Musings from the Highlands

Just some goings-on up here in God's Country. It's been hot (for the benefit of my readers in other parts of the world. Of course if you live in the area, you already knew that. How hot was it?

The bottom numbers are the outside temp/humidity. Muggy when I took this.

In addition to the new BBQ Gazebo...

An HDR shot of the new gazebo on the deck. Designed to keep the rain and snow at bay. I barbecue year-round and this is going to help a lot!

... I bought an interesting new product that I first saw at my friend Lori's place in the city. It replaces my sliding screen door — it's two panels held together by a set of magnets (that's the black vertical line in the middle) and it snaps together nicely after you walk through it. I walked through my screen one too many times!

"As seen on TV". Magic Mesh, I think it's called. $25 at Canadian Tire. I did have to roll up the bottom a bit because it won't close if it's dragging on the ground..

It's perfect. It keeps the bugs out, you can just walk right through it with both hands full, it snaps closed right away. OK, well ALMOST perfect. There's someone else who can just walk right through it without any difficulty:

With the nice weather, we've been spending a lot of time outdoors, walking, swimming, and working very hard ...

Hard at work! 

Guest Photo

During my last DSLR class, Val, one of the students, went out on assignment to shoot some pictures and came back with this one:

So I spent the afternoon after class looking for this guy again, without success! I haven't seen him since. Val is a really good photographer and I hope I was able to take her up a step or two.

A few more of my shots

A couple of people asked me about the range of my bellows attachment. I shot a couple of sample pictures to demonstrate that.

This is about the minimum magnification with the bellows completely retracted. That said, zooming the lens changes the magnification and I don't know where it was set.

And this is at the other extreme,  Both of these shots are right out of the camera, as you can see, holding exposure is not easy — also depth of field at these extreme magnifications is almost non-existent. 

Whitewater shots

I dropped by the whitewater preserve on Sunday and took a few shots. I was on the bike and only had my 24-120 lens with me: it was dwarfed by the lenses that the 3 or 4 other photographers there had! Interestingly, they were all Nikons, ranging from a lowly D300 (like mine) to a D7000 to a new D800! Nicest lens I saw was a Nikkor 300mm f/2.8. Can you say envious?

In my humble opinion, there are two different ways to shoot action: slow, and fast. This first shot is at 1/1000 second, so the water is frozen.

This is a tone-mapped image — not exactly an HDR because it was made from one photo. I treated it that way because I wanted to emphasize the muscle tone and detail. What attracts me to this shot is the facial expression: I call it "focused" but someone else said, "he's obviously 'in the moment'" which I thought is a good way about saying it.

But I think you get a more dramatic and dynamic image at a slow shutter speed, like the 1/30 second used for this shot. Which one do you like best? 

I'm dong another basic DSLR class this weekend: it's light because of a cancellation so if anyone wants to come up at the last second, give me a call (416 630 5921) or email me, there's room. Saturday and Sunday, 11-4.

TTFN

— 30 —

July is supposed to be a quiet time!

It's been hectic. There's been a lot going on, and some things have kept me from picking up the camera in the last little while. The disturbing part is that for a while, I didn't feel much like shooting pictures. It's a little odd, because I have a couple of new toys, one of which I haven't succeeded in using yet.

Part of the reason might have been that it's just been too hot. I was driving back up North last Saturday and decided to stop at one point to take some shots of a field with harvested hay rolls. I had a picture in my mind but didn't really capture it, although I "worked the scene" as Scott Kelby suggested in his recent seminar. What caught my eye as I drove by was this:

Too bad there weren't any clouds in the sky. And that the temperature was in the mid 30's (over 90°F). This was about an hour away from my house and I took solace in the thought that 5 minutes after getting home, I'd be in the lake!

Anyway, I stayed there about half an hour, trying various things. I chased a couple of butterflies around but they never landed so I couldn't get a shot. The best shot of the session was this one:

Originally I was going to post this exactly as it came out of the camera so that I could say, "See! Exactly as it came out of the camera!". However I never leave well enough alone. I sharpened the left and warmed it up a bit, and I blurred the right just a touch in Lightroom. But otherwise, it's "Exactly as it came out of the camera"!

