 |
| View to the East from the Deck of the Rental Property |
www.dennismook.com
As promised, a better post today with some new images. I'll include a couple of extras.
The rental house we occupy is sitting on top of a tall hill. Right on top. It is actually a one-half mile drive from the bottom to the top. In fact, it is a really harrowing drive up a one lane, very curvy "road", if you can call it that. (I would hate to drive it at night in the rain and fog!) The view is very nice in all directions and the sun rises over the distant mountains to the east every morning, much to our delight.
The surrounding countryside is filled with vineyards from the over 300 wineries in this area. The harvest is over by this time of the year and the leaves are turning a pleasant yellow with some red. Since the skies and air has been pretty clear, making images of backlit vineyards has been a delight. Photographing objects like colored leaves is much better "from the shadow side" as they become somewhat translucent. Much better than the sun behind your back.
During our travels, we have visited and eaten in several of the small towns in the area. The closest town, Guerneville, is about 5 miles away and makes it convenient to make trips to the grocery store when we run low on essentials. In town, I noticed two stores, with their associated signs, that I have not seen in years. One is a Five and Ten Cent Store and the other is a Rexall Drug store. I thought both of those had gone away many years ago. Finding those types of businesses and associated signs are one of the reasons I like exploring small towns across the country. Traveling through small towns is so much more rewarding to me than fighting traffic in large cities. I recommend you try it.
As for the images of the Milky Way that I attempted last night, I didn't quite capture the Milky Way but captured lots and lots of stars. It was obvious that my exposure was not long enough. If the sky is clear tonight, I will try again. My longest exposure last night was 17 seconds @ F/3.5 (using the 12-35mm F/2.8 Panasonic lens) at ISO1000. Tonight, I will use the Panasonic 20mm F/1.7 lens @ F/2 for 30 seconds and ISO 1600. The key is not to go beyond 30 seconds to eliminate any movement of the stars. Also, I will set my lens at infinity focus during the daylight and place the camera on manual focus. I had forgotten to do that last night in the pitch black dark and had a devil of a time finding some distant lights that were far enough away to be equivalent to infinity focus. If at first you don't succeed....
By the way, the Olympus E-M5 has a terrific feature call Live Timer and Live Bulb. You can see the image appear on your LCD as it is recorded by the sensor. You can then judge your exposure to more closely determine proper exposure. I had never used it before and I saw some digital noise appear, which did not appear in the image files, which left me a bit gun shy on using longer exposures. Now, that I know that the LCD noise is not in the files, I will proceed with that critical information. But the idea of see your long exposure image appear before your eyes is a nice addition to the camera's capabilities. I don't know if any other cameras can do that.
Today, two of our party have a big University of Michigan vs. Michigan State rivalry. So, us guys will settle in and watch the game to find out who will win the annual Paul Bunyan Trophy. I don't have a dog in this fight, so I just try to instigate a little more rivalry between my friends! Nothing like getting two buddies riled up and excited about their team winning while sitting back and enjoying the conflict! LOL
Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis Mook
All content on this blog is © Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to or reference this blog from your website or publication, with full attribution, of course. Permission may be granted for reproducing the contents for editorial or commercial use. Please contact me to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.
No comments:
Post a Comment