Category: Uncategorized

I was on my way out of town for a business trip and decided to visit the fields that provided so many interesting images in the summer.

It turns out that in late fall / early winter, the landscape is not all that compelling. But just beyond the fields, I saw this setting and lighting. I saw that no one was behind me, so I put on my hazard lights, stopped in the middle of the road, lined up the composition and took a single image before moving on.

The focal length is near normal and with the car window to brace against, I ended up with a pretty sharp image at 1/15th sec.

I saw the light hitting this fence while driving towards home. I pulled over to the curb, got into position for the image by inching the car up and shooting through the passenger side window.

A little relief from the organic forms I’ve been working on.

Over the years that I’ve been taking photographs, I hit on equipment combinations that just sing for me. Clearly it’s a combination of camera, lens, subject matter of the moment, and post processing tools.

First time around it was a Minolta SRT 201, 50mm manual focus lens, low ISO black and white film, Ilford mostly, and fixed contrast paper with glossy finish.

Later it was an Olympus Stylus (the fixed focal length version) and color print film- from the drugstore.

The Sigma DP1 has worked very well. but there are obstacles. It’s found a place for urban travel photography. The Leica M6ttl with the 35mm f/2 Summicron with black and white film is perfect for a different kind of urban travel photography, different from the DP1. It’s nice to have both since they respond best in different lighting conditions.

My DSLRs have been good general purpose cameras, but both the Olympus E-1 and the Nikon D80 put obstacles in the process. I loved the image quality of the E-1 with the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 lens, but it was slow to respond when setting up a shot. The D80 metering system and I didn’t agree. And I had no lens like the Olympus to go to. It was the 24mm f/2.8D with it’s normal view and chromatic aberration that mostly lived on the camera.

The D300 with the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 sings. Post processing in Capture NX2 with the NIK filter set is fast and can get me to almost any vision of the print I want within a few minutes. It’s wide enough, it’s long enough and it focuses close enough to do macro style photography.

It feels to me like I’ve arrived somewhere regarding these tools.

Is it possible that one need look no further than the fallen leaves?

There was a period of about 3 months between returning from our New Hampshire vacation until about two weeks ago where I felt that all of my attention was completely and fully committed, crowding out photography in particular. There was the start of the school year for the kids, the Jewish Holidays, work of course, but then there also, very importantly was the US election.

On long trips in the car for work (up and back to Philadelphia and New Jersey), I would flip the Sirius radio between CNN, Fox and toward the end Bloomberg and CNBC, for news. Listening to stump speeches. Analysis.

Then it was over and the mental space returned. More fitness work. Pulling out the camera. Music back on the radio.

I’m very happy with the Tamron midrange zoom so far. This image has a beautiful tonality range and real dimensional rendering that I like. I’m reminded of the Zuiko 14-54 that I had for the old E-1.

You can’t go wrong with this lens for an APS-C Nikon.

After a morning at the dentist, I stopped by our best local camera store, Service Photo. I had a look through their used midrange zoom collection including all of the usual suspects. I ended up walking out with the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. It’s compact, fast and, in the non-HSM version I bought, very inexpensive compared to any other f/2.8 alternative.

It’s not a VR lens, but then I’m not so sure that I’ve gotten any real boost in sharpness in this focal range given that I hand hold relatively well down to 1/30th second.

Here’s one of the first session with the lens in one of my favorite spots for quck shots, a local 1 acre conservatory.

My photographic output has been much less over the last few months. Whether symptom or cause, my cameras have not been accompanying me unless it’s been specifically for travel, in which case the Sigma DP1 now automatically comes along.

I’ve seen some very nice light over this time, but I didn’t have a camera with me. I started once again trying to decide whether there was any reasonable way to carry a camera with me more consistently and even started checking out smaller compacts that would be more easily pocketable than the DP1.

In the end, I decided that the problem was that I’m lacking photographic goals right now. With the end of the calendar year in sight, I’ve spent some time looking over my images in Aperture, looking at what equipment has been most productive for me and thinking about how I use my collection of equipment.

The DP1 is my business travel camera, sometimes being traded off with the Leica M6 when I’ve shot Black and White in cities, mostly London. My most popular images on Flickr are DP1 images, whether because of the image quality, the subject matter or the level of interest in the camera. It’s clear to me that when Sigma offers an update with a faster lens, better low light capability and faster operation, I’ll be a buyer. Or perhaps we’ll see the equivalent from Olympus or Nikon in the near future. With a new Leica M8 now going for $4000, it could be that I might eventually go to a digital M.

The D300 gets used with either the 24-120mm VR or with a kit of the 12-24mm f/4 plus the 105mm f/2.8 Micro. I’ve grown fond of using the 5x zoom of the 24-120mm, but the rendering quality of the lens doesn’t suit me well. While images tend to sharpen up well enough in post processing, it is not a crisp, high contrast lens. Yet having it on the camera, it tends to displace my better lenses, since the focal lengths are completely or in part covered by the superzoom.

I’m going to try to use the 300 with a bit more purpose now. Either with the 24-120mm for casual shooting, easy enough when I’m walking out to my car and not having to walk much with the big camera and big lens, or with the 12-24mm plus 105mm kit for a serious shooting session.

It seems I really don’t need anything longer than the 120mm for now and I might even consider swapping it for the newer Nikon 16-85 VR which is reputed to be a sharper lens.

The two primes, the 24mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1.8 are small and fast, but I don’t see how they fit into this plan right now. I loved them on the D80 since I could have a small, light DSLR kit. I’m used to the larger D300 at this point and have the DP1 when I want to go very light. And I don’t get along with the evaluative metering on the D80, while the D300 and DP1 are generally right the first time.

Nearly two months without a photo upload or post here. The combination of the Jewish holidays and the election seemed to squeeze out any air for photography. With the election now decided, I regret that I missed some of the best light and fall color. Here’s my penence: a black and white conversion from a D300 image. When I grabbed it this afternoon in the overcast light, I saw it as monochrome, so I immediately converted it.

This with the much maligned Nikon 24-120mm zoom, which I find sharpens up nicely.

This is an image that had no intent to it. I was photographing my son as he slid down a slide in these cascading pools, working on how to set shutterspeed and pan to capture him sharply amid the rushing water. In this frame he was out of site more or less (that’s him at the far left of the frame) but the image is striking.