I ran a basic DSLR workshop on Sunday. The students were excellent: they had great vision and a feel for composition, so it was a pleasure to work with them. One got a very cool picture of a grasshopper on my woodpile; I've spent 2 days looking for the little guy so I could emulate it, without success! I did take out the bellows to show them how it worked, and found these teeny tiny bugs on a daisy:

These guys are about half the size of a grain of rice, to put it in perspective. I missed the focus by a touch, though.

I got a candid shot of one of the students at lunchtime. Bear in mind, this is outside, in sunlight, at mid-day. Just the time when you're not supposed to be able to take good pictures. I was trying to get a backlit shot for the "lighting" lesson and this worked out pretty well.

Here's a 100% crop of the original image. I was surprised how much texture appeared, given that the light was coming from behind her. I did some enhancement in Lightroom:

Next I took it into Photoshop and did some more work on it. Primarily I focused on the eyes, but then I added a "Glamor Glow (Nik Color Efex Pro). Then I brought it back into Lightroom, took out some more skin texture and lowered the red saturation a bit.

When I posted the un-cropped image on the NAPP site, I was accused of over-smoothing the skin, a la "Fotoshop by Adobé". So I reworked it a bit, same concept but less effect. Here's what I ended up with:

I'm pretty satisfied with this shot. Maybe I should shoot something other than rocks and trees sometimes!

I shot some more macro stuff with the bellows. The jury is still out on the focusing rail that I got (I don't like that the control that lock the positioning and the screw control to move it are both on the same side. I don't have enough hands!). Anyway, this is a 4-shot focus stack on a flower bud that's about the size of a grain of rice (when I think of a better comparison, I'll let you know!).

And yesterday I picked some raspberries, so I shot this single frame. This one is a virtually untouched original:

Until next time! TTFN.

— 30 —

Up Close and Personal

In today's blog, I'd like to share two topics with you: first, getting up close and personal shooting pictures of little wee things, and second some guest pictures from the moose workshop I could not attend.

Close Up photography

As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I now have a bellows which allows me to shoot closeups of really small things. This will give you an idea of scale:

This is nowhere near full magnification. This shot has NOT been cropped, that's what my sensor saw.

And I did that with a $35 piece of equipment (well, added to the camera and lens and tripod and Speedlight and light tent and...). Technical details are on my tech blog here, as well as other pictures. It's a basic tutorial on all you need to know to get started shooting this stuff yourself. Here's another image:

Same flower, more magnification. This was slightly cropped because there was something ugly at the bottom of the frame.

I also shot the following picture in the light tent at the same time. It's not a "macro" since the flower is quite a bit larger than the frame:

I did a bit of work on this image, just to sharpen it and do something other than pure white (or black) for the background. I think it's called a "Day Lily", maybe someone will come along to confirm or correct that. By all means, click on this to blow it up to check out the detail.

Now that I know how to fold up my light tent, I'm going to use it more!

Moose Workshop

As you know, I could not attend the Mike Bertelsen moose workshop in Algonquin Park mid-June because of family circumstances. I'm rather sorry I missed it, maybe I'll have another chance in a while. Two of the people who were on that trip sent me pictures yesterday, and with their permission, I'm able to show them to you here.

Without further ado...

These first two outstanding images were captured by Mark Girard

These two fabulous images are by Dennis Phillips.

Basic DSLR Workshops

If you're a relatively new DSLR owner and photographer, you too can improve your photography. One-day and two-day workshops are available here in the Haliburton Highlands or elsewhere at your convenience. Check it out at www.photography.to.

— 30 —

Challenges

Not for you, for me.

Oh, OK. I have a challenge for you. But first let's talk about me.

Due to some family matters, I literally haven't picked up my camera in over a week. Which implies that the photos in this blog are older than that! So that's been keeping me busy for a while. Then I got home and turned on my laptop and, "boing". That's the only word I could think of that wouldn't end up with this blog getting x-rated.

