Back home from New Brunswick!

I got home on Tuesday night from a week long vacation in Hillsborough, New Brunswick. The family had an awesome time, we ate a lot of fish and chips, spent a lot of time at the water, and just generally relaxed.

Now I am back to the real world and work and all that fun stuff. :P

But I do have lots of pictures that I took to show everyone! I was able to get away a few times and go exploring and shoot some subjects that I don't get to see around here. Namely lots of water, and very dark skies! I was able to practice some star trails which I have been wanting to do for a long time. Here is the results from that;

Here is a link to the star trails pic

I wasn't too concerned with foreground elements and the like, I just wanted to see if I could get it to work. So this is a result of about 2.5 hours "work". Around 100 30 second exposures stacked with 1 dark frame image. I like the result. Next time I think I will get more shots and work on the foreground of the frame.

So I have processed some of the other images as well, I will link some of the ones I am particularly happy with here, and you can check the rest out in my gallery page under the scenics/landscapes and macro sections.

Here is one of my faves from my last morning in New Brunswick. This was shot in Waterside, NB. Once the sunrise burned away the morning fog, the sky turned an amazing blue. I used a B+W 1000x ND filter to get a 30 second exposure to smooth out the waves. Nikon D80 with 10-24mm at 10mm.

'Morning Tide'

© Craig Gosling

This Church I had passed by on my back to the house from Waterside. I drove by it because I was in a little bit of a hurry. Then I thought about it and pulled a u-turn. I would have hated to have missed this perfect little church atop a hill. I pictured this one in Black and White and I think it turned it out great! Nikon D80 with 50mm f1.8d

'Lonely Church'

© Craig Gosling

This one was also taken in Waterside, NB. I love my 10-24mm lens for how insanely wide it goes. Even if there is no real picture to be taken, I enjoy just looking through the viewfinder sometimes. I had just taken another shot of the water, when I was done I turned around and saw this vast sky and fog coming in on my right. It was such a huge scene I snapped a shot of it. I wasn't sure how it turn out once I got it in the computer, but it worked out well, and gives a sense of the openness of the area. The whole beach area almost looked martian, and you will see that in some of my other pictures too! Nikon D80, 10-24mm @10mm

'Vast'

© Craig Gosling

Well, I need to sleep now, there are a couple of others on my gallery to check out as well. I will post some more up here over the weekend I hope!!

Enjoy the long weekend, and leave a comment if you feel like it, or head over to my Google+ page and hit me up over there! (Link is in the right hand sidebar at the top)

See ya

C

Almost 5000 visitors to my blog!!

Hey just a quick note to say that there have been just shy of 5000 visitors to my blog!! Thanks everyone who reads and follows! I know that the posts are sometimes few and far between, but, such is life for someone with 2 kids, a full time job etc :)

Thanks again everyone!

See you later!!

C

New toy, and finally some night sky photography!

Hey everyone, just a quick one tonight :)

So I got a new toy last week. My old cell phone was dying, so I picked up a Google Nexus S! I love it, it is my first smartphone and I am pretty impressed. I have been playing around with the camera, and it is not too bad! There is a camera app called "Vignette" that is really handy. It has a lot of settings, and can emulate vintage/toy cameras, film, tilt shift, etc all very accurately!

I have started a new gallery on my page aptly titled "Andrography" and it will store selected images I have taken and edited on the phone! So head over there to check it out, and let me know what you think!

Also, I went out of town this past weekend to a place called Orillia, Ontario. It is way out in the boonies, so I lugged along my camera and gear and braved the absurd amount of mosquitoes to attempt some night sky photography! You forget how many stars and how peaceful it is out of the city sometimes. Once my eyes adjusted, I could actually see the milky way! I took a few "decent" shots, but I was disappointed with the whole ordeal. My camera it seems, is not really suited for long exposures. I wanted to try some star trails, and in the resulting pics, there is large spots from where the sensor heated up, turning the image a little purple in the corners. I did manage to get one ok one, and with enough post processing to kill a horse, I got it too look just alright for me :) I think I had too high of hopes. Here it is:



Okay, I gotta run, have to work in the morning. As always, stay tuned for some more shots from my phone, plus maybe a more detailed post about that Vignette app. Also, I have a bunch of old shots from my camera that I am working on atm.

Take care

C

Two new pictures

Hi!
I have two images for you today! One is an old one that I processed awhile back, but never really liked it. So I took another look at it today and finally got it to look the way I want. So here it is,

'Museum of War'


This is at the War Museum in my home town, pretty ominous building and the black and white conversion really conveyed a great mood in relation to the structure.

The next is a recent one. I took this one in a particularly strong wind storm. I used an ND filter to smooth the waves and the clouds. I shot this in portrait and landscape orientation, but I found the portrait to look better.


