Upper Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan. Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
I came across MSN’s “TOP TEN FALL FOLIAGE SPOTS”. Some of the choices on MSN’s list are classics (VT and NH). Others are surprising. MSN’s list is here.
My top ten list would look different.
click the page links to the right to continue
Composite image. Copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
I had asked Andrea if I could use her photo on a promotional photo and she said sure “as long as you don’t put my face on a horse”. So I took her literally and didn’t put it her face on a horse. I DID put her face on a lioness in Photoshop. In case you are wondering, it IS ok with Andrea that this image is posted here.
click the page links to the right to see the original photographs
Our daughter, Janae. Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.
Symptoms: one sore right foot, one very sore left ankle, one very painful left achilles tendon, sore left thigh, one scraped knee, two scraped elbows, very sore ribs on the left side, bloodshot eyes, small lumps on the head, and one very big smile.
Obvious diagnosis: Taking pictures again in Rocky Mountain National Park.
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Sunflowers, northeast Colorado. Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.
I am on the road. Photos are here.
It was rumored, now it’s official. The new Canon 20D looks like an impressive successor to the 10D. The sensor is 8 megapixels. It still has the same 1.6x field of view crop as the 10D. I was hoping for a bigger sensor so my wide angle lenses would give me a wider field of view than on the 10D.
Start up time is much faster, it shoots at a maximum of 5 frames per second vesus 3 fps on the 10D, and it has a bigger buffer.
DP Review has an excellent 11 page preview here.
When you refer to your computer mouse, you probably aren’t thinking about a living, four-legged, furry critter. My son went to do some work on his computer one evening and found a very young and small mouse happily sprawled out and warming itself on a power block plugged into a power strip. My son and daughter-in-law decided the mouse was too young and cute to kill, so they captured it and turned it loose at the back of their yard. He went back to work at the computer.
Early the next morning, he again headed downstairs to the computer and there was the same mouse, back in the house and warming itself again on the same power block. (Notice the ignored mouse trap, baited with peanut butter.) Once again, the persistent mouse was captured. This time it was taken for a car ride and turned loose at a city park.
And what happens in the unlikey event the mouse finds its way back again? It will be deemed worthy of a proper home and they will keep it.
SEQUEL – August 14
A day after posting the above, I received the following photo and note from my brother-in-law.
“Ours wasn’t so lucky.”
Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.
I stopped by the road in northern Ohio to photograph a combine. To my surpise, I was invited to go along for the ride. The story is here.
“Showy Ladyslipper”, Thorne Swift Nature Preserve, Michigan.
Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
In my travels last week I stopped at Thorne Swift Nature Preserve in Northern Michigan, not far from Harbor Springs. This little gem of a wilderness is almost always a nice place for intimate (small scale) nature photography from May through fall. My article on Thorne Swift is here.
THE BIG FIVE:
8 MP DIGICAMS
There are five digicams with 8 megapixel (MP) sensors. If you are looking for a full featured point-and-shoot digital camera, you might be considering one of these. They are so full-featured that point-and-shoot hardly seems like an adequate phrase, but these are all-in-one cameras with a single non-interchangeable zoom lens. Some of them have auxiliary lenses that screw or bayonet on the front of the permanent lens.
I am not tempted to buy one of these cameras, tempting though they are, for three reasons.
click the page links to the right to continue
This morning DP Review posted a complete review of the Canon 1D Mark II, giving it a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED rating, their highest.
This is a remarkable 8 megapixel camera that will shoot at speeds of over 8 frames per second for 40 continuous jpeg frames (20 in RAW mode) before the camera pauses to give the buffer a chance to write to the memory card. Amazing!
click the page links to the right to continue
12GB CF CARD!
HOW MANY CARDS DO YOU NEED?
Just what you need for Christmas, a 12 GB (gigabyte) compact flash card from Pretec. Estimated price in U.S. dollars (drum roll please): $14,900. That’s right, just shy of fifteen thousand dollars. It is supposed to be available by the end of the year, maybe in time to go in your Christmas stocking.
What would you do with such a thing? Stick it in your digital camera and take pictures forever!
Does this make sense? Not for me. Ignoring the sticker shock, I wouldn’t want that many images on one memory card. Too risky.
I use mostly 1 GB flash cards. In a serious shooting situation I might fill one or two cards in a day. At the end of the day I download the card/s to a computer, do a quick preliminary edit, delete the bad shots, and burn the rest to CD-R discs. Only when the files have been burned to disc do I re-format the flash card and use it again (more on the reasons for this some other day).
