Am I camera Crazy?

Mid February isn't supposed to be quite this cold.  Wow! This morning it was -12 F.
Yesterday it did warm up to about 10 degrees and if you could get out of the wind, it actually was pleasant.

I had put off my errands in town most of the week so yesterday I grabbed my list and went.

I really don't like going to town.  I especially dislike going on Saturdays.
But there you go, I really just ended up putting it off until I had no other choice.

However, I put my Olympus E 420 in a camera bag and brought it along.  Sometimes an opportunity will present itself and ... well, you never know.

Olympus E 420 kit lens

And it did!  I love this curve in the gravel road.  I wanted to explore some more, but there were chores to do when I got home.

Point and Shoot Fujifilm

And the road conditions on the ridge were getting a bit nasty.

Regarding my Olympus camera.  I do love it and it is generally my go to camera for hiking because it is a lightweight DSLR.  It isn't the tanks that the Nikons are.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Nikon and the Nikkor lenses.  But the Nikon D5200 is sort of a primadonna.

Apparently it doesn't like cold or damp ... or humid weather.

However it really loves doing Still Life photography!

Nikon D5200 with Nikkor 40mm micro lens

And I love doing this work with it.

So.
Naughty me.  I began to look into mirrorless cameras.

A few years ago I saw an ad for an Olympus OMD-D E-M5 Mirrorless camera.  A man sets the camera on a tripod and watches as a storm approaches.  Rain slashes the window he is standing by.  The camera is shown, water droplets are covering it.
Zoom into the back of the camera and live view. Lightening flashes and the man in the house uses his smart phone to remotely take a photo.

In 2012 this camera was $1,499.  Ouch, way beyond my reach.
Now the camera is being discontinued.  A new and improved model will take its place. The price was affordable even to me.

Kudos for Olympus.  Their mirrorless line will take all lenses from the previous DSLR's.  Nikon and other companies have all gone with special lenses.

The nice thing about the Oly lenses is that they are lightweight enough to work with a mirrorless camera.

Olympus E 420 kit lens

My Nikon weighs approximately 44 oz with a 'kit' lens. Generally I carry an extra lens with me while hiking.

The Olympus OMD-D E-M5 weighs 22 oz. with the M. Zuiko ED 12-50mm lens I ordered. 

Well there, the cat is out of the bag.

I am looking forward to hiking with the Oly.  I won't have to drag around a heavy weight tripod with it either, I can go for a lightweight one! 

I won't have to worry about snowfall getting the camera damp as it is weather sealed as is the lens.

Just color me happy.

My Nikon D40 is being retired.  I sent out an email to a friend who has kids who are interested in photography.

Nikon D40 free to good home.  It will get a good home and lots of use also.

Olympus E 420 kit zoom lens

I am looking forward to all sorts of great adventures and hiking with a lighter camera.

Now to figure out how to make these cameras earn their keep.

That is the hard one!

Oh and for those of you reading?  Happy Valentines Day...one day early!

Nikon D5200 50mm lens

Enjoy your Saturday.  It looks like mostly indoor work for me today.  

I like Ice!

I believe the temperature actually got to something like 8 degrees today.  So after finishing up with the farm chores I decided to grab the snow shoes and trek down to the creek.

Once down there I wandered around looking to see what sort of changes had occurred since my last visit.

The ice wall was incredible.  

Water seeps out of the limestone bank and slowly freezes in beautiful formations alongside the creek.
This is one of my favorite places to try and get some neat shots of ice.
Yeah.
I like ice.

Not the kind on the road that makes your car slip ice, cool ice shapes...ice.

 

The water was flowing fairly well IN the creek but frozen over in other places.


I set the snow shoes up against a tree and set up the tripod in the creek itself.
After about 40 minutes of messing around in the creek I noticed that my fingers were getting rather annoyingly cold.
So were my feet.
Obviously I was standing still for too long.

I picked up the snow shoes and hurriedly packed up the cameras putting them carefully away in the backpack and started hiking quickly along the creek bottom.

When I hit the trail that leads up and out of the valley, I stopped to put on the snow shoes.  

Half way back to the ridge my fingers got warmed up and so did the toes.

I was anxious to see how some of my shots of the creek turned out.

Sad to say that I reviewed them and didn't care for them at all.

But the ice shots took the day and made it worth half frozen fingers and toes.


If the temps EVER get back above 10 degrees, I'm going to hike back to the ice cave.

Tomorrow?  The high of 4?

