Another Fall Sunset

Another LZ4 shot on my way home. Magnificent light. I tried this nEO iMAGING a little. It looks pretty nice, especially the frame part.

Wedding

I shot a wedding today, only the party. The pentax 540 flash works all right and the diffuser works very nice. I probably should get one myself. I shot with 16-45/4 with flash on my K10D and 50/1.7 on a friend's K100D with ambient light. The 50/1.7 is mostly used in F1.7 and DoF is very shallow. I missed quite some focus due to MF. The contrast is not high and saturation is on the low side. I forgot to tweak the setting on K100D and maybe that is the reason. Or maybe it is just the Pentax feeling people talked about old Pentax lens, not very high in the color. The party is on a low-roof room and most of the flashes shots turn out fairly good. But I should watch out more in the wide-angle (16mm) shots, sometimes the flash head bend too much in bounce position and the direct light shows up in the upper corner of the pictures.

I would like not to reveal the people here. So here are two still life shots and they are actually on my K10D. The saturation and contrast is fairly high here though. So maybe that is just the setting on camera.

Fall in Orchrd Down

I thought I would skip today's post again on the way back to home before I saw this scene. It is a very nice scene with falling leaves. I wish I could set the iso in LZ4 . All other shots end up in iso 200 and only this one in iso 100 and looks much better.

Meadowbrook for Sunset

After a few days' LZ4, my hands became itchy for K10D. So I took a short into Meadowbrook again with 50/2.8 macro and 28/2.8. I got there a bit late. Meadowbrook is surround by trees and it is not really great for exactly sunset. But I got a few shots and had a good walk.

Pentax's SMC is really amazing for flares. This one is shooting into the sun almost. The deep-bury-in design of 50/2.8 macro probably helps somewhat too.


A very lovely white flowers.

Moon & Trees

It is probably better to put one not-so-good picture than to skip one day. It becomes more if I start to skip. So here we go another sub-level picture with LZ4.

Houses

Well. It is P&S again. I took a little detour on the way home and shot a couple of interesting houses.

Red

I wanted to shoot this maple and building for a long time. It is on the way of bus from home to school. Every year it gets red beautifully and made good compliment with the building. I always thought to come back to shoot it on the bus when it passed by. This year I ride the bike and never passed it. I thought about it today and whala, it is already half bald. Anyway, I still want to give it a shot. So here it is

BTW: It is Agriculture Engineering Sciences Building.

Study

I took another quick shot today. I thought about it late on my way home and decided to take a shot about studying. Here is the trial. I shot with 135mm and 100mm and chose this one with pentax-m 100mm. 135mm is a bit too long and I had a bit better composition with this one. I did not tweak the white balance all the way to the "correct" one. The orange tone of the table lamp gives a bit feeling of it. I almost changed it to BW, but likes this wrong WB and decided to keep it color.

Pentax-M 100/4 Macro F4.

Sculpture

I am pretty busy recently but I hate to stop it. So I will put more snap shot by LZ4 on my way around. This is a sculpture in front of the Education Building. I tried a few Picasa effects and it looks a little better.

Administration & Record Building.

Well, I guess I could be less demanding after an intensive photography weekend. This is the only picture I took today. The battery of LZ4 ran out after this very only one. So be it. People always talk about the 1/3 rules, non-center. I put this in a exact symmetric way because it is the way of the building. I do not know how to show it otherwise.

More about Starved Rock & Matthiessen

We stayed in Peru, IL last night and started out this morning 6:00am. The weather is still not good enough for a sun rise. We went to Starved Rock first to hope a sun rise, but got nothing interesting. We went to St. Louis Canyon then. It is an easy hike, but the end of the canyon there is an interesting fall with lots of opportunities.

St. Louis Canyon in Matthiessen. I can get a high point, a little interesting perspective.



An interesting macro with Pentax-M 100/4 macro

Starved Rock & Matthiessen (for Oct. 13)

CCCC has fall color field trip every years since 2005. It is Starved Rock State Park, about two-hour drive from Urbana. We, Barry &I, left off 4:15am Saturday from Urbana. Unfortunately, the cloud was too thick there to get any good sun rise. Nevertheless, we wondered around and had a good time hiking and shooting. We visited Matthiessen State Park in the afternoon. It was a more interesting walk in my mind because it has a canyon with quite some water, which gives the life to the scene. But there were lots of people there and they kept getting into the picture. This is often a bit annoying although sometimes people make good complimentary to the scene. The group had a good dinner in Peru, IL and we stayed in La Quinta there. And we had a good time overall. Here is the link to more pictures.

This is multi-exposure (9 or 5 I think) with long exposure. So total 1.6*9. This creates a good swirl feeling, which I like.


LaSalle Canyon






I like this one. It reminds me the electric field graph I learned in middle school.