At a recent conference I aeraged a gigabyte of photos per day for 10 days. You can see some of them in the “World Conference” albums here (scroll down to the 10 albums posted in late March-April, 2004). Every night I would download my card/s, edit, and burn two sets of discs, one for me and another for the conference PR department. I would drop off their disc the next day.
With a 12 gigabyte memory card, I could have captured the whole conference on one card, but it would not have saved me from the nightly download, they wanted pictures every day to post online.
And bad things happen to good memory cards. They can eventually fail, get lost, be physically damaged, dropped down the face of a cliff while you are switching cards while photographing bighorn sheep, stolen, or any one of a number of other mishaps. The loss, damage, or failure of a memory card is just like losing a bunch of rolls of exposed film, the bigger the card, the more pictures you lose.
I have not had a lost, damaged, stolen, or failed memory card yet, but I know it will happen some day. For me, the choice is a compromise between the convenience of carrying less cards and the risk of what happens if a card is lost or damaged and the images unrecoverable.
In Colorado last fall, I filled a 1 GB card with photos almost every day. If something happened to one of my cards, I would have lost a a day’s worth of photos. That would be truly sad. If I used a 12 GB card and lost it, I would lose a whole weeks worth of photos. If it was a great week, that would be truly awful (at least in photographic terms).
I went on the trip of a lifetime to Alaska and photographed the whole venture on film. If I had been using my current digital camera I could have shot the same number of photos on one 12 GB flash card with room left over. It would be simple and save lots of space, but what if something happened to that card?
I can think of one good use for a card that big, in a USB card reader you could carry around a collection of your most treasured files, ready to plug into any computer anywhere.
Then again, for $14,900, you could buy a laptop for your treasured files, or several laptops, or a car to carry your laptop, or lots of camera gear, or several trips to Alaska, or . . .
Happy Safe Shooting!
“June 3, 2004 (TOKYO) — Pentax Corp plans to introduce this fall a SLR (single-lens reflex) digital camera aimed at general consumers that will retail for a little more than 100,000 yen.
Monthly production will be set at about 20,000 units, and the company intends to ship about 100,000 units by March 31, 2004.
Pentax began selling higher-end SLR digital cameras last September that retailed for around 190,000 yen, and it is now looking to expand demand by reaching out to ordinary consumers. The firm aims to raise the consolidated sales from its digital camera business by about 40% to 70 billion yen in fiscal 2004.”
Original article is here.
Assuming this is a good quality camera body, this is good news for people with Pentax lenses that want to go digital for less than $1,000.
Photo (c) Robert Capa. Taken June 6, 1944.
See my June 6, 2004 post here
I am deeply moved by the photos of U.S. war dead returning from Iraq. They speak of sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism, commitment, sorrow, and the high price of war.
I posted one photo with some information about the photographer, Tami Silicio, and the story behind the photo in my May 16 post “ON THE WAY HOME” (see below). If you missed that post, you can read more here and here. Tami Silicio took the photos because she believed the families of the fallen soldiers would be comforted to see how much respect and care were shown to the remains of their loved ones. The photographer has a brief web page here.
Whatever your views on the situation in Iraq, the photos are worth looking at. I have not posted these photos as a protest. (Personally, I believe we should be in Irag but I don’t we believe we have made all of the right policy decisions about what we are doing there.)
If you want to see a complete set of photos, the Memory Hole has posted several albums of photos of flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover AFB. Due to very heavy internet traffic, several other sites have mirrored the photos, including this one.
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia came apart over Texas. Photos taken of the flag-draped caskets of the Columbia astronauts arriving at Dover AFB have been mis-identified in the press as U.S. casualties from the war in Iraq.
*** *** ***
NASA’s press release:
“April 23, 2004
Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1600)
NOTE TO EDITORS: n04-059
COLUMBIA CREW MISTAKENLY IDENTIFIED AS IRAQI WAR CASUALTIES
Many news organizations across the country are mistakenly identifying the flag-draped caskets of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew as those of war casualties from Iraq.
Editors are being asked to confirm that the images used in news reports are in fact those of American casualties and not those of the NASA astronauts who were killed Feb.1, 2003, in the Columbia tragedy.
An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia’s seven astronauts.
News organizations across the world have been publishing and distributing images featured on the web site.