Without dwelling on the details, it's dead. I was lucky enough to be able to recover my data. I had done a backup to an external drive about a week before, and if you're not using Dropbox, you'd better start now. Click the link. Saved my bacon — I had gotten into the habit of copying my critical files, especially my Quickbooks accounting file to Dropbox and there it was when I needed to recover.

So I went computer shopping. I really wanted to get a Mac, but in the end, the price of changing over was too high for me. Not only the hardware, which is close to double what you pay on the PC side, but also all the little bits and pieces of software that I would need. I stayed on the Dark Side.

This is not an endorsement for either the manufacturer or the store, but I bought an HP laptop at Costco. When I transport stuff, it's in the back of my Subaru Forester SUV so size doesn't matter (in computers as well as other things...) but I have to admit that the 17" I bought is HUGE. In fact, when I got home I discovered that the big leather computer bag I've been using for years is too small, it won't fit in! I had to buy a computer backpack (at Costco again... OK, I do endorse them!). Anyway, a quad-core i7 processor, 8Gb of RAM expandable to 16Gb, 1.5 Tb of hard drive storage in the form of two discrete 750Gb drives, and a 2Gb NVIDIA video card. All of which I'm sure will be obsolete in 6 months!

Anyway, I'm sure you don't want to read about the endless trials and tribulations of getting software installed and configured, it's a daunting exercise. But it can be a Sisyphusian task (look it up!) if you don't do it right from the beginning, which is why I brought the computer up to Jim's place before even taking it out of the box! Jim is a workflow guru and I think we got things set up in the best possible way. Thanks, Jim!

Photography Courses in the Highlands

They are up and running. I have at least two sessions booked in the next two weeks. All as a result of this ad placed in the Haliburton Highlander:

For those of you interested in taking such a course, I'll be running these here in the Highlands or in the Toronto area for now. Please use this link to contact me. Or you could, of course, pop over to the photography.to website. Or even phone me!

If you're interested in TEACHING such a course, my Train-the-Trainer manual is coming along nicely and if all goes well, it will be ready in a month or so. Please contact me via this link to get on the list of those who will receive a FREE copy of the manual when it's ready.

Rosa is a smart lady

So she deserves a subheading of her own in this blog! Kathy and others will remember the difficulty I had trying to collapse my light tent so that it would fit into its original dinner-plate-sized bag. Kathy did it last summer in about 3 seconds but try as I might, I just haven't been able to do it.

Rosa said, "Look on YouTube. I'm sure you'll find how to do it there". I was skeptical. She is a smart lady! There are a number of tutorials on there that show exactly how and I DID IT! Her insights into a thousand different things amaze me. For a right-brained artist, she sure knows a lot of stuff. She's even challenging me on Quantum mechanics and string theory. She doesn't "get" the Big Bang Theory, my favourite TV show, though! LOL

Business Cards

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I have a source for full-coloured, double sided, high quality business cards at ridiculously low prices (like $20 for 1000 cards!). Since then, we've ordered a number of them for people and they've all come out exceptionally well. If you're a photoshop type, you can do the whole thing from start to finish yourself, if not, I can help you with it. Go back and check out the previous article or contact me if you need some.

A really Excellent presentation.

I watched a presentation by Scott Kelby a couple of weeks ago and it caused me to recompose some of my teaching points in my course, but more importantly, to rethink some of my practices when shooting pictures. It was called "Crush the Composition" and it was recorded on YouTube. It's an hour long, and worth watching -- make the time. Here's the link.

One of the things Scott touched on in his talk was "Working the Scene" and it's a fabulous concept. In three words or less, if you've stopped to take some pictures of a scene, don't just take one or two snaps, work it. Your original picture may not work out, but there are bound to be others that will, if you take the time and make the effort to try different perspectives or views of the same scene. He documented a great example, when he visited the Taj Mahal... but I'll let you hear it directly from him instead of trying to paraphrase it.

