New Jersey Botanical Garden

After driving past the New Jersey Botanical Garden for years, we finally stopped - a week before we leave NJ for good. Wish I went sooner, and more often, because it is a great place to do flower, insect and macro work (in any combination).

More on Flickr...

Linda came away with some nice shots, too. It was her first time out with the 300D; once she got over the habit of holding a DSLR like it's a point-and-shoot she was off and running like an old pro.

Stoned in Texas

Canon EOS 40D | Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 20mm | 1/250 @ f/4.5 ISO 200




Canon EOS 40D | Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 12mm | 1/4000 @ f/3.5 ISO 200

Stone carvings by John Langston - Axtell, TX

More Flora...

Canon EOS 40D | Canon EF-S 10-22mm @ 22mm | 1/250 @ f/5.6 ISO 100



Canon EOS 40D | Tokina AT-X 100mm Pro D f/2.8 | 1/400 @ f/5.6 ISO 200



Canon EOS 40D | Tokina AT-X 100mm Pro D f/2.8 | 1/4100 @ f/9 ISO 200

The Shandaken Inn

Linda and I found ourselves in the Catskill unexpectedly on July 4th, having loaded the car with nothing more than cameras, a couple of toothbrushes and coffee. We took a western approach, exited NY17 at East Branch, followed NY30 (and the Delaware River) all the way to Margaretteville, lunched in Roxbury, then took NY28 until, some 6 hours later, we stumbled upon The Shandaken Inn, a charming little B&B whose new owners, Dean and Brig, just opened to guests the day before. Despite having little in the way of cash or clothes, we were tired and sore and decided to stay the night and had a nice time chatting into the evening with our gracious hosts and after a wonderful breakfast the next morning we headed home.

My hopes for catching the morning light was dashed by clouds - but as always, clouds make for dramatic b&w skies. The above was shot from a low angle @10mm, and while the original RAW image had the building fairly underexposed because of the sun directly behind it, a little Aperture and Photoshop magic brought it to life to my satisfaction (despite a bit of lens flare at left).

Behind the Inn runs the Esopus Creek, and a little trailblazing yielded some neat shots of the area.

Little Yellow Flower

Canon EOS 40D | Tokina AT-X 100mm Pro D f/2.8 | 1/400 @ f/9 (-1.0EV) ISO 100

This little guy caught my eye while doing some yard work in Closter, a solitary beacon of color amidst a sea of grass. See this photo for an idea how small it was.

Wildflowers

Wantage, NJ
Canon EOS 40D | EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 (@10mm) | 1/100 @ f/13 ISO 100

Passed by these roadside flowers on the way to the A&P, then stopped to shoot them on the return trip. Using the EF-S 10-22mm wide open and shooting nearly straight down, I was able to get an interesting perspective with the surrounding tall grass spreading out radially from the central subject. In Aperture I cropped square, then desaturated the greens and yellows while enhancing the blues and reds, went heavy on the Vignette, then tweaked the highlights and shadows until I got the effect I was looking for.

I love this lens...!

Monksville Fishing

Monksville Reservoir - West Milford, NJ
Canon EOS 40D | EF 300mm f/4 L IS | 1/125 @ f/18 ISO 200

Why is it every time I say "Monksville" I want to add a "Daddy-O" after it...

Old Farm, Warwick, NY - An HDR Oddysey

Old Farm - Warwick, NY
Canon EOS 40D | EF 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM (@ 12mm) | Multi-exposure HDR @ f/5 ISO 200

In my continuing attempt to come to grips with the High Dynamic Range Imaging revolution I'm slowly quickly filling my hard drive with multiple exposures where a single shot would once suffice. In this case, I shot 24 different RAW files at different shutter speeds (approx. 11MB each), processed the seven best images using the new Hydra HDR plug-in for Aperture (which created a 60MB TIFF file), which was then brought into Photoshop for final tweaking (resulting in another 62MB TIFF file). But 386MB later the result is a photo that, to my eyes, doesn't look that drastically different than one of my single 11MB RAW frames processed in Aperture. Clearly, my HDR Kung Fu is weak. Back to the scriptures...