Shot from about 3 years ago of the 'ice cave'.

 


Nope, doesn't look like I'll be taking my more sensitive equipment out.
But I could still go exploring in the valley out of the wind.

Or I could try some still life shots.
 

What kind of camera do you have?

I'm often asked this question.

So I thought I'd explain what I do have and what I carry with me most every time I step out of the door.

I have a plastic Sanyo P&S camera that I picked up at a Big Box store because I needed a carry along that I could stick in my pocket and it would not be a big deal to lose it...not much $ to replace it.

I have an old Pentax Optio W60, which is one of my favorites.  You can take it out on rainy days, freezing temps, drop it in the creek, drop it off a mule...and it won't bust up.  I have sent it in once for repairs.  This little gem takes fantastic macro shots.  Think fungi!  It also fits in the breast pocket of a shirt or cargo pants pocket.

Yes.
I have DSLR's.  I have a nice Olypmus E420 that I picked up for a steal as Olympus was discontinuing that model.  I find it nice and lightweight compared to the Nikon D40 or my newer Nikon 3100.

These cameras don't go with me unless I am really out hunting photos.  And even then I carry a pocket camera and generally my FujiFinePix HS30EXR.
This camera can go from ultra zoon to a 1cm macro in no time.  No lens changing in the field!  
It isn't THE best camera of its kind, but it suits my purpose.  I think some other brands would take 'better' photos, but this one had the super macro feature which is something I really wanted.

 

I can go from this shot of the acorn above to this shot of a mule below in just a few seconds.

 

 

Sometimes the photos are a bit 'noisy' and sometimes the colors may be a bit off.  But any camera will do that to you.

I've had the Fuji for just about a year now and I've taken 4,700 photos with it.
Not all were fantastic, not all were winners.
But compared to my other cameras, this one goes with me everywhere as it is the most useful to me.

It doesn't do well in low light though, thought I'd add that.
But you can compensate with a light tripod and a lower ISO.

Well off to run some errands and then if the rain lets up, I think I'll take out my camera bag and see what goodies I can find.

 

Comparing Cameras and more snow melt!

I hope Neal who left a comment can see this or will read this.  He asked a question regarding the FujiFilm HS30.

This shot was done with the FujiFilm FinePix 30EXR.
I used a ND Filter X4 with a ND Filter .6 added.
Here are the settings:
Exposure:     1/10 of a second
Aperture:       f/11
Focal length: 38.33
ISO:                200 could have gone with 100
I used a tripod with a the delay option to avoid camera shake.

Here is somewhat the same shot with a Nikon D40 using a telephoto lens and a ND filter 1000X which means the filter is black and hard to see through, allowing for much longer exposures in bright sunlight.

The colors are different because of course the cameras are different.  I left the tripod in the same place.
Here are the settings for this shot:
Exposure:     13 seconds 
Aperture:       f/25
Focal length: 200mm
ISO:               200 
The Nikon D40 does not go below 200 ISO and I took the zoom to its highest level.
I have a remote for this camera so I used that.

Both shots were shot in their RAW format and processed with the software that came with the cameras.
I then used Adobe Elements 5 to process them.   

The next two shots come from my Nikon D3100, the camera is faster and has more focal points than the D40.
The first shot was shot in Program Auto.

  
You can see the movement in the water here.
Exposure:      1/100th of a second
Aperture:        f/5
Focal length:  55mm 
ISO:                 100

Same place now with a ND .6 filter.  The day was heavily overcast so I didn't need much of a ND filter to help slow down the exposure.

Exposure:      1/6th of a second
Aperture:       f/22
Focal length: 55mm
ISO:                100
I left the lens at the same spot and just added the filter.  I tried to get the very same shot, but inadvertently moved the tripod while putting on the filter.

Lastly, for those who enjoy not only photos but videos, I brought along a Point of View video camera called the Drift.  It can be attached to a car, or a helmet.  In this case I carried it and was able to catch yet another small 'flash flood'.

The video was compiled in Windows Live Movie Maker which is not very difficult to do and is fun.
   

Baby, it is COLD out there!

It was cold.  I mean really cold!
Okay it wasn't 20 below zero cold, but the air was damp and the winds blew down the valley length making it 'feel' quite cold.

My goal for the morning was to go to the big spring on the eastern end of the valley.  Walking with my back to the wind was no problem.  The snow was getting soft where the sun hit and it was hard where it was in the shadow of the hills and trees.