A few days later, I stopped at a canola field that caught my eye. I already showed you one image a couple of weeks ago, but here's the one I had in mind when I originally stopped there:

In the spirit of "working the scene", I mounted my 400mm lens and took this shot:

and this one:

And this one, which I did some additional work on:

I used some of the new tools in Photoshop CS5 to move the plants around to form a better arrangement,
then the oil paint filter to add some texture.

Back to my 70-200mm lens, I created this layered looking panorama

and now a deliberately slow shutter speed and panning action on that smooth gimbal mount produced this:

I call this one, "Yellow". I wonder why? I'm contemplating making a very large print of this for mounting and display. The one before as well.

Are you bored yet? I'm not. Half-a-dozen totally different images, all from the same stop at a yellow field of canola plants (actually I stopped twice, about a week apart).

My challenge to you

Next time something catches your eye and you stop to take a picture, pause and look around and see what other images you can create from the same spot. Post your pictures somewhere and send me a link to where they are, I'd love to see you stretching yourself like I think I did!

I had originally intended to come up with a theme for you, but I don't want to impose any limitations except that you should try to capture some totally different images, all from the same location.

I'll try to find some time this week to shoot some pictures. I'm working on the course, and I have to prepare for my CRA audit (shudder) next week, but I'll be baaack!

— 30 —

Stuck in Toronto

Could be worse... I could be stuck in {don't want to name any specific city like Regina or Buffalo or New York, at the risk of offending anyone} some other place. The bad part is, I can't get any work done, and I'm bored. I guess this is going to drag out another week, although I'm going to sneak a quick trip back home on Tuesday to take care of some stuff.

Workshops I have and will miss...
I spoke with Linda and emailed with Ron and learned that the moose workshop last week was fabulous. Believe it or not, I'm not resentful that I missed it, I'm sure I'll have another opportunity down the road. Hopefully one or both of them will share some pictures with me, so that I can share them with you. I heard both days were sunny and bright, but day 2 was blessed with a misty dawn, so I'm expecting some great pictures out of them. Mark and Dennis, you too!

I've cancelled the Workshop for this coming weekend and indicated on the website that the new scheduled dates are July 7 and August 11 weekends. I hope that works out. Again, if you know someone who wants to attend, get them to pop over to www.photography.to and check it out.

Do you ever watch the TED talks?
I do, from time to time, when a subject catches my eye. I have it on my RSS feed where I read blogs on my iPad. This one was particularly good and I recommend you take the 10-15 minutes to watch it. It's by someone named Juan Enriquez and it's called, "Will our kids be a different species".  If you don't know what the TED talks are all about, go here.

It's a small world, after all...
I'm really sorry, Skid. That's Jim's nickname, if you don't know him. One of the things that really bugs him is songs that stick in your head and no matter what, you can't get them to go away. That title is one of them. Sorry, Skid.

So I've always wanted to shoot macros. I looked at buying a macro lens but procrastinated for a long time. I could explain that to you, but you'll have to wait until I get around to it. I used to have some screw-in macro lens/filters but I don't want those because I think the extra glass is not a good way to go. That leaves extension tubes or, in my case a bellows.

For those who don't know, the further you move the back of your lens away from the sensor (or film plane), the closer it will focus. Extension tubes act as spacers; a bellows is an infinitely variable spacer. But because the lens is not mounted directly on the camera, autofocus and aperture adjustment don't work. You need a lens with an aperture ring, and none of mine had one! So I did a Kijiji deal in a Tim Horton's parking lot (felt like doing a drug deal!) and bought a little Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D-type lens to use with the bellows.

I can't put a picture of my setup up because I've loaned someone my P&S camera so I can't take a photo of it; and I don't want to violate anyone's copyright by stealing a picture online. So here's a link to the eBay vendor I bought the bellows from. It took about 2 weeks to get here from Singapore and cost me all of $35. This is NOT an endorsement, you understand: just a picture of what I bought.

