Photography – Page 8 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Galveston Oh Galveston

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The weather for the last few days has been spectacular. Lows in the 50’s and highs in the 60’s and 70’s. I had Friday off and wanted to take advantage of it so I invited my friend Jim Henkel to head off on a road trip to post-Ike Galveston to have a look around.

The Flagship Hotel

Galveston is still very tattered. Lots of debris and devastation but signs of life and reconstruction were plainly visible. I wasn’t all that interested in documenting the destruction, but the sight of the Flagship Hotel was pretty compelling.

The Flagship Hotel

We checked out Seawall Blvd and then headed to The Strand (Galveston’s historic district) where they were making preparations for the Galveston Mardi Gras. And by preparations I mean people were busy stocking the storefronts with booze.

We found some lunch and then headed off to catch the ferry over to Bolivar Peninsula to have a look around. That was way more depressing. We took a quick look around and then made our way back to Houston.

The road to recovery is a long one for poor Galveston.

I Got A Basketball Jones

I was commenting to some friends at one of the recent Geek Gatherings how it had been awhile since I’d been to a basketball game. I’m not a huge huge fan, but Cynthia is. I enjoy it well enough but the real joy is watching Cynthia watch the game.

Turns out the person I was talking to was a season ticket holder and he said that he could hook me up sometime as he didn’t go to every game. I didn’t think too much of it until a few weeks later when he contacted me and offered tickets to the Rockets VS. Mavericks game.

The tickets are at the Red and White Wine Bistro, an upscale all you can eat restaurant and wine bar. Food was included with the ticket but you paid for the wine. And the seats are right on the balcony with a great view of the court.

The Toyota Center has a 4 inch limit on lenses so there was no bringing my long zooms. I settled on my 11-18mm with the idea of capturing some wide angle shots like this one:

Rockets VS. Mavericks

Click to see the larger version and check out the detail.

And although I know it is getting more and more passe and trite, I took the opportunity to create a fake tilt-shift miniature:

Rockets VS. Mavericks

Again, the larger version is much more enjoyable.

The food was excellent, the seats were great and we had a blast! The Rockets even won!

Thanks for the use of your tickets, Alan!

Raiders

It’s like they know when we put the bread out for the birds. They show up almost immediately.

Interloper

Loving the SAL-70300G!

Urban Development

The folks who brought you The Continental Club, Sig’s Lagoon, Tacos-A-Go-Go and Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge are at it again. This time right next door @ 3600 Main.

The derelict building that sits next to The Continental club has been vacant for years and was recently acquired by the same folks that own the property @ 3700 Main and innovation is well under way. I was asked by Pete Gordon (manager of The Continental Club) if I could swing by and snap some “before” photos or what promises to be a very cool space in the not too distant future.

As they are working to demo the building they are finding that a very interesting art deco style facade was simply covered with stucco by the previous owners.

Pete tells me that the intention is to try and preserve as much of the original exterior as is possible which is very commendable.

If you squint just right and imagine it with some paint to bring out the original design you can just make out what a wonderful space this is going to be. There’s already plans for a coffee shop and a pizza/burger joint and if Pete has his way, a new club called “Wallpaper”…

In these interesting economic times it’s heartening to see the hustle and bustle of new development. As I was taking pictures numerous people stopped to see what was going on and one woman waiting on the train was misty-eyed as she spoke of her own personal joy at seeing something being done not only to restore this old building, but also of her optimism in seeing something that demonstrates growth in this city while the news outlets continue to issue their dire warning doom and despair.

BUG

Bug

We went for a walk on Saturday down by the bayou just to get out and get a little excercise. Of course I had the camera in tow. Not a lot of photo opportunities, but Cynthia spotted this guy on a flower no bigger than a pinky fingernail. I’m stiff today from squatting down and trying to hold the camera still as the wind blew my subject to and fro.

It looks very much like a Crane Fly (aka Mosquito Hawk) which we see all the time in and around the house. But this guy is much smaller and has a probiscus rather than mandibles. My guess is he’s either a juvenile Elephant Mosquito or just a plane old male mosquito.

This pic remonds me of the album cover of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of The Worlds

On a side note, there’s a 30th anniversary tour in the works which (sadly) doesn’t look like it will make it here to the U.S.

This shot was done with a flash from above.

Bug

Macro Mothra

Best shot of the day at the Cockrell Butterfly Center was of this moth as I was leaving.

Macro Mothra

Camera: Sony DSLR-A700
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/9.0
Focal Length: 100 mm
Exposure: 0.00

There was a little daylight shining right on him so I shot with fill flash which allowed me to take advantage of the natural light for the majority of the illumination.

Check it out when we zoom in a little bit.

Macro Mothra

The detail is phenomenal!

This is a full on, un-resized 100% crop of the original image:

If you are interested in seeing the full sized image in all of it’s 6.2 megabyte, 4272 x 2848 glory you can download it here:
http://www.baldheretic.com/pics/photography/macro/moth.jpg

It’s pretty amazing and worth checking out.

Sony SAL-100M28 – A Modest Review

I’ve always been fascinated by macro photography and it just so happened that I was investigating options for a dedicated macro lens without any real intention on adding one to the arsenal until I fell prone to poor impulse control again.

Eyeball

Above photo was shot for fun and treated with a little HDR style processing to enhance detail.

