The cloud cover cleared up just in time for this, and looking at next two days maybe cloudy/rainy. So just had to get out and set up the 500mm on the tripod.
1/10s, f/8, ISO 4000
If I do get a chance Tuesday, I will try changing those settings.
Samy, very cool photo of what appears to be a rocket launch. That must have been a monster rig you used.
James, very nice captures of the kitties. Great stuff that you were able to provide them with permanent shelter.
Sometimes, good fortune favors the foolish. No small thanks to Peter's informative post on page 1112, set out to hunt down the elusive 16/3.5 and it was in the house a few days later. It is a very late K serial that does not appear to have been used much. Awesome looking lens with spotless optics, silky smooth focus action and zero marks. I suspect it carries the Rafael seal of approval.
Took it for a spin last weekend and here are a couple from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Z7 + FTZ + Nikkor 300mm f/4.5K ai'd ED (non-IF) hand held, some 13m away; ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/800s; ~13% cropped (6/45MP), no flash used.
These white woodpeckers are crazy enough to feed on wasp nests (larvae, pupae and a little of the nest material together), so this male is bringing some of this kind of food to the nestlings.
Serge some of the folks have truly monster lenses like the 800mm (Jose, Rafael, some others). The 500mm F4 P ED AIS has its limits to what it can resolve. Here's a crop of just Saturn, at 1/500s. Did some up-res editing in Photoshop.
saph wrote:
Serge some of the folks have truly monster lenses like the 800mm (Jose, Rafael, some others). The 500mm F4 P ED AIS has its limits to what it can resolve. Here's a crop of just Saturn, at 1/500s. Did some up-res editing in Photoshop.
That sure looks like Saturn. I once had a decent telescope and did quite a bit of star and planet gazing. Amazing the velocity these celestial bodies travel when seen through magnification. It is a great and educational hobby that I miss.
SiMuMe wrote:
Very nice pictures of a beautiful cathedral, serge. The stars make it even more special.
Thank you, Siphiwe. The 16/3.5 s a very special lens that I should have picked up long ago. It produces the incredibly bright and sharp sun stars with super ease.
The great thing is that I can retake photos of most anything and it will have a totally different look. I think the lens opens great creative opportunities.
St. Patrick's is a beautiful and monster cathedral that very recently underwent a total restoration. The interior was much darker not long ago.
Serge, I got into photography as a side-product of an initial interest in astronomy. I have a Celestron telescope (not used for quite a long while now). Seeing some cool views (mostly the moon and planets, can't see too much else here with the light pollution) I was looking around for cameras to do astrophotography with, and ended up getting a Nikon D50 ~15 years ago. Somehow the telescope has languished since then while the camera gear has proliferated
And you are right, the more the magnification, the faster the objects move inside the frame.
Excellent church interiors Serge! Congrats on the 16 3.5! Its got quite a cult following here
Quite a few years ago I did a kind of a project for myself, getting appointments at various historic Baltimore churches to go in and do interior pictures. Mostly with the 14-24 AF-S for wide angle and some shots with the 135 f2 AI or 85 1.4 AIS for close ups of stained glass windows. Didn't really do anything with the pictures, they are just stored away somewhere, but it was fun nevertheless.
serge07 wrote:
Hi, everyone:
Samy, very cool photo of what appears to be a rocket launch. That must have been a monster rig you used.
James, very nice captures of the kitties. Great stuff that you were able to provide them with permanent shelter.
Sometimes, good fortune favors the foolish. No small thanks to Peter's informative post on page 1112, set out to hunt down the elusive 16/3.5 and it was in the house a few days later. It is a very late K serial that does not appear to have been used much. Awesome looking lens with spotless optics, silky smooth focus action and zero marks. I suspect it carries the Rafael seal of approval.
saph wrote:
Excellent church interiors Serge! Congrats on the 16 3.5! Its got quite a cult following here
Quite a few years ago I did a kind of a project for myself, getting appointments at various historic Baltimore churches to go in and do interior pictures. Mostly with the 14-24 AF-S for wide angle and some shots with the 135 f2 AI or 85 1.4 AIS for close ups of stained glass windows. Didn't really do anything with the pictures, they are just stored away somewhere, but it was fun nevertheless.
