With the New Year on the Way, A New Way to Photograph...

I have always believed that what camera you use does not matter. Photography is not about equipment, it’s about images. It’s about learning the grammar of the visual language and applying those lesson when taking your photographs.

At the same time, I scoffed at the idea of photography with a cell phone. All the while cell phone manufacturers were improving the cameras in cell phones and the photography world started paying attention. Given that almost everyone has a cell phone with a camera, a lot of photographs are being produced by cell phone cameras. But still I scoffed. Real photographs are taken by real cameras.

One day during my usual visit to YouTube I came across a video from a company named Moment. Moment is based in Seattle. They make cell phone cases and lenses that you attach to the case for a number of different cell phone brands.  (https://www.shopmoment.com/)

Well now, this looked interesting. So I though I’d give it a try. I ordered a case for my iPhone and a couple of lenses.

Moment iPhone XS Max Case and Wide Angle Lens

The case finally arrived after a two month wait. (Apparently a small company does not get the attention from a manufacturer that a larger company does.) 

So yesterday I went out to Beckman Mill to shoot a comparison between the native iPhone lens and the Moment wide angle and telephoto lenses. Here are the results.

iPhone lens

Moment wide angle lens (18mm)

Moment telephoto lens (58mm)

I also got the Moment macro lens and shot some frost photographs yesterday morning.

And one more photograph with the Moment 58mm telephoto lens.

So far I’m liking the results but I need to spend more time taking photographs until I’m as comfortable with the iPhone as a camera as I am with my Nikons. Thus the title of this post. When I don’t need all of the capabilities of the Nikons, I plan on shooting with my iPhone and exploring all of its capabilities as a camera. After all, as someone once said “The best camera is the one you have with you.” And I have my iPhone with me all the time.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.”

Video Post Test...

Testing the video upload on Blogger.

Pietenpol Fly-In at the Brodhead Airport...

A year ago I was mentoring a new photographer. We were in Brodhead looking for interesting things to photograph. On the way out of town, we went down Airport Road and passed the airport. (A very small place with a grass strip.) I noticed a number of older planes.

When I got home I fired up my browser and Googled “Brodhead Airport”. Well they were holding the annual Pietenpol Fly-In. So I decided that the next year, (2018), I’d go there to to see what it was all about and take some photographs.

So this past Thursday, June 19, I drove over to the airport. The weather was cloudy and gloomy and not the best for flying. Yet there were a number of airplanes there. Apparently the weather on Wednesday afternoon to the west of us kept some people from making the trip.

So I wandered around and took some photographs. 

On Friday the 20th, I went out again. Unfortunately it was raining off and on, more on than off. I did talk to a guy who had flown his plane in from Minneapolis on Wednesday. I got a brief history of the Pietenpol airplane from him. Very interesting. You can read about it’s history here: https://www.pietenpolaircraftcompany.com/pietenpol-air-camper-history

So here are some photographs from Thursday and Friday. I plan to go back next year. Hopefully the weather will be better.

The Tamron 1.4X Teleconvereter...

When I bought the Tamron 150-600, which I subsequently sold, I also bought the Tamron 1.4X Teleconverter. I hardly ever use it because I was never happy with the results from it on the 150-600.

So today I thought I’d Give it a try on the Tamron 100-400 on my walk this morning with Roxie. I wanted to check out how the auto focus works and if I could get a sharp image with it.

The photos below are from that walk. It is sharp. These photos were all hand held while holding onto a leash at the same time. Not an ideal shooting situation. What I did learn is that for these kind of close photographs, the f-stop cannot be smaller than f/8. Auto focus did not work well at f/11 in darker conditions like deep shade. In brighter light it worked just fine. More testing on this required.

But I was happy to see the results and can now shoot with this combination with confidence.

1/400 at f/11 - 290mm

1/400 at f/9 - 480mm

1/400 at f/8.5 - 420mm

1/400 at f/11 - 350mm

Tri-X, f/8, and be there

Watermarks...

When I process my images with Alien Skin Exposure X3, I add a watermark on exporting the edited image. See lower right on the image below.

As it turns out, you can create a watermark using the image’s metadata. A very useful feature if you want to document the effects of various shutter speeds on an image.

Quite a different effect between 1/500th of a second and 1/20th of a second.

Of course you can over do it. I added the camera, camera model , and serial number.

Tri-X, f/8, and be there

Giordana Velodrome Friday Night Races...

I was in Rock Hill, South Carolina, recently for a short visit with a sister. On Friday, my sister and I went to the Giordana Velodrome for the Friday Night Races.

The 250m world-class Giordana Velodrome is part of the Rock Hill Outdoor Center at Riverwalk. The facility is owned and operated by the City of Rock Hill and has hosted national and regional caliber races along with several special events and outreach programs.

I’ve never photographed at a velodrome before so I was looking forward to it.

I use my Tamron 100-400 and in addition to stopping the action with a high shutter speed, I used a slow shutter speed and panned with the action. I was very pleased with the results.

Tri-X, f/8, and be there

Does Your Camera Matter?...

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” – Ernst Haas

I was reminded of this quote the other day when I saw a post online titled “Will the Sony a7 III Cause You to Jump Ship?”

This is typical of the obsession with gear in photography today. Everyone wants more megapixels, more AF points, faster frame rates, mirrorless cameras, EVF (electronic viewfinders), IBIS (in body image stabilization), and on and on. People are not satisfied with the lenses they have so they keep buying the latest f/1.2 Art lens thinking that will improve their photography.

And when a new camera comes out, it foretells the death of Nikon or Canon, or Sony, or DSLRs.

Or the incessant comparisons between cameras: “We compare the Sony A 7 R III to the Canon 5D Mark II to the Nikon D850. Which camera is better?” Really?

And thanks to the manufacturer’s marketing efforts and photography blogs, and YouTube videos the obsession with gear continues. I think that in no other art form is there such an obsession with the tools used to produce the final work of art. (I doubt if you’ll find that sculptors obsess over their tools asking questions of which chisel is better, should I buy this chisel or wait for the next version. Or painters posting comparisons of different manufacturer’s brushes or canvases.)

For me, none of that really matters. What matters is the image, the photograph you produce. What matters is your vision. What matters is what you feel about your subject. What matters is how you framed your image, the quality of focus, the depiction of time, and how you arranged the content of your image.

And don’t get me started on megapixels. I dare say that most people who get into these discussion are not making huge prints but are mainly posting to web sites. You really need a 50 MP camera to post to Flickr?

And if you print, most affordable printers can only manage A3 or A4 paper size. I’ve printed images on A3 paper that came from a 3 PM camera and they are gorgeous.

Here are some images that were taken with the following cameras:

Canon Powershot S410 - 4MP 

CoolPix 5700 - 5MP

Olympus EPL1 - 12MP

Nikon D1 - 3MP

Nikon D1X - 5MP

Nikon D50 - 6MP

Nikon D300 - 12MP

Nikon D5100 - 16.2MP

Nikon D7000 - 16.2MP

Nikon D610 - 24.3MP

Nikon D750 - 24.3MP

Nikon D7500 - 21MP

Motorola G3 - 13MP

Can you match the photograph to the camera and megapixels?

I didn’t think so. Because “There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” – Ernst Haas

‘Tri-X, f/8, and be there.”