 
This made the footing a bit more interesting than usual.
I'd debated taking my snow shoes, but had planned on getting down in the creek to get some shots of flowing water, ice, frost, and anything else that caught my eye.

I did notice some small brown trout flitting about in the deep still part of the creek.  That did make me smile.
When I got to the big spring, I was slightly disappointed.  

One, my feet were cold, but two...the sun was shining down on the spring area and there was no heavy frost build up.  I would have to come back on a much colder day either when it was overcast or when it was late afternoon to catch the frost build up on the rocks from the warm spring waters.

No matter I still had other goals and one of those goals was to set up a tripod and use a slow shutter speed to capture some flowing water.  I used my small tripod that I'd gotten at Cabelas in the hunting equipment section. It served well for a camera tripod.  It was heavy duty and close to the ground.

I switched over to the south side of the valley to try and use the sunlight to warm up a bit and dropped into the creek to get out of the wind.  I could pick my way delicately over rocks being careful not to get into deep water.

The sun warmed me up and being out of the wind really helped quite a bit.  Although heading home I'd be hiking straight into it.

I finally found a spot that might work and spent the next several minutes figuring out what exactly I wanted to do.
 

Really ... I have no idea how long I spent setting up the tripod, kneeling in the snow and looking through the view finder...taking shots...shaking my head...taking another....blowing out air in frustration...taking another...moving the tripod...trying a different camera...attaching an ND filter...and so on and so on...twisting into a pretzel so I could see through the viewfinder...accidentally leaning over and putting my hand in the creek...wondering what drove me to do this...and then...

I got this...

Then I wrapped it up and decided I'd gotten what I'd come for.

RAW and JPEG

For many years I resisted shooting in RAW format.  I argued that it took too much time, too much space, and too much energy.
Anyone could shoot .jpeg and make it look good.

Then I ran into an issue with the color of snow during the winter.  And believe me, winter is my favorite time to be out with any camera.

I added Topaz Plug-ins to my Adobe Elements 5 and Photoshop 7.0 [very old versions].

I was able to transform this .jpeg blue cast snowy scene from this:

To this:

I thought it was good, but unless I went to black and white I had a hard time of getting rid of the blue tinge.
I used to argue that it just made the scene colder looking.  But the snow and sunlight was fooling my camera.

I knew that from somewhere back ages ago when my dad was helping me with photography.  He didn't have the benefit of digital and the aid of a 'digital darkroom'.  
After reading this  article by PCWorld regarding 5 tips for shooting in the Winter, I decided to switch my cameras over to RAW+JPEG mode.  This way I could compare shots.

Now don't get me wrong.  I also love my little point and shoot cameras.  They are easy to carry around and sometimes you can be extremely surprised by getting it right with one of those.  Here is a shot from my cheapo Sanyo Pink Fugly camera.

Anyway I'm going to use the very same shot and show samples of different processing.  I used the Fuji Film Fine Pix HS 30 EXR for this shot.  I shot it in RAW+JPEG.  I 'developed' the RAW shot in software that came with the camera.

There are may arguments for buying and using Adobe Light Room, but I haven't tried it yet.  I've been told once I try the trial version ... I'll just have to have it.

Here is the .jpeg shot:

Pretty, but the color is quite blue-grey.  The only way to fix this would be to convert to black and white.

Here is the .RAW shot converted to a .TIFF, then saved to a .jpeg for this post:

Pretty nice right?  But the snow looks flat to me.  And I'm not known for leaving things just as is so I monkeyed with it the Topaz Plug in called Adjust 5.


Here is the shot after Adjust 5:

Nice, but let's try something else.  Lets use a 'fake' HDR process and run it through a program called
Dynamic Photo HDR.

Here is is with Dynamic Photo HDR single image processing:

I think the shot shot and processed in the RAW format made my life a lot easier.  I didn't have to work so hard on the shot to remove the blue cast and bring the brightness to the correct level.

I could have worked hard in Elements to achieve what I did in minutes to get that first shot.

I also like what was done with it in Topaz and in DP HDR.  But that is just my personal opinion.  The shot I developed from RAW was correct, but I like a bit more 'oomph' to my snow scene and reflections.

I did some test shots using the Nikon D3100 and the jpeg's nearly turned out as correct as the RAW shots.  The Nikon D40 gets a nod from using RAW and after going out for a bit today, we'll see if I can get rid of that 'fantasy' blue with the Olympus E-420.  [That is the first shot that is shown on this post.]