Thanks, Samy and can understand why it has a cult following. I was not sure it would be a good match for a crop sensor but Peter's photos with the D500 illustrated otherwise. I thought it would take weeks to source a great copy but there it was.
Back to telescopes, read a while back that high quality low powered scopes around 50x and less are best for star & planet gazing unless one lives far way from lights and pollution. Today, that probably means the top of a mountain. That makes perfect sense as it would reduce distortions from the atmosphere, pollution and movement of the objects.
You should check out your old photos of the Baltimore churches. You certainly used A+++ lenses so they should be excellent. I am looking forward to revisiting a few churches and cathedrals when all these darn travel restrictions and bans are lifted and put this new toy to good use.
Not the best shot, and not the best presentation, but after a very heavy workload these past few months, things slow down a little (at 45 hours/week now, until the end of the year). so I take some time to focus on the more important aspects of life.
Home baked bread, milling my own coffee beans. George, I could really do with some of your roasted beans over the holidays, but I settled for some nice Peru highland blend instead.
the solitaire wrote:
Joining in with the kitchen still lifes here.
Not the best shot, and not the best presentation, but after a very heavy workload these past few months, things slow down a little (at 45 hours/week now, until the end of the year). so I take some time to focus on the more important aspects of life.
Home baked bread, milling my own coffee beans. George, I could really do with some of your roasted beans over the holidays, but I settled for some nice Peru highland blend instead. ...Show more →
I love that shot! Can smell that bread now I like the looks of that grinder too.
I just got a batch of raw beans and will be roasting this week (have a break from work).
Christmas lights with a difference?
My son donated his 3 year old watercooled motherboard to me. It runs silently. Radiator and fans not shown in this shot.
I added a stick of NVMe to hold the O.S.
Sits in a perspex faced case. Probably more apt in a teenager's bedroom but now adorns my study.
Super responsive and much better than my 10 year old rig
The first photo I edited in LR just had to be of the psychedelic setup.
DeltaSigma wrote:
Christmas lights with a difference?
My son donated his 3 year old watercooled motherboard to me. It runs silently. Radiator and fans not shown in this shot.
I added a stick of NVMe to hold the O.S.
Sits in a perspex faced case. Probably more apt in a teenager's bedroom but now adorns my study.
Super responsive and much better than my 10 year old rig
The first photo I edited in LR just had to be of the psychedelic setup.
This is probably as far as one can get from a water cooled motherboard , Lincoln Square from yesterday.
Below ground is a very large subway station and used the opportunity to fill up the metro card.
This is the emptiest I have seen this place. The weekend before Christmas, this is specially one rocking busy area. For those not familiar, there is a huge Whole Foods down the escalator.
Fuji X-E1 + 16/3.5 which have decided not to return.
Take care,
Serge
gbohannon wrote:
Why did you show this?!! I haven't built a PC in years and don't want to fall down that rabbit hole again. (now googling watercooled motherboards)
Too good to waste. I would not go down this sort of route either but the it made sense to re-purpose the kit that was sitting idle. The silence is wonderful though.
I also treated myself to a 2TB NVMe to hold my photos. It will replace a 1TB hard drive that is destined to be a backup drive for the OS.
Alas, I am short of the M2 3.5mm screw to hold it in place so will have to wait for replacements to turn up in the post. (:
Where's McReagan? PC talk should bring him out of the shadows....
I have been re-organizing my photos, and I have run into major trouble with simply the size of my body of work. I always had a system saving just the imaged jpgs and raw (digital go back to 1994 or initial scans with film) then burning the leftovers to dvd. (hundreds if not thousands of them) until about 2005 (D2X added) then just tossing all the rejects, and hanging onto the keeper jpgs, raw, imaged on the hard drives. Well, there are almost 500,000 of them and only lightroom in windows seems able to cope with it. I really like Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Studio for an operating system (more than win10 or osx Catalina, and Aftershot pro 3, gthumb, digikam, Luminar, and openshot for linux or mac just cant handle it. I need some asset management software (preferably for linux) that works over a network. Back in the day Extensis Portfolio was the bomb, now they don't even publish a price..."request a demo" sounds a bit pricey. ACDSee was famous for how fast it could open jpgs...claim now that they are a great DAM? Canto basically admits the make the price up as they go along. None of these work in linux. Does anyone know of a linux DAM that works well, and can handle a very large database?
