Windmills and Reservoirs

Hrrrmmmphhh...couldn't find my remote switch (or remember how to set the camera timer) and it is supposed to rain the next four days.

I bought a $20 set of ND filters (sunglasses for cameras) so I could slow the exposures down. Although I was braced against a fence, there is still an awful, awful lot of handshaking in the pics. Once the trees leaf out I'll return and set the camera up on a tripod and remote trigger to eliminate camera movement:

I used the full stack of 2-4-8 for a total of 14
Canon EOS 50D, 1.6 (), f/25, focal length 35, ISO 100


Ok, same pic as above with more playing in Lightroom -- still don't think I have it dialed in just right:



Same pic once again, but I realized there was a stonewall in the background and used that in Lightroom as the "neutral gray" source for setting the light balance. Next time I do this I'll bring my "gray card" with me that provides a 100% accurate gray that is used for setting the light balance correctly. The light balance can then be adjusted on the camera before taking the photo, or afterwards in Lightroom by applying settings from the sample gray card photo.



Then I took the above photo and went +1 on the exposure in Lightroom. I don't think I could have done the exposure different on the camera without reducing the size of the "blur" on the windmill.



Canon EOS 50D, 1.6 (), f/25, focal length 38, ISO 100


Now with the same LR settings as the previous photo set plus a little bit of fiddling with the tone curve. If the three windmills were facing me (and the photo was sharp) this would be cool:


...and the Scituate Reservoir was a spectacular blue this afternoon:

Canon EOS 50D, 0.02 (), f/25, focal length 200, ISO 400

Windmills

Rained this morning. Went to see Aunt Eleanore and straighten out some of her electronic challenges.

Too wet to work outside, so went kind of aimlessly driving -- came across the windmills in Johnston, RI.


I've gotten the notion in my head capturing the motion would make a neat photo. However there was no way I could take a long enough exposure in daylight, and my filters which might have helped reduce the brightness were all at home :/

So I need to do some research if I can filter this enough to get a long exposure, or if I could over-expose the photography and fix it in Lightroom???

(Also doesn't help I can't really make out what I took on the screen -- I really need a laptop sized screen to review the photos).

Canon EOS 50D, 0.002 (), f/22, focal length 47, ISO 400

Canon EOS 50D, 0.0125 (), f/25, focal length 42, ISO 100

Canon EOS 50D, 0.01 (), f/22, focal length 50, ISO 100

Little bit of photography

Sunday morning:

CL&P has been extensively upgrading power lines the last few years. This is the 115kV transmission line that runs from the Montville power station up to Putnam (well, Tracy Road on the Killingly/Putnam town line), which I seem to recall was built 1928 (I need to confirm that). It does show up on the state's 1934 Aerial Survey. I'm not sure if the old wood poles were the originals -- the question is are they 90 years old or ~50 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if they were engineered to last a century.

In the late 1960s (very early 70s?) a 345kV line was run from Willimantic to Rhode Island, but this line up until 2005-ish didn't provide any power to northeastern Connecticut. The 345kV line could provide power via a 115kV tie that ran from Willimantic to the substation at the Tunnel hydroelectric station in Preston, with the Montville power station being the primary power source in the regions.

Around 2005 the Killingy Substation was built which inter-connected with the 345kV line due to increasing power demands north of Preston. Even though Lake Road Generating Station was being built by that time, reading the DPUC reports there remained a concerned about capacity if that power plant was down for maintenance or other reasons.

The 345kV line just finished being upgraded by adding a second 345kV circuit when they started working on this project.

Note the old tower is using 7 disks on the insulators, the new tower 9 -- so my guess is they're engineering this to eventually be upgraded to 138kV.

(Looking at the photos now...holy crap they look not-sharp. I suspect had I used a tripod I could've taken better photos -- I'm just looking at too long of distances to handheld shots not to pickup body motion.)




And Monday I...took a sick day because I could barely move. I knew by the time I could drive in I would have a parking spot so far out it wasn't worth the pain of walking in :D 2+ years of not much physical activity since I screwed up my knee in 2016 will do that. Managed to capture another rock in the foreground :/ but I don't feel like cropping the photo. Since it was drizzling I took this from inside my car, from the driver's seat through the passenger window.

Canon EOS 50D, 1/5, f/6.3, focal length 200, ISO 100

Gardening....and cleaning up Uncle Ed's

I'm so sore.

This morning got trenches for taters and a new asparagus bed dug, and and area for onions and peas turned over.


Then stopped at Agway for taters, peas, onions...they didn't have asparagus in yet...on the way to Ro & Ed's to help with a yard cleanup.




Casey spreading mulch...with a broom. WTF?!

Putting the leaf blower and Crown back in the car...

Photography Toy Fund...

So we got a small bonus this year (not much more than the on-call pay I get every 10 weeks, but still unexpected), plus a small refund of unused insurance that was also unexpected.

I missed two used "ultra wide" lenses on Craigslist this week which sold in a day, and I figured it wasn't that much more to buy a new one. So Saturday began with a trip to Hunt's in Providence. (Well, actually it began with sleeping in until 10 -- the latest I've done in months :D ).

Then it was off to visit Aunt Eleanore with mom for a couple hours, then I ran up to Eric's to borrow his leaf blower since we plan a clean up at Uncle Ed's tomorrow. It was good a day, beautiful weather but I also just felt...well. Little inflammation, clear head. Can't quite bring myself to say happy, but darn close.

