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Forum: Pentax Forums Giveaways
09-07-2016, 01:05 PM
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I'm posting. Because my genuine psychic astrologer ($3.99 for the first minute, $2.99 for each additional minute) told me that a kind, decent person would give me a Pentax K-50.
Of course, if you don't want to be a kind, decent person...
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
01-02-2009, 08:50 PM
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Yeah, it was cold on the night of the 1st, but without much wind. I understand strong, gusty winds aren't ideal for fireworks displays.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
01-02-2009, 02:37 PM
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While I probably won't be going that route, Federal Hill has been a very popular place with Baltimoreans since before the United States was even an independent country (and it's where Baltimore had a big celebration when the US Constitution was ratified, in addition to figuring in the War of 1812 and the Civil War), so there are tons of pictures of Baltimore taken from Federal Hill, dating back to the early days of photography. (I'm more or less arbitrarily deciding that if it pre-dates Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs, it qualifies as "the early days of photography.")
While one couldn't quite turn the pictures into a film clip, it's not difficult at all to come up with a series of photos taken from Federal Hill park, showing changes in the harbor and the downtown over the course of the past 150 years.
Here's one of the earlier ones, from 1849. The Washington Monument (the one in Baltimore pre-dates the one in DC) is clearly visible in the distance, which indicates that the camera was pointed in pretty much the same direction as mine was, when I photographed the fireworks. (Can't see the Monument in my photo, due to tall buildings and the fireworks. But trust me, if the buildings and fireworks were invisible, you'd be able to see it.)
Lots of others may be found at Google Image Result for http://www.mdhs.org/Library/Images/Mellon%20Images/Z24access/z24-00012.jpg
Today, it's such a popular spot from which to photograph the Baltimore skyline, that's it's almost a cliché. Which has never stopped me, you understand.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
01-01-2009, 10:18 PM
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The New Year's Eve fireworks display over Baltimore's Inner Harbor was moved from New Year's Eve to 7PM New Year's Day, due to wind.
I took this photograph from Federal Hill Park.
I always have terrible luck with fireworks pictures, and tonight was no exception. I had my lens manually focused at infinity, and somehow moved the focus ring at one point, rendering about 20 pictures out of focus. (Some of them would have been my best shots, of course.) Whenever I had my camera pointed in one direction, the best fireworks were going off about 90 degrees away. Whenever I tripped the shutter, I'd get 5 seconds of lull between bursts. Etc.
But this picture isn't too bad. At the rate my fireworks shots keep improving, by the 4th of July 2048, I'm really going to be hitting my stride. :)
Camera was a Pentax K10D, with the 18-55mm kit lens at 40mm. Exp. 1.6 sec. @ f/8, ISO 100. Bogen 3001 tripod and wireless remote.
On the way home from the fireworks, I stopped and took some pictures of City Hall. You'll note that the rotunda is illuminated in purple. That's done when the Baltimore Ravens football team makes the playoffs.
Camera was again my Pentax K10D, with 18-55mm lens at 35mm. Bogen 3001 tripod and wireless remote. I took 6 shots - 3 pairs, with each pair consisting of one shot at the nominally correct exposure, and one 2 stops under. Each pair was digitally blended, and the 3 resulting images stitched together to create this final image. I know there are easier ways to accomplish the same thing, but I went with what I know. It came out okay, which is the important thing.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-19-2008, 07:13 PM
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This is a follow-up to my previous thread, found at https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/post-your-photos/35816-george-peabody-lib...re-md-usa.html .
I finally managed to get back to the library, and take some photos from the stacks.
Here's a picture stitched together from 18 individual "frames." (Six rows of three frames each, taken with the camera oriented horizontally.)
I won't go through all the background story again, but as for technical details, I used my Pentax K10D, this time with the 50-200mm lens (at 50mm). Exposures were 2.5 sec. @ f/11, ISO 100. The rest of the technical stuff was pretty much the same as last time.
Although most people would automatically reach for a wide angle lens in situations like this, I sometimes choose to go with a normal or short telephoto lens, even if it does mean I have to stitch together more frames for the final image. There are pluses and minuses to each approach, but shooting at what amounts to a portrait lens focal length seemed to work out nicely for me in this case.
The final picture is rather detailed. "Rather" meaning it's a little under 10,000 pixels wide, by more than 11,500 pixels tall. Resolution (of the final .tif, not this re-sized .jpg) is good enough to show enormous amounts of fine detail on the spines of the books at the far end of the atrium.
