Terrific collection of wildlife with the D300/800 5.6!
jamesdak wrote:
A few more from the old setup. Colors and contrast were a bit "dead" on the RAW files of the two fox images. I struggle to get them looking real in post process. Yet other shots from this D300 & 800/5.6 are vivid.
This one was shot at a campground east of Yellowstone. Black clouds overhead and I was balancing between a high enough ISO and fast enough shutter speed. Well, usually around 1/250 so not really fast enough. I was tripod mounted but working fast before the sky opened up.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922317.jpg
Then these were at a den in the little mountain valley of northern Utah I live at. One of many den sites lost to overdevelopment up here.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922407.jpg
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922404.jpg
The bear was at Yellowstone in the Tower area. I worked him in the woods resting the beast of a lens again trees if I remember correctly. He was on the move so no chance for the tripod.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922367.jpg
Found a pair of young amorous Grizzlies up in Glacier years back. It was June and they were fresh out of the den, skinny and scruffy. If I remember correctly I shot them multiple times over a 3 day period as they stayed around the one meadow. A little tricky because there were a lot of low spots in the meadow. So you'd think it was safe to walk in looking for them only to have one pop up nearby from the low spot they were resting in.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922363.jpg
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922366.jpg
Shot these Swallow shots in the rain one day.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922449.jpg
Finding the one above reminded me that my all time favorite swallow shot was taken with this same setup.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/112201427.jpg
And there's a ton of Eagle shots from this period also.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922458.jpg
And one final shot from a little cutie. These guys never hold still so shooting them with a long manual focus lens can test your patience, !.
James Markus wrote:
High iso film by Rollei (Paul & Reinhold) 100th year anniversary developed in a new to me method called "stand development" N90S with the 85mm f1.4 ais and the modified tc16a.
Really like the grain on this file! I just read up about it, it has good reviews. Haha I am not sure I have the patience for stand development
A few more from the old setup. Colors and contrast were a bit "dead" on the RAW files of the two fox images. I struggle to get them looking real in post process. Yet other shots from this D300 & 800/5.6 are vivid.
This one was shot at a campground east of Yellowstone. Black clouds overhead and I was balancing between a high enough ISO and fast enough shutter speed. Well, usually around 1/250 so not really fast enough. I was tripod mounted but working fast before the sky opened up.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922317.jpg
Then these were at a den in the little mountain valley of northern Utah I live at. One of many den sites lost to overdevelopment up here.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922407.jpg
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922404.jpg
The bear was at Yellowstone in the Tower area. I worked him in the woods resting the beast of a lens again trees if I remember correctly. He was on the move so no chance for the tripod.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922367.jpg
Found a pair of young amorous Grizzlies up in Glacier years back. It was June and they were fresh out of the den, skinny and scruffy. If I remember correctly I shot them multiple times over a 3 day period as they stayed around the one meadow. A little tricky because there were a lot of low spots in the meadow. So you'd think it was safe to walk in looking for them only to have one pop up nearby from the low spot they were resting in.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922363.jpg
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922366.jpg
Shot these Swallow shots in the rain one day.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922449.jpg
Finding the one above reminded me that my all time favorite swallow shot was taken with this same setup.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/112201427.jpg
And there's a ton of Eagle shots from this period also.
https://pbase.com/jhuddle/image/175922458.jpg
And one final shot from a little cutie. These guys never hold still so shooting them with a long manual focus lens can test your patience, !.
That's some great work with the 800mm. MF on a swallow nonetheless, and the bear pics are great Jim!
---------------------------------------------
James Markus wrote:
High iso film by Rollei (Paul & Reinhold) 100th year anniversary developed in a new to me method called "stand development" N90S with the 85mm f1.4 ais and the modified tc16a.
Meanwhile, this Jim is busy sniffing on chemicals to delight us with another processing find!
Still learning the Zr. Controls are very different from any Nikon DSLR or mirrorless I have used. Video is a whole new learning curve for me. Still figuring out how to work raw video files.
The Zr is intriguing. Larger, brighter VF, and larger battery, almost like a supercharged Z30 but FF and with a much larger capacity battery. Waiting on more reporting from you Samy. Good to see you post again.
Sky started to look interesting as I was backing out of the garage this morning, so made an unplanned stop. Glad I did. Four shot HDR stack in LR, with "Auto Settings" on in the HDR dialog box. I think auto is too classic HDRish, but feel free to comment, interested in feedback from this group. 24mm f2.8 AIS.