Dead End

Canon EOS 40D | EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM (@ 10mm) | 1/250 @ f/18 (-1.0ev) ISO 200

Dusk at Monksville

Canon EOS 40D | EF 300mm f/4 L IS | 1/50 @ f/5 (+1.0ev) ISO 800

Canon EOS 40D | EF 300mm f/4 L IS | 1/8 @ f/4.5 (+1.0ev) ISO 800

Watkins Glen SVRA Vintage Cup - 1989 & 1991

I've been busy scanning more 35mm prints from the 1989 and 1991 SVRA Vintage Cup races at Watkins Glen. These are some of my favorites, many more have been added to Flickr.

Brabham BT26A



Ford GT40s at the Esses



Alfa Romeo T33-SC-12



Ford GT40 at the Anvil



Gurney AAR Eagle-Weslake Mk1

Saturday Morning Critters

Blackbird
Canon EOS 40D | EF 300mm f/4 L IS | 1/400 @ f/5 (-1.0ev) ISO 100

Ant & Wildflower
Canon EOS 40D | EF 300mm f/4 L IS | 1/320 @ f/5 (-1.0ev) ISO 100

Silos

Canon EOS 40D | EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 (@ 10mm) | 1/80 @ f/13 (+1.0ev) ISO 100
(Unprocessed image here)

Canon EOS 40D | EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 (@ 10mm) | 1/80 @ f/13 (+1.0ev) ISO 100
(Unprocessed image here)

Interesting clouds accompanied a cold front that moved in earlier today. While Linda and I were out and about I noticed the increasingly neat sky and went looking for something to put in the foreground. The silos on CR 319 in Beemerville performed this task admirably.

Raw images from the 40D came out of the camera with a 3650 K white balance, even though the camera was set to 4000 K. Still not sure about WB on the 40D in RAW mode, but it's a moot point since RAW allows white balance adjustment in post. I sent the original images to Aperture and Lightroom to continue my comparison tests. I'm still on the fence - Lightroom has a few tools that work better than their counterparts in Aperture, but I still like the way Aperture works better. Since I can (and do) use Photoshop for any serious adjustments, the scale is increasingly tipping in favor of Aperture. The above images are the result of Aperture - Photoshop round-trip processing.

Corvettes and 'Cudas and Cobras, Oh My!

Corvette
Canon EOS 300D | EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 (@ 28mm) | 1/1000 @ f/7.1 (0ev) ISO 100

'Cuda
Canon EOS 300D | EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 (@ 28mm) | 1/125 @ f/7.1 (0ev) ISO 100

Cobra
Canon EOS 300D | EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 (@ 28mm) | 1/80 @ f/5.6 (0ev) ISO 100

A few more reworks from my Watkins Glen 2004 collection...

Birds

Did some birding just before sunset today out in the back yard with the 300 f/4L.

Turkey Buzzard
Canon 40D | EF 300mm f/4L IS USM | 1/3200 @ f4 (+1.0ev) ISO 800
(Unprocessed image here)

Robin, The Bird Wonder
Canon 40D | EF 300mm f/4L IS USM | 1/100 @ f6.3 (+1.0ev) ISO 400
(Unprocessed image here)

Original images were OK, exposures good at +1.0ev compensation. Did usual light tweaking to Levels and Vibrancy in Aperture then sent to Photoshop for further color adjustment and, in the case of the buzzard, a Gaussian Blur of the sky to reduce the ISO noise.

Setting the 40D to AI Servo focusing mode and selecting the center AF point, and the lens for panning (Stabilizer Mode 2), all works well for capturing birds in flight. Still need some practice at this - I kept moving the focus ring while hand-holding the lens!

