Star Trails and Amp Glow

Every once in a while I get the funny idea that I should do a star trails shot. The results have been okay, but I've run into a problem that forces me to crop out the top corners of the frame.

That's a full frame of a star trails shot I took last summer in Quebec. It was my second time doing star trails, an 11-minute exposure (using long-exposure NR) with my D80 on the beach looking out over the lake. I was a bit perplexed by the shot, because I hadn't seen anything of the sort when I'd first shot star trails.

The second picture was taken the previous December with the D40, also an 11-minute exposure using long-exposure NR. After some searching around it seems as though I'm suffering from amp glow problems with the D80. I had considered that the ambient temperature may have been the culprit (25°C vs. -25°C) but I also ran into the problem (to a lesser extent) in December 2011 with my D80.

In the end I just crop out the corners when the amp glow gets too offensive, but it's something I need to keep in mind as I'm framing my shots.

I'm curious to hear if this problem is widespread, or if it varies a lot from camera to camera. Is it possible my D80 is just a lemon? I'm hauling a D70 around with me these days, so I'm a bit curious to get out in the country and see if its results are more like the D40 or the D80.

Not Quite Daily Photos

So my daily photos are already falling behind, so I'm going to nip this in the bud and drop any notion of doing a photo every day. I'll certainly try to take one or more every day, but I won't sweat it if I miss.

Of course now I can't simply post "Daily photo #4,509,652-4,509,671" and have it containing whatever random photo I happened to take, I might actually have to start putting more thought into these blog posts and trying to group photos together into themes of some sort. Quite frankly, it's a daunting prospect.

Consider the mixed bag I present here:

Festival Place - June 6 2012

Spray painting fun - June 8 2012

Strathcona High School - June 11 2012

"Bard Residence" - June 11 2012

Downtown Edmonton from the river valley - June 12 2012

"Edmonton Queen" Riverboat - June 12 2012

If anyone can help me find the thread of a theme through here I'd be glad to hear it!!

Daily Photo 1: River Valley Cycle

Wait ... what? Photo a day has returned with slightly different labelling to keep some separation from the first go round. You may have to bear with me a bit through this, I scratched the sensor on my D80 last night and I'm currently borrowing the D70 I have at work. It's a slightly different beast, and I can't guarantee I'll always have it available for the daily photos, but it should do the trick. This is the former site of River Valley Cycle, which burned in 2007. The bike shop moved and this site has remained fenced off and abandoned for more than four years.

Daily Photo #1, May 29 2012 - River Valley Cycle

... and because it felt so good to be back in the proverbial saddle I've got a bonus photo to share as well.

Ten days in Quebec

As I mentioned earlier, I went to Quebec on vacation at the end of July. In addition to the daily photos I posted here are a few more from Old Montreal, St. Joseph's Oratory, and out in the countryside. Enjoy!

Old Montreal:


















In and around St. Joseph's Oratory:








Countryside:

An evening on film

I found a little gem in a storage closet at work back in June, a Canon FTb with 50mm f/1.4 and 28mm f/2.8 lenses.


I burned off the film that was in there (it was decade-old slide film and didn't develop properly) and picked up a roll of ISO 100 black and white. One evening I headed to campus, both D80 and FTb in tow, and took some shots. I brought the D80 along to use as a light meter, since the FTb's meter battery died. Overall I ended up with shots that were over-exposed compared to what I'd normally go for with digital, but I'm pretty pleased with the results.













As much as I'm pleased with the pictures, I found the whole process to be somewhat "disconnected" (for lack of a better term) compared to shooting digital. Maybe it's simply because my ideas aren't well-formed enough when I shoot, but I usually do a lot of iterative shoot-review steps to see what works, and the review step is missing on film. I enjoy similar guessing and testing when I do post-processing, but for these shots I just got the lab to scan them and that was that. Maybe I just need a darkroom ...

A few days in California

As I mentioned with my last batch of daily photos, I was in California for a conference last week. Of the time I managed to spend taking pictures I got quite a few "keepers" (by my standard at any rate). Since most of these are quite snapshot-ish, touristy, photos I'll present them without much comment except to say that even when travelling I manage to take pictures of churches. Also, I highly recommend getting a burger and a beer at Alcatraz Brewing Co. if you have the chance.

































There's also a few pictures that I already posted and I put up a gallerama gallery as well