Gear Reviews, Tech & Photography
Today was the first major snow storm in Lincoln. Predictions called for up to 4 to 6″ but in the south part of Lincoln we only got about 2-3″. I made a timelapse video of the storm and of me scooping the driveway. I took about 750 individual frames totally 8.5gb to make this. The music is Emancipator – First Snow (Ooah Remix).
Make sure to watch this in 720P or 1080P at full screen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh6cNPKYcng?hd=1
Wow, what an Airshow. This was one of the best all around airshows I have been to. A lot of this had to do with the VIP access that @Rossnelson and I had (Thanks @Pafford). We were at show center, as close as you could be. I was so close that when the Blue Angles fired up their engines and then made a turn on the ground you could feel the heat and jet wash. The lineup was great. For me seeing the A-10 Warthog fly was fantastic. This has always been one of my favorite planes since when I was young. It really amazed me how maneuverable it was. If only they could have shot its Gatling gun. I also had a neat opportunity to see another B-2 stealth bomber flying. This one was named after Nebraska. This was great since the last time I saw the B-2 I was not really close enough to get good photos of it. It was also rare since it did not land and was only at the show on Saturday for 3 passes only. The Blue Angles put on a good show as always. Their precision flying really is amazing. The show was not as fast or as loud as I remember though. I would have to say that the F-15 at the Offutt show a few weeks prior to this one was louder and had sharper turns. One of the Blue Angles did have mechanical troubles it looked like and he landed early. The last flying B-29 was cool too. It is amazing that there is only one left flying today, considering how many of them were made during WWII.
The bad, was that parking was terrible. We must have parked in the worst possibly place because it took 1:45 to get off the air base. Granted they said over 250,000 people came to the show over the weekend but we expected traffic to be better.
Enjoy the photos below. They are only a small set of the more than 600 I took that day. View the rest of my edited photos from the Airshow on my G+ gallery at http://goo.gl/Enn9P
View the rest of my photos from the Airshow on my G+ gallery at http://goo.gl/Enn9P
Here are a selection of photos I took at the Offutt Air Force Base Air Show in 2011. It was a good show and I was glad to go with a friend who had a good time. See all of my photos on my G+ page. G+ is my new home to display most of my photos in edition to here. I did not renew my Flickr Pro account. No use in paying for something I can do over on G+ for free.
In February I decided to start building a studio in my basement. At the time the weather was cold and I was out of things to work on in my house while it was still cold. This was always something I had wanted, so I built a Backdrop stand out of PVC, bought some fabric to use as a backdrop and found a good deal on some great studio lights through a contact at Awesome Camp 2011. About the time this was finished the weather got warmer and I started work on remodeling my garage. A couple of weekends ago a good friend came over and we played around in the studio for a couple of hours. She brought lots of clothes and we had fun mixing and matching. I am looking forward to future studio time to learn. I still have a ton to learn about studio lighting but i think the results below turned out pretty good.
I ended up firing the Alienbee B800’s I have wirelessly with my Canon 7D with the built in wireless flash firing trigger built in. This is a great feature, it was guess and check to get it set right but so far it seems to work great, and quite reliable. I shot tethered via USB to my old laptop using Lightroom to see the shots as I took them. This was cool and my model really liked being able to see every shot as they were taken. I think for the next shoot I will bring one of my external monitors so the images are larger. Other things I learned was I need a bit more width to the room to move lights further away from the source. For big shoots I might have to push furniture to the sides of the room and setup there. I will have to think on this. The backdrop holder worked well. I need to re-engineer one side of it a bit but for the most part it did its job well. I did learn the carpet under the model while nice for her to stand on causes the backdrop to have rinkles. This is distracting in the photography and next time I will remove it. I also learned that I need to iron my backdrops. Not looking forward to this task as it will take forever. Does anyone have a steamer?
I do plan on doing a blog post sometime on the construction of my DIY PVC backdrop holder, and my garage remodel, but I make no guarantee when that may be. In the mean time enjoy the small sample of pictures below and the link to the set on Flickr.
