Remember to test your equipment first

Time for the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown in the city. Brought my usual parade kit, D3 + SB-800 + 70-200VR. Got to the event, started firing off some shots. Blinking highlights. Odd, but I ignored them and continued to shoot. Even more blinking highlights.

Decreased the aperture, and whoa, major overexposure. Stopped the aperture down (whoops, flash is strobing in modelling mode) and looked down the lens barrel: aperture is wide open. Removed the lens, and the aperture lever is stuck. It was easy to move it back to the fully closed position, and I moved it around just to make sure it was ok. No more blinking highlights after that fix.

Capture NX to the rescue. Of course it can't give me back the missing DOF, and some shots are just too overexposed to be of any use.

Lesson learned: always test your equipment before shooting, and don't ignore the blinking highlights.


On a side note, the Olympus E-P1 and 14-42mm lens are arriving tomorrow. New toy!

Struggling with night time parades

I've never understood why the Chinese New Year parade starts at dusk. Most of the participants don't come equipped with lights, and the fireworks really aren't big enough to warrant darkness. But it is what it is, and every year I struggle to get good shots of the parade.

This year I decided to skip using a flash, and went with the D3 and 35mm f/2. I set auto ISO to a limit of 3200, and got decent enough shots. The mix of sodium lamps, incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, neon tubes and flash makes white balance tricky, but I'm happy with this year's images, more so than with other years.

Anticipation

There's less than an hour left before the premiere of the final season of Lost. I've almost done re-viewing last season's episodes as a refresher course.

It's been a fun ride, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up. More than any show, I've enjoyed watching Lost and always look forward to new episodes. I'll have to find something else to do when it's finally off the air.

Here's my minor brush with the production crew. Taken in 2006 in Manoa valley when I was on my way to hike the Manoa Falls trail. Of course the guards wouldn't say what was being filmed at the time, but it's not too hard to guess.

A Merry (macro) Christmas!

The gifts have been unwrapped, the noche buena enjoyed (but not completely finished off), and it's time for the cycle to begin again.

Out-of-focus tree lights (ala Banana Republic, but it would work better if the lights were colored).

Martinelli's sparkling cider.

Shooting hand-held with a 105mm micro (Nikon-speak for macro)  isn't really recommended. Any slight movement you make means an out of focus shot. But it's still fun to try.

Home-made ornament. It takes a lot of patience to cover a ball with sparkles, and the patience ran out.

Macy's musical snowball (wait for the post-Christmas sale for a good buy).

A hand-painted clown angel ("Homer! You have it set on whore!")

And finally, my goal for next year's Christmas.

The right lens for the job

Back in 2003, I shot a pan of the city from the Marin Headlands, using the D2H and the 70-200VR. It's one of my favorite photos, and shows off the clean long exposures from the D2H and the image quality of the 70-200VR. Tuesday was a very clear day, so I decided to do a similar shot, using the D3 and 105mm DC.

Bad idea. After spending hours in the cold (to the point where I couldn't feel my fingers), I looked at the full size images, and discoverd lens decentering on the right side of my 105mm DC. I didn't know this, since I never used this lens for landscapes. I should have checked it first before I selected this lens for the job. I compounded the issue by shooting the city from Treasure Island, making two shoots ruined by picking the wrong tool. A case of wrong lens for the job.

Despite the failure, I did learn a few things. One, I hadn't set up a menu bank on the D3 for long exposure shots (long exposure noise reduction, exposure delay, 2sec self timer, etc.). Two, it can get really, really cold up in the headlands. Three, the iPod Touch flashlight program works nicely to light up the bubble levels on my tripod and quick release base in the dark. And finally, always, always, always check your settings before you shoot.

I'll have to go back after Christmas to do the shoot again (before they turn off the Christmas lights on the pyramid and Embarcadero Center). I think I'll use the 85mm f/1.4 this time around. I also want to shoot the pyramid from Chinatown/North Beach.