Woodshed

Woodshed | Warwick, NY
Canon EOS 300D | Tokina AT-X 100mm Pro D f/2.8 | 1/320 @ f/5.6 | ISO 400
(Unprocessed image here)

Alas, I have bitten the bullet and bought Photoshop CS3 - a decision made easier once I realized that, as a loyal registered user of Dreamweaver since version 1.0 and every Macromedia Studio package since, I was eligible for a Nice Price ($500) to upgrade to what is now called Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium Edition. This package includes the CS3 versions of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks (which in my capacity as Der Webführer I needed anyway...), Illustrator (which replaces Freehand for me), a bunch of utility apps like Bridge and Version Cue (which I may or may not ever really use), and of course the chewy center of it all: Photoshop CS3.

I've come to realize that Aperture, even with its improved version 2.1 plug-ins and adjustment tools, won't (nor was it meant to) perform the magic that Photoshop is capable of. This magic, however, is elusive unless one really groks the inner workings of the program. I've been using Photoshop since version 1.5, always knew enough about it to be dangerous, and while I consider myself to be an above-average-dumbass it is still just as easy for me to turn a so-so photo into as garish disaster as it is to improve it. It's high time to dig deeper into the more advanced features which separate it from Fireworks. I bought a couple of Kelby books - The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers (I already had the original edition, but that was a little out of date as it covered up to Photoshop 7), and his Seven Point System book. Also grabbed Leslie Alsheimer's Black and White in Photoshop CS3 while I was at it, since this is of prime interest to me as a sensitive artiste...

My goal is to fine-tune my workflow ("workflow" being the buzzword du jour amongst digital imagers) to include Photoshop in the adjustment process, while retaining Aperture as the input (from the camera) and output (to the web or printer) interface for my photos. (I may switch to Lightroom sometime down the road if I see any advantage in doing so, but for now I find the tight Aperture/OS X integration more important to me than the Lightroom/Photoshop integration.)

My first experiment with Aperture/Photoshop round-trip editing is a photograph I took earlier in the day of an abandoned shed along the side of the road in Warwick, NY. The original image is exceptionally average, not very vivid because it was a grey, overcast day without any shadows to make things interesting and contrasty. Using the Tokina 100mm f/2.8 I took three exposures at different aperture settings (2.8, 5.6 and 16). All three yielded nice, well centered histograms; I chose the f/5.6 image as my pick since it was a little sharper than the f/2.8 shot and there was barely any difference in depth of field. Aperture was used for RAW conversion, White Balance and light Levels adjustment giving me a subtly modified, yet still uninteresting image to work with. The Edit With Photoshop CS3 command in Aperture creates a duplicate TIFF file as a working image and opens the file in Photoshop.

In Photoshop, I did an Auto Contrast, then loosely followed Kelby's 7-Point method by applying Curves in an adjustment layer, merging the layers down when I was satisfied. Next, Shadow/Highlight adjustments were done in a Smart Filters layer, then merged again. I converted to Lab Color, applied Medium Contrast to the "A" channel, and finally applied some Unsharp Mask and Fade Unsharp Mask (Luminosity). Bringing the image back to Aperture, I added a small amount of Vignette and did a little more Highlights/Shadows tweaking, reduced the Vibrancy slightly, and set the Tint with the eyedroppers. I tried a few crops at different aspect ratios until I decided that a square format worked best because the background was too busy and pulled attention away from the subject.

I'm fairly pleased with the result, though I may go back and start over once I get a better grasp on what Photoshop is actually doing; right now, it's still pretty much trial and error for me.

The Battle Is Joined...

...and the debate rages on: Does your camera make you a good (or bad) photographer?

Some of the web photo-pundits that I respect have differing opinions. Ken Rockwell says your camera doesn't matter; Michael Reichmann says it does; and Scott Bourne wishes we'd all just shut up about it already!

And I agree. With all of them.

