The Humans Are Dead

re-shoot of some previous night photos of the backyard. Ice in the trees and street lighting made for some amazing colors, and the new K10D captured it all beautifully.

Yesterday the UPS man delivered my early Christmas present to myself, a spanking new Pentax K10D.The decision to upgrade my Pentax *istDL to the new “semi-pro” (whatever that means exactly) K10D resulted from consideration of my normal subject matter, night photography and exploration shoots. For night photography, I’m looking for the benefit of the lower noise of a 100 ISO setting. For exploration, there is the possibility that the Shake Reduction feature may allow me to hand hold more shots in the generally poor lit abandoned spaces, hopefully making me more mobile. I would also assume that the weather proofing of the K10D might be helpful in dusty or damp situations.

The size and comfort of the *istDL was a big part of my decision to buy that camera. For comparison, the K10D is just a bit bigger than the *istDL, but it’s still not as bulky as the Cannon and Nikons I handled.

The only trade off I found so far (I mean besides the $600 some dollar price difference that is) in moving to the K10D from the *istDL is the loss of faster ISO speeds. The K10D ranges from 100 ISO to 1600 ISO. The *istDL, 200 ISO to 3200 ISO. But for what I usually shoot, I’ll trade the high end for a little more low end. I’ve also heard the noise pattern on the K10D is more pleasant. I’ll test that out later on some night shots.

The K10D has eleven selectable focus points to the *istDL’s single center focus. The K10D also sports PRImE (Pentax Real Image Engine) which makes noticeable difference in image quality and color.

So how about some sample picks with the new camera. We just suffered through a massive ice and snow storm so I can’t go snap pics of the same flowers I shot with the old camera. Instead, I’ve got some shots from the backyard on ice!

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I needed a cable release switch so I could start taking some longer exposure shots with my camera’s bulb mode. While searching the web to find a cheap one to buy I came across schematics for building a switch that would work for my camera. So I rounded up the needed parts from “The Shack” and set about building my own cable release.

The project was remarkably easy. Here’s what it took…

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I made a brief scouting patrol around town last night and ended up outside of the vacant Pillsbury Mill. This massive facility has been sitting unused for quite a few years. Earlier this year there was some talk from the city about coming up with something to do with the place but I don’t think anything ever came of it. The building has been a fixture of the Northside of town for a long time (all of my life and then some) so hopefully they wont decide to do anything rash like tear it down. I would love to see the inside of the facility, but I need to find somebody with the connections to get me in for a photo shoot.

And I’ll throw in a bonus photo. This one was also taken last night but at a different location.

Two night expeditions last week and I’m just getting around to posting the products. Tuesday, Bill and I made a midnight run through the rural areas just south of town. I think I’m getting a little better at exploiting ambient lighting in these night shots… no lighting the shot with the car’s headlight this time around. Away from town and out in the open, the wind became a problem as can be seen in the motion blurred trees in the shot above.

Friday night’s run was with Jason and his wife Jen. The night was perfectly clear, no wind and a full moon producing an iridescent blue sky. The plan was to head out and retake the photo above. However the photos I shot of the same spot that night, just don’t have the same feeling. Sometimes it’s a one time thing you just can’t repeat… which makes the original shot even stronger for me. But I picked up this shot that reminded us of those anime cartoons where the artwork is super realistic.

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Back to the New Salem Saw Mill for day shots of the wider area to complement the single night shot I posted previously.

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A friend and I went out to visit another friend Sunday night. I knew that the trip to his house would take me past this old Saw Mill that sits on the Sangamon River just outside of New Salem. So I brought the camera with me to try to get a night shot of the mill. The location was much darker that I was counting on. Even 30 second exposures weren’t pulling in enough light. So we had to improvise a little car headlight spot lighting from the parking lot. Not the ideal lighting source but I think I managed an interesting photo. Too bad only one of the shots was usable.

I dug up some of the old film photos I took back when I was in college and scanned them in. They turned out pretty grainy. The photos were already slightly grainy because we were shooting everything with 400 iso film (if I remember correctly) and printing to a matte finish paper (can’t remember what exactly it was). But the scans turned out with even more grain than in the prints. I think my scanner is about to crap out on me. So these are slightly photoshopped for balance and contrast to try to get them closer to how they look in the prints.

View the rest of the set over at Flickr

Things have been incredibly hectic with work the last 3 or 4 weeks. And the problem with writing about work, is it takes away time from actually working! So needless to say, I haven’t been posting anything. It seems like as summer draws to an end everybody realizes summer is almost over and they haven’t gotten project “blah blah blah” finished yet… where does the time go?

I have been taking 30 minutes here and there whenever I get time, to click off a few photos just to try to keep my interest piqued.

The backyard theme is certainly getting tired, but I’m finding a few new things to try back there. I stumbled on to some gorgeous night time photography a couple weeks back, so I had to give it a try. As I was trying to figure out the technique I managed to get a couple interesting shots. I’ve still got a lot of playing to do to start getting good results. But even given my limited experience with night photography (and without the benefit of the dramatic colored lighting) the images can be really interesting. Hopefully I’ll get time soon to work with it outside of the backyard.