I paid a bit more for the filter (which protects the lens) than I planned, but the bag was only $20 so I pretty much came in on budget. I guess forest green is no longer in fashion judging by the dust on it -- but I wanted a bag smaller than my "everything" photography bag, but which could carry a couple lenses and my small case that I usually grab to go to fires can't hold extra lenses.

I'm think this will be the perfect size for places like Old Sturbridge Village to take photos both outside and inside, which really need at least two different lenses to take the best photos in both environments (if not a third) (or more...cameras are like guns, I'm not sure you can have enough for every situation :D).

Thursday night I played around a bit in low light in the house. This is my 50mm lens that can go down to f/1.4 -- a very big aperture needs little light, but the trade off is the larger the aperture (the smaller the f number) the shallower the depth of field that is in focus. Sometimes that is good for artistic shots.
Canon EOS 50D, 0.0125 (), f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200

Same lens, Saturday morning in daylight, f/8 so it has a deeper field of focus so the background is not nearly as "soft."
Canon EOS 50D, 0.0125 (), f/8, focal length 50, ISO 3200

Now to show what my lens could do. Here is the 50mm again -- note the width of the photo:
Canon EOS 50D, 0.0125 (), f/1.8, focal length 50, ISO 3200

Putting on my Tamaron 18-200mm lens, set to 18mm. This was the widest I could take a photograph before.
Canon EOS 50D, 0.07692307692307693 (), f/3.5, focal length 18, ISO 3200

Now the new lens at it's widest -- 10mm, which you do see some distortion towards the edges. But notice how much more the room it picks up. (These ultra-wides are also used for very large landscape photos)
Canon EOS 50D, 0.07692307692307693 (), f/4.5, focal length 10, ISO 3200

And the same lens set to 14mm:
Canon EOS 50D, 0.07692307692307693 (), f/5, focal length 14, ISO 3200


The 10mm is as wide as the class of my camera (ASP-C / Crop Sensor). Without the distortion of a fish-eye lens the only way to get a bigger field of view without stitching multiple photos together is to upgrade to a Full-Frame camera. The 10mm on my camera is equivalent to a 16mm on a full frame -- so my 18-200 on a full frame would produce an image almost as big as my 10mm lens. You can put a 10mm lens on a full-frame, but I would need to spend at least three or four times as much for a lens in the 10mm class that is built to produce good images on full-frame. While many lenses are compatible with both camera frames when you push the edges of performance like this you end up needing high quality lenses to avoid distortion and other problems.
This, plus the new batteries I bought earlier this week, is probably the last spending on the camera gear for this year and maybe next.

There are three more lenses I'd like long term --

-- Super-telephoto (Sigma 150-600mm I'm looking at you).
-- Macro (Used for taking very close-up shots)
-- Fisheye (For funky artistic shots)

Peepers

First time this year --
March 30, 2019

De-rutting the driveway

This should be it for the year...ruts are gone again :)



I'm figuring out it is best to go both directions, relatively short stretches, kind of overlapping.

Plus the moisture seemed just right -- when it gets dry it seems to not smooth well. I think this is the smoothest I've gotten the driveway ever.





And a Sunday night short-ball. Can't really call it a highball :D

Connecticut Volunteer Firefighter recruitment video

Nicely done:

Mudding (and scallops)

The never-ending mud season that began around the first week of January...even now we're 40s by day but 20s by night. So this won't rut up at least till I get back home tomorrow evening :D




Either it is a really good job smoothing mud, or a really shitty job finishing concrete :D

Don't accuse me of never color co-ordinating on a holiday.

It is Saint Patrick's Day.



(And yes, Crown Apple is smooooooth.)

Finally really snowed!

Never even took the shovel out of the garage until today -- all the other storms were under 4" and/or I could just wait a day for them to melt.

This...was not going to melt. Last forecast of the evening had us in the main 8-12" belt "with it more like 8-10""...soon as I looked out the window I was "Welp, that's not 10 inches!"









iPhone can't do it justice, but the snow had that lovely blue glow to it.

Not saying I'm geeking out...

I'm just saying I'm SSH'ing and SCP'ing to Windows 2019 using official Microsoft supported server side tools :D

Mud on Permafrost...

45° today...finally ventured out in the mist to try and knock down the ruts of 6" of mud on top of frozen ground:



So far this year I haven't so much as taken the snow shovel out of the garage. No snowplowing, no tractor work.

But the weather keeps ping-ponging between 10° and 50° -- it'll be 9° on Wednesday morning, and mid forties forecast by the weekend.

Worse mud I've seen since the driveway has been a mess for a month, and probably at least another month to dry up.

January 21st Ice Storm

Thankfully we never got wind to go with the 0.25" or so of ice so no major damage.

I was iced in until Thursday...driveway was shear ice so I just worked from home for a few day!



Yeah...it took me a month to get around to posting this :D

Interviews with Old -- really old -- Folks ...

So I can remember to watch in future:

Jaye P. Morgan, 1978 Daytime TV, and cocaine...

This amuses me thoroughly...and probably is positive proof that 1978 was the highpoint of the United States.

There is a moment that is NSFW. Which is truly impressive when you realize Jaye P. was 47 years old when they filmed this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME_rrjIODTE

Paul Rudd, Stephen Hawking, and Quantum Chess

...I still only have a vague clue what they're talking about... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi0BzqV_b44&feature=youtu.be