Film! Film? Really.... FILM!!! I shot film!

Having had the opportunity to use my fathers old Voigtlander Vito II camera, a folding 35mm film camera made in 1954...ish... I am excited to announce that it works, and actually works quite well!

I put in a roll of 24 exposure, Tri-X 400 and off I went. Now just so you don't think this was an easy painfree experience, here is a description of what is involved with taking a shot. After you have figured what you want to shoot.

1) Pull out the light meter, spend a minute or two using it to estimate the best exposure.

2) Put away meter, pull out camera, unsnap case, release folding mechanism and fold lens out locking into place.

3) Set exposure on camera, cock shutter, guess your focusing distance. No there is no way to confirm your focus. This is not even a rangefinder, this is point and guess.

4) Frame the shot, make whatever adjustments need to be made, take a deep breath, let it half out, hold and gently press the release button, trying not to shake. There is no Shake Reduction, or Vibration Reduction, or Image Stabilization.

5) Wait till you finish the roll, get it developed and find out if you messed up or not.

In this age of instant review.... this is hard to deal with, kind a fun though.

Now... on to the pictures. (Just as a side note, Blogspot is doing something weird with my thumbnails, and putting some kind of sharpening on them that is giving me halos at the dark/light transitions. This is not intentional, I try to avoid them at all costs.)

These are the "Keepers" from the roll, I was not super choosy, lowering my standards in difficult shooting situations keeps me sane!

Olympic Bridge at the University of Utah, this was part of the athletes village during the 2002 Olympics.

I have NO CLUE, where this shot was taken, likely someplace downtown, but I do not remember taking it at all. Absolutely LOVE the shadows though.

I have shot this staircase at the human genetics building at the U of U since I took this image and posted it here, but this was the first shot I tried.

Downtown Salt Lake, cast iron chair in a new plaza.

New Fountain on the plaza, I really liked the arch of the water, with the Salt Lake Temple in the background. I may try this shot during the Christmas Season when the trees are lit up.

This was a very unique fountain that caught my eye, the curves please me.

Back to the other fountain again, this could end up being a staple for me, I think there are lots of ways to photograph this.

The rest of these shots are from the Tour of Utah. I went up to the Presidents Circle after getting off of work and shot some of the cyclists as they went past. I really didn't expect any of these to turn out, but I got more keepers than I had any right to.

I'm NOT ready, but Fall is here anyway!

This last week has seen an explosion of color here in the Salt Lake Valley. I HAD to get up and see what was out there yesterday morning. Fortunately I live close to several canyons and I was able to get into the color altitude quite easily. I was there before dawn (all part of my nefarious plan) to try to set up before the sun was up. I found a spot I liked, hopefully you will like it too.

Now, a caveat here, I am not a huge fan of overdone HDR, this borders on overdone, but it was the only way to get any foreground details at all. I am not really all that convinced that it is a shot to be proud of, but I am liking it a bit.

8 shots in 1 stop increments, tripod of course, @17mm.

Another HDR, but less of a push to get the details. This I like!

Everything is rusting except the dead tree and the evergreens. Due to the warmness of the early morning light, I had to cool this down a bit so that the greens looked like they should.

This little stand of Quakies was my favorite. Just turning and standing up for themselves.

My friendly dead tree, not sure why but I liked him enough to shoot again.

Further down the canyon, I found time to tramp around a secret part of the little stream that runs through it. Glad I have Gore-Tex waterproof boots, and that I take the time to look in the hidden places.

This little spot captivated me for quite awhile, I LOVED that God put some delicate little water droplets on a leaf in the midst of rushing water just for me. He knows I really like that kind of stuff.

Multiple shots follow.

Cropped and converted to B&W.

The original.

Trying to get closer, I slipped and splashed water over the leaf... sad.... sad... but there was still beauty to behold.

Happy Fall!

Finally a chance to shoot Macro in a Controlled Enviroment.

I have been waiting since I got my new Macro lens for the chance to really put it through it's paces in a controlled enviroment. Getting to know a new lens takes time and pushing the limits to find where the lens will not do what you want it to do, and to find where it shines.

This lens is a challenging beastie, macro lenses at close focus will challenge your ability to hold your camera steady, when your depth of field is measured in tenths of inches there is little room for error. That is one thing that has challenged me so far when shooting handheld. The other difficulty is related to that, to get a larger depth of field, you need to stop down, well even in broad daylight stopping down to f16 with a 100mm lens requires higher ISO's or a tripod.

Anyway, I took the opportunity on Sunday to get out my softbox and tripod and see what this lens can really do.

First: My favorite flower along with Daisies, The Sunflower. While not at 1:1 magnification this type of shot is something that a Macro should excel at. I was not disappointed.

Moving in closer, makes things more tricky. Both exposure (increased to get detail in the middle of the flower blowing the petals) and point of focus have to be carefully set, often by positioning the camera and moving the subject.

Turning the flower and a larger aperture allow for isolation of certain parts of the flower. While not the best shot, it allowed me to see the effect of what I was doing.

Abandoning the flower, I photographed a treasured piece of Caithness Glass, I love this stuff, and it was fun to make a beautiful photo with it.

Getting closer is always a temptation.

Then getting a little more out there I put some water droplets on a CD and played with my LED Maglight. Liked the effect, but not as much as I had thought.

I learned a lot about my lens which will help me when I get to a more critical point when I need to get the shot and I need to absolutely trust the lens will do what I expect. So far I am really confident that this lens will deliver.

Yet Another Car Show.....

