Canon 5D MK4
Sigma 12-24@12mm
f/4
12:45min
ISO 400
June 5, 2022
Rules
A photo in which the photog ignores the rule of thirds.
Canon 5D MK4
Tamron 70-200 f/4 @f/4
1/320 sec
ISO 125
December 31, 2021
November 30, 2021
September 20, 2021
August 20, 2021
Peripherals
The boring stuff is always hard to prioritize. Even for a gear head like myself, I find it difficult focus on the support pieces in my kit. It’s usually in middle of a shoot when I’m getting frustrated with a shortcoming that I’ll realize that it might have been more important than previously held.
You know the stuff. Light-stands, filters, caps, triggers, cards, etc.
One I’ve been half heartedly pursuing is a filter set. There is a psychological barrier from an early experience when I used a smudged (fluorescence?)filter on shoot. The lesson learned should be more about awareness, but I still hesitate to introduce points of failure to my system. And quality is expensive when talking filters. And since I have an ultra-wide lens I need ultra-wide filters. Like 150mm big.
Filling in the boring niches allows furthering the capabilities of our gear… Which isn’t really boring. So… 10 stop 150mm here I come.
July 13, 2021
October 18, 2020
July 21, 2020
The law of entropy
Things break down. They just do. So I wasn't shocked when this last week my workstation pc bit the dust. I could have fixed it but it would have been a waste of time. It was a powerhouse... 12 years ago... Times and resolutions have changed. It was still holding its own up until it decided to "blue screen of death". Repeatedly.
So for the first time in 6 years I have a Mac. It was not a planned upgrade but since it can handle modern media, I might get through some of my 5D backlog. I haven't stopped shooting. Just keep filling the memory cards :)
The digital darkroom is getting a refresh. We'll see how it goes.
January 21, 2020
November 7, 2019
August 30, 2019
The final solution
I used to change out camera bags frequently. Seasonally? After I outgrew my faithful Tamrac adventure backpack I never found a bag that checked all the boxes.What are those boxes you ask?
Fit all the gear. ALL THE GEAR.
Be comfortable.
Have all the gear be instantly available at a moments notice.
Be weather resistant/have a rain cover.
Be carry on compatible.
Not look like a camera bag.
The Lowepro Video Fastpack 250 has been my mainstay for the last 5 years or so. It got a bite taken out of the lower padding by my motorcycle at one point, but it keeps chugging along. But as the "life-and-camera-gear-simplification" process continues I see that the Fastpack will need to go. It doesn't fit all the gear. I can strap my 500mm and the tripod to the the sides but... It then upsets #2, #3, #5, and #6.
In the name of simplicity( and good image quality) I plan to replace the 500mm with 70-200 + a 2x extender. I need a 70-200 anyway seeing as how I dropped my IS F/4 in Salt Lake City that one time and it was never the same. My current 28-200 Tamron is a workhorse. And the image quality(especially at 200mm) is atrocious. But hey it was 99 cents. Well. $10 dollars anyway. But I digress.
The 500 goes away. The 70-200 goes in the imaginary perfect bag. Followed by my recently repaired 17-40L. All is well... Oh, and the 2x. And the new ebay mid-range lens. And the nifty-fifty. And the full-frame camera that I'm going to buy after I save up for all the other things... The tripod needs to go too. Its too old. Too heavy. On my recent trip to the Oregon outback the tripod head failed. Twice. Actually just the mount. Unforgivable.
Although alot of my gear is in transition, I can see things finally getting sorted out. I'll do a gear review in a few weeks with some before and after (if I can find any before...) But first I need to review some more non-adobe-cc software, the Oregon Outback series, my recent shots from climbing Mt. Theilson, and some recent Yosemite shots. (The above is one of them.) So hang tight...
July 21, 2019
The digital darktable
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| Canon 7D Tamron 28-200mm@28mm Post: Darktable GIMP Alienskin Exposure X |
Processing images after the shoot can be tedious. The best image organizers run fast. No lagging. They allow you to quickly sort the sometimes thousands of images from a trip or shoot. Adobe Lightroom and I have had a rocky relationship. It cost money for one thing. Which mean I couldn't spend that money on lenses. It also had a bad habit of not playing well with my network storage. And it did this weird thing of pulling its database into a giant library. It made the program run fast. But it used up a huge amount of disk space. Adobe addressed this issue in more recent releases.
I have tried various other methods including file explorer. Lately, I have been using Darktable. Nice program with a bit of a learning curve. Not as intuitive and missing some features that Lightroom would offer, but much faster. And free. I had a bit of a hard time getting used to the controls. In edit mode, you can't use keyboard arrows to navigate. But you can if you have full-sized images in the "lightable" section. Overall the program has a professional feel and could easily fit into a high volume workflow.
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| Import, export, info. Click on the "Darkroom" to enter edit mode. |
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| Sort previously sorted images for fast processing. |
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| Scan through lots of images and view the information in the right pane |
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