photography – Page 4 – A Darker View

Macrophotography With Extension Tubes

One of the advantages of a mirrorless camera, like the EOS-M, is the very shallow backfocus requirement. The distance from the lens mount to the sensor is quite small, allowing use of just about any series of lenses on the market. All that is needed is the correct adapter, a need that several specialty manufacturers have addressed with products. The result is that the camera is useful in a wide range of photographic experiments and projects.

Gecko & Plumeria — A gold dust day gecko (Phelsuma laticauda) on a plumeria blossom

This includes older lenses from years past such as the Canon manual focus FD lenses or the Leica M lenses from decades ago. I have a number of these excellent lenses, mostly Nikon and Canon, the fast primes once treasured by photographers for their optical quality. Because these old lenses are not suited for use with modern DSLR’s they are often relegated to eBay and discount shelves in used camera stores. This does not mean they are obsolete, there are creative uses still available for these classic lenses.

I have had fun simply shooting with these old primes and the EOS-M camera. Sometimes I will grab a single lens and just go someplace to play with the camera for half an hour, sort of a self imposed creative exercise. Using one of these manual focus lenses brings back memories of my first years of film photography, before the days of auto-focus.

Combine these old lenses with an extension tube, and the rig becomes a macro-photography setup capable of fairly high magnification.

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Inside Passage – Echoes of the Past

SE Alaska and the coast of British Columbia are a place where the past does not get wiped away. Ruins, wrecks, and abandoned places are often left for nature to reclaim rather than scrapped or redeveloped. When traveling the waterways of the Inside Passage you are often wandering through echoes of the past.

Inside Passage – Echoes of the Past from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo

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Dual Lasers on the Galactic Center

I have been trying to get some good photos of both Keck lasers on the galactic center for some years. Other photographers have produced spectacular photos that have me seething with envy. Why can I not get equivalent photos? It is not like I have a lack of access. The answer is mostly bad luck and circumstance. I do work, this limits the nights I can make the attempt. On those times I have ascended the mountain to photograph I have been plagued by bad weather.

There are only a few nights a year when Andrea Ghez and the UCLA Galactic Center Group have both telescopes scheduled, the night when both lasers will be focused on the core of our galaxy and the massive black hole that dwells there. Last year I had attempted a night only to find clouds and fog through the night allowing only a few moments of dual lasers and disappointing results.

This year looked to be much the same. The night was set, I had volunteered to host several local photographers, we had film permits on-hand, an observatory vehicle reserved, all the arrangements made. The only issue? The Mauna Kea Weather Center forecast promised high clouds and fog for the night. I was bracing for yet another disappointment.

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Buying Hard Drives

My slide digitizing project is now producing data by the gigabyte. As expected I am filling up the drives on my desktop computer. Not that there was a lot of space available in the first place, less than 50Gb was clear on the primary data drive. Time to buy a new hard drive! At least when I built the computer I bought a gaming cabinet with plenty of drive bays.

I face the agonizing decision… When dealing with critical data, what brand and model of hard drive do I buy? I make multiple copies, but still, a failure can cost me days of work between backups. What hard drive do I buy for my photos?

The reviews on Amazon and other retailers are nearly useless on hard drives. There will always be failures of devices like this, and angry buyers are very likely to leave negative reviews. Thus the data looks very skewed and it is hard to evaluate the reliability in any sort on meaningful way. Much less compare one drive to another.

There is real data! The cloud storage provider BackBlaze runs thousands upon thousands of hard drives. Obviously hard drive failure rates are of paramount importance to them and they closely track each type of drive they buy. Fortunately for the rest of us they publish this data and allow us to see what does, and does not work.

There are several obvious lessons in the data… Stay away from the 3Tb drive from Seagate and to a lesser extent the 3Tb drives from Western Digital. Several 4Tb models appear to be far more reliable. The failure rates on the worst drives can be upwards of 20% to 30% per year, while the better drives well under 5%. Those rates may seem high, you need to consider the hard use these drives get in a data center.

Based on this I have a new HGST 4Tb drive installed in my computer. All looks good so far, a trouble free installation and my photo collection copied over without issue. Now to see how long the drive lasts when I put some hours on it.

A Photo Review of 2015

Cobbler — Old boots and an older sewing machine in a cobbler’s shop

A review of my favorite photographs of 2015. So many wonderful images, so many memories! It was a very good year for photography with a number of excellent photo opportunities. Opportunities I did not waste. of course living in Hawaiʻi and working atop Mauna Kea often provide a photo or two. Add a trip to Nicaragua allowed a whole new range of photos.

