Moon over Vegas Valley

Steve W said:
The other day TC(Girl) and you talked about making images of a moon lit field and I decided to give it a go. We don't have any fields here in the Las Vegas valley, so I hope desert will suffice.

[Click for big pic.]

Spent about 1-1/2 hours out there and got 3 exposures. The long exposure NR [The camera takes an extra, black, exposure, to get the noise level and deduct it from the exposure] doubled the time for each 8 min exposure. From the histogram I probably should have done 16's + LENR but I was running out of dark (sounds odd doesn't it).

The tops of the peaks look to be brought up by the lights of Las Vegas and the sky was backlit by the Pahrump valley which is about 25 miles behind the peaks. The moon was almost directly overhead, so there isn't a lot of shadows. From what I have read, exposures longer than about 2 min start to soften the shadow detail and not totally blocked.
[I had trouble getting that sentence, so Steve clarified:] You had mentioned that under moonlight the shadows would have no detail (blocked). The moon moves in the sky about it's diameter every 2 minutes, so the shadow's edge begins to soften. Given enough time and the open-ness of the desert bushes, there is slight detail in the shadows of them.
I hope I am using the right terms in using 'blocked' for when the sensor records no data or in other words falls off the left side of the histogram. The highlights on the right that fall off are 'Blown'.

Canon 5D MI set to Bulb, EF 24-105 f/4L IS set to Infinity focus, Canon TC-80N3 Timer Controller, all mounted on a very Slik tripod and ball head.
480 sec @ f/8 and ISO100 PP= Luminance, -30 Blue, +25 Orange, +15 Red. A touch of Clarity and Vib. Levels= +.08 center slider. NR= +1 on the Blue channel. Dust spot removed from the sky. Black border and burned the bottom corners.

Thanks to Steve, this is great.

Me, I would have tried with 400 ISO, probably the image quality would not have suffered much.
And perhaps I could have used F:4.0, if it would have had the depth-of-field to make the foreground sharp (which depends on the lens and the distances).

Steve comments:
The Aperture was decided for DOF. I have done enough up there in the daylight to know f/8 is about min if you want the foreground in focus. I wasn't sure about the noise, so I used ISO 100. As it was, I did get a bit of noise show up in the sky. Higher ISO with faster exposure might have about the same noise, I would just have to test that [very long exposures tend to increase noise. - E]. I was also interested in seeing how long the star trails would be at the 8 min exposure. Doing the math, I could have used the 35 f/1.4 @1.4, ISO 400 and the exposure time would have been 7 stops faster, or 4 sec. It is all tied together.
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Flat roofs

How come roofs are slanted in the country and flat in the cities?
If a slanted roof is the cheapest way of dealing with snow and rain, why don't they use it in the city too? It's not like the roof is usually used for anything much, except for meetings and fights between superheroes, and they really should have their own headquarters.

The art of noise (not the band)

[Thanks to Bert.]

The art of noise, noise sculptures by Zimoun.

I think they're very cool.
(though I doubt I'd have one in my home!)
I especially like those with little motors bouncing around, they are like little animals or big insects.
Gawd, what a fantastic amount of work he's put into these works! You have to take your hat off for the industry of some artists.

Is it "noise" if it's not unpleasant? Well, the dictionary says:
Noise:
1. sound, esp. of a loud, harsh, or confused kind: deafening noises.
2. a sound of any kind: to hear a noise at the door.

I guess the second definition applies here instead of the first.

I'm reminded of back in the early nineties when I had first discovered the wonderful piece of music "Ministry - Crash and Burn/Twitch (Version 2)" (below)... my sister happened to call at least twice while I had it on the turntable, and both times she said: "what's that noise in the background?" She didn't say "what's that music"...
I especially like the second half (second video) which is instrumental, and very noisy indeed, but also amazing music.

Fake Chuck Westfall

[Thanks to Luke.]