CSSA Moon Festival 2007

I shot for practice for CSSA 2007 Moon Festival Show tonight. My stuff is not up to this task. It will be nice if I had an AF fast prime. The stage light is often dim and varies a lot. You need to change the exposure setting all the time. On the other hand, it is fairly dim often and my 16-45/4 is not up to the task. I shot often with Pentax-M 50/1.7. MF is manageable for things not move much, like singing, play, but it is very hard for fast moving stuff like dancing. Also, it will be nice to have selectable focus point because I often shot at F1.7 and the focus-frame approach often is not accurate enough. SMC is really cool. SMC 50/1.7 does not flare or flares very little with some strong direct light. I like to shoot in practice, I just stood on stage and shot, up close. I can shoot in the way I wanted, much better position than in the real show. Anyway here is a few and more on http://picasaweb.google.com/zggame/2007CSSAMoonFestival



I do not intend for this one. The slow shutter speed is due to the slow lens (16-45/4). But I like the feeling of the moving. And there is good comparison between the moving part and rest part.


This girl is too cute to miss.


This staff has a great emotion and I think the slightly out-of-focus (out of my intention) actually contribute to it.

Temple Hoyne Buell Hall

Well, this building is on the south side of the campus. There are so many interesting building on campus.

This time I shot with K10D and 16-45/4. It would be better to shoot with tripod, so the ccd face can be parallel to the buildings. But that is just a snap shot.


I like the modern feeling about this one. Almost close to those in si-fi. The WB is very difficult in this one. The inside lighting is way much colder than outside. I end up set something in between and this looks best for me. Well, a more appealing WB is probably better than more correct one.

CSL (Coordinated Science Laboratory)

Well, another one by LZ4. I can probably get a better picture with K10D. But that is too heavy and bulky to lag around in pocket. :) There are more interesting building than I knew in the north side of the campus.

DCL with P&S

I shot this one with the Panasonic DMC-LZ4, a 5M bottom line P&S. It is not too bad, with a 6x zoom and image stabilization. It is small and much easier to take around. I snapped this interior of DCL while I had a little rest before class. Not a very good shot. But I am busy and do not have much time for today's shooting. I guess it is more important to keep it going.

Teaching

The camera was in office but I am still busy today and do not want to take a walk around. So I am looking in the office and noticed this chalk root. That is good quick way for today's shot, I thought. I shot with 100/4 macro at 1:2. I used it a lot when I am holding the office hour. Nice topic for my teaching.

I also tried some shots with flash and f16-f20. But these shallow depth-of-field shots with ambient light look more interesting to me.

I like this white-balance wrong version. It gives me some feeling.


This is the one in flurosent light set. It gives out a little red tint for the background, which is also nice. Which one do you like?

Roman and Greek in Spurlock

I spent about 40 minutes in Spurlock again this afternoon. I stayed in the Mediterranean room (mostly Greek & Roman). There are lots of models from Greeks architecture and sculpture. They are nice. I had thought I had 50/2.8 macro on the camera , but found out the 16-45/4 on it instead when I opened the bag. I shot some in 28mm, but I still like the perspective of 50mm. So I shot mostly in 45mm. I mostly shot at 1/15s. But some of them turns out not very sharp. People said SR in K10D is better than K100D, but for my experience, the opposite seems true.

This one looks nice. It should be a Roman one. It is the goddess of agriculture I remember.

Major Overhaul

The internet is down last night. So here we go.

We did a major overhaul for our apartment. We put all the computers in the study room and this related to move route, reset the cable all thought the apartment. Here is mess during it.

K10D, 16-45/4, with the little auto flash at bounce

500mm Mirror

I got a Pentax M42 adapter earlier with some other stuff in a package from Ebay. To my surprise, my old 500mm mirror lens for Canon is actually a M42+Canon EOS adapter. So it is nice and easy 500mm mirror for K10D. I took a little walk around with it, mostly aimed for squirrels. It is difficult. 500mm needs a fast shutter speed, even with SR and ISO 800. This is hard to get even 1/150s in shade. And this lens only have F8 and it is soft. The bokeh is interesting for mirror lens. Usually people hate it. But sometimes it looks interesting.

Droplets

I experiments with the multi-flash with the droplet. It is not a very successful one, the flash I used can only exported at fixed power, which is fairly large for macro. I have to use F14-F22 in ISO 100, which prevents to blur the background effectively. And I was too lazy to use a tripod, which makes the flashes not aligned well. I should definitely try more. It is quite interesting.

50mm/2.8 macro

DIY is not Easy

The motherboard came back this afternoon to my surprise. I started to put them together. There are some problems. The extra fan I bought was too big and seems not work at all. I have to go back to the original boxed fan. Also, I have no SATA HD, only IDE HD, yet the board only has one IDE port. I have a IDE PCI card though. But I cannot put the system partition for the disks connected to that. Messy. Finally, the PCIe port does not work with the 6600 card. The onboard video works fine. Well. I do not know how long I need to sort them out. It is really much hassle than I though. But God knows,... I like sorting out stuff and hardware in the bottom of the heart. I am just like it.

It is probably impossible to keep the nice photo for every post if I want one for everyday. Maybe I should let it goes to the more diary style. So this is the mess I am talking about. 1/10s with 50/1.7, SR really kicks in.

