Palmer Arboretum

So thought about Old Sturbridge Village...but my knees actually feel OK today and I didn't want to over-do them, plus it was supposed to get downright hot (upper 80s) so the thought of a decent length walk wasn't appealing.

Then drove towards Tower Hill Botanic Gardens -- and from what I read the toughest stuff for photographing flowers is bright sun and wind, and I noticed there was a steady strong breeze to outright gusty winds :/ Not sure I wanted to drop $16 for admission in that case.

But on the way home decided to finally go behind the old Woodstock Town Hall to visit the Palmer Arboretum for free!

Canon EOS 50D,0.0015625 1/640, f/5.6, focal length 50, ISO 800


Canon EOS 50D,0.0015625 1/640, f/2.8, focal length 50, ISO 200


Canon EOS 50D,0.0015625 1/640, f/2.8, focal length 50, ISO 200


Canon EOS 50D,0.002 1/500, f/2.8, focal length 50, ISO 200


Canon EOS 50D,0.0008 1/1250, f/2.8, focal length 50, ISO 200


Sunny and windy? Challenge accepted :D Actually I'm really pleased how these photos did turn out for the most part.
Canon EOS 50D,0.00015625 1/6400, f/2.8, focal length 50, ISO 200


But you can see how it really is blowing stuff out when there is areas of sunshine between the shaded areas.
Canon EOS 50D,0.008 1/125, f/5.6, focal length 15, ISO 400


Canon EOS 50D,0.0025 1/400, f/2.8, focal length 50, ISO 400


A crop from the above photo.

Windmills & Waterfalls -- Part III

The two shots from Pachaug that "didn't make the cut" (See Windmills & Waterfalls -- Part I) -- composition was a bit off, and probably one is too soft in the back and the other too sharp.

Canon 50 D, 50mm f/1.8 lens -- 1/30, f/2.0, ISO 100
Exposure -2 in Lightroom


Canon 50 D, 50mm f/1.8 lens -- 1/50, f/8.0, ISO 800

The other thing I just realized, after Liz M. commented that the forefront of the falls looked "soft" is how depth of field is affecting these shots.

Here is a close-up from the f/5.6 shot. I was about 3 meters away, so depth of field was about 30" (I was probably a bit further away and thus a little deeper field). Focus was basically at the top of the closer dam.


Compare that to f/2.0 which had a lot of bokeh in the background, but also meant a lot more of the foreground was also out of focus, The depth of field is only 10" -- way too narrow to get the front falls to "pop" fully.

Windmills & Waterfalls -- Part II

Not quite what I want yet...but getting closer!

The original shots specs were the same:
Canon 50D 50mm 1.8 lens; 1/100 F/18 ISO 100
High Speed mode, Live View mode
Took 30 shots like this:


Used Imagemagick to create this "averaged" composite:
convert -average *.JPG converted.jpg


I also played with Canon's Digital Photography Professional 4 software which can make composites, but what I found is each photo was quickly increasing the exposure. The blades are more or less what I want, but it will be time consuming to do this -- I suspect I have to copy the current raw files, drop their exposures, and possibly make several intermediate files to combine later in order to stop overexposing.


Additionally, even though it's just a couple seconds the clouds moved enough to blur significantly -- his might be a candidate to Photoshop to keep a single background and substitute in just the composite windmill. Hmmm...

Windmills & Waterfalls -- Part 1

Pachaug Forest

Canon 50D, 50mm f/1.8 lens, f 5.6, 1/250th, ISO 800, Exposure +1 in Lightroom:


Wasn't even noticing the swirls (of course I was on my belly, my head hanging off the bridge abutment to get the camera low enough) till I got home and started developing the photos. Best perspective I could get without putting on a bathing suit, the prospect of which in a flowing brook before Memorial Day is not enticing!

Cliff Manzone -- Nathan Hale Homestead Milky Way

This was recently posted on the Coventry Farmer's Market Facebook page, taken by a fellow from Bolton, Conn.

https://cliffmanzone.pixieset.com/astro/

Less it seem I'm just being lazy with the garden...

So in other words ... in the 147 years of record for #Boston, April 2019 saw the most number of days of measurable precipitation at 21 breaking the previous record of 19 last set back in December 2007.

Hard to get some dry time in the garden to plant stuff and not make a muddy mess when it is raining almost every day!

