Monthly Archives: July 2014

Think Tank Shapeshifter Review

Camera bags. Hmm… How many of them are there and how many can I own? Will I ever find the perfect bag? Of course not. However, in recent years I have come a bit closer. I have owned a variety of camera bags and actually still own all of them since I never get rid of any of them. My first Think Tank bag was the start of things getting a little bit better. They do make some really good bags that seem to have been well thought out. It also helps that I have become better focused on what I actually want from any particular bag. No bag does all things so I have systems that are suited to certain roles.

One thing I have been troubled by for a while is taking a camera with me on work trips. When I am traveling light for the work trip, carrying some camera gear with me is a bit problematic. I have recently been carrying a body and lens or two packed in my roll-aboard bag but this is hardly ideal. My work backpack was too small to stuff camera gear in along with the computer and other bits. Then, as if by magic, I get an email from Think Tank. They are offering a free trial of the Shape Shifter. This is a backpack that expands. It has a pocket for laptops and can hold bodies and lenses individually along with having plenty of pockets for other bits. This looks like the sort of thing that could go under an airplane seat leaving the space up top for the regular roll-aboard. It would also make the camera available while in the seat if anything looks interesting out of the window.

The trial is a month and, if you don’t like it, you just have to ship it back. I decided to give it a go and with a trip imminent, the timing seemed perfect. I am now back from the trip and I can confirm it did exactly what was required. Not only was it ideal for the travel but it also allowed me to carry the camera gear to the meetings so I could head off shooting after work without having to go back to the hotel. (It is also nice to not have to leave the gear in the hotel room.) When fully loaded, it is pretty heavy. I didn’t fill it up so with all sections full and a larger laptop – it can take a 17” one if you like carrying heavy laptops around – it would weigh a ton. However, it does the job perfectly. I guess it isn’t going back at the end of the month. One more bag for the collection!

Funky Cloud Processing

wpid10424-C59F1221-Edit.jpgPart of a run back into Oakland recently came across the bay but it was unfortunately covered in cloud. However, the cloud was sitting in very distinct locations with a clear edge as you headed down the bay and a similar edge near the shoreline on the Oakland side. Since we were not high above it, this looked pretty interesting. Even as I photographed it, I figured the shots would need something a bit different when I got around to processing them. Having a more contrasty look seemed the best bet and a black and white conversion also seemed likely. That is what I went with and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. See what you think.

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Flying Out of The Bay Area

wpid10541-C59F1221-Edit.jpgI have been traveling a reasonable amount recently and on one of my trips we took off from Oakland and flew out over San Francisco Bay, past the city and the Golden Gate and up to the north. The first time, I had my camera with me but it was in my bag in the overhead locker. My phone was still to hand of course so I grabbed a few pictures with that. They were passable but nothing special. I also was fighting some reflections given the time of day and the position of the sun.

wpid10531-C59F8732.jpgWhen I came to make the same trip again, I planned ahead and did two things. One was to have my camera with me rather than in the overhead and the other was to bring the Lens Skirt to try and cut down on the reflection issues. My methodology for having the camera to hand involves yet another camera bag but I shall leave the description of that to another post.

wpid10529-C59F8710.jpgI should point out that on the first outing, I got interesting pictures both out and back. The second time, the weather was not so cooperative. On the outbound leg, the Golden Gate was shrouded in fog with the bridge just poking out of the top of the clouds. On the return leg, most of the bay was shrouded in cloud so the views of Oakland that I had got with my phone were obscured. Here is a selection of the shots. I will be making this trip again no doubt so will probably try and get a better selection. Shooting out of airplane windows is problematic and not usually the source of great images but airliners do get you in places that have views that are unusual and worth recording, even if they are not going to be published.

SFO Night Approach Time Lapse

wpid10427-C59F8422-Edit.jpgMany moons ago (pun intended), my buddy Paul was visiting and we decided to have a go at night light trails at SFO. However, we had not come well equipped so headed to Best Buy to pick up cheap tripods. They were very cheap and performed as might be expected. However, with Paul coming back, we decided to have a second go at this and to prepare properly this time. We also scoped out some locations that might be suitable to get good angles on SFO.

Two things conspired against us this time. First, SFO is having runway upgrades installed so the pair of 28 runways are the only ones in use. This cuts down on the possible angles for a while. Second, the great weather forecast turned out to include some low cloud over the location we had scouted out. The aircraft rapidly disappeared from view as they climbed. (It later turned out that they were still in the clear but above the thin layer of cloud which we were under.)

We went with a plan B and found a location along the lake-shore that would provide an alternative. It was not as good but it did work. I had actually brought a spare tripod in case Paul didn’t have his so I set up two cameras. One was running long exposures that I intended to blend together to get light trails. The other I point out onto the approach which was quite busy at that point and take a lot of shorter exposures for creating a time lapse. The blend is above and the time lapse video is below. Let’s hope for better weather next time. I shall also remember that warm weather does not include after sunset and bring something a bit ticker to wear!

Rainbow Phantom

wpid9832-C59F9200.jpgIn going through my archive recently for a piece for Global Aviation Resource, I was searching through old shots of F-4 Phantoms.  I noticed one that I hadn’t recalled taking but that seemed pretty cool.  Occasionally jets pull ‘g’ when above you and the angle of the sun makes the vapor project a rainbow.  This was one of those moments.

