Random Photos

[Tom.G]

Several years ago, we had a Humming Bird feeder just outside our living room window. One Spring there was a family of four Orioles that made a habit of feeding there.

My wife and I would often stand in the living room, about 8 feet from the feeder, to watch them.

As birds tend to do, if they are perched somewhere and another bird comes in to take their place, they will leave to avoid getting raked by the new-comers talons.

One of the youngsters was feeding when Papa came in for a snack. Of course Junior got out of the way... for a little while; but then decided that it was hungry - got a flying start - and drove his beak into Papas wing. Junior then finished the interrupted meal.

A few weeks later, one of the youngsters spotted us watching thru the window - and decided to drive us out of 'their' territory. It made a dash to my forehead, but crashed into the window and flew off. It was so quick that the bird was gone before I could react!

From then on it was a family of three that visited the feeder.

 

[Andy Resnick]

A beautiful spring day over the weekend, another opportunity to take a couple of lenses out for a walk :)

55mm Micro Nikkor, f/5.6, shutter speed about 1/200s, auto ISO (handheld):

But the real reason for the stroll was an Eagle's nest (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), about 1000 feet away from where I set up to use my 800mm (400/2.8 + 2x tele), shooting at f/8, about 1/1000 s, auto ISO. Imaging conditions were terrible- in addition to shooting through 2 stands of trees, the atmospheric turbulence was severe even at this moderate distance:

And, since this is a nest....

The 'parents' were gone for quite some time... long enough for a red-tailed hawk to take notice:

Which brought the adults back, post-haste:

A very enjoyable afternoon!

 

[DennisN]

The 'parents' were gone for quite some time... long enough for a red-tailed hawk to take notice:

Which brought the adults back, post-haste:

Did you shoot the two photos with flying hawks/eagles without autofocus?
If so, that is incredibly difficult, and I am very impressed.

I actually tried shooting flying birds (seagulls) for the first time a couple of days ago (with my autofocusing zoom) and it was very, very fun. I also shot with the focus tracking mode enabled on my camera, which means I saw the focus points in the viewfinder actively locking in on the birds, which also was very fun. It felt a bit like I was hunting airplanes with a missile targeting system .

I will post some pictures here later .

 

[Andy Resnick]

Did you shoot the two photos with flying hawks/eagles without autofocus?
If so, that is incredibly difficult, and I am very impressed.

I actually tried shooting flying birds (seagulls) for the first time a couple of days ago (with my autofocusing zoom) and it was very, very fun. I also shot with the focus tracking mode enabled on my camera, which means I saw the focus points in the viewfinder actively locking in on the birds, which also was very fun. It felt a bit like I was hunting airplanes with a missile targeting system .

I will post some pictures here later .

That's correct- no autofocus. Thanks!

 

[DennisN]

Two shots taken recently in April:

Railway tracks and trains at night:

(Equipment: Sony A7R + Sony FE 35mm, f/4, 1/3 s exposure, ISO 800, stitched photos)

A Western Jackdaw keeping a lookout on a tree branch:

(Equipment: Sony A6000 + Sony 55-210mm, f/8, 1/1000 s exposure, ISO 2000)

 

[DennisN]

Hatton, Sri Lanka

Lights illuminate Adam’s Peak, a Unesco world heritage site and ancient pilgrimage site that has long attracted thousands of pilgrims from all faiths

Photograph: Thilina Kaluthotage/NurPhoto/ShutterstockSource:
Beach-racing cars and marathon moments: weekend’s best photos
(The Guardian, 23 apr 2023)
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ga...ars-and-marathon-moments-weekends-best-photos

 

[Andy Resnick]

A colleague and I scraped some liquid crystal from a broken LCD monitor onto a slide:

16X, crossed polars. Replacing the illumination polar with a circular polarizer:

And using the varicolored filter in place of the illumination polar:

These images are straight-from-the-camera jpgs, no cropping or adjustments (except re-sizing for posting). Overall, the image quality is getting better and better!

 

[DennisN]

A variety of shots and techniques in this post, including some brand new techniques I recently tried for the first time (long exposures in daylight & action photography).Traffic, long exposure, night:

Gear: Sony A7R + Sony FE 35mm + tripod, settings: 10 s exposure, f/6.3, ISO 50Traffic, long exposure, day:

Gear: Sony A6000 + Sony 55-210mm + B+W 10-stop ND filter* + tripod,
settings: 20 s exposure, f/9, ISO 100

Notes: Taking long exposures in daylight to get significant motion blur from moving objects is as far as I know impossible without extra gear. You need a neutral density filter (ND) which significantly darkens the image (because long exposure in daylight quickly overexposes the image). I will definitely experiment more with this, it's very fun. You can for instance shoot lovely scenes with flowing water to make dreamy images, as shown in e.g. this article.