In past eras it was popular to keep a detailed diary of one’s life. While real diaries are rarely kept anymore, blogs and photographs serve much the same purpose. As I have often stated, Darker View is a blog in the original sense, a personal diary of my life. To look back through these photos I relive much of the past year, the good parts anyway.

Click through for the full gallery and click on any photo for a slideshow.

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Street Photography with the Canon EOS-M3

Packing the camera for a trip always presents a set of vexing decisions for a photographer. What do you plan on shooting? What gear will be needed? This particular trip would be to a place I have never been and would present a range of unique photo opportunities. Nicaragua for the first time!

While I had never visited Nicaragua I had been in Mexico many times, I expected the photographic situation to be much the same, an expectation that was not disappointed. Each town in Latin America may be unique, but at at the same time looks much the same as the last. The character of these towns offers varied photo opportunities. Best of all to my thinking… Many towns feature markets, a sampling of the people and goods unique to the region, a condensation of the local culture in one convenient place.

Thus I chose my gear uncompromisingly for street photography. Leaving the big DSLRs and lenses at home I loaded two EOS-M bodies. I have one original model and one of the new M3’s purchased just before the start of the trip. These two cameras would take very little room in the luggage and offer a good range of capability. Traveling with only a single backpack meant space was at a premium. The primary lens would be the 18-55mm to allow a good general purpose walkabout capability.

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Walking a Market

Traveling Central America offers a wide range of photographic opportunities, but few offer the concentrated view of local culture that is offered by a city market. A real market is something that has been lost in the US, long ago pushed aside by supermarkets and shopping malls. A central location, filled with small shops or simply stalls, where one can buy everything they need. These markets still exist in much of the world.

Vegetable Seller — A vegetable seller poses with her merchandise

A market brings everything together in one place, the very character of the country. The people of the region, produce and tropical fruits, the goods and services of everyday life. You can spend hours in a few city blocks, wandering and shooting, a good photo around every corner and down every dim alleyway between the stalls. From vegetable stalls to cobblers and barbers plying their trades, cell phone accessories and racks of colorful shoes, everything is on sale here.

Markets are public spaces, a place where people take little notice of the camera and seldom object to being photographed, where your wanderings will draw little attention, except perhaps from peddlers hoping to make a sale.

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Nicaragua

Yes, Darker View has been a bit quiet lately. I have been not only off-island but out of the country for the last couple weeks. I flew to Portland to join my parents on a trip to Nicaragua.

Campesino — A Nicaraguan farmer leaning against the wall of his home in Tierra Amarilla

We spent ten days in Nicaragua, the first part of the trip helping out with El Porvenir, an NGO that does water and sanitation work with rural farming communities. The last part of the trip was spent playing tourist, traveling the Rio San Juan on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The trip allowed me to spent a good deal of time with my parents, do more than a little photography, and visit a beautiful country.

Back at home and back online, I have a series of posts in the works to record my experiences. The trip was extraordinarily memorable, with interesting stories to share. Along the way I did a lot of photography, thus I have gigabytes of material that needs to be sorted through. The best of this will appear here on DV as I have a chance to process it. My hope is that I can preserve a bit of the experience here in blog form. Not only for you to read, but as a record that I can read many years from now to remember this wonderful trip.

Vintage Glass

EOS-M with Canon 24mm f/2.8 FD — The EOS-M with a Canon 24mm f/2.8 FD lens mounted

This includes older lenses from years past such as the Canon manual focus FD system from decades ago. Forgotten by most, these lenses have none of the modern features photographers have come to expect. No autofocus, no image stabilization, just solid optics from an age now past. These old lenses are not obsolete, there are creative uses still available for these classic lenses.

Any sort of zoom lens need not apply, the quality of the older zoom lenses often suffered. Designed without the aid of modern optical design software and without aspheric elements these designs fall short of modern standards.

You can find these classic lenses languishing on shelves in the back of camera stores, in garage sales and on eBay. There is a lot of junk out there, it takes some research to differentiate the good from the bad. A couple quick rules of thumb will sort out most of the junk… Stick to a first rank name in old camera gear; Canon, Nikon, Ziess, Hasselblad, and Leica. The next hint of a hidden gem is the focal ratio. The classic primes were fast, f/2.8 or faster. Still, it is wise to look up the history of the lens before plunking down any cash. The good lenses will be well written about, even in modern times. You will find good references with a quick web search.

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