Glad you made that unplanned stop! I really like this Ray
pbraymond wrote:
Sky started to look interesting as I was backing out of the garage this morning, so made an unplanned stop. Glad I did. Four shot HDR stack in LR, with "Auto Settings" on in the HDR dialog box. I think auto is too classic HDRish, but feel free to comment, interested in feedback from this group. 24mm f2.8 AIS. https://www.pbraymond.com/img/s/v-10/p1178872502-6.jpg
pbraymond wrote:
Meanwhile, this Jim is busy sniffing on chemicals to delight us with another processing find!
Ray, I couldn't smell anything. In fact, it didn't look like any chemicals at all - just plain water. I had to make a 1:100 dilution of Rodinal. Less than a tablespoon into a quart of water. (10ml into 990ml). There are people that even do 1:200 dilutions. It seems that about the time I left film behind someone came up with the process.
saph wrote:
Really like the grain on this file! I just read up about it, it has good reviews. Haha I am not sure I have the patience for stand development
Samy, Have you ever tried the NYT's "No Knead Bread"? You dump everything into a cast iron pot - stir it up, wait, bake and you get an amazing cob of delicious crusty bread. Stand development is simple. Pour the developer in the tank, agitate for 10 seconds, come back in 30 minutes and invert the tank twice, and go away for another 30 minutes. To say I was skeptical is an understatement, but it produces that lovely grain, and the smoothest gradient transitions + subdued contrast I have ever seen.
pbraymond wrote:
Sky started to look interesting as I was backing out of the garage this morning, so made an unplanned stop. Glad I did. Four shot HDR stack in LR, with "Auto Settings" on in the HDR dialog box. I think auto is too classic HDRish, but feel free to comment, interested in feedback from this group. 24mm f2.8 AIS. https://www.pbraymond.com/img/s/v-10/p1178872502-6.jpg
pbraymond wrote:
Sky started to look interesting as I was backing out of the garage this morning,... I think auto is too classic HDRish, but feel free to comment, interested in feedback from this group. 24mm f2.8 AIS. https://www.pbraymond.com/img/s/v-10/p1178872502-6.jpg
I wouldn't know what "classic HDR" looks like. In fact, I'm not really sure what that picture looks like because my two monitors are so different. (I could tweak one but the laptop has no obvious monitor controls.) That being said...
Lot of color and a lot of subtlety. Great picture!
James Markus wrote:
... but thought i would mention OBS and Divinci as excellent free solutions.
[Caution: Nothing in this note is about MFNG. Sorry.]
I have used both OBS and DaVinci Resolve for producing a few concert videos shot with various videocams. OBS (Open Broadcast Studio) is good for interactive live recording but was intended for live broadcast. With multiple cameras it can record multiple video tracks for you to work with. It has some zoom and pan features.
Resolve is versatile, especially with transition effects and track mixing, but can be frustrating. An hour-long, multi-track concert is demanding on the computer's memory. On my Win10 laptop for the first production, a Covid-induced backyard concert, it ran okay but after a version upgrade it ran with fits and starts. On Win11 it ran worse, usable on my laptop but requiring lots of patience and re-checking. Under Win10 and 11 some operations caused unexpected time shifts for some tracks that I had to re-sync, time-consuming when playback was so uneven. (I wrote to Blackmagicdesign about it, not asking for support but just informing them of a problem. I got a response that since it wasn't a paid-for product they wouldn't provide support. Okay...) It also had issues syncing audio to video. I wish I could run it under Mint Linux. IIRC it has to run under Wine because there is no Linux version. However that had some fatal issue, maybe because it is 64-bit. I gave up, would like to find an alternative.
More frustratingly and not the fault of Resolve, audio/video sync would be unpredictable in the final product depending on what player is used to watch it. I tried more a dozen different production codecs and settings combinations but none produced a result consistent across different players. I really don't know video file structure and I never found a solution. Streaming such as from YouTube would be handled differently than how an mpg4 (or mov or avi or wmv) is played. I could burn it to a writable DVD but that's not a good distribution method for most cases.
That's been my experience. Good enough for amateur production. Frustrating and a huge time-sink. To produce high quality video I would need to buy hardware. Ain't gonna' happen in the near future. But it's better than nuthin'.
Now back to your regularly scheduled MFNG discussion.
jimmuller wrote:
[Caution: Nothing in this note is about MFNG. Sorry.]
I have used both OBS and DaVinci Resolve for producing a few concert videos shot with various videocams. OBS (Open Broadcast Studio) is good for interactive live recording but was intended for live broadcast. With multiple cameras it can record multiple video tracks for you to work with. It has some zoom and pan features.
