My first attempt at a proper Milky Way arch photograph. Not easy to stitch properly, but worth the effort! Click on the image for a file size large enough to properly enjoy…
MIlky Way Arching over Hualālai
Category: Photography
NYPL Digital Collections Online
The New York Public Library has just published 187 thousand digital images online. The collection is staggering in its volume, a collection of images that ranges across the spectrum of American and even world history. One could publish an interesting blog simply mining this huge collection for the historical tidbits it contains. World events to restaurant menus, there is just so much there.
In addition to the images there is a great deal of other material. Old engravings and illustrations, maps, even menus from restaurants dating back a century. I will have to refer to this collection when looking for illustrations in the future, there is a treasure trove of material here.
Most of the interesting images I found were stereoscopic pairs. Stereoscopic pairs were incredibly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While many might be familiar with the View-Master style stereo viewers of the 1950’s and 1970’s, the original version of this used a side-by-side print in place of a transparency.
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.
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
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.
How far for a good photo?
How far do you need to go for a good photo? My trips to Central America or Alaska have resulted in a catalog of great images. On the other side, so many of my good photos can be found close to home, the geckos in my garden or the shoe rack a few feet from the desk where I process my photos…
Canon EOS-M3 Review
Despite a rough introduction the Canon EOS-M series is developing into a solid product offering. And it was a rough start, the first model with the first software version was so bad I sent the first camera I ordered back in frustration and disappointment.
In time, and after receiving a withering round of criticism, Canon fixed some of the most striking deficiencies in the original EOS-M, in particular the sluggish and erratic focusing. With the fixes in place, and steep price discounts, I gave the camera another try. I have gradually come to like this little camera. The photo quality is quite good, the EOS-M lenses are nice and sharp, and the touch screen a very usable feature I have often missed in my full size DLSR’s.
After a couple years of shooting with the EOS-M I decided to order the EOS-M3, the latest offering in the product line. For reasons a mystery outside Canon the camera was originally not released in the US, available in Japan since early 2015. Only in the last month has news come that the camera will become available for order here in the US. Not willing to wait, and the start of an adventure looming on the calendar I ordered a Japanese version on eBay. No issue, there are YouTube videos that explain how to navigate the kanji menus and set the language to English. Thus my fun with a new camera began.
A Camera Security Device
Taking astrophotos or time lapse often involves leaving a camera out in the dark for long periods. Cameras are somewhat more robust than humans, tolerating the cold for a bit longer. As a result often the cameras are unattended while the human seeks shelter in some warmer place. This can result in the theft of the unattended camera.
On the mountain is not the only place this risk exists. I have often left a camera operating for hours in my driveway at the front of my house attached to a telescope. In an attempt to make it somewhat more difficult to simply grab and run I designed a simple security device. A little block of aluminum with a slot that accommodates a standard computer cable lock.
Machined from aluminum the block took very little time to make and provides a great deal peace of mind. It is not impervious to a determined attack, but does prevent the camera from simply walking away. In place of aluminum it could probably be 3D printed if you do not have a machine shop available. With a little more patience it could be manufactured with simply hand tools.
Mechanical design for the CamLockBlock
The slot is the standard Kensington security slot, a 3mm x 7mm slot as found in almost all laptop computers. The locks are available from just about anyplace that sells computer accessories.
The screw I use is a tamperproof button head screw, one that requires a special tool to remove. A standard hex button head screw would probably work in most situations, it is unlikely that an opportunistic thief will have a set of allen keys handy.
The block can be used on a telescope, with the cable wrapped around a tripod leg. It can also be used on a tripod, a ¼-20 hole is tapped to allow the block to sit between the camera and the tripod head. The security cable can then be secured to anything available. Atop Mauna Kea there are many railings, guardrails and signposts that would provide a solid locking point. In nature there are fewer steel poles, but a tree trunk or something similar would also serve.
The design can be modified to suit ones needs, the mechanical drawing above shows the device in its simplest form. As you can see in the photo my prototype block includes two screw holes for the camera and a 3/8″ threaded hole for larger tripods. I also put a second lock slot on the bottom to have the option of having the lock stick out in a different direction.
Check the dimensions of your camera, tripod head or favorite adapter plate to insure that the lock will fit without interference. You can always adjust the dimensions or the mounting hole positions to accommodate your setup.
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.
Vintage Glass
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.
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.
Oregon in 1985
More scanning, more memories. Taking these old photos out of the boxes has been fun. So many little treasures on celluloid. Photos of myself as a teenager, photos of the neighborhood I grew up in. There is so much of my life stowed away out of reach, converted to digital they live again…