-end-“
*** *** ***
The complete set of Columbia astronaut photos from Dover AFB is here.
Due to very heavy internet traffic, the photos are also mirrored here.
Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty. Jr.
This marmalade hoverfly was photographed with a Canon 1X-5X macro lens. More here.
Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
How I missed this tongue in cheek article, I don’t know. Be forewarned, the writer must have overdosed on 1950’s grade-B gangster movies.
Read Mike Johnston’s humorous take on how camera companies supposedly bribe reviewers.
Personally, I found the bribe from the OM bunch the most poignant. The Konica-Minolta bribe would be the most useful.
The Sony bribe?
As they say in the movies, “Fugedaboudit!”
Photo copyright 2004 Tami Silicio
“Flag-draped coffins are secured inside a cargo plane on April 7 at Kuwait International Airport. Military and civilian crews take great care with the remains of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. Soldiers form an honor guard and say a prayer as, almost nightly, coffins are loaded for the trip home.” The Seattle Times
Taking this photo cost Tami her job. The story is here and here.
PHOTO OF THE DAY – JALYN
Photo copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
This photo is a digital solarization. It began as a color slide, was scanned and turned into a black and white photo (Grayscale), and then recolorized (RGB mode) as a digital version of the wet darkroom technique of solarization. To learn how this was done, go here.
Andrea, Rock Climbing, Final Fling, Saturday, May 8, 2004, Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
On the Saturday before finals week, Graceland University has a day of fun activities called Final Fling. Rock climbing, mud volleyball, big glove boxing, a 3D obstacle course, and the velcro wall are just a few of the activities of the day.
Final Fling, Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
More Final Fling photos are in the album posted here. All of my currently posted albums are here and my primary website is here.
Final Fling, Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
Bridget, World Conference. Photo (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
This is one of the most popular photos from albums posted during World Conference, measured in terms of the number of visitors that clicked on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the photo. Bridget is my niece.
I snapped the photo below during a break in the activities. Rachel was my photographer’s assistant for the week.
Rachel, World Conference. Photo © Jim Doty, Jr.
More conference photos are in the 10 albums posted here.
Digital Photo from SPECTACULAR 2003, copyright (c) Jim Doty, Jr.
Charlotte K. Lowrie: Two weeks ago, I walked into my office, raised the lid of my laptop, and was greeted with a one-line error message: “Can’t read from drive C:.” This was far too simple a message for such a total failure. I looked at the screen expecting solicitous condolences or maybe an apology. None were forthcoming. . . .
Ah, the perils of storing digital photos. Lowrie provides a perspective on the issue that I raised in my April 26 post (see below or in the Archives for April). She has opted for external hard drives to backup up digital photos. I prefer to use external hard drives AND high quality CD-R discs.
Read Lowrie’s article here.
Photo (c) M. Plonsky
What kind of closeups can you take with Canon G1 and G3 point and shoot digital cameras? The insect photos at M. Plonsky’s website are a good example. The site has a one page tutorial on macro photography with the G1 and G3. You can see more of Plonsky’s work in the galleries posted at PBase.
If you want to do closeup photography with an SLR, I have an article here.
Photo (c) M. Plonsky
The digital photos stored on your CD-R discs may be fading away even as you read this.
Are you backing up your photos on CD-R discs? You should since every hard drive will eventually crash. BUT those photos on CD’s may not last as long as you think. In recent tests (see the links below), some brands of CD-R discs lose their data in as little as 2 years. Whatever you do, don’t buy cheap discs. And you should store your data on at least two CD-R discs which are stored under the right conditions (coll, dark, dry) in at least two separate locations.
Other options are to store your photos on multiple internal and/or external hard drives. DVD’s are an option too but some DVD’s may not be much better than the cheap CD-R discs. Again, buy good quality. One of the best currently available options are the Mitsui Gold CD-R discs which you can get from InkjetArt. Paying more for top quality discs is better than discovering your digital photos have faded away to nothing. Don’t assume your data is safe for anywhere near as long as the claims you read. Go back periodically and check your discs.
Another option is turn your best digital photos into prints and copy the prints onto high quality slide film. Recent Kodak or Fuji slide film, if stored in a cool (70 degrees or less), dark, low humidity (40% or less) place will outlast the vast majority of digital storage media now available.
You can read some recent research at news.independent.co.uk. They have links to two other articles here and here.
You should also read the article on storing photos on CD-R discs at my website.
