Category: Photography

I have just had my first experience with Adobe Lightroom [the beta version] and I have to say that it is VERY cool. You can do all sorts of things with it and I think that using it for managing photos is probably much more productive than using Canon’s DPP + Adobe Bridge & Photoshop CS2. Lightroom combines the functions of DPP and Bridge together… which would make editing and organizing take place in the same application. That would usually mean that I might actually do it instead of putting the orgainzing work off until later.

I haven’t done much with it yet, but from what I’ve seen, it’s RAW processing capabilities are quite sophisticated. I’m anxious for the final version…

Yesterday, Laura and I along with a couple of friends from chuch [Phil and Troy] went to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC. There are a lot of lilly ponds and other marshes and plants. This was actually a good trip and my first dedicated “photo outing”. I think it turned out quite well. I ended up taking 170 pictures before my 2GB card filled up. Laura was using the Canon Elan 7n [our 35mm film camera] and one of her rolls was slide film, so we haven’t seen those shots yet.

All in all, though, we got a lot of good shots and a lot of “blah” ones which will be deleted – never to be seen again…

I’ll post the pictures as soon as I finish processing and sorting them… [which might be a while as I’m still rebuilding my laptop].

I have always wanted to take pictures of lightning striking out of a thunderstorm and I thought tonight was my chance. It was not to be, however. While the thunderstorm rages outside [without rain so far], all the flashes have either been behind a cloud or below the tree line.

Guess I’ll have to keep waiting.

Have you ever invenntoried your photo collection? I don’t mean rough count or taken a quick look… I mean found an organizational system, say by date/shoot, and categorized and filed all the digital pictures you ever took? Well, if you have you know it’s a big job. For me, however, it’s more than big – it’s GI-NORMOUS. I have over 7,000 digital photos taken over a span of 8 years. I haven’t actually had a digital camera all that time, but I have scans of my film shots from back then. I have been trying to organize my photos since I decided that I would go ‘pro’.

Once I decided that, I had to find a system. I chose by date and shoot. My photos were previously oganized by location, and some by date under the location. However, there are so many different days at each location that it is still VERY tedious. I’ve only done a small percentage, like maybe 10% or so, but it’s taken me weeks to get this far. The pictures I take since I made my decision, though, are already organized – at least I don’t have to re-do those!

I can’t wait until I have to get back to putting my negatives in sleves… well, maybe I can wait.

I have finally saved up enough money to purchase a professional quality lens. It’s the Canon 70-200mm F4L USM lens and while it’s the cheapest of the Canon “L” series lenses, it’s also one of the best. I will now be able to use it to photograph small children or sports [which would be easier than children, I think] since the focusing mechanism on this lens is extremely fast. I haven’t had a chance to take it out for a full test since I just got it yesterday, but I have learned a few things.

First, I learned that my old Tamron 28-200 must have been flawed in some way because the 200mm view that I see through my new lens is much bigger than the 200mm view that my old lens gave me. I think it did not go all the way to 200 and may have stopped at 180 or so. Second, there is a switch on the lens that does something cool. If your focusing objects are 3m [~10ft] away or more, you can set your focal range to 3m – infinity and the focusing speed will be lightning fast. If your objects are closer, you can move the switch back to 1.2m – infinity and the speed will only be extremely fast [still very fast, but there’s a noticable difference between modes].

So, I have to find a way to go out and really put the lens through its paces.

In my ongoing quest to caputre long star trails, I made another attempt last nigh. This time, I tried an hour long exposure with the big dipper just above th trees and moving upward. It would have been a lovely shot. I let the shutter stay open for an hour and then closed it. All was well at this point. However, the camera has that really nifty feature of long exposure noise reduction that kicks in after a long shot. It came on and I waited for the shot to de-noise. About 15 or so minutes into the de-noising exposure [I can’t remember how long, but it was at least 15 but no more than 30 minutes] I noticed that the camera “busy” light was not on anymore. I checked the camera and discovered that my battery was completely dead. I lost the shot.

For my next attempt, I will put in a freshly charged battery to try again. The one I was using I had taken a good amount of shots with, so I don’t know how close it was to it’s charge capacity. If I can’t do an hour exposure with a fresh battery, I may try and get the “battery grip” expansion that allows me to put in two batteries at once and extending the exposure life past that 1.5 hour maximum that I’ve hit. Or, even better, I could try the external power adapter.

Once again I have attempted the long exposure and this time, I waited even longer and the camera came back with this picture. Patience is rewarded and I can now see a circular rotation pattern which illustrates the rotation of the earth in the night sky.

What I now have to learn is to take this technical technique and bring some art into it. I definitely have to make it more interesting than sitting on my back porch. I will have to do some more experimentation – and try some even longer exposure times.

I’d better bring a good book…