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Showing posts with the label clarity

Infrared Light Characteristics

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H ere is a photo that I shot this morning in our living room.  This is an Asiatic Lily plant sitting in sunlight coming through one of our living room windows.  I've mentioned a few things in previous blog entries about infrared light but this photo is a good example showing a few of these unique characteristics. First, the chlorophyll is glowing white which makes the green leaves render as a very bright white in infrared.  All else inside the house is dark.  It is like the lily plant is illuminated from within itself!   I've also mentioned that another characteristic of infrared imaging is exceptional clarity.  This is certainly visible in this shot but, honestly, it is really noticeable outdoors when shooting a wide landscape shot.  Infrared light seems to see through much of the haze that our human eyes see in visible light.  Well, it doesn't see "through it".  The haze that we see simply isn't visible in the infrared wavelengths. There is such thing as haz

Telescope Eyepiece Quality

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Kit eyepiece, far left, with three upgrades to the right. I feel as though I'm always trying to persuade newcomers to astronomy about the importance of purchasing something better than the kit telescope eyepieces that come with most new telescopes.  My advice, however, usually seems to fall on deaf ears until, that is, the new telescope owner eventually gets to peer through a better eyepiece with their own eyes.  Then they are flabbergasted with mixed emotion, saying, "Wow...  I can't believe the difference!" as they smack their forehead with the palm of their hand instantly realizing all the time they wasted while dragging their feet about purchasing new, better eyepieces. You see, these eyepieces that come packaged with new telescopes, generally speaking, are tiny, difficult to see through and less-than-sharp junk that border on useless.  I recently realized that if I write about this and show some photos,  at least   these people would be able to see the

Kodak Gardens

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I ended up getting sidetracked away from painting a bedroom this morning (Lukey would tell me I got "derailed"... his new word of the day) and, by the time I had a chance to get back on schedule, it was really too late to get anything significant accomplished before lunch. And, after lunch, I must nap or my health will crash. So, to kill some time, I grabbed a different camera than I grabbed a few days ago and, again, headed out to our wildflower gardens. It is the end of the season now so there isn't much to shoot out there. This was more of an exercise in using a different type of camera... This camera I chose today is my old digital SLR camera which sports a beautiful and unique Kodak sensor. I'm not a fan of Kodak in the digital age, in general (they really shot themselves in the foot and wasted away an historic and tremendous corporation) , but this imaging sensor is stunning. It is my oldest camera but it has one of my favorite imaging sensors. The clarit

Success Shooting Tiny Birds!

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Panasonic G3 camera, Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm lens As I was writing my previous blog post this morning, I could hear all sorts of birds and squirrels outside  for the first time in quite a long time . It was as though they all moved into the area at the same moment! It has been unusually quiet here for months... no small wildlife at all... no birds, no squirrels... just an odd silence outdoors. All of a sudden, this morning, this all changed. I grabbed my newest camera purchase... my Panasonic G3 with my old Olympus 70-300mm lens mounted on it. This combo gives me a very long telephoto reach equivalent to a 600mm field of view on a full frame camera. This is a loonnnggg telephoto reach in a rather small package! When I stepped outdoors, I headed toward the deeper part of the backyard with old, tall trees where I figured most wildlife would be located. As I walked back that way, I listened to hear where the birds were located... "hmmm..." all the noise seemed to be c