Superb fishy-eye landscapes. You really know how to work that lens.
I have recently been watching Youtube videos by a Landsape photographer called Thomas Heaton.
He hails from Northern England (Ben will love the accent) and only recently gave up his day job to became a full time landscape photographer, vlogger and workshop presenter. He has a down to earth attitude and his use of drone footage adds to the quality of his videos. Thought the link might be of interest to some.
(p.s. I am not affiliated with this guy. I admire his courage to turn his passion into a profession.)
Thanks!
Because it was a 12 mile round trip day I just took the 16/3.5 Nikkor, 35/2.8 Sony, and 85/4 Zeiss (+A7RII) - a relatively light weight setup, thus a lot of wide angle images with the 16/3.5 'cause I had nothing else for wide shots.
Oosty wrote:
As was the case with Knysna, Cape St Francis, 110 miles East of Knysna was affected by fire on the same day. Acres of coastal scrub were decimated but with no loss of homes. 4 months later nature has shown her mettle and millions of wild flowers have bloomed.
We were lucky enough to be there this weekend.
Peter, that first shot really is gorgeous ! Liked the whole series too!
MarkA
asiostygius wrote:
Lichen captured by a 4 shots focus stacked image:
Colin, the Manor series is superb. I wonder, no interior shots?
Mark, good anticipation on the HDR series, not a big fan. ANy chance to see a couple of those more conventionally processed? I like the sweeping panoramas, esp the third image in, and you had great clouds.
A few days behind, Scott, but Letchworth is worth looking at again. The train adds just the right touch. Like the AF shots too.
Movie star horses, hmm, must be a thing. Nice portraits.
Acres of felicia filifolia is just amazing, Peter. Hope they last for a long while.
pbraymond wrote:
Colin, the Manor series is superb. I wonder, no interior shots?
Mark, good anticipation on the HDR series, not a big fan. ANy chance to see a couple of those more conventionally processed? I like the sweeping panoramas, esp the third image in, and you had great clouds.
A few days behind, Scott, but Letchworth is worth looking at again. The train adds just the right touch. Like the AF shots too.
Movie star horses, hmm, must be a thing. Nice portraits.
Acres of felicia filifolia is just amazing, Peter. Hope they last for a long while.
Hi Ray, here are 4 lightly processed, just for fun, they are big so you can look at them 100% and see lots of detail. 1000 High by X wide.
Meanwhile, here some more coffee related pictures, the DF with the 55 1.2 SC, what an awesome lens! I believe I like it a lot more than the 55 F/1.2 Ais.
This series of pictures will come in two parts as not to have too many in one post.
These are related to roasting coffee at home. This is certainly one hobby I have managed to keep affordable and the reward has forever made me a coffee snob for fresh roast coffee. I enjoy awesome coffees from all over the world at a very affordable price.
First I start with some unroasted coffee, the beans are green for the most part and very very hard. They have an earthy fragrant smell, very pleasant!
Once the beans are inspected they need to be washed if you are not buying pre-washed beans. This would be done with a metal strainer and running fresh cool water over them, and then letting them dry. The beans you see here have already been washed.
This is a small home Air Roaster, about $150 US. There is a better one I would buy now today if I were to have the choice, that is a Nescoe Pro as it has an agitator in the center to better circulate the beans. You could obviously get some really expensive roasters for home as well ranging from $300 to $3000.
The small roasting chamber on this is filled to just under the middle chrome band around the container. The top chamber on this model traps chaff from the roasted beans and suppresses smoke. Even though it suppresses it better than roasting over an open stove in a nutroaster, today I managed to setup the smoke detectors 3 times and had to vent the house.
The aroma one gets from fresh roasted coffee is both amazingly awesome and strong! It will last for about a day in your home. You can see some of the chaff on the outside of the roasting machine. Since this model does not have an agitator, sometimes you have to stir the beans up and lift the lid to do so, which then blows chaff out.
Roasting takes about 8 minutes using the crude method I am using. There is actually a tremendous amount of science related to controlling the temperature when roasting with it ever increasing on a steep curve. My roaster has Low, Medium, High and Cool. So I cycle through those temperatures over the 8 minute cycle to best follow a suggested roasting temperature curve.
Here we see some beans several minutes into the cycle and can see how they have puffed up almost filling the chamber and have turned brown. Beans pop when roasting. Light roast is caught right at the first crack. Medium is after all the beans have cracked/popped. Dark comes after a second crack/pop. Dark roasts have less caffeine and get oily.
Below is the Brazilian after being roasted to a lighter medium roast and that is followed by a dark Sumatra roast after the second crack. You can hear them popping almost like popcorn as they hit the two crack points.
Picking up from the last post, we put the beans in to storage containers, I use glass to keep any metals or plastics from impacting the coffee. You can see these containers in the background in the pictures below.
My coffee machine has a bean hopper where I put the coffee each week for the morning brew. The jars serve as storage and fuel for mid day pick me ups!
Coffee gives off carbon dioxide for about two weeks after it is roasted. This process is called “degassing.”
Most of the gas is released shortly after roasting, especially within the first four hours following roasting. Carbon dioxide then continues to escape from the beans with the amount of the gas being released slowly over 14 days which is really the prime life cycle for fresh roasted coffee and it starts loosing its prime flavor.
In my case I leave the lids on my jars loose for a few hours and then let the coffee sit with the lids sealed for 3 days. 3 -14 days is when the optimal brewing cycle starts and ends.
