Trip to Provo

Got lucky enough to spend some time with my wife yesterday, one of our favorite places to eat is in a town called Provo close to BYU. When we pulled up my wife needed a minute to finish a chapter so I opened the window and pulled out my everpresent camera. I love old Provo Center street, there are some quite old buildings with some fun details. These first two shots were taken with the intent to make them B&W in Post-Processing. Done with slightly different methods, but I like them both.

This is a decoration in the dining area that I liked. The area where we sat has east and south facing windows and I love the light in there.

Later we went to University Mall and I was taken by the design of this square rotunda and light fixture.

As always, comments and criticism welcome.

Somehow I am still stuck on Temple Pictures

For those of you who are not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon Church) it is tough to explain really about our temples and why they are so important to us. Just suffice it to say that these buildings are sacred and considered to be places where the presence of Jesus Christ is more imminent than anywhere else in the world. As such they hold a special place in my heart, and I love to take pictures of them, especially if they are any good. The sky is not what I had hoped for, but the sunset had faded rather quickly before I could get up there.

I have posted both the original straight out of the camera and the processed RAW images, though I haven't done much beyond some simple curves and levels adjustments. Taken with my Sigma 17-70 from on top of the roof of my truck. Dumb I know but it was the angle I wanted. sigh....

JPEG
Procesed from RAW

The Three Amigos

Earlier this week a fellow forum member posted a picture of 3 of the limited primes in the Pentax lens lineup. (The DA 21, DA 40 and DA 70 "Pancake" lenses.)

Inspired by his shot, I tried to do something sorta similar but completely different, I am not sure how well it turned out, but it was fun to play with some different lighting.

After lining up the lenses I set one flash on an optical slave trigger to the left of the camera nearly on the same level. I triggered this with a hand held flash on the right of the camera. The camera was triggered independently with a wired remote release on Bulb setting. This shot required flashing them 3 times due to being stopped down for depth of field reasons. I kinda like it, but I am not sure if the front lens being slightly out of focus is too distracting. sigh.... Taken with my Sigma 17-70.

Saturday Morning Sunrise in Salt Lake City.

Last Saturday I was on my way to one of the local hospitals that I moonlight at. Running ahead of schedule I decided to take my camera stuff and try for a shot I have been wanting to try for, for awhile.

I have often gotten off of I-15 at the 600N off ramp, looked up and seen the Utah State Capitol up on the hill. I have wanted to capture this but lacking a really long telephoto lens this has been problematic.

An acquaintance/benefactor/friend that I have made on-line sent me an older Screwmount (m42) lens. Vivitar 200mm f3.5. (Thanks again Ron!) I have wanted to get outside with this lens but have not been able to do so due to the weather and my personal level of wussiness.

This first shot is kind of a warm up shot with my Pentax k-135mm f2.5. Processed from JPEG, Forgot to select RAW+JPEG, Cropped for compositions sake, with mild local levels adjustments via Magic Lasso tool. (Thanks Phil)

This is taken with the Vivitar M42 200mm f3.5, processed from the JPEG similarly to above though with saturation adjustments for red, yellow and magenta. Also rotated to level, and slightly cropped.

This next was taken with my New/Used Sigma 17-70 at 17mm. As the sunrise developed I had to go wider to capture the glory of the morning. This was processed from the RAW file and had very mild color adjustments in the sky, the foreground was modified to total blackness to simplify the composition.

After getting a few shots in (ok 20 or so) I decided I could/should try for this shot I have been wanting to take as well. The sunrise had faded a bit by then but still had some really good color. this shot was processed moderately heavily from the RAW file. Rotated, cropped, multiple local adjustments...

My New Sigma 17-70

As mentioned previously, I bought a new lens, my first autofocus lens, and guess what? I LOVE IT!! Here a few samples of what it can do. I have hardly screatched the surface of how versatile a lens it is. It can literally focus so close that the subject is almost touching the front of the lens. It is prety sharp and I think I will really really like it. Really.

Here is a near 100% crop of the main part of the shot. This is using the natural light from the comparison shoot between the 3 lenses I posted a few days ago.

The original.

This is also a cropped shot but not quite as much as the first. Looking at the original, leaves you amazed at how sharp it is.

This shot was taken hand held at work, right after a patient gave me these flowers to take home to my wife.