Here's one of the very first shots I took with the bellows setup, last night. It was tough because it was getting dark and hard to see to focus.

There's nothing here to define the scale. This bud is about 2mm across and about 5mm high. The exposure was 3 seconds at f/8, ISO 200 and probably at 80mm focal length but there's no EXIF data when the lens isn't hardwired to the camera.

The challenge shooting macro is depth of field. There essentially isn't any. This next shot, with the bellows extended even more for greater magnification, is a good example of that:

I took this one this morning when there was more light, so it's the same settings except shutter speed was 1/30 second. Although there are a few things in focus, you can see that the depth of field was exceedingly shallow.

One solution is focus stacking. Shoot a series of pictures with different things in focus and have Photoshop merge them together. It's tricky and finicky, and requires a lot of planning and thought. The picture above is one of 9 exposures I did at different focusing points. Here's what Photoshop CS5.5 (I'm on the laptop, CS6 isn't installed here. Yet) can do:

I never knew that flowers and leaves had little transparent hairs.

Now if I can only catch a bumblebee or a butterfly doing his thing. Trouble is, I think the front of the lens was less than 5cm (that's 2", Yanks!) from the plant. I'll be experimenting after I eventually get home.

Another tool to add to my arsenal.

Catch you later!

— 30 —

If you want to make God laugh...

... tell him your plans.

I was shooting the Vaughn Hospital Charity Motorcycle Ride on Sunday morning when my cellphone rang. Without adding too much detail, it was the doctor telling me that there was a family medical emergency and my shooting day ended there.

It also put the Kaibosh on my planned two days shooting moose in Algonquin Park this week. I was lucky enough to find someone to take my place and I heard from the others that were there that it was a fantastic time: I heard there was a small bull, a cow and two calves and assorted other wildlife shot. I hope to get another chance to go at another time.

As I write this, I'm sitting in Toronto, not sure when I'll be able to get home. I'll keep you up to date as time goes on.

That doesn't mean I don't have stuff for you to read and look at. Onwards and upwards...

My Workshops are up and running!
I've announced two dates for DSLR courses up in the Highlands: June 24 and July 7 weekends. Those will be group courses, I can do individual or semi-private courses at the students' convenience, you tell me.

An ad is running in the Haliburton Highlander as we speak, and the link to full details on the workshops is here: http://www.photography.to
Here's what the courses are about:

Shoot Better Pictures

This course is aimed at people who are relatively new to Digital SLR photography. Beginners, more or less. It is a general course, so that you can use more of the features of your camera but mostly to get you to understand that the camera doesn’t shoot the picture, you do.

Now I know that most of my readers are well beyond beginners, so this workshop is not for you. But if you know someone with a new DSLR and they want to get off Program mode, have them contact me. I'll do sessions in Toronto or elsewhere as well, but we'll have to work out a schedule.

If you want to TEACH a course like this, let me know. I have the curriculum almost finished and the "Train the Trainer" manual almost done. The intent is that I'll share the course curriculum with you for free and I hope you'll use the student workbook I'm writing, at really nominal cost for each student (I'm thinking $2.99!).

That's another hour out of my life I won't get back...
Warning to PC users (if you have a MAC, you can probably skip this section).
I was bitten by some Malware this morning. I'm not sure where I got it because I don't surf "those" sites. The only thing I can think of is that I went to tinyurl.com to get a short name for a long URL and I remember something popping up which I ignored.

I've seen this one, or ones like it before, so I didn't bite this time. But they're insidious and creative, so I thought a word of warning is appropriate. About 10 minutes later I was writing an email and a big huge warning box popped up onscreen that said my computer was infected, click here to get rid of it. It's easy to think that's your virus protection software kicking in BUT IT'S NOT. It's a trojan (virus). In my case, I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del to get rid of it.

I finished the email, then shut everything down and ran Malwarebytes. Sure enough, it found two infected files.

So two messages here: (1) don't click on these infection warnings and (2) install and run Malwarebytes anti-malware software (there's a free version here). It catches stuff your regular virus software doesn't. Run it whenever you have an incident, or if your computer is misbehaving, or from time to time just for the Hell of it. You'll be surprised what it finds.