I believe that, regardless of the type of camera used, anyone who takes the time to understand exposure, composition, camera basics - i.e., one who can call himself or herself a photographer - will take better (by which I mean more interesting) photos than the average schmoe who owns a camera (cheap or expensive), uses it for pictures of kids and dogs and what-not, but doesn't pursue photography as a hobby or vocation - i.e., a snap-shooter. I am confident that, armed with a $150 point-and-shooter, I could take better photographs than any number snap-shooters I know even if they had a top-end Canon or Nikon with $10,000 worth of glass attached to it. And I'm equally confident that any of my favorite photographers, armed with the same $150 cheapo, could create far better photos than me no matter how much I spend on equipment. My photos might come out sharper, have better color balance and more megapixels, but in the end all that really matters is what the eye sees. Frankly, I'm just beginning to learn how to see and I've been doing this for 25 years. Spending $25,000 on equipment isn't going to make me Paul-Henri Cahier or Art Wolfe.

On the other hand, having better equipment without question enables me to take better photographs. Not necessarily better than you, but certainly better than me with inferior equipment. My composition skills won't improve; that's all between the ears. To be sure, some of my favorite photographs are ones I took with a point-and-shoot (as illustrated below), but I'm certain those same photos would have turned out better had I used my current DSLR system. This point is clearly proven when I look at my photos from my Banff trip in 2000, in which almost every photo taken with my 35mm SLR was duplicated with a 2.1 megapixel PowerShot A50. Compositionally, the digital and film images are identical. However, very few of the digital images look better than the 35mm prints; they are less sharp, the color isn't as vivid, the tonal range is not as wide. The occasional digital image that did turn out better than its film counterpoint was without question due to a poor exposure choice on my part. Bottom line: There's a reason pros don't use PowerShots!

On the other other hand... the reason some of my favorite photographs were shot with a PowerShot is that I had it with me. There are times I won't have (or won't want to have) a DSLR body and all of the lenses and filters and other gear handy when the photo-op presents itself. But I almost always have my S40 in my pocket or glove box, ready for whatever Pulitzer Prize-winning moment comes my way. Case in point: The Ulster American Folk Park in Ireland. It was raining, I didn't feel like lugging around my DSLR case and certainly wasn't going to carry my new 300D around in the wet without a case... so I slipped the S40 into a pocket and was ready for action when it came time to take one of my favorite photos during the entire trip:

Wagon Wheel | Ulster American Folk Park | Omagh, Northern Ireland
Canon PowerShot S40 | 1/13 @ f2.8 ISO ???

Note handheld exposure at 1/13-second. Without Image Stabilization! Must not have had my 10th coffee of the day yet. But I digress...

My point is, were it not for the S40, this photo doesn't get taken. And honestly, folks - how many DSLR owners do you know that don't also own a point-and-shoot?

The argument (if you could call it that) over whether your camera does or doesn't make you a better photographer is simply a byproduct of leisure time and the internet, a highly combustible combination. People love to bicker, point to meaningless specifications to prove that they made a smarter choice than you or me, talk about things like chromatic aberration and dynamic range as if they understand it themselves, and basically repeat a lot of stuff that others say or write. That's fine, it's a free country. But if, as some claim, this is causing newbies all sorts of anxiety if they hear that their camera doesn't have as wide a dynamic range as a 5D or D300, or that their Sigma lens isn't as sharp at the edges as a Canon L of the same focal length... well, they need to relax a bit and just have some fun with whichever camera they have or can afford. As Scott says, learn to see. You can always buy a better camera (or lens or flash or tripod), but you can't buy, at any price, the basic skills you can (and must) develop with any camera if you want to take more interesting and creative photographs.

First Light: Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

So this is what all the commotion about Canon "L" lenses is about!

Canon EOS 300D | EF 300mm f/4 | 1/640 @ f/6.3 (0ev) ISO 200



Canon EOS 300D | EF 300mm f/4 | 1/800 @ f/7.1 (-1.0ev) ISO 200



Canon EOS 300D | EF 300mm f/4 | 1/360 @ f/16 (0ev) ISO 200



Canon EOS 300D | EF 300mm f/4 | 1/1000 @ f/4 (0ev) ISO 200

Note that these shots were not taken with the 40D - that's on its way to Canon Factory Service to fix a faulty main dial (don't get me started on that). Instead, I threw the new lens on my 300D to give it a quick shakedown and I'm very impressed with the results. The wasp photo was quickly shot in straight Program mode without any thought of camers settings, it happened so fast that I didn't have time to do any bracketed exposures or even dial in aperture or shutter speed; it was point-click. The squirrel, lake and branch shots were bracketed in Av mode - the latter at f/4 to get a feel for the depth of field and bokeh. (I always wanted to use the word "bokeh" in a sentence, makes me sound smart...)