While I'll undoubtedly tweak it some more in Photoshop, and maybe try it as a black and white conversion, I'm basically very pleased with the picture, and am glad I went to the bother of going back to the library for a re-shoot.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-08-2008, 06:30 PM
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Thanks, heliphoto; that fixed it. To quote the late William F. Buckley, "You da man!"
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-08-2008, 02:42 PM
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Is anyone having trouble seeing the second shot (the cathedral)?
It was showing up just fine for me until this morning. Since this morning, the skyline shot is visible, but not the cathedral picture.
That's when viewing this thread using Firefox 3.0.1 as my browser. If I view the thread in IE everything appears.
Just wondering. (And if any of you know why Firefox might suddenly not want to display one of the images, and how to correct same, feel free to tell me.)
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-08-2008, 07:16 AM
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Panorama Factory, but I do a fair number of panos, and lately I've come to rely on CS3's Photomerge capability, at least most of the time. It's reached the point where I'll almost always try CS3 first, and only in those minority of cases where I'm dissatisfied with its results do I give the dedicated software solutions a try (not that they always do any better).
There's nothing special about Panorama Factory, either. It's just a piece of software I happen to own and have on my computer. PTgui is probably better. But, as I've said, with CS3, Photoshop's stitching capabilities have gotten good enough that they're all I really need, most of the time.
I would add that when I take pictures intended for stitching, I usually go for lots of overlap between frames - not just the 20% or so that some people consider appropriate. And I'll often choose a moderate focal length - not whatever's the widest my zoom lens will do - even though this does mean more shots are required. These factors tend to make it easier for the software to put together a good quality pano, or at least that's my opinion.
For the most part, the precise make and model of my stitching software just isn't all that important. It's kind of how one's choice of Raw converter doesn't have all that much significance in terms of image quality (for all that there are folks out there seemingly obsessed with trivial differences, mainly visible only under artificial conditions that don't reflect how people actually view pictures).
FWIW, back in my Tri-X and darkroom days, neither did I care much about precisely which factory manufactured the bulb in my enlarger, or whether there might have been a 0.1 degree difference between the temperature in the center of the D76 tray, and the temperature at its edges.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-07-2008, 07:44 AM
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-07-2008, 02:38 AM
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This first one is a panorama consisting of 8 stitched together shots. It's of Baltimore's Inner Harbor, from Federal Hill Park. This is one of the classic locations for photographing the Inner Harbor area.
I used a Pentax K10D and 50-200 lens (at 50mm). Bogen 3001 tripod. Exposure of 0.3 sec. @ f/11. (Manual exposure mode, about 1 stop more exposure than the camera wanted, to compensate for all the sky in the picture which was tricking the camera into underexposing a little.) Manually focused. (I typically use manual focus on panos, as I want all the frames to be focused for the same distance. In this case I could probably have just used auto-focus, since they'd likely have all been focused at infinity, anyway.) ISO 100. Shutter tripped by hand, but with 2 sec. delay.
The picture was made right around sunset, several months ago, as it would be getting dark enough at that time that there'd be plenty of pretty lights, but it wouldn't be nighttime dark. Basically, I wanted dusk, not night. (I generally prefer the look of cityscapes at dusk, to their look during mid-day or night.)
The resulting pano is more than 18000 x 2300 pixels in size. (But I've greatly reduced the size and converted it to jpg for posting to this forum.)
And yes, that thing way over on the left edge of the frame is indeed a cannon. In April of 1861, as the Civil War was getting underway, the hill was occupied by Union troops under the command of General Benjamin F. Butler. They erected a small fort there, with cannon pointing toward Baltimore's business district. Their goal was to guarantee the allegiance of the city and the state of Maryland to the federal government, under threat of force. (Maryland was a slave state, and if it had seceded from the Union, Washington DC would have been surrounded by hostile forces.) This fort and the Union occupation persisted for the duration of the Civil War. A large flag, a few cannon, and a small Grand Army of the Republic monument remain to testify to this period of the hill's history.
This second picture is of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, up on N. Charles St., in Baltimore.
I checked ahead of time to make sure there were no restrictive rules against photography in the cathedral, and I tried to time my visit so as to minimize disruption of religious services, wedding rehearsals, etc. All in all, I had around 90 minutes to take some pictures.
The camera used was my Pentax K10D. Lens was the 18-55mm "kit lens," at 18mm, and an aperture of f/9. (At f/9, depth of field was more than enough to keep everything sharp, so stopping down any further would just have unnecessarily lengthened exposure times, and anyway past f/11 or so a decline in image quality can be an issue.) The camera was mounted on a Bogen 3001 tripod, and triggered by remote. (The remote was a Pentax Wireless Remote Control C, purchased from Ace Photo Digital, via amazon.com, for under 4 bucks. See, I use only the finest, most expensive, camera gear.)
