My coffee of choice is always rich, dark, and robust. One of my favorites is Sumatra and I was delighted to discover a local source of the Sumatra I love so much this morning at the Farmer’s Market at the gym. Red Barn Roasting out of Penryn has started selling their coffees through local farmers’ markets. Check out Red Barn’s Website.
Focal Length 180mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/100
WB Auto
Straightened
Focal Length 112mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/100
WB Auto
SOOC
Along with buying strawberries yesterday at Granny May’s strawberry farm, I bought some fresh garlic and Japanese eggplant that I plan to turn into ratatouille. Too bad my tomatoes aren’t ripe. I will have to pick some up at the farmers’ market tomorrow to make it.
Focal Length 190mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
6/10 second
WB Auto
SOOC
I came across a patch of Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot) along the side of the road this afternoon. When I saw it, I decided to forego today’s topic, “Things with Wings.” I didn’t think I’d find any wild birds out in the 100° plus heat and in any event, I find Queen Anne’s lace quite lovely. What is interesting to me about Queen Anne’s Lace is that a single tiny purple flower appears in the center of the cluster amidst thousands of white flowers. As I composed my shots, a couple of honeybees buzzed about and so I was able to capture “things with wings” any way.
The first shot features a couple of flower heads, SOOC. I cropped the subsequent two shots.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/8
1/500
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/8
1/500
WB Fine Weather
Cropped
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/16
1/200
WB Fine Weather
Cropped
Flowers again. This is Abraham Darby, resting lazily on his trellis.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/25
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
A day lily lives up to its name. . . each bloom lasts just one day, a sad thing for such a lovely flower. Here are two shots of the same flower with its predecessor shriveling away to the right and its successors underneath awaiting their unveiling tomorrow and over the next couple of days. It was breezy out so there is a little bit of movement showing in the petals despite the fast shutter speed I used. I was inspired to take flower shots today after viewing the macro flower shots that Melinda posted on her blog yesterday.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/1.4
1/4000
WB Fair Weather
SOOC
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/1.4
1/4000
WB Fair Weather
SOOC
My Nikon D800 passed! Based on tests I performed today, I am fairly certain that my new, wonderful, exotic D800 camera focuses properly. What a relief. Focus has been an issue for me since I got my Nikon D90 two years ago. This blog is called “In Focus Daily” precisely as a reminder to me that my primary goal is to make sure every shot I post is in crisp, tack sharp focus. While I do not always manage to do so, it is still my goal. Now that I’ve moved up to the Nikon D800, I continue to struggle with focus. In recent days I have become aware that some of the new, award winning D800 cameras like mine were manufactured with autofocus defects. I’ve been reading horror stories about these problems and wondered if my fabulous camera might have fallen prey to this condition. To find out, this afternoon I performed an autofocus test on the D800 using my 50mm 1.4 lens. I plan eventually to test all of my lenses and my D90 camera as well but I cut my test short due to the heat. I was forced outside to perform the test in the heat because I needed to get optimum, fast shutter speeds for the test. And the 91° heat, actually a moderate temperature for this time of the year, got to me after a couple of hours of test shots, downloading and evaluating, outside again for another series of test shots.
For any of you camera wonks out there who are curious about what I did, I followed the instructions in NASIM MANSUROV’s Blog. First I downloaded and printed a test page; attached it to a white board propped on an outside table; I leveled the board to make sure it was perfectly vertical and that the test page was perfectly horizontal on the board, then leveled the tripod and set the camera focal length about six feet from the test page. The lens was set to maximum aperture, low ISO, and fast shutter speed. I took a reference shot using Live View. The problem here was that live view requires the ability to see the LCD screen well and since I was outside in bright sun (the board and test page were in open shade/indirect light) it was next to impossible to see the screen so I stood with an open newspaper draped over my head and top of the camera, feeling like a photographer from the 1800’s underneath his black cloth. I still had difficulty making sure the reference shots were focused well. Then I took three successive shots focusing through the view finder with autofocus after making sure the lens was unfocused before I started to autofocus each shot. I repeated this process three times, for each of three auto focus areas: center (the most accurate), far right, and far left. The left autofocus area gave me the most concern because some of the shots were not in crisp focus but when I repeated the test for the left autofocus point, all were in focus.
Since I have spent the day on technical camera issues, not using my camera artistically as I would prefer, my blog today features two of those technical, in focus shots. First is the severely cropped version of the test.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/1.4
1/2500
SB Fair Weather
Cropped
This is the uncropped version.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/1.4
1/2500
SB Fair Weather
SOOC
Unless you buy it a Trader Joe’s who must have a cheap source because I think I paid only about five dollars for this bottle of saffron threads. But, come to think of it, the bottle holds 1 gram (.035 ounce) of saffron; 28 grams to an ounce. At that rate, an ounce of saffron would cost $140. I guess I should not be so cavalier about displaying it for a photograph. I hope I got it all back into the bottle.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/13
Custom WB
SOOC
While I was at the grocery store this morning, I got a call from the California Foundation for Birds of Prey (CFBP) to pick up an injured baby hawk. The people who found the hawk had placed it in a tall corrugated carton that we were able to buckle in with the seatbelt in the back seat of my car. When I arrived at the CFBP clinic, Vincent asked if I had my camera with me and since I go no where without my camera, I whipped it out, he opened the box, and we both peered inside. They think he is probably a young Cooper’s hawk. I hope he makes it.
