I wanted morning light for one of the lighthouses. But NC route 12 has this tendency to get ocean and sand covered. It is only 50 feet wide of sand in spots. And, get covered it did. Oh, well. Go home and try again some other time. Which I did. That trek is needed for two lighthouses and I did have success on the second attempt.

At this point, I have several other lighthouses to shoot along the Atlantic coast, so I guess I had better plan to stay away for days if need be. That, rather than drive longer distances back and forth when things don't work out.

Stan

[RICHARD L.]

I have an old picture book by Elliot Porter on Baja California interspersed with lyric poems from a Spanish author ("Nubes, rochas que no pesan ..." meaning "Clouds, rocks that weigh nothing ..."). It was a magnificent opus that I kept dearly all my life. Mr Porter used a 4X5 technical camera and his ultra-sharp pictures always included the special flora of this part of Mexico (saguaros, agaves and boojum trees among others).


Regards

[texandrews]

I have an old picture book by Elliot Porter on Baja California interspersed with lyric poems from a Spanish author ("Nubes, rochas que no pesan ..." meaning "Clouds, rocks that weigh nothing ..."). It was a magnificent opus that I kept dearly all my life. Mr Porter used a 4X5 technical camera and his ultra-sharp pictures always included the special flora of this part of Mexico (saguaros, agaves and boojum trees among others).


Regards

What I adore about Porter is that he's sort of the anti-Adams (and don't get me wrong, I love ole' Ansel!). Where Adams' work has such admirable drama, Porter's is so quiet.

BTW, fun fact: his brother is Fairfield Porter, the painter, whose work in the '50's was an antidote to both the drama of abstract expressionism (which I love) and Andrew Wyeth's realism (which I also love).

Two brothers, same quiet sensibility. Remarkable in the middle of the last century, in many ways. Not a quiet time....

[wa2kqy]

Hi,

Here is a funny one, I haven't mentioned. When I was at Cape Lookout shooting the lighthouse, someone asked me....

Get this!

If I was Ansel Adams!


I can't type enough funny faces on this line!

I guess (a) I had a big camera and (b) I had a big tripod and (c) I was shooting a B+W lighthouse and (d) I'm old....that combination did the trick....

Just for a refresher, it was this one:



And. here it is in B+W, just because I could!




Stan

Or should that be Stan-sel???

[RICHARD L.]

Adams was born in 1902 ... Do you look this old, Stan ? (Just kidding !)

Regards