ISO 100. And since the interior of the cathedral was somewhat dim, exposure times were well into the multiple second range. Well, it's not like the cathedral was in rapid motion, after all.
Camera orientation was vertical. And as I like a lot of overlap between images that are to be stitched together into a pano, I took 20+ "slices", covering over 180 degrees.
Really though, many of the "slices" consist of a digitally blended set of two or three exposures. One at the nominally correct exposure, one 2 stops over, and one 2 stops under. Since this was the only way to get both some color in the stained glass windows, and some detail in the shadows. Just too much range there to manage it all in a single exposure.
And yeah, the result of all these .tif files was a honkin' big final panorama. Several hundred megs in size.
The image presented here is a .jpg of that pano. Shrunk way down in size, and compressed some. Because sharing an uncompressed .tif that's 12500 x 4600 pixels in size on this forum wouldn't be all that friendly.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-05-2008, 05:43 PM
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Thanks, dadipentak. Here a few others from Baltimore, from a self-assigned project on Baltimore's street murals, that I've been working on for the past several months. (And after thousands of photos, of maybe 140 murals, it's finally approaching completion. Maybe to appear in a book, eventually. But probably just on a website.) All taken with the humble 18-55mm kit lens.
The first one is a 2002 mural, by Ernest Shaw, Jr. It's one of several murals Mr. Shaw has created under the auspices of the Baltimore Mural Program. While I usually prefer not to include people in my photographs of murals, I make occasional exceptions, as in this case.
The Baltimore Farmers' Market is held every Sunday morning, May - December, beneath the Jones Falls Expressway (I-83), down around Holiday and Gay Streets. While this location does offer shelter from the rain, it's not the most scenic of settings. Starting in 2004, a program was begun of painting murals on the many supporting pylons there. Various artists have participated, and some of the resulting art is extremely powerful. If you want to see the pylons (which are almost impossible to depict well in photographs, due in part to the great size of the space, and the terrible lighting conditions), I would urge you to visit when the Market is NOT in operation. The crowds on Sunday morning make it essentially impossible to appreciate the artworks.
Many homeless men will be found there, as well. (Hey, it's Baltimore. But really, it could just as easily be one of many other large American cities.) So if you're going in hopes of photographing some of the pylons, and you don't want some homeless guy in the picture (which, I admit, might be a valid photographic statement, but it wasn't one I cared to make), careful planning, timing, choice of vantage point, and awareness of your surroundings is a must. (And due to the poor lighting, a tripod is a necessity, too.)
"Reflections," is a 2005 mural by Pontella Mason (who has created many splendid murals in Baltimore). The middle panel in the top row dipicts an African woman, with the W.E.B. DuBois quote, "The spell of Africa is upon me..." The bottom row features three West African symbols and their meanings. From left to right, they are Akoben ("Readiness and Volunteerism; A Call to Action"), Fi-Hankra ("Solidarity Brotherhood Security"), and Bi-Nka-Bi ("Justice Unity Peace Harmony").
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-05-2008, 05:02 PM
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I'm not one of those people who insist that a $100 lens is just as good as a $1200 lens. Usually, it's not. But I do know that even a $100 lens - used appropriately, and within fairly broad limits - can yield stunning results.
I also know that image quality is determined by a whole chain of factors. And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. 98% of the time, that weak link is not the hardware being used, it's the photographer.
Hardware matters. Hardware sometimes matters a whole lot. But it seldom matters anywhere near as much as the photographer's skill.
Furthermore, in my opinion, most photographers would see more improvement in their work if they took a few hundred dollars and spent it on membership in a nearby art museum, some photography books (showing actual pictures by accomplished photographers, not just "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Awesome RAW Conversion Software"), and a class or two at the local community college, than they would if they instead spent the money on upgrading one of their camera bodies or lenses.
But buying stuff is easier than learning stuff.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-04-2008, 09:51 PM
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To update -
I emailed the library the other day, asking if they'd make an exception and let me photograph the place from the stacks.
The librarian with whom I dealt last week responded to the email, saying he remembered me. He explained that he was having a bad day when I was there, otherwise he'd have given me permission, and he felt bad afterward that he hadn't let me shoot a few photos from the stacks. He said I should let him know when I'll be dropping by, and so long as I sign a waiver and let him accompany me, there won't be any problem with my photographing from wherever I like.
