Category: equipment

A Two Hour Smile.

8/11 Waves.

It was a good dream.   Vague and mostly forgotten, not at all unsettling, a slight smile in my sleep.  I seemed very young, maybe seven, still free with innocence, unencumbered by later life.  It was a hot day, summertime, and we were, or had been, at the beach, where I had spent the entire day engulfed in waves.  Diving under, jumping up, turning so that the back of your head had the wave break over it while you looked through to shore, maneuvering for the next one, on and on.  Bodysurfing.  Giggling underwater all the way to the sand when you got caught.

Then came the post stoke relaxation and good sleep.  Warm breezes, full moon, abundance of life and living.  The August cicadas were singing away, celebrating the season.  Something then turned, the timing too early.  Soundwaves getting louder and louder, threatening my sleep and dream state.  The dream faded, like youth, or a good summer on the first day of school.  My alarm was blaring, no longer a cicada’s song.  I hit snooze.  Ahhh, crickets….

This new silence was not feeling like more real sleep,  so I grabbed my camera bag and water housing and headed down to the beach.  There was a slight North wind, which is always good, but heavy stratus cloud cover prevented any sunrise light.  Scanning the ocean for whales and dolphin, I waited, enjoying my 7-11 large, dark coffee.  Didn’t see any, but noticed the waves were actually curling a bit, first time in a while.

When I opened my bag to grab my 16-35mm, the lens was missing.  In its place was my 24-120mm.  Wasn’t sure if it would fit in the housing and with no collar on the lens there would be no zoom, but I gave it a shot and got lucky.   24mm, not bad for leaving the house half asleep. (EDIT:  looking at exif data, the zoom slowly shifted towards the longer end.)

Patches of blue started peaking through the grey.  I headed down toward the Fire Island Lighthouse.  Bare feet in sand, coffee in hand.  The next two hours brought changing light, one long smile, a few giggles, and the focused, alert, wake-full-ness of salt therapy.  Living in a dream.  It comes in waves.

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Summer n’ Sharks…

NY Summer Arrives.

6/28 Hot with a North wind.

 

Warming waters, plentiful bunker, lots of life, and a gentle northern wind to turn the ocean to glass made for a nice trip.   The dorsal fins of lots of Hammerheads and a few Blue sharks could be seen slicing the clean surface.

  • location – a few miles out of Fire Island Inlet.
  • subjects – Hammerhead and Blue sharks
  • gear – Nikon D810, Tam 150-600mm;  GoPro.  (I really could have used a polarizing filter to cut through the water surface.)

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Cutting through glass…

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Note the elongated, narrow dorsal as opposed to that of the blue shark.

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Sleek Blue
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Entangled Blue Shark

Blue shark, entangled in rope.  This blue was not boat shy, seemed attracted to the electronics in the GoPro.

 

 

 

On another note, please do not release balloons.  They are making a mess of things.  I filled a hatch without going out of my way, picking the ones in my path.

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Spitting into the Weather.

 

I was overheated, lethargic.  The world looked gray and dull for photography.  Yet there was that something in the air – subtle signs of weather change.  I figured I’d try to cool off swimming in a local cove for relief. The high temps and humidity had me feeling pretty lazy, so I figured I’d leave the camera home.  Realizing this was dumb, and anticipating rain, I left the heavy lenses home, but put my camera into a surf housing.  

Hemlock Cove was refreshing.  The god awful record-breaking brown tide was all but gone.  All was calm, but storm clouds were moving in, looking good. Had a swim, took a few shots and the wind shifted North.  White caps within three minutes inside the cove!

A North wind smooths the surface of the ocean, countering the usual onshore breeze here on the south shore of Long Island.  I ran across the parkway, and jumped in.  A nice storm, and being in the ocean are two things that re-energize me.  Can ya relate? Yep.

Photo tips:   I use a Nikon 16-35mm lens with an Aquatech base model housing. The base model has no real controls, so I set the F-stop to where I want it, and shoot in Aperture priority.  I then set the ISO to auto.  This way the camera has a chance to give me a good exposure. In the menu, you can set the lowest shutter speed and the highest ISO that you are comfortable with.  (If the amount of available light means your shutter would get too slow at your chosen F-stop, the ISO will automatically increase, allowing the camera to keep your shutter speed fast.)  

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(Aquatech base with flat port)

The wide angle requires a dome port. To prevent water droplets from blurring a pic, they need to go.  First, make sure you have no oily greasy fingerprints on the port.  (dish soap, but rinse well.)   Then, spit.  And spit.  And lick.  The dome port actually has a lot of surface area.  Spit a lot.  Lick a lot.  You may get funny looks.  Keep the housing under water until right before you shoot.  The water will fall off, leaving a thin film of water with no drops.  Keep spitting, keep licking, keep shooting. 

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Questions or comments?  – feel free to hit the comments.  Thanks for looking!

Winter and the Walking Dead

I don’t shoot much inside anymore, preferring to be outside at the beach. For some reason, with the winter blues or whatever, I didn’t feel like venturing outside in Thursday’s blizzard. I must be living a bit dead, since I am usually twitching to get into the middle of any storm.

