Sign Commemorating Forbes Field

Given that this year is the 50th anniversary, there were quite a few more people there than usual.

People gathered at the wall

So many people were expected that the city closed off the street that runs by the wall in order to accommodate the festivities.

Street Closed

There were some interesting characters in the crowd.

Super 'stache

Arrr, matey!

There were plenty of reporters and cameramen.

Whoa, I definitely should not have had that burrito for lunch.

People brought along souvenirs and mementos…

Maz and the '60 Bucs

…and maybe a beer or two.

Yinz got an arn for me?

When 3:36 rolled around, it was time to celebrate.

Yes!!

High five!

It was a great event, an opportunity for those of us who weren’t there to experience the thrill of it, and a chance to share it with the next generation.

We had 'em all the way!

While I thought this would be a great gift, I was a little concerned that it wouldn’t work on the university’s wireless network in our on-campus apartment.  Sure enough, when I tried to set it up yesterday I couldn’t get it to work.  Any time a new device tries to connect to the university’s wireless network the DHCP server assigns it a temporary local IP address and redirects it to a registration web page.  Unfortunately, the Eye-Fi isn’t really a network adapter so you can’t use it to browse the web.  Thus, you can’t visit the registration page in order to register it for use on the network.

After the automatic setup procedure didn’t work I jotted down the card’s MAC address (which is easy to determine using the included software) and emailed the IT people on campus to ask if they could manually add the card’s MAC address to the list of MAC addresses the DHCP server will supply with IP addresses.  They were very helpful and responded that they had added the card’s MAC address as I had asked.

So, now it appears that I’m all set. I spent some time this afternoon getting it set up and I’ve successfully uploaded 5 or 6 pictures and one video using the device. All in all, it’s pretty nice. Hopefully, using this card will simplify the process of getting pictures from the camera to the computer but only time will tell if the device lives up to its promise.

If the card I got my wife works out well, I’ll seriously consider buying the Eye-Fi Pro, which permits you to upload RAW files as well as JPGs and videos.  In addition, it enables you to set up an ad-hoc connection with your PC so you can bypass local wireless networks and upload pictures directly from your card to your computer.  This type of functionality typically costs much more than either the Eye-Fi Pro’s street price of $100 or its MSRP of $150.

The first was taken using a zone plate, which I got ages ago but never used.  I got it last year at my birthday in a kit like this, which includes a device for holding photographic pinholes, the pinhole itself, and an adapter to make it fit my camera.  I had taken a few photos using the pinhole but never the zone plate.  I like the effect.  There are a couple of downsides to using either the pinhole or the zone plate, however.

First, these have incredibly narrow apertures, which means that, in order to get a correctly exposed image, you need a very long exposure or very high ISO setting.  I kept the ISO reasonably low but I used my tripod to give me the stability I needed for a long exposure.  I used a 1.3 second exposure, which, for a shot taken in the middle of the day, is really long.  This zone plate has f/56 (not 5.6, 56!), which is pretty wide for this type of device.  The pinhole I have is something like f/130, so it would require a much longer exposure.

Second, whereas taking photographs with traditional lenses is pretty forgiving when it comes to junk on your sensor, pinhole and zone plate photography is extremely unforgiving.  I had to do a bunch of spot removal in Lightroom to get rid of a bunch of ugly splotches on the image.  The image below is a 1:1 crop from an image I took of the same scene with the pinhole.  There are at least 4 spots that are clearly visible, though they vary in severity.  I had never noticed these spots before in shots taken using my normal lenses.  I guess if I want to do any more photography using my pinhole or zone plate, it’s probably time to have my sensor cleaned again.

The most recent picture is my first foray into high dynamic range (HDR) photography.  I’ve been interested in this for a while but never really pursued it.  The point of HDR images is to make details visible in both the highlights and shadows of an image. Generally, both the camera sensor and any typical viewing medium (like a monitor or even printed photos) don’t have enough dynamic range to either properly capture or properly display details in both an image’s shadows and highlights.  There is just too much difference in brightness between the darkest parts and the lightest parts in a scene for the camera to capture everything or for it to all be faithfully reproduced on a monitor or print.  So some kind of workaround is necessary.

