Nubble Light Foggy Night

Ahh, a warm weekend and no snow on the ground here in NH! So Saturday I decided to go up to Cape Neddick for some night pictures of Nubble Light holiday lights. Then Nancy surprised me by coming home from Thanksgiving (in Maine) to NH a day early (Saturday). So I decided to wait until Sunday, as it was supposed to be another warm evening. My bones still quiver when I remember a few years ago standing in the wind and the cold trying to take night pictures of the holiday lights of Nubble. But as we got closer to Portsmouth on Sunday, for the intermediate stop to pick up my photo from the gallery, we noticed the thickening fog. I picked up my unsold photo (hoping I got the correct one-mine), and with fear and trembling, we forged on, figuring that if the fog got too thick near the Maine coast, Nancy and the dog could walk ahead of my vehicle and lead us safely to the lighthouse. It was only a few miles! Alas, we arrived without much fanfare (and a good GPS), and there stood Nubble Light with a foggy glow. Now luckily, Sunday afternoon, in a rare event of my thinking ahead, I had Nancy read the camera manual for me to find out how to set the self timer on my camera. So arriving and setting the camera on the tripod, I took several shots at different settings and got a few test goodies. I liked the foggy glow of this test photo, so I am sending it along for grins.

 

Click on image to enlarge

 

Nikon D7000, ISO 1000, 1 sec with self timer, 42 mm, f 4.8, shutter priority
And all that hoorah stuff!

Seasons Greetings and keep your lens clean.

Linwood "Lin" Wickett

Turkey Tease - Part II

Yesterday, our turkey friends returned for Wickett's Buffet. It is comical to see them running toward their daily treat. So the one turkey pecked away at the mirror as it did the day prior. Today the turkey rapidly circled the stump and mirror. I took a few minutes of video and then put the mirror away as I did not have a straight jacket the right size for the turkey. The attached 3 pictures are: the turkey proudly showing its fan...ny, staring blankly again at the image, and peeking behind the mirror to figure where the other turkey hides. The turkey has given us bucketfuls of laughs and several gigabytes of images.

Enjoy

Turkey Teaser Linwood Wickett

Stratham, NH

Technical: (from a non-technical camera guy)

The turkey pictures were taken with my (35x) Canon SX 30 IS not fully zoomed. ISO was 100 and I used the P mode, rather than the Av or Tv mode as it gave me the best shots. The Av mode set at F8 was too slow (causing blur) and the Tv mode would have been guess work that the camera did much better. The photos were emailed at Windows Medium Resolution. The Canon camera shoots at 14.3 mp but doesn't shoot RAW. RAW shooting is on my "round-to-it" list of things to do later with my Nikon D7000. I am getting much better results with distant feather details for birds with my Canon than my Nikon D7000 using the Nikon 55-300mm lens at 16mp. Rather than spend $ 10,500 for the lens I would want, I will stick with the Canon for these long shots for now. However, I am finding the D7000 incredible at events with no flash and high ISO. I am finding little difference in the noise level from ISO 400 to ISO 2000 with the Nikon D7000. The Canon has been unusable for indoor events with or without flash at any ISO of 100-800, but makes a great lens to supplement my D7000 for day time "birdie" shots. I purchased the Nikon D7000 at the end of July, so to further investigate its capabilities, would tax my learning curve, which is similar to the turkey's learning curve.

Turkey Tease-Turkey and the Mirror

The other day, we watched the flock of visiting turkeys feed from our back yard. One was obsessed with its reflection in the window of the pickup truck cap in our far back yard. So we added a mirror against a stump to check its reaction. It was a load of laughs yesterday as one strutted around pecking at the mirror. Last evening, a deer showed up and was casually munching on the back yard goodies. Then the deer saw its reflection in the mirror and it jumped and took off running at full speed. Hence the term, it "high-tailed it outta there!"

Today, the turkey humorist returned and was so enthralled with its reflection, it pranced around for about half an hour, even after the rest of the flock vanished to the far back of the lot. The turkey ruffed up its feathers, pranced around, pecked at the image in the mirror, and tried to attack the reflection turkey from behind. It could not figure how the other turkey (in the mirror) would disappear when it went behind the mirror or stump.

I am only sending a couple of pictures as I haven't had time to pick the best ones from the 750 or so digital pictures I took today.

Have fun!

Happy Thanksgiving to All

Linwood & Nancy Wickett

Stratham, NH

Bokeh

Bokeh: Another Linwood blank stare…

The other day, Saturday or Wednesday, I was standing in line to be seated at a local restaurant when an attractive young lady (brunette) stepped out of line and moseyed over to an odd color photograph on the wall. Then a balding middle-aged gentleman, with a thick ring of hair around his ears, and a waxed handle-bar mustache, wearing torn jeans and white sneakers, and a flannel shirt, and suspenders, and so on, stepped out of line and stood beside the young lady. “Nice Bokeh!” he said.

I waited for the young lady to draw a fist and slug him, or at least hit him with the small purse she was carrying. “Thanks, I took it myself! May I buy you lunch?”

I was floored, but figured it might be a good time to learn something new for this year. It especially hit home when I remembered that term being used at one of our photo meetings during one of our “free-for-all” sessions. (Thus, a blank stare event)

Two days ago, Monday or Thursday, I had lost my “round-to-it" and opened my November Popular Pornography to the centerfold (Whoops! That bruise beside my head came with a voice that said it was “Popular Photography”). On page 40, lo-and-behold, there was the term Bokeh again.

Okay, this may be the one new thing I learn this year, but here is the definition, in case I need to look it up again.

“BOKEH: A Japanese word that roughly translates as “blur” or “haze,” Bokeh refers, photographically, to defocused areas of an image either in front of or behind a sharp subject. It’s a phenomenon associated with the lenses and is primarily influenced by the size, shape, and smoothness of the opening defined by the aperture blades of the lens. Lenses are said to produce “fine” or “course” bokeh, the former being more desirable then the latter. Fine bokeh is characterized by smooth, circular shapes in the defocused highlights created by specula reflection s off shiny objects or directly from light sources. Course bokeh is identified by oval highlights or by highlights shaped as pentagons or octagons, a direct reflection of the number of blades making up a given diaphragm. The word is pronounced “boh-keh,” with one long and one short vowel and equally stressed syllables.”

Now I have to learn what “vowel” means. Also, now I have an idea what the Topaz Lens Effects that I purchased, was talking about.