Look at that little squirrel S.O.B. stalking up from the background.
It’s bird seed, not squirrel seed. You dick!
Tag: D90
Long Exposure Tests
I took advantage of my new Monday telecommuting day by going to the gym (laugh), going to the store to pick up a loaf of bread, and by pulling into the Methuen Music Hall parking lot to do a couple more long exposure pics of the Spicket River.
This time the plan was to take the same pic multiple times, using different exposure times. First though, my house has central air. The AC was on most of the night. When we woke up today it was pretty chilly inside. Outside, however, it was already pretty muggy. Do the math… cold inside plus muggy outside equals foggy camera lens. Grrr.
Before I could start the experiment though, I had to rush through de-fogging things so that I could grab a picture of our friend the huge ass heron, who was just up river from me. He hung around for quite a while. He’s a good guy (assuming he’s a he and not a she, in which case she’s a good gal).
Next we have the just-when-you-thought-you-knew-what-you-were-doing moment where I forgot that I had the ISO setting up really high from yesterday. Woops.
Now that the silliness was over, I could begin the experiment. First I pointed the camera at the little waterfall and took four pictures. The first was a 30 second exposure.
The second was a 20 second exposure.
The third was a 10 second exposure.
And finally, a 1 second exposure.
Cool! Can you see the differences? Longer exposure means more light entering the lens and hitting the sensor. It also means more pronounced blurring. Shorter exposure means less light and less blurring. You can actually see it! I can’t decide if I prefer the 30 second or the 20 second.
Next I turned the camera down river toward route 28 where the river goes under the road. Again, four pics with four different exposure times.
30 seconds.
20 seconds.
10 seconds.
And finally, one second.
Again, the differences are pretty clear. Can you see the blurred cars on the bridge in the 10 and 20 second pics? I was so focused on the river that I didn’t even think of the road. Pretty cool.
Now that I’ve done this, I need to figure out what to do next. There’s always the Merrimack River, right?
The Whole Bird Watching Thing is Out of Control
I can’t stop. I just want to sit out there and wait for the uncooperative birds to come and visit. There’s only two or three who actually come to the feeder, but that doesn’t stop me.
This chipmunk was almost close enough to pet a couple of times. He’d sneak up next to me, see me looking at him, and then run away like his ass was on fire.
I did get a few birds. Just the regular cast of characters.
As I sat there watching the chipmunks hanging around the ground beneath the feeder, and watching the squirrels stalk around the edge of the yard, and watching the birds stay in the trees where they are no good to me, I decided to increase the options available to our wild kingdom friends. I went to the edge of the trees and got the original squirrel bird feeder. I can hang it on one of the flower poles, but only if I keep it less than about half full. So far so good.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and the squirrels will only climb on one feeder and leave the others alone. I’m dreaming, I know.
After the big feeder was up a couple of birds went to the small feeder. No one acknowledged the big one.
Not long before I was ready to call it an afternoon, I had moved the chair away from the house and faced back up the hill. I caught this guy flying up the street. I think it’s a hawk. It sorta looks like it has a red tail, doesn’t it?
But all in all, the winner for this early afternoon is this guy.
Ghosts!
I went outside again this evening to watch the bird feeder. Not a single bird showed up. The jerks.
It was getting dark out there when I saw something crazy. A ghost in our back yard! Check out the proof!
It’s a ghostly apparition if I ever saw one. Who ya gonna call?
I turned the camera toward the woods and I got another view.
I came back to the bird feeder and there it was again! Ghostbusters and all that! WOOHOO
(nerdy things like this happen when you buy a nerd like me a new toy for his camera. 30 second exposures for everyone!)
Birds – Again
I spent some time watching for birds today. I didn’t get any Earth shattering pics, but I did use shutter priority again, so that was good. I played with some lower ISO settings too. I just didn’t have any real moments where the birds played along.
The few birds that visited tended to stay on the other side of the feeder. They were literally screwing with me. The jerks.
