Post your photography!!

[mhedges]

Haw River Abandoned Store by Mark Hedges, on Flickr

 

[Danddd]

 

[devnull]

It's a good week for lightning here.

Just shot these a little while ago. The clouds came in very low and obscured must of the lightning. The first one I saw the other side of it far to the left after it traveled through the cloud.

 

[onepixel]

 

[devnull]

I had to figure out how to correct the barrel distortion and perspective on these shots because the software I use for post processing, Darktable, doesn't apply lens correction properly. No idea why. I thought these were a loss.

I shot this one with a Tamron 17-50mm F4, which is a lens I like, but it was challenging figuring out how to edit these things. Lens distortion/perspective correction isn't a big deal until you start shooting with wide angle zoom lenses that need it to present the image in an acceptable manner.

This is a lightning strike on a TV antenna earlier today. That thing is at least 6 or 7 miles away, maybe a bit more.

These are shots I took back on March 30th. I used a Tamron 17-28mm F2.8 and had no idea how to fix them at the time -- same as the 17-50, crazy barrel distortion and perspective made them useless. Actually, these were far worse. They almost looked like fisheye lens images.

I shot these through a window. I normally don't do things like that, but the lightning was coming in just south of my building and it was either shoot through the window or not get anything. I was disappointed that I didn't think I was going to be able to use them because they were some of the best lightning shots I've taken.

The stacks are from the power plant across the street. The building on the left looks a little wonky. Probably due to the window.

 

[onepixel]

I had to figure out how to correct the barrel distortion and perspective on these shots because the software I use for post processing, Darktable, doesn't apply lens correction properly. No idea why. I thought these were a loss.

I shot this one with a Tamron 17-50mm F4, which is a lens I like, but it was challenging figuring out how to edit these things. Lens distortion/perspective correction isn't a big deal until you start shooting with wide angle zoom lenses that need it to present the image in an acceptable manner.

This is a lightning strike on a TV antenna earlier today. That thing is at least 6 or 7 miles away, maybe a bit more.

These are shots I took back on March 30th. I used a Tamron 17-28mm F2.8 and had no idea how to fix them at the time -- same as the 17-50, crazy barrel distortion and perspective made them useless. Actually, these were far worse. They almost looked like fisheye lens images.

I shot these through a window. I normally don't do things like that, but the lightning was coming in just south of my building and it was either shoot through the window or not get anything. I was disappointed that I didn't think I was going to be able to use them because they were some of the best lightning shots I've taken.

The stacks are from the power plant across the street. The building on the left looks a little wonky. Probably due to the window.

Nice shots!

 

[highvoltage_]

I shot these somewhere around 5 AM this morning, not sure exactly when as I had the time wrong on the Sony A7 II I used. I actually had both my A7 II and the A7R IVa set up, but the A7R IVa was pointed toward the leading edge of the storm, and it faded just as I got set up. So the less capable camera got all the lightning.

A few of these are pretty big crops, about as far as I can push it given the sensor density of the A7 II.

The lightning was right on the edge of the cloud line, so quite often it was a narrow strip in the frame with the action. I tried a panoramic perspective on a few of them that were particularly wide.

I have a number of images from yesterday I haven't processed. While there were few great shots, over the last few days I've been pretty lucky.

The last one is my new avatar!

 

[mhedges]

Graffiti with Table by Mark Hedges, on Flickr

 

[Danddd]

 

[Old Ears too]

SpaceX launch with first stage doing its flip turn to return to earth. Street light flare in lower right, I shot this from my driveway.

 

[old_tv_nut]

My entries for Wednesday's camera club competition.

Subject of the month: "Abstract":

Rose Refraction


Black Expanse



Outing category (Sahuarita car show):

Ford Deluxe



Monochrome category:

Murky

 

[mhedges]

Graffiti with dangling light by Mark Hedges, on Flickr

 

[Danddd]

My entries for Wednesday's camera club competition.

Subject of the month: "Abstract":

Rose Refraction
View attachment 3746703

Black Expanse
View attachment 3746705


Outing category (Sahuarita car show):

Ford Deluxe
View attachment 3746707


Monochrome category:

Murky
View attachment 3746710

I like Rose Refraction a lot.

 

[old_tv_nut]

I like Rose Refraction a lot.

Thanks. Tomorrow I'll find out if the judge does.

 

[devnull]

I'm still mucking around with figuring out how to improve my macro images. This 10X image is one I like. Nice color and some pretty good detail.

This was taken using the new Godox MF12 flashes I bought.

Monarch butterfly wing.

I tore down my homemade optical bench a few times in an attempt to try to reduce the amount of vibrations getting through, mainly by adjusting the air pressure in the wheelbarrow innertubes I use as a vibration isolation measure. It seems that the setup I started with is about as good as it's going to get. 50X is out of the question, and 20X is borderline, but some of that is due to the diffraction limit involved with the objectives and the cameras I use, the other side of that is the vibration I'm dealing with.

Here's a 20X I shot yesterday.

The sharpness is fading a bit from the 10X image.

I've been researching what it will take to address the vibration problem. I'm going to buy four lab grade pneumatic vibration isolation legs and build a custom table frame to mount them. A honeycomb breadboard will go on top of the isolation legs.

 

[Old Ears too]

I'd mount it on a bag of concrete if you don't want vibes getting to it.
My brother designed scanning electron microscopes before retiring and they were always mounted on giant slabs of concrete. They were used on the equipment that checks wafers before they're cut into chips. Think nanometer scale dimensions and you're close.

 

[old_tv_nut]

I'd mount it on a bag of concrete if you don't want vibes getting to it.
My brother designed scanning electron microscopes before retiring and they were always mounted on giant slabs of concrete. They were used on the equipment that checks wafers before they're cut into chips. Think nanometer scale dimensions and you're close.

Zenith used to have a huge audio anechoic chamber in a building next to the tollway. It was in the basment, mounted on an indepent foundation to isolate it from building vibrations, and still picked up up some low level low frequency vibrations from traffic on the tollway.

 

[devnull]

I'd mount it on a bag of concrete if you don't want vibes getting to it.
My brother designed scanning electron microscopes before retiring and they were always mounted on giant slabs of concrete. They were used on the equipment that checks wafers before they're cut into chips. Think nanometer scale dimensions and you're close.

And I'll bet those big slabs of concrete were mounted on specialized vibration isolation equipment. I did a little reading and the concrete is only one part of the design of the support structure for electron microscopes.

They also are quite often located in basements such as old_tv_nut mentioned.

Vibration isolation I'm trying to achieve tends to involve very heavy tables that are spec'ed at very heavy loads. I wanted to buy a commercial table, but most are so heavy that they would exceed the load rating on the floor in my apartment -- and that's just the table. That doesn't include all the weight you need to stack on top of the vibration isolation legs to get them to where they're within their design specifications.

Zenith used to have a huge audio anechoic chamber in a building next to the tollway. It was in the basment, mounted on an indepent foundation to isolate it from building vibrations, and still picked up up some low level low frequency vibrations from traffic on the tollway.

I'll bet there are some very interesting installations at various facilities across the US.

 

[mhedges]

Rattle can graffiti by Mark Hedges, on Flickr

 

[mhedges]

Bridge to the south mill by Mark Hedges, on Flickr