Resolve is versatile, especially with transition effects and track mixing, but can be frustrating. An hour-long, multi-track concert is demanding on the computer's memory. On my Win10 laptop for the first production, a Covid-induced backyard concert, it ran okay but after a version upgrade it ran with fits and starts. On Win11 it ran worse, usable on my laptop but requiring lots of patience and re-checking. Under Win10 and 11 some operations caused unexpected time shifts for some tracks that I had to re-sync, time-consuming when playback was so uneven. (I wrote to Blackmagicdesign about it, not asking for support but just informing them of a problem. I got a response that since it wasn't a paid-for product they wouldn't provide support. Okay...) It also had issues syncing audio to video. I wish I could run it under Mint Linux. IIRC it has to run under Wine because there is no Linux version. However that had some fatal issue, maybe because it is 64-bit. I gave up, would like to find an alternative.
More frustratingly and not the fault of Resolve, audio/video sync would be unpredictable in the final product depending on what player is used to watch it. I tried more a dozen different production codecs and settings combinations but none produced a result consistent across different players. I really don't know video file structure and I never found a solution. Streaming such as from YouTube would be handled differently than how an mpg4 (or mov or avi or wmv) is played. I could burn it to a writable DVD but that's not a good distribution method for most cases.
That's been my experience. Good enough for amateur production. Frustrating and a huge time-sink. To produce high quality video I would need to buy hardware. Ain't gonna' happen in the near future. But it's better than nuthin'.
Now back to your regularly scheduled MFNG discussion. ...Show more →
You may want to look into Ubuntu Studio - a linux distribution that is specifically made for audio, video, vector and bitmap graphics, and any creative venture. It has been around for a long time, and recently moved from a Gnome based desktop to Fusion. My video/audio workflow dates from the 1990s using vintage container file formats, PCI cards, and time - lots of time. Currently MP4, MKV are all I need, and long gone are the hacked MS avi video codec, and variants.(xvid, etc)
Today's activity was an awesome November walk through Assabet River NWR. Not much bird activity but the light was interesting. I carried only two lenses today.
I did no color treatment on this. Just turned around on the trail and saw this, had to take a shot.
200mm f/4
Jim, what version of the 35 2,8 are you using? I am struggling finding a 28 and 35mm Nikon manual lens that would best for landscapes a mere AF 28 80 3,3 5,6 G.
lumenspixel wrote:
Jim, what version of the 35 2,8 are you using? I am struggling finding a 28 and 35mm Nikon manual lens that would best for landscapes a mere AF 28 80 3,3 5,6 G.
I bought the camera in '72 or '73, probably 73. The 35mm was the second extra lens I bought, probably '74. By its serial number it had been manufactured 10 years earlier. I had found that it wasn't short enough to be a true wide-angle, but with my new Z5-II it makes a good alternative when I'm carrying my 200mm. I can usually crop a shot to make it more like a 50 or 55.
I bought the camera in '72 or '73, probably 73. The 35mm was the second extra lens I bought, probably '74. By its serial number it had been manufactured 10 years earlier. I had found that it wasn't short enough to be a true wide-angle, but with my new Z5-II it makes a good alternative when I'm carrying my 200mm. I can usually crop a shot to make it more like a 50 or 55.
So if I understand it is a pre K version so a 7 elements lens.I own the K 6 elements version and the AIS 5 elements and consider the K a better lens but I need to close the iris to f6,7 for landscape use. And this only to equal the performance of the plastic zoom at F5,6. So if the previous computation has any chances to be a better lens I might chase for one.
lumenspixel wrote:
So if I understand it is a pre K version so a 7 elements lens.
Well, if it helps any, the database lists it as type F though the F description in http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/lenstype.html doesn't hit everything right. SN 187117. Front lens reflection is pink, rear reflection is more like light purple. No screws in the rear mounting plate. Range marked in feet. Focus and f rings black plastic, the rest soft-finish metal that looks like aluminum but might not be. The name says NIKKOR-S. I have no idea how many elements it has. - [Edit] Various online references say it should be 7 elements, 2nd generation 35mm f/2.8. I've had no reason to question its quality but I've never pushed it very hard.
jimmuller wrote:
Well, if it helps any, the database lists it as type F though the F description in http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/lenstype.html doesn't hit everything right. SN 187117. Front lens reflection is pink, rear reflection is more like light purple. No screws in the rear mounting plate. Range marked in feet. Focus and f rings black plastic, the rest soft-finish metal that looks like aluminum but might mot be. The name says NIKKOR-S. I have no idea how many elements it has. - [Edit] Various online references say it should be 7 elements, 2nd generation 35mm f/2.8. I've had no reason to question its quality but I've never pushed it very hard....Show more →
Many thanks. If you consider it sharp to the borders prior f6,7 that triggers my attention.
lumenspixel wrote:
Many thanks. If you consider it sharp to the borders prior f6,7 that triggers my attention.
Like I said, I've never tried to push it, never worried about it though nothing ever jumped out at me. I can do some tests. I can't guarantee I'll learn anything though!
!. 
