Contrast vs Sigma : dltphoto

I enjoy contrasty days and the lower sun of autumn but it does come with its photographic challenges.

Three shots of the exact same scene from the Sigma DP1s just metered differently to gain the true detail of the white wall and the rich blue of the sky. One cannot have the perfect exposure in this scenerio without the use of split neutral density filters or manipulative photoshopping... unless you have an amazing sensor!

Here is a poorly edited combination of the first image and last image to make the exposure more even.

Friend or Foveon? :dltphoto

I've slammed this dump camera for sometime yet I still continue to use it.The Sigma DP1s has to be the slowest of the slow in the camera world. Despite this, the layout of the camera is brilliant and the limitation of the fixed wide angle lens is very appealing to a street photographer like myself. Sure I'd love to own the more modern equivalents such as the Nikon Coolpix A or the Ricoh GRII but since I cant justify that kind of expense and being that I won the Sigma, I shouldn't really complain and I should just use it and be happy... and I am.

It's simpler in Black & White :dltphoto

Once upon a time everyone's images where pretty much in black and white, even TV's where once only black and white also. Sometimes its nice to step backwards, which is also why I used the Sigma DP1s ( the stigma) since it's like stepping back in time because it's sooooooo slow.

 

 

 

Ruby Tuesday..wait, it's Saturday!: dltphoto

Sometime ago I acquired an extremely vintage camera called a Ruby, made in England sometime between 1925-1934. It is in fantastic shape, even in the original box. Since it is using a discontinued film format I had to use the only format that is commonly available today, medium format (120). This camera shoots an impressive 6x12 format. Wonderfully large negatives. Optically though not equally as impressive. My Yashica-D  is using the same film but in the square format 6x6 with a far superior optical lens.

My chum Colin, from our Photoclub, took the camera home and cleaned the optics of the Ruby since the lens was not really usable due to years of air and moisture, it was almost impossible to see-through it. He also rigged a spool to accept the smaller 120 film. Since it doesn't have the frame counter marking available, I loaded it and guessed the winding necessary to get it to the next frame without any overlapping. I fluked out with that as I got no overlapping at all.

Shutter speeds and Apertures.

It has very limited shutter speed capabilities, 1/100th, 1/50th, 1/25th, 1/10th Second Also with Bulb and T which is a different type of bulb mode, somehow.. Since I only had a 400 ISO 120 in my fridge I had to wing it. (winging it refers to utilizing my educated guesswork for all my years with film). I think I shot it at about 100th sec and F8 or F11... seemed to be close. Films delightful exposure latitude makes winging it a little easier.

APAC Photoclub submissions: January 2013: dltphoto

No ranting this month. Just images.

Architecture, "A Yellow Lining". Score 9

 On my quest to score a 10 with a cell phone, I finally cracked a 9 with this shot. So close!.

Simple glass building shot (Best Buy in Abbotsford, incase you locals want to know), looking up at it with some nice sunlight hitting the corner of the building illuminating it with a rich yellow. I played with a few editing Apps on the Android phone. The original capture is featured below, for anyone who cares. I did have to clean the image up a little in photoshop to remove the blobs or dirt from the glass, but all other image editing done through littlephoto app if I remember correctly.

Original Capture

 2nd Image of the night! This was from my Sigma DP1s. A long exposure, about 6 seconds if I recall, at F11 at probably 50ISO with a neutral density filter or two perched on my little gorilla pod.

Experimental, "Colourstream". score 8

 Pretty much right out of the camera with this image. Just some minor Lightroom work to clean the image up a little, also attempted to remove the weird colour vignetting  the Sigma produces.

P7K (Nikon Coolpix P7000): dltphoto

Big Thanks to Mr Koopmans for babysitting the "snail-like" slow Sigma DP1s whilst I get to play with his "F1" performance Coolpix P7000. I have had this camera before, at least I had the Nikon reps model. It has since had a pretty wicked firmware update which has brought it up to the speed of its younger brother the P7100. Now the youngest sibling is the Nikon P7700 which is yet to arrive on the shelf. It should be 'oh' so much improved, but will it really be improved? The P7100 in all its glory has only some minor upgrades to it over the newly updated P7000, features such as Zoom burst and artistic mode and other than the tilt-able screen it isn't much improved from what I can tell. We will see the vanishing act of the optical viewfinder on the P7700, which I see as no big loss, since I never used it on the P7000 anyways.
 The best option for me on this camera is the RAW file, it's not the normal Nikon NEF file I have been accustomed too. Sadly, I couldn't open them on my Lightroom Version so thank goodness for Nikon's View NX2 free software. It's not pretty, but it gets it done.
Here are a few shots, the original in jpeg form and the edited version through ViewNX2

Edited Raw

Original

Now having seen these two images at a relatively low resolution on this blog, check out what I spotted accidentally when zooming into the file to check for sharpness.....

