I don’t know if I will be able to wake up at 4:00am in order to get there in time, but if I do I’ll have a digital camera and a film camera and it will be cool.
I made it to Salisbury Beach this morning. I took a bunch of pics and I don’t like any of them. I had the ISO set way too high because I set it high when I’m at home and I always forget to lower it when I go outside. It ruined all of my long exposures. Blah.
44/365
I think I prefer the 40mm lens to the 28mm lens for the sun itself, but the 28mm is better for the beach as a whole. That makes sense, right?
I had the ND filter on for a lot of these. Not sure which pic is the first one after I took it off.
From here on the ISO is set to 100 instead of 1600.
I thought this morning was going to be a bust. I got up to Hampton Beach in plenty of time to catch the sunrise, but there were clouds covering the horizon. Lots of them. I thought I had wasted a morning. I didn’t though. Gravitational lensing and all that? Could be.
I took a few shots before the appointed sunrise time, just because I was there and the ocean was there and we were there together and why not, right?
The waves were super wimpy, but the sky was just spectacular. I set up the tripod and put the digital camera on it for some long exposures. I’m not sure why, but none of them came out. I used shutter priority and set the time to 30 seconds. I didn’t try anything shorter than that so it’s my fault, but at least I can blame the… shit… I forgot to drop the ISO down to 100. I keep it set at 800 when I am at home. Okay. I can’t blame shutter priority, it was all my fault. Sorry about that, folks.
Anyway, I took out the ebay Nikon with Dad’s zoom lens and I was putzing around with that when suddenly I noticed the freakin’ sun was visible, popping out of the water. I guess I didn’t waste the morning after all!
Success! Two sunrise shoots in less than one week. I think I am set for sunrise at the ocean pics for a while then. Excellent.
One thing that’s fun at this spot on Hampton Beach is catching the sun reflecting off the windows across the street. It was less impressive than other visits but it was okay. I was missing my old zoom lens at this point, but I had a zoom on the film camera so I may get a good view when I get the film developed at some point in the vastly distant future.
I took a bunch of sun and water shots with the film camera. I expect they will all suck, mostly because the light meter on the Nikon FG-20 is a bitch to read. Manually focusing with that camera is also a bitch, but everything I was looking at was at infinity so that made it easier. Hopefully everything will come out okay, but we’ll have to wait and see.
I had planned to make a second stop on this morning’s photography adventure. I was going to go to downtown Lowell and walk around with one of the film cameras. Unfortunately for my plans my bladder was kinda full. I changed plans to stop at a spot in Andover where you can get up close to a railroad track, but I needed to change from route 495 South to route 93 South and I accidentally got on route 93 North, which is the way to get home. I was kind of on autopilot because I was listening to the live tracks on the deluxe edition of Rush Permanent Waves because today is Geddy Lee’s birthday and I guess I just distracted myself.
I decided I would go home, pee, and then go out for some car music. When I got home, Jen suggested I go back to bed because it was only 6:30am or so and I was going to need a nap at some point, so I went back to bed for a couple of hours and then did car music.
The sun will come up at Hampton Beach tomorrow at 5:31am. If I am going to get there in time I have to leave the house by 4:50 at the latest. I would have to be out of bed by 4:20 or so.
Can I do another sunrise shoot? The second one in a week?
I’m pretty tired tonight… but I think I will pack the cameras into a backpack before bed tonight. You know, just in case.