For what it's worth, I use Microsoft Security Essentials as my main virus protection. It's also free, doesn't clutter up the computer with extra stuff like other programs (I don't want to mention Norton or AVG, so I won't) and it comes from folks who have a vested interest in protecting Windows products. I've linked to it above.

Photos from the Charity Ride
As I said, I was interrupted while shooting the Charity Motorcycle Ride. I did get a few pictures, though.

My favourite lens is the 70-200. You can't take a bad picture, especially at f/2.8

The Honourable Julian Fantino, MP for Vaughn. Chief Fantino, as many people still call him, was the head of the OPP before running for Parliament. He made a presentation to StylesQ, the organizer of the ride.

...and here's StylesQ on his iron steed, just getting ready to depart on the ride. Although he was leading the ride, and he designed it, he got lost. I know Styles doesn't mind me saying that. He once got lost trying to find his own house. He has said to me, "what is this thing 'North' that you keep mentioning?".

I've put a few of my ride pictures up on my Smugmug site here, and Kathy Constantinou who was also there, and did manage to shoot the whole ride, put her ouststanding images up here. If anyone wants prints or screensaver/wallpaper images they can contact me or Kathy by email.

Canola field in the sun
I drove home on Wednesday to pick up some clothes (and my laptop!), then came right back to Toronto the next morning.

As you drive along at this time of year, you might spot a canola field. The bright yellow caught my eye and I had to stop to photograph it. I'm probably going to brighten this image up a bit in a few days but I'm not at the desktop computer right now (on the laptop) so I can't. What caught my eye when I stopped here was the incredibly bright yellow and it needs to be brighter than what I see onscreen right now.

What did I tell you about the 70-200 lens, especially at f/2.8? Right. This field was just west of Argyle, Ontario. There will be some more shots of it on my Smugmug gallery in a little while (when I get back to the computer!).

Poetry in motion
As I was driving to Toronto on Saturday (out of chronological order but so what?), I saw a bicycle race in the Mount Albert area. I drove ahead of the pack, then pulled over to park (actually they fooled me and turned onto a different road. I had to backtrack and do it again! They drove past the Nudist colony but I didn't stop in for pictures!). Anyway, I took a few shots:

This one was done at a deliberately slow shutter speed, panning with the bike. I can't get at the EXIF information right now, but I think it was 1/30 sec or slower).

Black Background Flowers (again)
Again, going backwards in time, here are a couple of pictures I did on black backgrounds up North. Two different varieties of Irises. Suitable for large format reproduction, if anyone is interested... email me.

Two guesses which lens I used to capture these images! These were actually shot inside my light tent, using the great big light in the sky as illumination. Actually, I may have used a bit of flash fill on the second shot, also bouncing it off the light tent.

Anyway, more to come. I hope to get back on track in a few days. TTFN.

— 30 —

A day in Algonquin Park

The phone rang around 7am Saturday morning. I was up, just barely. I was where you go when you get out of bed in the morning — more detail would be TMI... "Hi, it's Ron. I'm in Algonquin Park. What time can you meet me here?" I needed a little time to get going, so it ended up a little before 10am at Smoke Lake. It was a bit of a blustery, damp, overcast day: perfect lighting for daytime shooting.

An HDR, converted using Photomatix, one of the black-and-white presets. Then I used Nik Color Efex Pro to tone it and the "Polaroid" preset to frame it.

We drove up Arowhon Road where we came to a camp at the end of the road with a bunch of rotted, peeling canoes and a fellow (Joe?) who was refurbishing them. Neat shop: I'd like to go back and photograph inside. We had been there for some time and didn't want to wear out our welcome. I got this 'arty' shot outside.

These are canvas-coated cedar strip canoes.

On the way back, we stopped a couple of times, not staying very long in one place because of the voracious mosquitoes!