He added that the "yahoos" who go upstairs, ignoring the signs, get escorted out by security. But someone who goes to the trouble of politely asking for permission usually receives it.
Very decent of him, I think.
I'd hoped to make it there today, as I was in Baltimore in the afternoon. But things came up. I don't want to do the shoot tomorrow or Saturday, as the skies are supposed to be gray (like they were the last time I was there), and I'd like to see blue sky through the skylight. I'll probably go one day next week, whenever the forecast is for sunny weather, and I can fit the couple of hours into my schedule.
Anyway, I'll probably be combining some HDR shooting, with some pano stitching, on next week's effort. (Without going the HDR route, I'll have big problems with a sky that'll be many stops brighter than most of the library interior.)
LaRee - The full resolution .tif doesn't look over-sharpened, and I'm actually pretty sensitive to such things. (So many photos on the web are sharpened to within an inch of their lives, the rationale presumably being "If a little sharpening is good, a ton of sharpening can only be better!") So even if the jpg is just a little over-sharpened, chalk it up to the fact that I don't devote quite as much time and effort to getting the sharpening just so when it comes to much reduced and compressed jpgs posted online somewhere.
And as for it being a job to stitch it together, naw, not really. I shoot lots of panos, some of them truly huge in size. But my desktop computer is a quad core, with plenty of RAM, so I no longer have to wait hours for tasks involving very, very large images to complete. (The first time I realized I'd been waiting around for 10 minutes, just to rotate a pano 2 degrees counterclockwise in CS3, I knew there was a newer, faster computer in my immediate future.)
Damn Brit - Thanks for appreciating the description. A nice picture is a nice picture, and that's all well and good. But I do prefer seeing at least some technical detail and maybe relevant non-technical background about the shot, when it's a picture posted to a photo board for comment or critique. So I try to give some background when I post a picture of my own.
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Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
08-29-2008, 12:59 PM
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The George Peabody Library (of the Peabody Institute, which includes one of the nation's foremost music conservatories, and which is part of Johns Hopkins University) is widely regarded as one the most beautiful libraries in the United States.
I'd long wanted to photograph the place, and managed to get over there yesterday afternoon and spent some time taking pictures.
One the minus side, access to the stacks is restricted, so I couldn't get the vantage point I'd been hoping for. (I could almost certainly have gone up the "Staff Only" stairs, and photographed away, without anyone noticing for some minutes. But I decided I'd act responsibly and obey the rules. I'm sorry if that costs me photographic street cred with some people.)
On the plus side, while I'd previously been told that tripods were forbidden, when I asked the librarian upon my arrival, he told me that a tripod would be okay. Moral of this story? Always seek out that second opinion. Other moral of this story? Always keep a tripod in your car, just in case. (I always have my old Bogen 3001, in the trunk.)
And a tripod was definitely handy. Not just because it permitted more careful composition than would've been possible handheld, but because I was looking at shutter speeds of around 1 second @ f/8 @ ISO 100. And my K10D's in-body image stabilization is good, but 1 second is still an unacceptably long time for handheld exposures.
Yeah, I could've bumped the ISO up to 800, and opened the lens (the 18-55mm kit lens) up to f/3.5, but that still would've had me shooting at around 1/30 sec., and I'd rather shoot at ISO 100 than at ISO 800, at f/8 than at f/3.5 (in this instance), and on a tripod at 1 second rather than handheld at 1/30 second.
The lighting was also very tricky. There were some areas well illuminated primarily by sunlight, and other areas relatively poorly illuminated and relying on incandescent bulbs. Big range of brightnesses there, even on a cloudy/rainy day like yesterday. And, of course, the temperature of sunlight is very different from the color temperature of the bulbs, so balancing those two took a little doing, too.
I'm going to work on the picture more in Photoshop, but isn't that always the case?
This picture is a pano, consisting of 8 individual images (taken in vertical orientation, and at 18mm) stitched together. Had to go the pano route, as 18mm wasn't anywhere near wide enough to get the image I had in mind. The picture loses a lot being resized and saved as a compressed jpg, but there's no way I'm going to post a 200MB 8000x4000 tif file, you know?
Anyway, the library is really gorgeous; this picture doesn't begin to do it justice. If you have any interest in architecture at all, and you happen to find yourself in Baltimore, it's definitely worth a visit. (If you're not much interested in architecture, but you like taking pictures, Peabody is right in Mt. Vernon, which is an extremely "photo rich" environment. So run in and take a look as long as you're there.)
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Michael
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