Last night
Tag: landscape
The answer is …
(The question was: is the Canon 1Ds good for landscape pictures? Camera Decision said “no”, but this is the result I got with a little practice & effort.)
More landscape trials
Canon 1Ds evaluation continues. First two with the 50mm Super Takumar, second two with the 135mm Vivitar (which is not as sharp but is no slouch either).
Landscape trial
Camera Decision says the Canon 1Ds is no good for landscape photography. Their complaints are a lack of live view and low resolution sensor. Naturally I had to give it a try.
These were all taken with the 40mm EF lens, which is fairly sharp but not as good as the old Takumars.
What I found: There’s dirt on the sensor again! Yes, a higher resolution sensor would enhance landscape scenes and a live view LCD would be helpful for framing/composing. I would not call it a failure, though.
I intend to try some more shots, using the 50mm Super Takumar, when I can get to it. Once again the weather is about to turn on me and I’ve got about one more good day which I will use up getting a little work done around here.
6 with the 35
Struggling to find anything like light around here lately, but at least I did clean the sensor on the Canon 1Ds! These were taken with that camera on manual, using the 35mm f2 Super Takumar.
Okay the landscapes themselves aren’t very good pictures, but there’s nothing wrong with how the camera captures them.
That’s a segment of the full-size image of the berry, by the way. So much for the “11MP is very low resolution” crowd.
Next for this camera I will try the 28mm f3.5 Super Takumar. I am debating buying additional lenses for this camera because I’ve come across a deal on a couple, and I find I like the camera fairly much – aside from the absolutely idiotic controls arrangement. No photographer was consulted on the layout of them, obviously.
I will be ordering a larger CF card because this “ten picture limit” is driving me nuts. I can’t really go out in the field and shoot a “whole roll of film” because of the storage limitations.
Not possible to get out to the cabin yet as snow and ice is still all around and keeps coming back. I have q few pictures taken with the Nikon P610 to share, and a photo shoot ‘job’ to do this week. Who knows; maybe the sun will shine long enough to capture it.
More on a Monday
Well it’s been a couple of weeks worth of “just get through today” living. Nothing much going right in all that time, and the details are boring so you will be spared them.
We had sunshine on Friday. We had sunshine on Sunday. Yes, it’s so bad that any sunny day sticks in the memory. The rest have been just awful. So I took advantage of the sun (and cold: clear skies let all the heat escape) and took a few photos. Nothing much. I used the old Kodak P850, just for fun.
The Master Plan isn’t advancing either. This is due to a lack of co-operation from the world at large. Such as refusing to sell me a Canon 5D at a reasonable price. I keep watching the Ebay auctions, and noticing the trickery, and … nothing. Seriously; if I want to pay that much I can just buy one from a camera store. Beware on-line auctions, folks: there’s some nasty crookedness happening there. It doesn’t help that even when the offer is legitimate bringing the item into Canada (as there’s almost nothing offered here) ramps the price up by expensive shipping and import fees. You can usually bet on seeing another $75 disappear for those, whereas state-side shipping would be $20. Consider also that despite a slight improvement in the exchange rate our dollar is still around 77% of the US$. It’s fun living in this country, but expensive.
Right now I’m waiting for a couple of items I bought to show up. One has nothing to do with The Plan, and the other is an offshoot of it. Waiting. *Drums fingers on table* How far is it from Canada to Canada anyway? (Yes, I bought within the country to try things out. I’m not going to make my first purchase from Albania or anything like that.)
So I’m bored right now, and that’s not a good thing.
Anyway, here are the Kodak picture picks.
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s strange because our airports are basically shut down, yet I keep seeing jets overhead.
When I’m at the cabin the view overhead is a bit different:
Of course we get water traffic as well:
In the woods you can hear lots of birds, but you usually can’t see them. Here’s one I did see:
I got some work done while I was there, but didn’t quite finish the job. Oh well, at least the scenery is nice:
An old test of an old camera
One of the batches of slides I came across is labeled “Exa I test”. The Exa I was an Exacta ‘cousin’; a much simpler SLR that used the same lens mount and finders but had only a four speed ‘guillotine’ shutter. It was quiet as a mouse, and thus that was the nickname it earned. The one I had came with a Meyer-Gorlitz Primotar 50mm f3.5 lens, which is most likely what the test roll was shot with. Primotar was Meyer’s version of the Zeiss Biotar lens, the name being a portmanteau of “Primoplan” (their best lens) and “Biotar”.
The film itself is Kodachrome 64, and it hasn’t held up well over the years. It’s gone dark and contrast-y with a decided colour shift towards blue (a trait usually seen in Ektachrome) and some significant ‘blowout’ in the highlights – despite genuine Kodak processing. With some careful post-scan reworking I managed to get some images, but they don’t really do the camera justice. No doubt I used a light meter for these, but I had so many of them there’s no way to tell which one.
I probably should have kept that camera just to have it, but as with so many others …
C’est la vie.
Letchworth State Park, NY
Some more from the archives. These prints date back to the 1970s, and I’m pretty sure they were a test roll for some camera judging by the questionable quality.
Letchworth is known as “The Grand Canyon of The East” and it deserves the title. There’s quite a few features to it, including a bat cave you’re not allowed near. Oh well you can at least enjoy the park, the Glenn Iris Inn, and the three waterfalls. There’s also a dam, but I’ve no pictures of that in this batch.
The railroad bridge across the upper falls. This iron work structure replaced a wooden one which burned down over a century ago. I understand this one has been torn down as well, but I don’t know if it’s been replaced. I’ve stood on this bridge and taken pictures out across the Genesee river, even while a train passed. Beside it there was a set of decayed wooden steps that led all the way down to the towpath of the old Genesee Canal, which was abandoned almost as soon as it had been built.
Pretty sure this is the Lower Falls. Possibly the Middle Falls which is behind the Inn. My memory isn’t what it was.
A splash of one of the many small rivulets that feed the river from the hills beside it.
The park was one of Dad’s and my favourite places for trying out cameras. Not only did it offer the familiarity of views for comparative purposes, but the scenery is fantastic all on its own. It would be a shame if these were the only remaining images of it from all that we’d shot there over the years.
Elysium Fields
Some more old prints I found. The pictures were taken in Perry, Upstate New York, and are at least 25 years old. Beyond that I don’t know the exact location, date, or what camera and film were used. They had suffered a bit from the passing years, so I cleaned up the worst of the damage after scanning. But not too much because I don’t want to lose the “old film look”.
It’s kind of fun finding the old photos, but it emphasizes the overwhelming number that have gone missing and makes me wish all the more that they hadn’t. There may have been some great pictures in there.
I’ve found more prints, slides, and negatives to scan and will be doing so as there’s not much chance of taking new pictures under the current circumstances. I did not find what I was looking for, of course!
Wandering Words 