Fake Chuck Westfall (The real CW is Director for Canon U.S.A) and me?
(Though I thought the pictures I (and Mike Johnston) had selected showed the likeness better, some people actually believed it was me on both.)

New year's snow on grass

I'm quite fond of the last one, with the tree. (Canon 5D2, 70-200mm at the long end.) It's funny because the subject is surrounded by distracting things on all four sides, cars, trees, etc, so you really don't see it until you try with a tele to separate compositions and get into it.

Lorre 196

Saw this card after an episode of the entertaining Big Bang Theory:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #196

my soul's journey

To let go of the fear and anger which imprisons my heart,
To relinquish all childish expectations and live joyfully in the world as it is --
not as I wish or imagine it to be,
To be free of the always craven and ever-craving ego,
To be released from the endless hungers of the body,
To see God in others,
To see God in everything,
To die without death and merge my consciousness into the
cosmic sea of bliss from which I came,
To crank out two sitcoms a week that can compete
with a deaf chick dancing her ass off...
This is my soul's journey.

I wonder if he's referring to something on TV, or this vid:



If the latter, I'd have expected it to be a very popular one, since he uses the word "compete". But it has only had a few thousand views, not millions as some youtoobs have.

Here's a fun little story of censorship and what a vanity card is (I didn't know).
"Please know that my aim was only to provoke a bit of gaiety through the judicious use of a little thing I like to call “the truth.”"
Did he really expect CBS to look at that card as "a little gaiety"? It may have been truthful, but it clearly is an attack, not a little joke. I wonder if Lorre is aware of how combative he really is.

Tommy's fireworks

Tommy made these fireworks photos, way cool.

Interestingly they are made more graphically interesting by him not using a tripod, which gives them the squiggly look!
I would not have thought of that, I'm too much of a follow-the-rules kinda guy. (In deep struggle with a rebellious heart deep inside.)

Nikon D3s low-light samples

Talking about low light, NeutralDay has tested the new Nikon D3s. Very friggin' impressive. It beats the D3, which was already king of the hill. The images at 16,000 ISO has much less "grain" than the photos I took with the first 400 ASA (~ISO) color film back in the day (late seventies).

Jul, Babushka (updated)

The two guys are the same actor, Anders Matthesen, believe it or not.



I'll give a full year's membership at Domai to any Dane who will transcribe and translate this in full, before Jan 9.

Update: much of the storyline is about terrorists, believe it or not. And it seems the Danish cartoon-story is not over yet, lo this story from 2 January 2010. I think fundamentalists have long memories. [Thanks to Joe.]

Long flash

It just occured to me to test the "night eyes" of my flash and camera. And lookit this! It illuminated the whole damn yard! The building is only illuminated from my camera. That's ridic.


Canon 5D II at 3200 ISO, Canon lens 35mm F:1.4, and Canon 580EX II flash.

It would be cool to photograph the nightlife in town like this. Buuuut... with the "beer-bin brainiacs" who pass for young men around here, it would be a quite risky proposition. Even if I were to bring a couple of strong friends, we may run into five or seven drunk skinheads who, already looking for a brawl, decide we are pervs wanting a good lesson.
But really, this is beginning to inspire me... it could be an alternative kind of night photography, even of still objects.

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Cool coincidence: NeutralDay is also getting into flashing (as it were) right now.
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Talking about gear: Whenever you buy it, or software, there's a registration form to fill out and send. Has anybody ever observed any practical effect of this, other than you get put on another mailing list?

Da Da Da

Goodness, Justine is cute. I once saw her on a Danish talk show, she was on the couch and Boy George was too. The idiot interviewer brought up the question of how big a penis should be. Boy loved it, but poor Justine was so embarrassed.
Elastica was a great band. The perfect mix of nice pop tunes and awesome guitars.

So, other cool version of Da Da Da:

2010

Happy new year!!

Gawd, it's 2010! (Well, here in Europe at least.) Strangely, to me that feels more "science-fiction-y" than 2000 did.