In my research I read about the Sony SAL-100F28 along with Minolta AF 100 F2.8 Macro D which is the out of production predecessor to the Sony. And while the Minolta is less expensive than the Sony when you can find a good copy on the secondary market (Ebay, Craigslist, etc), I opted for the updated optics and mechanicals of the Sony along with a warranty.

Don’t get me wrong, the vintage Minolta glass has been widely praised. I even own the legendary Minolta AF 70-210 F4 (Beercan) lens and love it dearly. It’s just a crap shoot sometimes when you buy used technology from the 80’s and I was willing to pay the extra dollars for the Sony. Besides, immediate gratification was in play.

I also considered the Sony SAL-50M28 but decided I needed the 100mm reach over the 50mm to be able to get the shots I envisioned.

A medium sized and lightweight lens, the Sony SAL-100M28 is not cumbersome in the bag or on the camera. Being fast (f/2.8) and a prime lens, it appeals to my fast lens snobbery.

Aside from a few shots taken of Dooley and my own eyeball and such, I hadn’t really had a chance to really take this lens through its paces. Cynthia suggested The Cockrell Butterfly Center as a possible testing ground and having the day off yesterday I decided to make the trek to the HMNS compound to give it a whirl.

It’s worth noting that the Cockrell Butterfly Center is hot. They keep it hot to keep the butterflies alive, which makes sense. Having been there before I dressed comfortably and wore a head scarf and remembering my Hitchhiker’s advice I brought a towel.

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels…

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

Ok, I wasn’t hitching a ride across the galaxy, but I did need to be able to wipe the sweat from my brow as I plunged into the macro-verse. It was a wise choice.

It should also be noted that when changing lenses while dripping sweat you want to be extra careful not to drip into the sensor while the lens is detached. I dodged this bullet with an uncharacteristic display of forethought.

I don’t have a macro flash (yet) so any flash photography was going to be done using the built in flash of my A700. Shooting with a flash allows you to shoot at a slower aperature which increases the depth of field.

Whatchoo lookin at?

Shooting with a flash does make shooting with auto-focus much easier. But as I have mentioned previously, I prefer to shoot without a flash. This does present its own set of challenges. Faster aperture means shallower depth of field which means it’s harder to gain and maintain the focus of such tiny objects. If you breath (in or out) your subject moves completely out of focus or you focus too much forward or aft of your subject.

Since good macro photography is usually done using manual focus, a tripod or monopod is recommended. I did not bring one on this trip.

I discovered a technique where as I allowed myself to ever so slowly and ever so slightly pull back from the subject as I fired at full on 5 frames per second after achieving focus. The results are very satisfactory.

Red

Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 100 mm

As you can see, the shallow depth of field givea a rather unique perspective when combined with shooting something so small so closely.

This resulted in a few really interesting shots

Here comes the sun

Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 100 mm
Exposure: -1.65

Whitey

Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 100 mm
Exposure: 0.00

I’ve got a lot to learn and I also need a lot more practice. Holding steady is crucial in this milieu, even with anti-shake technology. The slightest shift can ruin the shot. Still, I like a good challenge and when things go right the results are quite thrilling.

Additional shots in my Macro Gallery.

For a full on technical review of this lens check out this article at photozone.de. Also check out real world reviews in this post at dyxum.com.

Sony SAL-70300G – A Modest Review

I don’t claim to be a photography expert. I am self taught through personal experience and what I have been able to glean from various web resources and other photographers. I choose Sony over CaNikon for various reason which I won’t go into in this post. That being said, I am not a reviewer who cares to detail the technical aspects of the equipment I use in a the formal way you see at sites like Photozone where the reviewer gets into detail about distortion, light fall off, vignetting, chromatic aberrations and so forth. I leave that to the experts. Besides, why duplicate what is already there?

What I like to do is share my own personal experience as a fan of the platform and show real world examples in the hopes that others interested in this platform will benefit.

As I have mentioned before, the Sony SAL-70300G lens comes highly recommended from my fellow Sony/Minolta users and is a quality piece of glass.

I was finally able to take my own personal copy for a real test drive. Mounted on the A700 (even without a vertical grip) it is well balanced and it’s easy to use hand-held for reasonable amounts of time.

I had Tuesday off so I went to The Cockrell Butterfly Center. This was Cynthia’s suggestion as a place to try out the new macro lens but I figured I could also take the SAL-70300G along as well to see how it performed.

Butterfly 1

Click above image for larger version
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 250mm
On-board flash

I am not a huge fan of shooting with a flash, but as you can see the detail is amazing and the color vivid and true.

Next I wanted to shoot without a flash. Personally, I find the colors and saturation much more appealing in available light and truth be told, I am a high speed elitist when it comes to lenses. I like f/2.8 or faster and the SAL-70300G is only f/4.5-5.6 making it unsuitable for low-light situations.

Butterfly 1

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300mm
No Flash

Fully extended to 300mm at 1/60th of a second. BEAUTIFUL! And thank you Sony for the built in image stabilization or your camera bodies. I jokingly refer to myself as Mr. Shaky McShakerson as I don’t have the steadiest of hands and that can be a real problem shooting hand-held at this focal length in less than optimal light.

Fast focus and SSM makes the the lens practically silent.

I have no buyers remorse at all. This lens does what it is designed to do and it does it extremely well. The 70-300mm focal range is a change for me, personally. But it is proving to be a fantastic and fun addition to my lens arsenal. I anticipate I will use this lens quite a lot in my daytime shooting and am even now working out the packing details in my brain for our upcoming trip.

Additional examples are in my Sony 70-300mm G gallery which I will be adding to as time goes on.