Due to the limitations of the camera’s sensor, capturing the details in both the highlights and shadows requires multiple images to be taken at different settings, a technique called exposure bracketing.  In the simplest case, exposure bracketing involves taking the following 3 photos: one that’s significantly underexposed (to capture details in the highlights), one that’s properly exposed, and one that’s significantly overexposed (to capture details in the shadows).  These images are then imported into a program on a computer that merges them to produce a composite image that has a much higher dynamic range than can be captured with a single exposure.  Unfortunately, this image also has a much higher dynamic range than can be displayed on a monitor or on a print, so another step is necessary.  This step is called tone mapping.

Tone mapping takes a HDR image that can’t be displayed and maps its brightness values back to a range of values that can be displayed.  When an image is captured, the darkest darks and the brightest brights are “clipped”, which means they’re simply cut off – detail in those areas is lost.  Taking multiple pictures of the same scene using different exposure settings gets back the data that was clipped.  Tone-mapping could simply clip the data again, however that would throw away the detail we want to preserve.  Instead, tone-mapping compresses the dynamic range, so that the details are preserved in both the highlights and shadows.  Modern tone mapping algorithms are actually quite a bit more complicated than simply compressing the dynamic range.  Rather, they operate on the data both globally and locally to try to maximize the extent to which details are visible in the image while simultaneously compressing the dynamic range to something that can be viewed on a monitor or print.  This often results in a very striking, though sometimes unnatural-looking image.

Yesterday I was looking through my to do list and I found a reminder to buy some software for making HDR before I graduate so I can take advantage of their (60%!!) educational discount.  Having just sold our exercise bike, I had some cash on-hand so I decided to go ahead and buy the software while I thought about it.  I bought Photomatix from HDRSoft for about $40 rather than the usual $100.  I remembered that I was out a month or two ago and for some reason decided to take some shots using exposure bracketing, so I looked through my Lightroom catalog and found a few sets of exposure bracketed images.  I picked the set that I liked best, exported it to Photomatix, created the HDR image, re-imported to Lightroom, fiddled a bit with saturation and noise reduction, and then exported from Lightroom to PixelPost.  Done.

Having a tripod makes HDR photography easier, so I’m looking forward to using my new tripod along with my new HDR software to produce some good looking images in the future.  Stay tuned.

Anyway, I have wanted a sturdy tripod for a while.  After a lot of looking, I decided that I wanted a ball head since I had grown tired of having to adjust two or three knobs in order to get my composition right.  I settled on the Manfrotto 322RC2. It seemed like it would allow incredibly fast composition changes and would be very comfortable to use.  So, that found its way onto my wish list.

By pooling together money I got for my birthday I was able to get the 322RC2 head with the Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod legs.  I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to use everything yet but so far I really like it.  The ball head is so nice.  It is super easy to change your composition, very quick, and it locks solidly into place.  The legs are big – if I extend the legs fully, the eyepiece of the camera is at eye level without raising the center column at all.  This is great because it maximizes stability and gives me some freedom to play around with shots that might require the camera to be above my eye level.

Shortly after I got my kit and put everything together I took a picture of my wife and me enjoying our nerdy lifestyle:

Of course, this picture isn’t going to win any photo contests – it’s just a fun way of documenting what our evenings sometimes look like.

Earlier this week, I needed to provide someone with a head shot of myself for a poster on my research work.  I couldn’t find anything suitable among the pictures in my collection since I’m normally the one behind the camera.  So, I needed to have one taken.  I decided to try taking one of myself using my tripod.  In addition to the tripod, I also used my Pentax Remote Control F to trigger the shutter.  I wanted the picture to have a background nicer than the curtains in our apartment or something such so I went down to the banks of the Charles River and set up the camera.  I had to experiment with the camera height in order to make sure that the banks of the river in the background didn’t line up with the middle of my head, which would have been distracting.  I also ended up using my circular polarizing filter control the appearance of the clouds.

Below is my favorite from the whole batch, which includes probably 2 good pictures and about 45 bad pictures.  I felt pretty silly standing there smiling at the camera and taking pictures of myself as people drove by on Memorial Dr. and as runners strode by on the running path but I’m pretty happy with the result and I’ll probably never see any of those people again, anyway.