Grinding your coffee rapidly accelerates deterioration and therefore should only be done at the time of brewing for the best coffee.
Ideally there is a ratio of coffee to water which makes for the best cup of coffee. In my case it seems to be about 15-17 grams for about 450ml – 550ml or grams of water. You can just measure this out with a scale.
Coffee is then grounded with a conical grinder to a very course grind. My grinder is conical but it really still grinds to fine, even on its most course setting.
The coffee is added to the French press and then you wet the coffee so it can bloom for 30 seconds. The coffee puffs up in this face. Water is added after it boils and then sits for 30-40 seconds which brings it to a non boil and optimal temperature to begin brewing.
From the time the water first hots the coffee to the time its done should be no more than 4 minutes. You press it and serve. If you are making more than one cup, you must pour that out of the press or else it will continue to brew and go bitter.
Hope you enjoyed learning about home roasting, PM me if you want to know what book to buy to learn about coffee, I know of and can point you to the best!
Yesterday we had our Dia de los Muertos celebration. These are from the pre-parade activities, and yes, I did get my face painted as well, but no photos of me other than a cell phone selfie.
pbraymond wrote:
Colin, the Manor series is superb. I wonder, no interior shots?
Mark, good anticipation on the HDR series, not a big fan. ANy chance to see a couple of those more conventionally processed? I like the sweeping panoramas, esp the third image in, and you had great clouds.
A few days behind, Scott, but Letchworth is worth looking at again. The train adds just the right touch. Like the AF shots too.
Movie star horses, hmm, must be a thing. Nice portraits.
Acres of felicia filifolia is just amazing, Peter. Hope they last for a long while.
Ray,
That glorious blue sky kept us outdoors. We opted for fresh air and did not purchase a ticket to enter the interior. Sorry about that. We have been inside the house a few times before. Maybe next time.
Colin
AM4L wrote:
Picking up from the last post, we put the beans in to storage containers, I use glass to keep any metals or plastics from impacting the coffee. You can see these containers in the background in the pictures below.
My coffee machine has a bean hopper where I put the coffee each week for the morning brew. The jars serve as storage and fuel for mid day pick me ups!
Coffee gives off carbon dioxide for about two weeks after it is roasted. This process is called “degassing.”
Most of the gas is released shortly after roasting, especially within the first four hours following roasting. Carbon dioxide then continues to escape from the beans with the amount of the gas being released slowly over 14 days which is really the prime life cycle for fresh roasted coffee and it starts loosing its prime flavor.
In my case I leave the lids on my jars loose for a few hours and then let the coffee sit with the lids sealed for 3 days. 3 -14 days is when the optimal brewing cycle starts and ends.
Grinding your coffee rapidly accelerates deterioration and therefore should only be done at the time of brewing for the best coffee.
Ideally there is a ratio of coffee to water which makes for the best cup of coffee. In my case it seems to be about 15-17 grams for about 450ml – 550ml or grams of water. You can just measure this out with a scale.
Coffee is then grounded with a conical grinder to a very course grind. My grinder is conical but it really still grinds to fine, even on its most course setting.
The coffee is added to the French press and then you wet the coffee so it can bloom for 30 seconds. The coffee puffs up in this face. Water is added after it boils and then sits for 30-40 seconds which brings it to a non boil and optimal temperature to begin brewing.
From the time the water first hots the coffee to the time its done should be no more than 4 minutes. You press it and serve. If you are making more than one cup, you must pour that out of the press or else it will continue to brew and go bitter.
Hope you enjoyed learning about home roasting, PM me if you want to know what book to buy to learn about coffee, I know of and can point you to the best!
My wife is the coffee drinker here (and one of my daughters). I can only imagine how they would be with that fresh of a roast. Probably turn into worse coffee snobs than they already are. .
AM4L wrote:
Hi Ray, here are 4 lightly processed, just for fun, they are big so you can look at them 100% and see lots of detail. 1000 High by X wide.
Hope these are more enjoyable! )
MarkA
Thanks Mark. I can see why you liked the HDR versions. I do like them non-HDR, maybe with a little further push. Nonetheless, good pics, I especially like the birds in the air. Good coffee posts too (with delicious pics), though as much as I like coffee I think I'll steer clear. Don't need to get into something else.
Reagan wrote:
I don't think I have ever had fresh roasted. My Keurig is as close as I have come
I am probably better off not knowing
I do like strong coffee though
R
Next time your in KS, look me up, will send you home with some!
Superb fishy-eye landscapes. You really know how to work that lens.
I have recently been watching Youtube videos by a Landsape photographer called Thomas Heaton.
He hails from Northern England (Ben will love the accent) and only recently gave up his day job to became a full time landscape photographer, vlogger and workshop presenter. He has a down to earth attitude and his use of drone footage adds to the quality of his videos. Thought the link might be of interest to some.
(p.s. I am not affiliated with this guy. I admire his courage to turn his passion into a profession.)
Colin - ha ha - you're absolutely right. I've been watching him for ages. I'm not really into his hiking/photography stuff but I'm mesmerised by his accent. Not just the accent - it's his whole northern English vibe. Actually I follow all the northern English photogs on Youtube. Just can't get enough.
Loved the coffee post Mark
I've been dabbling in cold brews and also with a sous vide machine but I never knew what happens upstream. My friend passes me the product to use already, ahem, post-processed...
)
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