Early Testing of a Vivitar 200mm f3.5 Screwmount (M42) lens.

I took all of these within moments of each other all on tripod ISO 100, I found that as I stopped down I had to compensate more, I will have to play with that more in the future.

I really wasn't impressed with f3.5 at the closest focus, nothing was spectacularly sharp, I thought it sharpened up nicely by f5.6 and f11 seemed really nice, though f22 was visibly softening again.

I hope to take some more interesting shots when it warms up and see what the bokeh is like.

For A Forum Member

A week or so ago a member of DPReview posted a thread about trying to get some roofs lined up in a shot, this was my contribution, and was shot with the intention of posting it. These were taken on Valentines Eve as well. Both with 135mm. Here is the thread.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=30943027

On a Clear Night the Mountains Are Beautiful

Went to the East side of the Valley Sunday night for a Valentines delivery. Decided to try for a shot I have been wanting to get for a long time. Usually when the Moon is full, this is an OK next best until the next full moon and clear day. The key is the clarity of the air. In the valley we get some inversions that make this kind of shot hard to do.

This first shot is the JPEG straight out of the camera, 28mm f3.5 and 30sec.


This is from the RAW with a Tungsten WB setting in the RAW converter and a little selective desaturation of red and magenta. I like it!

Valentines Evening at the Lake

Valentines Day was a good one for me in many ways. Least of these ways but most important for this blog was the Photos I took on the way home! This is the same Temple as in a very recent post just further down the street. I have done fairly light processing on most of these except the last, which I will comment on later.

There is a bridge over part of Oquirrh Lake west of the Temple, this is taken right on the east end of that bridge, I was happy to get the angle and light I did. Taken with my 135mm


This was turning around and looking west very shortly after, we get some awesome clouds here in the winter sometimes. I love the drama. 135mm.

Taken just North of the bridge, if you look closely you can see part of the stone spiral/ramp in the bottom left of the picture. 50mm,

This is just South of the bridge, the sky was just awesome and I loved the reflection in the water and the texture in the ice on the edge of the shore. There are geese that winter on the lake and get in and out right where I was shooting from. I tried for a slightly different color balance with each shot in Photoshop, basically what looked good to my eye. Please comment and let me know which you like better. 28mm @ f8

This one was my absolute favorite, and I took the time to convert the RAW file to TIFF, and then Photoshop it. I do believe I get less noise and better detail in the sky and darker areas with that workflow. 28mm @f8.

Evening Sunset At Oquirrh Lake

I am excited that I am starting to get sunsets while I am on my way home from work. I have been doing the go in and home in the dark routine for too long. I have been wanting to get more shots of and around this lake close to my home. This sunset wasn't quite as nice as I hoped for, but I was glad to see it for once. This was taken hand held, with my Pentax 28mm, @f5.6.

Warm-Up Shots

This was taken in the morning of Feb 13th, 28mm. this may also become a favorite of mine as well, it matches with the angle of sunrises for a large part of the year, and I can frame out a lot of distracting stuff.

This is a new Temple being built in my area, My long term plan is to take a picture worth printing that is as good as the professional ones that will be taken. Towards that aim I am taking opportunities to take pictures at different times of the day, seasons etc... to learn the best angles and lighting/lens combo. There will be more lights added/turned on as time goes by, this was the first or second night that they left any exterior lights on and I was excited to see how it looked. I didn't have my tripod so I had to up the ISO and hand hold, so the grain/noise is nothing to write home about but I think I like this angle, will need to adjust a little though I did have to clone part of a tree out.

A Rose is a Rose

I have been wanting to try some Macro (Or close up) photography, lacking a macro lens I just decided to get as close as I could and crop a little bit. I liked this one the best of the 25 or so shots I took, for some reason the red ones just didn't look all that good. sigh.....

Anyway this was taken with my k 135mm f2.5 at f4 and 2sec shutter (to allow me time to fire my flash by hand) with hand held/triggered flash. I have cropped a bit from the original. What do you think?

Thought it would be fun to do a Black and White conversion as well.

Provo Temple

I have begun playing with using more advanced processes with my camera. For one I have begun using RAW format and being more picky as to which I keep and deleting the rest. (RAW files are uncompressed and are larger x3-4)

The top photo is the JPEG produced by my Camera. The bottom is the file produced by taking the RAW data, converting to TIFF format, manipulating in Photoshop and then Saving as a JPEG to upload to the internet. To be fair I should have adjusted the JPEG as well, but I wanted to post them and see on my monitor at work which looks better.



Tell me if you think this is overly bright and/or just not as good.

Christmas Lights 2009

I find that I need to do a obligatory picture of the Christmas lights on the front of my house. I chose this night because of the drifted and unplowed snow from a Christmas Day snowstorm. Anybody want to shovel me out? This wa taken with my 28mm and PP included some major curves adjustment and color mixer work to fix the colors from the streetlights and my porch. Maybe next time I will turn off the porch light and let the Christmas Lights do it all. hmmmm...... good idea.

Dawn January 01, 2009

Had to work New Years Day, not all bad though, I decided to bring my camera along, and while not as spectacular as I wanted I got some interesting color.

The first shot is a Processed JPEG from the camera, the second was shot as RAW (Pentax PEF Flavor) and converted to 16bit TIFF than processed and saved as JPEG. Not trying to match either, just processing as best I can and to my own (Weird) taste. Probably went too far with the color on the first one, but still having fun.

Bread... Tasty Bread.....

We had a Christmas Party for our whole family on Christmas Eve, and my sister (The Fantastic Baker) made some bread. She left it on a wooden bread board to cool, and I was suddenly struck by the light on it over in a darker corner of the kitchen. So being the camera geek I am I whipped out my tripod mounted camera and started shooting. The best two shots are here, in reverse order. These were taken with my 50mm f1.4 at either f8 or f11, with natural light.

Nativity and Temple Shots

I have loved sitting by this fountain on warmer days, looking at the temple and drinking in the peace of temple square. I especially love temple square during the Christmas Season. It brings back memories of High School Choir times, singing in the visitors centers and assembly hall. Ah... I love this place.

I was very excited to see this nativity in the middle of the reflecting pool just east of the Temple. It just seemed like such a cool idea. It was hard to photograph due to it's lighter color and the amount of light it received. I think I handled it fairly well.

Backlit Windows on the Assembly Hall

Shooting through the trees created an interesting pattern of lights and darks. I really enjoyed taking these images.

Lights on Temple Square

I have a "Thing" for lights glowing under snow, and the interplay of light and shadow on the snow. It is something that I can stare at endlessly, take pictures of endlessly too.

OK, You wanted the finished tree......

Here ya go!!!

Snowy Sunrise

Lauriann woke me on the morning of Dec 15th to come witness a magnificent sunrise, I missed the best part of it, but I was able to get this lovely image.

Resized to crop off a bunch of crud on my sensor, need to buy some swabs I think.

Building a Christmas Tree

OK so they are in reverse order, sue blogger, they are the ones that put them in reverse order from the way I picked them!

I feel that photography can and should tell a story, well this is a story of getting ready for Christmas.

Again in reverse order. sigh...

The Ghost of Christmas Present

I was playing/practicing low light photography with a master and dumb slave flashes, I did OK, though I need to use a better bounce for my master, can you guess what I did wrong? Yep, I got up and walked away before the exposure was done. Turned out kinda cool though.