I’m excited about the possibilities the tripod creates for me.  I’m looking forward to trying my hand at some high dynamic range photography.  While a tripod isn’t essential for these, it certainly makes things easier since HDR pictures require at least 2 source images that have to be properly aligned before combining them to create the final product.  Also, I’m looking forward to being able to photograph the city at night.  I have plenty of good pictures looking across the Charles at Boston but none of those I’ve taken at night have been acceptably sharp.  I’m hoping my new tripod will change that.

All in all, I’m very happy with the setup, which also includes a padded carrying bag and a separate strap for carrying the tripod without the bag.  Given how solidly these things are built, I expect to be using them for years to come and probably passing them on to my offspring.

I’d like to thank my parents and my parents-in-law for their generous gifts, which not only got me the tripod but also got me the remote control and circular polarizing filter at Christmas.  Thanks!

Yesterday, my wife went out to Target and came home with a headband for him. You can see a picture of him wearing it by clicking the link below.

In any case, my son is now following in my footsteps.  He has been tripping, falling, and hitting his head on the ground for probably a month.  Today, though, he tripped and evidently hit his head on a small rock lying on the ground.  So, instead of a nice scrape like he’s gotten before, this time, he got a nice cut, which bled profusely down his face.  You can see a picture by following the link at the bottom of this post, but be warned – there is a lot of blood.  Also, here’s my wife’s description of today’s action.

Anyway, apart from my 50mm f/2.0, this is my fastest lens.  The zoom lenses I got with my K10D start at f/3.5 or something.  Since it was dark and I wanted to keep the exposures as short as possible, I thought I’d use my 135mm.

Unfortunately, when I took some pictures with it, I got the image below and others like it:

The moon shows up twice and the word “Prudential” is also visible twice.  From the word “Prudential” it’s clear that this secondary image is upside down and backwards with respect to the original.

Initially, I didn’t know what was going on.  At some point, however, I thought it might be related to the UV filter I had on my lens. I took the UV filter off the lens and the weird reflections disappeared.  This solved the problem but it still doesn’t explain to me why or how this happened.  I can’t think of a physical explanation for what I observed.

If anyone knows what set of reflections could be responsible for upside down and backwards “ghost” images appearing, please let me know.

The whole situation was complicated this winter when I got a flash and a flash bracket.  I also got a Gary Fong LightSphere II on Alex‘s recommendation.  This setup produces great quality images but it’s pretty unwieldy.  In addition, the whole thing is very top-heavy and is prone to falling over if it’s set upright.  However, if I lay it down, it takes up a huge amount of desk real estate. Since I want to be ready to take pictures at a moment’s notice, I want to leave the whole thing put together but I couldn’t find a good way to store it all put together.

I’ve considered hanging it on some kind of hook before but I never got around to pursuing that idea until this week.  In designing it I made sure it would be able to handle the considerable weight of the camera, flash, and flash bracket.  I also spent a lot of time making sure that the camera would hang upright.  Finally, I designed in a little locking mechanism so the camera couldn’t be inadvertantly bumped off the hook.  In the photos below, you can see the results of my efforts.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the way it turned out.  As they say, however, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”, so it remains to be seen whether it actually accomplishes the goals I had for it.  For now, though, I’m content to sit and admire my handiwork.

• I’m actually happy with the theme (that is, the layout and color scheme)
• I installed a Lightroom plug-in which allows me to export images from Lightroom directly into PixelPost without having to save a temporary file on my local computer.
• I’m starting to understand how to use Lightroom, which should help me to actually use it, which, in turn, will lead to more photos posted.
• Now that I have this set up, I have more motivation to process my backlog of RAW photos, albeit in manageable, postable chunks.

I posted 5 pictures today to kick things off.  I hope I’ll be able to follow through and continue posting with reasonable regularity.

In addition to adding photos, I hope to continue tweaking the site.  I made a number of changes today to the information that’s displayed when you click on “Info & Comments”.  By default, the theme only gives you the date/time the photo was added and the photo description.  I added in all the EXIF data, the categories, and I reordered things a bit. I was surprised at how easy it was, given that I know nothing about PHP or CSS.

Since I found editing the theme to be pretty easy, I’m toying with the idea of installing this add-on, which enables visitors to see where photos were taken on a Google Map.  I was interested in adding GPS coordinates to the rest of the EXIF data.  Unfortunately, PixelPost doesn’t seem to natively support GPS-related EXIF data, so an add-on is necessary.

In any case, I hope you enjoy my new photoblog.