My Beloved 50mm/2.8 Macro

I was quite busy today. So I took the easy shots to show my beloved 50/2.8 macro. It is kind of difficult to make it stand out because its front element is deep in. I have to positioned it quite carefully to get some nice reflection. I end up put another Pentax-M 50/1.7 on the side and Pentax-M 100/4 macro in behind to comply that.

It is taken with another pentax-m 50/1.7 with a normal 60W lamp.

Nighty Crossing

I started to think about today's post late. And one of the titles of tomorrow's CCCC's (Champaign County Camera Club) competition is Night Photography. I need to go to department, so I took a few night shots on Green-Wright Crossing. I mostly thought about the cars' light track. Unfortunately, traffic is fairly light, which reduce the density of it. I use ISO100, F22, which gives me about 10s. I used 10s-15s. And I tried the multiple-exposure of K10D. It supposes to average all the exposure and should give me more exposure time than one shot in this case. But it seems to give more weight to the last shot when averaging and makes the light-tracks in previous shots less obvious.

I am using the DA 16-45/4 this time. I just realized all my old posts' photos were taken by old MF lens. This is the first picture by AF lens. Well, I do not have really wide-angle for MF lens. (This is probably most because APS-frame. The wide-angle here will be ultra-wide-angle in MF era. ) My UV filter is kind of dirty, produce lots of flare. It really needs some cleaning. I am too lazy. The second shot is without the filter and has much less flare.

Another Bike

I took the camera with me this afternoon and had a short walk after the meeting. I tried out this JCPenny 28mm/2.8. It seems not very good. The corner is quite soft and there is some distortion. This bike was taken with it and maybe something wider will give me better result. I just like the feeling.

Something about CPU

I played with my E2140 a little bit. The motherboard got some problems and is back to service now. So the CPU sits there alone. I tried my flash set-up again. One flash is down of the transparent board and one on the side. The one on top of the camera triggers them. It is not very successful though. The color is a little bit dull and reflection is hard to control.

This one is My Favorite Two Tools. Both the pen and the CPU are indispensable in my study and life.


Jie Suggested this idea. Two chips.

(with 50mm macro, Sigma 500 super, sigma 430 super, quantum auto flash)

Meadowbrook

Well I took a 50mm walk on Meadowbrook Again this afternoon. I went there a bit earlier today and there was still plenty of sunshine there. I tried some macro again. It seems better this time with F14-F20. I got both the petal and stamen into focus in some shots. The stamen are really nice, subtle green. I also tried out the polarizer received yesterday. It is a linear polarizer, but it seems to work just fine on the K10D. It cuts down the reflection and deepen the blueness of the sky. Fairly nice. The only problem is that the 50mm macro's filter thread is a little off. It must be dropped before. I corrected this a little bit, but not very smooth for the filter.

I really like this shade.


This thing looks interesting too.

Great Food

Jie surprised me with lots of dishes when I got home . Here is the one looks most beautiful. Others taste great but not as good-looking. I shot the picture last night but went to bed early and forgot to upload it. So this one still counts as 9/26's.

It was shot by 50mm/2.8 macro with a small flash. It will probably looks better with a multi-flash set-up. But I am too lazy. Also, the food often looks great with the direct flash's high-light, which emphasize the feeling of the oil and juicy coving.

Squirrel in 200mm

I got home early this afternoon and it was a cloudy day with rain. The sun hides in thick cloud and it was good to shoot the squirrel. They do not hide in the dark shade like in sunny day and it is much better illuminated in the openness of cloudy day. I took the new arrived Pentax-M 200/4 and an 2x adapter. With the 2x on, it is F8, I can works in 1/200s still for iso 400-800 with lens wide open. Fairly good. The picture quality is not very great, somewhat fuzzy. It is very hard to focus and some are just because of off-focus a little. But some seems just caused by the adapter or maybe the lens. I am not sure which one I should blame. Anyway, it is still good to get this simple 400mm solution with a reasonable picture. It was filled in the full picture and I only need to do a very small crop. One thing I am fairly sure about the adapter is the CA. Check out the out of focus part of this one.


This one looks cute. K10D produces a very lovable tone for the leaves. Again, I am not sure which one I should credit, the K10D, the 200/4 or adapter. Or maybe all of them.


Check more squirrel here.

First day with K10D

Somebody picked my K100D from ebay yesterday. So now it is the start of K10D era. I am not terribly thrilled by the camera though. The review after shot is still a bit slow. It does not show until it saves the image into the card. Maybe my card is not up to the speed. Anyway, it is not as fast as my old 20D. Maybe I am not familiar with it enough. I will wait a few days to get used to it.

I took a walk with the 100/4 macro around. K10D seems cannot meter the lens consistently. F4 is good, F11-16 is kind of over-exposed. It was quite windy. And it killed most of my relatively slow speed shots. I was lucky to spot a couple of locusts. Well, the 100/4's macro ability stands to the test. It only goes 1:2, but it is well enough for the locusts. And in 1:2, the work distance is fairly good. And fortunately the locust was fairly dumb and did not move a lot.