* A ridiculously expensive filter if bought new (it costs around $140 new ) which stings considering you are basically paying for a piece of glass that heavily darkens the image. I got it for merely $10 second hand
on an online auction, which stinged a lot less .A dog in action:

Gear: Sony A6000 + Sony 55-210mm, settings: 1/1600 s exposure, f/9, ISO 1600

Notes: I was out training photography of moving objects (birds taking off and flying) and saw a pair in the park playing with their dog. So I asked them if I could take photos of their dog in action, they said yes, and we did a few rounds were they let their dog chase a ball.

The trick with action photography, which I haven't done much, is to shoot with very short exposure times (let's say ca 1/1000 s - 1/4000 s) in order to get a "frozen" image with as little motion blur as possible. Shooting with "burst mode" enabled on the camera (many photos taken in succession) which I did here also helps if the object is moving very fast in your view.Flowering tree in April:

Gear: Sony A7R + Pentacon 135mm f/2.8, settings: 1/320 s exposure, ISO 400A dandelion in the courtyard:

Gear: Sony A7R + Pentacon 135mm f/2.8, settings: 1/1250 s exposure, ISO 400

 

[Andy Resnick]

A variety of shots and techniques in this post, including some brand new techniques I recently tried for the first time (long exposures in daylight & action photography).

Traffic, long exposure, day:

Gear: Sony A6000 + Sony 55-210mm + B+W 10-stop ND filter* + tripod,
settings: 20 s exposure, f/9, ISO 100

Nice shots, all around!

Another use for the 10-stop ND filter (during daylight) is to blur out all motion, so for example a downtown street shot will appear to be devoid of people and traffic.

 

[DennisN]

Nice shots, all around!

Thanks!

Another use for the 10-stop ND filter (during daylight) is to blur out all motion, so for example a downtown street shot will appear to be devoid of people and traffic.

Interesting! Have you tried this?

I've been thinking about trying some street shooting in daylight with this technique, but not to achieve the thing you mentioned. I was thinking of the opposite : getting motion blur from people. But when I think of it maybe it's impossible (or very difficult?) since the cars disappeared in my photo (but not their lights), so maybe people are too dark to generate significant motion blur?

 

[Tom.G]

so maybe people are too dark to generate significant motion blur?

About as dark as the rest of the scene!

 

[jtbell]

 

[TonyStewart]

 

[Tom.G]

That looks suspiciously like Niagara Falls, specifically Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian side; and Rainbow International Bridge in the upper lefthand corner.

I spent my teen years living on Grand Island, about 2.5 miles upstream of the falls.

I remember one time when a friend came home on leave from the Navy. We picked up our girl-friends and headed to the Canadian side. Immigration asks everyone entering Canada from there "What is the purpose of your visit?"

In the back seat, my friend, with his arm around his girl-friend, immediately pipes up with "Recreation, man. Recreation."

We were waved thru with no more questions asked!

 

[TonyStewart]

In the back seat, my friend, with his arm around his girl-friend, immediately pipes up with "Recreation, man. Recreation."

Spoken like a "Pro...", man.

 

[morrobay]

The Lost Coast, Central California. Taken from the Coast Starlight. The coast highway goes inland after Santa Barbara. And the train stays on the Coast up to Pismo Beach. This remote area is where Vandenberg Air Force Base is located.

 

[morrobay]

 

[morrobay]

 

[TonyStewart]

$8 seats in Blue Jay's stadium, then move down to the $150 seats in the 2nd or 3rd to be with my diehard buddies who came once a year with single season tickets from near Ottawa for 3 days of golf and baseball.

 

[morrobay]

Revisited my previous (for good reason) Cappuccino place in Jomtien this morning- what a difference a staff change made.

 

[Rive]

The Skeptic in the Garden

 

[Andy Resnick]

I played around with some of the lenses that I rarely use. All images are full-frame D810, no post-processing, jpg straight from the camera, etc... First, the Luminar Zoom image of an Intel 1602A:

Next, a Leica 10X Mirau lens, designed to be used for profilometry. This is a random FET, the fringe pattern is used to measure the surface profile:

The major step change occurs from the base (blue surface) to the greenish pad, the fringes shift almost exactly 1/2 a wavelength (note- this is white-light fringes, no color filter used), my guess is the height change is about 250 nm. And then you can see another big height change stepping up to the top layer. Helpfully, Leica sells software that will do a better job of image analysis :)

Last is a pair of images showing the effect of epi-DIC: 80/0.95 Epiplan lens, INKO DIC

Moving the prism from just barely positive to a just-barely negative position reverses the sense of surface relief.