Playing with the flash

,,,I have to do something while waiting to do my 10 o'clock changes for work...

600EXII RT Speedlite, attached to the camera, using the default ETTL settings. (In theory I should be able to set the flash up remotely from the camera, too -- that will be for another night.

Direct on:
Canon EOS 50D,0.005 1/200, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Pointed towards ceiling:
Canon EOS 50D,0.00625 1/160, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Towards ceiling, with built-in diffuser:
Canon EOS 50D,0.00625 1/160, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Towards ceiling, with the clip-on diffuser:
Canon EOS 50D,0.00625 1/160, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200

HDR

Practicing with the "AEB" (Automatic Exposure Balance) on the Canon 50D, which lets me then combine a sequence of three photos into one in order to produce an "HDR" (High Dynamic Range) photo. First photo is taken at what I set the exposure to, then the camera automatically takes another under-exposed and another over-exposed, which then can be combined on my computer with the Canon tool (or Lightroom).

First three were taken at +/-2 (stops) on the exposure:

Canon EOS 50D,0.008 1/125, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Canon EOS 50D,0.002 1/500, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Canon EOS 50D,0.03333333333333333 1/30, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


And Combined:


First three were taken at +/-1 (stops) on the exposure:

Canon EOS 50D,0.005 1/200, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Canon EOS 50D,0.0025 1/400, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


Canon EOS 50D,0.01 1/100, f/1.4, focal length 50, ISO 3200


And combined -- first one I forgot to set to "auto align"; the second is the aligned version.

Dresser Hill to Point Judith...

Poured overnight -- a couple inches of rain so I couldn't work in the yard.

But there was a cool "dark" cloud line in the sky when I got going in the morning, and I kind of chased it north trying to find a good place for photos. Went a lot further north than I expected to Dresser Hill.

The two lenses I used today were the EF-S 10-18 f/4.5-5.6 I bought earlier this month, and the EF 50 f/1.4 which is my best piece of glass. I don't have filters for the 10-18, but I did put a ND 0.4 plus polarizing filter on the 50 (but I'm not sure I had the polarizing aligned right...I forgot to check it :/)

Canon EOS 50D,0.0025 1/400, f/13, focal length 10, ISO 200


Canon EOS 50D,0.002 1/500, f/13, focal length 10, ISO 200


Canon EOS 50D,0.00625 1/160, f/22, focal length 50, ISO 200


I was planning on the back side of Woodstock Academy but I was unhappy how much the trees on the back side had grown up. Heading further north I passed through East Woodstock -- and decided I needed to come back to try and get this photo. (For those not following that on a map, my next goal after WA was Prospect Street, but the road side was WAY too wet to try and pull over).

I had gotten to Dresser Hill it was raining there -- and by the time I waited out the rain for 15 minutes and took the photos, to the south the clouds had already moved in again!

I'll probably revisit this once the grass is greener and sky bluer -- and if I get a shot I like better it is probably a great candidate for Photoshop to remove the telephone and power lines.

Canon EOS 50D,0.0008 1/1250, f/8, focal length 50, ISO 400


Then I came across the old dam in the middle of East Woodstock. I still had the ND 0.4 plus polarizing filter on the 50 lens. I didn't take long focal length; maybe if I did I could've gotten it slow enough to get the "smoothing" effect. Canon EOS 50D,0.0125 1/80, f/8, focal length 50, ISO 400.


Canon EOS 50D,0.0125 1/80, f/8, focal length 50, ISO 400


The 50 however was way too close to get the whole scene in, and there was no practical way to backup without being in the middle of the road and having a guard rail in my photo :D
Canon EOS 50D,0.001 1/1000, f/8, focal length 13, ISO 400


Canon EOS 50D,0.001 1/1000, f/8, focal length 10, ISO 400


Canon EOS 50D,0.00125 1/800, f/8, focal length 18, ISO 400


And down to the shore to play a bit.

Canon EOS 50D, 1/2000, f/2.8, focal length 18, ISO 400

2.8 doesn't sound right to the image, I'd think at least f/8 but that is what the EXIF is saying in LightRoom.



I seriously underexposed this image...but the "after" Lightroom impressed me (as long as you don't look at the large size image which is very grainy):
Canon EOS 50D,0.0002 1/5000, f/8, focal length 50, ISO 400


Canon EOS 50D,0.0002 1/5000, f/8, focal length 50, ISO 400

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