Pensacola Interstate Fair

It's that time again- the Fair. Out local photo club met (I never saw them) at the Fair to catch some moments. The Fair is an interesting mix of professional showmen and local contributors - farmers, photographers, artist, etc.

Eating flames - thats my job.

Cow talk.

Steer for sale!

Mine is bigger than yours!

Performing - resting

Twisting

Turning

Swinging

Fixing photos using Picasa

Most of the photos we take can be improved. Sometimes the light was difficult, too far away, accidents such as crooked picture, etc. All of these fixes can be made relatively easily in Picasa. It is by no means a full photo editor, but if your pictures as close to original intent, Picasa can do wonders. In the majority of cases some minor nudging can make the difference between a good and a great picture. There will always be cases where more flexibility and power is required, well then there is Photoshop. But the convenience of being able to fix 95% of you pictures in your album is valuable.

The following is an example where I was forced to make compromises because of shooting conditions. I could have taken the risk of moving closer or used longer exposure, but chances of success would have dropped dramatically. The compromises made were not completely reversible, but close. A blurry bird or no bird at all would be irreversible.

BTW, this pelican was in bad shape. It had a fish hook in the soft part of its beak and the fishing line was twisted around its feet. It was sitting still, but looked scared and weak. The photo was taken at Joe Patti's seafood in Pensacola, Florida.

Original image. It is way underexposed and not zoomed in enough. These were real constraints when taking the picture. The wounded pelican was nervous, so I could not get close too it. I was using a 28-135 mm lens. It was also quite dark and I had no tripod. Even though the lens is Image stabilized, I could not risk any longer exposure (1/60). That could have resulted in a blurry image if the bird moved.

Tuning. Often the automatic tuning will bring up the light levels. Be careful though, it is often too aggressive and you end up with burned out pixels. In some instances this is fine, but not here.

Crop. This takes care of the "too far away" problem, or "too short lens" problem. But by cropping half the picture we now have a 3 MP picture instead of 6 MP. This is a major comprise and one that would not be feasible for larger prints.

Sharpen. This last step brings out more details in the bird. The sharpening on this camera, Canon D60, is set to soft by default, so are most other Digital SLR. Sharpening is destructive and a step you want to perform at the end. In most cases I perform sharpening at print time. Many print program sharpens the temporary print file and the original if left unchanged.

Donkey and Montain Lions

Somebody sent me pictures of a Mule attacking a Mountain Lion, here is a link. I do not know if this is true, but I had a similar experience on a trip to the highlands of Ecuador. We were riding bicycles in the mountains outside Riobamba, at about 11-12,000 feet altitude. We met an old lady with a herd of sheep and a Donkey with tied front legs. We asked her why the legs of the donkey were tied. She said the reason was to keep the donkey from running away. The most interesting part however she revealed herself. The purpose for having the Donkey come along was to protect the sheep from predators. In lieu of this experience, it is not fat fetched to believe the Mule was giving the poor Mountain Lion a lesson.

The Donkey was the guardian of the sheep.

Sheep herder in the mountains of Ecuador

The rest of the Show photos

Here is the remainder of the photos that was on exhibition at the Power of Photography show in Pensacola Florida in September 2005. These pictures were entered in different categories from Children to Wildlife.

Happy Children, Berle Norway
The children are playing on the grounds of their daycare. I used to go to school there and was glad to see there are still happy children there.

Good heron, Perdido Key Florida
This heron was the most photogenic bird. I took at least 50 photos of it with or without flash. He was only 6-7 feet away. Good bird.

Abstract
This is a chimney in one of the many nice houses in Rosemary Beach Florida. I liked the simplicity and how the red top breaks the monotony.

Condo
This black and white picture was taken on Pensacola Beach Florida after Hurricane Ivan came through and destroyed about 6000 houses. You would think water front property would be considered a liability rather than a privilege after this, but the prices seem only to go one way - up!

Gullfoss, Iceland
Europe's largest waterfall. Iceland is an amazing country, a volcanic island in the middle of the North Atlantic. It sits right on the border between the European and the American plate. As they drift apart more magma comes up from the earth and makes Iceland a little bigger. Note the lone guy at waters edge.

Lone swimmer in Rosemary Beach, Florida
The Gulf Coast of Florida has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. This swimmer was enjoying the crystal clear water at Rosemary Beach.

Icelandic Farm
One of the many isolated houses and farms in Iceland. The country has only 300,000 people and of those over half live in the capital Reykjavik.

Boat houses, Bremanger Norway
This rugged island on the western Norwegian coast has a remarkable nature. As can be seen from this picture you need a boat to get to your boathouse. This is high tide. One can walk to these houses at low tide.

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC
There were many people there this day, Memorial Day 2005.

Children in the Birmingham Alabama Botanical Garden.
Fall colors. The children did not mind posing under the colorful tree.

Canon 5D, some thoughts

For every new camera Canon releases there is a firestorm of excitements, criticism, comments, etc. This is a sign of a young industry. Every new Digital SLR has been received in a similar way every new version of the Windows Operating system was received in the late nineties. Computer geeks would wait hours in front of a store to get the latest version of the software. Not so much because it performed better or were less expensive, but rather to be the first to have it. The same trend is now taking place in Digital SLR world.

Some cameras warrant more attention than others. When the Canon D30 came out, it was a breakthrough in performance. It was the first time a CMOS chip was used in or associated with a high quality camera. CMOS chips had mostly been used in low end imaging devices. The image quality was revolutionary for a $3000 digital camera. This opened up new possibilities for using this camera in professional work where very few if any camera had the usability and quality of this camera. See the initial review from Luminous Landscape.

Canon 5D has some improvement worth noting, but they are not by any means as revolutionary as the D30 was when it came out. The 5D has a full frame sensor, the main point here is the price. It already has two older brothers with full frame CMOS censors, the IDs and IDs Mark II. Size is the other advantage. Its size is much more similar to the 20D that its 1Ds brothers. The rest of the specifications indicate few incremental changes from the Canon EOS 20D.

With the full frame sensor there are a lot more real estate. Since the 5D or all full frame censors are about 2.5 times bigger than sensor in the 20D, we could expect cameras with 20 MP in not too long. Since noise was not a problem in the 20D, pixel count could be increased further.

For now, for those who have been waiting for a lower cost full frame camera, its here.