 

[jack action]

The following is NOT a tricked photo. How long does it take for you to figure out what you are looking at?

Spoiler

The top part on the right is a building in the water. The lower part on the right is the reflection of the building in the water.

 

[TonyStewart]

chat.open.ai/images for "electronics circuit design of tony on the new yorker

cover"

Electronic Design in the style of Picasso

Electronic design in space

 

[jtbell]

The state has been building a replacement for the old bridge leading into our neighborhood. Maybe soon it will be finished, finally.

View attachment 324924

And then we all can stop using Amazon delivery drones. Just kidding... there's another way into the neighborhood. This is from about three months ago:

View attachment 324925

We had to listen to that pile driver for a few weeks. Bam! ... Bam! ... Bam!

And now it's finished! They took away the barricades this afternoon, between when I started my afternoon walk and when I returned.

 

[morrobay]

 

[TonyStewart]

Design by da Vinci on the cover of Vogue by openAI art

Da Vinci Art in oil on Mad Magazine

Exotic Interior Design

Wow! That is a genuine image? No touch up?

Highly touched up. When you turn up the gain in a gamma curve then quantization noise from the limited number of colour levels for RGB (256 each) for 3 byte chroma These then show up on a histogram as discrete spikes of colour intensity levels difficult for our eyes to detect for untrained eyes. So I compared a couple random photos on Irfanview and disabled curve fit.

Where the density of a colour levels becomes sparse, you know the colour was amplified for that brightness level.

It's the same way led white would look with a strong Blue spike and yellow-red phosphor. For most things, you can't tell unless the object has a continuous range of colours to reflect then you see the gaps by the "off" colour. This is why I prefer tri-phospor FL tubes over dual phosphor LEDs for under cabinet lights in kitchen to see food prep or marble/granite

Irfanview32 is my GoTo picture viewer with T thumbnails and quick edits. (free) and supports Abobe filters. Somewhat like GIMP and others with a couple more features but certainly less than pro tools.

 

[TonyStewart]

That's correct- no autofocus. Thanks!

Nice job.

The fuzzy logic focus used by Sony (perhaps others now with target recognition) has been impressive to me in dark conditions. I tried to catch surfers with 10x binoculars in front of an iPad lens once. I needed really steady hands, but the old school Sony handicams with 800x zoom with Steadicam are impressive for lost cost.

 

[TonyStewart]

iPhone 10Pro Max

OpenAI

 

[DennisN]

Magpies courting (I think) in a tree:

Gear: Sony A6000 + Sony 55-210mm + B+W linear polarization filter.

This was a lucky shot; I noticed that these two magpies were moving a bit strangely in a tree, so I directed the camera at them and let the camera go off like a small machine gun . Afterwards I went through the photos and found this one.

Magpies are interesting birds for a variety of reasons. They (Eurasian magpie) are extremely common (at least where I live) but it wasn't until I started "hunting" them with camera that I noticed they are extremely observant and very hard to get close to. They are also very intelligent birds.

Going Rambo

Since I like photographing birds and have noticed how difficult it can be to get closer to them, I've decided to "go Rambo"... I never ever thought I'd be buying camo gear, but it happened.

(I notify @Andy Resnick about camo gear, since it seems you enjoy photographing birds too )

Camo gear:

• Camo cap & scarf (Amazon link) - the cap is for the head, and the scarf for covering lens (side) and perhaps part of camera
• Camo fabric tape rolls (Amazon link) - I didn't know such products existed, but now I know . I will use the camo tape to cover one of my camera bags and perhaps other things (backpack/small bags). Note: the Amazon page states it is self-adhesive, but the rolls I got weren't particularly adhesive, so I'll either sew or glue the tape to attach it.
• Camo Waist Bag (Amazon link) (not in my photo since it hasn't arrived yet)

I'll probably soon be looking for a camo jacket and camo pants too.
And then I will disappear from sight .

 

[TonyStewart]

OpenAI: downtown bottom half mirror image

O

penAI

 

[TonyStewart]

openAI text as shown

steam engine falling off a cliff hires

 

[TonyStewart]

openAI : memories of Loyal Chapman's art of golf but not as well as he did for 18 holes for fantasy golf courses

impossible golf from penthouse

 

[BadgerBadger92]

Some of my work

 

[morrobay]