100% Crops and a Video

Last Saturday I walked up along the old Champlain Canal trail North of Waterford with my 100mm macro lens. While I did get some decent closeups of wildflowers, I can't resist taking snaps of wildlife even when the gear isn't ideal.

Here a couple of images showing the view from the camera along with 100% crops.

Earlier this Spring "they" dug a drainage ditch along the trail to channel water from the old canal and keep the water away from the trail. Along this ditch tiny rivulets of water pour into the ditch from the larger swampy area at various points along the trail. At one spot there is a nice vantage point through the grasses and cattails. Here is a five second video of that spot. I'd like to get back there with a tripod and make some longer videos.

Catching Up

Since the last blog I've been doing more party preparing than shooting. But I've a sunset, a party picture and some canal scenics from this morning. Just to keep the timeline moving.

Vertical Vistas

I opted for the five mile version of my morning walk today for the first time since last Fall. This brings me further into the city of Cohoes and through a different part of the canal trail in Northside, Waterford. I even carried the 4.2 pound combination of 5D Mark III and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.

I've chosen to share a few vertical scenics I made along the way. These are multi file HDR processed images but I tried to keep them natural looking as opposed to some of the more processed images I tend to like. Captions indicate focal length and exposure information for the normally exposed file.

This first shot is of what is called the first branch of the Mohawk River as it passes through the city of Cohoes. There are four branches which eventually result in three outlets into the Hudson River. Two on either side of Peebles Island to the North of Van Schaick Island and one to the South of Van Schaick Island. I cropped this to a 3x4 aspect ratio because in order to get a decent amount of the foreground I needed to include far too much of a bland sky.

24mm, f/6.6, 1/350 sec., ISO 200

This next shot is almost in the same location but facing South West instead of North. The church is St. Peter and St. Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church established in 1907.

70mm, f/5.6, 1/300 sec., ISO 200

This final shot is along the canal path in Waterford showing a pond like area of the canal with houses along route 32 in the background.

50mm, f/5.6, 1/500 sec., ISO 100

Handheld HDR Sunset

Even though my favorite location to shoot sunsets is only a few blocks from my home, at a boat launch on the Hudson River, it's necessary to head out before the sky looks really nice in order to be able to make photographs when it does get nice.

Usually I make my decision about whether to head down to the river on what the cloud situation is. The clouds looked promising last evening so I headed down around 7:45 PM, with actual sunset scheduled for around 8:30 PM.

Decent colors only began showing after the sun disappeared behind distant clouds. Here are four images which were all made with five bracketed exposures merged in Photomatix Pro. All were made with my Canon 5D Mark III and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.

Captions include time, focal length and exposure information for the normally exposed fine.

8:02 PM, 30mm, f/11, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

8:13 PM, 28mm, f/8, 1/750 sec., ISO 400

8:18 PM, 38mm, f/5.6, 1/500 sec., ISO 400

8:21 PM, 35mm, f/6.7, 1/350 sec., ISO 400

Waterford Harbor Scenics

This early morning was hazy and cloudy with some sun breaking out occasionally through the haze. I have room in the bag I'm using these days for either my 2X extender or my 40mm pancake and 50mm STM lenses and I've been switching back and forth, at least until I sell the extender.

This morning I was using the 50mm f/1.8 STM lens for my morning walk. This is Canon's cheapest lens at $126 new and yet it is a modern design which came out about a year ago.

These are all HDR processed files using Photomatix Pro which I'm getting used to. Exposure information is for the normally exposed file.

f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 200

f/5.6, 1/125 sec., ISO 200

f/5.6, 1/125 sec., ISO 200

f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

School Play Shoot

Last evening was the final dress rehearsal for a school performance of "A Murder is Announced." I've uploaded a gallery of images from the rehearsal to http://trulandphoto.zenfolio.com/murder.

I've shot several plays in the same auditorium so I know what settings to start out with. The only variables being what lighting is used in the various scenes. An aperture of f/2.8 and ISO 3200 seems to work well for all but the darkest scenes. Here are a couple of shots followed by an embedded slide show.

Something different this time was that instead of using off camera flash and a reflector for head shots we simply used a single spotlight against the closed stage curtain. Much quicker and easier and I like the results.

The total time required for shooting the over four hundred original images, editing and processing the best ones and uploading them to zenfolio was between nine and ten hours. With about five hours of sleep wedged in the middle.