These next three shots were taken at a park near my work. This was my first chance to play with my lens outdoors. This goose was moving quite quickly, and was a little too fast for the autofocus.

I love how wide this lens goes, it is the equivalent to 26mm on a film camera, and it is quite sharp corner to corner, with very little chromatic aberration. I just LIKE it.

A close up of a budding twig, this demonstrates the uselessness of autofocus with macro, it is best to just turn it off and do it yourself. I was trying for the bed, and got the little budlet right in front of it.

Yashica Vs. Pentax Vs. Sigma

One of my Photography buddies recently acquired a screwmount Yashica 28mm f2.8 lens. While I was arrranging to purchase a zoom from him (more about this later) he asked me if I could/would play with it and test it out. Always eager to play with another lens I said sure. This is my first try at a controlled test. I did OK with setting up lighting, but I think I had one flaw with my methodology, in that I used the focus confirmation indicator in my camera to confirm that the two manual focus lenses were focused. I think somehow that the Yashica focused a little toward the front of the subject, while the Pentax was spot on. The Sigma 17-70 I had the camera focus the first shot then switched to Manual focus mode, assuming from chimping the LCD that it was correctly focused, I think it also was slightly front focused as well.

I will try to post a few 100% crops later to show the differences, but you should be able to see which was the sharpest from these shots.

I shot all lenses at wide open (f3.5 for the Pentax k-28mm f3.5 and the Sigma 17-70, and f2.8 for the Yashica 28mm f2.8.) with the Sigma zoomed to 28mm. Then at f4, 5.6, 8, 11, and 16. Except for minor differences in color, all were quite sharp at f11 and f16. At f8 they were all reasonably good with the Pentax slightly ahead in sharpness. The Pentax was by far the best performer at f3.5 (wide open). The Sigma tended to overexpose which I think compromised it's IQ a little bit as well.


Yashica f2.8 Yashica f4.0

Yashica f5.6

Yashica f8

Yashica f11

Yashica f16

Pentax f3.5 Pentax f4.0

Pentax f5.6

Pentax f8.0

Pentax f11

Pentax f16

Sigma f3.5 Sigma f4.0

Sigma f5.6

Sigma f8

Sigma f11

Sigma f16

Two Temples in one Night

It is a wonderful part of living in Utah that you may drive past several temples in one day. Temple building is a big part of the worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (a.k.a. the Mormon Church, though this is not the official name)

Utah is the only place on the face of the planet where you can do that. Recently we went for a drive and decided to go past two of them, so I could get an idea of angles and sites to shoot from. I am greatly desirious of taking opportunities in the future, when I think the light/sunset/sunrise etc... will be favorable, to shoot as good of shots as are taken by professionals and sold here in Salt Lake.

These three I liked, the first is the Draper Temple, the second and third are the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. I have been using more and more, the sophisticated tools that I have at my disposal in Photoshop to adjust the image to look closer to reality and more pleasing as best I can.

I hope you like them.

Last Light

This is my first long distance/infinity focus shot with my Vivitar 200mm. I missed the best of the light, didn't know it was there that day. I need to train my kids to be better spotters.

I love seeing the last light of the day on this mountain which can be seen from my front porch. It is just an amazing sight when it is lit up just right.

I am still working on geting my screwmount adapter to fit just right, the flange is not quite thick enough and without some kind of spacer I can't get the bayonet to turn into the mount. But if the spacer is too thick then I lose infinity focus. Guess I should have just spent the money for the real thing from Pentax. I am planning to try and get a better lit shot at some point.

Moving Clouds at Night.

As you saw in an earlier post I had a picture that I took at night that was a fairly scenic shot of the mountains from above my boyhood home. I decided to try to replicate that in a more planned way. I really enjoyed how the clouds were blurred by movement during the exposure.

I decided to do a little less playing with the colors than on my previous image. I have to admit I am temped to download a program to stitch these two images together and see what that looks like.

Taken from Alta High School, just west of the Football Stadium.

Techincal info: Pentax K200D, Pentax K-28mm f3.5 @ f8, approximately 2min exposure, hand timed with wired remote release. Processed from RAW to TIFF in Pentax PhotoLab, levels adjustment and cropping in PhotoShop 6.0.

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