So close… so not good.
If this guy were in focus it would be the best picture I’ve ever taken.
This guy spent quite a long time pigging out.
This little yellow dude was always just out of focus. The jerk.
Spicket Falls Dam
So let’s see here. I posted the long exposure pics from Tuesday. I posted the normal Forrest Lake pictures. I posted the Grove Street pictures. All that’s left is the non-long exposures from the Spicket Falls Dam. Guess what’s coming now!
I’ve seen the flow over the dam both much lighter and much heavier than this. Doesn’t matter, I like it no matter what.
I still haven’t been up on the walkway. Somehow it feels to me like I would be trespassing if I did.
Even with the light flow over the dam, you get a pretty good rush of water underneath.
The water on Tuesday looked pretty dirty to me.
A lot of the old mill towns in the Merrimack Valley have converted their old abandoned mill buildings into condos or apartments. This, I hear, is Methuen’s mill-turned-apartment. Not 100% sure of that, but I think that’s true.
And that, kids, is everything worth sharing that I took on my little walk around on Tuesday. Just a little touch of my town, Methuen, Massachusetts.
Forrest Lake
Methuen, Massachusetts has a town lake. It’s called Forrest Lake. There is a little swimming area that is roped off. There are picnic tables with hibachis. There’s a boat launch. It seems like a nice little place to bring the family to hang out. Unfortunately we have yet to take advantage of it. One of these days.
Yesterday was the first time I went there with my camera. I was there a couple of hours before it opened so, with the exception of the dude fishing over by the swimming area, I pretty much had the run of the joint. I took all of these pictures from the boat launch area.
The fog on the water was cool, but I would have preferred some sunlight.
What are the flowers on the lily pads called? Lilies?
This makes me want to buy a boat.
Geese, Canadian.
I did notice this guy hook something. Something big. It flipped out of the water and made a really good sized splash.
Fish tales told here.
This also makes me want to buy a boat.
Picnic table graffiti, romance style.
Ralph has a Last Name
On June 25th I entered a post that showed a photo of a headstone with some kind of moss growing on it.
Yesterday, while on my 30 second exposure photo shooting bonanza, I stopped by the cemetery on Grove Street in the hopes of finding a last name to go along with Ralph’s mossy headstone.
I was successful. Ralph’s last name is Harris.
Unfortunately there are no dates listed for him or his brother Jackson, only their parents.
His father, Samuel, was born on May 3, 1794 and died on June 1, 1874. Samuel’s wife, the former Roxgeny Woodbury, was born on April 4, 1798 and died on December 27, 1880.
There are actually five people in the family plot. There is father (note, a grounds keeping crew was cutting the grass while I was there. These stones will be looking much better kept by now):
Mother:
Ralph:
Jackson:
And Elizabeth, who I hadn’t noticed the first time I visited this family plot:
Elizabeth has dates on her stone, 1836 – 1910. I wonder if that implies that Ralph and Jackson died at birth? I hope not.
I have never met these people. I have no idea who they were or what they were like. It’s been over 100 years since the last date shown on the plot. Still, I just want them to know that some one is still thinking about them. Gone but not forgotten.
30 Second Exposures
I took my new neutral density filter to a couple of places around town today in the hopes of pulling off at least one decent 30 second exposure. The first stop was Forrest Lake. Of course, the sun was barely out and the water was fogged over. I gave it a shot anyway.
First I used the auto focus to focus in on a shot, then I turned the manual focus on so that the camera wouldn’t try to refocus when I took the shot. Next, I went into shutter priority and set it for the longest time possible, 30 seconds. If I had a remote shutter release I could leave it open longer, but I don’t so I can’t. Then I put on the filter. I was using the live view function on my Nikon D90 so I could clearly see that barely any light was getting through. Then I set the shutter delay to the lowest setting I know how to get, 10 seconds. That way I wouldn’t shake the camera when I pushed the shutter release.