See the rest of this set on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157626682837239/
I heard about this event on Twitter and decided to go take a look. It would be good for my 356 photo project right? The quack-off is a duck race that is a fundraiser for the local volunteer fire department. It has been going on for over 20 years. During this year the small town of Avoca Nebraska grows from 250 people to over 2000. Many local bars in Lincoln and other surrounding larger towns charter busses to take people to this small town and bring them home safe. Alcohol was a common theme along with the ducks so the bus to get people home safely was a wise idea. Tailgating was happening all around town anywhere people could gather. Fires and BBQ’s were common. The local bar served basic food and drinks for anyone who did not bring their own. While there were lots of little kids I would not really of called this a family event with all the drinking. People of all ages were at the event but it was a majority of college aged kids.
The event worked like this racers registered a few hours before the race for $20. They could use their own duck or “rent a duck” for a fee if they needed. The racers were then organized into individual races (5 racers at a time). The winners advanced until a champion was crowned. The race was held on a basketball court in the local park. The last few days had been very warm so things were very muddy from the melting snow for the spectators. The weather was great for January in Nebraska. Sunny with a high of 35 F.
This was an experience to say the least. It was nice to just walk on to the basketball court and take photos. With a big lens and an attitude that you know what you’re doing gets you a long ways. Everyone was nice and enjoying the event. Bleachers would of helped people not in the first few rows see. There was even a marriage proposal from a young couple who had their first kiss at last year’s race. She said yes and then the couple won their race. Below are a few photos from the event. You can see more on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157625814754047/
The newly engaged couple wins.
Kind of sums up the quack-off
The annual Offutt Airshow this year was on August 28th and 29th. I went on the 29th with @Rossnelson and had a great time. Security was really tight, we had to go through metal detectors and then most people were wanded after, they did not give second chances of removing more metal to go through again. They were also not allowing bags in so I had to carry my camera around my neck the entire day and only bring one lens. I brought the 70-200 and was glad I did. One last thing about the security was that Ross was wearing a t-shirt from the band Bad Religion and he got a talking to going through security about it. The guard thought he might be trying to make a political statement and said he may have to turn it inside out if asked to do so. Luckily other service men knew of the band and let us through. Security was nearly as tight as an airport. I guess this was because we were on an active air force base.
The day was long and hot, people took cover as the day went on under the wings of aircraft. I loved seeing people sitting in lawn chairs under the huge wings of a B-52 or under the fuselage of a B1. We walked around and saw all the static planes which were too many to list. We then watched the aerial show which was good. My favorite by far was the F-22 Raptor. It was such an impressive fighter plane. The thrust vectoring really made it very maneuverability and agile. It also was so stable at any speed it seemed.
This was the first time shooting anything similar to sports on with my Canon 7D. I used Al Servo and a combination of Auto focus Expansion when on the center point. It put emphasis on the center point (or where ever you wanted it) but also included one above, below, left and right. It worked well. for slower moving planes. For the really fast ones I used the new zonal function AF selection and choose the center group. This grabbed the center 11 points and used them. As long as you kept the points on the object and the AF drive engaged (I did this manually with the AF button) it worked well. I was amazed at how well it would track planes coming at you quickly or going away from you. The hardest part was panning quick enough to keep it in frame. For sports this camera is a huge step up from my old Canon 20D.
Here are a few photos from the day more can be seen at Flickr in this set here.
More can be seen at Flickr in this set here.
The Lincoln Zombie walk was this past weekend on 8-28-2010. This year was bigger than ever as over 1200 Zombies participated in taking over downtown Lincoln. The event was moved to be earlier in the month this year and it was a great success. The weather was fantastic with highs in the mid 80’s compared to last year when I remember wearing my winter coat and gloves. The time was also moved to a little earlier which made photography much more enjoyable. The zombies were suppose to do the Thriller dance at the Union but at the last minute decided not to for an unknown reason. In the end everyone gathered outside of Pershing Center for a street dance. I met several Lincoln Flickr and Twitter people for a Flickr Walk and Tweetup. It was great fun. See the photos below.
See more photos on Flickr Page http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157624728841511/detail/
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
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/