Here's Ron shooting this landscape at a beaver-dam-created slough. This is an HDR and I blended in a Topaz-toned "Ron", using just a single image for that part for the detail and sharpness. Notice how he's all covered up against those pesky bugs.

There was a forest scene we had passed on the way up. Should have stopped: the lighting was outstanding. We stopped on the way back and it was pretty good but not as nice as when we first saw it.

It's an HDR, of course. Then I used the new "Oil Painting" filter in Photoshop CS6. Wow. This image is a keeper! It's going to make a dandy large format canvas-wrapped print.

Next stop was Rock Lake. Nothing much to see there, except this family of Canadian Geese. Ron and I kept driving them back and forth to get good views.

Family Portrait.

Another family shot, soft toned with Nik Color Efex Pro

Back lit by light reflecting off the lake. Blended layers to enhance the three goslings in the foreground and blur the background. All of these shots were done with the 400mm lens.

That was it for the day. We headed home, anticipating our next visit in 2 weeks with Mike Bertelsen. Ron's already got his moose shots, I'm looking forward to mine!

The following day, I saw the following image at my house. Technically it's not a "black background" shot but close enough!

After the Rain. Almost as shot, just a little toning to increase contrast and detail.

I used the new tripod this weekend. It does everything my heavy Gitzo does but it's a lot easier to lug around. I have some new equipment coming soon which I'll hold off telling you about until after it arrives. That doesn't include the Nikon D800e that I ordered today, which I might see by my birthday in September. It's going to take me that long to build up the money to pay for it!

— 30 —

Things with 3 Legs

Yeah. They're called "Tripods". I just bought a new one for 3 reasons.

• The Gitzo I have is really big and hard to carry around on my bike
• It's heavy. I think the legs themselves (not counting the ball head) weigh 5 or 6 lbs.
• I saw this one and really thought it was innovative.

So I wanted a tripod that was really light. This one weighs about 2 lbs without the head. It's made of carbon fiber which is very rigid and strong. The head is innovative too, and it weighs less than 2 lbs and can support almost 20 lbs. It needs to be small so I can pack it easily. This one folds down in a really innovative (using that word a lot!) way -- the legs fold up over the head so the overall length is only about 17".

It also needs to be tall enough so I don't have to bend my aching back over to look through the viewfinder. Do you think this one is tall enough?

As I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago, this tripod is made in England by a company called, "3 Legged Thing". And the name of this tripod is "Brian". Cute, eh? Here's a link to the manufacturer's site and here's where you can buy it (at B&H). They say the one with the blue ball head is backordered but the black one is in stock.

I'm really happy with it, although I've had it less than a week. The only issue I'm having is that I tend to grab the friction locks (there are so many of them!) and loosen them inadvertently, so I need to tighten them more. I like the ball head, it's smooth and easy to use. On a scale of 1-10, it's a 9. So far.

When it gets dark...

Don't put away your camera. Instead, take out your tripod and get creative. I like star shots, so here are a few:

I used a little flashlight to paint the tree with light. This is a 30 second exposure at f/4, ISO 800 and 15mm in case you were interested. To keep the stars crisp at that long an exposure you need to use a wide angle.

The moon is really bright. In this picture I tried not to let it affect my exposure so I stuck with the same settings as the last image. I was struck by the pattern of the clouds and never noticed the meteor trail at around 10 o'clock (I suppose it could be an airplane but meteor sounds better!).

Almost the same exposure: a little darker originally because it was 15 seconds at f/4, ISO 400. But I did some processing to bring out the Inn and the sky at the same time.

A couple more hummingbirds. This little fellow is in flight — actually hover mode at my feeder.

Male Ruby-throated hummingbird in flight



Male ruby-throated hummingbird at rest. This looks similar to a shot I did a week or so ago, but I like the sharpness and the composition better. Remember this guy is only about 2" (5cm) long.

And finally,

Attack Squirrel! This guy looks like he's coming after me. Quite the opposite, he's frightened. He should be: this is just after he emptied my squirrel-proof bird feeder.

More to come!

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