Photographers, did I do that right? Should I have done anything different?
Here goes. I will try to post a shot without the filter in auto mode, and then one with the filter in shutter priority. The colors at the lake came out… weird on the long exposures. See for yourself.
The shutter speed on this one is 0.008 seconds.
The shutter speed on this one is 30 seconds, and it uses the filter. See what I mean about the colors?
You can see the effect of the long exposure on the water, but the water was calm enough this morning that it didn’t make that much of a difference to me. Here are some more…
I don’t have a before picture for this one. All you get is the 30 second shot.
The guy fishing by the beach (which was closed. I was on the boat launch) was the only other person in sight. I should just junk this one, the 30 second shot looks like the camera moved a bit. Nothing on the ground is in focus. Crap. I wanted to see what the effect of having a mostly stationary person in the shot would do. I still don’t really know.
This one looks better, but you sort of lose the fog.
I also took a boat load of plain old ordinary auto mode pics as well as this was the first time I had my Nikon with me at Forrest Lake. You’ll see those in a future post.
Now we move on to the Spicket Falls Dam. I love this place. This dam is literally why I wanted to buy this stupid little filter in the first place. The results were… okay I guess. I probably threw things off myself. I have a gorilla pod, which is a little bendable tripod thingie. I had the camera on it for all of these pics, but at the dam it was standing on a not-so-wide cement wall that seriously scared the hell out of me. I envisioned the whole kit just dropping off the side into the river where I would never be able to get to them. I ended up holding onto the shoulder strap for dear life while the shutter was open. I probably shook things up.
First we see the dam without the filter.
Now we see a couple of 30 second snaps.
Not so bad. The second one seems a little too fuzzy, but the first one isn’t a disaster. Like I said, I was really nervous about the camera sitting on the wall, so I was probably moving things around too much and throwing off the focus. Still, it’s not bad for my first day, right?
The next couple were also taken from the cement wall, but they were points down stream from the damn. The water was moving pretty fast here, and the effects are pretty dramatic in comparison to everything I’ve shown so far.
Look at the little chunk of cement jutting out on the right side of that picture. It’s not perfectly focused, but it’s close. Now this is what I had in mind when I bought this little thing!
Here’s another spot on the river, just before it turns and goes under Osgood Street. This has a little more of the river bank, so the effect seems even more drastic to me.
This is the best one so far, by far. The tree and the bank looks pretty clear. I like this one.
Next I followed the river walk across the road to a spot where you can get down to the water itself. I have only done this in the fall or early spring, so I wasn’t quite ready for the amount of plant growth, but I toughed it out. In this case the camera was on the gorilla pod, which was sitting on a tree stump. This worked the best, although I was still terrified of having the camera fall off.
I don’t think I actually took this while setting the focus. The rocks on the other side are clear, but the branch on my side of the river isn’t.
Now check out this bad boy. Both sides of the river are in focus, but the water is silky smooth happiness.
I didn’t set this one up at all. By this point I had reached the camera-falling-off-the-log panic threshold, so I just turned it to a different spot and clicked. It came out better than most of the other pictures.
So there you have it. My first foray into long exposures in the daytime. I wonder if this thing will solve the problem of moon pics too. When I point the camera at the moon I get a nice night sky with this great big overexposed blotch where the moon is supposed to be. I wonder if I put the filter on and just snap a few, will the moon look okay? Something else to try!
I almost feel like someone who knows what he’s doing (even though I clearly do not)!
ND Filter Test
I bought a Neutral Density Filter last week. I thought it was coming UPS tomorrow, but it came today.
It’s pouring rain outside right now, like Noah and the end of the world and all of that. There is a little pin hole sized leak in the gutter over our garage. When it rains the water comes streaming through that hole and makes a puddle on the side of the driveway. The dirt in that spot is eroding away at an alarming rate, but for today it served as a good place to test out the new filter!
It worked! WOOHOO!
Inside the Red Head's Head 