 My love affair with cars is well documented, I like classic old cars with details that are there just for decoration. Classic cars. Our local Rotary Club, sponsored a charity car show at a local collectors ranch last weekend. This was a treat, I never that this local business owner also collected cars. For my donation I got to see the cars that were entered and two HUGE barns of cars that the host owned as well. Really fun time. A lot of cars were inside and thus harder to photograph, but really fun to look at. I went a little different direction than is my usual wont, I took my full bag but only ended up using the Sigma 17-70 (a lot) Pentax DFA 100mm (quite a bit) and my Sigma 10-20 just once, but not a keeper shot. I really think that a kit of the DA 15 and DA 21, coupled with the DFA 100 would be a perfect group for this type of shooting.

1941 Cadillac... unusually enough in Brown. I liked it, really liked it.

 Really liked the hood ornament. Just something cool about a naked angel in chrome......

Nicely done up '57 Chevy. Candy Apple Red works for that car.... really works.

I voted for this car as best of show. Just a beautiful car, second owner, insanely enough NOT RESTORED!!!! It is simply well maintained. Just awesome!

 This Ford was next door, not as sure about the hood ornament that is also functional. I think I prefer them non-functional and purely decorative. This is the kind of shot that the Pentax DFA 100mm was made for. Stopped down to f4.5 it has essentially no CA or PF, and really nice rendering of the out of focus areas.

 Ahhh...... Bliss in Olive Green. Just yummy! Chrysler Town and Country.

Another naked lady on a Cadillac, my Sigma 17-70 did pretty good with this especially considering the poor light over in the corner.

Pretty cool old Chrysler Airflow, never laid eyes on one before. Nice car, really nice.

Miscellaney and general stuff......

Time to post some stuff to get caught up and clear my "done" box. I have been having fun just shooting what I see in daily life, with whatever lens is available. So this is just a catch-all post really.

First come Sugar cookies. Shot with my DFA 100mm Macro with my K200d mounted on my tripod using ambient light. Some exposures were several seconds in length, but with a tripod... who cares?

The biggest struggle I have with my macro lens is the depth of field as I get closer. I worked with much smaller apertures than I am used to to get a deeper DOF. Notice the difference between the two shots? The first is at f5.6 the second at f11.

Outdoors I can handhold the 100mm quite easily even when stopped down. This however was at f4.5, I managed to get the parts of the plant in focus that I wanted to with that aperture though. I have a self title in my mind of "Nature Finds a Way", amazing how on a busy light rail platform something can grow and thrive... even a weed!

At the library downtown I went wider to 24mm, which still wasn't wide enough, so I turned it sideways and shot 8 frames that I stitched together. I can do better but I like the building and the shot nonetheless!

Inside, I could not help but take this shot. I am trying to get more bold at shooting in public, I like to melt into the background and not be noticed. That is hard when shooting people. Figured this guy was asleep so I could do it unnoticed.

Looking up in the atrium was the staircase I have been wanting to shoot for a long time. Slowly finding the angles. I think this has potential, just need to find the best time to go after it.

The people lounging under this tree interested me, especially seeing as this is in front of the City-County building downtown. Surprised they let them stay there for any length of time. Thought the grocery cart was a nice touch.

In spite of how this looks, these guys were just goofing around, The DFA 100 worked well for this, I could have been even further away and still got the shot and maybe not have been noticed. This may work well as a street shooter with the hood reversed so it is compact...er.

Hope you enjoyed a journey through to days of my week. Man, don't think I could do a 365 project, would get way way behind trying to get something semi decent every day.....

State Fair WINNER.... well in my category, but I got a Blue Ribbon!

Alrighty, so... I had a wonderful surprise last night, I went to the Utah State Fair last night to see how my photo did in the photo contest. Lo and behold, it won first place in the Advanced Amateur class, Architectural category. I was really chuffed and.... well.... made a lot of noise, did a few high fives with my buddy Dave who was there for moral support, just in case etc... 

Since then I have spread the good word in several places and received lots of compliments and a few questions as to how I did it. Well here goes.

I chose a cloudy morning in February, with clouds that were moving quickly. (It helps to have that as I learned a year ago when I did my first version of this shot.) I set up my camera with my Sigma 10-20 ultra-wideangle lens on an L-Bracket in portrait orientation. I set the tripod IN the pond and almost in the waterfalls, basically reaching as far as I dared without falling into the water. Had to be careful the side was covered in ice. I centered and lined up the camera as best I possibly could, locking the ballhead in place. I then determined how far I wanted to rotate the head to compose the final shot. I determined that 5 shots would give me the best coverage. So I then figured the amount of rotation for each shot from center and commenced to shoot 3 bracketed exposures at each position. Once that was complete I carefully got both me and the camera/tripod back onto solid ground and left.

Once I was back at the computer I blended each bracketed trio in Photomatix obtaining the following shots.

At that point it was time to stitch those 5 shots into a panorama, I used plain old Photoshop Elements 7 for that. Once that was done I began to work on exposure, which included a layer that was just sky which allowed me to adjust the foreground and background separately. To make that look good I had to cut the edge around the buildings and horizon by hand. This took 3-4 tries and several hours to make look right. I was then able to produce this: Which I almost wish I had entered in the Panorama category as well.... sigh.....

From the above shot, after merging the layers and some sharpening and brightness/contrast adjustments, I used my B&W conversion program, to give my final product that you see here. Simple right? Not even! This whole process took me hours over several weeks. With a quick set of revisions right before I sent it to get printed. Hope you enjoyed the small glimpse into what I do with photos.

Revisiting old haunts....

Ever since I delivered office supplies to this building as an undergrad peon working in the bookstore, I have loved this staircase, the perspective just works for me. Finally decided to shoot it. Not sure which I like better but the portrait orientation one is the stronger image I think. The leading in of the stairwell from the corner on the bottom left leads the eye into the frame better than the landscape shot.