Coyote

wpid9944-AU0E5316.jpgA drive along the Marin headlands was about to come to an end when we spotted something unexpected. I was about to turn off on the road back towards to freeway when we saw a coyote strolling along the side of the road. A quick reverse and turn onto the other piece of road and we followed him. Interestingly, he seemed totally uninterested in us. We followed him along the road and he went where he felt and did not seem to care about the car following him. Eventually, he hopped off the road and on to the grass. This gave me an opportunity to get alongside him and get some shots that weren’t through the windshield.

wpid9940-AU0E5297.jpgWe watched him for a while and a few cars came up behind us. At first, you could see that they wondered why we were stopped until they saw the coyote at which point they, too, stopped what they were doing and watched him. We stayed for a short while and then decided to leave the guy in peace. I suspect that didn’t really work out since it only gave the people behind us an opportunity to pull up closer. I guess we did them a favor instead.

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Painted Ladies in Alamo Square

wpid9834-AU0E6912.jpgMy sister wanted to see one of the more famous images of San Francisco while she was here. While the term painted ladies refers to the buildings in the city that have bright paint schemes, it is often focused on Alamo Square. Here there is a line of houses that typify the style and have a backdrop of the city behind them. Alamo Square itself is a park and the area is a popular place on a sunny day irrespective of the famous vista on one side. (Indeed, some of the other buildings in the area are more interesting but they don’t have the same context.)

wpid9836-AU0E6919.jpgWe stopped off to take a look. The area is popular with tourists and there is an ongoing problem with tour buses blocking up the area despite the fact that they are banned from coming into the square. We didn’t have a problem finding somewhere to park though so went to hang out in the park for a while. The middle of the day is not the best time to visit if photography is your goal but in this case it wasn’t. Unfortunately, a couple of the buildings had scaffolding on them which took a bit away from the image. They were on one end so could be ignored if you tried but it was a bit of a shame. Sitting under the shade of a tree in the park on a sunny day looking across at that view is certainly not a bad way to pass a bit of time. A guy came and sat near us and got out his guitar. We wondered whether we would be impressed or distressed by his playing. As it was, he seemed to be playing silently to himself so it was neutral for us.

HDR Panoramas

wpid10158-C59F8190-Edit-Edit.jpgAnother one of my processing technique posts today. For those of you interested in pictures of places, today will probably be one you pass on. You have been warned. This is about my first venture into the realm of HDR panoramas. I know at least one of you who knows exactly how to do this sort of thing and does it on a regular basis. You also will probably skip the rest of the post. However, you have some specialized tools for doing the job and I am playing with Lightroom and Photoshop so here is how it goes.

My initial thought having taken the shots was which order to carry out the processing. HDR first or pano first. I concluded that it had to be pano first. All of the pano exposures were consistent and would stitch properly while I wasn’t convinced that each of the pano frames would be consistent if I had done the HDR blending first. However, this left me with a second concern. Would the pano merge produce images that would align for the HDR merge. I use the pano tools built into Photoshop and, while I select the algorithm it uses, I did not have confidence that it would produce an identical alignment for each set of exposures. However, this was the route I tried.

Stitching the panos was straightforward enough. I created each of them from Lightroom and ended up with five panos with differing exposures. At this point I could have taken them directly to HDR Pro within Photoshop but, since I wanted everything to end up in the Lightroom catalog, I decided to save the files and go to HDR Pro from there.

Here I encountered my first hiccup. As expected, the panos produced were not identical. There were very close but not identical. HDR Pro only works on files that are the same dimensions. I imagine some more specialized HDR applications might be able to handle this but I was stuck with Photoshop. Since the panos were thousands of pixels across and only a few pixels different, I opened them back up in Photoshop and changed the canvas size to be identical in each case. HDR Pro is able to manage alignment of slightly misaligned shots anyway so I wanted worried about the positioning. Also, with such small changes in dimensions, I didn’t fear that I would have distortion.

With this change made, Photoshop went to work and created the HDR file. Amazingly, it worked just fine. I didn’t have any problems with the files being distorted relative to each other and it did a great job of blending them. All that was left was to crop everything in to clear up the empty corners from the pano creation (I didn’t get rid of those in the first instance since I was trying to keep the pano files identical in size and alignment) and then a few tweaks back in Lightroom had the job finished. I was pretty pleased with how it worked and, with the experience of this time, should be able to turn them around quite quickly next time.

Basking Sea Lions

wpid9860-C59F6765.jpgEn route back from Monterey, I wanted to show Liese and Chris the sea lions that bask on the jetty at Moss Landing. We got out of the car and sure enough, there they were. However, something had happened since I had last been there. One section of the jetty was gone and another section only seemed to be partially attached. I guess a storm had done some damage. This didn’t make any difference to the sea lions and they were squeezed on to all of the remaining space.

wpid9854-C59F6732.jpgWhether this was a space issue or not I don’t know but a whole bunch of them had taken up residence on the ramp to the jetty from the parking lot. This ramp is blocked off to pedestrians but this isn’t a problem when you can look over the wooden panel and see the sea lions right underneath you. They certainly didn’t seem bothered by us and most didn’t even open their eyes, preferring to doze in the sun. Lower down by the water, the usual squabbles were going on between those in a good spot, those in a bad spot and those trying to get out of the water and find a spot of any sort.

Container Ships

wpid9846-AU0E6816-Edit.jpgI was in Alameda recently and, as I started to head back towards Oakland, I came along the channel that separates Alameda from the container port. One of the large container ships was just making its way out of the port with some tugs in support. As a kid, I grew up by the sea and used to watch the container ships coming out of Southampton. Those ships looked huge at the time. Now, they are lightweights in comparison to the modern ships. The one I saw on this day was not big compared to the very latest mega ships but it was still pretty substantial. While it had plenty of containers onboard, I am guessing that a lot of them were empty as she was riding quite high in the water. Even so, it was still cool to appreciate just how big these things are.

wpid9946-AU0E5279.jpgLater, while we were up on the Marin headlands, I saw another ship making its way in under the Golden Gate Bridge. That was another comparison of sizes in which the ship suddenly looks rather insignificant compared to the bridge!