A trailer for the upcoming season of Walking Dead played, a memory that a friend had dressed up as Negan for Halloween also played, so I came back to life a bit and set up some lights and played. It had been a while.  Gotta shake out the rigor mortis. “I need a phone call. I need a plane ride. I need a sunburn…”

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Set up: 3 foot softbox as main light, cam right. Small softbox hair light behind black seamless paper. Reflector cam left. I added a extra light behind subject to control background for a bit more separation from the black jacket. Processing was just some quick Lightroom, except for dropping in the full moon in PS. (Negan doesn’t get skin treatment.)  There was also a fog machine for that pic.  Shot in living room with 70-200mm, mostly at 80mm. (Negan credit: Adam Snair.)

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Anyway, playing with lighting is really a lot of fun.  And cabin fever is no good reason to let your brain get eaten.  If you have any comments / questions feel free to leave a comment! Thanks for looking!

Harbor Seals

…almost overslept

It was a nice morning.

 

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Almost over slept this morning.  Got up, but I was a bit slow getting enough coffee in me after yesterday’s fantastic game.  I wanted to get some landscape shots before the sunrise – I like an hour to a half hour before for photography and observing.  Those times often offer the best color.  Running a bit late, I caught the sun coming up over the ocean, always a blessing, but I missed all the good color from earlier.

The light was still great so I changed plans.  I switched out the wide-angle for the Tamron 150-600mm and went looking for wildlife.  I was hoping to get lucky, maybe see some raptors or a fox.  Drove around a bit, nothing.  Had another thought and this is what I found this morning. (Phoca vitulina)

All shots are cropped considerably, even at 600mm, the harbor seals were pretty far away. Because the low sun was hitting them just right, I set exposure compensation at -1.0, to help prevent any overexposure of the seal’s light fur. (Seal fur, btw, belongs on a seal.)  I was shooting in aperture priority, not manual mode, since I was kind of parked in the middle of the road, with a park ranger behind me tooting his horn for me to get back in my car.

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All shots:   ISO 500, F9.0, 1/1250th sec., 600mm.  The ISO was bumped up to increase shutter speed, as I was hand holding 600mm.  Aperture was 9.0, because this lens is very sharp there, and figured I needed some depth of field.

 

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There are some better places to find seals on Long Island and I will try to hit that in another post.  Seals are federally protected marine mammals.  Please respect them by staying at least 50 yards away.  If your presence alters their behavior, you are too close.

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Continue reading “Harbor Seals”

Equipment / Gear

…some of our favorite things!

Everyone has heard everyone say that equipment doesn’t matter.  Yet everyone drools over every new camera that is announced.  The drool is only part pavlovian response to enticing key marketing terms.  Another reason to drool is the frustration of having a camera or lens that finally starts to limit what you are trying to accomplish.   I’m a Nikon guy.  For close to 10 years, I shot with a 12 mp D300.   It took great photos, and I learned a lot from it.   I’ve sold many prints of its output.   But….
A ways back, someone wanted a 4 x 6 foot print of a cropped image of mine.  I spent a month’s worth of beer money on the print, she looked at it from 6 inches away, and said – nah.  We all know that looking at a print from 6 inches away is kind of stupid, but it is what it was.   Modern software has made it much easier to up-res, but at some point you will be limited by your camera’s ability to capture enough megapixels.  (If you are just shooting for web images or small prints, 12mp is all you need, and today’s entry cameras are superb.)   I’m not rich, I opted for a refurbished Nikon D810.   No problems whatsoever with the refurb.  I love this camera and its 36mp for land and seascapes.
Modern Nikons have also come a long way in their ability to capture dynamic range (DR).   No cameras can match the human eye’s DR.  Your pupil continually adjusts to expose for what you are looking at.  Add in an optic nerve with attached brain, and the ability to squint, and things are literally looking good for us.  We can take in visual information over a large range of light intensity.  For example, when it is very bright outside, we can not only see the stuff thats nice and bright, we can also see useful information in the shadows.   Cameras have a hard time capturing that wide range of light intensity within one image. Cameras have only been evolving for a short time, they have a lot of catching up to do. But they are indeed catching up.   The D810 is pretty amazing compared to the old D300.  By the way, always shoot RAW.  Period.  Don’t argue.  Modern software like Lightroom and Photoshop can pull amazing detail out of the shadows of a RAW file.
Another area where newer cameras have come a long way is high ISO performance.   ISO is basically a way to make your camera more sensitive to light.   At higher ISO’s you don’t need as much light to get a good exposure.  This enables you to use faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures (larger Fstops) when there is not a lot of light.   Think shooting fast-moving sports in dim light.  (The downside of this is that images start to get noisy, and you lose some DR.)   While the D810 is pretty damn good at high ISO, there are better cameras out there when it comes to high ISO performance.   Seems every new camera body that comes out these days has better and better ISO.   So, yeah, I’m drooling for a second body, just for high ISO and higher frames per sec.
Advice:   Camera bodies keep getting better and better.  If you are just starting, or on a budget, they are all good.   Camera lenses, on the other hand, are a better investment.  You’ll hold on to a good quality lens forever, as the camera bodies come and go.
What I am currently shooting with:
  • Main camera – Nikon D810
  • Lenses –  Nikon 16-35,  Nikon 50 1.4,  Nikon 105 macro,  Nikon 70-200,  Tamron 150-600.
  • GoPro 4 Silver
  • Tripod – Giottos with Markins ballhead.
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Aquatech housing, image from catalogue
I’ve recently acquired an Aquatech splash housing, (pic from catalogue).  Taking your camera in waves is very fun and a great excuse to get back in the ocean!   To do that when the water is cold, I use a Hyperflex Voodoo 5/4 wetsuit, with 5mil gloves and boots.  I really do stay warm.