Spiders are always lurking!

October 2012: Favourite Shot: dltphoto

Here is one from our camping trip to Alouette Lake. A little stream that I assume runs into the lake.
Shot the annoyingly slow and frustratingly poorly screened Sigma DP1s. It darn well creates beautiful files but couldn't be any worse of a camera. Maddening... but I shouldn't complain. Not many have the unique Foveon Sensor to fool with!
Shot on a Gorilla Pod SLR zoom, Sigma DP1s, 50iso, 13seconds, F11 with two cokin ND filters stacked.

Alouette Lake, BC: dltphoto

When planning your annual thanksgiving weekend holiday at Alouette Lake, please make sure your pack some shorts. These words have never been spoken by NO ONE EVER! Beautiful Summer like weather in October. I'll take that!

 All images in this post post with the Mega, but oh so slow Sigma DP1s. Really it has brilliant detail. Its a shame!

Camping 2012, Digital, Part 1: dltphoto

The first of this years camping trip was to one of our favourites, Green Lake. Since I holiday with several different cameras, perhaps about 10, i find I am able to post a few times just using some of the different camera formats. This years I have a full spread of varying digital ( compact and DSLR) and film ( manual and automatic).
  Having so many formats and being able to still use them all makes it all a little bit more fun for me, after all it is my holiday too! In this entry I will be displaying some of the digital compact versions, since I have an awful lot of images I think I will just bore you with a few!

The beach

My Cycling Shadow

Pal M4: dltphoto

Another treasure that I have recently inherited from the UK is the Pal M4, back in its day it was the worlds smallest full-size 35mm camera. As compared to the the Voitlander it is a little smaller, but with this treasure I have another component.

So as stories go, this one started off well. Having been in my Dads camera box for eons, it has since been given to me. Figuring its not just a shelf piece and everything seemed to fire I decided to put a roll through it to see if it really was all still operational. So we went on a little visit to Seattle and around Abbotsford and I shot the roll though. I sent it off during the vacation with great anticipation to check the roll, when pickup time came the roll was not there... Eeeeek! I waited impatiently for another week but alas all seemed doomed. So I decided to give it one more roll and the camera trigger decide to give up. After some encouragement and a "technical tap" in several directions it freed up and decided to work again. Then by some stroke of fortune I found the missing roll...Joy of all joys...So now I have a working camera and the first roll through it in maybe 20 years.... or maybe more!!

enough now, here are the results.

Yellow, Yellow and yellow

Wedding: June 2012: dltphoto

The nice thing with not being the lead photographer at a wedding is that you can just be yourself, and shoot more random things. You don't have the pressures of being "the man". I quite enjoyed my little assisting time with Mr Jason Beattie the other day!
I even dabbled with different formats, such as my Sigma DP1s, 35mm Film ( Nikon F100) and the Nikon D200..!

Lets start with the Sigma...

APAC: Photoclub Submissions, June 2012:dltphoto

This months submissions caught me a little off balance, since I was enjoying some well earned vacation time with my family and I quickly grabbed three images in the folder of potential images for submission!

First up was the assigned topic, "my Community Landmark".

Since Abbotsford is fairly spread out I thought I would try a landmark which is always a landmark. Every now and again, these little crosses show up in a farmers field for everyone to see. It relates to someone's opinion regarding abortions etc of which I have no opinion, that's not what this post is about!

Anyways, this is a shot right out of Insta.gram (phone App)!!!! even still had the border on it. It scored a 22 which was right in the ball park, at least I chose an image for MY community and not some other community far far away, after all the challenge was "My Community Landmark"

Crossing the Field, (Score 22)

 Next up was an image from my "stigma" from Green Lake last summer. It was one of the few Sunsets I got during that holiday which worked out, the detail was really nice with the "pink wheat" in the foreground. Minimal editing done really, just converted it from the weird Sigma Raw.. This scored a surprising 8, of which being the top score of a Level 1 Rookie, meant I had to speak about it. Nothing to say really.

Sunset at Green Lake, (score 8)

 The final submission which a Fog shot from December I think, this one also happened to be from my Phone, didnt really mean to add another phone shot this time, I just grabbed the image that I saw first. Once again it scored a very pleasing  8 and I gave a quick talk about it, although I didn't mention that it was from my phone... duh!

Powering the Fog, (score 8)