'The Bridge'

Okay, that's it for now! Stay tuned, I am slowly working my way through some old pictures and seeing if any are worth uploading. I am getting much more critical of my older shots, so they may never see the light of day :)

Take care!
C

Discussing Thom Hogan's "State of DX" article

So I regularly follow Thom Hogan's excellent site (www.bythom.com).

He has an interesting article he posted yesterday called the "State of DX" (scroll down a bit on the page).

To summarize, he talks about the current situation for Nikon DX users (like myself). What is happening in the future, what should be happening in the future, and what is not so great right now.

In a nutshell, the DX format will not see too much going on this year, we are most likely getting a D400, and a D5000 update. But it's the lenses that are really a big issue to me at least. I never really thought about it before, but there is a lack of DX lenses that should be a no-brainer for Nikon. For the range I would be interested in (wide angle), there is not much to choose from. We do not have any wide-angle primes, or a DX PC-E lens. Nikon is focusing on it's DX lineup but are shorting us on proper DX lenses for serious shooters. We have tonnes of zooms and kit lenses and the like. We have a 35mm 1.8 prime, but nothing below that. For wide angle, we have the 10-24 or 12-24. But any primes are FX only and really expensive! I for one would love to see a DX PC-E lens, the widest is the 24mm PC-E, but that is not really that wide for DX users.

So, I don't feel too confident moving forward and actually seeing any of these lenses. It seems that they are just focusing on the consumer zoom set of lenses. Moving to FX is not fiscally suitable for everyone, me included. I know there are alot of serious DX shooters who like the smaller size of the DX cameras for travelling light, the extra reach of the 1.5 crop or whatever other reasons. People that use DX aren't just mom and pop wanting to shoot the kids soccer game and whatnot. There are people that make their bread and butter with DX cameras that shouldn't be ignored!

Here is the end of his blurb:

Prognosis: Poor. Nikon will introduce one mediocre body update and maybe one decent one, and have little or nothing to say about significant new DX lenses and the future of DX lenses. Considering that DX is the core of Nikon Imaging's profit engine, this is disappointing and bodes ill for the long-term health of the company.

Well, I hope someone at Nikon reads Thom's article! What are your thoughts??

C

Layout Changes, Site Redesign Imminent!

Wow, two posts in one month! Things are looking up :)

As you can tell, I am changing the look of a few things around here. I figure a little revamping is in order. I was never really happy with the layout of my gallery, so over the next little while, I will be rearranging things and generally playing around with a bunch of stuff. Mostly, I think the structure/organization needs to be simplified. I think I have too many categories for images. When I set out to make all those categories, I thought it would aid people in finding what they want, but instead I find it segregates my images to much, and breaks up the flow of the site.

So there you have it, just wanted to keep you all informed. If you have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them! Drop me a line in the comments or in email.

ps; the gallery may be inaccessible for short periods if doing some major overhauls is in order. Also, some of my links in the blog may cease to work after I am done moving things around. I will try to keep up with that though.

C

Butterfly Bracket

So having read 'Closeups in Nature' and 'Landscape Photography Field Guide' both by John Shaw, I decided to have a go at his macro flash bracket, dubbed the 'Butterfly Bracket' (because he uses it to shoot butterflies). It is a simple construction requiring some aluminum strapping (1/8" by 1" wide) and a small ballhead, and some nuts and bolts. I was unsure of where to obtain the aluminum and I eventually found a source online, but shipping was expensive, so I put the idea on the back burner for a bit. The other day at work, I got to thinking about it again, and decided to ask on of the guys in our maintenance department where I could get some aluminum locally, and explained what I needed etc. He, funny enough, used to work in an Aluminum Foundry, so he knew some spots. So, my luck got better then next day though! I am at work again, and the fellow I spoke to earlier called me into the maintenance shop, and promptly handed me a 7 ft long piece of 1/8" by 1" aluminum strap! One of my coworkers had bought it by accident thinking it was stainless steel, but discovered otherwise when they tried to weld it and it melted under the heat. So he didn't need it anymore and I offered to take it off his hands for $5!! What luck!!

So, now I am set up, I already had a small ballhead that I purchased last year when I first wanted to make the butterfly bracket, so all I needed was to cut and drill the aluminum. All in all, it was pretty straightforward. The only issue is with the flash arm, I didn't have the tools to make a slot for the flash to move up and down, so all it has is a series of holes. I have some leftover strap, so I will make version 2 at some point!

Here are some shots of it, it may not be pretty, but it works! I think the SB-600 is a little heavy for it, so I am going to look into an alternative at some point, maybe the SB-400, or a cheaper non-Nikon brand. I don't need anything too crazy.







And here it is fully loaded!







Alright, that's it for the write up. It is now 2:11am and I am tired. Tomorrow I will post a few shots of the results. There was nothing really interesting around the immediate area, I did find a small spider hiding in my basement though, so check back!

Thanks for tuning in :)
C