Manual Len Portrates on a Canon DSLR
I have gotten very interested (With the help of an influential friend) in some of the older classic manual lenses, so I now have a SMC Pentax 55mm F2 Type K in Pentax mount and a Jupiter 9 85mm F1.8 M42 that I have been mounting on my 7D and I wanted to try them out so I went out with a friend and had some fun around town. The 85mm is hard to focus because it has such a small DOF and its goes through 2 converters to mount on my camera so its no perfectly tight. The lens is also a bit stiff, but optically its good. I need more practice. The Pentax is a great lens & I am getting the fever for more. Its very sharp and extremely mechanical. Great little lens. Thanks to my model Megan for the great job, I could not have done it without you.
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Pentax 55mm
Sigma 10-20mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Jupiter 9 85mm
Canon 50mm F1.8
Canon 50mm F1.8
To see the full gallery Click http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/Megan1/
Lincoln, NE 4th of July Fireworks 2010
Better late than never right? The city of Lincoln's annual firework display was postponed one day due to the large amount of rain on the morning of the 4th of July. The evening of the 5th was perfect weather wise. I met up with some of the #LNK tweeps out at Oak Lake Park to watch the display. It was a nice time and I got a few good photos that I will post here. This was my first time watching the fireworks at Oak Lake Park and it had its pros and cons. The space is better for the amount of people that come, parking was fairly easy and emptied pretty quickly. However the background they shoot the fireworks against has too many lights, and is pretty industrial. In that regard Homes Lake was better, and much closer to my home. Hopefully someday they will decide to move it back to Homes Lake.
For more photos see the gallery http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/LNKFireworks2010/
Lincoln’s breath taking sunset 5/30/2010
I have a soft spot for sunsets of all types. I am not sure what it is, maybe the intense colors or cool clouds that often occur. Lincoln has a great sunset every once and a while, especially when storms are rolling in. Sunday May 30 2010 this exact thing was happening and I just happened to catch it out the corner of my eye. I grabbed the camera and went out on the deck and snapped a couple of photos. I then decided to drive to Holmes Lake. Unfortunately the lovely pink had disappeared from the sky and the clouds had rolled in more. I still got a couple of nice photos though.
More photos of the trip will be posted over the coming weeks. I am going to make a real effort to keep this blog updated. We will see how that goes.
Monkey Wrench Cycles Shop Review
Backstory: I bought a Specialized Hardrock bike 4 or 5 years ago and rode it quite a bit but stopped because the drivetrain was not working right. The bike had trouble shifting gears and staying in gear. The place I had bought it from in Lincoln got a chance to fix it twice and really did not do much but charge me to fix it.
Review: So deciding I wanted to bike again I pulled the bike out and found, it was likely (After some Google searches) that I needed a new freewheel because I could peddle put not put any power to the ground. After hearing good things about Monkey Wrench Cycles in downtown Lincoln I gave them a call. Monkey Wrench is a service oriented bike shop. While they will sell you a bike they specialize in repair of any problem, big or small. These guys know their stuff! They are racers and hard core bikers, not some college student who are their just to pay the bills. They were able to get my bike in and explained a possible estimate on the price from the problems I had described over the phone. So the next day I dropped it off and explained all the problems I had been having and was told it would be ready in 2 days.
Two days later I went to pick up the bike. The best part of the service was how they explained to me everything they did and why. Being a detail oriented person and mechanical I like to know why and how things work, so this was great. On my bike they put on the new freewheel, and then went to test drive the bike. The technician felt more vibration in the drivetrain and went on to further diagnose that my chain was way stretched. This was news to me as I had no idea chains stretch but after further explanation this is a very common problem. If you ride your bike for 30-40 minutes a couple times a week they recommend you change your chains every 3 to 4 months. Don’t worry they are cheap about $12. A stretched chain can cause your other drivetrain components to wear prematurely. After replacing the chain they adjusted my brakes. The design of my calipers is poor, and because of this a cap cracks, falls off which causes a critical spring to not function as designed. As a result most of the brakes only pull from one side cutting in ½ your stopping power and causing uneven wear. Since this is a design flaw the part is no longer made so the solution becomes modification of the part. The mounting bracket was taken off and drilled for a new cable run location. Now the brakes work great and pull from each side.
At the end of the day I am very impressed. These guys did quite a bit of work on my bike, they spent time doing great work and then checked their work by going out and putting a couple of miles on it. The bike is now better than it has ever been even brand new from the factory. The price was very reasonable too for the amount of work that was done.
If you live in Lincoln, Nebraska or surrounding areas I cannot recommend Monkey Wrench enough. A+ Local business! Check out their website http://www.monkeywrenchcycles.com/ blog http://monkeywrenchcycles.blogspot.com/ and Google customer reviews as well for their address and phone number.
Monkey Wrench Cycles LLC
1225 P Street, Lincoln, NE 68508-1429
(402) 477-4104
First Thunderstorm of 2010
Last night Lincoln received its first real big thunderstorm of the year. Parts of Northeastern Lancaster County were even in a tornado warning, but in south Lincoln we got just a sprinkle of rain and some impressive lighting. I went out on the back deck and took a few photos of the impressive clouds. The storm was a bit odd because it was spinning counter clockwise so the storm came from the southeast.I really like how the panoramic turned out.
It was really cool to watch all the photos people were posting to Twitter with the #LNK hash tag. You got minute by minute updates on the conditions around town with pictures. @MrWilson has created a cool website to follow the #LNK hashtag at http://inlnk.in/. Also anyone with a twitter account who wants to stay up to date with the weather should consider following these people/companies on twitter who announce current weather as well as any watches and warnings that are issued.
@LincolnNEAlerts is a neat service provided by SWAS Sever Weather Alert System that for most cities in the USA tweets hourly the weather conditions at the official weather station (In Lincoln its the airport). They also announce when watches and warnings are posted.
@NEZ066 is a twitter account that I believe is only for Lincoln, Nebraska that only posts the most up to date watches and warnings. It is very fast and almost instant from when the National Weather Service issues the statement.
So here are the few photos I took last night
As of right now it looks like we are going to get another round tonight!
Expect more blog posts this week I have some great ideas for future topics.
Husker Football Spring Game 2009 Photos
The Husker Nation sure is a dedicated crew. When you can get over 77,000 people to attend what can only be described as a glorified practice its a good day for a great game. All week the weather was forecast to be rainy for the game. Well the weather men were wrong! It rained before the game but cleared up perfectly for the game its self. The entire game was sunny and warm. You could not have asked for better weather.
I decided to bring my camera to the game because I had great seats (Thanks mom and dad). It has been a while since I had shot sports but considering I was in the sands I think I got some decent results.
More photos can be in the gallery
Nebraska’s Blue State Capitol?
Yesterday I was driving back to campus from Jones Coffee house where I helped photo club hang our exhibition (Photos coming soon). I noticed that the state capitol building had blue light shining on it from all 4 sides. I though this was cool so I stopped and snapped a few photos. These were taken hand held with my Fuji F30 P&S while leaning against as lamp post. Does anyone know why it was blue last night?
The pictures below are of the capitol during a evening when it is normally lit. I took these in the summer of 2007 I believe. They may have already been posted here but they are worthy of being posted again.
Gen1, Gen2, Gen3 Mazda RX-7
This is a late post coming, I shot these images about 3 months ago now. I have some friends who each have Mazda RX-7s. We had all generations of cars represented that night. Generation 1, light blue, Generation 2 Red and Gray, and Generation 3, Red. We really had a nice time that night. These guys have some great cars.
For more images check out the gallery here
