Scattered Thoughts . . .

T here is a way to sort of simulate shooting in medium format or even large format (those old large wooden cameras with a bellows on a big, heavy tripod with a cloth draped over the photographer's head) by shooting many images (side by side, high to low) with a wide aperture and then stitching the images together.  This provides a wide view compared to just a single image using the same lens but also will provide a very shallow depth of field.  I've never tried this before but the idea of this technique always intrigued me so I tried it this afternoon in our living room. A shallow depth of field simply means that what is in focus in the photo is just a small slice of the whole scene...  what is in front of the slice of focus is blurry and what is behind the slice of focus is blurry...  the only thing in focus (hopefully) is the subject.  This type of shooting is most prevalent in portraiture or still life photography to eliminate distracting backgrounds and/or e...

I haven't done any macro photography in a very long time...  perhaps a couple of decades...  so I tested some of my photography gear over the past few days to see what works best for macro photography when using some of my newer gear. Although I have quite a bit of photography gear, I actually don't have any macro lenses.  Macro lenses allow you to get closer to your subject due to the closer minimum focusing distances that macro lenses provide.  I do, however, have some extension tubes which also can shrink the minimum focus distance which allows me to focus on objects that are much closer to the lens than without an extension tube.   Getting closer makes your subject appear larger in the frame (obvious, I know, but I had to mention it).  Lenses oftentimes only allow you to get as close as three feet or so.  With some lenses, you can only get as close as ten feet.  It is difficult to get a close-up view at those distances so adding an exten...

T his is going to be a rather boring blog entry and I'm only writing this entry because I haven't written lately.   My health has been rather lousy so I've been sticking close to the living room, bathroom and bedroom over the past few days.  Writing here has been farthest from my mind.   I've had breathing issues which is interrupting sleep so I'm overwhelmingly fatigued.  I had a cascade of symptoms that started heading toward anaphylaxis so I immediately jumped on extra medications and then some emergency medications.  My bones ache.  I had some gastro-intestinal issues hence my need to stick close to the bathroom.  And, I've had some blurry vision which is mostly affecting my ability to read music at the piano.   So, for the most part, I've been either sitting at my desk or sitting on the couch.  I have had a few cameras scattered around me while I work on refining my slow synchro flash techniques for each camera while using...

I added another snapshot of a bird in our backyard to this year's collection of bird photos...  well, this bird is really in our neighbor's yard on his Frisbee Golf basket, not our backyard.  I did shoot this photo from our backyard though.  This is another photo from my initial test photos that I shot about a week or two ago but I just got around to editing it.   This was really a test of the autofocus system while using a new lens adapter but I feel the need to point out the negatives and positives of this image as a whole. I could have used a bit more light on my sparrow's face.  The sun was high and behind the bird so that was a problem.  I'm not too fond of the bird being perched on a Frisbee Golf basket either.  I would have preferred it being perched on a tree branch.  Plus, this sparrow is looking out of the frame which forces the viewer to wonder what he is looking at...  not a good thing.  You want your subject looking in...

I t wasn't raining this morning so I wandered outside to do a little bit of photography testing.  I am in the process of testing a new lens adapter to be used, mostly, for wildlife photography so I stepped outside for a short while this morning to see if I could find any birds or squirrels to capture in photos.  I'd even settle for a neighborhood cat but I couldn't find anything. After sitting crouched down low to the ground and perfectly still for about ten minutes, I was thinking I wouldn't see anything and that I might be wasting my time.  The birds that I did happen to hear were off to the east too far away from me to see.  After a few more minutes I decided to very slowly and quietly wander around the yard in search of something to shoot.   A couple of chickadees flitted quickly from one tree to another about 50 feet over my head so that was a good sign.  At least I saw a couple of tiny birds so now I was wondering if maybe I had spooked all the b...

I've never been one to be a follower.  I definitely will not follow the masses in purchasing popular products by inexplicably popular manufacturers.  I am no lemming, I am no blind follower.  As such, for this reason as well as others, I'll never promote anything made by Canon, Nikon, (cr)Apple, Tesla/Musk (jeez...  I don't even like writing these two names), or similar manufacturers just to name a few that come to mind first.   (I have to point out that my negative feelings and opinions of Musk go far deeper than simply not following the masses after decades of giving lectures on the evils of this lying, dishonest, rapist of our Earth...  and it is a topic I have beaten to death in professional lectures touching upon, unfortunately, only deaf ears.  In time, unfortunately when it is too late, people will understand what I had been warning about decades earlier.)  I don't just blindly dislike these manufacturers.  I do research these man...

When Lukey and I were using the microscope a week or so ago, I noticed a few nagging problems that needed to be resolved before I attempted another microscopy session and especially a session that included photography and/or videography.  I spent the past week or so trying to resolve these problems and thought it would be best to document it all here. My first problem was that what I was seeing on my camera (and on the 32" monitor connected to my camera) was not nearly as crisp as what I was seeing visually in the binocular eyepieces.  This was really frustrating.  I had been using my Sony a6000 camera in a prime focus configuration.  Prime focus imaging involves no additional lenses including eyepieces.  This type of imaging works very well in astronomy but I was not liking what I was getting in microscopy.  The images and video were very soft, sort of mushy, un-crisp.  They looked really terrible on the 32 inch monitor. The next problem was figuring ...