Today’s challenge theme is “size” and as I reviewed the few shots I took, it struck me that he looks small down in the depths of the big box. Perfect for the “size” challenge. I had to increase exposure a bit.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 1000
f/1.4
1/80
WB Custom (once again, erroneously left over from yesterday’s shoot)
Today’s theme is “energy” and although I drove by an electrical power station on my way home from the gym this morning, my energy was too sapped to stop and take a photo. My “picker upper” of choice after a strenuous workout is Muscle Milk, a high protein energy drink. I really needed it this morning—but not before I took a couple of photos. The photos all looked uninteresting until I rummaged around and found my weights to add interest (and a little Fourth of July color). I don’t use these weights at home too often but at least they served as an appropriate prop.
I have added another Lightroom “skill” to my repertoire. Although I used my tripod this morning, I didn’t level the camera well enough so I have now learned how to straighten a photo.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/1.4
1/15
Custom WB
When I went out about 9:30 to take my flag down, I looked up and in the southeast sky, just above my neighbor’s rooftop, the full moon loomed. Since I missed the last full moon which was the Super Moon, and since I haven’t yet taken a full moon photo with my D800, I got my tripod out, set my camera to timed shutter release and took several shots. Despite all my care with trying to keep the camera still, I think the long, heavy 28-300mm lens and the clunk of the mirror when the shutter releases, still resulted in a bit of a camera shake. These shots are not as tack sharp as some of the moon shots I’ve previously taken with my D90 and 70-300mm lens. So tomorrow night, I may try to take some photos of the slightly less full moon with the camera set to the “mirror up position” to see if I can eliminate or at least reduce the camera shake.
In the first shot I used the Sunny 16 settings: ISO 100, f/16. 1/100 and as I look at that shot, the moon actually has a greenish tinge, at least on my monitor. With slower shutter speeds, the moon brightened and became silvery. Here are two shots, the first at 1/100, the green cheese moon, and the second, at 1/25, the silvery moon. Both shots are severely cropped.
Peridot is the August birthstone and when I was born, I was given a baby ring with a green peridot gem set into a tiny gold ring. I know next to nothing about gemstones and all I know about peridot is that it is green. The ring is marked 10K and the metal is very thin so it is not an expensive ring, and the stone looks suspiciously like colored glass. When I was about twelve, I asked my mother if I could have the ring resized because I wanted to wear it. A small piece of gold was added and I wore it on the baby finger of my right hand. The stone is badly scratched and a chunk of it broke out when I hit my hand against the edge of the desk after reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance one morning at Junior High School. But I still keep the ring in its original cute little hinged plastic ring box which seems to have held up better than the ring for more than 65 years.
I took this photo on my kitchen table and I used a small aperture because I wanted a deep depth of field. I tried using a custom white balance but the color was not at all accurate. When I switched to auto white balance, the color was perfect.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/16
1 second
Auto WB
SOOC
Today’s challenge theme is “foot” and today was a challenging day for me, photographically speaking. I was busy with other things and not inspired to photograph anything so finding a foot to photograph was not an easy task. Bobo would have been the perfect subject holding a pepper in her foot and scratching her head which she was doing when I realized it would make the perfect photograph but by the time I got my camera she wasn’t doing it anymore. A few other foot options were uninspiring, like my one foot ruler and the feet on a brass bucket but when I went out to check on my flag, the holder for which got installed this afternoon by a friend just in time for the Fourth of July, I realized that the little statue that has stood in my entry for the past twenty plus years might work. She is concrete, she is well worn —eroding is more like it— and she sports bare feet. It’s the best I could do today.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/3
WB Fair Weather
SOOC
A couple of days ago I discovered that Juliet, my hybrid grape/Roma tomato plant has set a few clusters of fruit. When I went out this morning to set up the sprinkler to water my dying lawn because my automatic sprinklers need repair, I admired my clusters of tomatoes, then remembered that today’s challenge theme is “starts with ‘T'” so after watering, I took this photo.
With this morning’s photo, I have advanced from the Import/Export window in Lightroom to the Develop module. I can now crop a photo which is what I did to this shot. I had to cope with lots of tomato leaves, stems and supports which were all pretty distracting so I got rid of most by cropping out everything but the “two tiny tomatoes.”
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 320
f/5.6
1/80
Auto WB
Cropped