I exchanged the Tokina AT-X 80-400mm AF D zoom for the EF 300mm f/4L IS three days after I received the Tokina. Call it buyer's remorse, second-guessing, whatever - I really didn't find the 80-44mm to have the same build quality as the AT-X 100mm f/2.8 Pro D, the focusing ring had just too much play in it for my comfort, the switches were stiff, focusing slow and noisy. It certainly felt a lot more solid than my old Tamron 100-300mm zoom and is probably a great value at $650 for an all-purpose long zoom. The indoor test shots looked nice. However, in the end I decided that a long focal length prime was really what I wanted all along and was just kidding myself into thinking that a zoom would be good enough. I would have hung onto the Tokina a little longer to give it a thorough workout outdoors, but B&H was scheduled to close for a week and I didn't want to wait. So exit 80-400mm zoom on Monday, enter 300mm prime on Tuesday.

It took me about 5 minutes to confirm that I made the right decision in upgrading to the "L". The feel of it is... substantial. I don't know how else to describe it. Not heavy, but a seriously solid lens - more so than any other I've used. The IS works as I've come to expect from using my other IS lens (the EF 28-135mm IS). It just exudes quality. The built-in lens hood and included carry case are added bonuses. I'm anxious to get the 40D back so I can really ride this thing hard; the 300D takes pretty pictures and certainly has served me well for 4 years, but after using the 40D for a few weeks I have become spoiled, not so much by the extra megapixels but by the creature comforts such as live histogram, fast continuous shooting, even faster buffering, and just plain better ergonomics.

Yankee Stadium (v.2.0)

Opened in 1923, rebuilt in 1974, and about to be torn down and replaced by it's third incarnation (The House That Jeter Built!), Yankee Stadium is near the top of my list of Favorite Places Ever, along with (in no particular order) Banff National Park, Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, Cedar Key, the Whiskey Hill Family Ranch & Animal Park, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum. The Stadium is an amazing enough place when filled to its 57,000 fan capacity, but even more impressive when its nearly empty, with an atmosphere much like a cathedral.

I always wanted to sit in the upper deck directly behind home plate, and Linda (bless her heart) made that dream come true in June 2001. Once again the little Canon A50 did good. Unfortunately, this was years before I took my image archiving seriously, so the original files are gone and all I have are a few which were cropped and processed in Photoshop, stripped of all EXIF information regarding camera settings. Thankfully I didn't apply excessive sharpening and saturation, as I was prone to do back in those days before I realized it how stupid it looked.

Canon PowerShot A50 | 1/?? @ f??? ISO ???

Canon PowerShot A50 | 1/?? @ f??? ISO ???

This last image, taken during the top of the 6th inning, was the middle image of a failed attempt to create a pano shot of the stadium - not a great exposure... but it appears to be the only digital image in my archives of the field at Yankee Stadium. How can that be possible???

Canon PowerShot A50 | 1/?? @ f??? ISO ???

It's like Squaresville, Daddy-O

Paul Giguere's recent Thoughts on Photography podcast got me thinking about square format photography, so it was off to the archives in search of images might work if cropped square. Naturally, I came up with cats...

Peewee, The Best Damn Cat Ever™
Canon EOS 300D | EF 28-135mm IS USM f/3.5-5.6 (@ 95mm) | 1/15 @ f/5.6 (0ev) ISO 400



Eye of Bad Cat
Canon EOS 40D | Tokina AT-X 100mm f/2.8 | 1/30 @ f/2.8 (0ev) ISO 1600